For a change, I'll offer a synopsis of five powerful works of cinematic art that I was moved by in different ways.
As always, versatility is my aim and I hope you all like my idea of capturing the essence of the stories in verse.
So I write the synopsis in prose, followed by the poems below.
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HILLBILLY ELEGY (2020)
Melding past misgivings with a present destined for better things ahead, this is an adaptation of a seminal memoir about one boy's disorienting grappling with his family status . Yet he is enveloped by love, on the part of a mother who has greatest reserves of it and is also her own worst enemy as also from his beloved MAMAW and eventually sister. A bountifully gifted cast makes it accessible.
For all its critics who can't handle its truthful stance on financial despair, I have to say that it's not the first time you have dissed women and children in life affirming portrayals. So be it with you all. HILLBILLY ELEGY moved me with its hopeful stance and a lived-in feel of class awareness.
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12 ANGRY MEN(1957) & A FEW GOOD MEN(1992)
Two classics almost forty years apart in eras and setting contend with the truth and a hankering for justice in blindsided alleys of law. In the first, it involves a motley crew of men from a cross-section of social classes performing their collective duty as jurors, as random citizens enacting their parts till one of them stands up for reason.
In A FEW GOOD MEN, the tussle is among lawyers and army professionals where authority and experience weigh the scales even when the evidence is bare for all to see.
The long road to triumph is hence bittersweet for the defendants here because truth entails an act of recovery from prejudices, pulling it down from the pedestal on which we put law, sometimes preferring sections and clauses above humanity.
Powerful performances ground both in common parlance and impactful resolves.
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GODLESS (2017)
A riveting albeit expansive Western series set in the fading years of 19th Century frontier America, GODLESS is a worthy addition to the genre's revisionist canon as women rise up from the ashes of history to show men how it's done.
YOU ARE READING
A LETTERED SOUL: REFLECTIONS ON LITERATURE, CINEMA AND CULTURE .
Non-FictionI have often wondered about the very curdled natures of our opinions so much so that the perch of imagination simply becomes a bystanding abstraction and real thoughts of genuine merit slip between the fingers. That is a human tendency, to beat arou...
