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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <rss version="2.0" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/" > <channel> <title>DearCinema.com » Review</title> <atom:link href="http://dearcinema.com/category/review/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /> <link>http://dearcinema.com</link> <description>Indian Films, Festivals and World Cinema</description> <lastBuildDate>Mon, 16 May 2011 06:52:32 +0000</lastBuildDate> <language>en</language> <sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod> <sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency> <generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.3</generator> <item> <title>Ragini MMS: Witch and Craft!</title> <link>http://dearcinema.com/review/ragini-mms-unwelcome-ghost/0914</link> <comments>http://dearcinema.com/review/ragini-mms-unwelcome-ghost/0914#comments</comments> <pubDate>Sat, 14 May 2011 05:39:14 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Bikas Mishra</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Top Story]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ekta Kapoor]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ragini MMS]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Raj kumar Yadav]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://dearcinema.com/?p=16910</guid> <description><![CDATA[Ragini MMS titillates a little, scares a bit and makes audience laugh aplenty, and not entirely by design.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin-left: 10px;"> <a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fragini-mms-unwelcome-ghost%2F0914"> <img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fragini-mms-unwelcome-ghost%2F0914&source=DearCinema&style=normal&hashtags=Ekta+Kapoor,Ragini+MMS,Raj+kumar+Yadav&b=2" height="61" width="50" /> </a> </div> <a rel="attachment wp-att-16915" href="http://dearcinema.com/review/ragini-mms-unwelcome-ghost/0914/attachment/ragini_mms_poster_600x450-2"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-16915" title="ragini_mms_poster_600x450" src="http://dearcinema.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/ragini_mms_poster_600x4501-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" /></a>Director: Pawan Kripalani, Producer: Ekta Kapoor, Actors: Kainaz Motivala and Rajkumar Yadav Ragini MMS titillates a little, scares a bit and makes audience laugh aplenty, and not entirely by design. The “inspired” work of cinema is a movie buff’s delight for its obvious inspirations. From LSD (that it pays onscreen tributes to) to Paranormal Activity, it’s splattered all over with blood of sources that it thankfully doesn’t kill entirely, however, it does fail to raise above the shadow of originals remaining mostly crafty yet ominously inadequate. The opening credits play on Tulsidas’s Hanuman Chalisa (The forty lined verse praising Lord Hanuman who is believed to be capable of warding off evil spirits!!) This is probably the peak of desi-ization!! The Chalisa doesn’t later come up in the narrative of the film. Even if it had, Hanuman, being a celibate, wouldn’t have helped the protagonists in the middle of their bondage sex! Ragini is a likable middle class girl-next-door. His boyfriend is a crass countryman. The two set off on a vacation in a country home that’s haunted. A heady cocktail of sleaze and spook, the film relies on base instincts to begin with and manages to titillate. While it does quite well as far as the sleaze is concerned, it falters in the spooky part ending up often in laughter riots! Camera constantly plays the “peeping tom”, a device that serves well to sleaze as well as horror. The low-lit, often handheld camera tries to add realistic flavour to the declared “inspired from real events” drama. Just to make it real, the protagonist often carries camera in scenes where it looks unnecessary like in a mall and departmental store. The most remarkable desi-ization in the film is that of the ghost! Such a ghost can only exist in an Indian horror film! A Marathi speaking witch whose palatial bunglow is rented out for making sleazy sex tapes. As is the convention of horror genre, Ragini MMS heavily relies on sound effects. The ghost even has a signature effect! Low key lighting, sound effects and a vulnerable girl in handcuffs! The film uses the basics of horror and at times achieves the desired effect. Rajkumar Yadav, whom we first saw in Dibakar Banerjee’s Love Sex aur Dhokha, plays a similar role. Industry is all set to typecast him as a Delhi boy (though in Ragini, he isn’t a Delhi boy but he keeps the mannerisms and speech nevertheless). Ragini MMS is an overhyped Bollywood fare, deriving its inspirations from American Indie films and attempts to cash in on some recent scandals. Not that the director lacks craft, but that alone (that too often falters) can’t take him much far! <iframe src='http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fragini-mms-unwelcome-ghost%2F0914&layout=box_count&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=65&font=lucida+grande' scrolling='no' frameborder='0' allowTransparency='true' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:65px'></iframe>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://dearcinema.com/review/ragini-mms-unwelcome-ghost/0914/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Stanley Ka Dabba: Out of the (tiffin) box!</title> <link>http://dearcinema.com/review/stanley-ka-dabba-out-of-the-tiffin-box/2559</link> <comments>http://dearcinema.com/review/stanley-ka-dabba-out-of-the-tiffin-box/2559#comments</comments> <pubDate>Fri, 13 May 2011 06:55:59 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Nandita Dutta</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Top Story]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Amole Gupte]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Partho]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Stanley ka Dabba]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://dearcinema.com/?p=16867</guid> <description><![CDATA[Stanley Ka Dabba shows how a film can be based on a simple ritual of everyday life, showing the extraordinary behind the mundane. One doesn’t need to deal with a heavy-duty topic laden with sentimentality to leave an impact while working with children. In this case, simplicity rules.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin-left: 10px;"> <a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fstanley-ka-dabba-out-of-the-tiffin-box%2F2559"> <img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fstanley-ka-dabba-out-of-the-tiffin-box%2F2559&source=DearCinema&style=normal&hashtags=Amole+Gupte,Partho,Stanley+ka+Dabba&b=2" height="61" width="50" /> </a> </div> <a rel="attachment wp-att-16868" href="http://dearcinema.com/review/stanley-ka-dabba-out-of-the-tiffin-box/2559/attachment/stanley-4"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-16868" title="stanley" src="http://dearcinema.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/stanley3-233x300.jpg" alt="" width="233" height="300" /></a> Writer, director & producer: Amole Gupte, Cinematography: Amol Gole, Editing: Deepa Bhatia, Actors: Partho, Amole Gupte, Divya Dutta Amole Gupte is an ambitious filmmaker and he makes no bones about it. To that effect, the beginning of the film is noteworthy. Gupte makes a reference to Indian cinema classics like Damle and Fattelal’s Sant Tukaram and Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara before claiming that he has attempted to enter the same league of Indian masters with Stanley Ka Dabba, a 100 years later! The film begins with a beautiful animation by Gitanjali Rao, the same filmmaker whose animation films will screen in Cannes Critics Week and Cannes Film Market this year. Beauty and innocence run innately through the film, emerging from the children who feature in Stanley Ka Dabba. To extract such natural performances from children is an achievement on the part of the filmmaker. Or should they be called performances at all, as the film has been shot with school children over Saturdays and holidays during theatre and cinema sessions! The result is surely a warm, sweet and simple tale of school kids and tiffin boxes. It deserves a special mention in the very beginning that the film belongs to Stanley. Gupte has clearly downplayed the launch of his son Partho as the protagonist Stanley in the film. And rightly so, for Partho manages to make a mark for himself through his performance. He handles the complex role with a mature countenance; without going overboard or evoking pity from the audience, but affection. Gupte is an engaging story teller. The story of Stanley Ka Dabba revolves around Stanley and his gang of classroom friends. Gupte plays the Hindi teacher Babubhai Verma aka ‘khadus’ who is a glutton and hankers after his students’ tiffin boxes. When Stanley and his bench partner quarrel over space because Stanley is a left-hander, he instructs him to write with his right hand. On the other hand, there is Rosy Miss, the affectionate English teacher played by Divya Dutta. She approaches the problem by asking Stanley and his partner to exchange places. There is a constant tussle between the simplicity and goodness of the world of kids vis-à-vis the complexity and insensitivity of adults. Stanley never gets a dabba to school, he is always shown covering it up with a smart lie or drinking water as a substitute