Showing posts with label Bollywood Movies Trailers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bollywood Movies Trailers. Show all posts
Hasee Toh Phasee - Official Trailer - Sidharth Malhotra, Parineeti Chopra
Hasee Toh Phasee - Official Trailer - Sidharth Malhotra, Parineeti Chopra
Afridi demands explanation for Bollywood’s joke at his expense
Afridi demands explanation for Bollywood’s joke at his expense
The trailer of Ali Zafar’s new movie Total Siyapaa has created a furore. The film that makes funny references to public figures also put the famous Pakistani cricketer Shahid Afridi on the spot. However, Afridi hasn’t taken the jibe on his erratic batting skills all too well, and is demanding an explanation from the film-makers.
Despite the cricketers’ outrage, the makers of the movie are quite confident that the dialogue, when heard in context, will be taken in good humour by the masses and the cricketer. For now, an insulted Afridi has written to the producers, asking for an explanation of the exact context in which his name has been used.
Actor-singer Ali Zafar, who plays the lead in the cross-border love story featuring a Pakistani boy and an Indian girl, went on record with The Express Tribune, saying, “I am an Afridi fan myself. Let’s leave the final verdict to the viewers as and when they step out of the cinema after watching the film, and the context of his reference.”
Published in The Express Tribune.
Dhoom 3 New Trailer wow What A Stunt Must See Video
Dhoom 3 New Trailer wow What A Stunt Must See This Video Its Top Of The Chart
'Besharam' slips at the box office
'Besharam' slips at the box office
It started on a positive note, but Ranbir Kapoor-starrer Besharam is slipping at the box office. Trade experts say that the movie had a good opening, but couldn't retain the footfalls on the subsequent days.
The film, which released Wednesday, hit 3,600 screens in India and 700 screens overseas. Critics were not too impressed with the movie and wrote that "with Besharam, Ranbir sinks to a low".
Trade analyst Taran Adarsh termed the Abhinav Singh Kashyap-directed film's box office collection as an “epic disappointment”.
“Besharam (earned) Rs.21.56 crore on Wednesday, Thursday Rs.7.13 crore, Friday Rs.5.68 crore, Saturday Rs.5.94 crore. Total is Rs.40.31 crore net. Epic disappointment!,” Adarsh posted on Twitter.
Besharam, which also stars Ranbir’s star parents Neetu and Rishi Kapoor along with newcomer Pallavi Sharda, was made at a budget of Rs.60 crore in addition to the cost of promotions, marketing and advertising.
“First day was good, but second day onwards the performance of the film has drastically dropped. Even on weekend, I don’t see any improvement,” Puneet Sahay of Spice Cinemas stated.
The movie has been co-produced by Himanshu Mehra, Sanjeev Gupta and Reliance Entertainment.
'Grand Masti' crosses Rs.100 crore mark on home turf
'Grand Masti' crosses Rs.100 crore mark on home turf
Director Indra Kumar's adult comedy has hit the bull's eye at the domestic box office - it has crossed Rs.100 crore mark and a trade analyst says it has become "the first adult film to attain the status".
"And it's a century... Grand Masti crosses Rs.100 crore net mark in India. First 'Adult' film to attain this status," tweeted trade analyst Taran Adarsh.
Aftab Shivadasani, who plays one of the male leads in the movie, took to the microblogging site to share his excitement about the film's growing numbers at the ticket window.
Aftab, seen as Prem in Grand Masti, tweeted, "And history is made - the first adult film to make Rs.100 crores! Feeling elated to be a part of history! Thank you all."
Also starring Riteish Deshmukh and Vivek Oberoi as the male leads, the sequel to 2004 hit movie Masti, released on September 13, 2013 as it was panned by the critics for being too vulgar.
Co-produced by Ashok Thakeria and Indra Kumar, the film has been presented by Bharat Shah and distributed by Eros International Worldwide.
After minting Rs.66.4 crore in the opening week, the movie has entered the prestigious Rs.100 crore club in its third week.
Shah is happy about the Indian collection and tsaid, "It's very good".
Asked if this indicates that the audience has started accepting sex comedies, he said, "Yes, definitely. The credit goes to the director and producers of the movie and also to the cast."
