English, August

English speaking Bong Agastya Sen is transplanted to a small town in AP and discovers to his shock that he is very much like a foreigner in his own country when taken out of his social mileu. The director has done a brilliant job of cutting out the self-indulgent, boring introspective prose present in the novel. He has cleverly disguised the fact that nothing much really happens plot-wise with the aid of some very nifty editing and I guess a 'slice of life' narrative structure. The soundbites (and pretty insightful ones at that) found throughout the movie really make the movie something special. All the actors are extremely competent and have been perfectly casted. Much, much better than the "Bombay Boys" , the "Hyderabad Blues", the "Rockfords" of this world. Hope "Split Wide Open" is just as good.

english, august released in 1994 was one of the first indian movies in english. this brave effort and its relative success paved the way for many such movies later in the 90s. this movie which is based on the brilliant book by upamanyu chatterjee is very well made and is enjoyable.

the movie captures well the dichotomy and the vast gap between rural india and its urban youth. rahul bose is very good as the lost young IAS officer unable to come to terms with the slow-paced rural life.

the movie is rather a faithful adaptation of the book, but nowhere as brilliant as the book itself. see the movie after reading the brilliant book.

a competent 8!!

The movie is hilarious, balanced and representative of the Upamanyu Chatterjee novel. Although Rahul Bose doesn't quite fit the description of the urban dislocated youth of the novel, he's done a truly wonderful job. The lack of expensive camrawork et al is hardly felt as the movie takes charge of your attention span completely. The one thing for which I would be eternally grateful to the movie is for finally helping me decide on a face for the Joker of Madna and Mrs Srivastava, notwithstanding the graphical depiction of her undergarments. Rahul Bose looks at mighty ease throughout the movie and makes one suspect he truly identifies with the dislocation and perverseness which his character symbolizes. This is one movie which makes you go back and read the novel all over again and relive the moments you witnessed during the film. A rare film which has handled the subtle yet ripping humor of the novel extremely well. Overall a movie representative of the beginning of the mature Indian cinema.

The vision of Rahul Bose laying purposeless on that dilapidated cot, the curtains in the dark room fluttering to give a fleeting evidence of the raging heat outside, the fan on the ceiling turning with a reassuring repetitive noise, as the smoke slowly fills the screen. The rubber hits the spaced out road. I just had to light up, taken in by the movie hook-line-and-sinker. If you have liked fear and loathing in Las Vegas, if you have been riveted when Spud went Sputnik in Trainspotting, if you have split yourself during the round tables in That 70s show, then bet your bottom dollar on this one. Even if the names above sound Greek to you but you are a male who at least once in his life has felt you are somewhere you don't belong, have touched alcohol as a student and continued the virtue into adult life or if you have crossed teen and don't live with your folks - then do yourself a favor and watch this work of art. And if you dope, I am assuming you have watched this film one time too many already. Agastya brings into life the hidden snob in us, who is afraid to belong. H goes through the film meeting and rejecting people, creating an impenetrable social and cultural divide between himself and the people around him. As he resigns into his solitude, surrounded by colleagues and acquaintances, we are drawn into a trip of lethargy. The humor is silent and splitting. Contextual, self derogatory as well as condescending. One after the other characters from our everyday life enter the movie, your neighbour, the salesman, the loud guy who had sat at the table next to you at the café, the grocery store owner who wont give you credit. They are all there, and you are Agastya wading through them, one among them and yet far far away. It is a classic.

It's this novel I've been reading. It's possessing me, doctoring my mind with the blasphemous and sometimes bordering on the sensational and bizarre, thoughts of Agastya Sen, the protagonist of this Indian story. I had watched the film based on this brilliant novel, around three years ago but only recently managed to acquire the novel itself. In many ways, it has made my fondness for the film even more acute. Using the tag line of the novel itself, English August is the story of of Agastya Sen, 24, an IAS officer, who is posted to the nowhere land of Madna and finds his imagination dominated by women, literature (Marcus Aurelius) and soft drugs On several levels, most of them subliminal, there is a sense of gratification and mild relief that others before me too have gone through the similar set of emotions, circumstances and turmoil that I now find myself entwined with. And it is a source of great solace that my solitude is not necessarily as desolate as I once thought it was. However, somewhere more inexplicably, the experience has also been one of disappointment. It was almost fun not knowing that someone out there has already felt all that I am feeling right now. I was passionate about my exclusivity and now I'm paranoid about the lack of it. Agastya has shattered one of my dearest illusions that my experiences were singular, rare and therefore, consequently profound. His story is unbearably relatable. The secret fantasies that I had so laboriously harbored to be only my own have now been proved beyond doubt to be pervasive and universal Coming back to the novel- it is driving me crazy. I can share his feelings, empathize with his dislocation, cringe at his pain, revel in his reveries and completely comprehend the myriad thoughts that his hectic brain emanates. He has invaded my private thoughts, encroached upon my personal space and one of these days, I'm going to sign a paper or an affidavit to change my name to Agastya. Kunal seems like a pseudonym anyway. And that for all practical purposes, I am Agastya and Agastya is me. We're like two souls in one body- like the double yolked egg. He's like my elder twin brother, a doppelganger, a mirror image of myself but I can hardly recognize the face in the mirror. Is it my own or is it the aftermath of one of several hallucinations of Agastya, brought upon by Marijuana and compounded by Marcus Aurelius and Keith Jarret? The novel has changed, amidst other things, my perspective about the film. Earlier I considered the film as a landmark mainly because it pioneered the multitude of multiplex films and made 'art', a commercially viable proposition, being the first English language film to have done so well at the box office. Now, in my current state of mind, I think that it is a masterpiece. English speaking Bong Agastya Sen (played brilliantly by an enigmatic Rahul Bose in his debut feature) is transplanted to a small town named Madna and discovers to his disillusionment that he is quite like a foreigner in his own country when taken out of his chic, urbane and shallow social milieu. "His life till than had been profoundly urban". We accompany him in his journey through another India, fraught with anti establishment innuendos, pervert anecdotes about anything remotely carnal and elaborate fabrications (akin to the compulsive liar that was Holden Caulfield in CITR), all along trying to discover Agastya and thereby realizing our own motivations in the process, through his sojourn. Benegal's direction is adequate but he's helped by the awesome material (The screenplay incidentally was also written by Upamanyu Chatterjee- the author of the novel). Annie Hall meets Charlie Kaufman- A strong 9/10 for me. An ordinary tale told extraordinarily. Indeed. Pretenders in this genre may come and go but English August stands as a true classic of our times