It was just announced that Deepa Mehta’s film Water, Canada’s entry this year for best foreign film at the Academy Awards, has been selected as one of the final group in the running.
An earlier review of the film is here.
More pix from the Guru press conf
January 21, 2007 By 2 Comments
Flash!
Damn, I thought I put the ring in my jacket pocket!
Diamante bindi
Abhiwarya
A.R. Rahman wondering, given that 85% of the questions went to AB 2.0, and 10 to Mani, what he’s doing here
Ash making a point
Abhi sending out coded signals through his very own sign language. That’s “L” for lover, baby!
Polyester vs. Khadi: Guru
January 21, 2007 By 22 Comments
Last year it was Rang de Basanti and Omkara…. now, before the second week of January 2007 is over, we have Guru.
Three films, all less slapstick and fanciful than, say, Phir Hera Pheri or Chup Chup Ke, more real, yet still with the vibrant song picturizations and visual lyricism that so many look forward to in mainstream Hindi movies.
Two years since his Yuva (or Three Dots, as the spine of my Thamizh CD says; talk about literal!), Mani Ratnam has given us this story of a man for whom the phrase “low self-esteem” would not register.
Gurukant Desai first appears as a restless young boy in Gujurat, who can’t pass his math exams, and sets off for Istanbul, unibrow in tow, and where he works for several years. Upon being offered a big promotion at a foreign multinational, he turns it down, reasoning “Why should I work for this white man? I’ll work myself.”
Back in Gujurat, he decides to go to Bombay to work in “bijness”, more specifically the fabric bijness, but needs some capital to get started and marries Sujatha (Aishwarya Rai), the sister of his childhood friend and partner, for a tidy Rs. 25,000. From here, the story is about his rise, and his locking horns with the owner of a major newspaper, who tries to bring him down.
Guru bets his luck on this new fabric, kela silk (polyester) and backs a winner.
Mithun Chakraborty plays Dasgupta, the newspaper owner who is initially charmed by Gurukant’s can-do sense of confidence, but later grows to resent his success. As Guru’s nemesis, this subtly sinister yet also grandfatherly man becomes a khadi-wearing Charles Foster Kane of sorts (“You provide the prose poems – I’ll provide the war”), who uses his paper to pursue Guru, bending the rules of ethical journalism himself, while accusing Gurukant Desai of all sorts of corporate tomfoolery.
Unlike most Hindi movies, Mani Ratnam shows us Gurubhai’s increasing wealth not with the usual massive, marble-floored home with the sweeping curves of a dramatically long staircase in a grand hall, but rather through the Merc that the Desais drive, and Sujatha’s saris, jewelry and grand, industrialist matron hairdoes. (By the way, note the license plate in this shot.)
Ash’s costumes before Guru’s income soars are lovely too. If, in Kandukondain, Kandukondain, we mainly remember her in the cool blues and emerald greens of the Kannamoochi number, and later in Devdas, in that classic still of her as the wealthy married woman in a rich peacock blue sari, thick ingot of sindoor on her part, moon-sized bindi and fantastically heavy jewelry, as the young Sujatha she has been dressed in shades of plum, saffron and maroon cotton saris.
In the fantasy part of the picturization of Tere Bina, Ash is at a palace. As the sky behind her turns dusk and she dances in a glittery pale cream-colored ensemble, it is lit in such a way that it seems the light is not being shone on Ash for the shot, but rather that the light is actually emanating forth from her.
If there’s a secret to looking younger, Mani’s hit on it in this film, having his boy Madhavan lose weight. The difference is dramatic; Maddie looks like a guy barely in his 20s.
On the subject of never looking too young or too thin, The Most Beautiful Manglik in the World (TMBMITW) had already shed some weight for Dhoom 2, and while she’s definitely not bronzed as she was in Brazil, the lost weight makes her look years younger than her fiancé, in spite of the fact that she’s actually 33, and older than AB 2.0 by 2.something years.
Abhi’s own physical transformation is remarkable. As he becomes the bade industrialist, he grows into the role, literally. Just after the interval, Guru exits the shower and finds a pregnant Sujatha looking at her profile in a full-length mirror, lamenting her expanding belly. In a moment of husbandly empathy, he stands next to her, also in profile, and allows his own hairy gut to expand and spill over the top of the towel, protruding as far as his wife’s. Aside from the shock of seeing Abhishek in this state, it is a sweet scene, where Mani portrays their genuine domestic comfort with each other. This is the only of the four onscreen Abhiwarya pairings where they have had any spark between them at all. In the scenes of their early marriage, they appear at ease when touching each other. I attribute that to Ash’s celluloid thaw, as her betrothed was beautifully physical as Lallan in Yuva, in the Kabhi Neem Neem song picturization in particular.
Some critics have questioned the point of the roles of Madhavan and Vidya Balan. He’s Shyam Saxena, a reporter at Dasgupta’s paper, she is Dasgupta’s granddaughter, Meenu.
Meenaxi begins in the film as a little girl with a limp, who Guru always fusses over affectionately when he visits, and as she grows into a beautiful young woman, her multiple sclerosis forces her into a wheelchair, but Meenu maintains a smile and attitude that masks her struggles with the illness.
