Great Movie Reviews

De Vlaschaard (1943)

2011-12-10T05:18:00.000-08:00

Boleslaw Barlog’s little-known film De Vlaschaard (meaning “The Flax Field”; also known as Wenn die Sonne wieder scheint) is yet another masterpiece from the best of decades for cinema: the 1940s. Shot with a camera given to detail, the film narrates an ages-old story of father-son rivalry in a world where land means everything; inevitably, women have not much role to play in this capitalist world where only the stronger is richer, except being a silent motivation or conscience to their lovers and husbands. A brilliant performance is given by the two Pauls, Klinger (the son) and Wegener (the father): these two men, who dominate the film, who cannot understand each other, are tied by relations of familial pride in each other, and yet resent each other’s ideas and way of doing things.

In spite of flaws like a happy ending where it looks out of place and terrible miscasting of the son’s love interest Bruni Löbel, who doesn’t at all look like a poor farm girl even if I forget her lack of acting skills, the film doesn’t fail primarily due to its tight structure: even if the camera lingers, the story doesn’t, and in a matter of 80-odd minutes an effective, realistic and sad story of many fathers and sons across ages is told. There is also no attempt to brush-stroke characters sympathetically, but rather the world is shown as it is.

Klinger’s character, while ambitious, unafraid to follow his own lead and even if his ideas do turn out to be right always, does turn out to be insensitive and selfish, unable to think outside of himself or his farm; the story is very well constructed, so that Klinger’s offer to go away from the farm if Löbel were to be turned out comes only at a certain critical juncture of the film, when he is full of frustration and rage at being unable to do things his own way. Klinger also comes across as a Rudin-like character, unable to fulfil his promises and yet giving them thoughtlessly.

On the other hand, while Wegener on the face of it resents Klinger’s advice, he does follow it furtively, and when he’s away, he does celebrate the intelligence of his son with his neighbours: for him, his son is just like his farm, and he hopes it is also a very good produce. The issue, however, is that human beings, especially the good produce, are not mute like flax would be: that humans are not owned like cattle. However, while both father and son are obstinate, Wegener is to the point of being obdurate, thoughtlessly so: and he does fulfil his promises, if just for the sake of recklessness.

Without pretentiousness and without claims to intellectual stuff, De Vlaschaard is a powerful film telling a real story and asking questions. The most poignant scene is to watch and imagine the corruption of Wegener’s heart in a world which lives by things like capital and thus-earned respect and morals: how the man has become blind to everything but these, how he estimates himself and his worth and his youth in only these. And maybe, Klinger with his fond love for his farm will follow in the same steps of decay.

The Third Man

2011-08-28T02:24:00.000-07:00

A film from that golden era of English films, whether coming from Hollywood or Britain, the 1940s, when films dared to be grey, realistic and yet fogged in a halo of street lamps, Carol Reed's The Third Man boldly tries things which few films have done throughout the history of cinema, until today. A music that grows on your nerves rather than forming a complementary to the plot; a key man of the plot being introduced when you had almost forgotten of him (and what an introduction!); and some never-to-be forgotten dialogues that give the film a human relevance much beyond what its film noir look would have done so: these are things that are hardly done nowadays, when directors claim to be "experimental," let alone back then in that era when women often had nothing to do except being the love interest. Alida Valli also doesn't have to do more than that, but in walking off from the blundering positive protagonist, Joseph Cotten, she makes a statement to rival that made by Maj-Britt Nilsson in the Swedish film Sommarlek, interestingly from the same period: the statement that a nearly similar film, at least as far as the atmospherics are concerned, George Cukor's Gaslight, failed to make, in spite of a remarkable performance by the talent of Ingrid Bergman.

Apart from the music, the film's strengths lie in its unconventional cinematography but conventional editing, and actors very well suited to their parts except Welles to a large extent and Valli to a certain extent. However, since Welles' role is primarily that of bringing a shock value at points in the film, it does not matter that much; it is the ensemble of the self-pitying but still-searching Joseph Cotten and the very internationally diversified world around him in the post-War Vienna that form the crux of the cast and the strength of the film. Where crisp cinematography, Valli's eyes, and Cotten's performance are already ruling the roost, it's a feat to even be noticeable: Austrian actress Hedwig Bleibtreu rather manages to illuminate the whole film, in the matter of hardly minutes, with that minor role of the landlady of Valli she has. Not only that, but in the context of the post-Welles film, she - more than any gangrened patients in the hospital, who should've been shown by the camera (this is one major flaw of the film; I don't know if it was due to any production code issues or merely that fine detail of avoiding hurting people's sensibilities) - it is she who represents one of those obscure "dots," which hardly matter in the scheme of things. While Raskolnikov's old lady might have been portrayed as mean and not in a flattering way, here is another such obscure dot, waiting to be exterminated: but this time this dot is brimful with life. Life not in the sense of doing great things, rushing from one city to another, or unbounded laughter or sex; but life in that ultimate sense of living, that love for living which permeates so many of us, which only gives meaning to everything we do.

A lot has been said of that brave shot at the end of the film, and even after having watched hundreds and hundreds of films, I, too, find it a really brave shot: I hadn't expected it at all. Only Lean's entry for Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia rivals it, but I would say even that wasn't as brave a shot as this one is: to set such a shot at the climax of the film, with around 2 mins of screen time without wavering from that simple walk that rejects the pretender, could not just be termed brave, but could have been called visionary, had the later filmmakers learnt anything.

Talking of other things, Trevor Howard gives a fine performance, as does the Austrian actor Ernst Deutsch in a vampirish-looking role. The accent of Bernard Lee makes a delightful addition to the film. And the end of Welles is probably even more remarkable than the entry of Welles in the film: clutching and grasping. For? Money? Or this time, life? Salvation? Or trying to escape from being a once-upon dot?

Le roi et l'oiseau

2011-08-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

A precursor for many films and inspiration for many filmmakers, Le Roi et l'Oiseau (int'l title: The King and the Mockingbird; more appropriate would have been the literal translation, The King and the Bird) is not merely a heritage object; it says things that many other films do not, it brings to life characters that appear stilted even in live-action movies, and it moves with a fluidity that is remarkable and typical of a good animated movie.

Fluidity does not only belong to the storyline and editing; it also belongs to the brilliant animation work done, especially considering that it's traditional 2D work and not 3D. In the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale extract, when the chimney sweep helps the shepherdess come down a ladder, the movement of the hips of the shepherdess is a sight to watch: and compared with the precedent climbing down movement of the sweep, a highly instructive lesson as to how carefully observed life has to be to create a good work of art. Sustained by the music and more of excellent animation work (the King has no rivals in all the animation work I've ever seen), the film also, atypically for an animation film, attains greater consistency by not introducing too many characters. Yes, the finale has a bevy of carnivores, but they are more a chorus rather than an assortment of tricks.

A much more interesting feeling that one gets is that the film is not only an attack on unenlightened monarchy, but an attack on any kind of totalitarian institution. The film attacks, much more snidely than Yann Jouette's brilliant Berni's Doll, which seems to have taken the baton and carried it forward, all sorts of assembly-line work: it is worth noting that not only there are a thousand statues of the King being assembled, but every member of the King's police force looks alike and behaves in the same stupid and dead manner. It is only the lower city that has escaped the dummification, and yet they are also dummies in another way: waiting for the Bird to come as their messiah. However, they are still not dummies in every way: they still do believe that the Sun exists, they still listen to music and can dream that more beauty is there even if they can't really say what it is like, and hence they can still be someone. It is interesting that most of those who are under the Sun and the Stars have nothing to believe in and know everything, most of those are dead; and that from those for whom the Sun is a myth and to say that the Earth is round a prayer, who can only and do believe, most are still alive, even if stripped of the confidence in themselves. But it is the swaggering Bird who believes and yet knows a lot, who makes - one knows not - stories or truths of all the world she has seen but also has the anger to finish the last cage in the world of Kings, which exemplifies the virtue of being sagacious and yet a romantic, especially in a world being increasingly populated by dummies.

El espíritu de la colmena

2011-07-16T05:33:00.000-07:00

At times, silence speaks much more than voices, forebodings are truer than what happened, and a deserted plain has more secrets than a forest of chestnuts. I will call Victor Erice, the director, the timekeeper: a man who must have had the ability to feel the untold burden and the untold wealth of love, fear and anger to be able to make El espíritu de la colmena (int'l title: The Spirit of the Beehive).

The film has no need of oblique references to Franco and the Spain of yesteryears; within itself, the story of a child haunted and imprisoned, a life-changing sentence that at once is transcendental between life and death, between the meaningless order of bees and the disorder of humans consequent to striving for meaning, the story not only moves you sweepingly in her world, but also thrills you and grips you. Even without the horror, there is horror; the film is shot carefully, with colors chosenly blended: a heavy melancholia pervades at all times the house of two lively girls in the silent Castillian village. While Isabel slowly develops sadistic streaks as her form of rebellion against the silence, Ana chooses silence to cut silence: finding labyrinths through the silence, she must encounter the spirit, and determine if the spirit is even evil or not. Why to accuse the spirit beforehand? She is ready for change, for a new oncoming; may not a spirit bring more sense to the world of bees, building cells and collecting honey as if they were run mechanically?

Every shot is a beauty to watch, and it is rare that a film succeeds when every shot is some thing: here it does, because every shot has a purpose, a meaning. The art direction is very relevant, only enhanced by the extraordinary cinematography. At once, through rich poetics, Erice addresses growing up, rebellion, the gatherer's life we choose to live, and the meaning of poetry itself in life. A film hard to forget, The Spirit of the Beehive raises the rarely asked question: who is said to exist?

Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes

2011-05-27T22:48:00.000-07:00

Klaus Kinski had to play only himself; but it is the way that Herzog restrains himself in his critique of the West’s lust for power and riches, not going overboard and yet being to the point, that defines the astonishing film Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (int’l title: Aguirre, the Wrath of God). And it is the music of the film that gives that elemental touch to the film, when man is at war with nature: nature not only of the Amazon but also nature within, where man makes a slave of himself in pursuit of mastery over everything and everyone. Power brings with it the subjugation to the oppressed: something unfinishedly said in Orwell’s “Shooting an elephant” and more refinedly in Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. For when you establish a power over someone’s body and wealth, his will and land, you tie yourself up within the realm that that power gives you; the more vast the reach, probably the wider is the radius of your tether, and yet tied you remain. And sometimes like a hurt animal ready to bite, as Aguirre (Kinski), mad but ready to pierce every envelope, and madder for he has the intelligence to feel that this was not a prison worthy to broken, a fort worthy to be taken; gold means nothing, for fame and power are absolute to him; and yet, if he had attained that fame and power, would he have finally felt satisfied? Or, like Ashoka, been driven on to that eternal lust of repentance and God?

Werner Herzog would have been the right man to make a film on Ashoka, for here he leaves the business unfinished; the final realization, that the powerful is the most powerless, is here only as the apparent truth, but what about the implied truth, when even the senses say otherwise? But given the limited scope of the film, he does marvellously: the way he only touches upon the aspect of incest since the start of the film; the manner in which he handles the pristine beauty of the landscape without letting it be the central element of the film; and how he handles, sparingly, Kinski himself. Rather than any antics or rhetoric, it is Kinski’s burning, blue eyes that bespeak the maniac in him, the man who is not the average but who has risen to only so far as to despise the others, not more above. A bully besotted with himself.

L'avventura

2011-04-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

When you do not believe in anything, how empty is your life? A story stunningly portraying the decay of Western civilization, L'avventura (literally The Adventure) goes where films as a rule don't go: a sincere attempt to comprehend reality. The film stops where Sandro stops: wanting sympathy, in despair, and himself not knowing where is the response. And, outside the pales of forgiving or forgetting, having crossed the sense of culpability in loving a forbidden, does Claudia know anymore?

Like leaves without wills blown at wind's whim, men and women flow about: what they leave behind is facades, ruins and church bells. What they desired is an answer to who they are: but they forgot to seek it in the other; they forgot to ask who the other is. Obsessed with the quest for themselves, every human comes crafted for them: Anna and Sandro have merely utilised each other in this lonely and selfish quest, and none has ever really thought about the other. None has known how horizons can be expanded; tragically, Anna's mysterious vanishing will only bring to the fore the inability to cope with themselves as they are. Sandro does find himself, would know what he is: a man unable to love. He will not need to look in Claudia's eyes for that judgment; he will need to look at the sky, or he will need to look at the buildings he never built. He is but the man who watches, envies, takes malicious pleasure in destroying the beauty he seeks, and tries to leave furtively; he is but the pitiable human who are born for greatness but are lost for ever in trying to deconstruct beauty. And the woman, Claudia?

Among the few women's films, l'Avventura is one. Monica Vitti (playing Claudia) neither is pretty nor knows very well to act, but the way Antonioni has used her is remarkable: she is not exactly wooden either, and her beauty is the kind that you will believe in one day and not the next day. Which is why, the constant focus on her face gives the film a double edge: a sympathy that she is ruining her life by falling into that love, but that she could not do anything otherwise. She is the one who still believes, who has that courage; and she has the horrible destiny of being undeceived: of how the others don't, and of how they can merely fit you in the scheme of things. Her belief, whether in Anna's being alive or whether in love and happiness, is never very well founded, yet never seems crazy, and seems a better thing to have than coldness which would be called realist by some.

It is a wonder to me how could a film be made so well demonstrating the decay at the heart of the West, and yet not take a preachy or a flippant tone. In a way, Fellini does the same thing with 81/2 but he adds in a lot more absurdity, which makes the effort that much less touching. Rohmer does the same thing in all his films, but Rohmer is more like Zola: he is empty of ideas. He only points the microscope at the bacteria, but has no ideas about the bacteria's place in universe. In addition, using stilted dialogues and contrived situations, Rohmer can often be preachy and indulging in vanity. But, here, we have a storyteller who knows the phenomenon and knows the evolution, who knows the germ and who knows the fruit: and one who is in love with stories and humanity, and thus with himself.

L'uomo che verrà

2011-04-07T06:38:00.000-07:00

It is as simple as a Daudet tale and it is as touching as the silent moonlight is: with a surprising sincerity even when the subject is Nazi devastation, avoiding rhetoric and background music scores that seek to put a story in relief, and treating children more like adults, L'uomo che verrà (int'l title: The Man Who Will Come) is first and foremost a story that desires respect for being story, for being truth: references can be dispensed with, even the actual Marzabotto massacre on which the film is based. If you've liked Hollywood and Polanski, you will not like this film: insincerity, pomp and loud activism find not a single echo here. If you love Tarkosvkiy and have asked yourself the question what can make a man so cruel, you will want to watch this film.

Education? That is the central question of the film: can it immunize a man to everything, and all the morals and all the conscience are only an education, a conditioning we have been born bathed in? Goring a human flesh and using a woman as your lover as good as it lasts: is there something wrong in it? Is it only yet another argument to justify cruelty, or is there no cruelty but in the head, in the imagination, in the fulfilment of the Other's desire through you? People want to be humane, as they are expected to behave so; they can easily want to be efficient killers, if they are started being expected to behave so? Where does desire get born? In yourself or in the Other? And yet, sometimes a shooting squad member will falter, a boy's blue uncomprehending eyes will ask him strange questions: is it simply that he was too grounded in his earlier education of morals and stuff? Those blue eyes, they don't trouble the other serial killer, after all. Shouldn't the blue eyes trouble every potential killer so as to prove an absolute?

In a very different way, the film raises almost the same questions as Tarkovskiy's beautiful Andrei Rublev raises, most notably during the Tatar raid in Rublev: an almost Salvador Dali-esque sequence, but instead of laughing in its face more intent on asking and asking. Beautifully shot, parts of the film will remind you of that yet another great movie, L'albero degli zoccoli; the grinding poverty of an Italian village and the dominant Catholic influence (absent in present-day Italy) do not serve to pigeonhole the film in an epoch, but only mark the universality of man's material concerns: food for himself and for his horse, clothes and marriage. A son, a daughter. Like many other Italian films, the film does not employ actors quite known, except Maya Sensa, who slips into her quiet role very efficiently; editing is not fancy but simple, and the film slowly lurches from grim monotony to shocking barbarity: just like it would have been for the inhabitants of Marzabotto. Disbelief. No, this can't be possible. Surely, not the church? Surely, not the women and children? Surely, not the priest?

La Collectionneuse

2011-03-07T22:25:00.000-08:00

Words, works of art - and silences - are but the razor blades to keep an annular space of void, a zone of no-entry, between the world that constantly endeavours to attack us and the self. That is what Daniel articulates but that is also what every Rohmer character does in La Collectionneuse. The film is nothing but a deep, patient study of the decay of society: Adrien's vain solitude and Haydée's pointless flirtations and love-making are sadly not even due to an inordinate appetite, but those are the razor blades that each one has selected to keep everyone else at bay. At once narcissistic and unable to love, the choice before them is to manifest in deeds and words - or silences - their identity and their existence.

The private space of any human being is sacrosanct, but that private space is also peopled, and not sterile: peopled however by one's own emotions, beliefs and love for others, because alone in myself I cannot know myself. It is in the other's eye that I have a role, it is in the other's laugh: mechanical sex only makes me identify myself as a pump though I may believe that I have given the world a pump and retained myself intact. Which and what myself? Love is in the loving.

Haydée Politoff as Haydée is perfect; it is surprising that how did she never become a famous actress, considering that she is not only beautiful and can look dumb, but also that she is someone who would slip into most parts very well: she is not gorgeous and yet charming, and the air of mystery that can be construed both as real mystery and as dumbness multiplies the number of possibilities of roles for her. Camera work in the film plays a key role; it's a leisurely observation of chameleons basking in the sun, and all one should keep in mind is to let the viewer feel everything: every movement and every smile, the nap in the sun and the swim in the sea. Expressions on the faces of both the lead characters are focussed upon for great lengths of times, and the rest of the characters have been given a bit of a short shrift.

It's always puzzling to me why Rohmer used to make such films? If you remove the prologue, most viewers would be at a loss to understand the film: most of them anyway I guess watch it to gawk on Haydée Politoff. The film is like a camera observing how flies die: however, Rohmer instead of showing human existence as purposeless shows how the riches and the beauties are there and yet it is we who make of ourselves the flies. Words are for reaching out, and there already exists a void between the expression and the enunciation, so there is never the danger of the sacred space getting violated: yet, when we begin to understand ourselves from our own words, when we begin to take the proof as the all there is to it, when we lose track of discrepancy between the parole and the parler, it is then we erect razors, and we see words as razors: it is then that we start searching for our identity in every night's pleasure and in every witty statement.

A beautiful film by Eric Rohmer, with the typical French pace of cinéma, there is hardly a moment where the viewer is not engaged.

Höstsonaten

2011-02-09T05:51:00.000-08:00

I haven't ever read interviews of Ingmar Bergman, or rather anything about him - the way I know him is his work, his films. He is, to me, one of that rare breed who are not afraid to doubt - who stand within the pales of religion and yet take a promenade in there. He is a "doubter" - not just in the sense accepted, that of doubting religion and God, but also doubting the arguments contrary to it. Bergman's overarching pain, which he imposes on others through his films, has been striving to understand the perfection of a world which has so much ugliness as well; if man is God's work, why the ugly institutions he created to venerate the same God? Why, Man whom Eva alludes to in the film as having the highest and the lowest in him at the same time, why that man who bears the image of God in himself does need the external symbols and securities? Eva loves: this is the expression of Man, and we give it names. She loves; and thwarted in a world long decayed, she tries to learn to live, wherein every day is a practice.

A beautiful film, which on the face of it is about a failed relationship between two humans, a mother and a daughter, Höstsonaten (int'l title: Autumn Sonata) delves much deeper and brings into play all the themes Bergman struggled with, all the things he tried to understand. One of the features of most Bergman works, one which is not met often in literature or films otherwise, is that it is the women who are successful (and also often prey to that success, just as men are in others' works): forgetting the successful pianist Charlotte, even the tormented and unloved daughter Eva comes across in a way successful compared to her silently suffering husband, Viktor. That is the way Bergman plots the film: although, of course, a silence does not mean that a person does not suffer, yet Viktor is, for Bergman's film, dispensable; he is merely a "detached" narrator, a man playing a side role in the prominent story of a daughter who wants to be loved as she is, without questions and without judgments, without expectations and without bouts of enthusiasm and worry about her. She wants to live but be loved, but not be weighed down by love. Or the affected love - as that of her mother.

Autumn Sonata brings in one more very strange constant of Bergman's work: an old, cynical, intelligent man, a man who understands the world very well but is always a bit bored and wants to keep himself amused by a novelty (Stavrogin if you have read Dostoyevsky, Uncle Erland if you have seen that marvellous Bergman film Summer Interlude), who finds a new prey in a young girl, ready to believe and love, ready to adore and pray, a girl whose spirit is strong but who is what the world will call as naive (it is interesting that in a politically correct world, all the actual cruel words do keep on existing). I consider the Leonard-Helena happening as a complete byplot in the film: probably, in structural terms, it is even a defect; it distracts from the main body and that for a long time in a mere one-and-half-hour film. Yet, who will mind? To glimpse what goes in Bergman's mind, and what dark shadows lurk there, is more fascinating itself.

The question that Bergman never really asked openly - maybe he never got further to the pith, or somehow he just didn't want to - is not a mere rhetorical one, that why this? It is, rather, why the boredness? At the same stroke, Bergman, almost, attacks the religious institutions and glorifies God: in a world of thousand things and patterns to learn, or as Eva says in a world of many alternate realities than we can sense or know ever - God - there is the pew-sitting, there is the sacrament, and there is the choir - religion - someone instilling and instilling always inside us, as if we were mere cardboards, as if our desires and hopes were unclean, as if they were not enough to make us learn ourselves. Instead of trying to know the other realities, we don't even know ourselves - but run after a shining wax model erected by someone and told as desirable, all to protect us from our insecurities, a deus ex machina for the times that we are in doubt of us.

For, yes, we are doubters: and it is good that we are doubters. The inherent opposition between the concept of God and the idea of religion has probably never been so brilliantly put, excepting Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor. Brilliant acting performances, especially by Liv Ullmann, and a simple film with no editing tricks elevate Ingmar Bergman to a master story-teller: the one who touches hearts, who can feel oneself.

Ivanovo detstvo

2011-01-29T21:29:00.000-08:00

Tarkovskiy's first feature, Ivanovo detstvo (int'l title: Ivan's Childhood), lacerates the viewer with pain, questions, and a moody silence: Kolya Burlyaev as the 12-year-old Ivan shows a maturity of acting skills unsurpassed and is the pulse of this wonderful film, another example of what a fine black-and-white film can achieve and how strange it is that poetry is felt when one watches beautiful cinematography in black and white.

As a film, a young director's flaws do come out and at times there is more intellect than heart, more the intention of sending out a message than an attempt to understand and explore the message oneself using the medium of a film this time: some of the dream sequences like the apples one and the final fantasy of all gathered in a paradise? seem imposed on the film, seem like tacked onto it. However, even the flaws of a genius are beautiful to watch or experience, and such foibles do not in any way take away from the rare thing that Ivan's Childhood is: a humane attempt to make sense of an insensible world, a struggle to not reject, to not give way to the easy method of denial of everything. This is where the stunning performance of Kolya as Ivan comes to the fore: his burning hatred not just provides him with the fodder to live on, and the will power for action, but it also would have led him to a more enlightened self, through which he knows himself, that what he is, who he is, and probably that there are differences between the what and the who.

The subplot of Masha seems like a complete early Ingmar Bergman film: however, it does seem unneeded to me in this film. There is little time already in a one-and-half-hour film to devote to Ivan; outside of his dreams and his hate-filled eyes, there is little to choose from, and had it not been the expressions on Kolya's face which are themselves a million stories, the viewer would have been stifled. Tarkovskiy gives glimpses of that rare ability that Resnais had, to play with time, but compared to the latter, he still is green. I did not like the voiceover at the end when Ivan's fate was revealed to the viewer: the voiceover is a simple trick but ungainly because in real life there are no voiceovers (sometimes, it is effective, but those are different sets of circumstances). It very much reminded me of an opening scene of the Hindi classic Saahib, Bibi aur Ghulam, where the discovery of some broken bangles by a civil engineer leads to the unravelling of a past, forgotten story (here, the discovery comes only at the end, but again the end of the protagonist can only be guessed at by the person who discovers the remains of a life lived passionately). Time, even though we see it as so separate, is so kneaded: why to use voiceovers and flashbacks to reinforce the notion that time is separate, divided into discrete periods? Considering the intention Tarkovskiy set out with, I felt the story betrayed, the boy betrayed. He looked for synthesis everywhere: his quest for justice and vengeance was nothing but a search for resolution. A resolution above all in time: the old man who has lost his wife, he himself who has lost his family, Russia whose future is uncertain and present black, and Siberia where time and space both seem to stand still, for even 200 or 2000 kilometres in Siberia is not far.

L'Humanité

2010-11-22T19:16:00.000-08:00

In a world increasingly caught up in abstractions, trying to always avoid facing realities, is Bruno Dumont's L'Humanité one of the last-ditch efforts to try to make face people themselves, to recognize the stories in their lives, and to make an effort to clean up themselves, to find meanings in the beauty they could be grateful for?

The film is a stunning, brave, and unintimidated answer to the direction cinema has been taking over the past half-century: not just the Hollywood penchant for futuristic fantasies, but also the so-called arthouse or intellectual cinema of directors like Godard. It's ironic on first news that Bruno Dumont is an erstwhile philosophy teacher, but not anymore so, when you realize that sucked into a pseudo-science he realized how he's lost contact with the people, how he can't touch them, and thus he turned to film-making. This is where the wide gulf is between Dumont and Godard. Godard is what I call as "a philosopher" in cinema, referencing and referencing, stacking layers upon layers of meaning, and creating an edifice that will yield high cerebral pleasure to the ones in the esoteric circle; he forgets that cinema as the knowledge of life should touch people and should draw from people. But Dumont knows that the most beautiful edifice is only when it can be built from lay notions, lay words: humanity is a participatory experience, of senses, of impressions, of images and sounds and whatever we sense, and of the people we interact with. Stories are the most beautiful creations, whether fairy-tales or the tales of reality; and when told well, when the narrator is sincere to each of his characters and uses his voice only as the medium to communicate but nothing more, then the story is loved, speaks at least to someone's heart, incites passions and emotions and something to think. To different audiences, I may speak in different languages; but when I change the language, the heart should not go missing, the cores should remain intact.

Many people and critics, among whom some I respect, compare Dumont with Bresson. I do not agree. It is very difficult for me to explain why, but Bresson's camera is an objectifying, deadening gaze; it looks around without searching for meaning, without finding meaning. Dumont's camera is an absorbing, non-judgmental gaze: it looks around without judging, but still trying to understand the meaning. Note that even trying to understand is a kind of judgment, because what you are still trying to understand is not something you're still comfortable with and hence your mind is still active with it. On the other hand, can a complete deadening gaze of Bresson be called non-judgmental? Or, would you call it an indifferent gaze, figuratively speaking a cold gaze?

The remarkable thing about this film, L'Humanité, is that Dumont also finds an actor, Emmanuel Schotté (playing Pharaon de Winter), whose gaze is as absorbent; the character of de Winter reminds one a lot, a real lot, of Dostoyevsky's Prince Myshkin. It is a very, very difficult task to show how a man can feel utmost contempt for the crime, the act, and yet love and/or pity for the criminal, the perpetrator; how one can be in love with humanity, even if one keeps on encountering actions of a bewildered humanity, actions that one not only hates, but which eat up your soul constantly with their why?, how is it possible?, why?. De Winter is sexual and yet sexless; he can keep hoping blindly and endlessly for his neigbour Domino (played by Séverine Caneele) and watch her with a voyeur's gaze, and yet he can do that without a voyeur's delight, as if all the time he's trying to put 2 and 2 together, as if he's trying to understand the motor impulses of a human being, of humanity, that impels them to things like rape, murder, and the very commonly found insensitivity to another person. For, everyone's busy in their insensitivity: de Winter's mother, Domino herself, and all the world; life is a burden upon them, that they try to shake off, do a jig, and grunt again under its load. For de Winter, it's the uncomprehendingness ("incomprehension" means something else; I don't mean that) that is a bigger burden, against which he wants to scream; for once, he also feels the burden of the society that won't let him shriek when he wants to.

Manon des Sources (1986)

2010-10-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

(For entry on Jean de Florette, refer here.) Borne on by the beautiful music of Jean de Florette and the strong presence of Yves Montand, the second part of this Marcel Pagnon saga spread across generations, Manon des Sources (int'l title: Manon of the Spring), is resolved to balance out the injustice and play the judgement game; and as a story, it suffers a lot on that count. Emmanuelle Béart might be very pretty, but she also looks hardly the role of an intelligent, wild woman: and her shortage of acting skills are in full evidence. The issue here is that she is playing the title character, and as much as Yves Montand can do to shore up the film, it is Béart who must light the film.

The film also has an extraordinarily slow pace, probably because the story is a little puzzlingly simple. It is not clear why would Manon's mother leave her for the operas; it is also not clear that what was Manon, if she was filled with that much hate for the Soubeyrans, doing all this time? Happily singing to her herd of goats and waiting for a schoolteacher to arrive to enlighten her? There is also a serious disjunct between her father's character and hers: which of course is something that happens all the time, but the only thing is that a revenge story craves for a justice arrived at, rather than being meted out.

