A perfect balance of Black and White

First things first, it is hard to believe that this is Subhash Ghai. Quite literally, Black and White (hereafter B&W) is the very antithesis of anything that Ghai has ever stood for. Grand commercial successes, ornate melodrama, opulent set design, stylized imagery and costumes—he is Bollywood’s modern day showman! B&W is, in one word, minimalist. Not in scope or reference. For the film, for perhaps another first in mainstream Hindi film lore, examines the trans-territorial nature of Islamic extremism. The narrative moves from the bombed-out badlands of Afghanistan to the narrow bylanes of Old Delhi. The reflection of minimalism becomes apparent in the latent landscape of the film. The major part of the story is set in Delhi’s historic Chandni Chowk overlooked by the majestic Red Fort, the object of the terrorist’s gameplan. The thronging crowds at the Red Fort commemorating India’s independence must be blown apart in one diabolical suicide mission—the protagonist/antagonist, Numair Qazi, an Afghan posing as a victim of the Gujarat pogrom is the man on a mission, a mission to give up life for the ONE above. It is after all, Allah’s wish that he blew himself up to attain jannat. Once in India, he meets Prof Rajan Mathur, a Hindu teacher of Urdu at the Zakir Hussain College, reminiscent of the strange case of Prof SAR Gilani, the man accused of sheltering terrorists and aiding the suicide attack on the Parliament. Prof Mathur mouths verses of the Holy Quran with a never-seen-before flair, a rather piquant anomaly for the young man on a mission. As the narrative moves ahead, his mentor in India – a well-known businessman who had promised Numair an entry pass to the Red Fort, shoots himself dead when faced with arrest, a crucial turning point in the film. It is after this incident that Numair discovers that he will have to make drastic changes in the original plan to make his mission a success. Thus, Prof Mathur is the only other person who can get him into the VIP enclosure; Prof Mathur is a good man, a well-respected man. The only hitch – Prof Mathur’s firebrand wife, Roma who feels Numair is more suspicious than trustworthy. The terrorists hatch a plan to convince Roma that this young man is a victim of communal hatred, a soul who has lost his childhood in the raging fires of Gujarat. Stealthily, the terrorist gains entry into the Mathur household, into the impregnable fortress of Indian syncretism. Ghai plans his narrative well. He places the Afghan extremist in the sprawling mansion of an elderly poet-patriarch, played so brilliantly by the inredible Habib Tanvir. No one suspects him, not even the chirpy newspaper baron’s daughter who lives next door and loses her heart to the silent, brooding young man. The film dwells deftly on a couple of sequences that are quite strikingly woven together to create an overall impact. One such sequence is the one in where the stodgy government official offers Numair prasad from a temple. The man’s intention is clear. He plays on the notions of morality and blasphemy in the annals of conservative Islam. Numair is an Islamic radical. Earlier in the film, he kills a man, a Muslim, in cold blood after he announces that he drank himself to a stupor and could not wake up in the morning and states that he does not believe that anyone who doesn’t follow Islam needs to survive in this world. So, the officer looks expectantly for the man to flinch, lift up his hand and strike him down, kick him from under the chair. Numair does none of these. He puts the sweet in his mouth and gulps it down disdainfully, all for the sake of the final hurrah, his ultimate prize—the path, you see, has been chosen by his maker. He must die so that he can live in the afterlife. Numair gets his entry pass, his ticket to salvation. The other sequence that needs a mention here is when Prof Mathur’s little daughter plays Saare Jahan se Accha on her synthesizer for Numair, who has by now been accepted as a member of the Mathur family. The scene is study in understanding the conceptual tendencies of trans-territorial Islamic fundamentalism. Numair is an Afghan, he is on a deadly mission to India and here is listening to this little girl playing an ode to the very edifice that he has come to breach. The creases on the man’s brow tell it all. Does he succeed in his mission? No, he doesn’t. Roma, the woman who called him brother is killed by members of his group. Prof Mathur forbids his daughter from wailing as he fears a Hindu backlash will ruin the peace of Chandni Chowk—a secular haven. In one heart-rending sweep, Ghai delivers a power-packed scene. Independence Day; Numair does gain entry into the VIP enclosure, is about to blow himself up but does not. His eyes well up, they killed the woman who called him brother, they let her die…he cannot take it anymore. The police too – having cracked the plot – is closing in. Numair escapes. With a lost dream, with an image of India that still lives on the hope that Hindus and Muslims are one nation. Does he survive? Yes he does. Prof Mathur saves him, standing like a shield between the bullet and the man he gave shelter to. The Indian state accuses him of treason. The film ends with the terrorist’s email absolving the good professor of all guilt, declaring him a great son of India. The film works because of the way it ends. Ghai resists the urge to close the narrative in a form of a bloody encounter where yet another suspected terrorist is killed. The man survives to realize that perhaps the larger ethos of India is much too strong for the footsoldiers of global jehad to break down. However, at the cost of sounding nit-picky, I lament the fact that the film, in many ways, falls into the trap of stereotyping the Muslim. The villains of the set-piece are all Muslim barring the good-hearted poet and the guitar-totting aspiring musician. The terrorists are technical wiz-kids; the protagonist/antagonist prefers the jehadi’s interpretation of the Quran over the professor’s peace-message. The man is ruthless, unscrupulous and takes lives without batting an eyelid. One does not doubt Ghai’s intensions but frankly these rather stark images sometimes leave a bitter taste in the mouth. The narrative moves at a good pace. Some critics panned the film by saying that it is slow. It is not. This is Ghai’s best work till date. After Yaadein and Kisna and a long hibernation, the man returns with a powerful critique of contemporary world politics. Even though he does get caught in the exigencies of stereotyping and imagination, the film is well intentioned. He succeeds in extracting good performances from the leads actors. Newcomer Anurag Sinha is, in a word, minimalist, the solitary, quiet recluse with a searing screen presence—Ghai’s perfect terrorist, viscous and uncompromising. Another possible addition to the string of ‘performing actors’ who have made their presence felt in an incestuous industry. Veteran Anil Kapoor is exceptional. One wonders where Sonam Kapoor came from. She certainly does not seem to be this man’s daughter.

