January 2010 Issue
Hello There,
Here we are with a new issue on the new year. Our Jan issue is themed “Sibyl” and we are all set to take you on a journey in to 2010 and beyond. Filled with short stories, poems, book reviews, movie reviews and our usual columns, we are sure you will gobble this up.
Dont forget to tell us what you think. Leave a comment or email us at editor@thebanyantrees.com
Pearls Among Swine
“There has been tremendous growth in the Hindi film industry over the last decade. Not only are new subjects discovered but often repeated subjects find new treatment and come across fresh. “
With a bunch of adventurous production houses willing to experiment with new directors, the Indie culture is here to stay. Not all of them succeed and not all of them deserve the brickbat meted out to them. Some of them, indeed brilliant are misunderstood by the audience or seem Greek and Latin to them. Here we see five underrated movies from the year that is drawing to a close and why they should have got their due.
Delhi 6
An ensemble performance cruelly reduced to a nonstarter thanks to a shoddily done climax. Delhi-6, at first look, had a lot riding for it. After the success and cult status attained by Rang De Basanti, the expectations from Rakesh Omprakash Mehra grew to skyrocketing levels. And added to that the music of AR Rahman, that was his finest in a long time, knocking itself into the library of his best records like Roja, Thiruda Thiruda and Rangeela. A script written with almost perfect precision and some brilliant sequences that move the characters towards that unification of principles (not story or plot, mind you) that turned out to be both the best and the worst aspect of Delhi-6. With the pushing-down-your-throat message climax being its only gripe, Delhi-6 was wee bit less than the sum of its parts. What was needed here was little justice and appreciation for a breezy two hours or so, with some of the best and subtle performances of the year. And Delhi-6 deserved that much.
Best Scene: Most of the Ram Leela sequences that parallel Roshan’s visit to India.
Luck By Chance:
Thanks maybe to her illustrious brother, Zoya Akhtar generated a lot of buzz for Luck By Chance, a seminal look at the Indian film factory with its myriad of characters, cartoons and buffoons. From a single viewing, we can be pretty sure that when Zoya started shooting the movie, she had a perfectly bound script in hand. If that was not the case, we wouldn’t have watched one of the most endearing character
based movies without squirming in our seats, slowly losing patience. Beginning with the year’s best opening credits, almost every tiny detail, including the name of the movie within the movie is etched with care. Zoya does a huge favor by not resorting to Madhur Bhandarkar sensationalism and “realism”, but rather takes us through a journey where we observe every aspect of the movie making industry in a way that manages to break the fourth wall. It’s tough to gauge why this movie failed the way it did, but it surely ranks as one of the top five movies of year.
Best Scene: Zoya managed to rope in a number of actors for special appearances. One appearance that stands out is that of Shah Rukh Khan, mainly because of the importance of the lesson he imparts to Vikram, the new star in the making. Spoken with the charm that’s Shah Rukh’s own, it’s a scene that triggers Vikram’s
Gulaal:
If I had got an opportunity to watch a preview of Gulaal, I would have implored the makers to give it a wider release. For reasons best known to them, Gulaal did not even get a release in Chennai. Neither did it get a release at major theaters in New Jersey, USA. An ambitious effort from Anurag Kashyap following the success of Dev D, with lesser known faces but with some of the most powerful performances of the year, Gulaal truly deserved better. Taking up a topic seldom dealt with – student politics – Gulaal had some amazingly written scenes with a different story and a radically different treatment. With the quest for power as it’s main theme throughout, with able characters failing and seemingly powerless characters outwitting the former, Gulaal was as surprisingly good as it gets. With a great background score, references to John Lennon, The Gita, and some nice directorial touches, Gulaal is a film I, personally, loved more than Dev D.
Best Scene: As Ransa and Dileep amble back after getting a beating by Jadwal and his gang, you hear a very different version of Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna performed by Prithvi Bana (sung by the actor who plays Prithvi Bana – Piyush Mishra – himself). The timing and the song befitting the situation was quite understated but marvelous.
Sankat City:
A few years ago, Kamal Haasan made one of his numerous comic capers, called Mumbai Express. As extremely misunderstood as it was, it was also one of Kamal Haasan’s best scripts. Sankat City, maybe not as great, falls into a similar league. It isn’t a comedy of errors or the traditional comic flick we are all so used to. The characters in Sankat City are funny without trying to be so. The sequences, most of them, are funny without trying to be so. As in the whole sequence of events are funny on screen but not inherently so for the characters that are part of them. And that’s one of the main reasons why Sankat City failed much the way Mumbai Express did. Most of the set pieces quite cleverly created, Sankat City had the stamp of The New Indie Movie from Mumbai.
Best Scene: In the beginning, a radio announcer gives out a warning about an expected earthquake. It’s not the main focus of the scene and is in fact, completely offhand at first. And towards the end of the movie, this event sets up a finale that though not entirely unexpected, comes as an ingenious touch when you see how it alters the fortune of the main characters.
Kaminey:
Though declared a semi-hit, Kaminey finds itself in this list because of the appreciation that it never got. Judging only by the quality of film making and plot device, Kaminey is the kind of movie that Guy Ritchie or maybe even the Coen Brothers, would have been proud of. Kaminey spoke of a number of factors in its favor – quirky characters, intelligent set-pieces, great original performances and some of the best lines uttered – the stuff that cult cinema are made of. Vishal Bharadwaj’s gorgeous soundtrack and dialogues lend itself to the kind of film seldom seen on the Indian screens – a film that instead of spoon feeding you leaves it for you to figure it out. And when you do, things do fall into place admirably well. That’s the kind of cinema you watch with your thinking
cap on.
Best Scene: That scene in Charlie’s makeshift cabin, with Bhope Bhau and his thugs; small talk over vada pav and the best Mexican standoff ever filmed in Hindi cinema
Aditya Shrikrishna
