The Polyphony
What Beasts of No Nation, directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, is about is not only the loss of war, but also about how war is loss. War is a lost cause, and no matter whose side you’re on there’s no going back. By depicting an African child being dragged into a civil war, everything he once knew taken away from him, Fukunaga paints a poignant and uncomfortable picture of war’s human cost.
More than just a feel-good film, CODA revolves around Ruby, a CODA (child of deaf adults), and her deaf fishermen family. Having a great passion for music and singing, something her parents know next to nothing about, Ruby has to choose where her values lie the most.
To watch Kore-eda Hirokazu’s After Life (1998) is to watch countless people telling and retelling countless life stories, and we could all relate to them despite knowing that they are all fiction, because we could easily find ourselves in those stories.
Millennium Actress (2001) by Japanese director Satoshi Kon is a beautifully animated love story that spans across millennia, yet is also confined within the small screen that is cinema and serves to demonstrate the ultimate power of movies as a narrative device.
The Remains of the Day, by British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, is an astonishing novel that tells the story of Stevens, an aging butler, and his journey through the English countryside not only to visit an old work colleague, but also back to his past and examine the person he has become.
The Polyphony