Totally Filmi

The Bright Day (dir. Mohit Takalkar, 2012)

 

“Isn’t it unfortunate that you still don’t know where your heart lies?” says Shiv’s father to him.  Shiv’s parents are worried about him.  At twenty-three he is coddled and a little cocky, and totally aimless.  But Shiv agrees with his father, so it’s perhaps not surprising that he sets off on what turns into a very personal and spiritual journey, a journey that shows the progress of his soul as he tries to figure out what his life means and what it is worth.

It’s a drastic step, and one that has consequences, both for Shiv (Sarang Sathaye), and for the family and friends he leaves behind, who miss him terribly and worry about him.  But like the best of spiritual quests, the things we need are given and revealed only when we are ready for them.  Along the way, Shiv meets people who change his life, who act as guideposts for him, and who are there for him when he reaches the darkest point in his journey.  Shiv wants to become someone, something, and his journey allows him to strip himself of everything he thought was important to him, and finally find a purpose to his life.

 

Mohit Takalkar’s film is probably the most thoughtful and spiritual of all the films I’ve seen this week at TIFF2012. The film’s title refers to a book by Russian writer Andrei Turgenev.  As Shiv’s mother (Shernaz Patel) tells us, it’s the story of a prince who gave up his kingdom, leaving and no one knowing where he went.  “Why should someone give up his world?” she wonders.  “Real life isn’t like that.”  But this story, which she tells Shiv and his brother at bedtime – changing the ending, of course – shows that Shiv’s reality, at least, is like that story, and some princes need to go in search of something different from what they already have.

 

The Bright Day occasionally feels staged, the dialogues occasionally stilted, but there is much is Takalkar’s film that is thoughtful, joyous and charming.  The director has said that the film is about a journey towards lightness, and he’s not wrong.  As I sat in the theatre and watched cinematographer Amol Gole’s crisp, vibrant, and luminous images (the film is shot using DSLR photography, with a short depth of field that draws you right into the frame), listened to the soulful music (Benedict Taylor’s original score draws from local sources for inspiration), I felt the weight of everything just drop from my shoulders.  Shiv’s journey, finally, allows him to find his own note to sing (as the old man he meets on his journey might have it), a note that brings him, and us, joy.

 

Talaash Trailer! With English Subtitles! Woohoo!

I know, I know, who has time to think about this in the middle of TIFF2012?  But!  Talaash!  English subtitles!

 

 

Miss Lovely (dir. Ashim Ashluwalia, 2012)

Documentary filmmaker Ashim Ashluwalia makes his transition to feature films with this story of the two brothers, Sonu (Nawazuddin Sidiqqui) and Vicky (Anil George) who work making lurid and sleezy  (and highly illegal, given the censorship and repression of the times) schlock horror and porn films in 1980s Bombay.  Vicky is the ambitious one of the pair, working out deals with gangsters when he isn’t trying to sidestep their hold on the distribution of his product.  Sonu is the more hapless, almost dimwitted, and decidedly passive brother, who harbours a dream to create something different, a romantic film that he titles “Miss Lovely”.  He feels he’s found his heroine in Pinky (Niharika Singh), a seemingly sweet young woman trying to break into films, but with a shadowy past and a link to Vicky that Sonu discovers far too late.

 

Theirs is a world that is a far cry from the glitz and glamour of Bollywood.  It’s a dirty, gritty world, where, in the words of one of the money-men, PK, “the girls need to be pretty and shameless.”  The casting couch is not only a fact of life, it’s a prerequisite for becoming a heroine.  But it’s also an environment where the quest for fresh flesh means that heroines are tossed aside without a second thought.  It’s hard not to think of Milan Luthria’s 2011 film The Dirty Picture while watching Miss Lovely (though I suspect that Ashluwalia might not be happy at that comparison)– but Luthria’s film is a much tamer work, where competing heroines duke it out in song and dance.  In Miss Lovely, they engage in a knock-down, drag out cat-fight.  Luthria’s film flirted with shamelessness; Ashluwalia’s is unabashedly tawdry and tacky, a true dirty picture at its core.

 

Ashluwalia captures the 80s to perfection, right from the film’s opening with its fabulously retro title card.  The film’s great strength lies in its aesthetics, reminiscent in some ways of the low-budget horror films produced by the Ramsay Brothers.   There is, at times, almost a documentary feel to it all, with Ashluwalia attempting to give us an almost clinical, detailed glance into this shadowy and highly disreputable world.  That’s a strength, but it’s also a weakness, robbing the film of a narrative flow and depth in characterisation that would make it so much more engaging.  Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s Sonu moves listlessly through much of this film, so passive that he never makes much progress on his dream project and finds himself pushed by Vicky into situations that find him taking the rap when the police finally crack down on their productions.  Siddiqui’s Sonu reminds me of his Faizal in Gangs of Wasseypur 2 – both men suffer from an inability to act, but when they do, they do it in a way that is explosive and brutal and almost unexpected.

