We in Hindi cinema have stopped telling the stories of our cities. We’ve reduced our big towns into convenient and stereotype-strewn backdrops, sure, told apart by accents and architecture. And once in a while, a Dibakar Banerjee or Habib Faisal will throw on a dollop of asli Dilli, (or Amit Trivedi will make a great song) but these are only Delhi films when contrasted alongside the glitzy Bombay-based popcorn whose only concession to that great big throbbing swearword of a city is a character eating vada pao.

These are films set in cities, not films that set out to rhapsodize the city itself, like Sai Paranjpe’s immortal Delhi excavations of the 80s and, to an extent, Ram Gopal Varma’s Bombay transgressions of the 90s. Our current cinema seems obsessed with surfacial scabs — either too-glossy or too-grimy, or too-convenient targets for caricature — and refuses to really talk of our cities, which deserve far better cinematic time capsules.

But despair not, for I have the answer. We just bring in the best in the business and stand back, tug our jaws off the floor, and watch him reintroduce us to the city we think we knew. There’s never been a better time to call in Woody Allen, at a point when he’s walked away from his Gershwin-scored Manhattan and is busy finding miraculous muses in the world’s cities, serving us London, Barcelona and Paris in a way native filmmakers of those countries haven’t, in ages. Equal parts wide-eyed tourist and insightful surgeon, the incurable romantic takes the city by the wrist and checks her pulse while tangoing with her, and the results are enchanting.

And yet there is prose here too, in those ugly, necessary numbers of film financing and government-aided funding, and these are the factors that have been doing Allen’s deciding for him, not just the length of the city’s legs. He’s been going from grant to grant, and this is where we must pounce and roll out the scarlet carpet. We must call in Allen to make our great city-bred masterpiece, a film about shapeshifting Bombay, wellfed Delhi, cacophonous Calcutta… He can come in and work his charm, and the city will yield its secrets only too willingly.

But hark, benefactors-to-be. This is not sponsorship, and expect not characters to wear your brand on a shirt or carry your mobile phone or have a big relationship argument under a hoarding for something under your umbrella brand. The closest Woody Allen gets to product placement is sending us to libraries via Midnight In Paris. No, here we need selflessness, which is why I recommend either some manner of exorbitant crowdsourcing or even a governmental intervention. (Here’s the thing, Mr Political Party. You bring us the master, you make it happen, and I’ll vote for you, no matter how much I’ve hated you in the past. Promise.)

Because we need him to remind us, we always have. About how in the Barcelona of Vicki and Christina, people on the streets used to the commotion, don’t spare a look as Penelope Cruz gives Javier Bardem a dramatic tonguelashing. About how ruthlessly classist the London of Match Point is. And, in Midnight In Paris, about how much is to be found by walking in the rain in a city paved with magic. He said it about Manhattan in that gorgeous film of the same name, but he’s always been as tough and romantic as the city he loved — even if he’s gone on to love more cities. And behind those black-rimmed glasses still lies the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat.

~

First published Mumbai Mirror, January 25, 2012

We trade places this Friday, cinema and I.

The arrangement has long been a simple one. Movies unfold themselves before me, while I sit back — one hand eager to applaud with thigh-slapping glee, the other resting by a freshly sharpened scimitar — and watch, then write. This weekend I do neither, as a film where I am but a celluloid passenger hits screens. I am now in your hands, you turner of pages, you complainer of my words, you disagreeing deity. And it is to your chopping block I offer my throat, ready for garrote, guillotine or gaali.

In Sudhish Kamath’s ridiculously independent film Good Night Good Morning — releasing across the country this Friday — I am, as conceded above, a passenger. (Literally. I sit in a car surrounded by real actors, as one of them talks to a pretty actress.) It is an unconventional and peculiar romance, an all-night phone conversation brought to the audience via black and white visuals mostly split halfway down the middle, and while I have absolutely no idea how good the film is, I suspect the conversation may be quite disconcertingly close to reality. Or at least that’s what incessantly-texted conversations I’m currently having in the off-screen world seem to indicate.

And that, in a nutshell, is the whole problem, and the point of this column: I just don’t know how good it is. I can’t. I’ve watched the film four times over various festival screenings and finally now — with prints scrubbed up digitally and the sound mixed to multiplex standards — it does indeed feel like a ‘real’ film, and yet I, too busy cringing every time I see myself on screen to drum up any objective viewpoint, have no idea how the film actually is. I’m ‘told’ it’s quite good. Occasionally “intense,” even. But you know how critics are.

