Saturday, 12 April 2014

Water

(2005)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

Human Wrongs

Slow-moving essay on widows’ lack of human rights in pre-partition British India – a problem still extant today.

Interestingly, water is used as a metaphor for both spiritual cleanliness and ethical uncleanliness in its being used for communal, ritual cleansing - with strangers. An analogy is also made between removing the British Raj with Passive Resistance and changes in their own – often hideously-discriminatory - Hindu culture.

The movie concludes, correctly, that the only real freedom comes from within - as well as from the courage to recognize this simple fact. Where the film falls down somewhat is in its preference for arrestingly-photographed images over thematic content.

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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.