Tough love

Last year, film critics in this country railed against two instances of backward thinking. They castigated Ishaqzaade for Parineeti Chopra's quasi-rape, and Cocktail for its retrograde view of Deepika Padukone’s ‘westernised’ character. Yet, in the almost universally praised English Vinglish, hardly anyone pointed out that a film built around a mother who follows her desires ultimately ends with the same character sacrificing it all for her family. In other words, two easy targets hit, one moving target missed.

In this country, there are several writers who can turn a mean phrase, or craft an acid takedown of Salman’s latest. But how many are truly provocative? To truly provoke is to make a reader question his or her beliefs. Sixty years ago, a diminutive 34-year-old called Pauline Kael was published for the first time in City Lights. She reviewed Charlie Chaplin’s Limelight; unimpressed by the film’s pieties, she titled the piece ‘Slimelight’. It was an auspicious beginning. Kael would go on to become one of the most influential, opinion-dividing critics ever. But she wasn’t the first to elicit strong reactions, and she wouldn’t be the last. Here are four great provocateurs of film criticism.

Manny Farber

Critics writing for mainstream publications have always been under pressure to make their views more accessible. But Manny Farber, who wrote about cinema from the 1940s to the 1970s, was notoriously difficult to pin down. His compliments were warped, backhanded; like this description of John Wayne: “As he moves along at the pace of a tapeworm, Wayne leaves only a path that is bits of shrewd intramural acting.” His description of Jean Luc-Godard’s Weekend was even more puzzling – “a film which loves its body odour”. Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote after his death, “You can’t always be sure whether he’s praising or ridiculing the subject before him. Maybe he’s doing both.” Besides steering criticism away from a thumbs up/down mentality, Farber had a huge influence on the grammar of film writing, coining terms like ‘underground films’, ‘hard sell cinema’ and ‘termite art’.

Pauline Kael

Kael was an admirer of Manny Farber, but her own approach was anything but non-committal. A couple of lines into any review, you’ll know exactly how she feels about the movie. No other writer was as caustic (“Costner has feathers in his hair and feathers in his head” was her reaction to Da nces with Wolves) or as personal. Cinema for her was an obsession, a come-on, and her book titles – I Lost It at the Movies, When the Lights Go Down – reflected this.

Kael wasn’t the first critic to champion lively B-movies over arty ‘prestige’ films – but she was the most emphatic. “Trash,” she once wrote, “has given up an appetite for art.” Her reviews, most of which appeared in The New Yorker between 1967 and 1991, were instrumental in helping directors like Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma grow an audience. Though she died in 2001, her shadow still looms large over film criticism today. Ten years after her death, her biography was published – something no other major critic can boast of.

David Thomson

A Biographical Dictionary of Film has this to say about John Ford, possibly the most famous director of Westerns ever: “The Ford philosophy is a rambling apologia for unthinking violence later disguised by the sham legends of old men fuddled by drink and glory.” The same book claims that Charlie Chaplain lacks “artistic intelligence, real human sympathy, and even humour”. With provocations like this on every page, it seems unlikely that David Thomson’s 1975 book, which has entries on hundreds of actors, directors and writers, would still be in print. Yet, it’s now in its fifth edition, and was voted the best ever book on cinema by Sight & Sound magazine in 2010. Thomson’s arguments may infuriate, but they aren’t easy to poke holes in, informed as they are by an immense knowledge of and affection for cinema. Now in his 70s, he continues to write busily. Look up his columns for The New Republic: you’ll find something to get you riled up – and a whole lot to think about.

Armond White

Type the words ‘troll’ and ‘film critic’ on Google, and the first six entries are all Armond White. White’s gained a reputation as a contrarian, someone who shoots down movies that have amassed a critical or popular consensus, just because he can. His blunt pans have earned him enemies across the board, as have his numerous spats – with the New York Film Critics Circle (of which he was chairman), with directors Michael Moore and Noah Baumbach, and with fellow-scribes Roger Ebert and J Hoberman (he accused the former of destroying film criticism and the latter of racism). 

Amidst all this, White continues to sling out criticism that’s opinionated and uncompromising. He’ll defend anything he thinks is being unfairly criticised, from Jack and Jill to Taken 2. And he has no problem taking on the fanboys (as he did with The Dark Knight), the general public (his frequent Pixar pans) or the highbrows. Let’s face it – you have to be pretty ballsy to elevate Paul WS Anderson’s Resident Evil: Retribution over PT Anderson’s The Master, both of which released on the same day last year. It would be interesting to see him review something like Bol Bachchan; instead of slamming it, he might turn around and point out the genius of Rohit Shetty.

This piece appeared in GQ's March issue.

Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster Returns: Review

Aditya Pratap Singh, ruler of a princely state in UP, ended Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster pretty much in the dumps. By the time this sequel begins though, he’s bounced back admirably. He’s still wheelchair-ridden – the outcome of a shootout with his wife’s lover – but he’s tipped to start walking within a year. He’s back to pulling political strings, even as Madhavi (Mahie Gill), his wife, turns into an absentee MLA and raging alcoholic. Saheb also has plans to get himself a second wife, someone who’s less likely to seduce the driver and plot his murder, as Madhavi did in part one.

If you’re worried that director Tigmanshu Dhulia might have exhausted the possibilities of royal family subterfuge in the first film, have no fear. Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster Returns has plot enough for three films. First off, there’s the new Gangster, Indrajit Singh (Irrfan), a small-time operator and thug. Indrajit is in love with Ranjana (Soha Ali Khan), the same person Saheb has managed to get himself engaged to. Ranjana’s father, smarting from being made to allow his daughter to go live with an already-married man, asks Indrajit (his employee) to ruin Saheb. Madhavi too wants her husband weakened, but not killed; she turns to Indrajit for help. Indrajit has his own complex revenge agenda; but in the meantime, he might be falling for Madhavi, even as he risks life and limb to meet Ranjana in the haveli. You should spend the interval making a flowchart.

Yet, if you like being hurtled from twist to twist, Dhulia’s film is a fun ride. The writing is sharper than the earlier film, and there are frequent flashes of humour, such as Saheb telling Ranjana’s father that he, a royal, “can afford an extra wife”, or a drunk Madhavi tossing her husband’s new fiancée around on the dance floor. Like in Dhulia’s Paan Singh Tomar, it feels like the ends of certain scenes have been lopped off, which gives the film a blistering pace and the viewer little time to think. This works in the film’s favour, though, because when you actually start to examine character traits and actions, they don’t always match up.

Shergill, very assured in part one, is even better here. What he really needed was a worthy rival. Indrajit, despite Irrfan’s best efforts, isn’t in the same league. After the brute force of Randeep Hooda as the earlier Gangster, it might have been to this film’s advantage to have someone who’s more of a strategist, able to out-think Saheb. But Gangster can’t even outwit Biwi, who ends up providing the film’s motive force. This means an inebriated Mahie Gill gets a third of the screen time, which is a pity. We love an angry Mahie, but a drunk, pathetic one just makes us sad. More effectively conveying the film’s themes of decay and nostalgia is the sepia-toned cinematography by Yogesh Jani.

I, Me Aur Main: Review

We’re all for character arcs. Casablanca wouldn’t be the same without them, neither would Shri 420. But it stands to reason that if your film centres on one person’s eventual self-discovery, your audience better be willing to journey along with the character. If said character is unappealing or just plain dull, it hardly matters whether they follow an arc or move in a straight line or remain still. That’s the biggest problem debutant director Kapil Sharma’s I, Me Aur Main faces.

Ishan (John Abraham) is a self-centred reprobate, the kind our films like to encourage and then put down in the last act. Shallow and emotionally stunted, he chases skirts, cheats on his girlfriend Anushka (Chitrangada Singh), and deals in the sort of smarmy forthrightness that you’re supposed to be able to get away with if you’re good-looking. The long-suffering Anushka finally dumps him, only to find out that she’s pregnant with his child. While that bomb ticks away, ready to explode at a time convenient to his emotional development, Ishan finds himself another girl to treat badly. Her name is Gauri (Prachi Desai), and the film goes to great lengths to stress how much like regular folk she is, and how good she’d be for this misguided, flip-flop wearing music producer.

It’s a little scary to spend any film entirely in John Abraham’s company. This one is a trial, especially when he stops looking at his reflection and flails around for empathy in the last ten minutes. An early dialogue exchange – Anushka saying “I love you”, Ishan replying “I love me too” – tells you all you need to know about the character’s inflated sense of self, and the film’s indulgence of such obnoxiousness. As if to drive home the point that a female-dominated cast doesn’t necessarily mean there’ll be any worthwhile roles, there’s Zarina Wahab as a mom who can’t tell her no-good son off, and Raima Sen as a corporate honcho so noxious, she makes Ishan look nice. Still, Singh’s composure serves her well, and Desai makes something of a very badly written part.

This review appeared in Time Out Delhi.

Moonrise Kingdom: DVD Review

Moonrise Kingdom is Anderson’s seventh feature, and his return to live action after 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited (the stop-motion Fantastic Mr Fox came in between). Susie (Kara Hayward) and Sam (Jared Gilman) are New England teens who decide to run away together, she from her distracted, eccentric parents, he from a boy scouts troop. They go on the lam, camping, fishing and falling in love. On their trail is Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton) and his Lord of the Flies-like troop, policeman Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), Suzy’s lawyer parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) and Social Services (Tilda Swinton).

