Sunday, April 17, 2005
1good film out of 4
Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi
Hindi cinema has, by and large, kept away from contemporary history and dealt with politics in a superficial manner. So Sudhir Mishra can be commended for taking on a difficult subject at a time when audiences seldom look beyond popcorn entertainers—though Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi is in English, it is a ‘Bollywood’ product.
Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi (from a Ghalib poem) is not easy viewing; moreover it demands thorough knowledge of the politics of the period in which it is set, since it provides no bite-sized pieces of reference. It will go totally over the heads of today’s generation (intoxicated by the Page 3 culture) that doesn’t remember what happened yesterday, forget about knowing any details about the Emergency or the Naxalite movement. Even those who grew up in that period might have to jog their memories. But the JNU ‘jholawalas’ of the seventies would understand and identify with the film completely – unfortunately that is a minuscule section of the moviegoing audience.
Delhi, at a time when echoes of the Beat generation were being heard on college campuses, and students were seriously giving up their privileged upper class lives to work at the grassroots level. Siddharth Tyebji (Kay Kay Menon) is one such, who goes to fight alongside oppressed villagers in a Bihar. His girlfriend Geeta (Chitrangada Singh) marries a bureaucrat (Ram Kapoor), leaves him and joins Siddharth in the village too. The man who loves her deeply and unconditionally is Vikram Malhotra (Shiney Ahuja)—son of an honest politician, now rising rapidly in Delhi circles as a “fixer”.
The Emergency is imposed, opportunistic politicians change sides, the good ones are imprisoned, and deep in the rural areas, along with the forced sterilization camps is the crackdown on Naxals. Siddharth and Geeta are also rounded up and tortured, but it is the noble Vikram who faces the consequences.
Combining the sensational (Sanjay Gandhi’s lawless coterie), the stagey (a morcha of Jai Prakash Narain supporters crossing Vikram’s baraat), the shocking (police brutality in Bihar), with the intense relationships between Geeta and the three men in her life, Mishra creates a deeply felt and cerebral testament to the times.
Shiney Ahuja is outstanding in the role that combines the street savvy of the Delhi social climber, with the sensitivity of a man who never stops loving even though he gets nothing in return. So powerful is his role and his portrayal of it, that Geeta Rao’s character inadvertently becomes grey. Able support comes from Kay Kay and Ram Kapoor, and some of the other unknown actors, like the one who plays Siddharth’s father.
Mishra tries to pack in too many issues and ideas into the film and in many places lose grip, but the near-perfect period details, the sparingly used but haunting music and a remarkable visual quality make Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi an undoubtedly a superior film—totally non-commercial though.
Kuchh Meetha Ho Jaye
When an aircraft malfunctions, in Samar Khan’s Kuchh Meetha Ho Jaye, a character comes to the pilot and says, “Captain, I think we have a problem.” The audience must also be thinking on more or less the same lines— problems with a majorly malfunctioning film.
The many characters are introduced in a very unimaginative fashion— their photos and a voiceover into. Once you know that they are all a bunch of losers with totally trivial problems, what’s to keep you interested in the remaining 145 minutes?
Set at an airport in small town Ganganagar—where in India do we have airports as swanky?—the film takes off when a flight to Delhi gets delayed. The airport manager is a drunken clown Saif (Arshad Warsi, acting as if he were auditioning for Munnabhai) and his skeletal staff includes a dumb Sardar (Jaspal Bhatti) and a moron who has lost his ‘murgi’—and that makes for a most unfunny running gag.
Among the stranded passengers is a girl who has sneaked off to meet her internet ‘boyfriend’, the pilot and airhostess sorting out their adulterous relationship, a couple divorced but still in love, two women fighting over a bachelor as if he were the last man on earth, a newly married couple with the husband already hen-pecked, two overage codgers kindling a romance, a Booker prize-winning (too many Booker winners in Hindi films these days, how about a Nobel now?) author and his disgruntled wife (Mahima Chaudhary), who is the reason why Saif swigs steadily from a hip flask. And there are more…
Such a bunch of crashingly dull characters has seldom been assembled (though this week’s other release Khamoshh gives KMHJ tough competition on this count) and since they are mostly unknown faces or TV actors, they are not capable of grabbing the audiences’ attention with their presence or performance. (Why are the women all over-dressed in gaudy clothes?)
If you think of the films from which Samar Khan takes his inspiration—whether it’s The Terminal, Love Actually , Airport or Casablanca—how come at least some of their sparkle or brilliance didn’t rub off on this film?
A structure going awry, jerky editing, weak screenplay and the cheesiest dialogue imaginable make Kuchh Meetha Ho Jaye (which takes its title from a chocolate commercial) as unappetizing as a chocolate with worms.
Mumbai Express
Kamal Haasan’s self-indulgent productions are getting from bad to worse. Mumbai Express, directed by Singeetham Srinivasa Rao (Pushpak, Appu Raja), a convoluted comedy tries too hard to get its laughs. It succeeds a few times, but both Rao and Haasan have seen better days.
Shot on DV, the film looks fuzzy and too add to its woes, most of the actors in it are unattractive, to put it politely.
Digamber (Vijay Raaz) is the leader of a woebegone gang of kidnappers, who want to pick up a builder’s (Saurabh Shukla) son for ransom. Before their ‘fool proof’ plan can be carried out, all the members of the group are wounded.
The help of a hearing-impaired ‘well-of-death’ motorcyclist Avinash aka Mumbai Express (Kamal Hasaan) is sought. The money is delivered, and then it is found that the kidnapped kid belongs to the ACP (Om Puri) and his mistress Ahalya (Manisha Koirala).
Now starts the confusion and comedy of errors as phone calls fly to and fro and are invariably misunderstood. Ahalya, fed-up of being the other woman wants the money, Avinash wants to return it, and the kid just wants a father.
It takes too long to reach the climax, but in a classic happy ending, everybody gets what they want.
It’s not one or Kamal Haasan’s better performances, lesser-known members of the cast like Dinesh Lamba (as the dumb crook Johnson) and Ramesh Aravind (as the wily insurance agent who wants a cut) are really hilarious.
There are a few genuinely funny bits, like a school chorus going off key as the kids watch Avinash hanging in the air from a crane, or the scenes in which a hapless ACP tries to juggle the kidnapper’s demands and his daughter’s wedding, the rest of the film is just about endurable.
Khamoshh Khauff Ki Raat
Deepak Tijori merrily lifts Hollywood flick Identity, dumbs it down, has the girls flash some skin and turns out Khamoshh Khauf Ki Raat, that looks like an assembly line slasher flick.