Khuda Kay Liye: a searing critique

I did not intend to but am forced to start with this. Watching Khuda Kay Liye in a plush multiplex in the capital reminded me of another piece of searing political drama—Black Friday. The audience reacted with such mirth and vile that one felt nauseous. They sniggered at a man being tortured by Americans saying, ‘These Muslims deserve it.’ Was I amazed, shocked? Neither. The sensibilities of a so-called educated class are suspect to say the least. The finest thing about Khuda Kay Liye, Pakistani filmmaker Shoaib Manzoor’s ambitious take on the current political scenario in the Islamic world and Western hegemony is that it begins with music and ends with music. Within the larger debate of fundamentalism and extremism pervading Pakistan, the film narrates the tragic story of a family torn apart by the endless and devastating scourge of a disintegrating world order. It is about Mansoor and Sarmad, blood brothers who belong to an upwardly mobile, elite Pakistani family. Both are musicians. They play to the gallery, they love their music. Symbols of a modernizing world, English-speaking, and hence the object of hate in the conservative, fundamentalist sections of the Pakistani society. And Sarmad succumbs. To the blatant venom-spewing Maulana Tahiri. A radical, the Maulana drills hate into his very being. ‘Islam mein mausiki haraam hai,’ says Tahiri. Sarmad falls deeper, stops singing, questions his older brother who still swears by music, defies his family and leaves home to accompany the mullah into the depths of jihad. Meanwhile, Sarmad’s cousin, Mary (or Mariam) – a British-Pakistani in love with a Brit youth – arrives in Pakistan with her father, who is bent on getting his ‘wayward’ daughter married off to a true Muslim to prevent her from getting into an alliance with the firang man. The man is worried to death about the purity of the Islami nasl being in danger! And who does he want as his daughter’s groom? Her cousin, Mansoor. But as luck would have it Mansoor proceeds to the United States for higher studies in musicology and leaves behind a forced marriage between Sarmad – by now a real jihadi, complete with the Islamic attire including the headgear – in the rugged backdrop of the frontier areas. Mary is shattered, she hates her father, hates her cousin (now husband) and everyone else around her. By now Mansoor has settled down in the United States, and found himself a gori girlfriend. Of course, they plan to get married. Then 9/11 happens to the world—the event that shattered the lives of an unimaginable number of people all over the globe, be it Afghanistan or Iraq, Morocco or Egypt, no one was spared America’s wrath, most of it misplaced and misconstrued. Mansoor is arrested on the night of his wedding and taken away by the US police. The pain sets in. Mansoor’s incarceration in the US torture cell are the most chilling sequences in the film. It is no hold’s barred, one is reminded of the horrors of Abu Ghraib. However, the sequence that defines Khuda Ke Liye is so telling, one is caught between a guffaw at America’s foolhardiness and a tear at the condition of an innocent man held in an American hellhole for no fault of his. A raid at Mansoor’s house yields an old abandoned taweez. But of course, the chief investigator has no idea what it is. He tears it open and finds a scrap of paper with a grid, a common sight in dargahs and mazaars’s across South Asia—the blessed pieces of paper that so many of us carry with us as divine protection against the evils of the world. Our super-intelligent American, of course thinks the grid is a map of New York. And here’s more, he picks out the numbers 9 and 11 written in two squares, encircles them, and holds it as evidence of Mansoor’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks. The quantum of torture increases. Relentless and never-ending, the young aspiring musician ends up in a mental rehabilitation centre—paralysed, bruised, broken, and speechless. While Mansoor is facing the wrath of the American (in)justice system, Sarmad is busy fighting a fruitless battle against the marauding American forces in Afghanistan and his own inner demons which pull him back, prevent him from killing another human being. Mary, his wife by force in the meantime has succeeded in sending a letter to her British lover. She receives help. The British government gets involved in a legal battle to get Mary back to England. The girl by now is a mother, the result of a forced copulation. Sarmad too decides to go back. The courtroom sequences are brilliantly written, especially the monologue delivered to such amazing perfection by Nasiruddin Shah. From the right of a woman in Islam to walk out of a marriage to the Prophet’s love for music, Shah dispels myths with a panache never seen before. Pakistani star Shaan is superb as the tortured Mansoor and so is Fawad Khan as the confused Sarmad. The young man’s return to music – his first love – is well-crafted. Mary, free from a life of bondage, presented with a bright future in Britain, returns to the frontier areas to set up a school for little children whose love for ‘Englis’is unparalleled.

