Essay: An Excursion Through The Hindi Movies Of The '00s.

The '00s decade was a mixed one for the Hindi film industry. We saw hits, misses, torrid dramas finding a footing in an unforgiving industry and many, many retirees. And a few comebacks. The hits ranged from good to wowee and the misses ranged from, well, blech! to did I really pay for this. And who can forget Lagaan, the third Indian movie to get an Oscar nod. So, all in all, the decade did do us some good, judging from the caliber some filmmakers laid out in their oeuvres, but still it didn't end on a majestic note. Tsk, tsk. But we'll get to that later.

We started on a high, no doubt about it. Lagaan, Aushutosh Gowariker's absurdly entertaining epic, which revolved around a bunch of enthusiastic young men in a famine-affected village in the heart of rural India challenging a British constituency to a cricket match. If they win, they can evade the tax imposed on them. And if they don't, they'll pay treble the tax. A story that could've made a scream of a gag, you know. But Aamir Khan was at reins so I took it seriously. I had to. And, boy, did it come through! It brought the audiences at the cinema - me included - on their feet cheering, and I can't last remember a Hindi movie doing that. But we lost to Danis Tanovic's No Man's Land, a stunner of a war movie that wasn't about war. Lagaan was whiffed out and I couldn't argue, not after I saw Tanovic's vanquisher. Don't believe me? Check it out at your leisure.

Farhan Akhtar's Dil Chahta Hai glorified the urban India that had evolved covertly sometime in the late '90s, and had people talking and enthusing over it. An acutely observed drama that examined the friendship between three men, it benefited from a magnificently-written quip script by Akhtar, who was a major revelation, maybe the most significant of the decade. Dil Chahta Hai was a landmark film, possibly more important than Lagaan, and was certainly one that opened doors to free speech.

Anurag Kashyap, the rugged brainiac behind the surfacing feisty trend in the industry, proved his mettle as he had promised with his first real movie job - writing the script for Satya. His second feature Black Friday, after his debut Paanch which still remains unreleased - hopefully, not forgotten - was liberated after a long battle. Well-researched, well-detailed, it showed flashes of a promising, uncompromising filmmaker. That tag Kashyap lived up to. Still does.

Vishal Bharadwaj made his directorial debut with Makdee, a feature adapted from a fable, that went unnoticed. But he came back with Maqbool, a perturbing gangland drama that is, in my opinion, the second best crime film after Ram Gopal Varma's Satya. And it introduced one hell of an actor in Irfan Khan. Bharadwaj boasted of his artistry in Omkara and Kaminey too, but Maqbool's expertise cannot be topped. No way, sir, no way.

There's one movie that criminally escaped everyone's attention. That's Khosla Ka Ghosla, directed by a ballsy debutant, Dibakar Banerjee, who proved with his succeeding fleet of films why he's the biggest prevailing hope for Hindi cinema. I'll remember Khosla Ka Ghosla for it's impeccable script by Jaideep Sahni, who hasn't let me down as yet, the witty, loquacious dialogue backed by the swank detailing that defined Banerjee's style of filmmaking. Banerjee is undoubtedly one of the finest filmmakers the industry has nurtured in the past decade.

While some filmmakers addle with movies outside their comfort zone, few of them try making a likable bunch of them without steering clear of the contemporary style of storytelling. Rajkumar Hirani, the mustachioed master of the genre, proved it with Munnabhai M.B.B.S, his debut. Though I did enjoy it, I found its supposed sequel Lage Raho Munnabhai a far better film. Hirani sticks to his exegesis of Hindi cinema. He packs a substantial amount melodrama - sometimes overdoes it, aargh! - with genial characters who are funny without ever trying to be. And, as always, they go home happy so everyone goes home happy. Hirani knows what its like to have an enjoyable experience at the cinema. He may not always pitch cohesively-structured films but he sure as hell shows us a good time. Sometimes that's all you need, ain't it?

When I look at the whole picture, I don't see why I can't classify it as a good decade for the industry. And then, I see why I can't. I contradict myself. Sure, we had a few films that stood out and I've mentioned a few of them in this treatise, but how many of them have been gladly received by the general public? That precise impression gave the producers the idea of making, uh, films apparently, that would entice the audiences to walk into the theaters. So began an armada of godawful poppycock movies that sustained themselves on a paper-thin plot. They'd usually feature a protagonist that tries to catch the attention of a shy female while mouthing off the corniest lines one could imagine, snide humor in handfuls and an antagonist that popped out of a '90s cartoon. I can't imagine why anyone would want to put their money in a film that hyped to be that kind of snotty cinema but, well, the films found the darn money.

