Alternate Movies

Uttara(Wrestlers) -Bengali 2000

2007-09-14T20:40:00.000-07:00

Uttara by buddha deb gupta has all the usual elements of his film, but this time he touches a theme that many around the globe can relate too.

The movie is not a single story.There are a few threads each signifying a certain theme.The movie mainly focuses on the wrestler friends Balaram (Shankar Chakraborty) / Nemai (Tapas Pal) and a father of a local church.Some new people from the city come to the village and the peace and tranquility of the village is disturbed.The father character is loosely based on Graham Stewart Staines who was burned to death by hindu activists in orissa.

The story of these various characters are just for the name sake to convey certain message .As usual some of the usual communist/socialist ideas are abundant in this movie.But buddhadeb makes up for all these with beautiful images shot in puralina, bengal.The movie has this usual buddhadeb magical feel to it.You will hardly see any other characters other than the ones who are significant in the movie.And he employs all the classical shots a low camera angle capturing the wrestlers wrestling right in the middle of the shot, on a mountain with the sky above them.An out of place church with a S path Leading to it.

And there are these dwarf characters and dancers coming now and then.Most of the time they are totally out of place and almost dream like.He breaks some scenes with the dancers coming from nowhere.A serious scenes of a gang chasing a boy to kill is cut off by dancers dancing with a beautiful beat and song.

Ananlysis
***spoilers*****
The movie is a ode to the weaker people.The wrestlers basically represent the Powerful,strong,wealthy people or just USA and USSR.The core theme of the movie is that the basically humans are responsible for all bad things that is happening in the world and significantly, it is the stronger/tall people and not weaker/short peoples.The stronger don't care about love and care.In this both of the wrestlers are more interested in fighting with each other than taking care of their family.women for them is just a sex thing.There biggest happiness is wrestling with each other than their family.It could be gov't rather than taking care of its people indulging in war and confronting other countries.

The movie stats with the beautiful scene of woods in the village where there is tranquility and peace.It is disturbed by human beings.The people from the city are another example of stronger people who are only interested in sex and violence.

The dancers are peace harmony and traditional ways from which we are deviating. Buddhadeb is indirectly asking us to follow our old tradition and customs which were made for us to live in peace and harmony.The small boy represents the future generation which has witnessed violence on first hand and joins the dance troops.Basically a positive message that the future generation will be more peaceful and harmonious

Buddhadeb gupta

The Sky

Links
Graham Stewart Staines murder

Bariwali(The Lady of the house) -Bengali 1999

2007-09-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

Another nice movie from rituparno.This is the story of banulatha(Kiron kher) an old spinster, who has been leading a lonely life.Banulatha has a sad past, her marriage did not happen as her would be groom died by a snake bite on the eve of the marriage.Banulatha has been a spinster since then.She lives in a big house with a maid servant ,old house keeper and lot of dreams and desires.

She is finding it hard to keep the house because of her financial difficulties.Her lonely life becomes colorful when a movie director asks her house for shooting. Banulatha is attracted towards the director Deepanakar(Chiranjeet), she starts having feeling towards him.The shooting ends , what happens to banulatha is the story.

Rituparno takes his time with the banulatha character and beautifully conveys her loneliness and attraction towards Deepankar.Deepnakar's entry itself was a nice one.The current goes off in the house, there is some problem in the power switch board.Deepankar who comes to meet banulatha for the first time , sees banulatha struggling with the switch board, he says he will fix it and oolah he brings light into the house and banulatha's life.

Sudeshna Mitra(Roopa ganguly) is the lead actress of the movie, and the movie that they are shooting is Tagore's "Sand in the eye", which is nothing but choker bali.The movie that they are shooting focuses on the widow character(played by aishwarya in choker bali), her suffering and ironically the director deepankar is completely oblivious of banulata's.There is a scene in the movie where they want a married woman beautifully dressed with lot of sindoor to sit next to sudeshna mitra in the movie.just to bring pity to the widow character in the movie.Deepankar insists that banulatha should do that role.Again there is an irony here, this almost widow like spinster acts as a happy married woman and the lead actress of the movie who has it all acts as the widow.There are a lot of scenes like these in the movie.

The movie is subtle and nice.But i just couldn't stop comparing it with 36 chowringhee lane.The core of the movie is definitely inspired from 36 CL.But it is not even close to 36 CL in many aspects.Rituparno actually does his version, where there are many characters and lot of ironies and stuff.This actually makes us loose focus on banulatha, whereas in 36 CL it is all Violet stoneham.Jeniffer kendal rocked in 36 CL but ironically she didn't get the national award.

Cast and Credits:

Kiron Kher ... Banalata
Chiranjeet ... Deepanakar
Sudipta Chakraborty ... Malati
Surya Chatterjee ... Prasanna
Rupa Gangooly ... Sudeshna Mitra
Abhishek Chatterjee ... Abhijeet
Shivprasad Mukerjee ... Debashish

Music is by Debajyoti Mishra.He has done a nice job in the movie.There is this beautifully marriage song that comes during the title and at many places in the movie.

The movie is produced by Anupam kher, husband of Kiron kher.Actually the Banu latha role was supposed to be done by rakhee first, but some how it ended with kiron kher.

Awards:
1999 National award for Best Actress - Kiron Kher
There was lot of controversies around this award.Kiron kher went on record that she practiced bengali for almost a year and did her own voice for the movie.But it wasn't so.Read more about it here

Links
Kiron kher interview with kavitha chibber
The Controversy
Dub and Be damned

Dahan(cross fire) -1997 bengali

2007-09-13T09:50:00.000-07:00

Jeez rituparno gosh is good.Another of his movie where he brilliantly weaves the screenplay with so many characters to build a great story.The movie which is kind of an amoress peros style start has an incident which affects the life of three womens.

-------story-----
Romita (Rituparna Sengupta), goes shopping with her husband Palash(Abhishek Chatterjee).Romita is molested by a gang in front of her husband, when the crowd is watching.Jhinuk (Indrani Haldar), a schoolteacher passing by the way comes to there rescue .This incident and the fight to get the men punished, creates rift in their respective families and in that process the womens of the movie learn many lessons about men and life as whole.
-----------------------

The movie is based on the novel of same name by Suchitra Bhattacharya and the book was inspired from a real life incident in which a female journalist Ananya Chatterjee Chakraborti saved a housewife from public harassment.

She is also the very woman whose courage, conviction and tenacity inspired, first, a novel and, later, a film on her by Rituparna Ghosh named Dahan. Author Suchitra Bhattacharya was inspired by Ananya's guts in standing by a young couple who were harassed in full view of a crowd at a Kolkata Metro station on a rainy evening in 1992... Advised repeatedly to "forget" the incident and look the other way, Ananya stayed the course in her fight for justice and even returned a bravery award from the police.read more about Ananya here

Rituparno is a gifted screenplay writer and he excels when there are more characters, UTSAB, SHUBO MUHURT and DAHAN are good example of that.The movie takes that small incident and paints a picture of problems that women face in our society.The thing is, this is not a movie about the problems of some poor illiterate village women.This is about well educated well do women who still face so many problems in the society. Romita for example faces pure violence from unknown guys in the street and after few days she faces violence from her husband in her own bedroom.It throws up lot of questions.If the violence by those thugs has to be condemned, what about the violence in her own bedroom?.

Like any other benglai movie from a big director, it has the anti capitalistic dialog's all over the movie.There are the usual fake people and those who want to take advantage of the situation.The movie is the struggle of 3 women amidst all these people.

Cast and credit:
Shakuntala Barua .... Jhinuk's mother
Abhishek Chatterjee .... Palash
Subhendu Chatterjee .... Jhinuk's father
Indrani Haldar .... Jhinuk
Nirmal Kumar .... Government lawyer
Suchitra Mitra .... Jhinuk's grandmother
Rituparna Sengupta ... Romita

Directon & Screenplay: Rituparno Ghosh
Cinematography: Hari Nair
Music: Poroma Banerjee, Debajyoti Mishra

Suchitra Bhattacharya

Awards:
1997 was an interesting year. Both the male and female national awards were split for two persons.AMong the actors it was Suresh Gopi(Kaliyattam) and Balachandran Menon(Samaandharagal) and among actresses it was Indrani Halder & Rituparna Sengupta both for Dahan.

1997 National award for Best Feature Film In Bengali
1997 National award for Best Screenplay Rituparno gosh
1997 National award for Best Actress Indrani Halder & Rituparna Sengupta

Indrani Halder

Rituparna Sengupta

Links:
suchira bhattacharya
Dahan the book
Indrani Haldar

Rituparno gosh

2007-09-12T23:02:00.001-07:00

Rituparno gosh has some great movies and he is one of the best directors among the young parallel movie directors.Rituparno is peerless when it comes to scripting complex screenplay's.He handles stories with multiple characters so beautifully.Many of his movies are women oriented and many of his movies have been well awarded at the naitonal awards.He has won the best director award for UTSAB in 2000.His movie Unishe april won the best picture award in 1994 and 3 or rather four of his lead actresses have won the national awards.

Kiron Kher in 1999 for Bariwali.
Indrani Halder & Rituparna Sengupta in 1997 for Dahan
Debashree Roy in 1994 for Unishre April

Rituparno gosh

His movies here
UTSAB
DAHAN
BARIWALI
SHUBO MUHURT
ASHOOK
UNISHE APRIL.

Bhuvan shome(Mr.Shome) -hindi 1969

2007-09-12T10:20:00.000-07:00

The movie that kicked off the indian "Nouvelle Vague", bhuvan shome is a simple movie with a different narration style for its time.

Mrinal Sen

Based on the novel of same name by Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay(Banaphool), It is the story of transformation of one man ,Mr.Shome(utpal dutt).Shome is a strict disciplinarian who has fallen into a routine.He is one of those high ranking authoritative bureaucrat who follows rules to the T. There is one of his subordinate jadev patel(Sadhu mehr) who has been reported for taking bribes.Shome is about to dismiss him.Shome who is bored of his daily routine,takes a break and decides to go on a hunting trip.He steps out of the closed four walls and enters a world of simple village folks.There he meets gauri(suhashini mulay) ,who helps him in hunting. How his day out in the village transforms him is the remaining story.

The story of the movie is simple but the way it is told was very different.Mrinal employs jump cuts,freeze frames,juxtaposing,animation images and he pretty much steps outside the line of all film making style employed at that time.This is not like his later movies, which didn't convey much visually.In this movie he keeps things simple and everything is visual.For example you can see the suit clad shome getting into a villager dress,or the man who has been leading his life in a straight path like railway tracks making a U turn at the end in a muddy track with greenery on both sides.The confined rooms and open desert etc.

Mrinal has used the music and cinematography also wisely and it all adds up to the overall difference in the movie.Music is by vijaya raghava rao and cinematography by K.K.mahajan.K.K mahajan beautifully captures the natural background with desert and birds.

The movie jumps from comedy to sensitive scenes beautifully.Well some credit goes to utpal dutt here.He is in his usual best.And he gets good support from suhashini mullay.You will fall in love with this innocent village girl.You can't tell that it is her first film by seeing her acting in the movie.

Can a simple day out change a man?.It is interesting to think on those lines.Shome's office is a imaginary world where he has power and he is respected and he is at the top.But in a distant village nobody respects him and he absolutely has no power over anything.The imaginary power hierarchy of the office is not there and he is totally lost.The simple village life and a caring village girl does seem to have changed Mr.Bhuvan.A simple and interesting movie.

Links
cinematographer mahajan
shooting bhuvan shome
mrinal sen
Suhasini Mulay

Chinthavishtayaya Shyamala(The Pensive Shyamala) -Malayalam - 1998

2007-09-11T16:00:00.000-07:00

The story of the movie is nothing extraordinary, it is about ordinary peoples.It is about one of those many irresponsible husbands in india.In this case it is Vijayan(Sreenivasan) a school teacher in a small town.Vijayan thinks high of himself and thinks that the school teacher job is way below his capabilities.He tries his hand in various business and fails.He does all these things without caring about his wife shyamala and kids.The movie is about what happens to vijayan and his family.

This is another movie with a beautiful screenplay.Probably the best of srinivasan's screenplay.This movie's screenplay is so well crafted that it will swing you back and forth into happiness and sorrow with such an ease.one time you are laughing at the antics of this slacker husband and the next second you want to kill him when the focus shifts to his wife shyamala.srinivasan plays with your emotions of the viewer and takes them on a roller coaster ride with emotions.

This is not a simple comedy movie though.Srinivasan beautifully concludes the movie with a nice message.

Awards:
National award for Best film on social issues - 1999

Music:
Listen to the music here

Links:
http://www.rediff.com/entertai/1998/aug/12sreen.htm

Thaniyavarthanam(Solo perfomance) -Malayalam -1987

2007-09-10T18:43:00.000-07:00

If theerthadanam was all story, this movie is all screenplay.The movie screenplay is just excellent.

This movie is a straight forward story about a man and how the blind beliefs of the society changes him.The movie is by the successful pair of writer lohithidas and director sibi malyail, which has given many award winning movies.One of the best roles of mammooty, this movie will haunt you for ever.

The movie focus on how deep the blind faith is in rural india and how our perception of something , makes it right or wrong rather thatn what really it is.I would hate to give away anything about the story of this movie.Nothing much to say, just watch it people, its one of a kind movie and a must watch.

Sibi Malayil
Lohithidas

Theerthadanam(Pilgrimage) - Malayalam -2001

2007-09-09T20:45:00.000-07:00

Theerthadanam is one of those book based movies that gives you feel of reading a book when you watch the movie.Based on a short story by jnanapith M.T.Vasudevan nair, this is a simple and sweet movie.

This is the story of a retired school teacher Karunakaran(jayaram) and vinodhini(suhasini maniratnam).Karunakaran, occasionally gets letters from one of his old student vindohini.She mentions in the latest letter that she will be going on a pilgrimage to the mookambika temple.You slowly come to know that Karunakaran is actually hiding everything about vinodhini to his wife. He lies to his wife and sets off to the mookambika temple.From flashbacks we come to know that karunakaran had a love interest with vinodhini when he used to be her teacher.what happens to them, when they meet at mookambika is the rest of the story.This is kind of 10% of the whole story there is a lot more to it than this.

The movie is kind of slow and meanders as it follows these two old people on the pilgrimage, but all those scenes adds up at the end, making the climax richer.

Analysis:
*****Spoilers*****
M.T.Vasudevan nair employs some classic story telling techniques with theerthadanam.We usually support the protagonist as the story is told from his point of view.what nair does is he tells the whole story from karunakaran's perspective and you start feeling for his lost love, and you don't care about the vinodhini character.But when the climax happens it turns the whole table and your whole sympathy goes to vinodhini and all your opinion about karunakaran, changes in a minute.He falls in our eyes, as he had enjoyed a good life and all he was doing was chasing his lost love of youth, whereas vinodhini has lost everything.
*****************

Music:
Listen to the songs here

Credits:

Director:B. Kannan
Writer: M.T. Vasudevan Nair

M.T. Vasudevan Nair

Chidambaram -malayalam/tamil -1985

2007-09-08T18:36:00.000-07:00

Ok little bit about the name.chidambaram actually is a holy place in tamil nadu, it has a shiva temple which houses the famous nataraja statue.The climax scene of the movie takes place in chidambaram.Even though the movie is supposedly a malayalam one.There are more dialog's in tamil than malayalam.

Considered G.Aravindan's best work.Chidambaram, Inspired from a short story by C. V. Sreeraman is a beautiful movie that throws so many questions regarding man woman relationship.

Shankaran works in the office of a cattle farm.An unmarried bachelor, he leads a lonely life.Muniyandi a laborer who manages cattle's in that farm, brings his new wife sivakami to the farm.Sivakami who comes from a sun baked remote village in tamil nadu is fascinated by the farm and its greenery.Sankaran and sivakami start having an illicit relationship, the consequences of that is the rest of the movie.

The movie does not do pages and pages of dialog's justifying the action of its lead characters.The dialog's are minimal and it is left to the viewer to decide everything about the characters.These characters are basically good people.But they break the rules set by the society and put so many moral questions to us.When the movie ends,it is not an end, that is exactly where you start constructing your version of the story.

There are lot of visuals in the movie which are metaphorical and has to be watched closely.vanaprastham fame Shaji N Karun was the cinematographer for this movie.The movie hardly has any BGM, probably 5 minutes in the whole movie.But it adds to the drama that unfolds in the movie.

Cast and credit:
Mohan Das --> Jacob
Gopi --> shankaran
Smita Patil --> Shivagami
Srinivasan --> Muniyandi

Very good acting by everyone.Gopi,smita patil and sreenivasan.Nedumudi venu and innocent come in a guest role for few minutes.

Awards:

1985 National award for Best Film
1985 Kerala state award for Best film and Director

****spoiler*****
when muniyandi dies there is a scene where jacob says that he heard that he killed his wife also, suggesting that sivakami might already be dead.But in the end, shankaran sees sivakami.So did he really see her?.or was it a sign that he is becoming delusional?.If yes what is going to be his fate.If not, what are they going to do are they going to live together?.shankaran and shivakami living happily in chidambaram. can they forget the past?.what about poor muniyandi?.These are only very few ways by which you can expand the movie.The movie gives you an abundance of space to explore.
**********

G.Aravindan

Arimpara(Wart) -Malayalam - 2003

2007-09-07T18:00:00.000-07:00

When is indian cinema going to appreciate directors who experiment with forms, when are we ever going to come out of stories of a poor man/woman suffering in poverty?.Year after year the national awards are given to directors who deal with serious social issues and people like murali who are working hard to bring cinematic excellence by experimenting with forms are forgotten.This is a movie that was hardly recognized in india but was well received in cannes and internationally. This is one beautiful movie from an awesome director.Murali sure is a director to lookout in the future.The brightest star among all the directors in india, he seems to be one of the few indian directors who can make movies that can compete at the international level.

Based on O.V.Vijaya's story of the same name,this is the story of krishnan unni and his wart.Well at least that's what it is from the face of it.But there is more to this movie.Krishnan unnni is a landlord living happily with his wife and son.Krishnan unni comes from a family that is well respected in the village.But things have changed now, laborers are no more the bonded slaves, who used to bend over for their landlords .Krishnan unni still lives in the past glory days and refuses to change with time.The story takes a kafkaish turn when a wart in his face takes a life of its own.what happens to krishnan unni is the story.

The movie is a masterpiece in the way it is told.Murali beautifully shifts the story from one end to the other.At first it is slow, murali takes time in explaining the pastoral and simple life that krishnan unni leads.Krishnan being playful with his kid, the easy going life etc.Changes with the wart are also gradual.But as it grows there is a big tone change in the movie from the pastoral setup it almost becomes a david cronenberg type movie.

Murali at the start shows an evening in which the father and son go to the temple lit with hundreds of lamps reflecting on the pond to the gory gory wart .By juxtaposing this two different setup, he greatly disturbs the audiences.Given the low budget of the movie , the effect murali brings forth is great.I wish all those people who talk about the problem of money in making good movies watch this one.

Good Acting by everyone especially Nedunudi venu, as usual he makes you beleive the character to the core.

Analysis:

****************Spoilers****************

The wart is a Metaphors in the movie.This is my take on what murali is trying to convey.I think the wart is used to convey the burden of our old customs and traditions.Krishnan, who is well rooted in the old traditional ways, refuses to change with the times. He refuses to get it operated, but tries to cure it with old way of herbal medicine.And the lesson here is if you don't change with time, the old customs and blind faith will become a burden and if you keep on doing that, there will be a time when they will take over you, meaning all your decisions will be based on how traditionally you were doing it or what the old scriptures or astrological charts dictate you.And after a while these old traditions and customs, will be taken out as something personal to an individual or a group and would be associated with god,it would be made into something holy.Now everybody has to do it as it is divine. i think that's how most of the old customs and traditions would have come into place.

Murali in the end shows how the wart which was growing in him escapes from krishnan unni and becomes a huge elephant.There are a bunch of priests who are looking at the elephant and they comment, such a big animal, we should keep it in the temple.The wart which was personal to one person has become divine and holy to everyone now.All he had to do to cure the WART was seeks the help of science.

************************************
Murali Nair

Links:
Nedumudi on arimpara
Nedumudi Venu
Nedumudi on wiki
Murali Nair

Cannes: Who cares?
Cannes: wake up call for India
Nedumudi venu on Murali Nair

Watching the parallel movies

2007-09-07T12:59:00.000-07:00

This is to all the people who wanted to know where to download or watch these movies.I watch most of the movies on DVD.for people in US you can rent them through www.Netflix.com , http://www.hindiflix.com/(it has all the other religion movies too),www.italkies.com etc.And there are lot of forums to download other regional movies.There is a new online service called jaman.They have some tie up with NFDC and they have put up some movies that are not available anywhere else.So if you want to know how kumar sahani has handled chekov's or mani kaul has handled dostoevsky, you can watch it here at jaman.

Deshadanam(Migration) - Malayalam -1997

2007-09-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

Thought i will complete my special on jayaraj.so here is deshadanam

There is a fleeting moment in Ray's "Aparajito".Apu's dad is no more and his family has moved to a village.In order to help the family, the locals make apu as the village preist.The kid who used to be carefree and playful ,has already started maturing with burden of the family.He is returning home after doing pooja's at the temple.He stands on a high ground and looks at many kids playing in the field.He just looks at them and moves on, for he has responsibility and he is the man who talks with gods ,a priest now, he can't play with them.

Well that was satyajit ray, who conveyed so much in a few shots.But what will happen if you blow up this scenes into a full fledged movie?.Well Two people tried it, one was martin scorcese with Kundun the other is jayaraj with Deshadanam.Was Kundun the inspiration for jayaraj?.I don't know?.But the result was a national award winning(Best Regional Film) movie.

This is a straight forward story told in a realistic way.It is the story of pachu.A child prodigy who lives a care free life like any other child, but shows maturity beyond his age when it comes to religious philosophies.He is identified by a holy mutt to become the next Holy guru.His grandfather who once wanted to join that mutt, is delighted and he agrees to that.The parents don't want to send pachu to the mutt, but they can't go against the word given by the grandfather.And to become a monk pachu has to renounce everything,including his family.

The turmoil that the family faces because of pachu becoming a monk is the story.It is kind of a family movie with lot of sensitive scenes.Made on a shoe string budget of 25 lakhs, the movie sticks to basics and makes us feel the characters and their turmoil.The main focus is on the mother, even though other characters also suffer because of this decision, it is the mother who goes through too much pain.For her he was just a playful boy till now, but now has become a holy saint.First of all she has to pretty much donate her loving son to the mutt and apart from that she cannot view him or treat him the same way she used to.From a playful kid, he becomes a holiness.

Filled with lot of sensitive scenes and good music.This is another good movie from jayaraj.

Awards:
National award
Best Regional Film ,Best Child Artist and Best Audiography

Music:
The movie has some excellent songs.Listen them here

Back

2007-09-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

Iam back after a long break.Thanxs for all the comments.Iam Sorry that i was not able to reply to all the comments that were posted.I have some free time now and thought i will post a few good movies before i go underground again.

Paithrukam(Heritage) - Malayalam 1993

2006-10-15T15:20:00.000-07:00

This is a classic case of Clash of Ideologies. How important is ideologies in one's life?.How far should one go for his ideologies?. Are Ideologies more important than love?.The movie throws various questions through a beautiful and different story with an awesome screenplay.The movie also has good music and acting. This is, i would say is one of those must watch movies.

A namboodari(Narendra prasad), who is a high priest in a temple, has two sons.Bhanu(Jayaram) and soma dattan(Suresh Gopi).The namboodari is a very orthodox guy, who performs yaga's and poojas.His first son soma dattan is a reporter in New delhi and his second son is with him and he is a priest at the same temple.

Soma Dattan leaves delhi and comes back to his home town for good. But the family realizes that he has changed. Slowly we come to know that soma dattan is a staunch communist and an atheist. He is against blind beliefs , customs and he opposes even his father on those issues. Because of the difference he moves out of the house, marries another fellow atheist and starts living in a house, that the villagers believes is haunted.

There are two separate threads of how soma dattan's atheist wife changes and his brother's love affair, and how, in both the cases customs and blind belief's becomes a problem.

On the main story, the villagers request the namboothari to perform a yaga to bring rain to the rainless village.The namboothari agrees, soma dattan starts an agitation against it as he thinks it is a blind belief.

On the yaga day he challenges his father and tells him that he should become an atheist if it does not rain.The father agrees. Did it rain??is the rest of the story.

You might take different side or view than what the director has portrayed. But if you consider the whole thing as just a story and get within the realm of the story.This is a wonderful movie.The movie is not about which ideology is right and which is wrong. It is beyond that, it is about the fact that love is above all of them.

During a talk between the father and son.Soma dattan says that he believes that a man has progressed from a primitive hunting tribe who roamed like animals to what he is know, because of questioning everything and thinking on his own, and customs and traditions stops a man from questioning things and thinking on his own.He says heis taking everyone back to the old ages by all the traditional practices His father simply replies that iam not doing anything that will cause an harm to anyone. Iam doing everything on the belief that it will bring good to them.

Analysis:
***************spoilers*******************

Before soma dattan leaves the house the father and son have a talk and then the Nambothari says that soma duttan will return to this house one day,when he has understood everything.

In the climax after the yaga, it actually rains and it rains like hell.Soma Dattan is stunned.He just cannot believe it.But he concedes and goes to his house to ask for his father’s forgiveness. But he goes to the house only to see his father immolating himself.The movie ends with soma dattan carrying on his father's priestly duties.

The big question here is why did the namboothari commit suicide?.Through out the movie, the namboothari has been a good father, He has been trying to balance both his beliefs and being a good father. At the end when his son after all his emotional talks and agitations loses because of the rain. The father is the one who is more sad, he does not want to see his defeated son, a broken soul.Hence he commits suicide. By these acts he shows how much he has loved his son.

The characters are done well. The namboothari and somma dattan are the stead fast ones.Gayathri is the opportunist and bhanu, is more for his brothers love than ideology.Actually Bhanu is the one who suffers the most on this.

********************

Cast and Credits:

Geetha - Gayathri
Suresh Gopi - Soma Dattan
Jayaram -Bhanu

Music:
The movie has excellent music.Music is by S.P.Venkatesh.The songs are all classical based with Yesudoss rendering them beautifully.

Check out the songs here

Kaliyattom(The Play of God) - Malayalam 1997

2006-10-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

Long before Vishal Baradwaj adapted shakesphere's Othello into Omkara. Jayaraj adapted it, into the national award winning movie, “Kaliyattom“. He takes one of kerala’s traditional dance form called theyyam as the backdrop and seamlessly merges Othello into it.

