carnality

"Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." I agree with the second part."

I watched Se7en (1995) last week and finally understood why it was a cult hit; acknowledged to be one of director David Fincher's masterpieces. Starring Morgan Freeman as a measured older detective about to retire, and Brad Pitt as the brash young cop about to replace him, Se7en is a study of humanity and the darkness that is integral to our existence. The plot revolves around the two aforementioned detectives searching for a serial killer who carries out murders in the theme of the seven deadly sins, hence the film's title.

I love this film because I believe it to be an intelligent thriller - something that is hard to come by these days. Touching on subjects such as death and morality, the script written by Andrew Kevin Walker never patronizes the audience and instead engages it. The acts of violence and murders are never shown, also allowing what is unseen and unknown to scare us, with the evidence and aftermath of the crime scene prompting our imaginations to go wild. Personally, I find such implicit direction to be preferable to the bloodbaths of most R-rated thrillers these days, where the prevalence of barbarity is currently banal, contrived and lacking the shock factor.

This film is also a winner to me because of the lighting, the set design and the make-up. Set in a grimy unnamed city that could be inspired by New York, Fincher uses a monotonous industrial palette made of grey and blue hues to communicate the sense of dread, fear and danger that pervades throughout the film. Buildings are shown to be dark, run-down and crumbling, perhaps paralleling the disintegration of the world's morality - one of the overarching themes of this movie. Thirdly, the make-up is a feat in itself, with the corpses from each murder looking like extras off the set of The Walking Dead, something both macabre yet fascinating. When the three factors cited above come together along with Howard Shore's effective and chilling score, the result is movie magic. Take a look for yourselves.

Look at these powerful mise-en-scenes, I know they will definitely stay with me for a long time.

Finally, the last factor as to why this movie works is due to the acting. Morgan Freeman brings great gravitas and wisdom to his role, with his character forever giving the vibe that he is "the smartest guy in the room" (yes I ripped this quote off Now You See Me, a terrible convoluted mess of a movie that Freeman also starred in, acting in a role he could ace in his sleep). He owned his role as a world-weary detective that has seen and felt too much in his lifetime, projecting both grace and regret. Brad Pitt admittedly and understandably was then still unable to attain the finesse of Freeman in his performance, but was still effective and convincing in his part. The authenticity of Pitt's performance was pivotal in the climax of the film, where he wrestles with grief, anger and a great dilemma in the face of a shocking revelation. Last but not the least, Kevin Spacey's gut-curdling performance as the serial killer was another star-turn. Together with Fincher and Walker, he created a complex and interesting villain that was enigmatic, intelligent and highly unsettling. Without revealing too much, the disturbing nature of the murderer is heightened when he reveals the rationale behind his killings, and we as the audience cannot help but marvel and perhaps even understand the logic and truth behind some of it. 

I leave you with Se7en's opening credits - a testament to the greatness of the film itself and Fincher's construction of an abhorrent and twisted world that is only a shade darker than ours. 

I swear that outro by Nine Inch Nails is going to haunt me forever.

things I've learnt after 3 weeks at work

1. Most people in my office speak that horrendous Chinglish smashgorism that is highly prevalent in the Singaporean population, making me ("the banana") the odd one out. I suppose it is social situations like this that highlight the intense bifurcation between the different strata in our nation - a growing problem that could honestly be virtually unsolvable.

2. Most working people do not care about the technicalities or what they (I believe) consider to be "minor issues" of the English language. It irks me when the proof reading for official government documents is either a) never done or b) sloppy, judging from the poor grammar, inaccurate prepositions and the omission of the definite article. With most of my supervisors and colleagues being engineers, I obviously do not expect them to produce reports with high-falutin or elaborate language, but isn't it reasonable of me to hope for simple, clear, unadulterated and most importantly, grammatically correct English?

Most of my supervisors are university graduates, with one even holding a doctorate, and hence I believe that they are rather intelligent people as they have triumphed over the academic rigour of the engineering course. Yet, most of the ones I have worked with are unable to string grammatically correct sentences in English together, with a warped syntax amongst other issues, and this saddens me because it very possibly means that the education system in Singapore has failed.

To be fair to them, they come from Chinese-speaking backgrounds and are less comfortable in speaking English, which I do not blame them for. However, with this thought in mind, one should presume that they would be able to speak Chinese properly and beautifully, yes? Sadly the reality is a far cry from this assumption, as evidenced by point 1 (as above). The majority of people I have witnessed speaking proper mandarin in full, complete sentences are: 1) People from China, 2) Chinese school teachers, 3) Chinese tuition teachers and 4) Some Malaysian Chinese individuals.

I wonder if this mode of communication is borne out of habit or due to our inability to master a language properly. Personally, I speak the Chinglish smashgorism when I am forced to because 1) my chinese is terrible, 2) I do not have the right social environment to practice speaking proper mandarin and 3) I hate my mother tongue as boring school lessons made the process a bazillion times more painful for me. I admittedly, am very embarrassed and ashamed of my inability to be truly bilingual (against the wishes of our founding father LKY), and now I have forgotten so many Chinese words to the point that I often stare at Chinese characters blankly when browsing through SPH's free publication, My Paper.

So does this mean that Singapore's education system has largely failed us, regardless of your background and what language your family speaks at home?

In scenarios like this, I would honestly love to fly to Scandinavia and force them to reveal their pedagogical secrets, that allow most of their countrymen to speak good English, even though it is their second language.

I was watching videos from YouTuber PewDiePie yesterday, and this blessed hilarious man is from Sweden - the home of Ikea, Swedish meatballs, Stieg Larsson and EFFECTIVELY BILINGUAL HOMOSAPIENS. Obviously while playing his games he was not giving speeches about wormholes and the time-space continuum, but his command of English was good enough to enable him to crack jokes and comment on how terrible and annoying FlappyBird is. I genuinely believe that I am unable to do the same in continuous sentences  of Chinese, with my colleagues perhaps only marginally better than me.

If Singapore's education system, learning attitudes and social environment do not change, I guess we will be the "jack of all trades, master of none" in the language realm. Now I also do genuinely pity the people working in the SpeakGoodEnglish and HuayuCool campaigns, because they do have a lot of work cut out for them.

3. On a more shallow note, Tanjong Pagar has great/orgasmic/wonderful/fantastic/[insert superlative here] food. Amigos, if you want to go cafe hopping with me  or check out the hawker centres, hit me up!

4. Sending around 400++ emails in the last 4 days of my life was terrible, stressful and deeply unsatisfying. I guess the whole theory of workers having a low morale and hence causing internal diseconomies of scale is very true.

5. Meeting friends for lunch instantly makes my day better - it gives you something to look forward to.

6. It is hard to make friends in the office, especially when your supervisors/colleagues are much older than you and on a different wavelength. The problem is compounded especially when the follow temporary staff are either a) weird as fuck, b) shy or c) unwilling to make friends.

7. Thank god for Whatsapp/SMS/technology, because they keep me connected to people I actually care about, and get me through the daily grind.

you hold me without touch

"What do you like the most about this place?"

"Silence."

I know I am extremely late to the whole hoo-ha regarding Alfonso Cuarón's highly critically-acclaimed film Gravity (2013), but that shan't stop me from heaping praise on this masterpiece. 

For those who do not know, the film chronicles medical engineer Dr. Ryan Stone's (Sandra Bullock) catastrophic experiences as she attempts to survive, after debris hits the space shuttle she is working on and destroys everything in its path, with another astronaut (George Clooney) providing her with aid along the way. It is a tale of survival, faith and the overcoming of adversity. 

Although Bullock gives an incredible performance that grants her a well-deserved Oscar nomination, in my opinion, the most marvellous part of this almost-perfect film is its much-lauded direction and cinematography. Due to the use of visual metaphors, the film's themes never come across as overly pedantic and instead are given a spiritual significance. 

Furthermore, the fact that Cuarón managed to pull off an 'impossible' film should warrant more applause and appreciation, as the scenes of spacewalking and Stone spinning uncontrollably in space are given a never-before-seen heightened sense of realism. Shots taken from Stone's perspective are extremely dizzying, as the view of Earth below highlights the magnitude and distance between home and the merciless void of Space. Moreover, the dichotomous nature of Space itself being both beautiful and frightening, is underscored with the juxtaposition of Stone's calamities and the breathtaking view of our blue planet at sunrise, dusk and after dark. With its feats in cinematography, it simply pisses me off right now that I have to watch this film (which was specifically crafted for IMAX 3D) from a 13" laptop screen, as its release date was during the period before my dreaded A levels last year (fuck you very much), causing me to be unable to watch it in the cinemas!

If Gravity does not win the Best Cinematography at the Oscars this year, anger and resentfulness will literally flow out of every pore in my body, because c'mon let's take a look at some of my favourite mise-en-scenes:

Two words: pure genius. I'm sure you would have to agree with me - Earth has never looked so authentic and yet these are simply computer generated images from the minds of a talented director and cinematographer. My favourite shot would be the third one from the top, which features Stone in a fetal position with the tubes nearby resembling an umbilical cord. According to Cuarón, the scene represents Stone's rebirth after surviving multiple calamities, and is a masterful way of representing thematic concerns without awkwardly inserting them into the dialogue, which many directors are guilty of (I'm looking at you, O. Russell!).

Gravity - one of the best films of 2013 and an example of the unbridled possibilities CGI can bring us in the future.