Kramasha(2006)

Director: Amit Dutta

Country: India

Language: Hindi

A village sleeps in the wee hours of the morning. A half asleep, half awake boy has dreams about an ascetic in a black coat, hallucinatory images of his village touching upon the history of the place, his ancestors and his childhood.

At the first viewing, Dutta's film may come across as pure visuals. He uses a vast array of visual techniques like constant change in focus, oscillatory camera shots, frequent jump cuts, almost obscene bird's eye view shots and such. His camera meanders through the village, exploring historical sites, ruins and the greenery in search of untold stories, often using walls, pillars, windows and other such structures as lenses. The colors are so lush that one can almost feel them, smear their hands in them.

But on successive viewings, if one can manage to see beyond the images, only then does the film become totally comprehendible. After all what are only images without the sounds associated, without the stories behind them? History and images cannot exist without each other. As the boy's dreams go on from being weird to weirder, the narration helps us connect the history of the village to the numerous mythological and folklore references. The film's defining moment comes when camera moves up a building, overlooking dark windows, sterile walls, which look like hiding stories of their own, to the terrace where an old man sleeps and we hear the narrator saying "Father once told me about all this in detail. In my conscious state, I find all these tales nonsensical. Only in my dreams are their meanings truly understood." This film is all about the parallel between history and dreams. Because, as the narrator reallizes, all history is but a dream as we see it and put the pieces together in our subconscious.
This would be my most favorite Indian film for some time now.

Continuum(2006)

Director: Anand Gandhi and Khushboo Ranka.

Country: India

Language: Hindi

This is a short film of 35 minutes duration that deals with the different aspects of human life. It comprises of five seemingly disjoint vignettes titled "hunger", "trade", "love", "death" and "enlightenment". And at the end every story gets connected as everything falls into their place in the greater schemes of the universe. All the incidents, all the characters become a part of the continuum. Not that of space, not that of time. But of life, in general. The camerawork is awesome, the music very fitting to the theme, the script is very witty and hilarious at times, touching at others. From the opening scene to the closing scene, every frame of this short film oozes brilliance. This just might be the best short I have seen till date. Even if its not, it is the most moving one for sure.

301, 302(1995)

Director: Cheol-su Park

Language: Korean

Park's film centers around two women who live in apartments 301 and 302 of the same building. Both are single, obsessed with something or the other, and alone. One day 302 goes missing and a Police Detective comes looking for her. Thats about all that happens.

The central themes of the film are the two most basic necessities of human life, food and sex. As the film opens we see a little girl talking enthusiastically about all the vegetables, cereals, fruits in her mom's kitchen. She chops vegetables as she talks. And then another little girl who talks coldly about the cold meat in her mom's freezer. We immediately know who they are. The two women meet when they move into neighboring apartments. 301 is plump, happy, spends all her day cooking different delicacies. While 302 is anorexic, depressed, cannot eat a morsel to save her life. Its almost as if they are incomplete without each other. Both their lives revolve around food. For one food is life, for the other its hell. And for both, the obsessions have their roots back in their sexual experiences. So when one goes missing, the viewer can see the climax coming miles away. But still, Park's excellent direction, his to and fro jumping around in the timeline, makes the viewer wait. In anticipation. And at the end when they truly complete each other, the viewer cannot help feeling awestruck. Or even feel like vomitting. This film is almost "The double life of Veronique" made by Takashi Miike. One has to watch it to know that even a mundane activity like eating can be made so revolting, almost obscene. Like bad sex. And all the credit to the cinematography for achieving this. Very interesting film, definitely worth a watch. But not quite before a wholehearted meal, if you know what I mean.

