piri-piri

It’s raining outside, and has been since around 8 am. The first shower was a good long one — not heavy by Mumbai standards — but certainly the heaviest rain I’ve seen here in a while.

Now it’s down to being ‘scattered’ as the weathermen say. I’m Indian, so we love the rain, and we look forward to it no matter what. If an Indian says, “It’s a gorgeous day!” they probably mean that it’s overcast and raining, vis à vis the traditional warm and sunny definition of the term.

It’s a gorgeous day.

The tennis open is going on across town. Yesterday the papers were plastered with pictures of Maria Sharapova playing tennis in a makeshift court inside Ski Dubai, which is this town’s latest hot thing. When the Burj Al Arab was the hot thing they had Tiger Woods teeing-off from the centre of the suspended helipad a few dozen storeys up. Now all that is passé, apparently, as the Mall of the Emirates (*huge exclamation point*–third biggest in the world–*huge exclamation point*) with its attached ski-slope and snow park has taken centre stage. From the top level parking the ski slope looms above you, a pulsating plasma display of lights along a strip in the side. It
looks like the giant nacell of the Starship Enterprise, and from that angle it’s very impressive, and immediately brings up earnest desires of building and owning starships — instead of ski slopes.

Haven’t been inside the snow area — somehow the fact that I’ve never seen actual natural snow makes me reluctant to try the manufactured version. Up against the large glass viewing windows some of it gets thrown by kids, our faces the target. I put my nose up to the glass and take a look at it, smeared there. Looks like ice chips. Doesn’t look like the crystalline fractal flake patterns I would expect from real snow.

All this for a romp in a large freezer?

I’ll wait for the real thing.

Sharapova’s quote on playing tennis inside an artificial ski resort in the middle of a desert kingdom is, understandably, “Surreal.” I wonder what she’s saying now, standing on the edge of a drenched tennis court in an otherwise parched desert kingdom. There have been more sirens heard in the streets in the past hour than in the past three months. Obviously all those top-of-the-line cars with their ABS and intelligently designed tyres are in severely lacking in top-of-the-line squishy flesh things operating them.

Unlike the rest of the world, Indians just love rain, so you can imagine how Indians react in this country where this is probably the only full day (if it lasts that long) of rain we’ll get all year. Anjali called me up in the morning, and she’s been calling everyone, rallying them with stories of masala chai and bhajias. The chai I can
do, but there’s no chick-pea flour in the house (or any potatoes or onions) so no bhajias.

My mind wanders to chill breezy monsoon evenings that seem both like yesterday and lifetimes ago, of slicing potatoes and whatever else we had on hand to experiment with (mushrooms, broccoli) while my mother mixed up the batter. I’ve eaten a lot of bhajias, and so have a lot of people I know, but all of us agree that my mother made the best ones. Crisp and crunchy with the merest, milimetre-thin layer of soft batter between the outer shell and the steaming, floury slice of potato. Salty and spicy with the slight unfathomable (umami?) taste of the chick-pea, the rounding, mineral taste of cumin and the metal tang of ajwain. We never had the need for chutney with those, even when it was around.

It’s funny, but you never really think of asking you mother to teach you her recipe for bhajia batter because she might be dead in a few years.

Meanwhile it’s sad, pudgy, spongy things from the local cafe. The closest I’ve ever had was this vada-pav guy opposite Fountain, tucked away under the arches of one of the buildings. It was great, but not quite the same. Too much salt, no ajwain. Also, 2,000 kilometres away. On my last trip to Ghadeshwar (pictures of the place are in the work page) I managed to snag the last batch of bhajias from the one stall propped up on the slope. Little yellow chips, gone soft in the damp atmosphere, but still bhajias in the rain. The classic combination.

I vaguely remember learning the recipe from her, and it was more of an hour-long experiment with different consistencies and spice-levels and the thinness of the slices. I get the feeling that each time she madeit she taught herself again, and it was willingly forgotten in the subsequent eating, the gulping down of too-hot, gingery chai and too-strong South-Indian coffee. Part of the fun of cooking I learned from her was the forgetting of things. To re-learn the process every time is a vital part of me. I get the same feeling when I’m drawing or writing or taking a photograph. The sense of discovery is as important
as the sense of successful operation.

The number of times we’ve been in the kitchen — especially in the later years when Samir or I were doing the hands on work and she was instructing — and and some point halfway through the traditional recipe we’d just decide to chuck something in or change something is far too many for me to recall.

When I look through her handwritten recipe books I am always struck by the fact that there are no ingredient lists — the recipes directly begin with instructions. Heat Oil. Add this. Add that. Cook it. A dash of this, etc, etc. There are some rudimentary measurements on the way, but that’s all. Again, it’s the very visceral nature of just starting up the fire and putting things into action; cooking as a private performance, as meditative self-discovery. She never started cutting things up before she lit the fire (I do. The onions are more evenly cut, but the food is a little dead, if you know what I mean). She never cut tomatoes on a chopping board, prefering instead to slice uneven chunks right over the pot.

No one can teach you how to cook. You have to teach yourself.

Hmm, the mosque-guy has started a speech. He never does that on Thursdays. Must be the rain. If you think we love rain, imagine an entire culture that is only used to seeing it once a year.

The rain, like good bhajias, is a very elusive thing.

Nevertheless, it’s a gorgeous day.

V

reviewing basanti

I tried.

I really did. There were long, drawn out drafts that went into every nitty-gritty of the plot, the acting, the music, the cinematography, the postprocessing, and it ended up sounding like a thesis, or worse, the script for a Crier’s announcement of his King.

