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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American History X

There's a moment early in the film where Derek (Edward Norton) ) has just mercilessly slaughtered two blacks, for having vandalized his car. And the police have surrounded him, and he has his hands behind the back of his head. And then he rises like a demi-God, a smirk on his face, with tattoos of a Swastika and barbed wires on his bare body. 

Danny, his younger brother, is looking on in fright, shock and awe. Derek looks at him in absolute triumph and then winks at him. The deed is done. And the police and the incarceration are just small prices to pay. And Derek, in the most subtle of pass-throughs, had just given his legacy of hatred and intolerance to his younger brother. 

On the face of it, American History X  is a seething document on racial discrimination. But deep inside, the film is about the origins of evil, and the influence which family has on us. 

We start our lives with clean slates, our hearts and minds eager to learn, ripe to be influenced. And the seeds of prejudice often come on the dining table: one comment of discrimination, and a mind could be warped forever. After things spin out of control, it becomes easy for Derek's father to tell his separated wife: "Doris, you don't know the world your children are living in." For he wouldn't remember how he himself had sown the seeds, which had now come into a full flowering of prejudice and hatred. 

The film moves between past (shot in stunning black and white) and present, as Danny writes a punishment-paper of "historical relevance" – his brother Derek's history. 

The film's set-pieces delve deeper and deeper into the origin of our true beings. The family discussion around the dining table is heart-stopping in its intensity. Derek is insistent how incidents of black-white disputes are being explained away and marginalized, as if "its not a riot, its rage; its not crime, its poverty."

Ironically, Derek than manhandles his sister, Devina, who doesn't like what he says, and a line is crossed. His mother tells him "I am ashamed that you came out of my body." And she asks him to leave the house.

The man-slaughter thereafter becomes just an extension of Derek's frustration and anger. 

But life changes people, just as they are influenced with people they accept in their lives. In the jail, it requires an innocent black partner to have Derek see what goodness can do. And a bunch of his earlier avatars to see the forms evil can take. And he understands what his mother meant when she comes to visit him at jail and says "You think you are the only one doing time?"

Derek is a changed man when he comes out of the jail. Even as he starts to negate his past, his past relationships, and draws closer to the family he had always treated with scorn, the past refuses to let go of him.

Family can mean a lot, indeed. When he starts to bond with Danny and seeks to pull his brother out of the mess he was getting into, both of them take down every remnant of their past from the walls, which they did not want as intrusions in their futures. 

But there was a circle of pain to be completed. Nature finishes a task, one way or the other. Tragedy falls, but in ways which are both stunning and heart-rending.

Danny, in his history and testament, says this, to close his essay: "Life's too short to be pissed off all the time. It's just not worth it." He quotes Abraham Lincoln: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."

As this remarkable film shows, its a sentiment easier said than done.

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Three Colours Red

Red is for love, passion, anger: emotions which connect people. But more than anything else, red is about warmth, which makes life livable, lovable.

"Three colours Red" is all about life, and its strange coincidental connections. And how a turn in a road leads to an amazing turn in one's life.

Valentine is a model who has a jealous boyfriend gone out of town. All she wants is "a life of peace and quiet" as she waits for him, and wears his jacket to sleep, to feel him near her. One night, as she runs over a dog, and meets Kern, the owner, to return the creature, life takes a turn. She finds Kern to be an eavesdropper of the telephone conversations of his neighbours.

Connections are found, connections are built. Pity is construed, disgust is found.

And when out of the turpitude, there arises honesty, there is also the strength of innocence which springs forth.

Valentine passes through hell when her life suddenly goes into an alley she doesn't understand, and what she stood for starts to unravel.

Valentine and Kerns, two strangers, alone, slightly adrift, find meaning, where none seem to exist.

When Valentine puts her palm over Kerns', on either side of a car window, she acknowledges how we seek - and find - intimacy and redemption in mysterious ways.

