DASVIDANIYA...

A year ago, who could have predicted that the year’s best film would be a First time director’s small budget-small star cast film on the morbid subject of impending Death? Lympho-Sarcoma of the intestine-anybody?
Did I hear the regular Hindi film audiences already running for cover from the doctor’s waiting room? Hasn’t superstar SRK dealt with it so smartly and glibly in Kal Ho Na Ho- a couple of years ago? But the deceptively named Dasvidaniya(goodbye in russian) is in a different league. Less than a quarter of this very Indian film is shot abroad. It has little to do with Indo-Russian platitudes. And there are no rivers of glycerine being shed around the hospital bed as the camera pans from the convulsing hero to the now staple cardiogram with a pulsating green saw toothed line.
Director Shashant Shah’s Dasvidaniya is on par with Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anand in terms of ingenuity of screenplay & dialogues (Arshad Syed), and sensitivity of approach to a subject that is depressing to say the least. (The only department its found wanting is the music). The strength of the movie lies in the protaganist’s (obvious) acceptance of his situation and the (remarkable) journey of fulfillment of his Bucket List. What are the ten things that YOU would do if you knew you’d die in three months? Learn to pay the guitar? Buy a new car? Travel abroad? Go find the girl you had loved all your life? For a film that rings the death-knell for its darpok protagonist within its first fifteen minutes, Dasvidaniya finishes on a note of upliftment that’s remarkable to say the least.
The double chinned, bespectacled, sadhna-cut Vinay Pathak excels as the shy, reticent and bland Accounts Manager who suddenly finds out that he’s about to kick the bucket in three months and decides to live out the rest of his life by fulfilling the wishes that he’d been too afraid to even admit to himself throughout his beleaguered 37 years of existence. Here’s an actor who’s choosing the right scripts to work on and is growing from strength to strength ( Bheja Fry, Manorama, Khosla Ka Ghosla, Jhonny Gaddar). In a dramatic turn around of sorts from his proven repertoire of mad-cap roles, Vinay Pathak’s character of Amar Kaul harks back to some of the Amol Palekar/ Vinod Mehra Ghar-Gharounda films of the70s or even the classic DD serials of yore like Mr. Yogi/Wagle ki Duniya that people still remember despite their so called ordinariness. Also worth a mention is Sarita Joshi as Kaul’s partially deaf and TV addicted mother who resurrects her limp/distracted existence to try and save her son as the film hurtles towards its predictable but undoubtedly memorable end.

In its simplicity, poignancy, courage and undeniable bitter-sweet charm, Dasvidaniya is almost the best Good bye ever.

BELIEVE THIS, YOU'LL BELIEVE ANYTHING !

Why is Paresh Rawal’s new film being credited to a 20 year maha-successful gujarati play when its actually a Straight Lift from a James Hadley Chase book called-There’s always a Price Tag(1956)? And who’s this Uttam Gada fellow that the play’s credited to?
After Ketan Mehta’s ill fated Aar-ya-paar(Jackie Shroff/ Deepa Sahi)- Maharathi is the next attempted rip-off from the acknowledged master of pulp-fiction. Since the gujju play has been Paresh Rawal’s pet project for so long, he insists on playing a young-ish swindler who walks into the life of a rich, lonely, neurotic, alcoholic wastrel (Naseeruddin Shah) and immediately gets into loggerheads with his gorgeous but bitchy wife (Neha Duped-ya).
Then when the old man kills himself and leaves behind a twisted will to punish his unfaithful wife, con-man turned car driver Paresh must store the body in a convenient Olympic sized sized Deep Freezer in the kitchen till the cops(led by Om Puri) come in and start asking awkward questions to everyone. Odd questions like-Will Naseer taste better frozen with chocolate syrup or thawed and well done with barbeque sauce?
For all the intruigue, twists and turns that Chase is famous for-I would recommend the book. Trust me-its shorter than this overly long ‘thriller.’ Meanwhile, director Shivam Nair first spends too much screen time in setting up the ‘crime’ scene and then follows it up with too many scenes that are either loosely written or hurried through. As a result things don’t add up as they should and the stench of the corpse begins to filter through to the audience. The heavy wt cast of Naseer, Paresh Rawal,Om puri and Boman Irani are competent enough in the limited scope that the long-wound script affords them but they largely fail to hold the audience’s interest. The screenplay just doesn’t grip. Now, for a crime thriller-that’s a real shame. Maharathi is a very unimaginative and weak Indian entry into the library of umpteen noirish films that have been made on Chase’s books. Get a load of that.

WELCOME TO SAJJANPUR !

