PK: Con again

*Note: When I refer to Raj Kumar Hirani (RKH), I equally refer to his partner in crime Abhijat Joshi.

Rather than the obvious disappointment or anger I have towards a bad movie, I was rather disgusted by PK. It is that movie whose every beat serves a purpose, a purpose of proving a point so obvious, a point so dumbed down, a point already proved last year at the cinemas. It doesn’t have a single moment, which is just out there without any ulterior motive.

Few years back, Roger Ebert introduced me to a word ‘frisson’. It is a french word, whose literal English translation is ‘thrill’, but more aptly it means the small brief ‘kick’ that we seek in daily life, like, someone liking your FB post, enjoying a joke on whatsapp, getting to know some gossip about your colleague at office, and so on. These frissons don’t result to much in retrospect, it is just that fleeting kick we get and keep on seeking on a daily basis. If we were to translate this in movie terms, it would be the beats in the movie, those small comic punches, those small story twists etc. Our most esteemed director, who is loved equally by a rickshawalla and Anurag Kashyap, is a director of frissons. Each moment in his films, delivers a frisson. These are either quick fire jokes, quick trigger sentimentality or contrived story twists. Each dialogue, each moment serves this purpose, give the audience a frisson.  Mind you, it is not an easy job; he has a reasonable mastery over the craft of filmmaking. But he uses this craft to create highly manipulative stories and manufactures emotions for fast food consumption, and he does acknowledge this when he shows us the inserts of side-characters crying and being overwhelmed by the emotions of the scenes through radio (in Lage Raho Munnabhai) or TV (in PK). It is exactly what you see, manufactured sentimentality for consumption of social media.

‘3 idiots’ was equally manipulative, but still had some genuine moments between friends, lovers. But here you get a love story, which has couple of genuine beats, one of them when Anushka withdraws from a conversation with Sushant, when he is revealed to be a Pakistani. A very important point to note here is that she withdraws not when he tells that his name is Sarfaraz, but soon after when he tells he works for Pakistani embassy. That moment really stuck with me, because it was not about the religion, just a kind of jolt we receive when we realize we just interacted with someone from our neighboring country. But this very love story of a indian girl with a pakistani dude is milked for religious purposes, and used as the defining moment in the movie’s climax. This disgusted me out completely. And this might be lesser offender when compared to a train bomb blast, which kills a bogey full of people, just to add some weight, some sort of emotional buildup to the film’s climax. It serves no other purpose at all except proving the agnostic world-view. It plays the evergreen ‘Aasman pe hai khuda..’ from Raj Kappor’s Phir Subah Hogi on the images of the aftermath of the blast. It extracts the agnostic vibe from the song and uses it as an earnest cry out to god. But in the context of the film it is far from earnest. From an alien’s desperation of seeking god, it abruptly cuts to a horrific human tragedy and projects the tragedy via the alien, a quickfire way to add weight to the waferthin premise. The entire film is made up of moments, which provide quickfire frissons.

Enough of disgust. The difference between PK and earlier RKH film is that this is a really bad script. If you take out the central idea, “An alien comes to earth and we see the stupidity, duality and hypocrisy of humans through the alien’s eyes”, there is no scene with any real situational humor or strong drama. Every line of the script stems from the central idea of the film. It sounds like great film-making integrity on display, but when your central idea (which at the most deserves a 1 hour film) is as thin as this, there is a strong need of situations resulting in comedy or drama. There is none to be found here. And it is never really good news when a key plot device can be replaced without affecting the theme of the film. Cannot we achieve “uncover human hypocrisy from a outsiders pov” via an autistic character (My Name Is Khan tried it to a similar “criticize religion based politics” effect), or an overgrown child (like Koi Mil Gaya). Paa had similar problems when it tried to use Progeria as a fatal disease, where any fatal diseases like cancer, or the Anand one could have resulted into the same movie. Just that AB wouldn’t have been part of the film. It was a marketing ploy, nothing else.

Anyways coming back to PK. One more RKH observation. The antagonist in his movies is slowly becoming more an dmore caricatured and one-dimensional. Dr. Asthana was cartoonish, but he still had well-rounded character moments with Sanju, his daughter and colleagues. There were few scenes where I empathized with him. Lage Raho Munnabhai’s Lucky Singh was shrewd and cunning Sardar. He was not as well rounded as Asthana, but still was a character in its own. The real caricature started with Virus. He was a unique caricature, but a complete one dimensional cartoonish character, with no real personality. And now we have a completely generic caricature of a character in Saurabh Shukla’s Hindu preaching baba. It is a character well suited in Singham Returns (Come to think of it, Amol Gupte added more spunk than Saurabh Shukla was allowed to). It is RKH’s complete lack of conviction in this character that resulted in this.

