Hide and seek

Excuse me but i keep going back to movies. Not because i'm short of topics to scribble short paragraphs on but because cinema is something i can relate to. I'm not an authority on music though i listen to almost everything possible but movies are an altogether different arena. Having said that, i'm not an authority on cinema either. At least, not yet. Like my partner-in-downloading-crime Anu once remarked during our usual cine-discussions: "One lifetime is too short to watch all the movies in the world." Because of stark truths like these, nothing can come close to the joy of watching a film (hopefully a good one) and forgetting oneself in the process. Be it two hours or three or even four, a movie grabs you out of your mundane stupor. Entertainment is just a garb in disguise. What's really happening is much deeper than that. I doubt whether a song or a painting or a sculpture for that matter would be capable of doing so. Assumptions apart, what else can explain the spell celluloid has on its audiences? Think about it. You're placed in a dark room with the light beam falling on the screen—not you—and still you remain hypnotized in your seats. You don't have to be at your best behaviour. There are just series of pictures in front of you, not real people to check whether you're paying heed or not. You know that, right? Nevertheless, you stay put as if cinema itself has cast a playful 'statue' on you.

Honesty, the best policy?

   Loneliness can make a person lie, especially on the Internet. The relentless need of companionship might compel people to not only enhance their online avatar but also change their realities at least in words. The protagonist of this film does exactly the same and pays a cinematic price.  

A still from the film

   I M 24 follows a 42-year-old balding writer who is known for his honesty. Well, that was the case before he falls in love with a much younger aspiring beauty queen. To make matters worse, his friends decide to help him win her affection. The premise is pretty clear though: He’s not the guy she is looking forward to and she’s not the girl he should be looking for.

    Directed by Saurabh Shukla, this movie is bound to find resonance amongst those who spend a lot of time on social networking sites. After all, only they realise how different they are in actual life from the image they display on the web.

    The screenplay could have been much tauter had some basic loopholes been taken care of. For instance, if a stranger tells you that he composed the music of Rockstar, you’ll at least Google once to confirm no matter how ignorant you are about Bollywood. To add insult to injury, it’s happening in the big bad world of cyberspace! Also, would the societal balance be maintained if the age of the protagonists were to be interchanged? Like, if she were 42 and he, 19?

    This has to be Rajat Kapoor’s finest big screen performance till date. He simply slips into the character and doesn’t deviate an inch from his graph. Manjari Fadnis is adorable as his love interest. Ranvir Shorey fits the bill as his hyperactive best friend. And Neha Dhupia’s non-mainstream performances tend to better her mainstream ones. Forgettable songs notwithstanding, this is a one-time watch thanks to sincere acting from almost everyone present on the canvas.

Prison makes beautiful CINEMA!

I just finished watching a movie you most probably haven’t heard of yet. It’s a French movie called ‘Un Prophète’ (A Prophet) and is nominated for Best Foreign Language at Oscars this year. The movie is about a guy in prison who rises from nobody to somebody by the time he completes his sentence. Needless to say, the movie is great or else I wouldn’t have dedicated a blog to its sake.

But the real reason behind my blogging here is the “prison” part of cinema and the question that why does it fascinates us so much. I mean to say, I seem to get a touch when I’m watching a jail-related movie be it ‘An Innocent Management’, ‘Lock Up’, ‘The Baader Meinhof Complex’, ‘Hunger’, ‘Papillon’, ‘American History X’, ‘The Counterfeiters’, ‘Dead Man Walking’ or ‘The Green Mile’.

In fact, my all-time favorite movie, “The Shawshank Redemption” is about prison-life, in and out. “Midnight Express” is one such movie that comes close to the very best of all. In Hindi movies, I found "3 Deewarein" (3 Walls)to be a perfect execution of a brilliant story that entangles three different personalities.

I believe the attraction to this kind of movies arises from the fact that we relate to the characters on the screen. We understand why they feel the angst of screeching their nails on the slammer wall. Somewhere in us, we see the rationality of not being there in a prison but at the same time also understand the volatility of reaching there if we get caught on the wrong side of law. After all, everyone wants to be free but when you are locked up, all you have is free time.

Prisons are wonderful. Wonderful, in a sense, it is just like our life. All we have to do is get accustomed to it. Just like in our life. We get accustomed to our mother’s love; get accustomed to schooling and education, followed by jobs we love or hate and then to societal obligations. All this happens exactly the same way in a prison too. The guy who gets used to it survives.

There are not a lot of directors out there who can handle the intricacies that comes with making a movie on cell life. Its very difficult to capture the essence of a prisoner in captivity where his body is interned but his mind is free to wander like Javier Bardem’s character does in “Before Night Falls” or to show the humor of escaping like in “Stalag 17”.

Coming back to ‘Un Prophète’, I want it to beat the German masterpiece ‘The White Ribbon’ which is the overwhelming favorite at the Oscars that will be announced on March 7, 2010.