Amelie

Expectations kills many a movie. Thats what happened with my experience with Amelie. With all the critical backing that this film has received over the year, I felt let down from the it. It looked more a case of confused storytelling than anything else.

Amelie is the story about a little girl raised by neurotic parents in a weird and lonely household. She grows to be a lonely and introverted child not connecting socially. In her twenties she has no boyfriend or even friends. The movies tells us that she gets her thrill/ happiness from little things like skipping pebbles in a lake. she works in a cafe as a waitress.

Her life takes a turn, when she discovers a long lost metal box hoarding a child’s treasures. She decides she would find its owner and return his childhood treasure to him. After some difficulty she DOES find the old man, who is somewhat as lonely as her and anonymously returns the box. The man is thrilled and touched, and he connects not only with his long lost childhood but also his grandchild.

Amelie feels she has unraveled her calling in life. She finds her own happiness in spreading happiness in people around her. And so it goes on.. Somewhere in between when she is doing her thing she meets Nino, a porn store clerk who has a hobby to collect and collage discarded snapshots of people at the automatic photographic booths. There in starts an almost ‘cat and mouse’ game where Amelie and Nino express their feelings in a puzzle kind of way.

I guess viewed without the weight of all the expectations of watching a hugely-loved AMELIE, this is a nice small feature. It has some amazing cinematography and stylish narration. It sometimes goes into tiny details about secondary characters that are amusing. The narration is swift and smooth, we are never tied to a situation. Plus the number of secondary characters made by her Cafe staff and regulars, the neighborhood folks is large, and Amelie also tries her bit to help these people. Sometimes these miny sub-plots turn comical, reminding us of Tom and Jerry.

I have to summarize that Amelie isn’t the movie I want to watch again. Inspite of its lighthearted narrative and some amusing subplots, this one doesn’t work for me.

Last tango in Paris

This is a very controversial movie from Bernardo Bertolucci, starring Marlon Brando. I saw it in two parts spread over a week, and its hard to make up my mind, how I feel about it.

“Last tango in Paris” released in 1972 with a mixed response. The critics were split over whether it was a porn-exhibition or Bertolucci’s masterpiece. Also, some critics claim that this is Brando at his best. Seriously I dont have the answer to either of the questions. The characters speak mostly in French  with some English thrown in occasionally.

Brando plays a middle-aged American in Paris, who gets into an affair with a very young parisian girl. The weird thing about their liasion is that they dont exchange names, their backgrounds, and practically anything about each other. Its based solely on sexual gratification. They meet in his rented apartment which bears a deserted look and indulge in stuff that ranges from machismo to plain cruelty. On the side, the girl has a filmaker ‘fiancee’ who keeps shooting her for his documentary.

That about the portion I saw on my first partial viewing. I found it quite uninteresting and did not derive much meaning from it. However, when I completed the movie last night, I admit it does have its own uniqueness, and a layer beneath the obvious going ons.

The backstory of Brando is slowly revealed, which is about his wife, who has recently commited suicide. Also she was having an affair with someone in the hotel they owned. Brando is shattered with her death, realizing how little he really understood her inspite of their marriage of some years. His faith has been shattered. Its his pain that we see when he indulges in his repungent acts with Jeanne, the young girl. His constant enforcement to ensure no personal details are exchanged is to ensure he is not attached or ‘gets to know’ this girl.

More interestingly, Jeanne is attrated to this man, who forces her in submission in various ways. Inspite all the pain and his lack of affection, she keeps coming back to his apartment. Hers is the more interesting character.

The underlying theme is pain and means how people react to it. Both the central characters react differently to their pain. He looks for an outlet to relieve himself of it. She seems to be attracted towards it… towards the insanity, the almost fantasy she finds in the apartment.

I remember the debate surrounding MEMENTO, and how some critics panned it saying without its reverse narrative, the story doesnt have enough meat to told. Now, I think this holds true for a large number of movies, with “The Last tango in Paris” being a good example as well. Its only because of the fractured narrative, where in we start with Brando already in mourning and embarking on this strange affair with Jeanne, and slowly his back-story being revealed to give us a snapshot of his state of mind, that this movie holds our interest. On a different plane, the narrative IS the movie. And choosing a different approach to tell the ’story’ is what makes the movie.

Anyway, this one is strictly for those who dont flinch on seeing carnal activities on display.

Life in a.. Metro

I have to admit I saw this the day after I saw Cheeni Kum, which I have elaborate upon with immense delight in my previous post. Now Cheeni Kum did raise the bar real high, so it was harder work for Metro to impress me than had I not seen Cheeni Kum, the day earlier.

Metro is not a very new movie, and hence has had a fair share of stuff written about it on the internet, some of which had been exposed to me. From what I read, I believed it was pretty much the first multi-narrative feature not to fall on its face. I guess thats how I would summarize it really.

The first 3 minute sequence tries to show most of the various lead characters (9 if you count!!) criss-crossing through the frame, giving us a fair idea what Metro is about.. threads intertwined in a mess, all trying to push hard in their directions, often snapping a few of them. Well, come to think of it, thats even a better summary of it.

Anyway, Metro starts off in a very tongue-in-cheek manner. The first 20-30 odd minutes introduces us to all the lead characters and their stories. To start with, things are shown with an element of flippancy. The commonality is how everyone seems to be in a mad-rush to get ahead. All of these are in some or the other rat-race, except one (Shiny Ahuja’s character, ironically who remains the only one who kind of joins the rat-race at the end of the film).

