Bonded

Bond is now the most successful movie franchise in the world. Considering that half the world's population has seen a Bond flick, every now and then the people behind Bond update the super spy. This time around the change-over so mesmerizing that no one remembers the change Pierce Brosnan got to Bond. While Casino Royale was a truly phenomenal makeover for the famed agent, I can't help but think that Quantum of Solace (read review) kind of loses the plot somewhere. This is the first time in my Bond experience that I couldn't get the story. I know…you are going what the hell…Bond and story. Who gives a fish about things like plot, narrative, screenplay and other such cinematic terminology when you view something like a James Bond film?

That's exactly the thing the producers changed with Casino Royale. They really worked their gray cells and came up with a structure that doesn't follow the norm. They worked on a story and other things like characters and arc and what have you. After all here was a Bond who showed his softer side when he just hugged the girl under a shower after a bloody battle. He was so, for the lack of any other semi-worthy word, metrosexual. He fell in love with a woman who could match up to him and he wasn't going to let the villains get away when they eliminated the love of his life. So much so that he comes back in Quantum of Solace and parades a parallel plot wherein his search for Vesper's assassins doesn't stop till he avenges. It's a different story that he looks lost as a schoolboy while pursuing his tormentor but hey this is more than what one would ever expect from a Bond.

Daniel Craig is a strange choice to portray Bond. He isn't like Sean Connery or Roger Moore or even Brosnan but it wouldn't be totally incorrect to say that he dons a little of all his predecessors. He is mega physical and doesn't miss Q's zany inventions; he'd rather jump across the screen chasing the bad guys. Every ten minutes he gets into a fistfight with someone and every ten minutes you see a shot of him bleeding. I don't recall any Bond with blood on him besides Brosnan being tortured by the North Koreans in Die Another Day.

Has the effort of the Bond producers to rework Bond since Casino Royale gone a little too far? Casino Royale had no suggestion of him being a charmer. Maybe they were setting up the man for a newer, different world and with so much happening Bond never really gave a darn about charm. You think that by the time Quantum of Solace hit the screen he'd cultivate some charm. No go. This time around he's not even interested in the opposite sex. He is forever looking for a scuffle, a fight, an argument some bang, bang, some boom, boom.

This would also be the very first Bond flick wherein the famed Bond gals are missing. Bond isn’t interested in even seducing the first one. She meets him at some airport and commands him to stay put at some hotel rather than go looking for trouble. It’s not even like he suggests that they get cozy; the woman is more than eager to get it done with. It seems like she was briefed about the older Bond and she’d find it insulting if the things she heard weren’t true. The other woman is some secret agent who is on a mission of her own and is really busy standing up for herself rather than Bond. Even at the very end of the film she coyly suggests that she wishes she could take away his pain and all our man does is awkwardly kiss her. That kiss was so forced, so uncomfortable that I forgot all about it. It was only when a friend came up with her analysis of James Bond/ Daniel Craig that I was forced to think about it.

This is a changing world. We’ve had a white man rapping the blacks out and a black golfer acing the records. We now have a black US president and Bond is soft, caring, and too metrosexual. Daniel Craig suggested that he’d love the idea of an African-American portraying Bond…we still have some stops before that. Quantum of Solace managed to convince me that Bond’s could be more than just a recovering misogynist, he could be gay. If the next Bond has him doing the same stuff- jumping around like a teenager out of the West Side Story I’d be certain that Bond’s more than just a straight man.

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Madhur Bhandarkar's Fashion

The basic formula for any Madhur Bhandarkar film is as straight as it gets and his latest Fashion continues the tradition. Even though the film is laced with stupidity, Fashion manages to work on a lot of levels.

(Click here to read a review of Fashion)

The underdog usually comes from some godforsaken small town to the biggest baddest city in the world called Mumbai. Here the protagonist, usually a woman, starts to work in some fancy setting- a page three news desk, a traffic signal, some corporate outfit. As she is exposed to the workings of the business she is told that no one, absolutely no one can make it to the top without bartering a piece of their soul. She, being the idealistic woman, refuses but for how long. Somewhere in the middle she comes across people who are sympathetic and nice to her. Watch out she will hurt them eventually. Going thorough the throes of mundane existence she trades her morals for success. She is aware that even though she might do what is doesn’t believe in, this is just temporary. Predictably she changes into just the thing she loathes. Then something will go wrong, really wrong. In the bargain this person would be forwarded as a compromise candidate. This person will come a full circle and that will be the end of it. Their confidence would be shattered and they won’t believe in anything and continue with their lives.

Madhur Bhandarkar always finds a microcosm of the world in the premise of his films. Hence the traffic signal would become a mini India; the corporate entity would be just like the current world situation. He takes pot shots at the people of these worlds, he lampoons them. Everyone is caricatured in his films and his phobias are fueled. He tattles on the setting and fulfills the basic skewed notion that people have of a certain lifestyle. This works as everyone is a voyeur and who doesn’t love seeing someone fall. I was in Delhi when the fabled 1 MG Road mall was razed to the ground under the strange land ceiling act. There was such a show that was put up. The fashionistas cried hoarse saying that ‘middle class’ was jealous of their air kissing life and hence they were being singled out. This is exactly the kind of mindset that Bhandarkar operates on. He is one for headlines. He is the archetypal person who feeds on the Aaj Tak like sensationalism- follow headlines and don't bother with the main story.

Bhandarkar's characters are very black and white. His definition of gray is really slightly black or off-white and nothing more than that. Characters in Bhandarkar films don't really do anything but take a semi-stand. This largely reflects the director's own stance. In a recent television interview when pressed to reveal his personal take on issues that laced his films, Bhandarkar refused to say anything. The man was so scared that all he said was he was an observer who brings up an issue and once the film is over he moves on. He also confessed that the issue be it gay marriage or marital rape and other such 'sensational' ideas were his weapons only for a short span of time (he implied this) for once he is done with them the issue 'dies' for him (he said this).

This is rather sad and unfortunate for Madhur Bhandarkar fails to realize his own reach. There are people who wait for his films and take them a little to seriously at times. All my corporate friends used to sing his praises till he made a film on their supposed world. Now they had a problem with him as he showed nothing but lies! Here is a man who makes use of current affairs and doesn't even have the guts to voice his opinion.

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