the rise of the new woman - mayakkam enna vis a vis 7th sense

Only recently I have learned that it is usually not safe to voice your own opinion of   a movie when it is overwhelmingly disliked and ridiculed by an audience. Since our audience can tolerate to a great extent extremely poor movies without making noise in the theatres( how do you explain the movies of dr.vijay) , if they are totally pissed off with a movie, then it must mean that the movie is an extremely good one.

Mayakkam enna belongs  to the latter category. However for  physical safety reasons, I kept my views when asked as “oh it is  a boring movie”

After watching 7th sense, I felt that it was mindless of me to go and watch a movie in theater anymore . the whole movie was an exercise in revulsion . till then  I had not approved of kamal hassan’s weak attempt at intellectual antics, but after that movie, I decided the entire family is not to be trusted.  Their capacity to let down an expectant audience seems to be a genetically inherited trait that it seems only the  bodhi dharma technique will cure that family and bless tamil cinema.
 To my surprise, it seems the tamil audience bought the movie without much thinking, apparently they have forgiven a lot of movies on their way to blockbustership.   They have created super stars and little super stars for a lot of wrong reasons  and it is understandable they have begun to wait for the maitreya , sorry, oops , bodhi dharma ….

  Jokes apart, my cousin’s marriage served as an occasion to reconsider my decision to boycott movies in theatres. Mayakkam enna was a fresh breath  of air… a fragrant change in a whirlwind of obscenities.  It  was a statement of courage and reaffirmation of conviction in one’s own vision of cinema. It is not without its own faults but it has to be pointed out that it is a significant step away from the garbage brand that directors like murugadoss and gautam menon  seem to be fostering in the name of a new wave in tamil cinema .hence its weaknesses has to be understood in that perspective rather than  than a strict admonition of its mistakes.

Mayakkam enna  can be classified in the genre of the underdog genius movie – an unrecognized  talent - a prodigy gone wrong and redeemed by ‘love’- most notable example being the beautiful mind by ron howard .

It is the life of two extraordinary people  whose defiant attitudes and reckless vibrancy sets them apart from the lesser mortals they are obliged to live with. At the first look it may seem like the movie is about karthick swaminathan who struggles to gain recognition in the merciless world of wildlife photography but a much deeper look reveals that it is as much about , (if not more) his counterpart yamini who is relentless in her beliefs  about what entails her life’s mission.  In fact, the film can only be understood in terms of her character, as the whole movie is roughly divided into two halves – before and after their marriage and the seemingly contrasting approaches of yamini towards life before and after marriage .

She is the modern girl who is willing to date a guy(sundar) who pesters her  to be his girlfriend ..she does so because she is confident about herself and knows her limits .at the same time, her independent disposition allows her to be open about her attraction towards his friend , karthick.  She is not the timid sort who accepts the so called mis fortunes of womanhood that other silverscreen ideal women do not miss a chance to preach about.  
After the marriage, she does not give up after her husband goes near -insane because she knows what does it take in the modern world to follow one’s dreams.. following one’s heart in this consumeristic , globalised world is to be not available as a commodity in the market and hence not exactly profitable in money terms.. it makes one go mad but the madness is the path to liberation in a creative life and sidestepping that  process only breeds mediocrity .it needs a loving heart to empathise the torture such a mind has to undergo before it comes out with the phoenixoid creativity ..yamini is one such  woman who knows the eccentricity of a genius as well as the paltry opportunism of his friends who seek her as an object of lust(the scene in the car) . she is a woman of the world, who can choose to do what she believes is right, even to the extent of not talking with her husband because his act of violence aborts their child. The movie ultimately moulds a new woman , who knows where both her foci and loci lie. Do u even want to compare her with the daughter of siddha vaidhyar who stands as the champion of recombinant tamil identity , miss subha srinivaasan…( all she does is  a few hip twists in a half dozen songs while mouthing loaded dialogues in a funnily new slang of horrible tamil)

