REVIEW: Kahaani (2)AH KOLKATA!
There are reasons to rejoice: it’s not often that film can be whole-heartedly recommended. Then, it’s yet another film with a woman at the centre and like Vidya Balan’s much-feted The Dirty Picture, it is likely win both awards and acclaim. Hopefully, it will help Bollywood traditionalists to give women more respect... since in showbiz, it’s all about money.
REVIEW: KahaaniQUITE A STORY
The beginning of Vidya Bagchi's (Vidya Balan) journey in Sujoy Ghosh's Kahaani is reminiscent of the opening minutes of Rajkumar Gupta's Aamir. In both cases, outsiders enter bustling Indian cities and are nearly swallowed up by the chaos. Vidya is seven months pregnant and in Kolkata to find her missing husband. The metropolis grabs her in its stifling arms as she's accosted by eager taxi drivers, greeted with polite indifference by a senior inspector, and obliged to stay in a seedy guest house (because her husband also stayed there, although...).
ESSAY: Actresses of the YearTHE YEAR OF THE BAD GIRL
Earlier this year, our mid-year picks brought out the indie soul of Bollywood, before a litany of blockbusters took over the box-office in quick succession. Female actors often have precious little to do in many of these ‘100-crore’ bonanzas. However, this year has certainly reaped a rich harvest of great turns by women, several of which have been in films that have done reasonably well commercially. A common theme that has emerged is how the ‘bad girl’ seems to have been catapulted centrestage, indicating that audiences are perhaps increasingly able to view women outside the mould of tailor-made propriety.
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REVIEW: The Dirty Picture (2)VA VA VOOM VIDYA
Even today, the Indian movie business is male dominated, women get far less money and respect than men do, and their career spans are shamefully short. In the eighties, in conservative Tamil Nadu, the male chauvinism was much worse and so was the hypocrisy. Kudos to Milan Luthria and Ekta Kapoor for attempting a film like The Dirty Picture, when hardly anyone makes films with female protagonists. Sadly, most such films also disappoint in their portrayal of the woman. It can’t be helped, perhaps, that filmmakers also come out of the patriarchal system that the movie industry is, and it would be very tough for them to take a financial risk over a film that overturns conventional ideas.
Hamming it up royally—Shah with Balan in The Dirty Picture
REVIEW: The Dirty PictureIT'S DIRTY ALRIGHT
Would Hollywood make a film about say Marilyn Monroe (coincidentally, My Week With Marilyn released in the US and UK just last week), call the protagonist Marilyn, use her blonde bombshell image to sell the film, release it on her birthday, and then cheekily put a disclaimer describing it a 'work of fiction bearing no resemblance to anyone living or dead'? Of course not. But hey, we don't imitate Hollywood. We're the original vultures who have mass orgies over dead people's bodies. And this one's on Southern star Silk Smitha, the sum of whose life is reduced to raunchy dances (and sorrily lacking the sheer brashness and audacity of Silk's original numbers) sex, booze and sleaze, alternating between objectifying her and struggling to portray her as a real human being with rare spunk.
Southern siren: Vidya Balan in The Dirty Picture
ESSAY: Mid Year Best of 2011THE INDIE SOUL OF BOLLYWOOD
Before the onslaught of out-sized holiday blockbusters, it's always quieter in the first half of the year. The first six months of 2011 has been privy to films that aren't usually the kind of fare that our cinema is associated with (and we’ll be back to overblown gaudiness soon enough). After last year's middling mid-year harvest, this year has been a revelation, with some truly worthy efforts, very often by first-time film-makers, who represent a new brat pack of upstarts and rule-changers. Here's a look at the very best of the lot.
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REVIEW: No One Killed Jessica (2)AND JUSTICE FOR ALL
To make a film about an event that most people in the audience would be familiar with and still evoke shock, outrage, empathy and helplessness is commendable. But then choosing a sensational case such as the Jessica Lall murder made Rajkumar Gupta's job that much easier. Having said that, the blatant subversion of justice abetted by tampering of evidence, buying/coercing witnesses into giving false testimonies and the sheer callousness of a political family to believe their son could get away with murder, is sickening enough to make your stomach churn any day of the year. Only, it happens all the time in this country -- and hence, the rare instance of a fair judgment and conviction, belated as it may have been, becomes a cause celebre.
REVIEW: No One Killed JessicaCAUSE CÉLÈBRE
Rajkumar Gupta’s well-made debut Aamir was somewhat tarnished by the exposure of its foreign source (Cavite). His second is as Indian—rather as Dilli—as India Gate.
That a film like No One Killed Jessica (taken from a newspaper headline) was made at all is a wonder. The sensational case has all but slipped from public memory, though the incident itself—of a politician’s son shooting a girl in cold blood and almost getting away with it—has been used in other films (Satta, Halla Bol) for its shock value. Then, it has two female protagonists, and Bollywood is notoriously wary of woman in the lead.
