UTV World Movies Insignia December 2010 by Uditvanu Das

Volume 1, Issue 12, December 2010

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Germany Conversations: Sander Francken Olivier Assayas

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Movie of the Month

Rhapsody in August

Best Christmas movies of the decade

Contents

Ghosts of Christmas Past

Sander Francken Olivier Assayas

Best Christmas movies of the decade

Germany Film History: Consonant Is King Myth: Fairyland Central Culture: Grimm Tales Food : Guten Appetit Sport: The Four-Year Itch

Genre: Kammerspiel Location: Berlin Soundtrack: Das Boot Book: Demian

Akira Kurosawa The Dark Knight

Movie of the Month Rhapsody in August

Assistant Art Director Neaha Nagpal

Assistant Editors Sudarshana Sengupta Kanika Punwani

Designers Yogesh Jadhav Digital Imaging Paras Damani

Race to the Globes:

This first digital avatar of Insignia is also our first brush with this battle. Doubt ye not though that our sacred lord, King Content, will continue to hold sway in this strange, new kingdom as well.

Nomination Special

Through it all, may Cinema be with you.

Holocaust Hangover

Race Course

Managing Editor Tanmoy Goswami

Going from print to online is a bit like moving from a lavish villa to a swanky serviced apartment. One gives you the freedom to float around in luxuriant white space between the lines, the other is always buzzing with aptly named hyperlinks. One makes you feel boyish enthusiasm for whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s between the covers, the other makes you feel completely in control. There really is no battle between the two; the battle, if any, is in our minds.

How Theatrical:

Cultures in Conversation:

Art Director Rishita Chandra

Dear Readers,

Up close with

Reviews

Editor Maneck Davar

Editorial

Conversations

Editing and Design Spenta Multimedia (www.spemultimedia.com)

Tanmoy Goswami Managing Editor

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Movie of the Month

Of an Indelible Rhapsody... Ayush Prasad looks on as Akira Kurosawa’s Rhapsody in August reignites the past, opening up the question of the relation between the perpetrator and the victim during war… Thick clouds are seen against a blue sky. Thunder shatters the silence. The sharp, piercing, grating sound of an irregularly spinning bicycle wheel makes way. It is sustained through the film. At another point of time a wheel whizzes, tittering, cutting a hole in the history of a nation. Insects keep buzzing continuously and the wind seethes though the reeds as the camera focuses on children and grandma inside the house. We see, look, hear and are rendered tense as the rhapsody builds on, a rhapsody in August, Japan’s unforgettable August, a narrative that neither abates nor ends in the memories of those who survived it, a narrative that does not let go of those (Japanese, Japanese-Americans and Americans) born later and choosing to look upon it with a distanced forgetfulness.

They claimed they dropped the bomb to stop war. That was 45 years ago… war has not… stopped. War is still killing people. War is to blame you know. People do anything just to win a war. Sooner or later it will destroy us all.

An experience that returns cyclically to haunt generation after generation, it needs to be made into a rhapsody, a painful, touching, revisiting mélange of melodies to be borne. Kurosawa’s portrait of the children’s Grandma is the portrait of a Japan which the world would want to forget after handing down a few souvenirs of art and sculpture, but wouldn’t be able to. It is the portrait of a Japan, which its own, post-war, new, middle-class would want to forget while acquiring an unthinking, consumerist and American middleclass life, but wouldn’t be able to. A Japan ravaged both in its unconscious memory and conscious everyday life with the gaze of the “eye”: the eye of the bomb that exploded on Nagasaki on 9th August, 1945. The American bomb tore through the life and culture of Japanese civil society with the excuse of stopping the war: This is Kurosawa’s political indictment of America, which prefers to forget that it had ever ravaged a whole nation and moves on. The perpetrator must acknowledge and recount what it perpetrated.

The song “And the boy a rose did see” (also the first words of the film) forms Kurosawa’s beautiful yet horrifying metaphor for the experience of the atomic blast. The children of the house sing it as they welcome the Japanese-American Clark (Gere) as one who chooses to glance back at the incident which killed their grandfather. In the film’s last scene, a parallel for atomic devastation, it plays in the background with the piano, the flute and the violin as accompaniments. Clouds rumble, thundering menacingly. A deluge comes down, a smothering curtain, forgiving nothing. Grandma surges on, drenched, the canopy of her umbrella thrown back in the shape of a water lily by the howling wind. Disjointed from the world’s present, reliving the nuclear explosion, a train of children and adults running after her (experiencing the bombing, de facto, through her), she is frozen in the film’s last frame as a metaphor for all those who have permanently become a part of their memories of the atomic blast: “And the boy a rose did see/ A rose standing in the field/ Blossoming in all innocence/ The sight then to him revealed/ A never-ending fascination/ For the crimson colour/ Of the rose standing in the field.” An army of ants climbs up a rose tree to its only, large, over-powering and enchanting rose as Japanese survivors and citizens chant Buddhist prayers and pay homage to the victims of 9/8, making perfect sense. A poignant sopranic piece (dominated by the violin with the piano as the accompaniment) calls upon the new Japanese to embrace the darkness of the past and asks Americans to understand the bombing for the barbarity it was—not simply a necessity of war.

Rhapsody in August (Hachi-gatsu no kyôshikyoku) Year: 1991 Director: Akira Kurosawa Cast: Sachiko Murase, Richard Gere and Hisashi Igawa

Director

The Dark Knight Kurosawa’s cinema may seem to be about heroic action, but heroes, in the end, are merely human, writes Trisha Gupta. One of my most vivid cinematic memories involves a stocky little Asian man and a suitedbooted white man frantically cutting wild grass, while the sun threatens to set behind them. I was six or seven and understood nothing of the film. But the elemental power of that single scene never left me: the vast, bleak grassland, the eerie light, the wind beginning to howl, and the knowledge—somehow contained wordlessly in the furious cutting of the grass—that life depended on it. Fifteen years later, I learnt that the film was called Dersu Uzala (1975), which was also the name of its memorable protagonist: an old Goldi hunter who knows the cold forests of the Russian Far East like the back of his hand, but loses his eyesight and is forced to go live in a town. Its world-renowned Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa, had been offered the project by the Soviet studio Mosfilm in 1973. It was a time of great tumult in Kurosawa’s life: his attempt to break into Hollywood with Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) had gone horribly wrong, his experimental venture Dodesukaden (1970) had received a lukewarm reception in Japan and he was unable to get funding. In Dersu’s profound bewilderment—that he, who was so attuned to the wilderness, can no longer survive in it—one senses an echo of Kurosawa’s own feelings about cinema in those years. In 1973, Kurosawa had already been directing films for thirty years. Identified in the West with his superlative samurai films —Yojimbo, Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Sanjuro and The Hidden Fortress (which inspired Star Wars), he was seen as a master of the dramatic action narrative. Dersu Uzala is, by comparison, a slow film. But it contains many longterm Kurosawa preoccupations: the individual striving to surmount all odds—seen most powerfully in To Live (Ikiru, 1952), where a minor bureaucrat’s life is transformed by the discovery that he is going to die); relationships between younger and older men—Seven Samurai (1954), where a newbie samurai apprentices himself to an older one, and Red Beard (1965), about an old doctor and an arrogant intern; and the connection between man and nature.

