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Reviews
Bas Ek Pal (2006)
A fake of a movie - avoid if you can
An overwrought movie relying almost entirely upon an implausible plot. And before people go on celebrating this movie's "brave" darkness.. watch for the sequence of clichés: alcoholic, abusive husband who suspects wife of having affairs; intelligent and sincere wife who feels too bad to leave him (wtf?); love at first sight etc. etc. Nauseating.
The characters have little depth, and when they experience emotions it's either jealousy/guilt, or it's unyielding love/sheer cunning/unthinking evil.. usually in predictable sequences. What ridiculous emotional dichotomies.
Weak performances all around, and Juhi Chawla is completely wasted in this movie. So is Sanjay Suri. Both were so promising in Onir's far superior "My Brother Nikhil." Here they stumble around with weakly written characters. Urmila Matondkar is predictably annoying. Jimmy Shergill was kind of okay in his brief romance scenes with his first love interest in the movie, but quickly got much worse in the rest of the movie.
The Fountain (2006)
Pretentious & boring, with flaky performances.
Sitting through this movie was one of the most difficult ordeals I've had to endure. I couldn't wait to get out of the theatre. I laughed out loud during supposedly emotional/profound scenes. It was all so absurd.
To begin with, the movie has no substance. It has the most bland plot I've experienced. I wouldn't have minded watching a very slow-paced film that deals entirely with one man coming to terms with the death of his beloved. But this movie was plain absurd, with pretentious ramblings by flaky characters who invoke Mayan legends and immortality. Can we just leave the Mayan stuff alone already? I mean, I know Europeans went around killing indigenous people all over the world and their descendants might have quite a bit of guilt associated with it, but please stop fetishizing and romanticizing all these supposedly genuine indigenous tales of creation and death.
Also, what's up with all the New Age crap (again back to the romanticization of "Other" cultures)? Are people really ridiculous enough to buy this clichéd crap for art? The soundtrack, and the repeated, annoying imagery of the protagonist (complete with shaved head and everything, in Lotus position), levitating and contained within some vesicle/floating globulet. God, even someone from grade 4 could be challenged to come up with more imaginative and creative stuff. What a bunch of fluff. The fact that audiences might appreciate this film scares me. I want to feel that people are more demanding than that.
I felt there wasn't a single genuine moment in this film. I was never able to identify with any component of the film, let alone the characters. Now, I am not by any means a film snob - I enjoy a huge range of films of several varieties. The genre is dear to me - funny films, romance films, slow films, action films, artfully done films, experimental films, etc. But I can't stress enough that this film is terrible in its conception and execution.
Iruvar (1997)
Ratnam's absolute best -
This film tells the story of two friends and the parallel events in their lives. Although Rathnam states officially that this film is not a true story, it is generally believed that it was inspired by the real life stories of M. R. Karunanidhi and MGR during the beginning days of the DMK and their respective film careers.
Everyone always calls this film a "documentary" and tends to emphasize the fact that it supposedly tells the story of Karunanidhi and MGR. I think this film has very little to do with politics. It goes beyond the popular perception of two famous political figures in TN and tells their personal stories and attempts to disconnect these two characters in the movie from the superficial symbols of power we may perceive them as.
People that stubbornly hold onto to the idea that this film is about former Tamil Nadu chief ministers Karunanidhi and MGR (M.G. Ramachandran) will most probably not enjoy this film as much as people who view it as a drama about two ordinary men who turned out to do extraordinary things.
Some of the finer points in the movie are the unsaid words between Mohanlal and Prakash Raj (not their role in politics!). All the invisible dialog that goes on between the two of them is reflected in the background music. Mohanlal plays Anand with a high level of sensitivity. Prakash Raj is also brilliant. Good, controlled performances from the rest of the cast. This film also has two wonderful songs--"Narumugaye" & "Poo Kodiyin Punnagai." Both have amazing lyrics by Vairamuthu and good visuals, as well. Santosh Sivan's camera-work is spectacular, as usual. He impresses in a nicely-captured, post-lovemaking scene with Tabu and Prakash Raj.
Kannathil Muthamittal (2002)
A Decent Effort from Ratnam
Amuda is an adopted child who longs for her birth mother, about whom she has managed to find out as many details as she can. She learns her mother was a Sri Lankan refugee who had given birth to her in a refugee camp in Rameshwaram, India. As usual, Ratnam's narration is perfect, with realistic portrayals of Amudha's home and family members, and the warm and funny (and not at all "filmi") flashback romance between Simran and Madhavan.