I really don’t care to delve any deeper into the endless machinations RKH applies to illicit a laugh and a tear. It is an exhaustive exercise to uncover his manipulations, which are slowly rising up to the surface. With more people noticing them in PK, a part of me is happy to be not alone (like I was during 3 idiots). I was conned twice (MMBBS, LRM), but Sanju still manages to put some soul to the contrivances, Aamir exposes them further.  I think I’m done with Aamir-RKH combo. I feel next would be Ranbir-RKH, which I would still give a try hoping Ranbir can work some miracle like Sanju.

Action Jackson: Action Below The Belt

I really believe Prabhu Deva brings a very unique sense of humor into Bollywood, which is very refreshing. It is bizarre, outlandish and many times loaded with double innuendo but mostly much less crude and perverse than Milap Zaveri.  He started his Bollywood innings with remakes (Wanted and Rowdy Rathore) and now he is into originals (R..Rajkumar and Action Jackson). It becomes very evident now, that beyond couple of comic situations he is plain mediocre, who is just churning movies on auto-pilot mode. He kind of goes all out in Action Jackson going beyond double innuendos and hitting right below the belt. The movie is surely outlandish and might serve as amusement, but it is lazy, sloppy and grating, which makes a mess of even something as basic as a double role.

There is nothing in the plot worth getting into, but I would like to get into a scene, which I believe is a very unique scene in terms gender role-reversals. It starts of as a regular misogynist scene from those countless 90s B-movies. A girl is kidnapped, tied to a chair, and soon drenched in water to exploit the see-through property of white shirts when wet. The villain soon starts feeling the girl up, unbuttons her revealing a well shaped cleavage throwing the mass centers in raptures (and the multiplex audience into a uncomfortable territory). We thought we were over all this exploitation in the 90s , but here is Prabhu Deva bringing all those  memories back. And this is the point in such a scene, where to balance the perverseness, a hero needs to be ushered in to save the day and rest of the already exploited girl’s ‘izzat’. Till now it is like any other of those scenes, but at this point Mr. Prabhu Deva turns the scene around its head, and the attention shifts from the girl’s cleavage to Ajay Devgan’s ripped abs and from the villain’s Ranjeetesque looks to the girl biting lips and going all ooh-aah about AJ’s well-sculpted body. The victim of male desire suddenly becomes the one desiring a male (which later in the movie turns into a predator like instinct). Sure, the girl is later conveniently put into the Vamp’s role like all other movies, but in that 3-4 minutes sequence, the way a victim is empowered and set free from the hindi movie shackles of female sexuality repression is absolutely refreshing. And in this moment, as Raja Sen notes in his review, AJ is just a prop and Manasvi Mamgai is the one with the reins in her hands. This feminist turn is strictly limited to this moment and it soon defuses and settles down in familiar territory.  Manasvi Mamgai the predator soon turns into the ‘psycho bitch’.

The role of the 3 females in the movie is as follows

Female 1 – A harebrained girl who believes her luck changes for the good whenever she sees Ajay Devgan’s private parts.

Female 2 – A mute spectator of a wife who gets thrashed twice in the movie. A placeholder of a character to get AJ angry with revenge.

Female 3 – Constantly on horomonal rush. She fantasizes AJ more than we did Alicia Silverstone in the 90’s. Her primary reason of existence is to provide fantastic visuals of cleavage and a bare back.

Despite of this, our esteemed critic Raja Sen considers this movie a ‘benchmark in feminist cinema’.  I agree with Shubhra Gupta when she says, “Action Jackson treats its women as dumb dodos or doped-out vixens…” Her review spells the awfulness of the film very bluntly.
If filmmakers argue that they make mainstream movies with stars to give people a personality they love to watch without any trappings of serious story or drama, then at least give us something junta loves. I don’t think anyone wants to watch Ajay kick ass like this with awkward swordplay, superhuman punches and kicks. We don’t want him doing tomfoolery like Akshay Kumar or Salman Khan. If I may speak on behalf of the moviegoers, I would say we all want to see Ajay Devgan as a cool, calm, calculated and a laidback fellow who could just kill someone with a stare. We want to see more Malik and more Sultan Mirza. Rohit Shetty claims he knows how to get the best of Ajay on screen. I think he absolutely doesn’t and nor does anyone else currently working in the mainstream space. It is rare we get a Sultan Mirza, which made me go ecstatic.
As we herald all the wonderful small budget films that we’ve started getting post 2000, my heart also bleeds for the absolute degrading of the hindi mainstream film. I still believe 90s and the early 2000’s was the best time for the quintessential ‘hindi-pickchur’.  If we are reaIly done with it, so be it, but at least this generation deserves their own Ram Gopal Verma, to challenge norms and churn out an alternative to this maar-dhaad-kapda-faad variety of cinema.

