Must've been the second or third year of college. I'd chanced upon 'An Officer and a Gentleman' and 'Terms Of Endearment' in quick succession and had promptly fallen in love with Debra Winger. Now, as I sit watching 'Terms Of Endearment' once again, I realise that not all youthful crushes are flippant.
Could be her throaty voice (as if she were seeing off a cold) or could be her unassuming manner (the way she squats in the garden in one of the opening scenes), Ms Winger has you at Hello. But of course, what really really gets you is her elusive strain of joie de vivre. Mind, it's the elusive strain I mention; the strain that is significant and ingrained, not the garden variety which comes plastered in perkiness and flaky optimism. Exhibit 1: Check out the scene where her estranged husband visits her in the hospital. The dying woman lights up merely because he's wearing the tie she'd gifted him just after their marriage. 'God, you're so easy to please,' he(Jeff Daniels) tells her. Your eyes kind of wet up when he adds, somewhat ruefully, 'I wish I'd done it more often.' In fact, so loveable is Winger's character that when you see her having this little fling outside of marriage, all you can do is smile indulgently.
 
And that's what the movie is primarily about. It's a tale of characters with imperfections and of imperfect circumstances; a tale about the great imperfectness that is life itself. And just like life, the tale magically manages those difficult vacillations between the heart-wrenchingly tragic and the uproariously comic & frivolous.
 
Helping the tale unwind are some stellar performances. There's the inimitable Shirley Maclaine(Winger's mother, who ticks off her son-in-law with 'one of the nicest qualities about you has always been that you recognized your weaknesses. Don't lose that quality now, just when you need it the most!') and there's quintessential Jack Nicholson('there's something about your manner,' Maclaine tells him, 'it's like you're trying to toy with me.'). There's also a six year old who should've got the Oscar for best supporting actor that year. It's a treat to watch that four minute performance where he's seeing his dying mother for the last time and his shifty eyes are fraught with apprehension that his elder brother might create a scene.
 
As I said, stellar performances all around.
 
The movie has one flaw though. Somewhere towards the beginning, Shirley Maclaine warns her daughter against marrying Jeff Daniels. "You're not special enough to overcome a bad marriage," she says. Though it's a beautiful line - for it tells of a quality (a quality other than callousness) which supposedly assists people overcome bad marriages - mother couldn't have been more wrong. Because if bad marriages could at all be overcome, it is precisely people like her daughter who'd be able to do so.

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(streaming on Netflix)
A movie from the house of Charlie Kaufman, the man who gave us such gems as Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. So yes, in this movie too, the canvas is the human mind and the dominant colour is the one that’s Kaufman’s favourite: human connection. What’s different though are the brush strokes, i.e., the treatment of the movie. So different is the treatment, and so different is the experience it leaves you with, that it becomes futile for a reviewer to parse the plot or to prise open the characters.
As a character says in the movie, “People like to think of themselves as points moving through time, but I think it’s probably the opposite. We’re stationary and time passes through us.”
I guess the ITOET experience is much the same. We don’t wade through the various sections of the movie. The movie as a whole wades through us. It leaves you not with the memory of a sequence of events but with amorphous impressions of them. Impressions that at a later time come to life on their own and invite their own trains of thought.
Take for example these musings by a key character, “I think what I want is for someone to know me. Really know me. Know me better than anyone else, maybe even me. Isn't that why we commit to another? It's not for sex......This kind of relationship is harder to achieve than one built on biology and shared genetic.”
The question that arises is, WHY this desire? Why so pronounced this need to be understood? Is it merely for the basking in the comfort of someone’s empathy? Or could it be more? Could it be that when someone understands us well, we begin to understand ourselves even better? And since understanding and knowing oneself is usually a prerequisite for spiritual evolvement, the need to be understood may well be a genetically programmed one.
In another part of the movie the protagonist ruminates about Newton’s first law of emotion. Just like a body in motion tends to stay in motion, she asserts, we tend to stay in relationships even when they’re way past their expiry date.
But wait......let me expound no further. I mean, why impose my own impressions and thoughts upon the would-be movie goer. Instead, let me just spill the climax to you.
The climax is a surreal dream sequence. This dream embodies all that the protagonist has ever aspired for. Hence, not only does our man receive the Physics Nobel, he also gets to use Russel Crowe’s acceptance speech from ‘A beautiful mind.’ But that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is the audience. Seated among them are our guy’s wife, his mother, AND, the three girls from the neighbourhood ice-cream parlour who used to be mean to him. This trio that routinely mocked him is now applauding him and looking up at him with awe.
Hell, the sort of people our subconscious wants to get even with !

