Traffic (2000)

In early 2000, I made use of the Internet for the first time and soon started spending time tracking Oscar winners. I loved getting to know about the various categories, tracked movies being shown on TV, and overall loved the exposure to Hollywood.

In these early days, I read about Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, got to know they were getting married, and most importantly (for me) they starred in ‘Traffic’. I have wanted to watch the movie for a long time (well, 25 years) and finally got down to it, thanks to Benicio del Toro.

Why, you ask?

Benicio has starred in ‘One Battle After Another’. He was nominated for best supporting actor, and it reminded me that he had won the Oscar for ‘Traffic’. I searched, found the movie on Amazon Prime and rented it.

Brilliantly shot in sections with English and Spanish, ‘Traffic’ is a masterpiece in storytelling involving multiple arcs. Not all characters meet each other, but their lives are interwoven masterfully – it is no wonder to me that the movie won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay as well. There are 3 stories happening in parallel, each with its suspense intact.

The movie is about the illegal drug trade between United States of America and Mexico, how various players sustain the drug trade, and how it impacts families. Douglas’ character is a Judge who is appointed as a drug czar, only for him to discover that his teenage daughter (an excellent student) abuses drugs and has been prostituted. She later joins Narcotics Anonymous, and starts recovering.

Zeta-Jones plays a pregnant wife whose husband is arrested for distributing drugs in the USA. This is a clever storyline to showcase how families behave, even when there is illegal activity involved. I liked how Don Cheadle played his role as a honest DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent.

As for Benicio, he plays a Mexican police officer who stops drug transport. I couldn’t understand most of his dialogs as they were in Spanish – and subtitles wouldn’t get turned on – and I watched it as if it were a silent movie. His physical presence seems tailormade for the role.

I loved watching Viola Davis and Salma Hayek in their brief roles. I have been a huge fan of Viola ever since I watched her in ‘Air’.

‘Traffic’ is a must watch for parents and enforcement agencies. Given how drug usage in India is steadily rising (Punjab, some parts of the North-East, Kerala), it is important to see how consuming locations and transit locations are related. Schoolchildren have started abusing drugs, courting danger on so many fronts. At a time when brains are still developing, this is extremely dangerous. 

I’ll never know the high of drugs (and I don’t want to know), but I do know the high of watching a great movie. ‘Traffic’ is one such movie.

Parasite (2019)

Given how illness affects me and how disorienting and difficult movie-watching gets at that time (see my post on ‘Bharat’ for instance), I have decided to stay away from movie-watching at the theatre to the extent possible when I am ill. In my latest episode, I couldn’t sit through ‘Tanhaji’ with its selfie references – the only movie we watched in the theatre - and we left in the interval. I was upset at taking medication outside of home, and felt the CCTV would capture this. Which is true, but the act wouldn’t have been as disorienting on a normal day.

Anyway, Oscar season in 2020 arrived and the sibling asked me more than once if we could watch ‘Parasite’ at the theatre. I did not want to take a chance, and kept postponing the plan. Finally, I watched the movie on Amazon Prime last week in the afternoon, with sub-titles. I can see why the movie won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and still can’t figure out how it got the Best Picture award. It has won numerous awards, so perhaps critics and others can see something in the movie that I cannot - I did prefer 'Joker' on the whole.

I loved how the families were chosen for the leading roles (especially the sister in the poorer family), and how authentic the settings looked especially in the sequences involving torrential rain. I couldn’t fully relate to either family though, and the constant reference to unsavoury smells from the poor left me sad even as I recollected the odour emanating from cabs in Gurugram. What also left me upset was the way art therapy is portrayed in the movie. Trauma-driven mental illness in the rich kid could have been portrayed differently. How different? With more compassion (even for the rich) and letting go of black comedy for a bit. Art therapy doesn't see financial status. Why link it to that? There are differing views on this though.

I also learnt about this dish called Ram-Don (a made-up word for Jjapaguri in Korean) and the role it plays in the movie. MasterChef watching-exposure means I can watch non-vegetarian food getting cooked with more interest than before, and if I had been a non-vegetarian, I would have been tempted to cook this dish myself.