The last few years of the decade have been cataclysmic for the industry. We saw an uprising on highly commercialized cinema, which we now associate with the Hindi film industry, and the benighted industry now ostracizes movies having feeble audience connectedness and intellectually compelling plots. One example of this was Stanley Ka Dabba, the debacle that was one of the best movies of that year. Though I realize it released in 2011, Amole Gupte's miraculous film was indirectly rebuffed because of the obsession that jostled out many for the same reason.

So, I've given my views about what I think of the movies the Hindi film industry fostered in the '00s. I'd root for the talent that has emerged in the past decade but sadly I just can't say the same about the movies. If you yak about the variation, I'd say I wouldn't know about. I can't see it.

Review: Nicolas Winding Refn's "Only God Forgives" : It's A Monster And It's Alive!

So, I finally watched the movie I had been waiting for all year. And there's a good chance that you might've not even heard of it. It's called Only God Forgives, a gloriously angry movie about loyalty, morality and, uh, mothers. And before you hawk and hurl a million questions at me, I'd have to state that it was booed loudly by the audience at its Cannes premiere. And that's where I start hunting for a different kind of cinema. Because the legend goes that any movie, any movie, that gets catcalled at Cannes turns out to be a pretty good cinematic experience.

But that wasn't where I first heard of it, no siree. The first trailer, released two months before its Cannes premiere, had me psyched. And after that, I wasn't left with much choice. This is the medical condition which doctors term as getting Refn'ed. And while watching a Nicolas Winding Refn film, you've got to anticipate when to keep your eyes open and when to keep 'em closed. Because if you don't, well, you'll see some poor sod getting his eyes gouged out at some point in the movie.

So, Only God Forgives kicks off with an English gangster, Billy (Tom Burke), whetting his fetish for violence and murder and brutally slaughtering an underage prostitute. And one cop, Lt. Chang, gets the wind of the crime and arrives at the crime scene. Now, Chang (played by Thai actor Vithaya Pansringarm) ain't your usual cop. He's sadistic and he has his own way of doing things. He's dangerous, he's eerie, he's The Angel Of Vengeance. He's earned that sobriquet, by the way. How, you come to know in his first scene. Calm, composed and resolved, he calls the father of the murdered girl and tells him to do whatever he wishes with Billy. He has a cup of tea while the livid father obviously butchers Billy to death - and I'm skimming over the hyperboles here - and then cuts off the father's hand in an act of morality. Whoo, that's way too much violence for the first thirty minutes.

Julian (Ryan Gosling) hears of it and lets the father go. Julian's a quieter version of his dead brother. Angry, silent, cold and calculating, he talks when he wants to talks and listens when he wants to listen. Yep, he's the Driver from Drive, a film in which Refn gave us a David vs Goliath in modern day Los Angeles. He's vying for something bigger here, something that hasn't been attempted before, unless, of course, by Quentin Tarantino.

So, Julian's a weird guy. He slams a whisky glass in the face of an innocent customer in a nightclub, breaks his thighbone and beats the crap out of him. Why? Because he's angry, he's misunderstood and he's fucking weird, that's why. He's obsessed with Chang, the God, and he can't do anything. Not against Chang anyway. His mother, Crystal (the excellent Kristin Scott Thomas), arrives to see her first son's body. She's incensed to find out that Julian's doesn't want to avenge his brother's death and even more so when she finds out that the guy who's actually behind it fearlessly walks the streets of Bangkok. She's a woman with a mission, a foul-mouthed, seething godmother who decides to take care of it. She ridicules her son, his girlfriend Mai (Rhatha Phongam), whose name she pronounces as May, calls her names, cum-Dumpster being one of them, and jeers at her son for being a wimp. She goes after the ruthless Chang, who wants a reason to keep the streets clean, but when it's in the hands of Crystal, it's personal.

Refn encompasses his movies with a certain mood that's evident throughout. Vivid, esoteric, nightmarish, Only God Forgives uses the dark well. Cinematographer Larry Smith, a Kubrick colleague, knows his way around the camera. Tastefully shot and visually striking, there's a lot of eye-candy here. Bangkok has never been as sinister nor as exciting. It's a living, breathing character, no less.

