Search Results for Padmaja Challakere

“Man of Honor”: Liability and Responsibility in John McDonagh’s film The Forgiven (2022)

January 17, 2023 Padmaja Challakere 2

Visual Spaces

The Forgiven is a dark film that has drama, suspense, and visual artistry, at first glance, homage to Bertolucci and Antonioni. More importantly, it asks: What rules or norms of truth determine our burden of responsibility? Then, the central puzzle: Who has the power to forgive? Is forgiveness the end of punishment? Padmaja Challakere reviews.…[Read More]…

Looking Through the Glass of “Rushdie Affair” & the Free-Speech Trojan Horse.

September 20, 2022 Padmaja Challakere 1

Between The Lines

Late August, Salman Rushdie was subjected to a near-fatal knife attack by a Lebanese-American. That incident raises the ghost of the fatwa on Satanic Verses and the West’s sense of Muslim ‘fanaticism’ and its own fealty to ‘free speech.’ Padmaja Challakere critiques both as ‘lazy‘ binaries, evidence of liberalism’s own failings. …[Read More]…

Telugu Cinema:: Intoxication with Woundedness: A Broken Hero for a Broken World.

May 11, 2022 Padmaja Challakere 1

Visual Spaces

Padmaja Challakere reviews Telugu cinema, “movies from the south” with the recent release of Sukumar’s Pushpa (2021), and S.S Rajamouli’s RRR (2022)- and one Kannada movie, KGF2. A new genre is birthing here, she avers, offering a hero with a real woundedness but also with a self-overcoming asceticism, discipline, and a sense of responsibility. Not a messianic hero, but one ordained to dignity.…[Read More]…