#✛ MONOLOGUES. \ FORGOTTEN ADAGE.

[catalyticvicar]

✛ MONOLOGUE. obdormio | 01.

he could feel the untended chill of air breeze across his skin as the heater shut down. a sudden frost of the winter’s bitterness down with the glass of water he’d just poured a second before. now, a cemetery of appliances lay around him for nothing more than a second. however, the tutor’s mind whizzed through thought in even less - did something break? a wire, perhaps the start of an electricity fire? where was the box, who was going to fix it? - that all came to an abrupt pause as soon as the overhead lights flickered on, illuminating his morning attire - dressed up in only so far a blouse and dress-pants, as it were only so early in the morning. a sigh of relief escaped him, his worries eased. despite the convenient repair, he wasn’t entirely satisfied. what if it were to happen again, after all? in a time where times were just slightly more urgent? he made note to make an extra round to the back of the house just to make certain, dousing the aforementioned glass. he was already turning to head out the back door, before he could even feel the glass break upon the tiles of his kitchen floor. scraping by those shards, with the most minimal of cuts suffered. and yet, he barely bled, no - he could remember why. not how, not why it was like that, but why was it so -

when he had first arrived to rome it wasn’t through bus nor tram, more awakening with sand in his mouth and hair, doused in the sea water just behind him and emerging from the shores of a beach not far off from the city. his hip and everything below dead-weight, nothing more than aching - burning muscle - dragging just behind him as he crawled along the shore, mindless, clueless to his surroundings. like his legs, his mind was scorched. scorched and touched with flames that roused through every nook and cranny that could’ve carried a coherent thought, now disarrayed and hopeless to ever resurface as it rots away unspoken and dragged down into the depths of his own subconscious. maybe a whimper, no - not even words, but merely the growl of a haughty animal that had finally been cornered. but even then, there were no words needed to describe the feeling of falling back asleep, the fear of going back - but to where? where was before? it wasn’t something he could remember, almost as though there were chains pulling the mouth of his mind apart, ripping those jaws apart to keep him from making even the most humanest sound. the last he saw were the figure of two fishermen coming close, before he fell back asleep again, and awaken under bright lights.

his name is laurence. there is no record of a surname under any legal documentation. if he had a mother, her face had been lost to time. he was on a ship. it crashed, somewhere in the Atlantic ocean. he was lucky and got washed ashore. his legs were badly burnt and were fractured, he had to sit in bed for months in an endless white room with no halls that could ever be exited. his mind was still blank, as though those words meant something, and at the same time, they were nothing to him. and yet, he was remembering something different, something almost unreal, something of much more fire than he could ever begin dreaming of, with much more wails and far too much fur. he remembers the way it licked at his very bones, in the internal clockwork of his misshapen, beastly anatomy. the way his antlers stung and rung drills through his skull as he attempted sleep, oh - how dead sleep had become in those times unforgotten. his fingers grasped for the cement between the tiles, clawing at them with human nails. vivid fantasies, such turmoil that while had only entered his life now, in such a terrible way, it was only that of a single memory. a moment in time that felt as though it would stretch on forever, and in that moment felt ever more real than the life he had been living.

he had a title. he had a title. an honored one, one that brought men to their knees and he could feel it, he knew it, there was something just hidden under his tongue, just in the blind side of an eye, under the nose and in every obscured corner. and yet, nothing came up.

all he could remember was naught but a beast.

[hissyreviews]

September Reads!

Sooooo, who’s 12 days late to show all the books I read last month?

This bitch!

So here’s how I decided to do this end of the month wrap ups. I’m going to add a read more, give the back of the book summary, my snap thoughts, and then a rating. That way, if you don’t care for long posts you don’t have to suffer.

You’re welcome.

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

A young FBI trainee. An evil genius locked away for unspeakable crimes. A plunge into the darkest chambers of a psychopath’s mind- in the deadly search for a serial killer. . . .

