Doctor and author Robin Cook is widely credited with introducing the word "medical" to the thriller genre, and twenty years after the publication of his breakthrough novel, Coma, he continues to dominate the category he created. Cook has successfully combined medical fact with fantasy to produce a succession of New York Times bestsellers.

In each of his novels, Robin Cook strives to write about the issues at the forefront of current medical practice. To date, he has explored issues such as organ donation, genetic engineering, fertility treatment, in vitro fertilization, research funding, managed care, drug research, organ transplantation, and more significantly, bioterrorism.

Cook says he chose to write thrillers because the form gives him "an opportunity to get the public interested in things about medicine they didn't seem to know about. I believe my books are actually teaching people."

Robin Cook is a graduate of Columbia University Medical School and finished his postgraduate medical training at Harvard. He is currently on leave from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. He divides his time between homes in Boston and Florida.

The Seventh Seal is an all-out religious allegory addressing that most-contemplated question - does God exist? This is one of Ingmar Bergman's best films, may be the best, and it a very fascinating piece of cinema.

A knight (Max von Sydow) comes back from the crusades, in a time the Black Death is controlling the country, and encounters Death (Bengt Ekerot). Death has followed the knight home and now it is time. The knight suggests that they play a game of chess and as long as the knight doesn't lose he can keep on living. The game of chess comes back during the entire movie. The knight travels with his squire (Gunnar Björnstrand) and on the way they meet some people.

In the time the knight has left he wants to find out whether there really is a God, or it is merely a figment of one's imagination. One striking scene where he asks a witch, accused of sleeping with the Devil himself, if he can also speak to the Devil because he must know whether God exists, leaves one with a very good possibility that there is no God. Death exists as supernatural, but a God is not part in that. This possibility is considered in the movie for a long while.

The knight and his squire also meet actor Jof (Nils Poppe) and his wife Mia (Bibi Anderson). They have a little boy named Michael. He also meets Jonas Skat (Erik Strandmark), a womaniser who seduces the wife of a blacksmith (Ake Fridell) and leaves with her while the smith is watching the players' performance. Later, the knight's squire discovers Raval (Bertil Anderberg) - the man who originally convinced the knight to fight for Christendom in the Holy Land, now himself an atheist - as he is looting the bodies of plague victims and attempting to rape a young girl (Gunnel Lindblom). Chased away by the squire, Raval goes to a local pub, where he and the cuckholded blacksmith threaten the simple-minded Jof, forcing him at knifepoint to stand on his head, jump on a table, and dance like a bear. The squire enters, cuts Raval's face with his knife, and takes Jof with him away from the inn. Later the knight comes to the actors' campsite, where he is given strawberries to eat by the kind Jof and Mia, and briefly forgets his own despair.

Joined by the blacksmith, Jof, Mia, their child, and the young girl, the knight and his squire continue on their journey. So does Death, strewing sickness across the land. Survivors whip themselves so that God will spare them, hoping to atone for their sins through self-flagellation. When the knight and his troupe meet the rake Skat and the smith's wife, Jof and the smith square off, apparently ready to fight to death over the woman. However, both men back off. Skat then fakes his own suicide, reuniting the married couple. Afterwards, Death comes and puts an end to Skat in earnest. The rest continue on, and come across a woman who is being burned as a witch. They try to save her, but cannot. Traveling on, they find Raval dying of the plague and again can do nothing to help.

Meanwhile, the knight is losing his ongoing game of chess with Death, so he kicks over the board before his opponent can take his queen. Confused, Death hurries to find the scattered chess pieces. Jof and Mia race away with their child. The knight and and his squire travel on to his castle, where the knight's wife (Inga Landgre) waits for him. Death follows them, entering the castle as the knight prays to God for mercy, while his lady reads from Revelations (from which the film's title quotes). In the morning, Jof, Mia, and their baby have been spared; the plague has passed them. Jof looks up to see Death leading the knight, his squire, the blacksmith and his wife, Raval, and the young girl in a dance across the crest of a hill, the figures silhouetted hand-in-hand in a chain against the dawn sky.

