Totally Filmi

Delhi Safari (dir. Nikhil Advani, 2012)

In director Nikhil Advani’s latest film, Delhi Safari (his foray into animation), a group of wild animals find themselves under threat from a housing development that begins destroying their jungle habitat.  When the leopard Sultan is shot trying to protect his cub, Yuvi, the animals decide to leave and find a new place to live.  But Yuvi has other plans.  He convinces Bagga (a bear) and Bajrangi (a monkey) to help him kidnap Alex, a parakeet living in comfort in the home of his owner (a Bollywood director).  Alex, it seems, is the one animal who has the ability to communicate with humans.  Together with Yuvi’s mother, Begum, they set out to convince the Indian government in Delhi to help them.  Along the way, they meet with adventure and adversity, before finally arriving to make their case.

 

It’s not hard to understand why the Hindi language version of Delhi Safari was reasonably well-reviewed by many in the Indian press – the film’s animation shows the great progress happening in the Indian industry, and the performances of the film’s star cast (including Govinda, Boman Irani, Akshaye Khanna, Urmila Matondkar, Prem Chopra, and Suniel Shetty) leant the film weight and charm. 

Delhi Safari was, however, declared an unmitigated disaster by Box Office India.  For whatever reason, the film didn’t connect with the ticket-buying audience.  Described as India’s first 3D animation (I’ve only seen 2D versions), the film was completed at least a year ago, and didn’t benefit from improvements in technology that have happened in the meantime.  The world has grown very small, and audiences almost everywhere have access to the best and the latest, and Delhi Safari would need more than just its animation to draw in the crowds.  Certainly, that cast is a plus – but the story, with its strong ecological message about what happens when humans do not live in harmony and balance with nature, and it’s decidedly abrupt ending– is one that’s been done before. 

Nikhil Advani hasn’t had a hit film since his debut outing, Kal Ho Naa Ho, but I’ve quite liked a couple of his films --particularly Salaam-e-Ishq, and, surprisingly, Patiala House.  And this is where I confess:  I actually love the Hindi version of Delhi Safari.  For me, the trio of Govinda as Bajrangi, Boman Irani as Bagga, and Akshaye Khanna as Alex, worked brilliantly.  More than that, I adored all the little Bollywood references – since Alex the parrot lives with a Bollywood director, it’s no surprise that when we are first introduced to him, we see him singing and dancing in front of the television as Kishore Kumar sings  "Main Tera Tota" ("Here I Am") from the film Paap Ki Duniya.  When Alex finally gets to make his speech to the media, he starts with a song.  In the Hindi version, he riffs on "Kajra Re" from Bunty Aur Babli (you can still hear remnants of that in the English language version’s background score), and then follows it up with an Ajay Devgan-style Halla Bol (Raise Your Voice) speech.  These nods to Bollywood are a delightful surprise for fans, and ensure that the film, as good animation should, works on levels that appeal to both children and their parents.

All of this, though, makes it very difficult for me to look objectively at the English language version of the film that releases in the United States on December 7th, with voices provided by Tom Kenny, Jason Alexander, Cary Elwes, Christopher Lloyd, Jane Lynch, Vanessa Williams and Brad Garrett.  The problems that existed for the Hindi language version remain – the animation that is solid, but slightly dated by North American standards, the message that has been heard in other films, the echoes of films like The Lion King and The Jungle Book (the Bear in the English language version sounds too close to that of Balloo for my taste).  All this adds up to a film that feels a little bit of “been there, done that” for an audience.  The English language lyrics to the songs don’t seem to resonate as much as the Hindi versions (though one of the songs, “Jungle Mein Mangal” is retained in its original form in the credits of the English language release), but their music, composed by the veteran team of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, reflects their ability to successfully fuse western stylings with Indian sound and sensibility to create something fresh and listenable. 

That said, however, the messages found in Delhi Safari (the importance of friendship, looking after others, the need to find your courage and make a stand, the need to solve problems through discussion instead of violence, and the need for humanity and nature to live in harmony) are never presented in a way that is preachy or pedantic.  The film manages to hit most of the right emotional notes, by turns funny, charming, mildly frightening and often heartwarming, and Mr. Totally Filmi and I found ourselves chuckling and awww-ing in all the right places.  Delhi Safari could offer a little welcome warmth as we head into the holiday season, and could very well appeal to families already interested in ecology, and open to exploring the film’s Indian setting.

 

 

Barfi! Trailer

So,  the official trailer for Anurag Basu's Barfi! is out:

 

 

And I have to say, it gave me such a hit of "inspired by Jean-Pierre Jeunet":

 

 

 

From the quirky charm, the almost retro-but-timeless quality,  Yann Tiersen's score, the cinematography (especially the reds and greens so associated with Jeunet's films), to the seemingly effortless quality about it all.

And I totally mean that in a good way -- as if Basu and his team were able to take a film inspiration and turn it into something of their own.  And not only that -- something that I am suddenly very keen to see.

The Barfi! trailer has had me break my "see the trailer once, or more only if it turns up in a cinema" rule.  I've watched it four times now, because each time it left me with a question I wanted to go back and see if I could answer, partly about whether I was really feeling the Jeunet connection (I don't think I'm wrong here), partly wanting to see little things I thought I'd missed the previous time I watched it.

I can't remember the last time a trailer appealed to me so much, or made me want to see the film as much as I do this one.  I only hope the Barfi! promotions won't wear out their welcome or ruin my desire to see the film in September.

Patang: a conversation with Prashant Bhargava

I had the great fortune to be offered an opportunity to speak with director Prashant Bhargava about his wonderful film, Patang (which I also had the chance to review).  Prashant was most generous with his time, and the result was this delightful conversation.  My side is bolded; Prashant's answers follow.

 

How does a guy from the south side of Chicago decide to make a film set against this backdrop of the kite festival in Ahmedabad? 

When I was a kid, I used to go to India a lot, and I saw my uncles flying kites on the rooftops...and that was in Utter Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.  And everybody around them, whether they were rich or poor, Hindu or Muslim, stared up at the sky with such wonder, and they forgot about all their tensions.  I thought that kite flying in a simple way is a meditation that transcends boundaries, and so when I mentioned it to a cousin of mine, he said you must go – so, it’s eight years now, eight years ago I went there, and when I saw the kite festival, a million kites in the sky, and how vital this celebration was for the vitality and reach of a nation of the whole city, I knew I had to make the film.

Ahmedabad is a place that’s gone through a tremendous amount of religious violence in the past, as well as natural disasters, so this particular festival, known as “the day the wind direction changes”, it’s called Uttarayan -- Makar Sakranti across the rest of India – it’s just something that everybody who’s been on both sides of the conflict or every age group, every gender, everybody’s just up there and it’s a really healing experience, which is the theme of the film.

