Murakami in Bollywood

Finally, Murakami comes to India. It's been a week since I saw Zero and I chose not to write about it then because it took me time to process what I had seen or rather experienced. This isn't as much a review as it is an expression of my feelings. *FEW SPOILERS*

Zero is a winner not because it is unconventional but because it stays true to what it is. We have all, at some point in our lives, dreamed of a miracle to happen. This is a movie of such miracles happening at regular intervals. The movie starts off in a typical Rai-Sharma style with the characters being established and a giveaway of a conflict that would soon seep into the screenplay. However this time, they take it a notch higher with Bauua (a brilliant SRK) swiping stars from the sky. I bought into the world immediately, hoping that I will be in for a joyride and I wasn't disappointed.
Unpopular opinion but I enjoyed the second half thoroughly. The first half was more of typical storytelling coming from the writer-director combination but the second half is where they upped the ante. I feel the idea of the film was inspired by Murakami's world. There are two regular people who get embroiled in a love story that has metaphysical elements and their life takes a turn with attributes like love, loss and life embodied, only to have those characters have a happy ending.
This is no easy film to sit through because it is illogical. Illogical not because it has stupidity written all over it but because we, as humans, cannot comprehend something that does not feature in our logical framework. The idea of finding our own realities in a world that is virtual has seeped in so much that we fail to differentiate between our imagination and what is real. At the core of it, Zero is a humane story of triumph, grief and emotions but is coated with a plotline that is beyond this world, both literally and psychologically. And this is what makes it great. How can you judge a film that is based on a parameter lying on the opposite end of the general human spectrum?
There are two ways to it. You either discard it or accept it in the form that it has been created. People chose the former and I have no issues with that. However, the film would go down as one of the finest experiences I have had inside a theatre because it transported me to a dimension within our world but a dimension we cannot feel because we have not sensed it. It does take its concepts literally but not seriously which is a dangerous line to function on.
Our logical framework has an ego that needs to be satisfied and the movie challenges it, just like any other Murakami novel. It puts in real characters with real inner conflicts and makes them do extraordinary things that people can only dream of. Bauua kept blaming his father for every trouble that he had to face in his life and the father, eventually, becomes the reason why Bauua and Afia did not end up together in the first place.
What I am trying to say is that everything fits but not in our realities, which does not make it untrue. I believed in the film since the trailer came out. I believed in the fact that Katrina would be the best part about it since her first poster came out. It had something to do with me being an SRK fan but the film has stayed with me for so long making me believe that my belief wasn't driven by my biases.

Zero is a movie that might never get its due which makes me feel bad. However, when I first compared it to a Murakami movie, a friend asked me not to glorify a shitty film but a true Murakami fan felt the same which gave a definition to my reality of this magnanimously beautiful and yet down to earth movie. Murakami has finally come to India.
It is never 'Sometimes that we wish for a miracle' (as I had mentioned) but 'ALWAYS' wishing for it.

P.S. - I did not intend to add these two points in my post but I cannot resist now, even after months of watching the film. Firstly, the no gravity scene of Zero where Anushka and Bauua have an argument of sorts, but the way it has been shown displays the genius of Rai. Two people, who have a story that does not belong to the world, are away from from the ground and are finding grounds to their haphazard bond.
The next one is probably the most beautiful feeling I have had inside a cinema hall. Anushka completing the countdown for Bauua and then swiping. This is the reason why I go to watch movies. The sheer bliss that the scene elicited from my face is a feeling I would want over and over again. I could not stop smiling since I had seen a moment that blew away my brain. Kudos to the team. And No, Shahrukh, you did not make a wrong film. It wasn't perceived correctly. Your count up till 5 was correct, we could not complete it to zero and therefore, did not see the night stars falling at our will.

Knowledge before Greed

'Tumbbad' is a winner all the way. Again, this is not a review as much as it is a discussion post and yes, Pankaj Kumar has outdone himself and any cinematographer in the Indian film industry this year. Watch out for the last 15 minutes especially.

'Tumbbad' claims to be a horror film and I am still in two minds about the fact whether it redefines the genre or actually introduces us to it. It is a film based on the concept of 'Greed beyond Fear' and how aptly have they explored its depth both cinematically and literally.