In a mad world,

only the mad are sane

Kurosawa was deeply concerned about human hubris. He once said, “People today have forgotten they’re really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They always think they can make something better...” There is something magical about his rendition of the landscape in Dersu; the wind, the rain, the sun seem almost to conspire to make the two men lose their way. Then you watch the two warriors befuddled by the forest in Throne of Blood (1957), and you realize that Kurosawa has thought of nature in this way for a long, long time. Transposing Macbeth to medieval Japan, he takes the Birnam Wood of the prophecy (I shall not be afraid of death or bane, till Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane) and makes of it an eerie presence more powerful than the strongest warrior: the Cobweb Forest. Even in Seven Samurai, the heroism of the samurai is ephemeral—it is the land and the peasant’s link to it that is forever. Kurosawa was known for his largerthan-life dramas. But what makes his cinema truly epic is the profound sense that there is something larger than the heroic human life.

Genre

Kammerspiel Call it accidental or coincidental, but if the term Kammerspiel sounds like a Welsh hammer to you, blame it on the Expressionists who took over the stage with their dark, twisty ways. Kammerspiel was shadowy and skulked down the alleys where Expressionism had just made a huge row and split. Yes, it was the same alley, the crannies and crevices of your mind, the deepest depths of your subconscious and other equally dark and morbid spaces. They just chose to tell their stories differently. Born around the same time, Kammerspiel chose to be the stoic elder sibling to the angsty, neurotic perpetual teenager we know as German Expressionism. While it dealt with equally dark and depressing themes (and what less can you expect from Germany after the First World War), the Kammerspiel films chose to go about it without attracting much attention to themselves. The movement relinquished spectacle, extreme emotion and stylisation, instead focusing on a small number of characters in intimate surroundings. This atmosphere, lacking flights of fantasy or mythology concentrated attention on character psychology within everyday situations. The emphasis was on slow, evocative acting and telling details rather than extreme expressions of emotions. These were films set in everyday, contemporary surroundings, covering a short span of time. While it gave them a distinct tone (or so they hoped), it also meant that viewers and critics alike tended to confuse the two genres, often marking them as offshoots of the other. And it didn’t help that the filmmakers of one waltzed in and out of the other, leaving further cause for ambiguity. Apart from war, depression and a general overview of the human condition, Kammerspiel films also drew their influence from chamber play theatre, popularised by Max Reinhardt. Chamber plays were known for their naturalistic style, emphasis on acting and minimal use of external props or special effects. The films used chiaroscuro lighting to create intimate, claustrophobic environments. F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh (Der letzte Mann, 1924) is the best example of this obscure film genre, and you cannot get more obscure than that. This was one of the first films to incorporate a moving camera and a set built entirely within a studio, unusual for Murnau, who preferred to shoot on location. However, while most Kammerspiel films ended with the death of a main character, The Last Laugh notoriously had its ending changed to an outrageous, upbeat outcome. Sell out, much? — Sudarshana Sengupta

Murnau’s The Last Laugh

Location

Berlin Berlin. Narrow streets holding buildings with crumbling facades give way to a wide, open square—Gendermenmarkt. A top angle view reveals a series of repeating grids, white and geometric for as far as the eye can see. A train screams loudly overhead. An ambulance hurtles through a gap between yellow-hard-hatted men and screeches to a halt as the air splinters around it. A sheet of clear glass lies shattered, the lone victim of the accident; its shards glinting amidst a white-grey cobblestone street.

Flash forward and this time the ambulance stops. The men walk by. The glass pane they hold between them remains smooth, continuous, unbroken. We see the square from ground level now, the surrounding structures embracing it evoke a sense of comfort, making the space seem more manageable, less maze-like. Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt, 1998), with its three alternate realities, shows the city in its modern day, post-wall avatar. As the flame-haired heroine blazes through the streets on a quest to save her lover, boundaries break for her, roads clear, streets reinvent themselves to suit her needs; until topography loses meaning, and East and West merge.

Tykwer’s, and by extension Lola’s, Berlin pays scant regard to geography, often breaching reality—casinos appear in city halls, bridges connect places a stone’s throw away from each other, and areas that are miles apart are covered in a few confident strides. It is the Berliner’s Berlin. There are none of the expected landmarks, no postcard locations, no touristy gratifications. This is the new Berlin, adamantly denying its history, like Lola, constantly re-inventing itself, shaking off convention, breaking all the rules, picking itself up and starting all over when things don’t go its way. It’s a Berlin of shifting realities. Like the square sometimes intimidating, sometimes warm; like the ambulance sometimes throwing itself into a path

of destruction, and, sometimes braking in time, momentarily distracted by a red mirage, only to realise a few seconds later that what stopped it was nothing more than a pale apparition of itself reflected in glass as clear as air. — Kanika Punwani

Book

Demian Sounds like a cookie cutter specimen of a coming-of-age story. In other words, it recounts the trials and tribulations of one Emil Sinclair in whose mental journey (from innocence to maturity) Demian plays a central role. Yes, it is replete with angst, loss of innocence, love and heartbreak, and ultimately finding oneself and one’s place in the world. And while this alone may indicate that the book is likely to be a good read, this novel by Hermann Hesse has a lot more going for it. Here’s why. For starters, it is a story written in Hesse’s style, a style that reflects the lyricism of Borges, the simplicity of Italo Calvino and the dulcet seduction of Neruda’s poetry. And all this in his very first novel. As a bonus, you get to find out about the philosophies of thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche, Novalis, Schopenhauer, Schlegel and Carl Jung. In his attempt to find a belief system that helps him understand the world, Emil comes across characters who reflect their ideas. Interestingly, in Demian we find the proto-Siddhartha: the man who achieves greatness by swimming against the current, challenging the zeitgeist and, ultimately, going his own way—not he who accepts it unquestioningly. Which brings me to my next point. Picture this. It is 1919, well into the First World War, with Germany in the thick of things. All around are voices going hoarse with demands for death and destruction. In the midst of this frenzied chaos speaks a voice untouched by this mad thirst for blood, urging people against war, warning them about an age full of “blood, bullets, disasters” to come. Absolutely prescient. And finally, a classic is that which stands the test of time. Demian exercised an electrifying influence on the post-war generation, striking the nerve of the times. The beat generation then embraced it, hailing it as a masterpiece, and today, when warmongering and propaganda have reached still greater heights, its relevance cannot be questioned. — Seetha Natesh

