Cinema Connoisseur's Cave

Humor and mockery, there is a fine line between these two and in history of any form of art where humor is an objective for the artist, there has been occasions where the artist failed to make the dichotomy between humor and mockery quite distinct. The line often becomes blurred for many; and therein lie the beauty and novelty of one artist who manages to provide pure humor though the subject of his work appears to take the form mockery. Belgian filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael displays that rare talent of humor in his film The Brand New Testament.  The Brand New Testament’s begins with the premise that God does exist and he lives in Brussels; with his docile wife, the Goddess, and rebellious daughter, Ea. God is tactless towards his wife and abusive towards his daughter. While he is not being those towards his family, he makes up laws on his computer, laws for worldly human. One example of those laws is ‘Your phone will always ring when you are immersed in bathtub.’ I th...

Lenny Abrahamson’s Room is poignant. Room is evocative. Room is devastatingly beautiful. There is a magic in creating a world in a child’s perspective. To capture and display the innocence, the purity, the sheer amount of confusing vastness of the world is no mean feat. Writer Emma Donoghue, who is also the writer of the book that the film is based upon, and director Lenny Abrahamson manage to do just that. The film starts with the pair of mother and son, Joy and Jack, played by Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay living their lives while scrapping for resources yet finding solace in each other’s company, in a room. That is right. In a single room (which later revealed to be a garden shed with a skylight as the only source of sun). The reason behind this ordeal revealed to be that Joy had been abducted by person referred only as ‘Old Nick’. Old Nick kept Joy and Jack, who is his biological son, sans any means of communication with the outside world and had them live a life d...