It is always our innate desire to pursue something that is beyond our capacity to comprehend. We are in a perpetual state of seeking the ultimate power, based on our perspective, and more importantly, keeping it to ourselves. It is the exposure to the things that we neglect, due to the inferior approach, that really makes us fearful.'Tumbbad' exposes us to such inner demons which pops up and make places in those vacant positions of our mind that should have been filled with the knowledge of what we were supposed to seek. And this is where it is frightening.

A human walks through the jungle periodically and all the trips they make turn out to be a success. The thought of expecting more out of those trips might actually increase the frequency of our visits but also deepen the footprints we leave behind each time for the beasts of the jungle to easily track us. It is not the Greed as much as the child inside us that refuses to stop and despite all the maturity, we follow a route beyond our limits of understanding. And this is where we falter. This is where the demon strikes because they can only overpower you once you give them that power.

It is the point where whims replace reality and we let them, hoping those whims will turn into our reality. We refuse to lose. We refuse to bow down. We accept the God in us but fail to recognise it. We let the external power of our own kind take over our mind sidelining the very reason of how we could be the fascination of those external entities. At the end of the day, this is what makes us mortal. This is why we must lose for the game to end. This is why we must cease to exist for the powers to vanish.

The more we know about the world, the more it expands itself. Or the more we know about the world, the more we realise the unimportance of continuous seeking and how important it is to be satisfied with our process and results. This dichotomy of the same idea is what probably gives birth to the thin line between right and wrong. It is not bad to be greedy as much as it is to greed for something without knowing. The meeting of these ideas and us, and what we could become with all our ignorance and clouded opinions is what makes 'Tumbbad' a compelling watch and a true horror movie.

You are not looking at Vinayak (a fantastic Sohum Shah) but your own self. You see Hastar and your inner conscious twitches. You know you are powerful but can also fathom your anti-power. You realise the powers in you but you cannot use them because you do not know how to channelize them. You will only realise it because you are watching it from a distance. Do not commit that mistake because 'Tumbbad' wants you to go inside that womb. Let 'Tumbbad' engulf you and you will come out as confused and blanked out as I was, probably. I need to watch it again to make more sense out of it. I am in shambles and my thoughts in disarray.

Andhadhun - Made in India

A lot has been said about 'Andhadhun' and how brilliant the movie is and I feel almost everything has been covered in the discussion. What I am trying to do here is not review the film or appreciate film but rather talk about the power of cinema through the world of 'Andhadhun'. It might have SPOILERS because it is an interpretation and might ruin the movie experience. IT HAS SPOILERS.

Andhadhun in the true sense questions our understanding of the word 'Truth'. What is 'Truth'? Is it something that we comprehend? Is it something that we believe in? Is it a perspective? Does it even exist?
In one of the famous Murakami novels, I read a line that goes like - "Do we believe in the truth or just in the things that we wish were true?" Andhadhun presents us with the same question.
It is a deep study of human psychology and philosophy. It talks about a character who pretends to be blind because people tend to shed their inhibitions in front of him. Thus, he can find the inspiration. He can see them naked on a psychological level or physically. Artists leave their home in the morning to find an inspiration and come back to their house again in the evening only to leave again, the next morning. This is what Ayushmann does throughout the film. He sees a rabbit stick and probably creates a story around it. He can focus on things that are important rather than varying his vision to inculcate unnecessary details. He can make people believe in the most unusual story. Everything is happening by chance yet everything is believable.

If one asks a psychologist about extracting information from the subconscious, the probable answer would be that it is not possible today but even if we could, it would just be pure chaos. To bring a meaning to that chaos, one would need a deeper understanding to solve those equations and this is where Raghavan comes in. This is a chaotic movie told with an orderly approach. Raghavan talks about manipulation, our incapability to overcome our emotions, our search for finding a solution and being content with it and above all, our inability to look beyond our own little world. This is where an artist like Akash comes in and weaves a story or a tune despite their blindness (that we perceive). We tend to feel that an artist is socially blind and confined to their own whims but what we don't understand is those whims are a byproduct of the dimension they notice within the human structure. Andhadhun is a prime example of 'What we see might not be the truth' or 'Every entity has its own truth'.
I still feel Raghavan was Akash and the audience was Apte. What I also felt was Akash was as much a musician as he was a storyteller. He found a sense of entropy around and gave them a form of a 'Tune' or a 'Story'. I wonder if he sometimes sits alone and laughs at the world and its mediocrity while an old lady, out of deep respect for God, hands him a note of a higher denomination believing it will reconcile her with the ultimate truth.
This is the part that differentiates the artist from a common man. They know how to keep the commoners, commoners. An artist has an ego to satisfy. An artist has the power to display. And they will. What we do is, unknowingly give in to those mediums and then when left awestruck try to polish our egos by giving it a boundary via our answers.

