TALAASH the answer lies within: A REVIEW.

Dir: Reema KAGTI
Starring: Aamir Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Kareena Kapoor and Nawazuddin Siddique.

The new Reema Kagti film, lets call it that and not Aamir Khan starrer; had for the starts made all the right noises. An actor, known for breeding 'different' kind of films in a manufacture oriented film industry, a strong actress in Rani Mukherjee and a noir-thriller to boot. However, after seeing the film, one cannot but feel, that with all the potentialities that had made themselves available for the film, it somehow lets them down. I am not saying the film to be a bad film, mind you. But, I feel that what the film lacked, is what it needed most, the support of a good skeleton, a brilliant plot and a supporting conclusion. The film's premise had all in it to be a wonderful thriller, but what it requires is not to be seen as a thriller. There is an unsolved death, mystery in the hearts of the Mumbai myriad lanes and  red light areas, shady characters and a cop who tries to investigate and look beneath this quagmire of deceit and crime.

One thing, that is noticeable and commendable is that the advent of numerous upcoming filmmakers has given the popular hindi film, a new lift. The producers are not shy of treating different subjects and treatments, and back filmmakers with interesting ideas. Gone are the days when the Hindi cinema used to be three hours long, with songs and trees and dance. Talaash, has that sense of newness. The collage of sequences that open the movie presents a kaliedoscopic panorama of the Mumbai by-lanes. Amongst the glitzily clad prostitutes, the slight image of one hiding a bruised cheek through makeup is eye catching. The eye for detail of the filmmaker is really praiseworthy. Mohanan's cinematography is astute in capturing the dingy lanes through some interesting angles. The space in which a drama unfolds becomes important in a film as such and the visual images do not disappoint.

Talaash is the story of Surjan Singh Shekhawat, who is investigating the accidental death of Armaan Kapoor, a filmstar, whose car apparently swerved out of control and splashed into the ocean dead at night. As he gets entangled in it, and the search, the 'talaash', his personal life gets entangled as his own life and relationship with his wife, Roshni (Rani Mukherjee) gets into turmoil and he is made to confront a suppressed demon, the death and the possible guilt of losing his only son. 'Talaash' should appropriately be seen as the quest for this man, our protagonist and his quest to be finally at peace with himself. As he battles with himself, and embroils himself more to avert his own conscience of holding himself responsible for the death of his son, he meets a sex-worker, Rosie (Kareena Kapoor) who helps in his search, both within and without. And it is where the film starts to run haywire. The problem that I have with the film, is that if the film was to be structured as a man's inner quest to fight his own demons, the entire premise of the film and the plot structure should have been different than what it is, which is in the mould of a typical noir-thriller and a whodunnit story. The audiences's expectations of the film as a thriller is not quenched as the series of bizarre events are easily explained by an equally bizaare supernatural element in the plot. Though we agree that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies, yet the handling of something as tricky as a supernatural element requires a maturity which lacked in the film, which ultimately concludes with a supernatural revenge motif. Thrillers of the highest order, even if incorporating supernatural elements require plot construction of the highest order which the story lacked, and I am afraid to say the conclusion puts the film down as it resorts to sentimentality which degrades the film.

Other than that, acting wise, there should not be any complaints, Aamir Khan is good, Rani Mukherjee with her restrained self plays her part well, as does Kareena Kapoor. However, once again, I would have to admit the class of Nawazuddin Siddique as Tehmur, who is in two words, brilliant and outstanding. Ram Sampath's music revives the mood of the noir thrillers of the 60's Hollywood and one might say, he is turning out to be a brilliant composer. 'Jeeh le zara' sung by Vishal Dadlani, is a wonderful song, and comes at a perfect moment in the film.

'Talaash' or search, is again a reminder of what could have been. It is a person, with a well toned body, having brilliant eyesight, brilliant heart, digestive system, without any disease and extremely healthy except for a very very very brittle skeleton. Filmmakers should I feel, try to adapt quality thrillers by authors and adapt them to suit the Indian space. Adapting foreign authors and moulding them on Indian contexts has been done in the past and at least it would give a film a basic skeleton to thrive on, and not leave all its cast and members in a 'talaash' for a story.

Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Talaash_poster.jpg

History with Honesty and Authenticity

History with Honesty and Authenticity

Chittagong(2012) a review.

Dir: Bedabrata Pain

Cast: Manoj Bajpai, Nawazuddin Siddique, Vega Tamotia, Delzad Hilwale, Barry John, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Saheb Bhattacharya, Anubrata Basu.

 

I must admit that my decision to see Bedabrata Pain’s Chittagong was fuelled by many facts, and some of them not remotely related to the film. There were numerous curiosities that led me to see it. Firstly, of it being made by a NASA scientist, who had shown immeasurable courage to forego a lucrative and highly prestigious job to venture into an unknown and unpredictable world of cinema, was something that pulled me towards the filmmaker. The fact that in this day and age, when a generation is motivated by monetary stability and the lure of occidental shores, someone, especially a Bengali, can take such a risk is commendable enough. Also, being somewhat of a serious amateur photographer myself, having an admiration for the inventor of the sensor technology that forms the backbone of every digital camera and DSLR that we see today would be inevitable. But when I went to see the film, I was very particular to leave all this baggage behind and put on my critical cap. The film would have to stand up in front of me and be counted, and I must say, I was not disappointed, not at all. 

The one thing that strikes about the movie is its almost ruthless honesty. An attempt had been made of portraying historical facts and the situation where the events make the characters and not the other way around, something which had been remarkably absent in the populist films which treat with the issue and episodes from our freedom struggle. Indian popular cinema has always treated our freedom fighters as idols and a sense of feigned idolatry makes the struggle a mere romantic exercise and takes the honesty and the ambivalence out of it. And it is precisely that Chittagong attempts to showcase.

The film showcases one of the forgotten sagas of Indian freedom movement. That of a revolutionary, Masterda Surya Sen, and his band of gutsy youths, the youngest of them, a boy of fourteen, and how they had the British rulers on the run. It portrays that same episode in Indian freedom struggle, known now famously as the ‘Chittagong uprising’ where a group of youngsters led by the schoolteacher Surya Sen carried out simultaneous raids on the armoury the European Club and cut down on the telephone as well as the railroads. The events are narrated through the eyes of the fourteen year old ‘Jhunku’ or Subodh Roy. The fact that we see the real Subodh Roy, at the end of the film in an interview is a ploy which works to lend the authenticity to the film. Something we have also seen in a cult film as Motorcycle Diaries.

Time and again I have to refer to those words, authentic, honest. The film tries to be honest and authentic to the core. The filmmaker seems to be aware of exactly what he wants and for someone who inhabited a world far removed from the cinematic, what Bedabrata Pain ultimately comes up with is commendable. The film captures beautifully the insecurities and poignancies of the revolutionaries. It never goes for idolatry and worships the figures as gods. We as audiences must realize that all great revolutionaries are humans after all and at moments of crisis they too have their doubts about their methods. The insecurities and self-doubts of the protagonist Jhunku mirror authentically that selfsame doubt which would be inevitable in any fourteen year old taking up guns against an empire knowing very well, that the next shot could be his last. Images, flood to mind when we see a young Jhunku with the rifle. Films like Kenneth Loach’s The Wind that Shakes the Barley or for that matter short-stories like Liam O’ Flaherty’s ‘The Sniper’ can be drawn as parallels.

Manoj Bajpai as Masterda excels as does Nawazuddin Siddique, who after Kahaani and the Wasseypur films, have become one of the finest young crop of actors in this country. Delzad Hilwale as the young Jhunku delivers a good strong performance capturing the confusions of a youngster who has jumped into a cauldron he has not yet been able to grasp. But I guess the surprise of the crop was, Vega Tamotia as Pritilata Waddedar, who despite a minimum screen presence delivers a strong and finely tuned performance. Alexx O’Nell as the ruthless Charles Johnson, reminds us  of those individuals whose sadistic expression and revelry of executing power characterised many colonial regimes. The scene where Surya Sen’s fingernails are pulled off one by one reminding us of a similar sequence in The Wind that Shakes the Barley recalls this horror.

