Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Ijazaat -1987



Ijazaat is another must see indian movie.The movie is directed by padmabhushan S.S.Gulzar , based on a bengali novel by Subhodh Ghosh.You can see the multiple facet's of gulzar in this movie.Gulzar the writer, the director and the lyricist and this is one movie where you cannot point anything wrong in the way he has done his job.Gulzar like basu chatterji, sai paranjpaye and hrishikesh mukerjee is another middle of the road film maker, who has given some beautiful movies.And this is one of his best.

----------------------------story -----------------------
The movie starts with mahendra(nasrudeen shah) & Sudha(rekha) meeting in a railway waiting room. They recognize each other, they are litle uncomfortable with each other at first. Then we come to know that they were married once and the story slowly unfolds as flash backs. Mahendra is in love with maya(Anuradha Patel).They actually live together without getting married. Maya who does not believe in marriage is also in love with him but is non committal on marriage. During that time mahendra is pressurized by his family to marry sudha. Mahendra tries to reach maya but she is not in town.So he gets married to sudha after telling all about his past and relationship with maya.sudha is ok with it, if he completely forgets maya and starts a new life with her. They get married.

Sudha finds that mahender is trying to forget maya, but still her thoughts are with him.Maya comes back and is upset on mahender's marriage. She even tries to commit suicide.Mahendra takes pity on her and gives emotional support. But sudha who is unaware of maya's suicide attempts believes that her husband is still in love with her and leaves him.so after 5 years are so they again meet in that railway waiting room.After discussing all their past, rekha comes to know that maya tried to commit suicide and that's why he had to support her. she feels bad for her decision to leave him. What happened in there lives in the past 5 years after they separated adds a twist and ends with a nice climax
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This is a romantic movie, but a movie that talks to the matured audience and not to teenagers. It is more about loving after marriage than before marriage. This is a sweet and subtle movie that talks about love in a very sensitive way.There is no big villian who wants to stop the lovers or jealously, hatred that arises in a triangular love story.It is a movie that explores love in a deep way.

The movie is about the 3 main characters and the story is told in a serious of flash backs.This emotional drama unfolds in just one night, with the story alternating between past and present through those flash backs. The movie which starts with the hero getting into the waiting station on a rainy night ends the next morning, when the dark clouds are not there anymore and the sky is clear.The pent up emotions and thoughts are out. It is all clear now, time to move on.

Ijaazat reminded me of maniratnam's alaipayuthe which later came as saathiya in hindi. Alaipayuthey has the same feel of ijazaat, a husband who still hasn't understood the real meaning of love and care waits in a railway station, where his past plays out as a serious of flashback. A new character is introduced at the end of the movie and this character makes the hero realize what loving one's wife really means.

alaipayuthey

Ijazaat beautifully sketches all the 3 characters and does not distract into anything else. Every frame is about these characters, no unnecessary comedy or fight scenes. Songs yes, but they too give more insight into the characters than distract us. It is not a typical run of the mill movie where characters are shown in black and white. In this movie you are made to agree and sympathies with all the characters. The character Maya in any other indian movie of that time period would be a tramp, a life loving free spirited person, a woman who does not belive in marriage is not a character that would appeal to the indian audience.But in ijazaat you understand her too and you are comfortable with her stance on life too.The credit off course goes to gulzar for making the audience agree with that character.This is a pure writers movie, a good story, exploring the complexities of relationships. Gulzar the lyricist has created a poem with this movie.

Cast and Credit:
Rekha .... Sudha
Naseeruddin Shah .... Mahinder
Anuradha Patel .... Maya
Sulabha Deshpande .... Parvati
Shashi kapoor
Shammi Kapoor


Music:


This is another awesome album by the Gulzar,Asha,Burman combo.Another movie with deadly songs by gulzar ,all of them sung by asha.



Mera kuchh saamaan -Asha Bhonsle
Katra Katra milati hai -AB
Khali haath shaam aayee hai -AB
Chhoti si kahani mein -AB

Burman, asha, gulzar

The lyrics are just awesome in the songs.Especially Mera kuch saaman. Pain is always expressed in a crying song a milder version will be where the heroine will sing the song with a drop of a tear in her eyes. But this is a very different one; this is poetic pain, a lyrical pain sung beautifully by asha.

