Category: Journalism

(News reports, analysis, editorials, commentary, interviews, features etc from India and the world)

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Cinema Journalism

Documentary Review: Sangharsh – Against All Odds

The more you take out from a creation, the greater it becomes. Whether or not it holds true for my experience while watching an inspiring documentary entitled Sangharsh – Against All Odds late last night, I certainly came out of it with a renewed hope for things around. Sangharsh reinforces the learning that there are many worlds in this world of ours. And that every world provides a perspective to the ‘rest of the worlds’. It is that lovely reminder, laced with a stirring message of hope, that makes the documentary worth a dekko.

Made by the students of SIMC (Pune), the documentary takes the viewers on a journey to a world that most of us would never be able to experience. A world where the native people were completely at home with nature and nakedness just till a decade or so ago. A world where a handful few have the weaponary to blow up a police patrol Jeep but most others find it difficult to even imagine what a train would look like! A world where it takes good samaritans close to six years to convince the native people that education is not such a bad thing after all, and then produce a qualified doctor from amongst the tribals! A world where some of the better people of ‘our world’ have decided to spend their lives; providing education, medication and building bridges between the tribals and us.

All credit must go to Mrunmaiy Abroal, Smita Diwan and Swati Subhedar for a thorough research on the subject. The detailing shows and adds much to the effort of their very young team. The director-duo of Mrunmaiy Abroal and Smita Diwan show great control over the narration. The duo, courtesy a very robust platform provided by Vimida M. Das’ script (in absence of any mention of screenplay in the credits, I would take script as screenplay too), make the thought flow effortlessly from the description of the geography of the tribal villages, to the amazing societal work by the Amte family and others, to the mushrooming of hope for the tribal children amidst the deadly naxal violence. Editing by Anand Kumar (a.f.e.) is seamless and facilitates natural progression of the thought. Providing him ample ammunition on the editing table is some lovely camerawork by Rajesh Das.

On the downside, I thought Chandrika Chakraborti’s narrative voice needed some more weight or texture. What also let her down at places was the script writer providing her with some very predictable lines over self-describing images. But the biggest failure of the documentary was its background score. Lacking the enterprise of the makers and the subject, the background score meanders from being mundane to outright uninspiring at places.

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Cinema Journalism

Whose Line Is It Anyway

For years after the Shahenshah, it took three to triango! However, if we were to believe the media, one stroke of brilliance from a light eyed father’s even lighter eyed son might set the triangle to square one. Square of one-man domination i.e.. But not many are complaining. Atleast not the better sex. Right ladies? Kaho na!

We are now into the fourth month of the new (sic) millenium and the only reason why the industrywallahs have managed to keep their ‘modesty’ under wraps is because Kaho Na Pyar Hai has hit a jackpot. What’s worth a concern, however, for the lovers of the art of cinema is that while the media has gone berserk over Hrithik, nothing much has been said about Rakesh Roshan. Thus conveniently forgetting that Hrithik afterall is – with no biological pun intended – entirely Rakesh Roshan’s creation! Okay we agree that KNPH is not one of the greatest pieces of art. But isn’t the purpose of launching a newcomer with style evident in every frame of it? Doesn’t that make it a success of the director?

Star appeal of course drives the box office carts the worldwide. But nowhere else would one find such lopsided attention given to stars as one sees in India.

Cinema has eternally been acknowledged as the directors’ medium. Take Griffith or Eisenstein, Kurusowa or Renoir, Fellini or Ray, the fathers of cinema have consistently been the directors and NOT the leading stars. The path of the industry has invariably been decided by the man behind the camera.

But can we say the same about our industry? An industry where for two decades, scripts were written solely to provide a larger than life image to a tall and immensely versatile actor-star. Where a recluse Khan is eternally credited with ghost-directing his roles. Where the spontaneous no 1 is allowed to write his own scripts – after the camera has started rolling! And where a living legend like Shyam Benegal struggles to find theatres for his film Samar – after being in the industry for forty years!