 

That came across for me as a viewer, too.  I felt very moved by the intensity of the celebration, and by the healing that was going on in that family.

And much of the stories came from a lot of research.  I did three years of research, and I was very conscious that I was coming from the outside.  I spent three years getting to know people, gossiping with the grandmothers, chasing kites with kids, interviewing kite makers, getting in trouble with the gamblers, all sorts of things.  And a lot of the stories just arose from those experiences.  I remember the first year that I was there, I was very shy.  I would hide behind cars and tell people I’m shooting a documentary and I’m going to school, things of that sort, speaking in my broken Hindi.  By the third year, I was able to hold the camera two feet from someone in the old city and they would continue to be themselves.  That was not only the foundation for the storyboards, or for the story in terms of the script, but it was also a foundation for the process in which we made the film eventually.

 

One thing that strikes me, looking at your work, it’s not only the intense and beautiful visuals, but how often they’re connected to sound.  For me as a viewer that created a much more intense, involving experience.  I assume the visuals come from your background as a graphic artist, but how do you see that visual/sound connection?

I collaborated with some beautiful artists, and there are three components to that.  One is the composing of the film, which was done by Mario Grigorov, who did Precious and Taxi to the Dark Side – and that was a really interesting process because the first few tracks that he provided, I didn’t connect with them, it was a very general Indian sound.  So I suggested to him, “Let me come down to your place in LA,” and I sat with him for a week, and like two actors, we just got into it.  There were three melodies of this film, one is of the kite, the other is of the brothers’ past, and the last is of the family house.  And so we composed those melodies only on a piano, and then he brought in a group of musicians, that, based on those melodies, improvised and also worked with his compositions.

He eventually worked with Shubha Mudgal, which is a very famous artist in India, a Hindi vocalist, classical singer, and she’s the one who opens the film and closes the film and also during the climax, it’s her voice.

And then the second component was the tracks, the popular tracks in the film, and that was really cool.  I didn’t meet any of these artists when we did it – I worked with a music supervisor, Shivani Ahlowalia, and we got in touch with a Denmark group, Djuma Soundsystem, electronic DJs, also another DJ in Brazil, Maga Bo, and then we had Hindi lyricists and vocalists, Pankaj Awasthi, Shilpa Rao and Papon, and they sang along with those tracks.  I had ten tracks put in originally, and then it just came to this really wild place where everyone had this synergy across the internet and was talking – it was great.

And then the last component was sound design, and I worked with Dig It Audio who did Half Nelson, Man Push Cart, Sugar, Inside Job – and they are really well known for doing naturalist dramas.  And so there was this process where we sat together for six hours and did a spotting session, and they squeezed out every detail about what I thought the sound landscape was, what was significant to the narrative, what was happening in the scenes – so much so that eventually, when they started doing the sound design, at that point it was so open in the beginning about trying to get all the information from me, that they even said, “You need to go back and edit this one section.” 

And one of the great scenes they did was the kite battle, that was like a gladiator scene, you know.  I gave them a Nike World Cup commercial with grand sound design and all these kinds of slowing of things happening, and so Abigail Savage, the sound designer, she based the kite battle on this gladiator battle with sword slashings and bombs blowing up.

 

Again, as a viewer, it was one of those moments that was really intense.  I’m wondering, too, about the tension between old and new – it was something I saw in Sangam as well as in Patang, whether in Sangam it’s between the guy raised in the US and the new immigrant, and in Patang it’s between Delhi and Ahmedabad or new and old Ahmedabad.  Part of me is sure that it’s what creates a good story, that drama, but are there deeper reasons for those tensions between old and new in your work?

I think you make films because in some way or another it’s therapy, you know?  I think when you watch Sangam, it’s much more a film about longing, longing for that fullness, and in Ahmedabad it comes from a slightly different perspective, where the fullness exists and how do you maintain it or have it continue in your family in a larger way.  So, there are very strong issues, and what I was very conscious of was when I did the research was those conflicts that originally would have been thought of as happening fifteen or twenty years ago from the west to India, now exist in extreme ways within India itself.  So you have someone coming from the large city of Delhi, which is as foreign, in a way, as someone coming from America to a small town in India, and that kind of dilemma within India was something I found very interesting.

 

 

 

I’ve heard that Seema Biswaas originally felt her character to be a little bit of a backdrop – but for me as a viewer, though, she seems essential to the story.  Was that always your intention, or was that something that you and she developed when she came on board?

It was always my intention, it was just that on the written page, she doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, so when you read the script, it can seem like this is just a typical housewife and it doesn’t have that kind of weight or power.  But so much of her moments are told through silence and those intimate gestures of trying to calm her son down or nurture everyone in the household, you know?  But she later on referred to her character as the water in the house, that she had no place of her own, but whatever gap needed to be filled, she filled it, and that was the definition of how she approached her character.  And that one exchange that she has with Jayesh at the end when she says the thematic line of the film, that we don’t hold onto our past with sadness, we hold on to happiness, our little, little happiness – that is something that is everything for me in terms of what the film means.  It’s her and the grandmother which are the two positive characters in the film – I mean, maintaining and pushing this family forward.  In another way, all the men in the film are kind of screw-ups. 

(We both laugh at this point.)

She’s very much based upon my own mother.  I convinced her through a long email to come and see what we were doing in Ahmedabad, and when she came and she saw the relationships that I had with the kids, and how open it was and how much it was like family and it was not an environment that you would normally see on a film set.  She also spent time with my mother and my mother and her went around to different households of people that I met throughout my experiences that were like Sudha.  And so, that instant kind of connection and refreshing process that we were engaging in really attracted her to the project.

 

I was also hoping you could talk a little bit about Hamid and his place in your film, because for me he was almost like this little voice of wisdom, reading human nature better than the adults around him.

He’s an amazing kid.  Overall we did a workshop with twelve kids for two and a half months – we did theatre games, discipline exercises, would just have them become comfortable with one another, and I did an audition at the end where I had the kids bounce a ball for two blocks, and I gave them twenty rupees and I said, “Buy a couple of things,” and two blocks down the other way I already had a bunch of kids that were ready to steal that ball, so I could see what his reaction would be, and also just going and trying to bargain with the shopkeepers, so when I saw him, what you said, there was a resilience to the kid, a wisdom about him.  My favorite scene in the film with him is when he sits with Chakku, and Chakku’s complaining to him about his uncle, and you know, he’s a businessman, and when the kids says, “Yeah, but he’s going to lose, too” – I didn’t write that, it was just something he came up with.  He comes from a rough neighbourhood, he has a good family structure, but that line was his own.  I think he’s gone through so much in his life in terms of seeing adversity that he has an innate wisdom about him and there’s also this purity of his own laughter and who he is.