Thoughts: MMMM yes, this is the good shit. Hell to the bells yes. This is my shit. One of my faves. Top ten books read ever.

Rating: 10/10 would recommend

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road is a profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which a father and his son, “each the other’s world entire”, are sustained by love.

Thoughts: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. This book is rough. This world is absolutely horrifying but the relationship that McCarthy crafts between the father and son is so emotional. I have heard that this is one of McCarthy’s least rough books to read in both emotional trauma and philosophical nihilism. (Also I think there was a Jesus allegory in the son. I don’t know why but it felt like he was the future religion. Look, I was too busy crying. I don’t think I could handle reading another McCarthy, alright?)

Rating: 4/10 I didn’t really like it but I think it’s like Pulp Fiction. Everyone should read it once.

The Beguiled by Thomas Cullinan

Wounded and near death, a young Union Army corporal is found in the woods of Virginia during the height of the Civil War and brought to the nearby Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies. Almost immediately he sets about beguiling the three women and five teenage girls stranded in this outpost of Southern gentility, eliciting their love and fear, pity and infatuation, and pitting them against one another in a bid for his freedom. But as the women are revealed for who they really are, a sense of ominous foreboding closes in on the soldier, and the question becomes: Just who is the beguiled?

Thoughts: This is one of those books that I came into with high hopes. The story itself was good. I liked the overall story. I was not fond of the writing style. It’s the 1960′s trying to emulate the 1860′s. Overall, it went over like a lead balloon.

Rating: 5/10 Take it or leave it. You’ll either like it or you wont. (Check it out at the library.)

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

It’s the summer of 1854, and London is seized by a violent outbreak of cholera that no one knows how to stop. As the epidemic spreads, a maverick physicians and a local curate are spurred to action, working to solve the most pressing medical riddle of their time. Ina a triumph of multidisciplinary thinking, Johnson illuminates the intertwined histories of the spread of disease, the rise of cities, and the nature of scientific inquiry, offering both a thrilling account of the most intense cholera outbreak to strike Victorian London and a powerful explanation of how it has shaped the world we live in.

Thoughts: I loved this. I know that history can be dry and dull but this had a dynamic way of speaking about the past. The writer is a journalist not a “true” historian so it makes for good reading. No shade, but many historians just write like dust. Sooo dry. Mmm, book good, much education. I feel illuminated.

Rating: 9/10 would recommend

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured cars and lived in mansions.Then one by one, the Osage began to be killed. Mollie Burkhart watched as her family became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. Other Osage were also dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who investigated the crimes were themselves murdered. As the death toll rose, the case was taken up by the newly created FBI and its young, secretive director, J. Edgar Hoover. Struggling to crack the mystery, Hoover turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White, who put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent. They infiltrated this last remnant of the Wild West, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American History.

Thoughts: This is a book that will make your blood boil. It shows the blatant racism with an unapologetic stare. As an Irish Cherokee living in Oklahoma, I was biting my fist in rage throughout this entire book. These crimes, these absolutely disgusting crimes should be taught in history books. If you have no idea what this is about. Read the damn book. If you have an idea of the events. Read the damn book. If you live in Europe. Read the damn book. Events like this should never be forgotten. And God bless Mollie Burkhart. Read the book and you will feel that way too. Just read the book.

Rating: 10/10 read the damn book

The Circle by Dave Eggers

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime - even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

Thoughts: Holy shit. This is why I don’t own a smart phone. Read this book and you will second glance at every piece of technology that you own. In thrillers I try to guess what is going to happen and I was wrong about the ending of this book. Which, to tell the truth, made me happy but I was paranoid about the ending. Like it feels like life is moving towards this kind of universe and I don’t like it. May I just say that I am Mercer.

