Putting Ghajini into a genre

Ghajini is not Memento. Ghajini is the boy-meets-girl (and falls in love) story followed by boy-avenges-girl’s death rant. The non-linear unfolding of the narrative is superfluous because there is no surprise in the story and because it doesn’t serve any purpose except for tightening the pace. It’s a different movie altogether, with a different focus and a different niche, and it is entirely unnecessary to keep Memento in mind when thinking of it.

Ghajini is not Bollywood either. It has been reworked to Mumbai, but the screenplay wouldn’t have made much sense without its Southie (I think it’s called Kollywood!) motifs. For example, Asin plays the typical innocent bubbly girl with attractive simplicity (real life bimbo made larger than life on screen!). Obviously this is a character done to death in Bollywood, but they do it with a different kind of sensibility in South which you can see in this movie. The Goody Two-Shoes-ness of Asin might thus be a little jarring to the rest of India, but I am sure they will enjoy the bit where Aamir Khan subconsciously learns to drink tea in a pedestrian manner from her.

Ghajini is Kollywood in Bollywood clothes with the addition of Aamir Khan. It’s almost a scene by scene remake of the original except for a better paced and politically correct (or may be I should say cinematically correct!) ending.

Digression to South

There is a remake of Bommarillu (Genelia plays another Miss Goody Two-Shoes Bimbo) in pipeline, and I’ll quit writing on this blog if the hero doesn’t pick up some pedestrian mannerisms from her in the course of the movie. The original in fact contains this very pedestrian way of drinking tea as depicted in Ghajini.

I am being a little harsh. This transference of pedestrian habits symbolises the hero loosening his tie and all that sort of thing, I know. My problem is, I want somebody to invent a different narrative technique to convey hair being let loose. I am tired of the same old shit being peddled around with upbeat music and sweeping camera movements. Audrey Hepburn blowing her nose into Peck’s handkerchief was funny fifty years back in Roman Holiday, but I am sorry if I don’t enjoy seeing it now after so many rehashes of it in just about every other average chick flick.

I want to see some imagination. Something inventive like Saawariya or Amelie. Content can wait. I want to see something inventive or just pretty.

Now back to Ghajini!

Ghajini is a formula movie in two parts. The formula is simple, but broken into non-linear (in time) pieces to interweave the two parts (which differ greatly in mood) in order to make the transition smooth. In fact, because the transitional difficulties have been dealt with by screenplay, it has allowed the director to exaggerate and contrast the moods of those two parts.

Romance and Revenge.

In the part of Romance, the boy falls in love with a girl who is faking to be his girl friend. It has been done with nice low key humour and perfectly romantic ambience. Something you can take your girl friend to!

And then the girl dies and in the Revenge part he goes on around trying to avenge her murder. The original stylised looks of action sequences have been retained. I have been thinking how they were done, and my guess is that they shot them with the usual jumpiness and jarrings and then smoothed the image progressions.

The Music

While the music is disappointing, the background score is actually good (particularly in emotional/ contemplative scenes). Guzarish had a great potential, but the music director seems to have run out of material and instead of sitting on the simple piano bar (which is what this song really is. it’s a very pretty piano bar stretched to fit some average piece of lyrics.) till it grew to be a decent song, he has attempted to make a song out of it! It reminds of his last movie, “Yuvraaj,” about which I have written elsewhere.

But I don’t blame him for making such a mess out of Tu Hi Meri Dost Hai (of Yuvraaj). Gulzar is solely responsible for that, because I can see that the original music Rehman must have had in his mind was twisted and contorted to fit Gulzar’s crappy pretentious lyrics. That movie is full of some of the worst lyrics ever written.

Moving on, Kaise Mujhe Tum Mil Gayi is a well crafted and well placed song. The high notes of the song might have been unsuitable to the occasion, but Aamir Khan’s portrayal of the emotion is striking and the song and the visuals together capture the mood very well and mark one of the high points of the movie. In fact, without the song and without Aamir Khan, I think the sequence would have been overtaken by its clichéd overdose of mush.

