Death by Lightning: Netflix's Contribution to U.S History & Politics 101

President James A. Garfield, the college educated farmer & Congressman from Ohio should have played a transformational role in U.S history and politics than the couple of months fate had allowed to helm United States of America in 1881.

Netflix's latest historical offering, "Death by Lightning," brings this forgotten giant of American politics into sharp focus. If you're a student of history and politics, especially of U.S. history like me, we should be thrilled by these contributions Netflix is making towards our historical and political education showcasing some of the forgotten figures that shaped the United States. Garfield holds the unique distinction of being the only sitting member of the House of Representatives to be elected president, and his resume reads like a greatest hits of 19th-century American achievement - preacher, lawyer, Civil War general, and finally, a tragically brief POTUS.

The mini-series, based on Candice Millard's exceptional book "Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President," doesn't shy away from the complexities of both Garfield and his assassin Charles Guiteau. The casting choices are nothing short of spectacular. Michael Shannon's portrayal of Garfield is so convincing, his beard looks eerily similar to the president's historical photographs. Matthew Macfadyen's Guiteau made viewers genuinely uncomfortable each time he appeared on screen - which is precisely what a good portrayal of an unhinged assassin should do. Betty Gilpin delivers a convincing performance as Garfield's wife Crete. Nick Offerman as Chester Arthur is so amazing that Netflix, if you want it, you could almost tease out a sequel based on Arthur's presidency.

What strikes you most about this series is how faithful it remains to historical facts. I am sure the personal moments probably didn't occur exactly as depicted or might not have happened at all, but they help building context and fleshing out each character. Guiteau really did join a free-loving commune and failed spectacularly at everything he attempted in life. Garfield truly was one of the last "log cabin" presidents, rising from poverty through sheer intellect and determination. The assassination attempt itself unfolds with disturbing accuracy - Guiteau hiding the gun in his pocket, the black physician being one of the first doctors on the scene, the pioneering use of the first metal detector on the wounded president.

While the series does not really capture the magnitude of Garfield's popularity and the nation's grief on his assassination, that did not stop me from going digging after binging on this engaging mini-series. His inauguration drew 100,000 people to Washington D.C., while his funeral in Cleveland attracted 150,000 mourners - one of the largest presidential funeral turnouts in U.S. history up to that point. He was mourned as a national hero, his death marking a pivotal moment in American political consciousness.

The 4-part series does take some liberties with period-appropriate language - the liberal use of f-word and phrases like "quality time" that wouldn't appear for another century and feels anachronistic. But these minor quibbles don't detract from the overall impact of seeing this transformational figure brought to life.

Interestingly, Garfield's legacy extends beyond politics into pop culture. Jim Davis named his famous cartoon cat after his own grandfather, James A. Garfield Davis, who was himself named after the President Garfield following his Republican nomination in 1880. The score, composed by the same talent behind Game of Thrones and Iron Man, perfectly complements the dramatic tension.

One of the reasons "Death by Lightning" succeeds is its perfect length. Four episodes allow enough time to develop these historical figures without overstaying its welcome. Perhaps a deeper dive into Garfield's impressive Civil War career would have strengthened our connection to him, but the focus remains laser-sharp on this pivotal moment in American history. As a student of history and politics, this series got me digging deeper into both Garfield's and Chester Arthur's presidencies - exactly what good historical drama should do.

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Baramulla : A movie by Aditya Jambhale (Netflix)

Baramulla, what could a film about Baramulla possibly be about? Other than being another film about the decades-long disputed-territory status of Kashmir. But I was happily surprised, and in the best possible way.

Before diving into the movie, here's some backdrop: Baramulla is this town up in Jammu and Kashmir, India's northernmost state that's still a bit of a hot mess. Kashmir has been like an open wound ever since India's independence, when the Hindu king of this Muslim-majority region decided to throw his lot in with India. Both Pakistan and India have been picking at this wound ever since, and one of the most brutal chapters was the displacement of Kashmiri Pandits - that's the majority Hindu group in Kashmir, back in the late eighties and nineties. Not exactly feel-good material for your average weekend movie night. Baramulla, the movie, comes from director Aditya Suhas Jambhale and stars Manav Kaul and Basha Sumbli as a Muslim couple. The husband's a cop, deputy superintendent of police, freshly posted to Baramulla to investigate some politician's kidnapped kid. The director and both lead actors are all from the displaced Kashmiri Pandit diaspora which adds a layer of authenticity. The family moves into this gorgeous, rambling old house that screams traditional Kashmir architecture. And man, does this house work overtime in the atmosphere department. It's pretty in that old-fashioned way that makes you want to book a vacation there, right up until the creepy stuff starts happening.

