"Piku" (Hindi Film Review)

Rarely comes a movie with a starcast, story and narration that draw you out of your zone of mind chatter and then makes a point or two in 125 minutes flat without any formulaic elements of story-telling or even statutory warnings. "Piku" has raised great expectations when Shoojit Sircar, the director of "Vicky Donor" and "Madras Cafe" cast Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone and Irrfan Khan in an improbable combination. Surprise, he delivers with style and aesthetics. And engages you till the end with a screenplay that packs a million emotions, it has a storyline that resonates with most people.

Piku is Deepika Padukone who stays with her seventy-year old father Bhaskar Banerjee (Amitabh Bachchan). Piku is single and a key partner in an architecture firm who never takes a break even as she dates many men in the hope of marrying one day. Amitabh is a hypochondriac old man whose sole problem in life is constipation. He also worries about all the parameters that make old men make weekly trips to diagnostic centers - BP, Sugar, blood count and so on. Deepika and Amitabh argue about health issues and about that over-anxiety about   smoothness in bowel movements that eludes Amitabh till the very end. Piku has an obsession over her father's health habits, her father has a neurotic thing or two about his health and constipation. Both get worked up and miss out on the real fun in life - it takes a toll on Piku's work habits. She calls a regular taxi service to ferry her on work trips but almost always drives the car drivers to bump up.. Enter the owner of the fleet of cars - Irrfan. With the main characters built out like this, an idea comes to both father and daughter to head out for a holiday in homeland Kolkata by road. Irrfan is forced to drive the vehicle because none of the drivers turn up.

 For the next 1500 kilometers of road trip, Irrfan becomes a curious bystander to the intriguing fights, ego-trips, patch-ups and face-offs between the three of them.  Irrfan is a stranger to the family yet he becomes an intruder who negotiates emotions and drives home a perspective or two on what is bugging the twosome. At times, Irrfan also throws tantrums or tramples upon the ego of Amitabh or  holds a mirror to Deepika on the way she has been dealing with her father all these years. Most of the times, the exchange of words between Irrfan and Amitabh is fiery but what Amitabh realises is that Irrfan is dry-cleaning his funeral clothes and making him see ways of getting out of a lot of self-created mess -  mostly in the mind. Shoojit Sircar gives us an unhurried and dispassionate overview of the emotions of millions of Indians as we deal with health issues of aging parents and clueless youth who have their head in the sand on matters of balancing affections with personal goals. Will Amitabh solve his health issues thanks to Irrfan? Does Deepika find a man finally? What is Irrfan's role in both of their lives? Is there a twist in climax? (Hint: There is...) "Piku" takes you on an exhilarating ride of emotions and treatment like never seen before. It is difficult to give a three-act structure to a story that moves out of your living room and back but Sircar pulls it off with  memorable story-telling.

What makes the film stand out is not just the brilliance of all the technical masters - in photography and in music by Anupam Roy but in the aspects of direction and narration and finer subtleties and sensibilities of Bengali households. If you have been closer to a Bengali, you will realise the DNA in their social intercourse - everybody loves good food and roots for their culture but they also have intellectual candour and the abrasiveness of behavior towards each other. Daughter corrects the GK of father, sister-in-law gives it back to her sister's husband, a family tenant talks turkey with her avuncular "owner". In such a "Didi-style" war of words, one wonders why Bengalis rarely inter-marry, keep fighting with each other but bond better overall than many other regions. Sircar captures the essence of an ordinary story and constructs a mesmerising mosaic of human emotions - there are dollops of humor that bring the roof down in almost every scene with every character - sometimes insinuative and mostly  explicit about the motions of the human digestion. For this film, Shoojit farts all his way with the ultimate compilation of jokes and trivia about constipation and all that - that  regales us despite being predictable. Messages that come out of the film are purely accidental, not intentional so Sircar ensures the movie is never preachy and boring. That shot of Deepika Padukone playing  Shuttle Badminton is a paisa-vasool scene.

 Performances by all the three stand out - Amitabh, you don't see him, you only see a Bengali babu who is finicky about his health and self-righteous about everything else. This film is the finest for AB in years  - better than  the flippant experiments of recent years - people will enshrine AB for this role forever for he has truly imbibed the core of a Bengali patriarch. Deepika gives an impressive performance that dovetails her hiterto unexplored dimensions of acting into a complex role. Hiding her emotions, guarding her vulnerability, and hardlining a tough father while letting go when needed - whoa, what a role! Irrfan essays another effortless role as an owner who is at more than one receiving end. He has mastered the art of input-output ratio for an actor - just knows what dosage to give for each scene and yet leave the audience gasping for what is not expressed. His school of acting is quite different from the montony of a Naseerudin Shah or an Anupam Kher. It spawned the likes of Nawazuddinn Siddiqi but Irrfan is a malleable actor who stumps you with new tricks each time. A surprise packet has been Moushimi  Chatterjee - so full of energy and live-wire Bengali goodness and outspoken-ness. She makes her entry in both the halves with  good impact. Raghubeer Yadav as the doctor is also good. Musical output by Roy takes the cinematic experience to new highs. Also the role by the cinematographer - he shows great visuals of the Ganges and the multi-faceted personality of Kolkata but you still cannot miss the sponsor names like Amul milk more than once. But how did he shoot those moving pictures of a car in motion? Haven't seen that in many films and considering the lengthy footage of the travel, it looked authentic - the visuals of the roads. 

