Bold, provocative and
confrontational, Ketan Mehta’s visceral feminist film Mirch Masala was all these and a bit more. Subtlety wasn’t among
its facets, and yet, ironically, its bluntness – a tight-fisted punch against patriarchy,
and the accompanying sexual oppression and abuse against women (legitimized through
traditional power structures) – is what made it all the more powerful. The tale,
based on a short story, is set in an arid hamlet in colonial-era India. The
village is marked by its disdain for anything that challenges status quo – the
then swaraj (self-determination)
movement against the British, education for girls, the right to dignity and
agency for women and lower castes, etc. – and the same is perpetuated by the
village headman (Suresh Oberoi) and slimy priest (Harish Patel). The vicious
and arrogant subedar (Naseeruddin Shah) represents the worst of the lot,
assuming it his birth-right to plunder the village for fun, brutally thrash his
servants, ogle at women and have his libido satisfied at will. Things take a
dramatic turn when his lascivious gaze falls on Sonbai (Smita Patil), a sultry
and defiant married woman lusted by the village. And all hell breaks lose when
she displays the gall and temerity to wound his fragile male-ego, leading to a
thrillingly shot pursuit, and the iconic climax that the film is led to upon her
taking refuge in a factory, guarded by an old watchman (Om Puri), where womenfolk
grind red chillies into powder. Both Patil and Shah gave electrifying
performances, while Deepti Naval, too, was memorable as the headman’s feisty
wife who, like Sonbai, refuses to go silently into the night. The film’s
dominant colour palette was red, symbolizing passion, sexuality, fury and
rebellion.
Director: Ketan Mehta
Genre: Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Ensemble Film
Language: Hindi
Country: India
Rian Johnson’s enjoyable
murder mystery film Knives Out is at
once classicist and modern. On one hand it’s a lavishly mounted pastiche on the
classic whodunits of Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle, where a gentleman sleuth in
a dapper suit makes use of minute clues, half-truths and circumstantial
conjectures for solving a case. On the other hand, it also had undercurrents of
social commentary, in its evocation of class politics as well as in its vocal critique
of the rising reactionary wave of xenophobia and majoritarian supremacy in
opposition to immigration and multiculturalism. The death of wealthy
crimewriter Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), on the night of his 85th
birthday party, invites the visit of Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a renowned
detective with a hilarious Southern drawl, to the Thrombey mansion in order to
investigate the potential crime. What he finds is a dysfunctional family of
pampered, devious and self-centered hypocrites who’d go to any lengths to
secure their share of inheritance – Harlan’s egoist daughter (Jamie Lee Curtis)
who started her business thanks to her father, her philandering husband (Don
Johnson), and their narcissistic brat of a son (Chris Evans); Harlan’s slimy
son (Michael Shannon) who runs his father’s publishing company, his right-wing
fanatic wife (Riki Lindhome) and their alt-right teenage son; Harlan’s widowed daughter-in-law
(Toni Collette), who’s a lifestyle guru and siphon’s Harlan’s money on the
side, etc. And then there’s Harlan’s gentle-natured nurse (Ana de Amas), a Latin-American
girl whose origin is hilariously confused as Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and
Brazil by the wretched family members. Even if too slight to be taken very seriously,
the film nevertheless was both funny and stinging in its parody and satire.
Director: Rian Johnson
Genre: Crime Comedy/Mystery/Ensemble Film
Language: English
Country: US
There have always
been stirring self-reflexive elements in the disarmingly radical cinema of Agnès
Varda’s – be it in her championing of leftist politics and feminism, or subverting
the conventional form of documentaries by permeating them with her memories,
opinions and experiences. Therefore, while watching Varda by Agnès, a charming retrospective – a “Greatest Hits”, if
you will – on her fascinating journey as a filmmaker, one can’t really think of
anyone more suitable than Agnès herself to make this; it was a trgic irony that
she passed away just a month or so after completing it. Compiled from a mix of lectures
and interactions; laced with her customary humour and irreverence; and interspersed
with delightful quips, anecdotes, reflections and reminiscences, this takes one
on a whirlwind tour through her pioneering filmography through nicely established
thematic linkages (some intended, others post facto), covering her fiction
features (La Pointe Courte, Cléo from 5 to 7, Le Bonheur, One Sings the
Other Doesn’t, Documenteur, Vagabond, Kung Fu Master, A Hundred and
One Nights, etc.), docufictions (Jane
B. by Agnès V., etc.), memoirs and diary films (Jacquot de Nantes, The
Beaches of Agnès, etc.), documentaries (Daguerréotypes,
Mur Murs, The Gleaners and I, Faces Places, etc.) and short films (Diary
of a Pregnant Woman, Salut les Cubains, Uncle Yanco, Black Panthers, etc.). Along with her
views on filmmaking, her effortless transition to digital, and her participation
in the fight for women’s rights, she also lovingly speaks about her late
husband Jacques Demy, her key companions and milestones in her journey, her passion
for photography and love for paintings, her tryst with experimental audiovisual
forms (Some Widows of Noirmoutier,
etc,) and, of course, idiosyncracies, mortality and legacy.
