Simple human stories, even if they often earn
condescension from self-conscious cineastes, can at times mask understated
complexity through deftness of touch, narrative brevity, poignancy and
university, and thus be deceptively affecting. Argentine filmmaker Matias
Lucchesi’s refreshingly assured debut feature Natural Sciences might not, therefore, evoke explosive reactions,
but it nevertheless warmed the cockles of my heart. At its centre lies a marvelous
turn by 10-year old Paula Hertzog as Lila, a young girl obsessed with finding
her father who she’s never seen or even known. Hence, much to the consternation
of her mom and the principal of the boarding school she studies in, she keeps
making desperate attempts to undertake this seemingly absurd odyssey. Her refusal
to tone down finally compels her empathetic science teacher (Paola Barrientos)
to help her, and armed with the flimsiest clue imaginable, they embark on an
adventurous road trip to a shanty town, where they meet, among a few others, an
ageing and unwell loner (a brilliant Alvin Astorga), who’s been alone for so
long that he just doesn’t know what to do or how to react to this cute, perky
and incredibly stubborn, albeit tongue-tied, little girl who, to his utter
dismay, claims be his daughter. The film’s simplicity and minimalism, combined
with a subtle interplay between quirky humour and melancholia, and with a
harshly beautiful natural backdrop, made this a heartwarming watch. And, though
it would be ludicrous to place it in the same ballpark as Angelopoulous’ ravishing
masterpiece Landscape in the Mist, or
for that matter Szabo’s heartbreaking gem Apa
or Wenders’ mesmerizing road movie Alice in the Cities, its thematic resemblances to them, among a few others, is worth
noting.
Director: Matias Lucchesi
Genre: Drama/Road Movie
Language: Spanish
Country: Argentina
With Le
Bonheur Agnès Varda made a delightfully ambiguous film on marital fidelity –
a subject that has fascinated filmmakers from Bergman to Woody, Godard to
Truffaut, Antionioni to Chabrol, Kubrick to Linklater, etc. She also made a dramatic
break, stylistically, from her first two features, viz. La Pointe Courte and Cléo from 5 to 7, replacing the here-and-now realism in grainy B/W with a
dazzling, dream-like and synthetic vision in saturated colours. In an interesting
choice, Varda cast real-life couple (Jean-Claude and Claire Drouot) and their
kids, as a happy suburban family comprising of François, a diligent carpenter;
his beautiful, angelic wife Thérèse, who operates out of their cramped little
home as a dressmaker; and their two adorable kids. Right from the idyllic
picnic scene that the film starts with (picnics, in fact, act as a recurrent
motif), along with the displays of love and casual lovemaking that they so seamlessly
indulge in, their family seemed straight out of an old-world’s pet version of a
happy and virtuous marriage. Things, however, take a different turn when François
starts a heady extra-marital affair with Émilie (Marie-France Boyer), an
attractive, independent-minded postal worker. To ironically complicate this further,
when François informs Thérèse about Émilie, the wife, instead of flying off her
handle, accepts it with unsettling placidity – that, along with the sunny,
playful and enchanting visuals filled with a riot of colours and vibrant
imagery, made the tragedy that follows and the circle back to an eerie normalcy
thereafter, that much more disconcerting. This disarmingly sensual and deceptively
pessimistic film can therefore be taken as either boldly radical or deftly conservative,
and this paradoxical contradiction made it all the more memorable.
Director: Agnes Varda
Genre: Drama/Romantic Drama/Marital Drama
Language: French
Country: France
If Neflix India’s first original production, Sacred Games, is anything to go by, the
American giant’s vision towards creating high-voltage, provocative original
content, seeped in the Indian milieu, deserves appreciation. Adapted from
Vikram Chandra’s epic novel, the 8-part TV series set in Bombay’s criminal
underworld, had a sprawling and audacious scope, and reminded me of a couple of
co-director Kashyap’s previous works in terms of its temporal arc, viz. his ambitious knockout combo Gangs of Wasseypur 1 and 2,
and his gangster pastiche Bombay Velvet.
