KURBAAN: MOVIE REVIEW

Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Vivek Oberoi, Om Puri
Director: Rensil D’Silva
Runtime: 180 min.
Verdict: Trash. Absolute wannabe trash. Hateful despicable trash. This film is overflowing with a sense of inferiority complex, and a pretentious political-intellectual stance.
Genre: Drama, Thriller, Romance

        Mr. Johar, I think, isn’t too happy with his existence. Nor is, I suppose, the filmmaker. These men wish they were in some other world, or in some other country. These people wish they were different people with different issues than us. That is why, I believe, they make film that deals with Iraq and Afghanistan. “Deals” is a wrong word. These folks rather display their supposed intellect and political know-how. You see, reading NYTimes, and Washington Post, and watching BBC, and having an opinion on US and Iraq, and Israel and Palestine is very much the in-thing. You see, everyone of us mediocre Indian citizens has an opinion on the Naxalites or blasts or all that related mediocrity, and when one of us makes Aamir, it is hardly pressing. Not them, for they are beyond and above us, dealing only in the real matters. The global stuff. I can imagine these people over coffee tables, in their precious accents, trying to impress the hell out of each other with their just-read excerpts from the morning online edition of NYTimes. Sorry again, not “just-read” but “just-grazed”. Stereotypes have truth to them, you see. After all, these folks hardly have an individual opinion apart from the borrowed one. They are just trying to be global intellects. You know, liberals. And you know, I hate that. I really do. It sometimes wants me to do bad things. Real bad things. Terrible things.
        But, never mind. Kurbaan is a terribly made movie. It is boring. Doesn’t take you ten minutes to figure out you are in one long uncomfortable journey. The opening scene does the trick, and presents you the choice of walking away or staying. The interaction is artificial. And ridiculous. The cheerful romantic tone is jarring, especially after a Se7en-inspired grim credits sequence. You see, there are smart ways of being a wannabe, where you don’t betray yourself through your ridiculous formal choices. Mr. D’Silva doesn’t know any of them. He instead chooses to ask the female character call the male character a swine. A swine? Really? Haven’t heard one of those in a while. Not since young college girls in stupid 90’s romantic actions obligatorily referenced our young dude. Of course they were wannabe times too. But those were stereotypical college girls, with big sunglasses, and you understood. The female in question here is a professor of literature. Still, you choose to stay, for you represent the stupid mediocrity and you are hopelessly hopeful. Twenty minutes of such absolute nonsense fly by, where the lead pair sings a song, and have obligatory erotic scenes (which qualify neither under erotic nor scenes). I have found more spontaneity and more warmth in little porn clips on the internet. They fly to New York, and grace us with obligatory New York festivities. You know how people in New York spend their vacations? By walking on Zebra crossings with ultra-wide smiles. I tried it a few times here, but couldn’t feel a thing. People must be different out there. You see, they paint their faces and make Statues of Liberties out of themselves and dance around on the streets. Life in New York must be fun. That is why our lead pair buys a house in an Indian neighborhood. You are hoping the film might metamorphose into something ridiculously sinister. There is a real terrible movie playing in your head. The trouble is, it is way more fun than what is on screen.
        You stay behind nevertheless. God is disappointed. I mean, the writing is on the wall. You haven’t felt a thing yet. Even Mr. Khan’s man-boobs underwhelm you. His over make-up and overdone hairstyle annoy you. You see, three other Khans have already graced us with theirs. You are hoping against hope, that the movie, in a fit of wannabe-ism, shrugs away everything and displays Ms. Kapoor in all her glory. Doesn’t happen my friend. Anyways, with all the talk of size-zero and stuff, it might be a case of shutting your mouth and let people wonder than to open it and dispel all their doubts. Ms. Kapoor just turns her back on us. And still you choose to stay. You know the movie is trying to cash-in on the actors’ personal lives, and marketing them, like one of those Airtel advertisements. And you let yourself get caught in that. How dumb are you? How desperate could you be? Get a room and watch porn man.
        The next warning comes. In the form of Ms. Kiron Kher, as some Afghanistani woman. You should hear her accent. Neither Mr. Danny Denzongappa (Khuda Gawah) nor Mr. Rajesh Khanna (don’t remember the film) hammed up the khabiz-ka-baccha accent this bad. Useful advice: you see Ms. Kher in a film, you run. You don’t ask, you just run. Run like the wind blows. She is easily the worst thing to happen to Indian cinema, sorry world cinema in more than a decade.
        Still you choose to stay. You deserve it, you dumb schmuck (put on your rhyming cap).
        There is rhetorical liberal politics too. Afghanistan is getting screwed. Iraq is getting screwed. Innocent civilians are being killed. You know, all that stuff. You get that here. Actors actually speak it out. That brings your attention to the writing. You wonder about the script. There is a car-action scene where a supporting actor behaves really weird. I mean, even for a dumb retard, he is weird. The cops stop a car carrying our terrorists, and this dumb schmuck (keep the cap on, I feel real angry man), for no particular reason, starts boiling with rage. You wonder what the script must have read like. What was the filmmaker trying to write? Let me imagine. For that let me name the schmuck “X” because I don’t really remember anybody’s name in here. And in case if I wasn’t clear, it is a film, if you should choose to see, you should forget in haste. Otherwise you might be motivated to join Tyler Durden’s outfit.

EXT. CAR CHECKPOINT (2100)
SUV stopped at checkpoint. Cops check the SUV. They check behind.
X is raging in anger. Y says –
Calm down man. What’s the problem? Stay cool.
X is boiling.
The cops ask them to step out.
X is evaporating.
He shoots.

        Funny scene, don’t you think? Nah, in there it was inexplicable. But still you stay. Mr. Oberoi enters the frame, and you still stay. The writing is so bad you are sure it wasn’t even written. The performances are awful. Mr. Khan is trying his level best to rein in that brilliant nonchalance of Ek Hasina Thi, but the film is forcing him to act in that binary mode Mr. Bobby Deol does so well. The motivations are non-existent. A reporter wants to take revenge over the loss of his girlfriend, and so decides to blow up the terrorist outfit on his own without informing the FBI, and joins them, and then uncovers the plan, and then informs the FBI, and I had no idea where it was all going. To the bottom of the garbage I suppose, where worms would eat the script and you wish you never ever bought the ticket and wasted your night. Life seems to go in reverse. You think about what could have been. This is such a film. I think you should run. I did. Run away.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: MOVIE REVIEW

Cast: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat
Director: Oren Peli
Runtime: 86 min.
Verdict: A rather instructive exercise in the infinite pleasures of economy. And yes, a still camera is unnerving.
Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Horror