Awards:
In 1987 chithra was on a hatrick for the national awards for best singer, she won the national award in 1985 for "Padariyen" - Sindhu Bhairavi - Tamil

Chithra and ilayaraja

and in 1986 for "Manjal Prasadavum" - Nakhakshathangal - Malayalam.But the R.D.Burman/gulza/asha team broke her hatrick with "Mera kuch saman".Mera kuch saman won gulzar the 1987 national award for best lyricist and singer for asha. But eventually chithra went on to get her 3rd national award the very next year, 1988, for the song "Indupushpam" from the malayalam movie Vaishali.Well a broken hattrick.

In 1988 film fare awards gulzar won the best lyricist for "mera kuch saman", but asha and burman didn't get the singer and music director awards. Reason the entry of two block buster movies tezaab and Qayamet se Qayamet tak.The awards went to alka yagnik for "ek do thenn" and anand milind for QSQT.

listen to Ijazaat songs here in musicindiaonline

Trivia:
Pawan says that the character Maya's penchant for taking off on sudden unannounced road trips was borrowed from Deepti Navals real life persona . Naval - a travel freak is apparently given to taking off on her jeep to far flung places like ladakh, etc...without informing anyone.

Aroma Radio gave this intresting trivia that Gulzar wrote the dialouges for saathiya.

Links
lyrics
gulzar interview in hindu

-------------------spoiler-----------------
Till the end of the movie you are made to take side of the hero and how rekha didn't understand him etc.We are also distracted by their mutual respect for each other and are made to hope for the usual happy ending of the pair getting back together at the end of the movie.But the usual gulzar twist awaits at the end of the movie.At dawn enters sashi kapoor into the waiting room.From him we come to know that rekha got married again and he has come to pick up rekha from the station. Sashi starts telling rekha why he was late, how he was struck in the traffic etc.He then gets her the shawl that she forgets and asks her to wear it as it is cold outside.By these many small gestures he conveys how much he loves and cares for his wife.Our view of the hero mahendra completely changes with those gestures. Even though mahendra was struggling between the 2 women and tried to be sincere, he never loved or cared for his wife sudha like sashi kapoor.He comes to understand what it means to love & care.The audience are left with mixed emotions.You feel pity for the mahendra character and happiness for sudha. Everyone is made to think the mistakes that the character mahender has done and how he could have corrected it.Probably take some lessons from the movie for their personal life.
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Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Gulzar



Gulzar, Gulzar, Gulzar. What can you say about this man.It is hard to escape his sensitive words, be it in a story or in a song. If you have a heart and if you can understand his words, he will capture you. He will turn you into a slave, a slave who longs for his words. Gulzar for me epitomizes the best of indian cinema.

He has shinned in all departments. As a lyricist, screenplay writer and director. To put it simply he is a writer, poet for whom cinema is another medium like books to get his literary stuff to the audience. His stories and screenplay carry the same lyricism of his songs.Like a breeze, they cross you, leaving you with a few characters that you will carry with you, all your life.

He is one man who will make you want negative results in movies. While watching his movies,i secretly pray in my heart that the hero and the heroine should not resolve their differences. Let them be separated, a chance meeting is ok, but let them not get together, let them be separated as long as possible. You might think that iam cruel?. Let me be, I would rather wish to have the sweet taste of pain and sorrow that flows out of gulzar's words rather than see a happy couple.

Is there so much sweetness in pain? is sorrow an enjoyable thing?.Yes, in a gulzar movie it is.He is a class act, who can take you into the complex world of human relationships, put forward so many questions, make you support both the opposing parties and leave you with moist eyes.He is a man who has repeatedly portrayed indian sensitivity at its best.

