Finding Fanny

Devicka and I have traveled to Goa each year in last 20 years so that makes it around 20 trips. Some years we have missed out but that has been more than compensated by more than one trip in several years. Often we have hired a car and gone off the beaten track.  The landscape can be stunning at times. You can take a turn somewhere and be suddenly faced with a water body in the form of a swirling river or a calm lake. It could just be a pond. You can reach a remote picturesque village with the old world charm with green hills forming as backdrop and as you enter a small shop to buy a soft drink you realize that it is actually a small bar. You will find someone who looks like Naseeruddin Shah in one of the bars no matter what time you go. It could be 10 in the morning. He will be brooding and drinking some stinking feni. If you sit down for a while with him he will start philosophizing and then break into a song in his gruff voice.

This is the beauty of ‘Finding Fanny.’  I could identify with the place and its people.  The movie is about a road trip and each character grows on you as the movie progresses. So much so that Fanny becomes insignificant and the trip takes the centre stage.

We saw the film in English version after reading that the ‘puns’ in the movie come out better in English version. I kept laughing from the beginning to end. At times the humor is dark but it is still funny. You could actually laugh at the death of an animal or a lovable character!

Deepika looks gorgeous as she is with minimal makeup, straight hair and nice and simple clothes like skirts and dresses which suit her fine figure. She has a lovely smile. She is like a girl next door though I must confess there was no such girl next door when I was growing up. Don’t blame me if I enjoyed her seducing Arjun Kapoor.  Pankaj Kapur, Arjun, Dimple and Naseer are more than competent and each one of them is a lovable character. Pankaj Kapur once again shows what talent is. He can fit into any role and bring it alive.

The art of enjoying a movie is not to analyse the movie while watching it. Enjoy the photography, story, acting, narration and the dialogues. There is enough in this movie to discuss and analyse. There are a lot ifs and buts. There are dark hidden moments and some riveting moments. But that will only come when you enjoy the film. If you havn’t enjoyed the film then it’s not worth analyzing. As far as I am concerned- I want to watch it in hindi as well.  

Shudh Desi Romance- Let's celebrate the film.

Quite enjoyed 'Shudh Desi Romance'. Such films should be encouraged and celebrated as they break away from our routine films.I am no lover of romantic films but this film is not just a romance- it is much more than that. The characters are lovable and these youngsters bring zing to an interesting screenplay.

Jaipur looks good in the movie. The chaos and the heritage of the city have been captured well. Cinematography has been given due attention and it works. Hawa Mahal, Amer fort , Jal Mahal and many other havelis and monuments form the backdrop of many scenes and certainly show that the unregulated urbanization of the pink city still has a lot of heritage to offer. I must say that film has been shot beautifully.

The middle class India is producing women like Gayatri (Parineeti Chopra) and Tara (played by Vaani Kapoor). They are independent, feisty and experiment with their sexuality. Parineeti is a spontaneous performer and she can be feisty one moment and very vulnerable and romantic the very next. I loved her expressions and her timing. Gayatri lives thousands of miles away from her family, smokes like a chimney, has had several boyfriends & live in relationships and does not give a damn about what her neighbors think. If she could get her lover in the house she very well could kick him out too. I Loved her character in the film.

Tara is another interesting character and grows on you as the film progresses. I liked the ever present naughty smile on Tara’s face . She looks very relaxed and doesn't seem to be facing any jitters facing the camera. Her character is not as well defined as Gayatri's but she does do a good job.

It is Rishi Kapoor who brings the screen alive each time he appears on it. You want to see more and more of him.This portly and lovable wedding maker holds the fort whenever he is on the screen. We smile automatically when that happens.

The fake Baarati's; the addition of 'touch of glamour' in baraat ; and the matchmaker cum wedding organiser played by Rishi Kapoor is sure something new to most big city folks.I really didn't know such professions existed. I now have no doubt that these things actually happen and director Maneesh Sharma and writer Jaideep Sahni have done well to present this in a realastic but funny manner. Maneesh Sharma must have been helped by the research at the time of his making of 'Band Baja Baraat.'

 Sushant Singh Rajput plays his part. At times he looks awkward but most of the time he fits well into the story and the character. A pity that as a tourist guide he is only shown fooling his clients and never once showing them any historical monument. He is lucky to have acted in two nice films in such a short span and managed to kiss two lovely girls innumerable times in one film. His future seems to be bright. 

I will not go into the story of the film as I want everyone who reads this to go and watch the film and see the story unfolding themselves.You end up wanting to see more of vintage Rishi Kapoor. You feel for all the 3 characters in the film. You want pace of the movie to pick up a bit towards the end. The movie has many faults but yet my recommendation -Don't miss it.

Madras Cafe - It has history to it.

We went for a vacation to Switzerland in the summer of 2002. We flew Air Lanka. On the way back from Zurich our flight landed at Male. From Male it was a short flight to Colombo. I was sitting at a window seat admiring what the nature had to offer as you could see crystal clear waters, atolls and rolling hills. Soon we were touching down at Colombo airport and I was stunned to see Airbuses, helicopters and army aircrafts littered around just a few hundred yards from the runway. Each aircraft seemed to have been broken into several pieces with fuselage, tail and cockpit lying in different places. There was so much scrap that it was difficult to believe that the most protected area of the country had been so audaciously breached by the LTTE and the huge aircrafts had been reduced to scrap. This stunning attack at the Airport had happened a year back in the summer of 2001. A year later, the country was still in shock. It had not even been able to dispose of the debris. It seemed that the island country had received a blow from which it would never recover.

