Ramblings

Karan Malhotra’s Agneepath, Mukul Anand would have been proud, Martin Scorcese would appreciate

2012-02-03T01:01:00.000-08:00

I am a pretty solid fan of Mukul Anand’s Agneepath, so much so that I still keep trawling online and offline stores for VHS tapes that contain the original vision of Mukul Anand with the gravel voiced Amitabh Bachchan. I also welcome the idea of remakes, coloring of movies and so on, because these...gimmicks, for the lack of a politer word, bring old movies to a new generation, and when done well perhaps provide one with a fresh perspective on an old favorite. However, remakes are, as everybody knows, an extremely tricky business, respected filmmakers like David Cronenberg (The Fly) and Martin Scorcese (Departed) have done it successfully, or failed spectacularly like Gus Van Sant (Psycho). Scorcese has been derided for Cape Fear, but his version is now more or less acknowledged at par with if not better than the original. Hitchcock remade his own “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and Cecil B. Demille “The Ten Commandments”. Our legendary filmmakers Mehboob Khan and B.R. Chopra revisited their own works Afsana & Aurat to create Dastaan and Mother India respectively.

There would always be people who would say the earlier “The Man Who Knew Too Much” was better than the later bigger, flashier and longer remake by the same master. Similarly there would be people who would permanently view Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas and Farhan Akhtar’s Don with the blackest of contempt. For most such critics, I have observed, the primary issues are with the obscenely successful and cocky ‘kal ka chokda’ SRK taking over from statesmanly greats like Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan, somewhat like many from my father’s generation cannot imagine anyone else but Connery as James Bond - Moore (wimp!), Lazenby/Dalton (who?), Brosnan/Craig (Baaaah!)

And how can we forget RGV ki Aag, poor fellow, the whole Hindustan was gunning for him from the day he announced the megalomaniacally titled Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag, it did not help matters that the film was...well it had NISHA KOTHARI filling in for Hema Malini...we’ll pass on the rest. But you would really appreciate our self-styled showman of the 80s, a certain Mr. Subhash Ghai for not shouting from the rooftops when he was working on ‘Karma’ in the early 80s. Clever man and talented filmmaker, he was doing what he should have been doing, making a full blown masala entertainer. If you are a fan of Sholay, do try to watch it and Karma on the same day and you will see how the village of Ramgarh becomes Hindustan, Thakur becomes Col. Vishwapratap Singh (Dilip Kumar), Gabbar Singh is Dr. Dan (Anupam Kher) , Khairuddin Chishti (Naseeruddin Shah) is Jai, Veeru is divided into two - Baiju Thakur (Jackie Shroff) & Johnny/Gyaneshwar Prasad (Anil Kapoor) (it takes two to replace garam Dharam!), we also have a rebooted Sambha in a longer role as Jolly Jagga (Shakti Kapoor) and even Ramlal, as Dharma (Dara Singh). He, he, he, my obsession with Sholay, has led me to watch anything that reeks of that movie, from Seven Samurai & The Magnificent Seven to Mera Gaon Mera Desh/Ramgarh Ke Sholay/Army/RGV ki Aag (the last 3 in theatres) and even ‘Duplicate Sholay’.

So where is Agneepath among all this blabbering? Don’t tell me you didn’t check this blog’s title...you were suitably forewarned...Back to Agneepath, I certainly am not going to commit the blasphemy of placing the Karans - Malhotra & Johar with the illustrious company mentioned in first paragraph, maybe somebody 5 decades down the line would find reason and openings to do so. But to put it straight, Karan Malhotra’s Agneepath had me floored. I did not miss Krishnan Aiyyar Yum Yae! or Amitabh Bachchan’s Vijay or Danny Denzongpa’s Kancha China (big fan of this one too, sad he does not do more movies) or Rohini Hattangady, and of course not the screechy Neelam.

Karan Malhotra’s Agneepath goes beyond being a mere copy-paste job like Gus Van Sant’s Psycho (who needs one when the original grows in reputation with every passing year), its a glorious homage, a true fanboy’s tribute. It is a reinvigorated, respectful, reimagining of a cult classic, the way Navdeep Singh’s Manorama - Six Feet Under was to Polanski’s Chinatown or Cronenberg’s The Fly which took the source material to much higher planes. Yeah you read it right ‘much higher planes’ because I think Agneepath 2.0 is superior to the first one which had problems typical of Mukul Anand’s films. We have entered dangerous territory here - Mukul S. Anand is widely referred to as a director ahead of his times who did not get his due. Having watched every Mukul Anand film, I do not completely subscribe to that view, Mukul Anand was a technical wizard (he was trained in FTII I believe) and he knew his Hollywood, his inspirations include the aforementioned Cape Fear (Kanoon Kya Karega), Dial M for Murder (Aetbaar), Scarface (Agneepath in parts). He made several very bad movies (Main Balwaan, Maa Ki Saugandh, Khoon Ka Karz) the blame for which could be thrust on the producers’ as these movies simply did not reflect the sensibilities of the man who also made Insaaf, Khuda Gawah, Hum and Agneepath. But were these movies really great - my opinion - Mukul Anand was stuck within a perpetual tug-of-war between Hollywood and Bollywood. A common cloud of problems hovers on his better known movies (Khuda Gawah, Hum, Insaaf, Agneepath & Trimurti!!!). All of them have brilliant first acts, the likes of which have never been seen before or after. They have great villains and setpieces. But they all steadily go downhill from the second act, except for Agneepath which sored high in the final act. For me Hum and Trimurti are among the saddest lost opportunities in Bollywood, the former has a solid initial 40 minutes after which enters the holier-than-thou Kadar Khan with his painfully outdated long-winded dialogues, the not-funny-at-all joker/villain Captain Zatak and ‘Bum Chiki Bum Bum’. In the most ridiculous hindi film climaxes ever mother and daughter tied to a ticking time bomb sing ‘bum chik bum bum’ to call the Bro-in-law/Chacha Govinda. Hum has patches of brilliance, from the main villain Danny, who is not totally black, to the real evil people masquerading as buffoons - Anupam Kher and Annu Kapoor. As for Trimurti - it had Kooka (up there with Gabbar & Mogambo) and Satya Devi, a brilliant opening 20 minutes and a very delicately presented relationship between 3 brothers, all of which were scrambled, probably God, Subhash Ghai and Mukul Anand would know why. Similarly, Khuda Gawah had a climax reminiscent of Agneepath and problems similar to Hum and Trimurti. The movie opens with Badshah Khan and Buzkashi and loses its way when the second generation which includes Sridevi, Nagarjuna and Shilpa Shirodkar enters the story - this reminds me of Yash Chopra’s Kabhi Kabhi ;-).

