OLD IS COLD

Same shtick, different setting – isn’t it time Akshay Kumar moved on to something else?

JUL 5, 2009 – HOW WOULD YOU KNOW IF YOU’RE among the card-carrying legions of Akshay Kumar fans who transformed the actor from action hero to comedy superstar? (He returns to his roots in this comedy by playing an action hero: a stuntman.) I suppose the indication would come early on in Sabbir Khan’s Kambakkht Ishq (reworked from the okayish Tamil comedy Pammal K Sambandham, with Kamal Hassan), if you find you can survive the wedding of Lucky (Aftab Shivdasani) and Kamini (Amrita Arora), a cuddly-wuddly ceremony accompanied by exchanges of “my wabbit” and “my tweety.” For you, then, is this movie made. As for me, I experienced what I usually do in an Akshay Kumar laughathon: there’s always a of law of inverse proportionality at work, which dictates that the more the public adores it, the more I have to resist the impulse to find a quiet corner and blow my brains out.

Tashan and Chandni Chowk to China were hardly successful films – not (entirely) artistically, and certainly not commercially – but they were at least borne along by minor-league ambition, even if that goal was to simply execute jazzy riffs on once-upon-a-time movies. At their core, there was something beyond just scene after trying scene attempting to up the noise quotient under the guise of humour. But after those flops, Akshay is back to upping the noise quotient. If size matters in the case of Kambakkht Ishq, it isn’t bigger that’s better but louder – not only is every actor instructed to perform as if on stage and playing to an exclusive audience of the hearing-impaired, it’s also the sheer volume of the slapstick, which at times assumes the shape of a bludgeon. Towering over you like a giant bully, the film practically dares the unimpressed not to laugh.

The tragedy of this comedy is that it could have delivered genuine laughs had it merely followed up on its battle-of-the-sexes premise. Viraj (Akshay Kumar) loves women but hates commitment. Simrita (Kareena Kapoor, in her unbearably supercilious “Poo” mode) hates men and, subsequently, hates commitment. There is, therefore, the mild anticipation of the inevitably old-fashioned trajectory of Viraj and Simrita moving from hate to love. They meet, for the first time, at the aforementioned wedding, where he is aghast that Lucky has gotten hitched, and she expresses similar sentiments about Kamini. It’s only a while before they begin sniping at each other. “Dog,” she hisses at him. “Bitch,” he barks back. “Ah, true love,” we sigh, and settle down for this apparently mismatched couple to realise that they are, in reality, perfectly matched.

But instead of sexy banter and witty comebacks, we’re treated to farce – which isn’t such a bad idea, except that the unendurably broad gags are of the type where an overweight black woman squats on Viraj and subjects him to a rectal probe. (She suspects he’s carrying drugs.) Then suddenly, the film veers into drama – which, again, isn’t such a bad idea, because badly done drama is infinitely preferable to badly done comedy. For the most part, though, Kambakkht Ishq can’t seem to make up its mind whether it wants to settle into a farce or a rom-com, with mellow passages underlining the melting of hearts. Sylvester Stallone, Brandon Routh and Denise Richards put in guest appearances as movie-folk – they are surprisingly relevant to the story, set in Hollywood – but once again, all the heavy lifting is left to Akshay Kumar. As I said, if you’re a fan…

Copyright ©2009 The New Sunday Express. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

THE DAY THE EIGHTIES DIED

It’s bad enough that the new ‘Terminator’ movie annihilates memories of the original, and then Michael Jackson dies. What a terrible time for the thirtysomethings of today!

JUL 5, 2009 – THE GENIUS OF THE TERMINATOR MOVIES is the simplicity of the premise: the chase. In the film that launched the franchise – simply called The Terminator, and simply one of the greatest B-movies ever made – Arnold Schwarzenegger was the chaser, and his robotic inexorability was defined by Brad Fiedel’s now-classic score, a quintet of metallic clangs suggesting steel jaws of death snapping at the heels of the hapless Linda Hamilton. Schwarzenegger evolved from chaser to cuddly protector in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a sequel whose title hinted at the increased ambition in its conception. We were no longer in the realm of the microbudget B-movie. Judgment Day may have been a B-movie at heart, but the liquid-metal special effects raised the film to the level of sacred pop-art – it felt, at the time, like a religious experience, as if we were witnessing the rebirth of cinema.

The third film, freed from the directorial autonomy of James Cameron, returned squarely and unapologetically to B-movie land. (Even the title felt less like creative statement than commercial consideration. It was called, very simply, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.) But in the hands of the talented Jonathan Mostow – who’d made his bones as a solid journeyman, with sturdy B-movies like Breakdown and U-571 – it was a dependably no-nonsense entertainer. While it didn’t change the face of filmmaking, as its predecessor did, it knew what it had to do – lure back the faithful; keep the franchise running; send Schwarzenegger off in style – and it accomplished this with tongue pressed firmly against cheek. Why else would you have a muscle-strapped man-giant running scared of a woman with far greater powers of destruction?

That was the success of the sequels. The newness was in reimagining the nature of the chaser – the molten shape-shifter in Judgment Day, the quintessential femme fatale in Rise of the Machines – but the premise was left untouched. It was still someone on the run from someone who wanted to run them down. All that, however, changes with the fourth entry in the series, which is rather ponderously named Terminator Salvation, as if something as down-and-dirty as Terminator 4: The Rebels Strike Back would be an affront to its ambition. Like its even-numbered predecessor, the title aspires to grandiose myth – salvation! – and even the cast and crew (Christian Bale! Helena Bonham Carter! Jane Alexander! Danny Elfman!) appear to have cherry-picked with an eye on staving off the hints of disreputability and desperation that usually accompany late-in-the-day sequels.

