Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Shakespeare in Love is a grand celebration of the creative drive and the pleasure of fiction. It's also what we consider a Perfect Film - much like Rashomon or Ladri di biciclette.

Fictions layer over each other in Shakespeare in Love - and the way we approach this fundamental deceit is explored. Are we like the enraged, indignant preacher, waving his hat at the fact that "vice is in the show!"? Or are we like the passionate theater-goer Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), who admits that her love affair with William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) "is not life - it is a stolen season", or, even better, is a "flattering dream - too sweet to be substantial", but revels in it nonetheless?

Because fiction abounds - fiction as the transformative, cathartic, passionate release for our transcendental drive. The fiction of Viola as "Thomas Kent", an actor for the down-on-his-luck Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush) and his struggling theater company. The fiction that Shakespeare is writing Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter - no, Romeo and Rosalind - no, whatever - and that this play is for Henslowe… no, his competitor, Burbage (Martin Clunes). The fiction of Viola and Will's love for each other - she, already bound to the blunt, unimaginative Lord Wessex (Colin Firth); and he, exiled from his wife and children in Stratford. The fiction of the final play - Romeo and Juliet - and how it interweaves with the stolen romance Viola and Will enjoy.

You could call it lies or deceit, but everyone is definitely living in a fantasy in this film - deception, masks, costumes and dissembling abounds. Yet - just like in the Neopolitan underworld and its circus-like, surreal atmosphere in Mi manda Picone - this essential non-reality is accepted by everyone. It's like structured play. Everyone agrees that this isn't real, and everyone still operates within these bounds of non-reality.

The result is priceless: whimsical, funny, heartfelt and, ironically, very true. Early in the film, Queen Elizabeth (Judi Dench) accepts to judge a wager between the hard realist Wessex and the dreamer Shakespeare that true love could never be captured in a play. In the end, even though everything on which that love was built was a lie, we see that the love indeed was true. It's a cunning meta turn. And, just like Will and Viola or the audience of the play, the audience of the film - i.e. the PPCC - suffers a big letdown when we leave Narnia and return to reality. The dreamscape was so much… realer. At least, it felt so! (Ironically?)

Of course, the strength and intelligence of this film relies almost entirely on the strength and intelligence of the script by Tom Stoppard. The actors are all uniformly strong; it's a veritable tour of RADA talent. The music and direction support and give accent to what is essentially an emotional story (much as dreams have their own emotional logic!) and, of course, it's great as just a celebration of Shakespeare (expect lots of puns and references). It also does something which is rare, but delightful, to behold: it shows us the creative process at its most fluid and prolific. Like Amadeus, this film captures the verve and alive-ness of producing something creative, especially when that something just pours out of you. As if you were a conduit to something greater. The best part of being human? We'd wager Wessex his fifty pounds on it.

Highly recommended.

The Tempest (2010)

We had been hearing about Julie Taymor's The Tempest for nigh on two years now, ever since Helen Mirren was announced to be playing the role of a female Prospero (called Prospera - catchy!). Imagine our delight and excitement when we learned that they were also adding some of our favorites - Chris Cooper! Djimon Hounsou! DAVID. STRATHAIRN! - to the mix.

However, The (girl) Tempest is a big mess; incoherent and over-the-top visuals coupled with a chopped-up Shakespeare that's barely recognizable. Most people agree (statistic!) that Shakespearean plots don't resonate with modern audiences anymore - twins, shipwrecks, fairies, love at first sight, those wretched proletarian comedy subplots, people being deceived by masks or a pair of pants - ha! We are not so easily duped as those Elizabethan yokels. And that's not why us modern folk usually watch the Bard - we watch it for his epic, fancy talking (so Elizabethan! so complicated! so fancy!). So when you remove the talking, you're left with a lot of silliness. And when you amp up the ridiculous elements with Xena: Warrior Princess-style CGI and loony, masala-style close-ups, the audience (or, at least, the PPCC) feels overwhelmed and eventually alienated. Nothing really could resonate in all that bombastic mishmash.

The plot: Prosper(a) (Helen Mirren), the exiled Duchess of Milan, is living on some random island with her daughter, Miranda (Felicity Jones). She is a great magician, and she uses her dark arts - along with the help of her enslaved fairy, Ariel (a gender-less Ben Wishaw) - to destroy a passing ship in a passing thunderstorm. Onboard are none other than all her political rivals: her conniving brother Antonio (Chris Cooper), King Alonso of Naples (David Strathairn), his brother Sebastian (Alan Cummings) and the kind-hearted consigliere (or somesuch) Gonzalo (Tom Conti). They are all shipwrecked together on one side of the island. On the other side emerges Alonso's son, Ferdinand (Reeve Carney), and - from a third angle - the dim-witted shipmates, Trinculo (a mighty Russell Brand) and Stephano (Alfred Molina). Add the controversial character of Calaban (Djimon Hounsou, in burnt, peely skin) to the mix, and you have the cast. Mostly, the story is about all of them bumping into each other and eventually bumping into Prospera, where they all apologize and Miranda says, "O brave new world! That has such people in it!" The end.

Hacking the text to pieces was really a shame, since so much was lost or garbled - ultimately appearing superficial and daft. Ferdinand and Miranda see each other and are immediately smitten. It's idiotic! OK, that always happens, but here, it's idiotic and inarticulate. This is also a shame, since the cast is really top-notch, and they do quite well given their muted, over-simplified dialogues: Helen Mirren is, of course, amazing in her role, and yes, there is some ephemeral interest in seeing the Prospero-Miranda dynamic become a mother-daughter thing. (It makes the Ferdinand treatment make a bit more sense, at least.) Similarly, Chris Cooper and Alan Cumming do well; while David Strathairn just mopes. Alfred Molina and Russell Brand basically do slapstick, and Djimon Hounsou's interpretation of Calaban is bravely, troublingly close to slave stereotypes. (We've seen productions where Calaban was played as a ghoul-buffoon; here, he's a proud, dignified, angry slave.) Ben Wishaw was fine, though his occasional breasts and lack of genitals distracted.

