Inglourious Basterds – Quentin Tarantino

… around this time you could ask whether you’re real or fictitious. I, however, think that’s too easy, so I won’t ask that yet. Okay, my native land is the jungle. I visited America, but the visit was not fortuitous to me, but the implication is that it was to somebody else.

Multiple storylines. Mindless violence. Mexican standoffs. Long-winded monologues. Obscure cinematic references. Inglourious Basterds has all the above hallmarks of a Tarantino movie and more. However what makes Tarantino unique amongst directors is, not his using these hackneyed themes but, his ability to take this kitsch and turn it into a narrative that is novel and exciting. And it is in this construction of a riveting narrative that Inglourious Basterds spectacularly fails. And to think of it, this might just be Tarantino’s most linear script!

Tarantino’s skill as a film maker has always been to create strong point/s of identification for the audience with the primary characters on screen. With a point of identification established, the cliches suddenly get backstory – a context – and cease to be the ones heard before (Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs). And with a point of identification established, the audience is on a roller coaster ride and not just watching one.

Also in a certain way he makes his movies as puzzles – not in whodunnit terms but in how-did-it-happen terms. Throughout the movie, he is in charge of giving you the clues, and as audience your job is to figure the puzzle out in the smallest number of clues (Pulp Fiction). What this again enables him to do is to pull the audience into the narrative, become involved in it and immerse themselves in it.

The plot and setting of Inglourious Basterds makes both of the above difficult (maybe nigh impossible) to achieve. WW 2 and Holocaust is a theme much written about and  much filmed, but rarely in playful terms. By treating this setting in his usual obliquely humorous fashion, Tarantino suddenly alienates the viewer. And while the major protagonists are all fictional, the presence of the historical figures just does not allow a viewer to slip into the boots of Aldo Raine or Colonel Lander. And in failing to get this involvement running, Inglourious Basterds fails.

And yet, all of the is not to say it is unwatchable. This is Tarantino’s most ambitious work since Pulp Fiction. There are still enough moments in the movie where one can only say (in retrospect), “how the hell did he do that”. And then most importantly the failure of Inglourious Basterds is due to ambition and not mediocrity.

Night and the City – Jules Dassin

Harry is an artist without an art …, that is something that could make a man very unhappy, …, groping for the right level, the means with which to express himself.

The best examples of film noir (Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon) rarely rely on the strength of their characters to achieve excellence. They succeed by bringing out the palpable fear in the dark corners of the urban landscape and by tying together these shadowy images into a taut narrative. Jules Dassin’s Night and the City achieves all of this but what separates it from the pack are the characters that populate the screen.

Unlike the glum, angsty but essentially morally upright protagonists (Sam Spade in the Maltese Falcon) we have Harry Fabian, a rogue, who is at once likeable and detestable. He is smart, ambitious and often “works as hard as 10 men”. But he is also an escapist, preferring to fly his way to the top rather than working through the trenches. The viewer constantly on an emotional tenterhook: is Harry to be pitied as a victim of circumstance or is his fate a result of his own misdemenours meriting no sympathy? Similarly, the archtypical vamp, Helen, is no longer a purely scheming woman; she just wants to scheme her way out of her suffering. And though she is indirectly responsible for the violent denouement, she cannot be squarely blamed.

While Night and the City breaks away from noir norms in characterization, it reinforces and enchances them in mis-en-scene and narrative style. Dassin films the alleys and streets of London at their shadowy best. In closeups, his camera exquisitely captures the expression of the most primeval of human instincts – the fight to survive. And though the narrative has its foggy bylanes, they all meet together in the end for the almost apocaplyptic ending. For in the world created by Dassin, redemption is not an option.

Night and the City is a directorial masterpiece and perfect example of how to tell a story on screen. It’s greatest success is to induce in the viewer’s mind a dichotomy of emotions for the onscreen characters drawing them further into the movie. A must watch for any serious movie buff.

The Dark Knight – Cristopher Nolan

For a film that has garnered awesome reviews from fans and critics alike in the last two weeks, it seems a little redundant to add another blog post (and that too so late) saying “This is really great”. But even then, I would just consider this post as a personal Thank You note to Christopher Nolan for finally making Batman movie that finally does justice to the comic book hero not only in his moments of glory but also in moments where he is in obvious frailty, plainly human.

The Dark Knight is just not a great movie. It is a great movie that has possibly for the first time taken existing material from a visual medium and put it on theater screens without compromising on essentials and still making it seem like something new. This achievement is not something to mock at. We often remark that a movie can never be better than the book it is adapted from. Yet, while making a film out of a book, the director can set the visual structure as he wishes giving the plot another dimension that is totally missing. A comic book on the other hand defines not only the plot but also the visual style and often on a frame-by-frame basis. What does a director work on then? Why would he make a movie that at points seems like transcribing from one medium to another.

Christopher Nolan understood when he directed Batman Begins, that Batman stands for something much larger than just a drawing inside a book. If he gets out the essential conflict inside Batman and the contrast of his characters with that of his villains his job is done. Gotham city is dark and dingy in the comics because in a static medium it is one of the few ways the internal conflict of Batman can be shown to the readers. But in movie a lot more can be done. And it took someone like a Christopher Nolan to realize that and bring it to fruition in The Dark Knight.

Lastly, a word for Heath Ledger as the Joker. Initially I thought, how the hell can he aim to take over a character that had been immortalized by none other than Jack Nicholson. And for once, Mr. Nicholson has to step down and acknowledge Heath Ledger’s portratyal as the definitive Joker. He brings to life the vision of a person without rules, and while he says Batman completes him little does he realize that he completes Batman too.

The possible scratches on the shiny image of The Dark Knight are probably the rushed through fight scenes and the staccato robotic delivery of Batman’s lines by Christian Bale. But then, we should leave something to look forward in the next installment of this series.

Eastern Promises – David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg is one of my favorite modern day directors. His films showcase his ability to abstract the surreal out of the ordinary, and magnify it making us view the world around us a little differently. With movies such as The Fly, Crash, Videodrome, eXistenZ, Naked Lunch and History of Violence, he brings out the horror in our daily lives. His movies however remained nightmares; dreams from which we woke up shaken but with the knowledge that it was a dream. If to make a film is to create a new world, the primary task of the director then is to build bridges – emotional or otherwise – with the real world. It is not enough to start from the real and descend into the surreal – a film needs to continuously reinforce this connection. It is in this aspect that I felt Cronenberg was not so successful in his earlier ventures. And it is primarily in this aspect that he excels in Eastern Promises.

