The British Library has just made available a collection of traditional Indian music free online. You can browse by location the music comes from or search using keywords. Each clip has a description of the piece as well as the music’s function in folk life.
See this interesting interview on The Daily Show with author Nandan Nilekani, who wrote the new book Imagining India.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Nandan Nilekani | ||||
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With its best picture win at the Oscar’s last night, Slumdog Millionaire is raising a few questions in the film industry. Does this signify the rise of Bollywood in America? CNN takes a look at the film and its links to India. (The director and lead actor are British.) Business Standard looks at the market potential for Indian films in the U.S.
The Tamil Tigers have claimed responsibility for an air attack on government buildings in Sri Lanka. Two planes have been downed in the capital city of Colombo. Both BBC and CNN have the story. To see more articles about the event, check out the Google News results for the story.
Salman Rushdie has a sense of humor! See this video from Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report.
(Viewer beware: there may be some questionable language/content due to the nature of the program.)
Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State arrived in Indonesia today. See this CNN story for details about the agenda for her trip. Note the discussion about Islam–Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country, so what does this trip say about the United States and its relationship with Muslim nations?
Thinking about writing your Humanities paper on an Indian or South East Asian film? Check out this selected list of films available on reserve.
After the Wedding (Efter brylluppet) (2006)
Director: Susanne Bier
India
Far from home, Jacob (Casino Royale villain, Mads Mikkelsen), runs a struggling orphanage in one India’s poorest regions. Desperate to save the orphanage from closure, he returns to Denmark to meet Jorgen (Rolf Lassgard) a wealthy businessman and potential benefactor. What appears to be nothing more than a friendly gesture to attend a wedding sets in motion an increasingly devastating series of surprises, revelations, and confessions that will forever change their lives.
Bandit Queen (1994)
Director: Shekhar Kapur
India
Directed by Shekhar Kapur, this is a controversial movie based on the life of Phoolan Devi, India’s notorious woman dacoit (bandit), who channeled her rage at her rape and mistreatment into violent action. Imprisoned in 1983 and freed in 1994, she eventually became a prominent politician and was assassinated by relatives of one of her victims. The controversy surrounding the film stems from the real Devi’s fury over the way the formative events of her youth are depicted, and also from Kapur’s refusal to meet with his subject, all the while proclaiming the “truth” of his narrative. Subjected to considerable scrutiny and potentially flawed, Bandit Queen is nonetheless an excellent film. Music lovers will be fascinated by the score, composed by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the renowned singer (summary from rottentomatoes.com)
Bride and Prejudice (2004)
Director: Gurinder Chadha
India
The exotic sounds, vibrant colors, and ecstatic dancing of Bollywood collide with the cunning storytelling of Jane Austen in Bride & Prejudice . When smart, outspoken Lalita Bakshi (Aishwarya Rai) meets Will Darcy, she finds this American businessman arrogant and conceited–but because his best friend is falling in love with her sister, Lalita agrees to travel around India with Darcy. On the trip, a childhood friend of Darcy’s named Johnny both tickles Lalita’s fancy and confirms her worst suspicions about Darcy. But as events unfold, Lalita wonders if she hasn’t misjudged Darcy–and Johnny. Austen fans will be find much to criticize; Bride & Prejudice transplants the basic plot of Pride & Prejudice to modern India, but not much of Austen’s sly wit or her insights about character and society have survived the translation. Rai commands the screen like a true star (unsurprisingly, she’s hugely popular in India, and previously starred in a more homegrown Austen adaptation: I Have Found It, based on Sense & Sensibility). For Western audiences unfamiliar with the freewheeling exuberance of Indian movies–wild musical numbers can break out at almost any moment–Bride & Prejudice offers an engaging taste of this fantastic cinematic style.
Earth (1998)
Director: Deepa Mehta
India
Earth, the second film in Deepa Mehta’s controversial trilogy (also Water) is an emotionally devastating love story set within the sweeping social upheaval and violence of 1947 India. As her country teeters on the brink of self rule and instability, 8-year old Lenny, an innocent girl from an affluent family, is in danger of having her world turned upside down. As the simmering violence around them reaches a boiling point, Lenny’s beautiful nanny Shanta (Nandita Das) falls in love with one of Lenny’s heroes,… the charismatic and peace-advocating Hassan. Love, however, can be dangerous when religious differences are tearing the country apart, and friendships and loyalty are put to the test. Building to a shattering climax, Earth is a devastating human drama in which desire unfolds into a stirring tale of love and the ultimate betrayal.
