F.i.g.h.t C.l.u.b

The brief was the same this year. A mail was sent to the usual cinema comrades who write, contribute, and help in running this blog. It went like this – a) Close your eyes b) Think of all the films you have seen in 2013 – released/unreleased/long/short/docu/anything c) Think what has stayed back with you – impressed/touched/affected/blew d) Write on it and tell us why. Ponder like Jep Gambardella in right gif, and write about the joy you experienced like the left gif.

Almost everyone wanted to write about The Great Beauty. It has emerged has a clear favourite this year. But since the idea is to cover as many films as we can, so only one person was allowed to write on a specific film. Though we ended up having two writers on TGB. Finally, here’s the massive list of 17 terrific films picked by 15 film buffs, and they tell us why these films stood out from the rest. If they don’t look familiar, click on their handles. It’s linked to their twitter accounts.

(Our earlier post in the same series – 20 Things We Learnt At The Movies and 13 Unanswered Questions is here, Top 10 Musical Gems We Discovered This Year is here)

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@kushannandy   on   I L O    I L O

What do you do when a bald, tipped-hat wearing character, straight-out-of-Jeevan’s gang, writes to you and his other Versovian gang-members an underground email in which he threatens to squash your sperms, a la Uma Thurman did to the eyeballs in Kill Bill, unless you close your eyes, think of your favorite film of 2013 and some such shit…?

You shit. And you sit on your laptop.

My pick: the best film that stayed back.

A spoilt schoolboy, his unemployed father and pregnant mother, who tries in vain, to survive her pre natal pangs and the annoying habit of the males in the house leaving urine on the toilet seat, form a small middle-class family of three in a quiet province called Ilo Ilo in Singapore. Well, not three. Actually four. Terry, a modern and resilient maid, walks into this family and battles the boy-bully, combats the mother’s territorial jealousy and earns the respect she deserves from the senior-most member of the family.

There is nothing innovative about the plot. No melodrama. In fact, zero drama. Yet, Anthony Chen’s debut film left me spellbound. The unbelievably realistic performances, the emotional nuances, take it right into Asghar Farhadi territory. And what holds the film together, is Angeli Bayani’s portrayal of the Filipino maid. Chen’s silent close-ups of Bayani’s deeply emotive face and haunting eyes stay with you, long after the lights come on.

@sudhishkamath   on   Q I S S A

I’m not sure we’ve seen a better film about the fluid nature of identity and sexuality, that too from India. And this complex question of who we are is explored through a simple nature versus nurture plot.

A story of a girl raised as a boy. Because the father (Irrfan Khan) has always wanted a boy and is in absolute denial about who she really is. Tillotama Shome is just the kind of ballsy woman for the role and casting an actress in the stereotype-defying gender-bending character is just one of the many triumphs of Qissa, which is full of twists that are introduced not to shock but to explore the question of identity, layer by layer. Saying anything more may just ruin the film for you. You might have issues with the titular ghost that pops up but that’s exactly the kind of ingenuity that makes you think about the question raised in the film. With Tisca Chopra and Rasika Duggal in the cast, this is as solid as an Indian film has got in ages, especially from the arthouse circuit!

@krnx    on   R U S H

Since, I suspect, no one is going to write on a Hollywood movie being their choice of best film on MFC, I will. And also because Rush was one kick-ass film that literally gave me a rush and had me applauding at the end of it: physical reactions that no other film in 2013 managed to evoke.

There really isn’t much to say about Rush that hasn’t already been said. I used to be a fervent F1 fan (less now but still enough to be in the grandstands of the first Indian GP) and for sure that’s contributed to my admiration of Ron Howard’s expertly crafted drama. He is a director, I admit, I find hugely inconsistent (only cared for Apollo 13 and Frost/Nixon besides epic television Arrested Development) but with Rush, the slate’s wiped clean.

Just unearthing the story – James Hunt vs Niki Lauda – must’ve been a moment of triumph for screenwriter Peter Morgan. But some scripts are expensive to tell and it was an arduous journey for Morgan’s spec(!) effort before Howard got involved.

Besides the incredible rivalry that Howard’s captured in moments of pure cinema, the authenticity of period F1, and spectacular visuals (especially those of the final race in Japan in high-speed rain) that haven’t made a home in my mind for all these months; Rush encapsulates everything that Formula 1 is about – adrenaline and utter disdain for subtlety. Not the usual qualities in, what we have come to expect, a “good” film.