For Bollywood, there’s an India where faux-gay men shave their tanned chests, strut about on the beaches of Miami and declare that Indian cinema has 'arrived'-and then there’s Shyam Benegal’s India. Doubtless-his Welcome To Sajjanpur is a charming, winsome yet scathingly satirical film- its simple cause/consequence take on pathos and a rushed fifteen minutes wrap-up notwithstanding. The protagonist’s (a brilliant Shreyas Talpade) insistence in using an old fountain pen to write letters for a rupee each for all the illiterate villagers is a metaphor for the low-on-ambition and grossly under-represented ‘other’ India that continues to grapple with its hardships in the shadow of the media-blitz on the metros that defines the ‘modern India’ today.
Yes, this village where everyone talks in a borderline UP/Bihar accent is a microcosm for all the pleasures and pains that define life in an Indian village. WTS is the Mera Gaon=Mera Desh idea resuscitated from the seventies and presented in a farcical nautanki mode. The film is more character than plot driven and takes the viewer on a rare, lighthearted Malgudi Days like journey through an idyllic Sajjanpur as seen through the eyes (and pen) of it sutradhar- Shreyas Talpade. Everyone in the village needs him to be their spokesperson and he tries his best to keep maintain a sense of parity, balance and a sense of justice through the power of his carefully penned words and little else. There’s a forlorn bride (Amrita Rao) who pines for her estranged husband, an ambitious gunda (Yashpal Sharma) with electoral aspirations, a chat-pati, ‘dog’matic chachi (Ila Arun) who wants to marry off her cursed daughter (Divya Dutta) to a dog and of course the lovelorn village idiot (Bhojpuri star~Ravi Kishen). The characters ranging from a stingy snake charmer to a retired army man are all nothing new, but what makes the film so interesting is its sparkling screenplay and dialogues (Ashok Mishra). Under Benegal’s watchful eye, the characters are funny (in a rustic way) without being crude and loud without being distasteful. So there are no backless cholis on display and no laathi-dacait fights in the middle of the day. In its dignity and poise, WTS is truly captivating.
The film touches upon issues as wide as widow re-marriage, gender roles (Hijra-Sarpanch), wretched superstitions, communal harmony and even thwarted efforts at industrial development (for proposed car-plants). In doing so Benegal conjures up too many characters that use up about three-quarters of the film’s running time in their mere introduction and leave no scope for a satisfactory Third Act finale. Despite all that and the absence of any star-power, Welcome To Sajjanpur is well worth a visit. It’s a small but ambitious and energetic entertainer that showcases the vision of an auteur to a mainstream audience and proves the power of the pen in more ways than one.

RAB NE BANA DE JODI

RAB NE BANA DE JODI

Rip-Van-Winkle Aditya Chopra (DDLJ, Mohabbatein) returns to the big screen after a long break with a strangely out of sync film that's neither here, there or anywhere in between. In Rab Ne Bana De Jodi-SRK plays the role of the oily-haired-scooter-wallah wimp-type Surinder uncle next door whose out-of-turn marriage to starry eyed debutant Anushka Sharma stirs up his lacklustre life like none of the products he endorses on TV ever can. When his new wife admits to an aborted love affair, SRK has to re-invent himself into his now done-to-death slick-spandex-chewing gum-cool-dude-avatar to really win her over. There-that's the film's story for you in one line.
Aditya Chopra, like the more regressive Sooraj Barjatya has his heart in the right place but fails miserably in critical plot-hinges. What kind of a post millenia girl would fail to recognize her husband if he swept his hair the other way, shaved off his mushtache and strutted about like Shaimak-Davar in technicolour designer clothes? The same tepid idea of a married woman's apparent predicament in cheating on her 'husband' has been done/dealt with before by the same SRK in Amol Palekar's Paheli. (There too, Rani Mukherjee was fooled by a mushtache~or rather by its absence.) And for the record, the same twenty minute plot was just as boring when it was set in the arid, pictuesque locales of rural Rajastahan.
In the first half hour of this film SRK bears a shorter mustache and is admittedly watchable in his unseen middle-class-Mungeri Lal act; but a reigning superstar like him who barely has one release a year now should really be choosing better scripts to peg his precious career on. Everyone appreciates the time he spends in commitment to 'causes' like the IPL-Kolkata team and the heart-felt endorsements for mardon waali Fairness creams-but does King Khan realise how the tight nexus between the new Moghuls(UTV-Vishesh Films)+ talented young directors(Anurag Basu-Bhandarkar)+small star/actors(Shiney Ahuja,Emraan Hashmi) may be tolling the bell that could end his charmed fifteen year reign?
Despite a honest-to-goodness parochial kind of sincerity in rendition of an inane idea ,an odd spark here & there in the inconsistent screenplay and above average music/ choreography- RNBDJ appears to be stuck in a rut and does little justice to its great expectations. After Chak De! SRK- should have really moved on.

OYE LUCKY! LUCKY OYE!

