A LETTERED SOUL: REFLECTIONS ON LITERATURE, CINEMA AND CULTURE .

THE ART OF PORTRAYING INNER LIVES.

OF TROUBLED INNER LIVES

These are feature films that took their inspirations from the troubled inner core of lives. Social and personal aspects intertwine in all the titles, affecting viewpoints and taking emotional precedence in their lingering composite whole.

THE LIFE AHEAD

This was the first opportunity I received in watching veritable screen legend Sophia Loren lead a screenplay; the fact that THE LIFE AHEAD is written for her and directed by her son Edoardo Ponti makes it personal and heart-warming.

As Madame Rosa, a former Holocaust survivor and now retired lady of the night, she gets to play someone her own age, positioning the vagaries of time on a life on the fringes. By acting as dedicated caretaker to children hailing from a similar situation, she evinces her humane responsibility. This film is pretty straightforward in its journey of loss and love. The background of its personages is never reiterated or made to stay as a moral centre because their present status is all that matters, the personal equations somehow making Rosa and orphan Momo( Ibrahima Gueye) equals in their identities as essentially refugees holding on to the final vestiges of memory, their common striving for a lost childhood and less than ideal realities unifying them with others in their orbit.

THE LIFE AHEAD very quietly, and with some unique manner of agency, maps the bonds among the leads and few supporting members, to show us that there is indeed a light that guides us through passages of grave darkness. It is brave, poignant in how it confronts the inner workings of these lives.

**

THE CROWN SEASON 4

The fourth season of THE CROWN brought us closer to the era in which a re-evaluation of royalty and hegemonic institutions of yore defined public discourse. As a person belonging to a country that had been occupied under the crown for two hundred years, this inside look at the mentalities and unsparing class consciousness of the titular outfit is not unlike any other social matrix where the idea of privilege is all-encompassing and refuses to die down with the passage of time or evolution of societal structures. Writer Peter Morgan takes a deep dive into how the retinue of people associated with Queen Elizabeth ( Olivia Colman) have become the greatest casualty to common sense or national interest, living in their moth-balled utopia of palaces and castles, private holidays and sports, largely caught in their own trap of invincibility and by extension cold cruelty. It doesn't help that the public simultaneously rebukes and yet largely celebrates their curdled halo because it has been dictated by centuries worth of tradition.

That inner network is brought upon to bear on the innocence and life-affirming hope of Princess Diana ( an excellent Emma Corrin); with precision of body language and emotional articulation, Corrin embodies the stifling pain and parallel helpings of individual strength that overturned conventions and made her endear to generations. In my opinion, her performance as Lady Diana should stand the test of time for being so true to the polarities of her world and the unraveling of a young life that saw and experienced way more than any average person.