1. Angry Indian Goddesses
It is a film which should have been made,
definitely, but maybe a bit differently? Like nobody is killed? Saw the cuts
which were asked to be made by the CBFC. It is bullshit. What was wrong with
the image of Kali which was blurred in the film? They couldn’t stand a woman’s
legs and shorts in a suggestion shot? What was with asking the word 'sarkar' to
be muted etc?
Why were they objectifying men? Is that the solution
to objectification of women? Just like I suspected, it was a male director. Why
was the Anglo Indian killed and raped? So in the end it always happens? Yes,
the men get killed too, but is that the solution? What is, then? There are, a
lot of problems which have been shown in the film which are genuine. The mother
daughter thing was absolute crap. What was the need of it and it was against
everything that was supposed to be have been told in the film.
Also it remains a fact that all these women are rich
and of a certain background. The only dark skinned woman is, an activist who
wears ‘activist’ clothes. The only other woman from another class, is Lakshmi,
the maid. Her revenge? She gives it up in the end. She was the one who got the gun. She got slapped.
Cried like a baby, though.
[Everyone standing in the church was predictable].
Vai Vow made a joke. 'So all the people in the church knew the whole story till
then?'
Why did the girl have to die? There is also a debate
in the film which ends with women are women’s worst enemies. I felt that was
the director talking. And note that there was no counter argument or retort for
that statement.
2. Bandit Queen
It is a great film. CBFC was a casteist male dick to
have banned it. I remember watching it in Kairali Sree, that Women’s Film
Festival for which Sethuvamma had (probably forcefully) taken me and Kunju Thalona. Both Sethuvamma and Kunju Thalona were all praises for the film and I was excited too even
though I hadn’t understood a thing. So when I went back I was all excited and
told Appachan the story as I had heard from both of them. A woman was raped
and raped and raped, I had said, many times during my narration. Appachan,
after listening to the whole story told me, that rape was a very big word, that
it involved sex and I shouldn’t say that word. That it was enough that I said
something bad. Like എന്തോ ചീത്ത എന്ന് സംഭവിച്ചു എന്ന് പറഞ്ഞാ മതി. I do remember
that, clearly. I didn’t know what rape was, then. I didn’t know that I would
get raped one day. Nor did Appachan.
Some scenes rang a bell. Mostly the lover scenes.
And now, I think what will never leave my mind are other scenes. Many other
scenes. I, anyway have to read her memoirs to understand the film. I got a
feeling that it had not done full justice to it but let me not be the judge too
soon. Update: Learnt that Phoolan Devi had objected to the film and moved the court and it had banned it. Currently reading her autobiography and already realizing that the film indeed, was an uppercaste male masnplaining a lower caste woman's story.
The film is really good in making and is a great
production. Looks like a lot of money was spent too. First of all I want to see
how Phoolan’s relationships with the two men, Manoj Bajpayee and her partner
who gets killed. How it is in the book.
Also the last attack that Phoolan does. The way it
has been told is to generate sympathy towards the dead upper caste men. The
small boys wearing poonool and doing the last rites for their fathers. For the
first time, I saw their poonool in the film in that scene.
Have to look up the director also.
Some screenshots from the film below. For future reference.
Screenshot from Bandit Queen. Seema Biswas as Phoolan Devi
3. Black Friday
Didn’t understand why the man made the film. There
was already a book. He made a film which is like a book and added nothing to
the information in terms of form or medium. Why waste so much money! Have to
read the book now. Uff.
4. Cafe Society
Woody Allen film. Did not like it much. The Social Network actor goes to
Hollywood and falls in love with Kristen Stewart. She is having an affair with 'Office' boss guy. The guy looks
like a manipulative abuser. Finally marries her also. Not much in the film. The
Woody Allen narration is as usual. About Hollywood affairs and glitz and
glamour and gossip. They love each other, end up being with other people and
keep thinking of each other. What’s so great about it. Why did he have to make
that film. The only thing that was good about it was that the two did not get
together and live happily ever after, in the end.
5. Fatso!
After watching Kahaani 2 we felt that we should
watch more films together to ward off depression and other such problems. So
then we watched this film which was in Vai Vow's laptop.