Mukul Anand made his best/closest-to-perfect movie with Agneepath. It was different for it’s times...well okay, we’d had the much superior and original Parinda, a couple of years back, which flopped like Agneepath and has similarly gone on to earn respect over the years. Mukul Anand’s Agneepath is basically hinged on Amitabh Bachchan, the dialogues, the personality, the context everything came together to create a certain alchemy which can never be planned. But apart from that and the awesome setpieces at the beginning, middle and end, it’s not strung together well enough, the patches show. In comparison Karan Malhotra’s Agneepath is a long but tightly woven and singularly focused tale of vengeance. Yes Priyanka Chopra’s character could have been done away with completely but so could have been the Mithun-Neelam love story in the original. The characters are well developed, the three buffoonish villains in the original led by Sharat Saxena cannot hold a candle to Rishi Kapoor’s Rauf Lala (a masterstroke of casting) and even the relationship shared between Lala and Vijay has been developed with great care. The mother played by Zarina Wahab is more believably complex than the one played by Rohini Hattangady, unfortunately she does not get to say awesome stuff like ‘tumhare haath saaf nahi hone wale Vijay” or something like that. The new Vijay, is not a punchline spewing larger than life figure with pain in his eyes. He appears like a regular, unusually quite Joe with deepset trauma, who is also cunning like a fox and has a single mission - revenge, and man does he convey all of that well! When he says “Vijay Dinanath Chauhan, pura naam” I didn’t miss the “hain!” of the original, I didn’t feel like whistling, you don’t, when your bones are chilled. Hrithik makes the character his own, as I see it, where the original Vijay was really Amitabh Bachchan, here Hrithik Roshan is Vijay. Sanjay Dutt as the evil Kancha does his job, there’s not much to discuss about what is basically a one-dimensional character out to scare the bejesus of anyone who crosses his path, his Gita obsession is jarring as it seems to have been thrust upon the character, yeah there was room for improvement there. Apart from that Karan Malhotra’s Agneepath is not a great film, but it’s a very good film, very well made, and the sincerity shows in every department, from writing to production, to acting to direction. It would be unfair to say that the makers have resorted to remaking movies with established reputations because their creative juices have stopped flowing. It takes a high degree of creativity and even more courage to create a meticulously reimagined version of a film with such a passionate following and doing it well. Would I watch Karan Malhotra’s Agneepath again, yes, would I watch it again like I make it a point to watch the original Agneepath every few years, no. Mukul Anand’s Agneepath has a lot of history/memories attached to it that adds to its gravitas and that would make me pick up it’s DVD over Karan Malhotra’s Agneepath.

Dreaming in Patiala House

2011-03-06T06:22:00.000-08:00

There was a time when Hindi movies began with titles coming up in English, Hindi and Urdu, nowadays they are mostly meant to be read by people familiar with the English alphabet. But Patiala House goes back to the good old days, and that's not the only pleasant surprise it had in store for me. Nikhil Advani strikes back, and how! He makes a movie which while easy to dismiss as just another big budget mainstream Hindi film with songs and dances is a lot more than that. A movie has 'something' if it brings lumps in your throat, and controls your heartbeat and breathing easily. Among other things Patiala House reminds us that even life saving medicines come with expiry dates, after which they turn into poison, and this is especially true about various long-past-expiry-date "this is the propah way to live" systems that at best poison humanity at the grassroots level. Finally, when formula works, nothing can beat it, great dialogues, amazing Akshay, wow Anushka Sharma and awesome Rishi Kapoor backed by a uniformly excellent supporting cast. Patiala House made my Sunday.

The life and husbands of Susanna

2011-03-06T05:51:00.000-08:00

It takes a lot to shake up my cinema jaded senses... Vishal Bhardawaj has been able to do that with every movie of his including Saat Khoon Maaf, few filmmakers, whether its Ashutosh Gowariker, Farhan Akthar or Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, who initially showed brilliance have continued to push the envelope like Mr. Bhardawaj. Though I felt '7 Khoon' got a little tired in the last 15 minutes or so but, what a movie! what a deliciously detailed, wonderfully bizarre movie!

Chitti Chitti Bang Bang

2010-10-10T05:40:00.000-07:00

Ideally Robot should have been made in the 80s (at probably 1/100th of its present budget), with less songs and many more punchy dialogues and thumpier scenes. Then it would have been ideal stuff for some pleasantly nostalgic viewings on lazy Sunday afternoons in Set Max/Star Gold/Zee Cinema. Coming as it is, in 2010, it's fun (the first half sprightlier than the second which is frequently shot down by unwelcome songs) but could have used some quality creative imagination on the script level to produce several 'aha' moments, rather than bludgeon the viewers with the combined might of lucre and technology (abundance of resources at disposal tends to blunt creativity, read that somewhere and have over the years found many reasons to believe it) I have a feeling that director Shankar is the kumbh-ke-mele-mein-khoya-hua-bhai of Michael Bay. Yeah, yeah I did not enter the theater expecting subtle and classy cinema. But hey I did not even come across a satisfying number of hoot-worthy scenes like I did in Hindustani or Pokkiri (the frame-by-frame remake 'Wanted' had a wickeder atmosphere and hence methinks it was a definite improvement but that's another story).

