Narada is a legendary sage who appears in a number of Hindu texts, including both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. In the movies, though, he acts as the local divine trickster; if you have a serious problem, you should get Narada to solve it, since it's probably his fault anyway. Yamudiki Mogudu (2012)? Definitely Narada's fault.
Due to a celestial mixup, Naresh (Allari Naresh) is born a month early and without a destiny, which means that he is immortal and has power equal to the gods. Indra and the other gods ask Yama (Sayaji Shinde) to deal with the situation, but Yama doesn't want to, so instead Narada is chosen to deal with the unexpected immortal and also humble the god of death. (Which is just as well, because it is Narada's fault.)
Years pass. Naresh grows into a charming loafer and terrible student. Worse, he's also an aspiring actor! Naresh is cast as Ram in a play about Sita's Swayamvaram ceremony, and just as he's about to go onstage, Narada makes his move. He convinces the husband of the actress playing Sita to drag her home, then talks Naresh into calling out for a replacement; thanks to Naresh's subconscious godly powers, the replacement Sita is Yamaja (Richi Panai), the daughter of Yama. And since apparently they don't have religious drama in Yamalok, Yamaja believes that they actually are now married, and starts following Naresh around and calling him "husband."
Naresh tries to get Yamaja to go away, but eventually brings her home disguised as the family's new maid. And after a brief period of adjustment, she wins the family over, and suddenly everything is going really well. Most importantly, Naresh's brother gets a promotion at the bank where he works and manages to get the infamous gangster Royyala Naidu (Tanikella Bharani) sent to prison, an action that I'm sure will have no negative consequences.
Meanwhile, Yama is worried about his missing daughter, so he allows his son Yamaganda (Master Bharath) to go to earth to search for her, as long as Chitragupta (Krishna Bhagavaan) agrees to accompany the boy. Yamaganda isn't the brightest spark in the pyre, so before he can find his sister, there's a lot of slapstick and confusion and a great deal of ice cream.
Yamana won't leave her husband, so Yama is forced to do things the old fashioned way, by traveling to Earth himself and forcibly abducting her. Thinking quickly, Naresh grabs the tail of Yama's divine buffalo, and rides it up to the heavens, where, with a little help from Narada, he can match wits with the Lord of Death to win back his love. Unfortunately, Yama does not play fair, and while Naresh is immortal, his family is not. And there's the matter of the gangster with a grudge.
Despite the supernatural setting and the meddling trickster sage, Yamudiki Mogudu is basically an old fashioned romantic comedy in the DDLJ mode, with the hero living among his future in-laws and slowly winning them over. That means that Yama is playing a different stock part than usual; he's the stern father-in-law, the relationship End Boss who must be convinced before the hero and heroine can be happy. This Yama is still a bit of a stentorian buffoon, but he has to be more competent and cunning in order to be a suitable antagonist. And he has to be hostile and scary and still believably change his mind at the end. Movie Yama is a more flexible character than you might expect. And we're not done yet.
Saturday, July 11, 2020
Saturday, July 4, 2020
It's a jolly holiday with death.
Yama, god of death, is a stock comic figure in Indian cinema. He's a stout, jolly fellow with distinctive headgear and spectacular facial hair, and he lives in a magical realm with his helpers and a large buffalo. He's like Santa Claus bringing the gift of passage to the next life to . . . everybody, really. And that is why we have Yamaleela (1994).
As the movie opens Yama (Kaikala Satyanarayana) and his assistant Chitragupta (Bramhanandam) are hanging out in the afterlife doing vaudeville bits, but on Earth, Suraj (Ali) is having a much harder time. He's a carefree scamp who owes money to a lot of people, but while leading his debtors on a Benny Hillesque chase through town doesn't bother him, this time he's also made his mother (Manju Bhargavi) cry. When the family servant reveals that the family is actually royalty, reduced to Jane Austen poverty because of debt, Suraj vows to make enough money to buy back the family castle. (Said castle is surprisingly affordable; the specific figure given is one crore rupees, which works out to about 130,000 dollars. But Suraj is poor enough that it's still an impossible task.)