There were some strange moments, when the music and imagery came together to produce scenes from Dune; we half-expected Helen Mirren to declare, "Yes! For he is the Kwizatz Haderach!" Think fuzzy, reverb-heavy electric guitar slamming down on minor power chords, coupled with epic shots of Prosper(a) standing on cliff precipices.

It's a shame this movie emphasized its million visual ideas (much to its detriment; like the over-stuffed Daywatch) rather than its story or text. Even genuinely striking visuals were lost in the mush; one great moment, for example, was when Ariel explains to Prospera that all the nobles - while given a good scare - emerged scratchless from the shipwreck. In that moment, we see David Strathairn, Chris Cooper, Alan Cumming and Tim Conti suddenly emerge, fully upright, in the rocky ocean, as if the water level itself was decreasing. A quirky, fun visualization of being unharmed! Alas that it was just a brief gem in a messy sea of good, bad and ugly.

Wallander: Faceless Killers (2010)

Blue/orange, blue/orange, orange/blue, blue/orange, WHY?!?!

A well-worn tale of the world weary detective archetype, Wallander is appealing, if not very original.

A BBC remake of a popular Swedish series, the British version retains the Swedish rural setting and just replaces everyone with British actors - the protagonist being portrayed by Kenneth Branagh (ironic, as we were just lamenting how he's not working enough these days!). Branagh's a good choice for the soft-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside Detective Kurt Wallander, a rumplied workaholic who gets skittish when things get too personal. Jowly and awkward, he has an appealing Everyman quality. He also retains, beneath that haunted, vacant stare of the emotionally and physically exhausted, a familiar Branaghian current of drama queen. He is, as he always has been, a wounded puppy, only a trembling chin away from tears, and he inspires the compassionate in his colleagues, Anne-Britt (Sarah Smart) and Nyberg (Richard McCabe), who spend much of the episode we watched shooting tender stares in his direction. (Okay, we did too.)


We few.


We happy few.

Indeed, so endearingly, boyishly vulnerable is Branagh as Wallander, that it's hard to believe he could have such frosty relations with his father, Povel (an unexpectedly old and unexpectedly brilliant David Warner), and his daughter, Linda (Jeany Spark). We have yet to see the barbed, slightly villainous undercurrent that juxtaposed so well against that boyish charm in something like Henry V, where Branagh's performance hinted at a darker core. Wallander is as vanilla as they come; obviously wounded, emotionally inept, weary moral purity personified. But this is a series, and we watched only one episode, so maybe we just need to give it time for the complexities to emerge.


This story shall the good man teach his son. (A divine David Warner.)


"These wounds, I had, on Crispin's Day."

In episode Faceless Killers, an elderly Swedish couple have been brutally murdered on their farm. As Wallander and crew set out on a paltry set of unpromising leads, someone from within the police force leaks that the killers may have been "foreign". This immediately sparks a rash of xenophobic violence in the sleepy Swedish hamlet, enraging Wallander and spurring him to work even faster to give non-foreign faces to the faceless.

Meanwhile, Wallander's piteous personal life is rocky as ever. His daughter introduces him to her new boyfriend, Jamal (Arsher Ali), a young Syrian-Swedish doctor. Wallander's latent racism alienates all three - and leads to a healthy dose of self-loathing on Wallander's part, as well as some suspected overcompensating in fighting the town's xenophobia. Meanwhile, Wallander's father is crumbling further into Alzheimer's.


Narrowness and claustro-/xenophobia, thanks to limited focal depth.


And again.

Other reviews of the series have lauded its moody shots of the gloomy Swedish countryside, as well as Branagh's likably depressed vibe. However, this whole tale shares too many similarities with the Icelandic film Jar City, a film which treats an identical subject with more grit and less squish. Indeed, Faceless Killers' script - apart from often telling us something we have just seen for our own eyes, bad writer! - also includes a number of touchy-feely lines which, even in Branagh's excellent delivery, ring very cheesy.

Nonetheless, it's all enjoyable - if only because the countryside is gorgeous and Branagh is likably rattled all the time. There is a moody theme of caring and being cared for (and being bad at both of those things, see Wallander, Kurt), and the entire production was very sleek. The biggest surprise, though, was David Warner, who we last saw in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country as a Klingon Gorbachev. He conveyed great depth and tragedy in his few scenes. And there was a poignant parallel of his character and the old white stallion who often encounters Wallander during his lonely drives around the farms, only to bolt, wild-eyed.


Once more unto the breach, dear friends!

We look forward to more Wallander, if only for the revelation of David Warner's greatness and the comfort food of Kenneth Branagh's angst. Someone give that man a hug.

1942: A Love Story (1993)

Well, let's face it. It's a party in the PPCC's heart and only Anil Kapoor is invited.


We wuv u.

Actually, scratch that - Pran, you can come too. And Madhuri, of course. But all you other folk - you Radioheads, you Shashi Kapoors, you pizzas, you family members - can get out. Sorry, there's just no more space for you anymore. Maybe if you grow a mustache and go, "Ah-hyuk, HAH HEYYYY!!!" we'll let you in purely on novelty value (a pizza in a mustache?), but if you're not willing to compromise your individuality in the name of His Stacheliness then it's the road for you! See ya, wouldn't wanna BE YA.

