The Disciple [dir. Chaitanya Tamhane]

There are two measures by which Chaitanya Tamhane's new film may be measured. First, as a follow-up to Court, his seminal exploration of the machinery of the Indian legal system. Court (reviewed on this site HERE) was the antithesis of all Indian legal dramas that had appeared till then (and even most foreign films I have seen), not concerned with generating courtroom fireworks, but realistically depicting an ongoing proceeding in context of the greater institution which carries on in its phlegmatic fashion regardless of how the wheels of justice turn for any individual. The Disciple promises to bring that same kind of non-judgemental (ha!) fly-on-the-wall observation in its journey through the world of Indian classical music.

To read the rest of the review, submitted as a Readers' write-in to Baradwaj Rangan's blog, please go HERE

Dekalog [dir. Krysztof Kieslowski]

No, you're not going to find this on your favorite streaming channel (at least in India, although if you do, let me know so I can sign up too). Dekalog (or The Decalogue) was a 10-episode anthology serial made for Polish television in the late 80's by Krysztof Kieslowski (later known for The Double Life of Veronique and the Three Colors trilogy). It is predominantly set in a housing complex, and each hour-long episode is a self-contained that deals with one person / family. Dekalog is a loose reflection on the significance of the biblical Ten Commandments in modern existence.

By loosely, I mean that it's not easy to pigeonhole an episode as a rumination over a specific commandment. And that is as it should be, because life's moral dilemmas rarely come with convenient labels or pat resolutions. A wife demands to know if her critically ill husband will survive, because that will decide whether she keeps or aborts the child from a lover. A daughter may have found that the man she regards as her father may not be so; would that legitimize her incestuous feelings towards him? An impotent husband who suggests his wife take on a lover finds himself less equanimous when he discovers that she may have done so. A woman drags a former lover from his family on Christmas eve because she has been long abandoned by her husband and is jealous of having to spend that time of traditional joy alone. The most famous episode of Dekalog, and one of two that were expanded by the director to feature-length, deals with two killings - the first, in which a young man brutally strangles a cab-driver for no apparent reason, and the second, in which said young man is hanged by the state with apparently equal callousness. It is credited as being instrumental in the abolition of the death penalty in Poland.

Like the individual apartment blocks of a building complex, each episode is self-contained, yet contains strands that link it to other episodes. A lead character in one story may make a fleeting cameo appearance in another. The outline of one story may be referred to in passing elsewhere. The effect is to create a rich tapestry of this microcosm of a civilization. As with James Joyce's Dubliners or Rohinton Mistry's Tales from Firozesha Baag, the individual parts are worthy in themselves, but the sum is significantly greater.

For this of course, thematic unity becomes essential. This comes primarily from Kieslowski's direction. Originally the idea was that he and his co-writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz (a lawyer when Kieslowski met him in the course of conceiving a documentary on legal trials) would script the episode and leave the direction to young film-makers looking to prove their mettle. But as the project progressed, Kieslowski either grew more possessive or realized the power of the material, and helmed the whole anthology, giving it a unifying vision. His musical collaborator Zbigniew Preisner provides an additional emotional anchor with the minimal main theme and the haunting pieces for the individual episodes (abetted by the great "Van Den Budenmayer").

With ample justification, the series made Kieslowski's name internationally and gave him the opportunity to become the universally respected artist he deserved to be. Dekalog was and continues to be a landmark of what television could be when it is not geared to gratify instant cravings, when it is not the idiot-box.

Eeda [dir. B Ajithkumar]

Indian cinema owes a debt of gratitude to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet; that tale of star-crossed lovers is almost its own genre in this land. The hearth of the Great Indian Melodrama has in turn given back to the source by way of variations on the theme. As I recall in the bard's original script, the background for the feud between the Montague and Capulet families is never particularly elucidated and we are to take for granted their sworn enmity that forbids the romance of their children. In our film adaptations wealth/social divides, histories of revenge and even language/cultural barriers have been woven as the backdrop of clan animosity against which our young lovers revolt in the avowal of their love.

