Essay: A Tribute to Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s “Khamosh”

[Contains spoilers.]

A couple sits on a rock near the banks of a gushing river and discusses a future together. Their lines sound unrealistic in the way Hindi film dialogue often does, because this is a scene from a movie they’re shooting. A hand appears from the water and brushes against the woman’s sole. She kicks it away, caught in the eroticism of the moment. The director calls for a retake. The same thing happens again. Momentary confusion paves the way for a breathtaking reveal: a body emerges from the water in slow-motion, breaking, in truly cinematic fashion, the brief lull a plot that had seemed to hit a dead end left in its wake.

In Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s “Khamosh,” murder is everywhere. It is discussed, it is suggested, and it is seen. A motley film crew is filming a romantic thriller (ironically titled “Aakhri Khoon”) in Pahalgam, Kashmir, and at the heart of it is a murder. The director understands its significance in the film—he wants its execution to be flawless. But his crew is indifferent to his enthusiasm. His actors, like most seasoned film stars, are weary but professional, not particularly fussed about this director and his grand plans to stage the perfect murder.

This introduction doesn’t divulge what simmers just beneath the surface. Jealousies abound. Bitter glances and murderous stares are shot over dinner. Men are seduced and women objectified. From sleazy producers to conniving mothers, the set-up is reminiscent of a great Agatha Christie novel. (There is no doubt Christie might have been one of Chopra’s many influences.) After a budding actress slaps the inebriated producer at a party, her body is found hanging from a tree the next day, exactly how it was supposed to have played out in the movie they were filming. The police declare it an open-and-shut case of suicide, citing that she was upset to lose out on the lead role in an upcoming production. But, as it happens so often in the movies, this isn’t the entire truth.

What’s puzzling is that she was rehearsing her lines the night before in the hotel’s boathouse, an isolated cabin on the hotel’s grounds doubling up as a costume cabinet. The scene she was rehearsing is the one in which her character gets murdered, an ominous coincidence. She was screaming out her lines, much to the chagrin and amusement of the crew, when suddenly her voice lost its histrionic quality. Fear was palpable. Her terrified screams for help echoed in the dead of night. But nobody batted an eye. Everyone heard her rehearse, but nobody heard her getting killed. 

Released in just one cinema, the Regal, in Bombay in 1985, a year after Chopra’s remarkable debut feature, “Sazaye Maut,” “Khamosh” is a fascinating specimen of Hindi independent cinema. Working off what might have been a stringent budget, Chopra uses ingenious filmmaking to elevate a stock murder mystery. The misty, stark, achingly beautiful landscapes of Pahalgam accommodate not lasting love affairs but cold-blooded murders. Quite incongruous, one might think, keeping in mind how the Hindi film industry has long used Kashmir as a place where lovers requite their love for each other, often through lavishly filmed songs. In “Khamosh,” the place attains a shroud of eeriness. Even Binod Pradhan’s camera is voyeuristic—it creeps up on people, eavesdrops, intrudes. We, the audience, are complicit.

A cursory glance at Hindi cinema’s most popular murders tells us how dramatic we like them to be. Vijay Anand’s “Teesri Manzil” opened with the image of a body zipping through the night air and landing on a slab of pavement. Later, in the same movie, a more sensational killing, extracting a well-earned gasp from those watching it for the first time. In Yash Chopra’s “Ittefaq,” a fugitive seeking refuge in a woman’s house on a rainy night stumbles upon a dead body in her bathtub. And that startling twist in Abbas-Mustan’s pulpy “Baazigar” deservedly made a star out of an actor. What these subversive murders have in common is that they were executed in cold blood by someone we expected to possess a little more humanity. And if only the film was seen by a larger audience, the cleverly staged murders in “Khamosh” would have found their rightful place alongside them. If only.

By choosing to not let the film deviate from the blueprint of an old-fashioned whodunit, Chopra makes the crucial (and brave) creative choice of giving us ample time to engage with the clues. And what clues these are: a deceptive photograph, a hidden movie prop, an inscribed khukuri, a missing button, and a body hanging from a tree. To the lover of mystery fiction, this would seem like a fine world to get lost in, especially when nothing ends up being what it first appears to be. We see each of these clues in close-up before Chopra cuts away. When they are referred to later after the plot has unravelled a little more, they acquire a special significance. Shorn of the flamboyance seen in Chopra's later work, “Khamosh” is a tightly controlled, thrilling exercise in suspense.

In this teasing mix (which includes passing tributes to “The Godfather” and “Psycho”) is a parallel thread casting light on how the Hindi film industry exploits hopefuls. At one point, a chilling rape scene is woven casually into the film they’re shooting. “This’ll make your career,” the director tells a budding young actress. When the scene crosses into lewdness, she breaks down. Chopra’s camera pans across the film crew’s stony faces. This pan is slipped in at the end as well, when the mystery is tied up, the villain is dead, and the crew discovers who it was all along. Only this time we see their faces through a red filter, as if indicating their complicity in letting these brutes roam free.

For years I instructed whosoever I recommended the film to to get into the habit of watching charming Hindi-language comedies from the 1970s if they ever hoped to grasp the achievement that is “Khamosh.” And for years I got puzzled looks in reply. Truly, what makes the film’s climax Hindi cinema’s finest example of metacinema is how it shrewdly plays on one of Hindi cinema’s most loved stereotypes. Oddly enough, “Khamosh” ends up being just like its murders: cold, smart, flawless.

[Not For Reproduction]

Essay: A Tribute To Ram Gopal Varma’s “Rangeela”

[Contains spoilers.]

It is Hindi cinema’s oldest story: The girl chooses love over riches. It is also the story of Ram Gopal Varma’s “Rangeela,” which turned twenty-five a couple of weeks ago. I desist from saying it has ‘aged like fine wine’, for it hasn’t aged a day. If anything, it achieves a rare feat, a hallmark of a great film: with each viewing, one gets to see a different film. A recent rewatch made it plain that this was no longer the fairytale I believed it was. “Rangeela” is far richer than it is made out to be, far more melancholic. Beneath its buoyancy is a tale of loss and discovery, an ode to a city that has time and time again taught people more about themselves than anything ever will, and to the city's cinema that has a say in not just what we dream about but also how we dream.

“Rangeela” arrived in 1995, when India, its mind fixed on globalisation, had opened its doors for the world to peek in; when Hindi cinema, resurrected after a bad run in the 1980s, delivered its most beloved romance with “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge”; and when a young filmmaker, Varma, who had not made an out-and-out romance until then, decided to take on a fairytale set in Mumbai. And the approach he chose for his first romance was daringly novel: he recruited a music director who had not scored a Hindi film before; a young actress, while not new, had yet to get her big break; and a young actor, who was actively resisting getting typecast, was picked to play a street cookie. These elements gave “Rangeela” its face: a flock of young talents, eager to prove themselves, conduce to deliver a film that is, at its core, a crowdpleaser, but not in the way most Hindi films tended to be at the time. It didn’t have heroes and villains or even traditional action sequences. Even its love-triangle (if it was indeed one) was atypical: the two men never fight for the affections of the girl. They brood privately, hurt privately; there isn’t a grain of machismo in them. The two men, Munna and Kamal, are broken. Munna is an orphan and Kamal a widower, their shot at a happy life cruelly obliterated by fate. Mili, the woman they both love, is their best shot at happiness. They cling on to it, unwilling to let go.