Soundtrack

Das Boot Wolfgang Peterson’s 1981 WWII classic Das Boot boasts of one of the most memorable soundtracks of the last couple of decades. It’s a strange mix of epic strings, orchestra, military drums and eerie sonar echoes which work incredibly well to make you feel heroic, at sea, but at the same time scared and claustrophobic. It’s a minutely crafted, intense soundtrack, and it safe to say that, Klaus Doldinger—a well known jazz musician in Germany—has created a masterpiece of sorts. The lead melody is in turns gloomy and uplifting, perfectly reflecting the terror, the despair and fleeting glimmers of hope which the soldiers experience inside the cramped confines of their submarine. Doldinger uses a few well-known techniques to shock, thrill and melt the listener in turns. Angriff, is a staccato piece which will set your heart racing because it comes in at all those nail-biting moments in the film, where the fates of the soldiers hang by a string. A creepy silence is punctuated with orchestral riffs, making you leap every time they intersperse those unbearable silences. On the other hand Rückzug, the hectic violin version of the lead theme, is so full of optimism that you feel like you can take on the biggest destroyer ships and slay them with your bare hands. The lilting guitar piece comes in at those poignant moments where the soldiers remember their loved ones. The listener becomes a puppet in the hands of Doldinger. The music binds you tightly to these German soldiers, battling battles they do not understand so many hundred leagues beneath the vast and icy ocean. You will feel breathless, you will feel scared and you will feel moved beyond words. The music works magically with this gritty, powerful film, never overshadowing it, but always complimenting it—the hallmarks of all brilliant soundtracks. Some of the other tracks include the zesty bar room Mon Gars and the wild jazz piece Schwarze Augen. J'attendrai sung by Rina Ketty and La Paloma sung by Rosita Serrano are heard in the background as records played by the captain and his crew inside the submarine. The Erzherzog-Albrecht-Marsch (a popular military march), and It's a Long Way to Tipperary performed by the Red Army Chorus complete this rich, eclectic soundtrack. — Nandini Gupta

Conversations

Double Dutch We caught up with Sander Francken during his short sweet visit to the city for the screening of the film Bardsongs at MAMI. By Sudarshana Sengupta How did the study of Modern Art help in your journey as a filmmaker? Studying Modern Art meant that I was exploring various disciplines during a couple of years in order to find out what to do during the rest of my life. The reason why I started this study was my talent for drawing. But once at the Academy I lost interest in that, because there were so many other ways to express myself. I started industrial

and graphical designing, painting, sculpture, a little bit of architecture, photography—but none of these could fulfil my need for self expression. And then I discovered that filmmaking, particularly the making of fiction films. After making two small films I realised that my life was too short for the endless possibilities of filmmaking. From that moment on I focussed on my very first (professionally produced) film project, titled Video And Juliet (about the influence of television entertainment on the relation of a couple) which was released in 1980 and got the Prix Futura 1981 in Berlin. Bardsongs talks about the subtle differences and similarities of different worlds. How did the film take shape in your head. I started the project when searching for a cinematographical visualisation for the city of Djenne, in Mali. In West Africa they have a tradition of folktales which are orally transferred from generation to generation. People like stories, so the next step was to find a folktale

which would enable me to lead the audience of my film through this magnificent world of Djenne. During my research I came across the story of Bouba, who has to find ‘the largest part of all knowledge’. Subsequently I asked myself how I could give this project more meaning than just this little adventure of a West African nineyear-old boy in Djenne. The answer was: by producing a series of filmed folktales in different cultures. This would be interesting because of the fact that folktales usually carry a wisdom which is universal. By bringing tales from different cultures together in one film I could show that although cultures have a different look and habits and traditions, when it comes to the basics of our existence we all share the same thoughts. As such the film might work as a positive contribution to a public discussion we have in Europe in these days about the integration of non-Westerns citizens in Europe, where people look mainly at the differences between themselves and the others. Bardsongs however shows what we share with each other.

To become aware of what people and cultures share is very important for our future—and the future of the world.

Has music always been a source of inspiration for you? If I had the talent I would like to be a musician. Music is mankind’s most spiritual way of expression. Music is also the ‘secret weapon’ of fiction films, because through music we set the tone, the mood… Just before coming to India I watched one of my earliest films, titled The Oplossing (The Answer), which I hadn’t seen for more than 25 years. And it was like I saw it for the first time, with fresh eyes, as if it had been made by someone else. And it was full of music, like an opera… actors that started singing in the middle of a scene. And it worked brilliantly. In the few video clips I made I always tried to visualize of the song... For example in the 90s I made a documentary about the Tenth Symphony of Mahler; a symphony which Mahler never completed and which caused a controversy between a few contemporary composers who had completed it themselves, pretending to know how Mahler would have done that. Also in the 90s one of my films, titled DUIF (a 30-minute thriller, shot on a train which runs through the Netherlands) got a prize for the best music score. So yes, music has often played an important role in my films.

Your drama series PLEIDOOI (Called to the Bar) was extremely well received in the Netherlands. Is television in your country as much of an influence on popular culture as it is in the rest of western world? The majority of the people in Europe—especially the Northern European ones—are used to watching television for a couple of hours a day, so you can imagine how they are hypnotised and paralysed by television. There are so many stupid programmes being broadcasted... programmes that sometimes create a useless reality only for the sake of television. Of course this has a great influence on culture... and in my view, often not a very positive one. Has cinema always been a part of your life? Who are the directors from world cinema who have inspired you in your journey as a filmmaker? Since my student days, I have been lucky enough to never do anything but film projects and make a living out of it. Between 1986 and 2000 I was very busy with writing and directing commissioned films because I needed the money for my family. Since 2000 I’m back to projects that come straight from my heart. Which means less income, but more fulfilment. As a filmmaker I always tried to invent my own wheel and not to copy anybody. In the beginning of my career I was inspired by the early work of Bernardo Bertocuci. I don’t watch many films, but sometimes I see one which makes a deep impression on me—like last week at the Ghent International Film Festival where I saw a German film, titled Shadada, which in my view is a very important film for our times.

BARDSONGS The musical feature film Bardsongs was shot in India and Mali. At the basis of this film are three folk tales from Rajasthan, Western Africa and Ladakh respectively, put to music by musical celebrities from those regions and interpreted by local actors who knew these tales from their youth. The film focuses on the similarities between three totally different worlds.

