Movie Review: The Social Network

This is my first movie review - which is sort of ironic given the post below. A great movie for me is one that pushes the imagination and emotions to its extreme edge such that one is consumed by the experience for days and takes quite some time to get it “out of the system”, so to speak. And every few years, there is always one such movie that is released by creative film makers around the world. The Dark Knight was one such; it took me 3 days of continuous viewing and many days of reading/ talking about it to find peace in the Joker’s outrageous sense of morality. Fight Club was another – a dark, stylish, post modern flick encapsulating our almost programmed participation in a litany of mind less races that have us confusing life for 'stuff'. At the very least, it was a story very crisply told, with great background music, great performances and great direction by David Fincher. His next, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was quite disappointing in that it had not much to offer by way of story telling and was largely a cosmetic celebration of Brad Pitt’s beauty with some great background scores. Social Network is his next where he has finally replaced Brad Pitt with a fairly interesting ensemble cast and is right up his ally in that it begins at the same place of the story of a loner, who did not fit into society due to his many quirks and his spectacular journey of creating something extraordinary that changed the world as he knew it.

On the face of it, the Social Network is the story of Facebook and its Co-Founders Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) and Dustin Moskovitz. It is also the story of the Winklevoz twins (both played Armie Hammer) who claim to have the original idea which was stolen and implemented by Zuckerberg before they could get around to it. However, the film and its script is much more than that. It is at once an introspective look at morality for our time and age and the real price of ambition. Like the Joker, it takes a dark look at the meaning of human interpersonal reactions albeit within the landscape of business, where money and recognition find weight in gold, corrupting innocent notions of right and wrong that are ingrained in simpler academic worlds. It is a fascinating tale of 2 founders of a path breaking idea; one the genius with the alternate vision – the lateral thinker, the game changer, uncontainable and free spirited, driven only by his creation and what it represents and stands for; and the other, the more restrained voice rooted in business reality looking to make economic sense within the architecture of his friend's creative world. The character etching is fascinating and the film never once passes judgment on the right or the wrong - it simply provides enough information for the viewer to work it within his framework of morality - and even if based on some distorted facts, it is largely representative of the world we live in where choices to do the “right” thing are only understood deep inside inside our consciousness where our hearts whisper it out to us with annoying clarity.

Eduardo Saverin was a consultant for the script and from the very beginning, it is almost impossible to not empathize with his character played by Andrew Garfield. He forms the moral compass, the heart and soul for the film as one of its most likable characters; someone who believed in and paid for a promised ride on a magical highway that would soar into the skies; yet found himself deserted mid way through the journey by the driver who found companionship in suspicious strangers along the way that better spoke his language and better painted his pictures.

Eisenberg is outstanding as Zuckerberg, his eyes and his body language convey the compulsions and isolation of a man at the top that is focused on the drive, on taking his paradigm shifting world view of the world forward, for developing it and ensuring all the values it encapsulated and stood for were never compromised along the way. In achieving this, the film highlights the many difficult personal choices he had to make and Eisenberg while giving the character the necessary geek persona also manages to convey the cold ruthlessness, obsessive and defensive character traits that constitute the backbone of his eventual decisions. Yet he is not completely contemptible, his eyes do reflect just that slightest hint of vulnerability and discomfort of understanding exactly what his actions constitute to his friendships, his defiance of money and moneyed peers make him almost heroic and his excitement at meeting Sean Parker, a man among the isolated few that understood his idiom make him endearing despite not wanting too. Rest of the ensemble cast put in solid performances including the Winklevoz twins and the character that plays Larry Summers who is exceptionally brilliant in his limited scenes.