Some of you loyal readers might marvel that, between the known flop Trimurti and the known super-hit 1942: A Love Story, we chose to watch and review Trimurti first. But that's just how we roll. We'd much rather watch something that flopped and find it's a hidden gem for the PPCC than (1) just confirm that, yes, the super-hit classic really is good (booooring), or, even worse, (2) we don't think the super-hit classic is any great shakes (perish the thought!). (Too bad Trimurti really was bad...) And then there's the usual problem: what can we say about 1942: A Love Story that hasn't already been said? And said? And said?

Well, if some of you are coming here from a certain science fiction magazine today, then allow the PPCC to make some wild assumptions about your demographic: white? American? unfamiliar with Bollywood? maybe you just watched a certain little film win Best Picture at the Golden Globes last night? Then stick around, because this may be the only way the PPCC can contribute anything of value in our review of 1942. We can say, behold!, Bollywood virgin, that sleazy game show host from Slumdog Millionaire is a lot more famous in India for this (aaand this) than some flashy yet likable quasi-Orientalist super-hyped glittering bauble that wins like ten gazillion unexpected awards. Ta da!


One of the film's many iconic moments.


"I saw a girl and it was like... like... " JUST SAY IT, FOR GOD'S SAKE. IT WAS LIKE FLOWERS BLOSSOMING. LIKE A POET'S VERSE. Oooooh, ek ladki ko dekha to aisa lagaaaaaa...

A rare historical romance, 1942's lovers are the bouncy, bourgeois Naren (Anil Kapoor) and the kind-hearted Rajeshwari (Manisha Koirala). He is a pampered, upbeat muppet whose father (Manohar Singh) is an evil collaborator with the British Raj, while she is a quiet working class girl whose father (Anupam Kher) is an underground revolutionary. The lovers meet via a couple coincidences and Naren's local amateur theater director, played by - wait for it, wait for it - we can't say it, it's too wonderful - okay, yes, yes, we can say it - PRAAAAAAN (!!!!!). The year is, yes, 1942 and hence we are thick in the heat of the Indian Independence Movement. For once, some effort has gone not only into authentically recreating the historical context - pageboy hats, old cars, and saddle shoes abound - but also in presenting a believable portrait of oppression under the British Raj. The film's villain, the British General Douglas (Brian Glover, looking distinctly like he could be Colin Mochrie's dad), speaks in a caricatured raspy growl, but everything else is presented realistically and sans outrageous embellishment. Throw in one hunky freedom fighter, Shubhankar (Jackie Shroff), and one hunky tormented collaborator, Major Hisht (Danny Denzongpa), and the fun abounds. Throw in a secret plot to assassinate General Douglas, and the tension skyrockets!

This film is really an enjoyable little number. Director Vidhu Vinod Chopra has an excellent eye for iconic framing, and the narrative has a sort of epic drive that makes even the most throwaway scene feel cataclysmic and gargantuan. Some moments - such as when Naren pursues Rajeshwari through the town's alleys, or Pran's arrest - aspired to sublimity. The film also made innovative use of Romeo and Juliet - indeed, this is the first time we've seen Shakespeare's lovers used in a Hindi film rather than the more typical Laila and Majnu myth. In 1942, the local theater company is performing a Hindi translation of Romeo and Juliet, and Naren and Rajeshwari naturally fall into these roles. We at the PPCC have been culturally indoctrinated into Romeo and Juliet, and so when this film passed all the same defining moments - the balcony scene, the secret marriage, the misinformation about their lover's death - it got an immediate emotional response from us. Even better, like West Side Story to racism, this film managed to successfully graft the classical Romeo/Juliet mythos over the much larger narrative about the freedom struggle.


The balcony scene squeezed squishy feelings from our heart, and we relived the thousand other balcony scenes we've all seen and loved.


PraaaAAAAAAAAaaaaAAAAAAAAAaan! Admit it, this is not the craziest thing we've caught Pran doing.

Another interesting thing to note were the visual and aural allusions to the freedom struggle. Director Chopra often uses classical Western pieces in his background score, and here he makes heavy use of a certain recognizable Western piece to herald the British Raj's oppressive military presence. Which one is it? Why, it's Holst's Mars, God of War. Clever! Meanwhile, the scenes of Indian resistance are accompanied by the rousing anthem, Saare Jahan Se Accha, or a really phat, speedy sitar riff.


A cunning visual reference to the anti-imperial struggle: Princess Leia buns!

The performances were all fine. We should admit that another reason we were not so excited to see this was that we're not very interested in soft focus romances - and we certainly don't watch Anil Kapoor for his straightforward, vanilla hero roles. Nonetheless, he's effectively Mickey Mouse in this. Manisha Koirala does her usual ethereal moping thing. But the real stand-out of this film was Anupam Kher. See! Anupam Kher is a good actor - a very good actor! Just give the man something to work with! In 1942, he is worlds apart from the usual grating comedy antics he was forced to do: here, his performance is extremely understated, quietly passionate, fragile and compelling. We found his scenes more moving than the lovers!


Oh, Anupam Kher!


Pran and Anil Kapoor sharing celluloid is almost too much for the PPCC to handle.

Much is made of this being legendary music director R.D. Burman's final film. The oft-parodied Ek Ladki Ko Dekha (I saw a girl) is lovely (if overly familiar), but - and please don't burn the PPCC down for this - we actually didn't really dig the rest of the soundtrack. Plus, it was one of those relentless soundtracks with song after song after song - for once, we wanted to skip the songs and get back to the most excellent story!


Guh, just look at that composition! "Jai Hind!" indeed!

Jhoom Barabar Jhoom (2007)

The PPCC has now seen approximately 60 Hindi films, and it has never seen anything quite like Jhoom Barabar Jhoom. A frantic, carefree comedy with the stereotypically big, warm Hindi heart, its uniqueness resembles the singularity of films like Dil Se, its style is like Farah Khan if she revelled a bit more in the trashy, and its general funness is matched only by the original Don.