Finding Fantasy

Finding Fanny is an English language film, and I am always suspicious and wary of such endeavors where characters speak ‘well-written’ English dialogue.  The dialogues always try to be natural, but unless actors are adept enough, the movie becomes a tedious watch. I am sure more than half the scripts of Bollywood are written originally in English, and then translated to Hindi. Few of them like Delhi Belly and now Finding Fanny manage to come out in their original intended form, but still I always prefer the Hindi.

The reason of my prologue is that the enjoyment of this film depends highly on how much of an ear and liking you have for these ‘natural’ English conversations. Fortunately we have actors like Pankaj Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia who just knock it out of the park, language not-withstanding. But on the other side we have Deepika Padukone, who feels like is reading rehearsed lines. Of course, her physical presence alone in a scene can have you rapt in attention, but hearing her talk was one of the most tedious part of the film.

Enough of the surface, lets get into what this film is trying to be and where it ends up. The story is set in Goa and has a bunch of oddball characters, which are grappling with reality and pursuing an elusive fantasy. Ferdi(NS) receives a undelivered letter that he had sent to his lover proposing her for marriage 46 years back. Feeling frustrated and excited at the same time thinking that he was not really rejected - as the letter never reached Fanny, he sets the story in motion when he shares this with Angie(DP) .She coaxes him to finally go looking out for Fanny and telling her what remained unsaid for so many years.  This leads to a road trip that turns into a melting pot where raw emotions surface, tempers rise and finally couple of outbursts later everybody gets a reality check.

The structure of the film is quite standard. But there are couple of threads which are delightful. Especially the artist-muse relationship between Don Pedro(PK) and Rosie(DK). It starts as a very comic and awkward dynamic, progressing into something very cynical and unusual. The muse, for the most of the part, is very nonchalant towards the artist’s advances, but she is left zonked and almost devastated at the end. Ferdi’s pursuit of a romantic fantasy is apparently a contrast to the Don Pedro’s pursuit of physical beauty, but eventually it melts down to the same superficial nature of a fantasy, where nothing can really trump physical beauty. And this climactic moment is handled very lovingly. The harsh reality check is delivered with such dry humor, that Ferdi is left devastated and at the same time freed of his flights of fantasy. Mr. Adajania displays a genuine good-heartedness in handling this, because its never easy to squash your character’s fantasy and at the same time empathize with him.

Mr. Adajania himself displays pursuit of physical beauty when he more often than not punctuates scenes with a shot of Angie’s back.  This male-gaze never really adds to the bigger picture, and so does the whole Savio(AK)-Angie love angle. It becomes a very jarring and confused (maybe that’s the point) side thread. It does give a wonderful gender role reversal scene where Angie after making love to Savio, just lays there staring at the sky reveling in the moment not wanting to be disturbed by Savio. It has that traditional male trait of finding nothing more than self-fulfillment in sex. But the heightened self-awareness displayed there by Angie’s character almost robs the moment of its potency.

This whole gender role-reversal (or maybe the new urban gender role structure) is a continuing theme carried by Deepika Padukone (or the directors who have always viewed DP as the new-age urban woman in control) right from her Karthik Calling Karthik days.  She is kinda typecast but she emanates a very genuine vibe which gives a distinct personality to all her characters, always different but still always the same. Come to think of it, the Savio-Angie love story is nothing but a more pleasing playing out of Ferdi’s incomplete love story. But it is mostly ineffective due to sketchy characterizations and a generic back-story.

The music of the film deserves special mention, and I’m not talking about the hindi language songs, but the wonderful English-Spanish (whatever that was) songs which fill Ferdi’s fantasies. They do more justice to the milieu than the hindi songs. 

Finding Fanny, finally is a middling effort, but still has quite a few memorable comedic moments that stay with you maybe not for its humor, but its darkness. 

PS: Cocktail should be moved from Mr. Adajania’s to Mr. Ali’s fimography. Finding Fanny sits as a more apt follow up to Being Cyrus rather than Cocktail.

Break ke Baad

originally posted on www.passionforcinema.com

We saw in Vinnaithandi Varruvaya (VTV) and Imtiaz Ali’s films that at most of the times the obstacles in a relationship are very much internal as opposed to what we are led to believe by most of our mainstream cinema. We are fed by our films that the hurdles between two lovers and the happily-ever-after are either fate, misunderstanding (where both parties are cluelessly innocent), parents or a third person (forming a triangle). While if you look around you it is more often than not indecision, insecurities, volatile interest in the partner, ever reducing attention span, high running libido or sometimes just plain boredom. Break Ke Baad doesn’target these specifically but it does something very refreshing for a mainstream Hindi rom-coms, it internalizes all the struggles one faces in relationships.

