The Critique

Dir: Christopher McQuarrie Starring: Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Henry Cavill, Alec Baldwin, Michelle Monaghan Dur: 2 hrs 27 mins Genre: Action PG: Expected Violence. One stray and totally misplaced kiss. Rating: 9/10 This film, should you choose to watch it, is guaranteed to blow your mind. (Don’t worry, this review is not going to be destroyed in the next 5 seconds so take your time to read it.)     Like all Mission Impossible films, this one has a killer beginning and ending. I had to put it out there, right at the beginning. For me, this is one of the most satisfying and enthralling film series of all time since it promises you great things and delivers the goods with a bang (literally!) Tom Cruise is getting old but despite this fact, the film does quite well to showcase him for the action star that he is sans his obvious aging. Hardly for a moment, are you given the opportunity to sit back and think abo...

Dir: the Erwin Brothers Starring: J. Michael Finley, Madeline Carroll Dur: 1 hr 50 mins Genre: Biographical Drama Rating: 8/10 I watched a lot of this film with tears in my eyes. It traces out the real story behind the titular hit song ‘I Can Only Imagine’. The film is the fruit of life and music. It expertly depicts how music is drawn from life and life experiences and how it has the power to influence and inspire the very life that gave it birth. Bart Millard’s story is relatable and touching. His family was broken through and through. My father wasn’t half as nasty and Bart’s but I could empathize with him. Bart’s father was a terror. He abused Bart and his mother on a regular basis. He was full of dashed dreams and bitter memories. He allowed them to take control of his life and destroy him from within. The emptiness he felt within translated into nastiness and violence towards his wife and son. Bart’s mother was sweet, loving and supportive of his dreams but coul...

Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) is perhaps one of the greatest, yet underrated philosophers of the last century. His name is usually eclipsed by other heavyweights in the philosophical arena like Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer and the like. This oversight however, is not due to his diminutive popularity but to blatant neglect. He featured on the cover of Time magazine (1970) on account of being “the finest philosophic thinker of the 20 th century.”This says a lot about the person he was and the lasting contribution he made to philosophical discourse. One of the many things that struck me while studying his though was the interesting reflection he makes on the subjects of philosophy and theology. He starts out by stating that there is no absolute separation between philosophy and theology since they are isomorphic, however, a distinction can be made between the two. This distinction is on account of their different sta...

John Sequeira, “Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics” , Divyadaan Journal of Philosophy and Education, 19/1-2 (2008) 143-162. Vorurteil (Prejudice) is not a negative term for Gadamer. In fact, he sees it as a condition for hermeneutic verstehen (understanding). Understanding begins with a projection of one’s expectations. What one projects is what one already understands or knows. One tries to impose a meaning that is familiar on the text and propose it as a possible interpretation. Even before consciously interpreting a text, one has already placed it in a certain context, approached it from a certain perspective and conceived of it in a certain way. However, it must be pointed out that this prejudice ought to be constantly revised in order to make it possible for one to understand better and reduce the risk of bias. Although understanding begins with prejudice it actually takes place only through the interplay of one’s prejudices and the alterity of the text. "Preju...

Anantanand Rambachan, “Where Words Can Be Set Free: The Liberating Potency of Vedic Words in the Hermeneutics of Ś a ṅ kara” in Texts in Context, ed. Jeffrey Timm, Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1997, 33-46.   P ū rva-M ī m āṁ sa claimed that the Upani ṣ ads did not have an independent purpose. Ś a ṅ kara on the other hand felt that the Upani ṣ ads were an integral part of the Vedas. (33) P ū rva-M ī m āṁ sa contend that the knowledge of dharma and adharma cannot be acquired from any source outside of the Vedas, while knowledge of other existents, including Brahman could be sought and found elsewhere. In this way, they ensured the elevated status of the Veda and made all other literature subservient to it. (34) Ś a ṅ kara agrees with the M ī m āṁ sa contention on the knowledge available in the Vedas but felt they were doing injustice to the Brahman. According to him, the two categories of knowledge that are inaccessible to all other prama ṇ as (sourc...

Jeffrey Timm, “Traditional Hermeneutics in South Asia” in Texts in Context, ed. Jeffrey Timm, Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1997, 299-306. The author calls for respect for the native exegete. He notes the difficulty and possible bias there exists whenever there is a cross-cultural attempt to understand and/or explain the hermeneutical approach of a different culture. To this end, he exhorts for encountering the Other through its own categories of understanding instead of forcing them into a culturally foreign framework.   He warns against cultural imperialism and points out a problem it gives rise to: How to understand diversity in a generic way? We can never transcend our culture, so does this mean that we can never speak meaningfully of another culture? Can we ever be objectively neutral?   To overcome these difficulty, he suggests that we approach scripture and its interpretation as a dynamic and relational phenomenon and not something static. Traditional he...

David Carpenter, “Bhart ṛ hari and the Veda” in Texts in Context, ed. Jeffrey Timm, Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1997, 17-32.   Bhart ṛ hari (5 th cy CE) is a grammarian and philosopher of language. He has written a good number of commentaries on classical Indian texts. In this article, the author focuses on Bhart ṛ hari interpretation of the Veda. Interestingly, he begins by pointing out that the Western and Indian approach to hermeneutics is markedly different. They neither ask the same questions nor do they use the same methods/canons of interpretation. This seems to be a pretty obvious point and it is kind of ironical that in order to ‘prove’ it he distinguishes between Ricoeur’s and Bhart ṛ hari’s approach to a text. (18-19) Hermeneutics in a religious context must be understood as interpretation of religious literature with the aim of bringing to light their contemporary significance for the religious community. Bhart ṛ hari is greatly influenced...

Dir: Ricky Gervais, Matthew Robinson Starring: Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, Louis C.K. Dur: 1 hr 39 mins Genre: Fantasy Drama Rating: 7/10 An unexpectedly great film. As a matter of fact, I stumbled upon this film in a passing reference in a talk show. I was intrigued by the title and true to its name the film, delivered on what it promised. To state the fact, the film is a story on the invention of lying. The story is brilliantly written by Ricky Gervais himself, who also directed, produced and starred in it. The setting is a world where everyone can only speak the truth. One fine day, a man, Mark Bellison (Ricky Gervais) who is dealt a harsh hand of life, stumbles upon a lie and enjoys its consequence. He then, goes on lying to improve his position in life but ultimately comes to the realization that though lying can twist the world into whatever you want it to be, it doesn’t always ensure your ultimate happiness.  The film sarcastically takes a dig at ou...

Dir: Meghna Gulzar Starring: Alia Bhatt, Vicky Kaushal Dur: 2 hrs 17 mins Genre: Biographical Thriller Rating: 8/10 I can’t tell you how impressed and happy I was with this film. The true story behind this is really inspiring and yet poignant. The film is based on a 2008 novel written by Harinder Sikka, ‘Calling Sehmat’, which tells the story of an Indian woman spy who was married young into a family of Pakistan officers with the view of relaying information to India in the buildup to the 1971 Indo-Pak war. Another interesting thing about the film is that it doesn’t show Pakistan in very negative light; there is just that villainous shade but nothing overly explicit. The first thing that struck me about the film was that India is shown to have a pretty neat spy network. Frankly, this is something I was unaware about. I mean, I know that we have our own intelligence agency and stuff but I didn’t think we were as advanced and slick as depicted in the film. Kudos, to the...