Now, I'm not sure if this counts as a Bollywood film. Sure, it's in Hindi and features Manav Kaul, who's done his share of Bollywood gigs, but it feels like something else entirely. We're seeing this whole new parallel cinema thing happening - movies produced by Netflix, Amazon Prime, and their streaming cousins, using local crews and native languages but breaking free from the tired old Bollywood formulas which have not been hitting the mark lately. I'll admit, I was dragging my feet about watching this one. The producer, Aditya Dhar, made his directorial debut with Uri: The Surgical Strike, which wasn't exactly my cup of tea, so much so that I never even watched it. But then I caught wind of some chatter about Baramulla being supernatural horror, not just political drama. And you know what? Sometimes the best surprises come when you're least expecting them. What we get here is a quality film that somehow manages to mash up history, politics, horror, drama, and actual ghosts without turning into an emotional train wreck or an over-the-top melodrama. For an Indian film to pull that off without the usual histrionics is genuinely refreshing. Shot entirely in Kashmir, with top-notch acting, editing, production design, and direction across the board. Jambhale has crafted one of the most creative supernatural films to come out of India in recent memory, and here's why it works: it's anchored firmly in reality, history, and the real suffering of real people. The genius move here is making us experience the horror through the eyes of a Muslim family - the same religion as those who perpetrated the Kashmiri Pandit exodus - and forcing us to realize that regardless of religion, we all feel the same outrage when faced with atrocity, no matter who's dishing it out.

The sequences where history bleeds into present-day attacks where the veil thins between the dead and the living are masterfully interwoven, creating a storytelling and editing exercise that's both haunting and enlightening. A well-made film that doesn't preach but provokes thought. Perfect for lovers of history and supernatural storytelling who aren't afraid of confronting uncomfortable truths.

 

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Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein (2025) : A review

I had been meaning to watch Guillermo del Toro's 2025 adaptation of Frankenstein ever since it dropped on Netflix. As someone who has never actually read Mary Shelley's original novel (yeah, literary sacrilege!), I went in with zero expectations except knowing it was a del Toro film, which usually means visually stunning and emotionally complex storytelling. This is quintessential del Toro - all dark aqua blues, deep greens, and rich browns creating that Gothic atmosphere he's famous for. The production design is absolutely marvelous, every frame looking like a painting, if you were into that whole moody Victorian vibe art. This is definitely a movie that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible because of its sheer grandiloquence. Del Toro has this thing about redeeming his monsters, and this newest retelling of Frankenstein fits perfectly into that pattern. Oscar Isaac plays Victor Frankenstein and he's irresistibly handsome in that tortured genius way. Isaac's Victor is portrayed as a complete egotistical dickhead, which apparently has some book purists up in arms. I read in various forums that readers of Shelley's original have major issues with how this adaptation simplifies both Victor and the Creature's characterizations. The consensus seems to be that in the book, Victor is indeed a piece of work for abandoning his creation, but he was also just a naive young guy who couldn't fully grasp the magnitude of what he'd done. Similarly, while the Creature is tragic, he's also a stalker who intentionally murders innocents in his quest for revenge against Victor - far from the blameless victim we see in this movie version.

 

The script-writing deserves special mention here. There's this moment where the monster, still learning human speech, says something like "Perhaps this was the way of the world, the world would hunt you and kill you for the way you are." The philosophical poetry woven through the simple words of a creature learning to speak is just brilliant. There are several such dialogues that stay with you long after the credits roll.

The female lead had me scratching my head a bit. She's written as this very righteous, empathetic character – maybe that's how Mary Shelley, daughter of philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, intended it. Women are often more empathetic than men, sure, but this lady thinks she's wise when she's really just displaying the foolishness of her immature young age. She was literally the only character who could have made Victor see the truth and helped redeem his ways, if only she would get down off her high horse and actually engage with the complexity of the situation instead of just being judgmental.

She falls in love with the creature ridiculously quickly, professing something like eternal love after what feels like two meetings. And wasn't she flirting a bit with Victor, her fiancé's older brother? The whole love angle felt forced, maybe they were staying true to the book, I wouldn't know.