.  selva raghavan  constructs the character of karthick swaminathan in dhanush quite flawlessly and I think it is parallel to the effort one saw in the protagonist of kaadhal konden, albeit with a lot more elan. Dhanush proves again that perhaps he is the only consistent young actor worth the name in tamil cinema industry .one can easily contrast his extraordinarily ordinary face and its raw expressions with the paucity of the more handsome and much acclaimed (though without justice) surya who looks humbled by any scene demanding challenging acting.. I do not remember any other actor who can  do with so many close up shots . in a  countless number of scenes , dhanush proves his mettle..take for example the frustration with which he confronts the plagiarist madhesh krishnaswamy  after his photograph is published in national geographic, or the silent zen like meditated state he goes to, as he watches a leaf descend  while stalking the cormorant, or the recklessness with which he breaks the head of  his best friend’s bride  with a bottle .Kudos, flawless performance.

The film also talks about hitherto untalked or less talked areas. The confusing web of relationships that exist in the life of the earning cyber youngsters, the discriminations that exist in elite fields such as photography, the debate on whether creativity is gifted or acquired ,  the practicality with which illicit relationships are approached by modern youth, plagiarism  .. all these are quite new to tamil cinema except as a casual references  till now.

 There are a lot of glitches on the technical side , though..the graphics are unconvincing..the final sequence when he becomes the best photographer and receives an award looks like an attempt to bring forth the feel of  A BEAUTIFUL MIND..sorry, selva, it looked too artificial for a movie like this..

Perhaps selva raghavan’s biggest problem is himself.he has truly the marks of a great director, what he needs is the confidence to completely explore his cinematic language and that can only come with the recognition that is his due..

It is the most encouraging sign of a new tamil cinema I have seen this year.. welcome back , selva… after the debacle of aayirathil oruvan

A SERIES OF SO CALLED POETRY

3.INTERPRETING MIRACLES

he never said he would walk on water

neither did he attempt it in the neighbourhood lake

he never brought pastries from thin air,

nor did he vanquish snakes 

slithering through our hallways ..

and it never rained 

when he played the flute..

but 

the day he died,

there was a strange fragrance 

in the house of our dirty streets..

people who used his believing heart

to run their errands

and scoundrels who trampled over the flowers 

of his incredible naivety

lost their sleep in their cosy beds..

children thronged his corpse,

still laughing over the bland dragon flies

and vividly colored bananas 

he gave them everyday..

the rain that started after 

the funeral 

went on for three days and three nights..

 just before the pall bearers came

and the hearse was almost ready,

a leaf from our porch tree

slowly descended to the ground..

when the little boy picked it up 

with curious hands,

somehow , we  remembered his grandfather's

guileless smile..

 that was when we saw him 

arise from the corpse ,

and walk past the mourners,

offering his shoulder 

yet again ,

to the pall bearers...

laughing aloud 

to himself, 

as he narrates to them

another of his meaningless 

and empty jokes..

A SERIES OF SO CALLED POETRY

2. INTERPRETING FAILURES.


.a failure may mean many things,

anything,...

 

a failure means 

the world has shut its door,

first time , another time or the last time ..

a failure means 

your sweaty time 

has wailed over the 

pendulums for nothing

in the neighbor's eyes ..

a failure may mean(thus)

your neighbor 

need not be a friend, 

not necessarily..

a failure means 

your confident sureness of yourself 

will henceforth be a drunken boast ..

a failure means 

you have to prove again 

to justify your not being a burden..

a failure means 

instructions from all corners 

to refine yourself 

to the standards of contemporary success;

to decipher the TEACHINGS that failure

"imparts"

a failure 

PLAINLY MEANS 

you have not succeeded 

plus or minus reasons or excuses

a failure means 

once again you are lonely...

