Caught by the Tides [2024]

 Few filmmakers have so masterfully blended profound socio-cultural upheavals with achingly intimate individual stories, and the inexorable flow of time with stasis, melancholy and transience, as Jia Zhangke. Caught by the Tides – with its episodic structure, zooming in on two outsiders drifting and reconciling over three segments across multiple years, inextricably counterpointed with China’s tectonic mutations – immediately recalled his two previous films Mountains May Depart and Ash Is Purest White. Jia, in a remarkable artistic choice, composed the first two segments by sifting through a thousand hours’ outtakes from three films – as well as deliberately shot additional footage with plans of converging them into a future work – viz. Unknown Pleasure from 2002, his sublime masterpiece Still Life from 2006, and Ash… from 2018; the final segment, shot during Covid-19 pandemic, was the only one filmed in present. Astonishing self-reflexivity aside, this radically conceived assemblage imbued it with fascinating additional textures and subtexts – be it the organic ageing of the two lead actors (Zhao Tao, Jia’s partner and muse, and Li Zhubin), or the changing visuals, viz. grungy and energetic low-fi videos in the first segment, bleak and meditative widescreen exteriors in the second, and recently shot digital images in the third. While it did have a skeletal narrative – a dancer (Tao) and her boyfriend (Zhubin) are separated when he leaves Daton to find work elsewhere; she travels to the site of the Three Gorges Dam to find him; and he eventually returns amidst Covid-19 restrictions – it also possessed long observational stretches and interludes like fly-on-the-wall documentaries and travelogue essays. Incidentally, while the mesmeric Tao hardly ever speaks, the film was a kaleidoscopic compilation of folk, pop and disco soundtrack.

Director: Jia Zhangke

Genre: Drama/Romance/Road Movie

Language: Mandarin

Country: China

The Seed of the Sacred Fig [2024]

 The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a fearless demonstration of how even the most intimate spaces – the confines of one’s home, familial bonds and private thoughts – aren’t exempt from paranoia, conflict and violence when one resides in a totalitarian theocracy. Through a gripping tale filled with urgency, fury and dissent, Mohammad Rasoulof as much chronicled revolution in progress as he defiantly participated in it. Having courted bans and arrests on multiple occasions, it compelled him to flee Iran and take political asylum in Germany to avoid draconian punishments. The film both directly and metaphorically examined the “Women, Life, Freedom” protest movement through a seemingly regular middle-class Tehran family. Iman (Missagh Zareh), the middle-aged patriarch employed with the country’s judiciary, has just received a big promotion, bringing with it better salary and a bigger apartment, as well as troubling moral consequences because – like a puppet – he must sign on documents which will seal death sentences. Consequently, his family – comprising of his doting wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), and independent-minded daughters Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki) – must keep his profession a secret. Meanwhile, massive protests and the government’s brutal crackdowns against it bleed into their home through disturbing found footage shot on mobile phones – which, in today’s times, have come to provide powerful counterpoints to complicit mainstream media – that the sisters secretly follow. Their physical separation from the turbulence outside gets breached when a college friend is grievously wounded, and the fault-lines within the family irrevocably escalates to disturbing proportions when Iman’s official handgun – in literal mirroring of ‘Chekhov’s gun’ – goes missing. Rasoulof’s polemical resistance was accompanied by terrific performances and a riveting script that unfolded like Matryoshka dolls.

p.s. Watched it at the 2025 Bangalore International Film Festival (BIFFES).

Director: Mohammad Rasoulof

Genre: Drama/Family Drama/Political Thriller

Language: Persian

Country: Iran

The Room Next Door [2024]

