Lootera

I remember we were once told in scriptwriting class that you begin to notice all the technical aspects of a film (the cinematography, editing and what have you) when the story fails to hold your attention. It is quite the opposite with me. Nothing distracts me from bad story-telling. And so I have nothing to say about the cinematography, the acting, the Bengali literature/culture references and whatever else Lootera has got praise for. 

I must say I loved the first five minutes of the film. The way it opened, the play (was it Ramayan?), Sonakshi Sinha relishing it with child-like joy, and the first foreshadowing of her illness. Then her father, the zamindar decides to tell her a story. Cue in a 'let me tell you a pariyoon ki kahani' type background music for a barbaric story about a king being betrayed and his parrot (which safeguards his soul/life) getting beheaded. It might have worked in an ironic way but that sadly wasn't the intent. 

Varun's character encompasses all possible human traits. He starts off being a little bit of an introverted, shy, hulk of a man. He looks nervous around Pakhi, not because he is afraid of being caught, but because she's a woman. He looks doomed and brooding when she's not around. When we see him in the latter part of the film, it might as well have been a different person. He is suddenly all man. Pakhi's character I liked. Her's had the most economical exposition. Very well done. I know she's a protected, indulged child in like five minutes! Now, if she is the apple of her father's eye, why would he consent to her marriage without any background check done on the boy? Varun saying he is orphaned isn't enough. (Raanjhanaa and Lootera and beginning to sound similar!)

I had no clue Varun wasn't who he claimed to be, so when that information was revealed it was unexpected. But I didn't feel half as bad for Pakhi as I did for her father when Varun dumps her and cleans out the treasury. He left that poor man with NOTHING but heart ache (literally :)) all because it would have been improper to tell his adopted uncle no. When Pakhi confronts him with a 'So your mama/chacha was more important to you than me,' he deflects the answer in the lamest way possible: "You are rich, grew up in mansions, what do you know?" As with Raanjhanaa, here too I found the protagonist's actions beyond redemption or empathy. 

Varun's two decisions, one to stand up to his uncle and get married to Pakhi, and two, to run away the next morning were without external provocation. I am doing the film a favour by ignoring the chacha landing up there and giving him a veiled threat, because 1. Varun had no reason to feel threatened. Whether his chacha tells Pakhi's father 'his asliyat' or Varun ditches her, Pakhi was bound to find out the next morning. But submitting to the chacha meant Pakhi found out his true colours in the saddest of ways, and 2. Varun later claims he ran away on the day of the wedding out of loyalty to the man who bought him up. So the uncle didn't have to threaten him. That scene was to make Varun seem like he was being forced by a malignant force to act against his wishes but that could hardly be the case. It just occurred to me that it is representative of the very thing I blame the writer (s) of: using outrageous character actions to avoid cliches. In the hands of a less aspiring writer/director, Varun's uncle would have threatened to cause Pakhi great harm should Varun go ahead with the marriage. And so Varun leaves Pakhi for HER good. Cliched yes, but I'd actually have preferred that for the logic it lends Varun's actions thereafter. This is a long explanation for a scene I planned to ignore :) So if Varun was forced to leave Pakhi to protect her, this might have become the epic love story they were going for. 

Next, there was no trust built between the two for it to be broken. The scene when she has her attack in the car and he has to inject her with her medicine was well-directed, but under-used. And it certainly was cute when Pakhi yells at him for saying no to her, but that means she's in control of the relationship not he. The film is about trust being broken and then re-built. But, where was the trust gained in the first place? I get that Pakhi's character was drawn up to be childlike-trusting. She falls for the new archeologist because he is new. It is sweet but it makes me less sympathetic towards her. Like I said before, I felt a lot more for her father than her... which is okay I suppose.

Moving on, as Varun does quite happily... we enter the dark, sombre second half. Varun lands up shooting his friend, accidentally, sure, but he was trying to kill someone nonetheless... a police officer doing his job, to be precise. And what was he saving? His own bloody skin. And this killing changes our bumbling, spineless non-hero into a raging, righteous, full on testosterone hero. He comes barging into Pakhi's house and demands to know how dare she inform the police! He even pulls out the very same gun on her and her help. The justification for his anger is that he did not realise that his previous actions resulted in the death of the Zamindar. Like breaking a poor girl's heart and robbing her father blind aren't enough reasons for her to call the cops on him.

