Films I am dying to see
35 Shots of Rum
White Material
Where the Wild Things Are
Lorna's Silence
You, the Living
A Serious Man
The Milk of Sorrow
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Book I am dying to read
The Original of Laura

The Hurt Locker

One of the best action films and one of the best films on Iraq, The Hurt locker is highly recommended. Jeremy Renner and Kathryn Bigelow, both are now on my high alert list.

Kate Bush - The Sensual World

I dreamed a dream - Susan Boyle

Even Reality TV and Talent shows have their moments. Does not she remind you of one of those chirpy women of Terrence Davies' films who sing their life away. Wonderful. Here you go!

Delhi 6

Few things about Delhi 6.

1. If an artist wants - a confident and cocksure artist, the type we all know - he can make a miniature painting with bold strokes and still feel good about it. Similarly, for the directors who cant help but think big, everything becomes mini-India, so we have standard Hindu-Muslim characters, standard dadima, standard sweet-bitter relatives (large hearted ones have big breasts or big smiles), standard kids (two types - with glasses, without glasses) and other associated clichés but remember that the mini-India of our serious and good-hearted directors is not quite complete without the holy grail of goodness and that can only come from an NRI (preferably man, preferred age 25-27, must be good at heart and good looking too - as they go hand in hand - , must be doing quite well in US, preferably a software engineer, scientist or son of an Indian male, who is doing very good in US, preferably a doctor and married, - as they go hand in hand). He comes, he sees and he reforms us. Whether he stays back or carry on his journey is quite immaterial (or rather depends on whether he gets a girl here. The girl should be fair, preferably long hair. She should be of a kind which should make India look cool - now coolness really depends on director's definition of it. There are basically two types of coolness - Traditional coolness and hip-coolness. Typically girl adjusts to whatever NRI wants. The romance between NRI and girl must follow normal Bollywood standards. The first encounter must be little rough (The only tussle they have is whether they should kiss Bollywood style or Hollywood style, here the guy loses usually), rest goes smoothly. I repeat girl should be fair or become so in due course of romance). We all know and understand that an NRI is the closest approximation to a white man you can find in our family, so it is nothing but natural for us and our film makers to be drawn to them. They are as white as we can ever get. "Son of an NRI" is even cleaner than the NRI, in moralistic terms. Technically he never left the country. He is godlike- if I may say so - with no Original sin. He is a kid, he observes with a zeal of a teenager. He is so young, innocent and beautiful that the whole theatre must feel bad if someone slaps him tight. His voice of reason, his ok-ok Hindi (like the dubbed Tamil and Telugu of South Indian heroines exported from Bombay), his untainted ideals and his open-minded feminism (and he will definitely get chance to show it few times in the film), his goggles, cell phone, laptop and a wiser and purer (if not cleaner) brain. No wonder, he becomes friends only with Dadima and kids, he is beyond (or out of) his time, just like god. His inability to express hints to his innocence, his childlike gaze becomes his purity of observation and his smile becomes the mirror of his pure white soul. NRI (or son of an NRI) is at once, pristine and philistine - a godsend for Bollywood.

2. Nothing irritated me more than the use of Ramlila sketches to push the tick-mark narrative points forward. The worst abuse was made of Sabri's story. Its was like watching a low-intellect children story where references to an age old saga are so badly needed to validate the point that it does not fear from trivializing the story itself. The last best use of Ramleela was done in Rajkumar Santoshi's Lajja where drunk Sita (Madhuri Dixit) refuses to go to Agni Pareeksha and argues onstage with both Ram and Lakshman. It was one of the last instances of feminism in commercial Bollywood. It was much better than when ramlila was used to extreme ends to bring director's point across like in Deepa Mehta's Fire. Attempts like Fire or Delhi 6, use the epic for their narrow ends, but efforts like Lajja's ramleela scene flip-flops it to make us think.

3. Surprisingly, I was alright with the Kala-bandar theme. I know its more or less like Panchtantra, that we all have a kala-bandar inside (Banality of evil for kids and toddlers), but it was done with some humor so it works in parts. But I was most embarrassed by Amitabh's role. Do Bachachan's come in a package. ek ke saath ek free. One can not help but think of Abhishek's reply when the director/producer asked him to work in this film, "Papa ke saath", he would have replied. Amitabh and his tribe (who so ever calls him Amitji, Amit Uncle or Papa) are in so many films now-a-days that one can safely say that there is a Kala-bandar inside every film.

