Archive for the ‘film review’ Category

Have you seen Adaminte Makan Abu – India’s official entry for the Oscar?

Posted: September 29, 2011 by moifightclub in cinema, film review, movie reviews, News, Simbly South
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Most of us haven’t. If you don’t have any respect for Oscar, and surely there are many valid reasons for that, then you don’t need to worry about the film Adaminte Makan Abu. It also won four National Awards and it made us curious because Oscar or not, a good film is a good film. So we asked our good ol’ Mallu friend Prasanth Vijay to write a review post for us. Read on…

Abur Sansar

As it happens once in a while in Indian cinema, Davids come out of nowhere and walk over the Goliaths. The latest in line being Adaminte Makan Abu (Abu, Son of Adam) which has become the country’s official entry for Oscar this year. Majority in Kerala, except a few of us who had been following the reports of its making, had a similar shock when the National awards were announced a couple of months ago and Abu won four major awards. It was a natural extension to see the film winning another four at the state awards a few days later (though many argue that this wouldn’t have happened without the National awards win). On hindsight, none of this is too hard to understand because parallel cinema in India is always forced to remain under a veil until a saviour comes along and salvages it (though sadly for many, this never happens).

Adaminte Makan Abu is about an old Muslim couple whose greatest dream in life is to attend Hajj pilgrimage. Over many years, they scrimp and save small sums for this out of their modest living. Things begin to fall in place, and they start preparing for the pilgrimage when calamity strikes in an unforeseen way and they are almost back to square one. Around the protagonists is the rustic panorama of a Kerala village (now a highly endangered entity) and its inhabitants who touch on their lives constantly. The towering achievement of the creators of the movie is turning this seemingly clichéd and possibly melodramatic synopsis into a well-crafted film which culminates in a much higher level of composure and optimism. And for the record, it’s certainly NOT poverty porn. It is about hope, and about a virtuous Abu who moves us to tears by the goodness of his character, rather than by his trials and tribulations.

Abu, a street medicine and perfume vendor is a staunch believer in his religion. And religion serves its true purpose here, making Abu a great human being who is at one with all of nature, not just the humans in it. He accepts that the purity of the means he takes up is as or even more important than the end. He doesn’t have to mull over even a little to resist temptations, however harmless they seem. There is a Malayalam verse which defines ‘courageous’ as the one whose mind doesn’t flicker the slightest even when there are strong reasons. Amidst heroes whose morals stoop when pressed by circumstances, Abu’s frail figure looms above them as the bravest of recent times, though too insignificant to matter to anyone else. True, it is a nearly fanatic faith in his religion that backs him, but with his clarity he touches the essence of it which is nothing but love and goodness, even if it’s unrequited.

Salim Ahamed, the writer- director of the film was as unknown as the film till the National awards. The creative mastery and the maturity of craft of the debutant are commendable. The artistic honesty he has brought into each frame is what has saved the film from falling into the possible traps of cliché and melodrama. It’s well detailed- from elaborately showing the preparations of Hajj pilgrims (which prompted naysayers to call it an extended travel agency ad) to the passing scenes of the wife smelling a lemon to fend off nausea during bus rides. Salim also deserves credit for extracting what he wanted from a seasoned crew- from ace Madhu Ambat wielding a digital camera for the first time to magical musician Issac Thomas Kottukapally creating music out of silences and Pattanam Rasheed for whom adding a few decades to a person’s face is never a big deal. The cast also has prominent artists even in minor roles so that they stay etched in our minds. Zarina Wahab becomes Ayeshumma as effortlessly as she dons her prayer robe.

It’s unjust to a film or any work of art to say that one element of it rises above the rest. But Salim Kumar, playing Abu stands out here because of his inseparability from the film. An accomplishment which is likely to be widely overlooked by viewers outside the home state is the unparalleled makeover he has undergone to become the character. Salim who has received popularity among masses and occasional brickbats from critics for his slapstick roles (which were by no means easy feats!), has proved the versatile actor in him whenever given a chance- in Achanurangatha Veedu (2006) and Bridge (segment in the anthology film Kerala Cafe). He lives as Abu the way no other actor in the world could have.

Adaminte Makan Abu is undoubtedly a lucky film – right from its conception to its reception. It might not be “the best” of its times, but it surely deserves most of the accolades it has already been honoured with. It may be considered as the prize for the honesty and sincerity that went into its making. In an industry that churns out either insignificant trash or over-hyped pseudo classics, this noble film marks itself by its restraint and lucidity. It’s another instance of many right things happening together towards a greater goal. Where mediocrity is celebrated and excellence is even denied birth, it’s not enough that we have visionary and resourceful film-makers. They should also have the blessing of fortune shining on them to materialise their dreams. May their tribe increase!

A Play On The Screen: That Girl In Yellow Boots, observes Salik Shah

Posted: September 4, 2011 by moifightclub in cinema, film review, movie reviews, reviews
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With any Anurag Kashyap film, one thing is for sure – a debate. A divided house. We are also swinging from one side to another with every new post on the film. This is Salik Shah‘s first post here. Read on..

That Girl In Yellow Boots is Kalki Koechlin’s debut as a filmmaker. It’s written all over the film. Anurag Kashyap just happened to be there while Rajeev Ravi was busy setting up his camera on the ‘stage.’ Except for one scene where Ruth smokes against the dazzling red screen, the audience never notices his camera tricks. There is one scene though — where they abruptly cut from a close up to a mid shot of the two protagonists who seem to have finally accepted the tragedy of their solitary existence— which seemed to be an attempt to tease the audience by not allowing them to have their ‘emotional cumshot’ exactly where they needed it.

Pulp Fiction is an old trick—but can provide little ‘happy endings’ in otherwise an unhappy film. The happy diversions in That Girl In Yellow Boots are just that. The sad thing is the mistiming. In an otherwise comic scene, where Ruth spins a story about her father’s death, a little mischief was desirable. A camera angle or two, hinting at her playfulness, where she appears brutally honest to the innocent criminal but palpably mischievous to us, might have been forgiven by the neo-realists. Excess is bad, but so is overt restraint.

