Last night I watched a film on, was it, Zee Studio. It was called 'Fateless'. I think Zee Studio is doing what most other 'English-language film' channels are doing - trying to gain viewers by airing previous Oscar-nominated flicks. I'm sure Star Movies has already shown 'Titanic' three or four times, haha. The difference seems to be that Zee Studio is also airing films nominated in the foreign film category. So, here we are. It's a Holocaust film in the most direct sense - we see an adolescent boy wrenched from his home, cattle-trucked to the grimly obscene irony that is Buchenwald. To do labour, not to be gassed, but that doesn't make it any easier, does it? I haven't read the original novel, and I had to divide my attention between visuals and subtitles, and I don't have any film jargon. What I can say is-

It had some especially good moments. Seen as a whole, it's more of a collection of snapshots, or of anecdotes, which is not a bad thing, but then you have the very artsy use of colour filters, and the slightly annoying way scenes have of fading into black. Abrupt cuts would, I think, have served the material better.

I have no idea what Daniel Craig was doing there.

Probably the most disconcerting thing about 'Fateless' is how beautiful the protagonist, Gyuri, played by some kid called Marcell Nagy, is throughout the whole hellish mess. Even after he's broken and reduced to this naked will to survive - and even after he comes close to wanting to lay himself down and die - he's painfully, painfully beautiful. Now perhaps I'm more of a paedophile than I'd be comfortable accepting - but really, I don't think it's what I mean. It makes more sense at the end. Gyuri goes back to face the hypocrites, the spouters of meaningless platitudes, the spooners out of empty sympathy, and the film ends with his asserting that he will go on- there was happiness to be found even in the camp, and nothing is so unbearable that it cannot be endured. Perhaps what I found beautiful in the character (I don't know how good Nagy is, but I felt for him, and it didn't feel cloying, so he was doing something right) is that. The defiance, despite it all. The will to survive, which is too often said to be 'animal', therefore vulgar, therefore ugly like truth. But this, too, is truth. Clumsy, clumsy paraphrasing. I'm teetering on the edge of dangerous words, words like 'transcend', like 'vital'. Then again, 'vital' is right, subversively, utterly right. It made me think, and I'm still thinking. I'll probably have to read Primo Levi again.


Graffiti I saw on campus today: one of the many anti-Bush slogans that have cropped up seemingly overnight. Rather unimaginative, but oh well. What made me smile, though, was that the 's' in 'Bush' was stylised into a swastika. Equating, naturally, Bush with Hitler. Whoever painted that either believes that, out of respect, the swastika should always stand as a sign for 'Nazi', for hatred, for genocide, for Evil. Or has conveniently forgotten that it's really a symbol that has been around for ages, a symbol belonging to many cultures, a symbol that was appropriated by the Nazis, a symbol that anyone walking about right here in Kolkata will find on anything from coconuts during a pujo to crusty chairs at outdoor functions. That a swastika is not always or everywhere a shorthand for 'Nazi'. There are arguments for both sides, of course, but I just wonder if they knew. If we're protesting against George W. Bush, shouldn't it be a properly indigenous, or indigenously clever, protest? Shouldn't it be more than sad little micchhils that end at the main gate? GEORGE BUSH DOORE HOTO. That walking talking steaming pile of poop? He's not coming near us, comrades, if that's any comfort (best served cold).

Prematurely senile, that's me. Someday I shall have enough decency to be embarrassed by these rants.