All That Jazz - Bombay Velvet review

Most guys, who have had their luck with women, would have dated that one stunner in college - the properly-endowed, fashionably correct, classy chick who can work a drink with the finesse of a violinist. She walks lightly, talks in measured volumes, breathes like she's sipping on wine, smells like luxury, purses her lips every now and then, swears with the decorum of a priest, dances like moonlight bouncing off of dark windows and is great in bed. But she's not the girl you would tag along with to a book reading. Or review porn movies with; staying up all night, exchanging shoplifting experiences, naming freckles on each other's bodies, laughing at quips with extremely low taste, eating food directly off the pan, or fart while under the covers to get familiar with. In other words, the stunner is not a keeper. Because with every conversation that you share, you know you are only entering waters that are just ankle-deep. Of the two, Bombay Velvet is the former - all style, very little substance.

Shyam Benegal, on describing Pather Panchali said "It had the ability of a great work to make you see the general in the particular and the particular in the general." Kashyap invariably weaves this trait into most of his films, garnishing it with an ingenious objectivity that resulted in modern classics like Black Friday, DevD and Ugly. Here too, we are shown glimpses of this genius (that alas get lost amid the ostensible trappings of a commercial fare). There is a comedic satirist, a regular at the jazz club, poking fun at the socio-economic condition of Reclamation-age Bombay - a trope seldom handled by any other filmmaker. When was the last time you saw a period drama having a comic to hold a mirror to the polity of that time, however relevant it is in reality? "This is just classic unconventional film-making" you start to think, only to have the rug pulled from beneath your feet. And I don't mean it in a good way. The plot is obviously the culprit here. It starts off with an idiosyncratic setup of the political state of 60's Bombay, taking on the inception of Nariman Point as a cultural and historical organ of the city, and interspersing (again, idiosyncratically)it with the blooming of love between two broken souls stuck in adolescence. You are thinking this is Gangs of Wasseypur meets DevD, the jazz version of the masterpiece that is Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi,  but the story loses its focus well into the second half. Kashyap begins by coloring his love epic with the turbulence of the times it is set in, but runs out of pastels midway through the narration. The second half isn't bad though. It just turns indifferent to the tone that had been setup, and this is BV's greatest failure - it's uncertainty in what it wants to tell. Some twenty minutes into the movie, after quite impressively establishing the lead characters, we are shown a scene where our man Johnny Balraj (Ranbir) is watching James Cagney's The Roaring Twenty's, tearing up at the climax where a dying Cagney lies in the arms of Priscilla Lane, for her to brood - "He was a big shot". It is here where we get a premonition of the familiar path this ill-fated romance will take, and yet we hope that it is done with flourish.

Being a fan-boy, I quite can't get over the speculation that BV was initially cut to be over four hours, giving me a reason to believe that it is not Anurag's fault on the whole. Because the film is crafted with some genuine pearls that managed to not roll off the editing table once the string broke. The scenes of childhood of both Johnny and Rosie(Anushka) are a particular delight- he is shown as a young kid shouting at a foreigner at the docks asking him to shove it; she is shown as a young girl being taken under the wing of a musician, who treats the scars on her thighs with ointment and his sexual deviance with a whip.  Khambata(Karan Johar), Johnny's mentor who manipulates him for his political ascension gets some nice scenes too - the one where he exits a meeting with Johnny and his buddy only to snigger at Johnny's proficiency in English, clearly revealing the skeleton of their relationship; the phone conversation between Johnny and him without a word being spoken by either; the one where his frustration at the gun going empty after firing a couple of shots beautifully meets the fear of being unarmed. Alas, these moments are few and far between in a movie that has multiple plot threads that weave and un-weave themselves uselessly into the proceedings, creating a muddled mess. Cases in point being the involvement of a photo negative that is never really done justice to, the land deal that Khambata has going on or the inevitable inclusion of a twin into the classic Bollywood narrative (we should call it twins ex-machina.  Or something). Characters with great potential are treated with very little space to grow on you, like Johnny's childhood friend Chimman (played by the smoldering-eyed Satyadeep Misra), the passively menacing inspector with a playful countenance (played to perfection, as usual, by Kay Kay Menon) or even Rosie's boyish chauffeur Tony (played by you-should-have-stopped-with-7KhoonMaaf Vivaan Shah).

