Educating Rita...wonderful reveleation that more than anything education gives you a CHOICE

Educating Rita
Directed by Lewis Gilbert

Educating Rita is indeed a wonderful revelation. And through Rita's (well her real name is Susan, but she takes up the name of Rita in honor to Rita Mae Brown, one of the few authors she had read)urge to find herself, I discover the real purpose of education.
Rita is a 26 year working-class married girl, who works as a hairdresser and refuses to succumb to the family expectations from her...to have a baby. She decides to educate herself through open university and that brings her to Professor Bryan(Michael Caine). The professors, is initially reluctant to teach Rita. However he finds this self-styled student although tarty-looking creature dressed in a short tight skirt and long black stockings, teetering adorably on her high heels and sporting pink streaks in her dyed blond hair is in all honesty a bundle of spunk and intellectual curiosity. And slowly Rita becomes his protegee. The movie scores high when Rita explains why she has decided to educate herself. Her husband is against her ventire and even burns down her books, she finds herself a misfit in the pub songs with her family,and yet Rita strongly clutches onto her decision to educate herself, to read and to learn when she finds her mother lamenting for "some other song" rather than teh one they sing every time. And Rita understands that its only her education which would give her a chnace to learn "another song", to have a different taste of life, to know herself beyond her role as a hairdresser, a wife or a mother.
And Rita in her own limitations and innocence is indeed dedicated. The sodden, alcoholic professor brooding over his lost social life and relationship, finds streaks of ingenuity, honesty and fresh-air in Rita's presence. At times i felt it is almost Pygmallion in the reverse way. Instead of Higgins' culturally upgrading the country belle Eliza Doolittle, here Bryan in his efforts of educating Rita, realizes that what university prescribed course formats does is to erase honesty and genuine expressions from the minds of pupils and rather tecahes them to think in the ways, already jotted down as others' thoughts. Rita's understanding of assonance as getting the rhyme wrong, impresses him. He understands and even admits that Rita has something more valuable that he can give her. And that is her "own thoughts and ideas" to interpret and understand. Hence Ibsen's production values become insignificant to her, since she thinks, stage was anyways a compromise for Ibsen, who wanted to do it on radio. Such fresh ideas, unscathed by the education system makes Rita Bryan's special student.
However Rita is insistent to be like the othet college students. To argue like them borrowing quotes and thoughts from the books, to be cultured and educated and gets impressed by her new room-mate Trish, who is sophisticated and cultured. This pains Bryan incredibly, finding Rita losing herself, losing her originality to become someone else. He reminds her that she had set out to discover herself and now she has completely lost herself to become someone else.
At this point when you are wondering what literature and books are all about, are they to erase off your originality and fill you up with artificial, borrowed, intellectual banality, the movie enfolds one of its most precious moments.
Rita confronts the professor. She tells him, that today, she might flunk in her exams by expressing her own soulful ideas or she might write the answers as per the university standards, she might accompany her friends to Paris or stay back at London, take up a job or have a movie.. whatever it is SHE HAS A CHOICE. And that is what the professor has helped her in having.
The books have opened a new paradigm for her. Through Blake, Shakespeare, Ibsen...She has indeed tasted a different life. She is not compelled to do anything, be a hairdresser and have a family and baby, just because, she doesnot know what else is there to be done.
And having a "choice" is having power, which has now percolated down to a working class girl like Rita.
This liberating feeling is what thrills and enchants you at the end of the movie.

