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Comedy shows with no laughter track
Note: Admittedly, as the list keeps growing, there will be shows which I'd add even though I didn't find them funny or those that I haven't even watched. Those that I enjoyed watching will have a little comment suggesting that.
The Herzog sequence
Great films from around the world
Directors:
Werner Herzog: 12 films Akira Kurosawa: 9 films Alfred Hitchcock & Takashi Miike: 8 films Martin Scorsese: 6 films Satyajit Ray, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovskiy: 5 films each Wong Kar-Wai, Julio Medem, Singeetham Srinivasa Rao, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Pedro Almodovar, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Sergio Leone, Shion Sono, Francis Ford Coppola, David Fincher, Quentin Tarantino, Stanley Kubrick: 3 films each
Decades: '00s: 1 '20s: 3 '30s: 3 '40s: 11 '50s: 23 '60s: 42 '70s: 30 '80s: 30 '90s: 40 '00s: 55 '10s: 31
Earliest film: A Trip to the Moon (1902) Newest film: Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum (2017)
Incredible India
1. Films are made in so many different languages 2. Not many come with subtitles 3. Quite a number of old films have either been lost to wear or have simply been lost. 4. Accessibility is still a major problem for non-mainstream films from before 2000.
I am as of now loath to include films like Pather Panchali or the rest of its Apu Trilogy brethren as they are so popular anyway. Maybe once this list goes close to a 100 films I'll do it. Of course, in no way does it mean they aren't great films.
Note: List not in any particular order
Reviews
After Life (2019)
Poignant and funny
This is an excellent return to form for Ricky Gervais whose earlier ventures weren't exceptional. After Life is about Gervais' quintessential middle-aged man who has lost his wife to cancer.
He struggles to cope with the loss and finds ways to hurt people around him. This would have been cringe-worthy in earlier shows of his, but here it comes across as poignant and very affecting.
Chekka Chivantha Vaanam (2018)
Should have been a longer film
4 major stars plus a few more are squeezed into a 140 minute timeline.
Most of them have moments which they own but it doesn't make them full characters. This would have worked better as a longer film with them being etched better.
Still, this is a decent film. Arvind Swami sort of wades through a unsurprising first half and comes into his own as the action builds up. Jothika gets exactly one terrific scene. Vijay Sethupathi is very good but he is one of those who suffers from a slightly incomplete characterisation. Arun Vijay and Simbu are ok in their roles.
Kothanodi (2015)
Mother's Day
Based on folk tales, this Assamese film weaves four stories together in an interesting mix of whimsy and depth. Each story is bizarre and thought provoking at the same time. Some are situated close to each other geographically and appear to trod the same tracts of land, but are in fact stories all alone. Some end predictably following long stretches of jaw- drop surprise while others go the opposite way.
A woman is followed by a fruit, an evil stepmother takes advantage of her husband's absence, a man captures a python so as to marry it off to his daughter and a man keeps burying his newborn babies. That's about as basic a premise as it is. Shot beautifully, Kothanodi soars wildly and is an absolute joy to watch. It reminded me of my childhood which was spent in the company of Jataka Tales and the Panchatantra. Much recommended.
Death of a Gentleman (2015)
For the love of the game
Death of a Gentleman starts off as an observation of the health of Test cricket and segues into the murky world of its administration and administrators. Giles Clarke of the ECB comes across as an incompetent and arrogant man at best, N Srinivasan does slightly better than him but anyone following Indian cricket for long enough know about his shadow of murk. All this is sandwiched between a tenuous hook in the form of Ed Cowan who enters and exits international cricket.
I felt the two different worlds, that of the cricket of the players and its fans and that of the political playground of the sport never quite gelled well enough (like in real life). While Cowan's story was an affecting one, it just feels too feeble because of the sinister machinations the films begins to follow on the side. Once Sam Collins and Jarrod Kimber get into the investigative part of the film, there really is very little room for the emotional core.
