Reviews

Eh?

Movie in which horrendous over-moneyed Nathan Barley-ji (a 'visualiser' for a hot shot advertising agency, no less)and equally vile braying It-Girl counterpart frolic amongst the picturesquely poverty-stricken dens of Nepal. They do drugs! They do the sexy! They are oh so terribly modern in their sensibilities, yah? See, its rilly a social issue movie, Okayyyy?

Why should anyone care about these pretentious cretins? Never mind, as the film blurb said, they are soon 'faced with a challenge' that puts their alleged mismatched personalities (he is a crazy freewheeler, as the film would like to describe him, in that turgid middle-ranking US business school 'rocking out to Bruce Springsteen' kinda way, she is allegedly the sensible one) to the test.

There has to be something amiss when you find yourself rooting for the two leads to be eviscerated in a hail of bullets by Maoists, Naxalites, or whoever could pick up the gauntlet and genuinely Punish Bad Cinema as Cecil B Demented would have it. Oh well.

Wow. Whenever I find myself watching allegedly show stopping choreography in new Bollywood films which style themselves as fantasies, this sense of total boredom always creeps in at the sheer unimaginative nature of the dance routines. They're ubiquitous of course. Everyone prances about like their fresh from the Brian Rogers Dance Connection on Seaside Special, same kicks, same cutaways, the lot.

And then I saw Navrang on satellite. Wow. This is a truly fantastical film. It looks genuinely unearthly. The plot: 19th Century sage/poet/artistic type Divakar (Mahipal, looking uncannily like William L Petersen circa Manhunter)has lost his muse. This is a time of British Imperial rule (booo), but there's no overt agenda here. Its a simple story via which Divakar starts to be tormented by his artists' block. Which is where Sandhya comes in. In a dual role of his beloved and his muse she performs some gob smacking classically inspired pieces. There's this scene where she's performing a kathak (?) style routine, balancing about 10 water pots on her head, she even bends down whilst balancing them on her head (no strings). There's fantasy set pieces that are simply beautiful too, notably the piece where she's in the temple, and it morphs into a whole white-out room full of giant temple bells, each with a dancer on the ringer, swaying to the music. This is up there with the glorious surreal set designs of some of the Hollywood musicals of the 30's, and the Powwll & Pressburger film "The Red Shoes" in terms of real skill on display. they make it all look so simple too.

To be honest, I'd not heard of the goddess Amorru. This is a nice little story about good triumphing over evil. Bhavani is a simple village girl who gets her dream hubby (Doctor, US work permit) in the village of her birth. She faithfully worships the goddess Ammoru. Unbeknownst to her, she is the target of a vengeful village harridan and their oddball family, including a villain who has sold his soul to the Demon Channda in order to gain immortality, as one does in these films.

And so she is faced with all manner of trials and tribulations, including an attempted rape, etc. But Ammoru always saves the day and there is finally some top-notch ultra violence at the end where the Devi does some baddass actions to make sure the right ending happens. South Indian film often gets ignored or brushed over when people talk about Bollywood. It's a pity, because the stories are at least trying to be different from the usual mush of inept romantic family dramas produced by their northern counterparts