When I started the fiftyfiftyme challenge I decided not to count any English-language movies I watched toward my total. This was mostly to inspire me to cut into my backlog of unwatched Indian movies, but gave me a pass for the relaxing fun of watching light French comedy. Potiche is a good example of the genre.
Over the last 5 or 6 years, I've come to think that the French have mastered the art of, and cornered the market for, light comedy. It's a ghastly, hideous cliché but there really is a certain je ne sais quoi about many French comedies that make them very entertaining and distinctively different from Anglo fare.
This film, the story of a trophy wife (the "Potiche" of the title) who discovers a talent for running a business when her husband is incapacitated, is a good example of the difference. The most striking difference is the age of the leads. This is a film about middle-aged people primarily, and that's not common in Anglo films. Catherine Deneuve was very good in the lead role, and I enjoyed both Fabrice Luchini (who I'd previously liked in Molière and La fille de Monaco) as her thoroughly caddish, chauvinist husband and Gerard Depardieu as her once-and-would-be-future paramour. Neither Depardieu (now) nor Luchini would be considered for leading man roles in Anglo films, I'm sure. Especially would the idea of them being romantic leads be incomprehensible.
That is another part of the difference - the attitude toward sex. French matter-of-factness about sexual behaviour means that it can be used as a part of the comic element of a story without heavy-handed crudeness or juvenile snickering, which afflict many Anglo (and most Indian) films that try it. Here it's a big part of the plot, but handled with a competent lightness of touch that I doubt would be possible in the Puritanical US cinema tradition (which revels in violence but recoils from sex), and is definitely not possible in mainstream Indian cinema, which becomes puerile whenever it tries ( cfDesi Boyz).
Films like Potiche are bit like a pavlova. A basic meringue-style dessert may seem easy to make, but everything has to be just right for it to be a melt-in-the-mouth confection. Afterward, there will be no life-changing impact, just the memory of a pleasant sweet interlude. All the ingredients in Potiche come together to deliver just that, a sweet little diversion, one that features real people, even old ones!
From "to thine own self be true", to "trust your instincts", English has generated plenty of aphorisms designed to warn us that we know ourselves best and should heed our own advice in many matters. Watching Desi Boyz was a salutary lesson for me in the painful consequences of ignoring all those clichéd axioms. Everything about it said that I would not enjoy it, the always funny Vigil Idiot savaged it with particular ruthlessness, yet still I went ahead and watched it. Why? I'm still asking myself the same question.
The main reason I overrode the legion of voices in my head screaming at me to avoid it (they all laughed wickedly when proved right) was Chitrangada Singh. She is a very attractive woman, but I first saw her in Sorry Bhai, liked her performance in it, and was intrigued by her story as an actress returning to the spotlight after marriage and a child, which was still newsworthy when she did it, before Lolo's return. I hoped that her parts of the film at least might be worth watching. I was so very, very wrong. There is a place for films that are just big dumb fun , but this film only scored one out of three, and to paraphrase Meat Loaf, that IS bad.
If I was pressed to sum up this film in one word, it would be tawdry. I think of it as a movie that aims for sleazy but doesn't quite make it, tries for vulgar but falls flat at crass. Perhaps most important of all, it was painfully unfunny. Vigil Idiot skewers every film they review, but I enjoy seeing films I liked getting the treatment, because I can acknowledge the points made while knowing there were redeeming features (at least for me) that let me enjoy the film. This is particularly relevant when it comes to plotholes. I can like a film with more than a few of them, if there are things about the film that compensate for them. Sadly, there were no such compensations in this painfully awful, insultingly stupid, film.
Actually, that's not entirely true. There were two bright spots in this ugly morass for me. One was the soundtrack. I discovered that I quite liked the songs, finding them pleasant to listen to and moderately catchy. They were quite easy to enjoy, as long as I only listened to them and did not watch their picturisations, which were as bad as the rest of the film. The other highlight came at the very end, the outtakes played during the credits. I actually laughed, something I hadn't done for the entire two hours of the movie. It looks like the cast may have had real fun making the film, which at least slightly made up for my having none at all watching it.