The film showcases history and that is the highlight of the film. The fact that the events narrated are historically true makes for the gripping drama as well as the characterised layers of the film. The material was already there and what the filmmaker needed was just to look, and he has done that wonderfully well. Particularly of note should be mentioned the cinematography by Eric Zimmerman which captures the landscape quite well. If any fault that might be noticed in the film lies in the script, co-written by Bedabrata Pain and Shonali Bose, which at times falls short of the intention of the film and one feels that some of the actors had to visually uphold on screen what the script lacked to backup such strong acting cast and plot. The music by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy is patchy and though at times it matches excellently with the sequence, at times it falls flat. Sometimes one feels, that sequences shot without any background score add more drama to the film. However the final song ‘Ishaan’ sung by the filmmaker himself is beautifully placed.

In general it must be said, that Bedabrata Pain’s Chittagong is a very honest and authentic attempt. Comparisons with another film on the same plot, Gowariker’s Kheley Hum Jee Jaan Sey (2010) would be inevitable, but it would be fair to say, Pain’s film is a far better rendition cinematically of the topic than the previous one, which unfortunately was one of those mindless Bollywood manufactured products. Chittagong is by no means a perfect film, but in the modern context it is a fresh outlook that had been lacking in this genre. As a cineaste Chittagong is a must watch, for it would be unwise to miss out on such a moving film.

Image courtesy: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bd/Chittagongposter.jpg

Kahaani: A Story.

Post the humungous success and critical acclaim of The Dirty Picture, one had to feel a certain buzz about the next Vidya Balan ‘starrer’, Kahaani. Not only because of the prime cast, but also because of the huge presence of primarily good actors from the Bengali film Industry working in a Bollywood film and also the presence of Calcutta/Kolkata. Kahaani is essentially about what the title suggests. It is about stories and telling them. That director Sujoy Ghosh and co writer Advaita Kala can conceive of such an idea and weave a thriller on it is worthy of kudos indeed.

Without giving much away, the film is essentially about a pregnant woman, Vidya Bagchi, or Bidya as she is called, who has come down from London to this city for the first time, in search of her missing husband. And sees Kolkata, a different and mysterious city which even to its too critical and familiar audience is becoming these days, a tad defamiliarizing. The film is about this search and what this search leads to. In this search Kahaani encapsulates and explores the dingy and the underbelly of Kolkata, not the city of high rises and shopping malls, but the lanes and by-lanes of an ancient labyrinthine mystery. It explores the peripheral lives that unfold in the darkness of the city. Its people and places suddenly reverberate into a visual cacophony and becomes that all important character in whose matrix all the characters are trapped.

Kolkata is a cinematographer’s nightmare as well as paradise as is most Indian cities with a colonial background. The unplanned roads and the dingy lanes act as exciting and vibrant backdrops for a camera and the capturing of it is a challenge for anyone with the instrument. It is this city that we have seen in The City of Joy and very recently in Srijit Mukherjee’s 22shey Srabon, which incidentally was a thriller too. Kahaani in this aspect was a brilliant attempt, but one feels at one level, where the film could have shot off, the cinematographer as well as the director has reverberated certain clichéd images that has been used to saturation. The use of the steadycam, personal perspectives and series of close up shots take you directly to the action, and puts you in the midst of it, and it is in this sense the importance of Kolkata as a character is essential and is highlighted.