I liked it in some ways. This guy who dies and goes
to after death place which is neither hell nor heaven and finds out that it is
just like a government office. He finds out that he was brought there by
mistake and that it was his friend whom they always call ‘Fatso’ who was
supposed to die. Gul Panag is the dead guy’s girlfriend. They looked like a
couple who was very happy. So now he has to go back to earth but in the body of
Fatso because his own body has been cremated already. I liked it because it said
that god didn’t exist and heaven and hell didn’t exist. Body shaming was not
addressed properly and the girl falling in love with Fatso was not gradual
enough. It happened all of a sudden and without enough provocation.
But the film is not that bad.
6. Firaq
It is a really bold and beautiful debut film. The
script is good, like Vai Vow said. I hated some dialogues. Much much much
better than Parzania but there are problems of course. And again, no wonder it
got banned. It says all that what Parzania said and more. That Hindus killed
Muslims, engineered it, that violence continued for months, years after that,
Muslims were leaving Gujarat out of fear, and everything. Felt that Nazuriddin Shah character was overdone. This
Muslim poet is really something people should get rid of. Urdu sprinkled Hindi
and all that. The old good Muslim ignorant of what happened in the world. There is one
opening line that I liked. The house help at Shah’s place is saying bad things
about him because he has not repaired the TV for long. Shah replies, who seemed
to be not hearing what he was saying, that ‘But you can still hear everything,
right’.
Muslim assertion. Saying that I am a Muslim. It is really scary for the Hindu nation. That
is the reality in India today and it has been shown. As it is.
The part where Nawazuddin Siddique is killed has
been done so well. She is a really good director. The man is observing
everything from upstairs. The police
only has to tell him that the man who just ran away is a Muslim for him to tip
the police man off which way he went.
Later he escapes from the police and rests under this man’s house. The man is
still watching from his balcony. He goes back in silently, as though defeated.
Meanwhile Siddique sees the boy he had left behind and smiles. His smile is
shattered when the man throws a concrete block on his head from the balcony and
kills him. It is that easy. Nobody is going to ask you anything. The police man
will probably come back and congratulate him.
The bindi should not be worn these days. It is used
to identify people. The visible signs of hindus should be avoided. Is it
protest? Who knows, but may be we should see what it does to understand what it means. How would the
RSS react if there was a ban on bindi.
7. Fire
Makes sense why the Censor Board did not release the
film. Indian men just couldn’t take all the feminism.
Towards the end the film really gathers momentum and
becomes really something.
The fire in Nandita Das is seen from the time she
enters the house. She goes to the room and wears pants. She plays music and
dances.
There is another woman in the house and looks like
all the elder brother cares for is her. His mother. Even in the end when his
wife is burning, he picks up his mother and leaves. A frail woman who can be
picked up – okay for men.
Layers. There are a lot of layers to the film script
wise and making wise. Deepa Mehta’s style was really good back then I wonder
what her current films are like. Should watch all of them. I am not sure if I
liked the mustard field dream/flashback of wanting to see the ocean and the
mother asking the little girl to imagine it all. Beautiful cinematography by
the way. Forgot to look up who did it.
Husband refusing to have sex with wife is all very
okay. Both the husbands are like that in the film. But when these two women
find their desire and reject sex with their husbands, they just can’t stand it.
It was Delhi, the city. In films I seem to like it.
Will I in real life? Sure is spacious than Bombay. I liked space. The curtains and the terrace.
It was odd listening to it in English. It’s funny.
These days Hindi films which are 80% English are also okay but when it is a
film like this somehow sounds very artificial.
I didn’t like the use of music in the film.
Isn’t it interesting that women find love in all
places. It always happens. The two women found love along with desire. They
made plans to run away.
8. Five
Abbas Kiarostami’s long takes dedicated to Ozu.
Didn’t like it. May be I am not mature enough but so be it. Liked the long take
with ducks. It was funny. And choosing the sea is kind of convenient when it
comes to long takes, don’t you think? That is, perhaps the only thing human
beings like looking at for a long time. Isn’t it? Fell asleep watching it with
Vai Vow. Watched 4 out of 5.
9. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
Interesting. A very powerful Chief of Police is
shown murdering his ‘mistress’. We get to know that she is a married woman. The
Chief leaves a lot of evidence around and is a very powerful man. His point is
to prove that he is above suspicion. Which he looks like in the beginning.