Curiously enough, there is enough evidence that people do expect a certain style from each of the established directors viz. the Showman Ghais, the Romantic Chopras, the Immaculate Bhansalis and the Wacky Dhawans. Hence acknowledging the directors’ individuality.

But have these directors ever managed to rope in the audience on the basis of their individuality? Well, Yash Chopra couldn’t do that with Faasle and Varma with Raat and Kaun. Taking a lesson perhaps, other directors have long avoided the sticky wicket of a film sans a handful of stars. Easy lesson.

Unfortunately, not many directors in recent times have shown the willingness to take a lesson from the classic example of Satya. A film that showed that if a subject is consummate, stars don’t matter. Evidently, the gamble becomes extremely worthwhile in today’s scenario where although every top star consumes more than a crore as his fees, few films get back even that money for the distributors. Making the star fetish even more ridiculous.

Think of it that, whether we like the theme or not, the theme based films ensure that everytime we visit a cinema hall, we get to see something different. A welcome change from watching the same face over and again in ‘face based’ films. Any takers?

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Cinema Journalism

Next Bhoot Please!

It was interesting reading the readers’ take on Ms. Deepa Gumaste’s review of Ram Gopal Varma’s Bhoot. Apart from many who chose to get personal about things, there was a vocal section that believed that though appreciating Hollywood films comes very easily to Indian critics, they seldom find anything good in Hindi movies. And this after Ms. Gumaste was profuse in her appreciation of the film in the first seven paragraphs of the review!

Hollywood is not the final word on quality cinema. It never was. It was not before it used its money muscle to literally pull the best European talent to the American mainland. It has not been since big studios buried tender human stories under war ships, space ships and plain old-fashioned ships! But the argument is not whether our Company scores over their Gangs Of New York or not. The argument is whether we do accept the various shortcomings in our films or not.

Bhoot carries about four spine-chilling scenes, an outstanding performance by Urmila Matondkar and great camera and sound wizardry. And yes, a good captain in Varma, who makes sure that the film is worth at least one watch for any of the aforementioned hightlights. But whatever happened to the rest of the elements of the film?

Let’s see why, apart from the aforementioned superlative differences, the film ends up, especially and almost completely in the second half, being any other Indian horror film.

“The film does not have screeching doors, does not show a woman walking with candle in her hands and is not filmed in an isolated haveli” is what was floated as one of the more intellectually gifted USPs of the film.

The above claim is absolutely true and we are thankful to Varma for that. But Bhoot still has pretty much everything else of other bhoot films. The biggest being the reason that causes the birth of the story. It is absolutely beaten to death and unimaginative. From dacoit vendetta to Nag-Nagin revenge to modern day delayed-justice stories, the germ of Varma’s Bhoot has been used everywhere.

Sure, Bhoot does not have an Anupam Kher with a weird hair-do in the role of a tantrik who knows everything. But Rekha does try to match that with her own tantrik act. She looks totally unbelievable, acts like someone in Zee Horror Show and adds wood to the theory that at least some women are from Venus. The character played by Rekha must surely rank itself as a top contender for the Weirdo Of The Year award.

Sure, Bhoot does not have an old caretaker who makes food and opens rooms for a group of youngsters in a desolate haveli or farmhouse. But it has Seema Biswas wiping the floor with similar effect for Ajay-Urmila, who, incidentally, live at a perennially desolate floor.  Seema Biswas, playing a Bai, looks, talks and behaves in a manner that seems a very blatant effort on the part of the writer/director to build tension. Of course, Swati (Urmila) doesn’t think so in the movie. For, she asks the Bai to come to work from the next day after speaking good two sentences with her. And we’re talking of appointing a maid in Mumbai city!

The patrons of B-grade bhoot films would be happy to know that on the watchman front, Varma’s film scores even with earlier bhoot films! The watchman doesn’t speak much, stares and knows a lot. Ironically, the very reason that can help explain his character makes his continued presence in the watchman’s chair a little hard to digest.