Kaliyattom is a dance performed in temples during festivals, where various characters play the mythological stories. During the festival the lead character is supposed to have divine powers, so people worship and ask advices from the lead character. And because the lead character is semi god the person who is playing that is respected in the society. And he is also supposed to maintain some discipline in his personal life.

Kannan Perumalayan(Suresh Gopi) plays the lead character in the theyyam's.He has two other persons in the troupe, paniyan(lal) and kaanthan(Biju Menon).Perumalayan falls in love with thamara(Manju warrier),the daughter of a rich guy. They both elope and get married. They are both asked to appear before a respected old man of the village and in that meeting the angry father tells malayan that, his daughter is a wicked girl who ditched her father and ran after him and warns him that one day she will ditch him also and run with some one else.

Among the two guys in his troupe, malayan likes kaanthan a lot as he was the one helped him in his love affair with thamara.Paniyan who plays the role of a joker in the theyyam's is jealous of malayan.He is jealous of the importance given to Malayan in both theyam and in real life. As he is only a joker in the they yam, nobody respects him and he is mistreated by everyone. He secretly wishes to become the lead character one day, and become a respected person. He plots against malayan by poisoning him with the idea that thamara is having a love affair with kaanthan. What happens to thamara and malayan is the rest of the story?. Well people who read othello know the answers.

This is a far better adaptation than Omkara.Excellent acting by the lal, suresh gopi and manju warrier adds life to the movie.The theyyam backdrop adds extra color and emotions to the movie.As a lead character in theyyam , malayan is supposed to have a clean mind , but since he starts having the suspicion. He starts feeling that he is not pure enough to be a god and it slowly starts eating him. Suresh gopi expresses that pent up anger , suspicion and love nicely.

Cast and Credit:
Suresh Gopi .... Kannan Perumalayan/Othello
Lal .... Paniyan/Iago
Biju Menon .... Kaanthan
Bindu Panikkar .... Cheerma, Paniyan's wife
Manju Warrier .... Thamara/Desdemona

Original Music by
Gautam Mukherjee

I felt Lal acted a lot better than suresh gopi in the movie.From a joker who is simple and foolish to a very cunning planner. He goes to both the extremes with ease. Lal who was a famous director, script writer, producer was convinced by jayaraj to act in movies.Now he is one of the well known actors in malayalam.

Music:
The movie has very good songs.Especially the climax song "Ennodenthinee Pinakkam".Set on the sahana raaga with beautiful lyrics, this is a wonderful song.

Listen to the songs here

Awards:
Jayaraj bagged the National Award for best director
Suresh Gopi shared the National Award for best actor with his fellow malayalee actor Balachandran Menon.

Trivia:
Jayaraj tried his hand on another shakesphere play.He adapted Macbeth as "Kannagi" starring Nanditha Das , Lal and siddique.It was well adapted except for the stupid climax.

Links
Rediff special on Kaliyattom
Suresh Gopi interview
Lal Interview

Jayaraj

2006-10-14T08:20:00.000-07:00

Call him a maverick.He is just not a director who directed national award winning movies or internationally acclaimed movies.He has also directed box office movies loaded with masala elements to crap movies.One of the under rated director's in india, jayaraj has given some very good movies.

Its a pity that he was not credited for some of his good works in his own state.As most of the film makers in kerala or communist, his religion oriented stories are not credited properly even though there were credited outside the state.

Check out Jayaraj's profile on Rediff here.

Jayaraj Movies in Alternate movies
Kaliyattom

Paithrukam

Deshadanam

Thoovana Thumbigal( DragonFlies of the spraying rain ) - Malayalam 1987

2006-10-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

Probably the best of Padmarajan, this is an awesome movie.A movie that has to be seen more than once and analyzed like a book.

The movie is about the character Jaya Krishnan. A stingy farmer and a clean guy in his village, he leads a dual life. He becomes a different person when he goes to the nearest city. He spends lavishly with his friends and visits the bar regularly in the city.As he had stayed and studied in the city during his college days, he has lots of friends in the city. His friends circle includes a pimp, who he address's as thangal(Babu Nampoothiri). One day thangal asks jayakrishnan's help to bring a new girl, clara(sumlatha) into his business. He asks him to write a letter like a mother superior of a church, asking clara to come to the city.This is to get the girl to the city with her father’s permission. Mean while jayakrishnan meets Radha(parvathi) a homely girl and falls in love with her.He goes and meets her and conveys his wishes to marry her.Radha refuses and insults him.

Thangal again meets Jaya Krishnan and asks for another help. Clara has come to town and he want's to know what kind of a girl clara is.Jaya krishnan who even though knows thangal for a long time and have setup many of his friends, has never touched a girl till now and firmly believes that the first girl that he touches should be his wife.But disappointed by radha's disapproval and the attraction towards the clara, he falls in love with her and spends a night with her.He is surprised to know that it was the first time for clara too.

He promises to marry clara as he is already guilty of the fact that he was the one who wrote the letter and brought her into the business. But clara runs off next morning and disappoints jaya krishnan. Radha changes her mind and starts loving jayakrishanan.Jaya krishnan is again caught in between two worlds. Between the homely radha and now prostitute clara. What happens and who he marries is the rest of the story.

You can say this as a simple love triangle or a great story depending on how much time you spend to understand the characters. On the first go this movie might seem as an average love triangle. But believe me it is not.It is one of the most beautiful characterization ever done in indian cinema.

The beauty of the movie lies in understanding and analyzing the characters. Why did clara run away?. Why is jaya krishnan going after clara, when radha has already come into his life?. Why does his facial expression change after making rishi drink or after setting him up with a girl?. Analyze and ask questions, the movie becomes bigger. Repeated viewing will make you understand the characters better and know what an awesome write padmarajan is.

Analysis:
****spoilers****
Jayakrishnan is one of the beautiful characters Padmarajan has ever created.Jaya Krishnan is not a distant character. He is one of us.Many of us, do have dual lives.Two faces.One for the society and one for our self.Given india’s social setup, there are many characters like Jaya Krishnan living amongst us.Jaya Krishnan is a complete character, he balances everything in his life.He is not an out and out party guy.He is a family man, who escapes to another world now and then.He balances the good part and bad part. Padmarajan extends the dual personality of jayakrishnan to his love life too.Jaya krishnan the homely guys escapes to another world now and then through his visits to the city.On the love front also he does that by trying to meet clara again and again.But unlike his dual worlds he cannot go on with it in his love life and he is forced to take a stand.

On the other hand clara is a character that wants to be free, a character that does not want to get hurt. A deep character which does not reveal much of herself. She does not want to be caged into anything. Dark and mysterious, Clara is also a very good characterization.

Padmarjan nicely uses rain in the story.At the start when ever jaya krishnan comes in contact with clara it rains.It rains when he writes the first letter to bring her into business. It rains when he meets her the first time.It rains when he gets the message that clara is coming back to meet him.Jaya Krishnan takes these as a sign that clara was meant for him. But later it does not rain when he meets clara , as by that time clara has become a prostitute and jayakrishnan's love for her is not as strong as it was before.

There are some beautiful moments in the movie, Especially the scenes of jayakrishnan and clara.Jayakrishnan meets clara for the first time and they go out to the beach.Its night time and in that romantic hour, they both lay down in the sea shores on the waves and talk about there future.

Similarly when clara comes back after becoming a professional call girl.She meets jayakrishnan and when he asks her whether they should go to any hotel or room.She says that she does not want to go into any room.She just wants to walk around as she is sick of rooms.She says all that she sees in her profession is, walls, walls and walls.Bedroom walls,bathroom walls etc.Lets walk in the open space she says.They walk around the city all night.

The next day they take a lonely house on top of the hills.Padmarajan does not show any scenes of them staying inside the house,they spend there time outside the house under the open sky and stars.

On that hill, when they are talking, clara hears a cry.She asks jayakrishnan who is making that nosie.He says there is a mad man chained and locked inside a room.His legs has got lots of bruises because of the chain and he cries when ever the chain brushes the wounds. Clara says, she wants to be the wound in that mad man's legs. An un healing wound which has only relationship with the chain.

*****************

The film was adapted from padmarajan's novel "Udakappola".

Cast and Credit:
Mohanlal .... Jayakrishnan
Sumalatha .... Clara
Parvathi .... Radha
Asokan .... Rishi
Babu Nampoothiri .... Thangal
Srinath .... Madhavan
Sukumari .... Jayakrishnan's Mother
Jagathi Sreekumar .... Ravunni Nair
Sankaradi .... Radha's Father
M.G. Soman .... Moni Joseph

Original Music by
Johnson (background music)
Perumbavoor G. Raveendranath

Blessy who later on went to make movie like kazcha and Thanmathra was Padmarajan's assisant during this time.

Good acting by everyone.Mohanlal depicts the character jayakrishnan beautifully. The duality of the character comes out of him naturally.

Music:
As usual the movie has good music.Nice songs and theme music.

1)Onnam ragam Padi

From http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZpZYf-Mwh8
Megam Poothu thudangi

From
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPkqMx18LdI

you can listen to the songs here

DVD:
This movie is available on DVD.As usual with bad subtitles.This DVD is released by sandhya films.The movie can be bought at there website here.

Njan Gandharvan(I, The Celestial Lover) -Malayalam 1991

2006-10-12T14:42:00.000-07:00

Last of padmarajan's movie.This is a beautiful fantasy story, filled with magical moments. Many movies were inspired by wim Wender's "Wings of Desire", like City of angels etc.Padmarajan takes a leaf out of Wings of Desire and spins the story around our mythology and legends for this movie.Unlike the other movies where the angels are philosophical and dull, the gandharvan in this movie is a lively character. Padmarajan enriches the scenes of gandharvan with his imagination. When ever he appears there is a feast for your senses. Beautiful visuals, good background music, nice dialogues/songs and the characters talk about how there is a good smell of Palla flower when ever he appears.

First of all who is a gandharvan?. Gandharvans are celestial men, who are very good musicians.There job is supposed to keep the deva's in swarg(paradise) happy with their music .They are also big womanizer's, who often get caught. If they are found guilty they are punished to stay away from paradise and spend a certain time on earth. The gandarvans during their stay on earth, keep on doing what they are well know for, seduce women. They seduce women on earth and go back to paradise after there punishment time is over.

This movie is about one such gandharvan and bama the girl that he falls in love with. Bama is a college student. She goes on a tour to some sea town and while standing at the beach, she gets a statue. A beautiful statue that turns into a man at night.This particular gandharvan is someone who does not enjoy paradise and wants to leave everything and live like a normal man on earth. Unlike the usual gandravan who just use the women of earth, He falls in love with bama and breaks some of the rules that a gandharvan is supposed to follow. The Gods come to know about it and order the gandharvan to come back to paradise or face punishment.The gandarvan is in love with bama and he does nto want to go back. Did those lovers succeed in their love or not is the rest of the story.

The movie is lyrical.The scenes are normal and realistic.But when ever the gandharvan appears it becomes lyrical and pure imagination. The movie has a strong sexual undertone, but there are no revealing or sexual scenes in the movie. Padmarajan at the later part in the movie, wastes many scene by making the gandarvan a simple magician.

This is a story that is a pure fantasy and it is hard to convince the audience about a gandharvan coming and falling in love with a girl on earth.A slight mistake could screw up the whole story.But this is where padmarajan proves why he is a great writer/director. The screen play is done in such a way that you don’t have any time to question the setup of the movie. You are sucked into it right from the start and take the story as it is and enjoy the lyrical quality of the story.

Cast and Credit:
Nitish Bharadwaj .... Gandharvan
Suparna .... Bhama
M.G. Soman .... Gopalakrishnan Nair
Ganesh Kumar .... Pradeep
Philomina .... Bhama's Grandmother
Vinduja Menon .... Bhama's Sister
Thezni Khan .... Bhama's Friend
Sulakshana .... Bhama's Mother
I.V.Sasi .... Bhama's Father

Art Director for this movie is Rajiv Anchal. Who later became a director and directed movies like Guru.

Music:
Music is by Jhonson.Like many of padmarajan's other movies, this one also has some melodious songs and BGM.The songs are classical based and Yesudoss who is called the "Gana Gandharvan" renders them beautifully.
Listen to the songs here

You Tube Links

Devi

Paalapoove

Devangangal

Moonnam pakkam(The Third Day) -Malayalam 1988

2006-10-11T14:33:00.000-07:00

Among loads and loads of trash movie that india produces, this is a gem of a movie.A wonderful movie from a master director.A beautiful combination of music,story, screenplay and acting. If u can get the movie don’t read the review as it has spoilers.

Thampi(Thilakan) is an old man in his 80's.A retired lawyer, he is leading a solitary life in a beach town.He gets the news that his grandson bhaskar(Jayaram) aka pachu is visiting him on his holidays.He is excited, cause he hasn't seen pachu in the last 5 years and after his son's death, his grandson is all he got in this world.Pachu visits his grandfather with 3 of his college friends. Thampi is very happy, as pachu and his friends bring joy and happiness into the house. One day while swimming at the beach Pachu is sucked into the sea. Nobody is sure whether pachu died or not as they are not able to see his dead body. The rule of the sea is that if someone drowns, the body will wash ashore after three days. What happens with everyone and pachu in the next three days is the rest of the story.It's about those painful three days.

This is not the usual tear jerker movie.No, you wont see long crying sequences and sad sad dialogues. This is about those moments that affects the characters deeply.Padmarajan plays with the emotions of the viewer in the later part of the movie. He repeatedly teases the audience with hopes and despair. When others are hopeless that pachu will come back alive. Thampi believes that he will come back. Padmarajan switches back and forth between the hopeful thampi and others, creating doubt in the mind of the viewer.

Like many of his other movies, padmarajan beautifully builds the characters. All the characters become memorable.Unlike other movies, the stories does not stop with the drowning of pachu.It goes on for another 45 mins to a good climax.The movie can be seen in two parts. The scenes before the accident and the scenes after.Before the accident padmarjan builds the story on the mischievousness and fun of pachu and his friends.In the second part he gets into the feelings of everyone who was associated with pachu.The guilty friends, the hopeful grandfather, the shattered girl friend etc.what goes in the mind of a old man, whose has lost his son and is not sure whether his grand son is alive or not.Or the friends who saw pachu drowning,or pachu's girlfriend who is away from her parents and her only comfort was her childhood love.

There are lot of nice scenes after pachu's disappearance .The scenes are realistic and touching .Like, Pachu's friends are guilty as they are the one who always wanted to go and swim at the sea.They go to the sea side every morning after pachu disappears, to see whether the body has washed ashore. One day Ranjit, one of pachu's friend is looking at the sea.He sees some kind of object at a distant, he rushes with the expectation of seeing pachu alive/dead(with a very good BGM playing),only to realize that it is some kind of a wood. Everybody at the beach keep asking them "Did they get the BODY?","Did they get the BODY?".The word BODY hurts the friends greatly.

Cast and Credit
Jayaram .... Pachu
Jagathi Sreekumar .... Kavala
Thilakan .... Thampi
Rahman .... Lopaz
Ashokan .... Ranjith

The movie has very good acting by everyone. Especially thilakan. He comes out with a performance of a lifetime and brings the character thampi alive. Jayaram as pachu is a good fit for the character, with his cheerful attitude and innocent looks he makes the loss of the character unbearable to everyone.

Music:
Music is by Ilayaraja.
There are two songs in the movie

1)Unnarum Ee Ganam
A beautiful nostalgic song.Pachu is coming.The grandfather is excited about his arrival,his old memories come out as a haunting melody.

from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x2xiL6mXZM

2)Thamarakilli Paddunnu
A duet between pachu and badra.

Forget the visuals,You can switch of the visuals and just hear the audio of the movie.Hearing just the movie's awesome background scores is a experience by itself.THe movie has an excellent background score. Looks like Maestro illayaraja was impressed with the story.

Awards:
G. Venu Gopal won the state award for best singer

Trivia:
The novelist that badra talks about with thampi is Borges.You know you are watching a malayalam movie when the heroine reads Borges, instead of sidney sheldon or other popular novelist.

Links
Thilakan Interview

Padmarajan

2006-10-11T01:02:00.000-07:00

Read about padmarajan on wiki here.

One of the important directors who started the middle of the road movies in malayalam, Padmarajan is an awesome writer/director. So many directors make movies from books, but not all succeed. Off these very few movies give the same feeling that you get when you finish a good book. Padmarajan is such a good writer/director that most of his movies gives you that feeling.

Watch his movie and the character stays with you for life.I haven't seen anyone who can etch out a character as good as padmarajan.His movies have to be read and analyzed like a book. Like books in his movies he slowly builds up the story, with good characterization and nice climax. He spends time on his characters and makes the audience understand it well with the detailed portrayal of the character. And like books there are those magical and moments in the movie. His eye for details brings out those cherish able, simple moments of our life through the characters in the movie. And on the bigger picture, he chooses different and unforgettable stories.

Watch his movie or rather read his movies.

Padmarajan movies in Alternate Movies

Moonam Pakkam

Njan Gandharvan

Thoovana Thumbigal

Links
Padmarajan Home page

The world of Malayalam movies

2006-10-10T14:09:00.000-07:00

When there is a scarcity for original stories and screenplay in rest of india, the kerala film industry churns out so many different stories. Yes, it might lack the technical excellence or sophistication of the other regional films. But they are in a different league when it comes to making movies with different and original stories.

They do make there own share of junk movies,But on the other hand there are some beautiful and unforgettable middle of the road movies.These movies have strong stories, realistic characters and excellent screenplay. These movies lack the glamor and glitz of the regular movies. But on the other hand you don’t have to be worried about seeing a villager doing a dance song in switzerland, when he falls in love. Actually most of the songs in these movies are used to take the movie forward than a group of people dancing in a beautiful location.

It is sad that people hardly know about the malayalam movies outside its regional limits. Non availability of DVD's and poor subtitling of the available DVDs also adds to this problem. Thought i will write a little bit about some good malayalam movies & director's.

Trishagni(Sand Strom) Hindi -1998

2006-10-03T08:34:00.000-07:00

Based on the story by sardindu bandopadhyaya. Saripur is a desert town located in central asia.In this town, 2000 years before, lived two monks. Pithumitta(Alok Nath) and Uchanda(Nana Patekar). Pithumitta is the older one and uchanda is the younger one.

One day a big sand storm comes and the whole village sinks under the sand.Pitumita and uchanda escape the sand storm. When they come out of the monastery after the storm.Nobody is alive in the village except for two kids. They name the boy, Nirvan(End) and the girl, Ethi(Beginning).

After 20 years, Ethi(Pallavi joshi) and Nirvan(Nitish Baradwaj) are fully grown.Uchanda is disturbed by the young and beautiful ethi.Ethi falls in love with nirvan.Uchanda's mind becomes filled with Lust and jealousy. He tries to separate both of them.He makes nirvan a monk.And tells him that he should not have any relation with women. What happens to the lovers and uchanda is the rest of the movie.

Four characters in a desert monastery and two of them are monks, can there be a story to tell. Yes, you cannot escape from the human drama. Even though the monks renounce everything and are trying to lead a life without any needs, one of them fails and falls prey for jealousy and lust.There starts the drama and everybody is sucked into it.The movie throws some basic questions.What are the religious rules for, if it does not want two people to fall in love. Wasn't love supposed to be the basis for all the religious rules?.

Cast and Credit:
Alok Nath - Pithumitta
Nana Patekar - Uchanda
Nitish Baradwaj - Nirvan
Pallavi Joshi - Ethi

The movie has only four characters.I felt Nana Patekar was a wrong choice to play the monk role.He looked like an usual villain in saffron robe.

Nabendu Gosh

The movie is directed by Nabendu Gosh.Even though he has been in the industry for a long time, this was his debut movie as a director and he won the national award for Best first time director at an young age of 79 :)

Music:
Music is by salil choudhary.There is one mesmerizing song in the movie called”aisa lage” by Asha Bonsle.A beautiful song well composed by salil choudhary.

Awards:
1988 Indira Gandhi Award For The Best First Film Of A Director

Warning:
There is a nude scene in the movie.

Links:
Nabendu Gosh
Young man of 90

Adi Shankaracharya -sanskrit -1983

2006-10-02T16:02:00.000-07:00

This is a movie for spiritually inclined people. Others might be terribly bored with it as it all about Hinduism and one of the greatest saints of Hinduism. The movie has the credit of being the first one to be taken in sanskrit.A language that is thousands of years old, but it has taken so long to make a movie in it.

The movie is the biography of shankaracharya.Born in the state of kerala,he becomes a monk at an young age and travels north, in search of knowledge and truth.It was a time period when hindus were giving importance to rituals and forgetting the all prevailing, one god.It was also the time period when Buddhism was on the raise. shankaracharya forms a new school of thinkers preaching the adhvaitha philosophy. Through his new philosophy and teachings he changes the views of many scholars and religious people.

The movie as i said before will be boring for non-spiritual people. The most interesting thing that i found in the movie was the usage of symbols by g.v.iyer. The movie is filled with symbolism.

For example two children’s join shankara when he is young. They are named "death" and "wisdom", they are the symbolic representation of death and wisdom."Death" arrives as soon as shankaracharya's father dies and "Wisdom" arrives during his initiation into brahminhood. Through out the movie these characters come and go again and again, symbolically meaning different things depending on the context. Details in the symbolism section.

G.V.Iyer

Director G.V.Iyer(Ganapathi Venkatrama Iyer) is a known philosopher. He had put in lots and lots of efforts into the movie. Apart from telling the story of a great saint without any commercial selling points in mind.He has also tried to tell his teachings in the most simplest way. He not only tells the story of the saint, he breaks up the big philosophy's and truth's told in the upanishads and vedas and has tried to give them in a way, even a lay man can understand. And off course his usage of symbolism in the movie is great.

In a scene where shankara is walking with his followers and a untouchable comes before them. All his followers ask the untouchable to move aways.He does not move. Shankara asks him to Keep off

The untouchable asks who should i keep off?
My body or my inner self(atman)?
All bodies are made of earth built alike and hence impure.
The inner self is all prevading hence immovable and inert.
Tell me who should move away?

shakara realizes his mistake and falls on his feet.

During this scene where shankara and the untouchable are on opposite sides."Wisdom" his friend movies aways from shankara and stands next to the untouchable, symbolically conveying who is wise and who is ignorant on that case.

The movie has very good subtitling. Apart from good translation, an explanation of the rituals that are being carried out and symbolic meaning of objects are also subtitled.

Music:
Music is by Dr.Balamurali krishna himself.He also sings many of the slogams in the movie.

Cast and Credits

Sarvadaman D. Banerjee .... Shankara
M.V. Narayana Rao
Manjunath Bhatt
Leela Narayana Rao
L.V. Sharada Rao
Bharat Bhushan
T.S. Nagabharana
Srinivasa Prabhu
Gopal
V.R.K. Prasad
Gopalakrishnan
Gayathri Balu
Balasubramanyam
Balu Barghava

Original Music by
Dr. Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna
B.V. Karanth

Cinematography
Madhu Ambat

Editing
V.R.K. Prasad

Art Direction
P. Krishnamurthy

Dialogue
Benanjaya Godvincharya

Screenplay
G.V. Iyer

Directed by
G.V. Iyer

Madhu ambat has done a very good job in the movie.The movie has excellent cinematography(remember this was taken in 1983).

Awards:
The movie won the covetted national award for Best Picture in 1983.It also won the national award for Best Cinematography, Best Audiography and Best Screenplay.

Links
G.V.Iyer on wiki
G.V.Iyer the saint who walked alone

Symbolism

Shankara's father fore sees his death, his funeral pyre.He then walks inside his house, next to the yaga fire.The camera does a low angle shot, which almost makes him look like as if he is on fire.

Crow and dove.Crow is the doer, the active one.The dove is the passive observer, the atman(inner self)

Shankara goes to watch a play.The Story is that of nachiketha who asked yama to tell him the secret of atma.Yama tests him and tells him the truth only after knowing that he is steadfast on attaining that knowledge.Shakara sets on with his travel to attain knowledge from govindapada.

Shankara with "Death" and "Wisdom"

Shankara goes to take bath and death is sitting on the banks.Shankara asks what are you doing?."Death" replies "Iam waiting for you". Shankara goes to take a swim in the river.He almost drowns, his mother prays saying that she will make him into a monk ,if he survives. Shankara some how escapes and comes out with a saffron(symbol of renunciation) cloth that was floating on the river, covered over his body.

At the end of the movie when shankara wants to attain moksha.He is all set to reach god, he goes on to the top of the himalaya's leaving all his followers. Death leaves him saying he cannot follow him anymore and wisdom embraces him.

shankara's journey which starts from the flat lands of the southern most state of india, kerala, ends at the northern part in the summits of the himalaya's.He is ready to leave the materialistic world and reach god.He has reached the peak.

The caged ignorant parrot

Sardari Begum -Hindi 1996

2006-10-01T11:26:00.000-07:00

This is the second movie of the shyam benegal's trilogy of Khalid Mohammed stories(the others are mammo and zubeida).This is probably the best of the trilogy which talks about independent muslim women who went after what they wanted in life.For sardari it was the love of music, the wish to become a great singer.

khalid Mohammed

The movie starts with sardari begum (Kiron Kher) singing "chali pheke".She is disturbed by some commotion outside.Two political/religious groups clash outside her house.She goes to the balcony to look outside.A stone hits her, she falls down and eventually dies.

Reporter tehzeeb is asked to cover the incident for a local newspaper.Tehzeeb accepts it reluctantly. she talks to the people on the streets only to find out that the party leaders, even without knowing much about sardari are trying to take political advantage of her death. Tehzeeb goes to the funeral and she is shocked to find that sardari's brother is none other than her own father jabbar.

kiron kher as sardari Begum

Tehzeeb starts investigating about sardari from her father. She comes to know that her father did not wanted to be associated with a tumri singer, who was considered low in the eyes of the society. The story then unfolds with tehzeeb talking to various people who knew sardari. What did she find about sardari? and how sardari's past affects her, is the rest of the story.

In "sardari Begum" the views of people she meets are very biased. Even though she was a good hearted person, everyone talks low of her because of her social status as some one who sings in mehfils. The story slowly develops with different inputs and there are overlaps to show how different people manipulate the narration to suit their viewpoints.

