Alternate Movies

I still dont understand this pic.Geetha character never uses the gun in the movie.why in the poster??

Read part 1 here

HKA is the Lal salaam of sudhir mishra to a generation that grew up in an era where india's destiny could have been changed. A generation that dreamed to change the world, they fought with their parents, left what they had good education,money etc and went to remote villages to fight for an ideology.Sudhir mishra tells the story about that generation and there thousand desires to a new generation, which is is ideologically empty and enjoying the benefits of the sacrifices made by the older generation without even thinking about them.But sudhir is not taking blatant sides in the movie, he does show his displeasure towards indira gandhi and the janatha party,but he is not rooting for the romantic idea of armed resistance.Things are told in a subtle way.Unlike Govind nihlani's "Hazar chaurasi ki Maa" which presents the idea raw, sudhir presents it wrapped in a beautiful love story.

The movie starts with the dream of pandit nehru.His independence speech "Tryst with destiny".

"At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom..."

As soon as the speech ends.Sudhir mishra brings you down from that lofty dream of nehru by quoting that

"Nehru was holographically wrong. Infact the time at New York was 2.30 in the afternoon"

That was a dream and a reality.The dream speech of nehru is again brought down.This time through images of a mob violence.The scene starts with the banner of indira gandhi and the violence happening right under the banner.The dream of the father and the reality during his daughter's regime.

The movie goes on to explore the unattained dream of nehru through the lives of 3 college friends.Siddarth Tayebji(Kay Kay Menon),Vikram Malhotra(Shiny Ahuja) & Geetha Rao(Chitrangada Singh).Siddarth, son of an ex judge desires to change the political system through armed resistance, vikram hailing from a middle class family wants to make it big in terms of money and power, however he can.Geetha is in love with siddharth and wants to be with him. But for siddtharth his first love is his ideology.

After college they all move in different directions.When they meet again there life had changed.The movie from then on brilliantly weaves the political situation of that time period with the story.To a certain extent all the 3 characters attain what they want.But a twist in the tale, turns theirs life's topsy turvy.What happened to their desires is what the movie is about.At the end of the movie the fate of the generation represented by the three people are different,their desires changed.one escapes reality,one becomes totally powerless and one carries the hope.

The movie was great.But i felt something was missing in the movie.I didn't feel good, or i didn't feel overwhelmed with emotions at the end of the movie.But i felt that what happened to the characters where wrong.I felt as if only 96% of the movie was there there was this 4% missing.What was it, the lovers walking into the sunset??.The hero killing the bad peoples and going to jail??.Hero dying??.I was confused and wanting an answer.

Then i realized that this is what sudhir mishra wanted to do.By making us involve in the 3 peoples desire and leaving us in the middle,he forces us to feel for their desires.The desires are left to you to be mentally fulfilled.With, kind of an open ended climax, sudhir mishra has successfully made everyone to question themselves on what is right and what is wrong.How things went wrong in the life of those three people(that lost generation) and the political system of india?.what is everyones stance now and how could those desires be fulfilled?.I think sudhir mishra's masters in pshycology must have helped him a lot in constructing such a story.

Another good thing about the movie is, nothing is in black and white.You cannot pin point one person as good and other person as bad.The characters are not plain, they are complex.They all show greatness & weaknesses.Like arun, geetha's ex husband who after hearing about geetha, releases her from jail, but he says NO to releasing sids.vikram rushes to bojpur to save sids, but when he himself is in the hospital he hates and shouts at sid.

Indira

Similarly the movie does not manipulate your emotions or it does not explicitly say things.It just suggests things in a very subtle way.It is emergency, sterilization camps are taking place, police brutality is shown and in the next scene Sid's father talks with a politician about getting sids released from the jail.Indira visits that politicians house and there are chants "How should a nation's leader be, should be like indira gandhi".

A Sanjay gandhi look alike

Among all the corrupt characters there are only 2 peoples who stick to there ideologies during those turbulent times.One is sidtharth(to a large extent) and the other is vikram's father, both representing the different ideologies of charu mazumdhar and JP.The movie depicts the false nature of the change that was about to be brought by the Janata party,by showing randhir yadav joining the Janatha party and his political talks.When the political chameleon's like randhir yadav are scared to death because of emergency, vikram visits his father in jail and he is proud to see his father, a tireless soldier of gandhi spinning cotton.



The performance by everyone who acted in the movie was good.Every small character becomes memorable.vikram is the most colorful character in the movie.He portraits the middle class mentality of trying to make it big.He depicts the bourgeois youth who doesn't care about the society and is focussed only on making money.His only weakness is geetha.Even though geetha fails to see his love, he forgives and accepts her every time.

Vikram

He has this small slimer of hope when geetha leaves her husband arun.But when he goes to her apartment with a wine and she says that she is going to the village to be with sids.He accepts his defeat and changes his decision in a minute.He takes the tag out of the wine and starts dancing and tells that he is getting married to someone else.

Geetha

Kay kay(this movie is supposedly his first but it got released later) has also given a good performance.chitragandha singh fits the role of geetha beautifully.She is the less developed character of the three.At the end you are left with a confusion whether she loved sidtharth or the romantic idea that he was carrying.

I liked the way the letters were used in the movie.The letters had perfect wordings, summing up everything beautifully.You come to know about the characters first by two letters to geetha, one by sid and other by vikram.siddharth's talks about his interests in naxal movements and nothing personal.on the other hand vikram starts with the line "first thing first, i love you" and tells about the riot in his home town meerut and that ONLY 38 people where killed in the riots and gives a funny account of two people killed by lions in the riot and how he wished his gandhian father stopped worrying about the communal riots and concentrated more on generating money for the family.You get the gist of the characters from the letters and what they want.sidharth writes 3 letters he comes and goes out of the movie through a letter and in between he gives an account of his experiences in bhojpur, bihar through letters.sidharth first letter is brimming with dreamy youthfulness("we have to change the world and change it fundamentally").second letter is the reality on the grounds in the village in bihar bhojpur("Bhojpur and delhi are not only separated by a 1000 miles but also by 5000 years").He beautifully bids adieu in the third letter by saying "you have to get away from your first love to be completely free",the third letter is the death of the dreams.pretty much the summary of any dreamers big unachieved dream.

passionate Big dream -> face reality -> disillusioned, compromise,accept defeat or rarely succeed.

Music by shantanu moitrai is good.You find music only where it is needed.Man yeh bawra was awesome.Hearing 'He sajni' i had to recheck whether it was done my "Indian ocean".

Hats off to sudhir mishra for not compromising with the story and for giving such a good movie.For a second imagine what and all could have been done with this movie.It could have easily been made into a big commercial movie.Imagine maniratnam making this movie.It has 3 college students,love & a political backdrop.



Let's welcome another quality movie maker that is sudhir mishra.Iam hoping to see more great works from him.

links
madrid film festival

official web site