Sound is a tricky affair; the jarring background score wasn’t called for at key scenes—or was it placed there to deny the audience any sympathy for Ruth? How I wish I could mute to listen deeply to Ruth’s silences… A minimalist approach might have further polarized the audience—but the result might have been a rewarding experience. Years ago, I couldn’t understand Nobody Needs to Know (Azazel Jacobs, 2003), but the expressionless, unfathomable face of its female lead has stayed with me. That Girl In Yellow Boots works in silence, often brilliantly.

There are people as they are—and many of AK’s assistants have verily filled in as Ruth’s steady customers. Prashant, however, is the film’s most visible link to the theater. The words he chooses, the way he moves—all seem to be a reminiscence of an era behind us. Be it in the Skeleton Woman, Ek, Do (FTII) or That Girl In Yellow Boots, he is there—loud, unchecked, mimicking himself. You can see that he is acting—a constant reminder of the film’s limitation.

Cinema is not an actively participatory experience like the theater. When the human contact is lost, you’ve to employ literary, theatrical or cinematic techniques to fuel the audience’s imagination to fill in the gaps in the visual narrative. That is why you get the unborn child manifested in Three Monkeys. That is why whole sequences in After the Rehearsal are devised to ‘mesmerize’ the audience. Here we get face to face with Ruth and Ben as they are—helpless, victims of their own doing, hopeless—all in a very straight-forward, good in a theatrical way.

If anything, it’s an exercise—for Anurag Kashyap, for you and for me. Why should it be anything else? Making a film is all that matters to him; while we go to great lengths to obtain and frame a fake poster of a pirated film! Strip the cinema of its greatness, please. Today every man with a camera is a filmmaker. While I don’t expect them to be Wong Kar-Wai or Tarkovsky—which they might very well be; they don’t need to be—I do believe if given a chance, they could be more authentic. It’s a good thing for cinema. It’s the new pen of our times; let them write; let us write with it. That’s indie. And no one seems to understand this better than this father of ‘Hindie.’

Keep shooting.

 — Salik

TGIYB : Heartless city, relentless life. Fatema Kagalwala wonders if there are any easy answers ever

Posted: September 3, 2011 by moifightclub in cinema, film review, movie reviews, reviews
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Forget Salman Khan, even Fatema Kagalwala is on a roll. One day, two posts. Click here to read her hilarious dissection of Bodyguard, and scroll down to read her post on Anurag Kashyap’s latest release, That Girl In Yellow Boots.

Seedy is not Mumbai’s underbelly, it is the defining aspect of its identity. In this quagmire is a young girl struggling to survive. An English citizen in a strange city, she is but twenty years old. At a time when most of us our dreaming of building fancy careers, watching our weight, worrying about skin/hair problems while striving to date that hot bod, she is fighting to stay afloat in the dense-ness of red tape and sexual exploitation.

She is Ruth, Anurag Kashyap’s protagonist in his latest film, ‘That Girl in Yellow Boots’. She is as vulnerable as she is steely and as undaunted as she is brittle. She meets exploitation at every corner, simply because she is young, female, single and white-skinned. She is looking for her father who abandoned her when she was five. There is darkness everywhere she turns and she buys some light with the money she earns by giving massages and handjobs to willing customers, what she ironically calls, ‘happy endings’. As the official synopsis reads ‘everyone wants a piece of her’, and she obliges – if it will lead her to father.

Anurag Kashyap lays it out thick. Grime, blood, sweat and semen. Loss, pain, failures and trauma. Darkness is no stranger to the film-maker, his oeuvre almost revels in it. He always says it as it is, sometimes even too much. But TGYIB doesn’t suffer from over-doing. Ruth’s world is murky and steeped in pain but there is spirit in her struggle. Her existence seems doomed but there is assurance in her steps. There is an emptiness in her eyes and a desperation in her heart but her mind is focused. She is love-less but not lost. She is gathered and determined.

So is the narrative. It follows its story with focus even though it becomes unstructured and loose at times. It doesn’t give into impulsive cinematic expressions at the cost of her character’s journey and that seems to be symptomatic of a creative evolution of the maker. For that alone, this can be called a notable film.

This time round there is no shying away from emotions. There is no uncomfortable distance from vulnerability and neediness is not wrong. There is a unique objectivity which is a hallmark frame of reference with Anurag Kashyap’s films, something that made Black Friday the classic it is. Along with this objectivity there was also apparent a seeming reluctance to engage emotionally with the character. Hence Dev simply remained a lost drunkard, Chanda an unapologetic fighter and Paro’s vulnerability never found the sure footing to blossom enough.

But Ruth is not like that. She is almost life and blood. I say almost because she falls prey to a lot of unsure moments in the film which keep her from blossoming fully. Her interactions with her boyfriend seem half-heartedly performed and the fault does not lie with the protagonist but the choreography and uncultivated chemistry between actors. Her denouement is not intense enough but while she is on unsure ground she is also explored from more ways than one. However, she is not sentimentalised and therein lies the strength of the film. Wouldn’t that have simply undone the very premise of her character?

Kashyap employs child abuse as a prominent theme, perhaps to enforce yet another layer of brutality to the already dismal world of the film. But this he juxtaposes with a fatherly figure, Ruth’s only male massage customer who is affectionate to her without objectifying her. Female strength finds yet another towering personification in the massage parlour owner, Maya (A brilliant, effortless and sparklingly honest Puja Sarup). Their identification and subsequent bond speaks volumes about the opposing forces of exploitation and survival.

Cinematic elements come together in harmony to tell the story of Ruth’s journey. Even as Rajiv Ravi’s digital camera caresses Ruth’s dismal life with an expressive graininess, Wasiq Khan’s seamless production design melts grunge with the dullness of the ordinary. We notice the torn beige sofa and the darkly-lit, narrow parlour lounge almost becoming metaphors of Ruth’s dislocated life.

In the pursuit of defining its protagonist’s journey, the film however fails it’s peripheral characters. Shiv Subramaniam, Mushtaq Khan, Divya Jagdale, Makrand Deshpande, Piyush Mishra, all remain mere tools of the exploitative environment without completing an experience. This singularity becomes representative and seems forced and has much to do with broad-stroked writing, seeming to take the ‘easy’ way out.

