Shaitan

I remember how when I was a child, I would hear people admonish someone who was naughty or did something wrong as “shaitani”. You mustn’t be called that, because that would mean that you are a bad person. It’s almost the height of evil doing. And that’s what this movie is about. It’s about what happens when you continuously indulge in things that are not good for you, losing your sanity in the process. It is about how when you have to cover up for one mistake, you have to commit many more, that turns out to be a never-ending nightmare of bitter regrets and unimaginable actions.

Shaitan, directed by newcomer Bejoy Nambiar came as a brave attempt at unearthing the underbelly of the Indian police, and the consequences of young, wild erratic lifestyles of the uber cool, rich city bred kids. Five friends, KC (Gulshan Devaiya), Dash (Shiv Pandit), Zubin (Neil Bhoopalam),Tanya (Kirti Kulhari) and Amrita Jayshankar a.k.a. Amy (Kalki Koechlin) are on a wild ride of drugs, drinks and all that spells trouble. A fatal accident completely shocks them and to cover that up, they are forced to device a riskier plan that they hope would save them from serving a jail sentence. The “plan”, however, proves to be too costly to their friendship, their faith in each other and in life itself. Life turns out to be one hellish journey that takes away their spirit, their hopes, their happiness.

Shaitan’s appeal lies in its ability to provoke the senses of the viewer, to make the unexpected come true, but only in certain sections. While the first killing seems real, the ones following that seem a bit overdone. The film urges one's senses and performs in these particular bits. The technical experimentations are fresh, but borrowed. Distinctly Aronofsky right at the beginning. I liked how he brought a twist in Tanya’s story. And how Amy got high in the shot of her against the wall. I liked how the remixed songs were played in the background of completely contradictory visuals. The songs did not come in the way of the film, neither did it disrupt the flow of the narration. It only added to the substance, sometimes loudly, sometimes subtly, but it played in a way that blended with the screen action. The chase scene is done with alacrity keeping the pace and pulse fast and intense. The accident is, by far one of the best sequences in the film. The impact, the silence, the heaviness - all combined to bring out the extent of its magnitude - that would determine the course of the rest of the film.

The film did not work for me for a few reasons. First its luck was pulled too far. The antics started to repeat itself, and hence felt overdone. The dialogues sometimes lacked an intelligence. The actors did a fair job, but other than Rajeev Khandelwal who played Inspector Arvind Mathur, there was a certain lack of depth in the other characters. Amy’s estranged mother and her devastated state of mind was explored well, yet failed to really come through. It lacked a history, and a solid build to the mother and consequently her state of mind. It tries to have an impact, but again, lacked a fineness. However, the last scene of the child in the tub pulls it off well. Arvind Mathur’s marital problems did not directly affect his screen presence, and the parallels drawn between his police life and his issues at home did not bring any major point to the forefront. There was a disconnect between these two selves.

The larger issue on which the film built itself on, the corruption of the Indian police force is not fully addressed. Yet its attempt to expose the flaws in the system and display how easy it is to make a "bribe" in order to keep a crime under the rug is admirable. Rajeev's character acts as the thread that tries to keep the credibility of the system intact. He is the fibre that runs through the film to connect the dots, to replace the missing pieces, to bring justice. Our society needs to wake up to these realities and stop taking corrupt ways for granted. If it can ruin someone else's life, it can very well ruin your life too. This is what the characters in the movie symbolize. They are the victims of a system gone terribly wrong. And one wrong system can turn into a vicious circle of many many wrong and awful consequences.

The characters were clearly inspired by real people that the director may have come across in his life. They had different shades and dimensions to their personalities. The overall message of the film stands strong in its desire to shake our fantastic thoughts of wild fun, and ground us to the grim realities of such dangerous turns.

Watch it for its edginess, its pace, and most of all, its compelling theme.

The Black Swan

Aronofsky does it again. This time with greater grip, passion and spectacle. The Black Swan, in all its intensity took me on a journey of dangerous ambition, hateful competition, and disturbing mental trauma seen through the eyes of the victim - a ballerina.

