Film Impressions

ESSAY: In Cinemas This Week

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

If you’re an avid watcher of Bengali films (as yours truly) Rajesh Sharma would be a familiar face. Alternately, you may remember him as Silk’s ‘mentor’ in The Dirty Picture or the cynical Delhi cop in No One Killed Jessica. But Sharma, who slips seamlessly into just about every kind of character, finally gets a starring role in debutant Sameer Sharma’s Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana––a film quite like authentic slow-cooked gravy which may not be very attractive to look at, but leaves a delicious aftertaste nevertheless.

Rajesh Sharma (in background), Vinod Nagpal and Kunal Kapoor

BOOK: Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro—Seriously Funny Since 1983

As the cult film by Kundan Shah prepares for a Nov 2nd re-release, we take a look at the book on the film by Jai Arjun Singh.

SMALL FILM, GIANT FOOTPRINT

Anyone who has ever watched Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro—and frankly, one doesn't know a soul who hasn't—has their favourite moment from the film. The easiest to recall are the 'thoda khao thoda phenko' scene at Commissioner D'Mello's Madh Island bungalow, the loony telephone episode at Tarneja's house, a drunk Ahuja mistaking DeMello's coffin for a car and 'towing' it away, and the Mahabharata climax where the entire cast gatecrashes a live performance with Dhritarashtra periodically intoning in sheer frustration, 'ye kya ho raha hai?' as emperor Akbar makes an inexplicable guest appearance.

Naseeruddin Shah and Ravi Baswani in a scene from the iconic film

Now there are two happy coincidences for Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro fans. NFDC, which is reviving its classics on DVD has recently brought out a new edition complete with an add-on disc about the making of the film and an interactive game, and Delhi-based journalist Jai Arjun Singh has written a witty, entertaining book in the film's 30th year, chronicling its fascinating journey from a nutty idea in Kundan Shah's head to an insane black comedy that has now achieved cult status as a nihilist classic or simply great social satire.

ESSAY: The Inward Gaze

STORIES WE TELL and LIV & INGMAR

Cinema, by its very nature, is voyeuristic. We sit in the darkness and delve into peoples’ lives––in turn emerging from the imagination of others––and sometimes make an immediate connection with them like no other art form can achieve on a similar scale. But what happens when, instead of mining for inspiration in the outside world or within their fertile minds, filmmakers and/or actors turn the camera around and examine their own lives with, what may be described as, subjective detachment?

Two fascinating documentaries screened at the recently concluded Mumbai International Film Festival did just this with equally satisfying results. The first, Stories We Tell, is a film by Canadian actress/filmmaker Sarah Polley who discovered a few years ago that her father, Michael Polley, is in fact not her biological parent and that she was born out of wedlock when her actress mother Diane Polley had a relationship with another man while she was in Toronto for a play in the late ‘70s.

Sarah Polley filming 'Stories We Tell'

MAMI REVIEW: Ship of Theseus (2)

The film was screened as part of the 2012 Mumbai International Film Festival.

THE ESSENTIAL TRUTH

Through an aquamarine-tinted glimpse of an unseen Mumbai that is delectably photographed and appears to be thriving under the dust and the mayhem, and a seamless narrative that masterfully ties together three separate stories with the same soul, right through to the film’s stunning denouement, first-time director Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus provides us with evocative drama that is unhurried in pace but rich in emotional cadences—a slow trickle headed irrevocably towards a postscript that is flush with meaning.

A stirring potrayal by Aida Al-Kashef. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY TIFF

The central paradox on which Ship of Theseus hinges its narrative is derived from Plutarch’s query—whether a ship restored by replacing all its planks remained the same ship. Inversing it somewhat, Mr Gandhi applies the premise to the realm of organ donation, tracing a reverse genealogy of organs from a single man, recently deceased, which have been used to replenish other lives. Aida Al-Kashef, an Egyptian filmmaker in her first acting role, plays a photographer, startlingly expressive in her work when blind, but struggling with a perceived loss of spontaneity even as her restored eyesight allows her more tangible control over her craft. Neeraj Kabi is a monk who revels in his intransigence, refusing treatment for liver cirrhosis, because most pharmaceutical companies, whose drugs could cure him, have a track record of flagrant animal abuse, to which he objects stringently. Sohum Shah, also the producer of the film, is a stock-broker recently in receipt of a kidney transplant, who feels compelled to track down a laborer’s stolen kidney that he initially believed to be his own.