This is a strange movie in a way, but it is beautiful as well. It is something not seen in any contemporary movie, which makes it even more fascinating. A great story, acting brilliance, the expert direction of Bergman, and unmatched cinematography make this a movie not easy to forget very soon. The scenes of the knight playing the game of chess with Death belongs to the greatest in the world of cinema. The famous final dance of death was spontaneously created. Bergman had finished the day's shooting when he saw a beautiful cloud in the sky, and unwilling to let the image go unfilmed, hurriedly got his crew members to dress in the costumes of the already-departed actors and form the silhouetted procession. The scene was shot in just a few minutes, without rehearsal.

The film's imagery is among the most memorable ever put on screen - even if one questions the profundity of Bergman's speculations on the nature of good and evil or even God and the Devil, his image of Death wandering the countryside remains unforgettable.

Cries and Whispers is a quintessential entry in the director's oeuvre. This is a visually stunning film deeply concerned with the emotional and physical pain of its protagonists. Even more, it is a highly praised and much admired film, which could possibly be the most accomplished cinematographical work of Bergman's multi-faceted career.

The story takes place at an old English manor and revolves around four women - Agnes (Harriet Andersson), Maria (Liv Ullmann), Karin (Ingrid Thulin) and Anna (Kari Sylwan). Agnes, the owner of the manor, is a young, virginal woman terminally ill with womb cancer. Agnes' sisters, Maria and Karin, are unhappily married and have traveled to the manor to help take care of their dying sister. Anna is Agnes' faithful and reliable maid, who goes to great lengths to make her as comfortable as possible. The film depicts Agnes' last two days of life in terrible agony, her death, and in a sense, even her resurrection and legacy. Cries and Whispers offers a glimpse into the lives of these characters, the terrible effects of the emotional and physical pain they are afflicted with and the different ways they cope with their suffering.

Undeniably, Cries and Whispers is a film about the world of women, and is very open in terms of the gender and sexual politics that it portrays. Males, as represented by the doctor and the Chaplain, are completely useless in providing any comfort to Agnes. Also, Karin's and Maria's husbands utterly fail to understand the emotional needs of their wives. Women are not presented in a much better light. Except for Anna, all the women metaphorically epitomize monsters. Agnes's terrifying disease is a biological horror clearly related to her sexual anatomy. Maria's infidelities drive her husband to attempt suicide. And most shockingly, Karin performs an act of self-mutilation on her sexual organs to disturb and drive away her husband. On the other hand, Anna allegorically represents the maternal figure. But then again, Anna as a mother proves to be a disappointing failure as both children under her care - her biological daughter and Agnes - end up dead.

Although all the characters have different and very well delineated personalities, they all share a profound agony. In a sense, Cries and Whispers is a film about pain, either emotional or physical. Agnes' bodily pain is at the core of the narrative, and the scene showcasing her overwhelming suffering just before death is one of the most dramatic and terrifying depictions of pain in cinema history. Maria and Karin undergo a frustrating life of repression and emotional horrors, as excruciating as the physical misery endured by Agnes. The film offers a bleak and depressing portrayal of pain, as all the characters are unable to find any relief from the pain through either medicine or religion.

The sisters remember that they were close in childhood, but somehow in growing up they lost the ability to love ... to touch. Only Anna, the servant, remembers how to. When Agnes cries out in the night, in fear and agony, it is Anna who cradles her to her bosom, whispering soft endearments. The others cannot stand to be touched. In a moment of conjured nostalgia, Maria and Karin remember their closeness as children. Now, faced with the fact of their sister's death, they deliberately try to synthesise feeling and love. Quickly, almost frantically, they touch and caress each other's faces, but their touching is a parody and by the next day they have closed themselves off again. These two scenes - of Anna embracing Agnes, and of Karin and Maria touching like frightened kittens - are two of the greatest Bergman has ever created. There is no abstract message; it communicates on a level of human feeling so deep that viewers are afraid to invent words for the things found there.

