Emancipation of the effect of the film 'By Me and Mine (2023)'

If you wandered carelessly into the wind river of the mind of Vallance Alvares somewhere between the months of February to the May of 2023, you'd find ink blots amongst the pieces of memory stolen. I'd written one letter and edited one film with 12 days of discussion to the 120 days of sodom (THE RAGE WE HARBORED). This story will be one that I'll keep pondering about for quite sometime. 

In February I wrote a blogpost, something about ALL my friends being rockstars. Maybe it was April. Anyway, the impact of that post remained unnoticed, till I made the film. The reasons for its undertaking does not remain a secret. My friends had a fallout. No one was talking, everyone shuttered themselves down. I don't believe they'd speak unless they were provoked by an external wish. I took to myself to make certain changes about how we'd handle this situation. The couple broke up, a crush and the crush harborer stopped speaking, a masochist got stuck taking all the blows, two-three best friends had a crush on the same girl; they stopped speaking to her. Then her best friend had a huge fight with her. Where was I when all this was happening? I was becoming cinema. Only upon my unbecoming I could finally see the light and the direction the situation headed. No one was ready to speak. If they spoke they'd fight, if they fought they wouldn't see eye to eye. In a very public eye, it was all distraught and broken down. An unmovable machine. A stolen engine. Time took its toll. It made it harder to make it work. I'd almost given up. The film came as a reminder of what it was like. To be together. To be part of one whole.

The music I chose for it remained Aftersun's Under Pressure by Queen. By Me and Mine was a ship sailed for the storm. It wasn't supposed to work. It was a crying of the final tears. The first act begins with:

Under pressure - that burns a building down

Splits a family in two

Puts people on streets

It's the terror of knowing

What this world is about

Watching some good friends

Screaming let me out!

The burning building, the good friends and the screams! I felt this rhythm in my heart. I think I cried when it was all pieced together. In the final act, as though the messiah came out of myself: prophesizing the future and what it would hold if we continued treading toward the same path - 

Why - why - why

Love

Insanity laughs under pressure we're cracking

Can't we give ourselves one more chance

Why can't we give love one more chance

Why can't we give love

Cause love's such an old fashioned word

And love dares you to care for

The people on the edge of the night

And love dares you to change our way of

Caring about ourselves

This is our last dance

This is our last dance

This is ourselves.

Poetic cinema.

THE CULTURAL ICEBERG:

It's been about 2-3 months since it all went down. Did it reform ourselves? I think yes. Was the film directly responsible? No. But it started a conversation. It wasn't responsible for reformation. It influenced it. Definitely. People are talking now. It embedded itself into their subconscious. Even if it doesn't directly impact them, it did impact their lives and that's power of good cinema. The subject material can forever alter your perception of someone. This is why we need good films and better filmmakers. This is why our cultural sphere is dying since we put the fucktards behind the cameras. 

I prefer the parallel cinema of the 60's to the Bollywood of those times. Even today, Hindi cinema. I will call it Bollywood because they live up to the cringe-term. Mimicking the mimics. Imagine the amount of retardation required to create a culturally uncultured film remaking a pre-existing film that doesn't or never will have the same style. They're from different forefathers. I'm done raging.

Go watch By me and mine.