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.

The movie is a blatant screen adaptation of O Henry’s One Thousand Dollars (Sau Crore means One Thousand Million), with the requisite plot overheads and song-and-dance routines and the dumbing down for the masses. Stripped off of the sensibility of the original, it couldn’t have provoked me, but the movie goes on and does the exact opposite of what the story did.

While not Kafkaesque itself, One Thousand Dollars is one of the very few stories of O Henry with a Kafkaesque premise. But the story is more human, in that it substitutes the irony typical of Kafka with a dash of irreconcilable tragedy.

Kafka is fond of taking a joke, turning it inside out and then looking at it from the insider’s point of view (the insider who is now an outsider. almost all of Kafka’s stories are described from an outsider’s point of view.). Then it is no more a joke, it is an irony at varying levels of surreality. But it is never tragic, because that perspective inside the joke from which Kafka looks out is not human at all.

That is where One Thousand Dollars is different. It is human. It is a tragedy. May be I am wrong, but I have come to think of tragedy as a very human perspective.

That is why Sau Crore fails. It takes Henry’s rather whimsical interrogation into human beings and tries to look at it from the outside, making a bad joke out of it that it is.

And none of this is conscious. From the movie, it is very clear that Dev Anand doesn’t appreciate enough the pathos of the story to stop from making such a mockery of it.

Considering all the crap that gets thrown at me, I know I am overreacting. But then, why shouldn’t I?

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.

I think the time for such movies is over. You can’t just make a “straight whodunit movie” any more. The cinematic language is dead, stale, and little innovation has been seen over the years. One could experiment with the narration, the pace, the atmosphere, but little is going to get any better. No matter how subtle your composition of a shot is, the average audience will know what it means, and they will know how to interpret it. Because, frankly, it is all there, everything that could have been done has been done. The end has come for closed room mysteries.

The Movie
The principal reason why Bhool Bhulaiyaa doesn’t work, after one succeeds in ignoring the production glitches, the emotive incoherency and the many cinematic liberties taken by the Director, is that the cinematic language all cliche, and the story too thin.

I dismissed the movie as soon as all the mysteries of the movie were formally introduced, because by then I had everything figured out. Amisha Patel couldn’t be the culprit, because she was being victimised. The meek brother and the mute sister were obviously dummies, because the director invested no amount of screen time or focus on them.

Now that Amisha is out of the equation, you suddenly remember that terrible Agatha Christie novel you read years back, and something similar comes back. Now why was Amisha under suspicion? Because she pushed the clock on Vidya Balan, right? Because she set Vidya’s saree to fire? But, if she didn’t do them, who did? Who could?

Exactly. The answer is Vidya Balan! And I start to get depressed about the coming two hours of the movie.

And then, presto! Akshay Kumar enters the screen. His character, while it is caught in the story of the movie, isn’t really a part of it, and therein lies its appeal. His histrionics kept the comic refuges coming, and I didn’t want to miss any of his scenes (except for the ones towards the end). I came out with a favourable impression, because the movie was not a tedious self-indulgent exercise of a director wanting to make his mark, it was a commercialised piece of junk without any pretence at integrity, and it doesn’t fail to entertain.

Music and Background Score
There are very few songs, and they are catchy, short, and mostly take the story forward, contributing towards the pace of the movie. Akshay looks cool in the title track.

The background score is also competent, but sadly misused, to the point of ruining the thrill of the movie.

Consider the scene where Vidya enters the much advertised mysterious locked chamber for the first time with a stolen duplicate. The sequences are good enough, and tension builds up as we start to fear for her physical safety, wondering what is going to happen next. But just before the tension could reach its peak, the ill timed exuberant background score pops up and we instinctively know that nothing is going to happen to Vidya, and all the laboriously built up panic dissolves away. We let the long held breaths out, ease ourselves into our seats, and go back to snoring.

Aesthetics
The most interesting sequence of the movie is towards the end, where Vidya Balan, finally having surrendered to the ghost (of her mind), produces a captivating dance, which was almost the best thing about the movie, along with Akshay Kumar. I wish I could see more of that haunting look, I wouldn’t mind going to the theatre just for that performance.