The airport is near the town of Negombo. It is just 326 km from Negombo to Jaffna. Jaffna is at the northern part of island. It is supposed to be most beautiful part of Sri Lanka but was totally captured by LTTE who ran a parallel government there. Prabhakaran was the undisputed leader of Tigers and LTTE was the most disciplined terrorist organisation in the world. Our taxi driver offered to take us there. He said roads were good and it would take 6 hours. We declined the offer. He chuckled.

I have been to Sri Lanka 4 times between 1993 to 2007. I have travelled to Negombo, Colombo, Nuwara Ilya, Kandy, Galle, Benetota and Kalutara. It is an island blessed with natural beauty. Though I did not see too many Sri Lankan beauties on the beach, the hotels and hospitality were top class. You could get exotic sea food at a very low price. The shopping of clothes was good. But you had to be content with security. The fear of LTTE was visible everywhere. Young boys in army fatigues had hardened faces as they expected bombs to explode anytime and take their lives. On each of our trips, our car was stopped many times and searched thoroughly at several points. The President Chandrika Kumaratunga had lost an eye in a bomb attack. Prime Minister Premdasa was killed in such an attack in 1993. LTTE had introduced the world to plastic explosives and human bombs. No place was safe. Bomb blasts in Colombo had become routine.

In his election promise Rajapaksa promised to remove LTTE from the Northern part of the country. He promised to eliminate each and every Tamil tiger. Considering that Buddhism is the main religion in this country, it was a very sad state of affairs.

Prabhakaran

Talented director Shoojit Sircar has made an espionage political drama called ‘Madras café.’ The film deals with Sri Lanka, LTTE, and assassination of our very own Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. It is a fast moving and brilliantly directed thriller. I would rate it very high as a thriller as you cannot get up for even 2 minutes as you would miss out on important happenings on the screen. John Abraham plays as a covert operator of R&AW called Vikram Singh and does a good job. Only R&AW or army would know whether such officers exist, but his performance is creditable. Watching the undercover agents , terrorists and refugees crossing over from Sri Lanka to southern part of India on ordinary boats makes you realise how close these countries are to each other and how porous the borders are.

The accord of 1987

The movie starts with signing of peace accord between Colombo and New Delhi and this is followed by sending IPKF to Sri Lanka by Rajiv Gandhi. The LTTE had become a feared organisation in the North and East of island and under the leadership of Prabhakaran. All Sinhalese were either eliminated or pushed out from regions North of Elephant pass. IPKF had the mandate to neutralise LTTE and this they could do by capturing or eliminating Prabhakaran who did not want any provincial elections to happen. LTTE at that time was loved as well as feared by Tamilians. LTTE had formed a parallel government and Prabhakaran was the supreme leader.

If you go back to history and read the account of top army officers, they put all blame for the failure of IPKF to the failure of R&AW in providing adequate and correct intelligence. In a memoir released on the 25^th anniversary of sending of IPKF to Sri Lanka, a top army commander wrote that General Sunderji had promised them that the mission would be accomplished in 2 weeks. The army stayed there for 2 years and mission is considered to be a failure today. However, IPKF was not totally a failure and they did eliminate the middle rung of LTTE and drove them back to the forests of North. Prabhakaran survived miraculously once in one of the attacks by IPKF. LTTE was driven into jungles and some army commanders feel that it was a matter of time before they could have forced Prabhakaran to join the political stream. However, the fact remains that IPKF was withdrawn and Sri Lanka went into a bigger crisis. Many reasons have been attributed to this failure of IPKF. It is said that Indian army was not prepared for the innovative guerrilla tactics of LTTE. They found it difficult to fight an army which they could not see but which had all information about them. Intelligence also failed to inform our army that LTTE had latest guns and armory along with state of the art equipment and radio system. LTTE cadres were so committed that they would replace each dead person with another one immediately.

Shoojit Sircar has taken some familiar names in important roles. These people are not known to be film actors but have done a good job. Siddharth Basu plays the R&AW top boss Robin Dutt; Piyush Pandey the ad man plays the role of Cabinet Secretary and TV anchor Dibang plays a role of informant. Dibang was in the film appreciation course, conducted by Alan Wilkins, a NYU professor last year which I attended as well. Nargis Fakhri plays an important role of a British war correspondent. She has a short role but looks convincing. There is no romantic angle between the hero and heroine in this film.Actor Prakash Belawadi plays the role of ‘Bala’ , the compromised R&AW head of Madras Desk. This character is based on the real life R&AW agent Unnikrishnan who had been honey trapped by CIA in 1987 and photographed in compromising position with an air hostess.

