Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Fearfully and wonderfully made

A film like Endhiran reminds me why so many people exclaim with the psalmist that man is fearfully and wonderfully made. I have never realised that it is an oxymoron that something can be made fearful and at the same time wonderful. Chitti is simply that. The first half of the film shows that he is wonderful and the second half shows that he is fearful.
Throughout the ages science has often posed a challenge to creation and Endhiran is the final frontier of trying to superimpose emotions onto a robot. Dr. Vaseegaran is faced with the same perplexing questions which God often faces - of placing a 'free-will' into his most advanced creation 'MAN'. God can do everything by might and power as beautifully demonstrated in the film 'Bruce Almighty', but not 'force' somebody to love. Chitti again reiterated to me that any all-powerful creation cannot create or extract love from another human being; that even God is helplessly waiting at me for the reciprocal of his love shown to me.
The Bible recounts in just its 6th Chapter in the 6th verse, that God repented for having created man - that that verse is found in page 6 of the Tamil Bible is a curiouse case of coincidence, a topic for another day. But how can God 'repent'? Why would God feel sorry for a wrong doing, if that is what repentance means? Those questions are answered in Endhiran. Vaseegaran as the creator, leads us through those emotions.
To me the real hero of the film is Shankar, the director. He had the guts to dream a dream and has achieved it, providing further inspiration to the dreamers. It will always be a debate if God was right in providing free-will to man, if Vaseegaran was right in providing emotions to Chitti. If there was no free-will there is no free, unrestrained love. And God valued that free-love so much that he would stake the whole world for it.
Endhiran is a beautiful portrayal of the struggle between power and love. Even in real life, much has been talked about jodu ka gulaams and hen-pecked husbands. When you come to think of it, every man of the house could whack his wife and get work done, but will that evoke true love? I am sure it wont. It is the cruel path of sacrifice, understanding and patience that will do it. For those reasons a man and a woman are fearfully and wonderfully made - to live with and for each other. No Endhiran will be able to match that.

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