La Cienaga(2001)

English title: The swamp

Director: Lucrecia Martel

Language: Spanish

Two cousin sisters struggle with their respective families in the unbearable heat and humidity of an Argentinian summer. Children go hunting, people get drunk, people get hurt, the Virgin appears and still the two families get sucked into the swamp that is their life with each passing day.
From the very first shot till the last, this film is all about the visuals. As the credits roll, the film opens with one of the most amazing opening sequences ever. The camera hovers around a poolside. We see middle-aged people with wrinkled skin, on a drinking spree. Their hands tremble, their words muttered, the stealthy camera shows us a perfect picture of the typical bourgeoisie hedonism in the present Argentinian society and thus sets up the mood for the whole film. Throughout the entire film, the camera moves around with utmost stealth, almost like a voyeur. The children of the two family spend their days by the pool or hunting in the forest or sleeping with the maid or even each other. There's always an anticipation of sexual escapades but it is always overcome by violence. The children get into fights, accidents and hurt themselves. No one around seems to be normal except a little boy and the maid. Interestingly, both of them seem to be confined within abnormality. Every frame suggests that confinement, every shot prepares us for something bad to happen to the normal people. The director uses her camera to take us almost into the minds of the characters. Sometimes, the close up shots are so close that you might just hear the characters think. She makes use of the sounds in a regular household as well as the various silences to suggest the fate of the characters. Apart from the physicality of the whole scenario, we see no one answering the telephone throughout the film and the Virgin only appearing before the poor Indians, thus emphasizing the faithlessness and lack of communication amidst the class differences in the Argentinian society. The mostly amateur cast puts in a strong performance within a seemingly erratic but indeed very tightly bound screenplay. But what really makes this film work is the excellent cinematography. The director says almost everything through the empty spaces, the silences and the few recurring motifs. If not for anything else, this film should be a must watch for an extensive lesson in Mise-en-scène.

Charlotte et Véronique, ou Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick(1959)

English title: Charlotte and Veronica or All the boys are called Patrick

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Language: French

JLG's first film as a director is a delightful comic short about two girls who set up a date with the same guy on two different days and later find him going out on a date with a third girl. Its perhaps the only JLG film that has a story written by someone else. And when that someone is none other than Eric Rohmer, it shows in every frame of the film. There are no typical JLG trickeries in the film, except maybe for the music and the Chaplinesque portrayal of the protagonists. Instead, the charm, the wit, its all Rohmer. Nevertheless, a very enjoyable film.

La double vie de Veronique(1991)

English Title: The double life of Veronique

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski

Language: Polish, French

The much famed director of the Three colors trilogy, in this film, takes us on a peculiar journey that constantly shifts between the erotic and the melancholy. It is really one of those films that hands over a puzzle to the viewer. How he solves it is how he sees the film.
This is essentially the story of Weronicka, a Polish girl and Veronique, a French girl, who seems to have much more than physical appearance in common. But Kieslowski, from the opening scene makes it clear that the surface hides many a haunting images. As the film opens, little Weronicka looks at the sky and sees the beautiful stars while the little Veronique only sees the falling leaves. Then we see a grown up Weronicka waking up from a deep sleep just because she feels someone is out there, with her, always. She is almost an ascetic, almost renouncing everything material. Her relation with her father, her aunt or her lover is almost superficially loving. Her only passion seems to be music which she takes up inspite of a heart condition and dies on stage. And at the same time, Veronique feels an urge to let go of her musical aspirations as she feels something has gone amiss from her life. As the story shifts to her, we understand she is a very earthy human, very much tied in the bonds of humane life. She cares for her father, falls in love with strangers. But whatever she does, the very passion of her nature is imminent. In other words, she completes Weronicka.
Kieslowski's use of music at times gives the film the feel of a haunted supernatural story, at other times the music transforms the film into sheer poetry. He successfully draws parallels between the simultaneous lives of the two girls. The shot where Veronique rushes into a bus, clicking pictures of Weronicka standing, marooned, on a crowded square or the shot where Veronique plays with a puppet, while another lies silently on the table, makes up the mood of the entire film. A huge part of the film is almost a puppet show with Kieslowski playing around with Veronique as the dead Weronicka lies in her grave. And his show becomes all the more interesting due to the puppet he finds in Irene Jacob. She, with her wide array of ever changing expressions, dreamy and almost lost eyes, make Weronicka and Veronique who they were supposed to be. She is quiet for most of the part yet so vocal. Kieslowski is a clever director. He never brings his story to any conclusion. He just leaves it hanging in there, waiting for the viewers to grasp it. Watching this beautiful piece of work is almost like becoming a part of it, where the cinema and the viewer lead a double life, where they make each other complete.