Gandhi (1982)
Director: Richard Attenborough
India
Sir Richard Attenborough’s 1982 multiple-Oscar winner (including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Ben Kingsley) is an engrossing, reverential look at the life of Mohandas K. Gandhi, who introduced the doctrine of nonviolent resistance to the colonized people of India and who ultimately gained the nation its independence. Kingsley is magnificent as Gandhi as he changes over the course of the three-hour film from an insignificant lawyer to an international leader and symbol. Strong on history (the historic division between India and Pakistan, still a huge problem today, can be seen in its formative stages here) as well as character and ideas, this is a fine film.
I Have Found It (Kandukondain Kandukondain) (2000)
Director: Rajiv Menon
India
Sense and sensibility are not the only things that meet and mix in this Bollywood adaptation of Austen’s classic novel. When East meets West, and audiences meet the two charming sisters at the heart of it’s tale, there is no end to the fun, adventure, and romance. Sowmya and Meenakshi have it all: looks, money, and youth. The only thing they lack is the true love they both yearn for. This situation is soon remedied when three suitors, each attractive in very different ways, are introduced into their lives. The level-headed Sowmya continues to put filial obligations ahead of romance, while the impetuous and passionate Meenakshi tries to figure out which one is her “white knight.” While Sowmya is courted by a filmmaker who loves her but insists he must finish his first movie before they marry, Meenakshi must choose between a wounded soldier and a charismatic businessman with the heart of a poet. Ultimately, however, the increasing infirmity of the family patriarch may present the girls with some difficulties they are ill-prepared for. A brilliant widescreen extravaganza, I Have Found It is the sophomore effort from director Rajiv Menon. It manages to successfully blend comedy, social satire, and familiar genre conceits into a stunning, dazzling musical spectacle that is a delight to behold. (summary from rottentomatoes.com)
Kal Ho Naa Ho (2005)
Director: Nikhil Advani
India
For Naina Catherine Kapur, life is cold grey and dull - as it has been ever since a family tragedy shook her world. Between the constant bickering in her half Punjabi half Catholic household, her grandmother’s temper’s, looking after her little sister and brother and helping her mother deal with the family’s financial troubles - Naina has no time for things like parties, fun or herself… She’s twenty-three going on fifty. She is serious. She is boring. Enter Aman Mathur. Like a whiff of fresh air, he moves into their tiny Indian neighborhood to take it over. Helping others resolve their problems, face life’s little challenges - Aman has all the answers. Much to Naina’s irritation, he insists on interfering in his life too… Aman pushes Naina into doing things she would never dream of doing. He nags her till she learns to smile. He conspires with friend Rohit , an eligible Manhattan bachelor to help find her happiness. Kal Ho Naa Ho is the story of Aman, Rohit and Naina’s journey together - how they discover themselves, find the courage to love and come together to celebrate life.
Koi - Mil Gaya (2003)
Director: Rakesh Roshman
India
Koi…Mil Gaya earns the title of the first science fiction film in the Hindi language. It tells the story of Rohit, a young boy who was born mentally challenged and is the son of a scientist who was born mentally challenged and is the son of a scientist who died when his son was very young. Rohit finds a machine that his father built which was designed to communicate with intelligent life in outer space. When unexplainable events start happening around town, people begin to wonder if Rohit could have made contact? (summary from rottentomatoes.com)
Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2007)
Director: Ashutosh Gowariker
India
Would you believe the most enchanting musical of the year is an almost four-hour-long epic about a ragtag group of 19th-century Indian farmers who form a cricket team to take on an arrogant British captain? The old-fashioned Hollywood musical is alive and well in India’s Bollywood industry, where the joyful explosion of music and dance and innocent romance abounds in sweeping epics. In this infectious tale of bloodless revolution, the underdog outcasts and oddballs of a fractured village pull together into a unified team to take on the oppressive colonial Brits at their own game. Think The Longest Yard meets The Seven Samurai by way of Rudyard Kipling, with cricket bats, choreographed dance numbers, romantic triangles, and a rousing call to solidarity. There are no surprises, but what spirit, what color, what good fun!