We’re not in this for the profits but the prestige, they seem to be saying – and thus they misguidedly abandon the thrills of the chase for something far less fun, far more grim and grimy. They’ve reimagined the Terminator movie as a war epic, set in bombed-out battlefields populated with soldiers streaked with soot. The future of humankind was at stake in the earlier installments too, but this is the first Terminator movie that forgets to have any laughs en route to doomsday. The token attempts at humour appear to have been slipped in solely as nostalgic reminders of what-once-was. (There are reprises of signature lines such as, “Come with me if you want to live,” and “I’ll be back.” And no, they don’t even go near, “Hasta la vista, baby!”) Otherwise, the film takes its cues from its star’s surname – it’s bowed down by bale, and by boredom.

The one time the theatre erupted in cheer was when a prototype of a Terminator in the form of Schwarzenegger made an appearance. In that instant, we were transported back from the deadening nihilism of the modern-day superhero-movie to the irony-free delights of the eighties, which faced another blow with the passing of Michael Jackson. So much has been written about the King of Pop – so many reminiscences, so many reevaluations of his life and music – that there, really, isn’t much to add. This is not a great singer we’re talking about, someone like Frank Sinatra, say, who could phrase a song in so many ways, he’d make you think each iteration was a brand-new creation. Nor was he a great composer, in the sense of the word that leads us to imagine musical forms being shattered and then created anew from the shards.

Jackson was a synthetic genius who, like none other, channeled the zeitgeist of a decade ruled by synthetic pop – and I say this with respect and admiration, as an unabashed fan of the music of the eighties. (Thriller is one of the great albums of all time, period.) It isn’t easy to embody an era with everything you do, but Jackson, for a while, managed it effortlessly – whether it was in the magpie-like melding of funk and rock and pop and soul set to the most infectious rhythm loops imaginable, or in the high style of the music videos that were really miniature pieces of cinema, or simply in his signature dance moves that defied, simultaneously, the imagination and gravity. It may have been an unbelievably lightweight decade, all spangly artifice, but Jackson stood as an unimpeachable symbol to all of us who knew that, sometimes, style was substance.

Copyright ©2009 The New Sunday Express. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

ANATOMY OF A MURDERER

JUL 4, 2009 – JACEK LAZAR (MIROSLAW BAKA) WALKS INTO a cinema hall. He looks at a film’s poster and asks the woman at the ticket counter, “Is it a good film?” She’s busy doing her hair. Without glancing at Jacek, she mumbles, “No, it’s boring.” He looks at the poster again and asks the woman, “What’s it about?” She replies, “Love… but it’s still boring.” She turns to him. “Anyway, it’s not on now. There’s a meeting here.” He asks, then, what she is doing, and she replies that she’s pulling out grey hairs. He asks where the nearest taxi stand is, and she points him to Castle Square. As Jacek walks away, it’s the end of this vignette, one of a series of desultory vignettes that establish his aimlessness. He doesn’t seem to have anywhere to go, anyone to talk to, anything to do.

Therefore, when he hops into a taxi and kills its driver, Waldemar (Jan Tesarz), it appears to be as cold-blooded a killing as a killing can get – a perverse act driven by no motive other than offering Jacek something to do. He killed a man in order to kill some time – it’s just the latest vignette in Jacek’s life. Our sympathies, therefore, are entirely with the victim of the ghastly crime that’s depicted in gruesome detail, right from the instant Jacek slips a rope around Waldemar’s throat to the final moments where, dismayed that his efforts have failed to completely extinguish life, he smashes Waldemar’s skull in with a heavy stone. The film succeeds in making us feel that Waldemar didn’t deserve to die, but Jacek certainly does – and subsequently, we let slip a sigh of satisfaction when a court sentences Jacek to death by hanging.

But gradually, our vindication is tempered with misgivings through a plot contrivance that appears, at first, geared towards fleshing out that oldest of sentimental clichés – the humanising of an inhuman – but which, eventually, is interested in something else altogether: it wants to turn the tables on the identities of murderer and victim. Jacek asks to see his lawyer, Piotr Balicki (Krzysztof Globisz), who is shown into the small cell. “You wanted to see me?” Piotr asks, and Jacek replies, “Have you seen my mother?” He wants to know if she was crying, if she was asking about him at all. “She just cried,” Piotr remembers, getting increasingly uncomfortable with this line of conversation. Perhaps he’s beginning to realise, like us, that Jacek is just a boy, a sad-faced boy with just a few hours left to live.

Jacek asks, “Would you see my mother again?” Piotr replies, “Afterwards.” Jacek nods. “Of course. I thought so, because you called me from the window when they took me from court. You called my name.” Piotr says, “I wanted to…” He pauses, unsure. “I don’t know what I wanted.” Jacek continues, “I’m almost twenty-one. But when you called me, my eyes filled with tears. I didn’t listen in court, not until you called to me. They were all… all against me.” Piotr argues gently, “Against what you did.” Jacek shrugs. “Same thing.” He bows his head, secure in the knowledge that whether they were against him or his action, nothing will change the reality that he’ll be dead in a few hours. Piotr reminds Jacek, “You want me to see your mother.”

Jacek raises his head and makes a halting request. “Yes, tell her I want to be buried in my father’s grave.” Suddenly, he’s stricken with doubt. “Will it be possible for me to be buried in the cemetery? That’s what the priest said.” Piotr nods. Jacek continues. “In my father’s grave there’s one more place for my mother. I’d like you to ask her to give it to me. Yes, there were three places. Marysia and father are there and one place is left. Marysia is there. Five years now. Yes, five years ago she was run over by a tractor, back at home. She was still at school. She was twelve. The school year had just begun. The driver of that tractor, he was my pal. We’d been drinking vodka and wine before it happened. Then he went and ran over her in the meadow by the forest.”