Superhero noir

If the words of director Matthew Vaughn are anything to go by, the form-shifting, mutant men and women with one single incredible personal power that differentiates them from the others are in for a rollicking ride on the turnstiles as long as comic book superheroes rule. “If introducing the major characters in X-Men: First Class was the difficult part, the next few films would be joyrides,” he said and how right he could turn out to be. As the introductory prequel to the box office blowback franchise, the celluloid adaptation of the Marvel comic sensation makes for an awesome, prosaic and bat-your-eyelid-and-miss-the-fun adventure, albeit with a stupendously genuine historical context.
The film rearranges the characters to build them to their present forms, providing a wrenching account of the relationship between friends-turned-foes Professor X (the progenitor of X-Men, convincingly played by James McAvoy) and Magneto (the creator of the Brotherhood of Mutants). Running through the narrative is a blatantly undisguised yet remarkably muted reference to the non-acceptance of difference that has characterized human society. It cleaves in place the fact that mankind has historically been unkind to those who are different. Exemplified with stark ingenuity in the constant inner battle waged by the blue-hued mutant Raven who walks around in her human form just so that she is accepted by humans till Erik Lensherr or Magneto (a utterly brilliant Micheal Fassbender as the wronged, brooding, monosyllabic avenger) as he will finally be called, walks into her life and proposes an alternative life—that of a blue-formed, rough-skinned young mutant, her original form, the way she is, the way she would always be. Or the super-smart, six-toed Hank (Beast) who develops an antibiotic fix for his difference, all for the sake of acceptance. Unfortunately for the nerd, the experiment goes wrong, leaving in its wake a faux-toothed, dark blue, hairy Neanderthal, a visage that mankind would find all the more difficult to accept. This allusion to difference and its acceptance runs through the film concluding in the difference of opinion that emerges between Professor X and Magneto over joining hands with mankind or raising hackles to fight the marauding humans—the real enemies of the world of mutants, mirthless humans who distinguish and discriminate on the basis of form, colour and appearance.
The film is a spectacular dash to the beginning of the saga and unfolds with a young Erik bending drawers, tables and book racks in Herr Schmidt’s office who shoots down his mother in cold blood to make Erik unleash his metal-bending powers. Across national boundaries, a teenage Charles Xavier (Professor X) meets a young Raven who appears to him, of course, in human form. Years later, as Erik searches high and low for his mother’s killer, Professor X, fresh from the success with his PhD, is sought out by the CIA which is convinced that a marauding mutant, Sebastian Shaw (previously Herr Schmidt [Kevin Bacon at his menacing best]) is hell-bent on a Third World War for the complete annihilation of mankind so that mutants could hold fort on earth. The Professor and the avenging angel meet as the world is at the cusp of a nuclear war, with the United States and USSR stationing missiles across the Cuban peninsula, one intent on helping the humans come out of the crisis and the other mind-numbingly immune to everything else but revenge for his mother’s death. A group of young mutants with extraordinary powers is their last hope to stop Shaw from executing his sinister plan. Shaw’s death at the hands of Erik is only the beginning of the end. As Professor X prefers to side with the humans, Erik opts out to battle them—the race he terms as the real enemies—as Magneto!