Like many other Cronenberg movies, violence – real or imagined – remains the central theme here too. But the plot allows him to depict the violence in this world and not in some dream world. The result is that we have a gangster movie that matches Godfather or Goodfellas in it’s depth. Much like the much vaunted Marlon Brando epic, what is seen and heard on the screen is merely the tip of the iceberg. The main action remains unseen and unheard, left to the viewer to imagine. While Cronenberg showed dreams in his earlier movies here he gives the viewer fodder for nightmares. The film captures human depravity when endowed with absolute power, and yet also shows that such depravity will leave a mark that proves to be the perpetrator’s undoing.

However, where it matches Godfather in depth it fails to match in it’s width. Godfather was not about the transition from one era to another, it was also about the era’s themselves. Eastern Promises remains the story of only the transition. But then it probably is not meant to be an epic, but merely a strong reminder of the reality of the world we live in.

Hopscotch – Ronald Neame

The only thing that propels me to see every movie by a Tom, Dick, and Harry is that once in a while, by sheer chance on basis of the large numbers involved, I get my hands on one these classic masterpieces that people seem to have forgotten. After a week of seeing what I very generously term “action flicks with hot chicks” (now that I think of it this topic in itself deserves a blog post), Hopscotch was a reminder that you don’t need to make a few hundred cars to blow up and a few million bullets to be fired to make a good spy movie. Yes, The Bourne Ultimatum does give you that nice adrenaline rush as Matt Damon runs through world capitals like he runs through his list of girlfriends or something but it does get boring after a time. Movies like Hopscotch though you could see anytime.

The idea that spies are this set of nasty people, more like machines and rather indestructible too, is what comes when you read much too many Ludlum or Follett novels. On the other hand, if you are fan of the early Forsyth or the Le Carre (minus their moodiness) protagonists you would see spies as rather smart people who more than anything else have dollops of black humor poured on them and are rather nihilistic since they do the job not for the love of some flag or something but because they are good at it. Miles Kendig portrayed immaculately by Walter Matthau is one such spy. And he is taken off the field by his I-really-want-to-punch-you-on-the-face boss Myerson and decides to teach the entire agency a lesson. The old dog then proceeds to run rings around them before publishing a book of his memoirs. And yes there is romance with an old flame and the evil Russian as well, who seems to enjoy the game of his friend as much as his American boss hates it.

In his Criterion Collection essay Bruce Eder says

Ronald Neame’s Hopscotch has the distinction of being the only “feel-good” realistic spy film ever made. As the movie walks a fine line between serious drama and satirical comedy, and between topicality and escapism, it beguiles the viewer with its sophistication and complexity. The most surprising aspect of Hopscotch, however, may not be how well it walks that tightrope, but that its makers accomplished this balancing act in an era that saw the spy movie genre reduced to tales of relentless despair.

Add to this a touch of tongue-in-cheek Brit humor and you have a perfect cocktail. But seriously, don’t take his or my word for it. Go and watch it.

People reviewing and providing movies

My erstwhile roommate and colleague and now-but-soon-to-be-ex Stanford student, Ajay seems to be addicted to movies. But the best thing is that he has gotten addicted enough to start writing about them here.

And while browsing the internet randomly, the other day I found this. A more noble pursuit I cannot think of.

And while I am at it allow me to introduce Jaman. Jaman aims to be for movies what Amazon and eBay have been for traditional marketplaces. Actually, more eBay than Amazon. It is a movie download service without a single blockbuster in its list. Apart from the South Asia collection, I had heard very little of any of the movies there.

Saw this, this, this and this after downloading them from Jaman. All free and legal. And regardless of their IMDB ratings each of these movies had the director trying to do something new. Whether they pulled it off or not doesn’t really matter because they give you food for thought. If you realize what the film is trying to say but not saying it in the best way, you have a problem and thats half the battle won. Really looking forward to seeing some of the other movies from this service.

And yes, Grindhouse is deliciously gruesome and Kung-Pow is the greatest undiscovered movie gem. Thanks DJ for the latter.

The Best Films of 2006 – Part I

The first part of this list is foreign movies (Hollywood et all) and some really good ones miss out (Blood Diamond, Apocalypto, The Illusionist, The Prestige, The Departed, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Fountain) but for what it is worth, these are for me the top of 2006.

 

 

El Laberinto del Fauno – Guillermo del Toro’s surreal modern day fairy tale, peeks into the deep abyss that is human psyche to understand the root of our fears and desires, and our notions of good and evil. The first time I saw this movie, I was tempted to describe it Magic Realism on film. Ofelia, an eleven year old girl travels to the countryside with her pregnant mother so that the son her step-father, a maniacal army general fighting the rebels, expects can be born in his presence. Here she discovers (creates??) an alternate world where she is the long lost princess Moanna. She has to complete three tasks in order to return to her kingdom and true self. The narrative seamlessly alternates between the brutality of the ongoing Civil War and the horrors faced by Ofelia in her tasks. The viewer soon begins to wonder, what is that which is real, fully knowing which is which and yet wishing that it was the other way around. The shot where Ofelia tells a story to her yet unborn brother takes us smoothly from the real world to the realm of dreams and without any apparent effort brings us back, encapsulates the basic themes of the movie. Set in the post civil war era in General Franco’s Spain, this movie can be read at once a trenchant indictment of Fascism as well as the beauty that lies in Innocence that is often forgotten in the dark days of humanity. Spellbinding story, beautiful images and unobtrusive special effects that add to rather than overshadow the story make this a brilliant piece of cinema and by far the best movie of the year.