A must watch

Taking Sides

Taking Sides Directed by Istvan Szabo
How could people, with lofty artistic and intellectual tradition (of even silently listening to Beethoven in soaking rain pouring from a bombed off auditorium roof) go back home and support immense barbarism, in the name of Nazi ideas and in the form of silent hero-worship of Hitler? Surely the entire nation would be involved and would have been perpetrators of Nazism. This is the strong belief with which American Major Steve Arnold (played magnificently by Harvey Keitel) comes to Germany with the purpose of de-nazification. However he has his brief from his boss-the enraging, nauseating video clip showing Nazis mutilating piles of Jew corpses and the motto of bringing Wilhelm Furtwangler, the gifted conductor of Berlin Philharmonic during Nazi regime to trial.
America has taken onto herself to sterilize the society of these barbaric Nazis. And of course they believe entire Germany to be ailing with this Nazi disease. And unfortunately, they cannot bring the entire nation to trial. However to set example and crush the last remains of the creepy disease, they would charge Wilhelm Furtwangler accusing him for taking sides with the Nazis. Furtwangler considered being almost a genius is referred to be Hitler’s band-leader by Major Steve. His appeals to having helped innumerable Jews and having made anti-Semitic comments only in the presence of the Nazis (Goebbels and Goering) are dusted off to be his insurance scheme to later pass off as non-guilty. Furtwangler has played on Hitler’s birthday and that almost sums up his support for the Nazi party.
Furtwangler, according to Steve has preferred to stay back in Germany, when his contemporaries were leaving. And this was solely because he had the internal understanding of his security by the party. To the Nazi party, who became custodians of the German art and culture, kept patronizing Furtwangler, even when he was not a party member. And all these have happened with silent approvals from Furtwangler.
The protests and defence presented by Furtwangler are too feeble and scorned off. And this is where the movie actually brings out the real conflict between the two cultures-The boisterous, all-action Americanism, as against the soft, silent apparently acquiescing German high art sense, which allows Nazism to grow.
The debates of the movie are at times extremely one-sided. During his interrogations of the magisterially courtly conductor, Arnold systematically humiliates him. He keeps Furtwangler waiting for hours, and then forces him to ask permission to sit down. Contemptuously referring to the conductor as ''Hitler's bandleader,'' he reviles him with the same kind of obscene language that Nazi officers in the Gestapo used to address Jews in less-than-human terms. And this never allows the creation of dramatic tension out of our uncertainty over who we should believe. American Arnold Steve was painted with such vulgar spirit and vigour, humiliating the soft, self-acclaimed “naïve and exploited” Furtwangler, that we immediately sympathise with Furtwangler. Adding cues were the feeble protests and supports from Steve’s Jewish assistants, Emmi and David, siding with Furtwangler. Emmi’s support towards Furtwangler is because, she believed that like many Germans, Furtwangler too was unable to comprehend the real game being played by the Nazis at the concentration camp. One remarkable part of the movie comes when Emmi’s father a martyr in plotting against the Nazis is praised by Major Steve as someone who was courageous to have moved against Nazism. And to that Emmi Straube replies that her father did not plot against Nazism, rather he fatally plotted against a losing ruler when he realized that Germany would lose the war. Hence Nazism in question was never fought at.
The predominant tone of the movie was the clash between Major Steve’s moral absolutism, 9who believes there cannot be any grey, only black or white and hence, if Furtwangler had played for the Nazis or shook hands with him, he had sold himself to the Nazi ideas) against Furtwangler’s aestheticism and beliefs of art being separate from politics. This important argument that art is separate from politics could have had more meat. Unfortunately this relationship between art and politics becomes a secondary theme and is snubbed off as too unrealistic by Major Steve. I expected this argument to be the defining tone of the movie.
However it is an excellent movie to stir up several questions in your mind…the most important one being , can you keep art separate from politics, or the former becomes a medium of expression for the latter, or the latter is fought on the basis of the former?
Furtwangler was ultimately cleared of the charges by a de-Nazification court, although he was prevented from conducting in the United States.
At the end of the movie, we see the real footages of Furtwangler, conducting at the Berlin Philharmonic, his much alleged handshake with Hitler and then we see in the footage, his wiping off his hands secretly after the handshake… and he also did not give a Nazi salute(one of the few defences, Furtwangler had)…..that was Furtwangler’s way to condemn Nazism
A must watch, if you ask me… (and another thing, after Makhmalbaf's Silence, another movie where Beethoven's 5th symphony is almost a defining background score for the movie.. da.. da..da..dum)

