Satyagraha: A Letdown

Director: Prakash Jha

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Manoj Bajpayee, Arjun Rampal, Amrita Rao

Prakash Jha’s much anticipated Satyagraha with its multi-starrer cast slumps in critical circles creating only a minor cinematic splash. While the performances of Amitabh Bachchan and Ajay Devgn are commendable, a half baked script and unexploited potential present a string of vapid scenes and at best trophy supporting actors.

Dwarka Anand (Bachchan), a school teacher begins a Satyagraha movement when he lands in jail for slapping the collector. Manav (Devgn), an opportunistic businessman, has a change of heart when his friend and Anand’s son Akhilesh dies in a brutal accident. Along with Arjun (Rampal), a student leader, Akhilesh’s wife Sumitra (Rao) and Yasmin (Kapoor Khan), a journalist, he becomes the brain of the movement.

In a movie in which events tumble one after another like rolling pins, moments of stillness add an element of grace to the pace of the hurtling narrative. After his son is brutally killed, Dwarka Anand finds Sumitra, his daughter-in law, sobbing in the dead of the night and consoles her in silence. Another surprising non Prakash Jha-esque scene sees an emotional Anand reluctant to let Manav go after he has already lost a son.

The muddled depiction of private and public space has openly carried out dialogues cut in medias res and continued in private over a cup of tea. The mob appears and disappears like a poor magic trick just to provide numbers.  Balram (Bajpayee) the corrupt minister becomes the single point of evil and a uni-dimensional character.

One can equally disparage the portrayal of the media when Yasmin interviews villagers with her shades on and repeatedly instructs the cameraman on how to do his job. To add insult to injury, she announces her decision to give up the President’s entourage to cover the movement as if there are no bosses and deadlines in the world of journalism.

In the end, it becomes a game of spotting every headline-making piece of news and identifying characters with real life figures such as Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal. Yet, that recognition does not add anything to film which is neither a poignant reflection of reality nor a bold narrative taking off from it. It is at best a recapitulation of all that has occurred in the public space so far. 

Planes: Delightful for kids

                                                                                                                                                
Director: Klay Hall                                                                                       
Cast: Dane Cook, Stacy Keach, Carlos Alazraqui, Priyanka Chopra

Disney’s new 3D animation Planes has everything to entertain the kids right from colourful planes, to swanky races and aerial action over swirling oceans and impressive landscapes. Although the plot is predictable and involves the triumph of the protagonist against all odds, the animation is replete with the message that a fair and just competition can also be friendly competition and need not involve jealousy and sabotage.

While Planes seems to fall short of Disney’s previous venture Cars and has been hailed as a rip off by many, it does not fail to entertain. Comedian Dane Cook infuses life into the lead character of Dusty, a crop duster plane that dreams of being in the big league and racing across the globe in spite of his fear of heights. With help from a WW2 veteran plane Skipper and friends Chug (Brad Garrett) and mechanic Dottie (Teri Hatcher), Dusty participates in the international flying race Wings around the Globe to compete against planes from all over the world.

While the more powerful planes fly high, Dusty flies low over the ocean and takes the railway route instead of taking on the Himalayas because of his fear of heights. With breathtaking visuals and Dusty’s unrelenting spirit, this film is sure to win the hearts of the young audiences although it does not entirely capitalize on 3D.

The addition of international planes brings a motley group of characters to the film from the British Bulldog (John Cleese) to the smitten Mexican El Chupacabra (Carlos Alazraqui) and our very own Priyanka Chopra as the Indian Ishani among others. While Priyanka’s accent is not stereotypically Indian, the film strategically uses a repetitive sitar strain to mark her entry and also regales the Indian audience with an aerial scene over the Taj Mahal with Rehman’s Tere Bina from Guru in the background. Incidentally, Priyanka has also lent her voice for the song ‘Fly High’.

In the end, Dusty is not just the farm boy or the underdog who triumphs against all odds and cunning, but also the plane that achieves more than what ‘he is built for’. While the film encourages its viewers to not be deterred by skepticism in following their dreams, it also emphasizes the importance of empathy over a selfish victory.