 

 

 

Children of Men – There is something about Mexican directors this year. Alfonso Cuaron’s last directed movie was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. This one could not have been more different. The movie starts with the news of the youngest person on earth being killed and that it was more than 18 years since the last person was born on this planet. The entire human race had suddenly turned infertile. Scarcely, has the importance of this piece of information sunk in that the viewer is taken head-on into a dystopian Britain of the future, where all immigrants are being evacuated (the scenes reminded me of Schindler’s List, though this time in colour) and a group of “terrorists” are fighting the oppressive regime. Clive Owen plays a disenchanted government servant, and is entrusted the task of escorting Kee, the first pregnant woman in nearly two decades safely to Human Project, so that secrets of procreation might be known again to humanity. The yet unborn baby, however, is being viewed as massive propanganda tool for the terrorists and they have managed to convince the mother that the government will never accept that the first baby in so many years was colored. There is, on the other hand, a mother’s love and her concern for the safety of her child where the cause of the government or the terrorists are of no concern. Completely different in treatment from El Laberinto del Fauno, another movie that delves deeply into what it means to be human in the first place.

 

 

Volver – Pedro Almodovar returns with this sweeping epic drama across generations to his first love, Women and the colour Red. It is in filming the stories of women, their joys, fears, trials and conquests, that Almodovar truely finds his forte (Talk to Her, Women on the Verge of Nervous Breakdown, All About my Mother). Volver is story of Raimunda, her mother Maura and her daughter Paula. Each generation of women cannot escape the actions of the other, forcing Maura to come back from afterlife to tie the loose ends up. Deaths happen, corpses are hidden and parties thrown as if they were merely just another ritual in the daily monotone of the female protagonists. Penelope Cruz as Maura and the entire cast do a brilliant job of infusing life into the script. With the theme, Almodovar also returns to his standard pallete, brilliantly filming the reds and the browns of the dresses, landscapes and the spilt blood, almost making colour as a separate voice in the film. This is not a film with a twist. Or a message. It is merely a superbly beautiful rendition of a story on film by a master.

 

 

V For Vendetta – The Wachowski brothers return to the silver screen with their rendition of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel. Directed by James McTeigue, this movie has all ingredients to become a cult movie. Chock full of quotable quotes (V’s memorable introduction comes to mind) and cross referencing works across ages and genres, V for Vendetta presents an almost savage rebuttal of the fascist state, that preaches a return to chaos and anarchy rather than tolerating repressive order and rule of law. While, the politics of movie would clearly the unpalatable to those inclined otherwise, it is almost impossible for anyone, having a pretense of concern for the affairs of the world today, not to be affected by it. Topped with Natalie Portman’s brilliant acting (and British accent) and the almost comical madness of Hugo Weaving as V, V for Vendetta is at the very least a very intense film.

 

 

Babel – The final installment of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s trilogy on death, Babel was probably the most awaited movie of the year for me. The narrative structure of Babel is similar to both Amores Perros and 21 Grams which preceded it. However, while in the first two movies the separate storylines transpire in a limited space (same city) but are widely varying in their temporal occurence, Babel’s story spans across four countries and no less than six families, but a very limited time span. The denouement with the revelation of all the connecting threads leaves something to be desired. It does not really shock the viewer as it did in the earlier two movies, with the threads appearing tenuous at best in some cases. That the director was able to hold together such an ambitious script finally leading to a conclusion, is a feat in itself. Babel primarily deals with fear; the fear of an individual in an alien land, neither trusting nor trusted, with an overarching scepter of death looming in the horizon. While the previous two movies kept away from socio-political messages, a clear message is sent out in this movie in terms of trying to understand those who are not the same as us, rather than immediately stereotyping them. While this does not add to the cinematic quality of the movie as such, it does provide a clue to the gradual progress of Inarritu’s work.

Technorati Tags: top 2006, movies

 

Casino Royale

“The name is Bond. James Bond.”

A line etched in cinematic history, this line encapsulates the essence of the 007 canon. Suaveness. Panache. Above all a surety that with Bond around nothing can go wrong. The villain has to die and the girl has to fall into his arms like a limp, rag doll that most of the Bond girls are portrayed as. That these are Daniel Craig’s closing and not opening lines in the new Bond offering Casino Royale is an indication that this is not the regular kill-the-world-order-threatening fiend and bed-the-hottest-chick-in-the-show flick.

Casino Royale is the story of James Bond coming of age. His receiving the 00 status at the beginning of the movie provides the viewer a clue that the Bond we are going to see is not the indestructible character, Pierce Brosnan essayed over the years. Daniel Craig’s Bond is naïve. His Bond is human. He pummels victims to death. Gets blood on his starched white shirt. Falls in love. And gets his heart broken. Heck, he almost loses a poker game and does not care if his martini is shaken or stirred. Bond enemy here is his own heart; his humanity; his ego. And he has to crush them in the road to become the perfect and indestructible James Bond, we all know.

Casino Royale lacks the fancy gizmos that viewers have gotten used to. Q does not even make an appearance. It takes its inspiration not from the last four movies in the series but the first four. His opening interaction with Vesper Lynd contained the typical tongue in cheek Bond humor that has been lost to viewers ever since Sean Connery passed on the mantle.

Vesper Lynd: I’m the money!
James Bond: Every penny of it!

[Was this an allusion to the missing Miss Moneypenny??]

Vesper Lynd: Am I going to have a problem with you, Bond?
James Bond: No, don’t worry. You’re not my type.
Vesper Lynd: Smart?
James Bond: Single.

And yes there is, all said and done, a considerable amount of the mindless violence, destruction of fine cars and impeccable display of markmanship by the new Bond. These too are an integral part of the Bond canon. But this movie reiterates they are not the only things. And that is what makes Casino Royale, amongst the finest Bond movie to come out in years (in my opinion the best after The Spy who Loved Me).

technorati tags:bond, movies, casinoroyale

Blogged with Flock

Through a Glass Darkly – Ingmar Bergman

Through a Glass Darkly, is the first and probably the most engimatic and yet the most lucid of Bergman’s Winter Light trilogy (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence). It is also the starting point of his collaboration with Sven Nyquist, the master cinematographer who is credited with the creative and masterful use of natural light and shadows in many of his other works.

As in many of his other works, Bergman subject matter centers around the struggle to define one’s own concept of God, a struggle that was intensely personal to him. The greatness of the film lies in the fact that it is a compelling family drama on the surface and that Bergman never loses the grip on this narrative while all the time posing to the viewer the question of conception of a creator. David, a reasonably successfull author is torn between the love of a  father for his daughter Karin, a schezophrenic, and the artist’s urge to observe and record her descent into madness in view of creating a magnum opus. The other major characters are Minus, the brother and Martin, the husband of Karin. All characters love Karin and yet each of their affections is distorted by their own percpetions of her. The movie is set in a desolate island; the characters have nowhere to escape and have to face and come to terms with their feelings, fears and inhibitions about each other.

