bollywood

‘Axone’ Serves The Understated Hatred So Tastefully

June 13, 2020 Movies
Axone

The savagery of racial injustice has come to haunt humanity, yet again, with the brutal murder of George Floyd, 46, on the streets of Minneapolis in broad daylight. The incident instantly made headlines because law enforcement agencies were involved while a 17-year old had the presence of mind to film the brutality on her phone. These bellicose emotions often hurled towards visible minorities is no less ‘xenophobic’ in nature — from the Greek Xenos, meaning “stranger” or “foreigner”, and Phobos, meaning “fear”. In short, it’s a fear or hatred of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange. On those lines, Axone (‘Aa-Koo-Ne’) is a praiseworthy narrative and an attempt to address that systemic xenophobic mentality towards the culture and the people from the North-Eastern states of India. Also, I love movies that are made with the capital city of India, New Delhi, as a backdrop, and I assure you that there are only a few of them.

By the way, I’d suggest not reading any further than this if you haven’t watched the movie yet (it’s playing on Netflix right now) and if you don’t want the spoilers to ruin all the fun.

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“Denzil Washington” in ‘Badla’?

March 11, 2019 Movies
Badla - Movie Review Paper Cutting

Be honest now — wouldn’t you be hysterical hearing the news that the ‘Baadshaah of Bollywood’ is paired with a Hollywood legend on a Bollywood movie, and to watch these stalwarts together on the silver screen, wouldn’t that be amazing? A freaking, Hindi language movie. The moment I read “Denzil Washington” in the cast of a review of Badla by a prominent national newspaper and a renowned film critic, my eyes almost popped out on the keyboard and nearly got squeezed between my dancing fingers. I brought myself back to my sense, and read the names once again. Both, Amitabh Bachchan and Denzel Washington are defining legends of our time’s all credit to their innate competencies, it’s needless to judge that both have garnered a cult following of their own in their respective realms and both have tons of awards to their name — an Oscar, nonetheless, for Washington. Crime & suspense thrillers are my personal favourites, and Badla seemed like one such taut suspense thriller if the Internet was supposed to be believed. This latest offering from Sujoy Ghosh has gained some rave reviews from critics as well, and I am particularly fond of his other creative craftiness such as Jhankaar Beats (2003) and Kahaani (2003), and the Radhika Apte starring short film Ahalya which was truly mesmerising. That Ghosh managed a casting coup of sorts by effecting a collaboration between two gigantic doyens in a Hindi cinematic experience was mind-boggling to read. In fact, it was so mind-boggling, that I didn’t trust the news in the first place, although, Ben Kingsley has acted opposite Amitabh Bachchan in Teen Patti (2010).

So then I checked IMDB, skillfully perused the Wikipedia page of the movie, and it wasn’t long before the shiny tiny bulb in my brain finally glimmered brightly. The actor in question was Denzil Smith, a distinguished Indian stage actor and a producer, not the renowned American legend I had truthfully imagined. No regrets, except, what seemed like a dream-come-true cinematic experience was, in fact, one hell of a typographical error, and faux pas that not only sent me on a wild goose chase, besides smashing my ambition of ever feeling the pride of enjoying Denzel Washington in a Hindi movie on a big screen. But who’s to know the future? Eventually, it did bring me back to my filmy duniya that’s Bollywood!

Chef And A Dil Chahta Hai Moment

November 26, 2018 Movies

Bollywood offers myriad stories & sequences including in refashioning original Hollywood movies for the Hindi audiences for diversion, however, there has also been a crop of official remakes in recent times, such as Bang Bang, Players, just to name a few. There was a moment in one such recent movie with Saif Ali Khan called Chef that caught my attention and which was probably missed by many viewers.

