Shogun: When Fate and Honour Clash

Schemes and dreams rattle castle halls. A siege of whispered manipulations and two-tongued treachery drown out amity in favour of authority, culminating in a crimson sky ablaze with violence and death. This is the double-edged blade of power and survival laid bare. This is Shogun.

Shogun fictionalises true events in Japan’s storied shogunate history by depicting the cultural, political and bloody clashes between Western and Japanese powerbrokers. English sailor John Blackthorne is shipwrecked upon Japan’s shores, landing at the doorstep of Lord Torunaga. With hostile agendas encircling both men, Torunaga and his compatriots form a shrewd alliance of preservation with John to stave off other feudal lords from encroaching usurpation.

Shogun asks us what can one’s own purpose hold within the machinations of honour? A slave to another’s fate, or a life of meaning?

Head-locking large swathes of fans at each episode’s premiere, Shogun from its first episode sees almost every character with notable screentime eventually cross paths in a larger intertwining saga. Trivial interactions blossom into multi-faceted feuds. Each character sees everyone else as chess pieces to move around for their own gain. A tactical game at the razor’s edge of demise.

This is especially true in how Shogun boldly subverts the Japanese sense of honour as both an act of duty and a ploy of warfare. For instance, the feudal touchstone of seppuku (ritual suicide) still maintains its reputation of accepting one’s own failure of fulfilling their purpose, but simultaneously these individual self-sacrifices drive a larger role of serving their master’s plan. One purpose is failed to succeed the other, a testament to the underrated cunningness of Japanese stratagems where something as culturally divine as Japanese honour can be both respected and manipulated.

Shogun’s layered cast of characters helps ease us into its thematic complexities. Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai masterfully portray subdued strength underlying determination and heart, while Cosmo Jarvis and Tadanobu Asano masquerade personal aspirations as controlled rambunctiousness.

Shogun asks us what can one’s own purpose hold within the machinations of honour? A slave to another’s fate, or a life of meaning? Shogun tells us it’s both, and it was never your choice.

Dune Part Two: Of How A Leader Dreams

A blazing sun dawns on inviting earthly hues set to the rhythmic bellows of Han Zimmer’s thumping score echoing across an arid sea of spice and sandstorms. In this vast emptiness, fate will turn dreamers to leaders, and more dangerously, leaders to dreamers.

Dune: Part One charted a betrayal that led to House Atreides’ downfall, with protagonist Paul Atreides and his mother surviving a gruesome massacre orchestrated by the Harkonnens over spice control on the planet Arrakis. By the end of Part One, Paul embodies the convergence of biblical and philosophical ideas of what a true prophetic leader should be, setting his sights on undertaking a higher cause to lead the native Fremen of Dune towards their freedom against the Harkonnens.

Dune: Part Two dismantles these optimistic philosophies by gradually scraping off the veneer that hides the dark truth of ascent to power. In fact, the film plots a simple but no less consequential trajectory of faith to power: Innocent faith in hopes of fate becoming real, and that fate grants almost irrevocable power to those who are the fated.

The Fremen have a sycophantic faith in the hope of a prophecy that would see them be saved by a fated messiah. This faith locks Paul into a path to absolute power. And in history’s chronic lessons, it’s biggest one is that power corrupts, even unintentionally.

A power that dreams, might be a nightmare for those who follow.

For Paul does not deliberately want to be an evil dictator, nor a benevolent messiah. He is simply a man who dreamt of using power as a conduit to exact a personal vengeance on the Harkonnens that wiped out his family. Just as a gun is only harmful when someone pulls its trigger, maybe power in itself doesn’t corrupt, but the purpose that controls that power.

But with that power always comes greater ambition, to dream upon higher callings far beyond the initial purpose that gained someone that power in the first place.

And so as messiahs wield foreboding omens unto their path of personal retribution in Part Two, bound in fate are the followers whose blind faith in these messiahs lead them into a cycle of poisonous prophecies and distorted destinies.

A power that dreams, might be a nightmare for those who follow.

Justice League The Animated Series: My World’s Finest

As a 6-year-old kid, every evening at 6.30pm I’d plant myself in front of the TV and tune in to what has been, and always will be, my favourite TV series of all time, Justice League.

I’d happily allow myself to be sucked into this fantastical world brimming with awesome, wonderful and individually distinct superheroes, ranging from the stalwart trinity of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman to household names like Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl and Martian Manhunter, and dozens more incredible heroes.

