Osama

What a powerhouse of an Afghani movie "Osama" made by Siddiq Barmak, tells the story of life under Taliban rule in Afghanistan. An unnamed young Afghan girl and her mother are caught in the maelstrom that is Taliban in Afghanistan. Under Taliban rule, women are not allowed to study or work and not even allowed to walk on the streets unaccompanied by a male relative. So when the hospital in which the Afghan girl's mother closes under Taliban orders, she is left bereft of any income and the three of them i.e. the girl, her mother who is a doctor and her grandmother are left penniless. Till the grandmother decides to dress up the girl as a boy and send her to work. There is disgust everywhere among the Afghan residents but there is fear also of their harsh rule and retribution. The girl is named Osama by a street urchin who sees through her disguise and made to study in madraasa and perform ablutions. Till she gets caught. There is a heart rending and gut wrenching scene when the wailing girl is forced to hang from a well - it breaks the heart. In the end the film shows the mullah to whom the girl is forced to marry already has three wives and keeps all his wives under heavy lock and key. Brilliantly made movie by Barmak, it is a hard hitting commentary on the Taliban rule. The camera work is quite spectacular and Barmak has managed to extract maximum from all his performers and most of all from Marina Golbahari as Osama. It is both breath taking and brutal in its intensity. This movie was apparently made after the fall of the Taliban in 2003. 

  

Guitar Man

Guitar Man by Will Hodgkinson is an autobiographical journey of a 30s Britisher to learn guitar having virtually no musical brain at all since his birth. But it turns out to be delightful journey of the guitar itself. Will delves into the history of the guitar taking us to its roots. Enroute he takes us through some of the musical greats who have played guitar and he interviews a few of them and travels to US to delve into the Nashville blues, Memphis rock & roll, Mississippi delta blues all the way taking some lessons or two from the guitar masters, many of them reclusive ones. First up is an intro to Davey Graham who seems to be an iconical guitar player and his composition "Anji" is certainly one up at the top. Davey influenced guitarists like Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton among others. When i listened to Anji it certainly inspired me, it is apparently a difficult piece of composition and many seasoned guitarists have tried to play it without any success.  Being a lifelong music fan especially of the blues, this book resonates very much with me. Blues is one genre i love very much and it is one genre that has not died down the ages. Will's narrative is fluid, easy going laced with humour, having to navigate learning guitar and form a band of sorts, take care of his wife and kids as well. Highly likeable book for those who like music and the blues. Goodreads 5/5

National Education Policy

PIB press release dated 29th July, 2020

The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi approved the National Education Policy 2020 today, making way for large scale, transformational reforms in both school and higher education sectors. This is the first education policy of the 21st century and replaces the thirty-four year old National Policy on Education (NPE), 1986.  Built on the foundational pillars of Access, Equity, Quality, Affordability and Accountability, this policy is  aligned to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and aims to transform India into a vibrant knowledge society and global knowledge superpower by making both school and college education more holistic, flexible, multidisciplinary, suited to 21st century needs and aimed at bringing out the unique capabilities of each student.

 

Important Highlights

School Education

Ensuring Universal Access at all levels of school education

NEP 2020 emphasizes on ensuring universal access to school education at all levels- pre school to secondary. Infrastructure support, innovative education centres to bring back dropouts into the mainstream, tracking of students and their learning levels, facilitating multiple pathways to learning involving both formal and non-formal education modes, association of counselors or well-trained social workers with schools, open learning for classes3,5 and 8 through NIOS and State Open Schools, secondary education programs equivalent to Grades 10 and 12, vocational courses, adult literacy and life-enrichment programs are some of the proposed ways for achieving this. About 2 crore out of school children will be brought back into main stream under NEP 2020.

 

Early Childhood Care & Education with  new Curricular and Pedagogical Structure

With emphasis on Early Childhood Care and Education, the 10+2 structure of school curricula is to be replaced by a 5+3+3+4 curricular structure corresponding to ages 3-8, 8-11, 11-14, and 14-18 years respectively.  This will bring the hitherto uncovered age group of 3-6 years under school curriculum, which has been recognized globally as the crucial stage for development of mental faculties of a child. The new system will have 12 years of schooling with three years of Anganwadi/ pre schooling.

NCERT will develop a National Curricular and Pedagogical Framework for Early Childhood Care and Education (NCPFECCE) for children up to the age of 8 . ECCE will be delivered through a significantly expanded and strengthened system of institutions including Anganwadis and pre-schools that will have teachers and Anganwadi workers trained in the ECCE pedagogy and curriculum. The planning and implementation of ECCE will be carried out jointly by the Ministries of HRD, Women and Child Development (WCD), Health and Family Welfare (HFW), and Tribal Affairs.

 

Attaining Foundational Literacy and Numeracy

Recognizing Foundational Literacy and Numeracy as an urgent and necessary prerequisite to learning, NEP 2020 calls for setting up of a  National Mission on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy by MHRD. States will prepare an implementation plan for attaining universal foundational literacy and numeracy in all primary schools for all learners by grade 3 by 2025.A National Book Promotion Policy is to be formulated.