You hear a song like "Therey beena zindaghi mei koyi" from aandhi.The song breaks in between and sanjeev kumar utters the words that you know by heart, the song then goes on.A sadness sets into you, not an overpowering one, a melancholic sweet one.It's done,You are already under the gulzar spell. what is about those words, why does it create a mild sorrow in us?.Think its cause they are just not words, those words brings with it, the life of a man, his happiness, his love,his pain. Everything transferred to you in those few lines.A feeling that is unique of a gulzar song.

Lyrics in his movies are very much an essential part of it.They are not in the movie just for the heck of it.They are the musical version of the movie, capturing and enhancing the situation to greater heights.When you are watching a movie like Lekin, the first thing that strikes you is the imagination of gulzar the writter, a soul struck in time longing to free itself,waiting for someone to free her, hmmmmmmm, what a great imagination, you think. Before you could even come out of that thought, Lata mangeshkar sings the beautiful lyrics of gulzar, "Main Ek Sadi Se..".Its an overwhelming feeling when you hear it, the lyrics raises above the story capturing the feelings of a pitiful soul.When you hear the beautiful composition and a flawless rendering of it.It is bliss.Those are the moments that i can't get in any great international director movie, moments only an indian can enjoy to the core and only gulzar can write it that beautifully.

Gulzar's movies are about life. The innumerable beauties that it carries. It asks you to appreciate life, embrace life as it comes, see life in its wholeness, where inevitable things happen but you carry on, where mistakes of the past become sweet memories, where happiness is in living life moraly right and working for the common good of others, where love is the purpose of living. It teaches you to love life deeply and your partner even more deeper.

Director
Ijazaat

Writter
Masoom
Rudaali

Links:
A short bio
His personal site
Gulzar info
Gulzar the poet
interview

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Black Friday



It's a shame that this movie is banned in india.Just another example of our government’s attitude of pushing the bad thing under the carpet and act nothing has happened rather than face the truth and correct itself.

The movie tells the story of How the bombay blasts happened .It starts from the incident and takes us on the trip of how the police pieced all the information together. The movie which does a "how the incident happened?", somewhere in between changes to "Why the incident happened?”. The movie which meticulously constructs the whole story of the blast , goes to the roots and completes the circle. The vicious circle of violence, from the Bombay riots to the Bombay blast.

At the start of the movie when the blast happens, you hear that ringing sound that one hears after a blast.A sound that deafens and numbs senses for a while. The movies comes back to the same blast at the end with that same sound, to the deafness, shock and numbing of senses.



The movie follows an internationally old filming style of Cinema Verite, but a first, as far as indian movies are concerned."Battle of Algiers", Z are supposed to some of the best examples of cinema verite style. This is more like a documentary filming style with focus on realism and the idea, rather than a story about a protagonist (Means no hero/heroine, think about that, an indian movie without an hero, isn't this movie different?).It mostly uses non professional actor's, real location, natural light and most of the scenes are shot on hand held camera's. In black friday you can see that style to a great extent, you can notice that in the movie the, scenes are short, no big dramatics, uses spatial and temporal discontinuity, realistic actions, real locations, non judgmental characterization, news clip inserts for authenticity etc all of which add to the realism in the movie.The fact that the movie jumps from character to character and different locations, breaks the audience continuity on the individuals and makes them focus on the incident.

Aditya Srivastava

The script is awesome, because the movie follows the book, which is organized by chapters, anurag follows a non linear narration. The book constructs the whole story on information that became available to police and not a complete timeline narration. Anurag who is sticking to the book jump's from bombay blast to ISI training to ayodhya incident breaking the continuity.

He seems to have painstakingly constructed the movie.The movie if broken into distinct scenes, will go into 1000 of small scenes taking place in various locations. The movie is shot in bombay, calcutta, delhi, jaipur and many villages. To capture them one by one at various places that too for a scene that won’t even appear for a minute in the movie is just awesome. It shows the meticulous preparation and the humongous amount of effort that has gone into the movie.In the first part of the movie on an average there is an editing cut for every 10/15 seconds and many of them are scene changes.

Anurag is one unlucky guy for sure. After this much of hard work, his movie still hasn't seen the day.Its hard to think how he will get his energy back to do another movie.After all his movies continually facing problems with the censor board, i wont be surprised if his next movie is a pure dance & fight mainstream movie.

