DEAD PEOPLE WALKING
According to Wikipedia.com, a zombie is “an animated corpse resurrected by mystical means, such as witchcraft. The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotised person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli.” The latter part of this definition fits two of the three protagonists of Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK’s hilarious Go Goa Gone more accurately than the ‘real’ zombies who show up later in the film.
CINEMA OF DELUSION
Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD
Towards the middle of Bombay Talkies, in Dibakar Banerjee’s short film, Star, actor-in-exile Sadashiv Amrapurkar emerges Yoda-like from a dumpster, every dint a doyen of Marathi theatre, unusual abode notwithstanding. Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays Purandar, his son or protégé (as seen in Banerjee’s Oye Lucky Lucky Oye with Paresh Rawal’s character, Amrapurkar is presented as an amalgam of a man’s father figures). Purandar has chanced upon a part in a big film, with just an exclamation by way of dialogue. Still he submits himself to a semblance of rehearsal, mostly by mouthing the filmi lines that are a part of every bit actor’s repertoire. The ‘father’ emerges as a taunting hallucination, and Amrapurkar, tantalisingly in his element, draws nuance from bombast, and breaks down the tenets of raw performance that may well be beyond Purandar’s reach. Purandar is a never-has-been, an eternal ham whose funny faces and odd tales even his daughter doesn’t find funny anymore, although he has tasted blood on stage in the distant past. He lives dissolutely in a chawl, and is an object of much amusement amongst its residents, not least because he keeps an emu as a pet, and the daily barbs add to the din of ridicule that seems to inform his life.
IN WITCH KONKONA RETURNS
Kannan Iyer’s directorial debut, Ek Thi Daayan, co-written and co-produced by Vishal Bharadwaj, comes with a curious disclaimer––“This film is a work of fiction and doesn’t stereotype women as witches”––which is greeted with guffaws by the sparse audience. It’s a relevant concern that stereotyping women will only worsen their lot (and daayan, like chudail, is a potent word in our cultural context), but such a disclaimer is hardly the remedy.
LIFE, DEATH AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN
We often describe our films as ‘melodramatic’, literally meaning a combination of melody and drama––a heightened representation of emotional states, achieving climax and offering collective catharsis to an audience. Melodrama synthesises social criticism with mythical archetypes thereby enabling the viewers (diverse sections of them, as another essential ingredient of this genre is the near absence of psychological depth) to see the follies of men and institutions combined with the triumph of virtue and punishment of vice. The audience’s involvement with the characters’ journey is critical to the success of the genre.
SHE’S THE MAN
Sai Paranjpye has been conspicuous by her absence from the hullabaloo around her 1981 cult comedy Chashme Buddoor. You can speculate on her reasons though the obvious one that comes to mind is the very idea of remaking a film that’s still so fresh, both in content and treatment, and then handing it over to David Dhawan. No offence to Mr. Dhawan, but a closer reading of the original will reveal healthy contempt for the cinema he practices, or at least that of his predecessors which leads young men like Omi (Rakesh Bedi) and Jomo (Ravi Baswani) to believe that girls of all hues are stupid enough to fall for their scarce charms and a little heckling in the line of courtship is par for the course.
Continue reading "REVIEW: Chashme Buddoor and Chashme Baddoor" »
ON WATCHING SAHEB BIWI AUR GANGSTER RETURNS
What do audiences take home from films like Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster Returns? I, for one, came away with a headache. Tigmanshu Dhulia perhaps wanted to critique contemporary India’s fungible moralities and the absence of valour even in blue-blooded descendants of erstwhile princely states (of course he'd already done so effectively enough in Part 1, but still...). In a superb tragicomic scene the gangster (Irrfan Khan) struggles with a rusty knife to pledge his blood towards restoring family honour before the pockmarked bust of his ancestor. It’s unambiguous irony––among a few such clever moments––but for those who’ve seen the film, it’s also a dead giveaway that the SBAG franchise may even spawn a third edition, particularly if reports of an encouraging box-office opening are true. In a newspaper interview published last weekend Dhulia confessed that he only made the film for commercial reasons.
Continue reading "ESSAY: Of Franchise Films And The Dilemma Of Dissoluteness" »
THE MAN WHO COULD SAY ‘NO’
Last month I sent Farooque Shaikh an impulsive message after watching his latest release Listen Amaya for the second time. It was an uncharacteristic gesture and the idea was merely to compliment his work. Most actors don’t respond to smses from strangers. He did so within minutes––a warm and courteous one in his unique shorthand which I gradually learnt to decipher. Actors also don’t grant interviews to small-time journalists who run obscure websites that few people read (especially if they themselves are technologically challenged and don’t even know how to switch on a computer). Yet I found myself at his house this week and ended up falling in love with the man after a two-and-a-half hour marathon chat about everything and nothing.
THOUGHTLESS AND POINTLESS
There is a human face to every tragedy––even the most violent and horrific ones. A filmmaker has the right to choose his stories and the points-of-view from which he narrates them. For instance, Ramgopal Varma may have a greater fascination for the 10 terrorists who landed in Mumbai on 26/11 than any of their victims or those who tried to capture them. Fair enough. Then he must delineate the story from their perspective, giving us a real sense of who these people were, where they came from and their compulsions and motivations. Also how they lived through the ensuing carnage. What instructions did their handlers give them while the attacks were underway? How did they cope with the tension and the uncertainty? Was there any regret, remorse or fear? And ultimately, after nine of them died and Ajmal Kasab was captured alive, what transpired till the time he was hanged?
A WORLD WITHOUT WOMEN
Kai Po Che wouldn't be the first Hindi film to fail the Bechdel Test for Women in Movies. Spectacularly too. Nor would it be the last. Male-bonding and undying love between the boys is one of our most enduring themes. But Kai Po Che is a good place to start applying the Bechdel to our cinema. The test involves asking three basic questions––1) Are there at least two women characters in the film with distinctive names (which means they are identifiable as individuals and not just as Ma, Behna, Bitiya etc.), 2) Do these women talk to each other (if they share screen time it means they are relevant enough to the screenplay as individuals, as is their relationship with each other) 3) Do they talk to each other about anything except the men in their lives (to gauge if their existence has any importance beyond their relationships with men)?
WHEN FEEL-GOOD DOESN'T FEEL RIGHT
*Spoiler Alert
Despite its thoroughly entertaining exposition and great period detailing (how I’d love going back to the computer/mobile-free ‘80s with just two state-manufactured cars, HMT watches and all the inconveniences of the License Raj! But that’s misplaced idealism too…), something about Neeraj Pandey’s Special 26 left me feeling disturbed.
Continue reading "ESSAY: Special 26-The Raju Hirani Connection" »