Cast and Credits:

Amrish Puri & Uttara Baokar

Smriti Mishra & Surekha Sikri

Amrish Puri .... Hemraj
Kiron Kher .... Sardari Begum
Smriti Mishra .... Younger Sardari
Shri Vallabh Vyas .... Jabbar Abbasi (as Shrivallabh Vyas)
Syed Khurshid .... Young Jabbar
Rajat Kapoor .... Sadiq Moosvi (as Rajit Kapur)
Rajeshwari Sachdev .... Sakina
Salim Ghouse .... Manik Sen
Surekha Sikri .... Idbal Bai (as Surekha Sikri Rege)
S.M. Zaheer .... Fateh Khan
Uttara Baokar .... Hemraj's Wife
Ahmed Khan .... Mehmood Abbasi
Ashok Lath .... Mark D'Cruz
Kumud Mishra .... Amode Bajaj
Ravi Jhankal .... Police Inspector
Javed Khan .... Maulvi
Seema Bhargava .... Kulsum's Mother (as Seema Bharaova)
Rakesh Shrivastav .... Leader (as Rakesh Srivastava)
Anupam Shyam .... Leader 2
Masood Akhtar .... Leader 3
Murad Ali .... Munir
Ravi Kemmu .... Musician
Rajina Raj Bisaria .... Tehzeeb

Rajat Kapoor & Salim Ghouse
Kiron Kher & Rajeshwari Sachdev

Anupam shyam
Ravi jhankal

Music:
One of the good things about the movie is its music.The movie has lots of thumri songs.2 of them are by asha bhonsle, one by Shubha Joshi and rest of them are by Aarti Angalikar.
Aarti Ankalikar Tikekar

The movie starts and ends with the song chali pheke.Once Rajat Kapoor comes, the songs get colorful with asha singing the songs.She sings two peepy numbers Chahe Maar Dalo Raja and More Kanha Jo Aaye

check out the songs here.

Analysis:
Tehzeeb first comes to know about sardari from her father. who talks ill off her, more off a prostitute than a singer just cause sardari lived the life the way she wanted to live.The story which starts as a curiosity to know the life of sardari ends with a bigger picture of the state of woman in our society.Even though sardari is seen low by the society , end of the day all that she has done is shun the role the society offers. To be a sacrificing mother or a good wife and leads her own life as an independent woman.

The movie is multi layered, not only does it tell the story of the thumri singer, it also parallely narrates the story of two other woman, tehzeeb and sardari's daughter and how at the end sardari's life influences them to take decisions on their life.

Kathavaseshan(The Deceased) Malayalam - 2004

2006-09-30T00:47:00.000-07:00

This movie is a beautiful example of how one can make good stories out of newspaper headlines. T.V. Chandran has written a story from a contemporary incident that he felt deeply about.I wish there are more directors like T.V.Chandran who will make realistic, hard hitting and original screenplays. Rather than make movies out of social issues with loads and loads of masala stuff.

All is not great about the movie though. The screenplay has got big holes, and at times you cannot help but laugh. But T.V.chandran compensates all of the shortcomings with a great climax. A climax that is shocking and hard-hitting. It brings down the wandering screenplay into a crashing halt, putting the whole movie into perspective.

kathavaseshan is about Gopinath Menon.An engineer by profession, he is all set to marry renuka menon.But suddenly one day he commits suicide. His fiancé Renuka Menon is shocked, but she is also curious about why he committed suicide.She had spoken to him for a little while and from what ever the short time she interacted.He doesn't seem to be a week hearted person. She starts to investigates about him.She talks to various people who knew gopinath and tries to paint a picture of his life and why he committed suicide. The reason why he committed suicide is the climax.

Dileep & Jyothirmayi

Following the typical citizen kane style Renuka's talks to gopinath's friends and acquaintance to know more about him. Unlike "Ek din achanak" in this movie the falsh backs are not biased this is just a straight forward story peiced together through various peoples. Renuka first goes to gopinath's village where she meets Janardanan(Vijayaragavan). Through him she comes to know gopinath's past love affair and how his long time girl friend got married to someone else.When you think that this is the reason for his suicide.the story takes the turn, actually gopinath was little sad, but he wasn't upset to commits suicide. He wasn't the usual guy who would take this matter to his heart and commit suicide or becomes a devadas.Rather he goes to her girl friends wedding and wishes them good luck.This intrigues her more. Such a strong willed guy. why did he commit suicide.?

Later renuka meets gopinath's friends/room mates from calcutta and ahmedabad.They tell more about gopinath, how he bleeded for every needy person. Renuka's search doesn't take her anywhere. At the end one of his old roommate comes and reveals the reason for his suicide.And i don't want to reveal the reason. watch it for yourself.

The movie is not all perfect it has some glitches. The story gets developed with renuka meeting peoples who knew gopinath. T.V.chandran over does the “coincidence meetings” to narrate more about gopinath.The height of this is that of a thief who comes to steal at renuka's house.when caught he starts telling about gopinath and how he helped him. Another stupid scene was at the suicide investigation agency. T.V.Chandran could have introduced gopinath's diary or something to avoid this too many coincidences thing.

"For those of us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity. -Albert Camus"

The movie starts with the albert camus quotes and shows the suicide. It then slowly pieces together a man, who feels deeply about peoples and is always ready to help and care for others. Through the flashbacks of so many people we come to know gopinath menon. A man who has impacted the life of so many people, a man who has made so many peoples life better. Through his life the director points out many things that we have ceased to feel for in this modern and materialistic world.

The movie talks about the sensitivity that we have lost.After watching the movie all i remembered was Vijay tendulkar's words on an outlook interview

I find increasingly that the media is out to deceive me, me as in the ordinary reader or viewer. There is an organized effort towards that, all raw material is turned into a thriller of some kind, there's a sense of breathlessness. That's misplaced because the genuinely important issues do not induce such urgency. News has to be reached to people with facts and in its right proportion. A news event happens once but the impression I get from television is that it happens some 10 or 20 or 100 times. They have to repeat, I understand that, but the repetition often distorts the original. When this happens with issues like rape, we lose our sensitivity to it, it doesn't enrage any longer.http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20051107&fname=AATendulkar+%28F%29&sid=1

Cast and Credit
Dileep .... Gopinath
Jyothirmayi .... Renuka Menon
Vijayaraghavan .... Janardanan
Jagathi Sreekumar
Janardanan
Salim Kumar
Indrans
Bindu Panikkar

Awards:
At the state level.Kathavaseshan which was adjudged the second best feature film and the awards for screenplay (T.V. Chandran),Jayachandran(Music) and lyricist (Gireesh Puthenchery).

Ek Din Achanak (Suddenly One Day) - 1989

2006-09-28T17:42:00.000-07:00

Based on the story by ramapada chaudhuri, this is an awesome movie by the master director. This is the last of Mrinal sen's absence trilogy movies(the other's being Ek Din Pratidin and Kharij )

The movie starts with the stills of a calcutta affected by heavy rains(Actually these are the establishing shots as the movie jumps straight into the story).Then it moves on to a house where the family members are sad and silent. The sound of a car brings everyone to the feet.They all rush out to see who it is.We are made to realize that they are waiting for some one.The credits start rolling with a kind of a suspense music.

Once the credits end, the faces of the family members looking from there balcony at the car below is shown.There faces are worried and expecting someone.The car is not shown in the picture.But there eyes move with the car.The look on there face says that what ever they were expecting did not happen with the arrival of the car. Disappointed they all move back into the house.

The movie starts beautifully building a tension, a worry, into our mind right from the word GO.You are already hooked into the story.Why are these people worried , what are they looking for?.The search for answers starts right from the first scene and mrinal sen keeps us on the search for answers till the end.

The people were the wife, son and daughter's of a retired professor(Sreeram lagoo), who went outside and hasn't returned home. The story is slowly developed with the family members searching for the professor.The story alternates between past and present and through serious of flashbacks the family members and relatives try to figure out why he disappeared suddenly and what could have happened to him. what happens to the professor?. Did he return is the rest of the story.

The story is built through a series of flash backs by family members and friends. The story alternates between paste and present and mrinal makes some interesting cuts .somebody is knocking on the door in the present, professor's wife opens the door. The scene cuts to a flashback where she had opened the door for someone in the past.

Analysis:
The story is built slowly bit by bit, all the while keeping you engaged.Keeping you guessing. Your idea of the missing person changes with every bit of information you get. Your thought about the person is altered every time with the opinions of the different family members. Since you are told about the missing person through the words of the family member at first the audience are made to believe what ever the family member says.But later the audience themselves start forming an opinion about the professor as every family member perceives him with his/her own needs. Neeta (Shabana) is the only sane soul. Who sees things as it is.

The movie is kind of philosophical and provokes us to introspect ourselves in relation to our surrounding. If that professor was perceived by different people in a different way depending on their needs where?. how am i being perceived?. what is the worth of a human being?. Is he what he thinks himself as or is he someone that the people around him, perceive as.

As the story progresses we get to know more about the professor. In the movie the professor says that "The most important thing for people is success. Nobody cares about dedication". We can see the academically inclined, intellectual professor who finds it hard to get along with his materialistic wife and son. Neeta's uncle in a scene tells that even though he(professor) was with you he was lonely amongst you. And through the scenes of professor and his son we come to know that the professor is frustrated by his son's failure to become something and his own failure to become someone.

Aparna sen

Cast and Credits:
Shabana Azmi .... Neeta
Shreeram Lagoo .... Professor (Neeta's father)
Aparna Sen .... Professor's student
Uttara Baokar .... Neeta's mother
Roopali Ganguly .... Seema (Neeta's sister)
Arjun Chakraborty .... Neeta's brother
Manohar Singh .... Neeta's uncle
Anjan Dutt .... Neeta's boyfriend (as Anjan Dutta)
Lily Chakravarty .... Neighbor
Anil Chatterjee .... Arunbabu

Manohar Singh & Anil Chatterjee

music by jyotishka das gupta.Music is worth mentioning in this movie.Jyotishka das gupta sustains the tension and mood from the start to finish with some good background score.

Mrinal Sen

Awards and Recognition:
Uttara Baokar won the 1998 national award for best supporting actress.
"Ek Din Achanak" got a special mention at the Venice International Film Festival.

Trivia:
The author professor and aparna talk about is Irfan Habib

**********spoiler*********

The movie comes to a beautiful end. One year after the professor disappeared all the family members sit in there house and talk about how wrong they were in perceiving there father. Neeta declares that there father was just an ordinary man and even he realized it.

And the professor's wife says that, till now she didn't say something that their father said. which is

"The most saddest thing is that there is only one life.A man only lives once."

The professor has pressed the Reset button of his life.He is starting over all again.A new life with what ever he had learned so far.

**************************

In search of the RoseBud

2006-09-27T23:58:00.000-07:00

In India directors don't mind making change with the content, but they are very afraid ,when it comes to form.There are not many movies that have non linear narration styles.Shatranj ki khiladi/suraj ka satvan goda are some movies that are on the top of my mind, when i think about non linear narration.But there are some other movies too.I want to talk about one particular style.The narration style of orsen well's citizen kane.

When i say the Orsen Well's classic narrative technique, i mean the construction of a protagonist through various peoples who were associated with him/her. This style has been adapted by many directors.It has been adapted in a few indian movies too.Iam going to write about 3 good movies that followed that style.

Ek Din Achanak
Kathavaseshan
Sardari Begum

Nizhalkuthu(shadow Kill) - Malayalam -2002

2006-09-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

For all those who have been waiting to see a Adoor movie.Here atlast one of his movie is out on DVD.First run features in alliance with The Global Film Initiative a nonprofit foundation has come out with the Global film initiative. The Initiative is to promote cross-cultural understanding through the medium of cinema. And adoor's last movie Nizhalkuthu has found a place in their collection.

Nizhalkuthu is another good movie from one of india's finest directors, Adoor Gopalakrishnan.This time he tells the story of a poor old hangman called Kaliappan.Through Kaliappan's story, adoor throws at us various questions regarding, justice and responsibilities. Well, more than the story and the moral question's it is the way that the story is narrated that makes you feel that you have watched a work from a master director.

The story is set in the pre independence time period, in the early 1940's.A time period when india still had is past as kings and queens, present as british and future as freedom fighters. Kaliappan is a hangman for the state of travancore. He lives with his wife, son and daughter .His son is a freedom fighter, who has taken to gandhian ways.The story slowly builds up to a hanging that is about to take place.The night before the hanging, Kaliappan comes to know that, the person that he is going to hang is innocent. what happens to that execution is the story. Well that is the shortest summary of the story.

A typical movie executioner is a bulky evil looking person, who comes as a guy who is insensitive towards the accused. But in this movie,adoor shows a different type of an executioner.A meek and guilt driven guy, who is like any of us. He is a god fearing family man, with all the problems that a man of his age faces.And oduvil unnikrishnan has brought that executioner to life with a very good performance.

The story is nothing without the narration style.Adoor proves why he is a master director with his narration style. For a layman it is a simple straight forward narration, you can hardly find anything complex. But this is a complex narration. Details on the Analysis section.

The movie is multi layered and filled with so many interesting scenes. Repeated watching makes the movie more enjoyable and keeps revealing more things than what you saw the first time. There isn't a single scene wasted in the movie. Every scene is important. Especially what the two villagers talk. The villagers are personification of the public. So watch carefully.

Reeja

Cast and Cedits:
Oduvil Unnikrishnan .... Kaliyappan the executioner
Sukumari .... Marakatam, his wife
Reeja .... Mallika, the younger daughter
Thara Kalyan .... Madhavy, the older daughter
Murali .... Vasu, Madhavy's Husband
Sivakumar .... Mallika's Lover
Sunil .... Muthu, Kaliyappan's son
Nedumudi Venu .... Jailer
Vijayaraghavan .... Jailer
Jagathi Sreekumar .... Maharajah's Officer
Indrans .... Barber

Cinematography by
Sunny Josef
Ravi Varma

Film Editing by
Ajith

Murali

Good acting by everyone. Oduvil Unnikrishnan as kaliappan has given credibility to the character.He was great, as an alcoholic or a guy bearing the guilt of killing innocent men. The 2001 best actor national ward winner murali, comes for a few scene and with other like sukumari,vijaya raghavan and nedumudi venu , plays his part to perfection.Reeja and sunil the new faces are also good.

Sukumari

Music:
Music is by Maestro illayaraja.I generally like his background scores. But not in this one.He comes up with his usual stand out background scores, which some times makes us feel that it is too much for a slow moving, minimalistic movie like this.

Awards and recognitions:

2002 kerala state awards
Best Actor :Oduvil Unnikrishnan(Nizhalkuthu)
Second Best
Actor :Jagathy Sreekumar(Nizhalkuthu, Meeshamadhavan)
Best Photographer :Mankada Ravivarma, Sunny Joseph (Nizhalkuthu)
Best Editor :B. Ajithkumar (Bhavam, Nizhalkuthu)
Best Art Director :Suresh Kollam (Nammal)
Best Sound Recordist : N. Harikumar (Nizhalkuthu)
Best Costume Designer : S.B.Sathish (Nizhalkuthu)

Links:
Nizhalkkuthu Dvd
Nizhalkuthu reception

Trivia:
* Sunil was actually rajeev menon's assistant. Adoor who came to rajeev menon for some help with selecting camera, came across sunil and he became an actor. He has acted in few films in malayalam.He also did a hero role in tamil movie called Chithiram Pesuthadi under a different name, Narain.

* Oduvil passed away on 27 May 2006.

Title:
If you are still wondering what the title means?. Shadow kill means killing indirectly.It comes from the practice of killing a person by killing a doll or some other objects.This practice is mentioned in mahbharatha. Here is an interesting story from the mahabharatha episode.You can relate the malayan character with that of kaliappan character in the movie, reluctant to do the shadow kill and feeling guilty about it.

Abhicara - Black Magic.

Duryodhana orders Malayan to kill Pandavas by piercing the shadow. Malayan refuses saying that both Pandavas and Kauravas are kings to him. Also Krishna is with the Pandavas,hence he will not be able to do so. Duryodhana threatens to kill him. To avoid the work, Malayan demands things such as lamp of sun, plate of moon, measure of darkness,eggs of elephant, arrows of Rama, twenty one leaves of water etc., which are impossible to get.He also demands that Dussala (Duryodhana's sister) should be sacrificed in the abhicara.

This enrages Duryodhana. He suspects that Malayan is trying to avoid the work by giving excuses. He repeats the threat to kill him if Malayan does not perform the task. Malayan promises to perform the abhicara using available things.While performing the abhicara of shadow piercing, the Malayan looks at the black (Anjanam) stone. He is surprised that the shadows are not visible on the black stone. Realising that if this abhicara is not successful, the king will kill him, he prays to the gods to help him.Then he sees the shadows along with Krishna. He is deeply worried and prays to have mercy on him. Then Krishna's shadow disappears. Malayan realizes that his aim is accomplished. He prays for pardon saying that he was forced to do the task.

After killing the Pandavas by shadow piercing, Malayan is praised by Duryodhana who gives him many gifts. On the way back, Malayan thinks that he has committed a sin and how he can face his wife.Seeing him unhappy, his wife asks the reason.Malayan tells her that on the way he saw a deer with five does and he killed the does by abhicara. The worried wife further questions him. Malayan admits that he was forced by Duryodhana to kill the Pandavas by nizhalkkuttu (piercing the shadow).Hearing this, the wife is devastated and enraged. She tells Malayan that he will also experience Kunti's grief now. She kills her own son and rushes to see Pandavas. Seeing this Malayan falls unconscious.

Kunti finds her sons dead, suddenly. She cries out and prays to Krishna to help her. Krishna appears. Kunti is relieved to see Krishna. Krishna touches the Pandavas and revives them.Then Malayan's wife arrives. Krishna asks her why she has come. She tells Krishna that Malayan was threatened and forced by Duryodhana to kill the Pandavas by nizhalkkuttu (shadow piercing).

Krishna tells her that he knows everything. Killing her own son was an extreme step.Her son will live again. There will not be any hatred towards Malayan.All these were caused by Duryodhana . Yudhishthira and Kunti praise Krishna.Krishna assures Kunti that he will always protect Pandavas.

from
http://www.geocities.com/harindranath_a/maha/variation/nizhal.pdf

Analysis:
**** spoilers a head. I recommend reading this section after watching the movie.****************

The movie is filled with ironies, counterpoints and the cyclic nature of things. For example the Cylclic nature of life and death is shown in the way the rope that is used to hang the prisoner is burt and the ashes are again used to heal sick peoples. And when one rope ends another one becomes available.

Comming back to the narration, Kaliappan at the start, drinks at the arrack shop and says that he hanged an innocent man. Actually that scene is not the start. That is actually the end of the movie.He was actually talking about the guy who he(rather his son) executes later in the movie .The whole story is actually a flash back. But you don’t know when the flash back begins.

Nedumudi venu & Vijaya Raghavan

Before the execution night kaliappan sits with the jailers are drinks. The jailer starts telling a story. Adoor uses an awesome technique here, he makes kaliappan visualize the whole story in terms of his family members. This way he personalizes the story to make the listener feel the pain.

A hangman,or for that matter anyone, won't feel the pain or helplessness of an innocent guy, who is going to be hanged. For them he is a distant person who they don't know, who they cannot sympathize. So when they read a news article or hear a news about an innocent man hanged.They don't feel anything for the denied justice.They dont care whether it is a real kill or a shadow kill.An example is the two villagers at the start of the movie.Talking about the sensational case where the influential real culprit got away from punishment and how a stupid boy got the death sentence. How can you make these people feel for the injustice that has happened?. You can do that only when you make the pain & injustice personal. In order to make the hangman sympathize, Adoor makes him visualize the story of a third person in terms of the characters that he already knows. With those characters everything falls into perspective and he can sympathies for the man to be hanged, Feel the pain of injustice and get angry over the real culprit, not being punished.

Another example of the cyclic nature of the movie is who has to bear the sin. The two villagers who basically represent the public come in 2 scenes and contribute a lot to the movie. In the second scene they talk about who bears the sin of killing an innocent man?. who is accountable to god?. One villager says that it is the king as he is the one who orders the hanging, for that the other says the king escapes that by a practice he follows. The king actually sends a letter to the person to be hanged, revoking the hanging sentence and pardoning him just before the execution. But the message is deliberately made to arrive a few minutes after the hanging. So by sending the pardon letter, the king washes off his sins, he says.

That throws the question, who actually bears the sin?.If the king is gone then it must be the hangman. But Again coming back to the cyclic nature of things in the movie.Kalippan every time prays to goddess kali, especially before execution about how he is just an instrument in the goddess's hands and how everything that he does is her own actions.He uses words like "You are the sin and the sinner". By these prayers kaliappan squarely puts the blame on the goddess herself.

As i said before, the movie is filled with ironies and counterpoints.Here are a few scenes that come to my mind.

**As the day of execution nears, the public starts thinking that the power of kaliappan has increased. The women who bathe at the tank, go to the level of telling that there is a halo around his head. But in reality, Kaliappan becomes more disturbed, more alcoholic, more afraid and weak.

**There is a scene in which the school teacher teaches a poem about the certainity of death in the class, and kaliappan's daughter bleeds and attain's puberty, a sign of birth.

**Adoor cuts the scene of muthu, Kaliappan's gandhian son spining the cotton with that of the prisoners spinning the threads to make the hanging rope.

**Adoor puts muthu as a counterpoint to kaliappan character. Muthu is gandhian who is against drinking, Kaliappan is an alcoholic.Muthu is a vegetarian, he is against killing animals.Kaliappan executes peoples even after knowing that they are innocent.

**Lot of people complained about how the puberty function of mallika is shown for a long time and it is there just to appease the foreign audience. But i think it was shown more to keep in sync with the various other death scenes that are shown in the movie. In the later part of the movie there are long scene of preparation for the hanging, if you consider the puberty function as a counter point to those death scenes in the movie. Then you can understand why that scene was there and why that long.

**At the start of the movie the rich guy asks sunil about his father and laughs at him for being a gandhian and asks him."Do you think you and gandhi can bring freedom to us?". You can take this statement in two ways, one even though sunil is a gandhian he is not steadfast on his principles. He compromises for his family. When his mother asks him not to go to the club to give the handspun threads and take care of the household work. He obliges and later in the movie he again compromises for his father.So the unsteadfast sunil is not going to bring freedom for the villagers.

If you take the same dialogue with gandhi bringing freedom to us. It could be a suggestion that he still hasn't got us the real FREEDOM.

Also Adoor hits at few things in the movie.

##The rich villager after talking to sunil, looks at the women who passes by and asks the other guy, who she is. Later they both talk about her and the talks convey that the rich guy might go after her. Is that an indication of some crime to happen later??. Will another woman be violated. Will another rich man escape the law?. will another innocent/poor guy be punished wrongly?.

##At the end of the movie the gandhian son who wears the white cap and kurtha is shown in black dress and black cap.A sign of a dark future for him??. He seemed more caring and fragile person. Will he also be suffering like his dad?.

The jailer when narrating the story to kaliappan starts with describing the beauty of the village and the innocent love story of the village girl.Everything seems to be perfect.Till the evil thoughts of one man comes out.All the peace and beauty in the world or only destroyed by the evil thoughts of human beings.

If you notice there are lots of shots of natural scenery and scenes involving the five elements.Adoor with these scenes and the many counterpoints, cyclic things in the movie, tries to bring a cosmic balance to the story.
******************************

The Householder -English -1963

2006-08-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

This is the best of all the merchant ivory movies, i have seen so far.It is a simple and sweet movie that tells the metamorphosis of a young man into a householder.

Prem Sagar(Shashi Kapoor) and Indu(Leela Naidu ) are a typical indian newly wed couple.Prem is a poorly paid delhi professor, who is always worried about making ends meet.He is also a timid and shy guy, who finds it hard to get across his point to others.The movie tells the early days of this couple, who are coming to terms with their new roles and responsibilities as a mild comedy.

The couple prem and indu go through various stages that the newly weds usually go through, like getting to know each other, growing up from an young adult to a responsible family man/woman,understanding real love and affection etc.Prem apart from all these also goes through the emotions of coming out of his mothers love bonds to get entangled with that of his wife. Prem who was a carefree young man finds it hard to change into a householder. The movie sweetly talks about how he finally does change and comes to terms with his role as a householder, like many millions before him have done.

I used to wonder why the merchant ivory team always went with ruth pawar jabberwala in most of their movies. she wasn't that impressive in many of the movies that i saw. I got the answer in this film.It is her best, the characters well etched and the story told in a beautiful way.The story is universal in its theme. It will touch a chord on everybody who watches it even though the movie is completely told in an indian context. Guess adjusting to your partner and becoming a householder is a common tough task for any young man around the world.

The movie is also about communicating with your life partner and everyone else in the world. Through out the movie you can see the characters living in their own world. Most of the people don't listen to what the other person is saying and they keep on talking about their view point's. Nobody listens to the other.

Sashi kapoor has given a nice performance in the movie.He places the timid and shy professor beautifully. The character Mr chadda played by Harindranath Chattopadhyay was also an awesome one.So are the principal and land lord characters.

Mr.Chadda & khanna played by Harindranath Chattopadhyay & Romesh Thapar

One interesting scene in the movie, is a scene where all the professors are taking a break in their staff room. Sashi kapoor and another professor sohanlal talk about how mehuruli is a long way, how the other professor has to bring his lunch and other mundane stuff.The uptight Mr.Chadda, who always thinks low of the other professors, starts reading from Thrift by Samuel Smiles

Of all wretched men, surely the idle are the most so those whose life is barren of utility, who have nothing to do except to gratify their senses. Are not such men the most querulous, miserable, and dissatisfied of all, constantly in a state of ennui, alike useless to themselves and to others mere cumberers of the earth, who, when removed, are missed by none, and whom none regret? Most wretched and ignoble lot, indeed, is the lot of the idlers.

His quoting is only broken by Mrs.Khanna(The college principal/owner's wife) who reduces the speed of the fan and says that the professors cannot run the fan at that speed with electric charges being so high.Sashi kapoor again continues talking to professor sohanlal about his wifes name how he doesn't like the name indhu and prefers something like nirupama or nimmy. The whole scene is hilarious.

The whole movie is a mild comedy.All the characters are wonderful and funny. The principal, chadda, landlord, prem's mother etc. The jokes are subtle, repeated viewing will make us appreciate the movie better. Here are a few

Indhu goes to the landlords house. The Landlords wife is knitting a sweater, and her son is lying next to her. She says that she is knitting the sweater is for her son who is next to her and reading some magazine.If you look closely you can see that actually he is looking at some models in their designer dresses in some fashion magazine.