Up in smoke

The verdant albeit crowded beaches of Goa are a treat to watch, in any cinematic landscape, through the twists and turns of even a lukewarm plot, the dramatic sizzle of western India’s most happening state is infectious. Therefore, when Dum Maro Dum opens with a cutting line on the myriad snakes populating the golden sands of Goa in the form of drug traffickers and runners, controlled by the string-pulling hands of the drug mafia, the expectant veins of the cinegoer do not exactly hyperventilate. Though the lines are pithy and searing. This is the story of a Goa marred and polluted by the acrid smoke rising out of the chillums of thousands of backpackers, tourists and locals; there is no default in the supply chain, the carriers are chosen carefully, and cocaine and heroin worth millions are traded everyday against the backdrop of rave parties and beach fiestas. Gone are the scenes of palms swaying against the sea breeze and the shimmering waters lapping against the glittering sands; this is a Goa of Russian drug lords, British rave organizers, and Nigerian peddlers who work in unison and with alarming alacrity and guile with local Goans (not to forget the police) to seal the fate of this fabulous party destination. The characters range from a bad cop-turned-good cop, a young college topper with dreams in his eyes, to a local DJ with a heart of gold and the drug kingpin who inaugurates deaddiction centres without batting an eyelid. Lawrence Eduardo Gomes (Prateik Babbar) is the local goalkeeper who receives an admission letter from a university in the US but not the scholarship, which incidentally is bagged by his girlfriend. So, Lorry (short for Lawrence, a typical Goan quirk) becomes easy prey for the drug overlords hatchet men who turn him into a willing carrier of contraband drugs, trying to pass off a suitcase laced with kilos of cocaine through airport security. Incidentally, Lorry is all set to join his girlfriend in the US having secured all payments and papers in return for a safe passage for the consignment. Enter ACP Vishnu Kamath, the cop with an enduring legacy of being one of the deadliest narcotics policemen, also one of the most corrupt, but with a tragic past (lost his family in accident etc etc). A shaken Lorry is caught, detained, searched and questioned. Kamath, on special duty on invitation by the Chief Minister of the state, has put together a small team of two men (and himself) which includes Rane (Govind Namdeo). The clueless police force, by the way, has been trying to track down a shadowy man called Michael Barbossa, the alleged leader of the cartel running the contraband industry in Goa. Joki, short for Joachim, Fernandes (Rana Daggubati) steps in to help a pleading Lorry, willing to stand guarantee for the young lad. After all, the aspiring musician has already lost his ladylove Zoe (Bipasha Basu) to drugs and the local lord, Lorsa Biscuita (Aditya Panscholi) (never mind the name!) and, of course, is incredibly pained to see another young life going to the dogs. Subsequently, Kamath and his team, with help from Joki, embark on a wild goose chase to find Barbossa, also known as Vincent Vega, Colin Coutinho, and Toby Follett. Cut to sacrifice by the fallen air-hostess-turned-gangsters moll and her consequent death at the hands of Biscuita and the enlightening discovery of the origins of Barbossa—actually a name engraved on top of a gravestone brings the film to a close. By this time, Kamath has been killed, felled by bullets from the service revolver of his own team man Rane who sleeps with the enemy and follows the lure of the lucre and Biscuita has been unmasked. Ever the help at hand, Joki takes on from where Kamath left off, goes for the jugular making Rane grovel and beg for mercy, finds Michael Barbossa’s grave, stuffed with narcotics worth Rs 970 million and avenges his girlfriend’s death. Lorry, meanwhile, has been let off and is free to fly away. The plot is racy and the dialogues taut. Cinematographically, Dum Maro Dum captures the beach life of Goa abundantly and reflects the colour and splendour of the state. The performances are efficient, except for Bipasha Basu who has little to do except look slim and svelte, shed a few tears and make love to Rana Daggubati and (hold your breath) Aditya Panscholi. Abhishek Bachchan stands his ground as the angry young cop, while south star Rana Daggubati takes pretty long strides into the heart of Bollywood. Panscholi looks sufficiently menacing though the cold countenance could have been better exploited.