On a rainy night when the roads are flooded and the phones are down, an assortment of people (a hooker, a honeymooning couple, a wounded woman and her husband, a tantrum-throwing actress and her secretary, a cop and convict—all wooden actors) find shelter in a creepy motel in the middle of nowhere. The motel has one receptionist-cum-caretaker (Vrajesh Hirjee), who is a dispassionate spectator of all the drama happening around him, till the guests start getting bumped off.
Intercutting with the motel murders is a prison psychiatrist (Juhi Chawla)—since when do our prisoners have their own special shrinks?—pleading for the life of a death row prisoner, who is, she reasons, “a killer but not a criminal.” Right!
In Identity, a lot of what happens is the murderer’s schizophrenia playing up, Tijori does not get into all those complexities and makes a straightforward thriller, but then why retain the other track, which looks forced here?
He does a fair job of creating a dark and eerie atmosphere, it’s just that the same shock tactics are used in so many movies, that they fail to scare any more.
Hindi cinema has, by and large, kept away from contemporary history and dealt with politics in a superficial manner. So Sudhir Mishra can be commended for taking on a difficult subject at a time when audiences seldom look beyond popcorn entertainers—though Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi is in English, it is a ‘Bollywood’ product.
Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi (from a Ghalib poem) is not easy viewing; moreover it demands thorough knowledge of the politics of the period in which it is set, since it provides no bite-sized pieces of reference. It will go totally over the heads of today’s generation (intoxicated by the Page 3 culture) that doesn’t remember what happened yesterday, forget about knowing any details about the Emergency or the Naxalite movement. Even those who grew up in that period might have to jog their memories. But the JNU ‘jholawalas’ of the seventies would understand and identify with the film completely – unfortunately that is a minuscule section of the moviegoing audience.
Delhi, at a time when echoes of the Beat generation were being heard on college campuses, and students were seriously giving up their privileged upper class lives to work at the grassroots level. Siddharth Tyebji (Kay Kay Menon) is one such, who goes to fight alongside oppressed villagers in a Bihar. His girlfriend Geeta (Chitrangada Singh) marries a bureaucrat (Ram Kapoor), leaves him and joins Siddharth in the village too. The man who loves her deeply and unconditionally is Vikram Malhotra (Shiney Ahuja)—son of an honest politician, now rising rapidly in Delhi circles as a “fixer”.
The Emergency is imposed, opportunistic politicians change sides, the good ones are imprisoned, and deep in the rural areas, along with the forced sterilization camps is the crackdown on Naxals. Siddharth and Geeta are also rounded up and tortured, but it is the noble Vikram who faces the consequences.
Combining the sensational (Sanjay Gandhi’s lawless coterie), the stagey (a morcha of Jai Prakash Narain supporters crossing Vikram’s baraat), the shocking (police brutality in Bihar), with the intense relationships between Geeta and the three men in her life, Mishra creates a deeply felt and cerebral testament to the times.
Shiney Ahuja is outstanding in the role that combines the street savvy of the Delhi social climber, with the sensitivity of a man who never stops loving even though he gets nothing in return. So powerful is his role and his portrayal of it, that Geeta Rao’s character inadvertently becomes grey. Able support comes from Kay Kay and Ram Kapoor, and some of the other unknown actors, like the one who plays Siddharth’s father.
Mishra tries to pack in too many issues and ideas into the film and in many places lose grip, but the near-perfect period details, the sparingly used but haunting music and a remarkable visual quality make Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi an undoubtedly a superior film—totally non-commercial though.
Kuchh Meetha Ho Jaye
When an aircraft malfunctions, in Samar Khan’s Kuchh Meetha Ho Jaye, a character comes to the pilot and says, “Captain, I think we have a problem.” The audience must also be thinking on more or less the same lines— problems with a majorly malfunctioning film.
The many characters are introduced in a very unimaginative fashion— their photos and a voiceover into. Once you know that they are all a bunch of losers with totally trivial problems, what’s to keep you interested in the remaining 145 minutes?
Set at an airport in small town Ganganagar—where in India do we have airports as swanky?—the film takes off when a flight to Delhi gets delayed. The airport manager is a drunken clown Saif (Arshad Warsi, acting as if he were auditioning for Munnabhai) and his skeletal staff includes a dumb Sardar (Jaspal Bhatti) and a moron who has lost his ‘murgi’—and that makes for a most unfunny running gag.
Among the stranded passengers is a girl who has sneaked off to meet her internet ‘boyfriend’, the pilot and airhostess sorting out their adulterous relationship, a couple divorced but still in love, two women fighting over a bachelor as if he were the last man on earth, a newly married couple with the husband already hen-pecked, two overage codgers kindling a romance, a Booker prize-winning (too many Booker winners in Hindi films these days, how about a Nobel now?) author and his disgruntled wife (Mahima Chaudhary), who is the reason why Saif swigs steadily from a hip flask. And there are more…
Such a bunch of crashingly dull characters has seldom been assembled (though this week’s other release Khamoshh gives KMHJ tough competition on this count) and since they are mostly unknown faces or TV actors, they are not capable of grabbing the audiences’ attention with their presence or performance. (Why are the women all over-dressed in gaudy clothes?)
If you think of the films from which Samar Khan takes his inspiration—whether it’s The Terminal, Love Actually , Airport or Casablanca—how come at least some of their sparkle or brilliance didn’t rub off on this film?
A structure going awry, jerky editing, weak screenplay and the cheesiest dialogue imaginable make Kuchh Meetha Ho Jaye (which takes its title from a chocolate commercial) as unappetizing as a chocolate with worms.
Mumbai Express
Kamal Haasan’s self-indulgent productions are getting from bad to worse. Mumbai Express, directed by Singeetham Srinivasa Rao (Pushpak, Appu Raja), a convoluted comedy tries too hard to get its laughs. It succeeds a few times, but both Rao and Haasan have seen better days.
Shot on DV, the film looks fuzzy and too add to its woes, most of the actors in it are unattractive, to put it politely.
Digamber (Vijay Raaz) is the leader of a woebegone gang of kidnappers, who want to pick up a builder’s (Saurabh Shukla) son for ransom. Before their ‘fool proof’ plan can be carried out, all the members of the group are wounded.
The help of a hearing-impaired ‘well-of-death’ motorcyclist Avinash aka Mumbai Express (Kamal Hasaan) is sought. The money is delivered, and then it is found that the kidnapped kid belongs to the ACP (Om Puri) and his mistress Ahalya (Manisha Koirala).
Now starts the confusion and comedy of errors as phone calls fly to and fro and are invariably misunderstood. Ahalya, fed-up of being the other woman wants the money, Avinash wants to return it, and the kid just wants a father.