        At this writing, the film has reportedly crossed the $100 million mark. Made in 2007, at a budget of $15,000, this is a fairytale alright. One might even claim Paranormal Activity is inspired by The Blair Witch Project. I would say, it emulates that success story all over again, for a new decade, and a new audience. For horror, more so than the thriller, is inarguably the most accessible of all genres. If 2012 were to really destroy our way of life, and future generations were to re-discover this medium, they would tend towards horror. It is the most natural of all genres, and one that shall never experience a lack of interest from the audiences.
        More so, a film like this, or The Blair Witch Project. Movies that create the illusion not of the magnificence or scope of celluloid, but the immediacy of reality. And that is what interests me no end. I mean, this is a home video. Watching a home video is a personal experience. How would you prefer watching a beloved’s marriage video – sitting on a couch with your family and sharing tidbits and laughs and what not, or sitting amidst hundreds of strangers with the footage splashed over the big screen? Come to think of it, how would you prefer to watch your porn? I mean, if given the choice between a shady theater and the warmth of your bedroom, I think the bedroom makes better sense. No, not because it allows you to react, but because it allows you to get involved and enjoy all the more. Alone, that piece of video is for you, only for you, not to be shared. I haven’t watched Rachel Getting Married on the big screen, and I don’t want to. You see, so much of the movie exists within me. I don’t know, maybe all the movies could be personal, or shared. Maybe both ways provide for a different experience. But I fail to understand – How a movie like Paranormal Activity, which is in essence a home video, and which depends upon the illusion that you feel what is happening inside is not just a movie wherein you can enjoy the action munching popcorn but an intense experience that has really happened in some corner of the map, can work on the big screen? It simply should not. But it does. You got $100 million to prove it. You know, is it the marketing or the story itself, I don’t know. I simply am not convinced.
        Never mind. Reader, here I declare that the rest of the review shall contain possible spoilers and I would advise you watch the movie first, and return later. I think watching this film needs you having no idea what to expect.
        Now, when I say Paranormal Activity only emulates the success of The Blair Witch Project, I claim thus based on the extremely interesting example of image composition at hand. In this age of fast cuts, and an active camera, the film represents a revolution. A camera has always been about what the filmmaker wants us to see. He arranges objects, choreographs movements and composes them with his camera so that he can take control of our eyeline and lead our eye from one part to another. This control is often manipulated for misdirection, and when done brilliantly, it surprises us, just like the best of the scary films. Of course, the genre has gone so banal that we come to anticipate every movement, and even predict what the camera is misleading us into, and to what end.
        Not in Paranormal Activity, where the nighttime bedroom sequences with a little timer on the right hand corner have to be one of the most accomplished pieces of image design in recent cinematic history. They are interspersed throughout the film, like say an action sequence in a Bond film, and they are the nigh points. Everything else is directed towards those few moments, wherein tensions heighten and there is an almost claustrophobic influx of fear. A little fade out is the red herring that one of those night sequences is next up, and all you see is an absolute still frame watching the action. I attach the image above for your reference. The camera is always there, right there, during those sequences. No obvious zooms, no formal establishing shots, the scene not following any specific architecture of shot-cycle, no obvious edits. All it does is place its camera at this strategic location in the room, where a young couple – Micah and Katie – find themselves haunted. The image is right there for you to scrutinize completely. It isn’t shying away; it is just sitting there, and making you feel helpless. The complete frame is up for grabs, and you have little to no idea where the action is going to come from, and what the nature of it would be. You would obviously look at the door, and the film shall play on those instincts too. And I shall divulge no further.
        These scenes, by their very design, are relying on absolute freedom to the viewer to imagine the worst. You see reader, the unknown and the unseen is always more fearful than what can be seen. The film follows that belief. The action is almost entirely within the confines of the household, and that in a way cuts you off from the world. It is a principle of filmmaking, or storytelling. You establish it firmly within the context of a world, and you go about creating the world in the background, and narrating the story in the foreground. And although the two actors – Ms. Featherson and Mr. Sloat – are miles away from convincing, they feel believable. You watch only them, continuously, and you get used to them. Audience behavior reader, it is a simple matter of audience behavior. Your mind adjusts. And the film there, starts to play like The Shining. You feel caged in with these people. You don’t exactly mind it, but I believe I was annoyed by both of them at various points of time. Is the film hinting at cabin fever? I don’t know. Much of the film, apart from the bedroom scenes, is by itself harmless, and contains quite ordinary pieces of footage. But as it starts acquiring context, everything inside begins to feel menacing. I think that calls for a greater study on the audience’s reactions. It would be greatly instructive. And yes, I shall share the film on the big screen, and see how it pans out.

THE INFORMANT: MOVIE REVIEW

Cast: Matt Damon, Melanie Lynskey, Scott Bakula
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Runtime: 108 min.
Verdict: A Soderbergh special. A Damon special. I think it might be a great film.
Genre: Comedy, Drama

        I walk out of the theatre to the parking not knowing whether to laugh, or to cry. You see, I lie. All the time. It is an instinct. Even when I tell the truth, I’m suspicious of myself. That I might be convenient about the truth. I think we all lie. More than to others, we lie to ourselves. Nothing bad I suppose. Often we don’t even know we are lying. How well do we really know ourselves? I don’t know. I’m often afraid of myself, and what I might say and what I might do in a given situation. I practice so hard to do the right thing, mock situations in my mind, so that when the time comes, my habit overwrites my instinct. What is that instinct by the way? What is that thing I’m practicing? Is my instinct to lie a lie, or is my instinct to do the right thing a convenient truth? I don’t know, it is all pretty mixed up in there. I think we all are different people at different times. Or are we the same person acting differently? I really don’t know. I really don’t know if I shall ever find the answers.
        And neither does Mr. Soderbergh. Nor the great performance from Mr. Damon, arguably this year’s finest turn by any actor. Yes, that includes the genius of Mr. Waltz. I claim without a shred of doubt hat there is no other actor who could’ve played the part. Oh, I might be wrong. Maybe the brilliant William H. Macy. There is something in their speech patterns, of Mr. Macy and Mr. Damon. There is something in their eyes. I know not for sure, but the characters they etch with such layers of contradictions, that I never seem to be sure of their morality. Eyes are the windows. Most actors have a fixed pair of eyes. I know the range of a George Clooney. I know the range of an Irfaan Khan. I know the range of a Benicio Del Toro. I can read their eyes. Not Mr. Damon. Not Mr. Macy. These two seem to be something else. I suspect, for various reasons, these two might be two of the greatest actors working today. Or okay, if not that, arguably the two most fluent actors of our generation. They aren’t intense. You see, intensity is something that calls attention to itself. These two actors seem to be a chunk of our everyday lives. They just exist, piling contradiction upon contradiction.
        Roger Ebert, once again, provides a superb bit of articulation of the greatness of Mr. Damon, which might easily be extended to Mr. Macy as well. He says, ending his appreciative review here –
              "Mark Whitacre, released a little early after FBI agents called him “an American hero,” is now an executive in a high-tech start-up in California and still married to Ginger. Looking back on his adventure, he recently told his hometown paper, the Decatur Herald and Review, “It's like I was two people. I assume that's why they chose Matt Damon for the movie, because he plays those roles that have such psychological intensity. In the ‘Bourne' movies, he doesn't even know who he is.”
I guess Mr. Ebert chooses to include such wonderful bits is the reason why we read him so often.

        The Informant! is about the real life corporate whistleblower Mark Whitacre. The organization in question was ADM. The crime in question is price-fixing. One might be reminded of such recent films as The Insider, A Civil Action and Erin Brockovich. One might even be expecting such a tale. Since it comes from the lens of Mr. Soderbergh, it even seems to boast of the same grainy texture, and the same color palette as Erin Brockovich. Whitacre, agreed to be an insider for the FBI to bring down ADM and its price-fixing scam. But that is just half the story.
        Mr. Soderbergh, one of Hollywood’s true liberals, is looking deeper. He is looking at the simplified nature of those true stories – of Jeffrey Wigand, of Brockovich – and asking himself – Is it just that the corporate, the system that is bad all the time? I applaud that, I applaud that line of questioning, that line of introspection. One might even claim that The Informant! is a noirish tale. I would have to agree, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is cynical in any way. Because it isn’t. It is true. Much of the politics of cinema so conveniently assumes the innocence of the citizen, and the absolute oppression of the system. Even literature. Mr. Soderbergh is hoping to venture beyond that, and shed some light on a completely new facet of the equation. And interestingly every scene is lit, and every scene has an abundance of the light source. I think he is drilling his way onto the real reason behind it all. Till now, it has always been Us versus Them. But really, how different are Us from Them? Doesn’t what drive Them drive Us too? Ever heard of greed?
        He goes about unraveling his point the funny way. And boy, what a hilarious film The Informant! is. The credit goes to the superlative writing, a near masterpiece of narrative clarity and density. Not since There Will Be Blood and Zodiac has there been a script so concise, and yet so vast. It also goes to the great performance from Mr. Damon, and his enthusiastic voice-over. He is speaking to a lawyer and he is wondering about the tie. How often don’t we do that, how often don’t we find ourselves within the control of our meandering mind? Whitacre is not Jeffery Wigand, burdened by the fear of personal losses. He is smarter, way smarter, and he is sharper. And the thing is, he knows he is smarter. He likes being smarter. He has the innocence of a little child. I think there is a competition within him. He asks the FBI to code him 0014. You know why. Yeah, double as smart as you know who. I think he likes being in a situation. So does the film, in an ironical way, and it scores him with such an upbeat score of guitars and pianos, as he marches onto glory. In his own eyes, I think. I believe the trick to Mr. Damon’s greatness is that he doesn’t create so much as an arc for his character, as much as he plays it moment for moment, believing in each one of them wholeheartedly. Method actors put their methods to the whole character. Damon, I guess, believes wholeheartedly in the moment.
        But there is a revelation at the end, which felt like a betrayal. I don’t hold the film responsible, for they were merely serving us the facts. I felt betrayed by life, I guess, for I don’t feel Mark Whitacre’s medical condition had anything to do with it. The judge at the end claims that Whitacre is different from the usual thug. I don’t think so. He is the usual thug. On the emotional level behind his crime, he is no different than us. He has the most loving and understanding wife one could ever hope to have. He has a loving set of parents. But still, portraying oneself has a hero standing against the tides of life is everybody’s notion of oneself. Even if the tides never existed.

