Ek: The Power Of One - Bollywood Movie Review

Cast: Nana Patekar, Bobby Deol, Shriya Saran, Khulbushan Kharbanda, Chunky Pandey, Jackie Shroff, Sachin Khedekar
Director: Sangeeth Sivan
Rating: *

Everything that can go wrong in a film does in “Ek: The Power Of One”.

Decades ago Raj Khosla had made “Bombai Ka Baboo” about a man who replaces the missing son of a simple rustic family and learns a few lessons on humanism.

Many years later Manmohan Desai reworked the same theme in “Roti” and in that Rajesh Khanna played the impostor son who takes over an impoverished son’s life.

Now in “Ek…” it’s the ceaselessly-stoic Bobby Deol who takes on the role of an impostor in a Chandigarh-based joint family who seem to specialise in making fools of themselves. The only members of this extended joint family to conduct themselves with dignity are Kulnhushan Kharbanda and Zarina Wahab.

What gives this high-velocity action flick a cutting edge is the fight sequences. Bobby seems to replicate his bade bhaiyya (elder brother) Sunny’s muscle power. When he hits, the earth moves.

Bobby’s character is shown to be a killer from adolescence. In the interestingly-conceived prelude, the child pulls a gun out on a gangster in a car and fires at him with the aim to kill.

Yes, this one learns young.

A subsequent attempt to just hurt a wily politician (Sachin Khedekar) goes horribly wrong - quite like this action-drama’s outdated script. And Bobby ends up hiding in the bustle of a boorish household in Punjab where he’s chased down by a trying-hard-to-be-cool-and-leery Nana Patekar.

There are some arresting moments between the fugitive and the cop. The material is occasionally edited with speedy care by Chirag Jain to bring together various strands of the action in a pantomime of cohesiveness.

Alas, the lose ends shriek out their protest. For Bobby, after “Bichoo” and “Badal”, playing the cold-blooded assassin comes naturally. He could sleepwalk through such a role.

Nana is a live-wire but in the wrong character. The role of the randy cop shooting bullets and making lewd passes at the speed of a gun seems to be a corny carryover of Amitabh Bachchan’s Sexy Sam in “Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna”.

Nothing in “Ek…” suggests even a remote connection with sophistication. This one causes a ‘head-Ek’.

Videsh - Heaven On Earth - Bollywood Movie Review

Director: Deepa Mehta
Cast: Preity Zinta, Vansh Bhardwaj
Rating: ****

When the first slap comes, it hits the audience hard across the face.

Spousal abuse as a theme is not new to cinema. What sets Deepa Mehta’s “Heaven On Earth” apart from other films including Jagmohan Mundhra’s “Provoked” is the fusion of unspoken unexpressed terror with mythological elements all packed with sardine-like compactness into a small apartment in Ontario, Canada, where Chand arrives fearful and hopeful after her wedding.

What she brings with her is her mother’s tales and homilies, songs and mythology that follow the bride into her chamber of horrors.

What follows in Chand’s new life is a nightmare that could claim the life of any Indian bride transported into a foreign country after marriage.

Absolute authenticity is the hallmark of Deepa Mehta’s vision. Her permanent cinematographer Giles Nuttgens enters Chand’s adopted Canadian home with her and remains by her side, living her pain, experiencing her humiliation and agony, as within no time Chand becomes that nightmarish entity whom we all read about in crime sections of the papers: the abused wife.

The film’s greatest triumph is its economy of expression. The tightly-wound tale of the tormented wife is never allowed to have loose moments. Ironically, outwardly we see a warm home filled with a Sikh family half of whom seem to have absolutely nothing to do. Within their abject nullity lies the secret to the violence that claims, possesses and tries to smother Chand’s domestic dreams.

We know from the start that she’ll escape the nightmare of a brutal marriage. That she lives to tell her tale is self-evident. The magic of her existence in the trap of an arranged marriage lies in the illusion of normalcy and compassion that she creates within the ambience of abject terror by inventing a double for her husband… a doppelganger, a spirit in human form, if you will, who applies balm to all of Chand’s wounds and gives her the courage to survive when the very breath of her existence is being choked out.

