Freeze Frame #159: Some Like It Hot

I watched the film on a plane ride back from the US, and had to spend a considerable amount of time trying not to shake too much with laughter and wake up the passenger sitting next to me. Most of all, I was amazed by Marilyn Monroe’s sheer presence. Watch this scene — it takes a certain ability to do what she does here, right down to that tone of voice.

A couple of weeks later, I watched Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – let’s just say that my reaction was somewhere between active distaste and near-indifference. I remember discussing with a friend once, that there was as much guano to be found in the old movies as in the new ones — we just manage to pick the good ones in hindsight. Except in case of GPB, our hindsight was a little impaired.

While Monroe played versions of roughly the same character in both films (ditzy blond on the lookout for a rich guy), in SLIH, she seemed to project a certain innocence that was incredibly appealing, whereas in GPB, the cynicism and self-awareness was a lot more apparent. She has her moments in the latter, but is never spectacular. And I remember thinking, she was a lot more fun to watch when she didn’t know how good she really was.

And then of course I found out that Some Like It Hot came out in 1959, a full six years after Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She had been through twenty-five films, thirty-three years and three marriages by then; three years and three films later, she’d be dead of a barbiturate overdose. How on earth did she manage to deliver a performance of such freshness?

 

Special Chabbis

The last time Neeraj Pandey made a movie was nearly 5 years ago. It was a taut, two-character drama called A Wednesday and gave its stars — Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher — such good material to work with that their sheer joy at playing these characters shone through. The film was not without its flaws, but during its running time, one could not help but stay riveted.

Ordinarily, a good deed such as a well-made, well-received first movie does not go unpunished. The result is usually a bigger budget, bigger stars (with bigger egos) and — sadly enough, more often than not — a bigger but not necessarily better film.

Neeraj Pandey has indeed gotten himself a bigger budget. It has most probably gone towards paying a bigger star (Akshay Kumar) and mounting a more lavish production (the film is set in mid-eighties India, and the period detailing is wonderful). But here’s the thing: it seems like he has spent a good bit of the time since his first film doing something extraordinarily strange: writing a good script. The result is a film that has only a few (mostly forgivable) flaws, works for nearly its entire running length, and is practically crowded with good performances.

Caper movies, like this one about a bunch of con-men who pretend to be CBI officers conducting a raid and make off with the ill-gotten gains of the rich and powerful, are as much about character as about plot. In fact, the more entertaining the characters and their interactions, the less you worry about whether the plot holds together. And since crime capers usually hinge on so many things going precisely right at precisely the right time, it is very easy to poke holes in the plot afterwards. This one is no different. What makes it work is the sheer joy of the ride. 

And this joy is to be found in abundance in Special Chabbis. Let me start with the lesser players and work my way upwards. There is the henpecked husband (Kishor Kadam) whose day job seems to be washing his wife’s clothes and generally trying not to incur her wrath. And a lady constable (Divya Dutta) who essentially has one line of dialogue, repeated at various junctures, and yet manages to make you want to see more of her.

The bigger players have even more fun, maybe because they rarely get to have this much of it. Jimmy Shergill, who exuded toughness in A Wednesday, plays an earnest cop whose palpable chagrin at having been duped provides the punchline to nearly everything he says or does. Manoj Bajpayee, who is enjoying a welcome return to form these days, brings a fearsome intensity to his role as the cop on the trail of these con-men, but leavens it with a dash of wry humour (his specifically worded request for water at the end brings the house down). Akshay Kumar, who seems to be enjoying a renaissance of sorts playing second fiddle to seasoned character actors, brings every ounce of his star power to the Danny Ocean role, but doesn’t upstage the movie by it.

It is Anupam Kher, though, who is the star here. There are moments when his character’s nervousness reminds you of the one he played in Khosla Ka Ghosla, while at other times he displays the ferocity of his character in A Wednesday. The funny thing is, although the various shades of his character here find echoes in other characters he has played before, rarely has he had an opportunity to do so much in one film. Or, for that matter, in one single take. Watch how his body language changes in the course of a walk through a corridor. This is an actor at the peak of his powers, having an absolute ball in front of the camera.