For Nawaz Siddiqui who plays his counterpart in terms of Chakku, this was Nawaz’s first leading role in a feature film, and this year he has three films in Cannes and eleven films releasing.  And for him, this experience of Patang, working with Hamid was probably the most transformative in his career.  He had to let go completely of all of that “acting” and just be, because on and off screen, Nawaz was not Nawaz to Hamid, Nawaz was always Chakku.

 

 

Yes, I was struck by the incredible casting – not only the actors, but even the non-actors you managed to get to work in the film, it was just a lovely combination. 

I was wondering if there was any one pivotal point in the production that could have made or broken your film, and you were fortunate that it went your way?

There was a really bad thing that happened.  In that fireworks scene, where they’re blowing up fireworks, everyone in the film was rather careless.  We had a big bag of fireworks, and these kids were blowing them up, and Chakku was blowing them up and having fun, and one of the kids took one of the large fireworks and put it down, and then took another one and put it to the side – and these are Fourth of July type fireworks that blow up in the sky really big – and he lit it, and it hit the side wall of the roof and blew up and the clay went into Chakku’s eyes.  For a number of days it seemed he would go blind, everyone was completely...broke apart the whole film set, we were ready to shut down, and it was only three days or four days before the kite festival itself, meaning if it did happen, we would have not been able to complete the film that year.

Luckily, things did after two days kind of calm down.  For two days I was shooting on my own, and eventually it all came back together, but that was a huge catastrophe, and luckily Nawaz turned out to be okay, we had a great eye surgeon and all of that, but it was very, very scary.

(I was a little speechless at this point.  Prashant continued.)

There was a time when that happened – this is a little bit of a side point – I came home from the hospital, because I was flipping out, and I didn’t want to....Nawaz had been recently married, and I didn’t want his wife to see the state, that energy that I had, so I came home early and got off two blocks ahead of the hotel where we were, and I was walking down the street, and there were seven cows in the middle of the street, and it was completely quiet.  And when I was twenty feet from the cows, one of them looked at me, and all seven of them ran the other way.  And my point of that is, there is something very unset, divine, something very fate-driven, spiritual thing about that old city, where energies that you carry with you come back.  And what was really haunting about that scene was that I had written it for Hamid to fall off the roof, but then to have this catastrophe happen, you feel like you’re almost a puppet-master of some sort of tragedy.  It was really a crazy place to be, emotionally, for everyone.  Just a little insight into where I was at.

 

Can you speak to me a little about how the wind changes direction in your film?

It’s a very gentle metaphor with the kite --like The Red Balloon or The Red Violin which were influences for me.  That’s almost the puppet-master where everyone’s connected to that.  And what I noticed when I was doing research, is that every person in the city during this festival, including myself, goes through some sort of small change during this day.  There’s something extremely powerful about it.  And everybody’s life -- I mean, excluding Hamid, which is a relentless....he doesn’t have a lot of arc, he’s just the soul of the film --but everybody else, in a tiny way, through the interactions of the celebration of the festival and the relationships that they form, their life changes in a little way, like the wind changing direction.  It’s very gentle, you know?

 

One of the things that struck me is that this is the second film I’ve seen in the last year, from a director from an Indian background but raised and educated in the US, who’s decided to produce a very independent type of film set in India.  I think you’ve mentioned a little bit why that was important, but I’m wondering if you could expand a little bit more on that. – maybe even the perspective you bring to India and the stories you set there.

At some point when you ask, why do you make films, there are reasons you think of in terms of where the stories come from, but after the first month of kind of conceptualizing something it’s just an addiction and you have to keep going and doing it and it’s a part of you.  So you wake up and you have a knot in your stomach and you lose all the girlfriends that you had, and you go broke in so many other ways, but this is it, this is when you feel most alive, and I would say when I’m in India making this film I felt so alive as a person, so just thrilled and present, especially working in the old city of Ahmedabad, I just fell in love.

As far as this film in relation to India, this is a kind of revolutionary film for them, because in 2007 and 8, we were probably one of the first to do a narrative feature on a digital medium, it was Nawaz Siddiqui’s first role, overall for the whole cast and crew there were many, many times when people just thought I was completely an idiot the way I was working – long takes, loosely based on this script, only three people out of the forty are actors, improvising, hand-holding camera, no storyboards, two people shooting, very tiny crew – aiming for this naturalism and allowing people to live onscreen.  And so all of these kind of techniques were very, very new for India, and also for the independent movement.  And I’m really thrilled that ninety percent of the independent India film coming now has major presence of my cast and crew on their films, and it’s made an enormous impact on India as a film, in its process and how we worked.  And you’re seeing a lot more of that now echoed in the wave, whether the cinematic language, or it’s the naturalism that’s emerging from India.

Right now India’s going through something quite remarkable, it’s like the independent movement that happened years earlier with Sex, Lies and Videotape, at that time in the late 80s and early 90s in America, it’s happening now in India with the access to technology and all of that.  People are really taking a lot more risk and it’s really impressive to see – it’s electric over there. 

But I am very conscious as well that I see the world from a very different point of view than my fellow independent filmmaker in India.  The things that I notice and that I try to focus on are very different than what they are. 

 

So, where are you going next?

I’m working hard on the release, really, really excited, and it’s going well, and I just shot a film in Madurai, in India, and it’s a collaboration with Vijay Iyer, a jazz musician, and it’s based on Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”.  This is an Indian rite of spring, Holi, where they throw colours, and I shot it in Lord Krishna’s birthplace, in his playground there, and they celebrate for ten days and it’s very violent and primal and sexual, and just absolutely beautiful!  I’m editing that this summer.  And then I’m writing a film that takes place on the South Side of Chicago, on the golf courses – it’s called The Highlands, and it’s a coming of age story of a nineteen-year-old kid – black folks, Kangos, Cadillacs, hustling on the golf courses, and it’s a story of a nineteen-year-old kid and how he emerges from being someone who represses his talents from an older hustler, and I’d like to shoot in the same way that I did Patang, 90 per cent non-actors, and really make an anthem for the South Side of Chicago.

 

 

Patang opens in Canada this Friday,June 22nd at the following theatres:

Toronto, ON - MLT Carlton Cinemas
Toronto, ON - The Projection Booth
Toronto, ON - Woodbine Centre Cinemas
Vancouver, BC - Denman Place Cinema

I highly recommend that you go and see it -- you won't be disappointed!