After my viewing of Only God Forgives, I tried to decipher the reason why people didn't accept it. Maybe because it was pretentious, trying to be an art film and trying to fashion violence like poetry, but that just didn't seem right. It's artsy, alright, but I can't classify it as as art film. It's high on the beautifully ethnic score by Cliff Martinez, a rousing winner, but no, still not an art film. Maybe it was because the whole idea was abstract, the dialogue idiosyncratic and the characters were, uh, characters.

Contrary to all notions you might have, I loved the movie. I found it to be an incredible experience, a little disturbing perhaps but fantastically crafted with an eye for style. It's not as good as Drive but it's still a damn good movie. I loved the brawl sequence with Martinez's Wanna Fight playing over, how it ended with yet another classy song You're My Dream, how diabolical the movie is and how engaging it ends up being. It's intensely fascinating, really.

Only God Forgives may not be the best movie of the year but it's certainly one of the ballsiest. Pure guts and skill make this an experience to be had, a movie that's so radically different from a filmmaker who wants to be unusual. It's utterly absurd and yet it makes a lot of sense. Watch it, sit through it and make your day.

Essay: Should "Lootera" be the film India pins its Oscar hopes on?

After my initial viewing of Vikramaditya Motwane's Lootera, an Indian adaptation of the O. Henry short The Last Leaf, I was sure that any person in their right mind would definitely think of recommending it to the Oscars. Because not only was it loyal to its inspiration, the short story it is adapted from, but also it was also a movie we are seldom treated to in an industry obsessed with ringing cash registers.

True, it didn't get to me straight away. Blame the lethargic pacing or the long silences if you must but yeah, it doesn't work that way. It wasn't meant to be instantly likable, I thought. Those of you who remember Motwane's debut Udaan would know. Motwane uses time to magnificent effect, as is discernible in his two movies, he lets his characters grow, evolve and then he sneaks in some plot when you begin to care for them. That's how he makes 'em how he makes 'em.

Having read The Last Leaf before watching this film, I was surprised to see how it all made sense at the end when Motwane followed a different story altogether for most of its runtime. And till the interlude, I was raving about it. The first-half of the movie is breezy, stunningly crafted, masterfully shot, something that I missed seeing in a Hindi film. Motwane then dunks it into an emotionally-charged second, where cinematographer Mahendra J. Shetty employs a dexterous use of lighting to epitomize the change of mood. The emotions run haywire between the contrasting characters when they get the wind of what circumstances have made them do. That's precisely when the plot of O. Henry's marvelous short begins to take shape. I'll have to also talk about the incredible score, a score which compliments the deep, disguised emotions between the characters and one which pays homage to the old Hindi classics, thus creating a nostalgic aura that a period piece like this needs. Terrific.

So, when I heard that the process for the Oscar submissions had started, Lootera was the movie I kept thinking of. Now, I'll be honest with you, I'm a cynic when it comes to India and Oscars. Because I don't believe that the recent Indian submissions for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar were the best cinema we had. I mean, who ranks Paheli above Black, really? And why, why do we send movies with plagiarized content to vie for the big one? But I concurred when the Film Federation Of India (FFI) sent Anusha Rizvi's fabulous Peepli Live four years back. Barfi! was last year's submission, a decent movie but much of it had been lifted straight off Chaplin's films, something that should've been looked into and acted on accordingly, but apart from the splendid performances, the film had very little to offer to the West. At least Lootera credited its inspiration.

Still, when I weigh Lootera's chances at the Oscars, I'm not too sure. Yes, that would be my choice for this year's submission - and I seldom watch regional films so I'm not confident about my choice - but Lootera was a wonderful film and something that would fascinate the West, I think. It was careful with its adaptation, virtuoso in its execution and above all, fearless in its ambitions. That's why I think it'd make a decent choice.

By the way, Ritesh Batra's Dabba generated a lot of buzz in this year's edition of the Cannes Film Festival. When an Indian film is talked about at Cannes, it should be something special. And Dabba is gearing up for a release next month. I won't be surprised if it wows the audiences, for the trailer is mighty impressive.

Let's see, shall we?

Essay: Howard Beale's Premonition Has Come True. Beware!

One of the most striking images from the movies of the '70s is that of Howard Beale going nuts in front of sixty million viewers.

So, yeah, I'm talking about Network. That beautiful, beautiful film Sidney Lumet crafted way back in 1976 from a deliciously candid script by Paddy Chayefsky that did most of the talking and using a bunch of actors that defined what acting was all about. Yes, that film. Now those of you who remember Network know which scene I'm wanting to talk about. One of the greatest scenes in the history of cinema, made sublime by a brilliant actor and a peerless screenwriter. And when Beale mouths off the magical words from the pen of Chayefsky, what revels is a sequence, a premonition really, that confounds us with its reasoning and its veracity.

