"Wherever you are is a beautiful thing."

Reflecting on the new direction of the newsletter, and a movie to watch.

This is Mohnish Soundararajan, a filmmaker in Portland, Oregon, the director and screenwriter of the upcoming ‘Monochrome’, and a member of Desert Island Studios. ‘Reflections’ is a new direction of the newsletter, in which I reflect on film, books, human nature, life, the mystery of who we are, and everything beyond. These reflections are spoken orally into a microphone, interview-style. They’ve been edited for clarity, length, and fun. Enjoy.

Reflection: On the New Direction of This Newsletter

“So what the fuck is going on?

Basically, I've come back from the dead. I was dead, and now I'm here. It's been maybe 10—20—50 years since I think we last spoke, but basically, if you don't remember, I had a newsletter.

The newsletter had very specific book and film recommendations. And then I disappeared off the face of the planet. And now, when I disappeared off the face of the planet, everyone was like, oh, Mohnish has died.

He got shot by three arrows and he's probably on a field somewhere dying.

And so the question is: what happened?

I think in the beginning there was this idea that I was going to be doing the newsletter forever. I would just keep doing it the way that I was doing it.

But the thing is that life is constant change. Life is constant evolution. And one of the things that I realized was that the newsletter as it was didn't feel authentic to my deeper spiritual yearnings as far as what I wanted it to be and how I wanted to flower and blossom and bloom (and other synonyms).

At a certain point, I remember having a conversation with someone who was in the book industry, and we talked about the newsletter. And after that conversation, I remember having the distinct sensation that the prior newsletter didn’t feel true to me anymore.

It doesn't feel true. And so while I've been away, I've been writing screenplays. I've been involved in the film industry. I’ve directed. I’ve edited. I have been writing, writing, and writing. And in that process, I connected back to what I felt was deeply true to me, which was that I wanted to work in the world of narrative.

And so—what the fuck does that have to do with you?

For this newsletter, I still want to talk about beautiful film.

I still want to talk about (and recommend) beautiful books, and I still want to talk about the nuance of what makes storytelling tick, and why it matters to us, now, today.

But I think one of the things that I also wanted to do is I also wanted to open the gamut to life itself.

And with Reflections with Mohnish—which saying my name in the third person makes me want to die—but with Reflections with Mohnish, I'm hoping that this new format is going to be a treat to read.

I’ll talk everything from film to books, but also more about life, about psychology, about human nature, about the mysteries of why we act and behave the way we do, about the things that we can't know, about the topics that fascinate me.

And so I wanted to open the door to Pandora's box in this newsletter. This current run will last until September of 2025—in which I’ll reinvent again, or, keep course.

If you've been with this newsletter, I hope you'll stick with me. And if you don't, well, you know—go live your life!”

Reflection: On a Movie You Should Watch

“A movie that I loved, that I recently watched with my wife, was The Substance.

And The Substance was incredibly tame and incredibly normal and very straightforward.

And by tame and straightforward and normal—I mean that it was not tame and it was not straightforward and it was not normal at all.

But before I begin: there’s a concept that I need to explain to as to why I love this movie—without spoiling the movie.

I think movies work on two levels. I think there's Level One, which is the fact that the movie works as a purely visceral experience.

For example, let's say you watch an empty headed thriller (I'm not saying all thrillers are empty headed, I'm a lover of the genre.)

But let's say you're watching an empty headed thriller and then all of a sudden, you leave that movie theater and you never think about it again.

That movie was functioning purely on Level One, as I would say, and it was functioning on the visceral experience. The thrill was why you went there.

Now, one of the reasons I love film is because that level of working on someone, that emotional experience to me is, is incredibly powerful.

And I think it is a strength of film. It is why I love film so much, because it works on that level. But there's also another level which is Level Two.

And Level Two is hard to put into words because I think it's beyond language.

I think it's a kind of a concept or a feeling-tone that is beyond words.

The best way I can describe it is that Level Two operates on a level of depth.

So when you read a great play by Shakespeare, when you watch an amazing film—Past Lives comes to mind—there's this feeling beyond Level One that there's Level Two and there's this feeling that the film is not just visceral and exciting, but that that viscera and excitement is in deep alignment with a greater depth about our shared humanity, about our psychologies, about who we are, about our spiritual lives, about us as souls living in a physical universe.

It says something about human nature. It gets you thinking after the film.

It feels like it echoes and stays with you in a way that an empty-headed thriller doesn't stay with you.

And what I loved about The Substance was that it worked on Level One as well as Level Two.

Level One is extremely visceral. And The Substance is one of the most visceral films you're ever gonna see.

I mean, it's gonna—I don't know how to say this without it not seeming like a compliment (but it is a compliment)—you're going to watch it and it's going to make you want to jump out of your fucking window.

But it also works on Level Two. And it made me feel the gargantuan struggle that I think every human being has to deal with—every single person deals with—which is the dichotomy between the old and the young.

The yearning to be young, the yearning to have that lost vitality, the yearning to have that energy that you had when you were young.

And it reflected the reality of being older, of not having that energy, of your looks fading over time, of the world growing less interested in you, day-by-day.

And I think this dichotomy between the old and the young is something that everybody goes through—a trial we all face, in one way or another—and everybody feels.

Especially as you get older—we get into jobs that we hate or do things we don't like, and we feel that the youthful, buoyant part of ourselves has gone missing.

And what I loved about this film is that it showed that kind of seesawing nature of how we flip between polarities of these two kind of energies.

I also loved the film because it left with me this deep, deep sense that: damn, wherever the fuck you are, whether you're 90 and you're about to hop into your grave or you're one years old, it doesn't matter. Wherever you are is a beautiful thing. And what I loved about this film is that it tackled things that I think we all feel on different levels.”