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.

Pier Paolo Pasolini

When you think of Italian Cinema, the first thing that comes to your mind is Federico Fellini. Then you recall Roberto Rossellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti, Roberto Benigni, Vittorio De Sica, Bernardo Bertolucci, and above all Sergio Leone. But the man that does not come to your mind is Pier Paolo Pasolini.

PPP’s films are not for the mass. It is not for everybody to digest him. He was a film-maker, author, producer, screenwriter, editor, cinematographer and actor. The World did not accept his existence as a gay, Marxist, Atheist being. No wonder the extremist agencies got him at 53.

If you think you have seen and experienced everything in life - then watch Salo (1975). Watching Salo gave an impression that extreme power over other people leads to indescribable cruelty. Fascism not only views violence politically, here it show how fascists use violence as entertainment and arousal. The men of power are always seen as predators of the illiterate, the poor, the young and the weak. It reminds us that human beings are capable of such cruel, unthinkable, unimaginable and inconceivable atrocities over other human that one starts hating and loathing the human kind.

Salo is not about acting, lighting, sound, camera, action – it is about a state of mind of certain class of people.

It is a film one may not like to see it again. The core is helplessness and hopelessness. It is either madness or death.




Meanwhile it was a fortunate thing to discover his other works :: The Decameron (1971), Mama Roma (1962), Accattone (1961), The Gospel According to St Matthew (1964), Teorema (1968), Oedipus Rex (1967), Pigsty (1969), Medea (1969), The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966), The Canterbury Tales (1972).

Word of Caution! - If possible - Stay away from PPP. It is best for the mind to avoid him

KK’s Blind Chance

Are we here by ‘Blind Chance’? Are we here to just live life and throw some so called philosophical questions around that have no satisfactory answers?

How do we meander ourselves through life and deal with our surroundings? Are we supposed to fight the systems we life in? Are we supposed to participate in the systems? Are we supposed to be a part of the systems? And if we do not like it, are we supposed to change the systems? Or do we ignore the system and concentrate on being happy. Are we responsible for our happiness? Do we fight against everything we don’t like? Should we accept the systems as it is? Should we let go and just try to make the most out of the system? How do we deal with our surroundings? Are we here to take actions? Are we here to believe in something? Are we here to fight for something? Is there a power which interferes with our fate? Does that power pushes us and forces us to take one of the two roads, perhaps the road less taken? And even if we in our so called free will choose a road, does that road change our life? Or is it that even that choice that we choose is pre-destined? Will we have a trouble free time had we chosen a different road? What happens if we do not choose any roads? Do we end or change our directions with each choice we chose to make or not to make? Are we aware of these possibilities of change when we choose to make or not to make a choice? Are we guided by coincidence or are we led by destiny? Why do we keep on examining whether it is God, we, “Blind Chance” or fate that creates the world? Are there two different worlds which collide with each other based on our choice? Who is responsible for this system? What is the fate of man?

These are a set of innocuous questions which were raised while viewing Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blind Chance. (Incidentally one can throw “Run Lola Run”, “Sliding Doors”, “It’s a Wonderful Life” or O’Henry’s “Road of Destiny”, into the same lot, though I would refrain from comparing any works with Kieslowski).

The answer is simple - I don't know!

No matter what road you choose, consequences exist.

Nevertheless, at the end, we all know that the only predictable destiny for us is Death.

Meanwhile – Life goes on

Werner Herzog

If you are a Hollywood watcher – get away from Werner Herzog! Herzog movies are not for everyone. One, especially a passive viewer, may not usually connect with Herzog.

The journey with Herzog starts with “Signs of Life” (Lebenszeichen - 1968 ). Funnily Signs of life starts with not much signs of life. Into an hour the movie does not seem to go anywhere, and one might find it totally lackadaisical - and then things begin to pick and change drastically. This is for certain that one may not be likely to see another film like Signs of Life.

The takeaway is that when there is nothing much to do and when one is plagued by boredom – one might then find oneself sinking into madness.

In Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), a film not for everybody, the plot makes it clear that if you follow a madman, he will lead you to your doom. This work is about our world which has gone crazy, where greed and obsession controls the world, where people are dehumanized; the work is about insanity, coercion, domination, dangerous nature, traditions, control and the great Klaus Kinski.

The Enigma of Kasper Hauser {1974} is hard to deal with and involves the insanity of everyday life, brutality, authority, hostility, loneliness and isolation.

Stroszek {1977}, with great music by Chet Atkins (The Last Thing on My Mind/On my way down to Phoenix) and Sonny Terry (Old Lost John) delves in alienation and how the system chokes and devours you if you are not ‘intelligent’, ‘smart’, or ‘clever’, (read ‘social misfits’). A great work by Bruno Schleinstein, who also was in the lead in ‘The Enigma of Kasper Hauser’.

Heart of glass {1976} is not a very accessible movie, but it nevertheless shows a miserable human condition and how extreme obsession leads to helplessness and eventual madness. It illustrates how human being strive to realize their dreams, driven and controlled by the society and where there is a complete absence of personal dreams

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) showcases Klaus Kinski . Period!

The urge to break free and destroy a system or machinery that confines you and a rage against civilization is described well in Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970). At first glance this revolutionary work looks bizarre but eventually succeeds in making you feel like a dwarf in front of the authorities which in any case treats you like a mental inhabitant. The music is a reminder of our own Santhals’ composition. If you are easily offended, stay away from this zone.

In the Documentary “Into the Abyss” {2011} it raises questions as to why first people kill people, and then the Government kills people, like the eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, taken of straight from the Old Testament….

Werner Herzog would continue with his interest in isolation, obsession and madness with Fata Morgana (1972)

Woyzeck (1979) will tell you why after watching Klaus Kinski you will not be able to go back and see “Hollywood” stars. Herzog demonstrates frustration and madness and an out of control Klaus Kinski. This is not a film for everybody.

Fitzcarraldo(1982) : The West encroaches on other cultures and we are in awe of them. We are all in shit and we gaze at the stars. One man’s dream and obsession (eccentricity) of bringing the opera in the city leading him to push a boat up the mountain to reach a parallel river where he can get to the rubber trees to satiate his greed is not exactly everyone’s cup of tea. One begins to understand Herzog at this juncture. He no longer is a film maker but gradually metamorphosis to an adventurer. Here you also begin to ask: Who is crazy? Kinski or Herzog?

Where the Green Ants Dream (1984): It portrays the futile struggle of an Aboriginal tribe against the needs and greed of civilization. It shows the clash of the old with the new, the mindless and soul-less rush of progress versus conservation, destruction of ancient civilization and how the lead actor Bruce Spence tries to enlighten his hypothesis of space and time to one of the aborigines.

Cobra Verde (1987) is a journey to the unknown. Welcome to another world.

Lessons of Darkness {1992} gives a bird-eye view of man literally screwing the only earth he has, of war, of destructions, of end of life, of disaster, of horror,

Invincible {2001} gives the impression that like thousands of red crab crawling all over the rocks, we human beings too seem to be endlessly and meaninglessly in a bid to look for a non-existent meaning of life, keeps clambering all over the earth.

People have heard of Helen Keller. Werner Herzog introduces the obsessed Hollywood world to Fini Straubinger. Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) deals with isolation loneliness, insensitive and senseless world. How do we exist with our insignificant problems? Existential to the core! It also makes me realize how selfish we are and exposes our indifference and cruelty as an Indian.

The Wild Blue yonder (2005) is prescribed for die hard Werner Herzog fans and idealistic idiots, not for anybody else (it might put you off very quickly). Somewhere you may have that feeling that the Alien is a very seriously confused human being, representing the bulk of Americans. It also depicts the genius and the absurdity of humankind. Don’t watch this – Do something else. What the “___”?

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009) looks at a ‘true story’ character who gradually loses his sanity whilst living in the character of a play that he is performing and kills his own mother. The adulation and adoration of the protagonist towards his mother reminds one of Norman Bates (Remember? Mother. . . .!). One feels like jumping over the walls of an insane asylum and trying to seek the truth - whatever that means.