Mon Oncle Antoine(1971)

English title: My uncle Antoine.

Country: Canada

Language: French

Its a chilly and snow filled december in Quebec. A father leaves his children and wife behind to find work. An undertaker raises a child as his own. An employee has secret liaisons with the wife of his employer. A mother sees her son die. A whole town basks in the joys of christmas and fights the hardships of daily life. And a little boy watches with his big, blue, innocent eyes. We watch through him. We watch with him. And we watch him as he struggles to become a man, in every possible way. Jutra's film about the coming of age of Benoit is so simplistic, so real and so heart wrenching, it reminds us of Apu in "Aparajito". Benoit learns to take on the world, he gets a taste of death, love, betrayal and sex. And at the end, he gazes innocently at the life out there, the real life where there's no uncle Antoine to protect him, no Carmen to love him. This film is a wondeful journey through two fateful days in Christmas time. But a journey that changes lives forever. And one that will change the way you look at life too.

Dev D(2009)

Director: Anurag Kashyap

Language: Hindi

Kashyap arrived on the scene a few years back with "Black friday" based on the Mumbai blasts. It had its shortcomings but made us wait for his "Paanch", which never came out. Then came "No smoking" and Anurag took Hindi cinema on a ride, a bumpy roller-coaster ride. With "Dev D" the ride comes a full circle. Kashyap has finally given Bollywood what it deserves, a true masala entertainer for the serious cine-lovers. Shed all your inhibitions, this is not your regular Hindi movie. It is a tale of lust, love, lust, obsession, lust, psychedelia and lust. Bollywood finally grows up, with the help of a man who has disgraced the silver screen more than once before. Devdas Mukherjee had always been an epitome of self pity, drunkenness and failed love in Indian cinema. Dev Dhillon is instead an absolute bastard who fondles other women and cracks up at rumors of Paro kissing someone else. Dev Dhillon is essentially just another avatar of Devdas Mukherjee, yet so very different. He drowns himself in vodka, does coke, calls up Paro's house at 4 in the morning, yet he sees Chanda's face when he closes his eyes. Dev D doesn't believe in "moving on", yet he truly does by the end of the film.
What Kashyap does to the much cliched tale is quite unexpected. It has always been about the man, Devdas himself. Kashyap, on the other hand, examines each and every character with utmost sincerity. He gives us the two of the strongest female leads in Indian cinema. Paro sends her nude pictures to Dev, carries a mattress on a bicycle to a field to have sex with Dev and ultimately, on being refused, manages to have her revenge too. Lenny on the other hand is not afraid being filmed while she gives a blowjob to her boyfriend, or accusing her father of getting aroused by her mms, or becoming Chanda by night. Kashyap gives these characters various shades of gray and turns them from mere props to symbols of women empowerment. Not that he accomplishes this all alone. He is helped by the wonderful Mahi Gill and Kalki Koechlin. Kalki's almost deadpan expressions, indifferent moaning and impish smiles alongwith Mahi's big eyed passionate looks mark their arrival on the big scene. Abhay Deol is fantastic as Dev. The use of light throughout is brilliant. Kashyap uses different shades of blue, pink to set the dark, often brooding mood of the film. I already talked about the music before. How it was all different and stuff. But what I was amazed to find was all the 18 songs were used in the film. And still the film didn't stall for a single moment! Kashyap makes use of the music wonderfully well, sometimes to tell a part of the story and take it forward, sometimes to compliment the mood and sometimes just as a background score. His use of music is actually reminiscent of Godard. I don't know if its only me or Lenny reading Moravia's "Contempt" with Brigitte Bardot on the cover alongwith the use of music is really a tribute to the French master. I hope it is because it would be a most befitting one. Kudos to Mr.Kashyap for finally giving us a nouvelle vague Devdas.