The literal English translation of the original Swedish title (Såsom i en spegel) of the movie, taken from Corinthians 13:12 in Bible

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face. . .”

obfuscates and obscures the intent of the film – to expose the distorted view we have of people through the mirrors of our own minds and bring us face to face with our own emotions. Our search for God, Bergman contends is to end within our own selves if it has to ever end and not in some external creation.

As with many of his other movies, the harrowing psychological analysis of the characters and the ascetic setting of the movie give, Through a Glass Darkly, the reputation of a depressing film. The use of natural light and the brilliant interplay of shadows give the viewer far keener insights into the minds of the characters than is possible through the spoken word. It is here that Bergman displays the power of cinema as a medium and his forte as a director. As many critics have said, Through the Glass Darkly is probably best construed as a cinematic equivalent of a String Quartet; each character with his own story to tell and at the same time taking forward the main storyline in a coherent manner.

technorati tags:bergman, cinema

Blogged with Flock

A weekend with Jim Jarmusch

Collective Chaos screened three movies of the much acclaimed director Jim Jarmusch this weekend – Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law and Broken Flowers. While missed the Friday screening of the much acclaimed Stranger than Paradise (which I hope I will catch some other time), I did manage to catch the other two despite losing my membership card. I must thank the CC guys for letting me in without really any proof of membership. I had on earlier occasions seen two of his other films (Coffee and Cigarettes and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai) so it was great that CC showed these three.

Jarmusch’s movies to me have always seemed to me like snippets of a journey; starting at a station and end on another: none of them is either the start or the end for the they are fixed at birth and death of the individuals. It is when the paths of more than one such traveller entwines that we have something akin to a plot. The plot and the setting therefore is not something which shapes the characters but it is other way around. If even one of the participating characters were different it would probably lead to different plot. Jarmusch is a master of setting situations and bringing in the main players (often characters from the edge of the society) together as a result of which all his movies have an air of inevitability around them. And then there is a comic vein running through the body of all his works; sometimes ironic and satirical but mostly plain humour, when you laugh because somebody just touched that cord somewhere. Both Down by Law and Broken Flowers, though separated by a couple of decades bring out these aspects.

The first can alternatively seen as humanist comedy or an harsh indictment of the justice system. Apurva’s post on this says almost everything there is to be said about the second issue. However I do not believe that Jarmusch wanted to deliver a strong message here. What transpired in the courts, what course the law took or what crimes any of the main characters are charged with are not known to the audience. The prison in my opinion is merely a device (why he chose such a device is another discussion) to bring the characters together; it is the station where the story starts unfolding. The characters in the beginning are shown to be somewhat self-centered; Zack (Tom Waits) and Jack (John Lurie) not listening to their girlfriends and each other and Roberto; and Roberto (Roberto Benigni) not really wanting to understand what an English word really means or if anyone is really interested in what he is talking about. The prison cell mirrors their close minds about themselves and others. The turning point in the movie was when Roberto draws a window on the cell wall, showing an willingness to explore and to see out. Soon they escape and on their first stop – a bunk in the swamp – is a replica of their cell but with a real window indicating that the tranformation has started. By the end the only character with any sort of a proper denouement seems to be Roberto who has decided to settle down in the wilderness with Nicoletta; but others too have reached their ending stations for the last scene shows them taking a decision amicably the only time in the movie. Their journey has not ended but a milestone has been reached.

Broken Flowers reminded me greatly of Sophia Coppolla’s excellent Lost in Translation; not as much in its theme but in how the entire script is written to fit Bill Murray’s personality; and Murray does deliver a stellar performance as the newly rich ex-computer-geek with with slew of girlfriends who have deserted him. The film’s trailer starts with the journey of a letter from the drop box to the delivery address and the film’s story starts with the Sherry (Julie Delpy), leaving Don (Bill Murray). A just arrived letter in a pink envelope seems to be the last straw for her, and yet for Don is the start of a new journey of self-realisation; for the letter informs him of his son with a long forgotten lover. As Don visits his previous flames one by one, it dawns slowly on him that he is not really made a mark on anyone’s life; each of his exes have continued their lives without him and slowly discarded him. This dawning realization furthers the feeling that somewhere there is someone who could never forget him for he is his father and increases the ache of meeting him. This pushes him further in his journey ultimately ending unsuccessfully in a graveyard in front of the grave of now dead ex-lover. The success of this journey is open to interpretation. The ending shows Murray standing alone looking ahead into a road into which a roadie he mistook for his son has just disappeared and he seems all alone in the world; but there is still hope for Sherry has written saying she still loves him. The letter itself is merely a device (just like the prison cell in Down by Law) – the audience can neither deny nor affirm its authencity till the very end. That Don says to the roadie, “Well, the past is gone, I know that. The future isn’t here yet, whatever it’s going to be. So, all there is, is this. The present. That’s it.“, made me think that his journey was worthwhile.

Technorati Tags: movies, jim jarmusch

The 78th Oscars message

If one has to take a message out of the Oscars this year, it would be “Go watch movies in the theatre and not DVDs and definitely not pirated ones.”; not surprizing since the theatre revenues fell enough in 2005 to warrant the Academy’s august attention. Those hunting for reasons can find some here.

I see the problem as a cyclical chain. Reduction in the number of people going to the theatres greatly diminishes the experience of watching a movie there, which in turn keeps away more viewers. As the preseident of the Academy said, watching a movie in a theatre is akin to sharing your emotions with hundreds of strangers; and the opportunities for such platforms are not many in todays world. What makes the Govinda movies funny is not only his over-the-top-comic actions but also the comments, hoots, jeers and shouts from the general public. What transforms a Lagaan into a rivetting tale is not the script but the wishing of the crowd that Bhuvan hits the last ball for a six, as if it was not a movie but a live cricket match going on. Theatre adds a different dimension to the experience of watching a movie.

Sadly, such experience is proving to be a costly affair these days.