Which is why I’m asking you to go see it, and then let me have the full earful. (And yes, like I said last week, if you don’t like it halfway through, walk right out. And do tell me you did.) But giving it a shot would be both nice and a personal favour, since I, flummoxed and exasperated by not being able to have an opinion, would really like you to do what I usually do and tell me how terrific or trashy it all is.

Several online haters, infuriated by my less-than-devout attitude toward their favourite superstars, have been hammering this poor little film all over online forums, calling me names and even calling it a knockoff of George Clooney’s fantastic Good Night And Good Luck, merely because both films are black-and-white-and-titled-politely. Sigh. Murder the film by all means, but get it in your sights before you squeeze that trigger, yes?

So impale it or embrace it, high-five me or hang me, all I say is watch the film and smack me between the eyes with your opinion. Because it’s killing me to not have my own.

~

First published Mumbai Mirror, January 18, 2012.

If you don’t like a film, turn it off. Or change channels. Or walk out.

It’s something I can’t do, shackled to a seat despite absolutely no possibility of things getting better. It’s like The Ludovico Technique, except with Vishal-Shekhar playing instead of good ol’ Ludvig Von. I am, however, paid to bite that bullet, and because I have made a career out of giving movies of questionable quality a fighting chance, I steadfastly refuse to offer similar generosity to books or music. No unheard of indie band playing in Juhu for me, thankyouverymuch, and no debutant novelist’s scribbles about a sprawling clan. But movies? I’m around right till the end credits. And you don’t need to be.

Nope, you aren't Alex.

It begins in school, this conditioning that we must not abandon a book midway. That we must see it through despite the first few chapters being dense, or boring or just not specifically interesting to each of us. We’re told it’ll only really reward us in it’s entirety, a strategic truism partly to expand our horizons beyond what we already like, and partly to serve as training grounds to help us master the rote, the ratta that gets us through other subjects, even lowlier ones that do not involve the reading of novels.

As a result, we finish bad novels (‘what’s another 180 pages?’) and bad movies (‘only 40 more minutes to go, surely Philip Seymour Hoffman will do something?’) but these questions are more submissively masochistic than they are rhetorical. 180 pages is a helluva lot of your time, and if he hasn’t dazzled in the first two hours, Hoffman’s waiting for the end even more impatiently than you are. And he, like me, is paid to stick around.

There are hundreds of thousands of better films –masterpieces and sideshow attractions, little gems and wild cinematic carnival rides, classics and underrated indies – and the more time you devote to a film that isn’t satisfying you, the more you’re missing out on something that could. Screenwriters are told to engage the reader in the first few pages of a script, else it’s curtains as the producer snoozes. And yet we, the audience, are much kinder to films that fail to grab us after twenty listless opening minutes.

But if a film, the most sensory offering in all of popular art, fails to arrest you 40 minutes into the proceedings — through neither narrative nor character nor backdrop nor music nor performance nor light and shadow — then you are decidedly better off walking out. Do it guiltlessly and with head held high, because the truly great films will always have, at the very least, some little thing that’ll reel you in and make you want to keep watching. And what if the climax is spectacular and, as some say, ‘worth the price of admission?’ Well then, watch that bit on YouTube. So scram, and celebrate your moment of justified truancy, as if you got to skip a midday meeting or a drab lecture.

Go ahead, make me jealous.

~

First published Mumbai Mirror, January 11, 2012

But, if I were to pick one: the Bombay girl. Epic.

~

Originally published in MumbaiBoss, January 2, 2012

It’s been a sloppy year. The Hindi cinema of 2011 has been markedly short of ambition. Most of our brightest filmmaking talents were missing in action, and the majority of this year’s debutants were content to steer clear of the unexplored. Well short of plot and pluck, our biggest hits relied on literal hero-worship and formulae, while our indies, at best, were harmless diversions.

Here, then, are the exceptions. The films that made up the class of 2011 — presented here in ascending, countdown order — and the valiant also-rans that missed the cut due to flaws too hard to overlook.

The Almosts: Delhi Belly gave us uproarious laughs, Vijay Raaz in phenomenal form, and an actual twisty little plot, but I wish it was as true to itself in English as it was in Hindi. Pyaar Ka Punchnama had crackling camaraderie between the leads, a star turn by Divyendu Sharma, but lost all edge when it spent the last half hour crying into its beer. Sahib Biwi Aur Gangster begged for actresses who could even halfway match the terrific leading men. Mujhse Fraandship Karoge impressively avoided mush, but also, sadly, originality. And if only Bbuddah Hoga Tera Baap had something (anything!) more to offer than Bachchan having a blast.

