A TEN FOLD CHAOS!

MOVIE: Dasavathaaram
CAST: Kamal Hasan, Asin, Mallika Sherawat
DIRECTOR: K.S Ravikumar




The script of the movie is based on the popular mathematical idea of the west; the Chaos Theory. The Chaos theory believes that even though a particular event is deterministic, its fate is described by its initial state, it occurs through a random and unpredictable series of events. And as a further corollary to this theory, it goes on to say, that all events in this world is a part of the chaos theory. The initial state of the earth has determined its fate and whatever happens in between is a random, unpredictable juggle of events.

On the other hand, our Hindu mythology speaks of a multitude of Gods looking at earth and living with terrestrial beings in form of incarnations. The Hindu mythology supports the idea that even the biggest of disasters happen to overcome a bigger disaster and that everything is being controlled by the Gods.

The genius of the script writer of Dasavathaaram lies in the fact that he has collaborated both these distant ideas into one and has actually brought out the essence of these ideas in an entertainment packed manner. As a thought, this movie is a sheer winner, but it does not really translate as an equal wonder on screen.

The movie travels many generations ranging from the Cholas in the 12th century to George Bush, from Biotechnological Weapons to the Tsunami of 2004. Hasan plays 10 roles in the movie and like most of his movies, there is only he all around. I dont think theres a single shot without him on the screen. I saw the movies dubbed version, so many comedy scenes might have lost their wit. Asin overacted throughout but looked great. Sherawat's brief stint was good enough. All the 10 avatars of Kamal Hasan are brilliantly carried by him. No doubt, the make up job was brilliant.

Himesh Reshammiya surprised me with two tracks in this movie. While Mukunda Mukunda was a sweet portrayal of Vishnu's incarnations, Kallai Mattum was deep and very beautifully sung by Hariharan. The other tracks were very average. The movie towards the end had some stupid scenes. We were made to believe that a bullet hitting a cancer patients throat can do a miracle of taking the cancer away with itself......Also Asin's overacting was taking a toll on the viewers patience and more so because of the dubbing, until another version of Hasan, Khalifullah came to the rescue.

The beautiful correlation of the ten forms of Hasan and appropriate pattern of narration make Dasavathaaram an out and out entertainer. Though the style of filmmaking could be a little more mature than the typical Tamil action flicks, this movie is an intellectual treat if you put efforts to think about it. Though the movie is a few hours of entertainment, its idea, endless.

AATH AANA!

FILM: Barah Aana (2009)
CAST: Naseruddin Shah, Vijay Raaz, Arjun Mathur
DIRECTOR: Raja Menon





After coming to know that everyone else in my class had gone to the movies to celebrate the end of exams, I had become desperate to do so too.This quest led me to the doors of this movie.Sitting all alone with a friend in a neraly complete empty theater( this was not a reflection on the movie...actually it was 11 in the morning on a Monday) with my legs propped up on the seat in front, I watched the movie screen come to life.

The story goes something like this. Shukla(Naseerudin Shah) discovers that he has officialy been declared dead due to a series of misfortunes(This part may have no significance now but holds the key to the end). He moves to Mumbai to work as a driver and lives in the slums of Dharavi. Yadav(Vijay Raaz) is a watchman who is trodden over and abused to the limit and then beyond it. And he has no choice but to bear it for the sake of his family who are solely dependent on him for their existence. Aman( Arjun Mathur)- Yadav's room-mate is a waiter at a swanky restaurant. He crushes in a on Italian girl who unkown to him lives her life by selling drugs.The plot shows it face when Yadav receives a phone call informing him that back home money's needed for treatment of his child.

Unable to procure the money properly he turns to trickery due to a completely unseen turn of events. Enticed by the power, he coerces Aman and threatens Shukla to continue the "business". The conclusion of this whacky adventure is the best part of the movie. Add along a side track of romance between Aman and the beautiful Italian (Violante Placido) onlyn for him to be finally betrayed, you have a classic paani puri to be eaten. But sadly, I found the movie all paani and not much puri.

Now, the movie is not all that bad . In fact I had really liked the start and the end. But unforunately, that was it. Sure, certain moments provided amusement but nothing that kept you going along with the story.Over the years oppression of the poor/ helpless has been quite a hot topic with film makers. Sensationalisation along with some fantasy has led to this giving us several hits.

