Review : Rajkumar Hirani's "P.K." is endearing but a bit too theatrical.

Rajkumar Hirani has spawned a brand of cinema that has many takers, that opens intriguing discussions and that can easily be a game changer as far as Hindi movies are concerned. He sermonizes, amuses and stirs, layers his plots with melodrama and has a knack for lacing them with throwaway gags. His films may be proudly theatrical, but they are not unnecessarily so. Hirani is a part of a phenomenon. His films are genuinely earnest in their quest to question the absurdities of life, of a system of beliefs and seek answers to questions that seem improbable, the answers to which delight us. Like the loony characters he creates, he has a certain way of seeing things that forms the nucleus of his films, and a certain way of exploiting what he sees. That is how he does what he does.

P.K. is no different. With the good part of the hype on its side and a weighty topic on its shoulders, it swaggers through a series of convivial episodes to a predictable conclusion, but it is a ride that is as flawed as it is thought-provoking.

It has neither the unflappable magnetism of the Munnabhai series nor the pure wackiness of 3 Idiots. But it is ambition and aplomb that eventually propel it over the finishing line.

In its opening moments, P.K. plays out in a manner that one would expect from Hirani. A voiceover -- critical in his previous film 3 Idiots, has no relevance whatsoever in this one, I'm afraid -- illuminates how an alien is stranded in the arid deserts of Rajasthan (I groaned, for aliens in a Hindi film look outlandish, but I needn't have worried) and is swiftly robbed of his only possession, thereby establishing an apt diegesis. In an independent strand, an inconsolable Indian girl, a victim of religious speculations, has to give up on her romance with her Pakistani partner. When the girl, who turns into a journalist upon her arrival in her home country, senses a story in the alien's attempts to retain his lost possession and realizes the worth of his curiosity, P.K. transfigures into a prudent, riotous and ultimately edifying satire.

Though the portion before P.K.'s foray into a full-blown satire is a bit cluttered, everything blends in seamlessly after. One thing that catches your eye almost instantly is its doughty approach to the material and its airy manner of expression. Living in a country that is oversensitive to the matters pertaining to religion and godmen, I was pleasantly surprised to find that P.K. has no qualms about mocking those who generalize in their name. Umesh Shukla's engrossing OMG: Oh My God! had similar intentions before it fell prey to a desire to please the believers in the audience and successfully hinder any kind of controversy, and hence ended up undoing whatever dynamic arguments it made. 

P.K. follows a similar pattern argument-wise, but it has a tastefulness that makes it easier to digest and harder to dislike. Some cleverly assembled sequences are apprising and hilarious, like a particularly lengthy one in which the protagonist is baffled with different kinds of people embracing different religions, hence different gods, who come with rules to comply in a house of worship. It's a tricky idea, but Hirani does it with such subtlety that it has the gentle pinching effect coupled with chuckles, which was the desired outcome, perhaps. The profundity found in the protagonist's naive queries is often overwhelming, a splendid bullseye. It is cathartic to see someone take intended potshots at the country's willingness to submit to religious barriers, but it does it in a refreshingly tolerant way. 

While P.K. works wonderfully well as a cogent satire in the first-half, it is the second-half where it stops being perceptive and lighthearted. As godmen culture, existing so freely in this country, is brought under the microscope, it switches to a more conventional narrative. There is an excellent sequence early in the second-half, but the lack of such potent punches makes that second-half drab. The climax is surprisingly clumsy for a filmmaker of Hirani's prestige, when the true face of godmen is unmasked in the flurry of a tear-soaked reunion and silent change of hearts, a typically theatrical touch but one that seems horribly out-of-place for a film that had little to no melodrama throughout. Or a dispensable bolt from the blue right before that. Or, as is the case in countless Hindi films, a half-baked romance that threatens to crumble the likability of the two primary protagonists in its final moments, but thankfully does not. Although these are relatively harmless defects when you look at the bigger picture, their questionable presence does irk somewhat.

P.K. has a couple of winsome elements (Sanjay Dutt's cameo is lovely, and personally my favorite part in the film) and some that don't work as convincingly. The screenplay is a bit frail in parts and heavily relies at times on coincidences, but the reasoning it brings forth deserves to be lauded. Also, rarely does it happen during a Hindi film that one sits in a theater packed with people; atheists, agnostics and believers who conform to different religions, laugh at themselves when a caricature of them presents itself on the big screen.

The tragedy here is that this approach works only in film; in the real world, these actions would have led to brief acts of violence and disorder. That makes P.K. a timely wonder.

Review : Pawel Pawlikowski's "Ida" is melancholic and unforgettable.

Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida is a film of mystique; there's nothing exotic about it, but its potency is astonishing. Often, in film, we've been on numerous trips with a character who has lived a fabricated life and who naively digs into their past in search of the truth, and the bleak surprises await them. How good this kind of film eventually turns out to be hinges on how startling the revelations are, and how profoundly we let them hassle us. 