Later we come to know how the woman had liked power very much and how they used
to enact various murder postures and click pictures of them etc. But the man’s
problem is ultimately that his power was not working with the woman. He hated
her calling him a child. Later to make him angry, she yells that he is indeed a
child and makes love like a child. She starts having an affair with someone
else and the Chief becomes very jealous. The new lover is also a rebel. The
government calls itself democratic but is really fascist. They are constantly
hunting down students and their protest. Yet in the end even after the man
confesses, nobody is willing to take him seriously. They only cover up the
crime and destroy evidence. Sexual jealousy and how the Chief fails in all the
tests. In front of the young rebel whom the woman chose over him. During
interrogation it becomes clear that the student has power over him. This play
of power is very important and nicely portrayed. The last scene in which the
man draws blinds in the room and we see him and his colleagues standing in the
room through the closing blinds is something that can be copied. Movement of
camera, a slight tilt down will look good with it. Try other movements as well.
Hated the background music.
10. Kahaani 2
Vai Vow and I watched together. I am depressed
because I am pregnant. Horrible thoughts in head all the time. This film viewing together took both of our minds
away from all the fear. For some time. Didn’t like the film one bit but liked
seeing Kolkata and its people again. Why is Kahaani 2 not about the same woman in Kahaani 1?
In this one, what I liked the best is the portrayal
of child sexual abuse. When every attempt fails, Vidya Balan says ‘yahaa aur
yahaa touch karte hai to bura lagta hai’. Then the child says yes, ‘mujhe bhi’.
Then there is the grandmother who is colluding with the uncle. Who tells the
girl that it is all her fault. The lecture that Vidya Balan gives her saying
how can a 6 year old child know about
what is love and what is abuse is also well done. But otherwise the film fails
in all ways.
It is not Vidya Balan’s film. Arjun Rampal who saves
everyone is the hero.
You can upload the portions in Kahaani 2 which speaks about abuse in YouTube.
11. Lion
The thing that I liked the best about the film came
in the end. It said that Saroo was pronouncing his name wrong all the time and
he was actually named Sheroo which means, the title of the film, Lion. But it
was really funny, listening to the Australian woman talking about how she got a
vision when she was a teenager, of a ‘brown’ boy. So the whole adoption thing
was not because she could not have children, she says, self righteously, it was
because she had a vision. It was one of the things which made the couple fall
in love, she said. So the ‘brown’ boy in front of her was sitting there because
this white woman had a vision when she was a teenager. Ha ha. And he is supposed
to feel grateful for it. Ha ha ha.
But the film was really really well made. Towards
the end, that is, after the boy grew up into the older version, I kind of lost
interest and it was no longer told with love, the story, but the first part was
so brilliant! The boy who loves jalebis, who says that he will eat 2000 jalebis
when the older boy returns. The young actor was impossible and so sweet. I
really loved the way Nawazzidun Siddique episode was told. The little child
senses that there is something wrong. That something is really wrong. And we get to
know that he senses it. The landscape, was shown beautifully, and how it is an
integral part of the place. That longing for the landscape which only people
who have been displaced in some way or the other can understand. Cried, yes.
The girlfriend angle was not really required, was
it? Like her mother and cancer, that dialogue itself was not required. Some
stories are beautiful because it is a true story. Spotlight was one like that,
for me. This one, I felt should have been imagination, somehow. Felt that it
would have been incredible if it had not
been a true story. Don’t know why.
Incredible debut film, I should say.
12. Luck By Chance
Liked the film in a lot of ways. Found it boring in
between. Was waiting for it to get over in the second half because it was quite
loose, the narration. But there are, so many things that the director has done
in this film which are really required. I wonder if this film was made before
or after 'Om Shanti Om'. In a lot of ways, it is Om Shanti Om’s predecessor if it
was made before. If made after, it was kind of a feminist side to Om Shanti Om, in that it tried to address certain issues that Om Shanti Om could have addressed and
did not.
Casting couch. Patriarchy in film industry. 'Om Shanti
Om' touches on the subject, yes, but not in the way 'Luck by Chance' does. Liked
it that in the end Konkana Sensharma tells the man who apologises to her that
even then everything is about him, how she can be an anchor to him. Her career
as an actor or her as a person does not figure anywhere in the scheme of
things. The woman becomes independent and happy, in the end.
