I'm honestly no film critic to carefully analyse each aspect of filmmaking and cinema. This is just an honest account of what I felt after I saw the film. I watch films because I simply love them and I love indulging in the story as if I were a part of it. Anyway, this was my first press show of a film and I didn't want to miss it since I was awaiting Rockstar's release since ages. Moreover, with Rahman's music and Imtiaz Ali's direction, I had high expectations. I love the larger- than-life angle to films and Rockstar is no different. It is a simple story with multifarious emotions and takes you on an emotional journey of an artiste/performer/musician (whatever you would call him except a rockstar). Janardan Jakad (Ranbir Kapoor) is crazy about music and wants to be a rockstar, adhering to the likes of the legends like Jim Morrison and Led Zeppelin. It's just that nothing clicks for a long time and he is made to believe by his friend-mentor that music emanates from a broken heart. Heer Kaul (Nargis Fakhri) is the campus hottie and is known for her high-handed ways of dealing with guys. Janardan befriends her only to realise that love doesn't happen so easily and it takes a lot to know what love is. Then on the story unravels itself with interesting twists and Janardan becomes Jordan, the ultimate rockstar. He fulfills his dream only to realise that what he really wanted was missing in his life.

What struck me was the honesty and simplicity with which Imtiaz presents his characters in his films. And in a world where you have too many pretences around, Imtiaz makes you believe that people are genuine, crazy; they are passionate and also fail in life. Janardan doesn't change inwardly as a person and neither does he fall prey to the shallowness around him. Problems arise only because he refuses to and wants to live in a world of his own. As always, Imtiaz gets the pace of the film bang on. I believe that if a story doesn't drag, doesn't make you want to fidget in your seat and doesn't make you look at your cellphone for distraction, then it manages to hold your attention with the right pace. This also proves that he has a good editing team. And Imtiaz lets his characters develop and gives them that space to grow. Music is probably one of the strongest factors that draws the audiences to the theatre, but the music and story go hand in hand once you put the two together in case of Rockstar. Both would have been incomplete without each other. Imtiaz also reaffirms your faith in love stories and that they can exist in a realistic world of trials and tribulations.

Now what doesn't work is the second half of the film. The first half allows Janardan to realise, to become mature and understand the ways of life. What second half fails to achieve is the same flow and questioning. It's more of his struggle and angst rather than the reasoning behind it. It could have been endearing to see Janardan question himself, the world and his music a little more than what was shown. Also, several situations remain unanswered and unattended. But logic is not what we look for in our cinema usually.

Imtiaz carefully weaves his story around people and places that are refreshing in a world of Hindi cinema dominated by the Punjabis and Gujaratis. Janardan fits well as a Jat boy and Ranbir brings out that rawness and mufatness (if i may indulge in Hinglish) with much maturity and understanding. His sudden spurs of angst and restlessness with the well-written dialogues support him develop his character ably. Even the picturesque Kashmir and Prague are a treat to your eyes and Imtiaz once again make you gasp at the simplicity of places and people. The film has its moments of fun and laughter without even making an attempt to be funny. Nargis Fakhri is definitely charming and alluring, but not an actor by any means. She truly has a long way to go and could keep up lest she works hard at her dialogue delivery and diction. Otherwise the moments of romance do tug your heartstrings. There's clearly no scope for right or wrong aspects since the film doesn't believe in them. But it's only fair that you don't miss out on a good film. Go watch it now.

Dot

I am back! :) and with full josh only to be slowed down again by laziness. Currently on my music article on Colombian artists, I couldn't resist coming back to my blog. It seems old, vintage types with a very old design and dots and circles. I appreciate dots and believe in them. They do make life more meaningful and interesting and barely require any space. Come to think of it, a lot can be summarised in one dot. I do hope i make some sense here because very often I tend to digress and include random thoughts. So dots make sense. It is obviously known for putting an end to everything and three dots that also signal the process of continuing. And it is something we can see unlike some latest antimatter particle which claims to be the root to all life in the universe. Considering their visibility, size and shape, I think they make for an excellent punctuation mark. Dot rhymes with few three lettered words like pot, lot, cot, got,hot, tot and not. But dot sounds the best and has been more meaningful than any of the other three lettered words that rhymed with it. I envy its independence. It can exercise its right whenever it wants to and the person coming across a dot who probably would have made no sense will still try to figure out the meaning and purpose of a dot. It can do whatever it wants to and will never face the blame if it has gone wrong. The dot is known to be objective and lives by its own principles. I wish the dot could have some more respect in life. Or may be one just needs to feel "dotty" to understand the dot.

happy endings

I am currently in the midst of studying semiconductors and how free valence electrons are created. It is fascinating till a point( because i dont like the mathematical derivations and graphs coming in after that) where their kinetic energy helps them create and break bonds and conduct electricity with free flow of electrons. And there is a happy ending to the process. What after that? The purpose has been achieved and probably new electrons now flow freely to conduct electricity. Now my problem is with happy endings. Ideally i shouldn't relate this to poor electrons and their conduction but couldn't help resist the thought of happy endings. And pondering over it i actually feel weird at times about 'happy endings'. All is well that ends well. But after that the same process continues albeit in a different manner probably and the same intentions are achieved.