Pakhi gives back as good as she can (there was a rediff review about how their noses in this scene reflect their inner turmoil which I found really amusing. But perhaps it is true. Just that I never noticed how their noses were framed). There is one weak attempt to call the police and after that she doesn't bother. He proceeds to squat in her house... again to save his ass. See what I mean by outrageous character actions? Now that Varun's male-ness has made an appearance it refuses to go away. He thunders through the house, grabs her at will, huffs and growls and is absolutely nothing like what he was earlier. And it isn't that the earlier version of him was an act. He was only pretending to be an archeologist. The tenderness, bewilderment and love was all his own. I guess the writers felt that if Varun returned to her cowering and pitiful, what story would have been there left to tell? I think there was. Changing his character just for some conflict or chemistry is silly.

Then, out of nowhere, Pakhi whose character was so well-defined, goes all nuts about a tree outside her house. It isn't even like her favourite tree or anything. If they had at least shown her to be superstitious earlier, or if, say, when her father dies she notices that the tree outside her house had no leaves, or something, I'd have been able to understand her obsession. The thoota (parrot) tale isn't the reason, unless there was an edited scene following that in which Pakhi believes she is going to die and her father tells her that she can never, because he locked her soul in their Dalhousie guest house walla tree. So this tree-obsession was a force fit from The Last Leaf. (And what a silly girl it makes her too. Doesn't she understand the concept of winter and spring? Leaves fall means tree dead? Tu-tut.) She is too much of an adult to believe in rubbish like that, and too much of an adult for us to not argue with. Varun listens to her, nods along and immediately gets to the task of painting yellow leaves (nice touch though, the colour).

Let's assume Pakhi's belief in her life being tied to the tree's leaves is convincing for us and Varun... But the last 30 minutes, which was the The Last Leaf adaptation, missed the whole point. The Last Leaf was about a selfless sacrifice. The old man downstairs (who was a painter and looking to make his masterpiece) had no reason to go through such lengths for a child, but he does. He doesn't do it every night either, because that is just plain stupid. Couldn't you find a more solid way of fixing the leaf that didn't require you to climb up every night? How about fixing more than one leaf? And what if the leaf fell during the day? Who is to tie the leaf after he dies? What makes him think that after he leaves, she will stop believing in this stupidity? See, The Last Leaf is based on a child's irrational fear and builds to the climax on a stormy night. When you read The Last Leaf you are convinced that the next morning there will be no leaf, and you fear how the child is going to react to it. In Lootera there was no such anxiety. And in Lootera it wasn't sacrifice as much as it was redemption. He owed it to Pakhi to save her life.

Which brings me to my biggest grouse: the lack of surprise in the act of sacrifice. The reason we remember The Last Leaf as well as we do (I do at least) is because the sacrifice took us by surprise. Here Varun owes it to her. Where is the surprise if his inner world is thrown wide open to Pakhi and us. For at least an hour he labours through his redemption in full public view. He is no kind stranger. He stays with Pakhi and helps her through her illness. Hence the leaf-tying act was diluted. It is the only thing she doesn't know about him, but that can hardly surprise her much. To contrast this, what if he everything he did in the second half was without her knowledge?

Imagine that Pakhi does not see Varun at her guest house, but he does. He finds out what harm he has caused her by running away on their wedding. He gets a chance to skip town, but how can he leave this poor, sick girl behind? She unwittingly has become his responsibility. Little acts of kindness turns up at her doorstep without her knowing who is responsible for them. All alone and unwell, she looks forward to this invisible stranger's gifts. The police tell her to look out for Varun and she is more than willing to. The jerk ruined her life. Varun hears about her crazy obsessive belief in the tree. Every day he watches the leaves fall with fear. What can he do? The night of the great storm. Pakhi stands at the window just as Varun steps out. They both see each other. She might be dying, but she owes her father this: She telephones the police. Varun knows what she might have done, but doesn't run away immediately. What he has to do wont take more than five minutes he reasons. But, as always, he underestimated painting. It takes him all night.

