Tashan

The thing with Tashan is that no one spent time on the script. The film could have been made interestingly only if the screenplay existed. Filled with loopholes bigger than the one in ozone layer, Tashan is really a let down considering that it’s been directed by a writer and produced by someone who possesses wonderful script acumen.

The film is about everyone living life with tashan, which in the parlance of our times means style. Everyone in Tashan wears strange clothes and talks in a stranger way. The film is about Jimmy, a call center executive, who is hired by Puja to teach her boss Bhaiyaji to pass off as an angrez. The problem is that Jimmy doesn’t really have enough blood to make both ends of his body work at the same time. He falls hard for Puja who narrates a sob story of how her father owed Bhaiyaji a lot of money and now she is tired to paying back. Jimmy is convinced by her to rob Bhaiyaji’s booty and start a new life. Jimmy does that but it’s Puja who runs off living him behind. Jimmy is caught up Bhaiyaji, who summons Bachchan Pande, a recovery specialist, to hunt hi money and Puja down. Jimmy and Pande set off a la Tom & Jerry. Somewhere along the line Puja joins them and suggests that they get away with the money. Just when Pande is being smooth talked by Puja, Bhaiyaji enters the picture. He gives the woman seven days to get the money back. A road journey across the vibrant country ensues. Pande and Puja get to know that they were childhood sweethearts. Pande is told to kill Jimmy and Puja but he decides to return Bhaiyaji’s money but let the two go. Once Pande leaves, but not before Jimmy switches the money, Puja reveals how Bhaiyaji killed her father and this is all about revenge. Pissed off at being taken for a ride by just about everyone, Bhaiyaji’s wrath targets Pande. Jimmy and Puja come to save the day. Some confusion and double-crossing later, Puja kills Bhaiyaji and all ends well.

Is that all that’s wrong with Tashan?

Nope.

The acting is bad. Saif Ali Khan tries to be cool and succeeds sparingly but that’s because of who he is (off screen) and not what he does (on screen). Kareena Kapoor does the same Jab We Met bit but only with an urban sheen. If Akshay Kumar is the best thing about Tashan then Anil Kapoor is the worst. Kumar plays the small town bumpkin like an affable gorilla who looses it every once in a while. He gets the same lines as everyone else but trust Kumar to take them to a new level. Anil Kapoor on the other hand is the same Munna or Lakhan. He speaks Hindi laced with english words like a cowboy and ends up looking like an idiot. He mouths the famous Mandir sceen (aaj khush to bahut hoge) from Deewar in his Bhaiyaji hinglish style in the first half hour of the film and you know that you are in for a strange trip. Kapoor wears bad clothes; looks tired, sounds like a nut job amongst other things. After watching Tashan one can’t help but think that in front of three heavyweights- Akshay, Saif and Kareena- maybe someone new or understated would have worked better. Someone like Irrfan Khan could have really added resonance to the role but this is Yash Raj Films we are talking about!

Don’t the producers watch their films before releasing them?

This is the exact question that haunts you while you endure Tashan. The film is too long. Just because the director hit big time with the Dhoom series, he ensures that film is filled with twists and turns like some interesting road undertaken for some interesting journey to some interesting destination. Only that this road is potholed beyond repair and the end ain’t half as exciting as promised. The fact that the screenplay lacks any sense of purpose is acceptable now days as gloss can tide over any shortcoming.

Just because the film fails to divulge the slightest traces of intelligence, doesn’t make it an ode to the films 1970’s or 80’s as suggested by some people. Some wise people even called it regressive. Come on now! Tashan is plain stupid and infantile. In Tashan just because you have a mighty star-cast you can’t do stupid things and think that it works. The climax has Anil Kapoor using a water canon on Kareena, Akshay jumps his way to save her but is shot at by Kapoor but suddenly Saif Ali Khan comes on a jet ski to save the day. If this wasn’t enough then a few minutes later Anil Kapoor comes out on a cycle rickshaw with two swords on the handle to get rid of Akshay and Saif.

Much has been written about Yash Raj Films looses it’s touch, etc. but is that really the case? I don’t think so. Simply put they need to give a little more attention to things like script and less to their tashan. Start making films based on stories and not ideas. Also give Aki Nirula, the man behind the hideous costumes of Jhoom Barabar Jhoom and now Tashan, a break.

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My Blueberry Nights

There was a great deal of enthusiasm surrounding My Blueberry Nights. This was Wong Kar Wai's first American film. Some years ago this move would have meant that he has 'sold' out but that argument doesn't hold water anymore. Wong's reputation of being a master filmmaker precedes him. His demigod stature and cult following have made him one of the most closely watched filmmaker of recent times. So much so that Cannes had no problem showcasing a 20-minute version of his then work in progress 2046. Wong Kar Wai mesmerized the world with an extended trailer of a film that he had been working on for almost 4 years.

