Raindrops

Slumdog Millionaire - Review

2009-01-24T01:58:00.000+05:30

It has been a long time since I have written a review, atleast on the group list. I thought with the considerable hype around Slumdog Millionaire, I should write a first day first show review.

The Story

The story is quite simple and must be familiar to people following the endless news coverage. It is about a kid from the slums, Jamal Malik, who is on the verge of winning Rs2 crores in Kaun Banega Crorepati. As he is just one question away from the final prize, he is whisked off to the police station overnight to be questioned if he has been cheating. He is subject to some heavy torture by the police, played by Saurabh Shukla and Irrfan Khan. Then he reveals how he has been able to answer each question as it corresponds to an event in his life. His brother, Salim and childhood love Latika, are with him on and off through his life and Jamal’s quest for Latika through brothels and gangsters dens becomes his obsession. He is finally released by the police and he goes on to win the prize and Latika too.

My Views

I am in two minds about SM, I really wanted to like the movie as it was a quasi-Indian movie which has been seeing considerable success and above all the themes, if not the sensibilities, are essentially Indian. The theme being essentially about the role of destiny (or fatalism in a negative sense) in our lives. However the movie for me was underwhelming, and that too by a huge margin.

One big note of caution before reading my views is that the context in which I have seen the movie was different than most audiences. I am one of the very few who have actually read the book on which the movie was based – Q&A by Vikas Swarup. The book, though not exceptional on literary merit, was excellent entertainment. I am cognizant of the pitfalls of comparing a book with the movie, however the pitfalls are likely to be fewer here as the book is largely a good story which should have been easy to film or adapt. However the filmmakers have changed the story around to make it more palatable to international audiences and reduce a few complexities.

However, one big grouse which I have is the sequencing of the questions to match the chronology of events in Jamal life. To elaborate, the first question might refer to something that happened to Jamal when he was 4 years, the second to something that happened when he was 5 and so on. This was really really stretching destiny. The book was interestingly structured where each question refers to a different phase of the protagonist’s life and we keep going back and forth till we have a neat mosaic of his life.

With the kind of structural experiments in narrative that we keep seeing nowadays (Following, Memento, 21 Grams, Irreversible etc) I thought that the story could have really merited a different flow to it.

Another factor which hinders an objective assessment is the feeling of déjà vu that I got when we see many of the scenes from the movie, whether the search for love or the grittier parts of the movie. I feel that, it might be new for international audiences, but people being handicapped for begging or young girls forced into prostitution is not something we are unaware of.

Unlike the comments of some faux nationalists or ignoramuses, my crib is not that we are presenting the seamy side of India for the foreign markets but that it is not seamy enough to make a more hard hitting statement atleast for Indian audiences (including me) who have been long been inured to these scenes. I felt that there was a flippancy in the way these gritty events were handled, never lingering for the audience to think, but used just to propel the story to the next question. There is a visceral movement to the movie, a very music-video psychedelic pace which makes it very difficult to dwell for a moment on the love just lost or the horrors recently seen. In editing terminology, the movie I am sure would be having a very low average length of shot (ALoS) (I really wanted to use that, never got a chance to do that until now)

Technically, the movie is top class. The photography was really award worthy. On the music, thought Rahman has done better work earlier. The actors are uniformly good, though I would take my hat off to the kids who played the younger Jamal, Salim and Latika.

However, nothing above should deter you from seeing the movie. In fact, you should see it and give me an opinion so that I can test my hypotheses of whether my reading of the book affected me against the movie and whether the movie is liked more by international audiences (a couple of Indian friends have seen it in the US and corroborate my views).

On the awards bit, I really would have loved to see the Dark Knight get more recognition. It is still the best movie I have seen in 2008. More on that later probably.

White Tiger - Book Review

2009-01-11T17:39:00.001+05:30

There was a time I used to read all the Booker prize winners, from 1997 to 2003 – I read 6 out of the 7 winners; only missing out on the 2001 winner – True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey. Of late though, the awards have become pretty mediocre, at least by the reviews I have read of them, and more importantly, their impact. I have seen a steady deterioration since 2004, when they awarded the Booker to Alan Hollinghurst’s “The line of Beauty” over David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas”. The selection was universally panned at that time. I did not read the former but read the latter and was bowled over by the sheer literary inventiveness of Mitchell. Post 2003, most of the books were apparently very dull and eminently forgettable and probably have been. Even Kiran Desai’s “Inheritance of Loss” was supposedly a very weak winner.

On the whole, most of the Booker winners I have read have really impressed me and I would gladly re-read many of them and have actually re-read like “God of Small Things”.

To be honest, I decided to read the White Tiger not because it won the Booker but just because it was available at the British Library. It being Indian was the least of my concerns.

The story is about Balram Halwai, born into a very poor family in Laxmangarh, a village near Dhanbad. His father is a rickshaw puller and his childhood is similar to millions of other children we read about everyday. The area is steeped in feudalism and there are faint stirrings of change, ostensibly through the Mandalisation of politics and the lower classes appear to be finding their place in governance. All this is only a minor backdrop to Balram’s story. He is pulled out of school to help his family out. He works in tea shops and other assorted places before learning car driving as a way out of the Darkness (as he calls the region). He is recruited by the local landlord’s family to be a driver, first in Dhanbad and then in Delhi. Balram, though achieving more than anyone in his family ever has, is still not comfortable with his current state and his outlook and he aspires to breaking free. He realises that the only way of getting out of the rut would be to steal money from his employer, but ends up killing him. He runs away to Bangalore to start a new career for himself as a taxi operator for call centre workers.

To say that I was disappointed by the book is an understatement. It was totally underwhelming. The book has nothing which caught my attention – either story or narrative or sheer self-indulgent literary craftiness (like a God of Small Things or Cloud Atlas). The story is very straightforward, which one would often read in newspapers or magazines. To make a story about it would require more than reporting. Unfortunately, Adiga has been a reporter for Time and this is the angle he takes. There is little additional depth he brings to his any of his characters, has superficial knowledge of the region or people he speaks about and has barely any understanding or insights into modern India which the book attempts to show a mirror to. It come across as a shallow effort, like one of those 2 page articles in Time or Economist which one encounters every other month, talking about the “real India” and how development is passing them by etc etc. If you are writing a 300 page book, your should aspire to more than that. The shining example which Adiga should have followed is “Bombay – Maximum City” which shows the real Bombay, things we know about but with a grittiness, a realism and sheer reporting brilliance and guts.

I could have forgiven all this if the language or narrative was brilliant or had a distinctive voice. There was scarcely a passage or phrase which held me in thrall. White Tiger looks like something which a schoolboy would write for his school magazine, high intentions coupled with a mediocrity and inability to rise above his position. In fact, I could not understand why Balram was writing his biography as letters to the Chinese premier. Why? It seems to be a lame attempt by the author to infuse some narrative style which seems downright juveline.

Finally, the only thing going for the book is that it is a very easy read, so is your Sidney Sheldon or Jeffrey Archer but that does not mean they get feted by awards.

Short notes on Books i read in 2008 (25 in total)

2009-01-11T17:08:00.005+05:30

FICTION

Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Salman Rushdie
Entertaining read. But somehow I kept losing interest in the book, did not find it gripping enough. I am not much of a fairy tales guy.

Full Moon
PGW
Very good Blandings story.

Road
Cormac McCarthy
Pulitzer price winning book set up in a dsytopian landscape where the world has been destroyed due to some reason and people have resorted to cannibalism to survive. The story is of a father and his son's trek along the country to reach a safe place. I did not find it compelling enough, it would have been good as a short story of say 50-100 pages but nothing to keep the interest sustained for 250 pages.

Vengeance
George Jonas
Did not realise that Munich by Spielberg was based on a book. Just came across this in BCL. Started off well but gets a bit repetitive and the writer seemed to have lost interest in the later stages of the book just as Avner lost interest in killing.

Train to Pakistan
Khushwant Singh
A great book set during Partition. A must-read

Different Seasons
Stephen King
A collection of 4 of his famous novellas - The Body (made into a critically and commercially acclaimed movie - Stand by Me), Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (made into Shawshank Redemption), the Breathing Method and Apt Pupil (made into Apt Pupil). Though Apt Pupil was the weakest movie of the lot, the book was the best of the above 4, they messed up the movie towards the end.

Green Mile
Stephen King
A long but compelling book. Different from the usual Stephen Kings, mysterious and magical.

Q&A
Vikas Swarup
A very entertaining read. Thought it great for a movie as it has indeed turned out (Slumdog Millionaire)

Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte
Loved the book. Very dark and brooding, thought the writing to be quite modern and seems to have dated well.

Unnatural Causes
PD James
Adam Dalgliesh investigates a murder in his aunt's country village. Though these PD James' seems more recent, somehow I found the investigation and unfolding of the suspense too sudden and not logical.

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman
PD James
My first PD James. Good characterisation, a refreshing break from Agatha Christie

The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler
A famous noir book and movie. Liked the dialogue and the style. However the actual uncovering of the suspense at the end seemed forced.

Moon and Sixpence
Somerset Maugham
Ideally one should read this wonderful book when one is in his early twenties, it is more relevant. The summary of the book is in this line from the book "a man is not what we wants to be, but what has to be"

A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Mohd. Hanif
A good satire of Pakistan politics. I don't think a similar book on Indian politics would have been possible.

Very good Jeeves
PGW
One of the earlier PGWs which are usually a notch better than the post-50s books

Never let me go
Kazuo Ishiguro
A charming but haunting, sci-fi/dystopian book on cloned babies, organ donation etc.

Motherhood, the second oldest profession
Erma Bombeck
Was running out of books to read in Hyderabad on holiday. Picked it up at my favourite used book store there. Meant more women actually. Some parts are good but gets trite after a point

Tell No One
Harlan Coben
Heard about the French movie which was a big critical and commerical success last year. It was actually based on this American thriller. Completed in a day, an absolute page-turner.