It takes too long to reach the climax, but in a classic happy ending, everybody gets what they want.
It’s not one or Kamal Haasan’s better performances, lesser-known members of the cast like Dinesh Lamba (as the dumb crook Johnson) and Ramesh Aravind (as the wily insurance agent who wants a cut) are really hilarious.
There are a few genuinely funny bits, like a school chorus going off key as the kids watch Avinash hanging in the air from a crane, or the scenes in which a hapless ACP tries to juggle the kidnapper’s demands and his daughter’s wedding, the rest of the film is just about endurable.
Khamoshh Khauff Ki Raat
Deepak Tijori merrily lifts Hollywood flick Identity, dumbs it down, has the girls flash some skin and turns out Khamoshh Khauf Ki Raat, that looks like an assembly line slasher flick.
On a rainy night when the roads are flooded and the phones are down, an assortment of people (a hooker, a honeymooning couple, a wounded woman and her husband, a tantrum-throwing actress and her secretary, a cop and convict—all wooden actors) find shelter in a creepy motel in the middle of nowhere. The motel has one receptionist-cum-caretaker (Vrajesh Hirjee), who is a dispassionate spectator of all the drama happening around him, till the guests start getting bumped off.
Intercutting with the motel murders is a prison psychiatrist (Juhi Chawla)—since when do our prisoners have their own special shrinks?—pleading for the life of a death row prisoner, who is, she reasons, “a killer but not a criminal.” Right!
In Identity, a lot of what happens is the murderer’s schizophrenia playing up, Tijori does not get into all those complexities and makes a straightforward thriller, but then why retain the other track, which looks forced here?
He does a fair job of creating a dark and eerie atmosphere, it’s just that the same shock tactics are used in so many movies, that they fail to scare any more.
Labels: Cinemaah
Lucky
For two new directors (Radhika Rao and Vinay Sapru) to get a star like Salman Khan, a generous budget and gorgeous Russian locations -- that’s a lucky break. To blow it up on a boring, plodding, inane film is no way to go.
Lucky—No Time For Love had the potential to be a wonderful action-adventure-comedy, if only the characters and situations had been better etched, and the pace kept brisk. But the lead pair starts singing slow romantic songs (composed by Adnan Sami) in the middle of what could have been a nail-biting moment, or get an easy rescue in a very sticky situation-- the little excitement the plot builds up dissipates completely.
Lucky (Sneha Ullal, a cross between Mandakini, Mayuri Kango and Aishwarya Rai) is the school-going daughter of an embassy official (Ravi Baswani, after ages) in Russia, who sneaks into a car to escape a molester.
The car belongs to Aditya (Salman Khan), the son of the Indian Ambassador (Vikram Gokhale), which drives right into a ‘jung’ (war) situation with soldiers and insurgents blasting away. What the problem is, who is fighting whom, when, why—is conveniently glossed over. So when Lucky and Aditya are lost in the Russian wilderness, from where they will emerge unscathed—this is a movie, right?—you don’t get that pulse-pounding sense of danger, that would have made the movie work.
The two have these cute little spats as they get into one crisis after another, from which they are invariably rescued by the mysterious PD Kapoor (Mithun Chakraborty), clown, master of disguise and supposed “Intelligence Officer” (huh?), who gets everywhere in a jiffy even with a Civil War on!
The directors go very wrong in the screenplay department— for instance, to have one scene of the lead pair hiding from soldiers chasing and shooting terrorists, immediately followed by a dance under blazing lights is unforgivable. Not to mention gaffes like Lucky being on the wrong side of the border when the ‘war’ breaks out, or her jumping out of a train and running miles to join Aditya lying wounded on the tracks.
Why have a teenage heroine if she is so devoid of energy and spirit? The dialogue should have crackled with witty banter. All Lucky does is whine and squeak “Adi” like a wind-up doll. There is even a ‘Princess and the Pea’ scene forced in, making you wince at the extra delicate, damsel-in-distress, who just so outdated! Of course, Salman Khan whoops it up playing the modern day equivalent of a knight-in-shining armour, and he is one of the two reasons for watching this film. The other is the beautifully shot (Sudeep Chatterjee) locations not seen in a Hindi film before.
Lucky—No Time For Love had the potential to be a wonderful action-adventure-comedy, if only the characters and situations had been better etched, and the pace kept brisk. But the lead pair starts singing slow romantic songs (composed by Adnan Sami) in the middle of what could have been a nail-biting moment, or get an easy rescue in a very sticky situation-- the little excitement the plot builds up dissipates completely.
Lucky (Sneha Ullal, a cross between Mandakini, Mayuri Kango and Aishwarya Rai) is the school-going daughter of an embassy official (Ravi Baswani, after ages) in Russia, who sneaks into a car to escape a molester.
The car belongs to Aditya (Salman Khan), the son of the Indian Ambassador (Vikram Gokhale), which drives right into a ‘jung’ (war) situation with soldiers and insurgents blasting away. What the problem is, who is fighting whom, when, why—is conveniently glossed over. So when Lucky and Aditya are lost in the Russian wilderness, from where they will emerge unscathed—this is a movie, right?—you don’t get that pulse-pounding sense of danger, that would have made the movie work.
The two have these cute little spats as they get into one crisis after another, from which they are invariably rescued by the mysterious PD Kapoor (Mithun Chakraborty), clown, master of disguise and supposed “Intelligence Officer” (huh?), who gets everywhere in a jiffy even with a Civil War on!
The directors go very wrong in the screenplay department— for instance, to have one scene of the lead pair hiding from soldiers chasing and shooting terrorists, immediately followed by a dance under blazing lights is unforgivable. Not to mention gaffes like Lucky being on the wrong side of the border when the ‘war’ breaks out, or her jumping out of a train and running miles to join Aditya lying wounded on the tracks.
Why have a teenage heroine if she is so devoid of energy and spirit? The dialogue should have crackled with witty banter. All Lucky does is whine and squeak “Adi” like a wind-up doll. There is even a ‘Princess and the Pea’ scene forced in, making you wince at the extra delicate, damsel-in-distress, who just so outdated! Of course, Salman Khan whoops it up playing the modern day equivalent of a knight-in-shining armour, and he is one of the two reasons for watching this film. The other is the beautifully shot (Sudeep Chatterjee) locations not seen in a Hindi film before.
Labels: Cinemaah
CU at 9
No other decent release, and sheer optimism – misplaced, as it turned out—led one to attempt Marlon Rodrigues’ CU at 9. The director with a reputation as a good music video maker, the title in trendy sms lingo, a hunky model and Southern starlet as the lead actors—just how bad could it be?