Match Point – Woody Allen

Match Point, has been called alternatively Woody Allen’s return to form or a break (not a great one at that) from his unique style of filmmaking. One thing is certain, Match Point from the top does not look like a Woody Allen movie but is nonetheless a cracking movie. And once we dig a little we find the same themes that Allen has always talked about in his previous flicks.

Allen deserts his muse New York here; moving over to her distant cousin London across the Atlantic. There are none of the standard Allenisms in terms of the overpowering satire or biting sarcasm in the movie; or no judgements on a society malformed. In fact, it seems that Allen is finally trying to tell *only* a story. And he does that well. And for this reason I would say Match Point is a good movie.

However as much as he has sacrificed in terms of style and practices, he has embraced his core themes that much more closely. Allen has grown old; he seems to have lost the hope that tearing apart the existing structures and conventions with his mordant wit is possible. He presents the characters so enmeshed in this societal structure that they themselves murder any hope of an escape from it. The same themes as before, merely a new way of looking at them.

Trois couleurs [Bleu, Blanc, Rouge] – Krzysztof Kieslowski

Stupidly deleted my earlier post. Reposting it again. Also please note the spoilers warning – *SPOILERS AHEAD*

In this ambitious project, one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of recent times, Krzysztof Kieslowski, takes on the issues of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity – the pillars of the French republic in particular and democracy in general, symbolized by the three colours in the French flag. His attempt, with three separate storylines is as much to put these traits in the perspective of contemporary French society as to also answer his own question “Do people really want liberty, equality, fraternity? Is it not some manner of speaking? “

Bleu (Blue) the first movie of the trilogy deals with the grief of Julie, admirably enacted by Juliette Binoche, who has recently lost her composer husband and daughter in a car accident with her being the only survivor. Here, as in the rest of the trilogy, Kieslowski gives a very personal and individual twist to the meaning of Lberty. Julie initially attempts suicide and then cuts herself off from her old life in her attempt to liberate herself from her grief. Gradually though her old life creeps back bringing with itself the liberty that Julie so desperately seeks.

Blanc (White) is less a French and more a Polish movie. It is the story of Karol Karol, a Polish immigrant, whose French wife Dominique deserts him, leaving him bankrupt and heartbroken, on the grounds of his incompetence in the bed. Karol meets a fellow Pole Nikolaj, who takes him across to Poland in a suitcase, where Karol reinvents himself as a business magnate. In his quest for equality with Dominique, Karol elaborately stages his own death, gets her into Poland and makes love to her in her hotel room, finally leaving her to be deemed insane for believing he is alive. Karol’s quest for revenge is his search for Equality.

Rouge (Red) is the only movie in this series which deals with an entire gamut of characters rather than having a single focal character. This is interesting because both Liberty and Equality can be seen as individual traits, while Fraternity clearly needs numbers. Also the plot here is much more complicated, starting with the chance occurrence of Valentine (the central character if one has to be identified) meeting a retired judge, who spies on the telephone conversations of his neighbours. This narrative is intertwined with the life of law student Auguste, a mirror for the narrating the life of the retired judge. The judge and Valentine grow closer always knowing that theirs was a meeting that would never be fruitful. To quote the judge, “… you are the girl, I never met”. The movie in the end is about fate. How our lives are shaped by the people we meet and how different it could be if we met somebody else. The denouement brings together all the major characters in the trilogy together as the survivors of an accident (it had to be fate). Finally Liberty, Equality and Fraternity meet.

A discussion on every aspect of these movies would be big project in itself. I would however restrict myself to things that I personally found interesting.

• Camera speaks – Kieslowski’s movies are known for their frugality with dialogues. All three movies share the same trait. He chooses the camera to say things rather than the character. Be it the unshakeable strength of Julie, or the unabashed devilishness of Dominique or the uncomplicated goodness of Valentine, it is the camera which says it all.
• Use of colours – Each movie features prominently its theme colour. Blue is the colour of the trinket that Julie takes with her when she escapes her past life. Blue is the colour of the pool that she endeavours to lose herself in to find her liberation, only to rise to surface, her face silhouetted by a red light. Similarly it is white snow of Poland that heralds the equality of the Karol. And the constant flashback to his wedding with Dominique, she being in white reinforcing the belief of status quo that Carol probably seeks. There is also a nice interplay of white and black throughout the entire movie. In red; well you cannot miss the red. It is everywhere to the point that I sometimes felt irritated (probably Auguste smokes Malboros because the pack is red).
• The old lady - All the movies have a common scene where an old lady tries to put a bottle into a waste basket as the central character looks on. It is only on the third movie that the character actually gets up and helps the old lady in her task. My friend Supriyo reasons that Kieslowski does this because the director himself believes that of the three traits, it is Fraternity that is to be valued most. It is interesting to see the scenes in this light, because one can then understand several other parts of the puzzle – on why the third and final movie had to be red, or why the colour red is omnipresent in the movie, while in the other two the references are more subtle.
• The accident - Red and the trilogy ends with an accident where the sole survivors are the characters from the three movies. This can probably be summed up in Kieslowski’s own words, “In ten phrases, the ten commandments express the essential of life. And these three words-liberty, equality, and fraternity-do just as much. Millions of people have died for those ideals“. Kieslowski’s wants to stress through the accident and the death of the so many that regardless of what happens the ideals of French Revolution will not be lost to humanity. (The ten commandments reference here is to his earlier work Decalogue)
• The intertwining of the narratives – The end in Red is clearly the case in question, but the each movie is linked to the other in numerous other subtle ways. The characters of White appear for a moment in Blue and the vice versa and all finally come together in Red. Going back to the use of colours each movie while predominantly shaded in its theme colour also uses the others to bring out the effect that the three ideals do not and cannot exist in vacuum.

As with all good movies Three Colors asks more questions than the answers it provides. It actively engages the viewer in a game of guessing, providing hints and suggestions all along the way without ever explicitly telling out what is it that the director intends to say. Maybe the intent is to engage in a conversation with the viewer about these traits and their relevance in today’s world. On these grounds the movie scores a perfect ten.

Postscript:: One can read much more comprehensive individual reviews of the movies at Roger Ebert’s site. (Blue, White, Red)

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – the Movie

A book is always better than the movie based on it. But if a relatively uncomplicated book has ever been made into such a bad movie, I do not know of it. If the movie were to be described in one word, a good one would be melangé.