Note Added (11-Nov-2009): I think I might have finally understood the precise belief that drove a guy like Whitacre - that he was too good for most places, and most people.

AJAB PREM KI GHAZAB KAHANI: MOVIE REVIEW

Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Darshan Jariwala, Smita Jaykar, Zakir Hussain
Director: Raj Kumar Santoshi
Runtime: 150 min.
Verdict: A rather amusing and largely charming cinematic comic from the house of Raj that doesn’t quite earn its title
Genre: Romance, Comedy

        I should admit. Of my preconceived notions about Mr. Kapoor, who I so conveniently and ignorantly assumed was no more than an annoying face. With ever watching only a single film of his. And who I declare now a stupendous actor. There is stuff he does inside this film which I imagine only Mr. Shah Rukh Khan pulling off. Or Mr. Amitabh Bachchan. Or his dad. This is a fine young talent who has the rare gift of making the absurd work. With great charm too I might add. And absurd is what he has to dish out in spades. And boy what a joy he is. I had mistaken those perennially raised eyebrows as the over exuberance of a silly kid. Exuberance it is, but over the mark it never is, just like it never is with Ms. Amy Adams. And silly he certainly is not. I wonder what a treat Mr. Kapoor would have been in one of them black and white silent comedies of Buster Keaton.
        And I wonder about Ms. Kaif, a walking and talking showpiece. You get down to the processing room, you pick up every frame she is in, you remove her from them, and you insert any random object. Any. A mannequin. A poster. Of anyone, even Ms. Kaif. A bush. Even thin air. I daresay the results would be positive. It has to be. You see, Ms. Kaif gives this false hope, whenever it is you look in her general direction, that there is a real flesh and blood person standing there in her slot, only to dash them. Anything else wouldn’t do that. I don’t know dear reader, but how much does hollow beauty work for you. Please note that I haven’t used dumb. Dumb equals to something. Hollow tends towards nothing. And hollow doesn’t work for me zilch. You see, I don’t mind a bad actor. A bad actor, I can at least enjoy a chuckle at his incompetence. With Ms. Kaif, I don’t even know where to start. Ah, she isn’t that beautiful anyway. We human beings, by our very nature, cannot stare at an attractive couch for too long. But if you can, God bless you. You shall enjoy this film even more than I ever shall.
        The film. Mr. Santoshi had a notion of making something two-dimensional like one of those Bankeylal comics we would read when we were kids. Reader, two-dimensional not as a limitation, but as an intention. Every emotion, every narrative strand, and every character right there on the surface. There is supposed to be no narrative build-up. Tones are supposed to change at the drop of a hat. Often literally. In my years as a film viewer, I’ve learned that such kind of a narration is the most difficult one to convey. You see, it is all about feeling a particular scene. How well does a scene work? How much have the preceding scenes amused you? You need to in love with the characters for this to work. You need to believe in the place for this to work. There needs to be certain innocence for such filmmaking to work. The good-old 70s entertainer would pull it off with élan. Remember Hera Pheri, where a comic scene (Mr. Bachchan gambling out Asrani) runs into a mystery (Mr. Bachchan running after the man).
        Mr. Santoshi, for the most part, makes it work. Hell, he makes it work all the way. Right down to the climactic fight, which is amusing and often hilarious. Mr. Kapoor makes it work. That fantastic actor, Mr. Hussain (Johnny Gaddar, Sarkar) makes it work. These guys have the chops to pull of the screwball. And, intentionally or unintentionally, Mr. Santoshi starts with them. The opening frames, and little balloons immediately put you into the land of comics. A bandit (Mr. Hussain), dressed in black and white stripes, is robbing a bank. And he encounters the goofy Prem (Mr. Kapoor) sliding downhill on a brake-less bicycle. The town is no place familiar. It has no reason to be either, for it exists solely as fantasy. And Mr. Santoshi is wise. He doesn’t oversell it like Mr. Bhansali did it so foolishly in Saawariya. He does it, economically, through small moments, and always pays attention to keep it firmly etched in the background. And it stays there, in our minds too, that place, magically cutting us off from the reality of the rest of the world.
        But no, the film doesn’t quite earn its title. It is not your next great love story. It is clichéd and stupid, and I didn’t mind that at all. It is about this nice young chap, and the nice young people around. Except for a politician and his son, and some stupid parents pulled right out of one of those fairy tales, everyone else is good. Even the baddie is good. I loved him. God appears, and I was moved. Almost to tears. Such is the honesty and purity with which Mr. Kapoor prays to him. This is not a hilarious film, reader, this is an amusing film. You shall smile, just as you smiled when you read all those silly drawn comics as a child. You shall enjoy a light hearted fare. This should be a time well spent. No more, and no less. And my dear ladies, you should be prepared to fall in love with Mr. Kapoor all over again. I wouldn’t know, but if I was you, I think I would come with my heart parked in my car.


Note: To cynics, like me - Hey buddies, I don’t think there is much problem in including Jesus and excluding a more Indian god in the run of things. I know, I’ve wondered about it, but I don’t want to dwell on it too much. Might spoil the joy.

ANTICHRIST: MOVIE REVIEW

Cast: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Director: Lars von Trier
Runtime: 104 min.
Verdict: An alright film that has gained notoriety for something we shall find again this Halloween. In Saw VI. And no, Trier is not the biggest filmmaker on the planet. He is far from it.
Genre: Horror, Drama

        I never do this. It is against my principles. It is beneath me. But I shall. For I’m greatly disappointed. And disgusted. Not because of the goriness of Mr. Trier’s infamous graphic images, which frankly are ludicrously funny. In a dismissive sort of way. They seem to be appended with obvious calculations to perpetuate pseudo-intellectual mumbo-jumbo, to what could have been a deeply spiritual film. The final forty minutes betray what I dislike most about the filmmaker. His rather perverse sense of showmanship. And although the entire film itself is tending towards an imagery that leaves little room for life to breathe, they still evoke a sense of emotion that is absolutely non-existent in the film’s second half, and which is quite frankly Saw material. No more, and no less. Okay, maybe less on a gory level. But not more on any artistic level.
        So I shall. Describe to you everything that happens in the final forty minutes, so that, my dear reader, you’re in full knowledge what loony sadism you’re signing up for. Sadism that is pandered as symbol embellished imagery. So here it is –

