Bose- Rahmania!

Allah Rakha Rahman- This man never ceases to amaze me, the sheer musical genius he is. Just as I was recovering from an auditory overdose of Yeh Jo Des hai Tera, he comes up with an absolute stunner of an album- Bose- The forgotten hero.

The pick of the album is obviously Azaadi, sung by the man himself. When it beguns with a Jai Hind refrain, the irony of a Western chorus in a song about the Indian freedom struggle gnaws at you. But when the stirring, passionate vocals of Rahman break free against that orderly orchestration, it is almost symbolic of the Indians rising against the British. Rahman rarely sings in bass and whenever he does as in Vellai Pookal and more recently, Yeh Jo Des Tera, he comes up with mind blowing masterpieces. But in Azaadi, Rahman switches back to his high energy, high scale mode and you cannot help but be moved by the patriotic fervour and emotionally charged intensity with which he sings, filling you up with an amazingly nice feeling. Here is a man who makes music and sings, right from the bottom of his heart. As the song builds up into an overpowering crescendo, the holding-his-breath alaap he does in the end, subdues all the Western influences, paling them into relative insignificance.

If there is anything else that inspires Rahman as much as Maniratnam and patriotic themes, it is his intense faith in God and Sufism. Following in the line of Piya Haji Ali(Fiza), Noor-Un-Allah(Meenaxi), and Fanaa(Yuva) comes the stunning Zikr. Zikr in Sufism signifies a persistant remembrance of God, an all-else forgetting state where you think only about Him. Zikr, the song epitomizes that meaning, with hymn like intonations, heavy harmony, and Rahman’s voice yet again, combining to produce a soothing, yet stimulating number. The powerful effect this song had on me, in spite of me being of a different faith and scarcely understanding the words is enough testimony to the magic of this man’s music.

The last period patriotic album Rahman composed was The Legend of Bhagat Singh and it is difficult to hear Bose without a hangover from that. It is tempting to draw anologies- like a Ghoomparani for a Jogiya, a Des ki mitti for a Sarfaroshi ki tamanna. But once you shrug that off, you are able to truly appreciate the majesty and grandeur of this album. There is a delectable spread of close to twenty tracks with nearly 7-8 instrumentals. To review each of those tracks would be a study in music by itself. The other songs that make an immediate impression are- Des ki Mitti- Sonu Nigam revels in this melodious song which involves considerable voice modulation and Ekla Chalo- begins with Bengali lyrics and progresses into a beautiful song. The instrumentals would make a stronger impression when the movie is released. However, the Afghanistani theme with an operatic female solo and a middle-eastern feel does beckon a special mention. I share the popular notion that Rahman’s music has a tendency to grow on you. The commonest argument against this is that you can either like or dislike music, hearing it once or twice, and there is no point in repeated listening. But Rahman’s compositions are so rich and there is so much variety that there are bound to be distracting influences. Just as you need to look intently at a cluttered painting to discern the various elements and appreciate the art, you need to hear his music more than just once or twice to get its true feel.

Listen to this album today, for, what is bliss but an endless loop of Rahman songs!

Mumbai Xpress- Roller coaster breakdown

Mumbai Xpress opens with Vaiyapuri, Pasupathy and Dheena sitting and rehearsing their kidnap plan, a plan that sounds so incredibly stupid that it sets the perfect platform for some hilarious moments. Kamalhaasan, an innocent stunt bike driver is drawn by circumstance into this Baby’s Day Outish scheme and things begin to move in top gear and comic sequences cascade into one another. When things proceed at such a frenetic pace, you know that it is hard to keep the momentum going and things are bound to slow down. And that is precisely what happens when Kamalhaasan and Manisha meet, bringing in the weakest link of the screenplay. It seems as though Kamalhaasan stopped midway while writing the dialogues saying “Hold on! What the hell am I doing! This is Crazy Mohan’s job!” and decided to switch to a more familiar territory- emoting sentiments. An absolutely ridiculous love story is allowed to develop on such a fickle premise that if it was intended to be funny, it isn’t so and if it was intended to be serious, just how dumb did Kamalhaasan take his audience to be. It is not as though his comic hits are devoid of sentiment and melodrama. But the key element is that the melodrama has always been fleeting, never been allowed to linger, like “passing clouds”. The moment it stays longer than it should, it distracts the audience and ruins all the hard work done by the comedy.

