renaissance – Movies of the Soul

Vampire Owl :: It is such a gloomy Diwali this year. Nothing to be done. I expect this Halloween to be bad too.

Vampire Bat :: I had my own celebrations though.

Vampire Owl :: Really? And you didn’t call me? After all, I am your only officially undead friend.

Vampire Bat :: It was not arranged by me. There was lightning and almost everything in the living room seemed to be enjoying fireworks. Only the stabilizer is working now.

Vampire Owl :: I would need that stabilizer. I can connect it to my owlifier and hope that it works without loss of energy.

Vampire Bat :: Do you know that you often seem to talk like Victor Frankenstein?

Vampire Owl :: Absolutely not. See, you are giving a wrong idea about owlification to the society. This is for their own good, so that they don’t have to face a third world war and a possible extinction.

Vampire Bat :: Have you even read about a world war?

Vampire Owl :: No. Why should I? I read no evil, hear no evil, see no evil. I just create evil – I am an evil mastermind.

Vampire Bat :: I have a movie for you then.

[Grabs of a cup of tea].

What is it about? :: The Best Offer is set in a world of art, where an old expert in art Virgil Oldman (Geoffrey Rush) runs an auction house. He is not a loved person around, as he has very few people around him who likes his way of behaviour and most of his life is spent with the desire to illegally gain the possession of very rare and highly valuable pieces of art, unmarried. He is appointed by a young heiress, Claire Ibbetson (Sylvia Hoeks), who asks for his help to auction off a huge collection of antiques and grand pieces of art which has been passed onto her by the family lines. But as Claire suffer from “a strange disease” as the people she knows tell him, or a certain amount of agoraphobia as she keeps herself confined to a room inside the huge mansion. As curiosity keeps getting into him, he hides himself inside the mansion one day to find that she is young and beautiful and sees her in a compromising position. He is immediately attracted to her beauty, and as they come close to each other, there will be the course of something else that will be set in motion.

The defence of The Best Offer :: Here is a movie which never ceases to enchant you with its visual splendour provided by art rather than anything else. There is a lot of beauty in the way in which the whole thing is narrated. Here is a quote which you can take home — “Emotions are like work of art. They can be forged; they seem just like the original but they are forgery. Everything can be fake: joy, pain, hate, illness, recovery… even love” – it tells a lot about the movie and how it connects art and man. Then there is question of truth and happiness, the things that are not found even in the real thing. The performances are splendid too, especially from the two leading characters. It is indeed a fresh take on the mystery genre, and a different entry to the world of romantic thrillers. There is also the abstinence from the usual formula that can be seen on a number of occasions. One can’t also deny the existence of so many angles from which this movie can be viewed from. I see the hollowness of humanity which can create huge artistic forgeries of the mind.

Positives and negatives :: The movie is slow, and it has lots of art associated with it, not really appealing to everyone. It is easy to find such people who don’t care about antiquity in this part of the world as we see our own centuries old monuments being vandalized by people or even those who claim to be lovers to write their names. There is almost no love for art in our lands, not even to the courses related to the same. So, this movie not releasing her was never a surprise, and people are going to find fault with its setting anyway. There will also be people wondering how such a thing in the movie is even possible with the two – but human mind is indeed strange, and emotions are pretty much ridiculous even for the most skilled ones – that much one has to be aware of. Yes, there are some characters who should have developed further and are lost in this seductive battle between the two main characters. It does give a little bit of too much clue to the viewer’s liking too early, but not everyone will pick them.

Performers of the soul :: Geoffrey Rush steals the show right from the beginning, and even by a bigger margin by the end. We don’t have a character here whom we can easily sympathize with, but here the man has completely made us feel for the character and the emotions that he has, even as he is not that much of a positive character, or someone we can cheer for. He is not a hero here, but we are given a chance to admire him as a tragic hero with this performance, and here he is elevated to the status of someone like Doctor Faustus who has the power of knowledge and yet not the wisdom to make things work in the right way. There is a certain beauty about it. Sylvia Hoeks is stunning here, not just by looks, but with a performance which seems to make her a modern day Rapunzel, caught in the hopelessness of the never-ending loneliness in the middle of nowhere, with no escape and less hair, but still extremely beautiful and having all the traits of her gorgeous and mysterious character.