While trying to earn the needed money, Suraj runs afoul of the local organized crime syndicate. Syndicate may be a bit too generous, actually; there are two gangs in town. The "bat batch" are all men who use hockey sticks as weapons and are led by the cartoonishly evil Thota Ramudu (Tanikella Bharani.) The "chain batch" are young, attractive women who use bicycle chains as weapons and are led by Lilly (Indraja), who isn't as violent as Thota Ramudu but is a terrible, terrible person. Suraj instantly falls in love with Lilly, and tries to earn money from Thota Ramudu, but he is doubly disappointed and winds up standing in the rain all night only to collapse in the morning.
And that's when his luck changes. Chitragupta drops the Bhavishyavaani, a book which records the future of every human being, and it falls right on Suraj. When he opens the book he sees lottery numbers. The next day, he takes his lottery winnings to the race track, and soon he's rich enough to buy the castle, with enough left over to live in luxury and toss the occasional huge stack of money at nearby gangsters.
Meanwhile, Yama and Chitragupta have been stripped of their divine powers and sent to Earth to retrieve the book. They have thirty days to find it before they are exiled to Earth forever, and it will not be an easy task, especially since Yama keeps getting distracted by the pleasures of Earthly life, by which I mean ice cream. And because Yama doesn't have the book, he can't be sure when anyone is supposed to die, so he refuses to take any souls. That's good news for Suraj, who has the book and therefore knows that his mother is definitely going to die very soon, unless he can find a way to save her.
So, can Suraj save his mother? Does Yama restore the balance of life and death to the universe? Will Lilly become at least slightly less terrible? You already know the answers. This is not a deep or complicated movie; it's a fluffy and comfortable and very silly movie about death.
As the movie opens Yama (Kaikala Satyanarayana) and his assistant Chitragupta (Bramhanandam) are hanging out in the afterlife doing vaudeville bits, but on Earth, Suraj (Ali) is having a much harder time. He's a carefree scamp who owes money to a lot of people, but while leading his debtors on a Benny Hillesque chase through town doesn't bother him, this time he's also made his mother (Manju Bhargavi) cry. When the family servant reveals that the family is actually royalty, reduced to Jane Austen poverty because of debt, Suraj vows to make enough money to buy back the family castle. (Said castle is surprisingly affordable; the specific figure given is one crore rupees, which works out to about 130,000 dollars. But Suraj is poor enough that it's still an impossible task.)
While trying to earn the needed money, Suraj runs afoul of the local organized crime syndicate. Syndicate may be a bit too generous, actually; there are two gangs in town. The "bat batch" are all men who use hockey sticks as weapons and are led by the cartoonishly evil Thota Ramudu (Tanikella Bharani.) The "chain batch" are young, attractive women who use bicycle chains as weapons and are led by Lilly (Indraja), who isn't as violent as Thota Ramudu but is a terrible, terrible person. Suraj instantly falls in love with Lilly, and tries to earn money from Thota Ramudu, but he is doubly disappointed and winds up standing in the rain all night only to collapse in the morning.
And that's when his luck changes. Chitragupta drops the Bhavishyavaani, a book which records the future of every human being, and it falls right on Suraj. When he opens the book he sees lottery numbers. The next day, he takes his lottery winnings to the race track, and soon he's rich enough to buy the castle, with enough left over to live in luxury and toss the occasional huge stack of money at nearby gangsters.
Meanwhile, Yama and Chitragupta have been stripped of their divine powers and sent to Earth to retrieve the book. They have thirty days to find it before they are exiled to Earth forever, and it will not be an easy task, especially since Yama keeps getting distracted by the pleasures of Earthly life, by which I mean ice cream. And because Yama doesn't have the book, he can't be sure when anyone is supposed to die, so he refuses to take any souls. That's good news for Suraj, who has the book and therefore knows that his mother is definitely going to die very soon, unless he can find a way to save her.
So, can Suraj save his mother? Does Yama restore the balance of life and death to the universe? Will Lilly become at least slightly less terrible? You already know the answers. This is not a deep or complicated movie; it's a fluffy and comfortable and very silly movie about death.
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Not sorry, Shaktimaan.
These days, there are a lot of superhero TV shows available, and these shows will carefully adapt the source material, focusing on the best bits and changing things as needed in order to adapt to the medium of TV. Shaktimaan (1997-2005), on the other hand, is like injecting the distilled essence of Silver Age comic books directly into your brain. Let's explore.
