Review - Dhobi Ghat

Poster image sourced from here

Director: Kiran Rao
Cast: Aamir Khan, Monica Dogra, Prateik Babbar, Kriti Malhotra
Rating: 0.5/5

Dhobi Ghat, the much awaited directorial debut of Kiran Rao, is a film that intends to view the city of Bombay through the lives of its protagonists. The film examines the effect of the city on the confluent lives of four characters from different backgrounds.

Characters

Arun
Arun is a successful painter (played by Aamir Khan). He is divorced and his wife and daughter (who never appear in the film) have moved to Australia. Arun is an introvert and plays the 'pensive artist' - something that Aamir Khan attempts to achieve by incessantly scowling and smoking cigarettes. He moves into the former home of Yasmin (one of the other characters), where he finds her undelivered 'video letters' to her brother. Arun plays the brooding enigmatic intellectual. It takes him less than the first ten minutes of the film to get Monica Dogra into bed.

Yasmine
Yasmine is a Muslim girl from Uttar Pradesh (played by Kriti Malhotra) who has come to Bombay after getting married. She is also the previous occupant of Arun's flat. We only see her life through video recordings she makes for her brother (found by Arun). These recordings (video letters) document Yasmine's life, emotions and become the subject of Arun's obsession. Yasmine is innocent, naive, helpless and is the victim of a forced marriage - something that eventually causes her suicide.

Shai
Shai is an investment banker(played by Monica Dogra) based in America. She is on a sabbatical in India. She meets Arun in the beginning of the film. Following a one night stand and a rejection, she grows obsessed with him. Shai is also an aspiring photographer and she spends most of her time taking pictures of the city and (secretly) of Arun. She also becomes the subject of Munna's (Prateik Babbar's character) obsession - whom she befriends in the course of the film in the hope of uncovering information about Arun.

Munna
Zohaib a.k.a Munna, is a Dhobi by day and a rat killer by night. He is also an aspiring actor. Originally from Bihar, he lives in the dhobi ghat, along with his mother and drug-dealing brother - Salim. Munna is both Arun as well as Shai's Dhobi. His acquaintanceship with Arun encourages Shai to befriend him - with whom he falls in love with. However, events through the course of the film make him realize the class difference between him and Shai, forcing him to relinquish the idea of having any sort of future with her.

Dhobi Ghat attempts to depict the city of Bombay through its characters, but all it does is obsess with them instead. This by itself isn't necessarily a flaw. However, Kiran Rao's characters do not do anything even remotely significant, to make us want to watch them. We only know that they're from different backgrounds, because the characters themselves claim so.

Munna, the dhobi from Bihar is familiar with 60s American rock music. His interactions with Shai include watching movies in multiplexes and having drinks on the promenade. Kiran Rao fails to realize that an individual coming from a dhobi background will not blend in with the urbane crowd. When Shai flirts with him, he reads it precisely as flirtation - like a more westernized individual would. From the start of their friendship, Shai looks at Munna longingly, with desire. Considering her encounter with Aamir Khan in the beginning of the film, one would be lead to believe that she is promiscuous. However, there is no romance that occurs between Munna and shai, simply because of his dhobi label. An investment banker from America and a dhobi from Mumbai's dhobi ghat cannot function on the same plain simply because their conflicting backgrounds make them function in completely different ways. They're like apples and oranges. Prateik Babbar's body language and mannerisms are that of an urbane youth. He behaves like an apple, when he's supposed to be an orange. He does not seem the least bit out of place in urban areas such as a multiplex. Moreover, we see Munna indulging in western behaviour such as contemplating holding Shai's hand during a movie - One might argue that the massive influx of western culture into the mainstream could make this possible. However, one s keep in mind that his background makes him an outsider in those surroundings and to perform such an act, one would be required not to be conscious of the happenings around him. To suggest that an individual from the dhobi ghat frequents multiplexes is absurd.

