Dilwale Dulhaniya Kootitu Povaanga

When I saw the trailer of Chennai Express I wasn't sure I wanted to watch it. Not that I am averse to mindless comedies. In fact I am a huge fan. This is the only genre of mainstream bollywood I am sold even before I see the trailers. But from the trailer, it seemed like Deepia was intent on butcher tamil and they had used the villians's underlings from Shankar's movies to be what seemed like the main villians. Then I found out Sathyaraj was in the movie. And I was tempted.

And surprisingly I found that this is not a hindi movie but more of a hindi-tamil-english trilingual. A lot of the movie is in tamil. And the portrayal of most of the tamil people is how a tamil movie would have portrayed them. In America the entire movie is subtitled but from the way the movie flows I don't think the tamil portions are subtitled in India. I mean Tamil people will catch a lot of the jokes before the others. Because a lot of the jokes take advantage of SRK not knowing tamil. So a situtaion is explained  in tamil. This is usually the set-up for the joke. SRK is forced to answer by nodding his heads. And his nods lead to something slapstick funny happening to him. Deepika then explains in hindi what was told and to what he nodded. So the hindi audience gets a translation as an explaination after the joke has passed. Since most of the audience was laughing I guess they didn't mind.

The movie is another typical rohit shetty movie. The gags are completely slapstick. And you laugh because you have gone to see a movie and forget about everything else. It is a fairly entertaining two and a half hours. The laughs kept coming through most of the movie. A lot of the movie is a tribute to DDLJ. Right from where he gets Deepika into the train five minutes into the movie to the climax where he goes back to Sathyaraj's village to get his permission to marry Deepika but is almost beaten to pulp by the guy Sathyaraj had chosen for her to marry.All this in true Rohit Shetty style, with a lot of buffonery, exploding cars and fights.

I enjoyed most of the movie and wouldn't say I was disappointed. I laughed and had my paisa's vasool. You are expected to leave your brain behind. And if you you will be rewarded with a decently funny movie.

But they could have made this a lot better. Instead of having Deepika they could have used a tamil speaking actress to perform her role. Like say Asin. While Deepika's exaggerated accent in hindi was irritating I would still accept it. It was her tamil that was so badly spoken. When Dhanush did Raanjhana he didn't murder Hindi. Yes a few wisps of his tamil accent remained but it was fairly accurate. If Dhanush could have worked so hard on his hindi, surely Rohit Shetty could have asked Deepika to work on her tamil. Hell the one marathi dialogue that Deepika says is delivered with a perfect marathi accent. But not one tamil dialogue was spoken correctly. Similiarly the guy Deepika was engaged to, if anything spoke worse tamil. And with an impressive name like Thangabali.  They could have just had his voice dubbed and nobody would have known the difference. But they insisted on him speaking twisted tamil. These things may not be noticeable to the primary hindi speaking audience of the movie. But the difference between an average movie and a good movie are in these details.

Overall though I am actually happy with how tamil people were shown in the movie. It is very rare to hear proper tamil in a hindi movie. You typically only hear the Mehmood style of tamil if you hear it at all. But this was a proper bilingual. More such collaborations would surely be fun to watch with the caveat that the few people whose accent is still poor work on that! 

Blue Jasmine

Going to watch movies made by old movie-makers is usually a lot of fun. These directors have very little fucks to give and so they make movies from their heart and not tailored to a particular audience. As it is, Woody Allen, for most of his career didn't make movies that would appeal to a wide audience. Obviously he has his small but extremely tight fans. I was always intrigued by them. I mean I have watched Annie Hall previously and I liked it. But I wouldn't call myself a huge fan.

Well with this background I went to see the Blue Jasmine. I was expecting a fun but depressing movie. What I saw blew my mind. No seriously. This was a movie made by a guy who knew his craft. A tight movie with amazingly power packed performances. Cate Blanchett's acting is beyond words.

Blue Jasmine is a depressing tale of the leading character, Jasmine, whose husband turns out to be a Ponzi scam artist. The story builds slowly and shows how the once rich girl reacts once she loses all her money. How she cannot adjust to the menial, and how she pushes her poor but happy sister to get try and snatch a rich guy. In the process she almost destroys her sister's happiness. The detailing of Jasmine's fall to depression is just amazing. 

The movie has very very few scenes that are funny. Even though the movie is made by one of the leading stand-ups of the past and has a role for the biggest stand-up comedian of today ( Louis CK in a small role). 

A lot of the movies I like are tragedies. The well made ones really move you. And the point of cinema is to touch your emotion. One of my favourite ends to a movie is Moondram Pirai.  A depressed Kamal on seeing that Sridevi doen't even recognize him goes and sits in a bench. And the director focusses on his face and then pans to the credits. Extraordinarily moving. There the depression comes in ten minutes. Here its a slow but steady fall towards sadness. Its mostly bought on by Jasmine herself. You try to empathize with her when she tries to get out of her situation by trying to study. But she gives up and tries to use a short-cut to get out. And you stop feeling bad for her. But the end is heart rending nonetheless. She lies to her sister that she has got her escape and hopelessly depressed walks out sits on a park bench and starts mumbling about her past without realizing what she is doing. She is a complete wreck and in a pitiable condition. And Woody Allen fades to the credit.

For a couple of seconds you will be wondering WTF happened. But when you go home you will still be thining about the movie. About how brilliand Cate Blanchett and Woddy Allen are!