Category: cinema: hindi

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Books cinema cinema: hindi

WALLS PEOPLE BUILD

Image

Even in the most formulaic of products cinema can surprise you to lengths that you could have ever imagined.

2 states is no new story, two people from diverse background fall in love and naturally their parents oppose, how the couple convince their parents form the rest of the tale. Yes, how many times have we seen this story? Yet 2 states gets most things right where others slip.

This writer walked in expecting a clash of cultures, a comedy of manners and other such gags, but that was not the case to be. Usually not one to expect authentic portrayal of south Indians in Hindi films, there was really anything for me to complain about.

Most of the films in the same fashion, in fact even with the same story reduce characters to prickly caricatures, taking ample advantage of existing stereotypes, the troubled couple usually have to tread carefully amidst the culture bushes while not rustling them, but trying to win their approval as well.

It is not to say that 2 states does not take the help of the stereotypes, just that they are not gags, like first you think Mr. Swaminathan is the grumpy  simple south Indian dad, then we come to realize that he is not grumpy  because he is south Indian, but he is tired of doing others’ work, likewise  the “middle-class” minded fast talking groom’s mother also begins as a staple, not unlike many Bollywood Mas; but she too just wants some respect after being mistreated for most of her life. Her issue is really not having a ‘Madrasi’ daughter-in-law, but her fear of losing her son’s love and respect, something her husband could never provide. 2 states aptly bring out the motivations behind the stereotypes rather than just painting them in stock expected colors.

When characters are written with respect, it shows on screen! Even if respect did not allow much time for research, the previous clash of the culture films only seek to bring the differences to one common ground for the benefit of the lovers, so much so that we do not really care in the end if the protagonists get married or not.

In the end it is not the diversity of the cultures that is the hindrance; it is the minds of the people who preferred to be safely walled up in the name of society and culture.

Marriage is about individuals, not about culture. Yes it does involve culture, but it is not to be seen as a solid unmovable entity that shuts out people and selectively allows some in. Culture is a result of individuals, accumulated over the years to make things easier, if it makes life a chore; then a lot of rethinking needs to be done.

Well written characters are essayed by finest supporting actors (Ronit Roy, Amrita Singh and Revathy deserve more than special mentions), while the biggest hurrah must go to the likeable lead, Alia ‘light-in-her-eyes’ Bhatt and the surprisingly effectual Arjun Kapoor.

While the film does stop and get into the usual Bollywood song and dance occasionally, all that is forgiven. Also nobody gets married at the Shore Temple, it is a UNESCO world heritage site for God’s sake.

2 States is immensely pleasant even at its length, a film that rightly captures the scenario while not being either youth-rebellious or teacher-preacher in its handling of marriage, that is an achievement.

Yes it also ends well.

PS: Two paragraphs on how good this Alia Bhatt is, as Ananya Swaminathan was written, it was deleted keeping in mind that Arjun Kapoor(Krish Malhotra) too is amazing. Further problems were averted by using simpler adjectives in the piece.

PS 2: Remind yourself that this film is not an ad for YES Bank and Sunsilk, repeat this again please for your benefit.

PS 3: This writer did not read the Chetan Bhagat novel from which the film was adapted from and thus cannot speak about loyalty to text issues.

X Box: Kya Yaar, we also see Hindi films.

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cinema cinema: hindi

CK AND MM AT THE MOVIES: DHOOM 3

It is New Year’s Day 2014 as Caustic Kumar and Moderate Manohar make their way to one of the theaters screening Dhoom 3.

They find that they are not the only ones who are spending the first day of the year watching a film, at that very moment CK remarked

CK: Heard some news about some set ratings is slowly going to replace us.

MM: I heard them, too. Think the recession is catching up in our field too; soon robots will start writing customized articles in long form for readers.

CK: Who reads long form anyway? Imagine the horror when people get to read what exactly they want to!

CK and MM together: The Horror!!!

dhoom_660_081413122505

<Movie Begins>

<Interval>

<Movie Ends>

CK: You go first

MM: No! You go first.

CK: You were the one who complained that you were being made the ‘Watson’ in the two of us.

MM: As if that isn’t true, you are the vociferous one, take the first shot.

CK :< starts to say something…pauses…looks around to the thinning crowd> I actually liked it.

MM: Aha!

CK: What Aha? Can’t I like any film?

MM: Surprised actually, was hoping you will run this down with a bulldozer with the ‘Prestige’ point, which this film is a sort of reworking.

CK: That it is, maybe reworking is not the right word.

MM: But then this is the same reason you had problems with earlier films, I see that clearly the film will work for anyone who has not seen ‘The Prestige’ assuming all those cheering in the audience haven’t seen it.

CK: It does work for people who have seen Prestige too, at least for me. Dhoom 3 takes the big reveal from Prestige and digs with it for plot moments, almost care-able characters. I must say I was not disappointed.

MM: And you are not going to say anything about the increasingly irritating buddy cop routine brought out by Jr.Bachchan and Uday Chopra, forced excuses like world crime conference and the utter buttery premise of a plot.

