The Irishman: A Timeless Tombstone For A Legacy Of Crime

Mobsters die bloody, undistinguished deaths in Martin Scorsese' The Irishman. 

Not that we get to see those deaths or their gruesome details. Scorsese, lifelong poet and artist of violence and crime, who once scored unforgettable rock epics against montages of once proud and boastful men being shot, stabbed and beaten to death and their bodies being discovered by dumbstruck policemen, refrains, this time, from showing us the obvious; rather, we are told the hard, cold facts of their inevitable fate, the unflinching truth writ large on the screen whenever we are given our first, undeniably impressive glimpses of these men in their heyday. And right then, it is apparent what the veteran filmmaker is gunning for: an unfurnished portrait of the brutal reality of a life of crime, of how it goes down, in the end, to a futile waste. 

It is this sad, melancholy sense of wistful regret, of an awareness of this very same futility, that marks so much of The Irishman and, in effect, makes it a strangely timeless film, a cinematic experience both exquisite and elegiac, a rare thing: a crime saga that, for the first time, makes us feel the weary, heavy-hearted toll of an entire lifetime marked by death, betrayal and a vain attempt at grabbing back glory. 

Scorsese' film begins, unexpectedly, in a nursing home for ageing old-timers. The camera, in a trademark Scorsese long-shot, cruises leisurely down a corridor while The Five Satins' In The Still Of The Night, a pop classic that will surely gain eternity with its wonderful usage in this film, plays in the background like muzak. Our gaze circles around a grizzly, white-haired man sprawled on his wheelchair and then, he stares back at us through his inscrutable dark glasses and starts to talk. 

That old man was once Frank Sheeran, the titular Irish-American freebooter and this is, at least in the beginning, ostensibly, about his rise, from a trucker stealing prime steaks to a trusted, tight-lipped henchman for a Mafioso family, with a penchant for "painting houses" and doing more odd jobs. For a good part of the first hour of this leisurely, almost larger-than-life narrative, unravelling gracefully and unhurriedly over 210 minutes, we follow his arc, we sense his gradually sharpening sense of a professional dedication to his unsavoury profession and also, deep inside his almost icy soul, a stirring ghost of disenchantment. 

Propping him on his predestined path deeper into the darkness of crime is his de facto benefactor and "made man" Russell Buffalino, a taciturn, affable yet shrewd mob boss adroitly pulling the strings, making negotiations and keeping things on an even keel. The two men share an unlikely mentor-protege dynamic that is soon supplanted by the arrival on the scene of a bigger player in the story inspired from real-life history. Union bigwig Jimmy Hoffa offers Sheeran, already touted and well-spoken for his efficient talents, the chance to be a "a part of this history"; a history of vain wish fulfilment in which the unions wage war against the Kennedy dynasty. Can Sheeran deliver on his promise?

And while we are all aware, by now of the director's unerring mastery of this particular genre and milieu of storytelling, that is what we are tempted to ask ourselves too: can Scorsese, too, deliver on his promise, to even overshadow the unrivalled greatness of his earlier works? Can he give us something as canonical and inimitable as Goodfellas all over again? It is reassuring to know that he can, that he does, resoundingly so, though not quite in the same way as you expect. The Irishman has the director's immaculate signature emblazoned on every big and little scene and yet it is fuelled, this time, less with a delirious. hyper-kinetic energy and anarchy and more with a gnawing acknowledgement of guilt and a throbbing emotional resonance that puts it up there as the finest, most poignant of crime films ever made. 

Cinematographer Rodriego Prieto shoots this film like a fever dream; scored to the choicest of classic pop and rock and roll hits and Robbie Robertson's intense, almost Leone-like harmonica swells, the lavish long-takes are breathtaking in how they bring to life a world of the past, a sense of time and place in history, with such authenticity and bruising intimacy, that we are drawn into this world with effortless artistic mastery while Thelma Schoonmaker cuts the rich, elaborately measured screenplay by Steven Zaillian, with the finesse of the finest tailor and yet, Scorsese breaks and subverts his own rules here: a tracking shot digresses and closes up on a row of floral wreaths in a shop window while shots from a saloon are heard in the background, a sudden murder in broad daylight is filmed in ultra slow motion so that we register each moment of outrage and shocked disbelief and, in one ingenious reference to The Godfather, we all stop breathing as a woman hesitates to turn on the ignition. 

For all this dazzling daredevilry, demonstrating a director in the very peak of his prowess, it is when The Irishman strikes hard at its emotional core, especially in the film's final, painfully troubling hour of devastating reveals and disillusioning conclusions, that the film achieves both the heartrending beauty and dystopian complexity of such deconstructionist works of cinema such as The Wild Bunch and of literature as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. As in these iconoclast creations, the very tropes that were always the mainstay of these stories are turned on their head and, for the first time, we look at these popular, almost mythic characters without their pretensions and facades of make-believe glory or even villainy. Rather, we see them as they are, people living a lost dream, nursing futile hopes and rendered vulnerable by the inevitability of their fall from grace. The overwhelming feeling, despite the routinely entertaining, smoothly orchestrated twists and turns and Zaillian's juicy, profanity-ridden dialogue, is of unmistakable despair, of a last and foolhardy shot at greatness and everlasting legacy.

