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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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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