 But sometimes a good story doesn't need to be complicated. Del Toro delivered something gorgeous to look at, Isaac brought his brooding good looks and acting, and Jacob Elordi as the Creature got some genuinely moving dialogue. 

The Arctic scenes alone are worth the watch. There's something haunting about that ship stuck in the ice, with the Creature framed against a pale sun that looks more like a dying moon. "I am malicious because I am miserable," the monster tells his creator, and you feel every word of that misery in the frozen wasteland that mirrors his isolation. Not every adaptation has to be exactly as the book, sometimes it just needs to be good television.

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Love and Loss: Amy Bloom's In Love & Netflix's One Day

Reading Amy Bloom's In Love helped me understand Robin William's final act. While there are nine states (Washington, Oregon, California, Hawaii, Colorado, Montana, New Jersey, Maine and Vermont) and the District of Columbia which have right to die laws, you cannot have a physician assisted suicide without satisfying certain conditions. First, you have to be a resident of one of these states to have the right to die, more importantly you need to get medically assessed as having only six months to live. Which means you have to be almost at death's door to use this right-to-die card to have a physician-assisted suicide in the US of A.  Incurable degenerative diseases like Lewy body dementia (that Robin Williams had) or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's that will slowly hollow out a person over years are not excuses good enough to have the right to die in any of the nine states or DC. This is where Switzerland steps in.  Remember the name Dignitas and Pegasos, just in case.

Just in case was the reason why I decided to read Amy Bloom's In Love after I chanced upon a blurb about the book somewhere. Memoirs focusing on a single event in a writer's life and its aftermath is not my favorite form of non-fiction, but the information provided by the author and her style of writing kept In Love engaging for me.

During the same period I was going through Ms. Bloom's love-n-loss heavy memoir I also accidently started watching a chick-lit(?) series One Day on Netflix. Like Amy Bloom, Ambika Mod's Emma Morley is a bookish ethnic girl who becomes a writer and finds a soulmate in handsome, British upper class Dexter Mayhew.

Emma and Dex in One Day

One Day is based on the book of the same name written by David Nicholls, and tells the story of Emma and Dexter who meet and spend a night together on their last day at the university in 1988 and decide to meet each other every year afterwards, on the same day. There was also a 2011 movie based on the novel, starring Anne Hathaway as Emma. 

I loved the way Emma's character is written. Her one-liners are profoundly deep and funny. Leo Woodall's Dex is hurtlingly handsome and posh. They are from the opposite ends of the spectrum, both socially and intellectually and we, the viewers, desperately want them to be together, to see how it will all turn out. The writing and the script makes sure the audience are invested in Emma and Dex although the plot line of boy and girl from different sides of the track is an over-used one.

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Munich: The Edge of War

Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity is  about the meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.  The reason I bring up synchronicity is I believe I had a light brush with it through the movie Munich: The Edge of War. A couple of days after watching the movie, we are in a history-repeats-itself situation with Ukraine, just as it had happened in the movie and history in 1938.

Netflix released Munich: The Edge of War on Jan 21, 2022. Maybe it was a far-sighted move on Netflix's part where their geopolitical team was scouring current events to find subject material for new movies. The team identified Munich 1938 as a plausible candidate to make a movie that people can relate to in the current times, when we have Hitler-lite dictating over Russia and looming like a menacing cloud over Europe. Congratulations earthlings, you were almost wrung out to dry by a global pandemic, how about World War III now? This is the roaring twenties, all over again, the excitement never stops.

A sucker for war movies, I had to put Munich: TEoW in my watchlist soon after it was released. It sat there languishing like the rest of the movies in My List, awaiting for my scroll button to pause on it and click Play. The click Play happened near Valentine's Day, a season I keep aside for watching war movies. But with my movie watching ADD at its peak, the bureaucratic nature of the movie felt a bit too slow for me and I left it there, after watching for about ten minutes. Then I picked it up again last week and finished it off soon after.  

Going into the movie I had no idea about the Munich Accord of 1938 or Hitler's invasion of Sudetenland (former Czechoslovakia,  current whatever) , which was the precursor of WWII. I am familiar with most of the famous battles of WWII thanks to WWII in Color (Netflix), but I am mostly clueless about the events leading up to the war, except having a general idea that Hitler's megalomaniacal territorial ambitions and the program of ethnic cleansing for racial purity eventually resulted in the war. 

Munich: TEoW plays out during the days before and during the signing of the Munich Accord in 1938. It blends history with fiction, where the fictional lead characters are two young government officials who went to school at Oxford together and are now on the opposing sides of the geo-political divide. Both are seen trying to prevent a war, within their extremely limited spheres of influence.