Unrelated

Unrelated (2007)
Directed by Joanna Hog

Unrelated is a movie I happened to watch yesterday and cant help but write about it.My interest in the movie is due to the issue it highlights through the protagonist Anna (katherine Worth). From the very beginning of the movie, we find Anna, somewhat distruaght, dragging her luggage across the dusty roads. When she arrives quite late in the night to a Tuscan villa without her husband Alex, to spend a vacation with her old friend Verena and her family,her discomfort is still not over.
Her demeanour, hesitance completely makes us feel that she feels completely out of place, however is almost hell bent to make the most out of this vacation. Her converstaions, with her husband up on the hills where she could locate network, shows cracks in her marital life. However Anna soon finds herself drawn towards the younger members of the family-Verena's children and Oakley- son of Verena's family friend, who are also holidaying with them.
This is where the movie starts getting interesting. An undercurrent of sexual tension starts building uo between Oakley's irreverence and Anna's silent pleas. Amidst the warm and sunny Italian countryside, beneath the hazy skies, Anna increasingly wants to spend more time with the boozing, boisterous, grass-smoking teenagers. And it seems 40 something Anna eagerly looks forward to Oakley's easy charm and smug confidence for fresh holiday air she is yeraning for. However Anna's behaviors are not unnoticed. At 40 and also being an old friend, she is supposed to behave in a particular protocol and that is definitely not getting into the children's car, drives and expeditions with them, boozing and dancing away. Verena soon suspects something wrong. This is where Joanna scores highly. All such pangs of suspect, tensions, doubts are shown in silent facial expressions. However it seems Anna is desperate to find meaning for the life and that lies in her acceptance by the teen-age group. A car accident, which enrages Oakley's father, so much as to shout at his on, somehow threatens to push away the possibility. A frantic Anna finds herself belonging to nowhere. One brilliant shot signifying that is a walk by all for a lunch at a local friend's place. We find all the characters moving across in groups, Anna being the only single, alone trudging behind.
Almost in the last 15 minutes of the movie, we get to understand Anna better. In fact the last 15 minutes come as a shock to us.
Anna has just entered her menopause-a truth she finds difficult and almost impossible to reconcile with. She is childless and thus almost loses herself to the grief of losing her womanhood. Anna's angush becomes clear. Plea of acceptance into the teenagers' group was a sublimation Anna was looking for to denounce her biological truth. Her sexual underpangs are still not over and she cannot accept her meopause. It seems her body has betrayed her and she tries to gain back her existence through the subdued yet cleverly timed advances by Oakley. Hence she never protests Oakley's undue intrusion and curiosity in her sexual life. At one point, her self-pampering by buying designer lingerie for herself, or coming out naked from teh swimming pool all hint at the insinuating sexual attraction she suffers towards Oakley. Her melancholy is due to her self-awareness of the futility of the whole game.
Menopause is indeed the most difficult time for a woman. It becomes all the more difficult, due to social expectations from the women. It is expected that the journey from one phase to another, would be smooth enough. The sexual desires would immediately be replaced by more matured revelations regarding life. Anna however is still not ready. The world of adults is meaningless, dull and hopeless for her. We are seeing the movie through her. Hence an adult congreggation discussing over the pride of a family possession-a seater used once by Mussolini occurs to us as shallow, pompous and menaingless as it is to Anna. In the end, it seems Anna transcends the distance from one phase to another. Thus we find, the always eager to please Anna, who never expressed disgust at the stubborn insensitivity of the roudy teen-agers throughout the night, gathers herself up asking them to lower the volume of their conversation. The movie ends with Anna finally reconciling with her husband on her way back to London, now much poised and comfortable with herself.
Hog has handled the movie in an excellent manner and never for one moment it seems like a story of middle-age hang-ups. rather it becomes an intriguing story of a damaged woman caught in the most troubled quagmires of her life.

A must watch, if you still have not wtached the movie.

Remains of the day-Self denial for Dignity of Service

Remains of the DayProduced by James Ivory (1993)
Directed by Ismail Merchant
Written by Ruth Prawar Javbhala

I happened to watch this movie based on the 1989 booker-prize winning novel of the same name by Japanese-British author Kazuo Ishiguro. Remains of the Day is a period drama set in 1930's Britain starring Sir Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.