The portrayal of mother and daughter competing for
the young guy’s attention sucked. Later these areas were touched upon by the
scoop writer. I saw Filmistan studio which is in SV road in the film. Very near
my house where I was watching the film from. Bollywood really is Bombay.
Anurag Kashyap’s role suited his character very
well. He is called ‘institute’ for saying crap. It was really funny. Dimple
Kapadia talks about how she was made to sleep with the producer at the age of
sixteen by her mother. The blame is on the mother in the dialogue but it is
referring to the problem of casting couch.
13. Moonlight
Liked certain things. Did not like certain things.
Did not like the film. It is a full circle of a black boy becoming a drug
seller. The story begins with a drug seller finding the boy, bullied by other
boys because he is a ‘faggot’. He is bullied in school because he is gay. It
also says something indirectly, that he is going to die. Because in the second
part, as though it is natural, the first drug dealer was dead. The film didn’t
work because of the way the story was told. I liked the story of black people
looking blue in the moon that the first drug dealer says. Blaming the mother is
still very much there. Don’t know about the psychology of the viewer. Does the
viewer feel that it is the mother’s fault? There is one line in which the old
drug dealer says that he misses his mother now and he used to hate her too and
that that was all that he was going to say about it. Is it really that simple?
Yes, noticed that the cast was all black. It was
really great to watch. And the actor was really good. Because in the end when
he is with his lover, he becomes the old boy. The white Oscar committee must
have loved the film and given it Oscar because all black, all drug and guns and
violence and drug doers. Must have been heaven for them?
14. Paanch
Anurag Kashyap shit again. Did not like it one bit. Didn’t even like Kay Kay in
it. He didn’t have Menon attached to his name in credits. Need to see if he
dropped it. [Wikipedia has it.] What on earth was the film
about. A very predictable story in which Kay Kay is the bully don and thinks he
is mad. Has Van Gogh and Kafka mentioned on his wall but writes Morrison as his
last name. Thinks he is Lucifer and his hairdo seems to be to imitate devil.
How pathetic. Men really think that such stories need to be told. Whaaaai!
I predicted the ‘twist’ in the story correctly. That
Kay Kay is not dead. And that the girl had gone back to the station to say
that. And he, in the end, like a pathetic loser, Kashyap wrote that the girl was also
caught. Because he was too scared that it would give the ‘wrong’ message. Then
why make the film in the first place, idiot! This film did not get a release
because censor board did not give certificate. Never thought I would say this,
but thank you censor board. [I am completely against all kinds of censorship by the Board and think even bad films like these should be called bad films and banned only by the viewer. That no body has the right to deny the viewer that. But sometimes some films make you feel so bad that you end up thanking the Board for banning them!]
15.Parzania
About Gujarat riots. No wonder it was banned. It
says that the Gujarat riots were pre planned. That the Hindu right wing was
behind it, that it was engineered and orchestrated by Modi and with police
protection. It is still scared, the film, because it tried to say it through
the point of view of a foreigner who wants to do research on Gandhi. There is a
man who looks like Ghoshal, a Hindu man, who provides insight to this
foreigner. Also the protagonist family from which Parzan goes missing is Parsi.
Not muslim. The concept of all religions are one and the same etc tried. But it
spoke the truth. Showed the brutal killings. The participation of the police
and everything. No wonder it was banned. Yeah.
16. Sansaara
Beautiful film of beautiful pictures from across the
world. Didn’t like the filmmaker’s commentary on some of it. Like mechanization
of people and fat people eating meat leading to obesity. How typical. But the
film is really something. Some of the images really need to be shown to the
world. As if to see itself in a mirror. The Buddhist monks painting with
coloured powder. In the end they demolish the whole painting created so
painstakingly. In the film it is kind of done like a statement. Like that’s how
the world is, the beginning, the end, the full cycle kind of a thing. But these
statements are not what is important.
What the film achieved is much more than
what the maker intended. It is a rare thing to happen. The portrayal of
aborigines was problematic. Somehow them looking into the camera felt violent.
There was something wrong in them doing that. It felt as if the director had
instructed them to do it for the certain kind of feeling it would generate,
cinematically and that they were not at
home doing it. Japan is like Bombay. High rises and big factories and
slums. So many sights of so many places that I had never seen in my life and
never ever imagined seeing. The climax was so climactic and it is very
difficult to do that in this sort of a film. He achieved it.