Maybe its a cultural remove at work but the intentionally comic scenes in films from South usually turn me off, Robot is no exception (for that that matter the humor present in the Japanese films of Akira Kurosawa also make me cringe; call me racist if you will, which was what a reader called Mayank Shekhar after reading his less-than-enthusiastic review of this film in Hindustan Times). Coming back to those idle Sunday afternoons, if I have a choice between Nagarjuna's Meri Jung 'The One Man Army' and Robot, I would go for the former for my 'paisa vasool' entertainment.

Kites - The twain should ne'er had met...

2010-05-30T08:20:00.000-07:00

Old Guard (Rakesh "Krrish" Roshan) meets new New Guard (Anurag "Metro" Basu) and we get a neither here, nor anywhere, "Kites". It seems they were writing the screenplay as they spotted various "beautifully framable locations".

Conclusions:
1. The twain should ne'er had met.
2. If you are in love with creating/seeing beautiful frames, become a painter/go to art exhibitions dammit!
3. Anurag Basu should stick to making his kind of movies.
4. Rakesh Roshan, an earlier favorite seems to have gone the Subhash Ghai way! Retirement time?
5. Hrithik Roshan should do something about himself because with his stock dancing style and limited vocal/facial expressions, he neither has the ammo to see through as an actor in the long run, or even as a choreographer. What a waste of an otherwise awesome personality!

LOL dialogue - You have a dream, I have a dream, now both of us have a bigger dream.

Recommended watch for the 88% western critics who gave it a thumbs-up - Bunty aur Babli.

The Amazing World Of Comics

2009-03-12T23:36:00.000-07:00

Last week when I was going home after my fortnightly (weekly, when I am lucky) jaunts to college street, I was asked by a man sitting beside me in an auto-rickshaw,”You still read that stuff?” He had a smug, sneering look painted on his face, and pointed towards the bunch of superman and batman comics in my hand… somehow he missed Ray Bradbury’s “Golden Apples of the Sun”.

“Yes I do”. I shot back, countering his smugness with my best deadpan expression. We didn’t speak through the rest of the 15 minutes journey. But that encounter has visited my thoughts a few times over the last week. It amuses me. So many people associate comics with dumbed down entertainment meant for kiddos. The same people watch the mostly inane entertainment offered by the multiplexes and scores of television channels with relish. The more serious ones prefer to watch the distasteful black comedy presented by the news channels 24/7. Many of these people did read comic books as kids. Maybe they did not stay long enough. Because that’s the beauty of comics, the pleasure a regular issue of Batman can offer to a 10 year old would be quite different from that which is felt by a 30 year old.

Comics, like movies and television series are simply a tool for telling stories. They can be as intelligent or as dumb as the other two. The problem is that most people associate them with superheroes who wear their underwear outside. That’s true. But that’s just a part of the whole truth. One needs to read comics in order to pass a judgment. Though I am far from an expert on the topic, I have my reasons for respecting comics. I was hooked on to them before I knew how to read. My father’s collections of Tintin and Phantom comics were something I treasured, and initially tried to decipher by studying the frames, and making my own stories. Sometimes my uncle used to help me out by reading them out to me. Then I learnt to read them myself and there has been no looking back. I have covered a wide range of Indian and foreign comics from my initial heroes Superman, Phantom and Tintin to Chacha Chaudhary, Nagraj, Super Commando Dhruv to my current favorites, Batman, Wolverine, Captain Haddock and Phantom, again.

Comics have given me more than hundreds of hours of pleasure. They have given me the tag of a bibliophile; they instilled in me a reasonably good taste for the visual arts. And they initiated me into the world of books. They have given me my career. If not for them, I probably wouldn’t have been a writer.

And for those who believe that comics are dumb. Let them know that X-Men is actually about xenophobia and racism that has plagued the world since the dawn of mankind and it tackles the issue much more effectively than any moral science lesson. Spiderman is about standing by your ethics in a world which is increasingly ungrateful and insane, and Batman is about the futility and tragedy of aimless destruction. In other words, it is about terrorism. Check out “The Dark Knight”, which came out this year. It is one of the most explicit films about terrorism made till date. It centered on an enemy for whom destruction was an an end unto itself. Today terrorists are mauling the world, apparently for some cause, which does not convince us. But once they did have a cause. Bhagat Singh had a cause when he hurled that bomb. He was a terrorist for our erstwhile rulers. But he was driven by a cause worthy of great respect. However, over the years spectacular destruction has overshadowed any “cause”. When we think about the twin towers crashing to the earth, no cause comes to our mind. “The Dark Knight” Is a movie that has foreseen the times we are headed towards. The terror attacks at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai were quite like the Joker’s onslaughts on Gotham City. It had no purpose, other than creating death, destruction and chaos.

All comics are not necessarily dark and grim like the above. There are Tintin’s delightful adventures and of course good old Asterix. I never tire of rereading them. A good comic is as good as any other piece of artistic entertainment; it entertains and educates, and leaves the reader a little bit wiser.

Suspend Your Disbelief!

2009-03-04T02:38:00.000-08:00

The fag end of the year…

Two of the most hotly anticipated movies…

Two of the biggest stars of Hindi cinema…

Two men on the wrong side of forty, romancing girls young enough to be their daughters…

Two logic defying plots…

Two certified super hits…

Welcome to the world of blockbusters, Bombay ishtyle!