The performances are unforgettable and indelible. Al Pacino, playing Hoffa with crackling electricity, harnessing all his spontaneity and fire to the best effect, makes for an irresistibly showboating character, an easily flustered rabble-rouser who won't take it lying down and whose quixotic denial of the increasingly dire realities around him set the stage for the film's real rub. Joe Pesci is even more extraordinary as Russell Buffalino, ageing with measured, beautifully calculated grace with each new plot proceeding, superbly in place and quietly, magnificently at the helm of the devastating decisions that he has to take. This itself feels like something of a miracle; the astonishingly combustible performer, who had earlier built a reputation out of his usually hot-headed, almost psychopathic mobsters, reins himself majestically, appearing almost like a doppelganger for the director himself. 

This is an ensemble cast for ages, of men that we had seen on the screen so many times as quotable and forever influential mobsters; another Scorsese collaborator of the yesteryears shows up in a truly memorable cameo as the silken Angelo Bruno while Stephen Graham chomps up much scenery alongside the already celebrated legends as a sneering, smarmy rival union leader who triggers Hoffa's explosive rage. Watch out, also, for Anna Paquin, as Sheeran's daughter Peggy who is also an unlikely witness to his dirty deeds and also his silent and troubled conscience. 

And then there is Robert De Niro. Returning to the screen with the filmmaker who is irreversibly responsible for their most incredible collective triumphs, here is the veteran actor, lately miscast in works of mostly variable quality, finally recovering his true histrionic greatness. His Sheeran is a performance of almost unbelievable honesty and emotional power; even as he stays stoic and stiff-lipped about his dedication to his chosen vocation, his guilt and pathos are to be found in those eternally exquisite, wistful eyes, in his silences and in the way he tries to disguise them as his indifference. This is ultimately his story, the heartbreaking tale of his own inevitable fall from grace, condemned to live with the betrayal that he commits and unable and even reluctant to find redemption. De Niro plays each beat, from the measured, almost perfunctory attempts at affability and warmth to the growing sense of disillusionment with the world around him, with pure perfection. It is a performance as timeless as this film. 

The film comes full circle at the end, Scorsese pulling out and zooming in to Sheeran's room in that very nursing home, but not before the man is subjected to his own trial of fire, compelled, by age and desolation, to face, for the first time, his own vulnerability, of death knocking on his door, the door that he leaves ajar in the film's final, haunting frame. All through these 210 minutes, this was what Scorsese was always driving at. At its heart, cold and yet bleeding with the guilt of lies told and blood spilled, The Irishman is about these brutal but battered and broken men trying to find some forgiveness for their failings, in vain. As Raymond Chandler wrote so truly, dead men are heavier than broken hearts. 

My Rating: 5 Stars

Joker: A One-Man Show Of Misery

Every Joker has a unique laugh that always echoes in your mind. 

From Cesar Romero's ridiculous, cartoonish glee, to Jack Nicholson's creepy cackle, from Mark Hamill's devilish, sardonic laughter to Heath Ledger's manic, excited whoops of delight and derision, every cinematic version of Joker has brought his signature sense of dangerous, deranged humour to the screen and made an unmistakable impact, even to the point of parody. It is then only normal for us fanatics, who, despite our shared love for the Caped Crusader, have worshipped this unforgettable, irascible devil of the comics sinfully, to expect that the latest in this line-up, at least, knows his killing jokes and lethal punchlines.

Joaquin Phoenix, an assuredly overwhelming, almost fastidious performer who has cemented something of a reputation of playing both torment and delicious evil, is every bit a perfectly cast choice to play the arch-kingpin of crime and right within the first five minutes, the actor creeps into our skin and leaves us shaken and disturbed with his own signature laughter: a rattling, helpless, almost screechy fit of hoarse despair that his Arthur Fleck tries to explain, with a little card of apology, as a pathological condition. 

And all this is before he is pushed over to the edge, before he is reborn as the dastardly super-villain that he is known to be. 

As said, Phoenix is unquestionably brilliant as Fleck, a spindly, skinny and sad-eyed clown and aspiring stand-up comedian living a sordid existence with a mother still nursing hopes that her benefactor and employer, a proud and preening Thomas Wayne, will come to their rescue. Roughed up by street thugs, fired from his short-lived stint as a clown, Fleck rides the underground train back home one dark, dank evening and things turn suddenly violent. Soon, he is not only a reviled prime suspect for the upper crust snobs crying for his blood but also something of a rousing vigilante for Gotham's brutally marginalised masses. 

We follow Fleck through this terse, almost dark and nightmarish descent into the depths of unhinged psychosis with a relentless atmosphere of mounting dread. Lensman Lawrence Sher's visuals are grimy but also dramatic and vivid in their grittiness, lending this film's Gotham City an unmistakably decadent urban texture of a dog-eared trade issue of the period of the film is set in, the banal 1980s and with its materialistic, money-grubbing mindset. Joker, however, achieves poetry truly when it gazes, longingly and almost tenderly, at Fleck's tormented eyes and gaunt, disjointed frame as he trudges on through the city's underlit streets, as he curls up in agony when beaten up and left on the ground and as he soon sways silkily, almost in effete grace as his mind swarms with the poison of nihilistic anger and loathing at the unimpressive world around him. For anybody who has always thirsted for a truly absorbing backstory of one of the most iconoclast pop culture villains of all time, this, the purely sensory experience of watching a tormented character plunge headfirst into off-the-wall anarchy, would suffice. 