 

Based on Robert Harris's best seller and directed by Christian Schwochow, George Mackay who according to me is the most German looking English man, plays the English civil servant Hugh Legat and Jannis Niewöhner is his college-mate who is now a German diplomat. Then British PM, Neville Chamberlain has been given a makeover or a whitewash and is portrayed in the movie by the indomitable Jeremy Irons. The movie says that Chamberlain's much critiqued move was him deliberately allowing to tarnish his image in history for the sake buying time for the the rest of the Europe (or Allies as they will be called later) by sacrificing Sudetenland.

1938 in the movie feels like a time just like we are in now. Europe is poised at the edge of war, triggered by the actions of a madcap dictator who looks and acts like a man who must have had his black belt in judo revoked recently. Instead of Sudetenland we have Ukraine, a democratic nation whose President - the (multi) Talented Mr. Zelensky, is fighting on the front lines with his troops defending their capital city - Kyiv. But unlike 1938, it is not just European nations who are joining hands to fight the aggressor - here is a sample of one of the Allied partnerships* of 2022. 

*pornhub part was fake news

Yes, here we are. Showing a significant reversal from their post WWII stance, Germany has invested 100 billion Euros for its military expansion. Poland is praying that German forces will march into their country and save their back side if/when the need arises. Switzerland has stopped signing its emails with the pronoun - 'neutral' which was specifically invented for them right after Napoleon's reign and has announced sanctions against Russia, causing Russian oligarchs scrambling to buy piggy banks. 

In case we are still not convinced that this stuff is serious, Sweden and Finland who are the lesser known step-cousins of Switzerland and have never picked any sides just like their more well known cousin, have also picked a side, joining the Pope, Poland and Anonymous. It is not Munich which is at the edge of war in 2022, all of Europe is at the edge of unity. 

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Best shows on Amazon Prime & Netflix: My 2021 List

This is my customary end of the year list post. I usually do best books, but this year I am going to the best TV shows I have watched this year. Some of them were even adapted from books! That gives us one more reason not to read books, we can wait and watch when the show comes out.

My discovery of the year or my best TV show award goes to The Man in the High Castle on Amazon Prime. Here is the list of my top 10 tv shows of the year in no particular order, except for the one in the first place.

First Place - The Man in the High Castle (Prime): I like history. I like time travel and alternate universes. I don't really like science or fantasy fiction. But I am starting to like Philip K. Dick more than ever. He is the only science fiction writer I have ever enjoyed reading. 

The Man in the High Castle is history, time travel and alternate universes baked fresh from the kiln fired up right after WWII. It is based on Philip K. Dick's book of the same name. I started reading the book after I finished the show which is on Amazon Prime. The show is told from a different perspective than the book. The creators and the actors have kept it engaging, charismatic and it leaves us wanting more. Incredible performances all around. I am particularly impressed by Rufus Sewell who steals the show.  A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. If you are a history buff with a weakness for alternate universes, this one is for you.

The Underground Railroad (Prime): What if the underground railroad was a real subterranean railroad transporting slaves to the free lands up north ? Based on Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer winning novel of the same name, Barry Jenkins' poem of a show is a hard-hitting portrayal of the ambitious and risky flights to freedom undertaken by slaves from southern plantations in the mid 1800s. 

Them (Prime): Amazon Prime has more authentic shows about black people than Netflix. While it has garnered many negative reviews from critics, I liked the period aspect of Them and how it shows a family of four who moved to Compton from the Carolinas battle the duel evils of racism and supernatural evil. Are they one and the same?

Patriot (Prime) : If Wes Anderson was making TV shows, Patriot might be it. Maybe writer-director Steven Conrad is Anderson's brother from another mother. Patriot is about a spy, who cannot be identified as a spy, whose day job is at an industrial piping company in Milwaukee, who also moonlights as a folk singer as an antidote to his stress - the level of which would have killed any other person. It is serious and comedic at the same time. It also reminds me of Asian black comedy crime dramas where periods of silence are abruptly offset by loud action, then all goes quiet again in the next minute and the protagonist carries on with whatever mundane daily task he might have been doing - like sharpening a pencil or reading a bus time table.