We do know that Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by LTTE. We don’t know whether what is shown in the movie is a correct portrayal of events leading to it. Was the conspiracy hatched by foreign governments for their own benefit ? Or is it because some foreign governments wanted India away from sri Lanka ? Was LTTE paid so much money for it ( the movie says 54 million euros)? Is it correct that R&AW had managed to zero on to the time and place of attack on our PM but were helpless to stop it ? Were there moles in Indian organisation which led to the failure of IPKF and several covert operations ? One day  these secrets will come out. Whether these things are correct or not, they are plausible and there might be some truth in them. While the movie portrays R&AW and its agents to be competent, the incidents of history show that the intelligence of LTTE was far superior to that of R&AW. The army commanders have written that messages about advancing Indian platoons were sent by LTTE cadres in coded signals through the bells of temples and also they used children extensively to run around innocently to gather each and every information about the enemy. The message would be conveyed through series of messengers on cycles.While indian intelligence could not infiltrate LTTE, the LTTE had all the knowledge of what IPKF was about to do.

The movie is an espionage thriller with Sri Lanka war as a back drop. It is an extremely competent effort as it does explain the Sri Lankan problem and keeps us glued to our seats with a great sense of storytelling. You keep hoping that PM would get saved though you do know the end result. The movie briefly touches the family life of agent Vikram Singh and his pretty wife who has no inkling what her husband does. 

Once Rajapaksa won the elections and became the President, he kept his promise and attacked LTTE with all his might. He asked his troops to go all the way and not show any mercy to anyone. When Rajpaksa’s army attacked Jaffna and annihilated LTTE, India remained silent even though many civilian Tamil’s were being killed. When certain Tamilian politicians protested, the Government told them that LTTE was India’s enemy as it had killed it’s PM. Had Prabhakaran not ordered the killing of Rajiv Gandhi, there is no way that India would have allowed Tamils to be killed so mercilessly. The documentary by channel 4 gave a graphic details of the human rights violations in Sri Lanka where even children were not spared by the army. The protagonist in the movie correctly says that this assassination robbed the chance of any peace settlement to happen and compromised the lives of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

I think full marks should be given to Shoojit Sircar for making a film on such difficult subject with such fineness. True potential of director is evident when you realise that last year he had made a movie which was far from any kind of espionage or war. He had made an award winning funny film on sperm donation called the ‘Vicky donor.’

Genre of Gangster films

Genre of Gangster and mob films has always fascinated us. Mob films have been made by Hollywood for as long as one remembers.Recently I watched Marlon Brando taking on his bosses in ‘On the Waterfront.’ This film directed by Elia Kazan was released in 1954. However it was Marlon Brando who became the ultimate Don with his portrayal as Don Corleone in the unforgettable ‘The Godfather.’ The Godfather stunned the world when it was released in 1972 and it became a cult film. It was followed by a successful sequel and then 2 more sequels.The Godfather series is something to be kept with you on DVD’s and to be watched every couple of years.  I do this.

When I had seen the film in a theatre in Lucknow, I could not understand a word that Brando uttered as he seemed to have marbles in his mouth. Yet, the movie left an amazing impact as it was violent and hard hitting. The killing of Sonny Corleone at a toll booth with hundreds of bullets piercing his body was a kind of scene we had never seen before. It was an ‘A’ movie but cinema halls in Lucknow were lax in implementing these rules.For us 'boys' the page 26 of the book by Mario Puzo had already become popular with a descriptive capturing of Sonny Corleone's tryst with the bridesmaid of his sister at the latter wedding. In the film, the scene was there but not as hot as the page 26 description of the book. What was hot in the movie at that time was a lovely topless scene of the Italian beauty Simonetta Stefanelli who gets married to Michael Corleone. This role was played by Hema Malini in 'Dharmatama' but we had to be content with her pretty face and Feroze Khan singing 'Tere chehre pe kya jadoo hai' in the deserts of Afghanistan.

Dharmatma was plagiarized from the Godfather as Feroze Khan had not taken any permission from Francis Ford Coppola to re-make the film in hindi. Dharmatma did well and Feroze Khan reaped in good profits in 1970’s. The film gave a new lease of life to ageing Prem Nath who played  the role of Dharmatama. Feroze Khan played the role of both Sonny and Michael and actually made a decent gangster movie. Many years later Feroze Khan went on to make the glossy ‘Dayavan’ which was a re-make of ‘Nayakan’ by Kamal Hasan. It was based on the life of underworld don Vardharajan Mudaliar. Vinod Khan as Dayavan was impressive and Madhuri  Dixit was a newcomer and did the erotic kissing scenes with Vinod Khanna the like of which had not been seen on our screens till then.

 I loved Dayavan when I saw the movie in 1988 but only till I saw ‘Nayakan’ at IFFI at New Delhi in January 1989. Nayakan blew me away. I had not seen such powerful performance by any actor as was by Kamalhasan in the movie. I still rate that performance of Kamalhasan as the best I have ever seen. Directed by Mani Ratnam, this movie was a big hit in South India and Kamal Hasan received the national best actor award. Time magazine rated it amongst the top 100 movies ever made. Those who have not watched Nayakan, must do so as soon as possible.