B Ajithkumar's Eeda (2018) introduces political conflict as the new ground for the discord. Our Romeo and Juliet are Anand/Nandu (Shane Nigam) and Aishwarya/Ammu (Nimisha Sajayan), natives of Kannur who first meet - appropriately - in the midst of a curfew. Their encounter is not a peaceful exchange of sweet nothings: Nandu is tasked with taking her home on his bike while avoiding rioters, and they have a tense exchange about his choice of unfamiliar routes. The selection of the leads and the manner in which this whole sequence is captured sets the tone for the film to follow. While Shane (also seen in the enchanting Kumbalangi Nights) has a Ranbir Kapoor-esque appeal that may set teenage hearts aflutter, neither he nor Nimisha in this film are given any kind of gloss or halo separating them from the rest of the cast. Nandu's entry and his manner of rescuing Ammu are never adorned with the HERO treatment. Her fears about being led by a stranger on an unknown route are sympathizable, and their ensuing arguments not the exaggerated blow-ups that are precursor to cloying romance. When Nandu drops her off at her destination, there's no grand moment of chivalry or macho posturing.

In Mysore, just a bus-ride away but a different world altogether with its cosmopolitan air, the two later meet again as regular young urbanites - she is a student in the university while he works for an insurance firm. The same groundedness and attention to small details underlines the romance that develops. How rare and refreshing it is to come across an onscreen depiction of budding love that respects the spaces, silences and the awkwardness which define that sweet ache of courtship. Like how the late Sachy's Ayyappanum Koshiyum reinvigorated the revenge drama by its organic building up of one sequence upon the other, Eeda's script and direction encrust the romantic narrative with a realism that overrides any sense of déjà vu. Even the scene where Romeo's famous balcony climb is referenced is not a quick stunt moment; you can feel Nandu's trepidation and physical struggle to reach Ammu's window. It is precisely because they are relatable ordinary people whose emotional attachment transcends their fears that their bond emerges as a powerful entity which justifies what happens later.

The third major character here is their hometown in Kannur, a constantly simmering pot of tense relations between the Marxists and the Right-wing. Here politics is not an abstract concept or a matter for leisurely teatime discussion among gentry, it is a vital, visceral force running through the populace, gripping entire families (womenfolk included). For each faction, the 'Party' is like a collective that governs the fates of its members and their kin: an individual may on orders cheerfully walk away from a kabaddi game to prison, or a marriage alliance may be fixed as per their directive. And from time to time, each tribe demands its quota of blood. While Nandu and Ammu's romance would be an unquestioned fact in Mysore, it is a different story in Kannur: here, they belong on opposite sides in a conflict they want no part of, but which is determined to bend them to its will. There are few obvious villains here. Nandu's uncle Govindan cares for his followers even as he orders them to perform violent acts, while Ammu's mother obviously loves her, but will not support her defiance of the party's ditkat. Keeping stereotype hysterics to a minimum, Eeda steeps us in the enveloping quicksand of violence and dread that strangles the dreams of our young lovers.

While retaining its credibility, Ajithkumar's script aims for more a mythic touch in its final act. Nandu and Ammu's more pragmatic visions of a joint future are shattered, but in a knowing reprisal of the circumstances of their first meeting, the lovers are determined to be together even if their fate has already been sealed. It is a fitting conclusion to a heart-tugging journey.

Orange Mittai aka Orange Candy [dir. Biju Viswanath]

My opinions of the Hrishikesh Mukherjee classic Anand have been conflicted. While the first time I was wholly in its thrall, laughing at the funny moments and bawling at the climax, I later harbored a growing resentment at the idea of a dying man devoting his remaining time to being an interfering dick in other people's lives, and playing the sympathy card because he's dying. At least Anand is the happy kind of dick (and that climax still works).