Timely wakeup call for a wounded nation
Movie Name : Satyagraha
Cast : Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor, Arjun Rampal, Manoj Bajpayee, Amrita Rao
Director : Prakash Jha
Banner : Prakash Jha Productions, UTV Motion Pictures
Cinematography : Sachin Krishna
Genre : Political Thriller
Our rating: 4
Prakash Jha's Satyagraha bears no thematic relation to any of his earlier political dramas. It is certainly not a sequel to his Raajneeti, as has been reported in some sections of the media. And yes, it is most certainly based on the movement that Anna Hazare started against corruption.
To say that Mr. Bachchan's character Dwarka Anand in Satyagraha, lovingly called Dadujee by one and all, and Dadujee's turbulent relationship with the go-getting NRI-turned-Gandhian-nationalist Maanav Raghvendra (Devgn) does not bear a resemblance to the Anna Hazare-Arvind Kejriwal equation, would be plain blindness.
What Jha and his very able astute and politically informed co-writer and long-time collaborator Anjum Rajabali have done, is to collect together the thematic threads of Anna Hazare's mass anti-corruption movement and weave it into a gripping, thoughtful, hard-hitting and inspirational drama which contains all the resonances of a newspaper headline, and wrap it up in the semantics of cinema with as little creative violence as possible even while addressing an inherently violent issue.
From the time Jha made his intensely political drama Damul, there has been a constant strife between the director's personal political ideology and its rendition into cinematically interpreted language. Drama and emotions have always been Jha's bete noire. In his predominantly brutal domain of interpersonal politics, the human drama is played out austerely, often at the cost of squandering away the chance to draw the characters' innerscape in an elaborately-charted scheme.
In Jha's Aarakshan, we had seen that trademark emotional austerity in the way he portrayed Mr. Bachchan's relationship with his screen-daughter Deepika Padukone. InSatyagraha, one feels the relationship between Mr. Bachchan's character and his widowed daughter-in-law (Amrita Rao) could have gone a little further. But then Mr. Bachchan is the kind of extraordinary actor who can say so much about his character's emotional environment in the most meager playing-time. Here, he has that one moment with Amrita Rao when hearing her sob in the dead of the night; he goes into her room to console her... And we know the kind of deep bonding this powerful patriarch shares with his cruelly widowed Bahu.
There is little time for emotions in Jha's world of politics and national awakening. Dwarka Anand gets just one sequence to show how much he misses his son. It's the moment when he returns to the scene of his son's death... The father's anguish here is palpable, throbbing with unexpressed grief. And then before we can wallow in the moment, Jha's editor Santosh Mandal mercilessly tears us away from this poignant scene of a father's loss.
In my favourite sequence, Mr. Bachchan shares a son-like camaraderie with Devgn's character telling him how he would miss Devgn when he leaves the next day. It is a deeply contemplative moment where Devgn reacts to Mr. Bachchan's supple emotions with rare care and attention.
Hold on to these infrequent episodes of emotional expression in this turbulent tale of awakening the nation's conscience where there is no room for individual's self-indulgence. In fact, Devgn's growing fondness for the TV journalist Yasmin Ahmed (Kareena Kapoor, lighting up every frame) and the sudden burst of an acutely romantic song seems to belong to some other time-zone.
You see, there's the business of the country's future to be attended to. And who better at creating a cinema of socio-political reform than Prakash Jha? The director constantly wrenches away from his individuals' personal feelings to focus on the broader picture.
Jha's narration gets busy with the business of swooping down on huge crowds of anxious restless people looking for a way out of the country's scam-frozen destiny. It's a world built on the premise of socio-political reform that Mahatma Gandhi and Jayaprakash Narain dreamt of and Anna Hazare attempted to bring to fruition.
There's an abundance of references to mobilisation of youth power through the Internet and mobile. Satyagraha probes and questions the validity and motivation of any mass movement that is born out of an inividual's genuine passion for reform. The pitfalls of such a mass movement are brought into play with a vingery mixture of broad drama and subtle humour.
