Loss, Longing, and Loneliness

 El Hierro, the smallest and south-westernmost of the seven Canary Islands of Spain, is also known as Isla del Meridiano, or the Meridian Island, because since time immemorial, its location has been serving as the pointer to cartographers to mark the Prime Meridian. In Gabe Ibáñez’s debut feature film, Hierro (2009), the island drives a wedge into the life of single mother María (portrayed by Elena Anaya, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Julia Ormond, and will next be seen in the acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s much-anticipated The Skin I Live In) much the same way the Prime Meridian slices the globe into two halves.

María and her five-year-old son Diego (Kaiet Rodríguez) board a night ferry to El Hierro. While Diego is busy playing, María drifts off to sleep and wakes up to a living nightmare. To her utter dismay, she finds no trace of her child. A thorough search is organised both on the ferry and into the inlands, but to no avail. It appears as if the island, which is known to assist us in pinpointing our own location is, for once, at a complete loss when it comes to locating this particular five-year old.

Six months pass by. Like the island itself, María finds herself more and more cut off from those around her—be it her work or her sister Laura (Bea Segura), who has recently given birth to a baby boy. Ironically, she also realises that ever since the incident on the ferry, she has developed a phobia towards water, even though her job involves dealing with various aquatic species. With every passing day, she feels more and more like those fishes in her workplace, swimming inside huge water tanks made of glass. Her grief makes it difficult for her to reach out to others, and starts manifesting itself in frightening drug-induced hallucinations. No matter how much she tries, María just cannot come to terms with her loss and seems equally unable to forgive herself for not living up to a promise she had made to Diego. Many a time she had assured him that in a game of hide-and-seek if she fails to find her son at first, she will keep on looking for him.

Then, one day, comes a phone call telling her that a body of a young boy has been found in the waters surrounding El Hierro. The age and the approximate date of death match those of Diego. There, at the morgue, once she sees the body, María is as relieved as the coroner is surprised. It appears that the officials were, for some odd reason, convinced that it was indeed Diego’s body, but María proved them wrong. To be absolutely certain, they request a DNA testing to be done. Since that would require the presence of a judge, and the judge is currently off the island, María is requested to stay behind for three more days—a request she begrudgingly acquiesces to.

With nothing to do to pass the time, María and Laura, who had accompanied her, hire a car to tour the island. On an isolated beach, while taking the first step towards overcoming her phobia of swimming, María thinks she spots Diego playing near a travel trailer. Hoping against hope, she begins investigating on her own. Soon, she finds out that her is not the only child to have gone missing in El Hierro. But what are her chances of getting to the root of this mystery when the people on the island are a closely-knit community and it is quite apparent that there are times when she cannot trust her own eyes?

A child gone missing is a common trope in thrillers. The various facets of this particular sub-genre have more or less all been covered in some memorable outings like Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), The Wicker Man (1973), Without a Trace (1983), The Orphanage (2007), and Changeling (2008); as well as in some not-so-memorable ones like The Forgotten (2004), Flightplan (2005),  and Vinyan (2008). Hierro falls somewhere in between these two extremes.

While the premise itself is as worn out as the traditional usage of El Hierro’s location, the film is not an abject failure for more than a couple of reasons. An animator by profession before he made a foray into feature filmmaking, where Ibáñez has stumbled as a storyteller, he has more or less made up the lost ground when it comes to the visual elements. Aided admirably by his cinematographer Alejandro Martínez, Ibáñez’s vision comes alive in a sumptuous treat for the eyes. Ibáñez also uses his experience in working with miniatures to bring about a sense of stark contrast. This is apparent from the very first sequence of the film itself, when a toy car tumbles down beside an upturned vehicle. This big-small comparison is threaded throughout the film. We see a tiny Diego seated in front of water tanks containing huge fishes; tiny insects that lie trapped in the water of a swimming pool; a single individual on a sprawling beach…the instance are many. It is as if to depict that the magnitude of any incident is relative to the point of view—a fact that comes to light when María overhears her sister over the telephone and realises that the mishap that changed her life in an instant like a chameleon changing its colours is not that significant to her own sibling.