C l o s e u p: G erman y Film History

consonant is king As the The Milton Brothers’ circus act was being shown on Max Skladanowsky’s Bioskop in the Berlin Wintergarten on 1st November, 1895, Germany silently kicked off the cinema revolution. A few days later, though Frenchmen Lumiere’s Cinematographe put the Bioskop into oblivion, Oskar Messter’s Geneva Drive in the projection systems, paved the way for future cinema projectors. Little cinema booths called the Kintopps gave way to the Lichtspieltheatre. With so much happening and so many unpronounceable names, Germany’s first chunk of serious movies came in 1913 with Max Mack’s Der Andere and Paul Wegener's Der Student von Prag. By the time the Universum Film AG (UFA) was founded in 1917, the Germans boasted of the largest film industry in Europe. Dark Expressions As WWI ended, Germany’s economic situation plummeted. Forced to make cheaper movies, the UFA ushered in an era of German Expressionism. The first of these were Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (Dr. Mabuse der Spieler, 1922) and Robert Weine‘s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari, 1962), but what took the movement to an entirely new level was Lang’s silent film Metropolis (1927). The fact that the Germans got a kick out of dark gloomy movies can be seen by the successes of expressionist movies like Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) and Wegener's The Golem (1920). However, by the ’30s, as the Nazis branched out, the expressionist movement died down in Germany, but left behind an indelible mark on later film noir directors. Hilter of Arc Around 1933, Joseph Goebbels established the Reichskulturammer (no brownie points for pronouncing it) which oversaw that the German films were complying with the political parameters of the Regime. Not surprisingly and, yes, not funny at all, but Joan the Maid (Das Mädchen Johanna, Ucicky, 1935) did embody Joan of Arc as Hitler and Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens, 1935) was mainly about Nazi ideals. Though most of the German film talent shifted bases (read: fled) to Hollywood, Wünschkonzert (Borsody, 1941) and Veit Harlan's Kolberg (1945) did achieve commercial success.

Debanuj Chakraborti rummages his way through the history of cinema in a once war-torn country to find a film legacy left behind by pretty much the pioneers of modern cinema.

Rubble Films For A Rubbled Country The post-war period saw an increase in ‘rubble films’ or Trümmerfilm depicting an apocalyptic Germany. The country, which was indeed in rubbles then, was treated to more of such kind in Josef von Báky’s ...and the Sky Above Us (...und über Uns der Himmel, 1947) and Wolfgang Staudte's Murderers Among Us Die (Mörder Sind unter Uns, 1946). Thankfully the Germans, realized that such films were the last thing they needed after the war and quickly switched to happier films. Finally, the Modern Era It was only during the early ’70s that it struck 26 young directors to sign the Oberhausen Manifesto which marked the birth of Neu Welle, the "New Wave". Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog and Volker Schlöndorff took up the challenge of bringing Germany back into the international scene and partly succeeded. The internationally acclaimed The Boat (Das Boot, Petersen, 1981) during the ’80s helped to pull up the socks of the industry and by the ’90s the industry got back a little of its initial charm. The post-modern era saw movies like Downfall (Der Untergang, Hirschbiegel, 2004), Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt, Tykwer, 1998), The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher, Ruzowitzky, 2007) and The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen, von Donnersmarck, 2006) wowing audiences all over the world. Today, movie buffs do acknowledge that Germany has given the world something more than just beer and Hitler.

C l o s e u p: G erman y

Grimm tales Having always dreamed of backpacking through the ‘land of poets and thinkers’, ultimately to attend Oktoberfest, Janice Pariat looks at what makes Germany, well, quintessentially German. Oktoberfest Why not begin with the one thing we all know and love? Traditionally, Oktoberfest takes place in Munich over 16 days running up to the first Sunday in October. It’s attended by over five million people, and continues to be, since it’s beginnings in the early 1800s, the world’s biggest, most raucous festival. And why shouldn’t it? Apart from vast quantities of beer, there’s also hearty würstl (sausage), schweinsbraten (roast pork) and knödel (potato dumplings) on offer. Enough said. “O’ zapft is” (literally, “It’s [the beer keg] tapped!” to announce the start of festivities). Music Stefan, a German backpacker friend I met in Manali, introduced me to Tocotronic, a rock band considered part of Hamburger Schule, a musical trend popular in the 1990s featuring punk, grunge and experimental elements. Tocotronic, with their heavy guitar riffs and catchy tunes, has remained a favourite despite the fact that I cannot understand a word they’re singing. Other German musical movements include Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW), a mostly underground trend during the ’80s influenced by British punk; Krautrock, ’60s experimental music whose name could either stem from the ethnic slur (German person in World War II) or marijuana, both being called “kraut”; Volksmusik, or folk music from the alpine regions of the country; Schlager, sweet pop music comprising sentimental ballads; and others such as contemporary hip-hop and trance. Philosophers While it may be over 20 years since the Berlin Wall was torn down, there was another wall in the city that celebrated instead of divided. Part of theWalk of Ideas event in 2006, a boulevard lined with six installations celebrating German culture, was a towering 40-feet “wall” of books with names of great German thinkers on their spines. This included Kant, Hegel, Brecht, Mann, Hannah Arendt, Goethe, Grimm, Gunther Grass, Hesse and Luther among many others, and goes to show that some of the world’s greatest ideas—Phenomenology,

Hermeneutics, Kantian ethics—indeed some of the ones that changed the history of mankind, emerged from this nation. Not to forget, the Grimms also gave us our fairy tales. Expressionism If there was anything that came out of World War I, it was hard economic times that forced German filmmakers to abandon extravagant Hollywood-style sets and plotlines, and opt instead for sparse, moody, darkly symbolic films that make up the bulk of Expressionism. Set designs were wildly unrealistic, sometimes even geometrically absurd and served well as a backdrop to tales of insanity, evil and cruelty such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1920) and Nosferatu (FW Murnau, 1922). We have much to thank German Expressionism for. It hugely influenced the horror genre and film noir, and a young Alfred Hitchcock, who worked as assistant director and art director at the UFA Babelsberg Studios in Berlin on the film The Blackguard (Graham Cutts, 1925).

Culture

Humour It’s a widespread stereotype outside the country that Germans have little or no sense of humour—it doesn’t help that apparently there is no direct translation of the word in their language. Yet we know this couldn’t possibly be true—else all Mexicans would be sly and lazy, all Jewish people tight-fisted and all Chinese people selling pirated DVDs. Yet humour can be tricky and subjective—it’s not something that everybody gets at all times—and German humour, for linguistic reasons, is constructed differently to English-language humour. According to World Lingo, a website on the culture of translation, German sentence construction, and its fewer double meanings (due to the regular use of compound word constructions) mean that German humour relies more on humorous ideas than a play on words. It’s easy to see this could be lost in translation. A traditional comic character is Fritzchen (Little Fritz)—the teacher asks: “Fritzchen, why are you always speaking of our Soviet brothers? It’s ‘Soviet friends’.” Fritz responds: “Well, you can pick your friends.” Stefan, I promise, is much funnier.

