Monday, August 04, 2008

Weekend Movie Fiesta

On one of those rare occasions in recent times, I watched not one, not two, but four movies this weekend. The rainy, uncertain weather helped, of course..


Dekha, by Goutam Ghose, is the story of a poet who has lost his eyesight and now lives pretty much cooped up in the decaying splendor of his old home. He reminisces about his past, listens to Bengali classics on vinyl and wonders what the crows that caw from trees near his balcony are trying to tell him. He lapses into silence, worries about the news of farmers' deaths and ponders on the future of a classless society. In short, he is every bit the stereotypical Bengali intellectual you are likely to meet and since you know as much you know there is only one living actor who can play that role and that is of course the redoubtable Soumitra. He has a renter, the daughter of a former teacher of his, played by the lovely Debashree Roy (what an underrated actress!). It is interesting to see that the character played by Soumitra is not some homily-spouting, ultra-idealist former poet...the story has enough ambiguous scenes wherein his former colorful nature, his playful manner, his seductive charm is still shown to be alive. This , I thought added an edge to the tale which could otherwise have devolved into a tale of decay and self-pity...


Rituparno Ghosh's Bariwali is an accomplished production with some accomplished acting under, what I will call, accomplished direction. Have I see Kiron Kher act before? I do not remember...she is such a revelation here...as Banalata [or Bhanulata, as one web reviewer referred to her]...but everyone else puts in a fine effort, especially the tart Sudipta Chakraborty as Malati and Surya Chatterjee as the dependable Prasanna. And some fine direction too, what with the story flowing seamlessly. Of course, Banalata's capitulation seemed too easy, to quick...and so, in a way, the poignancy of the ending was predetermined...

From more sedate, south asian dramas we now go to some searing, eurasian stuff: the German-Turkish movie, Head-On by Fatih Akin. This is a story about two Turkish immigrants living in Hamburg and their providential coming together, and even liking one another. I do not wish to summarize the story here because it did seem to have too many loose ends. But the movie is slick and the two main characters, Cahit and Sibel are whacked-out and rebellious, in some ways. There is an edge to Sibel that is hard to pinpoint and even when you see her "fall" for Cahit [did she not always harbor a soft corner for him?], the fierce, uncompromising lines of her taut face never soften. It is also her waifish body that has some renegade punk energy to it [funny, there is a scene of Cahit and her dancing to "Punk Will Never Die"...].

and finally, this...

I actually do enjoy recreations of comic-book tales [Spiderman, earlier Batmans, Superman], I enjoy adventure movies like the Pirate movies, the Raiders of the whatever movies...and so I went with great expectations to see the Dark Knight. I came back quite overwhelmed by the violence and the gore and the explosions and a bit underwhelmed by the narrative. I was mightily impressed by Heath Ledger, tho'...

No comments: