Saturday, October 30, 2004
Morning Raga
Morning Raga is a huge improvement on Mahesh Dattani’s first film Mango Souffle, and a large part of the credit would go to Rajiv Menon’s exquisite cinematography, which makes the film such a visual treat. And the remarkable fusion score (Mani Sarma, Amit Heri).
The plot is serious, but still lightweight—with its instant fixes, pop psychology and fear of carrying the characters’ traumas to morbid levels. While this makes for a brisk, watchable 90-minute film, it does not leave a lasting impression.
Singer Swarnalatha (Shabana Azmi) is stricken with guilt when her violinist friend and her own son are killed in an accident, when she is taking them to Hyderabad for a performance. After this, she refuses to sing or cross the ill-fated bridge to the city.
Twenty years later, the dead woman’s son Abhinay (Prakash Rao), tired of composing ad jingles comes to the village, where his crusty old father (Naaser) looks after the family lands and hopes his son will take over. In the village he meets Pinkie (Perizaad Zorabian) who has come there to deal with her own angst. She is a singer, and with her help he tries to fulfill his dream of starting a fusion band.
Their rehearsal space is above Pinki’s mother’s (Lillete Dubey) boutique, and the other two band mates – the dorky guitarist and flaky drummer--are almost picked off the streets. But their music has something vital lacking, which, Abhinay figures, can be solved if Swarnalata sings for them. There must be dozens of practicing Carnatic singers in the city, but we accept this plot device.
With amazing ease, Swarnalatha is persuaded to record—no resistance to new gadgets, no rustiness due to lack of riyaaz. But she still refuses to cross the bridge to perform in the city. The problem is solved by her giving quick Carnatic vocal lessons to Pinkie. A bit of female bonding here, a bit of comedy at the expense of Pinkie’s mother, who trips around the village looking for local colour.
Pinkie own grief is connected to that accident—a needless complication—and all the supposedly broken souls are mended by fusion music! Even Abhinay’s father is softened by his son’s resolve.
There is no depth to the friction between Abhinay and his father; Pinkie and her mother settle their differences with one quick, clumsy ‘confessing’ scene. Swarnalatha’s pathological fear of the bridge is also cured in a jiffy! It’s as if Dattani didn’t want his characters’ inner demons haunting the viewer.
In the performances there’s a sharp divide between ‘then’ and ‘now’ – Shabana Azmi and Lillete Dubey – excellent as can be expected—give studied, ‘show-offy’ performances, while Prakash Rao and Perizaad Zorabian are casually natural. Only the brilliant Naaser of the ‘then’ generation manages an unruffled ‘now’ performance. Vijay, the actor playing Swanalatha’s supportive husband, is quietly understated.
Morning Raga is in English, which doesn’t sound right in a rural milieu, and also limits the film’s audience to urban multiplexes and festivals. But those who venture in to see it, despite its lack of commercial elements, won’t be majorly disappointed.
The plot is serious, but still lightweight—with its instant fixes, pop psychology and fear of carrying the characters’ traumas to morbid levels. While this makes for a brisk, watchable 90-minute film, it does not leave a lasting impression.
Singer Swarnalatha (Shabana Azmi) is stricken with guilt when her violinist friend and her own son are killed in an accident, when she is taking them to Hyderabad for a performance. After this, she refuses to sing or cross the ill-fated bridge to the city.
Twenty years later, the dead woman’s son Abhinay (Prakash Rao), tired of composing ad jingles comes to the village, where his crusty old father (Naaser) looks after the family lands and hopes his son will take over. In the village he meets Pinkie (Perizaad Zorabian) who has come there to deal with her own angst. She is a singer, and with her help he tries to fulfill his dream of starting a fusion band.
Their rehearsal space is above Pinki’s mother’s (Lillete Dubey) boutique, and the other two band mates – the dorky guitarist and flaky drummer--are almost picked off the streets. But their music has something vital lacking, which, Abhinay figures, can be solved if Swarnalata sings for them. There must be dozens of practicing Carnatic singers in the city, but we accept this plot device.
With amazing ease, Swarnalatha is persuaded to record—no resistance to new gadgets, no rustiness due to lack of riyaaz. But she still refuses to cross the bridge to perform in the city. The problem is solved by her giving quick Carnatic vocal lessons to Pinkie. A bit of female bonding here, a bit of comedy at the expense of Pinkie’s mother, who trips around the village looking for local colour.
Pinkie own grief is connected to that accident—a needless complication—and all the supposedly broken souls are mended by fusion music! Even Abhinay’s father is softened by his son’s resolve.
There is no depth to the friction between Abhinay and his father; Pinkie and her mother settle their differences with one quick, clumsy ‘confessing’ scene. Swarnalatha’s pathological fear of the bridge is also cured in a jiffy! It’s as if Dattani didn’t want his characters’ inner demons haunting the viewer.