A week may be a long time in politics, but a hundred days is an even longer time in the world of Hindi cinema. That's about how long after its release I finally got see Kahaani. The downside of that delay was missing out on all the discussion about the film while it was current, having to strictly avoid all reviews for fear of spoilers. The upside was the objectivity that was possible in watching it well after the hype and buzz had worn off. Kahaani was a good film, one I enjoyed greatly, and could easily watch again. Was it the quantum leap forward in filmi thrillers that it was widely described as? I don't know, but if it was, that says more about the dire state of other filmi thrillers than it does about this one.
Right from the start, it had a familiar, comfortable feeling. I knew there was a surprise of some sort coming, and the biggest part of that surprise took perhaps a femtosecond to work out. I don't really blame Kahaani for this, I blame my own familiarity with similar ruses in other, Western films. Therein lies the film's weakness and its strength for me.
The weakness lay in just how obvious the most visible part of the surprise was. I did not work out the entire story before the climax, but I recognised the elements of Western thrillers that had been blended into this film, and that enabled me to know one important thing about the lead character for certain. Familiarity did not breed contempt, but it did kill the chance of "wow, I didn't see that coming!"
That same Western style of storytelling, though was also part of the film's great strength. Many, many Indian films rip off Western films, and do so with excruciating ineptness. Some pad out a Western film's story with too many songs and self-indulgent lack of editing, creating unpalatable slop that does neither cinema justice. A precious few merge a Western genre with an Indian milieu and sensibility and get it just right. For me, Kahaani is right near the top of the list of that elite group. Director Sujoy Ghosh said that he wanted Kolkata to be a star of the film, and he succeeded magnificently, I thought. The authenic feel of the film, the sense of being there and the feeling that the city herself was a major character was a big part of what kept me interested, even when the story was unremarkable. Atmospheric is perhaps a clichéd term, but it fits so much of this film, especially the climactic final scenes, making good use of the crowds and colours of Kolkata's Durga Puja to make that iconic Bengali tradition an integral player in the story. Making the film a tribute to his hometown definitely added a personal warmth to the viewing experience.
If Kolkata was a star of the film, Vidya was thestar, without a doubt. The promotional posters made it clear that this was her film, and she owned it. Her performance was so good that I was invested in seeing how the story developed for more opportunities to watch an expert ply her trade, rather than focusing on her non-secret. She is the complete package for sure, brains and beauty. That clear intelligence and captivating beauty power a melting smile that is irresistible. There were plenty of scenes where her beauty and guile made the story's developments plausible.
The one at whom Bidya's magnetic charm and intelligence was mostly directed also deserves special mention. Parambrata Chattopadhyay played his "double agent" role really well. The relationship between his character and Vidya's was deftly handled, a nice blend of restraint and implication, with volumes left not only unspoken but only very subtly hinted at. A tribute to the actors and the director, I thought.
The other standout role and performance for me was Saswata Chatterjee as Bob Biswas. Some might argue that it's not much of a stretch to see an insurance salesman as a detached psychopathic killer, that there's a Bob Biswas in almost all of them, but I think it's a scary tribute to his performance that I was reminded of Anders Breivik.
The weak link in the key cast was Khan, the IB agent. I say Khan, because I see the flaw as being the character, not the actor. Nawazuddin Siddiqui has received praise for his performance, but I found the character he played extremely problematic. Up until almost the end, he's a bombastic bully, with all the finesse and subtletly of an avalanche, and I can't see how such a character could rise so high in the world of intelligence and covert operations. There's nothing remotely covert about commandeering a police station by means of a profanity-laden outburst at its commanding officer.
That was the only real flaw in the film, from my point of view. Some have said that the thriller element was weak and too easily ascertained. but I thought it was competent and serviceable. Perhaps that's just because the one major assumption I'd made about the film turned out to be wrong, too obvious after all. The strong characterisation and excellent performances made the film interesting and involving even if the structure seemed a little familiar. And the film could definitely be used as a model to explain the unfamiliar concept of editing to may filmi directors. A very good film, perhaps not a great one, but one that makes me want to see more of everyone involved in it. One of the main cast has already appeared in a film directed by my filmi favourite, Nandita Das. Now more than ever I want to see her direct a Vidya Balan starrer. That way, my cause of death could officially be listed as, filmi bliss overload. What a kahaani that would be!