GoF is not my favourite book in the HP series. I felt when reading the book that Rowling had lost her way; that she was forking out too much and introducing too many things at the same time. However, this is also the book where we are introduced to the wide world of magic rather than the limited coterie of Harry, friends and family. We come to know of foreign schools, magical tournaments, see the first Death Eaters and at the end Voldemort is reborn. When it came out it was by far the most voluminous of the series. Taking this book and making a decent movie out of it – tackling the myriad and intertwined narratives – is a challenging task; a task that Mike Newell fails to achieve. He fails at the very outset by not identifying a core theme for the movie. The identification of a core theme would have allowed him to identify and cull out the extraneous material with relative ease.

Instead, what happens is that random parts of the narrative are thrown together in the mix without rhyme or reason, much like one of Snape’s potion assignments, hoping something good will come out of it. The movie does not tell a story of its own. It merely puts on the visual medium parts of Rowling’s book. This is my biggest disappointment with the movie.

On other aspects, Michael Gambon as Dumbledore did not exude the same charisma and power as Richard Harris in the earlier movies. Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort had too short a role to make any mark. The main trio however have grown and put on mature performances. The graphics were top of the line as expected from a mega-gazillion venture. These however, remain only sidenotes as the film lacked a basic narrative spine.

The HP series is essentially about human feelings, emotions and conflicts rather than state-of-the-art graphics. The graphics and the sets are the means to an end and not the ends in themselves. I was hoping after three movies Warner Bros. would have understood that, but maybe then I was hoping for too much.

technorati tags: movies

[Movie Watch] Uzak – Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Long time ago, I saw Pather Panchali. And it touched a chord in my psyche. The movie was called by some as unnecessarily long and boring, without an apparent plot meriting its length. The way I saw it was that it was a movie about life – the way it is. Uzak [Distant], by the Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a film in the same mould.

Uzak takes us into the life of Mahmout, a village boy who has made it good in the big city and Yusuf, his cousin – laid off from his job at the village factory, who dreams of getting a job on a ship and striking it rich. Mahmout is not really elated to see Yusuf coming to his place to live; he invades on his private space, a space he has created with so much pain and is so comfortable in. Yusuf on the other hand was searching; outwardly for a job – but also in a sense for the meaning of his life.

Through various detours in the narrative we learn of Mahmout's ex-wife Nazan, his interests in photography and how in effect he lives in effect as a single individual cut off from the rest of the humanity. He has become apathetic. It is not that Mahmout has become emotionally numb – his conversations with Nazan and the way he goes to the airport in stealth to get a last glimpse of her – belie this proposition. It is just that he has relapsed into a state of utter emotional lassitude – a monotonous state and to him a very comfortable life.

The films greatest strength is probably is the camerawork. The images on the screen reflect the prevailing mood in the narrative. Long and static shots, dark canvases [especially inside Mahmout's house] which show no color are pulled off to perfection. But two best shots in the movie are in Yusuf's lot. The first where he walks beside a derelict ship in the snow bound Istanbul harbor after he realizes that getting a job on the ship is not a cakewalk. And the seccond, where a fish taken out of water is struggling to live, but it cannot. It comes just after Yusuf realizes that the girl he has been following and wanting to talk with already is with someone.

The movie is without much meaningful conversation. In fact the first spoken words appear after around 5 minutes the movie starts. Conversations as a pre-requisite demands emotional involvement. And the character of Mahmout does not offer too much in this department. External sounds – the crashing of the waves, the sound of traffic etc – have been amplified somehow making up for the lack of human sounds. I believe these further pushes home the point of loneliness of the character.

In short, Uzak is movie one should watch.

All time 100 great movies as TIME goes by

TIME got its list of 100 all time best movies out recently – ranked in no order. The list can be found here.

The list in my opinion reduces to a vehicle for lip service to the world of cinema and while maintaining a politically correct stand.

In the list we find no mention of cinematic classics like Godard's A bout de souffle, Fellini's La Dolce Vita or Di Sica's Ladri di bicicllete. Incidentally the later insipred the Apu trilogy of Ray which is there in the list. The selection comittee's criteria was that the movie should leave the viewer with some sense of awe. An subjective benchmark – but the non inclusion of classics which have revolutionzed the way films have been made and seen does not lend much credibility to the list. Missing also is The Battleship Potemkin, a film that virtually gave the world the language of cinema.

Also consider the entry of Kandahar. If one had to choose a representative for the brilliant humanist cinema out of Iran one should probably look at Cyclist or Close Up. On seeing Kandahar in the list, I somehow got the feeling that it is there not only for its cinematic abilities but for the fact that it was shot in Talibanized Afghanistan. Similarly lip service is paid to Kurosawa (on selection of Yojimbo) and to entire film industries by the inclusion of Pyasa and Nayakan. While the aforementioned two movies are brilliant (they are amongst my favorites), I am sure that Indian cinema has more to offer than these two entries. For the sheer pleasure of viewing not many movies of the era match Mughl-e-Azam for that matter.

While the list does make up a good collection of movies to be watched, I would hardly rate it as a good list of the best movies of all time.

[Film Watch] Revenge of the Sith

An inveterate Star Wars fan, I had been disappointed with the last two releases (Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones) and I was looking forward to the last episode of the series which would tie everything up. Though Revenge of the Sith [RotS] is a better movie than its predecessors, it still left a lot to be desired.

RotS seen in the big picture is a filler movie, just as Empire Strikes Back (my personal favorite) was. I have heard praises for Lucas for daring to give audiences a bleak ending; but from where I stand Lucas could not have gone any other way without compromising on the basic rubric of the entire series.

The key event of the movie – the transformation of Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader – was pitifully handled. The passing over of Anakin to the Dark side is the transformation of his mind. And I believed it is in this aspect the movie fares woefully. Anakin's feelings were never conveyed realistically by the director. As a result the transformation seemed like a knee jerk action. Anakin's fear for Padme's safety – his motive for turning over to the Dark side was not portrayed with enough conviction by Hayden Christensen. Neither did the Jedi Council regular putdowns to Anakin show his anger and frustration to the full extent. And the worst part was the Emperor poisoning his mind about the Jedi Council taking over the republic – one expects Anakin a member of the Jedi order for so long to understand the council a little better.