Ben-Hur is a great film not just because of its story of miracles and its sheer belief in humanity and life, but also because Judah's wife asks him: You've become the very thing you set out to destroy, Messala! This is the poignant crux of life: to kill the killer I need to become the killer, and then what is the point of that justice I am seeking? A mere unspent bloodthirst? At this important point, Manon des Sources fails.

Daniel Auteuil has little to do in the film, while Montand has simply the role of a tired man doomed to the results of his wickedness; his remorse, the revenge for him, is only because Jean was his own son, but he would still do the same thing tomorrow to some another man who wouldn't be his son. Is that even revenge? Béart is insipid, while the rest of the village's sudden desire to talk about an affair that happened more than a decade back is strange, as is their newfound ability to suddenly connect the drying up of water with what happened at the Romarins. However, on the whole, the two films Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources are classic examples of French cinema: slow and thoughtful, lingering shots, a woman's nudity as a fact and beauty and not in the way most American films show, a simple story with not many twists, life's ironies and realities, ordinary acting and beautiful music, and an emphasis to content over style. I could watch these two films just for Dépardieu and Montand and the Verdi music that is the refrain of the film.

As an aside, I must say that have the DVD poster-makers started making posters without seeing the film and from their own imagination? The current poster higlighted on imdb.com for Jean de Florette (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091288/) is not only not a scene from the film, but it couldn't have been: the sheer tragedy of the films lies in the fact that Montand drove his son to his death and ruin without even ever meeting him, his eyes, his voice.

Paltadacho Munis

2010-09-30T08:13:00.000-07:00

A searing critique of institutional religion and the ways it is wedded with politics, Laxmikant Shetgaonkar's film Paltadacho Munis (int'l title: The Man beyond the Bridge) is first a thoughtful, beautiful story of a lonely forest guard fighting off his loneliness as much as the greed and corruption around him, with nothing but a big heart and a cane in his hand. The film's strength lies in that without using dialogues, it's sort of a monologue: the forest guard (Chittaranjan Giri) is an insignificant peg in a vast administrative network, and the forest is his closest friend. Every element of the forest means something to him: including the mad woman he first falls in lust with, and then love with.

The theme of loneliness is not simply explored through Giri's nonchalant character, but also through the mad woman's (Veena Jamkar). If she has escaped the taunts and the stones of the villagers, then was it only to lose the last remnant of independence: her ability to roam and to laugh at her own will? Giri wants to care for her, but in the process he forgets how she came to him: and he tries to cage her, and give her an image of his own. But water is not molded; it has to break free, it has to flow on. Giri and Jamkar realise their limitations, and also how each must respect the other, and only then could love continue: because the forest is not only full of silences but also predators. Outside, there is only the forest; and the warmth must be made within, even of themselves, themselves the flint and steel and themselves the fire.

Throughout the length of the film, the hypocrisy of religion, rituals, and politicians is well exposed, albeit as a silent observer. The way in which Giri chooses to fight is being himself, by doing what he wants; rather than anything symbolic or grand, he dares to love, and he dares to protect. And so does Jamkar. The man beyond the bridge may be outside the pale of civilization, but it could be that the world is more beautiful on that side.

Shot in the beautiful Goa-Karnataka border region, the film is made in Karwari and Bardezi dialects and available subtitled in English.

Vendredi soir

2010-08-31T06:24:00.000-07:00

The film Vendredi soir (international title: Friday Night) draws in and repels in equal measures: without a story, with its object of simply showing a one-night stand, the film revels in images and senses; a Paris of the congested roads because of the proverbial French strikes, but also a Paris of the now-empty, again owing to the strikes, cafés and hotels; a Paris of loneliness where the radio announcer hints the car-drivers to give a lift to passers-by for it can be "fun," to a Paris of crowds of islands roaming in the night, seeking pleasure or a final edification.

To talk of the theme, Claire Denis probably means to show a woman's decision to be a part of a one-night stand as women's lib, as some feminists do believe it to be; the final image that rests with the viewer is an ecstatic Valérie Lemercier after a night of pleasure: there is neither guilt nor a lust for an encore. She is satisfied and happy. However, that jars in when compared with the attitudes of the two brief lovers for all the time: the man (Vincent Lindon) is cool, detached, and very sure of himself (and probably, as the woman later suspects, he used, though maybe not, the ten franc change to buy condoms, before the woman had even evinced any apparent interest in him). He is not bothered if the woman leaves, but he feels welcome to her body if she would let him. The woman likes being suddenly cared for; driving alone on the streets, living a monotonous life, the man comes as an ephemeral spark to her, and she need not even take any initiative. Now if the film were to be a non-committal comment on urban life, this would have been another story that happens: even now, this does indeed remain a very credible story, but then it does not say why should it merit one and half hours of footage? Why should the film want to give a message at the end, and freeze it there: does the film itself intend to be treated like a laxative? It is strange liberation being suggested when the man is sure of his sexual possession over the woman: even if one could argue the woman has only used him instead for that night, it would only lead furthest to the conclusion that the man didn't possess her but rather she wanted to be possessed; is that the women's lib the director believes in?

As for the style in which the film is made, I would say the film is to cinema what a haiku is to poetry: nothing but the impressions of a night in an urban environment being gathered by a woman. The man is dead, the woman is dead: they are concentrated in themselves and seek each other out as ejaculations; it could be a film of masks. Haiku however are often beautiful if well-conceived, for they do not drag: this film drags for half an hour on the traffic jam and for the remaining time on the fling. I think sex scenes are often quite tragic in films: they purport to show an intimacy that gets violated the instant it is being shown on screen. Here, Denis obscures many details in darkness, or moves the camera here and there, or shows the act here to be a slow kill rather than a wild dash; however, she only succeeds in prolonging the torture: any eroticism, if it could have been imagined, is flushed out (one could have simply recorded a couple all night and called it a film!), and what remains is a sick tale of what all possiblities are present in life.

There's one saving grace of the film: the shots of Paris in the opening; rooftops, houses, a falling day.

Raavan

2010-06-20T06:43:00.000-07:00

While the epic Ramayana, which the film has for its storyline but in modern settings, is a victor's account of the quest for supremacy of Aryans over Dravidians, Raavan does the magic trick of pushing the same struggle between state administration and guerrilla justice at the periphery, rather simply a context. Foremost, Raavan is the story of truth: and of truths. The absolute is in the eyes of Ragini, which make Beera transcend himself: and the moment he attains it, it is then that Ragini must face and live with the pain of that truth. And taut between this continuum of absolutes, there are the truths: in the name of dharma (duty), in the name of possession, in the name of revenge.

Raavan as a film is primarily designed for being a visual treat: but the design has not been done through any visual effects, but through the stunning nature and diversity of the Western Ghats, one of the countable few remaining ecological hotspots and treasuries in the world. The camera does not play tricks: rather, it brings out every beauty. From the creatures endemic to the Ghats, to the roaring southern rivers amid wild herbs and mists, to the drops of water, mud, turmeric, tear, sweat, fear on the protagonists' faces - the camera is in an observant mode, as the story of stoicism plays out. If Ragini had not been as pure as her cries that only come back to her in this world where man and nature share a home's warmth, if she had been more afraid of the vulture who comes near to pounce, then this could have been a mere Thomas Hardy story: where the frailties of humanity are mourned; or a modern counterpart, where they are celebrated. But, even if Beera is a dacoit steeped in blood, even if Ragini has been immune to the truths around her and yet dares to think herself as true, even if the Superintendent of Police plays with life and its denizens like a cat with mice: even then, the desire to win the water that shall sweep everything away, the battle to win a heart, the scorn for the hand to protect for it seems a master reign the field, as if nature has gained ascendance over them and imbued each of them with an own freedom, an own whim, a liberty defined by the furthest mountain, the most treacherous cascade. To which, there is no end.

The character built for Beera deserves special mention, and I also think Abhishek Bachchan has played it to a difficult perfection. It is a hero unlike any hero or anti-hero or even any character role that I've seen in any film across the world and Hollywood cinema; he is built as if to alienate audiences! Except for his staunch figure often silhouetted on the screen, he has hardly any dialogues: and when he has, they are noises, they are his irritations and his amusements and his angers venting forth in the form of some of his typical mannerisms, which do not change but keep repeating throughout the duration of the film. His smouldering eyes are probably the only indication of how alone he is within himself, of how much depth he is capable, and how quick he is to divine things. The opening half-hour of the film, and Beera throughout, also reminds a lot of Peer Gynt: there's the same lyrical drama structure, and while Peer Gynt plays around with girls and doesn't know where his happiness could have been till late, Beera plays around with blood and doesn't know where his actual death would come from - Ragini, the woman he respects and desires - till late.

Talking of the other actors, Aishwarya Rai fits in the film well; somehow, her kind of beauty and figure blend in with the story, and her eyes always seem to say as if she thinks herself superior, so they match with the character of Ragini. The remaining however, except for Priyamani, do not fit; and there lies a major weakness of the film. The greatest weakness of the film is however in its loose editing: but Ratnam lapsed with this job even with Dil Se, which I consider to be his best ever, and was probably only on the mark, to some extent, with Guru. Rahman's music is again brilliant, though most of the scores also feel to me a rehash of his old ones: in particular Beera has an echo in Dil Se. But Gulzar's lyrics light a fire unparalleled: he has probably surpassed even himself with the lyrics of Behene de.

The one aspect where Ratnam disappointed me the most was his sudden use of northern Indian motifs, in and around Jamuniya's marriage scenes. From Maharashtra to Kerala, the coverage of Western Ghats that is present in this film is in itself locating the story at too many places, because the Ghats differ a lot as one moves a few hundred kilometres; but to show houses and ceremonies in a manner which could not happen in that Indian world, and on top of that to show a highly rich and bourgeois style of marriage considering that it's a guerrilla leader's sister who's getting married, is a bit jarring and offputting to say the least. One of the marks of a good film is consistency, and I am afraid Raavan does not have it in many respects. However, if for nothing else, the film is a must-watch for the exploration of one of the most dangerous and beautiful places in the world: the Western Ghats.

Kites

2010-05-31T11:16:00.000-07:00

Yes, Kites is indeed Koyla stylised, repackaged, and trimmed, and in fact a much inferior version of the latter. Yes, the Indian critics are right to rip it off for its complete lack of story and the actors' non-acting. But yet, the film I would say is more rather an introductory tutorial into the world of Indian cinema for the Western audiences, and in that it does the job: the warmth of the film stunningly contrasts with the coldness of Hollywood films and has been a major factor besides its very design that has made it the first ever Indian film to make it to the US top ten at the box office, and the chemistry between the lovers - Hrithik Roshan and Barbara Mori - is a sight to watch in spite of the two different languages they speak in - English and Spanish. Love is a lot like music.

While Koyla brimmed over with anger and focused on the angst of a man, Kites chooses to remain being a simple love story doomed to failure: in some senses, there is more of Ghai's Kisna to it than any other film. But instead of the Himalayas, this time we have the New Mexico's sunflooded arid landscapes. The beauty of Kites lies in the fantasy feel to it: the love between Roshan and Mori seems like too good to be true, and yet it seems to be true. Even though the actors themselves don't know much about acting and have a limited stock of expressions on their faces, the chemistry between them is just alluring, and forgotten is their greed for money which brought their cruel fate onto them in the first place.

What is sad though however is so much non-use of Kangana Ranaut as to force her name as in a guest appearance in the credits roll: one of the finest actors of the world that she is, and reduced to a few minutes' screen time? Her character, too, could have been developed more: her father's one dialogue that he has seen her happy after a long time in itself sets in chain a thousand sequences that could have come off, that could have established another niche in the film, and all we have is just a jilted woman, who is shown to be obsessed so that the audience may not sympathise with her at all. On the other hand, the brother is rather more focused upon, in the old tradition of Hindi films where the villain was equally important as or even more than the hero, and it only makes the film a bit caricaturish. But then, as one US critic said of the film, everything is forgiven. It's a warm, crazy film, and just for the sake of that, it's not all that bad.

Roma, città aperta

2010-03-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

Probably, stripping away the old Hollywood flair and style meant "neorealism": Roma, città aperta (Rome: Open City) works well, and grippingly enough, for a small snippet from the occupation days, but realism? Melville's L'armée des ombres, a film strikingly similar, would have highly merited this tag; Lino Ventura, even if an actor, looks more natural than the "non-actors" here. Realism doesn't just mean filming in devastated cities and showing life to be hollowed out (which is what was also probably thought by the Bicycle Thieves maker) but life as it is. The German officer might scorn the rhetoric that Italians are fond of, but there is hardly any visible rhetoric in any actor's mouth: instead, the director indulges in much of it - the running betrothed woman was bound to be shot; the German officer had to forget his cruelties in drink; the woman who gave them away had to swoon; the whistles sing before the priest is shot. Is this not rhetoric?

Rhetoric might be a reality in people's words, it hardly is when it comes to life. Things don't happen so opportunely, especially when one is not seeing in hindsight. A key force to realism is lent by an inability to see backwards or forwards: one lives in the moment, just as one lives life. To show depressing sights is not the answer; for that one can see a grim documentary. A film must work on the level of fantasy - even if it tries to project reality - the fantasy of a tightly strung thread running through; reality does not work on the basis of what might have been and eliciting such sighs from the viewers, but the brute slap of what happened and can happen, the realization and the fear, the action and the anticipation.

Though Melville's film came much later, as a viewer of the modern age having once seen it I see little to choose in Rossellini's film. The story of Rome: Open City is fortunately centered around only few characters, and yet a poor cinematography and lack of characterization make the film appear like one were watching a story through binoculars; there is hardly any depth to the film, and it seems to make blanket statements for or against each of the protagonists, covering all in a shroud of inevitable tragedy. As long as one breathes - which is reality - nothing's inevitable, nothing's impending!

Harishchandrachi Factory

2010-03-11T08:02:00.000-08:00

It is not only a marvellous story of the pioneer of the world's largest film industry, but also in equal measures the story of an always enterprising India, the story of a middle-class Hindu family, and the story of a man who refuses to die whatever the moment be. Nandu Madhav stars as the irrepressible Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, a man fascinated by stories and magic and machines and now bent upon learning and unfolding the magic of moving pictures upon the world. The best thing that Harishchandrachi Factory (English: The Factory of Harishchandra) does is to stick to its title; it has no interest in showing the multiple facets of Phalke: the brilliant photography student from the MS University of Baroda or the man obsessed with printing machines and who went to Germany to learn more of them or the man who worked with Raja Ravi Varma and learnt magic from Carl Hertz. The film is only about the making of the first Indian film, Raja Harishchandra, and almost parallels the enthusiasm in a similar story shown about the first Romanian film's making in Restul e tăcere.

Where the film however makes a mark is in situating the story firmly in the Indian context: while the few slogans for Tilak and pictures of Kesari are just artificial ploys to make the film appear in 1910s, it is the brilliant artwork and well-written dialogues that do the job. Hardly has anyone succeeded in so meticulously constructing a typical Hindu family's lifestyle and dynamics as Paresh Mokashi has in his directorial debut. The chemistry between all the four family members is a sight to watch, and each member of the family shares work and respect equally; coupled with the humor attending the never-say-die spirit of Phalke, who makes the bleakest of situations appear as games to be played, the film is a life-changing story.

One thought that strikes the viewer is the large contrast between Benigni in Life Is Beautiful and Madhav in Harishchandrachi Factory. Benigni comes upon suddenly as an overacting, highly affected actor in comparison to the natural skills of Madhav, who seems to be lifted out from life and placed in the film. Benigni 'keeps' himself happy, Madhave knows to be happy.

And a special mention to the film's effervescent music: not only capturing the days of old Marathi cinema, but also tilting the viewer into the craziness of DG Phalke.

Road, Movie

2010-03-05T06:49:00.000-08:00

The much-touted, much-anticipated Indian answer to Cinema Paradiso never materialises in spite of a talented cast, stunning locales, and a vast and diverse country as the backdrop: Road, Movie never adopts a story, instead ending up with a confused one that wanted to tackle all the Paradiso themes of coming of age, journeys, and the magic of cinema, and yet ends up with only an abstract shimmy into the hot, arid desert landscape of Kutch-Rajasthan. Where it fails even more miserably is by giving the story the typical oft-seen Hollywood notion that young men have to come of age; on the other hand, in Paradiso, Toto came of age at every moment of his life: the childhood of learning from Alfredo, the youth of love and waiting for love, and the old age of the magic still alive and yet the realisations and the revelations never ending, a life thrilling to touch at each moment. A life to live with the gumption of Alfredo, whatever it may bring: there's always a story, romance.

Abhay Deol carries his Dev D mistargeted angsts to this film and set against the flimsy hairoil business of his father that he hates, the undecided nature of the film sets in. The film from there on does not manage to balance the several threads running right through: molière-sque farce and life-changing journeys. It does not explain how does the Rajasthani boy manage to pronounce Starbucks so correctly, and how does Yashpal Sharma, the water dacoit, manage to pronounce the English "~tion" as "shun" and "son" both. The sweet Rajasthani dialect or the salty Kutchi one, wherever the film is meant to be placed, is completely absent, and instead we have every character speaking khariboli Hindi; how? If a lonely truck roaming in the desert picks up a gypsy woman who speaks just like a woman you met in a real Starbucks cafe would have, and when this woman roaming in search of water even manages to have a full coat of lipstick on her lips, then how do you manage to feel the film? Especially when the whole point of the film is somehow to just get lost in the hotness, the ballooning white skies, the sheer struggle of finding oneself through travelling. And not just find places, not just peace for yourself, not get lost in wildernesses, but to find humanity, outside and within you.

There are times though because of the beautiful landscape that the film does work and shows travel to be what it is. Punctuated by a selfish Abhay, bright Mohammed Faizal (who seems to be simply the most effortless actor I have ever seen, and with a head on his shoulders; a good match-up for Ishqiya's Alok Kumar), a maverick and lovely Satish Kaushik, and a sultry gypsy Tannishtha, the film is essentially hardly cinema and its magic, but just the various colors of this world, and how each life, each voice, each background, each drop of water carries a story, a breath, a dream. This is what travel is and this is what Abhay realises, alongwith finding a bit of more humanity in him than he was wont to. Showing remote human settlements cinema is just the guise for Abhay, and the filmmaker.

For lovers of the beauty that India presents, the film is a gift: though not going outside the desert, there is enough to make the viewer curse that why did the director not make a full Hindi feature-length film, instead making some chopped-headed 2-hour-or-less film. Short length is a major weakness of the film: when you start with Lawrence of Arabia landscapes, and try to play some of the same tricks that Lean played masterfully, then you also have to let your films seep into the viewer's mind, into his consciousness. Lean was able to ignore the Hollywood commercial guidelines and still ended up a winner, since his films were good: and even if they had not worked, he wouldn't have shelved his grand sequences that got into the sun and wind of a shot.

It's still a wonderful film for a traveller: s/he will know the pleasure of being on the open roads and the not-roads. But a film is meant to be a story at some level, and Abhay's character didn't excite me to write a story about him - how to build a film without any empathy, or hate, for or with the hero?

Ishqiya

2010-01-29T05:13:00.000-08:00

A firebomb of a film, Ishqiya dares to take the viewers through one of the most dangerous places on this earth: the Hindi heartland of eastern Uttar Pradesh, where prospective goons are nurtured, the international arms trade occurs with as much no fuss as onions in other parts, caste wars rage and every single child knows the A to Z of a gun and dreams of an automatic, and where even the passion of love is consumed with the desire of power, to play a game with lives. Till love revenges itself.

What can you say about a film whose only most glaring fault is the distinct dichotomy in pace pre- and post-interval; the languid harpy atmosphere interspersed with two robbers falling in lust and love for a woman who doesn't care for them and the antics of their survival, sharp snapped against the sudden pick-up of tempo as a story hidden resurfaces in all its horror, and the India-Nepal border doesn't simply remain a safe haven to cross for the two on the run, but also a bristling source of the Maoist terrorism existing across a vast swathe of India, sourced through Nepal, funded by ? no the film does not go so far, as first and foremost this is a Vidya Balan film.

The brilliant actress she showed herself to be in her very debut (Parineeta), she has hardly managed to find more such roles; in years and years of film-watching from the world over, I don't think I have ever met such a whole-heartedly strong woman character, as constructed by debutant director Abhishek Chaubey with Vishal Bhardwaj here. It is curious that apart from the swear words, her language is the civilized Hindi; and yet it only adds another twinge of curiosity about her past, her likely upbringing, as does everything else about her. On apparent looking, a beautiful widow; the complex layers emerge and fascinate soon; on retrospect, a beautiful woman with a will to live, with the joy to be able to love and live. It is a fortune to find that the rest of the cast is as creamed into their niches as if they were taken deliberately out from them and placed here: Arshad Warsi, with his open-mouthed stupid seeming looks and murderous darting eyes at any girl and a ready wit when occasion needs, gives in an unexpected good acting performance; Naseeruddin Shah is the run-down elegance personified, a man who has still hankerings left after what he thinks as his alter ego; Alok Kumar the unwitting boy to set the climax on fire; and Adil Hussain the power-hungry man obsessed with his ideals and bloodlust. The selection of previous Hindi film songs played at various times in the movie is a pointer to the excellence of the film: their relation or unrelation in the right degree to the scene unfolding, the characters unfolding, and the complexion of the Hindi heartland unfolding; for where can you move in Uttar Pradesh without hearing songs playing from radios and tape recorders and CD players and MP3 players and iPods?

Ishqiya also catapults the vibrancy of Indian cinema to the very fore: while Hollywood clutters itself with fake characters and parodies of world-saving farces, with mindless comedies and mind-numbing action films, while Europe sticks to the fare of depressing, dysfunctional tales or low-key warm tales of 'ordinary' lives, which maybe it tries to project as more ordinary than they are, the Hindi cinema does not remain to any one stand. It tells stories: not formulas. It mixes ordinary people with extraordinary events, it believes in people with a frenzied warmth and in the potential to discover dramas in lives; it's not a coincidence that on the same day as Ishqiya releases, another film diametrically opposite, Rann, based on the ugly sides of the media industry, also releases, and makes another impression of the breadth of the Hindi filmscape.

Ishqiya, another Vishal Bhardwaj film, another explosive and beautiful combination. Vishal's screenplay, music, and dialogues, and Gulzar's lyrics - who can better the combination? Maybe Chaubey's, and not Vishal's, direction: it infuses a yelp of young energy throughout the film even though none of the characters, even those on the sidelines, in the film is in any way young.

Aamir

2010-01-16T05:39:00.000-08:00

Showing Mumbai like never before, Aamir, in spite of a gaping logic hole in the central motive of the plot, leaves you stunned completely: a low-key thriller, daring to take on the world of jehadis, the Muslim society of India, the Mumbai slums, and the urban life where no one is willing to take you on board, all that Aamir does, and with one of the most brilliant acting performances I've ever seen in my life. Rajeev Khandelwal makes you really sit up and wonder, that what has this man been doing on television, in countless soaps and reality shows, and even after this film? The whole 3 Idiots argument of money running in after excellence I think is quashed, right here.

Camera, besides Khandelwal, is the single most important factor behind this film; the music is great, and an ably done camerawork would have sufficed to make this film 'powerful'. However, the camera goes beyond that, and makes the film talk: to our hearts, minds, senses. I could myself feel nauseous when Khandelwal is about to step into a dirty, often-seen toilet in an Indian milieu; and that's the key to a film. Without even showing anything, how to build the tension, how to grip the viewer completely: not least is the expression of individuality that runs right through the story. Khandelwal, playing the title character of Aamir Ali and a young doctor, says "I only want to live for myself", and when pooh-poohed for doing that and not "doing anything for his community", he quite simply says, if everyone were to live for himself, the community would be well served. That - and that statement seen in the context of the film's climax - signifies the film as one breacher of all values plodding along since centuries in the guises of ideals, and keeping men divided: the men and the women, shown as different facets of a moving and a still life at various and all points of the film. As a confused, terrified, tired, and desperate Aamir is made run through the mazes of Mumbai, his gaze falls on unseen slices of lives: lives of perpetrators, participants, onlookers, alienated, all sorts of lives. Lives of people somehow tired, somehow deadened like an outer dermis, and yet somehow alive, who also get tired after all, who can feel it, who would like to stand one day. Someone holding a baby, a woman hanging clothes, an old man now used to look helplessly ahead: and amidst it all, the protagonist trying to give meaning to his day and life, in a few hours his destiny to be decided, not this time by himself. And this is the pride with which the terrorist works and gives the name of khuda to it: a brilliantly paced film, with no sermons attached, the snippets of Mumbai life make you only think, why? Why has man chosen this? Why an imagined heaven instead of one here?

3 Idiots

2010-01-15T22:17:00.000-08:00

I almost now associate an Aamir Khan film with the worst of cinema: Dil Chahta Hai, Rang de Basanti, 3 Idiots (of course, I didn't even bother to see Taare Zameen Par). Those three are pretty much united around one single thought: an expectation of how youth behave, and should behave, an attempt to make a norm. The most striking thing is how people love being defined, and hence the films: I will set out on a course trying to learn myself.

3 Idiots does not merely make your blood boil by its propagandist intentions: it also disappoints terribly by having no story at all, and the skeleton that stands without any logic at all. I would have said the ending of the film an add-on eyesore, if I had believed the film to be moving in any direction at all till that moment. Not only could I completely not understand that why a man who claims to be in love with a girl has in fact cut himself off from her quite conveniently and happily and without any compulsions to do so, but I also couldn't understand if this was Ayn Rand in a supposedly light-hearted makeover? After all, if the film starts with hurly-burlies of giving out 'messages', then it should send out the right ones, if any: by suddenly projecting the protagonist as some kind of super-genius, the film in fact reinforces the notions of those parents who want their children to be doctors and engineers - they do that since they don't think their kids to be super-geniuses! And their prescription is, if not, then do this, it will at least ensure money, and thus whatever you want with the money. By equating everything with success, as at the end of the film, what is the point sought to be made?

The actors are decent, there's a zing of freshness to the print of the film (!), and the far and few in-betweens of the Shivaliks and Upper Himalayas are a delight to watch; and on those crutches, a film presumes to call itself a work of cinema. And also earns money, and money, and money. Incredible!

Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year

2009-12-31T08:57:00.000-08:00

I call it a toothpaste ad: meant to exude some hazy brightness, where the world of commerce is neatly divided into Robin Hood businessmen and the others, Rocket Singh poses a much more important question: why did the film-maker become a film-maker? To make this?

To take an average middle-class Indian and tell his story is not a sin; neither is to package all the grim pornographic realities of life into a giggle. The former is a necessity; the latter is a style. To tell a non-story is one; to preach is a greater one. The amazing feeling of contrast that one can see this film in with Khosla ka Ghosla is an eye-opener; the latter tells a story with the joy of a story, and doesn't ponder creakily over who's right and who's wrong. It is another matter that Khosla has really the clean men winning and the bad men losing; the win and loss are not fished out from MBA books or heavy history tomes or thou shalt not guides to moral characters, but they are the part and parcel of a life, of a pretence, of a hoodwink. Rocket only manages to pull the usual trick: of preaching; where it fails even worse is that after all the preaching, the preacher himself seems a black sheep!

The start is promising: a Doordarshan-like stillness, seldom seen today, on the different things of daily use in the namesake protagonist's house, with a background score immensely hummable and looking as if it also crept up with the sun in your or mine mind; what strikes you is the clean textures, bright colors. For an opening credits sequence, this only weaves in freshness, and makes you ready for the hours to follow; however, what follows is more horrific set design! The textures continue to be clean, as if every wall in the film was painted yesterday; the clothes continue to be spotless; even the roads seem to me very freshly woken up. It's debatable whether this kind of look was even intended by the director: if intended, he surely would've tried to bring in a decay somewhere? A story purported to be on moral decay of the business world, and glowing in bright, fresh colors: is it to show the optimism that Rocket Singh shares with no one about the world, about people? For that, first of all, it is the sketchily built character of Rocket Singh which would have to be explained, if possible.

Is he an innocent, a fool, a hypocrite, a smart man, or a do-gooder? The problems of the film go beyond the malaise of a stillborn character brought to life. It does not require rocket economics to understand that if a thing costs 20 units and instead of selling it at 25, thus earning something, if you sell it at 21 then the customers are going to come; that's how any small business in this world starts and competes with the larger names. How is that supposed to be virtuous? In fact, forget 21; I might even go for selling it at 19 just to build the business to a certain level. I believe that is the most glaring of sins; when I buy mangoes from the farmer, I buy at a different price than when I buy them from the vendor, and I don't expect the price to be same, nor do I want it.

Why the cloak of virtuousness? Do protagonists have to be? Show the story! Undercutting happens a lot in real life; people even siphon off their company's funds and equipment and tomorrow are business masters, there's nothing to be ashamed of telling a story. A story is what is believable; not a Rocket giving you lectures on honesty. Beyond an excellent understated performance from Ranbir Kapoor, considering that he's considered to be hot and is not much of an actor otherwise, and another one from Naveen Kaushik (as Nitin) till he has a change of heart, the film is only remarkable for the morning mint flavors it comes with; till the intermission, it does still seem like a good jingle, but when the heavy punches of what's right and wrong start landing soon after and a self-help guide of how to run businesses, including even the tea-giving boy having his own lectures to give, the film begins to feel a farce where you are not even able to laugh.

Note: I used "even" for the tea-giving boy. Not in my mind. But the director did use him like the pawn of an "even" and yet smilingly bared his teeth to say that oh oh for him all are "equal", no evens for him. This is where films and books and songs, almost everything in the world begins to go bad; when you think a teamaker a teamaker and you don't think you can say it aloud. Hush, hush, hush! An educated world of educated fairness, hush, hush, hush!