Who would think the petite form of the ballerina could be turned into a bloody nightmare that haunts, disrupts and even kills? Nina Sayers, played by Natalie Portman is torn between her most private insecurities and her ambition to get the lead role of the Swan Queen. Personifying the conflict of good and evil in Tchaikovsky’s ballet “Swan Lake”, Nina needs to fight the demons in her head that make her lose her mind. She sees competition in Lily (Mila Kunis), who has the qualities that she lacks, the sexuality and seductiveness that is required to play the black swan. Nina is a perfectionist, but only in technique. She can carry off the role of the white swan beautifully, but lacks the emotion and spontaneity that will carry the character of the black swan.

The pressure only mounts with Nina’s mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), who dreams of her daughter’s success, and lives to see her become a great dancer. She is strict when it comes to discipline and performance. Her character also has hints of dark shades right in the very early stages of the film. Although she acts as Nina’s support system, she strangely also drives her to desperation and fear. The other voice that increases Nina’s need to be perfect is her dance teacher Thomas Leroy (Vincent Casel), who with his autocratic hand, pushes her to bring out what she lacks most - her sexuality. He gives her exercises that will help her discover herself and get more comfortable in her skin. Nina simply does not know how to handle this. How will she free her mind and repressed body, amidst the leering eyes of her mother who allows her no freedom?

Nina’s darkest fears translate into a living nightmare where she confronts what she sees the way her mind perceives it. Her world overturns when her dance takes over the air she breathes, the movements she feels and the voices that she hears. She sees herself in everything that haunts her. Her face becomes her fear, when it reflects itself at the most unexpected moments. Will she become the force that drives her to perfection? At what cost? And whose?

The movie is replete with Aronofsky style camera angles and movements all the way. His signature style of walking along with the character in quick successive steps especially reminded me of his earlier film Requiem for a Dream. Like how Jennifer Connelly leaves the apartment and walks out into the lift and out into the rain, Nina too, after a horrific sight, walks devastated towards us, as the camera moves with equal pace and urgency as her. This I find a unique experiment in Aronofsky’s cinematography. Also in this movie, the camera swirling and dancing around Nina as she finds her way across the performing space lends to a spectacular visual treat.

The soundtrack is one of the most dominant forces that lead the film. The background score by Clint Mansell takes the movie to a level that speaks the turmoil of Nina. Like in all other Aronofsky films, Mansell has delivered the best, bringing out the theme, the tune of emotions and the physical moods of the characters.

In a mix of genres, the Black Swan hits you somewhere but you are not sure where. It merges what you see and what you believe to have seen. It takes storytelling to a different level where the character’s quest to prove herself becomes the biggest threat when it overtakes the stability of her mind. It wipes out all doubts of unlikely possibilities because what our heart feels may not always be what our mind sees. It is a complex game of reality and dreams, an exploration into the deepest and darkest abysses of oneself and the fight to overcome the numbing pain. Like The Wrestler, here too there is the passion for a career, and beating all odds to find true happiness in doing what one loves most. But not without conquering a war that will take everything out of you, even your sanity.

Not everything needs to be explained with a practical reason. Neither does this ending. Watch The Black Swan for its beauty, tragedy, intrigue and exhilarating passion.

The Social Network

At an age where everything happens at the click of a mouse, and we swear by what we read on our social networking sites, life seems to revolve around the computer screen and all the time we spend in front of it. From updating status messages to uploading unlimited photographs to sharing our common interests, our social world is getting defined by how we like to portray ourselves online.

The Social Network, directed by David Fincher is testimony to how such an idea of developing a website that has grown as enormous as The Facebook has come to rule our lives. Jesse Eisenberg, who remarkably plays the character of Mark Zuckerberg shows us how the world’s youngest billionaire came to create a social networking site that proves to be a revolutionary finding. Unlike his character in Adventureland, Eisenberg is more nerdy, less socially active, and focused on his genius finding. The movie is the tale of rewards, and the complications of lawsuits filed against Zuckerberg. He is accused of stealing an idea, and we see him fight through the case with resolve and confidence.

The film meant many things to me. First, the phenomena of Facebook itself. What had started as a mere revenge stunt in college, turned out to be something that people couldn’t get enough of. From rating college girls based on their hotness, to its popularity lending to the growth of an entire social networking site where people not just got to post a profile of themselves, but also got to know others who they may be interested in.