Blandings Castle
PGW
Short stories of important background events at Blandings Castle - how Freddie gets married, how Empress wins the Silver at Shropshire etc.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole 13 3/4
Sue Townsend
I don't like to give up books. I had dropped this once in IIM. I picked it up to finish it again. Again, to be read, when a teenager or just out it. But still a fun read.

NON-FICTION

The Art of Captaincy
Mike Brearley
Considered to be a classic. I thought it was an over-rated bore.

Conversations with Javed Akhtar
Nasreen Munni Kabir
Very interesting book structured like an interview.

Life and times of the Thunderbolt Kid
Bill Bryson
Easily one of my best books of the year, a really funny book after quite some time from Bryson.

The Mughal World
Abraham Eraly A guide to the lives of the kings and subjects during the Mughal times.

India after Gandhi
Ramachandra Guha
Detailed review on this blog below.

Book Review - "India After Gandhi" by Ramachandra Guha

2008-04-09T11:23:00.003+05:30

I have been an admirer of Ramachandra Guha since some time. I have been a regular reader of his columns in the Hindu and also read his Cricket Anthology and his Wickets in the East/ Spin and other Turns. His "Corner of a Foreign Field" has also been critically received, though i never got round to read it.

India After Gandhi is Ram Guha's first history book, though he has written some other books in the niche of environmental history (available as a compendium in Oxford paperback).

The book covers Indian history from around the time of Independence till date. Most history we are taught in schools ends at around Independence which is a bit of travesty but we can't expect it to change soon as the post-independence history is too controversial to have a uniformly accepted version of the truth. The syllabus will have to keep changing whenever the Congress and BJP come to power after the other.

India After Gandhi is an impressive achievement offering the un-initiated a snapshot of Indian history over the past 60 years. It is nearly 800 pages long and 900 including the bibliography. So it is not a lie-down-in-bed read, unless you want to sprain your wrist (as Vikram Seth once famously put it). However, it is a surprisingly fast read, an easy read (did not have to reach for the dictionary even once) and quite compelling.

I use the word un-initiated above with discretion. At the risk of sounding immodest, I already knew most of what was written. That is where my problem with the book lies (actually the problem might be with me rather than the book). Any decently well read Indian might also feel the same. There are few instances in the book where I wanted to know what would happen in the following page. Apart from a few instances like the Naga conflict, resettlement of refugees post-independence, influence of PN Haksar on Indira Gandhi etc. i find it difficult to come up with things i am not aware of. To be fair, even Guha acknowledges it in his prologue that recent history will have people already aware and judgemental. But still, in an 800 pages book there are significant areas which could have been covered that had evaded the lay reader.

Another issue of mine is the treatment of the Nehru legacy. Ram Guha comes across as a Nehruvian. I have no issues with that, he is entitled to his view. I can forgive Nehru's economic policies (that was the mood of the times as Guha makes it a point to prove), his indecisive foreign policies (non-alignment, Chinese debacle), sticking with friends for too long (Krishna Menon) to the point of sidelining legends like Rajaji, Kripalani etc. What i can't forgive is his bringing Indira Gandhi into the party and actively promoting her. She was already General Secretary at the time of his death, so it is not like his Congress sycophants foisted her on to us after Nehru’s death. When so many able candidates were available like Morarji Desai, Jagjivan Ram, Kamaraj - Ram Guha never even discusses why Nehru had to promote Indira over others. What was Nehru's state of mind, what compelled him to do this could have been actively explored. This is the legacy that Nehru leaves - a dynastic cult which has never left us. To give credit where due, Nehru can be considered to the torchbearer for India's secularism which makes me proud every moment. I also admire his persistence in changing the Hindu civic code by amendments to the Marriage and Divorce Act and the Inheritance Act. But the family legacy that he started rankles.

Guha is also a bit flippant over one of the most important reasons for the Indian democratic decline - corruption. He doesn't even mention the Nagarwala scam under Indira Gandhi, the death of LN Mishra (who was supposed to have been the extortion agent cum revenue collector of Indira Gandhi) receives a brief comment. However what is surprising is how he almost swept the Bofors story under the carpet. It WAS the biggest story in the press in the 80s and for me personally, it was the almost like my first awakening of political consciousness. The anti-Sikh riots after Indira Gandhi's death do not get the opprobrium they deserve. I can't imagine the response of rights activists if the same actions were carried out by the saffron brigade. But here it was a liberal, secular party which did these things. This leaves writers perplexed.

In a nutshell this book is a celebration of democracy - just like we have many books and columns today that are a celebration of our economic strength. But just like these business books which ignore the dark side, India after Gandhi too does not delve much into the democratic rut. Some of the questions which are relevant here and needed some discussion:

· Why has debate frequently come around to a trade off between growth and democracy? To the un-initiated again, even Pakistan is growing at 7-8% per annum.

· Is democracy a rich man's need (who does not vote) but a luxury for the deprived (who actually vote)?

· Continuing with the earlier question, especially in the light of the success of other non democratic regimes like Singapore, China, is democracy as defined by Western political scientists and political philosophers a universal necessity or only an option?

· Freedom of speech is a crucial pillar of democracy - however countries like China (and even Iran) and Russia have created very successful pieces of architecture, movies, literature than countries like India? Don't get me started on Russian oligarchs, India beats them hands down.

· Was Nehru's marrying socialist economic thought with democratic politics a losing combination? Socialism economies, it is suggested, work better (if they do) where the lack of incentive for citizens (due to absence of property rights) is compensated by the whip hand of an autocratic leader. Did India choose the worst of both worlds?

· Why did liberal parties like the Swatantra party never reach the masses? Was it lack of charismatic leadership or is it because liberal polemic is always weaker than the left or the right, especially in a deprived nation?

I would have loved to read about these issues in the book and not just a chest-beating exercise on Indian democracy and secularism.

History is not only about facts, it is also about insights which is a bit lacking in the book. This is compounded in the book by the frequency with which Guha uses quotes from earlier books or manuscripts, though amply cited in the bibliography. Guha has a distinctive voice which is somehow lost within this profusion of quotes.

I might have been a bit harsh, probably some of the above points are better discussed in a political science book and not a history book. India after Gandhi, with its limitations, will continue to be a pioneering work in the field of post-Independence Indian history.

Lives of Others - Movie Review

2008-03-19T11:31:00.001+05:30

The Lives of Others got the Best Foreign Film award at the 2006 Oscars and I have rarely seen an award which was as richly deserved. The Lives of Others is set in the final years of East Germany amidst the paranoia and corruption which the communist regime had sunk into. Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe) is an ace investigator and interrogator in the Stasi, who has been assigned the role of surveillance of a top dramatist Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) to ascertain his political leanings. Dreyman is suspected of having anti-left beliefs and Muhe’s boss wants to lock him up at the slightest hint of being anti-left. Muhe’s boss is also sleeping with Dreyman’s girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), a decent if struggling actress, using his coercion and influence in getting her roles in government funded plays and letting her have her daily dose of amphetamines/ drugs.

Wiesler, in the first scene, is shown as a canny, relentless and ruthless interrogator who has completely bought into the communist regime’s thought control. However as he proceeds on his surveillance, he gradually realizes the power of art, the limits of his own belief in communism and the subversion of his ideals (where he has to veritably act as pimp delivering D’s wife into the hands of his boss).

The movie is an intense subliminal thriller and keeps you guessing what Dreyer’s true political beliefs are until late in the movie. It is like a horror movie where one jumps up at the sound of something in the kitchen and happy that it is a cat. Similar the audience is drawn into being a voyeur, watching with bated breath whether Dreyer is going to say something in the next line or next scene and get arrested by the Stasi. Finally when the scene passes, you rest back in your chair and glow in the director’s subtle manipulative genius. The screenplay is fantastic in its plotting of the gradual but subtle changes in characters. The denouement when it comes is melancholic but uplifting.

The movie main’s focus is on the totalitarian regime’s breakdown; Wiesler is a left leaning, unquestioning citizen in East Germany who flips finally onto the other side over the moral corruption he has to endure just like the vast majority of the population leading to 1989. But the movie is as much about the redemptive power of great art. A key turning point in the movie is where Dreyer and friends are listening to a piano piece entitled “Sonata for a good man” and Wiesler in his surveillance center is listening on with his headphones. The conversation goes “Lenin said ‘Anyone who creates such music can’t be evil’. Similarly for Wiesler, a great wordsmith like Dreyer can’t be evil.

Ulrich Muhe has given one of the most brilliant and controlled performances I have seen in recent years. He has an impassive face throughout and hardly has any dialogues, but manages to convey his feelings with a minor pause in words and movements, a gleam or sorrow in his eyes and a fine and compact body language. In a tragic coincidence, in real life, Muhe was an East German actor apparently being spied on by his wife under the East German government. He finally found this out when the state records were opened after the German unification. Muhe died from cancer, shortly after the release of the movie.

Lives of Others is by far, one of the most fulfilling movies I have seen in ages.

Black Friday - Movie Review

2008-03-19T11:27:00.002+05:30

Black Friday

Last February, Black Friday was finally released after a delay of over 2 years. I felt that at least in this one instance, the delay was justified in a way and not due to some censor board member’s whims or minister’s fancies. The objection to the movie was that it pronounced the accused as guilty even before the court has passed their judgement in the 1993 Bombay blasts case. Finally the movie was released in February 2007 after the court had passed their final judgement.

I happened to miss it in the theatre due to some pressures at work and it did not have a long run. Finally I saw it on DVD. Black Friday got some good reviews and justifiably so. But there was something in the movie which did not work for me, something which made the movie fall short of being a truly good work.