The story is largely told using a juxtaposition of flashbacks on the creation of facebook and the current legal suits facing its founder from his friends and peers – a story where one does know the eventuality upfront but the unfolding of it is narrated almost like a thriller; a story where despite the geekdom in the dialogues, the film manages to have just enough heart and brilliant music to make it one of the more outstanding films of the past couple of years. It is a film of our times that captures the spirit of a generation that isn’t prepared to wait their turn or pay their dues and instead will make the opportunities for themselves or tear it away from the less ambitious. It’s like a gangster film where the young hoods prove themselves to the older wiseguys by doing something audacious despite breaking all sorts of codes of honour. It’s both admirable and threatening, exhilarating and terrifying. However, in this case, the antiheros aren’t left in jail or dead but are left to endlessly refresh a browser to see if an ex-girlfriend has accepted their friend request.

The Movies!

I LOVEEEEEEEE the movies!!

I enjoy the whole shindig of movie watching – of popcorns, cola, crowds albeit that in an Indian context, it implies sshing other moviegoers who keep cellphones on chatting incessantly and other talkative sorts who don’t get that the rest of us paid good money to watch the film. I follow a typical movie routine – for English movies check IMDB, rottentomatoes for ratings, for hindi movies – check out Rajeev Masand’s and Raja Sen’s ratings (the sachharine sweet diabetic inducing Taran Adarsh and the rest are completely compromised in my opinion to the various industry camps). If they are good ratings, then I go check out the movie without reading any of the reviews. I hate reading reviews or discussing a movie before watching one – I’d rather to go into it with a complete blank canvas and be encompassed into the entirety of the audio visual ride the movie has set out for us. After the entire experience of the movie has been enjoyed, I come back and scan the net for every available piece of information about the movie – on rottentomatoes, imdb faqs, trivia, other reviews (nytimes), cast and director interviews, wiki on the production, making of movies etc etc….this (esp the review reading part where I love to see how others have experienced the movies, the parts I missed out or the reviewers didn’t get) is one of the greatest joys of the experience. Besides discussing it at length with Venkat, my friend and manic movie lover (by an order of magnitude) who has taken great pains to sensitise me to the various filmmakers, movements in film making and aspects of film making I had never thought of earlier (like camera angles or editing or the role of background music that is in the foreground sometimes, among the million other things); not to mention his timeless and priceless gift of pirated downloaded set of all time best 1000 movies (including IMDB top 500 movies of all time) to ensure I had a visual world to keep me sufficiently occupied while he left the country to see the world. And Vinu, who has an innate ability to quantify any subject matter, however abstruse to a crisp and precise rating on 5.

In some cases, if I don’t feel that I couldn’t capture the entirety of the movie in one viewing, I watch it again. And some times, again and again, 3 days in a row like the Dark Knight. Some of my all time favorite movies are The Fight Club, The Dark Knight, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, American Beauty, Shawshank Redemption, A Beautiful Mind and among Indian movies, a lot of the current bunch like Gulal, DevD, Peepli Live, Rang De Basanti, Jab we Met, Taare Zameen Par, Chak De, Sadma, Karthik Calling Karthik etc. Fight Club remains my all time favorite movie and its brilliant director, David Fincher, my all time favorite director - my best paintings have been inspired by Jack, its nameless protagonist which you can find here.

I also enjoy the business of movies and spend a lot of time talking to friends who are insiders, working in production or distribution houses. I check boxofficeindia.com every week, watch komal nahta on etc and bollywood business on zoom to know which film has made how much money. I would love to produce a film one day – there I said it. It is one of those things to do on my bucket list!

So here’s to more reviews of the many memorable movies ahead. I start with the first one, the social network, fittingly by David Fincher.

Drawing...

Found this amazing letter on drawing on the web..

Dear ....

Think less. Draw more.

When you draw a thing, see it just as that. Not a head, not perspective, not crosshatching, just pure observation as if you’ve never seen it before. The more preconceptions you bring to the drawing, the shittier it will be.

Clear your mind, and start drawing what you see. Start anywhere. I tend to start in the upper left hand corner because I am right handed. I move across observing, recording, until I get to the lower left hand corner. Then I am done.

