Mission Istanbul

I’m tired of believing in things and then being taken for a royal ride. The promos and poster of Apoorva Lakhia’s debut feature Mumbai Se Aaya Mera Dost managed to rouse my curiosity. After watching the film I vowed never to see a Lakhia film. God save us for such a world where there is an Apoorva Lakhi film! Some promises were meant to be broken albeit unknowingly but some how I have ended up watching every film of his since his debut.

I tortured myself by enduring Mission Istanbul for no real reason. There is some hidden sadist in me who just wanted to see how bad the film could be. This is the same sadist who auto piloted me to Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag just to find out how stupid could the flick be. Mission Istanbul is a non-stop ride on the stupid side of a serious global menace called terrorism. Here there is no research and everything is loud and fast. Will someone please tell Lakhia that loud, cheesy and jarring sampled background score doesn’t make a film pacy. Imagine a scene where a character is talking about his dead wife and one showing two guys running from terrorists having the same earsplitting music.

As far as the acting is concerned Zayed Khan's longest role ever and he makes a hash out of it. I don't mind Vivek Oberoi for he tries hard. He was called great in Shootout but according to me he hammed his way through Lokhandwala. Here he tries to be restrained in the first few minutes and that could have been a yardstick for the character but watch him take off as a cocksure college senior leading Zayed. Shreya is Zayed's wife in the film and has precisely six scenes in the film and a song. She looks miscast and behaves like one. The other woman, the one called Liza Lobo, well let's just leave it there. Suneil Shetty is Suneil Shetty and the villian is someone who can play Hulk without the special effects!

If you think this is all then there is more. After a mind numbing chase sequence the character opens her car’s boot and takes out Mountain Dew. The goons finally catch up with out Dew sipping dudes; Vivek Oberoi looks at Zayed Khan and says, Darr Lag Raha Hain (Are you afraid?)…and Zayed offers the Mountain Dew answer, Darr Ke Aage Jeet Hai…(Victory after fear).

That’s not all.

The awesome threesome with the woman strutting her stuff in a tighter than tight jeans beat the crap out of the goons, who by the way are henchmen of a terrorist and come with baseball bats! There is the customary special appearance by good friend Abhishek Bachchan in an item number, which needless to say has no connection with the film. There is no hope in hell to survive this mission for whatever is left of your brain dies thanks to Amar Mohile's third-rate background music. Imagine a film set in Istanbul and there not a single trace of some local music. So much so that be it Srinagar, a love scene, a chase, a disco, a news office any place, any scene Mohile's music sounds the same.

Then there is a scene of a George Bush look alike inside Air Force One telling his people to leave India alone for they can’t attack everyone! The main villain is introduced as the head of a TV channel who wears a tuxedo to work!!!

Need I say more?

(As a matter of fact I have said more about this film at twitch film.)

Image: www.chakpak.com

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One More Kiss

I remember watching Kiss of the Spider Woman in college almost 20 years ago. Even then I was mesmerized by the images although I never understood many of the sub plots or contexts for the film. The funny thing was that unlike other films this one was never available on DVD, so I could not revisit it. Therefore all that remained were the images in a distant memory.

Watching the film again last week two things were reinforced. One is still impressed how the project was completed given its unique, non mainstream narrative and the second is the coming together of the various talents who made the story believable.

Almost 70 percent of the film is set in a jail and by the time one of the protagonists steps out, you are almost relieved that the ordeal is over. Over a discussion post the film screening, the producer of the film mentioned that the film took almost a year to edit. Whatever the explanation, this feeling of isolation is beautifully captured and you feel what the characters feel trapped in a prison cell.

There is also the film within a film where one of the characters is either telling stories that he remembers from films he has seen or is making them up. This is very similar to stories that inmates tell each other to pass time. However here the "films" have another significance. In these "films" the characters are more black and white - the vulnerable woman, the strong man - something that apparently the writer of the novel (on which the book is based) uses to explain homosexuality.