But it is the love story that somehow manages to endear in spite of all this, even if it fails to reach its peak. Johnny and Rosie are kids who never grow up, and particularly Rosie, whose end of innocence is as abrupt as the switching off of the lights in a room, as against us normal kids, for whom it is more gradual, like the setting of the evening sun. And that is why their love story is innocent, immature, brash and delicious - because it is the only way they know how to love. During their first "date", Johnny and Rosie are having ice golas at the beach, where she collects the discarded gola stick of Johnny's to add as an entry to her diary. This is what schoolkids in love do. Intimacy to them is owning a part of the other person's trash, and it is something more beautiful than I can venture to describe. They hurt each other physically, and Rosie even finds it funny that she is capable of hitting him with a chair; Johnny blames her for not being clear enough and leading him to kill a man unnecessarily, to which she responds by saying that she has hurt her ankle; Rosie pokes fun at Johnny by calling him "Johnny Walker" - these are the only moments that truly make you laugh, and be glad that we have the electrifying chemistry between Ranbir and Anushka to complement it. Replace any other pair of actors in these parts and I wouldn't be too sure of how it would have panned out (In case anyone is making a Tamil remake, Dhanush and Nithya Menen would make for an interesting pair). And Anushka should be given an award just for the few seconds of her on-screen rendition of Dhadaam Dhadaam, executed with such pain and agony that I almost moaned in disappointment when the moment passed onto the next scene.

Speaking of Dhadaam Dhadaam, the music by Amit Trivedi is just terrific. Yeah. That's the word - terrific. He makes jazz creep under your skin like no other music director can, creating a modern rock-star out of the exhilarating Neeti Mohan, much like what Rahman did for Mohit Chauhan with Rockstar. If she doesn't win any of the singing awards for this year, then the awards circuit in Bollywood is really as disgustingly rigged as it has been spoken about. All songs find importance (though not all of them are featured), sound organic and fit seamlessly into the narrative (you will especially rave about the placement and treatment of Dhadaam Dhadaam and Darbaan). And the adrenaline rush that is Tommy Gun, the best of the instrumentals, takes the prize for one of the most delicious tracks of this year. But alas, such wasted genius. I had given a hear to the soundtrack almost a month before the movie released and found it too painfully beautiful to bear, only to have the crushing weight of the movie's disappointment trickle out the last breath in me, minute by minute till the end. It's like falling in unrequited love with a breath-taking woman, and witnessing her marry a worthless douche-y  a-hole.

Much has already been said about the look of the film and the production design, and I wouldn't want to add to the multitudes in fear of being banal. But that said, if there need be a big budget Bollywood remake of Star Wars or Moulin Rouge!, you know which team to call upon to design the sets. A hat tip to Rajeev Ravi, for the consistently impressive cinematography. My favorite bit, among others, included an early scene in the film, where Anushka runs away from her mentor and boards a bus, which gets attacked by a group of rebels; sitting in the backseat she looks around in befuddlement, and as she turns, we have her slightly injured face transverse the immaculate sunshine - Talk about heralding the arrival of brighter times.

Watch Bombay Velvet if you are a Kashyap loyalist. Watch it if you hate him. Watch it, to know that even giants succumb to the travails of what they always operated away from. In this case - big budgets, stars and schedules. 

Saachuputiye Thalaivaa! - Why Lingaa might be Rajini's worst film in recent history.

Have you ever had to watch your kid's school play, which you eventually know is gonna suck? Lingaa is pretty much that. You have the apple of your eye performing on stage and you are not allowed to even cringe at the monstrous mediocrity in front of you. Coz, dude, it's your kid. And also, remember, the play is 3 hours long.