Films like Blue Valentine( and Everyone Else, a german film which I highly recommend for those who have seen Blue Valentine)take this particular aspect to the most brutal/honest part of its spectrum, where one partner, to bare it in all its primitive simplicity, looses interest and respect for the other partner. Plain and simple. There seems to be no other reason to dump a husband and the father (who actually helps the mother by taking responsibility of a child who may not be his). Pardon my digression into Blue Valentine, but this is a film which is weighing on my consciousness right from the time I watched it. It cut really close to me, so close that I can’t even get myself to recount the last scenes of the movie. Which is why I will now immediately lose myself in a hopeful, may be a fantasy, world of Break ke Baad, in which all characters get a chance to wise-up and make up for their minor digressions.  They understand their misgivings in retrospect and act on them. They ask for forgiveness as easily as they forgive. It is a movie where our judgment may get better of us and bias ourselves against the movie. 

From whatever reviews I’ve read I can only conclude that Deepika’s character doesn’t earn any brownie points for her behavior which, if you take a step back and observe, is actually being very harsh on her.  It would be actually fairer if I talk on this with more context  and in a more organic way. 

We have a very simple and identifiable premise of a cribby stuck-in-banal-job guy dating a high-flyer ambitious I-wanna-live-my-life kinda a girl. If we look around at such scenarios in real life, and importantly at a juncture when the female makes a breakthrough and achieves somewhat higher ‘social-standing’, we know what is in store for that particular couple. Break ke Baad offers a take on this premise in a rather naïve yet honest way. It catches up with the couple before the female takes a (or rather acts on a plan to) high jump.  The roles are defined between them. The guy is supposed to be grounded and realistic one, while the female being an impulsive and instinctive wild girl. They both very well acknowledge their roles and seem to be relishing them. They infact also acknowledge the practical convenience of their roles and how without either one it will all collapse. The female brings in the excitement while the male sets the speed limits. One of the best scenes of the movie comes during this part when the female very cutely tells the guy that tomorrow if I waiver and take off, it is your responsibility to tether me down and lash two tight slaps to bring me back to ground. Now if you see, this guy is barely holding onto her, always on the edge thinking what if tomorrow she leaves me? He is plain insecure. The female here finally decides to move to another country for better opportunities. Amidst much gung-ho she eventually moves to Australia. After couple of weeks of phone chat, one day by accident another guy picks up the phone at the female’s end. Our guy panics and in a snap reaches her place in Australia un-announced. Pissed off by her boy-friends ridiculousness she there and then dumps him saying that its over. But our guy taken over by a bout of self-righteousness stemming from their earlier understanding of him being the ‘mature’ one, doesn’t budge from there in hope of once again bringing her down from her supposed flight of fancy and rekindling their ‘love and understanding’.  This is the interval point. I want to ask all those who hated Break ke baad, one question, isn’t this interesting? I mean isn’t this setup really interesting.

Danish Aslam (the director and writer) said in his interview, “I could relate to the first draft a lot more but after Renuka came on board and as the script evolved, I feel Aaliya is becoming a lot like Renuka. She even talks the way Renuka does!”

If you observe, the basic structure of the script is to put the guy in a righteous position and then make him win at the end by making the female realize that she had gone a self-centered trip. Reading Danish’s interview I was sure that if not for Renuka Kunzru (the co-writer with Danish Aslam), the movie would have felt very aloof from its female lead and would have become a rather skewed rom-com. Renuka lends credibility to the female which helps to get more important issues at fore.

Now coming to the latter half. If you even are getting somewhat closer to Aaliya’s character, you will notice that the characters in the 2^nd half are just imposing their own insecurities on her, in a very annoying self-righteous way.  She has absolutely no insecurities and is just doing what she wants in the moment. Her mother tries to throw her on a guilt trip by some solid emotional black-mailing (which all our mothers are expert at). Her boyfriend is not ready to accept a life without her. I’m not saying both don’t have a point, but they are just acting on some misguided, highly biased impulses. She is traumatized from both the sides. But she holds her own, does what she wants to do. Though she finally asks forgiveness from her mother, but till then her mother has also realized her own prejudiced stance and everybody wisens up a bit.

Till this point I have nothing but praises for the movie. But then the way the movie goes about solving the whole issue with her and her boyfriend is a bit been-there-done-that,  though no less truer. The true part of it is that there is no way to rekindle romance after such a break-up, unless the guy earns respect in the eyes of the female.  How to do that filmy style, make the hero a runaway successful chef! It is shown all too easy. Once the guy is on his feet, the female’s interest is piqued. And then we have no looking back. This completion arc is somewhat muddled (may be that is the point). I’ll have to watch the film once again to properly understand this arc, but instinctively it just felt a bit convenient and not worthy of the issues put forth in the initial setup.  I would be lying if I said the end was oh-so-predictable. The reason the end surprised me was because I was expecting something unusual (given the VTV hangover) but it ended being the usual. I felt sudden joy when the film decided to go the happily-ever after way after the misleading twist. Maybe I badly wanted the guy and the female to get together. 