Chennai Express

Director: Rohit Shetty

Cast: Deepika Padukone, Shahrukh Khan

Touted to be an action comedy, Rohit Shetty of Golmaal fame brings to screen the much speculated about Chennai express. While the trailer doing the rounds of social networking sites received a lukewarm response especially when it came to the representation of Tamil culture and Deepika’s accent, the film as such has fared much better with the first half outshining the second.

Registering an opening record of Rs. 33 crore, Shahrukh has shown that his fan base is still intact and silenced skeptics who perceived him as the aging romantic hero. While Shahrukh Khan believes in having his female co-star’s name before his in the credits, Deepika seems to have taken that lead rather seriously by giving a delightful performance that brazenly eclipses the King Khan on several occasions.

In a tongue in cheek reference to many of his earlier films, SRK’s character is again called Rahul while Deepika plays Meenamma a South Indian belle and daughter of a village don in Tamil Nadu. Rahul, a 40 year old Punjabi bachelor is entrusted with the duty of immersing his late grandfather’s ashes at Rameswaram although he is more interested in a vacation at Goa with his friends. En route the Chennai Express, he meets Meena who is on the run from her cousins who want her to get married to another don.  

While the plot is a no brainer, the film’s success rests entirely on the comedy arising from the North South clash factor. Rahul constantly tries to outsmart the South Indian mob and sometimes even does an over-the-top act to regale his audience. The vehicle chase sequences, cars and people flying in the air and muscled goons are inspired largely from South Indian celluloid violence. Although your patience wears thin in the second half, other cinematic elements bolster the film. Music by Vishal-Shekhar boasts of a couple of good tracks like ‘Titli’ and ‘1 2 3 4 Get On The Dance Floor’ while cinematographer Dudley’s picturesque scenes of the South Indian landscape are a visual feast.

If you ignore the clichés and the predictability factor, this film is the perfect Bollywood potboiler and a masala flick with all the right doses of comedy, romance and action.

Lootera: A Bollywood Miracle

I just saw Vikramaditya Motwane's Lootera this morning. This was one Sunday morning well spent :)
Partly based on O Henry's short story 'The Last Leaf', Vikram Motwane's Lootera is a poignant story about love, fate and sacrifice. While O Henry's story dwells on the idea of death and the affirmation of life, creating characters and a story foregrounded in Bengal at the end of the colonial era and feudalism was a narrative decision that displayed pure genius on the part of the film's writers. Scripted by  Bhavani Iyer and Motwane, Lootera recreates the mixture of aristocratic decay, nostalgia followed by the emergence of a new class and the proliferation of the popular that marked the years around the Independence. What the film excels at is not just  the portrayal of a beautiful love story but  also the invocation of an entire historical age in a few celluloid frames that do not take away from the theme.

Barun Chanda, a wealthy zamindar fails to see, even on the repeated counsels of his Majumdar, how the Government's Zamindar Act will strip him of his lands. He is further taken advantage of by Varun,(Singh) who poses as an archaeologist and robs him and leaves his daughter Pakhi (Sonakshi) in the lurch on the wedding day. In the second half, the film portrays Pakhi living out her days after the death of her father until fate brings Varun back to her. The ensuing story unfolds as the two lovers face each other and the law catches up with Varun.

 The first half of the film is as much about class differences as it about two robbers clandestinely  robbing a wealthy Zamindar.  The film itself opens to the pomp and gusto of Durga Puja followed by a drama during which the Majumdar advises the Zamindar to establish a trust with his money. The debate between the naive Zamindar and the practical Majumdar is taken up later in the film between  Pakhi and the Majumdar's daughter. But Pakhi also seems to live in the same oblivious haze as her father as she does not try to find out more. Her driving escapade sees her bullying the driver into taking the blame for the accident.
Even the 'archeologists' Dev and Varun make fun of the Zamindar with his English interjections like 'Of course.' At the same time, Dev and Varun have to deceive the Zamindar's labourers and find themselves trying to explain why they want to dig. 'We are digging because there is earth!'  tells Dev comically to the villagers squatting in front of him. While the Zamindar clings on to the remnants of colonialism through his English and his Western music, the very next scene has a Bollywood song playing on the radio. The juxtaposition of two Indias and two classes becomes strikingly clear with Dev's obsession with Dev Anand and the latest Bollywood films that represent the emergence of the popular and the middle class.