Sashi goes to meet the college principal Mr.khanna for an increment in his salary.Mr.Khana is having breakfast. Mr.Khanna gives a big lecture on how to keep ones body healthy, watch out for what he is eating...lots of ladoos

It is a Merchant Ivory movie.There must be Shakespeare somewhere in the movie. Shakespeare qoutes comes as a wall hanging in Sashi kapoor's house.He has Shakespeare seven ages of men framed in his house.
Indhu reads the part

And then the lover
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow.

Leela naidu

Cast and credits :
Shashi Kapoor .... Prem Sagar
Leela Naidu .... Indu
Durga Khote .... The Mother
Achala Sachdev .... Mrs. Saigal
Harindranath Chattopadhyay .... Mr. Chadda
Pahadi Sanyal .... The Swami
Romesh Thapar .... Mr. Khanna
Walter Woolf King .... Professor
Patsy Dance .... Kitty
Indu Lele .... Mrs. Khanna
Prayag Raj .... Raj
Pinchoo Kapoor .... Mr. Saigal
Praveen Paul .... 2nd Lady
Usha Amin .... 1st Lady
Shama Beg .... Mrs. Raj
Pro Sen .... Sohanlal
Jabeen Jalil .... Bobo
Ernest Castaldo .... Ernest

Directed by James Ivory
Screenplay and dialouges by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

This movie belongs to Ruth Pawar jhabvala, this is her best.The movie is supposedly based on her novel of the same name.

Thanmathra(Molecule) Malayalam -2005

2006-08-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

Blessy again has come up with a different subject.This time he has roped in the other malayalam super star to do the role of Rameshan Nair in his movie thanmathra.

Rameshan is a middle class family man working in a government office.He is yet another father who harbors the dream that his children’s would make it big in the future. Everything goes smoothly, till his family and friends see him behaving differently. Later the doctor diagnose him and declare that he is an alzimer's patient.The movie is how the family copes up with the disease.

The movie explains rameshan's life and his lovely family in the first half and the second half is how the family deals with the disease. The doctor after diagnosing the disease says that it is the family that has to know more about this disease than the patient. As they are the one who are going to suffer more because of this.

At one point in the movie rameshan who explains the alzeimer's disease to his son says that it is a slow process where we keep forgetting everything that we have learnt till now, kind of a reverse process where an adult keeps forgetting all that he remembered till now and goes back to a child state before he dies.The second half of the movie is that slow reverse process.

Blessy again comes up with a movie that is filled with love and lot of touchy moments. Realistic characters and good acting makes the movie very interesting.One of the complaints on him is how he is not showing the progression of the disease gradually. I also agree with that, could have used some more scenes to show the graduation deterioration of his condition, As rameshan's change from a normal person to a full fledged alzeimer patient seems to happen kind of quick.

Blessy

The movie has good acting by everyone, especially mohanlal. But don’t expect a Amitab's Black like performance. Alzeimer's forgetfulness patients are sometime mistaken as crazy people. Mohanlal walks the fine line of portraying an alzimer patient who could sometime be mistaken as a crazy person. As usual he gets into the skin of the character with so much ease.

Mohanlal who has been acting in one crap movie after the other since vanaprastham, redeems his reputation a bit with this movie.

Nedumudi Venu & Mohanlal

The story is inspired from Padmarajan's story 'orma'.

Cast and Credits:

Mohanlal .... Rameshan Nair
Meera
Vasudevan .... Lekha
Arjun Lal .... Manu
Nedumudi Venu .... Krishnan Nair
Jagathi
Sreekumar .... Joseph
Seetha .... Swarnam
Innocent .... Sukumaran Nair
Manka Mahesh .... Lekha's Mother
Prathap
K. Pothan .... Doctor
Niranjana .... Manju

Music:
Music is again my mohan sitara, who did blessy's other movie kazhcha. He has composed some good numbers.

The best is the melodious "Mele Vellithinkal" which is a song to show the loving family.watch the song here

The other good song is kannama which is in tamil.

Listen to thanmathra songs here

Awards:

At the state level the movie bagged many of the biggies

Best Film
Best Director: Blessy
Best Actor: Mohanlal
Best Screenplay: Blessy
Arjun lal who plays the son got the special mention from the jury.

Links:
Thanmathra Official website
Thanmathra special on rediff
Mohanlal interview
Mohanlal interview in hindu

Morning Raaga

2006-08-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

The movie is mediocre at best.It has a story that can be guessed in first 5 mins and performance are very average by everybody including shabana.The only saving grace is Lillette Dubey.shabana tries very hard to do the alapanaas, even though she is pronouncing the swaras right, it is very obvious that she is trying hard.

The only good thing about the movie is its music.Very few films has done this kind of fusion music before.With some of the big guns of carnatic music doing the singing the songs are a beautiful blend of east and west.The movie goes to a fitting climax with a beautiful fusion song.The song is Oothukkaadu Venkatasubbaiyyar's "Thaye yasodha".It is rendered as a duet with Sudha Raghunathan singing it in tamil and Ranjani Ramakrishnan in english.The music is also a beautiful blend of western orchestration and carnatic violin interludes. Music is by Mani sharma and Amit Heri.

The movie is directed by Mahesh Dattani’s and rajiv Menon is the reason behind the good cinematography of the movie.

Oridam (An Abode) Malayalam -2004

2006-08-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

Oridam is a quest of a sex worker to find a place for herself in the society.The very same society, which uses and throws her.The sex worker character played by geethu mohandas doesn't have a name, nor does many of the other characters in the movie.The protagonists has a simple dream.A dream of leading a decent life, one that doesn't have anything to do with the flesh trade.The movie is her quest to fulfill that dream.

Geethu Mohandas

The movie doesn't sensationalize anything and focuses just on the protoganist and tries to bring her inner self out on the screen.Through the eyes of the character we come to know the problems of sex worker's.

Murali's handling of various visuals to convey the protagonists desires and thoughts are the only best part of the movie.Otherwise its an average movie that promises more but fails to deliver.

Pradeep Nair and Geethu Mohandas

Awards:
Special mention award at the 52nd National Film Award

At the state level it got the following awards

Geethu mohandas best actress for Oridam and Akale
Best background music : Issac Thomas, Kottukapally
Best costume design – Kumar Edappal
Best film processing – Chithranjali Laboratories
Special jury award for outstanding brilliance in cinema – Pradeep Nair

Links:
official website
You can pay and download the movie here

kazhcha(Sight) Malayalam -2004

2006-08-01T13:35:00.000-07:00

Kazhcha is a wonderful movie that sings an ode to love. Universal in its concept, it beautifully etches the importance of love and care.Yet another awesome movie which could only be made in kerala as a main stream movie and run in packed house.

***** spoiler**********

Kazhcha tells the story of Madhavan a 16 mm film operator.Madhavan is a small time operator who screens movies in festivals and for cinema enthusiast’s around kuttanad area in kerala. Madhavan comes across a small boy, who speaks a different language.He takes him with him to his house. Even though the boy speaks a different language which no one understands in the family, a special bond grows between the boy and everyone in the family. They later come to know that he is speaking gujarathi and that he was a victim of the gujarat earthquake, which left around 30,000 dead. what happens to the boy and how politics, judiciary etc look at the boy and whether he gets back with his parents is the rest of the story.

*******************

Mammotty gives a beautiful performance in the movie.The action is very controlled and as necessary for the movie.He should be appreciated for doing this role as Master yash who plays the kid pavan, gets as much coverage in the movie as the super star himself. Good supporting roles from everybody including master Yash.

The movie is shot in kuttanad, a lush green backwater place of kerala.The visuals are beautiful and it's very refreshing to see such a beautiful landscape and lifestyle of the people who live there. For example lakshmi, madhavan's wife tells her daughter that she is late for school. You hear a horn sound from outside the house.You think the school bus is waiting outside.The camera pans to the front of the house. Instead of a school bus, you see a school boat full of children’s dressed in their school uniform. Madhavan's house front gate ends right at the back water. If you step out of the house you will step into water. The primary means of commute in this part of the country is boat. we get to see the milkman pouring milk to his customer from the boat etc. Camera man azhagappan has done a good job in capturing the beauty of that region. Towards the end, the movie shifts from the lush green backwaters of kerala to the dry kutch region of gujarat and cinemetographer azhagappan's makes us feel his presence there too.

Credit should go to blessy for narrating a beautiful story with focus on so many other things also.He has given lot of attention to small things in the movie.First he takes time to make us feel the people in the village. Through various actions of people in the movie, we come to know the laid back, helping and friendly nature of the village.And on an another aspect he spends time to makes us feel the thoughts of pavan the vagabond kid.A guy who is traumatized, yet so much like any other kid of his age. With pavan and ambili, madhavan's daughter, he takes us into the world of children's. A world of pure joy,love and fun.

The movie is about visuals, the sights.Even though pavan does not know the language malayalam, he is affected by various scenes that he sees in the movie.Belssy also talks about how media affects people.Everybody understand the boy's problem once they see the visuals off the earthquake.He also tells about how media manipulates emotions etc.The movie is also about movies, through madhavan's profession he constantly points about movies, how cinema has degraded, how tv is affecting cinema.And how movies are so close to people.There is reference to tamil movies like vasantha maligai, veera pandia kattabomman, and scenes of few movies are also shown.Malayalam movies like desadanam,spadikam etc.I was sweetly surprised to see scenes of "Battleship potemkin" in the movie. Only in a malayalam movie would you be able to see Sergei einsteins classic "Battleship Potemkin" and show the "Odessa Steps".

Above all the movie is also about our inflexible judicial system.A system that does not have a eye or a heart.

******** spoiler******
At the end of the movie, we are left with a great sense of releif. What would have happened to this boy, if he wasn't taken care by madhavan?.He would have turned into a street criminal, he could have been misused by the people.He could have become the scum of a big city.But madhavan's love for him changes his whole life.Not only does he changes to the laid back and friendly lifestyle of the village from the city/town life.He also changes to a kid from becoming an young adult.Away from his street friends and his fight for daily food.IN the village he remains as a kid due to his friendship with ambili.He retains his childish laughs, childish playfulness and sense of wonder and amazement of small things.The love of madhavan's family, the dog,hen, birds and a home changes it all for this small boy.From a guy who hurts a man who tries to misuse him, he sings song with the crocking of a frog.Love can change the world, in this movie it is the life of an innocent boy, his future.
**************************

Cast:
Mammootty .... Madhavan
Yash .... Pavan
Padmapriya .... Lakshmi
Sanusha .... Ambily
Manoj K. Jayan .... Joy
Innocent .... Fr. Kuriakose
Augustine .... Political Leader
Venu Nagavalli .... Officer

Azhagappan and Blessy

Music:
Music is by Mohan Sitara.He is the source of one of the big discontent of this movie for me. He overdoes the background music. He has gone for sensational scores. Even though the scenes or underplayed by blessy and mammotty.

The movie has good songs.
Jugunu -This is a beautiful number. This is the song that pavan's dad sings for him.
Kunje - what can you say. It was sung my yesudoss.
The movie has 3 more songs.
Listen to kazhcha songs here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x7UPH0mwSY

Awards:

Mammokka won the best actor award in both filmfare and kerala state
The movie had to compete with akale.So even though shyam prasad won the best director award at the state level.Belssy won awards for "Director of the best film with popular appeal and aesthetic value" and "Best Debut Director"

Trivia:
The various movies shown in kazcha are

Spadikam
Desadanam
Saanthwanam -unni vaa vaa voo
Battleship potemkin

Links:
Blessy interview
Mammooty official website
Mamooty on kazhcha
Blessy's interview in the week
gurajat earth quake
Gujarath earth quake on wiki

Top ten of Satyajit Ray

2006-06-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

This is my list of Top Ten movies of satyajit Ray.

1)Charulatha
2)Pather Panchali
3)Aranyer Din Ratri
4)Jana Aranya
5)Apur Sansar
6)Mahanagar
7)Shantranj Ke Khilari
8)Kanchenjungha
9)Agantuk
10)Jalsaghar

Why Spoilers

2006-02-02T19:47:00.000-08:00

I don’t like to give out everything about the movie. But iam writing the spoilers cause i want people to understand the finer points of good movies. The general indian public has been spoon feed with simpler stories that they don’t appreciate good movies cause it takes a little bit of effort to understand what the director is trying to convey. Me for example once used to watch a movie and used to wonder what was the movie about?. I would be clueless and would try to look for information on the movie. So the spoilers here are for people who want to cross over from main stream movies to art movies and also for people who didn't get the idea of the movie.

My strong suggestion is to watch the movies and then read the spoilers.

Malgudi Days

2006-02-02T07:09:00.000-08:00

Great news.Malgudi Days is now released on DVD.Check it out here.

Shathranj ki khiladi (Chess Player) -1977

2006-02-01T12:26:00.000-08:00

Shathranj ki kiladi is a classic from the master director. A must watch for every quality movie lover. Spoilers ahead, so my strong advice would be to watch the movie first and then read the review.

This is the first HINDI movie of satyajit ray and probably the most lavishly spent of all his movies.This is not a pather panchali or charulatha with its lyrical beauty. But this has its own unique style.You might have seen many movies with parallel threads in foreign films but a very rare occurance in indian cinema. This one is satyajit ray style and and it was made in 1977.

The movie is based on munshi premchand's story of the same name. Supposedly it was first published in Hindi as 'Shatranj ki baazii' in 'Madhuri' on October 1924 and in Urdu as "Shatranj Ke KhilaaRii' in 'Zamaanaa' on December 1924.

The history:
The british raj is spreading, the decaying mugal empire has resigned itself and only small pockets of their great empire remains. The british do their clever moves on the kings, they offer military protection for a sum of money.The kings gladly accept the protection of the superior british force. The kings then think, when the british is giving protection, why do we have to maintian
an expensive army. The kings dismantle their army. Without an army and without much to do the kings indulge themselves in various entertainments. The british after a few years of protection, knowing that the country lacks the military strength to oppose them, make a move to annex the country. The king who has already dismantled the army and is mentally week does not want to fight the british.

--------Story----------

Shathranj ki khiladi (chess player) is about Chess player's.Mirza Sajjad Ali(Sanjeev Kumar) and Mir Roshan Ali(Saeed Jaffrey) are two aristocrats living in the state of oudh. They are two passionate chess players.They play chess everyday from morning to dusk, even while eating.They are so passionate that they ignore everything including there wives Khurshid(Shabana Azmi) and Nafisa(Farida Jalal) for the game.While they are so engrossed in the games everyday, there is a regime change in oudh.

Amjad khan is the Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of oudh and Victor Banerjee is his prime minister. The nawab spends his time in various activites. He dances, writes poems and spends time with women.Ottram(Richard Attenborough) is the Company representative in Oudh who feels that the nawab is not fit to rule the state.East india company decides to take over the reins of oudh from its nawab(Amjad khan).what happens to oudh and the chess players is the story.
--------------------------

The movie works on multiple levels, and the characterization carries the ray's stamp of greatness. Right from the opening of the sequences where Mirza Sajjad Ali shouting at Mir Roshan Ali for touching a piece and not making a movie with it you know that Mirza is an angry guy and Mir roshan is a go easy guy who makes mistakes and is not serious about things. The movie continues with that characterization all throughout till the climax where this difference between them comes out in open.

outram's attitude is the typical british attitude which considered the indians kings as not fit to rule. His view is that of the righteous british way of looking at a ruler as only to serve people and not to indulge in any other activities. He finds a king flying kites, writing poetry and dancing not only funny but also the traits of a bad ruler.

Through Outram, ray let's out his feelings of the british's colonialism. Outram even though shown as the righteous guy who wants to unseat the indulgent king.You can see the mild envy in him with respect to the kings lifestyle and his mutta wife's. He also exposes the double standards of the british through him.

For example outram calls the king as a bunch of contradiction after finishing saying that sentence he agrees that they are at fault with the agreement that they are getting the king to sign.He also says that they cannot annexe oudh according to the old agreement but still they will do it.But he calls the king as a bunch of contradiction.

Similarly ray sights at many places about the british imperial attitude.When ever a british high official's visits the kingdom(like the sleeman commision),he is treated lavishly and given what ever he asks for and they don’t complain, but when they go away form the kingdom they become distant and righteous guys who complain about the king.

Wajid ali shah is the epitome of enjoying oneself. He was a connoisseur a poet,dancer,composer etc. There is an old saying that "you know that arrival of wajid ali shah with the arrival of his hukah". Amjad khan as the king is kind of comic too.A darbar is in session and someone is pleading something to the king, even though the king is looking to be listening to the guy.Actually he is penning a song in his mind.

Ray uses various kinds of narration to put forward the story.The movie starts with the introduction with the voice of amitabh, about the history of the state.Ray even uses cartoons at places to narrate things.Then the narration goes to the story of the two aristocrats, and that of the nawab of oudh.The movies switches between hindi and english.All dialouges of the british officers are in english and the rest are in hindi.

The movie is actually very funny, when i think back i find the whole thread of the 2 chess players funny, especially saeed jaffrey's dialogues. The scenes have a subtle comedy in them which you can enjoy a lot on repeated viewings. Their playing environment is a nice room with hukka near their seats and a cozy shawl .Food comes to where they play, servants bring them pawn and refill the hukka when ever it is over. They dont move from their place the whole day, servants even bring water to wash their hands and these two guys play on. Nothing can stop these guys, they play with vegetables and go to a guy who is bedridden and play chess stealthily without caring for that guy.End of the movie they become two unforgettable characters.

The photography is very good. There is a scene where you just see a close up of hukka from a low angle and a completely dark background. Only the hukha is lighted. From the dark background looming large over the low angle camera comes the eriee image of the servant to fill the hukkha. Well captured. You see this kind of a selected lighting on objects in many places in the movie. Like the scenes where the king is shown dancing in a complete dark background. Selected lightings on the king and the nautch girls, brightly dressed in lavish costumes was a treat to watch.

Art direction is bansi chandragupta is awesome.This movie joins the very few indian movies like umrao jaan and junoon that brought the lucknow of 1850's to life again. Lucknow was at its peak in arts and culture during that time and this movie beautifully recreates that time period. Music is by satyajit ray himself.

The visuals of Mirza Sajjad Ali and Mir Roshan Ali playing chess might not have the impact of the devil playing chess with Antonius Block in Ingmar bergman's Seventh seal, but it definitely joins seventh seal on the list of great movies made with a metaphorical chess game.

Shama zaidi - costumes/dialouges

Cast and Credits:
Sanjeev Kumar .... Mirza Sajjad Ali
Saeed Jaffrey .... Mir Roshan Ali
Shabana Azmi .... Khurshid, Mirza's wife
Farida Jalal .... Nafisa, Mir's wife
Victor Banerjee .... Prime Minister (as Victor Bannerji)
Farooq Shaikh .... Aqueel (as Farooque Shaikh)
Tom Alter .... Capt. Weston (Outram's aide de camp)
Leela Mishra .... Hirya, Khurshid's maid
Samarth Narain .... Kallu
Amjad Khan .... Wajid Ali Shah
Richard Attenborough .... General Outram

The movie has some great star cast. Saeed jaffrey is awesome with his subtle comical sense and forgetful nature. Sanjeev kumar the man known for his subtelety, plays the part of the angry and full of pride Mirza Sajjad Ali to perfection. It even has the director "Richard Attenborough"(Ghandhi) in it.Victor banerji is the prime minister of oudh and amjad khan is the king, it is sad to see that such a talented actor like Amjad was wasted in the commercial movies.

Award:
Best Regional Feature Film : Shatranj Ke Khilari
Director : Satyajit Ray

DVD:
The movie is widely available in DVD/VCD.Think both shemaroo and Eros carry it

Links:
Ray's portrayel of wajid ali shah
Premchand's chess player from Aroma Radio
Wajid Ali shah

-----spoilers----
**** spoilers are for people who didn't understand the movie, so watch the movie and read it ******

For someone not used to these narration style it might take some time to get the relationship between the two threads.You will be waiting for that scene that will invariably put the two chess players right into the middle of the other story of the regime change of oudh. But it never happens .when you look at the title and think again deeply on the two threads, things will be clear to you, the bigger picture will appear. When these two players where playing chess.There was a bigger game of chess being played by the east india company.

The British want the kingdom of oudh, they make their first movie with a report made by a british officer. The king is shocked, but does not care about it. Their next movie on the board is to cite the report and make the king sign a new treaty, which will give them the power. The british know that they cannot get the king to sign because he is protected by the treaty that they have already made with him.They need to break the old treaty to get to the victory. King does not want to do it.So their next move is to get to the QUEEN mother asking her to convince her son to give up the thrown. You can look at all these actions as moves on a bigger chessboard of the kingdom of oudh.

The parallels between the two thread will emerge once you start looking at the Game being played at two levels.On a further thought you can see that like the chess players who didn't care for their wifes,families but where only interested in their own games, both the king and the british where not interested in their people but the game.

Perceiving it from another angle, we are all players engaged in our own games, when so many things are happening around us. There are similar regime change or political changes or any important change for that matter is happening around us even today and most of us are engaged in our own games, without caring for it. Or we are those cowards/escapist who run away from pressing problems to pursue our silly games. Satyajit ray, the master that he is puts that in various places in the movie.If you go back to the movie and think all the scenes involving the common man, apart from these two groups that are playing small and big games, you can realize that everyone was in some sort of a game. There are not many scenes of crowds in the movie but when they were being showed, they were all involved in some form of a game or another. Flying kite, pigeons, cock fight, ram fight etc.

Shayam benegal's Junoon which was also a movie of oudh in 1857 kind of does the same story but the indulgence was Love.
---------

Ijazaat -1987

2006-01-11T10:48:00.000-08:00

Ijazaat is another must see indian movie.The movie is directed by padmabhushan S.S.Gulzar , based on a bengali novel by Subhodh Ghosh.You can see the multiple facet's of gulzar in this movie.Gulzar the writer, the director and the lyricist and this is one movie where you cannot point anything wrong in the way he has done his job.Gulzar like basu chatterji, sai paranjpaye and hrishikesh mukerjee is another middle of the road film maker, who has given some beautiful movies.And this is one of his best.

----------------------------story -----------------------
The movie starts with mahendra(nasrudeen shah) & Sudha(rekha) meeting in a railway waiting room. They recognize each other, they are litle uncomfortable with each other at first. Then we come to know that they were married once and the story slowly unfolds as flash backs. Mahendra is in love with maya(Anuradha Patel).They actually live together without getting married. Maya who does not believe in marriage is also in love with him but is non committal on marriage. During that time mahendra is pressurized by his family to marry sudha. Mahendra tries to reach maya but she is not in town.So he gets married to sudha after telling all about his past and relationship with maya.sudha is ok with it, if he completely forgets maya and starts a new life with her. They get married.

Sudha finds that mahender is trying to forget maya, but still her thoughts are with him.Maya comes back and is upset on mahender's marriage. She even tries to commit suicide.Mahendra takes pity on her and gives emotional support. But sudha who is unaware of maya's suicide attempts believes that her husband is still in love with her and leaves him.so after 5 years are so they again meet in that railway waiting room.After discussing all their past, rekha comes to know that maya tried to commit suicide and that's why he had to support her. she feels bad for her decision to leave him. What happened in there lives in the past 5 years after they separated adds a twist and ends with a nice climax
---------------------------------------------------------

This is a romantic movie, but a movie that talks to the matured audience and not to teenagers. It is more about loving after marriage than before marriage. This is a sweet and subtle movie that talks about love in a very sensitive way.There is no big villian who wants to stop the lovers or jealously, hatred that arises in a triangular love story.It is a movie that explores love in a deep way.

The movie is about the 3 main characters and the story is told in a serious of flash backs.This emotional drama unfolds in just one night, with the story alternating between past and present through those flash backs. The movie which starts with the hero getting into the waiting station on a rainy night ends the next morning, when the dark clouds are not there anymore and the sky is clear.The pent up emotions and thoughts are out. It is all clear now, time to move on.

Ijaazat reminded me of maniratnam's alaipayuthe which later came as saathiya in hindi. Alaipayuthey has the same feel of ijazaat, a husband who still hasn't understood the real meaning of love and care waits in a railway station, where his past plays out as a serious of flashback. A new character is introduced at the end of the movie and this character makes the hero realize what loving one's wife really means.

alaipayuthey

Ijazaat beautifully sketches all the 3 characters and does not distract into anything else. Every frame is about these characters, no unnecessary comedy or fight scenes. Songs yes, but they too give more insight into the characters than distract us. It is not a typical run of the mill movie where characters are shown in black and white. In this movie you are made to agree and sympathies with all the characters. The character Maya in any other indian movie of that time period would be a tramp, a life loving free spirited person, a woman who does not belive in marriage is not a character that would appeal to the indian audience.But in ijazaat you understand her too and you are comfortable with her stance on life too.The credit off course goes to gulzar for making the audience agree with that character.This is a pure writers movie, a good story, exploring the complexities of relationships. Gulzar the lyricist has created a poem with this movie.

Cast and Credit:
Rekha .... Sudha
Naseeruddin Shah .... Mahinder
Anuradha Patel .... Maya
Sulabha Deshpande .... Parvati
Shashi kapoor
Shammi Kapoor

Music:

This is another awesome album by the Gulzar,Asha,Burman combo.Another movie with deadly songs by gulzar ,all of them sung by asha.

Mera kuchh saamaan -Asha Bhonsle
Katra Katra milati hai -AB
Khali haath shaam aayee hai -AB
Chhoti si kahani mein -AB

Burman, asha, gulzar

The lyrics are just awesome in the songs.Especially Mera kuch saaman. Pain is always expressed in a crying song a milder version will be where the heroine will sing the song with a drop of a tear in her eyes. But this is a very different one; this is poetic pain, a lyrical pain sung beautifully by asha.

Awards:
In 1987 chithra was on a hatrick for the national awards for best singer, she won the national award in 1985 for "Padariyen" - Sindhu Bhairavi - Tamil

Chithra and ilayaraja

and in 1986 for "Manjal Prasadavum" - Nakhakshathangal - Malayalam.But the R.D.Burman/gulza/asha team broke her hatrick with "Mera kuch saman".Mera kuch saman won gulzar the 1987 national award for best lyricist and singer for asha. But eventually chithra went on to get her 3rd national award the very next year, 1988, for the song "Indupushpam" from the malayalam movie Vaishali.Well a broken hattrick.

In 1988 film fare awards gulzar won the best lyricist for "mera kuch saman", but asha and burman didn't get the singer and music director awards. Reason the entry of two block buster movies tezaab and Qayamet se Qayamet tak.The awards went to alka yagnik for "ek do thenn" and anand milind for QSQT.

listen to Ijazaat songs here in musicindiaonline

Trivia:
Pawan says that the character Maya's penchant for taking off on sudden unannounced road trips was borrowed from Deepti Navals real life persona . Naval - a travel freak is apparently given to taking off on her jeep to far flung places like ladakh, etc...without informing anyone.