Pakhi makes peaces with the fact that she is going to die, but at least the man responsible for her grief is not going get away with his crimes.

The morning-after she looks out and there, to her shock, is a leaf still holding on. She doesn't step out or anything melodramatic. She turns in her bed and goes to sleep. There is peace on her face. Varun, of course, dies at the hands of the police and not because he asks for it (by pretending to have a gun). He runs, tries to escape. He wants to live, why shouldn't he want to? The police shoot after the running man. He dies. Maybe I don't like suicidal people. That's the other thing about The Last Leaf... the painter wasn't exactly keen on dying. Makes his sacrifice bigger, if you ask me.

Lacing the O Henry story with the fall of the Bengal Zamindar was a good thing but it only lent itself atmospherically to the film. I did not know anything about that time in our history, so it was initially very interesting... especially since we watched it from the zamindar's point of view. I liked how beautifully the sense of loss, that fall from power permeates the post-interval part. I feel that the writers had a great Zamindar story that they tried to marry to The Last Leaf. But two wonderful stories don't an epic make.

On a side note: How random was the Sonakshi and Ranveer's scene with the 'Kya likh rahi ho'? Was it to give us that (to repeat the same word) epic feeling. The VO in the trailers felt like they were trying too hard and in the film the exchange was quite random. She pulls out her diary to write, if memory serves right, just after they've made love. Was reference to her writing a hat-tip to Charulata?

Raanjhanaa (with five 'a's, you'd expect it to be a topper, but!)

People who've liked Raanjhanaa insist that Kundan is an exact representation of Benarasi youth. 'That is how boys there love!' Kundan, still in school, follows Zoya everywhere. He could have found a million ways to tell her how he feels, but what he chooses to do is:
1) hold her hand in the middle of a crowded street and ENJOY getting slapped.
2) Slit his wrist when she says she doesn't feel that way about him.

This is a stalker and there are stalkers everywhere, in all parts of India. But surely in no town, not even in Bollywood Benaras, should they be romanticised the way Kundan is. Kundan isn't an anti-hero either. He IS the hero. Anand Rai makes sure of that by
1) having Kundan turn over a new leaf after Abhay's character is beaten up and
2) having every single character forgive him once they're exposed to the blinding glow of his pure heart.
Abhay Deol's sister who watches her bro get beaten tells her parents that if not for Kundan, Abhay would be dead. It is only when Abhay finally dies (smartly not shown) that she decides to give Kundan a couple of cold stares. But Kundan serves food at the Langar and who can stay mad at him after that, right? Remember how Abhay wakes up from his coma long enough to tell Kundan: no hard feelings, these chicks na, ruin our life? And Swara, after being stood up on their wedding, still loves him!!?? Kundan is the hero. If anything, he is a victim of louve.

A good question to ask is if Anand (with an extra 'a' somewhere, I forget) was so determined to make Kundan a hero, why didn't he go with conventional characterisation? Why give him 'grey shades' only to spend the whole second half white-washing? I believe Anand Rai is a bit upset with today's intolerance towards what was once acceptable in his growing up years. He wants to know: Is it really such a bad thing for a boy to threaten to kill himself for a girl? For him to bleed in front of her, till she agrees she loves him? Is it such a terrible thing when a boy publicly grabs a girl and threatens her even though she's made it clear she doesn't feel the same way? And what is the big deal if he uses someone else's feelings for him to exact revenge on the one who rejected him? Must we hate a person for doing all this? No, says Anand Rai, you must not. Such a person is still a lovely human being and you will see that the ones he hurt don't deserve our pity either.

Anand Rai uses three tools, in the form of characters, to achieve this.
1) The best friend, the one with the funny lines,
2) Zoya, whose actions too are not beyond questioning, and
3) Swara Bhaskar, who loves Kundan from when she was a toddler to like forever.
Never mind that a person who slits his wrists at the drop of a hat is most unlikely to have a loyal best friend as much in love with him as Swara Bhaskar's character is. What puzzled me most was why Zoya tolerated Kundan's presence on campus for as long as she did? Here, the writing is clever and I am only pretending to be impressed. To distract us from the impossibility of true friendship between the two, the friend is given humour. And to justify Kundan's ill-treatment of Swara she is made unlady-like almost autistic. Finally, Zoya, whose love of her life was killed because she refused Kundan, seeks revenge so late in the film that it feels irrelevant and actually mean!