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and Ghajini. Two of the most hotly anticipated movies of 2008, came a couple of weeks apart. Yours truly did not have much hope from both movies, going by the impression formed by their promos and whatever was known about their storylines, but somehow ended up watching both. And the movies fell mostly along the lines of my expectations.

I expected Rab Ne… to be typical diabetes inducing Yash Raj Films yawnfest. Well, it was saccharine sweet, it was boring, yes. And unlike a typical Yash Raj picture, it did not have memorable songs. But the departure that this movie made from the Yash Raj tradition, were in terms of its characters and setting, and that was what clinched the deal for me. Surinder Sahni, the character played by Shahrukh Khan reminded me of Amol Palekar in those wonderful films made by Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Chatterjee when they were at their creative peak. Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi was itself like a “primed up for NextGen” version of Choti Si Baat and to a lesser extent Golmaal. It was heartening to see characters wearing clothes worn by you and me. The protagonist commuting on a scooter like many of you dear readers might have seen your fathers and uncles do. The movie in fact had quite a few similarities with Choti Si Baat. Both had endearingly simple central characters who just couldn’t get around to winning their lady loves. Help for Amol Palekar came in the form of Ashok Kumar who promised to make playboys out of wimps, and for Shah Rukh Khan through his friend played by Vinay Pathak, who turns the world’s most boring government employee into a wannabe hunk (with a supremely garish dressing sense).

But where Choti Si Baat was a crisply edited, fast paced, and innovatively written romantic comedy which kept you glued to the screen in anticipation, Rab Ne… was let down by its writers. The movie has been well shot on wonderful sets and location. The director, Aditya Chopra started shooting the movie in May 2008, wrapped it within 50 days flat and released it in December. That’s quite an achievement considering the great looking and excellently performed end product. But another achievement tagged with the movie is that its screenplay was written in 20 days or so. Alas! That shows and may have proved to be its undoing.

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi starts off well, portraying the lives and conflicts of its lead characters through some excellent performances and gripping sequences. Anushka Sharma’s character, bludgeoned by tragedy, sitting on her marital bed and turning around to find two pillows is a powerful scene, followed by so many others – SRK taking a bath under a tap, SRK looking adoringly at the tiffin prepared by his wife. Things take a turn with the entry of the alter ego of Suri. Quite like Stanley Ipcis (Jim Carrey) in The Mask and like so many of us, Suri the outwardly sedate and sober soul, has a naughty spirit repressed within him, which he unleashes as Anushka’s dancing partner. Credibility goes to the winds as the lady fails to recognize her husband. However the writer/director cares to explain that it is ‘Rab’ who wants it that way. Fair enough. I am not complaining. I just want my movies to be entertaining, credibility be damned. But the entertainment fizzles out as Suri’s character takes backstage and his flamboyant version, the badly dressed, vulgar but cute, Raj assumes center stage. Not that the Raj character is responsible for the movie going downhill, I mean how many actors can you think of, who can carry inane lines like, “hum hain rahi pyar ke, phir milenge, chalte chalte” or wear the most atrocious tees and jeans with élan. It is the repetitive dance sequences and less of Suri’s character that does Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi in. I think if the script had more of Suri fumbling around to win his wife’s love and their relationship growing along the length of the film, “Rab Ne” may have been a classic.

Talking of classics brings to mind Christopher Nolan’s dizzyingly brilliant Memento. Unfortunately, A.R. Murugadoss only had the skills to rip-off the “15 minutes and memory kaput” element of the original’s plot. Ghajini stayed true to what I expected it to be, the promos reminded me of umpteen south Indian potboilers whose dubbed versions are regularly aired in cheap Hindi movie channels that do not have the money to buy better films.

When it comes to the so-called category of masala films, the self-styled Mr. Perfectionist, Aamir Khan has floundered more often than not. Even when we don’t take into account his Daulat Ki Jung and Mela days. Mangal Pandey – The Rising and Fanaa contributed to the stinking trash that came out when Mr. Khan tried to please the masses in the recent times. Add Ghajini to that dump. However, to be fair it’s not half as bad as the aforementioned films, courtesy it’s fast-paced, action packed plot. But then, that all there’s to Ghajini, and that’s not speaking a lot. I mean lead actors beating up baddies like the original Superman, the one from Krypton, is not a new concept. Bombay film industry grew out of it in the 80s, south Indian film industry still loves it. But the point is, it’s a juvenile and lazy substitute for devising well choreographed stunts, this in the days of the Bourne series and the Bond movies is unacceptable!

Moreover there is not a single well conceived character in Ghajini. We have the super successful hero, who has the world at his feet but falls for the poor beauty with a heart of gold. And later roams around the city like a mad dog killing people. No one recognizes him!!! An explanation is offered early on in the movie that he has recently returned from America and people don’t know him well. But c’mon man, we are talking about someone who is probably counted among the richest people in India, and is also a stunningly handsome bachelor. Anyway as I have explained earlier, I do not look out for logic in movies if they are entertaining enough. That’s the problem with Ghajini. It’s probably one of the most outdated ‘big’ movies I have seen in the last few years. Outdated in terms of its craft, writing, performance… you name it. The director does not reveal the heroine’s mischievous girl with a golden heart character. He bludgeons and drills that into the audiences’ mind. Same with Aamir Khan’s mad dog protagonist, who has to fume, groan and grunt so that the audience can understand his agony, such antics suited Dharmendra better and that too has been reduced to being fodder for the starved talent in various comedy shows on TV. And yes we are reminded every few minutes that the lead character is suffering from anteretrograde amnesia, which also results in a hilarious scene at the climax, where the protagonist goes through two diaries worth of knowledge transfer, gets to the baddy’s den, thrashes his goons into a mangled mass, pummels the arch villain and when he is at the edge of delivering his final blows, the writer/director remember that it’s time to make him start life with a clean slate! I guess, even Superman wouldn’t have managed to pack so much in 15 minutes. Overall the movie doesn’t have much to say, it has 3-4 types of sequences that are repeated throughout in various forms and that makes it tiring to watch. Better luck next time Mr. Khan! As for Mr. Murugadoss, since I have not seen any of his earlier movies, no comments! [Originally published in Passion for Cinema - http://passionforcinema.com/suspend-your-disbelief]

“Bollywood”. Period. Comes of Age. Period.