If my subject is sufficiently complex, this will take me a half hour or more. I go as slowly as I can stand to go. But I don’t know how long it is usually; my left-brain has no sense of time.

As I draw, I avoid evaluation. I avoid thinking of the purpose of the drawing. I avoid commenting on what I am drawing, even in the quality of the line. I am empty and the drawing fills me up. Drawing is meditation, not production. Drawing is entirely in the present with no attempt to create context.

Do not think about style. Add shadows as you see them. But better to avoid shadows all together and stay engaged with the contours of things. When you have done that for months, even years, then add shadows and crosshatching (My pal, d.price has been drawing for a dozen years. Only on his trip to New York last week did he decide to start concentrating on the effects of light. He still almost never uses color). For now, none of that is important. What matters is to see deeply and let your hand respond.

And if you start at huge length before you draw, you risk becoming bored, or forming mental notes, theories, ideas about what you are seeing. The reason to let your hand and pen take over is to shut the hell up, silence the internal voice, the endless chattering of the mind, the distractions, the pointless pontificating that insists on meaning for the meaningless. The moment does not need meaning or context. It just is.

Drawing is about reaching for pure being. Not making pretty pictures to put in frames and on websites. The world doesn’t need more pictures. It needs peace and connection. It needs people who can accept reality and don’t feel compelled to control their environments. If you can look at a boot, at a rotting apple, at car’s worn tire, at an old man’s foot, and see it for what it is, without value or judgement, can see the beauty and particularity of the thing, you will find peace. You will avoid being covetous. You will be happy with what you have. You will accept others more readily, will see the sunshine on a cloudy day.

Life is a wonderful business, though fools blow up London tube stations and sell each other crap and waste time with gossip about movie stars. If you can draw, you will always have a place to go that is beautiful and honest and true. As you sit in an airport you will find pleasure in the folds of a crumpled lunch bag. As you bide your time in a doctor’s waiting room, you will find peace in the arrangement of the shadows on the wall. Even without putting ink on paper, you will be able to slip in to Drawing Mind.

The point is not what your lines look like or how accurate your crosshatching might be.
The point is not the drawings on the page or the pages in the book.
The point is not the opinions of others who love/hate/ignore those lines you made on the page.
The point is not the money you make selling your work to galleries or publishers.
The point of practicing your craft is not to rise in the rankings of those who draw. It’s not to have your style dominate (sorry, Dan!).

The point is to more easily gain access to the moment, to the deeper more peaceful recesses of your Self.

The point is to live as well and as fully as you can today, right now, whether your pen is in your hand or not.

The point is to See and to Be.

Back to Blogging

Its been a long time since I painted. I think, its been a long time since I wrote, blogged or did anything creative. I think ever since I moved to Bangalore, I have not felt isolation. I have not felt the emptiness of space, the need to confront my thoughts in the sharp cacophony of silence. No doubt, I have enjoyed companionship. But I also have a dual need of isolation. I am not clear on how I should manage this. With routine, families, responsibilities - how does one find some time to be truly alone? Travel usually affords some alone time. But I am not clear on how to manage the routine from taking over.

I have enjoyed the last couple of weeks of being alone. Its strange, the first few days were difficult. But I have settled into me, myself and realised how much I have missed this. I feel more centered, more in harmony. So here are the things I promise to do over the next few months:

1. Complete a difficult painting composition. I want to move away from the landscapes and still lives and do something that is compositionally complex.

2. Blog more about thoughts and ideas. I have a theory of equilibrium, I want to write a post on that sometime.

3. Stay focused on the start up. And also write about it.

4. Not get my many complicated relationships get bigger than me. Sometimes, its a lot harder just being female - just way too many nuanced emotions to cope with. I promise to be on top, for once :-)

Hopefully, I will write more on random thoughts and ideas. I have missed this.