Shyam is sent to do Dasgupta’s bidding against Guru, and throughout he enjoys being the terrier at the heels of the magnate, with ever bigger gotcha moments in newsprint. He finds himself linked to Guru through Meenu, who he falls in love with and wants to marry. The couple actually share a kiss in one scene, and their relationship, like Guru and Sujatha’s, reflects a man and woman whose love gives them the conviction to support each other, without any second thoughts. (At one point, Guru says to Sujatha “If you’re with me, I can beat the world.” I’m guessing a better translation might be “conquer” or “take on”, but this is how it appears onscreen.) To me, it seems that Shyam and Meenu are there to look at Guru with different eyes, and give us a sense of the shades of grey.
And leave it to Mani Ratnam to even do an item number well.
Early in the film, in Istanbul, when Gurukant goes out with his friends to a club to celebrate their success, they see Mallika Sherawat perform a filmi sort of bellydance. It looks like no expense was spared on her gold and red bejewelled costume, leaving the poor background dancers to shimmy behind her in the cheapest-looking outfits I’ve seen in a Hindi movie in a while, more reminiscent of synthetic Halloween costumes from Wal-Mart than anything you’d expect here. I know there’s an element of that bride/bridesmaid dynamic here, where you don’t want anyone to outshine the bride on her big day, but still, at least put the girls in something that compliments the centre of attention.
All that said, Mallika looks luscious, seductive and brighter than her Hotsy Totsy image allows us to believe.
I know this is running long, but bear with me a minute or two more…because I have to stop to praise Rajiv Menon. The cinematography in Guru is lovely. Not in the sense that everything is pretty all the time, though, to be sure, the camera adores Aishwarya, and she is a joy to watch, especially in the picturization of Barso Re, where she is fresh and full of energy and hope for the future. There is a beautiful frame, when Sujatha discovers something about Guru that angers her so much she returns to her family home, and as the two stand on the street near their apartment in Bombay, a tram drives past, separating them. Well done, Mr. Menon.
And so what does it all mean? What is Mani Sir trying to show? I saw some shots this week of AVS and man-on-the-street interviews with people exiting the premiere and one woman said that Guru, the character, was very inspirational, and I thought “Hang on, you mean, as in, we should all be like Guru?” At the press conference last week Mani Ratnam spoke of using the character of Gurukant Desai to trace the trajectory of India, in “the period just after independence, of dreams and values that were very different than today.”
I don’t think it’s entirely the hagiography some people are taking it to be. Rather, I think the movie is a commentary on the ability and energy and confidence of people to succeed, but there’s also a point about how man can use the resources at hand in an unchecked grab for power, members of the fourth estate included. Mithun’s character is like Gandhi-era khadi, Abhi’s the more recent, now-ubiquitous, polyester.
One final note: did anyone else find Abhi reminded them of a young Al Pacino (circa The first Godfather) during this part of the film?
See it or skip it?
See it. Aside from possibly one more number than needed – the Ek Lo Ek Muft bhaang song – it’s a fast-moving story, told with loving attention to period detail (safari suits! aviator eyeglass frames! even the Bombay Baroda & Central India train line) and with two lead actors who’ve matured nicely, thank you very much.
And Rosh Seth arrives at the very end, like a light sorbet after an appetizing and filling meal. (It’s lovely to hear him speak Hindi; what a beautiful voice.)
Guru article for India-West
January 19, 2007 By 3 Comments
Here’s an article I did on the U.S. launch of Guru that appeared in this week’s edition of India-West.
Vikram Chandra at the Asia Society, NYC
January 17, 2007 By 8 Comments
Why blog about a fiction writer promoting his latest novel, in the midst of all this filmi subject matter?
Because he comes from a Bombay movie family?
He does, but no, that’s not why.
Because he co-wrote Mission Kashmir?
He did, but that’s not it either.
Toh phir?
Because his latest book, the 900-page, 2+ kilo Sacred Games demands to be made into a movie trilogy. (Preferably directed by Mani Ratnam and starring AB 2.0 as Sartaj Singh.)
Read it for yourself and see. Vikram Chandra has the most amazing gift for observing and remembering a dazzling amount of details, and seamlessly weaving them into his s-p-r-a-w-l-i-n-g novel about the relationship between the police inspector Sartaj Singh (who first appeared in the short story Kama, and one scorching love scene with his soon-to-be ex-wife Megha) and underworld don Ganesh Gaitonde.
Tonight, at an event co-hosted by the South Asian Journalists Association and the Asia Society, Vikram Chandra sat on the stage, with SAJA founder and Columbia j-school Dean of Students, Sree Sreenivasan, and read three excerpts from the novel then took questions from the audience, before heading up the spiral staircase to sign books and mingle at the reception.
What follows is my summary-on-the-fly of the Q & A:
SS: How have reactions been to the book so far in India?
VC: It’s been gratifying. People recognize the city they live in. It was gratifying to get an email from a serving police officer who recognized his world.
SS: Talk a bit about the language, and some of those words you just read in the text, words that have never been uttered at the Asia Society in English.