But before I turn hypercritical, it is not as though Mumbai Xpress is without its moments. A horse that bites anything put before it, downright dumb questions with perfect timing from Vaiyapuri, a neat cameo by Ramesh Arvindh, deft play of words, the off-key school band and Kamalhaasan’s histrionics- particularly the facial expressions after the traffic cop encounter make for some great entertainment. People have been raving about Pasupathy’s role, but I for one feel that there is no major difference in his acting. Rather, it is one hell of an intelligent and innovative casting. The reasoning is quite simple-take Pasupathy, a fabulous actor who has been typecast in serious, negative roles. On screen, people around him have always feared him making him appear the villain. Take the same Pasupathy, give him an almost similar role, but, this time make the people around him absolute bungling idiots, who frustrate him, make him bang his head in exasperation and Voila! Humour is born. (Wow! I am amazed at my own genius in coming up with this!).

Towards the end of the movie, Kamal decides to redeem himself by jump-starting the comedy track again but the novelty, which was present in the beginning, disappears. Mistaken identities and misinterpretations, clichéd they may be, nevertheless provide comic relief after definitely avoidable deviations. Nasser, Santhanabarathy and Sharad Saxena come and go in neat roles and in true Kamalhassan style the movie ends breaking one of Tamil cinema’s unwritten rules-that characters who lust after money should either be evil or funny. When they are neither, like Manisha is, it leaves a lot of untied ends and a dissatisfied audience. One cannot help but be reminded of Thiruda Thiruda when in the end both Prashant and Anand ditch Heera for the loot and the credits roll on this light hearted, unambiguous note. But in Mumbai Xpress, the end is abrupt and hasty and a lot of questions, particularly involving Manisha’s change of heart remain unanswered. It doesn’t make much sense to question the logic in a funny movie, but some things in Mumbai Xpress are too glaring to be ignored.

It is good to hear that this movie has been shot in digital format, which saves the producers a packet, but it is not as good to see. The picture does appear blurred and grainy at times and I am ignorant of the technical fundas behind whether that happens due to bad filming or bad projection. On the whole, Mumbai Xpress starts quite promisingly in top gear but loses steam in the middle only to struggle and chug past the end. The magic of the Singeetham-Kamal combination is there, but it is patchy and does not last the entire movie. That is possibly because when Singeetham made Michael Madana Kama Rajan, Kamal was more of an actor, less of a director, or a screenplay,dialogue writer. But today it is difficult differentiating all these inextricably intertwined entities in him. He is almost like one body with many heads, someone who is amazing to watch on screen, but difficult to direct from behind it.

Chandramukhi- Return of substance

There is confetti in the aisles, there are ear splitting whistles, there are ecstatic screams of ‘Thalaiva! Thalaiva’, and they are saying that the king is back. But, I being the unbiased, level headed, movie critic I think myself to be, beg to differ. I do not agree that Rajnikanth has returned to form. I opine that substance has returned to Rajni’s movies and though the compromises to cater to his style and image have not gone, they have definitely been underplayed. Frankly speaking, I walked into the theatre dreading the massacre of Manichitra Thaazhu to make it superstar compatible. But thankfully, they have respected the beauty of the original and have been remarkably faithful to it. And that powerful story is the reason why Chandramukhi will be a hit.

I have greater respect for Rajnikanth, the actor than Rajnikanth, the superstar. There is a popular school of thought that believes that Rajni’s sale-ability and fan following is purely due to his style. But I strongly feel that the movies where his style was prominent were all backed by stories of substance. Agreed that it is exhilarating to see him pop a cigarette into his mouth, see sparks fly when he walks, see him fly around whacking the baddies and mouth those sensational punch lines. But it is not so, if that is what the movie is all about. And fortunately for Rajni, the plot of Chandramukhi is brilliant.

Rajnikanth plays the psychiatrist friend of Prabhu and his wife Jyotika. The couple move into a palace, which as legend has it, is supposedly haunted by the spirit of a court dancer called Chandramukhi. Strange unexplained events begin happening in the palace and that makes Prabhu seek Rajni’s help. How Rajni investigates the issue and solves the mystery behind the haunting forms the rest of the story. The Malayalam version directed by Fazil was far ahead of its times. Brilliant performances by Shobhana and Mohanlal, and the handling of the theme with great finesse make it one of the best thrillers ever made in India. Chandramukhi is a decent replica of the original. Jyothika garners all accolades in a very good role, a role almost well suited to her tendency to overact. Prabhu is adequate in his role and Vadivelu provides good comic entertainment. It is very difficult not to draw comparisions between Mohanlal and Rajnikanth. While Mohanlal played a subdued, subtle role Rajnikanth brings in the flamboyance and charisma that go with his superstar image to that role. Popular opinion is that a glow has returned to his face, a glow that was conspicuously missing in Baba. But then the rest of his body does not seem to keep pace with that renewed youth. Most of his movements are scratchy and contrived. It is highly obvious that the smooth, stylish, fluid grace seen in Alex Pandian, Manick Baasha is just not there anymore.