The story, as is well known by now, is about the investigation and arrest of the culprits behind the Bombay bomb blasts in 1993. The movie starts off like a police procedural until the first batch of suspects are arrested, after which it becomes more a narrative on arresting the people who have been named by these first batch of arrests. Anyway in India, police procedural is more like torturing the hell out of the suspects and not like your typical Henning Mankel book.

The movie runs for the most part like a docu-drama and shows the planning for the bombing in impressive detail. The real strength of the movie lies in its realistic depiction of the lives of the bombers – most of whom come from poor families who have seen someone close lose their lives or livelihoods in the Bombay riots. The induction, indoctrination and training scenes are all very well shot. The detailing of the bombers’ personal lives is strong. The places they hang around, the friends they keep, the clothes they wear, are all depressingly normal. The fall of the bombers comes not when they are arrested but when they sink into a harrowing hole after their bosses forsake them.

Anurag Kashyap earlier wrote excellent screenplays like Satya. Even here the script is very tight. For instance, the only scene where you get to know that Rakesh Maria (Kay Kay Menon) is even married is when he gets a phone call at office which his constable hands over to him saying “Madam ka phone hai”. You do not him see him having the conversation too. Here is a movie you can’t fault with not giving too much importance to minor characters as the story is not about these characters. The story is about the bombers and the character of Badshah Khan is used as the lens through which we see everyone else’s.

Where the movie falls short is in editing and screenplay. The Imtiaz Ghavate chase sequence, the scenes of Badshah Khan (nicely underplayed performance by Aditya Shrivastava) on the run are stretched out for too long. The screenplay falters in requiring the audience to digest too many names of suspects too early into the movie. I did not have a clue who each character was and what was their role in the bombing. In fact I do not need to. I can do this in a book where I can flip through the earlier pages, but I do not have this option in a movie. The movie is close to 3 hours long – Anurag could have made it 5 hours or 10 hours adding on a few more suspects. Where does this stop? Focussing on a few key personalities and building stories around them would have made the movie a better watch. I can envisage the movie just being about Badshah Khan/ Tiger Memon and Rakesh Maria and expanding their universes slightly more. Anurag has tried to do justice to the book and has tried to cram too much into the movie. To use an analogy – you can make a documentary on the “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” but for a movie you would go with a “Schindler’s List”, “The Pianist” or a “Life is beautiful”.

The movie gave me the feel of watching a Discovery Channel re-enactment, except shot in a more cinematic manner. Not that I do not like these, it is just that I may not want to watch them on a DVD or theatre. This is not to take away any credit from Anurag Kashyap who was made one of the better Hindi movies in some years, but just some regret at what might have been.

Life in a Metro - Movie Review

2007-05-18T13:33:00.000+05:30

Prologue:

Bowing to the moral police gaining ground our country, I have decided to give a guidance rating to the movies. Love in a Metro gets a 15 (in a green circle) for a long and longing display of Shilpa Shetty’s belly, liberal images of promiscuous activity in urban middle and upper middle classes and especially call centres (much to the chagrin and wistfulness of my friends in BPOs) and above all gratuitous scenes of women drinking and smoking purely for pleasure and without remorse. Now that I have given you three reasons for seeing the movie, let’s go to the rest.

The Story

Well actually there are 4-5 stories.

Aakash (Shiney Ahuja) is a theatre actor playing to empty halls and struggling to make ends meet while Shikha (Shilpa Shetty) is a lady struggling with her husband’s silences, absences and distances. They have a brief encounter at a bus-stop and the inevitable happens and then does not happen. Shikha’s husband Ranjeet (Kay Kay Menon) is a top executive at a BPO who happens to be sleeping around with his junior Neha (Kangana Ranaut) who inspired by movies in which an actress called Kangana acted, feels that sleeping and weeping are good ways for career advancement.

Ranjeet uses the apartment of his subordinate Rahul (Sharman Joshi) for his night shifts. Rahul lets out his apartment for Ranjeet and other seniors at his BPO to gain some brownie points. Rahul has a crush on Neha and is crushed again when he realizes that Neha is sleeping with his boss in his own apartment. Neha’s roommate is Shruthi (Konkona Sen), Shikha’s sister who is pushing 30 and desperate to get married and runs into Monty (Irrfan Khan), pushing 40, a complete opposite in character and a male chauvinist who feels that gazing at a lady’s chest is okay. Again the inevitable happens.

Shikha (Shilpa) spends some of her time at an old age home where Shivani (Nafisa Ali) talks about her long lost love. Shivani regains it when her lover Amol (Dharmendra) comes back after 40 years and they elope from their old age home to set up a cosy nest for themselves.

My Views

“Pehle tho bistar pe galti se bhi pair takraate to sab kadwahat pighal jaati thi. Ab tho hamari khamoshiyan bi aapas me jagadthe hain” – Shikha on her marriage

“Did you leave her or she left you” - Shikha, “Love left us” – Aakash

“Hamne Zindagi girvi laga dhi, makaan tho kharid sake lekin ghar nahin bana sake” – Shikha (on house mortgage)

How I wish movie synopses could be condensed into a few quotes from the movie. Love in a Metro is that kind of movie. It has 4-5 stories, but one theme. A theme of love lost and gained and (sometimes) lost again. It has all these parallel stories running together to weave a colourful tapestry of emotions - hopes, disappointments, love, ambition, greed, confusion etc. The director Anurag Basu, who has earlier done some decent work in Gangster and some indecent work in Murder pulls off a petite piece of art here. He has inspirations – the entire letting-out-the-apartment episode is from Billy Wilder’s classic - “The Apartment”. But I am glad when people take their inspiration from Billy Wilder rather than say movies like Spiderman or Stepmom.

The stories might be predictable. But Anurag has a deft hand with characters and an even better one at casting. You grow to know and love/ hate their characters and at the end of the movie still want to continue to be with them and know more. Some areas could have been scripted better – Shiney Ahuja’s role has an incompleteness to it and so does Shilpa Shetty’s. Nafisa-Dharmendra’s track too could have had a bit more meat. No complaints with the others. Rahul-Neha’s episode is very sensitively portrayed. The Konkona- Irrfan episode is easily the highlight of the movie, a wonderful romantic comedy involving meeting of opposites. Probably one of the most delightfully written pieces in Hindi cinema of late, reminding you of Basu Chatterjee’s or Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s gems of the 70s. Both actors steal scenes from each other. Anurag should just make a movie on these characters. The movie is worth a watch for this storyline alone.

Anurag also has some nice directorial touches like the three singers (including Pritam, the music director himself) who crop at moments through the movie like the wandering minstrels we read about or Sutradhars, carrying the story along with some songs.

Anurag Basu’s main talent has been in getting together one of the finest collections of actors of our generation – Irrfan Khan, Konkona Sen, Kay Kay, Kangana Ranaut, Shiney Ahuja and still give each of them a significant role to chew on. Irrfan Khan, as they say is this part of the world, is a “total stud”. He brings immense depth to his character and you wish his episodes with Konkona were longer. Konkona Sen is good as usual. My favourite Kay Kay Menon acts with as much intensity as always. Kangana Ranaut may be being typecast in a self-destructive woman’s role, but she manages to pull it off each time. Even Shilpa Shetty is brilliant, her quivering belly conveys more emotions than most actresses’ faces. And thank Anurag for reminding us of Dharmendra.

Anurag has a nice sense of visuals, he makes even Mumbai in rain look good, even those dull, morose, blackened buildings somewhere around Mahim creek. As he has shown in his earlier movies, Anurag is able to get fantastic music from his composers and Pritam’s music, though a bit music-video like, is composed and sung very well.

Summary

Life in a Metro is the kind of movie which Woody Allen would have made if he was in India or Gulzar could have made if he was born 20-30 years later and Mani Rathnam should have been making, if his aspirations did not run ahead of his abilities. I am not comparing Anurag Basu with them, he is just aiming that high which should be applauded with both hands. Life in a Metro is the best Hindi movie I have seen this year.

Guru - Movie Review

2007-05-17T12:22:00.000+05:30

It has been over three months since the movie was released and I just got to see it on a flight from Frankfurt to India. Agreed that it was not the best location to see a movie but what the heck. One inescapable conclusion - Mani has added business naivete to his already well recognized political naivete (Dil Se, Yuva, Bombay ..). What was he thinking?

The story in brief – Gurukanth Desai is a failure in academics, goes to Turkey and earns a decent work reputation there but comes back to India to start his own business here. He marries Sujata (Aishwarya), who has a failed elopement plan on her resume, for dowry to start his business. He comes to Mumbai, makes it big in the textile trade and over time becomes one of the largest industrialists in the country. But this is not at the cost of creating enemies – personally and professionally and is finally hauled up before the court for violating some license era regulations.

A lot about the direction

The movie could as well have been produced by Indiatimes as part of their India Poised campaign. The hollowness of that campaign seems eerily similar to the gung-ho optimism of the direction in this movie. Even the background score (especially towards the end court scenes) has a rousing, Rajnikanth-going-for-the-climactic-fight, over the top feel to it. I had a similar feeling when I saw Independence Day – “Today, America will save the world” or some such nonsense. Every scene and every dialogue serves just to drive home the optimism of capitalism and moneymaking – when Ash examines Guru’s paunch, she says that she can sense 25,000 shareholders in there, when Sujata delivers twins the doctor says just like Guru’s companies which double profits, he has got double the benefit with one ejaculation (okay those last words are mine). It gets tiresome after a point.