Short Notes on 2008 Disappointments and a Recommendation !

Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt). Very honest and one of the most serious films of 2008 but so cold that it could not even justify the use of medium. The stack of stark images does not bundle up into something that seems to strike an emotional chord here or there as if the director is scared of emotions. I am more disappointed here because it is otherwise a glorious attempt in a sober voice.

Milk (Gus Van Sant). In preparation to watch Milk, I saw Rob Epstein's excellent documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk and in the commentary track of the documentary the director says that they consciously did not name it The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, because they wanted to capture the struggle in times of Milk not his life per se. The motion picture Milk tries to capture both and thats where it fumbles because it is not necessary that the personal life of a person be as interesting and important as his political life.

My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin). For me, Guy Maddin's films work when he mixes nostalgia not only with genuine sadness but with irony, surreal humor and perverse fantasies that are uniquely his. My Winnipeg works great in pieces but what spoils the whole experience is Guy Maddin's overemotional voice over, it pampers and plunders the images and their irony. You never know what to believe, Maddin or his images.

Alexandra (Aleksandr Sokurov). I am not too sure about this film but this is definitely Russian version of hate the war but support the troops, which is nothing wrong, but the grandmother character is overly patronizing and when we get the feeling that she is actually supposed to represent both mother Russia and director’s alter ego, the whole exercise, even if heartfelt, looks not only nationalistic but rather simplistic.

Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog). This is one attempt where from the very beginning director promises to explore the other side of the world "differently", there is supposed to be nothing usual here (Herzog himself says that he is not here to film penguins) but even if it is not arrogant its immodest promise and more length of the film is devoted to ridicule others than to show us things with new eyes. It is definitely a minor effort from Herzog. May be thats why it was nominated for Oscars.

Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant). Van Sant use of Christopher Doyle's excellent photography, Nino Rota's music and a cryptic narrative seems to cancel out each other in their stylistic excesses. It is one example where a bunch of good things does not result in anything better.

The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan). Self proclaimed harbinger of chaos and menace, the anti-establishment Joker's big-budgeted explosions looks meticulously planned and staged. In a strictly back and white sensibility, Joker's irrational lunatic evil does not go hand in hand with the bigness of his sophisticated misadventures or vice versa. Its just too layered. On the other hand the two face metaphor is overly clean cut, The face, the coin, the film divided in two halfs. And thats the problem with this film. You just can not have it both ways. Also, the cut after Joker's fall was too abrupt.

Dear Zachary (Kurt Kuenne). This is a heartfelt personal documentary but highly manipulative so much that one starts feeling that the director does not trust his audience's emotional responses and so he packs them with enough arsenal to illicit a powerful but expected response.

Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman). What you will think of a person who fantasizes of staging an artsy-fartsy funeral for himself. Thats exactly what I think of this film. Its self-indulgent in a very morbid way. But Samantha Morton's performance is quite good.

Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas). This is essentially the textbook of art house cliches. This film reminded me of Cartman's Christian Rock Album cover where he asks Token to point away from camera because this is how album covers are. Also, the director should go to confession for trying Dreyer so poorly.

Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle). My biggest problem with this film is the end dance sequence. Its so shoddily choreographed, its worse than mediocre - a half-hearted sham, lip service to Bollywood.

Now the recommendation, Abdel Kechiche's The Secret Of The Grain is long and intense family drama that brings different ends of a family together when it engages in opening a couscous restaurant. And look out for marvelous Hafsia Herzi. Ebert compares her to Isaballe Huppert.

