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Taxi Driver (1976)
The 'Taxi Driver' narrates a story of an ailing society and the inaction and docility in the face of this danger that's engulfing this modern society of ours.
The 'Taxi Driver' (1976) written by Paul Schrader, directed by the master Martin Scorsese and played by Robert De Niro as its lead protagonist is considered a cinematic spectacle that diagnoses the 'scums' and 'filthness' of a consolidating liberalism hegemony that was at its embryonic stage during the 1970s. The principle protagonist is Travis ( played by Robert De Niro) who is a marine and a Vietnam war veteran who works as a Taxi driver in New York. Travis is a weird figure who seems mentally unstable and an introvert detached from society.
Travis apparently suffers from insomnia and shows profound introvert characteristics with vague gazes and looks diverted while interacting with his taxi drivers colleagues. He lives alone far away from his parents, he doesn't follow politics or arts(music) and seems disaffected from societal efforts of betterment and improvement. For Him evil reigns and even politicians cannot fix it. This normative and boring life of Travis is reinvigorated with purpose and value as he come across a young preadolescence blond prostitute named Iris ( Jodie Foster) who is being pimped by gangsters. He goes into gun battle with the gangsters and saves Iris while he himself later recovers from coma to proceeds with his work as a taxi driver.
The 'Taxi Driver' narrates a story of an ailing society and the inaction and docility in the face of this danger that's engulfing this modern society of ours. The messiah is a 'white man' (Travis) who once shoots in the face a Black robber. De Niro and Jodie Foster act superb and are captivating to the audience. The 'Taxi driver' is more relevant now than in the 1970s, when society is growing dis-affectionate to politics or Hope of an' alternative world' in the face of a naturalized neo-liberal ideology that disregards and undermines 'the will of the people' as the fictitious presidential candidate in the Film puts correctly. The ripples that the 'Taxi driver' initiated in the 'cinema of Politics' will reverberate throughout time.
Leviafan (2014)
The title of the movie refers to Thomas Hobbes seminal work 'Leviathan', a political philosophy work about the nature and conditions of liberty and the nation-state.
Andrey Zvyagintsev's movie Leviathan (2014) is inspired by a true story that took place in the USA, the director however decided to shoot the movie in Russian in order to depict the conditions of Russians under a corrupt bureaucratic oligarchy. The movie suggests that the conditions of living under a corrupt leadership system isn't unique to one Nation and hence Leviathan intends to be a universal parable about a rigged and corrupt capitalist political system in our modern contemporary society.
The title of the movie refers to Thomas Hobbes seminal work Leviathan, a political philosophy work about the nature of liberty and the nation-state. Hobbes argue in his work that there is a need for a sovereign power that should rule instead of humanity being in a state of nature. Since Human beings are political animals and that antagonism is inherent in them, then for stability and avoidance of anarchy they need to surrender their powers and right to a sovereign institution. As its evident in the movie, Hobbes didn't anticipated that the sovereign will be brutal and corrupt to this extent. Modernity's Sovereign institution- the nation state- is run by 'figures' that dwell in a state of Nature. The protagonist Kolya is a hotheaded and rude car mechanic. He lives with his second wife Lilya and a teenage son named Roma from his first marriage.
Lilya is a depressed and trouble young beautiful woman and Roma loathe her totally. Lilya works in a fish factory where she cleans fish. This simple family living in a small town in the Barents Sea coast are haunted by the town mayor who is an ever drunk and corrupt. Vadim, the town mayor wants to evict the Kolyas from their land by a court order, and it is evident that the court is under Vadim's thumb. Dmitri, as sophisticated handsome lawyer from Moscow comes to help his former friend Kolya. The court rules against the Kolyas and as they report a trespassing case against the mayor, Kolya is arrested. While in jail Lilya and Dmitri have an impromptu sex in hotel and this leads to a crisis in the Kolya family. Kolya's calamities lead to catastrophes, Lilya commits suicide after he threatened her after her relationship with Dmitri. He is finally arrested and jailed. Roma the teenage boy is taken by a family friend. Finally we come to learn that Kolya's jailing was planned by the town mayor who demolishes their house and take the land.
Leviathan is a tragic drama that beautifully pulls its viewers to contemplate the subjects of morality and justice in our modern present day. Kolya is a modern day Job- the figure from the old testament fable- who endures the brutality and trials of living under a corrupt judicial and political oligarchy. Kolya's world just like ours is a world governed by arrogant corrupt politician, smart lawyers and corrupt priests. A priest who looks like a character from Dostoyevski films advise Kolya to endure his trials and be patient like Job and submit his affairs to God. Kolya doesn't heed this advice and ends up being the bleached whale – Leviathan-that we see in the dried sea basins and the movie hence evokes both Hobbes Political tract and the old testament's Job.