From their revelry, banter and relationship dynamics to epic, city-shattering battles against an iconic roster of villains, my eyes were practically glued to the TV screen as I watched episodes unfold in such memorable storylines that not only instilled in me that good can triumph over evil amidst adversity, but at the same time also presented admirably mature themes and interesting trains of thought.

I love the world of DC itself, because to me it was the ideal world to live in, to strive for.

What other so-called “kids show” from 2001 touched on both Norse and Greek mythologies, based an entire episode on Coleridge’s classic Rime of the Ancient Mariner poem, had characters deal with loss, self-sacrifice, mental struggles, torture, cowardice and yes, even asking – and answering – the age-old question of what is the purpose of life?

The show never got lost in these heavier themes, however, and knew to also be joyful, triumphant, emotionally cathartic and hopeful. No matter what tangent the show took, it always stayed true to the nature of these characters and what it truly meant for them be a hero, and therefore their actions, decisions, victories, struggles and characterisations always left a lasting imprint on me.

And that’s probably Justice League’s biggest impact – that my moral compass was partly formed by these inspiring characters. It’s probably why I don’t really have an ultimate favourite DC Comics character – I love the world of DC itself, because to me it was the ideal world to live in, to strive for.

And in our real world that grows darker and pessimistic each day, I’m even more grateful for the little light of morality, hope and perseverance that this show planted in me years ago – a little light that I hope never dims out.

The Holdovers: Dysfunction is Salvation

Quiet misery in isolation drains life faster than the loud ramblings of agony. And somehow, human dysfunction can help pull us out of that lonely hell.

Whether you think that’s a good or bad thing, this truth of human nature unfolds in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers. We’re transported to a 1970s New England school where a grouchy teacher, Paul Hunham (a career-best performance from Paul Giamatti), is forced to look after several students holding over the winter holiday season on the school grounds. Alongside the school’s head cook, Hunham ends up taking care of a particularly smart but unruly student.

It may be a simple setup, even boring almost. Yet the film’s simplicity allows the more vital narrative nuances to take precedence. Each of our three central characters (Hunham, the unruly student and the cook) come from wildly different backgrounds and experience deepening conflicts that come to bear on their personal insecurities.

It is as human as humanity gets, where our imperfections tend to fill the gaps of others’ imperfections.

Their icy holdover at campus eventually melts and amalgamates into a sort of dysfunctional family. Hunham and the student develop an unspoken father-son fondness for one another that fills each other’s innate desire for some kind of familial bond, while the cook embodies a steely motherly figure between the two of them as she processes the tragic loss of her own son.

In this regard, The Holdovers serves as a meditative device on how lonely, melancholic souls find solace among peers undergoing similar tribulations – and more than that – how they can together fuel an endearing revolt against the trappings of their own depressive chains padlocked by their own rejections, failures and losses. It is as human as humanity gets, where our imperfections tend to fill the gaps of others’ imperfections.

This is why the eternal dysfunction of the human experience has been history’s greatest gift and curse to us, unwittingly passed down from generation to generation under the false, unknowing bliss of thinking we are living a distinctive life from others – only to find out that we were just echoing the familiar vulnerability of everyone else’s experiences on Earth.

The Holdovers, like a warm blanket on a cold winter, embraces the chaos of dishonest ways, lost dreams and flawed pasts as it unearths the bittersweet beauty of how any tragedy can bind us together and how the answers to our grief rests in another’s own fragility.

And maybe that’s all life is, all of us unintentionally holding over our flaws and dysfunction for the next person who might need our imperfection to help themselves, and vice versa.

Funny how it’s our curses that can truly bless others.

The Boy and the Heron: How Do You Live?

Enduring, fantastical beings and locales brought to life alongside a tinge of charming relatability and emotional maturity have always been a staple of many Hayao Miyazaki films, with Studio Ghibli’s The Boy and the Heron being the legendary Japanese auteur’s latest foray into his signature style of magical realism.

Set during World War II, the film follows a young Mahito, who, after his mother’s tragic death, moves to the countryside with his dad and stepmother and soon discovers a stranded tower that leads into other-worldly realms.

With the film telling an original story inspired by the grounded 1937 novel ‘How Do You Live?’, one must presume that the 82-year-old Miyazaki, amidst his accumulated fame, experiences and lessons, felt obligated in exiting his retirement to wrestle with the philosophical notion of living.