              He (Mr. Dafoe) retreats into a cabin, slowly realizing the extent of the depth of She’s (Ms. Gainsbourg) beliefs, beliefs I would leave to discover. She fears he would leave her, and attacks him from behind. She slams what seems like a heavy slab (or a block of wood) into his groin, and renders him momentarily unconscious. Yet, surprisingly, he manages an erection. She masturbates him until he squirts blood, after which she drills a hole through his left leg. She pulls out a grindstone, and by using a spanner bolts it through his leg. So that he is anchored to base. She then throws the spanner somewhere below the house. Sometime later, he wakes up, throws out screams of pain (which, by the way, don’t feel even remotely convincing) and drags his way onto the nearby woods, and into a foxhole. He hides. By the grace of almighty he has a match in handy in his pocket. He lights. She is screaming for him outside, searching. He digs. Finds a crow. Buried. It caws. Loudly. She hears. He beats it a thousand times with a stone. It still caws. She finds him, and tries to pull him out, and fails, and ends up covering the foxhole with a boulder. She then starts digging. Night falls. She digs him out. They drag to their little house. There she waits for the Three Beggars (The Fox, The Deer and The Crow) and then lies beside him, reminisces the tragedy in a melancholic flashback, and cuts off her clitoris. This severance supposedly designed to be the crescendo. While she lay in pain, he manages to unbolt the grindstone, and then he strangles her.
        Now, this is the unnecessary and flaunty part of Antichrist, which in no way benefits the film. At least not from where I see it, and how I perceive it. For the first hour or so, Antichrist witnesses a near brilliant display of formalism, at least tending to if not reaching, Tarkovskian heights of metaphysical portrayal. There are manifestations all around, yet Mr. Trier, as he has done in all his films, plays safe. He doesn’t put himself on the line, something which Tarkovsky and the early Martin Scorsese would always do. When one puts himself on the line, art is born. When filmmakers like Mr. Trier indulge in pseudo-academic hollow-talk, pretension is born. Mr. Trier dedicates his film to Andrei Tarkovsky, and when that piece of knowledge appeared on screen at the beginning of the end credits, I would be lying if I do not say I was furious. I still am. Apparently Mr. Trier also had The Mirror as essential viewing for the two actors. In hindsight, it is mildly insulting. Mr. Trier might have gained command over the technical usage of capturing the life in nature, but he sure as hell doesn’t have the least bit of idea to what ends he use it to. He deals in symbols, his images built around a specific ideology, which he intends to hammer into us not via emotion or experience, but through a design which overexplains itself. That is why they do not have much room to evoke any response from us, and they end up being informative. Tarkovsky, on the other hand, always dismissed the usage of symbols, and more importantly believed in the purity of an image, and the emotion it evokes. Not it’s meaning. An image is nothing if it has only a meaning, for we all have our own experiences and our own cultures, and we bring to image different personalities. Mr. Trier does capture the menace of nature, quite brilliantly, but only for shallow ends professing mock ideas.
        I say brilliantly. And I speak of the very first shot, captured in slow motion, and black and white. I believe, aesthetically, it is the perfect choice, to capture that moment of carnal temptation, which He and She are indulging in fulfilling, whilst their little child, Nick, manages to walk out of the crib with his soft toy, fascinated by the snow outside. He climbs a table, and in his attempt to grab a snow flake, falls off the window. Him first, and several moments later, the soft toy. Yet, I do not feel anything. I do not feel any emotion. Let us, for sake of references, invoke Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman from Notorious and their most charmingly erotic kissing scene. Now, Hitchcock’s film worked, because – (a) He gave his actors room for breathing space, wherein their act was not the focus, but the people were, and (b) shot in black and white, and lit flatteringly, it was just about the most romantic cinema can ever hope to get. But Mr. Trier focuses on the acts, rather than on the people, for his people are no more than puppets for him. And we as audiences start churning out ridiculous jokes or hollow ironies, all of them ham-fisted. I’m not sure that is how Tarkovsky’s vision of cinema was supposed to be. As little Nick is falling off the window, the carnal pleasures reaches its crescendo. He falls to the ground, and She reaches her climax. That is horrible hammering of ideas for you, none subtle, and none too insightful. And what was I thinking the whole time. That the sequence might be wrong on physics, because you know, as Galileo proved from Pisa, things fall together to the ground. And yeah, the toy isn’t soft enough to enjoy a free float in the air. The problem is – why was the film letting me have these thoughts while such an obviously tragic scene was unfolding. And make no mistake – there is no truth in those images, all edited with great calculation, and a smug degree of cynicism. It is, as if, Mr. Trier is so drunk in his illusions of greatness, that he believes he is nailing all the various poetic facets of life – irony, fate – and he is making sure you don’t miss that. As an audience, it is uninteresting, because these facets always seem to be quite obvious.
        Now, the movie is structured into three chapters – Pain, Grief and Despair – and an epilogue, though it is not so much as structured as segregated into these three slots, the segregation between two slots inserted during the course of a scene, and often during the same shot. It is during Grief that Antichrist comes into its own, where the preceding film has had some kind of a psychological and emotional impact on us, and as the couple experience therapy during long nights, or they walk through the woods, we feel a menace creeping around them. And here I seem to disagree with everybody’s reading of the He character, for the way I see it, he represents everything that is good around us. Or everything in us that God deems agreeable. In many ways He represents a Nietzschian notion, where he is able to overcome his intense pain. Cue: He is distraught as they walk behind the coffin, and She faints. It is an interesting moment, because this is where He assumes the responsibility and rises over the confines of his own emotions, for the sake of himself and his wife. Roger Ebert, in his blog entry here, seems to have interpreted the tone of his character quite differently when he states –

              I suspect many of the reviews will focus on the physical violence She inflicts upon He in the next act of the film. It is important to note that the earlier psychological violence He inflicts is equally brutal. He talks and talks, boring away at her defenses, tearing at her psyche, exposing her. Listen to Dafoe's voice in the trailer linked below. It could be used for Satan's temptation of Christ in the desert.

        I disagree, but I wouldn’t want to argue, for this is tonal interpretations we’re talking about. He, from my vantage point, isn’t cold, and his therapy for sure isn’t anti-septic. There is genuine warmth in those scenes, and one feels some kind of true love in there, where he is trying to clear the muddle of her thoughts, is trying to truly help her, and is not falling to petty or adolescent or liberal temptations and trying to band-aid her trauma. He is going about the true way, and the hard way, and that requires a pain and a sacrifice of much greater proportions. I think most people might be mistaking sincerity for arrogance. That is why I believe, He is a representation of God, or in biblical terms, The Christ. I think the drill through his leg, indicating some kind of crucifixion, might be a symbol Mr. Trier is hammering on us. But then, I have never been good with symbols, you see.
        And they don’t matter much either, in my view of cinema. It is the themes that do, and in many ways, Antichrist is a reflection on the same themes that film noir so gloriously drill down and package in so fascinatingly layered films. Chinatown, for one. Memento, for another. It is important to note that Mr. Trier’s film is a product of a severe depression, and he wants to draw our gaze upon the idea that humanity, by its very nature, is evil. If not in reality, at least cinematically. I kinda like that, for this where I believe the film at least earns the catholic prefix of its title. It is anti to every film of hope and goodness that has been made – from Schindler’s List to you name them. I might be making Antichrist sound as some kind of great film, and it is not. It is a minor film, very minor, and I re-iterate – just about on the same level as those Saw movies, for it goes about proving its themes in just about the same artificial way, and its inferences sound just as hollow, as those celebration-of-human-spirit movies. What it does portray – that we all have evil amongst us, and we’re capable of actions way beyond what we intend to acknowledge – is although a true thought, falls terribly flat because of Mr. Trier’s ambitions of grandeur – not to make a true work of art, as much as make a work of art. His courage is all so calculated. Antichrist, in many ways, is Mulholland Dr. stripped off its more contradictory and personal human emotions, and twisted into revealing some false monotonic spiritual ones. And when I say contradictory, I mean that in the best possible way, for we humans are no more than a bunch of contradictions. Look no further than Martin Scorsese, and Taxi Driver, to discover an honest film, from a filmmaker who is ready to put himself on the line and is not scared to expose himself and confess. That is a true film, a real film, about the Christ and the Antichrist, in all of us, and how one affects the other. It is simple you see. You have a depression or not, I don’t care. As long as you are making some kind of commentary on humanity, don’t try to make a great film. Make a true film. Greatness will then take care of itself.
        Ah yes, one last thing. Even during these scenes during the woods, where He is walking around, and we feel the menace around, Mr. Trier isn’t seem to be convinced that his film is working on its own, and commits the cardinal sin of hammering the supposedly haunting score, and we’re pulled right out of the illusion. That is a filmmaking failure right there.