Despite the young leads at its centre, this is a decidedly adult film. In fact, for all the Andersonion whimsy that surrounds them, it’s difficult to recall a film in which two children have been so utterly – most probably clinically – depressed. Suzy and Sam are less teens than troubled grown-ups in microcosm. It’s easy to imagine them as younger versions of characters from other Anderson films; Suzy, for instance, might easily grow up to be wistful, unsmiling Margot from The Royal Tenanbaums. Or perhaps they’d grow up to be Wes Anderson, who grew up in Texas in the ’70s, but nevertheless populated this film with references from his childhood.

The worlds Anderson creates are so fascinating that it’s possible to simply sit back and admire the little details. Why would think of pairing Benjamin Britten and Hank Williams on a soundtrack? Is the lightning storm at the end deliberately made to look like colourised early film? The best thing about Moonrise Kingdom is that even if you don’t care about questions like these, there’s a good chance you’ll still be moved by the sweet, sad story of two kids, wise beyond their years, trying to escape their mixed-up lives. Watch out for Willis, supremely gentle and moving. The DVD has a solitary extra called “A Look Inside Moonrise Kingdom”; it’s a very, very brief look. 

This review appeared in Time Out Delhi.

Bullets Over Broadway: DVD Review

Chatting with Alec Baldwin on his radio show Here’s the Thing, Chris Rock weighed in on why Woody Allen is beyond compare. “Put it this way,” he said. “The average great filmmaker has about four good movies, right? Woody has about 12. Like great, and then he probably has about 10 more really good ones.” Lightly sidestepping the argument over whether Allen actually has a dozen great movies, we can say with some certainty that 1994’s Bullets over Broadway is one of those really good ones. Though it’s funny and well-acted, and has great affection for the Broadway of yore, it stops short of greatness because it isn’t that much of a stretch to imagine someone else directing the film. On the other hand, you can see the initials “WA” on every frame of Manhattan, Love and Death, Annie Hall and Midnight in Paris.

In Bullets Over Broadway, Allen returns, as he does ever so often, to the 1920s. David (John Cusack) is a playwright desperate for a hit and, at the same time, determined not to sell out. His resolve is tested when his producer tells him that a mob boss has agreed to finance his production, provided he find a part for his moll Olive (Jennifer Tilley). David succumbs, but his problems are compounded when his lead actor develops an eating problem, and he falls in love with the play’s headliner, a prima donna named Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest). Worst of all, the mob has sent a minder, Cheech (Chazz Palminteri), who has strong opinions on the play’s structure.

That Cheech turns out to be more of a natural talent than David is the movie’s best joke. Leave that aside, and you have a film that’s madcap, but predictable. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences went overboard and nominated it for a staggering seven Oscars. It ended up winning only Best Supporting Actress – Dianne Wiest doing a comic version of Gloria Swanson from Billy Wilder’s classic Sunset Blvd.

The Limits of Control: DVD Review

A lone assassin in sharp suits goes from one Spanish town to another. In each, he meets a person who gives him a matchbox containing a chit of paper, the contents of which he memorises. He then swallows the paper, washing it down with a shot of espresso. “You don’t speak Spanish, do you?” he’s asked repeatedly. He doesn’t. In fact, he barely speaks at all. He doesn’t sleep either. He smiles once.

Such is the plot of The Limits of Control, and if you think we’re being oblique, wait until you see the film. Less abstract than downright inscrutable, this 2010 movie with faint echoes of Le Samouraï and Point Blank never amounts to anything more than the sum of its parts. But lord, what parts they are. French-Ivorian actor Isaach De Bankolé plays the wanderer. There’s Bill Murray and Gael García Bernal and Tilda Swinton in a white wig. The voluptuous Paz de la Huerta appears briefly as a character called The Nude, which is no metaphor. Japanese ambient metal band Boris contributes a dissonant soundtrack. And the beautifully composed images come courtesy Christopher Doyle, cinematographer on most of Wong Kar-Wai’s films.

The man responsible for bringing these eclectic talents together is Jim Jarmusch, one of the patron saints of modern American indie cinema. With this film, he’s constructed a stately riddle, but is there a point to the film’s recurring motifs or its digressions on art, music and cinema? One could be cynical and say that vague statements about Sufism and Finnish films are an easy way to shift the burden onto the audience. One should also keep in mind that Jarmusch has never been an expository filmmaker, and that even his best films – Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, Night on Earth – have an abiding weirdness to them. But those films also made you feel something, which is something The Limits of Control never really does. No special features.