The Bums of Navarone: Ketan

Showing posts with label Ketan. Show all posts

Saturday, 18 January 2014

The Wolf of Wall Street

The yardsticks of judging films of a certain genre seem to be dug to the depths of inflexibility. We now know exactly when to expect a slow motion sequence, when to break into tears of pity and when to clap for a motivating monologue. And when an amateur rebel of a director comes around with something unconventional, we are ready to pan him down with a misguided sense of knowledge. Conventions, with their now predictable structure have crippled the audience and critics alike. Films, especially the popular ones, have become mere opportunities for wannabe's to broadcast pseudo-intellectual inferences and opinions.

Not us! We know what we're talking about.

An intervention is called for. And not from anybody vulnerable, trying hard to make their mark, but from someone well established and authoritative enough to righteously shove the intervention into people’s throats, basically-a big Daddy. Enter, Martin Scorsese.

A vigilante filmmaker with a large cache of cameras? We need Nicolas Cage to play this guy.

The Wolf of Wall Street is a surprisingly surprising film. With a biopic, that is unusual. Scorsese has challenged the film fraternity by using a genius technique which is disturbingly successful only when it is hidden. The film does not necessarily track the turning points in Jordan Belfort's life, what it does though is that it shows all the instances that highlight the intricacies of the character. These instances might not lead to the next phase of his life but they sure tell you what kind of a person Jordan Belfort is.

There are two separate questions- What is the story of Jordan Belfort? And who is Jordan Belfort? 'The Wolf of Wall Street' answers the second question. Does it do so reliably? We will never know, because it is based on a book written by the man himself. All we can do is laugh at his insanely money, drugs and sex driven life, as it slides down as much as it possibly can. And we get ample moments to laugh. So many moments that you start to feel guilty for laughing at a hard working man's tragedy. But hey, he is a crooked man isn't he? What might have been an immensely intense biographical drama becomes an immensely engaging study of a character. And does it come to a conclusion? Well the story does, but the character doesn't.

The character just keeps drinking.

So go watch it for Dicaprio's potential Oscar winning performance and Scorsese's relentless efforts towards quality film-making. Watch it for the humor and for the seeming light heartedness. Watch it for its aggrandizement of everything wrong, and for the challenge that it puts to your mind. Consume it all as food for thought. It is tasty food.

The Wolf of Wall Street is not unconventional. It is neo-conventional.

IMDB Rating: 8.7/10 (This rating will probably decrease in the following weeks)

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 76%

Should you watch it: Yes

My Rating: 3.5/5

Friday, 22 March 2013

Aatma : Shit hit the (horror) fan !

This is possibly how the job interview of the director of ‘Aatma’ went-

Producer A: What can you offer us? Do you have any new ideas to revamp the genre?
Director: I want to make a horror film.
Producer B: are you any good?
Director: I want to make a horror film.
Producer A: Why should we appoint you as the director of this film?
Director: I want to make a horror movie.
Producer A: I think we should appoint him, he is motivated enough.
Producer B: yes, he wants to make a horror film.
Director: I want to make a horror film.

I am a conscious phobophile. Not the one that goes to amusement parks and vomits his guts out while laughing out loud, sitting on a rollercoaster. I am the one that goes to watch horror movies and vomits out popcorn while gasping out loud, sitting on the edge of the recliner seats. I just made it up- the latter part- to make the introduction of the review a more poetic and an artistically consistent experience. Because I believe that when a film is not entertaining, its reviews surely are.

Yes, I am a conscious phobophile, perhaps placed somewhere in the centre of the phobophile measurement scale, but a phobophile nonetheless. Nothing connects to me more than fear does. And do not misunderstand this love of fear for love of exploitation; the lesser the gore, the merrier the horror movie experience. Because then you know that they have better things to focus on, rather than the obvious ones that waste everybody’s time.

The reason I emphasize on my genre preference is to take the following point home- it takes great effort to disappoint an audience on all counts, but it takes a miracle to disappoint the fans. You might say that it is easier to disappoint the fans because they have been analyzing the genre for a substantial time and expect more from a horror film than the rest of the audience do. I disagree. I say that they go to whimper, love to whimper and relish even a small helping of whimper generation.

Before I go dissecting the movie, I need to present a justification for watching the movie in the first place. Why would a critic have to do that? Isn’t he/she supposed to disregard the trailers and his/her own conscience in order to rate the movie objectively? This would be true in most of the cases. But if you are familiar with the quality of the current Indian horror film churn-out, you would have to be a nutcase if you want to pay to watch one yourself. I fancy thinking that I am not a nutcase, therefore the justifications- Firstly; the Bhatt camp has monopolized and ruined (in that order) the Indian horror cinema. This movie was an exception. Secondly, Nawazuddin Siddiqui had smitten me with his performance in Gangs of Wasseypur, Kahaani and Peepli Live. I trusted his choice of script. I wonder if he would also come up with a justification list after watching the movie himself. Thirdly, the plot-though a cliché, but a newer one- promised to explore multiple emotions and directions than the usual haunted house paradigm.