Never, never wonder how bad a film could possibly be—the answer always surpasses your wildest guess. CU at 9 has the quick cuts, jerky camerawork and random imagery of the music video, but no plot to speak of. The director is obviously fascinated by the B-grade slasher movies from Hollywood, but even the worst ones have some conventions and a fast pace is one of them. The incoherent, slow, manner in which this film unfolds, does nothing to alleviate the viewer’s boredom and repugnance at the grisly violence (censors allowed shots of tongues being chopped off and limbs being eaten!).
Romeo (Isaiah—model, male ‘beauty contest’ winner, and hunk of the John Abraham variety) is a director of cheap horror flicks, the kind in which bikini babes dismember screaming men, lots of blood drips about, as a man slurps on a human arm!
For some reason, not explained, a breathless female calls Romeo and asks to meet her at nine. Finally, despite warnings from his besotted assistant, he does see her in a dingy restaurant, with an out-of-focus waiter and no other patrons. The girl called Kim (Shweta) looks like one of those ‘undead’ creatures from a horror movie, and Romeo falls head over heels in love with her.
Then he meets Kim’s tarty twin called Juliet and is seduced by her, which understandably annoys Kim no end. She vanishes from his life, and he lurches about drunk, till the assistant sensibly suggests that they look for her address via her number.
Her house, in typical horror film style is a ramshackle, cobwebby cottage in the middle of nowhere, but it has an old rotary phone that rings with a startling noise. Girls in these films never have the brains to run when they find themselves in a house awash with blood and falling corpses. So the assistant dies a gruesome death and what happens to Romeo is to be seen to be believed – not that it is worth seeing!
Whoever is brave enough to sit through this one—and no, the sex scenes are not enough reason— and survives without wanting to throw up, deserves an award for courage.
Never, never wonder how bad a film could possibly be—the answer always surpasses your wildest guess. CU at 9 has the quick cuts, jerky camerawork and random imagery of the music video, but no plot to speak of. The director is obviously fascinated by the B-grade slasher movies from Hollywood, but even the worst ones have some conventions and a fast pace is one of them. The incoherent, slow, manner in which this film unfolds, does nothing to alleviate the viewer’s boredom and repugnance at the grisly violence (censors allowed shots of tongues being chopped off and limbs being eaten!).
Romeo (Isaiah—model, male ‘beauty contest’ winner, and hunk of the John Abraham variety) is a director of cheap horror flicks, the kind in which bikini babes dismember screaming men, lots of blood drips about, as a man slurps on a human arm!
For some reason, not explained, a breathless female calls Romeo and asks to meet her at nine. Finally, despite warnings from his besotted assistant, he does see her in a dingy restaurant, with an out-of-focus waiter and no other patrons. The girl called Kim (Shweta) looks like one of those ‘undead’ creatures from a horror movie, and Romeo falls head over heels in love with her.
Then he meets Kim’s tarty twin called Juliet and is seduced by her, which understandably annoys Kim no end. She vanishes from his life, and he lurches about drunk, till the assistant sensibly suggests that they look for her address via her number.
Her house, in typical horror film style is a ramshackle, cobwebby cottage in the middle of nowhere, but it has an old rotary phone that rings with a startling noise. Girls in these films never have the brains to run when they find themselves in a house awash with blood and falling corpses. So the assistant dies a gruesome death and what happens to Romeo is to be seen to be believed – not that it is worth seeing!
Whoever is brave enough to sit through this one—and no, the sex scenes are not enough reason— and survives without wanting to throw up, deserves an award for courage.
Labels: Cinemaah
Zeher Tango & Nikhil
My Brother Nikhil
Characters talk directly to the camera, about a dead AIDS patient, reminiscing misty-eyed, as if he were a great national hero felled by enemy bullets.
Hearts bleed for the HIV positive dude, though we never know how he managed to get it--surely AIDS is not an air borne disease! Sometimes these well-meaning, cause-waving films with their emotional manipulation just get on your nerves.
Nikhil (Sanjay Suri) belongs to a reasonably happy family, the only dark spot being a domineering father (Victor Banerjee). His mother (Lillete Dubey) and sister Anamika (Juhi Chawla) keep defusing the tension between the men with their cheerful banter.
Nikhil is Goa’s swimming champ, charming and outgoing, when he is diagnosed as HIV positive. He is thrown out of the pool, sacked from his job, his parents ostracized at their club and, worse, he is arrested and forcibly locked up in a filthy sanatorium. His mortified parents and the girl he was being paired up with (Dipannita Sharma) flee Goa, unable to take social pressure.
The story is set in the eighties, when there was terror born of ignorance about AIDS, and a patient was very likely to be treated as an outcast. If Nikhil had been the kind of guy who would look people in the eye and say, ‘ok so I am gay, I am HIV positive, I got it through unsafe sex, who are you to judge me?’ you’d have respect for him, and his subsequent projection as a ‘hero’ would have been justified. But he is a whiner, and he has a whole battery of people fighting for him, Anamika, her devoted fiancé (a geeky Gautam Kapoor), his gay lover Nigel (Purab Kohli) and a human rights lawyer (Shweta Kawaatra).
Writer-director Onir is rather insensitive towards the pain of the parents whose lives are also turned upside down by their son’s illness. But the attitude of the invisible townsfolk changes rather abruptly. One day they are stoning Anamika’s house, attacking Nigel’s home and scrawling ‘faggot’ on the wall, the next they are dancing at Anamika’s wedding, letting Nikhil teach their kids and then lighting candles in his memory. The school principal, a certain Gaston Roberge, who supposedly helps bringing out this transformation along with the sister and her supporters, is hardly seen. Since when does dying of AIDS mean automatic canonization?
On the one hand the film tries to tell us that hey, HIV patients are normal people, like you and me, ok? They can live healthy lives for years till they get full blown AIDS. Then you see Nikhil slowly and painfully wasting away in a matter of months, which kind of acts as a dampener on all that missionary zeal!
Still, debut filmmaker Onir shows definite promise. He beautifully creates a genteel world of pretty cottages, antique furniture, picturesque pubs and ordinary people. The suffering and courage of Anamika and Nigel often touch the heart.
The performances are mostly wonderful from the low-key Banerjee and Dubey, to the vivacity of Chawla, to surprising maturity of Kohli and of course the bravura Suri, who manages to accurately render the slow deterioration of a young man from robust to frail. Despite the tear-jerking, the film never descends to cheap melodrama, which is a major plus.
Tango Charlie
An anti-war film is always a good idea, but was there any need for Mani Shankar to be so ponderous about it? His Tango Charlie is an overly earnest attempt at glorifying the unsung heroes of the Border Security Force. He and his team have worked very hard on it, but the film with its documentary like solemnity makes for tedious viewing .
