Movie Review – Taxi Driver

What do I tell about the film? A film that changed the course of the way I started watching films. The story about how Scorsese wanted to become priest and Paul Schrader coming with Raging Bull script and making him change the course of his life is well known. That’s what this film did to me when I was in third year of college.

It was the week I was about to get the result of 4^th semester. I had joined the gym for the first time and the first unit test was fast approaching. You know about middle class parents. They were thinking that I’m wasting all my time in gym and watching movies. For them I’ve to study daily. When I even say this to my classmates, they’ll be like, “what? they ask you to study daily?” I don’t have an answer. I had got used to it by then. So… it was the week I was about to get results. On two consecutive days I watched Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. I didn’t talk about the movies to anyone. For me Taxi Driver and Raging Bull are not two different films. It’s a dual feature. They became so personal that I didn’t even feel like talking to anybody. The feeling that those two films gave me was phenomenal. Later that week I got my results with two arrears and I had to stop the gym for obvious reasons. But what this film did was, it made me not get angry on my parents for asking me to stop gym and worrying about arrears. The distant way in which I approached studies and life after that was something I thought I would never be able to do. That’s what movies or any art form is supposed to make you do right. To make you a better person! Taxi Driver did that to me. And without any effort. Not that I became very good in studies and got all matured in life. Not only did I have arrears after then and I also started thinking from the other persons point of view too when they scold me. Even if I had arrears after that it wouldn’t have really mattered.

You see how the movie opens. Close up of De Niro’s eyes. That seductive angels of taxis. Only after watching the movie one would come to know that taxis could be so seductive. And De Niro, man. How awesome that dude looks. I’m not sure whether an insomniac would look this good, without dark circles, tired face etc. But he nails it here. He’s part psychotic too. But in a good way. There is always a fan fight betwen Al Pacino and De Niro but I couldn’t even compare them. I go for De Niro hands down. Just watch these two movies. Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, you ought to become a De Niro fan.

Nothing De Niro does has a reason. You couldn’t make a better movie out of a loner. He wants a life that would be fruitful. When someone reads his diary he wants them to think that his life was phenomenal. So he does everything cinematic. He woos a beautiful looking girl, by walking right into the office. He helps a girl out of prostitution who doesn’t really look as if she’s troubled. He tries to kill a senator. In the climax he walks out like a superhero thinking, “with great life comes great responsibility.” He couldn’t have been a better loser.

Obviously no one is going to understand what I’m saying as well as what Travis Bickle was going through in the movie. The fact that what was wrote by Paul Schrader was exactly understood by Martin Scorsese and exactly enacted by Rober De Niro is why the film is culturally, historically and aesthetically significant. The same thing Scorsese tries with DiCaprio too but it doesn’t work like how I’m not feeling like typing Martin Scorsese and Leonardo Dicaprio for Scorsese and Dicaprio respectively. You understand? You better don’t!

Movie Review – 10 Enrathukulla

It was a pleasure to watch Vikram as Vikram (A Man with no name) instead of The Vikram. The former being his power while he was churning hit after hits during his peak time. Good that this time he didn’t have to do weight lifting, put on weight, take lessons for blind, study braille etc. Even for other commercial movies in recent times like Thandavam he was trying always to do something “different”. So above all 10 Enrathukulla was a relief.

When Hollywood makes movies under their most famous category “Hollywood Crap” it gets the money because of the amount of craft involved in it. Take for example Eagle Eye. You don’t need much viewing of Hollywood movies or any movies for the fact to call Shia LaBeouf a horrible actor and the plot with so much twists and turns a bad way of writing. But in spite of all that you get entertained there in theatre. We call Inception not a good movie (in classical sense) but it doesn’t mean that it’s as bad as Eagle Eye.  By saying Eagle Eye a good movie, it doesn’t mean that it’s better than Inception in any ways. I guess you are able to get it. Movies have to be categorized in the way they are expected to work. Movies failing in their categories are the worst. Classic examples like Rajapattai, Anjaan etc, which wouldn’t work in any genre at any point of time. This, without taking into account the movies of Thala and Thalapathy, safely negating it to avoid fan fights.