I tried short versions, but they didn’t really convey what the film is about, or do anything other tha say, “Hey, it’s good.”

I know that while 99.99% of people who have seen Rang De Basanti have loved it — myself included — that there are a few for whom it is just not going to click. If you’re jaded with life, remember every action movie made in the 1980s very fondly, or are expecting everyone
in the film to shack up and get married to elaborate Farah Khan choreography, then be warned: you’re either going to dislike the movie, or it will change you completely.

This one is right up there with Lagaan.

Watch it now.

V

watching basanti

There’s a new Aamir Khan movie out.

Usually I would be avoiding theatres like the plague now, waiting until next week or so when I can watch the movie without the excess chatter of first-day-first-show types who really aren’t interested in the movie so much as being able to say they’ve seen the movie. However, thanks in part to UTV’s extensive, news-channel heavy marketing campaign for their new film, and my father’s addiction to said news channels, I knew it would be inevitable that by midweek I would either overhear the entire plot (it’s a house where sound carries very well — I can hear the TV in the bathroom), or more likely it would be narrated to me by my excited parent.

Look, I’m a polite person, and I’ve even asked him — several times — to just not discuss anything about forthcoming movies with me, but still he persists, eyes wide like a five year old who’s just seen two of his teachers kissing behind the canteen, in rattling out the latest, juiciest gossip. He knows I don’t care who Abhishek Bachchan is supposed to be currently dating, so he likes to impress me with the latest he has gleaned about the movies I intend to watch. I can’t exactly punch him in the face when he’s driving down a highway at 120kph, can I?

I don’t like movie spoilers. This is why I never watch more than a teaser trailer for any film. I’m thankful that Indian films start off with a ten second teaser, then release a bunch of ‘song’ teasers leading up to its release, and only show ‘plot’ trailers about a week before, at which time I’m avoiding the TV anyway. I’m also thankful that none of the English theatres seem to show any theatrical trailers of movies I’m actually interested in (What? Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda don’t get along in Monster-in-Law? Nooo!).

With all this in mind, and prepared for a week of tense spoiler-avoidage, I was a little thankful that Candy had a sudden urge to go see the movie this past weekend. I was weary from the previous week’s Guestgiri, and nothing would have pleased me more than to watch a good Hindi movie. Still, I had a few reservations.

“We won’t get tickets,” I said. “It’s an Aamir Khan movie on the first non-working day since its release. No way, except maybe in one of the multiplexes, and that too we’ll get crappy seats and be surrounded by idiots*.”

*(okay, so this is the main reason I don’t go to Lamcy Plaza anymore, because — other than the smallness of the screen — there you’re always surrounded by idiots. I remember missing the first half hour of Parineeta because we had taken the last three available seats in the row and the guy next to me — who had come in 15 minutes late — was trying to convince me to scoot over a seat because someone of his was expected. I wasn’t going to scoot over into an already taken seat even though it was at the time empty. Ten minutes later the two from those empty seats show up and it turns out that they are with the annoying guy next to me, and in fact they had booked their tickets together but somehow left three seats in-between.

Idiots.)

When we got to the theatre I decided to just throw caution to the wind and let my father get tickets. My god, it was as if someone had asked him to commit murder. I finally know where I get my jittery/nervous/deer-in-headlights response from (lucky for me I also inherited my mother’s Athena-meets-an-immovable-cosmic-constant expression, which works).

Somehow we managed to send the kids (i.e. my Dad and Candy’s mom) to get the tickets. The theatre was nearly booked up, but thankfully it was free seating. Another advantage of going to the multiplex, although the ticket price is higher, and I usually pick seats near the front which are always empty because apparently no self-respecting Indian wants to see a movie from a seat where the screen appears any bigger than his 21″ TV at home.

We actually had to queue up — this has never happened at a Multiplex and it was apparent from the expressions on the cinema staff that this was a new occurrence too. Baffled non-Indians passing by looked on, their extra-large popcorns trembling under the weight of a shattered world view. A packed theatre, with a queue… in Dubai!

While there was a large crowd in line ahead of us, they were good Indians and headed straight for the nosebleed section of the hall, smug grin announcing the fact that they had got prime, picture-skewing ‘corner seats’ (the other coveted position of the Indian filmgoer, if travelling in a couple). Candy, Samir and I headed for the first row past the central aisle, roughly 1/3 away from the screen. They’re great seats, look straight ahead at the screen with no skewing, and the only thing in front of you is a balustrade and the aisle, just the way I like it. It doesn’t have the drama of Stalls Row 18 at Regal or First Row Centre at Eros, but then, what pre-fab multiplex has? My father and Candy’s mom headed straight for nosebleed. We never saw them again.

The theatre filled up behind us, with only the fashionably late arriving with petite tubs of popcorn and cotton candy shuffling into the seats next to us, complaining that all the ‘good ones’ at the back were taken.

At this point the ads started up so thankfully all this chatter was drowned out by CineStar’s louder-than average sound (another good reason to go there. It was a little treble-heavy during Van Helsing, but when we watched Serenity the seats literally shook when ships passed by onscreen). Nancy Ajram’s ‘Coke fizz tickles my nose’ ad is as bleh as
ever. The other one with the woman trying to get her le parkeour on is slightly better, but still underdeveloped (the woman is supposed to be a real life music video director. What she’s doing swinging from chains while Nancy suffers coke fizz assault is a matter that must be looked into). The Dodge Charger ad is very black, steals equally from the trailer to Torque and a million different car commercials before it, and goes by in a blur of post-processed neutral grey-blue and forced rap ‘jingle’. What happened to the good old days, when Peugeot’s African arm was showing people pelting through the Congo doing dangerous stunts in a stock hatchback and getting a “Bravo, Jacques!” from the narrator?