Aamir Khan and Asin

Needless to say, the movie rests on the shoulders of Aamir Khan, and he has some shoulders! I can’t stop gushing about his looks in the movie. For one thing, he has eight packs. But what I like best is the fact that he looks so cute in the songs in spite of all the beef. He looks incredibly cute in the songs, and I can’t help thinking how handsome he is.

And of course he has acted very well. In the romance part, he plays it with a lot of sensitivity which makes it plausible and convincing. But he plays the revenge part with subtle exaggeration which will capture the attention of every action buff. He plays the revenge part with murderous and blind rage. Blind rage overshadows the hatred that is supposed to drive him.

Which is how it should have been, now that I think about it. There is nothing that he can pin his hatred and frustration on. Without memory, there is no focus to his hatred. So it manifests itself as uncontrollable rage as he goes on around avenging the murder of the love his life. And I love the way Aamir Khan does it. It looks spectacular.

Asin turns out to be a decorative piece and bubbles and simpers (yes, she simpers. she tries to giggle but ends up simpering.) on the screen competently but with mediocrity. She doesn’t have a good figure (as yet?!) and is probably a little too fat for Bollywood! She doesn’t have hangups though, and may be she can act.

I must digress here to mention Rani Mukherjee’s character in Chori Chori. It was not a particularly remarkable movie, and I think it didn’t even get a theatrical release because of delays, but it features what I like to call a piece of vintage Rani Mukherjee! She plays an orphan who pretends to be the fiancée of a man in love with another woman and plays her part with incredible nonchalance and helplessness and sweetness. I love her in that movie.

Unique Selling Points

It’s a short movie, well paced and well acted.
Decent depiction of romance and action sequences. Southie style, but still decent.
Aamir Khan.

That makes it three stars out of five!

The Godfather (An obvious digression!)

Before the sun sets on a lonely Aamir Khan on a lonely bench, we see that he sees Asin next to him as he unwraps the gift. This scene has a point. It is expected to magnify and drive home his poignancy and his sense of loss by depicting what life could have been without the bitter unnecessary tragedies. They usually end movies about such dramatic loss with scenes with brief and imaginary happy union, but here it was more useful because it was necessary to show that in spite of his loss of memory, he is acutely aware of what he has lost in life.

It reminded me of the last scene of God Father 3. Every God Father movie ended with a brief scene which somehow managed to capture the essence of what was going on, but it was only after the last scene of God Father 3 was over that I understood and felt the bitterness of Michael’s loss of every woman that he had ever loved. That loss was what had underlined his entire life. Ignoring the thriller plots, the first movie is about his transition, the second about confirmation and the third one about resignation. The point is, the resignation doesn’t come till the very end. He had been working towards that resignation all his life, and it is accentuated in the difference between the way his father died and the way he himself died.

He never got a chance to be happy with the women he had loved (the two wives and the daughter). And the last scene was indeed about what it could have been instead of the last dramatic loss, but they choose to show another man who had not known the pain of losing at his happiest hour.

This is well past midnight and I have started blabbering. I just feel very sad for him when he dies alone in a dusty corner on a dusty chair silently and I realise that he had lost all the women he had ever loved.

Happy birthday to me! :)

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.

Note 2: To those who received the drafts – The reference to Robert Kolker was incorrect, which I discovered after going painstalkingly through his mammoth book again in an effort to quote him exactly (it contains the whole of GRE word list many times over). That would explain the delay. He said some nice insightful things though.

Note 3: This story, and its prequel, are officially declared to be ficticious accounts incorporating no characters inspired by anyone living or dead.

The Interview with the Professor

I didn’t understand the conclusion of the movie Micky One when I saw it for the first time. In fact, I didn’t understand it till I had seen almost all of Arthur Penn‘s defining works, till it occurred to me that violence was the underlining theme in his movies, violence overcoming a distance of some kind – distance created by blindness in The Miracle Worker (this is one reason I considered Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black plagiarised, he lifted this motif from Penn’s movie), impotence in Bonnie and Clyde (the doggerel was the immediate cue), paranoia in Mickey One (if you never understood the movie’s ending, this is the clue), the list goes on.