Also, I loved the film and if it does make it to international circuits, it should have an addition to its title for people who despise Indian cinema without knowing that a guy like Sriram Raghavan exists. Andhadhun - Made in India.

We, the fools.

Ignorance is Bliss.

There might be spoilers ahead for 'The Darjeeling Limited' so you might want to refrain yourself from reading further after the first three paragraphs.

I know a lot of you are pissed about a number of posts regarding 'October' but I couldn't find a more suitable movie to initiate this discussion.

I had restricted myself from writing any reviews for 'October' believing that expressing feeling via mere words is a polluted form of communication (also evident in the film). I wasn't reading any reviews too because of the very same reason but my optimism drove me to go on and read reviews of few critics that I sometimes look up to. The only takeaway for me was how each and every one of them reduced this heartfelt film to a piece of furniture in a living room. They were judging it by the factors that were way below the film's standard and therefore they could not connect with the film. I know most of them have been to a film school and learned the craft but what if something like October comes in that takes it a level further and we are still looking at it through our myopic lenses.

This makes me wonder if 'Ignorance is indeed bliss' especially in this case where we are ignoring the essence of the film as well as the need to draw the line between something like October that is artistic and 'A Death in the Gunj' that is well crafted. Someone suggested me to watch a film twice - the first time to feel it and then to understand why you felt the way you did.

Adding to the above discussion, I also feel our habit of over analysing with a blurry unidimensional vision has been mocked by a few filmmakers. Take an example of 'The Darjeeling Limited'. They carry luggage with their father's name inscribed on it which was symbolic of the baggage that they carried after their father's death. A point that most of the viewers completely missed, until the last train scene because of (probably) our habit of look for something great in a film. I laughed out loud during that scene because I felt that is where Anderson mocked all of the viewers for competing to be erudite. Ditto for when I was watching 'Mulholland Drive'. The film in itself was opened to multiple interpretations (that is what art is) but I felt the director knew people will go crazy looking for just a single explanation of what was happening. Reading its Wikipedia page just confirmed my theory.

Naachne Gaane wali Industry

While standing in the queue to buy tickets for 'A Quiet Place', I noticed a pattern in our audiences. I was third in the queue and it still took me 10 minutes to get to the ticket counter and hence, was late for the show.

I went in the next day and saw the same pattern. The audiences lined up actually were deciding on what movie to watch after they reached the counter. The lady, who I first noticed, brought up every film that was playing and just kept wondering what film should she and her husband be watching. The same thing happened to a couple that was standing right in front of me who until reaching the counter did not care about the movie they were going to watch. I eavesdropped a bit and heard the boy asking 'Baaghi 2 kaisi hai?' to which the girl replied 'Action accha hai, story kharaab hai' and they then discussed each and every film from Peter Rabbit to Blackmail and ended up buying the tickets for Baaghi 2. Same movie for the lady before them and the same thing happened the day after. What struck me was the casualness in the audience towards our cinema.

I have always been vocal about the need for films like Baaghi 2 and how they bring in the money in the industry. The films are causal in nature but a consequence of it that evaded my understanding until that day was how much of a 'Chalta Hai' attitude it has generated within the audience towards movies.

I read this article where Sajid Nadiadwala says how he wants the audience to get their each and every penny worth. But what he is missing out is the impact that the films of his create on the cine-goer, which is negligible. I heard my uncle saying once as to how Akshay Kumar is doing wonderful cinema by bringing out the social issues in the films. I was happy to see a positive reaction to our films and a certain sense of respect in his tone. And to be honest, I do not mind Akshay doing such transitional films (I like to call them that) that at least leaves our audiences with a question to ponder upon although the films in itself are not well crafted. But a film like Baaghi 2 only creates this sense of 'Blah' in them which is a highly convenient option for a country that compromises on a lot of fronts (Please do not get offended). Singing is an art, composing music is an art but Cinema, cinema toh humaara timepass hai. A film like Dangal or a Barfi or even a PK can mint the same amount of money that a Baaghi 2 can. They too give their audiences the worth of the money they have spent and alongside, create an impact that lasts longer and sometimes give them a perspective.

