I have often noticed that people who are pioneers in the world of Art tend to have an eccentric bone in their body. They are perfectionists, sucker for details and many-a-times obnoxious!
When I visited India this time, I saw the ads. of TITAN and Aamir in his hair-raising (literally) avatar. He grew his hair to fit the character of Mangal Pandey that he's playing in his next movie. It also meant that he was not doing any other movie until 'The rising' was released. (unless someone decides to cast him with his long hair and big moustache)
I was reminded of this quote "Striving for excellence motivates you, striving for perfection is demoralizing". In his quest for perfection, Aamir does one movie in five years, can their be anything more demoralizing for his fans?
I also concede that the role of Mohan Bhargava in Swades could have been played only by Shahrukh 'cause one of the requisites for this role was spontanity and heyyyyyyyyy...Shahrukh say zyaada spontaneous koi hai kya ?
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Monday, December 27, 2004
We the Swadesis
The last time I remember Shahrukh actually stepping into the shoes of a character and not letting his stammering and stuttering get in the way was more than a decade ago, in a certain film called Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa. In KHKN he played a desultory teenager who had two things driving his life, one was his Music band and the second his love for the local belle, Anna. He was careless, forgetful and deceptive but a talented guy who was often given a rude awakening by his band leader in the film , one stocky and tall drummer who believed that actions spoke louder than words...
Fast forward to a decade later and the often lying, lovelorn teenager has morphed into a larger-than-life King Khan. Acting has taken a backseat and every movie is, instead, a showcase of his hamming skills... enter the stocky drummer again, this time with an Oscar nomination, a much serious persona and a directorial avatar which cuts the 'King' to fit the size of a diminutive Mohan Bhargava, our main protagonist of Swades.
Swades is about the transformation of a repetitive and boring SRK into a character that he plays on the celluloid. It's about an Indian who is faced with the classic dilemma of to-return-or-not-to-return. Swades tries to deal with an issue which is not uncommon with every Indian who is living abroad and wants to go back, but for the glamour and comfort of the foreign land. The pursuit of this subject in most simple and honest manner, remains it's biggest strength.
Compared to the bawdy skin flicks and hackneyed whodunits that Bollywood dishes out with aplomb, Swades is a breath of fresh air.
One of the biggest positives of the movie is it's earthiness. There're no ostentatious sets, no meaningless glorifications and no exaggerations. Swades makes you feel that it's all happening around you and does not try to create a false sense of the subject being larger than life. It does create an aura of vulnerability and that to me is it's winning point. I almost felt like reaching out and hugging Kaveriamma, jostling with the kids running behind the big caravan and taking a dip in the village pool.
In the true tradition of his earlier movie (read Lagaan and no other) Gowarikar does show the triumph of human spirit, only this time, like the movie, it's at a much lower scale. The music and lyrics too compliment the setting instead of being individual triumphs. All in all Swades is a director's movie but unlike some other famous favourite sons of bollywood, Gowarikar does not try to jump out in every frame and tell the user 'Watch me! Watch me!'. On the other hand he deftly stands behind his subject and like his character in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na, let his actions speak more for him.
On an other note, there have been murmurs that the movie was 'preachy' and boringly lengthy. Barring a couple of instances, the movie tries not to offer a ready solution to the bevy of problems it showcases and the length is certainly true to the subject it attempts to handle.
Like all sincere efforts, this one has it's flaws too but we will stick with the old adage here, nobody's perfect!
P.S. Gayatri Joshi is as good an actress as she's beautiful, only she carries the elusiveness a bit too far.
Fast forward to a decade later and the often lying, lovelorn teenager has morphed into a larger-than-life King Khan. Acting has taken a backseat and every movie is, instead, a showcase of his hamming skills... enter the stocky drummer again, this time with an Oscar nomination, a much serious persona and a directorial avatar which cuts the 'King' to fit the size of a diminutive Mohan Bhargava, our main protagonist of Swades.
Swades is about the transformation of a repetitive and boring SRK into a character that he plays on the celluloid. It's about an Indian who is faced with the classic dilemma of to-return-or-not-to-return. Swades tries to deal with an issue which is not uncommon with every Indian who is living abroad and wants to go back, but for the glamour and comfort of the foreign land. The pursuit of this subject in most simple and honest manner, remains it's biggest strength.
Compared to the bawdy skin flicks and hackneyed whodunits that Bollywood dishes out with aplomb, Swades is a breath of fresh air.
One of the biggest positives of the movie is it's earthiness. There're no ostentatious sets, no meaningless glorifications and no exaggerations. Swades makes you feel that it's all happening around you and does not try to create a false sense of the subject being larger than life. It does create an aura of vulnerability and that to me is it's winning point. I almost felt like reaching out and hugging Kaveriamma, jostling with the kids running behind the big caravan and taking a dip in the village pool.
In the true tradition of his earlier movie (read Lagaan and no other) Gowarikar does show the triumph of human spirit, only this time, like the movie, it's at a much lower scale. The music and lyrics too compliment the setting instead of being individual triumphs. All in all Swades is a director's movie but unlike some other famous favourite sons of bollywood, Gowarikar does not try to jump out in every frame and tell the user 'Watch me! Watch me!'. On the other hand he deftly stands behind his subject and like his character in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na, let his actions speak more for him.
