Now for the most difficult awards .... This is my selection for the best films and performances of the year. Following is a list of the nominees and the final winners are indicated in italics. Feel free to comment and discuss about the final winners:

Best Film
Taare Zameen Par
Chak De! India
Johnny Gaddar
No Smoking
Manorama Six Feet Under

Best Director
Aamir Khan — Taare Zameen Par
Shimit Amin — Chak De ! India
Sriram Raghavan — Johnny Gaddar
Anurag Kashyap — No Smoking
Sagar Bellary — Bheja Fry

Best Actor
Shahrukh Khan — Chak De! India
Darsheel Safary — Taare Zameen Par
Vinay Pathak — Bheja Fry
Neil Nitin Mukesh — Johnny Gaddar
Abhay Deol — Manorama Six Feet Under

Best Actress
Tabu — Cheeni Kum
Kareena Kapoor — Jab We Met
Vidya Balan — Bhool Bhoolaiya
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan — Guru
Gul Panang — Manorama Six Feet Under

Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Male)
Vinay Pathak — Aaja Nachle
Vinay Pathak — Manorama Six Feet Under
Rajat Kapoor — Bheja Fry
Ranvir Shourey — Aaja Nachle
Akshaye Khanna — Aaja Nachle

Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Female)
Konkona Sen Sharma — Life in a Metro
Konkona Sen Sharma — Aaja Nachle
Konkona Sen Sharma — Laaga Chunari Main Daag
Rani Mukherji — Saawariya
Raima Sen — Manorama Six Feet Under

Best Music
A R Rahman — Guru
Illayaraja — Cheeni Kum
Pritam — Life in a Metro
Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy — Taare Zameen Par
Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy — Johnny Gaddar

Best Cinematography
Muraleedharan CK — Johnny Gaddar
Arvind Kannabiran — Manorama Six Feet Under
Sudeep Chatterjee — Chak De! India
M. Sethuraaman — Taare Zameen Par
P.C. Sreeram — Cheeni Kum

Best Editing
Jabeen Merchant — Manorama Six Feet Under
Pooja Ladha Surti — Johnny Gaddar
Suresh Pai — Bheja Fry
Amitabh Shukla — Chak De! India
Chandan Arora — Cheeni Kum

Best Story
Sriram Raghavan — Johnny Gaddar
Amol Gupte — Taare Zameen Par
Jaideep Sahni — Chak De! India
Navdeep Singh — Manorama Six Feet Under
Sagar Bellary — Bheja Fry

No, smoking is a personal wish – The No Smoking review

“I am never going to quit smoking. Only those people quit, who cannot hold on to anything…”

Everything about this movie is rather Kafkaesque. First you have the protagonist named K, (JUST K), reminiscent of Franz Kafka’s eternal fate struck hero, and then you have flashes from the author’s The Trial, with people looking all over K, silent, yet their eyes reveal the fate of the character, something that K does not know already.

And what is his only problem in the whole equation? The only reason that he has to roam the streets of Mumbai as a culprit, the only reason why he has to leave a restaurant during dinner time with all his friends and family, is that of his addiction to cigarettes. He is treated like a stranger in a congregation of men, a social outcast.

And though, admittedly, K is a bit of an ass, as one might put it, the result of his actions are also made according to some very rash decisions regarding him. For instance, while he is in the lift with the old woman and she asks him to stop smoking, K stops the lift and asks her to take the stairs. Now that may seem to be a rather devilish attitude, but the crux of the story lies in the fact that it is always the smoker who is asked to leave from a gathering. If there is a recommendation to make non-smoking chambers and areas, where do the smokers go? Should there also not be a kind of place demarcated for their use? Somewhere, where they do not have to feel like criminals?

And the introduction of the Prayogshala, run by his Holiness, Baba Shri Shri Bangali, Sealdah wale, reminds us again of Kafka’s dilemma, the Nazi party. Like K rightly remarks downstairs, (yes, that’s where his holiness holds his discourses, under the portals of the earth’s limits, very close to the core of the earth – where surprisingly, a whole civilization exists) that how would they help him get rid of his cigarette smoking habit, by placing a gun on his head? While Babaji may ward off that with a sinister laugh, the fact remains that soon after he does show him a picture of Hitler and speaks of what a great friend he was at once. And then the entire George Orwell 1984 “Big Brother” syndrome is displayed. Every action that he has ever committed is recorded by the rehabilitation center. There is a very surrealistic setting created deep down in the gutters of the earth. And K feels the brunt of it. The consequences of smoking are listed to him –

1) The first cigarette that he smokes will find his brother in a room full of smoke, a cumulative smoke capacity of all that K has ever smoked till today – and his brother is known to have only one lung.
2) The second cigarette that he smokes will have two of his fingers chopped.
3) The third cigarette that he smokes will actually kill his wife.
4) The fourth will kill his mother.
5) And the fifth will kill his soul.

Why would anyone touch another cigarette?

But K does. The Kafkaesque hero is not without a cause. He has the right to smoke, as much right as someone has to refuse a smoke. Another surrealistic situation creeps up, wherein K tries to get one ahead of the holy man. He buys tickets of airlines moving away from Mumbai. And from there he chooses any one. Once he lands at his chosen destination, he has someone buy him all the tickets moving away from that place – from where he chooses another ticket and so on. This way, if even he doesn’t know where he is going, how will Baba Bangali?

But the dream still continues. He gets caught in some remote part of Africa, trying to puff away. And he returns, only to find that his brother has indeed been pushed through what was promised. What else can he do now? He has to give up … And yet the story continues!

No Smoking is just not a Kafkaesque movie, but it also is a Fellinisque movie. It uses the same tools of absurdity and meaninglessness, to point out a fact that is crucial and of utmost importance—like the protagonist (the Kafka tool), the director slips from reality to the imaginary within seconds and frames, making it hard to realize the setting of the situation. Does the whole event happen in a dream, or does K actually go through all the afflictions? No one really can be absolutely certain about the fact, not even K.

What makes No Smoking a delight to watch is the treatment of the film and the message that it gives out—smoking is a person’s personal wish and it should be given in with that in mind. When a person starts to smoke, he does it fully aware of the fact that it WILL harm his health and after that the question of policing does not arise. If people want to ban smoking in public places, they also have to reserve corners for smokers to congregate! Nicotine is not a parallel for narcotics and it should therefore not be treated as a kind of social evil. And yet, the point never was about smoking—it was about a person’s inner desire, his personal wish!

The World Makes a Circle

“We were all born from The Overcoat. One day you will realize this …”

A crucial book, a crucial juncture and a crucial thought – all these sum up the birth of Mira Nair’s The Namesake. Why do I say Mira Nair’s and not Jhumpa Lahiri’s?

First then to clarify the hypotheses, so that the article makes sense right from the start and does not have to look for cover under anyone else’s ‘overcoat’, thereby perhaps adding an uncanny magical realistic aura around the entire Namesake phenomena.

I have not read the book. Have actually, but even that was loaned from someone else’s library and the recurring thought of returning it to its place of origin always kept a non-existent rush to reach the last page. And even this opportunity that I had to wrestle with the book came to me long time back; thus there remains a kind of scriptural amalgamation that refrains me from laying any claim to the novel. Thus I brand this article completely as an artistic representation by Mira Nair.

I saw the movie with rapt attention. I noticed the nuances that she managed to smuggle into the contours of each frame. I am a Bengali and therefore I regaled at the very ethnicity and imagery that she had attached to even the minutest of details. The accent of the lead actors Tabu and Irrfan Khan (both non-Bengalis) is worth a commendation right at the very onset. Every inscription is noticeable and worth an applause. The Namesake is an example of magical movie making, a concept that drags you into its duration and keeps you secluded from your contemporary reality. Very few movies have the power to do this and The Namesake belongs to this very elite class.

I have spoken about my source of information and have also accounted for the director’s abilities to make magic on the celluloid. Now I come to issues that deviate from the trend that made me begin my thesis. Though primary focus on the events in the film would generate from the namesake of the film, the whim to name his son after his favorite author, Nikolai Gogol, I have chosen a different perspective to gauge the reels by.

A motif that reverberates through the film is Ghosh’s (the passenger at the beginning on the accidental train, played by a charismatic Jogonath Guha) words – “Grab your pillow and blanket and set out to see the world.” That coupled with Gogol’s The Overcoat provides a view of the fact that the ‘view of the world’ could mean different aspects to different individuals.