Aroma Radio gave this intresting trivia that Gulzar wrote the dialouges for saathiya.

Links
lyrics
gulzar interview in hindu

-------------------spoiler-----------------
Till the end of the movie you are made to take side of the hero and how rekha didn't understand him etc.We are also distracted by their mutual respect for each other and are made to hope for the usual happy ending of the pair getting back together at the end of the movie.But the usual gulzar twist awaits at the end of the movie.At dawn enters sashi kapoor into the waiting room.From him we come to know that rekha got married again and he has come to pick up rekha from the station. Sashi starts telling rekha why he was late, how he was struck in the traffic etc.He then gets her the shawl that she forgets and asks her to wear it as it is cold outside.By these many small gestures he conveys how much he loves and cares for his wife.Our view of the hero mahendra completely changes with those gestures. Even though mahendra was struggling between the 2 women and tried to be sincere, he never loved or cared for his wife sudha like sashi kapoor.He comes to understand what it means to love & care.The audience are left with mixed emotions.You feel pity for the mahendra character and happiness for sudha. Everyone is made to think the mistakes that the character mahender has done and how he could have corrected it.Probably take some lessons from the movie for their personal life.
---------------------------------

Gulzar

2006-01-10T19:56:00.000-08:00

Gulzar, Gulzar, Gulzar. What can you say about this man.It is hard to escape his sensitive words, be it in a story or in a song. If you have a heart and if you can understand his words, he will capture you. He will turn you into a slave, a slave who longs for his words. Gulzar for me epitomizes the best of indian cinema.

He has shinned in all departments. As a lyricist, screenplay writer and director. To put it simply he is a writer, poet for whom cinema is another medium like books to get his literary stuff to the audience. His stories and screenplay carry the same lyricism of his songs.Like a breeze, they cross you, leaving you with a few characters that you will carry with you, all your life.

He is one man who will make you want negative results in movies. While watching his movies,i secretly pray in my heart that the hero and the heroine should not resolve their differences. Let them be separated, a chance meeting is ok, but let them not get together, let them be separated as long as possible. You might think that iam cruel?. Let me be, I would rather wish to have the sweet taste of pain and sorrow that flows out of gulzar's words rather than see a happy couple.

Is there so much sweetness in pain? is sorrow an enjoyable thing?.Yes, in a gulzar movie it is.He is a class act, who can take you into the complex world of human relationships, put forward so many questions, make you support both the opposing parties and leave you with moist eyes.He is a man who has repeatedly portrayed indian sensitivity at its best.

You hear a song like "Therey beena zindaghi mei koyi" from aandhi.The song breaks in between and sanjeev kumar utters the words that you know by heart, the song then goes on.A sadness sets into you, not an overpowering one, a melancholic sweet one.It's done,You are already under the gulzar spell. what is about those words, why does it create a mild sorrow in us?.Think its cause they are just not words, those words brings with it, the life of a man, his happiness, his love,his pain. Everything transferred to you in those few lines.A feeling that is unique of a gulzar song.

Lyrics in his movies are very much an essential part of it.They are not in the movie just for the heck of it.They are the musical version of the movie, capturing and enhancing the situation to greater heights.When you are watching a movie like Lekin, the first thing that strikes you is the imagination of gulzar the writter, a soul struck in time longing to free itself,waiting for someone to free her, hmmmmmmm, what a great imagination, you think. Before you could even come out of that thought, Lata mangeshkar sings the beautiful lyrics of gulzar, "Main Ek Sadi Se..".Its an overwhelming feeling when you hear it, the lyrics raises above the story capturing the feelings of a pitiful soul.When you hear the beautiful composition and a flawless rendering of it.It is bliss.Those are the moments that i can't get in any great international director movie, moments only an indian can enjoy to the core and only gulzar can write it that beautifully.

Gulzar's movies are about life. The innumerable beauties that it carries. It asks you to appreciate life, embrace life as it comes, see life in its wholeness, where inevitable things happen but you carry on, where mistakes of the past become sweet memories, where happiness is in living life moraly right and working for the common good of others, where love is the purpose of living. It teaches you to love life deeply and your partner even more deeper.

Director
Ijazaat

Writter
Masoom
Rudaali

Links:
A short bio
His personal site
Gulzar info
Gulzar the poet
interview

Black Friday

2006-01-04T19:40:00.000-08:00

It's a shame that this movie is banned in india.Just another example of our government’s attitude of pushing the bad thing under the carpet and act nothing has happened rather than face the truth and correct itself.

The movie tells the story of How the bombay blasts happened .It starts from the incident and takes us on the trip of how the police pieced all the information together. The movie which does a "how the incident happened?", somewhere in between changes to "Why the incident happened?”. The movie which meticulously constructs the whole story of the blast , goes to the roots and completes the circle. The vicious circle of violence, from the Bombay riots to the Bombay blast.

At the start of the movie when the blast happens, you hear that ringing sound that one hears after a blast.A sound that deafens and numbs senses for a while. The movies comes back to the same blast at the end with that same sound, to the deafness, shock and numbing of senses.

The movie follows an internationally old filming style of Cinema Verite, but a first, as far as indian movies are concerned."Battle of Algiers", Z are supposed to some of the best examples of cinema verite style. This is more like a documentary filming style with focus on realism and the idea, rather than a story about a protagonist (Means no hero/heroine, think about that, an indian movie without an hero, isn't this movie different?).It mostly uses non professional actor's, real location, natural light and most of the scenes are shot on hand held camera's. In black friday you can see that style to a great extent, you can notice that in the movie the, scenes are short, no big dramatics, uses spatial and temporal discontinuity, realistic actions, real locations, non judgmental characterization, news clip inserts for authenticity etc all of which add to the realism in the movie.The fact that the movie jumps from character to character and different locations, breaks the audience continuity on the individuals and makes them focus on the incident.

Aditya Srivastava

The script is awesome, because the movie follows the book, which is organized by chapters, anurag follows a non linear narration. The book constructs the whole story on information that became available to police and not a complete timeline narration. Anurag who is sticking to the book jump's from bombay blast to ISI training to ayodhya incident breaking the continuity.

He seems to have painstakingly constructed the movie.The movie if broken into distinct scenes, will go into 1000 of small scenes taking place in various locations. The movie is shot in bombay, calcutta, delhi, jaipur and many villages. To capture them one by one at various places that too for a scene that won’t even appear for a minute in the movie is just awesome. It shows the meticulous preparation and the humongous amount of effort that has gone into the movie.In the first part of the movie on an average there is an editing cut for every 10/15 seconds and many of them are scene changes.

Anurag is one unlucky guy for sure. After this much of hard work, his movie still hasn't seen the day.Its hard to think how he will get his energy back to do another movie.After all his movies continually facing problems with the censor board, i wont be surprised if his next movie is a pure dance & fight mainstream movie.

Anurag kashyap

As far as the script of this movie is concerned anurag does not take any sides.He narrates the movie from a journalistic point of view.He could have shown more about the root causes of the bombay blasts like the bombay riots and the babri masjid issue, but i guess that would be an entirely different movie. Think this is all he can show within the context of the blast.

For example at the start of the movie, the blast occurs, a typical mainstream indian movie would exploit this scene to the core, mutilated arms and legs lying around, burning bodies, women folks crying, grief all around. The post blast scene could be used thoroughly to get the sympathy out of the audience, you can make the audience cry out loud with those scenes. But in the movie, you just see one guy crying, a few scenes of bodies being taken on stretchers etc. The scenes then cuts to a guy stealing a gold chain from a dead body, soon you move on to the next blast and in a few scenes later you are with the investigation team. There is no time here to waste on sentimentality, the important thing is the truth behind the incident and not the commercial success of the movie.It's like anurag saying, "Let's move on with the investigation". The journalistic writings of hussain zaidi, well directed by anurag.

Similarly on an another scene, when tiger memon's house is being searched, everybody is eager to know what is going to come out. The way i would expect this scene to play out in a usual movie would be like this, a group of cops ruthlessly ransacking the house with a fast paced back ground music and finding an evidence. But this is a very different movie, you see the cops joking around, the inspector moving into the kitchen to get something to eat, instead of the pacy BGM you hear the sounds of the outside streets, the scene then cuts to the inspector eating a banana and feeling it bad to eat before the constable. Very unconventional way of handling for a hindi movie but realistic and that is the way most of the scenes are handled throughout the movie.

Sometimes the narration cuts to a few lighter ones too. when the police discovers the unexploded scooter. There is this guy who first noticed the scooter. He keeps saying that he always doubted there was something wrong about the scooter to who ever he sees.

Coming back to the editing of the movie, it employs the goddardian jump cuts at many places which gives the edginess and pace to the movie.There is a scene to show the efforts that the police have put to get all kinds of information regarding the memon’s. The way the scene plays out. you see, the tired kay kay taking bath for a few seconds, next cut you see him in the car, next cut you see the long shot of a building, next cut close up of the house, next cut the inspector bent to hear a girl.All these cuts happening in a gap of few seconds.

Like goddard, anurag does this pacey cut followed by a scene that the audience might consider unimportant.The girl tells the inspector about how tiger memon, their angry neighbor used to shout at the kids who were playing outside his house.

Again all these scenes break your effort to make a story out of all the incidents that you are watching. You will fail to get the sense of completeness or wholeness that you get in a regular movie. The narration makes sure that the movie doesn't slip into the tag of another dreamy story which will be forgotten soon, but with the realistic portrayal it makes sure that you will believe the movie 100% and you will always associate the blast with the movie from now on.

The movie which is based on the book on the same title by hussain zaidi has been in the market for so many years. But the government has banned the movie. Hussain Zaidi was the reporter of the Mumbai newspaper Mid day, which has produced this movie.

The movie addressing the blind peoples of both communities, starts and ends with Gandhi's statements "An eye for an eye will leave the world blind".

Cast and Credits:

Kay Kay .... Rakesh Maria
Pavan Malhotra .... Tiger Memon
Aditya Srivastava .... Badshah Khan
Dibyendu Bhattacharya .... Yeda Yakub
Kishore Kadam .... Dangle
Gajraj Rao .... Dawood Phanse
Zakir Hussain .... Nand Kumar Chougale
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Imtiaz Ali .... Yakub Menon
Aditya Bhattacharya .... Sheikh Aziz
Ashraf Ul Haq .... Bashir Khan
Pankaj Jha .... Anwar Theba
Pratima Kazmi .... Badshah's mother
Vijay Maurya .... Dawood Ibrahim
Loveleen Mishra .... Newstrack Interviewer
Pranay Narayan .... Imtiaz Ghavate
Nawazuddin .... Asgar Mukadam
Bobby Parvez .... Rakesh Khurana
Jeetu Shastri .... Tainur

Good action by everyone, especially Pavan malhotra and adithya srivastava. Pavan malhotra is back with his bombay accent of "Salim langde pe math ro".He is awesome, when he shows his anger against the hindu’s.

Music:
Music is by Indian Ocean

Links:
Kay Kay interview on Black Friday
Produced by Mid Day Multimedia
Black Friday book review on Times
pawan's review on the book

Sati -1989 Bengali

2006-01-02T17:48:00.000-08:00

Aparna sen's 3rd movie is a story set in the 19th century, even before the british raj abolished the inhuman act of sati.But this is not a movie about sati, but rather a look at the way women where treated at that time period.

-----story---------
The movie is the story of a mute girl uma(shabana azmi).Uma is an orphan who was bought up by her uncle. The mute uma also has problems in her horoscope.Who ever marries her will die for sure.Her uncle's own daughter is ready for marriage but uma being the eldest the problem of younger marrying before elder arises. So the men folk and the local priest decide to marry her to a tree, with the idea that her younger sister can get married without any issues.A human being married to a tree and the complications that arise out of it is the movie.
-----------------

The groom

The Bride

The feminist aparna sen treads her favorite path.The movie shows how women where exploited during that time period.The movie actually starts with an act of sati being performed.The widow who is kind of unconscious is being taken to the pyre and two guys are talking one says that the widow is very brave she didn't even utter a word or protest against the sati.For that the other guy replies that is cause she was already given opium.

It is a time period when having a sati in the house is considered a great fortune and the bride that does not protest and burn in silence is considered an angel. But the movie is not about sati,it is about how women where treated during that time period. Aparna brings in various feministic issues into the main thread.Like Uma's brother who only has daughters does a second marriage just like that to arrange finances for her marriage and to have a son.The way a small boy in the family is given more preference over Uma to name a few incidents.

Mute Uma representing the 19th century women who didn't have any voice in the society marries another mute and unimportant thing of those days, the tree. But the Tree at the end turns out to be a better deal to her.

The movie is not the best of aparna, it could have been done a lot better, the script fails to put together the central theme well as aparna deviates into many issues. Added to it is the complex role of uma, which shabaha didn't play that convincingly. A different story.

shabhana and aparna

Trivia:
Shabhana is the assistant director for aparna sen's movie Guglel.

---spoiler-------------
The rest of the story and what to make out of the ending.

Uma who is married to the tree, longs for human touch and she is used by a family acquaintance nabin. she becomes pregnant and the family wants to get rid of the baby.
The medicine woman who gives the abortion medicines says that they have to do that only as there is no one man enough in the village to step up and accept the child.
The medicine fails; uma and the family seem to be heading towards a disgrace.

But a stormy night ends the movie with the tree falling and killing uma. The symbolic meaning of it this that, in a village of coward men, the tree, uma's husband steps up and saves her dignity. The dead body of uma with blood in the forehead resembles the vermilion of the wife.Uma who died with her husband tree has symbolically become a sati, the virtuous woman who dies with her husband.
-----------------

Aparna Sen

2006-01-02T09:45:00.000-08:00

Aparna sen is one of those few female director's who made a mark for themselves in the indian film industry.She is one of those rare mix of beauty and brain. Daughter of Chidananda Dasgupta, who co-founded the Calcutta Film Society with Satyajit Ray, She came into the film industry as an actress in Theen Kanya, introduced by satyajit ray in the early 60's.She acted in many films for Ray and many others before making her directorial debut in 1981.The movie was 36 chowringhee lane, which started as a script that was approved by her idol Satyajit ray himself and on his suggest that she herself should direct the movie. She did make ray proud ,took a gem of a movie that has gone down as a classic. She also got the country's highest award for direction, the national award for best director on her first movie itself.

Aparna who is also called as Rinadi, since then has made many movies based on female characters and has established herself as one of india's ace directors. She is also a scriptwriter, actress and a magazine editor. she was awarded the padmashree in 1986.

Aparna sen films in alternate movies
36 chowringhee lane
Sati

Links
Aparna sen interview
Aparna in hindu

Shakespeare-Wallah 1965 English

2005-12-27T22:24:00.000-08:00

The merchant ivory site says that it is a film of "unexpected juxtapositions". It is a movie of unexpected juxtapositions, and it starts right from the name, Shakespeare wallah. Shakespeare an english literary giant and wallah a casual hindi word used to associate a person with something, usually with sellers. Like Panwallah, teawallah etc to denoted what that person who is dealing with tea or pan.Here it is Shakespeare wallah, the people who are associated with Shakespeare plays or you can think them as people who are trying to sell Shakespeare to a crowd which is not interested in buying it anymore.

Shakespeare wallah is the story of an english drama troupe, which travels around india staging Shakespearean plays at various places. The story takes place in post independent india, where the taste of the people have changed.The new medium of cinema and that to in the regional language has taken over the charm for Shakespearean plays.

The drama troupe lead by Mr. Tony Buckingham(Geoffrey Kendal), also has his wife Mrs. Carla Buckingham(Laura Liddell) and daughter Lizzie Buckingham(Felicity Kendal).Tony is finding it hard to deal with the fastly changing india which is cutting of its British links, but he loves the country and its audience so much that he does not want to go back to england. His daughter lizzie is in love with a rich indian playboy Sanju (Shashi kapoor), who already has a relationship with an indian actress Manjula (Madhur Jaffrey).The buckinghams are worried about the future of their daughter in free india.what happens to lizzie is the rest of the movie.

This is a very sublime and interesting movie.The movie's has this clever screenplay which brings the "unexpected juxtapositions" at so many places.For lizzie the indian cinema which is affecting her and her family professionally affects her personally also, through the indian actress manjula who is in love with her boy friend.The view of Shakespearean plays as obsolete and things of the past by the schools and other institution in india, in a sense also means the presence of that anglo indian family as also a thing of past, obsolete and unimportant. They are no longer needed in free india.

This again is shown in the meeting of the Buckingham's with a maharaja(utpal dutt), who is coming to terms with the free india, where the importance of the kings have been reduced and they have been made insignificant. A forgotten maharaja watches the Shakespearean play done by a forgotten anglo indian family.

There is a meeting scene before the play,and the whole scene is greatly done.The king and the players have dinner together and the king talks about how insignificant his position has become.He talks about how shakespeare has written about the kings, the quotes from Henry IV.
"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown".
he goes on to talk about the glory days of his father and how half of his palace is turned into office and his plans of making part of the remaining into a hotel.

For which Tony & carla Buckingham quote from Richard II

Let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been deposed; some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;

and tells that Mr.buckingham should adjust with the not so big stage provided by him. Mr.buckingham replies that he is used to making adjustment with the stage provided to him. The king says

"sooner or later we must all have to come to terms with reality. We are all forced to makes cuts in the text written for us by destiny".

Two people who's destiny has been changed in post independent india.

utapl dutt

After the play when the buckingham's are on the road their car breaks down and they meet a guy who shows tricks with monkey’s. They talk with him and he says, he is not doing to well and that the people don’t care for his art any more. They are able to relate to him.

There are lot of scenes where the shakspearean plays are cleverly used with the circumstances of the movie. Credit to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and the merchant ivory team as whole.

Geoffrey and Lizzie

The movie is supposedly an inspiration from the experiences of the kendal family who had their own drama troupe named Shakespeareana and did exactly what the buckingham's did. Travel around india and stage shakespearean plays.The troupe included their two daughters jeniffer and felicity also.

Shakespeareana 1954

The movie was well acted by kendals, especially geoffrey kendal. He is awesome as the stage actor or the worried troupe lead, he is simply superb. Felicity has also did her part well.

Felicity and shashi

Cast and credits:
Shashi Kapoor .... Sanju
Felicity Kendal .... Lizzie Buckingham
Geoffrey Kendal .... Mr. Tony Buckingham
Laura Liddell .... Mrs. Carla Buckingham
Madhur Jaffrey .... Manjula
Utpal Dutt .... Maharaja
Praveen Paul .... Didi
Prayag Raj .... Sharmaji (as Prayag Raaj)
Pinchoo Kapoor .... Guptaji
Jim D. Tytler .... Bobby (as Jim Tytler)
Hamid Sayani .... Headmaster's Brother
Marcus Murch .... Dandy in 'The Critic'
Pratap Sharma .... Aslam

Music is by sathyajit ray.You can feel his presence on the backgrounds for the various plays.

The movie shows an young shashi kapoor and jeniffer kendal.

Cinematography is by by Subrata Mitra, the satyajit ray regular.

Awards:
Madhur Jaffrey won the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival for her performance, and one of the greatest names of Indian cinema, director Satyajit Ray, provides the film's musical score.

Trivia:
#)Madhur Jaffrey is the wife of saeed jaffrey and the co-director of Ismail merchants Cotton Mary.

#)Shakespeare wallah by the merchant ivory team, was there first international hit.

#)This movie launched the carrier of felicity kendal in UK.

Links:
http://www.merchantivory.com/

Merchant Ivory

2005-12-27T21:54:00.000-08:00

Ivory,jhabvala,Merchant

The Merchant ivory team is one of the very few teams that has lasted for such a long time in the film industry.The merchant ivory team abroad is know for their periodic literary adaptations and indian theme movies.The team consists of Ismail Merchant the producer, James ivory the director and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala the writer.

The Merchant ivory production was first started with the idea of making english language films in india for international release.Later they branched off to literary movies and made their name their also.

Ismail merchant died may 25th 2005 and the recently released white countess is the last of their partnership.

There movies here at alternate movies
shakespeare wallah
Bombay talkies
Householder

Links:
Know more about the three here at the merchant ivory site
Ismail Merchant
James ivory
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Merchant ivory home page
Criterion has a special dvd collection on them.check it out here
Ismail merchant death news.
Merchant ivory on wiki

Saanjhbathir Roopkathara(Strokes and Silhouettes)-Bengali 2002

2005-12-22T08:34:00.000-08:00

This is one of those intelligent and abstract movie which rarely gets made in indian filmdom.Inspired by the Celebrated Sahitya Akademi awardee, poet and novelist Joy Goswami's novel of the same name. This movie brings to screen the beauty of creating something. It takes us deeper into the characters, into their consciousness and to the root of an creative idea. Unfortunately this movie didn't get its due recognition. Probably, the fact that this is a little abstract and a difficult movie to follow, worked against it.

joy goswami's book

----------story------------
The story is narrated by ‘Saanjbathi’ (twilight lamp), alias ‘Tukun’.Tukun is heavily influenced by her father's creative world of poetry and paintings. Tukun who also lives in this dreamy world, is not able to come to terms with the real world. Her dream world is repeatedly broken by reality which makes her disillusioned and loose her creative visions.what happens to her did she come to terms with her dreams and real life is the rest of the movie..
------------------------------

This is a very difficult story to tell. It is hard to portrait someone's consciousness on the screen. But anjan das has brought out the story beautifully on the screen.

The characters inner thoughts, dreams, visions and real life incidents mingle in the story. The story is narrated as events happening and what is tukun thinking about it, what is going on in her mind.It switches between reality and visons frequently.By making us aware of the real life incidents and how it affects tukun's vision and the way she thinks, Anjan Das gets us very close to the character. you are literally looking into the mind of the character.

The tukun character is a interesting one. She is that dreamy girl growing up under the love and care of her parents. She is shielded from the harsh real world and nurtured in a dream world by her parents. when she goes away from her parent to study at a different place, she goes through the growing into an adult routine.Dreams are broken, you are forced to face the realities of life and made to come to terms with yourself.Tukun also goes through that routine.She concludes that dreams and realities are different things and she cannot expect life to be like a dream.

Even though the movie is kind of slow. There is harldy any unnecessary scene.With in a few minutes into the movie,Anjan das easily establishes the deep relationship between the daughter and father. He weaves the story effortlessly from then on.With minimal characters and a good screenplay, anjan doesn't allow us to be distracted and keeps us focused on the characters.

Tukun who is trying hard to create something, trying hard to dream, realizes in the end that there is dream in reality itself.She also tastes the joy of creating something, she becomes a writer.

***********spoiler**********
Tukun who wants to create something, listens to his father about how he gets the idea to paint.He tells her that he gets the visions, he first gets the silhouette and then the whole image appears to him.

Tukun also wants to emulate her father tries to create the same way.she gets those visions, she sees this poor and sad women in her dreams who compels her to write a story about her.But she is just a silhouette and tukun is not able to write anything about her.She tries hard and still she is not able to write it.incidents in her life makes her decide that dreams don't exist in reality.But at the end of the movie there is a scene where she finds that one of the characters in the movie has a broken chappel similar to the poor women who came in her visions.When we see that character as the poor women , the silhouette that was presented in the vision becomes a full fledged figure.Tukun realizes that dreams don't come to you. you create them with your realities.

*********************************

Cast and Credits:
Indrani Haldar .... Tukun
Soumitra Chatterjee .... Saikat
Ratna Sarkar Mandel .... Boyfriend

Indrani Haldar & Soumitra Chatterjee

The acting by Indrani haldar and soumitra chatterjee is very good in the movie.The movie get's its credibility only because of the awesome acting by these two. Especially soumitra chatterjee, who as painter saikat has given an excellent performance.

Cinematography: Adinath Das

The movie is produced by one of the guy the indian blogosphere hates the most,IIMP boss, arindham chaudhari.But he should be appreciated for producing this movie.This script was supposedly rejected by many producers .This movie is as remote as you can go from a commercial material, don’t have an idea what made arindham produce this movie. But he did produce it under a new production company called "planman life" and successfully canvassed Columbia tri star to market it. Saanjhbathir Roopkathara has the distinction of being the first ever regional film in India to be released by a Hollywood studio.The movies supposedly did well at the box office and was very well received in the international film festivals.

Arindham chaudhari

Awards:
Its sad that this movie didn't get any national awards. Every one was hoping that this movie would clinch the indian oscar entry for that year, but it didn't. Blockbuster Devdas was sent instead .At the national level Mr and Mrs iyer took many of the big awards.

It was screened at the London film festival as one of the seven outstanding movies of the year.

joy goswami

DVD:
The DVD/VCD is released by Shradha Home Videos.More

Trivia:
Supposedly a Second part of this movie is coming in next year(2006).more

When tukun asks questions to her dad about how he gets his visions to create something. He reads her the pablo neruda poem "Poetry"

Poetry
And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.more

Links:
Saanjhbathir Roopkathara official website
Joy Goswami in wiki

Anjan Das

2005-12-22T07:43:00.000-08:00

Anjan Das is documentary and corporate filmmaker who has made a number of films for leading Indian and multinational companies. His first experimental feature film, Sainik was made in 1976. Thereafter he made only documentary films for twenty-five years. His second feature, Strokes and Silhouettes was highly acclaimed by critics and lovers of cinema and was shown at many festivals worldwide.via chaosmag.net

Saanjhbathir Roopkathara
Iti srikanta

Bombay Talkie -1970 English

2005-12-19T16:42:00.000-08:00

Another ismail merchant movie which has that easy feel and subtle emotions. This movie is a trip down the memory lane, so much of time has passed since this movie was released. you can see a young shashi kappor, jeniffer kendall, aparna sen,utpal dutt,jalal agha and a young usha uthup, who was usha iyer then.

The movie tells the story of Lucia Lane, an English writer who's last best seller was about hollywood. She comes to check out bollywood for inspiration for her next book. An self absorbed women she meets hari the script writter and vikram(shashi Kapoor) an upcoming film star. Through her the story makes fun of the film and spiritual industry of those years.

The movie gives a glimpse of the hindi film industry of the 70's to the western audiences. Like the shooting scenes of a song which is staged on a big type writer set ,with the group dancers dancing on the keys. The movie also shows us the spiritual part of india that fascinated the hippie era. It takes a dig at the swamiji's and the mad crowd that follows them.Pichoo kapoor comes as the funny guruji.

