– Willy Wonka, ‘Charlie And The Chocolate Factory’.

 The quote is an impeccable description of the movie. The movie is a bildungsroman. A number of hard hitting revelations strike Charlie, most of them resembling Joycean epiphanies. Charlie had encountered hardships previously but nothing resembled the epiphany he experienced when he realised the scarcity of good fortune. 

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a musical fantasy film directed by Tim Burton. It was released in the year 2005. The screenplay was written by John August. The movie is based on the 1964 British novel of the same name by Roald Dahl. The cast included names like Johnny Depp who played the role of Willy Wonka, Freddie Highmore who played the role of  Charlie Bucket,  David Kelly, Helena Bonham Carter, Noah Taylor, Missi Pyle, James Fox, Deep Roy, and Christopher Lee. The narrative follows the life of Charlie as he wins a contest and is given the opportunity of visiting the famous chocolate factory owned by Willy Wonka along with four other children.

The entire film was shot at Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom. The director used built sets and practical effects. 

The story has many profound facets. 

Charlie learnt something of paramount significance in the factory.

How little glee there existed in the world that was there to be found and therefore so many more reasons to celebrate each and every moment like it is the last one.

The paradise or opulence where Charlie previously found solace was shattered by the cold reason of Willy Wonka inside the chocolate factory. The factory was the place that would transform Charlie forever. 

The film received positive reviews and still is regarded as one of the classics that all children must watch. 

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The End of the F***ing World is a  dark comedy-drama series.  The series follows  James played by Alex Lawther who is a 17-year-old boy. He believes himself to be a psychopath, and Alyssa played by Jessica Barden is an angry classmate that sees in James an opportunity to escape from her turbulent life.  The series features Gemma Whelan, Wunmi Mosaku, Steve Oram, Christine Bottomley, Navin Chowdhry, Barry Ward and Naomi Ackie in supporting roles.

James embarks on a strange journey with Alyssa in search of her father. They become the center of numerous misadventures in the process. 

The series is based on Charles Forsman’s mini-comics The End of the Fucking World. 

The series has gathered critical acclaim. It is praised for its adroit screenplay and unique subject matter. Jessica Barden and Alex Lawther’s stellar performances enhance the quality of the series. It has won several awards and received numerous other nominations.

The series is special as it shows the alienated state of man in modern society. How terribly necessary it has become for everyone to possess the qualities of a utilitarian, to survive in a ruthless and indifferent world. It traces the importance of relationships, the formation of bonds that can still rescue mankind from the dire consequence of eternal doom. 

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For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird,

That cannot fly. “

Langston Hughes

The story of Lion is a strange melange of varied emotions. A lost boy finds a home away from home full of love and compassion for him. A feeling of cosmopolitanism asserted through Google Earth – an indication of how closely people are connected across the globe.  The experience of home and the world for a little kid who lost his way back home for no fault of his. A mother who never stopped dreaming that her child would return home one day. The child was oblivious of the very definition of home as Saroo was never quite uncomfortable in Tasmania. He even fell in love with a gorgeous lady. 

Lion is an adaptation of the autobiography of Saroo Brierly titled A Long Way Home. As believed by many, in the case of Saroo, the truth was actually stranger than fiction. 

However, the movie should not be mistaken as the story about the return of a son to his actual home. Lion is a movie about a man who had two homes. Places he could call his own, people he could love uninhibitedly. 

Garth Davis does a decent job as the director of the movie. The screenplay appears compact and adroit performances by Nicole Kidman, Dev Patel, Rooney Mara and Sunny Pawar makes Lion a must watch. 

Lion can be best described as the voyage of hope that was never lost. It found comfort somewhere yet it had to return somewhere else, somewhere his destiny could neither avoid nor abandon. Further, Lion also indicates that technology with all its nefarious possibilities could still do the unthinkable, bringing a son back to his mother, the one who lost him too early.

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Emil Cioran, A Short History of Decay

The confession of the old man in the final episode of Squid Game resembles Cioran’s philosophy about nothingness. 

Perhaps his reason to device a little game around death and misfortune was not so fiendish either. After all, it took lonely and greedy individuals back to their childhood when their desires were innocuous and the bright colors around were enough for them. 

Squid Game is a tale of desire and greed told impeccably through a dialectical lens of innocence and experience, friendship and deceit, avarice and benevolence. However, it can be best described as a battle between the dubious and sometimes paradoxical definitions of good and bad, of free will and predestination, of love and hatred.