The snake-god from Chand’s backyard in human form assuming the physical traits of her violent husband is a metaphor that illuminates the darkest recesses of Chand’s life. Every time she hides in her bedroom for a dialogue with her phantom-soul mate, Preity Zinta’s face lights up with thousands of unexpressed yearnings trapped in a heart that aches for release. Preity lights up the darkest corners of her tortured and frightened character’s heart.

Thoroughly deglamourised and devastated by destiny’s cruel blows, Preity plays Chand with dignity and depth that take us by surprise. She and director Deepa Mehta keep the hysteria completely in check. The drama is generated completely from the normal domesticated sounds and sights.

The film creates the growing claustrophobia of Chand’s marital domesticity with acute austerity. The spurts of on-screen violence are all the more shocking for the way they erupt within the workaday milieu.

The one big sequence of violence erupts in the kitchen when Chand’s somewhat confused and altogether out-of-control husband Rocky thrashes his wife… for his outwardly-stoic mother’s sake of course.

There are no villains in “Heaven On Earth” - not even the husband Rocky (played with understanding by newcomer Vansh Bhardwaj) who hits out at wounds that are never allowed to heal. There are only victims in Deepa’s scheme of presentation. Silently-screaming puppets on a string being manoeuvred into a life of domesticated dereliction by forces that we could designate as fate or just cruel blows of workaday drudgery.

The mythic intervention that creeps into the plot with the appearance of the naag in Chand’s backyard, slithers into the scenario with surreptitious grace, creating for the theme a residue of myth and dream that nourishes the wife’s bereft kingdom.

The borderline between illusion and reality, between Chand’s violent reality and the world of harmony and love she creates in the womb of her heart, is so superbly seamless we never know when Chand’s smothered scream transforms into a silent whoop of triumph.

“Heaven On Earth” is not a film that offers easily digestible solutions to the complex problem of domestic violence. It neither takes sides nor allows the bride to turn into a pitiable victim. Preity standing supremely dignified at the centre of the conflict furnishes the theme with amazing grace. She’s the only known face in the crowded Punjabi home of patriarchs, matriarchs, victims and perpetrators of bitter violence. But Preity never lets it known she’s a star.

She merges into the terrifying domesticity of Deepa’s household. The character steps out occasionally into the workaday world of a migrant job (the friendship with the feisty Jamaican woman at her workplace rings a little hollow when compared with the reality that envelopes the the rest of the plot) and returns to her horrific home space where she creates a mythical merger between illusion and reality.

Finally when Chand says goodbye to a life of married trauma, we see on Preity’s face a mixture of distant triumph and immediate self-realisation. She finally comes home.

Straight - Bollywood Movie Review

Cast: Vinay Pathak, Gul Panag, Anuj Chaudhri, Sid Makkar
Director: Parvati Balagopalan
Rating: **1/2

Let’s get one thing, er, straight. Homosexuality is finally out of the closet in our films. Well, sort of. Last year’s naughty blockbuster “Dostana” had two of our most popular leading men pretending to be gay.

Now “Straight” has Vinay Pathak believing he is gay.

There’s a slender space dividing pretence from belief, specially when it comes to matters of human trait. Often what you pretend to be is what you eventually end up being.

Fortunately for serio-comic hero Pinu Patel (Pathak) he’s not sexually attracted to the persistently charming new stand-comedian Kamlesh (Anuj Chaudhri) whom Pinu hires for his restaurant.

The scenes showing Kamlesh insinuating himself into Pinu’s life and place of work are done with a dash of devilish bravado.

Within no time Pinu finds everyone eating not just off his tables, but also out of Kamlesh’s hands.

A triangle of sorts comes up in a queer way when Pinu can’t figure out who he’s more jealous, when the pretty new accountant Renu (Gul Panag) strikes up a camaraderie with Kamlesh.

