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Leela (2016)
Caution: Leela is not everyone's cup of tea
I can't still believe Ranjith directed this movie. Ranjith is an acclaimed Malayalam movie director known for his gripping story lines and situation comedies. Since he's focusing on the aforementioned fields, he doesn't give much attention to the cinematography and realism. But this movie is an anomaly to Ranjith's style of direction. A dare attempt, indeed.
He focused on the cinematography enormously this time, endorsing Prashanth Ravindran is trustworthy. Apparently dark blue shade seems blended well in certain nerve-cracking scenes in the move. It interleaves dark-humor and eerie dream-like sequences. Obviously Ranjith's aim is not to entertain people from his usual style this time. But to pursue what he is passionate about at the time being. That's why he doesn't give a damn about how big the crowd is. I couldn't see any tag-lines or catchphrases in the poster with the title 'Lee-La' in a curvy font. Also no trailer and no marketing. That's why I'm emphasizing this is not for everyone in Kerala. This is not a family movie either. Leela is for those who are supposed to watch it.
It's based on a short-story by Unni. He might have shared a vital role while preparing the screenplay. Almost all events in the movie revolve around "Kuttiyappan" the main character, portrayed by Biju Menon. Kuttiyappan is a carefree middle-aged man who is jobless. His father was very rich and after his departure, Kuttiyappan got inherited all his properties. He lives in Kottayam, a district in Kerala. The film itself starts with a showcase of various locations in Kottayam by pencil-sketches along with a folk song. Kuttiyappan is pretty much interested in having a sexual relationship with women since he was younger. He's an impulsive alcohol addict with an eccentric personality. He doesn't like to do things in an ordered way. He's a pragmatic supporter of having a change from the usual. This is what makes the film unpredictable and dark-comedy oriented.
There are many occasions throughout the movie where Kuttiyappan's eerie decisions made the situation awkward. Travelling on a horse at nights, constructing a ladder to his balcony for taking food from his servant, Knocking on the door of his beloved friend "Pillechan" (portrayed by Vijayaraghavan) at midnight for a casual conversation , etc are a few among them. Pillechan is henpecked guy who is ready to come with Kuttiyappan anytime for an anything. He also has a pimp friend (Indrans). Kuttiyappan connects to prostitutes by this guy.
This film manifests a different angle towards prostitution. The title Leela itself could be a symbolism for prostitution. Kuttiyappan never actually has sexual intercourse with these women. He talks to them spontaneously, having a thought of make them happy. He studies the background of the prostitutes before he invites them for prostitution. Mostly he gives them the money the demanded without having sex with them and the pimp knows that. Before the intermission we'll get a vague idea about his personality.
The second half consists of many emotional stimuli with the assistance of his eerie experiences. He started thinking about having a life partner and he has had a weird dream once. In the dream he was having a physical relationship with a young woman, thrusting her against the trunk of an elephant! He wanted to portray such an event with his future life partner in real life. He's in search of such a woman in the second half.
I'm not delving into the details of second half. But I assure you it will give you a weird feeling that you never had before. It's like a mixture of all emotions mainly happiness, fear, anger and sadness. The success of an artist belongs to this part. He's trying to stimulate your emotional spectra, wanting you to realize how you would respond to that. It's analogous to communicating though emotions. That helps you discover the concealed part of your subconscious mind.
All actors performed naturally and their Kottayam accent was spot on! My words aren't enough to express my gratitude towards Ranjith and Team for making this happen. Hardly I've seen a dare attempt like this in Malayalam film industry. This movie will always be a remark in Malayalam movie industry. And I'm so proud of the growth our industry. Couple of excellent movies released lately. Keep up the passion and dedication. We're all here to support you, Ranjith. Peace.
3 Women (1977)
Altman's hypnosis
Film-makers seldom go for the character driven movies as there is a high possibility of getting rejected by the audiences. Apparently Altman's risky attempt has been acclaimed because of the emotional spectrum being projected throughout this movie. If you are looking for an intellectual content in this movie, you will be disappointed. I presume that the director may be following a postmodern approach in order to prevent us from logical thinking. Like an anomaly this movie has a linear screenplay. So that the viewers would not be spending much time, thinking of it's chronological order. So basically the director's intention is to hypnotize the viewers with a relaxed mood and that's what makes it special from the other character driven movies.
It's an irrefutable fact that Robert Altman was inspired by the movie Persona (Ingmar Bergman) to make this movie. Also the movies like Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive belong to the same category. Three of them acted really well, out of which Sissy Spacek's performance is outstanding. And the cinematography is mediocre with the normal camera movements.
