Discussion of 'Water' has begun! (Click here to read comments..)

"A widow should be long suffering until death, self-restrained and chaste.
A virtuous wife who remains chaste when her husband has died goes to heaven.
A woman who is unfaithful to her husband is reborn in the womb of a jackal."

The Laws of Manu
Chapter 5, verse 156-161
Dharamshastras

(Sacred Hindu Texts)

Where to begin? Where, oh where...
I found the setting mouthwatering. In spite of the abjectly horrible situation of the shunned widows, I repeatedly asked myself “could a location be more beautific?” I kept thinking what I would give to close my eyes and find myself (as me, Lee Paris, a free American woman) sitting under that house sized tree, feeling the warm breezes blow through my clothing, the sounds of the rain, all of it.

In her interviews the director, Deepa Mehta, tells how she had the setting created with exactly this in mind. She wished to convey “the beauty of the world and the despair within it.”
Naïve as I am, I was surprised (and impressed) to find out that much of what I was seeing was in fact a set created in a river town in Sri Lanka. Imagine, the statue of the lion by the river is made of Styrofoam! Thank goodness the tree is real or I think I would have been shattered.
What else? The dirty blue and green lighting, the unobtrusive photography, the music, all so beautiful in juxtaposition to the theme at hand.

This made me think about how many places exist in our world that are of such magnificence and yet contain within them unspeakable pain and suffering. It brought up questions (that I have asked myself before) such as “Would I rather be in love and homeless in Manhattan or lonely on a serene island in the Bahamas?” “Would I rather be sick in a large expensive ugly house that I owned or sick in a studio room that I rent surrounded by my favorite colors and creations?”

For days after the second viewing of ‘Water’ the weight of oppression has filled my mind. Oppression of so many kinds. The list is endless: Commercially processed animals, the mentally and physically disabled , war veterans seeking help, the entire universe surrounding the Katrina horror, the medically uninsured, abused children, the sex trade, small businesses paying gangs and mafiosos, homeless people, victims of violence, the innocent incarcerated, the politically oppressed, North Koreans, earthquake and tsunami survivors, the endlessly hungry, the starving, the countless widows in current day India who still “live a marginal existence at best.”

How does anyone choose which cause to fight for, which boulder to help push uphill? The one that hits closest to home I suspect...

LLI,BMH,LEM (see KEY)

Discussion of 'Feed' has begun! (Click here to see all comments.)

"Although the events depicted in this film are fictional, they are based on actual behaviours that are happening between consenting adults...right now."

Anybody still with me?
Having just watched ‘Feed’ for the second time I have to ask myself: seriously, did anyone but my partner David and I actually make it past the first 15 minutes?
During these first fifteen minutes of my second viewing I lean forward, mouth agape, starting to get a bit nauseous and thinking, “Holy shit, did I actually recommend this movie to anyone? Are they all going to shoot me, fire me, or whatever it is people do to people who recommend that they spend two hours of their precious little free time watching a movie that… sucks?”
Of course I must continue watching to find out why the hell I would have thought this was an appropriate film for this site, so I force myself to keep going…and a few hours later I find myself sitting in the same position (EOS, Edge of Seat Factor, is off the charts) mouth still agape and thinking “Yeah, yeah, I can see it… I can see the insanity, I am drawn into it. I am mesmerized by the charisma, beauty and power of Michael (the Feeder), I can see how Deidre (the Gainer) was played, how she got hooked, how Phillip (the Cop) would embody the outrage and need to purify the poison gasses (which ultimately reveal themselves to be as embedded in him as they are in the world he is trying to take down) and how this weird space could actually exist, how it could lie pulsing on the floor of the underground, deep in the black mud of our psyches, where nightmares and daymares meet and greet, the place where fetishes, compulsions and mindfucks seed, germinate, bloom, become full fledged flower beds, massive colored rows of fragrant, potent decadent desires, explorations and exploitations, controlling, submitting, yielding sanity…yeah, I can see it.”
But I still think you are going to shoot me.
So, if anybody is still out there, if you did or didn’t make it through, let’s talk. Tell me why. Why you did. Or why you didn’t. Help me figure out what it is that made me attach in some way to this piece. This dark, ugly and compelling aberrant trip. Is it because I am relieved that I don’t have to go there? That somehow, in spite of the many horrors of my life, the pain that sometimes feels beyond bearing, still the lowest rung of my ladder seems ten thousand steps up from what these people have chosen? (Or has it all been chosen for them? How does one come upon this fate or that, is it as arbitrary as it looks?) Or is it some devil sitting on my shoulder whispering “There you see? You humans can do ANYTHING. The world is not just your oyster, it is your canvas and your palette, and on it you are free to splash ANY paint. Stretch your mind to its farthest reaches, and still there is always further to go, miles and miles beyond even that.”
Is that Freedom? Does that release me? Does knowing that our lusts and our choice of degradations are so infinite actually make them the points of ABSOLUTE CONTROL? Is this the lure of the ‘sub/dom’ phenom? Is that what this film is saying? Is it saying anything at all? Or is it just one more hunk of crap in the junkyard?