On to the movie trailers (they showed English ones before the movie, and Hindi ones at intermission, but I’m grouping them together here). Ooh, the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie! Teaser trailer, so I don’t mind. Hmm, the producers seem to be playing the “Let’s make it even more like The Secret of Monkey Island!” game. I swear, Davy Jones even has LeChuck’s writing beard, only with postmodern hentai tentacle-sex references thrown in. It’s subtitled ‘Dead Man’s Chest’ at which point I was forced to utter, out loud and in full earshot of the decent, moral folk surrounding me, “Shaved or hairy?”

The sound of the next trailer starting up drowns out the screams.

Memoirs of a Geisha looked underwhelming when I saw the trailer on TV. On the big screen the same trailer looks gorgeous. I still don’t give two hoots about the story, but it has Michelle Yeoh, and I’m going to go see it just for her and the awesome cinematography. Next!

Oh look, it’s that blond guy who was in everything. Ooh, he’s threatening to kill someone’s girlfriend, but there’s a gun pointed to his head, and you almost feel like cheering for the guy — no, wait, wtf–aaaatomcruiseaaaaa! So, Mission Impossible Three looks a bit… generic. I can’t remember anything other than that opening monologue, and that Tom Cruise, fresh off impersonating James Bond in the first and Revlon Haircare products in the second (while doves flew in the background — do not forget the doves), is now some kind of hybrid of Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell, that dude from Syphon Filter, and every other black-ops/espionage/tactical/squad/stealth video game out there. Thankfully there were no overt Solid Snake references, unless the film opens with Cruise regurgitating a pack of cigs. You’d think that with JJ Abrams involved we’d at least get a Sidney Bristow-style cherry-red wig, but noooo…

The Hindi trailers were quite welcome, after that. Earlier I had no interest in Taxi No.9211, but the teaser trailer impressed me with its witty theme song (“sone ke sheher me sone ko jagah nahi” — sorry, the pun is untranslatable), the trailer’s lovely moving typography, and the fact that it’s produced by Ramesh Sippy and directed by Milan Luthria. You sold me a ticket, boys.

The teaser for Krrish, Rakesh Roshan’s sequel to Koi… Mil Gaya was next. Not only is it one of the first true sequels to a Hindi movie, but it’s a full-fledged superhero yarn, and I don’t recall any Hindi movie that’s tackled that well. The wirework looks nice, the cinematography bright and unusual, but the costume looks a bit iffy now. Still, I underestimated this team before when I went to see Krrish‘s prequel — came out pleasantly surprised — so I won’t understimate them again.

There was a very brief and quickly put-together teaser — well, it was more like a series of  studio shots of the cast set to music and flat Flash graphics — for Priyadarshan’s next, Chup Chup Ke (I hope I got the name right; there are so many movies with variations on ‘chup’ and ‘ke’ that a boy is bound to be confoozled). It didn’t look particularly interesting. Rajpal Yadav behaving like Rajpal Yadav. Neha Dhupia doing… well, something. I can’t even remember who the hero is, but hey, it has Kareena Kapoor. Worth a rental on that basis alone, although cinema-sized Kareena — when they do her makeup right, like in Asoka and Yuva — is a wonder to behold (her new Pepsi ‘Cafe Chino’ ad is a wonder for all the wrong reasons, however).

On to the actual movie (um, I’m doing an actual review later, this is just all the peripheral stuff, that’s why it’s in Out-and-About rather than Review-o-Matic). The first thing you notice when watching a Hindi movie in a usually English/American movie heavy multiplex is the sound. It’s LOUD. An American movie is quite even and pretty quiet, with even the loudest volumes reserved only for the biggest of explosions and events. Not so in Hindi movies, where everything from the dialogue to the score — especially the score — is pumped up to the maximum. I remember Farhan Akhtar saying that when they were mixing Lakshya abroad they kept asking the sound guys to make
it louder, something they were a little apprehensive about. He told the sound engineer that if he didn’t put it higher people watching it in India would rip out the seats and throw them at the screen. Remember, we are the culture that screams into phones when it’s a long distance call.

The colours were magnificent and the print pin-sharp, and it being only the third day of screening there were no scratches. There was this sick feeling I had during the title song a half hour in when the AC3 cut out and the system fell back on the flatter, softer , but by no means less comprehensible optical stereo track for an extended period of time, but luckily it rectified itself and the rest was smooth sailing.

I waited through to the end of the credits (Indian film credits are pretty short anyway — we aren’t contractually obliged to thank everyone and their agent), but that was mainly to listen to the excellent song ‘Roobaroo‘ in full surround sound glory.

Outside another, even larger line was forming for the next show, and, quite overwhelmed by the movie I’d just seen, I staggered out into the throng of the mall, satisfied that come what may, no spoilers would wound me now.

On this note, stay away from most reviews of the film, as they are spoilerrific as hell. Taran Adarsh over at indiafm even gives away the ending! Blasphemy.

I’ll try to keep the review short. I could go on and on about numerous aspects of Rang De Basanti, but in short: it r0XX0red my b0XX0rz.

V

reesetto!

Oh look, a new year.