Promising posters have become a reason to suspect foul play

Aatma is a story of a woman trying to save her daughter from being taken to the afterlife by a possessive, psychopathic, cuckolded and (before I forget) dead husband. Towards the beginning of the film, we learn that the daughter has been kept away from the truth of her father’s long absence. So when he comes late at night (when her mother is fast asleep) and tucks her in with a bed time story, the girl doesn’t suspect oddity. Soon her father starts accompanying her to her classroom and helps her with the classwork. The father also tells her that he loves her more than her mother does and that he is going to take her away with him, away from her evil mother. The little girl is also oblivious of the fact that this loving man, her father, is/was a wife beater.

History testifies to the fact that the villain needs to be a better developed and a more real character than the hero himself. Be it Darth Vader or Voldemort or Raoul Silva from Skyfall, all these people-though fantasized and exaggerated their antics are- are more like us, they faced real conflicts in decision-making and survived them only to die at the hands of their respective contrived, utopian and idealist figures- the Heroes. Aatma had a great potential to build a great villain. And with a casting triumph like that (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), their job was half done! But the ham-up operation was led by a team of headstrong genre-terrorists that interpreted the ‘holy book of horror’ wrong. The hero/heroine in this case- It’s like all the other cases, they are always right. Only in horror movies, they get to be dumb as well.

An ideal way to make this film would have been the adoption of a moody approach. Things should have taken time to unravel. The relationship between the father and the daughter, the father and the mother and the mother and the daughter should have been explored to the point we started caring about them. Even if they had ascended to melodrama, I would not have complained. The idea of the story does provide an opportunity to discover sentimental passages that could lead to an enthralling climax, full of emotion. But then this is a lot of wishful thinking. Let us see how the film’s been executed (pun intended) in this particular universe of ours-

The film opens with a song that could have been used in the background during the spooky scenes. As soon as the opening credits are done with, the film jumps into the plot, perhaps too early! This is the perfect place to explain with an analogy- instead of putting the first gear, the film directly puts the fifth one and as for the climax, it chooses the only one left- the reverse gear.

Once you spot a logical loophole in a film that you wanted to enjoy, the experience just gets ruined. In this particular film- why does the mother not sleep in her daughter’s room when she knows that a psycho ghost comes visits the little girl and has already threatened to take her away? Why does the woman never make an escape strategy throughout the film? Why expect the ghost to just give up its escapades for no reason? Every time the dead husband makes his nightly appearance, this woman- probably suffering from short term memory loss- hops, skips and shouts with shock. The antagonist himself is not a very stable character. This particular ghost has got his ideology wrong! His counterparts will cringe in embarrassment when they see how illiterate he is in the art of haunting. He kills all the random people for no reason, even if they do not come in his way. This might be the film’s alternate way of telling us that he is a psychopath. The problem is, they waste a lot of time saying that. There is no limit to the variety of ways in which the movie annoys you- A certain character in the movie (that of a cop) is investigating the random murders committed by this misguided ghost of ours. He gets to annoy us by repeatedly reminding us, in a pseudo-ominous tone- “Yahan kuch galat ho raha hai…” This exercise is used to bring us back to the edge of the seat, even as the film reaches its climax. They got it right in a way. The film was so bad in developing any sense of fearful progression that we had to be reminded by this guy time and again.

Another flaw is that the movie ‘tries’ to be intelligent. It tells us of things that are happening off-screen, through random dialogues (badly delivered). Now most filmmakers use this trick to focus on more important plot points. This film wasted those plot points off screen. What WAS kept was stupidity. Here is an example; our Sherlock Holmes explains a murder scene to our heroine-

“Unke sharer par koi ghaav nahi tha”
“Phir who kaise mari?”
“Unka Galaa kaatkar maara gaya”
“Par aapne toh abhi bola ki koi ghaav nahi tha”
*ominous pause*
”Unka gala andarse kaata gaya tha”

*audience mocks the situation with sarcastic sighs of realization*

And worry not; the film is full of these. The little girl was just attacked by a supernatural ghost but was saved at the last moment by her mother. The mother takes her away to spend the night at the neighbor’s place (why? The house is not haunted, the little girl is! Why endanger the innocent neighbors?). There a friendly woman tucks the girl in with her own and reassures the mother- “she is safe now”. How do you know? You have no basis to prove that statement! Just because a dialogue is necessary, you don’t have to speak baseless stuff. Times like these, we should go with the Hollywood staple- “everything is going to be alright”. It’s a broad statement that doesn’t talk about now. It talks about the final state of being. So even if things go wrong in the immediate future, you cannot be blamed. For uttering that one baseless dialogue, I guess the neighbors deserved the endangerment.

Kid's possessed by a ghost! These guys put the 'no' in in'no'vation!

When it comes to acting, what you have got to do in a horror movie is, firstly, be cynical when it comes to walking the corridors. Definitely, do not switch on the lights, because that way the disable the ghost. And secondly, act like you were being chased by a monster. The child actress cannot be blamed for her performance, but we can say that she was not motivated at all. Bipasha Basu must be proud that she is doing different stuff than dancing to item numbers, wearing skimpy outfits, but watching her in movies like Raaz-3 and this one, you want to pick her up (like you do in those strategy games) and place her in a place more respectable… the shampoo commercials, maybe? No she does not do a bad job; she could have definitely done a better job, only there is not much of a job to do. It’s more than dancing in skimpy outfits, but it’s sillier. As for Nawazuddin Siddiqui, he has just had his adrenaline shot to fame with his Gangs of Wasseypur stardom. He will have to choose his scripts carefully. I have to admit though that he was arresting in whatever little screen presence he had. He was one of those good ideas that were kept off the screen, you see?