2008-09-22T22:56:00.000-07:00

“Bollywood is finally coming of age/ We are closing in on Hollywood very fast” - Nowadays I hear, or read, this statement or its variants uncomfortably often. Uncomfortable, because I have some objections. Firstly, why “Bollywood”? The term is at best an insult to the rich history of Hindi cinema, and I have not even included our great regional cinema which are derogatively referred to as Mollywood, Tollywood and God only knows how many other “****woods”. Hollywood is only ahead in terms of production values and that’s simply because they are loaded with the greenbacks. The Godfathers of Hollywood can’t even dream of achieving the production values that a regular Mumbai potboiler can achieve, at a beggarly fraction of the average Hollywood budget.

The second part of the statement that makes me uncomfortable is about Hindi cinema pushing the envelope, becoming more intelligent and all that. To those people who hold such opinions, I would like to say that please skip the 70s, 80s and 90s and go back, you will find cinema that was much farther ahead than the most cutting edge stuff that Bombay comes out with nowadays. And no, I’m not talking about high brow, dull, or sleep inducing stuff. I am referring to white knuckle thrillers, vertigo inducing mysteries, stomach bursting comedies and larger than life melodramas. These were movies which were not “inspired” by some substandard Hollywood product. These were original stuff produced by brains that grew upon the power of raw imagination. Minds that had not been paralyzed by information overload, multitasking, dumb television serials and dumber news channels. These were the minds of B.R. Chopra, Raj Kapoor, Mehboob Khan, Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy, K. Asif, Hrishikesh Muherjee, the Anand brothers (Chetan, Dev and Vijay) and many more. They produced stuff which retains their razor’s edge even forty, fifty, sixty years after their release. Those were the times when people got to see great stuff with much more regularity than we get to see a Lagaan, a Dil Chahta Hai, a Black Friday, a Khosla Ka Ghosla or a Mithya. They had stuff like Awara, Shree 420, Madhumati, Kanoon, Ittefaq, Do Beegha Zameen, Johar Mehmood in Goa/Hong Kong, Pyaasa, Kaagaz Ke Phool, Jewel Thief, etc. coming every few months.

But then came the seventies and the angry young Big B, and somehow everything changed. Probably gargantuan hits like Sholay convinced producers and directors that they only had to hire Amitabh Bachchan and the money would come rolling in. Probably the memories of the struggles of Independence had already started dying out… It is said that great works of art have been produced during times of oppression. Probably we had started getting used to the benefits of Independence, started taking it for granted, become complacent and lost our edge somewhere. Probably that’s only partially true, probably we are not proud enough of our country, our heritage, which would have made us find and tell interesting stories… It’s only the Indians who hold Indian film awards in foreign countries… Oh! How we salivate for their attention. It’s only in Hindi cinema where stories are more often than not set in foreign countries, or need excuses in the form of songs to go there. The Chinese tell stories of China, the Iranians tell stories of Iran, and their cinema has long surpassed Hindi cinema in terms of global renown. I don’t want to appear overtly nationalistic, but if we really want to push the envelope and win global respect, then its time that we forget “Bollywood” and tell stories of India and Indians.

In Search of the Secret - Faisal Kalim

2008-06-27T00:15:00.000-07:00

It has been almost thirteen years (yes, yes I am positive about that unlucky number!) since I started my journey of self-actualization, beginning with probably “The Power of your Subconscious Mind” and continuing through to learning “The Secret” last week. I don’t know how much I have learned and how much I did grow in this period which has spanned maybe 1/6th portion of my life until now. Did I grow at all? How different would life have been if I did not know “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success”, the power of my thoughts, the notion that the human body and mind combine to make a very effective psycho-cybernetic system or “The Secret”? Most of my friends do not know about it, neither my parents nor my grandparents and they are pretty ok, living successful, satisfied lives.

However I do know that there were times when these books and philosophies provided me with solace as well as exhilaration. And there were times when I tried so hard to understand things, to achieve calmness that I ended up more frustrated than before. Deepak Chopra told me that “all possibilities” exist in the gap between two thoughts and if you put your intentions into the gap, the universe will manifest them for you. I try to access the gap everyday. I don’t know whether I am successful, you see it is supposed to lie between two thoughts, the “no thought land” so technically speaking I may never be aware when and if ever I have made it into the gap ;-)

I may sound like a cynic, that’s because I am one; probably I have allowed myself to be rubbed non-stop by self-help literature and philosophies, probably because I abhor the commercialization of something that is actually lofty. Mediocre, dumbed down and derived stuff is being peddled as man’s gateway to nirvana. It may only be a matter of time before we start seeing several “secrets” and “laws” of success peddled on tele-shopping networks; and god forbid if Ekta Kapoor decides she’s had enough of numerology and does a Byrne/ Oprah and produces “Kkissmatt Mmuththiiiii Mein Le Llllo” and dozens follow suite. Indian mommies would stop cooking with the hope of manifesting food and creatively visualize a clean house. Brrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!

It makes me cynical and I feel justified in thinking that way. Maybe some good stuff is reaching more people that way, but no matter what, I believe dumbing down something makes it vulnerable to corruption. I think an individual should be ready for the truth, in the case of New Age Philosophies, the truth is being ‘readied’ for the masses… which does not speak well for its future.