My Blueberry Nights is the second Wong Kar Wai film that I have left midway. My brother had gone to China and upon his return he got a bunch of DVDs. His yardstick, when in doubt, was to pick up any DVD that had the festival wreath on the cover! He got 2046 but the DVD justified its cheap price, Rs. 40, and didn't have any English subtitles. Nevertheless the lush images were enough to whet one's appetite. A year or so later I finally laid my hands on 2046, I started watching it with great anticipation. This was Wong Kar Wai after In the Mood for Love. This was the film that was in the making for years and was shrouded in intrigue and mystery just like any Wong Kar Wai film. Twenty minutes into the film and I'd had enough of his bizarreness! It's been years now and I still haven't completed the film.

Watching My Blueberry Nights was like 2046 all over. It’s the story of a woman whose boyfriend starts cheating on her. She finds a kindred spirit in a man who runs a diner and offers her advice along with a slice of blueberry pie. She suddenly (like most Wong Kar Wai characters) suddenly takes off to Memphis and starts working as a waitress. She meets a cop who just can't get over his ex-wife. The cop and the waitress indulge in some banter and that's where I gave up. The review says that she goes on to Reno and interacts with a poker player. She is, of course, doing all this to look for herself.

My Blueberry Nights is laced with the typical markings of a Wong Kar Wai film- vivid colors, lushness, great camerawork and characters who are unable to live through the night. Herein lies the catch. Post 2046, for me, all these come across as usual WKW trappings. The first giveaway is the camerawork. Even though it's Darius Khondji who photographs the film instead of Wong regular Christopher Doyle, the cinematography could easily pass off as Doyale's. You would argue that Chris Doyle style is actually Wong Kar Wai signature. Maybe it's Wong Kar Wai, the auteur, at work but one can't help but get a feeling that it's the same film all over again. The characters still move in slow motion, the haunting music (Ry Cooder) seems like leftovers, the framing, the movement of the camera, the conversations, nothing seems good anymore!

Is this a sign?

Wong Kar Wai is definitely one of the most influential filmmakers. He made the mundane look exciting. He works without a script in the true sense; he takes his own sweet time to finish a film. The question one really needs to ask is weather it's possible for WKW to go on doing the same thing and yet not bore me to death? Revisiting the older Wong Kar Wai films, namely In The Mood for Love, Chunking Express, Happy Together, Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time and Fallen Angels, I have come to the conclusion that barring In The Mood For Love and Happy Together none have the same impact on me. The thing I understood while trying to watch My Blueberry Nights is that one shouldn't attempt the same thing again. More importantly something that works in one country and language might not really work in another. Why didn't this film work? Maybe because everyone swears by In the Mood for Love and even a blind person could make out it's the same film. Would this work if it were made in Cantonese or Mandarin? No. The same reason stands- they have already seen and loved In The Mood for Love.

Ang Lee could have remade Brokeback Mountain for China but he didn't. Just as he'd not remake Lust, Caution in the US! One of the most respected filmmakers operating today, Lee can make a killing by remaking his English films in China and vice-versa. Imagine transporting 1970's American suburbia of The Ice Storm to 1960's Hong Kong. Lee would rather 'sell' out and do a Hulk instead of living the same nightmare again!

As for Wong Kar Wai...give me a Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung walking in slow motion in rain to get some chow instead of a cocky Jude Law forcing a blueberry pie down Norah Jones's throat!

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Juno or the Art of the giving away your child

The first thing that strikes you about Juno is that there is hardly any background score. I mean there are songs and the lead character is part of a band in school. But when Juno announces to her parents that she is pregnant, you are treated to normal sounds of her pacing around the room. Another place where she breaks down in the car and you are hearing traffic sounds.

A well written script that hardly lets you feel the "normal" emotions that films line up with a subject such as this. Juno's reaction when she finds out that she is pregnant is that she is stunned but she does not really break down - just gets back home to call her close friend. From then on you are constantly surprised by the reactions of those around her. They are surprised (parents), embarrassed, guilty (boyfriend), amused (classmates) but all of them behave in a muted way.

The film then takes an interesting turn when the girl decides to give away her child to a well to do suburban couple. The scene where she meets them for the first time with her father is funny. As their car drives past a series of suburban houses the film jumps from normal comedy to a comment on the class divide in America. The entire scene with the cautious lawyer and the tentative adopted parents contrasted with Juno's behavior killed me to laughter. The other scene was the Asian girl picketing the abortion clinic. She keeps saying - Every Baby wants to be Borned.

Years ago, Preity Zinta proved her acting credentials in Kya Kehna (where she has a child from a boyfriend) but her character suffers so much in the film that you were left wondering that whether it was possible for a single woman to ever keep her child. Juno does not really go there. It is not a big problem that the girl is having her baby. What is important is what she is going thru. In that sense the film strikes a new ground. Juno actually realizes that she is in love with the guy she slept with in the first place.

The film ends up with almost everyone happier than before. Juno hooks up with the love of her life. Her parents are happy that they are over this crisis. Her step mother has new dogs for pets. The adoptive couple break up but the wife decides to keep the child.

But as the camera pulls away in the end with Juno jamming with her boyfriend the scene was too perfect. A little too perfect. Can life for a 16 year old actually be like that? Or is it just that movies make us feel like that?