Another refrain that runs through the film is the leit motif of water, as exemplified by fishes inside tanks and in the ocean; Diego being asked by his mother about ‘What lives in the sea’; water spilling out from an upturned glass and bursting out of a tap; water seeping from under a corpse; a painting of waves; María’s fear and eventual victory over fear of swimming; and so on. In a sense, water, too, acts as a contrasting element that brings out how desiccated and barren María’s life had become the moment she lost her only child.

Water just as well might have another implication here. In Spanish, ‘hierro’ means ‘iron’. As the film progresses, we find how armed with only an iron will, a dejected, depressed, and disconsolate mother embarks on a journey to uncover the truth in a terrain as desolate as her own existence. However, like the effect of water on iron, as time passes, she finds her willpower gradually losing the battle against forces that are way beyond her control.

Pals, Peril, and Playing God

 There exists unanimous agreement among film historians that 1939 was ‘the greatest in Hollywood film history’. The watershed year witnessed the release of such landmark films as Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Of Mice and Men, Dark Victory, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, and Ninotchka. What made 1939 all the more fascinating was that these films encompassed a wide array of genres—historical romance (Gone with the Wind), musical (The Wizard of Oz), western (Stagecoach), literary adaptation (Wuthering Heights), drama (Of Mice and Men), social commentary (Mr Smith goes to Washington), tragedy (Dark Victory), and comedy (Ninotchka).

In the same vein, though far less celebrated, 1988 was an astounding year for the Japanese film industry. However, there is one small difference. The three Japanese films released that year that went on to make a mark worldwide all belonged to the same broad genre—animation, or anime (Japanimation) to be precise, which is the nomenclature for the peculiar animation style originating in Japan. Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies, an animated drama, is widely known as one of the most powerful and influential anti-war films ever made; the maestro Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro is a top-drawer example of animated adventure-fantasy; while Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira has the envious reputation of having introduced anime to the West.

Akira is a two-hour-long film, condensed from a six-volume, 2,182-page long manga (cartoons, comic books, and animated films that adhere to a typical Japanese style of drawing), created by Otomo himself that was published in a serialised form from 1982 to 1990. When it was first released in the US and Europe in the 1990s, Akira changed the way Westerners—who were till then fed only on a Disney diet—view animation forever (in one particular scene of the film there is a building, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Walt Disney logo). Even today, almost 25 years after it crept on to celluloid, Akira continues to astound its audience in the same manner it stumped the American distributors on its release, who had never seen an animation film like it before. Similarly, audiences to this day are confounded when they try to pigeonhole Akira into a specific sub-genre. But all these differences aside, if there is consensus on a film as path-breaking as Akira, which paved the way for renowned anime directors like Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Paprika), Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) and Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Ninja Scroll), it is that Akira is prescient and prophetic.

As the film begins with a bird’s eye view of Tokyo, we learn that on 16 July 1988 (which, incidentally, happened to be the exact date when Akira was first screened in Japan), after a nuclear explosion ripped through the city, Third World War had broken out. The screen immediately turns red and the overhead view of the topographical features of the city take on an eerie resemblance to blood-soaked veins and arteries.

This pre-title card scene encapsulates the entire philosophy of the film. The perspective from above is akin to god’s point-of-view. But what followed was not an act of creation but a deed of destruction. It is as if our relentless pursuit to play god runs through our veins and inevitably ends in blood being spilled.

Thirty-one years later, in 2019, a lot of blood is being spilled on the roads of Neo-Tokyo—the city that arose from the ashes. Tokyo, or the Old City, as it is known, is now nothing but a crater that stares continuously like an unblinking eye. The physical destruction of the Old City is mirrored in the disruption of the moral fabric of the new one. Here, terrorism is rampant, unemployment is on the rise, and nationwide riots between the aggrieved populace and the police are commonplace. In such a dystopian future, where corrupt politicians rule the roost, the streets and highways provide the backdrop for a different kind of power struggle—that between rival biker gangs like the Capsules and the Clowns.