If one were to look at the underlining theme behind my fateful interview with Professor SS the next day, he would have discovered Mad Max, women, dope, James Bond, gang rape and Professor KV, all in that order.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me begin at the beginning.

To put it without much ado, I have never been the man for the bright sunny mornings, partly because I have never been an early riser, but that was a day well worth making an exception for.

I was up early for a consecutive second day. There was sunshine in my heart and there was sunshine on my face, and it made the world outside look more than it was worth. My heart swelled with the scent of the early morning breeze, cold and generously sprinkled with the dust from the construction sites around C**, and when my heart could hold it no more, it spilled out and became music for my soul. I joined it and sang with gay abandon, though my hostel mates later gave a different description of the events, but that might have been due to the quality of my singing. Nothing could get me down that day. Well, almost nothing, till I remembered my appointment later on that day with Professor SS.

That was my mood when I proceeded to the breakfast table. In retrospect, I think Ni(ved)ita and Pad(mav)ati might have been giving me murderous stares on that occasion, which, I am sad to report, were completely lost on me. An(irb)it did cast the hostile glares in my direction as usual, but that he did always anyway; except when he was mad with anger at me, in which case he took extra pains to be friendly with me and flashed all of his white set of teeth at me at every opportunity. Every time he did that, I would grab someone nearby and ask him to take our photographs together. Two old friends dining amiably. Two old friends looking at each other amiably. Two old friends smiling at each other amiably.

But this is not about that.

I took my usual place next to An(shu)l, Sou(men)dra and Riya on the breakfast table. After some moments of uncertain silence, Sou(men)dra spoke.

“You know what, I have a solution that will solve all your problems at one stroke.”

An(shu)l observed nonchalantly that the last time someone had said that, he came up with the nuclear bomb.

This made all of us contemplative for some time, at the end of which I asked Sou(men)dra about his solution, which turned out to be a bunch of excuses, brilliant and intricate but convoluted excuses, to evade the responsibility for my mail. I like to face the consequences of my actions, however, mostly because they are funny, and Riya supported me in this.

“You realise what you have done, right?”, she asked.

I was going to answer that yes I did, but then I remembered the last time I had said that. I asked what had I missed, and was made devastated in return.

To cut a long story short, SS had thought that my remark was intended for the girls, who also happened to be a minority (only three in the entire undergrad program). It wasn’t until much later that Shree[vat]sa remembered what was to us the only known abuse of Rolypoly, and it was a boy who had been the victim. Had this information come out in time, I could have been saved, but the smart chap who observed that comedy is all about timing forgot to notice that tragedy is all about mistiming irrespective of its Greek or Shakespearean or modern origins. Such is life!

I finished my breakfast and started for SS’ office with a heavy heart dragging my heavier feet.

When I coughed and said my slurred “ess-use me” to SS in his office, he was busy checking his e-mail. He looked back with a questioning glance and I introduced myself. He turned off the monitor, wheeled his chair towards me and rolled his sleeves.

“So you are that Mad Max character, eh? What the hell do you think you are?”

I couldn’t say that I was not pleased by that comparison, but etiquette demanded that I look guilty and sorry.

“You think you are smart huh? You think you can get away with this? What did you mean by that letter?”

I thought it was an invitation to explain myself. I am perpetually in the habit of committing this error. I mistake rhetorical speculations for literal questions and proceed to answer them.

“Sir, I think there has been a misunderstanding, I wasn’t thinking of the girls at all when…”

“Shut up,” he roared, “enough,” he paused for breath, “I thought what anyone in his right mind will think reading that disgusting mail, and you have no excuses to defend yourself. You have behaved very very irresponsibly, and you better be ashamed of it.”

He softened a bit at this point, “You see, women are a minority here, and we have to make them feel safe. What you have done is not only demeaning and insulting, it might also scare them,” his temper seemed to rise at the thought. “What are you, an egomaniac bastard? Do you think you are James Bond or something? Do you think you are so sexy that you can insult any of these girls?”