In the end, Miss Lovely, aesthetically pleasing and unsettling at the same time, remains an uneasy film about an uneasy subject.

 

 

Peddlers (dir. Vasan Bala, 2012)

 

Vasan Bala’s first feature film, Peddlers, follows the lives of three unrelated individuals whose lives gradually intersect:  Mac (Siddharth Menon), a streetwise orphan who deals drugs and does odd jobs; Bilkis (Kriti Malhotra), a young former chemistry teacher with cancer who comes to Mumbai to work as a drug mule, and eventually gets work in the factory where the drugs are manufactured; and a cop, Ranjit,(Gulshan Devaiah) with a reputation as a seducer, but whose impotence drives him to sudden outbursts of rage.  Mac meets and falls for Bilkis, and the two of them begin to develop a tentative relationship.  Their paths eventually cross that of the brutal and violent Ranjit one day when he is following up on a tip that he hopes will lead him to a connection.  He arrives at a gaming parlour to meet his source seconds after Mac has bungled his attempted robbery of it.  The source tells Ranjit that Mac is the person he’s looking for, sending Ranjit and Mac on a chase through the lanes that ends tragically with Ranjit mistakenly shooting a young boy.  Driven by rage, Ranjit begins a hunt for Mac, leading to the film’s spectacular, surprising and brutal ending.

 

Bala’s film is gritty and pessimistic, his characters not losers, exactly, but wholly inadequate and unable to make something of their lives.  Bala is unsentimental in his portrayal of them, and of the environment they live in.  These are the people who live on Mumbai’s fringes, far from the glamour of the vibrant metropolis.  You can see the influence of director Anurag Kashyap (with whom Bala worked on films such as Gulaal and Dev D, and who is one of the producers of Peddlers) – there is a similar dark humour, for example, and an ironic referencing of Bollywood – Ranjit’s neighbour, for example, is a lawyer who claims to have started out as a background dancer in Bollywood.  But the music in Bala’s film is edgier, the camera work more agitated.  Bala’s style is grittier, his characters more disaffected – on the whole he creates an environment that is unrelentingly dark and depressing.  Peddlers is an uneasy watch, with an explosive climax that is worth the occasionally meandering paths that Bala leads us down.

 

 

 

English Vinglish (dir. Gauri Shinde, 2012)

 Note:  this is my personal blog, these are my views.  If you don't want to know anything about English Vinglish before the film comes out, then I suggest you don't read any further, and just wait for the film to come out.  Also, don't watch the trailer.  Almost everything I say here is in the trailer, so if knowing even that much upsets you, don't watch it.

 

 

Early morning.  A family chats around the breakfast table.  The conversation touches on the typical day-to-day stuff familiar to any family, but as the scene unfolds, we notice one difference:  much of the conversation happens in English, with the exception of one person:  Shashi (Sridevi, in a much anticipated comeback after 15 years away from making films).  As we soon come to realize, Shashi’s difficulties with the English language, her inability to speak or understand more than just a little of it, mean that she often finds herself feeling insecure, either with her family (who find her efforts at English amusing), or in public.  Shashi’s teen-aged daughter is especially judgemental, and cruel in a way that only teen-aged daughters can be with their mothers.  The one thing Shashi’s family completely overlooks is that her lack of English does not make her completely incapable.   She is a passionate, talented cook, who runs a very successful home-based ladoo making business.

When the family is invited to the marriage of Shashi’s niece in New York, the plan is to send Shashi ahead, five weeks early, so she can help her sister with the wedding plans.  Shashi, understandably, doesn’t want to go alone – she has enough difficulty navigating something as simple as a parent-teacher conference; the thought of having to fly to New York, with her limited English, and having never travelled anywhere on her own unnerves her – but her husband (Adil Hussein) insists that he will bring their two children later, and the process of preparing her to make this first solo journey begins.

So Shashi memorizes enough English to help her get through US immigration, exchanges some of the money she earns with her ladoo business for American dollars, and boards a plane to New York.  Her nervousness is palpable, but fortunately she is helped on her way by a lovely stranger (Amitabh Bachchan in a cameo), who shows her the ropes of air travel (“You may confidently push the button,” he tells her so she can call to request a glass of water), and who, in one of the film’s many touching moments, translates an English film for her when a dejected Shashi finds the plane has 50 English channels to watch, but only one Hindi one, showing a film she has already seen on television.

 

The New York Shashi is introduced to by her niece is a wonderful whirlwind of a place, and Shashi’s delight at all this newness is palpable.  But when Shashi is left on her own, she soon finds New York a bewildering and difficult place to be in.  Even something as simple as ordering a sandwich and a coffee turns into a disaster.