Shôtarô Kaneda is the leader of the Capsules. His best friend and companion since childhood is Tetsuo Shima. Ever since they met each other at a shelter, Kaneda has treated Tetsuo more as a brother than a friend. This protective nature has led Tetsuo to bear a thinly veiled grudge towards Kaneda, who has made a habit of coming to his rescue every time. But one day, during a high-speed bike chase, Tetsuo meets with an accident, and for the first time Kaneda fails to offer his helping hand. Instead, the military steps in and carries the wounded Tetsuo away.

What begins as Kaneda’s attempt to rescue his companion soon turns into a perilous journey that will involve a terrorist group; a trio of wrinkle-faced, psychic kids called Espers; the hard-as-nails Colonel Shikishima; the scientist Dr Onishi; and above all, the shrouded-in-mystery military experiment named Akira.

Man-made destructions and their aftermath are a leit motif in manga. It is a common device to tap into the cultural consciousness of Japan. Against this background that portrays man not as a higher power but akin to an amoeba that devours everything in its path, Akira posits the pros and cons of a psycho-spiritual awakening at two levels—man as an individual and as a species.

Otomo’s pessimism towards the so-called ‘evolution’ of man is apparent in the first scene of Akira itself, when in one singular motion an entire city gets wiped out. This is nothing but a depiction of an ungodly act that arises from harnessing god-like power. While humanity’s relentless pursuit has always been to control such power, Otomo shows that there comes a time when the power starts controlling us, instead.

Drawing upon the basic philosophy that is preached by religions as varied as Buddhism and Sufism—that of the innate relation between the creator and the created—Akira’s anime might look slightly dated today, but the secret of its longevity lies in its message that transcend time: ‘There’s ought to be a future that we can choose for ourselves. It’s up to us to find it’.

A Horrible Homage to Hollywood

   
The pithily titled Korean thriller H (2002) begins with the decapitated body of a schoolgirl being discovered in an unnamed city’s landfill. What looks like a young life wasted and dumped takes a turn towards the gruesome when an unborn foetus is also accidentally found amidst the mounds of waste. Four days later, on February 14, it is bloody Valentine for an unmarried mother, when she is brutally slain inside a city bus before it arrives at the terminus. Here, too, when a still twitching arm of a foetus is found half ripped out of the womb, detectives Kim Mi Yun (Yeom Jeong-ah, who acted in the following year’s horror hit A Tale of Two Sisters) and her partner Kang Tae Hyun (debutant Ji Jin-hee) notice an eerie similarity in the modus operandi of the now-confirmed serial killer with that of another convicted mass murderer, Shin Hyun (Cho Seung-woo).

The only problem is that ten months ago Shin Hyun had voluntarily walked into a police station, carrying with him in a bag the body of his latest victim. On confessing to six horrific murders of women, he is now on death row, counting down the last few days of his life. Evidently, there is a copycat killer on the loose. To obtain information that might help solve the case and stop further murders from occurring, detectives Kim and Kang decide to pay Shin Hyun a visit.

While what puts the two detectives on Shin Hyun’s trail are the obvious similarities between the recent spate of murders to those committed by him, ironically, it is resemblance of a different kind that puts us—the viewers—off, the moment the scheming, calculating, Nietzsche-quoting killer-on-death-row enters the scene. The setting, the sequence, and the situation all hark back to Jonathan Demme’s multiple Oscar winner The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Granted, the ode is not as blatant as the Christian Alvart (Pandorum, Case 39) directed German film Antibodies (2005), where another serial killer named Gabriel Engel (played by André Hennicke) had proudly proclaimed ‘What did you expect? Hannibal Lecter?’, but the likeness to that classic thriller is all too obvious to be ignored.