Rating: 8/10 would recommend

Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich

On April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occurred in Chernobyl and contaminated as much as three quarters of Europe. Voices from Chernobyl is the first book to present personal accounts of the tragedy. Journalist Svetlana Alexievich interviewed hundreds of people affected by the meltdown - from innocent civilians to firefighters to those called in to clean up the disaster - and their stories reveal the fear, anger, and uncertainty with which they still live. Comprised of interviews in monologue form, Voices from Chernobyl is a crucially important work, unforgettable in its emotional power and honesty.

Thoughts: This book  will take you through every possible emotion known to man kind. Alright. Do not read this if you are in an emotionally compromised state. It will make it worse. That said, I truly believe that this is a pivotal piece to understand the Chernobyl disaster from the ground up instead of the top down view that much of the western world understands. Also, with that Chernobyl series this seems an apropos time to read this.

Rating: 9/10 Everyone should read this once.

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Every Tuesday mornign for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi’s living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.

Thoughts: You know a book that makes you frustrated with the author when they did something you know that they would regret in the past? I felt that. I won’t spoil it but I did say on multiple occasions “You asked for this!” This book is living proof of the old adage “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” Yeah, that’s what I felt and pity. There was some pity going on.

Rating: 8/10 Read it if you are interested in Middle Eastern history or women’s studies. I don’t think it’s everyone’s cup of tea.

The Perfect Girlfriend by Karen Hamilton

Juliette loves Nate. She will follow him anywhere. She’s even become a flight attendant for his airline so she can keep a closer eye on him. They are meant to be. The fact that Nate broke up with her six months ago means nothing. Because Juliette has a plan to win him back. She is the perfect girlfriend. And she’ll make sure no one stops her from getting exactly what she wants. True love hurts, but Juliette knows it’s worth all the pain. . .

Thoughts: This book is an easy read. It’s a day and a half for someone who reads a lot. Easy to get into, easy to understand, but it doesn’t act like it thinks you’re stupid. Creepy in the same way You was creepy. If you liked You you will like this book. If stalkers aren’t your thing avoid this one. I will say that I found the ending underwhelming. It felt like the author was tired of writing and just wanted to end the freaking book. Other than that, it was fine.

Rating: 6/10 Like You? Read this one.

The Trial of Lizzie Borden by Cara Robertson

When Andy and Abby Borden were brutally hacked to death in Fall River, Massachusetts, in August of 1892, the arrest of the couple’s daughter Lizzie turned the case into international news and her trial into a spectacle unparalleled in American history. Reporter flocked to the scene. Well-known columnists took up conspicuous seats in the courtroom. The defendant was relentlessly scrutinized for signs of guilt or innocence. Everyone - rich and poor, suffragists and social conservatives, legal scholars and laypeople - had an opinion about Lizzie Borden’s guilt or innocence. The popular fascination with the Borden murders and its central, enigmatic character has endured for more than a hundred years, but the legend often outstrips the story. Based on transcripts of the Borden legal proceedings, contemporary newspaper articles, previously withheld lawyer’s journals, unpublished local reports, and recently unearthed letters from Lizzie herself, The Trial of Lizzie Borden is a definitive account fo the Borden murder case and offers a window into America in the Gilded Age, showcasing its most deeply held convictions and its most troubling social anxieties.

Thoughts: I have always been fascinated with this case. It is one of the first nationally publicized cases and as such everyone knew. Can you imagine never being able to go anywhere without being recognized as the one woman who got away with murder? In America we still sing “Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, gave her father forty-one.” No one alive in America doesn’t know who Lizzie Borden is. If you like true crime and history you will like this. I think you probably would even if you aren’t a connoisseur of those genres. P.S. I still think Lizzie did it.