Again, I was flattered by the comparison and the compliment, but couldn’t thank him for it. He went on bellowing at me. Inspired by the excitement of the moment, he even stood up from his chair and started moving towards me little by little as he continued shouting at me. I thought it might be safer to stay close to the door and started inching towards it as he tried to corner me. At the end of ten minutes, we had both moved on to the corridor, and he had moved on to the gang rape part of my mail.

“And how, how could you write about such a sensitive issue like that? You think joking about rape is funny? Do you think gang rape is funny?” From there on, he went on to talk about something related to Dalits and Gang Rapes and the social problem that it is. He must have yelled “sex,” “dope,” “rape” and “gang rape” at least a dozen times within a span of a minute, at the end of which Professor KV, whose room was next to that of Professor SS, came out of his office to take active part in the discussion.

He listened silently for the next five minutes as Prof SS cruised through me. And then came the conclusion, “One should never do such irresponsible things. I think an apology mail should be sent.”

Finally seeing his chance to participate, Prof KV intervened timely, “Yes yes, I think that will be appropriate. You should immediately send a mail apologising.”

Except that he said it to Prof SS.

I was stunned for a moment. So was Prof SS. Then he recovered his speech and started yelling at Prof KV. “What do you mean I should send a mail? Why should I be sorry? What are you talking about?”

As the explanations and arguments grew in length and intensity, I decided that it was time I gave them a slip.

Everyone lived happily ever after.

Hermione speaks …

“The Deathstick, the Wang of Destiny, they crop up under different names through the centuries, usually in the possession of some Dark wizard who’s boasting about them. Professor Binns mentioned some of them, but — oh it’s all nonsense. Wangs are only as powerful as the wizards who use them. Some wizards just like to boast that theirs are bigger and better than other people’s.”

Well, I finally finished the 7th book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The dream is over, and the journey has ended, with an empty space in my life that will never be filled again. I’ll never have to wait for another book, and I am already nostalgic thinking about 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.

It is an undeniable fact that the shock-value is one of the main selling points of his movies, but patterns emerge when one puts everything together in order to understand them. The worlds he creates are an indirect critique on the one we live in, and corruption is the theme it is built on. I like his portrayals so much because they happen to coincide with my own discouraging view of the human kind. His characters are neither heroes nor villains, they are individuals driven by existential despair towards their uncertain and brutal ends. The brutality is both physical and mental. It is best expressed in his own words - In my films, I focus on pain and fear. The fear just before an act of violence and the pain after. This applies to the perpetrators as well as the victims.

His movies can be seen and interpreted literally, but I often find scenes which can be metaphorically interpreted, which, at the same time being graphic and stylistic enough to daze the audience, subtly bring out the existential theme of his world and blend it with the theme of his movie, often vengeance. The depth of his movies does not lie in the theme or the content; It lies in the outlook, the insight they offer.

If one were to evaluate him objectively, Old Boy should be his best work till date (I haven’t seen I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK), the one where he perfected his cinematic style finally, but somehow I find Sympathy for Mr Vengeance a bit closer to my heart.

While Mr Vengeance is far from Old Boy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance in terms of the cinematic style and techniques he is famous for, he clearly anticipates himself stylistically in this grim and depressing tale.

Park Chan-wook has sometimes been criticised for the extremism in his movies, but in the end that is what sets him apart. There is an integrity to the way he creates his corrupt worlds. That is the key to understand his movies, to overcome the moral ambiguity of his characters and understand that being corrupt is not being evil.

It reminds me of what Damien had to say in The Final Conflict (Omen III) – Most people confuse evil with their own trivial lusts and perversions. Now, true evil is as pure as innocence. Chan-wook’s movies are not about what we in our illusion of grandeur consider evil, it’s about the trivial lusts and perversions that actually underline our lives.

I hate all the studio-forced star-driven farce that we watch in the name of good cinema here in India and elsewhere. I have no problem watching a movie as the genre crap that the heck it is, but it really tires me when people take them seriously. They might be more polished and sophisticated in their looks, but that’s about all that sets them apart from our Bollywood lot.