Note: Jim Emerson, at Scanners, seems to have captured the precise problems I’ve with Mr. Trier as a filmmaker. His piece on Antichrist is the best criticism I’ve read on the film thus far. It is here –
http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2009/10/viff_antichrist_a_pew_in_satan.html

THE SOLOIST: MOVIE REVIEW

Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Jamie Foxx, Catherine Keener
Director: Joe Wright
Runtime: 117 min.
Verdict: A film conflicted between the middle-browed pretentious aesthetics of its filmmaker and the quite compassionate story at the center. And no, a conflict that is not in the least fascinating.
Genre: Drama

        This is the problem when a Joe Wright tries to be a Gus Van Sant. It just doesn’t stick. As was the case with that atrociously out-of-place Dunkirk single-shot, Mr. Wright, who harbors great ambitions of being heralded as a modern artiste, doesn’t seem to have found yet a seamless enough blending of his artistic cinema-flourishes and his rather predictable structuring of narratives. So much so that sequences, which otherwise seem to be having great meaning and great life in them (courtesy two great actors), are reduced to evoking emotions from a rather shallow spectrum. It is jarring as Mr. Wright’s middle-browed aesthetics conflict with the much deeper story that is unfolding.
        When I describe a particular film as drama, what I seek from it is essentially a two-fold question – How much more does it know about life than me, and, How good is it portraying that richness? The Soloist, adapted from Steve Lopez’s book, does contain positive answers to the first part, in that, there’s a wholly truthful portrayal of a medical condition, not pandering to manipulate audiences into false emotions (A Beautiful Mind). I applaud Mr. Foxx for a magnificently courageous performance. Yet, the film doesn’t seem to be inspired by it, instead indulging in images of false poetry, false humanity and above all else, false artistry. Nathaniel Ayers Jr. (Mr. Foxx), a musical prodigy and a Julliard dropout owing to schizophrenia, is mesmerized in the illusions of an empire where Ludwig Van reins supreme, yet Mr. Wright deems it worthwhile to cut away from the magnificence of that face, and instead gaze, with an eye dripping with faux compassion I might add, at the kitschy image of countless homeless of the streets of Los Angeles. When Ayers is so completely immersed in playing the new cello gifted by an old woman who has been deeply moved by Mr. Lopez’s articles in the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Wright deems it worthwhile to indulge in another one of his faux artistry as we literally see parakeets flutter their feathers (clap), and fly out through the tunnel into the world above Ayers. Reader, imagine, how beautiful it would have been had the filmmaker resisted his shallow temptations, and instead relied on the talent of his actor, and only showed us the emotions on him, and his lone audience. Mr. Wright seems to be under the impression that virtuoso shots alone evoke emotions within us audience. As an audience, for the record, I state again –
                1. In a drama, the composition of an image ought to come from the heart, otherwise it isn’t a drama no more.
                2. Manipulation of audience can be deemed worthy of respect and applause only when it is a thriller. Manipulation based on emotions is cheap.
                3. There is no shorthand to emotions in a film. That is the job of a film, and a filmmaker – to carve out the journey for the audience to reach the emotional state of the characters within the narrative. Otherwise, I daresay, there isn’t any point to the whole exercise. No Country For Old Men might be a mighty fine exercise in audience manipulation but it is a pathetic failure when it comes to charting the emotional journey of Ed Tom Bell. The audiences just never got there.

        With regards to point # 3, The Soloist does cover a whole lot of distance in understanding the true emotions that might be faced while dealing with paranoia. Steve Lopez, played quite brilliantly by Mr. Downey Jr., is no Alicia Nash whose character was given frustrations only to register melodramatic effect, and to cause plot propulsion. He is helping out a mad homeless man, but in quite a lot of ways, he is helping himself out. There are occasions he is frustrated, but neither the actors nor the film make any deal of fuss out of it. The treat it as part of the daily routine, as moments and not as events, and I find that quite commendable. Yet Mr. Wright, behind these scenes of natural beauty, seems to be harboring a hidden agenda, wherein he is cutting the film from one such scene to the next for no apparent reason other than to feel something specific when the sequence is ready to offer a lot more. Just like his fellow filmmaker from the U.K. Sam Mendes, Mr. Wright seems to have a penchant for beautiful/striking images, which have absolutely no emotional resonance. During one sequence, in a concert, we also witness the filmmaker’s ambition to emulate Stanley Kubrick’s stargaze in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and actually visualize to us the music that is playing within Ayers’ mind and heart. Unfortunately, it looks and feels as inert and as out of place as one of those visualizations in the Windows Media Player. It is simple, Mr. Wright’ camera isn’t truthful enough. A Gus Van Sant, and we would be talking of Academy Awards for both Mr. Foxx and Mr. Downey Jr. And a film, where there would be no need of the clichéd final few moments of closure, for this is a tale where every moment together for these two soloists was about closure. I got to say this – Van Sant and Mann are blessings to us from the almighty.

THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE: MOVIE REVIEW

Cast: Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams, Ron Livingstone
Director: Robert Schwentke
Runtime: 107 min.
Verdict: A most beautiful love story. An instant classic. A masterful narration. The year’s sleeper genius.
Genre: Romance, Drama, Sci-fi