The Zamindar, a 'Romantic' product of the Bengali Renaissance, tells his daughter the story of the Bheel Raja who kept his life 'locked' in a pigeon. Although the Zamindar is afraid of his daughter's wheezing attacks and says that his life is 'locked' in her, it is eventually being robbed and betrayed by an imposter that kills him. Motwane skillfully weaves in this O Henry idea of investing life in an external object and negates it. Varun, who reciprocates Pakhi's feelings but cannot leave his old way of life because of his debt to his uncle, is forced to deceive Pakhi. 'You  have always lived opulently in these four walls. You cannot know what it is like to have a debt' he explains his actions to her. In the end, we suspect the love story is as much about circumstances as about ways of life and class differences. The villain in this story is not the unrelenting orthodox family that opposes the lovers but the law. The lovers are doomed to stay apart from the very start not because they come from different circumstances or classes but because the law can never overlook Varun's deeds. In that sense, the theme resonates with Les Miserables. The only thing that redeems Varun is his supreme sacrifice for Pakhi, making amends for her condition and giving her a reason to continue to live. This is certainly a most brilliant adaption in parts of O Henry's story.

 Sonakshi has matured from Dabbang's trophy wife into an actress skillfully capable of portraying feminine frivolousness as well as intense anguish and pain. Her futile attempts at writing in to the Dalhousie scenes speak for her ability to portray depth of emotion and it is a pity directors make more use of her 'traditional' face instead of these skills. Ranveer Singh's performance is commendable and is brilliantly supported by the inimitable Vikrant Massey who is already a small screen legend. From elements of Bhansali's celluloid master strokes, to Anurag Kashyap's insightful characterization and Dibakar Bannerjee's new-humanist style, this film has bits and pieces of all that comprises Bollywood today and yet stands in a league of its own which promises to be unmistakably Vikram Motwane. 

Ghanchakkar: Trying too hard

Director: Raj Kumar Gupta

Cast: Emraan Hashmi, Vidya Balan, Rajesh Sharma, Namit Das

Raj Kumar Gupta, director of the critically acclaimed Aamir (2008) and No one Killed Jessica (2011) fails to stir the box office with his newest venture Ghanchakkar starring unlikely duo Emraan Hashmi and Vidya Balan. While the film is as much about marital problems as about a bank heist booty gone missing, the only thing that salvages an erratic script and half-baked characterization is the generous dose of black comedy along the lines of Jane Bhi Do Yaaron or Is Raat Ki Koi Subah Nahi.

Sanju (Hashmi) a reluctant robber agrees to pull off a bank heist with two rogues Pundit (Sharma) and Idris (Das) to please his fashion-obsessive, boisterous Punjabi wife Neetu (Vidya) who wants money to live a better life. After the robbery, the trio decides to lie low for three months and let Sanju hide the money. Things take a turn when Sanju loses his memory after an accident and cannot remember where he stashed the loot.

True to its name, the film tries to portray each character’s quirkiness from Neetu’s outrageous sense of fashion to Sanju’s somnolent memory loss and Pundit and Idris’ comic-evil personas. The film’s redemption lies in the way it elicits fun in the most unlikely situations. The robbers wear paper masks of Amitabh Bacchan, Dharmendra and Utpal Dutt to loot the bank, Idris and Sanju discuss TV models on the phone at a crucial moment in the plot; from Neetu’s cooking to phone-calls from Sanju’s mom and the vegetable man on the train, the domestic drama that ensues as Pundit and Das shift into Sanju’s house is a laugh riot at times and downright insipid at others.

With side-splitting performances from Rajesh Sharma and Namit Das, one wonders how much better the film would have fared had the gap between scripting and filming been effectively bridged. The first half is definitely tighter and racier while the film slumps in the second half and jolts to a halt with an abrupt ending.  Although the climax is intended to have the audience linger in the murky aura of black comedy, what remains is a sense of suspicion that in spite of strong lead performances and supporting roles, maybe the movie didn’t get its act right this time. 

Kai Po Che

Director: Abhishek Kapoor

Cast: Sushant Singh Rajput, Rajkumar Yadav, Amit Sadh, Amrita Puri.