I never in my life have slapped someone and then turned around to smile at the person, so I can't say I understand Zoya. Apparently Benarasi women also behave unlike the rest of humanity. Why else would she allow Kundan to hang around her after he openly threatens her on the street? Why does she think maligning an innocent man's image is the only way to refuse a marriage proposal? And what was the idea behind asking your boyfriend to pretend to be a Muslim? Was no one in her family even curious about Abhay's family? Is Benaras, in convoluted Benarasi logic, so forward thinking that the orthodox Muslim family is okay to have the groom-to-be live with them till the wedding and be the sole representative of his entire family?

So, I don't like Kundan's character, or in fact, anyone else's. But that shouldn't have made me dislike the film as much as I did. I've seen other films in which the lead characters sickened/ annoyed me or were people I wouldn't be friends with: Clockwork Orange, Perfume, Raging Bull and so on. Plenty of films in which lead characters commit an unforgivable crime, seek redemption, win our sympathy but must still die: In Bruges, Dead Man Walking, Chamber, etc. Raanjhanaa's story is terrible because it was built with the sole purpose of convincing us that Kundan is a good guy. There isn't a plot at all! Had Zoya, like a normal human being, confronted him the minute she sees him in DU, several story possibilities open up. Maybe we'd have stepped into her shoes to see what it takes to forgive a man who was responsible for so much grief in your life. But since it was important to make her unreasonable, like apparently all women are, we are fed a fantastical tale of student leaders taking on the CM by merely wishing it. So we have a climax that's crazier than the character's relationship with each other. Zoya decides to blow up a rally to kill ONE man. And then confess to it at a press conference. How hard is it to get hold of some poison, lady? And now, having finally become a terrorist and gone crazy, she understands Kundan better (I suppose, I just don't understand the hospital scene otherwise) and she makes peace with him.

The girl who broke teenage Anand Rai's heart for the good-looking stud of the class has a lot to answer for. First Tanu Weds Manu and now this. Girls use boys who love them to get the boys they love. The boy getting used finally has ENOUGH of it and tells the girl off. And thus the girl is reformed by the self-sacrificing love of the boy. God know why, but it is certainly Anand Rai's big fantasy.

My notes while watching Yeh Jawani Hai Dewani

1. Why can't Kabir (aaaa) be nice to step mom? Is it only to give some 'backstory'? An obtuse way of giving his character depth?

2. Must Naina wear glasses?

3. Kalki's scene with the fat boy: what about her is really wild? All I can see is that she is ready to expose her reed thin legs.

4. a) Why is Naina standing petrified on the platform? Would have made sense if she had been forced to undertake this journey. Which also makes her 'always seen studying' work.

4. b) Naina should have won the race to the top. No reason why Kabir had to.. unless it was the only way the writers could think of to show 'chemistry'. Also the scene by the bon fire should have been funnier, wittier. When she walks into the party, it should be hard for her or at least alien. It isn't clear what specific thing she overcome to finally fit in. Just that Kabir says she's cool?

5. Why would he have a book with him on the night trek?

6. Make their 'hi, how are you?' are recurrent thing.

7. The mention of bananas and apples makes the teenage boys laugh. Aspirational: he gets the hot white girls.

8. A mention that 'she didn't wait either' to seem fair to both sexes. Convenient.

9. Why should someone come up to him and ask him 'what are you thinking?'

10. The number of people who speak with an accent.

11. Random promotions from camera man to host: aspirational

12. Why should he have lost touch with his friends? Why not show how DP (Naina) was never really part of his circle. Or she chooses not to stay in touch

13. Why would aditi marry a complete loser? Ah... To make it look like it is set up for a run away.. but it is not. Cool.