Then there is an old lady who does not utter a single word (in the film) and at least once leaves the door open to let two strangers get into her apartment, talk and go back.

Surprisingly, the writer/director duo tries to negate the effect of all of the above by introducing a caricature like police inspector (Nana Patekar). In B-grade films this role goes to the hero of the film, who often is Javed Khan. Add to that a helpless doctor and a bewildered mother and you stop worrying about things!

The arrival of Fardeen finally confirms that the film is after all a sophisticated version of earlier Indian bhoot films.

The article is not to show Bhoot in a poor light. In spite of everything, it is one of the better Hindi films running in theatres. It is just to underline the fact that even good Indian films, made by India’s most gifted (ever) directors often leave a loose end too many.

Now compare our films with the recent stuff by “their” top directors. Catch Me If You Can (Spielberg), Road To Perdition (Sam Mendes), The Pianist (Roman Polanski) and freshman Rob Marshall’s Chicago.

It is not about scale or in simple terms, the money involved. Scale is determined to a very great extent by the subject. Bhoot required barely 3 major locations (the apartments, IMAX theatre and his office place) and had the luxury of being enacted by giants of Indian acting fraternity. The visual special effects were also not too large. So, reiterating the point, it is not about the scale.

It is about a penchant for perfection and the pressure of delivering only the best.  The stakes are so very high in Hollywood that directors cannot afford to go wrong. Whereas in India big league directors like Varma, who is arguably one of the finest Indian directors, can get away with an “overall nice” film.

Sixth Sense by M Night Shyamalan cost about $35 million. We have reasons to believe that given even half of that budget Varma can make just as good a film if not better. But if a Tigmanshu Dhulia can make a Haasil for Rupees 4 Crores, shouldn’t Varma, with infinitely better rsources, create a more complete work?

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Cinema Journalism

Reading a Film Like Saawariya

Every single frame of a film (movie) is an amalgamation of a painter’s canvas, an actor’s histrionics, a musician’s melody (includes the use of silence) and the space-subject-action relation of theater. What separates one piece of cinema from the other, often, is the difference in the emphasis given by it to one art form from the other. So, emphatic usage of music and dance forms turns the film into a ‘musical’, while stress on human expressions or histrionics makes the film a ‘drama’.

As we all know, the so-called ‘mainstream’ films give almost equal emphasis on the various forms of expression – a la ‘bhel puri’. It is this “it’s got something for everyone” quality that gives such films the widest appeal; and makes them the ‘main stream’ of cinema thirsty (consumers).
But not all films attempt to be that.

Saawariya is a film where the SINGULAR and ABSTRACT nature of the basic story decides the creation of every single frame. Not surprisingly then, EVERY FRAME IS SINGULARLY ABSTRACT IN NATURE. And it is because of this deliberately abstract nature of the frames, that we see a film that completely does away with the subject-space relationship of the real world. And what we see is the floating of the subconscious of the narrator.

Maybe Bhansali had expected the questioning of the sets and spacing; because THE VERY FIRST DIALOGUE (narration) of the film is “Aapko yeh shaher duniya ke kisi nakshe mein nahin milega. Kyonki yeh shaher sirf mere sapno mein basta hai” (in Rani Mukherji’s voice).

With that kind of blatant ‘notice’ from the filmmaker, it then becomes IMPERATIVE for the audience to treat Saawariya as a story that lives out in the kaleidoscopic sub-conscious of the narrator, rather than in any real world.

The closest reference for it can be Fairy Tales picture books. In those books, the emphasis is on characters and the broader, outline details of the colourful world around them. Frames of Saawariya replicate the pages of those picture books. Hence, to be able to appreciate a film like Saawariya, the primary and most basic requirement on part of the viewer is to treat the film as FLIPPING PAGES OF A PICTURE BOOK, rather than a 24 frames-per-second zig-zag-zoom journey of a movie camera.

If the viewer settles down early enough with that frame of mind, the rest of the film can be evaluated mainly on the merits of the narrative. Otherwise, the entire experience can become a chain of nothingness.