Rating: 9/10 would recommend

Jane Austen, the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly

An illuminating reassessment of the life and work of Jane Austen that makes clear how Austen has been misread for the past two centuries and how she intended her books to be read. In Jane Austen, the Secret Radical, Helena Kelly, dazzling Jane Austen authority, looks a the writer and her work in the context of Austen’s own time to reveal this popular, beloved artist as daring, even subversive in reaction to her roiling world and to show, novel by novel, how Austen imbued her books with radical, sometimes revolutionary ideas - on slavery, poverty, feminism and marriage as trapping women, on the Church, and evolution. We see that Austen was writing in a time when revolution was in the air (she was born the year before the American Revolution; the French Revolution began when she was thirteen). England had become a totalitarian state; Britain was at war with France. Habeas corpus had been suspended; treason, redefined, was no longer limited to actively conspiring to overthrow and to kill. It now included thinking, writing, printing, and reading (Tom Paine was convicted of seditious libel in 1792 for ideas considered dangerous to the state), the intention being to pressure writers and publishers to police themselves; those who criticized the government or who turned away from the Church of England were seen as betraying their country in its hour of need. In this revelatory, brilliant book, Kelly discusses each of Austen’s novels in the order in which they were written. Whether writing about the fundamental unfairness of primogeniture in Sense and Sensibility (influenced by Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Women) or about property and inheritance, war, revolution, and counterrevolution in Pride and Prejudice (Kelly describes the novel as a revolutionary fairy tale written in response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France) or about Mansfield Park, with its issues of slavery and the hypocrisy of the Church of England, we see Austen not as someone creating a procession of undifferentiated romances but as someone whose novels reflect back to her readers the world as it is - and was then - complicated, messy, and filled with error and injustice. We see a writer who understood that the novel - seen as mindless “trash” - could be a great art form and who, perhaps more than any other writer up to that time, imbued it with its particular greatness. And finally we see Austen - the writer; the artist; the serious, ambitious, clear-sighted woman “of information” - fully aware of what was going on in the world around her, clear about what she thought of it, and clear that she set out to write about it and to quietly, artfully make her ideas known.

Thoughts: Damn that synopsis. Advice for publishers: create an engaging synopsis in one to three paragraphs. That being said this was a fascinating read. I love Austen so I enjoyed having more context to the stories. Great for women’s studies, english literature and a perspective of slavery rarely mentioned (at least in my readings).

Rating: 9/10 will enjoy if you enjoy Austen

[chesterfieldstings]

The Garden - Mirror Might Steal Your Charm - Review

The Garden Mirror Might Steal Your Charm Epitaph Records

It’s no secret fellas. Rock music is going through some growing pains right now. The landscape is changing and it’s been happening for a while. With hip hop and trap being the current zeitgeist and industry constantly catering to more electronic centric acts it’s not hard to see why. Rock fans don’t particularly help the situation either. With their puritanical nature and unwillingness to compromise it’s sort of tough to see where one of the biggest genres ever will end up in the future. The Garden, however is a punk band, not completely in the traditional sense given their influence and aesthetics but absolutely in how much they simply don’t give a fuck. Mirror Might Steal Your Charm is the 5th release from twin brothers Wyatt and Fletcher Shears aka The Garden and it’s easily their best yet. Packed with sardonic humor, an uncompromisingly idiosyncratic style and a dizzying array of influences, textures and motifs they have crafted one of the most unpredictable punk rock records of the decade.

It should be said early however that this album is absolutely not going to be for everyone. The vocals, are delivered in a consistently sarcastic inflection sometimes rapped, sometimes shouted, sometimes bellowed with bratty energy that draws out every syllable. The songs themselves have a hectic unpredictable nature to them that take multiple listens to commit to memory. There’s techno break beats, show tunes diversions, a healthy dose of hip hop, indie rock. The Garden have never shied away from throwing in everything but the kitchen sink in their music but this time around all of those elements are blended together more seamlessly than ever.

“Stallion” does a great job of establishing the tone for the record, being a completely unstable opening track that alternates between beach rock and hardcore punk impeccably. It also introduces the albums recurring motif of nearly every song having two contrasting components fighting each other for lead melody. With a few exceptions such as the touching closer track, this is a trick The Garden uses a lot and to good effect. “Shameless Shadow” has a rockabilly-esque saunter that transitions in between a show tunes theme worthy of a pair of jazz hands. A similarly jazzy groove is effectively used on the late album track “Stylish Spit”. The inexplicable mid album cut “ :( “ is one of the weirdest and wildest tracks with it’s choppy synth-led pounce and a hilarious skit where a man gets shot through a phone call with a ray gun.

