I didn't choose the skux life: the skux life chose me
Movies and music of 2023
I'm back with my last round up for '2023 - Best of'! It is always hard to narrow things down but here I am.
One of my favourite things to do when I have finished watching a television show or movie is to recapture the emotional beats of the thing with the music that's used. For example, Thor: Ragnarok (!!!) had an absolutely delightful use of ‘The Immigrant Song’ by Led Zeppelin, which made an already excellent and energising song very humorous. I believe there's a job called Music Supervisor in Hollywood and I imagine many of us would like to do that job! But I'm available to overlay the personal drama of your life with music if you so desire, with a song for every occassion.
Here is my list of music used in TV and movies, or a list of my favourite music, or movies. It’s all combined.
Aftersun (2022)
It will surprise none of you that I loved Aftersun by Charlotte Wells. The film is about a summer holiday that Sophie spends with Calum, her dad. Sophie records the holiday on her mini camera, and this footage is also featured in the movie.
There is a bit at the end of the movie where Paul Mescal's Calum, the father of young Sophie, starts to dance to ‘Under Pressure’ by Queen + David Bowie. The song is a well known quantity, already an ecstatic, nostalgic one, but in its use here, it is very moving. The lyrics "This is the last dance" takes on the burden of memory: broken, patchy, flashing and scobe-like haunting memory and grief. The syncopation takes on an emotional beat that makes the sweep and magic of the song deeper. Paul Mescal's body, face and movements play into the melancholy that underwrites the song. If you watch this movie, prepare to be absolutely devastated. I think this movie compared in emotional cadence to Moonlight, Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Tangerine: cinema essays on loss and relationships that just touch just beneath the surface of language, also my favourite films of the past few years (cliched gay person count: 1).
The video for those who’ve seen the movie (spoilers!).
Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)
This is one of the warmest and silliest films I have seen this year. A young unloved kid called Ricky from the broken foster system of New Zealand finds a home, joining the family of Aunt Bella and Uncle Hec who live a rough life of hunting and gathering. Things transpire, and Ricky and Hec have an adventure running away from the authorities into 'The bush' or dense forests of New Zealand. Ricky is a plucky young chap who loves hip-hop and writes haikus, and Hec is a gruff geezer of hard edges made for surviving the wilderness. They're both outliers and misfits, falling through the cracks of institutions and bureaucracy, and the movie captures their loneliness and friendship with great warmth. The movie is based on a book called Wild Pork and Watercress by Barry Crump, a rugged book of less hope and humour than the film adaptation. I call this movie unsentimentally sentimental, and it has the best use of Leonard Cohen's ‘The Partisan’ that I've seen so far. This also features Rhys Darby as Psycho Sam.
The video for those who’ve seen the movie (spoilers!).
Maamannan (2023)
I have the great privilege of being given an education in Tamil cinema from my dear friend Nadika, who not only makes me watch the best but provides annotations, commentary and transliteration and film history to elevate the experience. I watched Maamannan with her, an anti-caste film by Mari Selvaraj that is in direct conversation with Kamal Haasan's Thevar Magan from 1992. The film stars Vadivelu as Maamannan and Faahadh Faasil as Rathnavelu, actors who bring such force to their roles that I could not get the movie out of my head for days. Rathnavelu is a dominant caste politician who kills his pet dogs when they underperform, and asserts his caste pride in the most violent and despicable ways to maintain his social power and political control. Maamannan is a Dalit political leader, a gentle and kind man who has the difficult job of managing his role in a social justice party given caste dynamics. The dynamic between them is the crux of the story and its anti-caste message.
The film begins in the story of a caste atrocity against a pig-rearing Dalit community somewhere in Salem district. Teenagers are lynched by upper caste men for swimming in a village pond, and a local Dalit political leader, Vadivelu's Maamannan, who is part of a social justice political party, has to make the difficult decision of how to respond to this scenario. The shadow of this caste atrocity unfolds into the plot, which has elements of love story, political thriller and social justice documentary. I was devastated by this song sung by Vadivelu, who previously played comedic roles and Esakki in Thevar Magan.
A frightening thing I read about this movie was that Tamil online caste groups began to celebrate the terrifying Rathnavelu, the dominant caste politician of the movie. I think it goes to the power of Mari Selvaraj’s anti-caste politics, how much things get stirred up.
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
This year, I decided to give myself a cinematic education and watch the greats. I created a kind of ad-hoc list of cinema that I thought I must watch to be a rounded and well-versed person of the world. The first unfortunate movie on the list was Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was not high on peyote as I watched this film nine times to make it to the end, and therefore hated it. I was unmoved by the use of the ‘Blue Danube’ to a spaceship moving slowly in space, and found the idea of a slab of granite as an alien especially insulting. So I thought I could do better and watched Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon directed by Sidney Lumet, which I knew to be loosely based on a bank heist that failed.
The movie begins by telling you: “What you are about to see is true—It happened in Brooklyn, New York, on August 22, 1972.” Sonny (played by Al Pacino) and Sal (John Cazale) try to rob a bank. The attempt fails, and what follows is a tense, claustrophobic day where the police negotiate a hostage release with Sonny. The event becomes a televised sensation, and hundreds gather outside the bank. The movie is transcendent because of Al Pacino, and feels like watching a play in the immediacy it creates. What I vaguely knew but did not register til I watched it was that the character that Al Pacino plays is gay: openly gay, defiant and anti-authoritarian, trying to steal the money for his lover's gender-affirming surgery. He shouts "Attica" to the people gathered outside the bank, referring to a prison riot in which the police killed 43 men. To the fickle crowd outside, he is a celebrity, a sensation, and icon or criminal. Sonny seems to call into question everything simmering under the surface in America of the time: the police and their corrupt authority, race relations, class, gender, sexuality and love. It is a layered and bleak film, but something about Sonny's bravado sticks with you.
Cocaine Bear (2023)
Saving the best for the last: did you watch this movie, please? It is about a bear that has snorted a lot of cocaine. The cocaine, btdubs, fell from plane into a forest in a failed smuggling operation. Apparently this really happened. This movie is camp extravaganza, and you have to watch it with a fellow enthusiast who shrieks with abandon at the horror and silliness. What would happen to a group of people who met a murderous bear high on coke? The movie will show you. There are drug smugglers, park rangers, loitering teenagers, gory and bloody dismemberment sequences, slapstick attempts at evading the bear, and a tender family story. The bear is fantastic, and the movie never gets serious enough to wander into animal rights territory, so you cheer for the bear's addiction with no compunctions. I am waiting for the sequels and prequels.
Here is a playlist meanwhile of some of the music I loved this year, and one note about one song. The playlist is incoherent and won’t make sense played consecutively, but it is my assortment for you.
One of the songs is my mother’s absolute favourite, Mohammad Rafi singing for Dev Anand, lyrics by Shailendra and set to music by SD Burman. Set in a train, Dev Anand is creepily singing to Waheeda Rahman who is sleeping on the upper berth. The video below has subtitles, if that helps. I love the drama that his each 'sigh' is a 'toofan'. Only Rafi can make a creepy stalker song so mellow and beautiful that you can't stop listening to it.
On that mellow note, I hope you have a lovely end to this year, and perhaps the new year will bring better news, less violence in the world and some promise.
Yours, K
Oh I finally found it. I want to read and watch and listen to everything you’ve recommended.