With this in mind for The Boy and the Heron, Miyazaki deftly unleashes an allegorical playground of 2D-animated imagination that isn’t just a feast for the eyes, but an answer for the soul.

There is no shame in letting go, or even forgetting, parts of our past to start anew.

Mahito’s soul is destitute of direction, wandering the quiet plains of sadness in his mind. But the deeper Mahito traverses the stages of the heaven-inspired fantasy realm, the more Miyazaki comes upon his own answer to the question he’s been pondering.

The answer is that life can be an antithesis of itself. This means that, just as a lie can also be a truth, life can also be a tomb.

It’s a tomb of the self, where the world revolves around how you see it. It is undeniably true that you are the centre of your surroundings at all times, and as you look out into world from your own eyes, you can’t help but feel that your life must have been singularly purposeful in creation. And yet that’s also a lie, because as individually unique as we are from each other, we also revolve around one another too. We live a shared reality of unique perspectives.

Therefore, the building blocks of life that we each build for ourselves also affect others around us. These building blocks are delicate, and sometimes no matter how much we build them up, there will come a time when they fall apart. And when they do fall, your world and others’ worlds could start crumbling around you.

Does this collapse mark the end? Miyazaki tells us this is where you start. Start over. Start at the end. Start and build. And when what you build falls apart, move on and start again. There is no shame in letting go, or even forgetting, parts of our past to start anew. For the memories may fade, but the lessons linger on.

Your single tower of building blocks feeds into the billions of towers from everyone in the world. Towers that each raise their own dreams, tragedies, hopes, desires, evils, suffering, failures, love and more. Some towers are intertwined, some stand in silo. For better or for worse, this cornucopia of towers is where you live. But you alone will always know how to place your starting block.

So with that said, how do you live?

Blue Eye Samurai: The Poisoned Chalice of Good

Why is revenge universally compelling? From time immemorial, whether in our entertainment spaces or real life, revenge holds fast in the deepest recesses of our fantasies. But what primordial desire can revenge possibly fulfill in us ‘civilised’ folk? Is it following the sordid action-heavy sprees fuelling a bloodlust for justice? What makes us entangle ourselves with another’s undying will to right a wrong?

All those ingredients do conjure up a good revenge tale, but there’s one vital part missing in that concoction which Netflix’s Blue Eye Samurai brings to light, and it is this: good.

Hatred alone does not drive revenge, but love poisoned by betrayal, trust poisoned by manipulation. Revenge is not innate; it is evil bred from good.

A cosmic rage unsheathed by the grander machinations of her harsh reality, Mizu’s path of revenge is a visually-striking tapestry of vendetta.

Blue Eye Samurai’s protagonist, Mizu, suffered tribulations being born as a half-white child (marked by her distinguishable blue eyes) in Japan’s 17^th-century Edo period, which saw Japan shutter its borders from outsiders to remain pure. This decree cursed mixed-race Mizu to a life of abuse, so much so that she single-handedly honed swordmanship so that she could avenge the remaining loved ones that showed her love.

But in an unrelentingly cruel world, true love and goodness can never truly take root, and the remaining fragments of Mizu’s innocence were crushed by the heartless betrayal of those same remaining loved ones whom she sought to stand by. At this juncture, Mizu’s blue eyes have finally and fully condemned her soul into a purgatory of retaliation towards the world that created her.

This betrayal and condemnation reawakened Mizu’s vengeful spirit. Her retribution now is not about avenging anyone else but herself, as she becomes hellbent on wiping out the very heritage that birthed her with blue eyes.

A cosmic rage unsheathed by the grander machinations of her harsh reality, Mizu’s path of revenge is a visually-striking tapestry of vendetta. More notably, it’s a gritty reflection of the truth and appeal of revenge within us all.

Revenge is a poisoned chalice of good, and once drunk from that chalice, only evil is left foaming at the mouth of the drinker who has forsaken their once-decent soul into extinction.

Killers of the Flower Moon: Black Gold, Blacker Hearts

During May, on the Oklahoman hills, blooming flowers die out from the shade of taller plants encroaching over them. The North American Osage tribe call this the “flower-killing moon”. Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon plays into this metaphor by exploring a buried 1920s tragedy of the Osage people who were blessed with prosperity, and cursed with demise.

The Osage people are akin to the freely-blooming flowers on the hill that soak in the sun’s life-giving rays, almost like they were God-ordained themselves, and the discovery of oil on their tribal lands only further maximised their abundant resources.