Ratnam then brings his camera to the Eelam, from which point Amudha's own story gets partly eclipsed by a passionate revelation of a struggle for freedom. The scenes in Sri Lanka are spectacular, with the heart-wrenching song 'Vidai Kodu Engal Naadu' playing as an entire village is evacuated. Vairamuthu has penned painfully beautiful lyrics. In another evocative scene, strong winds batter the lush, green fields as Madhavan's character (initially viewed as a suspicious intruder by the rebels) and some militant rebels jointly recite a patriotic poem. Their united voices rise above the howling wind. "Vellai Pookal" is another Rehman gem, a cry for peace, playing as background while refugees gather in Rameshwaram from their war-torn land.
Keerthana, as Amudha, astonishes with her articulate acting skills. Simran, finally in a performance-oriented role, is perfectly at ease with her character. Madhavan, Prakash Raj (PR is sometimes annoying) and the others do a good job. We see very little of Nandita Das, and when we do, she impresses with her naturalistic acting. The Rehman-Vairamuthu combo is at its best in this film, with a superior soundtrack that is only second to their earlier Iruvar, perhaps.
Mandi (1983)
"Bigdi Zamaane Ki Baatein" (A tale of the spoiled people)
Based on a short story from an Urdu short story called "Anandi" by Ghulam Abbas, Mandi is presented as a black comedy about a group of prostitutes, led by Rukminibai, who struggle against the 'morality-police' forces in the city that want them thrown out, and their brothel destroyed to make room for 'development'.
This film is among Shyam Benegal's best work. Benegal assembles some highly professional actors, with Shabana Azmi excelling as the crude, selfish, yet likable "Bai" (madam) of the "Khota" (brothel), Smita Patil as the beautiful, gentle-looking, but rebellious Zeenat. The movie rests on their strong performances, and also on Naseeruddin Shah's, whose character reveals a lot about the 'khota' and about the relationships between its inhabitants. The relationship between Rukminibai and Tungrus is deceptively simple, for underneath all their interactions there is a deep concern they share for each other. This is why we see Tungrus being excessively critical of her during the opening scenes; he worries for her.
The relationship between Rukminibai and Zeenat is one of the main focuses of this movie; Rukminibai loves Zeenat like a daughter, but feels threatened when Zeenat wants to assert her freedom, and becomes addicted to 'taking care' of Zeenat and keeping her under her control. She eventually alienates herself from all the women who work for her, and her seemingly strong personality disintegrates, and right when she is on the verge of breaking down, and when the possibility of starting afresh and maybe beginning a reflective process of self-recovery appears, she tragically falls into the cycle of selfish-love/'motherly' control again.
Other interesting facets of this movie include the 'social worker', Shanti Devi, who is concerned about the moral degradation of the city, and fights the unrelenting prostitutes to claim back lost honor. There is an especially emotionally frustrating scene where Shanti Devi speaks about how a woman should be respected and not sold, while addressing a crowd, and proclaims that she will persuade her 'sisters' to give up this lowly work. Some prostitutes respond with, "And where will we get our bread?" Shanti Devi, the great, compassionate womens-rights espouser coldly says, "Bread isn't everything in life." One of the women casually reply with bursting frustration: "you must get it for free."
The prostitutes' fate feebly dangles in between these powerful forces--on the one side, there is the moral, 'feminist', social-worker, who is so superficially attached to her 'cause' that she cannot relate to real women and their struggles, and on the other, there is the powerful industrialist, Gupta, who buys their brothel with the intention of razing it down, but continues to mislead them.
Other female representations include Gupta's extremely-inhibited, mentally-restrained, child-like daughter, for whom he strategically arranges a marriage with the son of another powerful figure who also ties-in with the prostitutes in another manner. Aditya Bhattacharya plays the innocent, young Sushil, engaged to Gupta's daughter, but attracted to the liveliness and beauty he perceives in the unpretentious Zeenat. His attraction to her soon proves to be problematic, however.
This movie very subtly points out how morally-lacking these surrounding forces are, and how the prostitutes, who seem more real and bound by morals than the other, rather snobbish, 'respectable' people, ultimately are forced to take the blame for 'moral degradation' and are forced to leave the city (their struggles don't end there). This theme is at the heart of the recurring song (Rukminibai hums it often, and also asks Zeenat to sing it), "Zabaane Badalte Hain Har Aan Khubaan.. Yeh Sab Kuch Hai Bigdi Zamaane Ki Baatein."