As freakish as most of this is there are some very clear points of inspiration The Garden blends into what they call *Vada Vada. Devo is a pretty obvious one, modern electronic music is a pretty big one as well. Late 90’s techno and break beat appear on a few cuts like the speedy “A Message for Myself”. “Who am I Going to Share All this Wine With” is almost a dead ringer for an Iceage instrumental circa You’re Nothing era. Hardcore punk flashes in and out of these tracks and on one cut, namely “Make a Wish”, they give their take on, dare I say, trap music. The kick drum hits you right into the heart while Wyatt’s voice raps out nearly incoherent lyrics about drunken wizards whispering in your ear.

The Garden could easily be written off as a gimmick band and I get that a lot of people are going to see this album as another entry in their pantheon nonsensical albums. However, the critics saying this are somewhat right. Some of this content doesn’t make sense but maybe it doesn’t need to. “Make a Wish” seems to comment on the idea of needing songs to make sense. “Call the Dogs Out”, the albums fantastic lead single, delves into the idea of having your own little safe space to be creative and unique. Declaratively saying if someone shows up uninvited you can ‘let the dogs out’ and tell them to beat it. “A Message For Myself” ends with the succinct monologue saying that everyone is equal and nothing you do makes any more or less human than anybody else. In spite of the nonsensical nature of the music the general theme seems to be that you can do whatever you want, fuck it. You have one life to live and be as weird as you feel like you need to be. It’s a simple message but it’s something that can be sadly forgotten amongst the rat race.

Mirror Might Steal Your Charm is an album that checks all the boxes. This is a record that is wild, creative, well written and has an undeniable pulse to it that is severely lacking in modern rock music. Although, there are a few stylistic choices that go slightly awry. The insistence on using synthetic horns can be pretty overbearing and often makes the album veer into overly chintzy territory. Namely on the track “Banana Peel” where the horns that drive the melody obnoxiously honk and plod throughout the duration of the cut. The lyrics are cute however, that is if you’re as much of a sucker for food metaphors as I am. The closer “No Destination” wraps things up on an touching note. The Garden’s take on the old adage of “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey” comes across surprisingly elegantly. Perhaps there is no destination in life, perhaps there doesn’t have to be. As long as you’re enjoying your time on this earth then no one can take that away from you. Mirror Might Steal Your Charm is a love letter to the freakier side of life it’s fun, charming, grotesque, cute, obnoxious, and psychotic all at the same time. More often than not, it’s also brilliant.

9.2/10

Top Tier: “Make a Wish”, “Call the Dogs Out”, “ :( “, “Who am I Going to Share All this Wine With”, “No Destination”, “Stylish Spit”, “Good News”, “Voodoo Luck”

Meh Tier: “Banana Peel”

If you liked this, give one of these a shot!

Guerilla Toss - GT Ultra Ariel Pink - Pom Pom Zach Hill - FACE TAT JPEGMAFIA - Veteran

Aight love yall, have a nice day

*Vada Vada - taken from The Garden’s official website:

“They created the term, "Vada Vada" in 2011 to represent their music and other creations. Vada Vada is a term that represents total freedom of expression without boundaries or guidelines of any sort.”