Patang ("Kite", Hindi, dir. Prashant Bhargava, 2011)

 

 

 

Laneways bustling with a wedding party, little boys running to and fro, kites being made and delivered, kite strings coated with glittering glass and chosen with care.  Rooftops where families and neighbours share delectable dishes, sing songs, remember the past.  Kites that dip and swirl and soar on the skyline.  This is Ahmedabad during the annual kite festival.  This is the world that director Prashant Bhargava draws us into, a place where modern and traditional world views collide, and where a family’s emotions and conflicts mirror that of the kites in full flight and fight.

Jayesh (Mukkund Shukla), a successful businessman now living in Delhi, returns to his home in Ahmedabad, along with his daughter, Priya (Sugandha Garg) for a surprise visit during the annual kite festival.  Ostensibly a trip to show his daughter the festival, Jayesh’s motives soon become clear to his family:  he wants his mother to sign away the ancestral home so he can sell it and move them into a modern apartment he’s bought for them.  Initially his family welcomes him – with the exception of his nephew Chakku (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), who harbours a bitter resentment against his uncle, whom he sees as responsible for the early death of his father.  But it becomes apparent that there are old wounds in this family, and that it’s not just the distance between Delhi and Ahmedabad that separates Jayesh from his family.

 

Jayesh believes, as he has always done, that he knows what’s best – progress first and foremost.  But instead of really considering what his family needs, what makes them happy, he judges them, and makes decisions for them about what they need (and what will make them happy).  He recognizes that, as he puts it, every room in his ancestral home contains history; however, he just cannot see the value in it.

Each of the characters in this film is like one of the kites in the festival, individual, trying to seek out his or her own path to happiness.  Some may continue to soar; some may be cut down far too soon, forced to deal with life’s harsh realities.  Chakku is happy enough singing in a wedding band but must face his uncle’s disapproval of his choice; Bobby (Aakash Maheriya), completely smitten with city girl Priya, who left school to work in his father’s shop, and dreams of flying away.  “Times have changed,” he tells Priya, “but my father has not.”  Priya, who is happy flitting around Ahmedabad and filming it with her Super 8 camera (views that are incorporated into the film, and which heighten our sense of intimacy and being in the moment), and carrying on a flirt with Bobby, does not see the real Ahmedabad.  Hamid (Hamid Shaikh), the little boy who lives and works on the streets, rejected by his grandmother unless he can bring her money, is the one voice of clarity who advises the adult Chakku, who says his uncle will never have a loss  – “He will,” says Hamid, sagely.  Sudha (Seema Biswaas), Jayesh’s sister-in-law, who surely, steadily, quietly looks after her mother-in-law, Ba (Pannaben Soni), and mends the rift in this family as surely and as delicately as she mends one of the fallen kites.

 

The film draws us into the lives and the laneways, the sounds envelop us, the music pulses, its rhythms taking us further and further into the streets and lanes of Ahmedabad, the camera view intimate, dipping and swirling like the kites themselves, taking us into the lives of these characters, showing us their thoughts, their secrets, their struggles, their anguish, their smiles.

Flying kites bring small moments of joy to each of these characters, allowing them, for a moment, to be free of the constraints and disappointments of their lives.  Life, like the flight of a paper kite, is so fragile and delicate and beautiful, and happy.  “Are you happy?” Sudha asks her brother-in-law at one point, making the point that for all his belief that progress involves letting go of the past, life is more complicated than that.  And, yet, strangely, more simple, at the same time:  “If you think we are holding onto our past with sadness,” Sudha tells Jayesh, “you are wrong.  We hold onto our happiness.  Our little, little happiness.”

 

Everything about Prashant Bhargava’s film will draw you in and make you feel a part of this place – the story, the visuals, the sounds, the music, the characters – especially the characters.  But what will linger once the film is done are the moments of pure poetry:  the change in Sudha’s expression when she realizes Jayesh is not just on the end of the phone, he’s actually in Ahmedabad; the gulf between two worlds summed up in one expression – “wine tasting”; Chakku eyeing his uncle’s gift of an iPod shuffle with wariness, his eyes flitting back and forth between the package and its wrapper; Chakku later wearing the ear buds, a sign that his grudging relationship with his uncle has, perhaps, taken a new turn; fireworks on a rooftop; Sudha gently mending a kite; kite strings laid out, ready to have ground glass applied to them; Sudha twisting and tearing a napkin in her hand as Jayesh talks about his brother’s drinking; the absence of the brother felt like a presence; Bobby rolling the little car across the countertop towards Priya, and his almost bewildered expression when Priya kisses him; the squeak of the swing as Jayesh talks with his nephew, telling him he never sings; sunrise over Ahmedabad the morning of the kite festival; mouth-watering dishes handed around on plates; Hamid’s reaction when his grandmother closes the door on him.  All of these flavour the film, lace it with sugar and spice, and stay on our minds long after Jayesh and Priya leave to return to Delhi.  Patang shows us that we are like Hamid, his arm in a sling after a fall from the rooftops – we may fall, we may break, but we have the potential to heal, to mend, and to rise and soar again.

 

Good Night, Good Morning (dir. Sudhish Kamath, 2012)

 

“From here on, I am going to remember New Year’s Eve as this night that I had this wild conversation with a random strange boy.  Seriously, aren’t you going to remember this night when you got a little high and called a girl in the middle of it to talk about boobs and existence in one breath?”

 

 

Dear lord, how the heck do I start writing about this film?  Which I adore to bits?  Because it’s funny, witty, compelling, intimate, wry, tender, charming and meticulously written and crafted?  Like starting a conversation with a stranger, it’s not simple. 

Good Night, Good Morning trades in all sorts of pop culture references that are familiar, that allow us to immediately identify with the two main characters, Turiya and Moira, who meet by chance on New Year’s eve in New York, and spend the night carrying on a long and far-reaching conversation by telephone, Turiya in a car with his three friends, on their way back to Philidelphia, and Moira, spending the night in a hotel on a stop-over on her way to Mumbai. 

Images of New York, shot in black and white, and set against a smooth, jazzy soundtrack,  give this film a hip, contemporary, cosmopolitan feel.  I am a huge fan of black and white photography, and Kamath uses it to create an intense environment that allows us to focus on the discussion taking place.  But he also intersperses fantasy segments and flashbacks in colour, allowing for a change in pacing, and further emphasising the intimacy created by the use of black and white, contrasting with it.  The intimacy of the phone conversation is further intensified by the use of a split screen, not only allowing us to watch both characters, but also serving to underline the changing nature of their conversation and relationship.  In the early parts of the film, Turiya and Moira are shown facing away from each other, but gradually, as the film unfolds, they begin to slowly turn around, first facing out, then finally, facing each other.