Nevertheless, the most distinctive feature of Cries and Whispers is its striking colour palette made almost exclusively from shades of red, black and white. These colours have a definite metaphorical connotation for Bergman and are used throughout the film to support the narrative. The colors, and the images that they form, seem to be more important than the dialogue. Red dominates almost every single scene that takes place inside the manor, and  represents the interior of the soul, and most probably, is also used as an allegory for the interior of the womb. White is a colour often linked to the virginal Agnes, and stands symbolically for sexual repression. Black is a colour that is associated with priests and Christianity. More importantly, these colors mostly appear in two combinations, either red and white, or red and black, creating an arresting visual and thematic dichotomy. Bergman seems to suggest how seemingly opposite forces affect the human condition, the nature of the soul on one side, and socio-cultural repressions on the other.

Within the context of the narrative 'cries' are related to emotional conditions such as pain, anguish, impotency, loneliness, guilt and suffocation. In contrast, 'whispers' are associated with feelings of tenderness, tolerance, love and compassion. All the characters in Cries and Whispers appear to be trapped in a complex web of emotions, unsure if they want to cry or to whisper at any given time, as if they were being torn apart by their conflicting feelings. However, even with Agnes' ultimate sacrifice, this film does not provide any closure or resolution to these antagonisms. Instead, Cries and Whispers is a beautiful film that invites the viewer to think about the nature of the human condition. The ambivalent end of the film may to some place Agnes in a heavenly paradise, where she is absolved of her painful martyrdom. For others, it may merely suggest the futility of her sacrifice. Nevertheless, as with many other works directed by Bergman, the film's conclusion is not as important as the unforgettable process of self-discovery endured by characters and viewers alike.

The film ends with a scene of astonishing, jarring affirmation: We see the four women some months earlier, drenched with the golden sun, and we hear Anna reading from Agnes' diary, "I feel a great gratitude to my life, which gives me so much." And takes it away.

"I came out of that movie house reeling like a drunkard, drugged speechless, with the film rushing through my bloodstream, pumping and thudding."

This reaction from a viewer just about sums up the effect the Swedish cinematic masterpiece Persona will have on you. A magnum opus from the goodie-bag of Ingmar Bergman, the celebrated Swedish director of highly acclaimed films as "Cries and Whispers" and "The Seventh Seal". Power-packed performances by Bibi Anderson and Liv Ullman (a familiar face in many of Bergman's creations) make the experience more disturbing than entertaining.

Persona is the story of a famous actress Elisabét (Ullman) who, while shooting for 'Electra', suddenly decides to stop conversing. She is sent to hospital, but nothing much is done considering she is mentally and physically fit. A nurse by the name of Alma (Anderson) is assigned to care for her. Alma's attempts to persuade Elisabét to speak fail miserably; the actress refuses to utter a single word. The two women move to a cottage by the sea, and that is where they finally begin to get closer. In the solitude their new home offers, Alma bares her soul to Elisabét, sharing with her all she ever wanted to. She talks about the most hideous skeletons she hides in her closet, her turbulent past and the demons that haunted it. Elisabét's silence was the best thing Alma could have asked for, to pour her heart out to someone who did nothing but listen.

But then, something terrible began to happen. A silent hatred also begins to emerge between the two women, sparked by an incident where Elisabét writes to her doctor all she had heard from Alma's confessions. She writes about having enjoyed 'studying' Alma, and that she was amused by the fact that Alma was so 'in love with herself'. There is a shocking scene where this hatred is shown in a grotesque manner – when Alma does not tell Elisabét about the shard of glass under her foot, and Elisabét indeed steps on it and is hurt. It is almost as if Alma wanted to see her in pain, to make her realise how much her actions had hurt.

As time moves on, Alma finds her identity being fused with that of Elisabét. She idolizes the actress, holds her in awe, sees her as everything she wanted to be. But in all her admiration and adoration, she began to live a false life – that of Elisabét. In a scene where Elisabét's husband comes calling for her, she impersonates the actress. Again, when she narrates to Elisabét the story of the latter's estranged son, she does so as if she were talking of her own son. And somewhere, she fails to draw the line between Elisabét's estranged son and her own aborted child  (a haunting incident from her past). Bergman's portrayal of Elisabét as a psychological vampire is apt, then; she feeds on Alma's very soul and psyche. The shocking scene dedicated to this portrayal shows Alma opening a vein in her forearm and Elisabét putting her lips to it, as if to drink the blood.