Watch it if you want to watch the younger version of some famous stars. Otherwise there is not much in the movie.

Cast and credits:
Shashi Kapoor .... Vikram
Jennifer Kendal .... Lucia Lane
Zia Mohyeddin .... Hari
Aparna Sen .... Mala
Utpal Dutt .... Bose
Nadira .... Anjana Devi
Pinchoo Kapoor .... Swamiji
Helen .... Heroine in Gold
Usha Iyer .... Cabaret Singer
Sulochana .... Gopal Ma
Jalal Agha .... Young Man with anjana devi

Ismail merchant comes at the start for a few minutes.

Music:
Music is by shankhar jaikishen.There are 4 songs in the movie.
1)Good Times & Bad Times
Singer : Usha Iyer
Lyrics : Usha Uthup
2)Hari Om Tat Sat
Singer : Usha Iyer
Lyrics : Usha Uthup
3)Tum Mere Pyar Ki Duniya Mein
Singer : Mohd Rafi
4)Typewriter Tip Tip
Singer : Asha Bhosle, Kishore Kumar

There are 2 songs by usha iyer(uthup).Both of them in english.It was interesting to listen to Good times and bad times, a carpenters type song of the 70's set to a tabala background. Hari om tat sat is a typical jazzy number of the hippie era. And the two big guys have sung one song each, as usual they rock.

Listen to the song here

Iti srikanta(Yours truly, srikanta) - 2004 -Bengali

2005-12-16T17:19:00.000-08:00

Its yet another love triangle story of Saratchandra Chatterjee, that has been made into a movie.This time it is the story of a man torn between two women .

----story----------
Strikanta(Adil) the hero is the narrator of the story. He is a care free guy, who comes across is old child hood friend Rajalakshmi(Reema Sen) who has become a prostitute. Rajalakshmi takes care of Srikanta and he start having a relationship with her. srikanta cannot stay in a place or relationship for a long time.So he goes away from rajalakshmi now and then only to return back to her.Once, when he moves out of rajalakshmi's house he goes to his native place and meets his old friend(Gahar).IN the village he comes across a vaishnavite Kamallata(Soha Ali Khan) and falls in love with her.From then on he oscillates between these two women.Even though he appreciates the care that raja lakshmi shows for him, he does not like her possessiveness. who he chooses is the climax.
---------

The story is based on sarat chandra's 1917 novel srikanta.sarat beautifully places two women, who are totally opposite to each other and creates his usual love triangle.The two womens rajalakshmi and kamalatha can't be more different.For rajalakshmi is a prostitute living in her own bungalow and kamallatha is a vaishnavite who is residing in a ashram. Rajalakhmi is earthly, passionate and possessive.where as kamalatha is spiritual,calm and un possessive.

These two women are metaphors for many thing.Kamallata representing the mental part of love and Rajlaxshmi the physical. Rajlaxhmi the rich courtesan represents material wealth whereas the kamallata the vaishnavite represents the spiritual one.Raj laxmi wants to posses srikantha, she wants to make him his only, whereas kamallata believes she already has him inside her(mentally/spiritually) and nobody can take him away form her.

soha ali khan

The character srikanta is again an awesome one.He is a nomadic guy who believes that every new experiences enriches him.So he keeps moving from one place to another in search of new experiences. He does not want to be bound by anything and cannot stay in a place or a relation for a long time.He is a man who sits in the cremation ground and ponders about life. He represents the part of everyman which is in search of the true meaning of life.The part that is on a constant search to know what is the right way to live.This character is made to choose between two women. Who both believe that he is their saviour.Raj lakshmi hoping that he would marry her and save her from the immoral life that she is leading and kamal lata believes that he is the one, sent by the gods to save her from the earthly life and lead her to immortality.

The story which i guess is more true to the book,has a few unnecessary scenes.The movie could have been made little crisper.But it does get back to the beautiful climax, showing the stamp of sharath chandra.

Ail & Pijush Ganguly

The novel is set in 1917 and it talks little bit on the social setting of that time period. Through srikanta's friend gahar, it stresses hindu muslim unity.

Reema & soha ali khan

Cast and credits:
Soha Ali Khan .... Kamallata
Reema Sen .... Rajlakshmi
Adil .... Srikanta
Nirmal Kumar
Pijush Ganguly .... Gahar

Soha Ali Khan is the youngest daughter of nawab of pataudi and sharmila tagore.
Adil is a national drama school student.

Music:
Music is by tabla exponent Bikram Ghosh.The movie has a good BGM and an awesome bajan in hindi.

The movie is well cinemetographed by Sirsha Roy and directed by Anjan das.

Anjan Das

Awards:
The Award for the Best Audiography of 2004 is given to Anup Mukherjee for the Bengali Film ITI SRIKANTA for finest recordings of the sound in a superb way that lends an extra dimension to the film.

DVD:
DVD with english subtitles is released by eagle.more

Lorie

2005-12-13T16:02:00.000-08:00

Vijay talwar's lorie is a movie about motherhood. We keep reading stories about lost children's and people stealing children’s very often in the newspapers. This movie is a story about those peoples.

----story------
Geeta Malhotra (Shabana Azmi) a rich girl marries Bhupinder (Farooq Shaikh) against her mom (Rohini Hattangadi) and dad(B.L.Chopra).Geeta later finds out that she cannot become a mother, she goes through a depressive period and one fine day she steals a child.The police are after her, the movie goes to a court climax where she pleads that she should be given the ownership of the child. what happens is the climax.
-----------------

The movie heavily relies on the mother sentiment's and manipulates it to the hilt.The case of the lost child's custody can be dismissed without any question from a law point of view.But because of all the indian mother sentimentality, the movie becomes a court room drama at the end. Decent performance by everyone.

Cast and credits:
Shabana Azmi .... Geeta Malhotra
Farooq Shaikh .... Bhupinder Singh
Swaroop Sampat .... Suman
Naseeruddin Shah .... Micky
Rohini Hattangadi .... Sharda Malhotra
B.L.Chopra ..... Mr.Malhotra
Madan Puri .... Mr. Kapoor
Kiran Vairale .... Majli Kapoor
Sulabha Deshpande .... Shanti
Paresh Rawal .... Prosecuting Attorney
Yunus Parvez .... Head of adoption agency
Javed Khan .... Bus Conductor

You get to see faroque sheik in beard. nasrudden does a cameo as faroque's friend.

Music is by khayyam and produced is sagar sarhadi.

Terrorist - Tamil -1999

2005-12-07T23:43:00.000-08:00

Terrorist by Santosh Sivan is another minimalistic & beautiful movie like Akale.The movie is a great accomplishment for Santosh Sivan, given its meager budget.

-------------story----
Loosely based on the incidents of the rajeev gandhi assassination by the LTTE suicide squad, the movie tells the story of malli. Malli is a hard core terrorist who is sent on a mission to assassinate a VIP.On the mission she discovers that she is pregnant.
In the world of malli there is nothing else but death and loss, her father, brother, lover, friends etc and she is made to choose between death or life for another human being?. what will she do?
---------------

The movie is an indian 'El Mariachi'.Shot in a sparing budget of 25,000$ and in 17 days, the movie is a study on how to make a movie look rich on a meager budget. I think santosh is far better than 'Robert Rodriguez' as unlike El mariachi this movie is rich and shot in 35mm. Sivan cleverly uses visuals and audio to avoid the expensive scenes without compromising on the story.

Santosh employs lot of point of view and mid range shots and rarely uses long shots on an incident.Long shots are used for scenes of beautiful sceneries etc. This repeated point of view shots and short, medium range shots are used to accustom the audience to closer shots. He then brilliantly extends this into circumvent expensive scenes.

For example malli and her guide lotus go through a forest.you keep seeing many short,mid range shots of malli and 'Lotus'.Then there is a setup scene where lotus points to malli a land mine trip wire and explains her how it will go off.so you know by now, how the land mines go off. on a later scene they come to a place where the terrorist have set up a trip wire for military vehicles passing through a road.you hear noises of a jeep/truck coming closer on the road.The camera moves to the direction of the vehicle.But it does not focus the vehicle , it focuses on the trip wire with the head lights of the jeep appearing, out of focus and blurry.This out of focus light move closer to the trip wire.Shivan does a montage shot here, he cuts to the close up of the lotus. you see his facial expression of shock and the sound of explosion and vehicle crashing, the shock of the incident gets to the viewer through lotus's facial expression. Lotus tells malli that because the jeep got blasted, the bodies would have scattered all over and there would be flesh and blood every where. So he tells her not to travel in that direction.They move on in a opposite direction.The scene ends.

So what is avoided here in terms of expenses??.You dont get to see the big explosion, no fire works, no upturned/burning truck or jeep, no extra's lying around with blood, no make up, no mutilated arms and body parts. Santosh achieves two things here. one, he avoids the gory violence scenes that would run counter to the asthetics of the movie. Secondly no big expense on the scene, but the incident is conveyed to the audience and they are convinced.

Off this whole scene you don’t even get to see a drop of blood. Santosh has to be appreciated for taking a movie on violence, without showing much of violence.The regular movie's show violence for 2hours and 15 minutes and then spend the last 15 minutes explaining why violence is bad.But in this movie, you hardly see any violence, even though it has lot of scope for it.

There are numerous shots like this where the focus is on the characters and the bigger incidents happen in out of focus. Even when the movie goes to the climax where the VIP is to be assassinated.you don't see any long shots of big stage or decorations and a great crowd to welcome him, but you feel that it is happening. On one level for people in india and especially tamil nadu, the resemblance of the story to rajeev gandhi's assassination will fill up the gap of the numerous people who were gathered there. The mind invariable imagines the crowd that was present at the rajeev gandhi assassination. Even if you are not aware of it, you are shown images of the the band playing , like 2,3 guys and the focus is on the band players with the audio of a big crowd around, then the next frame shows a bunch of females standing next to malli, say 6,7 women they occupy the complete frame. That is all the people you need to show that there is a crowd. And add to this the falling flower petals and the background music, you got a crowd. And again point of view shots of malli with the vip and the crowd out of focus and blurry, makes your mind assume the blurry things as crowds.As the vip comes closer he cuts to a short range shot.The vip comes into focus and at that time again the frame is filled with vip and a very few people.The whole crowd scene is done.

Santosh sivan has not only used his camera techniques to overcome the budget constraints, he has used them to enhance the beauty of the movie also. The movie is a visual feast. It is one thing to go to an european country to capture the natural beauty and another thing to capture the beauty of an ordinary indian town. The movie has like 2 locations, some jungles in kerala and madras. A simple madras temple becomes beautiful in sivan's camera. But we should look at the efforts that he has taken to achieve that.How easy is it to capture the beauty of temple in a busy town??.It is definitely going to be hard so what santosh has done is he has shot the scenery shots mostly in early morning, as that is the time where there would be less crowd and it is easier to capture the pictures without any boy or a buffalo getting into the frame. you can also see scenes of airplane flying into the beautiful setting and trains crossing the bridge, which means some painful waiting and impromptu idea to capture the surrounding.

Off the whole 90 minutes of the movie sivan would have shown the close up of ayisha dhakhar atleast 15,20 minutes. He has used the beauty of ayeesha eyes to the hilt. By the end of the movie you will know the facial features of ayeesha by heart.Her expressive eyes and smile add so much to the aesthetics of the movie.He also repeatedly uses water when ever malli is thinking.

It is easy to get distracted into the political environment of the movie, but sivan stays out of all the politics.There is no advice or taking sides in the movie, it clearly avoids the political side.I guess if he would have taken a pro tamilian stand, he could have made profit out of a beautiful masala movie that could whip up the sentiments of the tamilians and the general pity of indian mothers.

Sivan again stays clear of political, emotional scenes and concentrates only on the characters.He looks the story through there point of view, their losses, grievances, how they have changed etc. For example lotus the guide of malli talks like a matured guy and behaves as one for the most part, but when he sees a tree he becomes the boy that he is and starts swinging in that. Similarly malli even though a hard core terrorist, when she sees a new dress and various women posters in the room she becomes and average women posing like those womens in the poster with her dress.

The story beautifully counter points malli's action packed harsh background which is filled with death, blood and violence to the easy going, simple and loving world of the madras house filled with hope and life. From seeing children’s running with AK 47's in her old place she sees smiling kids neatly dressed in their uniform going to school.The old man at the house makes her understand the importance of love and the beauty of life itself.

There is a down side to the low budget also, from the leo toys type machine guns used to the irritating back ground music there are lot of bad things. And the budget constraint means the movie cannot have the luxury of doing a 2 and a half hour movie with slow opening and gradual development of the story or gradual transformation of malli. The movie starts right from the word go and things unfold fastly.It also meant that santosh has to keep the movie simple and not complicate it with too many moral questions and dramatics.So you will be disappointed if you are looking either for an action flick or a deeply disturbing war movie.It is a simple movie which tells the view of a terrorist to its best with the given resources.

A simple and visualy rich movie.

Cast and Credits:
Ayesha Dharker .... Malli
K. Krishna .... Lover
Sonu Sisupal .... Leader
Vishwas .... Lotus
Anuradha .... Sumitra
Bhavani .... Old Lady
Parmeshwaran .... Vasu
Gopal .... Gopal
Saravana .... Traitor
Anna Durai .... Photographer
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Bhanu Prakash .... Perumal
Vishnu Vardhan .... Thyagu

Excpet for ayesha dharkhar and vishnu vardhan everybody else are non professional actors.

Music:
Completely amateur performance by sonu shishupal and rajamani, the music directors of the movie. The background music is loud at many places, there are times you cannot hear the dialogues at all, the BGM totally drowns the dialogues. And there are some experimentative BGM's in the movie which were totally out of place.

Trivia:
John malkovich was so impressed by the movie that he wrote an article about it in the times.He kind of became a post-facto executive producer. The reissued film's titles read "John Malkovich Presents".

Links:
Terrosit movie homepage

santhosh sivan homepage

John Malkovich's article in Newyork times

john malkovich godfathered terrorist

Akale(At a Distance) -2004-Malayalam

2005-12-01T14:57:00.000-08:00

Akale, based on Tennessee Williams play "Glass Menagerie" is the story of an Anglo Indian family in Kerala.

---story----
The family consists of Margaret(Sheela),Neil(Prithviraj) and Rose(Geetu Mohandas).Margaret the mother has been taking care of her children’s since her husband forsake her. Neil the eldest son works as a clerk in a warehouse and aspires to be a writer, rose the daughter is a very timid and sensitive person who does not do any anything. Rose who has a slightly deformed leg suffers from inferiority complex. The movie is about the dreams and aspirations of these characters.
---------

The whole movie stands on the story and its beautiful characters. All the characters in this movie live in there own dream world and are afraid to face reality. The fragile & sensitive rose spends her time with fragile glass toys, Neil lives in the dream world of movies and writing stories. Margaret the mother lives in a dream world where her daughter is not different from any other and that her daughter will soon find a suitable boy.

Rose makes a wish, another magical moment

The movie is mainly about the timid and fragile rose, who harbors an inferiority complex because of her deformed legs. She spends her time speaking to glass toys and taking care of them. In her small world all those creatures are unique and have there own lives.

We all have our broken dreams and unfilled wishes which lie deep down in the abyss of our heart.Time might have healed the scars that came out of those broken dreams but still some where in the remote corners of the heart, that dream still lingers on.what will happen when that dream manifests itself one day and catches you by surprise?. That will be a magical moment, a moment of pure joy and happiness from the bottom of the heart.

There is one such moment in the play.One day when rose was not expecting, her dream world peeps into her real world. she meets her childhood crush(Freddy) and what follows is a magical scene.In that single moment of care, love and attention, rose blooms, she looses her inferiority complex, forgets an entire life's sadness and dances to the music that flows into the room. she is so happy about the meeting that she does not even mind freddy breaking the horn of her glass unicorn. she takes it as a symbol of normalcy returning in her life.

This is a small movie which runs for an hour and a half.The movie is a ditto recreation of the Tennessee William's play.The stereotypical way of an old hero with beard & glass doing a flash back and an elevated western background score all looked old style.Also the movie being so true to its original is little out of place comparing to the indian environment. If you leave all these things and look at the movie comparing it with contemporary indian movies. This is a very sensitive, minimalistic and different movie.

Cast and credits:
Tom George .... Fredy Evans
Geethu Mohandas .... Rose
Prithwiraj .... Neil
Sheela .... Margaret

Tom George who is also the producer of this movie.

Geethu Mohandas

Prithviraj

The cinematography part of the movie is well done, You wont see any thing bright are very pleasing, the whole movie has a color tone which is kind of old and nostalgic. The tone changed to a sepia one when ever rose thinks about her pasts.

Shyamaprasad the director

Music:
The movie has a nice BGM, sometimes little out of synch with the movie, but very pleasing music. There is no song in the movie. But a music video inspired by the movie was later released. And it has some wonderful songs. Especially the title song Akale, an awesome melody.
Listen to the songs here at musicIndiaonline.com

Awards:
The 2004 National award for best supporting Actress went to Sheela, "for the grace with which she depicts the tragedy of a community fading away". It also bagged the Best Feature Film in Malayalam award.

Sheela

At the state level the movie won six awards for best film, best director (Shyama Prasad), best actress (Geetu Mohandas), best supporting actress (Sheela), best cinematographer (S. Kumar) and art direction (Raja Unnithan).

Trivia:
Shyamaprasad is planning to adapt O.V. Vijayan's classic "Khazakinnte Itihasam," into a movie.

Links:
shyam prasad home page
Glass Menagerie play

Anahaat (Eternity)-Marathi -2003

2005-11-29T12:01:00.000-08:00

Anahaat is a simple story told in a stage play style. Excellent cinematography, the beautiful sonali bendre,well decorated hampi ruins and rich costumes all add up to give a visually pleasing movie.Amol should be appreciated for bringing such richness & grandeur with minimal characters and budget. But the beautiful sonali's presence is balanced by the old Anant nag and deepthi naval who's age shows even after heavy makeup.

----story-----------
Anahaat tells the story of malla raja(Ananth Nag), who has gone impotent. The senate asks the Queen Sheelavathi(Sonali Bendre) to go through an ancient custom called niyog.Where she is supposed to select a male of her choice and spend the night "from sunset to sunrise" with him, to produce a heir. The queen is not consulted on this. The senate insists that she follow the age old custom and the king is bound by his duty.what happens to the queen is the rest of the story.
-----------------

The story of the movie is based on Surendra Verma's play "Surya Kee Antim Kiran Se Surya Kee Pehli Kiran Tak"(From the last to the first ray of sun), which Palekar had translated into Marathi and directed in 1972.

The story of Anaahat revolves around three characters, apart from the king and queen there is Mahattarika(Depthi Naval) who is the cheif maid and a childhood friend of the king.As she is close to both the king and queen, through her we come to know the turmoil both of them go through because of the niyog.

Apart from a close study of characters, the story is also about giving choice to women and separating sex from love.This is a very bold movie and again amol palekhar should be appreciated for bringing out these kind of movies.

Cast and credits:
Sonali Bendre .... Queen Sheelavati
Anant Nag .... The King of Shravasti
Deepti Naval .... Mahattarika

Art Direction:
Nitin Desai is the art designer and he has done a lot of research to bring the richness to the movie.The movie shows the indian way of keeping track of time. They use something called ghatti-ka-patr where a vessel is placed in water and time is calculated by units of the time taken for the vessel to fully submerge into water.
The jewels used in the movie are supposedly authentic gold.

Music:
The movie has very good music.Most of the singing that happens in the movie are supposedly dhrupad.

Trivia:
The film was shot in 18 days in Hampi, a world heritage site near Hosbet, Karnataka. Palekar required special permission from the Archaeological Survey of India to shoot deep within the ruins of the Vijaynagar empire and also after sunset.

Amol Palekar

Awards:
Anaahat (Eternity) received the Best Artistic Direction Award at the World Film Festival in Bangkok.

Links:
Anahaat home page

Diksha(initiation)-1991

2005-11-25T10:42:00.000-08:00

Diksha is based on Jnanapith Dr.U.R.Anantha murthy's story "Ghattashraddha".Like his famous novel samskara, this story also takes a critical look into the upper caste brahmin community in southern karnataka.Similiarly this story like samsakara center's around an acharya, who is made to decide on the supposed sin committed by his daughter.The time period of the story is 1930's.

----------------------story-------

Narayan bhatt alias nanni is made to go through the diksha(initiation)at a teacher,acharya udupa(Manohar singh)'s place in a distant village.The master has a widow daughter(Rajshree Sawant), who falls in love with a school teacher.The consequence causes a stir among the conservative community. The acharya's attitude towards that issue makes srikar(K.k.raina) someone who had his diksha through the acharya, and koga(Nana Patekar) a low caste servant who has high regards for brahminhood change their mind.

-------------------------------

It is a tought task to bring the writings of Dr.Anantha murthy to screen.As his stories are multi layered and filled with allegories. Diksha has done its best.But given a choice it is better to read the book.The movie's straight forward narration with sometime exaggerated acting makes this an ordinary movie where Dr murthy's various perspectives are lost.

Ghata Shradhha as a book also seems to have some of the samskara's way of approaching the story , the question of what is the right and wrong way to live for a brahmin.Like samskara here also the learned acharya is questioned.In diksha the acharya, the most learned of all is challenged by two people.The well learned srikar and the uneducated koga.He falls in both their eyes.Koga says "I was able to save your daughter from forest,snakes and wild animals but was not able to save from Brahmins" and questions his core when he asks what is the purpose of being a perfect brahmin when he had failed to be a good father.

For a teacher "Diksha is a unique and rare process of making the life of a disciple more pure, more enlightened and more successful".Also diksha is considered as the second birth of a brahmin.His physical birth being the first and his initiation(mental birth) being the second.

Like samskara, you can feel the multiple meaning of the title diksha at the end.The acharya punishes his daughter in the most cruelest form and falls before the eyes of srikar and koga who take a positive step of stopping to support the wrong customs and initiating themselves to live life in a progressive way.In a way these two undergo a diksha.The low caste koga recites the slogas better than the acharya's students,meaning that reciting slogas is nothign but a thing of practice and its not something that only a brahmin can do.There are more things like this to analyze in the movie as this is from a book by Dr.UR.Anantha murthy.

Cast & Credits:
Manohar singh

THe movie is well supported by some great artists like manohar singh, srikar(k.k.raina), manjunath(Vijay Kashyap),koga(Nana Patekar).One thing i didn't like was Nana patekar's supposedly south indian accent.

The movie has a good cast.Manohar singh,Nana patekar,vijay kashyap and K.K raiana all have done a good job.Nana patekhar as koga talks in the supposedly south indian accent.I dont understand why even art movie director's also use the mehmood accent as the default south indian accent.

Vijay kashyap and K.K.Raina

Music is by mohinderjit singh.He has also done a good job with the background scores.

Arun Kaul

Arun kaul with mrinal sen during the mrigaya shooting.

The movie is Directed by Arun Kaul.who was the screenplay assistant for gulzar in movies like Ijazat, Lekin etc.

Awards:
37th film fare award 1991
Critics' Awards for Best Film Diksha (Arun Kaul)

BEST HINDI FILM, NATIONAL AWARD, 1991: Rajat Kamal (Silver Medals) for both the Director and Producers.

Trivia:
The same story was already made into a movie by Girish Kasaravalli.Yes, his first movie Ghatashraddha ,which got him the first national award for best film in 1977 is based on the same story.

Links:
manohar singh

Arun Kaul

Ankush

2005-11-23T15:02:00.000-08:00

This is a serious movie which starts out well but ends badly. It's a rough and engaging movie that depicts the violence on the streets in its crude and ugly form.The story is about a group of unemployed young guys who went bad because of the society and in comes a girl who changes them all and she is followed by the villain who makes them bad again. An usual story, with some realistic acting performance, especially that of the always angry hero nana patekhar. But the fact was that this story was made in 1986 and was kind of unusual for that time period i guess. The realistic and pacey direction by N.chandra sets the movie apart. But he seems to have been in a rush to complete the movie as the movie rushes to an usual climax.

Nana Patekar .... Ravindra Kelkar 'Ravi'
Rabia Amin .... Manda
Ashalata .... Anita's mom
Raja Bundela .... Saxena
Arjun Chakraborty .... Arjun
Madan Jain .... Shashi
Nisha singh .... Anita
Mahavir Shah .... Gupta

The credit of the movie has the name of arjun chakraborthy and madan jain before nana patekhar.

Music
kuldeep singh

Siddhartha -1972- English

2005-11-22T19:07:00.000-08:00

Siddhartha is based on Herman Hesse's famous novel of the same name. The story is the quest of a young Brahmin boy siddhartha who wants to break away from the routine life that he leads and see the outside world. What follows in one man’s quest to know the ultimate answer. Siddhartha's spiritual journey to attain ever lasting peace transforms himself into a saint, carnal pleasure seeker, material wealth seeker and then ultimately to a simple boatman. As a boatman at last he finds his answers and finds peace with himself.

The movie is an exotic indian spirituality story cooked up for the western audience of the early 70's.The character i guess was made to be identifiable with the hippies of the 60's and 70's.The movie is very visual.There are very few dialogues and the story is mostly told in visuals with big time jumps. Guess most of herman hesse’s philosophical thoughts and story narration was sacrificed for the visual narration.

For an indian viewer there isn't much exotic stuff in here. It is just a rehashing of hindu philosophies.

Cast and Credits:

Shashi Kapoor .... Siddhartha
Simi Garewal .... Kamala
Romesh Sharma .... Govinda
Pinchoo Kapoor .... Kamaswami (as Pincho Kapoor)
Zul Vellani .... Vasudeva
Amrik Singh .... Siddhartha's father
Kunal Kapoor .... Hassan, Siddhartha's son
Shanti Hiranand .... Siddhartha's mother

There are a few nude shots of semi garewal and some kissing scenes in the movie.Semi garewal gets the distinction of being first by any indian actress to do them.

The movie is brilliantly photographed by the swedish photographer Sven Nukvist, who has photographed many of Ingmar Bergman movies.The photography might not look that different from the photography of current films. But the fact is this movie was shot in 1972.

Direction by conrad rooks

Music:
Music is by hemant kumar.The music again seemed to have been made to target the hippies. BGM's include various chants and bengali songs.

Haazar chaurasi ki Maa(Mother of 1084) -1998

2005-11-21T08:07:00.000-08:00

Probably the most sentimental and sensitive of all nihalani movies,this is a gem of a movie.Nihalani who mostly deals with strong male characters this time deals with an old mother.The protagonist sujatha chaterji is not a feminist who wants to fight against the society but an ordinary working woman, who lived in her own small world and never thought anything outside it.Nihalani this time targets the women folk like sujatha to think beyond there homes and have social responsibility. Inspired from Jnanpith award winner maheshwatha devi's story, the main character Sujata Chatterji is such an intresting one that it made jaya bachan come out of her acting career's, 19 year break to do this movie.