Confusion of sexuality is a theme yet in its infancy in our films. Director Parvati Balagopalan keeps the going light-hearted and most of the time frothy and amiable. There’s an endearing quality to the way these NRIs in London are seen not in the predictable roles of migrant misfits, but grappling with more personal problems without taking themselves too seriously.

Seriously, being funny about sexual preferences doesn’t come easily to our cinema. “Straight” just about manages it with dignity and charm. The triangular relationship among Pinu, Renu and Kamlesh is punctuated by bouts of laughter, directed more at the way the characters deceive than conduct themselves.

The camaraderie that grows between the male characters is specially likable. Not just Pinu and Kamlesh, but Pinu and his London-born brother Rajat (Sid Makkar) who finally turns out to be what Pinu suspected himself of being.

Through Rajat some groovy rock numbers (Sagar Desai) make their way into the plot to add to the fair casual-fun quotient.

It’s not always that we see a woman director comprehending male bonding without prejudice.

Arranged marriages and unarranged alliances all come under satirical scrutiny under Parvati’s vigilant and vivacious camera range. She gets to the point straight most of the way, thanks to the performances.

While Vinay Pathak brings a characteristic candour and confusion to his character’s personality, Anuj Chaudhri as the endearing intruder Kamlesh plays the character sincerely and honestly. Gul Panag is, as usual, very camera-friendly.

What really works for this film is the uncluttered clean and crisp narrative with London providing a subtly sensuous backdrop to characters who are anything but subtle or sensuous.

Barah Aana - Bollywood Movie Review

Director: Raja Menon
Cast: Neseeruddin Shah, Vijay Raaz, Arjun Mathur, Tannishtha Chatterjee
Rating: ***

A mellow, mirthful and at times moving story of three north Indian migrants, “Barah Aana” may not be the ideal idea of an evening out or even an entertainer. But for a discerning audience, this tale of tantalizing possibilities brings in a sense of un-visited surprise.

There are three main characters - a quiet driver Shukla (Naseeruddin Shah), a watchman Yadav (Vijay Raaz) and a waiter Aman (Arjun Mathur) - all driven to the doors of despair but stopped in time by a self-directed sense of humour that saves them from self-destruction.

The story gathers momentum when the trio hit on an age-old formula for survival - crime.

Superbly scripted by Raj Kumar Gupta, who recently directed the riveting “Aamir”, “Barah Aana” derives its strength from the frailties and vulnerabilities of the three migrant characters who seem to be drawn into the dark side of life without knowing where they are heading.

Debutant director Raja Menon seems to view the people in his plot with a reasonable degree of detachment. There’s a sense of riveting finesse in the way these unsophisticated characters chart their course without self-pity.

Of course the film would have never worked without the cast. What does one say about Naseeruddin Shah without sounding completely like a fan? He’s seen in two totally different avatars this week.

Naseer’s bullied, embittered and silently-seething driver’s part in this film is as distant from his disoriented classical maestro’s role in Nandita Das’ “Firaaq” as only he can make them.

Vijay Raaz, always in top form when given to play a man who has seen life without rose-tinted glasses, gives a sly snarling spin to his role. His performance has both bark and bite. Watch Vijay play the watchman.

The youngest and most inexperienced member of the trio Arjun Mathur, seen in a sensitive part in Zoya Akhtar’s “Luck By Chance”, has a tough time holding his own against Naseer and Vijay and also holding his Bihari accent in place. But he nevertheless leaves a positive impressive.

Another great performance comes from Tannishtha Chatterjee. As the flamboyant Rani, she shocks you after her quiet performance in “Brick Lane”. She should be seen more often.

With a message on the plight of migrants, “Barah Aana” would hardly appeal to multiplex audiences. Films on lives of migrants usually score high as cinematic works but low on mass appeal.

One must say that Preeti Sethi’s camera goes through Mumbai’s lanes with the least fuss. See “Barah Aana” for its terrific cast, first-rate production values and the director’s firm grip on the grammar of grassroot politics.