Aamir Khan's character does everything, from painting to scratching his head with the air of a star. He incessantly frowns and tries to appear 'thoughtful'. We see that he is dissatisfied, but we never learn why - as if to say that by default, an artist is always contemplating something of the utmost importance. We never even see these 'important thoughts' materialize into anything - there are no instances where Arun says anything remotely insightful. We only see him haphazardly throwing paint onto a canvas. This is less so because artists generally keep to themselves and more so because Kiran Rao lacks the capacity to script it.

The sub-plot with most promise in the film is Arun's interaction with Yasmine through her video diary. The only significant occurrence in the film is Yasmine's suicide. However, this does not materialize into anything. The fact that Yasmine's video letters to her brother are undelivered is ignored, even after we learn of her suicide. Arun does not make any attempts to deliver the tapes to the brother himself, preventing the story from developing further. All that materializes from Yasmine's suicide, is Arun's new collection of paintings.

Dhobi Ghat has been praised for its camerawork. However, this can only be attributed to the fact that it is unconventional. Yasmine's segments are all shot with a hand-held camera, aching to be called Goddardian. The rest of the film is visually uninteresting, with the camera focusing on the actors, almost completely neglecting Mumbai. Kiran Rao has filmed inside the Dhobi Ghat, but it isn't the Dhobi Ghat that she captures, it's Prateik Babbar pretending to be a dhobi. The films tells us nothing of Mumbai (except for abstractions such as - The air around Marine Drive smells of peoples' desires). Prateik Babbar's character is also a rat killer, but we hardly see him killing any rats. Even instances that have the potential to be visually potent are ruined by the actor-hungry camera, making the film a bland embarrassment.

Review - Black Swan

Poster image taken from here

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel
Rating: 2.5/5

Black Swan is a psychological horror film that examines a ballet production and the rivalry between two of its ballet dancers. Directed by Darren Aronofsky ( Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler), the film stars Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel and Mila Kunis and took ten years to make it to the screen.

The Story

The film examines the mind of Nina (played by Natalie Portman) a dancer in a New York City ballet company. She lives with her overbearing mother - a former ballet dancer - who sacrificed her career to have (and care for) Nina. Nina's mother wants her to have what she couldn't and incessantly pressurizes her daughter to be the best. The fact that she isn't particularly well-to-do only increases the pressure she puts on her daughter. It is this background that predisposes Nina to want to be perfect - something she states over and over again, right till the end of the film.

The company for which Nina dances, decides to put on a performance of the ballet classic - 'Swan Lake', under the supervision of renowned director Thomas Leroy (played by Vincent Cassel).

Swan Lake
The ballet, Swan Lake, is about a beautiful girl who is turned into a white swan by an evil sorcerer - a spell that can only be broken by true love. Her saviour comes in the form of a prince - who falls in love with her. However, before their union can take place, the prince is tricked and seduced by her evil twin - the black swan. The prince falls for the wrong swan. Devastated, the white swan throws herself off a cliff and falls to her death (for a more detailed synopsis, please click here.

The Story (continued)
Thomas Leroy tells the dancers at the company that this production of Swan Lake will be more contemporary and that for this new production, a new lead - a new Swan Queen will be chosen - someone who will play the roles of both the black and the white swan.

Leroy picks Nina as the new swan queen, but hesitantly. He tells her that she is perfect for the role of the delicate white swan, but isn't convinced that she will do justice to the role of the seductive black swan. Nina, now the new swan queen, replaces the old one- Beth Macintyre (played by Winona Ryder) - who is devastated by this.

Leroy begins training Nina to become the black swan - something she finds incredibly difficult to do. He tells her that she must 'let go', 'lose control'. Leroy asks Nina to observe Lily - a new dancer in the company who appears to be the ideal black swan - one who Nina has had a secret fascination for, right from the start of the film.

By now, Nina has begun hallucinating and seeing visions of a darker self. She also imagines herself literally turning into the black swan (beak, feathers etc.). This only furthers her frustration and she begins to question her sanity.

Nina strikes up a friendship with Lily - in whom she sees her darker self. She even imagines a sexual encounter occuring between the two of them. Their friendship takes a turn for the worse when Nina realizes that Leroy is readying Lily to be her replacement. From this point, we see Nina's hallucinations worsening as she further transforms into the black swan. She also begins to see parallels between the story of Swan Lake and her own life.

