In the not-yet-metro city of Pune, no film - English film - has 20 percent foreigners in a single show. But on the first day of one-of-the-many shows of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, the theatre seems to hold a special attraction for viewers from abroad. Most of them are carrying water bottles. Some have dressed up in ethnic wear which we, the Indians, opt for during festive occasions. Like most visitors to foreign lands, their deportment seems to suggest that they can think of Boyle’s slums as the ‘real Indeeah’ very easily. How one wishes one could tell them if that were to be true, every street in London has the Big Ben!
Since that would sound rude, one abstains. Cut to the reel thing inside the theatre where Boyle unfolds a supposedly grand film that has won four Golden Globes and ten Oscar nominations. The director is said to have made a viewer-friendly popular classic. What is great being seldom popular – and vice versa – one wants to see SM. From start to finish. Without stepping out of the hall during the interval. Getting a ticket on the first day seems like an achievement straight out of fantasyland. Such is the power of Mr B and his SM.
God is kind. Or, is He?
No. For, Boyle has made a film that has a weak body and no soul. Given his passion for indulging in all things filthy, let us say that SM is prose in loose motion. The narrative wobbles back and forth, pausing at several phases in the past to show the tragic life of an uneducated boy who finds himself on the hot seat of the game show Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?. The youngster Jamal is a chaiwallah towards whom the game show host Prem (a superstar) shows visible contempt: much like the director’s attitude towards his portrayal of India in general.
If Boyle has an understanding of life in the Indian slums, one surely doesn’t see it. Why he chooses to stay away from the flip side of slums is beyond comprehension: more so, because a few shots of Mumbai’s upper class life would have explained Prem’s scorn and the young man’s life below the poverty line even better. How the Golden Globe-winning writer Simon Beaufoy discovered just one abuse in Hindi that Indians use in the film cannot be understood likewise. The scene showing the Indian superstar (Amitabh Bachchan – a double of course) who signs his photograph for the young boy bathed in shit is the substance of nauseating, vomit-inducing imagination.
As in Vikas Swarup’s utterly simplistic novel on which the film is based, the beginning of the film conveys its climax. Seated on a money-making pedestal, the fortunes of a poor little poor boy have to change overnight. In short, the underdog has to win. Tragedies promise to turn into memories eclipsed by the wealth that transforms his life all of a sudden. So what if he is uneducated? He will find answers to the questions that offer more and more money as he goes along. He will irritate Prem because the latter’s mind is trapped in the vanity of class-consciousness. He will find his childhood love who has gone on to become the mistress of a don.
A tale of pain with a fairytale ending: that is what we expect and get, with the only surprise being the way in which Boyle treats the story. It seems as if he is directing the film for the Western audiences in a manner that is far too premeditated and shallow. If not, he is clearly influenced by the Bollywood of the 70s, which is when some of the worst Hindi films got made. In 2008, Boyle’s film joined the list of the era, making the average Indian wonder why the maker did not check the time for so long.
Lost in a lost world. That is the essence of SM. Unable to ruffle us emotionally, it shows, with appalling indifference, that sad moment in which the young boy’s mother loses her life during communal riots. Although the boy’s life takes a turn for the worse after this episode, the mother's death is shown with such surgical precision that we forget it before five minutes go by. Once the boy wins the entire prize money, we hardly get a glimpse of his ecstasy and disbelief. Instead, there is an abrupt cut, because of which the viewer gets very little idea of the boy’s state of mind. Sorry, My Boyle. But isn’t the plot supposed to be high on emotional quotient?
It is not that SM doesn’t tug at our heartstrings. It does, but for all the wrong reasons. When one walks out of the hall, it is with the feeling that Boyle made the mess of an opportunity to make a good film. As a viewer, everyone is prepared to accept unreality when one goes to see a film. But what could have, but doesn’t, happen in SM's case is that the narrative fails to grip the viewer with its revelations of understanding and sensitivity. Slums appear but as views captured by a stoical camera. When the young boy who has been packed off for police interrogation is subjected to shocks, his suffering is buried by the sight of a fat cop whose presence gives rise to humour. The host feels that Jamal is a cheat, but there is no well-written scene which shows how the latter tries to convince the former. Since a film needs to take liberties with a novel’s structure, shouldn’t Boyle have conveyed the boy’s helplessness as also his inability to understand how happenstance is blessing him time and again?
