Human behaviour is not always rational; compassion is a rarity while acts of cruelty and the ensuing injustice and suffering are more dominant in human society – this was the predominant theme in Robert Bresson’s much acclaimed and deeply humanistic drama Au Hasard Balthazar. This deceptively simple and seemingly allegorical Christian tale had a donkey as both an important character as also a symbol of its themes. Christened Balthazar by a young girl who becomes attached to it, the movie follows the proceedings in a village from the point of view of the animal over the course of its long life, which sees everything and experiences both love and maltreatment by those around it with quiet acceptance and resignation. The characters surrounding it – be it the frivolous and rebellious young lady Marie or the delinquent and troublemaking young man she is attracted to. Balthazar’s ownership gets transferred to a number of people over the course of its life, and each new ownership ends up providing layered commentary and observations on human life and behaviour. The scene where the donkey quietly dies remains a powerful cinematic moment indeed. Minimalist in tone and execution, the film tells its various stories largely through images and long moments of silence, with sparse usage of music or any dramatic effects. Acting too forms a largely trivial aspect of the movie, and consequently it would be meaningless to search for any powerhouse performances in it. Though the outer calm that permeates it has been subtly juxtaposed with inner spiritual turbulence and discordance, its seemingly tranquil nature and detachedness can also be a tad misleading and even simplistic to those unwilling to dig deep.
Director: Robert Bresson
Genre: Drama/Religious Drama/Rural Drama
Language: French
Country: France
Royal Bengali Rahasya wasn’t just one of the most cerebral stories featuring Satyajit Ray’s immensely popular creation – private investigator Feluda, but also one of the best of the lot. Sandip Ray chose this wonderful mystery novel as his fifth Feluda-outing. Though all his Feluda adaptations pales in comparison to the ones made by his illustrious father, but with each film one would note steady improvements, and that trend has continued with this one too. The delectably captivating plot, the famous Royal Bengali Tiger forms an integral part of which, involves Prodosh C. Mitter aka Feluda (Sabyasachi Chakraborty), taking a trip to the dense forests of North Bengal along with his trusted allies – his cousin brother Topshe (Saheb Bhattacharya), and novelist friend Lal Mohan Ganguly aka Jatayu (Bibhu Bhattacharya), on the invitation of one Mahitosh Singha Roy, the current patriarch of a family which is renowned for the string of fearless hunters it has produced. The initial intent was to spend some good time in the jungles and to solve a tantalizingly difficult riddle that could very well provide the clues to a family treasure. However, things turn ugly, leading to murder and the opening of a can of worms where the Singha Roy family is concerned. Sabyasachi is getting a tad too old for the role of the sleuth, but he is quite solid as always. Incidentally, Bibhu Bhattacharya, someone who had found it difficult to find acceptance among the Bengali populace for his caricaturish performances in a role that had been immortalized by Santosh Dutta in Sonar Kella and Joi Baba Felunath, expired soon after completing his dubbing for the movie.
Director: Sandip Ray
Genre: Thriller/Mystery/Detective Film
Language: Bengali
Country: India
The Adventures of Tintin is a fine illustration of why Steven Spielberg is considered an apotheosis by movie-goers around the world. It would be easy to dismiss his live-action animation featuring the legendary and ageless Belgian journalist as a movie devoid of any great intelligence or cinematic depth or character arc. But, in similar veins to some of his other blockbusters like, say, Jurassic Park, it would be pretentious or dishonest of me to summarily dismiss it or ignore its undeniable entertainment-quotient. I’ve been an ardent fan of Tintin comic books right since when I was a kid, and that was enough to pull me to the theatre to watch its cinematic rendition. However, I was in for a surprise when, shortly into the movie I realized that, unlike my earlier understanding that Crab with the Golden Claws and Secret of the Unicorn have been adapted “as it is”, they have been fused into a single story by the director, with the finale of Red Rackam’s Treasure thrown in too. Though this angered the Tintin-aficionado in me, it was not difficult to appreciate the director’s genius at extracting the best out of the two disparate books and turning the ensuing storyline into a fun-filled adventure-soaked joyride. Spielberg once again displayed his adeptness at the technological side of movie-making, by making this a sumptuous visual splendour filled with enough brilliant animation effects, great set-ups and great editing, which, combined with the kinetic pacing and light-hearted humour, kept me thoroughly engaged. The sequence where the inimitable Captain Haddock animatedly chronicles the terrific duel between Sir Francis Haddock and Red Rackam, did bring fond back memories of the hours I’ve spent with Hergé’s immortal creation as a young boy.