I loiter in the grey areas of faith and no-faith; I would really like to be one of the faithful. But I like my teachers to treat me like a thinking human being in search of spiritual evolution; not just someone whose sole aim in life is to spend time in the couch with Alladin’s lamp.

Om Shanti Om - A Modern Classic

2008-06-26T23:59:00.000-07:00

I can already see you smirking and sneering, dear reader. And if I am wrong, believe me, I will be very happy. Yes I do sincerely believe that the above-mentioned film is a modern classic, a milestone in Hindi cinema. I would have said Indian, but then I am not so well acquainted with the cinema of all regions of our country. I believe that I have already tapped a key too many around the bush and should cut to the chase, keeping in mind… the smirks… the sneers.

Om Shanti Om, brash, colorful, over-the-top, is everything I believe the makers intended it to be and in my opinion, one of the most intelligently written films of the recent times as well as in the past. The producers took a great risk by making a film whose enjoyment was to a large extent based on an extensive knowledge and reverence for the thoroughly kitschy and the so called B-grade cinema of the 70s and the 80s. Think about it, how many people in the prime target group of 15-25 years would have got all the in-jokes, the performances and the presentation of the story? Just think about its sources, Subhash Ghai’s Karz for the overall story, the Bimal Roy/ Ritwik Ghatak classic Madhumati and the genius Chetan Anand’s uncrowned classic Kudrat for the climax. And I have just mentioned some potential sources for the story line, the classics, to which this classic pays homage to. Then there are all those numerous set-pieces, from the king of all items songs, the howlarious and to some, irritating, Anna Rascala- Mind It!, the take-offs on the Sooraj Barjatya and the Rajshri classic ‘Maine Pyar Liya’, the archetypal sidekick pappu master and the feisty Indian mother, Govinda, Manoj Kumar among others. As if that was not enough we have cinema greats and even well known bloated egos like Subhash Ghai making fun of their tender spots (Mr. Ghai’s famous fascination with speaking the language of our former colonists, and his crippling inability to do so). It is refreshing to see such people actually making fun of really delicate issues concerning themselves. Arch rivals Shah Rukh Khan, Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan hit their own weak spots with great gusto, an ability which I have found rare, especially among us Indians. The only spoilsport being a certain Mr. Manoj Kumar, who had his desperate fill of 15 minutes of fame, and revealed later that he would like to have Shah Rukh Khan in one of his films. LOL.

The only other film-maker who has been able to take his love for B-movies and turn it into highly satisfying and charged up pieces of art is Quentin Tarantino with Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill and The Grindhouse. The international film community worships Taratino for his work, in the sense that he has really achieved something substantial. Sadly, I have largely found that a classic worthy of any respect in India is usually a movie which makes grand statements about the pathetic condition of humanity and similar themes. Believe me, it is a much more difficult task to write a movie with the inspirations of Om Shanti Om than farcical “Oh my lord! I am an intellectual” trash like ‘Black’. Farah Khan & Shah Rukh Khan are true artists because Om Shanti Om can only be made by true lovers of cinema. Unlike the likes of some high brow filmmakers whose movies almost carry the watermarks of their own mugs in every frame.

I think ‘Om Shanti Om’ deserves a label better than ‘commercial success’, which sounds so condescending. Several people say to me, Shah Rukh Khan knows what crap the public wants and he gives it to them. They forget how daringly different films he has gifted to Hindi cinema as a producer, from the far-ahead-of-its-time “Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani” to the wildly experimental and irreverent Asoka, to the misguided but again daringly different “Paheli” to the pre-cursor of “Om Shanti Om”- “Main Hoon Na”. Except for “Main Hoon Na,” which was critically panned, the rest have been big commercials failures… and why not, none of them were ‘safe films’ unlike say Mr. Perfectionist’s “Lagaan” and “Taare Zameen Par” which were designed for success and were comfortably predictable in an experimental garb.

If “Om Shanti Om” would have been a disaster, knives would have come out and people would have said “What did they think they were doing?” and much worse stuff. Look what happened to “Tashan” which attempted something similar - a take-off on the action cinema of the 70s and the 80s, an admirable effort/ intent but they came out of it horribly bruised, because paying homage to over the top movies is just no child’s play. “Om Shanti Om” delivered and it delivered big time. And it is much more than just a huge commercial success… and I hope it’s recognized that way.

I rest my case.

Jurassic Trip

2007-12-21T23:52:00.001-08:00

It was a terrible day, the rain gods seemed to be overcome with fury at the incessant complaints of mankind about lack of rain. So they let rain fall like never before. However, during such hours our beloved Dalai Lama had gone deep into a forest to meditate. When he had entered the forest, summer had been at its merciless best so he had not bothered to take anything that could protect him from rain. Now the heavens was pouring with such vengeance that nothing was able to give shelter and visibility had reduced drastically. The Dalai Lama lost his way and entered into a mystical part of the forest. There under a tree he found a raincoat. Being a man of principals he was loathe taking someone else's raincoat but a few terrifying bolts of lightning followed by renewed vigour of the rainfall convinced him to do so. With a silent promise to himself that he would return the raincoat to the rightful owner after the present ordeal was over he wore it and lo! His surroundings changed, he found himself in a sunny forest. He was trying to comprehend what had happened to him when he heard a bloodcurdling growl from behind him. It was a dinosaur, probably a T-Rex, as he remembered from the Spielberg movie. He also realized that the T- Rex was a carnivore. Then he thought about the Buddha and looked towards the T- Rex with a calm disposition and complete acceptance. He was in for a second shock when the T-Rex came up to him and said, "That's my raincoat", the Dalai Lama thought he had lost his mind, when the T-Rex said, "its all right, this is for real, got a smoke?" The Dalai Lama shook his head slowly and unconsciously put his hand into one pocket of the raincoat, he felt something and took it out, it was an ashtray, the dinosaur looked furiously at Dalai Lama and said, "you carry an ashtray with you and you don't have a cigarette", with this he lunged at Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama couldn't think of how to save himself, unconsciously he took of his raincoat and threw it at the dinosaur. The raincoat vanished into thin air and he found himself back in the forest where he had gone to meditate. He was sitting in his usual meditative posture. He opened his eyes to the bright chirpy forest around him. He smiled and looked down, his smile faded, there lay an ashtray, the same one.