We search for names and faces. It is the virtual meeting point and place to interact and get to know people we already may have met. It is like a dictionary of a person we want to get a quick update on. Today, rather than exchanging phone numbers, a person’s name is enough to track them down on Facebook. It’s the ideal way to stay in touch. More than e-mails, or phonecalls, the Facebook is the most convenient way for me to keep in touch with my friends. There is no obligation, the internet is an open book, and Facebook is the social meeting site. I not only get to say hello to my friends, but I also get to see their photographs, statuses, and all the updates that I’d like to know. It is addictive. It will take you to unlimited opportunities of connections. What better means for communication?

Facebook has now crossed the boundaries of age, countries and continents. It has become a global networking arena. A site of reunions, discussions, personal thoughts, mood descriptions, photo sharing, laughs, memories, triumphs and defeats. It has come to define our existence in the real world. Are we who we portray on our Facebook pages? Or is it a place to reclaim what we wish to be seen as? A drug that may not cease to satisfy, it can be a bug as big as the virus we fear most. We need to learn how to keep it away. While it is a pathbreaking instrument to bring the world closer, too much time spent on it can result in a virtual social life. Only.

The Social Network will show you the genius behind it all. Watch it for a story that is as real as I write this, and as fast as your mind is thinking about your next status update. Yes, you are bitten by the Network.

The Conversation

Your auditory senses couldn’t be more alert. The Conversation, directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1974 has one of the most engaging sound tracks that will grip you in a way you cannot forget.

Establishing a unique sound aesthetic right from the beginning, the audio dynamics is quite striking with its ability in itself to build a relationship of the protagonist Harry Caul (played by Gene Hackman) and the other characters in the film.

There is a noticeable discord in the various sound elements that has a stereophonic quality, which subsequently builds a certain auditory disconnect from the visuals in the film. The scene that struck me the most is the one from where Harry leaves the office after collecting his money. As he leaves down the elevator and asks Martin Stett (Harrison Ford) about what they will do to the two young people whose conversation he had recorded, there is a slow and steady drumbeat that starts and increases momentum as he walks out in the open and is frustrated with himself for the kind of work that he does and his guilt that something might happen to the couple. The African drumbeat exudes a feeling of building action, of an impending climax. Then there enters a voice that plays in his head that acts as both non-diagetic (as the source is not from location) as well as diagetic since the voice is from the character’s mind who is in the narrative sphere. The drumbeats subside as soon as he hears in his head the repeated line “He’d kill us if he got the chance”. At this point the drumbeats fade to be taken over by the sound of the wind in the background. As he hears the voice of the girl singing “red red robin”, we hear the sound of the wind overpowering the tense atmosphere. It is at its most heightened volume when the recorded voices of the couple say the time, day and venue of their next meeting. Also there is a discreet screech of the electronic recording as we hear these voices, distinguishing it as the same recorded voice that is playing in Harry’s mind. There is a certain expansiveness that is created with this sound design of the wind, the voices and the sounds of the recording.

Following this, we only feel silence of the interiors of the hotel room and the occasional sounds of the city outside as Harry inspects the room. Once he enters the bathroom, the atmospheric sound quietens and the sounds of his equipment as he sets up the path to listen to the voices of the other room progresses. We hear his slow breathing, the flush, the cement that gets cut into, the shuffle of his body as he settles and the vibration of the volume control box of his audio device. At a distance, we hear far away voices from the other side of the room that slowly gain in volume to become clearer and closer. As the conversation gets heated up there is suddenly a screeching rewind sound that brings the voices to an end. Harry gets up in anger and we can hear his heavy breathing. Then all that is audible are the hollow voices that resonate from the other room. As they continue to argue, Harry shuffles around restlessly and we hear the sound of the balcony open. In an instant there is a loud, jarring and disturbing scream along with a loud bell sound, as Harry hallucinates and sees a murder. This has a powerful impact on the viewers as much as it does on Harry. The scream continues on a higher but softer pitch along with the bells chiming as the sound of the television that Harry puts on overlaps it. The sound of the bells continues as the scream transforms into an ambulance like a wail in Harry’s head. This I believe is one of the most powerfully simulated auditory hallucinations.

The clever overlaps in sound and the closeness that it brought me to what Harry was feeling is what I greatly admire. It brings the theme of invasion of privacy quite intensely. Harry lived hearing the voices he recorded, feeling what the voices were feeling, traumatized by the emotional implications, and most of all, his lonely existence.