Apart from that, the movie seems to have a poor sense of Aesthetics. The atmosphere, which is supposed to be spooky, if not scary, is badly constructed. The attempts at interspersing shadows with light doesn’t quite work, and sometimes it sends wrong signals.

Actors
Akshay Kumar, as usual, has an energetic and entertaining appearance/mannerisms, and his performance is competent throughout. Paresh Rawal does deliver his lines, but he is underused. Amisha Patel is okay, and Vidya’s performance is raised from okay to good through some key scenes, some of which have more to do with her appearance rather than her acting. All the veterans (whose names I can’t remember) have turned in competent performances.

The odd one out is Shiney Ahuja, who disappoints. He alternates between wooden stereotypes and screaming fits, and expects us to take him seriously. I would blame the director though, how could he let him get away with those terrible performances? His character could easily have been emotionally consistent and normal if he had only stood there and let the scenes take their course. Instead, he tries to act and we have this high-strung guy who frequently overreacts (by screaming) and whose sense of loyalty towards his father-figure is simply incomprehensible. I like this guy. It’s sad to see him grow complacent like this. He has some serious self-contemplation to do.

Final Verdict
Given the standard of Bollywood movies, I would rate this movie 3 stars out of 5. One for the pace (the movie is not self indulgent, and keeps you mildly preoccupied from boredom), one for not digressing from the theme meaninglessly (like most of the other movies do, no item numbers), and one for Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan.

I have just watched the irritating Heyy Babyy, which tries to pass off a lot of vulgarity in the name of comedy. It is one of the dumbest and most disgusting movies I have (unfortunately) seen this year. I am surprised by the amount of “critical acclaim” it has gathered.

There were some nice ideas, like Prof Parimal Tripathy (but the follow through was unsuccessful, because this was a movie made by the brainless for the brainless), but the sheer vulgarity of the movie overwhelmed everything else. I could grant them the suspension of disbelief and the attempts at crude juvenile humour, but their mindless abuse of the cinematic language to produce counter points to a point just made was too much to handle. At one side they introduce Vidya Balan (at the wedding) as a sharif and khaandaani girl, who is the least likely to engage in freelance romance, and right there we see a sexed up Vidya dancing provocatively, to the point of touching her own b**bs, and I ask myself, what kind of sharif and khaandaani girl did Sajid Khan, the director of the movie, had in mind?!

In case someone is looking for decent (sometimes great) comedies in recent times, I would advise him to try the ones from Priyadarshan and the one-offs like Khosla Ka Ghosla or Bheja Fry.

I saw promos of Om Shanti Om and Saawariya, and I’m sure these movies are going to be big hits. Om Shanti Om is a sure winner, because it does what no other movie has done before, recreating a version of our seventies’ movie culture, and as a result has a freshness that’ll appeal to the average cinema goer. Good luck to the SRK basher (me being one of them), but this is a movie in the right direction and SRK is the right choice for his part. But of course, the seventies’ version we are going to see in this movie is going to be very different then the seventies as we knew it.

The first few seconds of Saawariya were slightly disappointing, but soon I was enchanted by the sheer beauty of the images and the sequences waltzing through. The beats in the background promise a captivating score, and the intricately detailed imagery provoke a feeling of poignant yet joyful emotion that I can associate with love.

However, contrary to SLB’s claim that he is trying to reach back his roots as a filmmaker, trying to relive his early innocence, this movie, or at least the trailer, is a testimony to the maturity he has attained. There are a few stills which reminded me of Devdas and Black very strongly.

Talking of that, I believe this movie will make a kind of trilogy along with Devdas and Black. Devdas was dominated by the colour red, and Black, redundant to say, by the colour black. Whoever has seen the promos of Saawariya will agree to the opulence and dominance of the colour blue. Red – Black – Blue. I am talking nonsense.