The essence of “Rangeela”—and of Mumbai—is captured by this love-triangle. Mili, young and vivacious, dreams of becoming an actress. The fact that she is one of hundreds of thousands of hopefuls doesn’t cross her mind. Her naïvety is offset by the men who love her. Munna is a small-time black marketeer of movie tickets, dealing with life one day at a time, one problem at a time, with no idea of what his future looks like. But even his aimlessness is measured. He has had a rough childhood, one that may have involved a trip too many to the police station. A single scene in which Munna deals with a cop who comes sniffing without any trace of fear slickly establishes this.

On the other side is Kamal, a withdrawn and lonely movie star yet to get over the death of his wife in a car accident. The incident haunts him, stings him: one gets the impression that he blames himself for it. When narrating the incident to Mili, Kamal, brave at first, is soon overcome by remorse. For a moment, just a moment, his vulnerability is for all to see. Only Mili does, her face drained of all colour at the sight. It’s the first time she sees him for who he is, without the curtain of stardom to shield him from the lies that movies feed us.

The two Mumbais of “Rangeela” clash constantly—Mili’s fanciful, Munna and Kamal’s grounded. Cinematographer W. B. Rao uses light to great effect. When alone, Munna and Kamal are cloaked by darkness. For Mili, Rao chooses bright frames. When Mili is with either man, the frames are lit well, reinforcing how important she is to them. Disguised to appear as throwaway details, they colour this tale in their own little ways. But the film derives much of its magic from A.R. Rahman’s sublime soundtrack. What of it? The film just wouldn’t have been the same without it. My childhood wouldn’t have been the same, either. Nor would Hindi film music.

A sombre tale this is not. “Rangeela” is pure, unbridled joy. Any implication otherwise is put to rest by its upbeat opening number. The dialogue is rapid but witty, specked with wisdom. The relationships are carved beautifully. When Munna and Kamal first meet, Munna is aloof but Kamal is polite, not threatened by this man because he does not care to know him. At an amusement park, Mili’s father gets ice-cream for his family but not for Munna. Munna may be ‘like a son’ to him but he is still only a tenant. (An example of how “Rangeela” consciously avoids being goody-goody.) This is Mumbai’s middle-class: Amiable but not overly so, keeping one eye on their money at all times. And although Munna doesn’t try to hide what he does for a living, this law-abiding family couldn’t care less. He is still welcome to dine with them. Believing in the inherent goodness of people is one of the city’s many characteristics, and that Varma not only recognises this but understands it well enough to use it to lift the film puts him in a class of his own.

As with any great film set in Mumbai, “Rangeela” works the far-reaching impact of ‘Bollywood’ into the film. The lead characters’ fantasies and dreams are often based on the movies they watch. An extra movie ticket becomes an instrument to show you care about someone. When Mili asks Munna if he has an extra ticket to a new film starring Kamal, Munna wields it as if it were a slice of gold. A closer reading tells us why—it’s the only thing he can afford to give her. And it is from a cinema hall that Mili flees in the film’s charming climax to stop him from going so far away that they would never meet again. Varma plays to the gallery here; of course he couldn’t resist. And neither could we. Here is a film that laughs at ‘Bollywood’ (Gulshan Grover, as the Steven-Spielberg-worshipping Steven Kapoor, is a hoot) but cheekily slips in a final scene at dusk where Munna and Mili squabble, having just professed their love for each other. Once the tricky business of confessing one’s true feelings is over, there’s still a life to lead. But we need not worry. We leave assured that no matter what the world throws at them, these two will be all right.

[Not For Reproduction.]

Essay: Kundan Shah’s “Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa” and the Birth of the Likable Loser.

I still remember the first time I saw Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa. I was nine and holed up in a hotel in Nashik, flipping through the channels on television, contemplating whether I should watch a talk show on MTV or a movie on the next channel starring Shah Rukh Khan which I happened to stumble upon. On instinct, I chose to go with the movie.

Back in 2002, when I was watching it, Khan had already established himself as a romantic hero. Tousled hair, a dimpled smile and a boyish charm accompanying a seemingly bratty persona, there was no question of imagining anyone else playing it with such aplomb, such ease, such grace. Khan seemed to be born into the skin of the role; as a child, I could scarcely believe the tales from his days as a struggling actor and that he didn’t come from privilege. But watching Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa was, I remember, a singularly frustrating experience, all because I was familiar with this image he had carved for himself. I put the channel on at that moment in the film in which Sunil, the character he plays, is at his most vulnerable, most innocent. He is at a carnival with the girl of his dreams, holding two cones of ice-cream, and has just been caught lying. The other man, the manifestation of the ‘perfect’ man and one of the two victims of this rather harmless lie, threatens to tell on him. But Sunil, suddenly panicky, does not want him to. He does, though, and Sunil is compelled to tell the truth. The truth is simple enough: He lied for her, because he wanted her to go to the carnival with him, just the two of them. He fumbles through his explanation but his reasons are genuine. He may not be bright but he is pure, purer than the girl and the guy, purer than most of us, any of us. His actions may be deplorable but in that moment I didn’t hate him. And after several viewings over several years, I still don’t.

I don’t know how Khan did it. And I don’t know how director Kundan Shah and co-writer Pankaj Advani wrote it. Sunil never wins at anything. He lies to his band-mates when he is late to a practice session. It's the second time in a week. He has failed his exams thrice. (Later on, when he fails again, he grudgingly agrees to lie to his father that he passed and back it up with a fake mark-sheet.) And then that lie to go to the carnival with the girl of his dreams. He tries, fails, and then tries again. Over and over. He hurts people. He hurts himself. And then he’s back to his cheerful old ways, trying to make amends. In the hands of a lesser actor with little charm to spare, the results would have been unsatisfactory, to say nothing of how unwatchable and bland it would have made the film. But Khan manages to pull it off by playing it just right. His performance is a mixture of empathy and courage, vulnerability and bravura. Sunil’s whimsical world is limited, his dreams are modest, and he keeps them together in his own clumsy way.

For a Hindi romantic-comedy or even a Hindi film for that matter, Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa is a surprisingly testing watch. Sunil’s love evades him. The girl never cares about him enough to stop and consider him as a potential suitor, never takes him seriously. He is always, always a friend. And in his innocence he doesn’t push it, doing as much as he can with the little attention she gives him. He lets her slip out of his grasp, choosing loneliness and music to help him tide over his heartbreak when she falls in love with someone else. We see him suffer, helpless and distraught. And in the climax of the film that I now recall so vividly as if it were only yesterday that I saw it for the first time, right after he chooses to let her go purely for the sake of her happiness, and just after the cursed ring slips out of her hand and rolls into the benches as she’s putting it on the finger of the man she’s about to marry, which makes the whole church get up and look for it, he sees her as if in a dream, exuberantly happy, calling out to him. It’s a confusing moment for him: there is his sister is in the crowd, weeping silently for her brother for only she knows how much this would take from him, and there is the girl he loves, wanting to know if he has found the ring. He has. He’s seen it. But, he shakes his head. Emotion floods his face, overwhelming him. It’s Sunil at his most selfish, most human. This is one thing he cannot do. He can never truly let her go.