P.S : Did anyone else notice three random guys in the film? Once when Dev first goes with Chunni to Chanda's den, next when Dev drunk drives and almost crashes his car? Even if you did, did anyone else think they were the three horsemen of apocalypse? Gah! I see too much into everything!

La Gran Final(2006)

English Title: The great match

Director: Gerardo Olivares

Language: Kazajo dialect(Mongolia), Tamashek(Niger) and Tupi(Brazil).

Scene 1: A group of Mongolian nomads and a few soldiers play football on the snow-capped peaks of the Altai mountains as a few others try to plug in a television to an electricity pole.

Scene 2: Three African men, clad in yellow and green jerseys dance around foolishly on a desert in Niger as a handful of others watch a television with glum expressions.

Scene 3: A native Indian in the forests of Amazon, "9" painted on his back, climbs the highest tree with an antenna on his back as his tribesmen wait eagerly for reception on a television.

This unique film is all about scenes exactly like these. Its about three very different groups of people with one similarity. They can go to any lengths to watch the final match of the 2002 football World Cup. The nomads risk losing all their savings in paying fines to the Government, the Africans forget all their errands and take a detour, the Indians risk getting shot. All for one reason. To watch Brazil take on Germany in the final. It is the love for the greatest game on earth that is contained in each shot of this film. Every frame speaks of the passion for football. Only that may be more than reason enough to watch this film. Add to it the wonderful cinematography, brilliant use of wide angle shots on the desert and the mountains, absolutely hilarious situations(like an African guy selling pages of Playboy in the midst of a desert) and also the very subtle socio-political undertones. And voila! You can't afford to miss this film.

Angela(2002)

Director: Roberta Torre

Country: Italy

Angela runs a shoe store with her husband Saro Parlagreco, when actually they deal in drug trafficking. Angela helps put up the shoe store show while Saro with the help of his cousin, controls his well disguised drug business. Problems start when Saro brings a new guy, Masino to help him. Angela and Massino fall for each other and their torrid affair gives the suspecting police a chance to round them all up. This little film is supposedly based on a true incident that took place in Palermo, Italy. The director's use of handheld camera and extreme closeup shots of all the characters make this look like a docudrama more than a film. And her use of closed, dark spaces give this film a very claustrophobic feel. The only saving grace is the very beautiful Donatella Finocchiaro as Angela, on whom the camera hovers for alomost the entire length of the film. She almost carries the film single-handedly and there's really not much else to look out for. What could have been a gripping tale of passion, guilt and organized crime remains only a mellowed Italian drama.

Adoration(1987)

Director: Olivier Smolders

Country: Belgium

A Japanese man invites the beautiful woman he loves to his place. After they have dinner, she recites some poems and he records them. Then he shoots her with a gun, cuts her body parts and eats them one by one.

This 16 minute long film is based on a real life incident. Its shot entirely in monochrome and has no dialogues except for the part where the girl recites some poems. The special effects are awesome, the director uses very innovative camera movements and angles to make this film technically almost perfect. The film works in its totality too. In the very short time frame, the director succeeds to present a very strong picture of passionate power play. The man looks at the woman with awe, kisses her, listens to her recite. After killing her, he even undresses her with utmost care, strokes her body with his hands and finally consumes her completely. What better way to culminate the ultimate passion that a man feels for the woman of his dreams! Its sick, its perverted. And its still the most basic, most natural form of obsession. Very interesting piece of cinema, this. But definitely not suitable for all.