@sukanyaverma   on    W A J D A

For someone who watches movies for a living, it’s very hard to pick ONLY one great movie from a pile of superlatives. More so, since 2013 fared rather well in my eyes and I didn’t ‘ummm’ even once on being asked for my pick of the lot. Wadjda, with its inspiring theme and touching simplicity, is that shiny gem from Saudi Arabia that gets my vote. Ever since I saw its first trailer among a hoard of others nominated by their respective countries, vying for a place under Oscar’s Best Foreign Film category, I was drawn to the beatific smile of a 10-year-old (an extraordinary Waad Mohammed) essaying the title role. Notably, Wadjda is the first film to be shot entirely in Saudi by filmmaker Haifaa Al Mansour who directed outdoor scenes from inside a van using a walkie-talkie adhering to the country’s stern filming restrictions for a woman/filmmaker and the first film from the nation to send an entry to the Academy.

 Right from the first scene where Wadjda steps forth sporting a pair of Converse sneakers in a crowd of Mary Janes, you know she stands out in a conservative, controlled society. Set in suburban Riyadh, Wadjda deals with a young girl’s determination to realise her dream of buying a bicycle after her mom refuses to do so. How she chooses to achieve her seemingly defiant goal by appeasing the same society and its doctrinal requirements is deftly portrayed in Mansour’s lovingly crafted feature. Also heartwarming are the interactions between Wadjda and her best friend, Abdullah. Unlike the grown-ups in the story, their friendship is untouched by the discrimination of their environment. Wadjda offers a palpable glimpse in Riyadh’s daily life, the anxieties and facades of its striking women, the deep-rooted conditioning of its self-engrossed men as well as the innocence of its blithe children without trying to be overtly cynical or judgmental. Through Wadjda’s mini triumph, Mansour astutely endorses a message of hope and her personal belief that change might be slow but it is steadfast and most imminent.

@varungrover     on    T H E    G R E A T    B E A U T Y

This was a year of turbulence for me. Lots of emotional ups and downs, fights, illnesses, personal and professional extremes, and a feeling of ‘ab hum bade ho gaye hain’. Mid-life crisis started hitting its opening notes this year, that slideshow of ‘80s/90s kids will remember this’ left me sadder rather than happier, some very good friends got separated from their better halves, some others got lost in the black-hole of their corporate jobs and/or parenthood, a favorite relative passed away, a cricketer I loved as a kid retired and I didn’t feel a thing, and a pet parrot flew away leaving me heartbroken.

And may be that’s why, no other film moved me as much as ‘The Great Beauty’ this year. A film about passage of time and people, relations disintegrating, dissolving into the great circus of bizarre the life is. Paulo Sorrentino’s latest, which I watched twice on big screen during this year’s MAMI (god bless Mister Narayanan, the festival director), had everything I would ideally like to associate my ‘end of days’ with –humor, acidic care-a-damn criticism of (modern) ideas of success and art, deep nostalgia, detachment, quest for beauty, spiritualism, and an affirmation that it’s all, after all, just a trick.

Films next year:

@varungrover   on   D I S A P P E A R A N C E    O F    E L E A N O R    R I G B Y    :   H I M    A N D    H E R     and    T I T L I

2 films that I saw this year (one at TIFF and another at IFFI viewing room) should be the most talked about international and Indian films respectively next year in my humble brag opinion. Ned Benson’s ‘Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her’ is a delicate, sensitive, brilliantly written and acted, mind-bending drama of a couple’s separation shown through the perspectives of him and her in two films of 90 minutes each. Think of it as Sam Mendes meets Asghar Farhadi. The layers of interpretation become thicker and mindboggling if you change the order of viewing from ‘him followed by her’ to ‘her followed by him’. And that, you’ll see, is a masterstroke.

The best Indian film I saw this year, and hopefully the whole of world will see soon, is Kanu Behl’s ‘Titli’. Seeing it on a desktop computer in IFFI, Goa’s ‘viewing room’ should be counted as an underwhelming, far from ideal setting, and still, this very dark very funny very depressing dastaavez on patriarchy BLEW ME AWAY like nothing this year. Stunning is the word. Breathless is another. Writing so sharp (Kanu Behl and Sharat Kataria co-wrote it) and performances so bang-on, not to mention excellent edgy-gritty cinematography (Siddharth Dewan), this is our best bet for world cinema honors next year.

