indian popular cinema

[nrh]

watched gulabo sitabo on prime, the first major hindi release to go straight to streaming during the continued covid lockdown, which is a shame because i'm kind of curious how it would've done in theaters.

the marketing materials sold it as comic battle of wills between tenant ayushman khuranna and miserly landlord amitabh bachchan over a crumbling lucknow mansion, but it turns into a sprawling ensemble whatsit about greed, displacement and loss in one of north india's strangest cities. sircar/chaturvedi's divisive last movie october was i thought a big step forward for them, moving away from the more conventional comedy look and rhythm of vicky donor and piku towards something slower, stranger, more steeped in place and time, and this one holds onto those virtues even while reintroducing some of the broader comic elements of the early films.

so it's an odd film...grounded and fable like at the same time, broadly comic in spots but overly melancholy in tone and trajectory.

and maybe we'll finally get to c/o kancharapalem this weekend...

[nrh]

rituparno ghosh's chokher bali, from 2003, the first movie where he moved into an indian film sphere rather than regional bengali film (the movie was released in a butchered short hindi dub, the longer bengali version available widely now, and an even longer tv version that doesn't seem to be available at all).

period piece, freely adapted from a very early tagore novel, about a young educated widow moving into a rich household where she falls in love with the westernized young doctor with an uneducated (even younger) bride, with the religious doctor turned revolutionary best friend who might love both women (and his friend) hovering close by.

because it's rituparno the delicate ways in which women in an oppressive system, and widows in bengal of the time are truly othered, create a personal and private space take pride over the melodrama plotting, even as time goes by and a never better aishwarya rai as the young widow stretches her agency until it can go no further. like his other period pieces, the burn it all down antarmahal and the other tagore adaptation noukadubi, which shares some important similarities with this, a quietly significant queer text in indian film.

[nrh]

wish i ended up liking c/o kancharapalem as much as everyone else does. SPOILERS i guess but the twist is very elegant, and moving in the way that it speaks to a kind of fluid identity within a culture based in very strict boundaries of class/religion/caste/etc. and it's wonderfully cast and acted, the kind of movie where every side character seems to have an inner life even if their place in the plot is a bit pro forma.

but as a whole it ends up as bit of cutesy cliches, with the romance between the older couple being the exception. and in some parts behavior just seems off; i don't really believe for example that saleema could be so naive, or that the kid, even in fit of pre-adolescent rage, would destroy the idol his father has built.

still liked it a good deal, although i suspect it will play a little more thin on revisit.

[Umbugbene]

I agree about the boy destroying the idol; that and its immediate consequence (trying to avoid more spoilers) felt overly melodramatic to me. There are a few wonderful moments of irony and revelation in the middle section, but it's mainly the ending that elevates it for me... not only the surprise, which is breathtaking, but also its faith in life which feels so well earned.

I did watch it a second time, but it didn't change much one way or the other.

[thoxans]

did a rewatch a few nights back actually, and it still held up well, though ymmv based on your initial appreciation of each storyline. it struck me as a particularly honest and heartfelt work, so its meet cute tropes perhaps didn't wear on me as much. really enjoyed how they addressed male-female control and social hierarchies, acknowledging the realities of female suppression and class division. never once came off as a mere hero saves heroine tale. rather the main male characters pursue strong women, and ultimately endure the devastation caused by other men

[nrh]

should also say the gambit of casting non-actors from kancharapalem really pays off, everybody has such strong sense of belonging to that space, and i don't think there's a false note in the large cast. the older couple in particular is truly great.

watched bulbbul on netflix, which just premiered this week, directing debut by anvita dutt after she already had a long career as screen writer and lyricist. ended up liking it a lot, of all things a kind of gothic fairy tale take on charulata. it takes the genre pleasures very seriously - horse drawn carriages cutting through fog shrouded woods as a city educated young man approaches a remote mansion and so on - and the bold gestures, like the searing red lighting used for the outdoor scenes, all pay off for me. maybe a little rushed at 90 minutes but a strong debut.

[thoxans]

bulbbul

watched it last night. major coppola's-bram-stoker's-dracula vibes. loved the otherworldly use of red, very dreamily (nightmarishly?) haunting, maybe even giallo-esque (with a dash of corman sprinkled on top). also dug on the gothic aesthetics big time. thought it a good piece of solid entertainment that even finds time to strike a couple of effective emotional chords

[nrh]

watched ketan mehta's mirch masala last night, since it was naseeruddin shah's birthday - totally fascinating how mehta manages to make this at once elegant, mosaic like portrait of village life and stylized, almost fable like drama. in any other movie it would shift around interval point, once smita hides in the spice factor to avoid naseer's vicious attentions and the siege begins, but this film manages to shift tones and registers in much more interesting ways (and the different acting styles are very interesting as well - so many competing registers of acting in this film).



typical imtiaz ali perversity that his most successful script of the last half decade wouldn't be any of his super high profile star films but a script he wrote for his brother to direct starring two complete unknowns (who also go on to play the young couple in bulbbul), laila majnu from 2018, which just got english subs a month or so ago.

it follows the old arab folk tale pretty closely, enough to spend the entire second half in dissipation, madness and tragedy, with a contemporary kashmir setting that has less to do with that region's political issues of the last few decades than with the region fame as backdrop to hindi romantic films. great soundtrack as well, kind of wonder if (like sonchiriya from last year) this got hurt from being stuck on indian streaming platform that's not all that accessible for a long time, since it has future cult film written all over it.

[brian d]

i just found out that mani kaul's duvidha was remade as paheli, from 2005. looks like umbugbene has seen it, not sure who else. anyone know where i can find it, or want to dissuade me from watching it if i know that duvidha is one of the best 10 or so movies ever made?

[thoxans]

watched it on netflix. haven't seen the kaul, but can't imagine you'd get much from paheli. i caught it as an srk completist, and even then it's at the lower end of my list of srk flicks. seemed more a star vehicle than something reflective/thoughtful of the source material/subject matter. found it an enjoyable diversion, very lightweight, so maybe in that way it'd make a good breezy summer movie, maybe (?) but disclaimer: i've been known to be wrong before, sooo...

[brian d]

yeah i figured someone would have seen it around here if srk stars in it. thanks for the info, i'll keep thinking about it i guess...

[nrh]

haven't seen the amol palekar version yet but i think it's fair to say rather than a remake of the kaul it's a version of the original rajasthani folk tale. kaul's version is very much based on the short story version by the rajasthani modernist vijaydan detha (the final narration especially is taken more or less exactly from detha's version, which is collected i think in choubuli & other stories vol. 1) so that's another level of remove.

since palekar very much hung out with the parallel cinema and experimental theater kids, including starring in a film by kaul's long time compatriot kumar shahani, i am sure he was at least familiar with kaul's version though...

[brian d]

what i saw on america's most trusted source, wikipedia, said that the palekar version was based on the detha story, but obviously not having seen it i'm not sure if that's the case or not. but yeah, the detha story is great too. there's a collection just by him called the dilemma and other stories that's worth checking out (not sure if choubuli includes more than just the one story by him).

no wait, just double-checked and it says it was a remake. again, not sure. also partly based on the film nagamandala which i also haven't seen.

[nrh]

hm i must have totally misremembered since i found an interview where palekar clearly says they based their script after detha (with significant changes made to the ending).

nagamandala is a very beautiful play by girish karnad, i've seen a little of the film version from '97 (there is a subtitled copy on einthusan) which doesn't seem bad but they kind of never really figure out a way to deal with karnad's theatrical form.

[brian d]

awesome, i just joined einthusan to give nagamandala a watch. i'm guessing your paheli information is better than what's on wikipedia. i'll try to watch it as well because of morbid curiosity, will report back on hopefully two decent movies.

[nrh]

one quick hint with einthusan - you can use this to download movies straight from their website as an mp4 w/hardcoded subs and avoid their horrible streaming interface http://en.fetchfile.net/download-from-einthusan/

[brian d]

ooh, fancy. thanks!

[brian d]

ok so i just watched paheli and i'm not impressed. really takes the magic out of duvidha by focusing on... well... magic, and also undercuts entirely the ideas of domestic control and class struggle of the earlier film, even while it tries to set them up at the beginning. some parts of this are definitely based more or less directly on duvidha, other parts might be more rooted in the story or the folk tale, i'd need to look at the detha story again to be sure. but if someone hasn't seen either of these, i'd say to definitely watch duvidha first.

[nrh]

for the c/o kancharapalem fans - director's new movie Uma Maheswara Ugra Roopasya, the second remake of maheshinte prathikaaram, is up on netflix. getting very good reviews fwiw.

[Umbugbene]

Hey thanks, I wasn't aware of that! I'll check it out soon.

[nrh]

Hey thanks, I wasn't aware of that! I'll check it out soon.

long interview with the director in english. rangan is very good interviewer even if i've been pretty disappointed in his recent writing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... e=emb_logo

[Lencho of the Apes]

quick hint

Another way to d/l video plus subs from einthusan is with the download helper that's available as an add-on to firefox. Only works in Firefox and maybe Chrome, but I'm a firefox kid to begin with, so...

[Umbugbene]

So I just watched Uma Maheswara Ugra Roopasya....

Spoiler!

I liked it, but not as much as C/o Kancharapalem. The acting and characterization are amazing as ever, and you can't miss the love of humanity that radiates through both movies. The plot is fine up to a point - there's a long sequence recalling Bresson's L'argent where a quarrel spreads like a contagion through the village, culminating in the main character Mahesh being humiliated in a fight that he didn't want to get drawn into. But it's a shame the movie can't find a better way for Mahesh to reclaim his dignity. He learns kung fu and challenges his enemy to a rematch... is that really the best it can do? The climactic fight is pretty standard stuff, only partly redeemed by the love story and the reconciliation that follows.

[nrh]

i remember joking on twitter or something that c/o kancharapalem felt kind of like a cliff notes version of malayalam popular film after maheshinte prathikaaram, so i was actually kind of shocked when he decided to just straight up remake that film

i remember that ending being somewhat criticized even in the otherwise beloved maheshinte prathikaaram

Spoiler!

even from qalandar's review at the time - Maheshenthe Prathikaaram isn’t perfect: in particular, I was disappointed in the way writer Syam Pushkaran ended his story, doing some violence to the logic of Mahesh’s character and ethos. That violence isn’t just metaphorical, and while the fight that serves as the film’s penultimate sequence is very well-choreographed (in equipoise between a naturalistic representation of a scrum, and the sort of stylization necessary to hold a viewer’s interest in two guys going at each other), the film, and Mahesh, shouldn’t have ended that way. It’s a small, sour note for me, in a film remarkably free of rancor, despite the heartbreak, failure, and humiliation Mahesh suffers along the way: Maheshenthe Prathikaaram recovers that good cheer in its last scene, despite the fact that several characters are arrayed around a hospital bed, and the last shot is of Mahesh’s rueful smile. That choice tells you all you need to know about the director: all might never be well, but there’s hope for Malayalam cinema, and for us, as long as there’s space in the culture for sensibility like the one showcased here by Dileesh Pothan.

i think there it was understood at least as an act of restoration, bringing back some of what was lost from the '80s to early '90s golden age of malayalam cinema by directly tackling the hyper masculine masala films from the late 90s through 2000s dark ages (they have fahadh singing narasimham song very specifically!). and it did genuinely help set up a new paradigm for malayalam popular movies going forward, and both follow up films by director dileesh pothan (thondimuthalum) and writer syam pushkaran (kumbalangi nights) managed to push even further away from convention and get big audiences.

what's a little confusing to me is why in the telugu remake, which because of the way telugu film works is always doomed to be a niche art film, would more or less get no theatrical release even without the covid situation, would feel the need to stick so closely to the original script. and surprised it seems to have gotten almost zero attention from anyone i follow despite the debut being so widely loved; maybe people just aren't interested in a remake?

[nrh]

really liked raat akheli hai on netflix, the debut film by honey trehan, who has been vishal bharadwaj's casting diretor and sometimes assistant and all around interesting guy in hindi cinema for a few decades now. this is classic whodunnit (dead body, mansion full of eccentric rich people who hate each other, climax where everyone gathers in the room and the detective explains what happened) north indian/up bleakness and an interest in tangled family and generational trauma that reminded me more of a ross macdonald/lew archer novel than many of the more christie type novels.

acting is great - nowaz plays his small town police officer as a quiet, angry man with a streak of vanity and pride, the kind of dude that lives in a tiny house with his mom but spends all his money on a royal enfeld motorcycle and leather jackets and shades but would never admit it, but the rest of the cast from radhika apte's traumatized prime suspect to tigmanshu dhulia's preening corrupt ssp are all great as well - and it's technically impeccable on all other fronts.

still not a great movie, but...this is the sort of thing i think netflix should maybe be doing if they want to be producing movies? mid budget interesting films that wouldn't really have a place in a theater world. if it's a little too familiar, both in genre clothing and political/cultural critique it's still the kind of movie that i think is needed if you want a healthy film culture in the first place (i didn't hate knives out but the distance between the two films is pretty brutal).

[rischka]

watched jhoom barabar jhoom after seeing charulata mention it on twitter and it was a lot of fun! don't think i've seen amitabh's son before but he was great!



will check more of his films i must say i was a little disturbed by the casual racism. i know it exists, it's just disconcerting (her oath to marry a white man)

[...]

From what I've seen, which admittedly isn't a lot, Abhishek seems much more comfortable in comedies than in the action/drama roles he gets, where he seems to figure that showing no affect at all is somehow suitably serious or something, when it more feels like he didn't bother to read the script ahead of time. He's much looser and inventive in the comedies I've seen. More importantly though, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom also has Lara Dutt, who I've wanted to see more of since she was so good in the couple films I've seen. I'll have to try and see this one sometime, once I finally get to live back at my apartment again next month and get to see movies again.

[nrh]

Jhoom Barabar Jhoom also has Lara Dutt, who I've wanted to see more of since she was so good in the couple films I've seen.

she's great in this and it would totally spoil some of the surprise to say exactly how!

abhishek had such a strange career, i guess if your parents are amitabh and jaya and you get married to aishwarya there is always going to be a certain danger of getting overshadowed, but there seems to have been a greater audience rejection...of course you could say almost all the actors who emerged from that weird transitional decade had a really tough time.

i think his pensiveness works well in antarmahal and naach, i guess sarkar where all the actors are just statues in a hall of iconography anyway. and he is great in the least showy role in manmarziyaan, but then kashyap has always been good with actors in that sense.

i genuinely find his raavan performance fascinating. he's totally wrong physically for the role, so his solution is just to be mannered, "crazy" in scare quotes, taking the ten headed raavan thing almost literally, where vikram in raavanan is able to just use his physical stature and charisma without seeming to make much effort as all (but then you never want to be in a situation where you are being compared to vikram in that kind of role!). it doesn't really work but a fascinating choice in a weird movie full of odd, fascinating choices. but he was absolutely mocked by the hindi audience for it, the movie totally rejected (the tamil version did very well).

[nrh]

will check more of his films i must say i was a little disturbed by the casual racism. i know it exists, it's just disconcerting (her oath to marry a white man)

i would take the whole movie as a kind of dialogue with the glitzy, europe and america set movies with nri characters that exploded after ddlj in '95, with the whole first half of the film being a kind of parody of those fantasies (ticket to hollywood is a great song but also rather pointed!). if all your fantasies are colored by a kind of globalization of course her dreams of romance will be too!

then the second half attempts to kind of create a new diaspora cinema from the ashes of the 90s, both rooted in the past (not just the beautiful 'bol nal halke halke' song sequence but the presence of beloved b list character actors in the dance contest, bobby and abhishek riding in the motorcycle like their parents amitabh in dharmendra did in sholay, the great piyush mishra reciting couplets to the birth of a new kind of romance.

[rischka]

omg that guy is the son of the other sholay character!! i didnt know this

ofc i recognized amitabh immediately but got from imdb that the star was his son

thx for sorting this for me nrh