        Mr. Bana has the sort of eyes that ask to be cared. A woman might never feel even the least bit of apprehension around him. Doesn’t matter if it his wife revealing a pregnancy, or a stranger on a train, or a little girl having a little picnic by herself in the meadows. He is not a Clint Eastwood, or a Christian Bale, or an Al Pacino, someone in whose arms a woman might feel safe. Rather, he is the sort of man a woman would want to care for, and embrace him as a mother would a child. There’s that sincerity in his eyes, an almost winning earnestness. I believe he is a triumph of casting here, more so for the fact that this is one of our best actors. And in The Time Traveler’s Wife he delivers an undeniably great performance, and one I believe that will surely be forgotten within no time. So would the incredible turn by Ms. McAdams. And yes, so would the film, which I daresay hail as an instant classic, and a masterpiece of architecture.
        Roger Ebert observes in his review of Memento rather precisely the idea behind the general structure as a narrative device, or a contrivance, rather than the eventuality of an emotional state. Although Mr. Ebert, a huge admirer of Alfred Hitchcock (Notorious and Vertigo exist among his favorite films), doesn’t recognize the genius of Mr. Nolan, he sure as hell nails the problem. He mentions Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, and as I watch the subtlety and clarity of The Time Traveler’s Wife’s narration for a second time, and feel the emotional truth behind it, I realize now what he intends to convey. Yes, it is true, Mr. Nolan does harbor intentions of reigning in some kind of emotional sense in the spiral structure, yet, in many ways, it is quite obvious, and maybe even gimmicky. Okay, I take that back, it isn’t gimmicky. But one has to agree, it does betray the blatant trickery of a master craftsman trying to provide his audiences for a thrilling experience, rather than using the time-manipulation as an emotional reaction. In that way, The Time Traveler’s Wife might quite possibly be the most brilliant and commanding usage of time-manipulation ever committed to the screen. Yes, more so than Chris Marker’s sci-fi masterpiece La Jetée.
        There’s nothing obvious, nothing confusing about the narration. It is sure, it is clear, and it achieves the purpose of a superior narration – making the audience reach the desired emotional state. It feels linear, and disjointed, and non-linear, all at the same time. We walk out of the screen having the satisfaction of watching a uniquely moving love story between good folks, yet we are not entirely sure of the timeline. It is all subtle, not sticking its hand out and claiming its brilliance like the Nolan brothers’ Oscar nominated script, but quietly seeping itself into our hearts and our minds at the same time. That is something I deem worthy of a standing ovation. I applaud, for The Time Traveler’s Wife is what I seek from a clever film – not flashing its intelligence, but quietly and assuredly using its intelligence to understand the emotional truth at the narrative’s center, and then try and structure the film so as to make us feel that truth, and that emotion. This is that rarest of the rarities, a film where every shot is so brilliantly taken that we aren’t figuring it out, we’re rather feeling every bit of it. Every shot is an eventuality, or a metaphor, or a synecdoche to the whole. With films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Memento, the “clever” structure, I believe, is more of a conceit, a rather shallow (adolescent? amateurish?) jab at the workings of the mind and heart. One might even go so far as to say that the trickery in the above films probably betrays a lack of emotional understanding, and hence they are reveling in their ‘cleverness’. The Time Traveler’s Wife, on the other hand, is where and how cinema and narrative ought to be with this ‘cleverness’ – not flashing it but using it. It feels as if this film knows how it must feel like to be disjointed in time, and it is absolutely and nonchalantly crisp and clear and considerate about it. I find that most admirable, and masterful.
        How does the film do it? By shunning the typical clever film’s hierarchical teacher-student relationship, one that it seems to so naturally assume from the screen above, and by taking us audiences into confidence. Time-travel has always been a paradox, it always will be, and the best movies with the best narratives have been the ones which do not make a big deal of the logic behind it. The Time Traveler’s Wife does not sit and try to figure out an explanation, it instead takes it as a given, as an absolute, as a law of nature just about as there as gravity. A film like Memento seems to feel an obligation for time and its structure from the protagonist’s perspective, always a noble thought, but the results are a trifle amateurish. Not this one, it instead structures itself more organically, with emotion driving the narrative. It is curiously exploring the emotional consequences of such a life. In that, it can be deemed a world of alternate reality. A reality wherein Henry DeTamble (Mr. Bana) has a rare gene which causes him to travel through time. I stress on causes, for Henry doesn’t know when he might disappear from a particular time frame, and where he might appear, and when he might return. We go through life linear, he goes through life non-linear, often even encountering an alternate instance of himself. Clothes do not travel, he turns up naked in a new place, and he got to steal. He is a biological first, and like our ancestors many thousands of years ago were nomads through space, Henry might be a nomad through time. He has been one, all his life. Up until he meets a beautiful young girl in a library, Clare Abshire (Ms. McAdams), and their journey begins. I leave you to discover their love, the most beautiful and moving one I’ve seen in quite a while.
        But I shall not miss the opportunity to describe to you the beauty of the imagery, not composed through inert picture postcards (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) but with love. Every frame drips with poetry, yet it never is sugary, it never is melodrama. The irony, which in any other lesser film might be heightened for the sake of faux-art, is here underplayed, and almost taken as the work of fate. And the film is a strong proponent of fate and the unique ways of destiny. After all, what is destiny but a philosophical synonym for time. It is fascinating how so much is conveyed so subtly, and the kind of questions that are raised in such calm a manner. What are we but instances of ourselves separated through time. Does that make our instances separate persons? When we love a person, do we really love the person, or love our perception of her, a perception guided by an instance we fell in love in the first place? Not many films do that to me, but here I am inspired to buy a novel and read it in a hurry after having fallen in love with its adaptation. Such is the beauty.
        None more than the exhilarating final sequence, a masterful shot capturing the beauty at the heart of this paradox. You will know it when you watch it. And while you do, ask yourself who has been waiting for whom, and who has been coming to meet whom. Yet such questions wouldn’t distract you, in any way, from the purity of the imagery. It is, quite undeniably, the year’s best cinematic moment yet.

SURROGATES: MOVIE REVIEW

Cast: Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, Ving Rhames
Director: Jonathan Mostow
Runtime: 104 min.
Verdict: Is just about as puzzled as me about that little extra thingy on Harsha Bhogle’s scalp. I like that.
Genre: Sci-fi, Thriller, Action

        Now don’t tell me you didn’t cringe when you saw Mr. Bhogle’s new avatar? I know, vanity does work in mysterious ways. And reader, I never did get the point of it. You see, when it comes to you and me we’re a couple of unknown faces, and if we have a little paunch hanging by our waistline, or a little patch of barren land we wish we could do away with, that is fine. I can understand that. You work out, day and night, and if you’re desperate you go to a clinic and pay for a little extra hair. And you turn up in a new place, with new folks, and it is like no one even knew you from before.
        Now I don’t get it when folks, about whom the whole world knows, turn up in a new avatar. Not that I wouldn’t desire a new avatar. I do, very much do, and I wish I looked like Lee Marvin or Jacques Kallis. But at the same time I would want to wipe off everybody’s memory of how I looked like before, and replace it with the new image. Getting me? With folks like Mr. Bhogle though, everyone knows it is artificial. Then why take the pains? I don’t seem to get that at all.
        Neither does Surrogates, a simplistic jab at the temptations of vanity. Based on a graphic novel I hope to read now, it is the kind of mediocre fare you should visit once in a while. You know, just to be in touch and all. Inside of it is a world where every human in the world, which is a roundabout way of saying every American, has grown so vain that a technology called surrogacy is the lifeline of everyday life. Folks stay down at home, reclined on chairs and beds and couches, with some kind of thingy attached to their eyes, while their surrogates, or avatars, or servant machines, which are nothing but the manifestations of the controller roam around. So it is not the actual person that goes to work but the surrogate. I don’t quite understand the logic. Surrogates might claim this as an invention to make its case against society, but I don’t quite buy it. You see, no invention goes against the human nature, and I don’t buy any line of thought that tells you humans will go so lazy so as to spend the rest of their lives within the confines of a room. Not Wall-E. Especially not with its reasoning. One can claim Surrogates has a stronger human emotion to back up its futuristic vision, and I’m still not convinced. You see, the way we work, we might not possess a quality but we sure as hell demand it from the folks we meet. Like say honesty versus pretension. I might be a smug pseudo-intellectual but god forbid any person speaks to me even with the slightest bit of air of pretension. Now if Surrogates really portrayed a plausible scenario, there is no chance of dating, no chance of love, and no chance of any degree of human interaction.
        So safe to say the film is a satire. Or at least the source is. Which I’m absolutely fine with. Only if it had the good sense not to pour in so much of melodrama. And family loss bullshit. There’s a murder mystery in there and the mystery part is stupid. The performances are uniformly embarrassing. The premise has a great movie within it, but one shouldn’t blame Touchstone for not finding it. When every major studio is busy minting money with hollow blockbusters, I guess it is only fair for the movie executives to try their bit too. Still a budget of $80 million is just too much. Touchstone, somebody out there is not worth their pay.

INGLORIUS BASTERDS: MOVIE REVIEW

Cast: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Diane Kruger, Eli Roth, Mélanie Laurent, Michael Fassbender
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Runtime: 153 min.
Verdict: The world’s greatest cinema scholar shows us yet again how it is done, with a masterfully conceptualized and crafted opening scene. And he fails grandly with the rest.
Genre: Thriller