Watching these people act is a pleasure in and as of itself, but watching them interact is the key here. Notice Akshay Kumar’s actions and facial expressions during his phone conversation with Anupam Kher on the eve of the latter’s daughter’s wedding. Listen to Manoj Bajpayee’s conversation with his boss about his promotion. There is no greater pleasure in cinema than spending a couple of hours in the presence of interesting characters who enjoy each other’s company enough to talk like that.

 

 

Viswaroopam

Warning: Beware of… nah, nothing here is a spoiler, given what the trailers give away. But who knows what someone might take umbrage at, so beware, anyway.

Okay, so what exactly is all the hoopla about? Or is it just me who is unable to see the offensive material packed into a story about an Al Qaeda plot set in New York City, with significant portions set in Afghanistan? What am I missing here? Never mind, let me focus instead on the film itself.

The story, which shuttles back and forth between two timelines and locations, involves a diabolical terrorist plot and a bunch of intelligence officers who work to foil it. The frenetic pace, slick production values and nonlinear storytelling makes it seem a lot more sensible that it does now in hindsight. Which makes it no better or worse than a number of entertaining action thrillers we’ve seen come out of Hollywood in the past.

Here’s the thing: You want to tell a story where complicated machinations lurk beneath a placid surface. So you start by showing the surface, and then rip that veneer apart in a series of dramatic action sequences. It’s a fair storytelling strategy and has worked well in a number of movies in the past. Trouble is, it isn’t a good story-building strategy. Why is that? You see, the story didn’t unfold backwards from the facade. The facade had to be the result of a logical sequence of events.

So, when an effeminate TamBram kathak teacher (played amusingly well, I might add) suddenly turns out to be someone else entirely, you are appropriately surprised, but when you try to reconstruct the story later, you realize that there is no earthly reason why he had to masquerade as said effeminate TamBram kathak teacher in the first place. The answer, of course, is simple: it gives Kamal an opportunity to play that character.

Having said that, there is much to like about this film. It is, as I said, pretty slick. The portions shot in Afghanistan are riveting. I don’t know how true to life it is, but it feels mostly plausible and works on screen. Sometimes the plotting is not just complex, but also left to be complex — I like a film that trusts its audience to fill in the gaps and doesn’t spell everything out. In the midst of all this, there is room for a little humor as well, including a cute inside joke about Dasavatharam.

That Viswaroopam isn’t the film it could’ve been is cause for disappointment, but this isn’t a bad film by any means. I’ll say this, though: Had they made this film in Hollywood with, say, Matt Damon, you would most likely not have seen him play a possibly-gay salsa dancer who enters into a marriage of convenience with a nuclear oncologist.

 

Snuff

When someone asks me what genre Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels fall under, my usual response is ‘comic fantasy’. But the truth is, I don’t read Pratchett for the laughs anymore, although I will readily vouch for the quality of his humor. No, these days I read his novels for their humanism. This might explain why I often find myself returning to his Watch novels starting Samuel Vimes, even though there is enough and more unread material waiting on my bookshelves.

Pratchett’s style has occasionally been described as stealth philosophy, which basically means that, while he’s making you laugh, he’s also slipping in a dose of his brand of philosophy. With the Watch novels, it isn’t quite as stealthy – he would basically pause between punchlines and deliver his punches, as it were, and there’s no way you wouldn’t notice when he does that. But the laughs do keep coming. Feet of Clay, for instance, has an utterly brilliant section towards the end where the golem Dorfl has an argument with the priests of Ankh Morpork. By the time you close the book, you’re still chuckling.

With Snuff, he bothers even less with the humor, idly picking at easy targets like marriage and scat on occasion, but staying focused on the dramatic content. It’s as if Pratchett, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, is trying to get Sam Vimes to dispense as much justice (“just ice”) as possible in Discworld before his own memory fails him, and can’t stop to engage in trifling wordplay. Note that I say this by way of description, not complaint.

The more crucial difference, though, is Vimes’ self awareness and intelligence. In the earlier books, he was a bit more of an earnest plodder with clear ideas on right and wrong, and would figure it all out eventually. In this one, you see a street-smart cop whose obstacles are not so much internal as external.