 

Reforms in school curricula and pedagogy

The school curricula and pedagogy will aim for holistic development of learners by equipping them with the key 21st century skills, reduction in curricular content to enhance essential learning and critical thinking and greater focus on experiential learning. Students will have increased flexibility and choice of subjects. There will be no rigid separations between arts and sciences, between curricular and extra-curricular activities, between vocational and academic streams.

Vocational education will start in schools from the 6th grade, and will include internships.

A new and comprehensive National Curricular Framework for School Education, NCFSE 2020-21, will be developed by the NCERT.

Multilingualism and the power of language

The policy has emphasized mother tongue/local language/regional language as the medium of instruction at least till Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond. Sanskrit to be offered at all levels of school and higher education as an option for students, including in the three-language formula. Other classical languages and literatures of India also to be available as options. No language will be imposed on any student. Students to participate in a fun project/activity on ‘The Languages of India’, sometime in Grades 6-8, such as, under the ‘Ek Bharat Shrestha Bharat’ initiative. Several foreign languages will also be offered at the secondary level. Indian Sign Language (ISL) will be standardized across the country, and National and State curriculum materials developed, for use by students with hearing impairment.

 

Assessment Reforms

NEP 2020 envisages a shift from summative assessment to regular and formative assessment, which is more competency-based, promotes learning and development, and tests higher-order skills, such as analysis, critical thinking, and conceptual clarity. All students will take school examinations in Grades 3, 5, and 8 which will be conducted by the appropriate authority. Board exams for Grades 10 and 12 will be continued, but redesigned with holistic development as the aim.  A new National Assessment Centre, PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development),  will be set up as a standard-setting body .

 

Equitable and Inclusive Education

NEP 2020 aims to ensure that no child loses any opportunity to learn and excel because of the circumstances of birth or background. Special emphasis will be given on Socially and Economically Disadvantaged Groups(SEDGs) which include gender, socio-cultural, and geographical identities and disabilities.  This includes setting up of   Gender Inclusion Fund and also Special Education Zones for disadvantaged regions and groups. Children with disabilities will be enabled to fully participate in the regular schooling process from the foundational stage to higher education, with support of educators with cross disability training, resource centres, accommodations, assistive devices, appropriate technology-based tools and other support mechanisms tailored to suit their needs. Every state/district will be encouraged to establish “Bal Bhavans” as a special daytime boarding school, to participate in art-related, career-related, and play-related activities. Free school infrastructure can be used as Samajik Chetna Kendras

 

Robust Teacher Recruitment and Career Path

Teachers will be recruited through robust, transparent processes. Promotions will be merit-based, with a mechanism for multi-source periodic performance appraisals and available progression paths to become educational administrators or teacher educators. A common National Professional Standards for Teachers (NPST) will be developed by the National Council for Teacher Education by 2022, in consultation with NCERT, SCERTs, teachers and expert organizations from across levels and regions.

 

School Governance

Schools can be organized into complexes or clusters which will be the basic unit of governance and ensure availability of all resources including infrastructure, academic libraries and a strong professional teacher community.

 

Standard-setting and Accreditation for School Education

NEP 2020 envisages clear, separate systems for policy making, regulation, operations and academic matters. States/UTs will set up independent State School Standards Authority (SSSA). Transparent public self-disclosure of all the basic regulatory information, as laid down by the SSSA, will be used extensively for public oversight and accountability. The SCERT will develop a School Quality Assessment and Accreditation Framework (SQAAF) through consultations with all stakeholders.

 

Higher Education

 

Increase GER to 50 % by 2035

NEP 2020 aims to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education including vocational education from 26.3% (2018) to 50% by 2035. 3.5 Crore new seats will be added to Higher education institutions.

 

Holistic Multidisciplinary Education

The policy envisages broad based, multi-disciplinary, holistic Under Graduate  education with flexible curricula, creative combinations of subjects, integration of vocational education and  multiple entry and exit points with appropriate certification. UG education can be of 3 or 4 years with multiple exit options and appropriate certification within this period. For example,  Certificate after 1 year, Advanced Diploma after 2 years, Bachelor’s Degree after 3 years and Bachelor’s with Research after 4 years.

An Academic Bank of Credit is to be established for digitally storing academic credits earned from different  HEIs so that these can be transferred and counted towards final degree earned.

Multidisciplinary Education and Research Universities (MERUs), at par with IITs, IIMs, to  be set up as models  of best multidisciplinary education of global standards in the country.

The National Research Foundation will be created as an apex body for fostering a strong research culture and building research capacity across higher education.

 

Regulation

Higher Education Commission of India(HECI) will be set up as a single overarching umbrella body the for entire higher education, excluding medical and legal education. HECI to have  four independent verticals  - National Higher Education Regulatory Council (NHERC) for regulation, General Education Council (GEC ) for standard setting, Higher Education Grants Council (HEGC) for funding,  and National Accreditation Council( NAC) for accreditation. HECI will  function through faceless intervention through technology, & will have powers to penalise HEIs not conforming to norms and standards. Public and private higher education institutions will be governed by the same set of norms for regulation, accreditation and academic standards.

