I don’t know what prompted me to press the checkout button on "The Painted Veil" in the vending machine at the Metro Market. The story line didn’t impress me as much as the 1920s English setup. Normally I love the happy-go-lucky drama/romantic stuff in the movie world-- there’s enough of reality anyways in the day-to-day world. But later that night I concluded otherwise.
A bacteriologist leaves from London to the interiors of China to serve and research in an epidemic breakout of cholera. The wife married the doctor even though she doesn’t love him. Her episode with another man outside of marriage, teaches her love- but that true love is betrayed by the other man's shallow vain flirtatious tendencies. She travels to China with her husband without a choice. The husband and wife live distant in their minds and under the same roof. The slow turn of realistic events bridges the distance between the couple-- they start living marriage without looking for what they wanted in the other—and instead accept the other as they are. The doctor brings about tough changes and establishes improvements in the Chinese village to fight the epidemic. The wife starts seeing a purpose in her daily life assisting nuns at an orphanage in the village under difficult circumstances given her spoilt upbringing back at home. But the end is tough- the doctor victimized by the cruel disease breathes his last asking his wife to forgive him. The once unfaithful wife is left with no words to express and cries her way back to London with a baby in her. The storyline shadows a weeping woman from a Chinese musical in the movie, longing for the love she would never feel and never give again.
Isn’t life is too short to be centered on self and pretence? Paint is just paint and not real. It washes and fades away with time, age and weather—rough weather. Not to say we can all be, or need to be selfless-- but we definitely need to be and do what naturally comes to us--- feel the precious emotions that are instilled in us humans. For instance- to love and be loved is a deep feeling. It is joyous and one of the happiest emotions ever. But the deep it is, the dangerous it gets. And yet the journey in the dark and unknown waters lit by a strange togetherness. The end of that journey need not be the beginning to a happier or a better one always. And the journey itself cannot be evaded. Somewhere, sometime, someday we will all be bitten by that bug, smitten and struck by it. Maybe it’s better to live it, travel it, and do justice to its existence. So why draw a veil over our souls?
I watched the theatrical trailer after "THE END". The punch line read "Sometimes the greatest journey is the distance between 2 people". I wish that- in an ideal world- that journey is a mere concept and not real, that distance zero. But the word “ideal” exists only in the dictionary.
A bacteriologist leaves from London to the interiors of China to serve and research in an epidemic breakout of cholera. The wife married the doctor even though she doesn’t love him. Her episode with another man outside of marriage, teaches her love- but that true love is betrayed by the other man's shallow vain flirtatious tendencies. She travels to China with her husband without a choice. The husband and wife live distant in their minds and under the same roof. The slow turn of realistic events bridges the distance between the couple-- they start living marriage without looking for what they wanted in the other—and instead accept the other as they are. The doctor brings about tough changes and establishes improvements in the Chinese village to fight the epidemic. The wife starts seeing a purpose in her daily life assisting nuns at an orphanage in the village under difficult circumstances given her spoilt upbringing back at home. But the end is tough- the doctor victimized by the cruel disease breathes his last asking his wife to forgive him. The once unfaithful wife is left with no words to express and cries her way back to London with a baby in her. The storyline shadows a weeping woman from a Chinese musical in the movie, longing for the love she would never feel and never give again.
Isn’t life is too short to be centered on self and pretence? Paint is just paint and not real. It washes and fades away with time, age and weather—rough weather. Not to say we can all be, or need to be selfless-- but we definitely need to be and do what naturally comes to us--- feel the precious emotions that are instilled in us humans. For instance- to love and be loved is a deep feeling. It is joyous and one of the happiest emotions ever. But the deep it is, the dangerous it gets. And yet the journey in the dark and unknown waters lit by a strange togetherness. The end of that journey need not be the beginning to a happier or a better one always. And the journey itself cannot be evaded. Somewhere, sometime, someday we will all be bitten by that bug, smitten and struck by it. Maybe it’s better to live it, travel it, and do justice to its existence. So why draw a veil over our souls?
I watched the theatrical trailer after "THE END". The punch line read "Sometimes the greatest journey is the distance between 2 people". I wish that- in an ideal world- that journey is a mere concept and not real, that distance zero. But the word “ideal” exists only in the dictionary.
2 comments:
I liked the painted veil too. But I'm prone to liking any movie with a pretty heroine.
Hmm...This resembles a movie that I saw a while ago...However "painted veli" is really good.
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