Three of them have very different personae. Pinky was a timid and immature girl. Her personality was rather submissive. She finds it awkward to interact with her colleagues. Eventually Millie was instructed to take care of Pinky. And they become roommates. Pinky thinks Millie is perfect and gradually she observes Millie. Pinky even tries to read Millie's diary secretly. Along with their friendship they trade their personae gradually. Millie introduces owners of her apartment, Willie and Edgar. Their personality was mutually exclusive. Edgar was a complete extrovert but Willie was always silent. She never talks to someone. The rest of the events seems like a dream sequence and it's difficult to find an explanation for it.
We can find that the three women Millie, Pinky and Willie shared something common.
1) Three of them were betrayed by Edgar; Edgar was the husband of Willie and boyfriend of both Millie and Pinky.
2) They were metaphorically represented as daemons in Willie's pictures near the swimming pool in their apartment.
3) Although they were the slaves of Edgar, they betrayed in a triangular way as well; Willie --> Millie (bar); Millie --> Pinky (apartment); Pinky --> Willie (Willie's home)
Eventually we can find that their minds complete each other according to the Freudian concept of psychoanalysis(Id, Ego and Super-ego). There is no intellectual conclusion in the world of emotions. It is meant to experience the emotional spectra produced by the director. It makes different impacts on each viewers and that cannot be expressed but only felt. Certainly I'm looking forward to watch the other movies of this genius.
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
A splendid masterpiece by David Lynch
I personally think 'spoiler alert' has nothing to do with this film. Nobody can make a 'spoiler' for this film, I swear. Hence I deliberately avoid spoiler alert here.
Mulholland Drive is one of the phenomenal work of David Lynch. It proclaims the brilliant direction of Lynch and I feel a trifle uneasy to find out a suitable genre for this movie apart from neo-noir. Since this is an ambiguous movie, viewers are given the freedom to decrypt it according to the didactics of their subconscious mind. Apparently the director hesitated to impart the gist of this movie thinking that the audience should criticize it without his assistance and certainly, this is what that distinguishes Lynch from the other directors. His movies are far beyond the standard perspective of Hollywood film-noir thus I feel a trifle uneasy to tag it as neo-noir or film-noir. David Lynch is renowned for his surreal style applying to the general precis of genres like film-noir, neo-noir, thriller, mystery and so on. Rather than exerting the graphical aspects of surrealism, he utilizes the epistemological angle of surrealism by means of the complicated story. The chronological order of the story turns indefinite as it proceeds and especially when the viewer start confounding what reality is. Even with a reasonable chronological story line, the logic of the events is still very illusive. He presents a film that challenges viewers to suspend belief of what they are experiencing through his juxtaposition of cinematography, cliché, surrealism, background music, lighting, nightmares/fantasies and nonlinear story lines. Apparently he avoided dramatic dialogues deliberately out of the film.
Naomi Watts achieved an outstanding performance. It's really challenging to impersonate two mutually exclusive personae (Betty/Diane). Laura Harring supported her well taking the role of Rita as well as Camila and she had a great chemistry with Naomi. The other actors did their role very well regardless of the importance of their roles. The intensity of light has been wisely utilized in order to scale their emotive status. Diane's dreams were shown in bright light especially during her arrival at the apartment. Also her emotional breakdown was rendered with darkness. Lynch used different camera positions throughout the movie most of then were hand-held point of view, so that the viewer identify with the suspense of the character in his or her particular space. Discrete style was also adopted to make deviations from the expected hand-held views, so that the multiple perspectives keep contexts from merging, significantly troubling our sense. Also sound-mixing and editing was excellent. Mild background-scores enhanced situations.
Apart from the eerie and mysterious atmosphere of a set of problems, the objective of this movie is to bring out the language of an unconscious mind. The objects we see in our dreams have a relation to our real life, some of them would be easy to interpret while some may be metaphorical representing some qualities or emotional aspects. The tagline for Mulholland Drive is "A love story in the City of Dreams." As we can see, Diane's struggle to love herself is what gives the film its poignant power, even more so than her doomed struggle to love Camilla. And that is as it should be, because we do not get much help understanding why Camilla is the person whom she is, but Diane's mind is laid open to us. In the end, Diane shoots herself and it shows Betty and Rita beaming at each other after which a woman in the Club Silencio balcony whispers "Silencio" as the screen fades to black. These images float in an indeterminate zone between fantasy and reality, which is perhaps the genuinely metaphysical dimension of the cinematic image. This indeterminate zone ended up by 'Silencio' which makes it hypothetical. I felt an indirect fatalism from that scene as if an external authority suppressing her unconscious mind to be silent. I felt it uncomfortable to watch such a pessimistic ending where everything became static and dark. I believe that the ending scene can be interpreted pessimistically as well as optimistically depending on the subconscious of audience. For me, it was pretty much pessimistic. I should not have said that. Erase it. Unleash your mind and enjoy the eternal ride to world of David Lynch. Good luck!