Rationalised Institutional Architecture

Higher education institutions will be transformed into large, well resourced, vibrant multidisciplinary institutions  providing  high quality teaching, research, and community engagement. The definition of university will allow a spectrum of institutions that range from Research-intensive Universities to Teaching-intensive Universities and Autonomous degree-granting Colleges. 

Affiliation of colleges is to be phased out in 15 years and a stage-wise mechanism is to be established for granting graded autonomy to colleges. Over a period of time, it is envisaged that every college would develop into either an Autonomous degree-granting College, or a constituent college of a university.

Motivated, Energized, and Capable Faculty

NEP makes recommendations for motivating, energizing, and building capacity of  faculty thorugh  clearly defined, independent, transparent recruitment , freedom to design curricula/pedagogy, incentivising excellence, movement into institutional leadership. Faculty not delivering on basic norms will be held accountable

 

Teacher Education

A new and comprehensive National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education, NCFTE 2021, will be formulated by the NCTE in consultation with NCERT. By 2030, the minimum degree qualification for teaching will be a 4-year integrated B.Ed. degree .Stringent action will be taken against substandard stand-alone Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs).

 

Mentoring Mission

A National Mission for Mentoring will be established, with a large pool of outstanding senior/retired faculty – including those with the ability to teach in Indian languages – who would be willing to provide short and long-term mentoring/professional support to university/college teachers.

 

Financial support for students

Efforts will be made to incentivize the merit of students belonging to SC, ST, OBC, and other SEDGs. The National Scholarship Portal will be expanded to support, foster, and track the progress of students receiving scholarships. Private HEIs will be encouraged to offer larger numbers of free ships and scholarships to their students.

 

Open and Distance Learning

This will be expanded to play a significant role in increasing GER. Measures such as online courses and digital repositories, funding for research, improved student services, credit-based recognition of MOOCs, etc., will be taken to ensure it is at par with the highest quality in-class programmes.

 

Online Education and Digital Education:

A comprehensive set of recommendations for promoting online education consequent to the recent rise in epidemics and pandemics in order to ensure preparedness with alternative modes of quality education whenever and wherever traditional and in-person modes of education are not possible, has been covered. A dedicated unit for the purpose of orchestrating the building of digital infrastructure, digital content and capacity building will be created in the MHRD to look after the e-education needs of both school and higher education.

 

Technology in education

 An autonomous body, the National Educational Technology Forum (NETF), will be created to provide a platform for the free exchange of ideas on the use of technology to enhance learning, assessment, planning, administration. Appropriate integration of technology into all levels of education will be done to improve classroom processes, support teacher professional development, enhance educational access for disadvantaged groups and streamline educational planning, administration and management

 

Promotion of Indian languages

To ensure the preservation, growth, and vibrancy of all Indian languages, NEP recommends setting an Indian Institute of Translation and Interpretation (IITI), National Institute (or Institutes) for Pali, Persian and Prakrit, strengthening of Sanskrit and all language departments in HEIs,  and use mother tongue/local language as a medium of instruction in more HEI  programmes .

Internationalization of education will be facilitated through both institutional collaborations, and student and faculty mobility and allowing entry of top world ranked Universities to open campuses in our country.

 

Professional Education

All professional education will be an integral part of the higher education system. Stand-alone technical universities, health science universities, legal and agricultural universities etc will aim to become multi-disciplinary institutions.

 

Adult Education

Policy  aims to achieve 100% youth and adult literacy.

 

Financing Education

The Centre and the States will work together to increase the public investment in Education sector to reach 6% of GDP at the earliest.

Unprecedented Consultations

NEP 2020 has been formulated after an unprecedented process of consultation that involved nearly over 2 lakh suggestions from 2.5 lakhs Gram Panchayats, 6600 Blocks, 6000 ULBs, 676 Districts. The MHRD initiated an unprecedented collaborative, inclusive, and highly participatory consultation process from January 2015. In May 2016, ‘Committee for Evolution of the New Education Policy’ under the Chairmanship of Late Shri T.S.R. Subramanian, Former Cabinet Secretary, submitted its report.   Based on this, the Ministry prepared ‘Some Inputs for the Draft National Education Policy, 2016’.  In June 2017 a ‘Committee for the Draft National Education Policy’  was constituted under the Chairmanship of eminent scientist Padma Vibhushan, Dr. K. Kasturirangan, which submitted the Draft National Education Policy, 2019 to the Hon’ble Human Resource Development Minister on 31st May, 2019.  The Draft National Education Policy 2019  was uploaded on MHRD’s website and at ‘MyGov Innovate’ portal eliciting views/suggestions/comments of stakeholders, including public.