“There was a meadow there, by the forest. I always kept thinking that if only she was alive, I wouldn’t have left the village. She was my sister. Three brothers, but she was the only sister. I was her favourite. She was my favourite, too. Perhaps everything would have been different. But afterwards I had to go away, join a labour brigade. I didn’t want to leave. Perhaps it wouldn’t have come to this? Perhaps I wouldn’t be here now? We bought the grave plot because Marysia loved the trees, she loved greenery.” The prison guard interrupts this reverie. “The Prosecutor requests that the conversation be terminated.” Piotr rises, as does Jacek. Suddenly he remembers something and turns to Piotr. “Amongst my belongings there is a receipt from a photographer’s. I asked for an enlargement, but I hadn’t time to collect it. Afterwards, I‘d like mother to have it.”

“What sort of photograph?” Piotr asks. Jacek replies, “First Communion. I took it from mother when I left home.” But the insistence of the guard, who’s now brought in reinforcements, leaves no time to continue. “Please…” Jacek calls out, struggling against the men marching him to his death. “I won’t…” And just like that the tables are turned. Now that Jacek’s earlier aimlessness has been explained away as the aftermath of a poignant and pointless death, we’re no longer sure that the murder was as cold-blooded as it then seemed, and we’re not certain that Jacek deserves to die. He deserves to be punished, yes. But now that he’s the victim and the State is the murderer, our sympathies have shifted. They now lie with this sad 21-year-old who just wants to be buried in the family plot, next to the little sister whose death has somehow led to his own.

Krótki Film o Zabijaniu (1988, Polish; aka A Short Film About Killing). Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Starring Miroslaw Baka, Krzysztof Globisz, Jan Tesarz.

Copyright ©2009 The New Indian Express. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

THE BARD OF THE BRUTES

Selvaraghavan spouts eloquent about dancing on a knife, about death being the biggest orgasm, about living life in the midst of rainfall, and, oh, about his forthcoming film.

JUL 03, 2009 – SELVARAGHAVAN IS A COMPACT MAN in a casual T-shirt, and as he seats himself opposite me, in an office that’s as sparely appointed as he is, he extracts a cigarette from a slender carton. Esse Lights. The question he directs to me isn’t whether I’d mind but whether I smoked. There’s either something about my face that gives off guilty fumes of a former addiction, or he’s simply the kind of guy who does exactly what he wants – if he stumbles into company, that’s fine, otherwise he’ll soldier on alone and regardless. Perhaps the numerous struggles in his past have strengthened his resolve to treasure his freedoms in the present day. He speaks of these struggles very easily, and with very little prompting. He speaks of his childhood in T Nagar, in a lower-middle-class family that couldn’t afford to send him to a convent school.

It was not a very pleasant childhood, he remembers. His father, the filmmaker Kasturi Raja, was struggling to make ends meet, and these frustrations would find their way to the children. It was not a family from an advertisement, he says, where everyone smiled all the time. They’d get beaten up for the smallest of things. The only time they’d have fun is when they went out to play, though afterwards, the children were scared to return home. After some years, his family shifted to a colony in KK Nagar, and these experiences informed the happenings in 7G Rainbow Colony. And as he spent a lot of time near Saidapet, he absorbed the life and the lingo of gangsters, and these exposures helped shape Pudhupettai. These revelations come in response to my remark about how intensely personal his films seem. It’s inevitable, he says.

But now, he says, he’s tired and bored. He doesn’t feel love inside him anymore and he cannot teach others how to be romantic. He’d rather make movies about characters that are larger than life, like the lean-and-mean Jason Bourne films that our filmmakers shy away from making. These aren’t future plans – they’ve already been set in motion. In the forthcoming Aayirathil Oruvan, Andrea Jeremiah plays a larger-than-life archeologist and Reema Sen is the larger-than-life head of an archeology department. He nods when I ask if the copy of Thamizh Panpaattu Varalaaru (A Cultural History of the Tamils) behind me contributed to the making of the film. There’s no father in Aayirathil Oruvan, no mother, no sister, no love – only adventure. It’s such a relief, he says, sitting in on the rerecording and not having to listen to sentimental music.

Hacking your way through the path less trodden comes with its own problems, like going overbudget and being unable to ask your producer for more money and having to put in eight crores of your own. He says he’s emotionally drained (after a colossal two-year shoot) and mentally scared (whether audiences will take to the film) – and yet, deep inside, he says he’s satisfied. There’s no thrill, he says in a purple burst of macho poetry, like dancing on a knife. But at the same time, he insists there’s no room for such heroism in his film. It’s more an instance of heroine-ism, he laughs, delighted at coining an instant neologism. The character played by Karthi is very down-to-earth, a coolie, a guide. It’s Reema who controls the film, the story, the structure, and therefore she controls his future, he says.

He chose Reema because she has the kind of face that doesn’t instantly advertise its owner as good or bad, angel or demon. It’s an unusual face, he says, and he needed her because Aayirathil Oruvan is an unusual film – another step in his striving to make that Perfect Film. He says his idea of a perfect film is Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Legend of 1900, which he saw recently, presumably in the very room this conversation is unfolding, on the big screen that looms over the neat stacks of DVDs covering a side of a wall. He doesn’t like anything he’s made so far. He says his films are full of flaws. He says Aadhi, the ostensible protagonist of Kaadhal Kondain is a fake, because there’s nobody in real life who’s so good and so pure and so free of negative shades.

The character played by Sonia Agarwal in Pudhupettai is also fake, he says. An educated woman wouldn’t marry a guy like that, even if she’s forced. She’d probably pull off her thaali and stay away, or she might run away, but she will not fall for someone like that and will not let him touch her. Sex, I remark at this juicy juncture, is an important aspect of his films. In return, he jests about a screenwriting tool that says when you have a girl talking on the phone, put her in a bathtub. He says lust is inside everyone, and given a chance, anyone could do anything – though he himself didn’t do anything till he was 22, which is when he first made love to a woman, a year after the release of Thulluvadho Ilamai.