#4: Shor In The City: A muddily elegiac ode to Bombay, Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK gave us disparate stories brought together by the maddest of cities, and shoved enough heart and sweat into that overdone synopsis to deliver a living, breathing film. Featuring a thrillingly unusual ensemble cast and well-etched characters, not just did Shor have 2011′s most rousing climax, but also –  in a scene where a barely-literate book pirate discovers his wife went to college, and she almost spoils The Alchemist for him –  one of the year’s tenderest, truest moments.

#3: The Dirty Picture: All about the girl, this. Milan Luthria’s shamelessly commercial film wades through over-written dialogue and a predictable narrative, yet stays constantly engaging thanks to unflagging pace, a won’t-stop-winking turn by Naseeruddin Shah and, most of all, a heroine you care about. Vidya Balan plays Silk with unapologetic fervor, making her not just an object of titillation but a real, self-aware woman who knows how best to win with the cards in her hand. It’s a strikingly bold, frequently brilliant performance, and the fact that this is a massive hit — in a year of Readys and Singhams — is heartening news for the Hindi film heroine.

#2: Rockstar: She’s getting married. ‘I have something to ask you,’ he says. ‘I’ll tell the truth,’ she warns. ‘So go on, who’s scared,’ he nudges. ‘Yes,’ she says. Imtiaz Ali’s intoxicating take on Heer-Ranjha has little to do with rock, but, aided by the director’s incisive dialogue and Irshad Kamil’s devastating lyrics, is a heady romantic brew not for the entirely jaded. Ranbir Kapoor, playing a causeless rebel with his head in self-created clouds, shows why he’s the best leading man in the country today, while AR Rahman drops our jaws yet again.

#1: Stanley Ka Dabba: A modest masterpiece is the hardest kind to make, and Amole Gupte’s directorial debut took us back in time just by ringing really, spectacularly true. Romanticising the tiffinbox, this movie about a boy drinking gallons of water and his gluttonous schoolteacher came to us from a knee-high point of view, amplifying the good-versus-evil stakes to those of a spaghetti western. Gupte’s son Partho led a smashing cast of spirited young ‘uns, while the director himself stunned as the mooching muchhad. Made on the smallest of budgets, this movie, shot on what looks like a still camera, proved as natural as the daylight it was filmed in. Magical.

~

First published Mumbai Mirror, December 28, 2011

From lactation to leering to simply being the best pillows imaginable, breasts matter and, as the people behind The Dirty Picture are well aware, they mesmerise. And thus does leading lady Vidya Balan’s bosom go through a lot in the name of entertainment, entertainment and entertainment. For mere visual sake, her breasts are lifted and shoved and enhanced and amplified and constricted and meshed together and accentuated, and finally end up doing more push-ups than Rocky in a training montage.

And while doubtless distracting, this could well be called a tawdry piece of exploitative cinema if the heroine wasn’t herself revelling in this celebration of boobage. Balan’s heroine Silk — who bears only a chronological resemblance to 80s icon Silk Smitha — is a highly empowered woman who is tremendously aware of the power her orbs wield. She does what she does — offer herself up on a bigscreen platter, an all-you-can-ogle buffet for carnally famished frontbenchers — simply because she loves it. She feeds off the attention, the control, the adulation and the sizzle of the spotlight.

Balan exultantly runs with it, making the character her own with remarkable commitment to the role. There is no vulgarity — even when she writhes awkwardly and desperately around a whip — simply because Balan visibly chooses to have a helluva time. She might not match the legend whose name she’s borrowed in terms of sheer screen raunch, but outdoes her with an assault of unashamed oomph. Vanity is disregarded early on as we see the actress’ paunch rolling over her waistline, even when she’s at her hottest, and later, as her gut barrels out of shape and yet she continues to wear midriff-baring tops, we see just how defiantly unapologetic she is.

The film too is defiant, but in more juvenile fashion. Director Milan Luthria’s approach to this heroic harlot is a masala one, and in its urge to please crowds, forsakes much potential nuance that could have made this a great film instead of merely a film with a great lead character. There is a surfeit of cartoonish sound effects and annoyingly convoluted lines of dialogue; the storyline settles into predictability halfway through, and never bothers to thrill again; and the one flagbearer for cerebral cinema — an impressive and subdued Emraan Hashmi, playing an artistic filmmaker who dresses in what looks like black vinyl — sells out promptly enough to become yet another ludicrous star. It is as if, in its rabid defense of formulaic masala, the film condemns any manner of cinema not subscribing to the bums-on-seats credo – and so strong is this unwarranted shunning of the sensible, as it runs like a theme through this film, that it makes The Dirty Picture appear not just insecure but fairly shaky. Pity.