It is no coincidence that the film's arch-villain is a politiciam portrayed as a kind of evil clown. Manoj Bajpayee plays the scummy 'scammy' brazely corrupt politician with lipsmacking relish. His smirky villainous neta act works as a perfect foil to Mr. Bachchan's controlled never overdone messianic act.
Devgn, in the all important role of the ambitious entrepreneur who becomes a catalyst for social change, could have taken his character much further down the road of self-articulation. On the other hand, Arjun Rampal has limited scope as a goonda-turned-self-appointed youth leader. He has great fun sinking his teeth into the rustic accent and boorish body language.
While the three main actors play off with each other with supple grandeur, some other supporting actors and characters are played at much too broad a pitch to be effective. When a corrupt policeman takes off his uniform to join the mass movement, you feel the script is teetering dangerously towards over-idealism.
But the message must be, and is, loud and clear. It is time for the nation to chase away damnation before it's too late. Jha's film is a timely wakeup warning, a massive clarion call for the conscience, brilliantly manifested in Prasoon Joshi's title song which tells us enough is enough, and listen... getting Gandhian on the cancerous community of corrupt politicians is a symptom of cowardice.
Satyagraha conveys the uncontrollable anger and energy of a nation on the brink. For telling it like it is and for creating a compelling film out of the raw material of present-day corruption, the film deserves a standing ovation.
With 'Besharam', Ranbir Kapoor sinks to a low
Movie Name : Besharam
Cast : Rishi Kapoor, Neetu Singh, Ranbir Kapoor, Pallavi Sharda, Javed Jaffrey
Director : Abhinav Singh Kashyap
Screenplay : Abhinav Singh Kashyap
Banner : Reliance Entertainment
Cinematography : Madhu Vannier
Genre : Comedy, Romance
Our rating: 2
The number of times Ranbir Kapoor, that simmering restless bundle of unstoppable talent, calls himself 'besharam' (shameless) in this movie is not funny. And with good reason, one might add.
The plot is evidently written as a back-handed homage to the 1980s and 90s cinema of outlandish logistics where coincidences covered up for the lack of a sound sense in the script, and every actor screamed his or her dialogues to conceal the embarrassment of doing stuff that no one with an iota of intelligence would attempt.
But even the logistics of the cinema of the absurd had a rhythm of its own.
Besharam, however, is devoid of rhythm, sur or taal. It's shot like an ongoing television sitcom where the actors are clueless about which way the intended laughter would take them. Everyone in the movie, from the redoubtable Rishi Kapoor to the gifted-in-her-own-right Himani Shivpuri, is in it just for fun.
I am sure the script, when it was narrated to the actors, must have had them in splits.
And why not? Director Abhinav Kashyap's debut in Dabangg gave a new language to the Hindi commercial cinema. The language of cocky hero-giri. But then, Dabangg featured Salman Khan who does not need to act to impress audiences. He does not even try.
Ranbir Kapoor in Besharam goes the other way. Every scene in the film is an "acting" moment. Ranbir does the equivalent of a very accomplished gymnast who must impress the sports council that he is qualified for the next Olympics.
The director obviously thinks very highly of Ranbir's talents. So do we. But does that mean he must attack every scene like an audition? There is desperation in the narration hidden out of our view, but discernible nonetheless. A desperation to project the protagonist as infinitely wacky.
Cynical disregard for basic decency is meant to be cool in this film. In the endeavor to imbue Ranbir's car-thief character with a sense of mischievous artlessness, the narration becomes woefully heavy-handed. The tone adopted is that of a conversation between two reputed stand-up comedians who are out to prove they can convey the seriousness of existence even while maintaining the jokey tone.
Everyone, barring the villain Javed Jaffrey, is given funny lines. They speak it with twinkle-eyed pleasure that, alas, is lost somewhere as it makes its way from the screen to the audience. There are passages of excruciatingly gauche writing where the actors run around in circles, trying to be cute replicas of characters from the movies in the 1990s.
Among these aimless drifters in the province of the potboiler are Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh, playing a corrupt quarrelsome Haryanvi cop couple. Their roles seem to start with the firm resolve that their real-life relation to the hero would be kept completely out of bounds. But then, as the script progresses, real-life references like "Tum toh meri maa samaan ho" ("You're like my mother") and "Main tera baap hoon" ("I'm your dad") creep in, until the margin of satire shrinks to the extent of being non-existent.