Ironic though it is, it was also the first scene of the movie I had seen. I was skipping through the channels on television and I saw this great-looking movie on one of them. And before I could even find out the name of the film, Peter Finch howled why he was mad as hell. And it left me lost for words, because the writing was so powerful, yet so simple. Chayefsky's vocabulary was a marvel, as is evident from the number of quotable quotes the film contains.

No, I'm not here to elucidate Beale's breakdown. What I'm trying to do is comprehend the consequences the speech had on me as I look out of the window and see what Beale meant. We're living in a world that doesn't care about anything, that doesn't want to make this a better place. I often think : what must have Chayefsky thought when he created Howard Beale? Was Beale a gawk? Or was he always as deranged as we see in the movie? In one scene later on in the film, a newscaster labels Beale as a mad prophet. Well, one thing's for sure - the mad prophet says the most insightful things one could think of.

There's a lot to Network other than Peter Finch who plays Beale. But, you know, as an adherent of the movie, I always look forward to his scenes. There's a wonderful speech by Beale later on in the movie, and it's such a kick to see him ravage and rant. It's a fearless performance, one of the best and one of the most significant ones in history. He says he ran out of bullshit on live-television when he's fired from his job, a line's that as funny as it is true.

Over the years, people have bitched about the film being too self-assertive, too aware of its ambitions but its Finch who gives Network its pneuma. Funny how the great Sidney Lumet makes a synecdoche count in his movies. Beale is the soul of Network, Sonny Wortzik was Dog Day Afternoon's.

What stayed with me after my first viewing was the last line of the movie, the line which brought Chayefsky his Oscar and my favorite line from the movie, after Beale is shot dead on live-television  - 'This was the story of Howard Beale, the first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings.' Is this what we'll eventually become? It's creepy to even think that we're heading in that direction. And that, my friends, is Chayefsky and Beale's victory, then and there.

Review: Why Paul Greengrass' "United 93" is the best film of the first decade of the new century.

There have been good films, great films and films which were criminally ignored in the '00s. Though Paul Greengras' United 93 clutched a deserving Oscar nod for Best Director, and being one of my favorite films, I had to endure the scalding insult of answering the disparaging question, "United 93? What's that? Oh, is it, like, a football movie or something?"

Uh-uh. It's something else, you know, something that can't be put into words. Is it enjoyable? Not really. Is it, um, great? Absolutely. But yeah, not many people have heard about it. That's because it doesn't feature any known actors, it wasn't a film of a big, sweaty budget, but it was a film of such prodigious power that it stunned me to my very core. Oh, you'll see, you'll see what I mean when you watch it. That's something a small treatise like this won't do justice to. You can't read about United 93 to get an idea what's it like, you've got to watch it to know it.

So, I had my first encounter with Greengrass' United 93 while I was scanning through the winners of the 79th Academy Awards, which was a big event because, as most film-lovers might recall, Martin Scorsese overpowered his peers to win a long overdue Academy Award for Best Director. And when I saw his name being called out, it was a moment of deep joy for me. But there was Greengrass, the only nominated director that night whose product wasn't in contention for the top prize. I had to watch it because my conscience wouldn't have it otherwise. Little did I know what I was about to see could whiff out any movie vying for any prize on any night.

Concisely, United 93 chronicles the events of United Airlines Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked during the September 11 terrorist attacks, which crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, when the passengers stirred up a surprise rebellion in the aboard flight. And when tackling a film that's based on true events, United 93 gets just about everything right. You've got the hand-held camera style of directing that's almost guerrilla, a way of reminding the audience that it could be passed off as a documentary too, you've got non-actors so that remind us that you don't always need actors to make a film experience endearing and you've got extemporized dialogue that makes the setting look so authentic. And you've got a lot of people playing themselves, most notably FAA operations manager Ben Sliney.

To tell you the truth, for most of its runtime I thought United 93 was spellbinding but not good enough to be ranked as one of the decade's finest, you know. That was until I saw the amount of filmmaking and emotions that Greengrass packed into the last half-hour, the thirty minutes of pure bliss that we are promised and denied so often. And I'm not lying when I'm saying that the last half-hour changed me as a person. Really. A piece of cinema so perfect that it's shattering. I couldn't remember the last time I had watched a film that had moved me so much. And when I finished it, I knew that United 93 wasn't just good, wasn't an experience to be had just once. It was different, a movie that knows what it wants from a director who knows what cinema is.