Baaghi 2 just drops the level of the industry to the conventional 'Naachne Gaane wali' place. The actors aren't taken seriously. Some of the films are just bypassed because they are movies. There are horrendous comments on the filmmakers by equally horrendous politicians even after their death. The reason, we simply do not respect our films and do not know the reason to why they should exist in the first place.

Peeping through the lenses

There is a common term for the understanding of literature coined as 'Reading between the lines'. Movies for me are no less than the visualisation of those pieces of writing, at its core, with other layers of technical aspects attached. Coin a term you want that is analogous to the aforementioned term for the art of moviemaking (i.e. Peeping through the scenes or whatever deems best), and we have a way to understand this world better.

Take an example of the scene from Hitchcock's 'Vertigo'. The scene where Gavin Elster asks Scottie for help. On multiple viewing, one would realise how beautifully the scene has been set up with Elster's positioning around the room. Another one would be that of a surprisingly panned 'Meri Pyaari Bindu' and the use of cassette in the movie, or the movie in its entirety through Abhi's perspective. There is 'Dear Zindagi' or 'October' that demands a viewer to have such attributes to understand a film.

What I have been observing, particularly in the local audience is the lack of such abilities. In an interview, Zoya Akhtar mentioned how critics really do not read between the lines. There is a constant competition between them as to who could use better condescending adjectives to bash a film. A trend that I have been noticing for a very long time but ironically the critics have a habit of not taking criticism (on them) in a positive fashion. As a learner, I would love a review that consists of reasons as to why a film was good or bad. I would love the analysis of the idiosyncrasies of a character, or the scene if I can put it that way. Bashing of the film is acceptable on that woman's front (the VDW reviewer whose video went viral) because I really can't call her a critic and take her seriously.

There is a dearth of constructive analysis within the film industry's vicinity. And I see that trend in the group too. The film has layers to it. Those layers are exemplified by multiple processes that a filmmaker uses. The understanding of a film cannot be immediate (from my own understanding) as a film would take its own sweet time to encapsulate your mind because, in a single scene, it has so much to offer for the mind to grasp (Eg - Wes Anderson's work). The mind itself grasps everything but does not process it completely. A more layered film also requires a more layered commenting on it which is missing. This habit of ours to judge on a film based on its face value (analogous to judging the book by its cover) is a hazardous way to critic a movie because it leads to disastrous results.

An immaculate way to deal with it is to first acquaint ourselves with the ins and outs of films, writing or understanding the psyche of people. Another important quality that should have been obvious is to start believing that there is no one right approach and our own approach comes with flaws. I believe only then can we understand a thought that is completely different from ours. A lot of decent films have been subjected to oblivion because of our stubbornness to look beyond our boundary of knowledge. There can be films that are completely opposite to our morals. The perspective needs to be understood and not the morals that it might or might not be trying to preach.

Art isn't subjective anymore

Art is subjective and something that we can all agree upon. Over the course of last few weeks, I have been exposing myself to various movies trying to understand the psychology of the filmmaker and how he/she creates the universe. I seem to have a clarity of thought to write down this post.

A filmmaker has a perspective. From their own understanding of this universe, dreamy or practical, they sketch a portrait of how they see a dimension that evades a common man. Then they make you believe in this thought. What has been happening lately is people trying to judge a far-off world, from their understanding of how they see the modern day lives. The whole critique process, I believe, is highly objective and most of the critics today have a limited horizon within that objective space. The whole procedure has boiled down to just a few aspects of filmmaking, mainly screenplay issues or logic in Indian cinema. The basic idea of storytelling is to indulge its listeners/viewers vividly into themselves to find those attributes, even if they seem preposterous in the mainstream surroundings. You can always comment on the process and what deterred you from buying into the universe but commenting on something that does not seem to please your intellect is a thought that I cannot fathom.
Take an example of Yash Chopra, his movies in the mundane sense was highly over the top yet powerful enough to make people believe in the concept of love. I agree that most of the audience took away most of the superficial concepts but I, for once, was fascinated by how he defined love in such a personal way. His work on the celluloid was like a poetry. How do you judge his body of work without understanding his definition of love, then? Calling it unrealistic is a pretty convenient option.

