The Departed

You like Costello though he is a killer, though you see he is depraved, remorseless, and, in the end, falling off his rocker. You like Costello because you see Jack Nicholson inhabiting him. Matt Damon is not so fortunate in his role, though. You give him all the hate you feel for his character, though you know it's Damon and he's merely playing the part. Why the difference? I must think. But you love Leonard di Caprio, he is vulnerable like Vera Farmiga says to him when he comes visiting her in her home, and you feel for him all the sorrow you're capable of, for almost all of two hours and thirty-one minutes.

Has anyone ever screwed up his face like a rat's so perfectly, and as endearingly, as Nicholson? Have you seen the movie? How did you feel seeing how the naughty look never left his face, even as blood welled in his mouth? For me, watching him in this movie was like attending a masterclass.

The movie has so much music in it, music I like, from start to end, beginning with the Stones! The music had to be there, to balance the relentless, rapid-fire profanity. Do the police really speak so foul like that to each other in the United States? Do they punch each other's face at work in the office and go around calling each other a prick? And use the f-word so freely?: Man to man, man to lady, lady to man, again and again in every conversation!

I've seen the film twice now, and I will surely see this masterly Scorcese a third time—this bloody and cruel tale of two rats, one ratting on the police, the other ratting on the thugs, and the police and the thugs each trying to achieve their ends through pinning everything entirely on their respective rat. Playing rat versus rat.

Bharat, ek Khoj

Today, I watched Volume-1 of the 18-volume DVD set, Bharat ek Khoj, which covers Nehru's ruminations on how India has held its core over 5000 years; the civilizations of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro; and the coming of the Aryans and the age of the Rig Veda.

It is not a big-budget venture, but V.K Murthy's talent and Shyam Benegal's creative handling keep up the interest—though a theatricized gambling in an Aryan settlement was excessively drawn out, rather in embarrassing Bollywood style. In showing the panorama of India, Murthy is kind to Benares, and the filth the nation has gathered he has avoided. Nehru smiles kindly, warmly, fondly, at his poor peasant countrymen. He deserves no criticism for that moment, because the peasants were under another ruler's yoke. Now, some three generations later, the lot of the peasants under a government of their own is remarkably unchanged, in this world and in our nation which have experienced so much change.

Om Puri's narration, when it began with a matter-of-fact telling, was an aah moment. Roshan Seth has absorbed Nehru so completely unto himself—a sprightly Nehru, in this first volume!