The film begins with Ghosh asking Ashok the object of his enquiry, the book he was reading and he answers, “The Overcoat by Gogol.” Couple this with what Ashok tells Gogol later … “We were all born out of The Overcoat.” There is a double emphasis generated here out of the word “born”. Gogol’s Overcoat is the point from where the movie begins as also the story of Ashok’s life. Ashok was earlier a student at Kolkata, who would make occasional trips to his uncle at Jamshedpur or as he mentioned, “I had been to Delhi once.” Ghosh gives him a new outlook, the advice to move out and see the whole world. The train goes and rams on to another vehicle on the track, thereby killing mostly everybody. However, these final words of Ghosh also get rammed into Ashok’s head and it is there that he takes the decision to go ahead and move to a settlement outside the confines of his own country’s national borders.

So as we can see, this is the point where the movie begins, it is born and then again, from The Overcoat. Thus there is some realism attached to Ashok’s words when he tells his son that they have all been born out of The Overcoat. And does the signification end there?

No. There is something else that is also attached to this feeling. The point of origin of the movie coincides with the point of origin of Ashok’s life. It is at that juncture, lying at his house in a crippled state that he realizes the focus of Ghosh’s words of conquering the world. Bursting inside his memory, these words are all that gave him the impetus to move out of his national confines and settle abroad. So in another aspect of the word ‘born’, we see Ashok being re-born, again out of The Overcoat. Ashok’s life has a unique attachment to Ghosh’s instruction. All his life he has lived in this focus. And this is signified even in his death, dying in a far off place in America, far away from all his family members who incidentally are born with him in America. The motif of moving along places never seems to end and the only possible end that can be achieved is through death.

And then we come to Gogol, the son. Completely within the folds of an American heritage and culture, Gogol feels a sense of alienation towards India, towards Kolkata. He feels completely out of place in a land where it id dangerous to go out to jog on the roads, or even to inhumanly drive a rickshaw puller by an extra person’s weight. However, an artist by profession, bordering towards architecture, Gogol in India, witnesses the beauty and splendor of the Taj Mahal. It is looking at a structure with awe and admiration that he had never seen before, something that actually belongs to him, but is yet so far away. It is a rather crippled existence, but the intensity of its actualization is far away from Gogol’s realms.

And towards the end, Gogol recounts what his father had told him when he took him to the edge of the sea. Due to the lack of a camera, he asked Gogol to remember it by realizing that they had gone to a place from where they could go no further. And that pseudo hypocritical statement, a harmless paradox, firms Gogol’s mind much later, when he realizes in the New York underground that maybe he should move towards India, to “see the world”.

It is at this moment that Lahiri (I cannot comment on the storyline, but the literary aspect of the same has to be attributed to the author and not to the filmmaker) stumbles the viewers and readers upon a post colonial influx that boils down to a West fixation. There is, as Ghosh points out, a kind of “dream” that draws Indians towards the West, somewhere where people do not spit on the roads, where everything is kept clean and tidy, on the verge of making it a very idyllic setting. Yet there is a lot more to it than just “opportunities” for the youth (which the very reason why Ashok wants Gogol to be brought up in America). Even the mysticism that is generally attributed to the East can stand as a marching order for people from the West, both foreigners and Indians who had long back migrated to the West and their families. This is why we see Ashok take Gogol to the edge of the sea and then tell him “remember that we came to a place from where we could go no further”. He was trying to justify to himself that he can seen the world. He was trying to tell himself that he had seen it all. He had indeed taken in all that Ghosh had told him but obviously he never did really believe in it. And he never wanted his son to believe in it, though it remained such an inextricable part of him.

The Namesake deals primarily with the thought of exploring the other and thereby being complete in vision. The difference remains also in the very realms of difference that actually defines the two hemispheres. The west enthralls the Easterners for its development in modern times, while the East draws people from the West because of its development in ancient times. And thereby they complete the world; because the world is round and as you start from one end, you come back to where you begun from. Thus we can see that The Namesake remains a post-colonial book, a post-colonial West centric phenomenon and a brilliant movie.

The Postman Delivers

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don't know how or when,no they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names,my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire,

and I wrote the first faint line,

faint, without substance, purenonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I sawthe heavens

unfastenedand open,

planets,

palpitating plantations,

shadow perforated,

riddled with arrows, fire and flowers,

the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

felt myself a pure partof the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke loose on the wind.

Poetry - Pablo Neruda

I never knew who needed the poem? Or who was in greater need of poetry? The person who wrote it, or the person who "needed" it. And then like Poetry arrived for Neruda himself, searching him out, Il Postino came in search of me and I wrote my first faint line. A film is an art form and no where has the intermediacy of the modes of films and poetry been so beautifully intermeshed, as in Il Postino. Truly remarkable, truly unbelievable.

The simple story of a fishing community in rural Italy. There are no educated people here. All that they need is provided to them through the fishing business. Mario Ruoppolo (Massimo Troisi) is just a poor guy, who knows how to read a little, that too at a very slow pace and all that he has read, belong to the poems of a certain Pablo Neruda. He is a bad fisherman and therefore he applies for the job of a postman in the village. But what good is that job, because no one there knows how to read and therefore, who would send them letters?

But Pablo Neruda (Phillepe Noiret) has just been exiled from Chile and has sought refuge in Italy. Under severe politcal pressure, Italy conscents to let him have his own little space in a non-descript Italian village, where he could stay for as long as he wanted. Since no one else in the village can read or write, the letters then end up being delivered to only one person - Pablo Neruda.

Therein begins the movie. Letters, parcels, all in bulks of a few hundreds, start arriving. From a mere government postman, Mario becomes something like a personal secretary of the great poet himself. And he brings him all his messages, all his communication from the outside world, a dictaphone from Chile and eventually, he also brings him a message from the Nobel foundation of Sweden that they were seriously considering awarding the Nobel Prize to the Chilean for his unparalleled contribution to poetry.

And the friendship grows. When you see a face for everyday, when you exchange words with that face everyday, even if it be for a few seconds, you do develop a certain bonhomy with that person, don't you? And this is just what happens between the poet and the postman. Their meetings signify a convergence between the internal world and the external world; carrying the news of millions of strangers, receiving letters from millions of strangers, they develop their own personal space, their own personal communication. And that is where Mario asks for help.

He is madly in love with the namesake of Dante's beloved, Beatrice (Maria Grazia Cucinotta). She is an absolute beauty, and there is no way that Mario can make any inroads into her heart. But now things are far different. He has the help of the greatest exponent of the romantic verse, Pablo Neruda. Neruda inspires, Mario writes. And together, a Marxist, an aethiest, brings two individuals before the alter. Love can make you do many things.

Neruda eventually serves out his asylum in Italy. Pinochet wins over the political mess that had led to Neruda's exile originally and therefore it is time for the master poet to return. There are a few tears shed, as an unspeakable friendship comes to an end. Neruda promises to write, but then once back, he must have been engulfed in the Chilean power mess and therefore all that Mario receives are mails from his secretary, asking Mario to send along items that the poet had left behind in Italy.

Mario continues the Communist dream and gets killed in a stampede operated by Italy's fascist nexus. Mario is dead and gone and he is survived by his wife Beatrice and son, Pablito. And then it happens ... Neruda returns to the village to meet his long lost friend, only to find that he is lost forever.

A truly remarkable piece of film-making, Il Postino is a tribute to the world of cinema. A film where verses rule supreme as the primary lyric, the music is completely breathtaking and awe-inspiring. The camerawork rules the roster, complementing the theme sequnce of the film, poetry. And so are the performances - simply poetic. The film is a metaphor of poetry and vice-versa. What is a metaphor? Go watch the movie ...

Man has no business with the simplicity or the complexity of thigs - Pablo Neruda (Il Postino)

Welcome to Rockyland!

"Its not how hard you can hit … It's about how hard you can get hit and still keep moving ahead!"

It is inspirational stuff like these which made Rocky a cult amongst all the fighting tigers of the world and now that he is back, in perhaps the last part of the entire series, Rocky Balboa doesn't disappoint.

Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) is back, this time, a sixty-year old man, a legendary boxer, who owns a small restaurant, making in the small bucks. He has put his boxing career way behind him. He's not the same old Rocky anymore. He's far more subdued, albeit a little old. He's retired. His days go by running this shop, plus visiting Adrian Balboa's grave and sitting there for hours on end. Rocky now is any other man, in any other place, leading a normal citizen's life.

On the boxing scene, Mason 'the flying' Dixon (Antonio Tarver) is having a similar bad time. He is the reigning undisputed champion of the world, but his popularity is on the downslide. His managers are getting rather anxious about his public relations. It's not about winning, it's about remaining a demigod in the eyes of your fans, like Rocky has remained till today. Plus there is this virtual reality thing, where the organizers go about tallying Mason's prowess against the all-time greats, with the temporal passages taking hold on the latters' abilities as boxers. First up for this comparison, is the legendary, two-time champion of the world, Rocky Balboa. The results are more defaming for the current champion, as they hold the result of Rocky beating him.

The comparisons spark off newer controversies over the champion’s fanfare. His managers get more nervous about the developing situation. There is perhaps only one salvo in the whole affair – a fight with Rocky, where not only does he beat the legend, but does it, leaving the veteran with his respect, his dignity – the outcome; not only does he consolidate his position as the undisputed boxer of the world, but also gains public support for “taking care of Rocky” through the ring.

Rocky, in the meantime, is having his own share of ideas. The virtual match provides him with the idea that he can actually return to the ring and take on a few people. Even at this age. Obviously he’s trying for the local level boxing matches just do realize some dreams of his. So he tries for a license and eve gets it, clearing all the scheduled tests. So Mason’s managers get in touch with him and Rocky consents to the fight. His son, Robert (Milo Ventimiglia) is furious. He claims that all he got in life was because of his last name. And now, when his father makes himself to be a laughing stock, he’s going to be included in that. What you then get, is vintage Rocky – “You gotta do, what you gotta do! The world is not sunshine and rainbows. It’s a mean world out there and no matter how hard you try, its gonna beat you to your knees and keep you there, no matter how tough you are. It’s not about how hard you can hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit … and keep moving on! I’m a fighter … that’s the way I am! You can’t change what we are!” Rocky goes into training. All muscle and heat, Rocky-style!

The stage is set. Rocky takes on Mason. Commentators are absolutely sure that Rocky won’t be able to last even two rounds - A straight K.O. for Mason. The bell for the first round rings. Rocky is pushed around; beaten up. Predictions seem to be running according to their words. Will Rocky be disgraced? But even before the bell for the second round’s termination could ring, Rocky turns on the heat. It’s a kind of pounding that Mason perhaps had never got at the hands of any of his current opponents.

The commentator’s words resonate through the arena – “welcome to Rockyland!” From there onwards, it’s Rocky all the way. Mason too gets to throw in his blows, Rocky also receives sufficient damage, but it’s not one-way traffic as expected. Mason is carried on through all the scheduled ten rounds of the match, Rocky style!
At the end, it’s not about winning or losing anymore. It’s about Rocky, the legend, the veteran, the larger-than-life figure. Rocky Balboa, the heavyweight champion. Rocky Balboa.

It must have been a very emotional moment for Sylvester Stallone, the last walk back from the arena. What started out as dream in 1976 has finally come to an end. Rocky will never fight again. It’s the story of Rocky, seen through the eyes of Stallone. But then again, “if I can change, you can change – everybody can change!” Rocky is transcendental, the center of the structure – both inside and out. Rocky is Stallone, the sixty-year old man, who can give a sixteen-year old man a run for his money. The determination, the will, the power – it’s just all Rockyland.
The cinematography and the music of the film (Bill Conti) deserve special mention. The camera was never handled better in any Rocky movie. The angles and the lighting, make it the magnum-opus and the ultimate swan-song of Stallone. Conti uses tracks from the old Rocky movies and the situations, in which they are added, make the scenes more stimulating.

The verdict – Rocky is the best! Be it the man, or the movie!

Pratidwandi

The sequel to his critics' entitled 'Calcutta Trilogy', Pratidwandi marks Satyajit Ray's legitimate entry into the world of politics. Perhaps his only clearly defined political film, The Adversary uses the "through-the-eyes-of-one-man" theory to expound typical Communist ideals of the late 1980s in Kolkata. And the elan in which the entire composition has been structured, amplifies Ray's mastery over the lens.

Deeply indebted to the French New Wave, in photography and montage to be precise, Ray uses to the metaphor of a crowded bus to align a class basis for his protagonist Siddharth Chowdhury (Dhritiman Chatterjee). He is on his way for an interview in a Government organisation. The questions are all placed thoroughly in clipped-British English and it ranges from the definition of the mitochondria, right up to what the applicant reserves as the most important milestone of the last decade. Instead of their wish of hearing about man's landing on the moon, Chowdhury speaks of the war in Vietnam, of which we were "completely unprepared. It is remarkable, because it showed us about the courage of the people of Vietnam." The bosses break into a thin line of sweat and stammer, "Are you a communist?"

Ray even uses Fellinisque dream sequences to break into the subconsciousness of the protagonist. From seeing his best friend, a revolutionary being shot by the police, to even himself coming before a guillotine - Chowdhury's mind is a complete mess. He can't land up a job, though his attractive younger sister works 'overtime'. Her boss' wife complains to her mother as to how she was having an affair with her husband. Chowdhury's troubled state wants him to kill the boss. But what can he do in the end? There is a an entire episode of his going to her boss' house to sort out the matter and yet he can do nothing. Its the money game, ostensibly the youth's take on capitalism. He returns from the boss' house and sees a driver of a limousine crash into a young girl. The people drive him out and beat him up. Even Siddharth tries to break in through the crowds, but his anger is not vented out on the poor proletariat, but at the Mercedez-Benz logo. Another take on capitalist tendencies in the naxalite injected state.

So where does his fervour end up? How does he fight this? He goes for another job and there too the crowd is enormous. People are waiting for their term to come, its summer and the interviewers have not only put in lesser number of chairs for the people coming for the job, but have also made available the use of only one fan. Siddharth leads a retinue into the office, rasing their demands. But they are subdued and just made to sit out and 'adjust'. The proletariat again adjust to the capitalists' tune. But then one of them faints. Siddharth is furious. Enough is enough. he breaks down the door and tramples over everything that comes into his sight. The table is wrecked, the people are pushed out of their chairs, a complete upheaval! The metaphor of a revolution. Siddharth has begun it.

But where does it end? How does he survive? How does he start working? Does he change in the system, or does he fall prey to it? He leaves the system, goes back to the pastoral, into the other line, where he starts work again. He may not have achieved anything, but he does not stay in there!

Yawn - The Review of Farhan Akhtar's Don

A few friends of mine informed me of their intentions to go along and see Farhan Akhtar's latest feature, Don. Having nothing better to do, I decided to accompany them and see what this new, upgraded version was all about. After watching the first few shots, where the new Don (Shahrukh Khan) pics up a Motorolla and croaks into it, "DON", i realised that perhaps a better alternative to vile away my time would have been to go to the neighbourhood canal and watch lackadaizical cows exctrete, rather than move into this thirty rupee hall and slaughter my senses. I really don't know what proposed Akhtar to remake this classic and I think neither does he ... Was he on marijuana or something, when this wierd hallucination gripped his senses? And just because Daddy-dearest collaborated on the original screenplay, i guess it gives you the liberty to massacre it. So Akhtar promised us to give a modern, pepped up and dynamic representation of the Chandra Barot Don, which coincidently had all that this was promising to offer.

So, where did the director go wrong? There must be something really disastrous in it, to make the maker of fantastic movies like Dil Chahta Hain and Lakshya look small. Well, that too is his own doing, since it was his bright idea of signing up Shahrukh Khan for the role of the modern Don. Now modernity is a very abstract term, and that will become clear to you after you finish seeing the movie - i.e. if you live to tell the tale, like I sadly have - because then you shall be caught in this dilemna, as to which of the Dons' was more modern! Was Amitabh Bachchan more modern, or Shahrukh Khan more antique (and I mean it in the Stone Age sense of the word)! He doesn't have the elan, the voice, the movements, the grace - in short he is a terrible Don. Stick to being Rahul or Raj, Mr. Khan, that's the way we love you! (I am NOT talking for myself)

After that comes the epic song, 'Khaike Paan Banaras Wala' and after Kishore Kumar, comes Udit Narayan. Now this chap always has a paan in his mouth, when he's singing romantic number, but here, where the paan was not optional but compulsory, there he decides to go moralistic! (Luckily I wrote moralistic there in stead of moronistic.) Even if you appreciate three pennies worth of your movie, you'll cry when you see this debacle on screen! Lucifer help you people!