Take the case of the Summoning Dark, which had one of the more intriguing cameos in Thud. Here it makes an appearance as a mostly benevolent demon that helps Vimes. There is something anticlimactic about that. Again, like I said, Vimes seems to have matured internally into a self-aware hero, and mysteries don’t mystify him anymore, so his problems are more, shall we say, operational now.

His wife Sybil has a bigger role to play in this one, and it seems like her understanding of her husband is also much better. She has always understood what he did, and sometimes even assisted him in her own way, but one rarely saw her taking it personally. There is a scene where she urges him to seek justice for the goblins, and her vehemence is surprising, even to those who have known her long. There is also more than one mention of their sex life, something I frankly didn’t expect in a Pratchett novel.

From a philosophical standpoint, though, what has distinguished the earlier Watch novels is Pratchett’s insistence on the rule of law, even though his novels are populated with people who deserve a more vicious punishment. However, the man has lately begun to favor the more visceral forms of dispensing justice, like the encounter between Andy and Pepe in Unseen Academicals, or the late scene involving Willikins here. And while these scenes are satisfying in the obvious way, they are also a bit worrying. It feels, strangely, like a cop out.

These quibbles aside, Snuff represents yet another strong entry in the always excellent Watch series of novels. Will there be another before a Terry Pratchett goes gently into that good night? Maybe not, but Samuel Vimes will walk into the darkness knowing (and I daresay a little bemused) that he has had, not only a series of books (mostly about poo and farm animals) read aloud by him and another series written about him, but even one dedicated to him. Blackboard Monitors have never had it so good.

 

 

Kadal

This is not going to be about how good an album Kadal is, or how Rahman’s doing a great job of importing blues and gospel to our shores. This album may not rank among his absolute best, but it is certainly very good. More importantly in the context of his recent collaborations with Mani Ratnam, melodious — his work in Raavanan or Guru or Yuva, while undoubtedly good, did not burrow its way into my head and refuse to leave.

My reason for writing this post is more personal. For a long time, especially back when I was a grad student, I related to songs like Barney Stinson related to women — I couldn’t pass a good one by without wanting to pick it up.

Then the urge sort of died down. I have no idea why, really. I could say something like, “Oh, real life got in the way.” Truth is, real life didn’t get in the way of anything I absolutely wanted to do. I just didn’t feel like singing. My skills, such as there were to begin with, have been slowly diminishing. So now I don’t sing too well, but I still remember enough to realize it, which makes it even more difficult to sing without wincing.

But over the last couple of days, I’ve been listening to Anbin Vaasalae and Adiye and desperately wanting to learn how to sing them right. Okay, given how important the backing vocals are to these songs, if I were to belt them out solo while driving to work, nobody will want to carpool with me for sure. And since, like I said, I know how badly I sing now, I’m gonna have to pull out my shruti box, get started with sarali varisai again and get to the point where, when I sing a note, it doesn’t sound like a probability distribution around that frequency.

Still, this need has not made its presence felt with such urgency in God alone knows how long. And for that, A. R. Rahman, I am thankful.

 

Madras Talkers

At this point, I suppose, I should define “we”. I refer to peole like me, born in Madras in the nineteen-seventies and ripening into cinematic awareness in the decade that followed, in Mani Ratnam’s decade. We are possibly the most qualified to write about Mani Ratnam. We might also be the least qualified.

– Conversations with Mani Ratnam: Introduction.

The above passage might serve to explain why I anticipated the arrival of this book like no other non-fiction book before it. I too count myself among the “we” that Baradwaj Rangan talks about. Born in the seventies, struck by the twin Sicilian Thunderbolts of Mouna Raagam and Nayakan. Felt, in a strange little way, disowned when Mani Ratnam went on to be owned by a larger audience after Roja.

Add to this the other “we” that a growing band of us now consider ourselves part of. The people who, come Friday morning, find ourselves keeping one tab in our browser constantly open to Blogical Conclusion and refresh it every few minutes to see if there’s a new post awaiting us.