Once Upon a Time in the West

2009-11-06T06:57:00.000-08:00

If Sergio Leone hadn't already achieved greatness with the Dollars trilogy, then he does that with the grittiest Western I've ever seen: Once Upon a Time in the West (Italian: C'era una volta il West) . A film that refuses to balance its characters in only the color of blood with no taints no sainthoods, as the Dollars trilogy does, each man and woman is living a pulsing life and struggling in the days of the birth of a great, industrious nation; those days when America was yet discovering its potential, the railroad was slowly bringing civilization to the last fighters against it, and instead of kings and business magnates the world order would soon have the voice for every man. Ennio Morricone once again gives the life its breath: his music defies definition; probably the only thing that can be said it suits the film and its epic story to the hilt, and sweeps up every emotion in human breast in its wake. Constructed from several references to Westerns already made, the film turns out to be a greater whole than the sum of its parts: not least because of a stunning casting coup.

Henry Fonda, who you could never dream of with any kind of negative shade, plays the villain of the film with nothing in the name of a white shade attached to him. He looks ruthless, and not a step ahead of the game. He simply fits the murderer with icy blue eyes, who loves to kill, to maim, to rape, to finish spirits. The nemesis is Charles Bronson, the icy character who refuses to even once take advantage of the woman he protects during the course of his revenge, even if the woman herself so desires. He is also the nemesis of the Man with No Name of the Dollars trilogy, a man who has again no name except that given by the bandit Cheyenne, "Harmonica," but who does not indulge in bloody meaningless duels all over the desert to vanish into dust, but is only after one man, and whatever else it entails. An important difference with Lee Van Cleef's character in For a Few Dollars More is that Bronson, caring only for revenge, remains a good man, helping anyone else he can and remaining grateful to people who help him; while Cleef, again after only revenge, has become ruthless to the whole world after his personal experience. This is the same reason that while For a Few Dollars More relies primarily on the strength of its climax besides the focus on desolate American landscapes, Once Upon a Time in the West achieves greater heights through its redemptive theme, and faith in human goodness. Faith that lasts in spite of a land and times where blood was much more easier to get than water.

A masterpiece from Leone, it was not much surprising that the film was a flop in the United States: it's one long reality, with a music to elevate and almost a documented bit of history to make the things hard to understand for teenyboppers.

Sokout

2009-10-21T07:27:00.000-07:00

The music I seek everywhere, find some bad some good some enthralling some uplifting, but music?, the beauty I create around me in which I can live, the beauty which only matters to me is the story of Sokout (int'l title: The Silence), yet another great Iranian film. A Tajik boy, Khorshid, blind, doesn't care for much anything but music; a Tajik girl, Nadereh, not blind, doesn't care for much anything but entering into his world. Around them is the world where music is everywhere, even when the landlord bangs doors to ask for money, and yet a world which does not have anything to give to these two artists except its beauty.

Khorshid often talks of bees, often answers questions about bees; and yet he is only in an instrument maker's shop. The instruments that come out from the shop are so often railed at by people: they only eke out sad cacaphonous poetry. Just as Khorshid is the yet untrained bee seeking nectar, and not yet knowing that the beggar might be a beautiful artist, but is helpless in the face of a world that loves money. Just as he himself might be deemed a defective instrument of mankind whom believers would bewail for. Nadereh takes the piece of mirror that reflects Khorshid; whatever is left is Khorshid's. As he seeks blindly the beauty in his sensations, Nadereh has already possessed him: doing so not by seeking to become the objective beauty whom he will sense, but being one with the beauty itself and thus feeling what is it he senses, becoming the between between sensing and sensed. An extraordinary poetic canvas brought to lyrical life by music and Persian language, the film goes beyond any attempt to define it. Life, poetry, earth.

Nattvardsgästerna

2009-09-28T03:16:00.000-07:00

More important than Why hast thou forsaken me?, why did Jonas brood so much over atom bombs being made by heathens as to commit suicide? Why did he start getting troubled over injustice and by his observations that God is apparently not doing anything in retribution, in recompense? Nattvardsgästerna (international title: Winter Light) is a beautiful film by Ingmar Bergman, most of the film a close-up of human faces and human frailties, and a stunning indictment of a sickening malaise: Christianity. It also asks questions about the existence of God and whether we should be even worried about if God exists or not. Should we not be better human beings instead of shutting ourselves inside dark recesses born out of custom and vocation and ritual and years of beliefs that seemed permanent, that seemed bulwark?

I like the simplicity in which Bergman made the film; except a boy sleeping during sermon and the organ player himself, the whole film is non-judgemental of anything; it just observes, shows, and thus asks the viewer his own questions. Even the questions are the viewer's. There are several provoking situations, dialogues, darknesses: a man kept on performing miracles yet didn't do any to save his life? If only to take the sins, then why the final cry of despair and doubt that oh Lord why hast thou forsaken me? Christ hung on the crucifix: why this emblem? In outward garb just showing the moment when he died for sins committed by man, then why not rather a symbol of an empty cave or the Ascension, a more promising and hopeful symbol? Or is it because it would be easy to make heathens believe in the goodness of a man who could die upon crucifix, forgetting that it was the punishment of the times (choosing to forget). What Godard calls shot and countershot in Notre Musique. Establish the countershot of Jesus hanging on crucifix; the rest becomes a relief, forming the shot.

Bergman also slides in a very interesting thought somewhere inside: love is the undoing of religion. Wouldn't the pastor have returned content with his administered communions to the woman he loved; maybe even if the woman looked at him with a question in his eyes; had not the woman died? That is what probably Märta doesn't do, and the pastor despises her even after using her body to try to wash his sins. Shot in close-ups throughout, the film only deviates in one long sequence into a hazy wide shot: when the pastor is in action, on the spot with Jonas' body, and a little far thus from his otherwise constant internal struggle. Why? Even if I don't find the why, since there could be many and my why might be different from Bergman's, it is beautiful. I find it beautiful. The rawness of the world which is laying and has laid out impressions on man's soul captured not being objective at all; and while man now struggles with his conscience, again eliminating the objective by filling the whole frame this time with the nothingness of a man's face, his impassive face. Or Märta's kind, sad eyes. Or the hate of living in an unbearable world in Jonas' eyes. Or the hate of weariness and the anticipation of more weariness in a world not understood, not wanted to be understood in Jonas' wife's face. Or the light of bitterness and realization in the sexton's face. Or the "ridiculous" image of the dangling Jesus in the pastor's eyes.

What's Your Raashee?

2009-09-27T23:19:00.000-07:00

First things first, a remake of the absolutely delightful TV program Mr. Yogi (1989), where the incomparable Mohan Gokhale so beautifully acted out the shy, sensitive, confused young man after whom suddenly everyone wants to run, should never have been attempted; the film is of course obstensibly on the same Gujarati novel by Madhu Rye, but it makes a botched attempt trying to cover all bases of (a) showing "real" India, (b) cheesy comedy, (c) launching for the third time the hero of the film, (d) giving some contrived happy ending. When you do all that you tend to get lost; now to the specifics. And comparisons.

Mohan Gokhale was lovable as the NRI who is desperately seeking for a bride with whom he thinks he can be then faithful and peaceful; Hurman Baweja is not, not just because he can't seem lovable at all, but also because the plot shows him as a man with no sensibilities to whomsoever he marries! To top that, the director tries to depict him a "progressive" young man [yeah, I will have to dole out many double quotes]. Baweja looks a lady-killer alright, but a downright killer too in the bargain; his acting skills make it seem he is himself bored of it all, why is he an actor then? Priyanka, at the time the film was shot his flame, can't keep up the film: just because in spite of the 12 roles she tries to essay, some are written to be the same, some are acted by her as if same.

Ashutosh Gowariker has time and again proved to be unbearable: the only film of his that I have ever been able to watch in full, that too only in spells over months, was Swades. The mistakes he repeats in that film are repeated here again: sugarcoating realities and presenting them as new realities, which makes things worse. A geek is allowed to change the whole system and politics quite easily in Swades, without even getting so much as a death threat; here, the hero gives mouthfuls of preachings to the damsels he rejects, and wow! the lives of heroines change and they are jumping after the hero who came, saw, conquered, and left. What flights of fancy and disgusting implications! [I don't think exclamations also are getting a break!] While watching a Gowariker film (since I've managed to watch spells of other films, but they just look uncompletable), you feel as if he neutered everything good, everything evil, then maybe distilled a drop of what he called "good," and vaccinated everybody with it. The half-confused public falls for it usually, swept up in frenzies of winning awards or national pride or prima donnas moving completely painted in grotesque makeups in grand sets; sets which also look sets. This time I think the public has for the large part rejected it, since men think to see a film anywhere near zodiac as womanly, the women are disappointed to find out that there is no glorification of the zodiac (in fact, in a fuzzy manner, a satire), and the kids of course get disappointed to find no "action" or vulgar jokes which they could recount in school next day. A shame really, to disappoint the viewers in such a manner after so stylishly naming the film, What's Your Raashee?

In spite of the mindless subplots of an other woman and a local mafia don, which were thought to be laughter inducing, what makes the film truly daunting to watch is its length, and the number of songs. I guess the director forgot his job and thought it's meant to showcase Priyanka Chopra, the actress playing all the 12 prospective brides, and not the story. If that is what he had in mind, he could have succeeded had not Chopra not known at all how to play a girl sensitive or shy: all she does is to curtail her lips in a manner suggesting some physical deformity, and speak from only the left side of her mouth! Considering that the 12 were neatly divided into two categories of not submissive and submissive, that's an extraordinary lot of digesting left-side-speakers. The music itself is not bad, but there was simply no need for it. The original novel character had a girlfriend in America too, which makes the real NRIs coming and arranging marriages scenario much more real; why was the hero here painted so much in confusion and so running after every girl, and yet he doesn't have a girlfriend back new home? Could have made the story more real: could have shown the intentions of an NRI to get a docile cow from home. But oh! The intentions were to save his family from a local mafia don! I forget the jumble always.

The only place where the film does score is touch upon, maybe with wrong approach and in wrong measure, some of the lives that women do lead, especially the Indian women living in the closed framework of families still living in the India of colonial and Mughal times, an era of living death for women. If all 12 stories could even have been just this touch without the preaching, it would have been some worthwhile effort. However, even focusing upon women and their lives in today's India seems a bit cliched; I would love a story of men, maybe not in the guise of zodiac, just different men, different circumstances. Calling Dalits as Harijans was in itself Gandhi's insult to them; why a different label? Isolating like some strange species women and microscoping them is as much hateful; the film does a good job of being feminist. When there are people who also keep refining their sentiments about things, I guess this is part of the world I live in.

Shaurya

2009-09-14T10:47:00.001-07:00

Ripped off by most Indian critics on the premise that this 2008 film was an unacknowledged direct "copy" of the film/play A Few Good Men, forgetting royalties due could still not be the crime of a work that masterfully weaves the Kashmir situation, albeit taking a very simplistic and ambiguous view, into the fabric of a court-martial drama that finally traces itself back to one top officer's psychology. As regarding the play itself, A Few Good Men was to me itself a pilferage of The Caine Mutiny, of course not a "direct" copy at all. So my conscience was not troubled at all while watching Shaurya.

What is valor? This is the basic disturbing question that the film asks throughout and tries to define through the actions, the mindsets, the words of its different protagonists. In the course of this, it tackles the Indian army's excesses in Kashmir, the resultant communal polarization that it could and does engender, and the nation India itself whose very fabric is its tolerance, not the laïcité of the West, but a true embracing of every viewpoint, every ritual, every word of seeming or actual wisdom that ever dropped in its fold and still does. The film is marred by a needless love story impeding the progress of tension throughout the narration, and yet there remain stunning performances from Deepak Dobriyal as Javed Khan, a man who can be easily framed because of his faith, Kay Kay Menon as Brigadier Rudra Pratap Singh, the man who would take a personal revenge upon a whole community, and once again, though in a very limited role, Seema Biswas, as Javed's mother. Rahul Bose as Javed's defense lawyer, who comes of age this late because of Javed's court-martial trial, and Amrita Rao in a very brief role of the young, beautiful widow who shows them all what the true meaning of valor is, also come up with superb performances; and thus, except for the romantic interest in the film, Minissha Lamba playing a journalist, there is no complaint on that score. The reason though that in spite of such acting skills and a fine climax the film turns out to be mediocre is that the film needlessly meanders till the time that climax occurs: it would have been a really brillliant 1-hour film; yeah, a risk, but what does a film-maker want in the end? A good film or a sufficiently long film?

Kaminey

2009-08-31T06:06:00.000-07:00

A film throbbing with Mumbai life, Bombay underbelly, and taking potshots at various social and political stunts that pull wool over people's eyes, Kaminey's biggest strength is its pulsating theme music that rivets the viewer to a weak storyline hovering around two twin brothers getting in and out of each other's shoes, each other's truths. One imagines the world in pristine colors but is too diffident to change it; the other is brash but knows that all in this world are kaminey; nothing rises above money. And yet both win their own battles and bury the ghosts of past, as the numerous fringe characters that dot a metropolis, especially Bombay, are brought to life superbly by a cast brilliantly picked by Vishal Bhardwaj. Not a very experienced cast outside of the lead trio of two Shahid Kapoors (playing Charlie and Guddu, the brothers) and Priyanka Chopra, in what is easily the best performance for me of both of them ever.

I don't think how without the music the film would have fared, since in the end it is just more and more an increasing number of disparate parties behind a cocaine package, interspersed with the sentimental stuff about twin brothers who don't see eye to eye now. What at least the film does is pack a punch, and powerfully enough, at those politicians who play the caste and religion cards, and expose them ruthlessly. It doesn't even spare those so-called nation's consciousness wakers with a penchant for changing city names to anything they think "looks" rustic or not of a British age. It also shows starkly how the world outside of dreamed ideals exists: a world where nothing counts but money, and more money, where the only thing that overrules it in the final loss of the dice is survival. Survival so that you can get one more chance of turning the tables and wresting back the initiative; and play the dangerous game again. Since who's going to win without taking the shortcuts?

The film only hints at the massive diamonds/drugs/arms nexus which funds wars in African countries like Angola and Sierra Leone; and it would have been better if the film had tried to be a complete thriller in itself, focussing on this shady international trade that finances terrorists and guerillas the world over, rather than setting up a story over why and how the two brothers parted ways somewhere in the past. The viewer needs better understanding of what's happening, not something very explicable (two brothers on different ways). The way it tries to compensate is by use of multiple languages: dominantly in Hindi, the film also uses quite a lot of Marathi and Bengali, along with smatters of English and Portuguese, to give it the mosaicy feel it required.

The actors are impressive, the technical aspects are slick, and of course the music, from the ever-present Go Charlie Go theme to the soft title song sung by Vishal himself, is simply great. Composed by Vishal and written by Gulzar, the songs had to be anyway great. But though another feather in his cap, this was not the best effort by Vishal, and even though he has done almost everything right.

Au Coeur du Mensonge

2009-06-19T05:47:00.000-07:00

For those used to slick American fare, where the reasons are spicier and the drama is more vivid than life itself, Au Coeur du Mensonge (1999; US title: The Color of Lies) is not the film. The usual French cinema's habit of concentrating solely on human emotions and behavior is taken to the extreme in this touching film, on outside just a thriller mystery, but on inside anything but that, rather the story of deeply intertwined love of a couple for each other, played by Jacques Gamblin and Sandrine Bonnaire.

Bonnaire had earlier impressed me with her suppressed performance in the 1998 Jacques Rivette film Secret Défense; however this time she has little to do except looking the part. It's the lesser known Gamblin however who gives the film all its pain: playing the part of a tormented lover, a fine painter, a man who is intelligent and too sensitive, who knows what he can give to her and yet is acutely conscious of his physical shortcomings. The film is advertised to be dealing with the mystery of a minor's rape and thus a whodunnit; rather it is sharply focused upon the Bonnaire-Gamblin couple and betrayal in relationship. True love can make the other's crime its own, which is what the film so beautifully brings out. And even the guilt.

Au revoir, les enfants

2009-06-04T23:38:00.000-07:00

One of the simplest films I've seen on the Holocaust, Louis Malle tackles the issue not on the war front or in a concentration camp, but at the personal level, more specifically the impact that a war and racism could have on children, one day to become adults. Malle brings his own story to the film, as Au revoir, les enfants (Goodbye, Children) so effectively and touchingly, without being dramatically sentimental, shows the children going out into the world, prematurely with dark stories, guilt on their soul, and living with fear; or children simply marching out to concentration camps with proud defiance, with fear of dying any moment.

It's a story of rivalry and friendship between two bright boys, out of the place in the ordinary bullies around. One, Julien Quentin, precocious, highly intelligent, and fiercely individualistic--and faithless though to be confirmed. The other, Jean Bonnet, talented in whatever he takes up, alone, and under a constant fear--and with bold defiant belief in his religion. The two are dreamers, preferring to do their own activities while even in a class, especially Quentin, and cut off from the rest of the students. Though Bonnet is more so because he's a newcomer and seems to lack the ability to mix up fast; Quentin because he is toss-the-hair, he is proud, and he can only really get attracted to talent higher than his or to genius. As he does to Bonnet. What starts out as a rivalry sensed, soon is in the vein of developing into fine friendship, but ends abruptly with the capture of one and the guilt of the other to regret for ever: if he wouldn't have turned, what would have happened?

The film's beauty lies in that it solely concentrates on the boys: the boarding and school run by the monastery. It doesn't give in to any sort of temptation to strike gold elsewhere. The sole 'outside' incident is the Vichy men's attempt to throw out an old Jewish man out of a posh restaurant: but it still serves as part of school life, since Quentin first knows the extent to which a man could be persecuted for religion. Soon, he is to know more, through searing experience that would maim him for life. And make him a better man. The film also brilliantly shows how difficult it is, how unfair it is to place a dreamer in a boarding school, in a hostel: how suffocating it could be for someone whose best company is his dreams and thoughts, and who is forced to live with fellow students of 'inferior grade'. Completely free of any dramatic intentions, the film is a story that occurred, that culminated in times where the Vichy regime itself was collaborating with the Germans, and French had to fight underground even against their own men. Soon Hitler was to fall, and sanity to return for a brief time: it's to the viewers to wonder what lessons they give to children to carry on in life. Bullying as power; squealing as life; and defying as death.

L'Amant

2009-06-02T12:59:00.000-07:00

A little too poker-facedly translated literally as The Lover in its UK release title, L'Amant shows the story of a weary love, transformed from a pick-up scene to something that leaves the lovers restless and in memories for all their lives. It's based on the novel of the same name by Marguerite Duras, and is on her own life story, when she was 15 in the erstwhile Indo-China.

Set in colonial Vietnam, the film stands out for the way Asia is shown, and it's easy to feel Marguerite Duras' love for the region through the camera of Robert Fraisse (he would team up for several films with director Jean-Jacques Annaud, including the highly impressive 2001 film Enemy At The Gates). But apart from shots celebrating the tiredness of both the protagonists, the film meaninglessly meanders along self-pity to self-pity, from the lazy Chinaman Tony Leung Ka Fai to the French girl who loves easy sex, easy money, who hates poverty, Jane March. It would be easy to justify March's character by the destitute poverty in which her family lives as white outcastes amid colored people, for whom they don't feel any human bonds. By the loveless atmosphere of her dsyfunctional family and a stone-hearted mother. By her seeming full of life to burst but with no outlet on whom. It would be more difficult though to know why the director shows the virgin who wants to just flower open so tired, so like experienced and weary. In another way, it's an interesting study too: the descents plumbed in order to gain power, to feel power, especially when one is yet searching for it and does not know where it truly lies. The Chinaman's character doesn't help either: just a weak man who lusts and then being not able to get the object of his lust, self-pities, hardly someone to be able to make a viewer hold out.

The film suffers from underdeveloped characters, thrown in maybe to bewilder the viewer even more: it hardly seems a French film at all, in fact it would be easy to think this as a Merchant Ivory production. The one place where the film pulls of a clever trick is when the film begins: the film shows the girl on the ferry and adeptly, imperceptibly moves to something that happened in the recent time before now, and then moves again to the now, the girl on the ferry. To add to this is that the now itself is in the flashback narrated in the lovely voice of Jeanne Moreau, and it's almost Faulknerian, maybe accidentally by the director since he never repeats this.

I haven't read the novel, but I think the screenplay could've been radically different on the same story: in spite of good cast selection, a beautiful music score, and an Academy Award-nominated cinematography, the film fails since it is unable to stop wallowing in its guilt of overzeal to show sex as 'demi-god' and yet finally ending up showing it as a game where both players always try to lose. There is a large hint of what might be happening and impending; however, there is less of an immediate good plot or reason to make the film itself.

Sins

2009-05-27T07:54:00.000-07:00

The man who gave one of the most honest and daring TV series that I've ever seen in my life, Reporter, Vinod Pande, gives a scathing indictment of the Catholic religion and completely rips off the tabernacles, the crosses hanging in ostentation, and the mumbled formulae, features of a religion that induces belief by fear and superstition as much as an affected belief that every man is your brother, or father.

Sins is easily one of the most erotic films I have ever seen across a spectrum of all the world cinema: the sex is not muted but wild, not painted in the rehearsed smooches of a Hollywood film but rather garish in one man's bestiality and one woman's greed, and not apologetic but telling us that it's indeed pleasure. Pleasure, however, for a Catholic priest to that extent that he ends at murder and is unrepentant, as long as he can take vows and kneel before Mother Mary and takes the rosary in his hands. The Catholic Church did everything to prevent its release in India, but failed to do so. It's easy to see why they never wanted it to be seen, though they could've easily ignored it: made in English, how many people were anyway expected to see this film? More than two-thirds would anyway be bench-warmers to gape at the nude scenes: but then doesn't a religion, especially ones which strike terror and lay down rules, run on such people?

Apparently the story of a priest who lusts after a young girl and then does everything to retain her in his power, one could think that the most one could derive is a mud slinging on the priests, not supposed to marry. But the film goes beyond that. After every sin, his salvation lies in confession, attending masses, praying: confess and do the sin. You already lightened the burden, placed it on Jesus through the medium of Church and pitied yourself: now you are free to earn more sins, the Son carried the crucifix for your sins and will do so. Finely woven are motifs where a parishioner explains why isn't she has been attending the church with regularity: fear and upbraiding leading man to the Church and thus supposedly to God. One of the best critiques of an organised institutionalised religion, the film also derives its power through the stunning acting performance of its lead actress Seema Rahmani.

At first feeling pleasure and willingly sharing each wrong of the priest (Shiney Ahuja), she slowly begins to be afraid of him: she has bedded a man who has repressed himself all his life and she is the vent now for his carnal instincts, for in fact everything that wasn't allowed to him while he blessed people with smiles and soft voice on his face, a man who holds power and has eyes and ears everywhere. Now the love metamorphoses into a physically abusive relationship, and from the first she was always a doll in his hands: but she realizes this now. Soon she would find kindness in another man, soon she would beg and hate the same man: and her every expression, even during the sex scenes in the film, lends power to the film. Set in southern Kerala, the green paradise of the world, the film however doesn't at all use any of the backdrops: what it strangely does is to try to mix up some Malayalam accent in the English which was not nice an experiment. Making it in English anyway meant an international audience, and it won't know the different accents within India, so there was no point at all marring the dialogues. Shiney of course, as seen many times, is great with facial expressions but leaves a lot to be desired with his dialogue delivery; what the film does have is a background music score that matches the film beautifully, and takes on the tempo as the sex climaxes, lulls again, picks it up again with another bout.

The film, let me warn you, is sickening! It is brilliant and the story and theme warranted it: and it succeeds. It does not lend a good aftertaste: the gruesome end doesn't help either. Shiney Ahuja's character also is one of the best studies I've seen of a psychotic killer who still believes that he loved her: better than any serial killer movies, Hitchcock movies, or films made upon elaborately pinpointed themes in that kind. It is indeed sad that India doesn't recognise its own good films, but runs behind something that the West praised or they think will praise. Of course one needs to have the sensibilities in the right place!

Musik i mörker

2009-05-26T02:50:00.000-07:00

Quite evident as the work of an early Bergman, Musik i mörker (Music in Darkness) is more raw and hitting on some of the themes that Bergman grappled throughout his life, just because the argument's just begun, as opposed to the continuation in his later works. Most early Bergman films had Birger Malmsten as the hero, and he is here again typecast as the overtly sensitive young man plunged into blindness caused due to an accident, not mitigated by the fact that that accident happened due to his love for animals and nature.

While the film overall is touching, the cast disappoints me just a shade. While Malmsten was perfect in Summer Interlude, I still reserve doubts over him in this film in spite of his looking so naturally a sensitive, sacrificing young man: he would have been a better choice in Sommaren med Monika (Summer with Monika) as the jilted lover. Malmsten doesn't look a proud accomplished, upper-crust Bengt Vyldeke calling Ingrid (played by Mai Zetterling) a "little wench" and nor later a very decided man. Though this also lends a shade of tragedy to the film which does not end on a too happy note: the lovers have married against society's odds and fighting their insecurities, but the future is still too uncertain and the viewer doesn't know who will break first, or will they last for ever. Zetterling herself in the role of Ingrid is wonderfully assured, and has a face of angels, and is dreamy which is difficult to bring out in a film: yet it is maybe the director who uses her as Hollywood used to use its heroines, just angels to save men or vamps to jilt them, with the god in creation being the hero even in a love story! One of the most Hollywood-esque scenes is when Bengt plays the music upstairs and Ingrid gets thrilled by it, and the camera just focuses on her getting thrilled for quite a long time and quite a strong unneeded light on Ingrid's face.

Another disappointment turns out to be the loose screenplay: the incidents of the hotel where Malmsten worked, the railway station where he almost gets crushed, the thief and subsequent confrontation with the hotel proprietor are all meant to show Malmsten's decline through society as well as in his own character, yet each of them is an end left untied, leaving an imperfectly wrought film. It is as if Bergman is just putting one by one all the arguments in a list that he means to, and not elaborating on them, not even indicating why to have here such an argument. Aunt Beatrice's conversation on suicide is a pertinent example: it has no precedent or follow-up in the film, despite considering the atheist views as well as suicidal tendencies of the hero.

As a story and as a visual, the film works. As much accomplished as Bengt was and is, he still doesn't have the love that Ingrid overflows with, and a faith in humanity and God, and it is almost as Raskolnikov and Sonya that they start now their married life: all might go awry, yes, but a tincture of hope is there that Bengt might finally be able to love people and thus himself. It is only then that he can truly love his most prized possession and treasure: Ingrid.

Tunes of Glory

2009-05-24T23:42:00.000-07:00

An interesting study of not only two men on the extremes of temperaments--one a whiskey-drinking, self-pitying, darling of men, chummy, able officer (Sinclair) who leads them through the war in an acting capacity but successfully, the other (Barrow) who was born into the regiment and sees its successful command as the salvation of his life, who tries to make men his own models, a strict disciplinarian, living by the rule-book--but also how a great film is usually made not through directorial tricks, but the best actors you can gather and a good enough screenplay, is Tunes of Glory. Editing unnecessarily and having montages of flows in an obvious aim to obfuscate the viewer and make his spidery brain tick has become the norm of the game today: it's high time we return to a game in which high tricks win the game and not bluffing.

The greatness of Alec Guinness lies in that he was approached for the role of Barrow, since he was most naturally suited to the role through his own persona, plus Barrow was yet another variation on the Col. Nicholson played so adeptly by him in the David Lean masterpiece The Bridge on the River Kwai. Guinness refused it and instead offered for Sinclair: on the simple grounds that he is an actor only if he can step out of his own skin and play someone else, since an actor "pretends." His word, as of any man good in his craft, was enough weight, and thankfully the director Ronald Neame took him on board as Sinclair and then cast John Mills as Barrow, another casting coup of sorts since Mills never used to play an aristocratic crusty gent. As Neame himself said, the beauty of Mills' performance was that if any other actor had played Barrow, it would've been easily overshadowed by Sinclair; but now the film has two counter-magnates, each of whom the viewer sympathises with in turns and still not commit wholeheartedly to either. Guinness of course was simply amazing: to change himself so completely, his whole personality, even how he walked and sat and everything about him, would have been nerve wracking, and it would have been impossible for him to go back to the real Guinness till some time after the film was shot.

The supporting cast is excellent, with Duncan Macrae as the pipe major and Susannah York as Sinclair's pretty daughter Morag especially good in their limited screen times. One of the most interesting things is of course the screenplay in itself; the balance between the two characters is finely etched out, the short effective punches of Mills alternating with the long rants of Guinness and in between the rest of the regiment, like hung on a thread between the two and not knowing what to do. Dennis Price (playing Battalion Executive Officer Charlie Scott) tries to sway the thread and disturbs the equilibrium, hastening the inevitable tragedy at the climax. It is unfortunate indeed that the tunes of glory are so often rung out when the moment is already past: and man only knows to see truly in retrospect.

Berni's Doll

2009-05-04T20:19:00.000-07:00

I saw Yann Jouette's short 3-D animation film Berni's Doll months and months back, and it still haunts me: putting aside the amazement that how could one man (i.e., Yann, the maker of that film) could achieve so much almost single-handedly, what even stunned me more was the dark story and how effectively the dark story is translated onto the screen without being pessimistic: it's just highly bitter!