Parliamentary representative democracy failed. The working class is under the gaze of a corrupt politician and a bent judicial system. Modern democracy is hijacked by crony politicians who employ the state institutions to control dissenting voices from the public, Kolya is finally behind bars as we have seen. The judicial system and the prison are used as a control 'mechanism'. The church expects and instills into the public the conformity the state wants. Modernity with all its facets and institutions turned out to benefit the few ruling elites and the subjects of modernity virtually live in a controlled society. Leviathan is a critique of the social contract theory that emancipated an absolute sovereign power. Foundational principles like justice, equality and right to own property are no longer sustainable under a modern sovereign power without complying with their rules and needs, and those who dissent are then put under the mercy of a corrupt justice and emergency laws. The state, the Judiciary, the prisons and the church/mosque all cooperate the elites to consolidate power in their hands.
I Am Not Your Negro (2016)
The poignant and cogent documentary is realistically scathing the contemporary and prevalent disenfranchisement of African-Americans.
The nominee for the best documentary feature at the 89th academy awards, I Am Not Your Negro is already considered a cinematic spectacle in its own essence by a variety of critics. The poignant and cogent documentary is realistically scathing the contemporary and prevalent disenfranchisement of African-Americans with a retrospective narration of civil rights era's horrendous and dehumanizing conditions that prevailed less than a generation ago.
The principle figure in the documentary is the celebrated African- American essaying and novelist James Baldwin (1924-1987). It is based on his unfinished manuscript of the novel Remember This House in which he documented his personal views on the civil right movement, the precarious conditions of African-Americans and his engagements with civil rights activists like Medgar Evers(1925- 1963), Malcolm X(1925-1965) and Martin Luther King Jr (1929-1968) who were all assassinated for their stance and activism on equality, civil liberty and the emancipation of African-Americans from a system that oriented its legitimacy and policies on slavery and Jim crow heritage.
The documentary director is the Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck. We remember him from his existentially nuanced works, like the documentary Lumumba (2000) which is about the Congolese freedom fighter and first prime minister of independent Congo Patrice Lumumba(1925-1961) who also demised at the hands of US and Belgium intelligence operatives. It is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson with a sonorous voice that arrests the viewers attention and initiates an irresistible compassionate empathy for the 'lived experiences' of African-Americans. Raoul Peck draws much of the narrated script from letters and notes written by James Baldwin during the 1960s and 1970s and wove video clips melodiously with them, and the result is a sublime and original documentary film .
I Am Not Your Negro, is a necessary intervention at a time when the global world is marred by racism, xenophobia and a deleterious identity politics. The resurgence of nationalism based on negativism (Brexit) and the mushrooming of the likes of Donald Trump and 'strongmen' across Europe discloses how
humanity failed to transcend an excruciating 'modern' racism and the failure of 'project Humanity' – multiculturalism, Tolerance and plurality. The documentary exposes the facile in modernity's claimed progress when it comes to issues of race and 'humanity' of black people in general.
Raoul Peck, reminds us of this gawking reality that the conditions of African-Americans has not changed at all – think of the Black Lives Matter and Baltimore uprisings. It is hard to avowedly enunciate the difference between what James Baldwin and his ilk faced and the contemporary challenges faced by African-Americans and Black people across the world. We exist in a continued adversary and detrimental conditions - in terms of economic, psychology and identity - that our parents experienced not so long ago. The issues James Baldwin begrudged and grappled with is what this millennial generation articulates and ventures to 'face and solve' with all its intricacies. Hamid Dabashi, the Iranian philosopher praised Raoul Peck metaphorically in a recent Aljazeera article that he '' has poured Baldwin's beautifully aging wine in a masterfully crafted new bottle''.
This year we have witnessed and exulted at the monumental towering of films by Black actors and directors with Moonlight, Fences and The Birth of A Nation taking center stage in cinema. The subject of their themes has been peculiar to African-American lives and its historiography as it meandered through the turbulent waves of the American dream. James Baldwin emphatically comprehended and discerned the African-American pariah figure and her conditions throughout his oeuvres and director Raoul Peck clothed it with a superficial cinematic poignancy and authenticity. I Am Not Your Negro lacks any blemish and I posit confidently that it's the documentary-film of this year 2017. Highly recommended for all.