A SERIES OF SO CALLED POETRY

1. THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST

i entered a room of mirrors

the room entered  me..

we became brothers

cannibals of  soul..

we were the grand dreams 

each conceived in the other's 

silent sleep

we could not look without the other's eyes

concurring.. 

then i hated and desired..

an existence mired in sorrow..

then i killed myself 

 bathed in my own blood..

and out of that death

blossomed

a flower with no face 

pinned on the shirt of 

the man without a past..

and 

now,

all who hate 'me'

are granted one more chance 

to try and love...

stoking the fires of fascism - elite squad

We watch a movie for different reasons ; then we scramble to tell our friends why they should watch it.. the reasons may vary...chinatown and cider house rules were both a class apart..elite squad is a movie i would suggest only people who are so interested in movies and critics- people who can waste their time to learn how a movie should never be made – to watch..

                                                                                                     The movie is set in rio de janeiro evolving around the operations of a special police forces which  deal with the favelas( favelas are something like our slums – these were originally formed of the blacks , later the rural migrants – now they are the havens of drug lords) and trafficking that is rampant. BOPE  is  a macho police force who are trained like military men, they are taught to be tough; taught to kill and show no mercy.. as nascimento,the protagonist himself admits at one time,’i don’t care how people  started out , i just worry about what they have become’ .perhaps this is the vision of the entire movie. It vehemently denies to explore into the layers of crime, about the root cause, ramifications, what soever, it puts forth a single solution- which is violence .  Nascimento ,a captain in the BOPE  forces,whose voice over narrates the entire story (, is told in the style of pulp fiction, in chapters, ) wants to quit the forces to spend some more time with his family. He at times suffers from the guilt that bothers him from being the cause of a death of a very young guy.

                                                         But he wants to make sure that the person who replaces him is as good and as ruthless he is .  he is confused between neto and matias- the former has so much of heart and courage but he is not mind sharp, while the latter is so thoughtful but he thinks too much before acting strong and aggressive , with his ideal notions of peace and justice.. in fact matias is shown as a student of law, because he thinks both law and policing are to defend the law. In law school he has rich friends who have contacts with drug dealers and are shown as screen stereotypes of spoilt kids.

                                                                                            The film moves toward the logical conclusion , the sharp mind of matias losing all that will make him a good man – notably his conscience is distorted and his compassion dries up. He moves away from reading foucalt  and sociology to being one of the elite squad.

What is disturbing about this film is , this film cannot be outright trashed .the director is not a naive , trigger happy police cheerleader whom you find in many of our movies- like kaakka kaakka by gautam menon, for example. Here is someone who is clever enough to prop up the symbols of equality and fight against injustice and violation of human rights. And then he puts countepoints to win the arguement . but this is an argument he cannot hope to succed, that is why this film fails.

                           I would be dumb if i believe using foucalt’s quotes about how penal system is mostly a manifestation of vested power interests  and dressing the BOPE  in ss like uniform and with skull as their emblem,  having the drug lord wear a ‘che “ t shirt  are coincidences. In fact, that very quote of foucalt proves why the film is wrong.. the whole film talks about the corruption and collusion with thugs in the regular police force , but who gets hounded – the drug dealer (whose crime may be because of a troubled childhood, as the fim with a non committal shrug acknowledges and doesn’t care about the fact ). My point is , for all the high moral tone and as upholders of righteousness , the BOPE  does not stand up to the establishment(which is corrupt). It is the god damn establishment ‘s most virtuous stooge. Then is it not a instrument of vested power interests?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvP49XoO9WE

                                  The training scenes reminded me of kubrick’s full metal jacket  in which there are extensive training scenes of the  US marines before the Vietnam war . sure both had similar sttings and dialogues .

Rifles do not kill. Only a hard heart does( full metal jacket)

Take care of your souls , your bodies belong to us (elite squad)

Only the perspective is different. Kubrick doesn’t glorify the violence, he laments over the inevitable consequence of it. Padilha delights in the endorsing of it- his glorification of violence is , to say the least, obnoxious .

i retched twice during the movie. I like to believe it is purely from indigestion and not over the fact that this film won the golden bear in berlin film festival .      As funny as obama’s nobel.... what else can one say ...

p.s . i am posting peter bradshaw’s  review of the movie in guardian....i liked it a lot- an epitome of precise words..