Finally, if I were you and I was reading this article, I would pan the critic for

1. Wasting so much time in watching a movie he knew was not going to be any good

2. Wasting so much time in writing a review for the movie nobody is going to watch any way.

Perhaps I would be right in doing that. It is not hard to see that shock horror is on the verge of dying. But it has been dying for a long time. There are superior genres. Genres that make you laugh, the ones that make you think about your life and the ones that inspire you. Horror in itself has been made into a cheap way of earning money. In olden days people used to go to magic shows to get dumbfounded, now we go to horror films. People will never stop testing their courage. They need to be motivated regularly. They need to know that they are not afraid and they need to feel intelligent. These needs are satisfied by today’s horror cinema. The genre will always remain on the verge of dying. What a sad state of immortality. I am reminded of a particular episode of The Twilight Zone, in which a man makes a deal with the devil. He trades his sickness for immortality, only to be imprisoned for life!

I do not regret watching this film. It was a waste of time, but it was laughably bad. Everybody in the auditorium laughed their guts out. They had a good time wasting their time.

One thing is for sure. As the crow's been flying, this has become a paradoxical statement-

' I have a good taste in movies. My favourite genre? Horror '

As for ‘Aatma’, there was not a singular scary moment. Don’t watch it deliberately, only accidentally.

Rating: 0.5 / 5

Tuesday, 18 December 2012

Sandy Hooks (and) The World

9:30 a.m, December 14^th

Sandy Hooks Village,

Newtown,Connecticut

Adam Peter Lanza, an armed 20 year old man, wearing a military outfit, killed 28 people in a span of 20 minutes. First he shot his mother in the face, 4 times. Then he stormed into the local elementary school killing twenty kids (all between the ages of 5 to 7) and six adults of the female staff. The 28^th ‘victim’ was Lanza himself.

Adam Lanza

The police arrived. No shots were fired by them. Investigation says that Nancy Lanza (the perpetrator’s mother) was a firearm enthusiast who used to stock guns and believed that violence was the only way to survive once the economy crashed, which according to her was very eminent. She wanted her kids to take this seriously, so they accompanied her to the shooting range on a regular basis. Nancy Lanza was a woman who could predict the fall of American economy but was oblivious of the eminent fall of her son’s sanity.

The victims

The crime is unforgivable. What had the children done to meet such a horrifying end? To Adam Lanza they were merely a collateral damage in his superior battle against the world. What enmity he had against the kids is a mystery and that is what the whole world seems to be obsessed about. Sure it is puzzling. This tragedy affects the whole world and the whole world needs to contribute in solving the crime. We need to spread awareness about the 28 people who died in Connecticut, because it so happens that an incident like this rarely takes place in our country. We need to spread awareness and we need to tell people how this event has scarred us for life. We are a global community and we unite against issues like this, right?

So what do we do? We twitter, we blog and we put up status updates, cursing Lanza, cursing his mother and cursing the American government. As soon as we are done with this, the little children wouldn’t have died for nothing! They were actually a mere collateral damage in our superior battle against the world, which begins with regulating American laws concerning possession of firearms. We are all Lanzas, shooting with our keyboards into the virtual world of internet.

Meanwhile, as the people of the cynical world are engrossed in their pseudo-humanity, the top management of the media houses is hunting for the next piece of information, rather the next bait. When they take a coffee break, they switch on their respective news channels. It warms them to see so many people dancing to their tunes. The chairman pats the backs of his executives for choosing the right ‘piece’. The sponsors are happy. The increased primetime viewership assures them that their marketing investment decisions have been sound. Other entertainment channels sulk because they cannot come up with such interesting pieces, as their network is supposed to air reality shows where the actors take too much time to rehearse their scripts, causing a further lessening of profits. They pacify themselves by saying that the audience will get tired of the violence and will come back for some animation films to uplift themselves and some nerdy sitcoms to laugh at. So the question that arises is- How much do those children mean to this industrial world where success is measured by profits? Money brings happiness, so the only way to quantify happiness is to count the money. So in a way, when some people are earning money through others’ tragedy, they are buying happiness. So happiness- like money- does not go out of system, just changes hands. Is this too heartless an idea? Well, If Lanza can happen to this world, so can this idea.

History tells us that Lanza is nothing. He is a big thing today because we are now living in a ‘pro-peace’ world and not in the times of ‘violent land grabbing escapades’. So we believe. He is a big thing today because he is all over your internet and television screens today. He is a big thing because the issue was blown up like a balloon. Whether the reasons for this amplification are sentimental or monetary, are for you to choose; whichever choice comforts you more is the right choice.

When I say that this issue has been blown out of proportion, I do not mean that it was not horrifying. So here comes the need to define a limit to the ‘proportion’. The proportion is inversely related to your ignorance. Here’s a simple exercise-

Leave this article for a minute, open your local newspaper
Scan through it
Notice how many homicides, rapes and other violent cases you find in there
Remind yourself that is just your town. India being the seventh largest nation in the world contains hundreds of towns like yours
Do the math

Now would you tweet about it?

Probably not. I will tell you why, because nobody else is tweeting about it. It is not ‘trending’! So why would you discuss something that is not in fashion? Isn’t it elementary that you discuss what is ‘in’ rather than discuss what is important? There was a time when people were reprimanded for not doing but only talking. If that is not the case now, can we at least discuss the right things?