See, the list like this is mammoth - Arjun Rampal for Pran, Om Puri as a god-knows who, Kareena Kapoor as Helen, Farhan Akhtar for Chandra Barot, I could make a three volume epic here! But I shall refrain .... Rather, on the other hand, let me try to provide a little relief to the already tormented director. Yes, surprising as it is, Don has a few plus points too. Though they are majorly outnumbered as compared to the flaws, they are positives none the less .....

Priyanka Chopra - hot, sexy, wicked seductress, eyeball popping diva! The shot in her in the pink gown will remain with viewers till the day they die. Words can't describe her!

Boman Irani - Iftekaar saab must be smirking from up there in the sky as he sees Mr. Irani effortlessly slip into his shoes. DCP De Silva's character is given a new impetus and elan as Boman Irani transcends the time barrier and breathes a new vitality into one of the central characters in the movie! Way to go Mr. Irani, you are the best!!

Also, if one sees the way the movie has been shot, its true that it is no great work, but we shouldn't complain, as many hollywood flicks have been represented in the same, sleazy way! So if we don't make a face then, we shouldn't do the same for a director from India. We should leave these neo-colonist viewpoints out of the world of Indian cinema, but if initiated into the reels, we shouldn't smurk!

The Final Verdict - AVOID it like the PLAGUE!!!!

Black - So is the movie!

There are many incentives for a film-maker, specially one like Sanjay Leela Bhansali, to go into a project which marks his departure from the regular fare of monotonous, epic-grandeurish movies that he has made till date, to a songless, seemingly-realistic fare, that plans to convey a message on a very serious topic of discussion. He wants to prove to the world that he has what it takes to deliver on a more aesthetic, 'arty' level of magnificence that is lacking in most directors of the times. He believes himself to be at par with perhaps Guru Dutt or Balraj Sahni, or maybe even a Raj Kapoor. So what does he do after making non-sense like Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and even great rubbish like Devdas? He goes and makes something which is a mix of the two - he goes and makes Black!

One aspect of art-house cinema, that is firmly embedded in the minds of the current 'trying to go new-wave' directors is that art films need to be boring, slow and accutely didactic. After all the movie is meant to give a message, to make the viewers think of a subject in newer light ... So what if Shyam Benegal made Ankur, he probably meant to give a message! Sanjay L Bhansali now grabs on to his "warriors of darkness" and tries to say something about them. It is the concentration of the message that gets into him so badly, that he obscures it completely within the reels of the movie. He remembers the self-flouted doctrines of pace (or the lack of it) of the film that he ventures into making it melodramatic. He tries to fill us with pathos and agony at the sight of his characters and he tries to forcefully enter into the audience's hearts to make them get up and take notice - and that is where he fails.

Black deals little with the situation of the deaf, blind and mute population of our country, but forcusses primarily on a deaf, blind and mute girl. It deals with her predicament, her sense of belonging in the world of perfectly functioning people. It deals with her struggle for existense, her never-say-die attitude, her optimism and her "teacher". But nowhere does it speak for the deaf, the dumb or the mute. Every event in her life is made into a gargantuan struggle before able bodies and thereby making her success all the more glorifying.

The seeds of melodrama are sown right from the begining, when the girl's mother revolts against her husband's decision to put her in a special school. I ask, what is so wrong in that? Isn't it the most wise thing to do in such a situation? Her mother's indiosyncratic manouverisms only end up throwing a spanner in her life! And if Bhansali didn't want this drudgery of melodrama to be inflicted on his viewers, he should have made the girl come from a destitute background, whereby her struggle wouldn't have been optional, but incidental. However, if he had done that, how could he fit in the "teacher" in his scheme of things?

Bhansali has merely applied the tools of an art film, but due to his lack of expertise in the matter, what has come out as the final product is anything but the idealist outcome he could have hoped for. In this context, I cannot help mention another movie that was released recently, dealing with the predicament of the third-sex in India. The movie, Navrasa by Santosh Sivan brilliantly captures the hopelessness of a 13 year old girl's uncle, who actually harbours the sentiments of being a woman. It does start of like Black does, but that is where the comparison ends. Instead of going away from a world of similar people, Navrasa goes right into it. Blending reality with myth, Sivan spins magic around the life of enuchs in India and essentially, never makes us feel any pity for them. The audience feels proud that they have created a world of their own. The audience joins them, rather than shower them with tears from the front of the curtain. That is the power of good cinema.

What makes Black a delight to watch are the performances. The young girl, Mitchelle, played by Ayesha Kapoor, is a powerhouse performance. Her eyes, her movements, her body-language, makes you believe that she really is what she is meant to be. Maybe Rani Mukherjee doesn't invoke much prowess in her skills, mainly due to the over-shadowing performace of young Kapoor, but it's true that no one in the Indian film industry could have done what she did. Shehnaaz Patel feels very significant as the lost, hopeless mother of a blind, deaf and mute girl and Dhritiman Chatterjee fits in beautifully as the pragmatic, yet loving father. And finally, the movie belongs to Amitabh Bachchan. At the age of 62, this man is a moving magician (incidently, that's what he is in the movie too, a "magician"). His nuances, his dialogues, his energy levels just fill you with awe. There is perhaps no actor in the world who could have done what he did, at this age too.

Black's significance and power lies in its performace and in its cinematography. Ravi K Chandran makes magnificient use of the predominant colour symbol in the movie and tries to create binary opposites without his camera getting preachy like the director.

Lets hope Sanjay L Bhansali returns to his earlier rubbish in his forthcoming Bajirao Mastani. At least there we can sleep it off in the cool confines of the theatre, rather than try to be awake, hoping that as promised, somewhere in the movie Bhansali will make things turn to something spectacular, to something worth watching.

[PS. There is one thing that I forgot to add, he has one more thing which goes to the film's success as the box-office - a stupid and equally melodramatic audience, who couldn't stop crying at this total hoch-poch, at this NONSENSE ...]

Unpretentious Pretence

When you walk out of Sirish Kunder's Jaan-e-mann, you immediately go back to the opening credit titles and seeth in anger, when you remember having read 'Story - Sirish Kunder'. You feel that did someone really write a story for this bioscope? Did he have something to say? Was there any definite progression in this attempt, irrespective of the narrative being linear or not? And yet you missed it? And then you think, that did this movie (I won't call it a story) having anything new to perform? All that you did see were bits and parts of Gene Kelley's immortal Singin' in the Rain and Nikhil Advani's never-born Kal Ho Naa Ho. Then you turn around and ask me what my verdict is? is this movie worth the price of admission that you paid for, or is it just another bad investment?

If you want to see a quasi-Yash Chopra Kabhi Kabhi or a maybe a new-age Sangam, you are barking up the wrong tree. Taking a cue from his wife, Sirish Kunder lays out his cards within the first five minutes of the movie and that also includes a two-minute title card. Jaan-e-mann, intendedly has no sense nor was it meant to. Full of madness and dream-sequences and seemingly-realistic flashbacks, with the present hovering around the past, the chord of this movie lies in its sequnces, in its moments. Every episode is so well crafted and magically imposed on the audience that you for once do not get the inkling to leave your seat and go home! You never really do focus on the story, though it goes on, without you having to forcfully rely on it. The fare is rather stereo-typed and monotonous, but the effect and touches are innovative!

In addition to it, you get to see a new-improved Salman Khan, who does the same things with newer elan. The walk is the same, the dancing routines are the same, the expressions are the same and so is the body language, but it is a Salman Khan that you have never seen before! Its a Salman Khan that you like and love, a Salman Khan that you can idolize. Though Salman is the lead hero in the movie, the film belongs to Akshay Kumar. he guffowes, laughs, cries and behaves like someone you only associate as the college nerd - and yet he carries you away! The film just rests on his shoulders and he makes sure that the movie does not fall off anywhere. Priety Zinta fails in comparison to her co-actors, but she isn't bad. Its just that like the others, she isn't different, isn't new.