@invokeanand   on   B O M B A Y    T A L K I E S

The Lunchbox made me long for the days gone by, Ship of Theseus made me feel guilty for merely existing, Chennai Express made me a philosopher, but the film that reached me this year was a story about identity and liberation -Ajeeb Dastan hai yeh (Bombay talkies). The film mainly dealt with identity – sexual and personal both, but what worked for me was the depiction of today’s charulata – hiding her loneliness and emptiness in sensuous saris wrapped in raw sexuality. It was her story, her struggle and in the end, her liberation. Trapped in a relationship moving slowly towards it’s end and feeling guilty for it’s eventual demise. Use of Lag Ja Gale was genius to say the least and felt like it was specifically written for this character. And in what eloquent ease does Rani Mukherjee carries herself throughout the film. And Johar, from loving your parents to hitting your parents has come a long way and we can only hope he keeps this bravado intact.

@diaporesis    on    T H E    H U N T

Before Midnight is the loveliest film I’ve seen all year but I’ve already written about it at length. My second favourite film this year stands in stark contrast to the occasionally sunny, sometimes stormy, yet entirely endearing story of Richard Linklater’s finest film. “The Hunt” is a little-known Danish film — despite it winning an award at Cannes 2012 — that stars the reliably excellent Mads Mikkelsen in a mesmerising performance as an upright schoolteacher, and occasional hunter, who is hounded and ostracised by the small community he lives in, after a child wrongly, but not maliciously, accuses him of a criminal act he did not commit.

Without talking about the accusation itself, nor of the movie’s very finely shot and acted scenes, it’s worth examining two key themes of the movie briefly. The first is banal but has several important interlinked parts — children are impressionable, difficult to understand, and can react unpredictably when spurned or angered. In the movie, the child is shown a porn clip by her brash teenaged elder brother. Later, when angered by the schoolteacher, she uses details seen in it to accuse him of an act he did not commit, without being aware of the fallout of her innocent anger. For some reason, while watching the movie, I was constantly reminded of another disturbing film in which an older child wreaks havoc on his family and schoolmates: “We Need to Talk About Kevin”. That movie should perhaps be watched in accompaniment to The Hunt for it sheer contrast in material. Second, perceptions and influence work in strange, and sometimes troubling ways. It is assumed that the child must obviously be speaking the truth while making such serious accusations. The teacher-in-charge, instead of trying to verify the story, literally puts words into the mouth of the child in her haste to get “justice” for the child. It must be noted that, in general, everyone knows that children are notorious liars; yet for serious accusations this is often overlooked. Moreover, the “epidemic” — of accusations of similar acts committed with other children — that breaks out soon after the initial accusation points to how impressionable children are, how vulnerable their minds and the paradox that must exist to protect them: to ensure their safety there must be inordinate power vested in their words. The hunt for truth and justice often leads to the bloodshed of those who only happened to cross the firing line at the wrong time. For a schoolteacher this lesson was hard to swallow; for the hunter, it could not have been more obvious.

@manishgaekwad     on    C H I T R A N G A D A

At the Kashish Mumbai International Film Festival this year, the closing film Chitrangada was also one of the festival’s most difficult films to sit through. Three days later, actor-director Rituparno Ghosh was dead. The film, which is inspired by a Tagore play, is about a transsexual choreographer undergoing sex-reassignment surgery. In a way, it mirrors Rituparno’s own battles, as he began to express himself more as a woman in the public eye.

This confusion in the audience to be able to identify with him, is also the moot point the film makes when he steps into the role of the agonising choreographer. Festival audience moved quickly; the deadweight of the film’s slow treatment, and watching this pouty, greasy, unattractive man blur the boundaries between art and life, freaked most people. By the end of the screening, the theatre was near empty. Which is clear how people do not want to see filmmakers indulge in self-flagellation. Keep your private parts, private, don’t turn it into something prosaic. Perhaps, Rituparno over-shot his license.

