Kurbaan :Worth watching.
Starring Kareena kapoor Saif Ali Khan and vivek Oberoi.
Debutant director Rensil D’ Souza may have chosen the Karan Johar production house for his launch pad but he makes a film different from the Kuch Kuch Hota hai genre. Largely the film could be seen as yet another justification of terrorism in a world which has lensed itself with prejudice. On both sides of this prejudice are persons with baggage and the innocent pay the price. Within the precincts of ‘our – cinema’, the debutant Director makes an interesting essay. Tight and sleek, the film is watchable more than really talkable. The film is worth watching and if nothing for some riveting and sincere performances coming specially from the support cast and some excellent technical support. The bane of the film, as with our cinema, is the climax where you are let down. It gets chaotic, simplistic, and bloody without conviction.
The story line revolves round Professor Ehsan Khan (Saif) who woos colleague Professor Avantika (Kareena) a visiting NRI and marries her. The young Professor couple go to U.S. and establish a home in an ‘Indian neighbourhood’. Soon they run into Bhaijaan (Om Puri) and Nasreen Aapa (Kirron Kher). A instance of domestic violence in the neighbourhood raises the first questions of suspicion and as she digs she is confronted with the can of worms. A trifle too late and now pregnant too, the world around her crashes.
There is also Rehana (Dia Mirza) a tele journalist who is a victim of a bomb blast. Rehana’s fiancée colleague Riaz Masood (Vivek Oberoi) swears to identify the killers and thus runs into Avantika.
The FBI is just closing into the killer group, even as the fatal plan to send the final instalment of the message of death, disaster and hatred is being executed with ruthless accuracy. The suicide bombers are out their hunting for their headlines and victims and taking their last tube rides. Innocent victims blissfully unaware of lurking death embrace the killers in their midst. The sacrifice is on…… Kurbaan.
The dialogue by Anurag Kashyap and Niranjan Iyengar is crisp. Each of the characters speak even the most ordinary of sentences with a certain accuracy that is a delicate match of the rhetorical and the normal. There lies the skill. The cinematography is good. Debutant Director Rensil D’Souza may have the backing of Rich Bag Karan Johar, but to his credit, it be said that the film is focused, organised and clear. Fortunately this is outside the mould of “Kuch-Kuch. Kabhi Kabhi” school of cinema.
.Om Puri looks a trifle jaded. Kirron Kher delivers. Vivek Oberoi is hardly given the space that would have made the difference for him. Kareena is gorgeous. Her performance has shades of poor, good, average and brilliant. In the looks department – she reigns but while acting, there are moments of synthetic execution. Saif lives his role. In fact he executes the task with arithmetic precision and holds the script together with his understanding of the psyche of a man who has been wronged and has since chosen to be the avenger. Truly a noteworthy performance.
Can terrorism succeed? Is it the answer if not the only answer to Oil Imperialism? How long, just how long will the innocent be the helpless victims of the war of the powerful and the deceiving wicked? How near is the doom day given the level of terrorism? Is the queer match of technology and hatred pushing mankind towards the fatal button? Kurbaan is perhaps a step and albeit a seemingly justified one towards Armageddon.
Coming in the light of New York it raises the question as to whether the world has justified its conclusions on terrorists and therefore cannot find a solution to it. As reams get written and reels done up, blasts, killings and death rules. Blood yet again is scripting out times. The message that hatred cannot win causes seems too naive. Yet there can be no human problem that cannot have a human solution.
Or, for humanity is terrorism the last layer in the Pandora’s box?
LRC
Monday, November 23, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Tum Mile
Starring: Emraan Hashmi, Soha Ali Khan, VJ Mantra
The movie is rich with moments. It is a layered story of the protagonists who meet, depart and meet again and are given the luxury to re-examine their decisions.. Opportunity strikes twice and in the context of cinematic fiction the second time the players make no mistake. Director Kunal Deshmukh works in the raw frame work of a Bhatt film.
To med the film is a revisit to Basu Bhattacharya’s Aavishkar. The film maker as part of his marital triology win laurels with this Rajesh Sharmila film. The protagonists visit three years of their married life where familiarity breeds contempt.. There the film maker took the times of the middle class family and drew around it the romance and reality of the protagonists. Times have changed. The viewer has already seen the likes of Love Aaj Kal and Wake Up Sid- urban youngsters living together without keeping matrimony as part of the larger scheme.
