Filmy Illusions

Picture Courtesy: FilmGappa “Is this girl even 5 feet? She looks awfully small, with this height and weight, will she be able to bear a child?” This was the dialogue uttered by one of the brokers who came to arrange an alliance for me. He said the dialogue and busted out laughing with his pan-stained teeth as if he cracked the century’s funniest joke. Till my death I will not be able to forget the humiliation I felt, that I wanted the earth to split and vanish into the same. Well, like these there were at least 15-20 wedding proposal dramas that took place in my native for me. Almost every weekend visit from college hostel to home meant that there was some random guy or worse, some random group of people who will come to see me. I had to dress up, take a tray full of teacups and go stand in front of them so that they can rate me based on my looks and decide if they will take me or not. Wait a minute, isn’t that what happens in brothels too? Maybe except that you have to pay, to get wom...

Picture Courtesy: Paytm Some movies are personal, for they remind you of those few good memories from a painful past that you have buried deep within. 83, to even my surprise became one such movie. Once an ardent fan, I stopped watching cricket 13 years ago in 2009, one year after IPL was introduced which made cricket, the circus it is today. I was too young to understand how bad IPL would make International Cricket, so obviously, that wasn’t the reason. I only watched world cups after that year which also eventually stopped after 2014. So, when the 83 movie released, I decided not to watch it, as I thought neither the movie nor me had anything to give each other, I wasn’t even born when the 1983 world cup happened. I was so wrong, I gladly realized minutes into the movie. Once bit by the bug of the game, guess it remains no matter what. Picture Courtesy: Youtube I don’t remember when was the first time I watched a cricket game on TV, but I do remember the game from a very young age. T...

Picture Courtesy: IMDb   "I do not know if India can be called a democracy anymore. Today, one can define democracy as a government of the privileged few, for the privileged few and by the privileged few," - Former Lokayukta Justice Santosh Hegde made this statement in 2011 commenting on the state of affairs in the country. In the movie Pada, based on real incidents of violation of Adivasi (indigenous) community rights on their own land, the narrative reminds us of the fact that India, has ALWAYS been a democracy for only a privileged few. For anyone without some privilege in the form of power, caste, religion, or money, it’s always been an uphill battle for their right to live and be treated as human beings. Pada doesn’t require a review, for all the good reasons. It’s a movie that each and every one of us must watch especially in the times we live in. Also, the real incident the movie is based on happened 26 years ago and nothing much has changed since then in the lives o...

Picture Courtesy: IMDb There is a huge difference between gender equality and gender role reversal. We keep dangerously mixing the two and end up making a mess like ‘Hey Sinamika’. It’s been an age-old narrative in movies about relationships where usually a man finds himself unhappy in a marriage and meanders away from the relationship until he realizes his mistake and then comes back to his wife to live happily ever after. Also is the portrayal of women as annoying housewives who got no personality of their own other than managing the household and micromanaging their partner in the name of love and care.  In the directorial debut of choreographer Brinda, ‘Hey Sinamika’ the same toxicity is adapted into the character of Yaazhan played by Dulquer Salman. The only difference is, maybe because it’s a man portrayed doing household chores, cooking looks like a MasterChef show episode, gardening or any other chore looks like an episode from a Netflix show on house décor.  Picture C...

    Picture Courtesy: Times of India Do we need a larger-than-life mass movie focussing on a patriarch managing to keep a family of misfits afloat? Probably not. Yet we do have an audience for that genre since as a nation, we have a tendency to look for that one person, as a savior and bearer of justice. That tendency is what collectively got us into the misery that we are in currently. Corruption of such amassed power can also translate to mass destruction, which we are bearing witness to these days. Although in Amal Neerad’s fictional world of Bheeshma Parvam (Book of Bheeshma), the thalamoothappan (head of the family) for a relief, is a flagbearer of justice, with shades of wokeness way ahead for the age the movie is portrayed. The backdrop for that is set as his parents being loving and open-minded, a trait which unfortunately passed down only to Michael aka Michaelappan (played by Mammotty), and a few others in the family. Anyone who has been following Amal Neerad’s f...

  Picture Courtesy: Onmanorama I thrive on memories and is a tad bit too attached to the threads of past.   When the hype was created about Hridayam as a nostalgic journey and so on, I kind of restricted myself. I wasn’t in a state of mind to take such a journey especially since a movie is not just a movie for me, as I associate my own experiences with the path the movie takes. Thus, after postponing for the longest of time, I finally finished watching Hridayam and honestly, I felt nothing. When Premam was hyped like this, years ago, I had the same experience and the best I could describe that movie was that it is a good biriyani with all the ingredients that the creators knew the audience would relate to, was carefully curated to evoke certain emotions. Hridayam is the same with added aesthetics and a bit of poster wokeism.   Issue could also be that, I am tired of this ‘coming of age’ genre where a man goes through stuff, in this case, college life, breakup, spirallin...