Instance 1:
Miss Julia (Kangana Ranaut) is getting ready to go on stage for a performance when she learns that her makeup-man is missing. He was swept away by the river while trying to save her belongings during an enemy attack. 'Zulfi,' she bemoans. She was genuinely fond of him. People around her try to comfort her but it's all to no avail. 'Zulfi,' she keeps uttering. Then her to-be husband joins in and more cajoling follows and then suddenly in the middle of this chatter about how the show must go on she abruptly asks, 'लेकिन मैं पहनूँगी क्या?'
 
Instance 2:
Julia and Nawab(Shahid Kapoor) were lost in a jungle and while finding their way out of it, they fell in love. However, once they're back in camp, Julia behaves as if nothing has happened between them. She summons him to her quarters one evening to tell him 'तुम्हें इस तरह मेरा फ़ायदा नहीं उठाना चाहिए था।' Nawab bursts into a small, involuntary laugh before he answers 'ग़लती हो गयी,माफ़ कर दीजिए'
 
Wonderfully revealing, the responses in both instances. Their spontaneity brings to mind the EM Forster line 'How can I know what I think till I see what I say?"

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Dr House’s best friend – the staid and conscientious oncologist, Dr Wilson – has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He’s been given five months to live and he decides to spend them leading a meaningful life. But since Wilson's life till now has already been about giving, caring, and searching for the profound, he figures that the only way to infuse more meaning into his life is by stripping away that very meaning from it. He hence decides to embrace selfishness, indifference, and all things shallow.
 
The insentient House is hardly moved by this change when Wilson tells him of it. He nonchalantly makes a pert remark and limps away. ‘Staring death in the face has changed my life is such a cliché’, says he.
 
So Wilson buys a shiny new Corvette and they (he and House) take off on a road-trip to meet his childhood crush. Enroute, they stop over for lunch at a diner. Hardly is House done perusing the menu when Wilson - who’s trying to act uncharacteristically impulsive – decides to order the ‘big one’. This is an 80 ounce steak which costs 79 dollars. The catch is that you get it for free if you can finish it in an hour. Such is the aura of the ‘big one’ that all dining heads swerve towards Wilson when the waitress shouts ‘one big one’s up’.
 
The next cut jumps to a scene where a crowd’s gathered around Wilson. It’s the usual potboiler stuff. Wilson’s looking done and exhausted, the crowd’s chanting his name, the timer’s running , and there’s still some steak left on the plate. But as expected, Wilson finishes the steak in time. It’s of course another matter that he right away pukes it out.
 
House, ever the bastard, teases the cancer patient on chemo about how nice it must be to puke for old-fashioned reasons.
 
And this is when Wilson comes up with these measured words; words which could well be the soliloquy that the whole episode was leading towards. ‘I'm glad I did it,' he says, ‘You see those people out there cheering for me? I was a hero. For one fleeting moment, for an incredibly stupid reason, for a bunch of morons who don’t matter to me; I was a hero. God, it felt good.’
 
God! I do wish these House guys weren’t so stark and cruel with their parables. 

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What great authors spend reams in trying to express, Bollywood often conveys in a single phrase. Sample this........
 
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Ideating on similar lines about how the material world is not quite the real thing, a philosophical Sunny Leone tells us...) "ये दुनिया पित्तल दी "
 
"The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night."
– Henry Longfellow
"अगर रात को जागना है, तो अभी सो लें"
Amitabh, in Sholay
 
“Sometimes I speak to men and women just as a little girl speaks to her doll. She knows, of course, that the doll does not understand her, but she creates for herself the joy of communication through a pleasant and conscious self-deception.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
"या रब वो न समझे हैं न समझेंगे मेरी बात,
दे और दिल उनको जो न दे मुझको ज़ुबाँ और।"
Rakesh Bedi to Deepti Naval, in Chashme Baddoor
 