This Diwali, if you want to make your troubles seem lighter, without actually receiving a sermon on how to do that, go watch Jaan-e-Mann. You'll feel better!

Lakshya - Mission Accomplished

His Dil Chahta Hain had created ripples in the Indian film industry, with an unusual script and an even more unusual plot. Some will question that what did the movie have? Others will say everything! Dil Chahta Hain contained in itself all the aspects of a typical hindi film, but it was so differently told that you were not bothered to make any connections. You just enjoyed it in its wholeness.

Farhan Akhtar, the golden boy of the Indian film industry disappeared after that. He was said to be looking for something completely different from his earlier offering, perhaps to show the audiences that he could handle different genres in the same medium. He was so hell bent on producing a stark variation that his father, Javed Akhtar came out of his screen-writing retirement to pen a war story for him, a story of war that had been shown many times before on Indian celluloid, but perhaps seldom potrayed to realistic perfection.

The story of Lakshya, the movie that was finally made is indeed very simple. The Kargil war of 1999 that it dealt with was incidental. It was never a war movie; it was a humanistic movie of an aimless individual who finally finds his 'lakshya' or aim in life. Progressing through a partial flashback from the present, Lakshya unfolds before us the life of Karan Shergill (Hrithik Roshan), aimless and confused. He wants to do everything, yet is too lazy to even put on his hot water apparatus to have a bath. Then comes a friend who has hopes of joining a 'dashing' Indian army. Karan immediately applies and is even asked to appear for the test. An irrate father (Boman Irani) is furious. Ego clashes appear and Karan bounces into the Army!

Now, everyone knows that the army is not a adventure zone and you can make that out when Karan escapes from the IMA. Romila (Priety Zinta) is absolutely crestfallen on hearing that and leaves him for good. What then changes him, as the screenplay tells us, is not consciousness, but again, his ego. It hurts him when she leaves him, he is humiliated. An interesting thing to be noted in this regard, is the dual perception of the word ego. Earlier, it was an ego which forced him to sit for the IMA exam because his father was furious. Now his ego deciphers the difference between his past and his future, his general incapability to take oncourse to a path his has chosen and a mission to go the full journey.

Karan is back and is now more disciplined and hard working. A collage of his training routine and his zeal is sufficient enough to tell us that, with Shankar Mahadevan crooning in the background. So, what happens next? He passes his course and is appointed lieutanant of the Indian Army. He earns his vacation after a posting under the command of Colonel Damle (Amitabh Bachchan). He returns home to see Romila engaged to someone else. Even as he gets over it, Pakistani infantry cause a breach of trust and cross the border to secure empty Indian checkposts. All army officials are called back and Karan Shergill, the boy who said "Main Aisa Kyun Hoon" (Why am I so incapable) return as a man to the firing line. Due to the advantagious position of the Pakistani infiltrators, thousands of Indian lives are lost. Col. Damle is forced to initiate an impossible mission to capture his designated peak and Karan Shergill completes the journey, he single handedly unfurls the tri-colour after taking possession of the outpost.

Brilliantly told and shown, Lakshya tells the story of a boy into a man, a man who knows what he is to do and how to do it and in a nutshell, do it. Farhan Akhtar consolidates his position as the Indian film industy's new powerhouse by perhaps (and this is only my view) surpassing his earlier Dil Chahta Hain. That movie was just a sequence of events, this is a message. Javed Akhtar cannot be talked of as a subsidiary in this article. His screenplay and dialogues leaves you spellbound. Take for instance the scene where Karan is taken to the border for the first time. He sees the Pakistani checkpost and exclaims that he always knew that he was an Indian, but this was the first time that he actually felt it. Absolutely stunning, it replaces with realism the utopian principle of a globe without borders. He brings out moments and characters that we can connect with, including the protagnist, Karan Shergill.

Speaking of whom, Hrithik Roshan absolutely delivers to the T. He too replaces his dancing image with an image who can portay anything. In Lakshya he plays a character, rather than the usual Hindi film conception of 'being yourself'. Karan is everything that Hrithik is not and that is what makes the character real and believable. You laugh at his earlier antics and you stand up and applaud, perhaps even cry, with Karan hoisting the indian flag on the peak. That speaks of Hrithik Roshan, actor and superstar.

Priety Zinta too matches up to Hrithik in perhaps the only half-baked character in the film. Her hairstlyles change, but she remains Romila Dutt right to the very end. She complements Hrithik throughout the movie, even in scenes that she is missing from, thereby playing the role of the significant other. Amitabh Bachchan looks like the about-to-retire CO, but his performance cannot be faulted. His eyes contain the misery that he must have seen over the years, in different wars and yet they flash genuine moments of bravado in his outfit's capabilities and his stigma. Hardly could anyone else do justice to Colonel Sunil Damle.

On the technical front, Christopher Popp's cinematography, his choice of angles and stock usage takes you into the world of the characters and potrays the various stages that they go through. This is perhaps one of the few moments in Indian cinema where you are transported into the world of the characters. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy score songs that stand out even in seclusion from the screen and the background score haunts like that of perhaps Vangelis or Theodarkis. The simple and monotonous scores keep coming back to make you feel the rush of blood through your veins.

In all the movie is a remarkable effort at signifying its message. And like the message it contains, it goes all out to reach its destination. Mission Accomplished.

Night at the Opera - A night to remember

Who can perhaps not know the famous Marx brothers - no, not as in Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, but Groucho, Chico and Harpo Marx, the famous brothers who had us in splits with their absolutely mad antics in the movies they acted in? The Night at the Opera was perhaps their greatest offering to world cinema, with a crazy plot and even crazier actors. Begining from the begining, they don't end at the end - anyone who has seen the 1935 movie will agree with me that they must have seen the eerie face of Groucho Marx in their dreams for days and nights to come. The impact of the movie is such that you are left breathless (yes, the gasping for air kind), just by severe stints at a hapless, stupid and utterly slapstick comedy.

The setting of the story is really simple (atleast that's how I'm sure the writers must have written it). Mr Otis B Driftwood (Groucho Marx) has been emplyed by typical rich American widow, Mrs Claypool (Margaret Dumont) to put her into high society. After years and years of only drawing a handsome salary ("that's nothing eh? How many men do you thing draw a handsome salary?" - Driftwood to Claypool), he practically hasn't done a thing he was hired for. Finally, he had got a brainwave - he wanted her to use her money and become a patron of the theatre - the New York Opera and thereby easily present herself into the higher strata of society. So they bring on the Director of the New York opera, Mr Herbert Gottlieb (Sig Ruman) and arrange the plans to get the greatest tenor in the country to sing for them. And who indeed is sent to hunt for this world famous tenor? Why, Mr Otis B Driftwood!

Meanwhile, at some other opera company, Tomasso (Harpo Marx) is having trouble with his owner, the 'greatest' tenor, Rodolfo Lassparri (Walter Woolf King) who is typically an arrogant and dominating bourgeouisie (that's the only link with Karl Marx in this article). Tomasso seeks revenge. Meanwhile Fierello (Chico Marx), fresh out a job (a con man basically) decides to himself appoint himself as a manager to a new tenor Ricardo (Allan Jones) and then he meets the perpetual fool Driftwood. He convinces him that Ricardo is the world's greatest tenor that he was looking for and they strike a deal for the world's best tenor at $ 10.

However, the goof up is soon spotted and the tenor replaced. But Driftwood has to put in Ricardo in the opera. What follows from there onwards cannot be described in this article, or for that matter any article, because words are the weakest symbols to desctibe it. A treat for the eyes (which blead in time), the Marx brothers leave no stone unturned in ruining the Opera. Like the famous saying goes, "its the Marx brothers against the rest of the world."

A laugh a minute saga ensues. And the point to be noted here, is that its just not a fiasco that errupts on the screen. The performances themselves speak volumes. Grucho, Chico and Harpo appear to be this way in their personal lives. They just "come, see and conquer" the stage. This movie is the powerhouse of slapstick.

I recommend this to anyone who can cry laughing. It's a must, must, must see movie. You haven't lived if you haven't been to the Night at the Opera.

Rang De Basanti - Attainable Utopia

Utopia, the ideal, ever since recognized by Plato in the 5th century BC, almost remains an ellusive term - always thought of, but seldom seen. It is for the attainment of this utopia, that the dabblers of art have long pitted their brains in the creation of. This has consequently led to the creation of timeless classics, be they in the form of books, paintings and even cinema - which is also one of the reasons leading to the creations of the superhero, a Batman or a Superman, someone whom we hoped would have lived.

