The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug

Watched The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug last night on High-Frame-Rate and 3D.

High Frame Rate and 3D
Obviously HFR and 3D are meant to enhance the film experience. At what expense, though? Film is an optical illusionary device. It fools the viewer into believing unbelievable things, things that are illogical and fantastic. Yes, it was great to be able to see every freckle and contour on Gandalf's face and watch every strand of Legolas' hair dancing in the breeze - but the action sequences and the orcs look copy-pasted from a fantasy game like Warcraft. A certain sense of magic was lost because of Peter Jackson's obssessive pursuit for clarity of sight. Jean-Luc Godard would have schooled Peter Jackson on this with his quote, "There is no point in having sharp images when you've fuzzy ideas."

Now I would not go so far as saying PJ had fuzzy ideas. But he got some things really wrong, in my opinion. Here are some of the things that went wrong:

1. Love triangle!? I can't even write any more on this subject because I can't handle the prospect of a love triangle of the silliest kind happening in Middle Earth as The Hobbit 2 wants us to believe it happened. It is almost unforgiveable.

2. Cirque de Soleil? PJ has always been into circus antics and choreography in fight scenes. I can see why. It may add a sense of magic and fantasy into action sequences. Tintin, the film, had the sequences where things began to feel like a computer game. The Hobbit 1 had many scenes, especially in the underground scenes, like that. This film too has its share of circus and ridiculous antics. To be honest, I don't buy it. But I can sign that off as a 'style' of Peter Jackson. But I have to say I was expecting more of gritty action sequences and not a Super Mario meets Assasin's Creed meets Cirque de Soleil extravaganza.

Now what this film gets right are (in no particular order):

1. Radagast was a little less stupid and more convincing in this film. Maybe because you didn't see much of him at all (and none of his silly bunny chariot, thank God!)

2. Middle Earth felt a lot more like Middle Earth. I liked the way the camera would pan out to show you larger areas of the surrounding to remind you of the scale of the environment that the film was playing out in. Dol Goldur was pretty good. More like Minas Morgul than Tim Burton's made up universe. But in saying that, PJ can ease down a little bit on using green lights. I have never thought green surround lights to be scary. It reminds me of the Grinch.

3. No singing drinking songs around happy dinner tables! What was PJ thinking with The Hobbit 1 and Return of the King (or was it Two Towers?). Singing about eating and having a merry wee time is never ok. Yes, I am sure there was a lot of singing going on in Middle Earth, and yes I have read the books and yes there are a lot of songs in the books. But can we please not having dragging film sequences of Merry or Pippin or Thorin or whoever singing anymore please?

4. Less humour. I have never LOLed (ever!) in a Peter Jackson film. I don't think he has a great sense of humour (for a Kiwi). So when this film turns out to have less of direct humour and instead more of implied/indirect humour, it was great.

5. References to history and backgrounds of Middle Earth. It was awesome that there was a lot of references to history and background story of Middle Earth. It made the film belong to the larger story which the first installment failed to do miserably.

These are not exhaustive list of things I enjoyed in the movie. The film is definitely worth a watch. A great step back into Middle Earth.

I guess the thing however, is that by now, the whole Middle Earth is starting to feel like a massive chain of merchandise and not anymore the elusive fantastic imagined alternate reality that most fans loved it for. Middle Earth, by now is becoming synonymous with bright lights, CGI, characters with bad humour (yes what the heck what the heck what the heck is Stephen Fry, who felt more like Gilderoy Lockhart than whoever he is supposed to be, doing in Middle Earth?!) and circus antics.

I hope Peter Jackson grows up just a little bit for the third installment. I would love to see a little bit more maturity and seriousness, especially if it is (and I hope it is) going to be the final Middle Earth film for good. 

On Timelessness

There's a certain timelessness in every soul, as flawed and as ignorant and little as we all are. A beauty never whole but that is lost to itself, a beauty whose glimpses you see now and then like the sun in a grey morning between clouds, never complete and satisfactory but present nonetheless. 

Images of broken lights which dance before me like a million suns, they call me on and on across the universe. Sounds of laughter, shades of life are ringing through my opened ears inciting and inviting me. 

Never quite there. But always inviting. Always inciting. Always teasing. A bottomless well that you can fall into with experiential traps and sensational nightmares and dreams. 

Timelessness being beautiful is also a scary prospect. 

I saw mists lift like in Avalon. It stayed open for hours. I could stand there for years gaping in wonder at the beauty of its nothingness melancholy. It must have been the song you were singing. It must have been the echoes that returned from the hills. The dipping of minors and the liberation of majors. The sombre verses laying low like they were hiding from the summer's sun. 

You and your freedom—You and your music

Open your mouth—

Waves they sweep out—

Galaxies and possibilities—

Songs and melodies

Tunes that have rung—

For centuries strung

I used to unbelieve—

In songs in music—

In words tumbling—

Held together by notes—

Rising falling—trembling

Until I witness—

The ocean waves—

Colliding to you—

To your song gale blew

Until I stood under—

Trees that thunder—

With wind—

Moved by your singing

On the beach—

You and your guitar—

Enough to change the world—

If you wanted to

You and your guitar—

And the wind in your hair—

Enough lies enough truth—

Enough shit enough good—

You and your accent—

You and your freedom—

You and your music

A Fine Balance - Book Review

Just finished A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. 

Paul & Sally Corwin gave this book to me on my last trip the Southern Alps, and it was in the afternoon as we were about to catch the bus on the Alpine Highway back to Christchurch, Paul said to me, Here, Ning, this is a book for you. It is a fantastic book, but be it will depress you like hell. (or something along the lines of that) So don't read it when you are already depressed, he joked and gave it to me.

