Film Impressions

REVIEW: Eat Pray Love (2)

AND WHINE SOME

The book may have been a bestseller, the film version of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love -- even with Julia Roberts’ star power -- is a tedious bit of drudgery about a woman who has a seemingly perfect life, but is unhappy anyway.  The solution to all ‘female’ problems as characters at several points of the story tell ‘Liz,’ is a man.  Right… but is there a need to go whining over three countries, when a single’s bar in New York could serve the same purpose.

If a woman wants to go eating, praying, loving her way to self-discovery, nobody would have a problem with that, just don’t make it sound as if the world should care.

REVIEW: The American (2)

THE SILENT MAN

George Clooney has reached the kind of iconic star status where he is routinely voted sexiest man alive, gets a pick of films, can move and shake things in Hollywood. It is understandable that he is tempted by a film in which he gets to be still and implacable; tempted enough to want to produce it.

Directed by the Dutchman Anton Corbijn, The American is a slow, spare film about an assassin who wants to get way from it all. But now someone wants to kill him, and there is one last job to be done for a mysterious woman who wants a custom made weapon.

REVIEW: Crook

IT'S BAD TO BE CLUELESS

In recent months, the attacks on Indians in Australia have been splashed over the media and created an atmosphere of fear and panic in the Indian community.  It was gratifying to see that a Bollywood film -- Crook: It’s Good to be Bad --was made so quickly on the topical subject.

The anticipation soon turns to alarm when Mohit Suri comes up with a bizarre, totally unresearched film, and emerges with the theory that Indians are responsible for the attacks on themselves, because they refuse to assimilate.

REVIEW: Do Dooni Chaar (2)

THEY ARE FAMILY

Every middle class family that knows what it is like to stretch the family budget will identify with the Duggal family in Habib Faisal’s Do Dooni Char.

Rishi and Neetu Kapoor Kapoor, a glamorous star couple in real life, play the beleaguered Santosh and Kusum Duggal. He is a schoolteacher whose meagre income, in spite of moonlighting at a coaching class, barely covers basic expenses and the growing demands of teenage kids Sandeep (Archit Krishna) and Payal (Aditi Vasudev). The old fridge groans, the new TV is just a dream, and fancy things like ipods are not even considered.

REVIEW: Do Dooni Chaar

A PLEASANT RIDE

When was the last time you saw a family in a Hindi film that looks like a family and not like over-made up, over-acting stars and wannabes pretending to be one? How often do we see a film these days, that talks of decency, honesty and simplicity as virtues and not inconvenient tics that need to be discarded in the interest of material progress? For that matter, why has the great Indian middle-class disappeared almost entirely from celluloid and been replaced by shallow aspirational fantasies of mindless consumerism where even the poor wear leather jackets and the rich live in the US? 

First-time director Habib Faisal's Do Dooni Chaar is perhaps the first film of its kind after Khosla Ka Ghosla (2006). It's a lighter, sweeter film, but the atmosphere and setting is much the same. It also marks the return to screen of the charming Neetu Singh alongside husband Rishi Kapoor, 30 years after their youthful romantic films. Watching these two effortless actors in a small, unfussy vehicle that rides entirely on their charisma, serves a painful reminder of the acute paucity of talent in contemporary cinema.

REVIEW: Eat Pray Love

INSTANT KARMA

Julia Roberts' Liz Gilbert travels all the way from New York to Bali to find Javier Bardem. Who wouldn't? After all, a woman's quest for purpose can only end with a man, isn't it? That she's as good-looking as Ms. Roberts, even in her '40s, helps. The cause of her existential angst or mid-life crisis can only be described as 'ennui of the affluent'. She's a travel writer who's seen half the world. She's living a comfortable life in NY with a husband (Billy Crudup) who appears no worse than any other. Maybe she doesn't think he's meant for her.

Before which, there's been a prediction by a toothless Balinese soothsayer that she'll have two marriages, one long, the other short. She dumps Crudup then, with the platitude, "The only thing more impossible than staying, was leaving." Of course Eat Pray Love is adapted from a best-selling self-help book by Elizabeth Gilbert. But did it need to be littered with so many pat truisms? 

REVIEW: Khichdi The Movie

POTLUCK

At least, filmmakers are looking in different directions for inspiration—Khichdi The Movie is the first  television sitcom to be adapted into a movie in India.  Friends, or Sex In The City it ain’t but the film, written and directed by Aatish Kapadia who also created the sitcom, has its share of madcap moments.

The characters in the series--the ineffectual patriarch and his idiotic brood--have all the quirks of a Gujarati family, even though people as moronic as these would be difficult to imagine—or rather imagine a whole lot of Rowen Atkinsons and Jim Careys on speed, but dressed in Indian costumes.

REVIEW: Anjaana Anjaani (2)

DIE ANOTHER DAY

Before one actually gets down to looking at Anjaana Anjaani,  there are a few questions.  Like why are so many mainstream filmmakers making what look like English films in Hindi. Can’t simple love stories take place in Indian? Is there nowhere to take a road trip in this big, wide country?

American films have barely begun to acknowledge the existence of Indians in the US, but in our made-in-America (or any other foreign location), Hindi speaking Indians are everywhere. People living and working in the West, routinely speak to each other in unaccented Hindi and even address strangers in this language, when there’s no means of knowing if the other person is of Indian origin.  But apart from all this annoying sheen of artifice, the designerwear clad characters, consuming gallons of alcohol and dancing in nightclubs (to Hindi songs) wearing really tiny outfits, sleeping in the same bed, are actually all desi at heart— the guy and the girl are coyly waiting for the right person, to, you know, ummm, do it!

DVD REVIEW: Helen (2009)

ANATOMY OF DEPRESSION

If you've ever battled the twin demons of depression and anxiety, Sandra Nettelbeck's Helen will hold a painful, yet cathartic mirror to your face. You'll see your abject helplessness and despair in Ashley Judd's brittle, crumbling frame, in what's another case of an astonishing performance going unnoticed at big award ceremonies. If you haven't, it'll expose you to the horrors of psychological disorders and their devastating effect both on the patient, as well as those around her. Mental illness isn't quite the same thing as physical ailments and somehow, the understanding and acceptance of people in such situations (their numbers are stealthily growing) comes only through a process of rigorous sensitisation. It's not easy for the best of us to cope with it, and even more, to live with it on a daily basis.

REVIEW: Robot

CHITTI CHITTI BANG BANG

At various points in Shankar's Robot, you hear lines such as,

"Main paida nahin hua, banaya gaya hoon"

"Ye akela sau ke baraabar hai"

"He's superb, what a lovely creation!"

And these are all with reference to Chitti, an andro-humanoid robot (Rajnikant, looking scary with plasticised makeup), created by a scientist called Vaseegaran (Rajnikant again, this time with ridiculous wig and beard, trying to look young enough to romance Aishwarya Rai). It takes several minutes to adjust to the idea of watching a Tamil film dubbed in Hindi. And even longer to accept the enormously far-fetched plot and exposition. Still, the first half is not bad. Vasee, as he's lovingly addressed by Sana (Aishwarya Rai), makes pathetic attempts to woo his girl. He then unveils his magnificent robot before a stunned audience -- he's fire resistant, water resistant, has unparalleled strength, can dance, sing, solve complex mathematical problems and memorise the telephone directory in a matter of seconds, we're told. In short, he's Rajnikant, the superhero.