The film follows the exploits of the platoon led by the constantly sermonising Havaldar Mohammed Ali (Ajay Devgan) and his cohort Tarun Chauhan a.k.a Tango Charlie. They literally go north-south-east-west fighting Bodos in Manipur (Kelly Dorji making an impressive debut as the Bodo leader), Naxals in Andhra and Bengal, rioters in Gujarat, Pakistanis in Kargil. In between they find time to romance (Nandana Sen, Tanishaa as love interests), in mercifully brief episodes, with short snatches of songs.
The battle scenes are very well done and the director has take the trouble to have characters speaking in the respective regional languages -- though it would have helped if there were sub titles. Authenticity apart, after a point it is repetitive watching people being killed. And the relentless patriotic, high-minded lectures strike a false and annoying note.
You really feel sorry that so much effort and expertise has gone into creating a movie that's not just tough to sit through, but does absolutely nothing for the cause it takes up.
Zeher
One more semi-erotic thriller from the Bhatt Factory, directed by one Bhatt nephew (Mohit Suri) and starring another (Emran Hashmi). The cosy family enterprise, merrily lifted from mediocre Hollywood cop flick Out of Time, just shifts the location from Florida to Goa.
Siddharth Mehra (Hashmi) is on the verge of breaking up with his wife Sonia (Shamita Shetty), who wants to go in search of her identity! Very conveniently, local hottie Anna (Udita Goswami) drops her dress, and seduces him. When the girlfriend has a vile husband, gets pregnant and has cancer for which tons of money is needed, and the boyfriend just happens to have the right amount from a drug haul in the police station safe, you’d think he’d have the good sense to run the other way.
But Siddharth, in spite of being a supercop (so the writer-director tells us), walks right into the trap. He gives her the money for treatment, and then to complicate the plot, Anna and her husband are killed in a mysterious fire just after she has named him as the beneficiary of her insurance policy. More plot contrivance: the investigating officer is Sonia. Now Siddharth must get to the clues first or he is prime suspect; and his wife keep looking daggers at him, even as she tries to feed him stale sandwiches. The vociferous feminist, incidentally, thinks nothing of observing Karva Chauth and touching her worthless husband’s feet.
This kind of done-a-thousand-times thriller would need atmosphere, erotica, pace, humour, super performances (and in the Indian context great music too) to work, and first-timer Mohit Suri fails on all counts. He does manage to get the story across in a semi-detached tone, as if even he didn’t know what to do when saddled with a prized idiot of a hero. Not to mention a femme fatale who couldn’t steam up a windowpane!
Characters talk directly to the camera, about a dead AIDS patient, reminiscing misty-eyed, as if he were a great national hero felled by enemy bullets.
Hearts bleed for the HIV positive dude, though we never know how he managed to get it--surely AIDS is not an air borne disease! Sometimes these well-meaning, cause-waving films with their emotional manipulation just get on your nerves.
Nikhil (Sanjay Suri) belongs to a reasonably happy family, the only dark spot being a domineering father (Victor Banerjee). His mother (Lillete Dubey) and sister Anamika (Juhi Chawla) keep defusing the tension between the men with their cheerful banter.
Nikhil is Goa’s swimming champ, charming and outgoing, when he is diagnosed as HIV positive. He is thrown out of the pool, sacked from his job, his parents ostracized at their club and, worse, he is arrested and forcibly locked up in a filthy sanatorium. His mortified parents and the girl he was being paired up with (Dipannita Sharma) flee Goa, unable to take social pressure.
The story is set in the eighties, when there was terror born of ignorance about AIDS, and a patient was very likely to be treated as an outcast. If Nikhil had been the kind of guy who would look people in the eye and say, ‘ok so I am gay, I am HIV positive, I got it through unsafe sex, who are you to judge me?’ you’d have respect for him, and his subsequent projection as a ‘hero’ would have been justified. But he is a whiner, and he has a whole battery of people fighting for him, Anamika, her devoted fiancé (a geeky Gautam Kapoor), his gay lover Nigel (Purab Kohli) and a human rights lawyer (Shweta Kawaatra).
Writer-director Onir is rather insensitive towards the pain of the parents whose lives are also turned upside down by their son’s illness. But the attitude of the invisible townsfolk changes rather abruptly. One day they are stoning Anamika’s house, attacking Nigel’s home and scrawling ‘faggot’ on the wall, the next they are dancing at Anamika’s wedding, letting Nikhil teach their kids and then lighting candles in his memory. The school principal, a certain Gaston Roberge, who supposedly helps bringing out this transformation along with the sister and her supporters, is hardly seen. Since when does dying of AIDS mean automatic canonization?
On the one hand the film tries to tell us that hey, HIV patients are normal people, like you and me, ok? They can live healthy lives for years till they get full blown AIDS. Then you see Nikhil slowly and painfully wasting away in a matter of months, which kind of acts as a dampener on all that missionary zeal!
Still, debut filmmaker Onir shows definite promise. He beautifully creates a genteel world of pretty cottages, antique furniture, picturesque pubs and ordinary people. The suffering and courage of Anamika and Nigel often touch the heart.
The performances are mostly wonderful from the low-key Banerjee and Dubey, to the vivacity of Chawla, to surprising maturity of Kohli and of course the bravura Suri, who manages to accurately render the slow deterioration of a young man from robust to frail. Despite the tear-jerking, the film never descends to cheap melodrama, which is a major plus.
Tango Charlie
An anti-war film is always a good idea, but was there any need for Mani Shankar to be so ponderous about it? His Tango Charlie is an overly earnest attempt at glorifying the unsung heroes of the Border Security Force. He and his team have worked very hard on it, but the film with its documentary like solemnity makes for tedious viewing .
The film follows the exploits of the platoon led by the constantly sermonising Havaldar Mohammed Ali (Ajay Devgan) and his cohort Tarun Chauhan a.k.a Tango Charlie. They literally go north-south-east-west fighting Bodos in Manipur (Kelly Dorji making an impressive debut as the Bodo leader), Naxals in Andhra and Bengal, rioters in Gujarat, Pakistanis in Kargil. In between they find time to romance (Nandana Sen, Tanishaa as love interests), in mercifully brief episodes, with short snatches of songs.
The battle scenes are very well done and the director has take the trouble to have characters speaking in the respective regional languages -- though it would have helped if there were sub titles. Authenticity apart, after a point it is repetitive watching people being killed. And the relentless patriotic, high-minded lectures strike a false and annoying note.
You really feel sorry that so much effort and expertise has gone into creating a movie that's not just tough to sit through, but does absolutely nothing for the cause it takes up.
