Waltz With Bashir

A haunting movie, on the effects of war on men.

Awash in ochre shades and sepulchral music, it reminds us that wars can only minimize us as human beings ~


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The Green Hornet

Good for a few laughs, with your kid (or for the kid inside ), but woefully short on all counts.

Written shallowly, with actors with zero charisma, its combo of action-n-humour is just not punchy or corny enough ~
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Dhobi Ghat

What do we see films for ?

To enter lives of people, to feel their feelings, to experience the dramas of their changing seasons. And to wonder at the amazing diversity of choices which people have - and end up living their lives with.

Dhobi Ghat is about the lives four people choose to live in one metropolis, where the crowds ensure you can pass each other at a whisker's distance, and not know about the other's presence.

Arun (Aamir Khan) is a reclusive artist. Shia (Monica Dogra) is an investment banker from the States on sabbatical. Munna (Prateik Babbar) is a dhobi and a wannabe actor. And Yasmin (Kriti Malhotra) is a Muslim newly-wed.
And they are all part of a city which gives them either recognition or anonymity, sometimes by choice, sometimes by happenstance.

Connect. Change. Be changed. Part.

But its easy to connect to human-ness, whatever the background of the characters in a film. It's both a strength and a weakness of thi film, that none of the protagonists have darkness in their souls. It makes them likeable, but also renders the drama a trifle effete. Thus things happen to people in spite of them being good. And they react the way good people do - tremoulously, tentatively, by flight, by withdrawal , or simply by permanently exiting.

But is there change in any of the characters as the film reaches the end? Have the incidents they have gone through changed them in ways good or bad? Alas, no.

The slice of their lives shown in the film remains a surface examination of the incidents and feelings of the characters: some tears, yes, but no red blood corpuscles on show.

But what the film loses in drama, is made up in empathy. There is a huge affection which the director has for her characters, and it shows in every shy smile and gesture of theirs.

Munna is an absolute sweetheart. He carries his status of a dhobi lightly, and doesn't let it overwhelm his relationship with the upper-class Shia. Similarly, Shia is sensitive to Prateik's feelings, in spite of her love for Arun. Both are characters well-delineated and enacted. But surely, the most poignant is Yasmin, the newly-wed who is seen entirely in video, and who enters our lives with stars in her eyes and leaves (and leaves us behind) with tears.

The most unsatisfactory - and the most surprising - part is that of Aamir. Underwritten, and lacking depth, one doesn't know what he feels or stands for. No amount of star-power - or brooding aloneness by the sea-side - can overcome a character which is poorly defined.

To make up for this one weakness is the incredible charecterisation of Bombay. It is a hideaway, a place for voyeurs, for a man to hide behind multiple pursuits or an upperclass woman to be friends with a washerman; but it is also a place so small that there is no one to reach out to, when one needs it most.

Finally, a film is as good as what it makes you feel. And this one brings a lump in the throat. There is delicacy and understatement - and the story is so obviously from the heart.

But it also makes you leave the dining table with the feeling there was a course served less. The rounding off is too little, the drama slight. It has its moments, but is not memorable.

~ Sunil Bhandari
Copyright © 2010 – All rights reserved.
January 23rd, 2011

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Autograph

As Arun Chatterjee (Prosenjit) leaves Srini's flat, after she refuses to go out with him, and Srini (Nandana Sen) asks him to stay on so that she and her director-boyfriend Shubho (Indraneill) can drop him home, he notices the dinner- table set for two. He turns and says "Let me go now, for anyway, I have to leave - ultimately."

It's the superstar Arun Mukherjee's sad autograph on a loveless life. And first- time director Srijit's autograph of finding significance in minutiae.

Taking a mere idea from the legendary "Nayak", Srijit weaves a story of hubris, obsession and integrity. And how, as a man finds a dream, he in turn often loses his soul.

Prosenjit is the superstar who wants to prove that his name is enough to put the marque on fire. And for him the way to prove it, is his adoption of a new director, and even becoming his producer. For wouldn't then he be the center of all attention - and prove that he makes or unmakes a film, irrespective of the director?

The chosen heroine is the director's live-in girlfriend, Srini. And as the filming of the story commences, the layers of the characters start unravelling. And the edifice of relationships start crumbling.

It is a trusim that our deepest feelings are what define us - and give us our inner success or failure, outward success notwithstanding. Thus, Arun Mukherjee's soul carries burdens which put his life into a permanent penumbra.

And then, one lonely drunk evening, he pours his heart out to Srini.

But just as radiance comes in the outpouring, the shadows build exactly where the sun shines brightest.

The irony of life is glaring, because just when the confession of the lowest point of a life results in redemption, the pendulum swings to the person who is ready to scrap the bottom of the moral barrel to reach the top.

First-time director Srijit's narrative is assured and beautifully layered, as the film's reality tears into life's fictions.

He uses side-characters as mirrors for his principal protagonists: a married couple on the tenous nature of a live-in relationship, an old production assistant to signify intolerance, an aging actor to be shown his place, and a beggar-boy to be reminded he's trash.

As Arun and Srini build a tentative, soulful closeness, Shubho seems to give space for growth to the person he's closest to - until the final ironical twist on the real nature of generosity.

In a film which starts with hubris in a superstar and ends with a recognition of kindred souls, its not of little significance that the turnarounds and the unravellings are heart-rending and true.

And nothing is as expected.

Truly, rare is this film which combines cinema sensibility with such heart-felt sensitivity.

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Robot

The great Indian sci-fi, with the greatest Indian alien, Rajnikanth!

With an intriguing concept- a robot with feelings, falling in love with the scientist's girl-friend, Aishwarya - and going haywire when rejected.

150 crores is spent like a nouvea riche - a Transformers made in Chennai! But with enough high drama, heightened emotions, corny humour, special effects and song-and-dance, to make it the masala film to go into guessing and to come out grinning!


October 10, 2010
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The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

As always, its a killer to read the novel first. The excitement goes, expectation increases. And who cares even if objectivity increases!

Right up, THE question - Noomi Rapace is, indeed, a fine Lisbeth Salander. Mean, gutsy, sly, idiosyncratic, and - yours only on her own terms.

The film is, happily, largely faithful to the novel, eschewing most of the side-plots and happenstances, without losing impact - except for one romance, which I will come to, in just a while.

The tale is, of course, of a disgraced journalist being called in by the scion of an industrial empire to solve a 40-year old case of the disappearance of his 16-year old niece.

The story unfolds at an even pace, as Mikael (Michael Nyqvist), the journalist, slowly pieces together strands of the old case. This is juxtaposed with an elaborate introduction of Lisbeth - a sleuth ostensibly, but truly an expert hacker - and what makes her so fascinating - her encounters in the sub-way, her clash with her official guardian, her interactions at work as a researcher. What this elongated piece does is to help the viewer delve into the psyche of Lisbeth, and also gives the film its adrenalin, amidst Mikhail's plodding and pottering.

Rapace is fascinating. And the screenplay nicely puts forth the contradictions and vulnerabilities of her character. Opposite her, Nyqvis' Mikael is effectively tired and beaten. His eyes reflect defeat which slowly grow in confidence, as the case starts to unravel.

The plot itself has its share of red herrings, religious references and depravities - which are par for the course for a decent thriller.

The major grouse comes in the form of the total exclusion of the book's fascinating relationship between Mikael and Erika, the magazine Millinium's editor. Its an absence which makes not only the romantic liasion of the film linear, but also robs the film from the story's complexity of relationships. Maybe that would have weighed down heavily on the structure of the film, but then - it would also have elevated the film onto a sociological plain, instead of being just a thriller with fascinating characters.

Until that is hopefully resoved in subsequent films, we need to double over from the sudden kick in the groin - or lie back and revel in the unexpected pleasure there - courtesy Lisbeth's mood!

~Sunil Bhandari
September 4, 2010
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The Wooden Camera

Hidden amongst hundreds of films made every year, are little gems, which sadly just do not get the viewing-attention and viewer-numbers which they truly deserve. "The Hidden Camera" from South Africa is one such film.

Charming, exuberant, and disturbing, this film delves into the racial ambivalence of South Africa, and a child's life, heart and mind, with rare sensitivity. Through the bonding and love of four black children – Madiba (the young hero of the film), Louise (his sister), Sipho (Madiba's dearest friend); and one white girl from a privileged family, Estelle, the entire spectrum of a nation's prejudices and a child's growing pangs and ambitions, are put into a fast-moving narrative.

Madiba and Sipho find a gun and a video camera on the body of a dead man who is thrown off a train. Sipho keeps the gun (with one bullet) and Madiba keeps the camera. And their lives change forever. Madiba hides the camera in a wooden box so the folks in his slum do not get enticed to it. And Sipho finds the power of a drawn gun very quickly.

One starts shooting the world around him digitally – and finds romance and magic in the most mundane of images of everyday life. And the other finds how people can be relieved of their belongings with just a flash of a weapon. The trajectory of their lives takes off on different planes.

And then Madiba, whilst shooting in Cape Town, encounters a white girl, Estelle, who steals a book for him, and gives it to him, as she speeds away in a huge car. Estelle is an unusual white girl: she reads Malcom X, has her walls covered with posters which say "We will stand by our rights", and pierces her nose because "(I) like it and it drives (my ) parents crazy"!

Madiba shoots everything and everywhere. Some of the best moments of the film come as he learns the power of a moving shot by getting a friend to pull him on a wheel barrow, and learns about the magic of lenses by shooting through colored plastic pieces.

The conflicts come in the form of Estelle's racist father, who can't stand blacks; and Sipho's taste for easy money. The denouements of both are immensely moving and shocking.

The film brings out the intense tension of the confrontations which poor kids face on a day-to-day basis as they go about their lives, and the challenges which an auteur faces in a world where there is no saying where the next morsel of food will come from.

The grime and the energy of the slum area are established with disarming and graceful charm. The friends, as they form relationships, who judge not before loving; and the siblings, as they enjoy each other's company, are etched effortlessly. Even as Sipho steals and kills, and Estelle fights and protests with her father, their intrinsic innocence and faultless view of the world never falters.

The final scenes of the railways tracks, as Madiba and Estelle set out to find their own world and way, are a testimony of a spirit which seeks its own rules and answers, as also of the infinite search for truth and beauty. And this film finds both in abundance.

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