Rescue Dawn, or, One more reason to love Christian Bale

I was watching Batman Begins for the nth time, when it struck me that I loved Christian Bale in Rescue Dawn. After I saw Saving Private Ryan, I told myself, "This will be the last war movie I'll see". For all its critical acclaim, Saving Private Ryan was cheesy, and played to the gallery till the very last note. So when Rescue Dawn came along, I dismissed it as another war movie, or worse still, an ego exercise for a rather intriguing actor. Eating maggots? Ew, I thought! But when I saw Rescue Dawn on the list of in-flight movies on a 5-hour flight, I couldn't resist taking a peek.

Rescue Dawn is no war movie. Yes, it is set in the thick of the Vietnam War, and the protagonist is a US Naval pilot who is shot down and held prisoner. But thats all there is to it. Like Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries), Werner Herzog wisely stays away from political statements (In this case, the machinations of the war in Nam). For instance, Dieter Dangler (Bale) is shot down in Laos (this is based on a true story), where the US is not supposed to have ever been. That the US bombed Laos to the last centimeter so that if one waters the ground there, a bomb tree would grow, is not something Herzog wants to get into. Nor does he portray the Viet Cong as black villains who indulge in horrendous forms of torture.

A lesser director would have added more drama, shown us blisters on sore feet, cut to a painful grimace of the man who is brave in the face of adversity. A lesser actor would have hammed it up, given us soulful stares and ponderous dialogue delivery. Instead, Dangler salvages a single rotting shoe and gives it to his fellow escapee Duane Martin (Steve Zahn) with the glee of a child who has found a stray marble. (Spoiler alert!) A few scenes later, he snatches away the same single shoe from the the dead Martin's foot without so much as a second thought! Bale does eat real maggots (if media reports are to be believed), but its not a big deal in the movie. Nor is it when Bale strips off a snake's head with his teeth (hope at least that was not real!).

Rescue Dawn could have well descended into a weepy, heavy handed picture. Instead Herzog and Bale work to create one of the most beautiful testaments to the human spirit that we have seen. I'd like to watch the Golden Globe nominated "Into the Wild" to see if Sean Penn even comes close! Bale is a class act, even without fancy outfits and terrible weight loss programmes (well, he had to lose some for this role, but not as bad as The Machinist). Note to self: see 3:10 to Yuma soon. Steve Zahn does some good work here as Duane Martin. In some scenes, he almost steals the thunder from under Bale's nose.

Verdict: Great movie. Bale is now at the top of the list along with Gael Garcia Bernal, and therefore earns the tag "amazing"!

The Last King of Scotland

The Last King of Scotland is the fictitious account of Nicholas Garrigan, a young Scot who becomes Amin's personal doctor and 'closest advisor'. Nicholas (James McAvoy, last spotted as Mr. Tumnus in Narnia), a blue-eyed, pink-cheeked, young doctor, arrives in Uganda sometime in the 1970s. To Nicholas, Uganda is an adventure, an escape from living up to his father's stature, and aborted attempts to kindle romance with a kindred spirit in Sarah Merrit (Gillian Anderson aka Scully from the X-Files). After a fateful meeting with the charismatic Amin who exchanges his general's uniform shirt for Nicholas' Scotland football jersey, he is invited to become Amin's personal doctor. Seduced by Amin's charm and the idea of having a blast, Nicholas takes up the post.

Even as he begins to get drawn into the cesspool that is Amin and his tyranny, Nicholas stubbornly refuses to see whats right under his very nose. And by the time he finally admits the truth to himself, its too late - he has caused the torture and death of one of Amin's closest aides. When Nicholas gets ready to run, Amin turns tyrant on him and Nicholas is forced to stay in Uganda. And to make things worse, Nicholas begins an affair with Kay (Kerry Washington), one of Amin's wives. When Kay becomes pregnant and is forced to seek a village doctor, Amin butchers her. For some strange reason, Amin spares Nicholas, till he foolishly tries to poison the dictator. Even as Amin is sweet talking the world media at Entebbe, the tortured Nicholas manages to escape along with the non Jewish passengers being flown out of the country.

While Garrigan's character is completely fictional, what happened to Uganda under Amin is not. By the end of his reign in 1979, Amin had murdered more than 300,000 Ugandans he suspected of plotting against him. He is also believed to have eaten the flesh of his supposed enemies (the only reference in this movie is when Amin jokingly tells his guests at a state dinner that the meat is non human) and god knows what else. The movie doesn't show any of this in graphic detail, but the glimpses it provides are enough to to convey the extent of horror perpetrated by the Amin regime.

Forest Whitaker is simply brilliant as Idi Amin - charismatic and majestic when Amin is playing the charmer, coldly cruel and menacing when his paranoia takes over. Whitaker plays Amin with a fully human touch, so that the audience sympathizes with him even as it is horror struck by his atrocities. When Whitaker laments that everyone is out to kill him, you feel his agony reaching out to you. A performance of a lifetime and Oscar well deserved!

That said, watching The Last King of Scotland was nothing short of a visual treat! No, I am not talking about Forrest Whitaker's brilliant portrayal of the mad Ugandan dictator. James McAvoy is so damn pretty that its distracting! With his ruby red lips, clear blue eyes and poetic wavy hair, it becomes very difficult to concentrate on his performance. That he manages to act the part of Nicholas Garrigan with any conviction is a feat, one that most good looking actors fail to accomplish. Which is probably why actors like the amazing(!) Gael Garcia Bernal can get away with a wider range of roles. Cillian Murphy is equally pretty, but he can look pretty creepy if he wants to - remember Batman Begins? It'll be interesting to watch the kind of roles McAvoy gets post The Last King.