Then in the early 19th century, came the sudden outburst of realism, of depicting things as they were, without corrupting the end users thoughts with imaginative nonsense. After all, why write about Superman, when no such person or planet actually exists? This feature, specially developed in communist countries, like the earstwhile USSR, soon became the dominant literary ideology of the times. Human beings now wanted to test their rationality, instead of getting wayled into an imaginary world. Aristotle's characters of magnitude, got replaced by the common man - new stories began to unravel themselves through people we saw around us. However the search for the ideal still continued through these stories, though their grandeur was far simpler now and constricted to mundane affairs, not the creation of an ideal republic like Plato.

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's second directorial venture keeps with the module of the new quest of the ideal and by Jove does it succeed! Telling the story of a group of friends, Mehra connects the nations past and the future and miraculously succeeds in converging the two tangents. And that is where the Utopia lies - just like our freedom fighters believed in the utopia we are abusing today, these boys and girls believe in an utopia which they believe they need to create. What is more significant in the storyline is the convergence of nationality along with the convergence of time, overriding all petty idiosyncrasies that the youth hold today.

To cut across to the main story now, it begins with a young english filmmaker, Sue (Alice Patten), all set to eulogize the extremist freedom fighters of India through a documentary. However things don't begin on a positive note for her, as the financers now realize that only Gandhi sells. Abusing them in Hindi, she arrives in India to start rolling, remaining optimistic to the very end.

Here comes in Sonia (Soha Ali Khan), who is her contact in India. They begin with their auditions, only to be thoroughly disappointed (and the viewers thoroughly amused). Sonia decides that Sue needs a break from this comic montage and sets out to meet her friends and introduce Sue to some fun. Now enter poet, philosopher Aslam (Kunal Kapoor), Karan (Siddharth), Sukhi (Sharman Joshi) and of course, the very best DJ (Aamir Khan). They are soon joined by the fanatical student union leader Lakshman (Atul Kulkarni) and a distaste between the latter and the group is quickly established.

Sue then decides that this band would be ideal to fill in the shoes of the characters in her movie. However, the potential actors do not think so ..... they belive that the world she wants to create is a farce, something absolutely untrue. They spit on this freedom and pronounce doomsday for the nation. Some coaxing leads them to the stage before the camera, but the spirit is still ellusive. Heroic references and statements are made fun of and the finger on the lips indicate "Maut ki ungli" (the finger of death).

The comedy progresses rapidly, till the news channels report the death of their friend, Flight Captain Ajay Rathode (R. Madhavan), flying a rickety MIG - 21. An under-current flows through them. They wake up. The Defense Minister aggrevates the issue by proclaiming Ajay to be a bad pilot. This adds fuel to the fire. They stage a dharna in front of India Gate, the country's insignia to honour the unknown soldier. The Defense Minister sends in the cops and brutally breaks up the peaceful protest.

Lakshman sees his former mentor ordering and overseeing the police proceedings. After a few seconds, the latter rolls up his window and exits from the scene. Another realisation draws on him personally - the ideals of his party, which he had believed in all this while, suddenly die out before him. His belief that Muslims belong to another nation and other pseudo-nationalistic views are shattered. He looks around to see mass-destruction on innocent protestors demanding justice. He sees Aslam being whacked by a policeman - he forgets the previous interactions between the two and charges at the policeman, snatches his stick and uses it on him itself. Such scenes are seldom seen in world cinema, comparable poorly to Eisenstein's famous "Oddessa Steps" in Battleship Potemkin.

It is at this point, lost for peaceful alternatives, that the group, now with a commitant Lakshman, decide to gun down the minister - Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad and Rajguru live on. They complete the impossible, only to have posthomous awards and recognitions thrusted upon the crook. Their objective is now thwarted. Therefore they once again return to the past - like Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt, they surrender themselves, letting the world decide on their actions.

With the last scene, inspired from the Western classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Mehra leaves a great impact on the minds of a certain faction of the youth - now just a fraction of the total youth population; the other refer to the last few scenes as comic relief - because they are still a part of the youth as potrayed in the first half of the movie. I wonder if they will ever progress to the second stage, but that is the omnipresent, ellusive Utopia. However, there is the other faction who stirred at the climax and that is why I say that the movie proclaims attainable utopia, something very difficult to contain in any work of art.

Now returning to the movie, I need not add anything about the filmmaker itself - I think my earlier paragraphs are proof enough of his prowess. On the technical front, Binod Pradhan's camer is lyrical and so is the editing. A R Rahman creates tunes that blend in with the story line. The songs are brilliant and the background score is simply stunning - this belongs in the hall of fame.

Speaking of performances, everybody has delivered to the T. Kunal Kapoor looks simply stunning with his locks and stuble, Siddharth gels as the cool introvert, Sharman Joshi is a revelation and Soha just falls short of her performance in Rituparno Ghosh's Antarmahal. Nothing needs to be said about Atul Kulkarni, who has proved his mettle over the years and Alice Patten is the best import from the overseas so far in the Indian film industry.

However, the movie simply belongs to Aamir Khan. Playing a character fifteen years younger than himself, Aamir excells and breathes life into the movie. Anything said about his performance would be an understatement.

Truly, after decades, theatres around the counrty are running responsible reels, reminding us of why we go to the movies in the first place.

Meenaxi - Running poetry

Ever considered seeing poetry unfold itself, verse by verse, on the celluloid? In case you have, but have never seen it in 'reality', watch Meenaxi - A tale of three cities. The second feature by the noctogenerian artist of the country, M F Hussain, Meenaxi is a far-removed and far more engrossing movie than his first attempt, Gaja Gamini. Though the visual spectacle of the two is accutely mesmerising, Meenaxi deals with a far larger dilemma that it did in Gaja Gamini. And then, the question that everyone who has watched this movie asks, is what does it mean, where does it end .... Precisely, the movie neither begins and neither does it end and through this abstract and unsatisfying closing, it draws in us a greater catharsis than that could be ever drawn by any other movie with a prominent ending.

Keeping with what I earlier said - where does Meenaxi begin? It shows itslef to us through the eyes of an author, Nawab (Raghubir Yadav), using his opera glasses to see things which are right next to him and yet missing out on what could be the subject of his new novel. He is at the moment faced with a terrible case of a writer's block and ponders over myriad possibilities that could absolve him of his drawback. The publisher, his friend, is hounding away for further drafts and all he can do is sit through a cycle rickshaw and peep into the world of Hyderabad.

It's his sister's engagement and preparations are on in full spate. He, as usual, moves around through the crowd, there but not there, till he comes across a woman. Things spark of in him and he tries to move towards her, but she keeps eluding him. He still tries to search her, but fails. And when he fails, she suddenly surrenders herself to him. She is Meenaxi (Tabu), a perfume seller in the city of Hyderabad. She declares herself to be a great fan of his and demands that he write a story about her.

Nawab tries to break free from his block and brings pen to paper. He sets his story around the beautiful sand dunes of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan and narrates the journey of Kameshwar Mathur (Kunal Kapoor), who also happens to be his car mechanic in 'reality', and his affections for a girl, Meenaxi. The story continues towards a love story between the two and time seems to stand still. Then how does the story progress? It doesn't .... An existential theme mocks at us when we try to decipher how this Jaisalmer story will end. And with the muse's 'real' presence the author also looses control of his own thoughts. He can't bring about a conclusion in his own imagination, because his 'reality' is made directionless by an inconstant inspiration.

The papers are burnt and Nawab now picks up his pen again to cast a new setting before us - this time in Prague and his character now is a lonely girl called Maria. Kameshwar Mathur arrives there also and another story unfolds itself to us. This time, Maria is more commitent in the relationship and the viewer tries to forsee the future between themselves and the 'real' imaginary characters. But then even a new setting and a new affair seems to wind its way into obscurity. This story also ends without an ending.