In Ida's case, the revelations are more dramatic than disquieting, but the sheer fluidity of its storytelling makes it an indelible experience. 

In spirit, it channels Denis Villeneuve's stunning debut Incendies, a singularly harrowing tale about a pair of twins who unmask their dead mother's cryptic past, but the comparison stops there. Pawlikowski's handling of the material is much more understated in stark contrast to Villeneuve's brutally frank modus operandi. There is no shock value, there are no loose threads. He sticks to narrating the story with as little pontificating as possible, without digressing and without emphasizing much on the disclosures. It's the characters he aims to create. And with characters so humongously, delicately multi-layered, how can one not be intrigued? On a road-trip with these two baffling female protagonists, we virtually decipher the unspoken subtleties of the human mind, and how it reacts to certain muted afflictions.

Ida is a bare film; scarce characters govern its plot, the exchanges between them are terse and the wintery landscape of Poland the film is set against makes it look dismally frigid and cramped. It's a film shot in gorgeously gloomy black-and-white, a chic touch, and scored unassumingly that complements its appearance. The imagery is aesthetic, of course; it chronicles a distinct story of its own, of post-war Poland and of nostalgia-swamped glimpses into a world we have only read about, a resourceful supplement in a film where dialogue is kept to a minimum to amplify the obscurity of its characters. And the performances (Agata Kulesza, in particular, is fabulous) are exacting and poignant. 

In the end, when the stirring revelations are done and dusted with, Pawlikowski takes Ida a step further. He proceeds to scrutinize how it has swayed his characters, exploring their state of mind with dedication and deliberation that puts Ida in the league of the best films of the year. The final half-hour is an act of reaffirming why it is a film that stands out in a stream of other films alike. Can a weak rebellion against a life of illusion diminish the harsher versions of the truth? Pawlikowski unrelentingly asks this question several times in his perusal of his lead character, but it echoes loudest in the film's dying minutes.

Ida is an expressionistic gem of a film about self-identity and forlornness that warrants lengthy reflection.

Review : Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" is a worthy sprint through adolescence.

"Coming-of-age" is a genre in film that is often dismissed as being too facile, but has more variations than what we usually surmise. In American cinema specifically, we have the kind that John Hughes served with generous helpings of humor coupled with disarming candor (The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off), the kind that John Singleton showcased with such sensitivity, starkness and cognition (Boyz N the Hood) and the kind that was brutally, uncomfortably real and dour, the perverse sort that made everyone descry the obvious talents of Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale).

Which brings us to Richard Linklater, the crackerjack who has shaped a reputation of being the modern master of the genre, whose Dazed and Confused doggedly solidified that assertion. And the good news is, Boyhood, while not being his best, is certainly a doozy experiment that is emotionally productive.

It's wondrous for the umpteenth time how Linklater cheekily manages to find allure in the ordinaries of life, in our conversations, hushed and yelled, the exhibition of our suppressed emotions, and how in the end we are only a minuscule part of a larger cosmos. Observing a boy from the ages of seven to eighteen, scrutinizing his conduct in a life he never chose as he grows up is a figurative, audacious move, and who better to do this than Linklater? Time is his muse. And time has never looked so benign in any film of his.

The approach is casual. The conversations invoke an overpowering sense of deja vu, riddled with dry, throwaway humor and are nailed with an unassuming earnestness that is hard to define. Really, it's a skin Linklater is comfortable walking around in, and he hurtles through twelve years without missing a beat. His Mason is a figure of familiarity, perhaps because he is, in many ways, a specimen that represents each and every one of us, and that makes Boyhood an engaging chronicle. We are looking at us, a more realized version of ourselves in a film that aims for nothing more except bringing to us a picture of what lies beyond what we see in the mirror.

However, Boyhood also feels like a rushed film. I only wish it wasn't so eager to make Mason grow up, and then slacken the pace so that the "childhood" part seemed like a blaze in a reasonably long film. But this is only a minor niggle. Cramming adolescence in a film is never a cinch, especially in one that has been in the making for a little over a decade, and, rationally speaking, there are going to be loose ends that were forsaken at some point. Linklater's directorial flourishes are completely absent as well, giving the film its plain vanilla look. He was never one who would be remembered for his skill in handling a camera. But I wonder, would Boyhood have been the same if Linklater's expressive touches were present? It's a document of an ordinary soul, would visual artistry have killed it or enhanced it?

The selling point of the film, the gimmick that has irreversibly glued itself to it, will place it in my memory for a long time. It's an experiment of towering warmth, even though it doesn't seek to tell a story. It's anything but philosophical, more willing to talk about life than find meaning in it. And, remarkable as it seems, a surprisingly simple film.

On his excursion through adolescence, Linklater's Boyhood is a collage of the little moments he saw as he whizzed past them.

Review : Pardeep Sarkar's "Mardaani" is a sly masquerade.

Pradeep Sarkar seems to have lost his way after his charmingly subtle debut.