If a single moment can indeed define a film, this one is Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa. It allows us a cursory glance into the mind of a character that Hindi films seem to fear, a character they put up so rarely, and never so exquisitely: a guy who’d rather be selfish than generous, who’d rather be flawed than saintly, who’d rather follow his heart than do what the world expects him to. 

Hindi films are often about the hero and heroine walking into the sunset together. This one rolls its eyes at it. It is, bravely, far too busy consoling the guy the hero beat to get to her.

[Not For Reproduction]

Essay: Filmmakers can choose to tell any story the way they want to. Yes, indeed.

[This piece comes in the wake of some people accusing filmmakers of having “ulterior motives” by picking controversial stories to tell.]

I’m not in the habit of judging people. And I’m certainly not in the habit of judging filmmakers.

I can choose to watch their work and I can choose to review it if I want to. If I do not like what I see, I can choose to refrain from commenting on it, or I can choose to write about what I did not like. I have that power over filmmakers, and to be honest, I do enjoy it. It gives me the right to decide something for myself.

But sometimes, I fear it. Why do I fear it? Am I fearful of them tracking me down and hitting me on the head with a brick? Maybe. But the fear I’m talking about is a different kind of fear. I fear I may be wrong about it.

There was a tiny problem I used to face often when I started out writing reviews: If a film I watch contains themes or sequences I have an objection to, because they go against my morals, do I call that film “bad”? Just because the filmmaker does not believe in the same things I do? That the filmmaker is so tactless that they decide what I should believe in? I believe I saw something objectionable in a film. Now I am outraged that someone was trying to convince me it is right. That’s right; that filmmaker had ulterior motives! Otherwise why would they include it in the film?

If that is how it works, I am not aware of it. Is there a rule written anywhere that people who make movies – or any kind of people, really – have to believe in the same things I do? Or have to believe in the same things that the general consensus says is right?

The answer is no. Filmmakers are not obligated to believe in the “right” things, and they are not obligated to tell us what’s “right.” They are not obligated to make “right” films either.

A film is a form of expression. It’s a cliché. We all know that. It can choose to tell a story or just be the product of a person experimenting with the form. Or maybe discuss an idea. It can be about anything. It can be about everything.

When I am watching a film, I do not make the mistake of forgetting that it is subjective. It’s a person’s viewpoint. It does not represent what a group thinks, or an industry, or a community, or an entire people. It represents what one person thinks. Maybe two or three. But definitely not a large number of people, simply because a single person cannot speak with a degree of conviction for a large group. 

I’m allowed to expect things from it. I’m allowed to expect sensitivity on the part of the makers, partly because no filmmaker knows what kind of an audience their film will garner. They don’t know who will watch their film, where or when. The target audience may not be the target audience after all. If the themes in a certain film are delicate, they should be dealt with in a certain way. Complete freedom dictates that a film can be made in any way the maker wants to, but a little sensitivity never hurt anyone. Why upset anyone for no good reason? Now that is moral, but again, it is not imperative.

In the four years I have spent writing film reviews, I never pinned a label on someone and told them they’re something. I have chosen to be a critic or an admirer of their work, but not of them as a person. I have never indulged in trying to figure out what kind of people they are from the work they have done. My ethics prevent me from making that judgment.

Cinema moves me, but seldom does it carry enough weight to influence the way I think. I’m too proud a person to that gullible. And I do feel a pinch of disappointment when a controversial story is told safely, without trying to actually say anything new.

There is no “right” film and there is no “wrong” film. If such an concept is introduced, absurd it very well may be, it's bound to become a threat to creative freedom. Something that is worse than a “wrong” film is a film made out of fear. Such a film does not indicate a healthy environment for artistic freedom, and a creatively oppressed country is not a free country.

We can choose to listen to filmmakers, argue with them or embrace them. The choice is ours. But we cannot reach conclusions about their character or intentions. In doing so, we are stepping into shoes too big for us. And those shoes didn’t belong to us in the first place.

(Not For Reproduction)

Essay: Decoding the subtleties of Kanu Behl's "Titli."

Two weeks ago, Kanu Behl's Titli was unanimously hailed as one of the better Hindi films of the year upon release. It was not an exaggerated claim, as I found later, thanks to its meticulous structure and carefully written characters that I found worth raving about. 

Before I begin, I should attribute a large chunk of this naive essay to my friend, Ashwini Dabadge. She noticed an important metaphor that I missed, and she told me about it during a rather illuminating discussion I had with her after we both watched the film. 

There are several tiny throwaway details, little flourishes, that stayed with me many days after I watched Kanu Behl's debut. Many reviewers of the film have pointed out Behl's seemingly weird obsession with personal hygiene. A recurring detail where some or the other member of the vulnerable family of violent carjackers is brushing his teeth and clearing his throat noisily -- something of a morning ritual in the family -- hardly seems like a detail a filmmaker would want his audience to watch repeatedly. It's simply unpleasant. Unless that filmmaker is trying to indicate something through it. 

Behl introduces us to this incorrigibly evil male family that engages in small but brutal crimes to earn a living. And he tries to acquaint us with his characters by taking us through their routines, emphatically stressing on how they begin their day. Through the film, three of the four members of the family are seen brushing their teeth vigorously (I don't recollect seeing the character of middle brother, Bawla, doing the same), making nauseating noises throughout. 

As I soon discovered, this detail signifies how the family is trying to rid themselves of their inner evil but always fail to do so. As the character of Bawla only lends a helping hand in the crimes, never being a perpetrator himself, he is not seen doing the same. He is merely a slave of his volatile elder brother, which doesn't entirely redeem him of his sins but makes him a sorry figure. But because we see the characters of Vikram and Titli channelling their inner monsters through their immoral acts, we see Behl's careful placement of these sequences after they partake in something unlawful or unethical. The character of Daddy gets a brief "brushing" scene, too, for not trying to reform his eldest son, choosing to be a silent spectator instead. In Behl's eyes, that makes him as much a criminal, if not more, than his son. The confrontation between Titli and the patriarch near the end is actually Behl's speaking through a fictitious character, I feel.

This theory also applies to the scene where Titli throws up before taking the high road. I believe it alludes to him ridding himself of the evil he had kept bottled inside for so long. As soon as he is done vomiting, we suddenly see him in a new light. We see him as a better, stronger person.

Although this is not a metaphor, the middle brother's strongly implied homosexuality lends itself wonderfully to the intriguing bunch of characters. This detail is implied through brief scenes scattered throughout the film and is kept restrained, bringing a nice subtlety to the character of Bawla. It also demonstrates how thoughtfully Behl and co-writer Sharat Katariya have fleshed out the characters.

Yet another metaphor I observed which was pretty discreet was the house this dysfunctional family lived in. A crumbling, perpetually messy house might be an indication of the crumbling, messy lives of the gents who live in it. And that we never see the characters clean or redo the house and the fact that they don't even seem bothered by it might hint at them being criminals beyond reformation. In one sequence, we get a quick glimpse into the wardrobe of Neelu. It is a tidy one. This bit, I feel, suggests that she is the only upright member of the family.

There are many more such trivial details crammed in the film that might be symbolic. Starting with that framed picture of their forefather, a detail that shows up in many a sequence and which I tried to but couldn't quite understand the relevance of. Maybe another viewing might shed light on that. Or maybe, as I discovered mulling over it in the last two weeks, not knowing what it signifies makes the film all the more fascinating. Maybe like Titli himself, we don't really know whether we want to know. Well.