The title song.

It's a film where almost all the characters wear extravagantly tacky outfits, to the point that even the protagonist is compelled to exclaim in one scene, "God, what a cheesy crowd!" The camera angles are frequently 90 degrees of the horizon, or floating above the car. And it features one of the most realistically screwball fantasy sequences in film - at least, the PPCC certainly daydreams about potential mates like that: inventing romantic yet illogical scenarios with narry a straightforward step to be scene, extended daydreams that usually end in marriage, kids and old age.

The plot: NRIs Alvira Khan (Preity Zinta) and Rikki Thukral (Abhishek Bachchan) bump into each other at Waterloo Station in London. Both are waiting for someone on the incoming, delayed train from Birmingham. Out of obvious self-defense against "dodgy" come-ons, both invent elaborate stories of fiancees in the wings: Rikki's multicultural lady love from Paris, Anaida (Lara Dutta), and Alvira's power lawyer slash stud muffin, Steve (Bobby Deol). As the two leads wait for a few hours for their "fiancees" to arrive, a bond forms and soon both are regretting the fake ball and chain. Yet both, of course, are too proud and embarrassed to admit they were lying.

In the meanwhile, Amitabh Bachchan appears during brief intervals, dressed as a pimp straight out of Kojak, crooning, "Heee-eee-eeey!" as the leads' feelings become obvious to everyone but each other. The Big B does little more than appear throughout the film like this: as a sort of wailing, inarticulate Puck or Greek chorus. Interestingly, he is only a spectator and, if anything, serves to embody the film's style: tacky, surreal, and incredibly entertaining.


The screwball fantasy love song. Love it!

Anyway, it takes faux fiancee stand-ins - a foul-mouthed prostitute (also Lara Dutta) for Rikki, and an anal retentive friend-of-a-friend (also Bobby Deol) for Alvira - and a Grease-style dance-a-thon in our beloved Southall to wake everyone up to the comedy of errors.

Actually, now that we bring up Shakespeare, this film could pass for a loose adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream - the mixed up couples, the deception, the glitter and rhinestones standing in for Oberon's fairy glitz. Hey, we already said Amitabh was like Puck. He can be Oberon too.

The performances were uniformly charming, all of them falling on the wrong side of the ham scale but since they seemed to be enjoying themselves so much, we as audience members enjoyed it too. Abhishek eerily channelled his father's "paan-chewing voice" (as deemed by BollyBob and as featured prominently in the original Don and Namak Halaal). Preity seemed to have regained all her lost zest and personality which propelled her to stardom after Dil Se but slowly gave way to blandness in things like KANK and Veer-Zaara. Also, Bobby Deol was a revelation. This is our first Bobby Deol film and we absolutely loved his anxious, baby-faced waif who speaks only in his mother's aphorisms but seems to enjoy dancing. Some details were particularly endearing and hilarious: such as when the nervous nail-biting Steve spits out a nail after Rikki threatens him. This is the same type of nerdy charm SRK also usues to excellent effect in things like the first act of Om Shanti Om.

Indeed Jhoom Barabar Jhoom resembles Om Shanti Om in its inspired naach-gaana, sweet and silly comedy, and being self-referential to the point of breaking the fourth wall. For example, when Rikki lists all the Indian wax figures in Madame Tussauds, ending with, "...Amit ji, our good ol' Bachchan." Or when Sholay's Yeh Dosti plays when Abhishek and Bobby Deol ride through London on a motorcycle - much as their fathers did back in Sholay itself. Or when Huffy Bhai (an excellent Piyush Mishra) drives a car with the license plate reading 786 - the number of Allah, and also Amitabh's lucky badge number in another 70s classic, Deewaar.

Along with Farah Khan, the PPCC thinks that this movie is part of that brave, new world of Hindi cinema - this is the direction things should be going in!

(Many apologies for lack of caps, but our computer refused to play the DVD. Perhaps out of jealousy.)

Baazigar (1993)

In Episode 17 of Arun Krishnan's podcast Learn Hindi from Bollywood movies, Mr. Krishnan asks whether Indian men are "mama's boys". If someone had only the movie Baazigar to answer this question, the response wouldn't be a mere "Yes." but rather an, "OH... MY... GOD."

Because Baazigar is the tale of a mama's boy. And not just any mama's boy. This movie is about The Mama's Boy.


Lithe like a cat! Graceful like a deer!

Consider this: When something horrible happens to your mom, you may feel enraged. Say, for instance, your dad's colleague, Madan (Dalip Tahil), swindled your family out of the family business, thus sending all of you into destitution and wretched poverty (surprisingly rapidly! but no matter). And let's say, further, that that colleague then had the audacity to flirt with your mom in front of your 10-year-old impressionable and enraged self. You might feel justifiably angry, appalled even. You might even seek legal action once you turn of age. Not so for Ajay (Shah Rukh Khan), who decides that the best way to redeem his family's honor and, most importantly, take revenge for past insults against his mother, is to not only steal the company back but also kill a few of the colleague's family. These are no impassioned homicides, the sorry result of a lifetime of hate. No, this demented ninja has calculated coldly and rationally how best to lay down his evil plan of exacting revenge. It's almost like Hamlet. Except without the paralyzing indecision; unlike his Danish cousin, Ajay loses no time in moving swiftly towards his goal.