It's important to note that the title character (Mukesh Khanna) isn't called Shaktiman, he's called Shaktimaan. The double "a" is important, because the name translates to Powerful Mind rather than Powerful Man. Shaktimaan is, as the theme song explains, an ordinary man, rather than the last son of a dying planet. All of his amazing powers (flight, telepathy, super strength, super speed, spinning, shooting lasers from his fingertips, and basically anything else the plot requires) are obtained through the careful practice of meditation and yoga; it's explicitly stated several times that anyone could have the powers of Shaktimaan if they are willing to put in the work.
Shaktimaan's origin becomes increasingly complex and baroque as the series goes on, but the essence always remains the same. He was destined from birth to rid the world of evil, and trained to do so by the Suryanshis, a secret order of monks. His destiny is very clear; Shaktimaan is to fight sin, not sinners. He is to inspire the people with his teaching and his example, rather than just punch bad guys, though there is rather a lot of bad guy punching involved.
Of course, the forces of evil are not going to take this lying down. Evil is personified by Tamraj Kilvish (Surendra Pal), though he's usually too busy reigning in dark Satanic majesty to get personally involved, so he works through a variety of evil minions, the most important being the self-proclaimed great Shaitan scientist Doctor Jackal (Lalit Paramoo), who dresses like an evil hotel bellhop, shouts the word "Power!" at random intervals, and uses his mastery of evil science to create monsters and supervillains and an elixir which can permanently turn people evil. (I am pretty sure he's named after Doctor Jekyll.) Other minions of evil include Catwoman (Ashwini Kalsekar), a witch with the power to change from cat to Nastassja Kinski in Cat People to a woman wearing furry mittens and an unconvincing cat hood, and Plastica, who is made of plastic bags and breathes clouds of deadly poison, but is mostly dangerous because she cannot be safely burned or buried without harming the environment.
Shaktimaan can't superhero all the time, so he has a secret identity: Pandit Ganghadar Vidhyadar Mayadhar Omkarnath Shastri, though everybody else just calls him Ganghadar. Ganghadar pretends to be a buck-toothed, bespectacled buffoon with an irritating laugh. He's silly where Shaktimaan is solemn, playful where Shaktimaan is pedantic, and not above using his super powers for practical jokes. Ganghadar works for the newspaper "Aaj Ki Awaz", alongside plucky reporter Geeta Vishwas (first played by Kitu Gidwani, then by Vaishnavi Mahant.) Geeta and Shaktimaan have the perfect superhero relationship; they love each other, but because of his vows Shaktimaan is forbidden from individual love and Geeta is determined not to be an obstacle, so the relationship can never be resolved one way or another, instead existing as a perpetual angst machine.
Shaktimaan doesn't do season long arcs, instead focusing on a particular storyline for a few episodes, then quickly moving on. And the stories themselves areripped off frominspired by a wide variety of sources. I've mentioned Cat People, but I've also spotted elements from Frankenstein, Star Wars, Predator, and Superman II, among others, all mixed with original ideas to create a show that is at once crazy and compelling. As weird as things get (and they do get weird) everything is rooted in character.
And then there are the special effects. They are bad. They are sub-Tom Baker era Doctor Who at best. And yet after a while they seem to fade into the background. It's like a stage play; the special effects are not trying to convince you, they are just there to indicate what's supposed to be happening onscreen. Perhaps because of that, the show doesn't take shortcuts. If a helicopter is going to explode, if Doctor Jackal is sealing the city in an impenetrable force field, if Shaktimaan is throwing a planet in the path of an oncoming death comet, you will see it. It won't be at all convincing, but you will see it. And perhaps that's what I love about the show; it is pure, unfiltered superhero content, without a trace of deconstruction or irony.
It's important to note that the title character (Mukesh Khanna) isn't called Shaktiman, he's called Shaktimaan. The double "a" is important, because the name translates to Powerful Mind rather than Powerful Man. Shaktimaan is, as the theme song explains, an ordinary man, rather than the last son of a dying planet. All of his amazing powers (flight, telepathy, super strength, super speed, spinning, shooting lasers from his fingertips, and basically anything else the plot requires) are obtained through the careful practice of meditation and yoga; it's explicitly stated several times that anyone could have the powers of Shaktimaan if they are willing to put in the work.
Shaktimaan's origin becomes increasingly complex and baroque as the series goes on, but the essence always remains the same. He was destined from birth to rid the world of evil, and trained to do so by the Suryanshis, a secret order of monks. His destiny is very clear; Shaktimaan is to fight sin, not sinners. He is to inspire the people with his teaching and his example, rather than just punch bad guys, though there is rather a lot of bad guy punching involved.
