Thursday, November 23, 2006

The Great Gig in the Sky, Bar One

Many people have left us this past week, intentionally or not. Great football players, great directors, great swimmers and great economists. I mourn them all.

Ian Thorpe is truly too young to call it a day, but I guess when you've been training your whole life to do this one thing, once you've done it you may want to, well, do something else. Ah, Ian, of the webtastic feet and super-muscley swimmers body, I do hope you wont disappear. 'The Thorpedo' as he was affectionately nicknamed (though of course I can't even think it without sniggering to myself) has 9 Olympic medals and won the 'race of the century' against Pieter Van Hoogenband and Michael Phelps (he of the gigantic neck) in Athens 2004. With his retirement the world of swimming becomes infinitely less drool-worthy, what with Alexander Popov also having retired ages ago. So here's to you, Thorpie, may we see you modelling your underwear soon.

All of the other people who have left us have done so by shaking of this mortal coil and taking their talents to, literally, another realm. Ferenc Puskas, who of course I never had the fortune to see play, was by all accounts a fantastic player. He's been rated the 4th best in the 20th century, behind only Pele, Maradona and Cruyff. His scoring record is ridiculous. 83 goals for Hungary in 84 internationals. 512 goals for Real Madrid in 528 games. Ridiculous is actually an understatement. Puskas once said about football: "I will write my life as a footballer as if it were a love story, for who shall say it is not? It began with my great love of football and it will end the same way."


Another person with almost supernatural talent in his craft, Robert Altman, also died. I am more personally acquainted with Altman's art than Puskas', and so feel his loss more keenly. Even if Altman had done nothing more than making M*A*S*H, he'd be immortalized in movie fans' minds. While the last film I saw directed by him, The Company was hardly vintage Altman (or even a very good film by other standards) the number of cinematic classics that Altman created is spectacular. One of the most inventive and demanding film-makers, there was always something to love about his movies, even in below-standard fare like The Company (which I may be biased against as a matter of protest for the hiring of Neve Campbell). Whether a comment on class relations fashioned as a Agatha Christie-esque mystery (Gosford Park) or The Long Goodbye, a revisionist noir (where Philip Marlowe is played by Elliot Gould, an Altman regular, who some might recognize as Ross and Monica's Dad from Friends), to satirical and brutal comments on the music (Nashville) or Hollywood (The Player) industries, his films were always revelatory, demanded from its audience and rewarded their concentration in spades. So here's to hoping his body of work will serve as an inspiration to young filmmakers, and they will atleast attempt to make films that mean something. The New York Times has described it beautifully:

"Unlike most directors whose flames burned brightest in the early 1970s — and frequently flickered out — Mr. Altman did not come to Hollywood from critical journals and newfangled film schools. He had had a long career in industrial films and television. In an era that celebrated fresh voices steeped in film history — young directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich and Martin Scorsese — Mr. Altman was like their bohemian uncle, matching the young rebels in their skeptical disdain for the staid conventions of mainstream filmmaking and the establishment that supported it...He was often referred to as a cult director, and it rankled him. “What is a cult?” Mr. Altman said. “It just means not enough people to make a minority.”"


The last person I am paying tribute to here is Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winner for Economics in 1976. Milton Friedman is a massive figure in the economic arena. He advocated an unfettered free market and liberal economics. Before Friedman, the Great Depression was though to be a direct result of free-market policies. As a result state control of the economy was considered not just unavoidable but also desirable. Friedman rewrote history, for all practical purposes. He identified human individual liberty as the cornerstone for prosperity. Whether one agrees with his philosophy or not, he had a major impact on the American economy and politics and by extension, the world.

1 comment:

Ridhima said...

Very well written!

How do you keep up with so much news and "happenings"!

I know I know.. you read.. but still it amazes me! :)

Keep it up!