The day of the performance finally arrives and Nina gets off to a shaky start. Right before she can go on stage as the black swan, Lily enters her dressing room and a fight occurs between them. Nina sees Lily as her darker self and in this fight, Nina stabs Lily in the gut, killing her. She then goes on stage and puts on the performance of her life and we see her successfully transforming into the black swan on stage. When she returns to the dressing room to change back into the white swan, she realizes that her fight with Lily was hallucinatory. She realizes that in stabbing her 'darker self', the person that she has actually stabbed, is herself.

Nina (now conscious of the shard of glass in her gut) goes on stage for the final scene where the white swan jumps off the cliff. She is stunning and the crowd goes ecstatic. However, when Leroy and all the other dancers come to congratulate her, they find her bleeding to death. The final moments of the film show a dying Nina (on stage) whispering repeatedly, "I was perfect."


Black Swan is beautifully filmed. Some of the ballet is stunning and the film exhibits technical prowess. However, it appears the Darren Aronofsky has fallen victim to the spectacle that he creates, leaving the story highly undeveloped.
We see Natalie Portman's character incredibly unhappy. We are supposed to believe that she is suffering from immense turmoil due to all the pressure that is being put on her. However, this is conveyed ineffectually by the film. If one is to take away anything from it, it can only be that being a ballerina is lot harder than one would imagine it to be. The only purpose that ballet seems to serve in the film, is that of spectacle. The film could have been about rival clowns in a circus and it wouldn't have made much of a difference to the story.

One question - Why must anyone be interested in examining the mind of Nina the ballet dancer? All her character displays, is signs of mental illness - this does not warrant a film, but a psychiatrist. What makes her the subject of interest? Even if we examine her life, there appears no reason for us to find her interesting.

Nina's mother does not seem as overbearing as she supposedly is. She is definitely poor, but she isn't starving. Apart from her mother, the only source of Nina's frustration is the ballet company - which isn't particularly austere. Even her rivalry with Lily only begins somewhere towards the last third of the film. So what is this great turmoil that she's facing, for her to grow hallucinatory feathers? The only explanation is that she's a raving lunatic. Thus, Nina is the victim of her own madness and it must be seen as 'how a young girl loses her sanity'.

When viewed this way, the film turns more bland as we now see the string of clichés it is. Natalie Portman literally wrestling with her darker self is not something extraordinary. Besides, her insanity just allows for more spectacle - such as her transformation into a swan - without any substantial development in the storyline. After all, she's mad.

Black Swan is driven by the good looks of Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis and combines it with the spectacle of Ballet to give us a watchable film - one we realize is incredibly hollow in retrospect.

Review - The Social Network

Poster image taken from here

Director: David Fincher
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake
Rating: 1/5

Before I begin, I would like to establish the following:
*The Social Network is considered to be an incredible film by both the public and by critics
*Popular opinion is referring to it as the 'movie of the year'
*Whether or not YOU took it seriously is immaterial. The orld takes it seriously and hence, it requires examination

'Facebook' is a product that has impacted millions of lives from across the globe. It has revolutionized the rather dubious umbrella term of 'Social Media' and today agencies are at liberty to charge companies exorbitant amounts of money for something a thirteen year old might do. It is undeniable that Facebook has left its still-growing-mark on the world and it would seem only logical, that a film be made about its creators. Moreover, Mark Zuckerberg - the inventor of Facebook is the world's youngest billionaire and there are people exclaiming, "Hey! That guy's even younger than I am!” They are still wondering how he made all that money. So it would appear apt that a film about such an individual should be made. However, for such an enterprise to be justified, some basic questions must be answered: Is the conception of Facebook worth dramatizing and is Mark Zuckerberg's life worth turning into a film?

