Tag: Reviews

Joker

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Joaquin will win the Oscar for Best Male Performance, next February. No doubt about it. Unless I see a better contender in the coming months, this is what I take away from Todd Phillips’ Joker. The film extends itself over a diaspora of human emotions and sympathy drenches its frames from the very beginning. There have been many interpretations of the eponymous character, the most defining one being the one portrayed by the indomitable Heath Ledger. However, one can say that The Dark Knight’s Joker would pick up where this one leaves off.

The story is a simple – and I would even call it clichéd – a mix of timeworn retellings that make up of most movies dealing with psychotic breaks and the various triggers that society sets out for the weaker sections that populate it. The average guy once again seizing power in the upheaval that follows through the movie, and the dynamic of nihilism combined with psychosis keeps sparking until it bursts forth in the climax.

When I saw the trailer a few months ago, I knew what I was in store for. There was no light that peeked through any of the script and what most of the fluorescence and shadowed daylight did was show the angled bent of the character’s descent into madness. The cinematography of the movie is superb. The play of light and shadow in a scene with Phoenix at the back of a bus, littered with graffiti, moving down a bridge is one of my favourites. A close second is the overhead shot of Phoenix in the dressing room, in full regalia.

I will not go into the details of the story. The script is a character study. The following of a polite, unassuming, troubled soul into his future. His past keeps cropping up at various moments and his struggles to make sense of it keeps aligning the viewer to his state of mind. The beauty of the madness is the innocence of it. Abuse and neglect by parental figures forms the twisted backbone of the Joker here. Watching disability create isolation is another theme that Phoenix portrays so well.

That laugh. Man, he should get an award for just cultivating that laugh.

The more I speak about Phoenix’s performance, the less it would be. The spiral he goes through as he commits the first murders is surreal, and the surrealism flows out toward you in the following dance. Did I mention it was exquisite? This actor has taken the mantle from Ledger and created another story of the Joker. Just as dynamic, chaotic, deranged and tumultuous – but the difference here is that the bats he faces are all within. It is a psychological war that he loses – it is his faith, his hope and his belief structure. It is a study of a victim who turns inward, finds the bedlam within, and lets it devour himself and the ones around.

In accordance with this, Lawrence Sher’s cinematography sets the tone of the movie. Everything is muted, subdued. It’s just the clowns that pop with their makeup and green hair. Some scenes leave a mark: Phoenix’s close ups, the angled back, the scenes in public transport, the sun hitting a running train, and the curtain call scene. Superlative poetry in picture.

I have mentioned the plot is not great. The segues formulate into clichés more than once. The interesting part to note is the fact that though madness is used as a tool to create situations it doesn’t always do so with absolute certainty – that in itself, grasps the idea of insanity. You can see what the character sees, and feels what he feels with no great clarity given to the ones behind the fourth wall. Your sharing this ambiguity makes his madness logical. There are friends who watched it with me who found this fact unnerving.

I will add something as a personal view. When I observe the protagonist’s descent into madness because of certain circumstance, I understand why it happened and I shudder to note how society ignores and mistreats mental illness that leads to his becoming an antagonist. I understand victim hood. I do not celebrate it leading to murder. One must mark a moment of concern when the audience cheers as he descends the stairs, emblazoned in a red suit, and dances. The dance is exquisite and pathetic, true – but there should be the following of dread in the onlooker, not anticipation.

The rest of the cast are mere extensions of Phoenix. DeNiro stands strong. Conroy is her usual raving characters. No, the film is solely Joaquin Phoenix’. This movie is definitely worth a watch, and once you do, it will stay with you for a long while, settling on your heart as ash settles on fresh snow.

Made In Heaven

Published on by Harpreet Chhachhia1 Comment

Made in Heaven

I admit I watched Made in Heaven,predominantly, because a dear friend, Anil Lakhwani, worked on the series. I also have a deep respect for the writing and overall aesthetic of Zoya Akhtar (she being my favourite director in Bollywood). I began watching the series with a sense of trepidation, knowing of its premise: the story surrounding the two main leads who are wedding planners, in Delhi. Each episode deals with a different wedding and the stories of the protagonists’ personal lives.

As I watched the first episode, I smiled at the wonderful Neena Gupta, who was such a relatable punjabi lady. And yes, I cringed at the depiction of a gay man, played by a cis-male, Arjun Mathur. Not because of his acting prowess, mind, but, because, I thought, like so many film makers, this depiction would be one that surmised homosexuality as just random sex-seeking and angst, against one’s own different self. The gay kiss was where I rolled my eyes – could they not have found an actor who was comfortable playing a gay man?

Then my friend, who had worked on the series and who I watched the series with, mentioned, “do you know how difficult it is to find an actor who is willing to play a gay man in Indian cinema?” I nodded. I didn’t say anything because I understood and was conflicted. Gay men have been playing straight roles all the time. But that’s our society and a different topic altogether. But a straight man, who should – ideally – value his work ethic and, for that matter, work with someone like Zoya, should jump at this role… Then again, that’s how I think and not how the world operates.

So, I decided to give the series another two episodes, before I called quits on it. However – the second episode got me hooked, and I finished the series, over a night’s viewing. That, in itself, should state how marvellous it is. But if it doesn’t, let me go on with the review.

Each episode deals with a marriage. We have a whole plethora of people being a part of them. Weddings, and the planning of, dealing with the concerns from royal households to that of a common man. Women, who are avaricious and succumb, like all flawed humanity, to the whims of this material world, to women who are empowered and revolt against patriarchal structures, encapsulate this world of marriage, life and love. We are shown grit and determination and then, also, the giving up of the self, love and practicality. Each marriage has something to convey to the Indian milieu – and it’s not just the people speaking English who this refers to. But perhaps, that’s who will end up watching this lovely depiction of the institution that is marriage.

