Lootera – Totally loots the hearts.

Lootera comes from a guy who did his schooling at Sanjay Leela Bhansali public school and graduated from Anurag Kashyap University. Vikramaditya Motwane’s debut Udaan is based on Anurag Kashyap’s life story.  Udaan’s plot deals with a expelled teenage guy who has no choice in life than to stick with his tyrant father until he takes a giant leap in his life. Each and every one of us could relate to this movie, in some frame, especially the ones stayed in boarding schools and stayed away from home during their teen phase. It was selected to compete in Cannes under Un certain regard category and won a cult status globally. Udaan will leave you spellbound with a triumphant smile and simultaneously with an ecstatic tear and a heavy heart. His Lootera, a poignant period drama, does almost the same but on a different emotional note.

The film opens with a subtle, untold note which one could hum themselves as ‘Once upon a time, long, long ago, there lived a beautiful princess called Pakhi Roy Chaudhuri’. The story and premise of Lootera can be stripped down in two lines. After hearing a story about a prince whose life has been locked up inside a parrot, a diseased Zamindari girl believes that she will die on a day when a last leaf falls from a tree. Motwane juxtaposed a good old Indian mythological short story with O’Henry classic ‘The Last leaf’ and baked a whole delicious, saccharine flavored love story under the Bollywood mainstream grammar. He has proven that one can make a successful, sensible and a soulful story without the mainstream clichés and compromise.

Amit Trivedi has composed, sorry, crowd sourced some of the best tones, orchestra & OST from Hollywood and world music. We definitely owe this guy big for bringing in the best world sounds, Indianize few and sync it perfectly. The main theme of Lootera has  been ripped from One day’s theme by Rachel Portman and you can also hear Hans Zimmer’s Time from Inception in a long run before the Intermission. But apart from few rip-offs he has composed few original scores too. Music will make you to linger around the spectacular aura on-screen, captured flawlessly by Mahendra shetty. It will be a treat, for all those who drool and jaw drop for dim lighting yellow, groovy gray and blusih black frames with gorgeous lightings.

All the characters have justified their roles perfectly. Even the ones with limited screen space won’t make you to forget them. It was a great transformation to see Sonakshi Sinha on-screen after all the brainless, sultry skin show roles that she had done right from Dabangg. She sizzles and sets the screen on fire not with her flesh but with her elegant grace and looks dashingly beautiful in a traditional Bengali Saree. From sex siren, item number dancer to an artistic performer, she made quite a great leap and Ranveer Singh is equally good, matching her charisma, paring up with her and rendering an adorable and heartwarming on-screen romance and chemistry.

Lootera is well crafted, passionately sculptured, aesthetically cam-captured, soulfully acted. Like a fairy tale romance, one can witness the magic of pure love story on-screen after ages. I don’t remember the last time I've seen an Indian romance, period drama which is as genuine and as good as Lootera. Not in the recent years at least.

Motwane elevates and transcends you into a whole different era in the first half, immerses you in an ocean of heart wrenching, melancholic emotions in the second half and finally sweeps you off completely in the climax. Amongst the big family tree domination in Bollywood industry, Motwane stands tall, stiff, solo and firm as a masterpiece ‘Last leaf’ amongst Kashyap’s kitties.  

Opening the frame with a small, glowing, hot fire flame and closing it with sad, sorrowful snow at the end, Motwane casted his magic spell throughout the film. Lootera is an original piece art and Motwane, you’re a magician.

This post of mine has been written for movie movieroundup website. You can find it here. 

Thanks to Haricharan for publishing it.

'Kshay' Movie Review - Classy, bold and brilliant

Kshay (Corrode) – directed by Karan Gour

Obsession – When you don’t know why you like it and want it, but still you madly need it.

Kshay is the typical portrayal of middle class people in our modern society. By looking at the high class people's lifestyle, the way the middle class people dreams about the money, wealth and fame is far beyond comparison. What Karan Gour has done with Kshay is classy, bold and brilliant.

