KAUFMAN - "Or cramming in sex, or car chases, or guns. Or characters learning profound life lessons. Or characters growing or characters changing or characters learning to like each other or characters overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end. Y'know ? Movie shit."
Kaufman is sweating like crazy now. Valerie is quiet for a moment - from "Adaptation".
We are all about CINEMA. That movie shit.
NOTHING is sacred.
NOBODY is spared.
Because we talk about films, dammit.
Not your sex life.
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After having its premiere at Cannes Film Festival, doing the international fest rounds, and bagging the National Award for Best Punjabi Film, Gurvinder Singh’s Chauthi Koot has finally released in India.
Official synopsis : Punjab. The mid 1980s. A train journey to Amritsar. A dog that barks. Unwelcome guests late in the night and early morning. Dilemmas and fears.
‘Chauthi Koot‘ is Singh’s second feature after ‘Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan‘. Based on the short stories of Waryam Singh Sandhu, it’s a reflection on the undercurrents of the 1980s in a fear ridden Punjab post the Bluestar.
Cast : Suvinder Pal Vicky, Rajbir Kaur, Kanwaljeet Singh, Gurpreet Bhangu, Tommy Crew :
Cinematography: Satya Rai Nagpaul
Sound: Sushmit Bob Nath
Executive Producer: Kartikeya Narayan Singh
Production Design: Priyanka Grover
Costumes: Navjeet Kaur
Associate Producer: Himmat Sarkaria
Click here to read what Dibakar Banerjee thinks about the film. And click here to read Singh’s profile in India Today. Waryam Singh Sandhu’s interview is here.
Here are the show timings across the country
Earlier this year, Singh had refused to accept the National Award for the same film. Our post on the same here and here.
Honoured and so happy to receive the National Film Award yesterday. Here’s the picture for you to like!
This is the image that filmmaker Gurvinder Singh posted on his FB with a status update. A post with such black humour, we couldn’t resist the urge to share it with our readers.
Gurvinder’s film Chauthi Koot was awarded the National Award for Best Punjabi Film, and the citation reads as follows – ‘Effectively captures the sense of fear psychosis and tension during the times of insurgency in Punjab’. The Rajat Kamal Award includes cash prize of Rs 1,00,000/- each to the Producer and Director. He refused the award as a mark of protest for the choices the jury made, especially for Baahubali winning the Best Film Award. We had written about it earlier. Though he made it clear that his producer friend will accept the Producer’s award.
Recently, he shared another anecdote on his FB questioning the choice of National Film Awards jury.
Accosted by a young man dressed smartly in a black suit at the Kayseri bus station helping us book a bus to Ortahisar in Cappadocia, the land of magical landscapes and cave homes where Nuri Bilge Ceylan shot “The Winter Sleep”, we drink Turkish tea to kill time as he tries to communicate with us jovially in his bare knowledge of English, sometimes with the help of ‘Google Translate’ on his mobile. Once he knows we are from India, the topic veers towards Indian movies. He tells us that Indian movies are very popular in Turkey and they like the songs and dances. This after a woman in a shop in Istanbul had said she loves Paro, but cannot remember her name as its too difficult to pronounce. Aishwarya Rai, we told her. Yes yes, she nodded enthusiastically. And after a man in the same market had proudly proclaimed to us that he is Shah Rukh Khan’s father!
Now the young man at the Kayseri bus station asks us if we have seen ‘Baahubali’? My jaw drops. Sunayana laughs. We ask him whether he likes the movie? Then he goes on to type something on his mobile in Turkish on Google Translate. It gets translated into English as ‘nonsense’! We all laugh and I heave a sigh of relief. To reiterate, he says its crazy and stupid.
This ‘nonsense’ will be awarded the Best Indian Film of 2015 at the National Film Awards tomorrow. Hats off to the esteemed jury for this remarkable selection.
An alumni of FTII, Gurvinder is one of the most promising and fearless young filmmaking talent in the current generation. Chauthi Koot (The Fourth Direction) premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2015. His debut feature film, Anhe Ghorey De Daan, was selected to premiere at Venice International Film Festival. And it bagged 3 National Film Awards – For Direction, Cinematography, and for Best Punjabi Film.
And as long as Singh’s fearless sense of (black) humour is intact, we will always be cheering for him.
I know Marathi just like I know Guitar and Keyboards. I can sense their presence but can never play with them (publicly) because I don’t understand them. My exposure to non-Hindi film music has been similar. My Marathi music ‘plays’ have been limited to the music of Shala, Balak Palak and Natarang. Cut to the first teaser of Sairat that I came across, and all of that changed. I have since then tried to explore Ajay-Atul’s work in depth, and most of it has been in Marathi, but more on that later. With absolutely no comment/interpretation on the lyrics of this film album, here is what I think of the album that hit me like a bolt of lightning!
Yad lagla is decorated so well as a composition that even before Ajay gets behind the microphone you would be swaying at those definitive violin riff repeats. Not only in the opening, violins are almost a second voice throughout the song. Even when we hear Ajay in antras, we can hear those violins and they are in no way bothersome to ears. A song that to my ears sounds like musings of a man madly in love. A song extremely high on melody.
Part college-festy (like Koi Mil Gaya from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai) and part Kannum kannum (from Thiruda Thiruda), Aatach baaya ka baavarla’s high points are those variations that Shreya takes in both the antras. The pause in between is only an excuse to hit the listeners with those layered percussion and strings almost immediately. Like I said, Shreya is top class in the song be her biting ‘attacha’ in every antra or her tempo variation. The backups reminded me a lot about ARRahman and his use of backups in 1990s, especially in the film, 1947 – Earth. An insanely enjoyable song!
In what soothes like a balm to the senses, Chinmayi Sripada starts Sairat zaala ji, and is almost immediately joined by Ajay. The song flows like a symphony and the overall mood doesn’t weigh you down because the antras are playful and easy on ears. I did feel the percussion could have been a bit lighter in the song. The flute in the second part of the song is all sorts of cute and the bagpipe parade like tune in between is actually smart. I felt the song gave more room to Ajay to improvise than it did to Chinmayi.
What is clearly, unabashedly and LOUDLY a celebration song, Zingaat is Ajay-Atul playing in their familiar territory. It is exactly *that* song which would haunt us Bombay-walas in the coming days whenever there is *any* celebration. The song has brass band as well, but you really don’t notice their presence because of the constant *dinchak dichak*. Length wise, this is the shortest song of the album, but impact wise, probably the song that will outlive the film, in Maharashtra.
Ajay-Atul’s symphonic inclination is well known, so much so that back in 2002, they came out with an album titled ‘Ganesh Symphonic Chants Experience’ which is quite something. Some kind friends have passed me the music of films like Natarang and Jogwa, and it suffices to say that the sound of Sairat is a step forward by Ajay-Atul in terms of marrying their favourite sound with the limitations that a typical ‘film album’ presents them with. Thumbs up for that!