 Pedro Almodóvar’s first feature-length film in English, The Room Next Door – based on Sigrid Nunez’s What Are You Going Through – bore all the distinctive signatures of the veteran Spanish maestro’s serious-toned films. With its two complementary middle-aged women characters, blend of melodrama and artifice, lush visual designs, predisposition with mortality, and wordy script, one wouldn’t make any errors in guessing its director, even if – perhaps on account of it having been made in a cultural milieu far away from his home turf and in a language that he’s not fully comfortable in (thereby necessitating translation of his screenplay from Spanish) – it also felt tad stilted and mannered at times, and lacking in the kind of playful vibrancy that one finds in his best works. It, nevertheless, was engaging enough thanks to the commanding performances of its two lead actresses – Tilda Swinton (who’d also featured in Almodóvar’s tantalizing short The Human Voice) and Julianne Moore –, in the way it tampered its funereal theme with effusive emotions that bordered on the campy, and cinematic references ranging from Fassbinder and Bergman to Keaton and Rosellini. Ingrid (Moore), a bestselling author, and Martha (Swinton), an erstwhile war journalist – old friends who’ve even shared the same boyfriend (John Turturro) – are reconnected after many years when the former suddenly finds out that the latter is afflicted with terminal cancer. As they revive their deep friendship through old memories, anecdotes and regrets, Martha confides into Ingrid that she’s decided to end her life and requests her to be in the room next door when she does that. Almodóvar, interestingly, permeated the atmosphere with an air of mystery, even if the premise was unambiguously clear throughout.

p.s. Watched it at the 2025 Bangalore International Film Festival (BIFFES).

Director: Pedro Almodovar

Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Buddy Film

Language: English

Country: Spain

Camera Buff [1979]

 Camera Buff, which established Krzysztof Kieślowski as an essential voice in world cinema, powerfully evoked his rich background as a former documentary filmmaker as well as his sublime prowess in crafting profound social, political, existential and moral inquires through narratives. It also stirringly exhibited self-reflexive elements – be it his own early days as amateur cinephile or his ethical grappling with the repercussions of documenting “truth” in complex political climates that ultimately influenced his decision to switch forms – through Filip (Jerzy Stuhr), a once easy-going man, doting husband and carefree worker, who discovers a magnetic love for cinema, becomes an amateur documentarian, experiences political and existential awakenings at the cost of marital and professional stability, starts understanding both the vitality and predicaments of his images, and eventually decides to train his lens on himself. Four key moments shaped his journey – his impulsive purchase of a 16mm camera to film his new-born daughter; being commissioned by his boss (Stefan Czyzewski) to shoot their factory’s jubilee celebration and then coaxed into submitting that at a festival; confiding into his troubled wife (Malgorzata Zabkowska) that he wants deeper experiences instead of simple contentedness, thereby cementing their marital collapse; and a work of activism inadvertently leading to the expulsion of a senior colleague (Jerzy Nowak) he’s fond of. Shaped by exceptional performances spearheaded by the outstanding Stuhr, delightful use of wry humour in the script, and engrossing visual compositions, the film’s two particularly unforgettable sequences involved the airing of an immensely moving docu that he’s made on a disabled colleague and his instinctive urge to view his wife’s departure through a frame, and featured a cameo by Kieślowski’s great namesake Krzysztof Zanussi as himself.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of this film can be found here.

p.p.s. Watched it at the 2025 Bangalore International Film Festival (BIFFES). 

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski

Genre: Drama/Political Satire/Marriage Drama

Language: Polish

Country: Poland

The Brutalist [2024]

 The Brutalist is an impressively imagined epic – at once monumental and intimate – on trauma, hubris, immigrant experience, corrosive ambitions, and demythologization of the American Dream. Its novelistically structured form, punctiliously conceived Eurocentric aesthetics, and exhilarating yet distancing tone obsessively mirrored its brilliant but flawed protagonist, and the modernist but abrasive titular architectural style. The intricacy and exactitude with which the narrative unfolded made it appear as an actual biographical account, even if it was, at most, a film à clef; this bold combination of faux-verité and quasi-historicity recalled the two extraordinary recent films Tár and The Zone of Interest. It follows László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor and renowned Bauhaus-trained architect, as he arrives at the US and settles in Philadelphia after WW2; finds in Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) a wealthy patron who places him in charge of a significant architectural commission, but malevolently extracts his pound of flesh; and finds his fierce love for his wife (Felicity Jones) replaced with conflicted emotions when they’re finally reunited after years of forced separation. These are juxtaposed with the borderline insanity with which he builds the colossal brutalist memorial over many years, and his self-destructive tendencies accentuated by his unprocessed trauma, inability to assimilate and heroin addiction. His first glimpse of America – strikingly captured through an inverted Statue of Liberty – sets the film’s feverish mood, which was sustained through stunning visual compositions – shot on VistaVision and 35mm film stock – and compelling score that was alternately orchestral, jazz and atonal. Incidentally, contrary to what the film’s muted coda ended with, director and co-writer Brady Corbet made it particularly about the complex, ferocious and tumultuous journey that preceded the destination.