There is also the sketchily written character of Kannadiga ganglord Chitiappa explosively performed by Gulshan Devaiah, easily the star of the film. He settles in instantly and shines through till the end, effortlessly balancing the Nana Patekar-esque eccentric stereotype with the defencelessness of a school boy. This balance is what Prashant Prakash never gets right unfortunately. His see-sawing volatile character had immense scope to capture a spectrum of moods, emotions, swings and even personalities but he never really manages to get under our skin.

The film begins on an unsure footing, taking us slowly into Ruth’s world, introducing it through her encounters. Dialogues are many a times listless, almost murdering moments. Improvisation shows in the body language of actors and sync sound catches the uncertain intonations of lines made up on the spur of the moment. For a film crafted to evoke a response beyond the intellectual and focused on following Ruth’s path to her father, this serves as an undoing.

The film largely works because of its choice of actors. Kalki’s oval-faced innocence, a full-mouth unable to hide the Bugs Bunny teeth and the clear sad eyes looking at you become synonymous with Ruth right from the beginning. The actress wears her character unlike any other she has done before, and it is this certain ‘giving up to the character’ that one senses, which becomes the most appealing. We never cry with her or hurt for her but somewhere the film convinces us to feel enough for her to know what will happen to her and silently wish her well. As a takeaway, that is big.

Luis Bunuel said – “Fortunately, somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether.” Team TGYIB uses theirs very well to give us a world that is precisely between chance and mystery. 

Iti Mrinalini : Koko channel in Rina rut

Posted: August 1, 2011 by moifightclub in cinema, film review, movie reviews, reviews, Tollywood
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Pratim D. Gupta is a full-time film critic with The Telegraph and a part-time screenwriter. Well, part-time till his film gets made. Based in Kolkata, he closely tracks Bengali film industry’s every intelluctual, pseudo-intelluctual and aantel (ask your bong friend. There is no english word for this one) move. So where does Aparna Sen’s latest film Iti Mrinalini fits in? Scroll down and read on…

Disclaimer: I don’t know why I am writing this piece. In an industry where scratching backs is the only way forward and where every film is a classic and every performance award-winning, one online rant really matters very little. Unlike Bollywood where good films and bad films, moneymaking films and praiseworthy films all have their own space, Bengali cinema is going through this incredible phase where you have to laud at everything and anything up there on screen. If you do not comply, you are against the growth and prosperity of Bengali cinema. “How dare you? Just because your script hasn’t got funding, you are badmouthing other films!” Honestly, I can’t help myself. I refuse to be party to this mogojdholai (brainwashing). So you can have your own conspiracy theories but I have my own views and I will stick by them. And no I didn’t like Iti Mrinalini. You too have a choice — close the window at this stage or read on.

What goes wrong with Aparna Sen? She makes a brilliant film and follows it up with something so ordinary, you start wondering how could she have possibly made that earlier great movie? One of the frequently asked questions in Bengali movie circles that has refused to die: Did Ray ghost direct 36 Chowringhee Lane? You watch Mr & Mrs Iyer, Paromita’r Ek Din and The Japanese Wife and you know the answer. You watch Yuganto, Sati and 15 Park Avenue and you are not so sure about your answer.

The problem is not just with inconsistency. There are many great directors whose great films are punctuated with not-so-great films. It is the sheer ordinariness of some of Aparna Sen’s films that really complicates the situation. You look at every nook and corner of the frame hoping to spot that Rina-di touch and your disappointment mounts by the minute till the time you want to throw up your hands and leave the theatre.

Sen, along with Rituparno Ghosh, has been the so-called custodian of the modern Bengali woman on celluloid. Her fantastic domestic femmefatales are independent, self-sufficient beings who manage to emerge on top of every challenge that men (and society) have thrown at them. From Paroma to Paromita. Sen herself in the 1970s was this ultimate epitome of everything that was new and clutterbreaking about the Bengali woman ultimately leading to her print revolution, as editor of Sananda.

Mrinalini is a wimp! A namby-pamby, a maudlin… such a waste of human life, that I do not want to watch her wet — strictly tears — life on screen for two hours. I do not care which bits of that life are fictional and which bits are from Sen’s own life, the life is dull, boring and flaccid. She fell in love with a boy in college who was a Naxal and got shot down, she then fell for her director who had a wife and two kids and was never really interested to set up a home with his kept and their daughter, and then she developed feelings for a man who has a very sick wife at home and yet is always there by her side. As is evident, it’s always the men who call the shots in Mrinalini’s life, who is just a ping-pong ball in search of the net.

And this insipid biopic is narrated in the most archaic way possible — an unfinished letter, a bottle full of sleeping pills and lots and lots of glycerine! You get the drift?

The only mildly interesting bit of the film is Mrinalini’s daughter with her director lover Sid who she gives away to her Canada-based brother and sister-in-law but ensures that the girl spends the summer vacation with Pishi and Kaku. It is a unique relationship that these five people share where terms of endearment and lines of blood get beautifully blurred. But then the most important scene of the film, when the young girl Sohini reveals to Mrinalini that she already knows that Pishi is her real mother and Kaku her real father, is so lazily written and treated so matter-of-factly that the emotional fulcrum is not tampered. How can Mrinalini’s reaction line be: “When did this happen?” As if the date and time of the revelation is more important to her — clearly written with the audience in mind — than the fact that her daughter knows she is her daughter. Compare this scene with the heart-wrenching revelation scene between Irrfan and Kal Penn in the car in The Namesake and you know where the difference lies.

The script has no structure or build-up of any sort and have scenes that shouldn’t have ever made it to the screen. Towards the climax we have a scene between Mrinalini and her young director love Imtiaz which goes something like this… “Have the tea Imtiaz.” “I didn’t ask for tea.” “Now that the tea is here, have the tea.” “No.” “Will you have coffee then?” “I can have coffee. But black coffee.” After she has ordered the black coffee for him, she asks: “Have you studied in America?” “Why because I asked for black coffee?” “Something like that.”

And then the whole film is explained in one scene. “There are different types of love Minu,” says one of the men in her life. Ok alright, we get it! But Rina-di, have you seen Frida? That film conquered what you set out to achieve. Yes, it’s a biopic of a real person and obviously a far more fascinating person that Mrinalini but it has the same plot points comprising Frida Kahlo and the men in her life. And this feels really silly on my part to tell this to someone like you but just by giving voice to WHAT THE WOMAN WANTS, Frida becomes so bloody awesome. When her husband Diego Rivera learns that Frida has been unfaithful to him, he says: “You’ve broken my heart, Frida.” She gives it back to him: “It hurts doesn’t it? But why? It was just a fuck, like a handshake.” Mrinalini sadly has no venom or vermin.