The Serpent (Netflix): The exquisitely shot, directed, edited and acted crime drama, The Serpent, follows the notorious criminal and serial killer Charles Sobharaj. Sobharaj was our version of Clyde, of the Bonnie and Clyde fame. There were several Bonnies in the real Sobharaj's story, although in this TV version, Bonnie is Marie-Andrée Leclerc . When I was a kid back in India, Sobharaj was captured and jailed for a brief time in Tihar jail from where he escaped using one of his ingenious schemes. It was great to see re-creation of sixties and seventies, going down the hippy trail in Asia on the tail of a notoriously manipulative psychopath. The production design and casting are on point.

Kim's Convenience, Seasons 1-4 (Netflix) : The best Korean show ever to be made by North Americans. Set in Toronto, it tells the story of a four member Korean-Canadian family who owns a convenience store. While it is light, natural, funny and this is the most realistic portraiture of an Asian immigrant family I have seen on TV.

Harlan Coben series on Netflix: For quick binge-able crime drama, just like the Harlan Coben paperbacks you might pickup from the airport kiosk, the TV shows adapted from Coben's novels are eminently binge-able, no matter what the language. I started with Safe, proceeded to The Five and The Stranger - all produced in U.K, before moving on to The Innocent (Spanish), Gone for Good (French) and The Woods (Polish.) 

Midnight Mass (Netflix) : Midnight Mass is an atmospheric series. It gives me the vibes of Netflix's show Messiah, a favorite of mine which Netflix canceled after the first season. Maybe due to religiosity, which is a cornerstone for both the shows. If you are in the mood for some dark moody horror with depressive undertones that rounds things off with a fiery apocalypse, too specific I know, then you might want to give Midnight Mass a try.

You (Netflix): How does a serial killer who is a book store manager ingratiate himself into high society and find his prey? Watch YOU for the answer. Based on the books by Caroline Kepnes, the protagonist could be called Dexter with a literary bend of mind. Addictive.

If I Hadn't Met You (Netflix): I will take time travel and alternate universes in any language. Si no t'hagues conegut is a Spanish Catalan series, a love story in disguise of a time traveling trope - that's what I fell for.

Other honorable mentions because I am too lazy to write.

The rest of my best on Amazon Prime you have probably not watched, yet.

• Hotel Beau Sejour (Belgium) : Supernatural crime drama with the protagonist murdered, caught up in an after-life limbo, trying to find her killer.
• Unforgotten (U.K) :  British crime series starring Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhasker.
• The Living & The Dead (U.K): Victorian era super natural of a farmer-scientist trying to prove the existence of after-life, starring Colin Morgan.
• Intruders (BBC America) : Stars Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown before she was famous. Supernatural.

The rest of my best on Netflix you might have watched already.

• Delhi Crime (India): Best Indian crime drama ever.
• Clickbait : Crime thriller set in the U.S, but Melbourne stands in for U.S west coast.
• The Chair : If you have always wondered what happens in academia and what do these professors, especially the ones who teach languages do, The Chair is a quick and easy watch.
• How To Sell Drugs Online Fast Seasons 1-3 (Germany) : Real life Breaking Bad about the true story of a teenage German entrepreneur. Engaging and funny.
• Never Have I Ever Seasons  1-2 : Teen drama. Mindy Kaling takes a look at the troubles and travails of teenage angst, through her protagonist, first generation Indian American teen, Devi Vishwakumar

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Chadwick Boseman in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Before Oscars So White Redux (2021) I didn't care much about Ma Rainey's Black Bottom to write a review.  I wished Riz Ahmed would win the Best Actor award, although like most people who had kept tabs on this year's nominations, I knew it would go to Chadwick Boseman and was mostly reconciled to it. After all the incredible human being and actor that Boseman was, he would never again get a chance to be in the Oscar race ever again. Everyone else, including Riz Ahmed, who I hope will have a remarkable career ahead,  will have more chances.

Then the Academy went ahead and did its thing- awarded Anthony Hopkins who was blissfully sleeping in his bed and didn't even Zoom into the award ceremony, the Best Actor award. This made it imperative that I had to write about Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, to make peace with Chadwick Boseman, even though he is at a place where they are indifferent to gold-plated bronze statues of Uncle Oscar and other such earthly knickknacks.

Viola Davis put in a power house performance as Ma Rainey, the so-called Mother of the Blues. But it is Chadwick Boseman as Levee - the trumpeter who steals the show. I did not even recognize him at first in the film. Considering it was shot during the last few months of his life, physically, he was a shadow of King T'Challa he was in Black Panther.  That did not deter him from pouring his soul into Levee. 