Unfortunately, one should not forget that Joker is also a full-fledged feature film, ponderously plodding on for more than 120 minutes, a fact that is not justified by how inadequate the film feels in comparison to the overwhelming performance trying to hold it in place. Director Todd Phillips, hitherto known for brash, physical comedies, tries his hand here at dramatic material valiantly but stumbles frequently on navigating what could have been a thickly plotted narrative to a well-rounded, coherent structure. The film suffers, quite often by doffing its hat relentlessly to not only far more well-plotted comic book storylines but also to better directed and written films and this is where I would like to talk about all those nudge-nudge, wink-wink references to that undisputed artist of urban decadence Martin Scorsese. 

Several elements of the plot feel derivative; like Travis Bickle of the still-extraordinary and heart-rending Taxi Driver, Fleck is God's Lonely Man and also falls prey to the same psychopathic tendencies when he is thrust unwillingly with a gun to fend himself in the streets. And as if that was not enough, his hopes to be a guest on the wildly popular talk show  hosted by his pompous comic idol Murray Franklin, played, in a rather awkward nod to The King Of Comedy, by Robert De Niro, the legend wasted here in a role that feels almost like a mockery of his own unforgettable portrayals Rupert Pupkin in that prescient film. 

Still, cinematic larceny is the least of Joker's crimes. Phillips could have conjured up something ingenious and subversive with these broadly borrowed strokes, even something audacious, outrageous and suicidally brave. It never happens, even as the film flirts with some intriguing ideas, like in the scene when Fleck is pitted against Wayne, who is not any idealistic Charles Palantine but rather our very own Donald Trump in his pompous arrogance and the stage is set for a very incendiary confrontation, complete with a nod at Modern Times, itself one of the greatest satires about a little man taking on a big capitalist world but it ends in a whimper of miserable agony and things only go downhill from then onwards. And the less said about a shoehorned metaphysical moment, the better, really. 

Similarly, there is nothing to be made of Zazie Beetz, cast rather lazily here as the warm and affable neighbour Sophie, whose cruelly brief narrative arc as Fleck's unlikely love interest can be construed as yet another failed attempt to match up to the afore-mentioned films. Those films were much more perceptive and subtle in their approach, using the conceit of unwittingly unreciprocated romance or casual social rejection as a trigger for the onset of the anarchy inside the battered soul of the protagonist; in Joker, she is merely for decorative value, a flimsy piece of flourish that is merely there to make the increasingly dire proceedings lighter. 

There is, however, still not much room for hope and while it is understandable that the film vies for a morbid intensity fitting to the character in question, there is also, subsequently, little room for any wicked wit or particularly subversive intelligence here as well. As origin stories of the arch-kingpin of crime go, Joker really tries hard and in vain to pull off the coup of being as hauntingly atmospheric as the groundbreaking The Killing Joke, with the great Alan Moore's nihilistic, noir storytelling and Brian Bolland's still eerie, nightmarish illustrations, which ironically did a flawlessly neat job of building up, scene by scene, the Joker's devastating moment of catharsis while sculpting, parallel to it, a lean and mean comic book story of insanity and vengeance. 

Yes, it is superbly shot, has a suitably melancholy soundtrack and Phoenix is really worth the money as he always is but is this what we, worshippers of the man who never tells the same story about how he got those scars, deserve? To quote a more memorably wicked voice of evil, it's not quite showtime. 

My Rating: 3 Stars Out Of 5

My Journal Of Greeneland: Ranking 18 Great Novels By Graham Greene

Novelist, reporter, scriptwriter, storyteller, playwright, columnist, globe-trotter, voluptuary, Catholic: these are the many and versatile facets of Henry Graham Greene, better known as Graham Greene, one of the 20th century's greatest and most influential literary talents. To explore all these eclectic sides to the alternately acclaimed and controversial man would be a suitably epic and enthralling quest but that might take some time, even for a seasoned and self-confessed admirer like me. But I do feel compelled to recommend many a novice and even my dearest friends to take a leap of faith and embark on a thrilling, alternately hilarious and heartbreaking and ultimately enlightening and eye-opening odyssey into the landscape of Greene's literature. 

So, here is an unofficial ranking of the 18 novels that I have read so far. There is still a lot of exciting ground to be covered; I am yet to discover his entire collection of short stories, his smaller pieces like Loser Takes All and quite a few more novels of equal standing, both his earlier works like Stamboul Train and It's A Battlefield or the later, more accomplished Monsignor Quixote. 

Then, there are those plays and critical essays and columns as well. But for now, these 18 novels, all of them, come highly recommended to all, not just to readers but also those who want to travel across space and time with a discerning eye and an unerring sense of prescient reality. 

18- Doctor Fischer of Geneva: Or The Bomb Party (1980)

Presumably written as a sharp-tasting, acerbic response to the crusty, preening and self-aggrandising elite of Swiss society (Greene was then living in Vevey), this slim and surreally dark-witted metaphysical parable on the boundless depths of human greed and built around a grimly comic social experiment might be simplistic but does not go soft on its satirical punch. Its basic, linear structure is made compulsively, perversely readable by Greene's still-flawless penchant for nuance and detail and the titular overlord, far from a Bond villain, himself ranks as one of the writer's most enduringly Machiavellian characters ever. 