Of course, the forces of evil are not going to take this lying down. Evil is personified by Tamraj Kilvish (Surendra Pal), though he's usually too busy reigning in dark Satanic majesty to get personally involved, so he works through a variety of evil minions, the most important being the self-proclaimed great Shaitan scientist Doctor Jackal (Lalit Paramoo), who dresses like an evil hotel bellhop, shouts the word "Power!" at random intervals, and uses his mastery of evil science to create monsters and supervillains and an elixir which can permanently turn people evil. (I am pretty sure he's named after Doctor Jekyll.) Other minions of evil include Catwoman (Ashwini Kalsekar), a witch with the power to change from cat to Nastassja Kinski in Cat People to a woman wearing furry mittens and an unconvincing cat hood, and Plastica, who is made of plastic bags and breathes clouds of deadly poison, but is mostly dangerous because she cannot be safely burned or buried without harming the environment.
Shaktimaan can't superhero all the time, so he has a secret identity: Pandit Ganghadar Vidhyadar Mayadhar Omkarnath Shastri, though everybody else just calls him Ganghadar. Ganghadar pretends to be a buck-toothed, bespectacled buffoon with an irritating laugh. He's silly where Shaktimaan is solemn, playful where Shaktimaan is pedantic, and not above using his super powers for practical jokes. Ganghadar works for the newspaper "Aaj Ki Awaz", alongside plucky reporter Geeta Vishwas (first played by Kitu Gidwani, then by Vaishnavi Mahant.) Geeta and Shaktimaan have the perfect superhero relationship; they love each other, but because of his vows Shaktimaan is forbidden from individual love and Geeta is determined not to be an obstacle, so the relationship can never be resolved one way or another, instead existing as a perpetual angst machine.
Shaktimaan doesn't do season long arcs, instead focusing on a particular storyline for a few episodes, then quickly moving on. And the stories themselves are
And then there are the special effects. They are bad. They are sub-Tom Baker era Doctor Who at best. And yet after a while they seem to fade into the background. It's like a stage play; the special effects are not trying to convince you, they are just there to indicate what's supposed to be happening onscreen. Perhaps because of that, the show doesn't take shortcuts. If a helicopter is going to explode, if Doctor Jackal is sealing the city in an impenetrable force field, if Shaktimaan is throwing a planet in the path of an oncoming death comet, you will see it. It won't be at all convincing, but you will see it. And perhaps that's what I love about the show; it is pure, unfiltered superhero content, without a trace of deconstruction or irony.
Saturday, June 27, 2020
I didn't study.
They say that in Bollywood, romance is dead. It isn't, really, but romantic comedies don't have the same box office draw that they did in the days when King Khan reigned supreme. However, things are different on the other side of the border; apparently the Pakistani film industry is happy to turn out wholesome romances like Mumbai used to make twenty years ago. Exhibit A: Lahore Se Aagey (2016).
Lahore Se Aagey is apparently a direct sequel to a movie I have not seen, Karachi Se Lahore, and picks up right where the previous movie left off, so I was initially very confused, but I soon realized that Moti (Yasir Hussain), a stocky, bearded guy with a pronounced stutter, is our romantic lead. Moti is on his way to see his rich uncle (Behroze Sabzwari), but he is being chased by hitmen A and AB (dunno who plays A, but AB is Omer Sultan.) You can tell they're serious and scary assassins because as soon as they show up onscreen, gratuitous slow-mo doves appear.
However, they aren't very good at assassinating people; Moti loses the killers by mugging a passing fashion designer for his clothing and then ducking through an outdoor concert being held by aspiring rockstar Tara (Saba Qamar). After the concert, and after Tara breaks up with her annoying boyfriend, she nearly hits Moti with her car, then saves him from A and AB. And that's basically the plot; Moti is on his way to see his uncle, Tara is on her way to a big concert which turns out to be basically "Pakistani Idol", and they travel together, fighting, talking, dodging assassins, singing songs, having adventures, and inevitably falling in love.
Even for a road movie, Lahore Se Aagey is very episodic; Tara and Moti stumble into a strange situation, sing a song, grow a little closer, and move on. Most of the time this works, but there is an extended sequence involving offensive tribal stereotypes, a secret jungle rave, a dance-off to the death, and a whole lot of product placement for KFC which drags on for far too long. (And, again, the treatment of tribal people in the scene is genuinely terrible.)