Hard to believe we’re already in the second half of the 2000s. Just yesterday we were all getting hot and bothered about the millennium bug, and those silly sunglasses with “2000” won them were making their appearance on drunk faces in Times Square (one wonders how the manufacturer plans to tackle the 2011 edition?).

I’m back in Dubai, where, if you’ve been keeping up with the news, we’re having what can only be described as not the best start to the new year. The ruler of this emirate died yesterday, and the funeral is going on as I type this. The much-touted annual Shopping festival was all set to start and has been put on hold. I suppose they’ll start it up by Eid next week, but until then the roads are relatively empty, malls are apparently full of closed shops except in the food court and a million dollars worth of fireworks that was set to kick off the festival is now sitting idle.

As I’m not a fan of fireworks, that last bit comes as some twisted variety of good news.

Other than that the new year seems to be going as well as the last. I have somewhat recovered from wedding-itis though the sore throat and dry cough still persist, not helped by the fact that while Mumbai was unusually cold — 12ºC at night — Dubai is much colder and drier. I’m suddenly much more thankful for the yellow Minnesota Vikings hoodie my cousin bought me from the states. I don’t know much about the Vikings, except that they play that completely unfathomable variety of sport called ‘football’ (I can, however, shout “First Down!” at random intervals). Also I live in a country where the temperature is well above 30ºC for most of the year — a thick hoodie is the last thing I thought I’d need. But, lookie, now I can do the morning walk without freezing to death.

(Look, I realise that for most of my American friends 12ºC is considered a nice spring day, but this is the tropics, and that too in a metropolis that suffers from acute Heat Island effect. If you want to eat an ice-cream stick you start at the bottom where the drip is and hope that the top of it doesn’t fall off before you get to it!)

Yes, I just spent the majority of this post talking about the weather. Well, the year so far has been that interesting, and other than taking a general survey of what needs to change in my life if I need to fulfill my dreams (lose weight/eat well, clean house/learn to cook better, develop skills/make money) I haven’t been up to much.

I owe all of you emails of various lengths, and so off I go to type them up.

Happy New Year.

V

timepass

I’m in Mumbai, getting caught up in wedding fever (my cousin’s getting hitched — we’re trying to keep her sane). Haven’t posted because no pictures have been taken other than stuff at the engagement, and you know I don’t post personal photos. Other than that I’ve been trying to catch as many movies as I can in between all the wedding madness that accompanies and Indian wedding, and all so far have been good.

Neal and Nikki was naughty and totally unapologetic about it, and I loved every bawdy minute of it. Extra points for the My Sassy Girl homage.

Home Delivery, mark my words, is what hindi movies will look like thirty years from now. Spellbinding stuff.

Bluffmaster, which I have just seen today, is… well, what can I say? It’s hilarious, slick, superbly acted and paced, has so many beautiful shots of the Mumbai I know and love (that sunset over Fort with Rajabhai tower just about floored me) and has the two words that will sell any hindi movie to me:

1)Abhishek
2)Bachchan

They also showed a trailer for Rang De Basanti, which looks awesome, and actually drew thunderous applause in Eros Cinema when the Censor Board certificate came up — first time I’ve seen that. Aamir Khan and Abhishek Bachchan are the only two hindi film actors who rate this kind of audience response. Not AB senior, not even Shah Rukh Khan. When Abshishek shows up in the first two minutes of the feature his first lines were drowned out by claps, whistles and hoots (the last one, I must note, came mainly from the females in the audience).

There’s nothing quite like watching a Bombay movie in Bombay.

V

yahaan review

“Don’t talk to them, Sir — they’re locals,” says a jawaan to his commanding officer. The central conflict in Shoojit Sircar’s Yahaan is best summed up by this line. It’s the strange paradox of soldiers who don’t trust the people they are protecting, and vice versa.

Kashmir has always been the central issue in most Indian war films, but it has always been handled in a detached way. Since insurgency began in 1989 almost no films have actually shot in the valley (Yahaan is an exception), and even when some other location is meant to be Kashmir, it only serves as a backdrop for heroic, patriotic soldiers to scream at vile terrorists or armed forces from ‘our neighbours.’ Kashmiris are relegated to cannon fodder, fleeing peasants, or oddly Punjabi love interests with nothing to do beyond a song and a brisk abduction near the climax.

The Indian war film, however, is changing — for the better, I might add. Last year we had Farhan and Javed Akhtar’s Lakshya which, even if its specific frontier setting was removed, still worked as a top notch tale about a soldier’s motivations, and, more broadly, a human’s need for a purpose and the finding of it. However, that film’s political side was expertly handled too, neatly crystallising the core of the India/Pakistan conflict into a three hour film — no easy task, and something not even achieved by three J.P. Dutta films (Border, Refugee and L.O.C. Kargil).

While Lakshya told the soldier’s tale through Kashmir’s eyes, Yahaan tells the story of Kashmiris through a soldier’s eyes. On his first posting in the valley, Captain Aman (Jimmy Shergill) is put in charge of protecting a small town. His bunker sits next to a house in which a beautiful girl (Minissha Lamba) lives, and needless to say the two fall in love.

This is really only the skeleton of the plot, as it serves to help flesh out a number of well-integrated threads about foreign terrorists, army corruption, the fear both the Kashmiri people and the Army harbor for each other, and Kashmir as this place removed from the rest of the world. It would be easy to make a heavy-handed film like most Indian war movies before it, but Yahaan handles itself with pitch-perfect subtlety (it’s needless to mention here that while the film was critically acclaimed — even winning an award — it was not a huge commercial success).