while his friends feast on the delicious meals their mothers cook. You wonder why, and the story teller knows that in order to hook you, he must not reveal it till the end. You eagerly wait while the story advances by days and months. In the meantime, friendships are strengthened by the sharing of tiffin boxes and ‘khadus’ who is trying to grab these boxes is established as the villain. The turning point comes when the heartless teacher imposes a rule on Stanley that he mustn’t show up in class until he gets a tiffin. Then the plot unravels, which in one sense can be treated as quite ordinary as it translates into the victory of the protagonist and defeat of the villain. There is also a customary event (here a concert for children), which is necessary to bring out the shining star in the protagonist kid. That apart, it also reveals the crux of the story and the issue the filmmaker has tried to highlight. But in no way can Stanley Ka Dabba be tagged as an issue based film. Rather, Stanley Ka Dabba shows how a film can be based on a simple ritual of everyday life, showing the extraordinary behind the mundane. One doesn’t need to deal with a heavy-duty topic laden with sentimentality to leave an impact while working with children. In this case, simplicity rules. For most part of the film, you dabble in the sight and smell of the home-cooked dabbas of children, and the children taking delight in them. Tiffin boxes stand only next to Stanley in the order of importance in the film. To one who is not aware, there will seem nothing special about the camera work in the film, and that is what makes the cinematography worth a mention. Stanley Ka Dabba stands out as a commendable attempt for a film that is shot on a still digital camera Canon 7D in natural light. It only reaffirms one’s belief in low-budget good filmmaking. Eyes cannot make out that the camera is hand held throughout the film and that no artificial lights have been used. The fact that the camera work seamlessly merges into the story speaks volumes about the success of the experiment of filmmaking with a DSLR camera. Gupte may not have created a masterpiece with Stanley Ka Dabba, but it is a good film in more than one ways. It had to be appreciated for the new and unique ways of filmmaking that it has embraced. Children will enjoy the film without doubt and so will the adults who miss the tiffins their mothers made them in school. The fact that it is an issue based film stands secondary. The film’s sheer sweetness and simplicity is impressive. <iframe src='http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fstanley-ka-dabba-out-of-the-tiffin-box%2F2559&layout=box_count&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=65&font=lucida+grande' scrolling='no' frameborder='0' allowTransparency='true' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:65px'></iframe>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://dearcinema.com/review/stanley-ka-dabba-out-of-the-tiffin-box/2559/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>2</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Cannes opening film: Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris</title> <link>http://dearcinema.com/review/cannes-opening-film-midnight-in-paris/0400</link> <comments>http://dearcinema.com/review/cannes-opening-film-midnight-in-paris/0400#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 12 May 2011 06:34:00 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Cineuropa</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Cannes Special]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Top Story]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Cannes]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Cannes opening film]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Midnight in Paris]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Woody Allen]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://dearcinema.com/?p=16818</guid> <description><![CDATA[Right from the opening clarinet notes of his 47th feature presented out of competition as opener of the 64th Cannes Film Festival, Woody Allen sets the tone he has used in his recent cinematic travels.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin-left: 10px;"> <a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fcannes-opening-film-midnight-in-paris%2F0400"> <img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fcannes-opening-film-midnight-in-paris%2F0400&source=DearCinema&style=normal&hashtags=Cannes,Cannes+opening+film,Midnight+in+Paris,Woody+Allen&b=2" height="61" width="50" /> </a> </div> <a rel="attachment wp-att-16829" href="http://dearcinema.com/review/cannes-opening-film-midnight-in-paris/0400/attachment/midnight-in-paris"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-16829" title="midnight in paris" src="http://dearcinema.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/midnight-in-paris-300x263.png" alt="" width="300" height="263" /></a>Right from the opening clarinet notes of his 47th feature presented out of competition as opener of the 64th Cannes Film Festival, Woody Allen sets the tone he has used in his recent cinematic travels. Through filming his city, this New Yorker has sometimes been unfairly reduced to the status of an admirer who, film after film, has offered declarations of love to the Big Apple. Shooting in Paris with a mainly American cast, the director of Everybody Says I Love You returns to the City of Light for the second time in his filmography and it is without the slightest infidelity that he transposes his passion with the charm and humour usually associated with him. In Midnight in Paris, the “Allenesque” character is Gil (Owen Wilson), a Hollywood-based author passing through Paris with his wife-to-be (Rachel McAdams). She wallows in the bourgeois superficiality offered by the French capital while Gil is much more attracted to the city’s cultural history where his artistic idols have flourished. Every evening from midnight onwards, he goes to meet them during initiatory wanderings in time, until he is integrated into their circle and shares their muse played by Marion Cotillard. From Ernest Hemingway to Luis Buñuel, Cole Porter and Salvador Dali (in an amusing performance by Adrien Brody), Allen takes delight in depicting Paris of the 1920s, as he would have liked to explore it, through flighty and inspiring encounters. Don’t expect to find the grey suburbs in Midnight in Paris. As with Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Allen films the picture-postcard city through the eyes of an amazed tourist. But in the end, it’s a shortcut to the collective image which shouldn’t offend Parisians, because while Midnight in Paris certainly indulges in simplification, it is never reductive. Allen is a Cannes regular. The US director, who didn’t wish to be in official competition, has already had 11 of his features screened out of competition. Well received by the press at its screening, Midnight in Paris has all the ingredients of an ideal opening film and is a good-humoured start to the festival. Those familiar with the director’s work will see it as another autobiographical piece about the personal concerns of its filmmaker, who himself regrets never having moved to Paris at the time in his life when he really wanted to. The strong cultural element of other references will also delight art lovers whose interests go beyond cinema. (Domenico La Porta for Cineuropa.org) <iframe src='http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fcannes-opening-film-midnight-in-paris%2F0400&layout=box_count&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=65&font=lucida+grande' scrolling='no' frameborder='0' allowTransparency='true' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:65px'></iframe>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://dearcinema.com/review/cannes-opening-film-midnight-in-paris/0400/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Centenarian filmmaker de Oliviera’s The Strange Case of Angelica</title> <link>http://dearcinema.com/review/centenarian-filmmaker-de-oliviera%e2%80%99s-the-strange-case-of-angelica/2156</link> <comments>http://dearcinema.com/review/centenarian-filmmaker-de-oliviera%e2%80%99s-the-strange-case-of-angelica/2156#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 05 May 2011 10:51:56 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Jugu Abraham</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Top Story]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Manoel de Oliviera]]></category> <category><![CDATA[The Strange Case of Angelica]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://dearcinema.com/?p=16668</guid> <description><![CDATA[One is never sure if a hundred year old can walk or even talk coherently. When you see a feature film made by a '102+ '-year-old that can make the grade to enter the 2010 Cannes official Un Certain Regard section, your jaws drop. The102 or 103 year old Manoel de Oliviera’s reported physical handicaps are limited to walking with the aid of a stick and a minor hearing problem and, believe it or not, is busy making another movie after the recent The Strange Case of Angelica.