The unfortunates who get in Ajay's way are Seema (Shilpa Shetty, recently involved in a cheek-kissing scandal), his girlfriend and the eldest daughter of his enemy, and Priya (Kajol), his... second girlfriend and Seema's younger sister. When Ajay realizes that he's getting no closer to Darth Madan via his relationship with Seema, he ruthlessly disposes of her (via the old pushing-you-off-the-roof trick), trades in his bookish identity for a racecar-driving hunk named 'Vicky', and begins schmoozing the second daughter (even as she grieves! almost Richard III-ian).


Our favorite song; wherein Ajay and Seema dance with gay abandon, even though Ajay's actually planning to kill Seema in the next scene.

This is all very fun and exciting in a horror B-movie kind of way. You watch with delicious excitement as Priya gets tantalizingly close to discovering her sister's murderer and hence demasking the evil Ajay. But then, just as the film is winding down to its inevitable finish, everything pulls a 180 and, as in that same year's Darr, you end up sympathizing with the schizo villain.


A cute early song.

People say this was Shah Rukh's Magic Touch, that certain something that propelled him to superstardom. Here was an actor with "unconventional" good looks (those eyebrows so lovingly arched by God! those dimples! that mop of hair!) who took daring, unpopular roles and infused them with vulnerability and charm. No one since Saif Ali Khan has done something similar and it seems that, in Bollywood, it takes courage to play the villain, and talent to make him lovable. (Bollywood's not really big on anti-heroes.)

While Shilpa Shetty doesn't leave much of an impression, this movie also shows how likable and talented a young Kajol was. She could switch from energetic and feisty to grieving yet impassioned at the drop of a hat (or, well, sister), and it's this range of ability that she also displayed in another hit, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. It's a shame she's not doing anything except cameos anymore, since she was truly a match for Shah Rukh - often outdoing him in terms of sheer personality and oomph.

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995)

We defy anyone to have a better ending than Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Bravehearted Gets The Bride, or just DDLJ). We defy anyone to supress their juicy, cathartic, crocodile tears at the last scene of DDLJ. This is Shakespearean stuff, man, except the Bard was never this epic. This is the rousing conclusion to Dvorak's New World sympthony. This is spectacle, this is extravaganza. This is shameless, reassuring cliche. This goes where even Disney movies fear to tread. It's the type of scene that we've all seen before, or think we have, many times, and yet it's so emotionally satisfying that we could watch those last few minutes again and again.

And again! Hailed by many to be the best of '90s Bollywood, the vehicle that launched Shah Rukh and Kajol to super-fame (as well as their famed onscreen chemistry), analyzed for its themes of emigration and longing for Mother India, DDLJ is superficially like many another Bollywood film. And yet it's been playing in some Bombay cinemas for over 12 years. What's the magic? you ask. Damned if we know! All we know is that there is something magnetically charming about this film. It's the ultimate plastic escape, yet it rings strangely authentic. It's the bog-standard story of star-cross'd opposites attracting, yet it all feels as fresh and exciting as the first time we fell in lurrrve. It's satisfying in a comfortable, endearing way.


The requisite wedding song extravaganza!

The film opens, improbably, with Amrish Puri standing in Trafalgar Square. Daily, this Indian emigre feeds the pidgeons amidst a grey, drizzly London and dreams of returning to his sun-drenched Punjab. Meanwhile, his daughter, Simran (Kajol), has dreams of her own: akin to Romeo's (or the West Side Story's Tony) prescience, she knows she will fall in love soon, but not yet with whom. We, of course, know it's going to be with the rich, boozing party animal, Raj (Shah Rukh Khan). Both youngsters ask their fathers if they can go on a month-long Eurail trip in continental Europe with their friends. Raj goes to celebrate his recent failure of college, while Simran is allowed to enjoy her last summer of freedom before her inevitable arranged marriage to a Dad-approved good Indian boy (who, of course, totally sucks).

As soon as the train rolls out of King's Cross station, Raj and Simran bump into each other. And continue to bump into each other all through Europe as the two groups of friends explore France and Switzerland. At one point, Raj and Simran are accidentally left behind. Left with no one but each other, they team up and make their way, first by rental car and then by foot, across Switzerland in order to find their friends. The initial awkwardness melts away and, with the help of a Cognac-filled night on the town, a bond of genuine affection forms between these two rambunctious 'opposites'.


Our favorite song.

The affection grows and, by the time they find their friends and return to London, they've both fallen into, yes, love. When Simran confesses to her mother that she's found the literal man of her dreams, her father overhears and angrily precipitates their departure for India. Raj hears that Simran's returned to the Punjab to marry her betrothed and, encouraged by his romantic, sentimentalist father, he flies off to catch her. He arrives just in time for the wedding preparations and then, since he is a traditional, elder-respecting guy despite the outward hedonism, decides that eloping is out of the question and instead works to win Dad's seal of approval.


The most famous song and main theme. This is turned into a cartoon for the DVD.

What can we say? The love story is anything but unconventional. Instead, what's interesting about DDLJ is it's treatment of the diaspora; some have argued this inspired a whole wave of 'modern Bollywood' where traditional Indian values, instead of being undermined in alien environments (London, NYC) are reinforced and treasured. And Indians abroad are anything if not truly Hindustani at heart - Raj certainly keeps reminding us of that by, well, saying it aloud many times.

The performances are uniformly energetic and charismatic; Shah Rukh and Kajol are at their bouncy best, and yes, The Chemistry is there. The cinematography is clever and enjoyable. We particularly liked the scene where the Punjabi maidens flock past a daydreaming Amrish Puri as he slo-mo feeds his pidgeons. The songs have rightfully become classics, with the above Tujhe Dekha even making a comical appearance in Shah Rukh's later film, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna - except this time it's his son who assures Simran that he's coming. Our only criticism is for showing us this land of wonders which contrasts so painfully with our plain ol' reality.

Veer-Zaara (2004)

Bahut accha!

