Thought crucible

OK, notwithstanding the immense, mostly unfounded criticism by my friends in college, I thought I had to make this (rather long) point :) . Has the cinematography hit such a stunning pinnacle that the audience comes to expect similar performances from something like the white wall face of Ash? Surely, histrionics is the hinge to good Cinema, but can’t we – just for the sake of a brilliant story-teller agree to look over the expressionless and mind-numbing performances?! In all the brouhaha about ‘confused script’, ‘lame story-telling’, ‘expected ending’- have we chosen to forget what to expect and what to neglect when it comes to appreciating cinema. And I call it cinema and not a movie. You can expect a movie to have sudden twists, unexpected endings, and all the now-rather-cliched tricks of the trade. But Good Cinema – well it deals with the simplest of plots and what is crucial here is the way it is narrated. I agree there were blotches in the screenplay that could have been avoided...

There was once a just king by the name Rama and there was an evil king by the name Ravana. Rama kills Ravana and saves Sita. Now thats the Ramayana for you and me. Well, the genius of Mani Ratnam meets a rather subdued perspective of the Ramayana in an epic called Ravan. A perspective that echoes the same sentiment as the temple dedicated to Ravana in one of the many unusual temples that adorn this country. A perspective where Soorapanaka was considered a beauty that was unparalleled by anyone. A perspective that recognises the various Grays of Good and Bad - just like the artistic appeal of the can of white that mixes with the sea of Black in the opening credits for this 5 starrer entertainer. Set in the backdrop of stunning tribal locales, the opening scenes seem to reflect the chilling horrors of the recent Naxal massacre of the Men in Khakhi. Beera (Abhishek Bachchan) plays the eccentric dark protag, who dares to kidnap the belowed dancer wife of Dev(Vikram) - Raagini (Aishwarya Ra...

Bibek Sabharwal was tried in Finland and as the ever merciful courts of that country pronounced a death sentence, more than one prayer was answered. As the judges and jury and the grand army of conscience keepers listened to the chilling tales of pure terror, atheists believed in Devil. After gouging out the eyes of the young women, he delivered a psychotic account of the problem statement. And the statement was not merely a concoction of constraints and freedoms in a fixed set of physical dimensions. The statement as they said, would help crossing ancient barriers of understanding across a wide range of research areas. The solution lay not in the objective abstracts of Maths, Geometry and Space, but in an inward journey. He then tortured out an account of the inner landscapes the prostitute and the actress saw. It isn't sure how coherent or even truthful they were, but the Devil would have surely known the tricks. And as these vivid descriptions had spewed forth, he had seen a sol...

The Finnish papers had screamed how gruesome the death of Riika Haikkinen was. The blue eyes of the mother of one-year-old Kimi had been gouged out as the hollow spaces of her once beautiful face screeched of morbidity. The efforts of Olaf and the Polissi had paid off as the as yet undecomposed body and pale body of the young actress lay in the frigid depths of Scandinavia. The press traversed annals of national well-being and literary successes to dig out the files of Elya Linnanein - a teenage prostitute murdered in the same horrifying manner as Riika. Surely the recent developments pointed fingers to someone other than Elya's greedy pimp. I could see the dark side of what they call human psyche when the august presence of Bibek Sabharwal made itself known at the reception of Mysore Mallige - my humble motel among the thousand lakes in Finland. My mother's sixth sense about me possessing one had proved horrifyingly right as I stared at the stone cold body of Elya Linnanein. T...

Except for that glint of silver in the overcast skies, all was bleak and dull at the university gates. Prof. Bibek Sabharwal had returned after his hiatus at the turquoise lakes in the Scandinavian snow. Millions of eyes lay fixated on the noisy feed from the few good men fortunate to have arrived at the hallowed gates on knowing that Sabharwal had made a rather covert landing in the wee hours of that sleepy Sunday morning. In another couple of hours, satellites would spew out HDTV data with detailed stories, as Dr. Sabharwal would peel out another layer of that 'Third Eye'. "Get out of my way! Scoundrels!", yelled the octogenarian at the inane cameraman who had dared to step on the 1940 'Welcome' jute mat he and his late wife had bought during their honeymoon. "You filthy bastards can't wait for another two hours when you have waited for an eternity and six months?!". The dazed cameraman withdrew to puffs of A-1 and Kulla Kulli BDs as superior e...