17- The Man Within (1929)

Greene's first published novel, even with the occasional flowery prose that stops remarkably short of being purple, is a lot more compelling than what its unimpressed author believed. The Man Within lays down the essential groundwork for his trademark style of storytelling: a self-doubting, far from heroic protagonist, the conflict between righteousness and the seductive allure of vice, a deliriously romantic but doomed love story and criminals with hearts of gold. The writer doffs his hat clearly to the classic adventures penned by Robert Louis Stevenson but look closer and you will find enough subversion in his coolly sardonic portrait of corruption in the countryside. 

16- A Gun For Sale (1936)

As the earliest of Greene's English crime and espionage thrillers, A Gun For Sale is so luridly thrilling and propelled with such an enthralling sense of nihilism that you might mistake it for a Raymond Chandler paperback, if not for the credibly sordid English atmosphere that this slim thriller reeks of. The plot thunders like a steam engine, the bitter assassin anti-hero Raven transforms into an unforgettable vigilante of the night, there is a strong-willed and spirited heroine in between and as always, Greene blends pre-war paranoia and political intrigue smoothly and seamlessly to add an unmistakable touch of poetic profundity to the pulpy proceedings. 

15- The Captain And The Enemy (1988)

Do not be misled by the seemingly simplistic, even low-key facade that had reportedly disappointed and confused critics. Greene's last novel is actually one of his most devilishly, cynically best. The narrative is almost dark-edged and ironical in its unreliability and slipperiness, as Victor Baxter, also known as Jim, chronicles his life with two equally untrustworthy surrogate parents: the enigmatic, elusive Captain and his doomed, fatalistic lover Lisa. Even the second half of the novel, staged like a geopolitical thriller of duplicity, belies the really devastating conclusion to which the writer drives at: love is as self-destructive as King Kong shot to death and every father is a bloody scoundrel. 

14- The Third Man (1949)

Before that masterpiece of noir got made, this was the working treatment and subsequently published novella from which Greene devised his flawless screenplay and Sir Carol Reed developed the final film. Inevitably, it suffers a bit in comparison to that still-influential classic. But on its own strengths, it is every bit stealthily sardonic, quietly suspenseful and, on occasion, even more melancholic and sobering than the film. Borrowing gleefully the template of Eric Ambler's The Mask Of Dimitrios and yet infusing a new angle of betrayed friendship and lost innocence, Greene again delivers a timely portrait of a beautiful city battered by war and now again ruled by the utterly amoral. 

13- Travels With My Aunt (1969)

Never too far away from the contemporary realities of his changing times, Greene set out to take a comic jab at the waning days of the counterculture of the Sixties through the point of view of old-timers trying to make some sense of it all. This entertaining, even unexpectedly poignant adventure follows retired bank manager Henry Pulling and his still-hedonistic Aunt Augusta on a nostalgic and naughty trail across old-school Europe and frolicsome Paraguay. Crammed with lovers and friends, dotty or dying, with warmly funny asides on international smuggling and smoking pot, Travels With My Aunt is a vivid, picaresque read that heralds a new era and still bids a passionate, heartfelt farewell to the old. 

12- The Tenth Man (1985)

Unfairly shelved when first written in the Forties, one of Greene's other story treatments was eventually published, with his consent, and the end result is a far more profound piece of work than what its cinematic counterpart could have been. The storyteller's peerless sense of time and milieu is evident here in spades, a terse, drily romantic and heart-rending tale of a rich lawyer in occupied France who pledges his wealth to escape death by law. The consequences that come hurtling down on him exemplify Greene's tremendous flair for chronicling crime, guilt and punishment, culminating, with beautifully orchestrated prose, at a climactic and unexpectedly heroic stab at redemption. Gripping and moving in equal measure. 

11- Brighton Rock (1937)

For many admirers and critics, Brighton Rock is the definitive moment in Greene's illustrious career that cemented his reputation and literary style forever: metaphysical and moral dilemmas, anti-heroes and antagonists blinded by their misguided righteousness, a sordid flavour of a city bursting with sin and vice and, of course, unforgettably hypnotic and credibly strong-willed women who hold the reins too. Ida Arnold, the intrepid amateur detective and do-gooder poking her voluptuous, blousy charm into the mystery of a murder in broad daylight, might be the working model for Francis McDormand's determined cop in Fargo. It is also Greene's passionate, heartfelt portrayal of his haplessly crooked Catholics that makes this such a haunting classic. 

10- The Honorary Consul (1973)

Ask me about my favourite pulp thriller and instead of all the Sidney Sheldons, Jeffrey Archers and Wilbur Smiths of this world, I would choose The Honorary Consul. The reasons are to be found in the novel itself, a tight, taut drama of a kidnapping gone wrong that turns into a surprisingly thoughtful and humane meditation on the ideas of love and lust, of faith and forgiveness and of the Spanish concept of machismo and even the English stiff-upper-lip. It is ingenious how Greene sustains the brittle, feverish tension right till the end and how he plays off each character devilishly, so much that this book, while crammed with suspense, is also loaded lethally with inconvenient truths. 