For me the main culprit is the screenplay which is extremely weak and thin – in building characters or situations. Business is hard work, here it is reduced to serendipity, puffed out chests and standing outside buildings. The last of the above takes the cake, it was as bad as using banana peels to evoke humour. It was that inane. Never do you see Guru struggling - leave aside living in chawls or going on Mumbai locals, where are the parts he refers to (in his final speech) – walking on feet all over Mumbai, lifting huge bundles of polyester. Struggle is only alluded to, not depicted. Where are the sorrows, disappointments, ebbs and flows of business. It seems to be one big joy ride for Guru. Never a wrong step, nary any hesitation. Does Guru regret having to make compromises, not seeing his kids growing up, or having kids late, or not devoting time to family etc. Mani just ignores the huge impact on personal life of entrepreneurship. In fact Guru’s family just serves as a picture frame, even his kids just disappear after inspiring one of the most illogical songs in Mani’s repertoire.

When Guru is pulled up in the press by Mithun Chakraborty’s newspapers for his misdeeds, we are not shown what those actions were save one minor scene with a politician. You can’t use the argument that Don Corleone (or Velu Nayakan) wasn’t shown killing people - in those cases, that is assumed, that is the underworld’s profession. But in a business biography, you need to depict the misdeeds. You can’t shy away from it. Well, unless Mani feels that all businessmen transgress laws anyway. If your argument then is that in a 2:30 hr movie you can’t be so detailed about business aspects (about rise is business or the misdemeanours) then you need to focus on the personal side (like a Godfather, Sarkar ..), you can’t do a total copout saying we do not have time, being a biography of a whole life. He could have cut all the unnecessary crap like Vidya Balan’s role (who is over-rated and overweight and whose only asset is a cosmetic enhanced smile).

Mani’s lack of business acuity is obvious where Guru is offered a blank cheque by a Parsee businessman to sell his businesses. A blank cheque, where did that come from - I thought this went out with Kader Khan or Pran. Does Mani think that is the way business is done.

Now to the climax – it has already been ridiculed and it deserves every bit of that. The comparison with Gandhi was downright puerile, he could have compared Guru to Robin Hood or some such comic book hero, spreading wealth among the masses. What irks me is that Mani appears confused here, throughout the movie the mood is almost that greed is good and we are not required to “like” or empathise with the character of Guru, however in the climax he does an about turn to indicate that all the while he was working in the best interest of the masses. Who is playing with the audiences here – Guru or Mani. And what is that Hindi-English bull in the court. It is like Govinda, the village bumpkin ribbing the big town, rich girl Karishma or Raveena.

Another biographical movie Gandhi (based on Guru’s spiritual guide, more on that later) was made in 3 hours, so the attempt to be breezy to fit the commercial biographical screenplay format lets the movie down badly.

A bit about the acting

Abhishek Bachchan has got a damn good role to play, but I think a better actor could have done a better job. But I guess Mani was hamstrung for choices. A movie like this required a star and a better actor like, say, Kay Kay Menon would not have fit the star billing. Abhishek is not bad, it is just that I am indifferent to him. He doesn’t surprise me, either in positively or negatively.

Repeat above comments on Abhishek for Aishwarya. Only change being that Mani could have got a better actress – say like Kajol or Konkona who would also have probably looked more Gujarati and more earthy too than Aishwarya.

The only actor with a large role who has done remarkably is Mithun who manages to steal each scene he is in.

It is all the two bit role players who have done a good job – Rajendra Gupta, Dhritiman Chatterjee, Madhavan (actually a four bit role) and make the movie rise a bit above the ordinary.

Nothing about the others

Return to insipidness by Rehman after the stunning score for RDB which seems to be a one-off. He wasn’t helped by Mani who has inserted songs at every wrong moment you can imagine. I would not like to comment about the technical aspects – we have reached a stage in our film-making where all the leading directors manage to get good work from their technical team.

Concluding remarks

Lastly, but primarily can we not have another intro rain song for the heroine. Can’t Mani recognize that he can’t repeat the same act for 2 decades. There are newer directors who are making more challenging movies (Vishal Bharadwaj, Anurag Basu, Rakesh Mehra) or old ones who are continuously dealing with fresh ideas (Ramgopal Varma). Mani, unfortunately, is not changing. And I am not qualifying my review here saying that I have higher expectations from Mani than from others and hence I am being harsher than usual. Even if this movie was made by Karan Johar or David Dhawan, my opinion would have been the same.

Corrections - Book Review

2007-03-21T12:37:00.000+05:30

Short review of Corrections

Corrections is this highly acclaimed book which came out 3-4 years back. I have been wanting to pick it up and finally got a used hardbound book in great condition for around Rs100. Now after reading I am thinking of selling it back, probably in weight!!

Corrections is about a dysfunctional family in Suburban U.S. That one line describes the book quite neatly. You practically know who the characters are going to be – elderly parents in St.James (Kansas) with the old man suffering from Parkinson’s, and the old lady living out delusions of her own; elderly son who is financially well off and living in New York and is bordering on depression encouraged by a wife who doesn’t like his hobbies or his parents; second son who teaches literature at college and has lost tenure after seducing a young student and then escapes to Lithuania to help in defrauding Western investors; daughter, an upmarket chef marries an older guy followed by a break up, has a lesbian lover and finally to top it up ends up having an affair with both a husband and wife.

All these are interesting characters if it were a short 250 page book, not a 550 page tome. There are parts which are absolute tedium - you are also forced to endure a 10 page experience and conversation with a turd by the old man; come on, I know he has Parkinson’s and dementia, can we get on with the story. Why can’t editors nowadays cut short books keeping in mind reading tastes and time. We are not talking War and Peace here. The best part of the book is the section where the daughter seduces both the wife and the husband. Any prurient and it would have ended up in Letters to Penthouse. If any of you has the time and the inclination, just quickly read through this section and dump the book.

I don’t know why I picked up this book – what do I know or need to or want to know about dysfunctional families, that too in the U.S. I also feel that the whole dysfunctional family thing is a piece of nonsense. Every other family I see in India is dysfunctional. Only a vastly hypochondriac society like U.S can give it a name like that and have entire literary sub-genres devoted to it. The writing too is not gripping. If the story is not interesting, atleast the writing better be. If you want to read a really good book in this genre, with a great voice, please do read Vernon God Little and look no further.

At least one good has come out it, I thought I will pick up some books by Philip Roth, John Updike (Rabbit series) but have decided to give up the whole idea. I don’t need any more of this shit (pun intended), literally (pun intended again).

Fever Pitch - Book Review

2007-03-20T13:53:00.000+05:30

Review of Fever Pitch - Nick Hornby, 1992, 242 p.

Fever Pitch was voted the best sports book of all time by Guardian-Observer in a survey a couple of years back (beating out books like Beyond a Boundary). It surprised me that I had not heard about the book till I came upon this list. I picked up the book with some trepidation as I am not a great football fan, though I do catch the occasional EPL or Champions League matches. However one thing which enthused me was that the book was about an Arsenal fan and whatever little I have followed of the EPL, I have always been an Arsenal follower.

Fever Pitch is an autobiography – a growing up story of the author set against the backdrop of the the author’s love and later obsessive interest in the Arsenal football club and how the key moments of his life, professional and personally, intertwine with the (mis)fortunes of the club. The book is structured innovatively with memories broken down into specific match days which is in fact representative of the author’s own mental condition where all his memories have an Arsenal backdrop. This is a great instance of the structure being used not for style alone but because the author’s life has flown that way.

For all Arsenal haters, (even though some of whom would have been won over by the exciting football which the team has been playing under Arsene Wenger), this book is not about Arsenal alone. It could have been any other club. Even for Hornby, Arsenal was just serendipity. It just happened to be the first match he saw at a ground, it just could have been Chelsea or Man U if he went to Stamford Bridge of Old Trafford that fateful day. Hornby’s dad had recently split up with his mother and in the first instance of the lifelong linkages between football and his personal life, parental weekend visits for his father end up at Highbury. Football gradually starts filling the gap left by his father and starts being a metaphor for his life.

Hornby likes the whole scene – going in the football special trains, the noise, the ability to hide oneself in crowds and consequently the power of groups, the braggadocio. Arsenal during this time was not a particularly successful team and hated by quite a few because of their dismal record and their dour style. Hornby parallels his own life here as just an average student at school. His obsession has already acquired manic proportions. For a brief while when he is about to leave for college, he leaves the ground misty-eyed as he feels that Cambridge and being 18 offered the prospect of Sartre, Van Morrison and being in bed with “young, rapacious, art students” and hence Arsenal had to go. He is back though in a few weeks excited at the prospect of a new manager and new sign-ons.

Hornby falls in love and out of it, gets out of Cambridge with average grades, takes up some odd jobs without any consistency and generally hangs around with the aimlessness of art students. His obsession for all things Arsenal becomes like an addiction to him. When he describes his state of life here, you can replace football with say “cocaine” and you are talking the same thing. He does not feel happy at these matches and instead he feels terribly depressed, his nerves are shreds and fingers are stubs, his lungs are full of nicotine, when he is not able to go to Highbury his heart is torn, even though he is at a friend's wedding or a job interview. All symptoms of a full blown drug addiction.

Frustrated by his lack of success in love and career, he even goes to a shrink but, in true addictive fashion, he slicks away one day to attend an Arsenal match which actually ends up reviving him. This is a turning point in the book when he starts thinking of his life and Arsenal as separate, each important in its own way.

Hornby examines a whole lot of issues, important and trivial, with an easy style. The most important for me, just when I have been upto 2 a.m to see India lose to Bangladesh in the World Cup, is what drives people to emotionally invest a big part of their lives in a particular team and especially a losing one. As Hornby views it simply, they have no option. Its not like they had a choice. They were given a team and they stuck with it, through joys and sorrows and disappointments and euphoria. He says being a fan is not that different from a job, with its attendant stresses, joys, losses etc. and it is not about entertainment which the fans do not seek anyway. This is an important point – when viewed against the backdrop of so many cricket experts asking us to enjoy the game irrespective of who wins. How many of us can appreciate Miandad’s last ball six in Sharjah? Okay that was a lusty heave, but still. Hornby feels that would be just expecting too much from a fan and that watching sports for entertainment alone is devaluing the importance of fandom and that lambasting football as boring is like criticizing King Lear for its tragic ending. ”For the committed fan, entertaining football exists in the same way as those trees that fall in the middle of the jungle, you presume it happens, but you are not in a position to appreciate it”.