And we finally come to a stage where Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh "adopt" Ranbir's character!
"Go for it," Ranbir's sidekick Titu (well played by Amitosh Nagpal) tells the hero. "You even look like the female cop (Neetu Singh)."
Well, well.
The trouble with mainstream Hindi cinema is that when all is said and done, it is nothing but a star-vehicle. Besharam stars off cocking a snook at conventional trappings. It eventually ends up sucking up to cinematic cliches, and with not even a pretence of subtlety.
Besharam is clogged with plot-holes into which the characters happily fall. There they remain happily wallowing in the uni-dimensionality of their narrow world-view.
The fuss, if you must know, is over a posh car bought by the girl that our hero, Bunty, has fallen for.
That the girl, Pallavi Sharda, seems to belong to another plot and another film is besides the point.
Bunty loves her, period. And what follows is a series of goofy escapades where Bunty outwits the villain. Laughter.
It is sad to see Rishi Kapoor reduced to sitting on the potty and noisily clearing his bowels. And at one point, the heroine herself asks, "Yeh thoda vulgar nahin ho gaya?" ("That got a little vulgar?")
Enough, as they say, is too much.
At last, a Big B remake that gets it right
Movie Name : Zanjeer
Cast : Ram Charan Teja, Priyanka Chopra, Sanjay Dutt, Prakash Raj, Mahie Gill And Atul Kulkarni
Director : Apoorva Lakhia
Screenplay : Suresh Nair, Apoorva Lakhia
Banner : Prakash Mehra Productions, Reliance Entertainment
Cinematography : Gururaj R. Jois
Genre : Action, Romance
Our rating: 4
Let's not get carried away. Every time a remake comes along, we get gooey-eyed and nostalgic about the original. The Zanjeer remake gets it right. Dead right.
Unlike Ram Gopal Varma's remake of Sholay, which was purely misguided, and Karan Malhotra's Agneepath, which was unnecessarily brutal, Zanjeer is just what a remake should be. It's respectful to the original material which, let me hasten to add, was no masterpiece, and suspiciously similar to a 1967 film called Death Rides A Horse.
In fact, a similar film Yaadon Ki Baraat, written by Salim-Javed and released during the same year 1973 as Zanjeer, was far superior.
Providentially, Lakhia's Zanjeer is neither slavishly reverent to the original material nor does it take off into weird wild and wacky tangents -- like the Rohit Shetty's recent remake of Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Golmaal.
Rather, the new Zanjeer opens up the original plot, weeds out the humbug and preserves the core of the revenge saga of an angry cop whose ire grows progressively higher as the plot moves through a series of cleverly conceived conflicts that accentuate his alienation from his khaki-coloured line of duty.
No one can do to the sullen cop's role what Mr. Bachchan did. But yes, even in his new avatar, Inspector Vijay Khanna seethes simmers and boils over with an indignant rage. Everything about the festering rotten 'system' makes him annoyed and churlish.
Since Zanjeer, and its more serious-toned country-cousin Ardh Satya, numerous cops have vented their cinematic spleen in films as far-ranging in quality as Singham andPolicegiri.
What makes Vijay Khanna in the new Zanjeer special is the plot-mechanics which put him in time-worn situations, but subject him to dramatic dynamics that give the prototypical Angry Cop a renewed riveting life of violent score-settling.
That this time, the Angry Cop who was played with such compelling candidness by Amitabh Bachchan in the original Zanjeer, is played by Ram Charan Teja is just a huge stroke of luck for the remake. Ram Charan brings in an entirely unique brand of silent satyagraha to his character. When we first see him on screen, he wallops a goonda-politician on a busy road of Hyderabad as a hoarding of Ram Charan's father Chiranjeevi's film looks down on the chaotic scene.
A version of ‘Raghupati raghav...’ plays in the background as Ram Charan lets us know without wasting time, that he means business.