The movie, the hare-brained plot of which can be surmised generously within the reverse of a bus ticket, has nothing new to offer, except for Santhanam's histrionics with the Thalaiva which failed miserably in their last outing together, Enthiran, still light speeds better a movie than this. Lingaa: Or How I Stopped Following the Movie and Desperately Waited for an Item Number, is primarily about this Raja dude Lingeshwara (Rajini), who decades ago built a big ass dam for the people he loved, against all odds including the British rule, caste-ism and an abysmal wardrobe, only to be shunned by the same subjects later. Enter modern-day grandson Lingaa (also Rajini, duh), a thief, to whom the fable of the Raja is recounted amidst an orgy of maudlin sentiments, and who now for no logical reason has to reopen the temple that grand-dad built, coz, you know, we have a huge budget and a whole lot more reel to burn. The hodgy-podgy writing grabs the been-there-done-that feeling and whacks it repeatedly on your face until you pass out owing to the heavy odor of altruism.

The problems of this movie begin right from the intro song which seems like it was composed for a political campaign rather than a star of Rajini's stature and the following first half, which painfully demonstrates a robbery that is smart enough for a third grader trying to wiggle out a tricky booger, and its well extended second act that prods on endlessly. Unlike its star's previous offerings like Sivaji(2009), Padayappa(1999) and Muthu(1995), the latter two of the lot being his collaborations with Ravikumar, which had similair epic setups, this one seems far from a cheap imitation. This has the aesthetics of a caricatured dick pic, albeit an ugly looking one. However, like the antics of your child which keep you awake throughout the play, Rajni, at 64, effortlessly (if a bit all too effortlessly) does the thing he always does, pouring all the panache and style left in him into every scene where he has to play being naughty, righteous, outraged, preachy and outright awesome. The laughs are limited to the first half only and the drama is manipulative enough to extract at least a single drop of tear. I admit there came a moment where I did get a bit teary eyed, but I do so too when I stub my pinkie toe against a piece of furniture.

"So what more do you want from a Thalaivar movie?" an irked fan might ask, arguing that logic was to be kept at bay while enjoying his films. As a self-confessed fan of his work, I've never wanted anything cerebral out of his movies, but whatever dis-endowment of logic that has prevailed was wrapped up with an engaging screenplay, while managing to make its cliches look normal-place. Lingaa over-cooks this formula and takes all the fun out of a worthy entertainer to its star's presence. The trappings of his stardom might cause the viewers, even his fans, to overlook his talent as an entertaining actor (his turn as the evil Chitti in the last act of Enthiran providing a testimony to this fact) among a slew of roles that fell well into his territory. Movies like Basha, Muthu, Arunachalam, Padayappa, evoke a larger than life character in the superstar, while here it is being hammered into. Even if Baba was a 'bad movie', it was never 'badly made', having its own interests at play unlike this fare here, which reeks of urgency from the very first shot. Not a single frame shows originality or perfection, and apart from a well orchestrated and shot train robbery sequence, there is nothing to awe you. Maybe a nod to the set department, for recreating the past era with some eye to detail and to ARR for a couple of songs which remind you that you are in a Rajini movie. That said, the performances are nothing to pine for, the characters are caricatures, the writing seems as fresh as a matrimonial ad and as for the 'punch-dialogues', I've heard better lines from the actor while speaking at public functions. So don't expect me to go into the specifications of the movie as to who's starring in it and likewise, because half the world knows it by now. Let's stick to saar.