CK: No. I won’t even try to remind everyone that Katrina appears only when there is a song.

MM: I thought the songs were done quite well, even if you are irritated of their occurrence you cannot look away.

CK: Exactly

<Both then speak on the choreography for a moment>

MM: So you are saying that even if this is more than an ‘inspired’ film, it is alright and you are not going to snipe this down; which is more like the philosophy that I’ve been trying to tell you all the while. That means we are not too different after all.

CK: No such thing, just that this movie didn’t irritate me as such the previous feigned ones did, and there were likeable things going on screen even if you knew what was going to happen. Something emotional I guess, and that I think is a primary requirement for any film.

MM: So you are going to be inconsistent in your views, I don’t know how chief will react to that.

CK: Inconsistent it maybe, but at least I am honest, I don’t think you can have an objective approach to these things, I’m not going to decry anything to which I was hooked to, also this Aamir Khan did lift this film; even if his tics did get quite tiresome in the end.

MM: Clearly you are reading some pseudo-spiritual meditation books, the ones which have bearded sanyasis on the cover with “happiness” quotes.

<CK frowns for a while, not unlike what Aamir Khan does in the film>

MM: Thought you would ask, but nevertheless I couldn’t buy this whole revenge against the bank is the motive for the heist thing, but otherwise yes I did find the film engaging, eye candy entertainment and technically superior; serious doubts are now in mind as to whether the film would have been engaging if not for Aamir.

CK: Speaking of Aamir, what’s with his cheeks, they seem to be playing a completely different role all through the movie, hope they too got paid.

MM: Oddness noted, but not so odd as much as your mild treatment of the film itself.

CK: I have a whole new year to be belligerent.

MM: I look forward to those times.

Happy New Year!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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cinema cinema: hindi cinema:tamil

WAIT RA! WHAT ARE WE CELEBRATING?

Dada Saheb Phalke

On the third of May 1913, Dadasaheb Phalke showed his film Raja Harishchandra at Coronation Cinema, then Bombay. It was a silent film.

Sometime in April 2013, a 24 hour news channel brought out a list of 100 greatest Indian films ever made. The introduction to this slideshow spectacle was humble and apologetic; like how they wished they could include more films and that this hundred were selected due to lack of space.

So basically the greatest 100 films we ever made are finally decided not on merit, but based on space availability.

Although the intention of this piece is not to find fault in the noble minds who put out this list, but where else can we express our irritation other than our very own blog.

For the past few weeks, every channel and publication had its own set of experts trying to come up with a sort of comprehensive list of the greatest Indian films, the list aforementioned had 40 Bollywood films or the Hindi film industry counting ‘Pushpak’<on the sides of which the description reads as such “Directed by Singeetham Srinivasa Rao, the film is a silent black comedy. This Hindi film tells the story of an unemployed young man”> Look buddies, you may take me for a lingual separatist but how did a silent black comedy become a Hindi film? It is not a Hindi production even.

We are not against Bollywood films and we welcome the josh in which you have suddenly realized that this cinema of ours is worth celebrating, and we are not even going into the credibility of these movies you have selected. But what we are irritated about is “oh shit we have to include at least one film from this language so as to look fair” attitude, and it is not for the Tamil films for which we are ranting.

To each his own cinema.

By virtue of being a vast and multicultural nation, we understand the difficulties and tensions in creating a sort of all inclusive list, so even 100 Bollywood films in that list would have been fine with us and so on for other regional languages(if you had the time and space).

So from all the above mentioned ranting, we have come to a decision that these celebrations are nothing but time fillers, empty commemorations that mean nothing; and this includes the southern media too, besides some stray specials the south has not shown much enthusiasm in celebrating this century. Whether this is indifference reciprocated? No one can say.

But what are we celebrating, really?

‘To Each His Own Cinema’ was a commissioned anthology film celebrating sixty years of the Cannes Festival, where filmmakers were invited to present a film as a sort of love letter to the screen, needless to say that none of our filmmakers were featured; while the far east and the middle east got many nods.

All right, you do not want to be judged from the foreign eyes and you will wish to stand in your incomparable emerald palace. You do not want to be compared, but what is the respect you give to your own films?

The fact that Raja Harishchandra to this day remains a partially lost film (only few reels are available) is just one of the many examples of the respect with which we have treated our filmmakers and films.

But shouldn’t we celebrate?

Yes,and much like that chocolate ad; you only need a reason. We could have celebrated even 47 years of Gemini Circus or some such thing.

But our only request is don’t make shitty lists like “100 best films”, “100 best scenes in 100 years” and “100 best rain drenched heroines” and the like, don’t fool yourselves. Every Indian can make 100 such personal lists and be happy about it.

And no polls, please.

Go and celebrate, we are not stopping you. If this celebration opens to you another door through which more visionaries and movies are discovered, then there is point in celebrating. But we don’t think any cinematic discovery of that sort will happen with rest of India hidden behind Bollywood’s screaming arc lights.