 

I’m a fan of the small details, and these are just peppered throughout the film – from the little scene from Some Like it Hot (the good night/good morning scene, from which Kamath’s film takes its title), to the waffles Moira mentions in an off-hand way, and which Turiya orders for her from room service (ask me how much I melted at that moment); to the ring Moira wears, and leaves behind; to Moira’s name -- it means “uncertain” or “bitter”, and she is, by turns, a little bit of both, and we long to find out why, what motivates or propels this lovely young woman, inhabited so splendidly by Seema Rahmani.

 

 

Turiya is still hanging on to a relationship with a woman who, three years on, he still believes was the love of his life.  But as Moira sharply notes, “Do you realize you always keep saying she “was” the love of your life?” Moira’s past is more secretive, more complicated.  She claims to be over her past, but like Turiya, she still carries baggage, though she will deny it.  As the night wears on, the two will eventually put down their respective baggage and when morning comes, be prepared to walk out into a new day.

What is lovely about this film is that though we first see Turiya as kind of a hopeless, even hapless, romantic and Moira as a more – if not cynical, then definitely world weary – realist, we come to realize each of them has a wee romantic soul, each of them really believes in romance, though they each define it differently.  For Turiya, love is about the journey, not the destination; for Moira, it’s about reaching the sunset of your life and realizing you really have spent it with the person who turned out to be the love of your life.

What makes their night-long roller coaster of a conversation compelling is, certainly, the dialogues (the script was written by Kamath and Shilpa Rathnam), sharply and crisply and pointedly wonderful; but it’s also the film’s two lead actors (Manu Narayan as Turiya and Seema Rahmani as Moira) who make us want to listen, to find out more about them, to see where this conversation will take their characters, as well as us.

And where it takes us?  On a free-wheeling ride, from flirtation through philosophy of life and the nature of love and relationships (the film mirrors the stages of a romantic relationship:  “The icebreaker,” says Moira.  “The honeymoon, the reality check, the break up, the patch-up, the confiding, the great friendship.  And the killing confusion”).  From Before Sunrise to When Harry Met Sally to The Matrix to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (oh, how I so love Moira’s reality check on that film).

What makes the film especially compelling, at least for me, is that the conversation between Turiya and Moira rings true, from beginning to end.  I’ve had that discussion about The Matrix:  “Explain The Matrix to me in four lines,” demands Moira, much as I’ve done myself, agreeing with her belief that “stories are meant to be simple, no matter what kind of bells and whistles they come with.”

And that’s why Good Night, Good Morning is so incredibly engaging as a film:  it is a simple story, and the bells and whistles are used precisely to create atmosphere, mood, and pacing.  They allow us to identify immediately with the film’s two protagonists.  We’ve been where they are – at some point in our lives we have all been Turiya or Moira --  and we want to see how it’s all going to turn out.   As Moira might say:  "It’s a great ride while it lasts."  And it’s a brilliant, delightful, charming ride while it does.

 

 

******

I had the distinct pleasure of seeing this charming film precisely because the folks over at Mela managed to strike a last minute deal with director Sudhish Kamath that saw the film release on Mela's various platforms on the same day as its theatrical release in India.  I would love to have seen the film in a theatre, but I likely wouldn't have seen it at all, or not for a good long while, if I hadn't downloaded the Mela iPad app -- which is still available on a free trial until February 10th, 2012.  Needless to say, if this is the kind of stuff Mela is going to offer me, I'm going to be downloading the paid app for sure.

The Eclipse of Taregna (dir. Rakesh Chaudary, 2011)

As a former history student, and as someone with a life-long love of history, it is perhaps not surprising that I adore decorated manuscripts, those carefully planned out and written texts which were often decorated – or “illuminated” when touches of gold or silver were added – with, amongst other things, historiated initials (which often contained little stories themselves in the margins of the greater text).  And The Eclipse of Taregna is the film equivalent, I think, of the manuscript illumination, telling a tiny story against the backdrop of a much larger canvas.

 

 

Here’s the main story, the true story, the manuscript, if you will:  in 2009, the residents of the tiny backwater town of Taregna suddenly found themselves thrust into the limelight, when it was announced that their home was going to prove to be the best place to view what was predicted to be the best eclipse of the 21^st century.  There was some concern over the safety and well-being of the throngs of visitors who, it was anticipated, would descend on the village, not only because the village was lacking in some of the basic amenities, but also because it was also smack dab in the heart of an area in which Maoist rebels (who claim to be fighting for the rights of tribal peoples and rural poor) are operating. 

 

 
 

Against this backdrop is set one beautifully illuminated historiated initial, a small story within the larger story of The Eclipse of Taregna.  It’s the tale of Mr. Pathak (Surendra Rajan), a retired engineer.  Mr. Pathak is gradually losing his eyesight to glaucoma, he’s seemingly lost his son to the rebel cause, and he’s already lost any interest in life, so when the news of the eclipse is announced, he doesn’t share the enthusiasm of his neighbours who are excited to find themselves, well, rather at the centre of the Universe when it comes to the eclipse.  To the postman sharing sweets in honour of the event Mr. Pathak grumbles that it will just overload an already strained electrical system.

 

 

And yet – when his grandson Roshan (Purav Bhandare) shows some curiosity and excitement about the eclipse, trying to understand it, Mr. Pathak quietly fixes the model Roshan builds in order to understand how the eclipse works, and then gives him his precious globe to replace the apple Roshan has chosen to represent the Earth.  Mr. Pathak comes to realize that his grandson needs someone to stand in for his absent father, to help him understand, to encourage his curiosity, to nurture Roshan’s dream of becoming an engineer – like his grandfather.

 

 

 

The Eclipse of Taregna is a perfect, small film, taking the story of one tired, ailing man and setting it, like a jewel, in the backdrop of the larger events happening around him.  Everything in director and writer Rakesh Chaudary’s short film has a place and a purpose, but like the finest clockwork, it all works beautifully without your being truly aware of how meticulously it has been crafted, from the story, to the acting, to the sound, to Santosh Vasandi’s warm and luminous cinematography.  Vasandi does one of those rare things:  he makes us see Taregna, makes it real for us.  As Mr. Totally Filmi said, “With cinematography like this, who needs 3D?”

Purav Bhandare is delightful as Roshan, dutifully helping his grandfather, intensely curious about the events unfolding in his little town.  Surendra Rajan takes Mr. Pathak from indifference to finally discovering a pinhole of joy in life, despite the glaucoma that is stealing his vision and causing him suffering.