"Helen, thy beauty is to me,
Like those Nicéan barks of yore.
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore,
To his own native shore."
-Edgar Allan Poe
"लड़की, हमें अपना दोस्त समझो"
'नारंग' to Zeenat Aman, in Don
 
"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour."
-William Blake
"ता थैया ता थैया हो, ता थैया ता थैया हो"
Jeetendra, in Himmatwala
 
 
 

A review of Bimal Roy’s Devdas invariably tends to feature a comparison with the newer version. This is unfair on two counts. One, Roy’s movie is remarkable in its own right. And two, it is anyway unfair to compare Bimal Da to the confectioner Bhansali – the man whose idea of movie-making is to erect garish sets confirming to a colour scheme, and then filling them up with such scripts and actors as may cross his path.
 
Now inasmuch as a movie tells us about its auteur, it also informs us of the times in which he lived (if not by truly mirroring the mores of those times, then by implicitly informing on the audience which it catered to). So on the one hand Devdas is about its dignity and self-assuredness, on the other it’s about the leisurely pace with which things transpire in the background. For eg, when Devdas is leaving after a two day stay in Calcutta, he hands over some money to his friend. ‘ये रुपय रखो।जिनके देने हैं, दे देना। बाक़ी नौकरों में बाँट देना।' We’re thus transported to a time when things were just beginning to get transactional. Though one obviously did accept money for goods & services rendered, it was done by means of a deferred payment. I guess that kept the whole thing from looking like a deal. भद्रलोक से पैसा लिया नहीं जाता था, उनके यहाँ से पैसा आ जाता था।
 
Then there’s the famed meeting between Paaro and Chandramukhi. No, we don’t have a ‘Dhola re’, as the original novel too doesn’t mention any such encounter whatsoever. But to accentuate the connect between the two women, Bimal Da comes up with a scene par excellence. No words are spoken between the ladies, their glances stay languidly drawn out, there’s no awareness in any of them of the other’s identity, and the background score is lush with chants accompanied by some really soulful music. It’s the kind of scene that stays with you for a long time.
 
And finally there’s the cast. We have Kanhaiyalal(Sukhilala from Mother India, who when told ‘कुत्ते की मौत मरोगे लाला’, had replied with total sang-froid ‘हाँ हाँ , तो कुत्ता भी तो भगवान का बनाया एक जीव है ’) and we have a young Iftekhar(‘young Iftekhar’ might actually be an oxymoron, for Ifty, like Nirupa Roy and Ashok Kumar, somehow managed to straightaway sublimate from boyhood to middle-age.) We also have Motilal, perhaps the only person who could have played the part of Chunnilal (anyone less frivolous wouldn’t have fitted the role, and anyone less dignified wouldn’t have qualified as a friend to Devdas.) But most important of all, we have Dilip Kumar; amazing throughout the movie but more so in two particular shots. One, when he’s taking the final leave of Chandramukhi. The scene’s charged with emotion (so much emotion in fact that just reading that scene in the script must’ve sent the hamming SRK into orgasmic ecstasy.) And yet, DK chooses to deliver those lines in very plain fashion. What transpires needs to be watched. A description is best not attempted.
 
The second outstanding scene is the first meeting between a grown-up Devdas and Paro. Yet again, the emotion is palpable only through body language. If in the previously described scene it is the tone which was seemingly ordinary, here, it is the words. Words that are meaningful and redundant at the same time. Imagine, the first sentence that he says to his lady love after all these years is ‘क्या हो रहा है?’
 
Poignant question that. A question which a lot many movie-makers would do well to ask themselves.

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You ask me to write a tribute to Saeed Jaffery, Himanshu Gupta, even though you’re totally aware of the injustice  I’ll wreak upon that fine actor’s versatility; that I’ll make just a passing mention of the flamboyant Suri saab from Masoom; that Kunj Mausa will be but a mere reference; that there'll be an attempt to forego Gandhi altogether; why, I’ll even keep Mir Roshan Ali confined to the sidelines (with full knowledge of the fact that in your esteemed view – and in that of Satyajit Ray and Resident sahib – ऐसा करना दानिशमंदी नहीं होगी) And yet, I’ll not succumb to the pressure of painting a complete picture. Why, you ask? Well partly because I know that if the affable Mr Jaffery were alive, he would forgive my omissions, quite in the manner that he forgave Sanjeev Kumar's (आपने इतनी शतरंज की बाज़ियाँ हमसे जीतीं और हमने कभी चूँ तक ना करी, और आज हम एक बाज़ी क्या जीत गए....). But as I said, that’s just part of the reason. The plain truth is that we (both you and I) are simply incapable of looking beyond Lallan Miyan.
                                             
