2011 Was a Damn Good Year!

I don't usually do the end of year lists (not because I have anything against them, but mostly because if I like something I will blog about it right there and then), but this year seemed to deserve a special pat on the back for giving us so much good stuff. So even if I have talked at length about most of these movies, this is the end of year wrap-up and my top 5 (or 6?) most awesome movies of the year.

Dhobi Ghat



This is technically a 2010 movie for me since that's when I saw it, so I debated whether to include it or not, but heck, it's always a good idea to give it another shout-out. It didn't do too well at the box office, and there are a couple of things that upon rewatch bothered me about it (the main one being Monica Dogra's acting skills or lack thereof), but I still consider Dhobi Ghat one of the most touching Indian films I've ever seen (yes, emotion works best for me when it's subtle and tender). Maybe because I was following it so closely pre-release, or maybe because I saw Kiran Rao on stage at TIFF talking about it, but this is one of those rare films where I can feel the love of the director for everything to do with filmmaking in every frame. It's a movie I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone who wants to give Bollywood a shot, because yes, I do consider it Bollywood (the new Bollywood that I am loving more and more) even if right now it seems like it's ahead of its time.

7 Khoon Maaf



Vishal Bhardwaj's sometimes humorous, sometimes unbearably dark drama about a woman and her 7 husbands who all end up dead. Another movie that didn't do very well with the audiences, and in a way it's easy to see why. Not only does it have a woman as the central character, but it's a very complex, wicked and confounding woman who makes it very hard to read her fragile heart through the layers of the film. Give it to Bhardwaj to attempt something as bold as this film and to almost get away with it. Priyanka Chopra's performance was the highlight of the year for me and that alone makes the movie worth while. But when we add to that the fabulous soundtrack, the Vishal trademarked camera-work and the story itself with its million interpretations, it's more than enough to shoot a movie to the very top of my favourites. Frankly I did not think another one would surpass it this year. And only one did, but more on that later since this list is in chronological order.

Shor in the City



This was one of the surprises of the year for me because while I was expecting it to be fun (based on how much I loved "99" from the same director duo), I didn't expect it to be so good. It's sometimes tongue-in-cheek and other times dead serious (emphasis on dead), and sometimes you're not even sure which one it is, but it's a damn good watch, that's for certain. Setting up a business in Mumbai, working the traffic lights and a peek into the lives of small time crooks, innocence lost and found again, all these themes get explored through the 3 story-lines of the movie and most come to a very satisfying end, even if not all believable. This is a movie I can't recommend enough.

Saheb Biwi aur Gangster and Delhi Belly





I cannot for the life of me decide between these two. I went to see Delhi Belly in the theatres 3 times and laughed my head off every single tine, while I only watched SBAG once but that was enough to know I was in love with it. What makes it even harder to choose is that SBAG is not a comedy by any stretch of the imagination, while Delhi Belly will only work if you find it funny, otherwise it will bomb. Delhi Belly is not very heavy on story-line, and yet somehow it kept me engaged every time. SBAG on the other hand has quite the plot and quite the surprising finale, so if story is what you're after, this is definitely the one to see. Delhi Belly then wins on the soundtrack side while SBAG wins on the visuals side.

Tell me this image alone doesn't steal your heart!

Both films have excellent performances and both have strong characters that make an impact. So you see... I can't choose. I'll have to leave this one to you.

Rockstar



I'm sure by now everyone knows this was THE movie of the year for me, so I'll keep it nice and short. Not many movies (and only a handful of Bollywood ones) grab me emotionally. I care for the characters, sure, sometimes they piss me off, sometimes I feel bad for them, but I'm never living every second of the film with them. So when a movie manages to remove me from reality and soak me into the story to the point where I forget myself completely, it's shocking. And wonderful at the same time. Rockstar did exactly that to me. Not once, not twice, but all three times when I watched it in the theatres. There is something so powerful about Imtiaz Ali's storytelling mixed with AR Rahman's music, that I simply lose myself in it every time.

I loved this movie so much that every person who did not feel the way I did about it made me sad. Not for the movie (which did well enough) but sad for them, because I felt like they were missing out on something powerful, magical and out-of-this-world special. But... then again, maybe other movies give them the same feeling, maybe movies that will never even gain my benevolence let alone my love, so I can't weep for them for too long.


Now let me tell you this was not an easy list to make. I left out the gorgeous Zindagi Na Milego Dobara, the hilarious Bbudda Hoga Tera Baap, the tragic Bol (this one would have been in my top 5 but it's not technically Bollywood, so it got disqualified), the adorable FALTU, and the quirky Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji, all movies that I really enjoyed this year. And I also left out the two glittery fluff-balls of the year, but that's because they're coming in a separate post.

So all in all... damn, it's been a great year for the Bollywood lover!

4 Karats in Silver: Shor in the City

I used to be a big fan of the TV show Heroes... aaaand had a huge crush on Sendhil Ramamurthy. What? Didn't everyone? Well, until he started getting the plague or something and then I couldn't look at him anymore. But that's beside the point.

At any rate, just wanted to state how happy I was to find that he was acting in a Hindi film, and as if that were not enough to get me to watch it (trust me, it was!), a film made by the same team who gave us the awesomeness that was "99" (Krishna DK and Raj Nidimoru). Of course, it didn't actually get an international release, so I had to wait for the DVD which luckily did not take long (even if that means that it didn't do all that well in theatres). So now I am on a mission to get everyone to watch it!