Once in while, sometimes, almost out of some unexpected roll of dice or a divine sleight of hand that dictates the fate of all 'creative' endeavours in Bollywood; comes a small, precocious film that gets everything right and like its protagonist wins everyone over, despite its modest star cast, lack of a memorable original soundtrack and a screeplay thats heavily peppered with a nasal panju-jat accent.
Like S Raghavan's Johnny Gaddar, you know Oye Lucky Lucky Oye is special from the moment its Truck-Body-Kitsch-Art casting starts rolling to the tune of Kishore Kumar's~'Chahiye-thora pyaar-thora pyar chahiye.' The film is a studied overstatement (!) of the aspirations of a typical Dilli lower-middle-class chor like no film before it. And its done with humour, panache and amazing attention to details from start to end~ right from the title which exemplifies the Punjabi way of addressal to its intelligent use of rank newcomers to make the protagonist's audaciously long run from the clutches of the law believable. And no, there are no derisive, stereotypical references to-' Barah baj gaye' type Sardar jokes or Karan Johar types glycerine/ glitterati shaadi tamashas where everyone on screen is gauche personified. Here; the sets look real, the characters flesh and blood and the general energy level and garish colours adopted by the director are as different from KHOSLA KA GHOSLA as the awkward Parvin Dabas was from smooth operator Abhay Deol.
Abhay Deol as the rather sweet, suave but remorseless cut-surd turned compulsive chor with nerves of steel is a joy to watch. He's making mental inventories of 'lift-able' commodities into any house that he walks into. Jewellery, clothes, music systems, TVs, anything will do. Even pet Pomeranians. He's forever looking for a quick gasp at everything that's rich, luxurious and just out of reach~ though he doesn't have a house to keep his stolen booty in. He lives in a car and is perpetually on the run. And he will go as far as his stars take him before his he runs out of luck. Total entertainment to the tune of 30 lakhs worth of good stolen, as per the state Police records.
The film begins with fifteen minutes from the life of a teenaged (& turbaned) Lucky as a precursor to his adult life of 'hi-fi ambition.' From there, there's no slowing down as Lucky steals cars, hearts, almost entire shop-marts. Where OLLO triumphs over regular chor-police romps is also in capturing the strain/changes that come into Lucky's relationship with his lady love (Neetu Chandra), brilliant side-kick (Manu Rishi), father( Paresh Rawal), chief mentor (Paresh Rawal) and a Vet (Paresh Rawal again!).
The overall plot is admittedly nothing to write home about but the hilarious screenplay, dialogues and character sketches score highly without falling into the trappings of ho-hum mainstream-masala movies. In this reality-bite of Dilli ka alu-paratha, entire families live their lives in small, stuffy and unplastered houses, scooters are still the only family vehicle, irate parents still throw pilate-glass at bigade-hue bacchas and the girl next door still looks like the coy girl next door, sans attitude, make-up and parlour hair-do.
Dibakar Banerjee's sophomore venture is one of best entertainers of the year. No question about it, oye!

MAAN GAYE MUGHAL-E-AZAM

After the debacles of Khubsoorat and Kya dil ne kaha, Sanjay Chhel(who shot into fame with RGV’s Rangeela) returns as a writer/director of the intriguingly titled Maan-Gaye-Mughal-E-Azam. The film is touted as a slapstick comedy that was inspired, at least in parts, by the inimitable Jaane bhi do yaaron(Kundan Shah).
In reality, the film’s a jolly good example of Bollywood’s brazen lack of originality and furthermore disability to deliver a reasonably adept adaptation of a twice made classic comedy caper. Having served as the Lyricist/ Screenplay-Dialogue Writer/Story Writer for at least a dozen films before MGMA, Mr. Chhel thinks he has his con-act formula figured out by now. Apparently, not.
Lekin, yeh mua Formula kya hai?
a) Take a classic (but relatively obscure) Hollywood script/screenplay that’s ripe for a scene-by-scene ’adaptation.’ In this case it’s a Mel Brooks/Anne Bancroft film (1983)-‘ To Be or Not To Be.’(which was a faithful remake of a 1942 film by the same name.)
b) In the absence of a Big Studio to back you up, take a B- grade Star cast where your biggest bets are Paresh Rawal and a one-surprise ‘side effects’ hit duo. Care not if they (Rahul ‘bete-noire’ Bose, Mallika Sharbat ) have little sense of comedy and appear thoroughly miscast.
c) Throw them all on a fictitious town on the beaches of Goa (exotic locale) and watch them flinch, jump and gasp to death like fish out of water.

The original movie is a rip-roaring yet incredibly tight comedy about the bumbling adventures of a struggling theater group just before the Nazi invasion of Poland, especially those of the Lead Actor, Josef and his flirtatious wife, Maria. The couple inadvertently get caught up in an effort to save a bunch of local Polish revolutionaries from falling into the hands of the Third Reich and Josef is forced to play the role of a recently deceased Gestapo officer and later, the Fuhrer himself to save himself, his wife, his and his drama company.
Now replace Shakespeare’s Hamlet with Akbar/Anarkali, Poland with Goa, Hitler with Dawood Ibrahim and the impending holocaust with the 1993 Bombay serial bomb blasts scenario to understand the depth and gravity of Sanjay Chhel’s Maan Gaye Mughal-E- Azam.
In trying to indianize the near-perfect To Be Or Not To Be, Chhel goes totally hay-wire with the screenplay. Practically every scene is badly re-written, over stretched, over-acted and unimaginatively shot. Curiously, there are zilch close up shots of the actors on stage ~despite Paresh Rawal and Rahul Bose trying to pull off numerous tight situations solely on the basis of some very unconvincing disguises. Only single mid-range shots. And some double entendre dialogues, of course.
And not to mention an audience that disappers on the count of three. Tee-Hee.