Life in a Metro

The products of the Hindi film industry are mostly mediocre stuff, run of the mill love stories or rehashes of long forgotten films with ideas and stunts which are directly copied from Hollywood movies. But, once in a while comes a film from the Bollywood Stables, which breaks out of the typical Hindi film industry mould. It is this kind of a film which comes to pass as a breath of fresh air in an otherwise pungently predictable production progression of poor pictures. I usually have to wait for months for such a film, a film without lovers running around trees or parents conspiring to separate their lovelorn children or lovers sacrificing (sic) their love for the sake of their parents/friends or corrupt politicians and cops and a super-hero who wins against all odds, bashing up hundreds of goons in the process.

Life in a Metro seemed to be a film which broke out the Bollywood mould and it did try to, but somehow fell short. It was typical in a Bollywood sense that it was a rehash of many a Hollywood movie but, they were Hollywood movies of yesteryear and to the director’s good fortune most youngsters in India wouldn’t have watched it. As far as the performances were concerned, this might be Shilpa Shetty’s best display of her measly acting skills after her performance at Big Brother. Irrfan Khan and Konkona Sen were good but, they usually are so. The surprise package for me was Kay Kay Menon. I thought he was just a singer with acting ambitions but he put in a powerful performance. Kangana Ranaut looked good in her new hair style but that was about it. The Dharmendra – Nafisa Ali track was not only very awkward but also lacked the spunk and passion of a love story. The one emotion missing in it was Anger; no woman would so easily forgive and forget her lover who stood her up and abandoned her for his own selfish reasons. And finally when Bollywood showed a couple in love, making out on the bed, it turned out to be a 70+ Dharmendra and 60+ Nafisa Ali! The tongue in cheek backdrop of a BPO/ call centre makes an attempt to play on the audience’s perception of such places as a hub of all vices. The director also apes the new Bollywood trait of introducing homosexual characters who are afraid to come out of the closet; atleast he avoided the making a mockery of the gay character. One of the main flaws was improper presentation of one central character of the movie, not the misfit Shiny Ahuja, but the city of Mumbai. Mumbai was represented by the incessant rains throughout the film with the Metro band popping out now & then to play their stuff. There was no typical hustle-bustle of the Mumbai crowds portrayed either on the streets or in the railway stations and knowing the fast capitalist life-style of Mumbai I doubt if Mumbaiites have time for an extra-marital affair in their chock-a-block lifestyles.

The film was doomed as soon as the director decided to make a film about extra-marital affairs in India, without comprehending the maturity level required for such a topic to be presented and the need for a necessary amount of skin show which would be essential to the story. If the Shilpa-Shiny situation had been shown as Shilpa giving in totally to her passion, or if in the final scene, if Shilpa had walked out on her husband, I would have got up and saluted the director. Instead, he chose to play it safe for fear of offending the moral sensibilities of the majority which still cannot digest a woman looking for and finding love outside wedlock or dumping her husband even though he is a serial-cheater. The idea was right, but all it took was yet another cowardly director to spoil the broth.

At the end of it all, I’m still waiting for a non-typical Bollywood movie this year.

Disclosure

A modern maxim goes “Never Judge a Book by Its Movie” and in keeping with this doctrine, I avoid seeing a film that has been adapted from a book until I have read the book first. This practice has stood me in good stead over the years and though I have been disappointed time and again by movies that have failed to live upto the expectations, I always take solace in the fact that I have atleast enjoyed a good book. It is incredible how such a staggering number of excellent books have been made into mediocre movies. However, after many years, I have been proved wrong (or should I say vindicated?).

I first saw the movie Disclosure in a screening at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai (Madras, back then) in 1996 and subsequently, a couple of times on television and enjoyed it each time. So, finally when I read the book a few days back, my high expectations were shattered. I can recall a lot of cases where the book and its big screen depiction have been good but this is the first incident I’ve encountered of a movie being a tad better than the book.

Michael Douglas and Demi Moore (Tom Sanders & Meredith Johnson respectively) have made such an impression on me that I picturized them mouthing the dialogues as I was reading the book. When Tom’s 4-year old daughter says, "Boys have penises, and girls have vaginas,” a dialogue which was not part of the film, I could imagine the look Michael Douglas would have given. The only reference to the Penis in the movie comes from Tom’s wife, who had a strong role as an ardent supporter of her husband but, has almost no role to play in the book. The description of the Virtual Environment System, which has been shown so impeccably in the movie is lacking in the book. Unless one had seen the movie, it would have been hard to imagine how such a system would look like. The character of Cindy, Tom’s secretary, a significant person with a meaty role in the movie is weak in the book. The mediation hearings, Cindy’s role in the hearings, Tom’s triumph and Meredith’s coup are all again depicted much better in the movie.

Personally, I don’t feel the book is that great a read (ok, the concept about Sexual Harassment being all about power and not about gender was good) and I would recommend the movie over the book any day and then, there’s always a first time for everything.

Lies...

Tommy Hilfiger appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show busted one of the biggest rumours doing rounds for the past few years. Apparently, he had never appeared on Oprah’s show before and his supposed statement, “If I knew that Blacks and Asians were going to wear my clothes, I would have never designed them.” turned out to be yet another Urban Legend, albeit an expensive one for him, considering the financial implications his made-up statement must have had on the sales of his products. The e-mail forwards (of which I was a recipient too) going around claiming Hilfiger’s racist remarks may not cease for a while and it was appalling to see an ad in the Times of India exploiting the false statement to sell some product without even a disclaimer that the supposed statement was false. This Tommy Hilfiger episode was the latest, I realize, in a long series of lies that we have been systematically fed over the years.

The Great Wall of China was supposed to be the only man-made structure to be visible from the moon. I remember quiz contests which had this question with its ostensible answer and I, myself, probably gave the answer in a quiz or two. It was one of my favourite bits of trivia in school and until a couple of years ago. Then, I discovered that it was a completely fictional bit of information, which owed its source to a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not cartoon. In fact The Great Wall would not be visible even at a height of just ten percent of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. It was another unsourceable lie concealed as a fact.

There were nine planets in the solar system when I was in school and in keeping with the tendency of schoolwork increasing with each year, I half-expected the number of planets in the solar system to go up too. Then one fine day, last year, the International Astronomical Union decided to expel Pluto from its status of a planet. The names of the nine planets I had committed to permanent memory, at some point of time when I was in my primary school, became somewhat incomplete now that Pluto was plutoed out. I can never understand how a celestial body which orbits around the sun, has an atmosphere and has its own moon can cease to be a planet. Whether the International Astronomical Union has the right to define what constitutes a planet is debatable but the school texts will, in all probability, soon be amended to show only eight planets orbiting around the sun and it will mean that I have been fed yet another lie.