New Delhi. The evening of 18^th December.A 23 year old girl and her boyfriend boarded a city transport bus. Surprisingly, they had only four co-passengers other than the driver. The co-passengers, not very surprisingly, started passing lewd comments towards the girl. This tactic was just to spark a violent argument with her boyfriend, which then gave them a reason to hit him up with iron rods. With the male taken care of, the men proceeded towards the female.

Late at night, a passerby found two bleeding beings, by the roadside. They were in a state of shock. The perpetrators long lost to the night.

This incident is on the front page of Chennai’s issue of The Hindu, right below the detailed descriptions of GMR-Maldives tussle, Dhoni’s loss against England and Gujarat voting rounds, squeezed between an SBI advertisement and that of a highly reputed college that has started providing a master’s program in family business management.

The girl and the boy were not the residents of United States of America, they were born and brought up in a busy Indian metropolitan city where the news of children being crushed under city buses is as usual as the weekly fluctuations of the stock market, where the head of the nation does not call press conferences every time people die. Because then he would have to be on the TV all the time. He would have a separate channel for himself.

I once asked someone, “Why does this city have such a disturbing road-accident rate?” The answer I got was more disturbing, “This is a metro, such things keep happening, you take care of yourself”. To my surprise, the same person was tweeting condolences to the Connecticut community, two days ago. Maybe the ‘Sandy Hooks Massacre’ is the new ‘Gangnam Style’ then. Sometimes I feel that being a global citizen has its disadvantages. Because there are no borders to adhere to, we start believing that we belong to the better part of the globe. Our reality becomes America. No more do we take steps to improve the quality of television in our country, we would rather watch international sitcoms that the internet gives us an easy access to. Not that it’s a bad thing to do, but don’t you forget that it’s just your computer screen that has the look of a developed rich economy. When you step out of your house, there’s still going to be gaping potholes, needy beggars and the undying stench of corruption. The exposure towards the better world is backfiring. The portal on your latest sharing device’s screen is just make-believe. Now when indigenous writers dream of plots for their story, they do not think of Kapoors, Mishras and Khans. They think of Mr. Smith and the bar on the Dewey Street. Including me. I do admit that in a fast-paced thriller, Anand Sharma would make a bad name for a protagonist. I would like to clarify here that I am not against the fact that internet provides access to global citizenship, hell I love the internet! But I try to retain my identity. Do you?

Israel has been torturing the Gaza Strip for a long time now. It is known to assassinate important leaders of its neighboring countries, until recently. It’s bombing on Sudan is a major discomfort to all the countries around it. The death toll and the living conditions are unimaginable. And let's not forget that Israel itself is under the constant threat of annihilation from these neighbors. The civil war in Syria has destabilized the whole of west Asia. With the various communities fighting for their rights, the governments of Sudan’s allied nations are distracted. It is said that Israel’s attack on Sudan was just a warning to Iran, which is probably supplying arms to Sudan and also 'allegedly' developing nuclear weapons, atomic bombs that could wipe out a country the size of Israel in a matter of seconds. One superpower that is supporting Israel in its violent endeavors is the United States of America. You see an integral part of the country’s economy functions on the selling of arms. When there’s no war, the arms sales take a drop. So “let the whole world fight, let me earn the money to defend my country against these violent countries”. Enter- greed. There is no deficiency in firearm production, so “let me sell some to my own citizens; so what if they are already drowning in taxes, there’s nothing wrong in providing money to support their government so that it can protect them from the violent countries out there!” But this injection of cynicism into the society has proved to be an overdose. And then we have reactions like those in Wisconsin and Sandy Hooks, Newtown.

Justice is a very relative term. Ajmal Kasab’s death was celebrated with fireworks and processions. The death was just a part of the Mumbai tragedy. This fact was forgotten. So much are we in the clinches of media that we have stopped thinking for ourselves. The picture is being drawn in front of us and all we do is appreciate or criticize it. We too can pick up a brush, you know? But then surely we cannot trot the globe and collect all first-hand information ourselves. So we have to depend on the news channels to provide us with the relevant information. The news channels have competitors (it’s a money game after all) so they will try to attract you towards their particular channel. And this can only be done by showing you something attractive; content that is more magnetic than the competitor’s. Important news gayi tael lene (can kiss my ass). And thus we watch what we are provided with. “Yellow Journalism” is too extreme a term for the entirety of Indian Media. But there’s a mild jaundice fever, one can sense it.

This is how things are running. And new stuff will start running when this stops. What we can at least do is close the internet window occasionally and open the literal window of our rooms. There’s things we cannot ignore. There’s things we ought to see, we ought to do. Besides, this will also make way for a better torrent speed!

Just for the record folks, between last year and this year, the Syrian Civil war has killed 50000 people. This includes about 2500 children. Many of them were tortured to death. But surely the Connecticut issue is more grave and discussion worthy.

Sunday, 4 November 2012

Skyfall (2012)

Sam Mendes has made some remarkable movies, few of them being Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road and the much acclaimed Oscar Winning film American Beauty. So when it was announced that he was at the helm the new Bond project, people decided to not give up hope. Back in 2008, Marc Foster’s Quantum of Solace had scarred them. It's a feeling I can understand, it was a painful experience every Bond fan had to go through. Further back in 2005, when Daniel Craig stepped in to the shoes of Bond, he received mixed reviews. Critics loved him because he was one of the few Bonds who could act. The movie itself took some time to be loved. Why? It didn’t give us the image that Bond was actually Superman. Well, not all the time at least. Coming back to the present, let me put it this way, we have been rewarded for being loyal to the franchise. Skyfall is undoubtedly the best movie in the series.