Orange Mittai's Kailasam (Vijay Sethupathi, who also co-wrote and produced) is a more difficult kettle of fish. In the beginning we see him as an opportunistic hypochondriac. He's lonely, and by default bitter and sarcastic to everyone around, but the moment he is given an inch of sympathy by the EMT nurse Sathya (Ramesh Thilak, thankfully in a better age of cinema than when he would have been reduced to Hero's Friend parts) he wants to butt into the guy's personal life.

Like the candy, Orange Mittai the movie promises to be a short sweet-tart experience. In actuality it's 100 min running time feels almost twice as long. And maybe it's just me, but I would question the judgement of any medical worker who chooses to ignore the call of his supervisor to reach an emergency site and remain as an emotional support to a whimsical, cranky old man who insists on stopping in the middle of the road to pull off a 'mass' dance routine (a scene that goes on for way too long). There are occasional poignant moments, like towards the end when Sathya hugs Kailasam after dropping him near his residence, and the latter reacts with stiff discomfort, like someone wanting affection but awkward when receiving it. But the film doesn't earn its demands of your attention (with its dumping of multiple epilogues, the editing is clumsy) and doesn't reward you with sufficient depth of character to make up for the annoyance caused by the assholery of the attention demanding old crank.

PS: Apart from Sethupathi and Thilak in the leads, the movie has a bunch of cameos from the Soodhu Kavvum cast.

Godha [dir. Basil Joseph]

Godha (Arena, the subtitles translate) is what Ali Abbas Zafar's wrestling movie Sultan would be like if it had not been Bhai-cotted. This is another story where an aimless youth Das (Tovino Thomas) falls for an aspiring wrestler Aditi (Wamiqa Gubbi) who would rather focus on her ambition. Initially Das is instrumental in Aditi running away from her orthodox brother in Punjab to become his dominating wrestler father's newest disciple. But her single-minded devotion to her craft makes him feel betrayed, until a tongue-lashing from her and his dad force him to get his priorities in life straight. He then revives his interest in wrestling, a sport he had abandoned long ago.

In Bollywood and Bahubaliwood this would have been the cue to shift the focus entirely over to the macho hero, with the girl taking a supporting part, marveling over his newfound awesomeness and discovering lurrrrv. But Godha is primarily Aditi's story, and while Das gets his spotlight moment of slow-motion running with blaring guitar soundtrack, his arc remains secondary to hers; even at the end the nature of their chemistry is ambivalent.

The other major character is Das's father Captain (Renji Panicker), a former mat champ frustrated at the lack of respect for the sport in current times, and seeing in Aditi a rare chance to mentor someone as dedicated. His favoritism towards Aditi extends to banning non-vegetarian food at the family dining table and insisting that his wife make paneer to please his vegetarian protege; the script always plays this for laughs, ignoring the dramatic potential for this encroachment on his affections. Towards his own son Captain's behavior is at first so blindly authoritarian that the rapidity with which he becomes an understanding life-gyan dispenser after Das is verbally whupped by Aditi, is a little jarring. Aditi's own behavior in her initial interaction with Das is somewhat schizophrenic, but there's a lovely single-take scene in which she opens her heart out to him about the pains of being an out-of-place girl sportsperson in a man's world, which explains at least some of her attitude.

The drama is peppered with a fair amount of slapstick humor, most which comes from the local lads' fascination for the "fair-skinned northie girl". It's not sublime comedy, but not intolerable either. Then there's the wrestling. Sadly, Dangal, which came before this, set such a high standard for authenticity in a wrestling movie that Godha just doesn't match up. Aditi is given a cardboard nemesis in the form of Pinto, a dread-locked wrestler from Delhi (if Pinto had been shown to be a Malayalee, it would have at least made for an interesting juxtaposition). Apart from playing unfair on the mat, Pinto repeatedly baits Aditi, even challenging her to a "Where you want, when you want" bout that makes Aditi's win on a home-crowd supported ground less of an underdog story. There's an unconvincing bit about the brother attending her bout and cheering her on when she needs it (there seems no reason for him to have had a change of heart).

