Thursday 29 November 2012

A reveiw of 'Jab Tak Hai Jaan'



A review I wish I didn’t have to write. Yash Chopra’s swansong with Shahrukh Khan in the lead totally failed to impress me.

Shahrukh Khan is Samar Anand. In his twenties, Samar charms Meera (played by Katrina Kaif) in London.  Though the year is 2002, Samar dances in railway stations with huge Olympic symbols behind him. Meera is the kind of person who makes deals with God and when Samar has an accident, she makes one with God. She promises to leave Samar if he were to recover. This is I find really hard to buy, considering that Meera smokes, swears, wears designer clothes and lives in modern London. Meera’s desertion makes Samar a loner and he ends up as a bomb disposal expert in the Indian Army. Enters tomboy Akira (Anushka Sharma), a reporter with Discovery channel who finds Samar’s diary by accident.  From here in the second half the movie really goes downhill.  It requires an enormous amount of patience to sit through the last hour of the movie (I was constantly thinking of going home so that I could keep the promise I made to my daughter to do some quilling with her)

The man who made movies like the classic Lamhe, Chandni, Deewar and so on constantly treads on a wafer thin plot, which I think is the movie’s main flaw. The music by A R Rahman is also a disappointment. Further, there are no heroines in chiffon sarees dancing in Switzerland, a Yash Chopra hallmark . Some things, I guess, are not meant to be.

The positives would include firstly the romance itself that Yash Chopra brings to the movie. It is hard to believe that this movie is directed by an eighty year old man and it is hard not to be inspired by his belief in love and romance. Shahrukh Khan’s sad, angry, loner performance as Major Samar Anand was good to watch. Anushka Sharma proves once again that she is one of the best actresses we have when it comes to ‘acting’. Katrina Kaif appeared wooden in most scenes. I think she was mostly restricted by the script itself. Both the heroines were able to be the typical Yash Chopra lead ladies- stunning, intelligent and graceful.  It is also a delight to watch the ever so beautiful London and Ladakh/Kashmir once again.


Tuesday 27 November 2012

A review of 'Life of Pi'






 Yann Martel‘s Life of Pi was a book I gave a miss after reading several pages with interest. It was not because it was not appealing or intriguing enough but because I was about to get married and I really had other things in mind. Couple of years ago I found out that Life of Pi is one of the highest selling Booker prize winners (around 10 million copies.) Intrigued, I read up on Yann Martel. From the interviews he had given, I found how he had stood dejected after an unnoticed first book, after which he visited India and while over here, the story for Life of Pi just came to him as a flash. It was an inspiring story, the kind of stories I generally relish.

It was even more exciting when the master director Ang Lee decided to retell Life of Pi. Ang Lee is said to have replied to a TV interviewer who asked how he found his films that “I don't find my films, my films find me.  Life of Pi found me.  Three of Lee’s films make have made it into my all-time favourite list. Sense and Sensibility (that amazing Jane Austen novel brought to life so masterfully with incredible background score and piano pieces), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (the music and the visuals will make you fall into a state of meditation), Brokeback Mountain (very few have told love stories better than this). 

Life of Pi is a story within a story within a story. It is the story of Pi Patel, who is left floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean after his ship sank. He is in this beautiful, almost mythical, white lifeboat in the movie in which he has a tiger, a hyena, an orang-utan and a zebra for company. It is an exceptional story and I would rather not give out anything more. At the outset we are told that it is a story which will make you believe in God. There is something in it for everyone. For the atheist, there is a story which the rational mind can tell, for a believer there are plenty of instances of the miraculous. If you are a new age enthusiast, you would find it replete with symbolism. If you are an animal lover, the magnificent frames of Richard Parker the royal Bengal tiger would be something you would find hard to forget. And the radiant beauty of nature itself is like in no other movie and it is for everyone to relish.  This movie uses 3D better than any other, even better than Avatar. And like in all Ang Lee movies, the music lingering in the background mesmerises you and transports you to another dimension.

The grown up Pi Patel is played by Irfan Khan who is as good as ever.  Debutante Suraj Sharma playing the younger Pi is exceptional. Tabu is as beautiful as ever. She seems to get better with each movie and the rare sensitivity of her face is a treat to watch even after all these years. A poetic shot of her with flowers on her hair watching the festival lights remains etched in my mind. Adil Hussain as Pi’s father is also brilliant.

So the verdict in short is that Life of Pi is truly a ‘bright and beautiful’ film and a must watch for any movie lover.


Monday 5 November 2012

A review of Skyfall





Skyfall begins with a brilliant rooftop chase in Istanbul where James Bond chases and fights a bad guy which then stretches to the top of a train. The newest Bond movie starring Daniel Craig has the Oscar Winning Director Sam Mendes at the helm. If you remember, this is the guy who made a plastic bag dancing in the wind look hauntingly beautiful in his movie ‘American Beauty’. Bond has been transformed.  And we find an unusual depth that we don’t generally associate with a typical James Bond movie.

All’s not well with MI6 which is under attack. M (Judie Dench) is asked to retire by Gareth Mallory (Ralf Fiennes) the new chairman of intelligence and security who is to oversee the period of transition. Bond himself is shown to be struggling, with a salt and pepper stubble and finding it hard to keep up physically.  

Mendes’s Bond is not the usual Bond. The movie has a dark edge throughout and as the movie gets underway, Bonds stiff upper-lip starts trembling. He is real, he is human and we are even shown glimpses into his so far unspoken childhood.  We hear M reciting Shakespeare and see Bond observing the Scottish highlands in a surreal scene. This is definitely not the old stuff we are used to.

Javier Bardem as the villain is superb; I think his first class acting has perhaps created the best Bond villain ever. Judie Dench as M comes up with an excellent performance and is the real Bond girl in the movie . The other two Bond girls fail to impress. Quartermaster Q makes a comeback and I loved his new avatar. Ralf Fiennes, I think, can never disappoint me ever. 

Skyfall is an exquisitely shot movie and there would be very little one can complain about whether it be direction, story or performances. Daniel Craig perhaps is one of the best looking Bonds ever, maybe the best ever. Nevertheless, I came out from the movie theatre with a sense of loss. It looks as if I will never be able to unwind and relax watching a Bond movie. Gone are the days when everything was safe in the hands of the super spy James Bond when he wined and dined and pursued beautiful women while he dealt with menacing villains with ease and composure.  

Go watch Mendes’s Skyfall if you like to watch a well-made, emotionally charged movie, rather than a two dimensional action movie.