The biggest beneficiary of 'The Godfather' was the young actor playing the role of younger son of Don Corleone. Al Pacino became a superstar overnight. His portrayal of a young innocent army officer who later fills the shoes of Don gave him critical as well as audience acclaim. Similar role was played by Abhishek Bachchan in Sarkar and Sarkar II. Ramu (Ram Gopal Varma) actually bought the rights of Godfather to make Sarkar in 2008 and cast Amitabh in it. The film was well received by audience but part II did not fare well.
Al Pacino also acted in another famous gangster film called ‘Scarface’ in 1983 on which I thought our own ‘Agneepath’ was based. Scarface itself was a remake of 1932 film of the same name. People were quite shocked by the excessive violence and graphic language when the movie was released but the film is now considered a classic. Amitabh Bachchan got a National award for Agneepath which had been directed by the young whizkid Mukul S Anand, though the spectators had given the movie a thumbs down and AB had to re-dub the film as his modulated voice was rejected by the audience. Agneepath was re-made recently with Hritik Roshan and Sunjay Dutt . It grossed over 100 crores.

The 1987 hollywood film 'The Untouchables' directed by Brian de Palma remains one of my favourite mafia films. It had a mouth watering cast of Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Robert de Niro , Andy Garcia and Charles Martin Smith. The film was about the prohibition era gangster Al Capone who is considered to be the biggest American gangster of all time. The movie deals with the crack team formed to arrest Al Capone.

The movie was a gripping saga of Chicago during the 1920's. Many of the action scenes from the film were plagarized by our films here including the famous pram scene with a baby ,where the pram goes down the stairs at the Union Station. This scene was copied by N. Chandra for 'Tezaab.' Last year while watching a scene at our 'film appreciation' class I realised that this scene in the 'Untouchables' was also inspired from 'The Battleship Potemkin', a 1925 silent film about the 1905 mutiny of the crew of the Russian battleship. This iconic Odessa Steps Massacre scene has been used dozens of times in films around the world, including Untouchables. Untouchables gave due credit to the source while 'Tezaab' was silent about it.
Al Capone was finally arrested not for murders and liqour smuggling but for tax evasion. Once inside the jail, the law enforcement agencies made sure that he stayed there. In June this year I visited 'Alcatraz' high security prison in San Francisco where Capone had been kept. I learnt that at first Capone had been sent to Atlanta prison where he took over the system. Once he was transferred to Alcatraz island, he was brought down by the prison warden and vicious co-prisoners.

It was actually Deewar  by Yash Chopra that started the trend of glorifying Mafia dons in Indian Cinema in 1975. Written by Salim Javed, this movie was based on the story of gangster Haji Mastan and this performance cemented Amitabh Bachchan as king of action and a superstar.  It seems strange that  Deewar was written by Salim Javed with the romantic superstar ‘Rajesh Khanna’ in mind. It is difficult to imagine Khanna as ‘Vijay’ of Deewar but Salim Javed had thought that Khanna was so versatile that he would be able to justice to the role. AB played this role and rest is history. This film finished off romance and Rajesh Khanna from the silver screens. This melodramatic action packed film made history at box office and dialogues of this film are still fresh in the minds of our 'junta.' Nirupa Roy became the eternal mother after this film and must have played similar role in around 50 films after this including 'Amar Akbar Anthony.'

I remember Deewar had released just after Majboor at the same theater in Lucknow. People just didn't know how to relate to this film. For the first couple of weeks there was no frenzy about Deewar but one fine day, it became a craze. The manager of the theatre told my dad that when the movie opened, it had an advance booking of 3-4 days. After a few weeks, the advance booking was for the entire week and each day there was a lathi charge at the booking window. The audience had more sympathy for a 'gangster and a smuggler' in the movie rather than a honest police inspector. The heroine was a cigarette smoking and wine drinking prostitute.Till then only vamps smoked and drank on screen. People started mouthing the dialogues spoken by 'Vijay' in the film. The dialogues are popular even after 35 years of the release of the movie. Deewar changed the very concept of the hero, heroine and movie watching in India. I watched it 8 times in cinema hall at that time.

Ram Gopal Varma made Satya with unknown stars in 1998. The film took Bollywood by storm. It is argubaly the best hindi film made on underworld. Not many people talked about J.D Chakravarthi who played the lead role. The flavor of the movie was Manoj Bajpayee in the role of a lovable rustic gangster ‘Bhigu Mhatre.’ Satya broke box office records and it truly showed the underbelly of the city of Mumbai. It showed the real picture about Mumbai underworld. We learnt that these Don's don't necessarily live in posh houses but they lived and operated in slums and chawls. This film made us realise that an innocent looking bystander could be a dreaded criminal. This was the real underworld which existed in India and Ramu exceeded himself by projecting things so realistically. Manoj Bajpayee may have acted in a hundred films after Satya but he is still best remembered as Bhigu Mhahtre.

Ramu followed 'Satya' with 'Company' which was a very gripping and well made film based on the rivalry between Dawood Ibrahim and Chota Rajan. One thought that Vivek Oberoi would be the next superstar of hindi films but that never happened. Ajay Devgan was impressive as a Don. Here he had played the role of Dawood but much later, in another film, he got a chance to play the role of Haji Mastan.

Haji Mastan wasn’t a polished and suave gangster as was shown in Deewar. Ekta kapoor decided to show the rise and fall of Haji Mastan and his rivalry with Dawood Ibrahim in ‘One upon a time in Mumbai.’ Ajay Devgan looked the part he played. The movie had the right blend of violence & romance. It showed what Mumbai became during those days when Mastan was the king of docks.Mastan dabbled with politics and with films. He wooed film actresses and became friends with many of the heroes. He married a B grade actress as well. The music added to the appeal of the film. Milan Luthria came up with a winner in 2010 which made a lot of money and won many accolades.This was followed by a forgettable sequel in 2013.