Triangle (2009)
A surrealistic movie for unbiased audiences
Triangle is an surrealistic movie which was astonishingly directed by Christopher Smith. It has a neat cinematography, mediocre editing, nice background score, good sound-mixing etc. Since it has a splendid as well as complicated screenplay I'd like to concentrate more into it in this review. It's quite intriguing to cognize that Christopher Smith was inspired by the movie 'The Shining' by Stanly Kubrick. Apparently the gist of this movie can be viewed from different perspectives. It may take more than 2 times for substantiating the movie. I've seen it around 5 times in a row in order to comprehend each and every aspect of it. I'd like to give a brief summary of the movie that I've understood so far, followed by my interpretations subsequently.
Jess looks after her son and consoles him since he had seen a bad dream. After packing her luggage to the car, she drives with her son as she was supposed to yacht with his friend Greg. On the way she meets Greg's friend Victor, and when they inquired about her son, she thinks for a while and replies he is at school. After introducing everyone they start yachting and end up in a catastrophe. They lose Heather(a friend of Sally) in that heavy storm and eventually they find a ferryboat and get in. Unfortunately they couldn't find anybody there. At the same time Jess is experiencing deja vu and she shares her bizarre feeling with Greg. Greg thinks she was on the hangover of the previous disaster at their yacht. And he consoles Jess that the feelings are the by product of her shock and it's delusional. Downey point towards a picture which was a black & white photograph of the ferryboat. And beneath the photograph a synopsis of Sisyphus(A God of Greek Mythology) is found. Ignoring the synopsis they wander around the ferryboat. Everyone except Jess was curious to meet someone. Each of her friends are being killed by a serial killer with a rumpled costume and a mask and Jess somehow survived as confronts that killer. The killer requests Jess to kill her friends. After a while she realizes that the incidents are being repeated as she finds her friends and herself in the yacht.
The movie steps into a complex line and occasionally clones of Jess and her friends began to occur in disguise. As far as the original Jess(that we are following through out the movie) is concerned the only thing to get way is to break the loop. Hence she decided to kill the disguised copies of herself and her friends to break the loop. Manifestly Jess realizes that some of her ancestor clones had already begun to break the loop and she herself is being confronted by the them since she has put on the costumes of that ferryman with a mask. After getting away from the ship she arrives at a seashore in unconscious state. Affirming her consciousness Jess aims back and arrives home to encounter her latest clone. Since her son had seen the murder, she empowers him saying herself is the real mother and the other things are just delusions, which had already shown in the first few scenes. Finally they get killed by a mishap. She instructed her cab driver to get her into the harbor and she also assured him that she will come back. The movie ends when she meets Victor and Greg in the harbor just before the journey starts.
Interpretation 1: Since the sole purpose of her excruciation and struggle was to rescue her child off the accident, it must be the starting point of this loop. Gradually she engages to made up complex stories deliberately with the assistance of the Story of Sisyphus of Greek Mythology, Toy Boat(for Tommy), the photograph of the ancient ferryboat, the quote at the side-way(something like "please return back"), the seagull(that accidentally killed by Jess), the remarks of her driver(like "there is no point to rescue the child, no matter how many times you do"), etc. And my means of such a complex story she convinces herself that she can do better up next time, Afterall she can rescue Tommy.
Interpretation 2: Like the story of Sisyphus, the entire story may be a metaphor. She was guilty as she scolded Tommy. And she wants to get rid of the accident and to protect her son. After the accident her soul traps in there. Since she was allowed to take a chance to rescue her son by the cab driver. He was impersonated as death. Remember he warns her "No matter how many times you try to rescue him, there is no hint to happen so" And he assures whether she could come back. After dropping her in the harbor he informs her that the meter would be running forever! As if she is doomed to suffer in the loop. That is analogous to the story of Sisyphus who was condemned to roll a huge rock uphill for the punishment of deceiving the queen of devil.
4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile (2007)
Realism at it's best.
After watching this film with subtitles, I was casually going through the IMDb profile of '4 months 3 weeks and 2 days' and I ended up wondering that the only genre by which it tagged in was 'Drama'. Since it does not comprise of any dramatic constituent, I feel a trifle uneasy to throttle it's genre as 'Dramatic'. A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes blended with exaggeration. The objective of a dramatic film is to exaggerate the emotional aspects with the assistance of projected over-expression, improbable situation-dialogues, mild background scores, make-up contexts, etc. And what am I supposed to call or indicate a movie without any components I've mentioned above? Apparently new genres are yet to be invented to extol modern movies like this. If I had a chance to invent a suitable genre for this movie, I would have proclaimed 'realism' without any amendment. This movie was embellished full of realism with no doubt, as you can see in any perspective, or in any aspects. Let it even be in cinematographic aspect, there is no sophisticated art of camera so is photography. Most of the scene are shown in a realistic manner which was a deliberate decision taken by the director. In each and every scene of this movie, there is no dramatic expression, no horripilating dialogues. Each characters were engaged in their own business in a spontaneous way as we see people in real life.