Mission Kashmir (2000)
Director: Vidhu Vinod Chopra
India/Pakistan
Set in the Kashmir Valley between 1989 and 1999, Mission Kasmir tells the story of 11 year-old Altaff (Hrithik Roshan), a boy whose family is brutally murdered before him by state police who are trailing a rebel leader. After being adopted by a police officer and his wife, who have just lost their son in an accident, Altaff discovers that his new adopted father is the man in charge of the operation that killed his parents. He runs away, where he is taken in an educated by a fierce militant leader (Jackie Shroff) dedicated to achieving Kashmir’s independence. After ten years of training, Altaaf sets out on a destructive mission–which is halted when he encounters a boyhood sweetheart who causes him to reconsider his violent ways. Vidhu Vindo Chopra’s action epic was named Best Action Film at the 2001 Filmfare Awards, India’s equivalent of the Academy Awards.
Monsoon Wedding (2002)
Director: Mira Nair
India
Monsoon Wedding is a return to form for Mira Nair, director of 1988’s Salaam Bombay! Nair’s gift for observation of the everyday and her love for her characters make for a delightful film, which spins a web of family relationships that knit and break during a wedding at a perfect pace. The excellent performances exceed the often stereotypical roles on offer (including the incomparable Nasiruddin Shah as the harassed father, Kulbhushan Kharbanda as the comic uncle, and Shefali Chaya as the orphaned cousin). Nair’s sympathetic eye for the unnoticed and the harassed is at its best with the tender romance between the servant and Dube (Vijay Raaz), the marigold-munching, upwardly mobile wedding coordinator, who brings pathos and humor to the often unseen servant classes. The handheld camera gives a docudrama feel to this celebratory look at the upper-middle-class Hindu Punjabi joint family, while paying tribute to modern Indian public culture of music, television, and, of course, “Bollywood.”
Mother India (1957)
Director: Mehboob Khan
India
From India, the cradle of the Gods, comes this epic drama of an Indian mother, the nucleus round which revolves the tradition and culture of the ages in this ancient land. In India, every woman is an integral part of a man. With marriage she merges her individuality into her husband’s and both together form a single entity in society. One without the other is but half the story of an eternal harmony going beyond a single birth and through seven births as the Indian scriptures say. A woman’s marriage is thus an eternal spiritual bond and in her absolute dedication to her husband, her single prayer is to die in the presence of her husband and be carried out by him even as a bride in death. To this eternal Indian woman, the home is her temple, the husband her god, the children his blessings and the land her great mother. This a story of one such Indian woman, a supreme symbol of millions of mothers that make this ancient land Mother India.
Muthu Maharaja (1995)
Director: K.S. Ravikumar
India
Rajanigandha, a beautiful lady works for a drama company as an artist and is loved by one and all for her loving nature. When Zamindar Rajababu meets her, her beauty besots him and he decides to marry her. But Rajanigandha is in love with Muthu, who works for Rajababu. On the other hand Rajababu’s father’s friend Raj Verma want his daughter Padma to marry Rajababu. When he learns that Rajababu wants to marry Rajanigandha, to fulfill his cruel intentions he kills Rajababu and puts blame on Muthu. What is his intention behind all this? Why does Rajababu’s mother loves Muthu more than Rajababu? Why is Raj Verma is blackmailing Rajababu’s mother?
The Namesake (2007)
Director: Mira Nair
India
Like her previous films Monsoon Wedding and Salaam Bombay!, Mira Nair’s The Namesake is a lush, beautiful film bursting with rich color and visual texture. Based on the bestselling book by Jhumpa Lahiri, the film follows two generations of the Ganguli family. After wedding via an arranged marriage, Ashima (Tabu) moves with Ashoke (Irrfan Khan) from her native Calcutta to New York. As Ashima struggles to adjust to life in her new home, a true love grows between the newlyweds. When they give birth to Gogol (who does not learn the true origin of his name until adulthood), the Gangolis decide to stay in American for their child’s sake, settling in the suburbs and eventually giving birth to a daughter, Sonia (Sahira Nair). While Ashima and Ashoke attempt to balance their new life with Indian traditions, their children have the very different experience of being raised first-generation Americans. With little interest in their ancestry, both Gogol and Sonia disappoint their parents by having little respect for the sacrifices their parents made for them. Gogol’s desire to change his name, and his relationship with a wealthy American girl (Jacinda Barrett), places a strain on the family which Gogol will later regret. Packed with unique characters, The Namesake offers audiences an outlet into Bengali traditions and the immigrant experience while telling a universal story of family bonds which all parents and children should connect with. Nair excels in what is her most personal work to date.