I just have one grouse – if not checked, Ajay-Atul can quickly sink to where our favourite ‘It’ boy went – using their own voice a bit too much in their albums.
Overall, this is the album that I have heard the most number of times vis a vis any out and out non-Hindi album that I have laid my hands on in the last couple of years. The madness that this album infected me with reminded me of film album by ARRahman titled ‘Boys’ that came out long time back.
When I heard Nenjukulle, I wanted to understand Tamil.
Sairat makes me want to write poetry in Marathi..
It is exactly the kind of music that makes you want to pay for it, twice! The album costs just 48 bucks on iTunes. Buy it, celebrate it. It’s well worth it!
Knowledge is acquired.
Art is inherent.
Knowledge solves complexities.
Art gives birth to those very complexities.
There is a whole scene dedicated to this Knowledge V/S Art (Vidya V/S Kala) debate in Katyar Kaljat Ghusli — and it is easily my favourite part in the movie. A musical maestro’s protege aches for knowledge. The knowledge that can hone his skills, set him apart. But he completely overlooks the fact that even without the knowledge, what he already has within him — the raw art of music — is far more valuable.
Anybody who has grown up in a typical Marathi household has heard their mothers and fathers sing Ghei Channd Makarand. It won’t be blasphemous to say that it is our equivalent of a Bachchan or Tagore poem, if not as widely popular. So when the film adaptation of the cult musical, Katyar Kaljat Ghusli, was released, all of us got a call from home urging us to go see what a spectacle it is.
And I’m happy to report that it has lived up to the hype. The plot is simple: Pt. Bhanushankar of Vishrampur (Shankar Mahadevan) discovers Khan Sahab (Sachin Pilgaonkar) in one of his mehfils and brings him back to his town. But Khan Sahab’s talent always ranks below Pt. Bhanushankar’s, and a fierce sense of competition starts to rise within him. Competition culminates into sabotage and Pt. Bhanushankar loses his voice as a result of a vicious scheme. As Khan Sahab settles into the comforts of the palace and new his designation of the Royal Singer, Pt. Bhanushankar’s protege, Sadashiv (Subodh Bhave) enters the scene to win his mentor’s honour back.
The most interesting thing about Katyar… is the use of music. It feels as important to the anatomy of the film as a limb (props to writer Prakash Kapadia, who has emerged as the master of the Indian epic. His next is Bajirao Mastani). While most films about music add songs just to authenticate the genre (here’s looking at you, Aashiqui 2), Katyar’s music takes the narrative forward and keeps you glued to your seats even through songs. While Ghei Channd will always remain a favourite, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s Sur Niragas Ho and Yaar Illahi could easily become the next generation’s favourites.
I may be at a disadvantage, having not seen the original musical, but my father tells me that the film was about 80% true to the source material, which is not a bad percentage at all. The dialogue is dense with beautiful lines about music, art, the value of commitment, envy and the evil in one’s heart. Shankar Mahadevan appears to be surprisingly comfortable in his role and Subodh Bhave — with his ability to be believable as Anybody — is honest. Sachin Pilgaonkar has walked away with the lion’s share of compliments, but I can never shake the feeling that his brand of acting is similar to Aamir’s — where, with each movement and each gesture, he wants you to know just how good he is. Frankly, he overdid some scenes, but let’s not focus on that.
The good thing is, the movie has released with subtitles and, for once, the person who has done the subtitling deserves a pat on the back. They have masterfully turned colloquial Marathi phrases into English lines, and successfully translated the humour when required.
Yes, the plot is predictable and spoon-fed to viewers, but if you’re in for a true musical with hair-raising compositions embedded into the story, and the magic of simple storytelling as well, this is your pick.
There I lay my head on the pillow, snuggled into my blanket ready to surrender to the world of talking animals and strange beings my mother was about to conjure for me. It was delicious.
Then one day, I found my sister reading a 1000 page fat book with tiny font and pictures. Strange, I thought. In my world only children’s books (or textbooks and magazines) had pictures and never in tiny font. Tiny font was ‘meant for grown-ups’ territory, one to be stayed away from, so boring. But curiosity got the better of me and I went down the rabbit hole a-la Alice and landed in a wonderland of rolling peas, talking trees and 3/6/12-headed dragons. It was a much-to-be-thumbed Book of Ukranian Folk Tales.
None of it was incredulous; magic never is when you are a kid. Just curiouser and curiouser. It was a real world, with real people living in real houses and doing real things, but that world was full of strange phenomena. It brought magic right onto my doorstep. These weren’t Disney’s amusement park-like fairylands visiting me, but home-grown magic churned like butter from daily life with all its shades intact. Kothanodi – River of Fables is something like that.
It opens on the darkest tone possible. A man is burying a living infant in a mysterious forest full of strange, eerie sounds. Wails and whispers are all around, suggesting something sinister is on. And you are intrigued to know more. This seems like more than a fable, more than folklore, you say, when suddenly an elephant apple comes rolling along. It is following a woman, carefully, loyally. A loving father is taking leave of his young daughter as a suspicious-looking step-mother looks on. A python is stealthily being caught in the forest and next thing we know it is being welcomed into a household to be wedded to a human girl. The setting is tribal, somewhere deep in the interiors of Assam, along a river that carries the fables from the shore of one house to another, from one mother to another.
A narrative connect of four mothers weaves four different folktales into one solid film. The screenplay is based on events and characters described in popular Assamese folk tales compiled in the anthology ‘বুঢ়ী আইৰ সাধু’ or Grandma’s Tales, by Assamese literary luminary Lakshminath Bezbaroa, and first published in 1911 (source: link). Each story soaked in the ethos of its space and time, flows in and out of each other.
The mother-daughter thematic motif makes it tempting to dig deeper to look for hidden sub-text of social comment, only to find it is a formal element instead. This realisation dawns as the film draws towards its unique and dreadful conclusions and with it takes away the pressure of decoding it, replacing it with the pleasure of magic realism.
The joy of the film lies in its naturalistic setting and use of melodrama to suitably evoke earthy, home-grown environs of tribal India where witches and teachers, merchants and snake-grooms, mothers and talking dead bodies, live together. The emotional decibel of the film is tuned in balance, with a heightened measure of melodrama where required (in Tejimola and snake-groom stories), and controlled where necessary (the elephant apple story and buried babies stories.) The play then, of the baby burying scene (which plays out in all its eerie glory), cutting in between stories to unsettle the mood a bit, lest the fable become a dream removed from reality, becomes interesting. The joy of a fairy tale is in its mirth and that of a fable in its mystique, while folklore is rooted in common, realistic setting. The more rooted the setting the more absurd and mysterious does the magic seem. Yet, surprisingly more real. You can touch it, almost. And in River of Fables we don’t question the magic, we just let it happen, like we did when we saw it when we were young.