A group of individuals in desperate need of money volunteer to participate in a game show oblivious of the consequences. An unflinching sense of greed and ambition brings some of them back to the proverbial arena of death, this time making them conscious participants in the game of destruction and opulence. 

These blinded competitors are led through a darkened labyrinth filled with juvenile games like Red light, green light, tug of war, making honeycombs, preserving marbles, musical steps, and finally squid game. These games are taking them a step closer to death and the winner towards a devastating sense of futility. 

They compete in a simulation of a world controlled by corrupted and ecstatic power magnets ready to bet on the death of competitors according to their whims and fancies.

One can’t help but be reminded of a specific line spoken by Gloucester in King Lear by William Shakespeare : 

” As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.”

The only difference is that God has been swiftly replaced by power in a world of sin and agony.

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Black Widow chronicles the life of Natasha Romanoff better known as Black Widow. The movie is produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.  It is the twenty-fourth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The film is directed by Cate Shortland. The screenplay is written by  Eric Pearson. The cast includes known names like Scarlett Johansson who plays the role of  Natasha Romanoff a.k.a Black Widow,  Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Olga Kurylenko, William Hurt, Ray Winstone, and Rachel Weisz. The movie is set after the events of Captain America: Civil War (2016) chronicling Romanoff on the run who is coerced to confront her past in the process. 

The viewers are taken back to the occurences of Romanoff’s past, her life as the little daughter of super-soldier Alexei Shostakov and Black Widow Melina Vostokoff who work as Russian undercover agents in Ohio. 

Cut to 2016, Romanoff is now a fugitive for violating the Sokovia Accords.

We thus witness the journey of perhaps one of the most loved characters of the MCU. We witness life and death of equally heroic proportions. We witness Natasha Romanoff for the first time behind the uninhibited courage of Black Widow driven by a stellar performance by Scarlett Johansson. 

It is perhaps one of the finest examples of witnessing the person behind the mask and further intensifying the agony for her triumphs, her losses, and her eventual sacrifice.

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Orange Is the New Black is an American comedy-drama series. It was created for Netflix by Jenji Kohan.  The story is based on Piper Kerman’s memoir titled Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison.  It chronicles her experiences at FCI Danbury which is a prison. The series is produced by Tilted Productions in association with Lionsgate Television.  Orange Is the New Black premiered on Netflix for the first time in the month of July 11, 2013. In February 2016, the series was renewed for a fifth, sixth, and seventh season respectively.  The seventh and final season was released in the month of July 26, 2019.

 It was widely acclaimed by critics throughout its run and has received many accolades. 

The series strikes the right chord almost every time with its impeccable blend of humor and tragedy. There are lines in the series that appear misplaced and bizarre. They initially unsettle the empathetic viewer. However, if heard carefully they invoke strong emotions that act as resistant forces against abysmal beasts both apparent and invisible. At times it is evident that some characters in the movie survive and later thrive for the potent presence of humor. 

The plot is subversive and powerful and most of the praises have been garnered for the flair and the courage evidently shown in the series. The characters appear powerful and powerless at the same point in time. Their defiance looks enticing almost making people question conventions, question their understanding of colors, and verify if at all the color orange is orange and not black.

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Is but a dream within a dream” 

                 Edgar Allan Poe

 Christopher Nolan spent almost a decade writing the screenplay of Inception. He ends up designing the most labyrinthine conduit of greed, dreams, and deceit. The process of bringing the script into life for Nolan was nothing short of a stirring game of chess against an opponent who is both unknown and formidable. As the narrative revolves around dreams and reality. It is also a trick par excellence devised by a clever mind in Christopher Nolan who is perpetually playing a game of bluff bamboozling both the audience and the characters in the story. It would be extremely difficult for one to decipher the difference between reality and dreams after watching the movie for the first, the proverbial limbo as used in the movie. From the box of Pandora, an invincible force crumbles the perception of most of the characters in the movie-making them question the state of their existence. Are they dreaming now or were they always dreaming only to find a way out of them for one? 

Dom Cobb played by Leonardo DiCaprio invades the minds of other people to steal their ideas.  However, he is hired by a  billionaire to introduce an idea into a rival’s mind, and make him believe that it was an idea he had himself perceived.  Saito played by Ken Watanabe makes him an enticing offer that would finally allow him to reunite with his family, something that makes him think of ‘home’ all the time. 