Rescue Dawn (2006) takes Werner Herzog again to difficult locations and shows that sometimes mere survival becomes somewhat impossible. There is this struggle and effort for mere existence – from captivity to loneliness to friendship to despair to sacrifice to freedom. It also reassures that man adapts himself to any change of environment - hostile or otherwise – cope with it and strive to have a miserable existence.

The list is long and meandering. Nevertheless, went through the following works of Werner Herzog:

{1962} - Herakles
{1967} - The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz
{1968} - Last Words
{1968} - Lebenszeichen {Signs Of Life}
{1969} - Fata Morgana
{1969} - Massnahmen Gegen Fanatiker
{1970} - Even Dwarfs Started Small
{1971} - Land of Silence and Darkness
{1972} - Aguire, The Wrath Of God
{1974} - The Enigma Of Kasper Hauser
{1974} - The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner
{1976} - Heart Of Glass
{1976} - How much Wood would a Woodchuck chuck
{1977} - La Soufriere
{1977} - Stroszek
{1978} - I Am My Films - A Portrait of Werner Herzog
{1979} - Nosferatu The Vampyre
{1979} - Woyzech
{1981} - Gods Angry Man
{1982} - Fitzcarraldo
{1984} - Ballad of the little soldier
{1984} - Where the Green Ants Dream
{1987} - Cobra Verde
{1989} - Wodaabe – Herdsmen of the Sun
{1990} - 1990 - Echoes From a Somber Empire
{1992} - Lessons Of Darkness - Iraq War
{1993} - 1993_Bells From The Deep
{1997} - 1997_Little Dieter Needs to Fly
{1999} - Mein Liebster Feind aka My Best Fiend
{2000} - Wings Of Hope
{2001} - Invincible
{2001} - Pilgrimage
{2003} - Wheel of Time ◦
{2004} - Incident at Loch Ness
{2004} - The White Diamond
{2005} - Grizzly Man
{2005} - The Wild Blue Yonder
{2007} - Encounters At The End Of The World
{2007} - Rescue Dawn
{2009} - La Boheme
{2009} - My Son My Son, What have You Done
{2009} - The Bad Lieutenant
{2010} - Cave Of Forgotten Dreams
{2011} - Into The Abyss {A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life}
{2012} - An Evening with Werner Herzog
{2012} - On Death Row

After this marathon experience - life looked strange and empty.

Irrational Education

It was always thought that education makes people free, independent in their thought process, making life more meaningful and worthwhile. What you see around you is just the opposite.

You have people rolling out of IITs with their Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics and holding superfluous and superstitious views. Parents on one hand want their sons and daughter to have the best of education and on the other hand to hold on to irrational visions.

It reminds one of China, where the authoritarian rulers do not want their citizens to think (churning out products designed by the Western countries) but at the same time wants to come out of this catch-22 situation (churning goods to become the second largest economy) and take the country to the next level to creativity.

It’s like being in a state of authoritarian democracy, where some of the elite class rules over the mass who needs to be controlled, and are by and large ignorant and distracted.

100 Years

The last 100 years or so saw us through

The British Empire,

WW1, Marxism, The Russian Revolution, Leninism, Communism, The Rise of Capitalism, The Great Depression, Fascism, Hitler, WW2, The Rise of US, Cold War, Superpowers, Nuclear Age, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Holocaust, Totalitarianism, Dictatorship, Stalinism, The Rise of China, The Division and Unification of Germany, Space Age,

Apartheid,

Glasnost, AIDs, Ethiopian Famine, TV,

Vietnam War,

Hippies, Rubik’s Cube, Drugs, Aircrafts, Tanks, Penicillin, Cars, Transistors, Computers, Internet, Broadband, Xerox, DVDs, iPODs, iPADs, Cell Phones, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth........,

Dig & Discover !