The film reminds me a lot of another Jimmy Shergill movie, Charas (also an under-appreciated favourite of mine) — that film was also set in a far removed and forgotten part of India, but its plot had things to say about us all. Jimmy Shergill might be the most underrated actor in the country right now (along with Prashant Narayanan), but he hasn’t crossed over into B-movie territory (B meaning ‘Bad’ here), and continues to pick great roles in great films and bring something special to them. Captain Aman may have twenty lines in the entire movie — no Sunny Deol-style patriotic speeches here — but Shergill just owns the screen even when he isn’t saying anything.

Minissha Lamba gets most of the lines — indeed, her character has more to say — and while she’s very pretty and emotes well, her dialogue delivery can be strangely clipped; it slows down when you expect her to speed up. It’s still a good, solid performance, however, and any dialogue quibbles are lost in the excellence of the rest of the film.

The real surprise, however, is the amazing work by the supporting cast. From some known names like Yashpal Sharma (who usually plays baddies but does a brilliantly conflicted and sensitive version here), to complete unknowns like the people who play Adaa’s family, they all bring something special and memorable to the table. Even the sniper in Aman’s platoon — ‘Tendulkar’ — is good despite having only two lines and around thirty seconds of screen time.

Lakshya had a foreign cinematographer (Christopher Popp), and so does Yahaan in the form of Jakob Ihre. His work is nothing short of magnificent. Popp shot mainly in Ladakh and gave the film a huge feeling of space, with sunny meadows and wide open vistas, but Ihre goes the opposite way, shooting tight and close, low angles and a lot of good handheld work. Kashmir is perpetually bathed in blue during the day, only showing warmer colours at night and in Adaa’s home. The feeling of claustrophobic confines even in an open, heavenly valley is palpable. The good camerawork and editing extends to both the calm rural scenes and the action scenes (of which a bomb blast at interval point is a particular highlight).

This is Shantanu Moitra’s first major work on film songs since his breakthrough in Parineeta earlier this year, and he continues to show a flair for more earthy, acoustic tunes. It would be interesting to see what he makes of, say, a hip hop or club song now. Gulzar’s lyrics continue to be sublime. If Javed Akhtar is Da Vinci, then Gulzar must be Dali, and that analogy still doesn’t do his work justice. Needless to say, the lyrics are pretty-much untranslatable. Learn Hindi, it’s easier than you think.

Moitra and Gulzar’s songs however, are overshadowed by newcomer Sameeruddin’s spellbinding background score. As subtle as Sircar’s direction, as evocative as Ihre’s cinematography — it’s so good it that once again I must plead and pray that the Indian music industry at least takes a chance and brings out a proper soundtrack album of a film rather than just the songs. Maybe as downloads? I’d pay for that.

Yahaan is a must watch, and a worthy companion to Lakshya if you’re looking for a double feature. What more is there to say? Well, the film was originally titled Adaa, but I’m glad they changed it to Yahaan (Here). As I write this there as been another terrorist bomb attack in Srinagar, but after seeing the film it no longer feels as if it took place in some far, unknown, altogether alien part of the world called Kashmir.

It feels like here.

rampart

juncture

camera obscura

You’d think that Sanjay Leela Bhansali would stick to what he got successful at — the extravagant, melodramatic, ultraromantic megadrama — but instead, he goes and makes a songless film about a deafblind girl and her teacher.


So, it seems, that Indian commercial cinema is going through another phase of diversification. The last time this happened (or at least perceived by the press to have happened) was in 2001, when films like Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai redefined what exactly it was that made an Indian film. Frankly, though Jism and all its spawn gave people the impression that the whole scene had regressed (thanks in no small part to some big budget flops from established directors like Sooraj Barjatya and Subhash Ghai), the commerical revolution in Indian cinema continued unabated. Films like Agni Varsha, Jhankaar Beats and Meenaxi continued to poke holes in the hull, but were either total flops or dismissed as that very catchy new genre, the ‘Crossover’ film.

Today, however, it’s back to the heady feeling of 2001 and the promise of globally successful Indian commercial films (read: white people — specifically Americans — must watch and like it). Surprisingly, only one film is causing this renewed buzz, and that film is Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black.

Back in the late 90s, Bhansali’s first film was the oddly titled Khamoshi: The Musical, which involved A deaf-mute couple, their child, and, of course, Salman Khan. I can’t tell you any more because I, like many, didn’t see the film, and while it did garner critical acclaim, it didn’t do much commercially. Bhansali went on to make the much more successful films, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Devdas, and firmly established Bhansali’s style of opulent sets, opulent costumes, and — to me, at least — a lot of very melodramatic acting. Hum Dil… was a nice enough film, a bit too long and a bit too angsty, but being as it was firmly within the confines of traditional commercial cinema, it fared much better than Bhansali’s first film (and thankfully gave Anil Mehta a bunch of great films to photograph, some of them being Lagaan, Agni Varsha & Saathiya).

I tried to watch Devdas. I tried to watch it many times, but could never manage more than five minutes at a time. It was just a little too theatrical and melodramatic for me, but nevertheless it was a big hit.

You’d think that Sanjay Leela Bhansali would stick to what he got successful at — the extravagant, melodramatic, ultraromantic megadrama — but instead, he goes and makes a songless film about a deafblind girl and her teacher.

Opinion has been pretty divided about Black. There are people who absolutely love it, those who absolutely hate it, and both sides spend as much time as they can trying to convince the other party that they’re right. One Black fan went so far as to take out a full page ad in a city daily urging people to see the film. Unfortunately he made the mistake of bad-mouthing a lot of (perfectly good) commerical films, and he — and Bhansali and Black by proxy — got the ire of the industry for a few days.

