Un Film De Almodovar

'Distinctive’ is not an adjective that gets easily attributed to film-makers. There are those who supposedly make gritty realistic movies, others are famous for making poetic epics; we have the visionary stylists and then others who just about make the popcorn worth it. In the 50’s, 60’s and even the 70’s, an Italian maestro making movies that seemed straight out of his fantasies and throwing every formula out of the window introduced the word ‘felliniesque’ to the English dictionary. He spawned a great number of imitators and followers though none of them achieved anything close to his greatness until a baby faced Spaniard burst onto the world cinema scene. Pedro Almodovar's sets were brightly lit with all the colours of a garden in spring. His characters were those you would never meet until you had re-created a crazy story in the corner of a sleazy tabloid or had lived for a period of time in an alternate reality or had taken a seriously wrong turn to the seedy underbelly of your city. His women were beautiful, strong, wilful and independent, the men were usually weak or disgusting and his stories were….. Oh yes they were ‘distinctive’.

My first real interest in Pedro Almodovar was kindled by the Cannes Film Festival of 2006 (I think). That year there were some great samplings for the quality craving taste buds of every movie connoisseur. There was Babel, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Wind that Shakes the Barley among many others. Volver caught my attention when I read the story synopsis. It was an impossible script, an absolutely outlandish plot to the point of being silly and yet everyone was raving about it. I finally got to see the movie only in 2007 and was mesmerized, mostly by the nonchalance with which the characters seemed to accept everything happening around them. There is an accidental murder at the start and unlike most movies it’s just a random plot point; no one seems to care much about it. There are so many under-currents running through the movie - Raimunda (played by Penelope Cruz) and her relationship with her sisters, her aunt, their past and suffering at the hands of their men; in short everything  that goes on in an everyday woman-centric world. The wonderfully rustic Spanish countryside adds its own flavor to the proceedings. There is such a celebration of Spanish culture in the routine happenings that to an outsider it’s fascinating. I was pleasantly surprised to see that someone could make such an engrossing movie showing just the characters instead of simply focusing on the crazy plot point running throughout the movie. A lesser film-maker would definitely have succumbed to that temptation (if you are wondering about the ‘plot point’ I am referring to, then let me assure you, ‘it’s different’ in a way even certain Spanish tomato sauces can never be). There is a song somewhere at the end sung by Penelope which is just pure magic, Volver; it’s the return, its redemption.

As I continued my cinematic love affair with Almodovar I turned my attention to La Mala Educacion (Bad Education) mainly because I wanted to watch the movie that is as personal to Almodovar as 8 and a half was to Fellini. The movie is about a film-maker who looks to stories buried in the corner of tabloids for inspiration. We see flashbacks of him at a catholic school where a close friend of his was abused by the head of the school. One fine day his old friend turns up asking for a role in his movie but the film-maker has doubts as to his true identity. Further along we see that the 'real' friend has turned into a highly disturbed transsexual who is looking for money to get breast implants. There are so many small stories, both real and surreal blended together so seamlessly that I was fascinated with the style. So many layers of storytelling in two hours of movie watching was absolutely unbelievable to me. The movie felt like a collage of scenes put together without any thought to cohesiveness and yet I feel this was the only way a story so haunting, disturbing and touching could ever be interpreted on screen. At this point I was marvelling at the sheer courage of this Spaniard and the utter disregard for anything that even came close to the word cliché. I was worried I might have reached my climax of adulation but then not for nothing is Todo Sobre Mi Madre considered his magnum opus.

How many themes can one movie explore with a just a handful of characters. Loss, grief, betrayal, prejudice, adulation, redemption and above all love. In Todo Sobre Mi Madre we see it all. A mother named Manuela  has just lost her son in a freak accident while running on the road to get the autograph of a stage actress named Huma. Unable to handle the grief she flies back to Barcelona, the city of her youth where she used to be a sex worker. She runs into an old transvestite friend of hers named Agrado in what is probably the seediest, shadiest piece of area ever filmed. Almodovar gives us a scene that is in a nutshell; genius in conception and unparalleled in execution. An open air red light area (that’s the closest I’ll ever come to describing it in five words) where people from every walk of life and I mean literally every walk of life have gathered to satisfy their most carnal of desires. Manuela knows this place because she used to work at this very site in her youth. The friend, Agrado is probably one of the most colourful characters I have ever seen in film and all she wants to do is to get another breast implant(she’s had a few before, not to mention a face lift and other such indulgences). She introduces Manuela to a nun, Rosa played by Penelope Cruz (an Almodovar favourite) who wants to go to some remote corner of the world to do charity work. Pretty soon we find out that the nun is pregnant and also has AIDS passed on to her by the same wretch of a man who had gotten Manuela pregnant. Rosa’s parents have serious reservations (being Catholics of course) and hence Manuela starts to care for Rosa at her home. At the same time she finds employment as the secretary of the stage actress who was responsible for her son’s death. There are scenes here that are so heartfelt, filled with such raw emotion, characters of so much flesh and blood that it reaches a very remote place within you and you resonate with the pain of each and every character. There is a scene towards the end where Agrado gives an extemporaneous performance on stage that sounds so true and so rich in life’s lessons that all of a sudden that disfigured face radiates a serene beauty. That’s the power of an Almodovar movie.