Zeher
One more semi-erotic thriller from the Bhatt Factory, directed by one Bhatt nephew (Mohit Suri) and starring another (Emran Hashmi). The cosy family enterprise, merrily lifted from mediocre Hollywood cop flick Out of Time, just shifts the location from Florida to Goa.
Siddharth Mehra (Hashmi) is on the verge of breaking up with his wife Sonia (Shamita Shetty), who wants to go in search of her identity! Very conveniently, local hottie Anna (Udita Goswami) drops her dress, and seduces him. When the girlfriend has a vile husband, gets pregnant and has cancer for which tons of money is needed, and the boyfriend just happens to have the right amount from a drug haul in the police station safe, you’d think he’d have the good sense to run the other way.
But Siddharth, in spite of being a supercop (so the writer-director tells us), walks right into the trap. He gives her the money for treatment, and then to complicate the plot, Anna and her husband are killed in a mysterious fire just after she has named him as the beneficiary of her insurance policy. More plot contrivance: the investigating officer is Sonia. Now Siddharth must get to the clues first or he is prime suspect; and his wife keep looking daggers at him, even as she tries to feed him stale sandwiches. The vociferous feminist, incidentally, thinks nothing of observing Karva Chauth and touching her worthless husband’s feet.
This kind of done-a-thousand-times thriller would need atmosphere, erotica, pace, humour, super performances (and in the Indian context great music too) to work, and first-timer Mohit Suri fails on all counts. He does manage to get the story across in a semi-detached tone, as if even he didn’t know what to do when saddled with a prized idiot of a hero. Not to mention a femme fatale who couldn’t steam up a windowpane!
Labels: Cinemaah
Classic Dance of Love
When B. Subhash decided to update the Bhagwati Charan Verma classic Chitralekha, into a hokey Classic Dance of Love, he probably didn’t intend it to be a comedy! Unfortunately, the ponderous writing, inept handling of the dated theme, terrible acting (except some scenes with Mithun Chakraborty), turn the film into a laugh riot. In fact, guffawing through it, is the only way of sitting through this dud—worse than anything Bollywood can (and does) put out with alarming frequency.
Mithun Chakraborty, who had once boogied into B-film stardom with Subash’s Disco Dancer, actually plays an ascetic guru Dr Acharya with a straight face, fulminating against “paapi” women who lead innocent men astray.
Chief sinner is Doli (Meghna Naidu), whose slow nasal speech sounds as if the recording tape malfunctioned. Even with her heavy make-up and tacky dress sense, this modern-day courtesan, manages to get London
millionaire Suraj (Vikas Bharadwaj) besotted by her.
Suraj and Doli do some heavy breathing under sheets, on beaches and in swimming pools before Acharya is able to break up the romance at the behest of Suraj’s worried father.
But Doli, made of sterner stuff, land up in the Guru’s ashram, demanding refuge and salvation. Once ensconced there, she pulls out a wardrobe of even skimpier outfits than she had been wearing so far, and in no time has the guru reduced to jelly at her feet.
Rejection and sexual frenzy drives the guru mad, and he takes to entertaining tourists with a strange classic dance of love, whatever that means.
The story of a man falling off his moral high horse had some potential, but it would take more than B.Subhash’s dubious directorial skills to make a convincing film of it in 2005. (Compared to this Vinod Pande’s comparatively superior Sins about a priest’s fall from grace seems like a masterpiece). And certainly much more than Meghna Naidu’s doubtful charms to convince anyone that she is such an irresistible houri who can not just attract an NRI millionaire but also cause a guru to lose his mind. Think of the regal Meena Kumari singing Sansar se bhaage phirte ho to Ashok Kumar in Chitralekha and then watch a half-naked Naidu pirouetting to Aa aa mujhe dekh, and you can see just how far Subhash is from anything resembling sensible filmmaking.
Mithun Chakraborty, who had once boogied into B-film stardom with Subash’s Disco Dancer, actually plays an ascetic guru Dr Acharya with a straight face, fulminating against “paapi” women who lead innocent men astray.
Chief sinner is Doli (Meghna Naidu), whose slow nasal speech sounds as if the recording tape malfunctioned. Even with her heavy make-up and tacky dress sense, this modern-day courtesan, manages to get London
millionaire Suraj (Vikas Bharadwaj) besotted by her.
Suraj and Doli do some heavy breathing under sheets, on beaches and in swimming pools before Acharya is able to break up the romance at the behest of Suraj’s worried father.
But Doli, made of sterner stuff, land up in the Guru’s ashram, demanding refuge and salvation. Once ensconced there, she pulls out a wardrobe of even skimpier outfits than she had been wearing so far, and in no time has the guru reduced to jelly at her feet.
Rejection and sexual frenzy drives the guru mad, and he takes to entertaining tourists with a strange classic dance of love, whatever that means.
The story of a man falling off his moral high horse had some potential, but it would take more than B.Subhash’s dubious directorial skills to make a convincing film of it in 2005. (Compared to this Vinod Pande’s comparatively superior Sins about a priest’s fall from grace seems like a masterpiece). And certainly much more than Meghna Naidu’s doubtful charms to convince anyone that she is such an irresistible houri who can not just attract an NRI millionaire but also cause a guru to lose his mind. Think of the regal Meena Kumari singing Sansar se bhaage phirte ho to Ashok Kumar in Chitralekha and then watch a half-naked Naidu pirouetting to Aa aa mujhe dekh, and you can see just how far Subhash is from anything resembling sensible filmmaking.
Labels: Cinemaah
Karam
Another gangster movie, you groan as Sanjay F. Gupta’s Karam gets underway. And this one has pretensions! Using influences from Hollywood to Japanese Yazuka movies, Gupta (similar style, but not to be mistaken for the namesake who last made Musafir) makes a film as stylish as it is tedious. Pity all the technicians slogging over backend work in animation and Fx to produce this turkey—because their work is excellent, the movie just doesn’t match up.
It must be de rigueur for all these laddish filmmakers post Ramgopal Varma to pay their tribute to the gangster epics of Coppola, Scorsese etc., before they embark on their careers as directors, or why pick such an overdone plot?
John (John Abraham) kills a child during a botched shootout and gets pangs of remorse. He wants to retire, but his crazy boss Captain (Bharat Dhabolkar) wants him to bump off his enemies before allowing him to go off into the sunset, so he kidnaps John’s chatterbox wife Shalini (Priyanka Chopra). Actually, the audience is rather relieved that locking her up makes her stop her endless prattle about types of flooring in her house by the sea.
