skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Bejoy Nambiar had won a competition comprising of aspiring filmmakers and he was supposed get an opportunity to direct a movie backed by Ashok Amritraj. Amritraj, who’s spent his life producing sub-par genre films, didn’t honour his commitment, and fortunately for the wannabe filmmaker, the maverick Anurag Kashyap stepped in in the nick of time. Shaitan is a dark, psychedelic and wickedly funny tale of five friends, and their hallucinatory journey through hell. The five delinquent, emotionally bankrupt youngsters, most hailing from wealthy families, end up inadvertently committing a crime during one of their many hedonistic sprees, thus setting them on a rollercoaster ride involving blackmail and murder. Meanwhile, an excellent cop, who has long stopped acting by the books, takes charge of the hunt. The hyperstylized, unabashedly violent and deliriously amoral film is unrestrained in its depiction of a modern-day urban dystopia. The film however is not without its drawbacks. For one, the young director’s overindulgence ought to have been kept under a tight check by Kashyap. Further, since most of the characters have been painted in broad strokes, they end up just as “types”. And not to forget, it started seeming overlong by the third quarter. Nonetheless, criticisms aside, the film has provided ample proof of Nambiar’s immense potential as a filmmaker.
Director: Bejoy Nambiar
Genre: Thriller/Black Comedy/Crime Thriller/Psychedelic Thriller
Language: Hindi
Country: India
Rohan Sippy quite surely has seen some world cinema, and has learnt about a few interesting filming techniques. But seeing his Dum Maro Dum, he seemed akin to a student of literature who might have memorised all the technical aspects about the language, maybe even the grandiloquent words, but has never learnt how to form a cohesive sentence. The film follows the lives of a number of disparate characters – an angry cop (Abhishek Bachchan), a sad musician, a naïve young guy and a self-destructive lady (Bipasha Basu), among others, all brought together by the prevalent underground drug-culture in India’s party-capital, Goa. Bachchan did a good job as the head of the team to clean Goa of its mess, and ends up going into collision-mode with the drug lords. A plethora of twists and turns later, however, the film turned into more of a brainless cat-and-mouse game than an intelligent thriller. For the film to be successful, it was essential for the director to invest time in building the atmosphere and making Goa the symbolic fifth character of the film. Unfortunately for us film goers, that never happened, and so a premise that held a lot of promise, was instead turned into a mindless, hyper-stylised and over-edited series of unrelated montages. And by the way, legendary composer R.D. Burman would surely be turning in his grave listening to the bastardisation of his iconic tribute to the hippy era – the Hare Rama Hare Krishna song that game the movie its name.
Director: Rohan Sippy
Genre: Thriller/Crime Thriller/Mystery
Language: Hindi
Country: India
Govind Nihalani is renowned for infusing realism in cinema (which some like calling "parallel cinema") – a rare trait among makers of Hindi movies, and Ardh Satya ranks among his most well-known films. Based in the mega-city of Bombay, the movie, which derived its name from a terrific poem that is recited in one of the most memorable scenes, is gritty, hard-hitting and deeply existentialist in nature. The film’s protagonist, Anant Velankar (exceptionally played by Om Puri), wanted to pursue literature. However his father (played by another doyen of Hindi cinema, Amrish Puri), was a constable, and literally forced him, through his towering and abrasive personality, to become a cop. A no-nonsense person by nature, the Anant refuses to take shit from anybody, and hence it’s only a matter of time before he goes into head-on, self-destructive collision with a powerful local mafia (another tremendous performance, this time by debutante Sadashiv Amrapurkar). Meanwhile he also starts developing a touching relationship with Jyotsna (delicately played by Smitha Patil), a soft-spoken lecturer in Literature. The film is not without its flaws, but it has the kind of vitality and energy rarely on display in Hindi cinema. It benefited heavily from great performances by everyone in the cast, including a fine cameo by Naseeruddin Shah. Interestingly, one of the scenes in the film, which shows Anant climbing up a staircase, was heavily reminiscent of a similar scene in Satyajit Ray’s Seemabaddha.
