Hitman (2007) by Xavier Gens. Rating:1/2 in 5

The year 2007 has been exceptionally productive, as far as films are concerned. That enabled me to have one of my longest-running orgies of sheer audio-visual pleasure, which was exhilarating and dolorously sinful, I swear. Well, friends, that uninterrupted run has come to an end, due to two of the most fiendishly abominable films ever. I am kind of very glad to tell you, one of them is an Oscar-winner. La-dee-dah! Oscar has not changed! But I will come to that Oscar-winner later. This one here is about a 2007 action thriller based on the popular computer game “Hitman”. The film, predictably, is also called “Hitman”. The film is stupid, unimaginative, routine, badly made, badly acted, and badly conceived. If the director, Xavier Gens, goes on this rate, he will be a good company for Ed Wood [unanimously tagged as “World’s worst director ever”] in hell.

This film is a publicity campaign for bald guys. It tells you how heroic, blood-thirsty and yet sexually innocent they can be; it reassures you that a girl need not fear that a bald man will “do it” to her even when she sits naked on his lap. How reassuring! If a bald man feels like suing Fox after that, I will donate to his court expenditure fund gladly! The film starts with a long sequence with a kind of mushy-mushy spiritual hymn going on at the background, where loads of very good-looking children get their heads shaved and a bar-code tattooed at the back of their head. It might remind you of ISCON, and, of course, pedophilia. A website says that this sequence is taken from the TV serial “Dark Angel”. May be, I don’t know. It is ostensibly an explanation for the shaved head of the hero [Timothy Olyphant]. What is amazing is that all those guys up there making these crap-shits can even dare to think that viewers will give a damn about their over-zealous and under-imaginative explanation for, you know what, A SHAVED HEAD WITH A BAR CODE! The hero, Agent 47, is the greatest killer on the planet. He is sexually frustrated. His educational credits are solely made of his readings of cheap magazines where they advice men on the art of seduction. I have a suspicion that you can possibly shoot him straight through his head, and he will not be killed; he cannot have got more than an ounce of brain. He makes people eat a pound of C4 and send them into offices in Africa as human bombs. Yet, he is so stupid that he forgets to cut their tongues off so that they cannot tell on him! And, the Human Bombs, very conveniently, forgets to take an enema or a stomach pump! He can walk barefoot, and when he steals from a showroom, people fail to see him. Blah, blah, yeah, yeah. And, this was very interesting, he is a member of a group of similar “Hitman”s [all with shaved heads] who do not fight between each other with automatics, but short samurai swords. That is supposedly quite honorable. There is a fight sequence in the film where 5 or 6 Hitmans fight with each other; it is the dumbest action sequence I have ever seen. The scriptwriters who came with this idea should be awarded the Darwin Award for endearing stupidity. Unfortunately for us, the prize is only posthumous. Then there is this arch-nemesis of our hero [Dougray Scott], an Interpol agent, who relentlessly shadows him. Unfortunately, instead of playing “Cops and Robbers”, they really play “Who’s the Dumbest?” between themselves. And, aha, there is a woman [Olga Kurylenko], because otherwise there would not have been a woman. She displays her gorgeous body almost all the time; seem to have an allergy towards clothing; and her only wish, dream, desire, ambition and whatever-else such woman may foster, is to get fucked by the hero sore. Fine. I love sex scenes. But can you imagine what happened next? Seconds before consummating his first “you-know-what”, the hero injects the girl unconscious. Still fine. I like homosexuals too. But no, this guy is not attracted to a hunk, a horse, a dog, or even a lamp-post! Throughout the film, I was shouting at the screen: GIVE ME ONE INTERESTING FRAME AND I WILL FORGIVE YOU! They did not give me the chance. This film is far worse than a video game.

