A film festival of sorts...

More than a week of holidays and home alone, I thought I finally had some time to myself. I did, only for a day though. My relatives seem to think I'd die if I live alone. I tried to avoid them as best as I could, but they cornered me. They wanted me to stay at my Grandmother's for the holidays. I politely refused. They asked me why. I couldn't come up with a reason that wouldn't hurt them. So I hurt them. But they aren't the kind who could take a hint. They tried coaxing me again, and again, and again, till I finally agreed to stay there, but not for more than 2 days. That's where I've been for the past two days.

My Grandma's place is somewhere I don't normally like to stay. Two vital sources of entertainment, the computer and cable TV, aren't a part of that place. I couldn't recall the last time I wasn't bored over there.

Now, I hadn't visited my Grandma in a year. Weird things can happen in a year. Like, my uncle (who lives there) could strike it big in the movie collection scene. Which he did, surprisingly. I had never seen so many foreign films in one place before, not even at a video store. They were all DVDs; movies of all sorts of languages. There was Russian, French, Italian, Polish, Serbian, Persian, Chinese, Japanese; you name it, he had it. Oh, English too. Entertainment, there was.

We (my uncle and I) decided that the best way to pass the time would be to watch as many movies as possible without enduring starvation or sleeplessness. And that's what we did.

Here's what we saw:

Solaris (Or Solyaris, 1972, Russian) - Directed by the talented Tarkovsky. My uncle, being a cinematographer, liked this movie for the camera work. That was pretty much the only good thing about the movie initially. I was expecting a sci-fi thriller after reading the blurb on the DVD cover. I hadn't seen the more recent George Clooney version of the movie. There were long and, in my opinion, unnecessary scenes involving clever transitions between black & white and colour on highways. Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, is sent to a space station which orbits around a weird planet called Solaris. The planet's weird because it can read the minds of people around it, and is able to create sentient beings from the memories of the people. Kelvin is sent because the people on board were assumed to be under severe mental stress, i.e., mad. The story is a more philosophical one than a thriller, though it does have subtle instances that thrill. It's definitely worth watching if you have the patience.

Dead Man (1995, English) - I couldn't believe I'd missed this one. Directed by Jim Jarmusch, it stars Johnny Depp. Robert Mitchum, Gabriel Byrne, Iggy Pop and Alfred Molina have short appearances. Music from the guitar of Neil Young. A Western flick (Black & white) where William Blake (not the poet, Johnny Depp) is wanted for murder. He meets a Red Indian, Nobody (Gary Farmer), who mistakes him for the poet William Blake. What ensues is a humorous adventure, in a dark sort of way. I personally liked the menacing Cole Wilson (Lance Henriksen), who has a few violent but funny scenes in the movie. Knowledge of William Blake's poetry can be useful while watching this one.

Knife In The Water (Or Nóz w wodzie, 1962, Polish) - This is one helluva film. Directed by Roman Polanski, it has just three actors in the whole film - two men and a woman. A fantastic play on human emotions, it's a brilliant psychological thriller with snappy dialogue. A hitch hiker joins a man and his wife on a boat ride, and the two men compete for the woman's attention in dangerous ways.

Kwaidan (or Kaidan, 1964, Japanese) - A film with four different stories in it. The stories are simple, Japanese ghost stories. Not the scary kind. To look at, this movie is beautiful. A lot of work has gone into it. The artwork and backdrops are stunning. And the lighting is fabulous. But the stories are too darn simple to be interesting, in my opinion. This first one is about a Samurai who ditches his wife for another and then returns to find her ghost. That's it. The second one's a bit better, and I kind of liked the third one. I wasn't patient enough to watch the fourth story in the movie. Unless you're a fan of art and Japanese folk stories, don't watch this one.

The Third Man (1949, English) - This one's often considered one of the greatest films of all time. I couldn't figure out why, though. The plot was pretty easy to guess during the movie. Perhaps because it's the first of it's kind. It's set in post-war Vienna, when the four powers occupied it. Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), a writer of cheap Westerns, is invited by his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) to Vienna. Upon arriving, Martins learns that his friend had died in a car accident, and also that he was a racketeer of sorts. He feels that it was not an accident but murder, and conducts an investigation of his own. A touch of humour here and there makes the movie enjoyable.

Close Up (or Nema-ye Nazdik, 1990, Persian) - Directed by Abbas Kiarostami, this is a kind of documentary. All the actors are people who play themselves, and it's based on a true story. A poor citizen of Iran, Hossain Sabzian looks a lot like a famous director (Mohsen Makhmalbaf), and he takes advantage of this fact and tricks a family into thinking he's the director, and stays with them. Later, he convinces the family that their house would be the perfect location for his next film. The movie also deals with what happens after he's caught, and the courtroom scenes were shot while the trial was actually happening. The real Makhmalbaf also makes an appearance in the film. A unique movie experience.

Underground (1995, Serbo-Croatian) - A film that starts out to be a raunchy comedy and ends in drama, directed by Emir Kusturica. It's set in a broad time period, starting from WWII and ending with the war in Yugoslavia 50 years later. A very long film (167 minutes), it's divided into three parts. Two friends, Marko and Blacky, are Communist rebels in German-occupied Belgrade during WWII. They're black market weapon manufacturers. Marko, being the smarter of the two, tricks his friend into staying in an underground bomb shelter till the war is over. And he never tells him when the war gets over. A very entertaining movie.

8 1/2 (1963, Italian) - Ah, this one's a classic. A brilliant film by Federico Fellini, it's about a movie director, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) who tries to take a movie which, for a change, would be pure and honest; a movie about his life. But he fails miserably, as he doesn't know what he wants. There's often a mix of fantasy and reality in this movie; Guido daydreams a lot about his childhood and his love life. He gets the actors for the movie but is still confused what to do. I really liked this one.

I borrowed a few movies before I left on that second day. The Killing by Stanley Kubrick, Wong Kar-Wai's 'In the Mood for Love' and 'The White Sheik' by Federico Fellini. No, I won't be writing about them.