And although she initially sits on a bench and weeps, the resourceful Shashi soon finds herself taking things into her own hands to turn all of this around.  She sees an ad for English language tuition on the side of a bus, decides to sign herself up, and in this way, the transformation of Shashi from insecure housewife to confident and self-assured woman begins.

 

Gauri Shinde’s film is, at its core, about the delicate and occasionally difficult dance that goes on in relationships – between husband and wife, mother and children, between a woman yearning for respect and working to get it from those who owe it to her, but rarely show it.  It’s a deftly written film, funny and tender by turns, and perfectly captures the difficulty facing those for whom language is a barrier to acceptance and success.  The film fumbles occasionally:  the disrespect shown by Shashi’s daughter and husband is, at times, a wee bit heavy-handed.  And Shashi’s fellow classmates, including a Latina nanny, a South Indian working in IT, the French chef, Laurent (who befriends and falls in love with Shashi); and their gay teacher, David (Cory Hibbs), risk, at times, seeming like stereotypes – in fact, in the case of David the only reason, really, for him to be gay is for Shashi to deliver a delicate and wonderful message about tolerance.  It’s an important moment, and especially revelatory about Shashi’s own values, but perhaps that’s a message that could have been delivered differently (although it should be noted that there’s one other gay character in Shinde’s film who is a complete contrast to the occasionally flamboyant David).  That said, though, these characters are a representative slice of New York, and Shinde makes them human and likeable, especially David, who enthusiastically motivates and encourages his students to learn.  When Shashi tells David that she has a little business making ladoos, he tells her she is an “entrepreneur”, a concept that makes her beam with pride and pleasure.

 

But English Vinglish more than makes up for its occasional missteps by having its heart squarely in the right place.  Amit Trivedi’s songs – so fresh and playful – add an extra emotional layer to the film.  And in creating the character of Shashi, Shinde allows Sridevi to return in a mature and sensitive role that places her acting abilities front and centre. 

 

 

And what a performance the luminous Sridevi delivers!  She delights and charms us from beginning to end, allowing us to share Shashi’s worries, her insecurities, her sorrows, and her triumph.  We see her absolute pleasure and passion for her business, as she delicately and almost tenderly rolls each ladoo.  We feel her anguish and frustration when, once again on the receiving end of her daughter’s scorn, she wonders how she ended up a trash can, dumped in whenever her family feels like it.  But this is contrasted with the absolutely delightful relationship she shares with her adorable young son, one of the charming high points of the film.  We share her strength and her triumph as she finally masters the English language well enough to make a speech at her niece’s wedding, and as she finally, quietly, demands the respect her family owes her, and ultimately gives her.  Every first experience is special, the film tells us; and Sridevi makes Gauri Shinde's first feature, English Vinglish special, indeed.

 

 

Gangs of Wasseypur (Part 2, with some reference to Part 1, dir. Anurag Kashyap, 2012)

Part 1 of director Anurag Kashyap’s sprawling family saga of power and revenge did two very important things:  it introduced the character of Faizal Khan (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), and it left me with a definite appetite to see Part 2.  I had the chance to do just that a screening held in advance of the presentation of both parts at TIFF 2012.

Part 2 begins where Part 1 left off, with the death of Sardar Khan (Manoj Bajpai).  Part 2 sees his eldest son, Danish (Vineet Kumar), begin to take over the reins, and exact punishment for his father’s assassination, but he soon is taken down by Sultan Qureshi (Pankaj Tripathi).  Thus it falls to the perpetually stoned Faizal to step up and exact revenge – a role that no one, not even his mother Nagma (“Look at your eyes, dead with drugs,” she tells him), feels he is fit for.

 

And it’s true – the days pass, and Faizal seems incapable of action.  But when he does finally swing into action, he does so in a spectacular and brutal fashion, proving himself to be more cold-blooded and brutal than any of his brothers – no mean feat that, because all of Sardar Khan’s sons – including Perpendicular (Aditya Kumar) and Definite (Zeishan Quadri -- who impressed me as much as Nawazzudin Siddiqui did) – are cold and ruthless.

Two of the three screenings of Gangs of Wasseypur at TIFF2012 will allow viewers to watch Parts 1 and 2 back to back (with a short break in between screenings), and although seeing them this way is the film lover’s equivalent of running a marathon, it does, I think, give you a sense of the shape and scope of Kashyap’s vision.  Part 1 lays out the groundwork, peppering us with dates and events, layering the history of these families over the history of the region, even the country they live in.  In Part 2, the focus is laid squarely on the sons of Sardar Khan and their opponents, and as the film progresses, the bullets fly more frequently and furiously, and the body count rises almost alarmingly.  The film is not for the faint of heart – and yet, as bloody and violent as it is, everything is filmed almost artfully and poetically – dust flies, water pours from a pail shot out by police, gunshots ring and shell cases clatter to the floor.