Sircar's strength seems  to turn an ordinary story into a fireball that keeps snowballing until you get the main points, in crisp format. No pretensions, no flashbacks, no mundane stuff but taut editing. No wonder, he is done with in 125 minutes. If only the jokes were not just about the stools all the time, this could have been a five-star movie but who cares? This is one of the cleanest movies in recent times and deserves a universal view (Can't understand why a U/A rating was given). If you have parents or not, this film is sure to move you. Most watchable and entertaining.

Rating: 4.5/5

#Piku #PikuReview #AmitabhBachchan #DeepikaPadukone #Irrfan #ShoojitSircar #AnupamRoy #MovieReviews #Bollywood #Bengali #MoushimiChatterjee #Sony #RaghhubirYadav

Parag Parikh - The Doyen of Value Investing In India

Parag Parikh, 61 passed away today after attending the Annual Shareholders' Meeting at Berkshire Hathway. Ironic and tragic. Tragic because he was about to board a plane waiting for him in Nebraska, missed a signal and got hit by a Chevy pick-up van running in the right direction from the opposite side. Ironic, because from the age of 25, Parag Parikh became addicted to the world of Value Investing, then groomed himself in the style of Buffett and Graham and followed their approaches rigorously. The adrenalin from following the world's greatest investor kept driving him all his life - and in the end the same high got him knocked dead in the morning, after waking to hear the Sage of Omaha the previous evening. 

I met Parag too in one of those years between the Harshad Mehta scam and the time that Templeton launched its first (and India's first) mutual fund based on the contrarian investing philosophy of Sir John Templeton. He was a stock-broker then and was rattling away the virtues of picking stocks at a fraction of their book value. He used to say the Indian Stock Market is going to reward the value investor just as any other market in developed markets if one pays heed to the legends of value investing. He was devouring books by Charlie Munger, David Dreyman, Christopher Browne, Bill Nygren and Howard Marks. His interest in picking stocks with a huge margin of safety got ignited after meeting his father's friend - the legendary investor Chandrakant Sampat who was the original big bull who had an unblemished record in the Indian Stock Markets. Groomed by Sampat, Parikh picked up as a stock-broker and started doing original research. As an ardent student of Buffett, he chose Indian Shaving Products (Gillette India) which saw huge unlocking of value before the Malhotras sold out. Since literature in the space of Investing was booming, Parikh derived "Ekalavya" wisdom from partaking in many books on Investing with a value bias. There was only one other erudite scholar who could vie for the top place as a pioneer in value investing - Chetan Parikh - who wrote extensively about the first generation of India's most famous stock-pickers in a book which is still a non-pareil "India's Money Monarchs". ( I only have a photocopy edition) but Chetan Parikh never ran a scheme or advised clients on money-matters. Parag Parikh, on the other hand, put his money where his mouth was. He wrote a book "Stocks to Riches - Insights on Investor Behavior" which set his ambitions high to be recognised as a thought-leader in Indian investing. 

"Stocks to Riches" was a seminal book on giving more than orderly interpretation on how stocks should be only invested for the long run. This Jeremy Siegal-like approach was backed by a serious plan to walk the talk. He started giving lectures on Value Investing with plenty of Indian examples from VST Ltd. to HPCL and BPCL, Engineers India and L&T against conventional growth stocks like ITC and HUL. He formed Parag Parikh Financial Advisory Services (PPFAS) and started a Portfolio Management Services for investors with concepts baked from Behavioral Finance and cemented in the core of Value and Contrarian Investing - quality of management, track record, corporate governance, treatment of minority shareholders, public behavior, margin of safety, business models, and value drivers. In the late nineties and early 2000s, he built his brand equity with a regular appearance in all business channels as an expert with a behavioral finance touch. In 2009, he published his second book to accomodate more insights into Indian stock market. It was aptly called "Value Investing and Behavioral Finance" but the timing coincided with a juncture that saw most investors losing faith in Indian equities or even world equities. The book didn't fly off the shelves as anticipated but it became a much-cited book in the chronicles of the Indian Stock Market. Undeterrred, Parag Parikh continued his evangelism of the Holy Grails - Value Investing, Buffetism and Behavioral finance. His PMS now stands at around Rs.300 crores and sought out those who chase value and who understand greed and fear.

Parag's finest moment came with his decision to enter Asset Management Industry as a house without sales teams with himself and his team as the talking heads. He zeroed in on only one scheme with a tax-bias in favor of equity which commingled  equity investments in India and overseas equities like Google and IBM and some debt and arbitrage exposure. It seemed to have run better than PMS and now counts a little under Rs.600 crores - still a far cry from the behemothic assets managed by fund managers who have outgrown Buffetisms like Prashant Jain and Sankaren Naren. The fund also advertises that the "insiders" (or promoters and fund managers) have invested into ten per cent of the corpus of the scheme. This is hardly disclosed by most  houses. Parag Parikh's fund has delivered in the last one year an alpha of over 11 per cent over Sensex and over 7 per cent over the CNX 500. It is following a no-marketing approach to a fund that believes in buying fans on a cold day, ie. buying into stocks when the lemmings are headed the other way. Parag Parikh, in recent years, found company amongst many legendary investors in India who love the Value theme - Ramdeo Agarwal, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, Ramesh Damani. Few of them make an annual trip to the living God of Value Investing. It was like making a trip to Tirupati to make a Darshan of your Lord but alas! the devotee got killed after the special darshan. Some day, when Indian Stock Market grows from its $2 Trillion Market-cap to a level that the world notices, remember this Ayn Rand fan who talked about Investing without behavioral traps and gaps and pushed the tradition of Value Investing into wider currency. May his soul R.I.P. 