Is it the best ‘Bond movie’? I would have to say no.

He just realized how awful Quantum was.

First of all, Daniel Craig is a powerhouse of an actor. In his first movie he was busy proving his Bond-ness, in the second one he was defending the title. In his last one, he decided to do what he knows best- acting. He puts his everything into the role and helps Bond reemerge successfully, this time as a human being.

The Antagonist, Mr.Silva is played by Javier Bardem. A great Bond villain played by the Biutiful actor. You don’t know who he is? Well then, this is No Country For Old Men.

You're not scared of this man? You should be.

Skyfall opens with a spectacular 10 minute long chase sequence in Istanbul. Soon after that you have the ritual opening song, this time sung by Adele. Even thinking about it qualifies for goose bumps. Sounds cool right? Perfect start for a Bond movie you might think. Till this point everybody loves the movie. From here onwards the whistles subside, the music gets serious (more of tense bass and less of jazz and brass) and Bond is seen sporting stubble, drinking away in some crowded and godforsaken beachside bar. At this moment people who haven’t paid for the popcorn stop eating it. Something is wrong. Suddenly all those negative reviews pop in your mind. You are on the verge of cancelling the dinner plans. Meanwhile, the movie goes silent. It goes dark. It is now progressing like an evening, slowly and mysteriously. You don’t expect poignant pauses and patient close-ups in a Bond movie! But it is happening. As the first half of the movie unfurls and comes to an end, all the people in the audience sit dumbstruck. Some feel fooled. Some feel rewarded.

The action formula is limited and the other franchises have tried almost everything. MGM’s regular bouts of bankruptcy, has given other studios an opportunity to trespass into their solo hero genre. We have the Mission Impossible franchise, the Transporter franchise, the Taken franchise and of course my favorite, the Bourne franchise (the most ‘moving’ of them all).

Even the goddamn poster is shaky.

Skyfall decides to solve this problem. And the solution is simple. We need to peek into the psychology of the audience. Why do people love to watch Bond movies? It’s the macho quotient. They feel tough. James Bond is invincible. No one can intimidate him (and believe me, villains try hard, they always take him for a walk around their estate, taking it up as their duty to explain to him, in unnecessary detail, their plans to conquer the world. They also inform him about the perils he needs to be aware of in case he decides to escape). He is handsome, he is sexy, he is rich and he is always surrounded by girls, guns and gadgets. But this picture is too rosy. We don’t watch the movies for only that. We watch them to know how he maintains this, how different villains try to take these essentials from him and how he always saves the world by not letting them do so. We got the point long back and it was wearing people out. They had stopped caring for the guy who always wins. There has to be some difference between James Bond and The Powerpuff girls. It was time to let people know what James Bond was all about. It was time to give them a reason to care for his life. It was time to show people that he too had feelings and that he too was nothing but another vulnerable human being with a painful past. Skyfall is a much needed installment. It is a movie the fans deserve. After a point of time, every enigmatic person has to reveal his secrets to become a closer friend. After which, he becomes a normal human being, just as boring. That is why people left the theater before the movie ended. They were not ready for this. Their fantasy had come to an end.

The scientific term for fantasies coming to an end is known as the Jar Jar Effect.

Movies in the late 20^th century and those of the 21^st century have always talked about the apocalypse some way or the other, sometimes unknowingly. And Skyfall is no exception. It talks about human corrosion with time. The imagery and metaphors are strong here and the dialogues, powerful. It is all about something you would not expect to be slid into a Bond movie (and believably so), motherhood. You have to be sufficiently intrigued by now.

Bond is not saving the world here; he is doing something more real and therefore more relatable. All you need to know is that this movie is different from all the Bond movies and about time so. Skyfall is more personal.

IMDB Rating: 8.2/10 (This rating will probably decrease in the following weeks)

My Rating: 4/5

Wednesday, 10 October 2012

Filmosophy: Barfi! vs Gangs of Wasseypur

I get very anxious when a highly anticipated movie is about to release. I fear that it will be ruthlessly panned just because it was wrongly or excessively marketed. Consider Blue for example. Had it been made without Akshay Kumar or Kylie Minogue in it, it could have saved a lot of money that was spent in buying these "brands". They could have spent it on better special effects and a better writer for that matter. But it seems they were not concerned about the quality anyway. They just wanted to sell a sub-standard product in the name of a big star. And I still don’t get it, why do these actors have to promote their movies to such an extent? Their presence is big enough an incentive. Such a waste of money for one big man’s stupid insecurity!

Think Jaws, but crappier.