The most striking scene is Alma's monologue when she tells the story of Elisabét's estranged son. This scene is shot twice in quick succession. The first time the camera shows Elisabét's face in a close-up shot, and the emotions flitting across her features. The second time the camera starts with a close-up shot of Alma but ends up showing both faces together. Truly a testimony to Bergman's gift with the art of direction, this scene.

Persona is not an easy film to watch. It leaves you disturbed, ruffles many a feather, and brings out the concept of nihilism. It shows how existing in a façade, living a life that is not your own, and going through an identity crisis for your own self, can torment you beyond measure. Alma's anguish comes alive in the film to put across this very message.

In a nutshell, an experience worthy of accolades, even bordering on reverence.

"Anyone who makes films must have a goal before his eyes: namely, to try to get as close to the viewer as possible, to affect him as deeply as possible. What I call technique is knowing exactly how to affect the viewer. That's the crux of the matter. All the rest is secondary. And it is a matter of talent."

Universally regarded as one of the greatest masters of modern cinema, Ingmar Bergman has often concerned himself with spiritual and psychological conflicts. His work has evolved in distinct stages over four decades, while his visual style - intense, intimate, complex - has explored the vicissitudes of passion with a mesmerising cinematic rhetoric. His prolific output tends to return to and elaborate on recurrent images, subjects and techniques. Like the Baroque composers, Bergman works on a small scale, finding invention in theme and variation.

Born Ernst Ingmar Bergman on 14 July 1918 at Uppsala (Sweden), Ingmar Bergman's mature cinema provokes the viewer into an intimate engagement in which a range of uncomfortable feelings are opened up, shared and laid bare. And this often occurs, quite literally, face-to-face.

As a director, Bergman favours intuition over intellect, and chooses to be unaggressive in dealing with actors. Bergman sees himself as having a great responsibility toward them, whom he views as collaborators in a psychologically vulnerable position. He states that a director must be both honest and supportive to allow others their best work.

Bergman usually writes his own scripts, thinking about them for months or years before starting the actual process of writing, which he views as somewhat tedious. His earlier films are carefully structured, and are either based on plays or written with other authors, usually as a matter of convenience. Bergman states that in his later works, when his characters sometimes start wanting to do things different from what he had intended, he lets them, calling the results "disastrous" when he doesn't. Throughout his career, Bergman has increasingly let his actors improvise their dialogue. In his latest films, he has written just the ideas behind the dialogue, keeping in mind the general direction he thinks it should take.

"For me a film's suggestiveness lies in a combination of rhythm and faces, tensions and relaxations of tension. For me, the lightning of the image decides everything." Bergman states. Bergman indeed did create in his movies such suggestive images that were able to express emotions more than a thousand words.

Once I'd decided on a go-ahead with this weblog, I set about thinking how to design its content. I wanted a feel of its very essence in each post - that each word I write should voice the unheard and speak the unspoken. That is to say the entire architecture must spell art and culture in capitals.

Memoriter shall consist of three sections:

1. Cynosure: the stars in my eyes (Cinema)

2. Sonnet: the song in my heart (Music)

3. Opus: the book of my life (Literature)

And so I commence ...

"Hence these tears ..." says the title of this inaugural post. But first about the weblog.

Memoriter is devoted to art - be it cinema, music, or literature. It shall narrate my experience with art in its various forms, and the impact each experience has had on me. And to borrow an oft-used and oft-abused cliché, this is not just a blog - it is a window to cultures of the world.

I dedicate this blog to the one man who opened this window for me, who showed me life beyond what surrounded me and emotions beyond what I knew. His unrelenting passion for forms of art, especially music and cinema, has always been an inspiration for me. He held my hand and guided me to and through life, and in two years has become indispensable to me.

This is just my humble way of thanking him - Swarup Gupta - for all those times I revelled in cinema and music. To the elder brother I wish I'd met a lot earlier in life - this is for you, Swarupda.

Hence these tears ...