Best non-2008 Films seen in 2008

This is the list of films seen in 2008 which I found very impressive and satisfying. In my opinion, a film like Beloved is 24 carat gold, a masterpiece of highest degree and cinema as piece of history and heart. Most of the films in this list unpretentiously strike a balance between the aesthetics and the reality in cinematic art and form. A film as film-scholarly as Who's Camus Anyway, tells more about human beings than about cinema and in its most sublime moments suggest them to be one and same manifestation. The documentary - The House is Black, To Be and To Have, Baleros and Near Death - either observes human condition with honesty or take part in it to evoke action. The Camp of Showgirls and Pussycat, and of course of Mike Kuchar's shorts is more telling, honest and probing than the seriousness of everyday Hollywood. In a Lonely Place, a film I saw several times last year, may be most profound film that examines love (or rather its impossibility) in the guise of a noir. As my personal change in trajectory of film-watching last year, I became more and more interested with the concept of films as therapy and for their humanity like in Ray's Devi and Sembene's Moolaade. I care less about lot of things which I used to care before. Awkwardly paced and clumsily acted but deeply moving, The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein would have never gotten a nod from me before. What remains constant are the films that can make reality look like dreams and vice versa, some sort of poetry - films like George Washington and Killer of Sheep, and to some extent Nobody Knows - the films that transform music and image put together to breathtaking beauty. And there are some terrific performances here - the star performance of Holly Woodlawn in Trash, Dirk Bogarde in The Servant, Doomed beauty Gillian Anderson in The House of Mirth, Celia Johnson's housewife-in-love in Brief Encounter and many others. All these films are highly recommended.

1. Beloved (Jonathan Demme)
2. The House is Black (Forugh Farrokhzad)
3. George Washington (David Gordon Green)
4. In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray)
5. Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
6. The Servant (Joseph Losey)
7. Who's Camus Anyway (Mitsuo Yanagimachi)
8. To Be And To Have (Nicolas Philibert)
9. Balseros (Carlos Bosch & Josep Maria Domènech)
10. Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembene)
11. Trash (Paul Morrissey)
12. Whisky (Juan Pablo Rebella & Pablo Stoll)
13. Freaks (Tod Browning)
14. Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven)
15. Careful (Guy Maddin)
16. Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Koreeda)
17. The Intruder (Claire Denis)
18. Brief Encounter (David Lean)
19. Near Death (Frederick Wiseman)
20. Devi (Satyajit Ray)
21. Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi)
22. Mike Kuchar's Shorts (Sins of the Fleshapoids, The Secret of Wendel Samson & The Craven Sluck)
23. The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein (John Gianvito)
24. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer)
25. The House of Mirth (Terence Davies)

Pic: A crucial scene from Masaki Kobayashi's Harakiri.

2008: Year in Film !

Here is the list of my favorite films of 2008 (I tried my best but I am never sure of the order). I am late as usual and the excuse (as usual) is because I wanted to catch up with few films and revisit some. Please recommend if I am missing any good films of 2008.

1. Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme)
Amidst the chop-shop of marriage and personal conflicts, the moments of reflection and reconciliation comes at the right time making the film an exercise in compassion, not in bitterness. Demme understands that narrative logic is not the soul of images, their emotional order is. With the backdrop of a faux-Indian musical wedding, past and present unveil and collide, moments are stolen, lived and lost, with the quicksilver performances of two daughters (Rosemarie DeWitt's elder Rachel and Anne Hathaway's Kym) and their mother (Debra Winger), the movie becomes a therapy of sorts. Demme sees the therapeutic power of confrontation, but also knows that sometimes words fall too short and there are times when nothing works. When Rachel gives Kym a shower after a rough night, it is not only a moment of reconciliation, but also a reflex of sibling love. Demme understands that familial bliss is somewhere rooted in selective amnesia - you forget mistakes of those you care - and somewhere in involuntary bond between family members. Rachel Getting Married is definitely the most soulful film of the year.

2. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)
One of the reviews of Mike Leigh's Naked wrote that the film "tries to articulate what is wrong with the society that Margaret Thatcher claims does not exist". Leigh's oft-miserable characters living at the fringe of society are just trying to survive but even then one can virtually smell the human warmth off his characters owing to Leigh's compassion for them. In few respects, Happy-Go-Lucky's heroine Poppy (amazing Sally Hawkins) –non-judgmental, intelligent and caring for people – is onscreen Leigh showing genuine understanding and respect to his characters. Poppy's zest for life and empathy for others is born out of clear heart and understanding. There is no strand of smugness to it. She is one of those persons who get truly moved by other people troubles and offer a helping hand. (Do not confuse this with Bollywood goodness of heart where happiness of one man cruelly breaks in the safe sadness of others). Poppy is not naive like Fellini's Cabiria but has her resilience. If we overlap the penultimate scene where Poppy pensively walks after having a heavy argument with her driving instructor (Eddie Marsan) and the last scene where she takes a boat ride with her friend, we can feel something akin to the last scene of Nights of Cabiria, and it is no small feat.

3. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
This film, like its muse - a red balloon - is free and floating. It is absolutely liberated from any notion of making a sensible narrative or any life changing epiphany. A dreamer duo - a curious child (Simon) and his baby sitter (Song, a passionate film student) - create a canvass on with reality taps in the form of child's mother (animated Juliette Binoche's Suzanne) and is absorbed within the calm of the canvass. Flight of the Red Balloon builds an awe-inspiring fantasy around the matter-of-fact reality, without trying too hard because it knows that it might break the spell. There is certain musicality to the whole film with calm of the dreamers and the resound of life outside their fantasy. Flight of the Red Balloon touches the idea of cinema as a tool to preserve past (Suzanne's asks Song to transfer her old 8mm movies to DVD) and also the idea that it reminds us of things and emotions forgotten ("Your film touches on very deep things I thought I'd forgotten," remarks Suzanne to Song after seeing her film). Emerging out of these basic ideas are notions of cyclic nature of cinema (you preserve and you revisit and you preserve again to revisit, its memory and past both) and its oddly magical way of connection and conveying emotions and ideas (Somebody preserves past, and someone else experiences it). Flight of the Red Balloon gently captures the crux of these ideas.

4. Still Life (Jia Zhang-ke)
Still life is set in a small village of Fengjie, on the banks of Yangtze River which is the site of infamous Three Gorges Dam Project. Jia Zhang-ke mixes fiction to this backdrop with story of two people (Shen Hong and Huang Mao) searching for their spouses. The social, political and emotional ramifications of the dam are filtered through lives of the fictional characters. With Zhang-ke 's excellent, almost uncanny, gift of composition, the backdrop and the fiction fuse together as a sensitive portrait of the history in making and unmaking. His unforced compositions have irony (shot of a demolished building collapsing in the cityscape behind the reunited husband and wife, a couple dancing with the backdrop of Yangtze), light-hearted humor (Workers sharing beer, cigarettes and toffees) and supernatural/absurd (A building like a Chinese alphabet becomes a rocket ship, a UFO flies over Yangtze River, the circuit board shorts as Hong Shen bandages an injured worker). But most importantly, Zhang-ke is talking about the power and control of money on the lives of his characters. People are moving away from their homes for money, there are debts to be paid, people changing after having a taste of money. In the biggest joke and irony of the film, workers show each other that their part of China on the banknotes. On the surface, Zhang-ke does not look very interested in the politics of dam (rarely in film we see any discussion about the dam), but the overwhelming rubble of a landscape is ubiquitous. Almost every scene has something going on in the background. Its like a play staged with a slowly disintegrating backdrop, everything here takes a new meaning.

5. Hunger (Steve McQueen)
Steve McQueen's Hunger may look like "protest cinema" because it documents Bobby Sand's Hunger strike in Maze Prison. Also because of the same reason it might even fall into "issue cinema" trap. In both of these labels - protest and issue - come before cinema and therefore Hunger, although about protest and issues is neither of them. With Hunger Steve McQueen joins the group of directors who know how to shoot human bodies and how to put them together to mean something bigger than the pieces. We all know Bresson did it again and again; several assorted shot of hands and pockets meant more than picking a pocket. But McQueen goes political with Hunger. Shots of bloodied knuckles of guards, corridors of Maze prison, wounds in skull, dark tiny prison cells, beating, shit smeared prison walls, stiff limbs, naked battered bodies, dirty fingernails and voice of Mrs. Thatcher are used to evoke a situation or rather how people are dealing with a situation. With these dispersed visual installments, McQueen captures the complexity and brutality of the situation on both sides. McQueen said in one of the interviews that his primary inspiration for the project was Goya and how to make the worst images engaging (nor sexy or numbing). As a testimonial to his success, the killing of a guard, in its shock, beauty and brutality will do both De Palma and Argento proud and the humanity of that scene is undeniable. The second act of the film is a brilliant argument (this argument reminded me of Pere Portabella's brilliant short El Soprar) between two ideologies - Bobby Sands and Father Dom Moran. The argument is about the new path for Republican's cause and the validity and need for hunger strike. Here McQueen hits all those questions head on - The questions that Bobby and Father ask each other, Is hunger strike heroic?, Is this good for the Republican cause? Are there other ways around and the questions which a viewer have in their mind, What is the ideology of the film? Does this film romanticize the terrorists, what is the moral center of the film, Is this film a protest or anger or frustration to a situation. Act three is the actual hunger strike and its brutal physical manifestations. Although dealing with a piece of history, McQueen works like an artist not a documentarian, and hence is freer. In his last minutes, Sands recalls a childhood memory of running in woods - a mysterious evocation of childhood freedom and fear, and is followed by a shot of birds flying at dusk - although a cliché of soul being free - becomes an simple expression of both exhaustion and release.