There is one hindi gangster film, which according to me is one of the best made in India but remains under-rated. This was 'Hathyar' by J P Dutta in 1989 starring Sanjay Dutt, Rishi Kapoor and Dharmendra. Shot mostly in Mumbai, the cinematography of this film like Datta's other films was top class.The film flopped and was forgotten. Sanjay Dutt however shone as a gangster in Mahesh Manjrekar's ' Vaastav' and Mahesh tried to repeat this magic with yet another film called 'Hathyar' but could not repeat the box office performance of Vaastav.

A few years ago (2007) the screens came alive by performances by Denzyl Washington and Russel Crowe when they came together in 'The American Gangster.' This film is about drug smuggling into America from South East asia in the 70's. The film lacked the normal action we associate with the mob films but it shows how the rot set into the American system. This biography of gangster Frank Lucas shows how America was invaded by drugs from south east countries thanks to the connivance of gangsters with officials.

Last but not the least, no discussion on gangster films could be completed without mentioning the master, Martin Scorsese. Casino was the 8th and the last film which he made with Robert de Niro. The earlier mob film that they had made together was ' Goodfellas.' 'Casino' tells you everything that you know and don't know about Las Vegas. Las Vegas is a place where Mafia rules; where gloss and glitter hides what is behind the scenes; where there's no day or night; where everything has a price; where if you're lucky, you could go home a millionaire .Of course, people who go to Vegas lose money, and people who try to take on the mob end up losing their lives. But Las-Vegas is all about hope where millions go each year with nothing but hope . If you have to watch a high class 'mob' film, Casino takes the cake. India does not have Casinos other than a few off shore ones at Goa. Otherwise we would have had a few inspirations by now.

One upon a time in Mumbai- Dobara (OUATIMD).

Ekta Kapoor and Milan Luthria had made a fine film called 'Once upon a time in Mumbai' in 2010 based on the Life of Haji Mastan and his rivalry with his protege Dawood Ibrahim. That was a fine film which was well acted by Ajay Devgan, Kangna Ranaut, Prachi Desai and Emraan Haashmi. The music of the film was also very well composed with some fine songs. It had the look and feel of a gangster film.
Ekta Kapoor and Milan Luthria then made a sequel to this film which was released last week. It was called  'Once upon a time in Mumbai- Dobara (OUATIMD)'. I don’t know on whose life this movie is based. Even after watching the movie in a theater I still don’t know whether the movie is a gangster film, or is a love story, or is it a comedy ? It neither has gangs nor does it have love, and efforts to make us laugh fall flat. Has it even been directed by the same guy who made the first film ? 

In the beginning I thought that this was some satire. The Don (a tall man who dresses like Dawood Ibrahim and wears goggles like him), talks in a funny manner. He is a Don as he smokes like all Don's do. Actually he is our sweet looking Akshay Kumar who is supposed to be a tough Don in the movie. He likes talking and each dialogue is supposed to be meaningful and funny. So he talks all nonsense throughout the film waiting for people to clap at each dialogue he mouths. He talks with a drawl and tries walking with a swagger. In the prologue he adopts two street boys seeing their potential . These boys were into betting fixing and spend a lot of time in an alcove under the tracks of railways. Luckily no one shits on them from the open toilets our trains have. Don had a long term vision so he adopts them and takes them under his wing.

Then a few years later while in Oman and soon after making out with a sexy married woman in red bra, he tells all the gangs of Mumbai that he has taken over the entire Mumbai and they can buzz off.  He has 5 to 6 henchmen so everyone including his opponents are shocked that he has taken over the entire Mumbai’s operations with the help of these few guys. Shockingly, all gangs actually buzz off leaving him to be the undisputed king of Mumbai. There is one fellow Sawant (Mahesh Manjrekar) who keeps trying funny stunts to kill the new Don. He also talks and behaves funny. He has no team, no henchmen and no support but he wants to destroy our Don.As if by killing Don he would have become the new Don. Mahesh Manjrekar was a fine director- look what the poor guy has to do to earn livelihood now. 

Our Don is the restless types. He even lands up in dangerous spots to do petty things as he doesn't trust his henchmen to do the work. Now, he has 5 henchmen  and he takes over entire Mumbai with their help but he doesn't even trust them !  Out of the 5, he kills one because police detains him only for a short while. I told you it was a satire!

Then  enters our  plump and 'slow in head' heroine.  Our very desi Sonakshi Sinha in her glorious suits and saris tries to dazzle us. The comedy scenes follow where she talks about her ‘intercourse’ . This wins the heart of our tough  Don. She has come to Mumbai to become a heroine and without a release to her  credit our Don  gets her a film award being held at some sidey hotel.  Now our villain Sawant realizes that only Don could have got this feat done so he puts two and two together and decides to make her a bait but then goes and shoots the heroine. Why he shoots the heroine when he wanted her as a bait is a mystery I have not been able to solve.