The Rituparno effect on Aparna is quite telling in this film. The whole analogy to Karna-Kunti Sambad and Raktakarabi bears a strong whiff of Ghosh and company in the way literature is blended into the lives of the characters. Throughout Iti Mrinalini there is an attempt to attach importance to a subject which is obviously not that important. It’s not true to its genre, it tries to be An Aparna Sen film. The political events streaming in the background (Vishal Bhardwaj tried the same in 7 Khoon Maaf) and the baffling ending are the biggest examples. It wishes to leave you dumbfounded, just like the ending of 15 Park Avenue. It’s that last shot in the arm to elevate the film to something substantial but when it backfires – like it does here – it really does more harm to the film.

The only masterstroke of Iti Mrinalini is how Konkona Sen Sharma is asked to perform like Aparna Sen and not the other way round. They both play Mrinalini and Konkona has the lengthier role but yet she tries to ape Aparna. Because the director understands that the better actor should be given the difficult task. And while Konkona cannot possibly start looking like a young Aparna, her body language and especially her speech is ditto her real-life mother. Close your eyes in the theatres and you will know what an outstanding job Konkona has done in Iti Mrinalini.

All the other actors barring Aparna herself — these filmmakers who act really need someone else directing them, as was evident in Ranjana Aami Ar Ashbo Naa recently — are good. The deadly combo of Rajat Kapoor on screen and Anjan Dutt in the dubbing studio makes Sid such a believable character. Koushik Sen is so effective in the few scenes he has. Saheb impresses in his little cameo. Priyanshu has great presence but is saddled with such a strange character, he can only do that much. The late Somak Mukherjee shot Iti Mrinalini with a lot of pizzazz, especially that shot on the beach where the two women are chatting and the camera curls on the young girl sleeping on top of Rajat. Wish there was at least a hint of period detailing, though.

Iti Mrinalini is really a very weak and disappointing effort from Aparna Sen. But sometimes there comes a performance that becomes so much bigger than the movie it comes in that the ordinariness of the films takes a back seat. Konkona has always reserved her best acts for her mother’s films. And while her mother’s films have ranged from brilliant to bad, she has shone in all of them. Personally, I found this performance to be her best till date. Here neither did she have the superficial condiments embellishing a Mrs Iyer nor the free mind of a schizophrenic patient like Meethi. It’s just one of the best actresses of our countries at the top of her game.

But Rina-di, don’t you think Koko deserves better? And maybe we too?

Iti Pratim

First Look : Don 2, Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster, Sahi Dhande Galat Bande (Trailer)

Posted: July 14, 2011 by moifightclub in bollywood, film, film review, songs & videos, Trailer
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Like in Hollywood, this is the year of 2,3,4 in Bollywood too.  Murder 2 is still going strong at the box office, and now the first trailer of Don 2 is out. And it seems D2 is going to be exactly like the earlier Don. The film is directed by Farhan Akhtar and stars Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Lara Dutta, Kunal Kapoor and Boman Irani.

Tigmanshu Dhulia is back, again. And we are again hoping that this time he will be back as the good ol’ Dhulia. Not the one who directed Shaagird. Even as his last film Paan Singh Tomar is yet to get a theatrical release, trailer of his new film Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster is out. It stars Jimmy Shergill, Randeep Hooda and Mahie Gill.

Remember Parvin Dabas? Yes, the actor is now director. And remember Preeti Jhangiani? She is now producer, and they are married. Here’s the trailer of directorial debut of Dabas, Sahi Dhandhe Galat Bande.

Delhi Belly – Bhainchod dus saal lag gaye!

Posted: July 1, 2011 by moifightclub in bollywood, cinema, film, film review
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If Rangan can, why can’t we? So, here it is. All in bullet points.

  • Dil Chahta Hai released in 2001 and this year marks the 10th anniversary of the film. My friend Kartik Krishnan is among those counted few who doesn’t like the film. First grudge – three guys who don’t even say bhainchod. Not even once. While the rest of us claimed it to be new bollywood’s coming of age film, KK still believes DCH is NOT us. Delhi Belly scores there at least. It took 10 years for three friends to come together and say bhainchod. Oops, three came for Rock On and three more are coming soon for ZNMD too. But that’s trilogy from Farhan Akhtar brand of cool and confused characters’ coming of age without the cuss words .
  • In order of their appearance – Fucking, fucker, balls, dick, chooth, bainchod, bastard, fuck, chootiye, gaand, asshole, dumbfuck, teri maa ki, bhosdike, gaand marane.  I hope these words are not new in your cusstionary and you don’t giggle every time someone says balls. Because in Delhi Belly, it’s all there. Seems I missed “thevidiya” – tamil word for whore.
  • So what’s your mother tongue? And is it the same as the language you speak everyday? No, right? Well, that’s the case with most of us. English is not a phunny language any more, desi characters talking in English is phunny. Or at least bollywood made it phunny. Add Rahul Bose and it’s super funny. Remember Before The Rains? Delhi Belly scores here too. The film is in Hinglish, which seems natural for a film like this, and the actors are comfortable in it. No accent too. Like us, they walk, talk and sleep in Hinglish without any kind of baggage.
  • No interval. This is about 96mins long. But since we contribute to the revenue more via cold drinks and popcorn, am sure the theater will keep on reminding you about this. Buy, buy, buy. Not every producer can demand a no-interval screening. And even if they demand, nobody will care to listen. With Aamir, it’s a different game. You Don’t Mess With Aamir. Nobody will say it but that’s the truth. Even for Dhobi Ghaat he managed to screen the film without interval. A refreshing change, hopefully others will follow soon, and hopefully we will still keep on contributing to coke, samosa and popcorn so that the theater revenue doesn’t go down.
  • And the movie? 3 guys, 2 girlfriends, 1 husband, his ex-wife and 1 Don along with some really good character actors in small roles. Stool sample and diamond pack gets mixed up, lots of confusion and farts of every possible kind, some cuss words, few kisses and bhag D K Bose. It’s nothing that you haven’t seen before but in a country where it’s difficult to think of one good film which released in the last six months and has repeat value, even a timepass entertainer scores high.
  • Shehnaz Treasurywala has lost her “wala” but her treasury is very much intact. She is still selling “peek-a-boo-b”. Remember MTV’s Most Wanted where she would come close to camera, bend a little and you could feast your eyes? Well, she does the same in at least 2 scenes.
  • For a person with a weak tummy, the farting sounds were really uncomfortable that kept on reminding me that I might need a loo break soon. Luckily i survived.
  • If you are looking for layers, I would suggest you go for Buddah Hoga Terra Baap which should be having layers and layers of make-up.
  • Dear Aditya Roy Kapoor, Y U NO GO TO KUNAL ROY KAPOOR SCHOOL OF ACTING?
  • Is it the same Abhinay Deo who directed Game? Again Aamir Khan will walk away with the credit.
  • Dear Cunnilingus, welcome to Bollywood. No, knowing you doesn’t make us look cool but it just validates your existence. Good luck on the debut. Hope you survive.
  • Dear Akshat Verma, hopefully you get to direct your next one. I know you wanted to direct this one.
  • Shock value? That’s just the marketing pitch, there is nothing shocking if you have been to Chan-Wook Park’s school of incestous studies. or even if you know Lars Von Trier.
  • 90minutes. No songs (Ok, almost no songs). No interval. Adults only.  It works. Watch it.