Veer-Zaara is the story of Veer (Shah Rukh Khan) and Zaara (Preity Zinta), he is Indian and she, Pakistani. Their predictably improbable romance begins when he (a rescue pilot) descends as from heaven to pull her out of the wreckage of a spectacular bus crash. She was on her way to Kiritpur, a small town in the Indian region of the Punjab, and he - also on his way deep into the heart of the Punjab - was going home for the Lodi festival. They spend a few days together, and we discover that the Punjab is apparently Elysium, full of colorfully-garbed, happy Sikhs who frolic through fields and sing. Thanks to Zaara's feisty chutzpah and Veer's look of blue steel, the two youngsters inevitably fall in love. The patriarch and matriarch of Bollywood, Amitabh Bachchan and Hema Malini, enter to give their seal of approval and a colorful song follows. And yea, all is well in the world.


First date.


We approve!


The best song! This is the best quality we could find, sorree.

Until, of course, things go awry. Zaara, the daughter of a prominent Pakistani politician, has already been promised to the son of another politician in a marriage of convenience. As her father makes clear, the entire future of the family name and his career hinges on her being a good wife to this other dude, Raza (no pressure or anything). Veer and Zaara are thus divided and, after two tearful scenes of departure accompanied by a beautifully evocative Lata Mangeshkar song, they go their separate ways - she back to Pakistan and into the arms of Raza the Frigid, and he back to India. Unsurprisingly he is stopped at the border by policemen (actually, Raza's henchmen) who accuse him of being an Indian spy. Raza steps out of the shadows to give him a choice: either deny the accusation and besmirch Zaara's spotless, virgin name, or keep your mouth shut and ensure a pleasantly uneventful life for her while you go to prison. Veer chooses the latter (what love!) and spends twenty-two years in a small, dark cell in Lahore.


In prison.


Still in prison. Can't get no haircutz.

Enter Saamiya (Rani Mukherjee), a feisty and empowered lawyer who also has the unprofessional tendency to cry during her client's sob stories. Much like the priest in Amadeus, Saamiya spends most of the film setting up the flash backs, allowing the decrepit, trembling Veer to recount his melodramatic life story. The last half-hour of the film becomes a court drama, as Saamiya manages to strike blows for women's empowerment and human rights law, all the while orchestrating the inevitable conclusion wherein the elderly Veer and Zaara are finally reunited. Oh-pah! And before you ask, yes, we cried like a big, fat baby.


Superlawyer, big heart included.

The director of this film, Yash Chopra, is known as the master of romance in Bollywood. Like Lata Mangeshkar, he's been making these films for decades and so you're guaranteed a good level of quality. A story as painfully cliché and trite as this one could have been seriously mishandled by someone else, but Chopra presents the story so efficiently and smartly that we even caught ourselves thinking, "This is the best Romeo and Juliet adaptation we've ever seen!" (It's not really an adaptation, it was just that good at what it did.)

Part of the film's success can also be attributed to the leads' charisma. We all know how magnetically charming Shah Rukh Khan can be as a young man, and how satisfyingly melodramatic he can be as an old man. Weep, my child, weep! But Preity Zinta matched and even outdid him in terms of sheer force of personality. Yay for girl power. In fact, that's where the Romeo and Juliet parallels come in - apart from the whole insta-star-cross'd lovers from the wrong sides of a divide, they also have that same mix of forceful confidence and helpless vulnerability. They are just bad-ass, 's all we're sayin'.

The music is all lovely, and the songs in the Punjab are particularly enchanting. Can such a paradise really exist?! Amitabh Bachchan brings his usual colorful booty-shaking to the role of the fun-lovin', rough-yet-kind, boozin' patriarch of rural development, and we just want to say, "Let the man dance!"

Our only criticism is the phenomenal final song, Tere Liye, is basically ruined by one, major mistake Chopra made. We're not posting it, it was so bad, but you can dare to watch it yourself. You'll see what we mean. Oy vey.

In the meantime, the best song.


The bit when the 'ghosts' sing to each lover is genius. GENIUS.

The Pakistani girl, the Indian boy.

Read a better-informed review, listen to the soundtrack, or just ogle Shah Rukh Khan.

(Oh yeah, and our favorite bit was as the credits rolled, and the elderly Veer-Zaara frolicked through the Punjab, reunited at last, with Veer looking disconcertingly like a kindly hobo. Awww. Oh yeah, again, and there's another excellent use of Sufi qawwalis during one scene; look out for it.)

Omkara (2006)

The bad-ass trailer.

Vishal Bhardwaj's Bollywoodized Othello-remake, Omkara, is a strutting, masculine ride through the raunch and jealousies of men, and the havoc these men wreak on the woman who love them. More hypnotic and spacious than his previous Shakespearean joyride, the moody Maqbool, Omkara is set in the 'Wild West of India', the region of Uttar Pradesh. Perhaps Bhardwaj has a fascination with the lawless, but once again Shakespeare has been teleported into a criminal organization. This time, it's the rootin' tootin' gang of Omkara (Ajay Devgan), second banana and chief thug to Boss Bhaisaab (an eerie Naseeruddin Shah).


The sweaty, raunchy, boozed up dance party.

Omkara has two lieutenants of his own: the grimy and thick Langda (Saif Ali Khan), and the boyish and also thick Kesu (Viveik Oberoi). When Bhaisaab wins a seat in Parliament (shudder at the thought), he nominates Omkara to be official Crime Boss, leaving Omkara then to pick his General. Or Captain. Or whatever, we don't really understand the military metaphors. Anyway, if you know Shakespeare's original, you know that Omkara picks Kesu over Langda, much to Langda's chagrin. Langda then decides that the only way he can ease the pain of rejection is by destroying everything that is beautiful around him. Namely, the illicit love story between "half-caste" Omkara and his (presumably full-caste) fiancee, Dolly (Kareena Kapoor).