The pace from that hard-hitting moment is relentless. The momentum never slackens even when Vijay Khanna gets down to expressing tender thoughts for the fast-talking befuddled and disoriented NRI girl Mala. Playing Mala, Priyanka Chopra seems to have a whole lot of infectious fun. She spells joie de vivre and looks gorgeous. Priyanka is the comic relief in this fast-paced actioner where fists and the background point out an ominous warning.
Lakhia paces the proceedings as a rush-hour traffic of bustling events. No one has the luxury to stop and think as the narration gathers up a storm of pulpy conflicts building up to an exceptionally staged climax filmed amidst the volatile proceedings of a crowded Moharram event.
From the Ganpati Viasarjan to the Moharram, Lakhia's interpretation of Zanjeer traverses a mammoth canvas of rapid-fire images. Gururaj Jois's camera moves dexterously, but never to divert our attention from the central conflict. And Chintan Gandhi's dialogues use one-liners judiciously, never over-doing the smart-alec retorts.
The film's action, by Javed-Ejaz, feels and looks right. The attention paid to getting the action sequences right is highly commendable. There is an elaborately staged multiple-explosion sequence in a huge Dharavi-like slum which belongs to a Vin Diesel-starrer.
Sanjay Dutt steps splendidly into Pran's shoes. His sequences, though limited by the actor's physical unavailability, show the sensitive side to his aggressive personality. The bonding between Ram Charan and Dutt comes across as effectively as the one between Ram Charan and Priyanka and Prakash Raj and Mahie Gill.
And the momentum never slackens.
Fast-paced, and forever furious, Zanjeer also finds space to be excruciatingly funny. In fact, the whole villain-vamp equation between Teja (Prakash Raj) and Mona Darling (Mahie Gill) is here subverted to a kind of comic coitus interruptus where Prakash Raj repeatedly keeps talking about sex without getting down to it while 'Mona' Mahie Gill purrs and moans and pouts -- not out of passion but for just the opposite reasons.
The most tongue-in-cheek homage I've seen in a remake occurs in this film when we see the new Teja-Mona pair watching actor Ajit and Bindu in the original Zanjeer on a DVD. The sequence is irreverent without appearing to belittle the original. It reminds us of the renewed cycle of art and individual talent.
Throughout the film, we sense the director's immense affection for the original Zanjeer, a reverence that never clouds his judgement.
This is one remake that stands tall and lithe. It is manned by a manful supply of action and yet manages to keep the machismo understated. Breakneck-paced, adrenaline-pumping, pulse-pounding -- Lakhia's deconstructed version of the Prakash Mehra film is a full-on pacy paisa-vasool entertainer with brio and balls.
Ram Charan Teja makes an impressive Bollywood debut. We can safely say he is the man among the boys.
Go for it!
Phata Poster...Nikla Salman!
Movie Name : Phata Poster Nikla Hero
Cast : Shahid Kapoor, Ileana D'Cruz And Padmini Kolhapure
Director : Rajkumar Santoshi
Banner : Tips Music Films
Cinematography : Ravi Yadav
Genre : Comedy, Romance
Our rating: 2.5
Let's get one thing straight. This isn't what you want to see a super-gifted filmmaker like Rajkumar Santoshi do when he gets together with a talented star-actor like Shahid Kapoor.
But what to do? Everyone wants a good laugh! It makes us forget about the troubles outside. Never mind the trouble that humour seems to encounter on screen each time someone makes a comedy.
To his credit, Santoshi deftly delivers the dynamics of drollery. No two ways about it. Unlike last week's lewd laughter in Grand Masti, Phata Poster Nikla Hero (PPNH) avoids vulgarity like the plague.
Dirty word plague....sorry wordplay is firmly eschewed. What we get is an earthy robust over-accentuated tribute to Salman Khan's Chulbul Pandey act from Dabangg, with Shahid Kapoor stepping into the khaki uniform with the same wonky elan as our dear Chulbul Khan.
Shahid has confessed it is easy to play a Salman Khan fan. The young actor who has so far not revealed his comic chops and has in fact shown dramatic synergy to be his forte, pulls out all stops to play an imposter cop, a role that makes him a Chulbul Pandey twice-over because Salman's cop-act was underlined as a spoof in the first place.