I thought the sex-scene in the movie was done well, and there are several opinions on how uncomfortable the audience felt on watching it. If anyone is hiding and watching others have sex, it is bound to be uncomfortable and privacy endangering, and can bring up several emotions – and this is exactly what the Director wanted the audience to experience.

Watch the trailer here. It is interesting to see who is the parasite.

Gaslight (1944)

I haven't seen Gaslight yet, and the movie is known to me because of the reading I have done on gaslighting. It is severe psychological manipulation that leaves its victims reeling, and sometimes the only way to survive it is to cut all contact with the manipulator.

Recently, I noticed an automatic like for the Ingrid Bergman page on Facebook -- I had liked the Wikipedia entry on her life earlier. I am happy to see this photo from the page -- she looks radiant and happy at winning the Oscar for her performance in Gaslight.

Oscars 2014

Marketing gimmick or not, it made me happy to see this selfie taken at the Oscars couple of days ago. There are so many past winners in this snap, and the impromptu snap has so many wide smiles. The snap was originally meant to be taken by host Ellen DeGeneres with Meryl Streep posing for it. Bradley Cooper took it, and other actors and actresses who were sitting close by also joined the fun.

It has been retweeted over 3 million times.

It was the 86th edition of the Academy Awards, and this is my 100th post on this blog. 

How celebrities party

When it came to the Golden Globes 2014, these handsome actors decided to bring along their respective mothers. They immediately got labelled as mama’s boys (they didn't bring along their rather young girlfriends), and the tone of the article made me wonder about their fathers. It turns out that Cooper’s father passed away in 2011, and DiCaprio’s parents are divorced. DiCaprio’s father is into underground comics – this perhaps explains DiCaprio’s activist side?

DiCaprio won his second Golden Globe award for 'The Wolf of Wall Street'. Cooper's father was a stockbroker.

Somehow, this picture made me think of this quote – "If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're misinformed."

Oscars 2013

As soon as I watched ‘Lincoln’, I predicted that Day-Lewis would win his third Oscar. Today, Daniel Day-Lewis won the best actor Oscar for his performance in the movie. What makes it special – he became the first man to win three Oscars for acting. I am yet to write about the movie, and will do so sometime.

I had also predicted that Anne Hathaway would win the best supporting actress Oscar for her performance as Fantine in ‘Les Miserables’. She did. It is only a matter of time before she wins the best actress Oscar. I had once mentioned her here.

I am so thrilled that Adele won the best song Oscar for ‘Skyfall’. This morning, when I heard her perform, I had goosebumps. She has a mesmerizing voice.

Well deserved, all three.

Mighty Aphrodite (1995)

As a teenager, I was besotted with the Academy Awards. I had made a list of past Oscar winners across categories, and happily updated the list year after year. This resulted in my becoming familiar with the names of several great performers (and movies).

Mighty Aphrodite was one such name. So were Woody Allen and Mira Sorvino.

I had watched Mira in the comedy ‘Romy and Michele's High School Reunion’ and enjoyed her performance. Recently, I watched her Oscar-winning performance in Mighty Aphrodite (1995).

This movie starring Woody Allen, Helena Bonham Carter and Mira Sorvino tells the story of Lenny (Woody Allen), his obsession with finding out who are his adopted son’s biological parents, and events that follow.

Lenny’s wife (Helena Bonham Carter) is embarking on an extra-marital affair, and his marriage is crumbling. On the other hand, the son displays signs of being a child prodigy. Lenny’s search for his son’s biological parents leads him to the mother, Linda (Mira Sorvino), a prostitute and part-time porn star.

Linda dreams of a loving marriage and husband, and Lenny introduces her to a dim boxer who wants to get back to his original occupation – that of onion farming. The amateur boxer proudly declares, “I've had 16 fights and I won all of them but 12.” The association ends when the boxer gets to know of Linda’s past, and she eventually finds happiness with a helicopter pilot. And Lenny’s (much younger) wife returns to him.

Watch out for Lenny’s interaction with the boxer, and Linda’s performance. Greek chorus makes an appearance throughout the film. So does sparkling wit. A funny sequence is when the chorus calls on Zeus; all they hear is his answering machine requesting them to leave a message.

I read that Woody Allen has undergone psychoanalysis for years. This is a subject I have little knowledge of, and lots of fascination for. Some day, it shall be explored in detail.