"Three colours Red" is an autumnal film of discovery. Of an old man who remembers an old love in an innocent girl and ruefully tells her "maybe you were the woman I never met". Its about a young woman who knows "something important" is happening to her, but she doesn't know what it is , and "is afraid." Its director Krzysztof Kieślowski's last film and his final golden testament to the mystery of relationships.

Against a background score which is sepulchral and haunting, the film is awash in warm earthly tones found in the leaves on the ground, as a setting sun's refracted slant, as a studio's red glow, as a dance class' chrome.

But above all this, is Irene Jacob's fragile presence as Valentine. Her face is a universe of emotions and her smile lights up lives. She gives this film of discovery, and rediscovery, a meaning and feeling which last far beyond the ordinary.

~ Sunil Bhandari
June 7th, 2010.
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The Two Jakes

Jake Gittes is a successful private detective. He has seen it all. He is cynical about life, sardonic about relationships: he is also insightful and sensitive. Corruption surrounds the world he inhabits, but, miraculously, it has not completely corroded his soul. As he says "In a town of lepers, I am the one with the most fingers."

And that, in this world, is both his strength and his Achilles Heel.

And this multi-layered man makes The Two Jakes a film-noir thriller with more than a mere thrill.

What seems like an open-and-shut case of marital infidelity and rage-murder, suddenly starts getting complex when a recording of the conversations of the adulterous wife and murdered man reveal a name which is right out of the tortured past of our detective Jake. Suddenly, there opens up a mystery - and an old wound.

As Jake delves in deeper, the reasons and the stakes turn out to be murkier. As Jake says, with irrepressible profundity: "Nine times out of ten, if you follow the money you will get to the truth."

But the greater mystery involves Jake's past: "You can't forget the past, anymore than you can change it." And as much as he let's his loins dictate what he does ("Put your ass up in the air: I am trying to be a gentleman here"), he gives in to the debilitating effect of remembrance ("Memories are like that: as unpredictable as nitro. You never know what will set them up.")

In the end, the thriller comes out with a trill of the heart. Rogues are secret heroes and self-annihilation is ultimately a noble sacrifice.

Complex, though languorous; intricately plotted, though sometimes overwrought; atmospheric, though under-directed at times; lush and beautifully scored, one cannot go wrong with a film where the adulterous woman totally refutes being an accomplice in premeditated murder by saying "I was honestly unfaithful".


~ Sunil Bhandari
June 9th, 2010
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Kites

Anurag Basu's ouevre is full of love in the shadows - and he manages to give anguish and understanding, instead of licentiousness, to the most basic of instincts and profane of relationships. His Murder, and more so, Life in Metro were landmarks of passion on the cliff-edge.

Hence he was the right person for this venture. Hrithik's stealing his betrothal's brother's to-be-bride from under the nose of the Mafia family's noses, was fraught with dangerous potential.

But, alas, he choses mush over edge, even when he had two full-bodied hot-blooded young stars ready to tear each other out. Instead of the dirty love-making the film was screaming for, we get virginal looks reminiscent of the squeaky-clean '70s.

And then, to make matters worse, the wisp of a story is not even given a bushy tail to wag.

But when one has given up on getting to see a great film, one sits back to check out the little pleasures. Mercifully, they do keep coming!

The film starts beautifully, interweaving the past and present. Hrithik's voice says "When kites fly together for too long they get cut." The barreness of the land is symptomatic of what is to come.

Hrithik's rake is seductive enough for a fragile Kangana to fall for. And his entry into her rich family starts the descent into deceit.

The first meeting of Hrithik with Mori, underwater, is beautifully filmed, with an Enya-like ululation playing out in the background, underlining the physicality of the tryst. Mori is a goddess worth the greek god.

And her boyfriend is, of course, a cad. He runs his hand over her thigh and says he flipped for her two legs leading to heaven. But at least he is honest in his grossness: the film's script is dishonest in having us believe that it is any different for Hrithik and Mori.