What follows is a train crash, protracted over nearly three hours. If you know the original, you know what to expect and, inevitably, you sit in grim anticipation as Langda manipulates Omkara's jealousies and creates an imagined world of sweaty adultery. If you've never seen the original, let's just say things don't really work out.


The haunting romantic melody. Doomed indeed.

Ajay Devgan is stiff and lumbering as the Othello character. But he does what he's supposed to, which is smolder for two hours, and then briefly weep. Likewise Kareena Kapoor is just Holy and Spotless enough that we feel genuinely sorry for her end, even though we didn't like her throughout the film. The milk and coal joke certainly seems... erm, apropos.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of Omkara is how amazing Saif Ali Khan is as Iago. Iago is generally a difficult character to play; too easily he becomes a charicature of the devil, all cackles and twirling black moustaches and no depth whatsoever. What Saif manages to do, even with the prototypical Shakespearean device of a bad leg, is invest Iago with a sort of sinister depth. Here is a man who hates himself, and, by natural extension, everyone around him. We at the PPCC don't like Saif Ali Khan at all, or thought we didn't, but now... Hmmm. He was certainly the only one, apart from Naseer, who was willing to look positively ugly for the film, what with his yellow teeth and lurching gait. And there's a tragic undercurrent to his behavior, a genuine and justifiable pain at being the loyal servant too-often overlooked.

Stream the lovely soundtrack.

Throne of Blood (1957)

Oh, the universal Bard. First, Will took a trip to modern-day India. There, he rubbed elbows with the "I wear my sunglasses at night" kingpins of Bombay's criminal underworld. And we were much entertained and impressed. Now Will's taken a trip to fuedal Japan, and he's put the brain of Macbeth into the head of Toshiro Mifune. Oh, this monochromatic tale has set off multicolor fireworks in our aesthetic pleasure center. Someone hide our joy before we implode!



We used to have samurai action figures very similar to these.

"What does that mean?!" you demand. We don't know. It's been a long day.

And it's been a very Macbethy month. Just a week ago we reviewed the Indian adaptation, Maqbool, which we thought was a clever reinterpretation of the bloody Scottish tale. Now we've come to review Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece, Throne of Blood, a more straightforward, but also much more strikingly beautiful, adaptation.



Shakespeare's fog! Check.


The Mac and his Lady. Check.

Instead of Castle Dunsinane in Scotland or Abbaji's mansion in Bombay, we're in Cobweb Castle somewhere in a very foggy region of Japan. Macbeth is called Washizu (Toshiro Mifune), his best buddy Banquo is Miki (Akira Kubo), and there's only one witch (Chieko Naniwa). The story follows the original very closely; in fact, the only thing that's missing is, well, the English language and the Scottish dress. Everything else is the same, par for par.

Fresh from victorious battle, Washizu and Miki ride triumphantly back to Cobweb Castle. They get lost in the aptly-named Cobweb Forest and, after a lot of horses neighing and fog rolling, they come upon a very creepy androgynous type person who sits spinning thread (spinning fate, dare we say!) and singing in a drone. Clearly we have met a witch. The other two must be on a lunch break. The lone witch lays the prophesying smackdown: Washizu, you'll soon be master of Cobweb Castle (cackle), but Miki's sons will inherit it (wheeze). A riddle! Uh oh.



CREEPY.


Washizu and Miki, chilling.

Washizu and Miki go, "HA HA HA!" in all-too-transparently-false bravado. They ride back to the Castle and try to shake it off. But it's hard for Washizu to shake anything off, especially when his Ice Queen of a wife (Isuzu Yamada) keeps filling his head with evil plots full of ambition and blood. Washizu tries the "lay off me, woman!" routine, but his manly resolve fails, and sooner rather than later he's holding a blood-stained spear in his hands, and the King is dead. Double uh oh.



You're crazy.

A note on Macbeth: it tends to peak early. The best bits, in our opinion, are the ones when Macbeth and Banquo are riding around, heads filled with frightful notions of what might be and what it means. Will Mac let fate take its course? Or will he change it, ruthlessly, and inevitably condemn himself? For us, the climax is when Macbeth kills the King and stumbles back to his wife with hands covered in blood.

MACBETH: Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep', the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast,--

LADY MACBETH: What do you mean?

MACBETH: Still it cried 'Sleep no more!' to all the house:
'Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.'

Ooh, we love it. Panic! Panic! Exciting! The rest of the play just watches the sad degeneration of the Mac and his Lady as they fall further into despair and craziness. By the last scene, we're usually like, end it. End it now. Ugghhh.

Throne of Blood, however, manages to maintain that giggly horrorshow excitement of the beginning throughout the entire film. For this reason alone, we were very impressed. The end, where we have been known to get impatient and glance at our watch in other productions, was so surprisingly scary that we almost started screaming along with Toshiro.

As the protagonists, Toshiro Mifune and Isuzu Yamada are wonderful at conveying the precarious sanity which make Mac and the Missus so uniquely who they are. What a couple! And it's interesting that Kurosawa chose to portray their love as something so cold and, well, nonexistent (Macbeth seems more scared of his wife than he was of the witch!); usually the Mac and his Lady are passionate hotheads. Instead, these two speak through powerful stares and meaningful silences. It makes everything feel cold, inhuman, and yeah, pretty awkward. Their transformations then, are especially creepy, as they essentially go it alone. (In other productions, it's like, at least they have each other!) Mifune's Washizu goes from a boastful, charismatic military commander to a wild-eyed and desperate loon. The final scene, especially, was amazing. Yamada's Lady Washizu slow mutation from calculating to mentally shattered was equally disconcerting.