After a break from movie-watching to focus on reading a bit more, I got back into my fiftyfiftyme film challenge with this 1958 film starring Ashok Kumar and Madhubala. I really wanted to like it, as it had been described as a fun mystery film. I did not dislike it, but I was left underwhelmed. Here are the things that did not work for me.
The characters: Specifically Uncle Joe and Mr Chang. Uncle Joe looked like he was supposed to Chaplinesque and his role as one of the bad guys was also apparently intended to be partly comic. Instead, it was irritating and clumsy. Mr Chang was a cartoon villain, not just in the sense that his character was a shallow stereotype of a villain but also in the more literal sense that he looked cartoonish, with eyebrows that appear to have have been drawn on to heighten his villainous appearance. Neither was helpful in hooking me into the story, a real problem given how much they dominate the first forty minutes or so. Which leads me to the other problems
The pacing and the plot development: For the first, too slow; for the second, too jerky. A mystery/thriller needs to make the viewer care about the mystery straight away, to raise intriguing questions and ensure that the viewer wants to find out the answers. Howrah Bridge did not do that for me. It was sluggish and slow to get its story rolling and I had to make myself watch the first half hour or so. There was at least one mystery about the plot development, though. In one scene, Edna is telling the man she knows as Rakesh that she doesn't speak Hind properly, and demonstrates this by mangling it even worse than I do. Having seen Edna in the conference where the drug trafficking was being discussed, I figured she was dissembling for some reason. If so, I never saw the scene where the reason was given.All I know is that for the rest of the film, she's talking completely normal Hindi. Did I perhaps doze off and miss the explanation, or was this truly an unexplained mystery of the plot, like the fact that the woman who sat calmly and matter-of-factly listening to her uncle talk about buying her a Christmas present with drug money was later a crusader for justice? Flaws like that distracted from the story, making it difficult for me to engage with and feel like I really cared how it ended.
Helen: Try as I might, I cannot see the allegedly irresistible allure of this most famous of filmi vamps. In this film, I actually quite liked both mera naam chin chin chu and Helen's performance in it.Of course Geeta Dutt's voice was as lovely as always, and the song was a cheery little number, but that was all. I thought it an OK song, and Helen's performance satisfactory, and for me, that's high praise for a Helen piece. My reaction to Helen is as incomprehensible to most filmi buffs as my similarly meh reaction to Sholay but in this film, it nicely sums up my problem with the film as a whole - it was just OK. Now for the things that emphatically did work for me in this film:
Madhubala: Unlike my reaction to Helen, I've always admired Madhubala as an actor, and enjoyed her films. I've also long been very fond of the song aaiye meherbaan, one of my favourite Asha songs, and one that nicely shows up the difference between her and her didi, the difference that makes me prefer Asha. I had not, however, seen the song. When I did, my reaction was a string of exclamations of the "haai allah!", "arre vah!" variety. Y'all can keep your Helen, here is some va-va-voom! Scales fell from my eyes and I saw why many have waxed lyrical about Madhubala's great beauty. In this song, she positively drips seductive allure, a perfect match for the earthy, sultry tones of Asha's voice. Those descriptions are not my coinage, I've seen them used as pejoratives(!) when comparing Asha's voice to Lata's. After watching aaiye meherbaan I have no idea how anyone could consider those terms to be pejorative. This song, with its absolutely perfect pairing of a sultry voice and a come hither Madhubala (pun intended) is what scraped Howrah Bridge a passing grade for me. Here it is just because I want to, I mean, for art's sake:
Throughout the film from this song onward, Madhubala's beauty helped carry me through. She seldom looked better than she did in this film, and it's almost a pity that she was on the side of the angels, because she would have been a very credible femme fatale. The other thing that worked for me about this film is something else that marks my filmi tastes as idiosyncratic:
Shamshad Begum: When I tell people that my 2nd-favourite filmi playback singer from the golden era was Shamshad, another tick goes on the "bilkul paagal" checklist, alongside "doesn't find Helen hot" and "was kinda bored by Sholay". I can't explain why, but from my first introduction to her, in teri mehfil mein kismat (which she "won", of course), she's been a singer I really enjoy listening to. I was genuinely excited to see her name come up while watching the opening credits for this film, and I enjoyed her duets with Rafi very much. Hearing her distinctive voice opening main jaan gayee brought a smile to my face, which didn't happen often enough in this film.