17. Seven Samurai
Kurosawa.
I don’t think I will like any of this man’s films. May
be some other period of life. As I am typing this, Vai Vow is piercing my thigh
with a pen. He is asking me to consider the framing of the film. Mansplaining,
basically. I liked this frame in which the title is being displayed in the end.
The four tombs of the dead Samurai plus the three alive ones. And the lovers in
the forest, the first time, I knew that the boy was going to go to romance when
I saw him pluck the flower. In their love story, the flowers frame is something
I really liked. Why do men make it sound like some things are really great and
that there is something called the ‘greater’ cinema. The division between
commercial and art is also, in a way, that. Like how time and space was for you.
Discovering things happen later and I am not even sure if I discovered time and
space because of this pressure or if it was a coincidence. In fact, it was
there, may be, and I wasn’t calling it that. Or what is it?
If you want slut shaming reference, plenty in the
film. The wife who went with the bandits or the bandits raped and took her. The
above mentioned woman who is made to look like a man. After the guy and the
girl make love, father gives a slut shaming speech. But this is one of those
films in which the woman does NOT get pregnant after having sex just once. At
least not during the reel time. Not specified.
18. Sins
Detailed review and a study coming up later. The film is absolute bullshit. About rape by a Malayalee priest played by Shiney Ahuja. I don't know if the film or his acting was worse.
19. The Danish Girl
Cried so much watching it. Just watching the love of
the painter’s wife. How much she loved that man. How much she loved him. I just
can’t believe. The film begins with a painting exhibition in which someone is
telling the wife that don’t you wish you could paint like your husband some
day.
The film could be about the woman also. The man’s
childhood friend who later comes into the picture says that when he cuts the
call. That Some Danish Girl is waiting to see him.
The way she kisses the friend guy after she has a
fight and at that moment I thought WHAT
AN ACTRESS! Later Vai Vow told me she won Oscar for best supporting actor. She
should have won it for best actor. The man has also acted really well. He is so
beautiful!
The dialogues are so beautiful.
Need to read the book. Put in wishlist.
Update: The book does not seem to be available.
20. The White God
Hungarian film about dogs that I did not like and Vai Vow liked. Apparently Un Certain Regarde winner it is, but what the fuck is
this film! Dogs taking revenge? For human supremacy? I mean because of human supremacy? [Confession. I am a human supremacist and i believe that human beings are above animals.] Then why are they in the
end again subservient and lying down in front of the girl’s music? What
happened to the grand plan of revenge? Hated the whole revenge part. The music
thing was nice. But did not like it. I can’t understand the politics. It is not
preaching equality. It is only preaching subservience.
21. Aankhon Dekhi
(23rd April 2017)
The one in which it starts like 'American Beauty'. The
male voice over is the protagonist's. Changes happen to this man in the film.
Like a coming of age of an older person. In the end he dies. [Jumps off a cliff
to understand if he can fly] The film Amaresh had shown us once - 'Toto the Hero'
also had something similar, I believe. The narrative device is also the same.
However, it is funny how for Indian men, revelations
happen but no feminism. The enlightened man comes home and hands over his stuff
to his wife, never pays attention. The wife’s problems are never even
addressed. Why is it that they always think that enlightenment lies outside his
relationship with people around him. Strange.
It is about this guy’s spiritual journey which
starts with him thinking that nothing can be believed until he himself sees and
verifies it. He gets followers and his philosophies keep changing, ending in
gambling. Commits suicide in the end. The man who plays the role of the brother
is the director of the film. Acting is really nice and I loved the man’s
daughter. She is a good actor.
22. American Honey
Liked the film. It’s a bildungsroman. Coming of age
of this girl. Liked the ending especially. Also how she leaves her siblings? back
home when going on this trip. She thinks she is in love with Jake, the man who
is kind of the leader of this band. There is a woman who is their head. Sexual
jealousy and everything. Liked it when the truck driver asks her what her dream
is and she says that no one has ever asked her that question. Later she asks it
to Jake and he says that nobody has ever asked him that question. Really liked
the ending in which everyone is singing the American Honey song and later Jake
is there and pulls her, gives her a turtle. She releases the turtle into a pond
and dips herself in it. The music stops abruptly when she emerges. It was
beautiful. Why was she shown removing the condom?