Of war and retribution

When Michelangelo painted the Fall of Man, little did he fathom the commonality and the parallels that could possibly be, insipiently and rather incongruously, drawn between the falling out of the men on the mural and the growing wedges between men and women irrespective of creed and colour, who, driven by anger, jealousy, lust, ambition, and egos, go to war. Men have been at war for ever. Even so, images of war on celluloid sear the soul, cripple memory and instigate fears of yet another conflagration claiming the lives of hundreds of innocents. But, the sucker for war films that I am, I end up compulsively and with renewed interest watch was films the second and even the third time. Saving Private Ryan (1998) is a film I have watched thrice and every single time I did, I came away thoughtful, questioning. Why do men go to war (I say men here as the case of women going to war have been critically rare)? In 1914, the Germans, the British, the French and the Russians went to war, the leaders disregarding faint but powerful voices advocating peace. Mammoth egos of powerful men led thousands to their deaths, countries and economies collapsed, widowed women lined the streets demanding jobs, Russia convulsed internally as the peasants and the working class rose against the Tsar. Even after the Treaty of Versailles had been signed, the League of Nations established, the losing Germans stripped of everything including their dignity, and the world sighed in relief, Europe went up in flames again in 1939, this time primarily because of the whims of one man—Adolf Hitler—and the uncompromising attitudes of the Allied powers. The mass murder that followed left all involved with nothing more to fight for or fight with and hence the bloodiest war in history came to an end in 1945. Saving Private Ryan is a story set in 1944 and begins on the beaches of Normandy in France, seen through the eyes of erstwhile Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon). Captain John H Miller (Tom Hanks) and his company, oblivious of the German emplacements throughout the beach lands in hell as the German guns open up. Miller loses more than thirty of his men under ominously grey French skies, in one of the best combat sequences ever filmed. As young American soldiers, most not more than boys, kiss their crosses and utter the Lord’s Prayer and stricken men look around the bloody beach for a limb, the catastrophe that is war comes home in one blinding flash. A day later Captain Miller is informed of his next mission—finding Private Ryan, under direct orders from the Army high command in Washington, following the deaths of all three of his brothers in combat. A shamed American military top brass is faced with a tragic dilemma—breaking the news to the grieving mother and delivering alive the one hope in the world she has—her last child. Thus, begin’s Miller’s journey, seven of his men giving him company through the French battlefields, through the heart of German reinforcements. He loses one man then another to battle. As the men trudge along, they make small talk, trying desperately to shrug off the fear and the possibility of death, they bet dollars on the origins of their group leader, toss around dog tags to find Private Ryan and even converse about the merits and demerits of a melancholic love song playing in the background of their last battlefield. They also lose friends, the team medic Wade who asks for morphine so that he does not feel the pain and dies calling for his mother and the big Caparzo who tries to save a tiny French girl from German sniper guns because she reminds him of his niece and falls to a shot. And Miller faces rebellion in the form of Reiben who wants to kill a f****** German PoW but relents to reason by Miller and protestations by Upham, the translator. After a few false starts, Ryan is actually found alive and unwilling to vacate his post. What wrong have these men committed? Why do I get to go home while they don’t? The utter uselessness of war, the half-baked logic of sending young men to their deaths for no fault of theirs, apparent or otherwise, the preposterous arguments in favour of armed conflict and absolutely unnecessary exercise of power…it all comes to naught. There is no logic for war, no logic either for transferring the weight of the ambitions of one man or one class of men on to the shoulders of common men and women. In the glazed dead eyes of Captain John Miller and the tears-streaked eyes of Private Ryan, is reflected the futility of war.