9- A Burnt-Out Case (1960)

Trust Greene to serve up even the most unsavoury premise into a compelling, beautifully crafted novel, subtly satirical and deeply compassionate in turns, about the human condition. A Burnt-Out Case ranks among one of his darkest novels yet, a literal odyssey into the heart of human suffering and despair in a remote leproserie in Belgian Congo. Newly arrived in this scene of pain and mutilation is Querry, a once-famous architect who has now become coldly indifferent to the world. In the heat, his practised cynicism begins to thaw but his new purpose is exaggerated to sainthood. The majestic prose and the thoughtful themes pose troubling questions, which make us reexamine our knee-jerk belief in falsities. 

8- Our Man In Havana (1958)

Sixty years have come and gone and yet, in our present day when the truth is blown wildly out of proportion to ferment trouble, it is no mistake that Our Man In Havana should still be so prophetic and prescient. The passage of time has not quite blunted its still punchy impact as a cheeky, yet eerily believable satire on earnestly crafty spies cooking up tall tales and falling prey to their own shenanigans. If anything, Greene's droll portrait of a world where people are driven to foolhardy ends in the name of patriotism is more resonant than ever. Even his swirling portrait of Havana's seedy beauty and more murky truths is impossible to replicate.

7- The Ministry Of Fear (1943)

Arguably the greatest of his British thrillers (I have to read The Confidential Agent yet), The Ministry Of Fear is more than just a rattling wrong-man yarn that Alfred Hitchcock served out regularly; it is an incisive, unsettling portrait of a country and its people driven to paranoia in the mists of war and in bleak, pitch-dark atmosphere, it has no other rival. In the embittered Arthur Rowe, we find one of his hauntingly memorable sufferers, pursued across a bombed London by a dedicated organisation of spies and murderers. With its unrelenting grip of almost menacing, nihilistic dread and with no relief in sight, the book seems to have inspired not only wartime thrillers but also 1984. 

6- The Human Factor (1978)

Greene might have inspired the likes of John Le Carre and Alan Furst to come up with their own grittier and grimmer spy thrillers that refute Ian Fleming's entertaining extravaganza of grand conspiracies and glamour. But it was with The Human Factor, possibly the lost cousin of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, that he delivered his most enduring novel of the genre. Initially disliked because of the deeply cynical portrait of a bureaucratic and back-dealing British intelligence, this colourless, coldly nihilistic and frequently heart-rending novel is actually a richly drawn and exceptionally resonant piece of work. The way he equates the vulnerability of honesty to the duplicity of love with the skulduggery of espionage is unforgettable. 

5- The End Of The Affair (1951)

Even when he is writing romance, Greene shows no signs of mellowing. Maurice Bendrix, the bitterly sarcastic protagonist, describes his inexplicably aborted affair with the married Sarah Miles as a story of hate. Indeed, there seems to be a sense of malice, almost impulsive anger in how the writer lets Bendrix narrate his part of the story, going back from his new-found pangs of sexual jealousy to their shared passions. Then, he sneaks in and reveals Sarah's painful confessions recorded in her diary and what strange force compelled her, on that fateful afternoon, to bring an end to her affair. That strange force, as this hauntingly hypnotic novel reveals, is faith, something which is both all-consuming and frustrating in its obstinacy. 

4- The Heart Of The Matter (1948)

Nowhere else is Greene's mastery of multiple genres evident to a greater degree than in The Heart Of The Matter, his dark and dank novel about a well-intentioned police inspector in Sierra Leone who is seduced by the Devil when his all-too-generous pity gets the better of him. As a study of the infidelity we are all capable of to the concepts of marriage and faith, the novel arrives at harrowing conclusions and a particularly disturbing climax. But before that, the compellingly plotted narrative, blending a turbulent socio-political premise with a deeply personal story of guilt and redemption and populated with plausible, believable characters also makes for one of the most powerful reading experiences ever. 

3- The Comedians (1963)

Never the one to compromise on his hard-bitten political stance, Greene's anger and anguish over Haiti's brutal dictatorship, reigned by the intimidating Papa Doc Duvalier and sponsored secretly by America, find their manifestation in this stunning, sobering novel. With a cinematic, elaborate and even elegiac narrative of exceptional depth, The Comedians uses its multiple-thread narrative, of idealistic American vegetarians and confidence men trying their luck in this failed country, to paint a convincing portrait of totalitarian terror and the grimly comic incapacity of the West to understand these grimy realities. It also features one of his most enduringly tragic heroes in the luckless Major Jones, who also proves to be the finest comedian of them all. 

2- The Quiet American (1955)

It would be hard to find a more perfectly structured and powerfully prophetic novel than The Quiet American. Like The Comedians, it compels Greene to argue potently about the insidiously dangerous nature of America's foolhardy intervention into the turbulent chaos of the third-world that would lead, twenty years later, to the self-destructive humiliation of the Vietnam War. But more than that, it is a brilliantly constructed love triangle that becomes even a dramatic battleground for ideologies and interests. It also demonstrates Greene's flair for professional dexterity and economy. Real-life observations of the ravages of war fought then by the colonials find their way organically into the narrative and it is still impossible to look beyond that moral - that even the best intentions can be more dangerous than merely evil ones. 

