Saturday, June 16, 2012
Ferrari Ki Sawaari
SLOW DRIVE
There’s a scene in Ferrari Ki
Sawaari, in which a child who is about to have his dream of going to a
cricket camp at Lord’s shattered, consoles his distraught father by telling him
that Sachin Tendulkar had not gone for coaching abroad. That scene could have been the key to the
film, to tell people with impossible dreams that you need determination, not
money, to make them come true.
But the film blew it, and turned into an urban melodrama of a
middle-class family’s aspirations, and the lengths a father will go to in order
to fulfill his child’s wishes. Truly inspiring stories are the ones in which
the characters face insurmountable odds—Nagesh Kukunoor’s Iqbal managed that. Because the story of Rajesh Mapuskar’s film is
so flat and without nuances of emotion, it remains a sweet, but slightly boring
watch. If a viewer has no interest in cricket or cars, then the film has even
less to offer.
Setting the film in a Parsi colony was a nice touch—the general
perception about Parsis is that they are honest and meticulous and these traits
in the lead characters form the spine of the story. Rustom Deboo (Sharman
Joshi) is a ‘sandwich’ dad, trying to look after his cantankerous father Behram
(Boman Irani) and meet the needs of his cricket-crazy son Kayo (Ritvik Sahore).
Rustom works as a head clerk at the RTO and with his meagre salary finds it
tough to bear the extra costs of Kayo’s cricketing gear. When the boy has a chance to go to Lord’s for
coaching and the fee is beyond his father’s means (though a lakh and a
half is not a huge amount today!) for the first time in his life, he does
something wrong.
A wedding planner (Seema Pahwa) has promised a small time politician a
Ferrari for his son’s wedding baraat. The only Ferrari in the city belongs to
Sachin Tendulkar, and with the kind of ease that only a lazy script can come up
with, Rustom gets a chance to drive it away.
In the course of the day, the attention of the Deboo family, the wedding
party and two of Tendulkar’s terrified employees is fixated on the Ferrari.
The film is neither fast-paced nor funny enough, nor does it make the
heart stop and soar with Rustom’s mounting troubles. In fact, everything
happens too effortlessly for him, never is there any doubt that he will achieve what
he set out to, and not get into any serious trouble.
Even in a mostly bland film, there are a couple of moving scenes, like
when Behram, puts aside his pride and goes to meet his nemesis, Dharmadhikari
(Paresh Rawal), the man who has destroyed his own cricketing career; while he
is humiliated by the man’s indifference, his honour is restored by the genuine
admiration of a waiter. The film needed
more such unpredictable moments.
Boman Irani, being a Parsi himself, gets the quirks of his character
down pat; Sharman Joshi is painfully earnest, wearing a long-suffering look
throughout—either smiling sadly or weeping--he just isn’t given any shades. The
kid is perky and cute. Paresh Rawal
shines in his two scenes. The supporting cast of lesser known faces is not
quite up to the mark. Vidya Balan’s lavni is fine, it serves as a dash of
colour and change of mood.
Labels: Cinemaah
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Shanghai
China Syndrome
The title of Dibakar Banerjee’s new film comes from various politicians' pronouncements about turning Mumbai into Shanghai—the Chinese city being the benchmark for progress.
Indianising Greek writer Vassilis Vassilikos' Z, which was made into an outstanding film by Costa Gavras, Dibakar Banerjee—one of Hindi cinema’s brave new voices—has crafted a contemporary thriller, a simmering cauldron of political skulduggery, corruption and greed. By now, of course, this sort of thing has been done innumerable times, and the finger of blame pointingtowards a powerful corporation that sounds like Enron would hardly get areaction today, so the film seems a bit naive by present day amoral times. If Shanghai were to really reflect thereality of small town India aspiring to a slice of the ‘pragati’(progress) pie, it would have to be far more brutal than it is--it should have been disturbing and it isn’t. Which has more to do with the thick-skinned times we live in, than any shortcomings in Banerjee’s intentions to provoke.
Then there is his verite style; shooting with his LSD cinematographer Nikos Andritsakis,the film seems coated in grime, not even a bit of accidental beauty. The fictional town it is set in, is populated by ugly, violent men, perpetually in a state of mob frenzy—either dancing with religious fervour or rioting.
The issue that has polarized the fictional town of Bharatnagar is the displacement of a settlement of poor people to build an international business park. The state’s chief minister (Supriya Pathak) and her cohorts are in favour of it, but Dr Ali Ahmedi (Prosenjit Chatterjee) tries to get the potential oustees to resist.