What Meenaxi deals with, are the binary opposites of reality and imagination,or perhaps their contrast that we have created in our minds. The story actually speaks of the thin line between the two abstract terms in the mind of a creative artist. Nawab loses himself in his characters and also in Meenaxi, the simple girl who sells perfumes in Hyderabad. Then the question remains that what is real and what is imagination? If both quarters of the author's mind release him into the same obscurity, then where is the difference? Is Meenaxi more real, or Maria? Is Kameshwar more real or the car mechanic? Or is Nawab the person more real than Nawab the writer?

And when we realise this aspect, we are once again taken back to Nawab's sister's wedding and we see Nawab following a girl dressed in white, a contrast to Meenaxi in a black saree a few minutes back. This time he comes up to her and has the opportunity to see her face. His eyes light up as he asks her for her name. She looks at him quizically and replies - Meenaxi.

Magnificently told and shown, Meenaxi, could well be the magnum-opus of the director. The essence of colour to wash away the difference between real and unreal is a delight to watch. The camera movements and angles are simply breath-taking. The opening shot of the Nawab on a cycle-rickshaw will perhaps never be seen in the history of Indian cinema. Santosh Sivan has amazingly given life to the three cities and the five principle characters in the movie. The characters are so well constituted that they feel absolutely real and not just shadows on celluloid.

I feel special mention should be made about the music in the movie. Composed by A R Rahman, they too blend in with the chief objective of the movie. Every city is percieved differently by the changes in the music pattern alone. The songs are mesmerising and absolute. The background score is stunning.

Meenaxi - tale of three cities is a must watch for people who love art as a whole, not just cinema. Not just because each aspect of film-making is beautifully arranged in it, but because the dilemma of art is finally resolved in one of the greatest movies of the Indian film industry.

A small advise for Vishal Bharadwaj before I file my thoughts on Omkara. Stop flogging the Shakespeare part of the film as he had done in Maqbool and now, Omkara. Like Maqbool, it is more relaxing to watch Omkara rather than start linking the original characters. It robs the real charm of the story, otherwise so beautifully told.

Omkara is a true and real representation of the Hindi hinterland and the goings ons in the political activities that we have since been subjected to. It is ironic that the very first acknowledgement card mentioned Amar Singh, for he is one of the real characters in the political scene who helped to move the value chain of Indian politics down to the pits. And it is this very pits is where Omkara is set. Leave aside the Othello, the Casio, the Iago and their desi derivatives, Bharadwaj has crafted a story like a master story teller with strong replication of the essence of the culture and ethnicity of the terrain, including the language. Full marks to Censor Board for being bold to let the film pass with out the cuts.

I am not going to re run the story for the readers as in most reviews as I think films are meant for watching and assimilating and not grasped through the coloumns of the critic, but all I can say is that the ditrector, who has also doubled up as the music man has had the pulse of the Badland completely in his grip and again full marks to Censor Board for allowing full, naked view of the Poltician Police nexus (and the mockery of it) with glimpses of Babloo Srivastavas generously sprinkled all over the story. The end is at once macabre and bizzare, perhaps the only Shakespaeare Seneca combo in the film.

In such a star studded film was it difficult to choose the best? Surprisingly, No! Saif Ali Khan. Langda Tyagi. And Konkona Sen Sharma. Remarkable.

Naseer could not be missed out either, not for the way he gets the Baratis to get in to the dance mood. He should know, after all he had led the cast and crew of the Monsoon Wedding some years ago!

Go, see Omkara. Not Othello.

[This review has been submitted by a guest columnist and an ardent film buff, Mr. Sujit Sanyal - Subhojit]

Colonial revolution in Mrinal Sen’s Interview

Mrinal Sen was pursuing a career as a medical representative, happy with his job, his life and hoping that it would stay that way. This was around the year 1943. Sen was dabbling into a lot of reading, be it the works of Karl Marx, or Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzche. While he was hunting through the shelves of the now National Library in Kolkata, he accidentally came upon a book, titled Film by a certain Rudolf Arnheim. As Sen himself puts it, it was a “gem of a book,” and it was convincing enough to get him hooked onto the aesthetics of cinema. Suddenly things took a turn for him and he went on to direct his first feature, Raat Bhore (The Dawn). What must be remembered to evaluate Sen’s works, are that they were not just tales in motion on a grandeur backdrop. This was also the time, when the Communist Movement in Bengal was slowly taking shape. Young minds like Sen were greatly moved by the idea of a new socialism which meant equality for all and this theme always ran in the movies that he made thereafter. There was always the idea of revolt prevalent in his films – revolt against the bureaucracy in Bhuvan Shome or the revolt against the post-colonial tendencies that were embedded in the subconscious minds of the people in his Interview.

A spurious take on the avant-garde style of film-making, Interview basically in a nutshell deals with an interview - a day in the life of the protagonist, Mr. Ranjit Mullick. The movie begins in the morning and goes on through his quest for the interview during the day and ends in the night. What is this plot around an interview one may ask? It deals less with the actual interview, but more with the decorations that the candidate has to prepare for himself to clear the first hurdle. And what could be the decorations? A suit! Why suit? Because the company is still steeped in the colonial tradition of having English aspirants at their door …

The movie begins, quite literally from Ranjit Mullick (Ranjit Mullick) getting up in the morning, and reciting for the nth time to his mother, the specifications of the new job – “Double of what I am getting now, plus commission, plus something, plus something, plus something …” His mother repeatedly asks him to stop using that refrain – typical Bengali middle class superstition, fearing that it might wear out otherwise – but as Ranjit puts it to her, everything has been taken care of through interior channels, all that was now required, was a suit! Does he now have the suit? No, he had given it to the Dry Cleaners three months back and withdrawn from the reclamation that it would be eaten up by moths in his house. All that he needed to do was go get the suit and arrive at the office on time for the interview.

Where are the shoes? In a trunk, kept safely! The trunk turns out to be a Pandora’s Box, which with time had graduated to hold all unwanted junk that had collected in the house – including the pair of shoes. What finally comes out of it is anything but a pair of shoes – completely worn out and dilapidated. However, Ranjit immediately delegates his sister to get the cobbler to operate on them and make them usable. Now for the suit. Where is the bill? Along with all the bills that the mother has had the fortune to collect – it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. However, like the shoes, even that is found. Now Ranjit is off to collect it from the cleaners. But he can’t do that! Not today … The Dry Cleaning Union in the city has called for an indefinite strike. All shops will remain closed due to their involuntary association with the same. The suit is then lost for the time being.

Ranjit moves around from place to place, pondering on his possibilities. Where could he get a suit from? He goes to his fiancée’s place and repeats his jargon, “Double of what I am getting now, plus …” Kites are flown, and she helps him decorate their future apartment. She even tries to help him get a suit. But luck fails him on all accounts. Another friend now hits upon an idea. One of their common friends from college is a ‘sahib’. He was sure that they could get a suit from there. So, with a little help from Lady Luck, a suit is obtained. All his troubles are over. He is on his way back home with the suit in hand, in a local bus, when he suddenly sees a man pinching a wallet in the vehicle. The socialist ideal in the idealistic youth is aroused and he tucks away his packet in one corner of the bus to catch him red-handed. The plot thickens here, but the suit remains in the bus.

Now when he is finally free from the Police Station, he remembers about this long lost suit. Its only a few hours away from his interview. There is nothing that he can do, to improve on the situation. He goes to the interview in the traditional kurta and dhuti. Needless to say, he doesn’t get the job.

The contact in that office lands up in his house and ventilates his frustration on the boy. He argues that he already has a job and as he continues with his thesis, the music rises to a crescendo and his dialogues are faded out. Did the director mean to say that he was talking rubbish? That he was actually furious at missing out on the interview because of a suit? The camera finds Ranjit, sulking away in the evening in some desolate corner. A nameless and faceless bystander questions him as to what was bothering him. Ranjit evades the questions, he tries to run away and then when finally, the viewer’s questions regarding the suit and “double of what you get now, plus commission …” gets to him, he does what he must have wanted to do for a long time – he pelts stones at a Suit shop, tearing apart the suited mannequin at the window.

The actual movie Interview begins with the demolishment of the English statues at various landmarks in Kolkata, something that had really happened in the early 1970s. It was an impulse to defy the post colonial sentiments that had actually gripped the city, the establishments in the city and as the story unfolds before us, we see how the sentiment actually existed. It is the inability to appear before the company in a suit that denies him a job opportunity, not his abilities and qualifications. It is a psycho-analytical concept that Sen defies. The suit stood for the “propah” English mannerisms that an Indian boy was required to exhibit. It was killing the ambitions and opportunities for the youth. The interview is not dependant on the physical capabilities of the aspirant, not on his mental abilities, but on a suit – a heritage that we have unknowingly acquired from the English during their Raaj in the country. We may not know it, but we do possess it in our sub consciousness and are quite proud of it too. What is wrong with Indian outfits? Just that they are not British?