Here too the protagonists have met up and have moved in together. She is rich, organised and a control freak. He, a freak who detests control, has only failure and rejection and is poor. The narrative however starts with the two walking down memory lanes. Sanjana (Soha Ali Khan) and Akshay (Emraan Hashmi) carry the baggage of the joint past. Even the road to their common past is different. One tries the façade of indifference, one stoic silence. One is willing to talk of the forgotten past (tongue in cheek), one refuses to reach the buried unforgotten past (tongue tied)
Sanjana is the rich daughter of an absentee ‘dad’ who has compensated his absence with wealth. Akshay is a poor struggling artist with middle class parents back home . He who wears his angst on his sleeve. At art school to learn painting he is already a guy with a strong opinion. Like the fictional Howard Rooke (the standard rebellion in the world of Self Believers) he refuses to compromise or even hold back his scathing opinions. The relationship is revealed in short stints from the past. The two share a very warm relationship – but somewhere the pressures of life creeps into the emotional space. Typical of the times, again, they have their ups and downs . Sanjana volunteers assistance, Akshay recoils. She probes, he cocoons. In the ocean of his rejection, there is simply no possibility of sharing his barren space of defeat. She is eager to take on the relationship. He is the hesitant recuse. At every stage she seeks the warmth of bondage, he the calm of recluse.
Akshaye is the artist who craves for success- and on his own terms. He cannot take rejection( can anybody?) He suffers in silence and even in company draws his invincible circle. The non penetrable area of his emotions challenge Sanjana who cannot perceive the emotional problems of her love form the stance of her luxury based life. At one stage the embers of the initial romance disintegrate into the bitter quad of mismatched expectations. They drift, move their respective paths and meet again.
This time it is not the picturesque Cape Town. It is Mumbai on its worst evening – July 26, 2k5, when rain played villain. The compulsions of the situation and the now successful protagonist is willing to take on the relationship... The high voltage story of expectations, failures, frustrations, and love suddenly is swept by the current of the Mumbai night. The script shifts pace, direction and content and leads to the death of friend (Mantra) who is electrocuted. Shocked the prime players now reach out...
Apart from its semblances to a few contemporary films, it forces you to take a compare with Aavishkar (Rajesh-Sharmila¬ --Basu Bhatacharya) classic) in a different time zone. While smooch specialist Emraan looks the role he also adds a high degree of credibility with an accurate mix of simmering anger and frustration. Good performance.. It is however Soha who really steals the show. As an actress she grows with the character and justifies the rich tradition she inherits in Aavishkar. Soha now gives it a classic new interpretation. It is a stand out performance and arguably one of the best this year. Full credit to director Kunal Deshmukh for not loosing focus. The many layers of human relationships in contrasting persona is narrated with a soreness that is a signature product of the Bhatt factory.. May not be a wonderful movie. It is a statement making moving film.
It is interestingly a film that eschews moral stances and delves with life in a true world. The later moments of the film when the Mumbai night of storm and hijack the narration, do not have the same credibility that the relation phase of the screenplay has. Even here, the warm chemistry between the stars nearly makes up for the other short comings. Even the chemistry between the sophisticated Soha and the notorious Emraan has a novelty that makes it less filmy. The film is interesting. Intriguing.
L.Ravichander
The movie is rich with moments. It is a layered story of the protagonists who meet, depart and meet again and are given the luxury to re-examine their decisions.. Opportunity strikes twice and in the context of cinematic fiction the second time the players make no mistake. Director Kunal Deshmukh works in the raw frame work of a Bhatt film.
To med the film is a revisit to Basu Bhattacharya’s Aavishkar. The film maker as part of his marital triology win laurels with this Rajesh Sharmila film. The protagonists visit three years of their married life where familiarity breeds contempt.. There the film maker took the times of the middle class family and drew around it the romance and reality of the protagonists. Times have changed. The viewer has already seen the likes of Love Aaj Kal and Wake Up Sid- urban youngsters living together without keeping matrimony as part of the larger scheme.