In summary, this film was OK. For the crores of more normal filmi fans who get Helen, mera naam chin chin chu is obviously a classic. For me, this best thing about this film was the revelatory experience of seeing Madhubala smoking up the screen in tandem with saddi rani's voice. I will definitely be obeying her invitation again, that's for sure. For now, I leave the Calcutta of Howrah Bridge behind. Next up, the Kolkata of Kahaani.
Looking for discussions on Pratchett's best novels, I was surprised at how often the Rincewind series was dismissed as inferior. Because I'm reading all his books in the order of publication, Rincewind was my introduction to Pratchett and still holds a special place in my heart. in The Last Continent, he's back in all his inglorious patheticness, and the results are as funny as ever.
In every Discworld story, the main "target" is pretty obvious, subtlety is not an important part of Pratchett's writing. Nevertheless, in The Last Continent, the target is so obvious that Pratchett takes the unusual step of writing a disclaimer to state that , and I quote, "this is not a book about Australia". Obviously, he's lying. Everything about EcksEcksEcksEcks is Australia, even the name, and the book is one long joke at that prisoner island's expense. Naturally, that alone should be reason enough to make the book a favourite of any true Kiwi, but unlike the petty, mean-spirited envy behind most NZ digs at Oz, this book is a celebration. Clearly Pratchett is very fond of Australia and that shows through in all the playful swipes he takes throughout the book. Of course one of the things that helps make Australia what it is is having a whiny, insecure little sibling hanging around craving attention, and Pratchett remembers that. In fact, he doesn't even bother disguising it with a pseudonym as he did with the land of Four Ecks: Since the word is derived from an island that did not exist on the Discworld, the wizards had never heard of a bikini. In any case, what Mrs Whitlow had sewn together out of her dress was a lot more substantial than a bikini. It was more a newzealand - two quite large respectable halves separated by a narrow channel.
Besides being the only mention of Australia's noxiously insecure little neighbour, that passage also highlights the other taget of this book - the Wizards. Occasionally, the depths of my own obtuseness still manage to astound even me, and this was one of those occasions. Perhaps it's because I never attended University that it was only in this, the sixth book in the Rincewind series, that I finally realised that the Wizards are Dons, and that the Unseen University is, of course, University in the meta, as it were. Happily, that spectacular ignorance on my part did not prevent me from being hugely entertained as always by the incredibly frustrating antics of the Wizards.
In The Last Continent the Wizards are on a quest to help one of my favourite of all Discworld characters, The Librarian. Their quest ends up intersecting with Rincewind's and along the way, there is barely even one Aussie icon left unscathed. It is to my deep and abiding shame that I must confess to having got only almost all of them when they first appeared. One reference I missed until it was mentioned again near the end. That was truly shameful because the Aussie icon in question is one that most Kiwis have adopted with eagerness and are happy to acknowledge as possibly Australia's only, and certainly its most important, contribution to the advancement of world civilisation - VEGEMITE.
This is not Pratchett mocking the big ideas, like belief, or patriotism, or intolerance. This is Pratchett having fun poking fun at a place he obviously has real affection for, and because of that, it's a great fun read for everyone else, too. If you want to laugh aloud, a lot, as you learn the real story behind "Waltzing Matilda", "Mad Max" and the creation of the duck-billed platypus, you simply must read this book. It’s a fair dinkum corker of a book, cobber, and you’re sure to enjoy it. No worries, mate!
Jingo Terry Pratchett fiftyfiftyme category: Major
George Bernard Shaw once said, "patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy", and Einstein asserted that "nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of humanity". Those two quotes are very dear to me, especially the Shaw, since they express a little something of my depth of feeling about the concept of the nation-state and the absurdity of giving any fealty to it. As pithy and expressive as those quotes are though, they are definitely not reomtely funny, and that's where Jingo comes in. It pours scorn on nationalism and patriotism and does so while raising many laughs.