Having said that, the film is far more engaging than most Bollywood produce. And it’s not just the bosom. Naseeruddin Shah plays a larger-than-life movie star with infectious glee, grotesque neck-skin folds never quelling his mojo. It’s a caricature, but Shah squeezes in much lovely detail, from a genteel sense of the proper (if only in front of the flashbulbs) to a foppishly detailed prescience about action cinema of the 80s. His genius is a curse, he claims with extreme world-weariness, and the effect is delightful. Tushar Kapoor, rather less effectively, plays his younger brother, a timid writer who wears cardigans that fit like muscle t-shirts with a gold chain dangling out front. And both brothers want the girl, for this is her film.

Silk, who turns men into worms. Silk, who cries when spurned away by casting directors and propositioned by sleazy men in movie theaters, but Silk who holds tightly on to the scraps of money they toss her way. Silk, who knows what she has is currency and doesn’t mind cashing in her chips. Silk, who has enough sass to shut a Stardust editor up and — with one rather unforgettable scene — even turn her into a fan. Silk, arrogant and self-absorbed and ruthless and brash. Silk, who sits in the cheap seats and beams with incredulous, childish joy as she watches her screen version turn them on.

It’s a very demanding part, and Balan shows that she’s worthy of both wolf-whistles and applause. It’s a dazzling performance — and a remarkably brave one, considering we live in a country so cinematically repressed that an actress wearing a bikini top in her next film is worthy of page one in every national daily. Constantly convincing, Balan proves so dynamic that she even makes her parts of the tinny SalimJaved-lite dialogues work. There is a lot of talk of legitimizing the lewd and the hypocrisy of audiences and critics, and Balan might as well be talking about herself in this film, and not Silk, and she delivers the lines in fiery style. She’s a treat.

The film has a nice period-but-glossy texture, and works breezily enough. The first half is a cracker, with Balan approaching both notoriety and pin-up glory, and then, halfway down the second, when approaching Silk’s fall, it fizzles out very weakly indeed. There are several possible reasons why a woman like Silk could burn out — younger and sexier competition, a drinking problem, disastrous commercial and romantic choices — and while the film alludes fleetingly to these, it chooses instead to keep showing us that Silk’s put on some weight. There are long and painfully elongated shots of Balan, her cheeks stuffed Brandoistically, looking into mirrors and gasping. Her entire downfall is thus made trivial, the story of a woman who chose suicide over a treadmill. Sigh.

Yes, there’s much to nitpick about, especially that whimper of an ending and much, much squandered potential. But, with the exception of Kapoor, it’s mostly well acted: Hashmi and Shah keep things interesting, Anju Mahendroo makes us wish the journalist had more to do, and Rajesh Sharma is always super. Also, the film does push the envelope, Luthria keeps the pace snappy except for the last half-hour, and like any schoolboy would attest, pretty much anything can be forgiven if the breasts look good enough. They do, and Vidya Balan ensures we notice that there’s a heart of a heroine thumping energetically away right behind them. It’s a performance to be grateful for.

So thank you, Ms Balan. (If your dress weren’t as low-cut, I’d ask you to take a bow.)

Rating: 3.5 stars

~

First published Rediff, December 2, 2011

Janardan Jakhar, a Delhi collegian enshrining Jim on his wall, stares back at the posters, his reverence surpassed by bewilderment. How to get it, he wonders, when told he doesn’t have what it takes to rock. He works at it, occasionally misguidedly, finds his own trajectory, and in his quest to emulate Morrison, becomes a massively loved, hysteria-inducing performer who never smiles.

For the cameras, that is. Jim’s best photographs are ones shot later, where the mask is off and the grin is wide, loving, Cheshire. The juvenile brooding of apparent depth is replaced by candour, by a real person sometimes having a good time. The finest thing about Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar is that it gives us both, the misguided scowling and the cheeky boyish smiles, and strikes a balance solid enough to make us believe in his flawed but phenomenal protagonist.