Another example that comes to my mind and might offend a few in this group is that of Wes Anderson. His body of work embodies a vast number of abstract theories and human emotions. The multi interpretative narrative exposes you to your inner demons in the most casual way. How, then, can you talk about a flaw in his script or more importantly his cinematography because he is probably, light years ahead than most of us in the school of movie-making.

And then one of my all-time favourites, 'A Ghost Story'. There is a scene where a woman is eating a pie. It runs for like 2 minutes or more. What is fascinating is not the scene but the build-up to it. David Lowery had me so much engaged that that scene did not need dialogues for me to understand the entropy within her head. I could feel what she was feeling. I was in that world eating that pie, mourning over the death of my lover and finding solace within that eating process to take me out of the mess that I was in. Stress eating is a convenient way to define it. Understanding the mindset is necessary.

How, then when you see a piece of work, that is beyond your understanding of the world around you, from the limited boundaries of an objective process involving the mere technicalities can you comment on the overall impact of a film? In that sense, if I were to look at sci-fi thrillers, I would say all of them are unrealistic given the leeway time provided by them to the scientific universe to attain the particular level of scientific development shown.

The reality of Infinite or Zero answers

The anomalies and the analogies of this world that becomes a driving force to keep us entangled without any definite answers.

The world of cinema. The world where whimsical fantasies see the light of the day, where ideas do not stay within the vicinity of our brain, where the thin line between subjectivity and objectivity is blurred to whelp out a product that not only is infinite but also infinitesimal.

The world of Art has a stark contrast when juxtaposed with other worlds of Science, Business or Managment. This world does not have answers. Or if I were to be more accurate, not one definite answer. We live in a world that is driven by overlapping realities. The real-life world has answers to every question or there is an attempt to come up with a unified answer. Filmmaking is a bit different. It hardly works on the concept of converging. Actually, it acts like a singularity that let the realities diverge to a distance incomprehensible to other parallel realities. There are multiple interpretations of a single product. Taking an example of October. There was a spectrum of thoughts at the display; each true in its own sense because each was perceived by a different reality. There was a concept of nothingness, someone talking about OCD or another one mentioning about Shiuli being a metaphor. The product was limited, the experience not so much.

The point I am trying to establish is how then with a world that has no set pattern, no definite answer, no way of understanding the concept as a whole and dimensions at a number that exceeds those of Science (M-Theory and String theory works with 11) get ahold of such different people to continue to be a part of it knowing they wouldn't end on anything because there is no end but a horizon?

The answer probably lies in our human psyche. The problem of curiosity. The sins of not being satisfied. The problem has a solution which transposes into another problem. The answer comes with an uncertainty and a possibility. The uncertainty because of our insecurity. The possibility that drives us to explore further. Further exploration takes us back to Step 1 with a different perspective, probably a different reality.

A film like October or a Dear Zindagi or A Grand Budapest Hotel is a world governed by individualistic laws. Laws that can not be deciphered by an external universe because of our lack of understanding. That being said, there is always an effort to understand the world or give it a meaning from our own little understanding simultaneously merging with our ability of ignorance. I do that a lot. The most recent example being 'The Post' by Steven Spielberg. I noticed the technique of blocking a scene and the very thought of revealing the bias of an actor through their positioning in the frame was an idea that fascinated me to the core. Another film would come from an industry that has been churning out some deeply insightful films of late. The Iranian film - Bodyguard. It's nowhere a perfect film but the sheer exchange of dialogues that create conflicts within a viewer because of the maker's understanding of multiple realities is a concept that I got attracted to. Or the ever dependant Kalki playing an outsider in 'The Job' whose production design takes the lead in a band of storytelling. This is a world with infinite possibilities. A world where changing the dynamics drastically or slightly would give birth to another world instead of destroying the original. The 'External Reality' becomes a foundation of our own realities. Yet, there is no final answer; for the answer to take a form, the observer and the observee need to interact which paves the way to multiple paths owing to the clashing of different worlds and each worldly law overlapping. Just like Young's double slit experiment. Not much different then, Science and Art, aye?