The fifth in the City Watch series, Jingo uses the sudden appearance of an island in between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch as the framework to poke much fun at the ignorance and xenophobia associated with blind patriotism. Much of the book examines the plight of Klatchian immigrants in Ankh-Morpork, "towelheads" who come from a place that's nothing but sand, "invented a number for nothing" and whose cuisine includes vindaloo and korma. This was a clever hybridisation of two immigrant communities prominent, and prominently despised, in Pratchett's England, and offered plenty of opportunities to mock the sheer stupidity of xenophobia.
Of course, what makes the best Discworld books so good is the way they show up Earthly absurdities in order to laugh at them, and Jingo has many laughs. It's by no means an earnest treatise along the lines of "why can't we all just get along?" It is a very funny skewering of the ridiculous human tendency to separate into "us" and "them", on the flimsiest of imagined reasons, and then to be prepared to fight and kill (or, preferably, have others fight and die) over them. The fifteen years since its publication have seen world events and global immigration trends make its message even more topical and universal than when it was released.
The other thing that makes Jingo so much fun is, again, The Patrician, Havelock Vetinari. The ultimate politician, whose machinations make Machiavelli seem mildly mediocre, Vetinari is always good for a laugh. The City Watch stories can be heavy-handed in their message of equality and tolerance, but Jingo avoids that trap by hovering firmly on the edge of the absurd. By doing so, it shows just how absurd the whole idea of "them" vs "us" is, and how laughably petty the debates really are.
For its handling of a subject very important to me, Jingo ranks with Small Gods as one of my favourite Discworld novels. That it is also very, very funny, made the experience of reading it that much more memorable. If you enjoy laughing at human absurdities, you should enjoy this book very much.
Hogfather Terry Pratchett fiftyfiftyme category: Major
What a difference a day makes. Having finished Terry Pratchett's nineteenth book, Feet of Clay on one day and and feeling underwhelmed, I turned to his twentieth the next day and was left grinning from ear to ear. Hogfather is everything a Discworld novel should be.
After the political preaching of Feet of Clay, in Hogfather Pratchett returned to his most productive territory - the role of belief in human society. This is the same topic he explored so brilliantly in my favourite of his so far, Small Gods. That book is the best of his I've read, but it's not the funniest. In all the books which have DEATH as a central character, Pratchett is at his humorous best, and Hogfather had me laughing out loud a lot.
There is a difference between the DEATH books and the Watch books, and I think the big difference is attitude. In the Watch series, Pratchett's target is politics, and the strength of his own political views often invest his writing with palpable anger. This was particularly noticeable in Feet of Clay, and it's clearly not easy to be flippant when angry. The DEATH books, on the other hand, have belief as their target, and they are written in a spirit of amused affection. There is so much absurdity in belief systems that they are a rich source of comic material, and Pratchett exploits that material well, with the affectionate attitude of someone who includes himself and his own belief system in the fun, rather than someone trying to preach through comedy, as in his more political works.
Everything about Hogfather shows Pratchett at his best. All the main characters are well drawn, including the psychopathic Mr Teatime and the bureaucratic bad guys, The Auditors. The star of this book, though, is the wonderful Susan Sto-Helit, DEATH's granddaughter. I saw the TV adaptation of this book long before reading it, so I visualised the wonderful performance of Michelle Dockery as I read the book. Susan's struggle to come to terms with her family background is a big part of the stories she's in, and provides plenty of opportunities for amusing swipes at other famous characters, as in "She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could
do. And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever
find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself
to death with her own umbrella."
Mary Poppins is not the only source of laughs in Hogfather, though. Around the central framework of an affectionate parody of Christmas, Pratchett managed to make me laugh out loud with digs at Hans Christian Andersen's predisposition for needlessly cruel, sad endings (the little match girl) to restaurant French - Mousse de la Boue dans une Panier de la Pâte de Chaussures, anyone?
Everybody believes something, which is what makes Pratchett's best work so universal.Anyone who can laugh at themselves should enjoy Hogfather, a good-natured celebration of the wondrous silliness that is the human imagination and the importance of its capacity for belief. This is a Discworld novel I can enthusiastically recommend to anyone who hasn't read one before, with one important warning: Reading it late at night may disturb the sleep of others in nearby rooms, try to keep your laughter down!