Played by Ranbir Kapoor, Jakhar starts out amusingly wrong. Told that great art is born out of pain, he chides his comfortable upbringing and berates himself for never having been in an accident or for having a set of legitimate, alive parents. He hits on a devastatingly pretty Kashmiri girl from Stephens in an attempt to get his heart shattered, but when shot down, his desolate act dissolves when distracted by a passing samosa in the college canteen. He succumbs to the savoury and looks sheepishly on as his talcumnecked mentor, played wonderfully by Kumud Mishra, tells him to go find real hurt.

He does so obediently enough, but JJ, a warmly irresistible hero who mistakes bugger for burger, also seeks out much heart. He befriends the striking Kashmiran — telling her how he slaps alcohol onto his face like cologne and pretends to act sloshed and then gulping submissively when she orders him to drink for real — completely besotted by the unlikely firebrand. Meanwhile, at home he stays away from the family business, and while that is reason enough to be ostracized in most Bollywood films, here the familial fuse erupts when Jakhar lashes out at an overtly affectionate young Bhabhi for being all touchy-feely.

There is much to admire as the film dispenses with linearity, starting with a concert in Rome and then flashing back and forth to fill in the backstory of Jordan — christened thus by his luscious ladylove. It is a simple, unspectacular tale, sometimes even predictable, but Ali masterfully weaves in details that draw us in while his leading man basks magnificently in the glow of a bespoke script.

Ranbir shines through the film, be it on stage tossing his tonsils into the microphone looking like a slightly oriental Frank Zappa in a Sgt Pepper’s jacket, discussing the terms of a kiss in a Czech field, or at a formal dinner dressed in upholstery. It is a performance that breathes life into the character, making us care about his JJ more than the story deserves. He wraps his mouth around Mohit Chauhan’s voice with desperate fervour, flinging out the words as if they were his own. And here again we see a love of nuance. His fingers close concentratedly into mudras as he sits in a recording booth trying to strike the right pitch, and while his guitarwork is unimpressive and often anachronistic to the music, his electric wriggling on stage makes up for it. Once, while in a meeting with a massaged music mogul, he breaks into a guffaw that, in itself, is worth the film.

It’s remarkable how much narrative detail Ali leaves to the asides, to margin notes not underscored and overwhelmed by AR Rahman’s grand, lovely soundtrack. That a character’s marriage is less than ideal is made clear through little revelations, that she has a therapist, and sleeps in a separate bedroom. Neither exposition is lingered on, and the impact is dramatic.

Equally dramatic are the visuals. Not just the gorgeousness of Prague or the motorbike jaunts through snow-capped hills, but the texture visible in the throwaways: Jordan playing guitar at a Mata-ki-chowki isn’t new; Shiv looming overhead looking like a giant blue Rakhee Gulzar, however, is. With this film Imtiaz often makes the ordinary interesting. It’s an assured film that believes in restraint. Drug use, for example, is apparent – Jordan offers his girl a hit of a joint in a longshot, and is clearly sky-high during an indulgent on-stage rant about uprooted birds – but not highlighted.

The rock could have used more attention, however. We don’t once get into what defines Jordan’s music, his creative genesis, his lyrical musing. The film chooses instead to focus on overflowing stadia and albums flying off shelves. For a film called Rockstar, the closest we get is a hero who occasionally slaps photographers. Then again, it is a film about wanting fame, about a easily misled wannabe who misattributes a middle-finger gesture to his idol, about needless defiance and the hollow but burning desire to drive fans crazy. The music is terrific but incidental, but for a kid who doesn’t finger a guitar fluently enough, this is a hero with pluck.

In Nargis Fakhri Imtiaz has an exotically ravishing heroine, one so pretty we forgive her occasionally stilted diction. She is a girl to stare at, and we, knowing her Heer merely as the object of Jordan’s love, gladly believe in his intoxication. The ensemble is fine, especially the actor playing Kapoor’s slap-happy elder brother, with minor niggles (Shernaz Patel laying it on regrettably thick) and a lovely cameo from a legend to make us all smile. We often refer to the late Shammi Kapoor as a rockstar, and his appearance here serves to remind us that the word isn’t about guitars as much as it is about grace.

This is the story of a boy goaded onto glory. He’s naïve, frequently clueless, and hardly ever has the answers. Bad boy image be damned, this is a man-child living in a bubble of denial, who gradually starts seeing his own life in extreme close-up and ultraslowmotion: in music-video images. For a dreamer, life outside the forcefield — even one created fleetingly by love and a bedsheet — can never be perfect.