#Parag Parikh #ValueInvesting #BehavioralFinance #ValueInvestinginIndia #ThoughtleadersinIndianStockMarket #IndianStockMarket 

"Uthama Villain" (Telugu/Tamil) Movie Review

Kamal Hassan’s most-awaited movie already raised huge expectations with a five-star trailer and a once-in-a-lifetime starcast - of Nazar, Pooja Kumar, Jayaram, Urbashi, Andrea Jermea, Parvati Menon and the legendary directors K Balachander and K Vishwanath - two directors who gave the actor his coveted cult status and critical acclaim. It is quite an eponymous moment for Kamal Hassan to see such an ensemble fire as a film unit. But does it have anything to fire? Thats the question that haunts you throughout the 172 minute extravaganza. 

The story doesn’t add up to the standards of a Kamal film. Manoranjan is a superstar with a midas touch and a madcap following who is still remote-controlled by his father-in-law K Vishwanath. But Mano wants to do one last film with his mentor and director Margadarsi (K Balachander). He convinces his mentor to direct him with lot of emotional blackmail which turns out to be for a bona fide reason as we later understand. But Balachander doesn’t direct without a good story - that story is a leaf out of history, it resembles a routine Chandamama tale of a king treacherously murdered by his minister (Nazar) who becomes a king and wants to ensnare the king’s daughter Pooja Kumar. Somehow Kamal fakes a fatal illness with the help of his lady doctor in front of Balachander  and manages to convince him to wield the megaphone. Thats just one half of the story, the other half of the story is about Kamal’s aborted love affair before marriage and the love-child  born out of that relationship - which comes back to move him. There is another side of Kamal’s story - his official family of wife and son who are living their own lives of desperation without staying connected to Kamal. The story telling moves in tandem with these two characters  - of Kamal as a cine-star and Kamal as a historical character  who gets famous for coming out alive each time flirting with death. He becomes an instrument for Pooja Kumar to avenge the death of her father by killing Nazar. The story despite its dual time settings doesn’t have the depth and variety to sustain your attention even as the director Ramesh Arvind gives a visual feast with great music  by Ghibran.

Story and screenplay by Kamal himself hands it on a platter for Ramesh Arvind but the overall output is not entertaining for a biopic hyped beyond expectations. The treatment is casual, lacks the seriousness, entertainment, twists  and the methodicity associated with Kamal’s films with grip on story-telling, pace, and multi-dimensions of his own characters. Twenty minutes into the film which is but a film in an actual film (because Balachander’s film within the film itself is titled “Uthama Villain”) the narrative fizzles out- it is either Kamal the star doting on his children drifting away or in making it out with his doctor friend in a drunken state or it is back to Kamal the ballad artiste  egged on by a princess to checkmate Nazar. The ballads are the soul of the film, no doubt, giving a rich lift to the Thaiyam dance form. Ghibran’s  music is a highlight of the musical numbers sought in the song-and-dance format of the embedded film with mesmerising makeup of both Kamal, Pooja and Nazar. It has been axiomatic for Kamal to create a deviant spectrum of characterisation far-removed from a real-life character  played with  aplomb and the deviant spark  - in this case, Uthama character - wins the acclaim. 

Sure, it could have happened again but Kamal didn’t get it right this time in UV- it is either deadpan humour or a character which insinuates the dramatic personal life of Kamal Hassan  - the flip side of being known as a catnip among women. It is this autobiographical insinuation which fails to take us on an excursion that disconnects us from reality into a world of surreal histrionics. While the character of Uthama tugs at your heart, the Superstar character gets you uncomfortably close to the inner thoughts and feelings that could be troubling Kamal the Superstar in real life with a string of  failed marriages to a series of much-publicised affairs beginning with Sripriya and so on. Did Kamal who penned the dialogues for the film too anticipate an emotional upheaval with his audience - these thoughts distract your attention in an otherwise passable fare but requiring lots of patience and veneration-filled optimism for the consummate actor and his masterly mentors - K Balachander and K Vishwanath. While K Vishwanath peters out in his performance, Balachaner stands out in one last hurrah of a performance. Director Ramesh Arvind and Kamal make Balachander hog all the screen with a fiery performance and impressive lines. Whoever dubbed for Balachander in Telugu deserves kudos. There is a deliberate intent to show Balachander in leniency with Kamal throughout the film except the first shot when the latter approaches him for a film collaboration. What surprises us is that Balachander would have thoroughly disapproved of the plot within the main film - Uthama Villain because he likes arts and folk arts but not so much as to make a film out of a fairy tale. Balachander’s films were steeped in reality and middle-class values - this one had neither realism nor morals that the middle classes keep up with. But the most delectable part of the film is the precious relationship between KB and Kamal and the climax scene does bring out tears. If the film deserves a watch, it is for Balachander’s performance alone and not Kamal’s for a change. K Vishwanath on the other hand, gives a lackadaisical performance. He is unconvincing as a tough father-in-law who is a control freak with an overarching influence on Kamal. Both KB and KV scenes are rich with nostalgic photo frames showcasing some great moments with Kamal, Rajini, Sivaji, and even Vani Ganapathy with Kamal on their wedding day. 