So what we get in PPNH is a khaki-clad clown impersonating a cop who is actually impersonating Salman Khan in Dabangg.
Does that make sense? Even if it doesn't, it's just fine. Don't sweat over it. This is not one of Santoshi's seriously-intended films. For that, please refer to this wonderful director's Lajjaor Halla Bol. And if you are looking for hardcore gut-spilling action, go to Santoshi's Deol-driven juggernauts Ghayal and Ghatak.
Come to think of it, PPNH is not even an all-out zany comedy of errors like Santoshi'sAndaz Apna Apna. So what is it? After painful pondering over the over-punctuated parodic material in PPNH, I'd say it's a mongrelized mirth machine. A sort of Dabangg mated with Santoshi's last very successful comedy Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani which evidently taught Santoshi a lesson: farcical frivolity and lengthy titles translate into big bucks.
Phata Poster... gives poster-boy Shahid Kapoor a custom-built opportunity to get seriously comic. He digs deep into the very slim plot, ferreting out meager meat from the skimpy material. I must think that Shahid has a ball doing the droll act for the doll Ileana d'Cruz who abandons her serious sari-clad audacious wife's role in Barfi! to play the kind of "social worker" who brings a bad name to all charity work.
Didn't Katrina play a similar busybee's role in Santoshi's Ajab Prem...? Didn't Ranbir do the goofy Chaplin-meets-Kondke act for the commodious camera in that film? Shahid seems comfortable doing the irrepressible comic impresario. But he's far more at home in the more sensible sober scenes he shares with his screen-mom Padmini Kolhapure, who looks too young to play Shahid's mom. But then at least her talent is being aired.
Come to think of it - everyone in this over-the-top comedy seems to be in it for the sake of getting into a massy mode. The art direction is kitschy. The camera wallows in the carnival mood. In the endeavour to enroll enthusiasm into the rom-com, the film succeeds. But be warned: the writing is repetitive. The scenes all end in exclamation marks and italics... like an essay by a schoolboy who is out to impress his favourite teacher. The humour jumps out of the screen like an eager 5-year old brat which must get your attention at any cost.
If you think Shahid is one of the more interesting star-actor's of the current generation, then PPNH is a frenetically fashioned farce fest with excessive energy oozing out of every saturated pore. Shahid's songs and dances, especially the zanily unpredictable ‘Agal bagal’ number are the highlight of the humour-hamper. And that's not such a good thing. Shahid gets to share camera space with some accomplished actors like Saurabh Shukla, Mukesh Tiwari, Darshan Jariwala and Sanjay Mishra. And that's a good thing.
At least we are ensured that the slender pretext for laughter is bolstered by hefty actors.
Oh yes, and the real Salman Khan shows up.
Taut, tense, tactile and terrific
Movie Name : John Day
Cast : Naseeruddin Shah, Randeep Hooda, Shernaz Patel, Elena Kazan
Director : Ahishor Solomon
Banner : Anjum Rizvi, Aatef A Khan and K Asif
Cinematography : Prakash Kutty
Genre : Thriller
Our rating: 3
This is no place for the weak. This world as we know it. And this film, as we discover with the thrill of chancing upon an unexpected little gem.
Inspired from a Spanish film, is it? I really don't give a fig where writer-director Ahishor Solomon got the raw material for this gripping cat-and-mouse tale. Does the kitchen where the food on the table originates really mean anything? What counts is the quotient of curiosity and suspense simulated by the script. And there, John Day ranks very high.
Not for a while have we seen a film so steeped in despair, so swathed in anxiety, so audaciously draped in despair and yet it engages our senses without miring the plot in morbidity.
The story is not for the squeamish. The two main characters are constantly haunted by their irrevocably tragic parts. Naseeruddin Shah and Randeep Hooda, real-life guru and pupil, play people who know no happiness. Incidents from their past continue to shadow and chase their present. There is scarcely a moment in the plot when John (Shah) and Gautam (Hooda) are happy except when they are with their beloved 'Other'.
But then Shernaz Patel, who plays Naseer's wife and the very beautiful foreigner Elena Kazan who plays Randeep’s girl are troubled by their own ghosts. So where do we go for comfort?
