bharatwatchesmoviesdaily-blog

[bharatwatchesmoviesdaily-blog]

Shame (2011)

Shame - the visual portrait of a single man in his early 30s living in New York -  takes you by surprise in more ways than one. The explicit nudity while might be the first thing that might turn off most of its audience the long streaks of silence and just observation is the work of an auteur in the making.

A lot of time is spent in establishing the character that Michael Fassbender plays, and I assume a lot of improvisation has been done on the set. Steve McQueen who directed this film and also co-wrote this film works with Fassbender for the second time, and he gives himself totally to the character.

Most of the film is made to look an voyeuristic, or so I felt, letting me assume that McQueen wants us to take a look at the character and wonder what's so wrong with him. You could just one of those people commuting to work with him, or live next to him in the apartment. You don't know who he is, what he does but you have seen him more than once in a compromising position or breaking up, but have decided to let go of it and go on with your lives.

There is a long tracking shot in the film for more than a minute where Fassbender runs across alleys in New York to classical music. That shot to me sums up the whole inner turmoil this character goes through. There is a lot of anguish and he can't let it go and the only way to endure is to hurt himself - be it the physical pain or the emotional pain.

Carey Mulligan playing Fassbender's sister charmingly shares more or less the same pain with him but she (thinks) has found a way to let it go. She's into music or at least she's trying to speak about it even if there's no one to listen to. It's quite clear from a scene early on the film that both of them have had a fight or she had lived off of him for too long. She's a drifter and he has no space for anyone in his apartment and life.

But she still thinks they're family. He doesn't. He wants to move on. He cannot.

Steve McQueen doesn't take a lot of time in setting up the relation between both these characters but leaves her character totally under developed by avoiding her point of view. We only know what we see and while that's a good thing leaving fodder for thought, the main conflict never comes up ultimately draining the emotional connect needed for us to connect to the characters.

Nevertheless the cinematography, excellent editing and superlative performances more than make up for a largely under developed script.

Steve McQueen is an exciting director to watch with a unique style even if he gets a little indulgent at times and I want to see his other film Hunger also starring Fassbender.

Be it Rian Johnson, Duncan Jones or Steve McQueen and even Andrea Arnold (Fishtank) these people make me want to wait and watch better movies.

Fassbender has had a wonderful start to his career and I appreciate his penchant to work in indies be it Fishtank or Hunger or now Shame. This guy has had it all, he's slowly working his way up the ladder with quite a few big releases but I hope he makes more such films that have a real story to be told.

A must watch.

Shame(2011), Written and Directed by Steve McQueen starring Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan.

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3.Mayakkam Enna

The last time Selva Raghavan made a film, Aayirathil Oruvan, the stakes were high and for the most people it didn't work what with it's over the top eccentricities and inconsistent characterizations.

I liked AO for the same things though - over the top eccentricities! Most people would consider Selva's movies misogynistic and crude - most of his films are set in the slums and take a (rather) gritty look at the life of young boys and their love escapades (lust and animal instincts, included!). Not one to shy away from presenting the other side of the love, Selva has often made movies from a male point of view.

Maykkam Enna is no exception, even though he tones down the crudity and eccentricity to a large extent, still most of the characters are extensions of his older ones - just that this time he sets his story in a more urban setting among today's youth living a western life with in the Indian confines.

Dhanush - excellent and subtle as ever, it has been a long time since I saw someone act so subtle in Indian Cinema - plays Karthik Swaminathan, an arrogant prick and a struggling photographer. He spends most of the day hanging out with his friends at the beach, at the bar until his best friend introduces his new girl friend (uptown- peter - copy writer chick) - turns out later, she doesn't really consider her to be his girl friend - and the tug of war starts which ultimately ends as it always does in Indian cinema falling in love with Karthik.

Meanwhile Karthik is cheated by an ace Wildlife photographer - his idol - who uses Karthik's photo to gain more prominence which kinda breaks his heart until he ends up a maniac!

Selva drifts rather breezily through and covers a lot of ground - Theory of Relativity, I guess - in the first half where Karthik falls in love, cheats on his best friend, has a life changing moment with the camera at least twice, all this while singing about love failure and life failure and getting drunk.

All hell breaks loose once Karthik marries and finds out his idol has cheated him. He becomes an alcoholic and he can't deal with failure. Selva goes real slow here and shows how his wife, played by Richa - What's with the frown face? - becomes her mother (or whatever that Indian Marriage should mean!) and takes care of him carefully sending all his photographs for various publications after her day job. She never complains though is visibly angry most times, she has accepted him like he has accepted failure.

But how long? Selva is unable to decide. He stretches the second half - where the more sensitive side of both the actors come out, Richa again goes a little overboard here but not that bad nonetheless - beyond it's limit and is unable to provide a solution to the conflict for the longest time.

This results in a very contrived second half in an otherwise very good film. Ramji was good in Aayirathil Oruvan and he's brilliant here. There are various shots which impressed me and GV Prakash's music is good.

Also I noticed that Selva and his editor do a great job cutting the scenes and I love how Selva gives the movie a very modern look.