 

 

And it’s precisely in his worst moment of suffering that we can see the true art and skill that went into the making of this film:  the intense sound of the fan over his bed, the blurred image, these combine to allow us to experience what Mr. Pathak is feeling: intense, searing, painful.  In an instant, we understand what he is going through, and feel so much compassion towards him – so much so, that when we later share his small moment of joy at seeing the eclipse with Roshan, we feel that all the more intensely, too. 

 

 

In ancient times, eclipses were one if those astronomical events that held great portent.  If The Eclipse of Taregna portends what’s coming from a new generation of Indian filmmakers, then I can only wish that all my film-going experiences would be this illuminating and joyful. Mostly, The Eclipse of Taregna was one of those rare things:  a film that made my heart swell with the joy of having seen it, and that made me wish I could see it again.  And again.  

 

Malayalam Monday: Anandabhadram (dir. Santosh Sivan, 2005)

Alas, this is not a full write-up of Santosh Sivan's Malayalam directing debut film, Anandabhadram, though it's a film I am, as a total Sivan fan, dying to see.

But blog reader Tina kindly sent me links to a couple of songs from the film, with a note that the first one, "Pinakkamano" was heavily inspired by the work of Malayalam artist Raja Ravi Varma, recreating a number of his paintings in its frames.  I'm by no means an expert on Varma's work, but I am familiar with it (and have a Varma project on the backburner bubbling away for the right moment).

So I thought, huh, why not see how many Varma paintings I can recognize in the clip?

 

Okay.  Here's my best attempt, with a link where you can see the portrait, and an approximate time in the clip to compare:

1.  Lady in her Dressing Room - as the clip opens

2.  Reclining Woman - 0:33

3.  The Milkmaid - 0:59

4.  At the Bath - 2:06

5.  Hamsa Damayanthi - 2:16

6.  In Contemplation - 2:38

7.  Stolen Interview - (I think) - start around 3:00

8.  Lady Holding a Fruit - 3:23

And even though that seems like a lot, I have this niggling feeling I'm missing at least a couple more.  Although I've done *far* better than Wikipedia, which identifies three of them.  If you pick out any more, do let me know in the comments!

Deol Dhamaka: the Shutterbug

 
“I have always loved photography. Even though I have not been trained professionally, I have nurtured it as a hobby for many years. The good thing is that I get to travel to beautiful places while I am shooting, so I get a chance to capture a lot of interesting shots. I enjoy it.”

Sunny Deol,  as quoted in the Deccan Chronicle.

There have been a number of lovely photos along with the occasional tidbit coming out about the film Sunny Deol is working on right now, director Chandra Prakash Dwrivedi's Mohalla Assi (release date August 2011 ::squee::), in which Sunny will play a Sanskrit teacher and pundit.

Probably the loveliest to come out so far have been this set making the rounds, of Sunny, in costume, on the sets of the film, camera in hand:

 
 

 

Of course, I had two questions about this.  First:  what kind of camera is he using?

 

To get the answer to that, I asked one of my favorite shutterbugs, John Meadows (creator of a rather lovely photoblog called My Third Eye), who, when I sent him to look at the photos, responded:

 

(John corrected himself in the tweet right after this, because of course, he meant "between an M6 and an M9")

 

(Aside:  I'm not a photographer, but as a knitter, I've been seriously covetting these very expensive pieces of equipment lately, which I'm guessing is the knitting equivalent of coveting a Leica Rangefinder, so at this moment, I totally understand John's tweet.  Totally.)

(And yes, those are FORTY DOLLARS each.  And yes, they are absolutely worth it.  I've done a test drive with one of the circulars.  TOTALLY WORTH IT.  Plus?  You can order a "stiletto tip".  Oh, yes, serious coveting going on around here....)

Oh, yes, the second question:  are we ever going to see some of Sunny's photos?  Wouldn't it be lovely to see a "Sunny Film Shoot Photoblog" somewhere?  Or, the occasional photo sent in a tweet, like Boman Irani used to do?  Or like Anupam Kher does (though, admittedly, I think Anupam Kher mostly sends iPhone pics from the sets, but still)?

Does anyone besides me think that this would be a delightful and interesting way to do a little promotion for a film, you know, now that Sunny has discovered that a little promotion can work wonders?

 

 

 

Betaab: getting thinky with it

As Nakhrewali pointed out in the comments, Betaab certainly has had me thinking a lot of "thinky thoughts", which is probably one of the reasons why I really do like it so much. 

So many 'thinky thoughts" that I decided that I'd devote one post to the topic of "Betaab:  Ten Things I Like About You".

(See what I did there?  Hee.)

So, without further ado:

1.  People, it's written by Javed Freaking Akhtar!

That's not to say every single thing Javed Akhtar has written has been gold, but seriously, even Javed Akhtar on a bad day can write circles around a lot of people.

And if I agree that Betaab maybe doesn't have the most original plot, or that the Shrew device isn't the best choice he could have made, I still have to argue that the script is solid, often compelling, contains a few twists I didn't expect.  Sunny gets a "classic line" -- well, okay, maybe not so classic, as it really didn't stick, and was replaced by more defining dialogues as his career progressed.  Ideas are seeded at one point in the film, and they are returned to later (for example, early on, Sunny tells his mother he understands her worrying about him, she's his mother after all -- and that exchange comes back later in the film, when Sunny is angry at his mother, and she justifies what she did for the love of him, telling him she couldn't help it, she's his mother after all.  It's a nice touch).

There's the device of Roma's scarf that wends its way through the film, finally becoming the banner of their love by the end of the film.  It's also nice touch.

And there's the letter Sunny writes to Roma to tell her he's coming to rescue her and take her away to marry her.  It is so poetic and so romantic, and it made my heart go "ping".

 

2. The Music is by R.D. Burman, and it's fabulous.

And that's all I have to say about that.

 

3.  The film's setting is GLORIOUS.

 

More beautiful than Switzerland.  Take that, YashRaj! 

 

Right from the film's opening frames, I fell in love with its setting.  I'm not alone.  After the film's release, the valley in Kashmir where Sunny's farm is set became such a popular tourist destination that it's now known as the "Betaab Valley".  I'd go there in a heartbeat if I could, it's so lush and so beautiful.  And I'll get another chance to see it on film again sometime this year, when Imtiaz Ali's film Rockstar (with Ranbir Kapoor) is released, as some of it was filmed there.

(Yes, you can infer from that that the reason I really want to go see Rockstar is neither Imtiaz Ali, nor Ranbir Kapoor, but the Betaab Valley.)