Coming to the actual plot, the storyline, as I said earlier, the fact that the director conceived of the idea is commendable indeed and the plot really had the potential to blur the lines between fact and fiction, reality and surreality. Srijit’s 22shey Srabon title track ‘ashole sottie bole sottie kichhu nei’ kind of reverberates in your mind as you hear the opening credit rolls, and to it ‘ami shotti bolchhi.’ Kahaani tells us a tale and tells us almost brilliantly, yes, almost. The plot which might have been the film’s greatest weapon, kind of lets it a bit down also. The opening sequence of the metro attack and the sequence with the child holding the bag, and in a separate case, where the milk bottle containing the poison chemical comes from in the bag are questions that are left unanswered. The sequence itself felt out of place. The film could have done brilliantly well, I say almost flawlessly well had it concentrated on a personal story line and focused on the microscopic rather that to forcefully increase the ‘seriousness’ by childlike intervention of the Intelligence Bureau, its workings, the entire hacking scenario, and a ludicrous terrorist angle. If the IB really functions as lackadaisically as portrayed, really, God help this country. But again if the terrorist is as ludicrous as it is portrayed, we need not worry. It feels disappointing to say the least that a film which had so much potential to be a cerebral masterpiece, and once in a time film, kind of leads some of that potential down the drain.

Shooting on real locations are done to give a film a realist touch. However the director should note that it has to be backed by realism on all accounts. The very sequence when Bob Biswas (Saswata Chatterjee) first attempts to push Vidya Balan and eventually pulls her back, as a metro train is approaching, is something that thankfully is in reality impossible with the posting of patrolling guards, a detail which might have been missed. Also ‘Satyaki’ was not the ‘Sarathi’ of Arjun, he was his friend as Arjun’s ‘Sarathi’ was Krishna.

The entire ‘mother-motif’ that the film uses with the Durga Puja, at the backdrop is pertinent to the plot, yes, but Kolkata is much more than Durga Puja, Howrah Bridge and Victoria Memorial, which somehow remains the only images of the city to its expatriates. The whole morality angle and the mythological archetypes, the mother angle do make for good box-office but take something out of the cerebral intensity of a thriller, the character study of a thriller, it takes out from a film’s multidimensionality. You feel pleasure at the end of the film, and not tired at all, as you are not stretched. The audience is left relaxing at the end as actions happen as expected, almost too forcefully true. I refrain from analyzing it thoroughly as it would give the plot away.

Though not entirely critical, the film does have some aspects which act eventually as its strongholds. At moments the film is brilliantly clever, amazingly shot but fails to sustain it. The true strength of the film lies in its cast whose performance can be summed up in one word, ‘brilliant’. The film is riding on a refreshing wave of ‘women’ centric movies to have recently come out from the Bollywood industry and it is a good sign that the industry is looking to break conventions here. The film was about Vidya Balan and much of the success of the film critically would also be because of her as she is the prime focus and she has stood up on all accounts. She has evolved into a truly brilliant actress and provides another stellar performance. Parambrata Chattopadhyay, as the cop ‘Rana’ also excels in his demure fashion and does the character full justice. Nawazuddin Siddique as Khan, Shantilaal Mukhopadhyay, Kharaj Mukherjee, Dhritiman Chattopadhyay all essay their roles to perfection. But a very very special mention, to Saswata Chatterjee as Bob Biswas who really makes this film reach its highest echelons. Small screen space did not deter this brilliantly portrayed character who is brought to life in a remarkable fashion and Saswata Chatterjee deserves thanks for doing it. With his vulnerabilities and Cold-bloodedness, the audience will fear the “nomoshkar” ever again. He has to be one of the most fearful characters of modern Indian cinema. Thanks Saswata Chatterjee and Sujoy Ghosh for giving life to it. Amongst the considerable number of reasons that would make the film a must watch or a re-watch, Bob Biswas and Saswata Chatterjee would be prime.

Kahaani is a film with potential and a huge one at that. The film does have some flaws, like the music which mostly seemed out of place, so I won’t use many words for it, but the flaws it has can be mostly overlooked on the account of the step the film has taken. Sujoy Ghosh has trodden an almost untrodden path in Bollywood with this film and deserves accolades for that. Solely judging with the critical eye, Kahaani is a good watch and within the constraints that Bollywood places on filmmakers, it is a considerable attempt. It is a huge sigh of relief from seeing the so called biggest film industry in the world can at least attempt to make standard good films these days. What is that standard? Well, that is for another day, but Kahaani verges very close to that.

Image courtesy. http://images.outlookindia.com