Here I expected our Don to be angry. I thought he would be so angry that he would burn down Mumbai. Each person in Mumbai would have to face the wrath of a wounded Don. In the past the Don had been shown having vicious and unforgiving temper. With great difficulty and persuasion the heroine had agreed to be his. His handsome henchman had gone to pick up the heroine when this dumb fellow Sawant had shot her. But strangely our Don is cool. He walks in coolly to hospital and without bothering too much about heroine he devices a plan with his handsome henchman to  get Sawant out of his hole where he is hiiding. He is intelligent enough to know that only Sawant was dumb enough to shoot her. The plan involves publicizing that handsome henchman and heroine are lovers and Don was against this henchman now. This would attract Sawant to henchman. (oh God- who wrote this bloody script !).

Now this handsome henchman is our hero Imran Khan. This hero is actually in love with our dumb heroine. They fell in love as each day they would accompany another of Don’s henchman and his girlfriend to a quiet place. Each day as the hero and the heroine watched this sidey henchman thump his girlfriend in a car, they fell in love with each other.

So the equation became as follows :

   a)  Don loves the heroine but she thinks he is just a friend. As she is dumb, she could not figure out his love for her even though he talked about stars and moon and all mushy things. When she says ‘no’ to him he breaks the entire film set and movie cameras and then sends gifts to her house. This way he manages to get the girl. Simple.

  b) Our hero loves the heroine and wants to tell her about this love but doesn’t. At each thumping session he looks at her strangely but she does not respond. He takes her to all sort of places and makes her lie down on dirty ground under railway tracks as well but doesn’t do anything ‘naughty’ with her. She must have thought that this is one dumb guy . Whether she loves him or not is another mystery. In the end she tells him that she did love him. Whew.

 c)  Don doesn’t know his henchman and his love were each day at a site where thumping took place. As he was a Don, had he known this, he would have killed them all.

One day Don finds out that there is some love story happening in which his ‘girl’ was involved with  our hero. Now this hero and the thumping henchman were the same 2 kids he had adopted and trained for so many years. The thumping henchman tries to signal the danger to the hero by honking. For this honking he gets killed.

I think somewhere along the way Sawant also got killed as he fell for the rubbish scheme the Don had made with our hero.

Don  gets very angry that hero and heroine had eloped and run away from hospital and reaches Dongri. Even in all these troubled times he does not give up his funny dialogues. Our hero had gone to Dongri with the heroine even though he knew that Dongri was the ‘adda’ of the Don. Dongri gives us an idea that it must be Dawood on whose life our Don was modeled.  People of Dongri liked the Don and they put up barricades made of fire to stop the Police.  Now the hero, heroine and Don were all in Dongri and Dongri had been barricaded.

The Don bashes up our hero with his own hands. He keeps hitting and challenging the hero but the hero was a  Namak Halal and did not want to raise hand on someone who had raised him up. But he raises hand at a crucial time to save the Don from Police firing and gets shot himself. Debt is paid back.

While all the drama is going on, Don also gets shot. God knows what happens next but somehow Don lands up in a cargo ship going off somewhere and our  hero must have got the girl for good if he survived.

If indeed this film is based on the life of Dawood Ibrahim, how would he have felt being portrayed like this in a movie ?  Must be rather insulting for him. Ekta Kapoor should be on her guard now for insulting the real Don. If I were Akshay, I would be even more careful. 

The ending was juicy. Hero has the heroine and he knows the tricks of trade. Will he be new Don ? Don is injured but on a ship. Will he be back ? So many gangs whom the Don had controlled with his 5 henchmen would have felt liberated after Don went away and 4 henchmen got killed.Would they now cause mayhem in Mumbai ?

Now anxiously waiting  for the making and release of 'Once upon a time in Mumbai-Tibaara.' 

Chennai Express - Worth 1 star

By the time I went to watch ‘Chennai Express’ the film had crossed 100 crore mark. The first film ever to do so in the very first weekend of release. The mainstream papers like TOI and HT had given it thumbs up with more than 3 stars each. From my friends and general public I received mixed reviews. There is one statement, becoming pretty popular now, which always surprises me : ‘Leave your brains behind and you will enjoy the film!’

 Leave my brains ? Where ?  

I decided to take my wife and brains along with me for the movie. I booked my tickets at 1 PM on 5^th day of the release of this mega hit for the 6 PM show. I got the best seats as the seat chart showed that only 7 tickets had been booked so far for the show. This seemed surprising for a big hit.

The movie has a promising start. It gives you a fair idea that it is going to be a comedy.  This is a welcome sign as one hasn't seen a good comedy in a long while. Then you get another promising hint. The movie is using one of my favourite hindi movies ‘Dil Waale Dulhaniya……’ as an inspiration. I realize I had done a good thing by getting my brains along. This was going to be fun for heart and brain and body!

The Dadaji  of ‘Rahul’ in the film as domineering old man and as a Sachin Tendulkar fan  is projected with aplomb. He controls everything about our hero till he is alive. Kamini Kaushal endears as a classy Dadiji. Dadaji’s death would set our hero free from ‘mithaiwala’ tag and he would go on his journey to find his way and identity in life. The first destination would be Goa. His granny tells him to go to Rameshwaram to immerse his dadaji’s ashes and he boards ‘Chennai express’ to make a fool of her  as he intends to get off the train soon and go off to Goa to be with friends and ‘chicks.’ This holds a lot of promise.

