Film Impressions

ESSAY: A Life Observed

TWENTY FIVE YEARS AND COUNTING

It would be silly to reiterate my obsession with Smita Patil, which, if anything, has only intensified with the passage of time. Yesterday was her 25^th death anniversary and still the wound refuses to heal. It’s not just a date on the calendar, but a marker for a loss that seems personal and irreparable even for someone who never met her.

Yet it’s heartening to know that I am not alone.

A few hundred people queued up outside Ravindra Natya Mandir last evening for a programme called ‘Moortimant Asmita’ which Smita’s friend and biographer Lalita Tamhane has conceived in her memory. The hall filled up in no time and people were packed in all corners, spilling into the aisles and standing against walls. Smita’s parents were present too and gracious enough to speak of their daughter, even when it was evidently painful for them to do so. Vidya Patil’s face still looks ravaged like that one tragedy literally brought her life to a standstill. “It would be impossible to cope with the loss, but for Prateik’s presence,” she said, visibly moved. “But the pain doesn’t go away for even a moment and the only heartfelt wish is that Smita's son (who she candidly recalls was wayward and difficult till not so long ago) does her proud.”

ESSAY: Why Helen is my Idol

Our guest contributor, Canadian drag queen Muffy St Bernard writes about the Helen who’s her idol. The article originally appeared in Bombay Dost magazine.

I DON’T know who Helen is. I have only seen a few of her films. I've never read Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb. I don't follow gossip columns here in Canada or abroad. I couldn't see her documentary before this article was due, and even if I could have, I don't think I would have wanted to because I hate doing research. But I don't need any of that information to explain why Helen is one of my idols.

Muffy St Bernard appears courtesy of DMent. Outfit is by Lydia Bellenie of Delirium Clothing, based on the one worn by Helen during the "Baithe hain kya" number in Navketan’s Jewel Thief (1967). Hair by Melissa Baumunk  of Brown Salon  (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada). Photography by Jenn Wilson

ESSAY: The Lost Oeuvre of Kareena Kapoor

A version of this article was featured on Firstpost

Given yet another 100-crore bonanza at the turnstiles, Kareena Kapoor seems set to extend her grip on the transitory mantle of the No.1 actress. In her free time, she's probably sitting with her legs up, between sipfuls of orange juice and carefully calibrated portions of jungli mutton so favored by the Kapoors, balancing rag dolls of the five Khans (as precious to her as an array of Oscar statuettes) on her knees, picking the one who is to be anointed her ‘absolute favorite’ come the time such-and-such film needs to be promoted in the kind of  marketing overdrive that makes engorgingly successful cinema from even such pap as Bodyguard and Ra One. But she’s probably never allowed to forget that for a really long time she was just Lil’ Miss Jinx (in the grand tradition of box-office poison like Meenakshi Sheshadri and Raveena Tandon).

Catch glimpses of the lost films of Kareena Kapoor in this special Film Impressions slideshow above. Use the arrows to navigate.

ESSAY: The Importance of Being Parents

NO CHILD'S PLAY

Four recent films, including the French entry for the forthcoming Oscars, bring modern-day parenting into sharp focus. The first speaks of the will, determination and triumph of a couple whose infant son is diagnosed with a rare and potentially fatal brain tumour, the next two are darker, because they involve things done by children either to harm others or themselves, which the parents are left to grapple with, and the fourth is about how the world intervenes in a parent-child relationship.

Valérie Donzelli's La Guerre Est Declaree (Declaration of War) is based on her own true-life experiences, which lends even greater poignancy to the narrative. A striking feature of her approach to this potentially melodramatic subject is to inject the screenplay with several moments of light-hearted cheer instead of sinking into the gloom of dejection. Valerie herself plays Juliet to Jérémie Elkaïm's Romeo ("We're in for a terrible destiny," she jokes—the actor is also the father of her child and in a sense this must be a first where a couple relive their past on screen) an unconventional duo who move in together, have a baby and are wrapped in domestic bliss when they realise all is not well with their son Adam.

REPORT: 13th MAMI Film Festival (3)

FESTIVAL OF SIGHT & SOUND WINDS DOWN

As the 13th MAMI Film Festival ends, we pick a few more of the gems strewn across the week-long event, marred by a few organisational glitches, but still a satisfying experience for film junkies.