The humor is hit and miss; many of the jokes rely on references to or cameos by various Pakistani celebrities that I have never heard of. I did catch the occasional Sholay reference, and there is a lovely gag involving a power drill that transcends cultural boundaries.
The romance is a bit more interesting. Tara acts tough, but deep down she's just hoping to find someone who will actually listen to her. And Moti is spellbound by Tara, but he's so insecure that he sometimes hides his feelings by acting like a sexist jerk. I think the relationship would be an absolute disaster in real life, but that's often the case with romantic comedies.
In the end, I'm not sure what to make of Lahore Se Aagey. I feel unprepared; I think I really need to see the first movie and pick up a working knowledge of Pakistani pop culture before I can judge it properly.
Lahore Se Aagey is apparently a direct sequel to a movie I have not seen, Karachi Se Lahore, and picks up right where the previous movie left off, so I was initially very confused, but I soon realized that Moti (Yasir Hussain), a stocky, bearded guy with a pronounced stutter, is our romantic lead. Moti is on his way to see his rich uncle (Behroze Sabzwari), but he is being chased by hitmen A and AB (dunno who plays A, but AB is Omer Sultan.) You can tell they're serious and scary assassins because as soon as they show up onscreen, gratuitous slow-mo doves appear.
However, they aren't very good at assassinating people; Moti loses the killers by mugging a passing fashion designer for his clothing and then ducking through an outdoor concert being held by aspiring rockstar Tara (Saba Qamar). After the concert, and after Tara breaks up with her annoying boyfriend, she nearly hits Moti with her car, then saves him from A and AB. And that's basically the plot; Moti is on his way to see his uncle, Tara is on her way to a big concert which turns out to be basically "Pakistani Idol", and they travel together, fighting, talking, dodging assassins, singing songs, having adventures, and inevitably falling in love.
Even for a road movie, Lahore Se Aagey is very episodic; Tara and Moti stumble into a strange situation, sing a song, grow a little closer, and move on. Most of the time this works, but there is an extended sequence involving offensive tribal stereotypes, a secret jungle rave, a dance-off to the death, and a whole lot of product placement for KFC which drags on for far too long. (And, again, the treatment of tribal people in the scene is genuinely terrible.)
The humor is hit and miss; many of the jokes rely on references to or cameos by various Pakistani celebrities that I have never heard of. I did catch the occasional Sholay reference, and there is a lovely gag involving a power drill that transcends cultural boundaries.
The romance is a bit more interesting. Tara acts tough, but deep down she's just hoping to find someone who will actually listen to her. And Moti is spellbound by Tara, but he's so insecure that he sometimes hides his feelings by acting like a sexist jerk. I think the relationship would be an absolute disaster in real life, but that's often the case with romantic comedies.
In the end, I'm not sure what to make of Lahore Se Aagey. I feel unprepared; I think I really need to see the first movie and pick up a working knowledge of Pakistani pop culture before I can judge it properly.
Saturday, June 20, 2020
Something is rotten in the state of Kashmir.
"Denmark is a prison" according to Hamlet, and as author and general smart person John Green points out, he is absolutely right. Hamlet's Denmark is a surveillance state in which everybody is being watched by someone, and sometimes seeming to be mad is the only safe choice. That's even more true of the Kashmir seen in Haider (2014); this is Kashmir in the nineties, dominated by insurgents, military checkpoints, and civilian disappearances. It's a world where an anonymous tip can be deadlier than ear poison.
Let's take it from the top. Haider (Shahid Kapoor) is a college student who returns home to find that his father, Doctor Hilal Meer (Narendra Jha), has disappeared, taken away by the army, who blew up the house for good measure. Ghazala (Tabu), Haider's mother, has taken refuge with her brother-in-law Khurram (Lay Kay Menon), and they are entirely too close for Haider's comfort.
Rather than mope around his uncle's house, Haider scours the country looking for his father, helped by his childhood sweetheart Arshia (Shraddha Kapoor), and later joining protests with the family members of other disappeared. Khurram, meanwhile, uses his brother's disappearance to further his own political ambitions, while Ghazala tries desperately to reconnect with her son.
