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July 15, 2001
Aks
The promos started last month. Amitabh sitting on a throne, looking devious and menacing. Raveena doing a Demi-Moorish strip-tease. Amitabh cavorting with Nandita Das. A couple of weeks later, Manoj Bajpai's visage entered the promos and the prominent "fall-through-the-waterfall" scene featuring Amitabh and Bajpai was incorporated. News started filtering in, that Amitabh was playing a negative character. My expectations were heightened. Hoping to see Amitabh in something different, something interesting, made me actually want to see the film as quickly as possible. I hadn't felt like this about a movie for a long time; no, not even about Lagaan.
Aurora, a stone's throw away from home, was to screen the film starting day before yesterday. I went on Monday evening, when bookings open, only to be told that all shows were already sold out. On Friday, WFM and I decided on the spur of the moment to see the film. We got scalper's tickets for the stalls, at three times the regular price; balcony tickets were not available at any cost. I had forgotten that the stalls in Aurora still have uncomfortable wooden seats and mosquitoes, but what the hell!
I never learn. But from this time on, I am going to try and firmly stick to a resolution I had made a couple of years ago. I will never go see a Hindi film on the first day without assessing the reviews on Sunday or talking to people who have seen it. Time is precious and to waste it on a bad film is such a bloody tragedy.
Aks reprises the usual problems with Amitabh films of the last five-ten years. Amitabh is very good, he is in virtually all the scenes but the movie is awful.
To give the film its due (more like finding saving graces), the cinematography is excellent. The story concept is also very interesting. But the film is too long, drags in places and fails completely. In brief (and not to spoil things for those die-hard Amitabh fans who might still want to see the film), Amitabh (Manu Verma) is an aging cop, a la Clint Eastwood in "In the Line of Fire". He fails to prevent the assassination of a minister (Amol Palekar) by Manoj Bajpai (Raghavan), a paid assassin and psychopath. Manu goes after Raghavan and gets him well before the interval, in a brilliantly done montage in a forest and waterfall. During this time, we meet all the main characters; Raveena playing Raghavan's girl-friend, looking very sexy and appealing; Nandita Das playing Manu's young wife and K K Raina playing Raghavan's younger brother. Just before Raghavan is to face the gallows, Manu goes to him to offer him a life sentence in return for information about his contractors. Somehow, Raghavan gets hold of a police-officer's gun and there is a face-off (a la John Woo); both shoot, Raghavan dies and his soul enters Manu's, who starts behaving like Raghavan.
From then on the film goes into a free-fall. It becomes tedious, irritating and at times incomprehensible. I developed a headache and almost fell asleep a couple of times. The audience behind me was also so irritated that they actually booed the film at times, and in a scene when Manu starts crying on Nandita Das' shoulder, the audience laughed. These were the final nails in the film's coffin.
Maybe if Aks was a two-hour film, instead of the tedious 31/2 odd hours that it currently is, with at least three songs removed, and a little laid-back on the hysterics, it would have worked as a taut psychological thriller. As it stands today, Aks is yucks, Aks sucks, Aks...(you can find your own combination).
Posted by bhavinj at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)
July 08, 2001
Its A Small World
We may have reached the 1 billion mark and we may be the second most populous country in the world, but in some respects, we are still a very small community.
Last night, we went for a small, surprise birthday party that WFM's friend's wife, Pushpa had thrown for her dentist husband, Paresh. Pushpa asked us to be present by nine, which is when she was going to get Paresh to the party-room, in a small hotel in Chembur. We did not know how many people she had invited, but we presumed that we would not really know anyone except Paresh's elder brother who had been in medical college with me. Paresh and WFM had been friends since their years in Ruia college in the early 80s; as is the norm, all the other mutual friends from that time have migrated to the US.
The party-room had no board or valet outside and we opened the door slowly wondering whether that was the correct room. I saw two couples sitting on a sofa at the far end. One of them we knew; Suresh, a dentist and Roma were family friends; Suresh and Paresh had been in dental college together. Brijesh and Parul, the other couple got up for introductions and Brijesh startled me by saying "Hi ___". He remembered me from school, having been one year junior to me. Parul looked at WFM and said "Hi, weren't you in Vachha? Don't you remember me? We were in the same class."
Four more people came in about five minutes later. As we got ready to introduce ourselves, assuming them to be Pushpa's or Paresh's friends, one of them, Vasu, walked up to me and said, "Oh, I know you. Weren't you in college with Mukesh (Paresh's elder brother?)". I couldn't place him, but he told me that he used to study in Khalsa college and would often come over to play cricket, etc. in our college. He even remembered that I used to keep wickets for my college cricket team. A little later when we got talking a little more, he told me he worked in Lintas, which is where a very close friend of mine works. Obviously he knew him; apparently they had also studied advertising together at XIC.
A little later another couple, Meeta and Shravan, good friends of ours from medical college, walked in. Shravan and Paresh had been in school together in Chembur and were very good friends.
I was then introduced to another couple; Priya, a dermatologist and her husband Krishnan, a computer and web-related entrepreneur. Somehow I didn't get to talk to Priya, but I am sure we would have found a whole bunch of common dermatologist or other medical friends. Krishnan and I chatted for some time and it was interesting to talk to an unfamiliar person who had nothing to do with medicine or dentistry. A while later he asked me quietly, "Were you in Ruia? You seem very familiar." I said yes and we found that we had been in Ruia during the same years, but in different divisions. Two of my batchmates in medical school had been in the same division as he. He had lived in Matunga for most of his life and we used to frequent the same circulating library, Abbas.
All in all, there were about 20 people at the party and we found that we knew or had connections with everyone except five or six of them. The only ones we didn't know were Pushpa's cousins and sister, the other couple that had come with Vasu and his wife and a couple of Pushpa's friends.
This is not the first time such a thing has happened. Each time we attend a party of peers, we land up meeting people who we either know, but didn't expect to see at that particular party or people with whom there are connections related to school, junior college or medical college either directly or through mutual friends. I have stopped being surprised and I have definitely stopped using the cliché "it's a small world."
Six years ago, in the US we met Sangeeta, a doctor from Mumbai who had married an Indian-origin doctor, Haresh, born and brought up in the US. When we got talking, we realized we had a whole bunch of common friends and by the time we had finished dissecting our school, junior college and medical college connections, Haresh started feeling so lonely and left out, we had to stop just to get him back into the conversation. He had no clue what was happening. Worse, during the same US trip, we went to meet WFM's cousin in Illinois who had a guest, a prospective bridegroom from Ohio, staying the night over. Though the guest had been brought up in the US, when we got talking, WFM realized that she knew all his cousins who lived in Sion and Matunga and they spent about 45 minutes gossiping. WFM's cousin hadn't particularly seen husband material in him and this incident got her even more irritated. Obviously they did not get married.
I am sure many of you have had similar experiences. This probably has to do with the fact that compared to the country's population, the number of people populating a particular set of schools, colleges and higher-learning institutes is minute. In the end you always find connections.
It is not just a small world; it is an unsurprisingly closed, interconnected and almost incestuous world.
Posted by bhavinj at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)