So Vikram is human here, it has 3 songs, intro song, item song, romantic song and a number of fights in between, a twist in climax and everything that you need for a commercial potboiler. But see a minute of silence that Vikram has after knowing that Samantha had fallen in love for him. Look at how brilliantly the scene where Samantha gets kidnapped cuts to the dogs and comes back to her, and the scene before that where the fight scene merges into the one where she comes out a street. Those are brilliantly done editing scenes which no one is going to notice and that’s not even necessary for a film like this. This shows the directors sincerity. He needn’t have done that but he did.

Vijay Milton being an ace cinematographer shows his skills majorly in action sequences, especially the reflection camera in the climax car fight. But see how the scene builds. Vikram slows talks to the sister, takes his own time, she lets out a tear, the doctor makes Pasupathi move out of his way when he is holding the gun. Above all there is 10 second silence. Now how many directors do that? Of course there is no logic to explain, how a person could shoo off a guy who is holding gun but the point is impact. It made me laugh, it got the theatre in splits. It was even better because it’s a doctor who shoos of the gun as soon as he sees the patient getting tears in her eyes. May be if Rajkumar Hirani had done it, he’d have made a better scene.

The director’s way of making a commercial movie was a neat attempt. Be it the name play with AR Murugadoss and ending it with chi… (you know why the Chi… was used) using the same scene for comedy as well as sentiment, in spite of it didn’t worry. Putting some effort in making a proper setting for this to be road film, amount of genuininty for the climax scene. The scene where the tire burns and thus being used in the rails, gets the necessary continuation. Even if he had directly put the car in rails no one would have complained, or if they had hated, it wouldn’t have made them to hate more. But still he did it.

Vikram is not a guy who has fans who’ll go crazy no matter what he does, a reason why he doesn’t have haters too. That means he has to genuinely excite, even his fans, to make them clap. See the fight scene in Andhra. When the kid says 1, 2, he gives a smile. He gives a smile like how it should be given at that time. Needless to say, no matter what skill they exhibit, Ajith and Vijay would have got applause for that scene, but for Vikram he has to give that smile which would suit that particular scene. That’s one reason you don’t get disappointed with the film. He’s there, he’s there in the movie, wanting to make people believe that actors still exist.

As a fan it was good to watch the intro scene, his social deeds by giving food but not money to an old woman, his anklet giveaway in climax etc. But is also large hearted to use his contemporary Ajith’s name for a nameplate scene in the film. Again shows that he’s a director’s actor.

Deus Ex Machina was used in a proper way, how it must be used in a commercial film. If we complain of Deus Ex Machina in Avengers we are stupid but in Ayudha Ezuthu if it happens its bad. But the important thing is how much it has to be used. Vijay Milton shows how much to be used.

A lot of things happened which gave us joy while watching the film but there was one scene which was beyond what we had wanted. A moment where we forgot that we have to shout for the scene to make other people to look at us, but actually shouted because that scene it’s a sin to sit on seats. You know what I’m talking about…

Book Review – The Mill on the Floss

There was a red hardbound, old, library like book with extremely small fonts and lot of pages lying in my shelf for the past few years. Not an ideal book to pick up after an extremely tough read, The Brothers Karamzov. But it was part of my four months project by the year end, where I’ve to finish remaining four penguin modern classics in my shelf. To my surprise, The Mill on the Floss swept me off my feet.

It has some history. The Mill on the Floss fell into a category which David Copperfield is in currently now. May be more books are going to fall into this category in coming years. May be because I’m not getting younger anymore and not getting more sociable anymore. David Copperfield like I’ve written a million times gave me company when I was stranded in Batal, in Spiti Valley, without knowing how I’m going to reach Manali. Similarly The Mill on the Floss, gave me company in Coorg in a mental asylum like room with creaky fan and nasty bed. Yes, both these books fall under the loner-in-fake-solitude category.

There are two books which I’d compare with it when I review this book. Obvious David Copperfield being one and the other one is A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I’ll tell why the latter, later. You know by now why the former would be taken into comparison.