Walter Murch’s seminal creativity with the sound effects has given the movie its personality and its purpose. The embedded conversation recordings, the innovative use of diagetic and non-diagetic sounds, the intense background mix, and the deafening silences are what makes it an absolute must to study the artistic value of sound with the film’s storytelling.

Peepli [LIVE]

This Independence Day comes a film directed by Anusha Rizvi, with a flavor that will tickle your humor buds and unassumingly heighten your awareness about the plight of farmers in our country.

A camera pokes right into the face of a poor farmer, who looks as innocent as a child who has just seen a toy gun. He is bewildered and doesn’t know how to handle all the sudden adulation. Why are all these people Peeping inside his house? Because he wants to, I mean wanted to commit suicide. To let his family live comfortably with the compensation that will be paid by the government. Until the media decided to make a sensational story out of it.

Natha (played by Omkar Das Manikpuri) and his brother Budhia (played by Raghuvir Yadhav) are farmers who run the risk of losing their land if they fail to pay back their bank loan. They are thrown into a helpless situation where they get no support to help repay their debt. The idea of committing suicide forms in their head as the only and last resort to save their family. As word gets around, television channels vie to make it a breaking news story; politicians try to make peace with the villagers because the elections are nearing and to top it, the agriculture secretary acts indifferent to all the developing mayhem.

I felt a certain inner happiness in watching this film, because more than anything else, I was blessing Anusha Rizvi for finally making a sensible film, bringing out a strong theme in a screenplay dripping with satire. What better way to show the deepest dirt and farcical nature of our so-called national system? I love the sarcasm in the visual language, for example how the Minster goes and gifts Natha a bright blue hand pump that is of no use to him or gifts him a television and garlands him in order to appease the threat he’s causing to the power play.

The role of the media is stark and shown in all its brutality. How far away are we from the truth? No too much, I believe. While all our news channels are bothered about TRP’s and being the “top news channel” with this “exclusive story” or that “special report”, how many of our journalists really care for the people or the stories they are reporting for? How many of us understand the real issue that these farmers are facing? How many Natha’s do we know about? I don’t know. Everything seems like such a drama. News has become theatrical. A live drama unfolding before us, with all the mise-en-scenes planned, and executed with perfection. With the perfect characters, and dialogues. For the perfect story. Why? To grab our eye-balls. So that we tune into the same news channel again to satisfy our thirst for dramatic realism.

While I write this at this very moment, I know that there are farmers dying, their suicides adding to numbers, and I feel restless now, because after watching the movie, I started to feel concerned. Although the film made me laugh, it also led me to a low when through the dark humour, I saw the real, cruel face of our power systems. The media, the politicians, the bureaucrats. Natha personifies the face of millions of peasants who face pressure and trauma to repay debts that is a matter of a life and death situation. When all the noise making elements left his village after his supposed death, we see how less anyone really cared about his fate.

Opportunistic. That’s what we all are. The world has become so competitive, that we seem to have lost that sense of humanity, that sense of not wanting to mindlessly think of how we can gain. Sometimes, it’s better to lose, in the eyes of the ruling power. Because, in our hearts, we have won. We may believe that everything needs to have a reason, but there’s no reason to play games with the lives of others to create that supposed reason. In the end, we are solely responsible for our actions, and if haven’t made that little difference in helping a Natha or a Budhia, then that action is not worth committing.

In a nutshell, Peepli [LIVE] shows us the voyeuristic nature of the media, how a story is not lived, but only thrust in front of the camera. Who cares about the old farmer who has been digging for days to sell the sand, and dies in that same mud trench he had been working his life for? Why couldn’t they show that story instead, voiced a more sensitive journalist Rakesh (played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui). Because, according to Nandita Mallik (played by Malaika Shenoy) “Natha is the big story.” Rakesh’s questioning attitude only invited a more curt answer, “ We are journalists, and this is what we do. If you can’t handle this, then you are in the wrong profession.” So my question is, is it worth sacrificing the real cause in the name of “profession”? How can a profession demand belittling our moral standards?

It will enlighten you. It might empower you. It can disturb you. Peepli [LIVE] is a wake up call to notice our distracting tools of public broadcasting. Watch it for its satire, its clever manipulation of story elements, its necessary exaggerations and most of all for its endearing and innocent characters who are the victims of our mad rush for attention. An Independence Day special, most certainly.