(PS – Was there more to Vir Das’ love story? Chop-chop at Khan’s editing table?)

A film (Videokaaran) this passionate deserves some passion from each and every film lover, argues Varun Grover

Posted: May 7, 2011 by moifightclub in cinema, film review, Movie Recco, movie reviews, reviews, Trailer
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Most of you might not have even heard about the film Videokaaran. We also had no clue. A video link on someone’s FB wall and it quickly spread all over. Varun Grover saw the film, loved it and strongly recommends it. Read on…

“Nahin boloonga – Mera secret hai yaar yeh” – Videokaaran

Before the film: The trailer hit like a bolt. “A film about a slightly unusual film buff” it said, and gave me the biggest blood rush that week. It looked dark, candid, grungy, and very passionate. Aur Hindustan mein film lovers pe film kaun banaata hai? It looked like a story from our own backyard, an original story. The trailer was shared, RTed, discussed, and we all were very curious. A screening at Vikalp, Alliance Francaise Mumbai came up. Not on a weekend, hence only I from among the Mumbai group could make it. And mighty glad that I did. Baaki ki kahaani…cut to.

After the film: Starting with a question. How many of us remember the title song, with antara, of Amitabh Bachhan’s 1992 film ‘Khuda Gawah’ (probably his last good act as a ‘hero’ in Hindi cinema). Think a bit. I am sure some can come close to remembering ‘Ho koi ghulaam…ya ho baadshaah…ishq ke bagair, zindagi gunaah’ lines. (Or was it ‘zindagi tabaah’?) But how many will remember, AND relish, the casually thrown in repeat-phrase ‘wai-wai’ throughout the song? Videokaaran is about a group of film-lovers who not only remember this ‘wai-wai’ bit but also sing it (over a doped out night at one point in the film) with as much respect as the rest of the song. In fact, a lone voice keeps singing ‘wai-wai’ even after the rest of the group has faded off.

Now this may sounds like a frivolous start – especially when the claim is that Videokaaran is the most definitive work you will see on the very complex cinema-fan relationship in India. But the example, much like a zen puzzle, is an answer in itself. It’s about passion for something some of us may consider unpassionworthy. It’s about people, who while living on the edge in their day to day existence, find a bond with moving images, words, tunes, stories, and to use an Arundhati Roy-esque term ‘the collective hysteria of larger-than-life’.

And it’s not a ‘look, they are so unique/ weird/ curio-pieces’ narrative the director goes for at all (the easiest way out, taken by many including the ‘B-Movie-Club’ of Mumbai which shows 80’s films to a group ‘for laughs’, or Anuvab Pal’s latest book on ‘Disco Dancer’ which reads the film as campy fun at its best). The subjects, with Sagai Raj in focus mostly, have been treated with as much respect as a serious film lover/observer deserves.

And the best part – Videokaaran (Video-waalah), doesn’t just stop at cinema. It very incidentally, mostly through the conversations, paints a picture of a world within Mumbai which seems not only time-removed from us, but plane-removed too. The characters, their pains, days, uninhibited laughter seem to hang in a surreal space-time we never cared to check. (But don’t mistake it for an ‘activist’ take on ‘two Indias’ or such. It’s as much fun as you will ever have at the movies.) A real, brass-and-nails world where Rajnikanth is God, and with a very strong reason.

And it helps that the Rajnikanth fan Sagai Raj, the central character of Jagannathan Krishnan’s debut docu-feature, has a unique, intelligent opinion on almost everything to do with cinema. Sagai used to run a Tamil video parlor in Chembur, in the shanties by the railway tracks, and is the kind of Thalaivar fan we have come to smirk at. But the smirk fades off with every passing minute, replaced by friendly warmth.

Sagai talks non-stop, loves porn and slasher flicks, has a quirky tangential mind (“I can’t fool a mad dog by pretending that I am not afraid. Dog’s sixth sense will interact with my sixth sense to let out the truth”), a weirdly original thought process (“porn films are the best indicator of a girl’s mind”), lives in a shady locality where police-raids and death by local trains is a norm, and has a life-story straight out of City of God. But above all, and in the context of Videokaaran, he is the brand ambassador of a class of people who consume cinema differently. And a brand-ambassador who not only was a regular viewer, but somebody who sourced porn to be exhibited, edited out films according to audience tastes at his own machine, marked out escape routes and strategies in case of a police raid, and indulgently, heartbreakingly filmed (on his DV cam) the bulldozer destruction of the very video-parlor he helped grow.