There are movies that have surprised me, those that have sent me into raptures, those that have entertained me thoroughly and those that have inspired me to write stories on my own. But an Almodovar movie has always, without fail, opened up a whole new world to me. Not a world that exists in someone’s fantasy or one that existed in the last century or a different dimension but a world that exists right here in the times we live in, a world that we choose to ignore as we are cocooned in our lives. A world full of prejudices, filled with unmatched suffering, heart breaking pain and pure beauty.

This post is an entry to the Reel-Life Bloggers contest organized by wogma.com and reviewgang.com

Movies that deserved a lot more credit......

Sarkar Raj

I liked Godfather 2 more than Godfather 1. Reason – Evolution. If Godfather had Michael Corleone as an upstart, a really smart one at that, Godfather 2 humanizes him. Shows him as a power hungry ruthless cold blooded Mafioso who doesn’t mind killing his own brother. If Shankar Nagre already achieved that by the end of Sarkar, in Sarkar 2 we see him as a do gooder who does anything and everything to do what he thinks is right as he keeps reminding us throughout the movie. Also the power struggle is not just with the outsiders but also in a more restrained manner with his own father. We can see the thin rope that the father-son walk on as Shankar on more than one occasion disagrees with his father and gets his way. Varma has made a brave movie. Luckily he didn’t sit back on the success of Sarkar and let the script take the easy way out. This movie doesn’t have a opening-middle-end kind of storyline. Instead it has some restrained angst, subtle sub-texts and most importantly a great father-son bonding. What it doesn’t have, is a sound editor, a non-cliched villain and cohesiveness. The movie had a lot of highly predictable Varmaisque sequences. The big tea-table meeting, the opening bang with Shankar playing a tape recorder and killing his henchman and sipping coffee, Sarkar waving out to the crowd like a modern day messiah of the masses, the the big project that promises lot of money but Sarkar has reservations, the whole Rao sahib angle and the kidnapping and the hired killer and and and….But somewhere towards the middle of the second half Varma makes a great deviation from predictability, something so rarely seen in Hindi Cinema. This one moment of pure deviation made me love the movie. He has always been brave and idiosyncratic but after watching Aag I really needed him to redeem himself. The rest of the movie I then realized actually plays around this one moment and the whole conventional Hindi movie sequential movement of storyline went straight out of the window. Because here the things you didn’t notice before suddenly become apparent. However the ending summation by Sarkar is a little drawn out and too elaborate for my liking, I still somehow liked the monologue next to the portrait. See there are small things which you like in the movie that stay with you. A movie as imperfect as Gangster would still stay with you for some amazing sequences however short-lived. Same is the case here. Varma overuses his by now famous shadows and thin ray of light scenes and his camera worships his lead actors. He wants them to be seen as great powerful people and yet we see conflicted people all around. Shankar haunted because he murdered his own brother, Sarkar again because he thinks he couldn’t change his son and Anita (played by a corporate attire clad Ash) whose father is more a businessman than father figure. Abhishek walks through the whole movie with a constipated expression. The Sr Bachchan does a little better and Ash is good when she doesn’t have to talk much. But this is a Director’s movie and as is the case with most director movies, the plot is a moot point. The speeches and dialogues tend to get a little heavy at times, but well they are pardonable this time around. Welcome back to form Mr Varma…