Firaaq - Bollywood Movie Review

Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Raghuvir Yadav, Sanjay Suri, Tisca Arora, Paresh Rawal, Deepti Naval, Shahana Goswami, Amruta Subhash
Director: Nandita Das
Rating: ****1/2

Nearly flawless, almost pitched perfectly to show the trauma of those who lose limbs, lives, love and faith in a communal carnage, Nandita Das’ directorial debut leaves you speechless.

This is what cinema was always meant to be. But somewhere in its chequered course from information to entertainment, our movies began to feel like vaudeville entertainment meant more for diversion than intellectual stimulation.

“Firaaq” doesn’t aim to be a cerebral treatise on communalism. Nor does it suffuse the narrative with what one may call intellectual masturbation for the sake of creating an aura of socio-political importance.

Non-judgemental and utterly bereft of stylistic affections, “Firaaq” is a graceful and glorious homage to the human spirit. Much of its visual power comes from Ravi Chandran’s articulate but restrained camera work, Sreekar Prasad’s seamless but trenchant editing that leaves nothing (not even destiny) to chance, and Gautam Sen’s artwork which makes the city’s riot-torn colours emblematic of the red anger and the blue despair felt by the characters.

Set in those turbulent tension-filled days right after the Godhra incident in Gujarat, “Firaaq” depicts the loss of human faith and the complete absence of the rules of civilised conduct in the day-to-day working of the administration vis-୶is civilians.

Language, in fact, is an amazing tool of unhampered eloquence in “Firaaq”. The characters in the riot-torn city speak in three languages Hindi, English and Gujarati. They do so without design or selfconscious purpose.

The outstanding words do not stand outside the characters’ ambit of everyday expression (sometimes colloquial, otherwise poetic). Even when the narrative pauses to debate the polemics of communal politics among the characters, we the audience are one with the pause. This is excellence without the silent sound of applause. The spoken words are not designed for the camera. They are said because they have to be expressed.

“Firaaq” first and foremost deserves the highest praise for the remarkably even-pitched writing by Nandita Das and Shuchi Kothari. No character jumps out of the screen in trying to make its presence felt. The people who live in Nandita’s film are the people we know in one way or another.

And yet they are here, special in a very unobtrusive way. The narrative episodes, written with finesse and passion, are constructed to accentuate the post-communal friction among people who till the other day were neighbours. There is a mixed-married Hindu-Muslim couple. Before the day is done the husband (played with silent sincerity by Sanjay Suri) has made peace with his environment and the fact that his name is Sameer Sheikh, not Sameer Desai.

Sameer in the context of the film’s volatile communal statement becomes a metaphor for the Hindu-Muslim divide which is now a looming reality in middle class lives. The tact and grace with which “Firaaq” weaves through the communal tensions of unrelated characters all joined by their collective fear of a communal backlash are signs of a time when cinema and society at large need to do a serious rethink on their responsibilities.

“Firaaq” throws forward an assortment of unrelated characters zigzagging across a domain of doomed conscientiousness. Nandita Das’s narrative doesn’t attempt to unravel the enigma of a disaster-borne civilisation. It looks at the people, even the lowest and scummiest of them (including Paresh Rawal who bravely plays a middle class businessman who happily looted a Muslim shop and shared in his brother’s participative glee in a gang rape) with a kind of reined-in empathy that makes even the seeming perpetrators look like victims.

The villains, if any, are the administrative personnel shown to be running around abetting the violence. If this is a simplification in storytelling then it can’t be helped. Celluloid depictions of troubled times have to somewhere find tangible figures to blame for the injustice. Otherwise we would come away from a certifiable masterpiece like “Firaaq” wondering if there’s any sense of justice left in this chaotic world of self-serving brutality.

Das’ narrative is propelled forward by powerful characters played by actors who not only know their job but also know how to make their jobs look like anything but professional hazard.

It would be criminal to pick performances. Deepti Naval (looking like a ravaged guilt-ridden avatar of the nurturing foster-mom Sharmila Tagore in Shakti Samanta’s “Amar Prem”), Paresh Rawal (as a trashy unscrupulous bourgeois broker) and of course the redoubtable Naseeruddin Shah (as an aged classical singer caught in a sublime time-warp) deliver performances that glisten with glory and sensitivity.

