THE MOVIE "MATERIALISTS" - WORDS TO TAKE YOUR HEART AWAY

Growing up into adulthood in the National Defence Academy, I was taught three activities were a must to begin the day - Sh.., Shave and Shampoo. In those times, that applied not only to people in the Defence Services but to all. Iconic sportsmen like golfer Arnold Palmer, tennis star Rod Laver and cricketer and Brylcreem face Denis Compton, all appeared freshly shaved and well-groomed. Girls' heart throb Shammi Kapoor had a clean face and hair nicely combed though cast as "Junglee" and screaming "Yahoo" in the film of the same name.

Not now, as exemplified by today's popular hero Ranveer Singh in "Dhurandhar" I and II. I don't know about the first activity but Shave and Shampoo don't seem to appeal to today's young men including our Cricket heroes who only have time for T20s but not Tests!

This fashion fits well with today's movies like the two mentioned above which are full of violence, blood and gore. Gone are the days of simple love stories like "Breakfast at Tiffany's" with Audrey Hepburn mesmerising us with "Moon River". So it was a delightful surprise when, on a whim, I viewed last year's "Materialists" on Netflix the other day. No foul language, no fights, no ugly scenes, just a plain love story with captivating dialogue.

Its story is about Lucy (Dakota Johnson) working in a matchmaking firm. Her efforts have resulted in nine marriages for her clients and she is upbeat for more. But her own love life is in a bit of a mess. She has broken off with her boyfriend John (Chris Evans) due to differences in financial aspirations and, after initial reluctance, starts dating rich Henry (Pedro Pascal). She has a client, Sophie (Zoe Winters) for whom, after some difficulty, Lucy arranges a date with Mark. 

Lucy's successful run of matchmaking receives a jolt when Sophie files a case against the company claiming Mark assaulted her after the date. Sophie refuses to meet Lucy who persists and finally catches up with her to apologise. When Lucy claims that she arranged the date because Mark "checked the boxes", Sophie is livid that her life was being shaped by checking off boxes and she walks off calling Lucy a pimp.

I found this aspect of matchmaking very interesting and similar to the Hindu custom of parents rushing to astrologists with horoscopes of the prospective couple to 'check the boxes'. I am told that the astrologers look for 36 attributes and declare whether the couple make the match or not. Later people discover the hollowness of it all when matches backfire and mismatches succeed. (A generous tip to the astrologer can also help him fix the boxes!)

I shan't continue with the story as you might have seen the movie or may want to. But for me, the movie stands out because of its distinctive dialogue by its Writer and Director, Celine Song. Here are a few examples.  

1. Lucy: You're the same as always.

   John: I was hoping you'd say I was different.

   Lucy: Why?

   John: Because if I'm different, I wouldn't be the guy who lost you.

2. Lucy: You're investing a lot in me, huh?

   Henry: I just want our dates to be romantic.

   Lucy: How expensive a meal is makes a date romantic?

   Henry: Doesn't it?

3. Harry: I wouldn't date you if I didn't see value.....I don't want to date you for your material   assets. Material assets are cheap, they don't last. I want to be with you for your intangible assets.   Those are good investments. They don't degrade. They only get sharper.

4. Lucy: I don't want to hate you because you're poor but right now I do and it makes me hate   myself.....And however much you hate me, I promise, I hate myself more.

   John: I don't hate you.

   Lucy: You do. And it's not because we're not in love. It's because we're broke.

5. John: You asked how I could love you. I just do; it's the easiest thing.

    Lucy: I love you too. More than you know. You're the only reason I know I'm capable of love.

    John: I love you now like I loved you before. I"ll love you till the day I die. It's a lifetime         guarantee.....I"ll be your certainty. It's my final offer. You can't negotiate because I don't have     anything else to offer you.

    Lucy: (after a pause, extends a hand) Deal.

6. Lucy: Who our partner is...it determines our whole life and how we live. Not for one, two, ten years, but forever.

With love, nothing is a lot. Without love, a lot is nothing.

 

AND THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR THE MOST OUTSTANDING PREDICTION OF ALL TIME GOES TO......

Remember the perennial favourite "Que Sera Sera" sung by Doris Day in Alfred Hitchcock's classic movie "The Man Who Knew Too Much"? She sings it to her little son as a lullaby lovingly telling him not to worry about the future because "Whatever will be, will be."

Human beings, however, are madly curious to know their future. Witness the daily, weekly, monthly and annual columns like "What the Stars Foretell"  that are published in most newspapers. Readers avidly read them without pausing to think how the forecast could apply to billions of people in different parts of the world just because they share a Zodiac sign! Prophets and seers appear daily on TV broadcasting their predictions very knowingly and condescendingly. To learn about their future in exclusive detail, people flock to astrologers, palmists, tarot readers and numerologists. The latter even suggest 'havans', 'pujas' and rituals to change the future from bad and undesired to good and wanted, never mind 'the moving finger having writ and moved on'! The craving as Omar Khayyam said is,

"Ah love! could thou and I with Fate conspire

To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire

Would not we shatter it to bits - and then

Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!"

On the global scene, perhaps the biggest future predictor has been the French seer, Michel de Nostredame, widely known as Nostradamus. His famous book,"Les Propheties", was published in 1555 and contains 942 quatrains which are supposed to predict future events the world over. To his supporters, his predictions are accurate. To his detractors, the predictions are vague, dateless, misinterpreted and moulded to fit events after they have occurred. 

If we believe his supporters, Nostradamus predicted the Great Fire of London in 1666, the French Revolution 1789-1799, the rise of Napoleon and Hitler, the two World Wars, the atom bomb attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York City. Coming to present times, an interpretation is that 2026 will be a turbulent year marked by a seven-month war, death of a great man and a naval conflict of seven ships. Believe it or not!

On a smaller scale but more accurate and technologically correct are the predictions made many years before their occurrence by writer Jules Verne in his science fiction novels. In "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" (1870), he wrote about an advanced electric-powered submarine, Nautilus. "From the Earth to the Moon"(1865) is about a moon landing, splashdown capsules in the Pacific and launch sites in Florida. "Paris in the Twentieth Century" (1863) describes gas-powered cars, skyscrapers, elevators, an automated transit network and electric streetlights. Verne also wrote about "picture-telegraphs" (fax machines), a network similar to the internet, green energy and solar sails. Made in the Nineteenth Century, the predictions all came true in the Twentieth and are still being improved upon in the Twenty-First Century.

Among thousands of predictions, the one that is the mother of all comes from the origin of the word '"trumpery". The first known use of this word was in the 15th Century and the word was derived from the French 'tromper' meaning 'to deceive'. The English word means 'something showy but worthless', 'trashy', 'paltry'. Synonyms of 'trumpery' include 'nonsense', garbage', 'nuts', 'blah', 'stupidity' and 'rubbish'. Samuel Johnson writing in "A Dictionary of the English Language" defined the word as "something fallaciously splendid; something of less value than it seems."

Was Samuel Johnson extraordinarily prescient more than 500 years ago or are we just fitting things in a mould already cast?

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, the Nobel Prize for the most outstanding prediction of all time goes to Samuel Johnson posthumously.