Baboon Logic

Sau Crore (1991) is directed by Dev Anand, and I don’t think any fan of Bollywood will need a longer introduction to the movie. I wouldn’t really have watched the movie, except that Naseeruddin Shah was in the lead, and Sunil Gavaskar was to make a special appearance along with his team.

Obviously I didn’t expect much from the movie, but it managed to surprise me. In spite of being devoid of any artistic merits, it offended my aesthetics. The movie can be seen as a forerunner to a whole generation of comedy bums that Bollywood is producing now.

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– spoilers ahead –

Some Philosophy
Murder, in all its glorious mystery, can not be the story (mark the word - story, not subject) of a movie any more. The focus must lie elsewhere, in the lives of the characters, their interactions, their crisis, their interpretation of the world around them, so that when a clue is quietly slipped into a scene, the viewers’ll either miss it, or interpret it differently (reminds me of Ram Gopal Verma’s Kaun), like we all have done in the best of Agatha Christie novels. This is how Bhool Bhulaiyaa fails. It has no story. Its characters have no life (except Akshay Kumar, may be). That is also why in the end, when the mystery is over, one fails to sympathise with the emotional difficulties of the characters.

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There is one scene from Sympathy for Mr Vengeance which summarises why I like Park Chan-wook so much - Ryu sits in his dingy room helplessly while his ailing sister moans in pain and the boys next door masturbate listening to it.

But that’s not how he shows it. What we see is a row of masturbating young men who are trying to keep up their illusion by touching each other selectively and by looking at pornographic images put at the back of the guy in front. They have pressed their ears to the wall, and we can hear in the background what appears to be the moaning of an orgasm. The camera keeps drifting, and we have some time to think about the scene at hand to allow us to detach ourselves with casual deprecation. Then we come to Ryu’s room to find him sitting on a chair with the kind of detachment that can come only from utter despair, and we find his ailing sister moaning in pain on the floor.

Now we have to judge those young men again in light of our previous impression.

Just another scene calculated to shock? Yes, but there is more that Park Chan-wook conveys here. Those masturbating young men, they are not perverts, they are common human beings just like you and me. Their lives are our lives, and that is all there is to life.

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Eklavya has a great beginning. The first scene of the movie is probably the most powerful one. As Boman Irani recites a sonnet from Shakespeare to his dying wife, remembering the better moments of their courtship, one is mistaken for a moment about the present reality, and when the meaning of it crashes in with all its irony and cruelty, one doesn’t know whether to feel sad for Rani Ma (Sharmila Tagore) or for the Rana (Boman Irani, who is reminiscent of the kings in Shakespearean tragedies). However, this bitter irony of life soon takes a malicious turn and the movie takes off. The darker and gloomier foreground of the deathbed against the lighted backdrop sets the mood of the movie.

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Eklavya has a great beginning. The first scene of the movie is probably the most powerful one. As Boman Irani recites a sonnet from Shakespeare to his dying wife, remembering the better moments of their courtship, one is mistaken for a moment about the present reality, and when the meaning of it crashes in with all its irony and cruelty, one doesn’t know whether to feel sad for Rani Ma (Sharmila Tagore) or for the Rana (Boman Irani, who is reminiscent of the kings in Shakespearean tragedies). However, this bitter irony of life soon takes a malicious turn and the movie takes off. The darker and gloomier foreground of the deathbed against the lighted backdrop sets the mood of the movie.

Read the rest »