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Human Error- 2001: A Space Odyssey

Arthur C Clarke once famously claimed, 'if you understood 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered." When Stanley Kubrick decided to make a science fiction he picked up a short story, The Sentinel, by Clarke to serve as the skeletal outline for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick wrote the screenplay in tandem with Clarke while the author penned a novel based on the screenplay.

I first saw 2001 in 2000. I was blown by the sheer genius that went into the making of the film. I revisited the film some three years ago and the dawn of man sequence gave me goosebumps all over again. The second time the film felt a tad slow and the acting wasn't too great. When I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey some time I realized that barring the Dawn of Man and HAL everything else in the film is a space filler. Agreed that when the film came out in the 1960's it must have take people some time to realize that they just witnessed one of the greatest films ever made. Now when I see the film i wonder what the hell was Kubrick thinking while shooting the long, seemingly never-ending sequences in which nothing happens besides futuristic space ships flying across the skies!

Even by the most conservative standards the long drawn scenes manage to convey a sense of loneliness and despair but there is hardly any drama in them anymore. I couldn't take my eyes off when Dave tries to manually dock his ship as HAL is pissed off with him and he has to let go off his partner but everything else seems a little boring and might slow now. The entire Stargate and Juipterscape sequences are no match for simple conversations between the humans and HAL. I wonder if Kubrick knew that HAL would become such a great character; would he have increased HAl's presence in the film in any case? Was it intentional that in order to have the desired impact Kubrick decided to rely on shots that would completely catch the audience off guard rather than a more conventional approach? Sure enough the laborious shots of a space ships, space travellers, futuristic telephone and cuisine, computers and what have you would make people sit up and it has the same effect, though in varying degree, even after 40 years; but I couldn't help but wonder...

2001: A Space Odyssey sure left an impression on future filmmakers who attempted science fiction. To me the basic plot of Solaris seems to be inspired by an exchange of dialogue between Floyd and the people he meets at the moon station. The excellent human-machine interaction of HAL and Dave could be the very element that subsequent science fiction films seem to have taken a shine to. The basic essence of Bladerunner and Minority Report have a greater human-machine interaction than effects and glitz.

Every time I see the film I find something new to look at. This time it was the sheer icy approach of HAL and Dave's unwillingness to give up. Though the end still seems very vague to me. Does it have something to do with the notion that most Arthur C. Clarke stories have great premises but the ending usually peters out? MAybe but if I had understood then both Kubrick and Clarke would have failed. Am not sure about Clarke but Stanley Kubrick sure as hell doesn't fail!

Check out www.kubrick2001.com in order to understand the cult to some extent.

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Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

There was one question that I kept asking myself while watching Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.

Is talent timeless?

The superb crime thriller proves that the Sidney Lumet, 84, still delivers. Taking its title from an Irish toast, May you be 40 years in heaven before the devil knows you are dead, the film deals with two brothers, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke who decide to rob their father's store in order to get their lives back on track. It was supposed to be a simple in-and-out kind of a deal in which no one was supposed to get hurt but like in all good movies, someone does get hurt and everything falls apart. The film also features Albert Finney as the father and Marisa Tomei as Hoffman's troubled wife. Lumet skillfully intercuts between parallel stories that keep converging throughout the film. Some might find the pacing of the film a little tedious but that shouldn't really bother as you'd be rewarded many a times. My moment came an hour and twenty minutes in the film where Hoffman and Finney open up with the son so pissed off with his father that he actually asks him if here were really his son.

For anyone who has followed Sidney Lumet's career Before the Devil Knows shouldn't come as a surprise. The film has all the essential Lumet markings- a great cast, excellent interplay between characters and lot of moments. What is surprising is that the legendary filmmaker has used HD technology for this film and reportedly enjoyed the freedom that video has to offer so much that he has decided not to touch film again. Lumet's film always give the actors ample opportunity to let it all out and this one's no exception. Never in the recent past has Ethan Hawke got such a complicated character and he is picture-perfect as the loser of a baby brother to Hoffman. Albert Finney hams it a bit but then I always believed that Mr. Finney couldn’t perform unless he has a spotlight following him. Hoffman, who of late has been grunting through his performances like Marlon Brando's ghost (Charlie Wilson's War being the latest), is perfect as the cocksure planner who looses it by the end.

Sidney Lumet always came across as a craftsman more than an artist and this film is executed with much vigor and enthusiasm. The multi-layered screenplay gets Lumet to observe his characters from a distance and real close as if they were some animals trapped in a cage. The film convinces me that talent has the potential to be timeless. Most filmmakers, as they age, start to believe that they know the craft better. Hell some start thinking that they are the craft! One can still do the same number provided one makes certain considerations with the passage of time. Look at Lumet, Clint Eastwood and to a great extent Martin Scorsese; these guys are doing exactly what they want and the only thing is that they keep up with times.

Closer home barring Yash Chopra everyone who is more than 5 films old refuses to move with the times. The last few outings of Subhash Ghai, Rajkumar Santoshi, Vinod Chopra, Ram Gopal Verma, Feroz Khan amongst others look like they are still churning them as if we were still in the 20th century!

Image: www.iwatchstuff.com

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