Perhaps, the biggest achievement of the film is bringing magic into the adult, mainstream language back by seizing it from children’s territory to a very adult world and adult problems and demystifying it by laying bare its darkest shades, without sugar-coating, something we don’t encounter often in children’s fables or popular folklore. And here the film does not differentiate or take sides with white or black magic, rather treats it like yin and yang. Exactly how it is. I hope this isn’t reduced to an over-simplified argument of fanning superstition.
The film would have been lesser if not for the gravitas that Adil Hussain, Urmila Mahanta and Seema Biswas lend to their characters and the story. They carry the inter-woven, longform narrative with assured grace and control that is a pleasure to watch.
Certain portions of the film, especially the eerie sequences, do have a tacky, under-done feel, partly in budget, partly in design and partly in imagination. Yet, it does not become a hindrance in enjoying an otherwise delectable fare much like that other gem in the same genre ‘Goynar Boksho’.
I lost my Ukranian folk tales book to a raddiwala because parents mistakenly thought I was too old to be interested in them anymore. River of Fables lessened the ache a little.
Mumbai Film Festival – our annual movie ritual is on. And like every year, we are going to cover the festival like nobody else does it. moiFightClub regulars and readers will bring you all the day’s reccos and reviews.
Things looked way more organised today as no screenings got cancelled and in spite of the weekend, the crowd management was quite smooth. Quick tip for people watching movies at PVR Juhu – head over to Dakshianayan next to ISCKON temple (5-mins walking) for a quick bite or lunch if you are hungry. Very reasonably priced and the best South Indian food on the western line.
Caught three films today too. (While getting nostalgic about the days we would catch 5 films daily. Sher buddha ho gaya ab.)
DHEEPANby Jacques Audiard
Audiard’s Palm d’Or winner is a continuation of his theme of looking at the French underbelly and the lives of migrant communities there and it’s as brilliant as we have come to expect from him. This time the focus is on Sri Lankan Tamils through the life of a defeated LTTE soldier and it’s easy to understand why it won him the top award at Cannes. The refugee crisis Europe is in the middle of right now finds an intimate reflection in the struggle of Dheepan, played with a breathtaking intensity by ABC, whose own life has many parallels with the fictional story. He moved to France from Sri Lanka 24-years ago, on an illegal passport, escaping from the life of a child-soldier for LTTE. Today he is a known Tamil writer in France but his sincerity in portraying the role probably comes from a line he said while replying to an audience question – “For a refugee, the closure never comes.”
THE IMMORTALSby Shivendra Singh Dungarpur
Shivendra Singh’s documentary feels more like a walk in a brilliantly curated museum of Indian Cinema History, complete with a very romantic audio-guide. It does give us a look at some rare pictures, equipment, stories, and relics from an era that seems to exist in a time thousand years ago, and not just 100. It’s shot like a dream with every frame looking like a master photographer’s creation but the missing names of interviewees, the poetic but rambling narration, and the abrupt narrative stop it from becoming a great film. It’s puzzling that the Director chose this route as he had some great material at hand. But then, every passionate lover has his/her own way of courting the muse. This one happens to be a bit too personal.
THITHI by Ram Reddy
A hundred-year old man (Century Gowda) dies in a village and his family and villagers prepare for the grand feast (Thithi) to celebrate the life of the grand old fucker. Very few Indian films portray village with as much irreverence, quirkiness and in shades of grey (instead of the standard glorification or demonization) as Thithi manages to and that is probably because of Raam Reddy’s writer and Casting Director Eregowda who hails from the same village.
The film is populated with “more than 100” characters, all non-actors casted locally and they bring so much novelty and weight to this occasionally uneven (the last chunk felt like going in too-many-directions) but very ambitious script. A must watch, not just for the humor but also for the philosophical undertones pulled off quite effortlessly.
– Varun Grover
CHAUTHI KOOT by Gurvinder Singh
Gurvinder Singh picks a potent premise – the everyday fears & paranoia of 1980s Punjab & yet delivers a film that feels mostly ineffectual. Singh eschews drama for mood & atmosphere but never quite seems to be in control of his craft enough to deliver the horror that the material intends. What doesn’t help is that the film is full of opaque characters who lack psychological depth – Tommy the dog (who is a crucial part of the narrative) feels like the best realized character. Slow, D.E.L.I.B.E.R.A.T.E.L.Y paced – the kind of film you can snooze through a couple of times without missing much. Underwhelming.
The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers by Ben Rivers
Since I’m not into vipasana & don’t plan to do the Iron Man triathlon anytime soon, I compensate by watching the occasional extreme art-house film as a feat of endurance. The reviews for TSTATEIAATTEANB (phew!) promised a tough, challenging watch and that’s exactly what the film delivers.
This visually striking film doesn’t have much of a narrative, instead it plays as a parable on control & the loss of it (or that’s what I think it’s about). It follows a French filmmaker trying to make a film in the majestic yet inhospitable Atlas mountains of Morocco (reminded me of Herzog & Fitzcarraldo) who is kidnapped & subsequently has graphic, painful misfortunes visited upon him. The film’s language is part surreal art project, part improvised documentary and is always destabilizing audience expectations.
Difficult to say that I liked it, though it does have some moments of amazing cinematic power. More appropriate to say that I’m proud I lasted the whole course. Many others in the hall didn’t – haven’t seen these many walk outs during a screening since Love Story 2050.
Rarely a film hits you so hard, and that too at the right spot. An investigation of lives at the medical school which has one of the toughest admission process, Placebo is a brave, brave documentary film.
The film creates such a stark mood, and at times, it’s so funny and disturbing. The editing must have been crazy as Abhay shot the film over a period of 2 years. Special mention for the sound design and background score.
Placebo shook me completely. It’s easily one of the best documentaries i have seen coming out of India in the recent times.
There is one more (last) screening on 3rd November at 6.30 pm (PVR ECX Screen 4) Please DO NOT miss it.
Film is Taxi, and its driver and director are the same person – Jafar Panahi. As he roams around on the streets of Iran pretending to be a taxi driver, people get in/out of his taxi, and the film captures the changing society and it’s morality. Peter Bradshaw aptly described it as Anti-Travis Bickle.
For most part of the film, everything happens inside the taxi. And yet, it’s funny and poignant in equal measure. It’s great fun as passengers of different nature/social status get in and make their point. But it’s sad when you think about the extreme that Panahi has to go to make a film. It’s heartbreaking. Don’t miss the text end plates of the film. This one is a Must Watch.