Of human ups and downs

Every once in a while, along comes a film which portrays the real as a fractious compilation of human failings, surrender to the baser instincts, departures from the staid guidelines of societal behaviour and finally, unnatural, uncanny and unprecedented success. A chronicle of pseudo-modern realism, The Social Network (2010) by David Fincher is a matter-of-fact, pragmatic, often banal overview of the forces behind the Facebook phenomenon. It is not the usual gravitas-filled, pathos-induced biography that we are so used to watching. Mark Zuckerberg is not really the wartime hero who sends tremors of emotion through the gloating audience, nor is he the vile, repugnant anti-hero who elicits nothing more than hatred; he is a hero and an anti-hero all at once, a function of duality overwhelmingly and achingly real. He pilfers the idea of a global social networking website from his Harvard colleagues, the handsome, well-bred Winklevoss twins and their Indian friend, adds his ingenuity as a master programmer and $19000 of his best buddy, Eaduardo Saverin’s money and voila! We have The Facebook. Then, Sean Parker walks in. The former founder of Napster is now out of a job and looking to make big bucks. Zuckerberg, who can safely now be renamed “Suckerberg”, falls for the charms of the big-talking Parker who nets him a huge financial deal. And yes! On Parkers word “The” is dropped from Facebook! Then, what does Zuckerberg do? He quietly and coolly deletes Saverin from his friend list, reducing his profit share to 0.1 per cent. Not surprisingly, Saverin takes Zuckerberg to court and that, along with the Winklevoss’ trial, forms the backdrop of this little gem of a film. But, of course, the millionaire twins sue Zuckerberg for theft of intellectual property, a heinous crime in the haloed portals of Harvard. Based loosely on Ben Mezrich’s 2009 bestseller The Accidental Billionaires, the film is helped along marvelously by a taut, gripping screenplay by Aaron Sorkin. Jesse Eisenberg is superb as Zuckerberg. The wronged former best friend Saverin is played to perfection by Andrew Garfield. However, the high point of the film is Justin Timberlake’s turn as Sean Parker. His rakish, over-the-top, loud act completely overshadows the second half of the film.

Grimace alright...but watch

Danny Boyle’s last film celebrated the filth and grime of Mumbai. The enterprising chaiwala, in pursuit of his childhood love, ended up taking Uncle Oscar home. Boyle is again part of the Oscar race…this time for a fine piece of cinematic experiment. It pits human spirit against the uncompromising, unrelenting force of nature. Nature as we have seldom known it. 127 Hours does not create a fantastic canvas of rain or hail, nor does it breathe life into the bounties of nature by panning the camera too close to accentuate the smallest particles that sustain life. As it sweeps over the dry, yellow, silent canyons of Colorado, it breathes life into the rocks and boulders that have made these devastating ravines some of the most beautiful, though one of the most feared, natural formations on the planet. The nooks, crannies and crevices are breathtakingly shot. American hiker/adventurer Aaron Ralston (James Franco) traverses these dangerous depths with the characteristic nonchalance of someone with many years behind him climbing rocks. Just that this time, the rocks decide to trap him and for good. From here on 127 Hours becomes a clear, concise and abridged guide to human survival. Ralston, his hand stuck against a boulder that has fallen into a crevice with just enough space for him to balance himself on the climbing rope, survives for five days, or 127 Hours, on a bottle of fast diminishing water, moisture from chewing his contact lenses, meager dinner (the last three days without dinner or lunch), a few yards of climbing ropes, some patience and lots of grit. Four days hence when the vitals start deteriorating and everything from the first steps on the canyon with his father, little sister playing his favourite tune on the piano, a zillion apologies to a doting mother, handycam recordings for family and friends and a phony act as a radio jockey (also for the handycam) have zoomed past his rapidly collapsing mind and feverish eyes, Ralston does what he had envisioned on the second day itself. He decides to live…even if he has to without his right hand. And how does he think he can do that? All he has is a Chinese multi-purpose knife which is of little help. Day five, Ralston must use the knife. And he does. Cutting through tissue and nerves, Ralston seems to be remarkably accurate.
Highlight of the film—James Franco. He is excruciatingly real. Moves from being a charmer to someone with incredible amount of guts with amazing ease. Beginning with his encounter with the girls out to have some fun on the boulders to gnawing at the tissues of his arm with a pen-knife, Franco is a delight to watch.