On a cursory look, the film is a highly believable fiction about times to come when humans will also be assemblable, but with a shocking aftertaste of even assemblable humans acquiring a soul and will of their own (which really differentiates Yann's film from those of others strutting out on the same theme); and when I asked Yann about where did he get the whole idea of the film from, he only humbly replied that he got inspired from today's world where people are more and more being used like tools. But this was a typical really humble answer and Idontseewhatsallthisfussabout answer from a typically great artist; the film itself operates on several levels, including several subtexts--all pointing one pointed forefinger to the increasing alienation of humans not only from other humans, but themselves.

On the face of it, the film shows a disillusioned man (Berni) who has no life but work at the assembly line the whole day and come back home and watch TV. And then to construct the woman of his dreams by ordering spare parts. Why he orders unmatching spare parts is another mystery: somewhere a Caucasian, somewhere a Negroid, is this simply the exotic imagination of Berni, or a deliberate intention of Berni to make something which as a whole no one will like and hence who he will be always secure of, or simply a snidish political comment, is difficult to determine: either interpretation (and you don't have to take only one!) it fascinates. And now, after having constructed the whole, he wants to fuck her in peace: but a victim of mechanization elsewhere, could he play with one toy over whom he thought he had power?

The film has won numerous awards, including a special mention at Annecy. Yann did all the visuals: characters, backgrounds, lights, rendering, and composition, besides being the man responsible of course for the story itself and direction; he worked with 2 animators and 2 musicians, and took 21/2 years for making the film. The slick grey textures, the drabbled rainedout set, and that movement of the spare parts woman slowly becoming a real woman--staccato of a decapitated torso and yet the sway of the woman--everything is perfection itself, and it's a pity that in a world dominated by Pixarish movies, animation has lost the plot, especially 3-D that has so, so much potential.

The film website is here: http://www.dummy.fr/berni_main02.html

Becket

2009-04-03T08:09:00.000-07:00

What Robert Bolt achieves by brilliant dialogues in A Man for All Seasons, Peter Glenville achieves by spinning a tale effortlessly on the screen and yet retaining all the dramatic elements in Becket. The beauty of the film lies in the mastery of dramatics that Glenville has, and to top it all he uses the finest actors he could’ve mustered, both from the British Isles (where else?), Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton. Completely dominated by acting from the two great actors, the film is a beautiful study of contrast across two personalities, two actors, two historical figures: Burton playing Henry II, O’Toole playing Thomas Becket.

The dialogue deliveries in mouths of both the actors who treated language like a goddess, and yet so differently, is a treat to watch and listen: to add are Burton’s habitual reserve and overstated pomp, and O’Toole’s itchiness, sparkling eyes, and a deep knowledge of the sap of life. Not paying too much allegiance to a thousand years old costumes or furniture, the film spares one from the boredness of a period piece, and only brings the contest between two sharp minds for power raw, in modern dialogue. Dialogue is crucial for the working of this film: without being too irreverent, it is yet not at all ancient, and does not even rely on completely rhetoric feats unlike Man for All Seasons; it whips you, swishes through you, and makes you wonder at the play of ego between men who still love each other so much and yet are mortal foes. If for nothing else, Becket should be watched for the performance of O’Toole himself: yet another virtuoso after Lawrence of Arabia! [How many is the man capable of?]

Restul e tăcere

2009-03-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

A curious and exhilarating mixture of American epic proportions and sweet candy stuff with European elegance and ability to nitpick on subtle things, Nae Caranfil’s Restul e tăcere (The Rest Is Silence) handles more than one thread with aplomb and an equal amount of zest. Fictionalizing the true story of the making of the 1912 Romanian film The War for Independence, the film sets the tone at the very beginning itself: presenting hardboiled nutty issues surrounded in a soft yolk of humor and irreverence.

Where the film excels is that it does not take any sides, except telling the story. It never suggests that the hero Ursache is really someone who is an artist, and even the story and detailed visualisation of the movie might be all his dead friend’s. But what his friend might never have been able to do, he does successfully: by the sheer dint of his ambition, and lack of scruples when he knows what he wants. And yet a man who keeps the god living in him: while all his co-stars are enjoying prostitutes of Paris, he is busy with the movie rolls gathering, and silently loving the young ambitious village girl who he knows is already on the path of trailing rich men for meaty roles and money. His strong mental-headedness is even more in the focus during the sombre climax of the film: he not only has realized that cinema is here to stay and even if it’s not as great as theatre yet it is the medium which can go to the masses and can help them relax and can bring ideas to them, but also that cinema is a collective effort, and roundly stymies the efforts of his wealthy benefactor and the film producer Negrescu of including him among the defrauders of money. He also finally takes his revenge upon Negrescu: the two coins that God made a beggar to give Negrescu might have been a symbol, but what’s more important is not to pass on rhetorically those two coins but to be the same man who once slept on the roads and not pick your nose on hearing the ticket was only 1 leu.

Ioana Bulca’s appearance strikes a fresh gong: the inevitability of the death of the golden age of theatre. The photographed moving image are only shadows of living fleshes, but the world can remember them, at least get some percentage of what those actors were. Yes, theatre would’ve been a different experience, but cinema would at least enable people to feel the same emotions and vitality, even if in much muted proportions or even distortedly. With the typical European peppy feel, a rich music score, and the biggest ever budget in Romanian film history, the film easily takes you off your feet: the only remaining grouse is that the film could’ve well been edited a half an hour shorter. The performances of Marius Florea Vizante as Ursache and Ovidiu Niculescu as Negrescu completely dominate the film, and the rest of the actors jigsaw perfectly in. A movie only Europe can give!

Hiroshima, Mon Amour

2009-03-21T06:57:00.000-07:00

When the dust, the ashes slowly settle, hiding beneath years of anger and felt injustice and mourning, then the greatest tragedy is redemption: to have the scorched frozen layer scraped. Alain Resnais reaches heights of his prowess with as difficult a subject as Hiroshima bombings, which he slowly weaves into a yarn of loss, and from thereon the loss of love. How Resnais achieves the miraculous feat of standing the film on its own legs--the only films I have seen without references are those of Resnais--is through his usual tricks of utilizing the stream-of-consciousness technique. Other directors struggle with montages, a simple cut, and their films become a mockery of a sequence of paintings carried forth to burst upon the viewer (none better example than Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain of the complete miscarriage of cinema); Resnais reaches the soul of his characters. Once again, voices play a key character role in the film, this time even more than La Guerre Est Finie. The voice is the unconscious, the seemingly unrelated scenes strung up in a sequence are the past, the unseen or the afraid-of present, the future, the actors and their bodies are puppets dancing to the plot's tune. That’s the whole beauty of Resnais: maybe only Kieślowski comes close to realize it.

The film's central theme is memory. Memory of a loved one. Whom you cannot forget, and who can never be redeemed. You bury him after years of effort, one-night stands, and denials; one day you meet real love, who undoes all that and rips open your heart with the pain you felt. The memory is blurred: there is no distinction between the lover fifteen years ago, and the lover now. Life continues, death continues. The two worlds of the small French town of Nevers on the banks of Loire where to love a German was the most shameful of crimes you could have committed in the 1940s, and the bombed city of Hiroshima whose denizens became not only a symbol of the horrors of war and of the need for peace but also that of liberation for Europe, the end of the War; those two worlds meet. And a love is born which knows at birth itself that it will last for ever, yet that it will never be together; that the one or two days they have are the only ones they will ever see each other. Emmanuelle Riva does an excellent job in her debut performance, but it is the Japanese actor Eiji Okada who impresses the most in this one of the most, most beautiful films I will ever see in my life. In a certain way, the film is an exact antithesis to Bleu, since older memories prevail, but in a much more strange way Hiroshima, Mon Amour teaches you to situate yourself within the grief and internalize it and face the world: as long as a marble can fall with the boys’ sunlight into a cellar, the world is yet open and embracing.

Nóz w wodzie

2009-03-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

Nóz w wodzie (Knife in the Water) disturbed me profoundly: so much that I use the adverb ‘profoundly’, one I hate very much. Besides the actual knife where the boy (Malanowicz) does prove his superiority over the husband Andrzej (Niemczyk), there is also the question of the figurative rapier: in what sense? One that simply shears the water surface, without being able to really cleave a way through, is one obscure, far-fetched meaning. Or it could simply stand for one metallic glint among the many little wavelets glimmering similarly in response to the sun: the hard glint of human greed and wish for power. For it’s the wish for power that dominates the film’s bleak Bergmanian landscape; the wish for power of the wife Krystyna (superbly played by Jolanta Umecka): by cuckolding her husband for the untested virile strength of the young boy, she at once gains mastery over her inner complex, her husband, and all the boys that that young boy represented. Where the film does fail is its atmosphere of drifting ennui, which does not surely bring up the tension to a point as to make the husband feel unwontedly jealous. The character of Andrzej is built very strongly, to show a man witty, strong, practical, of good hands, intelligent to some degree, an able man, yet lacking that free poetic will which would have enabled him to have the love of his wife instead of owning her. I do not think he could have been jealous of a boy whose only claim to a poetic temperament, notwithstanding the rather one-sided flirtations from the wife’s side when around the radio, was a reckless nature: does the filmmaker Polanski confuse recklessness with pure, untouched spirit that soars always high? I think so.

Being this main point unresolved, I often wondered about the purpose of making films like Knife in the Water. When you don’t know yourself what you set out to show, you only show your techniques: nobody wants to narrate a story just because he learnt fifty new words today. Fifty new words arranged neatly by an intelligent man seem beautiful: but what was the substance? The story ostensibly is that of sexual tension between the three: but the screenplay only shows drifters ending up in whatever circumstances are pitching them into, with not much energy or wills or even desires to have any kind of tension between them. One of the major weaknesses apart from the screenplay itself was the actor who plays the young boy: there is cold hardness in his eyes, like that of his knife-blade! It’s the camera which tries to construct the tension: showing Umecka in various degrees of undress to titillate the viewer. The boy hardly seems interested, there is no slow internal boil going over somewhere: what’s the point? To seduce the viewer like a soft-core porn film? I call such cinema, where the director seems just interested in testing his capabilities of filming something rather than narrating something, a ‘masturbation’--not engaging the viewer in sex, a film which just tries to excite the viewer and provoke him, not tugging the viewer’s sympathies for anyone, a cold, dispassionate view of roads and seas stretching far out. What makes the film a real fish in the bowl is the jazz soundtrack accompanying it: it reinforces the feeling I got when I saw the film, that it’s a film which silently tries to destroy everything meaningful and beautiful you see, it tries to convey everything is a game, not an exciting game, but a weary, worn-out game, played now and then, today and tomorrow.

Entre les murs

2009-03-18T08:13:00.000-07:00

As much as I would like to place a film with modern references, with modern slang on top of Blackboard Jungle, I still cannot do so with Entre les Murs (“Within the Walls”, shockingly called The Class for international audiences), just because the film is more a documentary, a calm documentary that does not provoke, does not take sides, does not take any partisan view, and does not provide any insight. It’s a quite successful observation of today’s modern education system and the generations that barely complete their bac; though what the film doesn’t even dare to do is to leave questions, if not answers, with you. And coupled with a surprising student lingo low in sexual innuendoes, the film makes you think: what would have the novel been like without any story, any thought to offer?

Where the film excels is the tight cinematography from unconventional angles, making the camera a direct participant observer of the action, and an ensemble cast, including the novel author himself reprising his role as the school teacher, M. Marin. The indecisive, shaky principal whose primary interest seems to keep the school’s business intact, the many confused identities among students (esp. Khoumba and Souleymane) and the staff themselves, and the school teacher Marin who could never inject humor in his class and who could himself get into arguments with his students time and again: who simply didn’t have the know of what question is right to which person at what time--all make the film a delight to watch. Even if the filmmaker doesn’t want to offer any solution, he does offer the quandary: an underperforming or undisciplined student might sink further if not punished and may lead to similar behavior in others; on the other hand, will punishing him/her help? What would be the impact in his personal life of such a punishment? Punishment--is it a system of correcting someone, or is it just a system of getting hopeless over someone and then isolating him in a bid to keep the society running smoothly and keep the glaring spots out of sight?

What I found to be the issue with the film is that the film failed to explore in depth the ways, the methods on both sides, and when it might be necessary to forego one for the other. M. Marin was hardly an inspiring teacher, so his just being softer doesn’t do much for the students; I personally would have hardly liked such a teacher. He is not firm, not articulate enough, and he does go by the rulebook on strange occasions: on one hand punishments are bad, yet he has to write in the report book of a student who clearly was off color, who clearly was having some personal crisis. Afraid at each step, what can any teacher achieve? Bound within the framework, what can he hope to achieve? Still an excellent film, in that it at least brings to the fore the issues at education in most Western countries; and many of the students would themselves be the audience, not to mention the teachers. What a teacher should always remember is that he’s not a passive actor in a student’s transformation or growth or at any stage: “what can I do more?” is not the question. There has to be always something more.

Beton/Ligne de vie

2009-01-10T07:09:00.000-08:00

Beton and Ligne de Vie might be as far as possible in their approach, both technical and narrative, but both strike home the point: the futility of war, the cruel subjugation, which makes soldiers worse than machines–indifferent perpetrators or gluttonous ravishers of violence.

The drill for the soldiers, stationed at the Israel-Palestine border assumedly, could range from playing the same dice games to boiling the same tea at the same afternoon time, to the same parade being called for. What they didn’t bargain for was the appearance of a free spirit: a stark black kite that appears beyond the beton (the concrete wall), and is unfazed by everything that is hurled against it, be it a stone or thunderous cannon shots. Though the short film by Ariel Belinco and Michael Faust is heavy in metaphors, it does not fall in its own trap of political consciousness–the water-colorish images save the viewer from indifference, and he remains awake to the message carried in the film. The kite persists, cannons keep going on, and the soldiers return to their monotony: playing dice games. After all, who cares? One day the kite will fall, the beton might be down for the invader might be on both the sides, and the victor might then fall in the indifference of smug content: but maybe it isn’t that simple, since the kite does not fly of its own accord, there must be someone to fly the kite! Maybe when the kite will fall, another kite would already have come up in the sky, even if the beton is no more.

Ligne de Vie is one of the most striking films on atrocities committed in a POW camp, especially in a concentration camp. It’s a film about who flies the kite: a prisoner who gives voice to other prisoners by drawing their daily life scenes, by drawing impossible dreams, who does not desist when even his hands are cut off. They didn’t even sleep since dreaming was fatal, they competed for fastest wheel-barrowing of stones so that at least they can prove they are alive, but yet they required that spark to keep their souls alive, their indifference to suffering away: and the man who was engraving the ligne de vie(lifeline) brought that. A striking film by Serge Avedikian in pencil strokes, the film won the Best Animation and Experimental Film award at the Yerevan International Film Festival in 2004.

Diva

2008-12-04T09:02:00.000-08:00

Sophisticated brilliance: this was enough to turn the world of French and world cinema upside down, and catapult France from the New Wave to the Cinema of Look. Jean-Jacques Beineix's debut feature, Diva, started it all: cinema du look; and stories with preposterous settings, uncanny twists, unimagined camera angles, and unexplained monstrosities in the storyline came into being. But yes, all forgiven: once you have Beineix's Diva or Luc Besson's Nikita.

The film is not at all shallow in spite of being nothing more than a crime noir with not too great a story and no punches hidden in the screenplay. The cast, the camera work, and the director's vision and energy take you by storm before you realize anything else. The film is an interesting study on solitude, what I call the "fetish of personal", and how much right does the world have to infringe upon it, and how much right are we to deny that. How much of our space is ours? The film plot itself hinges upon two recordings: one of a singer's voice, who believes her voice, her emotions, her singing would be reified if recorded and hence is against it; the other which could incriminate and expose a respectable man who is running a ring of prostitution and drugs. A postman (Frédéric Andréi), a medium of people's voices and nothing more, is the hero who must take care of both these recordings. Quintessentially, the film remains the slow French film, in spite of being a crime thriller. So that even the long double chase sequence of Andréi, shot so stunningly by Phillipe Rousselot, remains a visual treat of slow motion; and the cast of Richard Bohringer and Jacques Fabbri itself gives some extra gravity to a film already reeling with some kind of dazed energy.

The visual spacing, the sets, lighting and colors, and the strange sort of unexplained knick-knacks of the story as well as the decor further add up to the message of privacy that should be violated. No one knows what is the exact relationship between Bohringer and 14-year-old Alba (played remarkably well by Thuy An Luu), nor what exactly Bohringer does: equally abstruse are the waves that balance in his large studio-cum-residence, nude photos of Alba hanging all round, and a bathtub right in the centre of the vast, vast dark expanse. And almost completely opposite, garish, and equally over-the-top is the garage where Andréi himself lives: not the least the means of access to it, which plays an important part in the climax. Beineix believes in going over the edge, and this is what he has done right in his debut feature: and we enjoy going jusqu’au bout with him. Life is a little more than simple black and white, simple and rigid ethics, a simple question of what’s right and wrong, a simple seen and unseen: which is why we have actions occurring in people’s sunglasses, we have a bright shining red helmet almost through the film, we have people’s shadows and silhouettes framed against artificial lights equally well as the sun, and we have a lighthouse coming in with equal ease as the Champs-Élysées. À voir absolument.

The Danish Poet

2008-11-26T05:24:00.000-08:00

How many times the romance of chance has been brought to life in stories, told, read, seen, and how often it always stirs the blood for unheard of possibilities, not simply the ones awaiting us in the future, but also which went by heeded or unheeded in the dense labyrinth of our lives! The Danish Poet, a Torill Kove traditionally animated film, is one such simple story, beautifully narrated in the slightly lilting voice of Liv Ullmann and subtitled with delightful little satires, pricks, and bits of humor woven in the story: the dog who found his mate also just because of a funeral, the doctor who gives a whiff of cigar smoke just before advising his patient for some fresh air, or the dog again who finally finds someone who does not kick him whenever he wants some affection.

The film’s basic premise is simple: how life is constructed of small chances, inasmuch as you might meet your future life partner on a journey which might not have been even at the stage of intent a few moments back. Liv Ullmann lends a delightful piquancy to the whole film, with her turns of dialogues, giving an anecdotal atmosphere to the whole film: which is what the film more or less is. It seems a delightful story that I would love my mother to tell me a cold night when the world would be sleeping, and yet the stars would be awake: when “seeds” would still be floating around. Far from stretched allegories, digital effects, or things that try to be above average by flexing your brain muscles, The Danish Poet is simply a refreshing romance, a kind of animation film which are now being made less and lesser, and a film which speaks to the heart: which simply touches you. The film deservedly won the Academy Award in 2007.

Velipadukal: Biography of a Sacred Cow

2008-10-18T10:17:00.000-07:00

A rare film, made on something as selective as dystopia, and that has the temerity of asking questions about religion and cult, is Shahul Ameen’s Velipadukal. This Malayalam film, subtitled in English, was shot on a low budget of 4.2 lakhs (a running time of around 70 mins), and is yet able to force the viewer to reexamine many of the issues that he might have completely missed so far. The reason is its powerful script.

As with the usual films or literature on the subject, the film is not from the perspective of an outsider to a dystopian society, but from the insider’s (Lintu) who begins to question himself and the society. A society which follows a “scientific religion,” with the only divisions left now between “rightists” and “leftists.” Wherein ancestors are worshipped, to the extent that even the ancestor who made a chair is thanked before settling in it, and wherein women are only meant for sex and procreation: the religion believes in passing on ancestors’ attributes, even fleshly attributes, so that no one dies as such, but keeps on living through descendants. Thus, “eternity.”

An interesting premise, though I still do not understand why would such a religion get invented in the first place. Important, since for a fiction to work, it has to be as much believable as possible. In Shahul Ameen’s own words:

There are actually two storylines in the movie. One is obviously Lintu’s story. The second one is that of the creators and perpetrators of Scientific Religion, which goes like this – in the present times, majority of people who say they are religious are hypocritical, as they simply follow the rituals and do not follow the major teachings of their respective religions. In times like this, one clever fellow/a group of people devises the Scientific Religion. They use an innovative USP - that of surviving death and attaining eternity. Gradually, the religion spreads, and people start living more morally, with the aim of attaining eternity. Then, few centuries later, someone proves that the religion is wrong, and people go back to their innate sinful lives. The arbitrators of the religion are still satisfied that they were able to curb the entire human race at least for a few centuries.

Curb from what? Women at the beck and call of each and every man for procreation? The movie in fact fails to convey the second storyline, that of the creators of scientific religion, much effectively: the viewer very soon becomes obsessed with Lintu, and how he could fight such a totalitarian system, in which no one is ready even to hear him, forget understand him. Where people are already so much satisfied. Though in Shahul’s words, “I did not want the audience to develop so much sympathy for Lintu that they do not notice the satire, and I decided to use a nonjudgmental and objective camera language, avoiding close shots and shots parallel to Lintu’s eye-line as much as possible.” But, it does become a story of Lintu vs. the system, and maybe the film should have been treated more like an essay, a question.

Another one of my questions for the director and his subsequent answer were:

Me: If I might continue the discussion a little forward on religion itself, is it all really a totalitarian state, reducing human emotions to rituals? In spite of all the religions, I don't think so: and actually think it a necessary evil, if left to flourish only to some extent. For the simple reason that I've observed people being mad to find something to bow to: if you take away one thing, they will find some other thing or being. Even if your “scientific religion” won't be there, what would take the place of void? Can you suggest a society where people are not following any customs, any rituals, any religion? All religion proceeds from some of the primal instincts of man, like fear and sympathy and love for things one gets used to, or even a love of beauty. It isn't as detestable when one views it in this light, and believe me for a lot of people religion is more love (maybe not for people but for their own little habits and oddities) and habit. A cushion in a world where anyway they soon find out that even love is bought, sex is bought, and knowledge itself is bought, at least that knowledge which is apparent to the world. Religion affords to these people something of themselves that isn't bought by someone, nor did they buy it of someone. Yes, you would argue that they did buy it of their ancestors, but so did probably you your unbelief from your education, or even from whatever inspired you to dare to think existing things wrong.

Shahul: I agree that many people find solace in religious faith and rituals, and I don’t find any harm in it. And I myself am envious of people who are able to do that. But, many of those like me who start thinking think more objectively and critically as they grow up soon realize the flaws in the underlying beliefs, and hence become unable to find solace in those rituals/beliefs. Lintu himself initially tries to fight his doubts by trying to immerse himself in spiritual matters, and even attends another internalization with the hope that faith will gradually follow. He even asks the Psychiatrist whether all his problems are a result of his intelligence, and even tries shock therapy to get rid of the doubts he has about the religion. In one scene he looks at the ladies who find solace in The Book played in the stereo (though they do not understand a single word of what is being said), and slowly walks out, unable to share their pleasure. It is only after all these failed attempts that he comes out openly against the religion, first to his friend, then to the Principal, and then to the whole world through the TV interview. But, the world does not allow him his rights to not-to-believe. And exactly this is one of the criticisms of organized religions the script tries to make – those who find solace in absurd rituals have the right to do so, but unfortunately most of them don’t stop there, and start harassing those who see through it all.

Quite an interesting discussion, which I would like to carry forward one day with him and other people as well, maybe through some of my own work. Since work speaks the best. The film does disappoint on one or two scores of art direction and lack of an effective color scheme for such a subject, but then lack of budget also entails lack of extras, lack of several other small things each of which costs money when you finally add up those. Of course, the production quality is superb. You can read the director’s views and about the whole crew and the film on http://www.reactionshots.in/.

The real pleasure that I had was that thinking is alive, and people are making films--here in India itself--which are not merely song & dance routines or high-stakes thrillers.

16 Vayathinile

2008-10-16T09:21:00.000-07:00

A truly great film, Pathinaru Vayathinile (or 16 Vayathinile) is about the vulnerability of a woman, and yet her strength: at the same time, she can change the life of a man through her love, and she can mar her own life by falling for the wrong man in the first place. The film’s charm lies not only in three brilliant actors, who were all raw at the time--Sridevi, Rajnikanth, and Kamal Haasan--but also in the minimalistic style the film has been directed.

The focus has largely been on the characters, there’s hardly anything else. And of course the film stands upon the shoulders of Mayil (Sridevi) for that: she can spit on Rajnikanth as disdainfully as she can laugh with joy on receiving a slap from Chapani (Kamal Haasan), thinking of how hard hit must be the vet doctor who jilted her. Set in rural Tamil Nadu, the film absorbs the landscape in the story, rather than extraneously focussing on the village scenes, as so often many films make the mistake of doing (for example, Paruthi Veeran). Which is why one moves in a continuity, one moves with the characters to the story’s climax. Speaking of which, it is again one of the rarest and best ever seen: maybe, much oftener seen in Tamil films. There is no sweet, contrived ending as so often in Hollywood or Hindi films; and yet, it has something of a hope left. Even if Chapani is maybe going to be sentenced to death, there was always that love for which Mayil would wait for ever; and nothing can discount that. One of the highlights of the film by the way is the lovely drawl in which Chapani takes Mayil’s name: mentally retarded, yes, but his intonation of Mayil’s name has that special quality; which is how probably you get the measure of Kamal Haasan.

One of the rare greats of Indian cinema, the slow yet tenuous movement of the film’s story reminded me of another great Indian film, Girish Karnad’s Cheluvi.

Azur et Asmar

2008-10-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

Since most of the exposure for most people might only be to Pixar films in the sphere of animation, I would forgive them if they thought Azur et Asmar refreshing: of course, how many folklores are made today as films? And then, this is an “original folklore,” though this is where the film’s troubles start. Taking bits and pieces from various sources, like the old man sitting on Azur’s shoulders reminding one of Richard Burton’s Arabian Nights and the lion taking Azur flying through mountains of a similar Russian folk tale, does not always work: one has to sew everything into a wonderful whole. And then you have a princess Shamsa-Sabah who is suddenly too much of a Pixarish character suddenly thrown in this static animated film embellished with Arabic motifs and Arab language: static canvases don’t always work to make a film beautiful. For it is Azur and Asmar who are equally static; Asmar has actually not much of a role in except being mentioned in the title of the film! Concessions for being politically correct to an Arab?!!

The film starts again statically, but it does dissolve into a couple of beautiful scenes when Azur and Asmar fight as children, and get draped into mud, straw, tree branches, whatever. The animation here is delightful: both are like springs, seesaws, as if an elastic bond connects them in all their fights; also easier to animate this unrealistically, it’s also much more funny, and conveys the spirit of childhood. Asmar’s antics on the sidelines while watching Azur learn the crafts of noblemen lead one to believe that yes, the film will be really interesting, the story is going to be exciting when they both will grow up. But, the story and the film lose track, in trying to make things politically correct, and in maintaining the balance between everything French and Arabic, blanc and noir. Yes, Crapoux to some extent saves it, but then he is again a little jaded character brought from Pixar’s studio: he seems to be again the Edna of The Incredibles, reborn with a leaner role.

Maybe, part of the limited success that the film has met with, at least critically, has been due to the focus on characters’ faces. Though Azur and his nanny have not been assigned much variety of facial expressions, except closing and opening mouths and eyes, their faces have been rendered with much detail: Azur’s blue eyes seem really watery and pitiful, the texture and rendering artists have done a great job. Again, each of the novelties and delicacies of the Arab world have been focussed upon more: it’s OK if Azur’s stumbling when pretending to be blind for the first time looks very artificial, looks almost as if he himself is a stick rather than a human being; what counts in the director’s books apparently is to create quiet, serene background shots and frames. This is where Michel Ocelot errs: he should’ve selected a completely 2-D format in that case, right now it’s neither here nor there. Also, somehow people accept anything, even the most unreal things, when watching in 2-D; the same thing seems too much unreal or uncanny (yes, the uncanny valley phenomenon, as experienced by many in The Polar Express) in a 3-D format if you haven’t done your animation and dynamics properly. Using the 3-D medium yet the flat frames makes Azur et Asmar actually look very stupid: probably even most children won’t fall for it. And the purpose of any computer-generated animation, actually any film in itself, is to make the viewers fall for it!

Le voyage du ballon rouge

2008-10-05T12:31:00.000-07:00

A film that seldom, seldom is made: where the film chooses to understate everything, only to lend greater force to the argument itself, only to not to indulge in any of dramatic ploys and just soak in a story of a lonely mother fighting for life and happiness and a little comfort and independence, only to gradually make the audience feel a part of sun-seeped Paris, of serene France, of so many colors and life everywhere, even puppets. A masterpiece from Hou Hsiao-hsien, the film has often been miscriticised for being too vague, too ambiguous, maybe the critics were not ready for a simple working mother and her child's story. I find only Manohla Dargis from NY Times doing rich justice to the film, so let me add another chapter to this grossly underestimated film.

Based on the 1956 Lamorisse classic The Red Balloon, this film however turns things a little more in a direction not conventionally taken: the red balloon stands less for innocence, more for the frailty of life, for the unexpected trivialities that disturb the harmony of your life day in and day out. Juliette Binoche does it yet, yet again: another warm performance, another energy-filled one, and once again mainstay of the film. Fang Song gives in a brilliant performance as the Chinese film student, calmly watching this French family of Binoche's, her life with all her attendant grapplings with minor issues and neighbours, and of course Paris. She almost acts a critical element on Binoche's way of life: yes, her work with puppets notwithstanding, the delight and passion with which she independently stands on her own, is she right in continuing on with Paris and thus deal with a thousand other small issues, which do not even leave her enough time with her own son, Simon. The red balloon hovers around Simon, but only as a guardian angel? Or something which he is always unable to reach, which he cannot reach for: dreams which elude as soon as he would be awake, at most only an image of that dream the reality. It is this sadness, this gentle mournfulness which tinges the film throughout and makes the film stand out among the others.

