Cinema Connoisseur's Cave

Often, we hear, regarding a film, that the screenplay was not tidy, the story was non-existent, the pacing was slow et cetera. Why yes, the story of the film is very much the crux of any film, it is, however, possible to achieve greatness without much of a story per se.  Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin not only makes that possible but becomes a marvel at it. It is the sheer beauty of each frame that makes you forget about the story. Each frame, in itself, is a story. You do not mind the snail’s pace of screenplay as you do not want the frame in front of your eyes to pass. You gorge them. This rare feat makes The Assassin one of the truest visual poetry. For it is poetry. Most of the time we treat the film like a novel. Films are indeed often a visual mean of storytelling. In that regard, it becomes as engrossing as a great story should be. But, films can be a mean of poetry too. Poetry need not have three acts, great characters or a fine climax. Poetry is a b...

Once, Satyajit Ray’s widely regarded masterpiece ‘Pather Panchali’ met the criticism of “Selling Poverty” to urban audience. Quite a handful of Indians criticised it citing it depicts the poor class of India to cater to sentimentalism of western audience. Even Francois Truffaut wasn’t a taker of neo­realism of peasants. However, when the rich was depicted on screen, full of arrogance and debauchery, there was hardly any uproar. In this context, popular television series Game of Thrones had a thought through one of its character which says that the only reason the poor repel us is that show us who we truly are without all earthly attachments, tangible and intangible.  Raam Reddy’s Thithi gives us a character that symbolizes the detachment I am talking about. First let’s see, what the film is about.  Thithi is a Kannada word that refers to the ritual that is performed after the death of a person, post cremation. ‘Century’ Gowda, named understandably for...

Humor and mockery, there is a fine line between these two and in history of any form of art where humor is an objective for the artist, there has been occasions where the artist failed to make the dichotomy between humor and mockery quite distinct. The line often becomes blurred for many; and therein lie the beauty and novelty of one artist who manages to provide pure humor though the subject of his work appears to take the form mockery. Belgian filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael displays that rare talent of humor in his film The Brand New Testament.  The Brand New Testament’s begins with the premise that God does exist and he lives in Brussels; with his docile wife, the Goddess, and rebellious daughter, Ea. God is tactless towards his wife and abusive towards his daughter. While he is not being those towards his family, he makes up laws on his computer, laws for worldly human. One example of those laws is ‘Your phone will always ring when you are immersed in bathtub.’ I th...

Lenny Abrahamson’s Room is poignant. Room is evocative. Room is devastatingly beautiful. There is a magic in creating a world in a child’s perspective. To capture and display the innocence, the purity, the sheer amount of confusing vastness of the world is no mean feat. Writer Emma Donoghue, who is also the writer of the book that the film is based upon, and director Lenny Abrahamson manage to do just that. The film starts with the pair of mother and son, Joy and Jack, played by Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay living their lives while scrapping for resources yet finding solace in each other’s company, in a room. That is right. In a single room (which later revealed to be a garden shed with a skylight as the only source of sun). The reason behind this ordeal revealed to be that Joy had been abducted by person referred only as ‘Old Nick’. Old Nick kept Joy and Jack, who is his biological son, sans any means of communication with the outside world and had them live a life d...

Masaan in its English translation means crematorium, but the film, in its wider release, is named Fly Away Solo. This dichotomy of tone between the translations can be seen throughout the film and that is where Neeraj Ghaywan scored in his brilliant debut feature. The film is uplifting but heartbreaking, reflecting on both sorrow and hope and thus transcends to something that can be as refreshing as the morning air. In Masaan, the story, set in Banaras, is woven around two primary protagonists, Deepak(Vicky Kaushal) and Devi(Richa Chadda). One of them faces tragedy early in the film, and the other one sees its devastating form later. But, predictably, and here 'predictably' should not be taken in a negative way, both of their lives converge; one finding closure through struggle and another solace amidst loneliness. Masaan is not plot-driven, but character-driven; the like we see in Iranian and Romanian new wave films. It is not much of a story-telling than portrayal of lif...

Haider Vishal Bharadwaj’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s titular play ‘Hamlet’ is dark, gritty and thoroughly meticulous in craft. There is always a beauty about snow white backdrop that provides the canvas to draw human fallacies in red.  ‘Haider’, set in the backdrop of Kashmir proves to be violently beautiful. But it’s not the violence, or the prominent vengeance of ‘Hamlet’; nor the socio-political dogma that creating a ripple of controversy was faced by the people during the 95 Kashmir Conflicts,  that was the driving force of Haider. It was the awry and eerie love and relationship between the mother-son duo of Ghazala and Haider. The primary characters of the story, and their relationship did not deviate much from Hamlet in the film. But, just like his previous films on Shakespeare’s works, Bharadwaj triumphs, more prominently in this film, in the craft of blending the tragedy of the play with the emotional aspect of the story. Thus, the film becomes very unique...

              Incendies belongs to that rare breed of films that induce a tumultuous surge of emotions in its spectators while engaging them through the narrative. Jerry Seinfeld once said in his show Seinfeld, to add to the humor of that show undoubtedly, that Leo Tolstoy wanted to name his novel ‘War: What Is It Good For’ instead of “War and Peace”. Maybe that rhetorical question of a book title would have been an apt tagline for what was portrayed in this film.  What sets Dennis Villeneuve’s ‘Incendies’ apart from other films with post-war trauma as their underlying theme, is the spectrum of human relationship he constructed on the screen. The film starts with twin brother and sister, Jeanne and Simon, receiving their recently deceased mother, Nawal’s funeral wishes; wishes that need to be fulfilled, before the children can proceed with the burial. In two different letters, the twins were asked to locat...