And then Arshia is contacted by Roohdar (Irffan Khan), who claims to have a message for Haider from his father. The message is, as you might guess, "avenge my death." According to Roohdar, Khurram was responsible for Hilal's arrest. Hilal and Roohdar were cellmates, and so Roohdar was present when Khurram arranged to have them both murdered. To prove his claims, Roohdar directs Haider to his father's grave, and then, since this is a tragedy, everything goes to hell. There are soliloquies (so many soliloquies), antic dispositions, a big musical number which is the thing wherein to catch the conscience of the . . . lawyer with military connections turned powerful politician, and a climactic and astonishingly bloody gunfight in a graveyard.
This is not Hamlet the play, it's an adaptation, and that means there are differences. The treatment of the female characters is markedly better; Arshia isn't just Ophelia, she also fills in for Horatio, which means she displays a lot more agency than her Shakespearean counterpart; she is Haider's partner, rather than someone to be lied to and avoided. Like Ophelia, Arshia is present for Haider's big "To be or not to be" speech, but unlike Ophelia she gets to interrupt him to ask what the hell he's talking about.
Ghazala, meanwhile, is basically a tragic hero in her own right, She is torn by conflicting loyalties, has an even more complicated relationship with her son than the notoriously complicated Hamlet-Gertrude relationship, and yet remains an active character throughout the film and goes out on her own terms. The entire cast is great, and Shahid Kapoor may well be my favorite cinematic Hamlet, but Tabu is even better. It's an amazing performance.
Haider is also an intensely political film. Haider is not a prince, he's a common man crushed under the weight of an oppressive system. The film's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern analogues are obsessed with Bollywood actor Salman Khan, and the film will sometimes cut between snippets of Khan's goofy nineties movies and the casual brutalization of the people of Kashmir during the same period, including meaningless checkpoints, targeted arrests, torture, and the extrajudicial murder of prisoners. This is not just a meditation on the limits of personal revenge, it asks big questions about how to change a system that has no intention of changing. There are no answers provided.
Let's take it from the top. Haider (Shahid Kapoor) is a college student who returns home to find that his father, Doctor Hilal Meer (Narendra Jha), has disappeared, taken away by the army, who blew up the house for good measure. Ghazala (Tabu), Haider's mother, has taken refuge with her brother-in-law Khurram (Lay Kay Menon), and they are entirely too close for Haider's comfort.
Rather than mope around his uncle's house, Haider scours the country looking for his father, helped by his childhood sweetheart Arshia (Shraddha Kapoor), and later joining protests with the family members of other disappeared. Khurram, meanwhile, uses his brother's disappearance to further his own political ambitions, while Ghazala tries desperately to reconnect with her son.
And then Arshia is contacted by Roohdar (Irffan Khan), who claims to have a message for Haider from his father. The message is, as you might guess, "avenge my death." According to Roohdar, Khurram was responsible for Hilal's arrest. Hilal and Roohdar were cellmates, and so Roohdar was present when Khurram arranged to have them both murdered. To prove his claims, Roohdar directs Haider to his father's grave, and then, since this is a tragedy, everything goes to hell. There are soliloquies (so many soliloquies), antic dispositions, a big musical number which is the thing wherein to catch the conscience of the . . . lawyer with military connections turned powerful politician, and a climactic and astonishingly bloody gunfight in a graveyard.
This is not Hamlet the play, it's an adaptation, and that means there are differences. The treatment of the female characters is markedly better; Arshia isn't just Ophelia, she also fills in for Horatio, which means she displays a lot more agency than her Shakespearean counterpart; she is Haider's partner, rather than someone to be lied to and avoided. Like Ophelia, Arshia is present for Haider's big "To be or not to be" speech, but unlike Ophelia she gets to interrupt him to ask what the hell he's talking about.
Ghazala, meanwhile, is basically a tragic hero in her own right, She is torn by conflicting loyalties, has an even more complicated relationship with her son than the notoriously complicated Hamlet-Gertrude relationship, and yet remains an active character throughout the film and goes out on her own terms. The entire cast is great, and Shahid Kapoor may well be my favorite cinematic Hamlet, but Tabu is even better. It's an amazing performance.
