Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages

The film features several  different storylines , all of which intersect periodically throughout the film.  Jean, a restless teenager who yearns for  freedom , tells his sister-in-law Anne (Juliette Binoche) about his dissatisfaction  with working on his father's farm.  Jean suddenly throws a piece of garbage at Maria, a Romanian woman sitting on the side of the road. Amadou, an African boy, tries to get Jean to apologize and then winds up in a scuffle with him . The police arrives and blame the African. Michael Haneke juxtaposes different characters' different lives belonging to different social classes. Haneke gives us insights into the various lives that have intersected in modern city. We witness an equally racially charged encounter at the end of the film. A man (Arab) begins to harass Anne in a metro. She moves to the other end of the subway car.  He follows and sits down beside her and then spits in her face.  This is a film about race,culture ,urban rage and alienated identity. But then Haneke's films are not so straightforward as well.  Haneke loves to play with our assumptions of reality and he does it well in Binoche's scenes ,some of which may also be scenes from a film her character is making.

Samskara

The Kannada film dealt with  the lives and the customs  of the Madhwa community.  Samaskara directed by Pattabhi Rama Reddy was a path-breaking attempt in Kanada as far as parallel cinema is considered.  A Brahmin named Narayanappa dies suddenly.  He used to drink liquor and kept a sudra mistress.  He disobeyed the traditions of Brahmin actually.  Now there is a discussion about his cremation in the community, and the Acharya (Girish Karnad) ,the head of the Brahmin community fails to answer it.  He reads the holy books, but they do not provide any solution.  Meanwhile Acharya sleeps with Narayanappa's mistress and then he feels guilty about it and runs away from his place.  The film gives a beautiful count of the political,social and moral  issues involved in the funeral rites.  However this film becomes repetitive after a certain point. Still overall this film is a must watch for film-lovers.

Mat i Syn

Mother and Son is a 1997 Russian film directed by Aleksandr Sokurov ,  depicting a relationship between an old dying mother and her young son.  It depicts one-day  in the life of a grown son and his elderly,ailing mother.  The son must gently lift his mother and carry her from place to place.   Their speech is slow and heavy , as though even the act of speaking has become an effort for them.   Forget speaking-even breathing is an effort for both mother and son ,so heavy does their existence weigh upon them. From time to time, there is a far away train or a sail on the sea , emphasizing further their isolation from the rest of the world. It is difficult to find a film that has captured the sense of intimacy and communion between a parent and an adult child.  Everything happens slowly in Mother and Son .  Sokurov introduces a shot , and instead of cutting quickly to another angle , holds it on the screen, inviting us to feast on the image to find our own dreams and meditations and yardstick inside it , to perhaps recall our own parent-child  relationships.  Sokurov distorts his images to suggest the heightened , dreamlike reality of the dying mother and son. While the dialogue is kept to an absolute minimum , the soundtrack is extremely expressive and is an essential element of the work- the wind, the sea,  the "music" of the earth , provide a brilliant counterpoint and commentary to what is seen.

Herz aus Glas (Heart Of Glass)

The film was written by Herzog, based partly on a story by Herbert  Achternbusch.  The setting is an 18th century Bavarian town with a glassblowing factory which produces a brilliant red ruby glass. When the master glass blower dies, the secret to producing the ruby glass is lost.  The factory owner is obsessed with the ruby glass and believes it to have magical properties.  Several of the characters appear to be "mad" , either  mentally or emotionally.  One Young woman  is shown in various situations indicating that she is not of sound mind,  stripping her clothes off  and turning in a daze ,in a state of  mental unconsciousness.  The owner's father , an elderly man who is shown wearing clothing befitting an aristocrat,  yet he babbles and laughs uncontrollably , all the while refusing to walk. The overall perspective  of Heart of Glass reflects Herzog's grim vision of hopelessness.  Man's efforts to understand  the universe and build a humane civilisation are doomed to failure in the face of  his own depravity and the incomprehensibly vastness of great nature . Our so-called civilisation has tried to tame nature , but it is based on reductionist mechanism and increasingly drives us further away from any chance of harmony within it.

Vaastu Purush

The film begins in present-day Mumbai where a middle aged doctor Bhaskar Deshpande comes to know that he has received an award for his work among the city's slum-dwellers.  He decides to return his native village and build a hospital at the place of the ruins of his home , just to appease his family's guardian spirit.  Vaastu Purush means Guardian of The House.  After returning to village ,  he starts remembering about his childhood.   Though he was born in a feudal family but now the earnings of the family are meagre.  His mother wants her son to become a doctor and serve the poor.  VaastuPurush  is about memory, about loss  and remembrance , about the interplay between times past,  the present and possibly the unborn feature.  Vaastu Purush can also be seen as one illiterate woman's determination to ensure that her son breaks away from the degenerate feudal background of his once affluent family and becomes a doctor to help cure the needy.  The performances were good by all but the one performance which stands out is by Mahesh Elkunchwar who played the grown-up Dr Bhaskar.

Only God Forgives

A brilliant, macabre and ultraviolent anti-revenge film by Refn. The film has deep character development, little dialogue, extreme violence mixed with soft music.  Julian (Ryan Gosling)  is an American living in Bangkok , Thailand  who runs a boxing club , which is actually  a front for a massive drug smuggling operation.  Respected in the underworld  ,deep inside, he feels empty.    Lieutenant Chang , known as the "Angel of Vengeance"  kills Julian's brother for raping a woman.   Julian's mother Crystal  (Kristin Scott Thomas)  arrives in Bangkok and demands Julian to find the killer and  kill him.    Chang is shown as God's representative on earth.   Julian seems to be mesmerized by the near -mythical "Angel of Vengeance" .  It is Chang who glides through the film with mysterious precision and ambiguity .  Pansringarm doesn't have dialogues but is terrific as a violent cop who respects the sanctity of justice  but defies the law and even ethics to maintain justice.  Also the film is about oedipal issues of Gosling's character ,whose mother is played to excellence by Kristin Scott Thomas.  She even calls Gosling's beautiful girlfriend a "cum dumpster".  Refn's direction , Larry Smith's cinematography and Beth Mickle's production design are all superb.  Refn approaches violence like sexuality and considers a film as a build up to a climax.  Considering the impressive balance of violence ,sex and ideology in his films ,he is a very good director.

En la ciudad de Sylvia

Almost devoid of  dialogue , the film tells about an artist who returns to a city in search of a woman he met six years earlier.   For three days ,  he sits at the cafe outside the Conservatoire sketching the people around him.   Eventually he finds a girl who looks like her and stalks her through the city.  Finally he works up the nerve to say hello  ; she claims not to be the one he seeks ; they part ways.   But in the hands of the director
Luis Guerin , this is enough to construct a frequently hypnotic,  if sometimes irritating,  meditation on the act of looking.  It's a profile of a city paradise , where we hear only sounds of footsteps and overheard, muffled conversations , but we are presented with a picture of extreme beauty and wonderment.  The film mainly explores the themes like desire ,beauty and silent interaction of society.  As an ostensibly subjective film ,it also includes  many mysterious scenes where the identity of the observer is ambiguous.  The director has captured  the obsessive and mysterious compulsiveness of yearning and the ways in which it can take over our consciousness.