Here is a rough selection of ten movies in my to-watch list (apart from Om Shanti Om and Saawariya) -

1. Transfermers -
2. I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
3. I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK
4. The Bourne Ultimatum
5. Zodiac
6. Love in the Time of Cholera
7. Vivaldi (Joseph Fiennes)
8. Boyhood
9. The Long Goodbye (Altman)
10. My Wife Is an Actress.

It was an open secret that Anu Malik is an idiot. After today’s episode, it is not a secret anymore. He wrongly commented on the personal life of one of the contestants (to Deepali, your crush is crushing your voice. How cheeky is that?!). When cornered by the righteous Alisha Chinai, he employed three different devices of rhetorics (stalling techniques, more accurately) to evade the issue and justify himself. It could have been four, but one of his techniques constituted of making completely irrelevant statements and my knowledge of rhetorics is too poor to place it.

Anyway, some poor guy got eliminated today, and an ironic performance ensued from the other contestants that could easily have been dubbed hilarious. For the guy getting out the sorrow was genuine enough, and he took it very sportingly. Some of his mates shed some real tears too, particularly one of the girls who was with him in the danger zone. The rest of them were just pathetic, and it was hilarious to see them hide their faces with their palms so that we could not see their faces. I mean, they were supposed to be sad, and they were supposed to cry. But they failed to produce any amount of tears (we can’t blame them, the euphoria of not having been eliminated can be overwhelming) and tried to make up for it by hiding their faces and refusing to look up!

The host, Mini Mathur, however, had an easier time. After joking around with the poor eliminated guy for sometime, assuring him that he’ll be dearly missed, she simply went backstage and put some glycerin in her eyes and came back for the end credits, where she cried her heart out. I hope she gets paid well. She has to keep crying like this for seven or so weeks more.

But as the movie progresses, the hints of a Shakespearean tragedy disappears. With such an original beginning (for an Indian movie), Chopra soon gives way to all sorts of cliches that we in the Bollywood specialize in. However, in one of his better performances yet, Amitabh manages to breath life into the character (and the movie) which seems to have been written with him in mind.

For example, when Amitabh stands in front of the chest in his room, we know instinctively that he is going to pull out that scarf Rani Sahiba had dropped a few scenes back. Then, since he wants to express his anguish over his failure, what better (and more cinematic) way to destroy a piece of cloth than burn it? But at the hands of Amitabh, this tedious and predictable scene (it should be borne in mind that the scene doesn’t make much sense in the first place unless we stretch the point) becomes one of the key scenes for his character.

Looking closely, however, we discover that the character of Eklavya has no real substance, and has to depend on the tried and tested formulas to get the point across. His character is well sketched, but lacks depth. Just like “Black,” the character works only because it is
Amitabh playing it.

In comparison, Boman Irani’s character was much more real, and could have been made frightening in its helpless frustration and resignation. Looking at him one thinks that he is not much unlike Antonio Salieri, and lo! He whips out a plan for his ownAmadeus.

Jackie Shroff and Jimmi Shergil are more than adequate in their short roles. Raima Sen felt like a surprise discovery in this movie. She had some real acting talents after all!

Sanjay Dutt’s character of a dalit DSP is a stitch up job to hold the script together. He is completely miscast in the character, though he does a decent job. He has acted so seriously that it is hard not to like him.

Vidya Balan looks as lovely as ever, and the fleeting moments of her romance with Saif Ali Khan remind us very strongly of “Parineeta.” One wonders why she made such an elaborate preparation (reading books on Rajasthan and other local researches! she mentioned them in an
interview) for such a short role that hardly required Rajasthani sensibilities (of which she showed none). She has been wasted in yet another movie.

(Note: I didn’t mean to imply that Vidya did badly in the movie by discussing how lovely she looks. It’s just that I am so smitten! She was her usual best in the movie, and one couldn’t have asked more.)

Saif just about holds his character. The problem is that the audience is asked to relate to the emotions of characters like the young Rana (Saif Ali Khan) with the briefest of introductions and the corniest of dialogues. Since the script did not allow for much character development, Chopra should have gone for the actions and mannerisms rather than the words. May be a bit longer movie would have been a good idea.