Kai Po Che is an adaptation of Chetan Bhagat’s book The 3 Mistakes of My Life and revolves around the struggles of three friends Ishaan (Rajput), Govind (Yadav) and Omi (Sadh). The three friends struggle to open their own sports academy during the years spanning the Gujarat earthquake and the post-Godhra riots. The hot-blooded Ishaan is passionate about cricket and takes the young Muslim Ali, under his wing to groom him as an international batsman.  The simple and down-to earth Govind is the practical brain behind the sports venture, but things take a turn when he falls in love with Ishaan’s sister Vidhya, played by newcomer Amrita Puri. The naive Omi metamorphoses from a happy-go-lucky guy to a fanatic Hindu under the influence of his extremist uncle Bittu.

The film perks up because of its talented actors and the meticulous narrative touches like the Gujarati ads scribbled on public walls, side characters talking English with a thick Guajarati accent, archaic buildings and settings. Rajput plays the hot-headed and boyish Ishaan with startling conviction especially after an established role as the docile husband in the TV series Pavitra Rishta.

On a narrative level, the film tries to grapple with too many things at once. The several themes in the movie include friendship, the sub-plot of the love story, sports and the Indian scene, Ishaan’s naive humanism and the violence of religious fanaticism, and in the end Omi’s reconciliation with his past.  The viewer is bombarded with the battalion of events and incidents before they, like Ishaan, can have the time to grasp or react to what has happened. While the film does have its moments especially with the heart-warming camaraderie of the three friends, the storyline is sketchy with half-hearted characterization and kaleidoscopic narration. In the end, the film seems to be torn between being faithful to the book and scoring at the box office. The casualty in the process is the screenplay. Characters fall in love a little too suddenly, historical incidents appear because they have to, each character’s life could be a film by itself, characters die abruptly, and the climax fizzles out without a build-up even after much sound and fury.

Inkaar

Director: Sudhir Mishra

Cast: Arjun Rampal, Chirtangda Singh, Deepti Naval, Vipin Sharma

Sudhir Mishra’s Inkaar promoted as a film dealing with office politics is more a convoluted love story than about sexual harassment. Although it does talk of the thin line between flirtation and harassment, the underlying theme seems to be how the urban, competitive world with its greed and ambition has corrupted relationships that would otherwise be simple and straightforward. Mishra, the writer behind the cult classic Jaane Bhi Do yaaron and the director of the bittersweet Is Raat Ki Subah Nahi is known for his black humour and his biting irony. Inkaar is surprisingly fairytale-like although it does touch upon elements of Mishra’s trademark surrealism by portraying imaginary scenes from characters’ minds at climatic moments.

Rahul Verma (Arjun Rampal), the awe-inspiring and suave CEO of an ad-agency, is accused of harassment by Maya (Chirangada Singh), a talented copywriter who owes much of her success to his grooming. The story begins in medias res with Mrs Kamdar (Deepti Naval) presiding over the harassment case along with others member of the board. The non-linear plot spans seven years with a constant shuttling of time past and present from the point of views of both Maya, Rahul and sometimes even the board members and is an effective and gripping narrative device. Rampal is like wine. The older he gets the better he is. His performance is enticingly convincing and he would be among the few Bollywood actors to match the hysteria-triggering charisma of a Hugh Jackman or an Eric Bana. Chitrangda Singh is stunningly breath-taking although her looks at times outshine her acting, especially when she tries to portray emotional trauma.

While the lead characters are sketched in gray shades, the script makes a hazy connection between the Rahul in his childhood-taught by his father to fight for what he deserves-and the CEO who is calm, reticent and sometimes openly sidelined by Maya. Maya herself, shown as a power-hungry, alpha-female go-getter also harbours the irrational, emotionally unstable aspect that renders her unfit to wield power. With fast-paced, edgy music by Rajesh Roshan adding to the dramatic quotient of the film, and hilarious delivery by Vipin Sharma who plays Gupta, this film is a potent mix of drama, humour and Mishra’s usual dose of camera-happy experimentation.