Having revealed this much, he says he doesn’t think it’s necessary to hide anything, and that a man is at his 100 per cent when he is making love. And these private moments, if used in the right way, can be powerful on screen. Kissing or lovemaking is no big deal in Hindi films today and it’s not uncommon here and people should get used to it. I ask him about death, that other very prominent participant in his scenarios. He says that shooting death is extremely interesting. It’s a nice feeling that you’re going to kill someone in a way that hasn’t been seen before. It gives you power over the audience, because you can whip them up into a hysterical lather. That’s a thrill for the filmmaker.

Personally too, it’s a thrill. In the second flash of purple poetry of the evening, he declares that death is the biggest orgasm a man can have. He says he isn’t afraid of death, not even if he drops dead right now, because he’s seen everything in life and he’s curious about what happens in the afterlife. Is there a heaven? A hell? Is there someone who passes judgment? He doesn’t know and he’d really love to find out. I ask if these notions are behind the Christian imagery in his films, the missionary setting in Kaadhal Kondain or the Pietà pose in 7G Rainbow Colony. He says it’s most likely something he imbibed from Hollywood, but he also adds that his neighbours, while he was growing up, were Christians, and he’d go to church with them on Sundays.

This is one religion where pain is portrayed very easily. Even their god is depicted in pain, on a crucifix. And they believe in angels, which is what the heroine of 7G Rainbow Colony becomes, a guiding guardian angel. I point out that, over the course of the conversation, he has sounded less a filmmaker than a philosopher, and he says that the older he’s gotten – he’s a ripe 33 now – the more philosophical he’s become. Even Aayirathil Oruvan is based on philosophy, he says, though exactly how he doesn’t reveal. In a sentiment that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Tamil film lyric, he says that when it rains, you delight for a few seconds, and then the practical side of you takes over, worrying about getting wet and catching a cold. He says he’s trying to live his life in those few seconds.

Expounding this philosophy, he says there’s no point if you get scared. You do what you want to do, and as long as you like what you’re doing, people will relate to it. He has no patience for the theory that Tamil audiences are conservative in their moviegoing tastes. He says they’ve been underestimated, and because they lap up what you serve them doesn’t mean that that’s the only thing they’ll eat. In any case, he’s got to believe in that theory if he’s going to keep making movies his way, with the conviction that no one wants to see perfect people on screen anymore because every human being is a composite of two opposing forces, angels and demons.

I tell him that the difference between, say, Karthik in Mouna Raagam and the Selvaraghavan antihero is that the former, despite the inherent grey shades of the character, comes off as lovable and charming (in short, an all-white angel) whereas Selvaraghavan’s demonic angels (or angelic demons) make you shrink back in disgust. That, he says, is a reflection of the filmmakers. Mani Ratnam is a lovable, charming man, he says, whereas he is violently unlovable and the last thing from charming. He’s the kind of kid who stole money to buy a Hero pen, and when he got scared that he’d be found out and beaten up by his father, he boarded a train to Guwahati (without a ticket, naturally). The adult he’s become, he says, isn’t very far from the child he was.

Even the loner he is today is but a grownup version of the loner he was as a child. Afflicted with Retinoblastoma, a cancer of the retina, an eye had to be removed so the cancer wouldn’t spread. He was three-and-a-half years old when he began to endure taunts for being the only kid in the neighbourhood with a gaping socket in the face. He later bought himself a glass eye, but by then he’d learned to keep his distance from people. Now that he’s got a BMW purring in his garage, he’s finally going to be able to splurge on a cosmetic procedure that will gradually reconstruct his face and his eye. He says he’ll never be able to see from his left eye, but perhaps that isn’t really the point, which may be just to prove to himself that, at least in some respect, he’s left his past behind.

Copyright ©2009 The New Indian Express. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

THE BIG GRAPPLE

The point of conflict in this frustrating thriller isn’t terrorists vs. innocents so much as pretty stars vs. proficient actors.

JUN 28, 2009 – WHEN YOU’RE SUSPECTED OF ABETTING TERRORISM and when, under the cloak of interrogation, you’re stripped and bludgeoned and collared with a dog-leash and urinated on – or, on a good day, merely verbally abused – does this humiliation justify your turning to terrorism after you’re let go, if only to get back at the bastards? That’s the tricky (though not exactly timely) question hovering over Kabir Khan’s New York, which is set in the titular city in aftermath of 9/11, when scores of innocents were detained and destroyed under the Patriot Act. In his first feature, the modestly accomplished Kabul Express, Khan sought to put a human face on the Taliban, and here, he seeks to similarly humanise the Muslims who are routinely vilified as terrorist scum. Who are they? How do they get to be this way? And if you’re a Muslim-American, are you a Muslim first or an American?

Armed with this sobering agenda, would you go off and populate your film with John Abraham, Neil Nitin Mukesh and Katrina Kaif? (There’s Irrfan too, as an FBI agent, effortlessly demonstrating how a good actor can, even while sleepwalking through a role, deliver a decent speech. His mini-oration about how nothing justifies terrorism is easily the closest New York comes to possessing a soul.) About the only thing you can say for this cast is that a love triangle that threatens to break on the horizon is mercifully averted. Otherwise, try watching Katrina’s declaration of love to John and his reciprocation of the sentiment (by a roadside), or try to keep a straight face through the tears that roll down Katrina’s alabaster cheeks as she watches the twin towers reduced to rubble – and you’ll see why stars are stars and actors are actors, and rarely do the twain meet.