While the film offers a critique of the dictatorial regimes it does not go overboard with its argument or resort to propaganda. Instead it looks at the nuances of being forced to live in a situation that may be beyond your control. The homosexual is an outsider both in the dictatorship or the socialist regime that the rebels are trying to set up. In fact most of us would be a misfit in any system that takes ideologies to the extreme. The film is in sharp contrast to something like Persepolis which simply assumes that everything that happens in Iran post the Islamic Revolution is bad. In this sense the film does not glorify a personal story of suffering and use it to criticize the society.

What places the film above many others on such subjects (persecution, repression, homosexuality) is the use of the film medium combining them with dreams and reality. Very few films use cinema as a part of their narrative. A character may refer to a film or a character from a film but images from a film are only shown when the characters are in a hall. The Kiss of the Spider Woman leaves us with many questions. What is reality? What is a dream? And what is a film? A projection of reality? Or our fantasies?

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Samira's Garden

At the core of it Samira's Garden is a very basic idea and thankfully the execution is minimalist as well. Samira is coerced into marrying a middle aged widower. Her mother convinces her that perhaps some times in life one just has to do what has been planned out for them. This couldn't be truer for a girl coming of age in Morocco. Samira has no qualms about what she has walked into for she has no major expectations. All she wants of her husband is to love her and understand her. Things couldn't be further away from the truth for her.

Samira's husband choses to ignore her and utilize her as a maid. He makes it very clear to her that she would be responsible for the health of his ailing father. Samira dutifully plays the role of a loving daughter to her father in law, the dutiful wife to her husband as well as a friend to Farouk, her husbands nephew who stays with them.

Stuck in a farm cut off from the rest of the civilization and her husband's impotency in addition to his complete apathy towards her adds to Samira's alienation. She can't help but recall instances from her personal life before marriage and cry herself to sleep. Samira finds herself drawn to the boyish charms of Farouk and before she knows they end up having an affair. Farouk's companionship brings some kind of relief to her life. Just when she convinces herself that she could end up living her entire life the way destiny planed for her, Samira's husband gets a whiff of her fling with Farouk. The husband forces Farouk to leave. The parting image of the film is what sums up the entire story in a single shot; a lonely Samira sitting in her garden all by herself as the camera reveals how lonely she really ends up.

Directed by Latif Lahlou, Samira's Garden resembles Satyajit Ray's Charulata at places. Lahlou uses the setting of a farm away from city to convey most of the thought rather than rely on lines that run the risk of sounding stupid in such films. The screenplay puts Farouk and Samira in situations where sparks are bound to fly such as both of them bathing the old father in law. The sparse use of dialogue, the engrossing setting and the ponderous pacing of the film make it more than just a film about repressed sexual passion which it starts out to be.

Samira is portrayed by Sanaa Mouziane who manages to get the nuances of the girl-woman just correct for majority of the film. The sumptuous actress has a good sense of comic timing and adorns a free and easy habitation for the role but at times tends to go a little overboard. Sanaa Mouziane displays with aplomb a character who pays the price of personal freedom in the name of tradition in a Muslim society.

Image: www.tangierstehranfilm.org

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Two Paul Schraders

Paul Schrader's two lectures at Cinefan Film Festival were clubbed with the screening of two of most well known works- Mishima and Taxi Driver. After attending the two lectures I realized that they were perhaps given by two different people.

The lecture that followed Mishima was about the New Media and The Death of Cinema. Schrader joked about how the organizers very nattily omitted mentioning the Death of Cinema part on the program! The lecture was supposed to be an insight on the new emerging media trends where in anyone could make a film. I gathered that perhaps Schrader had just used the new technology to color correct a few scenes for Mishima’s DVD release and he might have been mega-impressed with the whole deal.

The lecture turned out to be an anti-climax. By the end of it I realized that Schrader was only to pissed off at the big players losing millions of bucks thanks to new media aka piracy. He was impressed by the reach of the Internet but rather than talking how someone like him could adapt this new technology, ended up sounding rather morose at the prospect of people downloading movies and not paying for them. It was a bit of a let down because one expected an old hand like Paul Schrader to talk more about the threat that new media poses to creativity rather than the business angle of it.