Of course , our myopia isn’t helped any by that disproportionate bias which we hold for Chashme Buddoor( I say ‘disproportionate’ not to undervalue Sai Paranjpe’s genius, but to account for the Delhi that she depicts; the Delhi we’ve over the years come to ‘assume’ as the Delhi of our college years). And Lallan Miyan, needless to say, is an integral part of that Delhi and that Chashme Buddoor. Hell! I can’t even recount how many of his dialogues we've appropriated into our day-to-day jargon. There are those which we use in the original context because age has brought with it a certain amount of stoicism (पर ख़ुश रहो! ख़ुश रहो क्यूँकि बिनके इरादे नेक हैं); and then there are those which are employed out-of-context because that stoicism which age has brought isn’t quite adequate (और क़सम इस बीती जवानी की, इस दिल ने भी एक ठंडी सी आह भरली). And who can forget Lallan miyan’s ‘ये देख!’ – the way he gleams as he shows-off his recently acquired corny-looking lamp(Is it me or did Uttam really use that phrase when he was showing us his president’s medal for gallantry?)
Bur mere dialogues do not define the domain of Lallan Miyan. I recall the time from college when one of my misdemeanours had spiralled out of control and made its way into public knowledge. Chhotu, our custom-bike riding colourful dhobi, had come up to me and offered ‘चिंता मत करना झा साहब। ज़रूरत पड़ी तो आपके लिए जान लड़ा देंगे'. So earnest, so outrageous, and so Lallan Miyan–like was that offer that I’d not been offended by the unsolicited assistance. I’d in fact smiled back to him with a ‘चिंता की कोई बात नहीं छोटू। और हाँ, ज़रूरत पड़ने पर तुम्हारी जान बक़ायदा ली जाएगी’
और देखिए! आज लल्लन मियाँ की जान सचमुच जाती रही।
खुदा आपकी रूह को सुकून बक्शे ज़ाफरी साहब. You’ve brought much joy in many a life. And as Oscar Wilde says somewhere in de Profundis, men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that.

This Amitabh starrer is best known for one-liners that sit pretty even in contexts not originally intended. Sample this.

Narang introducing himself to Zeenat Aman with 'ladki, humein apna dost samjho'. Now given the sublime abruptness of that line, what are the odds that these weren't the very words with which Amit Shah inducted Ms Bedi into his party?

Or consider, Pran saying to Iftekhar ' mein tumse itni nafrat nahi karta jitni apne bachchon se mohabbat karta hun.' Hate to say it in the run-up to Valentine's, but can't help wondering how many spouses draw solace from that statement.

And of course, there's this classic facade of a supposedly eventful youth - a facade behind which mundane middle-age usually hides. Amitabh saying to Iftekhar 'Pehle ki baat aur hai inspector sahib, Pehle darr nahi lagta tha. Lekin ab Deepu hai, Munni hai....'
(And what would have happened if Deepu and Munni weren't there you ask ? Well, in the words of the inimitable Pran sahab 'Doosra bekaar sawaal.')