6. Reprise (Joachim Trier)
Reprise feels like a first film for all the good reasons - fresh, original, experimental, spirited and personal. With the audacious beginning sequence of pile of would-have-beens, the film establishes its tones of hit and miss, inspiration and block, success and failure for our two young writers (Erick and Philip), in their professional and personal lives. The film has an amazing insight into human mind and how it processes, remembers and uses information. If this film is a mess of if-then-else loops and what-ifs, the director understands the impossibility of sorting some things out and he also acknowledges that its style will work only once, after that the cult will be quotidian (which might save it from being a Hollywood fodder). Hovering all over is the young men’s aspirations and strive for professional success (the intro sequence even establishes that, although they want their success not to be the famous type but a cult-case) in writing which in some ways is against their passion for language and writing (Their favorite author, Sten Egil Dahl ,tells Erick that never to discuss art on TV) so in the film there is always a friction between creativity and fame (our heroes get writer blocks once they get famous). The added twist is their life outside their writing world - the reality in which they live in, their friendship and love life (Erick breaks up with his girlfriend so that he can devote himself to writing vaguely reminds of Kafka's love letter to his girl friend that writing is his first love), which provides an amazing flux of scenarios of joy, awe and sadness. We only hope that our young writers will someday balance their multiple worlds.

7. The Witnesses (André Téchiné)
If any film this year understands and captures the sentiment of loss in essence, this is it. This film understands loss (without ever turning bitter or melodramatic or morally rigid) because it understands its power on people's lives and it understands the human perseverance in the wake of it. Novelistic and classical, in all its lightness and vibrancy, the film feels like a heartfelt remembrance of people and a passage of time, not just a bunch of regrets and sobs of the time lost. André Téchiné fast and urgent narrative - divided into three chapters, "Happy Days,” “The War” and “Summer Returns” - has a fleeting power, and is directed delicately not because the memory is thin, but because it is subtle and still alive. If images of Manu drowning, Manu touching Mehdi’s back, ailing Manu asking for a kiss from Sarah, Manu kissing Sarah, Manu dancing with Sarah and Adrien, haunt us, we understand what his friends and lovers have gone through and on a larger scale what an era has gone through. Téchiné film feels like a whiff of fresh air from past, loaded with life and loss.

8. In the City of Sylvia (José Luis Guerín)
In the City of Sylvia not only likens the act of watching faces, forms, people and poses to the art of filmmaking but it also plays out as the struggle of an artist to make sense of the rich and chaotic world around him. A quintessential romantic and artist type, El (Xavier Lafitte), visits cafes, wanders, and as we come to know, he is looking for a girl named Sylvia whom he has met in a nearby bar 6 years ago. The first third of the film is a very confident experiment in point of view, framing and composition. Shot in broad daylight, this sequence is extraordinary because it balances the reality and ordinariness of the real life and the romance and desire of a human heart. It is the same balance that an artist needs to strike - the balance between aesthetic and the psychological. This part ends in a high note when El spots a girl who he thinks is Sylvia. The second part is a hit and miss romantic chase which end in a disappointment. The chase is purely of a lovelorn wanderer kind, with only a little thrust of libido. The third part (my favorite) is the bar sequence which - for one - is the camp version of first act with cafe replaced by a bar and violin by Blondie, and also a fitting closure to a daydream where the director finally deconstructs male gaze into desire, disappointment and inaction.

9. Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris)
In Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris, tries to find the truth behind Abu Gharaib's infamous images through interviews with the various players, his signature recreations and dissection of images as never done before. Errol Morris is the most scientific and fact-based film-maker working today and his investigative zeal is not guided by a pre-determined goal or agenda (it is not to say that the film is crafted without foresight, but one can tell that the investigative research for the film was open-minded and unbiased). Morris is not quite interested in big questions like banality of evil or but in small-specific questions like "why was a portion of photo cut out", "who took the picture" and "what happened before and after the picture". Step by step, through such small questions and examinations Morris deftly crafts a portrait of morality, responsibility, corruptibility and truth, and takes us to a surreal climax where few of the most shocking images are marked Standard Operating Procedure by a US Official. In an effort to explain himself, the official says "People who have not been to places where I have been, I don’t expect them to see them in the same way", hitting right in your head that these procedures really are some sort of standard and routine in other such infernos. Standard Operating Procedure suggests that what happened in Abu Gharaib may not be the exact scheme given by top officials to these kids to operate but it is evident that they were sanctioned enough support and freedom (and of course \cover-up) for enough time with pressure of non-specific goals (like to get intelligence information for a Iraqi civilian) that one thing led to other, responsibilities of actions ("We were just following orders") were diffused and immoral humiliation and torture became the standard operating procedure. Haunting, persuasive and objective, SOP is an extraordinary example of building a big picture with small but precise stokes.

10. My Father, My Lord (David Volach)
The film told so gently and patiently as if its a tender past remembered with images, but at the same time so observant and compassionately close to its characters as if its meticulously conceived with feel of a dream. It must be little bit of both like any personal film is. Contrary to his own experiences, when young Jewish boy, Menahem is told by his father that animals do not have any souls, film gently suggests a betrayal to humanity by those who are trusted to protect it. The tragic climax becomes more hurting because one fears that pure experience and curiosity might have been drowned in the sea of rusted ideology in the name of faith.

Honorable Mention: WALL-E, Be Kind Rewind, Let the Right one in, Boarding Gate, Redbelt and Burn After Reading

Not Seen: The Wrestler, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Class, A Christmas Tale, Profit motive and the whispering wind, The Last Mistress, The Edge of Heaven, Trouble the Water, and My Blueberry Nights.

Notable Performances:
Sally Hawkins, Happy Go Lucky
Eddie Marsan, Happy-Go-Lucky
Juliette Binoche, Flight of the Red Balloon
Sami Bouajila, The Witnesses
Sean Penn, Milk
Josh Brolin, Milk
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married
Frances McDormand, Burn After Reading
Michael Fassbender, Hunger
Asia Argento, Boarding Gate

Disappointments and Letdowns (of varying degrees): Wendy and Lucy, Milk, My Winnipeg, Alexandra, Encounters at the End of the World, Paranoid Park, Dark Knight, Dear Zachary, Synecdoche, New York, Silent Light and Slumdog Millionaire. I will try to put my thoughts down soon on some of these.

Hindi Films: I really liked Mithya, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and A Wednesday in that order. I will try to write about them in a separate post. The most amazing performance of the year is Amrita Rao's (YES) fifteen minute scene in less-than-mediocre Shaurya. She makes tea and talks about her dead husband in horror and repulsion. Neat!

Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!

I missed first 15-20 mins of Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!. It all started with the trouble to reach the theatre. The listing that I checked showed 66th and 3rd Ave but it was actually 11th and 3rd (it is another story how I figured out that, in short it was not easy). When I reached panting, it was already 3:15 pm for a 2:50 pm show (I hope in the beginning they showed trailers of usual Bollywood crap like Dostana which was playing next door). All the trouble was worth it. I was just sad that I was the only one in the theatre, when the Dostana screen had so many people. No Kidding, it was sad.