Expectations, they spoil half the movies for me. They spoil more than half of your life. The concept of cognitive conditioning explains this phenomenon. Let’s say you watch an Alfred Hitchcock picture, a grade A thriller. And let us say it was your first thriller movie experience. You love it. You love the way the characters speak, the way the camera moves and the way the plot reveals itself seductively. You decide that thriller movies are your kind of movies. You then expect all thriller movies to the same for you, make you sit on the edge of you seat. So the next week when you buy a ticket for that seat, you do not expect yourself to slump on it halfway through the movie, bored. Now while nothing happens on the screen, you have the time to contemplate. Why would you think that this movie was going to be as good as the one you saw before? Did the plot promise that to you? Even if it did, why would you think that this director was as good as Hitchcock? And even if it was a Hitchcock movie, why would you think that this movie of his would be as good as his earlier work? Answer= because you did not think otherwise. Your experience(s) conditioned you to expect certain results and response when certain stimulus was inducted into the situation.

It is because of this that most movies are hated and panned, directors with a different vision of the genre- discouraged and shooed away. Scared of this, the businessmen funding these pictures coerce their writers to write something that is not very new, something that won’t find it hard to be accepted by the audience. It is because of our expectations we get exactly what we expected. And before long we start hating them for producing clichés. But what happens when we start expecting something new? This expectation is also based on an old experience. Maybe in the past, you were wooed by a movie that had attempted something new. This complex and fragile space in your mind, is what is targeted by the genius writers/directors of cinema. This is the only way they can survive while the producers still get to bank millions from their box office collections. This is the only way we all get to be happy. Sadly, these geniuses are few. What is good is that Indian cinema seems to have two latest examples- Anurag Basu and Anurag Kashyap.

Look at him smile. That talented bastard.

The theatrical of Barfi! was literally jaw dropping. I couldn’t help but admit that it belonged to international standards and no less. So, my expectations for the movie piled up, the factors being- the impressive cast, the experimental director and the big production values. Finally the time came when was finally sitting in the hall, waiting for the movie to start. After various jewellery commercials and well-timed theatrical teasers, the UTV montage finally made its appearance. The next thing that usually comes up is the silent and boring presentation of brand logos and media partners. But for the first time in my life I was happy and laughing my ass off during the logo presentation. Why? Because I was listening to an innovative idea of a song that told me what to expect from the movie. Before the actors came on screen, hell, even before the film title came on screen; the movie had won people’s hearts and a hard earned applause. The song is called “picture shuru” (the picture begins), which set the mood for the movie and as fellow movie buffs would agree, it celebrated the idea of watching movies in cinema halls. You won’t enjoy that moment on DVD or cam-prints, trust me.

Barfi! tells the story of a bubbly guy residing in Darjeeling. He is deaf and dumb, but definitely not dumb. He understands life more than we do. His disability gives him an opportunity to live life in silence and peace, to contemplate how he wants to live his life. The character makes us people feel stupid. Do we really need to talk so much? Do we really need to listen to people’s advices? Won’t life be much better the other way around, his way? Eyes speak a language more profound and in that manner, Barfi is a very talkative guy. And what happens when a guy like that falls in love? A wonderful experience of a movie, that’s what happens!

You have complaints? Well he can't hear them. (Yeah, we went there)

There were risks involved here- A non-linear screenplay, a Bollywood film-star acting deaf and dumb and one of the sexiest showgirls of the industry, acting autistic and not surrendering to item numbers. But they pulled it off. Why? Because they wanted to tell a simple story and you don’t really have to dance naked to do that.

The week after watching Barfi was spent enjoying the hangover, which also included listening to Pritam’s music, but then it was obviously not his, so I can forgive myself for that. It was then that a video went viral, accusing Barfi! of plagiarism and proving it. It was evident that Barfi! had incorporated scenes from Charlie Chaplin flicks and a few Korean movies. The video broke my heart. Not that I didn’t know those scenes were from Charlie Chaplin movies, just that the Indian audience is not prone to the concept of references in movies. And even if I believe that the scenes were "copied", I have to credit the movie for being so touching and moving. Surely, you cannot say the performances were plagiarized.

CNN. Reporting the Iraq war in a biased manner, asking reasonable questions about Indian cinema.

It’s been sometime since its release now. The Indian board has selected the movie for the foreign film category of the Oscars. And that is where the problem starts. The films running in competition were some regional films and mainstream Bollywood films, Kahaani, Gangs of Wasseypur and Heroine (why?!). Marketing helps. It provides a better chance for a movie to be taken seriously by the jury. So when you have good big budget movies, just because they earned well and were marketed better, they are preferred over the regional films, which are most of the times better. Makes sense to me. We are being realistic here.

Let us start with Kahaani. Supported by a terrific performance of the ever-awesome Vidya Balan, It was a first-rate thriller. But was it a great film? No. It was the kind of film which will be and should be the staple diet of Indian film goers in the near future. Genre-based films hardly make it that far and above in India, so that’s what the film needs to be applauded for.

Now let us talk about Fashion, oops Heroine. And let us end it here. (What? It was just another seasonal dose of Bhandarkar’s pessimism. Surely you don’t want me to discuss about characterless, weak girls who get caught up in the whirlpool of a deceptive and money-minded showman’s industry, where they have to sleep with people to get their bills paid. Forgive me, but the plot is so new I haven’t done enough homework to discuss it.)

He's going to the bank.