DHEEPAN by Jacques Audiard
Audiard’s Dheepan reminded me so much of his earlier film, A Prophet. As a ex-LTTE soldier moves to France and tries to start a new life, we realise that it’s never going to be easy for him. Forgetting the turbulent past, making sense of the confusing present, and fear of the unknown future – he and his two unknown companions, who pretend to be his family, battle it everyday.
In the last half hour, the film takes a dramatic turn which is quite different from the tone of rest of the film. But it still remains a powerful film which has empathy for its characters. It completely belongs to his lead actor Antonythasan Jesuthasan who is there in almost every frame, and has a great screen presence.
Jesuthasan was at MAMI to present the film and for the post-screening Q and A. Interestingly, the film mirrors his journey as he was also a member of the LTTE, and later settled in France as a refugee. When i asked him if his life has changed for any better after the film got critical acclaim, bagged the Cannes top award, and he is being invited all over. He said earlier he wouldn’t buy the metro train tickets in France. Now people recognize him and he is forced to buy that 2 Euro train tickets. So that has changed for him – expense of extra 2 euros. And he is still a refugee in France. The difference between life and cinema. Do watch it.
Raam Reddy’s directorial debut, Thithi has been selected for the prestigious Locarno International Film Festival. Also, this marks the end of a dry spell of eight years since an Indian film made it to the competitive section at the fest. This year’s edition of the festival will take place from August 5 – 15, 2015.
Thithi will be presented in the Concorso Cineasti del Presente (Filmmakers Of The Present) section and will be competing for the Pardo d’oro Cineasti del presente – Premio Nescens at the festival. This section features 14 films this year.
Last year, the Kannada-language film was selected for the Work-in-Progress Lab at the NFDC Film Bazaar where it was declared the Best Work-in-Progress Fiction Feature.
The film is a dramatic comedy about how three generations of sons react to the death of Century Gowda, their great grandfather, who is a locally renowned, and is a highly cranky 101-year-old man. Set in a village in the Mandya District of Karnataka, the three storylines intertwine before converging at Century Gowda’s thithi, the final funeral celebration 11 days after a death.
Shot in the Mandya district of Karnataka, this was co-written and developed along with Eregowda, who spent most of his childhood in the same village that the film was shot in. The cast of the film comprises of completely non-professional actors.
Filmmaker Raam Reddy is a graduate of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi and Prague Film School. Previously, he directed a critically-acclaimed short film called Ika (Feather). He has also published a novel titled It’s Raining in Maya.
Anurag Kashyap’s Bombay Velvet will also have its screening at the festival.
It’s the latest blockbuster that you might not have heard about. A bit of googling tells me that Anurag Singh’s Punjab 1984 had no takers intially. A serious drama in the backdrop of 1984, and that too in the age of YoYoHoneySingh and Jatt-Juliet, who would watch? But if only formulas and calculations of what-works-what-doesn’t could prove right every time, we would have been deprived of some of the best films ever made. Shailesh Kapoor tells us why Anurag Singh’s Punjab 1984 is a must watch, and how it has turned out to be such a blockbuster.
Technically, Punjabi is my “mother tongue”. I have grown up seeing my parents converse in the language at home, as well as with friends and relatives. I have even studied Punjabi as a third language in school for two years, till I was shifted from a Sikh school to a “normal” school, post the 1984 riots in Delhi.
Yet, I have never watched a Punjabi film in a theatre before this Thursday. Till recently, Punjabi cinema was not a thriving industry. Over the last 3-4 years, the industry has found its feet, thanks to the mushrooming of multiplexes in the East Punjab territory, creating a fertile ground for business. Yet, their cinema has been skewed towards the comedy genre. In a bus trip in Punjab last year, I was subject to watching one such Punjabi blockbuster on video. Assault on the senses won’t be an over-statement to describe the experience.
Glowing online reviews of last week’s release, Punjab 1984, forced me to a theatre during my short Delhi trip earlier this week. My interest in Operation Bluestar has grown over the last few years, leading me to read a few books on the subject. That familiarity with the subject, and the presence of Kirron Kher in the principal cast, was sufficient motivation.
Even as I went in with high expectations, I was not prepared for the brilliance of the cinematic experience I was about to be a part of. Know the song “Luka Chhuppi” from Rang De Basanti? Punjab 1984 is that song’s little story told through a film. And even though the song featured Waheeda Rehman as the mother, Punjab 1984 can well be described as the story of Kirron Kher’s character in the same Rang De Basanti, converted into a full-length feature film.
A mother-son story set in the aftermath of Operation Bluestar, Punjab 1984 has a grammar that’s uniquely matter-of-fact. It does not attempt to commercialize the subject, and equally importantly, it does not do the reverse either – of trying to be an off-beat film that demands to be taken seriously. As a result, what we get is a human story, laced with human situations and dialogue, directed with a free spirit that blends entertainment with sensitivity effortlessly.
Director Anurag Singh has directed some of those mindless blockbuster Punjabi comedies, one of which I encountered in the aforementioned bus trip. With a solid script and a superb starcast, he comes into his own with Punjab 1984, delivering a knockout performance at the helm.
I hadn’t heard of Diljit Dosanjh till a week ago, though I now realize he has sung a few Bollywood songs as well. Kirron Kher is in top form, at home with the language and the culture, and yet, Dosanjh manages to live upto her caliber in the role of her son, played with a sense of raw believability that’s rare to film these days.
There are at least half a dozen moments in the film when you struggle to hold back tears, when emotional highs are delivered through a mix of fine writing and good acting. And unlike Gulzar’s Maachis, the film does not confuse the issue of terrorism, and leaves the audience with a clear message that’s rooted in reality and morality together. Of course, without a hint of being preachy at any point.
The end credits blend the real into the reel. Not a soul moved in my half-filled theatre till the screen had turned absolutely black. I last remember going through that experience in Taare Zameen Par.
Punjab 1984 is set to cross the 10 crore mark, which remains a magical figure for Punjabi films, much like 150 or 200 crore for Bollywood. It’s been four days since I watched it, and I’m still wondering why an industry more than 20 times in size not produce such films, at a rate more than once or twice a year. And by “such films”, I don’t mean this exact film, but unconventional subjects where human emotions are treated as, well, human emotions.
I know that we are in an age of instant gratification and the youth drive cinema choices at the studios these days. But surely, there can be more variants (not versions) of A Wednesday or Queen. Surely, there’s a market. At least, there is no evidence that there’s not a market.
If “regional” cinema like Punjab 1984 is needed to shake up a national industry, then so be it. But hope the shake-up happens at some level. No place is a bad place to learn from.
Go and watch Punjab 1984 in a theatre if you can. Even if the language is entirely alien to you, the universality of emotions will cut through to you, right across the screen. And great performance can be heard, even when you don’t understand a word.