There is not an issue that a fan misses out and Hornby doesn’t too – racism, television broadcasts, stadium facilities, hooliganism all get his treatment in a thoroughly sensitive and entertaining manner.

Hornby also touches upon the 80s tragedies at Heysel and Hillsborough and how he feels that football would take a different turn for the English clubs after these disasters, especially the latter with some of the smaller clubs losing out with expensive regulatory compliances, bigger clubs getting bigger and better facilities and stadiums. Fever Pitch was written in 1992. Hornby was remarkably prescient in foreseeing this change. As we now know, Premier League was formed in 1992, television broadcasting rights were sold to Sky in 1992, bigger clubs earned higher revenues ensuring better facilities and the best players. Pity that close to 100 had to die at Hillsborough to achieve that.

Another important, light hearted take is on the difference between men and women on their obsessions, particularly with sports. He feels that for men, their passions and obsessions define their personality more than they do for women. He is spot on when he says that women are only obsessive about people (which may also keep changing) while for men, they get stuck onto passions and continue with it. Just as Hornby says that he is yet to come across a female football fan who musters the time to go to Plymouth on a working day (Wednesday), I am yet to come across too many women who can see an India vs Bangladesh test match which is petering to a tame draw. In a nutshell, there are more “anally retentive” men than women.

The funniest part of the book (even though it only 4 pages) and one of the most perceptive instances of obsessive behaviour is reserved for his discussion on the ultimate male fantasy of a female partner who is a sports addict and how Hornby tries to reclaim territorial domination using his 18 years obsession to browbeat a partner who is only a 4 month fan through a subtle mix of over-reaction, sulking, juvenile behaviour and general misanthropy. Witness this excerpt: (on his partner saying that dreaded “it’s only a game” thing) – “ ‘You don’t understand,’ I shouted as I had wanted to shout for months and it was true – she didn’t, not really. And I think that once I had been given this opportunity, once I had uttered the words that most football fans carry around like a kidney donor card, it was all over. What was she left with? …….i can safely say that I am top Arsenal dog in this house, and that when and if we have children, it will be my bottom exclusively that fills our season ticket seat. I’m ashamed, of course I’m ashamed, that I have to play dirty like this, but for a while back there I was beginning to worry.”

This is a slim book, only 240 pages long but every page incisive in its social commentary and acerbic in its wit and observations. Such a cynically humourous, mostly depressing and largely pessimistic book could have only been written by a Brit. This one is a masterpiece. Hats off, Hornby.

Babel - Review

2007-03-02T17:36:00.000+05:30

Review of Babel

I have seen two of Alexando Gonzalez Inarritu’s earlier movies – Amores Perros and 21 Grams (both with the writer Guillermo Arriaga). I liked both of them immensely, especially 21 Grams for its structural complexity, for its top rate acting, for its moral clarity. Inarritu has reached a kind of auteur status after his two movies – for his structural innovativeness, his micro-cosmic moral world view and the great work he extracts from his photographer and editor who have as much a role to play in his success.

Babel covers similar issues though not the same terrain as some of his earlier movies. It has 4 interconnected stories – some connections stronger than the other.

· One story has a Moroccan villager who buys a rifle to guard his flock of sheep and gives it to his kids who playfully shoot at a tourist bus while practising with the rifle.

· The second story involves an American couple (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) who are in that tourist bus and Cate Blanchett gets hit by the bullets.

· The other is about the kids of Pitt and Cate who are at home in the U.S with their Mexican nanny who takes the kids with her to Tijuana in Mexico to attend a marriage driven by her nephew (the Mexican face we all recognize, Gael Garcia Bernal)

· The last story has a deaf and dumb Japanese girl who is trying to handle her adolescence and her handicap and whose attempts to get a boyfriend are leading her to sexual frustration and suicidal thoughts. This is the weakest link of all, where the girl’s father, a big game hunter, had once gifted the rifle to his guide on a shooting trip in Morocco. Now that is one heck of an example for Chaos theory.

The shooting of the American tourist becomes an international incident attributed to terrorists and the Moroccan police launches a hunt for the terrorists. Brad Pitt tries desperately to save his wife which leads him to a remote village in Morocco and the hands of a veterinarian. The Mexican sojourn throws the nanny into a tragic immigration issue.

The movie starts off with a great premise and promise. Inarritu is tackling wider issues with his own brand of storytelling, but on a larger scope than earlier. Inarritu discusses issues like immigration, communication, teenage angst, globalization etc. in Babel, and does start off well. He holds us in thrall for the first hour, but soon you feel bored as you know what is going to happen – yes some liberal servings of misery are dished up.

My problem with Babel is the sense of gloom and misery which flows as an undercurrent through the various stories. You can sense that something ominous is about to happen in every next scene (will the girl jump off the building, is the kid going to be shot, are the kids going to die in the desert, is Cate going to die in the village). No misunderstandings please – I do like tragic movies and tragic endings, but Babel is like 4 tragic movies. In fact the best and worst story of the lot is the Japanese part, best because it is not as dark as the others and worst because it could have been handled so much better if the scriptwriter and director did not bring out a fatalistic twinge to it too.

Such a mood is alright in a horror movie but not for a sensitive exploration of human issues. This is particularly true in non-linear narratives like Inarritu’s. In a linear story line which has conflict and resolution as two book ends you are comfortable in the thought that the conflict has occurred and let’s relax for the resolution. In a non-linear narrative what has occurred might just be the resolution and what just awaits for you is conflict and more conflict. I really would like to see how comic scripts are handled in such narratives or is it only suitable for stories enveloped in despair.

Another issue I have with Babel is that Inarritu is too interested in giving neat ends to the stories and closes out the loops. For instance, the movie could have ended when the helicopter takes Pitt and his wife away from the village. I was surprised that it didn’t and we had to bear some more hospital scenes.

Technically, the movie is top notch especially the photography, bordering on a handheld indi style which provides a gritty edge to the story. The editing is a bit slack and I could have easily envisaged cutting out 20-30 minutes from the movie. The music is by Gustavo Santaolalla (who won an Oscar last year for Brokeback mountain). It sounds somewhat similar to his score there, but I could not complain. The acting is wonderful especially all the lesser known (to us) actors – Adrianna Barazza (the Mexican nanny), Rinko Kikuchi (the Japanese girl) and above all the adult and child actors who play the Moroccan family really steal the show for me.

Unlike 21 grams which was one movie shown as a jigsaw puzzle or Amores Perros which had three different stories, Babel tries to be both and the ambition becomes the cause for the downfall. I did some search on the net and in the Genesis, Babel apparently is a tower of ambition which drives mankind to ruin. It seems quirky that Inarritu used that title, does it stand for the stories he is telling or does it refer to himself and his ambitions ………….

Non-fiction versus fiction

2006-12-26T09:45:00.000+05:30

I started maintaining a list of all the movies I have seen (in theatres that is, movies on television are not worth the effort) since the time I was 15. This has met with sufficient enough ridicule for me to extend this to my other passion – reading. A recent examination of the list confirms what I been feeling over the past few months, a lot of my reading is non-fiction nowadays. I have thinking about this, wondering what might be behind this. Is it a natural growth path in one’s reading habits (I have to do a random survey of friends for this), or is it that a lot of what i look for in reading these days is knowledge and information rather than entertainment. Is entertainment something I have reserved for only movies and television and can books hope to catch up with that. Inherent in this is an assumption that books can’t offer entertainment on the same scale as movies. That assumption sucks.

So I guess I have been reading the wrong books. I am caught in an age and frame of mind where I have grown out of pulp (I recently got hold of Arthur Hailey’s Hotel, couldn’t wait to put it down) have started upon serious reading quite some time back but still even after all these years have not got around to really enjoying these books. Take an example, I read Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs last year. Just could not get myself to enjoy it or understand it. Same goes for Coetzee’s Disgrace. It was named by Observer as the best book of the past 25 years. At the end of it, I was wondering what the fuss was all about. I have always prided on the thought, immodest though it may sound, that my literary tastes are above the average reader. All this hoopla threw me into a quandary and I seriously started to wonder whether something is wrong with me and I started to feel inadequate.

By the way, I did read some other critically acclaimed books which held me in thrall Blind Assassins (Atwood), Life of Pi, Vernon God Little, Cloud Atlas, etc. But these books are few. After Blind Assassins I read another book of Atwood – Alias Grace – which did nothing for me. I was stunned when I read Faulkner’s Sound and Fury, but when I went on to As I Lay Dying, I was slightly disappointed. Into this list come various others - Raymond Carver’s What we talk about when we talk about love, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Le Carre’s The Spy who came in from the Cold, Kerouac’s On the Road, Naipaul’s A house for Mr. Biswas (absolute tedium) etc.; all classics mind you but didn’t engage me enough.

But on the other hand, bar a few, the quality of non-fiction has been relatively high. This I guess is only because my scales for assessment are different. I am looking for insights, information, facts, knowledge from these books and in each of these even half measures are okay. Even if you get “some” insights, “some” information it might be considered fine. But in fiction, “some” entertainment or “some” great writing takes you to boredom.

I guess I have to stop reading works of fiction just because they are on some top 100 list. But if I stop doing that what do I read – I can’t read pulp, at least not often. I can continue to plod on to the next great writer hoping that I can come across a great book – I haven’t yet read Ishiguro, Peter Carey, Philip Roth, Amis, Iris Murdoch, etc etc. But what if I do not enjoy any of them. I can’t stop reading, the thought is even more scary.