But there are dozens of other known and unknown actors furnishing Das’ gripping drama with an inner voice that screams in protest without overstatement. The interactive drama bringing together people during crises never lapses into hysteria and homilies. The beauty of the drama of the disinherited is never diluted by clinging on to the inherent drama of any given situation.

Like life, Nandita Das’ narrative moves on with confident steps creating for itself a kind of compelling circumstance when crises are a given, compromise a compulsion and surrender to fate the only means of survival.

Haunting and powerful in its depiction of a time when humanity is frozen in anguish and terror, “Firaaq” draws its tremendous strength from the screenplay and characters which seem to observe life’s keenest and meanest blows without flinching.

Here’s a film that must be seen not because it tells a story that touches every life. But because it touches our lives with such persuasiveness without resorting to overstatement.

Gulaal - Bollywood Movie Review

Director: Anurag Kashyap
Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Mahi Gill, Aditya Shrivastava, Raj Singh Chaudhury, Abhimanyu Singh, Ayesha Mohan, Jesse Randhawa
Rating: ***

The blossoming of Anurag Kashyap into a formidable storyteller who bends all rules of filmmaking acquires a startling new definition with “Gulaal”, which is about student unrest and intense politicking.

“Gulaal” emblazons itself across the screen as a deft and brutal film on the culture of decadence in a typical north Indian setting. And it spares no room for niceties as it is a powerful portrait of a culture that thrives on bullying tactics.

The homage to the cinema of Vishal Bhardwaj is rampant in “Gulaal”. Somewhere in the brilliantly-cohesive soundtrack we even hear strains of Lata Mangeshkar’s “Pani pani re” from Bhardwaj’s “Maachis” in the film where life is lived by the gun and the mantra for survival is deception.

The world of “Gulaal” is crowded, claustrophobic and potent. The writer-director spares us none of the details in bringing to life a world where unlicensed guns and unchecked lawlessness rule. This is the kingdom of anarchy. Enter at your own risk.

In many ways Kashyap’s portrait of a world on the skids is borrowed from the mafia films of Martin Scorcese. The same disregard for human life defines Kashyap’s collage of queerly egocentric characters in “Gulaal”.

In “Gulaal” human lives get snuffed out with anarchic disdain. The location and mood are perfectly pitched to deliver an ambience of uncouth vigilanteism. Men who are mean because it’s their only trick of self-preservation and women who scheme against unsuspecting men by using their sexuality tumble out of the crowded canvas.

Kashyap’s narrative provides us with no fullstops. The editing by Aarti Bajaj is so relentless in its pursuit of variable moods and situations that the audience is often left behind in efforts to keep track of the goings-on. The soundtrack too perpetually races ahead of the visuals.

Shakespeare meets Quentin Tarantino in “Gulaal”. With “Dev D” and now “Gulaal”, Kashyap has proved himself a master of basic storytelling. He pulls the plug on cinematic pleasantries and takes us straight to the core of the characters, often rotting and evil.

The royal politics of separatism rubs shoulders with the politics of sex and power in a heady brew that the Shakespearean tragedies had patented a century ago. And yet Kashyap’s stimulating cinematic language embraces its literary antecedents without losing focus on ugly facets of contemporary Indian life.

Kashyap begins with college ragging when we are introduced to the callow hero Dilip Singh (Raj Singh Choudhary) who’s locked up by a bunch of bullies with a naked woman(Jesse Randhawa). The two strike an empathetic cord that takes them on a nightmarish journey through the scummy world of north Indian politics where brother kills brother and love gladly betrays love.

“Gulaal” is many things at the same time. As a portrait of small town politics it bludgeons you with its lethal mix of grimy morals, slimy characters and perverted politics. The stench of corruption is conveyed with the same intensity as the odour of sweaty bodies running through dirty gullies in pursuit of the next victim.