Isn’t Schrader worried about the fact that now directors could add ‘emotions’ like a tear on a character’s face in post-production (Blood Diamond) or use dead people’s unfinished work (John Lenon and the goodies hidden in his closet) by making computers do the needful and bring them back to life. Or the thing done in Beowulf where muscles were added in post on the main character! If one looks at the other end of the argument, then someone like Robert Altman would have really used the 'new media' and done some wonderful work with it. Mr. Schrader sounded like a big studio emissary who came to the East to show how worried they were about the threat of a free uncontrolled Internet.

The other lecture was on screenwriting and it was much better. A few minutes into this one I was convinced that the first lecture wasn’t half as interesting because it was delivered by someone who didn’t really understand the subject. In stark contrast if there was someone who knew a thing or two about screenwriting then it would sure as hell be Paul Schrader.

The Master Class was a quick run through of what Mr. Schrader teaches at UCLA. It gave a rare insight into the mind and the style of a screenwriter whose credits are nothing short of case studies. Schrader had some very interesting take on writing for screen and one wonders why the hell did he have to deliver the first lecture? He made no qualms about making writing a very personal journey, nothing short of therapy. he came across as a someone who knew his contribution to the world of cinema but didn’t make too much of a deal about it. When asked how different would Taxi Driver be had he directed it? He replied that he was glad he never directed it for he would have made a mess of it. He revealed that his script was tampered around with too much save a few omissions here and there, and was happy when Martin Scorsese decided to cut some bits about Travis talking about loneliness. He said that this convinced him that the metaphor he came up with for loneliness, a big yellow metallic box of a taxicab, worked for the film.

Schrader talked briefly about his new script- a meeting between a CIA agent, who has lost faith in his work and is diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and his former interrogator, who, surprise surprise, had lost his will to carry on as a terrorist! He calls this his old man film and is looking forward to starting work on it soon.

Image: www.observer.com

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A personal history of a Revolution

How does one judge a film that one has read as a book? We know the story of the little girl and her family in Iran during the 70's and the 80's. But what the two directors are able to bring to the movie is a certain sense of community and the several layers of life which I felt the book lacked.

The best scenes visually are the war scenes, groups running out during an air raid and also when the protagonist's uncle treks across the country to escape arrest. Although in black and white, these scenes come alive and actually complement the original art work in the graphic novel. The sound design and music actually work here. That said in term of writing I enjoyed the "Punk is not ded" scene where the little girl cooks up a story of her evil step mother to escape the moral police.

The most endearing character is the grandmother who often refers to how the society was when she was young. The funny thing is that she is always claims that during earlier times people (in Iran) were more open minded. This is in direct contrast to arguments in the West who see any history as a progress towards a more open society. I have often felt that in the last ten years our societies have become more conservative and boring compared to the 90's.

The problem with the film is the same as the book. The history of a nation cannot be judged through the eyes of one person. Often such stories exaggerate the pain that a small group went through and force us to pass judgment on the country or its people based on those emotions.

There is a scene in the film where a woman has to go to a hospital administrator to ask permission to take her husband out of the country for an operation. She realizes that this is her former window cleaner and is horrified but she pretends not to recognize him. But since she has to plead her case with him she is very angry. This is a typical middle class reaction to political changes in society. They just cannot accept the fact that "illiterate" or "lower class" people can take over power and choose for others. Something the elites have been doing for centuries and created a problem in the first place.

One last point. The two times the protagonist steps into Europe the film turns into colour. After all the good stuff in black & white that just did not work for me.

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What Just Happened!??!

There he goes again! M. Night Shyamalan has done it again. Just saw The Happening and couldn't help but feel confused by the end of it. Usually when I end up watching a bad film, especially in a movie hall, I am besieged with a horrendous headache and am irritable. This is a sure shot way of finding out if the film was bad. This time around I couldn't figure out if I should have a headache or not. The question that I have been asking myself since I got out of the darkened theater is WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

M. Night Shyamalan comes across as a man who seems to know a thing or two about the things we don't. Anyone who has seen The Sixth Sense would vouch for this. I mean who thought of making a film about a child who reveals to a doctor that he sees dead people? And all this while no one talks to the bloody doctor! But since The Sixth Sense every Shyamalan film has been a let down in one manner or the other. Here is a guy who might have stretched his single rubber-band of an idea a little too far.