1- The Power And The Glory (1940)

A monumental masterpiece and a staggering culmination of his heart-wrenching first-hand observation of religious persecution in Mexico in the 1930s under the rule of the Red Shirts, The Power And The Glory is indisputably Greene at the very peak of his powers, even as other books in this list contend for that same title quite easily. From beginning to end, he tugs us into a dark, claustrophobically hostile world as we follow his anonymous protagonist, a worldly but weary whiskey priest as he tries to do his duty and also come to terms with his own mistakes and sins. The prose is starkly beautiful in its bleak desolation and the narrative is almost as relentless and poetic as a Biblical narrative unfolding on a contemporary canvas. Yes, The Power And The Glory is marked with unmistakable despair as an atheist lieutenant, goaded by his own idealism of a world without illusions, pursues this priest at any cost and a helplessly treacherous Judas leads him to his fate. But there is hope, there is wonder, there is even a miraculous, heart-pounding climax and there is Greene's powerful, impassioned plea that it is the flawed and the corrupt rather than the merely righteous who deserve the status of sainthood. 

Yesterday: A Love Ballad That Makes You Feel Fine

Last year, I visited the treasure trove of nostalgia that is Cavern Club in Liverpool. Walking down the winding, spiralling stairs to the basement that echoed with joyous, exuberant covers of many a classic chartbuster (and tittering irreverently at a bamboozled lady to a song about Lucy and diamonds), I found myself eventually thronged on all sides by fellow worshippers of the extraordinary, still melodious music of four legendary Liverpudlians, a winsome blend of grinning old-timers and bright young things, all dancing and swaying to the eclectic tunes being played by a mop-topped singer, from the earliest pop subversion of Ticket To Ride and Help! to the roaring politics of Revolution and Get Back. 

Indeed, how can one imagine a world without the Beatles? The very thought is not merely preposterous; it is horrifying in just how much it would rob us all of not just there music but the overwhelmingly emotional impact that they have left on us all, uniting Beatlemaniacs across the globe, like me from India and a couple of friendly beer-chugging men who greeted me and hailed from Sweden, in a religion. That would mean that Yesterday, in the hands of a different filmmaker or writer, would qualify for a horror story, a tale of the most depressing dystopia. 

And so, it is a marvel that, in the hands of director Danny Boyle and writer Richard Curtis, the film becomes such a charming, delightfully frothy romantic comedy that, despite a premise that aims consciously for inevitability, even predictability, has still plenty of wit and even subversion and delicious insight crammed into the most unexpected corners. 

Jack Mallik, an Indian-British lad, is an aspiring musician who is no longer feeling fine about his chances to make it big. Nobody really cares about his gigs in good old Suffolk and even as his best friend, the vivacious Ellie, does everything to help him out as a de facto manager, he is ready to throw in the towel. That is until one evening when the world blacks out in the space of a handful of seconds and his bicycle is slammed by a bus. Having lost a few teeth in the accident, Jack tries to remain upbeat and casually asks Ellie if she will still feed him when he is 64. She does not quite get it. 

There is something to be said about the subtle, confidently stoic narrative sleight of hand that Boyle and Curtis use to let the gravity of the new situation sink in. When gifted a gleaming new guitar, the first song that Jack can think to sing, about how all his troubles were far away the day before, makes everybody listening shut up, stirred and shaken, just as you might have felt when you first heard that rousing voice and those sad strings. It is the greatest heartbreak song ever written or sung and yet while Jack's friends are understandably gobsmacked, they cannot believe that a group of men named after insects or those cute Volkswagen automobiles actually sung and recorded it first. To them, in hindsight, it is not quite Coldplay. 

You can imagine Jack's startled predicament then. He rushes home and soon Boyle plugs the narrative on a live-wire of quirky, nutty comedy. Google informs our hapless, non-plussed protagonist that the Beatles are actually beetles and that John Paul George and Ringo actually means Pope John Paul II. Destiny seems to have delivered a strange miracle for this struggler and he lunges at the chance unabashedly, as Yesterday makes us wonder: does he do it for fame or does he do his bit to preserve all he can remember about those geniuses who wrote those incredible songs?

Boyle and Curtis are clearly interested in the latter which is why so much of Yesterday comes across as splendidly, ingeniously clever. The invisible but all-too-palpable influence of the iconoclast band on how we imagine the highs and lows of love is what this film portrays so successfully. Even the stand-alone sequences and visuals are written and filmed with devilishly wicked wit; when recording She Loves You, Jack and Ellie hold for that pause as a suburban train rattles outside. 

Then, later on, discord between them stems less from Jack finding his footing at the top of the pops and more from Ellie wondering, openly, as to what place does she hold in his life apart from being his intrepid manager for so long. It is a sweet sugary romance at heart that is nevertheless crisp to the taste in the most unexpected ways, like one of those crowd-pleasing McCartney song made a little edgier with Lennon's unmistakably sharper wit as well. 

But Yesterday also does not forget George and Ringo; this is a thoughtful enough film that ponders big enough questions, like Jack tormented by the moral integrity of his ascent to stardom by accident or him pushed to a corner in one scene and most memorably and literally crying out for help when he faces the prospect of losing Ellie too. For all the weightier elements that the film explores, much of it is nevertheless a deliciously unhinged lark, in the charmingly old-school style of Ealing comedies. Ed Sheeran shows up in a snarky, hilarious cameo as a preening, Salieri-esque celebrity version of himself who advises Jack, rather disastrously, to sing Dude instead of Jude. And Kate McKinnon hams rather enjoyably as a bloodthirsty American record producer who cannot quite understand Jack's besotted admiration for his own material. 