As discerning film-watchers, we all know that it is impossible to steer clear of all clichés, no matter which genre a filmmaker is trying to explore. That is the reason we were willing to forego the hackneyed characterisation of an expressionless detective, who has still not come to terms with a personal tragedy; her greenhorn brash, over-enthusiastic, impatient partner, who is diametrically opposite to her in character traits; the portly policeman, whose sole existence in the film is centred around providing some ill-advised comic relief; and the incessant chimney-like smoking by the two protagonists that reveal that the screenplay writers were in a haze while penning the detective duo, rather than express any depth of character.

These missteps aside, if there is one image that summarises this stillborn effort at crafting an effective thriller, it is that of the unborn foetus. It is nothing but an allegory of how Korean filmmaking was being prevented from evolving beyond an embryonic stage by Hollywood, before directors like Chan-wook Park, Joon-ho Bong, and Jee-woon Kim resuscitated it to life. In this context, it might be pointed out that the first of Park’s riveting revenge trilogy, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (2002)—the second film of the trilogy being Oldboy (2003) that single-handedly put South Korea firmly back on the firmament of filmdom—was released almost exactly nine months before H.

Coming back to H, the intentions of the filmmaker, akin to those of Shin Hyun, were noble, at least to themselves. One need not be a semiotician to read the anti-abortion subtext running throughout the film. But both first-time writer-director Jong-hyuk Lee and the character of Shin Hyun committed a similar error. Both got embroiled in the word ‘copycat’.

The initial interest aroused to try and figure out how a behind-the-bars serial killer is pulling the strings gets diluted by the red herrings thrown at us. The number of suspects is just too many, which, in most cases keeps us involved, but in this particular instance causes confusion. Moreover, it seems, the director, in his fervent enthusiasm to depict the tussle between the heart—(as portrayed by Detective Kang, who seems to take every atrocity around him—from a torn umbilical cord to a traffic jam—to heart)—and the mind (the ice-cold exterior of Detective Kim, who smiles exactly three times during the entire film) has thrown the entire volume of Psychology 101 at us. So, we have a doctor specialising in neuro-psychiatry, who has this curious habit of flashing a mysterious smile whenever she is in the company of cops; a patient, who suffers from a recurring horrible nightmare, which, supposedly, lies at the root of his psychotic behaviour; an abstract painter, who appears like the proverbial dues ex machine, and is proclaimed to be suffering from a multiple personality disorder; and last but not least, the prevalent belief among Koreans that a foetus becomes aware even when inside the womb, and the information gathered therein remains latent throughout one’s life as suppressed, unconscious memories.

After 106 minutes of mishmash that involves prostitutes and psychology; honour and horror; nicotine and Nietzsche, one is almost tempted to project Shin Hyun’s paraphrasing the German philosopher’s popular quote: ‘Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you’ on to the film and brand it as ‘abysmal’.

And as far as the elaboration of ‘H’ provided at the conclusion of the film is concerned, no matter what the director has depicted, it will take a lot to dissuade us from believing that it did not stand for ‘Homage’—an homage to Hollywood, and not a highly-recommended one at that!

A Downbeat Tale of Drugs, Decadence, and Death

In one of several brilliantly-written scenes in Shane Meadows’ (of  the 2006 skinhead drama This is England fame) Dead Man’s Shoes (2004), a small-time drug dealer Sonny (Gary Stretch) and his gang accost a local guy Richard (Paddy Considine), who has just returned to the British Midlands after serving the army. Sonny is suspicious that the previous night Richard had broken into his house. The tête-à-tête between them goes something like this: Sonny: ‘You know the lads had this ridiculous idea th…’ Richard (interrupting): ‘Yeah, it was me.’ The abrupt cutting off in mid-sentence and the instantaneous confession take both Sonny and us, the viewer, completely aback.