At heart “Gulaal” is a portrait of a civilisation that’s rapidly receding into chaos but thinks it’s just karma that propels them into annihilation. At the core there’s an unspoilt uncorrupted relationship in “Gulaal” - that between the aggressive student leader Ranajay Singh (Abhimanyu Singh) and his protege Dilip.

It’s no coincidence that Dilip tells his soulmate Anuja that he feels vulnerable without Ranajay.

Beneath the politics of power and sex, “Gulaal” hides a tender longing for bonds that transcend the barrel of the gun.

“Gulaal” sees an authentic set of actors playing characters who are completely at one with the director’s dark vision. Outstanding in different ways are Abhimanyu Singh as the self-disinherited royalty, Pankaj Jha as the over-age college bully, Kay Kay Menon as the unscrupulous Rajput leader and Aditya Shivastava as the illegitimate heir of a subverted princedom who dotes on his kid sister (Ayesha Mohan).

And then there is Piyush Mishra as narrator, conscience and cynic. In fact Mishra plays many roles and defines the chaos of the plot with songs that sing of old forgotten values in new power-packed parodies.

Jai-Veeru - Bollywood Movie Review

Cast: Fardeen Khan, Kunal Khemu, Dia Mirza, Anjana Sukhani
Director: Puneet Sira
Rating: *

“Jai Veeru” is just not cinema at its most appalling low, it is worse than that. It tries to be smart and sassy without possessing the basic writing and speaking material to make its two heroes - Fardeen Khan and Kunal Khemu - look heroic.

One remembers Kunal best as the hot-blooded illegitimate son of a film personality in Mahesh Bhatt’s “Zakhm” who fights a lonely battle on his mother’s behalf.

In the film Kunal grew up to be Ajay Devgan. In real life he grew up to be a promising wannabe superstar in Rohit Jugraj’s “Superstar”. Then Kunal apparently lost his way.

The young actor and his co-star Fardeen end up looking like a couple of morons on the prowl in “Jai-Veeru”. They play guys who have nothing better to do than ogle at idle, rich girls and eye other people’s money and property.

One steals cars and woos Anjana Sukhani on the Goan beaches. The other fires guns, gets hit and lands up in hospital with Dia Mirza playing nurse.

While the characters find their bearings you wonder what the scriptwriter and the director have been doing. Probably checking out the latest DVDs of Hollywood films to incorporate chase sequences and fights into the two-hour “Jai Veeru”.

Why did they bother? You ask yourself after the first hour. By then three-four of Bappa Lahiri’s item songs have swished by in rapid-fire succession.

Bappa is no patch on papa Bappi. His music says nothing to us. But we can’t blame the poor wannabe composer. His songs are part of a film that’s so wannabe it makes the week’s other releases look like major classics in comparison.

It would be foolhardy to even comment on any of the performances.

Dhoondte Reh Jaoge - Bollywood Movie Review

Cast: Paresh Rawal, Kunal Khemu, Sonu Sood, Soha Ali Khan
Director: Umesh Shukla
Rating: *

Johnny Lever playing a hardcore Pakistan-loving Muslim screenwriter in Bollywood, sitting on a rooftoop amidst a flurry of green flags and narrating a script that is a sad mishmash of past blockbusters could have been hilarious. However, he was part of a film that attempts to evoke mirth from the whims of the working-class but ends up weak-kneed and washed-out with the effort.

The characters in this quirky, quick-mix comedy try to give you the formula for a flop film. Finally, the characters end up making a hit film. If only the people behind “Dhoondte Reh Jaoge” were that lucky.

It seems they set out to make a hit film by conceiving a plot about a totally zonked-out film unit that has set out to make a flop film. But the idea never quite gets beyond the wish list. The collection of characters who crowd the film’s corny canvas seem to stand uncertainly at the threshold of a spectacular satire that never takes off.

The cast seems to be in the mood for masti. And when you have the redoubtable Paresh Rawal helming the hilarity, what could go wrong?

In theory, nothing. In practice, everything goes wrong in the comic climate of this strange connivance about an out-of-luck producer (Paresh), an out-of-luck charterered accountant (Kunal Khemu) and a struggling actress (Soha Ali Khan).