Crude oil is like black gold, and gold of any kind eventually attracts the darkest hearts. Men of greed are calculative predators like coyotes, wolves and owls. They stalk their prey during the day, and strike them come nightfall.

 It’s a masterful effort in imbuing cinematic poignance into horrific true events to amplify the resonance of their consequences.

Scorsese’s intelligent depiction of these murders represents the storied filmmaker’s deft handling and evolution of his signature onscreen violence. While films like Mean Streets and Goodfellas see Scorsese amplifying ugly violence and gore to portray a sense of danger for the characters, Scorsese’s later works such as Silence and now Killers of the Flower Moon shows him utilising violence to guilt us viewers rather than shock us.

He first locks us into the conspiracy of these murders by letting us in on the plan to murder the Osage people from the start. With no veil over the perpetrators’ identities or their plans, the film then forces us to be an unwilling accomplice to the unfolding clandestine killing spree of evil men ruthlessly and systematically murdering without remorse.

It’s a masterful effort in imbuing cinematic poignance into horrific true events to amplify the resonance of their consequences.

Even when some form of justice finally prevails, the marching of time banishes all deeds, good and bad, into obscurity. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe flowers can only survive in solitude – never sharing resources with other plants, but also dooming their finite lives and deaths away from those same resources. And that’s maybe the biggest tragedy of all.

Vinland Saga: Find It, And Engrave It

“Engrave it. Engrave it into your flesh. Engrave it into the land. Engrave it into your enemies. Engrave that encounter into me.”

Wisdom from violence, tranquility from bloodshed, spirituality from atrocity. These concepts couldn’t be further from each other. Yet, the best of the good can only come from the worst of the bad – and Netflix’s Vinland Saga makes a compelling case as to why that is so.

Casting back into the English-Nordic wars of 1000 AD, we follow Thorfinn, a doe-eyed Icelandic boy who witnessed his father’s murder and swore vengeance upon the perpetrators. What occurs after, is the advent of brutality, suffering and warfare that churns young Thorfinn’s innocence into a single-minded, rage-filled warrior that believes in revenge being the sole respite from the pain of loss.

It’s ironic then, that the fulfillment of his desire for revenge has scarred Thorfinn with emptiness and desolation. A few years after his battle-worn youth, Thorfinn is a walking corpse, aimless and working inconspicuously on a farm as a slave of rote.

The true measure of a man is not by the blood he spills, but by the hearts he fills.

Surrounded by the kindness and kinship of new friends, and toiling in the fields for an honest day’s work, Thorfinn begins relearning life-defining insights from simple everyday acts, especially this: the hands that once killed life, can also become the hands that nurture life. Thorfinn realises that man’s purpose is his own and anyone can choose to be born anew into something greater than their past.

Thorfinn’s conversion grows from this seed of realisation. No longer will he succumb to the demons of the past that drag him down into abyss of despair. He will instead reconcile and bear the weight of these demons willingly, choosing to use his past as a yardstick for reimagining a better future for all. After all, no one will understand the value of peace better than the one who had once robbed it from others.

From the wolf that slaughtered the sheep, to the shepherd that protects and guides the herd, Thorfinn now understands that the true measure of a man is not by the blood he spills, but by the hearts he fills.

Wisdom from violence, tranquility from bloodshed, spirituality from atrocity. Thorfinn found it, and will engrave it.

The Northman Review: The Fate and Fury of Vengeance

Part tragic Shakespearean cruelty, part ruminative lament on the inescapable tides of fate, Robert Eggers’ The Northman unsheathes a savage cinematic portrayal about the age-old Danish medieval legend of Amleth (of which Shakespeare’s Hamlet is heavily inspired from).

The Northman opens with young Amleth’s rite of passage where his father infuses into him the single-minded significance of fate – a thread of destiny woven by deities called the Norns, in Norse mythology. When a brutal childhood calamity rids him of his parents and home, Amleth escapes and clings to the solace of a fated vengeance.

Now a man, the spilt blood of his parents becomes the whetstone sharpening his bloodlust as he vows revenge on the treachery of his father’s evil brother. Thus, blood isn’t only materially aplenty in this gory tale, but also thematically pervading in threading the primary arc of the story together.

However, the bloodlines that bind Amleth’s destiny to revenge is called into question when Amleth learns of a demoralising revelation about his heritage. With a past legacy that’s tainted and a present legacy that has shunned him away, Amleth’s quest for vengeance is thrown into confusion and doubt. But what if neither the past nor the present is the answer to Amleth’s redemption from vengeance, but the future instead?