Newcomer Himesh Patel is quite a treat as the suitably perturbed Jack, blending an every-guy sense of earnestness into a very credible foil of derring do that compels him to plunge headfirst into the baffling world of fame and fanfare. Cast against him is the beautiful, beautiful Lily James, an actress who is only getting more evocative and effervescent with each subsequent role, as Ellie. She is vulnerable, quirky, messed-up, confident all at the same time and both the lead share a sparkling chemistry that makes their romance, even with its obvious simplicity, so worth rooting for. 

All you need is love, the boys sang once so memorably. The film believes in that universally appealing message in manifold ways. At one level, Yesterday is about the love we all share for those very boys and just how much of their incredible legacy cannot be imitated or even bettered; watch out for a scene in which everyone gives up trying to replicate those extraordinary album covers or for that scene in which Jack cannot quite get how to cover Eleanor Rigby. And yet, on a deeper, more heartfelt level, it is about the one thing that the group always stood for: following your heart and pursuing what or whom you love till the end of the world. There is even a cosmically special appearance by a true legend that makes your heart stop for a second and then makes a Cheshire grin of wish-fulfilment bloom on your face. 

Boyle, God bless him, has made a winsome film that celebrates not only the greatest musical group of the world in all its magical glory but also the heady thrill of falling in love and fighting for the same against the allure of destiny. Like the song with the same name, Yesterday might be a simple ballad on the surface but it is undeniably profound in its ultimate impact. We should not forget that the Beatlemania began with a memorable song about only holding hands. 

My Rating: 4 Stars Out Of 5

The Third Man: The Greatest Noir Thriller Of All Time

‘Best friend I ever had…’

‘That sounds like a cheap novelette’.

Pause. 

‘I write cheap novelettes’. 

And, thus, in the space of three spare lines, Sir Carol Reed’s The Third Man, written by storyteller extraordinaire Graham Greene, demonstrates just how false, ludicrous or even flimsy our friendships and allegiances can be. The morally complex construct in which the film operates, one that the author’s admirers call ‘Greeneland’, is an eerily prescient landscape of the real world that is teeming with little, seemingly casual but acutely unsettling betrayals at every corner: the slobbering, desperate disciple who turns into a pathetic Judas in The Power Of The Glory, the willing, wanton lover of The End Of The Affair who transforms into a saint to a cause that is hard to believe in  the earnest, misguided do-gooder who steals a cynic’s only love with his innocence in The Quiet American and the enigmatic and eventually elusive surrogate father of The Captain And The Enemy. 

In The Third Man, as in these works, moral duplicity and treachery are to be found, according to Reed and Greene, in the most innocuous of all relationships – that of camaraderie that begins at tender, unassuming boyhood and paves the way for a friendship that becomes a malicious, selfish game in adulthood. Malice is one of the writer’s pivotal themes, malice in carefully calibrated degrees yet casual and even reckless in nature and consequence and it also gives Reed the opportunity to flesh the deeply bitter irony of the narrative with his own wry, witty storytelling vigour. 

‘Already in hell…or in heaven’, announces the earnest and diffident Austrian porter in the beginning of the film, as Holly Martins, a wet-behind-the-ears pulp hack from faraway America, is told on his arrival in war-torn Vienna that his best friend Harry Lime was killed in an accident just a few hours ago. Right from that disorienting moment and the subsequent scene in which Martins is suitably perturbed at the strange faces standing around Lime’s coffin being lowered into a snowy grave, the director and writer plunge us into a cinematic territory that feels darker and more markedly cynical than the usual American noir thriller. 

The cold, blasted and battered Vienna, divided into four zones for each of the Allied powers and yet, one that ‘doesn’t really look any worse than a lot of other European cities’ is a far cry from the sunlit, palm-lined vistas of California or the American wasteland of motels and garages with which we usually equate the genre of modern noir; nor does it have icy blondes with dubious, even promiscuous intentions or hard-boiled detectives fashioned after Bogart. Yes, it does have an arching, monologue-spouting kingpin but he too is etched out in Greene’s trademark strokes of boyish bravado and a misplaced, perverse sense of incorruptible belief, as in Pinky from Brighton Rock or the eponymous bon vivant of Doctor Fischer Of Geneva, who devises ‘grand’ parties designed to humiliate his guests out of a mysterious quest for some elusive truth. 

And so, we follow Martins in this cold and alienating post-war landscape of vice and illegal trade, the film siding inevitably with a hopelessly out-of-sorts protagonist who is again hardly the sharp or particularly shrewd cynical protagonist who teases out the truth with their brains or fists. With a Southern accent slurred at the edges with drink or a lazy predicament, Martins feels like one of Greene’s archetype American characters, not wholly trustworthy or even heroic and distinguished from their greyer and more rascally English or European counterparts with their sense of adventurous idealism that leads them to inevitable doom. 

In the original story, later published as a novella, Martins was envisioned by Greene as Rollo Martins, English hack writer who wrote Westerns under an American pseudonym and the result was a more taciturn character who has shed his naiveté and knows his way around the moral complexity of his world better than his on-screen version. In the film, much of the dark hilarity derives from how Martins finds himself hurled from one shenanigan to another, on a wild goose hunt for a truth driven by righteous anger at his best friend being called a ‘murderer’ by the police. 