Lucas sense of humor also leaves a lot to be desired. Any comic reliefs seemed like they had been put there so as to add up to some necessary magic number. In fact as a general observation if anything is intolerable in the series of prequels it is Lucas sense of comedy.

Where though the movie succeeds is in tying up the entire series nicely. The original trilogy comes in as logical conclusion. From the ascension of the Empire to the birth of Luke and Leia everything is taken care of. In fact just after his battle with Anakin, Obi-wan picks up the his former pupil's discarded light saber (to be given to Luke many years later). Also as usual Lucas sets new standards in graphics and special effects.

Any Star Wars fan would probably see this movie regardless of how bad it is supposed to be. And it is not a bad movie. Just that it does not compare with the originals and even less with Empire Strikes Back, with which it has been equated.

[Film Watch] – The Perfect Human and Five Obstructions

What is a perfect human? Or should the question be, who is the perfect human? Every time I am confronted with such questions Kipling's If comes to my mind. In that short poem Kipling defines the essence what a perfect man (feminists please don't crib …) should be like and what every human should endeavor to be like. Jorgen Leth's short film "The perfect human" and the five obstructions to it proposed by Lars Von Trier try to answer the very same questions.

The original clip made in 1967 shows the perfect human, his actions and his thoughts and mainly caters to the first question. It tells us how the perfect human should look like, how it dances, how it falls and how it broods. In his short movie Leth explores the psyche of humankind from its days in paradise with Adam and Eve, to their fall and to the current day where each of the species spends its time not doing what it is apparently doing but pondering over the capricious nature of its existence. It does not tell if anyone is the perfect human, it shows that probably amongst each one of us there is a perfect human. When he shows the perfect human ear, immediately questions arise regarding the veracity of his claims and almost immediately realization hits us that it could be any else's ear instead.

The Five Obstructions is more in the spirit of Kipling's poem. It defines who the perfect human is. And the protagonist is none of those characters in the perfect human, but Jorgen Leth himself who takes each of the challenges thrown at him by Von Trier (think life) and makes something good out of it.

First Obstruction: Von Trier gives Leth rigid technical obstructions – less than 12 frames in an edit, no sets, a new place. This is fact corresponds to the daily difficulties each one of us faces in his jobs – writing code, laying bricks or making movies. And yet 9 out of 10 times we come with a solution that satisfies us and the setter of the constraints. Often these constraints allow us to think beyond what is normal and everyday and come up with answers which are truly original. Thus a perfect human twists around the restraints of his fate to his own advantage.

Second Obstruction: The past. There are parts in one' life that one does not wish to revisit again. However each of us in those imprisoned moments locks away some part of our humanity. And it is not possible to recover these bits without going back again. Leth in this goes back to the scene of his most horrific experience and he comes out triumphant as should a perfect human, not ruled by his past but with promise of the future guiding his actions.

Third Obstruction: What if you were given the freedom to do what you want to do? Not be bound by any constraints. In our lives these constraints gives us the bulwark on which base our actions on. They give stability and sense of control to us mortals. Take away those. We are left to create out of nothingness – you are the God in your universe, but then one did not say that playing God will be easy. The perfect human then creates his own world, one neatly ensconced in reality and yet of his own creation.

Fourth Obstruction: How many times have been told to do something that you detested? Parents telling to be back before 9 in the evening, boss telling you to file those papers in triplicate. That is a part and parcel of being human. We spend some (maybe lot of) time doing what we wouldn't want to do. The perfect human does what we all do. Do the job. But he gets involved. From that inescapable agony he creates something which gives him joy and makes him feels that the time and effort put into it was well spent.

Fifth Obstruction: The most difficult thing for a human. Probably to take criticism constructively. Leth is challenged exactly to do the same when Von Trier gives him a letter to read – one which he himself has written to him. This probably is the most emotionally moving part of the entire exercise – an exercise out of which emotions had been kept out till now. For emotions, feelings are what makes us human. As the perfect human says in loose translation, "I felt something new today. I will understand it in a day or two".

The movie is technically awesome, with Leth showing off his mastery of the medium – in putting the translucent scene in second obstruction to freeze moving background or in cartoon filming sequence or in the 3rd obstructions where he makes a movie to his own liking. But this movie for all its coldness and perfection went beyond exposing to us what it means to be human. And I left the theatre with words ".. and then you'll be a true man." ringing in my head.

Happy New Year with Movies ….

Haha It is that time of the year, where each of us decides at some level, "what done is done… Lets start afresh". Yups this is the beginning of another year which was ushered in with news channel screaming how bullish the market is going to be and MTV VJs pondering over who will show the maximum skin this year or have the raunchiest video. Journalists are busy noting down the good and bad points of the year gone by as if it was a homework assignment due every new year beginning. The bad points really mounted up in the last few days when the Tsunami hit South Eastern Asian coastline devastating whatever came in its way. Literaly pouring water over the pending celebrations. But as they say "Life goes on …".

So what about my new year … spent sitting like a bum at home watching for the nth time James Bond trying to explain his "Big Bang" theory to Jinx in the Ice Palace of Gustav Graves. In short watching the telecast of Die another Day on Star movies. Also in the run up and in the aftermath of this momentous occasion (in case you are wondering I am referring to the start of the new year …), I spent my time watching the following movies …

1. Annie Hall – Not my first viewing, never does this pessimistic darkly humourous and yet somehow touching tale of love lose its charm. Woody Allen rules.

2. Garden State – Directed, written and acted in by debutante Zach Braff, this is auteurism at its very best. The movie alternates between very good and very bad, downright blase to outright weird and the end leaves one with the taste that so much more could have been achieved. Decent view though.

3. City of God – Probably the best gangster movie to come out after Godfather. This brazilian flick has a rough realisitic gritty edge to its depection of violence that distinguishes it from the more suave picturization in the Coppola epic. The narrative also adds to the gritty effect. Of the class of the few films which have given me a sucker punch.

4. Before Sunset – After City of God, I was looking for a sweetner to appease the mind before going to sleep (You see I get bad dreams …). Now what I got was a movie I would rank with Casablanca as amomgst the best romantic movies of all time. A sequel to the 1995 movie, Before Sunrise, I think this movie manages to shrink the entire gamut of emotions and actions, from the gauchiness of the introduction to the rants of desperation, into a single conversation between two people in just more than 80 minutes.