New blog

Hey peoples (those few that still visit this haunted space)...have started a new blog....http://inksmemoirs.blogspot.com/ to document the startup story....
Thanks for visiting and love u all.
Ink

Pledge at HAL

Women taking a pledge at HAL, Bangalore
"....to improve the lives of our families and children...Khuda Gawah"

More Field Visits

Chamrajpet Chawls


Been travelling in the hot sun all over Bangalore. Have visited slums in Chamrajpet, HAL, Halasuru, Koramangala, Yeshwantpur so far.....large number of field visits remain. No better way to understand the issues of the poor unless one spends a decent amount of time with them. Some more pictures attached. Views on micro finance as a poverty alleviation tool are crystallizing...will put up a post soon....

Update!!

Quick life update - have joined Ujjivan, an urban micro finance company as the marketing head. Job is to create financially inclusive products for our customers, who are working poor women.
Some pics of my first field visit:

The hill

An old friend from a frozen time sent in this poem.

A : In memory of my wonderful times with you, I am posting this for posterity here. Love.

The Hill

This normative hill
like all others
is transparently accessible,
out there
and in the mind,
not to be missed
except in peril of one's life.

Do not muse on it
from a distance:
it's not remote
for the view only,
it's for the sport
of climbing.

What the hill demands
is a man
with forces flowering
as from the crevices
of rocks and rough surfaces
wild flowers
force themselves towards the sun
and burn
for a moment. 

How often must I
say to myself
what I say to others:
trust your nerves—
in conversation or in bed
the rhythm comes.
And once you begin
hang on for life.

What is survival?
What is existence?
I am not talking about
poetry. I am
talking about
perishing outrageously
and calling it
activity.

I say: be done with it.
I say: you've got to love that hill.
Be wrathful, be impatient
that you are not
on the hill. Do not forgive
yourself or other,
though charity
is all very well.

Do not rest
in irony or acceptance.
Man should not laugh
when he is dying.
In decent death
you flow into another kind of time
which is the hill
you always thought you knew.

    -- Nissim Ezekiel

Packing

Today is one of the last weekends in London. Moving countries can be overwhelming, I discovered. As I was telling a friend, M, earlier, I have moved 8 homes in the last 4 years! And travelled to 15 countries in the last 2 years - Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, France, England, Wales, Scotland, Spain, Morocco, Sweden, Norway, America and good ol India ! Have taken over 60 flights in 2 years and done the India-London leg alone around 14 times, Lon-NY 3 times, Lon-Paris over 15 times.

Much of the world remains to be seen. I am very keen on doing the Far East, Japan, Cambodia and Africa. Europe now seems largely similar - although each country was unique, I found a common vein running through all and soon there came a degree of predictability on what to expect - however Eastern Europe could be potentially interesting. The travel bug bit and took its pound of flesh, however is now satiated for the moment and hibernating for a bit. The sense of 'hurry' to see the world appears to have calmed down for now and there is a realization that a good part of life remains to see and absorb the rest of our beautiful world.

The last 3 months have been far too overwhelming at work to do any travel or to paint or write anything meaningful or even attempt to play the guitar. It was a tough period of complex negotiations, running the last lap of a very long race, a time when I internalized the identity of a banker - very strange this, only when the end was near did I begin to feel like one. Well, I guess one begins to appreciate only when the time becomes obviously finite. It was also a time of a painter's block, writer's block, music block...basically a creative glut. It is quite interesting how the mind needs such a huge amount of space and a sense of being free emotionally and mentally to be able to observe and create. This is going to be a challenge in the coming months. Entrepreneurship, in its very definition has a strong sense of ownership to the job and in that sense; it is going to be hard to ‘feel free and disengaged' to dissolve into a different kind of a creative space.