Salvador Dali once said “the guy who first said “your cheeks are like a rose” was surely a poet. The guy who repeated it was the sorriest ass ever seen talking.” Our world of film is unfortunately filled with such sorry asses, like all the people involved with this film (which includes Luc Besson). They have the habits of last-minute students who memorize essays from last-minute suggestion books. This film is like that half-burnt chocolate cake made by a fourteen-year old, who happened to have discovered the cookbook for the first time. It is even worse, it even lacks the enthusiasm. If one collects the cans of its rolls and dumps them at the Mariana trench, he/she will be doing an act of proper charity.

Some may say that it is a futile wish to find a mainstream action movie to be good cinematically. I absolutely disagree with that. Structurally, this genre has given us brilliant attempts [Bourne films, Blade Runner]. Some of them have been applauded by everyone [La Femme Nikita, Leon], some of them had a quirky intelligence and humor to them [The Last Action Hero]. All it needs are understanding, intelligence, and sincerity. But Hollywood never believed much in those. Some say that Fox has interfered with the shooting of this film, and toned down the violence. I don’t think violence can help this movie. Even with a lot of violence, this movie would have been the zilch it already is. This will prove to be a disappointment for the gamers as well, as it completely lacks the edge and movement of the game.

This is an abominable film. I give it a ½ out of pity that verges on self-disgust for watching this.

BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI

I'm Not There by Todd Haynes. Rating:4 & 1/2 in 5

If you want me to tell you what this film, “I’m Not There” is all about, I can’t. Because the film itself ain’t straight. It is about what Bob Dylan had been, could have been, should have been, shouldn’t have been, and may have been. Towards the end of the film, Jude Quinn (played by Cate Blanchett), an incarnation of 60’s Dylan at the top of fame and controversy, says: “yes….chaos, clocks, watermelon…it’s everything”. That’s the closest one can get to describe this film in a sentence.

There are six incarnations of Bob Dylan in this film; two of them (depends on how you count), Jack Rollins/Pastor John (played by Christian Bale) and Jude Quinn, are biographically and behaviorally partially similar to Dylan; others are, at best, reflections and, at worst, refractions of his character [I am not using the words “best” and “worst” as value judgments here]. Among them is a black child who fraudulently calls himself Woody Guthrie (played by Marcus Carl Franklin) ---an act of homage by the director---; carries a guitar that says “This Machine Kills Fascists” [a tag the real Guthrie used to keep on his guitar], hitchhikes the length and breadth of American railroad, ends up meeting the real Guthrie in a hospital, and is a state fugitive (for unknown reasons) in reality. There is this perpetually bored-looking guy who faces an interrogation team (it seems) and calls himself Arthur Rimbaud (played by Ben Whishaw), who talks about anything and everything, and does it with dazzling smartness [“I accept chaos…..I am not sure it accepts me”]. Then there is Robbie Clark (played by Heath Ledger), a “James Dean, Marlon Brando, Jack Kerouac, all rolled into one”, who acts in the role of Jack Rollins in a Hollywood film “Grain of Sands” and becomes an instant hit, who is as erratic and as difficult in his marriage with his wife, a French painter, Claire (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg) as Bob Dylan the divorcee; the film goes through their love affair [“and the cat across the roof, mad in love, scream into drainpipes”] that stays as long as the Vietnam war, and at the end, Robbie, most probably, dies. The strangest of all incarnations of Dylan is played by Richard Gere, who really is Billy the Kid [ the only semblance of a reason given that explains why Billy the Kid can be Dylan’s incarnation is this dialog “we hadn’t spoken in a long while...I think he was involved with someone...actually...he said something to me on the phone about angels hanging out of buildings, which was frightening....I thought he was hallucinating...that's the last I heard....it was like what people say about Billy the kid...that he really just dodged the bullet and went on dying....and Jack, he always loved Billy the kid..], only older, who lives near a town called Riddle, where Giraffes and Unicorns roam across the American grassland; Billy faces his old arch-enemy, Pat Garrett (played by Bruce Greenwood), and defeats him, seemingly. Then there is Alice Fabian, played with deceptive effortlessness by Julianne Moore, who very clearly is Joan Baez, there is Allen Ginsberg, all the four Beatles, a model named Coco, harlequins, jokers, mimics, masked men, carnivalesque crowds, miners, passengers from tubes, paranoid reporters, hobos, Americans looking like period pieces, Lyndon Johnson proclaiming “ Its not yellow, its chicken”, etc etc. Do you get the picture? Of course you don’t. Like any good film, it cannot be expressed through words; it eludes literature. Major portions of the film is made like a mock-documentary; the part with Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett) is a honest and strong reference to Fellini’s 8 & ½ (in black & white); and there are freeze frames and captions accompanied by rapid gunshots, which is again a clear allusion of Jean Luc Godard’s “Masculin Feminin”. The storylines are shot in different film stocks and styles. The scenes featuring Woody Guthrie, Robbie Clark and Billy the Kid are in color. The scenes involving Jack Rollins/Pastor John are shot on 16mm color stock, and are framed as a documentary with interviews from people who knew him describing his transformation. Arthur Rimbaud's scenes are shot on very grainy black and white stock. Finally, there is an abundant array of wonderful Dylan songs (many of them sung by Dylan himself) that work like a harmonic twin to the visuals. Altogether, it is an unusual film. In fact, although this is a film from USA, this movie is the grandson of that past cinematic moment where Nouvelle Vague and Frederico Fellini met. This is a European film, mate, and of the highest quality. Do you ask anyone, “What is it all about, Godard’s “Pierrot Le Fou”? Do you ask, “Give me a synopsis of Fellini’s “Amarcord”? You will not dare, because you know that’s stupid and irreverent to the craft of film-making too. If you understand that part, you must not ask what this film is about. At the final judgment, this film is about films. You have to see it to know what it is all about. I am done with telling the story. Now I will tell you what I felt about the movie.