After a public function, Dr Ahmedi is knocked down by a truck. His follower and lover Shalini(Kalki Koechlin) believes it was murder and the man who can help her prove it is a creepy pornographer Jogi Parmar (Emraan Hashmi). Ahmedi’s grim wife (Tilottama Shome) demandsaction. The state’s principal secretary (Faroouque Shaikh), dangles a Stockholm posting in front of a bureaucrat TA Krishnan (Abhay Deol) and asks him to heada one-man commission to probe the accident. He is up against surly, uncooperative cops and violent hooligans.
What the manipulative wheeler-dealers had not bargained for was Shalini’s persistence and the remnants of a conscience in Krishnan and Parmar. In the real world, the politicians would have gotten away with murder, smug in the certainly that idealism is dead, and the corpses of dozens of honest whistleblowers line the road to dissent.
The film is dark with short bursts of cynical humour (Krishnan saying his prayers in front of a laptop), and a sense of relentless danger just around the corner. But its idealism in the face of utter hopelessness somewhat dulls the impact of the film. That and a curious indifference to the plight of the poor who are about to lose their homes. A senior and seasoned bureaucrat being stymied by the threat of exposure of a corrupt deal can only be a script convenience.
Shanghai is not an easy or pleasant watch, but it has a point of view, a thought-out cinematic style and a bunch of actors who play spectacularly against type. Abhay Deol as the inscrutable babu and EmraanHashmi as the scruffy videographer are first rate and can expect a few awardsnominations next year.
The title of Dibakar Banerjee’s new film comes from various politicians' pronouncements about turning Mumbai into Shanghai—the Chinese city being the benchmark for progress.
Indianising Greek writer Vassilis Vassilikos' Z, which was made into an outstanding film by Costa Gavras, Dibakar Banerjee—one of Hindi cinema’s brave new voices—has crafted a contemporary thriller, a simmering cauldron of political skulduggery, corruption and greed. By now, of course, this sort of thing has been done innumerable times, and the finger of blame pointingtowards a powerful corporation that sounds like Enron would hardly get areaction today, so the film seems a bit naive by present day amoral times. If Shanghai were to really reflect thereality of small town India aspiring to a slice of the ‘pragati’(progress) pie, it would have to be far more brutal than it is--it should have been disturbing and it isn’t. Which has more to do with the thick-skinned times we live in, than any shortcomings in Banerjee’s intentions to provoke.
Then there is his verite style; shooting with his LSD cinematographer Nikos Andritsakis,the film seems coated in grime, not even a bit of accidental beauty. The fictional town it is set in, is populated by ugly, violent men, perpetually in a state of mob frenzy—either dancing with religious fervour or rioting.
The issue that has polarized the fictional town of Bharatnagar is the displacement of a settlement of poor people to build an international business park. The state’s chief minister (Supriya Pathak) and her cohorts are in favour of it, but Dr Ali Ahmedi (Prosenjit Chatterjee) tries to get the potential oustees to resist.
After a public function, Dr Ahmedi is knocked down by a truck. His follower and lover Shalini(Kalki Koechlin) believes it was murder and the man who can help her prove it is a creepy pornographer Jogi Parmar (Emraan Hashmi). Ahmedi’s grim wife (Tilottama Shome) demandsaction. The state’s principal secretary (Faroouque Shaikh), dangles a Stockholm posting in front of a bureaucrat TA Krishnan (Abhay Deol) and asks him to heada one-man commission to probe the accident. He is up against surly, uncooperative cops and violent hooligans.
What the manipulative wheeler-dealers had not bargained for was Shalini’s persistence and the remnants of a conscience in Krishnan and Parmar. In the real world, the politicians would have gotten away with murder, smug in the certainly that idealism is dead, and the corpses of dozens of honest whistleblowers line the road to dissent.
The film is dark with short bursts of cynical humour (Krishnan saying his prayers in front of a laptop), and a sense of relentless danger just around the corner. But its idealism in the face of utter hopelessness somewhat dulls the impact of the film. That and a curious indifference to the plight of the poor who are about to lose their homes. A senior and seasoned bureaucrat being stymied by the threat of exposure of a corrupt deal can only be a script convenience.
Shanghai is not an easy or pleasant watch, but it has a point of view, a thought-out cinematic style and a bunch of actors who play spectacularly against type. Abhay Deol as the inscrutable babu and EmraanHashmi as the scruffy videographer are first rate and can expect a few awardsnominations next year.
Labels: Cinemaah