But John is forced to take up the job and goes about it efficiently, while Inspector Wagh (Shiney Ahuja) tries to nab him. Though how a don becomes so powerful with just one assassin in his coterie is not clear.
First all Gupta starts the movie by giving away the ending—fatal error. Then he makes the ‘hero’ and his buddies look dull, but makes the warring dons totally outrageous – Captain lives in a white house with a long red carpet and red Japanese wall hangings and goes about swinging a sword like a kid playing at being a Samurai. Captain’s henchman is a fat ‘suited-booted’ guy out of an Italian mafia movie. His enemy Yunus (Viswajeet Pradhan) is a long-haired junkie transvestite. Of course, one killing has to be set in a nightclub! How can there be an Indian gangster movie without an item number.
Gupta is a cinematographer himself, and used to make music videos – so the film is full of black and white sequences, slow motion shots, an animation scene and music video imagery. The Tera Karam song is fabulously picturised, but all this sloshing around buckets of style in a film with no substance (thin plot, no character development, no conflict, no point of view) is a waste of effort. And the violence is stomach-churning.
Makes you laugh when Shalini solemnly says, “John kehte the”, as if John were a prophet not a hitman… and one who mumbles a few lines through the film, none of which sound like quotable quotes.
John Abraham’s considerable on screen charisma is not enough to make even his Dhoom fans suffer this film. Of the rest of the cast, only Shiney Ahuja attempts to do something with his tiny part.
Enough of cops-and-dons sagas, please?
It must be de rigueur for all these laddish filmmakers post Ramgopal Varma to pay their tribute to the gangster epics of Coppola, Scorsese etc., before they embark on their careers as directors, or why pick such an overdone plot?
John (John Abraham) kills a child during a botched shootout and gets pangs of remorse. He wants to retire, but his crazy boss Captain (Bharat Dhabolkar) wants him to bump off his enemies before allowing him to go off into the sunset, so he kidnaps John’s chatterbox wife Shalini (Priyanka Chopra). Actually, the audience is rather relieved that locking her up makes her stop her endless prattle about types of flooring in her house by the sea.
But John is forced to take up the job and goes about it efficiently, while Inspector Wagh (Shiney Ahuja) tries to nab him. Though how a don becomes so powerful with just one assassin in his coterie is not clear.
First all Gupta starts the movie by giving away the ending—fatal error. Then he makes the ‘hero’ and his buddies look dull, but makes the warring dons totally outrageous – Captain lives in a white house with a long red carpet and red Japanese wall hangings and goes about swinging a sword like a kid playing at being a Samurai. Captain’s henchman is a fat ‘suited-booted’ guy out of an Italian mafia movie. His enemy Yunus (Viswajeet Pradhan) is a long-haired junkie transvestite. Of course, one killing has to be set in a nightclub! How can there be an Indian gangster movie without an item number.
Gupta is a cinematographer himself, and used to make music videos – so the film is full of black and white sequences, slow motion shots, an animation scene and music video imagery. The Tera Karam song is fabulously picturised, but all this sloshing around buckets of style in a film with no substance (thin plot, no character development, no conflict, no point of view) is a waste of effort. And the violence is stomach-churning.
Makes you laugh when Shalini solemnly says, “John kehte the”, as if John were a prophet not a hitman… and one who mumbles a few lines through the film, none of which sound like quotable quotes.
John Abraham’s considerable on screen charisma is not enough to make even his Dhoom fans suffer this film. Of the rest of the cast, only Shiney Ahuja attempts to do something with his tiny part.
Enough of cops-and-dons sagas, please?
Labels: Cinemaah
Socha Na Tha& White Noise
Socha Na Tha
The guy can’t make up his mind— his ‘duh’ness is cute up to a point, but going through a whole movie in which a young man ping-pongs between two girlfriends, three sets of families and a whole lot of needless confusion, is a bit much.
Viren, the hero of Socha Na Tha, is the typical spoilt young son of a rich family, who has no other kaam-dhanda, except hanging out with friends— including a rather unpleasant girlfriend Karen (Apoorva Jha) and sounding-board best buddy.
Viren wants to marry Karen, and turns down Aditi (Ayesha Takia), the girl his parents want him to marry. Aditi doesn’t mind in the least (she is used to being interviewed and rejected), but her family almost goes to war with Viren’s stern clan.
Now, for no reason but that it suits the director (Imtiaz Ali), Viren needs to go to Goa to propose to Karen, and has to take the help of Aditi to get Karen there. In Goa, Viren and Aditi hit if off rather well, which causes problems back home, when she is spotted giving him a chaste good-bye hug.
Of course, everybody raves and rants and refuses to listen to reason. Plus the hero does go to great lengths to complicate his love life. When his family agrees to let him marry Karen, Viren realizes he actually loves Aditi, but she is getting married to someone else. And the whole rigmarole starts again.
Viren and Aditi must be the most brainless duo to have hit Bollywood, which is anyway not too high on IQ. Not only can they not make up their minds and speak coherently, they are constantly being ‘enlightened’ about their own emotions by other people.
Still, the first half of Socha Na Tha has a nice, bubble-gummy youthful charm; the second half is a drag, with a mournful song or two that needs to be chopped off (Sandesh Shandilya not in top form).
The dimpled Abhay Deol is not the Adonis type, more boy-next-door material, but he does well in the role of a befuddled young fellow. But this debut was designed for him by the doting Deol family; his talent will be proved when he is thrown into the big bad outside world. Ayesha Takia is simple and unaffected and really a welcome relief from all those sex-kittens bombarding Hindi films.
White Noise
Excellent opening scene: wife walks into the home of her husband’s girlfriend, tell her the affair is off, calls her names, leaves her shattered. Girlfriend jilted by proxy proceeds to get drunk, drives to office of the man, who is also her boss, throws a hysterical fit and gets fired.
Okay, you feel a twinge of sympathy for her, lots of gullible young women get into affairs with married men and get dumped. But if all she does afterwards is get drunk, wallow in self pity and throw hysterical fits, the sympathy doesn’t last for very long, neither does interest in Vinta Nanda’s White Noise.
After being thrown over personally and professionally, Gauri Khanna (Koel Purie) gets a job as a writer (with ex-boyfriend’s recommendation) on a soap called Pavitra Aarti. The male boss (Jatin Sial) promptly hits on her and the female (Mona Ambegaonkar) is a jealous virago.
One doesn’t know why Gauri is such a star writer, since her idea of resurrecting a soap is killing off all the characters. When she is not working, she is staggering around the city in drunken state and sleeping in her car because “there are ghosts in the house.”
Karan (Rahul Bose), an editor on the show, takes an inexplicable shine to the Gauri and spends all his spare time running after her with a blanket – literally and figuratively. A gossip item about her, unhinges Gauri completely, though of course Karan is around to pick up after her.