The brilliant cinematography and camera-work fail to hide the lack of a story as the movie fast progresses towards its predictable end. The director manages to keep the atmosphere intact till the very end, almost making the movie worth watching. But what the hell, one would be entirely justified for sitting through the movie just for the first ten fifteen minutes.

Chopra stops short of being gimmicky and tries to concentrate on the story once in a while, but the attempt (pressure?) to fit a commercial conclusion to the movie leaves an unsympathetic impression. The script could have been tighter without many of the sentimental false notes.
The commendable restraint in explaining plot details, however, was one bright point, except for the chemistry between Sanjay Dutt and Amitabh.

The background score and the sound tracks are competent, and they complement the movie well, sometimes touching a tender nerve, and sometimes depicting the acute agony of the characters.

In spite of the appearance, Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s “Eklavya” is not a murder mystery. It is not a love story, either. The way it ends does remind me of the Indian soap operas, but that would be an unkind comparison and the movie is good enough not to be dismissed that blandly.

All in all, Vidhu Vinod Chopra disappoints somewhat, though not probably as a director. The sheer originality behind the form of the movie stands out and puts it above the rest of the pack. With passage of time, I am sure this movie will be seen as an important commentary on Indian Cinema as a reflection of our growing consciousness about the technical aspects of movie-making in the frontier of our industry.

One of my problems with the movie was that I failed to relate to it. None of the issues or sentiments portrayed in the movie have any relevance to me, so I was pretty much detached from it all the while. However, some of the scenes were just terrific.

But the movie had a great start, and could be watched solely for the brilliant performance by Amitabh Bachan, not to mention the excellent cinematography. I give this movie a 2.5/5.

I spent a lot of time feeling disoriented by my spatial discomforts (accentuated by scenes where the audience’s perspective moves with the swings), feeling dizzy, not looking at the screen and trying to catch glimpses of the background music, which I liked. My recollection of the movie is skewed, but I think the one thing I liked a lot was the scene where Madhavan proposes Vidya Balan, mainly because of what they say, even though I have heard those things in many different disguises in many different contexts. The rain, the music, the sea, it was all nice, but what I liked the most was the moment when Vidya says that beauty doesn’t last, that it becomes shallow (eventually). Since that is something I have spent some time on being depressed about, it evoked images of men succumbing to their isolation in my mind, where every man is someway or the other a restatement of my loneliness. Anyway, Madhavan ignores her statement and the underlying insecurity, and chooses to live life while it lasts. It did make me hopeful for a moment, because I was thinking about myself at that time. Can life be embraced with that kind of simplicity? My little experience so far has been a little depressing – it looks like life can be embraced only with that kind of simplicity. I have found that thinking about life and love and beauty and intelligence at any nontrivial level of depth shatters my illusion, and I seem to be incapable of being happy without being deluded.

I could go on here and keep on vomiting exaggerated descriptions of myself, but I am tired of that too. I have unfortunately lost most of the illusions about myself (I can already hear comments screaming “that’s what you think, sucker!”). My reply to that, is, fuck off.

Whatever. There was also a nice song there, “Jaage Hain.” I felt the song in three different levels as I heard it. The first one of them is the intended one, where the lyrics of the song paraphrases the theme of Guru’s conclusion.

The second one is the one you talk about if you went to the movie with a bunch of engineering students. How many times have we all asked for those few moments to sleep on and dream about super models, citing long hours in the night as a reason!

The third one is what I really felt when listening to the song. It’s from an escapist point of view, one where I am asking for a few more moments to ignore the reality and slip into my dreams where I don’t know the difference between the two. It sums up a defeated life, where I am asking for a second chance only to complete in my dream the life I had dreamt up of. It felt wonderful, because the music (not the words) convinced me that the difference between the dream and my life doesn’t matter, that I could spend all my life dreaming like that.

I am getting too verbose to make any sense. There might be many contradiction in what I have written, and I guess with time I’ll not recognize my own thoughts.