No sir, I don't just write 'love' stories!

A view and 2 reviews...

You do not kill yourself or harm yourself for an injustice done to you in which you had no part. That is the feeling I got from watching two Hindi movies recently. The stories of both of them were based on a significant event in which someone close to the hero/villian kills herself because of some events where the person is humiliated for no fault of her own. So suicide comes into the picture initiating a chain of events. Both were well-made movies which were away from the norm of some irritating revenge sagas. One was Zinda and the other was Kalyug. Both had tight-scripts and some very good music going for them.

But I shall be partial to Kalyug because of the performance of the lead action. Kunaal Khemu, who was a child actor not long ago,acting as the young Ajay Devgan in Zakhm - another good movie. This is an actor to watch out for. He gives such a powerful performance. He is good looking, has lovely flowing hair [which happens to be one of my weakness'], a deep voice and above all a talent for acting that many of our mainstream heros could do well with. He recently bagged the Stardust Award for the Best Debut Performance. He more than deserves it. Its amazing that someone so young could exude so much pain and intensity in the role of a young man whose wife commits suicide unable to bear humiliation heaped on her. The revenge saga was believable. One could feel his raw pain though one wishes that the director could have spared some more time in the love story to make his pain appear even more acute. A little story development between him and his wife could have been good though the Jiya Dhadak Dhadak song does a lot in that area. what a beautiful song! What simple lyrics but so soo effective. It goes something like this -
tuhje dekh dekh sona, tujhe dekh kar hai jagna..
maine yeh zindagaani sang tere bitaani...

how beautifully the concept of a marriage is conveyed here. People writing recycled lyrics for Hindi Songs could learn so much from this verse. Simple Originality. Pakistani Songs are so sublime...this song is just too good. Listen to it.

Before you get too comfortable the movie in the next five minutes takes a drastic turn and morphs into a revenge saga. Though the hero manages to get to the top of the chain responsible for his wife's death pretty easily, its an interesting trip nonethless made more believable by Kunaal Khemu's performance. He is simply brilliant. [am I gushing yet?]. But there is a speed-breaker in the form of one Mr.Emraan Hashmi [who btw was voted as your classic sadak-chap seedy character if there ever was in terms of looks and performance on SB today]. ugh! ugh! ugh! What does the junta see in this guy is always at the back of mind whenever I am enduring his performance err..on screen that is. He is so so bad in what should have been a powerful cameo but what with the Bhatt camp's obsession with him, he is given this role and he fails to err..perform!

And also there is Amrita Singh in it. Once again an author-backed role which she tries best to perform with her limited acting abilities. She does a decent job but the hard work in getting the scenes right shows. She is too tense - though that was required of the role too I guess. All in all a must-watch movie.

Now coming to Zinda. Over-hyped would be the word to use here. I had studiously kept away from any sort of spoilers on this movie. All I knew was that it was a remake of a Korean Movie - Old Boy. Yes, that's right our movie-makers have remade all good Hollywood movies that could be remade. Now they are looking elsewhere for inspiration. So I settled down to watch it late in the night without any distractions [read after Lil A had gone to sleep] and was very happy that it was supposed to be just a 2-hour movie. I had high expectations from it. As one Mr.SSM will vouch for me, for one it starred two of my most favorite handsome hunks ..Sanju Baba and Johnny Baby. The music was once again very good. Esp loved the song - Yeh hain meri Kahaani...wonderful lyrics and music once again. Esp the lyrics. Very very meaningful and intense. Gems like:

Yeh hain meri kahaani - khamosh zindagaani;
Ek daastaan puraani - tanhaai ki Zubaani;
har zakhm khil raha hain - kuch mujh se keh raha hain;
chubte kaante yaadon ke daaman se chunta hoon...
girti deewaaron ke aanchal mein zinda hoon..
Bas yeh meri kahaani - benishaan nishaani

