Films & Feni: Star Gazing
STAR GAZING
NOV 28, 2009 – A FILM FESTIVAL ISN’T EXACTLY THE PLACE you’d trawl for stars, so it was a refreshing change-of-pace to slip into Manoel de Oliveira’s I’m Going Home – part of a retrospective-tribute to the great (and apparently ageless) director — and lock eyes with Michel Piccoli, John Malkovich and, especially, Catherine Deneuve. (Speaking of retrospectives, though, one for Gurinder Chadha? Featuring The Mistress of Spices and Bride and Prejudice? Really?) But the real star in these films is, of course, the director, and he conjures up a beautiful portrait of a theatre thespian capable of memorising entire iambs of Shakespeare, but fumbling with mere scraps of dialogue during the shooting of a scene in a film version of Ulysses. Could it be the alien language of the movie, English? Or is it that the adaptability of an actor decreases with age, unable to cope with the language of action-cut and the lack of on-stage continuity? Or is it simply the effect of a deep personal tragedy? Piccoli infuses these meditations with profound melancholy and meaning.
AMERICAN CRITICS LOVE TO BEMOAN the death of romance in the movies (and the rom-com, in particular). I’d propose that love is still in the air – it’s just that the breeze has drifted eastwards, first towards India, and now towards Thailand, as represented in Yongyoot Thongkongtoon and his bittersweet Best of Times. What begins as a standard-issue nerd-babe-jock love triangle segues into the attraction between two elders and how the latter informs the former (yes, think Love Aaj Kal all over again). The director is quite shameless in his intentions to manipulate the audience – he’s not above inserting gratuitous shots of adorable dogs lolling their tongues for the benefit of the camera. But he also fleshes out characters you care deeply about, even after the film has long overstayed its welcome.
PRESENTING HIS LATEST ODE TO RELATIONSHIPS, Shob Charitro Kalponik, Rituparno Ghosh joked to the audience that he’s been accused so often of verbosity in his films that he finally decided to make a movie whose very protagonist is… language. Perhaps afraid that he’d painted too arty-farty a picture, he then admitted his film wasn’t all that esoteric – but it is. An extremely beautiful (but also extremely inadequate) Bipasha Basu plays a hardnosed wife whose involvement with her head-in-the-clouds poet-husband (Prasenjit Chatterjee) deepens, unexpectedly, after his demise, amidst Persona-like visuals of doppelgangers and yards of poetry recited aloud. I’m still a little unsure what to make of it all, but the last half-hour or so held me in a surreal sway that almost made up for the beleaguered beginnings.
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Hi Brangan, would love to read your full take on Shob Choritro Kalponik. Watched the movie yesterday and quite liked it…found it much better than what I had heard when the film had its theatrical release.
Much as I like to give Chaddha grief for the crap she put out with Ash Rai’s face (the personality, I presume, was off making actual Bollywood fare), I;m still giving her props for one of her early efforts: Bhajji on the Beach.
I’ve come to think that it was mainly Meera Syal’s script that elevated it beyond her other efforts (how about a Meera Syal retrospective one of these days? So much more interesting!) but What’s Cooking? was pretty enjoyable too. I don’t know what the hell happened to them when they were writing Mistress of Spices. Maybe she and her husband only write well together when they’re tackling nonIndian stories or something. Or perhaps she’s like Danny Boyle and needs to stick with her own sensibilities – getting fired from the Dallas movie might have been the best thing to happen to her. That thing is going to be a MESS. I’m so gonna watch it!
Anyhoo! It’s a Wonderful Afterlife sounds like something I’d want to watch. Did they show Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging at the fest?
So,which are the films you would recommend to us among the ones which you watched?
Sougata Mitra: As I said, till the last half-hour or so, I was not terribly impressed. But with those revelations in mind, revisiting the film may be useful. BTW, As I write this, I’m about to step into the screening of Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s latest, Janala.
Amrita: Yes, Angus was there
S.Ganesh Kumar: All? Good, bad, ugly — a filmlover has to be game for everything, no?
/All? Good, bad, ugly — a filmlover has to be game for everything, no? /
.I’m not yet a full-time cinephile,I do care a bit about spending my money carefully,while watching/buying a film copy! 
(Prefer to trust my instincts.)
Looks like you’ve read/seen some of my blogposts
rangan, is it your first tryst with rituparno’s films? or you have seen others as well in the past? language is a protagonist on many of rituparno’s films notably “asukh”, “dosar”…if you haven’t please try and catch these two…two of the finest examples of bengali cinema to have come out in the last decade or so…
Arijit: I’ve seen Raincoat and Antarmahal. Perhaps a couple more. But not the ones you mention. It’s really hard getting subtitled prints of regional films, and if you miss them at a festival, it’s pretty much gone forever.
luckily both are out on dvd now…landmark here in bangalore stores a very decent collection of bengali films…not sure of the one in chennai though…btw, there have been some comments on “sab charitro” being somewhat inspired by “three colours: blue”…how true is that?
Arijit: Blue? I can see why the germ of the idea could be seen as an inspiration, but I’d say no.
Hi Brangan/Arijit…I too had a feeling that the film was in some ways inspired by Blue…also had read about Bergman influences when the film was locally reviewed during its theatrical run.