Coming to the important question - Is it really unjust of a fan to ask for a well-made movie of Rajinikanth? With Lingaa, comes the instance to look at how the audience and the industry treat their stars, and to realize that celebrating an actor should also include respecting him enough  to provide him with a decent work of cinema rather than striving to fill up his absence at the box-office with drivel. A debate might arise about the scope of roles that can be offered to Rajini henceforth, because any character that he might have to play will seem redundant. But like Kamal Hassan once said, "Filmmakers are like drug dealers. They don't want to sell what their customers don't want to take in". Enthiran, a well made conceptually pertinent movie failed to work because we didn't see Rajinikanth the superstar, but Rajnikanth the actor. And we really have forgotten who Rajini the actor is, how he looks, speaks, feels, emotes and smokes. With this catch-22 scenario of supply and demand, the actor loses his standing, while the star is supported by the pillars of fandom, wearing his stardom as a crown of thorns.

To conclude, Lingaa is a movie that you take with a pinch of salt and aspirin and painkillers and even cocaine if need be, just to make sure you are not consciously watching a Rajinikanth film, one having as much sheen as the unattended dust-jacket of a celebrated epic.
Watch it if you have to at a movie theater near you, while I resort to watching Sivaji, for the 76th time, as an antidote. 

Her - She's a dime!

Firstly, this is not a review. This is more of a reaction to what might very well be the 'When Harry Met Sally' of our generation, because everyone will end up saying "I'll have what he's having" after watching the movie. Okay bad play of words for those familiar with and also not-so-familiar with the dialogue.

Her is the latest offering from writer-director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Where The Wild Things Are), who for the first time steps out from under the cape of Charlie Kaufman to produce a work that resembles in motif that of the latter, but in soul is more tangible and pertinent. Extremely original and painfully intelligent, Her tells the story of a recently divorced writer who falls in love with the Operating System(OS) of his mobile phone (And no, this is not based on Amitabh Bachchan's Twitter obsession. Ram Gopal Verma was still working on the script of that movie when last checked).

Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), is a writer who works in a personalized services company providing hand-written notes of love for special occasions, somewhere in the palpably near future. He fills out scores of touching, sentimental notes for strangers everyday, but has a bit of a writer's block when it comes to signing his divorce papers. Like other fellow beings, he douses his worries by wallowing in technology and thus invests in a new Artificial Intelligence enhanced OS - Samantha (voiced intensely by Scarlett Johannson) for his phone. And what transpires between them thereon is what the movie is all about.
The movie has a plot as much as the movies in Richard Linklater's Before series did. In fact, if Richard Linklater made a romantic movie while on amphetamines rather than while on marijuana, then it would be Her. But the writing here is strong enough to feed Bollywood for the next 50 years. Jonze whips up a tale combining  incendiary romance, naked emotions, vivid hypotheses and lightness of being to complement the strong acting, lilting music and the unfamiliar, yet imbuing setting the movie is shot in. Yes. This is that rare movie that manages to tick off all the boxes. And the performances that he extracts are monumental. Right from the leads to the cameos, all performances leave you with some lovely nuances that you will try recapitulating in front of the bathroom mirror.

Coming to the question - Why is this movie culturally relevant?
The other day a friend and I were talking about evolution. He pointed out that by Darwin's theory of natural selection, since we have evolved from single celled organisms to apes to humans, what if the next stage of our evolution is dominated by the much fitter technology, thus turning us all into cyborgs or androids or humanoids or whatnot. I mean, just think of it. Technology in that sense is better than us. It's better at math, doesn't have body odor and comes only in one gender by physiology. Her captures the essence of this argument by showing how human relationships are susceptible to subversion from the least expected sources of threat. The lead characters of the movie, Theodore and Samantha, share all the foibles and intricacies of modern day love - jealousy, first fights, insecurities, double dates and other sweet surprises that would be thwarted in mentioning. Yet, Jonze delivers his masterstroke in pointing out how we, as humans are able to fuck up even an engineered-to-taste arrangement as this. Like Kaufman's past film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Her too meditates on the pain in forgetting and the vulnerability of love, however safe you play.
And also, the movie spawns a million ideas throughout its run time, though only few stayed with me, because frankly, it was too much for me to take in. In one of the scenes, after having been chided by Theodore for being too unrealistic about herself, Samantha later apologizes saying that she'll not have any illusions about herself anymore and also that she now understood why humans feared the notion of just being the person they are and not capable of being anything more. Of all the "high-funda" movies that I've seen across my years, this single explanation of human behavior knocked my dirty socks off. This sense of intimidating intelligence and fore-vision looms throughout the 120 minutes, making us realise how we are a slave to technology and how soon enough the exploits shown in the movie are waiting to creep into the infinite fabric of our society.
To get a better understanding of what I'm trying to say - You and your boyfriend/girlfriend have a relationship that is built generously on the floorboards of your mobile phones, what with the late night calls, Whatsapp, Hike, Line, WeChat and a million other Nigerian based messaging apps. What if the voice (or words) on the other end wasn't  from a real person but actually from a software designed to your sensibilities, actually masterminded so by Alok Nath in order to conserve the overall sanskar present in the environment? Okay.I digress. All I'm trying to say is that we are lemmings, following each other off a cliff to migrate to better pastures, but instead hit a rock and die.