Boy Meets Girl

2008-09-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

A debut feature film, and Carax achieves heights of poetic prowess: light and shadow, duty and love, soul and body, smile and destitution, David Bowie’s song and a couple fighting a bitter trivial battle in a neighbouring apartment, yes all the clash is wrapped up, packaged in the story of self-search, of pain, of love that could never be between two people, victims of uptight, unimaginative, orderly people.

The story is simple: boy meets girl. It’s the same old pain with momentary relief, a flash of teeth of Mireille (Mireille Perrier) that Alex (Denis Lavant) can induce with difficulty, and then the inevitable pathway towards love and doom continues. Lovingly shot in crisp black and white, the film opens with absurd: skis out of the windshield of a car. Nay, even before, there’s that voice, that old voice, which almost reminds me of another very uncanny opening of a totally different kind of film, Mackenna’s Gold, another masterpiece. The film deliberates, thinks, stands on its feet too often, and lets you get sucked into it by this simple contrivance. Not hastily, but slowly, yet not in any order, the camera tracks the life-map of Alex behind the painting, and then today’s scrawl. Again, the father’s phone comes the next morning with a theatrical gravity and which strangely does not look uncalled for in this mockery of all ambitions, mannerisms and achievements compared to love – yes that’s what this film does convey. We have the Einstenian and Armstrongish men, obsessed with themselves, or objects, when something far more beautiful is going on: Alex and Mireille. We have the hostess who says at an arm’s length “Je vous laisse” when Alex is nothing in answer to “Vous êtes qui?” And yet the same hostess treasures a loved one’s cup: is she sitting too long over one memory? Should she have moved away? Is Alex any better for moving from girl to girl, a newer stab in his heart and life-map? Or has Alex finally met Mireille, who even if loin is of the same mauvais sang as Alex, the same dysfunctionality? Or are Alex and Mireille only extensions of the deaf and dumb man and his interpreter: the man has much to say but he cannot speak, the girl has voice but words of the old man since she has to interpret him, not herself? How much do we become extensions of the other when we love, how much should we become, and more importantly can we even determine this? Wouldn’t it be better in that case then to play pinball silently, with the electronic circuits doing all the noises? Occasionally the pinball machine will go wrong, and then we will correct the circuitry; occasionally the sex will go wrong and then we will ask how dry or wet we like it, or change our lover. Isn’t that simpler than love?

Pickpocket

2008-06-30T09:47:00.000-07:00

A minimalistic style, Robert Bresson makes you feel the power of human soul, human hands, human emotions – repressed emotions, rusting intellect, objectless love – and brings to life Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” on a smaller scale, but as intense as the book. And, in my opinion, also a little frivolous compared to the book.

Michel is the Raskolnikoff: he is the man who thinks he can take law in his hands, since he is “intellectual”, and he can do what he wishes to. He should at least be better than so many others he silently detests. What makes the novel and the film script diverge widely are the acts which Raskolnikoff and Michel commit: while the former commits the murder of an old woman, an usurer, the latter becomes a petty thief, a pickpocket. In the former case, it’s one act against someone taken symbolic for the world’s insensibility, and greed, and power. In the latter case, it’s an obsession against the world itself, and a chain of actions from which the perpetrator finds himself unable to extricate. Raskolnikoff’s redemption lay in the soul, in his being cured of anarchy, of being in love with the people as they are, with himself, with Sonia. Michel’s redemption, to me, lies more in getting the love that he always was hungry for, and which he could have got earlier if not for the fixated obsession. Of course, the book has a strong antithesis in the lawyer who confronts and plays the cat-and-mouse game with Raskolnikoff; while the film seems to have all its sympathies with the anarchist, and in fact has a brilliantly, erotically charged sequence of men being looted on a train, a sequence which I would have expected more in some film rendition of Artful Dodger (“Oliver Twist”) rather than here.

As a film, it stands brilliantly on its own, mainly because of the character played by Martin LaSalle – the brooding, nervous, obsessive character of Michel. The brilliantly choreographed robbery scenes and the vulnerable beauty of Marika Green add to the film, though to what and in which degrees depends on how much you can bear an anarchist interpretation of one of the greatest anti-anarchist arguments by Dostoyevsky. The character of the heroine in the film again leaves a lot desired for – while Marika Green certainly looks the vulnerable working class, she doesn’t look the girl to fire the spark of reform in a man, much less a man whose rot is more moral, more inner, more mental than most whose vices are more picked-up habits, extraneous. I did love the film for its minimal use of dialogues, its quintessential French-ness, and the erotic pleasure with which most scenes are shot (not only the robbery scenes, but also the final scene in the prison between LaSalle and Marika, where once again human hands are the focus). And I equally hated it for the lack of sincerity with which it was made: half-hearted character interpretations of Jacques (Michel’s friend) and the police inspector make serious flaws in the composition of the film.

Blanc

2008-06-12T09:05:00.000-07:00

Blanc (in English, White) is easily the film lacking layers in Kieślowski's Trois Couleurs trilogy. Though interestingly it is the film having the most rich storyline out of the three. Both Bleu and Rouge have stories that are simple if you consider a story by the number of events that happen and the number of twists that the tale takes. Yet, both are exceedingly rich in metaphors, in cinematic challenges achieved, in the psychological depths that they enter into through their characters and of their characters, and both are extremely thought-provoking.

Not so the case with Blanc. It is kind of a very black comedy, and a complete inverse interpretation of the old phrase, "Everything's fair in love and war". Instead of the camera hiding layers this time, it's the protagonist, the inscrutable, calm, seemingly coward but clinging-on kind of person, Karol Karol, the Polish hairdresser, who hides layers, who makes the viewer queasy right from the start that something is up in this brain, this is no ordinary person who will take his destiny lying down. And the object of his love and lust is so typically the Parisian dumb gorgeous model, Dominique Vidal, that you feel hate for Karol Karol for having a noble sentiment for such a woman, and at the same time you yourself would like to strike down that vindictive woman who is so fair otherwise, and to the world.

The real charm that Kieślowksi manages to weave into the movie is the absolute "whiteness" of the character Karol Karol. He doesn't seem to ever have any semblance of dignity. He happily becomes a beggar, is packed in a trunk, beaten up by thugs, beaten up by the real estate scamsters later, and fakes his corpse; and has impotent sex with Vidal; and yet, he never fails, he just moves on. The lack of dignity does not bother him at all, he has accepted it already as part of his bargain. Except an inordinate lust for Vidal, he does not show any emotions on his face, and just cooly bargains through everywhere - whether it be the number of heads he has to do, or the plot to sell to the scamsters. Spotless white, even though he crosses borders with fake passports. He makes a lot of money, maybe from something illegal, but he uses it all not for himself, but for a very 'white purpose'. Many people search for the "whiteness" in this film in the same way they have looked at Bleu's blue and Rouge's red. But instead here we have the stunning reclining figure of Vidal in red silken sheets, the neon sign that blazes happily for a new Poland though the village seems to be as sleepy as it ever must have been (brilliant political satire by Kieślowski over the failure of any good times turning up in the aftermath of cold war), and a lack of any uniform color scheme if you except the drabness. And yes, it strikes me then, except Vidal, everything in the film is so very drab. The village, the hairdresser pal who takes Karol in, the enigmatic friend Mikolaj who wanted to kill himself (is he a toned-down version of the Judge of Rouge?), the railway station where Karol begs or the railway station where Karol meets by appointment to take the life of Mikolaj, the prison to which Karol slips in at the end - yes, the whiteness is in the drabness, the single-minded intents of all the characters. Karol is after revenge, Vidal after easy money and easy men, Mikolaj after forgetfulness that never comes, and the hairdresser pal after customers. White of purpose!

Krótki film o milosci

2008-05-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

The best thing about Krzysztof Kieślowski's Krótki film o milosci (A Short Film about Love) is probably that it shows an aspect of love which is very, very less understood, and is able to demonstrate that love has myriad forms, takes myriad sentiments as its ways of outpouring, including those banned by society to be even thought of: cases in point being incest, voyeurism, lust itself (and not as something distinct) and a sadistic desire and search for pain. Different people, different attractions, different names, but each one of them is "love", since each one of them is the search of a human being for something reciprocal, which sometimes he tries to find in himself through the other or which sometimes he tries to beget in himself through the other, or which sometimes he tries to destroy in himself through the other.

The film on its surface is a simple story about an adolescent falling into an intense love affair just by being a voyeur, just by watching the past-middle-aged artist who lives opposite and has a slew of sexual encounters with men, presumably agents to whom she is trying to convince to sell her artwork. The men of course take full advantage of her willingness to sell herself but probably never actually do buy something; at least, she is only a struggling artist, an unknown. But when you try to reflect on what does the story mean, on why certain things happen, and what else could have happened, it is then you tend to get absorbed completely in never thought-of issues.

One of the most striking things, established well at the outset of the film, is the sympathy placed on the voyeur. So while the same society which calls a voyeur a pervert watches this same film already anticipating their sympathies towards the voyeur. And the director doesn't fail them; he shows a sensitive boy, for company only his friend's mother, a secretive boy, and a boy who moves away his telescope when the woman opposite actually starts having sex with the man in her apartment. Later on, the boy confesses to the woman that he used to watch the complete ritual, but in any case this is never shown in the film. And we don't know whether the boy has only made this up to the woman in order to hide his sensitivity or he really used to see everything. After all, there are contradictory accounts of the origin of the telescope itself - while the boy claims that this was given to him by the friend in whose apartment (and with whose mother) he is living now and instructed to see the nice body opposite, the friend's mother later on in the film tells the woman that this is the boy's own contrivance. A doubt obviously ensues over how much the boy used to see. And considering the whole film, I think he saw "everything" but only once, and he was revolted by it.

This is essential to the film, in order to understand the hypersensitivity of the boy, who lives in his dreams, and creates his own pain. It's his friend's mother's teaching that when you've got a toothache press a hot iron to your shoulder, in order to forget the lesser pain against the greater pain. So in fact you just delude yourself into another pain, but all the while the consciousness burns inside you that why did you press the hot iron! Quite an extraordinarily suicidal teaching for a sensitive soul! It is against this backdrop of the fresh, virginal soul of the boy that this worldly woman who has sold herself to countless people but who does not enjoy any of those and keeps on somehow struggling for art, it is against this canvas the story unfolds of the boy who cannot bear that the woman whom she adores from distance breaks down, even if in private, that she cries! But unfortunately by calling her to the post office twice on false pretext only makes the woman unhappier, more bitter, and a butt of society's jokes on a lonely, poor woman.

The most interesting part of the film is the woman's reaction to the boy's confession that he watches her. It is almost never shock, except for the very initial moment; she's too tired for that, as if she's saying that ok, this was one joke yet to be played on me. But it is disbelief, of something as absurd as love itself and that too from a boy who doesn't even know her. Believing it to be just a passing stage of adolescent lust, which should be best relieved, she makes every effort of seducing the boy. And unwittingly strikes at the soul of the boy; he loves her pain and her heroic effort to not to show her pain, more than being excited about her body. It is only when he is now beyond her reach, she realises that love does exist in the world, even for a "fallen woman". The painful interlude has now probably taught each of them new things, things each of them were in need of: the boy has now been scratched, there will never be that fresh soul, he has stepped into manhood; the woman has also stepped into womanhood, she knows now that love exist, she knows now that beauty exists, and she has greater things to live for now. Maybe she is not going to seduce shady agents any longer.

The film's composition is the remarkable feature which makes the film riveting for the viewer. The film is always from the point of view of the boy, except the last part when it completely shifts to the woman. So there's no third observer in the film, no third eye. The boy's room is never shown in much detail, is not glossed over much; and most of the film goes as if one is watching the film itself through a binocular. The characters chosen are remarkable, especially the mysterious, sadistic old woman who is the boy's friend's mother and the bestial lover of the woman who is best seen peering through keyholes. It's an interesting aside to note that the woman does not have any charming, suave lovers; the most carnal instincts which prompt men to her door are compared against the platonic instincts of the boy which prompt him to even become a milkman at her door.

I only wish Kieślowski would have made Nabokov's "Lolita" and Dostoyevsky's "Poor Folks", he was so perfect for these neglected masterpieces.

La guerre est finie

2008-05-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

The William Faulkner of cinema, Alain Resnais through La Guerre Est Finie ("The War Is Over") does not only a brilliant psychological study of the revolutionary but also of the resistance itself. The spirit, the anger, the disjointedness, the weariness, the inspiration, the mechanical, the loss of charm, the loss of ideology with the gain of further knowledge, the loss of innocence in more ways than virginal: how often do you find a film that can catch all this?

Inspirational cinematography, designed to capture the soul, the subconscious, titillates the viewer, provokes the viewer, and finally absorbs the viewer. In this one respect, Resnais differs largely from Godard, in that all his unconventionalities only draw in the viewer further, only make the viewer feel a narrow constriction at heart even more. La Guerre Est Finie stars Yves Montand, Ingrid Thulin and Geneviève Bujold, all actors whom I can call 'choicest', 'hand-picked'.

Montand is the centre of the film; it is through him we get an interior view of an intelligent revolutionary who loves his country, and probably from that love is losing his ideology, seeing now, in his 'retirement' age, the futileness of it all. Some more will die, will anything change? Is that the way to go about it? Yes, the Spain of legends and bull-fights is sold to the tourists, and people enjoy and go away, satisfied that all is well with Franco's Spain. But would killing off tourism and civil war be the way out? Wouldn't those same scatterbrained people then go elsewhere and 'enjoy their lives'?

Long and short dollies, finest editing and cinematography I've ever seen in my life, and an equally ingenious way of making acquired passions of a man impersonal - all make the film a masterpiece. Let's get down to each one in detail.

Dollies and intercutting shots serve only to make the film more Montand-centric. As Montand is living a revolutionary's life, going places, struggling with his reactionism and what he sees now as the truth, and what is going to happen, something is happening somewhere all the times. There are so many people connected, networked, underground. Someone is waiting to apprehend someone, slip in someone quietly behind doors that might never issue forth that one person; someone is waiting patiently for that someone to come home and reclaim her. Some of these are things not real, only in Montand's imagination and dread of future, or his foresight. Some of it will happen in the film in the ensuing scenes. Some of it has happened before. But, suddenly, in between a Montand scene, you get these different images of different people, going about quietly, unquiet events happening to them quietly, and then you are back to the Montand scene. So now you are seeped in the subconscious of Montand's soul, you are now the disturbed revolutionary who has so much to achieve and so little means to do so.

Especially striking is the scene when Montand has just come to a café, depressed after being told to stay put and that he is growing old, he should rest and 'be convinced'. The images that flash in the telephone booth this time not only include all those involved underground but also Bujold, daughter of a resistance sympathiser and whom he is having an aimless affair with. It's a striking image, one of innocence, Bujold's eyelashes drooping, a virginal image. A guilt on freshness and virginity lost? But on what all counts? It also foretells in a way Bujold's own involvement, on a different and much more radical and destructive and foolhardy scale, in the underground movement. Also, an 'acquired taste'?

Bujold is French, not Spanish, and so are her friends. Theirs is a different case than Montand, who plays Domingo, a Spanish man. But they are obsessed with their youth, and they give it the names of internationalism, Leninism, and truth. A case of acquired tastes when you are intelligent, want to do something but you don't have proper outlets, and you have money or are well-to-do. Not only through such characters but also by way of using narrations in different voices (and not those of the actors) does the film make its point across of ideologies speaking. It is most prominent when Montand argues with other resistance leaders about the inevitable failure of the coming strike. There are two to three voices, not Montand's, not the other leaders', which take up this discussion. It is as if men have become impersonal here, they have been taken control of something higher than themselves, they have become just 'voices' and 'ideologies' and that's their identification, their brand. They will die one day, even their ideologies will be forgotten, at least as attached to them. There would be just the murmur of those voices on the wind.

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The film ends in inevitability. Thulin, the mistress whose devotion sometimes makes Montand uncomfortable yet at peace with himself, learns Montand is going to be sucked into a trap, and she starts out to let him know and save him from crossing into Spain. The film ends here, yet there's a shadow of death over it. Either Thulin will not be able to save Montand, or she will be able to save him and Montand will quit this life and spend the remaining part of it trying to make peace with himself and his country. Death, in one case of Montand the physical entity, in the other case of Montand the man of ideals, dreams, revolutionary potentials. That’s why Montand could feel the ‘shadow of death’ through the narrator in the penultimate scene.

Sommarlek

2008-05-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

To say a simple thing, yet beautifully, yet effectively, to show a story which hadn't had to use far stretches of imaginations, except the most inspiring ones of what happens between a young man and a young girl when they are in love with each other, and when it's first love for both of them, to do all this you not only require a director of the calibre of Ingmar Bergman, but you also require an actress like Maj-Britt Nilsson. She is so natural, so much the Marie, the playful, winsome ballerina she is playing in the film, you don't even realise that these are actors and this is a film. More crucially, Bergman has stuck true to the title (literally "Summer Games"), so the film is a long sequence of youthful love which you don't otherwise get at all in films.

Usually, there is at the most a scene like the montage scene in Eric Segal's Love Story, but why a montage? Why a brief moment, when your whole film is about love between two people? Are you lost of ideas, or do you feel shy and insecure that your film is a celebration of love? This is the place where Bergman excels, he has given full scope to his characters in the degree they require. So while there's that old woman all in black walking in front of Marie, no one knows whether foreshadowing Marie's lonely old life or just being a placard on old life in general, she just strikes a terror in the heart, she just forebodes what is to happen in the film afterwards. There is no attempt of variegating the example or extending the analogy. There is again, much later in the film, a much direct reference to what the viewer can expect soon, through the moustachioed aunt of Birger Malmsten (playing the hero, Henrik) talking about death and legacy. And finally there's the magician, who is more the mirror for Marie rather than the one they are both looking into. The magician incidentally reminded me of the philosopher of Godard's Vivre Sa Vie, almost doing the same role of letting realise the protagonist the punctum in her life.

The cinematography of the film is stunning. And even more so the choice of locale by Bergman. It looks fit for those two young lovers, wanting to be free birds, Marie and Henrik. They both look a part of that world and part of each other when they are on those sharp rocks jutting out on the sea, they both look lost in the world and to each other when they are seen in company, in that world where there is more piano, crockery, ballet, Uncle Erland. The film goes on to show how actors who fit into their parts are essential for a film, especially if it aspires to rise to the heights of "sublime", which Sommarlek (Summer Interlude) does easily.

Bleu

2008-03-18T05:50:00.000-07:00

Bleu (in English, Blue), from the Trois Couleurs trilogy of Krzysztof Kieślowski, is all about the pain of love. In many ways, the film reminded me of the Italian masterpiece Cinema Paradiso, but both films take completely different aspects of the same theme. While Cinema Paradiso is about the pain of unrequited love, unfulfilled love, Bleu is about the pain of love that is lost, love that seems never to wash us again, love that seems to have filled up our life with its suffocating scent for ever.

This film could never have been possible, at least for me, without Juliette Binoche. The acme she has reached in this film with her acting is something to be wondered about—I have rarely seen so beautiful "underdone" acting in my life. Add to that the beauty, the kind smile, and the scornful smile, the grace, the dignity, the pain on Juliette's face, and rest is completed by a brilliant director, who knows his craft, who knows his colours, and who knows his moments of silence. The whole film is like, Julie (character played by Binoche) is looking in your eyes, she does not want to ask anything, it's just that you don't have the answers.

Silence plays an important part in Bleu. The film has sparse dialogues, and the dialogues that are there are too crude, too simplistic (especially considering that it's a French film). It's the silence or the background blurry noises that dominate the film. Even when Julie splashes around the swimming pool, the water's sound is subdued, and yet the unwelcome noises, like that of children in red dresses coming in the bustle of a new life to the pool one such evening, those noises are heightened in contrast. It's a beautiful sound editing scheme which brings out everything in the film too well.

Blue, the color of memories

It's the blue glass chandelier, it's the blue candy. Things associated with Julie's memory, the memory which she wants to rub off in her desperation to get rid of her pain, are all blue. So, even the notes of the music her husband composed are blue. But the world which jars her, or which is in her present state of mind, is sepia, is too yellow, is too much not blue. In a beautiful scene, Julie is eating in the café, the scene is in sepia, then the music comes, similar to the music her husband had composed, and when she finally turns, we are introduced to the beggar, playing against a blue bespattered wall. Sepia and blue are in a fight with each other, liberty desired and being chained to old memories. But what is liberty?

Blue, the color of liberty

Does liberty mean to be free from memories? To get rid of memories, and then to start afresh? Yes, you will be liberated definitely, but would that liberty be worth living for? Do you envy the liberty that now Julie's mother, suffering from Alzheimer, has? It's a brilliant analogy drawn by Kieślowski, and there are so many hidden layers in each of his scenes, with so much stationarity, that allows you to think all this. Julie's mother is watching a man sky-diving, just hanging by a rope tied to his legs, and spiralling downwards in the vast air. Is it Julie's mother's condition? Aimless? Bien sûr. But does it reflect more of Julie? No support in her life now, no love in her life now, anything which she has or had she has already been rejecting. Just a slender string of memories to connect her to life, to God, to people, and which she wants to cut. Yes, she would be then completely free in the air, but to crash down? Would that be liberty?

It’s this struggle that the film concerns itself with. Julie still cannot leave it all. There’s a man being beaten up in the streets below, her interest is aroused, no matter how indifferent she tries to become. When she is locked outside in the night, she is afraid. She has to take help of the prostitute downstairs when she is afraid to go back to her home for fear of the rats, the infants, that the cat might have killed. Note the color scheme that plays up on Julie’s face when she is listening to the sounds of night when the man is being beaten up outside: blue light playing on her face, behind the frames are yellow (even though it’s a night scene).

Blue, the color of desire

Dialogues are very rare between Julie and her husband’s assistant, Olivier, who always loved her silently, and now continues to does so, again silently but shrewdly and very delicately. Julie asks “Vous m’aimez?” (and the response, “Vous êtes sûr?”) while inviting him for sex, as if trying to destroy her body from the memories. But, it’s never been “tu” between them, the formal “vous” exists, and yet they silently drop their encasings in front of each other. Each knows why the other is doing it: and each does it unquestioningly, without knowing if there will be any other time. Even much later in the film, when Olivier has succeeded to some extent in being closer to Julie, the dialogue is “Vous me manquez?”

Julie herself seems so desirable when she asks with such a definitive closed fashion anything. She is so sure of herself, although she is so much at struggle inside. Her questions don’t allow anything except a “Yes” or “No”, no, not even that. Her questions only allow what she wants as a response. It’s a shock that brings you closer to her, when you see her running after Olivier’s car, to know of her husband’s mistress that she knows of only now. When Julie is locked out and she rests on the staircase, the shot is from below, from her legs upward. It’s a scene which most directors would have missed or would have overdone similar instances in the film: a scene which highlight’s Julie’s desirablity, she’s only 33, her vulnerability, and by this contrast, her strength, her resolve to fight the grief, the pain. Yes, the solution that she has got now is to run away from the grief, but she is thinking, she is fighting, and she is allowing herself to see Olivier, to see and to compose the music her husband left unfinished, to see the young man with the cross.

Blue, the color of darkness

Julie gives back the cross, it’s a simple enough scene. But is there something more to it? Is Julie also trying to reject God out from her life? This cross probably changes the young man: we’re going to see the aimless young man who we saw in the opening scenes playing with a ball, pensive with that cross in the end credits. Crosses can be passed on, a life of beauty can be passed on, isn’t it? The prostitute touches the blue chandelier in one of the most touching scenes of the movie, when Julie imperceptibly becomes a tigress, she does not want anyone to touch her memories, her one memory that she has decided to linger over. The prostitute says she had one like this in her childhood. So, what’s sacred to someone and special to someone, might be just something that “someone had also.” The blue chandelier is maybe the blue of innocence for the prostitute, now lost in the blue of the world of sold desire she “willingly” inhabits. Is that chandelier too a cross which Julie is unwittingly passing on to the prostitute. Or can that never happen? There can be no innocence now, there can only be pain. When the sick beggar has gone for some days to a hospital, he has still left his flute. Music lives, soul lives, deeds live, rest might go. The same music is invented by her husband and by the beggar. How could they have the same ideas? A connection of beauty, imagination, life that exists among people? And hence is transmissible? The film here achieves a Dostoyevskyan beauty, very hard to achieve always.

What do rats signify for Julie? She cannot yet be rid of her fears, her old fears. Try as she might, she is still the old Julie. And there’s one rat, the others are newborns. Tender life, new life, while Julie is grappling with the pain of death. Life, which is so hopeful right now, which is unknowing of what is to come, which is happy in its squeals and movements. The fadeouts: Julie is lost, disconnected, from the present, and is gone back into the world she does not want to be in anymore. But every thing reminds her of it, every thing pursues her relentlessly to not to let her forget.

Blue, the color of love

When Julie finally says “Je viens,” the demons are slayed. Memories are kept alive, but life is not led subjugated to them. No. Memories only serve to make the life more beautiful. The adjunct of pain only makes it more variegated, and makes any present happiness more blissful. One of the most beautiful end credits I’ve ever seen, all the people connected directly or indirectly in the film are shown somehow connected to that one incident: the car crash.

The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane

2008-03-01T21:34:00.000-08:00

One of the best "little" movies ever made, The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane rakes up several complex issues in the mind of the viewer. How much independence does a child really have to live his or her own life? Especially if the child be "different" from others, if he or she has other tastes. Jodie Foster stars brilliantly as the thirteen-year-old girl Rynn Jacobs who dares to dream big and then dares to implement them, a bit ruthlessly. A girl who loves Emily Dickinson, a girl who can understand the intentions of a young, pervert man, a girl who does not bow down to the landlady in spite of all her threatening and her extraordinarily proprietary, insolent air and who responds in as insolent, as audacious a manner, and a girl who could understand why her father wanted to kill himself and why now she has to make the best of her life without compromising with anyone.

The film's strength is its cooped-up atmosphere of the scene being almost always centered at almost one place: the drawing room of Rynn's home. The location's the same whether it's the pervert son (played by Martin Sheen) of the landlady trying to force or blackmail Rynn, whether it's the Italian police officer who's again intruding Rynn's privacy, or whether it's something concealed, something only hinted at by circumstances. Your suspense builds up until Rynn tells the whole story to a young boy who she begins to trust and love, and it's only then that relief falls in place. I still don't know whether Rynn is true in her part of the story about her father, or is there something more? Is Frank Hallet, the pervert, just that, or does he represent something more? Maybe, there's a body yet to be found!

It's this Saki-esque tone of the story that leaves you so much on tenterhooks. Jodie Foster plays her part to perfection, cool, composed, and collected - you ever can't tell whether she's telling truth or not, even though you've got the benefit of being the third party, of being the viewer. The whole room, the house bristles with warnings, dangers, as if screaming that here another pervert lives, and there's no guarantee who's going to have the almond-tasting tea next! Martin Sheen brings a new dimension to the film, that of the pervert whom everyone knows as the pervert. So he has got to fight on his way in the town, somehow try to deny his tattered reputation, and yet always be on the lookout for damaging it anew, for again getting attracted to where the world would call him a pervert.

Based on Laird Koenig's novel of the same name, the film won two Saturns in 1977.

La Spagnola

2008-03-01T21:28:00.000-08:00

An unconventional film, it's another one in a line of those films which somehow only succeed in showing a woman helpless, in showing her in need of a man always. La Spagnola is for me the Australian version of Merci, La Vie. It's interesting that while both films show men always lusting after women, as lechers, yet it's the women who probably show up in a poorer light than men themselves - the unresisting, whimperous, confused beings that women are shown to be. While I would like to say a lot about the portrayal of women in these films and in general in the media, this, a film review, is not a proper place to do so.

The film, simply put, is brilliant. In spite of my reservations with both this film and Merci, La Vie for what they are trying to show, it has indeed to be said that both are designed to provoke thought. Which in itself is a good thing - for when you think, it is not a given that you're going to think only what the film-maker intended, you might very well run in an opposite direction. Opening with the shot of an un-Australian looking, un-charming teenage girl covering up the screen and the flat Australian barren landscape behind, the film sets its tone in the opening moments itself. While the husband is leaving the wife and house, and the wife is bickering and not at all ready to give way, the daughter is calmly looking, "contemplating" to use the right word, at the scene. As if she's not involved in it. Or, as we get to know her better, she's too sure of the outcome, and her love for her father and her hate of her mother's bickering ways are too strong to involve herself further in this scene in which she knows each will play out her part for sure, the father of leaving responsiblities, the mother of bickering and making herself a whore, the daughter of contemplating, self-discovering, and finally learning a woman's part in life.

The film's extraordinary charm lies in the success of the director to make an ordinary, everyday story transform into an unearthly phenomenon. Nothing seems real in the film, even though nothing is operating in the realm of fantasy or allegory as was the case in Merci, La Vie. Here, except one or two dream sequences, everything is rooted in the barren, desert landscape, everything in the stillness that surrounds these beings of a different culture in this inhospitable oasis. The hints are barely dropped at: there's just a school scene in which migrant children are being beat into "Australian dignity." And yes, most neighbours who La Spagnola consorts with now seem integrated very much in Australia, it's only La Spagnola who looks very much Spanish. And yet it is she who counts herself as Australian and has no professed sentiments for Spain, for it's "Australia that's feeding us." Beyond this, the film proceeds more on the tension between mother and daughter: tension created due to men, due to middle-class ennui, due to strikingly different natures of mother and daughter. A harsh camera and lighting arrangement, or an excess as for example when the mother's lover tries to seduce the daughter, makes the film even more disturbing. Silent studies of the daughter's contemplative face, taking in it all, and equally silent, relaxed, reassured movements by the daughter herself (brilliant acting by Alice Ansara) - all lead to this silent boil, for which we don't know where to put a finger on. On this heat and desolation? On lack of cultured or charming men? On their being migrants? On middle-class life? Or simply on their being women?