Haider is also an intensely political film. Haider is not a prince, he's a common man crushed under the weight of an oppressive system. The film's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern analogues are obsessed with Bollywood actor Salman Khan, and the film will sometimes cut between snippets of Khan's goofy nineties movies and the casual brutalization of the people of Kashmir during the same period, including meaningless checkpoints, targeted arrests, torture, and the extrajudicial murder of prisoners. This is not just a meditation on the limits of personal revenge, it asks big questions about how to change a system that has no intention of changing. There are no answers provided.
Saturday, June 13, 2020
Desi movie, Scottish play
Veeram (2017) isn't my first Indian MacBeth, but while Maqbool was a gritty tale of love and murder in the contemporary Mumbai underworld, Veeram is aiming for epic, with big battles, stunning scenery, and a storyline which mixes Shakespeare with traditional ballads.
Chandu (Kunal Kapoor) is a warrior, a master of the martial art of Kalaripayattu, and member of a clan of duelists. While returning home from a successful duel, Chandu and his friend Kelu (sorry, Kelu, but the internet won't tell me who plays you) wander into a cave, where they encounter a sorceress and her naked medium. The medium makes the expected predictions; Chandu will become the lieutenant to the clan chieftain, and then chieftain himself, while Kelu's son will be chief after him.
The pair laugh off the spooky naked prophecy and continue their journey home. When they get there, they learn that Chandu has been promoted to be the lieutenant to the current chieftain, Aromal (Shivajith Padmanabhan). Aromal is a bit apprehensive, since he personally prevented Chandu's marriage to the lovely Unniyarcha (Himarsha Venkatsamy), but everyone assures him that it will be fine, since Chandu is such an upright and honorable man.
Everything is not fine. Chandu is suddenly filled with ambition. Unniyarcha is suddenly very interested in Chandu, despite already having a husband, but Kuttimani (Divanaa Thackur) manages to win his heart, then Lady MacBeths him into sabotaging Aromal's weapon for an upcoming duel. And when that doesn't work, the pair tale matters into their own hands, everything takes a turn for the decidedly tragic.
This is post-Baahubali MacBeth; the budget is lower, but the scale is still suitably epic. The fight scenes are lovingly choreographed and make great use of the urumi, my personal favorite impractical melee weapon. The cinematography and set design is even more impressive, making stunning use of color and scale. And the
If the movie has a weakness, it's the dialogue. Like many Indian movies, Veeram was shot in multiple languages. I watched the English version, and while some of the lines were lifted directly from Shakespeare, much of the dialogue sounds like a modern translation aimed at students, replacing the original poetry with something more . . . prosaic.
Still, while the dialogue is a bit mundane at times, nothing else in the movie is. This is tragedy on a grand scale, like Baahubali's art-house cousin.
Chandu (Kunal Kapoor) is a warrior, a master of the martial art of Kalaripayattu, and member of a clan of duelists. While returning home from a successful duel, Chandu and his friend Kelu (sorry, Kelu, but the internet won't tell me who plays you) wander into a cave, where they encounter a sorceress and her naked medium. The medium makes the expected predictions; Chandu will become the lieutenant to the clan chieftain, and then chieftain himself, while Kelu's son will be chief after him.
The pair laugh off the spooky naked prophecy and continue their journey home. When they get there, they learn that Chandu has been promoted to be the lieutenant to the current chieftain, Aromal (Shivajith Padmanabhan). Aromal is a bit apprehensive, since he personally prevented Chandu's marriage to the lovely Unniyarcha (Himarsha Venkatsamy), but everyone assures him that it will be fine, since Chandu is such an upright and honorable man.
Everything is not fine. Chandu is suddenly filled with ambition. Unniyarcha is suddenly very interested in Chandu, despite already having a husband, but Kuttimani (Divanaa Thackur) manages to win his heart, then Lady MacBeths him into sabotaging Aromal's weapon for an upcoming duel. And when that doesn't work, the pair tale matters into their own hands, everything takes a turn for the decidedly tragic.
This is post-Baahubali MacBeth; the budget is lower, but the scale is still suitably epic. The fight scenes are lovingly choreographed and make great use of the urumi, my personal favorite impractical melee weapon. The cinematography and set design is even more impressive, making stunning use of color and scale. And the
If the movie has a weakness, it's the dialogue. Like many Indian movies, Veeram was shot in multiple languages. I watched the English version, and while some of the lines were lifted directly from Shakespeare, much of the dialogue sounds like a modern translation aimed at students, replacing the original poetry with something more . . . prosaic.