Chadwick Boseman as Levee at the center, in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom has all telltale signs of being adapted from a play. That coupled with my absolute no-clues-about-blues persuasion didn't endear me to the content of the film much. Ma Rainey also says in the movie that it would be an empty world without the blues. Maybe for you Ma, not for me.

The silver lining for me was Boseman's Levee. Despite his irreverent, go-getter attitude, his was the only character I found myself rooting for. The script gives a handful of theatrical monologues to Levee, knowing that this might be the last time Boseman would have an opportunity to deliver such hard hitting lines. Like this one on death, which considering the circumstances add to the poignancy,

"Now death. Death got some style. Death will kick your ass and make you wish you have never been born. That's how bad death is. But you can rule over life. Life ain't nothing."

The black and white footage at the end brings home the message that black artists didn't get their due and had their intellectual property stolen from them. It is heart-rending to watch white musicians play Levee's piece sans any emotion, while we the viewers know how much the black musicians had poured their souls into their compositions and never got credit.

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One Night in Miami & The Two Killings of Sam Cooke

All the four paths would diverge after that One Night In Miami. Two will be cut shot prematurely. Two will go on making their contributions to the world of sports and entertainment. It is the two who got snuffed out way before their time, their unfinished stories that well up in my throat. Like Sam Cooke’s last song which was released after his untimely death, we are waiting, we are still waiting…

It's been a long
A long time coming
But I know, a change gonna come
Oh, yes it will

One Night in Miami is what Bob Seger might have been thinking about (well not really, the unromantic in me is taking off on an imaginary scenic route here) when he wrote, “We got tonite, who needs tomorrow. We got tonite baby, why don’t you stay?” Stay they did, the coolest gang of bros who might have ever hung out together in the history of menkind – Malcolm X, Cassius Clay soon to be Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown at a Negro hotel in Miami, on the night of 25^th Feb 1964.

More than three fourths of the movie happens in a hotel room the four friends get together. It makes sense when it is adapted from a play and the occasion calls for it. The four men briefly spend some time on the hotel rooftop and Ali & Cooke make a short stop at a liquor store, but the rest of the time the conversation between the four men happen entirely in the hotel room. An entire movie centered around the dialog four people are having in one room reminded me a bit of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but the similarity ends there.

To write meaningful dialog without taking sides and keeping the audience attention unwavering without any change in background scenery is quite a challenge. Shout out to Kemp Powers who wrote the original play and his debut movie screenplay adaptation. It is also the feature debut for the director Regina King. She has absolutely nailed it. Along with Powers’ powerful screenplay, she has received tremendous support from the crew of four amazing actors who play the four historical figures – Kingley Ben-Adir (Malcolm X), Leslie Odom Jr. (Sam Cooke), Aldis Hodge (Jim Brown) and Eli Goree (Ali) whose paths cross one night in a hotel room in Miami.

It is such a personal moment (or a few hours) for these four guys, but this serendipitous meeting is also a watershed moment in history. The morning after the meeting Cassius Clay confirms that he is joining the Nation of Islam and he changes his name to Muhammad Ali a week after. Malcolm X would quit the Nation of Islam a week after this meeting and make a trip to Mecca, Middle East and African countries to understand more about Islam and get international support and exposure to the Civil Rights Movement. Malcolm X would be assassinated and Sam Cooke would be shot dead before the first anniversary of this meeting. Ali would go on to become one of the greatest sportsmen in history and Jim Brown would quit football for Hollywood after being named NFL’s MVP for the third time in 1966.

To read more about what happened after that One Night in Miami, here is a BBC article.

After One Night in Miami, I took a peak into Sam Cooke’s life in Netflix’s documentary – The Two Killings of Sam Cooke. It is less of a crime investigation piece and more of a biography of Cooke through the eyes and words of the people who knew him and his music. Like many black musicians at the time he broke into the popular music scene via gospel music then crossed over to the devil's music - pop music and rock & roll.

In One Night in Miami we see Malcolm X exhorting Sam Cooke to take the activist route, considering he had a platform that people listened to - his songs and music. Although the movie gives the viewer the impression that Sam Cooke was not much of an activist, he was in fact at the time risking his career with his activism and earning wrath of big time record companies like RCA. If he had lived we would have an African-American Elvis, the guy had music, looks, leadership and charisma. In an alternate reality where Malcolm X and Sam Cooke could've lived on, I wonder how the world would've looked like? Those two men had so much unfinished business to take care of.😞

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The White Tiger : A review

White Tiger, blue moon, albino alligator, purple carrot, double yolk egg - all these vagaries of nature catch our eye because they are rare. Aravind Adiga's novel The White Tiger bowled over the Booker prize judging panel in 2008. It was a rare page-turner, presenting a tight and perceptive portrayal of the emerging India of the early 2000s. Other than being mightily impressed just like the Booker panel I do not remember much about the story I had read 10+ years ago, that was till I watched Netflix's movie The White Tiger. 