An excellent review of the above movie from the current issue of Senses of Cinema is here …

So to end it all, HAPPY NEW YEAR

Morning Raga – Mahesh Dattani

The above movie is a must see for anyone who says that India cannot produce cinema which is both appealing and yet does not woefully lack in substance. The tagline for the movie says it all, "A story of three lives. Struck by tragedy. United by destiny. Redefined by music…".

Abhinay, Prakash Rao, is an ambitious young man, sick of composing jingles for bubble gums and condoms, and wanting to create music which will last like the Charminar. Pinky, Perizaad Zorabian, is a hep, young business management grad who helps her mother in running her boutique but still is looking to define her own identity. Swarnalatha, portrayed with usual aplomb by Shabana Azmi, is an elderly housewife. What connects them together is an accident 20 years before and their music. That accident took away Pinky's father, Abhinay's mother and the Swarnalatha's son but most importantly took some element of music out of their lives. 20 years later they try to reignite that lost flame.

The movie was shot primarily in the Andhra countryside and the camera work was good but not stupendous. What again stood out was the music. Carnatic, Jazz and fusion Amit Heri weaves a melody incorporating all of these elements and fitting perfectly with the canvas. It was not your run of the Anu Malik songs but at the same time the music gave the movie the element of lightness which Indian art house cinema is not known for.

The movie is not without its faults. The acting and the casting are both suspect as well usage of English as a language. But one should see this movie to realise that Indian cinema is more than Akshay Kumar and Priyanka Chopra gyrating in Paris or someone trying to say how everything is wrong with the society and calls for a total revolution. "Morning Raga" is not a work on the state of the society nor does have any deep message. It is just a story captured by camera. Exactly what cinema should be.

[Movies] – Old Soup in a new Can ???

Just saw "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind" starring Jim Carey (in a role which reminds you that he once did Trueman's Show) and Kate Winslet, again proving that she is not the dumb bimbo that people remember of her in Titanic. The story was greatly mutilated form of the standard Hollywood (actually Bollywood, Tollywood and any other kind of Wood you can imagine) love story we all know so well. Boy meets girl. They fall in love. Everything is not so rosy after sometime. They spilt. They realise their folly. They come together and live happily ever after. What however struck me in this movie was the way the same stories, the same plots keep coming back at us and we take them in with the same relish.

Just after seeing the movie I was feeling extremely cinematic and went to check out the latest edition of Senses of Cinema, wherein I found this article about Kill Bill titled "Tarantino and the Vengeful Ghosts of Cinema". One of the major thrusts of the article can be summarised in the following lines,

" Death and rebirth are at the heart of Kill Bill's vision of cinema: the vulnerability and resilience of genres that are all essentially dead. They exist either completely in the past or else the era of their history that Kill Bill specifically cites is no more. Cycles of revenge dominate the structure of the film: Bill's shooting of the Bride, Vernita's daughter's possible future revenge against the Bride for her mother's death, the Bride's revenge quest, the massacre of O-Ren Ishii's parents that turned her into a killer. The nature of revenge: one moment of the past played and replayed obsessively to the point of excluding present reality – the absolute domination of a past that not only won't go away but is not allowed to go away. Perhaps Kill Bill is the past of certain cinemas come back to take revenge on the collective mainstream of cinematic memory that has almost forgotten them. Rebirth against all odds is also central to Kill Bill. However much punishment she takes, the Bride keeps coming back – shot in the head, raped, buried alive, drugged, battered several times over, she refuses to let herself die. Her persistence is at once the persistence of basic cinematic narratives that won't go away, like the revenge story, and their destruction: her quest is, after all, to systematically eradicate film genres that are already, in fact, dead and, ultimately, to save her daughter from the clutches of cinema, to return her to a normal reality where the formal relics through which she has fought can find no nourishment. "

Clearly the author refers here to the now dead and buried genres' of Kung Fu flicks and Westerns, the two major shapers of the director we know today as Quentin Tarantino. And with Kill Bill they are thrown back at us, exageratted and gaudy in a brand new package and we lap it up. Savour it.

Reinvention of genres and plots is nothing new. A more popular example will be the slapstick comedy genre of Austin Powers which was again almost forgotten. What however is new is that film makers are trying to create identities of their own by their allegiances to these art forms. And these again can compartmentalize the genre not allowing any fresh perspectives or any new takes to be taken. A good example, of the opposite approach, would the movie "Dancer in the Dark", wherein the director appropriates the genre of musicals but refuses to accept it, rather taking a new look at it. With Kill Bill, however good or bad it is, I feel Tarantino fails to do that. However, what he does is good enough for a couple of visits to the cinema.

Now playing: 02 – Rammstein – Engel

Dancer in the Dark

I have seen it all
I have seen the trees
I have seen the willow leaves
Dancing in the breeze

Selma had not seen it all. But to save her son seeing this much would have to suffice.

I have this bad habit of checking up a movie on IMDB before I go and see it. And when I checked up "Dancer in the Dark", I found the a 7.8 rating and some comments saying this was amongst the best movies they have seen. And some more saying that the movie manages to show what exactly is wrong with the US and its society. I went to Suchitra Film Society hoping to catch a movie in the lines of Fahrenheit 9/11, slightly more subtle nevertheless.

I do not know if the movie manages to convey the above or not. I do not know if the movie's narrative was tight enough or if the characterization was unquestionable. I do not know if the camera angles used were good or bad. But what I do know is that this movie was an experience. An experience I will treasure but hopefully not repeat. Not because the movie is not worthy of second viewing but because it brings out the emotions beyond my capacity to handle.

Selma Jezkova is a single mother, partially blind, going to be completely blind in few coming months and irrevocably smitten by Hollywood musicals. She is not a genius and nor is she blessed with an innate capacity to charm and humour the people around her. But she also a fighter, who works two shifts a day in her near blindness, sells cards and pins and lives miserably and daydreams that her world is a musical to survive, all in the hope that she can collect enough money to fund the operation of her child which will prevent him from going blind like her. And when time comes she also kills and dies for that money. All in the hope that one day her boy will see what she could not.

"Dancer in the Dark" belongs to that category of films that give you a punch on your face , tear you apart and make you take a look at yourselves in ways that few other pieces of art can. I am glad I saw this movie but would think twice before seeing it gain.