Stumbling from genre to genre, churning out bucketfuls of banality, it's hard to believe that the once-budding filmmaker who showed such competence, such sophistication with Parineeta would call the shots for a staggeringly inept rip-off that gleans its ideas from the enjoyable Hollywood twaddle, Taken. 

Except that, when hell freezes over, Mardaani isn't enjoyable. Twaddle, though, it certainly is.

Leastways, Taken didn't pretend to be what it definitely wasn't, and proudly stuck to being a crackpot cash-grab which made the film easy to assimilate. Mardaani proceeds to be a crafty charade without an ounce of tangible sentiment infusing its audacious plot. There's no avidity to neatly etch its mundane characters or carve out a rational plot, but a desperate hunger to plunge straight into its gritty subject matter. 

While the film is insatiably enthusiastic to present itself as a stringent voice on sex-trafficking, it hardly makes any noteworthy attempt to tackle it in a pragmatic, perceptive way, like any levelheaded person would. Making the audiences cringe violently at the exploitative, brusque and horrific depiction of the treatment the girls sold into prostitution are subjected to would patently fetch the right kind of response, plausibly the one that is pined for, but it comes of as a rather manipulative attempt to hide one's own ineptitude.

The intentions, though greatly admirable, aren't backed by a pragmatic script, but by a hollow, laughably quixotic one. A tiny hint of authenticity would have been quite helpful in reminding me I was watching a film that was - probably - trying valiantly to be aberrant, but it was lacking. And how sad is that, in a film dealing with a grave subject that demands eyeballs promptly, they just couldn't resist skipping the materialistic elements that show up uninvited in the second-half.

As far as my knowledge goes, I'm not aware of a cop who would brashly pursue a potential suspect without necessary reinforcements. Or a trivial lowlife who would take on a senior cop with such impudence. Or the one-person squad who, like a sunny cliche it is, singlehandedly exterminates an entire operation in a tick in the fantastical denouement. What I am aware of is that I am watching a film that isn't taking my comprehension of the subject as earnestly as I wish it would. Which flusters me.

Without the crisp performances from its largely able cast, Mardaani would have slumped immutably. What it is, is a wily commercial venture masquerading as a thoughtful, diligent scrutiny of a subject seldom explored in the film industry. It screamed for a pinch of the ace perceptiveness of Mira Nair's magically moody Salaam Bombay!. And there simply wasn't any.

The question we ought to be asking ourselves is : does a well-intentioned film merit the tag of being an accomplished film? Are we too liberal with that tag?

For me, Mardaani was nothing more than a splendid, preposterous facade.

Handpicks : The Ten Greatest Gangster Films Of The New Century.

I devour gangster films with the kind of relish people usually reserve for euphonious music. Ergo this list.

The following are the the finest gangster films of the new century I have seen, handpicked with deliberation and prudence. I don't believe I may have missed out on any film, and a film not on this list has been consciously excluded.

So, in the alphabetical order for the umpteenth time :


1.  A Bittersweet Life (2005; South Korea)

There's something strangely alluring about precipitous bloodshed.

As Kim Ji-woon admirably demonstrates in his explosively stylish fusion of machoism, morality and mania, grisly violence can only give rise to grislier violence. And acts of pugnacity can make a varmint out of even the loyalists.

A Bittersweet Life follows a frustratingly predictable pattern narratively and thematically, but remains an exhilarating joyride purely because of the abstruse characters that it serves with a colossal serving of the old repellent ultra-violence. What we get here are a bunch of diabolical fruitcakes intent on causing mayhem and ridding the world of each other, but in the stray moments, we find that the film is actually about the thorny relationship between a master and his flinty servant, both of them a part of the Korean mob. About how, even when brutishness seems inevitable, an act of magnanimity can trigger complications beyond one's realm of understanding.

And the complications are delightfully dark.

It's a profound, cheekily coolheaded and supremely well-orchestrated little gangland drama that demands to be seen for the characters that it carves. Fish around for a plot, however, and you'll end up with a mouthful of cliches.

2.  A Prophet (2009; France)

Oh, my! What a beautifully bestial film this is!

I have often spoken of my outmost admiration for Jacques Audiard's hypnotic masterpiece, which is unyielding in its depiction of impetuous violence in prison, and how a youth does his growing up by dealing with guilty hallucinations. And at its crux, A Prophet is about a murder so terribly brutal and unsettling that it changes the course of the film, and leaves us gasping in horror. In a calculated move of creative acumen, Audiard skillfully hinders his protagonist from turning into a hero. And what he gives us instead is a dissolving and often poignant nightmare, a brilliant one that petrifies and gnaws. That propels A Prophet into the league of modern masterworks in film.

Perhaps the greatest of all crime films of its generation, A Prophet is as flawless as a film can possibly get.

3.  Animal Kingdom (2010; Australia)

Who knew the usually diffident Jackie Weaver would slide into her role of a fickle mafia godmother with such unnerving menace?