 

La Vendedora de Rosas

La Vendedora de Rosas or The Rose Seller, a brutal Columbian movie by Victor Gaviria. Loosely based on a story by Hans Christian Anderson it depicts the lives of young girls in a crime infested, drug infested suburb of Columbia. Children who run away from their homes because of violence in their homes get caught into the drug gangs racket, sniffing glue and trying to eke a living in a violent poverty ridden world. Monica is the fulcrum of the story, brilliantly played by Leidy Tabares, she is the one around whom the other girls revolve a sort of an unofficial leader of them. In comes Andrea all of 10 years old, also run away from a violent home. The girls have to be smart to survive in this squalid world where young boys are constantly looking to take advantage of them. All of them have one soft spot, for Monica it is her dead grandmother whom she had loved very much. A sort of Salaam Bombay kinda movie it delves into a Columbian life where violence is a just a few seconds away. A lot of scenes in the movie is quite realistic. Gaviria has managed to extract quite brilliant performances from all the kids in the movie.  

 

A billion colour story

A Billion Colour Story stands among the most quietly devastating achievements of contemporary Indian independent cinema — a film of immense moral sensitivity, political relevance, and emotional profundity. Written and directed by Padmakumar Narasimhamurthy, the film consciously distances itself from the shrillness and theatrical excesses that frequently characterize mainstream social dramas. Instead, it embraces a restrained, intimate, almost documentarian realism, allowing its themes to emerge not through rhetorical flourish but through silence, observation, and emotional accumulation. Shot predominantly in monochrome, the film transforms black-and-white cinematography into a potent metaphor for a society gradually surrendering its moral and emotional chromaticism.

At its philosophical core, however, the film is not merely about communal conflict; it is about the tragic erosion of innocence — that painful moment when a child begins to comprehend that the adult world is governed less by reason and compassion than by fear, prejudice, and inherited irrationalities.

The narrative revolves around eleven-year-old Hari Aziz, portrayed with extraordinary naturalism and emotional intelligence by Dhruva Padmakumar. Hari lives in Mumbai with his parents: Imran Aziz, a Muslim filmmaker played by Gaurav Sharma, and Parvati, his Hindu wife, portrayed with understated grace by Vasuki. Their marriage itself becomes symbolic of an idealized India — an India that transcends sectarian boundaries, embraces pluralism, and derives strength from coexistence rather than division. Hari, born into this interfaith household, represents an even more hopeful possibility: a generation that perceives identity not as a rigid prison of labels but as a fluid and humane spectrum.

Having returned to India after spending several years abroad, the family carries with it not merely artistic ambition but also a fragile idealism. Imran is attempting to create a socially conscious film, still clinging to the belief that cinema possesses the power to inspire empathy and nurture collective humanity. Yet idealism soon collides with the brutal realities of economic insecurity and social intolerance. Financial difficulties accumulate rapidly as the family struggles to sustain the project. Forced to sell their apartment and move repeatedly in search of shelter, they encounter a society increasingly consumed by suspicion, communal anxiety, and quiet bigotry.

What initially unfolds as a tender domestic drama gradually transforms into an unsettling portrait of modern urban intolerance. Landlords refuse to rent homes to Muslims. Housing societies engage in both overt and insidious discrimination against the Aziz family. Bureaucracy itself becomes an instrument of humiliation. Everyday conversations carry beneath them the faint but unmistakable undertones of sectarian hostility. The film’s brilliance lies in its refusal to dramatize cruelty flamboyantly; prejudice manifests instead through mundane interactions and casual exclusions, rendering it all the more disturbing in its authenticity.

Hari witnesses these developments with mounting confusion. Because he is a child, he cannot fully comprehend why his father’s religion should suddenly become a source of discomfort or distrust for strangers. Through Hari’s gaze, the film exposes the sheer absurdity of communal divisions with devastating clarity. Intelligent, curious, emotionally perceptive, and technologically aware, Hari repeatedly asks questions the adults themselves seem incapable of answering: Why should faith determine where one may live? Why are human beings so frightened of one another? Why does hatred appear infinitely easier than kindness?

One of the film’s most admirable achievements is that it never reduces Hari into a sentimental cinematic construct. He behaves like an authentic child — playful, awkward, imaginative, occasionally naïve, yet often morally wiser than the adults surrounding him. His innocent affection toward a neighbouring girl introduces moments of tenderness and emotional warmth, preventing the narrative from collapsing entirely beneath the weight of its melancholy.

As the story progresses, Imran’s optimism begins to fracture with heartbreaking inevitability. Initially, he remains convinced that India’s pluralistic ethos will ultimately prevail over division and fear. Yet repeated humiliations, mounting financial despair, and relentless prejudice gradually exhaust him emotionally. The transformation of Imran from hopeful idealist to deeply disillusioned man forms the emotional backbone of the film. Gaurav Sharma delivers a performance of remarkable subtlety; the character’s anguish never erupts into melodramatic spectacle but accumulates quietly through exhausted silences, defeated expressions, and the slow collapse of conviction.

Parvati, meanwhile, inhabits an especially painful liminal space. As a Hindu woman married to a Muslim man, she experiences simultaneously the privilege of belonging and the alienation of association. She understands the prejudice directed toward her husband, yet gradually realizes that her own identity cannot indefinitely shield the family from hostility. Her emotional fatigue becomes increasingly visible as financial instability and social rejection tighten their grip upon the household.