                                     Here is the biggest, fattest, dampest squib of the week: perhaps the most disappointing film ever to have won the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival. Brazilian director José Padilha made the documentary Bus 174, about a man who stormed aboard a city bus in Rio in 2000 and held the passengers to ransom at gunpoint on live TV. His fiction feature, based on the memoirs of a cop in the city's paramilitary elite squad, tells the story of how these hardcore officers were horrified to discover in the 1990s that Pope John Paul II on his upcoming visit wished to stay near the favelas and that they were therefore required to storm these no-go areas to clean them up. There's an awful lot of very cliched Brazilian slum-porn, gun-porn and poverty-porn, all knocked off from the influential favela masterpiece City of God. The movie's evasive cynicism, morphing gradually and insidiously into lipsmacking adoration of the macho lawmen in their SS-style black uniforms, is pathetic. The worst moment comes when the anti-hero Captain Nascimento (Wagner Moura) jeers at a feeble cop applying to join their ranks: "You belong with the whores, you belong with the pimps, you belong with the abortion clinics." Um, excuse me? Abortion clinics? Getting a reactionary sermon from a pumped-up man in uniform is the last thing we need.

                           

why 'emerging india ' is one big 'chinatown'

chinatown is not an indian movie..it does not refer to anything indian, not even for a joke.. yes, it makes fun of the chinese in one scene.. Probably, Roman polanski, when he made the movie , never even thought of the subcontinent... it was 1974, the problems we so hotly debate now had not claimed this importance or, god forbid, we were still too naive at that time to understand something was happening to us.. (sure, we were being screwed, albeit anaesthetically)
                      But when i finished  watching this neo-noir movie, and the rolling credits came on to the screen, i could not think of anything else but india ..I have heard people say , the best novel begins after you read the last line.. Chinatown made me realize that this holds good for any heartfelt piece of art..A whole new story unfolded , the canvas kept expanding after the movie was over..it reminded me of an india, where people get thrown out of their farmlands,; where dams and power projects , displace people, mercilessly, at throwaway compensation rates , bearing the shining banner of development..(True , they never said , development of whom..)..where special economic zones and nuclear plants scatter the natives and tribes.. where, nothing can be done and finally , we resign to our fate and collapse on our porches, exhausted and say,'this is our country,this is how it has always been, we can change nothing here.. '

