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I actually liked the trailor quite a bit. Nothing profound here but for the masala genre this seems honest and serious masala and not the comedy plus action thingy we get in the name of masala.
I didn’t mind the original Singham, but I still think the way forward for masala movies is the Khakee and Ghajini template…par itna dimag kaun lagaye jab kuch bhi chal jaata hai aaj kal.
agree completely.. the problem is that this kind of ‘brain dead’ masala (not that it cannot be enjoyable sometimes) is the only sort that’s found big acceptance in Bombay. Via the Telugu route principally. The Singam original is of course in Tamil. I have never been on the side of this brand of masala though again I enjoy some of the films in this regard. But also the cathartic dimension so central to the best masala work of the 70s is completely missed in this films which are almost solely about ‘effect’. So there are many recognizable elements from masala but it’s a body without the sole syndrome. Those two examples you quote are the only exceptions in this sense. Khakee was in a class of its own but Ghajini still had a narrative, real loss and so forth. Even in the masala-comedies of the 70s you often had this sense of loss. Take AAA for example. Happy endings for sure but not everything that is lost over time can be gotten back. Those films always insisted on this point. These contemporary efforts are just about a series of effects kept ‘on-the-surface’. But which is why they attract an audience. They’re not good enough to go beyond the initial, most of these are in fact terrible and the trending shows this as well. But the point is that those more serious films wouldn’t find too much of an audience either except on the exceptional day. We know this given all of the other choices of contemporary audiences. Where in commercial Bollywood today does one find real loss in any major film? Where does one find real catharsis? I’d go even further and ask this — where does one find ‘truth’ in contemporary Bollywood today?
Forget loss…nowadays we have YJHD where the hero has to decide whether to travel the world, or marry Deepika, or both. That’s some difficult life, but I think it’s also representative of the times we live in. The multiplex audience is not really interested in loss or anything remotely approaching 70s style melodrama.
agreed totally.. that film though watchable in some ways was appalling in every other sense. Not to mention other ridiculous stuff here. Deepika with glasses is supposedly ordinary and otherwise dazzling! Ranbir who doesn’t seem to be doing anything in life suddenly goes to Northwestern. Some years later he’s traveled every corner of the globe. Literally! In the old 60s, 70s films you’d sometimes have people go ‘I’ve been to London, Paris, NY’. It was a generic set, usually on 2-3 places mentioned, the statement itself was often taken as a boastful one (the character saying this was a wealthy father or someone). In YJHD though it’s literally true and said with the greatest earnestness. In one scene Ranbir rattles off the names off half a dozen US cities! Within a matter of a few years he’s become a top photographer who apparently does everything from the National Geographic kind of animal shoot in the Sahara to war-zone coverage! He gets back and it’s as if the the partying never ended. Compared to this most of the 90s stuff seems sober! And this is not about implausibility in general but the same within the frame of a film. A hero beating up ten in a masala film is not implausible because that relies on an epic framework where such things happen. We don’t ask how Achilles was able to do so much in the Iliad! Similarly we don’t wonder how improbably a bed trick in Shakespeare might be. Because it depends on the kind of world being created. The same guy beating up ten people would be very odd in the Satya kind of film which is why it doesn’t happen there! Similarly the YJHD world is an escapist one but it still is a normal world in this sense. But then you make a CD of a movie, keep it light enough, and anything works. Which is fine but let’s not pretend the success of such a film means anything for its quality. More importantly those who laugh at masala for lots of things accept the same within the multiplex cinema paradigm if not worse.