And if this trio reminds you of Rishi Kapoor, Farhan Akhtar and Konkona Sen Sharma in Zoya Akhtar’s recent “Luck By Chance”, then blame the Bollywood setting and banish the thought.

If “Luck By Chance” was an insider’s look at the film industry, “Dhoondte Reh Jaoge” is the wacko’s dekko into blunder-land.

No effort is made to understand the workings of the industry with satirical sensitivity. The laughter is the main criteria for entering the dream world of movie making. Sadly, the laughs are few and far in-between. The “Sholay” and “Lagaan” spoofs give the humour an extremely wannabe appearance.

Unintentionally bits and pieces of the satire merge into portions of “Rangeela” (wannabe actress falls in love with screen hero while her lover-boy from the chawls seethes in anger) which in turn merge into an Aziz Mirza kind of scooter-riding dreamers’ part for Kunal.

At the end of the comedy, the Paresh-Kunal intended flop turns into a superhit while the duo lands up in jail.

No such luck with this rather droopy and sad comedy. It tries hard to be funny and original but ends up being neither here nor ‘dare’.

Among the performers, Paresh needs no recommendation. In fact, he says as much in an end-title joke. Kunal reveals some hidden comic talent. Sonu as a somewhat dimwitted matinee idol does a number of get-ups and avatars quite sincerely. Sorry, he isn’t supported by anything much in the plot.

Karma Aur Holi - Bollywood Movie Review

Cast: Sushmita Sen, Randeep Hooda, Drena De Niro, Naomi Campbell, Suresh Oberoi, Rati Agnihotri, Suchitra Krishnamurthy
Director: Manish Gupta
Rating: *

Let’s play a mind game. What was Sushmita Sen thinking when she decided to work in this tableau of titillating possibilities on man-woman relationships all gone to utter and irrevevocable waste?

“Karma Aur Holi” with huge dollops of confession thrown in with the jerky suddenness of a car that decides to gather speed when the highway has ended, is one of those filmed fiascos that should’ve never been attempted. It’s like a Woody Allen ensemble cast about an angst-filled soiree that comes to a sorry state of spluttering incoherence.

The film does gross disservice to all concerned, including the poor debutant director Manish Gupta who probably thought he was doing a diasporic version of Woody Allen’s cinema but instead ended making up an extended episode of a Doordarshan serial on the vagaries of the Page 3 crowds.

Sushmita and Randeep try hard to look like a couple with serious marital problems. He takes business calls while making love to her. Maybe he likes the phone better than sex. That’s the least of our worries in trying to make sense of the characters’ dissociated sensitivities.

The film is about an outwardly well-to-do couple played by Sushmita and Randeep who are either showering together or shouting at each other, depending on which way their marital mood swings. One fine day the couple invites home a group of people, including a self-absorbed Pakistani filmmaker (Armin Amiri) and his pregnant girlfriend (Naomi Campbell), a bickering couple (Suresh Oberoi, Rati Agnihotri) and their porn-fixated teenage son, a repressed wife (Suchitra Krishnamurthy) and her bullying husband. By the time the day is done the lid is blown off the facade of suburban marriages in the land of dreams.

Sushmita playing a wife who dances with her maid in the kitchen while cooking (menu rab da vasta!) is more bothered about her swanky new dress being crumpled under sexual pressure than the fact that her husband might be having an affair with his over-sized secretary (Maya Lily).

Sushmita shrugs off her sister warning: “Do you think they look like they’re up to anything?”

Frankly no one looks like he or she is up to anything. That’s the saddest part of a film which wants to say so much. But the words perpetually get in the way.

A few minutes into this mish-mash of Woody Allen, George Bernard Shaw, Govind Nihalani and Keshu Ramsay (the horror of course creeps in unintentionally) and you know the narrative is in trouble. The characters who come to Sushmita-Randeep’s home in New York for an afternoon of heavy duty gossiping, bitching introspection and confession seem to be speaking dialogues borrowed from a cheap American soap opera.