It would be too easy to see Gangs of Wasseypur as an exercise in self-indulgence by one of India’s most uncompromising filmmakers – yes it is long, and yes, it frequently requires much patience on the part of the audience (more so in Part 1 than in Part 2, for me at least).  But Kashyap’s vision also reveals that he is unparalleled technically, and that he is able to reference the films and filmmakers who inspire him and yet create something that is totally his own.  His trademark dark humour is more in evidence in Part 2, providing a welcome counterpoint to the ever increasing violence.  Kashyap is easily unrivalled in how he makes use of music in his films, whether it’s the old Bollywood songs that are sung at funerals or weddings, or that chirp out as ringtones for cell phones, or whether it’s in the use of original songs such as the ones Sneha Khanwalker created for the films.  The romance of Mohsina (Huma Qureshi) and Faizal (easily one of the highlights of Part 2) takes place to the strains of “My lover has a dark heart” – so true in the case of the cold-blooded Faizal.  And Faizal’s signature song with its refrain of “Whatever’s wrong, set it right,” neatly highlights Faizal’s motivating force.  And finally, “Why are you trying to hold water in your palms, fool – its nature is to slip away” played as Faizal finally avenges his father’s death by killing Ramadhir Singh (Tigmanshu Dhulia) only serves to underline the futility of this seemingly never-ending cycle of violence and revenge.

 

Because the business of Wasseypur is not coal, it’s not cloth, it’s not iron – the business of Wasseypur is revenge, a cycle of violence handed down from father to son like a beloved family tradition.  Sardar Khan chose his two wives, Nagma (Richa Chadda) and Durga (Reema Sen) well – they both raise their sons, in the words of Durga, “to be killers, not cowards.”  That the films present us with a whirlwind of characters is, I think, intentional – it’s an almost bewildering and never-ending cycle, further underlined in Part 2’s final frames, when only one of Sardar Khan’s sons is left standing, and we see the son of Faizal Khan, who we can only assume will be groomed to take up the torch to exact revenge for his own father.

Gangs of Wasseypur also stands as a testament to how far things have come in Hindi cinema since Anurag Kashyap first started kicking at the edges of it.  His first film Paanch (unreleased because it was refused a certificate for what was felt to be excessive use of drugs and a glorifying of violence) now seems almost tame in comparison, especially as we watch Faizal toke and kill his way through Part 2.  Kashyap’s tireless and uncompromising attempts to push at the boundaries of what is acceptable in commercial Hindi cinema may come across at times as single-minded and self-indulgent, but when the result is Gangs of Wasseypur (even with its flaws), and the rise of a whole new generation of filmmakers who are able to share their own uncompromising visions, then I’m prepared to indulge Anurag Kashyap, and to look forward to where he will go now that he has Gangs of Wasseypur out of his system.

Shanghai (dir. Dibakar Banerjee, 2012)

 

“He didn’t understand how it had happened.  Undoubtedly he never would.  These moments are like shooting stars.  They pass before us, leaving only a luminous trail impossible to decipher.  Where do they come from?  What do they plunge toward?”

From the novel Z by Vassilis Vassilikos

 

A controversial political activist fighting the displacement of people in the face of a development project is mowed down as he leaves a rally.  When his wife calls into question the nature of the “accident”, the Chief Minister sets up an enquiry, headed by a rising bureaucrat who is expected to confirm the official reports and get things settled quickly.  When he begins to investigate, and when he is provided with evidence by Shalini (one of the leader’s followers) and Joginder Parmar (a videographer and part-time pornographer) he discovers that things are not what they seem, that the “accident” was, in fact, a premeditated attack on the leader with the collusion of the police and the powers that be.

The “Shanghai” of the film’s title stands as a metaphor for a kind of modern progress, where skyscrapers and housing developments are the new gods, and where India jostles with China to see who will come first in the race of emerging world powers.  As with anything new and shiny and powerful, it comes with a price, where political corruption and slippery morality displace other values; where people can be removed from their homes and relocated simply because it serves the purpose of those with more money; where murder becomes the way to deal with those who inconveniently shine a light on problems.

Most of Shanghai's characters are outsiders:  the bureaucrat Krishnan (Abhay Deol) is a Tamil working in the North of India.  Dr. Ahmedi (Prosenjit Chatterjee) is a social and political activist who lectures in the United States; Shalini (Kalki Koechlin) is marked as a foreigner; Joginder (Emraan Hashmi) is a pornographer; even the two murderers, the truck driver Jaggu (Anant Jog) and Bhagu (Pitobash) sit at the fringes of a movement that they hope will help them (Jaggu wants to pay off his truck, Bhagu wants to learn English so he can rise to put on a tie an manage a pizza place), but which is only too willing to toss them aside when they’re no longer useful.  All of them find themselves confronted with a system that is rife with corruption and that is only too willing to play with their lives.