Satyam: Terrific point on AAA (I remember Q said something similar sometime back in one of his own pieces). Also the difference between Singham (or films of its ilk) and Khakee are very apparent in their action scenes as well- in the former, when Devgn is shown whipping a goon with his police-belt outside a cinema-hall, not only is the scene played out for comedic effect (they Telugu way of cutting the scene completely drains the seriousness out of it), but it also somehow looks like a very pretentious attempt at depicting masculinity/macho-persona. In the latter film however, when Bachchan does the same to Devgn in that climax-fight, Santoshi actually subverts any fake masculinity associated with it by editing the scene in a way (there is no scattershot cutting here- the ‘whipping’ is shown its full form which makes it look disturbing) where it actually makes the audience wince when they see Devgn getting beaten up (Santoshi, during the course of that very fight scene, shows how Bachchan’s character has turned from a simple, righteous cop in to a deranged monster). In a somewhat different sense, I recall a scene from Dum Maaro Dum where Abhishek decides to shove the condom-covered barrel of a revolver into a hoodlum’s rear. Here Sippy does something really smart- he turns a half-comic scene into something far more disturbing by making Kamath recite the opening lines of his father’s iconic “khaike Paan Banaaras-waala” song in a deadpan manner…it is almost as if the scene is a both a half-tribute and a half send-up to those AB films.
fantastic set of points here Saurabh.. I’d just add for each of those examples you’ve used that there is a certain unpleasantness to each sequence. In one case (khakee) the violence is a bit excessive in a literal or visceral sense, in the other it’s even more disturbing in many ways for all the specters it raises about the sorts of things that happen in police stations.
Having said that I have enjoyed some of these ‘Telugu’ moments as well in different films. But these sorts of actions sequences with people flying all over the place or the sort of cutting you’re referring to, all of this stuff becomes incredibly monotonous and mechanical beyond a point. Perhaps I would mind it less if I hadn’t already seen it in tons of Southern films.
Looks like Singham 1 on steroids, the action is definitely more grand here. If the story is 3/4ths as a good as the first one and the songs click then 150 crores for sure. Kareena looks pretty but useless as always. But the astonishing thing was the scene that listed all of Rohit Shetty’s hits- unbelievable! 7 Hits since 2006 and by 2016 (Assuming the SRK movie and Golmaal 4 actually happen), he’ll have 4 100 crore films and 2 200 crore films. That really is incredible considering Ajay Devgn’s track record without RS and also since before CE, SRK’s highest grossing movie was <120 crores.
The YJHD paradigm is accepted because it’s aspirational. The target audience wants to lead that kind of a life, and will conveniently ignore the lack of realism.
The action sequence at the bridge ( Bandra Worli Sea Link ? ) seems inspired from the Mission Impossible III.
While one of the scene towards the end of the trailer where because of a blast behind him, Ajay Devgn flies and hit’s a car on the right is reminiscent of a similar scene during the sequence of Bridge attach in the MI – 3.
Actually (And I can’t believe I’m defending Rohit Shetty here) as far as I know he hasn’t copied in terms of action in the past- the 3 fight scenes in Singham 1 were original as far as I know and the scene where he pulls a guy out of a car in the air was epic! So I am a little surprised that he copied from Mission Impossible so blatantly here.
From Hollywood maybe not but a lot of his action is exactly like that of Southern masala (the strands I’ve often referred to.. mostly Telugu, a lot in Tamil is like this too but they have other variants as well).
Okay but continue the Singham scene- Singham coming out of the moving car is copied but the better part of the scene isn’t-when he shoots the tire of the car and it flies into the air and he grabs the guy out of the car.
I’ll stand by my original point. whether some action scenes are copied here or not what in Bollywood is really original most of the time? In any genre? and I absolutely don’t have a problem with genuine films inspired by Hollywood sources or otherwise.
‘To travel the world, marry Deepika or both’ if Ayan Mukherjee can create an engaging drama around this dilemma then all credit to him. Why does a film have to deal with big ticket issues like death, loss of property or crime to be interesting? Hirani constructed a very interesting film around the theme of whether to study for marks or your passion. It’s so good to see Bollywood being liberated from its measly bag of subjects and stories. After all what big ‘loss’ is at the center of films like ‘ Annie Hall’ or ‘ Before Sunrise’? But what wonderful films! Some may like to be stuck in the paradigm of 70’s cinema. But some of us would like to move on. Please.
“‘To travel the world, marry Deepika or both’ if Ayan Mukherjee can create an engaging drama around this dilemma then all credit to him.”
that’s precisely the point isn’t it? Some of us don’t define what’s happening in this film as ‘engaging drama’. Actually the people who discover this in the film should share prizes with those who find the same in Akshay Kumar hits!
I don’t know about Akshay Kumar hits since I haven’t seen Rowdy Rathore or Holiday or anything in between. But I certainly found YJHD engaging enough to see it twice. As with Wake Up Sid, another charming film from Ayan Mukherjee.
didn’t mind watching YJHD. WUS was better though. But either way this is the lowest of bars. On Akshay Rowdy was very enjoyable. Haven’t seen Holiday yet.
This seems to be a good project on paper. However the vibes are similar to Dabangg2…seen it before types. So at best would cross the numbers of Singham. Kareena’s presence would be a setback, esp with family audience.
(When you see a film like this you cannot help realizing how flat, uninteresting and unedifying a film like ‘Shanghai’ is in comparison. )
Saw this lovely little film called ‘Sthhniya Sambad’ in Bengali directed by Arjuan Gaurisaria and Mainak Biswas ( had never heard of them before.) It is what I would characterize as ideal film entertainment for me. Intelligent, Insightful, Inventive. Almost nothing in the film follows a any beaten track. The film is set in a rundown refugee colony in Kolkata where a certain Paul and Paul are trying to build an apartment complex together with a vocational center called GV Academy. It films kicks to life right away as Ananya, a young girl shopping for her birthday present in the local market discovers that someone has snipped off her plaits. In the meanwhile there are five young men idling on a bench , one of them reading out the news about this incident from an English daily. He wonders what is a ‘ bijare’ crime where a girl’s ‘ bride’ has been cut off. He refers to a tiny dictionary which he carries with him to find out what ‘ bizarre’ and ‘ braid’ mean. A bunch of girls are practicing Tagore songs for the upcoming spring festival. A shy and gawky young man, Atin, is doing the flowery narration. He also happens to be an admirer of Ananya and writer of romantic verse. There is the local grocery shop with its stoic owner chatting through the day with a sadhu of sorts who can sing exquisite songs of Radha-Krishna love. The narrative tension in the film is born out of the guys from Paul and Paul trying to demolish a few houses which fall within the proposed apartment complex, a couple of suspicious characters carrying some mysterious merchandise in a bag ( it could be Ananya’s hair, we suspect) which they want to sell to a mysterious Peter in an up-marker Park Street Hotel and Atin going out in search of Ananya who is found missing from her room.
But the film is really about all the various characters and what they talk. The lines area riot. And none of them are filmy dialogues. They all talk normally as one would do in normal life. But boy are they funny! There are long exchanges between Atin and Dipankar-da, a well-to-do intellectual of sorts, whom Atin considers a kind of friend, philosopher and guide. There is a sequence where the grocery store owner is explaining to the Sadhu the function of Anne French. And of course there is the banter of crisp short , quirky, unpredictable sentences exchanged between the five friends on the bench. The boys on the bench, giving the impression, they sit there the whole day, is itself a fantastic visual design, and anchors the film wonderfully.
Just one example of the quirky, unpredictable writing will give you the flavour of the film. Like every day, one of them teasingly sings a line from a Tagore song when three girls from the colony pass them by. One of the girls turns back, daring him to repeat what he said /sang, and she even calls a local dada to take the boys to task. The dada checks out the line the boy sang to the girl and asks him, ‘ Do you know the full song? Sing.’ We expect a bungling rendition that the girls and we can laugh at. Instead what we get is an impassioned and impeccable performance of the song!
Towards the end, the film sacrifices narrative realism for poetic effect. But I couldn’t complain much. The final sequence with Mr. Paul of Paul and Paul ( played with masterly control by theater-person Bratya Basu) where he outlines his vision behind the apartment project , reminiscing about poem sfrom his boyhood textbook. The ‘ evil capitalist’ has not been presented this insightfully and this entertainingly before.