I also found the slight dramatisation of the nexus a bit weak and it is not too difficult to see why. The story of the boards need not be dramatised. It is very clearly a game of politics and manipulation at the administrative level. These are minor quibbles though.
For someone who has known this game for most of my life, this came as a reminder of what is wrong with the sport. Clarke at one point hedges his bet on the sub-continent loving cricket in the future too. He, and administrators like him, are like ostriches with their head stuck in sand; except, they're also searching for gold at the same time.
This film may have been made better had they planned for it, but I doubt it would have done any more than what it does now. This is film for every cricket fan to watch.
Offret (1986)
Of belief, art and sacrifice
This turned out to be Andrei Tarkovsky's last film. Like it is almost always the case with his work, this too is about faith. Alexander, the protagonist worries about society and its lack of spirituality. The opening scene has him plant a tree with his young son. The last scene has the son, the only one not involved in the chaos everyone is, rest under it.
Sacrifice is the closest Tarkovsky and Bergman came to making a film together. Sven Nykvist, the cinematographer, Erland Josephson as Alexander and Allen Edwall as Otto the postman were all longtime collaborators with the great Swedish director and Tarkovsky was apparently in awe of Bergman and his films. Through Nykvist and his magical control of light and the slow, meticulous, long shots set to Bach, Tarkovsky makes a work of extraordinary beauty.
The story (or so) is about Alexander saving the world from a fatal war by making a string of personal sacrifices. We don't know how much of this is just his dream. Black and white shots are interspersed with shots of desaturated colour, the timeline is non-linear and it is possible that everything that happens is indeed a long dream. There is perhaps value in analysing the film as a study, but I am loath to do that. My experiences with such films have always been about curiosity. The questions this curiosity asks is mainly the "how did they do it" variety than the "what does he mean" kind. For instance, there is an early scene with Adelaide, Alexander's difficult wife and Maria, the housemaid who could also be a witch. Maria asks the lady if she can leave for the day. The scene is set in such a way that Adelaide paces left and right, while also getting closer to the camera with each turn. Maria is placed bang in the middle of the frame and her eyes follow Adelaide's pacing. At the end of it all, Adelaide ends up walking behind the line of the camera while Maria is staring at it. This is the sort of thing which elevates a film to a different plane. There is the story, the acting and the music yes, but this is something unequivocally cinema. The camera, the actors and their respective movements. In another scene, Alexander is shot as a reflection of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci (Adoration of the Three Kings). Apparently, Tarkovsky felt this would appear as if he was part of the painting and now he has come out of it. What a thought!
Raman Raghav 2.0 (2016)
A phone directory of crime
This is the story of a serial killer who goes about his business with madness and anger. It is also the story of a policeman who is tracking him (well, that's what we think but we're never led to believe that the cop is indeed tracking him or that he is any good at his job at all).
The premise is there for a cracking film, but unfortunately it all feels a bit damp and hollow. There are many good things in it, like Nawazuddin Siddiqui's terrific performance, a superb scene of the killer and his sister's family, a beautifully shot Mumbai and so on...but you wished it would all total up to a satisfactory sum, which it doesn't.
Agni IPS (1997)
It is ridiculously entertaining
In the 90s, there was a spate of films in Bangalore which were about local gangs wielding machetes and harassing women. Pretty bad films overall. In this mêlée came a small bout of efforts which showed ultra aggressive policemen protecting the commoner and the culture of the land. The memorable ones were those starring Sai Kumar, a voice artist turned film actor.
He came with anger and words. He would take down whole criminal gangs all by himself in the morning and still find time to lecture drunk young people in the evening. A recurring theme of his films was of invoking nation builders of times gone by. Mahatma Gandhi's bust has a long scene with the lead actor. So frustrated is he with society's lack of morality that he blames freedom itself.
Sai Kumar chews this role up. To be clear, no one else would want to bite into this, for it is over the top and quite profane for a general release picture. But he brings to it a sense of theatrical charm and a quirky rhythm of dialogue that, if you understand Kannada, you'll find irresistible.