Verdict - Don't miss it!

In other news, played Holi for the first (and last) time yesterday. Was great fun. Scrubbing the colours out wasn't.

Some eye candy for a dull day

Alles gut endes gut, solamente para los americanos

Half way through Babel, one is stuck by a strong sense of deja vu - hey, isn't this last year's Oscar winning movie? No silly, this is going to be the Oscar winner this year - if the Academy liked Crash, they are gonna love Babel. Or so the makers of the movie seem to have been thinking when they made this highly self conscious, pretentious clunker of a movie.

For those who have seen Crash, the interconnect between the four stories in this movie is fairly obvious (except the Japanese one, which is the best part of the movie). Two brothers in remote Morocco taking pot shots with their new rifle injure an American tourist, whose children get lost on the US-Mexico border with their nanny. I'll leave the Japanese connection to those who watch the movie. The picture starts off pretty strongly and in the first half you are practically glued to the screen. The second half is messy, and nobody seems to have a clue as to where its going. Ultimately, it ends pretty badly for everyone, except for the Americans.

The Japanese tale involving the teenager Chieko is undoubtedly the most enjoyable part of the movie - the contrast the studied silence in the rest of the movie where the characters can talk and listen with the thumping loudness of the deaf-mute Chieko's Japan. Rinko Kikuchi plays the angsty, rebellious Chieko with the right mix of depression, frustration, anger and vulnerability. Pretty impressive for a performance without a word of dialogue. The best scene is the one in the nightclub, we get to hear the pounding beats of the night club and suddenly, the scene switches to Chieko's POV - a multitude of colours accompanied by a muted roar. One of the most visually powerful scenes I've seen in a movie.

Brad Pitt is horribly miscast - its difficult to relate to him as a suffering, middle-aged dad knowing that he has a hot babe for a girlfriend, an adorable new born and a fabulous lifestyle. Cate Blanchett is wasted, so is the amazing (yet again!) Gael Garcia Bernal. His first mainstream Hollywood movie and his character doesn't even get closure - Boo! Adriana Barraza as the loving nanny who is deported to Mexico is the tragic heroine in this movie and she is simply heartbreaking here.

Is Babel Oscar worthy? I don't think so.

PS: Its official - Gael Garcia Bernal is the next best thing. And absolutely crush-worthy!

Gael Garcia Bernal

After seeing The Motorcycle Diaries, I've been reading up about this really amazing Mexican actor - his choice of films is just amazing (a word that pops up often when Bernal is mentioned) - Amores Perros, Y tu mamá también, El crimen del Padre Amaro, and more recently, The Science of Sleep and The King.

What is really commendable is that Bernal has established himself as an interesting actor without having done any Hollywood movies (Babel is the only big budget Hollywood movie he's done so far). I remember the first ever movie that I saw of Johnny Depp (Ed Wood) and itching to see more. Bernal is far more subtle an actor than Depp, and I think its going to be a pleasure watching him. Can't wait.

Filmy weekend

Watched a lot of movies over the weekend - Happy Feet, Star Wars Episode II, How the Grinch stole Christmas, etc. But the one thing that hit me was The Motorcycle Diaries.

Based on the road trip undertaken by Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his friend Alberto Granada across the South American continent, the movie is one of the best I've seen recently.

In 1952, Ernesto "Fuser" Guevara and his friend Alberto, start from Buenos Aires on a rusty old motorcycle (The Mighty One, which is anything but) to spend time working at a leper colony in the Peruvian Amazon, and reach Venezuela in time for Alberto's 30th birthday. They miss that deadline but the trip takes them across the Andes, Chile, the Atacama Desert and into the Amazon. Short of cash and often hungry, the friends devise ingenious methods to stay afloat, including getting a paper to publish an article on their ambitious trip.

It is not all fun and games, however, as Ernesto begins to emerge from the safe, warm cocoon that was his life in Buenos Aires. The human suffering he sees, across various parts of South America slowly seeps into him, sowing the seeds for the revolutionary that he would become later in life. By the time Ernesto and Alberto reach Venezuela, you can actually see how much the young man has changed.

Walter Salles, the director, has done a wonderful job in this film. This could have easily descended into a leftist, political movie, but Salles gives us a deeply personal account of what amounted to a life changing event in Che's life. The mining couple (Ernesto gives them the precious American dollars that his girlfriend gave him to buy her a bathing suit), the Native Indian woman who remembers a better life, the visit to Machu Picchu, the leper colony separated from the healthy by the mighty Amazon - one can understand that effect it must have had on a sensitive and intelligent 23 year old. (How I wish I had been that 23-year old!). Some might argue that Che has been idealized in this movie, but then Hollywood has idealized men far less worthy and Che's communist leanings don't change the fact that he was a great revolutionary.

This is my first Gael Garcia Bernal movie and the guy is just amazing! I finally understand why people rave about him so. Bernal is the actor who seems like a average looking guy in a few pictures and in some makes you wonder why he is so lusted after. But once he is on screen you understand why - he transforms into something else, he has amazing screen presence and is so endearing as the shy, sensitive young man who doesn't know the Mambo from the Tango. Must see more of this guy's movies!

Verdict: Apocalypse Now and American Beauty left indelible impressions on me. I was in my teens when I watched the first and 21 when I watched the second, more impressionable ages to be sure. But The Motorcycle Diaries made me sad - sad for having to grow up, for being caught up in everyday life, for not believing in pretty much anything. Che was a lucky guy. Loved the movie, a must see for anyone who has ever itched to get away from it all. A fitting description of my reaction to the movie would be Jack Kerouac's words from On the Road:

I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"