And, how crooked, people have gotten to escape from the stresses of their daily lives. Everyone is seeking no-strings attached gratification. It all plays tongue-in-cheek off course. It almost seems like a Madhur Bhandkarkar film, trying to shock us all the while, with that sense of overplay written all over it.

Slowly, you get to know all the stories about the leads. The KayKay-Shilpa track talks about complacency in a married relationship, where both parties start looking for love/ gratification outside of home. KayKay is having an affair with a demure looking Kangana, while Shilpa is getting infatuated with Shiney Ahuja. Sharman track is about ambitions, and how he makes compromises for it. While in love with Kangana, he still can’t help his boss, KayKay have an affair with her, that too in his own apartment. (this sub-plot is a borrow from The Apartment) Irrfan-Konkana track is about finding the right life-partner. And then there is the bonus track featuring Dharmendra- Nafisa Ali, playing an old couple who used to be childhood sweethearts, who are reuniting after 3 decades.

For about an hour the stories keep flipping from one-to-another, with little effect. All the characters seem distant and un-relatable. We now know their backgrounds and their aspirations. But since the movie keeps them at an arms distance, we don’t feel for any of them.

But, somewhere after that, the transitions stop jarring that much. Things start falling into place. The bruising these people carry start becoming more apparent, and to an extent why as well. Interestingly, none of the tracks (out of the 4) is a lemon, and all of them start complementing each other.

Perhaps the first track that starts connecting is the Shilpa-Shiney one. There is this sense of restrain in it, which after a lot of jarring sequences early on in the film, feels like a fresh breath. You can make out the restlessness in both of these characters. Shiney is restless for having finally found ’success’ somewhere in his life. Shilpa feels a teenage type longing, while scared of the implications of the affair. She isnt sure what she wants to do. Then the Sharman character starts opening up. He starts looking less of the bastard he seems early on. A more humane stream is evident in him. Similarly, Irrfan, who initially looks and seems like a jerk (to us and to Konkana as well) comes across as a normal fun-loving guy. The Dharmendra-Nafisa track becomes the reference point to some of the characters to what can happen if you dont go with your heart.

The acting is mostly good. Shilpa turns out an impressive and restrained performance. A lot many actresses might have used the character to scream shrill and go over the top, she doesnt. Shiney has a minor part. Ironically, his character really takes a reverse arc to a lot of other characters. He ends up poorer in the end, and more or less decides to join in the mindless melee. KayKay is soo natural doing the rogue act. He is turning out to be among the best actors in the industry. Every role he takes, you tend to forget him and watch the character. Thats his biggest strength. Sharman actually renders an impressive performance here, quite a departure from his previous frivolous roles. He doesnt play for the laughs, though there are some sequences that are quite amusing, about his apartment scheduling. Kangana has a minor role, though as always she looks dazzling. Contrary to popular opinion, Irrfan has only a minor part. He plays to the gallery and does it well, but then this role doesnt demand as much from him as his other roles. The same for Konkana.

A lot of people complaint about the music band being featured in all the music videos. I though that was a nice concept. The music is awesome and its feels better to ’see’ the band performing it, than it playing it ’somehow’ in the background. It attempts to join these different threads together, focusing on the similar emotion the different characters are feeling at the same time.

The main theme of the movie, I think was how maddening things appear in the hectic setting of a metro. How weird, unconcerned and selfish people seem. But if you look close and long enough you realize they are as human as anyone else, anywhere. Ultimately, the human emotion remains the same.

Obaba

Last evening, with nothing better to do, I was fiddling away with my remote to find a foreign language movie playing on Zee Studio, Obaba. Well, what really attracted me to the movie was the warm hues of the movie. It had this amazingly warm color tone highlighting some breathtaking European countryside. After a few minutes I rightly guessed the language of the movie – Spanish.

Obaba is a very patchy movie. In parts its really gripping, keeping your eye-balls glued to every single frame. And in parts, so underplayed that its hard to keep your concentration on it. This happens since the movie is in a chapter format.

Obaba tracks the lives of the inhabitants of a fictional area in Spain called Obaba. We uncover the lives of 3 (or was it 4) men from the boyhood/ schooltime days to present day, as a young and quite pretty aspiring filmaker makes a journey to Obaba and interviews folks. In between the flashbacks is a very shabbily done love track between the young girl and a guy living in Obaba.

The best parts of the movie are those involving a young schoolteacher, played by Pilar López de Ayala who is the common thread to all the stories. All these guys were students in her class. There is one episode that is primarily the schoolteachers story, which in my opinion is the best. Another one that surrounds a pen-pal friendship is also quite interesting. The chapters about some seriously horrible lizards and a psychologically ill man are quite misfits here. Rest of the movie plays out in a smooth soft flow, letting us enjoy beautiful spanish countryside. While these episodes are jittery and really disturb the tone of the movie.

The direction is mostly lucid and smooth, apart from the two tracks as mentioned earlier. The camerawork is astounding.

I realized very little material exists on the internet on the movie, which is quite strange considering it was nominated for the Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards in 2005.

Do watch this to feast your eyes on smashing Spanish visuals and two beautiful women.