(Not For Reproduction)

Perusal: The Characters of Chaitanya Tamhane's "Court."

A few days ago, I had the good fortune of watching Chaitanya Tamhane's intellectually rich and contemplative character study, Court, a film that was decidedly the finest I had seen all year. A whole week has passed since then and not a moment has flown past without me going back to it, for it is a film that caters to only those who are willing to dig deep into the details crammed into its mundane world. Tamhane weaved a wryly cynical inspection of the lives of those who are a part of the judicial system, transcending at this point other Indian courtroom-dramas that seldom bothered with such a thing, and while it also doubles as a critic of it, one can't help but wonder that there is more to Court than a detractor's view of the flimsy Indian judicial system.

For me, Court was foremost a story of alienation, and an observer of caste and gender differences.

Forsaking any hint of a plot with deliberate brashness, Tamhane moved to the outside of the courtroom and invaded his characters' personal lives. It is this move that caught my attention, because I wasn't used to it as an Indian cinegoer. In 1984, Saeed Akhtar Mirza delivered a sardonic rendition of the failings of the judicial system with the sublime Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho, wherein he astutely explored the psychological and emotional repercussions that legal proceedings have on those who are a part of it. And he also did it by invading his characters' personal spaces and painting their backstories using finer strokes. 

But what discriminates Tamhane's film from the classic is that the youngster is far more interested in people than personas. 

Tamhane's decision to draw a straight comparison between the lives of the public prosecutor and the defense lawyer is curiously clever and amplifies the mystical quality about them. It was an appraisal of caste, of gender and of the conduct of two people with two different approaches to their jobs in that environment. Every character is cloaked with a thickly psychological undercurrent, making it impossible not to invest in or explore it.

But as the concise and fitting title of the film suggests, it is the courtroom where we actually find out how their backgrounds mold them as lawyers. 

The character of Vinay Vora (played by the film's producer, Vivek Gomber) is a lawyer with a feeble sense of humor and a spirited conscience. He is a modern-day embodiment of Robin Hood, one who shops for exotically packed veggies and liquor in an air-conditioned supermarket, one who doesn't forget the pleasantries even while conversing with people who are not used to them, one who will willingly empty his pockets to bail his penniless client out but one who, at the end of the day, will visit a pub with a plush ambience to unwind. A quiet, self-assured and brooding character who is undeniably well-educated, well-read and brought up in an affluent household, it's evident from the way he conducts himself in the courtroom how his upbringing shaped him as a person. Adopting a practical and pedantic approach to the case, he accentuates his academic background by choosing to speak in English, switching to Hindi only while cross-examining, and quizzing the witnesses bluntly without beating around the bush. 

Gomber's finest moment--or maybe Tamhane's--was how he played him in the scenes featuring characters that were lower to his character in stature. He empathetically invites a friend of his client to lunch instead of asking him to wait when he is interrupted, drops the prosecutor's witness off in his car while calmly instructing her how to wear a seatbelt and promising to find a job for her, but is curt with his parents. 

Does empathy or sympathy drive his actions? Is the character a patronizer of sorts? 

As the public prosecutor and adversary, Nutan (played by Geetanjali Kulkarni) comes across as someone who has swallowed whole books on law. Mechanically quoting passages from numerous books, she is a by-product of everything the character of Vinay Vora isn't. Discarding basic logic for the sake of theory, making seemingly overblown statements in an attempt to implicate the accused on some charges and deprived of any zeal whatsoever while fighting the case, Nutan is a character that is the most multidimensional, most enigmatic of the lot. Unlike her rival, she buys her vegetables from the station (in Mumbai, the phrase "from the station" implies frugality) and dines silently in a modest restaurant, speaking only to remind her children to chew their food properly. Her face remains impassive even when she adds a forced "I strongly object" and it doesn't see much of a change when her opponent knocks a final nail in the coffin. From making small talk about olive oil and saris to expressing her exasperation at the futility of dragging the court cases on for years, it's a brilliantly realized and nuanced performance. 

But two things about the character caught my attention. Interestingly, Nutan isn't someone who might reject a chance of gaining leverage by crucially choosing to speak in a dialect that she has in common with the judge, and one that she knows fully well that the defense lawyer doesn't quite understand. But does she choose to conduct the proceedings in a language that all three of them are comfortable with? No. There is a thin trace of cunningness in her, of smugness, one that comes to the surface near the end when she brings up fresh and rather absurd charges against the accused and almost believes them, offering no explanation for it whatsoever. Even while she tediously builds a case against the accused--whose background, I surmise, is closer to hers than it is to the defense lawyer's, a stinging bit of irony--her queries seem practiced, distant and dispassionate. 

What I'm all agog to know is, is her decision to choose to conduct the proceedings in Marathi despite the defense lawyer's repeated protests and rarely look him in the eye a way to condescend to him? Isn't her decision to watch a Marathi propaganda play that is clearly against a minority similar in essence to the case of the person's she is trying to implicate?

Probably the character who is more abstruse than Nutan is of Judge Sadavarte (played by Pradeep Joshi), whose eyes convey years of wisdom, shrewdly weighing his words before uttering them unlike the caricatures posing as magistrates in other Indian courtroom-dramas who gabble deadpan lines of dialogue. The least sketched among the lot, Sadavarte is evidently a man of principles; he chides a woman who turns up in a sleeveless top for violating the code of conduct in the court and refuses to listen to her case. Regressive, perhaps, and superstitious to boot, it's in the final minutes of the film that show him taking a brief family vacation where this mysteriously distant character materializes into a multilayered one. While his family takes dips into the pool fully clothed, Sadavarte stretches out on a sofa, preaching superstition as a cure for a child's problems. While having dinner, it's interesting to note that the men and women sit on different tables, and he, once again, likes to be the one talking. 

It's a nice touch of detail to see how his job rubs off of him even in his social gatherings. Not used to being inferior to anyone, he talks over his kinsfolk, an air of condescendence wrapped around him. There's also a peculiar lack of empathy when he cuffs a kid who plays a prank on him, thus fulfilling my initial impression of him as a hardened man of scant sentiment. 

And the character at the core of this fascinating mess is Narayan Kamble (played by real-life social activist, Vira Sathidar), an incendiary and folk singer who just won't stop his diatribes against the society that has failed him. Fiery and composed, his stimulating and spiteful performances land him in jail for abetting the suicide of a manhole worker. In a quietly powerful, astonishing sequence, he refuses to be anything but forthcoming even when his future is possibly jeopardized. Answering each question he is asked as he is cross-examined with brutal candor, it earns him an amused chuckle from the only other man of principles we know: the judge himself. A clone of the big man, perhaps?

Although a victim of the country's judicial system and corruption within it, Tamhane accentuates the tragedy of his story when Kamble is arrested the second time on botched-up charges of terrorism as he is publishing a rather irreverently-titled book "A History of Humiliation." It symbolizes how even the freest of individuals cannot save themselves from the tentacles of a shoddy system. 

