Avatar...the movie

Avatar is a sensational visual delight which will tease your senses…free your spirit as you waltz in the open spaces with natives…your eyes will pop out in wonderment at the delightful colors of lovely ethereal plants and strange animals…you will fall in love with the athletic, fast, earthy natives – but all for five minutes…

Remember star wars and Padme Amidala, young queen of the planet Naboo, remember Lord of the Rings and Tolkien and the whole new language he created and Peter Jackson who brought to life the magnum opus…remeber Pocahontas, the last of Mohicans, Dances with the Wolves...and innumerable others...

Well if you remember all that I doubt you will want to go and see James Cameroon’s Avatar…The visuals are no doubt grandeur but severely limited in imagination, the planet Pandora reminds you of the images you conjured up in your head while reading all those numerous Enid Blyton’s books…Remember making up various fairy tale creatures in your head (…you have to give it to the dame)…maybe it’s not all James Cameroon’s fault that all he talks about in his story has already been conceived and written about by a children’s author…now I do concede that he did come up with the hugely innovative concept of mining “unobtainium” on the planet Pandora…shrewd, money minded corporate at loggerheads with humanitarian researchers and savage mercenaries…added in good measure is the fight between the good and the bad, your own specices or the aliens...

All is not all that bad though…the precious connection that the “aliens” share with nature and the reverence to the spirit or gaya or ehwya as you would call it does inspire us to go green and think about the planet…Though I must say at the risk of sounding stale the tree the natives dwelled in did remind me of “The Faraway Tree” (…remember moonface, silky and Mr. Whatshisname)…I know I know…I grew up on a healthy diet of child fantasy…

The movie evaporates between the stunning visuals and mediocre performances…you leave the theater (and remember to watch it in 3D) thinking why you braced Friday night traffic to watch the movie in a theater which supports 3D and is about 20 kms away from where you stay…Its high time that the director of this and all such movies learn that no amount of visual extravaganza can replace strongly etched out charachters and a crisp storyline...

Seriously man…you need to take the audience seriously…all of us are not nincompoops…

जीने के करीने...

किसी शहर की गलियों या कूचों में...
कहीं झीलों तालाबों या नदियों की लहरों में...
डूबे हुए दिल की गहरायी में...
अतरंगी से ख्वाबों के हुजूम में...
किसी शायर की ग़ज़ल में...
किसी कलाकार के मुजस्समे में...
एक अधूरी लिखी कहानी में...
एक उलझे से किरदार में...
शायद मेरी आज़ में...

लेकिन...

आकाश बड़ा बूडा बाबा सबको कुछ बाँट के जाता है
आंखों को निचोडा मैंने बहुत पर कोई आँसू उतरा नहीं...

Books and Me...

I feel I am finally beginning to understand books and writing…the written word has always spoken to me more than the said word…I was a voracious reader once…now I am just a reader…but there’s a huge difference…I was overly critical…I would only read the works I considered genius…of writers who “I thought” understood more than everyone else…of authors whose words filled my head with boundarylessness…and so I restricted myself…but now I am more appreciative of the way someone writes…even a simple thought and idea if written poignantly can give rise to a thousand new ideas…I think I am “hopefully” beginning to appreciate that now…

My nemesis…

It’s pathetic to be low on people’s priorities that are high on yours. It’s a curse to think about priorities...

मायाजाल ...

हर सपना देखा सा लगता है
हर आइना बिखरा सा लगता है
तेरी नज़र मेरी रूह पिघला रही है, और
हर लम्हा बेमानी सा लगता है
मैं जहाँ थी अभी भी वहीँ हूँ
हर कोई जो पास था
अब धुंधला सा लगता है...

Long overdue…A movie flowing in frames…

I had written this ages ago...don't know why never posted it...anyways here it is now...

As I go about some of my fav blogs and see every one of them writing about Dev-D…I am engulfed with guilt of not penning my thoughts…

If there was ever any hype for any movie for me, it was Dev-D…having close to heart people closely associated with this movie…having heard awesome comments about the script, music, about the movie…I was just dying to see it…

I had heard the music long before the movie was released…the songs in themselves are addictive and psychedelic…so much so that I have heard the songs over and over again…and there is a song for every mood and (you discover later in the movie) for every character…the songs have so much of character in them that they tell a story even when you haven’t seen the movie…”hadh se behad hadh kar di”…need I say more…

The movie is radical in more ways than one…I will begin with the adaptation…having read the original book…having seen innumerable Hindi and Bengali movies on the subject, I still could not have predicted the characters in the movie…they have been adapted with such brilliance and honesty…things, feelings which are there, which we experience but hypocritical as we are, we don’t accept…I was amazed that the director could portray them with such panache….be it paro who is so in touch with her sexuality…or dev who is unapologetic about his addictions and way of life or chanda who discovers life and freedom behind a mask…there are multiple layers to every character…

For the first time I felt the Indian cinema broke the shackles of the plot and ventured into the actual realm of film making…it reminds you of Ingmar Bergman in “Through a Glass Darkly” or Alfred Hitchcock in “I Confess” (I know I repeat these way too often :) ) or Lars von Trier with his “Dancer in the Dark” or “Europa”…

The brilliance is in the making of the movie…the way the movie moved between frames for me flowing seamlessly was awesome…and the fact that the music was so much a part of the movie that you never realize that there are close to 18 songs there…there are scenes which are executed with no nonsense…all I know is that if I have to tell about the movie to someone I will just show some of these frames to them…

One must applaud the actors…Abhay Deol who could have easily let the role slip into that of a “pathetic sex addict cum drunkard and loser” brilliantly manages to internalize the character and deliver a performance par excellence and Kalki for the rendition of Chanda without guilt, with complete awareness of self, without being bogged down with stale morality and judgment…

Overall for me the movie brings o life what was missing from Indian cinema…