The series followed two dramatically different narrative strands – in the grimy
first strand, Mumbai cop Sartaj Singh (Saif Ali Khan), facing tremendous
hostility from his colleagues for refusing to support police brutality, doggedly
investigates the sudden emergence and mysterious suicide of former mobster
Ganesh Gaitonde (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), with the help of his loyal constable
(Jitendra Joshi) and egged by an ambitious RAW agent (Radhika Apte), but much
to the chagrin of his crooked boss; in the second – and highly engrossing –
parallel strand, the spectacular rise and fall of Gaitonde is chronicled, along
with the changing sociopolitical and religious face of the metropolis, as he
becomes a powerful mob boss starting with his takeover of the city’s garbage
dumps, his blistering affair with transgender cabaret dancer Kukoo (Kubra Sait),
his foray into Bollywood and even marital placidity, and the changing political
dynamics that finally undo him. Multiple volatile themes – nasty religious
chauvinism, gender identity, corruption, etc. – jostled for space in this bold,
gritty and chaotic series, aided by an array of terrific performances (Siddiqui
and Sait were especially smashing), deliberate pacing and an atmosphere that
was moody, noirish and brooding, and packed with operatic violence, simmering
sexuality, political defiance and pop-cultural references.
Director: Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane
Genre: Gangster Film/Crime Thriller/Political Thriller/Police Procedural/TV Series
Language: Hindi
Country: India
Filmmaking, apart from its ambitious, political and
experimental possibilities, can be a deeply personal exercise as well; Lithuanian-American
avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas championed that facet about cinema through
his intensely personal stories where the subject, or at least the observer, was
he himself. The sprawling, lyrical and beautifully melodic 3-hour “diary film” Lost, Lost, Lost – shot over an
astonishing period of 14 years (from 1949 to 1963) using his 16-mm Bolex camera
– was a complex, layered and kaleidoscopic chronicle of the incredible circle that
may define the journey of an émigré, viz. the deep existential crisis upon leaving
one’s homeland behind forever, settling into a place which is absolutely
foreign not just geographically but more so culturally, the constant inner tussle,
the eventual acceptance of one’s new habitat and finally a tentative assimilation
into it. Mekas, along with his brother Adolfas, arrived in NY as a 27-year old “displaced
person” in 1949, after the end of WWII, and settled in Williamsburg, Brooklyn –
no wonder, this area, with its diverse, vibrant and politically active emigrant
population, formed a vital aspect of this 6-reel film, even though he spent
only 4 years there before shifting base to Manhattan. Not just its temporal
arc, its choice of subjects too was richly varied and was portrayed through grainy,
brilliantly framed and spellbindingly captured B/W images of the city, its streets,
its peoples, its social fabric, its multifarious political immersions and its
simmering zeitgeist. The movie, accompanied with a score that ranged from
classical to jazz, was laced with bold political splashes (angry protests to
subversive stances), formal bravura, and absorbing personal revelations – loneliness,
melancholia, reflections and friendships with the era’s bohemian and artistic
crowd.
Director: Jonas Mekas
Genre: Avant-Garde/Diary Film/Documentary/Essay Film
Language: English
Country: US
The engrossing world of classic American noirs
is replete with tough-guy heist films where things end badly through a mix of bad
breaks. The Asphalt Jungle – adapted from
W.R. Burnett’s novel, and one of Huston’s greatest works, along with The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
– remains a fabulous, gritty, hardboiled, fatalistic, hugely influential and a definitive depiction of,
to borrow from the script, “a left-handed form of human endeavour”. “Doc” Riedenschneider
(Sam Jaffe) is a recently paroled career-criminal who’s hatched plan for a big
caper; the potential payoff interests the wealthy lawyer Emmerich (Louis
Calhern) and a crooked bookie (Marc Lawrence) to fund the expenses and hiring of
the crew for the job, which includes a disillusioned hooligan (Sterling Hayden),
a bartender and a family man. Things, unfortunately, don’t follow the planned
route as Emmerich, unbeknownst to the group, has planned a neat double-cross;
and that, combined with murders, nasty luck and an overenthusiastic police
Commissioner, push Doc and his crew into a corner from which there’re hardly
any chances of a clean getaway. Most of the men have their weaknesses – the street-smart
professional Doc in his attraction towards nymphets; the seemingly well-placed Emmerich
having gone broke through his affair with a teasing seductress (Marilyn
Monroe), etc. – which, in the end, take all involved to their doom. The
sparkling B/W photography, jazz score and taut script were wonderfully aided by
a host of fine performances led from the front by the brilliant Sam Jaffe, and
a top-notch Huston who magnificently created a realistic depiction of corrupt
cops, societal underbelly and crime as just another occupation, despite the many
limitations of the then prudish Production Code.
p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of this film can be found here.
Author: John Huston
Genre: Film Noir/Crime Thriller/Heist Film
Language: English
Country: US