Neil, meanwhile, is required to function as audience substitute (the way John Abraham and Arshad Warsi did in Kabul Express), and with his maddeningly innocent bursts of apoplexy, he comes off like the world’s sweetest, saintliest man-child flailing about in a sea of unspeakable vice. (Was he cast only because of the scene where he mouths his grandfather’s immortal Zindagi khwab hai, from Jagte Raho?) But to be fair, it’s hard to think of any actor who could have survived a script this superficial – littered with such soporific lines as, “Sirf college khatam ho raha hai, dosti to nahin” – where every character is rendered cute and cuddly and essentially without edge. Early on, Neil mentions that John, sometimes, appears arrogant, but this is something you have to take at face value, because not once is anyone seen as anything but overwhelmingly sincere and sensitive.

The remainder of the interesting rough edges is smoothened out by the relentlessly manipulative background score, which makes the film feel, at times, like an interminable rock video. As he proved with Kabul Express, Khan’s strengths (or perhaps interests) aren’t in the political so much as the personal, the human. (He stages a scene amidst protesters holding up “Buck Fush” placards and mouthing anti-war chants – but this is simply window-dressing.) He’s the kind of director who uses the big picture as merely the backdrop for an examination of the people in that picture – and how he thought he could get away with this cast is certainly an intriguing question. As with Kabul Express, he delights in location shooting, which is among the rare instances New York comes alive – though what can you really say about a film where the cobblestone pavements show more character than the characters?

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THE BEAT IS ON

A new book that analyses rhythmic aspects of our film music – from the man who earlier analysed the melodic aspects.

JUN 28, 2009 – IN OTHER HANDS, THE CONTENTS OF Chords & Raaga – two years’ worth of research about how our film music has employed chord progressions and melodic layers – would have been plastered on a web site. But Gopal Krishnan knew it had to be a book – a slender one, but a book nonetheless. “I wanted to reach a wider audience. I thought of a portal, but not all music lovers are tech-savvy.” Chords & Raaga came out in 2004, and for a book of its nature – specialised in subject; seeking out not just listeners of music but lovers, rabid aficionados who subject songs to approximately the same procedures that a corpse undergoes under the pitiless eyes of a coroner – it did exceedingly well, selling over 1000 copies. “Chords & Raaga is still the only book analysing the harmonic aspects of film music.”

And now, he’s hopped on to an area that’s, if possible, even more esoteric. He’s published Rhythm & Style. The tiny wrinkle that he hails from a city – Chennai, which is quite possibly where 990 of those 1000 copies were sold, considering the terrifying degrees of music-geekiness here – where even hardened Carnatic concert-goers stage discreet walkouts during the taniyavartanam (the percussion solo) doesn’t ruffle Krishnan. “I don’t think that that is a sign of disrespect. I think it is a question of knowledge. A lot of us can identify ragas. But how many can distinguish between, say, a gati and a jati? I felt we needed a simple guide for music lovers to understand rhythms, at least those applied in the context of film music, which is not very complicated.”

Krishnan explains what he was after with the instance of the endlessly fascinating Avalukkenna from Server Sundaram. “It involves a complicated arrangement of mambo and bossa nova. Like raga and scale changes, there are variations (within a song) in the rhythms too – the switch from 12/8 to shuffle in Rajaraja Chozhan (Rettai Vaal Kuruvi) or the pattern shift from Motown to rock in Dum maaro dum (Hare Rama Hare Krishna).” The idea of documenting these discoveries in a book (which, like Chords & Raaga, Krishnan has published himself) came in late 2006, when Krishnan saw that our composers were heavily influenced by western styles. “I started researching rhythms early that year. I studied western rhythms on the drum set, under Jeoraj (of Musee Musicals, and an exponent in Afro-Cuban rhythms).”

And several percussion players from the film industry – Purushottam, ‘Thumba’ Sekar, KV Balu – provided valuable inputs, sharing their experiences and also pointing out how rhythmic styles have been adapted, over the years, for the purposes of film music. As if to emphasise the eminence of his panel of consultants, Krishnan explains, “Purushottam has been the key percussionist for Ilayaraja for the past 30 years, alongside Sivamani. Well, he now arranges music. Nobody plays on the drum set any more. It has sadly become an antique piece. Western rhythms are all played using sampled loops. ‘Thumba’ Sekar plays on the instrument called the ‘thumba’ and also on the bongos. He has been with MS Viswanathan for the last 40 years. KV Balu plays on the tabla and dholak. In addition to playing for films, he is involved in the band called Earth Sync (with Paul Jacob).”

Krishnan learnt Carnatic music on the violin under the Parur MS Anantharaman School of Music. He subsequently trained himself in Western music, on the keyboard. “In addition, I did a lot of self-study on the theory part. Sadanand, the lead guitarist in Ilayaraja’s troupe helped me understand the harmonics aspect.” Krishnan even played in a college band. “We started with classical. It was just two of us. I was playing the violin, accompanying the vocalist. Then we switched to light music.” But today he’s content with his occupation in the IT industry. “Analysing music is one thing, while composing and performing is an entirely different animal. Also, being creative under commercial pressure could be trying. I am happy to just appreciate and analyse music without any stress.”

He has, unsurprisingly, analysed today’s music as well, and he observes, “A lot of them are trying to experiment, though melody seems to have taken a backseat.” But he feels that, amongst the post-Rahman generation, Harris Jayaraj and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy “have come up with some very interesting numbers. Again, the trick is to not sound like Raja or Rahman, which is a challenge. It is very difficult to single out a rhythmic style or raga that Raja has not used. Then again, he faced a similar challenge as he had to sound different from MSV.” Krishnan now wants to convey these musings to a larger audience through a tele-serial like Balamuralikrishna’s Swara Raaga Sudha, from the eighties. “It pioneered a concept that, today, every TV channel has latched on to. If we could demonstrate the styles and also play the compositions which apply these styles , that would be great. Just great.”