The Happening is a film about a paranoid family that is on the run from god knows what, which is killing people in a manner most cinematic. The man and the woman have hit a rough patch in their marriage. I don't blame them for what do you expect if the woman's idea of cheating on her husband is having a tiramisu with someone called joey from work!? The man's best friend keeps making faces and telling him that something is wrong with the woman and the woman can't take it that the man has told their 'secrets' to the world. Come on lady! If you act like a wide-eyed mare every time the camera is on ya, what do you expect the people to make of it! The Happening is about something that no one knows. Methinks if so be the case then maybe the bloody thing isn't happening!!!!!!

In case you are planning to watch the film go with very low expectations. There are really good moments in The Happening but nothing more than that. The best thing about The Happening is that thankfully M. Night Shyamalan isn't acting in it! We are saved for if we could have survived whatever it was killing the people in The Happening and the bad acting by the lead, we wouldn't have survived M. Night in an extended walk on role. (Read my review of The Happening here)

I think Shyamalan should get around making a film out of Life With Pi, something that he was planning to do. This would give him an opportunity to get away from his 'genre' and allow people to see a different shade of him. After all if you believed that being #1 in the field of 1 was a win-win situation then take a closer look.

Image: www.startv.com

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The Sound of 80's

What is the one big difference between the films of 1980’s and any other time?

The music.
Barring a handful of films most stand out films made in the 1980’s have really bad music. Noting could substantiate my claim better than William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in LA (1985).

Most of us don’t think of William Friedkin beyond The French Connection and The Exorcist and many of us wouldn’t have had the opportunity to experience the last big film he made, Crusing, featuring Al Pacino. Friedkin’s LA is almost like a precursor to most of the action stuff that we were subjected to in the mid and late 1980’s.

The story might come across as very straight and simple but in the hands of Friedkin it is anything but that. A cop loses his partner while pursuing a master counterfeiter and his one point short-term aim in life is to put the guy in jail. He and his new partner approach the fraudster with a job but can’t raise the advance needed to get the task going. The cops end up robbing a diamond dealer who eventually dies in the bargain. They soon learn that the dealer was actually an undercover cop. The guilt starts taking its toll on one of the cops but the other one couldn’t care less for he is only interested in avenging his partner’s death. At the trade off things go bad and everyone cops it barring the guilt-ridden cop. If you thought the seemingly upright police officer would change his ways, you couldn’t be more wrong. He carries on as if nothing ever happened and moreover he becomes someone who, after seeing it all, doesn’t really mind pushing the limits.

The film stands and delivers even after two decades and you have to see the chase scene here to believe that Friedkin could better the one from The French Connection. Shot in gang territory the film successfully depicts Los Angeles as never before. So much so that a lot of John Woo films that eventually inspired Tarantino might have taken in a lot from this underrated Friedkin gem. It’s the then contemporary music of Wang Chung that fails To Live and Die in LA. According to film trivia Friedkin zeroed in on them as he felt that the band stood out from the rest of contemporary music! There’s even a title track with cheesy vocals. Something that Friedkin had specially instructed to avoid but changed his mind when he heard the track!

The second example would be Michael Mann’s Manhunter. A fantastic film that still beats the crap out of the Brett Ratner version any day of the week; only the music sounds dated. Even the soundtracks of Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack seems jarring today. Many would consider the soundtrack of the cult classic The Blade Runner by Vangelies a mismatch today.

A majority of the filmmakers who were calling the shots in the 1980’s were the hot shots of 1970’s whose clout was lessening thanks to the failing Michael Cinimo’s Heavens Gates. I think this is what pushed them to include what was fashionable then when it came to music. In any case a decade besieged with sequels expecting anything good would have been a difficult thing! Let’s be grateful for a handful of films that turned out to be great movies for what’d film viewing be without a Raging Bull (1980), The Shining (1985), Amadeus (1984) and The Blade Runner (1982).

Image: www.amazon.com

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