Cinema Paradiso - An absolute masterpiece!!

Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1988)



Yesterday I saw this movie. I'm out of adjectives for this. I might be generally a sentimental person. But this is the first movie that moved me so much that tears didn't stop from my eyes till I slept under its spell.



The movie is like Great Expectations meets Umberto Eco (Remember Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana..). Its so simple a narrative told in flash backs in the most straight forward way - it touches you in particular if you love cinema and movie making and sentimental about history.



It is an ode to the kind of theaters that used to play movies and when they used to rule the entire entertainment segment of the lives of small town's people. Even though it is set in the Sicilian village post world war II, I could identify with it because I grew up in a town where there were few theaters like that during my childhood and adolescence. They met the same fate too.



Alfredo in the movie - "Living here day by day, you think it's the center of the world. You
believe nothing will ever change. Then you leave: a year, two years.
When you come back, everything's changed. The thread's broken. What you
came to find isn't there. What was yours is gone. You have to go away
for a long time... many years... before you can come back and find your
people. The land where you were born. But now, no. It's not possible.
Right now you're blinder than I am."



It is so true. When I go back to my place I feel the same sadness that the grown up Toto feels when he turns around and sees the dilapidated soon to be broken down hall across the road. So much of change yet it is only few years.



Three things that touched me - Alfredo and Toto's relationship, Toto's love stories (with the theatre and with the girl) and the simply beautiful end.



Not a single frame is wasted, not a single dialogue is wasted, everything makes sense at the end and yet your eyes are moist. Guess that is the power of cinema.



One scene that haunted me - When Toto realizes finally that he is not going to see his dad for sure and is coming back from the war time office with his distraught mom, he sees the Italian poster of Gone with the wind and smiles at Clark Gable. Alfredo's description of his dad that he looks like Clark Gable left that image of his dad and he can continue keeping it.



A beautiful cinema, an ode to cinema and the forgotten theatres, the life they carried, the share they had in the lives of people. Must watch in any movie buff's list of movies.

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The Pianist!

I just finished watching The Pianist on TV. My eyes are still moist.. A great film and great minimalist method acting.



The movie is about a Polish Jew Pianist survival through the WWII. Adrian Brody, Whose first film I saw was King Kong and had an average impression about him, did a superb job. Not acting overtly, not acting for sympathy he lived that role. He is an artist primarily he is not the kinds who will walk into danger and face the opposition seeing the inhuman acts around him. He loves his piano he wants to survive. The way he underplayed the role with all the non-heroic melodrama is absolutely amazing.



The credit goes to the director who shows the horror filled WWII ghettos not for overtly making us cry or sympathize. He created these multiple layers in all the characters, not the simplistic 2-dimensional stuff like Saving private Ryan stuff. Not the classic Hollywood romancing of war movies.



Most Haunting Scenes: Brody playing piano in the air when he finds out the house he is hiding in has a piano.



Again the point goes back to my observation about the professional way of acting by these amazing youngsters. Brody learnt Piano, learnt to play Chopin (the most haunting piano I heard in recent times), trying to create the loss environment in his life when doing the role.



I guess the years 1935 -1950 were the watershed years in the history of world. The single point when world slumbering in the dying embers of middle ages, woke up in the modern days.



1. You had world war that changed the face of Europe and created the power called USSR.

2. You had Japan getting bombed and coming out of imperialism.

3. You had the independence of India the subsequent partition with its horrors.

4. You had The revolution in China.

5. You had the creation of Israel and the change of the face of Middle East.

6. Last but not the least - World came out of the great depression.



But why did we need a demon called Hitler to do this job of waking up the world.? What did the millions of Jews do to just get annihilate like that.? Are for that matter, what did the millions of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs do to deserve partition? The ghost still haunts by bombing Samjhauta Express.. When I saw the news of the Samjhauta express, I remembered the incident of the fateful train to Lahore during partition.



I want to visit some of the holocaust death camps - may be Auschwitz.. it will be such an overpowering experience I guess..



Read Dairy of Anne Frank..

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Love & Pain!!

Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in.

Time, you thief! who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in.

Say I'm weary, say I'm sad;Say that health and wealth have missed me;

Say I'm growing old, but add- Jenny kissed me!

- Leigh Hunt

Today's Points to ponder - What is Love?? What is pain?? Is pain a default outcome of love? What is more painful - the love itself or the pain caused by love??

And last question: can anyone love the pain caused by Love.?

Bits & Bytes of Philosophy!!

Today, while coming back home from office along with some colleagues, one of them raised this quite "interesting" topic - What do you think Philosophy is? Is it required for the software dudes? Is reading books essential to know? If so, what are the recommended books..??

Quite a lot of questions - especially when two very interested people are there in the car, I'm one of them, but a silent observer and listener.. I'm the Huck Finn.. There was the passionate colleague of mine who launched headon into it - I'll refer to him as Tom (a.k.a Tom Sawyer, since Huck admires Tom)..

He started off with Vivekananda and went till Osho via Ayn Rand.. He said that doing ones work in a whole hearted way without expecting the outcome but with right and honest intentions is the best way to approach a personal philosophy without reading any books.. A way of understanding Karma Theory..

Easy said than done.. How will you associate man's base nature of acquisitions and profit motive with this..? How will you go from this to a capitalist theory.. how can you associate a software offshore job with this theory.. How will you say you are contributing positively to the material output of the society..??? A whole lot of new questions arise...

Especially how can we accept this as a truth in the light of Objectivism as preached by the Shrugging Atlas..

Then we found a way out for all these by saying that what ever you do without harming anyone knowingly and not causing any pain to others knowingly, in other words keeping mind off any feeling of guilt will help.. Just live a common man's dream of leading normal life going to the church or temple when you want and confessing to your sins..