The Unborn(2009)

Director: Who cares.

A pathetic excuse for a film.

Une femme est une femme(1961)

English title: A woman is a woman

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Country: France

Angela is a stripper who lives with her boyfriend Emile. She wants to have a baby with him but Emile refuses. She turns to Emile's close friend Alfred instead. That is about all that there is to the story of this cute little film by JLG. Its his style of film making and Anna Karina, the most beautiful woman on earth, that makes this film work. Godard, notably an American cinema fan, took the b-grade gangster film genre, dissected it and remade it into "A bout de Souffle" in his own sly way. Here, he does the same with the Hollywood musical genre. There are constant references to musicals(Angela wants to star in a musical with Gene Kelly). And the use of background music is the most interesting it can ever get in any film. Godard not only uses discontinuity in music(as in "A bout de Souffle") but he does so much more with it. Sometimes the music is a supplement to the dialogues spoken, sometimes they stop to let the characters speak and at other times they are just too loud to let us hear what the characters are saying. He lets a score stop at the middle and starts another from nowhere and suddenly goes back to the former. To follow it thorughout the film, is absolute fun. The film has its unique moments when the characters interact directly to the audience, they bow to us, wink at us or even asks Jeanne Moreau how her film "Jules et Jim" is doing. Technically this film is outrageous, much as JLG's other works. But on the intellectual level this remains one of his most accessible works. Apart from being playful and comic at different levels, the narration doesn't really test the viewer's intellect.
The film belongs to Anna Karina. She's there in almost every shot. Her mischievous smile, beautiful body and the divine face is utillised to every possible bit. The film kind of reflects how much JLG was in love with this woman. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean-Claude Brialy do justice to their roles. There's an absolute hilarious scene where Brialy and Karina doesn't talk to each other and communicate only through the names of books they choose from their bookshelves. Overall, this is a really nice comedy that should appeal to the common viewer as well as the hardcore JLG fan such as me.

November(2004)

Director: Greg Harrison

When I picked this dvd up from a local library, I didn't have much hope. I just thought of it to be another run of the mill Hollywoodish thriller. Boy! I was in for some surprise!

The film centers round Sophie, who is a professional photographer in LA. She lives together with her boyfriend Hugh and has a pretty normal life complete with the cheating on her boyfriend with some guy from work. But one evening something happens, something tragic. A held up, followed by a shoot-out in a corner store. And then the dream and the reality starts mixing up for Sophie.

The film is just over an hour long and is divided in three parts viz "denial", "despair" and "acceptance". The three parts are but different takes on the same incident, the shoot-out that takes place on a November evening. They start essentially with same sequence of shots, continue to tell us about the same evening, the same incident, the only difference being the music and the use of light and the way Sophie interprets the incidents. The "denial" part is the darkest of all where Sophie tries to deny the absolute facts in her life, facts that would dawn on the viewer at the very end. In the "despair" part, she sort of comes in terms with these facts but is ridden with pangs of grief. This part uses much brighter though a bit yellowish light to keep up with the theme. The last part, "acceptance", shows Sophie finally accepting the inevitable and seek salvation. This is obviously the brightest part and the background music is also vastly different from the other two.

I won't give out any more details of the plot. Those interested should really go forward and see this. This small independent film makes a statement as strong as any so called "classic". In fact it is a rare film that is both very intelligent and intriguing at the same time. Courtney Cox does a wonderful Sophie, James LeGros is a delight to watch as Hugh. This actually might be the best Hollywood film I have seen in quite a long time.

P.S: IMDB gives "November" 5.5 out of 10. When will they grow up?

Le Samourai(1967)

English title: The Godson

Director: Jean-Pierre Melville

Country: France

If you are not a fan of the thriller/neo noir genre, definitely watch this film. Still, if you are not a fan of the thriller/neo noir genre, go die.