----story----
The movie is the story of sujata chatterji coming to terms with her death of her son brathi chatterji. Brathi is one of those "Best and the brightest of bengal" as told by siddharth in Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi.A brilliant student who gets involved in naxal activities and dies.Sujatha a mother who was totally unaware of her son's naxal links is taken back by it and she feels bad that she didn't know anything about what was going on in her son's mind. The rest of the movie is her efforts to understand her son and understand herself.
----------

Sujatha chatterji is called to identify a body.she identifies her son amongst the lined up bodies.

She ask the police officer saroj pal(Milind gunaji) "Can i take my son back?".
for that he replies, "No we wont give the BODY to you".
Brathi chatterji has simply become dead body number 1084.

The body is cremated by the police.Except for sujatha and her daughter in law nobody is there,all the other family members are more involved in distancing themselves from brathi.Why are they distancing themselves??.why is the police not giving the body to his family members??. what is happening??.so many questions pop up in our mind.We are clueless on what exactly is happening, which exactly reflects the mind of the main protagonist sujatha chatterji.

Jaya Bachan

Govind nihalani again does his style of the protagonist fighting at different levels, a mental struggle with herself in the inside world and the struggle against the outside world.Lot of people accuse sujatha.They say that she didn't take care of her son properly, that's why he ended up in bad ways. The doubts gets to her also. Did she make a mistake in his upbringing??. Why didn't she know what was going in her son's mind.what she wrong?? that becomes her internal struggle, outside she has to cope with her husband who cheats on her and the other selfish family members who don’t care about brathi.

The movie then follows sujatha who pieces together various information’s regarding brathi to know him completely. She reads his books, visits his friends house etc. Brathi's involvement in naxal activities surprises her.For her he was that same little boy who, she had to personally take care.She tells herself that a mother stops to understand her son after a while. She carries on with the same idea that her son is still the same person who she used to know. But in reality she is not aware of the fact that the little boy who was not thinking for himself, has grown into an independent intellectual man. This realization leads her to look at him as an individual, rather than as her son and with that her admiration for her son brathi grows stronger.

A little knowledge of the naxal raising and students participation in calcutta in the late 60's and early 70's would be helpful in understanding the movie better.Check out my post on this for Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi.

Seema Biswas

Every character in the movie is beautifully done. Seema biswas is mother of somu another young guy who gets killed with brathi. Somu's mother is from a poor family and she cries for her son and feels bad about the whole incident and she forgets it and movies on.But her life remains the same, nothing changes. Whereas sujatha on the other hand does not cry out, she keeps those emotions to herself. She takes it all in and goes deeper into them and channelize them into positive action, which gives a purpose to her life.

yashpal sharma,Sandeep Kulkarni,Riju Bajaj,Joy Sengupta

This is probably the only movie that tries to make the audience sympathize with he naxalites, it gives an up close look at their lives and those who were closer to them. It gives various views of how their families suffered because of them and how their families never understood them. Here are these brilliant students who talk about MAO , Lin PAO line of total annihilation of the classs and read Vladimir MAYAKOVSKY etc, on the other hand there are family members who are either illiterate or completely unaware of any of the ideologies or dont have any wish to change the prevailing system or fighting against it.In their eyes like many other people they simply become murderers. They are not given the recognition that they fought for some purpose.And even after their death, their family members get treated badly because they were related ot the naxals.

Nandhitha Das

The movie starts with the citizen kane style narration, off a dead body with the story slowly revealing itself.The last day of brathi is played out in various scenes by different characters. Nihalani makes us work to tie these different scenes to make sense out of it.

The movie also uses the appendicitis of jaya bachan as a metaphor. Sujatha relates between the political situation that her son fought on the outside world to her own personal situation in the small world of her home.The tyranny and isolation that she faces in the house comes to an end with the breaking of her appendicitis, symbolically meaning breaking of her old world which started and ended in her family.Now after the appendicitis burst she is newly born into a broader world where the society is also part of her family, where she has social responsibilities also to take care.

One of the important thing that lot of people didn't like about the movie was the way it portrait the naxals, as saviors and people who wanted to bring revolution in a romantic way and that the violence that they committed were glossed out.Nihalani accepts those charges but says that, it is exactly what he wanted to bring out.The question of whether what the students did was right or not, so that people can discuss upon it.

Maheshwatha devi, Jaya bachan, govind nihalani, nadhitha das

Cast and credits:
Jaya Bhaduri .... Sujata Chatterji
Anupam Kher .... Dibyanath Chatterji (Brati's father)
Seema Biswas .... Somu's mother
Milind Gunaji .... Saroj Pal, Police officer
Joy Sengupta .... Brati Chatterjee
Nandita Das .... Nandini Mitra
Yashpal Sharma .... Laltu (Brati's comrade)

Milind Gunaji

This is the movie where you will see the credits say "Introducing" Nandhitha Das.Another new face in the movie was joy sen gupta who acted as brathi. Jaya bachan and anupam kher where great in the movie. Milind gunaji was also good. The way jaya eagerly listens about the fatal day from seema biswas was just beautiful.

Music is by Debajyoti mishra.

Anupam Shyam
Not sure who this other guys is, he comes as the RPG launcher kishan in drooh kaal

Trivia:
The original Maheshwatha devi's story ends with the breaking of the appendicitis of the sujatha character but nihalani has added so much to the story to give the beautiful climax of this movie.

Droh kaal(Times of Betrayal) -1994

2005-11-14T13:36:00.000-08:00

Droh kaal is another great movie from nihalani. Another intense movie, which could have become a masala loaded commercial movie in the hands of a regular commercial film director, for it had all the components for a commercial movie. But Nihalani as usual stayed away from the commercial components and took his audience up-close into the mind of a police officer, Abhay singh.

------story-----
Police officers DCP Abhay singh(Om Puri) and DCP Abbas Lodhi(Nasrudeen shah) are friends. Abhay singh comes to know about Abbas lodhi's secret operation called danush. Danush an operation which aims to infiltrate the naxal gangs to gain more information goes well,till one of the secret agent is caught. The naxal gang who desperately what to know about the other members of operation danush, terrorize abhay singh and his family.whether abhay singh gives in or not is the story.
------------

The movie starts with the scene of Abhay singh's dream of suffocation/torture. An afraid abhay singh wakes up from the dream.That fear is the key to the movie.The whole movie is built on fear.Except for abass, most of the other characters are afraid of something or the other and they all become betrayers.Ironically the hero's name is abhay(Fearless).

Aashish vidhyarthi

A violent and anti people state not only perpetuates violence. It also generates counter violence.

The movie moves like a chess game with police and the naxals on opposing sides.Wins and loses are there on both sides.One thing that is common between the opposing sides is the betrayal of there trusted people.To an extent family is also a common vulnerable point for both sides. Whether it is the RPG launcher guy kishen or abhay singh they both start thinking about betrayal when it comes to their family.

Kitu gidwani

This is one of those very few movies that shows naxals as ideology driven peoples, rather than blind violence perpetuators.On the other side it shows the price the men in uniform have to pay for dealing with them.The line between a police and naxal, blurs a bit when some police personal turn traitors and some police spies who infiltrated the naxal gangs, almost become insurgents by killing innocent people to get into the good side of the naxal leaders.The viscious circle of betrayal and violence continues on both sides.

The movie like many govind nihalani movie has violence. But you hardly get to see the blood and gory mutilated bodies. The violence is more mental, both the sides believe in breaking down a man mentally through fear and physically through tortures.Fear becomes and important weapon for both the sides and if anyone is caught his limit to bear pain is tested and test is concluded only when he hits the breaking point.

When the movie ends, it leaves us with a great respect for the men who fight insurgents in our country.
Illa arun and saddiya siddiqui

Cast and Credit:

Om Puri .... DCP Abhay Singh
Naseeruddin Shah .... DCP Abbas Lodhi
Mita Vasisht .... Sumitra Singh
Annu Kapoor .... Surinder
Ashish Vidyarthi .... Commander Bhadra
Amrish Puri .... IGP Pathak
Milind Gunaji .... Shiv
Manoj Bajpai .... Anand
Vinit Kumar (as Vineet Kumar)
Ila Arun .... Zeenat
Kaushalya Gidwani .... kishen's wife
Saddiya Siddiqui .... Gulshan
Rajiv Dhingra (as Master Rajiv Dhingra)
Achyut Potdar
Shri Vallabh Vyas

Manoj BajPai & Milind Gunaji

Manoj bajpai and Milind Gunaji are the two undercover agents sent to infiltrate the naxal group.One of the earlier movies for both the stars, manoj bajpai hardly comes in 2 scenes.

All around good performance by everybody.Especially Ashish vidhyarthi, who stole the show with his sterling performance.

If you are wondering who is costume designer behind the filmi style commondo dress that ashish vidhyarthu wears in the movie.It is Pia Benegal daughter of shyam benegal.She is also the assistant director for the movie.

story,script,direction and photography and produced by govind nihlani

Music:
Actually A.R.Rehman was supposed to be the music director for Droh Kaal.He even composed music for it.But was Rahman was forced to opt out of 'Droh-kaal' when he lost all his compositions for the movie owing to a computer system crash.I guess it was good fortune he didn't go the background scored for Droh Kaal cause he sucked big time with bgm's during that time period.

Vanraj Bhatia

vanraj bhatia did the background scores and he has done a good job.

Awards:
Ashish Vidyarthi won the national award for the Best Supporting Actor award.The performance that was aptly cited as "bringing credibility to his role with
strength and total conviction".

Links
manojbajpai site
Pia Benegal

Party -1984

2005-11-10T13:34:00.000-08:00

If you ask me what is the story of party?. Then i have to say 10 small stories and still i wouldn't have told the story.Party is just a look at the minds of upper strata people, more specifically at the people who are involved in arts through a party.

A party is thrown to congratulate writer Divkar Barve(Manohar singh) for receiving the Government of India literary award.The story takes that as the base to look into various artist's personal and public life.

The movie is based on Mahesh Elkunchwar marathi drama 'Party'.Govind nihalani who usually presents two or three characters up close in his movies, this time presents a whole gamut of characters. When you watch a movie with so many characters, you tend to forget many of them as soon as the movie is over.But in party the screenplay is so well written that it is successful in making us remember most of them.The main reason being the fact that every character is unique and colorful, with its own worries and moral stand.

Akash Khurana & illa arun

The movie starts with various characters preparing for the party.Those scenes are also used to give a peek into the personal lives of those people who are going to attend the party. When the party starts and we get to see more peoples and the rest of the movie is just the party shot entirely in that house.No location change, no big action/romance sequence, it is just dialogues from then on.But even though it is all dialogues, the screenplay is as usual engaging in the nihalani style.Every small bit of scene, dialogue adding to the wholeness of the movie.

The characters are intellectuals who discuss so many things, in those small party conversations, various important questions are discussed. one of the important question being that the moral stand taken by an artist and an individual should be the same.simply preaching and practicing. In the discussion the avinash (Om puri) says.

Use the media as a weapon.If the artist is not politically committed his art is not releavent.

Again when people argue the importance of art as an entertainment and recreation, the doctor(Amrish puri) replies that

if an art form fails to reach the state of an epic. If it fails to show a new path. what use it is??

kk raina & soni razdan

As usual as the movie progress you get to know more about every character, on the surface they all look as people with social responsibilities who are very happy.But we come to know later that they are not so.Every character seems to have its need or it is in search of something. Vrindha the marxist is worried about getting married at her age. Rohini on not being loved, bharath on not being recognized etc.

Amrit is one character who you are made to admire, eventhough he does not come into the movie till the end.The whole characterisation of amrit is just built on the views expressed by different people in the party.

The movie comes to a nice climax,the party ends, exposing the shallow and hypocratic people.

Nihalani uses this same idea of Party as a stage to expose the hypocritical people in his other movie 'hazar chaurasi ki maa' and also this same theme was used in the movie page3.

Mahesh Elkunchwar

Mahesh Elkunchwar who acted in aakrosh has written the movie.You can even look at this movie as an extension of aakrosh as if (Bhaskar Kulkarni)nasrudeen shah the hero of aakrosh changed his mind regarding his fight for the tribals and became amrit of party who left everything to work for the tribals. Like aakrosh party also points at us for just talking and not taking any action against the injustice caused to the tribals.

Cast and credits
Party is one of those movies like trikal, mandi where u can see a whole array of indian alternate movie actor and actresses.

Vijaya mehta

Manohar Singh .... Divkar Barve
Deepa Sahi .... Sona Rane
Rohini Hattangadi .... Mohini Barve
Shafi Inamdar .... Ravi
Vijay Kashyap .... Guest
Akash Khurana .... Agashe
Vijaya Mehta .... Damyanti Rane
Pearl Padamsee .... Ruth
Amrish Puri .... Doctor
Om Puri .... Avinash
K.K. Raina .... Bharat
Soni Razdan .... Malvika (Vicky)
Mohan Bhandari .... Naren (Vicky's husband)
Naseeruddin Shah .... Amrit
Ila Arun .... Herself
Achyut Potdar .... Himself
Jayant Kripalani
Benjamin Gillani

All round good acting. Especially mahendra kapoor,Vijaya Mehta and rohini hattangadi. Rohini was just awesome in the movie.

Rohini Hattangadi

There are a few characters who come for a a few frames like Achyut Potdar who doesn't even get one close up shot. He is shown at the start of the party when barve arrives to the party.

Madan jain comes for a scene in the play in which shafi inamdhar is acting

Ravi jhankhal is one of the guy in the party.

Trivia:
#)The characters talk about various authors from Naipaul,salman rushdie,zeney and Federico García Lorca(govind later made his movie rukmavathi ki havelli based on his play) etc.

pearl padamse & vijay kashyap

#)Naipaul's names comes couple of times. Ruth when asked about naipaul's style comments that he is bitter. Amrish puri the doctor waiting in the reading room reads Naipaul's "The bend in the river".

Shades of Govind Nihalani

2005-11-07T09:47:00.000-08:00

In aakrosh as soon as the movie starts you see the scenes of lakhania close-ups after burning his wife. All dark just a close up of him, then his father and the rest, a minimal music in the background. Everything is minimal in that scene but the impact is deep. Without speaking a word you are already made to feel the tension and become curious about that character.That says his success as a cinemetographer.

OM puri in aakrosh

Nana Palsikar in aakrosh

Nihalani's words

The first and the most essential thing to study is the lighting because it is the lighting which gives a different kind of feel to the film. Every cameraman has a preference for a certain kind of lighting for eg I have a little liking for half lit faces. Composition is another important factor.

Sometimes i wish it is all night in nihalani movies. For the night brings the uncertainty, the lurking danger. It frightens the character that is already threatened, pushing the already confused mind into dark. And that is when the master plays on his characters, intensifying the scenes with emotions in close-ups of partially lit faces.

Amrish puri in Aakrosh

Nihalani is a cinematographer of his own style, unlike other cinematographers who indulge in capturing the natural beauty of mountains, rivers and greenery, nihalai indulges in capturing the human expressions. And capture it in a way you won’t forget.

Om puri in ardh satya

He brilliantly uses lighting in his movies to add so much to the scenes. The scene becomes highly intense and the visuals gets etched into your mind.Overall the scene is enhanced many folds because of the way the objects in the frame are lit.

Jaya bachan in Haazar chaurasi ki Maa

A light source is kept at a distance, in a dark room. That light brings out the thoughts of the character, the character is in touch with itself, a moment of consciousness at work, captured in celluloid.

Om puri in ardh satya

A light source and a half lit face, a trademark nihalani shot comes in so many movies.But it never bores me.It doesn't matter whether it is the beautiful smita patil or the old Nana Palsikar.The shot of smita in partial light is one of my favourite.Her dusky beauty enhanced many folds by the light.

Smita in aakrosh

Kunal Kapoor in Vijeta

Jaya bachan in Hazar chaurasi ki Maa

Nihalani loves the lamps that would be an understatement. All his movies will have various scenes played near light source. This kind of lighting and characters placement around it i think is to make the user more focused on the character and its expression that the usual distraction that happens when so many objects are in the frame. Another way of bringing to the color films the undistracted attention that the audiences give to the characters in a black and white movie.

Nanditha das in Hazar chaurasi ki Maa

smita in ardh sathya

Mita vashisht and om puri in droh kaal

rekha and sashi in vijeta

Aashish vidhyarthi in drooh kaal

Aashish vidhyarthi and om puri in droh kaal

Aashish vidhyarthi and om puri in droh kaal

Mita vashisht and om puri in droh kaal

Amrish puri in ardh sathya

Ompuri in tamas

Aakrosh

Vijeta(The Victor) -1982

2005-11-04T12:48:00.000-08:00

Shashi Kapoor's film valas which was producing some quality movies with good director's roped in Govind Nihalani to do a movie for them, the result was vijeta.

-------story------------
Vijeta is the coming of age story of Angad (Kunal Kapoor).Confused like any other teenager trying to find himself and caught in between the broken relationship of his mother Neelima(rekha) and father nihal(shashi kapoor).It is time for him to decide what he wants to do with his life.To select a profession and be someone, Angad chooses army.what follows is his struggle to become a victor both with his self and the outer world.
-------------------------

The movie is narrated very well, except for the too many scenes of flying fighter planes, height of it is when angad expresses his love and the scene cuts to a jet flying. It starts in a dramatic masala film style,with the scene of sardar shashi kapoor witnessing the riots, followed by the usual nihalani style bad dreams.All the tension generated by the dreams of the night are cleared by the beautiful sunrise and a morning song.

The characters are developed slowly, the important characters are nihal and angad. Neelima the mother is the other important character in the movie, unlike the usual docile mother with no intrests of her own,she is a independent woman with firm footing in the family. She is a professor who learns music even in that age and stays with her husband only for her son.

Nihal the man who faced the horrors of partition wants to be the protective father and like many other indian parent, he is also opposed to the idea of angad joining the army.He sees the army in terms of the security and how much money one can earn out of it rather than as a career of pride and all round development.Neelima intervenes and tells him

"you understood yourself and the world through the partition, Let him fight his battles to understand himself".

And that's what exacly Angad does. He steps into the world of army as a confused young man. He is still the teenager coming to terms with his self, he is afraid of heights and horse diving, only defends in the boxing matches and is shy to express his love.An accident with the horse takes him to the brink off quitting his dream.But he hangs on to his dream, the army training, the pride and the competition among the peers gives him a new goal, to become a successful fighter pilot.

He finds a new family with his friends, who all are from different region and religion. Through him and his friends we come to know about the dreams,aspirations, backgrounds of army men and what unites them at the army. They all find their inspirations with their superiors likes varghese and others.

In a earlier scene the mama's boy angad sits in a car and watches a thief being chased and beaten by the public, but after the army training when he is traveling in a train and robbers triet to loot a fellow passenger in the train. He and wilson dare the knives of the robbers and get stabbed.He knows his social responsibility now,he does not fear about death and is very clear of moral standing.His morals are clear, his growth is complete ,he has become an army man.

The movie is not just the story of the angad, it is packed with so many things. Govind again plays in his favorite ground of dealing with the inner daemons of his character's and taking the audiences upclose and personal with the characters.Angad trying to find himself amongst the broken relationship of his parents and sashi kapoor fighting with his past memories of partition are the examples.

He also highlights the complexities of relationships, the son who hates his father starts liking him, an overjoyed mother cries to see the father and son hug and like each other,the son who hated his father later becomes the one to take care of him, like the theme of utsab the construction and deconstruction continues but the structure remain the same.Also Like many nihalani movies he raises lot of questions. why army is not looked into as a career of complete development?.Which is worse war or riots? etc.

Apart from all that this movie is simply an ode to army men, not many people know the separate world that exists in the army quaters and among army personels.The pride of being in a particular battalion/squadron, the pride of being a fighter pilot, the pride of working under a certain superior, the pride of dieing bravely and so many other things that matters the most to an army man.Through Angad's eyes nihalani captures all these and the essence of army life, their parties, their ball room dances, their courage, sacrifice, their pride, their discipline, their morality and everything that differentiates them from the common man.No cheesy patriotic dialogues, no pakistan bashing, no tear jerking sacrifices, nihalani simply shows the soul of an army man through angad.

Cast and credits:
Shashi Kapoor .... Nihal
Rekha .... Neelima
Supriya Pathak .... Anna Verghese
Kunal Kapoor .... Angad
Amrish Puri .... Chief Instructor Verghese
Om Puri .... Arvind (Angad's uncle, Mama)
Dina Pathak .... Angad's grandmother (Biji)
Shafi Inamdar .... Parulkar
K.K. Raina .... Wilson
Madan Jain .... Venkat
Raja Bundela .... Aslam
Arvind Deshpande ... Dr.Deshmukh

The movie has a good cast the father son pair of shashi kapoor and kunal kapoor have become father and son in the movie also.Both of them have done their part well and so did rekha, amrish puri, supriya pathak and the rest.

Ompuri comes for a few scenes as angad's uncle.He is the army guy who introduces angad into army. In those few scenes he shows up, ompuri's is upright and straight you can see an army man in his body language.

Angad has three friends at the army.wilson(k.k.raina), aslam(raja bundela) and venkat(madhan jain).K.K raina especially has done a good job as a competitive army man with a fire in him. Shafi Inamdar is their officer. Arvind despande the army doctor and Achyut Potdar a superior

If you are wondering about the simple and beautiful costumes worn by rekha and supriya pathak. costumes are by jeniffer kendal.

Unlike his earlier movie vijeta does not have much light play as far as cinematography is concerned, Yes there are those scenes of night lamps working their magic on the characters but not as dramatic as aakroash.

Chief assistant director is rajkumar santhoshi.

Music:
Music is by ajit verman.It has one song
1)Man Aanand Aanand by asha bhonsle

Film Festival in San Francisco

2005-11-03T14:23:00.000-08:00

The third international south asian film festival starts from friday November 11th, 2005.

some intresting movies including Ritwik ghatak's Meghe Dhaka Tara, kamosh pani etc are scheduled for screening.

check out the schedule here

visit www.thirdi.org for further information.

Aakrosh(Cry of the Wounded) -1980

2005-10-31T13:03:00.000-08:00

Aakrosh, if for nothing else will be remembered as the debut movie of one of india's finest directors, govind nihlani. But this debut movie is not a one to be easily forgotten. This is a movie that after seeing will haunt you for your life. A trend setter movie that hits out at the indian judicial system and mocks at us for not doing anything to change it.

---------------story----------------
Lahanya Bhiku(Om Puri) a tribal is arrested for killing his wife Nagi(smita patil)and he is tried in the court for it.Bhaskar Kulkarni(Naseeruddin Shah) takes this first case as the govt appointed lawyer.bhaskar kulkarni with all dreams and aspirations to take his first case finds to his frustration that Lahanya does not want to co operate with him. Slowly bhaskar investigates the case which leads to stark ling revelations and the movies comes to a shattering climax.
------------------------------------

It's unbelievable that this movie which was made 25 yrs before still has that intensity intact, it still hits you hard, it still forces you to think. It still leaves you in a state of total helplessness. I can't imagine what would have been the impact of this movie on those who saw it 25 yrs ago.

Iam not sure whether anybody took a movie on tribals till that time. The single frame of lakhu tied and waiting before the court room, everybody passing by without caring, his father and sister standing with a baby is enough to show the helpless state of the tribals. That shot brings the message to the audience that Law and justice are something distant to those peoples. The movie further increases our anger with the indifference shown by the judicial system towards the victim with its requirements
for evidence.

The movie apart from telling the powerful story successfully, it also captures the inner self of the major characters brilliantly. Like many of nihalani's characters, the characters in aakrosh(Baskhar, Dosane and bikhu) fight with both the outside and inside world. Nihalani plays out the fight of bikhu visually in a long scene of him suffocating in the jail.It is also used to let the audience know how tormented he is by his wife's murder.

Once the movie ends you are tormented by the images of bikhu, his poor father, the wretched tribals.The images just rips your heart, this movies owes much of its success to govind nihalani, the cinematographer. He sets a style of playing with lights and close-ups, which creates a deep impact in you. He followed this style in many of his later movies, but this one is the best.

Mahesh Elkunchwar

Again this is the first of his many movies which had references to armed struggle, naxalism etc. A marxist played by Mahesh Elkunchwar comes as an person who is trying to organize the tribals for a struggle.

Nihalani takes an interesting dig in the movie.One evening bhaskhar is listening to the radio, and reading a newspaper. The news on the newspaper is that of a murdered adivasi women.At the same time radio news says "vinobhave's has decided to protest against the cow slaughter..".

This movie belongs to my list of must see movies of indian cinema.Nihalani who always fights for a social cause in his movie, has done a awesome job in this movie.A classic, this movie inspired many movies in many indian languages, most of them usual commercial movies, which were all forgotten before this masterpiece.

Cast and credits:

Amrish Puri, Achyut Potdar, Arvind Deshpande,Mohan Agashe

Om Puri .... Lahanya Bhiku
Naseeruddin Shah .... Bhaskar Kulkarni
Mohan Agashe .... President of the City Council
Arvind Deshpande .... Dr. Patil
Mahesh Elkunchwar .... Social worker
Reema Lagoo .... Nautaki Dancer
Nana Palsikar .... Lahanya's father
Smita Patil .... Nagi
Amrish Puri .. Dosane

Mahesh Elkunchwar, the play writer who wrote nihalani's later movie Party, comes as a social worker. The movie has many faces that govind nihalani used repeatedly in his later movies.Om puri, Nasrudeen shah, smita patil, Amrish Puri and Achyut Potdar.The movie also has Remma Lagoo, who comes for a lavani 'tu kaise hai mard'.

Reema Lagoo

Govind nihalani's camera work has to be mentioned. His style of using a light source to play on the images of the characters, creating shock effects etc where cleverly used in the movie.The half lit faces adds so much to the movie, whether its the angry bikhu or the beautiful smita.

The movie is written by vijay tendulkar the famous playwrite with whom nihalani again joined hands to do his other masterpiece ardh sathya.

Vijay Tendulkar

Music:
Music is by ajit verman.I dont know why the title song is pictured on an old man who wasn't playing any big role in this movie. This old man comes for the tile song and a scene later. Not sure what was the purpose of this character in the movie.