Many of you would feel that you and me have watched a completely different film altogether. I myself am surprised at the mass hate this film generated when it released. Chuck the whole relationship and righteousness blah-blah, but how can one at least not enjoy the casual refreshing conversations in the movie. Some scenes, like the one in the terrace, the one under the table are so cutesy without being overly cheesy. I loved that. I could understand where the guy was coming from, and thanks to Renuka Kunzru I got sufficient insights into Aaliya to fall in love with the character despite her selfish whims.

Another aspect of such films is that there is no sense of direction in the second half, things just see-saw from one moment to the other. Love Aaj Kal and VTV had a very similar second half, when both the lovers are just not able to take a decision and stick to it till the end. Their stances keep on swaying till the end. In this aspect Break Ke Baad doesn’t really break new grounds. It takes the safer and cleaner way, though there are some confusing scenes around the Dhoop Ke Makaan song. I would have really liked some more friction. But that is just what I want. What the entire movie did for me was way more that what I had expected (After all how good can a Imran-Deepika movie be? Right?) And I was just very happy at the end of all of it to just sing praises and make everyone watch this film (which didn’t really happen).

A traditional verdict is as follows,

Ups:                  Refreshing dialogue, refreshing premise and refreshing casualness.

Downs:             (I had predicted Imraan. But no he stands his ground) Convenient wrap-up.

Cast:                Deepika Padukone’s best act till date. It is HER movie all the way, but still Imraan in his own innocuous way ably supports her.

Direction:         Danish Aslam brings the right amount of natural camaraderie between the leads and creates a multiplex palatable (KJO esque) setting minus the irksome broad strokes.

Share The Best Hindi Films of the Decade: Part-1

Originally posted on www.passionforcinema.com on December 31, 2009

To accommodate as many as possible, I couldn’t help but come up with different categories, because I wanted to have Kya Kool Hai Hum too somewhere in the list. To come up with films right from 2000 I have referred Wikipedia’s list of Bollywood films released each year. I hope I haven’t missed any. You would surely find some odd entries here and there based on my personal taste. But my decade’s best is mostly keeping both my likes and the general rating among cinephiles and general audience. No personal tweaks there.

Runner-ups

This category formed when I ran out of category names. The films mentioned in here are a mix of personal favorites and films which are exceptional in parts but don’t crack it as a whole.

(The films are ordered according to their year of release)

Monsoon Wedding
If for nothing else, just for the celebration dance on Aaja Nachle followed by Sukhwinder’s song of the decade, Kawa Kawa.

Saathiya
The end was a bummer, but till then it was disturbingly real.

Khakee
If this is an original screenplay, I’m impressed. And even if not, Amitabh Bacchan’s taking-a-nap-on-stage scene and the explosive monologue at the police station, makes this Rajkumar Santoshi’s best since his Sunny days.

D
I fell in love with Randeep Hooda after this film. His performance fit perfectly as a prequel to the epic Malik character in Company. Some dialogues and scenes are for the keeps. “Main dhande ke liye marne ko tayyar hoon… kya tu sirf muje maarne ke liye marne ko tayyar hai?”

My Brother Nikhil
I cry buckets each and every time I see this film. The main reason being I have a very Juhi Chawlaesque elder sister. Get it?

Gangster
It’s a solid drama. Superbly shot, with a killer soundtrack. Shiney Ahuja’s arrest scene is gut-wrenching. The twist at the end was superb too but then the Emraan Hashmi’s over the top abusive encounter with Kangana at the end killed it for me.

Yun Hota toh kya hota
I simply loved the film. When I saw the film for the first time I had no clue about the stories linked with 9/11. So the end was completely heart wrenching.

Pyaar ke side effects
It took quite a long for apna bollywood to come up with a pitch perfect crisp romantic comedy.

Namastey London
Extremely satisfying hindi pickchur with an underdog hero and a diva like heroine. Easily Akshay’s best during his stint as a superstar.

Cheeni Kum
A crackling first half precedes an over the top farce in the second half. Amitabh and Tabu hit off with each other in a delightful tête-à-tête throughout the film.

Life in a Metro
A very enjoyable urbane filmy hyperlinked narrative laced by a killer Pritam soundtrack. Irfan and Konkana pair up to deliver the most delightful scenes. And Sharman with his brooding honesty won my heart.

The Blue Umbrella
Only if I had watched it on a big screen, I would have promoted it to the higher categories. Pankaj Kapur picks up the pahaadi accent so amazingly that I couldn’t stop myself from smiling every time he said something.

Aamir
It’s fast and it’s gritty. Puts you into the character’s shoes and suffocates you in the bylanes of Mumbai. I found the end moments stretched beyond a point. All the pressure and the anxiety vanished. If the end had worked for me, Aamir would have been way up my list.

Oye Lucky Lucky Oye
Something was amiss in this film. There was some vague disconnect which I couldn’t point out. But anyways, the first 20 minutes by themselves deserve to be in the list.