The biggest surprise for me was Vijay Raaz . He played his role with such sincerity...I truly say that this is his best performance till date. Arjun Mathur has done very good for a debut film although I felt he was trying too hard. Naseeruddin Shah is the cherry on the top! I've now come to expect nothing but the best from this man.
If I liked the acting so much, then what problem did I have with the movie you may ask. Frankly, for me, it was the implementation of the script.It truly left much to be desired.
But none the less, this film is truly timepass material- say for an afternoon weekend while lying in bed at home with hot samosas and a botlle of Pepsi. The originality of the script makes me give another half star...Its not the best, but its a start.


- Karthik Krishna

(For the first time on The Soaham Blog, we have a guest writer. Just wait and watch readers, there will be many new surprises coming for you. Karthik Krishna is an year junior to me, but has a tremendous writing flare and good insight on movies. He would be co-writing on this blog from today, Barah Aana is his debut! Lets all give him the warmest welcome to The Soaham Blog.)

You too want to write for The Soaham Blog????

Mail any of your article to soaham43@gmail.com

A TRUE BUT INCOMPLETE PICTURE

MOVIE: Firaaq(2009)
DIRECTOR: Nandita Das
CAST: Naseruddin Shah, Paresh Rawal, Suhanna Goswami,Sanjay Suri, Tisca Chopra and Deepti Naval




Now straight away let me tell you that talking about this movie here is controversial. I wont go deep into the political roots of this movie because I do not desire to hurt any section or inspire any section to do something radical. Whatever has happened in the Gujarat riots is unfortunate and inhuman. This movie deals with this issue and is set in the time during the riots. The strength of the movie is undoubtedly the technically sound direction of Nandita Das and the powerful performances by Naseruddin Shah, Deepti Naval, Paresh Rawal and others. Sanjay Suri and Tisca Chopra too were very impressive. The title Firaaq is exceptionally apt. It is an Urdu word which means both hope and separation. And both these emotions form the roots of this movie. The hope that things would get better and the separation from communal harmony and humanity too form the theme of this story.

The educated Hindu intelligentsia in our country today speaks pro-Muslim things rather than facts to prove their secularism. They have somewhere in them that if they praise Ustad Bismillah Khan(RIP) instead of Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia, they could be striking a more secular note. It is a usual human tendency, and it is somewhere reflected in Nandita Das' Firaaq. It is no doubt that this movie is a collection of some true incidents, but the sequencing of these events and the character built up has made it look very much anti-Hindu more than pro-Muslim. I mean the story writer may argue that he has not projected Hindus in general but only one character of Paresh Rawal and that in his story such a thing has happened. He may bring out an incident from the newsreel to support his storyline, but many newsreels and story lines regarding the Hindu sufferings may be omitted. All this because of that "prove to be secular" tendency.

Firaaq deals with the lives of different people in different societies and facing different conditions, the common thread between them being the riots. Naseruddin Shah brilliantly plays the retired musician who is cut off from the happenings of the world outside and immersed in the seven notes. Sanjay Suri and Tisca Chopra play a Muslim-Hindu couple who are migrating Delhi seeing the conditions here. Paresh Rawal and Deepti Naval play a Hindu couple where Rawal is a con fellow and Naval is a fishy woman with a good heart. No real reason for ther fishiness and hallucinations of riot victims was substantiated. Suhana Goswami plays a brilliant role of a woman whose house is burnt in the riots. Like most of the Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta kind of meaningless "meaningful cinema", this movie though superior to a Nair or Mehta flick, is inconclusive even with efforts of conclusion, is controversial unnecessarily and is a true, but an incomplete picture, which can be really dangerous.

NOT REVOLUTIONARY, BUT AMAZING ANYWAY

MOVIE: Revolutionary Road (2008)
CAST: Leonardo Di Caprio, Kate Winslet
DIRECTION: Sam Mendes




The institution of marriage is the strangest of all. While it is the purest form of union, its side effects can never be ignored. The amount of bliss a happy marriage can bring into life and the amount of positive energy it can give you is unbelievable. Similarly abundant is the amount of stress, retardation and suffocation an unhappy marriage can give you. Mr and Mrs. Wheeler have an unhappy marriage(Di caprio and Winslet) in Revolutionary Road. Mrs. April Wheeler aspired to be an actress. Her aspiration remained unfulfilled and her ambition got dug somewhere and her only consolation was a husband who supported her pretty decently. Her husband, Mr. Frank Wheeler, is on the other hand, unhappy with his job and believes the pressure of earning the basics has cut his wings and changed his freestyle mentality and forced him to work at a place where he does not belong.