The Story

Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is an unpopular student at Harvard who walks into the spotlight after he creates a web application that allows students to rank their female classmates on their looks. The application is such a huge success that it causes the Harvard servers to crash, just a few hours after going public. However, Zuckerberg isn't alone in this endeavour. He is helped by his wealthier, best friend Eduardo Saverin - whose popularity causes Zuckerberg to be secretly jealous of him. The motif of jealousy is incessantly reinforced throughout the film and Zuckerberg is evidently an unsavory character. Following the success of Zuckerberg's 'rank your classmates' idea, he is approached by fellow Harvardmates Divya Narendra and the Winklevoss twins, with the idea of Facebook. Zuckerberg is a computer programmer and they are not.

Now, it must be noted that throughout the film, Zuckerberg is obsessed with getting into the one of the private fraternities at Harvard - one that is comprised of the most popular Harvard alumni. Narendra and the Winklevoss twins are recruiters for one of these clubs. However, when they approach Zuckerberg, it is not with an extended invitation to join their club but with the idea of creating Facebook. Zuckerberg agrees to develop the site for them.

With financial aid from Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg develops Facebook behind the backs of Narendra and the Winklevoss twins. He then meets the creator of Napster, Shawn Parker (Timberlake) and Facebook begins to grow exponentially, becoming increasingly popular by the hour. Zuckerberg is so scheming, that he even cheats Saverin and takes away his share of the company.


Finally, he is sued by both Saverin and the team of Narendra and the Winklevoss'. He pays a settlement of 66 million dollars to the latter party and 'figures things out' with Saverin. The film ends.

Scrutiny

So back to our initial question - "Is the story of the creation of Facebook worth turning into a film?" The answer is no. That an individual got incredibly rich through a moderately intelligent invention are not enough grounds for us to want to know his story. Do we, for instance, also have a film about the creators of USB? Or do we have a film about Colonel Sanders? KFC is far more controversial than Facebook and we could even have Phillip Seymour Hoffman playing Colonel Sanders! So why specifically a film about the creators of Facebook? Because its inventor cheated four people and, later paid them fairly large settlements in court? Absolutely not! People cheat each other everyday. People sue each other everyday. People pay massive settlements everyday. So that is not reason enough to turn it into a film.

That leaves us with Mark Zuckerberg's ‘genius’. In the film, Zuckerberg is portrayed as an arrogant Einstein. He is incessantly belittling people throughout the film with his scathing sarcasm. There's even a scene in the film where he announces at the hearing that virtually no one else is intellectually incapable of producing anything like Facebook. Let's just stop right here. 'Intellectually capable'? Is he serious? For the record, Facebook is not the first of its kind. Similar sites like Orkut and Hi5 preceded it. Facebook is simply the most popular of the lot and this is largely attributed to the amount of privacy it allows users. That does not constitute genius. The filmmaker cannot convince us that it is a work of genius either and he simply endorses this claim. The film is filled with incredibly mundane conversations between the various characters, but by throwing in bits of jargon and words that aren't generally used in conversation, he makes it seem like the characters are discussing something profound. For example, in the opening scene, when Mark Zuckerberg talks about college affairs, he does so with the air of someone discussing relativity. There is also a section in the film where we see snatches of Zuckerberg writing 'code' and convolutedly explaining what he's doing. All this is perhaps, in the service of his ‘genius’.

There are people who argue that Facebook is one of the most powerful 'social media networking tools' in existence. However, we must acknowledge that what Facebook is today is not only because of Zuckerberg. It is primarily because of the number of independent developers from all over the world who have designed applications for it. Facebook was created by Zuckerberg, but it was developed by programmers from all over the world. Zuckerberg is less of a genius than an entrepreneur with few moral qualms.

The Social Network is not a badly made film. David Fincher is one of the more competent Hollywood directors and it is very slick. The performances are not miserable. Jesse Eisenberg is convincing as an unscrupulous person. After I watched the film, I learnt that Trent Reznor of 'Nine Inch Nails' was responsible for the music. I cannot recall a single piece of background music from the film and I am too infuriated to watch it again for its music.