Through all this roller-coaster ride of quirky fun we cannot miss what it can mean to have one’s home or shop demolished by an earth-moving equipment at night, having to take shelter in a club house, all your merchandise strewn about on the ground. You cannot also t miss the inevitability of development and the need to build apartments and vocational training institutes.
When you see a film like this you cannot help realizing how flat, one-dimensional, uninteresting and unedifying a film like ‘Shanghai’ is in comparison.
I hope this song is the last we see of Honey Singh. But I thought as a song it is as good or bad as Lungi Dance was. The difference being SRK and Ajay-while SRK made that song with his dancing/energy/presence, Ajay here looks oh so bored…not that he can dance in the first place.
‘There is a lot of money involved in it but there are better ways of making money than just doing anything and everything. (For example) Dancing at weddings, it is not my job! Today actors are doing this, its ridiculous. ‘
LOL this guy can’t even dance in movies, why would anyone want him to dance at his/her wedding? All he can do is that Singham move or the Po Po from SOS. He’s obviously making a dig at SRK with this comment, he’s so bitter. Is it because they started their careers the same time and SRK is more successful? Losing the filmfare award to him back in the early 90s? Because he lost the JTHJ-SOS battle? Because SRK-Kajol make a better pair and have more chemistry than he does with his wife? Or because when SRK teamed up with his savior and friend Rohit Shetty to make CE, it made double of any movie Ajay Devgn-RS made?
SATYAMSHOT 
July 11, 2014 at 7:18 AM
Disappointing. Same dialogues, same bgm, and just louder. Kareena has no charm. Kajal agarwal was so cute and natural.
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July 11, 2014 at 7:56 AM
BO results will be the same and more 🙂 150cr on here…..AD looks good with those brooding intense eyes and there is a sincerity in his acting…..
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July 11, 2014 at 8:08 AM
I think this will suprise. I don’t think it’ll be in the range of CE 225 crore but it will do well. Devgan is always good in movies like these.
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July 11, 2014 at 8:10 AM
should not find difficulty in crossing 120 cr at least…
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July 11, 2014 at 8:14 AM
I actually liked the trailor quite a bit. Nothing profound here but for the masala genre this seems honest and serious masala and not the comedy plus action thingy we get in the name of masala.
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July 11, 2014 at 8:24 AM
Excellent and first movie of the year I feel excited about. As Krish said this is how a real masala fare should be.
With Rohit Shetty name attached here this has potential to cross over 180-200cr in terms of box office results.
Personally I have decided to watch all Rohit Shetty movies in theatre from now on.
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July 11, 2014 at 8:45 AM
Ture, his movies are totally paisa vasool movies.
Would love to see Salman in one his movies.
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July 11, 2014 at 9:43 AM
Watched the trailer again, I might check this out in theatre, looks like it’ll be fun. Thsi should do very well in single screens.
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July 11, 2014 at 9:56 AM
I didn’t mind the original Singham, but I still think the way forward for masala movies is the Khakee and Ghajini template…par itna dimag kaun lagaye jab kuch bhi chal jaata hai aaj kal.
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July 11, 2014 at 10:03 AM
agree completely.. the problem is that this kind of ‘brain dead’ masala (not that it cannot be enjoyable sometimes) is the only sort that’s found big acceptance in Bombay. Via the Telugu route principally. The Singam original is of course in Tamil. I have never been on the side of this brand of masala though again I enjoy some of the films in this regard. But also the cathartic dimension so central to the best masala work of the 70s is completely missed in this films which are almost solely about ‘effect’. So there are many recognizable elements from masala but it’s a body without the sole syndrome. Those two examples you quote are the only exceptions in this sense. Khakee was in a class of its own but Ghajini still had a narrative, real loss and so forth. Even in the masala-comedies of the 70s you often had this sense of loss. Take AAA for example. Happy endings for sure but not everything that is lost over time can be gotten back. Those films always insisted on this point. These contemporary efforts are just about a series of effects kept ‘on-the-surface’. But which is why they attract an audience. They’re not good enough to go beyond the initial, most of these are in fact terrible and the trending shows this as well. But the point is that those more serious films wouldn’t find too much of an audience either except on the exceptional day. We know this given all of the other choices of contemporary audiences. Where in commercial Bollywood today does one find real loss in any major film? Where does one find real catharsis? I’d go even further and ask this — where does one find ‘truth’ in contemporary Bollywood today?