Reading a book and not liking it even more painful than not liking a movie. Reading a book takes a couple of weeks for me. And at the end of it, if I do not like it I rue the time spent on it. A movie only takes a couple of hours. I know this is my time pressurized modern self speaking but I am comparing alternative means of enjoyment.

What do I do now. Now where was the list of top 100 books of the century again. I have done 13 so far.

House of Flying Daggers - Review

2006-09-11T17:35:00.000+05:30

Movie Review of “House of Flying Daggers”

Its funny writing a review of a movie, nearly two years after it was released to much acclaim. It is a pity that HOFD took so much time to come to India. And it is an even bigger pity that it runs only for a couple of shows in Bangalore, the other slots being taken by an Indian Indiana Jones movie called “Naksha”.

HOFD has a gossamer storyline. It is the time of anarchy during the Tang dynasty, late ninth century. Various rebel groups are fighting the government and HOFD is one of the leading bunch of anarchists. A policeman, Jin, is sent to a brothel called Peony Pavilion in disguise to check out intelligence that a rebel is hiding there. There he runs into Mei, a blind courtesan, who is arrested after a dazzling dance sequence (the Echo Dance) on the presumption that she is the daughter of a leader of HOFD who was killed by the police. She is later helped to escape by Jin himself, who is acting as a mole to follow Mei to the HOFD. Jin and Mei are chased by soldiers and they fall in love after some elaborately staged fight (or dance) sequences across jungles, meadows, mountains and bamboo forests. Or are they just acting to be in love to meet their own motives. Some more surprises are in store and there is nicely spun tale of morality, love (there is even a love triangle) ending in a climax which is tragic and elemental. HOFD is a love story and please do not go expecting an action movie; the movie is not actually short of action sequences and indeed uses these to propel the love story forward.

Words like operatic and symphonic abound reviews of HOFD. For me personally, whose understanding of either operas or symphonies is next to zero, HOFD is a simply wonderful return to film making in its most pristine and unspoiled form. Films like “Crouching Tiger..”, “Hero” and now “HOFD” show the world and especially Hollywood a way of filmmaking which seem to have been forgotten. That cinema is primarily a visual (and aural) art form, in colour and texture. HOFD re-emphasises this in greater grandeur than ever before. The costumes are lavish and the art direction intricate (witness the floor design and the wall work in the Echo Dance. The action sequences are breathtaking and as (or more) wonderfully choreographed than the ones in Crouching Tiger or Hero (which to me was more mechanical than fluid). You are just dazzled by the way special effects have been integrated into the action.

Some of the sequences are truly memorable scene-of-the-decade ventures. The Echo Dance in the beginning where Mei has to dance to the pat of a bean/ seed on a drum and the Bamboo Fight with its astonishing colours, sounds and movements are both sequences of unadulterated visceral glory. You want to tip your hat to the directors ability to imagine, leave aside execute, these scenes. Even some of the sensitive scenes are shot very well, like the scene were Jin gallops on a horse around a meadow sweeping flowers to give to the blind Mei and the panning shots of Mei and Jun in the meadows after a frantic love-making session. One can just go on.

The music and cinematography are the high points of the movie. Unlike the earlier named Chinese movies which had music by the brilliant Tan Dun, this has music by Shigeru Umebayashi who managed to reach the immense heights scaled by Tan Dun in both “Crouching” and “Hero”. Zhang Yimou, one of the greatest Chinese directors, has been called a “visual sensualist” by some. Movies of Zhang Yimou (himself a photographer) have always had brilliant composition and shot-taking. Colour for him is like dialogue to a Woody Allen movie. Here it is not as in-your-face as the colour- coded “Hero”, but simpler and still elegant and recalls all the visual splendour of Zhang’s earlier movies.

More interestingly, the career of director Zhang Yimou seem to echo the stage and growth of the Chinese economy. In his earlier classics like Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern and Ju Dou made around the time of the student rebellion, he ran afoul of the government. However, the growing integration of Chine into the world economy seems to have made him return to more simple story-telling in movies like Hero and HOFD, though not in any way diluting his auteur status. I wonder what sociological conclusions to make from this, it is either mute indifference or an acceptance of the economic boom in China.

HOFD is “rich” in the way Hollywood movies were in the 50s when they were trying to battle television. The movie is a true feast to the senses, a riot of colour and music. I guess you may not catch it on the screen but a DVD rental is surely due. After seeing these movies, I wonder why we, with an equally strong mythology and folklore, don’t venture anywhere near what the Chinese have been doing.

Rang De Basanti - Review

2006-03-22T18:02:00.000+05:30

At a time when protest has become pedestrian with the current national obsession being something like whether Sourav Ganguly should be wearing boxers or Y-fronts, here comes a movie which recoups some of that lost glory, and where protest is pedestalised. RDB is a very significant (and I do not use that term lightly) movie in that it has succeeded commercialy and has become a cult movie despite it being a very serious and topical movie.

The Story

The movie revolves around a gang of four – DJ (Aamir Khan), Karan (Siddharth), Aslam (Kunal Kapoor) and Sukhi (Sharman Joshi). DJ, actually named Daljeet, is a Sikh and almost bordering on the lunatic. He has been out of college for a few years but hangs around there because he is scared of the world outside. This is actually a clever attempt to make Aamir act like a college kid though he does not look like one. Sukhi is DJ’s booze-um buddy. Karan is the strong and silent type while Aslam is a bit of a poet. Apart from Karan, most of the others come from middle to lower-middle class families.

All the four are great buddies – these are friendships born out of deep experiences like shaking hands without washing them after visiting the loo. They are having a great time in Delhi – drinking, driving, drinking, driving and everything short of Brokeback Mountain.

Sue (Alice Patten), after coming across the diary of her grandfather who was a jailor when Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev et al were in prison, comes from Britain to make a documentary on them. Soniya (Soha Ali Khan) is her local contact who is helping her out. After several frustrating (to her) and funny (to us) auditions for selecting the actors to recreate the historical roles, she sees light in the form of our four protagonists.

The guys, like most of our generation do not believe in revolutions and pessimistic about the benefits of protest. They can’t identify with the characters and do not want to have a saffronite play the part of Ram Prasad Bismil. They are on the verge of walking out when copious tears shed by Sue ensure that they devote their energies to the task.

Things take a serious turn when their personal lives start taking on parallels with their roles in the film. The film keeps cross cutting between the Bhagat Singh story and the story of the protagonists. A deeply personal tragedy pushes them into a maelstorm of politics, arms dealership, terrorist acts and finally ends in a blaze of glory.

Views

I was initially sceptical about this movie. The promos felt a lot similar to Dil Chahta Hai (DCH) and I thought it would be similar – loves and lives of some rich guys, essentially a usual growing up kind of theme. You have been through enough such movies before. But it was a very pleasant surprise to find that RDB is actually a very serious and topical movie.

The two most important elements of RDB are the script (Story by Kamlesh Pandey, screenplay by Renil D’ Silva, dialogues by ad man Prasoon Joshi) and editing (P.S. Bharathi, who is incidentally the director’s wife).

All the characters are finely etched, from DJ’s Sikh family background to Aslam’s lower middle class traditional Muslim upbringing. The dialogues are crisp with a good dose of college lingo.The allegorical script finds a very fine balance with the editing which cross-cuts between the present and the past. Non-linear story telling sometimes is done more for form (like in Ayutha Ezhuthu(Yuva), where the stories are not even and a bit disjonted) but here content drives the format.

Some critics have said the latter part of the movie is a bit simplistic, naïve, requires some imagination and suspension of disbelief etc. etc.. I accept all of them. But I condone them, as the movie is about youth and the urge to get things done. In fact it is but natural for 20 year olds to be all of the above, in fact even Karan in a scene says that their actions

were of weakness, not of strength. That is the anwer to the critics.

In fact the movie eschews the easier path. With a firang girl and Aamir Khan in the movie, having her succumb to India’s greatest kisser before Emraan Hashmi would have been easy. Having a good college song and dance routine with some cheap college humour would even easier. Having the guys being acquitted in court would have been a slam dunk. There are no songs too in the traditional sense, in fact all the songs only run in the background. In every step, the movie evokes an art-house flavour in its realism.

All the performances are top grade, especially of Siddharth (who has done some decent performances as hero is some Telugu and Tamil movies) as Karan. There are fine little cameos by Om Puri, Anupam Kher, Waheeda Rehman etc.

The lyrics and music deserve a special mention. A.R.Rehman is in his best form after some years of tripe. The spirit of the movie has been finely captured, with funkiness and sensitivity wherever required. The lyrics of Prasoon Joshi, are also apt for the mood. Songs like the title track, “Loose Control” and “Lukka Chuppi” are wonderful, especially the last which draws a very fine analogy for Mother India calling back her country which has gone astray, sounds corny but it does not.

Rakeysh Mehra’s main effort is in bringing diverse talents together and create a tour-de-force. My main liking for the movie, is in its earthiness and realism. There is no gloss or garish sets or costumes. No Punjabi song and dance movie of the Chopra-Johar clan has ever evoked the sounds and smells of Punjab as the Sikh festival shown in RDB. No amount of nostalgic meandering about “makki ki roti” and “sarson ka saag” in those movies can match the genuine warmth of the tandoor in Kiron Kher’s house.

RDB is patriotic without being didactic, nationalistic without being jingoistic. It shows that filmmakers after all do care about the country and the success of the movie shows that even the audience cares. Yes, we do.

Post – script

It is almost like the writer read my earlier review HKA’s post-script “HKA sometimes make you wonder what you will have to say to your kids when they ask “what did you do in your twenties?……..” Now RDB offers one answer, an answer which is blowing in the wind, blowing in the breeze of Basant.