The rest of the cast is mere prop for him. I don't quite know why B Saroja Devi is acting in this. This is so not her type of movie. I also don't quite know why this needs a heroine, a sad mother archetype and songs (pretty ordinary ones at that). All this film needed was scenes of Sai Kumar humiliating criminals and arguing finer points of democracy with varied sculptures. That's it.
I find Police Story, a film that preceded this, to be better than this. But this is not too far behind if you can ignore the ludicrous side of things. Sai Kumar is in fine form, and that is all that matters.
Gokuchu no kaoyaku (1968)
Story of Yakuzas
This is another of the Yakuza stories that came out in abundance in the 60s. Ken Takakura is a man with strong ideals. He doesn't care if a good deed costs him dear, he will still do it. He kills someone and voluntarily surrenders to the police. He picks fights for other people and finds himself in trouble. He saves a man from committing suicide while avoiding dynamites around him. He is man of ideals.
Yet, he doesn't care about the one person who has done to him what he does to others. The daughter of the mob boss he works for is in love with him. So too is he with her. She refuses to get married to anyone else when he was in prison (even though she's only just tended to him when he was injured). When he is released from prison, he quickly goes back to it than to her.
There are other things that happen in the film and the love story is but just a few minutes long, but it is the most interesting part of the film. While the "hero" goes about putting his life at risk and time in prison, his lover, though disgusted with the violence her family too has been spawning, goes about her life as if it is on pause for the length of his sentence.
The film, as a whole, is quite dull. A lot of it is predictable. Strangely enough the prison story is extremely tedious. It is weird that the film starts straight with an action scene, no titles, no establishing shot, no easing the audience into the action. That I thought was quite cool, but the film is a bit of a disappointment after having watched similarly themed films of Kinji Fukasaku.
Utopia (2013)
Interesting and inconsistent
This is an interesting series which has a lot of blood and ludicrous logic. It is gripping, for most of the time. The biggest problem it has it its characters. You don't really care for them or fear them, except one, Arby/Pietre. His is the character that affects and though not the fulcrum of the series, it is amazing how much emotional depth it brings to the plot. Unfortunately, you cannot say the same of the lead character, Jessica. She is quite unbelievable, literally. The difference between hers and Pietre's character is stark even though they are equally larger than life. You don't really feel for Jessica and that sort of winds the impact of the general plot. Another interesting part about this is the cinematography. It is extremely saturated and can catch your eye more than once, drifting you away from the main action. There are other characters too who are prominent in the two seasons. Most of them change traits over the course of the episodes and add to the general inconsistency of the show. It was good to see Paul Higgins get to play a character so opposite to his role in The Thick of It. He is one other you feel sympathetic towards but again, everything around him is a bit outlandish. Why then is this an interesting show? Primarily, the plot is quite attractive. It is mostly characters drive a story, and in such stories, they weave, what they call the McGuffins, in it somewhere and you ignore them for the greater good of the characters. Here, it is the opposite. The characters are the McGuffins.
Zeroka no onna: Akai wappa (1974)
Utter balderdash, but...
I'd loved Preparations for a Festival which had Miki Sugimoto in a key role. Zero Woman, I expected to be better. This is an utterly ludicrous film. There is Ms.Sugimoto as some weird cop who has her own methods of producing justice, fair enough. What this means is she's a two-trick pony; she allows herself to be disrobed off her beautifully-iconic red dress and lets rip a magical red handcuff at her victims. Apart from that, she just smolders, says practically nothing and watches over some of the most inhuman acts as if she can't be bothered with lives of extras or her own. The plot is nonsensical, and like the filmmakers, let's not go there. Instead, let's focus on why I gave it 6 stars. Miki Sugimoto is excellent in a role where she has something to do and say for about 3 minutes. The rest of the time, she is just there looking pretty. She does those 3 minutes and the rest very well indeed. I feel she would have done a good job in mainstream roles too had she had the opportunity and desire. But this is her turf and she mixes anger and gorgeous quite well. The other thing that works is the film-making itself. Ignore the story and script and you have, dare I say, a very interesting piece of art. Some of the scenes are just so powerful. There is a particularly brutal scene which Yukio Noda cuts and shoots in a way that is eyeopening. The use of freeze frames and other visual tools make it a worthwhile exercise to just study some of them as individual vignettes. I wish this had a better story and a less contemptuous plot.