Interspersed with film footage (‘Subramaniapuram’, primarily) and Hindi songs sung by the group of Sagai’s friends on a trippy night in Karjat, Videokaaran is as intimate a piece of documenting a vanishing history as it comes. The astonishing thing is, Jagan had not initially planned to make the film around Sagai. Sagai was just going to be the camera-person for the documentary, and the story was supposed to be about this bunch of Chembur guys who are the standard target audience of single-screen and/or video parlor cinema. And this bunch is equally interesting – comprising of a professional juggler and clown, whom Jagan calls ‘an evolved soul’, a DJ and painter who even designed a camera rig for the shoot on his own instinct, a sadhu baba they chanced upon who loves singing sappy songs from the 90’s hindi films (and whatay voice he has!), and a couple of other friends from the locality. (“We even thought up a sequence where the juggler-clown (name: Alisha) stands outside SRK’s bungalow, wearing an SRK mask, and does the juggling act.”)

But while filming, Jagan stumbled upon Sagai’s story and the camera changed hands. (The film still retains many portions shot by Sagai too.) From then on, it’s Sagai and his worldview – filled with anecdotes that shock, regale, and in a few surprise moments pierce through the hard skins of our snobbery to treat him as an equal, if not greater film lover.

The 70-minute film, culled from 40-hrs of footage, is edited (by Jagan’s life-partner Pallavi Singhal) unconventionally too. No voice-overs, no time-stamps or location-stamps (you won’t see many documentaries this confident about their content), and no fixation with linearity – Indian docus just took a huge leap ahead with Videokaaran.

Watch it wherever you can – jaise bhi. A film this passionate deserves some passion from each and every film lover out there. Options? At a film club or festival screening, by buying the DVD straight from Jagan, or waiting for someone to rip it off and put it up online.

As a final important word – Jagan hopes the film helps Sagai get more work as a photographer and photoshop artist. He is a brilliant, natural artist, as per Jagan. He can be contacted through his FB page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002362315963. And Jagan at: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=781940706. So if any of you have any photoshop or photography gig in Chembur or around, try Sagai.

Cold Weather, Colder Truth : How Coming of Age has aged, explains Subrat

Posted: February 13, 2011 by moifightclub in cinema, film review, Hollywood, Movie Recco, movie reviews
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The real battle in storytelling is with the cliches. You sit down to write a different ‘coming of age’ story. You pick a female protagonist, an unlikely location and you paint a grim picture of life addled with addiction, poverty and a fierce sense of kinship. You think that’s distinct – the trunk and branches that should hold the narrative seem real – so, you start arranging the leaves of the tree. It is then the hard work begins. These leaves look no different from the leaves you have seen on many other trees. Then begins your battle with the cliches. Fortunately for us, this is a battle that Debra Granik wins with aplomb in Winter’s Bone. In her dual role as writer and director, she scripts and brings to life on screen a searing coming of age story that’s original, disturbing and filled with arresting details.

There are two templates of coming of age story in modern literature. The most famous of them is Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield’s three days in New York after being expelled from his school where he confronts his sexuality, reconciles to his delusions of being the saviour of his generation, deepens his relationship with his sister and discusses life with his former teacher is the most adapted mould. There is no specific external event that triggers Caulfield’s actions. In fact, most of the external world is actually inert to his condition. The strife of Caulfield is internal as his soft idealism dashes against the granite hard reality that is the world outside. As Caulfield hurtles through the three days, the reader is constantly searching for a motive for his martyr without a cause behaviour. There’s none except you discover at the end that the motive was to have him accept adulthood – that living for cause than dying for it is the mark of coming of age.

The simplest example of the other template is ‘Barn Burning’, a short story by Faulkener. Here the catalyst to the coming of age of Sarty Snopes is his disgust at the life of crime and pyromania his father leads. Sarty has to question the only way of life he has known, discover his moral compass and break free. Again, there’s no added motive to Sarty’s actions. It’s his journey of self discovery; of finding his innate idealism in conflict with the principles (or the lack there of) that have reared him.

The second template is the closest that Winter’s Bone gets to as a coming of age tale. It’s a template that Udaan, one of the finest coming of age tales in Indian cinema, follows as well. What Winter’s Bone does beyond the template is to invest in a motive that would have been a story in itself.

Ree Dolly, the seventeen year old protagonist, has her hands full managing her two younger siblings and her ‘not quite there’ mother. There’s a certain elan and economy with which the Granik eases you into the film. There’s a folk song about Missouri that’s playing at the back as the film opens and the radio cackles with the newscast talking about a spell of really cold weather in the area. The stark landscape of Ozarks is quickly established as is the poverty of the families living there through the opening montage of run down houses, disposed cars and the lack of options for feeding the Dolly family dog. Ree is a woman too early – as she takes charge of the breakfast for her siblings, combs her mother’s hair and then walks the siblings to the school while testing them on their spelling and math. This is unlike any America you have seen on screen for a long time. There’s poverty of the kind where the next meal is uncertain, lurking lawlessness around and the class that’s running when the teenaged Ree reaches her school is on parenting which sums up the social environment. There’s also a strange kind of kinship that’s established quite early when the neighbour brings in meat and potatoes for the Dollys with the purpose of knowing why the police (or the law as it’s referred to through the film) had visited them that afternoon. There’s benevolence in here as also a fierce instinct of self preservation; two forces that drive the story forward. Ree accepts both these forces with a line that sums up her own view about the kinship – ‘never ask for what ought to be offered.’

The arrival of the law sets the things in motion. Ree’s father, Jessup, who’s out on bond on charges of ‘cooking’ meth has gone missing a week before his court date. This wouldn’t have meant much to the family except he has pledged the house and the farm to the court. Finding Jessup is the only thing that will keep the family from being out in the cold. The motive for Ree is established. She has to find her father before the week’s up.

This isn’t an easy task. As Ree goes looking for him, she finds an almost mafia-like code of silence pervading the community. She’s constantly advised to stop looking for him for her own good. There are ruses set up to leade her to believe he may be dead including a burnt barn (that’s when you first think of Faulkener) which seems to have gone up in flames because of the meth exploding while cooking. The reactions to her search range from angry but well meaning advice from her uncle Teardrop to active support from her friend (a teenager who already has a baby which makes the parenting class shown earlier in the film quite appropriate), threat of violence from others involved in the meth trade and finally, violence at the hands of women of the house of the local ringleader. Through all this Ree doggedly pursues in her quest. On the surface this is for her family and for a roof on their heads in this particularly harsh winter. But underlying it is Ree’s desire to understand the lives around her and her own life as it would be. By the time Ree finds her father you know she won’t remain the girl she was before she started this search.