In a sense, this short, but impactful scene encapsulates the film itself. Most of us, while reading the above verbal exchange might have formed a mental picture of Richard, the ex-army man, and Sonny, the drug dealer. Fed on the staple Hollywood diet of hard-as-nails, biceps-bulging soldiers and gun-toting villainous drug lords, the characters of Richard and Sonny in Dead Man’s Shoes are as different from the stereotypical portrayal of similar characters by Hollywood, as the astonishing repartee by Richard to Sonny’s half-asked question. Moreover, the confidence Richard shows in confessing does not stem from the power he feels in his muscles, but from his knowledge that deep-down Sonny and his crew of drug peddlers—Tuff (Paul Sadot), Soz (Neil Bell), Big Al (Seamus O’Neill), Herbie (Stuart Wolfenden), and Gypsy John (George Newton)—are a bunch of cowards.

The story of Dead Man’s Shoes, written by Meadows and Considine themselves, deals with the age-old theme of revenge. Richard’s mentally-challenged brother Anthony (Toby Kebbell) was abused, humiliated, and tortured—both physically and mentally—by Sonny and his cohorts, while Richard was away serving the army. Now, that he is back, Richard seeks retribution for the wrongs done to his brother, who was too weak-minded to fight back.

Straightforward, the story may seem, but run-of-the-mill, it is not. In the opening monologue itself, when Richard says ‘God will forgive them. He’ll forgive them and allow them into heaven. I can’t live with that’, we realise that our protagonist is not like his American ilk from the Marines or Special Forces, who have god-like powers and prowess. So, is he the devil, then, as Soz enquires when he comes face-to-face with Richard? The answer, this, time, too, is in the negative. Richard is simply a man consumed with the single motivation to right the wrong done to his helpless little brother. Later on, though, we get to learn what is stoking the slow-burning fire of vengeance inside him has a lot to do with Richard himself, which makes the character all the more humane.

On the other side of the coin lie Sonny and his gang. While their corrupting influence on Anthony revealed a malevolent and immoral streak, but like Richard, it does not take us long to see through this veneer. Just as Richard is anything but the personification of the ‘one-man-army’, these small-time drug dealers, too, are nothing but scared little ferrets inside. After all, bullying is but a façade behind which hide the weak.

Richard is well aware that Sonny and his gang feed on others’ fears, and that they would crumple like the powder and pills they ply as soon as they are confronted with an individual who can stand up to them. And it is this very weapon—striking fear in the hearts of those whose business thrives on that particular emotion—that Richard uses in avenging his brother’s brutalisation.

Sonny and Co. are quite similar to Anthony in the sense that they are nothing more than a bunch of overgrown children. This facet becomes all the more clear over the five-day period during which  Richard strikes terror into the lives of Sonny, Soz, Tuff, Herbie, Al, and Gypsy John. Be it scaring the living daylights out of Herbie by appearing in front of him while donning an army gas mask or generating a frenzy of fright among the entire group by breaking into Sonny’s apartment and leaving behind a ‘colourful’ message of warning, Richard relegates the outwardly tough drug dealers into a group of crying, bumbling, panic-stricken collection of cry-babies, who refuse to be left alone even for a second.

Unlike most revenge-films that focus more on the final culminating act of virile violence, Dead Man’s Shoes derives its message from the drugs that wreaked havoc on Anthony’s life. Richard believes that by peddling drugs to the youth, the dealers control their minds. And to teach these dealers of death a lesson or two, he turns the tables on them by doing exactly that—meddling with their minds first before delivering fatal blows. In fact, he had carved this philosophy on the wall when he had sneaked into Tuff and Soz’s apartment. The graffiti ‘Cheyne Stoking’ that he had spray painted on the wall denotes a breathing pattern in terminally ill patients that acts as harbinger of impending death.

Richard decided to turn every breath taken by Sonny and his band of miscreants into a poisonous inhalation—a fact made all the more ominous by the gas mask he wears. A vérité vengeance, indeed!

Trains, Transit, and Tribulations

It is said that if one climbs on top of the tallest tree of the Tapachula municipality of the Mexican state of Chiapas, then one can see all the way to China. But the dream destination for most Central Americans, irrespective of whether they are from Mexico or from Honduras, is not the Asian behemoth, but El Norte (the north), which is what they call the country that encapsulates all of their aspiration—America.