Director: Steven Spielberg
Genre: Animation/Adventure/Comedy
Language: English
Country: US
Mani Ratnam has often been referred to as a ‘popcorn auteur’, and Nayakan, regarded by most as his best work, provides a great elucidation of that. He infused elements of both arthouse and mainstream in it, thus making it appear as a highbrow film from a popular standpoint. This is a tale of how Velu, a young Tamilian boy, goes on to become a powerful gangster and a ‘Robin Hood’ figure for poor slum-dwellers in the city of Bombay. Kamal Hasan provided a superb and layered performance as the mobster with a heart – especially in his seamless portrayal of Velu’s journey from an idealistic young man to an all-powerful patriarch via personal tragedies. But the movie doesn’t seem to have aged very well. Further, it provided enough moments of déjà vu for someone like me who has watched Coppola’s Godfather trilogy. Though based on the real-life story of Varadarajan Mudaliar, the number of sequences and themes ‘inspired’ from each of the three Godfather films made it seem like a compressed and Indianized version of the Corleone-saga. It suffers from a few more pitfalls as well – poorly developed characters apart from that of the protagonist, incoherence and abruptness in some of the plot developments (as in the police officer who’s chasing Velu with such fury as to make one wonder if there’s some bad blood between the two), convenient usage of deux ex machina to create emotional tension, a rather lackluster background music by the renowned Illayaraja, subpar production values (specifically, editing), etc. Thus, despite the copious concoction of melodrama, and standard mainstream tropes and clichés, with faux-realism, moments of grittiness and violence, and the epic nature of the storyline, made this a reasonably engaging film, and also provided an apt illustration as to why the director has earned the rather pejorative epithet mentioned earlier.
Director: Mani Ratnam
Genre: Drama/Gangster Film/Family Drama/Urban Drama
Language: Tamil/Hindi
Country: India
Though made three years after the first chapter, Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom II started nearly from where the earlier season (The Kingdom) had left off. As in the first season, this too takes place in the titular Copenhagen hospital, and is a mix of horror and black comedy. However, where this deviates is in the proportion of dark humour in the aforementioned mix, and the degree of absurdism. The elderly "medium” is relentless as ever in getting to the bottom of the hospital’s supernatural contents; meanwhile the other characters have become parodies of their earlier selves – the CMO is now a mental wreck seeking psychiatric help from a nutcase, the Chief Neurosurgeon is more incorrigible than ever before especially in his quest towards averting criminal prosecution for a botched surgery, the junior doctor gets a first-hand experience in resurrection, the latter’s fiancé has given birth to a grotesquely deformed baby, and so forth. Where the first installment felt like a breath of fresh air and boasted of a superb atmosphere, this felt more like an in-your-face display of the Danish provocateur’s twisted sense of humour and playfulness. Consequently, it was difficult to take it too seriously, leave alone qualifying it as even remotely ingenious. The acting continued to be uniformly good, as was the pacing – the regularity with which new developments occur would keep one glued. Unfortunately, whereas, despite the open ending, the first season had a sense of closure and worked as a standalone story, the second season left me disappointed it finished off abruptly. Apparently von Trier had plans for a third season but couldn’t go through with it because of untimely demises of a number of key actors – but either way, that was not good news for me as a viewer.
Director: Lars von Trier
Genre: Horror/Black Comedy/TV Miniseries
Language: Danish
Country: Denmark
Most people might be more aware of Run Lola Run than Blind Chance, but cinephiles ought to know that the template for the pulsating thriller by Tom Twyker was provided by this Krzysztof Kieslowski gem. Despite being one of his earliest movies as well as one of the few plot-dependent works of his career (owing to the unique concept it relies on in driving the narrative forward), most of the archetypes that we’ve come to identify his movies with are present here – sensitive storytelling and observations, a strongly palpable sense of humanism permeating the film, great character arcs, excellent depiction of the mundaneness of everyday life, narrative looping, among others. The film’s crucial moment occurs when Witek, a young Polish medical student who has taken a break from academia in order to sort out his priorities in life, is running like hell in order to catch a departing train, and the director takes us to three distinct and alternate futures for the young man based on the outcomes there at the railway station. The first arc sees him becoming an important keg in the Party or establishment, while in the second he takes the diametrically opposite route by becoming a part of the underground political resistance; in the third he chooses the most conventional path by opting to complete his medical degree. On one hand this gently paced and beautifully scored movie managed to be a terrific commentary and perhaps even an underhanded satire on the country’s socio-politic climate (a striking departure given the relatively more covert political stances of most of his renowned works) – which resulted in it being suppressed for 7 years by the Polish censor board, while on the other it raised haunting and pertinent philosophical questions on the role of choice vis-à-vis chance in shaping one’s life.
p.s. My latest review of this film can be found here.
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Psychological Drama
Language: Polish
Country: Poland