Chef is an official remake of that Jon Favreau 2014 classic of the same name which I probably watched a couple of times, about an uncompromising chef who quits his respectable job at a prestigious Los Angeles restaurant to go back to his roots and rediscover the happiness in his cooking. The remake follows the same course, save for Roshan Kalra (Saif) who embarks on his path to enlightenment from the USA to pristine Kerala, but alas, the movie loses the plot somewhere between Goa, Delhi, and that “Rottza” whatever, that people thronged to relish. In all the munching, the heartwarming, ‘slice-of-the-life’ delight which Favreau’s Chef provided was clearly lost its way in its Indic avatar raising more questions than amusement. As an instance, why do all of Bollywood’s ‘reputed’ chefs come from the UK (Cheeni Kum) or ‘Umrika’ and not from the Taj Mahals or the Oberois in India while experiencing the boredom of metro-life, moving to a rural place in India and rediscovering their true passion? I suppose it’s not prudent to decode Bollywood’s logic of life so regardless I just enjoy or dislike the show.

The Dil Chahta Hai Connection

Dil Chahta Hai - Chef Connection
Saif Ali Khan as Sameer and Beatrice Gibson as Kristine in a still from Dil Chahta Hai.

In the second half, there’s a fleeting mention of the Saif Ali Khan classic Dil Chahta Hai when Roshan Kalra recalls an embarrassing moment to his assistant Nuzrool in Goa about visiting the place twenty years ago with his two friends and getting robbed. Saif’s actually talking about his character Sameer visiting Goa (with Akash & Sid) and succumbing to his desires for Kristine who plunders his personal belongings in an outlandish situation. His mention of 20 years is a tribute to 2001, the year when Dil Chahta Hai was released! Chef may have truly gone south but this tiny detail provided the only bright spot for me.

Bollywood Has Embraced Content Cinema

November 16, 2018 Movies
Badhaai Ho - Bollywood Movie Poster

There’s Hindi cinema with content, and then there’s ‘candy floss’ entertainment bereft of sanity & imagination. ‘Content’ is what connects you emotionally with the characters and keeps you glued to the screen, it subsumes your inner desires & notions by presenting a totally different perspective. Although, content is considered hard to be digested by the audience & hence is assumed to only reach a certain class of moviegoers. In Bollywood where brilliant scripts have turned out to be virtual duds because the film lacked technique or the filmmakers handled the idea shoddily it failed to make an impression. While on the other hand, stories that have been picturised a million times previously generated more interest at the box office because the content got a different context to thrive. Take the case of Marathi film Sairaat which set the box office rolling as a prime example of content that struck a chord with the audiences with its nuanced acting and music, despite being a story about teenage love and patrimonial furore being rehashed several times in countless movies. Content requires a conscientious effort in juggling the myriad dots in designing a vision that enthrals the audiences through its characters & script while the actors fade in the veneer of the narrative.

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The Freedom For Cinematic Creativity

July 21, 2018 Movies

Netflix - Cinematic CreativityI’d define ‘cinematic creativity’ as the vision for storytelling scripted by the filmmakers in context with the purposes of delivering content of entertainment value or the likes. In that sense, there are multiple reasons why movies in India, one of the largest movie industries in the world, do not get released in the cinemas, while most of them get heavily censored — meaning the so-called offensive scenes and dialogues are sliced by the CBFC and the original content is pruned to make it more viewer-friendly, so to speak. In short, what you eventually see on the big screen is not what the makers intended to showcase for the public. At times, the trailers depict one thing while the final cut of the movie does not have the scenes or the dialogues from the trailer which is disappointing! Luckily, nothing of that sort happened with ‘Sacred Games’ thanks to a platform like Netflix. Clearly, the likes of Netflix are not just an instance of a digital platform for streaming of original content, it’s an ecosystem for cinematic creativity and storytelling for filmmakers of any scale. It’s quite practical, that an underworld epic like the ‘Sacred Games’ would have been completely stripped off of its originality had it been released in the theatres in India, that lesson was bearing heavily on my mind as I was awed by the profanities in the script, albeit, it never seemed unwarranted or thrust upon us merely for its darker content. This is also an opportunity for a deserving sequel to a fully Indian-made series, what the magnificent Powder couldn’t achieve. Then again, unlike some other movies, there are those with a good content value which could never release in India for lack of a distributor which got a voice on this platform. ‘Sacred Games’ was brilliant, but I’d also say, “Viva, Netflix!”