                                                                                                         The film is set in the los angeles of 1930s, when people were busy building the city it has become now..Big dams are being built, one of them recently broken, causing  a huge casualty, as we are told towards the start of the film..The head of the department of water and power, Mr.Hollis mulwray is the sole voice against the corporate boss's insistence on building another dam, he was the one who made the department of water and power a public owned corporation from what it was, a private company. It had been run by Mr.Hollis and his partner,Mr.Noah cross(who happens to be the anti thesis of our film), and it went public much against the wishes of latter.. Incidentally, Evelyn , noah cross' daughter is the wife of hollis mulwray..
                                                                                                         The movie begins with an impostor acting as evelyn hiring Jack gittes, the private detective to look into the illicit relationship she believes her husband is having..gittes is an ex-cop who resigned because of his bitter experiences in a place called chinatown, where the establishment  was so corrupt that he could not do anything good.The unsuspecting gittes, photographs mulwray with a younger girl which becomes a scandal .. Later, he realises the trap he had walked into . however, mr mulwray is found dead, drowned in the reservoir, the police calling it as an accident..after that the movie progresses with a lot of suspense..gittes is hired by the real  evelyn (faye dunaway)who says she wants to know her husband's murderer and also he is hired by noah cross ,who wants to find the girl mr mulwray had been seeing(he doesnt give a reason)
                                                                                                gittes finds out that noah cross is the murderer,; motive- hollis found out about the illegal diversion of water from the reservoir to the orange groves of the nearby valley, the land of which had been bought from poor farmers at cheap prices..the girl whom mulwray was seeing turns out to be the daughter of evelyn, born to , Mr.noah cross, not Mr.hollis ..yes the whole film revolves around the incest, the forcible rape of the daughter by her own rich father who believes who could buy anything ... who could get way with anything ..gittes is not able to do much to help evelyn  ..he is arrested and evelyn is shot while she flees with katherine, her daughter cum sister..noone wants the truths of gittes.. he walks way with his friends, muttering, 'this is chinatown..you can do nothing in china town .'.
                                                                                                                               for one moment , i ask you to look into the symbolism that each character stands for..Noah cross is the corporate boss , in nexus with bureaucracy and the police..he cheats people , exploits the farmers, swidles tax payers' money and rapes his own daughter..in one scene he says, 'at the right time and right place, a man is capable of anything' .. this is a sort of justification given, when someone is accused.. (you dint get the opportuniy to steal, lest you would have been the thief)- the proverbial sharing of the spoils with which satan lures man always..now if we consider the land and people as something of our own, we can understand the parellel between evelyn and the society.. she is the personification of the valley ,its people etc. she is raped by its caretakers, police and the corporates ..the people who try to protect her - mr hollis and gittes are helpless..the former is killed and the latter is not even  allowed to reveal the truth..
                                                                                                                          in one scene, gittes notices a difference in evelyn's eye and asks her what it is, for which she says that it is a birth defect.. it is not without coincidence that she is finally shot in the eye..does the director want to say, the society is too naive- it has not got the right vision? maybe ..
                                           throughout the movie jack nicholson- gittes, keeps saying , he could not do anything worthwhile in chinatown.. the  climax also takes place when both gittes and evelyn try to escape via chinatown.. chinatown grows in stature throughout the movie until the viewers accept the helplessness of anyone in chinatown.. we accept the words of chinatown's district attorney.. "you think you know what you are up against, but the truth is, you dont"
                                                            Alberuni said, 'though there are innumerable  human races in innumerable countries, the common thread that unites them is humanity, the common ness of their emotions, happiness, anger etc' - i will be tempted to add one more thing-corruption, corporate bossism.. after all we have to adapt our academic learnings for the changing world, shouldnt we..?
that is why i wouldnt be surprised if you call modern india as one big chinatown...

                                                                                                             

                                                                                                         

celebrating the error - the cider house rules

This is my first movie review, so friends, readers and film buffs, go slow on me.. after i watched the movie , i really felt this is such a deftly made and sensitive movie which needs a good review , atleast in our circles.. Then i thought , i should look over at the earlier reviews to see if they had already wrote from the perspective i was about to write on.. but they hadnt... so here  i am..



The cider house rules is not your regular poignant movie; it doesnt choke you to tears
it is not the "hit hard on your head" powerful movie- it s not your schindler's list or hotel rwanda - you will not roll in your bed sleepless , guilty for having been born and having lived a life you had never thought you would have to live..
but , doubtless, you would smile to yourself, perhaps with a little tear drop lounging in your eyes , unaware of it .. but you would certainly revisit your life , wonder at the passage of time and maybe through these meanderings of your thought, fall asleep peacefully... but , LET ME TELL YOU,  it is not your feel good movie either..