The novel Z by Vassilis Vassilikos (on which Shanghai is based) is sweeping and clinical, almost a documentary account filled with a vast cast of characters.  It’s as if the author needed to document a version of events occurring in Greece at the time he was writing, to make sure these stories were told, and not covered up in the face of massive political corruption.  There’s frequently a sense of bewilderment on the part of many of the characters, as events almost seem to be beyond their comprehension.  The author seems to be bearing witness to events that seem almost overwhelming.
And it’s that sensation I get at times from Banerjee’s film – and the film stands in sharp contrast to the director’s previous work (the films Khosla Ka Ghosla, Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye! and Love Sex aur Dhoka), where humour and satire worked to provide social commentary in a way that was thought-provoking and often surprising.  Shanghai is darker, more intense.  It doesn’t seem to have any easy answers; nor does it seem to be a direct call to arms, and its ending makes me wonder if Banerjee himself is simply documenting a system that never seems to change, if his intention is in simply lifting up a rock and letting us see what’s squirming there when the light shines on it.

 

What hasn’t changed is Banerjee’s remarkable attention to detail.  Characters slip on a freshly mopped floor, symbolizing the shaky ground they find themselves on.  A basketball bounces in the inquiry room, suggesting that what is going on is more of a game than anyone realizes.  I particularly love the quirky little details that help us learn more about Abhay Deol’s Krishnan – his striped socks, the tie he carries but only puts on at the last minute, both perhaps suggesting his willingness to break with convention.  The computerized puja he performs, marking him as modern and yet sincere and devoted at the same time. 

 

 

Other characters, too, make an impression.  Kalki Koechlin’s Shalini is too tightly wound and too high-pitched for my taste, but the film occasionally uses that to great effect, for example, when she bites the hand of one of the men trying to attack her and Joginder.  In contrast, there is Tillotama Shome as Dr. Ahmedi’s wife, weeping for him on the one hand, and yet brutally aware both of his dalliances with other women (including Shalini), and the politics that separate her from her husband.  Bengali actor Prosenjit Chatterjee is an inspired choice as Dr. Ahmedi – the role is small, and needed someone to make an immediate impact, and Chatterjee brings the full force of his charisma to the role. As much as I hated Pitobash’s Bhagu and his willingness to gleefully embrace violence and to almost blindly follow party orders, I could sympathize with his desire to make something of himself.  And I have to state:  this is the first time I have ever enjoyed Emraan Hashmi in a film – he manages to make a character as morally slippery and almost pathetic as Joginder into someone noble enough to get involved to try to make sure the information he has gets into the right hands.

 

There are heartbreaking moments in the film too, such as when Jaggu, having been beaten by an angry Shalini after she discovers he was the one driving the truck that hit Ahmedi, notes dejectedly that he knows he is nothing to her, but equally, she and the supporters of the doctor are nothing to him.  This statement more than anything underlies the futility of everything they are doing, no matter which side they are on.  An observation by the young journalist in Vassilis Vassilikos’ novel applies equally to Banerjee’s film:  “There is something shattering about all these people who’ve somehow got mixed up in this sinister affair.”

 

 

 

Ishaqzaade (dir. Habib Faisal, 2012)

 

Ishaqzaade (“Love Rebels”, rechristened “Born to Hate, Destined to Love” for TIFF2012) tells the story of Zoya (Parineeti Chopra) and Parma (Arjun Kapoor), and is set against the backdrop of the political wrangling that divides their two families. 

“Here comes Ms. Earthquake,” says Zoya’s father of her when she arrives home after using her gold earrings to buy herself a gun.  If that surprises us, we soon realize it shouldn’t – Zoya lives in a place divided by religion (her family is Muslim, Parma’s is Hindu) and, more importantly, by politics, with the two clans, the Qureshis and the Chauhans, vying to win elections.  This is an incredibly testosterone driven world, with Zoya trying to match the machismo with her spunk and spitfire and carve out a place for herself that is equal to that of the male members of her family. 

At first it would seem that she has nothing in common with Parma Chauhan – who is a cad of the first order, rude, boorish, loutish and thuggish.  Whereas the educated Zoya works to help her father be re-elected, Parma has a lot of half-baked, ill-thought out, ill-considered plans.  What they have in common, we come to realize, is that neither of them is truly taken seriously by their respective families.  The male members of Zoya’s family laugh at her when she talks about becoming an MLA like her father.  Parma’s grandfather constantly tells him he’s a good-for-nothing who can do nothing right.  It’s this sense of being outsiders, I think, that finally draws the two of them together.