The movie has 3 songs..
1)Kanha re
2)Hum ne koi kisi
3)Tu kaise hai mard

Awards:
Golden Peacock for Best Film, International Film Festival of India;
National Award for Best Hindi Film

Links:
vijay Tendulkar

-------------spoilers------------------

There are lots of interesting scenes, its night and the world has gone to sleep, bhaskhar is getting ready to sleep, he does the normal bedtime routines, a melodious song is played in the radio.A perfect setting for the bed time, the audience are calmed down.But what you dont know is that govind has been setting you up for the shocker, a bottle crashing into the windows, shakes you up completely and switches you form that lazy bedtime setting to that of fear and shock. The effect is dramatic.

In this movie if Ompuri would have talked even 2 statements the whole movie would have lost that intensity. By not making that character speak, govind denied us the opportunity to hear his emotions and frustrations and pity him. That intensity, frustration is kept intact all through out the movie and it is transferred to us in the end. The audience might have lost the intensity even if the flashback was played out linearly in one go, starting with a happy family, the problems they face and the eventual crime. But the screenplay is crafted brilliantly such that the intensity is not lost. There are only 2 flashback scenes one lahanya warning nagi against the manager and the second one his witness of the rape scene. Some of the blanks are filled by dialogues and the rest is left to the audience imagination.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Govind Nihalani

2005-10-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

Govind Nihalani is one of the important names in the indian art film circuit. If satyajit ray is one extreme of the meaningful indian cinema with his simple, sensitive and beautiful movies then govind nihalani is the other end with his powerful, intelligent, brutal and hard hitting movies.

This pakistan born sindhi director who moved to india after partition, took up photography as a profession and worked with some great directors including shyam benegal and girish karnad.After a few films with shyam he started making his own movies in early 80's and caught every one by surprise with his intense and thought provoking movies. since then he has given a serious of intelligent and hard hitting movies.

But it is Sad that he has been branded as an art movie director, when his movies are more intense more meaning full and more pacy than the main stream movies.It is maybe due to the fact that hero, heroines running around the tree, funny and smiling characters were never present in his movies (at least till he switched to the commercial movie style).But this also made him stand apart as a movie maker, who made serious movies.

His characters are usually intelligent, serious, and confident and do things with a conviction. Important thing about the above statement is that it holds good for the female characters also.None of his heroines are the babes who's only purpose is to dance and make his man happy. Many a times they are part of a broken relationship but the female characters are also equally strong and intelligent as the male characters. Even villain’s are strong characters (Aashish/sadashiv),if at all if there is any as most of the time the villian is the system itself.

All his characters fall into a certain pattern. They are all morally correct in their own small world and have their own personal problems. As the movie progresses they are exposed to a bigger world which they cannot control and there starts a fight with the outside world and the inside world. And the movie becomes an account of how they cope with that new change/problem. Most of the time the characters come out stronger than what they were before, armed and fully convinced to take on the outer world..

Similarly many of his characters have a fire within themselves, an anger against society or smoother thing.Nihlani takes you on a trip of the characters mind and makes us understand the character better.The characters fights with him/herself and their efforts to better themselves are some of the fascinating aspects of his characterization. His characters asks the same questions that arises in your mind regarding the conditions in the society and becomes inspirational one and makes you stronger.

Nihlani's movies don’t belong to the category of movies that you see and forget at the end of the movie.The movie hits you hard at the end and leaves you shocked. A govind nihlani movie's effect starts only after the movie ends. Sometimes the movie disturbs you and leaves you gaping for answers. And many more questions are thrown at you through intellectual arguments of the characters. Questions that probe your moral stance and forces you to make a stance and action.

Govind nihalani in an interview:To find an answer to the issue is relevant to us. My films may not give you all the answers. But the fact is my films take a stand. They say this is the problem and as far as I think as a director this is the way out, a possible way out. Now you can agree with me, you can disagree with me. A debate can start and that is the positive outcome of any film.

His movies are intense and violent, but you dont see any gory dead bodies or violent act with of blood bath in the movie. With some brilliant use of camera, screenplay and direction, he creates this bloodless violence.Lamps and various light sources are used on the characters to enhance the emotions.Also his screenplay focuses on the mental violence than the physical violence that happens to his characters and he uses the most dangerous weapon of all, fear, against his main characters.

Many of his works are adaptation of literary works.He has worked with peoples like vijay tendulkar(aakrosh/ardh satya), Mahesh Elkunchwar(party),manjula padmanabhan(deham),Federico García Lorca(rukmavathi ki haveli),Bhisham Sahni(Tamas), Henrik Ibsen(Jazeere) , August Strindberg(pita) and the jnanpith winner maheshwata devi(haazar chaurasi ki maa).And also his intellectual characters discuss about various writers like Federico García Lorca, Rushdie, naipaul, mayakovski etc.

In the later part of his career he started to make main stream movies like dev and thakshak. It is a shame that he had to go the mainstream way to get the attention that he deserved. These two movies are far away from his earlier master pieces, they didn't have the fire that his earlier movies exhibited. Main stream actor/actress with their mediocre performance and nihalani's intention of showing things beautifully rather than his usual powerful character portrayal made them one among the rest of the main stream movies. But Nihalani's lack of experiences with the masala elements like songs showed itself, when the sleepy ajay devagan turned the song 'kamosh raat', a soulful & enjoyable melody of loneliness into a song of someone enduring acute pain with his expressions.

Reviews here at alternate movie
Aakrosh
Ardh sathya
Vijeta
Party
Drishti
Drooh Kaal
Hazar chaurasi Ki Maa

Also check out shades of govind nihalani

Other Links
Govind Nihalani personal website

UTSAB(Festival)- 2000,Bengali

2005-10-19T21:32:00.000-07:00

Utsab( not to be confused with girish karnad's utsav) is a bengali movie by rituparno ghosh. This is a nice movie that is set in the background of Bhagabati's(Madhabi Mukherjee) family celebrating the durga pooja.This is a realistic and intellectual 'hum apke hai kaun'.Ok hold on don't start thinking about a bunch of happy peoples singing and dancing, it has got nothing of that sort, it is totally bland in those aspects. This is a movie that celebrates life and the complexities of relations using various metaphors.

Rituparno sen gupta

-----story--------
Bhagbati has 4 children’s two sons Asit(Pradip Mukherjee),Nishit(Bodhisattva Mazumdar) and two daughters Parul(Mamata Shankar), keya(Rituparna Sengupta).And it is durga pooja time and all the children’s are at their parents house to celebrate the festival. The movie starts with Parul's son Joy(Ratul Shankar Ghosh) recording the festival with his video cam. The movie slowly develops to show the problems faced by all the siblings of bhagbati like keya on the verge of divorce with her husband Arun(Prasenjit Chatterjee).

Shishir(Dipankar Dey) a relative who is also a big real estate agent is interested in buying the house. Most of the family members want to sell the house. With all there personal problems and the idea of selling the house, we get a feeling that this might be the last durga festival that is going to happen in that house. What happens to the house and everyones problems is the rest of the movies.
----------------

Arpita Pal

The movie is visually very dull(except for images like the above).But even though at start you feel it is kind of slow and depicts mundane things, the movie is beautifully constructed to convey its theme.At the end you will think back all those small incidents in the movie and enjoy it.A totally positive movie.Bhagabati for example is very positive about arun the son in law, who is depicted as a hopeless character. she feels and convinces her daughter that he will change himself one day. Similarly arun talking to keya tells her what he saw when the durga idols Being immersed in the river.The boys jumped with the idol to take them out for recycling. Idol loses all the plaster over it, but still the frame remains which will be used to construct a new idol. Construction and deconstruction will keep happening but the structure will remain the same .The idol is the metaphor used for a person/relationship.

The movie slowly unfolds and you first come to know about the various characters, then there fears, there dreams, there past there future and what is there position in the current scenario. Like real life we misjudge certain characters at start and understand them better later.

The movie aptly points out the importance of communication within the family members, which is the main reason for problem in many cases. The characters first try to hide there problems, but later they open up and confide things to there siblings/son. The telephone was used as a metaphor for communication.

A beautiful moment in the movie is when shishir meets parul(ex lovers).There feelings for each other is expressed in those silent nods and glances that last for a few seconds. The relationship between joy and shompa is also expressed beautifully.

The construction deconstruction process is further conveyed in the cyclic nature of things that happen in the family. Joy's uncle asit wanted to study literature but his grand ma didn't want him to do it and asit ended up studying economics. He wants to get into film institute but his dad wants to do MBA and he is going to USA to do MBA.
The movie avoids all the emotional drama and ends with a beautiful climax. All there problems becomes beautiful memories.

Cast and credit:
The movie has a very good cast. Good acting by Rituparno sen gupta ,Mamata Shankar and prasenjeet.

I wish i didn't see the movie after watching madhabi.I always associated her with the poetic images of sathyajit ray in charulatha. From now on this image will also come into my thoughts when i think about her.

Madhabhi mukerjee

Alaknanda Roy .... Bonani, Nishit's wife
Anuradha Roy .... Monika, Asit's wife
Prasenjit Chatterjee .... Arun, Keya's husband
Ratul Shankar Ghosh .... Joy, Parul's son
Arpita Pal ....
Vinit Ranjan Maitra .... Bumba, Asit's son
Dipankar Dey .... Shishir (Special Appearance)
Madhabi Mukherjee .... Bhagabati
Pradip Mukherjee .... Asit
Bodhisattva Mazumdar .... Nishit
Alaknanda Roy .... Bonani, Nishit's wife
Anuradha Roy .... Monika, Asit's wife
Mamata Shankar .... Parul
Rituparna Sengupta .... Keya
Prasenjit Chatterjee .... Arun, Keya's husband
Ratul Shankar Ghosh .... Joy, Parul's son
Arpita Pal .... Shompa, Nishit's daughter
Vinit Ranjan Maitra .... Bumba, Asit's son
Dipankar Dey .... Shishir (Special Appearance)

Rituparno ghosh

Handling so many characters, showing there individuality and at the same time narrating the story in an interesting way is not an easy task to do.Rituparno ghosh has done it beautifully. He has scripted the movie brilliantly. The entire movie is shot in a house during the festival period. So the story progresses mostly on words rather than on any visual action. Even the past incidents are narrated in terms dialouges and not as flashbacks. But he does not waste any of the dialouges. Every single dialouge in the movie adds to the overall structure and is an essential piece of the story.

Music:
Music is by Debajyoti Mishra(Haazar chaurasi ki Maa).There is a beautiful rabindranath poem "Amalo dhabholo" which comes at various places in the movie. The song is sung my Sraboni Sen.

Awards:
Rituparno gosh got the national award for best direction in 2000.

Prasenjit Chatterjee & sengupta

Guru

2005-10-18T15:25:00.000-07:00

Again another awesome malayalam movie. Only in kerala will they make a movie like this and release as a main stream commercial movie.This surrealistic movie is one of a kind movie which takes u on a fantasy trip and uses metaphors to convey a message.

------------story-------
The movie is the story of Reghuraman, son of a hindu priest living in a village. This peaceful village changes after a communal violence started by politicians.Reghuraman joins the hindu gangs and takes part in the violence. A hindu guru in that area, gives shelter to all the muslim people affect by the violence.Reghuraman who goes there to kill them goes though a great experience. He gets transported to a land where every child is born blind. Among the blind people he sees another story unfolding an age old story of a poor singer being loved by the princess .Reghuraman does his part to solve the problem. His experience at that place totally changes him .what happens to him and the peoples of the fantasy land is the rest of the movies.
-----------

This movie does a story inside a story technique with reghuraman getting involved in a different story happening at the fantasy land. The Fantasy land story as such is interesting. But that story is not just for entertainment, metaphors are used in the story for the audience to see the relation between that story and the main one.

The usage of fantasy world and metaphors to make people understand a contemporary problem is something that i have never come across in any other mainstream indian movie. The movie is not a perfect one, it has its mistakes, but they are minor blemishes on the bigger canvas in which rajiv anchal has painted a beautiful movie.

Rajiv anchal the director has done a wonderful movie.At the end of the movie he finishes the story of the fantasy land and beautifully ties it to the original story leading to a perfect ending.So At the end, the message is crystal clear.You don't need pages and pages of dialoges to get across the point.You will just understand it.

Credits:
A decent performance by mohanlal.The guys responsible for making the fantasy world happen should be mentioned here.

Art Director:Muthuraj

Make-up: Pattama, Rasjeed

Costume:Satheesan,the costumes are supposedly resembling the Sumer and Egyptian costumes, exported from Gujarat centuries ago.All the 3 got the kerala state award for 1997.Kunnukuzhi Antony the guy who provided props for this movie says that guru was the most challanging movie of all that he has done.

The director of this movie Rajiv anchal has moved to US and is making english movies now.

Music:

illayaraja

If you are into Western classical music, you are in for a treat in this movie.This is one of the very best of illayaraja's work. Recorded mainly in hungary, the music of this movie is outstanding. This is a favorite of lot of people who are interested in orchestration, compositions and BGM's of the maestro.

The fantasy world where mohanlal gets transported is a completely imaginary one and the people there use weird musical instruments.This gave lot of scope for the music director to do some creative work and Illayaraja who loves challenges has done exactly that.Listen to the music, the sound are kind of unheard or rarely used in indian film music.

Illayaraja is again another colossal talent who got struck within the boundaries of regional cinema. This veteran Music director who has scored around 1000 movies, is peerless in indian film music when it comes to western classical style compositions and orchestration. Raja who loves to do western classical composition with indian touch has taken the music of this movie to a different level.

Raaja with richard king

If you want to know more about how to understand his compositions and how to appreciate his music, check out the article given below. This is written for an old illayra raja song called 'etho mogam', there is a link to the song above the article. Follow the song with the explanation to understand that composition.

Etho mogam article here

Coming back to guru.All the songs in this movie are awesome, I love the Aruna Kirana Deebam for its exotic music, the way he decorates the whole song with vocal interludes, the way he slowly sets you up for that grand opening taking you higher by creating tension in the vocals/music and bringing you down by resolving the tension with softer music and keeps doing it all over again through out the song, taking you on a fantasy ride.

Listen to the all the songs here here.The quality of songs in musicindia is not that good.This is just half the experience, Listen to it on the original CD and the experience will be very different.For the time being listen to it in earphones with high volume so that u can pick the various instruments playing in the background.

Awards & Recognitions:
1997 was the year of lohithida's boothakanadi and Jayaraaj's Kaliyattam.The former winning the best film at the state and the later winning the nationals.The only recognition that came to guru was the fact that it was the official indian nomination for the oscar in 1997.Supposedly the only malayalam movie to get selected for oscar.

Mohanlal and rajiv anchal might not have deserved any awards but i feel illayaraja deserved it for this movie , but he was pathetically denied the Best music director award at the nationals and as well as at the state.

Links:
Rajiv anchal's interview on guru
Rajiv anchal moves ot US
illayaraaja official website
Illayaraja

ManichitraThazhu (Decorative lock) - 1993, Malayalam

2005-10-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

This is yet another beautiful malayalam movie. Like i said in gehrayee.Many of the indian movies that dealt with paranormal topics in india were pretty much horror movies.Gehrayee was one movie that was very different and another movie that comes to our mind is Lekin,a movie that came 2 years before manichithra thazhu. Both Lekin and gehrayee dealt the story in a non scientific way, by making the supernatural things as part of the story rather then looking at them from a scientific view. Manichithra thazhu is one unique movie that weaved a story with the rural beliefs, fears and tries to explain the story from a scientific point of view.

----------story--------
Nakul(suresh gopi) and ganga(shobana) are a couple who come to spend some time in their home town in kerala. Nakul decides to live in his old house which is supposed to be haunted by a devil. He does not head to his uncle's(Nedumudi venu) advice of not residing in an haunted house. His uncle advices them not to open the door, that is locked and sealed with sacred threads. But the curious ganga opens the door and strange things start happening in the house. Everybody suspect sridevi(Vinaya Prasad) his uncles' daughter.Sunny joseph(Mohanlal) a psychologists and friend of nakul is asked to solve the problem.how he solves them is the rest of the movie.
--------------

This is a movie which encompasses some of the best features of a malayalam film industry. They make some of the interesting movies that get lost within the regional limits. The superstar of the kerala film industry mohanlal, comes only in the middle of the movie. Almost at the interval, this is just unimaginable in any other south indian or for that matter in indian movie. Adding to that fact, the movie has more acting scope for the female character than the male character, which any big star would think twice to accept. But mohanlal did all that.The movie is clean with no unnecessary masala addition and the film sticks to the story. Realistic performances and interesting screenplay, another aspect of the malaylam film industry is also in display in this movie.

This is a strong story based movie, with lot of characters. The movie starts slowly in a typical malayalam movie fashion, after introducing the various characters and hooks us with the strange incidents at the house and comes to a nice climax.

Credits:

Mohanlal .... Dr. Sunny Joseph
Suresh Gopi .... Nakulan
Sobhana .... Ganga
Vinaya Prasad .... Sridevi
Nedumudi Venu .... Thampi

The movie has sterling performance by shobana. This beautiful bharathanatiyum dancer, niece of the famous padmini, ragini,lalitha pair was at her best in this movie.As i said before the acting scope for the hero is less in the movie and mohanlal has given a nice performance as needed by the character.

Mohanlal and suresh gopi

Another person to mention is Fazil.He is a director who has given many hits in both malaylam and tamil. His strength is his brilliant screenplay and manichithra thazhu is a beautiful example for that.

Music:
Music is by MG Radha Krishnan, who has done a wonderful job with the BGM'S.Apart from the regular malayalam songs.There is one whole tamil song in the movie.Another aspect of malayalam cinema, its openness towards other languages.Listen
to the songs here.

watch the "oru Murai" song here.

Awards:
shobana

Shobana was awarded the first of her two National award for best actress in 1993 for her performance in this movie.

Trivia:
The movie was remade into hits films in all the south indian languages.All the versions except the malaylam one was totally messed with lot of masala elements.None of the other versions bettered the original.

Links:
shobana profile
shobana interview

*The Manichithra thazhu DVD might not have subtitles. check it out before you buy/rent it.

Vanaprastham(Last dance) - 1999,Malayalam

2005-10-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

Vanaprastham produced by mohanlal's pranavam arts is an exceptional movie.Movies of this kind are rarely made in india. This is a movie that is a beautiful mix of great acting, technical excellence combined with good/realistic story that shows the indian society in its complexity, beauty and ugliness.

----story----
This is a complex and interesting story told in a beautiful way.Iam not giving out anything in the story, here is a skeletal story line. The movie is the story of kunnikuttan(Mohanlal), a poor kathakali dancer's search for identity and recognition. He comes across subadhra(suhasini maniratnam), the daughter in law of the travancore diwan. The line between reality and dream blurs for subadhra.Like "Subadhra" of the mahabharath character who falls in love with the mythological character arjun,this subadra falls in love with the arjun of the kathakali play, kunnikuttan.This leads to various complexities and with kunnikuttan's drastic moves the movie come to a crashing climax.
-------------

The movie is an ode to kathakali.The story is beautifully woven around dreams and reality. kathakali enables the story to cross the reality line and move into a fantasy world. Mahabharatha's character's Arjun, subadhra, abhimanyu all become part of the story.The story is an extension of those characters from mahabharatha.

shaji's view on the mahabharatha characters.Arjuna for me is someone who isn't aware of his abilities, but is used by others for those very abilities. For example, Krishna. But the battle of Mahabharata was won because of him. So there is an identity crisis there. Vaanaprastham

And though Arjuna was married to Panchali, his relationship with Subhadra was different. It had a deeper, philosophical element to it. Though Subhadra and Arjun had never met each other, they knew each other through letters, through people. Both were exceptionally intelligent. Subhadra, for her part, was a woman with a strong concept of right and wrong. The two deeply respected each other. Their son, Abhimanyu, was immensely intelligent, too, having heard the story of the Chakravyuh while still in the womb. Intelligence, here, had a philosophical connotation which appealed to me. more

A little bit of awareness of kathakali would also make you enjoy the story more. Kathakali the traditional dance of kerala, it is mainly staged on various episodes of mahabharatha and the important characters are identified with their costumes. The famous green face is the arjun, other characters like duryodhana, dushasana all come up with different set of costumes with weapons and strange sounds, hanuman with a white cap etc.

Credits:

You cannot find fault with mohanlal's action in the movie, not even in a single frame. He does his part to perfection. He portraits kunnikuttan a deeply wounded, alcoholic artist, who is unrecognized both as a son and as a father. This depressingly sad character who carries a world of sadness, comes alive when he puts on the kathakali costumes.From a man who cannot control anything in his life he becomes the all powerful arjun who can stand against an army all alone. Mohanlal does not do much of an emotional outburst but the sadness of the character seeps out in every frame. You are left to wonder how did he make himself into kunnikuttan in every frame. How much trouble he must have undergone to bring the pain of that character through out the movie.

He was well supported by suhasini maniratnam as subhadra.

suhasini

The photography in this movie is of high quality. The cinematographers for this movie are santhosh sivan and Renato Berta.The photography is pleasing, kathakali the most colorful of all indian traditional dances is enhanced many folds by the photography of this pair.

And off course the much of the credit goes to the director shaji karun. Shaji who shot to fame with his movie piravi, which swept all the major awards at the 1988 national awards. He came back to assert his position in indian cinema with this movie.

The Cannes Film Festival committee declared '500 names that made Cannes' so far and Shaji shares the honor of being one among the names along with three other Indians - Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Sashi Kapoor. He was once listed in a Cannes cataloged as one who provided the late Indian director Aravindan with unforgettable images in the latter's cycle of mythological stories set in the State of Kerala.

In recognition to his contributions to the world of Cinema, the French Government has conferred on him the Chevalier dans ordre des arts et lettres (knight of arts and letters). Shaji is only the third in Indian filmdom, after Satyajit Ray and Sivaji Ganesan, to get the award.

Music:

Music was by the table maestro Zakir hussain.Apart from the traditional kathakali music the maestro has used a melancholic theme music and has enhanced various scenes as needed.

Awards & Recognitions:
It is pathetic that the committee responsible for sending indian movies to the oscars always falters.They send 'Jeans' instead of "Bandit Queen" and "Earth" instead of "Vanaprastham".This movie deserved it, but was pathetically brushed aside for the oscar nomination because some moron thought otherwise.

Vanaprastham might not have made it to the oscars, but it did make it to the cannes and it made it in style.Shaji karun whose all 3 movies including vanaprastham were screened in cannes, got the honor of making it to the 500 directors who made cannes and was awarded the 'Chevalier dans ordre des arts et lettres'.The movie did well in the art film circuit.

Shaji's words.It was screened in over a hundred theatres. You know, a Frenchman I met in Austria told me that he had seen the film in an Austrian village. Can you believe an Indian film running for 10 days in a European village? People are passionate about all art forms in Europe.

Actually, Vaanaprastham has been to more festivals than Piravi. It has gone all over Europe, Brazil and Mexico. It is going to the 65th film festival next month. Visually, too, it is different from other Indian films, as we had more finance at our disposal. So we had an opportunity to show the world that we are not lagging behind in technology.more

shaji N Karun

Mohanlal who plays the character that never gets recognized, got his recognization at the national level.The movie bagged Mohanlal the Best actor National award in 1999, He also received the award of Best picture for producing the movie.But the award wasn't an easy one.It was actually one of the well fought awards.

1999 was a great year, some excellent movies came out including vaanaprastham. Mohanlal and vaanaprastham had to compete with so many worthy contenders both at the nationals and the state level. It was the year of Kamal hassan's "Hey ram", Buddhadeb Dasgupta "Uttara", Rituparno Ghosh's "Bariwali", Aparna sen's "Paromitar Ek Din". Apart from the national level, mohanlal had to fight with another great performance in his home state itself. He had to compete with kalabhavan mani, who gave a stunning performance as a blind man in "Vasanthiyum Lakshmiyum Pinne Njaanum".In Tamil it was again, another stunning performance by vikram in Bala's "Sethu".

Vikram in sethu

Kalabhavan mani a former auto rickshaw driver turned actor. Did small roles in movies and sang folk songs. Things totally changed for him after his stunning performance as a blind man in the movie "Vasanthiyum Lekshmiyun Pinne Njanum".But the finest hour of this unrecognized actor was stolen by the well established super star of malayalam cine industry, bharath mohanlal. As fate put him against one of the best performance of mohanlal, He had to bow out. But Kalabhavan mani's performance did get the notice of the jury though.He was given the Special Jury Award for his performance in "Vasanthiyum Lekshmiyun Pinne Njanum".

Kalabhavan mani in Lakshmiyum...

With vikram it was a different story.His life story itself is a cinematic one.Vikram debut movie in 1989 was a flop.With that movie his fate was almost sealed.He didn't get any chance, he survived by giving dubbing voices. He went through an accident and was not able to walk for 3 years, with that and other personal crisis he had to wait for 10 years for a break.His sheer determination won at last and he got to star in director Bala's sethu.Vikram gave his soul and body for the movie.Every day he walked for miles, survived on meager food and went down half of his body weight to fit into the role. The change in his body was staggering in the movie.This and his acting combined with a strong story line made the movie a hit.Since then he has grown to become a commercially successful actor only second to rajinikanth, the superstar of tamil cine industry. Vikram fought all the way to the nationals, again unfortunate for him, his finest hour was stolen by mohanlal. Supposedly he lost the best actor award by one vote. But he didn't had to wait for long.He bagged the national award for best actor in 2003 for his role as a grave digger in another Bala's movie "pithamagan".

What would have been 3 best actor awards if they would have been released on different years, were all made to compete on the same year.Vikram and kalabhavan mani lost to a worthy winner.Mohanlal was simply superb in this movie.Whether it is dancing as a kathakali artist(his eyes, eye brows and the body movements match any good kathakali player) or carrying the burned of his birth in every scene that he appears, or the way his face lights up when he sees suhasini or his daughter he was just awesome in the movie.If i have to pick one scene i would say the scene where he talks with his father.There is hardly any movement or facial expression, the way the eyes are slightly lowered, voice modulation in uttering his words all indicating his bottled up sadness, anger and respect.How could such a feeling be emoted without much emotional outpour?.You have to feel the character completely and that is what exactly mohanlal has done in the movie.

Trivia:
The english translation of Last dance has nothing to do with the title vanaprastham.In Indian Philosophy, 'Vanaprastham' is the third of the four ashramas or stages in a man's life - Brahmacharya or bachelorhood, Grihastha or married life, Vanaprastha or retirement to the forest and Sanyasa or renunciation of all wordly interests.

Links:
The problems of the vanaprastham
shaji karun official website
vikram interview
vikram in week
Kalabhavan mani
know more about kathakali