Chuck De! India

2007-11-21T10:51:00.001-08:00

[Originally published in passionforcinema.com- http://passionforcinema.com/chak-de-india-jaideep-sahni-disappoints-this-time/]

I saw Chak De! India on the first Sunday of its release. After the show ended I remember walking out of the theatre with no remarkable feelings. For me the film was as lifeless as the promos (which were withdrawn) promised. I did not think about Kabir Khan, nor did I think about the state of the national game, Hockey, in India, vis-à-vis cricket. Not at all about the Vidya Malvade character (I don’t even remember the name.) I did not have any leftover feelings of being riveted to the screen, reveling in well-executed sports sequences. I remember having fleeting thoughts of Balbir and Komal because they played such endearing characters and they did it so well. I thought about Preety because she was quite pretty, but is that an achievement? But all this was before the Chak De! India or should I say the Yash Raj Films marketing juggernaut rolled on.

Over the next few weeks I was literally taken aback. Newspapers headlines screamed Chak De! at the drop of hat. TV presenters did the same. It was their on various websites. The Indian vocabulary seemed to have shrunk to two Punjabi words. It was dumbfounding, the movie was being presented as some kind of extraordinarily brave attempt at making good cinema, and somehow we were supposed to believe that it had contributed to everything, from women’s lib to the state of our national game hockey. I was at a loss! Didn’t we have 'Iqbal' recently, or 'Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar' or 'Naya Daur' in the past? And that’s only mentioning some Hindi films revolving around a game. Are only ‘apparently’ noble intentions, a huge star & production house, a handful of eager to please journalists/ film commentators enough to put a film on a pedestal? What happened to the good old parameters of substantial characters, a reasonably gripping and challenging, yet believingly executed story with some memorable set-pieces? A film that lingers in your mind for days afterwards, not because its all around you on newspapers, television channels and hoardings. Not because a bunch of the protagonists are being bundled to every city worth its salt, and being treated as if they actually achieved something as important as winning the world cup, for a country, which is starved of more substantial achievements.

And what is so noble about showing a bunch of losers, who play like novices and couldn’t care less for the game, because they were so lost in themselves, actually going on to win the world cup! 'Shaolin Soccer' was more convincing! Iqbal the deaf and dumb boy, who ate, drunk and slept cricket had me clapping when he got his chance in the Indian team. I felt like celebrating when Shankar (Dilip Kumar) pulled a breathless win with his tonga against an imported bus in 'Naya Daur'. And it was so very inspiring to see the ‘never do well’ Sanjay Lal (Aamir Khan) grow up and embrace his responsibilities by way of the central metaphor of the cycle race in 'Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar'. I rooted and cheered for the rag-tag group of gritty villagers to achieve the fantastical goal of winning against the cruel Englishmen in 'Lagaan'. Win they did and what a victory that was!!! Achievements, not big enough, when compared to what team India in Chak De! managed to do, but more convincing and satisfying with a lot more substance. 'Chak De! India' simply had the team somehow winning the games against apparently much better teams because the filmmakers wanted it that way, in the first place,but did not want to take the pain of conceiving it well. So the Chak De! team just sailed past after that first loss!!! No sweat. No grit. Hell! even Rocky Balboa had to lose in the first film!

Coming to the basics. It was a sports film, so the least one could expect were some riveting sequences of the game. No such memories. I just remember Ms. Malvade falling down on her knees in the same irritating manner for umpteen numbers of times, letting the ball into the post and the team, just going on to win every game after one loss from the reigning champs who they ultimately beat. Don’t ask me how. Contrast this with the racing sequences in ‘Naya Daur’ or ‘Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar’. Littered with overwhelming challenges, which the protagonists face and overcome with a grit that’s palpable. They never fail to set the pulses racing and consider the fact that the former was made about 50 years back and the latter more than 15 years.

There were so many characters in the film; so much scope to come up with a rich piece of filmmaking but most of them were just given cursory glances. Think 'Lagaan' and it’s huge cast where everyone came alive and most of them contributed in some way or other. 'Kachra' was much more than his freaky 'firkee' (spinning ball). Quite unlike the tribal girl in 'Chak De!' who was not allowed to go beyond saying ho!!! Or the north easterners who were limited to one scene were they are eve teased and a fight ensues. Bindiya Naik’s character/ Shilpa Shukla's talent was criminally underutilised. And pray on what ground the coach picked up Vidya Malvade as the captain, when he had got better players? Perhaps they didn’t suit his ego. The relationship between Vidya and Shahrukh seems to be just thrust in the script because it serves a sports film cliché. Same goes for the air-headed cricketer sub-plot. Am not against clichés, but the least one could expect from them is to have some logic/ believability and provide resonance to the story. There were clichés galore in Lagaan but they gave the story so much more depth because the writers had worked hard. Even the highly improbable love story of Rachel and Bhuvan in Lagaan was quite touching.

