Movie Review – Water

This one’s more on the surface level

Probably the least impactful movie of the trilogy, which could be attributed due to lot of factors like, the gap between the movies (this being the longest between two movies in the trilogy), the actors or even due to the compulsion of completing a trilogy. This always happens when you want to make a package of impactful movies. One out of it drifts away from the purpose. Rather than counting as a three different stories, a blue print should have been created to understand what happens as part of this universe. Having said that, the film is still an important film. May be for the one who see this as a standalone film or see this as first film in the trilogy, it’ll hit you a lot harder.

The first thing which strikes about the movie is the clarity of visuals. The first couple of movies ‘Fire’ and ‘Earth’ didn’t have the clarity but rather had a certain bit of rawness to it. ‘Water’ had a vibe of foreign film, even though it was made in India by an Indian. Technically, not Bollywood. It gives a very award film flavor. Not that I complain but when that happens, we tend to distance ourselves from the movie. ‘Earth’ in spite of having a superstar like Aamir in the film, lures us in the film.

The opening act of a small girl being pushed into a widow house by undergoing a painstaking process would wrench any heart. Anyone watching the film would instantly fall in love with young Chuyia (Sarala Kariyawasam). It’s difficult to not empathize with her. Chuyia is a dream kid. Even though she undergoes such rigorous act of torture and being sent away from home, she hardly cries. She does complain and shows her attics and in the process makes us afraid whether she’d get caught by the chief of the house, Madhumati (Manorama), but luckily she doesn’t.

Kalyani (Lisa Ray) remains as the only woman with hair in the ashram because Madhumati uses her for prostitution so that the ashram would get enough money to run. Shakuntala (Seema Biswas) on the other hand is torn between two worlds. She does what she had to do but then she thinks whether what she’s pushed to, is fair. Together all them form a unique combo with Chuyia being a focus point.

I would have loved the movie if it had talked about Chuyia completely. Rather the main focus shifts around Kalyani (Lisa Ray) and Narayan (John Abraham), who was clueless in the movie. Of the three movies and the ‘n’ number of characters, only John Abraham’s character feels so foreign. He doesn’t gel with the movie at all. He looks like postcard rebel who doesn’t create any impact. The romance between the two and the twist in the end too doesn’t work. Generally each one of the Deepa Mehta’s movies have a great sex scene but in this movie, even that fails.

The only good aspect of the movie is, it doesn’t dramatize any of the sequence. It doesn’t see the movie by shock value. Whether the scene where Chuyia is taken to prostitution or Kalyani’s death. It could have been easily made horrific but Deepa Mehta chooses the other way around. I’ve to appreciate her for that. But Kalyani’s death in the water, felt so gimmicky. Just because it was titled this way, she goes into the water, it didn’t feel appropriate.

Of all the characters, if there was one stand out performance, it had to be Gulabi (Raghuvir Yadav), a hijira who acts as a pimp for Madhumathi. A combo which will surely bring chills to the viewers. Especially the scene where he takes Chuyia to a palace and walks on the way to room.

To see the people walk about their acts so nonchalantly as if it’s very common, makes us know how hardened they’re as individuals. A set of people who don’t even know what mistakes they are committing. It’s disheartening to see that such people had existed before. I can only imagine how difficult it would have been to make them understand the ideologies of what’s good and bad. Truly another shocker of a film.

Movie Review – Cobra

Blasphemy!

If there was an award for choosing disastrous script, then Vikram would win it every single year. If there was an award for honesty in acting even in that disastrous script, Vikram would win even that. This film was again an example of such ridiculousness. Guess directors who want to take rest, earn big bucks and travel onsite for the film would have to do just one thing, imagine few getups and narrate the script to Vikram, rest all he’d take care. Even the directors who had fool proof record would do something like that to him. Every movie other than ‘Rajapattai’ was a hit by Suseenthiran. Same for Shankar and same here for Ajay Gnanamuthu. If a biopic would be made of an actor, of how great he could’ve been but couldn’t be, Vikram would fit right in. Something he himself can act.

The first half of ‘Cobra’ was utter rubbish. It’s a disgrace to even discuss it. Of his entire career, this was the only part of film where he doesn’t get to “act”. Even in a highly ridiculous ‘Kanthaswamy’ he’d have acted well in those horrible scenes. But here it was impossible to even sit through the movie. It was the first movie which totally didn’t work. Even ‘Rajapattai’ had few comic scenes, few which looked like comedy and certain massy scenes which would have got great applause if it had appeared in a Vijay or Ajith movie. Fights, needless to say were impressive. But in the first half of ‘Cobra’ even that was not good.