If you cannot create or invent something, then at the most – Dig & Discover. Perhaps you might stumble upon:



Éric Rohmer, Werner Herzog, Fritz Lang, Noam Chomsky, Theo Angelopoulos, Carl Maria von Weber, Blues, Sudden Series, Masaki Kobayashi, Robert Bresson, Costa-Gavras, Fernando E. Solanas, Kenji Mizoguchi, Leonardo Da Vinci, Charles Dickens, Jean Renoir, Abbas Kiarostami, Frank Sinatra, Strauss, Ella Fitzgerald, Bernardo Bertolucci, Agnes Varda, Muddy Waters, Raoul Walsh, Louis Malle, Greta Garbo, John Ford, Aki Kauarismaki, Chet Baker, Franz Kafka, Jazz, Western Classical, Bat Masterson, Alain Resnais, Confucius, Rembrandt, David Hume, Charles Mingus, Jean-Pierre Melville, Anton Chekov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Michelangelo Antonioni, Andrez Wazda, Existentialism, Randolph Scott, Roberto Rossellini, Stanley Kubrick, Michelangelo, Josef von Sternberg, Mozart, Jim Jarmusch, François Truffaut, Ahmad Jamal, René Clair, Audie Murphy, Max Brand, Jules Dassin, Bertrand Tavernier, Vincent Van Gogh, Son House, Luchino Visconti, Wim Wenders, Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, Billie Holliday, Barbet Schroeder, Claude Monet, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, Mario Monicelli, Klaus Kinski, Khalil Gibran, Gregory Peck, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Pablo Picasso, Ayn Rand, Martin Scorsese, Immanuel Kant, Lars von Trier, Peter Lorre, Woody Allen, Marx Brothers, Peter Sellers, Jacques Becker, Jean-Paul Sartre, Tim Holt, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Nagisa Oshima, Carmen McRae, Dave Van Ronk, Lukas Moodysson, Louis Armstrong, Joel McCrea, Paul Cezanne, Charles Bukowski, P G Wodehouse, Claude Chabrol, Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Marlene Dietrich, Albert Camus, Dilip Kumar, Oscar Peterson, Roy Rogers, Andrei Tarkovsky, O'Henry, Humphrey Bogart, Akira Kurosawa, Manabendra Mukhopadhyay, Steve McQueen, Sandhya Mukherjee, Chopin, George Bernard Shaw, Paul Gauguin, Sidney Lumet, John Wayne, Luis Bunuel, Jean-Luc Godard, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Aristotle, Marlon Brando, Federico Fellini, René Clément, John Coltrane, BB King, Arthur Schopenhauer, Salvador Dalí, T-Bone Walker, Billy The Kid, Alain Delon, Rene Descartes, Vivaldi, Eric Clapton, John Sturges, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, George Orwell, Jean Paul Belmondo, Peter Watkins, James Arness, Ingmar Bergman, Thomas Hardy, Art Blakey, Hemanta Mukherjee, Socrates, Plato, Voltaire, Wild West, Bela Tarr, Bertrand Russell, Nietzsche, Howard Hawks, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Budd Boetticher, Charles Darwin, Bismillah Khan, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Uttam Kumar, Beethoven, Michael Haneke, Bach, Edvard Munch, Yasujiro Ozu, Rachmaninov, Sterling Hayden, James Stewart, Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea, Bill Evans, Antony Mann, Jean Jacques Rousseau, David Lynch, The Rolling Stones, Buster Keaton, John Lee Hooker, Edward G Robinson, Brahms, Charles Bronson, Jean Gabin, Louis L'Amour, Thelonious Monk, Al Pacino, Robert De Nero, Gunsmoke Series, Ben Webster, Søren Kierkegaard, Jesse James, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rory Calhoun, Liszt, Karl Marx, Giulietta Masina, Alfred Hitchcock, Duke Ellington, Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, Wild Bill Hickok, Leo Tolstoy, Zane Grey, Charlie Parker, Jack Elam, Setsuka Hara, Benny Goodman, Edvard Grieg, Clint Eastwood, Ivan Turgenev, Toshiro Mifune, Lino Ventura, Alida Valli, Sahir Ludhianvi, Ernst Lubitsch. Art Tatum. . . . .