Calculating. No problem.


Shattered. Many problems!
In terms of imagery, the film is beautiful. But we expect nothing less from Kurosawa-san! We were even happy to see it was black and white; everything took on this fascinatingly textured appearance, and we ended up marvelling at the shiny scales of Washizu's armor, the silk sheen of Lady Washizu's kimono, the polished wood of the interiors. Very pretty.

Conclusion: Required viewing for any self-respecting esthete.

Maqbool (2003)

Point the First: We at the PPCC love our Shakespeare, oh yes. We like him medium cooked, well done, rare. We like him in Scottish kilts with buckets of theatre gore, or we like him in geisha outfits twirling his dainty umbrella. We like him old, we like him new, we like him sad, we like him happy. Huzzah.

Point the Next One: Our favorite plays by the Bard are Macbeth (for tragedy) and Much Ado About Nothing (for comedy). Our favorite screen adaptations are Akira Kurosawa's Ran for images and Kenneth Branagh's Henry V for words.

Point the Third: We love it when Bollywood meets Shakespeare. King Lear, anyone?

Point the Point: We have now added Maqbool, Vishal Bharadwaj's Bollyartsy interpretation of Macbeth, as one of our favorite screen adaptations. We have also now decided that Maqbool is the best Indian movie ever (for real, this time).


The Mac and his Lady.

You can often judge a good Mac-daptation by how the witches are presented. If they cackle out stereotypes and toss plastic frogs into a steaming cauldron, you're probably watching a pretty bad version. If they dress all in black, don't say any lines and perform interpetative dance, get out of the theatre now. Or enjoy it, who knows. Anyway, the witches set the mood and are very important. In Maqbool, Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri play the witches as two corrupt Hindu cops who like astrology and randy jokes. Yes, we were bought and sold right there.


Statler and Waldorf share yet another embarrassingly vulgar joke.

The movie opens as the play does: rather than gloomy Scotland, we're in the grimy underworld of Bombay, where the power structure is shifting. Two cops (the witches; Naseer and Om) proclaim that the stars are good and then kill a young man from the "rival" criminal organization. With that, Abbaji (King Duncan; Pankaj Kapur) now reigns as crime boss supreme. His second in command is the brooding Maqbool (Macbeth; Irfan Khan), his wife is the much younger Nimmi (Lady Macbeth; Tabu). Nimmi has the hots for Maqbool, and she is both shameless and desperate in her attempts to rope him in. He resists, but doesn't really. One evening, Maqbool and his friend Kaka (Banquo; Piyush Mishra) invite the cops over for some thank-you booze and horoscopes; Panditji (Om Puri) draws a diagram on the floor using mango chutney and proclaims that Maqbool will be a "king of kings", whereas Kaka will father a line of them. Uh oh.


Don Abbaji.


Things degenerate.

As any Macbeth-fan knows, what follows is a bloodbath wherein Maqbool, driven by Nimmi's urging, kills Abbaji and then must confront both his rivals for the throne and his own escalating paranoia. Banquo's ghost shows up at dinner, Lady Macbeth can't get the blood off her hands (face, in this case). It all ends, well, badly... except for the witches/cops, who have the satisfaction of seeing every detail they predicted fall neatly into place. You can read the original here.


Nimmi/Lady M in a rare moment of happiness.

When we heard about this Bombay crime adaptation of Macbeth, we thought, "OK, that should be fun." But we never imagined how interesting it would be as well. A fellow blogger mentioned the fascinating religious dichotomy in the story: Maqbool, Abbaji and the gangsters are all very actively Muslim, while the witches are very actively Hindu. As Prof. Singh says:

Moreover, the casting of a Pandit in the role of Shakespeare's witches (though you only see the connection if you know Shakespeare's play) balances the equation a bit. For Bhardwaj, Hindu astrology is akin to witchcraft; Islam is the normative belief-system.

We at the PPCC, who have no means of picking up on these cultural reference points unless they're painfully obvious, are always very interested in learning more about South Asian culture and especially better understanding its artistic output. In fact, we had another wonderful moment of cultural illumination in the first song of the film. In it, Maqbool and Nimmi are walking to the mosque, where they will meet the rest of the mobsters (who chose to drive). The song has beautifully romantic lyrics (We stand face to face/Oh worship of my eyes/Grant me this favor/That when I fall at your feet/May I never rise again/May my life run its course), so we went, "Wow, hey passion." Then, when the characters sat down to listen to the closing verse, we realized it was a qawwali ghazal, so the song was actually one of those devotional Sufi songs in secular disguise! What glee when we figured this out! And what a smart, contextual choice!


The song itself. Pardon the jumpy video.

The movie also manages to capture the bleakness and intensity of Shakespeare's original. Partly this is owed to Irfan Khan and Tabu's performances. Irfan's Maqbool is a ticking time bomb of barely-contained violence, always surpising us with his explosions. Tabu does a very good job of showing us Nimmi's somewhat precarious mental stability already early on in the film, this makes her transition to the crazy Lady M of the Second Act seamless and believably creepy. If we have one criticism regarding the performances, we thought Pankaj Kapur's Abbaji was a little too Marlon Brando with his cinema-gangster affectations, whispy voice included. Naseer and Om are lovely as the ever-present witches; they seemed to enjoy it too, playing them as two randy old best friends who are shamelessly cowardly (basically Statler and Waldorf meet R2D2 and C3PO). And we like it when they're friends in movies, it makes us feel fuzzy inside.


This is the same couple that literary critic Harold Bloom called the one of the only "really in love" lovers of Shakespeare.

Stream the soundtrack!