14. Nice touch abt not knowing where he is... which city. Happens.

15. Naina's pearl of wisdom not bad at all: We don't have to cover everything on the list.

16. How many times is Naina going to dip her hands and feet in water? Is it that hot?

17. It is okay for Kabir to feel up other women. But if Naina so much as drinks with another man, he gets violent.

18. Band Baja moment.

19. Why don't they talk after the kiss?

20. Logic cover-up: break into a song after the wedding. Don't stay with the sadness.

21. Logic cover-up: How does he make up with his step mom? Her speech should have come in earlier. And has nothing to do with their issues. She comforts him! Like his losing a dad is a bigger deal than her losing her husband and her step son not even check on her even once.

22. Kabir's coming back to Naina is such a non event.

23. So what was Kabir big issue in life: NOTHING.

Shaitan

An amazingly stylish film, which makes it hard to comment about. So much hardwork and thought has gone into everything, that it would be brash to be critical when one is still in the learning stages of the craft.

So, instead I want to get into what could have made the film better, more from the script point of view.

1. Not start with Amy's haunting memory of her mother. Instead, made her more on the edge by starting with her sinister drawings, her teacher finds it, is horrified, and her dad is called. Or start with her turn up for the wedding in her mother's clothes. Her father yells at her. Conversation overhead by KC. He walks over to her and they talk.

Cut to his smoking up and she looking on, fascinated. Tries it and in that dope haze describes her mother to him. Then, in silence, sees her mother enter the tub of water by herself. And she gasps back to reality.

--- the main point I want to make is that the fact that her mother tried to kill Amy must be saved for the very last ---

2. The finding her driver tied up by KC and co, stretched things. Instead have the note left on the windshield. She reads it, turns and has water thrown on her. They speed away, throwing a gang of students in array. The students curse them. Amy is impressed and feels an instant connect with their 'outsider' behaviour.

3. Not show Tanya's modeling shot at all. It takes away from her non-glamourous life. Her bulimia should have been repeated one more time.

4. The holi day - Tanya shouldn't have started with 'Hollywood, how many men have you slept with'. Instead, have Amy feel a little left out till she does the spin of the bottle.

The KC speech of the whole trust thing had to go.

And definitely shown her try cocain for the first time. Maybe right after she's had a disturbing recollection of her mother. Or better still when she has cocain she realises she can 'see' her mother better. The memory becomes more real.

5. Inspector Mathur's marriage track served no purpose. The only benefit being the divorce filing scene, which in any case is not how it happens. Not anymore, anyway.


Actually here I must stop because after this the story committed suicide with the running-over episode. After watching the film, you realise that the crux was film was the gang executing a crazy plan, then finding themselves on the run, and then turning against each other.

I didn't get why everyone else except KC felt involved in the accident in the first place. It wasn't their fault. Why would a girl like Tanya or a geek like Zubin say yes to the kidnapping plan? The initial mess they get into is so severe that nothing else kept up with it after that. The knocking down of Tanya and KC's death went into crazy land. Which is why, I think, the attempted rape and subsequent murder of the rapist seem to was written - the group need to be involved in one BIG goof up TOGETHER.

So if the initial mess was that in a cocaine-induced fervor they take the car away from KC as a joke and crash it up, you have a situation where everyone is involved. If it was Amy's idea to be take the car away, it makes sense that she say the kidnap her as a way to get the money. And here you have the advantage of keeping it light initially. So Somo's flashback in a flashback, the burkha's, Amy's sizzling sexuality can all be explored. And there's be no need to switch genres so strangely.

Continuing:

6. KC's jealously rages were silly. Breaking a bottle against a man's face because he speaks to his girl and then to treat her like he doesn't actually give a fuck are so, so weird.

7. If the running over had happened while they were on a run, nothing like it.

8. Amy's manipulation just didn't come across. It was important for us to see her talent in having people around her little finger because in the end we need to fear her as much as we feel sorry for her.

Well, so much for now. Have a ton of other things to write... so maybe I'll return and edit this later.

Ten things I love and hate about KAMINEY!