C l o s e u p: G erman y Myth

Once upon a time Germany was magical, magical place. Nandini Gupta recently rediscovered it. Germany! The country now largely recognized as a land of overflowing beer, delectable football players, Michael Schumacher and roads as smooth as silk, is also famous for some other stuff. If we double rewind the sordid World War bits, slow rewind past the Nobel Prize winners, historic music composers and philosophers, we will reach a period that is magical: a period likely to be remembered by generations all over the world, thanks to a couple of German brothers and every second Disney movie. Grimm Stories Yes, I am talking about fairytales and folktales, gathered by the ever resourceful duo of Jacob and Wilhem Grimm, to whom we owe a major chunk of our bedtime stories, childhood fantasies and a myth called “Happy Ever After”. Inspired by a folksong collection called Des Knaben Wunderhorn or The Youth’s Magic Horn, the Brothers Grimm set out to collect folktales and compile them in a book which came to be known as Children’s and Household Tales or simply, Grimm’s Fairytales. Stories like Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, The Frog Prince, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, and many more were all a part of this fantastic collection. The characters of the fairy godmother, wicked witch, elves and even Santa Claus-like beings had their origins in German folklore, which, given its shared ancestry in Germanic mythology, was very similar to Scandinavian and English folklore. Gods and Other People Like in Scandinavian folklore, there was a belief that, when the old gods disappeared, remnants of a “mythos” persisted. Some of them include—Holda, a supernatural patron of spinning, the Lorlei, a dangerous Rhine siren derived from the Nibelung myth, the Weisse Frauen, a water spirit said to protect children, the giant Rübezahl, changeling legends and many more such as elves, dwarves, kobolds and erlkings. One mythological interpretation claims that, most of these fairytales are founded upon solar myths. In Norse mythology, the gods Thor and Odin have a sky father, and both are doomed to be eaten by wolves, Fenrir and Garm, respectively, at Ragnarok, the final

The Goblin Brat-pack Gnomes, goblins and elves are very common in these tales. The story of the Elves and the Shoemaker closely describes the true nature of elves or heinzelmännchen, as they are called in Germany. The heinzelmännchen were little house gnomes, who did all the work for the citizens of Cologne at night, so that the people could spend their time leisurely during the day. The story goes that a tailor’s wife, curious to see the little creatures, scattered peas all over the floor of the workshop to make the gnomes slip and fall. Furious, the gnomes abandoned the city of Cologne forever, never to be seen again, leaving the citizens to do all their work by themselves. Futuristic Fairies Lest you think these folktales are too bucolic, how about some sci-fi action? Shape shifting was a pretty regular affair in these stories. Take for instance the story of The Frog Prince, who transforms into a handsome prince when kissed by the princess. This is, in all probability, related to the shape-shifting half-god Loki and also Odin, the Norse god who transformed Svipdag (a Norse hero) into a dragon because he had angered him. Reams have been written about these folktales and fairytales and they have been interpreted in ways unimaginable. But the oldest, inarguable origins of these tales are indeed, the old German myths, passed on orally and through literature for several centuries.

Fairyland Central

destiny of all gods. The Norse sun goddess Sol, says the myth, will be devoured by the wolf Skoll. Thus Little Red Riding Hood’s bright red hood is often interpreted as the sun, and the big bad wolf as either Skoll or Fenrir.

C l o s e u p: G erman y Food

It may not sound as good as it does in French, but Freyan Patel learns that German food speaks for itself… How can you not love a country where wurst doesn’t refer to the most awful quality, value or condition? Where beer is more abundant than water and whole menus are devoted to asparagus? Let’s Talk Meat With the average German consuming around 61 kg of meat a year, it’s safe to say it’s the one thing they love as much as their beer. Pork, the most popular meat, is used not only in dishes, but as an ingredient in sausages and for cold cuts as well. The Germans pot roast their meat and have several methods, now considered national specialties, to soften tough cuts.

Unlike in India, where main courses are often devoted solely to them, vegetables play a secondary role in Germany. Carrots, turnips, spinach, peas, beans, broccoli and many types of cabbage are served as side dishes, as are fried onion and various potato dishes. The one exception is the asparagus, white asparagus or spargel in particular. Spargel is usually in season between May and June, and, during this time—called Spargelzeit or Spargelsaison—restaurants will devote their entire menu to this vegetable. Well Bread The Germans are fond of their brot (or bread) and have more than 600 types to choose from. The most popular breads in Germany are rye-wheat, dark rye bread with sunflower or pumpkin seeds, white bread and a light wheat-rye bread with roasted onions.

Of course, you can’t possibly talk meat without touching on the tradition of sausagemaking. Not trying wursts in Germany would be as stupid as going to Naples and not having pizza. The most popular sausage is the bratwurst, made of spiced, ground pork. Another popular sausage is the münchner weisswurst. This sausage from Munich is light coloured as the meat (usually veal or pork) is uncured. It is flavoured with spices and is a favourite at German festivals, the Oktoberfest in particular. The blutwurst, the German variant of blood pudding, is usually made of pork blood and rind. The filling is made by cooking blood and then allowing it to congeal.

Last but Not Least Germany may not be famous for its pastries like France or for ice cream like Italy, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a good range of desserts to choose from. Many Germans enjoy fresh fruit tarts made of apples, plums, strawberries, and cherries. These fruits are often used in cakes as well. Schwarzwälder kirschtorte, a famous German cake, is made with cherries, while German doughnuts are usually balls of yeast dough with fillings such as jam or cream. A red fruit pudding known as rote grütze is served with cream or vanilla sauce and is made with black and red currants, raspberries and sometimes strawberries or cherries.

Diversifying It isn’t all meat and blood here, though. Fish, once limited to the coastal areas, is now available throughout the country. Trout is the most commonly eaten freshwater fish, though perch, pike and carp are also available. Rollmops, a dish of pickled herring fillet rolled around a piece of pickled gherkin or onion, makes a tasty snack. Brathering, herring marinated and then fried, is also a popular way to serve the fish.

It’s safe to say that German cuisine goes far beyond sausages. A taste for meat aside, the Germans do know how to enjoy the finer—and definitely tastier—things in life.

The sauerbraten—literally, sour meat—includes marinating meat (usually beef) in a vinegar or wine-vinegar mixture. Considered by many as the national dish, this pot-roast can be served with an array of accompaniments, including red cabbage, spätzle (egg noodles), potato dumplings and boiled potatoes.

Guten appetit

C l o s e u p: G erman y

The four-year itch

past as much as it is down to a natural Germanic disposition to hard work.

Every World Cup, Real Madrid takes the back seat as Nikhil Subramaniam finds a new football enemy: Germany.

Post World Wars, Germany’s major concern has been to rebuild their image. When previously, they could snatch and steal, this time they had to cajole favours out of people. It takes sweat and grime to make things happen in a stubborn world. In a world, where everyone loves the Brazilian flair, the Argentine finesse, the Italian stoicism, what do the Germans have?

When I think of German sport I can only think of football. And when I think of German football, my mind races back to night of 8th July, 1990. It was not a pleasant night. I was only seven (not even), after all, and this was not what nearly-seven-year-olds should be doing. There was a sense of adventure. I had stayed up way past bedtime to watch a hero—my father’s hero. I have always felt indebted to my father. He has kept me tethered to the ground. Made me feel empathy for people. Made me less selfish. And I naturally felt a certain connection to whatever inspired him. A month short of my seventh birthday, I stayed up hoping to get an early birthday gift. But then those Germans had to ruin it. They ruined my night; they ruined the night for Diego Armando Maradona. It was the night Maradona took a final bow on the world stage. He continued playing for years after that, but this was his last chance to shine. The fortunes of Maradona and the German national team have been intertwined. Four years earlier in Mexico, Maradona had led his team to a second World Cup triumph beating (yes, that’s right) West Germany in the final. And in the most recent World Cup, Maradona returned to the world stage as the manager/coach of the Argentine team, which lost in the quarter-finals to Germany. The stubborn legend gave up his job after that mauling. And it is probably the last time he will ever be in the limelight on the field. Germany 2 – Maradona 1.