With all this, for lack of a better term, noise in the air, I decided to just clear my head of any pre-conceptions and go and see the film for myself (hadn’t been too interested in the first place, because the trailers were downright terrible, plus I’m not the biggest fan of the Disabled Person Triumphs genre). I’m not going to tell you the story of Black because it’s pretty much exactly as you would expect from a film like this. How it’s approached is what would make or break the film for me.

On the technical side, the cinematography (by Dil Chahta Hai and Yuva lensman Ravi K. Chandran) is top-notch, as is Omung Kumar’s production design. The film is set in some unspecified time in the 1920s and 30s, and instead of being slavish to the period the film’s sets and locations are treated with an impressionistic flourish. Sometimes it looks like a theatrical play, and a good one, at that. Monty’s (no last name given) musical score is adequate but utterly unmemorable.

The film’s performances are where the real strengths of the film lie, with pretty much everyone putting in a solid turn. About the only problem I have is with Amitabh Bachchan’s god-awful English accent. At first I tried to dismiss it as just the character being drunk during his opening scene, but soon it became apparent that this was the way the character talks; it was forced and sometimes unintelligible, especially when the character starts shouting (when all you can hear are a series of sharp hissing sounds). It’s a bit of a let-down… I mean, this is Amitabh Bachchan we’re talking about.

The film also breaks the cardinal writing rule of Show, Don’t Tell. Everything in this movie is told to you. Every single moment of the film seems pre-scripted rather than captured, every line, every action, and it doesn’t help that once in a while the film’s structure twists in such a way that it just leaves you bored. For instance, a character we only get a glimpse of in the first half reappears later and, instead of actually showing us something about this character, we get this dinner scene where she spends 5 minutes telling us about stuff that we could have seen in 30 seconds in the first half.

And that’s about it.

If you think I’m being vague about Black, not delivering the hard-hitting, conclusive ‘Yes or No’ review, then you’re right, because I had the unfortunate experience of being utterly unaffected by the film. I didn’t think it was the greatest movie ever made, nor did I think it the worst. It’s a fine enough movie when you’re watching it — some of you may even love it — but once it was over I was just… numb. I picked up my empty popcorn packet, dropped it in a bin on the way out and just walked home, pausing only for a sugarcane juice. I can tell you how the sugarcane juice made me feel, but not Black.

A month or so ago I saw The Incredibles and had much the same experience (hence I didn’t write a review for it).

I will say that Black is different from commercial Indian cinema, but I must also say that it is very much a stereotypical movie. Only it’s a stereotypical American movie, the kind that’s released in the last two months of every year and is engineered to garner a ton of awards in the following months. It is, as they say, an Oscar Bait movie, which is why it’s being touted as potentially being well received by the West.

It may be in Hindi and English and set in India, but it never feels like an Indian movie (perhaps that’s why it left me cold), and seeing as I don’t like Oscar Bait movies, I didn’t particularly like Black (or feel the need to spend 80,000 rupees on a full page ad in Mid-Day)

If you like Oscar Bait movies, do go see Black. Or don’t.

I, for one, won’t be affected either way. That’s a horrible, horrible thing for a piece of entertainment to do to you.

Vishal

sharp words

“This is mature. The characters never hesitate to communicate what they feel openly. They don’t sit around crying for long, long static shots; they talk. They do’t wait around for misunderstandings to be turned into convenient plot twists like in other movies, and this, perhaps, is one of the first things people won’t like in Shabd. It’s no holds barred without degenerating into a shouting match…”

The job of a movie reviewer, in simple terms, is to tell you about a film and whether or not it is, in their opinion, worth your time and money. This is generally taken as meaning that the films recommended fall within what would be considered a ‘good movie’ by the reader or the majority of them. If it’s recommended, then it must be a good movie, or if it’s not your definition of a good movie then it must be what is considered a good movie by the ‘critical community’ and is therefore worth watching nonetheless.

I recall an incident a couple of years ago when a guy who runs a popular movie website put a film on his top ten of the year list, and mentioned that when he asked critics why they had given said film such a drubbing in print (while admitting to love it personally), they all replied that they couldn’t recommend it to their readers wholeheartedly, that is was a movie that would not be well received by the majority of their readers.

This situation does bring to light the fact that the majority of people look at cinema as a convenient piece of entertainment that doesn’t challenge them. The rationale is that they work hard all day and when they spend their 50 rupees, 30 dhirams or 8 dollars, they expect pay off not just in a general sense, but within a pre-conceived notion they have of cinematic entertainment. This has led to the heavy-handed genre system in place today. In America you have Comedies, Dramas, Romances, Action movies, Fantasies and Horror/Thrillers, and in India we have pretty much the same ones, although they tend to all smoosh together frequently. In a three hour movie with a fifteen minute interval in-between, you can start with a comedy/romance, have a dramatic/horror mid-point cliffhanger, followed by an action heavy second half and dramatic resolution.

This would translate into the standard ‘masala movie’ plotline of boy introduced — SONG — comedy involving boy’s buddies, Girl introduced — SONG — boy meets girl — SONG(s) (depending on duration of courtship) — girl’s parents/boy’s villainous rival/supernatural thingy objects, boy/girl dies/nearly dies — INTERVAL — boy fights all odds to defeat the minions of girl’s parents/villainous rival/supernatural thingy, gets beat up — SAD SONG — villains party — ITEM SONG — boy shows up, has final showdown, wins girl, buddies show up for one last joke, freeze frame on group shot, roll credits.

