Shudh Desi Pyaar - a rather apt commentary

I walked out of the theater with a little smile on my face. A lot's said in this movie. Art they say imitates life. That makes cinema a Polaroid snapshot of the ferment bubbling up in society's beer tankard at that moment.
Sex sells. So the promos spoke, copiously, of sex before marriage.
Instead, this movie vocalizes the desires and changing realities of the institution of marriage amongst people. It speaks of the change within women.
When I asked Audi about the movie, he said that made him want to go out and fall in love again. Must agree that this movie does tend to have that effect.
Besides one feels with the characters instead of for them for a change.
The dialogs are crisp, the backdrops are picturesque and the songs are not redundant.
Both the female protagonists Tara and Gayatri are commentaries on bolder, more free, and independent women where the man still needs to woo but here the man proposes and the girl disposes.
Heart warming to see that sex is not taboo but an expression-and a rather rapid and upfront progression of a 'relationship'.

I've no idea of how the movie will do in the box office hustings but it sure is a nice watch.

Bombay Talkies

The crowd at Paradise theatre came in lured with expectations of perhaps something else.  'Entertainment"? It was like a cat startled at watching itself in the mirror. Julius Caesar had a point "for the eye sees not itself, But by reflection, by some other things". 

The eyes of the middle class of a city super of saturated hopes and dreams saw realities was perhaps the ideal surrounding to experience Bombay Talkies. Voyeuring a glimpse into the "other things" first drew a few hoots (at Rani Mukherjee's bare back), then a few nervous titters at the advances of Avinash (Saqib Saleem) and then silence followed by whistles for the Randeep Hooda kiss. 

Dibakar Banerjee evoked a conversation next to me that ended in "arrey yeh wala to samjha hi nahin". 

The audience really did not know what to do with what they saw in the reflections of themselves. That I think is where the tableux succeeded. Stirring thoughts (and perhaps reflections). It was palpable and perhaps as visceral as the audience erupting in Lagaan.

I loved a Bollywood movie after quite a few months. Every director brought a little of his and her self into their exposé. They brought a little slice of themselves to the party and left a lump in the throat for the characters.

Karan Johar had to let people deal with a homosexual's revelation and the loneliness of a city that has prosperity and loneliness as interchangeable currencies. 

Dibakar Banerjee brought Lal Mohan babu to the party in a Lower Parel chawl wrapped in Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Marathi lore. And of course the emu. The joy of a child's smile and the folly of a dream receding into vastness in the end is what I'd make of the city as well. (I wonder how many remembered Satyajit Ray and got the Rabindra sangeet inspiration though)

And then of course the poignance of Zoya Akhtar's storytelling. Sometimes I marvel at her repeated success of recounting a story from the man's perspective as a woman (remember Zindagi Na Milay Dobara?). Shot to begin like a Horlicks or a Complan ad, I hope it rattles a few parents thinking... Cross dressing little boys would perhaps evoke a different response had she not woven it so gossamer that a viewer smiles a few tears of joy for the triumph as the curtain comes down.

Of course it needed an Anurag Kashyap to reveal that in Bombay "hagney ko bhi dui rupiya lagta hain!" and to highlight the cow belt influence that makes the city. 

I like the simplicity of each premise and what each little story stirred within and left behind. It is a movie that can be discussed and analysed ad infinitum... and yet entertain the plebian. I loved how the stories completely avoided the super rich and the super mendicant. A middle class quartet that plucks heart strings. A of course stirrs "other things"

I perhaps lucked it out watching it in the mirror 

Shanghaied...

This is more of an intermittent thought stream started as a consequence of a FaceBook conversation with JunJun.

I'd just watched Shanghai and reacted to a post about the movie...

Shashidhar Nanjundaiah

• Hi Ignatius, How're you doing? The ending of the movie was blurred, and maybe intentionally so. The revealing shot of Mrs Ahmadi in a politician's avatar probably meant that she was behind this whole thing. The "Madam" that was heard on the video may not have been the CM. But maybe we're overthinking this! 
  
  
  Ignatius Nayan D'RozarioI'd want to disagree here. Ahmedi's wife is never called "madam' through out the film (if I remember correctly).
  
  
  Ignatius Nayan D'RozarioAlso, my reasoning for my conjecture stems from Ahmedi's wife's discussion with Kalki where the difference in their character is shown... For example she asks Kalki why she is so 'angry' and then goes on to say how she is has moved on and does 'her own work...' since none of the people they fought for have not received anything in any case.
  Also there are two instances when she speaks with the envoy from the 'centre', once hinting that the home minister wants to speak to her and the second instance (where Kalki overhears the conversation) about a clear political offer.
  From one perspective both these characters have similar beginnings... magnetically attracted to the charismatic Ahmedi as his students, his lovers, and then supporters of his movements as an outcome... However, Kalki's character 'runs away' from NY while Ahmedi's wife stays becomes his wife, a recognized and legitimate part of his institution and takes off her rose tinted glasses and realizes how to exploit Ahmedi as a springboard.
  The end does not explicitly say what happened to the ones who made a volte face to survive... Only images tell their story. Ahmedi's wife (a part of IBP... Washing away what her husband's movement espouses), the killer driver-who now razes their own houses, Kaul (in the last frames) looks at the Cm who he is going to sell off and then engages with the home minister's aide... And so on...

So...Thus encouraged, I thought why vent only on FB when it can be easier to find later and say Tsk Tsk to my self.