I started reading it about four days ago and I crashed through it wanting to make the most of it. 

This book is about a number of characters in the era in India after Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister called a national Emergency, bring the nation to a screeching halt resulting in chaos and revolution. These characters are from the lower rungs of society, with no say in how the politics took over every aspect of their lives. 

The book is depressing - very much so - but also has very funny and lighthearted moments in it. It is very different from Arundhati Roy or Kiran Desai – in God of Small Things, you had the foreboding sense that things were going to go terribly wrong for the characters. In Kiran Desai's Inheritance of Loss (the name gives it away, really) there is a sense of melancholy and beautiful grimness to how the story is told and unfold. With A Fine Balance, there is no such mood. The novel reads objectively and to the point. Rohinton Mistry's sentences are apt, non-floral and black & white. In doing so, the characters come to life in a believable way. You begin to recognise them and they take root in your mind. So much so that I found myself outside my reading time, wondering what would come of them, and whether they would live through tragedies or succumb to them – along with the thousands and thousands of beggars, middle-class citizens, mussalman's, hindu's and sikh's that were murdered by scores during that time in India's history. 

The phrase 'a fine balance' comes from a conversation Maneck (one of the characters) has with a stranger in the train who insists to him that life is a fine balance of hope and despair and one has to live in an awareness of both realities to make the most of life. To me, the novel proves that life does hang on a very fine line. Almost sitting on a tip of a sharp knife - stray but a little to the sides and everything would come crashing down. (That last line comes from Tolkien.) One day the characters were the happiest people on earth, making chapatis and cooking on the verandah enjoying the evening sun and the next they are homeless, sleeping on the streets, their lives under threat from police thugs. One day the family is in tact and plans for celebration are on the way, the next day, they lie half dead on the town square.

In the epigraph, Mistry quotes Honeore de Balzac in Le Pere Goriot:

“Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, you will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true.” 

That sums it all up. This is a true story. Not just for a few people. But for everyone. It seems like Mistry is alluding to the greater fact that no matter how rich one is or how secure one is, life does hang on a fine balance. If life is at the lowest ebb, one is closer to hope that he/she will even realize. If life is at a mountain-peak, all it takes is a slightest tip for it all to bring you down. 

The insecurity of life. The hopelessness of human condition. What a prophet, Rohinton Mistry. 

-

I collected quotes that I liked from the book on to my phone while I read:

"Time has turned the magical to mundane."

"Noises are like people. Once you get to know them, they become friendly."

"Without beggars how will people wash away their sins?"

"But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended when it suited them memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be recreated – not with the same joy. Remembering bred it's own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain."

"I used to believe that God is dead. But now, I prefer to think that God is a giant quiltmaker. With an infinite variety of designs. And the quilt is grown so big and confusing, the pattern is impossible to see, the squares and diamonds and triangles don't got well together anymore, it's all become meaningless. So he has abandoned it."

"'You know, Maneck, the human face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no room for crying.'
'What a nice saying,' he answered bitterly.
'Right now, Dinabai’s face, and Om’s, and mine are all occupied. Worrying about work and money, and where to sleep tonight. But that does not mean we are not sad. It may not show on the face, but it's sitting inside here,' He placed his hand over his heart. 'In here there is limitless room - happiness, kindness, sorrow, anger, friendship - everything fits here.'"

"Parents are as confused by life as anyone else. But they try very hard."

"'It's a strange thing. When my Mumtaz was alive, I would sit alone all day, sewing or reading. And se would be by herself in the back, busy cooking and cleaning and praying. But there would be no loneliness, the days passed easily. Just knowing she was there was enough. And now I miss her so much. What an unreliable thing is time - when I want it to fly, the hours stick to me like glue. And what a changeable thing, too. Time is the twine to tie our lives into parcels of years and months. Or a runner band stretched to suit our fancy, stealing your youthful colour and your hair.' He sighed and smiled sadly, 'but in the end, time is a noise around the neck, strangling slowly."

"After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents - a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices , casual or deliberate, which add up to that one bug calamity we call life."

Untitled

You wonder what the lion said to the boy. That boy who wandered off and formed alliances with the enemy camp. That boy who put the army of our side at risk. That boy who followed his whim and fancy and lusted after the fruit that gleamed by the demented river.

You wonder why the lion's voice sounds soothing and why the lion doesn't roar and destroy that brat on the spot. You wonder why the brook that run besides doesn't form into a roaring waterfall engulfing that boy in a fit of unchained fury.

You wonder why the ravens start gathering around the boy, and instead of picking his hair and eyes out of his head, they bring him meat and bread – food to calm his nerves and silence his chattering teeth.

You wonder why the breeze does not start to pick up and turn into a dust storm caking that ungrateful little soul to fall to his knees and die on that spot. Instead the cool breeze fan his hair and quiet the tensions from his face.

You wonder how the eyes of the lion still gleam ever so brilliantly looking at the face of that boy – despite all that he is and all that he has done.

"the world is behind, and home is ahead..."

The repercussions will take all of our lives. Mine. Yours. His. Her's. The trees will groan, so will the mountains tremble, so will the seas quake uneasily, so will all souls shiver until we are all destroyed. The repercussion of the boy's acts. The repercussions of all of our acts. The repercussions of all of our thoughts. It will have our lives.

But now the lion turns his eyes to you. "The world is behind, and home is ahead..." Let's fight to our last dying breath. Let's run right to the edge of this cliff. Let's go down swinging our swords.

Home is only around the corner.