Rating: Four Stars

~

First published on Rediff, November 11, 2011

The first two panels of Catwoman #1.

The latest issue of Catwoman takes a while to show us her face. First we meet her breasts, nearly tumbling out of a lacy scarlet bra as she yanks on her tight leather suit. As she dons said costume, she’s in no rush to zip up the front. A trio of thugs breaks into her home and as she fights back, we see her butt, in painted-on leather. It’s not until page three of DC Comics’ new Catwoman #1 that we actually see her face, smirking upside down as she flings herself through a high window. The catsuit is inexplicably still unzipped, half her bosom braving cold Gotham air and bullets.

That issue — which ends in a startlingly explicit spread featuring comic-book sex at its most gratuitous and tasteless — is one of several new DC Comics releases sparking off impassioned debate about the hypersexualisation of mainstream comic-books, superhero comics ostensibly written for all-ages. The Internet is abuzz — as those of you going to Mumbai’s upcoming comic-convention are surely well aware — with comics writers explaining how characters need to be written gender-neutrally, how it’s embarrassing when a character is made to ‘pose’ for the seduction of the reader rather then for her fellow page-inmates, how some female characters are meant to be overt in their sexuality and some aren’t — except everyone looks Power-Girl pneumatic nowadays — and how far too many female characters are being turned into mere totty.

(Sigh. My kingdom for the strikingly cool girl: like Neil Gaiman’s Death. Or Ramona Flowers.)

And while I agree with most of the points being made, here’s what I think: women in comics are being turned cartoonishly sexy simply because a lot of mainstream comic characters are now being written with big-screen feasibility in mind.

And if the character is caricaturedly sexy to begin with, as part of the source material, then Hollywood is not whipped by the fanboys when they cast some massively bosomed bimbette in a fishnet costume looking like her primary superpower is Mega Cleavage, because all they’re doing is staying l-o-y-a-l: to comics that start out wanting to be movies.

I’m a hardcore fanboy, and I love superhero movies, but comics being written a certain way merely so they’ll make for more commercially bankable movies? Man, that sounds positively LexLuthorian in both cunning and shamelessness.

And it isn’t just the girls. Nick Fury, leader of superhero-employing world-saving organisation SHIELD (so Caucasian he was once played laughably by David Hasselhoff) started looking exactly like Samuel L Jackson when Marvel rebooted him in its Ultimates line, and who plays him in the movies these days? Voila, that man with the expletives on his wallet.

The new Barbara Gordon looks very, very familiar

The other way you can tell comics are being written keeping the screen in mind is in the overt need for diverse ethnicities. The overcompensation is the kind we see in revolving-ensemble TV shows like Law & Order and CSI. Everyone’s in the audience, and they all need to be represented. So we have Bruce Wayne hit on by some girl whose mother was a Bollywood actress, a half-Black half-Hispanic teenager getting spider-powers, and, in the panel above, the new Barbara Gordon looking quite uncannily like Priyanka Chopra, which could bode quite well for the actress’s future if the look catches on.

Piggy Chops as Batgirl? Way to make Ra One jealous, babe.

~

First published Mumbai Mirror, October 19, 2011

Bad, bad idea. He knows it; cluelessly, abruptly, his face automatically falls. Not everyone can get away with that, and in his latest film Shahid Kapoor is visibly better equipped to play a baby than call a woman one. For the cosy first half-hour or so of Mausam, he does so with gusto, a delightful young rapscallion with cheek and vigour.

Set in a small and very warmly depicted Punjab town, Mausam kicks off most entertainingly. The elderly gent playing the befuddled yet gruff village chieftain is an absolute treat and unquestionably the finest thing in the film, while cinematographer Binod Pradhan, capturing earthy frames with unusual yet fluid grace, earns a clear second place. The rest of the folks involved, including debutant director (and the best actor in the history of Hindi cinema) Pankaj Kapur are best advised not to look at the marks-sheet with much optimism.

Mausam starts off significantly fresh, making up for slightly overdone cutesiness with heart and flavour. The setting is enchanting and real, the characters are likable, the supporting cast stays pretty solid throughout, and Shahid revs up the energy while his classically gorgeous heroine Sonam Kapoor does what she does best, skipping around looking breathtaking.

It is when the film changes gear from romcom to melodrama that both Kapur and his son struggle, going from light and likable to irritating and implausible. The couple that initially wins us over gradually emerges harebrained and inexplicably passive. We never root for either girl or boy, because they coyly retreat just when they shouldn’t. The passion the film began quickly turns lukewarm, because as Mausam and Shahid begin to take themselves seriously, we stop having fun. And, more importantly, giving a damn.