Matsuri no junbi (1975)
Hidden gem
This is a superb film and like many such Japanese films of the 70s, quite unknown too. The story is about Tateo, a young 20-year old, who finds the village he lives in almost unbearable. His mother clings on to him unlike how she allowed her husband stray away from her. The film builds the relationships in the many characters of the village with humour. Tateo is at the center of much of this and he grows with the story. The madness in the film suddenly transforms itself into something much more poignant as if mimicking one of its own characters. Some of the characters grow on you, and you end up changing your opinion about them as the story goes on. A very intriguing film and a must watch.
Pisasu (2014)
Not an empty ghost
This is a very interesting film. On the face of it, a horror, it slowly twists, turns and melts into a love story. Scrape a bit more and it reveals an obtuse social commentary on marriage, affection and love in modern south India.
Quirky generally, it follows a clear vision from Mysskin the director. To go anywhere into the plot would mean flirting in the spoiler realm. So suffice to say it's about a man who tries to save an accident victim, a woman. From here on, it cleverly seams into horror territory, only to swing away onto a strong, emotional stage.
One of the best films of 2014 in Tamil (there have been quite a few), Pisasu is a must-watch.
Chûgoku no chôjin (1998)
Fairly bloodless Miike
One of Takashi Miike's best works, The Bird People in China is also one of his lesser known films. A strange concoction of the real and the imaginary, of travel and adventure, of beliefs and morals, of civilization and memories, this is a tight-rope act which could have fallen flat in the hands of an inferior filmmaker. The story is of two Japanese, a wide-eyed young man and a battle-scarred yakuza, who go in search of a precious stone in China. They are guided by Shen, a Chinese interpreter who very quickly makes this a trio in adventure. What follows is a quirky mix of comedy, fantasy and a fascinating touch of sadness. This film, more than any other, demonstrates the value of Miike to modern film history.
Yumurta (2007)
Slow, but interesting
Egg is one of those films which can be called either boring or meditative, depending on which end of the spectrum you are at. The first scene itself should separate these two disparate groups. A woman walks past a murky landscape in towards the camera and then walks out. It is a terribly slow scene. As the film moves forward you get a clearer understanding of that scene and it appears as a very important part of the experience.
The story follows a man who returns to his village after his mother dies. He has been so long away that he doesn't know the girl who looked after his mother. He is eager to get away from the village and its many associated memories. He wants to keep his distance, but cannot.
This is a very poignant little film. Depending on the sort of viewer it has, it demands varying levels of patience.
L'assassin habite... au 21 (1942)
A beautiful thriller
What a smart film this is! It took me a while to get around after the proverbial rug was pulled from under my feet towards its climax.
It is a thriller, but not just that. It is a comedy, but never distracting from the overall tone. It is intelligent, but doesn't take a cheat breather at the end to cover up writing inadequacies.
A policeman has to catch a serial killer in two days. He has for company an ambitious woman who is far from qualified to be in situations she intends to be in. He has a clue. And he has a set of strange people amongst whom he feels he has his target.
A fabulous whodunit ensues. Add to this the beautiful language of the French in what is a fairly verbose film, and you have an absolute must- see. Along with Laura, this is one of my favourite suspense thrillers from the 40s and I definitely recommend it.
Krzysztof Kieslowski: I'm So-So... (1995)
Better than so-so
I'm so-so is a documentary which works primarily because of the interesting subject and his familiarity with its director. It runs for 50+ minutes but is strategically divided into implicit chapters, each bookmarked by a short visual of Krzysztof Kieslowski saying how he feels that morning. Kieslowski, for the relatively short amount of time he made films, became a darling of the serious cinema buff. He created characters that had immense depth in their respective, flawed lives.