Do yourself a favour and gorge on this feast. It will give you a whole new perspective on interpersonal relationships and Scarlett Johannson (Personally, I thought she was all about the titties, but damn!). And "Joaquin Phoenix is Great! Amazeballs! Blow him! Performance of a zillion lifetimes!" comments might be glaring from the posters but in all fairness, he is the kooky, sensitive and perceptive geek that he's required to be. I'm going to go ahead and call him the poor man's hipster's Daniel Day Lewis.
 Cult movies or even movies that define a generation don't have the potential to be so when they are made. Conversely, their potential in becoming so depends on the ability of the generation to take heed and letting them define it. So play a part in letting it be. Watch Her, playing at a shady torrent website near you.
Or maybe I can give the movie to you. Just make sure your phone's OS calls mine (Her name is Savitha, BTW).

The Answer.

“Where does she live?” he asked.

“She lives by the highway in a shack,

Which has lay within its gate and beyond its awning,

An oasis amidst the dazed city,

 Rich with Bohemian weeds and archaic toads and balmy geysers,

 Adorned by decorative earthenware depicting taboo legends and,

 Small fire boxes of potted red clay storing sunshine from the day,

For use into the brink of twilight to facilitate her veiled trysts;

 A stone oven near the alcove in whose furnace she burns her paintings,

 Upon every fourth week of their completion,

While wild butterflies gather above to the aromatic fumes let out by the pastels

 And fly in tandem to the tunes from her rusty phonograph,

In cahoots with the singings from the brass piano I play with on the silk divan,

 After she feeds me crushed fruit bathed in honey through wooden spoons off of a ceramic bowl,

 Carried on forth from her mother,

For whom she cooks on Saturdays when the kitchen with her green cabinets,

Smell of rosemary and buttered garlic,

 A feast often wished to serve to my father,

Who misses it at his own misfortune” replied his son.

                                                                              - Diwakar B

Coffee, Cigarettes and Affairs

Coffee, Cigarettes and Affairs.

I

I call her as soon as my train pulls into the platform,

Insisting that we meet ASAP as it had been a year since I saw her.

She replies simply by inviting me home,

Since she had to run some errands.

(She ran a lot of errands these days, being married)

I insist; for good old time’s sake I say,

I have no time to spare I say,

I’ve been wanting to meet you I say,

I need some privacy with you away from your home I don’t say.

Her dainty self cedes to my askings like the poor thing always did,

So we decide on a time and place.

II

I order a cup of coffee for myself and start smoking,

Careful not to leave the remains anywhere near the table.

(She was under the impression that I’d quit)

Two cups and half a pack later she calls;

 I tell her that I’m seated by the rose bushes,

And stash away the remaining cigarettes.

I relax time, seeing her enter,

To take her in completely.

Her bespectacled eyes search for the rose bushes,

While I ashamedly miss the time during our youth,

When she used to wear contacts.

She finds the bushes and then me and smiles.