 

4.  The film throws up some very interesting visuals.

Apart from the beauty of the landscape itself, so crisp and bright you can almost smell the fresh Kashmiri air, I found the camera work in Betaab kind of interesting.  Things shot from lots of interesting angles made the film more visually interesting than I actually had expected it to be.  The other thing I found kind of intriguing is that I found the film *very* difficult to screencap, and I think it's because there's so much motion in the film -- not only in the action scenes (always hard to screencap), but just throughout the whole film.

I didn't find it jarring to watch -- but I do ask myself if all that motion gives the film a kind of energy that suits the film's youthful stars.  Just something I considered, and in any case,  it made the film more enjoyable for me to watch.

 

5.  I said it before, but really Annu Kapoor is quite lovely in this film.

 

I almost love him more here than I did in Mr. India.

 

6.  Sonu Nigam plays the young version of Sunny

 
I know where you'll be, Sonu, you'll be an immensely successful playback singer.

 

7.  BUT!  AND ALSO! The film has BUZO THE WONDERDOG!

You know, I'm so not a dog person that normally I'm immune to the appeal of them, but not so here in Betaab.  Sunny's dog, Buzo, is one of the best characters in the film.  I find it so sweet that Sunny is constantly playing with the dog, that the fact that Buzo seems very comfortable with Roma signals to Sunny's mother that there's more to the relationship between Sunny and Roma than meets the eye.

 
So.  Freaking.  Sweet.

Plus? 

THE DOG GETS HIS OWN ACTION SCENE!

I am not kidding.  Sunny has gone to get the priest for the wedding, the baddies turn up to kidnap Roma, and Buzo?  Not only chases after them, HE FIGHTS WITH THE VILLAINS, ON THE MOVING BUGGY, AS THE VILLAINS ARE SPIRITING ROMA AWAY!

Seriously, I can't even show you a photo, because the dog was just EVERYWHERE, TRYING TO TAKE DOWN THESE VILLAINS AND SAVE ROMA!

I love the dog.

 

8.  Prem Chopra's villain was more subtle than I've seen from him in other films, and?  He's stylin'....

 

I am totally not kidding about this.  The fashions in this film deserve a whole post to themselves (not unlike the brief one I did devoted to Sridevi's clothing in Mr. India).   You may not be a fan of 80s styles, and having lived through them and worn them once, I'd say I probably don't want to do it again.  No, I *definitely* don't want to do it again.

But -- and in complete and utter seriousness -- one of the things that strikes me when I watch some 80s films is how very, very fashionable and up-to-the-minute the styles are for the time.  It's always really hard to judge fashions in retrospect, and really easy to poke fun of them, and I'm occasionally guilty of that myself.

But this is what we wore in the 80s -- or what we really, really, really wanted to wear, if we wanted to be considered fashionable.  Roma has clothes in this film that I actually owned myself, or that I would have *died* to own IN THE 80S.

 

9. And while I'm on the subject of the 80s...

Despite its flaws, I really do think Betaab is another one of those films that adds weight to the argument against the 80s as a total Decade of Doom  with respect to film-making. It's not going to be a film that will find its way on to everyone's favorites lists, and with time, its flaws perhaps tend to overshadow what is good about the film.

But Betaab was a massive hit in 1983.  The only film that was bigger at the box office that year was Manmohan Desai's Coolie.  It made Sunny Deol a star, and it nabbed him a nomination for a Filmfare Best Actor award (along with Kamal Haasan, Om Puri, and Rajesh Khanna -- all of whom lost out to Naseerudin Shah).

And I like to think that's because the film had some things going for it, and that, as a result, it doesn't deserve to be relegated to some kind of 80s wasteland.

 

 

10. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai

Betaab occupies a place in my heart not unlike that of Karan Johar's Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.  KKHH is a film that I kind of hate, and yet, I adore it all at the same time.

I hate the first part of the film.  I hate the filmi college setting, I hate the fact that Rahul is so insensitive towards Anjali, I hate the fact that he cannot see how much she loves him, and that he ends up with Tina.  The first half of this film just gets on my nerves so badly that I cannot even begin to express it.

And then?  Kuch kuch hota hai.  Something happens.

In the case of KKHH, I love the film from the moment it gets to the train scene -- you know what I mean if you've seen the film, the moment where Anjali decides to leave college and Rahul and Tina go to the train station, and nothing changes, Anjali leaves, and yet.  Everything changes.  Kuch kuch hota hai.  And from that moment on, no matter how silly the film gets, or no matter what cracks I can still see in it -- I adore this film. 

And there's something about that in Betaab for me.  From the moment Sunny and Roma start working together and fall in love, something happens for me as a viewer, and no matter what else I feel about the film, it will always be made better by whatever the mystical, filmi something is.

 

 

 

Ah, yes.  I've told you what I like about this film, but I really, truly haven't told you why I absolutely and unequivocally ADORE it.  Yet.
 

Betaab: Pay No Attention to that Man Behind the Curtain....

Or, I suppose it's time I put my cards on the table and came clean about Betaab.

When I wrote:

" Betaab is a satisfying watch on so many levels, and is a "stress-free experience" for the viewer."

What I should have written was:

"I love this film so much and I see so much potential in it that I love it beyond all reason, and that's good enough for me."

So let me tell you a few things I probably should have the first time around.

1. The Shrew, comma, Taming of.  It's as bad as I think it is, right?

I spent a lot of time mulling this one over, and I'm going to have to concede, if the film falls down anywhere, it's here. (And remind me to talk about this again when I get to Barsaat, will you?)

That said:  I still don't think it's the most egregious use of the trope I've ever seen, and I do stand by what I said, that the "tamed" Roma still contains much of the spunk and spark of the "untamed" one. 

And I also think that throughout that bit of the story, I was thinking two things.  First:  why they heck is Sunny remotely interested in her, because she's such a snot, surely he can't be hanging on to that "oh, childhood romance" thing, can he?   And second:  you know, he's a bit too cocky for his own good, and sometimes he's just as bad as she is, so why does he get off so lightly?

There's another undercurrent to all of this that I've purposely chosen to ignore:  one of the things I find admirable, at least, about Sunny, is that whatever he does to "tame" Roma, it doesn't involve violence, and the film is quite blunt about this.  At one point during their emotional and verbal sparring, Roma lashes out and tries to hit Sunny -- he grabs her wrist before she can do so, and tells her that if she were a man, he'd have broken her arm.  The implication being he's not going to take anything out on her physically.

And this is, sadly, in contrast to her father, who gives her a right smack when he thinks she's gone too far and has dishonoured him by taking up with Sunny.  He tries it a second time, too, only in Sunny's presence, and Sunny stops him, and is clear that if her father tries this again, he won't be responsible for what happens.