This seed of unhappiness in this couple grows slowly into a monstrous forest and the after effects of this spoilt love marriage are better if not mentioned. They have two children and April deep inside considers their elder one as a "mistake" rather than a boon. Under all this unhappiness of their life, April one fine day decides that they should move to Paris to start of a fresh life. The decision is apparently childish as Frank does not have any guarantee of finding a job there. The dynamics of these human complexities, the human expressions of love, lust, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, infidelity, ambition, faith, courage and fear make this lovely treat called Revolutionary Road.

The Winslet- DiCaprio pairing is without a doubt one of the most complementing pairs in the world. Kate Winslet yet again features in a complex marriage flick, an earlier better flick she worked in was Little Children. Kate might have been nominated with a BAFTA for the best actress here, but I feel DiCaprio's portrayal of Frank was much superior and deserved more attention. The movie is nothing "revolutionary" in that sense, but just another sensitive tale and consequence of an unhappy marriage. This movie would be remembered for its elegant direction and brilliant performances. Michael Shannon's portrayal of the retard neighbour, forms a pivotal role in the film and is a brilliant performance too(nominated for an Oscar). As I have always said, "If marriages are made in heaven, heaven consists of a bunch of incompetent and wicked devils"

THE DARK COLOURS OF DEMOCRACY

FILM: Gulaal (2009)
DIRECTOR: Anurag Kashyap
CAST: Raj Singh Chaudhary, Kay Kay Menon, Ayesha Mohan




Probably the most important character in this movie is that of Piyush Mishra who happens to be the music director and lyricist of this movie. The movie opens with the fact that it is a tribute to the various poets who have deeply inspired the freedom movement of India. There could not have been a better person than Mishra to give this tribute. His songs will be remembered for the feat of carrying the theme of this movie amazingly. The depth of the words he has used make you a victim of several emotions. You may cry, you may smile, your blood may boil and you may just stay silent admiring the talent of this genius. Gulaal deals with a very delicate issue that revolution today is misunderstood and malpractices are occuring in the name of revolution. No one wants to bring a true change, revolution is a heavy word which serves the purpose of bringing momentum and energy to overthrow a power and to gain....power!

It is the lust of power which is driving the world now. Kashyap brings his world in Rajasthan. Kay Kay Menon plays a mass leader of an association which wants "revolution" and is as usual a brilliant performer. Abhimanyu Singh plays a brief but a powerful role of Ranasa who is the legitimate son of His Highness. He is contesting for the General Secratary post in a university. Fighting for the same post is a young and beautiful girl, Kiran. She too is the daughter of His Highness, but she is the illegitimate one. A ragged student of the college is our protagonist Dileep Singh, fantastically portrayed by Raj Singh Chaudhary.

Gulaal has its strength in the poetry and the dialogues and the brilliant Kashyap direction has made it a masterpiece eye opener. I often feel bad using the word eye opener. The irony with our society has always been that our eyes have been opened, yet we are blind when we actually have to do something to change it. This movie targets almost everything bad in the society and pretty decently carries it too. Depth is the word which is inseparable from Gulaal. The filthy dynamics of politics, the inhumanism of humans, the thirst for power and the power to get power, the paradox that power begets power and only power gets power have been strongly portrayed.

The happenings of the movie might be thoroughly depressing and saddening and maddening to a major section but what comes as a gift is the amazing cinematic treatment of Kashyap. He seems to have the fancy for red, blue, green lighting and unicolour filters and we see its extensive use in his movies. There was too much of yellow in No Smoking, too much of blue in Dev.D and here we see too much of red in Gulaal. These colours are not just for funk, they again as I said, are deep. The red here stands as a symbol to Love, Betrayal, Power and its misuse, Murder and Revolution. Even if you miss out on this movie, dont miss out on the music. The serio comic fast paced number called Ranaji and the meaningful Aarambh are two brilliant tracks from the album. But surely the best and concluding one is the defining one, Duniya. If you can withstand depression and appreciate hindi heartland slangs then that would be a great additional qualities to watch Gulaal . The question this movie deeply leaves on your mind and the answer for which may not exist iss, "What the hell is this circus called democracy?"