David Michod did. And the socko hunch paid off, lucky us. The appropriately titled and devilishly slick Animal Kingdom hardly looks like a directorial debut of someone, a crime film of such prodigious power and artistic maturity that we hang on for every fiendish twist it pitches, spellbound and speechless. The reliable Ben Mendelsohn shines through and through in his role as the sinister older brother of a crime family, providing the film its much-exploited atmosphere of dread and dreariness, and the balance in terms of performances. But it is Weaver, the wondrous Weaver, who takes the cake here. She's absolutely invigorating.

If you haven't seen many Aussie crime films, Animal Kingdom would be a fine one to get cracking.

4.  City Of God (2002; Brazil)

Now, ain't this a visual treat to behold?

Fernando Meirelles' City Of God is breathtaking in its scope, flawless in its storytelling and spunky in its style, a rip-roaring gangster film that is one-off for reasons more than one. Fusing arresting images of the scuzzy favelas of the City Of God and ebullient details, Meirelles employs a visual style like no other film in recent memory to chronicle a story of a young man's adolescence in a violence-plagued city where mob wars are commonplace. And its flaws are so scant that I can count them off my fingers and still have some to spare. If not for anything else, City Of God warrants a peek for the consummate storytelling gifts of Fernando Meirelles. However, let it be known that it is a tad difficult to watch at times. If you cringe at the harrowing sight of children toting guns or getting shot, it will more disgust than rivet you.

Expertly directed, bracingly edited and colorfully shot, City Of God is genre-redefining.

5.  Eastern Promises (2007; UK/Canada/US)

Trust David Cronenberg to make a crime film on the Russian mob, and Eastern Promises is exactly the kind of film I envisaged him cranking out.

After his compelling A History Of Violence, Cronenberg, one of the finest filmmakers of his generation who remains persistently snubbed for reasons uncertain, took a deeply distressing story of rape, violence and sin in London's Russian mob and turned into a tasteful, alarming and elaborate film that offered intelligent fodder for the mind and thrills for the starved senses. It is a film that strings together a few sequences of crackerjack filmmaking -- most notably the nude brawl in the Turkish baths, which is the kind of stuff that turns films into indelible memories -- and spine-tingling brusqueness in its portrayal of the waywardness of a person devoted to violence. And the stifled horrors it illustrates so brashly had me cowering.

Eastern Promises is nauseatingly violent, at times to a fault, but has an incisive story to tell and does it without much foofaraw.

6.  Gomorrah (2008; Italy)

If your impression of the Italian Mafia stems from the swanky aesthetics of The Godfather or The Sopranos, here is a brute of a crime film to get you au courant with the changing times.

Set in a far-flung world of grubby alleys and sooty tenements in modern-day Naples where a crime syndicate operates with his claws digging, worming their way into the thwarted existence of its helpless residents, Gomorrah doesn't cut you some slack. It's an absolute doozy. Intermeshing five stories of how organized crime affects the uninvolved, it's a concise, controlled explosion of sheer filmmaking power. It is styled like a stark documentary, nosing about for grim realities to bludgeon us with, acted with the kind of naturalism you don't usually associate with opulent mob movies, thereby flinging you headfirst into this abject world of power, corruption and greed. That's what makes Gomorrah a bleak affair; you live the characters.

To all the romanticized mob movies we were forced fed in the past forty years, Gomorrah is a fortifying contradiction.

7.  Infernal Affairs (2002; Hong Kong)/ The Departed (2006; US)

Two, because I can't make up my mind which one is better than the other. So, two.

While Infernal Affairs is a heavily-stylized cop-and-con thriller pretending to be no different than what it is, The Departed feeds off on its ever-developing emotional core. Both films are masterfully directed, loyally carrying an irrepressible flavor of their respective cultures, peppering the plot with wildfire, urgent dialogue and arbitrary bouts of bloodbath. While Infernal Affairs lacks the earnestness that makes The Departed a far more soul-stirring film in comparison, it cashes in on being coldly detached and very nearly manages to shift the focus on the slightly cockamamie plot instead. Directors Andrew Lau and Alan Mak only moderately succeed; Infernal Affairs works rather well as a character study albeit a half-baked one. But it is a hell of a punchy film, the kind you want to let you sweep you off your feet willingly and relish the coddling.

On the other hand, The Departed is an assured remake, conscious of the job at hand and working its way slowly to knock it out of the ballpark. The flamboyance of manner makes a rather delightful appendage, I must say. Working with minmal gore and relying heavily on oppressive tension, Martin Scorsese creates a palpable set of conflicted characters that are sculpted with great attention, and their woolly relationships with each other deftly add sprinkles of mystique to them. However, in terms of unmitigated audacity, it slumps vulnerably before Infernal Affairs.

While one's more of a plaintive drama, the other one's a turbulent thriller. Pick your fix.

8.  Outrage (2010; Japan)

Outrage can be described best as prolonged carnage.