Dev Patel who plays the adult Jamal is wooden in the initial stages of the film. He picks up later, but has nothing much to do simply since the script has nothing better to offer. As the proud host whose arrogance gets switched on the moments the lights are off, Anil Kapoor does a fine job. Frieda Pinto in the role of Jamal’s lover is a bad choice, but Irrfan Khan comes up with a good show as the inspector interrogating the man. Saurabh Shukla as the plump cop is good, but it is impossible to figure out whether or not his character is supposed to generate humour or seriousness. Among the film’s strengths is the cinematography, and AR Rahman’s background score which tries to elevate the scenes to a much higher level.
If there are so many minuses, how has SM managed to garner so much critical acclaim? The answer is a bit like the mystery behind Boyle’s treatment of the film. It is impossible to understand.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
SRK: THE INCOMPLETE BIOGRAPHY
Of all the Hall of Fame unauthorized biographies I wrote a few years ago, the one on Shah Rukh Khan did the best. Although it feels good to have written books on stars which did not rely on their personal inputs – if one follows that route, honesty can get diluted from time to time – what I would genuinely like to do is write the SRK book all over again. That is not because I want to get many more good, bad and mixed reviews, or hit the bookstores with another one which will fly off the racks for sure. On the contrary, after watching SRK evolve as an actor in the last few years, I have started believing that some of his best characters have hit the big screen in the recent past.
This is not to say that SRK did not come up with some noteworthy performances in the first half of his career. He did, with his 'K-k-k-k-kiran' act in Darr that triggered off his ascent towards invincible superstardom; his endearing performance in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa; and, of course, when he turned into Raj in DDLJ that made him the lover boy millions fell in love with.
Even those who hated the star – that number being less than a few – could not help confessing that his spontaneity imparted a special appeal to his characters. All his popular performances need not have been great, but they surely struck a chord with the masses who wanted to see more and more of the guy. He may not have looked as good as Aamir or Salman, the two Khans he competed with. But, he was ahead in terms of his popularity for the most part of his career.
He was the leader. No doubt about it. And, he continues to retain the number one throne despite Aamir's diversity and quest for perfectionism, Salman's glittering charisma and Akshay Kumar's emphatic emergence. There have been times when there have been talks about his slipping away – think Hrithik Roshan of a few years ago, and you have the answer – but he has kept the spot with himself on the whole. To say that is difficult would be the understatement of the century. That, to start with, is why I miss some more pages in the book.
But the main reason, as stated earlier, is the performance factor. Although Swades did not rock the box-office and received highly unfair reviews on occasions, few would question that SRK as Mohan Bhargava is as believable as he could have been. When he is at NASA as a scientist, we like him. But, we enjoy even more when he returns to India and starts working for the welfare of the downtrodden.
The character has a sense of purpose, and his philanthropic mindset makes us think twice about the lives we were leading. So good is SRK's performance that we actually forget the man himself when we see Bhargava. Considering his stature as a star, pulling off an act like that couldn't have been easy. After the performance, SRK made many rethink about his prowess as actor, which had often been obscured by the sheer weight of his superstardom. As Mohan Bhargava, he is Mohan Bhargava. That is all.
However, the two characters with which SRK seems to have conquered newer pastures are those of Kabir Khan in Chak De! India and Surinder Sahni in Rab Ne…. As the hockey coach of the Indian women's team whose reputation had been sullied in the past, SRK's Kabir is awesome. The character's frustration shows, and so does his willpower to make something happen when he gets the coach's assignment. Kabir's desire to prove a point and his methods as a coach makes him a very interesting and intriguing personality. When I think of it today, nobody apart from SRK would have been able to pull off the act with so much conviction.
At the risk of getting a lot of flak, and mainly because Rab Ne… does not have a great script like Chak De!..., I would rate SRK's Surinder Sahni in the former as highly as any other character he has essayed so far. Why I think so is since Surinder is one more regular guy whose personality becomes credible only if SRK's superstardom is forgotten completely. A diffident man with a good soul, Surinder in his bespectacled avatar is light years away from the six-packed guy that SRK actually is. It is a beautifully written character – unlike the entire film which has its loopholes – and the superstar simply makes sure that people walk out of the hall, thinking about Surinder instead of the guy who played the role.
As a writer of a book on SRK, I miss an exclusive chapter on these characters today. They have influenced the way in which I think of SRK as an actor, but there isn't anything I can do since the book was published a few years ago. But then, there could come a time when I will write another one on the star. Or may be, I will get a chance to edit the book and make it new.
This is not to say that SRK did not come up with some noteworthy performances in the first half of his career. He did, with his 'K-k-k-k-kiran' act in Darr that triggered off his ascent towards invincible superstardom; his endearing performance in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa; and, of course, when he turned into Raj in DDLJ that made him the lover boy millions fell in love with.
