HeadleyLamarr

Hindi cinema, particularly that called Bollywood cinema, is often a pastiche of snippets and vignettes from cinema all over the world. And the influences are usually aged and not modern. Thus Life in a Metro, the film that could almost be Dhobi Ghat if minimalized, took an entire sequence in its interconnecting stories from the Billy Wilder 1960 film The Apartment, but wove in a few other tales around the trysting place to modernize the whole. Others did not care as much - Tees Maar Khan went right to deSica's 1966 film After the Fox and simply added in a few extreme characters and item songs to season the tale for Indian palates.

Now Kiran Rao has dared to drag Hindi cinema into the 20th century by making Dhobi Ghat. Simply for that attempt to move beyond the set narrative based films we should commend her. However, these are still baby steps and a large distance remains to be traversed. The influence of world cinema is very strong on Dhobi Ghat. The set of interconnecting stories shifting and reforming like dynamic puzzle pieces around a teeming city, and the pensive mood set by the reclusive artist as he broods over video-taped letters he finds, makes it easy to spot the unmistakable Wong Kar Wai influence. In 1994 Kar Wai made Chungking Express, a story of two love-lorn policemen, unconnected tales, except for the city they were in, and the fact that both had lost love. There too the mood was pensive, dreamy, and whole film an artist's palette of color, mood and motion. Of course more recently Inarritu has taken interconnecting stories to a different level, starting with Amores Perros. The stories intersect usually triggered by some violent or catastrophic event, something that has no doubt influenced Kiran Rao. Skirting city centric films like Paris Je T'Aime, which somehow tried to connect 20 stories set in the real star of the film, Paris, she makes Mumbai an almost living breathing entity without glorifying it in any way. This is a scary Mumbai, where the watchman does not know what happened to a past tenant and (without spoilers given away) that seems almost unbelievable, there are drug wars and killings, and good looking men pimp their looks for money.

The package is let down by some amateurish writing that is riddled with coincidences, and some miscasting that drags down the effort. There are too many coincident meetings in the metropolis, making the very point about a large teeming heartless city quite pointless. The one dhobi connects all the dots, and everyone can see everyone else from an apartment window or doorway. The dialogs are stilted, and equally jarring when Monica Dogra talks in her Firangi Hindi accent about Dakshini Asia, or Aamir talks in English about his city, his muse, whore. The star of the show is Kriti Malhotra as Yasmeen. Starting out bubbly and vivacious, she goes slowly into fade mode, presaged by her fading into the light in the Elephanta caves (?). Parteik has tremendous screen presence, and Kiran manages to extract much more out of him as the beefed up star wannabe dhobi than Abbas Tyrewala ever could as the artistic self absorbed brat in Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. He does have problems with dialog delivery, but who cares when he can smile that, or look so vulnerable. Monica Dogra fits the role but does not add much to it, weighed down as she is by that awful Hindi accent and a monotonous dialog delivery in Hindi. Aamir is the most misfit of all four lead actors. His straining to underplay his role is palpable, forehead veins popping, crooked smile firmly in place. Even he settles in gradually, though is never completely comfortable in this film. Much has been made of the background score - but no one mentions the tracks by Begum Akhtar and Siddheshwari Devi that sublimely elevate the mood.

Kiran Rao is a fresh new talent, and to be applauded for trying something different. Now she needs to make all the pieces fit, and give the whole her own stamp - then perhaps we will be looking at great cinema, but we are far from that yet.

What would a normal 14 year old in the late 1800s do upon finding out her father was murdered by a scoundrel and a thief? Mattie Ross (played by Hailee Steinfeld) is no ordinary 14 year old. She takes the train into Fort Smith to deal with her father's body and stays back – determined to avenge his death. A poised and fearless young woman (having run out of money, she spends the night at the undertaker's with 4 dead bodies!) with rapier sharp wits, she manages to recoup some of the money owed her father. Mattie also finds out that US Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) is her man for tracking the murderer Tom Cheney who has fled into the Indian Territory. One eyed, overweight, aging and permanently drunk and disheveled Cogburn is Mattie's choice, she tells him, because she has heard he has TRUE GRIT and never lets go of a fugitive. Rooster agrees to take on the mission for $100, and after trying to evade Mattie by sneaking out ahead of her, allows her to come along when she catches up with him. They are joined by Texas Ranger LeBoef (Matt Damon) who is also hunting Tom Cheney, for a senator's murder in Texas. The grit and patience of each of the three fellow travelers is severely tested along this journey into the wilderness and we see the men gaining a grudging respect for the young girl as she more than holds her own on the trail. The ending is more true to the book than it was in the 1969 version of the film. This Coen brothers' adaptation of the book by Charles Portis is a somber tale that lacks some of the humor and crackling interactions we saw between the leads in the 1969 film. But it also has much less of the coyness and sugar that came in ample measure in the older version. The role of Rooster Cogburn won John Wayne his only Oscar and a memorable role it was! In the 2010 adaptation Jeff Bridges is as good as he can get, which is pretty darn good, but somehow the telling falls just short of all time greatness.

The show is stolen by Hailee Steinfeld – she has a poise and innocent charm coupled with a fierce determination, that makes her one of the more memorable characters in recent films. Matt Damn is more than adequate as a stiff necked Texas Ranger, who slowly goes from boorish to serious and dependable. Jeff Bridges is great as Rooster Cogburn, "a one eyed fat drunk man who cannot shoot straight anymore", because he does show true grit and more, a strong sense of justice and an innate nobleness. John Wayne's iconic persona was utilized fully in the 1969 film by Hathaway, and here the Coen brothers find a persona that matches the Duke's in stature. Bridges brings a loose limbed laziness to his Cogburn, and yet manages, even at his most whiskey soaked moments, to convey a sense of urgency and sharp wit that is required to make the character work.

The film is wonderfully shot on location in Texas with sweeping vistas, bleak forests in fall and winter, and seemingly endless plains. The Coen Brothers go fully mainstream in this film, finally producing one that has the violence mostly reined in (well some guys do die and fingers are chopped off too), and none of the language or situations containing being anything less than family friendly. But what makes this a winner is the remarkable young woman on a quest to see a criminal brought to justice. No simpering miss, she stands tall among leading ladies, as a sharp witted and brave character, honorable and just with all the good qualities that we often find lacking in the world today.

This one is a certified winner and not to be missed.

Trishul has a better cast than Kaala Patthar, but IMO the latter is the better film. Yes, Trishul has Sanjeev and when did he ever fail to satisfy? But his character is most undeveloped in my opinion. In the beginning it is clear that he loves Waheeda, is forced by his mother to marry the rich man's daughter, is torn when she announces she is expecting his child - so he is not all bad. But would just that one act of weak caving-in make him more and more extreme in his dealing with people? No fault at Sanjeev's door, he did a very good job with the material given him. Rakhi was just there, Sachin and his lady, not needed other than to stage a coup against the patriarch. Shashi was quite good, as was Hema - their love story was convincing. Amitabh yet again stole the show with his simmering rage and outrage at the abandonment of his mother. The fight scenes were so real, but the story was somewhat predictable. This one, like Kaala Patthar, was also mostly focused on the story and did not rely on too much romance or songs.

One thing I like about these oldies from Yash Chopra is the very matter-of-fact dealing between the sexes. In Kaala Patthar Shashi invites Parveen to stay with him after she is thrown out, tells her he lives by himself, and without any coyness she accepts. In Deewar the relationship between Amitabh and Parveen is most matter-of-fact. In Trishul the same goes for the relationship between Waheeda and Sanjeev. And these were educated people, not from the lower strata - yet they did not have the prudishness one sees on display in modern fare.