The feelings and thoughts are not only assumed they are also devoid of any coherent pattern. The script tries to be sassy without the basic source material to carry off its ambitions.

The narration is tragically chaotic. The characters seem to be let loose in a room constructed for conflict, and left to their own devices. Ideas of communal disharmony (Rati Agnihotri playing Suresh Oberoi’s sourpuss wife refuses to accept a glass of water from a Muslim filmmaker) and inter-racial coupling (the Muslim director has Naomi Campbell as his girlfriend and punching bag) jostle for screen space with musings on a marriage of convenience in a foreign cultural location where opportunities to f…k-up are limitless.

Ironically the film itself becomes one messy f…k-up with the characters unaware of where to go next or what to do with the dubious responsibility of acting like people who care about the goings-on.

There’s a pubescent horny teenager who’s hounded by a nosy girl (Depal Shaw) with a video camera, a buxom single women who confesses she’s more into women than men and a caricatural pair of American boss-and-bimbo cutting a shady deal with Hooda as wife Sushmita makes her displeasure more than clear. She even shuts the door in her guests’ face. So much for reciprocating the American hospitality.

Somewhere along the dreadful and droll storytelling a gangster pops up in the backyard pool with two floozies bouncing by his side as though they had just discovered the reason why they are part of this film.

We of course remain clueless as to why “Karma Aur Holi” was made. Or why the actors who should’ve known better lent their presence to the film.

While the international cast, including Robert de Niro’s daughter Drena, remain supremely oblivious of their utility in the plot, Sushmita tries hard to lend some grace and humour to a character hellbent on self-destruction. Another engaging performance comes from Suchitra Krishnamurthy as a repressed wife trying to make herself heard above her husband’s bullying.

Randeep Hooda carries his American accent and demeanour with a flair that scoffs at the film’s cheerless efforts to portray the Indian diaspora as a chamber piece done on a pitchless offkey scale.

Billu Barber (2009) [MP3]

Billu Barber is directed by Priyadarshan and produced by Gauri Khan under the Red Chillies Entertainment banner. It tells the story of a barber Bilas Rao Pardesi (Irfan Khan) who lives in his village with his wife Bindiya (Lara Dutta) and two kids. When superstar Sahir Khan (Shah Rukh Khan) comes to their village to shoot a film, Billas/Billu tells people that he and Sahir are childhood friends for which he is ridiculed. The films also stars Om Puri, Rajpal Yadav and Asrani, as well as guest appearances by Kareena Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, and Priyanka Chopra in item numbers. Billu Barber was released on February 13, so check it if you haven’t already.

Music of Billu is composed by Pritam. There’s a nice song by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan that I like a lot (Jaaon Kaha). There are a couple of other good songs too. I hope you like them.

(Direct MP3 Links - Right click and choose ‘Save Target As’)

1. Ae Aa O / K K, Rana Mazumder, Suraj
2. Ae Aa O - Remix / K K, Rana Mazumder, Suraj
3. Billoo Bhayankar / Ajay Jhingran, Kalpana
4. Jaoon Kahan / Rahat Fateh Ali Khan
5. Khudaya Khair / Soham Chakrabarthy, Akruti Kakkar, Monali
6. Khudaya Khair - Reprise / Abhijeet
7. Love Mera Hit Hit / Neeraj Shridhar, Tulsi Kumar
8. Love Mera Hit Hit - House Mix / Neeraj Shridhar, Tulsi Kumar
9. Love Mera Hit Hit - Remix / Neeraj Shridhar, Tulsi Kumar
10. Marjaani / Sukhwinder Singh, Sunidhi Chauhan
11. Marjaani - Balkan Mix / K K, Akruti Kakkar
12. Marjaani - Electro House / Sukhwinder Singh, Sunidhi Chauhan
13. You Get Me Rockin & Reeling / Neeraj Shridhar
14. You Get Me Rockin & Reeling - 1 / Neeraj Shridhar, Dominique
15. You Get Me Rockin & Reeling - Remix / Neeraj Shridhar