 

Zoya’s life (and Parma’s too) is changed by one small action she takes – when Parma points a gun at her, she decides that the retribution she must dish out is to be the first to slap him.  It’s that slap that changes the course of both their lives.

It is incredibly difficult to write about Ishaqzaade without giving away the main plot twist (that happens just before the interval).  Let me just say that the relationship that appears to be blossoming between Zoya and Parma is not what it seems, and results in the betrayal of Zoya by Parma in a way that is both unexpected and shocking.  And it changes both their lives in a way that Parma could never have predicted when he came up with the idea to try to seduce and marry Zoya – another of his half-baked plans that almost looks set to succeed (and which finally gains him the respect of his grandfather), but for his mother’s deathbed insistence that he must make amends for what he has done to Zoya, and because, unexpectedly, he actually falls in love with Zoya (and she with him).  This finds them not only at odds with both their families, but on the run as both families set out to deal with them in the only way they know how – violently.

I hadn’t expected that Ishaqzaade would turn out to be a film about honour killing.  In fact, the film is a whole series of “unexpecteds” for me:  unexpected from director Habib Faisal (he of one of my most recent favorites, Do Dooni Chaar, about a middle class family trying to make ends meet, and dialogue writer of the delightful and light-hearted Band Baaja Baaraat); unexpected from Yash Raj Films, from whom I expect frothy entertainers;  unexpectedly gritty and violent – in fact, Ishaqzaade makes an interesting counterpoint to Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur (also screening at TIFF2012), exploring a similar kind of lawless, almost frontier environment (though I’d argue that Kashyap’s films do a much better job of capturing the flavour of that environment). 

Totally unexpected, too, is the film as the launching pad for newcomer Arjun Kapoor.  Parma is no hero --- and although the film sets out to redeem him, he still spends most of it as something of a villain – incredibly unlikeable, and with a sneaky smile that almost makes him repulsive.  This is not a man with whom anyone falls in love, and I have to admire the risk that takes in an industry obsessed with the perfection of the leading man.  Parma’s betrayal of Zoya is both heartbreaking and cruel, and it’s almost distressing to think that the one scheme he has that redeems him in the eyes of his grandfather is also the one with the potential to destroy the feisty Zoya. 

Where Ishaqzaade falls down, for me at least, is in the romanticizing of the relationship between Zoya and Parma – and here’s where the Yash Raj connection shows, trying to convince us that it’s in Zoya’s best interest to reform the man who betrayed her, and that he will be a better man for it in the end.  The film allows Parma to redeem himself in fulfilling his mother’s dying wish that he make amends, but this comes at the expense of Zoya, who is left with limited options as to how she can retain any control in her life.  And as much as Parma might change, even truly falling in love with Zoya, still we can’t forget that his roots are in the misogynistic setting the film presents us with.

There are, of course, better films dealing with the subject of honour killings – for example Love Sex aur Dhoka, from Dibakar Banerjee (whose Shanghai is screening at TIFF2012) lands a sucker punch on the subject, using humour as a counterpoint to almost lull us into complacency, and then shock us by delivering the unexpected.  It’s an uncompromising film, but so is Ishaqzaade in some respects, and that is a strength.  Also interesting are the women to be found in this extremely macho setting – Parma’s mother succeeds in stopping Zoya when she makes her way into the Chauhan family compound, and she exacts a promise from Parma that he will make amends, something no other (male) member of his family would do.  There’s also the prostitute Chand Bibi (the wonderful Gauhar Khan), who takes a risk to help the pair out – even though she herself loves Parma.  And there’s Zoya herself, played magnificently by actress Parineeti Chopra, who, in the course of two films, has proved herself a force to be reckoned with in Bollywood.  In the end, though, they are all caught in this cycle of violence with no way out of it, and the shooting of Parma’s mother shows just how expendable and worthless they are to the men in this society.

 

Some have argued that the film is regressive.  The problem with Ishaqzaade is not so much that it is regressive; it is that it dares to promise something more – to give us a heroine who is powerful and who goes after what she wants with no concessions – and then snatches it back by reverting to typical filmi form.  Love makes Zoya vulnerable, and it’s that vulnerability that Parma exploits, to great effect in the film.  But it also dilutes her strength, her passion, and her power as a character.  The film does redeem itself somewhat in the end, thankfully, when Zoya makes a decision that allows her to take control over this misogynistic cycle of violence and repression she finds herself caught up in.  But the one option that is left open to her to retain that control, over how she will live, and how she will die, well, that one option just left me absolutely heartbroken.  And perhaps, in the end, that was Habib Faisal’s intention all along.

 

Prithviraj: an introduction through song

Not surprisingly, my Twitter timeline was a-buzz this morning with the release of the trailer for Aiyyaa, which stars Rani Mukherjee alongside Mollywood star Prithviraj (playing a Tamil in the film).