A brand-new teaser for director-cinematographer Santosh Sivan’s new film Ceylon (Inam in Tamil) has launched online. We don’t have details on the plot currently, but the film reportedly revolves around the lives of teenagers in an orphanage against the backdrop of war-torn Sri Lanka.
It’s an interesting, unconventional first look for the film, which doesn’t showcase any of the characters just yet, and instead chooses to show the destruction of war juxtaposed against nature, something Sivan is known to capture beautifully. Take a look:
The film stars Saritha, Karunaas, Sugandha Ram among others. Here are some of the crew details:
If you have read this earlier post on 17 terrific films of the year, the brief was the same for this new post. And this one is collaborative too. Only film has been replaced with scenes. So here are the 16 most memorable and powerful scenes of the year as picked by 16 film fanatics.
(If you missed our earlier post in this 2013 flashback series, here’s the list – 20 Things We Learnt At The Movies and 13 Unanswered Questions is here, Top 10 Musical Gems We Discovered This Year is here, 15 Film Fanatics on 17 Terrific Films That Have Stayed With Them is here, and 14 Bollywood Song We Played in Non-stop Loop Is here.)
Fandry, Nagraj Manjule’s charming story of Jabya, a young boy battling his inner turmoil of being born a Dalit, whose only source of income is rescuing the village from droves of pigs by chasing them out, and only happiness is a teenage infatuation and perhaps a non-existent bird, reaches an inevitable, satirical climax that can truly be described as the successor of the Mahabharata scene from Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro.
Cruelly hilarious and dripping with pathos, the last scene of Fandry is a portrayal of who we truly are. As Jabya is forced to help his aging parents chase the pigs down, the village gathers to celebrate this humiliation, almost like spectators at a T20 match.
At one point, one of the characters uploads Jabya’s plight on his Facebook page. That one moment points out how technology has invaded us and yet human values remain absent.
However, Manjule’s masterstroke is Jabya doing exactly what the viewer had been wanting to do all along. He gathers his frustration and desperation to plant a sounding kick into the belly of the very society that was trying to hold him down. Match over.
Sadly though, Jabya’s non-existent bird somewhere stands for the freedom from society’s humiliation that he shall never ever get.
Joseph Gordon Levitt’s hilarious Don Jon is the single greatest commentary piece on porn. It isn’t about porn but it’s a guy’s perspective on the necessity of porn. Early in the film in Don Jon explains why he watches porn despite scoring chicks whenever he pleases. He watches porn simply because it is more exciting and entertaining than actual sex. Real women don’t do the things that the ones in the porn videos do. Which is why always slips off the bed in the middle of the night, turns on his computer, rubs one out, and returns to snuggle with the girl in his bed.
Later in the film he falls in love with the Hollywood rom-com buff Scarlett Johnasson’s character Barbara who does everything with him except have sex. This tortures him. She becomes his porn. Whenever he opens his laptop he browses FB photos of her instead of looking at porn websites. After a lot of torment Don finally has sex with her. But as he lies in his bed, his voiceover tells us that he’s in love with Barbara, and he finally got to have sex with her after weeks and weeks of waiting, and that he’s sorry to say that it was STILL not as good as porn. Don skulks off to his computer and proceeds to rub one out.
The scene that brought down the house was the one where Barbara confronts Don about his porn addiction and calls it sick. He enlightens her that firstly, every guy watches porn and those who say who don’t are lying, and she refuses to believe him. And secondly they have sex all the time, whenever she wants, and it’s not like he’s cheating on her. When she asks him how he can even watch that shit, he replies by asking how she can watch those stupid unrealistic romcoms all day. Shell-shocked, she tells him that movies and porn are different things. And they give awards for movies. He tells her they give awards for porn too.
It was a beautiful and hilarious clash of irony, ideals and cultural norms. With one single scene JGL brought down the accepted definitions of ‘decency’ and ‘addiction’. He’s addicted to enjoying a perfect and unrealistic view of fulfilment and emotional satiation. She’s addicted to enjoying a perfect and unrealistic view of fulfilment and emotional satiation. And yet he is called a sicko and is dumped.
And most importantly, JGL pulled this off without coming across as sexist. That makes him a fucking great filmmaker.
I always believed that the past is truly yours and no one can deny you that. It’s like a drug which you crave for (un)knowingly. And this drug called nostalgia, like a termite, can eat through your present, one moment at a time. How many times have we watched that same video from 90s on youtube just to scrape whatever little memory you can from that time and place. When Sajan Fernandez watched Ye Jo Hai Zindagi on an old VCR, it killed something inside me. There is a sweetness to it and melancholy, still, a man lost in time trying to live his present through scraps from his past. That scene has stayed with me ever since i watched the film. Like those scenes where he smoked on his balcony, Irrfan Khan here emotes with minimal muscles and no words, and yet the entire back story of the character, his pain and his longing is laced before you.
The most powerful, stand out scene for me in any movie in 2013 – after careful deliberation – is from Short Term 12. Surprisingly, it doesn’t involve the lead characters, but one from the ensemble. Marcus – played by Keith Stanfield – is the standoffish kid on the verge of turning 18 and getting ‘released’ from the foster-care center for teens. He’s brooding, strong, and intense for most part of the story and, until the moment, paints himself as if pushed into a corner. When he does lash out, he does it – incredibly – with poetry. In a single, long take as his supervisor sits him down to talk, he unleashes a rap song no one knew he had the capacity to write or perform – heartfelt, expletive-ridden, and delivered with a gumption that’d give Tupac goose bumps. It is a remarkable piece of writing – not just the scene itself – but the build up to it. It is so carefully constructed, you will never see the character’s revelation coming. It leaps out at you from the pages, the screen, and yet goes with the grain of the narrative. Stanfield’s steely-yet-vulnerable performance and Destin Cretton’s choices as director only serve to heighten the experience and leaves you forgetting to breathe.