On an other note, there have been murmurs that the movie was 'preachy' and boringly lengthy. Barring a couple of instances, the movie tries not to offer a ready solution to the bevy of problems it showcases and the length is certainly true to the subject it attempts to handle.
Like all sincere efforts, this one has it's flaws too but we will stick with the old adage here, nobody's perfect!
P.S. Gayatri Joshi is as good an actress as she's beautiful, only she carries the elusiveness a bit too far.
Friday, October 29, 2004
An open letter to Aussies
OK... so you guys got what you wanted from this Indian 'test only' series. You call it the final frontier and you've achieved it, but do you realize what you guys have done to this Indian team ? First of all, this is cricket mates, not a war and even if it were, hello, we are the cornerstone of peace in this world, we bid farewell to arms long before Hemingway was running around in his diapers and you're trying to coax us to get into a volatile situation... nice try guys but that's not gonna work. We love our peace and even if it comes over losing a humiliating series to you, so be it !!!
And what's with all the intimidation guys ? Take it easy. There's more to life than cricket, OK. You think that you will come to India with your menacing stubbles and long hair and you will extract an emotion out of us, nah.... you gotta be more creative than that. You guys with your swollen heads went on endlessly about how you would defeat us even before a single ball was bowled. Did you know that we had a 'got milk' teenage kid in our team. Poor thing, he was so scared that he spilled all the edges you sent his way not because he's a bad keeper (and Ganguly will vouch for this) but because he was petrified of you tobacco (or gum, who knows) chewing, scowling, gnarling barbarians !!!
I'm sure you'll bring up Clarke and his age too. Hey, can I see his birth certificate ?
Look at your slogan for this series - the Final Frontier. Mates, in case you forgot, this is India and not some far out enigmatic place tucked deep between the black holes of this galaxy and you are mere cricketers and not the enviable bunch of cosmonauts lead by one Captain Kirk so drop all these fancy phrases cause you just defeated an out-of-form team and not a set of green eyed, multiple limbed monsters!!!
Also, let me ask you, what have we done to receive such a treatment from you guys ? OK so we have the Border-Gavaskar trophy with us, but is that really that important for you guys to have that you scared our famous top-order batsmen not to score even in double digits ? You could have simply asked us and we would have given the darned trophy to you, hell when we gave away the Kohinoor to the British what's a menial cup to us !!!! You should at least have taken in account that three of our top order batsmen got married recently and that they have responsibilities now...but you guys, all you can think about is a petty game of cricket and winning.
I hope you have had your fill with all your frontiers and what not. Please stop this brow-beating, we will concede the next test too. Please don't plan any more series in the future, our schedules is completely booked till the end of 2010 as we are playing some real teams in Bangladesh, Kenya, Holland and USA.
Last but not the least, please take that cricketer turned guitarist with you, before you know he would pen a song about this final frontier of yours and cause our cricketers unnecessary trouble.
An ardent Indian cricket fan
And what's with all the intimidation guys ? Take it easy. There's more to life than cricket, OK. You think that you will come to India with your menacing stubbles and long hair and you will extract an emotion out of us, nah.... you gotta be more creative than that. You guys with your swollen heads went on endlessly about how you would defeat us even before a single ball was bowled. Did you know that we had a 'got milk' teenage kid in our team. Poor thing, he was so scared that he spilled all the edges you sent his way not because he's a bad keeper (and Ganguly will vouch for this) but because he was petrified of you tobacco (or gum, who knows) chewing, scowling, gnarling barbarians !!!
I'm sure you'll bring up Clarke and his age too. Hey, can I see his birth certificate ?
Look at your slogan for this series - the Final Frontier. Mates, in case you forgot, this is India and not some far out enigmatic place tucked deep between the black holes of this galaxy and you are mere cricketers and not the enviable bunch of cosmonauts lead by one Captain Kirk so drop all these fancy phrases cause you just defeated an out-of-form team and not a set of green eyed, multiple limbed monsters!!!
Also, let me ask you, what have we done to receive such a treatment from you guys ? OK so we have the Border-Gavaskar trophy with us, but is that really that important for you guys to have that you scared our famous top-order batsmen not to score even in double digits ? You could have simply asked us and we would have given the darned trophy to you, hell when we gave away the Kohinoor to the British what's a menial cup to us !!!! You should at least have taken in account that three of our top order batsmen got married recently and that they have responsibilities now...but you guys, all you can think about is a petty game of cricket and winning.
I hope you have had your fill with all your frontiers and what not. Please stop this brow-beating, we will concede the next test too. Please don't plan any more series in the future, our schedules is completely booked till the end of 2010 as we are playing some real teams in Bangladesh, Kenya, Holland and USA.
Last but not the least, please take that cricketer turned guitarist with you, before you know he would pen a song about this final frontier of yours and cause our cricketers unnecessary trouble.
An ardent Indian cricket fan
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)