If David Copperfield reminded so much about me and made me sad about my imaginary past, The Mill on the Floss reminded so much about my sister and made me even sadder. I’m so like Tom Tulliver. Once I was reading the kids part of the story. I so much thought that I should give this book to my sister, ask her to read and apologize was hitting her during by first standard. Of course an incident that she’d have forgotten but definitely not me. But I know that this is not going to work as the Wodehouse book that I’ve given to her, lies with page marker marking the page where the first short story ends, for a month.

I’ll call her Maggie, Magsie. A way which Tom describes her when she’s angry. I call someone Cutsie. Severely inspired from this word. Magsie for me didn’t do anything unethical. Yes I could feel for Tom too, as to how he was pushed into hardships because of his dad’s death. How he was not able to show his affection towards Maggie and how his anger too was a kind of affection for Maggie.

Maggie on the other hand does nothing wrong. She’s the one who’s most good at heart. Loving his father, loving her brother, loving poor Philip Wakem but not able to pursue her love with him because of the one vow she makes in front of his brother in her father’s death bed. The way she’s torn between the love of his family and the love of her was so beautifully portrayed. I couldn’t read the book from her point of view. It felt as if I was a reincarnation of Tom and I was reading my story and how bad I felt how I behaved a century ago.

All through the while I was thinking how good George Elliot, being a male has written about a female character Maggie so intricately talking about all her insecurities. But only after reading the foreword I got to know that George Elliot is not actually a male but a female whose real name is Mary Ann Evans. I’d have loved George Elliot to be male and to have written so much about female insecurities without any prejudice. But few things are never bound to happen. But one good thing that happened out of it is a confirmation again to tell you that you should never read the introduction before reading the book. This was the only twist in the book for me though it didn’t involve the story.

I don’t know what’s with the climaxes during the Victorian Era novels. They make the climax setting so huge and bombastic and spoil everything they built. The disaster in the books are like building a great building with intricate detailing and demolishing before laying the final brick. So that people would get to see such awesome building again in life. Why such sadism? Why do they take the third act so literally? Why couldn’t a better structure have been enabled? Tom and Maggie didn’t see each other thereafter. She cried in the yacht she went and Tom put more hours to forget his Magsie. Story over. Why flood, why water, why disaster. Isn’t life’s disasters far sadder and less bombastic?

Movie Review – The Grand Budapest Hotel

Every frame is a painting. You’d truly associate with that sentence when you watch the movie. Attention to details was so awesome that you will forgive everything else when you watch the movie. When I was watching the movie, either for good or bad, I was interrupted a number of times. Every time I had to pause, it was a painting. I was talking over the phone and was observing the symmetry, the lighting, how objects were equally spaced, how every object had a meaning. Beautiful is the word. Beautiful it was.

This is just my second movie of Wes Anderson. I got a glimpse of his world in Moonrise Kingdom. But wasn’t taken into it. The Grand Budapest Hotel’s template too was similar. Symmetry, steady shots, art, painting, wry humor and add to it brilliant music. Here it worked. Of course the film was better than Moonrise Kingdom but I too was in a better frame of mind. Ever since I got to know the meaning behind Kurosawa’s framing, lighting, leading lines and camera movements I started liking movies where a shot has some meaning, rather than saying something through dialogues.

The movie could have easily started with Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) and the lobby boy, Zero. But instead it goes from a flashback to flashback to flashback. You know Wes Anderson creates his own world and it doesn’t fit in any definitive time period but here even the hotel and settings he creates as per his timeline which means it’s an extra effort which he intentionally does to add style to his movie. It’s debatable whether it’s worthy or not, needed or not etc. But at the end of the day it looks like how it should have been. That’s how he scores.

Of all, the absolute charmer was Zero (Tony Revolori). Be it his combination scenes with Gustave or the romance with Agatha (Saoirse Ronan). It was terrific. His indianized face severely reminded me of Kal Penn and Kunal Nayyar. This guy deserved an award. As if the name Zero wasn’t astounding enough. His way of using his name to write the love letter, Z to O was brilliant.