If ‘Avatar’ plot can be compared or related to the fight of nations for natural resources, concepts of Hinduisms, Neyitri's character as mother nature etc., Kshay’s  plot can be compared with the struggling Indian middle class, their obsession towards wealth in their day-to-day lives. Arvind, a hard working family guy, struggles for the completion of an unfinished construction. He fights with his contractor who loots a portion of his monthly wage consistently. Chhaya, a typical middle class house wife gets obsessed with Hindu Goddess Laxmi's statue, which is far beyond her need and scope of owing it.

Hit by a stone on her cheek, Chhaya walks with a scar the whole movie, which she ironically carries as the bandwagon status that the society imprints on the face of middle class. When goddess Laxmi’s statue flashes in front of her face, she gets the glimpse of wealth, a hope and a leap of faith. With lot of factors drawing and captivating her to own the Laxmi statue, she attempts desperately to buy the statue at any cost- yes, AT ANY COST. What will be the heights of extremity that she will reach to get it, lies the plot which is so obsessive in depicting the levels of craziness and insanity.

In Kshay, black and white texture has been well chosen and used at its best, along with the natural lighting. To picturize obsession, not necessarily one needs glorious colors to portray it. Colors are not needed in detail for a subject, to get obsessed with. Entire film lies in Chhaya's obsession in acquiring the Laxmi statue. The texture of black and white draws us well to feel her obsessiveness. The haunting background score blends well with traumatizing cuts, composed and edited by Karan Gour himself.

It’s unfair to compare our very own Indie filmmakers with others. But, If Q, the director of the Indie movie Gandu (2010 SAIFF winner) was termed as the ‘Gaspar Noé of India’, then Karan Gour has every right to be called as the ‘Lars von Trier of India’. What Darren Aronofsky and Danny Boyle did with addiction in ‘Requiem for a Dream’ and ‘Trainspotting’, Karan Gour does the same with obsession in Kshay.

I felt some sorts of Lars von trier’s ‘Antichrist’ moments while watching Kshay. The scene where Chhaya worries to Arvind about her miscarriage (the stunning, slow, steady, b&w prologue scene from Antichrist where the baby falls and the couple worries later), the tree art in the boy’s T-shirt at the statue shop (the same tree under which Antichrist duo make love, with satanic images around them in delusive sots), the way Chhaya hears and feels certain strangeness in and around her home (when Antichrist heroine hearing voices and whispers around the woods).

Kudos to Karan Gour & team for making Kshay possible amongst all odds. Kshay is a pure work of passion and a genuine piece of art. Art, at its highest level of obsessiveness swinging to-and-fro the eyes of the ultimate observer. The best psychological thriller I have seen in this year so far.

Go and grab a copy of Kshay DVD right away to immerse in the world of obsession.

You can watch the full movie online from youtube, Officially. Click Here

If you love to watch black and white films drooling all the way, check out my list of ‘Top 20 favorite B&W films’ so far. Few films in the below list has its plot dealing with certain type of psychological condition, not Intentional though. To my surprise I found this only after making this list.

1.       Breathless by Jean-Luc-Godard,

2.       The General  by Buster Keaton,

3.       High noon by Fred Zinnemann,

4.       It’s a wonderful Life by Frank Capra,

5.       The bicycle Thieves by Vittorio De Sica,

6.       All about eve by Joseph L. Mankiewicz,

7.       Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray,

8.       Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa,

9.       Mr. Hulot’s Holiday by Jacques Tati

10.   Persona  by Ingmar Bergman

11.   12 Angry Men by Sidney Lumet,

12.   Sunset Boulevard by Billy Wilder,

13.   Following by Christopher Nolan,

14.   Polytechnique by Denis Villeneuve,

15.   Pi by Darren Aronofsky,

16.   Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin,

17.   The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius,

18.   Manhattan by Woody Allen ,

19.   Le Trou (The Hole) by Jacques Becker,

20. Brief Encounter by David Lean.