This is an incredibly nuanced film. The cold weather and the landscape of Ozarks are used to create a cold, detached mood through the film. Meth is an all pervading character in the film. You see people addicted to it, dying of it, peddling it and living off it. There’s a matter of fact acceptance that eventually everyone will take to it when you find Teardrop asking Ree if she’s developed any taste for it. There is also chauvanism of the kind that would make khap panchayats proud. The distinct sense of discomfort is not only from the nature of Ree’s questions but the fact that she is a woman who is going about seeking such information. And, when things come to a pass, it is the women of Thump Milton’s house (the local ringleader) who get violent with Ree. The men couldn’t bring themselves to be harsh on a girl.

The film rests on Ree’ shoulders and, this is, quite possibly, the best written female character seen on screen for a long time. Ree is remarkably assured and level headed for the kind of world she lives in. It was easy to make her precocious but she isn’t. She has preserved a set of ideals that she lives by and they give her the fortitude to shoulder on as well as the vulnerability to break down when she finds the seizing of the house by court imminent. You could almost see they way life could have turned out for her when she goes to the Army recruitment centre. The singularity of purpose in the face of odds and the moral courage that she demonstrates would have been attributes of a fine young soldier. Those attributes aren’t lost. They eventually help her discover the truth in a test of grit that’s almost mythical.

Winter’s Bone is a poetic film. There’s lyricism amidst dirt, hunger and betrayal. There’s hope and optimism at the end that juxtaposes with an eerie sense of what Ree might become eventually. It’s poetry because it doesn’t wait to explain. It flows and takes you along till the final sequence. Ree on a rowboat on a pond on an inky cold night along with Thump Milton’s women. There’s a surreal beauty around that pond that hides the macabre truth that Ree already knows but is about to ascertain.

The water’s icy cold and the moment the chainsaw cuts to the bone, you know why this is a mould-breaking coming of age film. You also discover why it’s titled Winter’s Bone.

“What is True Grit ?” ponders Anupam Dhar

Posted: January 31, 2011 by moifightclub in cinema, film review, Hollywood, reviews, Thoughts
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Anupam, who ? Well, here is Jahan Bakshi on Anupam – I can’t really think of any grandiose ways to describe the unassuming bloke that is Anupam Dhar. So I’ll just say that Sunny, as we often call him – is my senior from the rather eclectic Department of Mass Communications at St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata, who happens to be a dear friend- and a huge movie-buff himself.  A Coen Brothers fanboy like many of us, Anupam thoroughly enjoyed their new film True Grit, and with this post, hopes to provide some perspective, especially in light of the many rants about it lacking that ‘Coens touch’ and being ‘just another western’.  Read On…

What is True Grit? This was a question I first saw in a review by some Western film critic. As much as I wanted to answer it, I was never sure I could do so simply because it’s almost so indefinable and so very personal. Indeed as I revisited the retelling of Charles Portis’ novel by the Coen Brothers last night, I was again so sure that maybe True Grit is just more than being brave and courageous in the face of adversity. True Grit is being able to stand up to what is right and what is correct; to be able to take things in your own hands when all around you people are shirking away from it. True Grit is fighting for what you believe in and never compromising on that belief. True Grit is Gandhi in his search for freedom but in the way he wanted it, without ever raising a hand when he was being beaten mercilessly by the British Imperialists. True Grit is Mandela, Martin Luther King, Bolivar and many more who have stood up against adversity with a smile and a determination to fight for what they believed. The biggest achievement of film True Grit is a reminder of that; the noblest and strongest of human emotions which often make people triumph over the seemingly insurmountable.

A lot has been said about the film, how it is just “another Western” with nothing new to add to it. Many were expecting the Coens to add a new dimension, maybe make a dark and satirical interpretation of a book, which had already been made into a much loved film. But isn’t the Western about raw human emotions; about those wild times when the gun ruled supreme and human lives were none too important; about the passions that the raw, unchartered and seemingly endless territories of the New World evoked? If that is so, then True Grit succeeds in its intention. It’s a beautiful film and much of that praise must go to Roger Deakins who once again reminds us that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, in this case that of Deakins and his camera. As the camera pans the rough territories, it tells its own story, one of survival and hardships and one where the rule of the jungle reigns supreme.

In one beautiful shot, the film’s protagonists, Mattie Ross and Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn approach a tree to which a man is hung. Neither display any emotion to the scene and their only interest lay in whether the dead man hanging is the man they’re searching for. Life is worth pennies where each man is fighting for his own. The beauty of the film lies in its simplistic narration; where a dark and somber story of courage and revenge is told just as it is, without the intrusion of the directors’ own point of view. In that sense True Grit is not just a story, it is also a study of man’s own brutal instincts and the latent violence that is there in all of us and which threatens to unleash itself at the slightest provocation.

True Grit succeeds a lot because of a wonderful ensemble cast. Led by the towering Jeff Bridges, the cast gives itself off to the film’s characters and brings in them the depth that enriches our experience of the film and makes us sympathise with the characters. Bridges moves far off from John Wayne and gives the character his own personal interpretation resulting in a far more complex character which evolves as the film moves on. Matt Damon is good as well and his Texas Ranger makes a deep mark in the film, especially in the scene where he spanks Mattie and tries to scare her off. Josh Brolin and Barry Pepper shine in their small roles. But this film truly belongs to young Hailee Steinfeld, who as Mattie Ross gives a brilliant performance; one which offers us a vivid picture of the 14 year old girl who wants to avenge her father’s murder. Mattie’s innocence, her resolve, determination, courage and vulnerability is expressed beautifully by Steinfeld which gives her character a larger dimension that was missing from the earlier film. Special mention needs to be made of Production Designer, Jess Gonchor and Costume Designer, Mary Zophres who give the film a beautiful and old world feel. Carter Burwell’s haunting background score adds to the atmosphere of the film. The Coens write and direct the film in the way a Western should be and for once I am very pleased with that. Some films are meant to plainly entertain, some are meant to make you think, but some like True Grit are simply meant to be absorbed and felt. It’s a document of those hard and brutal times and a testimony to the most sublime and also the most dangerous of human emotions. True Grit is, as I had tried to answer before, the heart to stand up and fight.