What bores us, though,  is the mutual admiration society formed between the trio of Kamal, KB and KV. The moment sympathy for Kamal grows, the movie becomes a celebration of the legend that is Kamal as everybody bends over forwards to make him feel good and blessed. That part, this celebratory part is a botched opportunity for Ramesh Arvind - if only he could have used the presence of two national-award winning directors to give their two cents on the craft of film-making or the nuances of finer acting through Kamal, it  would have made for different viewing. But Alas, the movie continues in its one-dimensional tirade of father-children-wife affections and the ballads galore. Performances-wise Parvati Menon, Pooja Kumar and Andrea get their share of sizzle - for Andrea it is the last intimate scene in the car with three men travelling together including Kamal. For Parvati, atleast two scenes stand out. And for Pooja, it is the song “Kanuke Bondumalli/Kaadalaaan…” where she essays a well-rehearsed dancing performance. Urmila gives her melancholic best in the hospital scene. Nazar gives an off-beat performance as a scheming minister who is both stupid and wicked at times. He produces some unconventional comedy with Kamal - a feat that never happened in his previous films. 

Kamal does his best to best the film with his histrionics but a lot of scenes look contrived - including his opening duet with Pooja and the scenes with children. One scene with his son stands out as well as one or two comedy scenes with Nazar as an imbecile Minister. Technically, the film resonates with grandeur in music thanks to Ghibran, in cinematography and in set design and artworks. Despite all that, film doesn’t score high as an output that should be one of Kamal’s most-watched films. This is because of the fatal flaw in story selection, as already pointed, with a bias for autobiography and the deja vu characterisation of the superstar - nothing new and fresh in Kamal’s portrayal as a father who errs and repents (“Indrudu Chandrudu”), alcoholic (“Sagara Sangamam”), romantic (“Panchatantram” and “Sati Leelavati”). He didn’t push new boundaries in acting with this film in both the characters except in the make-up department (which has always been the brightest spots in his films). In this film, he has also attempted a lot of singing which might not have registered well with the audience - used to leading singers like SPB or Hariharan as playbacks. In the Telugu version, Kamal dubbed in  his own voice instead of SPB which shows that he is passionate and experimental - but this could have been done when he had seen better days not when the payoffs are huge now. It appears Kamal has stopped investing in stories that pulsate with scope for performance. Instead, he is choosing stories with flimsy characters and somehow fit like a larger china box in a smaller china box - this kind of approach has outlived its utility because the audience are tiring of Kamal’s antics moving on predictable grooves. For almost a decade now, Kamal did films in the genre of comedy  - effectively limiting his own charishma, making him a puppet with many other puppets on screen. Then he realised he should fire on all cylinders with roles like dime a dozen as in “Dashavataram”. It met with limited success but not the levels that shake the box office. In between, he picked successful remakes of Hindi or Malayalam films or acted in crime stories that made his producers reimburse fatter bills. But the soul of his performance is yet to return in more than a decade - and we are still awaiting that perfect moment. Instead, Kamal is seeking more pleasures in selecting unimaginative plots with devious digs at Vaishnavism, brahminism, terrorism and so on. Time for a refreshed study  of one’s potential and what one is actually  doing. Kamal Hassan’s latest film proves that having charisma, superstar persona, raising controversies  and hyping it up with a five-star trailer are not enough to deliver a wholesome visual extravaganza. “Uthama Villain”is not that Utham. But for Balachander’s arresting presence and performance, this film, despite the highs in art department and choreography and music slips into an average category of 2.5. KB gives it a notch better rating. Barely watchable otherwise.

Rating: 2.75/5

#UthamaVillain #KamalHassan #KBalachandar #UthamaVillainTamil #UthamaVillainTelugu #Eros #Ghibran #KVishwanath #Kollywood #Tollywood #MovieReviews #UthamaVillainReview

Sri - Music Director with energy and audacity. R.I.P.