Anurag kashyap

As far as the script of this movie is concerned anurag does not take any sides.He narrates the movie from a journalistic point of view.He could have shown more about the root causes of the bombay blasts like the bombay riots and the babri masjid issue, but i guess that would be an entirely different movie. Think this is all he can show within the context of the blast.

For example at the start of the movie, the blast occurs, a typical mainstream indian movie would exploit this scene to the core, mutilated arms and legs lying around, burning bodies, women folks crying, grief all around. The post blast scene could be used thoroughly to get the sympathy out of the audience, you can make the audience cry out loud with those scenes. But in the movie, you just see one guy crying, a few scenes of bodies being taken on stretchers etc. The scenes then cuts to a guy stealing a gold chain from a dead body, soon you move on to the next blast and in a few scenes later you are with the investigation team. There is no time here to waste on sentimentality, the important thing is the truth behind the incident and not the commercial success of the movie.It's like anurag saying, "Let's move on with the investigation". The journalistic writings of hussain zaidi, well directed by anurag.

Similarly on an another scene, when tiger memon's house is being searched, everybody is eager to know what is going to come out. The way i would expect this scene to play out in a usual movie would be like this, a group of cops ruthlessly ransacking the house with a fast paced back ground music and finding an evidence. But this is a very different movie, you see the cops joking around, the inspector moving into the kitchen to get something to eat, instead of the pacy BGM you hear the sounds of the outside streets, the scene then cuts to the inspector eating a banana and feeling it bad to eat before the constable. Very unconventional way of handling for a hindi movie but realistic and that is the way most of the scenes are handled throughout the movie.

Sometimes the narration cuts to a few lighter ones too. when the police discovers the unexploded scooter. There is this guy who first noticed the scooter. He keeps saying that he always doubted there was something wrong about the scooter to who ever he sees.

Coming back to the editing of the movie, it employs the goddardian jump cuts at many places which gives the edginess and pace to the movie.There is a scene to show the efforts that the police have put to get all kinds of information regarding the memon’s. The way the scene plays out. you see, the tired kay kay taking bath for a few seconds, next cut you see him in the car, next cut you see the long shot of a building, next cut close up of the house, next cut the inspector bent to hear a girl.All these cuts happening in a gap of few seconds.

Like goddard, anurag does this pacey cut followed by a scene that the audience might consider unimportant.The girl tells the inspector about how tiger memon, their angry neighbor used to shout at the kids who were playing outside his house.

Again all these scenes break your effort to make a story out of all the incidents that you are watching. You will fail to get the sense of completeness or wholeness that you get in a regular movie. The narration makes sure that the movie doesn't slip into the tag of another dreamy story which will be forgotten soon, but with the realistic portrayal it makes sure that you will believe the movie 100% and you will always associate the blast with the movie from now on.



The movie which is based on the book on the same title by hussain zaidi has been in the market for so many years. But the government has banned the movie. Hussain Zaidi was the reporter of the Mumbai newspaper Mid day, which has produced this movie.



The movie addressing the blind peoples of both communities, starts and ends with Gandhi's statements "An eye for an eye will leave the world blind".

Cast and Credits:

Kay Kay .... Rakesh Maria
Pavan Malhotra .... Tiger Memon
Aditya Srivastava .... Badshah Khan
Dibyendu Bhattacharya .... Yeda Yakub
Kishore Kadam .... Dangle
Gajraj Rao .... Dawood Phanse
Zakir Hussain .... Nand Kumar Chougale
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Imtiaz Ali .... Yakub Menon
Aditya Bhattacharya .... Sheikh Aziz
Ashraf Ul Haq .... Bashir Khan
Pankaj Jha .... Anwar Theba
Pratima Kazmi .... Badshah's mother
Vijay Maurya .... Dawood Ibrahim
Loveleen Mishra .... Newstrack Interviewer
Pranay Narayan .... Imtiaz Ghavate
Nawazuddin .... Asgar Mukadam
Bobby Parvez .... Rakesh Khurana
Jeetu Shastri .... Tainur

Good action by everyone, especially Pavan malhotra and adithya srivastava. Pavan malhotra is back with his bombay accent of "Salim langde pe math ro".He is awesome, when he shows his anger against the hindu’s.




