Art reflects life. Movies are more than just a window; it is a magnifying glass that mirrors the endless fragments that are suggested by the perpetuating universe. Exploring indefinite wonders of cosmos and humanity, films are an art form that transcends culture, time, and language.
While the virus outbreak keeps us safely at home, BAZAAR rounds up a guide to the greatest movies and a documentary that take you through an erratic speed, all while burrowing the boundless capacity of the deeper human consciousness. Here, it is more than simple escapism.
1. Quills (2000)
“Reading’s my salvation. It’s a hard day’s wages, slaving away for madmen. What I’ve seen in life, it takes a lot to hold my interest. I put myself in his stories. I play the parts. Each strumpet, each murderess. If I wasn’t such a bad woman on the page, I’ll hazard I couldn’t be such a good woman in life.” – Marquis de Sade
With bedroom eyes and the mischievous smirk of an insatiable roué, this is a story of a writer, Marquis de Sade, who was born hard-wired as one of the most villainous creatures of humankind; one who remains defensive against repression and hypocrisy until the day he dies. Deprived of quill and ink, he writes to descent into madness and tenacity courage. De Sade has made his mark, when the word “sadism” is named after him.
Picture via Fox Searchlight Pictures
2. Taking Woodstock (2009)
“Everyone with their little perspective. Perspective shuts out the universe, it keeps the love out.” – Carol
Woodstock, a 1969 music festival, is the origin of the “hipster” heaven which is also a cultural landmark. Bringing the apotheosis of the ‘60s dream of “peace and love”, there were almost a million people who fight the traffic to spend three days being blessed-out in music and mud.
It’s a coming-of-age story about Tiber, a young, closeted gay Jew, who ends up securing a permit for the Woodstock Music Festival, turning his parents’ ramshackle motel into a base camp for the organisers, and having his mind blown by the time it’s over.
Picture via Focus Features
3. The Garden Of Evening Mists (2019)
“The palest ink will endure beyond the memories of man”― Tan Twan Eng, author of “The Garden of The Evening Mists”
In a setting of quasi-mythical lushness, a refined, patrician character must come to terms with a painful history. Amid “the stillness of the mountains” and “the depth of the silence”, a story deliberately unfolds. As Aritomo settles in the hilltops of Malaya and begins to build Yugiri, a “garden of evening mists”, the narrative turns to the fascinating relationship between Yun Ling, daughter of a prosperous Chinese Malaysian family (and the sole survivor of a prisoner-of-war camp) and gardener Aritomo.
Picture via Astro Shaw
4. Lust, Caution (2007)
“If you are an observant, nothing is trivial.” – Mr. Yee
With World War Ⅱ underway, a young woman Wang Jiazhi has been left behind by her father who escapes to England. As a freshman at university, she meets fellow student Kwang Yu Min who started a drama society to shore up patriotism. Although not originally the plan, Jiazhi becomes the centre of the plot as she captures the attention of Mr. Yee, a bigwig collaborator. Covering the span of four years, the story involves those in the resistance who may have more expertise in espionage and killing. The destinies of the characters move through a fatalistic setting, while changing Jiazhi fundamentally as a person, especially due to her intricate relationship with Yee.
Picture via Focus Features
5. Frances Ha (2012)
“Don’t treat me like a three-hour brunch friend!” – Frances Ha
Shot in sumptuous black and white, the movie traces the highs and lows of the friendship between Frances, a carefree and impulsive person, and Sophie, the more restrained realist. What sets Frances apart is that the women’s platonic relationship is likened to a courtship: they share a bed, they read to each other, and their local barista thinks they are “like a lesbian couple that doesn’t have sex anymore”.
Picture via Moviestore/Rex/Shutterstock
6. The Salt of the Earth (2014)
“We are a ferocious animal. We humans are terrible animals. Our history is a history of wars. It’s an endless story, a tale of madness.” – Sebastiao Salgado
Sebastião Salgado has spent his career documenting human suffering. He would traverse the world, using his hauntingly expressive photographs to expose the harsh existence of his fellow humans. This monumental documentary begins with some incredible black-and-white pictures of gold miners at work in Serro Pelada, Brazil. There were hundreds of men, sweating and covered in dirt and grime.
With a single flash of his camera, Salgado snatches a momentary insight into the humanity of his subjects. He began working as a professional photographer in 1973 and since then, he has been telling the stories of our planet’s most vulnerable people and places. In 1984, he photographed the famine in Ethiopia; in 1991, the bitter conclusion of the first Gulf War in Iraq; and in 1994, the genocide in Rwanda.
Picture via Decia Films
7. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (2003)
“Lust awakens the desire to possess. And that awakens the intention to kill”- Old monk
Elegiac and hauntingly beautiful, this movie will change the way you view the world. In the midst of the Korean wilderness, the film winds up like a moving picture postcard, as it captures thoughtful ruminations between a man’s self-control and human nature. Failing to resist negative thought-waves that eventually drag him to wrong deeds, the man seeks closure within himself at a high price of physical catharsis.
Picture via Pictures Classics
8. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” – Atticus Finch
Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiographical novel was translated to film in 1962 by Horton Foote. Echoing the emerging civil rights spirit of the early ‘60s, the movie poignantly indicted racial injustice as it revolves around the story of a scrupulously honest lawyer, Atticus Finch. It all begins when he puts his career on the line after he agreed to represent Tom Robinson, a black man accused of rape.
Picture via Universal/Allstar
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