It is however, a film, one must return to, for the artist who holds a gun to his own head. The film bored me, made me uncomfortable, there were long and dull portions, but what never left me, was that in his role as ‘deus ex ghosh’, he was trying to say something really, really important; about gender and bias and fluid sexuality, and what films should do and tell us about ourselves (sometimes). As Aparna Sen wrote about the film, in his obit, ‘Without sending out a message, within quotes, as a lesser filmmaker might have done, Ritu managed to bring the hitherto marginalized into the domain of the mainstream, to an extent.’ His timing was right, his exit wrong.

[SPOILERS]- Ironically the only two ‘honest’ men in the film end up as losers and most of the bent characters end up victorious. This one also has the greatest subversive ‘stalker’ scene in the history of tamil cinema (the IT guy with the lover girl office situation). Now waiting and hoping the hindi remake matches upto the original.

@damoviemaniac     on     N E W    W O R L D

Who said the gangster genre is dead?

Trust the Koreans to make actors dressed in black suit and assaulting each other with knives and baseball bats look poetry in motion. The film explores the power politics within a gang, primarily dealing with structures and mechanisms. It has unusual emotional depth for a gangster film and often feels like a tale of bromance and loyalty.

It is the perfect onion, unwrapping one layer at a time as the film progress. The film teases the viewer to a game of one-upmanship, trying to outdo each other. And just as we think we have solved the maze, the climax flips everything upside down and we gasp at the sheer brilliance of storytelling. But the film does not rely on the last minute plot twist for the viewer to appreciate. It acts as the cherry on top.

@lordmeow    on    T H E    G R E A T    B E A U T Y

Jep Gambardella claims that he was destined for sensibilities, whereas his friends cared only for inner lips of women. He has walked a long path, arriving at a view of life that gives him a panoramic display of the human comedy, broad and unambiguous. He has lost love, but his nature hasn’t undergone a brutal upheaval. He has been at war with himself; he’s the man who has been different men at different points of time. He has emerged from the uncertainties of life, remade, and illuminated by new feelings. Now, whatever its worth, is fairly settled, and he knows how to express it clearly, facing the camera, without a shadow of doubt, in true Italian style.

Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty witnesses the decadence of Rome again, seething with tragic irony of a Gibbonesque spectacle. It flings literature giants at you so elegantly that you are waiting to be damned by its words. But unlike Woody Allen (whom you actually expect to pop up at any moment in the film) whose intellectual adventures merely give a half-formed philosophy in an autobiographical fashion, Sorrentino’s characters reveal the inner labyrinth of life, rather a satire of life, on life everywhere, the struggle of its aspirations to fructify, the madness that follows it, and the disillusionment that awaits at the far end of the journey. The observations are sharp, but it is not cruel, rather it looks at poor folks, baffled and lost, rarely comforted, with a distant sympathy. With a rhythmic rise and fall of images (that gliding camera), Jep is the voice of a time going by. He utters inconsistent wisdom, not because of the character’s infidelity with truth, but because he has outgrown his preceding selves. To know him, unquestionably one must know him entire, and I can only fancy the aching romantic pain that sweeps his memory. As 2013 is flying by, I would rather settle for his terrace party, swinging to ‘Mueve La Colita’.

@ghaywan    on    T H E    C O N G R E S S

“Nazis and holocaust bring awards” says the head of ‘Miramount Pictures’ as he convinces Robin Wright, an ageing star, to surrender her youth to a pile of codes.

Ari Folman’s The Congress is a dizzy concoction of commoditization of cinema, the dystopian bleakness of our future that is bereft of choice, the blazing bohemia of a century full of animated characters and our relentless questioning of where we came from. It’s a giant fuck you to the Hollywood’s studio system, an ode to animation and eventually, an allegory of what our future holds for us with all it’s decaying art.

Robin Wright plays herself as the star who has to sign a contract with her studio to sell her image to digital restoration turning her real self completely obsolete. 20 years later she is called to the futurist congress, a convention of an animated world, where she is forced to lend her image to the capitalistic franchise of Mirmaount Hotel. The studio boss asks her for an extension of her contract where she “can now be eaten in an omelette or a Crème brûlée… you’re now a substance”. He even suggests her of a world where people will pay royalty to fantasize about a star. More ambitious than Waltz With Bashir but limiting in it’s cohesiveness of a singular theme, The Congress, has to be devoured for it’s vision and craft. As it goes with life, you may not understand this film completely but it is worth the trip, with all its spot-the-reference moments. This is Sunset Boulevard on acid!

@fattiemama    on    B E K A S