With I'm so-so, Krzysztof Wierzbicki (a one-time assistant to Kieslowski) picks individual films of his and works his way through some of the philosophies and ideas associated with them. Films like Camera Buff and Blind Chance are lesser known of Kieslowski's works and they get quite a bit of interest here. They somehow skip past much of Decalogue and the Red and White parts of the Colour Trilogy. But that is not really a major problem. Kieslowski displays a lively sense of humour and appears very comfortable talking about his films. Along with Werner Herzog's My Best Fiend, this is a great film about films and is a must-watch for all film students - serious or otherwise.
Gangs of Wasseypur (2012)
Very rewarding experience
This is a fascinating film. There are innumerable characters who you might easily forget between two scenes, but like with the legendary "McGuffins", you can subsist without knowing everything about every character. The story is set in, and is about, Bihar. The language is coarse, but beautiful, as the dialects from up there are. Manoj Bajpai is Sardar Khan who has revenge on his mind. Or so he says, for he takes a longer time ogling at women and impregnating them. If this role were an ocean, he dives into it headlong. If it were bread, he bites into it. No coincidence that his best remembered turn before now was as Bhiku Mhatre in Satya, which too was written by Anurag Kashyap. The setting is young India of the 40s, which grows into an indifferent one of the 2000s. Wasseypur is the cauldron of corruption, violence and disrespect. It is also very colourful. Richa Chadda as Naghma, Sardar Khan's wife is excellent. She gets all the great lines and she thrives on them. Nawazuddin Siddiqui, the most exciting acting talent since Irfan Khan, is the Michael Corleone to Sardar Khan's Don Corleone. He gets very few screen space, but with the promise that the next part of this epic will have him in a key role. If the music and the pace of the film can be kept so, Gangs of Wasseypur 2 is one you would check your local listings for every day.
Sherlock: The Hounds of Baskerville (2012)
Wonderful
The first season tapered off after a great beginning. Any doubts about this season disappointing after the superb Scandal in Belgravia is dispelled with an even better Hound of Baskerville. Holmes and Watson go out in search of a mysterious animal which has tormented a man since his childhood. Like all episodes in this franchise, there is plenty of humour, suspense and intelligence, but this one also manages to be a little scary. It is indeed great to see two wonderful stories this season, which leads us to the final one, where Holmes battles the original you-know-who. How exciting is it for Sherlock Holmes fans to get a fun movie and this series almost back-to-back. Great stuff.
Les diaboliques (1955)
The other Hitchcock
There were two different reasons that led me to Les Diaboliques. One, it was made by the film-maker who was called the French Hitchcock, and two, he had also made the brilliant Wages of Fear. If he was indeed their Hitchcock, this is his Vertigo. A cruel man doesn't foresee trouble coming from both his demure wife and a sultry mistress. The wife and the mistress don't foresee trouble coming from somewhere else. Like good thrillers, much of the film works on the tension that gets created in our minds. We guess every next move by the characters and invariably are left surprised by the actual outcome. For a film that is quite scary when it wants to be, not a drop of blood is spilt. An amazingly tight script keeps you missing a beat every once in a while. This is an extraordinary achievement, and even 50+ years post its release, still is a must-see.
El día de la bestia (1995)
Total fun
What a surprisingly brilliant film this is! Surprising if you are one of those who haven't heard of Alex de la Iglesia as I hadn't, and go by just the poster and the name. Brilliant because you shouldn't just go by the name and poster, and Alex de la Iglesia has made a super cool film.
The imminent arrival of Antichrist worries a priest to such an extent that he believes the best way to prevent the tragedy is to step into devil's own shoes.
Hilarious and edgy by parts, it is perhaps the only horror film which has made me want to watch it again. Apart from the scarily believable performances, it is highly energetic and doesn't slacken one bit.
It is not for everyone though. The delicate-hearted might find it too violent. I wonder if religious people would take kindly to it either. For everyone else, it packs a great amount of fun.