The story reveals in flashbacks rolling out in form the reminiscences of the butler James Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) of Darlington Hall, an old British mansion, now acquired in a bid by a retired American Congressmen viz. Mr. Lewis. James Stevens has been serving Darlington hall for the past 30 years, since the time of Lord Darlington, to whom James was completely devoted in service. The movie opens with James receiving a letter from a former employee of the Darlington Hall, the ex-housekeeper Miss kenton, Now Mrs Benn. Mrs. Benn hints at her failing marriage, which she had preserved for the last 20 years and now expresses her desire to find a job back at Darlington Hall. Seeking permission of his present master, we find James setting out in a Bentley for a rendezvous with Miss Kenton at Oxfordshire and slowly the stories of past unfold.
James played out with impeccable skill by Sir Hopkins, is an English Butler, beleiving in complete subservience to his master, perfection of duty and dignity of service. It seems Stevens' entire existence is dependent of his servitude to Lord Darlington, a British aristrocrat in 1930s England. Darlington Hall is managed deftly by Stevens, who maintains a keen eye serving the guests, making sure the china-crockery and the silver-cutleries all glistening bright, the activities throughout the mansion are timely, punctual and everything are in perfect order, controlling the hierarchy of service, however with complete detachment and disaffection towards his own emotions. It seems for Stevens' "dignity of service" is entrenched in the belief of repression of personal feelings and opinions. Stevens here almost appears as the worn out gasps of British Imperialism. Stevens represents the belief of forgoing personal fulfillment in the name of professional duty.On the contrary Miss Kenton (Emma Thomson) is more liberal and headstrong. She refuses to accept oreders unquestionably. In fact she is horrified to find Stevens employing his father as an under butler when he is almost in a worn-out health conditions. Stevens' self- denial intrigues her and even irritates her at times when she finds him absorbed in seeing to the comforts of the guests at a party in Darlington Hall, while his father lay dying. This unconditional surrender to duty, to serving his Lord, extreme loyalty defined Stevens' "being of himself". Therefore he refused to accep or reciprocate to Miss Kenton's feelings for him, lest his personal wills and fancies come in-between his duty. Hence we find him reacting to a hurt, sorrowful, rejected Miss Kenton by reminding her of some slip in duty. His reserve even brushes off the subtle raillery hurled at him by Miss Kenton questioning his complete agreement to his Lord's actions. His explanation is always, "His majesty knows the best". And through Stevens thus we get a notion of the era. Undoubtedly this movie is mostly a study of one man's self-imposed repression, but also a country still wrapped in tradition, where doing the noble thing didn't always coincide with what was the best thing. This is the time when England had to choose between gentlemanly complacency or bold interference, contenting themselves on the maintenance of a measured outward appearance, while inside the feelings are hard to keep swallowed down.
And slowly we come to face the overplot of the film, "the history". Lord Darlington, we find is one of those aristocrats with pro-German stance. Lord Darlington was brokering the policy of appeasement towards nazi Germany. And hence Darlington Hall along with Stevens sees many such peace-now conferences just before Munich. Lord Darlington, is one of those british novelties who wanted to stop war (seen as a ploy to save the estates and the remnants of feudal imperialsm in England). To the American Congressmen, Mr. Lewis who was a guest at one such party, such attempts were nauvice and he feels these policies to be dealth with Realpolitik "Professionals' rather than "honorable amateurs". This clearly sets the tone of the slow declining state of the Empire hedaing towards extinction. However our dutiful Stevens is a silent spectator to the happenings of history. In fact . influenced by the anti-semitic writing of Howard Stewart Chamberlain, when Lord Dalmousie dismissed the two Jewish girl-servants, Stevens merely carried out his order, instructing Miss Kenton to release the girls. Miss Kenton argues against such a decision since it concerns the security of the girls who might to deported to Germany. And again we find Stevens citing "I am not in a position to express opinions". Thus subtly Remains of the Day hints on the empire's class system, denying even the freedom of expression and questioning to the lower classes. The snobbery of the class system becomes more vivid in one of the most viscious scenes of the movie. Lord Darlington allows two of his friends to question Stevens about politics. Stevens curtly and true to his self (deft at suppressing his own opinions and emotions) replies " I am afraid Sir, that I would be unable to offer you any assistance in this matter (sorry.. i donot recall the exact dialogue)". The noblemen to their snug pride infers "universal suffrage to be a waste of time". They never consider lower or working classes to be capable of having any thoughts or opinions of their own.
The relentless, dutiful Stevens still continues with his loyalty to Lord Darlington who slowly realises the mistakes he has committed and finds the only support in Stevens who believes his master to have had the right intentions and is not a perpetrator of treason s painted by the media. In the meantime, Stevens does suffer a personal loss through the resignation of Miss Kenton, who leaves Darlington Hall, to marry and settle elsewhere. However he is too committed to allow him accept the fact. Lord Darlington dies a broken man facing many a humuliations and even alleged as a traitor for his sympathies towards Nazi Germans. And 20 years later we find Stevens, now setting up the Darlington Hall for Mr. Lewis.
Times have changed. Darlington Hall's banquet now has a table-tennis board, instead the chandeliers and guest tables. Though we still find the unduanted, dutiful Stevens. The shock comes, when we found, Stevens, now finding his loyalty to Lord Darlington embarrassing. Thus reveals the worn out remnants of Stevens' life. The person whose mere existence was defined by his "dignity of service" and "unconditional loyalty to his master" now suddenly finds both as embarrassments to be revealed (lest it is interpreted by the world as a pro-Nazzi stand). He goes to meet Miss Kenton (now Mrs Benn) with the hope of her rejoining him at duty in Darlington Hall. However Mrs. Benn has decied to carry on with her marriage, now that she knows her daughter is pregnant and to be with her. Stevens leaves, with a stoic face and a broken and bruised heart.Kenton cries, while Stevens, still unable to demonstrate any feeling, simply raises his hat.

The movie ends with Stevens resuming his duties back at Darlington Hall and pondering upon the last remains of his wrecked existence bereaved of any personal happiness, something he forcibly denied to himself. He now prepares for a fresh start.
However Stevens even at the evening of his self-castrated life, sets to free him from the burden of repression. This is symbolically represented by his efforts to free a pigeon trapped in the ceilings of the Darlington banquet hall. While, Stevens sets the pigeon for a flight of freedom far away from the Darlington Hall, i get a feeling about his resolve to gear up for a new tomorrow, ridding himself off the baggage of past silent and unconditional subservience.

Both Hopkins and Thomson are great and this is a must watch if you still havent watched the movie.