A Movie that Moved Me

Watched a movie last week called 'The Boy In the Striped Pyjamas' - a story set during WW II, where the 8 year old innocent son, Bruno, of a German Concentration Camp Commandant who has been told that they are there to supervise a collective farm, befriends a young Jewish boy who is interred at the camp and how the horrors are brought to life. He grows old beyond his years and has a thousand untold questions in his eyes when he meets his father who up till then he had assumed to be a good man, naturally. He sees his mother's anguish and inability to cope with the reality that her husband and by association, they are all involved in the systematic butchering of other human beings, her fights with her husband, he sees but does not understand why a doctor should work as a menial servant in his house just because he is a Jew.

Befriending this 8 year old Jew boy, he is appalled at what he learns but after all he is just a kid so when his Jewish friend is caught with some forbidden food which Bruno gives him, Bruno gets scared about the consequences and lies about his giving the food. Bruno feels contrite when he sees the boy's swollen and cut face - he realises that it was his lie which got the little boy beaten. Thoroughly remorseful, he apologises and when in a few days, the boy is worried that his father has not come back from his work in a couple of days, he impulsively volunteers to come into the camp across the barbed wire and help him search for his father.

Things get out of hand when both the boys are rounded up (since Bruno has dressed similar to his Jew pal in striped pyjamas to blend with the rest of the inmates - the concentration camp uniform) and marched to the gas chambers and killed along with the other hapless men, just as his parents are hunting for him high and low, and his father stumbles on his discarded clothes along the barbed wire fence and sees the black smoke and smell emanating from the chimney and lets out a howl of pain as he puts two and two together.
Was it poetic justice? I don't know but seeing the innocence destroyed by evil convoluted men with minds that can barely be called human, drained me and I couldn't stop the feeling of despondency.
We see the same kind of behaviour in different manifestations every day, the degree of cruelty may vary but why are human beings so vile? No other animal is...the human brain unfortunately is a double edged sword and the cuts it makes sometimes never heal.

Review of Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani

Tuesday, Dec 1st. 2009 evening was supposed to have been the usual: work- dinner-TV-sleep schedule of any working day, but then, some friends dropped in and by the time they left, it was too late to do any work, so we decided to just chill out - grab a simple bite and watch a movie and we chose what we thought was a rom-com, easy on the brains and timepass. Well, I can suggest a new title for the movie "Ajeeb Prem ki Galeej Kahaani". Absurdity scales new heights, whatever possessed Ranbir Kapoor to do this poor man's take on "Wake Up Sid!" (in which, he was excellent, by the way) I do not know? Its getting a bit boring to watch him as a no-good school drop out (he is regressing, in Wake Up Sid he is a 10th dropout, in this he called it quits after 9th.!) who is brought to his senses not by his parents' plight but by his love for a girl...Katrina Kaif who plays his love interest is fairly good in comic roles but, here somehow, she feels that making faces and rolling her eyes will pass for comedy...the story line isn't there, so don't bother looking for it, songs are okay...all in all, grab the DVD, do not blow money on a multiplex. It is certainly not worth it. Popcorn, you say? Buy ACT II yaar and just pop it in the microwave. Better still, you quit now and give this movie a pass...Cheers:)

From tomorrow is serious stuff, son's exams coming up...maybe i will do something on Sunday, till then, only a wedding to attend, which I find tedious...but gotta go...