what stands apart here is the realisation that dawns on you.. It is not a message that is driven home to your heads, but rather, you learn together with 'Homer wells' , the protagonist ..
To be brief, the movie takes the course of 'the coming of age' movies - along the footsteps of Homer wells, the orphan who was twice adopted and twice returned (the first couple think he does'nt make any noise at all, the second complain that he cries too much) back to the orphanage he was born into - st.clouds..the palace where the princes of maine and kings of new england reside- the titles bestowed upon the unwanted babies of the world born to disgusted mothers of the world by the chief doctor of the place- dr.larch(michael caine).. homer lives in the place all his life learning the intricacies of obstetrics from the doctor, though he has never been to high school even.. dr. larch has no qualms about being an abortionist, infact he considers it a service on his part, and a right on the part of the parents..but homer could never stomach it..  Homer wants to go into the world rather than practice medicine and uses the services of wally and candy, the young lovers who come to st clouds for an abortion to get out of the place .. he ends up as an apple picker in 'wally' worthington's cider house..From here on , the film travels in the blurred frostian apple orchard scape of the hardworking negro apple pickers and the wet liquid love blossoming between Homer and Candy, left behind by wally in favour of war..


                   the heart of the movie lies in the scene where he discovers in the cider house walls,  a set of rules scribbled in a scrap pf paper.. instructing the illiterate negroes not to smoke in bed and not to go up on the roof..the rules themselves seem so irrelevant .. And as mr rose, the crew boss of  apple pickers remarks, " the rules are put up by people who have never lived in the cider house" it seems so symbolic of life.. arent we all following rules jotted down by people who either do not exist anymore or people who do not follow it themselves..

the movie has people breaking rules every where.. It could be seen as a trade off between dr larch who breaks the rules for his conscious purposes and arthur ross, tha apple picking incestuous illiterate who travels the extremes of his conviction , albeit unaware of what he is doing..and homer wells stands in between .. everyother character look like a variation of these three people..dr larch upholds his practice of abortion, - he is saving   a woman's life from septicaemic practices of quacks and morons- prevents the young adolescent girls from the consequences of their carnal acts- deaths due to secrecy and ignorance, he calls them..
larch trains homer in medicine without sending him to medical school- a breach of law- later he forges his certificate-as he famously says to the nurse who confronts him  "and dont be holy about the law to me here - what has the law done for anyone here(orphanage)"- infact this one sums up the movie along with arthur rose 's outburst i already mentioned..

mr rose breaks the rules  by his sin of incest then amends for it by killing himself- which in itself is a break of  law..candy and wally break the rules -written by society - by having premarital sex and then correct it by another break of law - abortion- same can be said of her affair  with homer while waiting for her lover from the war front- (as homer later says, noone can do anything about it)-

finally , homer, while doing abortion for mr rose's daughter, realises the inevitability and perhaps the beauty of breaking the rules, and of throwing the rules' paper into the burning stove..

the essentiality of bob dylan - an amateur's look at counterculture part 3

When i was a school kid, our History cum English cum civics teacher, who always had a penchant to put poems to tune and sing aloud in front of us, by way of teaching, turned to a new page in our english reader textbook and began his usual chores.As always , the tune was outright bad, he was singing the poem like a number from an old MGR movie. I do not know if i enjoyed the experience at that time, but i still remember that the lines left me with a numbness one would , may be too emotionally, attach to the after- feelings of a trance. I even think, that was my first love affair with free verse poetry.. the poem went like this ..

How many roads must a man walk down, before they call him a man
How many seas must a white dove sail, before she sleeps in the sand
How many times must the cannonballs fly, before they are forever banned

* The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind

How many years must a mountain exist, before it is washed to the sea
How many years can some people exist, before they're allowed to be free
How many times can a man turn his head, and pretend that he just doesn't see

How many times must a man look up, before he can see the sky

How many years must one man have, before he can hear people cry
How many deaths will it take till he knows, that too many people have died

It was written by someone called Bob Dylan. I had never seen that name before and so quickly forgot it , however the first two lines stuck with me. How many roads must a man walk down? An ardent fan of rajni kant at that tender age, i imagined the number of roads would have to be eight (ra ra ra ramaiyya song from batcha) .. 