Here too the protagonists have met up and have moved in together. She is rich, organised and a control freak. He, a freak who detests control, has only failure and rejection and is poor. The narrative however starts with the two walking down memory lanes. Sanjana (Soha Ali Khan) and Akshay (Emraan Hashmi) carry the baggage of the joint past. Even the road to their common past is different. One tries the façade of indifference, one stoic silence. One is willing to talk of the forgotten past (tongue in cheek), one refuses to reach the buried unforgotten past (tongue tied)
Sanjana is the rich daughter of an absentee ‘dad’ who has compensated his absence with wealth. Akshay is a poor struggling artist with middle class parents back home . He who wears his angst on his sleeve. At art school to learn painting he is already a guy with a strong opinion. Like the fictional Howard Rooke (the standard rebellion in the world of Self Believers) he refuses to compromise or even hold back his scathing opinions. The relationship is revealed in short stints from the past. The two share a very warm relationship – but somewhere the pressures of life creeps into the emotional space. Typical of the times, again, they have their ups and downs . Sanjana volunteers assistance, Akshay recoils. She probes, he cocoons. In the ocean of his rejection, there is simply no possibility of sharing his barren space of defeat. She is eager to take on the relationship. He is the hesitant recuse. At every stage she seeks the warmth of bondage, he the calm of recluse.
Akshaye is the artist who craves for success- and on his own terms. He cannot take rejection( can anybody?) He suffers in silence and even in company draws his invincible circle. The non penetrable area of his emotions challenge Sanjana who cannot perceive the emotional problems of her love form the stance of her luxury based life. At one stage the embers of the initial romance disintegrate into the bitter quad of mismatched expectations. They drift, move their respective paths and meet again.
This time it is not the picturesque Cape Town. It is Mumbai on its worst evening – July 26, 2k5, when rain played villain. The compulsions of the situation and the now successful protagonist is willing to take on the relationship... The high voltage story of expectations, failures, frustrations, and love suddenly is swept by the current of the Mumbai night. The script shifts pace, direction and content and leads to the death of friend (Mantra) who is electrocuted. Shocked the prime players now reach out...
Apart from its semblances to a few contemporary films, it forces you to take a compare with Aavishkar (Rajesh-Sharmila¬ --Basu Bhatacharya) classic) in a different time zone. While smooch specialist Emraan looks the role he also adds a high degree of credibility with an accurate mix of simmering anger and frustration. Good performance.. It is however Soha who really steals the show. As an actress she grows with the character and justifies the rich tradition she inherits in Aavishkar. Soha now gives it a classic new interpretation. It is a stand out performance and arguably one of the best this year. Full credit to director Kunal Deshmukh for not loosing focus. The many layers of human relationships in contrasting persona is narrated with a soreness that is a signature product of the Bhatt factory.. May not be a wonderful movie. It is a statement making moving film.
It is interestingly a film that eschews moral stances and delves with life in a true world. The later moments of the film when the Mumbai night of storm and hijack the narration, do not have the same credibility that the relation phase of the screenplay has. Even here, the warm chemistry between the stars nearly makes up for the other short comings. Even the chemistry between the sophisticated Soha and the notorious Emraan has a novelty that makes it less filmy. The film is interesting. Intriguing.
L.Ravichander
Friday, November 6, 2009
Community bias!!
The label of our community is the ticket of social acceptance . The most learned of us, do not give up our tale telling names . In the centre of many a metro, we talk of our ‘social connectivity’ in the context of our birth signs. We place ourselves in the context of our birth- the first biological accident life is victim to. We proceed to brick our structure on considerations of caste and class. We play the card brazenly, shamelessly and often to our immediate advantage.
Our pretensions of social catholicity are driven by a cockeyed vision. For instance when we choose a person belonging to the under privileged section to a high public office, we first choose the community, then the person and then go about claiming the egalitarian nature of our social order. Rarely do men of great talent make it on their own and then throw the shadow of their great achievement on the community they belong to.
I am saying this in the context of a recent development in the state High Court. A advocate questioned the ongoing process of selection of four persons to the constitutional office of High court judges. I am not party to the content of his affidavit, since the writ petition is yet to be admitted. The counsel stood up opposing the constitution of the bench that was hearing the matter. He pointed out that one of the judges had the ‘proximity’ disadvantage of hearing the lis. In short he said : I do not believe that you will be unbiased in the course of deciding the constitutional issues raised herein. The judge recused form hearing the matter. The other judge did not qualify to any aspect of ‘proximity’ and wondered if he too gained the lack of confidence of the lawyer petitioner and oh behold! he answered in the affirmative.