Jake and his sexual jealousy, the only thing he is
concerned about is if she ‘fucked’ that man. He touches or fingers her and
smells his fingers to see if he can ‘smell’ another man. What the fuck. Seemed
like this fucker the man who used to beat me up. He had such weird jealousy
issues.
23. Her
I was asked a million times to watch this film. By a
million people. So I watched it the other day after four years of everyone
telling me that. I cried. And thought of her. You see, I have a her
in my life too and she is away from me now.
‘Her’ by Spike Jonze is a beautiful film. Not every
day do you get to see an honest portrayal or human relationships, love,
jealousy and every other emotion that we, as a race are capable of. I have no
idea how it was achieved. The beautiful script must have helped, surely. The
music and the edit and the cinematography and shot taking were all designed
especially for this. Oh well, that’s all of the film I am talking about.
These days I think a lot about her. May be
because she is away and every time she goes away I fall into this
recapitulation of my memories with her.
The film spoke about love. It has been two days
since I watched the film and still sometimes I drift to ‘Her’s time and space.
The grey of the film and her voice. I felt so sad watching the film. I felt bad
for humans who are incapable of more than one love. Humans think they own the
things they love. Or they love the things they own.
But Artificial Intelligence does not follow these
rules. Her in ‘Her’ constantly updates herself by imbibing the emotions she
experiences. She grows at a tremendous speed and soon outshines human love
which owns the things they love and love the things they own. Quickly they
learn that humans are not capable of understanding their love and they leave.
Quietly.
Do you know what I liked the best about the film? It
is that it told the story of her and not him. You see when the operating system
is being installed you have the option to choose a male voice or a female
voice. Theodore Twombly chooses a female voice. That’s how Samantha enters. At
this point I would like to tell you that I don’t think that Theodore is the
hero of the film. I think it’s Samantha. You’ll also notice that another
character who develops a relationship with her OS is Amy and her OS also, incidentally
is female. Since the film has a brilliant script and also because generally in
films nothing is a coincidence, I loved the decision.
Her-the film got inside me just like how she
did. There is no point trying to explain what she means to me or where
this analogy is going. I write when I am sad. Yesterday I read a note that
she’d written addressed to me and then cried like a baby and caught cold. Cold
is what I hate the most in the world. When you have cold and you smoke, you feel
like you are smoking through a water pipe coming all the way from under the
ground. She knows love the best. I love her so much.
You know what? We have a system here. We write the
name of the film we watched that day on a slate hung on our window every day.
An exercise to make us watch films so that we don’t forget that we are
filmmakers and while doing other jobs also make films. When it was my turn to
write I wrote ‘She’ instead of ‘Her’. I don’t know what that means. It’s only
when Vai Vow started laughing that I realized that I had made a mistake.
You know if she ever watches the film ‘Her’ she
is going to smirk and say, ‘Poor fellows, I have been talking about this for at
least ten years now’ which, in fact, might be true. Since she knows the
best about love and she gives a lot of love away, she has also
mastered the craft that Samantha possesses in ‘Her’. To love and to let go.
The Wrestler is by Darron Aronofsky that man who
made 'Requiem for a Dream'. Requiem was much better. I didn’t like the film much.
Don’t think the bar dancer and daughter characters were required. What was
achieved with that? The bar dancer come to his last match and all that, what
was that? And the film could have ended long ago, with just the man entering or
making him do the 'ram jam' again. If the death was not to be shown, the advent
of the heart attack also need not have been shown. I really really loved the
actor. The actor alone would have done.
25. Under the Skin
Didn’t like the film as a whole but the treatment is
something I liked. Why are people obsessed with this female character who
seduces people and kills them? Liked the use of tele in this. Like with the eye
and everything. The woman examining her own nudity is also something I liked.
But in that case the Director’s POVs should have been completely avoided. There
was an opacity thing that was done before the first attempted rape where she
was sleeping in a cavern and the trees in the forest were swaying over her
sleeping face. Then she wakes up to a stranger doing things to her body. Rape
scenes scare me. But should we actually show rape like that? Is it building a
definition of rape where there is physical violence involved etc?
No comments:
Post a Comment