I remembered that even while reading the book it had felt like it was gripping movie material for western audiences if it can be produced in English, the same language the book is written in. Just like Dickensian tales that never tire the audience even after repeat adaptations in different mediums, The White Tiger is like a modern day David Copperfield. It belongs to the same bildungsroman genre with the dark Victorian London substituted by the frenetic and murky 21st century New Delhi and northern India. A dog eat dog world where the poor has to overcome classism (and caste) to make something out of themselves.

And the most important reason why it has to be made in English and not in Hindi or any other regional Indian language is because poverty porn sells well to a western audience. [Parasite, has entered the chat.] It might even have a chance at being an Oscar contender in the regular category (and not in the best foreign film category.) If you think about other foreign films in the recent years that made it to the best picture category you shall see the light - Slumdog Millionaire, Roma, Parasite.

I can't say the poverty and the class/caste-divide The White Tiger depicts is not real. It it is not the India I am familiar with. I got lucky in the lottery of life. Salaam Bombay is real to people who live in the red light district of Mumbai, so is Netflix's recent home-brewed poverty porn classic - Hillbilly Elegy. But how many Americans I know and interact with everyday thinks that the U.S of A is as it is shown in Hillbilly Elegy? Zilch. Ordinary lives do not make interesting movies, we will leave it at that.

Adiga dedicated his book to his friend Ramin Bahrani whom he met during his student years at Columbia University. Bahrani has written the dialogs and directed The White Tiger as faithfully as he could, reproducing the narrative in his signature indie movie style. Bahrani, an Iranian-American director, born and brought up in the US somehow captures the simple and raw humanist docudrama vibes of Iranian cinema in all his films. He is well known for using raw natural talent, many with no previous acting experience as protagonists and placing them in a documentary-like story line (refer: Goodbye Solo) which is exactly what he does in The White Tiger too. It is helpful that Adiga's novel is indeed documentary-ish in its presentation - written as eight long emails from the protagonist, Balram Halwai to the Chinese premier at the time, Wen Jiabao. 

The cast is led by the newcomer Adarsh Gaurav as the protagonist and supported by the reliable and experienced Rajkummar Rao and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. 

Priyanka and Ava DuVernay are also two of the executive producers of the movie. Appreciate your choice ladies, it is a movie that needs to made. While the characters and the background scenery are specific to India, it is a satirical take on neoliberalism, the invisible global economic epidemic, which is normalizing greed and narcissism all over the world.

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Godless : A Netflix Original (Review)

 I am a fan of movies and TV shows based in the American West. Not all of them have to be Westerns. In fact I have not seen any movies of John Wayne, the classic Western icon. Maybe I will, one day. The message of the glorified cowboy who wins the West and its pioneer trailblazer construct does not appeal to me much.

It was Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy that introduced me to the westerns. These spaghetti Westerns were not classic Hollywood fare at the time. They didn't have just one good cowboy, what they had was a mixture of good, bad and ugly in the same people, fighting each other against a fantastic background score. And these Leone westerns were not even shot in the U.S! 

Places and things interest me more than people. The starkly beautiful, hostile wide-screen landscape is appealing to my eyeballs. The history of the westward expansion was another aspect, how it affected the conqueror and conquered and it all happened so close to the present. I have documented my love for the stories of the West a few times in this blog - here, here, here.

 

Godless is a Netflix mini-series that dropped in 2017. Yes, I am late to the party. But better late than never, right? It is written and directed by Scott Frank (director of Minority Report, Get Shorty) and the executive producer is Steven Soderbergh. The heroes in Godless are ordinary folks fighting their own personal battles and more than half of them are women. Although not exactly the feminist Western the series was marketed as, a frontier town without able-bodied men is a new take. 

The powerful performances by the women actors do justice to the story. Sam Waterson, Jeff Daniels, Jack O'Connell, Michelle Dockery, Merrit Weaver, Scott McNairy play some of the important characters in the series. It seems funny to me that for an American western TV show more than half of the lead cast is from U.K.