A SWEET LITTLE EXPERIENCE

FILM: Little Zizou
DIRECTOR: Sooni Taraporewala
CAST: Jahan Bativala, Imaad Shah, Boman Irani




I cannot forget my days in the Dadar Parsee Youths Assembly High School. Apart from the great school that it was, the beauty of its locality, the Five Gardens is something beyond expression. Five gardens are not the world's most beautiful garden, nor are they peaceful with the plenty traffic, pollution and kissing couples all around. Obviously the chaat walas, the horse carts and the toy wala, everyone coexist in harmony and not so harmony at Five Gardens; a place which bears testimony to the history of one of the great communities in India; the Parsees. The Five Gardens is one of the few places in Mumbai where you will find a dominant Zorastrain population. The Parsees are few in number and mostly the other communities often fail to relate themselves with the Parsees. A major reason to that also is a closed policy of the Parsees. They do not endorse mixed marriages and the rights to the entry to their worship place(Agyari) is chopped down even if you are a Parsee and have married a non parsee. All this makes the community shrink in size and conditions have reached such a horrible extent that in some cases just for the sake of protecting the community to community relation, often closely related cousins marry each other which has led to many biological problems amongst the community.

Coming to the movie, we are talking about Xerxes, played with outstanding maturity by Jahan Bativala, the new child artiste on the block. His elder bro Artaxerxes(Imaad Shah) is into his own weird world of making sketches and is working on a "Flight Simulator" along with two more engineers. Apart from that he runs a very interesting blog. They do not have a mother. Their father is a religious fanatic ;who in the name of "blessing does boob pressing" amongst the many other inhuman things he does. Artaxerxes compares him to Idi Amin(the cannibal Uganda president) and Atilla the Hun (leader of the barbaric Hun tribe). Boman Irani is a neighbour who knows this person's shady ways and wants to expose him through a modest newspaper he runs. With few more characters and a lot of depth to each of them, Little Zizou pulls out a very sensitive tale which makes you laugh, cry and most importantly learn.

More publicised as an All-Parsee film, Little Zizou surely does deal with the life of only this community but the way it has captured the slightest of dynamics of all age groups and lifestyles of the community makes it so human that any other community can relate to it and think of society and its problems in general. Bickram Ghosh, one of my favourite musicians, did not really work hard on the background score. He just pulled of few scores from his superhit Rythym Scape and used them here. More interesting were the ethnic oldies sung in normal voice by Boman Irani with his impeccable dancing. Few know that Boman is a brilliant dancer and has been training Imaad post Little Zizou.

Little Zizou mostly deals with the shady ways of the people in power exploiting religious sentiments. Power and religion often form the perfect cocktail for the con dividers and hence have been heavily mixed from centuries. This small little movie, with a very fresh approach tells you a lot about this cocktail. Go for this one, this could well make your dull day shining!

THE UNDERRATED JOHNNY

FILM: Johnny Gaddar (2007)
CAST: Neil Nitin Mukesh, Dharmendra, Rimi Sen
DIRECTOR: Sriram Raghavan




Rene Brabazon Raymond wrote many outstanding thriller novels and his writing life which ranges from the 1930s to the mid 1980s has captured the changing thrills of the American society. His books were bestsellers in Asia, Africa, France and Italy and many of his books were made into movies. Few have heard of Raymond, but many have read his works under the pseudonym he chose: James Hadley Chase! Johnny Gaddar is a tribute to this legendary writer. Raghavan also pays tribute to the Vijay Anand thrillers. My favourite has to be Guide. but Raghavan chose Johnny Mera Naam. Johnny Gaddar has to be one of the most underrated movies of 2007. Initially damned by critics coupled by blank theatres, this classic did not get its due.

The story is intelligent and complex and carved out of simple locations and characters. The movie deals with a caper gang which involves itself in making gray deals with an honest and old criminal Sheshadri (Dharmendra) heading the gang. Shardul (Zakir Hussain) and Prakash(Vinay Pathak) are the two other members of the gang apart from Shiva(Daya Shetty) and Vikram(Neil Nitin Mukesh). A commisioner Kalyan (Govind Namdeo, brilliant) offers Sheshadri a deal with which the caper gang can make a big killing. But Vikram the trusted one has other plans and he goes on to eliminate his fellow members to try and eat up all the food himself.

With brilliant performances by almost everyone, Johnny Gaddar is an intelligent, fast paced, interesting and an edge of the seat experience. Probably the best performance of Dharmendra and a perfect debut start for Mukesh, makes this flick unforgettable. The movie has a closed end, yet I heard that a sequel is being made with the name Johnny Tokyo. The successful creation of brand Johnny is completely credited to Raghavan's intelligent direction. No doubt, we want more of this Johnny!!