Still, while the dialogue is a bit mundane at times, nothing else in the movie is. This is tragedy on a grand scale, like Baahubali's art-house cousin.
Saturday, June 6, 2020
Romancing the large bag of cash.
Kshana Kshaban (1991) opens with a bank robbery gone bad, leading to a shootout with the police. Ringleader Narayana (Horse Babu) manages to escape with one accomplice and a bag of money, but he kills the accomplice and runs off with the money, infuriating his boss, quirky crimelord Nayar (Paresh Rawal). After concealing the money, Narayana hides out in his brother's photo studio, where he is quickly caught and tortured.
Narayana did leave directions to the treasure, but through a series of coincidences the directions wind up in the hands of one of the photo studio's customers, spunky office worker Satya (Sridevi). One of Nayar's men tracks her to her apartment, and after a brief struggle over a pair of scissors, he winds up dead. Unfortunately, Satya's creepy neighbor chooses that precise moment to drop by, and even more unfortunately he's from the Village of People Who Jump to Conclusions, so Satya suddenly finds herself on the run from the police.
And that's when she meets Chandu (Venkatesh Daggubati), a streetwise thief with the requisite heart of gold. he saves her from a pair of Eve teasers, and when the police show up looking for Satya, he assumes they're looking for him (because thief), takes her hostage, and the pair flee into theFire Swampnearby forest.
Kshana Kshanam has a remarkably straightforward plot, especially for an Indian movie from the Nineties; there's a clear MacGuffin, and Satya and Chandu look for it while dodging both Nayar's goons and the police. Sridevi handles the bulk of the comedy, so there's no need for a comic relief subplot. Still, the movie is two and a half hours long, and fills its running time with wild changes of tone. The opening bank robbery is dark and bloody and features no dialogue, while the scenes of Satya's daily life are bright and brittle, painting a picture of a woman who is not happy and hasn't realized it. And yet when Satya and Chandu begin to fall in love (because of course Satya and Chandu fall in love) we get dance numbers. Colorful, enthusiastic, occasionally silly dance numbers.
Kshana Kshanam was director Ram Gopal Varma's second film, and it shows; many of Varma's directorial quirks are on display here, including his trademark weird camera angles, but they lack polish. It is an interesting idea to film part of a car chase from the underside of a car, for instance, but it doesn't really work well in practice. Still, while the movie is sometimes clumsy, it is consistently interesting. Granted, sometimes the movie seems to be coasting on Sridevi's natural charisma, but she's got charisma to spare, so you can do that.
Narayana did leave directions to the treasure, but through a series of coincidences the directions wind up in the hands of one of the photo studio's customers, spunky office worker Satya (Sridevi). One of Nayar's men tracks her to her apartment, and after a brief struggle over a pair of scissors, he winds up dead. Unfortunately, Satya's creepy neighbor chooses that precise moment to drop by, and even more unfortunately he's from the Village of People Who Jump to Conclusions, so Satya suddenly finds herself on the run from the police.
And that's when she meets Chandu (Venkatesh Daggubati), a streetwise thief with the requisite heart of gold. he saves her from a pair of Eve teasers, and when the police show up looking for Satya, he assumes they're looking for him (because thief), takes her hostage, and the pair flee into the
Kshana Kshanam has a remarkably straightforward plot, especially for an Indian movie from the Nineties; there's a clear MacGuffin, and Satya and Chandu look for it while dodging both Nayar's goons and the police. Sridevi handles the bulk of the comedy, so there's no need for a comic relief subplot. Still, the movie is two and a half hours long, and fills its running time with wild changes of tone. The opening bank robbery is dark and bloody and features no dialogue, while the scenes of Satya's daily life are bright and brittle, painting a picture of a woman who is not happy and hasn't realized it. And yet when Satya and Chandu begin to fall in love (because of course Satya and Chandu fall in love) we get dance numbers. Colorful, enthusiastic, occasionally silly dance numbers.
Kshana Kshanam was director Ram Gopal Varma's second film, and it shows; many of Varma's directorial quirks are on display here, including his trademark weird camera angles, but they lack polish. It is an interesting idea to film part of a car chase from the underside of a car, for instance, but it doesn't really work well in practice. Still, while the movie is sometimes clumsy, it is consistently interesting. Granted, sometimes the movie seems to be coasting on Sridevi's natural charisma, but she's got charisma to spare, so you can do that.
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