[foremostlist]

The Forgotten Army Review: Kabir Khan’s Amazon Prime Video Miniseries Is Ruined by Being Bollywood

With The Forgotten Army — the new five-part Amazon Prime Video miniseries that follows the Subhash Chandra Bose-led Indian National Army — creator and director Kabir Khan (Bajrangi Bhaijaan) wants to shed light on what he thinks is an overlooked chapter of our history. This isn't the first time he's tackling the story, having directed a staid six-part eponymous docu-series in 1999, which has aged poorly. Khan has been trying to revisit the topic ever since and his dream has finally come true, over two decades later. And with decades of experience and the financial might of Amazon behind him, The Forgotten Army promises a grand look at the INA, from their valiant efforts to the horrors they faced. Sort of like a South-East Asia extension to the terrific HBO miniseries The Pacific. Unfortunately, Khan is too set in his Bollywood ways to deliver anything remotely close to an honest, grounded, and vivid account of the INA's Burma campaign, like The Pacific did for US Marines' Pacific theatre. The Forgotten Army — written by Khan along with husband-wife duo Heeraz Marfatia (Aazaan) and Shubhra Swarup (Wazir) — is driven by a need to make its protagonists come across as the hero, no matter how unconvincing it gets. But the much more egregious error is the constant reliance on a background song, which is sent in to rouse things up whenever the Amazon series is lacking in fervour. (Its combination with characters walking in slow motion is even worse.) The song is used so often that we felt like tuning off The Forgotten Army every time it was played. To make matters all the more annoying, Khan & Co. also fall prey to Bollywood's love for grandstanding. At various points during The Forgotten Army — sometimes laughably in the middle of a battle — the good guys will launch into a mini-monologue to talk about their heart-breaking, righteous, and powerful backstories, value systems, and capabilities. This is the poorest kind of message filmmaking. Don't turn your characters into loudspeakers and don't lecture the audience. No one enjoys being talked down to. People can think for themselves and should be treated as such, not like a dumb flock of sheep. Simply give us a look at what happened — remember the old filmmaking adage: show, not tell — and trust the viewers to deduce the rest on their own. Kabir Khan: ‘Secularism Is in Danger in Our Country' The Forgotten Army isn't a simple retelling. Split across two timelines, World War II-era and mid-90s — which it switches between at will, using a mix of (poor) CGI, and archival footage at times — it follows Captain Sodhi (Sunny Kaushal) who reluctantly joined the INA after British-controlled Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942. It traces his journey across Burma, alongside that of budding photojournalist Maya (Sharvari Wagh), who becomes his love interest. Meanwhile in 1996 Singapore, an elderly Sodhi (M.K. Raina) visits his extended family, where he meets another budding photojournalist in his nephew Amar (Karanvir Malhotra). With Amar, who wants to document student protests in now-Myanmar, Sodhi returns to the country 50 years on. Naturally, the Amazon series spends more of its time in the period past. The INA, aligned with the Imperial Japanese Army, took part in several major battles, including the simultaneous Battles of Imphal and Kohima, oft called the Stalingrad of the East, referring to the largest World War II battle. But save for the Battle of Singapore, The Forgotten Army shows little care in depicting the various events, even though it wants us to know about the INA. What we're left with instead are fourth wall-breaking moments disguised as dialogues — “India will remember our sacrifice one day,” Sodhi says — designed to attach self-importance to itself. You shouldn't have to assert your own relevance to inform the audience why it matters. If people are watching, most of them already care. As part of its self-important stance, The Forgotten Army makes a big deal out of having an all-women combat unit called the Rani of Jhansi Regiment. (Maya is part of it.) For what it's worth, it's valuable to talk about discrimination on the basis of gender when it comes to the Indian Army, more so in a time nearly eight decades on when India's newly-appointed chief of defence still believes women aren't suited to combat roles. But The Forgotten Army shoots itself in the foot, sadly. It first claims that women have never been trained and sent into combat before by any country. Fact-check: both Russia and Spain did it before the INA. The Amazon series' much bigger fault, though, is how it undermines its own point by never actually showing Maya or any of the other women in combat. Kabir Khan on The Forgotten Army: ‘I Don't Subscribe to the British Point of View'