Music Director Srinivas Chakravarty’s death due to renal failure is eerily similar to his father’s death for the same reason in 2002. Sri, as he was popularly known is the son of the most prolific music director of Telugu Film Industry in the 70s and 80s - Chakravarty. His name meant he was the Emperor and indeed Chakravarty was the go-to music director for all the commercial film-makers at one time whenever dates were difficult to get for the older generation of KV Mahadevan, MSV, Satyam and so on. Chakravarty composed music for 959 films - a feat that has been surpassed only by Ilayaraja. But Chakravarty was adamant his sons had to earn their spurs by themselves. That was how Srinivas Chakravarty and Ramakrishna Prasad came to the industry. Ironically, even between themselves, the two brothers couldn’t even compose music for even five per cent of the number of films their dad composed. But Sri, the elder of the two, made a mark for himself and earned a good name as a composer who can energise the film and uplift the moods to a new high. But in the years that he composed music growing out of the shadows of his dad (“Ammoru” was unofficially his first because he stepped in when his father was ailing and ready to pass out almost in the same style as RD Burman took over the reins from SD Burman in “Aaradhana”), Sri scored some peppy tunes which are still hummed in bachelor parties and chirpy get-to-togethers - “Bhadram Be Careful Brotheru” and “Chakravarty ki Veedhi Bicchagathiki” and so on. With movies like "Gaayam", “Money”, “Money Money” and “Anukokunda Oka Roju” with RGV and movies like “Sindhooram”, “Little Soldiers” and “Sahasam”, Sri proved he is a versatile composer with a sense of modern sounds and orchestration along with musical arrangements that differentiate the new generation of composers from the old. But it remains an enigma why he got so fewer chances despite huge talent and untapped reservoir of musical abilities - he can sing better than many modern music directors in a rich voice that doesn’t need track singers’ support, he can play guitar and violin better, he can create good background scores (although the earlier part of his career was marred by childish imitations of western composers like John Williams from “Jurassic Park”) and he can also give accomplished dubbing support to heroes. Some say, he was whimsical and critical of film producers and directors who were unappreciative of his genius. Some used to say, his ways of working were lazy and wishy-washy, there was no way to trap the tunes that he would think up one fine day. Whereas,  he used to say he didn’t feel like working after becoming embittered after his mother’s death. But his mother passed away atleast five years before his father passed away in 2002.  His elder brother passed away in a bike accident and Sri named his son after him - as Rajesh Chakravarty. Then he came across many times saying the film industry which extracted blood out of his father in over thousand films never came in droves to give his father a fitting final salute - which he truly deserved. In his interviews, he used to be very outspoken about why selection of tunes or the choice of music was beyond the comprehension of the producers and directors who approached him. The industry labelled “Sri” for many years as a composer with loads of attitude problems - but all directors who worked with Sri vouch for his versatility and sincerity in output. Whatever reasons lie in the realms of truth, Sri moved out of limelight into years of wilderness until he re-surfaced a few years back - with “Sahasam” and “Aadu Magadraa Bujji”. Only few stars like Nagarjuna and directors like Krishna Vamsee, RGV, Gunnam Gangaraju and Chandrasekhar Yeleti gave Sri the real breaks - the rest of the heroes hardly engaged with him. Chiranjeevi who has given a chance to RP Patnaik to compose a song in “Indra”  promised a song, if not an album,  to Sri  in “Anji”. But we never heard anything come out in the album.

For Sri, success came whenever he released an album but he was upset with the success-chasing addiction of the Telugu film industry. He wanted to show he was as much a volcano of talent as neighbourhood Rahmans and Jayarajs. But alas, the same directors who gave him an early break - RGV and Krishna Vamsee passed him in later years by recruiting composers like Raj Koti and Mani Sharma who had less qualms and no airs. They had hunger and thirst to be adaptive. But Sri had talent but wanted work on his terms. Unfortunately, thats not how the creative industries work. If you browbeat me today, I will survive for another day and scout for a better guy than you. Despite the nonchalance of Sri, he could have channelised his anger and frustrations into the albums -like what he did with Singer Smitha. Or, he could have taken up the magnum opus work-in-progress of father Chakravarty  - to create a body of compositions based on the 72 Melakartha Ragas of which he recorded about eight cassettes with Veturi Sundara Rama Murthy. Sri’s music has the hallmarks of a great composition - modern orchestration, rhythmic sounds, and an energy to sound different with a western beat. The last famous song he sung himself in “Chakram” was a soulful number written by Sirivennela and composed by late Chakri. But the melody songs never came back in his score after “Little Soldiers” - an album that is still a classic among the school-goers of the nineties. “Little Soldiers” put him in the dazzle of the great composers of the decade but sadly, it created a vacuum after that for a long, long time. Chakravarty, his father also grew lonely after his wife’s death and adopted a girl child (Chakravarty had four sons of whom, one died, and Sri was the second son, followed by two more sons, one in music and another in medicine). Sri’s father gave away half his estate of huge legacy of music rights and royalties to his adopted daughter who is now happily married and settled in life. We still cannot think Chakravarty’s musical legacy has created so many hits and songs that still play in the half dozen radio channels and many other channels worldwide to get huge royalties - because 959 films multiplied by six songs on an average means  5754 songs. That legacy split into two halves, if public domain speculation is to be believed is what could have easily settled the brothers. But bad health has snatched a gifted director who is one of the most intelligent and improvising composers that Tollywood failed to use better. If only the fickle-minded Tollywood had listened to this composer’s tunes more or made Sri experiment more, we would have had atleast fifteen percent of Chakravarty’s musical output in the name of Sri.  But the impact on sounds, musical arrangements, BGM scores and tunes created by Sri will be remembered forever. He will be more than just a footnote in the long tradition of successful music directors in Tollywood. God give him peace tonight as he meets with his prolific dad. His father was popular but not widely respected. Sri, was never popular but widely respected for his candidness. Today, he belongs to the ages. R.I.P.

My favourite top five tunes composed by Sri:

1.“Vaarevva Emi Face” (Money)
2.“Aayilaaa Aayilaaa Aiyilaaayeeee…Lechinde Lediki Parugu” (Money)
3.“Chakravarti Ki Veedhi Bichchagathiki” (Money)
4.“Adagalani Undi Oka Doubtu ni” (Little Soldiers)
5.“Alupannadi Undaa” (Gaayam)

#SrinivasChakravartyKommineni #Sri #SriMusicDirector #MusicDirectorsofTollywood #ChakravartyMusicDirector

"Sakhi" Review - Back to Nostalgia after "OK Bangaram"

Fifteen Years back, I wrote this film review after watching Mani Ratnam's movie"Sakhi" ("Alaipayuthey" in Tamil and "Saathiya" in Hindi) on April 14, 2000. Yes, it is edit-worthy but I wouldn't change one word. If a reviewer has mellowed, I am sure Mani Ratnam has too - waiting for a perfect reprise of another love story in "Ok Bangaram" ("O Kaadal Kanmani" in Tamil). Soundtrack by AR Rahman got released yesterday. Sounds promising. As I said here, welcome back Mani! My review of "Ok Bangaram" below in previous post.