The movie starts off showing a very normal couple, a normal friendship and once again before you start to get too comfortable there is that drastic turn again. The hero is imprisoned for no reason at all. For 14 years. Given the same food every single day and his only connection to the outside world is a small TV placed in the room. I read on oz's review of the same Zinda, where thou soul where he felt that the director did not do justice to this sequence of events where Sanju baba is relegated to a single room. That he skipped over a lot of things that could have been unpalatable to the Indian psyche. well, I tend to agree with him though there was relief somewhere that such details were indeed skipped ;-) But I have to agree one does not feel sorry for Sanju Baba somehow. One does feel his frustration but somehow since the whole 14 years was shown in about 15-20 minutes, one does not feel the passing of so much time. The director should have done more to show his pain and suffering to make us empathize with the character more. For example not once is it shown that Sunju is missing his wife. Its like he does not even think about her or his life at all. There should have been more pathos, more feeling - atleast in the beginning stages of his imprisonment. Could understand his apathy later but not in the beginning. There is no reaching towards one's heart that would have made us sympathize with Sanju's character a lot more. I for one could not feel his agony. Sanjay Dutt does act well, but that is to be expected. He could have done more with it imho, which he doesn't somehow. He always comes across as being human though the role demanded that when he gets out he has turned into a monster. One does not get that feeling at all. Not even when he is doing a root-canal on Zutshi with a hammer ;-). He just does not loose the human-touch as he is supposed to!

Then ofcourse there is John Abraham. He does not make his appearance in the movie until it is almost 3/4th done. He looks uh..out of this world, though his character is once again run of the mill. The suave trillionaire who can stand to loose a million a day. But one thing about his performance is though he is dressed in the best of clothes compared to Sanju's tatters, one can feel the inhumaness in him just by looking at the cold look in his eyes. That I think is the hallmark of a good actor. That he can look the part, get into the skin of the character without any props but just by being himself. The only thing about Johnny Baba is that he can only look 2 parts - the cold blooded killer or the intense lover. He gets into trouble if he tries to do anything else!! I esp am near puking when he is trying his hand at comedy. Could not watch 'Garam Masala' after a few frames wherein he is shown to be this brainless photographer. John Abraham and brainless? They just don't go together!! So we have a brainy John Abraham who keeps challenging the hero to find out what it is all about. OUr hero sure does. With the help of - you guessed it - a female interest. How could there not be one? There has to be. So we have the Svelte Lara Dutta who happens to be a cab-driver, who instead of riding her taxi in the opposite direction at top-speed when she sees Sunju drill into a man actually falls for him. Dumb? You got it...well anyways so Sanju Baba does come to know what the secret is.

And the secret is - well that's the climax of the review. The secret is that there is not much of a secret. It is such a trivial reason that you are left completely shocked that Sanju Baba and you had been subjected to such torture for something that wasn't completely his fault. Maybe that is what the directed wanted to convey - that he had to go thru so much for such a silly reason. Here you are waiting with bated breath as to what inspired all this - and when it is revealed to you, you are left cold. That spoiled the whole movie for me somehow. It made Johnny look very childish and infact very stupid. That such an intelligent man who could trade in millions, interact with so many people could harbor such childish thoughts on revenge seemed somehow too far-fetched to me. It would have been so cool if Sanju's character had done some evil things in the past and one of them happened to happen to Jonh Abraham. That could have explained his single-minded devotion in seeking revenge. But no, it has to be cliched and cliched it is. Right from the reason to Johnny growing so rich in a few years to have Sanju working for him in one of his company from his innumerable ones. Couldn't John have been an ordinary person? What was the reason to show him as being so rich and succesful. Looks very cliched. Not a must-watch but not bad either.

Coming back to why I started to write these reviews. As I said both the movies had a suicide where someone close to the hero/villian commits suicide for no fault of their own. I wonder why that happens. In Kalyug the heroine jumps out of the window after a porn film which was made without her knowledge is shown to her. She does not pause to think - that's my husband I am with and if some goofball taped it and distributed it on the internet, I should not be killing myself but killing that goofball instead. Somehow can never understand that concept where people kill themselves instead of brushing the thing away. Sure you might face some humiliation but is that pain more than the pain you would be causing your loved ones, especially someone as cute as Kunal Khemu who sings such wonderful songs like Jiya Dhadak Dhadak jayen to you!!

posted by Fizo @ 11:14 AM