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

“Why you should hate love stories” advises Subrat

Posted: January 28, 2011 by moifightclub in cinema, film review, Movie Recco, Thoughts
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“This is how a working class love story should be”, Subrat messaged after watching Blue Valentine. “Wow! Post ?” I replied back. And here it is. If you have seen it, read the post to fall in love with it, all over again. If you haven’t, do watch it. Was also wondering how in the last few years there has been a constant flow of good cinema thats exploring the “couples’ code” – all about man, woman and child. Away We Go, Revolutionary Road, Blue Valentine, Rabbit Hole and The Kids Are All Right. Where’s our code ?

Read on…

You are left stranded at the end. Fireworks go up in the sky. The closing credits come on with a tune that sounds familiar. It takes you a while to figure it’s the same tune that Dean (Ryan Gosling) played on his ukulele years ago while serenading Cindy (Michelle Williams) who dances at the doorway of a shop. And, you return to Apollinaire’s query – does joy always come after pain? Or, as you have just discovered in Blue Valentine, does pain inevitably follow joy? The title places ‘Valentine’ after ‘Blue’ which suggests the filmmaker nodding in assent to Apollinaire. But that’s deceiving.

On the surface, you see two stories in Blue Valentine. These are stories you’ve seen often. Of falling in love and falling out of it. Yet, in examining this over familiar terrain, in twisting and turning it under a steady unemotional gaze, Blue Valentine succeeds in creating compelling cinema.

There’s the present day story of Dean and Cindy. Seemingly, of everyday domesticity on an early summer morning. Their daughter is searching for their pet dog which has run off. You notice the house, the instant breakfast that Cindy rustles up and you sense indifference. Soon, you find the dog dead and Dean doesn’t have the heart to break the truth to his daughter. ‘She must have moved to Hollywood to become a movie dog. She had the looks’, he says.

You are then transported 6 years back in time. There is no reference though to this switching back. With the screen brightening up a touch more, you see a younger Dean looking for a job in a house-moving company. You are in the familiar boy-meets-girl-and-they-fall-in-love territory now. From here on, the film moves back and forth between these two stories of love blossoming and souring, the sweet to the tart without showing us anything that happened in the intervening years.

How does love seep away from a relationship? There’s never a single reason for it. It’s natural erosion. When you see Dean and Cindy falling in love, you might spot the seeds of future discord. Cindy’s desire to study and move up in life is in contrast to the slacker Dean who seems to be good at things but is bereft of ambition. There’s undeniable chemistry between the two but there’s something uncomfortable as you watch them. As the film flips between the two stories, you conclude that all the old adages about love are exactly the reasons why love sours. That love makes you a better person, that love can reform, that love conquers all – each one of them bites the dust. These are all predicated on a colossal lie – of people being made for each other. The film helps you with the benefit of hindsight to see through this lie. But leaves it for the protagonists to discover it as they live through it. That’s the beauty of this script.

As you watch Dean winning his daughter’s love and trust, you see the lie being played all over again. And you can’t help but pity the human impulse. Of deceit forming the premise for all love. We have all lived through it yet when the opportunity presents itself again, we willingly submit ourselves to another lie. Why, come to think of it, even that anthem of first love in Hindi cinema, ‘Pehla Nasha’, is a charade. Nothing is quite as it seems for the three characters in that song.

What aids this clinical exposition of love is the way the characters are etched in Blue Valentine. There’s a visible streak of misogyny that runs through the film. The emotional stack is loaded in favor of Dean. He marries Cindy despite knowing the truth at the abortion clinic. it’s Dean who is shown to be perfectly in sync with his daughter’s hopes and desires. And, he is expressly demonstrative about making the marriage work. You are emotionally invested in Dean from the very beginning. The artless way he admits to not being good enough for Cindy when he proposes to her at her home to his helplessness at the end when he asks Cindy – ‘how should I be’? The story ends too with a definite sense of loss for Dean that tugs at your heartstrings. This is a departure from how a typical marital discord story unspools where the emotional cards are equally dealt to make sure both the protagonists have a good hand (take Kramer vs Kramer as an example). However, if you look closer, you will find the prime mover through the entire film is Cindy. She is the one who makes all the choices in the film. She is willing to live through the consequences of those choices and is unafraid of confronting the truth. While on one hand it’s a subtle inversion of roles, on the other, it’s very clever scripting.

Blue Valentine is a film of deft touches. You almost feel there’s deliberate foolish manner in which love is depicted through the film. The scene of Dean strumming on his ukulele and singing while Cindy dances is not romantic for the viewers. The singing is bad and the dancing pedestrian. You almost feel embarassed to watch the silly couple falling in love there. The motel sequence with its space age suite where Dean and Cindy go to reignite the sparks in their marriage is clumsy and makes you squirm. There’s nothing grand about love and you are constantly reminded about it. The irony of the relationship between Dean and their daughter while you know of Cindy’s backstory is again never once brought up. The playing up of the father-daughter relationship is done so naturally that you forget the truth about their daughter in the last scene of the film.

You will find a similar trick played on you in Rabbit Hole, another film this year that had a beautiful subtle ending. You also sense the way fate mocks at Cindy – from wanting to study medicine, to making that life changing choice at the abortion clinic to ending up as a nurse at a maternity center.

It’s easy to call Blue Valentine a film that’s rich in subtext. That would, however, be simplifying things. Blue Valentine is not an ambitious film. Our ambitions are always an imagined superlative form of what we actually are. Instead, Blue Valentine, is a introspective film. It chooses to pose uncomfortable questions about our normal selves. It shows you the truth once the varnish wears off.

“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.” You will find that line in Kundera’s ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’. You can read that line many times over today and still not get what he meant there. Then one day you find yourself in a old Mumbai home on Napean Sea Road. You see two sepia tinted photographs of a couple. Both shot at the same location – the now closed Cafe Naaz with the iconic Queen’s Necklace as the backdrop. May be ten years apart. You look closely at the two pictures. And, you understand what Kundera meant.

Or, you can watch Blue Valentine.

(Ed – Click here to read all about the making of the film. It’s a must read!)

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