VC (smiling): Sorry, but cops talk like that, I wanted it to have the same texture.
SS: Was there any pushback from the editors on that?
VC: Surprisingly not. [on the subject of the glossary, in the US edition] I think the best way to read a book with other vocabulary is just to read and get the meaning from the context. Some manuscripts went out in the US and some people said they’d like a glossary, so we put one in, and a more extensive one on the website, that we’re still adding to, but when I was a kid and we read Enid Blyton, we talked about what “crumpets” might be and why people would eat “clotted cream” and there was no glossary.
SS: How much research did you do?
VC: When researching for Kama, I met some police. In the beginning, I don’t know what I’m looking for when I meet people in my research; I just try and get the person to talk about their lives.
SS: Did you ever feel like you were in any danger?
VC: For the most part, everyone was very avuncular and would say “Please sit, have some chai”. These guys operate like corporate heads and they understand the value of spin. The lower level guys are harder to find. Many don’t sleep more than one night in one place. The only time was when I went with a crime journalist friend and there was a guy in his 30s, who we thought might have been high on something. He was very agressive and he couldn’t stop his leg from shaking.
SS: Have you heard from folks you spoke to, since the book came out?
VC: Not yet. Maybe when the Hindi or Marathi editions come out. They’re all composite characters anyway.
Audience member: This book would make an amazing trilogy of movies, if not a serial. After seeing Mani Ratnam’s Nayagan, and Abhishek Bachchan in Guru last Friday, they would be great if it did happen, with Mani as director and Abhi in the role of Sartaj. What do you think about that, and is there anyone interested in making a film of it?
VC: I agree with your choices, though Abhi is a bit too young right now, because Sartaj is a rather dented 40-something, but in a few years he could do it. I’d like to see Aamir as Ganesh Gaitonde, because I think there’s a craziness deep inside that he hasn’t let out yet. Initially, when my wife and editor were reading chapters of the book they kept saying “This will make a great film!” and I kept saying “No, but the chronology and the length…”, but apparently people are talking about it and there is interest. But I don’t want to be a part of it.
SS: If people don’t know, you do have a lot of film industry connections…
VC: Yes, we moved to Bombay in the ’70s, and I think that the movies are part of our national conversation. It’s our modern cultural artifact. I notice how people use narratives to make sense of their own lives. I can be on a train to Patna and someone can tell me “Ramu did that o.k. in that film, but don’t do that in your book.” And I love the music. The panwallah on the street will be listening to Radio Mirchi and some song will be playing, and that becomes part of your landscape.
Aud.: What sort of research did you do?
VC: I spoke to police, sociologists, historians. Later the questions get more specific, like “How do you fix an election?” But I don’t care if someone does years of research in the darkest corners of the Amazon, or if they watch it on TV, as long as they can make it come alive on the page. We live in a confessional age now. But you must remember the saying “Writers lie for a living.”
Aud.: You work writing and teaching. Why did this book take so long?
VC: Initially I thought it would be about 300 pages. It all started with this idea of a dead body up the road, which actually happened. When I started to investigate, much more came up, politics, religion. Then I thought, maybe in three years I’ll be done. But then show business intersects, organized crime, companies. The book grew larger in thematic interest. I tried to mesh human lives and political agendas, and the book became a sort of meditation on the detective story. I write when I’m teaching too.
Aud.: How much of yourself is in the book?
VC: There aren’t any particular individual characters. In general, all characters are pervaded by my consciousness. But as a writer, you look into these darker areas, spending time poking in parts of your lives that others avoid, it reminds me of a book about writing by Frederick Busch called A Dangerous Passion.
Aud.: Have your Berkeley students read the book yet?
VC: No, but they did come up with the name. The manuscript went out as Untitled Novel. Then there was this interntional round-robin among some friends, and I think it was David Davidar who was the first to come up with the game part. The bhais use a lot of sporting metaphors, and see their life as a game.
Aud.: I’m from Bombay and your book really takes me back. Would you say you were influenced at all by Shobhaa De? [sniggers from the audience]
VC: You have to give Shobhaa props. When she started writing Neeta’s Natter, everywhere else you had this stiff, formal way of writing, but she was the one who put on the printed page the natural way we speak.
Aud.: Talk about your essay in the Boston Review.
VC: That was a polemic of sorts. It was a response to something that has become a standard criticism when speaking of Indian writers who write in English, the charge of “catering to the West.” For example, one writer recently was criticized for opening a book with a mynah. This is lazy criticism. What is it we’re trying to defend? I think it’s a retreat if you’re always defining yourself compared to an imagined West. After we got married, Melanie and I visited the Taj Mahal. It’s such a “typical” symbol of India, but it’s also such a beautiful sight. I think the problem should be how do you reclaim it, rather than not talking about it.
Quick pix from the Guru press conference, NYC
January 13, 2007 By 11 Comments
AB 2.0′s watch
AB 2.0′s phone:
A.R. Rahman, Mani Sir, AB 2.0 (Ash was yet to arrive), and, some man’s head:
(The movie was amazing.)