The Kramer vs Kramer game

I hope you'll read my Kramer vs Kramer review ....... Now its time to have some fun! Send me in suggestions as to who could be cast in the various roles of the original, in an Indian context - you can use any Indian actor, irrespective of regional disparities. The movie will be made in Hindi, keep that in mind! I'll list for you the characters -

Ted Kramer ------------
Joana Kramer ------------
Margaret Phelps ------------
Ted Kramer's first boss ------------
Ted Kramer's interviewer for the second job ------------
The Creative Head at Ted Kramer's second job ------------
Ted Kramer's Lawyer ------------
Joana Kramer's Lawyer ------------

Once you'll are through, I'll give you my combination ......... Enjoy!

I have seen Plato

Satyajit Ray was never known to be overtly political – neither in his films, nor in his private life. Yes, he did hold an election card and like a good citizen he would assemble at the polling booth and get his fingers dotted. As a matter of fact, in one of his letters to Mary Seaton, who later wrote his biography, The Portrait of a Director, he had mentioned clearly to her, that perhaps Pratidwandi (The Adversary) had been his most political work.
The insignia of Indian cinema, Satyajit Ray, only made aesthetic movies, on a large, soft, clourful canvas – the maker of timeless classics like Charulata, Jalsaghar and of course, The Apu Trilogy.
Now, keeping with the rest of my thesis, I have actually chosen a rather controversial film of the same maker. Though I have earlier mentioned that The Adversary remains his main and perhaps most political work, I have chosen one of his comedies, Mahapurush (The Holy Man) as my subject to talk about a psychotic analysis on a completely different level. Before I delve into my discussion, let me first provide the unfamiliar readers with the background of the movie.
Mahapurush, made in 1965 was the second half of a two-movie film made by Ray, titled Kapurush o Mahapurush (The Coward and the Holy Man). Based on a story by the popular Bengali comic writer, Poroshuram, a very serious man in real life, also the author of Ray’s only other comedy, Parash Pathar (The Philosopher’s Stone), Mahapurush tells the story of a certain Birinchi Baba, a first grade fraud, posing as an immortal saint to loot gullible people, of whom the world seems to be so full of.
Without any trace of slapstick, the movie sticks to the laugh-a-minute routine, splitting the audience into hoarse laughter, till they are left wreathing to their stomach pangs. Shuffling once again to the storyline of Mahapurush, as mentioned earlier, it contains the exploits of a certain Birinchi Baba (Charuprakash Ghosh), who is extremely fond of his famous doctrine – the convergence of time future and time past. The optical illusion was indeed so captivating that the minute the show was over at Kolkata’s prestigious Metro cinema, every member of the audience were trying to figure out how the thing worked.

Birinchi Baba, or babas of the world, are according to me and many people for that matter, the biggest psychotic killers in the world – because they do not declare their killer intentions openly, they are disguised killers. And the garb that they use is in itself the pretentious killer – religion. What the ideal side of religious practices had originally meant to dictate, has just got lost in obscurity over the years. From true souls like Ramkrishna Paramahans and the Sai Baba of Shirdi, we are actually left to these Birinchi Baba’s, who are pathetic liars to rationality. But then the golden question is if these people offer lies, how are they killing and what?

They are killing rationality – the very same rationality that would be used against them. From the opening shot of the movie, we see how a foolish man is tricked by the Baba to believe that he administered the sunrise by ordering it to get up. He breaks down like a child, surrendering himself completely to Birinchi. The man’s rationality has now been murdered – he has forgotten about the earth’s rotation, revolution, planetary position, everything! Birinchi has struck.
Now, leaving ourselves to our own rationality, we may also judge this particular man in this train to be thunderously weak-minded. However, Birinchi’s exploits do not end their. In order to solve the man’s problems, Birinchi moves into his house and starts sermonizing. Soon people flock to his house, the erudite Bengali gentleman, the wealthy but stupid Marwari – all kinds – would we call all these people weak-minded? But they too believe his words, that he has “met Plato, Jesus (a young child) and also the Buddha, taught E=Mc2 to Einstein” and calls the Crucification of Jesus crucifact, because he actually saw it with his own eyes. Another shot by Birinchi, is that the assistant of his (Robi Ghosh), was actually found by him in a crowded market place at Babylon! The Marwari is so dumbfounded; he turns to the sophisticated Bengali and asks – “Who Plato?” The Bengali replies, “Plato, Plato, Greek Philosopher.” The Marwari turns back, no more enlightened than he originally was.
Birinchi baba goes on with his exploits, fooling and murdering, claiming to have eaten a hippopotamus, to the point where he can bring down a God – with the magic words, “OM ores, OM nific, OM nescience, OM nibus, OM nivorous!” to which Satya, one of the principal characters retorts, “Is he a tantric?” A cynical procurer negates it by saying “he is a Dhanatantric,” – which in Bengali means, A Capitalist.
Moving on to the last shot, when Satya and his friends catch him and threaten him to leave, he escapes with his assistant, who was supposed to be Goddess Kali that night, with his attachment of four wooden hands – however, a significant aspect of the four hands, reveal that they hold four wallets in them – the final heist from this place before moving on.
The second murder – this time that of religion as a whole. Birinchi baba subverts the concept of religion to satisfy his own personal needs, he stops people from finding out that ideal, scriptural religion by dictating to them his own beliefs, policies and other dictates, which are of course false!
Therefore, I can perhaps now safely put that this is the worst killer amongst us, one that is the hardest to catch.

The Kramer vs Kramer review

I was just browsing through the stacks of the new DVD shop that had opened in my area a few weeks back. I was fresh from seeing The Graduate and to be quite honest, I was still swaying under Dustin Hoffman's performance. It had been quite some time, since I had seen one of his movies, The Rainman and I was looking around for some more of him on the shelves - anything!

Lady luck was with me, as I fished out Kramer vs Kramer from one corner and didn't even think twice as I walked out of the place, holding it under my arm in a brown paper bag. I could hardly wait to get into my easy chair and take my Home Theatre remote in my hand and peek into the personal lives of Ted and Joana Kramer. The movie begins with a light strumming of the guitar and just as the title appears on the right of the screen, a mandolin joins in, to offer, I think, one of the opening titles tracks that I have heard in a long, long time. Simple, yet very effective.

Mrs Kramer fades into the screen, wishing her son goodnight and goodbye, finally beating off the creative seclusion that she had been facing under her workaholic husband for the last eight years of their married life. Even as he comes into the movie, we see that Joana Kramer has reason to complain - even as she prepares to leave, he tries to make a phone call, leaf through some papers and look very distracted. Even as she walks out on him, he thinks she's just pulling a fast one and will be back within a few hours at the most.

What begins from there is Ted Kramer balancing home and office for the next few months and doing so pretty well. So what if he doesn't know how to make French toast for this son in the morning, he sure can learn! And he does - he learns it so well, that you feel he had been doing this all his life. The way he and his seven year old son balance each other, you forget that Joana Kramer ever existed. But will she allow you to do that?

She had tried her hand at various occupations and now she is back in New York. She earns a fat salary and now, she wants her son back. They go to court - she wins the case, but she can't take the boy back. "This is his home..." she says!

What really stands out in this movie, more than Dustin Hoffman's and Meryll Streep's performance, are the situations that are created. The first day between father and son, where Ted Kramer makes French Toast for his son, shows his absolute inability to come to terms with household needs and the day when Billy is to be taken away by his mother, both father and son make better French Toast then perhaps the French themselves. The scene where Billy meets his father's business associate in the nude is remarkable and cannot be explained in words.

The music, like I said, is simple yet striking. Only the use of the guitar and the mandolin in most cases, makes the soundtrack alone, heard over and over again. Great performances come in from Justin Henry and Jane Alexander. The photography is simply amazing and yet, like the music, simple!

Kramer vs Kramer is a must for all cinema lovers, leave alone Dustin Hoffman fanatics like me .......

Happy viewing!