But you have got to hand it to Takeshi Kitano, the orchestrator of this bang-bang, who skillfully hinders the film from turning into a pantomime. The multi-hatted auteur creates a baroque plot that brags of a thousand promises, and doesn't let it die down till he's done. Outrage may not be a levelheaded yakuza film, but it is a thoroughly entertaining fare that gloats of the most polished gore since the two volumes of Kill Bill. It is one of those crime films where the director would rather wipe out his characters in the most inventive way possible than be bothered about where the plot is headed. Though the tall body count in this film has some wild, plausible logic behind it, I'm just not sure if it was requisite. However, when a hotshot filmmaker is flying off the handle, it is best to stand back and watch him do his trade.


Outrage is a triumph of bravura over brains. For once, I readily basked in something like that.

9.  Sexy Beast (2000; UK/Spain)

In my fantasies, I often wonder what Gandhi would have made of his reel version's performance in this brawny bop of a film.

Because, like countless other film-lovers, I usually associate Ben Kingsley with his portrayal of Gandhi in Richard Attenborough's magnificent biopic at the mention of his name. Or the bumbling Jewish accountant he played so adeptly in Steven Spielberg's magnum opus Schindler's List. But Ben Kingsley as a presumably deranged, diabolical lowlife? That's an unimaginable first. But as Don Logan, the stuck-up, perpetually mumbling and dangerously volatile gangster, he not only delivers one of the finest pieces of acting I have seen in modern cinema, but also a masterclass in acting. The guy zaps the whole cast with his towering persona and makes it look like a cinch.

But the film's ravishing visual style is no less stupendous. Debutant Jonathan Glazer narrates as much with the imagery as the characters do with their garrulous lines. The characters aren't the affable sort, of course, which makes this crafty, subtle ride all the more intriguing. It's a slick and satisfying journey into their chaotic consciences that will give you gooseflesh.

Sexy Beast will come at you with the impact of a seething knockout punch. Best greet it.

10.  Viva Riva! (2010; the Congo)

My jaunt in African cinema began with a cabochon.

The only Congolese and African film I have seen, Djo Tunda Wa Munga's Viva Riva! is evidence of the kind of artistic talent they nurture in that part of the world. It is a film at par with any great crime films made with a bulkier budget and with far superior resources. It is a film that is noirish in its approach, working with a plot dunked in atmosphere and panache, and with an unmistakably authentic African setting. It steadily evolves into a brutal, brutal film, briskly paced and enjoyable to boot. To get a notion of how enjoyable this film is, the exclamation mark in its title is a gracious sample. However, those who despise acts of violence and sleaze would prefer to keep away from this maelstrom.

Viva Riva! opened a door into a world of cinema that I was oblivious to. And I'm stoked it did.

(Not For Reproduction)

Review : Vishal Bharadwaj's "Haider" is positively gobsmacking but only in parts.

Vishal Bharadwaj's Haider is one of the best Hindi films of the year, but it's also the weakest installment in his Shakespeare trilogy.

And it has further dethroned Feroz Abbas Khan's marvelously dark Dekh Tamasha Dekh as the ballsiest film of the year in spectacular fashion. No kidding, after two shockingly drab attempts at the outré, Bharadwaj returns to explore the ganglands and puts the Bard's eternal Hamlet at the nub of the Kashmir insurgency. 

Job well done. When it gets going, Haider is gobsmacking stuff. 

If there is one guy in the industry who knows how to deftly adapt a Shakespearean work without annihilating its brio, it is Bharadwaj, the brilliant Bard buff. Having already adapted two in the past with his moody and stunningly effective Maqbool and the cutting-edge revelation that Omkara was, it was a given that Hamlet, perhaps the Bard's most intricate oeuvre, would be next on the list. And what surprises me every single time is how exhaustively, intimately he understands the material. 

Haider explores the bowels of madness and depravity, but does so with a shimmering eye for sheer visual tantalization. It's a ravishing film, surging with spurts of dark comedy, brutal violence, yawning periods of inspired restlessness and plucky undertones. Like most of Bharadwaj's works, it is a film strictly for adults, but only for those who seek with a radical, inured mind. It begs oodles of patience from its audience, unwinds as lethargically as a funeral but remains the auteur's most assured work yet. 

In ways more than one, Haider is practically flawless, and yet the niggling flaws are vexingly discernible. 

The question is, could we forgive its flaws for its métiers?

I couldn't. There were stretches when I found myself getting too twitchy, but the utter virtuosity in a handful of sequences hinders the screenplay from falling apart, and it's a rather fragilely constructed one, if I may say so. And this particular discovery startled me; scripts are usually his forte. But here, Bharadwaj doesn't employ a taut narrative for his Hamlet, but opts for an ambling one. Many characters throng his steadily inconsistent screenplay, but hardly serve any purpose to the action. 

But what Haider succeeds in creating is a character study, a particularly edifying one. Richly atmospheric and detailed right down to the minutest detail, the characters, the dented souls that chew on the truth and endlessly brood over the atrocities that have glued themselves to their lives, give the film its soul. And what characters! Layers of emotion, lies and tragedy beneath the doleful, dead eyes, trying to comprehend the happenings in their land but failing to do so. And an almost incestuous relationship between a mother and her son; a dour touch, admittedly, but what a dramatic one and done so with a flourish! 