Soul exploration :: Even as the movie’s focus as well as its background are on art and valuable antiques, its soul is on the gorgeous enigma who is at the centre of everything. She is the one to determine the fate of more than one character in the movie, and the universe which was rather static until then, revolves around her and turns it into a romantic mystery and then into a kind of thriller with the world no longer following a pattern. The life based on art becomes the life based on one lady who is like living art in beauty, and the protagonist soon finds his Helen of Troy and seems to wonder like Faustus if it “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?” – there comes the radical change in the world, and it sets things in motion, as the centre is clearly the mystery that the mysterious beauty provides, and the protagonist comes directly under the influence of this centre, the soul which changes things.

How it finishes :: The Best Offer is lost to most of our people, and it is not even known to most of our viewers. Another fact is that it might not appeal to everyone with a universe of art and a mystery that is built around the same which is hard to connect for a lot of people belonging to the modern world. As it tells the story of two people who are separated from the usual known world in different ways, the focus is on the search of love and the vanity in the hope that there will be the appearance of such a feeling which is so hard to achieve in this world of materialism. The movie talks about the world of love just as the illusion of art, and forgery is possible with ease, even as the best of forgeries might require skills, and it will take more than just the expertise to look through the fake emotions of love and desire, and that should be an objective vision which should be completely absent when the illusion begins to spread through one’s eyes.

Release date: 1st January 2013
Running time: 124 minutes
Directed by: Giuseppe Tornatore
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Sylvia Hoeks, Jim Sturgess, Liya Kebede, Donald Sutherland, Philip Jackson, Dermot Crowley, Kiruna Stamell

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.

Every dog has its day :: Mr. Peabody needs a day for himself, just like any other dog (but surely with specs and a bow tie) without that day being called “a dog’s day”. Yes, the other person without the title is the human character who is obviously less intelligent. As the cats have nine lives and continues to dodge death (with the exceptions of our favourite cats who successfully tested the speed of those faster cars on the highway, may be not knowing that eight of the nine lives have ended and it is nearing game over – they should come up with a life bar on the top right corner of the eye or something), the dogs also need a day on which they can use their awesomeness to good use without taking any physical risk that could permanently place them outside the material realm to be devoured by the soul reaver. This is that day for Peabody, a white dog which could have easily been the ruler of the planet on another parallel Earth. As an intelligent creature who doesn’t ask for the nine lives for himself or claim his right to a possible return from the dead in the name of equality, this dog takes us into an adventure which has already been highly rated by the critics and is indeed splendid.

What is it about? :: Mr. Peabody might be not only the smartest dog in the world, but also the most intelligent creature on Earth surpassing all humans with ease. He proved that he was different from the other dogs in the childhood itself, due to which he was never adopted and never had a home as a puppy. So later, he adopted a boy named Sherman instead, only after he gets rich and popular. As Sherman gets into conflict with his classmate, Penny Peterson who tried to the be the “mean girl”, the adoption agency blames it on the behaviour of Peabody who is an animal and they threaten to cancel the adoption. As Penny is invited to their home with her parents to make sure that nothing worse happens, the kids end up in the time machine invented by Peabody which is usually used to teach Sherman history. As Penny gets caught in Ancient Egypt, Peabody and Sherman has to make things right before the space-time continuum is completely destroyed. But for the same, just a random journey to Egypt won’t be enough, that is for sure.

Mr. Peabody & Sherman @Ancient Egypt :: Chronologically the first place to be visited, but otherwise the second, the Little King Tut a.k.a Tutankhamun wants force Penny into child marriage to which she has no objection (even with the revelation that his name rhymes with butt) until she comes to know about the wonderful customs of the land from the Vizier. This is a nice little episode (the movie is so short, so it had to be little) which involves them wandering around through the tombs inside The Sphinx and using the statue of Anubis, the god of death to their advantage. There are some nice jokes involving plague, the underworld and the god-kings. This place is the answer to where, when and how the adventures of Peabody and Sherman actually begins. Well, what is the use of a time machine if you haven’t seen the Pyramids in the zenith of its glory? We don’t have the Roman or the Persian Empire at its zenith, at least we got Egypt. Still, there could have been more of the place, and the same can be felt about what is to be mentioned next.