A Passage to India (1985)
Director: David Lean
India
This adaptation of E.M. Forster’s mysterious tale of British racism in colonial India turned out to be master director David Lean’s final film. Subtle and grand at the same time, Lean’s adaptation is faithful to the book, rendering its blend of the mystical and the all-too human with exquisite precision. Judy Davis plays a young British woman traveling in India with her fiancé’s mother. While visiting a tourist attraction, she has a frightening moment in a cave–one that she eventually spins from an instant of mental meltdown into a tale of a physical attack that ruins several lives. Lean captures Forster’s sense of awe at the kind of ageless wisdom and inexplicable phenomena to be encountered in India, as well as the British tendency to dismiss it all as savage, rather than simply different.
Salaam Bombay! (2002)
Director: Mira Nair
India
Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake) adds her angry voice to the cinema of forgotten children in this wrenching drama of an 11-year-old boy (real-life street kid Shafiq Syed) who heads to the big city and joins a sea of homeless kids and down-and-out adults scrambling to survive the pitiless streets. The fantasy of Bollywood dreams hangs just out of reach in posters, movies, and radio tunes, momentary respites from the hard reality of a world ruled by brutal pimps and drug dealers. In the tradition of Los Olvidados and Pixote, former documentarian Nair’s feature debut is shot entirely in the slums of Bombay with a largely nonprofessional cast from the same streets. Though the drama is at times misty and melodramatic, her clear-eyed look at the mercenary world around these ultimately fragile forgotten children earned her the Caméra D’Or at Cannes in 1988
Water (2005)
Director: Deepa Mehta
India
Extremist groups waged a campaign of death threats, arson and riots to stop the production of this controversial film, but director Deepa Mehta (Earth) would not be silenced. Set against Gandhi’s rise to power, Water tells the profoundly moving story of Chuyia, an Indian girl married and widowed at eight years old, who is sent away to a home where Hindu widows must live in penitence. Chuyia’s feisty presence deeply affects the other residents, forcing each to confront their faith and society’s prejudices.
When Hearts Collide (Dil Hi Dil Mein) (2000)
Director: Kathir
India
An Internet romance blossoms between poor boy Raja and rich Roja, whose father - unbeknownst to either of them - is responsible for Raja’s college admission. Roja’s love life is arranged by her father, who has grand plans for her future… all of which could collapse when Raja learns the identity of his true love and finds the beating of his heart too powerful to ignore. A musical love story in grand Bollywood style, this sunny twist on You’ve Got Mail offers a delightful time for the whole family.
The World of Apu (Apur Sansar) (2002)
Director: Satyajit Ray India
The World of Apu is the third story in Ray’s magnum opus. By now it’s the early 1930s, and Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee) is a grown man. A dreamer and a writer like his long-dead father, Apu is working on a novel about his life. When his best friend Pulu (Swapan Mukherjee) asks him to his sister’s wedding, Apu has no idea that he’ll be the one going home with the bride. Poor Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) is betrothed to an insane man and when his illness becomes apparent, the wedding is cancelled. But Aparna will be cursed unless another bridegroom is found. Apu, in a weak moment, agrees to marry Aparna in return for a job. Then the unexpected happens. Aparna and Apu fall deeply in love. But will it last? Knowing Apu’s luck in the past, the obvious answer is “no,” and when Aparna dies in childbirth, Apu is left hating his son, Kajal. Finally, driven by guilt, Apu approaches his son, five years after the death of his beloved wife. Will they be able to salvage some happiness in an already too bleak life? You won’t be disappointed in the outcome.