The team Cobb assembles include Arthur played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt Eames Tom Hardy, Yusuf played by Dileep Rao, and Ariadne played by Ellen Page. Michael Caine plays the role of Professor Stephen, his father in law and Marion Cotillard plays the role of Mal Cobb, Dom’s deceased wife (someone he keeps on seeing in the entire film).

The movie has some mind-bending visuals especially when Cobb introduces Ariadne to the world of dreams when the city turns on itself like a tube. The Cinematographer ( Wally Pfister ) deserves a lot of credit for the fantastically shot sequences throughout the movie. 

Inception is still the movie Cinephile talk about when they discuss complicated plot lines yet they marvel at the quality performances delivered or the astonishing Cinematography of Wally Pfister. It lures us into the uncomfortable domain of uncertainty where we question the very state of our existence: Is this real? , Are we a part of some cynic’s extended dream?

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The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity…” 

William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

When Yeats wrote these lines, he could see the predicament clearly. He could see the brutality, the lawlessness, the chaos in Gotham City. A kind of chaos that has nothing glorious about it, chaos beyond the enticing verbosity of Lord Baelish in Game of Thrones.

Joker by Todd Phillips is a tale of caution with nothing romantic about the anarchy of Arthur Fleck, his path towards total uninhibited annihilation. 

Joker reveals a narrative of double metamorphosis, one specific and the other general. It shows the metamorphosis of Arthur Fleck into the Joker ( a self-proclaimed vigilante with the license to kill) and the transformation of Gotham from a city of order to a city of destruction with wreckage, fire, and dust everywhere. 

The intention of the director is an attempt to shed light perhaps on the monstrosities behind the making of a monster, a testament to the belief that every man (good or bad) does have a story. 

Fleck appears to be confessing something to his psychiatrist following a routine procedure.

The binary has been established from the very beginning as we learn that Arthur Fleck is a struggling comedian who lives with his mother. If there is one person who could affect him, it is his mother. Fleck’s struggle in an indifferent Gotham City appears real. He does small gigs where he dresses up as a joker in parties and functions. He is bullied, harassed, and beaten up in one of the scenes. 

The reason Fleck loses his mind is that he failed to find a way upward. He realized the divide between the rich and the poor, the privileged and the downtrodden was an eternal one, that there existed no fluidity and he could never fathom the echelons traded by Bruce Wayne and his father. There is also an indication that suggests Thomas Wayne be the father of Arthur Fleck, making the Joker and Batman siblings (one for the fandom).

Fleck meets a young girl to who he is attracted while simultaneously losing hold over reality as we later understand. 

He shoots a number of young men inside a metro as he finally becomes the Joker, pretending to be the epitome of justice, the face of the oppressed in Gotham City finally giving it back to the ones in power. 

Phillips impeccably outlines the traits of blind fanaticism and how demonic the outcome would be if people blindly followed an anarchist who has little sense of reality. It is not a surprise that we see death, fire, and cacophony in the streets of Gotham City by the end of the movie. 

The story of the Joker must not be told by the torchbearers of liberation as we must be wary of the sinister smile full of blood, forced upon himself by the devil with tears of naked destruction in his eyes. 

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There are three significant characters in the movie: Mary Elnor – a woman executed for practicing witchcraft in the nineteenth century, Gerry Fenn – a reporter working on mysterious occurrences, and Alice Pagett- a deaf girl. 

The story unfolds in three significant parts of varying lengths. The death of Mary Elnor, her history of practicing witchcraft, and her association with Satan (the devil) play a significant part in the movie. 

Alice’s ‘miraculous’ recovery of her voice and a number of mysterious occurences caused by her would raise an eyebrow or two for the strange nature of certain events with or without an apparent instrumental motif.

The third most important part of the movie is the climax depicting the devil’s final attempt to cause total mayhem. 

The movie follows the trajectory of a typical horror movie with a story of erroneous understandings and clueless fanaticism. It also projects Alice as a heroic figure as she must make the most important decision of abandoning the apparent abilities that were given to her as a curse to transfer total control of the world to the devil. There are a few unnerving visuals that might make one feel uncomfortable yet these serve as potent tools to inject fear into the psyche of the audience.

In the domain of misunderstandings, the director believes that words mean very little, almost interchangeable without any hassles. However, the storm brought in by the spirit of Mary causes quite the story invoking a harsh yet necessary awakening.

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