        You see, I’ve always tried to sell the pleasures offered by the likes of a Tarantino. Empty pleasures, of which often even I’m unconvinced. Yet tempting they are, for there are few joys in movie-watching that rival the realization of a masterfully crafted sequence. Car chases, and blasts are easy, I say. And the pleasure derived is less, say, from a conversation that makes you feel what the characters are feeling. Puts you in their frame of mind. See, a real conversation is infinitely more thrilling than any boom-boom. Remember the implied intercourse between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling (The Silence of the Lambs)? Remember the implied death threat between Anton Chigurh and the owner of the run-down gas station (No Country for Old Men)? Remember the soft eroticism on the bed between Michel and Patricia (A Bout De Soufflé)? The true masters of cinema construct such sequences, so that we seek the pleasure again and again.
        Mr. Tarantino has never provided me with such pleasures. His are ones that are more about the very form of the medium, and in many ways they sound empty. But pleasures nevertheless. These are the times when you aren’t seeking anything emotional or spiritual from the film, and chances are you aren’t engrossed. You’re instead appreciating the vaudeville’s glorious yet obvious trickery. You aren’t being taken in by the illusion, yet you’re appreciating the masterful hand behind it. You applaud, for you paid your money to watch a movie, and you got a damn entertaining one at that. It is a triumph for a filmmaker, any filmmaker, and his film when the audience discusses it on his terms. Lovers of Pulp Fiction do not discuss the spiritual nature of it, they discuss the fine architecture of it, they discuss the marvelous conversation of it, and how it was all so amusingly manipulated into fate for all these individuals. When we discuss Mr. Tarantino’s films, we discuss his characters not from our objective vantage point, but from a one where we realize the universe they arrive from. The universe that exists wholly inside of Mr. Tarantino’s brain. As I write this, it strikes me, filmmakers like Tarantino invariably want to have the power of God. Consciously or otherwise. Their cinema could be called wish fulfillment, or their cinema could be called a demonstration of how it ought to be done. You see, the best way to analyze and criticize cinema has always been to make a movie. Godard demonstrated it all those years back, showing us what could be done, and Mr. Tarantino has been showing us all what could be done.
        But all that until now. Things have changed.
        Consider the opening sequence of Inglorius Basterds. The greatest single sequence to have come out in more than a decade, I believe. It is a masterpiece, right up there with the very best and very greatest. At least far greater than anything that he has attempted. Mr. Tarantino has always been brilliant with his words, but often, one feels all his characters speak like him. And they speak unnecessarily. They seem to be so much in love with their speaking that it seems Mr. Tarantino is deriving pleasure at our expense. I often wish some of his characters just shut up. Howsoever good his dialogs be, they still remain dialogs. His films seem to exist as collections of Quotable Quotes. Marvelous conversations, yet adding little to the sequence by the way of form, and always making us aware that the filmmaker behind is trying. To be clever I suppose. Neither his characters nor their quotes bring anything to the table save an indulgence into cinephilia. An fanboy’s masturbation of his favorite stuff. His flights into fantasy, which carry no meaning save that they represent his tastes. We’re always watching it from a distance, enjoying, not viewing it in terms of the characters, but merely as puppets of Mr. Tarantino envying the fun he must be having while writing them. We perceive these clever tricks as concepts, a theory on how the conventions can be overcome. Yet, these concepts had always existed elsewhere. Just for the sake of citing an example, two assassins not talking about the plot but about something else had already been done by Martin Scorsese in Goodfellas.
        But here, Mr. Tarantino has constructed something grandly extraordinary. He has always been clever, but he has never before achieved the master craftsmanship of a Hitchcock. In the opening chapter of Inglorius Basterds he does. While it exists, we’re never aware, and we’re never wondering of the pedigree of the hand behind it all. Rather we’re caught smack dab within the walls of the screen, caught up with the characters, and wondering no other thing than to what shall happen next. Mr. Tarantino has always been good at laying theories, now he puts them to practice. That brings to mind again Hitchcock’s legendary theory on shock and suspense in film, which he laid out to Truffaut in one of them interviews. This is his words –
There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it'. As he explained, if you have three men in a room with a ticking bomb that neither they nor the audience know is there until it goes off, then the unsuspecting audience gets a surprise 'One surprise! That's all.' Contrast this with a scene in which the audience knows about the bomb but the men do not. The men still talk inanely but now even the most banal things they say are charged with an underlying tension. Such is the power of suspense.

        Now reader, imagine what the theoretical concept of tension would be? For that, let us put another twist to the situation above. It is a bit ridiculous yet has a certain mathematical ring to it. Say, even the men above know there is bomb underneath, but each of the three isn’t aware if the other two are aware. They keep playing the cards, sweat dropping. As Mr. Tarantino has a hard-on for Mexican stand-offs I seem to have one for Russian roulettes. And I guess this table-predicament is some kind of a Russian roulette. Consider the ticking time-bomb, and consider the psychological implications. Both within the frame, and amongst the audience. Such a scene drawn out into a sequence of significant length could be so tense it might well destroy your nerves.
        Such is the brilliance of the opening act, a practically realized example of the concept above which Hitchcock might have been envious of. You see, Hitchcock, as a filmmaker wasn’t very good with conversations; he was rather brilliant with the architecture of his films. And while I say that, I feel this would be a nice time to lay out the premise of Inglorius Basterds. Let us just say that there is a group of Allied soldiers, nicknamed the Basterds, and they are out there slaughtering the Nazis. Giving it back to ze Germans, Tarantino style. Led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Mr. Pitt). The Nazis led by, well, Adolf Hitler. And Joseph Goebbels. And a certain Col. Hans Landa (Mr. Waltz).
        But of course, I describe the film only through the broadest strokes. Calling it a war movie, or a revenge movie, or a mission movie, would be akin to categorizing Pulp Fiction as a crime movie, or a gangster movie. Which it bloody well is. But you know, since you’ve reached till here, that a Quentin Tarantino is always a lot more than that. Discover all of it for yourself. I sure as hell wouldn’t mind if you run right away, and read the rest later. Run Forrest run. Run like the wind blows.
        But I digress. The opening scene. Ah! What genius, what perfection, what precision. The sequence works on one emotion – fear – and how brilliantly Mr. Tarantino captures it, and plays around with it. There’s an underlying creepiness to it. Col. Landa is out in the French countryside, at Monsiuer LaPadite’s farm, who lives with his three beautiful and young daughters. Mr. Landa smiles, and it seems, is over-pleased to meet them. The daughters I mean. LaPadite looks like a nice gentle fellow. With a beard and big expressive eyes, this must be a God-fearing man. But he has three daughters. And everybody knows how bad the Nazis were. Kitschy Hollywood and popular history has taught us that they were really evil people, probably the progeny of a group-orgy that involved every evil one from every mythology of every religion. Mr. Tarantino uses that knowledge, and carves upon it one of modern cinema’s greatest conceits in Col. Landa. His masquerade his funny, with his overblown smoking pipe, but there was an anxious in my laughter. I greatly fear my brother’s anger, and as he admits, the more he laughs and the more jokes he makes, the greater the terror. Col. Landa is that terror, personified.
        The fear in the scene is palpable. It might have been constructed with supreme craftsmanship, but is suspect even the gross manipulation of it wouldn’t have deterred Tarkovsky from applauding as a near perfect example of sculpting in time. It might be fiction, but the fear we feel is true. Look at the economy of the sequence. Look at how precise Mr. Tarantino’s usage of the close-ups is, not as cue-shots, but more as evocative ones, that build upon the preceding events. There’re two, timed most precisely, and they are so effective and so organic they ought to be taught as examples in schools to budding editors and filmmakers. Shot for shot. It is an accomplishment – for Tarantino, for he has never made anything quite as effective before, and for modern cinema, for rarely do we come across skillfully written conversations. It is a triumph.
        The accomplishment is all the more priceless when contrasted against the second sequence, or in the film’s terms, the second chapter. Once again based on fear. Absolutely ineffective as a piece of craftsmanship, bet harmlessly enjoyable as the standard pleasures we’ve come to expect of Mr. Tarantino. It is amusing, but for all its gore and violence and swagger, it evokes zilch. That is a failure in my book. Why, one might ask? Because it is built upon caricatures, and the indulgences of Mr. Tarantino get the better of him. He tries desperately to once again rein in tension, once again trying to establish a legend – The Bear Jew – and delaying his appearance so that our minds play tricks on us. It is commendable, this effort, but he fails. I might not be able to precisely pinpoint why, for I am right now only in knowledge of my reactions, yet I shall one day make my observations shot for shot and make my case.
        The sequence/chapter dealing with the rendezvous at an isolated tavern might offer greater insight why the rest of Inglorius Basterds fails so miserably when viewed against the opening scene. Hitchcock always advised that the audience should be in possession of information whenever possible for a said manipulation to work. I think the tavern-sequence is a blunder. I say blunder because Mr. Tarantino, the supreme film scholar he is, overlooks his own belief. The scene contains a major surprise in the shape of a Gestapo officer, yet he is a shock, not a suspense. The scene, for a good part of its length, meanders with nothing interesting happening, and we audiences are clueless. Only if Mr. Tarantino had made known to us this variable sitting behind in the darkness, we would have felt the underlying tension. I wonder how Mr. Tarantino missed this trick. It baffles me.
        Yet, it doesn’t deter me from saying that Inglorius Basterds is the man’s finest film. Look at the masterful way in which he plays with us when Col. Landa asks Bridget Von Hammersmark (Ms. Kruger) to lay her leg on his lap, without specifying which one. Ask yourself what you were thinking, and see how Landa outmaneuvers you. This is a grand chess game, well most cinema is. At least the portion influenced by Hitchcock. And Mr. Tarantino for the first time is indulging you in a game. That is why I say this is a thriller and no more. He uses graphic violence not as vomit but as a payoff. Lt. Raine indulges in a little memento distribution with every Nazi he meets, and the director doesn’t show how he does it right until the end when he distributes it to the big fish. He has two great actors at his disposal – Mr. Pitt and Mr. Waltz. You might have heard a lot of the latter, and for once the hype is true. This is a great performance, right up there with the very best of all time. One for the books. One for the awards. Anymore and I still might not even tread remotely close to hyperbole. Yet I do not intend to state what has already been stated. Just that Mr. Waltz deserves a bow. And that Mr. Pitt is one of our greatest actors. Any other, and Mr. Waltz might have chewed him. That Mr. Pitt stands his own, and comes out just on equal terms is a measure of his absolute brilliance. He might not be spoken to of in the same terms as a Johnny Depp but Mr. Pitt is a genius in the same ballpark.
        Mr. Tarantino, in an interview, claimed that Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood inspired him to make something as good. He might not have achieved that ambition, but he sure as hell created his finest. Up until now he was just restating what could be done. That is easy. With Inglorius Basterds he shows to us how it ought to be done. You know, that is something.




