Peepli [Live]

Story: Story of two farmers Face loosing their land for an unpaid Government loan. At the time of National Elections they seek help from a Local Politician who suggests to commit suicide to get the benefit to their families.

* The Director and Producer deserve thumps up for coming with a movie with current issue - Farmers committing Suicide. * You too would have noticed 'What the News Channels' Want?! They are also marketing something, yes SO CALLED NEWS. And they market like anything. 'Death Toll Reaches 50 and Expected to reach 100 by Tomorrow morning', 'Breaking New - MLA's Sister had Knee Injury' etc..

Bollywood - Its very happy see this kind of movies in an Industry where Actors become just a Marketing Executive for their loose Products. Though there are a lot of Directors who just copies and rips from Hollywood or South Indian Movies, there are also few and very few directors and Productions houses who try to come up with new Innovative ideas. UTV is one such Brand and its great to see Aamir Khan producing as Movie in the kind of changing Bollywood to more meaningful.

The style of Director is sharp and strong though the director missed to convey a message - but sticked in to the story and left no Message. The film explores the response of the media. Many Scenes of the film spoofs the Internet and TV Media and Politics. The Natural and Simple Narration will take you to those good old Days where only good movies where produced. Problems of Farmers was usual topic in Malayalam Movies but Post 2000 - this is the best movie about Farmers to come in India.

Bollywood rarely make Sensible movies and Rarely does the Fans make them Box Office HIT. Different Attempt is not accepted easily in North comparing to South of India (Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada) wishing to see more people watching this movie. Promoting this movie only makes Bollywood Look better. Let they come up with more meaningful Movies here after.

Bollywood is changing finally! Bigtime!! Makers are now finally shifting their focus on realistic movies rather than making movies having same old clichés and melodrama. Latest film to add in the list is Peepli Live. Produced by ever dependable Aamir Khan, the movie has no big name in the star cast but kudos to Débutante Director Anusha Rizwi's superb screenplay and direction and combining with monstrous marketing strategies by Aamir Khan this created waves worldwide.

The subject of the movie is simple yet thought provoking. As India moves to an industrialized economy, farmers are committing suicide. Self- serving politicians at all government levels have been unwilling or unable to do anything about this. While the movie might appear as a spoof on the farmer suicides but it ends up conveying much more and presents some shocking facts.

Peepli residents Natha(Omkar Das) and elder brother Budhia(Raghuveer Yadav)after losing their land to the bank for not paying up their loan take the jest seriously and decide to volunteer. Natha decides to commit suicide and it becomes a big news. Reporters Nandita Malik(Malaika Shenoy), Deepak(Vishal Sharma) and a local reporter Rakesh(Nawazuddin) along with others make it a big issue and eventually the positions of many ministers is at stake. What follows is a very well directed satire.

Anusha Rizwi has handled her directorial debut like a pro.The lingo is earthy and much humour is derived from the manner it is spoken by the characters. Anusha leaves no stone unturned to poke fun of vote hungry politicians. Acting Department is ruled by Omkar Das and Vishal Sharma. Expressions given by the former make his character very endearing and the dialogues spoken by the latter are hilarious. Raghuveer Yadav has enacted his role impressively! Nawazzudin is exceptional as the reporter whose conscience awakens. Shankar Raman's Camera work makes a good impact. Music by Indian Ocean is OK.

To conclude, I would say go for it is you really want to see bollywood coming of its age and of course because its an Aamir Khan Production.

My Rating: 7/10

Thanks & Regards

The film is a hard hitting satire about the country, its people and the living conditions. More importantly, it has exposed the Indian psyche. It shows that India is not run by anybody. It runs on its own.

The movie also depicts the news media in its true and natural color. I had personally once noticed that "Knee surgery for the PM" was the headline and "24 farmers commit suicide in a week" was under "News in brief" section. Some news channel report every news item as "Breaking news". Basically, they magnify, marginalize and sometimes distort any news depending upon who controls them. Everyone has vested interests.

All news channels have just one objective. Drive up their rankings. To do that, they will go to any extent.

The movie also depicts politicians in their true color. It is a known fact that they will do anything to win the elections. Well, you cant expect anything else from them because 99% of them are high class thugs.