Generally happy endings in many situations leads to a block. It stops the thinking process or rather the process of exploring further. There are hundreds of situations to begin with but the classic one would be any hindi film blockbuster. Take Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham for that matter. The family separates and unites and we knew very well before the film begins that this would have happened. But post the film we walk out with pleasure carrying memories of one big happy family or a few of us would curse for having spent money on a silly film. Whatever we stop thinking. We stop thinking about options or any other alternatives. Not that it is necessary to think but for maniacs like me who love thinking randomly. Hindi Films is just a very crude example.

Looking at day to day situations where things end happily just stops ticking the brain. And again the happy endings are subjective. What may seem happy ending to you may not be a happy ending for someone else. Contrarily to world cinema where many filmmakers end their films 'abruptly' or 'without any conclusion' in fact leave a lot of scope for exploration and possibilities. Happy endings are in their place where the situation practically demands it and dosen't mean going out of the way to save the heroine when she is going to fall off the collapsing bridge. Yes at times it does stand for extreme ' optimism' and unrealistic situations.

Happy Endings are no harm. They are welcomed but i still don't understand about the fixation with it. Anything besides happy endings are more than welcomed because they show multiple layers of the same process and eventually lead to discoveries or happenings that could have the potential of stirring the universe.

Fairness Fixations

With the huge sales of fairness creams and soaps flooding the market it is difficult to fathom the society and the thoughts prevalent. And the quintessential question of 'ladki gori nahi hai kya'? during the bride selection process is still rampant around. I call it selection process because fairness is one important aspect in our 'Indian' society to market the bridal package. Ladki fair toh all set. Where are we getting from here? what is the crazy obsession with fairness? A matrimonial column talks about a rich business family with son from the very great IITs and IIMs wanting an extremely beautiful and fair bride. That is their first criteria. Whatever happened to her character, her personality and education?

In a society where aggressive marketing and advertising directs the choices and views of consumers, it is important to realise the damage they are creating. The structure of the society as it is crippled by weak governance and poor public consciousness will weaken more by such kind of mindset. That we are a democratic country and we should be allowed to choose and behave as we wish is completely acceptable but the question is finding out what is wrong or not acceptable in ourselves. Why as a society are we not able to accept the dark dusky skinned? do they look lesser mortals than anyone? isn't it time we move on in life in this fast paced era and ignore such petty thoughts of 'gorapan'? We can easily manage to ignore the climate change which will actually affect us. We can easily manage to ignore the rocketing food prices but we still manage to bother about fairness. I have a dusky complexion. Some call it 'wheatish' and i hate to categorize it. I have had half my relatives fussing over it as they worry that i may not get married due to me 'kaali moti nati' features. I seriously don' t care and give a damn to this kind of mentality. And if i were to be reborn i would always choose a dusky tone.

I dont want to get a preachy tone here and call an action for such things. There is no point banning advertising agencies or marketing companies as they are doing their job at the expense of a slackened society and everyone has a right to do what they want. There is no point telling the twenty four year old brides to stop buying fairness creams.They are adults and very well know what they are doing. But all i want to ask these people is that why are they even thinking that their dusk look is not in vogue or not acceptable. What compels them to reach out to methods of donning a conventionally created beauty picture. Why can't twenty year olds take bold decisions and redefine the definition of beauty and set their own trends?

Cast(e)ing aspirations

How often do we find ourselves drawn into the controversies of caste and class and the politics surrounding them? Something similar is what Anand Patil and his wife, the protagonists of ‘Aanandbhog Mall’ go through in their early thirties of a so called ‘blissfully’ married life. After Kashmir Kashmir ‘Aanandbhog Mall’ is the latest offering by Aasakta, an experimental theatre group from Pune . Directed by Mohit Takalkar and written by Ashutosh Potdar, the play delves into the intimacies of a married life of a couple surrounded by the hoopla of politics of caste and class. The play is essentially in Marathi with a Kolhapuri dialect used.