Director: Brady Corbet

Genre: Drama/Historical Epic/Film a Clef

Language: English/Hungarian/Hebrew

Country: US

Conclave [2024]

 Who’d have thought that a movie packed with ageing, pompous, conservative and hyper-religious men in ostentatious dresses could make for a taut papal thriller. Adapted from Robert Harris’ bestselling novel of the same name, Conclave was at its most entertaining when it functioned as a pulpy potboiler. When the pope dies of a heart attack, what ensues is one of the oldest and most secretive rituals – viz. election of the next pope. Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), as dean of the College of Cardinals, becomes the most powerful man in the Catholic church at such a time as this, and congregates the titular papal conclave at the Vatican City. The frontrunners are a liberal British Cardinal (Stanley Tucci), an ultra-orthodox and gleefully nasty Italian (Sergio Castellitto), a Canadian moderate (John Lithgow) who had a suspicious meeting with the Pope just before his death, an African-American (Lucian Misamati), whose win could be historic moment for the church, though ironically, he’s exceptionally regressive in his views, and an enigmatic last-minute arrival (Carlos Diehz) who’s been based in various war zones. It was amusing, bordering on the fiendish, seeing seemingly “pious” and “dignified” men concocting petty machinations at the canteen and corridors, squabbling with each other like schoolkids, and even resorting to Machiavellian ploys to win the coveted position. Along the way murky events – both within the sequestered chamber and outside – make the proceeding more dramatic. However, where the film faltered – which slightly undermined its delicious fun – was when it tried portraying moral seriousness, existential dilemmas and political correctness. Consequently, while Fiennes was excellent in his performance, his character was arguably the least interesting of the lot vis-à-vis his smug, hyper-competitive and power-hungry colleagues.

Director: Edward Berger

Genre: Drama/Thriller/Religious Drama/Conspiracy Thriller

Language: English/Italian/Latin/Spanish

Country: UK

Padatik (The Guerrilla Fighter) [1973]

 Padatik – the thrilling, fierce, sardonic and meditative final chapter in Mrinal Sen’s extraordinary ‘Calcutta Trilogy’, preceded by Interview and Calcutta 71 – was political cinema at its most blazing, dialectical and fearlessly radical. The electrifying work was infused with Godard’s self-reflexive style and Costa-Gavras’ pulsating aesthetics, in solidarity with the spirit of internationalism while embedded in the turbulent zeitgeist of 1970s Calcutta, powerfully advocating Marxist ideals and agitprop principles of ‘Third Cinema’ and cinema of praxis, and interweaved with dazzling formal and stylistic choices. Sen interspersed observational and conversational chamber sequences with energetic hand-held cams on the streets, documentary footage, newspaper reels, mock advertisements, striking protest photography by himself, Brechtian interludes, POV shots, jump cuts and freeze frames. The film consequently alternated in its championing of revolutionary fervour, class consciousness and political dissent; takedown of apathy, rigid obedience and shallow consumerism; and introspections on the Left confronting the state while grappling with internal conflicts. Splendidly shot by K.K. Mahajan and scored by Ananda Shankar, it follows a few days in the life of Sumit (Dhritiman Chatterjee), a militant Communist who’s been provided refuge, upon escaping from a police van, at an upscale apartment owned by a Punjabi-Bengali woman (Simi Garewal) who’s employed with an ad agency, sympathetic to revolutionary causes and engaged in feminist activism. Sumit’s inner turmoil – which turns towards disillusionment while stationed in the flat – is manifested through his long, intimate conversations with his hostess, changing camaraderie with a younger comrade, and his fraught relationship with his ageing father (Bijon Bhattacharya), a former freedom fighter and now an exploited factory labourer. Chatterjee’s terrific turn, and the film too, incidentally, made for a fascinating complement to Ray’s masterful Pratidwandi.

p.s. This is a revisit.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Drama/Political Drama

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Calcutta 71 [1972]

