Anhey Ghorey Da Daan: Review

Anhey Ghorey Da Daan acknowledges its debt upfront, with the dedication “For Mani, in remembrance” preceding the opening frame. The film’s director Gurvinder Singh had asked the late Mani Kaul to act as “creative director” on his film. Kaul agreed, but his death last year meant that Singh could only show him the opening ten minutes of his feature debut. The film was completed last year and ended up winning Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Punjabi Film at the National Awards.

Anhey Ghorey Da Daan opens during an eclipse, and, 117 minutes later, the viewer is still in the dark. This is not intended as a criticism, though viewers are advised to go in knowing that that they’ll be offered very little in terms of explanation, expository dialogue or (God forbid) voice-over. What you get instead is rigorous, highly-controlled filmmaking, and a small handful of facts. An old man’s house, constructed on land that’s been sold off to local industrialists, has been demolished. The whole village is on tenterhooks. The rickshaw-pullers union in the nearby town is on strike. And one Melu Singh, who may or may not have stolen money from his wife, refuses to go home.

In place of a story, Gurvinder Singh offers a collection of moments frozen in time (in this, Kaul’s influence is clear). One indelible image follows another: a baby owl in a tree, a group of women silently standing on a street corner, an old man protectively placing his hand on his grandson’s head. Satya Rai Nagpaul’s camera alternates between static, formally beautiful compositions and slow, raking shots that recalled Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice. This is coupled with a sound mix that foregrounds the clatter of everyday life. Tight-lipped though it may be, this is a rare art film that’s free of artifice.

Despite all of Anhey Ghorey Da Daan’s achievements, even patient viewers might eventually start clamouring for clarity. One need only compare it to Michael Haneke’s 2009 Palme d’Or-winner The White Ribbon to see how a film with similar beauty and reticence could be used to make a definite point. Both films create an atmosphere of great foreboding out of little details, but Haneke goes a step further, indicating the kind of collective mindset that led to the rise of fascism in Germany. Anhey Ghorey Da Daan refuses to be drawn out, though if you let it draw you in, you might see a side of Punjab that rarely makes it to the big screen.

This review was published in Time Out Delhi.

Fatso!

One successful gag does not a good film make. This is the sad lesson of Fatso!, though the gag in question is so beautifully thought out and executed, it almost makes the rest of the movie’s misfires bearable. Almost.

After he dies in a car crash, Navin (Purab Kohli) finds himself in an elevator, moving up to heaven. When the doors open, death turns out to be a government office. There are queues for “natural death” and “suicide”, mountains of files gathering dust, babus and clerks drinking cups of tea. What’s worse, Navin finds out that due to a bureaucratic screw-up, he was actually retired before his innings was up. His friend Sudeep (Ranvir Shorey), who survived the crash, was the one scheduled to die. Navin complains all the way to the top and is finally offered a compromise: rejoin the living, but in the overweight body of Sudeep.

Once Fatso! returns to earth, it begins to falter. Navin starts pursuing his heartbroken fiancée Nandini (Gul Panag), only now everyone thinks he’s Sudeep. It feels wrong – not just because of the mushy a-person’s-soul-never-dies bits, but because Sudeep being overweight doesn’t seem to have any particular bearing on the story. It’s an excuse, a way to draft in a couple of fat jokes and to feel superior when the reed-thin Panag starts developing feelings for her corpulent friend and spirit vessel. Weighing proceedings down further is the frequently banal writing (“Your problem is you’re a man and you have no idea how a woman feels”) and a grating subplot involving Neil Bhoopalam and Gunjan Bakshi.

Rajat Kapoor, whose last film was the dark, strangely moving Mithya, had planned to release Fatso! in 2009. Instead, it landed in theatres a month ago, after a frustrating three-year wait, and departed soon after. After all these tribulations, it would have been nice to be able to say that Fatso! is a comic gem that deserved better. The truth, however, is that it’s one inspired sequence in search of a few others. Still, the red tape scenes are heavenly. 

A version of this review appeared in Time Out Delhi.

This is Not a Film

This is Not a Film is not a film. Yet it might be the greatest example of self-expression in the history of cinema.

