chaos personified @hellish-cruelty - Tumblr Blog

Of lost chances, forbidden love and remorse.

It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Films in frame: Past lives, La la land, Fleabag, Normal People, In the mood for love, Atonement, Potrait of a lady on fire, Maurice, Blue Valentine, Her

The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Wes Anderson

"If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear." - Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

Movies: Pan's Labyrinth (2006), The Shape of Water (2017), Frankenstein (2025), Fantastic Four (2005), WandaVision (2001), Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Secretary (2002)

Aranyer Din Ratri, Satyajit Ray (1970)

Hiroshima mon amour, Alain Resnais (1959)

One of the most beautiful films to ever grace the screen. Meditative mosaic of love and suffering, juxtaposed within the past and present, t

One of the most beautiful films to ever grace the screen. Meditative mosaic of love and suffering, juxtaposed within the past and present, the personal and external experiences of heartbreak and the cruelty of humankind. Takes you into a trance like journey of rememberance and the thirst of forgetfulness, while continuously blurring the lines between them. But one cannot simply escape what has been, the past is inescapable. The horrors of war creeps into everyday life. Hiroshima is as much the lover and memory as much as it is the soldier and suffering. So to say, the opposite of lover is soldier and that of memory is suffering.

"The only memory I have left is your name..I yearn for you so badly I can't bear it anymore."

Every memory is another opportunity to be awake in the presence of suffering. Love though, can only be had in shape of a lie (illicit affair). Because once you've felt pain as seething as a war torn city, you cannot experience love truthfully nor can you erase it. It is the story of two people finding themselves in their shared misery but can love hold you enough to mend you.

It reads like a lullaby, an epic poem even. French philosopher Jacques Derrida argues that meaning is not fixed or universal, instead it is fluid and unstable. It uses deconstruction to reveal how language is inherently ever-changing, filled with contradictions. It is from this deconstruction that fragments are formed. Alain Resnais takes this fragmentation and fills it throughout the film with flashbacks and rememberance on the aftermath of the horrific bombing of Hiroshima. It is quite jarring to see how French new wave and literary theory meets to make this symbiotic relationship of understanding suffering and survival.

"I meet you. I remember you. Who are you? You're destroying me. You're good for me. How could I know this city was tailor-made for love? How could I know you fit my body like a glove? I like you. How unlikely. I like you. How slow all of a sudden. How sweet. You cannot know. You're destroying me. You're good for me. You're destroying me. You're good for me. I have time. Please, devour me. Deform me to the point of ugliness. Why not you? Why not you in this city and in this night, so like other cities and other nights you can hardly tell the difference? I beg of you."

hellish-cruelty

Wong Kar-Wai's In the mood for love deleted scene.

hellish-cruelty

More deleted scenes from Wong Kar-Wai's In the mood for love.

Menace of Corporate

Movies/TV Shows - Playtime (1967), Severance (2022), The Incredibles (2004)

Walking down the aisle

Movies/ TV Show - Scott Pilgrim vs The World (2010), IT (2007), We need to talk about Kevin (2011), Punch Drunk Love (2002), Big Eyes (2004), Companion (2025), One Hour Photo (2002), Drive (2011), Modern Love: Season 2 (2019), White Noise (2022)

The first time I watched Blue velvet, I thought the director had to be crazy to make a film so bizarre. It was the first year of college and I had no idea who Lynch was or of his greatness. The next time, I traversed an even darker path that lead me to Mulholland drive and you can imagine what kind of impression that had on me. It was peculiar and it is in these peculiarities that my curiosity thrived. I dived full throttle into the Lynchian universe and soared like a phoenix from the ashes, only this phoenix was dark and white, bizzare and ordinary, blue and happy and unspeakably aged.

David Lynch was larger than life, a man with a unique vision of the world. A surrealist artist who understood the human condition in its true essence. He was excruciatingly honest in his portrayal of the bizarre and expressed the human psyche unabashedly. To the moon man, to the beautiful beautiful weirdo, cinema loves you to the moon and back. Rest in cinema. 🎥

hellish-cruelty

Neon Cityscapes

Movies - Taxi Driver (1976), Lost in translation (2003), Ghost in the shell (1995), Akira (1988), Fallen Angels (1995), As tears go by (1988), Happy together (1997), Eyes wide shut (1999), 2046 (2004), Paris, Texas (1984)

Lonely People in Neon Cities

Movies - Eyes wide shut (1999), Heat (1995), The Departed (2006), Long Day's Journey into Night (2018), Ghost in the shell (1995), Chungking Express (1994), You were never really here (2017) Blade runner (1982), Blade runner 2049 (2917), Paris, Texas (1984)

Hallway scenes

Movies - No country for old men (2007), The Lobster (2015), Irréversible (2002), In the mood for Love (2000), Twin Peaks (Season 2, episode 22), Inside Llewellyn Davies (2013), Punch Drunk Love (2002), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), The Shining (1980),

24th November, 2024

Watched Payel Kapadia's All We Imagine As Light last week and my heart has grown fonder since. It reminded me of why I love cinema as much as I do. I was drowning in the same overused stories, until this came like fresh air and saved me a little.

Kapadia's brilliant soulful scenes are enthralling and yet so unassuming. It's for everyone who lives in faraway cities where loneliness collects itself in a bundle. You'll feel your loneliness recede slowly as you become one with the movie. You'll see yourself in Prabha, a caged nurse shun by her husband and Anu, an adventurous fierce woman, both navigating life, longing and social realities in Mumbai. Though, this Mumbai is not laced with dreams but with darkness and melancholy. A city of illusion and impermanence, and yet one must imagine the light. Under the city's shimmering blue, I reimagined myself in it's female friendships, desire and insecurities. The film explores countless themes without overdoing it. One dialogue that stuck with me is 'Class is a privilege. Reserved for the Privileged.'.

The film reveals itself like poetry, the verses of which I found in Agnes Varda (female solidarity, cats), Chantal Ackerman (how it deals with loneliness in cities, city as a character), Edward Yang (social alienation, fractured modernization) and many more. The tenderness and sensibility of the film stays with you, slowly healing, slowly transforming something in you.

I love loneliness. I love love women. I love love love cinema.

All We Imagine As Happiness.

Music on and time slows down.

Lost in Translation (2003), A Ghost Story (2017), Blue Valentine (2010), The Double Life of Veronique (1991), Pao Alto (2013), Bones and All (2022), Killing Eve, The Edge of Seventeen (2016), Last Night in Soho (2021), Girls (2012 - 2017)

Working in corporate is a blur. Days pass by waiting for the weekend and before you know it six months has already gone by and you're contemplating if this is how life's gonna be for the next 30 years.

Movie - Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), John Hughes

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