What price, solace?
John Day is a restless edgy drama of the doomed and the damned. This not the first time Randeep has played a fugitive shadowed by his own past. But this is certainly his most layered character which he performs with the kind of gravelly gusto that allows us to get only as close to the sullen character as he wants us. Towards the end-game when the momentum gets frenzied beyond recuperation, Randeep's character's softer side emerges.
He has a brilliantly written monologue with a comatose character where we get to know how much this brutal man loves his woman.
Yup, this man can die for money and for love. It's a dichotomous character torn between self-abnegation and vendetta.
In a way Randeep’s character plays a mirror-image of Naseer's banker gone amok. This is not the first time that India's most vaunted actor has played a wizened common man pushed to a corner by the monstrous corruption in out socio-political system.
Remember Neeraj Pathak's A Wednesday? Here, in John Day the terror that Naseer's character battles is far more personal, and hence in many ways, much more moving and compelling. His greatness as an actor doesn't come in the way of letting the character of the common man have his say in the most natural way possible.
It is very difficult to speak out openly about the characters and their motivations without giving away the plot. John Day is the kind of clenched yarn that makes you forget that yawning distance between cinema and the audience. You become one with the character's battles, without getting judgemental over their actions.
Some of the things that the characters do are unmistakably brutal. An innocent woman's head is shattered by a hammer, a man's tongue is bitten off and another man's neck is also bitten off. It's a cold brutal world with no comic relief, at least none where you laugh out loud at the ironies of life.
John Day brings the indomitable Naseeruddin and the intriguing Randeep for a taut cat-and-mouse chase that stays a step ahead of the audience right till the shattering end-game.
While the two principal actors get under their characters' skins, other actors seem equally at home in this inky kingdom of greed and gluttony. Vipin Sharma and Makrand Deshpande are very engaging in their supporting parts. They make doom seem anything but dull. But the film's third hero is Sandeep Chowta's background score. It creates a world of emotions beyond the spoken words for Naseer and Randeep.
This is a world where there is no escape from sorrow and grief. Enemies are clobbered and butchered mercilessly. Not because they deserve to die. But because life is as randomly brutal as we make it for ourselves. And cinema such as this reminds us that moral values of good, evil, justice and comeuppance mean nothing to those who have nothing to lose.
For a film about losers John Day proves to be a paradoxically profitable movie-viewing experience for the audience.
Desolation , Loneliness...Perfection!
Movie Name : The Lunchbox
Cast : Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Director : Ritesh Batra
Banner : UTV Motion Pictures, Dharma Productions, Sikhya Entertainment, DAR Motion Pictures, NFDC
Cinematography : Michael Simmonds
Genre : Romance
Our rating: 4.5
In Mrinal Sen's Khandhar desolation was defined and epitomized as much by Shabana Azmi's face and physicality as it was by the architectural ruins where Sen shot his dirge-like tale. In The Lunchbox, debutant director Ritest Batra - is this really his first feature film?! - does not seek easy escape routes for his characters' destiny of drudgery.
The film is set in the heart of Mumbai where everyone is busy making a living...or just trying to live. Right away, this extraordinary film catches your attention with the way the sounds and the relentless rhythm of that City That Never Sleeps are captured and put on screen.
While remaining purely cinematic there is something completely "non-cinematic" aboutThe Lunchbox.
It is stripped-down of all affectations. The secrets of lonely hearts are not laid bare through conventional cinematic devices - the use of background is so sparing that you often end up listening to the music inherent in everyday routine: the way the trains move in the sweltering afternoons, the sound of auto-rickshaws bustling through byelanes, the sizzle of onions frying in a suburban kitchen, the sound of the television playing as a nuclear family of three lonely people dine in deathly silence.
Not just Ila (Nimrat Kaur), the cooking, cleaning suffering housewife, even her preoccupied husband (Nakul Vaid) seems so lost in the act of existence. Even their little daughter looks so forlorn with her rag-doll, as though she needs a good cry but is not sure if Mama will be there to console her.
And to scare you there are whispers of a woman jumping to her death with her daughter. Ila won't ....never! Right?