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin-left: 10px;"> <a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fcentenarian-filmmaker-de-oliviera%25e2%2580%2599s-the-strange-case-of-angelica%2F2156"> <img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fcentenarian-filmmaker-de-oliviera%25e2%2580%2599s-the-strange-case-of-angelica%2F2156&source=DearCinema&style=normal&hashtags=Manoel+de+Oliviera,The+Strange+Case+of+Angelica&b=2" height="61" width="50" /> </a> </div> <a rel="attachment wp-att-16669" href="http://dearcinema.com/review/centenarian-filmmaker-de-oliviera%e2%80%99s-the-strange-case-of-angelica/2156/attachment/the_strange_case_fo_angelica"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-16669" title="the_strange_case_fo_angelica" src="http://dearcinema.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/the_strange_case_fo_angelica-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a>One is never sure if a hundred year old can walk or even talk coherently. When you see a feature film made by a ’102+ ‘-year-old that can make the grade to enter the 2010 Cannes official Un Certain Regard section, your jaws drop. The102 or 103 year old Manoel de Oliviera’s reported physical handicaps are limited to walking with the aid of a stick and a minor hearing problem and, believe it or not, is busy making another movie after the recent The Strange Case of Angelica. The Strange Case of Angelica is indeed a ghost story but to classify it merely as one would be missing the wood for the trees. If one is looking for a good ghost story movie, one ought to see The Others or Yella, not this one. If one is looking for special effects associated with ghost stories, this is far from one that can be recommended. It is definitely not a commercial film: it is merely a film that can make you think. It provides a cinematic repast for an audience that is able to look beyond the decades-old technicalities that would annoy the impatient, modern hi-tech cineaste. Rather than a typical ghost story, this movie is all about capturing the ephemeral beauty of this world of fleeting moments of Joycean epiphanies on film, if you will, for posterity. Director de Oliviera is probably one of the very few film directors from the silent film era still making movies in the 21st century. He has made some 60 films in the past 80 years. But what is most remarkable is that his films have a certain transcendental quality. The Strange Case of Angelica is a tale written by de Oliviera in 1952, a half century ago for the screen but only executed today. And therefore the purist would find contradictions in the conversations in the film on global warming that are anachronistic for a film that is set in the Fifties. But then this is a sensitive tale from a man who loves cinema, photography, and sound. Had de Oliveira made this film 50 years ago, I am very sure that the mature philosophical turn of the final product would have been missing. It takes a very old man who has lived through life’s many twists and turns to make a film like this one. The Strange Case of Angelica is about a still photographer—the starting point of anyone who loves cinema. The photographer is different, he eats little, he loves the radio, he is an introvert, and is a person trying to catch the elusive beauty of actions being erased by time. The photographer spends hours trying to capture for future generations the feel of a chain of farmers preparing a farm field to grow another crop while of all of them sing a chorus that provide a hypnotic rhythm for the actions of the group. Much later in the film, the photographer revisits the same spot and finds to his dismay the field preparation has been replaced by a clunky tractor—gone are the men and the song. Even though the camera of the photographer has captured the visual beauty, it is cinema that captures the sounds that will be lost in time. Cinema and photography can make time stand still by illusion. That is the precise beauty of the de Oliveira film. The movie is somewhat autobiographical—de Oliveira was a farmer and obviously realizes that his days on earth are numbered. The photographer in the film is an extension of de Oliveira, the film director (in fact the actor is his real life grandson). Are the hoes in the hands of the farmers a subtle image of the grim reaper for an old man? The film is evidently a poem on the magic that you can find through the view finder capturing the elusive image that you wish can stay with you forever. Here in this film it is a moment of magic realism where a dead woman comes alive through the viewfinder. So is the image of the farmers. So is the bird in a cage. The Strange Case of Angelica is much more than a tale of a dead woman coming alive in the mind of a young man. It is ostensibly a love story of two individuals who have never met in life, but are destined to meet and be together after death. The beauty of life and death is what this film captures through some amazing sequences. One such sequence in the film is of a cat staring at a bird in a cage, considering the prospect of the bird as its next meal. The cat’s delicious thoughts are hoed down by a dog’s bark—the cat soon realizes that it has to save its own skin. Another amazing bit of conversation in the film relates to a pet bird being fed the remains of an egg and the surprising death of the bird that results from the innocent action. The film has much to do with philosophy—the opening quote in the film that I do not now fully recollect, had something to link time standing still and God in us. It is not without relevance that a trivial conversation within the film set in 1952 discusses “anti-matter searching for the precise opposite.” For the record, the film’s tale revolves around a Jew in post-Second World War Catholic Portugal. A Jew encounters death of a Christian woman and a Jew deals with a photographic death and resurrection following visits to a Church. There is even a passing out in an olive grove. (Much of de Oliveira’s cinema contains suggestive Christian motifs for those familiar with Biblical passages.) The soul departs leaving the body behind. These are interesting images, not statements, in the film. Statements from the film have to be viewed in the context of visuals and sound. This film has much for a viewer to reflect on. And the film is not just a visual crossword puzzle to solve. It has an aural puzzle as well. The Chopin selection and application in the film needs attention. As the credits roll, you hear the very same chorus of the farmers that so fascinated the photographer earlier in the film. That’s de Oliveira’s nudge on the importance of sound that has a magic realism of its own. The bird in the cage flutters when death takes place elsewhere in the room. As the landlady closes the windows and draws the curtains to underscore death, you begin to reflect on this strange film that mixes hallucination, science, music and philosophy. It is a sensitive, delicate film that is unlikely to be appreciated by the conventional filmgoer who prefers a cut-and-dry tale. If you relish the film you will realize that this film could not have been made by a young person. Beyond the lack of modern craftsmanship lies a deep tale of mystery and philosophy rejecting modern machines (loud impersonal efficient farm machinery for one) and modern photography, all the while celebrating a mystical charm of the old world. <iframe src='http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fcentenarian-filmmaker-de-oliviera%25e2%2580%2599s-the-strange-case-of-angelica%2F2156&layout=box_count&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=65&font=lucida+grande' scrolling='no' frameborder='0' allowTransparency='true' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:65px'></iframe>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://dearcinema.com/review/centenarian-filmmaker-de-oliviera%e2%80%99s-the-strange-case-of-angelica/2156/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Minority View: The Chekist by Aleksandr Rogozhkin</title> <link>http://dearcinema.com/review/minority-view-the-chekist-by-aleksandr-rogozhkin/3001</link> <comments>http://dearcinema.com/review/minority-view-the-chekist-by-aleksandr-rogozhkin/3001#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 05 May 2011 08:00:01 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>MK Raghvendra</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Top Story]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Aleksandr Rogozhkin]]></category> <category><![CDATA[The Chekist]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://dearcinema.com/?p=16879</guid> <description><![CDATA[Examinations of dark periods of the past or dark events in history can be undertaken by cinema for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it is to ‘set right a historical wrong’ – as Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) claimed to do when it re-enacted the horrors of Auschwitz. Sometimes it is a rewriting that serves a current ideological purpose. The self-congratulatory note in Wolfgang Becker’s Goodbye Lenin (2003) is unmistakable ]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin-left: 10px;"> <a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fminority-view-the-chekist-by-aleksandr-rogozhkin%2F3001"> <img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fminority-view-the-chekist-by-aleksandr-rogozhkin%2F3001&source=DearCinema&style=normal&hashtags=Aleksandr+Rogozhkin,The+Chekist&b=2" height="61" width="50" /> </a> </div> <a rel="attachment wp-att-16880" href="http://dearcinema.com/review/minority-view-the-chekist-by-aleksandr-rogozhkin/3001/attachment/chekist__1992_big_poster"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-16880" title="Chekist__1992_big_poster" src="http://dearcinema.