The Runner

The Runner
Davandeh
Iran
1985
94 Min
Color
Persian
DIR Amir Naderi
PROD Ali Reza Zarrin
SCR Behrouz Gharibpour, Amir Naderi
DP Firooz Malekzadeh
CAST Abbas Nazeri, Majid Niroumand, Musa Torkizadeh
ED Bahram Beizai
My Rating : 5/5


Amir Naderi’s The Runner is such a powerful film that it literally screams out for the values that it stands for. It’s a timeless film that is especially relevant today for Iran as well as the rest of the world.

Amiroo is an orphan who is often screaming out to distant ships and airplanes. They excite his young mind and he dreams of travelling to far off lands in them. His life unfortunately is full of hardships. He begins working as a rag picker until one of his friends suggest collecting bottles. Later he sells ice water and eventually becomes a shoe shiner. At every stage of these odd jobs he faces injustice and young Amiroo fights it with all his heart. Life is a constant struggle for Amiroo but he is not a person to give up. He has a conviction that he is born to win. In fact, he enrolls himself in a part time school just because he cannot tolerate the taunts of a magazine seller. He memorizes his lessons shouting against the waves of the sea as if challenging nature itself to stop him. In a poignant finale, Amiroo and his friends compete in a race which is an astounding metaphor for their fight against their own destinies. Amiroo predictably wins this race but he also shares his trophy with others. Amiroo is a symbol for the fight to survive in this world full of injustice and betrayal. He is a model of hope for a largely disillusioned world that desperately needs people like him to put up a fight.

The Bogeyman

The Bogeyman
Kummatty
India
1979
90 Min
Color
Malayalam
DIR Govindan Aravindan
SCR Govindan Aravindan
DP Shaji N. Karun
CAST Ramunni, Master Ashokan, Vilasini Reema, Sivasankaran Divakaran, Kothara Gopalkrishnan, Shankar, Vakkil
MUSIC M G Radhakrishnan, Govindan Aravindan
My Rating : 5/5



Films have the power to develop a nostalgia for times in the past that sometimes never actually existed in our lives. Aravindan’s “The Bogeyman” reminded me of a childhood that I hope I had lived.

Aravindan takes us into a fictional village in Kerala with beautiful hilly landscapes. We see the sun rising in the morning, children going to school, the old village lady filling water from the pond and getting teased by the kids, children playing in the school playground, singing songs, studying etc. In short, we see a life free from worries and full of dreams of wondrous lands and fascinating creatures until one fine day, The Bogeyman arrives.

He is a strange person wearing a fake beard, holding a staff and a wooden pole balanced on his shoulder, singing wondrous songs and performing magic tricks. The children are initially scared of him but soon they start getting comfortable with him. The Bogeyman treats them to sweets and games and in return the children take care of him when he falls sick. He is a welcome distraction to the kids and they can’t seem to get enough of him. He evokes a goodness in them as they even stop being nasty with the old lady. They dance and sing along with him, a moment that we wish could freeze in time. But unfortunately, time never stops and one fine day, The Bogeyman decides to leave the village.

Before leaving, he performs one last trick to entertain his dear children. He transforms each one of them into different animals for some time before returning them back to their human form. Unfortunately, one of the boy’s who got transformed into a dog, runs away from the scene as he gets chased by a real wild dog. He is now trapped in the dogs body and has been chased far away from his home. Fortunately, he gets discovered by a teenage girl from a rich family who is fond of dogs. She puts a collar on him and treats him like her pet. The dog remains unhappy even after the love he gets from the girl and finally they decide to set him free. By chance, the dog is able to return to his family where his mother recognizes him. The family tries all kinds of god men to perform ceremonies to transform the boy back into his human form but its all in vain. In the mean time, the old village lady dies. Hopes of The Bogeyman returning to the village start diminishing when one fine day his chanting voice travels across the village and the dog rushes to him. As soon as he hugs The Bogeyman, he is transformed back into his human form. A rather predictable ending you might think.

But then, the boy returns home and does something inexplicable. He releases his pet parrot from the cage into the sky and there are poignant images of birds flying in formations. We now realize that the boy learn’t an important lesson through all his misery which most of us never learn in our entire lives. We take our freedom for granted. We never realize what it actually means to be free. Maybe every village needs a Bogeyman to teach us this important lesson.

The Woman in Rumour

The Crucified Woman/The Woman in Rumour
Uwasa no onna
Japan
1954
83 Min
Black and White
1.33:1
Japanese
DIR Kenji Mizoguchi
SCR Masashige Narusawa, Yoshikata Yoda
DP Kazuo Miyagawa
CAST Kinuyo Tanaka, Tomoemon Otani, Yoshiko Kuga, Eitarô Shindô, Bontarô Miake, Chieko Naniwa, Haruo Tanaka, Hisao Toake, Michiko Ai, Sachiko Mine, Kimiko Tachibana, Teruyo Hasegawa, Teruko Daimi, Kan Ueda, Saburo Date, Sumao Ishihara, Kotaro Kawada, Keiko Koyanagi, Midori Komatsu, Kanae Kobayashi, Kyôko Hisamatsu
ED Kanji Sugawara
PROD DES Hiroshi Mizutani
MUSIC Toshirô Mayuzumi
My Rating : 5/5




Plight of women in prostitution has been the subject of several Mizoguchi films and Women in Rumour (The Crucified Woman) is one of his best takes on the subject. The reason I say this is because this film has a very complex screenplay that Mizoguchi seems to execute with ease without losing out on the main issue of interest. This film is a precursor to Street of Shame; an excellent finale by Mizoguchi on the subject of prostitution which is similar to this film in its basic storyline but handles it from a different point of view.

We are introduced to a madame of a geisha house played by Kinuyo Tanaka whose daughter has just returned from the city after a failed love affair and a suicide attempt. Through the eyes of this new entrant, we are introduced to the mechanics of the household where regular customers arrive at their usual hour. Then there are some customers that require a visiting geisha. Men appear ridiculous and lecherous as they get drunk silly and create a ruckus in the house. Some of them try to lure the geisha’s away from the house in order to cheat them and some have their eyes on the madame to become a partner in the business. Women somehow appear to hold their own in all this madness. They have to tread a fine line in the patriarchal society where they have to take the help of men without getting exploited by them. The running of the household initially seems to embarrass Tanaka’s daughter but with the help of a visiting doctor(who appears to be a good person), her opinion about them seems to change. She realizes the misery of the geisha’s who, more often than not, have to support poor dysfunctional families and try to prevent their siblings from entering the business. Tanaka herself seems to want to give up the business by helping the young doctor set up a clinic and hopes to be his lawful wife some day. Unfortunately, Tanaka’s daughter also seems to fall in love with the doctor who seems to reciprocate this feeling. When Tanaka discovers this mutual love between her daughter and the doctor, she is naturally heartbroken and her dream to escape the business is shattered. Eventually though, we realize that the doctor happens to be a vile opportunist and his treachery seems to bring the daughter and mother closer than ever before. In the meantime, one of the geisha’s at the house dies of cancer and her young sister requests Tanaka’s daughter to let her work in their house as a geisha.

The film reaches a poignant and ironic finale as on one hand, Tanaka’s daughter starts managing the affairs of the house(with Tanaka falling sick) and on the other hand, there is the inevitability of the sister of the dead geisha entering the vile business. The film ends on a wistful remark by one of the geisha’s hoping for a day when there would be no need for poor young girls to sell their bodies to make a living. We cannot help but pray along with her for the same to happen some day. For the moment though, there seems to be no end to this vicious cycle.