Haider

So we finally watched the movie 'Haider' and I'm more a fan of Tabu's tragic eyes now than I was after watching 'The Namesake', and as much a fan of Vishal Bharadwaj as I was after watching 'Omkara'. The movie didn't let me down, loved the adaptation, the setting, the story-telling & loved the digs at the Salman Khan brand of entertainment.

Dedh Ishqiya

I'm a big fan of Vishal Bharadwaj & although this isn't a movie directed by him, it sure has borrowed his style. It's an entertainer, its funny, witty, layered & insane.

Set in the nawabi mileui of UP, the language is difficult to grasp - both the shayari & the profanities - so thank god for the subtitles! What a brilliant job though writing those lines & verses - they range from crass (in characterstic style of what you would imagine from UP conmen) to sublime (in high-brow urdu). The jabs at Italian DNA ensuring royalty & puppeteering the fake-nawab; the jokes on the 6 stages of love - all pretty hilarious. The lyrics of those songs are gorgeous. And Madhuri Dixit - as a fading beauty, broke royal, a glorious dancer, a frail begum - is amazing. 

I love the actor who plays the baddie (I remember him as  Dubeyji from Monsoon Wedding, although I've made many attempts to remember his real name, his Dubeyji character sticks). He is a guy who owns his wierdness- he stands out in any role he does. I wonder if he can play a man on the street as convincingly as he plays the quirky outlandish characters he usually does.

Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola

I didn't know what to make of the movie title but it made us curious enough to go watch it. And I quite enjoyed it. I can see why some people didn't though - its a whimsically made movie, bordering on the insane; but thankfully I was in a mood to lap up all the quirkiness that Vishal Bharadwaj could throw at me.

There aren't that many Indian movie makers who are brave enough to attempt a satire that so smugly refuses to put a boundary on imagination. Like Salman Rushdie's writing or Picasso's paintings, Vishal Bharadwaj's movies are gutsy in their quirkiness. That I love. I loved Pankaj Kapur's portrayal of the divided face of the Indian upper class. How tough is that character to pull off, to balance comedy with evil & tomfoolery with graveness. I loved Shabana Azmi's witches-of-Macbeth portrayal, especially in some of her monologues. For a restrained actor like her, it couldn't have been easy to be so overtly over the top. And I loved Vishal Bharadwaj's unhindered style. Its not easy at all to layer a satire under the bizzarre silliness of pink bulls & zulu dance troupes. It could easily be mistaken for just silliness.

Perhaps the movie could've been shorter, snappier; but I didn't get bored. I did wonder where it was going for a while, but that didn't last long. Its not a movie I loved, but I liked it a good deal.

Shanghai

We watched the movie 'Shanghai' this week & I thought it was a pretty good movie. It started off like a political thriller, but towards the middle, one realises that its not edge of the seat stuff that has you guessing what will happen next. You sort of know, having lived in India, that the decadence of the political system starts & permeates from the highest level of the government. The human stories in the movie are far more interesting.

There's an intelligent IAS-type working inside the government but not part of the political system; there's a young activist working against the system; there's a unsophisticated 'man on the street' who is largely unconcerned with whats happening with the system; there's a political-insider state secretary who is very much embedded in the system. This is a story of all these characters coping with this political system; in its brutal corrupt form that India has learnt to accept. The pessimism with which the movie ends is disheartening, but very well put.

I never thought I would say this, but how great an actor is Imran Hashmi!

Dev D.

I loved this movie. I had seen SRK's Devdas and hated it (special mention needs to be made here of SRK's long-drawn death scene & its hideous melodrama); and when I saw the promos for Dev D, I expected it to be an edgier, less glamourised, more real version of the same story, but the tragic tale of Devdas without melodrama was hard to imagine.

I also thought that the story of Devdas was basically bland - lost love makes this weak man drink himself to death - devoid of any strong characters. Well, Dev D is a loser too, he is selfish too, and he definitely suffers from a bigger male ego than SRK's Devdas; but he never tries to invoke pity from me (the viewer) & I wanted to know how far he would go with his insane broken heart/ ego. A Paro with attitude and gumption also was an interesting twist.

What I liked about this movie was its audacity. I don't mean just the audacity of the language, or the openness about sexuality, or even the audacity of Paro's character; but the audacity that the movie has shown in doing away with the filminess of Devdas' tragedy.

Abhay Deol, I'm a fan.

Twice as good

Good hindi movies are rare & to be able to catch two of them in a row is a chance one gets only once in 300 years.

I think 'Khoya Khoya Chand' is a great & intense movie. Like "Hazaaron Khwahishey Aisi" made two years ago by the same director; this movie too is under-rated. Set in Mumbai's movie-world of 1950s, Shiney Ahuja plays a Guru-Dutt-ish character; passionate & brooding; whereas Soha Khan plays a Meena-Kumari-ish actress; successful yet tragic. The movie follows the amorous love story of the two characters with the black-and-white Bollywood as a backdrop -- its vulgar inside as well as the glossy outside.

The other great movie I watched last week was 'Taare Zameen Par'; it had me sobbing away through out :) This is a story of a 8-year-old kid, gifted with intelligence & creativity, but he suffers from dyslexia & learning disabilities. Scorned by friends and punished by adults who don't recognise his disabilities, the kid finds his sense of self-worth almost completely eroded; until a sensitive art teacher turns his life around.

The movie made me go back in memory to my school days and remember all the 'under-performers' from my school and spare a thought for what they would've gone through. The movie also makes a strong statement on whats wrong with the competitive Indian education system that makes great doctors & engineers out of some school kids; but is ruthless to the rest of them.

Sacred Games

Although I wouldn’t count it among my favourite books, I quite enjoyed reading ‘Shantaram’ last year; mostly for its close-up view of the politics of the infamous-yet-awe-inspiring Mumbai underworld.

Bollywood has always glamourised tales of ‘poor-man-turned-powerful’ as well as ‘don-with-ethics’; told umpteen times in the 80s mostly with Amitabh portraying a diamond-smuggler; and lately there have been good mafia movies like Company & Sarkar. However the underworld has rarely shown up in good Indian literature (or maybe I missed those books).

Last week I borrowed Vikram Chandra’s ‘Sacred Games’ from a friend and I’m only half-way through the book now, but I already like the way the author has dealt with the theme. The food-chains in the mafia, the police force, political parties & even Bollywood are portrayed as flesh-and-blood persons. The power struggle, corruption & politics of it all make a gripping story, but they’re only secondary. The characters make this book worth reading. They all look, feel & smell like Mumbai.

PS: Have you noticed how Indian authors & movie-makers have suddenly become cool about the usage of hindi profanities? :)