Iqbal - Review

2006-03-22T18:01:00.000+05:30

Iqbal

It is very easy to make a bad movie about sports because it is "apparently" very easy to make a good movie about sports. Sports, by its very nature, offer all the elements which you need in a good screenplay – which can for simplicity be divided into "conflicts" and "resolution". Conflicts can be class conflicts (Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander, Breaking away etc.), underdogs versus leaders (Lagaan, Rocky), good versus evil (Escape to Victory) etc. You have tears, joys, struggles, adulations, suspense etc; everything you need in a good melodrama. Probably the last Ashes series or the 2001 Ind-Aus cricket series was as good as a movie. Against this backdrop, most writers tend to ignore that you need a good screenplay to bind things together.

Iqbal in that sense was better than many other recent sports movies. There was a decent script, good acting and a general feel good factor. In fact it was quite an entertaining movie. The issue i have with Nagesh Kukunoor is that his movies are very simplistic - script wise and narration wise. Knowing the director, you would even foresee that there would be a happy ending. It takes some of the joy out of watching a movie.

Of course, there are those who argue that the simpler the better as you are taking movies to what they are supposed to be, a bare bones, stripped-down-to-the-essentials narrative. But after a point in your movie-watching experience (or book reading experience) you want to be deal with complex characters and challenging narrative structures. A probably analogy would be with R.K. Narayan, the books are great but after a point you need grow beyond them to stretch yourselves.

In a nutshell, Iqbal is a “nice” movie just as R.K.Narayan books are “nice”. Just as the word “nice” is not being used nowadays, similarly Iqbal harks back to an age when sensibilities were simpler.

Black - Not much of a Review

2006-03-22T17:59:00.000+05:30

Black

“Look Ravi (cameraman), can I have some blue lighting from up there with a golden ray through the window. I am making a beautiful narcissistic movie and need some chiaroscuro lighting”

“And you ice cream guy, can you wear an overcoat. This is Shimla, everyone here wears overcoats”

“Michelle, stop using eating with your fingers and eat with a fork and spoon. This is India. See your Indian teacher Mr. Sahai, he also uses a fork and spoon”.

In the most artificial movie since Devdas, Black is an experience in dishonesty. Over-the-top filmmaking, without any character development, time or place perspective, emotional sensibilities etc., is fine in a commercial entertainment movie but when you are making a human interest kind of movie, subject matter has to take frontseat. While in Iqbal being handicapped was effectively used to elevate the material, here being handicapped just takes a backseat to a crassness in direction which is unpardonable. For effective Indian movies in this genre do see movies like Koshish (Sanjeev Kumar and Jaya Bhaduri), Sparsh (Naseer and Shabana) and to a lesser extent even the director’s first movie Khamoshi which appears to be a masterpiece compared to this. For effective non-Indian movies, the list is long.

Movie Review - Kill Bill Vol. 1

2005-09-15T19:38:00.000+05:30

Many of you must have seen Pulp Fiction, the ONE breakthrough movie of the 90s if you want to name one. Quentin Tarantino has made one other movie since then, Jackie Brown and written some screenplays like Natural Born Killers. He has come out of a 7 year break to make a new movie - Kill Bill - Volume I. A short review follows.

Kill Bill has a simple one line story. Black Mamba (Uma Thurman),pregnant,is shot and left for dead in the wedding chapel.This is the opening of the movie, set to a wonderful background song by Nancy Sinatra, Bang Bang - My Baby Shot Me Down. She is attacked by members of the Deadly Viper Assasination Squad whose leader is Bill. She wakes up out of coma four years later to start taking revenge on the Squad which includes four others besides Bill. She first takes care of Copperhead. This is a rather brief sequence. Next she flies to Japan to eliminate of O Ren Ishi who has in these 4 years become the leader of the underground in Tokyo. She takes her apart in a gruesome, bloody fight where Uma Thurman disposes of 88 fighters singlehandedly in the House of Blue Leaves. Now, she has to go back to take care of the 3 others including Bill but for that you have to wait for Volume II. That is all there is to it.

Kill Bill is an explosion of pleasures, from the background score to the wonderfully choreographed fights (by Yuen Woo Ping, who choreographed Matrix and Crouching Tiger,HD) and the photography by Richard Richardson, who shot many of Oliver Stones movies. Above all, the movie is a homage by Tarantino to all those B-movies he used to see while running a video shop. Movies which you and i would never have heard of. Elements from different genres -spaghetti westerns, Honk Kong kung-fu flicks, Japanese anime, Blaxploitation etc. – have been used to give spice and taste to a simple revenge dish. KB does not have a screenplay to speak of, in fact it hardly has any dialogues, which is very surprising coming from QT. KB is all about action, swordfights, revenge (sounds like the ad for a Dharmendra movie).

It is so easy to be dismissive of QT, some have said that he has cultivated an image of coolness and funkiness where everything associated with him gets acclaim. Some other cynics also say if the same thing were done an Indian director,it would be called trash. My answer to these critics is there is a fine line between "Homage" and "Parody" which is what KB could have ended up in the hands of a less accomplished director. It could so easily have ended up being a Hot Shots Part Trois or Naked Gun 4.44 or something. That the director is able to navigate the territory so well is his genius. KBKB is very, very gory - fountains of blood spurting from beheaded torsos are common here. But the most violent parts are shown in black and white and anime which makes them watchable. Uma Thurman looks gorgeous and QT's fascination with her is evident. In a snapshot: Quentin Tarantino has bundles of talent and is not afraid to show it. And hell, why should he not show it.

The movie has come and gone from the Indian screens before you could say Kill. The reason for writing the movie so late is to ensure that some (or most) of you who have missed KB-I could see Volume II which is releasing soon.

P.S: Trivia: The credits say that the movie is based on a story "The Bride" by Q and U who are Quentin and Uma.

Movie Review - Hazaaron Kwaishein Aisi

2005-09-15T19:30:00.000+05:30

The purpose of writing this review is essentially to spread some good word of mouth about Hazaaron Kwaishein Aisi (HKA) which otherwise is going to go out of theatres in a jiffy and make way for Bunty aur Babli.

The Story

The story revolves around three main characters Siddharth Tyabji, Vikram Malhotra and Geeta Rao, three classmates during graduation in Delhi. The story is set in the tumultuous late 60s and 70s when Naxalism, Emergency, etc. set campuses and young minds across the country on fire. The movie is in equal parts English and Hindi.

1969: Siddharth is a typical JNU, left of centre ideologue who is increasingly veering to the left than the centre disturbing his affluent British Accented Muslim father and Hindu mother. Sid and Geeta are in love. Geeta is a Telugu girl but has spent her life across the world. High on dope and after frantic lovemaking with Geeta, Sid joins the revolution and becomes a comrade in Bhojpur in Bihar so that he can kill those pillaging Thakurs and corrupt thanedars. Geeta refuses to join him in his revolution.

Vikram Malhotra is a middle class Meerut guy born in a Gandhian family. He has a crush on Geeta but knows how deeply she feels for Sid. He believes that revolutions are for rich kids. He is intent on using his links with the Congress party and succeed in life.

Cut to 1973: Siddharth is playing his role as naxalite to the hilt. Vikram is doing very well fixing his way in ‘Dally’ and improving his connections in the political arena. He also meets someone who looks suspiciously like Sanjay Gandhi and does some shady transactions with him. Geeta, meanwhile, has married an IAS officer. Once a month she goes to the village where Sid is and stays in a circuit house where she is joined by Sid for some breathing exercises.

There are hints of political upheavals in the country. Hints of ideological differences between the naxalites too. Vikram keeps coming to Geeta’s aid, spurred by a deep rooted desire to sleep with her. Alas she keeps going back to Sid. Geeta finally leaves her husband as she wants to go the village and wear cotton saries and blouses two sizes too large. She goes to Bhojpur and bears Sid’s child. Vikram is busy fixing his way to glory and power.

Cut to 1975: Emergency. Sanjay Gandhi does his bit to castrate the people and Indira Gandhi does her bit to castrate the country. Vikram continues to pull Geeta out of trouble with the police. Sid’s ideas start to weaken at the roots. Political persecution, police encounters, ideologies gone awry and everyone comes out shaken – Sid, Geeta and Vikram.

Views

It almost feels like Sudhir Mishra was inspired by Ginsberg’s Howl and its first line is like the theme of this movie. “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”. HKA is probably one of the finest political movies made in India. The main theme of the movie revolves around naxalism and emergency. However, the movie is as much about the rush of youth and the persistence and poignancy of love.

Sudhir imbues his characters with an inherent honesty. Siddharth is honest when he wants to join the naxalites, not because Vietnam is fashionable. The dishonest ones would have gone to Harvard to do Oriental Studies. Vikram is honest in his undying love for Geeta. Sudhir is honest in his views about the political scene. Even though there is some resentment against the immaturity of the ideology, he still appreciates those who had the courage to take the jump. His sharpest criticism is though against the Congress, Sanjay Gandhi/ Indira Gandhi and their cronies and specifically against the emergency.

Some of Sudhir Mishra’s earlier movies include “Dharavi” and “Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin”. But none of his earlier movies have the kind of scope he achieves here. The movie is funny, acerbic and grim but always gripping in its execution of what is essentially a large format movie.

Kay Kay Menon as Siddharth is excellent. He suits the role of a naxalite but seems a bit old as the college student. Chitrangada Singh, in her debut film, is brilliant as Geeta. A dusky beauty with a striking resemblance to Smita Patil, she takes the honours easily. Shiney Ahuja plays Vikram. He looks more like a model than an actor. He is passable.

The music, photography and editing are all top drawer. The music especially, by Shantanu Moitra, evokes the mood and times very well with a mix of folk and classical. Bawara Man and Mann Ye Bawara are by far two of the best songs you will have heard in recent times.

Post-script

HKA sometimes make you wonder what you will have to say to your kids when they ask “what did you do in your twenties?” I feel that saying “I transitioned a cross-country payroll process to Bangalore within 2 months” or “I got my client out of a drag-along clause in the shareholders agreement” wouldn’t pass muster. This movie leaves you with a feeling that we have missed something.