A special mention is due to Vidyasagar who is evidently in the peak of his career. Though the initial response was quite lukewarm to the music, the way the songs have been picturised on screen give the music a new vigor. Annanoda paatu and Devuda absolutely rock on screen, taking us back to the days of the high-energy songs of Rajni. But it is for Raa Raa that Vidyasagar decides to reserve his best. It is almost as if he has shrugged off the pressures and compulsions of making music for the superstar and done complete justice only to the theme of the movie to give us a splendingly haunting number.

Its in the latter half of the movie that flashes of vintage Rajni are visible. Towards the climax, when Rajnikanth walks with a band of men, in a style uncannily similar to Baasha, it is a goose- pimple raising experience and just for an instant you forget the cinema of the Maniratnams and the Kamalhaasans, care a damn about substance and story and screenplay, lose yourself in an illogical yet enduring facet of Indian Cinema- where style and attitude rule, where hero worship is the order of the day, where perfectly normal, sane humans scream themselves hoarse with cries of ‘Devuda! Devuda!’

The Life of Pi - Imagine....

Imagine a sixteen-year-old boy adrift in the midst of the Pacific Ocean. Imagine him alone on a lifeboat, with the fact that his parents and brother have drowned, weighing upon his loneliness, his life, as he knew it, shattered, nothing left for him to live for. Now, imagine him with an indefatigable will to survive, an unflappable faith in God and a royal Bengal tiger for company. On such a tantalizing setting, proceeds, The Life of Pi- the Booker prize winning novel by Yann Martel, tracing a magical journey that starts from the once-upon-a-time French colony of Pondicherry in South India.

The premise upon which this novel is built is thought provoking. The purpose, which we attach to life, is governed predominantly by whom we love and what we own. So when you lose both of these, does life cease to be purposeful? Is it not easy to give in, lose resolve, and become disillusioned as to what the point of living life is? But in such trying times, a deeper truth appears upon you, when you realize that there is no fixed purpose to life, when you realize that living for yourself is a purpose, and living life to experience life itself is a purpose. And when such realization dawns, there are other elements that you look towards, to lend meaning to your life, like belief in God or like co-existing with a wild beast! And that is precisely what Piscine Molitor Patel does in The Life of Pi. As the sole human survivor of a sunken cargo ship, he looks at establishing his superiority over a 450-pound tiger, his companion on the lifeboat, which is the only way to survive, as the purpose of his life.

Yann Martel uses the simplest of language, and a casual style to create such vivid lasting pictures. He plays on your imagination, making you see the reality of having to survive with a wild animal, the desperation that the need to survive can drive one to, and how in some situations the most unexpected things can fill you with a want to live. The fact that Pi is a zoo owner’s son makes him better equipped to understand the psyche of the tiger and Yann gives some spectacular insights into the animal world, the mind of the animals, and how they think and behave. The small paragraph where he analogises a zoo to a hotel and the description of the strategy to establish domination over the tiger, makes very nice reading. It is when Pi is adrift and learning the means of surviving, that the strength of Yann’s writing comes to the fore. The four days I was reading the novel, even at times when I was not reading, there was this subconscious worry for Pi at the back of my mind, and the feeling of being adrift seemed to pervade.

The transformation of Pi from being vegetarian to eating raw fish, turtle meat and drinking turtle blood is so realistic that you don’t feel the least bit of revulsion or disbelief. And even when he tries eating tiger feces and casually accepts tasting bits of human flesh, you can understand that, it is what anybody in his position might be forced to do. And as Pi settles into a routine, he finds solace and purpose in prayer, in appreciating the beauty- of marine life, of a moonlit star-filled night sky, of the feline grace of the tiger, and in imagining mammoth sized portions of all his favorite foods. And finally after an adventure in an oasis like, yet dark and mysterious, island and an encounter with a fellow drifter in the Pacific, Pi manages to reach land.


Pi goes on to narrate his story to two Japanese officials from the Japanese ministry of Transport, who are investigating the cause of the sinking of the ship. They listen to him with complete skepticism and disbelief and they assume that his tale of surviving with a tiger is just fiction-a result of his traumatic experience. And to humor them Pi goes on to tell them a different version, uncannily similar to the original, but which he tailors to make it seem more believable to the investigators. And here comes the true essence of The Life of Pi- Yann Martel destroys the imaginary world he so realistically and painstakingly built for the readers by sowing a few seeds of the dangerous weed called doubt in their minds. Till that point, I had no qualms about believing whatever he had described, and not for an instant did I doubt its veracity nor question its plausibility. But the moment he offers a more common, a more tangible version of the story, an uncertainty sets in and you wonder if it was all just a creation of Pi’s imagination. And it ultimately boils down to what you want to believe- the tangible or the magical. And I chose the latter for, in it I see- a tale of indomitable courage and resilience, a suggestion of the existence of forces beyond our understanding, that most choose to call God and a message that beyond the emotional, the physical and the material, the purpose of life is to live….