Lets start with a customary one liner plotline. Lucky, the charming, (an astonishing Abhay Deol) is a superchor, who along with his childhood friend, Bangali (Manu Rishi), works for Gogi Bhai (Paresh Rawal), but owing to his oversized charm and intelligence, he outsizes Gogi bhai and along the way he finds fame and notoriety, falls in love ["Jugnu rehndi sheeshe paar"] and hopes for a happy family life ["jugni hasdi ve hasdi, ke dil vich basdi"]. In this standard storyline, the first and foremost thing that director Dibakar Banerjee does is to literally add Delhi(same as he did in Khosla ka Ghosla, remember quick rajma recipe ["main kenni rajma chawal chadha de, ke do di vajai chaar citeeyaan vaja de, vich thoda soda paade, kal kenda ni si khada khazana waala"] in the opening scene). So a standard scene of seduction translates to that marvellous scene where the girl says "by god, main touch ho gayi" and a dinning table conversation translates to something even more marvellous [ "yeh show piece hai aur yeh khana"]. What is more amazing is that it all happens without a single stereotype, if I can say so (and I mean it as appeciation), they are all humane caricatures written with lots of sympathy for them. One way to explain this is through one of the song in the film soundtrack "Tu Raja ki Raj Dulari", a soulful Haryanavi Ballad (raagni). With raw traditional voice and lyrics, the song is true its spirit but the techno beat (which never tempers with voice and lyrics) is the indication of the milieu where it is used. Our hero is not someone who will write and sing that song, but the one who feels the same emotion (and may be in the same language) just because of the fact that he has grown listening to such sound and music. It is an excellent way for a film to connect to roots of its characters and fly, never giving an impression that such music is "used" for just creating the impression of Delhi like shots of Chandni Chowk to India Gate are cheaply used as "establishing shots" for Delhi in much of Yashraj-Brand Filmmaking.

Not to put the film in any disadvantage of over-expectation, I think Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye! is even better than Khosla ka Ghosla (although I have see Oye Lucky! at least one more time to say anything concrete), and one aspect where the film clearly exceeds is performances (I think for the kind of films Dibakar Banerjee is making, he knows how important the performances are). I did not find any of the performance weak (I only wish that the triple role of Paresh Rawal can be distributed among more actors just in the hope of finding more of Richa Chaddas and Manu Rishis, also I did not find any reason (logical or illogical, something like Ayeshia Takia playing both wife and secretary to K in No Smoking) why they are played by same actor. May be something happened in first few mins that I missed). Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye ! is a treasure trove of performances. A performance like Richa Chadda's Dolly is great by any standards. It is not a central role but its pivotal in a way any character role can be. It is not by chance that when I gave two examples before of how similar situations are translated to Delhi lingo, I quoted both lines said by Dolly, it is because she gets it perfectly right all the time, little here or there would have made those scenes little funnier but much more dispassionate. If Neetu Chandra's Sonal (excellent by the way) is girl next door, Dolly is definitely girl few doors away, a more cinematic entity, a more vibrant character.

The romance between Sonal and Lucky starts with Lucky's usual charm but the director plays with it for Lucky's need to have a family and with the excellent glass door motif, without overemphasizing, he conveys the fragility of this love, and also the emotional distance between lovers. Every visit and every opening of the glass door is a new beginning for the lovers. In few beautiful shots we see Neetu Chandra standing in front of the glass door, both fearful and waiting to open the door. It looked as if the director touched the cornerstone of romantic love.

I should not forget to note the first rate and large-hearted humor of the film which makes it such an entertaining fare. I was time and again amazed by the clever use of Hindi/Punjabi/Haryanavi (remember the first meeting of Special branch cop with Gogi Bhai and his flip to Haryanavi). And do you remember why Bangali is called Bangali? And how can one forget the "Lady Doggy" sequence - the funniest celebration of canine love. It is so heartening to see that even if director is dealing with something dark at the core, but he never raises "its serious cinema" flag. It is heartening to see someone trust his audience that they will understand the void in Lucky's life amidst the flourishes of his adventures and his zest for life.

A word about music, although I have touched it before. I am a minority of the people whom I know who think that Punjabi language and music has an unparalleled emotional power and much of it is wasted in similar-sounding bhangra beat numbers. I still remember the days when I first heard real Punjabi music in a Spic-macay concert at my college, it was amazed how soul-stirring it was. This film gets its music and the tone right and how songs are used without interrupting the narrative and how the mix of folk and funk is just suited for it.