Ashutosh Potdar started scripting this play three years back. He was witnessing the tensions among different caste groups in his hometown Kolhapur then and decided that he must do something about it. The caste differences have prevailed in our country since ages and continue to do so even in the modern times. They continue to rock the foundations of mankind and delving deeper into it we realize that it still creates friction among various groups. The hierarchy goes on building to an extent which creates disagreements and discords.

The couple in the play comes from two different kinds of social order and hence entirely different backgrounds with respect to their cultural and social differences. Right from their mannerisms to the way they talk or think is different. A large part of their background makes a difference to their married life and as a result the cultural baggage that they carry begins to show in their relationship. They come to settle in a city from a small town and are influenced to large extent by the media surrounding them. There is an instance where the husband asks the wife to look like Mallika Sherawat. The couple faces a situation where their present is haunted and threatened by the past.

Ashutosh says, “It is almost like negotiating with reality and compromising with the present”. There is a conflict in the minds of ‘to be’ and ‘wanting to be’. They are caught in a regular tussle between the theories of modernity and tradition. “They want to cling to their tradition without losing out on modernity”, says Ashutosh. They come across as confused and disconcerted wanting to ‘progress’ and ‘develop’. Although they are well educated and read newspapers like ‘Pudhari’, they realize the importance of education that is above the petty politics that they are still entangled in between conflicts of interests.

The mall to them represents a change. It stands for modernism, development and freedom which are soon to be overshadowed by the problems they face in a city. They come to the city with a hope of change and wanting to be away from the caste hierarchy that is rampant in the rural side of India. But they soon realize that although in metropolitans ,caste system may not thrive as much as in rural but there is an underlying class system which makes life all the more troublesome. Eventually they find themselves entwined in some kind of hierarchy whether it is caste or class. ‘Shifting Hierarchies’ is what Ashutosh calls it.

The play explores into the conflicting and confused minds of the two disconcerted protagonists who have aspirations to ‘develop’ in this ‘golbal’ world. Ashutosh Potdar is working for the first time with Director Mohit Takalkar. They met a year back and hit off well and the association has culminated into ‘Aanandbhog Mall’. Ashutosh who has been associated with several liberal movements in Kolhapur has also worked with the Narmada Bachao Andolan samiti. Talking about his experience he says, “It was absolutely great working with Mohit. His visualization is spectacular and intense”. Mohit is an award winning director and has directed several plays in the past which have toured the length and breadth of Maharashtra and have been invited to several national and international festivals.

Published on 27th November,2009 in The Asian Age

Operas

Operas have always had a sense of grandeur surrounding them. Huge tapestries, lavish settings, symphony like orchestra with the choir master, sopranos, violins et al are what we visualize of an opera. We imagine them to be set in eloquence and opulence which is only accessible to the elite. What Jeet Thayil and Suman Sridhar have done is that they have executed a creation which is the exact opposite notion of the operas we relate to. They bring us ‘Opera Noir’, a conversation between a ghost and a soprano which is currently being showcased at the ongoing Prithvi Theatre festival. It is not like that they planned it in such a manner but are happy that the final product eventually turned out this way.

“It all started as a seven minute sequence of poetry and music”, says Jeet who along with Suman came up with Opera noir a year ago. They didn’t find the time to work on it then due to work and other commitments. Then presentation of the poem at the poetry festival at Prithvi triggered off the conceptualization of the poem into play. “Sanjana Kapoor really liked the poem and she asked us to develop it into a play”, says Jeet who was then convinced by Kapoor to expand it. “You can never so ‘no’ to Sanjana”, says Jeet.

Jeet, a poet, guitarist and an author of four books met Suman towards the end of 2007 in Bangalore. Sharing a lot in common they built their music band under the banner of Sridhar/Thayil which is known as brand of urban grime that concocts sweet jazz vocals with mean gravelly talk over wailing blues guitar and electronic back beats. Suman Sridhar is a singer, actor, and songwriter who grew up in Mumbai with Carnatic and Hindustani classical music and studied Western classical music in NJ, USA.

Opera Noir is set in the city of Bombay (Mumbai). The Indian twist is the choice of location and the dark aspect of it refers to the dialogue between the ghost and soprano. There are interesting conversations between the two on God, murder and showbiz. Why choose these three as the base of a conversation? “In this case they have chosen me”, says Jeet. The play begins with a death scene which revolves the murder aspect where the partner is blamed for the death and accused of murder. Both the characters question God and demand for an explanation of the turnout of the events happening. The play explores the possibilities on matters of love and deception.

