The Terrorist/ தீவிரவாதி, Theeviravaathi (1998)

Well groomed.

Olga’s Notes:

Note1: This is without the doubt the best, the finest, the saddest movie I have ever watched.

Note2: Most people read my first novel, Helena: The Small Town Throwdown, and assume it is biographical. It isn’t. I have never experienced the horrors of war, or at least not yet. I’m a civilian through and through, a war-virgin. And yet, after watching “The Terrorist”, I can tell you exactly what a war smells, tastes, looks and feels like: a ticking heartbreak, coerced faith, muddy chaos and a big fat load of BS.

The silence of the plants.

Helena’s Notes:

Note1: This is not another action movie.

Note2: Say now you're a soldier, turning up for your first combat day in some foreign country far far away, or maybe on some mean corner of the hood you grew up on. How long before you discover that there’s no such thing as heroes – and yet that you’re still fully expected to die a hero’s death, so The Cause could live on? How long before you realise that this here is hero vs zero type of deal, and they got you by the balls, cos you ain’t gonna wanna (huh? North American spirit, unpossess!) come across as a pussy and a yellowbelly and a chickenshit, and have yourself put against the wall and shot?

So maybe think twice before you join, children, cos there ain’t no walking out on real war. All you can do is stay, hope to get good, hope to get better, and buy more shares of the same dogma that got you here in the first place, become the crazier and the braver one, the crueller one, the one with a bomb strapped around your waste.

This, by the way, is not meant to sound like a recruiting campaign. Although I can see how it actually might.

Reflective.