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July 11, 2014 at 10:45 AM
Forget loss…nowadays we have YJHD where the hero has to decide whether to travel the world, or marry Deepika, or both. That’s some difficult life, but I think it’s also representative of the times we live in. The multiplex audience is not really interested in loss or anything remotely approaching 70s style melodrama.
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July 11, 2014 at 10:58 AM
agreed totally.. that film though watchable in some ways was appalling in every other sense. Not to mention other ridiculous stuff here. Deepika with glasses is supposedly ordinary and otherwise dazzling! Ranbir who doesn’t seem to be doing anything in life suddenly goes to Northwestern. Some years later he’s traveled every corner of the globe. Literally! In the old 60s, 70s films you’d sometimes have people go ‘I’ve been to London, Paris, NY’. It was a generic set, usually on 2-3 places mentioned, the statement itself was often taken as a boastful one (the character saying this was a wealthy father or someone). In YJHD though it’s literally true and said with the greatest earnestness. In one scene Ranbir rattles off the names off half a dozen US cities! Within a matter of a few years he’s become a top photographer who apparently does everything from the National Geographic kind of animal shoot in the Sahara to war-zone coverage! He gets back and it’s as if the the partying never ended. Compared to this most of the 90s stuff seems sober! And this is not about implausibility in general but the same within the frame of a film. A hero beating up ten in a masala film is not implausible because that relies on an epic framework where such things happen. We don’t ask how Achilles was able to do so much in the Iliad! Similarly we don’t wonder how improbably a bed trick in Shakespeare might be. Because it depends on the kind of world being created. The same guy beating up ten people would be very odd in the Satya kind of film which is why it doesn’t happen there! Similarly the YJHD world is an escapist one but it still is a normal world in this sense. But then you make a CD of a movie, keep it light enough, and anything works. Which is fine but let’s not pretend the success of such a film means anything for its quality. More importantly those who laugh at masala for lots of things accept the same within the multiplex cinema paradigm if not worse.
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July 11, 2014 at 11:01 AM
more later on all this.. have to get some stuff done and move on to an Apes screening!
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July 12, 2014 at 3:55 AM
Satyam: Terrific point on AAA (I remember Q said something similar sometime back in one of his own pieces). Also the difference between Singham (or films of its ilk) and Khakee are very apparent in their action scenes as well- in the former, when Devgn is shown whipping a goon with his police-belt outside a cinema-hall, not only is the scene played out for comedic effect (they Telugu way of cutting the scene completely drains the seriousness out of it), but it also somehow looks like a very pretentious attempt at depicting masculinity/macho-persona. In the latter film however, when Bachchan does the same to Devgn in that climax-fight, Santoshi actually subverts any fake masculinity associated with it by editing the scene in a way (there is no scattershot cutting here- the ‘whipping’ is shown its full form which makes it look disturbing) where it actually makes the audience wince when they see Devgn getting beaten up (Santoshi, during the course of that very fight scene, shows how Bachchan’s character has turned from a simple, righteous cop in to a deranged monster). In a somewhat different sense, I recall a scene from Dum Maaro Dum where Abhishek decides to shove the condom-covered barrel of a revolver into a hoodlum’s rear. Here Sippy does something really smart- he turns a half-comic scene into something far more disturbing by making Kamath recite the opening lines of his father’s iconic “khaike Paan Banaaras-waala” song in a deadpan manner…it is almost as if the scene is a both a half-tribute and a half send-up to those AB films.