This is a love story gone awry purely because of undercommunication, and while that seems fine enough on paper, it’s rather hard to swallow two lovers cleaved for well over a decade simply because they don’t have each other’s forwarding address.

This isn’t a period film. Cellphones, email, academies and embassies, answering machines all exist. Our leads are well-to-do youths of significant affluence and sophistication, and neither makes standard enquiries? No, because we’re supposed to sob over the old-world sight of letters piling up in an unpeopled courtyard.

Sure, mosques are smashed and wars break out, but the real-life atrocities the film uses as background soon feel like predictable gimmick. Worse still, they serve only to underscore the film’s repetitive, episodic nature, making the already overlong Mausam feel like several seasons too many.

Kapur frequently salutes Dev Anand’s superlative Hum Dono, borrowing far more than a great song. A man goes to war incommunicado with his lover, with no clue of her whereabouts. A moustached soldier loses the function of a limb, and wonders aloud whether his love will still want him. A woman stays steadfast in her affections for her man, no matter how steadily he neglects her. Except Hum Dono has both well-defined motivations and strong characters; this one has a couple of flibbertigibbets, a man disgracefully churlish and the woman too bashful to ever speak up.

Sonam’s Aayat is a thankless character with an exquisite name, one I first encountered in Gulzar’s Chhaiyya Chhaiyya. (It means a hymnal couplet.) The first time we meet her we hear an alarming giggle before we see her face, and the second time she screeches out of a nightmare. This, despite there being much pretty smiling in the first act, somewhat sets a tone. In the rest of the film, she waits and pines, and is made to simper an awful lot. We’ve seen it before, and Kapoor knows what she’s doing. The actress shows genuine grace, once even while in a Mozart wig, and one wishes her character was smarter.

Shahid, as said, makes for a smashing small-town scamp but is inexplicably somber as a decorated IAF pilot. His Squadron Leader Harry is the kind of guy Tom Cruise’s Maverick would have made faces at, no-nonsense to a ridiculous degree. Once in uniform, he’s too self-serious to be taken, well, seriously, and we’re treated to a plywood-stiff performance, all pruned lips and occasional MohnishBahl-ery. He’s pretty good when in action, when running frantically across snow or while one-handedly trying to douse a fire (looking like a wrestling referee going for the three-count) for example, but the problem is when he sits down quietly and tries so very hard to look thoughtful or introspective or melancholy: there’s only that much you can say by sucking your cheeks in.

The film provides some genuinely affectionate moments — one where a song turns almost to karaoke as the lovers scribble notes making up the lyrics — and some curious but lovely detailing. A pair of small binoculars, opera-glasses actually, with a scarlet stain that could be both blood or betel seems like a sinister clue to a later revelation till the girl efficiently and unthinkingly wipes it clean; and later Shahid dancing at a wedding with a checked-shirt under his sweater reaching down to the knees of his jeans, looking quite a bit like a kilt: a fine precursor to the film’s next venue, Edinburgh.

But no lovely little nuance could forgive Mausam its preposterous bad-action-movie climax, completely bringing the guillotine down on the already too-long film. As manipulative masala tearjerkers go, it’s a film that tries relatively earnestly and certainly one that occasionally looks striking, but disappoints overall.

Finally, giving you opinion about a film called Mausam turn us critics into weathermen, so here goes: Bright and cheerful day, hit by a predictable, gloomy downpour and turned into a damp, middling mess. Perfect one-day cricket conditions, as the English would say.

Rating: Two stars.

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First published Rediff, September 23, 2011

The best way to watch 1939 gem The Wizard Of Oz, as many of you are doubtless aware, has nothing whatsoever to do with the film’s director, Victor Fleming. The original is a perfectly great film, a superlative piece of vintage movie magic that hits all the right chords in one delicious yellowbrick strum. And yet, classic and immaculate as the film is, it surreally transcends the cinematic experience when watched on mute, with Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon providing the audio.

When sync’d just right, the art rock masterpiece occasionally resonates so jawdroppingly with the film’s visuals —  that iconic Money cash register cha-chings as soon as Dorothy opens the door, for example, stepping from sepiatoned Kansas into technicolor Oz — that it feels like those architects of psychedelia consciously constructed the album around the film. That, of course, is merely shroom-fueled romanticism, with absolutely no basis in fact. Not that there’s anything at all wrong with that. How far could our legends possibly soar without their apocryphal capes?