I'm Here (2010)
What dreams may come
A shy, young man goes through his mundane life without companionship. Until he learns to dream.
Spike Jonze has made some bizarre-looking movies to say normal-sounding things. I'm Here is one such with a basic premise so basic, you wonder if the facade he uses is just a gimmick for drawing an audience. But his imagery takes you beyond petty suspicions and introduces some remarkable, relate-able characters. In fact, it almost makes you feel that that was the only way to make the film. It is a truly commendable quality of this short.
This is a wonderful effort and takes just 30 minutes to say effectively what many full-length features fail to in two hours. A must watch .
Goodbye Solo (2008)
Delightfully melancholic
This is a superb film. Such a surprise.
With definite parallels with Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry, Goodbye Solo is about a man evidently preparing for suicide with some help from a cab driver.
On the other hand, is the cab driver, played brilliantly by Souleymane Sy Savane, who is on the opposite end of the effervescence spectrum. A Senegalese married to a Mexican, he dreams of becoming a flight attendant. Yet, he gets drawn into the suspicious but sad world of William, the man on the suicide trail.
For those with some time on their hands, this is a must-watch. Not often would you find a film so affecting and honest.
Gunda (1998)
Beginning of the Perpendicular
Not very often in these times does one get a chance to be part of history of any kind, let alone the most outrageous one. I am proud to have been there, just about a decade back.
The Perpendicular was a term coined to honor films that dared to avoid both the commercial bandwagon and the pretensions of art. It is a seriously difficult line to tread, for as the name suggests it is movement along a different plane altogether, maybe the z-axis. Right through the history of cinema, there have been concerted efforts to make films which not so concertedly want to fall in this bracket. Perhaps the earliest example could be those of Ed Wood in the US and Joginder in India. It is difficult to class Glen or Glenda, just as it is impossible to straight-jacket Rangakhush. I am not even qualified to comment on these gems of the bygone era. As the master of madness, Klaus Kinski once said, "They were not just very good or excellent, they were magnificent, epochal."
Time doesn't stop for anyone. But it is advisable for Time that it stop for a moment, at least at certain times, and savor the greatness of the Perpendicular. I think this happened only once in the 90s, when Time stood still, outside the Nataraj theater in a nondescript corner of the Mumbai-Agra highway town, Dhule. Dhule or Dhulia is a buzzing place because of the many colleges there and also because it housed, at least till 2000, 7 cinema theaters inside a very small radius. On that blessed day in 1998, Nataraj was not lit by serial lights, there weren't long queues for tickets, certainly no black-marketeers and I don't remember seeing more than 20 people in the hall. Just the kind of lull before the Perpendicular storm. If movie posters say all about a film, this one was holding on to a great secret.
Till the movie began, people were smoking, joking, drinking, chewing, blowing their nose, doing push-ups, reciting politically-charged non- rhyming poetry or like us, were catching up on some pre-movie sleep. However, a strange sensation affected us suddenly. There were no curtains in the movie theater (not that I can remember at least), but we were woken up by a tingling feeling as if a joyous spirit had escaped captivity and was calling us to a fairy land. The screen lit up with a magnificently dull font which modestly informed us that we were to watch, "Kanti Shah's Gunda".
Review stars cannot tell you the magic of this film. It has to be associated with a deeper, maybe banal, yet a lot more metaphysical meaning. Have you felt the joy on a giant-wheel when it circles down from a great high? Have you run into a mango grove in your summer holidays and stolen ripe mangoes? Have you smelt the fresh smell of the mud on the first rainy day of the season? Have you held your bladder fast for the entire day and let go triumphantly on your neighbor's compound wall? Then, dear reader, only then can you understand this bliss.
In a film with many characters, it often becomes impossible to sketch each one with conviction. The length of the film is of course important. In Gunda, the problem is handled by an effective use of post-modernist poetry. The Pote character is between a evil boss and a henchman. How do you sketch this character? He isn't the most important villain, but nor is he a two-cent conman. This dilemma has to be resolved only by deliberating on the character for too long OR like Kanti Shah does here, sort it out with a single line of genius. "Naam hai mera Pote, jo kisi ke baap ke bhi nahi hote." It is a seminal line in cinema history. At once, the peripheral Pote reveals how independent he is of the sickening hierarchy of rowdy-ism in Indian cinema. At once the character has depth and reason to share space with the monumental Mukesh Rishi's Bulla.