MAMI REVIEW: Ship Of Theseus

The film was screened as part of the 2012 Mumbai International Film Festival.

CONTEMPLATIVE CINEMA AT ITS BEST

Simply put, the Ship of Theseus paradox raises the question of whether an object which has had all its component parts replaced, remains fundamentally the same object. A later corollary asks that if all the parts of the said ship were re-assembled to create another ship, would it be restored to its original self? In philosophy, this paradox is linked to the basic existential question––who we are––and how much we change over the course of a lifetime, including perhaps, the very essence of us.

Aida El-Kashef soaking in the sounds of Mumbai. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY TIFF

Anand Gandhi’s debut feature film applies this paradox to create a work of rare philosophical depth and acute compassion towards the dilemmas of human existence, fraught with the burden of a thousand choices and awareness of the inherent inequities and injustice of modern society. The best of us, then, are liable to succumb, and yet, each of us has the potential for redemption.

REVIEW: Chakravyuh

CRISIS OF CONVICTION

Wikipedia.com describes Chakravyuh as a ‘Bollywood political thriller’ and that’s exactly what it is. Which is a shame, because the issue that Prakash Jha and his writer Anjum Rajabali address is among the most critical ones of our times––the rise of Naxal insurgency and its increasingly vocal and often violent clash with the establishment. Both sides have raised the pitch in recent years while corporate India waits in the wings to take over humungous tracts of mineral rich land traditionally inhabited by tribals who have displayed no desire to join the Indian mainstream. It is a fertile premise for a great story, but not for commercial cinema which demands simplification and entertainment regardless of plot considerations.

MAMI REVIEW: Shahid

The film was screened as part of the 2012 Mumbai International Film Festival.

THE MAKING OF A HERO

One walked into Hansal Mehta's new film Shahid at MAMI with hesitation. Mehta's track record was hardly reassuring––his best work before this was the uneven and only mildly amusing Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar with Tabu and Manoj Bajpayee, and that too was over a decade ago. Besides, there were four other films one could have chosen from.

Then again, there was the enigmatic Shahid Azmi, a 32-year-old criminal lawyer and human rights activist, killed in his Kurla office nearly three years ago, after he'd made a successful career of defending those he believed were wrongly accused and imprisoned for alleged terrorist activities without much evidence to justify their seemingly endless incarceration. In newspaper reports one often read of his 'controversial' past, involving a prison sentence, among other things. In short, Shahid was a fascinating character, although Mehta's film comes with a disclaimer that the narrative is a mix of fact and fiction. 

Raj Kumar Yadav in and as Shahid

REVIEW: Aiyyaa

A SNIFFING BORE!

In 2009 Sachin Kundalkar released Gandha, a collage of three stories, in each of which, the protagonist has a unique experience involving olfactory perception. The writer-director won a Best Screenplay National Award for this refreshing experiment. The first of these shorts is called Lagnachya Vayachi Mulgi about a dreamy, ordinary-looking girl from a conservative Pune family whose parents are desperate to get her married and keep lining up prospective grooms whom she summarily rejects. The walls of her room are adorned with photos of movie stars and she is seen dancing in imitation of Kajol from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.

REVIEW: Chittagong

BAND OF BOYS

While watching Ashutosh Gowariker's dud Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey a couple of years ago, one was left wondering why the director missed the most obvious narrative hook––to tell the story through the eyes of one of the impressionable young boys Surya Sen led to an astonishing and audacious uprising against the British Raj in Chittagong in the early 1930s. For one night and one day, the ragtag Indian Republican Army comprising a handful of committed leaders and a few dozen teenagers took over the entire city after they attacked the police lines, telephone exchange, railway line and armoury.

There were two crucial impediments to their complete success––they couldn't find the machine guns they badly needed in the armoury and because it was Good Friday, the European Club they'd planned to attack was deserted.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Manoj Bajpayee as Nirmal Sen and Surya Sen

REVIEW: English Vinglish

THE RETURN OF SRIDEVI

There are those who adore her without reservation and there are those who can't stand her (yes, they too exist). This writer's position is somewhere in between these two extremes. She is an entertaining actress in her best work––Mr. India, Lamhe, Chandni, Sadma, Chaalbaaz, in that order––and not the first South Indian to have thrived in Hindi cinema despite her thick accent, even though it hampers the complete acceptance of her as, say, Chandni from Shahjahanpur or Pallavi/Pooja from Rajasthan.