Our heroine Deepika is lifted off the platform on to the train a la ‘Dulhaniya’ style by our hero. Then came 4 south Indian toughies who are also lifted on to the ‘Chennai Express.’ These toughies were actually villains who were running after our heroine to take her back to her village to her ‘don’ father. Our hero has inadvertently helped them into getting on to the train and now she and he are both their captives. This was going to be fun.

Then our hero SRK comes into form. He takes over the movie and starts what he is most infamous for : Hamming. He hams and makes faces and tries to be funny. Audiences laugh when his Rs 34200 phone is thrown off the train. Audiences laugh when the ticket checker is thrown off the train. A lot of ‘so called’ funny things start happening. My smile vanishes. Please do remember that I had not left my brains behind. I remain wooden for next 2 hours. Devicka (my wife also got her brains along with her). She looks at me accusingly every few minutes. Then she yawns. Then she gets busy sending Emails on her phone.

The movie falls into a predictable pattern. I could sense what was coming next. Most of the time I was right. My guess is that when Rohit Shetty and SRK got together, they decided to make a film with a loose script without any detailing. Some ideas must have floated around. They must have decided to write the screenplay as the movie progressed.  They must have decided to adopt following strategies :

Strategy 1 : Try to make most of the scenes funny by weird behavior of the cast and their facial expressions. Audience will laugh when the heroine behaves weirdly in middle of night and kicks the hero out of the bed. The audience will love it when a dwarf is introduced for no reason and keeps clicking his tongue as a method of talking. The audience will have a stomach ache laughing when the hero making funny faces would challenge the toughies double his size and then run away. The audience will get hysterical when out of the blue the hero will reach Sri Lankan waters and then continue his weird behavior. The audiences will adore the lead pair when they keep running from each other and end up meeting again and again.

Strategy 2 : Try to put in some emotional scenes. Examples :The touching talk by Kamini Kaushal about immersion of ashes; the touching talk by Deepika Padukone about immersion of ashes;  the touching scene of the heroine getting the ashes in the midst of danger to life and; the touching scene of immersion of ashes. (Please remember the movie is not about a train but about ashes of Dadaji).

Strategy 3 : Romance. Unfortunately one can only see some romance in the imagination songs and in the eyes of the heroine once the hero climbs with her in his arms up the 300 steps to a temple. Devicka suddenly takes interest in the movie. She likes the Saree the heroine is wearing in the scene. Now that the hero has picked the heroine and climbed up all those steps - then onward heroine has hearts in her eyes but hero is too busy hamming to notice all this.

Strategy 4 : Dilwale Dulhaniya in the beginning and Dilwale Dulahaniya at the end. What a sad tribute to that great film. The long lecture to his ‘to be father in law’ goes quite a waste as the ‘dad’ does not even help him when he is getting bashed up.Our hero almost gets killed but 'father in law' does not help at all.  We keep waiting for the ‘don’ to come to the rescue of our hero but that never happens. Must be thinking his ‘son in law to be’ a big joker who was trying to talk to him in a language he had no clue about. Can you imagine our hero refused the help of interpreter also ! Amrish Puri had more emotions in ‘Dilwale’ because he could understand what hero was saying and he was also a better actor.

Strategy 5: Intersperse all this with a few high quality action scenes and car chases, car crashes and in the end show that there is life after death. Life after death ? Well our ‘halwai’ hero from Mumbai must have learnt to fight like this  in the last ‘janam’ and luckily everything fell into place once he was attacked by armed army of men – each one weighing 100 KG’s more than him. His training of last janam suddenly comes handy. He rose from the ashes to destroy the evil to embrace his lady love and also made a statement on national integration.

The duo of Rohit Shetty and SRK must have promised the producers (UTV)  that they would make a great hit and earn them a lot of money. Producers must have been asked to do a blitzkrieg  of promotions and ensure that no other film in India’s history would have had so many screenings in the first 3 days. The 100 crore turnover in 3 days is the proof of a successful marketing strategy. SRK is an expert on this after his RaOne experience where he sold his rubbish to the gullible audiences in the first few days. I was lucky with that one as I didn’t go and watch it. But a little bird had told me that RaOne made distributors lose big money. Amul has come out with this great ad which tells the story  about Chennai express :

 

The stunning aspect of Chennai Express was the cinematography. From the time the train leaves Mumbai, you have stunning shots of the bridges, waterfalls and south Indian landscapes. The photography and locations are really out of this world. This aspect is the only thing other than Deepika’s pretty face which is worth watching in the movie.

During the entire film the hero keeps saying (after making weird faces) :’ Do not underestimate the power of a common man.’  Mr SRK, Mr Shetty and M/s UTV : Please do not underestimate the power of a sincere  and common movie watcher. One day he will bring you down for throwing such trash at him in the name of entertainment! Remember the fate of someone called Farah Khan and Sirish Kundra who kept giving us junks like'Tees Maar Khan'  and 'Joker' with Akshay Kumar ? 

I missed taking my kids for the movie. Knowing them I know they would have laughed at all the ‘supposedly funny scenes.’  Seeing them I might have also shed my wooden expression and joined them in wild laughter. Or am I underestimating my kids?