Late in the night.. just jotting down points before I forget them :)

Things that worked for me:

1. The story.
2. One of the opening scenes of Charlie running along side railway tracks. You think he is running away from someone only to realise he's the one chasing.
3. Charlie's lisp/ Guddu's stammer.
4. Mikhail and Bhope's scene. The fake diskum-tish.
5. Priyanka Chopra
6. The cinematography/ visuals.
7. The editing.
8. Guddu's breaking down near the petrol bunk when he realises Sweety lied to him about her stammer.
9. The bargaining towards the end inside Bhope's lair
10. When Charlie and his gang realise they are driving the Anti-Nacrotics gaddi.


What didn't work for me:

1. Guddu's AIDS song.
2. The hotel scene: Felt very strained.. very over-edited. Shouldn't have been that hard to establish that the Tasiba gang were busting a drug deal a few doors down from Francis.
3. Charlie's dream sequences.. could have been less film studio props and more real.
4. The obvious symbolism of Charlie landing up with blinders when Guddu and him fight over their father's death.
5. The brother rivalry was very contrived.
6. The slackening of pace when Charlie lets Guddu take the guitar. They've even placed a song here!
7. Unnecessary distractions: Bhope taking the next compartment... wasting about a minute establishing this, when it makes no difference.
8. Charlie taking the bullet in the end and it not being clear that he has in fact taken the diamonds.
9. The last few shots of the movie.. showing Charlie with the white hatted woman.. so un-required.
10. Tasiba keeping Charlie alive till the end. Made no sense. He should have been killed the minute he lets out where the 'guitar' is. Similarly Bhope's men should not have allowed Guddu to wander off so happily. Inconsistencies.

VERDICT:
On the entertainment scale: 7/10

Rating: ***1/2

Delhi 6

Let’s start with the story/plot first. Abhishek and his grandmom return to Delhi from US. Grandmom, Waheeda Rehman, has come here to die, and even begins shopping for her funeral. The neighbourhood they live in appears to have Hindu-Muslim unity stamped all over it. Example: a Muslim jelaabi seller is a Hanuman bhakt, Abhishek is the product of an cross-religion marriage, Rishi Kapoor, a Muslim, is a close family friend and so on.
The town is a far cry from a space-launching India. Untouchability is still practiced. Waheeda, faint from a stroke is being taken to the hospital in a cycle-richshaw. Just as Abhishek gets into a heated argument with a crowd gathered around a pregnant cow, we see Rehman limping for a darshan of the cow herself. Meanwhile a man dressed as the Kaala Bandhar wreaks havoc in the neighbourhood. Rumours, mostly exaggerated or wholly untrue, surround this creature. In no time (jusht two hours) suspicion of the Kaala Bandar’s identity divides the Hindus and Muslims. Politicians and police join in and the focus now shifts to a masjith, which some claim was built on a mandir.
The storyline evokes images of a quintessential, Indian small town, seeped in old-world charm. If the director also sought to add vignettes of neighbourly camaraderie, illogicalness of superstition and the ignorance about fashion and technology in his Delhi 6, the film had to be light footed, part-whimsical, part-satirical. And we have those moments too - when two warring brothers finally look at each other in the eye and a brick falls on the old radio making it finally sing in years. Or when the older brother advocates his younger brother’s water strategy to ‘short-circuit’ the Kaala Bandhar, or when two children walk with a lit cigarette down the street, feeling very grown up. There are several postcard scenes and their depiction is bang on right.
But then Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra also wanted a message delivered. And not subtely either. When Abhishek is pushed down the stairs of a mandir, he picks himself up (so much like his papa’s 80s films), and, with two feet clearance around him, delivers a speech on the mad fakir’s mirror. No, don’t ask.
The climax is again a tug-of-war between Bollywood old school (like the scene described above) and Mehra’s attempt at a tragic-comic situation (which, according to me, should have been the chosen style). The movie constantly shuffles between the two, blocking the possibility of either working.
The editing was just bad. So was the camera work. Would it have killed them to have two cameras? There’s just so much twirling-bluring-why-is-she-laughing-now one can take. And god, the songs were placed so randomly. And the actors lip-synched! (Told you, old-school). Even RDB spared us effort of trying to believe that Shreya Goswami’s rich voice could come out of Sonam or that every now and then we all do a cool gansta’ walk down busy streets, rapping.
Finally, the message. It doesn’t work for many reasons - overstatement, everything ending so pat, Abhiskeh’s rendezvous with his Dad in Heaven (I swear I could see myself in pigtails and uniform chanting ‘Our Father in heaven, holy-beed-ai-name’!)
Something tells me Mehra took a long vacation post production, because way too many things are messed up in this department. I’ve mentioned sound and editing already, haven’t I?
Performance wise, Abhishek was just ok. Waheeda Rehman is was the best.
Anyway, the film wasn’t anything of what I had expected. Disappointing, in a word.