United 93 is a mammoth achievement, no less, a film that needs to be honored and cherished and watched. I can't tell you just how good it really is, because I don't know myself. My vocabulary shames me. And when a moment like this presents itself, you know the movie's a knockout. If you haven't already seen it, please do so. I can't seem to find a better film to recommend to you. Not in the '00s anyway.

Review: Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" : Why It's Great In Two Very Different Ways.

There is a word I don't use very often to describe a movie : cocky. But I'll use it now because Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now is nothing less than that. In fact, there hasn't been a movie I've come across that deserves to be described in that way.

Coppola illustrated his magnum opus in a brief yet profound manner during the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme D'Or : 'My film is not about Vietnam, it is Vietnam.'

Now, if you're a film-lover, there's a very thin chance that you might've not heard of Apocalypse Now. And if you haven't, the slime-ball you are, I'll tell you about it. Because not to tell someone about it would be a crime. The nerve, the audacity, that went into making it is something I'd never even heard of. It's something like a nirvana for film-lovers but a haunted house for those with a fetish for an enjoyable movie experience. And Coppola has just put me through one of the most grueling experiences I've had at the movies.

I've always had a certain aversion to big productions with a high visual quotient. My fascination for them has always been zilch, and shall remain so. So, Apocalypse Now was a discovery. It sneaks up on you, like a carnivore waiting to strike, stealths you and finally climaxes with a sequence so unnerving, so horrifying, that it's absolutely maddening. And I mean that as a compliment. It's a crazed fuse of explosive energy, landmark use of visuals and sound and incredible guts. 

But Coppola's road was not an easy one. He once remarked : 'We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.' That's true, by the way. The film was notorious for the length of its production. Coppola edited millions and millions of feet of footage. He had also shot footage that was 100 hours long, can you believe that? And from those 100 hours, he just picked out the best 153 minutes. He contemplated suicide once because the film was going out of his hands. Sheen suffered a mild heart attack because it was so exhausting. And don't get me started on what Brando did, or almost did, to it. Brando's arrogance was legendary but it made the movie much more elegiac, you know, in a weird way. 

Martin Sheen was the second choice to play Captain Benjamin L. Willard. Pacino scoffed at the script when Coppola told him about it. So, here was Sheen, half-actor, half-soldier for most of the production, playing Willard, the juiciest role of his fine career, who has been sent to assassinate Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, a decorated army officer but who's a psychotic renegade. Brando, bald and overweight, hadn't even bothered to read the book the film was based on. Coppola's perception of Kurtz was a tall and thin man, but Brando was the opposite. But, hey, a name sells a film, right? Always does, always has. So, Brando was on for just 10 minutes. And he charged a million dollars a week for that small part. Or should I say, for half of his face 'cause that's only what you get to see of him, folks. Only that. And before you judge him, he was known to be a difficult star. So, half a face is a good deal, innit?

And yet, and yet, here was a movie experience beyond your wildest dreams and the smoky realms of your imagination. Here was Coppola, the big, bearded guy who made The Godfather, at his most visionary. Here was a studio willing to go bankrupt in an attempt to show you something different. Here were the characters, the human-beings, stripped bare emotionally, doing things so inhumane. And here was an experience so hellishly exhilarating that you can't get rid of its prodigious impact even a week after you've watched it. 

I'll be honest about this. If, say, Apocalypse Now were to release today, I wouldn't have liked it. Why? Because it'll be just another movie experience, you know. We're living in a techno-driven sphere, and the magical sound of Apocalypse Now would be attainable in our living rooms with just the right use of the right resources by the right people. Apocalypse Now looks chic on film without such hooey blunting its impact.

There's one scene I've got to talk about. The sequence where a water-buffalo is slaughtered is intensely horrifying, more so because it was slaughtered in real. A sacrifice Coppola witnessed with his wife when he was doing research for the movie was something that inspired the idea, but I strongly condemn the inessential sequence.

Apocalypse Now, nearly thirty years after it first released, is one of the nuttiest war films I've seen. But the grit and grime come from a fantastically clairvoyant filmmaker who is undoubtedly one of the most ingenious filmmakers of the past century. And Apocalypse Now cheekily haunts your conscience, a symbol of its triumph.

Haunting. Try it.