See SAW

I mean it.
See the damn thing. It is very gross and bloody, not to mention extremely twisted. But it is still compelling (or is it just me?)

Funda is about choices. A whole set of situations where the supposed farce of a choice exists- sounds like a definition for Life I think (or is it just me?)

Some random (that is what one thinks initially anyway) junta are put together just like the junta in your family are put in with you. Everyone starts off with “Where am I ?” and few other typical questions which can also stand for the deep introspective and metaphysical questions that everyone has at one point or the other…example “How did I get here?”

Then you are made aware that you are given some things read latent assets – intelligence, looks, money (A Tape, photos and the saw -in the movie); but that you also have some limitations and constraints that prevent you from operating freely read debts, disabilities, skeletons in the coffin, guilty secrets, liabilities in general (in the case of the film - chains that bind to the pipe at one end and the ankle at the other) and that you are put here to do certain things which you might not want to do if you really had a choice about it – here we think of the careers we picked so it would mean better things for your family rather than what made you happy, about the things we do every day that you would so give everything to just stop doing (in the movie its – kill the other guy, or just cut your own foot off). Motivation for picking the painful job is some invisible carrot dangling in the air (The promise that his wife and little girl will not be killed)

And orchestrating all of this, is some methodical, efficient and oh so very cold creature, with its own compulsions and motivations, that also keeps a constant watch over you all the time read God or the entity that humans believe in. The trapped duo even scream out to that master puppeteer, pulling their strings, at many places, but receive no response…rings a bell?

Think about all those times you cried out starting with “Oh God, Please…” and then nothing.

The most torturous part is figuring out - Why? Why is this happening? Why Me? Don’t we ask ourselves the very same questions all throughout our lives? Only in this movie’s case, at least at the end, one comes to know just why these things happened and why these guys were picked. Sadly, we may not ever get the answers to our questions, only some consolation terms like ‘Karma’.

And finally when all the twisted choices have been forced on the victims, they have been taken for a full ride and made to believe in a trail of wrong assumptions, they desert each other and it is revealed that the key to the shackles were with you at the very beginning but you let it gush down the drain.

The craziest part is that all of this sadistic torture teaches one to appreciate life more, teaches life lessons, actually helps. Just like we are told our hardships help in building our character.

I like this movie. Some, who watched it with me, felt only mental and psychopathic people will like it. I definitely don’t think so. I think the trick here to understand what it is supposed to convey, its underlying parody of life, rather than just take it as a psycho movie with thrills – its face value.

I thank the guy that lent me the DVD. What I don’t thank him for is for his having given me the psycho’s whereabouts even before I could physically take the DVD from him…and ruining the last great surprise that the viewer is supposed to get.

An unexpected gift but with a pang of regret – a rose with a thorn- also a metaphor for life…(or is it just me? )

Just Me,
Rain