The House Next Door [dir. Milind Rau]

The House Next Door aka Aval aka Gruham got a decent review from my favorite critic Baradwaj Rangan. In retrospect, I wonder if the fact that he was pally with the director and lead actor led to a softening of his otherwise sharp critical reflexes. Rangan made a lot of the fact that the film is a "pure" horror, not mixed with other potboiler elements. But apart from the fact that there are no song elements and comedy tracks, it's not particularly different from the standard Vikram Bhatt horror feature.

Siddharth and Andrea Jeremiah are a very-much-in-love married couple who set up home in a picturesque remote hillside (which must mean a really long work commute for the husband who works in a state-of-the-art hospital doing surgical "deep brain stimulation" procedures). They get a new set of neighbors in Atul Kulkarni and his family which includes his second wife and one daughter from each marriage. The elder daughter, who is infatuated with Sid (causing justifiable irritation in his wife, especially since Sid doesn't seem to be bothered to even politely tell the kid to back off) starts to show weird behavior and there's talk about evil spirits asking them to leave the house. Since she's a depressed adolescent with step-mum issues (and of course reads horror books) they first try to look for a conventional reason and after a pseudo-exorcism (Prakash Belawadi, pleasantly restrained) goes spectacularly wrong, they delve into the history of the house (hinted at in the prologue). More stereotype horror movie wankery till the end.

THND goes through a battery of tired horror movie stereotypes - stuff that goes bump, someone walking past in the mirror, ghostly face at the window, levitating furniture and stuff that gets hurled around. There's little here that's fresh or, like with the entertaining first installment of The Conjuring, done with enough energy to transcend the cliche. The stray good scene, like when Sid must try to ignore visions of ghosts while he's trying to do a delicate brain procedure, provides too little relief. The screenplay is predictable to a fault and while the camera captures some interesting colored lighting that harks back to Dario Argento's Suspiria, the imagery (CG or otherwise) to depict the ghosts is unimaginative. On the whole this Grudge is a drudge.

Helen [dir. Mathukutty Xavier]

Last night, me and mum watched this Malayalam movie called Helen, about the fate of a young girl (Anna Ben) working part-time at a fast-food outlet, who gets locked inside the walk-in freezer at closing time. No one knows she's in there, and for reasons, people including her widower dad (Lal) think she might have run off somewhere.

First off, the positives. What Helen is good at, is providing a credible look at how the girl deals with her predicament. She's not some superhuman survival nut that can duct-tape a bazooka out of a bag of frozen peas, but she's a trained nurse (her server job is a stop-gap earner while she takes English lessons and applies for an overseas posting) and applies her knowledge and natural quick-wittedness to use materials at hand to devise solutions for keeping alive. A good deal of thought seems to have gone into depicting the various phases of her hypothermic ordeal. Helen's actions while she is trapped are organic: they're not always the best choices, but you can appreciate her thinking in a desperate situation.

The script is however not perfect: The commercial compromise of a 2-hour film instead of a taut 80-90 minutes means we are subjected to a lengthy (half hour) prologue to establish what an absolute sweetheart Helen is, spreading joy and cheer, and acting as a gentle corrective rudder to both her father and her boyfriend Azhar (Noble Thomas, who also wrote the film). This is the stuff that would have worked better as quick flashbacks during her crisis. Administered as a concentrated dose at the start, it suggests that the makers were worried that the audience wouldn't empathize with Helen's plight if she wasn't shown to be all sweetness and light. There's also a longer than necessary sub-plot about a sleazy cop (Aju Varghese) who stonewalls the investigation into Helen's disappearance just cuz.

These cliches notwithstanding, Helen is a decent family-friendly experience and Anna Ben has a natural charm that carries the film.