"Ok Bangaram" (Telugu)/ "O Kadal Kanmani" (Tamil) Movie Review

When it comes to romance, Mani Ratnam has an uneven advantage in making even the mundane plots dance on screen with unblemished technical brilliance and undiminished attention to the nuances of love. “Ok Bangaram” passes the test for Mani Ratnam  and it is no mean feat for one of the finest masters of Indian Cinema. He has made a memorable romantic movie in every decade since the 80s that gets burnt in our psyche. “Mouna Raagam”, “Gitanjali”, “Sakhi” and now “Ok Bangaram” joins that league. Even if the plot is not something unfamiliar and the treatment lacks wow factor at few places, the finesse of the film with all the visuals, the rich music of AR Rahman and the tracks between the lead pairs (there are two pairs in fact) transport you into trance. Roping in such technical stalwarts like PC Sreeram, Sharmistha Roy, Sreekar Prasad and Rahman, Mani can heave a sigh of relief that his product, after a long gap, will taste some success at the box office. 

Indeed the plot is mundane and much cited on silver screens - a live-in relationship between two mature professionals - Aadi  (Dulquar Salmaan) and Tara (Nitya Menen) who are spectacularly in love with each other while keeping an eye on their fledgling careers. Dulquar is a gaming guru who conceptualises  imaginative online games that rake in the millions and Nitya is an architect who is seeking her Masters in Paris. Dulquar stays as a PG with an elderly couple  - Prakash Raj and Leela Samson. Love grows between the two young pros with faultiness often arising from live-in expectations. It goes through a roller-coaster ride before a familiar climax with many moments of truth inspired by the geriatric couple of Mrs and Mr Ganapathy (played by Prakash Raj and Leela Samson). But Mani Ratnam doesn’t believe in a riot of love without a cause, so you see a romantic track with the duress of a success-seeking professional and the affections of your immediate family, however dysfunctional or the care of those who need. In 138 minutes or so, Mani Ratnam’s old magic of story-telling returns without any temptations of narcissism of the craft or visuals that rush up your adrenaline. With good screenplay, stunning visuals and a commendable starcast, the movie deserves a once-watch even if some familiarity with his treatment creeps in at many points. In many ways, the old film “Sakhi” still remains unsurpassed because of the beauty of a sober plot that has many uncharacteristic twists and pathos moments. 

Yet, “OK Bangaram” scores high because of the freshness of the pair. Nitya Menen takes the cake in the movie with an effortless performance that will win hearts, she is at once vulnerable yet measured, cute yet cold-blooded with her mother, innocent but also volatile in moods. Wearing dresses that she might wear on a day of no-shooting, Nitya strikes a delicate balance with versatility and grace unbelievable for a South heroine. The only thing that takes away marks in her performance is the  inconsistency in her characterisation; she first turns down a lover who is interested in her estate but with Aadi, she gets distracted all the time falling for the same tricks that she believes boys play before getting fresh with girls. Aadi, played by Dulquar Salmaan is exciting. The boy who won all the hearts in “Bangalore Days” is the most promising youngster that Mani Ratnam has re-launched for an audience far removed from Mollywood (Malayalam movies). Whether in control of emotions in love or losing it, in anger and poise, camaraderie at work or sympathy for an elderly landlady, Dulquer smarts ahead with a great show of talent - something that comes easily to him from father and superstar Mammooty. His characterisation is the most consistent and worthy of a protagonist coming of age. Kudos to Actor Nani for lending his inimitable voice to Dulquer in the  Telugu version. Nani’s voice has amplified Dulquer’s character for the masses - it is a great idea and a good sporting gesture. Normally, Aalap Raju or Srinivas Murty are the only voices you hear for all Tamil heroes in Telugu versions but this is a delectable experiment - must be at Dil Raju’s bidding who produced the movie in Telugu. Prakash Raj gets such a meaty role in this film, after “Iruvar”that he should thank his stars for a spotless role which will re-ignite his career in that space where he was virtually unchallenged. If Jayasudha stole the show in “Sakhi”, Prakash Raj did it in “Ok Bangaram” with shades of “SVSC” performance. Leela Samson gives a soulful performance as a lady losing her way in life with Alzeimer’s. Her lines linger on and give the depth to an otherwise elementary story. 

What endears the film is Mani Ratnam’s mature handling of the themes and visuals he wants us to go home with. He could have been tempted to show cliched scenes of fights to elevate heroism or sympathy to pad up the love story etc.but he shows great restraint by sticking to responsible and refined cinema. In the film, for example, the heroine’s mother uses her influence to subject the hero to police torture. Any other director would have shown the scene  - right from Shankar to Rajamouli but Mani dismisses it as an aside plainly told by the hero to the heroine, matter-of-factly. Similarly, a love story doesn’t fire up without a customary item song or a drunken scene or fights. Cleverly, quite deftly, Mani shows none of these banalities - instead, he uses the montage of the gaming animation to show stunts and other chutzpah - skip it or snooze, the story doesn’t jar you. Heroism for the heroes and glamor for the heroines - both these get redefined by Mani in the film, a lesson somewhere for master manipulators of emotions in Tollywood. It is good that successive failures and biting criticisms of Mani’s previous films have made him mellow in his love with the craft versus attempt to tell a good story. 