My father often reminds me of the need to have a 'primary sense of identity' ie where all other personas are complementary – his distilled words of wisdom to prevent internal chaos and live in harmony. In the past, as a teenager, I have thought of pursing the 'arts' and giving a life to it and many times wondered with an inevitable tinge of regret if it was a right decision to pursue the completely contrarian path of accounting, economics, business and finance. Over time however, it was quite clear that I would not be happy being an observer or a commentator (any art as they say, is after all is a mirror to one self and society). In my head, I wanted to walk the war, 'do', make a difference, however tiny. And I am now quite sold to this idea. So, at the end of one half of a life, after drifting through many worlds, I can say with some certainty that I have 'found'. Only the manner of execution remains to be discovered. So I am glad in retrospect that I did study business and major in finance – IIMA equipped me with enough wings to be able to fly towards a different horizon.

Back to the packing now. Some more statistics - over a hundred books, 20 paintings, a million dvds....in 2 years. In retrospect, how did I find the time to manage all this??? Time sure was intense.....

Happy, happy..to be back. Tra la la ...

Free Fall

Its a lazy Tuesday morning. The end of my last deal. The beginning of the free fall... Its strange 'not' to have to stress about funds flowing or numbers adding....not to have to manage consultant speak, investor queries, p&l calculations, excel models, markets crashing, spreads widening...all marking the end of one phase of life in the fast lane.

Ystd, I had a long dinner with my vp. 6 glasses of champagne and lots of conversations later...she convinced me, it got no better with time. Work hard for one half of your life in an attempt to buy freedom, to truly do what you want to do, but then spend the next half being bound sub-conciously to a different kind of routine....

Its surreal almost. Have waited for so long for this day, cant believe its actually here.

India, here I come....

Scared...

Saw lagaan today. Yes, I know. Didnt see this historical movie for so long.

Scared. Having lived a life so far away from rural India, can I return?? Will I be an alien in my own land......?

Can I do anything worthwhile...?

But then, is it worth living without finding out? I want to find out.

...And one year later!

I have jumped!! From the firm hold of my job as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs International, London into the world of unknown…..following a vague notion of fulfilment …Of hope, love and change. Of a desire to contribute, to make that bit, however tiny, of difference. It is an open wide field with infinite paths of various colors…I am now only familiar with the shades that I will choose, the definitive path is yet to be discovered.

I have resigned this week from GS and taken the plunge. I will be returning to Bangalore, India by first week of September and looking around for a bit. Spending some time rediscovering roots. With this ends my time as a hard nosed banker. I have had a most interesting peek into this very exciting, even if void world. It has been a world so contrasted to the one in my thoughts, that I have often felt quite external to it…like watching a movie – a passiveness. Have seen big games played out at close quarters. Have travelled, met the most interesting people and made many friendships. Worked the 120 hour weeks. Complex analysis, tougher negotiations. All in a world where to optimise is to dehumanise.

I didn’t anticipate the smell of freedom would be so delicately sweet. It feels light and truly joyous!!!!

I am finally free.

My new guitar!!!!!!!!

The Fender Stratocaster.....a dream guitar!

Sleeping with Others

A beautiful poem by Stephen Dunn, Pulitzer Prize winner, 2001.

Sleeping With Others

Because memory and its intrusive nostalgias
lie down with us,
it helps to say we love each other,

each declaration a small erasure, the past
for a while reduced to a trace,
the heart's palimpsest to a murmur.

Still, our solitudes are so populated
that sometimes after sex
we know it's best to be quiet -

time having instructed us in the art
of the unspoken,
of in the sufficient eloquence

of certain sighs. Regret shows up
unpredictably,
sleeping with, but never between us.

Like joy it doesn't stay long, quickly tiring
of the language
used in its name, wanting only itself.

We've made this bed. We're old enough
to know sorrow may visit
now and then, and that the world slides in

at will - ugly, dark, confident it belongs.
Nothing to do but let it
touch us, allow it to hurt, and remind

'Meaning'

Dean Harker at S's graduation at Wharton gave a beautiful speech on the role of business leaders in today's environment. Quite a contrast from Laxmi Mittal who spoke thereafter on a long, pain-stakingly detailed account of the Mittal-Arcelor deal.

