Film Impressions

REVIEW: Chashme Buddoor and Chashme Baddoor

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.

PROFILE: Farooque Shaikh

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.

REVIEW: Listen Amaya

SAATH SAATH ONCE AGAIN

Millions go to the cinema to watch the likes of Salman Khan in trashy movies week after week, year on year. Some of us have waited decades to see Farooque Shaikh play the lead in a film. Just to hear the man say, "I love you" to his longtime screen companion Deepti Naval is well worth the price of a ticket for Listen Amaya. Why? Because when he speaks, the feeling gushes to the surface effortlessly and transcends the stagey atmosphere of this film.

REVIEW: Inkaar

CASE OF THE COP-OUT CLIMAX

Sudhir Mishra's Inkaar is a tough film to defend. Not the least because of its confused climax and an inconsistent performance by lead actress Chitrangada Singh. But it's also difficult to dismiss it on these counts alone, for there is much the screenplay packs in by way of the discord caused by women’s presence in the upper echelons of corporate life rather than working in secretarial positions or as subordinates to male bosses. There were, of course, issues of gender tension even in earlier times as portrayed in the middle cinema of the '70s, notably Basu Bhattacharya's Griha Pravesh and B R Chopra's Pati Patni Aur Woh in which male bosses develop an attraction for their female subordinates resulting in a domestic crisis. The gaze was male then, and it is so even now.

REVIEW: The Mad Tibetan––Stories from Then and Now

HUES AND REFLECTIONS

If Deepti Naval wasn't an acclaimed actress, perhaps her first collection of short stories The Mad Tibetan: Stories from Then And Now, would have received more attention for its content than the book release function. A compilation of 11 pieces––a mix of fiction, autobiography and travel writing—it's a deft tapestry of musings on the human condition.

You may not marvel at the writer’s flourish with the English language––although simplicity of expression is in fact, a highly underrated virtue––but are likely to be disarmed by her keen observation of life and empathetic world-view which embraces loners, madmen, prostitutes, tortured childhoods and birds, all in equal measure of concern. An ageing, Parkinson’s-afflicted piano tuner in Mumbai, struggling to make ends meet and keep his notes together––even as they “scuttled across the room, corner to corner, through the ceiling, against the damp walls and back”—sets the introspective tone of the compilation while Ruth Mayberry the screenplay writer in New York who “spoke slowly… and with grace, the one thing she never let go of”, completes the circle of life.

PROFILE: Deepti Naval

ART FOR HEART'S SAKE

Deepti Naval unexpectedly stormed into my life earlier this year through a film called Memories In March. It’s not as if one wasn’t already an admirer of her work in Ankahee, Main Zinda Hoon, Panchvati and Mirch Masala—and her more popular films Chashme Baddoor, Katha and Saath Saath. But this performance was unsettling because of its poise and calmness in a situation that warranted a far more overt display of emotion. The restrain was disturbing and moving at once.

A middle-aged woman grieving the death of an only son in a drunken accident, Aarti travels to Kolkata to collect his remains and stumbles upon a secret that shatters her—that he was gay and in a relationship with an older colleague (Rituparno Ghosh). As she tries to make sense of this revelation and cope with her grief, she conducts herself with remarkable grace and maturity; even when she has an angry outburst, she’s impassioned without being hysterical.

REVIEW: Memories In March

IN THE SHADOW OF A DEATH

Grief unfolds at a pace and manner of its own choosing. It's expression is unique to each individual and often, defies generalised perceptions. In Sanjoy Nag's trilingual film Memories in March, grief is the defining feature of Deepti Naval's face -- even when it looks outwardly composed, when it smiles, when it undertakes a mundane conversation with the building chowkidar. Or when it lashes out in rage against a shocking discovery -- even more shattering perhaps (at least momentarily so), than the news of her son Siddharth's death.