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Chekist__1992_big_poster.jpg" alt="" width="257" height="475" /></a>Examinations of dark periods of the past or dark events in history can be undertaken by cinema for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it is to ‘set right a historical wrong’ – as Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) claimed to do when it re-enacted the horrors of Auschwitz. Sometimes it is a rewriting that serves a current ideological purpose. The self-congratulatory note in Wolfgang Becker’s Goodbye Lenin (2003) is unmistakable – its satisfaction at being made in better times than those that the film is concerned with. Sometimes, the film is a reexamination of a political past which has not yet been fully discredited – Andrej Wajda’s Man of Marble (1977). The films just cited are unalike but one thing common, which is that they hold up a dark aspect of the past without taking responsibility for it. Man of Marble may have been made under a Communist regime but it is still pointing to a foreign influence – viz. Stalinism – and Poles are not held accountable for the political ills the film deals with. Needless to add, these films are largely made for audiences outside – those not directly involved in the events but who need to be informed. The Chekist (1992) is different in as much as it deals with the events as a way of coming to terms with one’s own cherished past and it is addressing people in Russia, those to whom what it shows is not merely spectacle (as Schindler’s List is to most of us) but something for which they share responsibility. The protagonist of The Chekist is Andrey Srubov (Igor Sergeev) the local head of the CHEKA in a provincial town. The CHEKA was the secret police set up by Lenin immediately after the Revolution as a way of dealing with counter-revolutionaries. The Soviet Union after the Revolution was embroiled in a civil war with the opponents of the Bolsheviks and the CHEKA was set up to deal with them. While the dealings of the successors to the CHEKA – chiefly those under Stalin and after, like the OGPU, the MVD, the NKVD and the KGB – have generally been made known to the world outside, the CHEKA is singular in as much as it operated at a time widely believed to be truly revolutionary. The years 1918 to 1921 (which are dealt with in The Chekist) are regarded as the golden age for Revolutionary Russia – when great artists (Kandinsky, Malevich), poets (Mayakovsky), filmmakers (Eisenstein, Pudovkin), theatre directors (Meyerhold, Stanislavsky) and composers (Prokofiev), many of whom were executed under Stalin, were active. The film is dealing with precisely this ‘golden period’, but perhaps for the first time, with the dark goings on under the Revolution. To provide the reader with a synopsis of The Chekist, Srubov is a committed and selfless Bolshevik, who diligently arrests, interviews for a minute, tries in ten seconds and executes intellectuals, aristocrats, Jews, clergymen, and their families. In the building basement, five people at a time are shot as they stand naked facing wooden doors. Unlike SS Officer Amon Goth in Schindler’s List, who is the vilest kind of individual, Srubov is presented sympathetically. Srubov is an intellectual, a person of integrity and incapable of misusing the power he is vested with but the fact remains that he is an executioner. He is trying to find moral justification for whatever he is doing, taking care to be as fair as possible in the circumstances although he is hated locally. One of the people whom he is required to execute is a friend of the family who insinuates that Srubov is impotent. Srubov tries not to feel anger and perhaps even succeeds. At another moment, he has a guard caught trying to rape a woman prisoner executed. Srubov specifies that the guard should be executed first so that the woman will die knowing that the Revolution is fair. This sympathy for Srubov in the film may seem wasted but The Chekist is dealing with the wickedness that can result from faith and belief. It is, in effect, describing a political system as doomed from the outset despite its lofty aims. The Chekist can be a disturbing film because of its dispassionate treatment of Srubov’s executions. The film tries to portray Srubov as a factory supervisor who is dealing with a commodity that few people are required to deal in – human lives. People are stripped naked to make the disposal of the corpses easier but the victims lose their identities and all of them, eventually, become meat: naked flesh hauled out of the cellar in which the executions have been carried out and piled into trucks and transported away for disposal. The guards try to deal with the situation as if it was an industrial one, but many of them become unhinged. The place is ill-kept and huge rats scurry about – sometimes to become pets. The doors against which people have been shot become weak and need replacing but the funds are inadequate and they have to continue the work. The Chekist was perhaps too much even for Russia after Gorbachev because it is scarcely seen today. Communism may have failed in Russia but admitting that 75 tears of turbulent history were unnecessary – which is virtually what The Chekist suggests – may be a difficult notion for a country to handle. Rogozhkin’s film is often astonishing but, if a complaint is to be made, its vision of political terror becomes too mundane at times. It is one thing to suggest the mundaneness that creeps into the most horrific of experiences but another for the recounting of the experience itself to become mundane. There is perhaps too much repetition in The Chekist for it to truly horrify, to make it the great film that, in the final analysis, it narrowly misses being. <iframe src='http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fminority-view-the-chekist-by-aleksandr-rogozhkin%2F3001&layout=box_count&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=65&font=lucida+grande' scrolling='no' frameborder='0' allowTransparency='true' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:65px'></iframe>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://dearcinema.com/review/minority-view-the-chekist-by-aleksandr-rogozhkin/3001/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Shor in the city: Comic-Realism!</title> <link>http://dearcinema.com/review/shor-in-the-city-comic-realism/0053</link> <comments>http://dearcinema.com/review/shor-in-the-city-comic-realism/0053#comments</comments> <pubDate>Sat, 30 Apr 2011 05:30:53 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Bikas Mishra</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Top Story]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ekta Kapoor]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Girija Oak]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Krishna DK]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Nikhil Dwivedi]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Pitobash Tripathy]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Radhika Apte]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Raj Midimoru]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sendhil Ramamurthy]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Shor in the city]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundeep Kishan]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Tusshar Kapoor]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://dearcinema.com/?p=16578</guid> <description><![CDATA[One story isn’t enough when it comes to a megapolis like Mumbai! The maximum city needs multitude of narratives to make us feel its pulse. Shor in the city succeeds in capturing the city with all its chaos!]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin-left: 10px;"> <a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fshor-in-the-city-comic-realism%2F0053"> <img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fshor-in-the-city-comic-realism%2F0053&source=DearCinema&style=normal&hashtags=Ekta+Kapoor,Girija+Oak,Krishna+DK,Nikhil+Dwivedi,Pitobash+Tripathy,Radhika+Apte,Raj+Midimoru,Sendhil+Ramamurthy,Shor+in+the+city,Sundeep+Kishan,Tusshar+Kapoor&b=2" height="61" width="50" /> </a> </div> Writer and Director: Krishna D.K., Raj Nidimoru, Actors: Sendhil Ramamurthy, Tusshar Kapoor, Nikhil Dwivedi <div id="attachment_16583" class="wp-caption alignleft" style="width: 217px"><a rel="attachment wp-att-16583" href="http://dearcinema.com/review/shor-in-the-city-comic-realism/0053/attachment/shor_in_the_city_poster"><img class="size-medium wp-image-16583" title="Shor_in_the_City_Poster" src="http://dearcinema.