In the performances there’s a sharp divide between ‘then’ and ‘now’ – Shabana Azmi and Lillete Dubey – excellent as can be expected—give studied, ‘show-offy’ performances, while Prakash Rao and Perizaad Zorabian are casually natural. Only the brilliant Naaser of the ‘then’ generation manages an unruffled ‘now’ performance. Vijay, the actor playing Swanalatha’s supportive husband, is quietly understated.
Morning Raga is in English, which doesn’t sound right in a rural milieu, and also limits the film’s audience to urban multiplexes and festivals. But those who venture in to see it, despite its lack of commercial elements, won’t be majorly disappointed.
Labels: Cinemaah
Inteqam: The Perfect Game
Is it by chance that Basic Instinct has been released in Mumbai at the same time as Pankuj Parashar’s Inteqam: The Perfect Game? So that audiences (at least the ones that do not have access to DVDs) can see the difference between a Hollywood original and its pitiful Bollywood rehash?
Parashar has claimed in an interview that his film is not Basic Instinct—he’s right, it’s not. Because he has taken a few scenes from Paul Verhoeven’s erotic thriller and turned out a mindless, convoluted, boy scout suspense flick of no consequence.
Actually, even the original film highlighting the power female sexuality (12 years later, a Hindi film in the era of sexual boldness in the movies, dares not replicate the famous uncrossing-of-legs scene) seems tame by today’s Hollywood standards. Back then, jaws dropped because Sharon Stone ‘flashed’, now the reaction would be ‘big deal’.
But the voracious sexual predator had the macho cop almost on his knees.
In Inteqam, the heroine is a vain, badly dressed, thriller writer Avantika (Ishaa Koppikar). It so happens that a couple of murders are committed according to scenes in her book and it gets encounter ‘specialist cop’ Uday (Manoj Thakur) all hot under the collar.
Far from being a threat, Avantika looks like a pouting kitten trying to pass off as a tigress. She is soon reduced to a quivering, hysterical mess, but not by Uday, who is kept busy in the bedroom by his psychoanalyst girlfriend Mehak (Nethra Raghuraman).
When its time for all to be revealed, the unfolding of the suspense is so spectacularly daft, it would rate as the corniest climaxes of all time.
Parashar manages to shoot some scenes stylishly and expose a lot of female skin in the MTV-like song interludes, but surely that doesn’t interest anyone any more. Performances? No go – all characters miscast. Manoj Bajpai is not in the least cool in leather jackets and dark glasses; Ishaa Koppikar looks as if she couldn’t even think of a few coherent words, leave aside write them (she talks into a dictaphone in Hindi, and it come out on her laptop in English), and if Nethra Raghuraman is a psychoanalyst, then lipstick, blush-on and eyeshadow sales must have gone up in the medical community, since one last met a real shrink.
Parashar has claimed in an interview that his film is not Basic Instinct—he’s right, it’s not. Because he has taken a few scenes from Paul Verhoeven’s erotic thriller and turned out a mindless, convoluted, boy scout suspense flick of no consequence.
Actually, even the original film highlighting the power female sexuality (12 years later, a Hindi film in the era of sexual boldness in the movies, dares not replicate the famous uncrossing-of-legs scene) seems tame by today’s Hollywood standards. Back then, jaws dropped because Sharon Stone ‘flashed’, now the reaction would be ‘big deal’.
But the voracious sexual predator had the macho cop almost on his knees.
In Inteqam, the heroine is a vain, badly dressed, thriller writer Avantika (Ishaa Koppikar). It so happens that a couple of murders are committed according to scenes in her book and it gets encounter ‘specialist cop’ Uday (Manoj Thakur) all hot under the collar.
Far from being a threat, Avantika looks like a pouting kitten trying to pass off as a tigress. She is soon reduced to a quivering, hysterical mess, but not by Uday, who is kept busy in the bedroom by his psychoanalyst girlfriend Mehak (Nethra Raghuraman).
When its time for all to be revealed, the unfolding of the suspense is so spectacularly daft, it would rate as the corniest climaxes of all time.
Parashar manages to shoot some scenes stylishly and expose a lot of female skin in the MTV-like song interludes, but surely that doesn’t interest anyone any more. Performances? No go – all characters miscast. Manoj Bajpai is not in the least cool in leather jackets and dark glasses; Ishaa Koppikar looks as if she couldn’t even think of a few coherent words, leave aside write them (she talks into a dictaphone in Hindi, and it come out on her laptop in English), and if Nethra Raghuraman is a psychoanalyst, then lipstick, blush-on and eyeshadow sales must have gone up in the medical community, since one last met a real shrink.
Labels: Cinemaah