Perhaps the film’s most inspired artistic choice is its monochromatic visual palette. This is not mere aesthetic affectation but profound symbolism. The black-and-white imagery becomes a metaphor for a civilization forfeiting its “billion colours” — its plurality, diversity, emotional richness, and cultural complexity. The absence of colour reflects the moral greyness steadily overtaking public life. Yet the title itself remains quietly hopeful, suggesting that beneath this monochrome despair there still exist infinite shades of humanity, compassion, and coexistence waiting to be reclaimed.

Visually, the film possesses the sensibility of European art-house cinema rather than conventional Indian melodrama. Mumbai is not romanticized as a city of aspiration and vitality; instead, it appears fragmented, claustrophobic, and emotionally sterile. Characters are frequently framed through windows, corridors, and confined interiors, visually reinforcing the family’s growing entrapment and alienation.

Admittedly, the screenplay occasionally veers toward overt ideological articulation, and certain dialogues resemble social commentary more than organic conversation. Yet even in such moments, the sincerity underpinning the film rescues it from becoming manipulative. One never doubts the emotional authenticity of its convictions. The pacing remains deliberately contemplative, privileging emotional accumulation over sensational incident. Consequently, by the time the narrative approaches its devastating climax, the cumulative emotional force becomes overwhelming.

Without revealing every detail of the conclusion, the film ultimately descends into tragedy while still preserving the faintest glimmer of hope. Hari’s actions near the end emerge as symbolic gestures of resistance against hatred, despair, and inherited divisions. The final moments achieve extraordinary emotional power precisely because they arise from such grounded realism. The film refuses both facile optimism and corrosive cynicism. Instead, it insists — quietly yet firmly — that empathy, humanity, and compassion remain possible even within deeply fractured societies.

What renders A Billion Colour Story especially remarkable is its prophetic quality. Released in 2016, the film anticipated anxieties surrounding religious polarization, nationalism, and social fragmentation that would become even more pronounced in subsequent years. Yet the narrative never descends into partisan rhetoric. Its concern remains fundamentally humanistic: the emotional cost of intolerance, particularly upon children who inherit divisions they neither created nor fully understand.

The performances throughout are uniformly understated and believable, but it is Dhruva Padmakumar who anchors the film with astonishing emotional precision. His unaffected screen presence ensures that the narrative never loses its fragile innocence and vulnerability amidst its political despair.

Ultimately, the film succeeds because it approaches politics through emotional intimacy rather than ideological aggression. It does not merely advocate secularism or tolerance; it mourns the gradual disappearance of empathy from everyday existence. Beneath its social critique lies a profoundly elegiac love letter to the very idea of India — an India imagined not as a battlefield of competing identities, but as a luminous mosaic of cultures, languages, faiths, and shared humanity.

In an era increasingly dominated by shrill sensationalism and performative outrage, A Billion Colour Story endures as a rare cinematic accomplishment: a gentle film that wounds with devastating force, quietly poetic, politically urgent, and emotionally unforgettable.

 

 

A Star is Born

A Star Is Born (1937), directed by William A. Wellman, stands as one of the earliest and most authoritative explorations of Hollywood’s perennial fixation with fame, reinvention, and emotional disintegration. Long before its subsequent incarnations captivated newer generations, this original opus delineated the narrative blueprint with a quiet yet commanding assurance—an exquisite amalgam of melodrama, romance, and sly industry satire that coalesces into a profoundly affecting cinematic experience.

At its luminous core resides Esther Blodgett, portrayed with disarming sincerity by Janet Gaynor—a young woman from the unassuming expanses of rural North Dakota, animated by dreams of cinematic stardom. Her aspiration is untainted by vanity; rather, it emanates from an almost reverential faith in the transformative alchemy of cinema—a faith that Hollywood, in all its resplendent allure, appears only too willing to commodify. Armed with little more than determination and a modest inheritance, Esther journeys to Los Angeles, only to confront the cold indifference of an industry teeming with aspirants of identical ambition.

Fortune, however, assumes a more benevolent guise when she encounters Norman Maine, essayed with tragic gravitas by Fredric March. Once a star of incandescent brilliance, Norman now finds his career dimmed by the encroaching shadows of alcoholism and professional decline. Their meeting—seemingly incidental—becomes the fulcrum upon which the narrative pivots. Perceiving in Esther an unvarnished, nascent talent, Norman facilitates her ingress into the studio system, assuming the dual mantle of mentor and lover.

Under the aegis of studio executives, Esther is rechristened “Vicki Lester”—a nominal transformation that epitomizes Hollywood’s proclivity for manufacturing identities as assiduously as it does careers. As Vicki’s star ascends with meteoric velocity, Norman’s trajectory charts a sorrowful descent. The film thus orchestrates a poignant duality: the apotheosis of one life is inextricably entwined with the dissolution of another.