Na Hong-jin's second film, The Yellow Sea is an explosion of sounds, fast-paced visuals and beautifully edited montages of chases and car crashes, implausible, yet rivetting. It's as though you want to believe even though the plot is just too far-fetched because the filmmaker infuses the screenplay with a pace and purpose that deserves respect—for two-and-a-half hours we are tied in with the destiny of a debt-ridden ethnic Korean-Chinese taxi driver living in an impoverished province of China who is forced to take on a hit job in Seoul because he needs the money and also to search for his missing wife. Things spiral out of control as expected and what starts off as a slow-burning thriller, ends in an eruption of senseless violence with blood and guts spilling out at every turn as machetes and axes go on a rampage. 

REPORT: 13th MAMI Film Festival (2)

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

This year's edition of the MAMI film festival is now winding down. These have been hectic days running between venues, queuing up, eating bad multiplex food, watching three to four films back-to-back and returning home bleary-eyed, but in a pleasant daze. The key to a successful film festival is doing your research well enough to know which venue to hit and which line to join in order to maximise your happiness quotient. To that extent, this one has been a very rewarding event with hardly any misses (Restless for example) and many satisfying films.

There was a largish package from the US comprising a mix of indie films, mainstream star-heavy features and a couple of documentaries. Errol Morris' documentary Tabloid delves into an incident that typifies yellow journalism about a small-time American beauty queen chasing her Mormon lover all the way to London, kidnapping or picking him up (depending on point-of-view) and taking him to a cottage where she was locked up with him for three days. The girl, Joyce McKinney, was briefly imprisoned and became the toast of the British and American tabloid press for a while.

REPORT: 13th MAMI Film Festival

A MIXED BAG

The 13th edition of the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image's film festival got underway on Thursday in Mumbai with much fanfare and as many glitches. Year on year, while the size and buzz has got bigger, basic organisational issues haven't been resolved. For instance, delegates can't be sure to get a catalogue of the films being screened, because there just aren't enough copies around. Somebody forgot to count the number of passes they'd issued and then order as many copies.

But that's not as bad as the problems with various screenings on the second day when the festival was meant to take off in earnest at a new multiplex venue. The screening of Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse turned into a cruel farce with the entire opening voice-over droning on without subtitles, followed by strange aspect ratio experiments and continued absence of subtitles resulting in a walkout by miffed delegates. On other screens there were other problems. But like good cinema addicts, we plodded on patiently. As we know in India, things usually get worse before they get better.

SPOTLIGHT: India at the Toronto Film Fest

At any film festival, it is always interesting to find out what the films that deal with Indian themes, whether diasporic or local, have to say about us as a culture. Usually the mainstream cinema we are accustomed to, supplants our cultural identity with a manufactured one that is woefully one-dimensional (all that spice-loving singing and dancing). Luckily, that kind of cinema is under-represented at most prestigious international festivals. That's when a different kind of picture emerges—something more rich and diverse—that for a second the miscellany almost fleetingly represents a kind of 'national' cinema that a country of such immense contradictions surely deserves. Here are ten films that form the 'unofficial Indian selection' at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Please wait for the slideshow to load, and navigate using the 'next' and 'previous' links. A non-tech version of this page for mobile users is available here

ESSAY: The Curse of the Cerebral Woman

WHERE ARE THE CLEVER WOMEN?

While browsing through titles at a Crossword’s in Mumbai, I came across a book that carried a recommendation by the actress Gul Panag. Now, ordinarily publishers would quote such worthy progenitors of good taste as the New York Review of Books, or the color supplement of The Hindu or even that most prolific of ‘blurbers’—Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. It wasn’t quite a ringing endorsement either. Panag said, of the book, “It’s such a quick read that I’m surprised I didn’t finish it earlier.” Quite cleverly back-handed there, and I’m sure she totally gets the irony, because although celebrities are now ubiquitous at book launches and readings (that’s the sideline that keeps them afloat), they’re usually not the go-to people for literary seals of approval. Not to take anything away from Panag, she is considered one of the few ‘thinking’ actors out there, but that blurb did still seem a little out of whack.

ESSAY: Why Women Can't Have Their Own 'Buddy Film'

AND OTHER SUCH TRIVIAL DILEMMAS

This week sees the release of yet another buddy film—Zoya Akhtar's Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara about the adventures of three friends on a road trip in Spain living for the moment and revelling in time spent together. Ever wonder why there isn’t much evidence of great friendship between women on the Hindi screen? Like a Jai-Veeru or Akash-Sam-Sid, who bond, hang out, share everything and have a solid relationship to the exclusion of everyone else in their lives, including girlfriends and wives?

Kudiyon Ka Hai Zamana was an Indian take on Sex & The City