Freak or Fate

When you compare the tip of an arrow or the movement of an arrow to the sheer enormity of the size, force, and the movement of the earth, one might just be overwhelmed.

Call it fate or freak, a 17 year old archer practicing to represent Maharashtra at Dahisar, released his arrow to hit his target at 70 metre. A 15 year of boy at THAT time was scaling the wall, attempting to retrieve a cricket ball. The arrow managed to ‘divert’, hitting the boy through his ear.

Of all the places in the world, the boy had to be there at THAT time! Of all the arrows of the world, the trajectory of fate had to travel through THAT direction!

Reminds one of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s films.

Peter Watkins

Peter Watkins’ films are hard to find and they are not for everybody. Having gone through his works it is but inescapable to experience thoughts, ideas or feeling that never occurred or one has never envisaged.

Take for example - Punishment Park (1971) (http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/punishment.htm ) which forces one to think that ordinary people can have their lives changed or altered by the decision of people who are more powerful than them. We are but mere tools not in the hands of gods but in the hands of human authorities. This work is so close to reality that you might start getting bouts of anxiety and might even shake you out of your ignorant, complacent existence... Time to start re-thinking?

One cannot but imagine a work like Punishment Park and a work like Edvard Munch ( http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/munch.htm ) where PW masterfully negotiates through the 3 hours 30 minutes footage to bring us a part of the life of the famous Norwegian painter.

Moving ahead La Commune – Paris, 1871 (2000) gives a good account in 5 hours 45 minutes, that nothing much has changed since then (http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/commune.htm )

Culloden (http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/culloden.htm ) is a 1964 film which shows the 1746 massacre of the Scottish Clan in the Battle of Culloden. Brutal, violent, macabre, ruthless – but in short mind boggling! Yes, again the age old thought crops up – History is a story of bloodshed and bloodbath.

Can we every come to a consensus that war will be declared illegal?

Some things are inherent to mankind – cruelty, corruption, desire to possess and sexual urge. But perhaps nothing is more inherent than the desire to hurt, maim or kill each other. One wonders if there is such a thing like the civilized man since man seems to be every ready to tear each other apart.

For a grim and bleak look at the blissfully ignorant miserable human, for war mongers and for the mass in general – one must take a look at a powerfully isolated horror film ‘The War Game’ (1965). (http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/warGame.htm )
Till today, one wonders if anyone on earth can come closer to making a film like this.

Mass hysteria, Staged stage violence, keeping the youths happy and out of politics, emptiness, greed, manipulation, loneliness, advertisements, consumerism, control (over others by the Corporation and the Investors, which amazingly is true even today with examples of iPod, iPad, FB, Twitter, WhatsApp, SMSes, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, e-retailing, etc), mass duping, pimping, crosses replacing swastikas, Media opinions and influences, converting people, Nationalism, Religious fervor, ….reminds one of the Big Brother in 1984….all these and more – see ‘Privilege’ (1967) a cult classic prophetic film. ( http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/privilege.htm )

The Gladiators (1969) ( http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/gladiators.htm ) shows that all systems (capitalism, communism, Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, collectivism, socialism, fascism, Nazism, anarchism, egalitarianism, humanitarianism, humanism, liberalism, libertarianism, republicanism, counter-culture, etc.) exploit and are all the same and sometime or the other it is going to gobble you down. No one –ism is better than the other.

Strikes, Politics, Corporation, slow economy, rich oil producing nations, unemployment, preconceived opinion of the media, police fascism, authority and people in power protecting the media to effectively repress the less privileged, daily brainwashing session using the media, propaganda and false news being spread using the intelligence agencies of a country resulting in successfully scaring the mass, employees’ being repressed so that they can keep their jobs, terrorism of all kinds, nicely covered up packages of hope to the mass that freedom and self-realization can be attained while all the time it is expected that after a hard day’s work a man is expected to sit in front of his TV and relax, discourage political active participation, when the world is divided between the ‘know’ and the ‘don’t know’, when man produce gun to kill each other - it affects mankind at large. All these and more are basically covered up in Evening Land (Aftenlandet : http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/evening.htm ) a 1977 Danish drama film.