The two really striking things are in themselves are so small and yet so impactful. One is that the mother is always La Spagnola for everyone ("the Spanish woman"). It's strange that although the dialogue proceeds in Spanish, although she has relatives, so obviously there are other Spanish around, it's she who gets referred to as "the Spanish woman," the director probably pointing out to her lack of integrability to Australian lifestyle. The other is the strange bilingualness (or rather, multilingualness, for there are other languages too) of the film. The mother asks the question in Spanish and the daughter answers it sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English. And a very heavy, lazy accented English. The film's bilingualness throughout works wonders, it does not let the viewer settle down in a zone, it keeps him on the edge. It is another of the several unpredictabilities associated with this film. The film in its climax again probably gives out the message that women must accept life as it is and thank life for as it is, for life even as such is something to be lived for. This might be a truth for many women. Yet, who dares to teach woman "acceptance"? It's here that I don't agree with both Merci, La Vie and La Spagnola, but yes I would recommend anyone to watch these films for sure. They will open a world of thoughts and a world of cinematic possibilities in front of you.

The film was the official entry from Australia for the Academy Awards for the Best Foreign Language Film category. This was in itself strange, insofar as it's a predominantly Spanish language film.

Nuovo cinema paradiso

2008-01-27T02:22:00.000-08:00

Many years back, when I had seen the film L’Armeé des Ombres, I had thought I would never see such a film again. But I was young, the mind was fickle, I had not seen the world and experienced first-hand the emotions, and I only remember the impression that I got, not the film, I only remember the smell of the paint, not the paint.
Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, the film I watched only last week, was a different experience. That film taught me “love,” if it is something which can be taught and as far as it can be taught. The film was such a beautiful poetry, a logical whole for that feeling called “love.” Love for life, that it was, yes, toujours.

First there is the mother – waiting. Why is she waiting? And then we see a middle-aged, worldly-wise-looking man, whose face is never properly focussed upon, who but we still guess is only sleeping with a woman who isn’t much to him or he to her. And there’s a mother waiting...

We could never’ve guessed that what a heart-rending, beautiful story lies behind, what a soul behind that calm facade of that man, a man who is still waiting, who never left hope in spite of life. He never left Alfredo’s side – so persistent, so charming! He had to learn all his tricks, he had to immerse himself in all the wonder, in all the love that he felt, without caring for the world. The films mystified him, and he could never see them as the others saw them – they were not just “reels” and “business” to him. This is the whole essence of Nuovo Cinema Paradiso – hope. The soldier who waited in rain and snow and cold nights 99 times did not wait for the hundredth time – yes, you can say that he was not hopeful, who will be in such a hopeless case as love for a princess? Yet, he had the audacity to tell the princess. And he had the wherewithal to keep the hope alive, to always think that the princess waited for him. This is the essence of the film, the movies themselves.

Cinema is not just entertainment, meant for you to take your girlfriend just to spend time with her or your kids just to give you some relaxation and sense of realised power. No; it’s so much more. It’s the means of hope, the means of having illusions and nightmares, something through which we can really escape reality. It’s the virtual paradise – paradiso.
Yes, Toto was born with the vitality of hope and love, which is seldom there in people (even if originally present, it gets lost somewhere down the line). Toto would also have lost it, if not for Alfredo. It was the theatre projectionist Alfredo, who in the way he understood best, took hold, complete hold, of Toto’s (Salvatore, from now on, let’s call him) life. Stopping not short of anything, Alfredo even became the villain of the romance, just so as to inject a pain in Salvatore’s life which he could never forsake, and hence which would always prompt him for searching, for greater things, for finding love and meaning in life. Yes, Salvatore in that search became a great director, but he never was successful in his search, finally. He had loved too deeply, he had loved truly for once.

Salvatore would never leave his first loves throughout his life. All those scenes cut out by the parish priest and now bequeathed to him by Alfredo, those scenes he half-hidingly knew in his childhood, the scenes he enjoyed when the audience was shocked to find them cut – he loves them more than any of his own films probably, scenes in themselves worthless, mere snippets of kisses and nude bodies from various sources brought together, but laden with so much baggage of remembrances, with so much loving memory.

As is the usual case with French & Italian films, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso is a film lovingly, caressingly shot, to every frame of which the director seems to cling to up until the last moment, a film shot with so much detail. Witness the scene when Salvatore returns from his unfruitful watch outside Elena’s window; the gaiety elsewhere brings out his pain so sharply – bottles crashing out of the windows to dark streets where Salvatore is the lone, dejected walker.
The director’s cut is a 173 min version, and rightfully so. It brings out the film as it was meant to be: it gives ample scope to Toto the child and Salvatore the man. The man who always brimmed with energy and daredevilry, and still does so, the man who could charm an audience, a princess, and even a projectionist.

Jules et Jim

2008-01-14T07:35:00.000-08:00

Long after seeing it, I hazard to review it – it's not an easy film to review, to judge. Most of the times you tend to get absorbed in the film's story, flow with the emotions, and judge accordingly – but not so with Jules et Jim (in English, Jules and Jim). Another one of those French films which keep you at a distance, which is in fact quite surprising given the warmth with which Truffaut has shot it, a warmth I disapproved of when I first saw the film.

I prefer to call it the film of the butterfly. My definition of course regarding a "butterfly" is different from Elizabeth Taylor's Butterfly 8 – not the girl who flits from one man to another in vapidness, in search of giving meaning to her life, in search of a looking glass when finally she can look at herself and relax, no, not this definition. The butterfly is so independent, so wilful, so intelligent - all the flowers are but slaves to her, ready to give their pollen to her, ready to unravel their choicest of juices, only for her. She is the queen, how do you expect her to be "faithful"? The word "faithful" itself when applied to her misfits. A man who can be her equal, who she cannot be bored with, such wit, charm, intelligence, kindness, and understanding - probably both Jules and Jim have these combined together, but maybe no single man can have.

It's a beautiful story, that reminded me of Thomas Hardy's long story, "A Pair of Blue Eyes" (though Hardy has stretched the point a little too far, maybe in zeal of experimentation). It is also an interesting study of shades of personalities. On one side is the quiet, reserved, more intelligent, kind, and considerate Jules the writer (Oskar Werner), but who lacks the spark that usually attracts a woman, or upholds her interest – he is too much like a curled up cat in front of a good fire. On the other side is Jim (Henri Sierre), lanky and awkward in figure, but vivacious, having a way with women, flirtatious, but ready to play second fiddle when he realizes that Jules his friend loves the same woman he does – Jeanne Moreau performing brilliantly her role of Cathy. It is only when Cathy is not able to have her way with someone, she could pine for that person. So when Jim, after the ménage à trois arrangement arranged by Jules in hope of retaining Cathy also collapses, distances himself, Cathy is distraught, nevertheless carrying on other affairs. For her, each moment is to be lived, has to have something for her, some joy or sadness for her – she can’t take it when the child by Jim’s dead, Jim seems not to care for her or the dead child, and there’s no more “fun” anywhere, with Jules in her servility for life and no challenge there.

I don’t know why Truffaut had that girl in the film, at the start and then at the end, who used to flirt with everyone, and mimic a train engine all through. But what it did seem to me, she was another Cathy. She had her springiness and stupid mimicry of an engine with which men could be so easily enamoured, Cathy had her ready wit, her resourcefulness, and her illusions of invincibility – which finally lead her to the premature end of a gloriously lived life, a life always tried to be lived on her own terms. Both die – one marries an undertaker and her will is defeated, finally subdued, the other does so more physically rather than see herself with a broken will, with patchy, fragmented desires.

Yet, I was disappointed from the film, primarily Truffaut’s direction and how he has visualized the film. The one thing really good that he has done is that he has given full play to all three of his major actors, especially Jeanne Moreau; but there are several other things I am not so enthusiastic about. Granted French films or literature are witty by habit, but the wit part was overdone in the film. Let Moreau have had all the witty scenes, but if the commentator behind is also putting his spoke in the wheel, the story tries to become a farce. It’s such a lovely story, with so much feeling, then why introduce a farcicial element? Through wit when you ask sharp questions every now and then, when you reflect on something philosophically now and again, you begin to cease to impress the viewer, to impact the viewer, and finally you begin to freeze-frame the viewer. My other cause of concern was the extraordinary warmth in the film; yes, Jules, Jim, and Cathy are always good friends, in spite of the tensions between them, but yes, the tensions are there, isn’t that so? How could you have so much warmth in the atmosphere? The best illustration is probably when Cathy sings “Le Tourbillon de la vie” (“Life’s whirlpool of days,” a beautiful song) – everyone is so uncomfortable, even Cathy who is only singing like a cat purring, yet why is the lighting so comfortable? Why is everything so evenly lit, such a lack of shadows, why is everything like they are all gathered for a comfortable tea? Yes, they are, but each one’s mind has something on it – and when the actors, the good actors always, don’t show it too much by way of acting (otherwise it would be melodrama, a Hindi film), you’ve got to back it up imperceptibly by some other means in the viewer’s mind, you can’t let the viewer also be comfortable.

Paris, je t'aime

2008-01-08T06:20:00.000-08:00

Unlike Dus Kahaaniyan, this film does not fall flat because the films are not good, but it does so since the title is probably inapt. One goes to expect the spirit of Paris, the beauty of Paris, the life of Paris reflected in the film, but it is a rare film or two that does satisfy you on that account, most somehow failing in that respect. I saw this film long, long ago, but it was only after watching the hapless Aesopian Dus Kahaaniyan I thought to write about Paris, je t'aime ("Paris, I Love You"), a much better anthology.

Some of the films in the movie are outstanding, the prominent ones being Tuileries, Loin du 16e, Place des Victoires, and Faubourg Saint-Denis. Tuileries is a film that I would put in the same category as Lemony Snicketts' A Series of Unfortunate Events (hope I got the name right!), a film not just giving you sharp humour, but also giving some real solid advice when in Paris. It's not a farce actually, the series of events that can unfold on you if you don't avoid eye-contact with strangers. The real interesting thing is the flatness that has been brought about in the camera angles, so it's a flat lonely metro station with one elderly tourist on a bench right at the center of the screen, making him look real lonely and disconsolate. Loin du 16e and Place des Victoires are probably the most touching films that one can expect in so short a time, especially the former. The film is only about a working mother, and shows her daily routine (see image), from one train to other, from her baby to her employer's. And in only this much, no effects, no histrionics, no music, just a lullaby, the film touches you. That's called a film, that's called a story. It's also a film that probably touches Paris, besides the opening film Montmartre. Place des Victoires is another film which tugs at your heart-strings, a film about a woman who lost her young son and is trying to come to terms with it. Juliette Binoche is at her best here. Faubourg Saint-Denis is a beautiful film about love - and with better twists in the tail than most twist-inserters do manage to. I say "twist-inserters," since I have recently seen the Hindi film Dus Kahaaniyan, where the sole purpose of writers and directors seemed to be giving a twist to the tale, be it something as absurd as a woman shielding a boy from a rioter by seducing him or a woman who finds that she had been wrongly blaming an opposite religion's man all along, with he being more of a sufferer (sounds good here, but when it's all about a rice plate, it seems very, very farcicial, not helped by some more farcicial, stereotype acting by protagonists Shabana and Naseeruddin). A blind man, a beautiful girl into drama and music loves him - how could he be not insecure? - that's the stuff, the simple emotional fabric, the rubric that great stories are made of, not some preachy rice plates or balloons.

Paris, je t'aime has three more excellent films, Tour Eiffel, Pigalle, and Place des fêtes. Tour Eiffel is about mime - much better than Raj Kapoor's hours-long ordeal Mera Naam Joker, it succeeds in giving the message that a mime artist's heart is in giving happiness to the world. The film has an interesting ending, which seemed to be inspired from the beginning scenes of Mina Tannenbaum (a film I reviewed here some time back). And importantly, it's a hopeful ending, though I was expecting the converse for such a film - something which pleased me, for it's very easy to drift into melancholic endings just to make seem a work of art greater than it is indeed. Only a courageous person or a person whose audience is mainly popcorn-munching - only those two kinds of persons hazard a happy ending. Pigalle is a very amusing film - a husband (Bob Hoskins) and a wife, both aged now, trying to sex up their married life, by the husband pretending to be aiming for a prostitute. It's the dark corners of the film which keep you interested - I mean literally, the dark camera corners. You have to see it to know what I mean. And then there is Place des fêtes, a film more like an American film than a European film. It's a film that presents you quite another perspective of love - love at first sight, and courage to abide by it, just by it.

In Gurinder Chadha's Quais de Seine, it's another love at first sight, crossing religious and tradition's boundaries, but we don't know whether the boy has the guts to abide by it or not - it's a charming story, but not worth being made into a film. Or even if you want to make a film like that, then I would have picked the Champs-Elyseés for that film instead of a quai, and a colder day, maybe from autumn, with a strong wind. These things matter - if you are not into such a loop, why are you a director? The other films do not do very well (in total, there are 18 films in the movie, total running time 2 hrs), but the two worst films, that lead you to even wonder why did you come to see the movie (for they come early in the movie), are the Sino-Australian film Porte de Choisy, a film I couldn't make head or tail of, and Quartier de la Madeleine, the usual vampire dose in an anthology.

Overall, a movie that has a couple of great films, some good films, and the rest average or not quite there. That's quite good from an anthology, n'est-ce pas?

Khoya Khoya Chand

2007-12-14T06:24:00.000-08:00

Rarely I find such an interesting plot, rarely so many things which were best left unsaid, rarely a music so befitting, rarely so strongly woman-centric theme in an Indian film. I would say it as the modern Umraao Jaan, the only, and the big, difference being the tone of the film. While Umraao Jaan was steeped in melancholy despair and conveys that a woman's lot is a helpless one, Khoya Khoya Chand takes up the gauntlet, and makes Soha Ali Khan's character a towering one, a character which always knew how to be spotless above the world, though the world may be the melting pot from where she, the muse, has emerged.

One of the better films of Indian cinema, it's surprising and yet anticipated that how much less popular it could be. While you are busy in six-abs and blue thematic films and autistic children, Sudhir Mishra has come quietly, delivered an ace, made a bow, and left the scene (I guess the film would have already exited from many cities). Where does the film score? An art which seldom the filmmakers of India practise - emotions. They are better to be left to the viewer and not be said, then you get some great cinema. While Shiney Ahuja has always fought the devils in his mind, that his mother and he being shortchanged by his father, he has still not fought him enough to not be the same devil - as everyone has done, he also only tries to use Soha, a stepping stone for his success. It's a different matter that he has still devils left to fight, a heart to bleed - he has still not become 'one of the industry'.

Maybe the best film ever on the subject of relationships in film industry - how they operate, what compulsions lead to breaking up and getting lost in places where you yourself are disgusted to find yourself one day, and how money and success can turn the best of men's heads - a film which provokes you to think so much, about so many things. All the characters in the film are played with aplomb. Shiney Ahuja's dialogue delivery is as poor as ever, yet it doesn't disturb you unduly. The screenplay could have been much better; there was no need to bring in the reference to Shiney's past life over and over again. But considering the quality of other Indian films made, I would happily overlook that - when even a Soniya Jehan and a Sushmita Mukherjee can so fit in their roles, then why should I crib?

A brilliant film to watch, if for nothing else than for its riveting story. Go, watch it!

Merci, La Vie

2007-12-07T17:16:00.000-08:00

This is a film I would want every film to be, when there is no narrative to tell. I use the word "narrative" here for too often one gets mixed up in story, script, plot, drama, words that have been used substitutingly many times, words that fail to grasp at the power of cinema. All the cinema, people forget, is only narrative - it's the art of telling a story, of absorbing a viewer, or of provoking him in thought, in fantasy (maybe erotic), in anger, in a thread of something worthwhile, something which he just not eschews with the last popcorn he ate, but makes his experience.
Probably because of its religious dimensions, it is not named often – but Ben Hur has been one of the greatest films to come out from the Hollywood, just as The Count of Monte Cristo is not accorded the greatest of places in literature, probably because of a lack of that "psychological" element that people nowadays search in everything and take as a hallmark of something great. Monte Cristo is a novel great on account of its sheer richness – does a story need anything more?

With this opening, I take up the case of Merci, La Vie (in English, Thank You, Life). It's a completely unstructured film, there's no narrative, no continuity. Not only the overlap is temporal, but spatial, even visual, of roles. We have the crew of the film admonishing us directly, we have a girl exhorting her father to have sex with her friend so that she can be born. But we have Anouk Grinberg's charming smile that will at the same time woo us to sit through such logical infallacies and watch the mayhem that the director manages to create.
Or is it mayhem? On the face of it, it’s a story of two girls, Camille (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Joële (played by Grinberg), two girls starved for sex and for more than sex. Joële is the one who seduces every man, who keeps on insulted by men and yet runs after them time and again. Camille, the lonely introverted girl, sees the friend she always looked for in Joële, and in the process becomes more open, more experimental, and understands the world that in spite of the “shit” life is, one learns to love living, and say “Thank you, life.” The film is open to a host of interpretations – each viewer can draw his own inference, own morals, even own story. Joële is shown to have devastated a whole town by gonorrhoea on the instance of a depraved doctor (who gets rich in the process; played by aplomb as usual by Gerard Depardieu) who is the only true love for Joële; the film plays out elaborate farces, even plane bombings, from the Second World War; and the film ends with Joële as a prisoner with Camille’s father, loaded naked with umpteen others on a train, to be shot at randomly by German pointsmen, and Camille hiding in a bombed-out hideout.

Camille and Joële seem to be one – I mean of course not in the film, but it’s the easiest way you imagine the inference. Joële is the alter ego of Camille – a figment of the introverted girl Camille’s imagination, and through her (i.e., in her full-blooded imagination) Camille tries to fill up the loneliness in her life. She makes herself believe that her father had more to give than he could, and hence she again brings Joële as the lover for her father, in the end exhorting her father to not to fear her mother but have Joële, so that she can be born. Interestingly, Camille’s mother seems to be another alter ego of Camille – her another bit of personality, played out in flesh and bones. The mother can’t stand the men, yet she panders to the German officers when they have captured her husband. Is it the personality of Camille which asks her to refrain from the attraction of loose sex, yet which gets attracted to that heated imagination represented by Joële, maybe even destructively in the end? The mother evolves into a bitter, sober, wise old woman – one who has seen it all, gone through it all, and emerged knowing that you’ve got to live through your life somehow, even if you’re a woman. Is that the way Camille herself will emerge after her protracted bout of imagination? Or will she continue to look for Joële? Will she continue to look for being insulted, slapped, raped by men, to be dumped on a highway when they feel convenient and to be used as a prostitute when they have to further their own ends? More importantly, why should a woman herself choose such a life? Why should Camille go for it? Still, looking at the end of the film, I think that Camille might yet opt for this – imagination and living through it are quite different things.

Mon Oncle

2007-11-24T21:20:00.001-08:00

The most amazing thing about Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle is that it never attempts to make you laugh, and yet it succeeds in doing so. But it is not an uncontrolled burst, a mindless burst, that is induced from you. The whole film is an unvarying social commentary, upon the times we live in, upon the way rich and society-conscious people live, and upon the simple ways that give you pleasure in life and that never change with time. There are so many things that you tend to reflect upon while watching this film; I have probably never seen the camera used so aptfully and so masterfully in any film.
Tati seems to be a master of his craft. The whole film is visualized mid-distance - the viewer is always the third party, the voyeur, another one of those guests who stand at the door and wait for the fish to be turned on. Not even a close-up shot of M. Hulot is spared to us - there is only one proper close-up that I can remember, that of the single neighbour (Dominique Marie), when she tries to ingratiate herself to the boy. What a brilliant visualization by the director! The woman looks as if she is going to gobble up the boy in her jealousy and frustrated single life.
There are many other scenes in the film that save it from a Chaplinesque fate. Not all imminent comic tragedies do happen. When the Arpels are trapped in their new-fangled garage, and the dog never seems to come there, there still is a maid after all who releases them, in spite of all her apprehensions about electricity. When M. Hulot tries to make the automatic gates dysfunctional one night and the gates come in his hands, two heavy gates and he trying to balance them somehow without waking up his sister and brother-in-law, he does succeed somehow - at least with all this build-up, this anticipation of a slapstick scene, there never does appear a slapstick scene. It provides a relief from the umpteen slapsticks made until now - after all the build-up, instead of the slap you just get the feeling of what might have been. In my opinion, it takes the film to a slightly higher sphere of the comedy, saves it from being called a slapstick.
The film is replete with minor details, minor characters, minor idiosyncrasies. There's the girl where Hulot lives, who always looks a bit soft in the head, always showing her new dresses, getting or giving a toffee, and never seems to do anything except play about with a permanent wide grin marked on her face. There are the boys whose company Hulot's nephew prefers, boys who gamble on whether their new trick of making people collide with a pole succeeds or not (this also reminded me of Fanny, where the old men around the bar play a similar game, this time revolving more around a guilty pleasure that people indulge in, so a bit more psychological). There is the woman whose social duty is to laugh (Tati doesn't even succumb to the temptation of showing her big, fat mouth open for once in close-up). And then there are the roaming vendors, the barmen, the haggling customers, the drunkards, who create little spectacles of their own in the main show.
It's a long time that I've seen a real comedy - the last time was Buster Keaton's The Cameraman, many, many years back. I am eager now for more of Jacques Tati.

A Mighty Heart

2007-10-28T06:34:00.000-07:00

Considering the premises of the film, that is, the inevitable tightrope that a director has to perform when selecting a story with so much of political and racist connotations, the film can be considered to be well-made. For the director does walk the tightrope. But when I further grope in my cinematic sensibilities and find nothing much that excited me, or that thrilled me, or that touched me, or that provoked me, I am condemned to shut up any further.

As I said, it's a film which balances itself well among people of different nationalities and beliefs. But that is all what the film does. Yes, you are delivered the message at the end, as usual, that we will not be terrorized - but then what was the previous 2 hours of film doing if a dialogue was to be inserted just to say that, while the rest of the film looked some kind of a damage-control exercise? A conclave of journalists and editors from all over the world, thrown in with intelligence men like Irrfan Khan or assortments off liasion people, just go on meeting together, tracking leads and keeping tabs of the latest emails and news in papers, drawing a map of involved people on a whiteboard - fine, great, reminded me of Mountbatten's red pins at the time of partition of India - but, that's not the story, the substance, right?

The film's most fundamental failure is the lack of a story. But this is not the only one - a poor direction and a poor understanding of nuances in another one. To talk of smaller but bigger matters first, why is Irrfan Khan made to act as if he is reporting to the whole cavalcade of editors of Western newspapers? At the most, he can be sympathetic and will do his duty - but why will he, a Pakistani national and SSP(CID), continously act in almost a subservient capacity to journalists, who don't even know the terrain, the country? Probably a doomed attempt to show the Westerners as superior against Indians and Pakistanis (for Archie Panjabi has nothing to do except sort the emails and track the leads - for that matter, there isn't anyone in the film who is doing any going anywhere). Angelina Jolie is completely disappointing - she is looking like a journalist to me, that's all - but it's completely beyond my comprehension that someone like her is even deemed to be an 'actress'. When the lead of a film does not hold your sympathy, then that's the first step where a film fails.

Now to talk of bigger things which seem also bigger, nonlinear editing seems to be the in thing nowadays, just as the wording "in thing" is, but it's better to keep it in wraps unless you (1) need it and (2) have the expertise for it. The Constant Gardener is the only truly great film made with a nonlinear editing technique - and there, the whole story is itself edited nonlinearly. Which is again something to be borne in mind - if you are telling a straight sequence of yarn, then 99 out of 100 you are better off if you narrate also straight. Of course, what I call as "nonlinear" in this film is not really so - the story is continuous, I am talking about the strange camera cuts used. It reminded me of the daily-running Hindi soaps - after something impactful (or even without it), the camera shows each one of the persons' reactions standing within the earshot - so a camera, instead of following the action in a straight sequence, becomes the register - that when something and something happened, what was happening to each person. (That's why I call it nonlinear - for the instantaneous reaction of all the people present to an event is simultaneous, and not like person C waits for person B to get amazed, person B for person A to get terrified, etc.) Even more deterioratingly, the film doesn't even have any impacts in between - so you just have a camera which has got a mind of its own, which keeps on swinging from one to another person without rhyme and reason, probably just to leave with the viewer that see, all these persons are involved in this, all these are thinking about Daniel Pearl and where is he, all these are really about their job.

In the final analysis, what the film was missing? Pain. And tension. Karachi. The sea of hate in which a Westerner would be living there - that doesn't come across. The struggle to survive in the fundamentalist heartland - that does not. And Marianne Pearl's pain - that does not.

Mina Tannenbaum

2007-10-19T08:26:00.000-07:00

A multilayered story, at first glance it looks quite frivolous, and you tend to frown upon encountering such a film, upon getting conned into an experience which does not seem would be much rewarding. The childhood stories of the two girls on whom the film centers only tend to reinforce the undercurrent that both girls are not the favorites of the social world that includes their parents - so both are very lonely, left to their own thoughts (always a dangerous thing), and destined to meet each other one terrible day. But this does nothing more - the film flows on turgidly for the first half hour.
The little girls grow up into Mina and Ethel, two Jewish irreverent girls played by Romane Bohringer and Elsa Zylberstein. The first one is bespectacled, the other one is gawkingly plumpy. They don't seem to have much confidence of ever attracting boys. And in that adolescent age, they don't have many other ideas about how to live - they just want to be free. How? They don't know.

Interestingly, except for their common inferior complex (let's give it that name for the time being), the two 'friends' have not much in common. Mina is crazy for arts, and has always been very good at imagination and drawing; whereas Ethel is just brash, not much talent in tow, just looking out, peering the world. It's funny that it's Mina who's the self-assured one in her glasses. The art instructor is rude and pricks her to the heart, yet Mina has the courage to answer that to place a nude among clothed does not require courage. Inspite of Mina already disturbed by her first crush.

The teen crushes of Mina and Ethel being got over with, the film then really takes on a headlong dive into layers of wit and irony and revelation of characters and the world in general - it is then that the film takes flight, soars high, and in the end burns itself in its greatness - a beautiful end.
As they grow up, their lives begin to get more entangled, mostly a result of their own thwarted desires and ambitions. Mistrust grows, especially as they are still not much sure about their charms on men. Mina falls for an art dealer, who conceals his dirty mind and dealings behind a brash, businessmanlike behaviour - even more than Ethel's final carving up a life for herself which has no Mina, it was the art dealer's dirtyness, I think, in the final analysis that made a lasting pessimistic impact on Mina, killed her off art, and led to the final end of the film. Of couse, in parallel Ethel became quite street-smart, misused Mina's name to further her own ends, and finally did make a comfortable home for herself, with a good career. The vacuum of Mina was only to be realized if she met you at the street-corner - but it's no vacuum if you forget it so very soon after in the arms of another. Probably, if Mina would have made some right choices or would have had some luck, Mina also would have been the same - but, she remained the forlorn, and hence she had no one now to fall back upon except her oldest friend, her only friend, Ethel.

Many critics have not approved of the tragic end of the film, but to me this was inevitable - Mina was Mina. To show something else would have made her very ordinary in the final say - any other end would have knocked her and the film from the pedestal.

Again, superb acting by Romane Bohringer after L'Accompagnatrice with good performance from all the other actors, especially the art dealer. Unconventional, crisp camera angles, and a good lighting usage make the film something to study.

L'Accompagnatrice

2007-10-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

Usually, French films haunt you by their atmosphere, by their lethargy-inducing pace, by the thick rings of smoke and philosophy that encircle you. But in The Accompanist it is the eyes of the protagonist, Romane Bohringer, which fix you in their grip, which haunt you for long after you're done with the film, which trouble you with questions about a woman's role in the subplots of this world.
The film is a story about an accompanist, Bohringer (playing Sophie Vasseur), to a rich, famous, selfish singer (Yelena Safanova playing Irene Brice). Coming from a poor background, and having an intelligent and quick brain, Sophie soon makes herself indispensable to Irene, utilizing the latter's many love affairs to her advantage. But the resentment of not having had all this never leaves Sophie - she feels herself the better, the more intelligent (and more talented as well?) woman, one who should have had the kind of pampering Irene gets, one who should have got the love of the young revolutionary Jacques Fabert, more of her age than Irene's, one who has to learn bows from Irene though her whole life is nothing but a series of bows. Is it a right that you were given from above? asks Sophie directly to Irene, in one of the best scenes of the movie - a moment, when it did come out of Sophie.

The film's rock pillars are the tour de performance by Romane Bohringer and the tragic beauty of hopeless, unrequited love in two aspects - that of Charles Brice for his wife, Irene, and that of Sophie for the world for which she does not exist, unless she flirts or unless she becomes famous or rich. Brice' love is, simply said, heroic - it reminded me of the love that Gabriel Oak bore to Bathsheba in Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, the book. And in that perspective, the double-cross of Irene and Fabert becomes very despicable. In a curious role reversal to the usual film fare, it's the businessman Brice here who holds the viewer's complete sympathy against the revolutionary. The tragedy of the film was inevitable - Charles Brice had loved more like a woman than a man. He had loved truly - that is only for once. Let the glass be dashed to pieces before drinking from any other.