In the end, the film veers away from any kind of social commentary on harassment but instead resorts to a more personal, humane way of resolving conflicts as both, the victim and the accused, learn to give in to each other. If you’re going to the film expecting a serious debate on harassment you will be disappointed, all you will get is a maze of point of views and the impossibility of arriving at the truth.

Dabbang 2

Director: Arbaaz Khan

Cast: Salman Khan, Sonakshi Sinha, Prakash Raj

Dabangg 2, unlike most sequels does not let you down. The blockbuster supercop phenomenon has charmed millions of hearts not only because of Salman’s crowd-pulling personality, but also in the way that it celebrates the ordinary and the common. From trouser-pulling to belt-swivelling dance moves, to the motley dance extras that include kids, classical dancers, sabjiwallas and small town shop owners, Dabangg 2 comfortably straddles both the rustic and the urban in its stride. Of course there is the usual Bollywood dose of bone-crushing, body wheeling, slow-motion punches and fight sequences coupled with Sonakshi’s simple and rustic glamour quotient not to forget the cameo item songs by Malaika and Kareena. Prakash Raj as Bachcha Bhaiya adds to the stereotype with his role of the oppressive and the duping politician.

Supercop Chulbul Pandey is transferred to Kanpur and moves there with his wife Rajjo (Sonakshi), his father (Vinod Khanna) and his dim-witted brother Makkhi (Arbaaz Khan). Chulbul’s band of loyal but ordinary policemen consists, among others, of an obese, pizza-eating superior, a senior citizen and an ex-hernia patient. Chulbul and his policemen right many cases which include a kidnapping, a murder and molestation. In all the cases, the details are left hazy while the audience is hurled headlong into the instant handing out of justice to miscreants. Justice in Dabbang2 has nothing to do with righteousness. Chulbul and his cops lie to the media, use violence, break laws, murder with impunity all in the name of welfare. There are only two things that justify them. One is the notion ‘Do unto others what you would have them do to you’; if the oppressors cannot take their own oppression, then they should not oppress. The other is: Salman Khan.

While most of the women in the movie are sidelined as the housewife or the item girl, Chulbul undoes his macho chauvinism by asking his wife to scold him when he orders her around. Chulbul’s charming interjections each time he remembers to ask about other people is an interesting touch. He grabs a fist of groundnuts from the cart-pusher and remembers to ask him about his son, while a gulab jamun in the middle of a fight sequence reminds him of his subordinate who had hernia. With all the right proportions of Bollywood masala and romance, this movie is a power-packed Salman dose.

Rain Man

Rain Man would certainly seem an ancient movie today given the fact that it was released in 1988 but it nevertheless earned an 8 upon 10 on IMDB. Rain Man starrs a dashing Tom Cruise in the pink of his youth and although I am a fan more of his looks than of his acting, I must say this movie completely blew me over. Dustin Hoffman plays an autistic protagonist and it is because of his brilliant performance that the movie works on a different level altogether.  Hoffman slips into an angst driven, existential lad (The Graduate) to an autistic and metathesiophobic character with the ease and grace of one of the best actors in Hollywood. Directed by Barry Levinson and written by Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass, the story takes on various themes and weaves them all into an open ended but richly textured cinematic space, a space, it would seem, which is devoid of the need to satiate audience desire for happy endings and family reunions. It is starkly realistic and the characters are portrayed in all their humdrum routine complexities, their mixed ethics and values, frustrated ambition, necessity and awry relationships. The movie has a very captivating score that brings the whiff of the late 80's. Also, because the major part of the movie happens on the road and during the journey, the music is charmingly apt and beautiful with haunting beats and pipes.

Cruise plays the character of Charlie Babbitt, an egotistic yet charismatic Los Angeles car bookie who can go to any length to rope in customers. He is the perfect product of all that is the worst of capitalism. He is a brilliant talker and wears his confidence as easily as he slips on his shades. He has the walk of a self made man, whose complusions and necessities end up glorifying his despair rather than crushing him. Charlie left his home as a teenager after a quarrel with his father about a 1948 Buick convertible which he used without permission and as a result, spent two days in jail because his father did not bail him out. It is only when his estranged father dies that Charlie comes to the funeral, more for claiming his share of the will than paying his last respects. Charlie's materialism in the way that he uses people for his own ends is also seen in the way he treats his love interest Susanna, played by the charming Valeria Golino. Charlie comes to know that his father has left his money to a trust fund for the care of a stranger while Charlie's only share is a dying and withering rose shrub. Charlie loses his wits about his inheritance especially as he is in dire need for his car dealings and sets out to find out who the real beneficiary is. He discovers that he has an autistic brother, Raymond. The money in the trust had been placed there for his care. Charlie kidnaps Raymond in order to coerce the fund authorities into transfering the funds to him. The entire story unfolds on this road journey as Charlie grows from an impatient and inconsiderate and opportunitic businessman to a caring and loving brother.