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Shor_in_the_City_Poster-207x300.jpg" alt="" width="207" height="300" /></a>Shor in the city (2011)</div> One story isn’t enough when it has to be a film on a megapolis like Mumbai! The maximum city needs multitude of narratives to make us feel its pulse. Shor in the city succeeds in capturing the city and its chaos with three stories and about half a dozen key characters! Tilak (Tusshar Kapoor) is a book pirate, whose aspiration is to buy “a big car like Nano” and live happily with his newly-wed graduate wife Sapna (Radhika Apte). His friends Mandook (Pitobash Tripathy) and Ramesh (Nikhil Dwivedi) are small time crooks. Sawan (Sundeep Kishan), a cricketer, wants to play for team Mumbai while his girlfriend Sejal (Girija Oak) is being paraded before prospective grooms by her mother! Abhay (Sendhil Ramamurthy) an NRI entrepreneur, just back from the states, is unfamiliar with the ways of the city where “protection” means extortion. These characters form the core of the ensemble cast. We follow the lives of these disparate characters over eleven days of Ganapati festival, undoubtedly, the noisiest days in Mumbai. Their paths criss-cross as the film moves forward. While the film visually sticks to the realism of streets, it has the undertones of a dark comedy. The film never misses a chance to poke fun at the bizarreness of situations. The ride begins in the opening scene itself. [SPOILERS] Tilak with his friends kidnap an author to steal the manuscript of his new book, so that he could release it on the streets even before the stores!!! [END OF SPOILERS] Casting and performances are where the film hits the bull’s eye. Tusshar Kapoor, not known for his acting prowess, manages to surprise. However, the true show-stealer is Pitobash Tripathy as Mandook. Pitobash gets into the skin of his quirky character so well that he stands a good chance of being typecast by the industry. Infact, the character of Mandook stands out because he represents the true character of the film that’s bizarre, quirky and funny at a deeper level. Filmmakers constantly maintain that tone. We know right from the beginning that things are likely to go wrong but humour alone will save the characters. There are plenty of such scenes where we can laugh happily knowing the fact that nobody is going to die! Infact, one of the most bizarre scenes by its own standard is the one where Tusshar (Tilak) meets the kid hurt in a bomb explosion and feels guilty for his state. The kid gets up and starts walking even before Tilak is gone. If that’s not enough, what about a gang of bank robbers waiting for the manager to arrive for fifteen minutes, after holding everyone hostage!! The film has its share of lows as well. The plot of NRI entrepreneur Abhay (Sendhil) leaves too many questions unanswered. We simply don’t know enough about the character to sympathise with his travails. And, his transformation is too radical that takes place entirely beyond the screen. From a law-abiding global citizen to a gun trotter, it’s too much to take! Despite its flaw,s the film has enough to hold your attention for about two hours. It is a commendable effort by the writers and directors Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, which deserves to be watched. <iframe src='http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fshor-in-the-city-comic-realism%2F0053&layout=box_count&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=65&font=lucida+grande' scrolling='no' frameborder='0' allowTransparency='true' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:65px'></iframe>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://dearcinema.com/review/shor-in-the-city-comic-realism/0053/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>3</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers</title> <link>http://dearcinema.com/review/review-bernardo-bertolucci%e2%80%99s-the-dreamers/0132</link> <comments>http://dearcinema.com/review/review-bernardo-bertolucci%e2%80%99s-the-dreamers/0132#comments</comments> <pubDate>Mon, 25 Apr 2011 04:31:32 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Amitava Nag</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Top Story]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Bernardo Bertolucci]]></category> <category><![CDATA[The Dreamers]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://dearcinema.com/?p=16424</guid> <description><![CDATA[Bernardo Bertolucci’s 2003 film The Dreamers is a tribute to cinema. It’s mainly a tribute to the European school of cinema which had been critically acclaimed and inspirationally followed across the globe. Hence it doesn’t need any time to hook onto it. For film buffs of India and the other Third world countries, this surely works – nostalgia and associations flood in making the viewing experience quite worthwhile in most of the case. ]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin-left: 10px;"> <a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Freview-bernardo-bertolucci%25e2%2580%2599s-the-dreamers%2F0132"> <img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Freview-bernardo-bertolucci%25e2%2580%2599s-the-dreamers%2F0132&source=DearCinema&style=normal&hashtags=Bernardo+Bertolucci,The+Dreamers&b=2" height="61" width="50" /> </a> </div> <a rel="attachment wp-att-16433" href="http://dearcinema.com/review/review-bernardo-bertolucci%e2%80%99s-the-dreamers/0132/attachment/the-dreamers-by-bernardo-bertolucci1-2"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-16433" title="the-dreamers-by-bernardo-bertolucci1" src="http://dearcinema.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/the-dreamers-by-bernardo-bertolucci11-201x300.jpg" alt="" width="201" height="300" /></a>Foreword: Bernardo Bertolucci’s 2003 film The Dreamers is a tribute to cinema. It’s mainly a tribute to the European school of cinema which had been critically acclaimed and inspirationally followed across the globe. Hence it doesn’t need any time to hook onto it. For film buffs of India and the other Third world countries, this surely works – nostalgia and associations flood in making the viewing experience quite worthwhile in most of the case. This also reminds of two very interesting and subtly different films which also pay tribute to the motion picture – Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso (1998) and Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Once Upon a Time, Cinema (1992). The latter pays tribute to the Iranian film history of the silent age. It’s quite unfortunate that in spite of being the biggest cinema industry of the world, it’s hard to find an epical re-take of the country’s cinematic ingenuity. This review is an insulated view of the Bertolucci film with a hope that future Indian film-makers get inspired to lay their hands on the treasure trove called the Indian Film Industry. A lengthy introduction! In 1968, Luis Walter Alvarez of USA won the Nobel Prize in Physics for “the discovery of a large number of resonance states, made possible through his development of the technique of using hydrogen bubble chamber and data analysis.” A little elaboration of the bubble chamber will let us understand that this is, in common terms, nothing but a vessel with transparent fluid which is almost at its boiling state. When an ionizing particle passes through such a bubble chamber, bubbles are formed along its trajectory due to boiling of the liquid, which can then be photographed and statistically analyzed. In essence, Alvarez’s research allowed nuclear scientists to record and study the short lived particles created in particle accelerators. The reason for such a prelude for a film critique seems absurd in the beginning. However if we delve a little further we will try to understand the analogy. It is ironical that the reason cited by the Nobel academy has so much correlation with the actual state of things world wide, in 1968. Thus, the world becomes a bubble chamber where there are so many ‘resonance’ states (which at times are radical to say the least) – the ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968 that was suddenly ended by the invasion of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia, double assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy in the USA, ten thousand demonstrators protesting outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago, USA, around eighty thousand march in protest of the Vietnam War in London who were mauled down by mounted police, the aftermath of the death of Che Guevara a year back, the ongoing Vietnam War, the formation of the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR – which adopted two salient strategies for its operations – ‘Allegiance to the armed struggle and non-participation in the elections’), the student riot in Paris, France which soon was merged with the general strike of the workers in protest of inadequate wages — the list is even longer. Hence it is really interesting to read a film which is set up in the backdrop of 1968 Paris student revolution – The Dreamers by Bernardo Bertolucci. More so, because Bertolucci deliberately brought in actual footage as well as enactment of the cinephiles’ demonstrations outside the Cinematheque Francaise against the dismissal of its creator Henri Langois by Andre Malraux, De Gaulle’s Minister of Culture. These are the opening moments of the film which sets expectations about the director’s take on the days of 1968 Paris. We find Matthew, an American who is a cine fanatic getting friendly with a twin – the alluring Theo and his glamorous yet seductive sister Isabelle. Soon these three forms a group – what eventually unfolds is a homo-erotic drama of carnal love, longing and incestuous fervor between them (an echo of Jean Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles) interspersed with some magnificent montage of earlier films (the director’s tribute to cinema?) – Alas, 1968’s Paris moves back and only resurfaces in the closing sequence of the film. Depiction of Kinship Libido: the public vs. the private In his seminal “The Psychology of the Transference” Carl Jung writes: “Everyone is now a stranger among strangers. Kinship libido-which could still engender a satisfying feeling