The narrative acquires greater emotional density as Norman’s alcoholism intensifies, precipitating public humiliations that corrode both his reputation and, by extension, Vicki’s burgeoning career. Among the film’s most searing sequences is an awards ceremony at which Vicki is lauded for her achievements, only for Norman to intrude in a drunken stupor—an episode rendered with excruciating clarity, laying bare the erosive toll of addiction upon dignity, love, and selfhood.

Notwithstanding her burgeoning success, Vicki remains inextricably bound to Norman, striving to salvage him even as he succumbs to self-destruction. Their relationship evolves into a tragic dialectic of devotion and imbalance: she ascends into the firmament of stardom, while he recedes into the abyss of obscurity. Ultimately, in a gesture at once self-effacing and devastating, Norman resolves to excise himself from her life, culminating in his suicide—an act of finality enacted through his solitary walk into the ocean.

The film’s denouement is suffused with an elegiac poignancy tempered by quiet triumph. When Vicki contemplates relinquishing her career in the throes of grief, she is persuaded to persevere—not as the studio-fabricated “Vicki Lester,” but as “Mrs. Norman Maine.” This declaration, articulated before the public gaze, resonates with layered significance: it is at once an homage to her late husband and a reclamation of identity that reconciles private bereavement with public persona.

What elevates A Star Is Born beyond the precincts of mere melodrama is its incisive critique of Hollywood itself. The industry emerges as both dream factory and merciless juggernaut—capable of elevating individuals to vertiginous heights, only to discard them once their utility wanes. Fame, in this cinematic universe, is neither stable nor enduring; it is a volatile construct, contingent upon youth, novelty, and the capricious affections of the public.

Visually, the film is distinguished by its early deployment of Technicolor, which suffuses its portrayal of Hollywood glamour with a luminous sheen. Yet this very radiance operates as an ironic counterpoint to the darker emotional undercurrents that course beneath the surface. The screenplay—crafted by Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker, and Alan Campbell—is marked by incisive dialogue and a perspicacious awareness of the industry’s inherent paradoxes.

In retrospect, A Star Is Born (1937) emerges not merely as a product of its epoch but as a timeless meditation on ambition, love, and the evanescence of success. Its enduring legacy resides not solely in the multiple remakes it engendered, but in its unflinching portrayal of the human cost of stardom—a theme whose resonance remains undiminished in the contemporary age. Indeed, its repeated reinterpretations—across four distinct cinematic iterations—attest to its status as a veritable cult classic, its narrative proving inexhaustibly compelling across generations.

 

Tokyo Story

There are films that narrate a story, and then there are those rare cinematic meditations that seem to hold a mirror to the quiet, unarticulated truths of human existence. Tokyo Story, crafted with exquisite restraint by Yasujiro Ozu in 1953, belongs emphatically to the latter category—a black-and-white elegy on time, family, and the gentle erosion of intimacy that modern life so often precipitates.

At its heart lies a deceptively simple premise: an elderly couple, inhabitants of a distant, almost forgotten village, undertake a long-awaited journey to visit their children in the sprawling, impersonal metropolis of Tokyo. Their lives, hitherto marked by the unhurried rhythms of provincial existence, are animated by a quiet anticipation—an almost childlike eagerness to reconnect with the very offspring for whom they had once sacrificed so much. The family itself is dispersed: a son in Osaka, others ensconced in Tokyo, and a devoted daughter who remains behind in the village, tethered to both duty and geography as a schoolteacher. There is also the spectral presence of a deceased son, whose widow, in a poignant twist of emotional allegiance, emerges as one of the few who embody genuine warmth.

What unfolds, however, is not the sentimental reunion one might expect, but rather a slow, almost imperceptible revelation of emotional distance. The children, ensnared in the relentless machinery of urban survival, are neither villainous nor overtly cruel; they are, in a more unsettling sense, simply indifferent. Their lives are crowded with obligations—professional demands that brook no respite, familial responsibilities that leave little room for reflection, and the quiet fatigue of modern existence. Even the act of taking half a day off becomes a logistical ordeal. In this milieu, the parents, once central to their children’s universe, find themselves relegated to the periphery—received with courtesy, yet deprived of genuine attention.

Ozu, with his characteristic subtlety, eschews melodrama. There are no grand confrontations, no overwrought declarations of neglect. Instead, the pain resides in the pauses, in the polite evasions, in the almost invisible shifts of tone that the elderly couple, with the acuity born of a lifetime’s experience, are quick to perceive. Their realization of being, in effect, an inconvenience is rendered with a poignancy that is both devastating and dignified.

Amidst this emotional austerity, the figure of the widowed daughter-in-law, Noriko, emerges as a luminous counterpoint. Her kindness, unforced and unselfconscious, serves as a quiet indictment of the biological children’s detachment. It is she who offers the parents not merely hospitality, but something far rarer—attention, empathy, and a sense of being valued.

The narrative takes on an added layer of fragility during the couple’s return journey. The mother’s sudden illness, necessitating an unscheduled halt in Osaka, is less a dramatic twist than a gentle reminder of mortality’s ever-present shadow. When they finally return to their village, the inevitability of decline asserts itself with quiet finality, culminating in a denouement that is as understated as it is profoundly moving.