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Vietnam
In the tradition of such obsessively driven directors as Erich von Stroheim and Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola approached the production of Apocalypse Now as if it were his own epic mission into the heart of darkness. On location in the storm-ravaged Philippines, he quite literally went mad as the project threatened to devour him in a vortex of creative despair, but from this insanity came one of the greatest films ever made. It began as a John Milius screenplay, transposing Joseph Conrad’s classic story “Heart of Darkness” into the horrors of the Vietnam War, following a battle-weary Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) on a secret upriver mission to find and execute the renegade Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has reverted to a state of murderous and mystical insanity. The journey is fraught with danger involving wartime action on epic and intimate scales. One measure of the film’s awesome visceral impact is the number of sequences, images, and lines of dialogue that have literally burned themselves into our cinematic consciousness, from the Wagnerian strike of helicopter gunships on a Vietnamese village to the brutal murder of stowaways on a peasant sampan and the unflinching fearlessness of the surfing warrior Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall), who speaks lovingly of “the smell of napalm in the morning.” Like Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God, this film is the product of genius cast into a pit of hell and emerging, phoenix-like, in triumph. Coppola’s obsession informs every scene and every frame, and the result is a film for the ages.
Buffalo Boy (Mua len trau) (2004)
Director: Minh Nguyen-Vo
Vietnam
A beautifully shot feature from director Nguyen-Vo Nghiem-Minh, Buffalo Boy is a powerful and nuanced coming-of-age story about 15 year old Kim (Le The Lu), the son of a poor family struggling in 1940’s Vietnam. Set in Cà-Mau, the last frontier at the southern tip of Vietnam where the low land meets the sea, the people survive by following the cycles of the flooding and dry seasons. Every rainy season, lasting about six months, water covers the entire land and the farmers must take the buffalo on a long journey to the mountains in search of food. When Kim is sent by his ailing father to find grass for their two starving buffalo, he takes up with a rough and dangerous band of buffalo herders. On the journey, he discovers an adult world of brawls, alcohol, and pillaging– one that, over time, gives way to friendship, love and the joy of freedom. Inspired by the classic short story collection, ‘Scent of the Cà-Mau Forest’ by Son Nam, one of the Vietnam’s most distinguished writers and a native of Cà-Mau, Buffalo Boy is a journey of self-discovery that also gives witness to the exhausting cycles of life under colonialism’s poverty.
Casualties of War (1989)
Director: Brian de Palma
Vietnam
Based on a true story, this Brian De Palma film casts Michael J. Fox as a soldier in Vietnam in a squad led by Sean Penn. While on patrol, in the wake of an ambush that has left friends dead, they kidnap and rape a Vietnamese woman–then murder her. But Fox, one of the soldiers who refused to participate in the rape, is so appalled by the killing that he reports it–and finds himself being treated as the villain. Penn is scarily tough as the vindictive soldier and De Palma does a solid job of re-creating the crime, making it a thing of horror. Yet this film never quite connects, despite a strong performance by Fox and a supporting cast that includes John C. Reilly and John Leguizamo
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Director: Michael Cimino
Vietnam
Winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, The Deer Hunter is simultaneously an audacious directorial conceit and one of the greatest films ever made about friendship and the personal impact of war. Like Apocalypse Now, it’s hardly a conventional battle film–the soldier’s experience was handled with greater authenticity in Platoon–but its depiction of war on an intimate scale packs a devastatingly dramatic punch. Director Michael Cimino may be manipulating our emotions with masterful skill, but he does it in a way that stirs the soul and pinches our collective nerves with graphic, high-intensity scenes of men under life-threatening duress. Although Russian-roulette gambling games were not a common occurrence during the Vietnam war, they’re used here as a metaphor for the futility of the war itself. To the viewer, they become unforgettably intense rites of passage for the best friends–Pennsylvania steelworkers played by Robert De Niro, John Savage, and Oscar winner Christopher Walken–who may survive or perish during their tour through a tropical landscape of hell. Back home, their loved ones must cope with the war’s domestic impact, and in doing so they allow The Deer Hunter to achieve a rare combination of epic storytelling and intimate, heart-rending drama.