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cinema cinema: hindi

THERE IS SOMETHING IN THE WATER

FILM

https://i0.wp.com/media2.intoday.in/indiatoday/images/stories/talaash-350_101812072223.jpg

TALAASH (2012)

We walked in, just in time to catch Reema Kagti’s name being flashed with the grim yet jazzy “Muskaanein Jhooti hai”; the song which also accompanies a certain TV spot of the film which has a full mouthed and in night gown Kareena dancing to the song in a jazz bar with revolving doors with all the movie’s characters, evoking the both the Bombay of the past and the classic Hollywood thriller, which is what it intends to do.

The night club song does not feature in the film, meticulously shot and high on style, it has no place in the film but then gives you an idea of what to expect from the film.

Which makes me wonder, whether little said the better is the right approach for a thriller?

Aamir Khan plays Inspector Surjan Shekhawat, who is assigned the case of a dead Bollywood actor, whose car crashes into the Arabian sea, but like any protagonist in a quest, he has his own problems which began with the drowning of his son. The inspector has internalized his problem and along with his disturbed wife Roshni (Rani Mukherjee) paint a picture which resembles the first few minutes of ‘En Bommakutti Ammavukku’, the pain of losing a child to water, ultimately ties itself with the case of the drowned actor.

An interesting subject for a thriller, but the writers do not seem to be interested in strengthening the process of investigation but more on establishing the pain felt by its protagonists, it is also to be noted that the inspector is not shown as fast thinking Indian Sherlock Holmes but a very human Mumbai Police officer. This makes the storyline or the case involved look simple; which is how probably real cases work. There need not be knots within knots just to prove the prowess of an investigator, I totally agree but the point of ‘big reveal’ is lost if you can see the ending from long distance. So that is perhaps why, I couldn’t take much from the film or to say it in other words Talaash did not create the effect that Yuddham Sei (also a film with a troubled police officer) had on me.

Or because the tagline of the film is, “the answer lies within” it should be seen not just as a thriller but also a sort of personal struggle. It is quite impossible to discuss the story further without giving away much of the plot.

And yes it is amazing how Zoya Akthar and Reema Kagti went from Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, that itself warrants Talaash a watch, also there is Kareena Kapoor and Nawazuddin Siddiqui(Two more reasons).

<click on the picture above to listen to the song, yes technology>

Categories
cinema cinema: hindi

OUR MAN FROM SAROJININAGAR

While I try desperately to come up with a title which references a another spy film, the extensive research tabs on my browser count up to five, if only Sriram Raghavan would also write his own review he would have come up with titles, multiple variations of ‘Never say never again’. But he keeps it simple here, a direct reference to a 1977 film which I know I can watch entirely on you tube.

But why do the directors take so much trouble in showing us from where they get their ideas from?

Agent Vinod begins with a Sergio Leone-esque dry land, where our man is captured in a rogue Afghan prison, much like the opening of Golden Eye in which Bond plays buddy cop; in Agent Vinod there is Ravi Kishen who keeps popping up acting more like Kato more than Sean Bean, so they prepare to give him a special appearance credit along with Gulshan Glover who walks in white like a man who has come get back some loaned money.

A Russian don gets killed and with him a secret known to the secret world as ‘242’ changes hands, our man who walks into RAW headquarters and has fleeting joke with an Indian Moneypenny is briefed briefly about the same. Thus begins his crash cruise through the world aided by an attractive Pakistani agent(Kareena Kapoor) going by many names. Will thewarring countries come together in saving the world? Or will they lose themselves in the process?

Reading through what I have typed in so far, I seem confused as to how approach in writing a piece on Agent Vinod.(I detest the word review, and how could a personal opinion be passed off as judgement) Should I indulge in length about the ‘Raabta’ sequence a clear homage to Scorsese or should I take a few critic like jokes on the wig of Ram Kapoor or the pony tail of Prem Chopra?

I truly enjoyed the film, with my minimum understanding of Hindi seventies pop culture I think I managed quite well, and I cannot speak on behalf of those who grew up on those films.

That brings us back to the original question of in-jokes and references/homages. Some things worked out quite fine, like calling a character after Indian model and Star Trek voyager Khambatta or the ‘Rakkamma Kayyathathu’ playing in the background while Vinod bashes up a Tamil, sometimes it doesn’t work or I hope to appreciate at a later age, Chaplin playing on the big screen at Riga. Wait was it Morocco? Through the course of the film Agent Vinod so many countries that you wonder that the makers will have trouble creating countries for the sequels (like Kamal and Sujatha attempted with Salamia in the much under-seen and derided Vikram).

Sometimes length is an issue.

As for the acting, I thought it was quite good considering the subject metter; Saif blends in as Agent Vinod and Kareena is adequate in the emotional scenes. Nobody expects Daniel Craig to accumulate nominations for playing Bond, so we should leave it at that.

And I take this opportunity to pass on some fact as advice to Sriram Raghvan, not that he doesn’t know. Here goes:

The man who made New York New York ultimately went on to make Goodfellas.

Sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss. It is OK.