And while I’d love to go on about how uncannily the “Black…” exclamation from Us & Them lines up alongside the visual of the Wicked Witch Of The West turning to face our naive heroine, (and do throw a “Whoa, dude” into my imagined voice in your head) the fact remains that this wonderful marriage of movie and music owes lesser to the creators of either work than it does to some ambitious dorm-room twist of fate, where some young feller decided to try and combine two different kinds of genius together and see what happens. In an alchemical explosion — the sort seen when a precursor of this lad slathered jam onto bread after exhausting the last of his peanut butter on slice one — the universe nodded its approval and something stellar came, coincidentally, to be.

Coincidences like that, it may cogently be argued, are in themselves proof that the atheists are wrong.

Speaking of Whom, no recent film believes in the almighty with quite the card-carrying, near-Missionary urgency of Terrence Malick’s latest, The Tree Of Life. It is a spectacular, humbling, overwhelming, emotionally naked film, more to be experienced than watched. It is a staggering work of art, one that works as prayer and parable, and yet, because it happens to be as catatonic as it is cathartic, works significantly lesser as a film. It must be admitted that it is, indeed, a bit of a drag. To speak with the National Geographic symbolism the film pours on indiscriminately and overzealously, The Tree Of Life is a cinematic black hole: so self-seriously heavy that it eventually collapses in unto itself. But what a lovely boom, huzzah.

However, true believers, I believe I might have hit upon the solution of solutions, one that makes up in impact what it lacks in out-and-out originality. An answer so fiendishly simple, in fact, that it pretty much presents itself: Like the man who came up with The Dark Side Of The Rainbow, just add Waters. First name, Roger. Majestic pretension cancels out majestic pretension, or at least so we hope.

The film opens with a quotation from the Book Of Job. Immediately after this is when you mute the film’s audio, while clicking play to kickstart one of Floyd’s maddest, most ambitious albums, Atom Heart Mother. As we see fluid scenes of 50s Americana via a family sired by granite-chinned Brad Pitt, the 23-minute opening track jars violently, dashing us rockily against the gorgeous images. And what unbelievably apt names the 6 sections of the titular composition have: Father’s Shout, Breast Milky, Mother Fore, Funky Dung, Mind Your Throats Please and Remergence. After this comes that simplistically haunting song, If, which ought to work as a punch right between the eyes, pretty much at the moment when Malick starts to show the trippy beginnings of life itself, mesmeric cosmic burps, jellyfish and dinosaurs. Skip the next track, Summer 68, play David Gilmour’s 14-minute concert version of Fat Old Sun instead of the one on the studio album, and top it off with Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast.

There we go. Already your Tree Of Life experience has been a decidedly more visceral one than Malick provided. Know why? No ponderous voiceovers to go with those gobstopping visuals. No “Mother, make me good, brave”, no “How did she bear it?”, no “I will give him to you; I give you my son.” My lord, I cannot stress how much more Pink Floyd have already improved on the film by killing those preposterous voiceovers, and, since your munchies ought be kicking in this long into the film, let me tell you it just gets better.

The second Floyd album for the film is Meddle, a cornucopia of aural imagery spread across bleak and beautiful soundscapes. Start with Echoes, the 23-minute masterpiece Kubrick rumouredly rejected for his 2001: A Space Odyssey, and play it twice, back to back. (Whoa.) Now the rest of the album, straight-up: One Of These Days, A Pillow Of Winds, Fearless, San Tropez, and Seamus. If there is a God and he wants us to get high on Malick, we’ll see the cluelessly contrite Sean Penn stumbling around exactly while Fearless plays, and blow our collective minds.

Those of you who have watched The Tree Of Life and have liked it might find this obsessive piece of Floyd-geekery excessive, and it certainly is. I hadn’t heard the band in ages, but the film — its unerringly note-perfect craftsmanship; its undeniable artistry; its magnificent, dazzling, overbaked visuals; its layers and layers of liberally applied symbolism; its bluster; its occasional genius; its frequent sexlessness and its hubris — instantly made me crave and hunt them out. Those who haven’t might be curious about the film’s ‘story,’ about which all I can merely say is that it is more of a meditation.

Like Wesley Morris wrote in the film’s finest review (one you should go look up if keen to know more about the film than the bits I’ve told you) “the movie is church via the planetarium.” And who better than Floyd to underscore such a killer sound and light show?

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First published Kindle magazine, September 2011