Firaaq
It was a really well made film, but it only rose occasionally to shattering levels. Maybe it was supposed to be that way. I appreciated the film to great lengths but it didn’t really shake me or shatter me.

Little Zizzou
Oh! A delightful warm and fuzzy Parsi movie. I watched it twice and enjoyed it thoroughly.


Guilty Pleasures

These are not actually ‘good’ films but I have a good time with them even today.

Nayak: The real hero
The Sanskrit chant which plays every time the CM kicks ass, is what I refer to as epic goosebump inducing background score. Anil Kapoor is very convincing as the morally upright socially responsible citizen. Shankar’s hindi debut is high on so-bad-its-good quotient too.

Rehna hai tere dil mein
I used to worship this as a teenager but then have grown out of it, but still each and every scene brings out the old memories and a smile.

Zameen
This was the time when I was an Abhishek fan. I still remember coming home after a first day last show of Zameen and shouting excitedly to my Mom “Abhishek has got his first hit!” People cheered throughout the whole movie. But alas I was wrong, it didn’t manage great business except for some territories.

Kya Kool Hai Hum
This is an absolute hooter of a film. Raunchiness levels hit through the roofs in this film. It is filled with gross double meaning PJs, but till today it gives me the kicks.


Best of Kickass

These are the films which brought back the kickass grit in bollywood this decade. These films feature greyer characters along with plain badass villians. Its not always good vs bad, but even if it is that, these films grind the good to torturous levels thus amplifying the payoff at the end.

Kaante
Sanjay Gupta has style. Period.
And a special mention for Milap Zhaveri for those acidic, kickass dialogues. Some were translated but some were, “sawaal yeh nahi ki bar mein kitni daaru hai, sawaal yeh hai ki tu kitni pee sakta hai.” I hope this isn’t a translated one too!

Ek Hasina thi
Saif Ali Khan’s best role on par with Langda tyaagi. He has some villianish bone for sure. The soundtrack was never recorded. The title sequence song ‘chaha bhanwar’ was astoundingly atmospheric.

Gangajal
The interval scene, where the cops pour acid in eyes of the imprisoned, is one of my favorite scenes. The whole build up where Mukesh Tiwari gets into a verbal duel with the goon and then simmering with anger goes out and brings the acid from his car battery, is purely exhilarating. It gave me the chills.

Apaharan
This film has tremendous repeat value. Its badass and fast paced. Nana Patekar and Ajay Devgan deliver powerhouse performances. Yashpal Sharma as always provides a pitch perfect haraami performance, to give us a superb interval payoff.


The Specials

These films are in general small in budget, indie films. Their achievement may not be as major as the decade’s best but still they are special in their own way. They are the little gems close to my heart.

Waisa Bhi Hota Hai Part 2
This was one of the decade’s earlier new wave films, with a soundtrack more famous than the film itself. Nonetheless it was filled with tongue-in-cheek humor and an adman’s crazy imagination.

Socha Na Tha
What a whiff of fresh air! The casualness with which things went forward in the film was refreshing. Not many people saw this when it came out, but those who did couldn’t stop raving.

Home Delivery
I met Sujoy Ghosh at the Hangover premiere in Mumbai. I told him that unlike many I love his Home Delivery. He started laughing. He said ‘Don’t let others hear this, or they will laugh!” The film had a very distinct rhythm to its proceedings, and the Mahima Choudhary scenes are hilarious. And this may be the only movie which leads upto Diwali at the end.

1971
I missed it on a big screen and I regret it. And I can’t figure out why the producer’s didn’t promote it, because it was a perfect crowd pleaser along with being superbly detailed and acted.

Dil Dosti Etc.
Campus is sooper fun. Why don’t more movies explore the campus, in a more real way like Dil Dosti etc. Shreyas Talpade surprisingly pulled off a Bihari role effortlessly. And the women in the film were hot. Period.

Ek Chaalis ki Last Local
Wild and entertaining. It also has a superb repeat value. A voice over was never so much fun in a hindi pickchur.

Johnny Gaddar
Sriram Raghavan reverses the whodunit gloriously. Instead of the audience, the characters in the film are clueless about the killer, which made the film extremely fun to watch.

Manorama: Six feet under
Abhay Deol biking through a Yana-Gupta-pouring-water-on-her-body mirage. Can one setup the environment, the premise, the characters more deftly?