The director looked like he was badly inspired by Nolan, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to make a movie this bad. Sci-fi or to be specific, a Nolan genre is not an easy nut to crack. Yes, the geeks love Nolan for the intricacies but as laymen, it’d work even without knowing anything. That’s how good he’s at his craft. That shows his sincerity. Not like here where a man is showed a genius just through few muted dialogues. Judith Samson (Meenakshi Govindarajan) was Ariadne (Ellet Page) whose role was to admire the killer for his math skill. But if you would point to the audience, why even to the director to tell about one complex math he did to do the killing, they couldn’t, and that’s how shallow the script was. The titular explanation of ‘Cobra’ by her was the second worst in Vikram’s career, the first being ‘Bheemaa’. Of the three actress, Meenakshi Govindarajan was the one who looked pretty and looked like someone who had the potential to actually nail a character like Ariadne but with such a horrible story, even Manorama during her peak days couldn’t have evoked any interest in the character.

After a numbing experience, around the interval there was a twist that at least evoked some curiosity. The second half had a solid story about twins. We don’t really know why their mother was in jail, but that’s okay, the meet up of the characters was well made and the action sequence in rain was shot well. The umbrella scene where Vikram stands on top and before the fight where he ties his hair were the scenes which worked but the audience were too tired before those scenes because the entire first half was buffoonery.

The story was about twin brothers, rivalry and chivalry between them. When the movie ended it was still not clear as to who was who, which was actually nice, audience were mumbling with each other. If it had happened for an English movie, it would have been appreciated but it’s not the mistake of audience. You got to have a solid plot to make such a movie, not just fool around with makeup.

The investigation scene should have worked like the ‘Anniyan’ scene but again it didn’t due to shoddy screenplay of first half. Climax was really good, the thinking of killing all Vikram’s imaginary characters along with him in such a serious way had to be appreciated. If someone like Vignesh Shivan had done that scene it’d have come out terrific. But here, audience were already exhausted to appreciate anything.

The flashback sequence, fight between brothers were all lame and as my friend pointed out, thankfully he didn’t reduce weight to act as a college student. But how well had he dubbed! Srinidhi Shetty actually looked hot than her previous outings, especially in “Thumbi Thullal” song. Only place in the entire movie where Vikram looked happy. Mirnalini Ravi was such a waste. Rahman’s music too was wasted here. Few of the BGMs were terrific which could’ve done a world of good to other normal masala flicks. Overall, yet another disaster.

Movie Review – Madras Cafe

A solid political thriller that grows with time

As this film was by Shoojit Sircar, it immediately caught my attention but turned out to be different from his usual feel good humane movies. The film took its own sweet time to settle, very much like intense Hollywood thrillers in the line of ‘Syriana’ but could not carry on the impact like that. The intensity and seriousness ‘Syriana’ brings in is something phenomenal, which ‘Madras Café’ could not achieve, even though it tries extremely hard to. However, what looks mundane initially, gradually grows on to become a decent thriller, even if not completely satisfying.

Madras Café stars with John Abraham in beard, where he looks hopeless. But, thankfully, his bearded avatar lasts only for few minutes. Then he gets called up to go to Sri Lanka. Due to various geo political stands, the situation in Sri Lanka gets grim. Vikram Singh (John Abraham) meets war correspondent Jaya Sahni (Nargis Fakhri) first up and finds a way to go to meet the rebels. His senior, Bala (Prakash Belawadi) and he develop a friction right away. But, given the nature of film, it isn’t greatly highlighted. Coming from Shoojit Sircar, it is really something, that he chose to make a film without emotions, in docu drama style. But, unfortunately it is not as classy as one would except or not as stylish something like the latter part of ‘Talvar’ which was unique on its own.

No matter what, Prakash Belwadi always performs his role to perfection. Such a fine actor. John Abraham even though occupies a lot of screen space, does not get a chance to emote. Even when his wife gets killed or he gets tortured, it’s nothing major. It feels just like one of the headlines in first page in some corner, which you usually miss. May be that is the intention of Shoojit Sircar. He did not want to really bring the emotions out of individuals. He wanted it to be a film firm on politics.

As hot she was, Nargis Fakhri’s role was irritating. The other officials looked proper in whatever scenes they acted. Nice casting I must say. One good thing about the film is that the film doesn’t take sides and it’s fairly neutral. Even if you see the story inclined to some part, it looks organic and doesn’t look like something which forces audience to see only one part of the story. In addition, the politics plays an important part, much more than human lives and their emotions.

Generally, Shoojit Sircar is a man with clear vision. Because it’s not easy to make a film like ‘October’. Even a ‘Piku’ or ‘Vicky Donor’ is doable but ‘October’ is not at all an easy film to envision. So, when he said that he wanted to show the raw face of RAW men, I was taken aback. I thought the intention of this film was to be politics, not necessarily ugly politics but politics. Because that’s how the film looked, devoid of any emotions. ‘Kuruthipunal’ fits the definition of what Shoojit Sircar says. Madras Café as a standalone film does a decent job in being a tense, getting on your nerves type of thriller but if it has to be considered a humane film, it so is not.