Friday, April 29, 2011
I Am
Life’s Like That
Onir’s I Am tells four stories of four individuals who have to make difficult choices. It’s a brave attempt at personal filmmaking, talking of situations when society, law or politics intervenes in the lives of ordinary human beings. Set in four cities, the stories do not have a particular binding theme, all they have in common is director Onir’s compassionate point of view. It also one of the few movies funded by people who believed in it, and the sheer sincerity shines through, whether one agrees with the film’s approach or not.
In the first (perhaps weakest) story, Afia (Nandita Das) wants to go in for artificial insemination to have a child, considered a problem because she is divorced. She has an awkward meeting with the donor (Purab Kohli) because she wants “a face.” Her friend Megha (Juhi Chawla) returns to a ravaged Kashmir of her childhood. She is angry and resentful because of the violence her family and other Pandits faced, while her friend Rubina (Manisha Koirala) silently conveys to her that the ones left behind suffered too. I Am Megha is the strongest, most poignant and heartfelt of the four stories. With a gentle lyricism it concludes that women on both sides of the man-made fence have to pay the price for a war they did not choose.
I Am Abhimanyu is the story of a victim of child abuse, who grows up to be promiscuous and exploitative. Abhimanyu (Sanjay Suri) was abused by his stepfather (Anurag Kashyap), and with typical emotional blindness his mother (Shernaz Patel) does not see or understand. In the last story, Jai (Rahul Bose) is seduced by a man, who is in cahoots with a blackmailing cop.
The film, has some jagged edges, but Onir is earnest, honest and not afraid to make a statement at a time when films are meant to be just light entertainment. If anyone sees a slice of their life in the film or understands the angst of another, that’s reward enough.
Onir’s I Am tells four stories of four individuals who have to make difficult choices. It’s a brave attempt at personal filmmaking, talking of situations when society, law or politics intervenes in the lives of ordinary human beings. Set in four cities, the stories do not have a particular binding theme, all they have in common is director Onir’s compassionate point of view. It also one of the few movies funded by people who believed in it, and the sheer sincerity shines through, whether one agrees with the film’s approach or not.
In the first (perhaps weakest) story, Afia (Nandita Das) wants to go in for artificial insemination to have a child, considered a problem because she is divorced. She has an awkward meeting with the donor (Purab Kohli) because she wants “a face.” Her friend Megha (Juhi Chawla) returns to a ravaged Kashmir of her childhood. She is angry and resentful because of the violence her family and other Pandits faced, while her friend Rubina (Manisha Koirala) silently conveys to her that the ones left behind suffered too. I Am Megha is the strongest, most poignant and heartfelt of the four stories. With a gentle lyricism it concludes that women on both sides of the man-made fence have to pay the price for a war they did not choose.
I Am Abhimanyu is the story of a victim of child abuse, who grows up to be promiscuous and exploitative. Abhimanyu (Sanjay Suri) was abused by his stepfather (Anurag Kashyap), and with typical emotional blindness his mother (Shernaz Patel) does not see or understand. In the last story, Jai (Rahul Bose) is seduced by a man, who is in cahoots with a blackmailing cop.
The film, has some jagged edges, but Onir is earnest, honest and not afraid to make a statement at a time when films are meant to be just light entertainment. If anyone sees a slice of their life in the film or understands the angst of another, that’s reward enough.
Labels: Cinemaah
Chalo Dilli
Jab They Met
It’s the classic chalk-and-cheese situation. A sophisticated investment banker with borderline obsessive compulsive disorder, a raffish Karol Bagh shopkeeper, manage, with some contrivance to embark on a road trip together from Jaipur to Delhi.
The plot has its roots in road movies like Due Date, Planes Trains and Automobiles and many others, not to mention Jab We Met (with the genders reversed), but director Shahshant Shah has done without one typical element—the opposites in Chalo Dilli do not attract each other. It is established early on that both are married, so the nightmarish adventure they share, does not end in romance. She calls him Bhaisaheb, and he calls her Behenji, and that’s that. The audience does not even discover their names till the very end.
Manu Gupta (Vinay Pathak) is the loud, chatty, annoying co-passenger everyone dreads on a journey. But he is also friendly, helpful and intrusive in an innocent but irritating way. He is not the kind of guy Mihika (Lara Dutta) would ever share space with, if it weren’t for bad weather landing her Delhi flight in Jaipur. She rents a car and is saddled with a creepy driver, which is when Manu hops in, ostensibly to aid a “solitary helpless woman.”
He ends up driving the jalopy, gets lost on the way and Mihika’s troubles begin. But, the plot intends to humble her—as all uppity women must be—by cutting her down to size literally (as her designer heels give way) and then showing her a side of India, she is unaware of. Eating oily food in a cockroach-infested dhaba, losing her luggage, sleeping in the open on a charpoy, seeing the sun rise, losing all her money, ending up in a cheap hotel, encountering rural thugs – everything awful happens to her, while Manu enjoys it all saying, “To kaunsi badi baat hai.”
Of course, clichés fly all through, but since the pace is zippy and Vinay Pathak is in overdrive, his Manu doubly aggravating than the character in Bheja Fry (his best to date), but also the kind of guy you’d like to have around when the car breaks down, the pocket is picked and the train missed. Lara Dutta, just can’t keep up. What the film could have done without is the Yana Gupta item number (in Jhunjuhu of all places), the overextended climax and the explanations for Manu’s crazy behavior. All in all, good for a few laughs.
It’s the classic chalk-and-cheese situation. A sophisticated investment banker with borderline obsessive compulsive disorder, a raffish Karol Bagh shopkeeper, manage, with some contrivance to embark on a road trip together from Jaipur to Delhi.
The plot has its roots in road movies like Due Date, Planes Trains and Automobiles and many others, not to mention Jab We Met (with the genders reversed), but director Shahshant Shah has done without one typical element—the opposites in Chalo Dilli do not attract each other. It is established early on that both are married, so the nightmarish adventure they share, does not end in romance. She calls him Bhaisaheb, and he calls her Behenji, and that’s that. The audience does not even discover their names till the very end.
Manu Gupta (Vinay Pathak) is the loud, chatty, annoying co-passenger everyone dreads on a journey. But he is also friendly, helpful and intrusive in an innocent but irritating way. He is not the kind of guy Mihika (Lara Dutta) would ever share space with, if it weren’t for bad weather landing her Delhi flight in Jaipur. She rents a car and is saddled with a creepy driver, which is when Manu hops in, ostensibly to aid a “solitary helpless woman.”
He ends up driving the jalopy, gets lost on the way and Mihika’s troubles begin. But, the plot intends to humble her—as all uppity women must be—by cutting her down to size literally (as her designer heels give way) and then showing her a side of India, she is unaware of. Eating oily food in a cockroach-infested dhaba, losing her luggage, sleeping in the open on a charpoy, seeing the sun rise, losing all her money, ending up in a cheap hotel, encountering rural thugs – everything awful happens to her, while Manu enjoys it all saying, “To kaunsi badi baat hai.”
Of course, clichés fly all through, but since the pace is zippy and Vinay Pathak is in overdrive, his Manu doubly aggravating than the character in Bheja Fry (his best to date), but also the kind of guy you’d like to have around when the car breaks down, the pocket is picked and the train missed. Lara Dutta, just can’t keep up. What the film could have done without is the Yana Gupta item number (in Jhunjuhu of all places), the overextended climax and the explanations for Manu’s crazy behavior. All in all, good for a few laughs.
Labels: Cinemaah