LikeLike
July 12, 2014 at 7:03 AM
fantastic set of points here Saurabh.. I’d just add for each of those examples you’ve used that there is a certain unpleasantness to each sequence. In one case (khakee) the violence is a bit excessive in a literal or visceral sense, in the other it’s even more disturbing in many ways for all the specters it raises about the sorts of things that happen in police stations.
Having said that I have enjoyed some of these ‘Telugu’ moments as well in different films. But these sorts of actions sequences with people flying all over the place or the sort of cutting you’re referring to, all of this stuff becomes incredibly monotonous and mechanical beyond a point. Perhaps I would mind it less if I hadn’t already seen it in tons of Southern films.
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July 11, 2014 at 11:22 AM
Looks like Singham 1 on steroids, the action is definitely more grand here. If the story is 3/4ths as a good as the first one and the songs click then 150 crores for sure. Kareena looks pretty but useless as always. But the astonishing thing was the scene that listed all of Rohit Shetty’s hits- unbelievable! 7 Hits since 2006 and by 2016 (Assuming the SRK movie and Golmaal 4 actually happen), he’ll have 4 100 crore films and 2 200 crore films. That really is incredible considering Ajay Devgn’s track record without RS and also since before CE, SRK’s highest grossing movie was <120 crores.
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July 11, 2014 at 11:23 AM
The YJHD paradigm is accepted because it’s aspirational. The target audience wants to lead that kind of a life, and will conveniently ignore the lack of realism.
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July 11, 2014 at 12:45 PM
The action sequence at the bridge ( Bandra Worli Sea Link ? ) seems inspired from the Mission Impossible III.
While one of the scene towards the end of the trailer where because of a blast behind him, Ajay Devgn flies and hit’s a car on the right is reminiscent of a similar scene during the sequence of Bridge attach in the MI – 3.
Trailer
or
Bridge Attack Scene –
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July 11, 2014 at 2:49 PM
The bridge scene looked more like the one from Ronin (Deniro).
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July 12, 2014 at 1:06 AM
@z Had seen Ronin.. long ago… liked it a lot. Shall re visit some time soon.
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July 12, 2014 at 3:20 AM
Roony: Great to see you here after some time. I do miss your comments.
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July 12, 2014 at 4:59 AM
@saurabh I am always here, it’s just because of work i dont see films anymore.
Hopefully u have been keeping fine.
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July 11, 2014 at 3:06 PM
Rooney.. I must congratulate you for expecting originality in these films!
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July 11, 2014 at 4:39 PM
Actually (And I can’t believe I’m defending Rohit Shetty here) as far as I know he hasn’t copied in terms of action in the past- the 3 fight scenes in Singham 1 were original as far as I know and the scene where he pulls a guy out of a car in the air was epic! So I am a little surprised that he copied from Mission Impossible so blatantly here.
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July 11, 2014 at 5:56 PM
From Hollywood maybe not but a lot of his action is exactly like that of Southern masala (the strands I’ve often referred to.. mostly Telugu, a lot in Tamil is like this too but they have other variants as well).
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July 12, 2014 at 12:47 AM
Ah I don’t have the slightest clue about South Indian films besides Robot, Sivaji and Vishwaroopam but that makes sense.
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July 12, 2014 at 3:19 AM
Raj5: “….as far as I know he hasn’t copied in terms of action in the past- the 3 fight scenes in Singham 1 were original”
Ahem, ahem…see for yourself 🙂
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July 12, 2014 at 3:26 AM
Okay but continue the Singham scene- Singham coming out of the moving car is copied but the better part of the scene isn’t-when he shoots the tire of the car and it flies into the air and he grabs the guy out of the car.
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July 12, 2014 at 7:07 AM
I’ll stand by my original point. whether some action scenes are copied here or not what in Bollywood is really original most of the time? In any genre? and I absolutely don’t have a problem with genuine films inspired by Hollywood sources or otherwise.