Mr. Peabody & Sherman @Greek-Troy War :: The trio lands in the middle of the Greek Trojan war as the result of a crash making it chronologically the second place to be visited, otherwise the final one. The Greeks are ready to avenge the death of Achilles and bring the fight into the city of Troy as they have carefully placed themselves inside the Wooden Horse. Sherman joins King Agamemnon, Odysseus and team in their battle against Troy, but is saved by Peabody before Trojans get to him. One has to admit that Agamemnon is the funniest character of the movie, and as the good guys beating up the enemies, they are lots of fun. From the location map, I was of the impression that this was going to be the Dracula Castle which was not to be. Well, there should be a sequel, we can hope for that. The father-son relationship reaches its climax during this visit and right after that, as a good number of historical figures make a visit to the future.

Mr. Peabody & Sherman @Italian Renaissance :: The trio catches up with Leonardo da Vinci during his attempt to paint Mona Lisa and even manages to make the lady smile or rather laugh in the process. Chronologically the third place to be visited and otherwise the second, this visit to Florence is when Sherman finds himself capable of something and he also gets along with Penny even managing to fly the prototype of a flying machine made by da Vinci together. The city of Florence as well as the Florence cathedral looks beautifully created, and the painting scene as well as the flying scene are nicely done. It is obvious that there were so many people in the theatre who knew nothing about Renaissance, it was a cultural movement of the thirteenth and fourteenth century beginning in the Italian states, especially the city of Florence. We were not taught about it in detail in the school history books, but Mr. Peabody will make sure that you won’t forget it that easily.

Mr. Peabody & Sherman @French Revolution :: Being at the French Revolution was more of a study trip for Sherman until things get serious. Thus it was the first time travel event to be shown even as it should come last in a chronological order. Caught between the cakes of Marie Antoinette and the call for assassination by Maximilien de Robespierre, Sherman avoids some advice for having cake as Peabody is almost executed in the guillotine before he finds a way out. As he mistakes Reign of Terror which comes with the French Revolution to be just another rain – they seem to struggle to escape, but Peabody does the escape act with ease. Nobody seems to be a match for the talking dog. The significant role which history would play in this movie is evident from this. I would say no history lover can dare to miss this movie, and it can also serve as a very interesting history class for kids, even as the movie might seem to lack logic like any other animated movie along with lacking in total content.

How it finishes :: Mr. Peabody & Sherman is that movie which has prevented Non-Stop from releasing here, and it might not be a good news for many, as it was a much awaited movie especially with Liam Neeson coming back to that path and into that avatar which the fans would like him to follow. Still, it has only lesser shows here at selected multiplexes just like The Lego Movie had if not slightly better. But as it is such a wonderful movie, why would someone ask for anything else? To add to it, this movie releases here a week before it releases in the United States, and that is a twist of fate. Let’s not be fooled by the name of the movie, as it is indeed not good enough to bring people to the big screen. The first impression that came to my mind when I heard the title was not good either. But do not just a movie by its name, especially an animated movie, as they never cease to surprise you, like this one which is the best movie of the year so far – yes better than The Lego Movie too.

Release date: 28th February 2014 (India); 7th March 2014 (US)
Running time: 92 minutes
Directed by: Rob Minkoff
Starring (voice): Ty Burrell, Max Charles, Ariel Winter, Leslie Mann, Stephen Colbert, Allison Janney, Stephen Tobolowsky, Mel Brooks, Stanley Tucci, Patrick Warburton, Lake Bell, Zach Callison, Lauri Fraser, Guillaume Aretos, Dennis Haysbert

@ Cemetery Watch
✠The Vampire Bat.