Franz Beckenbauer, for one. Without getting into the intricacies of dogmatic football tactics, Beckenbauer pretty much changed the way the football evolved. Germany has always had its fair share of inventors and pioneers. Beckenbauer played as a sweeper, the man responsible for building up attacks and closing down the opposition and is widely credited as the pioneer of this position. The days of Beckenbauer in Germany’s national team are long over, but that single contribution is still telling. The best teams since then, the ones that have dominated their eras have employed a sweeper (or libero, meaning free in Italian) or its variation.

In Rome, with scenes of a teary-eyed Maradona, began my hatred for the German national football team. Yet in a way that the Joker has for Batman, I do have a begrudging respect for Die Mannschaft. (Heehee. That’s a funny nickname).

Despite their seemingly ugly play, the tendency to make football seem like rigorous imprisonment, and my incapability (convoluted thought it may be) of ever seeing them in a bright light, it would be remiss of a football fan to overlook the German contribution to the game.

It’s hard not to admire the famous German tenacity. The way they time and again prove that it’s the fight in the dog that matters. And even though these are tremendously talented guys, they’ve always had to work that much harder than the Brazilians or Argentines or Spaniards to win. It is a sparkling quality. And also one that’s linked to Germany’s troubled

Now, I wouldn’t go as far as to thank them for it. No love lost here. As a football fan will undoubtedly understand, allowing a team to be your second least favourite is a great concession. And so I concede: Germany, not very awesome, but much better than Real Madrid.

Sport

50 Movies It gives you confidence in dedicating your life to cinema. I don’t think I’ve imitated Bresson, but I think I was inspired by the purity, clarity and daring of his filmmaking. Your film Demonlover stands out as quite different from your other films. How do you define it in context to the rest of your body of work? Well, it has a place of its own in my work because I have been making movies inspired by reality, by humanity and trying to suppress superficiality to get to the core of emotions and relationships. Demonlover is different. It is not exactly a movie about humanity, it is a movie about alienated human beings, and it doesn’t exactly happen in real life, it happens in a reality transformed by our imagination and so it’s a movie about the modern world and how humans interact in weird ways.

French Bred

In an interview with director Olivier Assayas, Kanika Punwani gets his take on French cinema, his recent movie Carlos, and his favourite world movies. Olivier Assayas has intelligent eyes. They glint with a half-remembered memory as he talks to me about Satyajit Ray and Guru Dutt. They squint into the distance when you ask him a question that he feels the need to ponder. I’m enamoured by these eyes—that flash between a luminous hazel and a deep brown, depending on what we’re talking about through our one-hour long conversation. Excerpts below: You’ve often spoken of Bresson being a major inspiration for you. Could you tell us a little about how his influence has shaped you as a director? I discovered Bresson’s films when I was a teenager and somehow they made sense for me in terms of what I wanted to do with cinema. He is one of those filmmakers who give you the notion that cinema can go beyond the usual limits, that movies can touch areas that until then you thought only novels and major works of art could touch. When you are a young man, and you see someone who went so far with his art, it’s extremely inspiring.

Would you say it falls in the category of French experimental films? Well, it’s an interesting question, I’ve never seen it from that angle, but I guess it makes sense. Though there is a strain of experimentalism in French cinema, it’s fairly marginal. Not in terms of not being recognized, it is recognized, but it is not really representative of what is going on within French Cinema. I’ve never been an entirely French filmmaker. I’ve always had a sense of myself as being an international filmmaker based in France and defined by French film culture. The great thing about filmmaking in the 21st century is about how fast movies travel, how you can connect with other film cultures, so you know there has always been that notion, especially with a film like Demonlover. Your latest offering Carlos has several languages and is in a sense devoid of boundaries and borders. Can you comment on how the movie is politically relevant in today’s world? It’s a movie that shows how ultimately terrorism is not about a local reality, but is about geopolitics; that there is no individual terrorism, there is only state terrorism. I don’t know how famous Carlos is in India, but in Europe he has been the figure of terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a Latin American militant involved with the Palestinians, organising operations in England, in France, and working with German militants. So he really embodied the connection of terrorism with international politics. In that sense a movie like Carlos is not just a movie that pans an international background, it is about internationalism; it’s the core of the film

There is a seething violence simmering under the surface of the movie. How did you maintain that tension? The tension and danger, I think, has to do with the reality of the situation. It is not fictitious. Take for example the scene where they take the oil ministers hostage on a plane and you do not know what exactly is going to happen, where they will be allowed to land, are they going to kill any of the guys? Ultimately the quality of the tension has to do with the fact that you are aware that this happened. And something I realised later is that as much as those events were famous in their time, people don’t really remember them now. So, it’s like fiction because you don’t really know how it is going to end. These kind of people, Carlos, Che, Mao, in his time, they were all enigmatic. Any story about them will have that power. Is there any side you have brought out in Carlos that has not been brought out before? There is no decent biography of Carlos. The only one is about 15 or 20 years old and misses a lot of points and is very patchy. And that’s the serious one; then you have the really bad ones. So, I think the way we make sense of the story of Carlos, the way we articulated the different moments is pretty new. The portrait of Carlos that comes out is very different from the myth of Carlos. For example, you just mentioned him along with famous leaders and revolutionaries, and Carlos is not like that—he is not a politician, he is not a big thinker; he is a soldier. I mean, sometimes he would be involved in operations that he hardly understood; he had no idea of the political implications. So, you know, he is a man of action and somehow much smaller than the image we have had of him. It doesn’t make him less interesting; somehow, it makes him more interesting.

