Any form of art is an expression of subterranean human effort. You may not feel the rigour while observing it and yet it is there, almost like a tribute to the tremendous power of the human mind. However one might try to conceal the effort, it shows. Art and its aesthetic appeal always suffer from the danger of foppery. This is precisely why the tale of a slumdog fails to reach the benchmark of mediocrity, even when it promises to tie a knot between surreal drama and an otherwise biting reality.
Mediocre cinema we grew up with. It is not of that realm. Strangely enough, it is not from the top drawer either. It tried to take the middle road, one of the most interesting vistas of India explored by stalwarts like Tapan Sinha, Basu Bhattacharya, Gulzar and others. In taking that path, it fails to keep up the rhythm of storytelling and confuses between the genre of real fantasy and fantastic reality. While it uses up the glitz of Bollywood to tone up the movie, in trying to adjust the shades it forgets to make a salutary notation to the touch of entertainment. Moreover, it never tries to humanise poverty to get rid of its grotesque Bollywoodness. No matter how unique the selling point has become, because of this dichotomy, or because how this dichotomy provokes the unique selling point of the movie, the poverty-porn tag is going to haunt it for quite sometime.
Let's talk about the last kiss [of course, it’s the first one too] with an ear-splitting background score. Even within the probable boundaries of magic reality, the kiss looks mawkish. The genre of magic reality transcends the boundary of its own probabilistic domain because of this mawkish outcry of directorial emotion, and the last kiss turned into the act of last rite for the movie itself. It became a hotchpotch of so many stylistic attempts at one go. Apart from some non-profit-organisation-boardroom-humour and cheap imitations of shanty-town-dialect [In Hindi of course; they usually speak idiomatic English, with ridiculous accents, bless magic reality!!!], this movie fails to touch the tip of real possibility.
Mediocre cinema we grew up with. It is not of that realm. Strangely enough, it is not from the top drawer either. It tried to take the middle road, one of the most interesting vistas of India explored by stalwarts like Tapan Sinha, Basu Bhattacharya, Gulzar and others. In taking that path, it fails to keep up the rhythm of storytelling and confuses between the genre of real fantasy and fantastic reality. While it uses up the glitz of Bollywood to tone up the movie, in trying to adjust the shades it forgets to make a salutary notation to the touch of entertainment. Moreover, it never tries to humanise poverty to get rid of its grotesque Bollywoodness. No matter how unique the selling point has become, because of this dichotomy, or because how this dichotomy provokes the unique selling point of the movie, the poverty-porn tag is going to haunt it for quite sometime.
Let's talk about the last kiss [of course, it’s the first one too] with an ear-splitting background score. Even within the probable boundaries of magic reality, the kiss looks mawkish. The genre of magic reality transcends the boundary of its own probabilistic domain because of this mawkish outcry of directorial emotion, and the last kiss turned into the act of last rite for the movie itself. It became a hotchpotch of so many stylistic attempts at one go. Apart from some non-profit-organisation-boardroom-humour and cheap imitations of shanty-town-dialect [In Hindi of course; they usually speak idiomatic English, with ridiculous accents, bless magic reality!!!], this movie fails to touch the tip of real possibility.
It is only a concoction of confused genres.
4 comments:
Somewhere back of my mind I felt nearly the same despite the movie being merited by so called arbitrators.
hello, anirban. this post reflects EXACTLY what was going on in my mind while watching the movie. So often does a very mediocre movie get labled as brilliant.
have you seen dev d? Its a thousand pities that a movie like this would never be showcased at the oscars .
you have a very nice blog. please do drop by to see mine.
@Sham
Thank you very much!:)
@Little Girl Lost
thank you! And I'm Anirvan, not anirban!:)
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