It is not only his bumbling, stumbling, purely incidental foolhardiness that earns our laughs; it is also Greene and Reed’s ear for wry humour that makes so much of the film disarmingly hilarious, even absurdly comical. Think, for instance, Lime’s shady friends and their terse encounters with Martins: Kurtz’s clumsy lies, Popescu’s showboating Continental swagger, Winkel’s cold Teutonic indifference. Or think of poor Mr. Crabbin, arranging Allied propaganda events which include both Hamlet and Hindu striptease dancers and mistaking Martins for a serious author, leading to one of the most uproarious scenes in cinematic history.

For all the lark, it is the grimmer, grimier side of Greene’s story and Reed’s film that haunts even today. The film is an insidiously harrowing portrait of the moral venality and helpless, even desperate disorientation that one could experience all too clearly in the aftermath of the Second World War. Cities like Vienna and Berlin were indeed left vulnerable to the swarm of many a profiteer running an amoral conspiracy; even the Allies were as much at the helm of these illegitimate dealings as the Nazis who escaped to havens in South America and Egypt. One of Greene’s numerous gifts as a powerfully prophetic, astute storyteller has been his incisive, relentlessly probing dissection of the many political upheavals on the world map through both his essays and novels. 

From the Mexican wasteland of the 1930s, policed thuggishly by the Red Shirts and where faith itself was a crime worth capital punishment to the sweetly poisoned exotic colour of Cuba at the end of Batista’s hard-fisted regime, from the debilitating end of the French colonial rule in Indo-China, paving the way for the travesty known as the Vietnam War to the dark, dank dystopia of Haiti under Papa Doc Duvalier, hellholes and failed democracies have intrigued both Greene’s Machiavellian imagination and his deepest, most heartfelt sympathies. Vienna, in contrast, feels benign in its desolate, dilapidated state; there are still jolly plays being staged at the Josefstadt Theatre but there is no denying the evil that lies at the heart of darkness of its black market trade, as evidenced by just how many casually callous medical practitioners came under the scanner after the film was released. 

All this comes brilliantly, ferociously to life with Reed’s brilliant, almost compulsive demonstration of technique, aided by his superb cast and crew. Shooting, for most part, on location and shooting most of the film in night, with cinematographer Robert Krasker devilishly blending seminal Dutch angles and a masterful play of chiaroscuro, the director not only succeeds in creating an unrelenting atmosphere of paranoia but also adds unmistakable touches of pathos to even the littlest of the scenes, lingering on a wizened landlady muttering angrily and desperately when the Allied military police ravage her house and leave it all a tumble or in the tears that stream down the face of the sad-eyed beauty Anna, bringing a melancholic Expressionist flavour to the noir plotting.

His audacious decision, of choosing the literally unknown zither player Anton Karas to compose the entire score with his single trademark instrument, pays off in spades, resulting not only in one of the most mesmerising themes ever composed but also suggesting that the ravages of war had still not quite obliterated Austria’s hidden gift of melody. 

The cast is flawlessly chosen. Valli, looking both deceptively demure and elegantly tough willed, is more than just a femme fatale; she is a real, believable woman, etched out in Greene’s peerless character building strokes as full of intriguing contradictions, heartbroken with torment and yet also willing to play along with the harsh truths of her life. The charismatic Trevor Howard plays the crusty, coolly sarcastic Major Calloway with wry, silken ease while Joseph Cotten makes for a very compellingly feckless and flustered Martins, portraying his character’s boyish predicament more credibly than what Reed’s original choice James Stewart would have done with the same character. 

Much scene-stealing is done by an American legend whose name I would hate to reveal to the uninitiated and who ad-libs a famous monologue about how evil breeds pure genius. And special mention should go rightfully to the fascinating Austrian veterans picked to play some very crucial roles, like Paul Horbiger as the befuddled but somewhat amiable porter. And watch out for Bernard Lee, who would later be cast as M in the early James Bond films, as the polite but quick-fisted Sergeant Paine. 

So much of what went into bringing the film to screen is the stuff of legend: Reed and Greene’s resolute and steely creative defiance against the sensationalist tendencies of Hollywood producer David O’ Selznick, Reed and Greene’s debate about the climax (the latter insisting on a happier alternate end hinting at a possible romance), Greene’s guerrilla style reportage of the black market rackets and his journalistic portrait of the city’s frozen cemeteries, hotels, drinking places and even the sewers and Reed’s painstaking command of directing all the three production units himself. 

What makes The Third Man, seventy years after it first released, still flawless and effective as both a startling thriller and a richly sardonic morality play acclaimed and deserving of the same accolade as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Orson Welles’ Touch Of Evil or even The Fallen Idol (also directed by Reed and written by Greene)? The answer is to be found in the film’s deceptive mathematical simplicity, when compared to the more elaborate tangle of lies and conspiracies to be found in its American counterparts like The Maltese Falcon or for that matter in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown. 

The film has, on the surface, a largely basic and low-key premise, of a curious, nonplussed protagonist trying to find out the truth behind his friend’s most mysterious and all-too-convenient death, only to uncover a bigger game afoot but such is Reed and Greene’s immaculate attention to the smallest and most devilish of details, from character quirks to mistaken intentions, from the strangeness of an alien tongue to even our capacity for deliberate omission of the truth, that the film remains constantly exciting, enthralling and brilliantly powerful and affecting even today.