One way to show the life of Lucky Singh is to realistically portray every twist and turns of his adventures and the other way to mythologize (not idolize) it. I personally like the later approach especially when it is used for something where it should not be used in popular culture, partly because its deviant, risky and interesting, but more so because it rescues the film from the typical struggle between good and evil, inspiration and rebuke but puts its in the realms of storytelling and about the passion of the protagonist. I felt that Lucky does not have passion for stealing (although to his credit he never differentiated between big and small, stealing everything with equal love) but a skill for it. His passion was his aspirations (if he were good at anything else, he will use it to pursue his aspirations) which the director beautifully uses to reveal different aspects of society which he interacts with. To the distant, he is a notorious celebrity of India's Most wanted list, and for the near, he is much more complex, evoking awe, love, hate and envy at equal measure, to us film goers he is sort of a middle class myth and director does something in the last shot of the film [a pixelled black and white close-up of Lucky] which comes close to mythologizing him.

To tell the truth, I was little scared before I saw the film. It is usual scare a cinephile experiences when he goes to see the second film of a director whose first film was really good. It was the similar scare which I had when I saw No Smoking, and it will be the same when I will see the next film by Navdeep Singh. It is more than the feeling that the director may screw it (he has all the freedom to screw) but it is a feeling that what ever you so dearly liked about the film was something of a byproduct (may be a fluke) not director's main concern, he does not think the way you thought he does. A second good film reassures all that. Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! does that.

Synecdoche, New York

No doubt, Charlie Kaufman is a fertile mind, but in films, fertility is not the richness of ideas, but it is the richness of images. It is sad that a film about exploration of a complex artistic mind and his obsession with death and decay, is so devoid of color that the only color I remembered as I came out of theatre was green - the color of poo in one of the scenes. One does not expect death and decay to be vibrant but toning all the colors down so that it all looks like everything happens in a glare of white light is sterile. In films, Kafkaesque does not translate to black and white, nor seeking truth translate to a character shouting "I won't settle for anything less than the brutal truth". Its a classic trap where darkness of an idea translates to aridity of images. Synecdoche, New York is a film where images are sacrificed for ideas.

It might be something personal but I am not very comfortable with films obsessed with self-obsession of an artist, especially when the central character is supposedly director's alter-ego. The only thing that saves such films is not honesty or truthfulness or brutality of self-examination (how bitter can an artist get), but irony and humor. That is why I am not a big fan of 8 1/2, but that film has anecdotes, images and irony, not just a bundle of ideas.

To its credit, Synecdoche, New York has many of Charlie Kaufman's brilliant themes which he explored in his previous screenwriting efforts. There is a very clear idea of the baggage of body that we carry with our mind and soul. But here too, Kaufman missteps because he forgets that he is dealing with film medium where images of faces and body are the index of ideas, if we do not take an easy way out of reading monologues and voice overs. And in the first 30 mins or so, Kaufman uses faces and bodies to show characters inner traumas, like a blister on the skin doubles for anxiety or decay. This ideas of body and mind, of self image and projected image, and their superimposition, become much more interesting later in the film where Kaufman use a cinematic device of using several actors to play a single character thus creating a playful drama, and pumping his big ideas in between.

I think, Synecdoche, New York has an excellent material for a film, but it is not such a good film. There are several moments of brilliance, like the episode where stories of two daughters merge (I do not want to give more details and spoil it) together so that we examine the life of one of the characters again, a character that we have written off long before because we were so into the central story, which in turn tells us the pitfalls of being self-obsessed, and ignoring the complexity of other human lives.

Do not be deterred by what I am saying (it is a very personal opinion), Synecdoche, New York certainly deserves to be seen at least once. I am just wary about the idea of film about ideas where images are considered secondary. Its like when you close your eyes after watching a film, what comes to you - an image or an idea. Even in Bergman's many monologues, the camera shamelessly scrutinizes the images of faces. A slight quiver or grimace on Liv Ullman's expressive face is more telling than the potent voiceover. Needless to say, I am not talking about shocking or pretty poster images, I am talking about the moving close up of Vera Drake sitting with her whole family at dinner table, when she comes to know that she is charged with a crime. I am talking about the end sequence of Suspiria where our heroine enters the mural maze. I am talking about the back view of Maggie Cheung as walks down the stairs in In the Mood for Love. I am talking about all the joys and zest of moving images surpassing words or explanations.