The Hollywood cliche trap that even Godless couldn't escape is when there is a powerful female character in a leadership role, she inevitably has to be a lesbian. Have they not seen hetero-sexual leaders like Angela Merkels, Golda Meirs or Maggie Thatchers of the world or our home-grown Kamala Harris ? Or is it done as a symbol of political correctness and inclusivity to make sure they don't leave any minority groups out? I am looking at you Mindhunter (Wendy Carr), Xena and Batwoman. It is almost as if a hetero-sexual woman won't have the balls to take on the leadership role intended for the said character. 

Godless captures the epic scale, wall to wall geography of the West faithfully making even trigger-happy TV remote user like me soak it in and keep my fingers off the fast forward button. As expected from the title, there are no Gods in Godless. It is set in a territory of lawlessness and struggle. Yeah, the struggle is real in 19th century New Mexico. 

 

Edifices dedicated to a higher power are conspicuously absent. The story is mostly centered around the silver mining town of La Belle, NM where a church building is seen to be in perpetual construction state and is never seen finished. All the men of the town perished in a mining disaster, except the grocer, the saloon owner and the sheriff and a few other old men.

 

The series is written as a journey through the lives of the people in La Belle as they advance towards the ultimate showdown (which will happen in La Belle) between two outlaws - Roy Goode and his adapted 'Pappy', Frank Griffin, both gun-slingers and outlaws of the finest kind. Roy being a Goode, the makers of the series are trying to tell us that there is some good in him. Guns play an important part in the show, but the lead character Roy Goode, while he is an ace shooter, sometimes belts out dialogs like he is a spokesperson of a gun control advocacy group, which is okay be me. Goes to show that even among gun-toting outlaws the voice of reason and reality was not always a lost cause.

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Ken Burns' Central Park Five and Ava DuVernay's When They See Us

Five boys happened to be in some corner of an 843 acre park when a white woman got raped in the same park. The five teens who had nothing to do with the crime are charged with it. Black kids. White women. We know it is an explosive combo, or else Emmett Till would have lived, right? Thankfully the white lady lived.

A blonde millionaire business man takes out ads in major newspapers calling for the return of death penalty to punish the kids. He must have been thinking that it should be obvious to (white) people that black teens get off by raping white women. It was the universal truth first discovered by KKK in the South. But this was not the South, this was the North, the promised land to which the slaves took the underground railway to escape persecution and lynching. This was New York City. The year was 1989. This happened after Michael Jackson had turned the world on its head with Thriller. Thurgood Marshall, the first black American Supreme court judge was already in the office for almost quarter century and there had already been four African American astronauts in space.

But more things change, more they stay the same. Your biases and prejudices just grow old with you. Maybe they fade out from public view, maybe they are less pronounced, but make no mistake they are still there. What happened to group of five kids christened Central Park Five was a catastrophic failure of the American justice system. No other case in the recent history highlights how the biases and prejudices of the U.S legal system works against the young people of color.

I watched Sarah (daughter of Ken Burns) and Ken Burns' documentary on Amazon Prime called The Central Park Five after I tried watching Ava DuVernay's Netflix biopic series based on the same event, When They See Us. Ken Burns' documentary is faster and it delivers justice to the boys in about 100 minutes. It has media footage and the film makers made the film after the ultimate exoneration of the five in 2002, wanting to make the miscarriage of justice public and to help the wrongful conviction case the Five filed against New York City.

When They See Us on the other hand is incredibly more

traumatic to see, especially the first few episodes. I cannot imagine what those innocent kids went through - first prosecuted for a crime they didn't commit and then charged and incarcerated for a major part of their young lives. The biopic delves in the lives of the kids before the event that turned their lives upside down, their time in the prison or juvie and their lives as adults after they come out of prison. No one but Ava Duvarney could direct such a powerful series.

In this era of Black Lives Matter, it is all the more important to watch these accounts of black people (or people of color, one of the five was a Latino kid), to understand how they are treated differently by the law and order machinery. While being at the wrong place at the wrong time does not work in favor of anyone, but if you are the wrong color too - that seals your fate, for the worse. 

These are the Exonerated Five - Antron McCray, Raymond Santana Jr, Kevin Washington, Yusef Salaam and Korey Wise. All the men have contributed and assist the Innocence Project whose mission is to help exonerate individuals wrongfully convicted through DNA testing. Here below are the Exonerated Five, at the screening of When They See Us, in 2019.

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