Sobitha Dhulipala, who plays Tara, kept reminding me of Angelina Jolie. And like the latter’s choice of roles, Tara plays this ambitious woman who rises from the lower rungs of society and reaches the place in the ladder she wants to set foot on. Machiavelli would be proud, up to the point, of course, where the character starts her climb and the grey begins to show, soon after.

This is the best part of the show, there is no black and white. There are role reversals and people soaring to loveliness and they being equally capable of plunging into nastiness.

In one of these various shades of grey, falls Arjun Mathur’s character, Karan. Arjun plays the role with an angst unique to the gay subculture. He hits the role with a vulnerability that is discernible, in flashes, to only the most attentive watcher. He makes the character personal and tragic, elevating himself to the stage of coming out and accepting who he himself is. But this journey is not singular, it is taken by all the main leads and is superlative to watch.

The lovemaking doesn’t seem forced (though I will say, Arjun Mathur had to play a top gay man – I guess, showing a passive gay man would push the buck for an actor to pick up the role [?] but then I can also say that showing a femme gay man would also play into one of the many generic stereotypes that gay people have battled against, for so long). Conflict seems to be the name of the game – and alas, life.

Arjun’s love story and the character graph is one of the most intense ones – though I would also say, hurried. It appears most of our lives are encapsulated in nine hours. Most of us gay boys go through what he has gone through. The internalised homophobia, the phobic parent, the sexual abuse by the powers that be, the love gone wrong, the ease of finding sex, the extortion and, yet, the finding of help and succour in the face of adversity. We have all been there in bits and parts. He has brought it out so wonderfully – so sensitively. The scene at the dinner table with his father, where he breaks down and cries, remains my favourite.

I must also talk about the very complex character portrayal of Ramesh Gupta, played by the indomitable Vinay Pathak. The nuanced performance is fantastic, and he deserves a stalwart commendation. He portrays all that could go wrong when one is not true to who he or she is – he is what reality can be.

Homosexual sub culture is neither glamourised nor treated with disdain. It is what it is – another facet of humanity that needs to be recognised and accepted.

It is not just Arjun’s work, but the absolute genius of the side actor casting that needs worthy mention. Ayesha Raza, Kalki Koechlin (shining in a superb portrayal of a kind woman, lost in the understanding of who she is and what she wants), Jim Sarbh (the suave, eligible man who cannot profess his love and cannot be honest about it and so compensates for it in various other ways) – all fantastic!

Two episodes stand out as my favourites: “The Price of Love” where the bride rocks and becomes a personification of women empowerment and “It’s Never Too Late” where Dipti Naval is, as usual, brilliant and such a pleasure to watch. Feminism stands balanced in every episode, with a healthy dose of the portrayal of women who are gentle and cruel, lost and strong, ambitious and content. The best part is that I could feel, as I watched these episodes, that the writers were hardly ever passing judgement. They have tackled the topic of not just feminism and alternate lifestyles but also of drugs, corruption and the helping power of good counselling.

I have not seen such a web series in a very long time. It is, in equal proportions, mature and engaging, liberal and empowering, engaging and staid. I applaud all the makers behind this venture: with a special brava to the writer-directors: Alankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti, and two thumbs up to the other directors: Nitya Mehra and Prashant Nair.

Absolutely cool, will definitely be spreading the word.

Where the lost things go

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Mary Poppins was a wonderful movie. It took me to a place where the lost things go. It reminded me of why I was called Peter Pan by a friend so many years ago.

In the middle of life, I grew up somewhere, some time, and I lost perspective of the things that mattered.

Friends and siblings have grown up. The conundrum is that I look for independence and maturity in people I choose to build bonds with. I look down upon the ones who don’t think, who hope extensively. But I’ve also realized, especially when faced with people who are alien to emotion and responses based on the heart, I do not think that they will be happy in life.

I set a lot of score in things that have no real tangible source of happiness. A good wad of cash gets good things that are wanted, tangible, things that can be touched and – perhaps even loved. But these things, along with the cash, do not really matter, in the end. We are human beings – unfortunately – and we need love and we need the succour provided by the Other.

Death becomes final, if there is no love. Memory makes the person immortal. Experience and history are what carries you into the future, into existence forever. The poets and the writers and the painters tried to capture this into art and transcribe it into the tangible. I have known people who have moved away from sensibility and into sense, but I have also seen them despondent and eventually, I have seen them float into the sphere of feeling, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes deliberately and sometimes, fighting tooth and nail.

I have seen how sense takes flight and sensibility takes over, with a vengeance. It is almost as if she wants to wreck love with a violence. She seeks to punish, and she feels it is right as is her wont. But I have dealt with emotion my entire life. I grow weary of her. Sense has come to me while sensibility has been told to wait in the corner. I haven’t discarded her. I just wanted to talk a bit with her sister. It is as Mary Poppins says, it is the time between the dark and light. And sensibility hides quietly.

Some people I loved died, and some, tragically, have grown up. Yes. These elite have no need now of sensibility. They haven’t just taken a break from her… or so they like to think. They wish to do without her. They wish to draw boundaries. They wish for rules. Lines. Space. Independence. Finding themselves. But they do not realise that sense isn’t the only thing that will lead them to peace and fruition.

I know that when my child died in the middle of my home, she left for good. The floor she lay on is just a floor. The home she breathed her last is just a house. Sense asks me to know that death is final. Dreams are dreams and fears are unfounded. But somewhere from the dark within, sensibility whispers, gone but not forgotten. Trust, she says. Love, she reminds. And I turn to the dark, searching for the place where the lost things go. And I trust and I love and find her in me – sitting right next to Peter.