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Business News/ Opinion / Blogs/  CINEMA CURRENT: Life as we don’t know it
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CINEMA CURRENT: Life as we don’t know it

Biopics often follow a predictable and comforting template

A still from the movie Rang Rasiya (A still from the movie Rang Rasiya)Premium
A still from the movie Rang Rasiya

(A still from the movie Rang Rasiya)

Biopics often follow a predictable and comforting template. If we’re feeling nasty, which we often are, we might say the biopic is a no-brainer. Start at the beginning, preferably in childhood (usually imagined in black and white), move on to key incidents that have shaped the life of the character, end at a high point or death, followed by a postscript (optional). Or, examine the character through the prism of a defining incident, as Steven Spielberg does in Lincoln, which looks at the former American president’s backroom maneuverings to push through anti-slavery legislation.

Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters imagines the early years of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima in stark black and white, but that’s just about the only thing predictable about this beguiling movie. Schrader’s arthouse movie from 1985 is a semi-fictional reimagining of the controversial Japanese writer, who produced several novels, plays and poems before attempting a military coup in 1970 and killing himself when the coup failed.

The avant-garde cinematic approach is a fitting way to approach an avant-garde writer. Schrader intersperses flashbacks to Mishima’s formative years and his last day on the planet with stylised dramatisations from his novels that unfold on gloriously coloured sets.

Ideas, rather than facts and milestones, also drive I’m Not There, Todd Haynes’s unusual 2007 film about Bob Dylan. The title can be taken literally: Dylan doesn’t feature in the film except in a screen grab at the very end. Rather, six characters represent his songs and the ideas that inspired him as well proved to be inspirational for generations. Cate Blanchett’s gender-bending impersonation of a moody rock star is a doozy, Ben Wishaw is his usual nervy self, and the usually cold and clinical Christian Bale is surprisingly affecting as a singer and a Christian preacher.

This weekly series, which appears on Fridays, looks at how the cinema of the past helps us make sense of the present.

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Published: 15 Feb 2013, 03:59 PM IST
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