Coming to Lagaan, its been quite a few years since I saw it on its release. But I still fondly remember Bhuvan, Rachel, Kachra, Guran, Bhura, Lakha among others…Its been only a few weeks since I saw Chak De! and I only recognize a couple of the girls who hogged the screen time and because there faces are plastered everywhere. Shahrukh comes to my mind because he is always out there. Contrast his Kabir Khan with Naseer’s character Mohit in Iqbal, both are patent sports films clichés- washed out, disgraced individuals who come back for their dues. Mohit is a darker character than Kabir Khan- he is the reluctant embittered coach, a drunkard and a complete loser. But he grows with the film. On the other hand Kabir Khan is a lifeless card board cut with an air of self importance. He quotes so much about India [IN-DEE-YAAH ;-)] that if he really existed I would have serious doubts on his feelings for the country as well as his sanity.

I am a big fan of Jaideep Sahni; ‘Khosla ka Ghosla’ is a movie which is in my personal list of all time great movies. But Mr. Sahni disappointed me big time with Chak De! He may have his reasons. But at the end of the day Chak De! India is an assembly line product at heart, an example of passionless by-the-numbers filmmaking. And celeberating Chak De! Is celebrating mediocrity.

Thinking KANK Ver 2.0

2007-10-16T21:33:00.000-07:00

[Originally published in Passion for Cinema in a modified form- http://passionforcinema.com/iview-â-kank-ver-20/#comment-43731]

First things. I am not a fan of Karan Johar films. They are entertaining; Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was fun, but not memorable. Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham was strictly ok. However, I vouch for the man’s craft. He delivers. He gives his fans what he promises. It’s probably his mastery over the craft that gets me to the theatre to see his movies and keeps me seated till the end. And I really like his writings on cinema. His articles, the few I have read show an intelligent and aware person and filmmaker.

Branded for his candy floss romances and rose tinted cinema, he did try to come out of his comfort zone by making 'Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna'. Unfortunately, he failed to deliver. I saw the film. It bored me. But at the end of the show I felt sad rather than cheated or angry. I felt as if I had just seen a great opportunity being thrown away. ‘Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna’ could have been a milestone in Hindi cinema. Karan had tried to push the envelope. He had chosen to tell a challenging story with an even more challenging set of characters.

Think about it. Here we have a movie where a principal character is thoroughly unlikable. He bullies his angelic son, is jealous of his loving wife who is also his childhood sweetheart. Then he goes ahead and falls in love with a married woman, pursues her till she gives in. This woman incidentally is a bird of similar feather. She has a handsome, loving, and well to do husband and a caring father in law, in short, a comfortable life. Yet she can’t help cribbing. Because she does not love her husband, not the way wives are supposed to love their husbands. This feeling is like a thorn in her life. And she doesn’t take much time betraying her husband’s love. Karan Johar should be commended for not explaining away and cushioning the negativity of his characters. Shahrukh’s character Dev Saran has an unfortunate back story. He could have been super successful but has been reduced to a being a nobody through no fault of his, this has made him a very bitter man. To make matters worse his wife’s career is going from strength to strength. Which fuels his feelings of inadequacy. Though Karan Johar supplies all this information to his audience, he never tries to justify the rotten behavior of Dev. Ditto for Rani who has known Abhishek from childhood and just got married for the sake of it. They are similar to real life people. Their decisions and motivations cannot be justified by simple cause and effect. A tip of the hat to Rani and Shahrukh for taking up such roles.

These are characters arising out of an intelligent observation of life. Characters which have the potential to give birth to great cinema as well as literature, yet, the movie didn’t work. I don’t want to sound like a know-it-all. But probably it had to do with Karan Johar not going the whole hog. He took a step forward towards a new kind of subject. But was still looking backwards when it came to the storytelling. Perhaps the movie needed a smaller scale. It did not require the typical Karan Johar treatment. It did not require so much color and grandeur. It did not require all the principal characters to dance together. It should have been a more intimate character study. Fewer songs, less of Sexy Sam. Less of those grand sets and on your face Manish Malhotra costumes. All that took the focus away from what could have been a very thought provoking study of relationships. The bleak, cold and gray landscape of New York could have been utilized better to reflect the mindscape of the characters. Unfortunately it was used to make the already good looking stars appear more stunning. This was not the purpose of the story. The grand and beautiful treatment took the attention away from the warts which were what the story was about in the first place. These 'warts' were the unpredicatability of emotions. Their ability to overwhelm us and make us act against our better judgements.

The ending which was heavily criticized was actually quite profound. The lovers get each other but they are broken down. They got what they desired but they have had to pay a heavy price for their choices, their indiscretions. They played with fire and got burnt, along with their innocent partners. Both are weighed down with guilt. Johar does not indulge in moralizing; no one is categorized as right or wrong. Unlike the classic, ‘Arth’, which vilified the cheating husband and the other women. He does not come up with pat solutions either. Its life, some people can make the best of it, some don’t, and most languish in the dark grey space between less misery and more misery. Johar does not make his characters saints or sinners. It’s not an ‘everybody lived happily thereafter’ kind of ending. It’s real. It’s tough.

Karan Johar frequently mentions that he has always been a great fan of Yash Chopra’s ‘Silsila’ & ‘Kabhi Kabhi’. Perhaps therein lies the root of the problem, as ‘Silsila’ and ‘Kabhi Kabhi’ were themselves 'potentially great' films that were crushed beneath the weight of their stars, songs and treatment. But history has been kind to them. Let’s see how posterity will treat Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna.

We need stories like KANK because they address essential issues of our lives. Issues which every other individual is trying to grapple with. In this age of undeserved and pathetic remakes. I would really like to see a KANK Version 2.0 where the story dictates the form and style. And who better to do it than Mr. Karan Johar himself, this time going the whole way. Perhaps we will have an ‘Arth’ or something superior for the present and coming generations.

[Published in Passion for Cinema in a modified form- http://passionforcinema.com/iview-â-kank-ver-20/#comment-43731]