And also not surprisingly, searches for "Prithviraj" have been leading people to my blog.  So I thought I'd start by putting together some songs from some of his films.  These are from Malayalam films only, no Tamil ones this time (which will explain the absence of Raavanan as well as the other Tamil films he's been in).

First, from his debut film Nandanam, the lovely song "Aarum".  I will admit, I adore this film, but I adore it more for the delightful Navya Nair, as well as a small appearance by Aravindar, than I do for Prithviraj, mostly because Prithvi's character, Manu, spends a lot of the film being mopey.  This song, though, is totally sigh-worthy:

 

 

 

Next "Kathirunna Pennalle" from Lal Jose's film Classmates, another film that is a favorite at Casa Totally filmi:

 

 

 

 

I almost hestitate to add a song from Pokkiri Raja, but it's a good example of Prithviraj in his "Young Superstar" mode.  The film's USP, of course, was that it paired the "Young Superstar" with the "Megastar" of Malayalam movies, Mammootty.  The result was, for me, a bit of a romp.  I'm going to avoid the trashy club song "Chenthengil Ponnilaneeru", which is totally cringeworthy, and "Kettile Kettile" (which I rather like), to share my favourite song from the film, "Manickya Kallil", which introduces us to Prithviraj's character, and which also features a special appearance by another fave, the lovely Shweta Menon. It's the perfect example of the kind of "Southern Masala" the film Aiyyaa is referring to, no?

 

 

 

I would also be remiss if I didn't include something from the film Anwar, an excellent film about terrorist recruitment.  "Kizhakku Pookkum" is a gorgeous song that has become one of my faves:

 

 

 

 

Okay, admittedly, the song is mostly about Mamta Mohandas and Nitya Menon, so I'll also share another song from Anwar, "Kanninima Neele":

 

 

 

Finally, from the breathtakingly beautiful Santosh Sivan film Urumi, there is the breathtakingly beautiful "Aaro Nee Aaro":

 

 

 

 

Aiyyaa!

When Anurag Kashyap's That Girl With Yellow Boots showed at TIFF2010, someone asked him in the Q&A that was held afterwards if he'd ever thought about making a mainstream Bollywood film -- Kashyap's response was something along the lines that if he tried, it would be something totally crazy.

After watching this long anticipated trailer, I think we have the answer to a related question:  if Kashyap produced a Bollywood film, what would it look like? Director Sachin Kunkalkar's  Aiyyaa:

 

 

I want to see this film so badly I could almost cry.  Lucky, lucky London folks who will get to see this at the BFI London Film Festival.  I would pretty much place money on the fact that we're not likely to see this in cinemas here.

Satyam-Shivam-Sunderam: the thematic underpinning of Ship of Theseus

 

In my review of Anand Gandhi's Ship of Theseus, I mentioned that one of the things that would be very helpful in making the film more accessible for the audience would be a clearer expression of the thematic structure underpinning the film and its three stories.

Today I was reading an interview with Gandhi over at the Film Army blog which nicely dovetailed with the release of three new trailers for the film.  Gandhi said that "(t)he three short stories evolved to fill in the three corners of the classical Indian trinity of Satyam-Shivam-Sunderam (The pursuit of truth, the pursuit of righteousness and the pursuit of beauty). So in that sense, the stories were reverse engineered of sort from the end, the big story."

And that was when the lightbulb truly went off for me.  Here, see how this plays out with the three new trailers.

The first story is that of Aliya, the blind photographer who regains her sight, and it illustrates the concept of the pursuit of beauty:

 

 

 

Second, the story of Maitreya, the monk suffering from cirhossis of the liver, who represents the pursuit of rightiousness:

 

 

 

 

And finally, the story of Nivan, who has recently undergone a kidney transplant, which leads him to engage in the pursuit of truth:

 

 

Ship of Theseus (dir. Anand Gandhi, 2012)

 

Ship of Theseus is the first feature film from director Anand Gandhi, and, as its title suggests, it explores the philosophical concept of the paradox of Theseus.  As described by the Greek philosopher Plutarch, the paradox is this:  if an object has any or all of its parts replaced, does it remain the same object?

The film, then, traces the stories of three individuals, all of whom are affected by this conundrum.  Each of them must deal with the change that is wrought in their lives and in themselves either after an organ transplant (in the case of the photographer Aliya and the stockbroker Nivan), or before it (the monk Maitreya).

Aliya (Aida Elkashef) is blind as a result of a corneal infection.  Despite this, she works as a photographer, relying on her intuition to fuel her creative output.  In addition, she has developed a way of working with her boyfriend – he describes the images she has taken in detail, and she decides, based on what she feels about the experience of taking the image combined with his description, on whether she will accept or reject an image.  Images the two of them disagree on get put in something they call a “memory box”, perhaps to be reconsidered another time. 