Sharvari Wagh as Maya in The Forgotten Army Photo Credit: Amazon India The Forgotten Army is also undermined by lacklustre, inconsistent, and unrefined filmmaking across the board. Primarily, the show suffers from tonal dissonances, as it switches between melancholy, celebratory, harrowing, romance, thrilling, situational comedy, and a sincere drama at will, with jarring results and little flow to the narrative. Speaking of poor writing, it wades into troubling territory with gender politics and patriarchy. On one occasion, a sexist male trainee officer is called out by a female one, who is later praised for overcoming his prejudice as the woman doesn't rebuke his romantic advances. Hello, it's not a woman's job to fix a man. Elsewhere, Sodhi, who is taught a feminist lesson by Maya, is later applauded for merely echoing her words in public. Can we please stop celebrating men for doing the bare minimum? Additionally, characters make stupid decisions for the sake of the plot, or their dialogues are aimed more at the audience. (Speaking of poor exposition, Shah Rukh Khan is briefly employed as narrator, but it's entirely unnecessary as it recaps the previous episode to reminds you what's happening.) The direction isn't always solid, with some scenes either lacking the focus or proper structure to communicate what they are trying to achieve. In other places, Khan shifts into over-the-top mode to convey the heightened emotions of a character. There's simply no need to play everything up to such an extent. Realism is also an issue with many of its haphazardly executed and filmed war scenes, whose sole intention seems to be to showcase the bravado of the INA. (Thankfully, the action is saved from the general poor quality of CGI as it largely feels practically shot.) That can be linked straight to The Forgotten Army's assertion that Indians were the only smart ones. Early on, as the British prepare for the Japanese attack on Singapore from the south-east, Sodhi warns them of the threat from the north. But the British belittle him. Expectedly, the Japanese do what Sodhi had predicted. Still, the Indians, then working for the British, keep the outnumbered Japanese at bay, only for the foolish British to sign a truce. Later on, with the INA making progress in Burma, the Japanese pause the attack as they strategise. Again, it's Sodhi who warns them of the impending monsoon threat. Expectedly, the Japanese don't listen and pay the price. The Forgotten Army also demonises the other, be it the British or the Japanese, to hand Indians the moral upper hand.

The British war room during the Battle of Singapore in The Forgotten Army Photo Credit: Amazon India And there's little need to bother with this. Colonialism by its nature, including the British variety, is villainous by nature. But The Forgotten Army doesn't really know how to further the conversation. In one scene, Sodhi wonders were Indians blind or stupid in treating Britain as their nation, given their prior allegiance? That's a reductive argument. If it was really interested in looking inward rather than outward, Khan & Co. could have done well to address Bose's values. The INA keeps reciting his famous words, but his presence is so minimal that The Forgotten Army felts a bit of a whitewash, more so given Bose held socialist authoritarian views and worked with fascists. That would have also allowed it to talk about how the INA was being used by the Axis powers for its gain. Where The Forgotten Army does marginally better is with the eerie parallels to what's happening in today's India. As the INA reaches the Indian mainland, it goes up against fellow countrymen, who battle Indians fighting for a free India. Later at the INA's Red Fort trials, a British Indian officer discredits the prisoners by calling them traitors for aligning with the Japanese. Sadly, this view of the INA persisted after independence, with governments denying them freedom fighters' pension. And then there's the Burmese students who are campaigning for democracy. The parallels are naturally unintended, but they are relevant and feel prescient. One wonders if Khan would have expanded on these topics if The Forgotten Army was being written in 2020. But that can't rescue a show that doesn't have a handle on the fundamentals. Even with these aforementioned parallels, The Forgotten Army wraps them up with an on-the-nose dialogue by the elderly Sodhi: “The struggle for freedom was ours. The struggle to preserve that freedom is yours.” It shouldn't have to be spelt out, it's the job of the images to convey that. Khan thinks the INA deserve better treatment. Well, they also deserve a better series. The Forgotten Army is out now on Amazon Prime Video worldwide. Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details. By ForemostList Read the full article

[catalyticvicar]

✛ MONOLOGUE. prologue - 01

✛ Cinder flies around the hall like insects. Ash eats away at the regal murals that once covered the ceiling with holy depictions, leaving it pale and rigid. The once polished tiles now stood filthy, worn away from time. When this floor began to rot, it was something the Cleric Beast couldn’t answer. From his pedestal, a collage of furniture that once littered the cathedral, he inspected the remains of the art. For how many times had he seen the cracks that scattered across the ceiling? Each and every detail, for all eternity, he could recount every single one. And yet, it was all he could remember. The smallest fraction that remains of memory.