Holding back the rituals of grief is a well-worn suburban ritual that Batra's screenplay understands only too well. Every individual in Batra's universe is disconnected from an inner tranquillity and distanced from the people around him or her.
It is no coincidence that Ila, our forlorn heroine who thinks of suicide but holds herself back, connects the best with an unseen aunty living with her comatose husband in the floor above. Aunty (Bharati Achrekar giving a vigorously expressive performance through her voice alone) never turns off the ceiling fan that whirrs above her inert husband, fearing if stops, so would his breath.
These little life-asserting pretences we indulge ourselves into believe that we lead meaningful lives is the crux of The Lunchbox. Hence Ila strikes up an illusory bond of empathy with the almost-retired office-goer Fernandes (Irrfan Khan).
It starts off with a wrongly-delivered dabba to a lonely widower in a typical non-government office.
The initial delight of two strangers communicating facelessly soon turns into an intriguing relationship of empathy. The tragedy of two lonely people, one married in a loveless partnership and the other still wedded to his dead wife's memory and bonding over burp-inducing tiffins filmed with gourmet dishes, is punctuated by the omni-presence of an annoying intruder, played by the very wonderful Nawazuddin, who keeps barging into Fernandes' meditative melancholic interactions with his faceless culinary benefactor.
Among the three protagonists, Nawazuddin as the deceptively shallow Sheikh has the toughest role. He must seem frivolously jovial and insensitive to Fernandes' lonely existence, though he is anything but these things. Further, he has a happy life. And that should and does fill him with a guilt he cannot express.
In many ways the bond that grows between Fernandes and Sheikh is far more tenable and real than the one Fernandes discovers in the aroma of the freshly-packed tiffin that lands up every day on his table.
Fernandes' loneliness is not of the same breed as Violent Stonheim in 36 Chowringhee Lane. He is alone, trapped in memories of happiness but also surrounded by noises and smells of a normal life. That little contact he makes with a family in the building opposite his own, through his window, is emblematic of his empathetic solitude.
Yes, this man has hope.
Food, which contours the tragic love story of Batra's film, is used almost as a reminder of life in the face of death. When Ila's mother (Lilette Dubey nailing her character's abject desolation in just two deftly-written sequences) finally loses her husband, she talks of hunger rather than loss.
Bereavement and loss affect individuals in very strange ways. What The Lunchbox says in a language that exudes the scent and comfort of the familiar is that we can strive to fill the emptiness inside us by cooking feeding, remaining busy with motivating acts of daily gratification. But we are finally left with nothing to hold on to. This frightening thesis of existence is laid bare in The Lunchbox with compassion and warmth.
This is a sad film. But it isn't depressing.
As the two protagonists whose souls collide and then come apart, Irrfan and Nimrat give exceptionally sorted-out performances even as their characters grapple with the chaos and complexities of feelings that alas, do not fit into compartments as comfortably as the food in a tiffin carrier.
Irrfan's bearing suggests age that won't accept defeat. He is a portrait of stoicism in the face of solitude. Does this actor ever disappoint?
Michael Simmonds' camera doesn't miss a thing. It seems to capture every moment of the character's inner and outer lives merging the two levels of existence and yet keeping them apart.
I came away from this profoundly moving tale with two of the most unforgettable lines of wisdom I've heard in a film.
One of them comes from Nawazuddin who says, "Sometimes the wrong train can take you to the right destination." And then there is Nimrat, so noble and restrained in her suffering within a pitiable marriage, who opines, "Very often we forget our memories because we have no one to share them with."
The memory of food, friendship and forlornness associated with "The Lunchbox" would stay with me for a very long time.
Some films scream for attention. This one gets it without trying. What a gentle, tender, soft and sincere love story! Is this really Batra's first film?! He demonstrates an astonishing mastery over the craft. And yet The Lunchbox is all heart.
Nawazuddin, Irrfan and Nimrat are so much in character that you wonder if these people were born before the script. The film celebrates the extraordinary ordinariness of their lives with a stark sincerity that takes away every morsel of artifice inherent in the act of filming made-up lives.
If this is not the best directorial debut since Satyajit Ray in Pather Panchali, then I am probably missing something vital.
And that's what this film is about.
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