Upcoming categories

Invoking mass Hysteria
Memorable theatre going experiences
How can I forget these?
Decade’s Best

Aamir shows us the real Hirani

Originally posted on www.passionforcinema.com on December 28, 2009

Where is the honesty? Where is the spontaneity? 3 idiots reeked of manipulations and design to the core. It was so thoroughly designed to deliver punches in each and every scene that it seized to be spontaneous the moment it started. Nothing really wrong with it, as people are having a jolly good time seeing it and taking lessons from it. As long as you don’t see the designs and the manipulations Aal eez well! But if one digs a scratch deeper and tries to see the hands behind the film, each and every scene feels contrived, made just to press the audience’s buttons at every step. Not even a single scene passes without telling you how to feel. Not even a single scene plays out naturally giving us insight into a human being. Zero organic writing. And as I unmasked Hirani along the film, I could see him mouthing the Akshay Kumar’s password in Ajnabee ‘Everything is Planned’. Bad one! But couldn’t resist :-P

Then I asked myself, why Munnabhai films didn’t feel that way. They were also precisely designed, delivering punches at each and every step. What was it about those films that despite of it’s hard-core Hirani treatment, felt honest and spontaneous. Why did I sigh ‘Bas karo bhashan’ in 3 idiots and didn’t mind even a single advice in Munnabhai. Lage raho was actually super preachy, but I could still sense a very good heart at the heart of the films. Whose heart was it? After seeing 3 idiots I can vouch that it wasn’t Hirani’s. He surely is supremely witty, but the heart wasn’t his. My sister helped me with this. She said “Outside Munnabhai films also, we all have an image of Sanjay Dutt. An image of a guy with a heart of gold. How much ever bad he does, one always feels he is essentially a nice guy at heart.” Yea!! That was it!! Munnabhai was Sanjay Dutt, by heart and soul. His character was extension of his off-screen persona. And this worked brilliantly for the film. The honesty and spontaneity was injected in the Munnabhai films by apna Sanju baba and Circuit too to quite an extent. These guys were actually living the characters and thus the films felt ekdum dil se. No amount of designs could overshadow or overpower Munnabhai’s honesty when he tells Dr Suman “Main tumko love karta hai…. Kya karu..woh ho gaya na..”

Now juxtapose that with the ‘heart-of-gold’ Rancho. Aamir Khan makes a mess of it. Hirani calculates Rancho as an inquisitive, naïve, mischievous, maverick and has-figured-out-life kinda guy. But Mr. Hirani, where is his heart? Just see the design of Hirani, to create sympathy for Rancho. After establishing Rancho as a genius, a know-it-all guy, he then unravels his past to reveal that he is actually a servant’s son, a poor guy. And I don’t know whether this design worked for the viewers or no. For me Rancho always remained a theoretical character. I enjoyed his antics but never connected or warmed up to him. He was just a script manifestation never actually fleshing out in front of me. The film overshadows this deficit by its punch-filled scenes and dialogues not once relying on the audience connect with Rancho.

I am a die hard Aamir Khan fan. He must be putting great amount of efftorts to flesh out a character but not once before 3 idiots did I see that effort on screen. He unfailingly delivers effortless performances each and every time. Even when he stepped out of the car as ACP Rathod, he was ACP rathod. He was DJ in RDB. What the hell, I even loved him in Mangal Paandey. His heart is always in the character. Every performance comes fore as a natural performance, though he must be taking great amount of efforts off-screen. That is Aamir Khan. But here each and every twitch of his body feels like an effort to look a college going guy. Each and every expression of his feels like an effort to look inquisitive or childishly mischievous. Though the moment he starts talking we all forget those efforts and are with the film. That is the beauty of Hirani and Abhijat Joshi’s writing. Bombard viewers with witty dialogues, so they are not off the hook. But in retrospective 3 idiots doesn’t work. I’m pretty much sure it doesn’t have the Munnabhai repeat value, but will give it a try once before it leaves the theatres. Because, I actually didn’t mind the movie that much. 3 hours whizzed past without major concerns.

Coming back to Aamir Khan, whenever he goes in the preachy mode I was reminded of Nikumbh sir from Taare Zameen Par. Why? Rancho is not that experienced, has not undergone that great tribulations to actually realize what he preaches. He acts just as the film’s mouthpiece. His preaches never came out of that character, it came from the writer to the audience. And that is precisely why I sighed ‘Bas Karo yeh bhashan’. Compare that to Munnabhai. Despite of the preaching throughout, one never cringed or was offended. Be it overly simplistic or totally outlandish, the preachings came from an honest heart of Munna, and that is why we took the preachings lightly in our stride during the movie. All the advice came from Munnabhai’s day to day suffering and realizations.

Aamir, may be is not cut for Hirani world. He felt as a miscast. I feel great pain in saying that Rancho was a role which Aamir couldn’t carry off effortlessly. It was painful to watch him make stupid faces while running in the hospital with a Mithai ka dabba, or seeing him with his hands in the pocket trying to walk like an innocent first year guy. I guess Aamir should stay away from Hirani, and Hirani should stay away from audience for a while, because I’m sure the audience will grow tired of his format if he strikes any sooner than 2 years.