of belonging together, as for instance in the early Christian communities-has long been deprived of its object. But, being an instinct, it is not to be satisfied by any mere substitute such as a creed, party, nation, or state. It wants the human connection. That is the core of the whole transference phenomenon, and it is impossible to argue it away, because relationship to the self is at once relationship to our fellow man, and no one can be related to the latter until he is related to himself.” We will try to read the traits of kinship libido in this film. Majority of the reel time is taken in the slow exploration of the self-imposed isolation of Mathew, Theo and Isabelle in the twin’s apartment once their parents leave to visit the countryside. During Matthew’s first night in their apartment he spies on them sleeping together naked – the voyeuristic peek disturbs Matthew as he becomes confused about his impending relation with the duo. Later on in a defining moment of the film, Matthew will come to know that the twins were not ‘lovers’ (atleast, they never had sex!!). As days pass, the trio locks them up even further from the outside world; they play games, act out roles from films and test each other’s knowledge. They, in this sense live in their dreams, in a world which is remotely placed from the current affairs. In one outstanding scene (I will discuss certain similar sequences and scenes in the next section) Isabelle and Theo challenge Matthew to help them break the record time for running through the Louvre established in Band of Outsiders. Bertolucci gets back and forth between Godard’s film and his own and in this fusion the earlier film as if acts as a dream memory for the characters – a powerful symbol of the ‘dream’ image associated to cinema in the minds of these Parisians as well interpreting if it’s a dream of the present film as well. The win in the race ensured that Mathew got the passport to enter the ‘world’ of the twins as they chant – ‘We accept you, one of us!’ As the three celebrate their victory march, Bertolucci cuts to Tod Browning’s Freaks where a group of deformed characters are singing this, loud and harsh. Much later, as audience, we will be able to correlate the connection between this film and the present one – the ‘freakish’ state of mind of the twins which Mathew eventually challenges. Soon, an undercurrent of psycho-analytical tussle of sexual rivalry ensues and which started as a Mathew-Isabelle bonding soon drifts to a more stable Theo-Isabelle pairing. This is embodied in a bath sequence where Isabelle and Theo wish to shave Mathew’s manhood – turning him to the child of their desire or else, transgressing him as a ‘freak’. Coming back to the opening quote of Jung, the twins are basically entrapped in the psychoanalytical kinship libido, in other words, they are in an uroboric state. This is a ‘natural’ state in childhood but to become ‘adult’ this libido needs to be broken for the individuals to grow up separately instead of clinging to each other in a cocoon which disallows their individual as well as collective growth. This is the unconscious state and hence self-reliant and self-sufficient in its close world. As days pass on, Matthew will eventually realise that the twins live in a world of their own where Mathew is also another toy – helping them to continue their incest uroboric state. French film director Francois Truffaut who had been an influential figure of the New Wave of the ‘60s had once said - “I also believe that every film must contain some degree of ‘planned violence’ upon its audience. In a good film, people must be made to see something that they don’t want to see; they must be made to approve of someone of whom they had disapproved, they must be forced to look where they had refused to look. ” Being an admirer of Truffaut, Bertolucci also, seems to tread similar paths – nudity has never been made lurid in this film. On the contrary, taking cue from Truffaut’s belief, the on-screen nudity at times lingered rather longer than being sensationalized, thereby making it as a common portrait of the film. And, there is substantial male frontal nudity as well to balance the female part – thereby ripping off the possibility of a dominant male gaze on the female body. However, saying this, the female body (Isabelle’s) was the subject of gaze of Mathew who in turn represents the audience at large. But this look in many ways is devoid of sexual urge, rather it is that of an anatomist’s curiosity. The representation of sexuality plays an important role in this film in placing itself as the ‘private’ as opposed to the ‘public’ (the 1968’s revolutionary Paris). These polar opposites are also symbolized as the home as opposed to the streets and as mentioned, Mathew spearheads the audience in intruding the ‘personal’ (dream) and ‘private’ (reality) spaces in the lives of these hermetically sealed twin couple. In reference to Before the Revolution as well as Last Tango in Paris, it can be observed that in both places there is this eternal turmoil in trying to flee from reality, either through sex or in listless loitering and pretentious posturing as ‘intellectuals’ or submerging in the artificial world of movies. Theo once said that they were Siamese twins conjoined in the mind – in essence the film finally turns out to churn the same old clichéd plot – the war over a woman where Theo gains the mind and Mathew the body (initially). Looking at a different angle, Theo and Isabelle are basically the same unit, the mind and body of one object (the uroborus) wherein Mathew is the external stimulant – drawn closer and then finally stranded on the street. To the audience, hence, Bertolucci delivers a fertile space to ponder where a luscious girl loses her virginity and gets locked in a lunging kiss smeared with blood and an enigmatic shot of a lock of Isabelle’s hair catching fire. A tribute to cinema In a very important moment of the film when Mathew first takes out Isabelle on a date, and they end up in the movie theatre, he doesn’t sit in the front rows which he always used to sit, rather he prefers the back rows citing, front rows are for those ‘who don’t have anyone’. Ironically it also refers to his state of affairs some time ago. Interestingly, at the start of the film in Mathew’s voice over we hear life ‘bursting through the scene’ for him. It seems he now wants to sit back and observe from a distance, his date with dreaming is over. As referred earlier as well, this film is studded with many finer classic moments borrowed from yesteryear films which Bertolucci has mixed so aptly that those scenes also become part of this film – they have a statement to make. One already mentioned is the Band of Outsiders running through the Louvre. In another, Isabelle imitates the memory scene from Queen Christina as we hear the original soundtrack. In another later sequence, Theo and Mathew draw themselves into a pointless ‘who-is-better’ debate taking Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. In the same sequence, Theo talks about Mao and the Red Guard and is all for revolution and as audience we understand the vacuum in his beliefs as he is reluctant to shed his cosy environment. On the contrary Mathew also turns out to be equally confused when Theo charges him about his ambiguous stance in the Vietnam War trying to justify it but himself not joining the troops. In another brilliant shot, Matthew asks Isabelle when she was born and she answers, “I entered this world on the Champs Elysees in 1959, and my very first words were, ‘New York Herald Tribune!’” Almost synchronized is the cut to Jean Seberg selling the newspaper in Godard’s Breathless – a direct reference of Isabelle’s positioning, she is the child of the French New Wave. There are a number of direct musical scores that were used from Pierrot le fou and The 400 Blows. In another funny scene during the bonding phase of the trio, Isabelle enacts a scene in white clothes from Blonde Venus as well as impersonating the character that Greta Garbo played in Queen Christina. There were also references and enactments from Scarface, Top Hat (mention of a tap dancer), Sunset Boulevard (Isabelle puts on sunglasses imitating Gloria Swanson) , Nadine Nortier’s suicide in Mouchette along with the inimitable James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause which also points to similar restlessness amongst the youth of the USA. Musically as well, the film showed the smart usage of Bob Dylan mixed with Jimi Hendrix (Third stone from the Sun) and the favourite Charles Trenet – Albert Lasry’s La Mer which acts as a defining piece symbolizing Isabelle’s embracing of Mathew and her rejecting him as well. In the scene where Theo and Mathew debate on Keaton and Chaplin, Mao and Vietnam, Isabelle didn’t take part in the rage which soon turned out to be jealous outburst of both, camouflaged behind their sophisticated veneer – the background score used was Jimi Hendrix’s Hey Joe (which depicts a lover preparing to shoot ‘his’ woman for taking another guy!!). Conclusion Near the very end of the film a rock is thrown through the window where this trio was sleeping. That marked their wakeup call from their dream to the reality – the revolution of the streets ‘bursts through’ the window. Is this an ‘awakening’ which the director wants us to believe – I doubt it, since throughout this callous philosophical standing of the central characters, we as audience, can feel the