Aliya’s world and her sense of herself as an artist are both changed and called into question dramatically when she undergoes a corneal transplant.  When we first see Aliya, she is blind, but incredibly confident, forging into situations without a second thought, making decisions about her art and standing by them.  Interviewed during a showing of her work, she reveals the connection she feels with novelist Patrick Süskind’s perfumer – just as he tried to isolate and preserve all the scents in the world, so Aliya wants to isolate and preserve something of her experience and existence through her work.  

Süskind’s novel is a story of identity and communication, and Aliya’s sense of identity, and her means of communicating meaning and expressing herself through her photography is called into question after she regains her sight.  Aliya is more bewildered by her physical surroundings – she seems to lose some instinctive, intuitive part of herself.  The irony, of course, is that Aliya can see, and yet, she can no longer see.  Aliya must find new ways of working.  Even as she experiences the joy of finally seeing her own photographs, she must confront the new insecurity she feels, and her inability to work and create as she has previously. 

 

 

Nivan (Sohum Shah) is a young stockbroker who has undergone a kidney transplant.  While caring for his grandmother when she finds herself in hospital after a fall, he learns of the case of a patient who has had his kidney stolen (after going in for an appendectomy).  Nivan’s initial worry, of course, is that he has been the recipient of the stolen kidney.  His research assures him that he has not, but he begins a quest to discover what happened to the kidney, which leads him to confront the existence of illegal organ transplant tourism, and the slippery morality that comes with it.  The Swedish man who received the kidney argues that if the owner was willing to sell, then why shouldn’t he buy it?  The man himself, so bereft at the loss of his kidney, is mollified when offered a considerable sum of money for it in the end.  Nivan questions whether his actions have made any difference at all – and is reassured by his grandmother, who tells him it is always better to try than to remain indifferent.  Nivan’s life, his priorities, his morality – even his relationship with his grandmother (an educated woman surrounded by activists, who disapproved of her grandson’s views on life) is transformed after his own transplant and how it calls him to question his life.

Both of these stories bookend what is perhaps the most compelling of Gandhi’s three stories – that of the monk Maitreya (Neeraj Kabi).  Maitreya is an animal activist, participating in a trial which aims to see the ending of animal testing in India.  When Maitreya finds himself seriously ill, with cirrhosis of the liver, he is told not to worry, there are medications he can take, and he may undergo a transplant.

Maitreya’s first thought, though, is to check his medications on a list of those banned for use because they are produced by companies actively involved in animal testing, and when he finds them there, he refuses treatment.  He becomes progressively more ill, more frail – and the film pulls no punches here, showing us his skeletal frame (the actor lost an incredible amount of weight over the course of the shoot), the bedsores that stick to his sheet – but more importantly, it peels back the ethical and philosophical layers he finds himself confronted with. 

Maitreya’s character is nicely balanced against that of the young lawyer he works with on the animal testing case.  The aptly named Charvaka (after the branch of Indian philosophy that embraces philosophical skepticism) constantly calls Maitreya’s beliefs into question, particularly as the monk comes closer and closer to death.  Maitreya’s central belief is one of non-violence (and he is also aptly named, “Maitreya” meaning “loving-kindness”), but Charvaka (Vinay Shukla) wonders about the violence one commits on one’s self by refusing to take medication, and whether sacrificing one’s life for a cause is a huge expectation to place on someone.  It’s an expectation that Maitreya seems to set for himself, until he eventually decides his cause would be better served by having him be alive to fight it.

 

 

TIFF’s Artistic Director Cameron Bailey has described Ship of Theseus as one of this year’s hidden gems, and it’s not hard to see why.  Pankaj Kumar’s cinematography is breathtaking and beautiful.  The sound (Gabor Erdelyi and Tamas Szekely) is lush.  All the performances are terrific, but the renowned stage actor Neeraj Kabi brings an intelligence and grace to his role that makes his portrayal of the monk particularly troubling and moving.

Ship of Theseus is one of those rare things:  an elegant film that demands that its audience be engaged at every moment.  It’s an incredibly ambitious film, and if it falters at all, it’s because it, perhaps, asks a little too much of its viewers.  Having seen Gandhi’s previous two short films – especially Continuum (co-directed with Khushboo Ranka), with which Ship of Theseus shares much, including a thematic structure and finale – I knew that somehow he would tie the three stories together in a way that was surprising and satisfying.  I wasn’t disappointed – but I did wonder what the film was like for those sailing rudderless, not sure where the Ship of Theseus was really taking them.  The journey is worthwhile, but some judicious editing and a better sense of continuity (Continuum, for example, used title cards to express which concept we were seeing played out in each of the stories) would make this film the truly magical, mystical voyage it is meant to be.