Copyright ©2009 The New Sunday Express. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

A STREETCAR NAMED EVE

JUN 27, 2009 – AS THE CURTAIN FALLS ON THE RIPELY theatrical proceedings of All About My Mother, a dedication rises: “To Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Romy Schneider. To all actresses who have played actresses. To all women who act. To men who act and become women. To all the people who want to be mothers. To my mother.” The sentiment is perfectly in tune with the film, which is a Technicolor paean to women everywhere – not the airbrushed sexpots of Hollywood, but the rounded and rooted earth-mothers who shoulder the often unbearable weight of being. And Almodóvar nudges the tribute further by invoking two classic works of drama that revolve around some of the strongest parts ever written for women, All About Eve and A Streetcar Named Desire, which influence the strong women here in ways both glancing and glaring.

The theatre star, Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), confesses, “I started smoking because of Bette Davis. To imitate her. At 18, I was smoking like a chimney.” (Davis, of course, played Margo Channing, the theatre star of All About Eve). When Manuela (Cecilia Roth) barges into Huma’s life, the latter is starring as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. Not only is the title, All About My Mother, a throwback to All About Eve, it’s even narrated by a man, the way the latter is narrated by the acerbic theatre critic Addison DeWitt. But the gentlest homage may well be the happenstance that Manuela’s occupation – in a centre that coordinates organ transplants from deceased donors – depends on “the kindness of strangers,” those very anonymous benefactors who repeatedly rescue Blanche in Streetcar.

Due to an unfortunate accident, Manuela’s son Esteban (Eloy Azorín) becomes one of those benefactors – his heart finds a new home in a donor who, you think, will become the focus of the story, especially since we’ve seen how close mother and son are, and how, after Esteban’s death, Manuela tracks down the man who now walks with her son’s heart. As she overhears a conversation between him and his loved ones – “I feel I can breathe like before… Even better… With an 18- year- old’s heart!” – we wonder, “Will the grief-stricken Manuela channel the women in Streetcar (say, Blanche) and forsake reality in favour of an imagined world where she can somehow be united with her past, her son, or will she take on the aspect of someone from All About Eve, with a pancake-mask of ruthless practicality that barely hints at the womanly insecurities beneath?”

It’s finally a bit of both, as the director makes explicit in a development that’s a wondrously scripted homage to, simultaneously, both films. (And incidentally, the man with Esteban’s heart is never seen again; after receiving the kindness of a stranger, he becomes a stranger himself.) Manuela ingratiates herself into Huma’s life, as the latter’s personal assistant, and one day, Huma enquires, minutes before a performance of Streetcar is scheduled to begin, “Where’s Nina?” Nina (Candela Peña) is Huma’s partner both onstage – she plays Stella – and off. Manuela whispers, “She’s bombed. She can’t even speak.” She adds, “If it won’t give you a heart attack, I could do her part. I know it by heart from hearing it over the loudspeakers.” Huma isn’t convinced. “But can you act?” Manuela replies, “I can lie very well, and I’m used to improvising.”

Manuela goes on stage and is a smashing success – a hit with everyone except, naturally, Nina, who spits, “You planned it all, you bitch! Just like Eve Harrington.” The reference is to the conniving young actress in All About Eve, who snakes her way into Margo’s life and subsequently replaces Margo on stage. Manuela protests, “I’ve known the part of Stella for years.” She looks at Nina, then at Huma. She realises they don’t believe her.” She sighs, “I won’t bother you anymore. I’ll get my things and go.” Huma, however, insists, “Manuela, I think you owe us an explanation.” And Manuela launches into her story. “A Streetcar Named Desire has marked my life. Twenty years ago, I played Stella with an amateur group. That’s where I met my husband. He was playing Kowalski.”

“Two months ago, I saw your version in Madrid. I went with my son. It was the night of his birthday. It was pouring rain, but we waited outside because he wanted your autograph, Huma. It was crazy to wait in the rain but it was his birthday, so I couldn’t say no. You two got in a taxi, and he ran after you. A car coming along the street ran him down. He was killed. That’s the explanation. That’s the explanation, Huma.” At this point, Manuela appears to be, like Blanche, attempting to hold on to a cherished past, heedless of her sanity, but unlike Blanche, she isn’t dependent on the kindness of strangers. As everyone from the pregnant Rosa (Penélope Cruz) to Huma to the transgendered Agrado (Antonia San Juan) would attest to, it’s Manuela’s kindness that moves the world. In a manner of speaking, she’s everyone’s mother. She’s Eve.

Todo Sobre Mi Madre (1999, Spanish; aka All About My Mother). Directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Starring Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Penélope Cruz.

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DRAG DOLLS

Jaaved Jaffrey and Shreyas Talpade dress up in girl clothes for a two-hour comedy that yields about ten minutes of good laughs.

JUN 21, 2009 – WHEN A FILM ADVERTISED AS A RIB-TICKLER opens with the unfortunate image of three grown men tumbling off bunker beds and landing on top of one another, and when the director (Paritosh Painter) is so lazy, he won’t even bother to stage the expected payoff shot comprising of much groaning and groin-clutching, you heave a weary sigh and hunker down in your seat. This, you know, will be a dispiriting addition to the ever-increasing number of films crafted apparently for the express purpose of giving its starlet-heroines some quick-and-easy pocket money, so they can buy those fancy bags for red-carpet appearances at the ever-increasing number of awards shows. (The beneficiaries, here, include Celina Jaitley, Neha Dhupia, Riya Sen and Sayali Bhagat, who are paired off with the almost-as-nondescript Shreyas Talpade, Jaaved Jaffrey, Ashish Chowdhry and Vatsal Sheth.)

Over the course of a plot that charts the travails of the protagonists as they attempt to locate PG digs in Bangkok, Painter throws at us much by way of wincingly misguided humour. And when a suitable accommodation is located, there’s a catch: the landlords (Johny Lever and Delnaaz Paul, who attempts to amuse us by referring to “aam aadmi” as “mango man”) will only let the room out to couples, and hence the contrivance of Talpade and Jaffrey posing as women (or rather, in the case of the latter, RuPaul’s estranged half-Indian stepsister). It’s a toss-up as to which is intended as the pinnacle of dazzling wit, the throwaway shots of the house (where this con is being perpetrated) bearing the address-plate “Plot No. 420,” or the revelation that the men-in-drag have named themselves Karisma and Kareena.