I have always felt that horror and gangster are the genres where you can experiment a lot in areas of technology and making. But when it comes to story, it has all been done. Scorsese, De Palma, Francis Ford Copolla (and even Guy Ritchie) have delivered the most and the best you can get from the genre. Bollywood’s tryst with gangster flicks hasn’t been bad either. Ram Gopal Verma, in the good old days, churned out some really gripping and ahead of its time crime cinema. Be it Satya, Company, Sarkar or even the recent Rakht Charitra for that matter, his cinema has always been about his style and he exploited it to the core. Now he overexploits it just because he’s got the moneys. Then it was Vishal Bhardwaj who rebooted Shakespeare’s Othello as a gangster drama of Hindi cinema. Omkara was a huge hit. Its star-cast, which was more prone to commercial cinema, made the movie famous with both Bollywood and niche audiences.

Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur is not in the same league. It’s better. Set in a chaotic little town in Bihar, this tale of gangsters has everything that a gangster movie needs- the golden days, the conflict, the violence and of course the swearing of revenge over the killing of a loved one. All this happens in the first half an hour of the movie. Now we are all set to enjoy the stylish slow motions, the making of strategies and the shocking deceptions. (Suddenly you say to your friend, “Wow this is going to be amazing! F*** you, I'm not going outside to buy popcorn! Not now!!”). The shocking deception is that the movie never does any of this. Yes, these bastards swear revenge and they just keep mentioning it every 15 minutes before slumping back into their car seats and driving around the town, looking for random people to kill. And that is the masterstroke.

The characters in Wasseypur are a bunch of losers who are wannabe gangsters. Unlike Puzo’s mafia, this sorry class of criminals is not born with a macabre mindset, but has learnt the notion of style from Amitabh Bachchan movies. Gangs of Wasseypur is a good movie if you look at it from a first timer’s point of view. Let’s go a little deeper. The gangsters here are not educated, they have nothing to do but satisfy their lust for violence and sex. Their family members are more concerned about the sitcoms based on family drama set in rich households: where women burdened with jewels walk around the house, hunting for trouble, which may sometimes be as grave as cold milk served to their husband by their daughter in law (who by the way is always dressed in an impeccable attire when it comes to serving breakfast to jobless people. Some family…) Anyway, I don’t want to go all Nolan in this article, fiction-in-a-fiction shit. Hey, what about the revenge? Yes, it is there in the back of their minds. Someday, when the opportune moment presents itself, they will take care of it.

There are different reasons for people loving a movie. For example, I doubt Barfi! is a success for its story, direction and depth of performances. No, I think its winning all that money because Ranbir Kapoor’s in it. Put a newcomer in his role and you would have never seen the movie climb the stairs of success, from the box office’s point of view. And it is the same for Gangs of Wasseypur, people are loving the movie because it got a standing ovation in Cannes. Why did it get that ovation? That’s the real reason to love the movie.

Gangs of Wasseypur is full of humor. There is one whole chase sequence consisting of an intense dialogue about fruits. It could have been a stupid moment in a serious movie, but hey when something like this happens, it is not a serious movie. It’s based on real events and this shit is so damn real! I can imagine myself in that chase sequence, contributing my share of knowledge… about fruits. In another breathtaking chase sequence, we see a fat man in hot pursuit of a guy who just attempted to kill the fat man’s friend. This pursuit is carried out by sitting on a dilapidated, poor scooter. Then the chaser and the chasee both run out of fuel in their vehicles and the next moment they are both refuelling at the petrol pump, just looking at each other while their poor vehicles take rest. Isn’t that just hilarious? If not, wait till you watch it. And do watch it.

Two-wheeler sales have been down, Kashyap wants to give the market a boost.

Gangs of Wasseypur talks about revenge in a very real manner. People in this movie have no other motive but revenge. And that is their only motive of life, because they are good-for-nothing fellows, whiling away their time in a town that’s poor and undeveloped because it has given up to the whims of violent people with stolen money. Revenge is the protagonists’ ultimate motive and they would have nothing to do after that. Therefore it has to happen later.

The 5 hour epic saga is about people who can be called plain stupid by us educated lot. But what are we measuring them against? Against us? Do they even exist in the same world? They did. And they were not gun toting stylish mafia of the north, but a pitiful lot who drowned in their own stupidity, pulling down with them, a whole world of their own… a world full of twisted ideologies about ethics, family and Bollywood.

Gangs of Wasseypur is not a better movie than Barfi! It’s a more distracted one. It is a more stupid one. It has far too many characters than it can handle. It has a screenplay that doesn’t satisfy its plot. And it is about people who don’t look remotely beautiful and as for their thinking it is far from beautiful. But I think that it would have been an ideal choice for the Oscars. Why? Because it’s more Indian than Barfi! is (I am not talking about plagiarism here). Gangs of Wasseypur is not a better movie than Barfi! It is just as good. But when it comes to a jury that looks at foreign films, Barfi! could be a film about anywhere. But Gangs of Wasseypur can only happen here in India, amidst its crooked politics and the mass psychology that is ignored. The film plays as a gangster movie, works as a family drama (also a comedy at times) and leaves you with anger in your heart, that you are too cheap for this world because there are just too many like you trying to ruin it. Simple economics.

Finally, it is common sense that if the Cannes jury appreciated it by giving it a standing ovation, surely the Oscar jury was also looking forward to watching Gangs of Wasseypur. But no, we had to take a chance. Now let us hope that they will forget India’s old friendship with plagiarism and treat them scenes as intelligent references. Highly unlikely? Cheers!

I pray to Morgan Freeman.