"Le Samourai" bears hallmark to the fact that even a virtually plotless tale, with almost no dialogues, actions and drama can still make an absolute cracker of a film. Alain Delon mesmerizes us as the methodical, cunning, devoid of almost all human emotions and deadly assassin Jeff Costello. Jeff, indeed qualifies as the finest to have ever graced the screen. Melville with his meticulously measured sense of framing the shots, his absolute lack of hurriedness and direction which is minimalistic to the point of being sparse makes sure that we are in for the ride of our life.

So, just sit back and enjoy this classic. They just don't make them like this anymore.

La femme Nikita(1997)

English title: Nikita

Director: Luc Besson

Country: France

This is one of those peculiar films which have me in two minds, where I cannot decide whether I like them or I don't.

A drug-addicted and convicted cop-killer is given a second chance at life by the French government. Nikita is trained at a secret government facility to become one of their top agents, a spy, an assassin. She undergoes the transformation very slowly. And when she is ready, she is given a new social identity and let loose on the streets of Paris. She juggles between love and killing foreign ambassadors and such until a mission is screwed up. Big time. Then Nikita reallizes she has paid her dues to the society and decides to run away from everything that is dear to her.

The acting throughout is top-notch. Anne Parillaud captures the different phases of Nikita's life with equal panache. The build-up, the slow transformation, the screw-up, everything is portrayed beautifully. Luc Besson does a terrific job directing the film. But still, somewhere I got a feeling that this film should have been 15 minutes longer. The dilemmas and the revelations of Nikita's life could have been made to a bit more detail. But still, this is a great film to watch and most viewers would find it very satisfying.

And do look out for Jean Reno. He is fabulous in another Leon-esque "cleaner" role. He steals those 5 minutes of screentime from the otherwise brilliant Anne Parillaud.

La voie lactée(1969)

English title: The milky way

Director: Luis Bunuel

Country: France

Two pilgrims in a modern France set out for Santiago de Compostela in Spain, where the body of St.James is believed to be buried. Throughout their journey they travel back and forth in space and time as they experience historical scenes referenced in different theological texts, all connected by a common notion. That of christianity, of heresy, of the dogma involving catholicism, of the beliefs and of the contradictions. They come across a priest obsessed with transubstantiation(who changes in his mind about it in a minute), a child with unusual powers, Marquis de Sade trying to preach atheism to a young girl in his own sadistic ways, an archbishop encouraging mass orgy in the name of Christ, nuns crucifying another nun, an angel of death and obviously Jesus who refrains from shaving his beard to make Virgin Mary happy.

Made almost 40 years after the famously notorious Un chien Andalou and L'Age Dor, this film still has some elements of Bunuel's blatant rendezvous with the equally, if not more eccentric Salvador Dali and their ideas of surrealist cinema. But on the whole, this film is much mellow, much more subtle with a tangible coherent structure in the narrative quite in the lines of "The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie". The scenes, the dialogues(co- written by Jean-Claude Carriere) reek of Bunuel's infamous sarcasm and black humor. Unlike his earlier take on Christianity, "Simon of the desert", this film is much closer to his latter work "The phantom of the liberty", only much more straightforward. But the dilemmas of his atheist mind, grown up in a completely catholic surrounding, are nevertheless very much visible. He constantly puts forward miracles, beliefs and ventures to counter them in peculiar and very satirical ways. He seems to believe one of his character's words "my freedom is a phantom" and still mocks it to the very end. The film is a collection of some wonderful moments. The best being the one where a priest sitting outside a room explains to a couple inside how the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus. He says that its almost like a sun ray coming through a window. At this very moment we see that at one moment the priest is inside the room, the next he is again outside. This has got to be one of the finest piece of cinematic irony ever.

True, that this film has got a huge number of biblical and theological references. Still for the ignorants such as me, it works completely. Dark, very funny, this film is indeed Bunuel's road trip to blasphemy! :D