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Vietnam
Stanley Kubrick’s 1987, penultimate film seemed to a lot of people to be contrived and out of touch with the ’80s vogue for such intensely realistic portrayals of the Vietnam War as Platoon and The Deer Hunter. Certainly, Kubrick gave audiences plenty of reason to wonder why he made the film at all: essentially a two-part drama that begins on a Parris Island boot camp for rookie Marines and abruptly switches to Vietnam (actually shot on sound stages and locations near London), Full Metal Jacket comes across as a series of self-contained chapters in a story whose logical and thematic development is oblique at best. Full Metal Jacket is a cynical, Reagan-era view of the 1960s’ hunger for experience and consciousness that fulfilled itself in violence. Lee Ermey made film history as the Marine drill instructor whose ritualized debasement of men in the name of tribal uniformity creates its darkest angel in a murderous half-wit (Vincent D’Onofrio). Matthew Modine gives a smart and savvy performance as Private Joker, the clowning, military journalist who yearns to get away from the propaganda machine and know firsthand the horrific revelation of the front line. In Full Metal Jacket, depravity and fulfillment go hand in hand, and it’s no wonder Kubrick kept his steely distance from the material to make the point.
The Hanoi Hilton (1987)
Director: Lionel Chetwynd
Vietnam
Based on interviews conducted with more than 100 former prisoners of war, The Hanoi Hilton captures the brutal and tedious life in a prison camp during the Vietnam War. Though released around the same time as Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, The Hanoi Hilton didn’t have the same impact, partly because it was an independent film and couldn’t afford the same production values, but also because its perspective was much narrower. This movie avoids grappling with the larger questions of the Vietnam War, instead throwing its support whole-heartedly behind the P.O.W.s and veering into jingoism as a result. (When a Cuban officer arrives to assist the Viet Cong, his wickedness is so swaggering he comes across as the villain in a cheesy melodrama.) But when the movie focuses on the decency and suffering of the men themselves, its compassion and outrage are undeniable, and the performances–particularly that of Michael Moriarty (Law & Order)–are moving. An interview with Senator John McCain, a former P.O.W. himself, accompanies the film; this was conducted while he was running for president and feels, regrettably, like little more than a promotional effort for his candidacy. The men in the film deserve a more candid and searching discussion of their struggles.
Platoon (1986)
Director: Oliver Stone
Vietnam
Platoon put writer-turned-director Oliver Stone on the Hollywood map; it is still his most acclaimed and effective film, probably because it is based on Stone’s firsthand experience as an American soldier in Vietnam. Chris (Charlie Sheen) is an infantryman whose loyalty is tested by two superior officers: Sergeant Elias (Willem Dafoe), a former hippie humanist who really cares about his men, and Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger), a moody, macho soldier who may have gone over to the dark side. The personalities of the two sergeants correspond to their combat drugs of choice–pot for Elias and booze for Barnes. Stone has become known for his sledgehammer visual style, but in this film it seems perfectly appropriate. His violent and disorienting images have a terrifying immediacy, a you-are-there quality that gives you a sense of how things may have felt to an infantryman in the jungles of Vietnam. Platoon won Oscars for best picture and director.
The Quiet American (2002)
Director: Phillip Noyce
Vietnam
The Quiet American proves that elegant and intelligent filmmaking can be emotionally powerful. Michael Caine plays Thomas Fowler, a British journalist in 1950s Vietnam with a lovely Vietnamese mistress named Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen) and a jaded view of the political strife teeming around him. He befriends a seemingly innocuous American named Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), who falls in love with Phuong–and slowly, Pyle’s real purpose in Vietnam becomes revealed. Fowler finds that, to hold on to the carefully balanced life he’s created for himself, he must make choices he’s long avoided. Caine and Fraser are both superb and give a human face to complicated politics; as a result, The Quiet American manages to be compelling as both history and a story about very specific people embroiled in a very personal conflict. An impressive film from director Philip Noyce.