Musicals are somewhat likable (ah, Music!), but the usual strings of American propaganda is just terrible. Take Cinderella Man for example. IMDB rates it at 8.0, and I never saw a bigger piece of shit in my entire life. There is not an iota of intelligence to be found anywhere in the movie, and it misrepresents Max Baer too (but Paul Giamatti and Russel Crowe were good). Gladiator is another example that comes to mind.

So given the kind of impression one is likely to derive from the usual media coverage, I didn’t expect much when I stopped to watch a few scenes from Million Dollar Baby while flipping through the channels. This post is not a tribute or anything, but the movie, for a change, was very decent. And intelligent too. It was touching, and I didn’t feel like going on my usual spree through the channels after it ended, and sat down there listening to the music (end credits) and feeling depressed, to discover the useless information that Clint Eastwood himself composed the music for the movie.

I will not get into the political debate surrounding the movie (which I unearthed afterwards in google), principally because I consider them off-point and idiotic. Anyway, it was a very well made movie, and I am never going to underrate Clint Eastwood again.

I guess that this trait can be traced back to one of my Freudian nightmares in childhood, but that doesn’t help me in coping up with this mess. I mean, what sort of people keep writing one love story after another! Someone might try to point out P G Wodehouse here; but then, he was funny. Anything can be excused if it is funny enough.

And of all people I! Honestly, I don’t think it is impressive to come across as a male chauvinistic moron insisting on Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I really can’t stand an imbecile idiot of a man out of his senses pledging his undying love to the leading lady to reassure her that he’ll “always” be there. I could gulp it down if he did with a bit of irony in his voice or a slight twinkle in his eyes, letting me in on the joke, the conspiracy. But no, he must go on and scare me out of my wits with his sincerity.

In fact, I have almost stopped watching mindless romantic flicks because of this reason. The one I recently watched was You, Me and Dupree. Movies don’t get any lamer than this, but I had to waste time till I caught a shuttle back to my hostel and I got the special ticket priced at 10 bucks (as opposed to the usual ones priced at 120 bucks). Anyway, the movie went all very fine till the build up to the climax when I woke up from my slumber (Ok, I actually watched the whole movie, but don’t blame me. I was jobless.) to find the romantic leads kissing each other and throwing up the usual crap about love and care and shit.

This was the only scene which made an impact on me in the whole movie. I felt so scared and sick that I thought I was never going to talk to or touch another human being again. I felt like running away and hiding somewhere, where no one, in particular no girls, could ever find me. The thought that one day I might be doing all that willingly was an immensely depressing thought, a thought that subsequently had to be driven away by a full course through roasted chicken and biriyanis (my Firefox spell checker tells me that biriyanis is spelled wrong, and offers the alternate spelling lesbianisms).

All romantic flicks do this to me. They make me want to hide somewhere and avoid any sort of human contact. As it is life is already pathetic. I tried to order my first pizza about two weeks back and miserably failed. In fact, J(iga)r thought I had an ego problem or something because I always asked him to talk to the shopkeepers when we went out together. But he eventually understood (or so I hope); may be when he found out that I couldn’t really talk to the waiters either.

I am improving though. I am sure I’ll improve significantly once I go back to my diet of Tim Burton and Stanley Kubrick and Action/ Adventure/ Woody Allen. I think the leading pair of You, Me and Dupree (They never had a single intelligent conversation through out the movie!) fit the random pair Alvy Singer picks up from pavement in Annie Hall -

Alvy: You look like a very happy couple…How do you account for it?
Young Woman: I’m very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Boyfriend: And I’m exactly the same way.

Ironically enough, I never penned down the only love story I could possibly have wanted to write myself. I have written, nevertheless, half a dozen love stories and countless poems on the same note at the request of others – some my friend, some not, but all of them in love (I have half a mind to agree with Oscar Wilde calling love a tragedy; but then, as Umberto Eco put it, Wilde probably suffered from furor sententialis, i.e., pleasurable rhetorical incontinence). A lot of people have the tendency to mistake the obvious for the profound and sometimes, to my regret, the beautiful. So I had prospered with my excuse of a poetry in those days (but I was very good at meter and rhyming).

Whatever. I guess I’ll just get on with my love story.

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.

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.