director’s sympathy for them. There is no harm in it even though the side-taking ponders over being pretentious at times. However, as I read the tumultuous years of 1968 now, I cannot help but lament that none of the trio sang with Paul McCartney “Hey Jude, you’ll do, the movement is on your shoulders”. <iframe src='http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Freview-bernardo-bertolucci%25e2%2580%2599s-the-dreamers%2F0132&layout=box_count&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=65&font=lucida+grande' scrolling='no' frameborder='0' allowTransparency='true' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:65px'></iframe>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://dearcinema.com/review/review-bernardo-bertolucci%e2%80%99s-the-dreamers/0132/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Minority View: Garde a Vue by Claude Miller</title> <link>http://dearcinema.com/review/minority-view-garde-a-vue-by-claude-miller/0826</link> <comments>http://dearcinema.com/review/minority-view-garde-a-vue-by-claude-miller/0826#comments</comments> <pubDate>Sun, 24 Apr 2011 06:38:26 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>MK Raghvendra</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Column]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Top Story]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Claude Miller]]></category> <category><![CDATA[French cinema]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Garde a Vue]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Michel Audiard]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://dearcinema.com/?p=16406</guid> <description><![CDATA[Garde a Vue (1981), one of Miller’s early films, relies on a brilliant script by Michel Audiard which does not mean that it is not cinematic. It can be loosely termed ‘noir’ in that it is about brutal crime and the artificial division maintained in crime stories between the law abiding citizen and the criminal is erased.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin-left: 10px;"> <a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fminority-view-garde-a-vue-by-claude-miller%2F0826"> <img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fminority-view-garde-a-vue-by-claude-miller%2F0826&source=DearCinema&style=normal&hashtags=Claude+Miller,French+cinema,Garde+a+Vue,Michel+Audiard&b=2" height="61" width="50" /> </a> </div> <a rel="attachment wp-att-16412" href="http://dearcinema.com/review/minority-view-garde-a-vue-by-claude-miller/0826/attachment/gardefinal"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-16412" title="gardefinal" src="http://dearcinema.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/gardefinal.jpg" alt="" width="194" height="259" /></a>Among the casualties of an epoch-making movement in cinema – like the French New Wave – are the talents that don’t get enough recognition because they are perceived to be ‘old fashioned’. If the directors of the French New Wave all embarked in new directions in the 1960s, it cannot be asserted that they were all successful. Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol’s later films, for instance, don’t hold much interest and some films of more conventional directors who appeared at the same time – like Jacques Deray and Michel Deville – often look more interesting today. Many of these filmmakers also did not have a ‘signature style’ so valorized by the New Wave and, even when they made the better films, they received less attention internationally. A filmmaker who emerged a little later but made several brilliant films in the 1970s and 1980s was Claude Miller, who did not stick to one or two themes but demonstrated considerable versatility in his handling of subject matter. Garde a Vue (1981), one of Miller’s early films, relies on a brilliant script by Michel Audiard which does not mean that it is not cinematic. It can be loosely termed ‘noir’ in that it is about brutal crime and the artificial division maintained in crime stories between the law abiding citizen and the criminal is erased. Noir is usually about ordinary people led into committing murder but while Garde a Vue (based on a novel by John Wainwright) does not take this course, it still convinces us that the impulses leading to criminal conduct of an extreme nature are more common than is admitted. Garde a Vue is essentially a police drama involving two characters – the suspect and the policeman interrogating him. Inspector Gallien (Lino Ventura) is investigating the rape and murder of two little girls. The only suspect is attorney Jerome Martinaud (Michel Serrault), but the evidence against him is circumstantial. As the city celebrates New Year’s Eve, Gallien calls Martinaud to his office and interrogates him for hours on end while the latter continues to maintain his innocence. As the interrogation continues, gaps begin to emerge in Martinaud’s story. He was in the vicinity at the time of each crime but Martinaud is apparently lying about what he was doing. To illustrate the ‘cinema’ in Garde a Vue, the film cuts briefly to the scene to illustrate what Marinuad claims he saw. The most striking one perhaps concerns the lighthouse that night. The night was foggy and when Gallien asks Martinaud if he heard anything, the latter cannot recall. When the Inspector persists, Martinaud finally explodes. “What should I have heard?” he wants to know. “The foghorn,” replies the Inspector as he walks out of the room and the film cuts back to the lighthouse – but now with the foghorn blaring on the soundtrack. A secondary motif pertaining to the attorney’s marriage is crucial in Garde a Vue. Martinaud’s wife Chantal (Romy Schneider), it gradually emerges, despises her husband and believes him guilty of the crimes. At the climax of the film, Chantal visits Inspector Gallien and tells him the story that will convict her husband. The story goes back several years to the early days of their marriage when the two were visiting friends. The friends had a daughter named Camille – a lovely child of eight or ten with whom Martinaud was taken up. At one moment, Chantal surprised the two deep in conversation, and from a distance, it looked exactly like an intimate one between two adults. As Chantal bursts out to Inspector Gallien, her husband “had no business making Camille smile the way she did”. The plotting in Garde a Vue is hardly watertight and its American remake Under Suspicion (2000) tries to tie up loose ends much more than it does. We are never told why Matinaud is lying to the Inspector but rather than these ‘loose ends’ making the narration, it frees Garde a Vue from the tyranny of film convention. To elaborate, moral divisions in cinema owe more to film convention (what is allowed to be shown) rather than to human nature (what people are) but over a period of time, representations have tended to define ‘normal’ social conduct, obscuring the fact that that they are only conventions. Categories like ‘child’ and ‘adult’, Garde a Vue suggests, are not intrinsic to humanity but only part of assumed convention. Martinaud’s misdemeanor in Garde a Vue is being drawn to a little girl the way other men are drawn to mature women. Although there is no indication that Martinaud actually did anything deplorable, Chantal is so shocked by the implications of what she saw that she is willing to see him convicted for a brutal crime without there being enough evidence that he is culpable. Since the crime for which Martinaud is accused carries a mandatory death sentence, his wife Chantal is, in effect, willing to kill him for it. Since Martinaud is portrayed as a person who keeps secrets, who is not completely ‘knowable’ there are possibilities of him being both guilty and innocent and his instability is a notion which is central to the film. It will perhaps be appropriate to conclude with a comparison between Garde a Vue and its remake Under Suspicion. The American film has Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman as the Inspector and the suspect respectively and the two are as competent as any actors one might find in Hollywood. Still, there are two things seriously amiss in the American film. In the first place, Gene Hackman – like virtually every other Hollywood star – does not have it in his range to play someone ‘unstable’, someone capable of child molestation and murder but who might also be innocent. Secondly, unlike the French actors, the two American stars don’t seem to know how to play against each other as Lino Ventura and Michel Serrault do effortlessly. American cinema works with psychological motivation as the driving narrative logic and begins by according ‘normalcy’ to its protagonists. We are invited to identify with the characters as French cinema is not prone to and this would not be possible if the characters we identified with were ‘unstable’. In the final analysis, where Garde a Vue makes us wonder at the notion of psychological ‘normalcy’, Under Suspicion closes off the possibility altogether because, given the circumstances dealt with in the story, Gene Hackman can only play an innocent man. <iframe src='http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fminority-view-garde-a-vue-by-claude-miller%2F0826&layout=box_count&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=65&font=lucida+grande' scrolling='no' frameborder='0' allowTransparency='true' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:65px'></iframe>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://dearcinema.com/review/minority-view-garde-a-vue-by-claude-miller/0826/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Dum Maro Dum: (Con)fused Genres!