One of the film’s most resonant lines encapsulates its moral core: the recognition that love for one’s parents is meaningful only in their lifetime, that respect deferred is, in essence, respect denied. It is a sentiment that lingers long after the film has concluded, echoing with uncomfortable clarity in the viewer’s conscience.

Ozu’s cinematic language is one of stillness and precision—unhurried compositions, low camera angles, and a rhythm that mirrors the cadence of everyday life. Even the Japanese language, with its lilting cadence and meticulous clarity of pronunciation, becomes an integral part of the film’s texture. The repeated utterance of “Arigato,” that seemingly simple expression of gratitude, accrues layers of meaning—sometimes sincere, sometimes perfunctory, always revealing.

The performances, uniformly understated, resist the temptation of theatricality. Yet among them, Chieko Higashiyama as the mother delivers a portrayal of extraordinary grace—imbuing her character with a quiet resilience and an unspoken reservoir of love that makes her eventual decline all the more heartrending.

In the final analysis, Tokyo Story is not merely a film; it is an experience—one that gently but inexorably compels introspection. It reminds us, with disarming simplicity, that the most profound tragedies are often not born of malice, but of neglect; not of cruelty, but of preoccupation. And in doing so, it secures for itself a place not just in the annals of cinema, but in the deeper recesses of human understanding.

Sambizanga

Sambizanga is not merely a film—it is a quiet yet unyielding act of resistance, a cinematic murmur that carries the force of a moral indictment. Directed by Sarah Maldoror, it stands among the foundational works of African political cinema: austere in form, deeply humane in spirit, and shaped by the lived urgency of anti-colonial struggle. Set against the early tremors of the Angolan War of Independence in 1961, the film avoids melodrama in favour of something far more unsettling—an almost documentary-like portrayal of oppression, endurance, and the slow awakening of political awareness.

The narrative unfolds in colonial Angola, primarily within the working-class district of Sambizanga in Luanda—a place marked by repression, where Portuguese authorities detained and tortured political dissidents with chilling regularity. At its centre stands Domingos Xavier (Domingos de Oliveira), a humble construction worker whose quiet connection to the liberation movement aligned with the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola gives him neither grandeur nor fiery rhetoric. He is not a revolutionary leader, but an ordinary man drawn into extraordinary circumstances.

His arrest arrives with bureaucratic suddenness: impersonal, routine, and therefore all the more terrifying. Seized by colonial police, Domingos is taken to a prison where he is interrogated and pressured to betray his comrades. His refusal leads not to dramatic spectacle but to something more disturbing—a slow, deliberate breaking down of body and spirit. The film does not exaggerate brutality; instead, it presents it as process: the erosion of dignity, the draining of strength, and the quiet courage of silence. Domingos endures—beaten, threatened, and mentally tormented—yet remains unbroken, his suffering forming the moral core of the film.

Running alongside this ordeal is the emotional centre of the story: the journey of his wife, Maria (Elisa Andrade). If Domingos represents resistance, Maria reveals its human cost. Initially unaware of her husband’s political involvement, she is thrust, after his disappearance, into a confusing maze of colonial systems. Carrying her child, she travels from village to village, prison to prison, asking the same question: where is my husband? Hers is not a heroic quest in the traditional sense, but a journey defined by repetition, exhaustion, and quiet determination. Along the way, she encounters indifferent officials, moments of kindness, and other women whose stories reflect her own—gradually revealing that her personal grief is part of a wider shared reality.

Meanwhile, news of Domingos’s arrest spreads through the community. What begins as an isolated event grows into something larger: conversations deepen, awareness spreads, and private suffering begins to take on political meaning. The film distinguishes itself here by refusing to portray revolution as spectacle; instead, it shows it as a gradual build-up—of pain, injustice, and shared understanding.

Maria’s journey ends in devastating irony. She continues her search, holding on to hope, unaware that Domingos has already died from injuries suffered during interrogation. The film offers no easy resolution—no reunion, no emotional release—only the painful gap between what is known and what is not. Yet this personal loss feeds into a broader historical movement: the uprising against colonial rule is already underway.

Maldoror adopts a style rooted in realism, using non-professional actors and real locations to ground the film in lived experience. The performances of Domingos de Oliveira and Elisa Andrade are understated and convincing. There are no dramatic musical cues or forced emotional peaks—only long takes, silence, and expressive faces. The effect builds gradually: the viewer is not told to feel outrage; it emerges naturally.

Unlike many political films that focus on leaders or battles, Sambizanga centres on ordinary people. Domingos is not glorified; Maria is not idealised. Their suffering is repetitive, everyday, and therefore deeply real. This choice turns the film into a study of how political violence shapes daily life—how colonial rule is felt not through grand events but through constant, quiet hardship.

Although the story begins with Domingos, it ultimately belongs to Maria. Her journey presents the struggle from a different perspective, showing how women carry the emotional and social weight of political conflict. The film makes it clear—without overt declaration—that women are not secondary to such struggles; they are at their emotional and moral centre.