Music:
Music is by Indian Ocean

Links:
Kay Kay interview on Black Friday
Produced by Mid Day Multimedia
Black Friday book review on Times
pawan's review on the book

Monday, January 02, 2006

Sati -1989 Bengali



Aparna sen's 3rd movie is a story set in the 19th century, even before the british raj abolished the inhuman act of sati.But this is not a movie about sati, but rather a look at the way women where treated at that time period.

-----story---------
The movie is the story of a mute girl uma(shabana azmi).Uma is an orphan who was bought up by her uncle. The mute uma also has problems in her horoscope.Who ever marries her will die for sure.Her uncle's own daughter is ready for marriage but uma being the eldest the problem of younger marrying before elder arises. So the men folk and the local priest decide to marry her to a tree, with the idea that her younger sister can get married without any issues.A human being married to a tree and the complications that arise out of it is the movie.
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The groom

The Bride

The feminist aparna sen treads her favorite path.The movie shows how women where exploited during that time period.The movie actually starts with an act of sati being performed.The widow who is kind of unconscious is being taken to the pyre and two guys are talking one says that the widow is very brave she didn't even utter a word or protest against the sati.For that the other guy replies that is cause she was already given opium.

It is a time period when having a sati in the house is considered a great fortune and the bride that does not protest and burn in silence is considered an angel. But the movie is not about sati,it is about how women where treated during that time period. Aparna brings in various feministic issues into the main thread.Like Uma's brother who only has daughters does a second marriage just like that to arrange finances for her marriage and to have a son.The way a small boy in the family is given more preference over Uma to name a few incidents.



Mute Uma representing the 19th century women who didn't have any voice in the society marries another mute and unimportant thing of those days, the tree. But the Tree at the end turns out to be a better deal to her.

The movie is not the best of aparna, it could have been done a lot better, the script fails to put together the central theme well as aparna deviates into many issues. Added to it is the complex role of uma, which shabaha didn't play that convincingly. A different story.

shabhana and aparna

Trivia:
Shabhana is the assistant director for aparna sen's movie Guglel.

---spoiler-------------
The rest of the story and what to make out of the ending.

Uma who is married to the tree, longs for human touch and she is used by a family acquaintance nabin. she becomes pregnant and the family wants to get rid of the baby.
The medicine woman who gives the abortion medicines says that they have to do that only as there is no one man enough in the village to step up and accept the child.
The medicine fails; uma and the family seem to be heading towards a disgrace.

But a stormy night ends the movie with the tree falling and killing uma. The symbolic meaning of it this that, in a village of coward men, the tree, uma's husband steps up and saves her dignity. The dead body of uma with blood in the forehead resembles the vermilion of the wife.Uma who died with her husband tree has symbolically become a sati, the virtuous woman who dies with her husband.
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Aparna Sen



Aparna sen is one of those few female director's who made a mark for themselves in the indian film industry.She is one of those rare mix of beauty and brain. Daughter of Chidananda Dasgupta, who co-founded the Calcutta Film Society with Satyajit Ray, She came into the film industry as an actress in Theen Kanya, introduced by satyajit ray in the early 60's.She acted in many films for Ray and many others before making her directorial debut in 1981.The movie was 36 chowringhee lane, which started as a script that was approved by her idol Satyajit ray himself and on his suggest that she herself should direct the movie. She did make ray proud ,took a gem of a movie that has gone down as a classic. She also got the country's highest award for direction, the national award for best director on her first movie itself.

Aparna who is also called as Rinadi, since then has made many movies based on female characters and has established herself as one of india's ace directors. She is also a scriptwriter, actress and a magazine editor. she was awarded the padmashree in 1986.

Aparna sen films in alternate movies
36 chowringhee lane
Sati

Links
Aparna sen interview
Aparna in hindu

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