Paanch: Flash of Brilliance

Originally posted on www.passionforcinema.com on December 20, 2009

I choose the word Flash very carefully because Paanch at the end of the day is just a flash of Anurag Kashyap’s nascent brilliance. In fact, there are a slew of those flashes throughout the movie, but somehow they remain disjointed and don’t add up to form anything awesome. Though the film is restlessly volatile throughout, it doesn’t quite deliver that final punch in the gut, and instead chooses to deliver intelligent filmy thrills.

Paanch starts of as a crime tale told in interrogation flashbacks. The underground mood is setup very deftly in the flashbacks, which introduces us to the Paanch. They are a bunch of weed-smoking binge-drinking college going guys whom every one of us has met at some point of time in the college years; the guys with a care-a-damn exterior and with a fuck you attitude all over their body language. And such a group is always incomplete without a butt-of-the-jokes guy. Someone has to endure all the ridicule and is also expected to take it all in the right spirit. The fuck you guys need him to feed their already expanded egos. They exercise their power, their attitudes relentlessly on the guy. The problem with the fuck you guys is they are so used to putting up the I’m fearless and ruthless image that whenever that image is breached their defense mechanism sets in motion and hell breaks loose.

Luke (Kay Kay Menon) is that archetypical fuck you guy and Pondy (Vijay Maurya) is the butt-of-the-jokes guy. And Luke is not just another guy with an image problem. He is THE guy with an image problem. His defense mechanism drives him to sheer lunatic levels. He bullies the other guys to intimidating levels. And if anyone of them tries to oppose or counter bully him, violence grips Luke and he breaks loose. With him in the room the atmosphere is always volatile. When a certain caper goes wrong, things get ugly and in a blood boiling moment Luke murders a guy. This event triggers further mishaps and the five of them quickly spiral down into an abyss of guilt and helplessness.

So as you can see Paanch has a very potent premise and in fact a perfect setting for Anurag Kashyap to revel in with his kinda characters and dialogues. The film starts off choppily but slowly gathers momentum and rises occasionally to gut-wrenching levels. Half the credit here goes to Kay Kay’s mind-numbing performance. And again half the credit of that performance goes to Anurag Kashyap. The performance is monstrous. It chews the scenery as well as the people around. Every other character complements it in their own humble way. The two places where the bunch frequently hangs out; their house of course and a garage where they jam together; are lit and shot superbly to lend a very queasy claustrophobic feel to the proceedings.

Something horribly wrong happens with the last ½ an hour. *SPOILER START* Suddenly the movie shifts gear and enters into a Usual Suspects kinda mode. *SPOILER END* The story suddenly feels contrived (maybe it is supposed to) and the entire unsettling feeling, which had build up due to the larger part of the film, vanishes. This certain change of gears felt very jarring, clearly robbing the film of the grim and grit. *SPOILER START* The characters suddenly loose their identifiable vulnerabilities and become Joker like schemers. *SPOILER END*

The performance and character which stood out for me apart from Kay Kay was of Aditya Shrivastava. His character is essentially someone like us who, though is smack in the middle of the proceedings, is observing things around with a steadfast yet laidback presence. He too is completely baffled by Luke’s lunacy. And the moment, when he stands up against Luke towards the latter part of the movie, is purely exhilarating.

Main Khuda was very amateurly shot. It looked like a home video. I’m not saying it should have been shot with a huge stage and laser lights ala Rock On. The song is special. It deserved something better. The subway idea was good, but somehow I couldn’t feel that on-the-streets thrill. Maybe because of the unreal lighting used or the thanda sad bhaade ka crowd. The energy was missing. The last part of the song delivers the sorta punch I expected from the whole song. The part when Kay Kay and Aditya Shrivastava get teary eyed followed by Kay Kay and crowd crooning the song alternately ‘Saans lo. Dum bharo. Chillakar Sabse Kaho…Sar jhuka khuda hoon main. Aasmanon pe khada hoon main…Main Khudaaaa…’ That pumped me up big time. That’s how I thought the whole song should have been shot. Anyways the song entered my system again after all those years, and I’m desperate to download or even buy a CD if available.

Without Kay Kay’s performance, Paanch could have easily had a ‘Love sex Betrayal’ caption and passed of as an above average fare. But Luke compels me to rate the film much higher than the choppy screenplay and a flat out bad finale allows it to be. It is after all an Anurag Kashyap film. His mastery of individual scenes doesn’t transcend to the film as a whole. I had similar issues with Gulaal. His films somehow don’t have the fluidity or the poetry of events which Vishal Bharadwaj’s films have in abundance. They seem to be a collection of great scenes. Great scene-cut-great scene-cut and so on. Black Friday was no doubt an exception. But Paanch, Dev D and Gulaal, all of them show this same weakness. But anyways like all his films Paanch has Kashyap’s distinctive intensity driving things forward, and for that alone, it deserves a theatrical release and thus a much wider audience.