That's precisely what makes Haider a smashing success -- it blends a complex work of literature and the history of a forlorn state effortlessly.

But it's no masterwork, not even close to being one. It's not Bharadwaj's best. It's also not one of the finest political films we have made. We have made better. He has made better. 

But what it has is chutzpah -- a word that is frequently mentioned in the film and essentially means 'shameless audacity' -- and it's also one that describes it perfectly. Haider is a great act of chutzpah.

Handpicks : Ten Great Hindi Films You May Not Have Heard Of.

Of course, I'm merely surmising you haven't heard of them.

In the past two decades, the trend of making socially responsible, prudent films has mysteriously evaporated with the decline of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) that was once a powerhouse of independent cinema. Its contribution to India's waning indie scene was epoch-making, producing over 300 films in various Indian languages, thereby setting up the bar that we now struggle to reach.

After its miraculous phase in the '80s, Indian independent cinema resurfaced only in the early '00s, when new filmmakers began exploring those tricky waters with their low-budget projects that didn't catch the fancy of too many commercially, but fortunately left a mark faint enough for me to descry. For the past few years, I've been trying to locate some of these lovely little films, but imagine my bile when I was told that these films were either unheard of or not important enough to be remembered.

However, I did manage to ferret out some of them.

The films I will be mentioning below are films I would like to watch again, films I will watch again, and films that deserve just as much plaudits and puffery as the tripe we now honor with our most prestigious accolades.

Right, that's that. Now to the list :


1.  Gattu (2011)

The crummiest piece of news that year was that the awards simply - barefacedly - refused to acknowledge Stanley Ka Dabba as a reputable film. Right, seconded in a jiffy. That's purely disgusting.

But, tragically if I may add, nobody even acknowledged Gattu as a dratted film.

What irks me is how quietly a film as beautiful as this one is released without any substantial credentials backing it, and how quietly, almost intentionally, it is pulled down without even giving it a chance to prove itself. And if it were up to me, I'd make sure this one reaches the eyes and hearts of everyone, because it is ever so charming, so evocative, that it made me want to soar in the sky like the kites it glorifies. Over the years, the Hindi film industry has feigned and flaunted its grand schemes to promote what they call 'meaningful' cinema, a term that has become a bit of a practical joke now. If an industry truly wishes to promote 'meaningful' cinema, whatever that means, give it space and sweat and invest in it. Trumped-up promises won't do.

I confess, I hadn't heard of Rajan Khosa before but, boy, can he handle a camera! Deft, jaunty and bracing, the film runs for a paltry eighty-two minutes but never trudges. And how unembellished is this story about an orphaned kid's earnest wish to take out an intimidating black kite flying in the arid sky, whose owner we never get to see. A kite as a baddie; that's a definite first for me. And Mohammed Samad, the tyke who plays the vanquisher, is absolutely beguiling in the role. When he was on-screen, my eyes never left it.

Khosa has made a film that is impossible to dislike, that raises important issues that have been examined in ample kiddie flicks before, but never sermonizes. It's not only difficult but also rare to come across one. Remarkable.

2.  Godmother (1999)

When was the last time a five National Award-winning film lay beyond recall? Right, five.

Shame. Vinay Shukla's skillfully made and astonishingly vivid film is now only a distant memory for me, mutilated by time. It is hard to believe that it used to play so often on television when I was a kid - and that's when I first saw it, that's also the last I saw of it, on television - but so fiery was its imagery that I remember bits and pieces. And I could tell you bits and pieces.

Based on the true-life story of Santokben Jadeja, this bleak and often harrowing biographical-drama pulls no punches on the typical viewer. There's no sugarcoating involved - phew! - for Godmother is a story of barbarity, of lust for power and supremacy, of consequences, and there's no space for pointless schmaltz. And lying in the heart of this urban myth is Shabana Azmi, who gives one of the finest performances of her illustrious career, and that's a mighty achievement, isn't it? What a career she has had!

I don't know how long it will take me to sniff out this small masterpiece, but if you beat me to it, I'd advise you to give it a go. It's not an easy watch, but it's crucial that you do watch it.

3.  Harud (2010)

We all know who Aamir Bashir is.

Yes, we do. You've seen him in many films, small roles but made no substantial impact with any of them. Most of you would remember him as the third squeaky clean police officer in A Wednesday. And are we lucky that he got behind the camera to orchestrate what may well be the best film made on the Kashmir insurgency yet.

Born and brought up in the Valley, Bashir knows the place like the back of his hand, he knows the mawkish flapdoodle masquerading as 'Kashmir films' we have been fed for decades and what the audience has come to expect from them. This guy knows. He's an insider with a voice too coarse to the sensitive ear, pooh-poohing the quixotic place the Hindi film industry has turned Kashmir into. He's out to present the Kashmir he knows. Sit back, let the man do his job. He's done a terrific one, if I may say so.