In this holi-songs parade meant to fathom the fairest of them all, a friend and I find ourselves rooting for the same candidate. Yes, the Oscar goes to Mother India. The song: होली आइ रे कन्हाई रंग बरसे
Sample this excerpt:
छूटे ना रंग ऐसी रंग दे चुनरिया
धोबनिया धोये चाहे सारी उमरिया
मोहे भाये ना हरजाई मोहे भाये ना
मोहे भाये ना हरजाई रंग हलके
सुना दे ज़रा बांसरी
What’s it about these plain and earthy lyrics that makes them so endearing, I ask the friend. ‘उस समय लोग हिंदी में लिखते थे,’ he replies very matter-of-factly. And even though my first reaction is to nit-pick upon that answer on technical grounds, I’m not able to. The unassuming profundity of those words has me in its grasp soon enough.
Indeed, not only was the language of those times a language easily understood, it was also a language that filled in the gaps in our understanding. And thus began a tradition where film-song lyrics provided articulation to that which we wanted to say but could not entirely express. They became the ventriloquist to the dummy that was our ineffable emotion. They were the sparkplug to the gas-charge of pent-up sentiment (most easily set-off by the electrical signal of drunken joviality .) Why, songs even began to 'manufacture' sentiment. Take for example the melancholy drenched ‘दिल जलता है तो जलने दे’. It allowed one to wallow in the grief of an imagined heartbreak from the imagined unfaithfulness of an imagined girlfriend. Or take ‘कभी ख़ुद पे कभी हालात पे रोना आया’. Where else were you permitted to bask in the glory of being a loser?
But I guess all that is over now. For a generation that knows what it wants - and is more forthright in demanding it - where’s the need for assisted articulation? So lyrics today have become mere addendums set to a blaring music. And it appears that the sole purpose of that blaring music is to obviate the need of a conversation between those listening to it.
Quite right my friend is. आज कल लोग हिंदी में नहीं लिखते।

It’s unfair, the way details in a movie go unnoticed, uninterpreted, and thus, only half appreciated. No, I’m not alluding to the motif of the dancing and the kava-sipping twins. That’s standard fare for anyone raised on a healthy diet of cinema. What I’m alluding to, and doing so with unabashed bias, is the role of Chachaji( Akshay Arora ) - the character that appears little more than a poker face but which is really a rich soup of complex emotions. Primarily, he’s restraint. But the vexation he’s restraint to is not a vexation that’s been subdued by plain self-control. It’s a vexation that’s been tempered by propriety stemming from an innate considerateness(‘सुबह से भूखा प्यासा खड़ा है, किस मिट्टी का बना है ये’ is all he says of the suitor who’s sabotaging his niece’s mehndi ceremony). And then there’s the scene where Chachaji asks Abhishek whether he dons the turban when in London. But when he senses hesitation on Abhishek’s part, Chachaji scurries to change the subject. His transition isn’t a flawless one. The dosage of awkwardness is carefully calibrated to apprise us of the guileless man that he is. छा गए दोस्त! जो खरज के सुर लोग आधी ज़िंदगी फ़िल्में करने के बाद नहीं बुदबुदा पाते, वो तुमने पहली ही फ़िल्म में छेड़ दिए। और यह तो तब है जब ये तुम्हारा पेशा नहीं।
How come I’m so perceptive of (and sensitised to) Chachaji’s expressions? Ah! When you’ve known a man for over 30 years (boarding-school, college years, years thereafter), you tend to become that way; especially when you’ve been regular at eliciting those individual strands of vexation, considerateness, and restraint(sometimes, not in that order).
And now about that other batchmate, Anurag Kashyap. What do I say? It’s tempting to plagiarise on Tarantino’s ‘we’re a great fan of your work’ but I’ll let that pass. Instead, Kashyap, allow me to compliment you on a feat that’s rarely been accomplished in Indian cinema: Extracting a performance from Abhishek Bachchan. I’m sure you’ve brought great succour to his dad’s heart. God knows he deserves it. You know, most of us parents harbour a belief about our kids. ‘दिमाग़ तो इसमें बहुत है। बस, पढ़ाई में दिल नहीं लगता।’ शुक्रिया तुम्हारा कि तुमने बच्चन साहब के बालक का पढ़ाई में दिल लगवाया।
Also, the grapevine has it Kashyap that this is your biggest commercial hit. And while there already may exist an explanations galore for that phenomenon, let’s also try moviespeak.
Schindler’s List. Remember the scene where Schindler tells Emilie about how there was always something missing in all his previous business ventures. And that even if he knew what it was, he could’ve done nothing because that something cannot be created; because that something is what makes all the difference between success and failure.
‘Luck?’ guesses Emilie.
‘War’ he corrects.
‘Luck’ was right too. Because it was ultimately luck that came riding on the shoulders of war. In your case, Kashyap, it would appear that luck came riding on a scooter. I’d say latch on to it. बाक्क़ी त्वाडि मनमर्जियाँ।