Director: Agnes Varda
Genre: Documentary
Language: French
Country: France
Marriage Story, a reflective and compelling depiction of martial breakdown,
and the vitriolic absurdities therein, couldn’t have begun on a more delicate
and elegiac note. The exquisite opening montage, through intimate voice-over soliloquays,
portrayed what Charlie (Adam Driver), a highly-reckoned New York theatre
director, and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), a recognized stage actress, love
about each other. Their marriage, however, are already past the point of no
return, as Nicole moves to LA, along with their young son (Azhy Robertson), where
she’s got a lucrative TV offer which might finally allow her to create an independent
identity her own; and before long their divorce proceeding starts, necessitating coast-to-coast
back-and-forth flights for Adam. The film has discernible influences of Bergman,
including a direct nod to Scenes from A Marriage, and Woody too, who, in turn, always wore his Bergman influences on
his sleeves; the stark (albeit luminous) photography, including conscious usage
of close-ups and profiles, the elaborate fade-outs and the evocative
organ-based score made that all the more perceptible. Be that as it may, it was
also a quintessentially Noah Baumbach film centered on NYC’s throbbing culturally
scene. The movie’s immersive arc wonderfully traversed the combative couple’s increasingly
ugly separation – contributed in no small parts by Nora’s gold-digging divorce lawyer
(Laura Dern); Charlie chose a surprisingly humane counterpart (Alan Alda) to
start with, but eventually goes nasty too (Ray Liotta) – and finally ending on
a quietly poignant note. It had an especially extraordinary, emotionally
charged sequence roughly three-fourth into its length – a blistering, explosive
argument, featuring astounding performances by Driver and Johansson (they were
terrific throughout) – particularly in the way the emotional pitch kept rising until
it reached an absolutely volcanic climax.
Director: Noah Baumbach
Genre: Drama/Marital Drama
Language: English
Country: USA
It’s difficult to be
a fence-sitter with regards to Mira Nair’s Salaam
Bombay! – either finding in it a brutally realist fable on street children surviving
and striving for tiny dreams (howsoever elusive or futile), or, contrarily, a
patronizing and voyeuristic outside-in fetishization of poverty. I’m inclined
to belong to the former bucket, albeit not unconditionally. The film’s key
focus is Krishna (Shafiq Syed), a young kid bullied out of his home and left
stranded by a travelling circus, who takes refuge on the footpaths in Bombay’s sprawling
red light area. There, as tea delivery boy to the brothel, he befriends the hapless
drug addict Chillum (Raghuvir Yadav) who’s nearing the end of his rope, gets
attracted to a teenaged victim of sex trafficking (Chanda Sharma), and develops
love-hate relationships with other other kids who’re more hardened on account
of longer exposure to this grit. Drug peddler and former pimp Baba (Nana
Patekar), single mother and prostitute Rekha (Anita Kanwar), and her little lonely
girl were other key characters. Nair – in a display of artistic integrity and
empathy – deployed actual street kids in the roles, and also setup a trust to try
rehabilitate them. The sequence where the sociopathic Baba casually torments
the vulnerable Chilum in front of a dumbfounded foreign journalist (Sanjana
Kapoor) unprepared for the casual display of violence, was lashing and
disturbing. And the natural performances by the urchins – in their street
lingo, their spirit of anarchy, their sense of small freedoms amidst the
squalor, their disdain for norms – was arguably the film’s best aspect, with its
grimy realism complemented by a sparsely used score comprising of violins,
sitar and tabla, and cinéma vérité
style photography.
Director: Mira Nair
Genre: Drama/Urban Drama
Language: Hindi
Country: India