Money (L’argent, Bresson, 1983) “Money is an important film for me because it was Bresson’s last film….My favourite scene is the last shot of the film where the police come to pick up this young man… and there’s a crowd outside that keeps looking at the door of his house, which is like a black hole. It gives you this notion that one evil has just walked out and we’re waiting for another, potentially bigger, evil to walk in. And that’s the last image in the cinema of Bresson.” The Last Metro (Le Dernier Métro, Truffaut, 1980) “Truffaut makes small films and bigger films; The Last Metro is a big film. It’s an ambitious movie about France during the German occupation, a reflection on art in difficult times. It has a big set, a big cast, it’s a long film, it gave him mainstream recognition…and yet at the same time it has the honesty of using the perspective he’s familiar with; he uses his own world.” A King in New York (Chaplin, 1957) “Chaplin is a very fascinating subject, in the sense that he goes beyond movies. [He] is about the early age of film, where movies were not inspired by movies, but by forces within society.” The Blair Witch Project (Myrick and Sanchez, 1999) “The Blair Witch Project is a statement in terms of how genre filmmaking, how horror movies, have been involved in the redefinition of the medium. So you have movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Night of the Living Dead that kind of came from nowhere, and all of sudden audiences are terrorized because it pushes the right buttons in smooth, smart modern ways that movies have not yet used up to that point.” Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997) “In cinema you constantly have people who reinvent the medium and influence the evolution of the art, in this sense Lynch has been an inspiration for filmmakers all over the world. He has invented his own language, and created his own form of a disturbing twisted take on the reality of the world—he is one of the modern filmmakers existing in that region between reality and fantasy.” This December, view Olivier Assayas’ choice on “50 Movies to See Before You Die” on UTV World Movies, every Thursday at 9:00 PM.

Cultures in Conversation

RACE COURSE Anindita Biswas essays the parallels and differences between racial prejudices and caste issues in German and Indian cinema. Erich: If we had a gun, We could really make him hop. Paul: Can you imagine how he’d jump? Erich: But castration’s better. He’d think about that longer.

In possibly one of the most humorous and ironic moments of racial prejudice ever caught on cinema, a Greek immigrant worker sharing a bar table with the two native Germans quoted here listens incoherently to their discussion about him and raises his glass to toast them—to which the other two politely respond and carry on with their conversation (Katzelmacher, 1969, Rainer Werner Fassbinder). Getting Racy It would not be unjustified to say that the subject of race has been a persistent obsession of German cinema throughout its existence. Evidence of this can be found in the generous patronage of propaganda films in Germany like The Eternal Jew (Der Ewige Jude, Hippler, 1940), which clinically demonstrated the imagined inferior racial traits of Jews while being veiled as a documentary on the Jewish way of life. While the propaganda films remain a sociological curiosity, Germany has also come up with some of the most honest critiques of racial prejudice in the avant-garde films of the New German Cinema and also in realist melodramas like Ali, Fear Eats The Soul, directed by Fassbinder in the mid ’70s, that centred around the romance of an interracial couple. More recent ventures like The Edge of Heaven (Auf Der Anderen Seite, 2007) directed by the celebrated Fatih Akin also touch upon racial prejudice. Depicting a society fragmented in terms of religion, political allegiances and geographical divisions, Akin’s film portrays a racial revulsion fueled by politically-motivated discontent and malaise in people’s lives that is amassed into hatred against a particular race. This is a far cry from the nearly-comic propaganda in the Fritz Hippler films in the ’40s, where Jews are depicted as vermin that have the ability to camouflage themselves and blend into their ‘human hosts’.

Caste Away Since the issue of race doesn’t apply pertinently to Indian cinema, a suitable parallel can perhaps be found in its treatment of the caste system. Indian cinema, however, seems to have mostly favoured a socio-realist or reformist approach to caste system. Even as early as the ’30s, films like Chandidas (Bose, 1932) and Achhut Kanya, (Untouchable Girl, Osten, 1936) dealt with caste discrimination and told stories about the star-crossed love between Brahmin men and ‘low-caste’ women. One of the rare instances of dealing with the notion of caste identity in popular Indian cinema was Raj Kapoor’s Prem Rog (1982), which dealt with the marriage of a widow from a Thakur family with a lower-caste man. This film was also striking not only because it was bold in portraying widow remarriage in a favourable light but also because, unlike earlier films where society prevents inter-caste romance from bearing fruition, here the protagonists themselves are subject to societal prejudices and the heroine does not consider the lower caste hero to be an eligible prospect for marriage (Seduced By the Familiar, M.K. Raghavendra). Propaganda films however seem to be largely missing from the scope of Indian films, and the stereotyping of negative characters seem not to be based on skin complexion or caste, as much as the rather abstract notion of ‘innate evil’ in man. The sort of frank examination of the notion of race in everyday life that was offered by New German films seems to be absent from Indian cinema which opted for a more melodrama-reliant,‘humane’approach even in the Parallel Cinema Movement.

How Theatrical

‘Tis the winter of our discontent, a ghostly wind roams the streets sapping from them all traces of joy and humour. Perfect time for a German film then, thinks Christian Siersen.

hatred towards a character and avoid offending minority groups, make them a Nazi. Just ask Stephen Spielberg when he dreamt up a Nazi plan to steal the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Shadowed by a century that has spewed more villains than an episode of Scooby Doo, Germany’s film industry creaks to its very bowels with sadness and remorse. The country’s role as a political stomping ground during the Cold War, life under the Swastika and general warmongery has equated to a historical hangover more serious than a night with Charles Bukowski. So life-leeching, in fact, that it has rendered all comedic talent in Germany bedridden, their cinematic stage annexed by the Imperial hand of historical dramas.

Some films tread more adeptly down the historical path, German-made Downfall follows Adolf Hitler’s last days in Berlin through the eyes of his secretary, Traudl Junge, as the war effort disintegrates around him. I reserve special admiration for the agent of Bruno Ganz, who plays Hitler. It must have been a tough sell persuading him the best way to realize his childhood dreams of being the next James Bond was to play history’s most hated figure. Hopefully Bruno can do a good Russian accent, as Joseph Stalin is yet to be given a thorough cinematic makeover.

Lest they yearn for a trip to the gallows, no earthly being can mention German history without also accounting for those-who-shall-not-be-named. The Nazis. A group so stigmatized that correct procedure requires one to turn around three times and throw salt over your head after every mention. With the Nazis, Germany has birthed cinema’s most prolific bad guys—besides murderous clowns and Mark Strong—ripe for harvesting by the astute director. Due to their universal unpopularity, Nazis have assumed the role of cannon fodder in movies. Director rule no.117: If you want to generate audience

What I am winding towards is that the unwashed masses are not crowding around cinemas hollering, “What do we want? To be depressed. When do we want it? Pretty soon because I feel a smile coming on!”There is room for reflection on Germany’s past, Schindler’s List deserves all seven of its Oscars, but German cinema should not feel the need to ingratiate history with a stream of sombre movies. Goodbye Lenin! is an excellent showcase of the comedic potential Germany harbours and should be used as a foundation from which its movie industry can flourish.

Holocaust Hangover

Christmas Special Love Actually (2003)

The interrelated stories of eight couples in London play out in the month leading up to Christmas.

Ghosts of Christmas Past It’s Christmas again, and the end of not just another year, but another decade. As we move into the tweens of the 21st century, and a year closer to what some believe will be the end of the world (here’s lookin’ at you, 2012), we present a list of movies that have graced the Christmases of this decade. Compiled by: Kanika Punwani

Christmas in the Clouds (2001) A Native American Christmas comedy of errors set at a ski resort in Utah, USA.

Trivia: While the film premiered in 2001 at the Sundance Film Festival, it only released in cinemas in 2005. Majestic Films donated 100% of box office revenues for the month of November 2005 to financially-challenged California public schools.