Breathtakingly shot by cinematographer Shankar Raman, Harud is a quiet examination of life in Srinagar, its bizarre ordinariness and simmering anger, gloominess and pessimism, and this makes it an unorthodox analysis of the conflict, so different from the ones we have seen. And somewhere, I knew that Harud is a film that is perhaps closer to the truth, if not perfect, it is a film that stays strikingly subdued. Maybe life in the Valley is somber.

Most of the audiences may not agree with Bashir's approach. But no one will deny that he has made a film far more tangible from the others that had tackled a similar subject.

4.  In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989)

We all know Arundhati Roy, the Man Booker winner, the idealistic orator, the sagacious, scathing critic. But how many of us claim to know Arundhati Roy, the actress and screenwriter?

Quite right. Primarily in the English language, Pradip Kishen's bittersweet cult film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, the nefariously forgotten, made-for-Doordarshan film that marked her screenwriting and acting debut, is an absolutely spiffing watch. Revolving around a bunch of vexed, scruffy, pot-smoking and teacher-hating architecture students - who endow their nastiest professor with the sobriquet 'Yamdoot' and play table-tennis in their underwear - and their adventures in their final year of college, Roy weaved her experiences, remembrances and observations from her days at the School of Planning and Architecture into a profoundly funny, candid and ultimately heartfelt film that has come closest to capturing the warp and woof of student life in India. And before you yak about 3 Idiots, let me assert quite overtly that 3 Idiots missed the mark by yards. Yards.

This obdurate film was understandably a darling of the architecture students across the country back in its time, fervently brought to my attention by my father, an architect himself, who took an instant liking to the spoonfuls of wackiness Roy laced her witty script with.  It took me four whole years to get my hands on a print - and I ended up with a darned lousy one - but it seeped in as the film ended just how rewarding the effort had been. It is one of the most acutely observed, percipiently written and sympathetic Hindi films on teenage angst I have seen.

Oh, and for fanboys and fangirls swooning over Shah Rukh Khan, his minuscule cameo will make you chortle. In any case, smoke this one out. To wait for it to play on national television, where it was screened only once in 1989 and then never again, would mean being injudiciously optimistic.

5.  Khamosh (1985)

Vidhu Vinod Chopra, the gifted helmer who gave us Parinda, who received a forgotten Oscar nomination for his documentary short, An Encounter With Faces, in 1979, traced his Hitchcockian roots with Khamosh. Yes, Hitchcockian.

If Parinda wasn't sample enough of this lad's obvious flair, take a look at this terrifically taut whodunit. Khamosh combines the themes of blackmail, jealousy, lust and, of course, murder into a twisty film that lasts a brisk hundred minutes of pure storytelling. You see, eerie mysteries with a psychological profile have always been Chopra's forte. His impressive debut, Sazaye Maut, is a film nobody knows about, yet everyone who saw it remembers, and remembers it well. Khamosh is, in the simplest of words, a showpiece, a specimen of what a great director can do with a camera in his hands. Mission Kashmir quashed the illusion, but I digress.

Khamosh is splendidly engrossing while it lasts, enjoyable to a certain extent too, but those of you who can spot and appreciate aptitude are in for a wild ride. Sign up for this one.

6.  Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho! (1984)

Saeed Akhtar Mirza, sadly, is remembered more for his titles than his solitaires.

He brought us the Indian common man's hassles with a thin undercurrent of humor, a modicum of tragedy and a lot of feeling in his films. He looked at the same things as we did, but his curiosity never wavered in the things we don't usually bat an eye toward. I mean, look at Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho! as a sample. Would you care to lend an ear to a rancorous old couple griping over a collapsing building if you come across them everyday? No? Mirza did, and we got a gem of a movie to relish.

Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho!, like numerous films before it taking scathing, humorous potshots at the lamentable condition of the Indian judiciary, offers an insightful glance at the naked truth. An aging duo drag their crafty landlord to the court after he refuses to address their problems over a collapsing structure of their building. The case isn't done and dusted promptly, of course, and the duo find themselves trapped, fighting a losing battle that is beyond their comprehension with the courts, with the world and with people who are more eminent than them.

Like most Mirza's works, it's a strikingly simple film, but one that is also deceivingly so. Scrutinize, and it's an intricate piece of work because it paints the spheres we know about but rarely are a part of. It cleverly balances wit and despair, and ultimately uncloaks a frighteningly familiar portrait of the world we live in. No way you will get your head around it.

I don't know if this film is everyone's cup of tea. But it's a resolute attempt, nevertheless, that needs to be watched.

7.  Party (1984)

Hindi cinema ought to start bragging about nurturing a filmmaker as adept as Govind Nihalani.

He gave me the best Hindi film I have ever seen (Ardh Satya, for the uninitiated) and the best thing that has happened to Indian television (please watch this spellbinding albeit little-known miniseries, Tamas, if you haven't already or doubt my carefully chosen words.) Apart from this, he's given us scads of dandy films that have made us proud on several occasions. What a catalog, this - Aakrosh, Drohkaal and Takshak. I'm afraid I didn't care much for Drishti. Dullsville, I thought.