Vasireddy Prabhunath the lawyer voicing concerns of the institution stopped short of dubbing the judge as incompetent to deal with a matter that deals with a person of his own community!! If any proof of the unsaid allegation was needed it came screaming in the packed court when the lawyer “with out fear or favour” snapped at the Advocate General and said he too was ‘part of the group” It is known that the few things the judge and the Advocate General share are their height, love for language, Shakespeare and their community. Surely since height love for the Bard are not the questionable disqualifications it is not difficult to conclude the alleged disqualification.
In the corridors of the hallowed High Court , we all talk of communities. Tragic, that at the sanctum sanatorium of Articles 14, 15, and 16, the high priests and the vendors talk this language. Now it out in the open. To quote form a gem that fell in the midst of the embarrassment: “ We live in perilous times where on occasion passion dominates reason. “
WE THE PEOPLE gave to ourselves this great nation. We the people, in the historic voyage understood the disadvantages of a society divided on community and other similar denominators. We the people in the midst of a bloody birth inherited the sanity to ensure against such unhygienic denominators. Today as we head to the Shashtiabdipoorthi- the sixtieth birth day of the paramount parchment we return to the roots. “Let it be in the open” a wise man said. A complicated adult world that sanctions adultery still holds back its approval for the act at a public place. We in a way have liberalised this sensitivity.
Time to think. It is easy to blame my colleague Prabhunath. That will be the task begun. The other aspect is the more challenging one!!.
LRC.
The label of our community is the ticket of social acceptance . The most learned of us, do not give up our tale telling names . In the centre of many a metro, we talk of our ‘social connectivity’ in the context of our birth signs. We place ourselves in the context of our birth- the first biological accident life is victim to. We proceed to brick our structure on considerations of caste and class. We play the card brazenly, shamelessly and often to our immediate advantage.
Our pretensions of social catholicity are driven by a cockeyed vision. For instance when we choose a person belonging to the under privileged section to a high public office, we first choose the community, then the person and then go about claiming the egalitarian nature of our social order. Rarely do men of great talent make it on their own and then throw the shadow of their great achievement on the community they belong to.
I am saying this in the context of a recent development in the state High Court. A advocate questioned the ongoing process of selection of four persons to the constitutional office of High court judges. I am not party to the content of his affidavit, since the writ petition is yet to be admitted. The counsel stood up opposing the constitution of the bench that was hearing the matter. He pointed out that one of the judges had the ‘proximity’ disadvantage of hearing the lis. In short he said : I do not believe that you will be unbiased in the course of deciding the constitutional issues raised herein. The judge recused form hearing the matter. The other judge did not qualify to any aspect of ‘proximity’ and wondered if he too gained the lack of confidence of the lawyer petitioner and oh behold! he answered in the affirmative.
Vasireddy Prabhunath the lawyer voicing concerns of the institution stopped short of dubbing the judge as incompetent to deal with a matter that deals with a person of his own community!! If any proof of the unsaid allegation was needed it came screaming in the packed court when the lawyer “with out fear or favour” snapped at the Advocate General and said he too was ‘part of the group” It is known that the few things the judge and the Advocate General share are their height, love for language, Shakespeare and their community. Surely since height love for the Bard are not the questionable disqualifications it is not difficult to conclude the alleged disqualification.
In the corridors of the hallowed High Court , we all talk of communities. Tragic, that at the sanctum sanatorium of Articles 14, 15, and 16, the high priests and the vendors talk this language. Now it out in the open. To quote form a gem that fell in the midst of the embarrassment: “ We live in perilous times where on occasion passion dominates reason. “
WE THE PEOPLE gave to ourselves this great nation. We the people, in the historic voyage understood the disadvantages of a society divided on community and other similar denominators. We the people in the midst of a bloody birth inherited the sanity to ensure against such unhygienic denominators. Today as we head to the Shashtiabdipoorthi- the sixtieth birth day of the paramount parchment we return to the roots. “Let it be in the open” a wise man said. A complicated adult world that sanctions adultery still holds back its approval for the act at a public place. We in a way have liberalised this sensitivity.
Time to think. It is easy to blame my colleague Prabhunath. That will be the task begun. The other aspect is the more challenging one!!.
LRC.
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