That brings us to the crucial questions - God and Religion..? What role do they play in deciding the personal philosophy..?? What role do they play..??

Somewhere I read that education makes people atheist.. I'm surprised that the average joe software guy these days is more disillusioned with god and religion.. especially the general trend is that religion-as practiced today by the populist religions- is not the way to reach God.

Guys, who want to be politicians riding on these general religious sentiments, beware.. you are losing your base in Techies..

My feeling, for once was very happy, that this is a positive sign.. but then that worries me.. will this disillusionment in religion, will in any way make people more cynical and lose the positivity in life..? Will they become more pessimist since it is very difficult to believe in a personal God without any kind of faith..

God survives on faith.. how will you instigate faith with out a commonly accepted method of imbibing it..???

Last question for the day.. if God becomes a surreal image what is the position of Love..??? I always thought Love is the image the shadow of God that falls on us, if God becomes so unreachable how to believe in love.. the pure and unabashed love for the other person, for your neighbor for the society.. where will it go..?? How can you whole heartedly say "Sarveh Janaah SukhinOBhavantu"... This brings us back to the square one..

Is Mr. Gekko right in saying "Greed is good, greed is right and greed works.."???

Wish some guruji is also blogging and reading my queries.. :-)

Corporate Culture!

Today our company had a huge bash to celebrate its spirit its uniqueness..

we have around 55 thousand ppl working all over the world and around 15 thousand in Bangalore. Out of these 15k, 2000+ came for the party.

Why all these statistics..??? will explain in a bit.. I work in a IT services company. The industry is defined by
1. High salary growth -jumping jobs gives a raise of about 30%
2. Very young employees (mostly joining at 21 yrs)
3. Huge recruitment every week.. (almost a thousand join every month)
4. Consequent to all the above factors - Very high attrition rate.

Now when you see the above numbers, the over stressed HR dept's long term objective is how to improve company's image among ppl who join them, how to increase the esteem feeling about the company and how to motivate them to stay longer to get the RoI on the employees???

How do you go about imbibing these ideas..?? You face multiple problems in this end..

#1. When you have such a varied employees across all age groups, what do you define as a culture of the company?
#2. Is the culture of the company equivalent to the personal/Individual culture and value system.? We have great many examples to this effect - Semcos of the world..
#3. Is culture a top driven thing or bottom up?
#4. How on earth will you find a common thread among people who are spread out across the globe with different aspirations and needs.?

All these problems are typical to any Multinational company.. there starts the debate - transnationals vs. multinationals.

Lots of questions pop in my mind when I see the way our company went about doing this..

What is the role of the top management in all this? Does the shareholding patterns play any role in this? What if one individual owns a majority stake in such a company rather than the retail shareholders?? How different such company should be run vis-a-vis a publicly held one?

How different is this culture factor in a services organization vis-a-vis a marketing one?? Does all the IBMers across the world believe and work the same way.? do they all feel very exited and glad that they work for a gr8 elephant that can dance.? Will it be the same way as a GE worker.?

How innovative can we be in creating such kind of cultural environment? Should a company encourage different kind of culture across different cities and different countries based on the kind of work and demography of the employees.? what if the market dynamics change in that region later?

Last but not the least.. Does this culture and employee perception is the single most differentiating factor for a services (especially IT&ITES) company? If it is, can it be taken lightly and be a follower.. like an Avis & Hertz or a HP & TI.. ?? (referring to Build To Last)

My opinion is that a company should be innovative at any cost in such a crucial thing as finding a single binding theme among the employees.. we are trying to define who are we and what are we.. top management plays a very vital role in such a large company.. it plays a role by doing not by talking.. Doing what and how is the innovation that it has to embark upon.

By being a follower we end up no where.. always trying harder to compete.. it is like running on a treadmill that is malfunctioning.. you need to run harder to keep the same place.. out of nowhere we will have some one beating us square by their innovation..

Need some erudition on this topic.. Wish to see some ideas on this.. from you guys..

Music & Lyrics

Yesterday I saw Music & Lyrics. It was a cute movie enjoyable once but not a DVD buy worthy.. The dry wit of Hugh Grant (we saw very famously in Notting Hill etc.,) is there and also a few good laughs.. He clearly enjoyed playing the PoP star.. tho we can't say the same with Drew.. she is gr8 as the Jilted Lover/struggling writer.. but clearly this movie is Meg Ryan stuff.. some thing like a French Kiss..

The best part is the way it takes digs at the pop music, their life styles and the teen sensations that come and go these days..

Though Hugh Grant sounds and acts the same in almost all his roles (Love Actually, Notting Hill and Bridget Diaries etc.,) each one is enjoyable.. especially the Brit way of speech..

Its amazing to see these famous stars sing so well.. growing up in India I know of stars using only play back singers.. but when I see these Hollywood stars of the likes of Joaquin Phoenix, Hugh Jackman and now Hugh Grant sing for their own films.. and the effort that goes in learning a new instrument and singing quite well.. it amazes me.. The difference between the largest producer of movies (India) and the rest of the world is that they take their movies and roles seriously while we take our stardom and money seriously.. It is a job afterall and a creative one at that..

My rating on Music & Lyrics - Watch it if you are bored with weeklong drudgery and want to have a few good laughs.. But if you are a lover of serious cinema then ask the ticket guy for Blood Diamond.. De caprio proves to be a true successor of the method acting lineage.. A movie worth every penny we spend on that.. Can't expect such movie coming out in Indian Cinema's mainstream actors..

My first post on this blog is on a popcorn romantic movie.. next time I'll post on some thing that requires more thought..