Part tragic Shakespearean cruelty, part ruminative lament on the inescapable tides of fate.

For all of The Northman’s heavy emphasis on destined paths and birthrights that lured Amleth into avenging the past through retribution in the present, the film’s ultimate message to us is in fact freedom from fate’s cruel cycle of vengeance. And that freedom lies in your future, not the past or present.

Sadly, this doesn’t mean salvaging your own future’s trajectory, but instead fulfilling the fate of your intended destiny, ruined as it may be, so that your future kin are blessed to reap the reward of living a better future from your sacrifice. It’s a bleak reconciliation of the inability to escape one’s fate with the choosing of a better future beyond fate’s shackles.

And so Amleth willfully gives in to the destiny of revenge woven for him, yet now it’s not for past blood spilt but for the hope of a new blood legacy thriving. While nobly sticking to his fate of vengeance may mean his woe, pleasing the Norns has its own respite – Amleth’s final fiery fate in his own hell makes him worthy of the astral gates of Valhalla. Lo the vengeance fated for doom, lo the vengeance that saved a soul.

Belle Review: The Strength In Being Vulnerable

A tale as old as time is given a dazzling sci-fi fantasy sheen, as Mamoru Hosada’s latest animated epic, Belle, soars into a poignant evolution of the classic Beauty and the Beast dynamic with a deeply edifying exploration into the toll and triumph inherent in being vulnerable.

Most people may misconstrue vulnerability as weakness, and Belle initially elucidates this misconception for the audience in its early scenes that introduce our protagonist Suzu, a shy and unassuming high school student whose past trauma saddled her with crippling anxiety. This has impaired her social skills, relationship with her dad, as well as her musical interests and singing ability.

Her best friend beckons Suzu to sign up for ‘U’, a virtual reality-powered social media hub occupied by online avatars that users create via their own biometrics in order to interact and live in the hub. U is not unlike the conceptualisation of Facebook’s Metaverse that’s just around the corner for us.

In U, Suzu’s corporeality fades away in favour of the online avatar Bell, an enchanting songstress that electrifies U’s inhabitants with her inspiring stage performances. The bashful Suzu finds her voice in U, literally and metaphorically, as Bell skyrockets to the top of U’s dominance hierarchy, much to widespread admiration and criticism. And why shouldn’t Suzu feel this way? U has propelled Suzu’s strongest real-world traits of music and generosity into the limelight – her anxiety and vulnerable nature virtually non-existent as she entertains billions in U.

Virtually non-existent. That’s the problem, right? Social media and online spaces almost always catapult the best and interesting parts of your real self for all to see, because it is what we hope to share with others. Suffering, tragedy and the imperfect nuances that define life as we know it are erased from existence in a virtual utopia.

This dilemma unravels in front of an increasingly distraught Suzu/Bell, who intensely connects with U’s most mysterious user, the Dragon. Discarding the over-romanticism and Stockholm syndrome aspect of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Bell and the Dragon instead bond over Bell’s genuine sympathy towards the Dragon’s internal plight and the vulnerability in acknowledging his suffering.

A deeply edifying exploration into the toll and triumph inherent in being vulnerable.

Like steel, emotional bonds forged though fire remain the sturdiest, and being vulnerable amidst tribulations is instrumental in unearthing the truth and strength of that connection. Because vulnerability isn’t about showing weakness, it is willingly acknowledging your risks and fears to allow yourself to truthfully accept the negative circumstances (i.e. trauma) you have no control over, instead of avoiding them altogether.

Vulnerability is the aspirational seed of courage, the stepping stone towards life lived by truth. Suzu realises this and, in reaching out to save the Dragon from his real-life anguish, sheds Bell for her true self amidst the shock of U’s virtual users. Suzu’s gales of song guide her to beautifully unmask the veiled depths of her authentic suffering and hope, consequently uplifting U’s masses into a rousing chorus as they are in awe of Suzu’s strength in her vulnerability. This moment is one of the most stirring musical climaxes I’ve experienced in a while, with Kylie McNeill (voicing Suzu/Bell in the film’s excellent English dub) exuding a show-stopping, old school vocal charm reminiscent of classic Disney films.

In evolving a classic tale, Belle divulges a deeper understanding of the multi-faceted morality entailed in illuminating the profound difference between being your best self, and your true self.