film roundup

fearless – the hunterwali story. arteries of bombay . dharavi – a new beginning . the burning sun. the place promised in our early days . the sky crawlers . underworld evolution . twilight . the sound of music

i should start at the very end- or the last film that we saw last night. ‘fearless –the hunterwali story’- a homage to nadia and her films made by a descendant. like all biopics, overly respectful and loving, but redeemed by the fact that the characters were fascinating and terrific entertainers in real life and on screen, whether that is telling stories of injuries on set or the shots of death defying stunts on trains. reading laura mulvey parallely (courtesy sur) gives those sequences even more meaning.

i also saw a set of films divisions documentaries back to back the previous night- all about the city of bombay. ‘arteries of bombay’ after a voiceover introduction proceeds to follow the local trains as they ferry goods and passengers across the city. made in the year when i was born – the city seems to be the ideal 20^th century city- progressive, energetic and alive. the madness of the city is all brought under control by the machines of the railway. a propaganda film about a citizens and a government officers cleanliness drive in dharavi ‘ dharavi- a new beginning’ is the worst kind of state sponsored film there can be. sanctimonious, badly shot with a terrible voiceover, whom does it think it is convincing. this film was made in the 1990s just before mukesh mehta flew in from american with his bag of goodies for the state and the developers that made them turn dharavi into a hellhole again in their rhetoric. ‘the burning sun’ plays with the distance between imagination (or rhetoric) and reality within the everyday. somehow managing to stay above the cool/cute juxtaposition of rich / poor, the film interviews maharashtra housing board architect, unsuspecting mr kasbekar as he plans efficient block housing for the slum dwellers in his office, and the ground realities of toilets and water on the streets.

another set of films over the weekend were the anime features. ‘the sky crawlers’ are a group of perpetually young fighter pilots kept in an interminable war in a possible future. an undefeated enemy is essential for peace within a society. the film pays obsessive attention towards sounds and silences in the sky and on the empty tarmac of the airport. another film in makoto shinkai’s series about unbridgeable distances between people is ‘the place promised in our early days’. a tower rises on an island in the distance in another country as two boys obsess about building an airplane to get there. a girl with an intimate connection to the tower that connects to other dimensions joins them. when the connection between the three is broken each longs in their own way to complete the circle. like the other films this one too is lovingly meticulous in the way that the light and sound of a space makes into sublime the details of the everyday.

it is amazing how vampire films have moved away form the horror genre that i otherwise keep far away from into others. vampires are good looking in a cold kind of way; and so are werewolves in a more animalistic way. like two poles. so the conflict between them sometimes is an action film like the ‘underworld’ series of which i saw ‘evolution’ yesterday; or a teenage romance/ coming of age (?) like the first of the ‘twilight’ series. in both a strong woman plays the central role. kate beckinsale in black leather plays tough beating up the boys in the first and in ‘twilight’ kristen stewart is not afraid as she is surrounded by and falls in love with a vampire. full of silly lines and predictable plot twists both films are guilty pleasures.

it is impossible to be objective about a film when your school partner through 5 years of school sang ‘raindrops on roses’ for every singing competition and won- every single year. so you are singing along knowing every word and remembering how you were identifying with different characters at different times as you are growing up. last week, it was the sardonic uncle.