She walks unexcitedly, with a fading smile,

A long distance apart, measured in time,

Romancing the intermittent sunshine through the trees,

Her facial blemishes blinking so,

Like switching her past and present selves.

I breathe in the gentle sway of her hips,

Her love handles flirting with the sartorial perimeter,

Neck, impeccably gleaming till the bosom,

Ample cheeks holding withering joys,

Supple arms which used to have un-callused hands,

Whose fingers used to have long fingernails.

She reaches, I hold my chair and find ground,

And others stop hearing my heartbeat.

III

With a distant hug, she says something sweet in my ears,

Something so sweet, that she makes sure I can’t hear.

Sitting down, she orders in the voice that sings better than it speaks

But doesn’t any more.

I reply to her enquiries about my long trip,

My flight, my train, my job, my endless numbered trifles.

I ask how marriage is treating her.

She throws her head back a little,

And chuckles nervously through her perfectly flawed teeth -

If I were a bit decadent, and she not so distant,

I would have drunk from her gorgeous dimples.

IV

She foots the bill and I tip.

I learn she has to pick Ari,

Her 6-year old son, up from school.

I want to tag along I say, also that my luggage is at the cloak room.

V

Her scooter chugs through effortlessly.

I lean forward to be abused by her hair,

Smelling of lavender,

Reminding me of when she scoffed at

My romantic overtures.

She brakes and I hold her shoulders.

Her collar bone touch my fingers

And I chastise myself like ages ago,

For desiring to make mad love to her love-stowed eyes,

Tender ears, olive skin, haplessly full lips,

Ditzy laugh, delicious scorn and tasty curses.

Hope she can marry a second time,

Or have an affair off this marriage,

Not with me essentially,

But so that her face regains a genuine trite-less emotion;

Becomes what I knew of before she threw her corsage backwards.

VI

School is over.

We stand under a tree and she looks amongst the crowd,

Trying to spot her kid.

Ari sees and runs towards us, ecstatic and tired,

Lunging into my arms, saying something like:

“Papa! You’re finally back!

  But Mom! You never told he’d come to pick me up from school!”

-          Diwakar B

School Bus

School Bus

Only of eleven, and Jimmy’s got nowhere to sit.

Obviously not next to the driver,

Whose mornings were fresh and smelt better

Than his late evenings.

Nope, not next to the chatty teachers at front,

Smelling hopelessly of jasmine and rich talcum.

Jimmy’s got nowhere to sit,

Not next to the English teacher wearing a pallor under her eyes,

Curing the previous night’s hangover of thoughts;

Nor her little son, away from her, disturbed by the loud whispers of a marriage.

So Jimmy moves ahead,

Beyond - the fat nerds and skinny bullies,

The stiff athletes and imperfect scholars,

The tanned hopefuls talking about football,

The proud hopeless talking about nothing,

The pretty little girls hiding behind their braces and eyestrain,

The gaudy ones wallowing in celebrated muck,

Sitting together, leaving Jimmy seat-less.

Still, Jimmy’s got nowhere to sit,

Not next to the 10^th grader with chapped upper lip,

Who always smells like the canteen chimney and takes huge breaths.

Nor next to the worm behind a pile of books,

Anal and saying “Fuck” a lot.

Maybe next to The Girl from grade nine that Jimmy liked,

Looking painfully beautiful,

Her Irish white face dissolved in splendid sunshine,

Save for her swollen red nose and puffy eyes.

Her legs are unseemly, inexplicably un-spaced,

And a shrug covers bites from a dead pet (she never had),

While the guy she usually sat next to sits away,

Regaling his ugly gasp wearing suck-ups with tales,

A sick cancer in his laugh while at it.

“Not today”, Jimmy thinks and moves up.

At the end of the bus sits Dmitri,

Next to whom Jimmy definitely is not sitting,

Owing to Monday’s spat.

Meanwhile Dmitri still mulls over why the school is not closed today,

Since the school bus ran over Jimmy yesterday.

  

                                                     -  Diwakar B