About a Boy (2002)

Will, a 30-something year old who never grew up, and Marcus, a middle-aged 13 year old, form a strange friendship. Will: What happened, in fact, was that my dad wrote a song in 1958, and it’s quite a famous song...and I basically live off the royalties of that. […] Megan: So, what’s this song then? If you can live off it, we must’ve heard of it. Will: It’s Santa’s Super Sleigh. Megan: Sorry. I don’t understand. How does that make you money? Do carol singers have to pay you 10 per cent? Will: They should, but you can’t always catch the little b****rds.

Daisy: [excited] We’ve been given our parts in the nativity play. And I’m the lobster. Karen: The lobster? Daisy: Yeah! Karen: In the nativity play? Daisy: [beaming] Yeah, *first* lobster. Karen: There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus? Daisy: Duh.

The Polar Express (2004)

Joyeux Noël (2005)

On Christmas Eve, a young boy boards a magical train headed toward the North Pole.

On Christmas Eve 1914, during World War 1, soldiers from both sides of the line call for an informal truce so that they can celebrate Christmas as brothers.

Boy: On Christmas Eve many years ago, I laid quietly in my bed. I did not rustle the sheets, I breathed slowly and silently. I was listening for a sound I was afraid I’d never hear: the sound of Santa’s sleigh bells.

General Audebert: You’re talking nonsense. Lieutenant Audebert: No, you’re just not living the same war as me. Or as those on the other side. General Audebert: You and your men will rejoin the Verdun sector. You’re right about one thing. I don’t understand this war….Today, I’m asked to fight a way where the shovel outweighs the rifle. In which people swap addresses with the enemy to meet when it’s all over. Plus the cat we found with a note from the Germans, “Good luck, comrades!” I was ordered to arrest the cat for high treason...until further notice.

Christmas Special

The Holiday (2006)

A Christmas Carol (2009)

Two women, one British, one American, decide to swap lives and move into each other houses over Christmas. Arthur Abbott: I’m wondering why a beautiful girl like you would go to a strangers’ house for their Christmas vacation, and on top of that spend Saturday night with an old cock-up like me. Iris: Well, I just wanted to get away from all the people I see all the time!...Well, not all the people... one person. I wanted to get away from one...guy [she sobs]. An ex-boyfriend who just got engaged and forgot to tell me. Arthur Abbott: So, he’s a schmuck. Iris: As a matter of fact, he is... a huge schmuck. How did you know? Arthur Abbott: He let you go. This is not a hard one to figure out. Iris, in the movies we have leading ladies and we have the best friend. You, I can tell, are a leading lady, but for some reason you are behaving like the best friend. Iris: You’re so right. You’re supposed to be the leading lady of your own life, for god’s sake! Arthur, I’ve been going to a therapist for three years, and she’s never explained anything to me that well. That was brilliant. Brutal, but brilliant.

This Christmas (2007)

The Whitfield family meet to spend Christmas—their first holiday together in four years. Melanie ‘Mel’ Whitfield: So, technically, you slept with Santa? Kelli Whitfield: Well, I didn’t know he was Santa at the time... but technically, I guess I did. Melanie ‘Mel’ Whitfield: Well, ho, ho, ho!

An animated version of Charles Dickens’ famous novel about a miser’s journey of redemption compliments of the spirits of Christmas.

Rare Exports (2010)

Fred: A Merry Christmas to you, uncle! Ebenezer Scrooge: Bah! Humbug... What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough. Fred: What reason have you to be so dismal? You’re rich enough. Ebenezer Scrooge: BAH! Humbug!

Trivia: In Finland, during its opening weekend, ticket sales for the film exceeded those for the new Harry Potter movie, which released at the same time.

On Christmas Eve, during an archaeological dig in Finland, Santa Claus is excavated. Soon children start disappearing.

In Bruges (2008)

Set during Christmas time, the film follows two hitmen in London who are exiled to Bruges, Belgium, by their boss after they botch up a job. Ray: There’s a Christmas tree somewhere in London with a bunch of presents underneath it that’ll never be opened. And I thought, if I survive all of this, I’d go to that house, apologize to the mother there, and accept whatever punishment she chose for me. Prison... death... didn’t matter. Because at least in prison and at least in death, you know, I wouldn’t be in f***in’ Bruges. But then, like a flash, it came to me. And I realized, f**k man, maybe that’s what hell is: the entire rest of eternity spent in f****n’ Bruges. And I really really hoped I wouldn’t die.

Golden Globes

Race for the Globe Aishik Barua takes a look at the star-studded ceremony of the 68th Golden Globe Awards. On Monday, 17 th January, 2011, stalwarts of Hollywood’s movie and television world will get together to honour the best of their lot. Here’s a sneak preview into the red-carpet drama. In the Motion Picture – Drama category, The King’s Speech leads with six nominations, including Best Motion Picture, Best Director (Tom Hooper), Best Screenplay (David Seidler), Best Actor (Colin Firth), Best Supporting Actress (Helena Bonham Carter) and Best Original Screenplay (Alexandre Desplat). Other major contenders in this category are Christopher Nolan’s Inception, David O. Russell’s The Fighter, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan and David Fincher’s The Social Network. The Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy category was dominated by The Kids Are All Right and Love And Other Drugs with three nominations each. The former for Best Picture and Best Actress (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) and the latter for Best Picture, Best Actor (Jake Gyllenhal) and Best Actress (Anne Hathaway). Walt Disney ruled the Best Animated Film category with two of its films, Tangled and Toy Story 3. The prestigious Best Foreign Film Globe nominees are Javier Bardem-starrer Mexican-Spanish Biutiful (Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu), France’s The Concert (Le Concert, Radu Mihaileanu), Russia’s The Edge (Kray, Aleksei Uchitel), Italy’s I Am Love (Io Sono L’Amore, Luca Guadagnino) and Denmark’s In A Better World (Hævnen, Susanne Bier). Biutiful is a clear favourite but only time will tell the real winner. Glee continues to remain on the nominees’ list this year with three nominations, including Best TV Series – Musical or Comedy, Best TV Actor for Matthew Morrison and Best TV Actress for Lea Michele. But this time around, 30 Rock, Modern Family, Nurse Jackie and The Big Bang Theory will provide for interesting competition. The ad agency-centric Mad Men and crime series Dexter still rule the roost when it comes to drama, as the two have secured nominations for Best TV Series – Drama, as well as Best TV Actor, Jon Hamm (Mad Men) and Michael C. Hall (Dexter). But competition looks tough because another hit favourite, Boardwalk Empire, has joined the nominee list Robert DeNiro will be honoured with the Cecil B. DeMille award for contribution to cinema. So, tune in to UTV World Movies at 6:30 AM IST on Monday, 17th January, (with a repeat telecast at 9 PM) and join host Ricky Gervais to find out who on the red carpet walks away with the prestigious Golden Globes.