 In Calcutta 71, Mrinal Sen constructed a fierce and subversive examination of impoverishment, deprivation, exploitation and the seeds of revolutionary politics, with irony, eclectic influences informed by European New Wave and Third Cinema, and a powerful Marxist lens. Shaped like a multi-act piece, the second film in his magnificent ‘Calcutta Trilogy’ – bookended by Interview and Padatik – was as ferociously political and biting in its social observations as it was dazzling in its blend of formal choices, narrative devices and cinematic styles ranging from classical to experimental. Following an arresting montage, The droll prologue – in the veins of farcical political satire – finds the protagonist from the previous film (Ranjit Mallick) facing an absurdist trial for having exhibited anti-capitalist angst by defiling a mannequin, and featured a hilarious anti-proletarian war waged by the bourgeoisie. That segued into four thematically-linked episodes (adapted from stories by Manik Bandopadhyay, Probodh Sanyal, Samaresh Basu and Ajitesh Bandopadhyay) – a destitute family in the 1930s who’re forced to seek an alternative shelter from incessant rains; a family forced to meet ends through prostitution, while struggling to maintain middle-class respectability, during the 1943 famine; a group of rebellious teenagers smuggling rice by train, braving righteous cops and overbearing middle-class men; and a cocktail party filled with self-centred wealthy humbugs. The first three were made in the neorealist tradition, while the fourth was a quintessential Felliniesque parody. The film ended with a scorching agitprop epilogue where a young Naxal revolutionary, killed by the cops, holding the audience to account. The ensemble cast included Utpal Dutt as a sneering prosecutor, Haradhan Bandopadhyay as an irate judge, Madhabi Mukherjee as a troubled working woman, and Ajitesh Bandopadhyay as a pompous hypocrite.

p.s. This is a revisit.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Political Satire/Black Comedy/Omnibus Film/Experimental Film

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Interview [1971]

 Mrinal Sen made a fabulous entry into radical political cinema – blending plucky insouciance, subversive wit and searing angst – with Interview. It, in turn, laid the foundations for his blazing ‘Calcutta Trilogy’ – which also comprised of the scorching Calcutta 71 and the scintillating Padatik – and demonstrated his love for counterpointing Marxist discourse and dissent with formal bravura and postmodernist playfulness. The slice-of-life dusk-to-dawn premise is centred on the titular interview. A young, personable, middle-class guy (Ranjit Mallick) – eager to ascend the social ladder – has landed an opportunity for a lucrative job at a foreign corporation, thanks to his uncle. All he must do is arrive in a dapper Western suit. His plans, unfortunately, go haywire, as his only suit is in a laundry which is shut on account of a flash labour strike, and thereafter for being unable to remain insular in a crowded bus. The only option left to him, ultimately, is to arrive at the prized interview in a scandalously inappropriate attire. The film, interestingly, began with the dismantling of a statue representing colonial past and culminated with the disrobing of a mannequin embodying consumerist present, whilst the tone transitioned from wry and amusing for most parts to seething fury at the end. Around the one-third mark, the protagonist dramatically breaks the fourth wall while traveling in a tramcar, and sheepishly informs that he’s an actor being followed by a movie camera, his onscreen mother is played by Karuna Bannerjee (Pather Panchali’s Sarbojaya), and his story is real despite the artifice. This Brechtian departures, combined with satirical liveliness and ingenious use of street photographs and footage (shot by Sen himself), made it a work of impish, idiosyncratic audacity.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of this film can be found here.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Drama/Political Satire/Experimental Film

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Amar Lenin (My Lenin) [1970]