There’s, to be fair, the occasional gag that evokes a grudging laugh – especially if, like me, you’re a fan of low-comedy or farce – but through the long stretches of tedium in between, I was free to ponder about the niggardly treatment we mete out to comedy in our film culture. This is a rich premise, and it could have yielded a profitable couple of hours of brain-dead entertainment – but thanks to the ineptness of the staging, it all adds up to little more than a lost opportunity. When are we going to realise that it’s not just the heavy-duty dramas that require talent, in front of the camera as well as behind, but also – and perhaps more so – the comedies? Why do we, for the most part, relegate the latter to low-budget quickie productions cooked up, apparently, on the shooting spot, and featuring the cheapest available cast?

It’s bad enough that you’re staging a climax that attempts to recreate the ink-black delirium of the final moments of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro – with a play-in-progress disrupted and systematically dismantled – but when you need an actor to spoof Amitabh Bachchan’s posturings in Shahenshah, is Ashish Chowdhry all you can scrounge up? The only performer who wiggles out unscathed is Shreyas Talpade. When pursued by the lisping gangster played by Chunkey Pandey – who mouths “Lonnie” when he really means “Ronnie,” so you know he’s up to no good when he smacks his lips and announces he’s going to launch into a “lape” – a hysterical Talpade (in drag) wrings big laughs out of old-Bollywood constructs such as “abla nari” and “hawas ke pujari.” Like Riteish Deshmukh, he’s an affably lightweight presence who blends perfectly into an ensemble, and he throws himself into these proceedings with an earnestness that’s at once endearing and entertaining. He is, in short, everything this film isn’t.

Copyright ©2009 The New Sunday Express. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

ENTERPRISE REPRISE

The new ‘Star Trek’ is a typically anonymous modern-day sci-fi extravaganza, with only a token resemblance to the TV series – but it’s fun nonetheless.

JUN 21, 2009 – A LONG TIME AGO, IN A metaphorical galaxy far, far away, we gathered around our black-and-white television sets, every Sunday morning, for what was unquestionably the prime programming swatch of the week. This was when Sherlock Holmes, in the form of Jeremy Brett, would unearth scandals in Bohemia and grapple with speckled bands. This was when the great BBC Shakespeare adaptations would unfold, in unexpurgated one-hour installments spread out over weeks (or months, in the case of the young prince who just couldn’t make up his mind). All this seriousness would be leavened by a half-hour of classic cartoons, with tenacious tomcats untiringly on the tail of deviously slippery mice. And somewhere in between, we’d get beamed up to the final frontier, where no man – certainly no Indian television viewer – had gone before.

But even discounting the newness of the experience, Star Trek was a bona fide phenomenon. Even as the series took flight to all those exotic places filled with all those exotic people – never mind that the aliens looked disconcertingly similar to humans, save for a pointed ear here, a gnarly forehead there – it was grounded by a genuine desire to explore, not just space but also the ethical and social and moral realms of science fiction. The conceit of a race of highly evolved (and highly diverse) humans on a spaceship in the distant future allowed the series to pontificate – sometimes ponderously, but also entertainingly, sometimes even irreverently – on the desires and the dilemmas of humanity in the present day. As children, we may have delighted in the transporter beams and the phaser guns set to stun, but a distinctly grownup sensibility permeated through the proceedings.

The films, on the other hand, rarely managed to live up to the television episodes. You’d think that with the inflated budgets and the increased dimensions of the screen, the adventures of James T. Kirk and company would play out better than ever, but the features only proved that Star Trek was, at heart, a medium-budget television series. With a few exceptions – The Wrath of Khan, First Contact – the films seemed so weightless as to be made of interstellar vapour, the gently ruminative tone of the series (which was in tune with the great sci-fi films of the era, like Silent Running or The Man Who Fell to Earth) inevitably having given way to the rambunctious swashbuckling that, thanks to the unprecedented impact of Star Wars, became forever inextricable from sci-fi cinema.

On the big screen, therefore, there’d be a great deal of action-adventure plotting over the nefarious cloaking device of the Bird of Prey, the grasshopper-green Klingon warship, or the crew’s efforts to barrel through the Great Barrier in order to meet the Maker, but the philosophies came off as undercooked – token oblations to the original series – and worse, the Kirk-Spock centric narratives left the rest of the cast about as resonant as Vulcan emotion. “Bones” McCoy was reduced to comic relief, a reliable dispenser of crabby wisecracks, just as Uhura was downsized to a glorified receptionist, forever clutching at her headset and relaying information to her shipmates. Scotty was simply some sort of plumber-engineer, tinkering around the bowels of the Enterprise with tools as heavy as his accent, and Sulu, little more than an Oriental chauffeur, steering his milk-white master’s vehicle through uncharted terrains of the Milky Way.

On screen, these characters were lost in space – they truly belonged on television, where, over a stretch of episodes, they appeared to be an integral part of an A-list team, rather than instantly replaceable handymen. What the small screen lacked in terms of big effects, it compensated for with bigger character development and better plotlines – and subsequently, when the films began to yield diminishing returns at the box office, it was almost a relief. With further big-screen installments looking increasingly less likely, it appeared that Star Trek would finally be consigned, through reruns and renewed series, to its first and finest home: television. But Hollywood, of course, would sooner self-destruct than abandon attempts to resuscitate a franchise that can live long and prosper, and so we have a new a big-screen version, rather ambitiously titled… Star Trek.