Scenes are like souvenirs an audience walks out with after a gratifying, enriching or, heck, even a revolting, experience. 2013 at the movies left me wowed, tongue-tied, startled, nostalgic, affected, bored, disgusted, thrilled, the works. But the one scene that stayed with me for all the right reasons and in all probability always will is from Vikramaditya Motwane’s Lootera. Resembling O Henry’s short story The Last Leaf only in the third act, Motwane creates a unique emotional history around Sonakshi Sinha and Ranveer Singh’s star-crossed romance. It’s this melting moment between an ethereal Sonakshi and her on-screen father (played by a brilliantly benign Barun Chanda) that resonates most with me:
Following a bad bout of asthma, the concerned dad is seen comforting his sickly daughter, gently waving a fan on her recumbent frame. They share a lighthearted joke, which leads him to innocuously thwack her wrist and promptly ask, “Laga kya?” Her made-up frown quickly drowns in peals of laughter (and coughing). On cue, with the opening strain of Amit Trivedi’s mesmerising Ankahee playing in the background, he begins to recount the story of an invincible, much feared Bhil King who just wouldn’t die no matter how fiercely the British attacked him. “Phir ek din pata chala ke Raja ne apni jaan ek tote mein chhupa ke rakhi hai.” To find the whereabouts of this peculiar parrot, the British sent out a beautiful spy who lured the King in her romantic trap and the two got married. One day she discovered the truth behind the King’s immortality and smothered the parrot to death without a second’s thought. “Phir?” quizzes his only child, somewhat, uneasily. “Phir…woh mar gaya. Beta, aap mera tota ho. Agar aap ko kuch ho gaya na…,” he doesn’t complete his sentence. He doesn’t have to. There’s so much more at its core though. Apart from highlighting the hearty father-daughter bond, it constructs a context to understand the magnitude of Sonakshi’s consecutive loss, heartbreak and need for retaliation. One has to possess a certain level of sensitivity to convey tenderness that doesn’t feel manufactured. Motwane does. And he lends it to this scene, which works beautifully even as a standalone.
Only in a state like Maharashtra, where right-wing is so strong that even after the death of their biggest ideologue I don’t feel confident and safe mentioning his name in a post that has no direct criticism of his easily-criticizable styles of functioning, where newspaper offices get ransacked for faintest of hurt sentiments, where people get beaten up for not standing up during the mandatory National Anthem before the film – a film like ‘Fandry’ is possible. (Just like BR Ambedkar and Vijay Tendulkar couldn’t have been anywhere else.) A state of oppression breeds an inventiveness and ferocity of protest like nothing else.
And in a protest film (though treated like a coming of age for the most part) like ‘Fandry’, comes a scene that makes all the protest scenes in the history of our cinema look tame in comparison. A Dalit family is trying to catch a pig next to a school, the Dalit kid is feeling humiliated ‘cos his friends might be watching the reality of his caste he has so carefully hidden from them, the pig evading them like a pro. After lots of chasing the pig finally seems to be cornered. The family now just has to move closer and catch it and end the misery on both sides of this hunter-hunted divide. The kid seems slightly relieved that the ordeal may be over as they encircle the pig. But, just before they could swoop down, the national anthem starts playing in the school assembly next door. Nobody can move now, except of course the pig. As the Dalit family stands in attention, paying ‘due respects’ to the nation they are equal citizens of, the pig walks away into the free morning.
The whole cinema hall jumped up and applauded the scene wildly. I guess the irreverence, cheekiness, and metaphor it stood for connected with all of us, so used to standing awkwardly before the film, one hand carrying smartphone, another carrying popcorn, thinking ‘Pandit Bhimsen Joshi ji, aalaap mat lo itna lamba. 56 second mein khatam hona chaahiye ideally!
My pick for the best scene of the year (apart from every other scene from The Great Beauty) is the 9 minute opening scene of Carlos Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux ( I wasn’t too impressed by the film). Reygadas has outdone the brilliant time-transition shot from his previous film, Silent Light. Here we have a little girl left out in the open in the middle of barking dogs and horses, running around merrily, unaware of the ominous shift in the sky. Shot almost through the girl’s eye level, the 4:3 frame and the blurry edges shows the constricted world of the girl and in effect, take us closer to her experience. Watch and get hypnotized.
Towards the end of the Bengali movie “Goynar Baksho” a young woman in her 20s rides a scooter to meet a lover who has been incommunicado for a few months. The scene, in which she is accompanied on the scooter by one of the film’s protagonists – another headstrong woman who asks her to drive faster – is remarkable for a number of reasons. It’s a starkly happy contrast from one of the first scenes of the film (dated about 50 years earlier) where a 12 year-old child was married to a man much older than her; was widowed soon after and subsequently had to endure three indignities: of wearing white for the rest of her life, of remaining unmarried and of having her lustrous mane of hair chopped off. Moreover, startlingly, the year is 1971, around the time of the creation of Bangladesh; not 2011. Lastly, it’s a bittersweet reminder of progressive Bengali literary thought and the once ostensibly modern, well-educated and relatively prosperous society that influenced it. Sadly, the great Bengali dream, a burgeoning reality till the late 70s, was crushed by decades of preposterous Communist rule, aided by a general lethargy in the Bengali bhadralok. That one scene holds a mirror to our present, where many observers rightly despair about the position of women in India. In an increasingly intolerant and regressive Indian society, one can only wonder where the next well of inspiration will spring from?
@nagrathnam on Soodhu Kavvum’s confrontation scene
[SPOILER ALERT]
For me, it’s the confrontation scene between the honest minister’s errant son and the Tamilnadu Chief Minister. Only a veteran like Radha Ravi could pull off the dead pan humor with which he dispenses shakti-ka-santulan and casually hands over the mantle to his son, forcing the irritatingly honest minister into retirement. That is the turning point of the film. Fair is foul and foul is fair, Welcome to Kalyug. And followed by the kickass retro montage.
“See how he shakes his head. A minister should like him!”
Don’t worry about the spoiler. Because this isn’t a plot twist. Or a big reveal.
A man who has been told that his ex-wife who is in a coma hasn’t reacted to the smell of perfumes, carries the box out of the hospital room. We follow him out in the corridor. Moments later, he changes his mind. He comes back to the bedside. Takes a bottle of perfume out of the box. His. The one she used to like. He sprays a little on him and leans towards her face and says: “If you can smell this, squeeze my hand.” He holds her hand. We see a solitary tear roll down a still woman’s face. He doesn’t see it. The camera is not interested in that. The camera takes us to a close up of his hand in hers and it’s waiting for the squeeze. The camera lingers on that beautiful composition. The entire film is constructed to arrive at this scene.
This ladies and lads, is the story of modern relationships. We all think we are so bloody mature to move on but the first instance when someone tells us it’s possible to revive the romance, we are quick to go and revisit it. We hold on to the undead person from the past, waiting for signs of life but are rarely in a position to see it.
Absolutely beautiful. Heartbreaking. Depressing. But also reassuring. We are not alone. This is the story of our times. Of fucked up relationships and messed up choices. I liked this film because it gave me the courage to put it all behind and let go. Completely. Cut off. And respect the dead.
When Deepika runs into Ranveer, and they draw out their guns. That frame, that shot, those colours. Wow! The one time I must have cinegasmed at the movies this year. The song that follows. The kiss. Lahoo mooh lag gaya! Truly breathtaking. It jogged me back to how Balam Pichkari was shot in YJHD. The same Deepika, the same sort of boisterous set up, the same use of riotous holi colours, and yet, you can tell the difference in how a film-maker frames his shot. Balam was youthful, zany, messy and the colours were ‘khacha-khach bhara hua’ – no sense of symmetry in it. Look at how Bhansali co-ordinates/’arranges’ his colours – the blues, the pinks, the reds – all evenly sectioned for each one hue to stand out. This is how you separate the men from the boys.