Vivre sa Vie

2007-09-28T09:49:00.000-07:00

I read somewhere an analogy being made with blocks - that one of the techniques to distance the viewer from the film that Godard has used in Vivre sa Vie is 'cutting' up the film in blocks. Yes, of course, I agree - but should this kind of filmmaking exist? Questioning a great master - it might seem heresy, but should not a great master indulge in beautiful sequences rather than presenting us with sharp trills and sharp basses, flats of the prostitution statistics, and crescendos as when Nana (played by Anna Karina, Godard's then wife) picks up a man from the street.

The film is about a girl who starts with an ambition to become a cinema actress, and ends up becoming a prostitute, a drifter. But, the film's too crisp, too sharply pain-giving. It does not allow you to dwell on a frame, even though the pace of the film is so lethargic; an unbounded flood of ideas, a nerve-wracking pace! Some of it is due to the chopped up effect of the film and the chopped up reality of the story. We do not know for ever why is it that Nana leaves her husband and child, even though her husband is evidently in love with her. We do not even get a good look at the husband's face; he doesn't mean anything in the time span shown of Nana's life shown in the film. How is it that she drifts into prostitution? OK, probably she sold herself to the man who professes to send her pictures to agents, in order to be in a film, but why did she continue the downfall? What was that compulsion that prevented her coming to a poorish, good enough family? And finally, why does Raoul suddenly try to sell her off instead of continually milking her, and why is Nana an unwilling yet silent party to all of this, only screaming when her death in all this shady business is imminent? Yes, you grapple with these questions, and at the same time the film is moving.

Now, mind you, most films move, really move; here, sometimes dialogues flow, and sometimes even they don't. When Nana talks to an old philospher about the meaning of silence and words and the artifice needed to erect a communication between your persona and the society, the breakwater that surrounds you, and love, dialogues flow - the old man's words, probably not all comprehended by Nana, and Nana, probably completely not comprehended by the old man. But, most other times in the film, there's not even the relief of dialogues - it's as if you are on a tight strain, a leash; almost all the frames are filled up with Nana's close-ups, and if not hers then of something else. Yet, Nana is there in almost every frame, she pervades all of it. Her face, the study of her face, if you can say that, that's the film. Interleaved is all kinds of talk, including Poe's poem and a lot of statistics about prostitution in Paris, and guidelines, and a moving tragedy occurs before our eyes for which Godard does not even allow us to cry, in fact does not wish us to cry. The film's too sharply painful.

Interestingly, the film, Nana, reminded me somehow of Maugham's Of Human Bondage, a book that was again painful for me till half-way, for I hated that waitress whom Philip had fallen in love with, and yet I could not tear away myself from why was she like herself, from the reality that who is the greater sacrificer, Philip or that waitress, who inspite of feeling no love or attraction for him, plays up to him only for want of money and something better.

It's a great film, but not necessarily a film that can give you pleasure. But, yes, it will give you fodder for thought - too much of it. A brilliant acting performance from Karina, plus a beautiful Paris, crisp monochrome, deftly handled camera, the usual unconventional shots of Godard (so that instead of getting sucked up into the story, you remain at a distance, at a tight distance, and keep on thinking) - all make the film a masterpiece.

Jean de Florette

2007-09-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

I begin on a more personal note. The film rushed back for me memories ranging from Zola to the rich tapestry of Monte Cristo - there was so much plot, there was so much earth, and there were so many parallel-running strands in the film. As I write this, I have still not attained the climax - the accompanying part, in which the daughter is to take revenge, is still remaining. But already, there is much to chew upon.

Jean de Florette is a wonderfully made film - all the actors play their parts so well, the camera is so much well-balanced, the rural character of France is so vividly brought out, and the music that backs up the film is so beautiful, poignant, and, for once, so unobtrusive in the story. The film's story is about that all-pervasive French theme - land. Desire for land takes the centrestage as brilliant acting performances stringed around it make it a wholesome experience. Yves Montand (playing Le Papet) plays a sucker of an old man, and a man with very deep brains for hatching plots - plots that succeed. This time, it's for land for his nephew (Daniel Auteuil, playing Ugolin), so that the Soubeyrans, of whom he and his nephew are the last, continue their stock and money. And, it's Gérard Depardieu (playing the title character) who becomes the victim of both the plotters.
Spurred on by his sometimes impracticable ambitions, especially when you consider that Jean's background in the film was that of a tax collector, knowledge based on books and 'statistics' (his farming plans and his all money are based on the monthly average rainfall that the books tell him!), a hatred of his being hunchbacked and at the receiving end of people always, and an inordinate capacity to see the bright side of things, make him a very, very lovable character, and one that moves you when you put in shade the schemes that the uncle-nephew duo have put in action to deprive him of water and, consequently, the farm. The film ends in tragedy, with Jean dying in another of his wild schemes. He never realises that the man whom he has put his all trust into, and who his wife and ten-year old daughter do not like, that Ugolin is the man who's ruining him, slowly killing him, and desiring even his daughter.
No, I am not running ahead into the second film. There are several unpicked threads in the film. When Ugolin encounters Manon (Jean's daughter) for the first time, inspite of the latter being a child, he is struck vehemently and stares for half a minute or so at her, forgetting everything else. Of course, the rest of the thread is to be picked in the second film, "Manon des Sources." Why is Ugolin, otherwise a man who is guilty to some degree over his ruining Jean (in contrast to his uncle, who is totally heartless), attracted to her, a child? Is it because Ugolin is uncouth, not educated, and still knows to be amazed at education (as he evinces so many times when confronted with Jean's bookish knowledge; "the othentics"), and in front of him is a charming girl, with firm grounding in education, not bombastic like her father, but cool and, you feel, more pragmatic? But, in order to grow flowers (Ugolin covets the land as his ambition is to grow carnations), he has, unknowingly to himself, already driven out the flower in his life! There's something else in the film which struck me forcibly - why does Jean de Florette hate the city life so much, when to all accounts he had a good salaried life there? Is it because he was born and bred up, as a hunchback, in an urban set-up, and has all the taunts in-drilled in him? Or, even more importantly, he wants to be "self-sufficient" - a rural farmer's life, based in his homestead, where he has minimal contact with fellow men, where he can live the way he wants and raise his family, where his being a hunchbacked does not matter?
The film has been beautifully shot. I could feel the hot perspiration on myself when I saw Jean toiling in the hills for trickles of water - this is always a litmus test for any beautiful film. You know then that the director has caught the moment.

The Blue Umbrella

2007-09-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

Much has been, as I've been reading on the Internet, already said about Blue Umbrella, and surprisingly, not very much in favour of, many times. Now, for me, it was not only a refreshing film, but a great film - especially for any intelligent child. Of course, any good book or film meant for children is always par excellence for adults.
The film showcases Himachal Pradesh like I've never seen it before in any film. And, more importantly, the director has never strayed where it would have been so easy - it's basically just the opening and closing shots of the film which really allow you to be in awe of the Himachal. Otherwise, the focus is always on Pankaj Kapur, Biniya, or the umbrella, whether blue or red in between.
Of course, the film's real strength lies in two things - Pankaj Kapur's brilliant acting (and his best, in my opinion, minus Maqbool, which I've not seen) and not much experimentation by Vishal Bharadwaj in any of the things, whether it be camera, music, or editing. It's Pankaj Kapur who provides all the innovativeness. Complete from a different accent to his whispers to himself, especially after his downfall, he has everything to give that an able actor can give. His every intonation, every movement (watch him, his head especially, preparing his tea after Biniya has 'accepted' him and bought biscuits from him), every dialogue renders him personality - and rarely we have such a fully developed character in cinema, and even more rarely through the actor rather than director. I understood everything that was to be heard and understood in the film - of course, for that you have to have be from north India or you must have lived there. Though if you have not, maybe for such a person the film would be even more enjoyable - it's a completely different mindset and culture up there from rest of India.
Interestingly, I was more touched by the concept of real power as presented in this film than through Schindler's List, bemusing though the comparison seem to be. Of course, there's the climax, in which Biniya accepts Pankaj Kapur, the umbrella being the token, and both Pankaj Kapur and Biniya have learnt something new very, very well - that love and forgiveness are the real power, there's nothing beyond that. But, if you watch the song in which Biniya is dancing with her umbrella with a little more care, you will find a very interesting half a minute of frames or lesser - out of the umpteen uses of the umbrella, Biniya also uses it to shade an old woman while grazing the cattle. It really lays the groundwork for the climax of the film to me - the child's character is very much evident there. Most children wouldn't even allow to touch something that they are crazy about (and which, I think, Biniya also would do in most cases), but for a poor, old woman, the heart upwells, and the umbrella is there!
And, for all non-Hindi speakers, the film is anyway subtitled in English, and done well too. So, doesn't leave an excuse not to see the film after this, at least after my review, does it?

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

2007-08-04T18:11:00.000-07:00

Rarely I have seen such a beautiful film! Alan Arkin lifts the film out of the realm of a genre of films made on disabled/handicapped people, into the realm of romance, beauty, and drama. Beautifully gathered in pace, the film rightfully opens with Arkin's best man, the drunkard, unhinged Stacy Keach. Even as Keach himself is unmindful completely of the world (reminding me famously of Dickens' Harold Skimpole), except as where it serves him, Arkin's love for him (and for the whole world) does not want a return, at least not a substantial one. One touch, one soft smile, one good kiss are enough to repay him - but as a deaf and mute, it is hard for him to find even that. The world's too busy in its own chores - messed-up lives, circumstances, and unsatified desires and ambitions - to notice him. At the most, thank him and forget him - after all, Arkin himself is too engaged in making himself effaced.

Fiery characters cross Arkin's path - each on his or her own path of self-discovery, whether late or early in life. Arkin, in his own way, has invaluable help for each, yet the worth is not recognized until when it's too late. Though Sondra Locke does a wonderful role in her debut and rightly gets an Oscar nomination, it's cruel that Cicely Tyson didn't get even a nomination, when she definitely deserved to win it. One of the best acting performances that I have ever seen in my life, and ironically the only reason I suspect that Tyson didn't get there was because she was black. Ironically, for the film itself is so much against inequality of every sort - woman vs. man, handicapped man (including Locke's father) vs. the world, black vs. white, poor vs. rich (Locke's party theme is a brilliant thread in the film; it is the only one that I thought could have been carried up a little way up or a bit differently - probably not have Locke's rich boyfriend as an honest fellow).

The American South is vividly expressed in the film - I felt all the stories from the South waking up in me as I watched the film. The recurring themes - music and deafness, black and white, helplessness of a man with all his faculties just because he has that feeling of being black in him against the power and resourcefulness of a man who's deaf and mute but who really wants to help and love someone (and wants to find some love for him in return), duty (Locke's mother) versus the 'joy of living' (Locke) - all are so beautifully stringed together, and presented as a whole, that I now want to read the novel as well.

And what saves the film from a Dobbin's fate is its tragic end. In many films, directors opt for a tragic end just to 'elevate' the film, to make it seem arthousy, to distance it a bit from 'the masses'. But here, the tragic end served quite a different purpose - it reinforced the film's title!

The Pursuit of Happiness (1971)

2007-06-03T04:40:00.000-07:00

It's a tortuous film - in everything: the pace at which impedingly it flows; the confused lives that the protagonists lead; and, perhaps the best of all, the plot, always seeking a direction, a new meaning, a new perspective. It's a film which used to be made in America in those days - the present day fake sentimentality had not come yet, the passing of values and grit from father to son had not yet become the ritual (maybe, not had come only as a 'inspiring story'), and experiments were being made and fresh films were being made - people had tired of vaudevilles and gold digging musicals, of gunslinging inperturbable heroes, of epic films of magnificient budgets, and there was a return, with different editing and cinematographic techniques, to the films of 1940s - the kind of films that you experienced with Kings Row.

It is the hero (Michael Sarrazin) here who really captivates the viewer - so sensously beautiful, yet lives up to his own ideals, and tries to live by them. The cast selected for the film is, I can say, perfect. The hero is captivatingly beautiful, yet looks a greenhorn and at the same time intelligent. He has always some loose ends about him - as if he has misplaced some keys in his child life, and is still searching for them with a lost look, not knowing where they might be, how they look like, not knowing at times what is it he is looking for. And yet, he has a disciple. His girl. She has an exuberant energy and faithfulness - all ready at her beloved's feet; she believes in him implicitly, at all times, as one superior to herself. Rarely do you see good, strong characterizations like that in a film.

Especially, the American films. The feminist tone or lack of it that has to be imparted to each of the characters, most of times deliberately, takes away the charm almost invariably. Too much is measured - very less is natural. Pursuit of Happiness shows what vigour does freshness lend to a film. The film is a very simple story of an intelligent, atheist young man, who leans a little towards communism because of his ready identification with the grief of others, a ready ability to strike a chord in himself for others, and his greenhornness. He hails from a very rich family, but has, in effect, renounced his wealth, and his didactorial grandmother, selfish and narrow aunt, and fond and intelligent father. His world just centers around his dreams and his efforts to 'correct' this world, and his beloved. Until fate strikes! And compels him to face this world as it is, with no place of refuge. The controversial point is that he decides to run away, at the end of it, fed up from the system that civilised societies work on.

Or, can you call it running? I do not. Primarily, only because he spoke to the gay black prisoner, only because 'he was nice' - there was no other motive. Neither the sexual or romantic one - as the prosecution wanted to frame the case; nor any reasoning in the young man that since he believes such and such things, so he must not debar from anyone's company and he would speak to all, and pompously get into everyone's broth. No! His only motives, throughout the film, are impulsive, and all his impulses are driven by a good and free heart - a man who does not fear anybody, any system in this world; he hates more the cycle of lies and poses that he would have to affect, even for a moment, to abide by the civilisation, to abide by what would be worldlywise good for him. But, the tragedy on which the film hinges, is that he refuses to barter his soul, even 'for a week'. This is where the film stands apart. Rest - a good background score, a great song, some very good cinematography angles and the New York locales, side actors who play their parts well, the 1500 that the greenhorn easily gives just so as to be able to run away - fall in their due places.

For a more wholesome treatment, you can go to http://www.thefilmjournal.com/issue11/pursuitofhappiness.html (rarely do you find such brilliantly written reviews).

Nishabd

2007-03-09T08:58:00.000-08:00

Probably, for the first time, an Indian film celebrates lust, though in guarded terms, cautiously trying to carve out a way for itself in the rotten Indian mentality. Sorry for being blunt, but when you hear the people airing their usual pretensions about 'vulgarity', 'morals', and 'love', and even stranger platitudes and defenses, you really get fucked off. To cut the whole thing short, the film is not beautiful because it is a landmark film - landmarks can be a hovel besides my house. The film is beautiful because it is beautiful. And that's it. It is always art for art's sake, "the rest can go to hell", as Amitabh Bachchan says to Jiah.
Amitabh's great; the cinematography and the tea gardens (Munnar?) are great, the shot angles and the panning of the camera, the weight of dialogues, when, where, how much, varying depths of field, the whole screenplay - yes, everything's top class, and Ramu has surpassed his work in Sarkar. But it's Jiah who enthralls you. How many talents will India suddenly unearth? After Kangana, now Jiah? Two talents who remind me of the classic actresses, with poise in their acting - how many actors, especially the girls, have poise, have weight, have patience of absorbing the scene, the camera and the lights, the dialogues remembered by heart, and rendering them perfect? A rare breed. Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, the Spanish heroine of Everytime We Say Goodbye - oh, how many of others?
And, actually, it's the lack of poise, which indicates the poise in this heroine. She has brought her own interpretation to the role of the self-torturing, living-on-her-own-terms Australian girl, the girl with no past, the girl with a destructive future. Watch Jiah in every frame - how she moves, how even while speaking the simplest and the briefest of dialogues (and the film doesn't satisfy the Indians' desire of melodrama by way of heavy dialogues), her every part moves on its own, independent and living a life, a dance of its own. Oh, how could Amitabh, a photographer, be not bewitched? She is so clearly enticing Amitabh, and yet she is so fiercely independent - a marvellous combination, so little celebrated in India.
The other debate about the film is that Ramu toned it down - no explicit scenes, or say, not even a suggestion that there did happen physical contact between the 60-year-old man and the 18-year-old girl. Yes, I agree only to a very pale extent. But, the thing is that the camera shots, usually taken with the legs of Jiah in focus whenever Amitabh is getting aroused, tell the whole story, and very aesthetically. I do not think that there was much point in going further. But yes, the suggestion could have been there that there did happen something between the two - otherwise, Amitabh's suicide wishes seem a little too abstruse to digest. But, personally speaking, if I would have written the same script, I would have included one explicit scene - that between Amitabh's daughter and Jiah. I would have shown them as girlfriends, and this puts then Amitabh's daughter not only in a state of shock when she knows about Amitabh and her friend Jiah, but also jealousy, and rivalry, and a pang of unfaithfulness from her lover, Jiah. The film did her and Jiah bathing together for the briefest of time, and I don't know why did the director not follow it up. I think, that was the hint, but it was not followed then the whole script, for fear of ostracising the already-offended Indian audiences. Would have been a marvellous story of human emotions then, with Revathi continuing to act as the undisturbed, freezed, un-understanding woman of the house.
The background score of the film is magnificient, and not what is 'expected' when films like this are made. The AB-sung "Rozana jiye, rozana marein" song could have been made a part of the end credits - it was a lapse, I think, by the director as well as the editor and post-production crew. There are only two negative feedbacks from me for the film, both minor - one, the usage of sound effects which have become now too common, and were always too vulgar (and Vidhu Vinod Chopra uses them in aboundfuls); the other restricted to only frame - a sudden swooping of the camera on the car, a very, very vigorous dollying, when Jiah is upset and climbs down from the car, having just received the first scolding from Amitabh in her acquaintance with him - totally unneeded, just being camera-happy, and spoiling the mood of the scene - the scene which so much brings out to the fore the childishness of Jiah, and the love with the father figure in Amitabh that she is with in.
The esteem that I put this film in is evident from my placing it in one of my three best Hindi films - the other two being Manisha Koirala's Khamoshi, the Musical and Dharmendra's Ghulami.

Parzania

2007-02-04T07:13:00.000-08:00

It is only political correctness that is prompting people to not dare to say anything against the current, the current which might pit them with 'fundamentalists' and the 'regressionists' and something which can cause them to be looked as uneducated louts or stone-hearted intelligentsia. But, the point is that art is for art's sake, and not for preaching or propaganda or an advertisement for missing. If you've got to indulge also in any of these pleasures, then package it with an ultrafine veneer, so that not even the keenest of critics cannot see through, and even if they can the film's power and beauty compels them to shut off.

This is where Parzania fails, terribly. Fine efforts by Naseeruddin Shah and Sarika go in vain - since there's nothing else. The love within the family and the easy relations between the different communities living in the same chawl - they are only being tried to be shown. For one thing, when you know that the dialogues would have been in a local language, it's difficult to digest English, especially for things such as sundry and trivial remarks. Otherwise, Americanise the film. It is only the American who is using the f__ word so many times, but do the Indians not speak it? Most of them, especially the Gujaratis, speak it even more (of course, the local language variants) - then why not? You have shown so many different people in the film, of all shades and hues, and yet somehow all are looking so subdued, so dazed and insensible, so much like amateurs in a debutante play.

The gist of the problem? The film does not touch you, anywhere. It still connected with me, somehow, since I have experienced the riots, the volatile situation, that was in Gujarat those days, and always haunts any Gujarat/Maharashtra city or town, village or hamlet. Maybe, why that is the case, more on that sometime later, on my personal blog. The child artistes are terrible - they are neither good actors nor sensitive ones, and nor charming ones. Now, in such a scenario, how does a film, whose sole premise is the tragedy of a lost child, connect? The director has probably even taken the wrong pains - Parzan's sister is shown gaily swinging in each frame of the film, even when she is getting up daily to chalk up the remaining days. Maybe, the director thought that this would bring out the youthfulness of the girl, the innocence of the girl - but believe me, it is looking so much terribly out of place (and besides, no child, except probably a retarded one, would behave so). And when you juxtapose with the later dialogue of Sarika that her daughter is terribly unhappy on the inside and she only does not show it - it really comes to being ridiculous.

It's not only the child artistes. All the characters except Shah and Sarika are totally out of place. Raj Zutshi as a Muslim itself is terrible casting - and that too one with an angst? The Gandhian, the supposed mentor of the American in the film, is looking a total hypocrite and is making look the whole Gandhism a terrible flip-flop. There is no intensity, no key on which the film operates. It's just a mess of saffron flags, the insufferable child artistes (the newspaper boy another one who adds to the agony), the totally out-of-place music by Zakir Hussain, and a beautiful-looking Sarika. In spite of Naseeruddin's acting, it is she who, for me, somehow props the film - but pity that she is given such sketchy and immature bits as delivering a lecture at the end of the film - very melodramatic and very, very film-destructive. The only wonder that how did the film-makers manage to put the name of Pande in? Really courageous - for PC Pande, the then Ahmedabad commissioner of police, was and is the one guilty of so many people's blood - he should be actually hanged, simply.

The real problem is the story of the film itself. The real picture is a very complex one in Gujarat, and to simplify or bias it is not only unfair, but also trying to put a spoke in a smoothly running wheel. The story might have been based on the real-life search for a Parsi boy, but this is a film. Show a Muslim family itself. And I would show the angst, the bias, the aggression that most Muslims in India suffer from - it is true that they celebrate Pakistan's victories, they are always on the lookout to poke fun at Hindu gods and ways of living, and that they do not share any patriotism whatsoever for India. It is true, very true! The problems are different, and mainly two. One, the usual one of generalisation. Just because someone is a Muslim, you do not classify that person as another one of those who try to undermine India. Exceptions are always there anywhere, and they are not rare, but many. Two, even if someone is a biased Muslim, how do you have the right to tell that person to move on to somewhere, or to injure him or his property? That person is a human being first of all, and all other things are created by us. Circumcision is not something based on which you classify humankind - the point is sorely missed by the film. Another thing - the violence in Gujarat was only facilitated, and probably provoked, by the state government. But, the Hindus of Gujarat, usually a very timid and cowardly lot, are very rabid fundamentalists - and the opportunity was perfect to indulge in some foreplay. (I call it foreplay, since Gujarat was and is only the so-called lab for the Sangh Parivar; they still hope to indulge in the bloodshed wherever they can, on a genocidal scale.)

F.I.S.T

2007-01-14T05:55:00.000-08:00

A brilliantly scripted, politically conscious film. The ardh satya of compromising one's ethics (and, in the process, siding with those very elements that the man had sought to destroy) and being able to do some good is to the fore in a striking, blatant manner - and how often it is that the need to compromise (and the wish) grows as one's power grows, as one's sphere of influence grows, as one becomes increasingly a public figure. The life of mask begins! You exhort fans and innocent supporters to shout "Fist, Fist, Fist," and yet the guilt, the void, the blackness of your best friend dead, to which you remained a mute spectator, is all the time inside you. You always wished the good of workers, and yet you know that if the same people for whom you are here come to know about some of the methods and practices you resorted to for doing their good, would boo you, would disown you, would hurl stones you, and verily you would become an untouchable.

Sylvester Stallone handles the role with aplomb, complete with his immigrant accent, decisive movements of the body, and tough still honest looking face. He amazes you even more with the later part of the film - when he is shown to have grown middle-aged. It is then that the film really acquires a relevance unthought of at first, when the viewer is just getting along with young Stallone's struggle to build up a union. But now, when the union is in good shape, the hunger for more power surfaces in Stallone - and that's when the film really gets interesting. He finally gets the girl whom he always loved, but on the same day his friend leaves him for his uncompromisable ethics - and, probably from that day on, the last really good influence in an active form also went away from Stallone's life. Now, he was an easy prey to his own ambition, greed for power, and tactics of his new-found associates. Ironically, while Stallone always used them as pawns to build his and the union's power, it emerges at the end that it is he actually who always was the pawn - primarily because he cannot ever be like them, try as much he may - he will always have that bit of the young man who never cared for his life fighting for a nonexistent union.

The film is scripted really well, and the screenplay (Stallone again) and direction are at a real good and suitable tempo. The strike scenes in the initial part of the film, the work conditions, the odd-man outism of Stallone everywhere (and yet his mastery in rousing the rabble) - all take the film to a logical whole. Sexual harassment - such a small scene, when the overseer insuinates that Stallone's girlfriend is short of day's requirements; the never-say-die spirit of the real politician - Stallone, even when leaving the courtroom at the climax of the film in a huff and with grief gnawing within him over the news of his only friend and mate's death (and the revelations that his friend had made from his past life to the prosecutor), rousing the rabble with cries of "Fist, Fist, Fist"; the senator - Rod Steiger as the wily, shrewd, masked democrat; the leaden sky color of most part of the film (especially, the initial part). An excellent story and film, and a must for a Sylvester Stallone fan.

Ffolkes/One Two Three - The Taking of Pelham/Juggernaut

2007-01-14T05:54:00.000-08:00

You will usually see only the fringe players in such films - character actors, actors who promise to become stars one day and never become, and some who just keep getting in and out of the film world itself. And yet, they somehow grip you. The dialogues are few, the music is impeccably paced, there's always a material image which looms larger than any of the characters (an oil rig, a train, a ship), there are always some, very brief snippets of the inactive characters in the film (I mean the passengers of the ship, of the train, the crew of the rig), and underlying everything is the tension, the all-pervading, sweaty tension. Someone is silently making ransom calls, someone is receiving them frantically, silently the calls are tapped and silently the heat and tension grows. The simplest solution - give the ransom. And yet, there's that thing of giving in to terror - and so, against time, plots are planned with mathematical precision, crazy experts are called for (whom nobody, even those who are seeking their help, likes), and the film is mounted onto a slow boil.
The amazing thing is that there's not any usual suspense in the film. Nobody wants to know who the person demanding ransom is and why is he or she doing it, nobody wants to know who will die and who will not, and yet there's a grip - although we all know that the ship or train with hundreds of people or the oil rig with crores of rupees will be saved at the end and we even know the general outline of the film in advance, somehow we remain in thrall of how exactly does this go now. The crispness and the dry satire of the dialogues in such film helps, and if the location is Britain, then be assured to get some vintage Britishness.
And, such films never do really well at the box office. People like dashers who can jump from speeding yachts and trains with nonchalance and lay stylish women at the same time in bed, and not the actual, efficient, superskilled and genius experts.

Dor

2006-09-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

What a rare treat in India! A film without a man-woman romantic interest at its heart, a film tenous in the pursuit of its story, a film without any visual or musical distractions, a film with the rare good feat of both making you laugh and cry, a film unique in its story and yet not strumpeting itself, a film which is really able to accord respect to women in its two strong-minded and strong-spirited women protagonists - need I say more?
It all begins with the title - Dor. The title is so aptly chosen - the delicate string that connects apparently a fiercely independent woman (Gul Panag) from the mountains of Himachal Pradesh to the strong-spirited, joyful, innocent girl (Ayesha Takia) from the raw deserts of Rajasthan, from the keen mountain air that moves your impulses to the conservative, stuffy air of Rajasthan, where girls are often thrown in wells as soon as they are born - the delicate string that binds a man and a woman, to keep which taut a woman (Panag) can go into the unknown, know no fear, bear all insults and the world of men, trust herself more than the God, be prepared to even accept an impostor's help - the delicate string that connects any good person to other person, any of this mankind to another, one which cannot be broken unless by severing it, one which as long as it is remains a testimony to the surviving humanity in that person, and one which can at the same time redeem human values in other people - the delicate string of circumstances which bind together an educated woman, an innocent already-married child, and an impostor into one common, kindred bond.
I had always wanted to see Gul Panag in a good, befitting role. The film Dhoop was a disappointment in that respect. But, here, Gul finally gets the role which only she is fit for in the Indian film industry - at the same time mentally strong, intelligent, able to take care of herself, and tender. Shreyas Talpade has you in splits more than any Munnabhais can do - it's a simple, unsophisticated, and, in fact, much tried-and-tested humor, and yet, he succeeds, primarily because he has it in him to make you laugh, he is doing his role sincerely and has worked hard on it (although he has not much of a role in the film), and of course, the dialogue-writer, the director, the person whoever has selected those disguises, all have really worked to make the bahrupiya (impostor) lovable. And, of course, the star is the much under-rated Ayesha Takia. I liked her first when I saw her in Socha Na Tha (with Abhay Deol - another fine, honest actor, though not at all hero-like) - she knows her acting, she doesn't get carried away, she knows the delivery of dialogue, she has got a good, winning smile, she looks innocent inspite of that sexy Telugu song which she shot to resurrect her career (I believe it was a Telugu film) and yet desirable, and, most importantly, she's not affected, she's not proud (I don't mean here the tantrums that stars and starlets are famous for; what I mean is the sort of pride that creeps in an actor when he begins to know himself or herself as a good actor - the real nemesis of Amitabh since he became hit). She plays the role of the village belle to perfection, the joyful girl who is still a child at heart, who wishes to live her life fully and joyfull still, who has not been numbed by the death of her husband, whose life is being 'made over' by the society in which she lives, although it is not over in her heart. And, lastly, Nagesh Kukunoor himself is suited to the hilt to his cameo role.
Other strengths - a beautiful music, good cinematography, aesthetic and not opulent visually, brilliant development of the characters of all three (Panag, Takia, and Talpade) - and for this a real thanks to the director that even in such a simple, bare story he did not go for cutting down the length of the film (Hollywood should learn something from this - preening over their 'value of time' give you only brainless things like Mr. Bean or a baseball match, not a Ben Hur or an Eng-Aus Test match), minimal peripheral characters, faithfulness to the story with absolutely no distractions. The only weakness that I felt was related to the Rajasthan that they have shown - I was disappointed that no one was speaking in the commonly spoken Rajasthani way in the film; without it, it was not an authentic Rajasthan at all. Another was Takia calling her husband by his name - I really don't think that in a conservative Rajasthan village, this can be a norm. I think, quite a major blip from the filmmakers, at least for me. Maybe, they wanted to show Takia's character as inherently modern, but if a girl has been taught some things from her childhood as right and wrong, and she follows some of those things only for the sake of it or for the sake of the society she lives (after all, she might be questioning them in her mind), she doesn't become unmodern.