The implication seems to be that it’s back to the basics, though nothing could be further from the truth. This handsome production is, every gleaming inch of it, a product of its pixelated era, a typically-today interbreeding of sci-fi spectacular and action-comedy. (I was especially tickled by the sly smile that spreads across Kirk as he accidentally cups Uhura’s breasts during a bar brawl. Somewhere, William Shatner is fisting the air that his successor, finally, is being allowed to boldly go where he never went before.) But unlike Casino Royale, which reignited and reinterpreted the Bond franchise by turning the guns-girls-gadgets formula on its head, Star Trek is content to coast along the least-resistance path of generic entertainment, whether or not the audience is the kind that wipes a silent tear when the older Spock assures the younger Kirk, “I have been and always shall be your friend.”

Whether it’s Scotty showing up in an unexpected fashion in a most unexpected location, or the planet Vulcan imploding into nothingness, or Kirk and Spock shockingly coming to blows on the Enterprise, the film has been shaped in that modern-day, hyper-edited, less-talk-more-action, please-all-audiences manner that replaces orneriness with ordinariness. Scotty could be just another comic-relief character, Vulcan just another eye-catching special effect, and Kirk and Spock could be any two headstrong individuals battling for control of a ship (it’s just that one of them happens to have funny eyebrows). This doesn’t make the reboot any less pleasing as popcorn fare. It’s just that you don’t have to be a fan to enjoy this Star Trek, which is possibly why it’s such an unqualified worldwide success. Besides, for those of a certain age who yearn for a certain vintage, I suppose there’s always television.

Copyright ©2009 The New Sunday Express. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

THE BOX OF SECRETS

JUN 20, 2009 – THE THICKSET ASIAN MAN IN THE BOWLER HAT opens a box in front of the prostitute named Mathilde (Maria Latour). She examines its contents, which are not revealed to us. All we hear is a peculiar hum, as if a particularly persistent mosquito were angrily attempting escape. But whatever it is, it’s not good news. Mathilde declares, “No sir. I don’t think so,” and leaves in a huff. Madame Anais (Geneviève Page), now, presents Belle de Jour (Catherine Deneuve). “What about her? Will she do?” Belle de Jour throws a brazen arm around the Asian client and kisses his cheek. That seems to please him. He nods and extends a credit card, which Madame Anais politely declines. “No good here. Only cash,” she says, miming the universal gesture for currency, repeatedly flicking her forefinger against her thumb.

“All right. Go ahead,” she allows, after the customer hands over a few bills. He nods again and picks up the inlaid box with its mysterious contents and allows himself to be led by Belle de Jour, stopping at least twice to kiss her. When they enter the room, he positions the box carefully at the corner of a table by the door, which he now closes. He turns the latch and removes his hat and hangs it on the wall, next to his coat. Talking, all the while, in a language she presumably does not understand – and as his thoughts aren’t subtitled, we are partners in her incomprehension – he picks up the box and opens it. Now only in her underwear, Belle de Jour looks at whatever’s inside, whatever’s causing that high-pitched hum.

They are a study in contrasts – his eyes narrowed and skin swarthy and black hair greased into place next to her wide-eyed, carefree, creamy blondness, as if the gods of desire had engineered a match between a Sumo wrestler and a Vogue waif. Something about her look prompts him to assure, in French, “Don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid!” He takes off his shirt, and she responds by fumbling with her brassiere. But he wants none of that. He points to her panties instead, which she removes obediently. He examines the garment and flings it aside and holds up his arms as if to demonstrate his strength. The curious ringing sound comes from tiny bells in each palm. The strangeness of the sight, the sound, and indeed, the situation – not knowing what he’s saying or doing or going to do – doesn’t strike terror in Belle de Jour.

Instead, she laughs – possibly at the ridiculousness of it all, and possibly the only response given the situation – and embraces him. And just as we think we’ll finally find out what the box is all about, there’s a maddening cut to the foyer, as Pallas (Muni), the maidservant, welcomes her daughter home. “Did you do well today?” she enquires. “Did you behave?” The girl replies, “Yes, mom.” Pallas orders her daughter, “Go say hello to your aunt and show her your grades.” The “aunt” turns out to be Madame Anais. When not being tormented by mysterious men with mysterious sexual appetites, they’re all, apparently, one big happy family. Madame Anais kisses her “niece” and examines her report card. “Aren’t you going to say hello to me?” Mathilde calls out, looking far more cheerful, now that she’s handed over her day’s share of heavy-lifting to Belle de Jour.

The girl goes over and kisses Mathilde, who smiles and asks, “Do you want to go to the fair on Sunday?” The girl nods with delight. Madame Anais announces, with some pride, “B in history but an A in language.” It’s the Parisian equivalent of a Norman Rockwell painting – and just then, this cozy picture of domesticity, not to mention normalcy, is interrupted by the frantic calls of Charlotte (Françoise Fabian), who’s ministering to a masochistic professor with a profound need to be dominated. In an instant, we’re yanked back into the sordid world of the brothel. Charlotte, for some reason, needs a pen, which is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, the Asian man exits from the bedroom, his box tucked securely under an arm. He runs into the girl in the corridor and fondles her cheek, but Pallas arrives in time to show him out.

The man tips his hat and leaves, taking the stairs down. The daughter goes to the apartment upstairs to do her homework. Pallas peers over the railing to check if the Asian has truly left, then she goes to clean up after him, in the bedroom where Belle de Jour now lies face down, a bedspread covering her behind. Straightening a knocked-over table lamp, Pallas observes that Belle de Jour is motionless. She walks over, ruffles the bedspread, and sympathises, “That man would scare me too. Sometimes it must be hard.” The mass of tousled hair that is Belle de Jour looks up sleepily and contentedly – secure in the knowledge that she and she alone knows now what was in the box, and what was done to her – and mocks, “[But} what would you know, Pallas?”

Belle De Jour (1967, French; aka Beauty of the Day). Directed by Luis Buñuel. Starring Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli.

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