Saturday, April 07, 2007

apocalypse today..a new dawn tomorrow

many of you must have heard of the new movie "apocalypto" from the highly controversial mel gibson. happened to read reviews of the movie, which in turn got me thinking about the original apocalypse movie - "apocalypse now" - a movie that is so intensely insightful about " human mind in love with hatred" that it disturbs you. if you have time to rent a good dvd, then don't miss this movie. what got mr,k interested was some of the things the characters in the movie say. reading it and re-reading it, it struck me that quite a few things hold good even for our lives. so here you go - with an absurdly cynical take on some quotes from the movie.

a) on moral ethics - on the ethics that we are taught at our schools, colleges, corporate world and how we figure out that ethics are only for good for boardroom talk - nothing more than that.
"We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write "f***" on their airplanes because it's obscene!" - Col Kurtz
b) on the politikos of the world - well, nothing much left to say
"What do you call assassins who accuse assassins?" - Col Kurtz

c) on mavericks - well, for all those people who want to improve the system - don't bother improving it unless you have it in you to go the full circle.
"Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were goin' all the way. Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole freakin' program." - Capt Willard ( On Col.Kurtz, who finally gets his reward - death)

d) on those highly committed,successful and lowly paid people - some point of time, all of us can relate to this
"You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill." - Col, Kurtz

e) on most of the leaders of today - ( with due apologies to women )
"who is in charge", "In charge? I don't know, man. I'm just doing what I'm told - I'm just a working girl." - Willard

f) on mission, vision and purpose
"You are fighting for the biggest nothing in history." - Hubert

g) on endings - we humans, everyone of us loves a good ending. we pray, we yearn, we dream, we imagine, we so want to make it a happy ending only to realize that we even don't have the power to write the endings the way we wanted to.
"this is the way the world ends, this is the way sun sets, this is the way brightness dims, not with a bang but with a whimper" - T.S Elliott re-edited by Col.Kurtz further re-edited by Mr.K

but cynicism and darkness also ends only for the sun to shine again and one wakes up to a new tomorrow If.

"do you know that 'if' is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, if you are losing everything and you never breath a world about loss, if you can fill the unforgiving minute of self doubts with sixty seconds of "hold on", yours is the sun,the stars, the earth, the moon, the universe and everything in it and which will be more - you will be a man,my son" - Rudyard Kipling re-hashed by Col.Kurtz and re-framed by Mr.K


No comments: