Sensationalism in Movies

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen the movie, Titanic, but I loved it every time. The love and the emotions besieging the ill-fated ship known as probably the biggest tragedy of those times, and the exemplary performance of the artists did make me awestruck.

But on hindsight, I wonder what was it actually, that I enjoyed in the movie? The love that a lady discovered in a stranger? The way the unsinkable ship cracked open when it hit the iceberg? The panic stricken people running haywire with the fear of death looming large around their eyes? The Naval officers trying desperately to save their passengers despite knowing they may not be able to save themselves? The kids who stare around innocently unaware of the inevitable eventuality beckoning at their door step? The final showdown of the sinking ship? Or the fact that all of this actually happened sometime ago?

With a beautiful music and a touching screenplay, one of the greatest tragedies of the last century becomes a worldwide sensation and a mass hit with Academy awards pouring through the roof. But what gets lost amid all the noise of this sensationalism is a thought about the people who actually underwent the trauma. Well, I wonder if I could have brought myself to watch the movie so many times if I were one of those kids who managed to live through that ill-fated day?

The world does sit back and watch when the media broadcasts something sensational, but in the midst of it all, the thought behind the gruesome reality and the people who had everything from their life to their future at stake, takes a backseat.

Talking about a tragedy is one thing, while living through it, is another. When memories of a panic haunt the mind, its hard to sit back and watch their melodramatic incarnation conceived by a bunch of people who were eons away from the actual happening. Trauma has a bizarre flavor to it. Generations of evolution has made the human olfactory system sensitive to the odor of approaching death. And when one manages to survive through that perilous stink, you won’t expect him to bring himself up to sit back in an air-conditioned cinema hall enjoying the emotionally histrionic screenplays re-enacting those moments.

Imagine just managing to survive through a trauma and years later looking at someone on the giant screen with a glossy make-up and gloated artificial tears trying to act out what you went through in the past! Sometimes it’s just good to leave the past where it belongs. As the old lady says in the closing scenes of the Titanic, “It should remain where it is. For that’s where it belongs”.

The Da Vinci Code

The biggest challenge in making a movie that is heavily dependant on a lot of unknown history is introducing the context and the history behind all that context, so that one can get an idea of what is actually happening and why it is happening. But this is precisely the point where the movie falls short.

With so much of complicated history – The Priory of Sion, The Knights Templar, The Holy Grail, Pagan rituals, Opus Dei et. al., the movie could have started with a short historical visual that introduces the Priori and their significance to the Holy Grail and then move on to the present day events, rather than showing such disconnected flashes of history all through the course of the movie. In the absence of an introduction, anyone watching the movie without reading the book is sure to take a while to understand what it was all about and end up missing the intricate points being shown. Making a dynamic screenplay out of a book is a big task. Especially, with the story jumping from Paris to Zurich to London and back to Paris and in the process sifting through a number of monuments that have a major historical significance, there never was an instance when a subtitle was placed to indicate where actually the present scene was happening. Showing the location and the time of the day as a subtitle would have helped the viewer keep up with the flow. Unless you have read the book, keeping up with the screenplay is a hard task.

The phenomenal bestseller that the book was, Ron Howard probably assumed his audience to have already read the book. Well, but that’s not what great movies are about. You would expect a movie to be self-contained, and not something to be followed with a reference material in hand.

A movie as this, which spans across different ages, does provide a wide scope for some really inspiring music. History and Christianity do provide an opportunity for a unique blend of music. But Hans Zimmer’s music hardly makes an impact. Except for the closing scene, when he plays an orchestra version of Clint Mansell’s original score in the movie Requiem for a Dream. That is one point where the music merges in an amazingly synchronous harmony with the cameras zooming in from the starry skies circulating through the inside of the inverted pyramid and breaking into the ground revealing the Holy Grail.

Tom Hanks (Robert Langdon) is nowhere close to his charismatic best, Paul Bettany (Silas) is chilling, Ian McKellen (Sir Leigh Teabing) is nothing dramatic, while Audrey Tautou (Sophie Neveu) is the only one who did complete justice to her role.

If you have read the book, the movie provides a fair gratification of watching events and characters play out on the big screen. If you haven't read the book, the movie is decent enough to make you want to pick up the novel and read more into the controversial theories and all those doses of history. Nevertheless, even considering all the practical constraints of making a movie based on a bestselling book, The Da Vinci Code – The Movie, could have been made quite a few notches better.

O Draconian Devil calling…

Finally, Jax managed to book tickets for The Da Vinci Code for this Sunday’s matinee. And despite very ordinary reviews for the movie, I’m quite keen in watching it.

Well, I don’t see the reason behind people watching the movie expecting to see the same gripping interest the book held in them. It’s practically impossible to cover the 400 pages of a book within the tiny span of 2 hours on the screen.

A book has the luxury of the absence of visuals. You could just write about two people in an intense conversation for a hundred pages and still manage to retain the reader’s attention, but you can’t expect the reader to sit and watch two people talking for an hour in a movie. You think and create visuals in your mind while a reading a book, but you don’t expect to “think” while watching it on screen. A movie is characterized by the visuals, action and the ensuing momentum. And for the sake of this momentum a lot of sheen of the book needs to be done away with.

Take for instance, Jurassic Park. The movie may have pocketed three Oscars, but I would any day prefer the book to the movie. The Dinosaur visuals is what ran the movie through the box office, not the story or the amazing science behind it. But the book was all about the science and the story and evidently far more stimulating than the movie.

So, I’m keen on watching it. That is, if the insanity that has crept into TN, AP, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Punjab and Pondicherry doesn’t sink into Bangalore. Even as I write this, Breaking News lists these states to have jumped into a ban wagon and banning the movie. If a bunch of senior Christian leaders watching the movie at the Censor board and nodding for a clearance is not good-enough to run the movie across the country, then I wonder what is. Funny!

Movie Review: Mangal Pandey

1857. Barrackpore. Four messengers on an elephant back beside the banks of a bright sunlit river singing praises of the land, inspiring people to rise from their slumber, to admire the scrambled beauty that the medieval age was all about. Well, atleast that was the idea.

In historical epics like Mangal Pandey, where one is already aware of the story, the history behind it, the expected climax and the obvious conclusion, the least one would expect from the movie is to carry oneself into that day, retelling and reliving the emotions of the past as if it were happening in front of his eyes, rather than an amalgamated narration of the incidents with intermittent bouts of fiction and masala. The fervor appears lost even as the movie begins with the Mangala mangala song and the four men on the elephant back theme.

The movie was Ketan Mehta’s 17 year old dream and had considered Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt to play the lead role during the days of his initial contemplation. But eventually, 17 years hence, when the project did manage to take off with Aamir Khan, Ketan Mehta seems still hooked on to his erstwhile visions of the movie.

The movie moves more like the Discovery of India (Bharath ek khoj) series telecast in Doordarshan 20 years back, with Om Puri’s voice (it was Om Puri in that series as well) narrating the events as they unfold, at times making one wonder if someone is reading out lines from a completely illustrated story book. Historical texts seem to talk of a British general, William Gordon, who fought with the Indian sepoys against the British forces. The movie goes a step further fictionalizing an intense friendship between Mangal Pandey and William Gordon, and the betrayal of his friendship eventually forcing Mangal Pandey to turn in the rebellion.

A friendship ensuing between an Indian sepoy and a British general is understandable, but some parts are hard to comprehend. A case being the wife of a sepoy who breast-feeds a British lady’s baby at the cost of ignoring her own baby whom she opium-izes and at a point when she warns her of the rebellions resorts to deeming the lady’s baby as her own. There could be a better way of showing a mother’s feelings. Wonder if any mother in this day or that, would resort to this.

The costumes are a let down. For a period placed in the mid 19th century, the costumes and settings seemed much contemporary. But for the uniform of the sepoys, there wasn’t much by way of costumes to carry the viewer into the medieval age. Compare the scenics of the villages in the movie with a present day village, and you wouldn’t really tell them apart. Camera angles and choreography fail to instill a sense of thrill or emotion. AR Rahman’s tranquilizing numbers appear lost in simplistic choreography with conversations taking over half the songs half-way through.

Rani Mukherjee does not have enough of a part to talk of her performance, while Amisha Patel does her insignificant role fairly well. Toby Stephens (William Gordon) performs the most vital role of the movie (next only to Mangal Pandey) with neat precision. Aamir Khan is probably the best thing that could have happened to the movie. His 2 year long grown moustache and hair and his uncanny knack of living the role he performs deserves due credits.

Mangal Pandey is a good break from the laborious stereotypes of typical bollywood masala, but far from living up to its hype.

Movie Review: Anniyan

sarva dharman parityajya mam ekam saranam vrajah
aham tvah sarva papebhyo mokshayisyami ma suchah

[Abandon all your dharma and surrender unto Me.
I shall deliver you from all sinful deeds. Do not fear.]