These illegal immigrants chase the ‘American dream’ as much as they flee from a life marred by the Maras, or criminal gangs—the most vile, violent, and vindictive of which is the Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS or MS-13. Instantly recognisable by the ornate tattoos that make the Mareras, or gang members—who are sometimes as young as 12, such as El Smiley (Kristian Ferrer)—look more like the Maoris, the MS-13 is a widely networked and closely knit group. Led by the merciless Li’l Mago (Tenoch Huerta), or ‘little magician’, MS-13 professes to flourish on the three pillars of honesty, respect, and generosity, but treats any transgression with utmost cruelty, of which cortes or cuts inflicted on the body is just the beginning. Not surprising, considering its initiation ceremony involves a new recruit being kicked around mercilessly like a football for 13 excruciatingly long seconds—harking back to the numeric part of MS-13—and killing a chavala, which is a derogatory term for the members of any rival gang.

No wonder then, for a Mareo like Willy (Edgar Flores), who is known better among his homies, or brothers in the gang as El Caspar, a teardrop tattoo is a constant reminder of how futile everyday is, especially when one has a sweetheart. In the opening shot of the film, we see Willy looking at a path laden with fallen leaves, with sad eyes. This is because deep down he knows that if he tries to leave all this behind and realise his dream of visiting the Six Flags amusement park in Texas with his girlfriend, it will in all probability result in him being crushed like the leaves. Falling in love with the beautiful Martha Marlene (Diana Garcia) has just made his life a bit more complicated. To spend more time with his fiancée, he is avoiding the mandatory visits to La Bombilla, or the ‘light bulb’—a place in Tapachula along the train tracks. Symbolising the flicker of hope that burns inside every illegal immigrant, who wishes to land up in America, La Bombilla is where these hoping-against-hope bunches flock together, often sleeping on the tracks to be woken up by the alarm of a blaring freight train, which is their ticket to the land of their dreams. That Willy is playing truant has not escaped the attention of Li’l Mago. El Caspar’s predicament is that neither can he tell Martha Marlene how close he is to Li’l Mago, nor can he tell his lascivious leader about her existence.

Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a teenager from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, is also facing a predicament. Horacio (Gerardo Taracena), her estranged father, who she has not seen in years, has just re-entered her life and now plans to take Sayra and her uncle Orlando (Guillermo Villegas) to New Jersey. While the possibilities that such a proposition entails are not lost on her, the inherent fact that she will be putting up with her half sisters, who she unambiguously tells her father are ‘your family’, has taken the gloss out of it.

Just like our introduction to Willy, when we get our first glimpse of Sayra, she, too, is looking at the horizon, but from a high vantage point. This is nothing but a precursor to the fact that eventually, the lives of Sayra and Willy will be intertwined; as well as a portend to the journey Sayra, Horacio, and Orlando will undertake—atop freight trains that trudge along laboriously, taking innumerable immigrants within a touching distance of the US border.

Sin Nombre (2009) is the American director, writer, and cinematographer Cary Joji Fukunaga’s first foray into directing a feature-length film. Based on his own short Victoria para chino (2004), which dealt with the true story of 80 illegal immigrants from the Mexican border who travelled inside a refrigerated truck with tragic consequences, Sin Nombre narrates the harrowing experience faced by countless immigrants, who originate from deep into Central America, including places like Guatemala and Honduras. Perched precariously atop cargo trains, only a handful of these hordes of nameless, faceless humans ultimately succeed in crossing over. The rest either fall prey to murderous marauders during the perilous journey or are shot at by the border police or the judicial patrol.

With more than one-third of the film shot on top of a cargo train, Sin Nombre is a cinematographic marvel. However, it is apparent that what attracted renowned Mexican actors Gael García Bernal (Amores Perros, The Motorcycle Diaries, Y Tu Mamá También) and Diego Luna (Y Tu Mamá También) to come on board as executive producers of a film by a debutant director is not its rich visuals, of which there are plenty, but because it dares to give a face and a name to immigrants and gang-members, who go through their lives facing trials and tribulations that are eerily similar.