</title> <link>http://dearcinema.com/review/dum-maro-dum-confused-genres/0333</link> <comments>http://dearcinema.com/review/dum-maro-dum-confused-genres/0333#comments</comments> <pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2011 10:33:33 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Bikas Mishra</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Top Story]]></category> <category><![CDATA[20th Century Fox]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Abhishek Bachahan]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Bollywood]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Deepika Padukone]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Dum Maro Dum]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Hollywood]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Rana]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://dearcinema.com/?p=16342</guid> <description><![CDATA[Dum Maro Dum is glitzy, glossy and edgy! In fact this is what remains of it once one walks out of the theatre. This is one of those films where craftiness comes in the way of storytelling.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin-left: 10px;"> <a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fdum-maro-dum-confused-genres%2F0333"> <img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fdum-maro-dum-confused-genres%2F0333&source=DearCinema&style=normal&hashtags=20th+Century+Fox,Abhishek+Bachahan,Bollywood,Deepika+Padukone,Dum+Maro+Dum,Hollywood,Rana&b=2" height="61" width="50" /> </a> </div> Director: Rohan Sippy, Writers: Shridhar Raghavan, Purva Naresh (dialogue), Actors: Abhishek Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Bipasha Basu, Prateik Babbar <div id="attachment_16343" class="wp-caption alignleft" style="width: 213px"><a rel="attachment wp-att-16343" href="http://dearcinema.com/review/dum-maro-dum-confused-genres/0333/attachment/dum-maro-dum-poster"><img class="size-medium wp-image-16343" title="Dum Maro Dum (2011)" src="http://dearcinema.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/dum-maro-dum-poster-203x300.jpg" alt="" width="203" height="300" /></a>Dum Maro Dum (2011)</div> Dum Maro Dum is glitzy, glossy and edgy! In fact this is what remains of it once one walks out of the theatre. This is one of those films where craftiness comes in the way of storytelling. Set up against the sun-kissed beaches of Goa, where drug mafia thrives, Dum Maro Dum builds itself upon the legend of a super cop and a rat. It could very well have been a thriller hinged upon “who is Michael Barbusa” or “there is a rat here”. However, the filmmakers don’t take this tried and tested path. Instead, they bring in a bit of drama here mixed with a pinch of Indian melodrama: something that lets it remain neither a thriller nor a drama. Super cop Kamath (Abhishek Bachchan) has been assigned the task to clean up Goa of drugs. He picks up his team and goes full throttle to nab the mafia. Story opens with the subplot of Lorry (Prateik Babbar), a student who gets caught into the world of drug trafficking to raise money to reunite with his beloved. Later we are introduced to DJ Joki (Rana Daggubati), an idealist musician who wants to rescue Lorry. He has a back story too. He has lost his girlfriend to the drug mafia. Joki’s idealism acquires heroic proportions as the film progresses. As the end credits roll, we realize that he is the real hero of the narrative whom the writer and director manage to keep under the veil for no apparent reason. Though cop Kamath (Bachchan) appears to be the man of the film, he isn’t. In a twisted way this is a thriller with a classical Indian hero that’s Joki, an idealist. His idealism is impersonal. He is fighting for the social good, not for himself. He has been wronged by the villain, his “girl” has been stolen but he isn’t fighting to get his girl back. Like Rama, he won’t accept the “impure” Sita. Instead he would sacrifice her. And he would even make his rejection of her look like a glorious sacrifice. Joki is a strange hero, who goes on being helpless to heroic without much of an emotional journey. Perhaps an ill-defined hero is something that makes the film inadequate. Despite its technical wizardry and edginess, it lacks the edge when it comes to storytelling. Kamath is a sharp and brutal cop who has travelled from one extreme to another. From being corrupt to the crusader. He is committed but he has nothing at stake, his motivation to fight the social malaise remains unclear that strips him of our sympathy. We like his attitude but we don’t feel much for him, even at times when the director would have liked us to cry for him. Lorry is another character we begin to sympathize with, however, he is taken off the screen by the time we get familiar enough to feel sad at his destiny. The film has a gritty look. Images are contrasty, camera is often shaky. Background score adds to the edginess of the film. Dum Maro Dum, a collaboration between Hollywood major 20th Century Fox and Ramesh Sippy of India, is a decently engaging film. Directed by Rohan Sippy, the film has two distinct sensibilities. The two traditions of storytelling, Hollywood and Bollywood, come together to tell a classic western thriller mixed with Indian drama, however, with little success. <iframe src='http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fdum-maro-dum-confused-genres%2F0333&layout=box_count&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=65&font=lucida+grande' scrolling='no' frameborder='0' allowTransparency='true' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:65px'></iframe>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://dearcinema.com/review/dum-maro-dum-confused-genres/0333/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>12</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>IFFLA Diary 2011: Pink Chaddis</title> <link>http://dearcinema.com/review/iffla-diary-2011-pink-chaddis/0023</link> <comments>http://dearcinema.com/review/iffla-diary-2011-pink-chaddis/0023#comments</comments> <pubDate>Mon, 18 Apr 2011 10:30:23 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Shekhar Deshpande</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Top Story]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Pink Chaddis]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sweta Vohra]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://dearcinema.com/?p=16219</guid> <description><![CDATA[he notorious incident in Bangalore (2009) that underscored the fascist tendencies so prevalent in right wing groups in India what purport to protect something a “mythical,” narrow version of Indian/Hindu culture remains one the dark chapters of the recent years. Four women were attacked in a pub and the “neta” of the “Sri Ram Sena,” [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin-left: 10px;"> <a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fiffla-diary-2011-pink-chaddis%2F0023"> <img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fiffla-diary-2011-pink-chaddis%2F0023&source=DearCinema&style=normal&hashtags=Pink+Chaddis,Sweta+Vohra&b=2" height="61" width="50" /> </a> </div> <a rel="attachment wp-att-16220" href="http://dearcinema.com/review/iffla-diary-2011-pink-chaddis/0023/attachment/pinkchaddis8"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-16220" title="pinkchaddis8" src="http://dearcinema.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/pinkchaddis8.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" /></a>The notorious incident in Bangalore (2009) that underscored the fascist tendencies so prevalent in right wing groups in India what purport to protect something a “mythical,” narrow version of Indian/Hindu culture remains one the dark chapters of the recent years. Four women were attacked in a pub and the “neta” of the “Sri Ram Sena,” Mr. Promod Muthalik continued these threats when he warned that young men and women that celebrate Valentine’s Day would be forcibly married off for voluntarily expressing their love on this Western and “pagan” holiday. The Pink Chaddis campaign was a social protest that sent the leaders a prize of what they feared the most; pink underwear to remind them of their real affinity with the gender, among other things. The 25 minute documentary on this movement and the incident by Sweta Vohra is crisp and to the point and will do much to enhance the pedagogical goals of such works. It is an incident that would shame anyone who regards Indian culture a diverse, heuristic and forever testifying to its rare capacity to absorb, to learn, to tolerate and to grow. This is a short work and coupled with another “pink” statement about women’s rights, it marked the final hours of the 9th Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. <iframe src='http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fdearcinema.com%2Freview%2Fiffla-diary-2011-pink-chaddis%2F0023&layout=box_count&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=65&font=lucida+grande' scrolling='no' frameborder='0' allowTransparency='true' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:65px'></iframe>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://dearcinema.com/review/iffla-diary-2011-pink-chaddis/0023/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> </channel> </rss>