Inception

The word is dicey. It exhumes a beat of novelty. True to its meaning, Inception by Christopher Nolan is the beginning of a new cult. The creation of something that is so mind-boggling that it's too good to be true. I worship his genius.

Dominic Cobb (Leonardp Di Caprio) is an expert at stealing. Stealing people's ideas from their dreams while they are sleeping. Yes, our world could come to that. But the bigger challenge comes to him when he is asked to plant an idea in someone's mind instead. Saito (Ken Watanabe), a rich man, wants Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy), heir to his father's empire, to break it up in order to avoid a threat to his own business.

Cobb hires a young aspiring architect Ariadne (Ellen page) to construct dreams that Fischer would enter when dreaming. She has to create a maze that would allow enough time for the team to manipulate the subject's mind, luring him into thinking what they want him to think. They want him to destroy his father's empire. Not violently and forcibly in real life, but by injecting in him an idea using emotional play. A business decision needs to be communicated by hitting what's most sensitive to us - our emotions.

Going down three layers deep into Fischer’s subconscious, Cobb and his team control and navigate through the dreams facing numerous challenges on the way. They discover that Fischer has been trained to ward off dream infiltrators, and so has developed security, which will only hamper their mission. But the game must go on.

This film got me thinking of many issues. One most prominent being how the entire concept of breaking into someone’s mind is in fact a reality today. How? Simple. Through the innumerous information we are being fed day in and day out, with the bombardment of the media. We may not be wholly aware of it (a dream state?) because it works seemingly discreetly, injecting our minds with what it wants us to believe. We forget what’s real and what’s not. Like how Cobb heavily sedates Fischer, we too are sedated – on postmodern paraphernalia.

The second thing I’d like to mention is the power of the mind. The power to invade directly, in contrast to the powerlessness of surrender. While we all think we have complete control of our lives once we get our degrees and pass out of prestigious institutions, we are equally vulnerable to the evils of the real world. But like in the film, what seems real for the victim is in fact a dream, although what happens in the dream is real because he is brainwashed enough to believe that the decisions he takes are his own. Brainwash. The word seems more interesting to me now. It makes complete sense. Brainwash can almost be used as a synonym to inception. After all, doesn’t it do the same thing? Systematically frame a person’s mind and manipulate it enough to convince him to believe that what he thinks is right and true of his own accord.

Nolan’s concept of limbo I find quite fascinating. When you are heavily sedated in a dream, you may never wake up even if you kill yourself and you’ll fall into what he calls “unconstructed dream space”, where you only find “raw infinite subconscious”. And what’s worse, you’ll grow old in this indefinite world. I wonder if many of us have already fallen in this limbo, living our world in an infinite subconscious simply because we have been heavily sedated by powerful market forces. I find an uncanny resemblance to today’s brand culture being part of sedating us into limbo. Unconstructed brand space. Until we give ourselves an appropriate “kick”, we may never get out of it.

If, however, we are aware of these forces of propaganda, then we can develop a resistance towards it, just like how Fischer developed security against invaders who entered his subconscious. But if propaganda can reach levels where we are convinced that we are not being manipulated, then what else is left?

How we perceive is how we understand what we see. How I see someone may be different from what you may. So like in the film where one sees someone else in a dream as a “projection” which defines his perception of that person in real life, in a sense translates to the fact that how we really see people in real life is what they are in our dreams.

Waking Life by Richard Linklater is another film that explores the blurring lines between dreams and reality. A rotoscoped film, it traces the dream adventures of a young man who cannot get himself out of a dream. Lucid dreaming keeps us aware that we are dreaming, but what if we get stuck and simply can’t get out? The dream becomes a reality that we live in, floating in its surreal geography. Like how the young man gets lessons from philosophers about life, existentialism, reality and free will, Inception is an application of some of these ideas in action. What is free will? Does it really exist? Who controls what we think? Can an idea ever be original? Even if it’s planted in one’s head, can we be fooled to think that it’s “our” idea? According to one of Cobb’s associates, “the subject’s mind always traces the genesis of an idea. True inspiration is impossible to fake.” So who gets the real credit of an idea?