The beauty of this film is, we know exactly where these characters lie in the scheme of things even when the film does not enlighten us. It provides with startling clarity a picture of how these mortals are lonely in their crowded milieus, how the court case is their only way to reclaim some credibility, how their credos clash in search for truth and how it's just an ego game when the truth becomes too absurd to handle. We see a bunch of characters fighting for something that cannot lead to any personal rewards, but they fight on nevertheless. And for what? It's just their way of life. Is sidelining the truth is their way of life? And everything boils down to how, at the end of the day, they simply go with the flow. 

Court is proudly pessimistic about the future of this country, and all the more intriguing because of it. 

In a metaphorical shot near the end, the courtroom slowly and silently empties, like a battlefield after a particularly bloody battle. But as Tamhane portrays it, it's a battle of little consequence.

(Not For Reproduction)

Essay: The Hoffman in Capote and the Capote in Hoffman.

The first time I saw the actor in Philip Seymour Hoffman was when I watched Scent Of A Woman, where he was overshadowed by a crotchety Al Pacino who ho-ah'ed his way to a long overdue Oscar win. Hoffman, that laid-back little rich git he played with that bowl haircut, caught my attention. With a perpetually amused face and a complacent grin slapped across it, Hoffman made a likable boor. And I liked the way he said Chas. I mean, you could almost hear the smile in that syllable. For the next two weeks, I imitated him by calling everyone Chas.

The death of Philip Seymour Hoffman last week dejected me greatly and, like other fans of his work, I ached to write a tribute to the great actor who brought the art back into acting. Hoffman was my favorite actor, make no mistake, and I had to endure the aggravation caused by the smug "Who is he?" whenever somebody asked me who my favorite actor was. Well, I don't write a lot of tributes but I wanted to write one in his memory. That's who he was. And while the other homages poured in, I got lost in the crowd. Then, I did something that I found to be truly worthwhile - I watched Capote, The Master and Almost Famous. All in a day. 

What started out as a tribute to him turned into a treat for me.

Hoffman's voice was fascinating. Deep and rumbling, it made me think of dark tunnels and ravines I'd never seen. And his laughter was booming, he laughed from the heart. Even his fake, practiced laugh was an amused one. It's an odd combination for someone who played Truman Capote, whose voice was more like a squeak and who laughed coldly, mechanically. I never knew Capote, I'd never read his books nor seen his interviews with the exception of the Frost one. And the first thing I noticed in Bennett Miller's masterful debut was how the deep turned into the squeak. With an evident lisp.

Watching Capote three days ago, I was hit by a sudden pang of awe. And this wasn't the first time I was watching the film. This experience felt different. Because this time, I was fully aware of the fact that the actor who was reveling in the mannerisms of Capote on the screen won't act again.

Hoffman sneaked into his character like he was walking around in it all his life. Capote was a larger-than-life person, a unapologetic sucker for attention and praise, and a dismal friend. He walked like Capote, with a snobbish strut and a deadpan face. He sat like Capote, drank like Capote, laughed like Capote. He became Capote, and I suspect even the great author didn't understand himself as well as Hoffman understood him.

There is a remarkable sequence which somehow leaves me lost for words every single time I watch it. Rack your brains - it's the sequence where the character of Perry Smith uses the word exacerbate to describe something, and then proceeds to explain what it means. To which the character of Capote frigidly replies, "There's not a word, or a sentence or a concept that you can illuminate for me." Watch Hoffman in that scene. Watch him closely. It's plain diabolical, like the punch you've been waiting all along. I watch that scene again and again because it's genius the way it was effectuated. In a single, cold squeak, the movie turned into a great one for me.

We'll never see Hoffman act again. He was a great, great actor.

He was cool by being uncool in Almost Famous. The guy gave a damn lecture on coolness in the movie. I mean, how cool is that?

He was rightfully called Master in The Master. A title I conferred on him a long time ago. The others caught up only last year.

He made me do something I thought wasn't possible - take sides against Meryl Streep in Doubt. I mean, how many times do you take sides against Meryl Streep, tell me?

Goodbye, Chas. You were found gold, you were the Master, you were the Capote we all wanted to know and you were goddamn cool.

Essay: The quirks of the crappy Indian Censor Board.

I'd told everybody that this Alok Nath piffle will come back and kick our butts one day.

This week, the Indian Censor Board saw a change of saints, and one Rakesh Kumar announced his arrival, fresh from the shrine of Baba Alok Nath. This godly man swore to set things right, which actually means taking us back to the 10th Century BC, when running your hands through your hair was considered worth a guillotine. The man in question, a former Railway employee, had problems with everything in the films he saw. Whoa, whoa, hold it right there! This galoot is a Railway employee? Oh damn, no wonder I don't get my train pass on time. Those folks are always meddling in affairs that don't concern them.

So, I came across his interview in a Mumbai tabloid, Mumbai Mirror, and I couldn't stop laughing. The last time I had laughed this hard was when the possessory credits of Sajid Khan's bilge masterpiece Himmatwala read A Sajid Khan Entertainer, because the entertainment quotient was roughly equal to having your face splashed by ice-cold water in a Delhi winter. Kumar reacted sharply to the increasing vulgarity and violence in Hindi films, saying that an actor of Aamir Khan's stature shouldn't have produced a cussload film like Delhi Belly.

So, while I'm getting a load of the observations made by this prehistoric soothsayer, I notice that he's not too kind with anything the films have to offer. He scorns Gangs Of Wasseypur because of its terrible language, Agneepath for its gory content and Shuddh Desi Romance because his five-year old daughter chirped that it had too much love. Really, you take a midget to watch a film about consensual sex and live-in relationships? And since he's so kindly mentioned going for the drivel Yaariyan as well, I want to question him on his decision to take his daughter to a movie which had bikini-clad girls and a lot mature talk going on in the trailer. I mean, that's what trailers are for, right? To give you an idea what the film's like, warn you if Sajid Khan or Ram Gopal Varma or Prakash Jha have helmed it and you need  to down a couple of shots of whiskey through your gullet to get through it if you're deciding to go for it.

You know, I have written endlessly on the need for creative freedom on this blog, and I hope the three visitors who have accidentally ended up here in search of trailers for Interstellar remember it. The Hindi film industry needs radical filmmakers, and if we appoint someone who drinks holy water for tea and was born somewhere in the 18th Century, we might as well get used to Ekta Kapoor's saas-bahu sagas.

A while back, I saw flashes of Qaushiq Mukherjee's, popularly known as Q, controversial extreme Bengali film, Gandu. Though dunked in striking imagery and explicit sexual content, Gandu was a compelling watch, an example of insurgent filmmaking trying to find a footing in a conservative country. Madly ambitious as it was, I was almost hoping that the Censor Board would concede and get it a limited release. And that would've surely meant that Anurag Kashyap, who I assume is getting through bottles of gin after hearing of Kumar's appointment, could have released his Paanch, which is still lying in cans. But those noobs are intent on killing cinema, which has long since been the hobby everyone named Ram Gopal Varma, so I don't really expect this Chief to bolster the freedom we're getting now.

I mean, really. We can't birth a few Sooraj Barjatyas, nor do I want to see filmmakers like him in the industry anymore. With those stolen wedding videos he releases as films, I don't really see them getting a good market now. But Kumar does, and he will get them released because every film will now pass under his scrutiny and those are the kind of films he prefers. Abuse of power? I'd like to think so. Take cover, chums, we're going to get hit by a load of shit now for a while.