Even those who hated the star – that number being less than a few – could not help confessing that his spontaneity imparted a special appeal to his characters. All his popular performances need not have been great, but they surely struck a chord with the masses who wanted to see more and more of the guy. He may not have looked as good as Aamir or Salman, the two Khans he competed with. But, he was ahead in terms of his popularity for the most part of his career.
He was the leader. No doubt about it. And, he continues to retain the number one throne despite Aamir's diversity and quest for perfectionism, Salman's glittering charisma and Akshay Kumar's emphatic emergence. There have been times when there have been talks about his slipping away – think Hrithik Roshan of a few years ago, and you have the answer – but he has kept the spot with himself on the whole. To say that is difficult would be the understatement of the century. That, to start with, is why I miss some more pages in the book.
But the main reason, as stated earlier, is the performance factor. Although Swades did not rock the box-office and received highly unfair reviews on occasions, few would question that SRK as Mohan Bhargava is as believable as he could have been. When he is at NASA as a scientist, we like him. But, we enjoy even more when he returns to India and starts working for the welfare of the downtrodden.
The character has a sense of purpose, and his philanthropic mindset makes us think twice about the lives we were leading. So good is SRK's performance that we actually forget the man himself when we see Bhargava. Considering his stature as a star, pulling off an act like that couldn't have been easy. After the performance, SRK made many rethink about his prowess as actor, which had often been obscured by the sheer weight of his superstardom. As Mohan Bhargava, he is Mohan Bhargava. That is all.
However, the two characters with which SRK seems to have conquered newer pastures are those of Kabir Khan in Chak De! India and Surinder Sahni in Rab Ne…. As the hockey coach of the Indian women's team whose reputation had been sullied in the past, SRK's Kabir is awesome. The character's frustration shows, and so does his willpower to make something happen when he gets the coach's assignment. Kabir's desire to prove a point and his methods as a coach makes him a very interesting and intriguing personality. When I think of it today, nobody apart from SRK would have been able to pull off the act with so much conviction.
At the risk of getting a lot of flak, and mainly because Rab Ne… does not have a great script like Chak De!..., I would rate SRK's Surinder Sahni in the former as highly as any other character he has essayed so far. Why I think so is since Surinder is one more regular guy whose personality becomes credible only if SRK's superstardom is forgotten completely. A diffident man with a good soul, Surinder in his bespectacled avatar is light years away from the six-packed guy that SRK actually is. It is a beautifully written character – unlike the entire film which has its loopholes – and the superstar simply makes sure that people walk out of the hall, thinking about Surinder instead of the guy who played the role.
As a writer of a book on SRK, I miss an exclusive chapter on these characters today. They have influenced the way in which I think of SRK as an actor, but there isn't anything I can do since the book was published a few years ago. But then, there could come a time when I will write another one on the star. Or may be, I will get a chance to edit the book and make it new.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
HOW BUTCH CASSIDY...CHANGED MY LIFE
When I was a child, I loved Westerns. Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner…I would love to make a list of stars who I admired in that cowboy hat, carrying a gun which made the ultimate statement of masculinity. As a kid, I never looked for logic in any of the stories. Naturally, since I never even realized that films were driven by some kind of coherence in the narrative. Being young has its advantages, you know.
Then came a time when my voyage of discovery took me to diverse cinematic worlds. I had grown older and, suddenly, the average Western seemed to be riddled with loopholes. To start with, the Good versus Evil angle was too clearly defined. The grey streaks in a 'good' guy's character justified themselves most automatically. More often than not, a bad guy was simply bad who was meant to be killed. Women occupied the ambiguous fringes, so much so that one was made to wonder what they were doing in the film anyway. The narrative was generally like the ambience of the plot: there was absolute lawlessness without any creative explanation whatsoever.
Like many young film lovers who had started to watch films that looked around the stereotype, my disillusionment tormented me a lot. I wanted to see a more evolved Django, but that was difficult to find. I wanted to hear background music that sounded completely different. This was the time when raindrops kept falling on my head all of a sudden. I loved the feeling since they made me believe how and why Westerns could go well beyond the kill-and-end and got-the-treasure formulas. I enjoyed the way Butch thought. I loved the way the Sundance Kid did his shooting act. The climax made my low just as the twosome's famous jump from the cliff made me smile.
Two decades after I saw the film for the first time, I continue to return to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid over and over again. And, I am sure I am not the only one who turns into a part of the gang that Butch heads before his life takes a turn for the different. Be it George Roy Hill's direction or William Goldman's script – and of course, the chemistry between Paul 'Butch' Newman and Robert 'Sundance' Redford – the film has so many strengths that the ultimate product goes to a different level altogether.