Jabbi Cigarette Jalti Hai – No Smoking

Anurag Kashyap's No Smoking is not just an incredibly original off beat film, it's also a wonderful tribute to some of the best artists of all times. The film supposedly based on Stephen King's Quitter's Inc (I wonder if by the time I die every story that Stephen King has ever written would be adapted into a movie) has a lead protagonist by the name of K. Coming from Anurag Kashyap I'm sure he had Frank Kafka's The Trial in mind. Then there is a bathtub scene that is unbelievably brilliant in its conception. I say that because everything you need to know about K is in that one scene. He epitomizes narcissistic arrogance.  Then there is his wife played by Ayesha Takia who doesn't have much to do but gets your attention nevertheless. We see how his smoking drives them to such point of disconnect that she asks for divorce as an Anniversary gift. We have a squint eyed Ranvir Shorey panic at the sight of a cigarette and declares vehemently that he can't smoke because he loves his wife. Then we meet Paresh Rawal. Hitler loving, finger cutting Baba Bengali. We see K walk down and down and down into an absolute abyss which he can't get out of without signing a contract and cheque for approx 21 lakhs( Baba Bengali takes only 1 rupee of that). Oh by the way that run down godforsaken place has a fingerprint analyser that keeps track of all their patients. He is allowed to go with the condition that he is never to smoke and if he does he will start losing things he loves, starting from his fingers to his wife. Then the film gets so arcane and so metaphorical that I'm surprised this movie was released on the big screen. This is a DVD movie with voice over atleast for the second half. It took me about 2 hours after I came out of the movie to completely convince myself that the whole underground sequence was purely virtual and under the effect of some drugs and stuff. Then in the last 30 minutes there is a great tribute to the Schindler's List gas chamber scene and I think also Fellini's 8 and a half. Bob Fosse's Cabaret sequence is shot brilliantly and Gulzar's lyrics; well what more can be said about Gulzar's writing anyway. I was surprised to see such scathing attacks on the movie. The theatre I was in was probably filled with people who expected an easy on the mind film and were hugely disappointed. That's the problem with some Indian moviegoers, they want variety and yet complain even more than normal when they are provided that. I had to endure similar mutterings and crude remarks during Brokeback Mountain. Well that's about that. I liked the movie for being brave and so obviously trying to be distinctive. As Ebert would say 2 thumbs way up.

Eastern Promises

How do you slit a man's throat? Or more importantly how does it look when you slit a man's throat? After watching so many movies where slitting a man's throat happens with one smooth move of the knife i watched something much more believable in Eastern Promises. It is not like cutting butter. It is more like cutting a hard undercooked piece of meat. I wonder if this was done so that the movie opens with a bang or just to show how difficult it is to kill a man in any way. Well the man being killed is a member of the Russian Mafia. The next scene is in an Indian owned Grocery shop in London (i think) where a heavily pregnant girl is asking for some medicines and is leaking blood from you know where. She is rushed to the hospital where she delivers a baby, leaves behind a highly important diary in the hands of a mid-wife named Anna played by Naomi Watts and dies. Naomi Watts is of Russian origin who has just broken up with her lover (who was black) and is living with her mom and uncle. Her uncle is a typical vindictive relative who believes that any inter racial mingling can only lead to disaster. He also has no qualms to say that this was the reason why Anna lost her baby (she was apparently pregnant once). Anyways now Anna wants the diary translated so she can understand what the dead woman has written. She cares for the baby as if she was her own and names her Christina. On the other side there is the Russian mafia. Semyon who owns a restaurant is one of the leaders. Anna goes to him for translating the book and finds herself strangely intimidated by the sweet talking man. His son Kiril is the one who ordered the first scene murder. This brings us to the most interesting character in the movie. His name is Nikolai played by Viggo Mortenson. He is the driver cum Undertaker cum lot of other things. Now he is supposedly an expert at disposing the bodies. So he cuts off the fingers of the dead man and as he is in this process he nonchalantly puts a cigarette to his mouth and puffs on it. Maybe there are real life characters who are so comfortable in the company of a dead body but is it really necessary to show this in the movie. I don't know, well anyways the dead man has powerful friends as well and now the diary is also a problem for Semyon. Turns out Anna's uncle also knows what's in it. This is where the lives of so many people get intertwined and leads to an extremely violent sauna scene towards the end. Atleast the ending is liberating and has some hope in it. Even the most cold blooded people have a heart and have emotions, thank god for that. I really needed to know that after watching No Country for Old Men. There is something very earthy about a David Cronenberg movie. A history of Violence also was the same. I don't know if this is offbeat cinema but it is simple cinema. Nothing flashy or gimmicky about it. The characters are all flesh and blood people and more than anything else they are all a character study than an actual movie. Even after watching A history of Violence I thought there is nothing special about the movie and yet I couldn't forget it in hurry and same with Eastern Promises. This makes me believe more and more that atleast in my case I remember the characters and not the scenes or the plot. Over the last few years I have noticed something odd about the leading men and leading ladies in movies. The men are becoming colder and more detached, less human. The ladies on the other hand much more sensitive. I don't know if this is just an independent observation  but after watching Eastern Promises I can't help but believe so.....

This post is an entry to the Reel-Life Bloggers contest organized by wogma.com and reviewgang.com