**Update: It all makes lots of sense now. The editor was none other than his wife Bharati. "I've now left Dilli 6 to her. She's now trying to make sense of my nonsense," chortles Rakeysh. I told you he wasnt around, ha!

Millionaires all the way to the Oscars

English (A)
Cast: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan
Director: Danny Boyle

Ten Oscar nominations and four Golden Globes! Looks like everyone whose opinion counts has spoken. That’s the penalty a delayed release levies on reviewers - a predisposed audience. So we better like it or have serious grievances and iron-clad defendable points.

That isn't my problem because I LIKED IT, this dark, quirky yet romantic movie.


‘You’re on your own’, says Prem (the mean-spirited game show host played by Anil Kapoor) and so you are, as you follow the travails of a boy who goes from living in a slum to becoming a millionaire. A ruthless, but touching story about two brothers, Salim and Jamal Malik, who make it big chasing their individual obsessions. Salim, ‘eldest of the family’, wants money and power while Jamal wants to reunite with Latika, his childhood sweetheart.

In their determined pursuits, the boys take us through slums alongside railway tracks; through communal riots, brothels, gang wars and gameshows. Danny Boyle does India no favours in his portrayal of a cruel, danger-ridden Mumbai, but he tells no lies either. The story has everything we have grown up watching – sinister villains, gallant heros, brothers pitted against each other – and in the middle of it all – a desperate love story. So dont be surprised if this UK stuff pales in comparison to our home-grown Bollywood drama. I was more 'emotionally' invovled watching Jab We Met than this. But then I am a drama queen in real life. I wont take it out on Danny boy if he didn't make me cry.

There are a few inconsistencies, however, such as 18-year-old Jamal’s Scottish accent, Salim’s sudden change of heart and the one-crore game show being converted to a 20-million rupee, ‘live’ one. Why did the movie suddenly switch to forced English second half. Clearly this movie wasn't intended for Indians, we're just a by-the-bye bonus. Hurrrmph. But it thoroughly entertains, nonetheless. As Irrfan Khan, who plays the role of a police inspector interrogating Jamal, summarises – ‘It is bizarrely plausible’.

Music by Rehman lends satire and pathos, perfect in its seamless integration with the narrative. But again, dont expect to be 'blown' away. We, who've been heard everything from Roja to Rangeela to Yuva, know this man is capable of much more. Yet, it makes me very happy he is getting recognition like he is now. (As an aside, Rehmad so represents diverse India. He is a South India singing in Hindi, a Hindu converted to Muslim. Love strange stuff like this.)

The cast looks and plays each part adequately, particularly Madhur Mittal as the older Salim and Anil Kapoor. If Dev Patel as Jamal is convincing at all (which he barely was), it is thanks to the younger actors (Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail and Ayush Mahesh Khedekar) and their astounding control over a wide range of emotions, who give context to their older counterparts.

Boyle’s direction is understated and it is something akin to a thrill to catch his genius in a cinematically perfect shot, in dogged chases, in an opera seen between the audiences feet or in a flashback played backwards (when Jamal traces Latika's scar).

The fast, rivetting pace of the movie has rightly earned the editing team an Academy nomination. The movie would never have worked if not for editing team. It made a very predictable plot interesting. In fact I wasn't particularly excited by the screenplay. I am sure the book was very boring. And Jamal should not have won in the end. If you haven't seen if and are mad I spoilt it for you, I dont care. Shame on you, actually.

With so much talent coming together to create this piece of good cinema, ‘Best Picture’ is the most telling of all nominations.

Rating: *** 1/2 and maybe even ****. It's long since I saw it, nearly three weeks.