✛ Fire burns into the nerves of his brain. it has no worth as an antlered monster. His dry gaze cranes to the statue he leaned upon - a woman tossing a vase of stone water. perhaps in droll humor, he made his lounge where he would’ve felt the splash. No satisfaction had come from it, but as he was human at one point, he still retains that force of habit - he remained locked in that spot. His drowsy mind found no sleep from his uncomfortable makeshift throne for his blood and bones flickered in daylight forevermore, exposing his burnt flesh and lightly illuminating his fur. It pained him, inescapable. The Vicar had hoped it would eventually eat away at him, rendering him ash finally so it’d stop hurting.

✛ He’d come to terms that it was hopeless to wait - no, rather - that he was hopeless. The rumble of shouts and slurred cries of fury echo’d from the entrance, but fell upon deaf ears, from their cockney accent - other Yharnamites. Ones that’ve gone mad with blood on their hands. No clanging steel or canon shot drowned out the flames of regret and the drips of blood, relentlessly filling up his cracked skull. His body burns, though his flickering sanity consistently sets him upon a course - his skull, oh - his head. His mind, any sort of reminder of what the Vicar once was, where had it gone? Perhaps it was a delusion, set upon him in a final cope, that there was still something to be done. Or .. Even more likely, simply another part of this curse that Kos had set upon him.

✛ he remembers the rampage he went through, how fiercely he tried to retrieve his skull back from whatever clutches of the nightmare it was in. Scouring rocks and much alike with the mantle that came his veins, melting ultimately as he scavenged the caricature of Yharnam that he was trapped within. Until, eventually, it proved in vain. It lead to a dead end, after dead end. It was hidden, obscured from sight. Maybe if he had some more insight -- no, no. Maybe if he just had kept some score of morals with him. Possibilities cross his heavy head, though unable to think of much else than longing and the despair that he caused for himself. Whatever the beast was thinking, it ended there.

✛ Laurence hadn’t been able to dream since he died. No vivid dreams he could inexplicably remember in impressive detail. No waking up to find himself stuck to his bed, his arms frozen in paralysis, for that was just his everyday. Though, for a reason he couldn’t wrap his head around, he could feel his eyes flutter shut. Had the curse been lifted - or would he finally be freed from his divine punishment, burnt by his own flames?

✛ Leaving naught a corpse behind, beyond just another head for another to find and treasure. Would they remember who he was? Would he ever be able to recognize himself in a portrait, or had they all been diminished? He succumbed with ease, though he couldn’t help but wonder. His thoughts all but races as he reached some sort of peace, his nerves shutting down as he could feel himself slip away from his being. As though being drifted like wood across a river, he can hear the water, too now.

✛ A bottomless curse, a bottomless sea, accepting all that there is and can be.

✛ He felt water sooth his flames as he could feel air slip from his lungs. Or was that just him going unconscious? Who was to say. But.. Finally, he was disappearing. All was alright, or so he hoped. He felt .. Significantly smaller, at least. Not as a hulking wendigo that had become his very being decades upon decades ago. In fact, he..

.. Was he actually in water? He always took it as metaphorically. After all, Great Ones come from the Cosmos, not the sea. Though, the Stars and the Sea weren’t too different from each-other - both vast, home to evolution that no man could ever predict. Whatever it was, he was rocked to sleep on whatever afterlife he was arriving upon. Or whatever was beyond death, he means. 

✛ And thus, he fell asleep. Somewhere on the River Seine, Paris. Floating.

[catalyticvicar]

[ dumping tags. ]