The setting of the play is contemporary according to Thayil and Sridhar. “There was no budget, no orchestra, no live musicians and everything was done by two the people involved in it”, says Jeet who along with Suman worked out on the minutest details involving all the aspects of a play. Jeet calls it a ‘homemade production’. He also opines about the fact that Operas are restricted only to the rich and a privileged few. The concept of such a thing doesn’t even exist among the masses and this production got down to bringing opera to a common man’s psyche.

For now it is a forty five minute venture and Jeet plans to expand it into a bigger and fuller version exploring new possibilities. Jeet is very happy with this year’s ongoing festival at Prithvi. “Prithvi has grown into a precious theatre resource and is open to new things. The core of Prithvi stands for the youth and novelty which is extremely important for our generation”, says Jeet. He is particularly impressed with ‘The Elephant project’ a production from Kerala He is currently busy with the final draft of his novel which is again set in Bombay and talks about the low life of drug addicts, prostitutes and people who always live on the darker side of this city. He wants to create a sense of respect for them through his novel.

Published on 21st November,2009 in The Asian Age

Modern Avatars of Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s works have always fascinated every generation and continue to do so. His works have been tried and tested by different groups in unique styles and substance without altering the main core. Amitesh Grover, a Delhi based director is at the Prithvi Theatre festival with his latest offering ‘The Hamlet Quartet’. “It all started as an NSD venture for an international theatre convention in China where the focus was to relook at Shakespeare in one’s country”,says Amitesh. By relooking and revisiting he meant that one was looking at the contemporary setting of Shakespeare’s works. But why Hamlet among the masterpieces? “I realised that Hamlet was one of his least performed works in our country”,says Amitesh who finds Hamlet one of the most interesting and influential Shakespearean plots set .

Amitesh believes that culture evolves all the time and is a persistent process. Shakespeare’s works have time and again been experimented with by various institutions,professional and amateur artists with respect to specific context. With the writing inspired by ‘Hamletmachine’ by Heiner Muller and Rosencrantz And ‘Guildenstern Are Dead’by Tom Stoppard,the former mainly focus on mapping the explosive political crisis that the world grappled with post world war and post-holocaust.It places the subject in the international arena along with several other identities from various parts of the world and the latter ridicules the existential dilemmas of the same man with warmth, wit and deliberation. The writing here is fresh and although it has been inspired by these texts it manages to bring a lot of novelty to the subject. Keshav Kumar Paroch, who is the writer was asked by Amitesh to write a few scenes who found it extremely fresh and distinctive. “There is a sense of contemporary setting in the play”,says Amitesh.

The main focus of the show revolves and investigates around two areas of conflicts which is firstly the relationship between the right thought and correct consequences. Secondly, it talks about the big conflict between two generations of people and the dilemmas they face while making choices about nationhood,duty,family and love. It looks into the take on love for the family coming first or a prevailing sense of duty.

Having worked with both the mediums of theatre and TV,Amitesh has made use of multimedia as a general trajectory and tried to explore the interoperability between the two media. The TV box entered the premisesof this play with the idea of disconnect that would help put forth the idea of certain scenes in an effective manner. For instance there is a live scene where Hamlet is watching his father through the television. A lot of imagery too has been employed which is open to one’s interpretation and understanding.Ophelia’s death is a matter of perception here where one is compelled to treat it as an accidental event or a deliberate one.

Hindi cinema by far has a lot of parallels drawn with Shakespearean plots. Amitesh points out to one of the most famous scenes of hindi cinema where Rishi Kapoor in ‘Ek Haseena Thi’ invokes a sense of guiltyness in his former lover played by Simi Grewal is actually a ripoff from Hamlet. Likewise there have been numerous cases where plots have been lifted directly from various Shakespeare plays. “ I feel intrigued by the amazing complexity of Shakespeare’s writing and and its transformations”,says Amitesh.

One of interesting features is that the actors involved come from different parts of India. Hamlet played by Vipin Bharadwaj hails from Kashmir while Savitha Rani who essays Ophelia comes from Haryana. Laxmi Rawat who plays Gertrude(Hamlet’s mother) is from Himachal Pradesh and Nitin Bhajjan who plays Polonious and Claudius is from Maharashtra.Amitesh finds beauty in the diversity of their different thick and thin accents of Hindi which add another dimension to the play. “It is a sort of hybrid transformation”,says Amitesh.

Amitesh,a freelance artist who moves from one location to another for new themes and projects is an NSD graduate and then went to study at University of Arts in London.He is currently gearing up for his next international project which is based on developing a relationship between one of India’s first graphic novels and the urban setup.

Published on 14th November,2009 in The Asian Age