This is you standard Hindi movie. This is what has, is, and will be the staple plotline of 90% of Hindi films for a long, long time. People say it’s all the same, that they want something different, but when something different — something truly different — does come along, they scoff at it and shun it like the plague (this is why four of the best films last year — Lakshya, Swades, Yuva and Meenaxi — were all critical flops, and not exactly commercial blockbusters).

Variations work. You can keep the same basic plotline, just shuffle the cards around and play it under new lights. In the 70s it was the Angry Young Man kind of films, the post-independence generation grown up and raging against the grimy machine that birthed them. In the 80s it was the more angry young men, only now they’d traded in their suits and
flared pants for stubbles, mullets and red baniyans, and while their predecessors were content with being angry at their daddies and the daddies of their lovers who had killed their daddies, the 80s hero was raging against The System.

Or Mogambo.

Mogambo (and Shakha and every other Blofeld-via-Gemini-Circus villain from that age) were still well tied into The System. Politicians were always hanging around their palatial dens, the pawns of these cancerous megavillains.

In the 90s people got a little sick of all the raging, and so the villains in the traditional sense were removed entirely, and replaced by familial discord, ideological differences, vanity and jealousy and the unstoppable urge to love, with nary a violent finger being lifted, except, of course, in all those gangster movies that followed Satya.

It is now 2005, and it’s about time we saw what this decade’s variation will be. A shrewd movie watcher will have already seen it, most notably last year. Most people don’t like this villain; most people don’t even know that they don’t like this villain, but they shun any movie that features it. The 2000s’ villain is the villain within. Or, to be more specific, it is the villain that many of today’s top directors are featuring.

So while Swades was about a man trying to find his country within him, Yuva was about three paths on that same road, each ending in a different destination. Meenaxi was about the giving of oneself, the cleaving of a part of you, about selfishness and life and the love of your creations, and Lakshya, the most straightforward, was simply about being. It’s not only last year; films like Dil Chahta Hai and Aks were tackling the villain as far back as 2001.

Which brings us to Shabd.

Leena Yadav’s film is very hard to describe, in the same way that M.F. Husain’s Meenaxi: Tale of 3 Cities was hard to describe, and if I were to compare Shabd to any other film, then it would be that one. Both are about writers, their muses, writers’ block, and love. Shabd has a much more straightforward storyline — unlike Meenaxi, it isn’t abstract — but nor is it a totally straightforward tale. You could say it’s like a Jeanette Winterson novel; it tells a story with rhythm and texture and mood.

The plot is basically about once-great-now-not novelist Shaukath Vashisht (Sanjay Dutt) starting his new novel after a two year dry spell following his second novel’s critical drubbing), his professor wife Antara (Aishwarya Rai) and the new, young professor in her school (Zayed Khan).
It’s a love story that is mature and warm and mad all at the same time, and for once, ‘mature’ doesn’t just mean that the protagonists wear suits instead of garish college-wear, or mention sex once in a while.

This is mature. The characters never hesitate to communicate what they feel openly. They don’t sit around crying for long, long static shots; they talk. They don’t wait around for misunderstandings to be turned into convenient plot twists like in other movies, and this, perhaps, is one of the first things people won’t like about Shabd. It’s no holds barred without degenerating into a shouting match (the other hallmark of ‘mature’ cinema).

The film looks and sounds gorgeous. Too often films use fancy effects and edits without adding anything to the experience, but in Shabd‘s case the editing, cinematography and post-production (along with Vishal-Shekhar’s excellent music) are essential. This is one of those cinematic movies; I can’t imagine it in any other format but on the big screen.

Aseem Bajaj’s cinematography is one of the highlights of the film; it alone is worth the price of the ticket. His camera is intimate and warm, lingering, quietly energetic. His work in Chameli was also top notch — although I was put off by a few times he resorted to gimmicky focus-effects and somewhat staid compositions — but Shabd is on another level entirely.

Performace-wise, Sanjay Dutt steals the film; he has a tough job too, since for much of the film he he alone on screen. I had never pegged him as a solid dramatic actor (he’s great in comedies like Khoobsurat and Munnabhai M.B.B.S.) but this performance is wonderfully nuanced, restrained and complex.

Look, Aishwarya Rai is very beautiful and all, but she’s never really delivered a performance I was 100% happy with. Until now. Yes, true believers, even she does a good job. Zayed Khan is rough in spots, but as the squeaky clean, vivacious ‘other man’ he holds his own. Certainly his best performance so far.

What more can I say; I think the film is near-perfect.

Near
Perfect? Why not Perfect?

Because I can tell you right now, that 99% you will not like Shabd. It’s not the kind of film most people (critics included) will like; it bends most of the rules of commercial cinema while still being a commercial film; it’s not set up to be consumed in bite-sized chunks. It expects the audience to have — if not a brain — then at least an open mind and an imagination. In short, it’s a film by a writer, made for writers.

I can’t tell you to go see Shabd because you’ll like it. However, I’m not one of those critics who ‘owes it to his audience’ to
say a film is good only if it will appeal to them.

So I urge you, go see Shabd, because it’s worth seeing.

society bitch

Page 3‘s strength is in its frankness. Subjects like homosexuality, drug abuse, sex, infidelity and yes, even pedophilia are depicted, no holds barred. Despite the inherent shock value of all these things, the film didn’t leave me with the impression that it was only for shock; things flow quite naturally.