Review - Inception

*Poster image found randomly on google.com

Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Leonardo Dicaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Rating: 2/5

‘Reality’ is a subject that thinkers cannot but speculate about and cinema has also followed with its own explorations. Especially in more recent times, with advancements in technology, film directors have been enabled to translate ideas of a more abstract nature into something tangible. Over time, this has encouraged younger filmmakers to focus on original, ‘never-before-conceived’ ideas. Over the last decade, the Matrix Trilogy took the world by storm. These films (primarily the first one) played an important role in creating a new standard for the ‘conceptual’ cinema that followed. This, combined with the rapidly changing world – now equipped with facebook, twitter and several other tools for its virtual extension - subject matter dealing with ‘identity’ and ‘reality’ became highly popular. Plots were no longer orderly because the greatness of ideas needed to be demonstrated and the audience needed to be convinced that these ideas were complex. But with more and more of these conceptually ‘complex’ films flooding the market, mainstream cinema has become grotesquely showy – like a carnival of bearded women – with each one trying to show off the most extravagant beard. Of course, not all the beards are the same – they can be streaked, cut, curled and twisted into newer shapes. However, one must keep in mind, that at bottom of it all, they’re only phony beards.

Christopher Nolan’s Inception is one of this year’s more ‘complex’ films. It has already made quite an impression and has everyone, from the critics to the public, raving about it. Inception stars Leonardo Dicaprio (recently recovering from a tryst with ‘reality’ in Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island), who plays a thief named Cobb. Only, Cobb is no ordinary thief. He literally breaks into people’s minds and steals their ideas. The process is fairly simple: An empty world is virtually created, into which the victim and Cobb’s team are placed. This is done by physically plugging the participants into a device when they are asleep.

This empty world works very much like an empty cupboard. When the victim dreams, s/he fills it up with his/her thoughts, turning them into phenomena that are more accessible and stealable by the others. It is just like someone unknowingly using your empty cupboard by filling it with their personal, most prized belongings, giving you complete access to them.

Cobb’s new assignment, however, is not to steal an idea, but to plant one. The term given to this is ‘inception’ – a procedure that is generally perceived as impossible but not for Cobb. For an idea to grow in someone’s head, it must be planted deep inside the consciousness, so that the individual believes that the idea is his/her own. Going deeper into the consciousness would mean to have a dream inside a dream. For the process of inception, one must be deep inside the person’s head. For this to happen, Cobb’s team must create a dream inside a dream inside a dream – three levels of dreaming.

Inception is packed with gunfire, laborious special effects and effortless performances that make it an entertaining watch. However, the plot is excessively convoluted and between flashbacks and disappearing into people’s heads, the film turns into a mess. Several other elements, such as Cobb’s relationship with his dead wife, also complicate the film. It is here, in this mess, that we realize that perhaps Nolan isn’t the genius that the buzz around him indicates. For example, one aspect is dubious is the location of the ideas that are being stolen. They are kept in high security places, very fortress-like – which is perhaps a play on the term ‘heavily guarded secret’ but it becomes an excuse for gunfire. An individual’s secret being literally locked away in his/her mind suggests too literal an imagination. At one point in the movie, one can even lose track of the number of dream-levels that are being accessed. A dream within a dream within a dream within a…oh well.

Moreover, the idea of breaking into someone’s head to steal an idea does not appear to be particularly original. The thought of manipulating thought, even literally, has been done before in films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The idea being not too fresh, Nolan’s task is to present in a form that provokes thought, to tease the audience with a logic that has either eluded them or lingers in the back of their heads somewhere. But instead of attending to this task by focusing on the narrative logic, Nolan turns the world he creates into pure spectacle. If Inception draws from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, - especially in Cobb’s interludes with his dead wife – it is only perfunctorily and not in spirit.

Of course, that is not to say the film is a complete failure. Nolan comes through in a few instances, making the film an entertaining watch. While having complete disregard for a lot of elements such as the clutter that comes along with a person’s mind – the information stored in the head, Nolan does do justice to a few, such as the effects of the individual’s physical state in the dream-world. Also, the special effects are remarkable at times and the film is best experienced on a big screen.