Certainly Cristian Mungiu is an outstanding director. He could pour the dilemmetic situations of our peculiar life in a microscopic view to the audience. I have never seen such a film before. Obviously one of the main objective of this movie is to create the state of affairs of the communist regime in Romania and the consequent dictatorship of it. In past few years(1970-80) of the Romanian communism, Nicolai Ceausescu the dictator's wife "Elena Ceausescu" officially declared the law for everyone that abortion is prohibited from the society, and those who tries to attempt it will be prosecuted. Later it's said and known that the Romanian society apprehensively followed her policies irregardless of the political party in charge of their society. The director could speculate the attitude of such a society in a realistic manner. When Gabita and her room-mate consulted the gynecologist 'Bebe', the apprehension was comprehensive from his persona. He was terribly anxious and careful to say his purpose that he want sex in a straightforward way. Eventually he convinces them about his needs and tells them he had even risked his identity card for his arrival at the hotel. And later it shows that he deliberately forgot his valuable identity card in the hotel in case they call any police. Even a tiny incident shown throughout this movie resembles to the events we face in our daily-life. Hence the consciousness of audience transposes from the perspective of a movie to their daily life, like how they interacts with the other people and how the get their responses back. Patently there will be glimpse of desperation especially when the reality seems deviated very much from the expectation.
To make a review of this realistic movie is as difficult as we make a review of life. Everyone is supposed to follow some set of rules and regulations in our society. Also lots of sacrifices are needed to convince others while everyone has their own explanation for what they have done. As an audience, I would like to show my gratitude to the whole team of this movie for making '4 months 3 weeks and 2 days' sensational and introducing a new dimension of realism in it.
Amen (2013)
Perhaps the first Malayalam movie in Magic Realism
First of all I'd like to express my sincere gratitude to Mr. Abinandhan Ramanujam for such a great cinematography.
Amen as it claims itself, is a divine comedy, directed by Lijo Jose Pallissery. The primary objective of the films which comes under this art-movement called "magical realism" is to create an illusion to the viewer despite the existence of some supernatural being or something bizarre to be blended with. Spontaneously the user would hesitate to think that the visual clusters are purely hypothetical. In spite of fabricating the VIRTUAL REALITY to end-user, the director could emphasize the same chunk of conditions in the story-plot as well as makeup aspects. It could extrapolate an extraordinary time-period of Kerala that I guessed it might be around 1980's.
Even though the script was dull at the beginning, audience forgot to notice it because of the consistent sitcom. Regarding the essence of comedy throughout this movie, is inherently related to the culture of Kerala especially the middle-aged Christian culture. So I presume, even if some non-native people of Kerala try to see it with subtitles it's not going to hit at the comical point that's supposed to be. Apparently audience adopted the situation comedies as in dialog as well as in trace movements of camera like zooming and panning which was captured with a mediocre high definition camera and was often shown it in extremely slow motion. I've seen a lot of internet-memes of this movie in social media networking sites so far.
Peculiar twist at the climax was another highlight.
Twist No.1 : Although some of the audience could predict what was going to happen after the instrumental extravaganza, a significant part of audience remained stunned especially when the remarkable character(Kalabhavan Mani) eventually died keeping the statue of the Saint beside him. Yes! Have you noticed the silence a few seconds after the instrumental climax? It's rather picturesque and bizarre chunk of clip at the same time. It was good way of representing as the breeze of calm air to the countryside up next.
Twist No.2 The metaphor of God as a representative of the new Bishop to be in charged. When the foreign girl realized whether it was a dream or illusion, I literally felt an experience resembling to Deja Vu at the denouement part especially when the new Bishop was rendering in front of the local store at the bay of the lake that has already been shown before at the arrival of the same Bishop.
Evidently the movie "Amen" is subjecting magical realism into theistic objectives, Optimistically it's been blended smoothly with the mesmerizing sitcoms. Music was innovative, the first song uses minimal instruments while the ending is embellished with a lot of instruments. I'd say music would be a mediocre attempt.
Now I'm more anticipated and looking forward to watch phenomenal extravaganzas like this in Malayalam as well as Indian movies. In short I'm absolutely convinced by what a new generation film looks like. NEW GENERATION film is not just an blurred imitation of modern life in hallucinations of drugs or sexual euphoria as a dignity or an extraordinary love story of an ordinary nerd.
PS: The peculiar cinematographic style reflected in this film was adopted from a french movie "Amelie(2001)". So is style of narration. Having said that assertion I might have watched it for 5 times. Obviously I have to emphasize that Amen can be recommended as a typical example of a NEW GENERATION movie. Once again thanks to the entire team of Amen in this regard.