Shor is divided into 3 tracks that criss-cross at different points in the film, each track inspired by stories that made the news in the past decade. On the one hand we have the small-time crooks Tilak (Tusshar Kapoor), Mandook (Pitobash) and Ramesh (Nikhil Dwivedi) who make a living by selling whatever they can steal from crowded buses. They also have a side printing business, selling books (some unreleased) at traffic lights.

The second track is Abhay (Sendhil Ramamurthy) as the NRI returning to India (after what we are lead to believe was not a rosy past in the US) to set up a business. Easier said than done because the street mafia is there to make money on his every move.

Finally I discovered with great joy that the third track belongs to Sundeep Kishan, an actor I had already loved in Prasthanam. He plays Sawan, a young man trying to make it into the junior cricket team across layers and layers of corruption.

Holding on to his girlfriend turns out to be the other major headache in his life.

By the way, just a quick pit-stop on the art direction front, how hilarious is this shot? Love it!

There are some moral issues with the story that I think are dealt with a little too lightly. I kept comparing Shor with 99 just because it's made by the same guys, but 99 never leaves its zone of goofy, harmless fun which makes its comedy perfectly adequate. In Shor on the other hand, the issues at hand are much heavier, which in my opinion required they be treated a tad more seriously. Just an example: a kid running with a bomb about to detonate in his hand - NOT funny. Sorry, but no. In any universe. As a matter of fact neither is playing with guns. Also, Abhay's solution to his problems is hardly acceptable for a hero, but then I don't think he was meant as a hero to begin with, so that one I can't object too much to.

Despite being disappointed by the general direction of the morals of the film (that direction being nowhere), I still loved it. Not because it's funny (99 is much funnier), and not because it creates some lasting characters. I loved it because it creates little pockets of magic that are absolutely unforgettable. The relationship between Tilak and his new wife is one of the major highlights for me, and all their little moments make a lasting impression, whether it's their coy attempts at consummating their marriage, or Tilak proudly showing off to his (college graduate) wife the traffic signal where his printing business comes to fruition, every single moment they spend on screen is so heavy with sweetness that it's hard to even think of them as part of the same film.

I found the references to Paulo Coelho's "Alchemist" hilarious (a book that everyone, myself included, loved in high school, but then most of us got over it). Whether this was the way I wanted to see it or the movie meant it that way, every single reference to "the philosophy" of The Alchemist suggested that this book is considered philosophy mostly by people who lack education, or by people who haven't read any better. Even the fact that the only educated character in the film had loved it in high school is a backhanded compliment. The snob in me was enjoying this way more than it would be polite. Though in the end, I must bow to its power to make people think positively about their lives and to steer them in the right direction, so credit where it's due, it was well used in the film.

Other pockets of brilliance are the glimpses of what shapes up to be the backstage of the spectacle that is Mumbai: people who get paid to organize rallies and riots, people who get paid to "make the right choice" for the cricket team, people who ask for bribes at every street corner. You could say it's a movie about corruption, except it's not, because corruption is such a fact of life that it never quite rises up to the level where it becomes its own entity in the story. It's just there, in the background of every event, you know about it, and you move on. I've seen the same type of subtlety before in Dhobi Ghat, in reference to poverty, and I always appreciate this matter-of-fact treatment of certain themes. 

 To top it all off, these little pockets of brilliance are brought to life by some wonderful performances from everyone involved, from the smallest goonda to the blink-and-you'll-miss-them secondary characters like Sejal's mother or Sawan's sister, or even Sejal herself.

I have seen Sundeep Kishan only in 2 movies so far but he's quickly becoming a favourite, so I was following his story with a lot of interest. Also notable because he's the only character whom you want to see being good, maybe because of his age, or maybe because of his predicament, but he was the only one I kept hoping would rise above the muck. His little moments with his sister and his brother in law, his fights with the stressed girlfriend, Sundeep lends this character such tenderness and vulnerability that you can't help but care for him in a way that you don't for everyone else, Sendhil's shirtless scene notwithstanding.

While we're talking about Sundeep, I'll take a few seconds to whine about garbage subtitles because they failed to translate one of the cutest lines he says:

What he's actually saying is: "Have I been speaking Telugu until now?" Get it? Telugu? *snort snort*

The first time I watched Shor I thought Sendhil didn't quite come through in terms of acting, but on the second watch I came to appreciate his understated style. Guess that's one of the dangers of mixing Western actors with Indian ones, their styles don't always match perfectly. But after adjusting my lens for the differences, I have to say he kind of rocks. Watch him try to speak Hindi and always end up blowing up in English. Watch his little smiles when he picks up on the innuendos and he learns to read between the lines. And then watch him be all badass! Enough said.

Oh come on! Don`t act like this was not done for precise purposes of screencapping!

I am convinced that the reason why the characters in Shor don't stay with you as much as the ones in 99 is precisely because they succeed so well at portraying real life people, the people you could meet every day and promptly forget, the people who only become memorable when something happens and they end up in the news or even worse, as statistics. Nobody is poorer than poor and nobody is richer than rich. Nobody stands out for extraordinary qualities or even for extreme villainy. It's not that they have no personality, because they do, it's just that in the end, they disappear in the crowd like you would expect them to with no major consequences for anyone. Every character in the film is just another building block of the maze that is the city of Mumbai, each trying to get ahead, each trying to make something of his life. The right way or the wrong way.

Don't watch Shor in the City expecting another 99. Don't watch it for a great uplifting moralizing story. Don't even watch it for a story that has its heart in the right place (the tag line of the soundtrack gives that one away: "Be Bad or Be Dead"). Watch it for the little moments of brilliance. Watch it for the rawness of the forces that run each character's life. Watch it for the fantastic direction. Watch it for the sincerity of the relationships. And for Saibo. Twice for Saibo.