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...