I'm sorry, I'm not censoring this write-up. When I get mad, I speak my mind, and I'm speaking my mind. I don't give two colossal damns about this guy, but I'm dead worried that this pious agarbatti-smoker is going to doom us. Unless someone goes to him and snarls in his face, "Saale, Alibaug se ayela hai kya?"

Let's wait and watch. If not, keep DVDs of Jai Santoshi Maa handy.

Reminiscence: Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets" and "Taxi Driver" : The Choice Puts Me In A Pickle.

In 1973, a year after Francis Ford Coppola changed the game for gangster movies by making Brando place the head of Khartoum on Jack Woltz's kingsize bed, Scorsese was gearing up for his would-be breakthrough film. Mean Streets was certainly iconic in its perusal of street crime and its attempts to mould a gangster movie with words and not guns. Scorsese knew crime, you see; he was brought up in Little Italy, a place in New York City where, as he disclosed in the making of the film, a whole bar would tussle over nothing at all. Maybe if you said something in jest or you didn't get a drink on time, tempers flared up and every single guy in the bar would brawl until one capitulated. He fashioned these observations into Mean Streets, which starred a young Harvey Keitel and an even younger Robert De Niro.

Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets.

I watched Mean Streets a couple of years ago when I was sixteen or maybe seventeen. It remained incised in my mind ever since because I couldn't believe a modernistic movie like that was made in a time when family films were walking away with the Oscars. 'Course, Mean Streets was spurned at the Oscars because it was too small a movie, too low-budgeted. I mean, you won't want a layman winning an Oscar, would you? Well, as they found out in the next four decades, Scorsese wasn't just another filmmaker. Anyway, I loved the movie. The coarsish script was talky, layered with dense jargon and the execution was masterful. That was pretty unexpected since I was under the daffy impression that we were dealing with a supposed amateur here. Keitel nailed his role, kept the urgency at the apex with his terse exchanges with De Niro and walked away with a coolheaded performance. Skookum!

But De Niro was the revelation here. He was. Even in his salad days, he could put together a textured performance that showed sparks of promise of a future luminary. His was a more controlled performance, a character that he was seemingly familiar with and he played him accordingly. In his four decades as an actor, I'd probably single this one out as the most neglected. Second comes the one in Ronin.

So, I was watching Taxi Driver the other day on television, a rare instance when the channel operators choose a movie sagaciously and another one of my most cherished movies, I wondered why was Mean Streets the movie with the shit end of the stick. Yes, Taxi Driver was a landmark film for obvious reasons, maybe the most audacious of all movies, but it came four years after the ravishing Mean Streets which ushered in the heavily eye-browed master filmmaker in the first place. Taxi Driver was a gorgeous piece of cinema, I won't dispute that, but it couldn't match Mean Streets in terms of style. Mean Streets was a ballad, an ode to the movies that young Scorsese saw as a boy. The soundtrack, a stockpile of old American classics, complemented the images smoothly. And it did what it did with such finesse that you're captivated from the moment it begins. 

Conversely, Taxi Driver was more of a character study. A demented man falters in his romantic life and he avenges this humiliation on the world that he sees as merciless. He meets loonies like him who fuel the rage inside him. And, in the end, it all comes forth. He goes bananas all over New York City. Scorsese isn't new to characters who work like a ticking bomb about to go off. He strayed in those waters later with Raging Bull, Cape Fear and even Goodfellas up to a certain point. But Taxi Driver was his most fearless coup, a 'man against the world' story that gave an insight into the mind of a wacko. In those times, movies like that were hard to come by. No wonder legendary film critic Roger Ebert instantly affirmed it as one of the greatest he had ever seen. Hell, here I am, all of twenty, four decades later and it's one of the best movies I've ever seen.

Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.

But when it comes to judging between the two, I'm iffy. Sure, go on, point your stubby little finger at Taxi Driver and chide me for not seeing the obvious choice. But when I think about it, and I mean really think about it, I ask myself - what would Scorsese have done if he had got a healthier budget on Mean Streets? What would that movie have been like? Hey, to all you twits who doubt it, remember - Scorsese made Goodfellas on a bigger budget so I wouldn't necessarily maul the idea. He can work both ways, you know. He made After Hours on a scant one and The Departed two decades later on a pricey one.

So, I'm trying to gauge what I want to say. It's a known fact that Scorsese has made a landmark movie in every decade he has worked in, like Jack Nicholson who is the other bigwig of the honor. But a lot of folks believe that Taxi Driver should walk away with the glory. I'm going for Mean Streets. I treasure those films that can whip up a ravishing experience on modest production and Mean Streets fits the bill perfectly. It gave us a gangster movie with minimal violence and a lot of smarts. A generation later, on a better production, crime movies don't match the panache of it.

Mean Streets is as close as you'll ever come to knowing a gangster in New York City and still be aware that it's just a movie. That's genius, you know.

Essay: We take pride in being chauvinists, even in the movies. Why, really?

A few days back, I happened to chance upon an extract of Bosnian filmmaker Danis Tanovic's interview at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, an extract which made a very interesting reading. Like thousands, including me, Tanovic was obviously pretty upset that The Lunchbox wasn't the Indian submission to the Best Foreign-Language Film category this year. One quick perusal and you can tell that Tanovic skipped over many of the cusses that he was raring to spit out and, in his stalwart defense, I do agree to most of his views.

There's one line from the excerpt that stuck in my mind because it abridged the problem that's been nagging the Hindi film industry for a while now :

"It's not a question of a good film. It's about whether you really want to win an Oscar, or do you want to send a film which you think is great."  

(source : NDTV)

In essence, his views are correct. Why, why, why did we send The Good Road? It's like we had reached out for the gold and now we find our palms clamped around a dubious handful of hope. Oh, we knew, we knew we stood a chance with The Lunchbox. I mean, it won an award at Cannes, it got an overwhelming critical and commercial reception and those bozos pick out a small movie because, well, because it showcases a different side of India, in their own inane vindication. And if rumors are juicy enough for me to believe in 'em, The Good Road isn't half as good as The Lunchbox. I surmised as much, you know. I did.

But no, we won't hear any of it, no sir. I mean, come on, look at the bright side - has the Film Federation Of India ever had the slightest perception of what kind of movies should be sent there, to compete with the other heavyweights from around the world? Has it? If you think I'm jabbering, believe you me, when I run you down the list of the Should Have and Shouldn't Have, you're in for a wild ride. We won't send movies that are daubed with the stuff Oscar-winning movies are usually made of. You want to know why? Because we are too aware of what the world thinks about us. We'll send the optimistic movies, like Barfi!, which made you cry a river. Of course, it made me cry too, because I couldn't believe I had invested my time into something so no-plot. We won't send the fiery movies, like Paan Singh Tomar, because earthy, moving and meaningful movies never win an Oscar, according to our conception of the whole damn thing. We strive to entertain. Pity, the other half of the world pisses on that very word. 

Then came the opinions of the industry personnels, which I often go back to for some comic relief if I'm stuck in a rut and need something to resuscitate me. Someone said,"We don't need the Oscars to prove that we churn out quality cinema." Fine, you two-faced twit. If you win - and believe me, I really hope you do just for this - be sure not to go there to collect the prize. Another dork said,"What's the big deal with the awards, man?" The big deal, man, is that you, in that cocky little life of yours, believe that you live in a country where you don't need to prove that the movies made here are of great merit but there are some who need evidence to buy that idea. Get it?