As far as I am concerned, the film's real hero is the script. The two main characters - both mavericks in their own ways, and out to make a fortune - are a study in contrast. Butch is a man of ideas, and miles away from the stereotyped Western hero therefore. When he returns to his gang with Sundance and finds a character (Ted Cassidy) waiting to take over, for instance, he challenges the guy and makes him hit the ground with a kick!
That is a hilarious moment, as is the occasion when both Sundance and Butch need to swim to escape: but, the former makes a sudden confession that he doesn't know how to do it. While Butch is taken aback, we, as the viewers, cannot keep our laughter in check. Again, when Butch rides the bike – with the lovely Katherine Ross who plays Sundance's girlfriend for company – the song 'Raindrops keep falling on my head' makes us think: hey, is this a Western, or something completely different?
Why the chemistry between Butch and Sundance works is because the latter is very close to the mainstream Western hero. Hats off to Goldman, who thought of an idea in which opposites could combine and create so much of an impact, and also because he introduced humour so subtly that we were made to rewind the DVD and watch the scenes time and again. The climax was brilliantly written, the sadness in the twosome's deaths shown with a visual that made an unforgettable impact.
If this film hadn't won so many Academy Award nominations – and picked up four eventually – it would have been shocking. And, I am sure there are others like me who started believing how Westerns could deliver so much more just because they saw this one. Brokeback Mountain or even Dead Man: there have been many films whose background is typically Western but whose content inhabits some other world altogether. Don't know how many of them were inspired by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Then came a time when my voyage of discovery took me to diverse cinematic worlds. I had grown older and, suddenly, the average Western seemed to be riddled with loopholes. To start with, the Good versus Evil angle was too clearly defined. The grey streaks in a 'good' guy's character justified themselves most automatically. More often than not, a bad guy was simply bad who was meant to be killed. Women occupied the ambiguous fringes, so much so that one was made to wonder what they were doing in the film anyway. The narrative was generally like the ambience of the plot: there was absolute lawlessness without any creative explanation whatsoever.
Like many young film lovers who had started to watch films that looked around the stereotype, my disillusionment tormented me a lot. I wanted to see a more evolved Django, but that was difficult to find. I wanted to hear background music that sounded completely different. This was the time when raindrops kept falling on my head all of a sudden. I loved the feeling since they made me believe how and why Westerns could go well beyond the kill-and-end and got-the-treasure formulas. I enjoyed the way Butch thought. I loved the way the Sundance Kid did his shooting act. The climax made my low just as the twosome's famous jump from the cliff made me smile.
Two decades after I saw the film for the first time, I continue to return to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid over and over again. And, I am sure I am not the only one who turns into a part of the gang that Butch heads before his life takes a turn for the different. Be it George Roy Hill's direction or William Goldman's script – and of course, the chemistry between Paul 'Butch' Newman and Robert 'Sundance' Redford – the film has so many strengths that the ultimate product goes to a different level altogether.
As far as I am concerned, the film's real hero is the script. The two main characters - both mavericks in their own ways, and out to make a fortune - are a study in contrast. Butch is a man of ideas, and miles away from the stereotyped Western hero therefore. When he returns to his gang with Sundance and finds a character (Ted Cassidy) waiting to take over, for instance, he challenges the guy and makes him hit the ground with a kick!
That is a hilarious moment, as is the occasion when both Sundance and Butch need to swim to escape: but, the former makes a sudden confession that he doesn't know how to do it. While Butch is taken aback, we, as the viewers, cannot keep our laughter in check. Again, when Butch rides the bike – with the lovely Katherine Ross who plays Sundance's girlfriend for company – the song 'Raindrops keep falling on my head' makes us think: hey, is this a Western, or something completely different?
Why the chemistry between Butch and Sundance works is because the latter is very close to the mainstream Western hero. Hats off to Goldman, who thought of an idea in which opposites could combine and create so much of an impact, and also because he introduced humour so subtly that we were made to rewind the DVD and watch the scenes time and again. The climax was brilliantly written, the sadness in the twosome's deaths shown with a visual that made an unforgettable impact.
If this film hadn't won so many Academy Award nominations – and picked up four eventually – it would have been shocking. And, I am sure there are others like me who started believing how Westerns could deliver so much more just because they saw this one. Brokeback Mountain or even Dead Man: there have been many films whose background is typically Western but whose content inhabits some other world altogether. Don't know how many of them were inspired by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
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