But then we all have a different way of looking at stuff. There will be many of you who might despise the film right from the beginning and shut it off in the first 20 minutes. That’s because you hated its character, its personality. Well, at least it has one. A good film must be judged on the basis of that. I could never watch Anurag Kashyap’s Dev-D in one go. Rather I think the movie is a pain. But I admire the movie for it never wanted to be anything else but that. It was supposed to act as a hangover, as guilt for the wrongs you committed, the medium was an old flawed character called Devdas.

The Indian audience has to do more than just criticizing the run-off-the-mill contemporary material that sucks to the core. We decide if we are intelligent enough to avoid films like Rowdy Rathore. Why then do we settle to watch it, just because there’s Akshay Kumar in it? Why do we go and watch Tees Maar Khan, for its item number “Sheila ki jawaani”? You see even if you criticize the movie, you do it after watching it. The producers are still earning their money back. They will make another piece of crap for you to analyze. You will pay them to analyze it. Analyze that. We pay the same amount of money for both Rowdy Rathore and Barfi!, then why do we get different levels of satisfaction out of them?

Admittedly, Akhsay Kumar would look funnier doing that.

Maybe, we are too busy earning our money, so we don’t give much of a damn while spending it on a no-brainer, thus wasting it. Settling to watch a bad movie for an item number is like buying a car with good seat covers but no steering wheel.

Friday, 28 September 2012

The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Role call!

Dumb girl, who is a wuss, but likes to explore dark corners of a haunted place – Present.
Another dumb girl, who is horny most of the time and wears clothes that are scanty enough- Present.
A dumb boy, who is handsome and well built enough to be the alpha male- Present.
Another guy, who talks weird stuff and thus gets all the promo dialogues- Present.
Yet another guy, who doesn't have any particular traits, but gets to die creatively- Present.

There we have the perfect dumb college group which goes to the woods to spend their weekend, just to be killed one by one. Don’t we just love it? It is like the Bond movies, basic mathematics! You have the formula- blasts, international level oil conspiracies, deceptive sexy ladies and a spy who speaks less and shoots more. They bring it to us every 5 years and we compare it to the one that came before, which had suffered from the exact same fate. It is never as good as the last one. All said and done, we hoot, whistle and jump when every time they repeat that stuff. Some clichés are necessary. Some things should never change. Even if we criticize people for the way they are and nag them to change, when they do change- we miss them for the way they were. Remember when James Bond shed tears in Casino Royale? It broke the fans’ hearts for all the wrong reasons.

My favorite genre is horror. It’s ironic but I feel comfortable watching horror films. Nothing ever changes. So we can always sit back and wait for our predictions to come right. There is a pattern and we criticize it. We are pretty familiar with the horror house architecture by now. Stupid decisions are taken and we get to shout out loud at the characters. You feel intelligent, as you feel you would do better int terms of a retreat strategy when your bedroom door slams open in the middle of the night. “Let me see what resources I can optimally utilize to beat this intangible spirit which can kill me any minute”.

What I don’t like is when somebody messes with the stereotypes. The Cabin in the Woods is therefore a source of discomfort. It has everything in the right place before it starts playing with the plot in a different way, playing with the pure idea.

Pornography and voyeurism are uncomfortable topics when we talk about them to the society. But they have a market. What if they are liberalized and further commercialized? What if the human race gives in to the lust? After all there’s money where there is thirst and hunger. But this is not the first movie to tackle this topic. David Cronnenberg made a disturbing thriller back in 1983, called the Videodrome. And I am sure there are a few more. It is a good idea. It is a horrific idea. Good for a thriller. But wait a minute, what about the dumb youngsters in the forest? What about the cabin in the woods? Hey don’t blame me; I am as confused as the screenplay.

Then there was some talking about mythology, shoved in were various film references (I bet the cabin in the movie is a tip of the hat to Sam Raimi’s cult horror-comedy trilogy- The Evil Dead). At one point of time I even felt like I was watching the demo of a Japanese video game. All of this packed in a glittery blood red cover of modern, comic book style, graphic filmmaking.

It’s been some time since we saw a good horror caper. Gore and sex have adulterated the genre. Clichés are a thing of the past. Now we have everybody trying to revamp the whole genre. The Cabin in the Woods is one such experiment. Sometimes, the inconsistency of

thought had me distracted. Too many ideas, not even one well exploited.

Imagine this situation. You finally visit your favorite restaurant on a hard-earned weekend. You order your favorite dish. The place is too busy and confused so they get you something else that’s equally tasty. You are too hungry to complain so you let it be and start enjoying the food. You have just gotten accustomed to it, when the waiter, without a warning, takes your plate away and serves you with something else. It is tasty too, but again- not what you ordered. You forgive him yet again and decide to have whatever you can get, fill your stomach and leave. Sadly, the restaurant has different plans it doesn’t stop switching your dishes. It is their idea of new and innovative service. Pissed off, you leave.

It is not a bad movie, but a bad horror movie. Rather, wrongly branded so. But a good thriller? Sure. Comic-book fans would love it too. After all, it is produced by Joss Whedon, the guy behind this year’s massive blockbuster- The Avengers. These guys surely had it in the back of their mind that they were making a movie about horror movies and not a horror movie itself, but that’s the problem- they had it in the back of their mind.

If only it had made me whimper and made my goose-flesh squirm. On the contrary, my geese had popcorn and flapped their wings off indifference.

IMDB Rating: 7.3/10

My Rating: 2.5/5