Raymond's repetitive speech and nagging including repeated talks of "Abbott & Costello", "Four minutes till Wapner", his neurotic fear with changes in his routine, his naive incomprehension of notions of privacy and intimacy, his stubborn refusal to travel by air because of flight accidents whose dates and casualties he remembers with astonishing accuracy, drive Charlie insane. However, this cross country journey becomes for Charlie a way to bond with his brother who is "the rain man" from a childhood song that he remembers. Charlie finds what it is like to have family even in the form of an autistic brother who apparently cannot understand brotherly love. The journey is also an adventure for Raymond  who ends up doing things he would never have done if he was institutionalized. He learns dancing, dresses up for a date, kisses Susanna who is kind and gentle towards him. He also reveals, through his fear ( "the hot water will burn the baby") that he was institutionalized because his condition posed a risk for the younger sibling Charlie. Out of a road trip arises a new understanding between Charlie and Raymond although the film leaves the question ambiguous whether Raymond is really capable of remembering Charlie as a friend or family. But Charlie becomes a more sensitive character. Although his journey began with kidnapping, his decides to take responsibility for his brother. But this decision is defied by the authorities who take Raymond back to Wallbrook Institute to his life of familiar routine of books, walks, and television programmes.

Kaleidoscope 2010

With the season for film awards, we can hope to watch some acclaimed international films in the fray for the most prestigious awards in the film world. The Golden Globes in January had interesting results. The Best Actor’s award was given to Colin Firth for his brilliant performance of a stammering King George VI in The King’s Speech. The Best Actress Award was clinched by Black Swan’s leading actress Natalie Portman, who stunned the world with her versatile performance of a timid and nervous ballerina transforming into her haunting and seductive alter-ego symbolized by the black swan. The Golden Globe award for Best Motion Picture - Drama was given to The Social Network with its fast paced narrative and its excellent editing that straddles various time frames in a linear sequence without losing clarity. While Inception was hugely popular in 2010, it remained only a nominee for all the major categories and failed to impress the Golden Globe critics. The BAFTA awards (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) went largely to the same films as the Golden Globes, revealing a vein of similarity with its American counterpart in its taste for celluloid art. The King’s Speech was a sure winner in the category of Best Film even as Colin Firth swept away a BAFTA award in the Best Actor category. The King’s Speech also won Supporting Actor and Actress award for Geoffrey Rush as the King’s speech therapist and Helena Bonham Carter as the queen. The Best Actress BAFTA award was given again to Natalie Portman for Black Swan. Inception received the Special Visual Effects and also the Best Sound BAFTA award while The Social Network got its share of recognition through the Best Editing award.

The Academy Awards better known as the Oscars are known to be every actor and director’s dream. The recent ceremony had largely predictable results, with Portman and Firth winning Best Actress and Actor categories. Some critics rated the The Social Network as a more skillfully crafted film than The King’s Speech however, they noted that the theme of a social networking site taking off globally would hardly be one fit for an Academy Award. Again, The King’s Speech reaped its share of glory with an Oscar award for Best Picture.

The 36th annual César Awards known to be the French equivalent of the Oscars were held on February 25th. They were presented by the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma. The Best Film winner was a 2010 French drama directed by Xavier Beauvois called Of gods and Men (Des Hommes et des Dieux), starring Lamber Wilson and Michael Londsale, who won a Best Supporting Actor award. The Best Actor award was clinched by Eric Elmosino for his performance in Gainsbourg while Sara Forestier won Best Actress for Les Noms des Gens. Best Supporting Actress went to Anne Alvaro for Le Bruit des Glacons.