If you have missed, that is what the Anniyan says everytime he goes about doing his stuff. The verses are from The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 18, Text 66).Ambi – an innocent youngster from an orthodox Iyengar family who goes strictly by the book on everything, right from not crossing the Stop line in a traffic signal to reciting the abhivadanam while prostrating before elders to lending a helping hand to someone hit on the road. Remo – A flashy modern day youth who falls in love with an orthodox Iyengar girl. Anniyan – The man! Goes about punishing anyone who acts against law and follows the ancient script of Karuda Puranam to choose the mode of punishment. And then the grand finale! Anniyan!!

I was not talking about three different persons here. Neither was I talking about the same person.

Despite parallels to a few other movies, Anniyan scores in its own distinct ways. The movie opens with a typical agraharam style locality where the innocent Ambi (Vikram) laments everyday about all the little to big law breaking fallouts happening around him. Vikram also plays the part of Remo and Anniyan and deserves complete credit for handling the three characters with startling distinctness.

Though the core theme of the movie resembles Shankar’s earlier work Indian, Anniyan has more than a social theme to it. Drawing from the psychology of a kid who gets perturbed after losing his little sister, to a youth who has been waiting 7 years (and still counting) to reveal his love, Shankar’s screenplay has weaved an exquisite balance in handling the sticking-together of seemingly independent pieces of story mingled with a few doses of religious hints.

A virtually unknown Peter Hayen makes his presence felt, with his stunt settings that has been based in the movie at a martial arts school. But the 360 degree revolving of the camera with the fighters frozen in mid air a la The Matrix occurs just a little too frequent in the almost 15 minute sequence.

Sujatha shows his class again with his dialogues that mixes comedy (anchored by Vivek) right into the crux of the story and does not deviate a bit from the mainstream at any point.

Harris Jeyraj has not done much to quell the Rahman'ised view of a Shankar movie. I would still feel AR Rahman would have done a better music. The background score whenever anniyan rises does not really provoke any sense of thrill. However Harris deserves credit for altleast a couple of numbers. Iyengar veettu azhage being my personal favorite (in fact, that could rather have read Iyengar aathu azhage). If you feel there is more reason to my liking than just the song being good, then you are not mistaken.

Considering a few distant parallels with Chandramuki, Shankar certainly knew better when he decided to hold the release of Anniyan not to get blown by the Chandramuki wave. However, if there were a tie for an award between Vikram and Jyothika, I would still vote for Jyothika.

Life’s like that

A conversation from Million Dollar Baby.

Frankie: Stop that!
Maggie: Why? What did I do wrong?
Frankie: You did two things wrong. One, you asked a question. Two, you asked another question.

Million Dollar Baby was beautiful. Somehow, I didn’t want Maggie to die. But then, if she had lived, the movie wouldn’t have got the Oscar. What do you feel?

Meet the Fockers

Had been to this movie past Saturday evening with my cousin. There were two very good things about this movie. One, PVR. Two, a regular-size cup masala corn and Pepsi during the interval.

Meet the Fockers. The movie could rather have been named Meet the Fuckers. Believe me, it would still have made perfect sense! Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) is engaged to his girlfriend, Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo). Before they could plan anything about wedding Pam’s father, Jack (Robert De Niro) would meet Greg’s parents (Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand) who lead a laid back Florida Keys lifestyle.

The movie opens with a characteristic mocking of Greg, delivering a baby for a woman. Greg is a registered nurse. The Fockers isle is more of an island off the coast of Pluto rather than something on the earth for Jack, a retired CIA Officer and a tech-savvy, modernized technocratic grandpa. Jack and his wife (Blythe Danner) move in their caravan along with Greg and Pam to spend a weekend with the Fockers, an amateur martial arts expert father and a sex therapist mother who helps old people rediscover their charm of sex life. And all hell breaks lose!

But original humor is what makes for good comedy, not the secondhand gags that this movie pulls. A lot of stuff is borrowed from the prequel Parents. Amid all the confusion that ensues Pam says she’s pregnant but would not reveal it to her obsessive father until after their marriage. The movie proceeds with a painful streak of forced comedy with the Fockers showing off their stuff, kissing and cuddling their 34 year old son as though he were just born and seem like having an orgasm every moment they touch each other. Much to the irritation of Jack, who is hell-bent in knocking the stuff out of this rubbish. The eccentric mannerisms and the dire lack of etiquette of the Fockers makes him turn against the marriage of his daughter. Then, Greg reveals Pam is pregnant.

The movie ends with an inevitable happy ending, with Jack giving in to the marriage and also ending up to the lures of the sex therapist, rediscovering his own lost passions with his wife.

Not the kind of comedy that will remain in memory for longer than the duration of the movie, but nevertheless a reasonable object to kill time in the weekend.