The Las Vegas sequences are deliberately garish, and Mori is a waif in the lights. And the rain-encrusted nights are beautifully captured. And so is Mori's knowing innocence.

The real tragedy here is the lack of connect between the lead players. Kangana's desperate love for Hrithik, delienated in just a couple of scenes has more authencity, than all the looks which the lead pair share. This is the most under-written part of the film, and a large reason for its lack of emotional resonance with the audience.

But the set-pieces come a-plenty.

The salsa dance is pulsating and cheoragraphed with panache, and itself worth the price of the ticket. The warmth of love-on-the-run glows in the way it builds. The landscapes of the song Zindagi do pal ki, Mori's and Hrithik's touching, kissing, the closeness and the radiance, along with the light-heartedness of the Mexico chapter are filmed with heart.

Unfortunately the chase scenes, which form a large part of the second half, fill you with a sense of deja vu, as uni-dimensional cops and villians try hard to make fools of themselves.

The penultimate scene is filmed in a white barren landscape against the blue sea, as Hrithik retraces - and follows - Mori's tragic fate.

The film ends where it started, under the sea, in a sepulchral, uplifting underwater dance of spirits. A scene which could have broken a viewer into pieces, only if, alas, it had been at the end of a full and fulfilling film.

~ Sunil Bhandari
Copyright © 2010 – All rights reserved.
May 28th, 2010

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Iron Man 2

Remember David Niven as James Bond in the spoof, Casino Royale (which came out much before Daniel Craig made it there with Eva Green)? That was a deliberate spoof and an atrocious film, unfunny, and immediately consigned to the dustbin of cinematic memory.

Well, here is Iron Man 2, an unfortunate - and undeliberate- spoof, in its very second outing.

A Russian is plotting against Iron Man with his own personal agenda. A rival American businessman is trying to make the Iron of the Man a national property. And Iron Man is dying, and he wants to spend the last days of his life boozing and partying and generally letting himself go.

Robert Downey can take the tragedy of a soul and make you feel the pain - that's his calibre. Here he plays out the insecurity and the sarcasm of his alter ego as a continuing joke. And he is joined in this unenterprising endeavour by almost every actor. Until it becomes one big unfunny comedy.

The story had some potential - with the chance to bring out the angst of an arrogant Super Hero suddenly finding himself to be mortal, and the delicious Scarlett Johansson being set up for potential romance.

But the tethered story-writing and the untethered (and under-directed) Downey (showing more of his arrogance as an actor than that of his character), make the film sink.

Tragically, the best action set-piece belongs not to him but to Scarlett Johansson, who delivers some superb blows as she gets into the villian's lair. The final confrontation is tame and yawn-inducing.

With Gwyneth Paltrow, Samuel Jackson, Mickey Rourke, and Scarlett Johansson, if this is what they make of their franchise, Iron Man is already rusted.

~ Sunil Bhandari
Copyright © 2010 – All rights reserved.
May 8th, 2010


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The Hurt Locker

Films are ultimately experiences. They touch a nerve, mostly tangibly, often intangibly. Some films hit you with a bat; some creep astride ( and then inside) you. And then there's The Hurt Locker, a film which does both.

A military squad in Iraq, which the film follows episodically, is doing a job of defusing bombs. One of the soldiers discovers tragedy. Another counts his days to escape. And yet another finds the job to be his personal escape.

Its all attitude. It could be another day in the office, with different people just doing their jobs in their own way. But this is war - a different kind of an office.

And that's what the film is all about. In its edge-of-the-seat construction, it brings in its layers and sub-texts.

The psychology of a passion, when life is taken over and everything else matters little. When what you do (here: work inside a pressure cook) gets inside you so completely that it touches your very soul. And leaves you cold to the warmest of human connections. War becomes drug.

And in its realization of this grim idea comes the reality of what a war can make of a person.

Its a frightening, liberating and an imprisoning thought. And that's what this film is.




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