@shripriya on 12 Years A Slave’s roll Jordan scene
To say “12 Years A Slave” is a powerful film is an understatement. Some of the scenes are very hard to watch and that is the point. But of all the scenes, a short scene, with no violence, is, perhaps, the most powerful.
What happened right before:
Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has just been betrayed by a white farm hand and had to burn a letter he very painstakingly wrote to his wife and with that, his last hopes of ending his bondage.
A slave collapses in the field due to overwork and Solomon and two others bury him. Solomon goes about the task mechanically. He’s even mildly surprised/annoyed when one of the other grave diggers wants to say a few words for the dead man.
The scene:
A group of slaves stand near the grave and start singing “Roll, Jordan, Roll”. Solomon is part of the group, standing right in front, but emotionally apart from the rest of the slaves, as he as been through most of the movie. Solomon, who was not born a slave, has always maintained his distance – protected himself by maintaining a distance.
We then switch to a shot of Solomon’s face. His face is anguished, full of despair and desperation, overwhelmed by the recent events. The camera just stays on his face as slowly, Solomon starts to sing. It is almost like the song is his lifeline and he grasps onto it, at first just mumbling the words. As he sings, his voice gets stronger and his face changes. The song powers him and finally, he accepts that he is a slave. He starts singing even louder and seems to embrace the group with whom he sings as his brothers. And finally, you can hear his voice stand out, powerful. Despite what he is acknowledging, it feels like a positive self-affirmation. Yes, I am a slave, but I will survive. Even as a slave, I will survive.
The shot of Solomon’s face lasts a minute and fifteen seconds. There is no dialog. Just the singing. For this scene alone, for all the complex emotions conveyed, Chiwetel Ejiofor needs to be a front runner for the Oscar. Brilliant.
@fattiemama on Blue Is The Warmest Colour’s break-up scene
I looked away. For a good ten minutes, I kept my eyes away from the scene. I would have loved to shut my ears too but not understanding the language helped. She kept hitting her and she kept crying, pleading for forgiveness. Tears, snot, blood all became one as the searing pain of betrayal and guilt broke through the barriers of language. I have felt all of it and in not a small degree to not acknowledge it, yet the sheer rawness was so testing I wanted to be relieved of it. They were so good together, so happy, so carefree, so intense and so young…young, I think that hurt the most…All of us love ‘happily forever afters’. The most cynical of us too, somewhere in the corner of their hearts they too believe and yearn. And to watch a love so young and so deep break in a moment hurts. It shatters all that we hold dear, dream of. Was it the beautiful performances of the two young actresses? Was it the single long take? Was it the unbridled tears and blows? Was it the resounding thud of a featherlite dream breaking? Was it my own connection to a story that wasn’t my own? The reasons could be all or any but that scene refuses to leave me. Someday it will be replaced with the eternal tenderness she feels towards her. At the end of great love does not lie emptiness or hate. At the end of great love lies great tenderness. Had the scene not escalated to that intensity the end would not have mattered as much as it did. Had the violence not been so visceral, the wound of the soul would not have been bared. Because a love as deep has to hurt as much too. I just wish the blows had not travelled beyond the screen to sear me.
@jahanbakshion Spring Breakers: In which Alien and the Girls become ‘Soulmates’
Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers was certainly one of the most divisive films of the year, lauded and loathed in equal measure. Some found it provocative, others called it puerile. For me, it was certainly one of the most hypnotic and immersive cinematic experiences of the year, and at the center of the film were 2 of the most memorable scenes of the year, one segueing into the other seamlessly.
The first scene begins with a gun-toting Alien jumps around his bed, Brit and Candy kneeling before him, seemingly in awe.
“You like it? You like my shit? Look at you fucking bitches. You fucking love it, don’t you? You a couple of bad bitches, ain’t you?”
He thrusts and rubs wads of money in their hungry faces and then begins to kiss both the girls. One of them picks up a pistol from the bed.
“Careful with that, it’s loaded.”
We see a look on Alien’s face we haven’t seen before. It’s the look of genuine terror. Suddenly, out of nowhere, both the girls have pistols pointed at Alien. The get him down on his knees and shove a pistol in his face, then another.
“Sick motherfucker, aren’t you? You think that you can just fucking own us? Open your mouth. Open your fucking mouth…. You’re a nasty little fuck. Yeah, you are. Do you like that? You like that in there?”
Alien is shitting concrete by now. You can see it in his eyes, almost closed shut out of fear.
“We have everything we need right here. We don’t need you, Alien. What if we just used you to come here? And in five seconds we just shoot you? Blow your brains out. And you’re dead… What do you think, Brit, should we kill him?”
And just then, something happens. Alien opens his eyes and stares into the girls faces. And starts to fellate the gun with unnerving glee. First one, then two loaded guns, and he’s going at them like a seasoned pornstar.
It’s a stunning scene- sexy, shocking, gender-bending, nail-bitingly tense and unpredictable- all at once. That’s what makes it so great, apart from how crucial it is in building the characters, their relationship(s) and the trust that forms the basis of their truly twisted love story.
“Y’all my motherfuckin’ soul mates, swear to god. I just fell in love with y’all…”
This flows into what is the most talked-about scene from the film, in which Alien sings Britney Spears’ Everytime, playing a piano as the girls do a ballet around him in pink ski-masks, bikinis and sweatpants, wielding shotguns like toys. As Franco’s voice fades into Britney’s, the scene cuts to a blizzard of hedonistic violence as Alien and his Angels perform their dance of destruction.
The use of contrasting music as a counterpoint to violence in cinema is nothing new, but Spring Breakers does it exceptionally well, managing to transform Britney Spear’s pop ballad not just into something darkly humorous but also a strangely beautiful elegy to the loss of innocence. It’s one of those scenes that lift the viewer into a trance and the film into transcendence. True to his name, Mr. Korine achieves that rare thing in cinema: Absolute Harmony.