The two films The King’s Speech and Black Swan which have been the most acclaimed films of the year, have some of the best performances when it comes to individual talents. Here is a little background into these films:

The King’s Speech: This is a film about King George VI of England who has no choice but to assume the throne as his elder brother abdicates in order to marry. George ‘Bertie’ suffers from a deep rooted inferiority complex because of his stammer and dreads the office of the king which requires meeting people and making speeches in front of large audiences. His stammer becomes a matter of concern to his loving wife Queen Elizabeth I and she sets out to find someone who can help him. She finds Lionel Logue, an unconventional speech therapist, who helps Bertie overcome his fears and to find his voice. In a memorable scene from the film, Lionel asks Bertie to read a passage aloud as he simultaneously plays loud music. Bertie cannot hear his own voice and is overwhelmed with pessimism halfway through the passage although he does not know that not hearing his own voice has made him read the passage flawlessly. The unconventional speech sessions which involve the king spewing a long string of swear words in order to relax his muscles are some of the funniest scenes of the film. In conclusion, this film is not only an original take on a piece of history, it portrays with skill the mutual dependence of a king and his subjects. It gracefully acknowledges that kings are also human.

Black Swan: As the title and the image suggest, the association of ballet and swan brings to mind nothing else but Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. This is a film about a ballerina, Nina Sayers played by Portman, who is a dancer in a New York City Ballet company run by Thomas Leroy (Cassel). Ballet is her only passion and she lives her life under the vigilant and controlling eye of her mother and former ballerina Erica Sayers. Things start to change in Nina’s life as she gets selected to play the lead in Leroy’s new season production of Swan Lake. However, she has competition in the form of Lily, a new dancer. Swan Lake in an original interpretation requires a dancer who can play both the White Swan with innocence and grace, and the Black Swan, who represents guile and sensuality. Nina fits the White Swan role perfectly but Lily is the personification of the Black Swan. As the two young dancers expand their rivalry into a twisted friendship, Nina begins to get more in touch with her dark side - a recklessness that threatens to destroy her. In a sequence of surreal events whose reality is left for the audience to decide, Nina glimpses her dark side through tangible reflections that are independent of her in the mirror. She hallucinates and commits murder as the black swan consumes her only to fight with her own dark side. As the Swan Lake performance comes to an end with the death of the white swan, Portman herself succumbs to the black swan as her purity and innocence are forced to die with the white swan. This is also a veritable cinematography masterpiece as the director explores the various relations with white and black.

1947 Earth

Earth without doubt establishes the power of Deepa Mehta as a director. She has the amazing talent of making her viewers turn in their seats in extreme discomfort and agony. She is the director of anxiety. Earth takes a view of the few months leading to partition in the city of Lahore which has a sizable Muslim population while at the same sees the flourishing of Hindus in trade. "Ham sab haraamzade hain" Amir Khan says, in a state of a tormented mind. A train from Punjab has arrived to Lahore filled with dead bodies. One whole compartment is filled with body parts of women. He has waited twelve hours expecting to find his sisters in this train. His extreme grief anger and pain have touched his innermost core. "We are like the animal in a cage," he says, "waiting to be let loose- and once the cage is opened- only god can help." This film raises intensely uncomfortable questions about civilization, about humanity, about virtue and about fate. Violence seems to live in the human heart like a pathogen, latent, waiting for a stimulus. Dil proposes to Shanta, seeing her as the only way he can to contain the violence that has suddenly been unleashed by the gory sight of corpses in the train. But Shanta refuses him as she is already promised to Haasan. Dil spies on them as they make love and is consumed by a jealousy that writhes inside him in the very way that his cigarette smoke curls up over his head. The next morning, Haasan is brutally murdered and left on the road side, crouching in a gunny bag. The Parsi home is stormed by Muslims looking for any Hindu in the house. Dil tricks even Leni, the polio inflicted child, as he exposes Shanta to the ruthless crowd. The film only reminds of the last words of Curtz in The Heart of Darkness: "The horror... the horror."