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July 12, 2014 at 7:50 AM
off-topic: have some fun guys – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n6MHpKgyUM
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July 13, 2014 at 4:19 AM
‘To travel the world, marry Deepika or both’ if Ayan Mukherjee can create an engaging drama around this dilemma then all credit to him. Why does a film have to deal with big ticket issues like death, loss of property or crime to be interesting? Hirani constructed a very interesting film around the theme of whether to study for marks or your passion. It’s so good to see Bollywood being liberated from its measly bag of subjects and stories. After all what big ‘loss’ is at the center of films like ‘ Annie Hall’ or ‘ Before Sunrise’? But what wonderful films! Some may like to be stuck in the paradigm of 70’s cinema. But some of us would like to move on. Please.
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July 13, 2014 at 7:54 AM
“‘To travel the world, marry Deepika or both’ if Ayan Mukherjee can create an engaging drama around this dilemma then all credit to him.”
that’s precisely the point isn’t it? Some of us don’t define what’s happening in this film as ‘engaging drama’. Actually the people who discover this in the film should share prizes with those who find the same in Akshay Kumar hits!
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July 13, 2014 at 8:29 AM
I don’t know about Akshay Kumar hits since I haven’t seen Rowdy Rathore or Holiday or anything in between. But I certainly found YJHD engaging enough to see it twice. As with Wake Up Sid, another charming film from Ayan Mukherjee.
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July 13, 2014 at 9:17 AM
didn’t mind watching YJHD. WUS was better though. But either way this is the lowest of bars. On Akshay Rowdy was very enjoyable. Haven’t seen Holiday yet.
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July 13, 2014 at 2:27 PM
This seems to be a good project on paper. However the vibes are similar to Dabangg2…seen it before types. So at best would cross the numbers of Singham. Kareena’s presence would be a setback, esp with family audience.
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July 26, 2014 at 4:22 AM
Kareena’s presence a setback for family audience. Why for family audience? Her presence did not affect 3 Idiots or Talaash or Bodyguard or Jab We Met.
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July 25, 2014 at 10:14 AM
(When you see a film like this you cannot help realizing how flat, uninteresting and unedifying a film like ‘Shanghai’ is in comparison. )
Saw this lovely little film called ‘Sthhniya Sambad’ in Bengali directed by Arjuan Gaurisaria and Mainak Biswas ( had never heard of them before.) It is what I would characterize as ideal film entertainment for me. Intelligent, Insightful, Inventive. Almost nothing in the film follows a any beaten track. The film is set in a rundown refugee colony in Kolkata where a certain Paul and Paul are trying to build an apartment complex together with a vocational center called GV Academy. It films kicks to life right away as Ananya, a young girl shopping for her birthday present in the local market discovers that someone has snipped off her plaits. In the meanwhile there are five young men idling on a bench , one of them reading out the news about this incident from an English daily. He wonders what is a ‘ bijare’ crime where a girl’s ‘ bride’ has been cut off. He refers to a tiny dictionary which he carries with him to find out what ‘ bizarre’ and ‘ braid’ mean. A bunch of girls are practicing Tagore songs for the upcoming spring festival. A shy and gawky young man, Atin, is doing the flowery narration. He also happens to be an admirer of Ananya and writer of romantic verse. There is the local grocery shop with its stoic owner chatting through the day with a sadhu of sorts who can sing exquisite songs of Radha-Krishna love. The narrative tension in the film is born out of the guys from Paul and Paul trying to demolish a few houses which fall within the proposed apartment complex, a couple of suspicious characters carrying some mysterious merchandise in a bag ( it could be Ananya’s hair, we suspect) which they want to sell to a mysterious Peter in an up-marker Park Street Hotel and Atin going out in search of Ananya who is found missing from her room.
But the film is really about all the various characters and what they talk. The lines area riot. And none of them are filmy dialogues. They all talk normally as one would do in normal life. But boy are they funny! There are long exchanges between Atin and Dipankar-da, a well-to-do intellectual of sorts, whom Atin considers a kind of friend, philosopher and guide. There is a sequence where the grocery store owner is explaining to the Sadhu the function of Anne French. And of course there is the banter of crisp short , quirky, unpredictable sentences exchanged between the five friends on the bench. The boys on the bench, giving the impression, they sit there the whole day, is itself a fantastic visual design, and anchors the film wonderfully.