 While Ritwik Ghatak’s staunch political beliefs and leanings remained largely beneath the complex dramatic surfaces of his films – imbuing the themes and proceedings with additional context without making them overtly political – they were far more articulated elsewhere, be it in his writings or in his iconoclastic documentary Amar Lenin. Once a holy grail for Ghatak aficionados as it’d been rendered obscure by censorship woes and formal unavailability – it was, in fact, banned by the country’s Censor Board, which was eventually overturned by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi – and it continues to exist today in the fringes through low-quality bootleg copies, and denied public screenings on the rare occasions that anyone attempts to do that. What’s particularly ironic is that, this 20-minute work, made in order to commemorate the birth centenary of Vladimir Lenin, was anything but inflammatory or provocative; rather, made on a small budget, it was completely devoid of hyperbolics, belligerence and harangue, and its tone was gentle, restrained and quietly uplifting. “Jatra”, a traditional form of folk-theatre popular in rural Bengal that’re generally focussed on religious and mythological topics, was often used during the 1960s and 70s by Communist collectives and playwrights to raise social and political awareness; the docu begins with a footage of one such performance at a village, with Marx and Lenin in Western outfits but speaking in Bengali, and then ending with a joyous recital of L’Internationale in Bengali. A young farmer, upon seeing this, is inspired to read more about Lenin’s ideas and activism, and then takes a trip to Calcutta to witness the processions, events and speeches celebrating the centenary, and finally participates with other farmers in a land collectivisation drive.

Director: Ritwik Ghatak

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film/Short Film

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Thampu [1978]

 Aravindan’s gently observational, lyrical and understated docufiction Thampu delicately straddled between fact and fiction. Alongside its form and aesthetics that were shaped by verité and fly-on-the-wall filmmaking, through portraitures deeply rooted in social realities, fragmentary structure, poetic visual language, and startling instances of breaking the fourth wall, it manifested that through its making too. Aravindan travelled to a coastal hamlet in Kerala with few former circus artistes; they set up tent, called the villagers to view performances, and shot the acts juxtaposed with the audience’s enthralled reactions; the villagers eventually got involved in the preparations of an upcoming festival, which therefore led to closure of this setup that merged avant-garde filmmaking with social experiment. Its spare three-point arc – viz. a traveling circus troupe arrives from somewhere to a nondescript village; temporarily sets up shop, provides performances to paying audience during evenings, while practicing during the days; and quietly departs for some other destination – was accompanied with fleeting insights into the group’s long history, current financial challenges, and growing weariness among its older crew members, and interspersed with the aforementioned local festivities and existential crisis of a young guy belonging to an upper class family who’s at odds with his father on account of his love for arts and music instead of worldly affairs. The cast comprised of non-professionals as well as few professional actors like Bharath Gopi as the troupe’s brusque manager who wields his power over this motley group of impoverished, marginalized, disenfranchised and nomadic performers. Shot in austere B/W by veteran cinematographer Shaji N. Karun, it wasn’t surprising that Aravindan displayed such profound empathy for his subjects considering that, like them, he too existed in the margins.

Director: G. Aravindan

Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Docu-fiction/Experimental Film

Language: Malayalam

Country: India

Aghaat [1985]

 While Govind Nihalani’s films were always political, rarely were they so unreservedly Marxist as his compelling and immensely underrated Aghaat. With it he delivered a persuasive, smouldering and nuanced examination of union politics and class struggle. It also, in turn, completed a trilogy of sorts with two brilliant and better-known earlier films. He focussed on a pursuer of individual justice in Aakrosh, an enforcer of legal and vigilante measures in Ardh Satya, and a custodian and enabler of workers’ rights here. Additionally, aside from being fiery, gritty and with violent overtones, the protagonists in all three were driven by their deeply embedded sense of right and wrong and stubborn refusal to quit in morally compromised worlds. It began with a striking dance performance – allegorically demonstrating revolutionary spirit of exploited workers – performed by and for a factory’s union members. Enter Madhav Verma (Om Puri), an educated, conscientious and profoundly committed union representative who’s striving to secure bonuses and benefits with everyone’s long-term interests in mind. His job, however, is complicated on account of a rival outfit – led by self-serving rabble-rouser Rustom Patel (Naseeruddin Shah, in a cameo) and mobilized on ground by his thuggish henchman (Bharath Gopi) – which is fast poaching members through nasty sabotage and reckless promises. When a shopfloor labourer (Pankaj Kapoor) meets with a crushing accident, that ensues an especially unfortunate three-way tug of war with the company bosses who’re happy to play both sides, leading towards an inevitably combustible culmination. The film, buoyed by Vijay Tendulkar’s script that was alternately wordy, introspective and high-octane, was led by a dominant lead performance by Om Puri, and fine turns by Gopi, Amrish Puri, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Rohini Hattangadi, etc.

Director: Govind Nihalani

Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Crime Drama

Language: Hindi

Country: India