So what I don't see in the use of this trope is Sunny trying to harm Roma, or trying to break her spirit -- because she's just as spirited after the....um....snake bite moment -- only difference is, she's a heck of a lot nicer.  And, I think, he is, too, so something in Roma's transformation brings out something better in him, too.

I take some comfort in the fact that once the relationship dynamic shifts, and they move into "sweet, youthful romance mode", each of them becomes sweeter, nicer, to each other, to those around them. But yes, the shift for Sunny is miniscule compared to what it is for Roma, and his flaws, though there,  are miniscule too.  He's seen as too chatty, not knowing when to say nothing, and a little too full of himself -- both Roma and his mother chide him for it, yet, they're also kind of tenderly indulgent of it, kind of "well, boys will be boys."

And it almost pains me to admit this, but, I have to be honest.  I don't think either of the film's young stars has the acting chops to carry the first part of the film off effectively (they're not alone.  I often feel this way watching first films, and it's why I'm terribly, tenderly indulgent).  They clearly lack the experience needed to bring a little more depth to that first part of the film, and as a result, they often come off as either terribly screamy and shouty (Amrita) or firmly and manfully reciting lines (Sunny).

But it's not for nothing that I have a blog category entitled "The Small Details Are My Cup of Chai" -- and if you look in some of the smaller corners of the film, you'll see lovely moments when both leads get things absolutely right, from Sunny's trademark winks, to the little kiss he blows at Roma when he thinks his mother isn't looking, to the wink Roma saucily tosses back at him, to their antics as they go about rebuilding the farm. 

2.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.  Except when it isn't.  Are you blind, woman?

I alluded to the film's sexual inuendo when I wrote about the snake-bite scene.  What I didn't say, and what I chose to avoid is, in fact, a whole heck of a lot of stuff that I've been writing in emails to Ness, wondering how in the world I was going to deal with it.

And I'm still not going to deal with it.

One of the things I wrote to Ness was that I couldn't decide if I was seeing all this innuendo because it was there, or because, well, I have some kind of weird or pervy mindset.

I think I've finally decided that yes, it is most clearly there.

I still find that very, very fascinating, because in some ways, it flies in the face of a lot of traditional thinking and misconceptions about sex and sexuality in Indian films.  And yet, in some ways, it clearly is trying to dance on a fence:  trying to set up its young lead as a new and hot sex symbol, without crossing a line into vulgarity or voyeurism, and if I'm generous and say it succeeds in staying on one side of the line, it's only by the smallist of margins.

And I'm not sure it actually succeeds.  You know what made me finally decide about this?  Screencapping.  I have some screencaps here on my computer, that, taken out of the context of the film, are pretty racy stuff. Heck, IN the context of the film, they're kind of racy. And I've decided it was intentional.  And I don't know what to think about that.  Except.  I did essentially say Sunny would have been my 80s pin-up boy, so maybe that's all there is to that.  Well, apart from the fact that I have to deal with how reverse-sexist that ends up sounding.

3.  Okay, Shammi is just doing his usual Shammi, right?

Yes, and he's playing a dad like I've seen Shammi play before.  And Nirupa Roy is still playing "Every Ma".  And Prem Chopra is, well, the bad guy.  And Annu Kapoor is the comic relief.  And yes, in fact, I have seen that before.

That said, too, I still found twists that I didn't expect, and some truly funny moments (watch Shammi's face the first time Roma pulls one of her fits, he's hysterical).  And Annu Kappoor is so sweet and gently funny.  And Nirupa Roy and Sunny have some lovely moments together.  All of this is true, too.

4.  When are you going to admit that you're wrong about this film?

Sigh.  I am wrong about this film.

And yet.  I'm still right about this film.

And it's leaving me feeling so very, very, very conflicted.  How can a film that troubles me so much still, in the end, be a film that I just adore when I watch it?  How can I overlook all its flaws (and some of them are not small ones), and still feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

5.  You lied, right?  It's not two Betaab posts you're going to write, it's three, right?

Yes, I suppose that's true.  Because somehow, I have to reconcile these seemingly opposing and disparate views of this film that I have.

 

What can I say?  Sunny is messing with my mind....

Deol Dhamaka: on the topic of firsts.

I have an obsession with firsts.  First films, first appearances, first time I've seen someone in a film -- all of these are important to me.

I mentioned that my first exposure to Bobby, his first film, Barsaat, had me totally smitten.  And my first exposure to Sunny was Arjun Pandit, which was enough to put me off him, at least for a while.  First films, first encounters -- they can make or break your relationship with an actor, if you let them.

I love first or debut films (for actors, for directors, for writers) because I love to think of them as the seeds for whatever comes next in their career.  In Bollywood, in particular, where there's this tendency for whole families to go into the business of cinema, and for one generation to launch its sons or daughters, first films take on a whole new meaning -- we're not just talking about an actor getting his or her big break, we're talking about a manufactured, carefully prepared launch, and as such, often those first films are tailored to show off what the young actor can do, to introduce them carefully and lovingly to an audience, and often project the kind of image or avatar the family hopes they'll take on in the industry.

I find it interesting that in the case of Sunny, Bobby, and Abhay -- all three were launched by Dharmendra, all three were paired with a heroine also making her debut (Amrita Singh with Sunny; Twinkle Khanna with Bobby; and in the case of Abhay, Ayesha Takia -- though it wasn't the first of her films to be released, in the end.), which stands a little bit in contrast to the trend today, to pair the debutant(e) in question opposite an established star.   And although each of their films is different, there are also these strong core messages in each of them that are dear to the Deol clan.

I'll be writing about each of their debut films here during Deol Dhamaka.  Alas, I do not own Dil Bhi Tera Hum Bhi Tere, listed as Dharmendra's first film everywhere.  Everywhere, that is, except in the Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, which, curiously, has one film listed prior to DBTHBT:  Railway Platform, from 1955, directed by Ramesh Saigal, and featuring amongst its cast one Sunil Dutt, making *his* film debut.

I have not seen Railway Platform (yet.  It's on one of my endless lists....), but I was incredibly curious, so I went trolling videos on YouTube, and sure enough, I found Dharam-ji, in the video for the song "Andher Nagri Chaupat Raja": 

Seriously, he's there:  watch carefully from around 0:30 to 0:37, he's in the back on the right.  Yeah, I know, blink and you'll miss him:

 

I love it.  Just love it. I don't know if he's anywhere else in the film, but he's not in any of the other videos from it that I've watched on YouTube.  But still.  I love it.