Ship of Theseus

I went to watch this film alone in a multiplex in Vasant Kunj. The film has had a very limited release and it is difficult to find a show which suits your time and location. Some of my film club members told me that this was a film for which I will have to make an effort and take out time. I also read the review written by director Dibakar Bannerjee in which he has written : “I will see Ship of Theseus many times in my life. To most, I would advise to watch at least twice. Once, to enjoy it. Then once more to cherish it.”

After hearing such good things from a critically acclaimed director and my learned film club friends, there was no way I was going to let go of the film without it passing through my eyes and senses.

The first part of the film is about ‘Aliya’ , a photographer who has no vision. Photography has had me hooked since I started to learn the nuances a year or so back so I got very interested in this story. For this vision less photographer, photography is a way of finding her vision through the lens of the camera which she operates through senses other than vision. I marvel at the way she goes about her work.It is really interesting to see how she composes the pictures and later gets the feedback from her hubby about the picture in detail. One thing is very clear, she does not like pictures in color. 

 It’s not that lack of vision has no psychological effects on her. When asked whether lack of eyesight leaves her with limits and doubts, her reply is a very unconvincing ‘No.” When the response to this is “Amazing,” she retorts ‘Why is it so amazing to not have any limits or doubts?

Being so used to working on instincts and with her senses, her restored vision leaves her dissatisfied with her work behind the camera. When she packs the camera away and admires the beautiful landscape of the hills with her own eyes – does she realize that she does not need the medium of photography to be her sight anymore? While we dwell into this, the 2nd part of the film starts.

By the way I am told that entire film has been shot using Canon EOS 1D Mark IV which actually is not even a video camera but a full frame 35mm digital camera with HD video ! So when you watch the film you will realize there are a lot of long takes throughout the film. You can actually visualize just one or two people shooting the entire film without all those fancy cameras, cranes and paraphernalia’s.

The entire movie has lovely dialogues. For the first part I really liked: A frog once asked a centipede how is it able to walk on a hundred feet, so gracefully synchronized while the frog finds it difficult to manage even two. The centipede took a moment to analyze its own walk and was baffled. So as it tried to walk further its feet got entangled and it tripped.

The above stated dialogue fitted into the film beautifully and captured the dilemma of Aliya.






The second story is about the monk ‘Maitreya’ who makes it a purpose of his life to give the laboratory animals a better life till they are alive. If it was up to him he would have liked this activity of using animals for research totally banned. For this he runs to the court to take on the pharma bigwigs. Convinced that all research into medicines leads to torture and killing of animals, he refuses any treatment which involves medicines. He refuses to accept treatment even when his survival depends on it. In this story it is the banter between him and young ‘Charvaka’ (who is not a monk or anything but a law intern) that keeps your full attention . Charvaka has an important role as he challenges Maitreya’s beliefs at each stage. Some examples of ‘Charvaka’s’ wise words : 

· It gives me some kicks though, to know that, a part of me was a part of an animal once, a flame, a star. A part will become mineral, flow in a plant, sprout in a fruit, get pecked by a bird. Every atom of my body will be recycled by the universe. You think you are a person but you are a colony. A microcosm which has ten times more bacteria in its body...than it has human cells.

· I got you a gift. Alphabets. It's amazing how we imagine that just these few alphabets will someday arrange themselves in a way that everything will suddenly make perfect sense. A permutation of known words suddenly bringing forward a previously unknown meaning. It's so oppressive, this obsession with final answers

- Monks are supposed to be celibate, then why this much intellectual masturbation in first place?

I really enjoyed the third part about this simplistic Rajasthani stock broker who has had a successful kidney transplant. When he finds out that someone’s kidney had been stolen just before his transplant, he doubts his own NGO at first and once convinced that he was not the recipient, he traces the donee to Sweden to get the poor labourer his kidney back. This was a very unlikely scenario of a self centred stock broker doing this social service. It went against his known character. This dialogue to his Naani (whom he abhors for being busy in social work when his mother needed her the most) was particularly funny:

· Toh aapne kaunse jhande gaad diye! Kaunsi duniya badal daali? Desh aazadi ke liye lad raha tha toh aap maa ko padosiyon ke yahan chhod kar chali jaati thi gaaon gaaon logon ko batane ke liye - condom pehno condom pehno! Hogayi kranti? Hogayi samaj seva? aap ke kaam se kuch bhi farak padha hota toh yeh sawa sau karod kahan se aa jate!
There is more to the film than brilliant cinematography, dialogues, background music , performances and direction. The film flows smoothly taking you along with it. You can identify with characters and situations ; you can identify with chaotic roads and tight slums; you can identify with chaos at the courts and hospitals; and you can identify with the crimes in the names of research and organ transplants.

The film may be in 3 parts but it has an additional 4th part which just lasts for a few minutes. This part leaves the maximum impact on the audience when they leave the cinema hall. Whether this impact will convert into any good by these people (including me) to the society, only time will tell.

Anand Gandhi has made a film that we all should watch. We should celebrate the arrival of a brilliant director. We should watch the movie silently without any distractions. Please don’t use facebook , sms, twitter or email on your mobile while watching this film. It needs your full attention.