Beyond words

'Perfume -- The Story of a Murderer' is a very good movie, though I would not say that it is an exceptional one. It is the story of a man who had a talent for sensing odour, and the extent of his talent goes beyond the usual human possibilities. For example, he knows the smell of iron, frogs, wood, water, and almost anything around his world. Besides, to sense the smell of something, he does not have to go near it; he can sense it from a distance. Even his sexual attraction towards a girl is manifested through his desire for her body odour, which she loses immediately after she dies. At some point of the movie, he realizes that his body does not have any smell of its own. For him, he is the only person in the world 'who' (or rather, 'what') does not possess a smell of his (its) own. Later, he falls into an obsessive struggle to extract the smells of beautiful women, and own those smells for himself. How? That is the story of this film.

In fact, I have no intention in talking about this movie itself. I am more interested in something else. The above character learns to speak lately in his childhood. Up to the age of ten or twelve, he is unable to convey anything through words. He senses the world through odour. And for him, anything around him is distinguished by its odour. When he finally learns to speak, he realizes that words were quite incapable of expressing the reality around him, what he has seen and felt. He could not find equivalent words for many things in the world as he knew it. It is this point I am interested in.

We all see things around us and feel many things inside our minds. And we identify almost all things within and outside us by words. Probably, man has been able to make his distinguishable mark on earth (or is he/she?) because of words. Thoughts originates as words (or do they?). Without words, no thoughts, no discoveries, no stories, no science, no news, no advertisements, and no "culture". But how do we learn words? Someone teaches us! We understand the world around us through the words someone has taught us! How strange! How mistaken we possibly could be about things around us! Shouldn't we learn words through nature? Why are we not taught like that? What if we are confused between things in the world because we identify them with wrong words? Do we have words for everything around us? At least for every feelings we have? What if we think that we are sad when we actually feel a mix of sadness and happiness? This happens to me many times! What are the words we use for our feelings? Anger, happiness, sadness, melancholy, jealousy, lust, serenity, and what else? Do we have feelings which do not have equivalent names? When I say I am angry, is there only one kind of anger? What if I can have many types of anger but I wrongly identify all of them as just "anger"? Have I really understood what anger is? (If you think I am writing some nonsense and I have gone nuts, you might as well be wondering "does he really understand what he is writing"?)

Buddha said "truth is beyond words" and what one needs is not indoctrination, which is merely knowledge of a few words, but a "transmission outside doctrine, with no dependence on words". Saramago has shown us what a person who can see sees in a world, where everyone is blind. Modern science says we have evolved in order to survive the hardships that we come across in the world. What if we have evolved in such a way that we cannot see what we must not understand? Put together, man is limited, imperfect, and blind in some sense.

Today, someone was wondering if he could realize an ideal lowpass filter (for non-techies, tuning of your radio in a perfect sense, without any extra interference). And by discussion, I could make him see why he could not! The trade-off between time and frequency characteristics, the uncertain principle and the practical non-realizability of infinity! But even then, we can cleanly listen to our radios, watch T.V. and talk to our friends over mobile phones! All these situations need filters. He said "Signal processing is great! Our technology is great!". I replied him "It is the opposite. We are imperfect. Even with imperfect technology, we can do many things that we are doing. We cannot sense any imperfection introduced by technology in radio music, T.V. shows, or mobile conversations. This is because, I repeat, we are limited and we need only limited technology". Will you agree with me? Without technology, we cannot see the infra-red radiation. When we see it by the help of technology, we feel that the technology is excellent. On the contrary, we cannot perceive the imperfection of the technology because whatever imperfections our technology suffers from are all due to the imperfection possessed by us!

Starting from a movie, I have gone to technology. I do not know what is happening to me. Probably, I have really gone insane! Nonetheless, I still dare to wonder what is beyond words?.

Becoming human!

Finally, after a short gap, I watched an excellent movie two days back. I watched it on DVD, along with my wife, and throughout the movie, she kept wondering "how somebody could conceive such different ideas!". Of course, unlike me, she had never got an opportunity to go beyond the usual Hollywood/Bollywood/Malayalam/Tamil shit! But, now, gradually she is ....

The Movie

The movie that grabbed our whole attention for two hours is "The Terminal". It is directed by Steven Spielberg. And Tom Hanks plays the protagonist Viktor Navorski. Tom Hanks has been one of my favourite actors -- how can I ever forget his class performance in Cast Away, The Road to Perdition, Philadelphia and Forrest Gump!

Well! To summarize the movie, Viktor visits New York for some purpose (that's less important, I think) and he belongs to a fictitious East European country, called Krakozhia. By the time he reached the New York airport terminal, civil war erupts back in his country and the government is overthrown. The United States has not recognized the new government and has cancelled all visa given to the citizens belonging to Krakozhia. Consequently, Viktor cannot enter America. Thus he happens to be "a person with no country", and is simply "unacceptable" to America. He cannot fly back to his country until the war is over. He is forced to live in the airport terminal, his passport being confiscated by the authorities. He is left with no money, no place to stay, and no work. On top of it, he knows very little English!

What I have described is the beginning, probably spanning the first twenty minutes, of the movie. The rest of the movie is about his struggles to survive in the terminal. I interpret the story as the struggle of a lonely man, thrown into a completely strange and, above all, indifferent world. His only objective is his survival. He has no identity, no society, no affiliations and associations, and no friends. Have you ever thought what a man would do in such circumstances? Viktor never resorts to anything immoral, but keeps his dignity as a human being throughout. Naturally, the initial concern must be food, and in the modern society, this means money. He discovers several opportunities in the terminal to earn money (watch the movie -- I don't want to kill your pleasure of anticipations). Later, his efforts are to identify and get himself identified with his surroundings. That is to say, to learn the language, to communicate with others, to make relationships, and so on. He has to begin everything from the scratch, like a new-born child! He has to learn how to become a human being. Fortunately, Viktor is admirably creative in overcoming all the difficulties.

Surely, this movie is something I am not going to forget in my life. My wife enjoyed it very much though it was pretty different from her usual taste!

Pirates 4

I watched the "Pirates of the Carribean 4" with a lot of enthusiasm. Well! Jonny Depp as Jack Sparrow ("there should be a captain somewhere in there" :)) was excellent, but the role of Angelica demanded very less from Penelope Cruz. However, the scenes in which both come together were very nice. The film had nothing special which could exploit the 3D vision! Except for a few scenes, the movie experience was merely 2D.

But we relished the coolness which the air-conditioners provided at INOX in this hot summer in Chennai :)