I’ve been trying to watch more films recently – particularly from countries/regions I’m not too familiar. One of the cool things about the time we’re living in is that a lot of artists and institutes around the world have decided to put out their work for free for people to experience, which I feel is the absolute right thing to do in the circumstances.
I posted a bunch of prose and comics available for free in my newsletter, but I’ve been watching both plays and movies that are available right now. The National Theatre put out Frankenstein with Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch, and Antony & Cleopatra with Sophie Okonedo and Ralph Fiennes. Shakespeare’s Globe did a live viewing of Romeo & Juliet, currently has The Two Noble Kinsmen and will be showing MacBeth from the 11th. Meanwhile, the Dharamsala International Film Festival has a viewing room with some excellent movies.
On the DIFF viewing room, I watched Turup – a Bhopal-based movie about caste, religion and gender, that’s a bit ham-handed about some aspects, but is admirable as a venture by an entire collective of people from various backgrounds within Bhopal.
The other movie that I found myself intrigued by was Jallikattu, a satirical movie from Kerala about a village whose hidden resentments spill out when a buffalo meant for the slaughter escapes and rampages through the village. It gets repetitive in its themes occasionally, and the ending overstays its welcome (particularly by sliding into a version of blackface was as as needless as it was iffy), but I found myself wishing more of Bollywood was this direct in its treatment of humanity as it exists instead of the innumerable versions of urban wish fulfilment it keeps spitting out.