Unfortunately for Sanjay Bhansali, the failure in establishing a reference frame for reading the film is not the only thing that holds Saawariya back from becoming a truly ‘reference film’ for Indian cinema. It is the absence of some relevant descriptions and the presence of the irrelevant at places that make it a less than fulfilling food for soul.

Let’s begin with the former: In tune of the nature of the film, a lot of detailing about places, people and incidents are done away with in Saawariya. While some of it is precisely what gives Saawariya the abstract form that it so aimed at, a good portion also contributes to the lack of identification with the characters and their emotions. The single biggest culprit of that sphere is the character of Iman (Salman Khan) and the ‘Meera-like devotion’ towards him of Sakina (Sonam Kapoor). With absolutely no description of Iman in the narrative, it becomes trifle difficult to understand the intensity and the reason behind the intensity in the relation between Iman and Sakina. Unfortunately, that ‘little’ relation eventually ends up deciding the course of the story itself!

On the other hand, at least two songs merely ‘add to the song and dance’ of the narrative; and also come across as some sore brush strokes on the canvas. Ditto for the sequence of Ranbir Raj (Ranbir Kapoor) going to Gulabji’s (Rani Mukherji) place. The real complaint against the aforementioned ‘digressions’ is about ‘placing of the defined within the abstract’. In other words, it is like a placing of a verbose statement between two silken couplets.

But apart from that, Saawariya is an A-grade attempt at a different style of cinematic expression – apart from boasting of an awe-inspiring arrival of a new talent (Ranbir). If only it were about 20 minutes shorter, it would have just made it into the Hindi cinema ‘Hall of Fame’. For the moment, it will have to do with 3 stars out of 5.

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Cinema Journalism

Film Review: KITES

Excerpt: Remember the days when you would climb up on to the rooftop with all the enthusiasm in the world for a good day of kite flying – only to realise that the wind is not sufficient for it to happen?

Kites, for all the sincere enthusiasm of the makers – who quite clearly wish to taste international acceptance – and the opulent execution of their dream, is a film that rarely flies high. And when it does, it goes nowhere in particular.

In the end, like many – if not most – of his recent home productions, Rakesh Roshan’s Anurag Basu directed Kites comes across as yet another vanity vehicle for the hopelessly good looking and accomplished star-actor, Hrithik Roshan.  

Distinctly disappointing. And yet, for many factors put together, just about a little less than 2.5 stars.

Review: “An Indian movie typically has five different genres going on at the same time. There’s suicide and dancing and car chases and romance – it changes from moment to moment. What they were going for was an international type film, so I took it to an international level. I focused on telling the story as simply as possibly and I took out stuff that was maybe clichéd”, said Brett Ratner – producer and director of the ‘Rush Hour’ movies – when asked about his task of preparing the English version of Kites (named Kites Remix).

Putting aside any insinuation of a condescending view on Hindi cinema or indeed the final shape of ‘Kites Remix’, one must admit that Brett indeed nailed the point of scattered orientation of Kites. It tries everything – from romance to comedy; from western to thriller; and indeed, from cross-culture to plain ol’ cinema of the 70s. Alas, it fails – in varying degrees – in almost all of them.

In fact, after a while, it becomes nearly impossible to arrive at the real target audience of the film! Yes; while on one hand it is too been-there-tried-that type of film for cinema connoisseurs (of any language), on the other, it is just too English and Spanish for Indian audiences. It would be interesting to see which language has more space in the Hindi version of the film – for Hindi is certainly not the leading language of it! (Largely English and Spanish dialogues, with English subtitles for small cities and towns of India, anyone?)

And yet, language is barely the problem with the film. The problem is that inspite of that constant talking in the two global languages, the film barely manages to say anything.