@miyaamihir on last scene of Star (Bombay Talkies)
हिन्दुस्तान की ही नहीं, शायद विश्व की सबसे प्रामाणिक ग्रामीण फिल्मों में से एक बनाने वाले निर्देशक सत्यजित राय मूलत: एक शहरी फिल्मकार थे। हमारे वर्तमान महानगर के चितेरे। उसकी अाकांक्षाअों के, उसके अपमानों के। मुझे श्याम बेनेगल के उन पर बनाये उस प्रामाणिक वृत्तचित्र का अंतिम दृश्य याद अाता है। राय अपने घर में अपने घर में, अपने कमरे में अपनी वर्किंग डेस्क पर बैठे हैं अौर अपना वही मशहूर सिगार पी रहे हैं। अौर फिर कैमरा ज़ूम-अाउट होता है। एक ही सिंगल शॉट में हम देखते हैं कि कैमरा पैन-अाउट होता हुअा खिड़की से बाहर निकलता है, अौर हालांकि राय अब भी हमारे सामने हैं लेकिन उनके साथ अब अन्य बहुत कुछ इस फ्रेम में है। एक पूरा शहर इस एक सिंगल शॉट में जैसे राय के साथ चला अाता है। एक ही फ्रेम में हम बीच में उनका घर देख रहे हैं जिसकी बीचोंबीच खिड़की में अब भी राय बैठे दिखाई दे रहे हैं, वही सिगार के साथ। लेकिन अब इस वाइड एंगल में चारों अोर से कलकत्ता की बहुमंजिला इमारतें अौर बाज़ार भी चले अाये हैं। यह एक दृश्य फिल्मकार को उसके सबजेक्ट के ठीक बीचोंबीच स्थापित करता है अौर शायद हमें यह भी बताता है कि किसी भी रचना को जैसे उसके समय से निरपेक्ष नहीं पढ़ा जा सकता, ठीक वैसे ही किसी भी रचना को उसके स्थान से निरपेक्ष रख के पढ़ना भी मुश्किल है।
दिबाकर की ‘स्टार’ के उस अंतिम पोर-पोर जादू से भरे दृश्य में जहाँ पुरंदर (नवाजुद्दीन सिद्दीक़ी) अपनी बेटी को अपने जीवन का एक दिन पुन:रचकर सुना रहे हैं, दिखा रहे हैं, ठीक ऐसे ही एक पैन-अाउट होते हुए कैमरे के साथ पूरा शहर उनके दृश्य की सीमा के भीतर चला अाता है। यहाँ वो नायकत्व है जिसका दायरा अपनी चाल की बालकनी से अागे नहीं बढ़ पाया। यहाँ वो पिता है जो अपनी बेटी के लिए रची कहानियों में भी कभी नायक नहीं हो पाया अौर उसे कल्पना की दुनिया में भी सदा किसी ‘िहृतिक’ का सहारा लेना पड़ा। यहाँ वो इंसान है जिसकी असफलता अगर गौर से देखें तो हमारे वर्तमान शहर की वो बची-कुची ईमानदारी अौर असलीपना है जिसके होने के चलते ही पुरंदर अाज भी इस शहर में मिसफिट है।
‘स्टार’ सही मायनों में बम्बई की कथा है। यहाँ मुम्बई की बन्द हुई मिलें हैं अौर बेरोज़गार हुए मजदूरों के घरों का ठंडा चूल्हा है। तमाम सिनेमा की पृष्ठभूमि पर ऊँची चिमनियाँ है उन मिलों की जिनका धुअाँ जीवन की अग्नि की तरह कब का बुझ चुका है। यहाँ कुछ सर्वश्रेष्ठ अदाकार हैं जो विदर्भ से मुम्बई तक कुछ सौ किलोमीटर की दूरी अपने जीवनकाल में कभी पाट नहीं पाये। फाकों पर होता थियेटर है अौर उसमें फिर बराबरी का स्वप्न है। यहाँ अपने बाप की पेंशन पर जीता अौर समाज की नज़रों में एक असफ़ल इंसान है, अौर फिर एक निर्णायक क्षण है जब वह खुद पिता हो जाता है। सिनेमा के दायरों से परे एक अौर दुनिया है जिसमें अाज संतुष्टि को असफलता अौर असफलता को अयोग्यता का मूल मान लिया गया है। ऐसे समय में जहाँ अापके होने से ज़्यादा दिखाई देने का महत्व हो, ‘स्टार’ इशारा करती है कि सफल-असफल के खांचों के परे भी एक संसार होगा जिसमें योग्यता प्रदर्शन की मोहताज नहीं होगी। ‘स्टार’ उस जीवन के बारे में है जिसे अपने दायरे की पहचान करनी है, अौर जानना है कि उसका ‘स्टार’ होना, न होना दुनिया की स्वीकार्यता पर नहीं, सिर्फ एक बच्ची की हंसी पर निर्भर है। अौर इसके साथ ही यह हमें समझना है कि महत्वाकांक्षा का जयगान गानेवाले इस दुर्दांत समय में ‘संतुष्टि’ एक दुर्लभ मूल्य है।
@NotSoSnob on The Great Beauty’s opening party scene
The two most memorable scenes of the year for me are the climax of Frances Ha and Ilo Ilo. Frances Ha’s climax wraps up the film beautifully as its lead character gets what she wants from a relationship. Guess? It’s simple, unusual and still profound. Ilo Ilo’s climax is bitter sweet, as a kid gets slapped, you laugh at the scene first and then you realise what the filmmaker has done – completed the loop between two strangers who fought initially, bonded later and then had to separate. But am writing about another absolute favourite scene of the year. This one is from The Great Beauty.
When you are watching the film for the first time, you keep wondering what’s happening. Where is it going? It seems like a non-stop party music video. And all you see is bodies shaking vigorously in every possible way interrupted by chants of a bald man shouting, I’ll screw you, while looking at a lady dancing on top of the table. You see striptease, a woman shouting for her lost mobile, a dog in a purse, a very short woman lost in the crowd while sipping her drink, and then a tv showgirl appears with 6-5 written on her boobs. As Jep Gambardella turns back, you realise this is his birthday party. It continues for few more minutes, and then everyone starts dancing while matching their steps on the beats of Mueve la colita. After some time the music slows down, Jep gets out of the queue slowly, looks into the camera, the camera zooms in, slowly everyone gets out of the frame and we see only his face as his voice-over starts – To this question, as kid, my friends always gave the same answer – “pussy”. Whereas i answered, “the smell of old people’s houses”. The question was :
This scene not only sets up the film but also sums it up well. As Gambardella’s search continues through Rome’s rich and boring men and fashionable women, the only word that comes to your mind is decadence. I have gone back to the film many times and specially this scene. Just to hear the opening voice-over. But the impact is lost if you don’t watch the entire party scene – the dancer number, the slowing down of music and Jep moving out of the crowd. Because that’s where the separation begins. Jep and the rest. You are going to encounter all these characters in the film through Jep only. To go back to the madness of the scene, i have even saved this image as my computer screensaver. But i still can’t get enough of Mister Jep Gambardella, his voice-over and the insane beginning of his search for The Great Beauty.
Do let us know about your favourite scenes of the year in the comments section.
F.i.g.h.t C.l.u.b 