Goodness seems like an afterthought, a corrected impulse. I cannot imagine living at a time when the mob rules; when individuals are at the mercy of the crowd, when heart breaking cries of victims are drowned by the roar of a thousand voices filled with hatred. Where does hate gain such an intensity? Why is that pain moves us more than joy? Human beings can fall back from a million years of evolution in a fraction of a second and be more beastly than any animal. To trick, to want to possess, to inflict pain, to be so callous- to be blind! Hatred is blindness- and yet what drives it. It is the undoing of all civilization- the devastation that man wrecks upon man who is left with nothing to possess and nothing to lose. Hatred and violence have emerged so often in the history of mankind that they stand testimony to the bitter fact of our innate bestiality, in spite of all our progress and technological evolution. It seems to me, we become subtler in our means for violence as we evolve, if we are evolving at all. But we do not ever rid ourselves of that nefarious death instinct which constantly runs against the strain of our very existences. It is easy to say that man needs to conquer and tame his own heart before sending rockets to the moon. But to turn enemies to our own selves, to betray and turn one friend against another in the name of religion, race and caste...to invest words, veils, a hundred year old customs with so much importance that we are left with nothing but skeletons and corpses! Life has no meaning without an aim, without faith and without beliefs.. but what is the use of that aim, that faith and those beliefs that seek to obliterate life itself?

It is spine chilling to consider even with the slightest premonition that violence is the natural disposition of man, the largest and the most dominant part of himself. We are drawn to it like "moths to a flame." It shall consume us even as it shall consume everything else. We evolve it would seem, to turn back upon ourselves and swallow our own kin, to feed in vain that gigantic hunger that will forever remain insatiable.

Stranger than Fiction

The writer's block is an interesting phenomenon. The double looping of the narrative on itself elucidates a strange blend of reflexivity and authorial intent. Harold Crick can hear the narrator spelling out his life, talking about his deepest emotions "in a better vocabulary" and filling in the details during silences. The author, Karen Eifel, is not only the privelged person who can see the insides of Harold, she is also his fate. She writes his future and also makes him feel, want and do the things she needs him to do to advance her narrative. The idea of the wrist watch- and consequently the story as an interesting experiment in the space-time fabric is brilliant. The reality of Harold, which we are made to believe at first, lies entirely in the hands of Karen. His life is prevented from being an ordinary linear narrative because of he plain fact that he can hear her voice without her intending to. This strange scenario reminds me of the question of fate and free will so prevalent in Greek drama especially in the Choephori, in which Orestes must kill his mother's lover or die himself.

Harold seems to be inhabiting two spaces simultaneously. He lives a part of his life completely outside the purview and the knowledge of his creator. This is the part in which he meets the professor and gets the advice on what to do. The professor does not belong to the cast of the author unlike Anna Pascal, Harold's colleagues and even the doctor who tries to make Harold see that "trees are trees." This simultaneous occupation, characterised mainly by his exchanges with the literature professor is brought into being only because of the stimulus of the author's prediction of Harold's death. An entirely surreal effect is, of course, the life of the chain-smoking author herself who suffers from the writer's block and her relation with the new secretary Penny. The author stumbles into the world of her own creation unintentionally when the tables are turned and Harold has "a sneek peek" of her on television without her knowledge. Harold's world then is not entirely controlled by Karen. He "exists" as she remarks with a sense of enlightenment. All the characters that she has killed were indeed real people, and writing a book then seems like the subtlest most ingenious form of murder that even the law cannot trace.

But in the end, Karen has the god like power of preventing death and allowing Harold to live in spite of his severe injuries. Strangely, the literature professor's advice to Harold "to do nothing" and his consequent tv watching and the dramatic intervention of the crane seems to occur in a middle space. The parallel world of the author sees her struggling to find ways to kill Harold. She goes to hospitals, she gets drenced in the rain and shares an umbrella with Penny. The complex structure of the narrative brings into question with suspicion the nature of the narrator who is recounting us the story in the film. The film itself is a narrative and we are its readers or listeners. We are characters in somebody's mind.. and maybe our death is nothing but the whim of creative idea.. possibly of a mind tormented by a writer's block. We invent ourselves, our lives, reality is a construct that shapeshifts like the mind itself. Who exists? that is the question that eventually arises; furthermore who governs our lives? It is true that most of us do not hear voices narrating our lives and hinting at the future. But creativity seems to be a killer in more than one ways.