          Many years later, when i came across a folder named bob dylan in my best friend's music files, i just passed over and went to the next folder. but my friend told me, "i think you will love bob dylan". There were a couple of songs in it.. LIKE A ROLLING STONE  and  BUTTERFLY KISSES (the latter actually a bob carlisle song)..when i heard, i was , to say the truth very amused. To my conditoned mind, this was very unorthodox. I remarked" i think this guy has something interesting to say, but why did he have to sing it..it is more like a poem"

          Six months later , i was a die hard fan of dylan and i was practically digging into everything i could find about him.. i wonder if anyone else connected with music had so much written about them- so much filmed about them, not in terms of volume, but in terms of criticisms and interpretations...

                                                                                                                 

In the sixties america, bob dylan's is not an unremarkable tale - in the land where martin luther king jr dreamt of an extraordinary american society where the black would walk to school hand in hand with the white, where the young generation (of the baby boom) tried its hand at everything that was till then taboo- alternate sexuality, drugs, oriental religion- you name it, they did it- weirdness and genius were often  a happy couple , a common sight .. 

                                                                                                                               And one would have to say, bob dylan was up to it.  A jew who hid his origins, naming himself  after dylan thomas, all the time talking about the "commie" woody guthrie, when he entered greenwich village, he must have been a sight for the onlookers. Those days, people there , were all doing something creative.. they would gather around in a cafe, someone would sing, while money would be collected in his hat upside down - almost everyone there would perform apart from being an audience. So, to make it to the top from there must have demanded something just more than 'luck' -which is often attributed to an unexplainable success story-

                                                                                          The initial songs of bob were reflective of the civil rights movements taking place at that time , infact , most of them were anthems for anti war movements- much of them still relevant .take for instance times they are a changing 

http://www.zappinternet.com/video/ViMsTofFek/Bob-Dylan-The-Times-they-are-A-changin-1965

 Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

or listen to' god on your side', who killed davey moore, only a pawn in your game, ww 3 blues etc.. these songs have a strong political note and demands no less courage to be written and sung by a guy with not much backing, who was just in his early twenties..he became an icon of the anti war movement, people identified themselves with him- his scruffy jeans and work shirts- his drawling voice and the next door boy face..

                                                                 To say the truth, he had a finger on the pulse of his generation..his uniqueness lie in the way poetry and folk music blend to give you a treat to your mind and soul.. and the rebelliousness exuding in the way he performs alone, with just  a guitar and harmonica and mouthing out lyrics that are as impressionistic as a painting by vincent van gogh ..

                                                                                               perhaps, it is his very nature to not conform to any norms, not even the norms of the anti war movement that tried to mould him as just a protest singer or the folk music fans, who ditched him when he went electric(switched over to electric guitar) - here he truly upheld the pride and uncompromising grit so many of our artists truly lack.. he did not pawn his music to gain popularity; he risked it.He would rather not sing at all than sing to someone else's tunes.. after the late sixties, his songs experimented with all the genres and expanded the perception of, nay shattered the frontiers of popular music . However though he may have left the movement proper and entered into art for art's sake kind of stand, his role in the counter culture movement is very significant even if it is for a short time. That his songs form the chief staple of anti war concerts still , can never be refuted. Or else how does one explain his popularity in vietnam

                                                                                      Not for nothing did the pulitzer prize was given to him in 2008.. awarded him a special citation  for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power".

                                                                                   In the 1980s bob began a tour of the world traveling with musicians performing throughout.. it goes on still.. it is called the NEVER ENDING TOUR .. PERHAPS, more than anything else, this symbolises his spirit...not resting, not stagnating..

because as someone said, STAGNATION IS DEATH

COURTESY 

* WIKIPEDIA PAGES ON 1. BOB DYLAN 2. GREENWICH VILLAGE 3. BEAT GENERATION

* MARTIN SCORCESE DOCUMENTARY- NO DIRECTION HOME.. 

*PENNEBAKER'S DOCUMENTARY, DONT LOOK BACK 

* I M NOT HERE - A MOVIE BY TODD HAYNES

AND ALL THE SONGS OF BOB DYLAN