Just one example of the quirky, unpredictable writing will give you the flavour of the film. Like every day, one of them teasingly sings a line from a Tagore song when three girls from the colony pass them by. One of the girls turns back, daring him to repeat what he said /sang, and she even calls a local dada to take the boys to task. The dada checks out the line the boy sang to the girl and asks him, ‘ Do you know the full song? Sing.’ We expect a bungling rendition that the girls and we can laugh at. Instead what we get is an impassioned and impeccable performance of the song!
Towards the end, the film sacrifices narrative realism for poetic effect. But I couldn’t complain much. The final sequence with Mr. Paul of Paul and Paul ( played with masterly control by theater-person Bratya Basu) where he outlines his vision behind the apartment project , reminiscing about poem sfrom his boyhood textbook. The ‘ evil capitalist’ has not been presented this insightfully and this entertainingly before.
Through all this roller-coaster ride of quirky fun we cannot miss what it can mean to have one’s home or shop demolished by an earth-moving equipment at night, having to take shelter in a club house, all your merchandise strewn about on the ground. You cannot also t miss the inevitability of development and the need to build apartments and vocational training institutes.
When you see a film like this you cannot help realizing how flat, one-dimensional, uninteresting and unedifying a film like ‘Shanghai’ is in comparison.
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July 25, 2014 at 11:00 AM
thanks, hadn’t heard of this.. will try and check it out..
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July 25, 2014 at 2:58 PM
Couple of typos in my last post: The film is ‘ Sthaniya Sambad”. The directors are: Arjun Gourisaria and Moinak Biswas
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August 1, 2014 at 11:39 AM
I hope this song is the last we see of Honey Singh. But I thought as a song it is as good or bad as Lungi Dance was. The difference being SRK and Ajay-while SRK made that song with his dancing/energy/presence, Ajay here looks oh so bored…not that he can dance in the first place.
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August 1, 2014 at 11:56 AM
Honey Singh’s got some fun dance songs (no worse or no better than most Top 40 songs in America) but this is terrible.
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August 13, 2014 at 3:30 PM
‘There is a lot of money involved in it but there are better ways of making money than just doing anything and everything. (For example) Dancing at weddings, it is not my job! Today actors are doing this, its ridiculous. ‘
Film Companion In conversation with the director and Ajay Devgn
Nice watch !
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August 13, 2014 at 4:08 PM
LOL this guy can’t even dance in movies, why would anyone want him to dance at his/her wedding? All he can do is that Singham move or the Po Po from SOS. He’s obviously making a dig at SRK with this comment, he’s so bitter. Is it because they started their careers the same time and SRK is more successful? Losing the filmfare award to him back in the early 90s? Because he lost the JTHJ-SOS battle? Because SRK-Kajol make a better pair and have more chemistry than he does with his wife? Or because when SRK teamed up with his savior and friend Rohit Shetty to make CE, it made double of any movie Ajay Devgn-RS made?
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August 13, 2014 at 4:15 PM
Dancing at people’s weddings is no worse than acting in movies like Son of Sardar lol
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August 13, 2014 at 3:44 PM
It’s not a coincidence that ajay Devgn can’t dance to safe his life!
Or can’t compere or do anything worthwhile in either a dance show or an event
Unsurprisingly u will also see sunny deol and all non dancers making similar claims
It’s good though to talk about this ‘principled stance’ of not working for money or dancing at weddings
Btw what the hell is so different from dancing in film songs and at weedings…it’s essentially the job of a jester aka ‘entertainer’ aka performer
It’s like some hookers saying we do everything but ‘kiss’ (have heard this can’t confirm!)
This movie should make 200 cr(wh)ores going by all the hoopla –haven’t seen singham1 movie or singham 2 promo !
But seems meh
Ps:
And btw why the heck is Kareena still around ??
Those finding Kareena attractive should be sent for hormonal analysis
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