Does it make my ilk uniquely qualified to talk about a series of conversations between Mani Ratnam and Baradwaj Rangan? Perhaps not so much, but it certainly makes the topic personal enough to want to write about.

With a book on film that involves a filmmaker and a film critic, one is tempted to get all meta and assign movie-like attributes to the book itself. This is not as much of a force-fit as it sounds. Conversations can be tricky. You have to strike a balance between covering the stuff you want to talk about and allowing it to flow in whichever direction the topic takes you. At its best, the conversation is smooth, yet wide-ranging. Sort of like a film that draws you in so completely that the maker’s skill occurs to you only in hindsight.

Cover art

The other aspect of these conversations is the comfort level that the two people seem to have with each other. The first chapter, which talks about, among other things, how Mani Ratnam came to be a director, is more in the nature of get-to-know-you chitchat. The tone is more biographical than conversational, but that is not to say that it is a dry, factual account. But as the book hits its stride, the dialogue gets more bilateral. There are questions where the man is predictably cagey, such as when he is asked about moving from Ilayaraja to Rahman. Then again, this isn’t meant to be a tell-all tome. For the most part, he is both articulate and detailed in his answers.

There are a few jarring transitions —  for instance, a conversation about Manisha Koirala in Bombay suddenly jump-cuts to a question on actors knowing how to enter and exit a scene, before getting back to her again. A conversation on tangled relationships in Dil Se suddenly gives way to one on the spiritual undertone to his songs. But these instances are few and far between. By and large, the shift from one topic to another seems organic and not forced. Towards the latter chapters (Kannathil Muthamittal onwards, especially), you just wish they’d keep talking.

The conversations are further enlivened by gentle tug-of-war between a critic’s intellectual viewpoint and a filmmaker’s refusal to let his work be mined for subtext. But this is not to say that Mani Ratnam is a purely instinctive filmmaker who doesn’t think in layers — his closing remarks in the chapter on Iruvar, and his comments on micro- and macro-conflicts in Kannathil Muthamittal are cases in point. His viewpoint, I suppose, comes from the fact that the final product we see is a function of what he originally conceived as well as what transpired on set.

Somewhere in the first chapter, Mani talks about the challenge of translating an abstraction (a scene as it is written) into reality (the scene as it is filmed) and being flexible about the things that change while not letting go of its essence. A macro version of the same idea comes up in the chapter on Mouna Raagam, where he reveals that the whole Manohar (Karthik) subplot was put in as a way of making Divya’s viewpoint more credible/palatable to audiences. Entertaining as it was, it might not have been there at all, had Mani made this film later in his career. Other instances, such as the case of a window in Kannathil Muthamittal, pop up here and there.

But at the end of the day, the fact is, we don’t notice the scaffolding. Or want to, for that matter.

 

Freeze Frame #158 (a,b): The Merchant of Venice

How the fuheck does The Merchant of Venice get labeled a comedy? Sure, it gets a bit farcical at times, and mercy (apparently) triumphs over revenge in the end and what not, but seriously? Didn’t Shylock deserve the right to kick Antonio’s butt seven ways to Tuesday?

The key moment, for me, is his wonderful monologue about the anti-semitism he faces. “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” he asks. Even earlier in the play, while you see Sherlock mostly through the eyes of the people around him, their criticism is laced with pithy self-awareness. But this is the scene where he leaps off the page and becomes the only character worth remembering from the play.

So when I heard a few years ago that Al Pacino was playing Shylock in a new adaptation of the play, I was obviously quite excited. If you had to pick an actor who could do justice to that impassioned rant, the man would be on top of a very short list. And his performance lives up to expectations.

Out of curiosity, I looked up other versions of that scene and came upon Orson Welles’ take from his unfinished 1969 adaptation. While Pacino is energetic, physical and angry, Welles sounds more sad than anything else. And if one had to bear the cross of anti-semitism (pun absolutely intended) for so long, I suppose both reactions are equally plausible.

For the most part, Welles is surprisingly unimpressive. But there is one moment where he scores. It comes when he puts in a little pause in the phrase “scorned… my nation”. For that one fleeting moment, you can see him being almost overwhelmed. Then he pulls himself together.