The dual narrative—Domingos’s imprisonment and Maria’s search—creates a powerful contrast between closed and open spaces, silence and questioning, certainty and uncertainty. This tension builds a sense of inevitability, leading to the painful divide between Maria’s hope and Domingos’s fate.

Historically, Sambizanga is a landmark: one of the earliest feature films produced in Angola and in Portuguese-speaking Africa, and the first feature film directed by a woman on the continent. It is both a work of art and a historical document, created during the very struggle it portrays.

This is not an easy film. Its pace is slow, its emotions restrained, and its story avoids conventional satisfaction. Yet this restraint is its greatest strength. The film understands that the true horror of oppression lies not in isolated acts of violence, but in systems that make such violence seem ordinary. By focusing on one family, Maldoror reveals the structure of an entire political condition. In the end, Sambizanga is less about Domingos’s death than about what follows it: the growing realisation that such suffering can no longer be endured in silence. It is, simply, a cinema of awakening—quiet, steady, and unstoppable.

 

Andrei Rublev

Andrei Tarkovsky’s monumental and oft-misunderstood cinematic opus, Andrei Rublev, is less a conventional biographical narrative than a meditative pilgrimage through the troubled soul of medieval Russia, refracted through the life and legend of one of its most revered iconographers, Andrei Rublev. Situated in the turbulent interregnum between the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries—an era when faith flickered uncertainly amidst brutality—the film contemplates not merely the man, but the metaphysical burden of creation itself.

Rublev, believed to have lived between approximately 1360 and 1430, emerges in Tarkovsky’s vision not as a prolific artist busily engaged in the act of painting, but as a tormented seeker, grappling with the moral and spiritual contradictions of his age. In a performance of extraordinary restraint and interiority, Anatoly Solonitsyn incarnates Rublev as a figure of quiet anguish, whose artistic voice is paradoxically expressed through prolonged silence. Indeed, Tarkovsky makes the audacious choice of withholding the painter’s creations from the viewer until the film’s denouement, as if to suggest that art, in its truest form, must be earned through suffering, contemplation, and transcendence.

The narrative unfolds in episodic fragments—vignettes that drift from one moment to another with a dreamlike, almost liturgical rhythm—eschewing linear progression in favour of thematic resonance. Through these episodes, Tarkovsky conjures a Russia besieged not only by external adversaries but by internal contradictions. The princes of the land, ostensibly defenders of the faith, are depicted as capricious tyrants, whose raids upon churches—replete with desecration, slaughter, and unspeakable violations—reveal a chilling dissonance between professed piety and lived barbarity. Christianity, far from being a unifying moral force, appears fragile, even imperilled.

Compounding this atmosphere of dread are the incursions of the Tartars, portrayed as alien both in physiognomy and in cultural disposition. Whether driven by incomprehension or indifference toward the Christian ethos, their presence amplifies the sense of civilizational siege. Yet, Tarkovsky resists the temptation of simplistic binaries; violence in the film is neither stylized nor sensationalized in the manner of a Quentin Tarantino spectacle. Instead, it is rendered with an almost sacred gravity—unflinching, harrowing, and profoundly disquieting.

Among the film’s most searing moments is the sacking of a church in which Rublev has taken refuge. As chaos engulfs the sanctuary and human depravity reaches its nadir, Rublev is compelled to commit an act that irrevocably alters his spiritual trajectory: he kills a fellow Russian to prevent the assault of a helpless woman. This singular act of violence, born not of malice but of desperate moral necessity, precipitates a crisis of conscience so profound that Rublev renounces speech altogether, embracing silence as a form of penance. In this gesture, Tarkovsky encapsulates the paradox of righteousness—that even the most justified act can leave an indelible stain upon the soul.

Visually, the film is nothing short of transcendental. Tarkovsky’s camera lingers with painterly devotion upon the Russian landscape: horses moving in spectral procession across vast, wind-swept plateaus; rain-soaked earth shimmering with primordial vitality; flames and shadows dancing in chiaroscuro compositions that evoke the very iconography Rublev himself might have painted. These images are not mere aesthetic indulgences but philosophical inquiries, inviting the viewer to contemplate humanity’s place within the cosmic order.

It is little wonder that Andrei Tarkovsky himself has attained a near-mythic status among cinephiles, his works revered as sacred texts of cinematic art. Andrei Rublev stands as a quintessential cult classic—demanding, enigmatic, and profoundly rewarding for those willing to engage with its austere beauty. Produced in 1966, during the height of the Cold War under the shadow of Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, the film inevitably incurred the displeasure of state censors. Its unvarnished depiction of violence, its spiritual preoccupations, and its refusal to conform to ideological orthodoxy ensured that it remained suppressed and contested for years.

Yet, as history so often demonstrates, suppression only burnishes the aura of greatness. Today, Andrei Rublev endures not merely as a film, but as a profound meditation on faith, art, suffering, and redemption—a cinematic fresco that, much like Rublev’s own icons, reveals its deepest truths only to those who gaze upon it with patience, humility, and an openness to transcendence.