This isn't movie-making as commerce or art. It has nothing to do with ambition, competitiveness, prestige. This is cinema as freedom.

Was the garbage-collector given a script? Was that a trained iguana? Who knows? Does it matter?

This - after decades of theory rammed down willing and unwilling throats - is the truest manifestation of director as author.

If we could tell a film, then why make a film? And if you can't stop saying 'cut', is there any point in pretending that this is not...but it can't be, so it isn't.  

Loaded on a pen drive, smuggled out of the country in a birthday cake. In its safe passage, something larger than the film itself was saved. This is why cinema has existed all this while, to see this single effort through to an audience.

And it isn't even a film.

Sarris tributes

When Andrew Sarris died this June, many heartfelt tributes were written, read and forwarded. Fandor ("Essential films. Instantly.") has done an admirable job of getting the best of the lot together in one place. My favourite is the David Bordwell piece, but don't miss Richard Corliss either.

Cinefan apart

A piece I did for Time Out about the upcoming Cinefan film festival, which begins on Friday July 29th.

Also, an interview with the director of the Oscar-winning Pakistani documentary Saving Face.

Coke Studio India S2: 70/0 in 10

Also known as a good start. Pleased to report that after an embarrassing, underwhelming first season, Coke Studio India has come charging out of the blocks in Season 2. Here are three songs from the first two episodes that show what's possible when you get your songwriters and musical backing right and ban Leslie Lewis from the studio.

Cocktail: Review

Dir: Homi Adajania. Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Diana Penty, Boman Irani, Dimple Kapadia.

Cocktail dangles before its audience the prospect of seeing three leads in a living arrangement that’s best described by a phrase that begins with “ménage” and ends with “trois”. It’s never happened before, but if it had to, it would probably be in the year with the film about the sperm donor, and the other one with the catchphrase “keh ke loonga”. One might reasonably expect, in this bold new age of Hindi cinema, a man and two women to live under the same roof, and share and share alike.

Cocktail certainly starts mixing it up quickly. Gautam (Saif Ali Khan) hits on Meera (Diana Penty) at the London airport, unaware that she’s married. A few minutes later, she isn’t – her new husband Kunal (Randeep Hooda) leaves her to fend for herself, citing plot exigencies. She goes to the restroom for a good cry, where she meets Veronica (Deepika Padukone), who invites her to stay in her flat. This is accomplished in roughly ten minutes. It takes another ten for the two women to spot Gautam, play a prank on him, bump into him again at a party (apparently Indians in London keep crossing paths), and for Veronica and Gautam to hook up. Gautam ends up moving in with them, and though Meera hates his guts, one can’t help feeling that a home-grown Jules and Jim might be on the cards.

A predictable surprise visit  by Gautam’s mother (Dimple Kapadia) has him lying about his plans to marry Meera. Surprisingly, Meera goes along with this charade; Veronica, amused by their predicament, has no problems either. The quartet, plus Gautam’s sympathetic uncle (Boman Irani), repair to Cape Town, where things get nicely out of hand when Gautam and Meera fall for each other. This is the point at which the film needed to decide whether it would take the road hinted at, or the road well-travelled. Disappointingly, it opts for the latter. Veronica is informed that she’s the third wheel now – she’s fine with that, but only until she breaks down in a club in the next scene. Meera, upset for having come between them, leaves Gautam, Veronica and the flat, and disappears. The rest is contrivance, tears, a diluted version of the mesmeric Coke Studio Pakistan track “Jugni”, and a trip back home.

Those who remember Adajania’s first film, 2006’s Being Cyrus, will be struck by how different Cocktail is. Cyrus was dank, claustrophobic, cynical; Cocktail, for a while at least, is sunny and sensuous. Khan plays yet another wisecracking, shallow, essentially harmless flirt, but no one can sell a bad joke like he can. Padukone looks supremely relaxed in the first half as the straight-shooting, pants-shunning Veronica, while debutante Penty manages to keep Meera from becoming a sacrificing bore. Adajania and veteran editor Sreekar Prasad, working from a screenplay by Imtiaz Ali and Sajid Ali, keep things zipping along, even though after a point they don’t go anywhere we haven’t been before.

A version of this review appeared in Time Out Delhi.