With our son and d-i-l off to office and grandsons to schools, it is time hi time hai for us. Even when we perform the daily chores on slow motion, we are free by 12.30 pm. Lunch over by 1.30, and it is movie time till they trickle back one by one. Thus on an average we get to see, courtesy Netflix, Amazon and TV’s own channels, five movies a week - Monday to Friday - like a physician’s prescription. Here is my take on some we watched.
The Debt (English). A team of three, two men and one lady, of Mossad (the Israel equivalent of CIA or CBI) is sent on a secret mission to capture and bring alive a German doctor, nicknamed ‘The Surgeon of Birkenau (a concentration/extermination camp)” to Israel to face a trial for his active role in poisoning and killing thousands of Jews during World War II Holocaust. Whether the team succeeds, partly achieves its goal, or fails, is all the film is about. With the screenplay shifting back and forth, it keeps you on tenterhooks as events unfold themselves. Rating: 4 stars.
That took me down the memory lane. I recollect having seen over the years at least three movies on Nazi’s atrocities. One is The Train featuring Burt Lancaster. The Germans overpower France, and try to smuggle some of the finest artefacts from French art galleries to Germany. Burt Lancaster, the French engine driver is forced, at gun point, to drive the train all the way up to the German border. The French Station Master gets a secret message to manipulate in such a way that the train does not leave the French territory; and he does so with alacrity. He alerts his counterparts in stations en route who promptly change the name-boards of stations as though the train is heading towards Germany, but is in fact making circles all within France. By then the Allied Forces gain upper hand and the German attempt is foiled. A fine movie.
The other is Eichmann. A Nazi member, his job was mass deportation of Jews to concentration camps. After WW II, he escaped to Argentina on an assumed name. One Jew who survives the concentration camp is settled in Argentina and has lost his eye sight since. By sheer chance he gets introduced to Eichmann in a park. By the smell of the scent that Eichmann patronised, he suspects that it was Eichmann and alerts Mossad. And Eichmann too notices the Concentration Camp ID number tattooed on the guy’s arm when he shook hands with him, and stays extra alert since then. Mossad goes about collecting more evidence on Eichmann. But Eichmann gives them a slip and was about to board a plane when Mossad whisks him away to Israel for trial. The treatment of subject deserved compliments.
Last but not the least, Life is Beautiful. The Italian hero got the Best Actor award at Oscar for this role. I was told that he specialised in comedy and got a national award for some other movie. At that time someone asked him if he could make a comedy out of a serious subject like Holocaust. And he accepted the challenge. The result, Life is Beautiful, another outstanding Holocaust movie.
On reflection, I wondered why Bollywood should not attempt some of these edge-of-the-seat thrillers drawing inspiration from British rule in India. Off the cuff, I cann’t recollect any movie other than on Gen. Dyer’s Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
We watched two Hindi movies. Talvar, (Irrfan Khan). Debutant director Meghna Gulzar, coming from the Gulzar stable, could have trimmed footage. Another version featuring K K Menon, I was told, was a shade better. Rating: 2-1/2 stars. Madaari, (also Irrfan Khan). A little long drawn. Just watchable. And, two more English movies - Heist (Robert De Niro, Jeffery Dean Morgan) gangster type. Nail-biting. Unwittingly your support leans on the criminal. Experiment in Terror, a 1962 movie. A little slow. Fetched the best supporting actor at Oscar for the villain. The movie brings back the charms of the good old days, and of black and white.
V VSundaram
30 Oct 2016
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