I know one thing for sure. Nolan’s genius is impossible to fake. With his execution of the most complicated mind games, it is a breathtaking experience to watch this film. Not once, not twice, but for as long as the totem spins. Lost in your dreams? You could be in danger. Because your mind is the seed of the crime.

L’Avventura

A 1960 Italian film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, L’Avventura at first sighting might seem to come across as a movie that one does not find very impressive.

The story is simple, that of a girl who disappears, and a search that yields nothing. The process of the search, however, results in another love story. The characters do not engage in anything very eventful at any given point of time. The purpose by which the film sets out to develop as, is lost when the character who has disappeared, and the search to find her yields no results. I wondered if we are too used to being fed with a resolution to every conflict in a film. Now what is it about this film that has made it reach iconic status?

The movie poses a challenge to its viewers by not giving an answer to the absence of the apparent central character, who was expected to be Anna. Every developing scene or conversation is linked to finding Anna and in our minds that is what the film needs to resolve in the end. The romance that develops between Claudia and Sandro is not only slightly shocking, but also secondary to the search to find Anna. However, Antonioni cleverly pushes us off balance by making it the film’s story itself. So does that make the film a love story?

We are not sure whether Sandro is really in love with Claudia. He is unable to say that he loves her with ease when she demands it. At a point of humor, he even says he doesn’t love her. That, I found as a subtle clue to his confused feeling. Does Claudia love him? This is highly doubtful too because she seemed to have simply gotten drawn to Sandro’s advances and was vulnerable to his strong persistence.

Sandro’s character is typical of the male ego. He is not only unaffected by Anna’s disappearance, but is also arrogant in his failure of becoming an architect. He intentionally spills ink over a young architect’s drawing. He doesn’t show interest in volunteering to seek Anna when they wanted to look for her at the other island. Yet, in the end, Sandro breaks down. That is his breaking point. Perhaps he too has a soft side to him, where he feels guilty of his actions. And also, maybe his way of dealing with Anna’s loss was by distracting himself with other thoughts. He immediately fancies Claudia, and claims his love for her, but somewhere I think he wanted to get close to her because she was Anna’s best friend and so mostly might be like her.

Claudia, I believe is the central character in the film, where the whole plot revolves around her. While she remains an observer sometimes, she also is the participant at other times. She, in a sense is the catalyst of all the unfolding events. For instance, it’s Claudia’s resistance to Sandro initially that makes him come onto her more forcefully. He follows her in the train to plead to her. It is she who is visibly affected by Anna’s disappearance prompting Sandro to continue the search for her. Claudia’s constant looking out of the window could be an indicator to her restlessness, her hope to find something. Yet she’s not sure of what she’s looking for. Perhaps for an answer to the complicated situation she was in? The window is quite metaphoric. It accounts for a mise-en-scene.

It is evident that the characters are lonely, and most scenes have a certain emptiness that is overwhelming. When the search for Anna is on, there is usually one character in a frame at a time, who are mostly looking or moving away from the camera. The conversations are disjointed and the vast expanse of land and rocks alienates the characters from each other and from the viewer.

I found the sound of the seashore important in many respects. During the search for Anna at the island, the waves hitting the rocks sounded harsh and foreboding. Towards the end of the film, we hear the sound of gentle waves of the sea as background, when Claudia and Sandro are at the open terrace together in a moment of uncertainty. The expanse of the sea conjures up in our mind, which evokes a sense of calm, yet haunting uneasiness.

The final scene is very crucial to the analysis of the film. The weight of her hand spoke what was to be communicated. Also, her hesitation to touch him was a moment of conflict, followed by a sure and steady touch of understanding. But how do we know that that touch meant so? She was not only consoling him, but herself, for everything that had happened till then, and in seeing Sandro break down, may have realized that the only way they could get through the pain was by forgiving and being there for each other.

I also found the last scene important for another reason. The fact that Sandro was sitting lumped down on the bench crying and Claudia standing next to him stamps a strong message. That of the power of the woman. The film not only carried women as the prime characters, with Anna, Claudia, Gloria, Patricia and Guilia who seemed to have men in their desirable arena, but also ended with Claudia having the say in the final act of redemption by Sandro.

It is to be said that Antonioni did experiment with the formula of a traditional plot and narrative structure, to create a new venture in cinematic expectations.