An excerpt of the speech is as below:

John Gardner, a great academic and civic leader, said this about meaning:

“Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life.

“You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something.

“The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure – as the world measures success or failure – is of less account.”

On a separate note :-) , started playing the guitar. Will put up pictures over the weekend.

Parting

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

- Emily Dickinson

Motivation and beyond..

Have finally joined a painting class. My first professional training ever in oil-painting. It looks like a large commitment in terms of time (every sat 10-5pm for 10 Saturdays) – given the insanity of time pressure on the weekdays (Ah! The pitfalls of an investment banking job), weekends are crucial to numb down the high frequency pitch of the mind and indulge in a contrasted world of calmness, utter solitude and peace. Fitting this routine on weekends is going to require a certain amount of rigour and commitment to the art – I hope I am able to live it out.

First class was satisfying. The studio is large with big windows and as spring has now set in, there is lot of sunlight through the day. Alison (www.harperart.com) has a beautiful mind – it is wonderful to finally meet someone in flesh and blood who shares this deep love and passion for the art. I did a still life of three peppers in complementary colors for this class - will put it up next week once I get the painting back home. I learnt about color toning and also did a painting for the first time without turps. It was not easy to do the detailing without a paint thinner but not as hard as I imagined either. Loved the overall tone and texture of the painting eventually. Alison made me do a canvas wash in acrylic in a complementary color of the actual background before I began the painting. I had never experimented with acrylics and oils together on canvas before - loved the overall warm feel and the painting really started coming together due to that wash. Also learnt to avoid too much detailing in the beginning but to work on all parts of a painting parallely and get into levels of detailing for the painting as a whole (this was initially anti intuitive to me – need to unlearn quite a bit and consiously control instincts to get it right). For the next class, I need to do a black and white painting.

Also joined an online guitar class recommended by F, www.nextlevelguitar.com . The teacher, Dave seems to have a very simplistic approach to guitar learning and has taken the fear out of my mind. He makes it a lot of fun. The last time I tried learning to play a guitar (on IIMA campus), it was a disaster - mostly due to a combination of lack of practise as a result of severe case of bumming out and fear (not really sure why). This time, there is the benefit of unlimited runs of the online videos and besides, Dave has dumbed it down sufficiently for beginners, so looks like a lot of fun. So far, the lessons have been quite exciting really. Need to buy a good electric guitar.

It was also evaluation week at work. Usual reviews - nothing unexpected except that what was in my head so far is now apparent to the world. Motivation or rather lack of it.....apparently, they have not seen anyone ranked as high on technicals and productivity to be ranked as low on motivation.... so now its an open secret!

More travel lined up for next week. Can’t wait to meet S and A at Philly next weekend. Until then – Adios!

Marrakech

Arabian Shooters on Horses at the 'Pasha'

Snake charmers at the Souq

An artifact store at the Souq

The market behind the 'Kutoubia'

Cactii in the blue garden

Spice shop at the souq


Our horse carriage ride around the city


(Blog to follow)

Of conflict, free will and Marrakech

What would life be without conflict, I often wonder… one with no dichotomy in choices. A friend once said, you are open to vulnerability only if you allow yourself to feel. A life of vacant emotion or profound pain…..? Of stability or free-will? Few months to go….time and this blog will soon tell.

As an aside, a lot of travel lined up these next few months..so more blogs to follow:

• Visit to Marrakech next week for 4 days on an office offsite
• Visit to Philly, Pennsylvania mid May for S’s convocation at Wharton
• Visit to Switzerland end of May for S’ post convo celebration
• Short weekend visit again to Paris

Cant wait to do Marrakech, have a 3 mnth visa. So might do Casablanca later as well.

Until then, adios....will keep painting.