Shiva - An eulogy

2005-09-15T19:28:00.000+05:30

My homage to Shiva written on October 5, 2004.

It has been 15 years to this day that a movie by a new director was released with minimal pre-release hype and went on to be the most revolutionary movie in the history of Telugu cinema for the past 2-3 decades. There have been better movies before and better movies after. There have been more successful movies before and more successful movies after. But no other movie before or since has made a greater impact on filmgoers as this movie and become the icon of an entire generation of 15-25 year olds. The movie is Shiva, released on October 5^th, 1989. This article is a homage to that epochal day.

Shiva marked an inflexion point in my life, personally, when movies stopped being an interest and became a passion. It was a wonderful time to be 15 (or 17 or 19 …) when I went into Devi theatre on November 26, 1989 feeling like a boy and came out an adult. Shiva showed me the power of cinema and the power of the visual media.

Memories: Every scene in Shiva is etched in our collective memory. Every backdrop is marked out clearly in our memories to be passed on to kids down the ages. Every location was known to us – I do not how many are true and how many apocryphal. The college is where they study is apparently Keyes High School in Secunderabad, the house where he stays with his brother is in S.R Nagar, the cinema hall where they go for a movie is Vimal in Balanagar, the bar where Chinna runs out of is Urvashi Bar in Punjagutta, the house where Shiva stays after marriage is in Lalaguda etc etc. Every guy with a child on his cycle became Shiva. After the movie, countless kids in our school would etch an image of chain on to their desks and numerous shops would be named Shiva in that wonderful calligraphy in red.

Right from posters to photography to promos, Shiva marked a breath of fresh air in Telugu cinema.

Photography: At a time when photographers like P.C. Sriram were making waves, S.Gopal Reddy proved his worth with his brilliant photography. What Shiva will be most remembered for are its wonderful, chase sequences brilliantly shot with a steadi-cam. Steadi-cams were being used even before this movie but never to such effect as in this movie. Shiva led to a huge increase in popularity in usage of steadi-cams, by both accomplished directors like Mani Rathnam and even mainstream commercial directors. In Shiva, the action is more through movement and momentum than aggression. The steadi-cam makes the audience feel every movement with the camera.

Editing: Shiva was criticised by many for being overly violent. I had some uncles and aunts walking out of the theatre at the violence. If you observe the movie closely, there are few scenes of bloodshed and gore. I mean, nothing compared to the movies nowadays. Many criticise Shiva for starting this trend. Most of the violence in Shiva is unseen, it is the way the editor cut the movie. The violence is played over in the viewers mind. Take the scene where Naresh is assaulted, his head is taken to a boulder, the camera takes the boulder’s place and Naresh’s head is pushed toward the camera. Cut. We are not shown his head breaking, his blood splattering etc. If it were shown the scene would have ended there for the viewer however cutting the scene makes the viewer imagine it in three of four different ways and the violence is played over in our minds so many times. This amplifies the violence for the audience. In fact, we are not even shown Naresh’s body in the hospital. A similar pattern can be seen when Sudhakar is killed when he in on the ground, and the axe is raised and the scene is cut.

The undercurrent of violence in Shiva, to a large extent, has to be credited to the editor Sathi Babu. This coupled with the tight screenplay never allows the proceeding to change tone or momentum.

Music: There is nothing left to say about the Illayaraja’s songs. I would like to make a point about the background music which still replays in my mind whenever I visualise any scene. Powerful and evocative. It is a pity the art of background music is losing out these days to music directors who do not know the value of a good score.

Direction: Ramgopal Varma main skills were in writing a tight screenplay and using the assets at his disposal, photograpy, editing and music to visualise a thin story and create a lasting impression. More than anything else, he inspired a generation of filmmakers who took hope from a young 27 year olds first effort and took to film direction. The past 15 years of the Telugu film industry are littered with his protégés – Teja, Krishna Vamshi, etc. – some successful and some not so. He introduced Mani Sharma in Raathri where he scored the background music. Teja’s first photography venture was also Raathri. Rasool, the steadicam operator in Shiva, made his photography debut in Gayam and later directed “Okariki Okaru”.

Posters and promos: The first time I saw the poster of Shiva was the one where Nagarjuna is walking with five people spread out in the background and a rising railway gate (the scene where Amala is abducted and rescued). This and several other posters (another memorable one being a degree certificate being rolled by a chain with the caption “He was the nice guy in college till they made him a graduate in inhumanities”) were markedly different from the run of the mill posters in vogue back then. The usage of English in these posters was also so new to the audiences (who now are bored repetitively with mindless captions). Even the TV Promos were in English. A short scene ending with a voice over “Nagarjuna in Shiva” very much like a Hollywood promo.

Other credits: Art: Thota Tharani; Dialogues: Tanikella Bharani

I wonder how many of you are less than 25 years old to whom the movie must have come at a bit too young an age. The true worth of a movie is in its ability to withtstand the ravages of time and Shiva does come out strongly here. Shiva to this day still gives me goosebumps whenever I see it and imagine Raja’s score playing on the background. The art of cinema journalism and cinema history is not too prevalent in India but I surely wish someone would write a book on Shiva and bring home those memories.

Movie Review - Lakshya

2005-09-15T19:25:00.000+05:30

It is probably a pity of good directors (Farhan Akhtar can be called up after only one movie) that they are judged not on the basis of what is right but on what is wrong in the movie. If this review takes such a turn, it is no one’s fault.

Lakshya is a single line story about how one aimlessly drifting rich kid – Karan Shergill (Hrithik Roshan) – gets a sense of purpose into his life, discovers himself and realizes his own true feelings by joining the army and facing the horrors of war. Karan turns into someone is willing to take on responsibilities for himself and of others and become a “man” in the process.

The movie is set against the backdrop of the Kargil war. Romila Dutta (Preity Zinta) is Karan’s love interest. After a falling out, the love is rekindled between the two when Romila, who is an intrepid TV reporter covering the war, and Karan meet each other in the war torn land.

The last Hindi movie I saw was Farhan’s Dil Chahta Hai. DCH and Lakshya have some common threads. Hrithik Roshan’s character in the movie is just a reprisal and expanded version of Aamir’s character in DCH. Both are growing up movies – in DCH the hero finds “himself” in love while in Lakshya the hero finds “himself” in war. You can see several inspirations for this movie (whether intended or unintended) – like Govind

Nihalani’s brilliant Vijeta in the early 80s and An Officer and a Gentleman.

By the time the movie reaches the interval, you reach the premature conclusion “Yes, he has done it again”. However, the second half does not do justice to the expectations raised in the first half of the movie. The war scenes are shot badly, the Paki characters unidimensional and the war never too horrifying or realistic. Too much soft focus, slow motion and too little blood and gore. The microcosm of the movie is in the main peak climbing sequence – the buildup is done for a long time but the actual ascent to the peak is not shown. It is like watching a 4 hours tennis match and not seeing the match point.

The screenplay by Javed Akhtar is good in parts. However many of the dialogues and characterisation look like something out of the 70s movies which he was adept at scripting. This is the major drawback of the movie. Om Puri has four lines of dialogues in the entire movie while Amitabh spends most of his time drinking coffee and pointing at a mock-up hill with a stick. Most of the other characters too are not developed well. Satyajit Ray once said, the key to successful filmmaking lies in the emotional integrity of the relationships which it portrays. When this does not happen, the audience is bound to react “Now, how can he fall in love with her” or “What the heck is he crying for now”; which is what the audience is likely to feel. There is very little bonding between the soldiers and when these guys lose their lives in the war, you do not feel too much pity and share in the agony of Karan.

Coming to the actors, Om Puri is wasted in a two bit role and Amitabh in a four bit role. Amitabh is really a sore point in the movie and his performance is very dispassionate. I guess he has shown more passion in shooting for Parker pens. Amitabh hardly got a few claps when he first appeared on screen while even Boman Irani and Amrish Puri (still) got a full round of applause. Times they are a changin’. It is time Amitabh took a serious look at the sheer quantity and quality of work he is churning out lest he becomes a parody which former greats like Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor et al became in their latter years. Preity Zinta looks bubbly as usual, but the bubbles appear misplaced in this movie. She looks more like someone covering a college youth festival.

Has it ever occurred to Indian writers and directors that not everyone in a war is brave and itching to come back in a coffin and not all Pakistani soldiers are evil personified. The possibilities of subtle nuances and shades in characterisation are ignored and the second half looks like a J.P. Dutta movie with fewer characters.

Technically too the movie is a surprisingly weak. The music is bland and Shankar- Ehsaan – Loy have not been able to recreate the magic of DCH. Much was made of the foreign cinematographer – Christopher Popp. Ironically, Popp is still a rookie with very little experience to show. The photography is a disappointment and you really miss someone like Ravi K. Chandran who did some brilliant camerawork in DCH. Some reviews have been raving about the photography. These reviewers fall into the common trap of confusing good locales for good photography. It is the beauty of Ladakh which makes the shots look good. It is surprising that even talented directors look at foreign talent when Indian cinematographers would have done a great job. The editing is also very uninspiring and contributes to unnecessary length and tepidity of the second half. Here too you miss the scissors of Sreekar Prasad.

The feeling once the movie ends is one of lost opportunities. Though is must be said to the credit of Farhan Akhtar that he will not lose much of his sheen. He can atleast be credited with taking on a subject different (though not vastly) from DCH and showing that he can handle a larger canvas. The movie is not just about the growing up of Karan but also about the growing up of Farhan. If there is one standout element in the movie, it is Hrithik Roshan who is subtle in the light hearted scenes and shows sensitivity in the emotional scenes. Inspite of its flaws, Lakshya is entertaining and can be seen if not for anything then for Ladakh.