Note: For the complete Hitchcock-Truffaut interviews, this is link that ought to be visited –
http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/wiki/Interview:_Alfred_Hitchcock_and_Francois_Tuffaut_(Aug/1962)

WHAT’S YOUR RASHEE: MOVIE REVIEW

Cast: Harman Baweja, Priyanka Chopra
Director: Ashutosh Gowariker
Runtime: Time does anything but run
Verdict: It’s simple. Mr. Gowariker doesn’t know how to make a feature film.
Genre: Romance, Comedy

        Conversation, it seems to me, is a dying art. More so at the movies, where I increasingly come across conversations being swapped for some empty flash. You see, when it comes to movies, especially romance, or comedy, or drama, a conversation is often the very basic unit of the script. Often, it is everything. The window into the characters and all. That Mr. Gowariker decides to drape (actually I think he mutes) his conversations behind a rather silly sounding song is proof enough that he has nothing interesting to say beyond the clichéd/rhetoric/recycled. Think of it reader. Isn’t it alarming that a film based upon the simple premise of people meeting new people doesn’t have even a single conversation of note. I mean, I’m a voyeur. As are you. That is why we watch other’s people’s lives on the screen with such interest. I would’ve very much wanted to overhear what Pooja (Ms. Chopra, the doctor) had to say to our guy. I wouldn’t know, and I assure you neither does Mr. Gowariker. That speaks real low of his filmmaking.
        What annoys me is that Mr. Gowariker doesn’t even have the bloody sense of music. His songs do not feel a part of the film. They’re absolutely inorganic, lending less to the situation, and taking away more. If compassion and intelligence were really the currency of his filmmaking, there were at least three candidates by my estimate who shouldn’t have existed in the title track. You see, our guy, who in Mr. Gowariker’s defense, doesn’t really seem to know what he wants. Can’t really be sure if that was intended. Then again, how can one be when someone is as harmlessly untalented as Mr. Baweja. Nevertheless, my gut feel was that the dude wasn’t really interested in the 15-year old Jhankhana (Ms. Chopra, again). That leads me to believe he could never ever consider her as a possible contender. If he was a flesh and blood person. Or if he was a snapshot of the filmmaker’s thought-process. Yet, despite the dude’s and script’s instant rejection, Mr. Gowariker chooses to include her in the final scheme of things is proof enough that the man doesn’t have any idea what he’s doing. The film scarcely exhibits any shred of what is considered as human behavior. It is all conceptual, like much of everything that Mr. Gowariker makes. And boy, what a boring one at that.
        But be thankful. To the good lord, for he laid only twelve constellations in the sun’s path. In there, it feels like our path too. Really. Mr. Gowariker shows once again why he doesn’t really have much sense of at least two principles of filmmaking – scriptwriting and editing – and might also be considered mediocre at best when it comes to framing. His images are devoid of any sort of life. Absolutely. Everything feels staged and framed. I do not know his history but his aesthetics seem to betray a bend for the television soap, or a play. Not that he is good at that, like say Mr. Sam Mendes, but he is seemingly incapable of capturing a life in his image. They are mighty artificial, with only a sense of concept driving them. Every filmmaker has an idea behind his image, but the one who’s worth his name has a knack of making us feel that idea. Mr. Gowariker’s sticks out just as ugly as a fifth grader’s little essay on My Hobby. No wonder the Oscars represent such mediocrity. What else can we expect from such a voting panel?
        One needn’t look too far for evidence. You see, analyzing Mr. Gowariker’s films isn’t exactly analyzing a thesis. The simplistic line of thought exhibited in his films isn’t a progeny of an idealist by any means. It is merely, well, simplistic, much like that fifth grader’s argument. The flaws in his films are jumping on the very surface. They are fundamental ones. Like for instance, the editing. One can safely say, even with the kind of feeble knowledge of it as I do, that Mr. Gowariker has little sense of it. For instance, take the clumsy manner in which the dude is introduced to us, after the silly premise of a – money owed to the sharks resulting in a forced marriage – is laid out in front of us. Look reader, how amateurishly that entire portion of the film is structured. The family in India, after learning the only solution to their wretched predicament, decides to call our dude in Chicago. And then, what do we see. A montage, of him –waking up, going to some school, and suddenly in a nice suit at some firm. Didn’t that confuse you reader, if he was studying or working. The question is simple – is Mr. Gowariker interested in the montage of one day or his entire cycle in Chicago. We don’t know, but what we do know is that the little montage is inherently incomprehensible. Doesn’t just fit. Might have worked if it was the opening few minutes of the film, or the background for the credits. The advantages would have been threefold – (a) We might have saved on valuable time, (b) Would have made better sense, and (c) Would have got rid of that visually unimaginative credits-song that lends absolutely nothing.
        Or consider another little moment quite early in the film. Our dude knows he’s up against it. The film cuts to him sleeping on the couch. And within a matter of two beats, he gets up, conveying to us that he cannot sleep. Any filmmaker will tell you that is wrong. A scene shouldn’t exist to merely relay news. By my estimate, the scene started at least 5-6 second late. See reader, a matter of sleeplessness should first be established. The manner in which Mr. Gowariker handles it reins a sense of artifice that is very much the dominant tone of every moment of his every film.
        You know, if I come to think of it, isn’t it sad I spend almost one thousand words and I seem to have addressed only the very basic issues. Never mind. The acting is bad. Awful. Mr. Baweja, and everybody around him ought to realize that some people just cannot act. Not even if their very life depended on it. See Mr. Ashmit Patel. It’s not their fault. They’re challenged. Also given terrible material to work with. And neither is Mr. Gowariker too generous on them. He basically deals in generics and concepts. Stuff like that. Stereotypes too. That career-woman Rajni (Ms. Chopra) is an embarrassment. Is that how a caricature is done? So are many others. Silly songs deleted and more moments to these women and it would have been so much more fascinating. You see, the premise is not a problem by any means. Rather I find it to have a potential for some kind of great film. Meeting and knowing the very inners of new people is so interesting. But not here. My respect for Mr. Aamir Khan’s sense of filmmaking has jumped up a few notches. Boy, doesn’t he know how to get the job done.
        Oh yeah, just in case you were wondering whether you would be stumbling upon some insight into girls of various signs, my better half is a Sagittarian. And by god, she’s not even remotely like the one on display. Except for the simple fact that both are, you know, women. I’m sure Mr. Gowariker’s aims weren’t so low.

Note: In a humble display of my protest against the uninspiring imagery on display I attach not a still from the film but its poster.