I don't want to assume that I'll have to wait a whole decade to see a movie that's worthy of competing for the gold. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that we make great movies only once in a while but we need to change the way we choose which film to forward for the competition. But missing out on the gold now does hound. Like Tanovic grouched,"We blew it."

We did. And it's going to cost us. 

Essay: John Hughes : A Filmmaker Who Understood The Audience.

There's a really good chance that you'd walk into a John Hughes film and come out smiling, aware of the fact that you might have just seen a movie that you know at the moment would not be the last time you'll see it. And when I really think of this stuff, I find that nobody has invented a situation wherein you won't enjoy a movie by Hughes. You can watch it when you're angry, sad, hopeful, despondent, it'll go all too well with your lunch and your dinner, you can make your Sunday by lazing out on a couch, curling up against a bowl of popcorn and watching the goofiness unfold.

It's never easy to make a movie on teenage angst. Never. And when you check out the profile of Hughes, you'll find out that the guy had PhD'ed in the genre. A rather quiet loner when he was young, all his movies were a result of his acute powers of observation and unabated creativity. Hughes made movie after movie on young people and their ambitions, often incorporating characters who are conflicted and frustrated, and he did it better than any filmmaker ever could.

I remember watching Hughes' Ferris Bueller's Day Off, my first Hughes movie, and surprising myself by how much I enjoyed it. You walk into a theater for one of the two reasons : either you're looking for an escapist diversion from your poky little life or you're looking for a spiritual and meaningful experience that only cinema can provide. The second case is rare, which makes you a definite sucker for the first one. Hughes understood that. He knew his audience, he knew their expectations when they lay down a few bucks for a ticket and he made movies suitably conforming to them. His films were just as they were - uproariously funny, frequently moving, gleefully goofy and always, always optimistic. At the end of the day, every single character went home a little wiser, a little happier, like you.

I haven't seen his debut, Sixteen Candles, though. But my first viewing of The Breakfast Club left me speechless. A coming-of-age comedy drama set in an authoritarian school, it's how six starchy students spend their time in detention on a Saturday. And the whole movie's shot in a single location with only seven characters giving it its soul. There's the Brat Pack, as they were known at the time, their conversations, their secrets and worries, their ambitions and their contrition. If you're looking for a visual feast, there isn't any. There's not even an attempt to allure you by utilizing tawdry gimmicks, which seem to have found a sure footing now, or by getting a big-shot star cast with hearty smiles. No, here's a movie that's aware of its audience, aware of its content and here's a virtuoso that illuminates his observations through his characters. There's a really slim chance that you weren't an ear at some point of time to what these characters talk about. It isn't new, you know, it's just too real. There isn't any fucking around, the characters are really honest in their answers and there's a whole lot of truth to sit through. A hell of a movie, I found.

Hughes' movies are often accused of being formulaic, which they most certainly are. Break down two of his movies, any two of 'em, and you'll find that they do resemble each other in terms of structure and writing. I mean, look at John Bender from The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Are they similar? Like two peas, aren't they? Yet the situations we've seen them in aren't similar. It's the same old story, the one we know too well, but it's treated differently. It's the cue of a great filmmaker when you watch a concept that's you identify with and then you find out that it has taken you by surprise by its newfangled scrubbing.

Unfortunately, we saw far too little of Hughes. His last directorial outing, Curly Sue, was way back in 1991. And after it being a bomb at the box-office, he sustained himself by writing and producing movies till his death in 2009. I was sad to hear about his demise, for he was the one filmmaker who took me back to my adolescence with his movies and his survey of the trepidation of the young.

There have been attempts to clone his movies, his formulas, his ideas but they haven't been acceded to, at least by me. Because I don't believe anyone's got that zing that Hughes galvanized his movies with. Thank you, sir, for reminding me of my salad days, for making me believe that cinema can be so enjoyable that nothing else would even remotely matter. And may I add that your movies still make my Sundays rapturous.

Essay: The "Before" Trilogy : Is it under-appreciated?

I'm not a big sucker for romantic movies, especially if they involve a lot of drama. Comedy? Fine, I'll sit through it without grumbling even if the jokes don't get to me. You know why? Because my perception of romantic movies has been bludgeoned over the years. I've noticed that movies often delight me boundlessly by their observations, not by their creations. And what do you get to see in a romantic movie? What? You get a boy and a girl, you get forbidden love and you get a happy ending. And, if the director's got enough balls, he opts for a tragic denouement. That's the hackneyed romance that makers often dye and coat and puff right in your eyes. Smug, ain't it?

One day, I got wind of this movie called Before Sunrise, which was what you'd usually call a movie with a minimalist plot. I could probably describe the story to you in a line but what the movie really was can't be. I checked out the trailer, a really promising one, and I decided to grab a seat and watch it. To be honest, I hadn't even heard of Richard Linklater back then though I really dug up his works after I saw Before Sunrise.

Before Sunrise was the ancient yarn of a boy who meets a girl. On a train. Going to Vienna. He's American. She's French. They talk. That's the story.

This probably sounds dumb in your head, doesn't it? And yet, here I am, talking about it like its hot canard. Yeah, go ahead, call me a loony, but the magic of Before Sunrise does not lie in what you see but it lies in what you hear. Richard Linklater, like some dark wizard that he is, takes an absurdly simple story, twists and turns it into a living, breathing firecracker of a film that's at once fluffy and honest. Before Sunrise isn't all fluff, no sir, but it's a movie that braves to put forward some thoughts that you'd rather not think aloud, especially not in front of others, but Jesse and Celine speak them aloud for us. They're still kids but they are kids who understand what life is, what feelings are. They know it, they have experienced it, they are experiencing it. And we follow them during the time their thoughts animate on-screen as they stroll on the beautiful streets of Vienna, which doubles up as a comfort character. Never since Roman Polanski's masterful Chinatown has a movie had me gaping for every word of the conversations. They sound extemporized, like Linklater thought it'd be cool to throw in a boy and a girl in Vienna and film what they talk about. They go places, yeah, they meet people and they see some of the city. They're divided in their opinions, honest in their answers and casual in their behavior. There's romantic tension between them and it's handled sensitively. It's found gold this, because I haven't seen a romance movie quite like it.

Until I saw its sequel Before Sunset.

Thank God for small mercies, I got a chance to watch Before Sunset right after I completed Before Sunrise. Because I pity those poor sods who had to wait nine whole, long, agonizing years to hear them talk again. Jesse and Celine grew on me, their thoughts arrested my fascination like no other characters' ever have. I met them again, this time in Paris. Yeah, life went on for them but their notions hadn't matured yet. That part is still ripe, much to my delight. It was like meeting old friends you hadn't met in a long time and now you can't wait to hear their side of what went on for them after their last meting with you. Jesse was now a successful writer doing a book-tour. His first book was about a girl he had met whilst on a train and the one night he spent with her in Vienna. And the girl finds him in Paris nine years later. He's married, she's not. He's tranquil, she's not. They're still kids in their own way, like in a scene where Celine jokingly shows him the finger when he contradicts her conception on a subject. He has eighty minutes till a flight out of there. She invites him for a coffee, he agrees. All good, all excited. But seriously, we get eighty fucking minutes? If you have seen Before Sunrise, you'd know that eighty minutes is scant. Way too scant.