Tall claims? Not exactly. Party convinced me that Nihalani wasn't just any other filmmaker. While the rest of the world were making, and laudably succeeding, in creating compelling dramas with a handful of people trapped in a single location, the practice had not caught on in India back then. Though Basu Chatterjee's nicely adapted Ek Ruka Hua Faisla tried to change things, it just couldn't come out of the thick shadow of 12 Angry Men.

Party revolves around a bunch of people getting ready for and eventually hobnobbing with each other in a party. It is a film intelligently pieced together, strikingly offbeat in its content and a woeful reminder of the talent we have yet never completely acknowledge.

It's unconventional for a Hindi film to go down this road, and perhaps that is what makes it such a splendid attempt.

8.  Raghu Romeo (2003)

It's a marvel this film was even made.

I say this because I have read - from a rather unreliable source, I must assert - that it had thirty-five producers on board. Thirty-five. Now, I don't know if that's true, but Raghu Romeo, thirty-five nincompoops on board or nil, is a wonderfully understated film. It's daringly different, inexplicably sad and has that charming human element that Rajat Kapoor's films are defined by used to its fullest. With scant characters and only a handful of locations, Kapoor weaves a solicitous tale about a young waiter's love affair with a television show.

The waiter in question is played with subtleness and compassion by Vijay Raaz, whose scraggy shoulders are tolerant enough to carry the film all the way. He's effortlessly pitiful, desolate and delightful, adding layers to his character till you can relate to it. He's upfront but unpredictable, timid yet incisive. What the film manages to do is make him human, make him one of us, all the while being an observant, earnest take on the country's obsession with melodramas.

Like most of Kapoor's films, Raghu Romeo manages to leave you with the feeling that you have watched something, because even if you leave with a simper, it has managed to evoke a torrent of feeling inside, warm fuzzy being the first.

9.  Rockford (1999)

Oh, I've missed watching this film.

Back when I was a kid, my parents used to humor me - and I'm reasonably confident that I wasn't the only one getting a load of this poppycock - by threatening to send me to a boarding school, where I would be caned and buffed into a decorous, scholarly kid. Needless to say, Nagesh Kukunoor's Rockford put them up to it.

Exploring the many exploits of a sheepish adolescent, Rajesh Naidu, in his first year at Rockford Boys High School, Kukunoor's film is far from the remarkable ones he came to be associated with in the early '00s, but there is an air of aplomb, an aura of willfulness, that makes it so charming. It is a story of friendship, of first love, of shattering hostility and subsequent redemption, narrated with honesty and humor, sensitivity and simplicity that is quite unlike any other Hindi film of the genre I have seen. Well, maybe with the exception of Stanley Ka Dabba.

There are films that delight us by being boldly familiar, and those are the tough nuts. Taare Zameen Par is a prime example. Because they take a familiar chapter out of our lives and show us what we already know, what we have already seen. They seek to please us by trying to understand us, and if we spot a bit of ourselves in them, they win. These are films that choose a path less explored.

Rockford is one such film. It's your story.

It's a small film but a sparkling one. Like most of Kukunoor's earlier works.

10.  Supermen Of Malegaon (2008)

Malegaon, a town in the heart of the country plagued by communal disharmony, houses many of India's most passionate filmmakers.

The problem is, we don't know any of them.

Faiza Ahmed Khan's side-splitting yet tearjerking documentary does a commendable job of bringing them to us. Finished in 2008 but released theatrically in India in 2012, when I finally got to see it, it was one of the most wondrous experiences I had had at the movies that year. I'm going to go out on a limb here and state for the record that this was my favorite Indian film of that year.

Sheikh Nasir, who runs a video library and garment store in the small town, really is a figure of inspiration and awe. He has already ripped off the Hindi film industry's most cherished film, Sholay, and had the infamous train sequence set on a local bus with armed dacoits chasing it on cheap bicycles. He proudly states that the audience had applauded his low-budget, visionary spectacle, and now he is prepared to make his most ambitious film yet - a rip-off of Hollywood's beloved Superman.

Khan wisely captures his pitfalls and triumphs without ever making it look caricatural.

In a particularly amusing scene, Nasir naively inquires why a normal film crew has a costume designer. The man has a point; he accompanies his actor - the Superman, Shafiq, an ordinary factory worker who agrees to work on the film part-time - to shop in the local market for costumes and accessories. Even his screenwriter doubles up as a VFX artist and primary antagonist. The Superman's cape is actually a dupatta tucked neatly in the collar. And they only have a paltry 30K to make the movie with.

And yet, what they have in liberal amounts, and what many Indian filmmakers sadly lack, is verve. The story of this small film is fused with useful anecdotes from every person involved, their dreams, desires and despairs. It constantly oscillates between hilarious and heartbreaking, but always remains optimistic in its scrutiny.

I don't remember the last time a film has made me feel this elated about being so ordinary.