The movie is not meant for the average Indian who expects the formula (1 hero + 1 heroine + villains + 4 love songs + i item girl song + 4 fight scenes) I loved the language used in the film. It is the way a farmer would speak. No fancy monologues (usually referred to as dialogues). There are a few bad words and I wonder what the impact will be if those are removed.

I strongly recommend this movie because the situations are quite funny and at times you will laugh like crazy.

So go ahead and enjoy!

Satire is always a tricky genre for directors. Always a possibility of making a mockery of a grave situation or making it too serious for the audience (especially Indian) to take it. This balancing act between the poignant and theatrical is a precarious one, which is why Anousha Rizvi's directorial debut is noteworthy. Rizvi, a former reporter/journalist from NDTV brings a more insightful approach to the problem of farmer suicides and dynamics of media coverage.

I am not a great fan of Indian cinema. But every once in a while a movie comes along that shows ambition and reach which is not reminiscent of our cinema in general. The script while focusing on the predicament of farmers also manages to bring in the role of the media and the politicians. Probably, one of the more well rounded scripts in Hindi cinema in recent times.

The plot:-" Natha a poor farmer from Peepli village in the heart of rural India is about to lose his plot of land due to an unpaid government loan. A quick fix to the problem is the very same government's program that aids the families of indebted farmers who have committed suicide. As a means of survival Farmer Natha can choose to die!!! His brother is happy to push him towards this unique 'honor' but Natha is reluctant. Local elections are around the corner and what might have been another unnoticed event turns into a 'cause celebré' with everyone wanting a piece of the action. Political bigwigs, high-ranking bureaucrats, local henchmen and the ever-zealous media descend upon sleepy Peepli to stake their claim. The question on everyone's lips - "Will he or Won't he?" As the mania escalates what will be the fate of Farmer Natha; nobody seems to care how he really feels?"

The criticism levelled out at the film inspite of the positive reviews is the lack of empathy it generates for the state of the farmers. It is a fair argument if those were your expectations from the film. My take is that it wasn't and it shouldn't be a director's prerogative to "effect" the audience. Especially in a satire, where the prime motive is to poke fun at the theatrical failure of system and its participants. Be it "Dr. Strangelove or how I learn to stop worrying and love the bomb" , "Network" , "Wag the dog", "Jaane Bhi do Yaaron" or any other great satire, I never really think the writer was conscious of establishing sympathy or empathy for the characters. Humour in life and films was essentially developed to convey some real harsh absolute truths in a sugar coated manner. We from the cities who our so pre occupied with planning our weekend, our holidays, our Diwali shopping, job appraisal etc can't be realistically expected to be social workers and understand the true plight of the farmers after paying Rs. 200 for an A/c theatre with sofa seat. It is quite incredible how insulated we are from "less privileged".

Of the performances everyone if top notch. Raghuveer Yadav is an explosive talent and I am glad he got this role. On a slight negative, the gag got a bit stretched in second half which could have been edited by 5-10 minutes. It is always a risk in a satire, when unnecessary emphasis is added on an element that audiences have understood, in this case it was of media "sensationalization". I think it was truly insightful in showing political and media nexus and how the cover stories and sound bytes are planned for. Maybe after this, people consuming the news will be more discrete.

I'm a native American and saw this movie in a theater with maybe 30 Indians (sorry, I'm old enough to find multiple ironies in that sentence). Anyway, I went into this movie with no expectations. Though I've seen a number of Indian movies over the last few years, I knew nothing of this author or director. I laughed out loud more than I have for any Hollywood movie this year. My cohorts found it even funnier than I, but I guarantee you that you don't need to know that much about Indian politics or media to get most of this satire.

It starts with a farmer deciding to commit suicide to get his family the $2000 that may save his farm from foreclosure. From there, the media and government turn it into a circus, stepping all over themselves in their self-serving ways.

It suffers only in minor ways from a few slow spots and odd shifts in tone, but these are worth sitting through. It's currently showing here only at a suburban Atlanta theater that shows a combination of H-wood and B-wood. This should have been picked up by some American distributer when it showed at Sundance. Hopefully, enough people will see it and generate the buzz to get it to a wider audience.