Writer-director Vinta Nanda was one of the leading lights of television, so one would expect her to be a little more accurate about things. Since when do the newspapers bother about a soap writer and editor? Who even knows who writes, directs or edits all those high-TRP soaps? Why would a talk show hostess base an entire episode on some TV producer and his wife, throwing barbs at some poor, drunken writer?
How come Gauri had dozens of friends to go on a picnic to Alibag, but absolutely no well-wishers or confidants otherwise—except the masochistic Karan, whom she treats worse than a garbage collector?
How do TV writers and editors live in such plush apartments? At some point someone says that if weren’t for Pavitra Aarti, Karan and Gauri would be on the streets, then how does Gauri manage to get money to make a film?
The two lead characters are supposed to be complex—they are given psycho-babble reasons for their loony behaviour; his mother remarried (all through the film his parents pathetically try to call him) and her father abandoned her. But they just come across as irritating losers. It would take a master to make an appealing film with characters like this, Nanda can’t swing it.
The worst part of White Noise, is the florid dialogue, delivered by all characters in a grand theatrical manner.
Koel Purie (given garish make- up and ghastly wardrobe) manages to laugh and cry rather well, it’s the in between stages that don’t work. Rahul Bose’s character is quite vague, so he can’t be blamed for going through the film with a dazed look, probably passing for extra intense.
While one cannot expect a pro-woman agenda from a female director, Vinta Nanda’s take on today’s urban professional woman is annoying. The girl-- beautiful and talented—hasn’t a shred of dignity of self-respect. She sleeps with her married boss (that she loves him is no justification), needs a man’s charity for a career, and a man’s help to deal with a personal, self-inflicted trauma. Not done!
The guy can’t make up his mind— his ‘duh’ness is cute up to a point, but going through a whole movie in which a young man ping-pongs between two girlfriends, three sets of families and a whole lot of needless confusion, is a bit much.
Viren, the hero of Socha Na Tha, is the typical spoilt young son of a rich family, who has no other kaam-dhanda, except hanging out with friends— including a rather unpleasant girlfriend Karen (Apoorva Jha) and sounding-board best buddy.
Viren wants to marry Karen, and turns down Aditi (Ayesha Takia), the girl his parents want him to marry. Aditi doesn’t mind in the least (she is used to being interviewed and rejected), but her family almost goes to war with Viren’s stern clan.
Now, for no reason but that it suits the director (Imtiaz Ali), Viren needs to go to Goa to propose to Karen, and has to take the help of Aditi to get Karen there. In Goa, Viren and Aditi hit if off rather well, which causes problems back home, when she is spotted giving him a chaste good-bye hug.
Of course, everybody raves and rants and refuses to listen to reason. Plus the hero does go to great lengths to complicate his love life. When his family agrees to let him marry Karen, Viren realizes he actually loves Aditi, but she is getting married to someone else. And the whole rigmarole starts again.
Viren and Aditi must be the most brainless duo to have hit Bollywood, which is anyway not too high on IQ. Not only can they not make up their minds and speak coherently, they are constantly being ‘enlightened’ about their own emotions by other people.
Still, the first half of Socha Na Tha has a nice, bubble-gummy youthful charm; the second half is a drag, with a mournful song or two that needs to be chopped off (Sandesh Shandilya not in top form).
The dimpled Abhay Deol is not the Adonis type, more boy-next-door material, but he does well in the role of a befuddled young fellow. But this debut was designed for him by the doting Deol family; his talent will be proved when he is thrown into the big bad outside world. Ayesha Takia is simple and unaffected and really a welcome relief from all those sex-kittens bombarding Hindi films.
White Noise
Excellent opening scene: wife walks into the home of her husband’s girlfriend, tell her the affair is off, calls her names, leaves her shattered. Girlfriend jilted by proxy proceeds to get drunk, drives to office of the man, who is also her boss, throws a hysterical fit and gets fired.
Okay, you feel a twinge of sympathy for her, lots of gullible young women get into affairs with married men and get dumped. But if all she does afterwards is get drunk, wallow in self pity and throw hysterical fits, the sympathy doesn’t last for very long, neither does interest in Vinta Nanda’s White Noise.
After being thrown over personally and professionally, Gauri Khanna (Koel Purie) gets a job as a writer (with ex-boyfriend’s recommendation) on a soap called Pavitra Aarti. The male boss (Jatin Sial) promptly hits on her and the female (Mona Ambegaonkar) is a jealous virago.
One doesn’t know why Gauri is such a star writer, since her idea of resurrecting a soap is killing off all the characters. When she is not working, she is staggering around the city in drunken state and sleeping in her car because “there are ghosts in the house.”
Karan (Rahul Bose), an editor on the show, takes an inexplicable shine to the Gauri and spends all his spare time running after her with a blanket – literally and figuratively. A gossip item about her, unhinges Gauri completely, though of course Karan is around to pick up after her.
Writer-director Vinta Nanda was one of the leading lights of television, so one would expect her to be a little more accurate about things. Since when do the newspapers bother about a soap writer and editor? Who even knows who writes, directs or edits all those high-TRP soaps? Why would a talk show hostess base an entire episode on some TV producer and his wife, throwing barbs at some poor, drunken writer?
How come Gauri had dozens of friends to go on a picnic to Alibag, but absolutely no well-wishers or confidants otherwise—except the masochistic Karan, whom she treats worse than a garbage collector?
How do TV writers and editors live in such plush apartments? At some point someone says that if weren’t for Pavitra Aarti, Karan and Gauri would be on the streets, then how does Gauri manage to get money to make a film?
The two lead characters are supposed to be complex—they are given psycho-babble reasons for their loony behaviour; his mother remarried (all through the film his parents pathetically try to call him) and her father abandoned her. But they just come across as irritating losers. It would take a master to make an appealing film with characters like this, Nanda can’t swing it.
The worst part of White Noise, is the florid dialogue, delivered by all characters in a grand theatrical manner.
Koel Purie (given garish make- up and ghastly wardrobe) manages to laugh and cry rather well, it’s the in between stages that don’t work. Rahul Bose’s character is quite vague, so he can’t be blamed for going through the film with a dazed look, probably passing for extra intense.
While one cannot expect a pro-woman agenda from a female director, Vinta Nanda’s take on today’s urban professional woman is annoying. The girl-- beautiful and talented—hasn’t a shred of dignity of self-respect. She sleeps with her married boss (that she loves him is no justification), needs a man’s charity for a career, and a man’s help to deal with a personal, self-inflicted trauma. Not done!
Labels: Cinemaah