Last Word: I don't know how famous Dhanush is in his home land, Tamilnadu - I know he's famous - but this guy is such a joy to watch.

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2.Young Adult

When I first watched Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, I felt very happy. I watched it again a week later and felt even more happy. Almost all of Crowe's films make me happy. I haven't watched We bought a zoo yet but I'm sure it'll make me happy, at least I hope so.

Few years ago, when I was in college one of my friends asked me to watch Juno and I did. A story of a cynical teenager dealing with unwanted pregnancy with a killer soundtrack (One of my favorite soundtracks!) and dialogs referencing pop culture, Juno made me want to watch it again. Even though it ends on a happy note, the movie made me feel sad. Then I watched Thank you for smoking. It was a great movie from what I remember of it with Aaron Eckhart hitting the ball out of the park. 

And then came Up in the Air about the recession, job cuts and above all a lonely man who has convinced himself that everything's perfect. There is a sense of levity with which Jason Reitman deals with most situations the script throws us while saving us all the burden for that last scene. It was uber depressing but I watched it again anyway for all the performances and that awesome script.

Jason Reitman is hell bent on making all his audience feel bad with his movies and I'm not complaining. Most of his protagonists are lonely dealing with such First World Problems that sometimes you'd even be saying 'What's the big deal! I've been through worse.' But how there is - there will never be- no light in their lives is what Jason Reitman wants us to see and that is not easy.

In Young Adult, he gives us a 37 year old woman (girl?) Mavis - modestly successful (ghost) writer working on Young Adult fiction and mightily depressed - who has abandoned her good for nothing small town for her big city dollar dreams. She has everything going for her or so does it seem until she finds out that her old love is happily married and even has a newly born daughter.

Determined to wreck his marriage and convinced that she can do so, she visits her hometown Mercury. There she meets Matt with a limp - a fat geek who was mistaken for being gay back in school and will pretty much be a loner all his life - her schoolmate and they bond over their drinking problem. Matt seems to be happy with what he has and he knows his limits but Mavis who's sure she can seduce a happily married man (Buddy) with a kid tries all out in vain.

What happens in the end is kind of a no brainer given Jason Reitman is at the helm of proceedings supported by Diablo Cody ( they also worked together on Juno, for which Cody won an Oscar) so I won't delve much into that. What interests me though is the analogy between Diablo Cody and Mavis, the protagonist and their interest with Teenage Romance -Juno, Jennifer's Body and the book that Mavis is working on in the movie.

Sometimes people just can't be happy. That's it. There is a scene in the movie when Buddy's (Mavis's Ex) wife  shows Mavis a chart of all the expressions in life and tells her this is how she teaches special needs kids for whom it doesn't come easily. They don't know when someone's happy or angry. Mavis asks her 'What about not feeling anything? Neutral! How do you teach that?'

Buddy's wife, Beth (if I remember the name correctly!) says you don't need to describe that. They know what's neutral. That whole conversation just about sums up what the whole movie and Mavis's character.

She is exactly that. She wants to feel happy. She wants to be loved and love. But she just can't no matter how many designer dresses she wears or how many manicures she has. She will not be happy. She has to deal with it.

Among other things, Rolfe Kent - who also does Dexter's score comes up yet again with a very neat score and that song - continuously referenced through out the movie - The Concept by the scottish band Teenage Fanclub with the dialog "I think I went down on you for the first time to this song' are keepers.

Young Adult Directed by Jason Reitman, Written by Diablo Cody and Starring Charlize Theron, Patrick Wilson and Patton Oswalt as Matt.

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1. Love Failure

There aren't a lot of films by filmmakers other than Woody Allen when it comes to making quirky rom-com dramas offering deadpan sarcasm. Love Failure is no exception.

Love Failure - a bi-lingual made it Tamil-Telugu borrows a lot of narrative style from Allen's Annie Hall to tell a story of a simple guy and simple girl going to college in a relationship and how they almost mess it up and break up with each other before ending up together in a true Indian Filmi style. 

Now that I gave away the ending, let me go back to that word Simple. I say simple because the leads in this film ( Siddharth and Amala Paul) look like normal people devoid of any glitter and drama. Both of them act pretty well with in the scope of the material provided.

There isn't much story to talk about here as it's just a lot of couples set out to prove 'Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus' but the screenplay ensures there aren't too many dull moments. If there's any complaint, it would be that too many scenes are staged like a short film.

All the songs are aptly choreographed - nothing too fancy - but Thaman's exuberant soundtrack does get noticed particularly the song with the 'Love Love' Chorus. 

What I loved the most in the movie though is the guy-bonding and all the complaints about relationships - girls in particular - from a guy's angle. The two artistes playing Siddharth's friends are amazing. 

Nirav Shah, co-producing this movie also takes care of the camera department setting most of the scenes in natural light and considering Siddharth pretty much spends a quarter of the movie directly speaking to the camera, he makes sure it never gets boring.

Balaji Mohan who wiki says is just 24, does a clean job of directing and writing this sensible movie.

Love Failure (Telugu, 2012) Written and Directed by Balaji Mohan.

PS - Amala Paul is my newest crush and did I say she's hot!