J. (Hrithik Roshan) is a dance teacher in Las Vegas, who is also in the business of marrying illegal immigrants in order for them to get green cards. While being at his dance class, a rich casino heiress Gina (Kangana Ranaut) falls for her dance instructor. When J. comes to know of the background of Gina, the lust for green paper makes him play along the romance and marriage game with Gina. But when Gina brings him home to meet the family, J. meets Natasha (Barbara Mori) and discovers a piece of his past. And from thereon, the film travels back and forth time and locations – just as J. and Natasha find love in each other and elope to Mexico to start their live afresh.

Director Anurag Basu, who had made a delightful film about intricate human relations (Life In a Metro), fails to manage his characters and their interaction with the surroundings in Kites. So, while a simple dance-teacher-cum-marriage-expert makes the situation of a bank look almost comical by his responses, the heir of ‘the biggest casino of Las Vegas’ moves around the country with guns to kill people – almost as if USA were a banana republic. Just as while super-rich Kangana looks as if she is still playing the part of a mentally unstable girl in skimpy clothes (watch her in the scene where all that seemed to matter was her trying to tell the world that she has got ample and attractive thighs!) in any of her Bhatt camp movies, almost all other characters fail to exist beyond the dialogues that they mouth.

In a film that is clearly designed to pitchfork Hrithik into international market via his international good looks and versatility, every single character seems to suffer from shallow characterisation. And to add to it, while many are constricted by single mood, single expression ‘demand of the script’, others are made to jump from romance to action to comedy at the drop of a hat.

Kites stands for a wasteful hash of an ‘attractive idea’ by the script and direction department.

It brings us (again) to the acting in the film. While Barbara Mori does manage to hold herself and the scenario together, it would have to be said that her being a Mexican probably played a bigger role in her getting the role than any extraordinary acting talent. She does well. Just as well as she is allowed to.

Kangana Ranaut and Kabir Bedi (as the Casino King, Kangana’s dad & Hrithik’s father-in-law) play out themselves for the millionth time. Nick Brown as Tony (Bedi’s son) is one person who makes this film a Hindi film of the 80s, with his spoilt, loud, criminal act.

But it was never meant to be about any of them anyone. Surprisingly though, in a film that is designed to make him an international star, Hrithik – while being his consummately competent self – fails to come up with a performance that would be remembered forever. At many places, he plays himself. At others, he jumps the mood abruptly. There is no fault in his acting here. He does well. But he could have done just the same in a lesser film too.

Such ambiguous coordinates by the writer and the director manages to take a casualty of editing (by Avik Ali) at many times. Though, there were many in the audience who could be heard saying “Oh come on guys, let’s get over it all now” in the second half, the editor has fared better than the writers. There are some moments where one feels the editor saved the film from dragging. But there are also places, where a crisper editing could’ve made a difference. That Brett Ratner has actually chopped off 40 minutes out of a 2 hr 5 min long film, tells us actually the scope for a crisper editing.

Giving company in keeping all the pieces together is the music of the film. However, quite like the other faculties, while the original soundtrack by Rajesh Roshan does not rise beyond the two hit songs (“Dil kyun yeh mera” and “zindagi”), the background score by Salim-Suleiman is converted into a Khichdi of some loud thumping ( a la RGV film), some predictable mood symphonies and even “Once Upon A Time in Mexico” type of Spanish guitar led score. While neither stand out as a sore thumb, it is equally true that neither would be remembered beyond this weekend either. Sad.

Amidst all the loose blocks, however, two departments that can stand with heads held high are cinematography (by Ayananka Bose) and production by Rakesh Roshan. One fails to recollect when had one last seen such exotic locales of USA and Mexico in a Hindi film. From deserts to dazzling nights of Las Vegas, Kites offers some of the most sumptuous visuals of recent times. The film, quite like its lead actors, is fabulously ‘good looking’. What clinches the deal is that never does it seem that the camera is trying too hard to get the right frame.

Alas, great cinematography, enviable production values and scorching hot lead couple do not add up enough to make the kite soar.

Verdict: If money, time and quality are issues for you, you might want to wait for Rajneeti to arrive the next week. If body beautiful is all that makes you get going, you might watch this one. Overall, Kites falls way short of the humongous expectations that it has managed to evoke.