Director: Govind Nihalani
Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Police Drama
Language: Hindi
Country: India
Adapted from a short story by Ruskin Bond (who is, ironically, best known as a children’s writer), Vishal Bradwaj’s 7 Khoon Maaf is a dark and twisted journey, even a phantasmagorical one at times, through the life of its damaged protagonist. Susanna is a beautiful and elegant lady, she has an aristocratic lineage, she’s always surrounded by a devoutly loyal coterie of orderlies and servants, and all she craves for is simple and unconditional love. Yet, as luck would have it, she gets married to one grotesque man after another – a wife-beating chauvinist, a crazy drug-addict, a two-timing Russian diplomat, a double-faced sadomasochist, an unctuous pill-popper, and a vicious murderer in the garb of a gentility; and she responds, as the title suggests, by sending each of them to their graves. The film is very well photographed, peppered with some lovely numbers, and boasts of a marvelous ensemble cast comprising of the likes of Naseeruddin Shah, Anu Kapoor, Irfan Khan, John Abraham, Neil Nitin Mukesh, and Konkona Sen-Sharma. But the most striking aspect of the film, undoubtedly, remains Priyanka Chopra’s absolutely incredible performance as the enigmatic Susanna. However, the film could have been edited into a more compact whole as some of the sub-plots dragged at times. The guy who provides us with the voice-over was also disappointing as he seemed to be trying really hard to copy Shahrukh Khan of all actors.
Director: Vishal Bharadwaj
Genre: Psychological Drama/Psychological Thriller/Black Comedy/Ensemble Film
Language: Hindi
Country: India
Manorama Six Feet Under is an interesting, and at times, a mind-bending thriller – I’m sure that’s reason enough to call it an offbeat Hindi films. The film is an Indian rendition of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown. The protagonist is a small-time writer who, while investigating a powerful politician for infidelity, gets inadvertently drawn into a sordid conspiracy filled with blackmail, deceit, murder, and well, much more. Set in the rural badlands of Rajasthan (expertly framed by the DOP), the film is well-paced and boasts of a captivating plot, more so if you haven’t already watched the Polanski masterpiece. And the iconic role of Jack Gittes (immortalized by Jack Nicholson) is here played by Abhay Deol. Though never close to Nicholson’s volcanic performance, Deol's is pretty good nonetheless. Raima Sen too is good as a mysterious girl who Deol, despite being a married man, finds himself falling for, while Kulbushan Kharbanda and Vinay Pathak are very effective in their respective roles. A lot about the plot might seem borrowed from the neo-noir classic it is based on, yet there’s also a lot of novelty here which seems like a whiff of fresh air amidst the travesty regularly dished out by Bollywood in the name of cinema. And, given that the director came clean about his reference by showing a glimpse of the famous nose-slashing scene in Chinatown, it’s easy to appreciate the fact that he isn’t just a good filmmaker, but an ardent cinephile too.
Director: Navdeep Singh
Genre: Thriller/Crime Thriller/Neo-Noir
Language: Hindi
Country: India
Kiran Rao had been known till now as the wife of the popular Hindi movie actor, Amir Khan; henceforth, thanks to her assured directorial debut film Dhobi Ghat, she has carved a recognition for herself, albeit among those of you who, like me, enjoy niche, intelligent, sensible and middle-of-the-line cinema. The film is about four individuals, and residents of the mega-metropolis of Mumbai, who, as coincidence would have it, end up sharing a link to each other’s lives – a chain-smoking painter who prefers living a lonely existence (Amir Khan, in a fine role completely stripped of his ‘star’ persona), a US-resident investment banker who has taken a sabbatical from her job in order to pursue her passion of photojournalism, a poor ‘dhobi’ (laundry man) who dreams of becoming an actor someday, and a young lady who has recently moved in to Mumbai with her newly wedded husband. What I found most striking about the film was, apart from the honesty of the nicely penned down script, was the way simple, unspectacular moments of a few regular people have been affectionately captured. And these moments have been wonderfully woven together to provide a collage of these disparate individuals, with the city acting as a silent but omnipresent observer. The film has been exquisitely shot, providing a tapestry that is as rich as it is affecting.
Director: Kiran Rao
Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Ensemble Film
Language: Hindi
Country: India