Ah, but it's still eighty minutes of pure bliss! Linklater outdoes himself yet again, creating a romance like no other. One may argue that Before Sunset is no romance. True, it's not, it's more like a rendezvous in Paris. Attraction is mostly absent this time around, sadly, though I had not expected one. One again we're an audience to a witty, allusive and strikingly intelligent talk about life and other things. Eighty minutes later, Jesse and Celine are a tease. Linklater joshes us by fading out at the precise moment when things get critical. The anguish, the fucking anguish!

Fortunately for me, nine years later, they're going to meet again. Some have already met them halfway across the globe but I haven't. Before Midnight is going to be the final chapter in the trilogy. It's an accomplished piece of work, no less, squashed from a one-line idea. It's takes a special talent to make three engaging, astute movies having the same characters talking more or less about the same things but being perky and waggish every single time you bump into them. If we're lucky - and I really hope we are - Linklater will find time to make a small movie on them again. Maybe how they spend a Sunday?

One of the many things that unexpectedly pops up in my mind when I talk about the Before trilogy is - why hasn't it been nominated for an Academy Award yet? I mean, yeah, it has, but nominating Before Sunset for the Academy Award For Best Adapted Screenplay is more like a given, you know, a certainty. Why has it been shivved for Best Picture or Best Director? It's good enough for either one, don't you think? I may be barking because I'm a major fan of the trilogy but when I change perspectives, trade my place for a regular movie-going guy, I don't contradict myself. It deserves appreciation, more than just a single nomination. Now, I don't mean to be biased but when I look at the biggest trilogy of all-time, Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings, I find that Linklater's Before deserves a place right beside it. It may not be a trilogy of a similar scale and grandiose but it does achieve what it sets out to, like Jackson's. It delivers to us an utterly magnificent piece of cinema that engages us and derides our courage, our imagination. And that's something very hard to come by.

I do hope that Before Midnight will be that film which breaks the malediction. If it does, I wouldn't say that one part of the trilogy has won. I'd say it won the Oscar that it wholly deserved for eighteen years.



 

Essay: The Shameless Obsession With Remakes. Arrrgh!

It's raining remakes in the Hindi film industry, which means it is time to smother yourself to near-death with your cushion every time some modern machismo mouths off corny lines when the villain insults his long-widowed mother or his morose spinster sister. No, I'm not against remakes per se but I do have a certain aversion to them. Because the whole shitty business is a way to earn a few bucks more and make the people who were credited with the original have a cardiac arrest in their tub of tomato popcorn right in the middle of the theater while watching the carnage revel in front of them.

What I do enjoy about the whole remake business is how those numbnuts justify their decision to coerce their baloney on us. The most exploited response is, "Oh, I just loved that movie as a child! And now when I watch it again, I still love it! I simply want to pay a befitting tribute to it." And that too accompanied by a vapid droll on how the whole movie influenced the five-year old mind of theirs years ago when the guy had no idea what the movie business was. And so began a trend in the industry. People dove into their memories to search for that one damned bond they have with their adolescence and we were the wretched casualties of the hokum that followed.

Now, allow me to list the recent remakes that got high on the ballyhoo - Agneepath, Chashme Baddoor, Himmatwala, Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag and Zanjeer. I concede, I haven't seen any of these bogeys simply because I haven't dared to. To be fair, Agneepath isn't entirely bad, I'm told, as a matter of fact, it's pretty watchable. Hrithik Roshan reprised the cult character that gave Amitabh Bachchan his identity. The makers retained the names that glorified the middling original for their visionary remake but in terms of storytelling it wasn't exactly unassailable. Oooo! Smart move, getting the stars and the names. Too bad it didn't work for the movie as well as it did for the general public. Tsk Tsk.

Filmmaker David Dhawan has been in the industry for quite a long time. And, if my memory serves, at one point of time, he was releasing four movies a year. All comedies, all nonsensical. But yeah, I confess, I'm a fan of them. Dhawan's Haseena Maan Jayegi, my favorite film of his, entertained and biffed in equal measures. So, the question that pervaded my mind for a while was : why would he bother to remake a classic? I mean, doesn't he already have a sufficiently enviable list of comedies under his belt? But no, David didn't think so. He remade Sai Paranjpye's majestic Chashme Buddoor with a godawful cast that gave me goosebumps. I couldn't bear to even think about it. And when I saw the frenetic promo, I knew that the die had been cast. The makers were intent on creating - or killing - the spirit of the original. Nope, didn't work out either way. Now, can we please have a screening of Paranjpye's magical tour de force? If not, could we have the old David back?

The remaining movies are pure dreck that don't deserve a piece to be written on them. Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag or What Were You Thinking, Ramu? is often considered the worst Hindi film ever made along with a lot of other worsts. Think worst mistake, worst cast and, uh, worst torture technique. So painful, so strident was this Ram Gopal Varma movie that it destroyed a lot of careers. Not that they showed any promise anyway. And yeah, Ramu went down with it. He's still in the movie business though. Made some tripe called Department a while back and gave Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag a run for its money. No, don't worry, Mr. Varma, your movie didn't destroy your visionary debacle. Tsk, I still consider your Satya as one of the best Hindi films ever made, sir. Please don't kill it with Satya 2. The trailer's got me dead worried, sir.

It takes guts to remake a classic. But it takes more to remake it with an unbelievably trashy cast. I'm talking about Zanjeer, the new remake not making waves in tinsel town. The original Zanjeer made Amitabh Bachchan the man he is today. And Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar's terrifically scripted lines and characters made Prakash Mehra the man he was. So, Mehra's sons decided one day that they want to remake Father's old masterpiece. They did, with Telugu superstar Ramcharan playing the iconic role that Bachchan immortalized. Prakash Raj, who usually plays comical villains with a bloated ego, took up the role of Teja. Priyanka Chopra, who was incredible in the so-so Barfi! last year, must've been finagled for a signature on the contract, I think, because no actor in their right minds would agree to this. And did Sanjay Dutt know what he was getting into? The movie's bad, I hear. Worse than bad. I don't have anything to say against it. The casting did the talking for me.

Sajid Khan fancies himself as an entertainer. Not a filmmaker, mind you, but as an entertainer. His movie's aren't anything to yap about, you know. Because when an entertainer is made in the Hindi film industry, creativity usually goes down the drain tooth-first. That's the case with Khan's films. He remade his favorite film as a kid, Himmatwala, that is now used as an example in film-schools as how not to make a movie. I got the gist from the trailer in which the possessory credits read A Sajid Khan Entertainer. Groan! As if the trailer wasn't already bad and derisive, not to forget the remake of an already terrible film, we now have to get used to the misleading credits being misused for an actual entertainer. Because Himmatwala wasn't entertaining in any way. In fact, it wasn't even an honorary addition to those so-bad-that-it's-good kind of movies. Shivved everywhere in every which way, folks.

So, remaking movies is apparently now a business in the industry. And that's a bad enough sign if anything else isn't. Creativity is usually farted upon - can't anyone see that, too? - in the remakes but, you know, I talk to the wall in such cases. I hear some other classics have been racked up to be remade. As if the trendsetters above haven't argued on the case already. If the guys who are thinking of remaking a few other classics into piffle, make sure you watch these movies before the go-ahead. They are valid reasons to kick the whole idea.