The Scent of Green Papaya (1994)
Director: Anh Hung Tran
Vietnam
This exquisite, Oscar-nominated, French-Vietnamese film from 1993, begins in the 1950s and ends more than a decade later during the early years of the Vietnam war. The story is set almost entirely in a Saigon house where a 10-year-old orphan girl named Mui arrives to work as a servant. As she grows into a beautiful young woman, Mui is quietly and carefully observant of everything around her, from the scent of green papaya (hence the title) to the relationship between her employers. The film takes its visual cues from Mui’s observations–it’s a placid, soothing film that lingers over the physical and emotional details of its setting and story. What’s really astonishing about this beautiful film is that director Anh Tran Hung shot it entirely on a soundstage in Paris, but the sights and sounds are so completely convincing that you’d swear the setting is an actual home in Saigon. This remarkable craftsmanship remains invisible to the viewer, and the seductive progression of the story unfolds with exacting visual precision. It’s a film about Mui’s growth and development, but also about her benevolent effect on the world around her. As such, it’s a movie to savor like no other, life affirming and glorious in the memorable depth of its captivating simplicity.
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Director: David Lean
Burma/Myanmar/Thailand
The story centers on a Japanese prison camp isolated deep in the jungles of Southeast Asia, where the remorseless Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) has been charged with building a vitally important railway bridge. His clash of wills with a British prisoner, the charismatic Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), escalates into a duel of honor, Nicholson defying his captor’s demands to win concessions for his troops. How the two officers reach a compromise, and Nicholson becomes obsessed with building that bridge, provides the story’s thematic spine; the parallel movement of a team of commandos dispatched to stop the project, led by a British major (Jack Hawkins) and guided by an American escapee (William Holden), supplies the story’s suspense and forward momentum.
To End All Wars (2004)
Director: David Cunningham
Myanmar/Burma
A Japanese P.O.W. camp during World War II becomes the battleground for the souls as well as the lives of its Scottish and British prisoners. Based on a true story, To End All Wars centers around Ernest Gordon (Ciaran McMenamin), a young soldier who wants to teach philosophy. When Gordon recovers from seeming death by illness, the other prisoners agree to become Grodon’s pupils, studying Plato, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Gordon’s superior officer, Ian Campbell (Robert Carlyle), scoffs at the increasingly pacificist bent of Gordon’s teachings. Jim Reardon (Kiefer Sutherland), a lone American running a black market, is equally skeptical. But under the relentless brutality of the camp, the only way for the soldiers to survive is to find what gives their lives meaning. The strong performances of To End All Wars makes this moral conflict as vivid as any gun battle.
The Killing Fields (1984)
Director: Roland Joffe
Cambodia
This harrowing but rewarding 1984 drama concerns the real-life relationship between New York Times reporter Sidney Schanberg and his Cambodian assistant Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor), the latter left at the mercy of the Khmer Rouge after Schanberg–who chose to stay after American evacuation but was booted out–failed to get him safe passage. Filmmaker Roland Joffé, previously a documentarist, made his feature debut with this account of Dith’s rocky survival in the ensuing madness of the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal campaign. The script spends some time with Schanberg’s feelings of guilt after the fact, but most of the movie is a shattering re-creation of hell on Earth. The late Haing S. Ngor–a real-life doctor who had never acted before and who lived through the events depicted by Joffé–is outstanding, and he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Oscars also went to cinematographer Chris Menges and editor Jim Clark.
The King and I (1956)
Director: Walter Lang
Thailand
The story line, adapted from an earlier, nonmusical stage hit, follows widowed English teacher Anna Leonowens (Deborah Kerr) to her new posting as tutor to the Siamese king’s formidable mob of children. The collision of East and West affords its winning mixture of drama and humor, and the warm friendship that grows between the king and the patrician teacher provides a poignant, unfulfilled romance between the two wary protagonists. Into this framework, the composers insert a superb score, echoing Asian motifs, as well as a bouquet of lovely songs including “Hello, Young Lovers,” “Shall We Dance,” and two ensemble pieces for Anna and the royal children (”Getting to Know You” and “I Whistle a Happy Tune”) that suggest prototypes for Rodgers & Hammerstein’s later hit, The Sound of Music.
All film descriptions are from Amazon.com unless otherwise noted. Continue »
Listen to this NPR story about effects of the civil war in Sri Lanka. Choose “Listen Now” to hear the audio.
See this CNN story about Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained leader of the pro-democrary movement in Myanmar. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and has been under house arrest under the country’s military rulers since 2003.
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