If you would have told me two years ago (when Amit Saxena’s Jism was doing the rounds) that today a frank, slice-of-life movie about Mumbai’s high-society would be the first hit of the year (while skin flicks that try to out-thigh and out-cleavage Jism are being released), I would have told you it was highly unlikely.

But here were are in February 2005, THE FUTURE, and Madhur Bhandarkar’s Page 3 is out and strutting proud, even in the face of such heavily star-laden competitors like Black and Shabd (more on this film in a later post).

To be honest, I’ve never seen Madhur Bhandarkar’s work (despite the fact that he worked on one of my all-time favourites, Rangeela. Chandni Bar didn’t interest me in the least, Satta I have only ever seen half of (it did nothing for me, which is the worst thing a piece of entertainment can do), and Aan… well, it came out in the same year as Khakee, need I say more?

The only reason I actually trekked all the way down to Sterling to see Page 3 was Boman Irani. I could watch Boman Irani watching paint dry, and even though his screen-time in the film is limited, his performance alone is well worth the price of admission.

Irani plays the editor of a fictitious newspaper called Nation Today (which looks suspiciouly like the Bombay Times suppliment of the Times of India), and sparkly-eyed 22-year-old reporter Madhavi (Konkona Sen-Sharma) is the kid in charge of page 3, the page dedicated to pictures of the high-society parties and the people who populate them. Most of the time, nobody knows who these people are or what they do, but that they are famous and appear on Page 3 now and then.

The film opens, appropriately enough, on a PR agency pitching to a newly US returned NRI businessman (that guy who played Dr Rustom in Munnabhai M.B.B.S.) who can speak very little English, a subtle and realistic joke. The PR agency arranges a party in his name, marking his arrival into Mumbai society, and it is in this party that we are introduced to the major players in the movie. All the usual archetypes/stereotypes are present: the air-kissing middle-aged wives, the drink-drug-sex binging teenage kids of said wives, their armani-clad industrialist husbands, starlets, politicians, mafia, etc. In addition to this, a separate track involving all the chauffers of the party people runs concurrent to each do, and this serves as depricating comedy/commentary to what his going on inside.

In all this Madhavi does her reportergiri, not entirely reluctantly too. The rest of the film does have a plot, and a pretty decent one too, but to summarise it would be to take something away Let’s just say that in high society everyone is not as they seem, a few people die, a few people change (Madhavi among them), but the parties, inexorably, go on.

Page 3‘s strength is in its frankness. Subjects like homosexuality, drug abuse, sex, infidelity and yes, even pedophilia are depicted, no holds barred (okay, the pedophilia is not exactly shown — that would be illegal — but nor is it merely hinted at off-camera; this caused quite a shock in the Indian audience I saw it with, as we’re not very used to even hearing of it here). Despite the inherent shock value of all these things, the film didn’t leave me with the impression that it was only for shock; things flow quite naturally.

What is clunky is the dialogue, especially in the party sequences. It’s as if every line is tailored to be some kind of illustrative vignette out of a 50s school documentary. Because of this most of the already plastic characters appear even more two dimensional. In stark contrast to this, all dialogue involving Madhavi and her spunky room-mate Pearl (Sandhya Mridul, amazing as always) is punchy and entertaining, as is the office banter between Madhavi, Boman Irani and Bhandarkar favourite Atul Kulkarni (as a crime reporter, another well essayed role by the actor).

As the protagonist, Konkona Sen-Sharma is adequate, but doesn’t really endear and is a bit plain; in a film populated by dislikeable cardboard cutouts, it would have helped immensely to have a lead with some charisma. Oh well, on second viewing I’ll just substitute her with Rani Mukherji. I’m getting quite adept at this.

Another letdown is the cinematography. It’s functional, but that’s about it.

And finally, the worst offender is the audiography and dubbing, which ranges from okay to horrendous, and really takes away from the viewing experience.

Without giving away the ending, let me say that it impressed me; for once a realistic film has a realistic, mature ending. Too often do these kinds of films devolve into either sugary, deus-ex-machina meets jingoism endings (Nayak… oh wait, the entire film was like that) or total dystopian megatragedy (far too many to list here). Page 3 has a Mumbai ending; it seems cold, unfeeling, and harsh, but it’s actually empowering and positive.

One thing to note, though: there’s a sequence later in the film that is very gory (it’s the aftermath of a bomb blast, so what do you expect?), so stay away, all ye of gentler constitutions (as if the mention of pedophilia wasn’t enough).

Page Three is worth a watch on DVD (the TV-like cinematography will lend itself well to the small screen), or a cheap ticket at a matinee show.

Oh, and dear Mr Bhandarkar: do not tease us with Hrishitaa Bhatt in the music video and not have her in the actual film. I was sorely disappointed. Now that woman would have made an excellent Madhavi.

swagatam, baby

Welcome to allVishal.

I'm Vishal, and this site should contain all of me that is fit to print
(which is quite a bit, really). You will notice that comments are a lot
easier to put in, have a lot of funky emoticons like monkies and cows,
and also you can use textile to format stuff better (best of all, no
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too).

So… there may not be many photos for a while (digicam is back in
Dubai being put to some professional use by my brother, while I'm in
Mumbai watching movies and getting drunk on gingery sugarcane juice).

If I can get this old laptop to work for more than ten minutes, you
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So do leave a comment and tell me how you are, what you're wearing
currently, and how many partly-bald men it takes to change a hairdryer
fan.

Vishal