Imagination is a key in Kanti Shah films. It is especially true of Gunda. The audience is transported to a different world. For the money you pay to these films, it must be the cheapest space travel currently available. Violence is a dormant urge in all polite people and second nature in the impolite ones. It is an obvious urge, like death and destruction are obvious possibilities. That is what Kanti Shah's Gunda says even without wanting to sound preachy. Chutiya (Shakti Kapoor with a ponytail) is a personification of the existential dichotomy of the human being. He has decided though that he wants to be a man, but it is a decision taken from observation, more than intelligence. Maybe, he is "almost" a metaphor for Perpendicular cinema. But unlike him who has decided he wants to choose one rather than swim away from two ideologies, the Perpendicular is happily in uninhibited land. That Gunda has been a significant milestone in ushering this new phenomenon is a true evidence of the film's longevity and vitality.
Encounters at the End of the World (2007)
Where did that penguin go?
Werner Herzog's films have made such a big impression that I am tempted to start a tribute blog. For someone to consistently create fresh images and present them as interesting stories would take a lot of effort. Herzog did that with Aguirre in 1972 and he still does it with Encounters at the End of the World in the 2000s.
Unlike many film-watchers I hardly have any questions to ask after viewing a film. I either like it or don't. There are very few times that I intend to know something more. Long gone are the days when I struggled to get a grip on the art and craft of movie-making. It took me some time to realise that I couldn't understand either.
In Encounters
, which makes Herzog the most accomplished director in the history of cinema geographically (he has filmed at least one film in each of the seven continents), he travels to Antarctica to meet men and women from various walks of life who try to make sense of the steadily melting ice-land.
He disclaims at the outset any desire to film penguins. But he does end up asking strange questions about them and what happens after that can only happen in a fairy-land or in a Herzog film.
"Can they go crazy?"
Cuts to one penguin who leaves his fellows and waddles away towards oblivion. A few go to the right of the screen, while another returns back, but this one goes straight into the vast landscape. If it had been a man and not a penguin, one could conclude that this was scripted by Herzog. It however is an amazing scene, in a film that wouldn't get affected if penguins weren't talked about.
Herzog reckons it is going towards sure death, which could occur at least because of hunger. He doesn't bother chasing it and we are left with only our imagination and his words to deduce the penguin's fate. I would like to know what happened to that penguin.
For the "Pink Floyd" seals, for the penguin that walked alone and for Herzog, it's kindred spirit, do watch the film.
Gulabi Talkies (2008)
Not so rosy
Umasree is Gulabi, the effervescent, politically-naive mid-wife whose love for the cinema can only be matched by her innocence. Deserted by her husband, her dreams of every day begins and flourishes in the cinemas. After performing an emergency pregnancy she receives as gift a colour TV and a dish antenna.
She suddenly becomes the focal point of her small fishing village. Woman folk and children flock to her hut while their men discuss if it is good or bad. Even her husband returns to her for a while lured by her new acquisition. The TV plays serials, movies and cartoons. In one of these channels, the news keeps reporting the Kargil war and Gulabi is blissfully immune to any growing communal friction in the village.
The growing discontent over fishing waters and the religious tension feed off each other and Gulabi gets caught in the crossfire. For a significant latter part of this story, the "Gulabi Talkies" gets lost in the commotion.
Kasaravalli's film begins as a quiet, interesting story about dreams, but embraces more universal issues as religious tolerance and globalisation. As if a toy snatched from a child, the idyllic setting for a good story is shattered by the focus on these issues. In another storyteller's hands this might have strangled the film entirely. But Vaidehi, Kasaravalli and Gulabi herself lend a credibility to it and it lives OK.