Omkaara

2006-08-23T09:05:00.000-07:00

The only thing that I can say is that Vishal Bharadwaj has easily surpassed Shakespeare in adapting Othello to the screen. I will jump straight on to the real strength of the film - its independence of the players, the paramount direction, art settings, lyrics, dialogues in rustic UP Hindi, and the explosive music. All the actors perform their roles to the hilt, yet the film rises above them and is not grateful for its greatness to any of them. Yes, Saif Ali Khan was always expected to play the jealous sower of evil perfectly, and he does that, Kareena Kapoor is indeed the innocent, lovely girl caught up in a web of intrigue about which she doesn't even know, she doesn't even have an inkling of, and Konkona Sen the added dimension of the ignorant wife of Saif, unwittingly adding fuel to the fire. Ajay Devgan and Viveik Oberoi don't have to do really much - the film doesn't belong to them, they just have to turn out, as Bipasha Basu has to for the electrifying song, once again given by who else than Gulzar and Vishal's combo, "Bidi Jalai le". But the film's hero is purely Vishal Bharadwaj - he has captured western UP, which is far more difficult to catch than eastern UP. Not many people even attempt to catch western UP; in fact, I can't remember one instance from my experience, unless it has been the Muslim culture. So, here's something fresh, not many times seen before on the big screen - and the canvas looks so evocative, so charming, so old worldly, so pristine, so beautiful on the screen. Right from the frame when Kareena's father comes to Naseeruddin Shah to complain about his proteges (see the sunlight streaming in behind from the window, with a pile of books dishevelled in the typical, typical UP style) to the frame when Saif is provoked to jealousy sitting on the bridge and the whole bridge is seen majestic against the backdrop of the river (the whole scene is sort of fuzzy, the camera's focus is nowhere sharp, as if the camera is undecided what to point at now, and during its indecision is just revealing the majestic canvas unwittingly) - what else can you ask for? Maybe, a little more development of the characters of Kareena and Viveik, but then remember Vishal is no spoilt, darling director of the masses like a Karan Johar, he has to think of the finances too - already, adapting Othello was a bit of risk, maybe less in today's times (the film would have definitely been a non-starter ten years ago).
Even now, after being acclaimed all over by critics and audiences alike, there's a common refrain - the dialogues, the abuses. First of all, my basic problem is simply that what's the problem with the abuses themselves? Let alone the fact that such language and sexual undertones were necessary for the film, what's the problem of people with abuses that are so common in the society that they live in, that most of them themselves use in their day-to-day life. They can watch a vulgar Priyanka Chopra or a Govinda any time of the day, and they profess to be shocked with a good film, why? They don't want to take their women and children to "such" films, they ask how did the censor board pass it even with an adult certificate. And it is a fact that they are shocked; they simply do not claim to be shocked, but they are in reality. This puts me in a real confusion, a total non-understanding in fact. How can a person rave for Govinda and really feel shocked with Omkaara. Is it that they live by a set of rules and the rules begin to govern their tastes, their likings, their whole experience of the life? For how can it be explained otherwise? Or is it that they are thick-skinned? Until and unless a man pushes his cock into some girl's ass or an expletive is used, everything is fine with them? So, they will lap up all the suggestive dialogues, all the double-barrelled jokes with a good amount of smirks of pleasure, and yet they will revolt when something is shown which is totally devoid of any meanings other than what is right there before you, what is in fact a necessity, what they too know is a daily occurrence (for to imagine that in UP life would go on without abuses in small talk is absurd)? I cannot understand these double standards. Where is their shock with all the obscene songs and dialogues? Or is it that for them there exist two kinds of movies: the ones that they enjoy without inhibitions, which they in fact like, but which are not called "great", and the others which are "supposed" to be great, and hence then they bring all their definitions of "greatness" in it? After all, Mahatma Gandhi's probably greatest source of the influence over Indians was his eccentric way of living, his non-practise of sex, his remaining absurdly and unreasonably naked and bald - so even though they would not live like him and would call any of their sons as mad if he even thinks of following Gandhi in earnest, they will call him as a hero, partly because he was all that they do not understand, and partly because it has been accepted he was great.
Anyway, simply drifting. This was meant to be a review of Omkaara. Great and effective use of camera, good drama, great music and lyrics (the strength of the music lies in that it is suited to the film to the T), and preserving the plot of Othello intact with no tampering - these are the strongpoints of the film, and every film lover must watch the film.

Gangster

2006-06-04T07:17:00.001-07:00

Yes, you could have a whole sociological essay based on the probable reasons that Gangster didn't work. Though the film has been produced by one of the well-versed marketeers, Mahesh Bhatt, the film doesn't work. Why? Lack of a stellar cast? But, then, had Rang de Basanti a stellar cast? Or had not Mangal Pandey - the Rising a stellar cast?
Gangster is a superb film, the most intense love story that I have ever seen made in Hindi. Its a tortous love story, it doesn't let you rest in peace, its what love is. It conveys to the home the hopelessness, the helplessness of a person when confronted with true love. The sympathy never wavers from the lead pair of Shiney Ahuja and Kangana Ranaut, even though the latter's end betrayal could have induced a resentment against her character among the audiences. This is the best testimony to the craftsmanship of the film. That is what is the forte of the film - its different editing style, and the construction of the screenplay (of course, the editing style has been necessitated due to the unconventional screenplay). And, oh, what a music score! Even if its lifted from Arabia, I don't care as long as I get to hear some real music.
Emraan Haashmi is his usual poor self, a poor actor, who is only fit to star in some hit songs. But, then, the film does not depend on him at all. Its Shiney Ahuja who impresses you (thankfully, there are a very few dialogues in the film from him, for he has still to learn about his dialogue delivery). And Kangana is the star of the show. What an honest acting effort! She looks sad, she looks drunk, she looks glamorous, she looks in need of love, she looks in love, she looks betrayed, she looks the star! Her dialogue delivery is also unusual, and very apt for the sort of role that she is playing in the film.
Why didn't the film do well in India? Maybe, first of all, due to a poor name selection. People think that it is some violent film to which they won't like to go with their kids et al. and then to top it off, after seein' the name of Haashmi in it, they think that some extramarital things also must be going on in the film, and it might be just one of those usual Emraan Haashmi films. So, I think, selecting Emraan was a big mistake for this project, when his kissing services weren't much needed also in the film. The name too. Then, though the real music lovers absolutely loved the music and it is still at no. 1 on the billboards, yet the music didn't create as much a wave as, say, Rang de Basanti. Why? Because, the youngsters want something to dance with in the disco bars, want something which could fill them with insta excitement, and which has that bawdy feel of Punjabi music in it. Of course, many of the youngsters would prefer this music for disco bars also against RDB's, but then the reach won't be upto those who do not have their own preferences but simply follow what they think their peers must be following. And, most importantly, its an intense film, a serious love story, not at all sugary. No melodrama in it, no deep plots in it. Its a simple story with some unconventional screenplay (another put-off for Indians). The acting is very honest, the dialogues are very few, Shiney Ahuja's eyes tell you the whole film, and the cast is not a star cast. Its a low-budget film, and the exhibitors were more interested in investing their money in the forthcoming Fanaa, which has a star lead pair, than any other films. A popcorn-munching public simply wants something to spend their time with, they don't want something too serious - if confronted with, they will laugh it off, disdain it to the bins, and make directors like Priyadarshan the creators of vulgar comedies.

Memoirs of a Geisha

2006-03-14T00:05:00.000-08:00

What a beautiful film! Again, the Oscars surprise me by their zeal for political correctness instead of cinematic excellence. A film, which should have definitely got the Best Picture Oscar not even nominated and a soundtrack which is so overwhelmingly touching, which has so much of a woman's life in it, losing out to a band of persons who don't even know what music is.
The role of Sayuri has been excellently essayed by Ziyi Zhang, and the role of Sayuri as a child has been even more excellently performed. The film's simple story is so touching (I have not read the novel) and so full of love. An intelligent, rebellious girl, unhappy with her lot, finds happiness for herself in that one kind gesture of a stranger; she is inspired to improve her lot just because of that one person and in the hope of meeting him again. Amidst all the dirt surrounding her, she keeps herself astonishingly and pristinely pure for that one person, for the stranger who was the one person kind to her in her life. And Ken Watanabe, though in a brief role, suits very well to the role.
To show a different culture or a different era is a big challenge for the director, for the costume designer, for the art director, for the screenplay writer. You have to have the film pervaded by that culture, and yet you have not to overdo it. While dressing up all in Japanese costumes and making the actors behave in Japanese manners, you have to still ensure that the film does not begin to look like a fancy dress parade, which often ends up being the fate of several period or historical movies. And here, Memoirs of a Geisha scores heavily. The film is a visual treat, and yet it does not overdo it. The key to it is probably the use of low intensity lighting throuh most parts of the movie, and a brilliant colour scheme. The focus is more on Ziyi Zhang's face rather than her clothes - first there is Sayuri and then there is the geisha in her. This is what is difficult to achieve. Otherwise, she would be like all other geishas.
All the other characters in the film have played their roles to perfection, especially Sayuri's jealous rival and "Pumpkin." The music is the best that I have ever heard, and the most suitable to the storyline of the film.

Rang de Basanti

2006-03-14T00:00:00.000-08:00

I had not expected much from the film, except its great music and the energy of youth. And, it turned out that the film really had only these two elements. Rahman's great music saves Rang de Basanti, otherwise the film has no storyline, lacklustre acting, misguided aims, and, more importantly to me, an insult to some of the great persons whom I have admired since my childhood.

The director looks a very confused person. What does he want to show in the film? I couldn't understand for the life of me that why all the scenes like Kakori's train loot and Saunders murder are enacted and shown in this film. In fact, when the filmmaker first visualized all the leads in the roles of freedom fighters to herself, then only it was a little distasteful to me. But to go on with it and keep on showing them feels like real blasphemy. Why blasphemy? Since how could that rabble of a lot, who are simply vagabonds and who do not care about their country and nor about acting or how a film is made, how a character is played - how could that rabble be shown to be selected for the documentary? The film initially shows concerns from the documentary film maker that her docu is not being taken seriously, they are not what they have to be - but suddenly the docu is shown to proceed with aplomb. How does this transformation occur? Since they remain the same unruly, vagabond lot that they were to the end of the film - I didn't think of them as martyrs even after the director's painful efforts to show them as such.

Other faults? A lot, like more light could have been shed on the backgrounds of each of the friends, plus a lot of India could have been captured, especially looking from the eyes of the foreigner. Is a Western person, even if he or she is interested in Indian politics, going to be charmed by the sight of parliament after coming to India. Is that the symbol of India's might, India's exoticism, is that the thing for which India holds its name as a synonym for a 'difficult country to live in, and to leave'. Things like this instantly make you feel that the director's attempts are all hackneyed, and cannot be sincere.

Rahman's music, as usual, is great, and not only saves the film from ignominy but also makes the film a box office success. How easy it is to delude people!

Black - much ado about nothing

2005-12-28T08:55:00.000-08:00

Apart from visual opulence, the film disappoints terribly. While I'm here going very much against the established opinion about the film in the public in general , and also the critics, the fact, for me, remains that the film is only good in patches, and never attains the status of an excellent film, a riveting film. Inspite of his best acting in his career by Amitabh and a brilliant performance by Ayesha Kapur, the film fails primarily due to a weak post-interval script, and a third-grade lead actress in Rani Mukherjee. I wonder what the film would have felt like if, instead of her, the lead would have been Ayesha Dharker, very unknown in India but a powerful actress, though probably not versatile enough. Of course, the script in that case should have suited her.
Rani is in fact suitable to the script, and hence it can be said that, notwithstanding Rani's mediocrity as an actress, the real blame of the film's failure lies in a weak and inconsistent script. The rebel, intelligent child (Ayesha Kapur) transforms into a cowed-down, ordinary girl (Rani), which is what is indigestible. Indigestible not because this cannot happen, but because I cannot see any dignity, any heroism, any story to tell in the life of the character that Rani plays. What do the filmmakers intend to show? The director, Bhansali, proudly proclaimed in the interviews that the deaf-dumb are not "children of a lesser god" but it is he in fact who is portraying them as such, and the film Children of a Lesser God stands as a proud example of rebelling against the pity, the discrimination, the sympathy accorded to anybody less privileged.

More weak points follow. Amitabh and Rani are shown to be dependent on each other too much, the object of each other's existence. But yet the film tries to imply that Rani's character is some heroic character, that she is now very independent, very much transformed by the mentor that took her by storm when she was an unruly child. To summarize, the child, when the mentor had yet not come, is looking more intelligent, more rebellious, more lovable than the girl that grew from her. Then the whole film is pointless.
I mentioned visual opulence earlier. Yes, the film is visually opulent, but remember I have not said that the film is visually beautiful, is visually breathtaking, is visually magnificient. No, the opulence seems out of place. The setting of the film in the Wildflower Hall itself seems out of the place, and in fact I think that by sticking to Christian atmosphere in this film, Bhansali lost more than gained out of it. Panoramic views of the Hall, romanesque statues, and broad, spacious halls and galleries make the film only visually "opulent", not "beautiful". What was needed was more of Simla, and in fact, the real Simla and not the recreated one in the sets. For in fact, the real is different from the one depicted in the film in a brief scene. When Amitabh goes to get Rani ice-creams and gets lost, they should have been sitting somewhere in the Lower Bazaar and the ice-cream seller on the Mall ( for those of you who do not know Simla, the town is in tiers almost, and there are lots of broad stone stairways between any two tiers, as for example here the Mall and the Lower Bazaar, so that people can easily ascend/descend to another tier). The scene could have been then made visually poignant, with Rani on the lower tier waiting expectantly and Amitabh getting lost due to his attack of Alzhiemer's. The camera could have then a long shot of Rani and the long flight of stairs, with a narrow depth of field focussing on the stairs( and not on the foreground, Rani) and the hustle-bustle of people on it. It is in fact upto the director then how to toy with the camera, the real idea is to interpose the stairway between them, and the people on it. The stairway would have served the purpose of re-emphasizing the point of aloofness between Rani and ordinary people, her impending estrangement between her mentor(Amitabh) and her, and most importantly, the sexual alienation of her from all the people. It would have also served as a brilliant coping-stone for the scene to follow when Rani craves for sex from her mentor herself.
I would in fact have placed the lead heroine in such a manner that her back is towards the stairs, and then using the long shot ( of course, then only both her face and the stairway can come in shot), so that the point that she is unaware that there could be tragedy in her mentor's life also (and other people's) is also emphasized. These small things make or mar a film, otherwise everybody has the camera, and the actors, and the underworld dons to finance them. But these are the things, the real ones. Anyway, it would be too much to expect it here, when the script, the screenplay, and the actors themselves(except some of the actors on sidelines, who have all done brilliant jobs, especially Ayesha Kapur, and the actors playing the parts of Rani's mother and father) go kaput.
Other positives are excellent cinematography and a great background music score. The promos were brilliant, as well as the website design. The play of light and shadows was brilliantly executed, but again it was a little too unreal, too opulent for me.

A Couple of Films

2005-11-22T06:30:00.000-08:00

I saw Hud just today, with Paul Newman again demonstrating what a fine actor he is (watch his drunken gait, as different from the normal one). But what struck me was that Newman was completely overshadowed by his co-actors, all of whom have done a fine work, especially Douglas. Patricia Neal has also done a very good work in her brief role ( I have only seen her a second time, after once seeing her in The Subject Was Roses many years back in which she has performed par excellence and the film itself is one of my favorites, plan to review it sometime later on).
I came to know that the film has received Oscars for Douglas, Neal and the cinematography. Though I praise Neal, I think it could have been only a severe lack of competition which enabled her to earn an Oscar since the role was too brief and neither that much powerful so as to make her deserving of the award for that particular role. Or it could have been one of those innumerable instances in the history of the Academy Awards where a fine performance by an actor is overlooked and then to make up for it, the actor is rewarded for even a tolerable performance later on. Anyways, I am not too much a fan of the Academy Awards nor want to be interested by their intrigues.
The striking point of the film Hud is of course the sweeping cinematography and yet the static camera at times, forcing the viewer to be unwillingly pushed into the scene, into the setting, as if he is himself getting oppressed by the cruel wantonness of Newman, the heat, the sultry monotony of the ranch life, and the desires of letting oneself go into the manifold temptations once in a while. The solitary ranch life is dominating them all, is dominating the film, is dominating the viewer, and of course this is where the director had to succeed and has succeeded. A good film, but I don't think that most of the people will able to tolerate it , since the film is neither thrilling at any point nor has any sort of pace. Its a heavy-handed film, almost drooping shoulders on the viewer and asking him to take the burden along.

Also saw A Streetcar Named Desire some days ago, and that was my first time for this Brando-Vivien Leigh film. As a matter of fact, I could say that this was the film that I liked least of all of all the Tenessee Williamses I have ever seen (I have already seen Cat on a Hot Tin Roof many times, and besides it Night of the Iguana and Sweet Bird of Youth). Vivien Leigh's acting is very great and very brilliant, and yet its for the stage, not for the film. Maybe since Leigh had already been doing the play for the stage for a long time, she was unable to act in a less dramatic way or maybe the director never told her to tone down. Anyway, but that is a major flaw to the film for me, although Leigh's brilliant dramatic acting is alone why every man should possess this film. Brando - well, I have never liked him at all , but here he suits very well to the character. And his wife's role is played to perfection, but looking too much of in a pink of health for the poverty stricken setting of the film.
Where the film succeeds is of course a very good cast, all suitable to their roles, and the director's ability to bring out the sexual tension between the characters in the film. Even more than the director, it is Leigh and Brando who succeed in creating the tension through their performances and the cinematographer also doesn't play a small role. But I would have loved to see a little bit more of what happened when Brando took Leigh by force, something more after the shattering of the glass. Maybe it isn't there because of the censors of that period.
Where the film fails is of course the lack of sympathy for any character in the mind of the viewer. No character could call for any sympathy in my mind. Williams used to say that he could never conceive of a story in which he doesn't feel intense physical attraction towards one of the characters, and for that kind of a story to succeed the viewer must precisely feel the same, but in this film there is none whom at least I would feel a desire for.
In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof I feel it for Elizabeth Taylor's character, in Night of the Iguana I feel it Ava Gardner's character (rather than Kerr's), and it is the vitality of the character of Paul Newman which keeps you going in Sweet Bird of Youth (though the written play is disappointing, only the film is good). But here, there is none.

Parineeta

2005-10-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

The film is only okay, with some of its glaring faults being too much forceful to let it be a good one. But first harping on the positives, first one is that a good actress has come to the fore, Vidya Balan. Though now would come the sternest test - will she be able to handle the stardom and yet mature as an actress ? Rather too elegant for the persona in Parineeta, yet she is the modern day Meena Kumari, and will do well if she is limited only to soft,sensuous roles ( she would have excelled in a remake of Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam). She is not an excellent actress, just good, and I don't think that she would make a versatile one. But a good,fresh talent. Another positive that the period has been captured effectively and the film captures the atmosphere a little bit( though only a little bit) of Calcutta. Its good that the filmmakers put the film in 1960s, an era with whose dresses and lifestyle the viewers could adapt themselves better than pre-Independence period ( of course, much depends on the director's vision; maybe the director could have placed the film in the Vidyasagar/RamMohanRoy period and could have made the turbulent social reform period as a backdrop, involving an increasingly long film but possibly a great epic film , but better to not to try something too ambitious at first try, so commendable effort by Sircar). Very good melodious music, and suiting to the mood of the film to the T, of course is adding value to the film.

The negatives ? here they are. Overly melodramatic, especially the climax scene. And not just that, but the whole film. As for example, the song Piyu bole has been too much mellowed , too much steeped into the sunset by the post crew. Similarly, there are often sound effects at crucial scenes, as for example when the heroine is stunned on seeing her haveli as the projected heritage hotel, just like those which are staply used in daily soaps running on the television and those sound effects are rather decreasing the impact of the visual; rather than emphasizing the visual, they are rather looking like giving a cue to the viewer that ' c'mon, now you've got to feel shocked'. The humor quotient of the film is not high enough nor good enough, though it has been tried enough. Secondly, going against what most of the people are saying or have said, Saif Ali Khan was to me a poor choice as the hero. He seems too brutal, and the director doesn't help matters when he is showing him brutally hitting Balan on-screen. And the most important, the flaw in the storyline itself. I don't know anything about Sarat Chandra's novel, but anyway the filmmakers have every liberty of modifying it, and they should've done so if the novel itself doesn't concentrate on the heroine' s dilemma about accepting money from Sanjay Dutt. After all, the money could have meant only one thing, that Dutt's character was head over heels in love with the heroine. She can't refuse, she is grateful, but there is a gnawing doubt always in her mind that what if a price were to be asked of her for this generosity ? And even if the price is never asked, she is understanding everything, perceiving everything, should she not then pay the price of her own accord ? This is the dilemma that the heroine should have been shown in. A grateful smile on Balan's face is there, okay, in the film, but it should have been followed by even deeper tensions , deeper introspection, and greater observation of Dutt's character, and maybe trying to please him and despise herself at the same time.

Then of course there are other flaws and issues. When Saif Ali Khan comes to know of her beloved's marriage to Dutt through her mother himself, then he is seen to come out from the haveli with a beautiful song just starting to rise from the night along with the whiff of a bidi of a lower-class person, complete with the slow,firm,steady action of his alighting the bidi. A beautiful sequence of frames! Why not more of such? And why the so much interchange of happy and sad sequences in the film ? Right after the heart attack of heroine's father, we have Saif trilling around in Darjeeling. Not letting the viewer to get sucked into the film at any stage is always a disaster recipe for the film.

Finally, a positive - the support cast is also brilliantly suited to their roles, even the elderly lady who is helping Saif's mother to cook in a very small sequence of frames. Maybe only the person playing the part of Saif's friend disappoints , among the support cast. Rekha and her costume are perfect for the cabaret song, as is the music itself and the lyrics.
An honest effort, a good effort, but doesn't turn out to be excellent fare. Vidya Balan's and Diya Mirza's characters needed more exploration, as did Saif-Balan's love.

Kisna: The Warrior Poet

2005-10-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

Much criticism has been heaped over it, and not only by the critics but by the viewers themselves. It is simply not that unfavorable reviews by critics led to its downfall, the response of those who went to see it was itself contemptuous. Yes, there were definite mistakes, big ones. Isha Sherwani’s dances again and again, and that too in those unnatural mannerisms, were not too helpful for the rhythm of the film. And the start and the ending sequences of the film were too hopelessly insipid and unnecessary, there was no need to put them. The add-ons at start and end were too ridiculous.

But, especially considering against films made usually in Bollywood, should the film have suffered so terribly for these fiascos ? People lamented a lack of storyline in the film, but how do the same people find stories in a Page 3 or a No Entry is quite beyond me. Did nobody care for the excellent cinematography, and the beautiful visuals of the Alaknanda-Bhagirathi junction ? The water-splashed look of the film – did no one feel that ? The freshness of the film, of the actors themselves should have been such an incentive to watch the film – Antonia Bernath does her role well, as does Vivek Oberoi. Not many in Bollywood do their roles well. And I found the story not damnable. Yes, it was not much of a story, it was always a chase and run story , but then the love emerging between Oberoi and Bernath, and which they wished to hide from themselves (due to social compulsions) until the circumstances force it to explode with all its youthful vigour, was that love not beautiful ? Was it not much of a story ? Maybe that’s why Robinson Crusoe isn’t much of a success in India, the people would ask what’s the story in it ?

And a very, very great music. Beautiful music for almost all the songs, and picturised also quite interestingly. After many years in fact, such good music has emerged from Bollywood. But strangely, songs which anybody would be ashamed to call even songs like Gela Gela become hit and not these. I can understand Woh Lamhe becoming hit, it has a catchy music but how can something like Gela Gela become hit ?

Quite obviously, I do not understand quite clearly two things – the market economics for one and the herd mentality for the other.

Children Of A Lesser God

2005-10-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

People consider all sorts of films as romantic but not this one – I’m surprised why ??? Maybe what people consider romantic is those mushy films (which I hate absolutely) where people go only to go for a movie and eat popcorns, where they do not want to be inspired, where they do not want to think, where they do not want to be moved, I mean deeply moved since after having been deeply moved you find yourself not much in that candlelight mood, that flippant mood, which so often characterize people “looking for romance”. And considering the number of clumsy and third-rate “romantic comedies” turned out in America on televison as well as on cinema screens, I think of that as the most probable explanation.

But for me this is the most wonderful romantic film. The build up of love between the hero and the heroine leading to the inability of enjoying of some things of one since the other cannot do so( the inability of absorbing himself into Mozart for the instructor to deaf William Hurt since he now loves a deaf girl, Marlee Matlin) is nerve-wracking ! And shouldn’t the greatest of loves be shown as intensely nerve-wracking on screen ? – nerve-wracking to the viewer and possibly to the lovers in the plot themselves.

The whole personality of the instructor is shining through William Hurt, and Marlee Matlin is simply excellent. She’s every inch the obstinate, the self-willed, the imaginative, the emotionally deep, the beautiful, the intelligent , the deaf girl that she is meant to portray. And of course the plot is excellent.

The story’s brilliant, and all the support cast is very able, thus letting not one weakness to creep into the film. The school principal, the other students, and lastly Laurie Piper, everyone’s excellently suitable for their roles. The cinematography is great, especially the underwater one. And the soundtrack also.

But what really uplifts the film into the realm of sublime is the brilliant screenplay and direction, the whole concept in fact of not letting too much of the normal world into the film. Without stifling the viewer, the film manages to come more from the heart of the dumb heroine rather than the hero (the old classic Johnny Belinda had also this difficult characteristic though in a less marked manner – in that Jane Wyman film the effect was achieved more through the camera rather than absence of sound, more through showing vast, flat, beautiful landscapes rather than through the raw vitality of two persons trying to communicate with each other). Most of the talking in the film is through sign language! And to aid the viewer, the hero of course speaks in undertones most of it, but still those sounds of dialogue do not obtrude since the story itself provides that the hero is slow to comprehend sign language while the student is very fast, very able in it. So he is simply talking to himself, interpreting to himself whatever Matlin is saying, and the viewer is the beneficiary. The attempt to keep most of the film in the soundless world of Matlin is excellent and it has surprisingly succeeded without boring the viewer.

One of the best films that I’ve ever seen, and the climax is really excellent. If you haven’t seen it, please see it now.

Cinderella Man

2005-10-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

A remarkably good motion picture after quite a long time from Hollywood. And interestingly the film's success is due to the more solid premise that though each of the characters is playing his or her part superbly well and suitably well ( two different things) yet neither of them is getting dominant over the film itself, the Cinderella Man itself, the tone, the mood, the swing of the film.

The film's said to be a real-life story of a boxer who achieved glory during the days of the Big Depression. And interleaved into it is the gist of the film - his struggle with poverty and his inability to accept the fate of his family, his heroic struggle in which he would turn to beg rather than have to send his children away, and most importantly his sense of obligation to his family , his pain when he sees his wife, his children suffer because he, the man of the house, cannot provide for them sufficiently. The meek and accepting wife's role is excellently performed by Rene Zellweger, though probably in concession to the more feminist tone of America and the world at large, a couple of dialogues have been thrown in towards the end (the manager's wife saying them to Rene) to imply that being always in waiting to be provided by the man is such a tragedy for women. Still, although I personally think that the dialogues are jarring with the tone of the film, they are not being too anachronistic. Of course its a tragedy, but a tragedy in my viewpoint for only some of the women, women who seek to go out, who seek to play a larger role than the one society is restricting them to or expecting from them. But many women are happy also at being provided, and in fact now that women also make careers as well as men, I often get to see women who are unhappy at being thrust into a career rather than a home, but then they continue to live that way since they do not want to feel left out, do not want to feel that they are not conforming to what society expects of them.

But I’m veering from the review. The manager’s role has been done brilliantly by Giamatti and his sharp jabs of speech and apparent enthusiasm , his dancing around the ring always makes him the most lovable man in the film. And it is Crowe and him who are keeping the film alive, and even more than them the editor and the cinematographer, who have edited and shot the boxing scenes fantastically well, so that your guts will be wrenched out seeing those fights. Maybe only there was no need to do something very conventional and obvious, the showing of breaking of bones through xray visuals. Otherwise the fight choreography, the editing and the cinematography make for a heady combine. A great film !

An Introduction

2005-10-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

I will be posting here reviews of various movies, including the ones that I've recently seen, the ones about which I want to talk forever, the ones which have merited the status of greats.

Occasionally, I may also discuss directors, do an analysis rather than a review of films and contemporary trends, and veer off the topics. Please forbear ! The movies will contain mostly a mix of Bollywood and Hollywood.