Sunday, September 9, 2018

The still undercurrent


It was a scene from the famous movie ‘Saving Private Ryan’ where Matt Daemon was narrating to Tom Hanks (and they are my all-time favorite actors alongside Al Pacino) that he and two other friends were trying to save the life of the girlfriend of one of those friends as she was being attacked by a very violent mob. The gifted girl had climbed up a tall tree that was also fairly fat when compared to the swank, groggy lasso. Her boyfriend Adam was ruminating because he had left her alone in the middle of the mobile mob that was surrounded solely by soon to be bygone bushes behind the backyard of their huge house. Now afraid to the highest intensity of upon having climbed to the tree and reaching the apex of that tree, she in a still motion swooped down to the ground (not the Gradient Descent method way!) but found her clothes and her inner wear getting shredded to pieces before flying in all directions resembling a gyrating motion, including in the direction from where Matt was watching in a state of pensive yet constant shock. To add to the hysteria, she had touched down all the brown branches of that giant tree (she had not having any time to apply any pruning mechanism or optimized her way to descend) before landing on the ground with a loud thud. There she lay like a still leaf in a rain socked pool of water having little undercurrent.
Sadly, Matt reckoned that it was exactly two years ago that that scene had transpired and when he and those friends were last to be seen together.
Having heard this, Tom replied with ‘Oh, my’ and Matt quickly convoluted to a state of still and then let his laughter aloud. He was laughing from his gut. But before he could gather his wits, his head felt a huge undercurrent and his mind ricocheted in many directions that were not devoid of desolation and despair (we can call these weighted vectors and tensors when speaking in an academic institute of repute).  It was the moment of melancholy which also resembled a lull before the storm, or as I call it the still before the undercurrent, because they were laying stranded in the middle of a fierce battleground with the sound of guns and artillery blaring their ears for fun.
This scene was shown right after the interval of the movie.
Perhaps we can have similar moments in many other movies which decide their fate. For instance, in the movie ‘Sanju, the movie was veering towards a dull biopic of Sanjay Dutt until after the interval, a Gujarati origin man named Kanhaiya from New York city, never married before persona, entered the movie and gave some sane advice to Sanjay Dutt, and stole the limelight from Sanjay due to his demeanor, easy on eyes acting that was often juxtaposed with traces of wit and humor.
We should get videos of such scenes that can potentially change the course of the entire movie, resembling the undercurrents that we can often see in the business world! Can we cull out such patterns spanning say ten minutes from an otherwise two hundred minute long movie, and exclude those movies whose interest and plot tails off in the first half itself?
There can be other patterns in the movies as well, such as the beginner's luck as was evident in 'Dev D', 'Vicky Donor', etc. But we can analyze that pattern in our future analysis.
Definitions of undercurrent:
1.       A flow of water that moves below the surface of the ocean or a river.
2.       A hidden feeling or tendency that is usually different from the one that is easy to see or understand.
3.       There is a strong undercurrent for Mergers and Acquisitions in India right now. Many conversations are happening, even if the deal news has not been announced.