Mani has told a good story with a familiar message though - with conventional trappings and some deja vu moments of bitterness and celebration in love and life. But the effort shows and leaves you with a nice aftertaste unlike some of his forgettable films in the last decade. Helping him to get a breather again are technicians who worked closely with him in several films. PC Sreeram, that ace cinematographer proves  a nonpareil when it comes to catching fire with screenshots. This time, he choses Mumbai’s lesser-highlighted imagery - torrential rains, jerky rides  on bike, high seas of the Arabian Sea with up-close shots of the ships that keep a vigil on the coast at night and many other shots like that. Sreeram’s work is itself paisa vasool for the film and makes it above-average viewing. Of course, his lighting is legendary - and while he makes the lead pair sizzle in their chemistry and screen presence, he has highlighted the old pair in the moods that Mani wanted them to be in, Leela Samson’s shrinkage from a carnatic musician to a forlorn patient is captured well by Sreeram as also the shots in the trains in which lot of Mani’s films revel. AR Rahman’s music has been a chart-buster before the film released, now it will egg you on more since the film is a treat to watch. With nine songs rich in variety and orchestration, Rahman has given the season’s best songs and BGM. And Mani hasn’t fully done justice to their picturisation;  he hasn’t subtracted though from the music with his visual output. Visually, the song on the gaming concepts that greets you on titles has the raciest groove in the score. The carnatic  number sung by Chitra is the only song abruptly cut short by Mani. Otherwise, almost three or four songs which are good audio tracks are extended in the second half which increase the hummability of the songs. Songs by Rahmanand the music co-scored by Rahman and another troupe take the experience to a new high. Mani’s imagination is not commensurate with Rahman’s perceptible instrumentation reserved for “Mani Sir’s films”. The only song that stands out is the duet in the lodge in Ahmedabad where the young lovers feel the physical temptations of love but don’t give in yet. Dubbing-wise, you don’t feel this is coming from Tamil, the quality and the Telugu diction  is so good. Also, references to local towns and a couple of politicians make it credible. Sirivennala’s lyrics make the Telugu songs enchanting and classy compared to some of the hopelessly inapt lyrics penned in Mani’s previous films dubbed from Tamil. Instead of using words like “Gunde Kinda Needocche” and “Kuriseti Gadiyaaram”, Sirivennala uses lilting words which are also sensible. Dialogues by Kiran are in the same metric length of Mani Ratnam - crisp and business-like. Despite many moments where you feel the lag of a director who is not able to outgrow his favourite love scenes and hurrah moments, “Ok Bangaram” will get Mani’s fans happy again. Here’s a master who gets his mojo back. It is not brilliant and not the best of his movies - but he re-presents the timeless paradigms of skin-deep love for another generation confused in online chats and careerist obsessions with reinvigorated craft and squeaky clean touch of class. Watchable, for sure.

Rating: 3.25 / 5

#ManiRatnam #OkBangaram #OKadalKanmani #NityaMenen #DulquerSalmaan #ARRahman #PCSreeram #Tollywood #Kollywood #MovieReviews #DilRaju #PrakashRaj #Nani #OKBangaramReview 

Bapu's "Seetha Kalyanam"

Watching ETV on Sundays post-lunch is getting quite nostalgic for Bapu film fans. Last Sunday, they aired "Radha Kalyanam". Today, we watched "Seetha Kalyanam". This film, despite the extravagant efforts in trick photography by Ravikant Nagaich and a poetic treatment of Ramayana story from birth of Rama to Seetha Swayamvar turned out to be a damp squib at the box office. 

Made in 1976 at a cost of Rs.14 lacs, it was made in just 14 reels but it created history of all kinds for Bapu-Ramana. Before its release, noted maker B.NagiReddi was shown the first copy. Obviously taken in by the visual treat, and buoyed by the stupendous success of the earlier classic "Sampoorna Ramayanam", Nagi Reddy is said to have remarked: "This should run atleast for an year." It probably ran for as much time - but not in the theatres but at major film festivals around the world - London, Chicago, Berlin, Denver. The producer lost his shirt in the making - his name Pinjala Ananda Rao. What made the Indian audiences walk out of this lyrical beauty and made the Western audiences croon over this film is a mystery. Perhaps, the absence of too many dialogues and too many songs spoiled it. Mullapoodi Venkata Ramana in his autobiography says the film has been the most relaxing for him as a writer because all he had to pen was ten pages of dialogues in the film  - the rest was all Bapu's hardwork and the work of the cinematographers, artists, music director KV Mahadevan and Ravi Nagaich. Audiences in AP however didn't receive the film well - when the movie started playing and the songs wouldn't end - they were clamoring: "Sound! Sound! Can't hear the dialogues." Obviously it bombed and after soaking up earlier to the complete six-course menu meal in "Sampoorna Ramayanam", the visuals didn't strike gold at the Box Office. But it became a milestone for Indian films in special effects and cinematography used in mythologicals. Before Bapu-Ramana stepped into the arena making mythologicals, the benchmark was Kamalakara Kameshwar Rao who was called Mythological Brahma. After the duo stepped in, there was only one way to make Ramayana and that is the Bapu-Ramana way. 

After the film's release, one film critic who wrote for "The Guardian", Derek Malcolm actually sang hosannahs to the team that made "Seetha Kalyanam". And I quote Derek Malcolm: 

"It is one of the most extravagantly beautiful films I have seen...It was really made by a team who have worked together often before. Mullapudi Venkata Ramana (writer), KV Mahadevan (the superb carnatic music), KS Prasad (Cinematography) and Ravee Nagaich (the Ray Harryhausen of Indian Special effects) have combined with Bapu to illustrate part of the Ramayana. The result is like a Hollywood Bible Epic done with real taste - an amalgam of lyricism, poetry and spectacle achieved with rare authenticity (everything is as accurate as possible to the legend and to the centuries-old paintings and decorations that embellish it). All is done with a gravita and dignity that is ultimately very moving. I have seen nothing like it before and can't help thinking that its popularity in the West is assured."

This film review ensured Bapu and producer get the passport to London film festival and get accolades galore. Later, the BBC released an English version of the film as "Seetha's wedding" in four episodes. Most of the world fame attributed to Bapu Ramana came with this film itself - despite the film losing the plot for the audience and the money for the producers. A few years back, one of my close friends gave me a contrarian viewpoint on "Seetha Kalyanam" written by none other than the legendary Satyajit Ray. It pained to read Ray's opinion on the film and here I quote again Ray:

"The chorus of praise showered on the south Indian mythological film "Seetha Kalyanamm" launched it on an invitation tour of the international film festival circuit where it won more praise. And yet, in fifty years of film-going, I have not come across a more flagrant exhibition of unmitigated kitsch. As a cultural hybrid which takes an episode from one of the two great Hindu epics, swamps the interiors with Persian carpets, Mughal chandeliers and comic-strip wall paintings; floods the soundtrack with what is claimed to be classical Carnatic music, but it turns out mostly to be high-decibel film songs a la Bombay; punctuates the story with camera tricks that were already cliches in the early days of the talkies; and wraps the whole thing up in the colours of a chocolate box, "Seetha Kalyanam" is a concoction par excellence. One could see it as being mildly enjoyable as camp, though that is not how the critics saw it.. They took it seriously." Those were the words of Satyajit Ray - one of the all-time Asian legends of film-making who thrived on making films for the western audiences. Phew! I was devastated that a film like this which is an outrighht mythological could be received so differently from a man who was an atheist and whose father Sukumar Ray, another multi-faceted legend wrote stories and spoofs on the Ramayana. One cannot judge Ray for what he said nor take what he said as the measure of what Bapu created iin "Seetha Kalyanam" because Ramayana and Rama-essence was what Bapu breathed all his life. So you cannot fault Bapu for failing to portray a mythological (which by its very nature cannot have historical angles and authenticities of settings) in the myriadness with which he endeavored to.

In his own version of what Satyajit Ray commented on the film, Bapu wrote in one of his last pieces that instead of commenting on whether he liked the film or not, Ray had made just two points on the film. "The carpet on which Seetha sat is of Arabic design. There were no crotons in those times." Bapu was sportive enough to take it on his chin on what the Oscar-winner felt honestly about the film. Then he asked for a snap with Ray which is stuck in his library with a caption: "The Long and short of Indian Cinema." So much for the criticism and its reception - Bapu style. But let me make out another inference: it is after watching Jayaprada play Seetha in the film did Satyajit Ray make the famous statement: "Jayaprada is the most beautiful Indian actress." Even the great director K Balachander once put his hand on Bapu's shoulder and said: "I don't go to temple or do pooja, being an atheist. But after watching "Seetha Kalyanam", my mind was reeling with visuals of your film for one week."

Back to the film SK. Not content with the film's poor reception, producer Ananda Rao went ahead post-film to make another two films with the same starcast of Jayaprada and Ravi who fit so well as Seetha and Rama. They were directed not by Bapu but by Kamalakara Kameswar Rao - "Seetha Rama Vana Vaasam" and "Sri Rama Pattabhishekam" but both bombed at the box office. Large-hearted Bapu Ramana who were paid Rupees Sixty thousand as remuneration for SK returned fifty thousand to the producer who was struggling to make both ends meet. 

Those were some of the tit bits I remembered after seeing the film "Seetha Kalyanam" (even as I am still at a loss of words to pay a fitting tribute to the great Bapu uncle). Most people rate the scene which shows the river Ganga's descent to earth as the best SFX scene which was created by Ravikant Nagaich using loads of chalk powder in gunny bags poured from atop the mendicant hoods of Lord Shiva. Yes that was something ingenious in those days. But my favorite scene is the climax where Parasurama comes after Rama breaks the Shiva's bow at Swayamvar.  It is a fantastic interpretation of what happens when one incarnation makes way for another and there's subtle psychology at work in all the characters in limelight for the scene - Parasuram who feels like a spent force after Rama takes the Vishnu's bow as a test of greatness and breaks with equal elan, and then Vishwamitra who is witness to a new history in making -  he divines that Rama is indeed Vishnu's incarnation and then magically moves his hands - first as an acknowledgement of divine blessings and then waves them back at the Lord as if all that comes to us should go back to Him only. One of the most subtle scenes that tells a lot. 

Those were the times when movies were made with purity of heart and without an expectation of rewards or awards. 'Seetha Kalyanam' will stand the test of time as long as Ramayana stands.

#SeethaKalyanam