This movie has nailed Bob Dylan, precisely because it refuses to nail him down. The inanity of conventional Hollywood biopics like “Ali”, “Aviator”, lies in their futile attempt to create a private “human” out of celebrities; as a result, we see them crying, fucking, shitting in their pants, and ending up being the greatest hero of the humanity. No one dares to explain what we saw, what we heard, what we felt. This film does not try to portray humanity, it does not even pretend to believe that the phenomenon of Bob Dylan can be explained or even shown consistently through just one persona. That is the first hypothesis on which this film stands: “there he lies. God rest his soul.... and his rudeness. A devouring public can now share the remains of his sickness...and his phone numbers. There he lay--poet, prophet, outlaw, fake, star of electricity; nailed by peeping tom...who would soon discover (Cate Blanchett--the problem is like a naked person) even the ghost is more than one person...”. Even the ghost of Dylan is more than one person. The film-maker took a risky decision in opting for six different Dylans; it proved to be a brilliant one from a true experimental formalist. At the end, there is not a single mention of Bob Dylan in the film, but he is everywhere; you might try to pin him down scene by scene, but then, he is just not there. The film is about the real Dylan because it refuses to essentialize a singular Dylan, and forget about all his anomalies, contradictions, betrayals. The film gets him where he is not. Dylan is there where he is not. Find it paradoxical? That is the first clue to psycho-analysis. We can consider this film to be a psycho-analysis of Bob Dylan. A brilliant psycho-analysis at that.

With this film, director Todd Haynes has established himself as a true “Auteur”. This is the first film I have seen of him, and I am terribly impressed. He shows his inheritance of Fellini and Godard with a frank show of strength that astounds. Any director of lesser skill, imagination or confidence would have made a complete frothing mess out of it. Now, here I must caution you people. There are and will be negative reviews about this film that will say “It is incoherent, tangled”, “art-house stuff”, “lacks a coherent storyline”, “it is cerebral and obscure”, “it does not illuminate Bob Dylan” [Illuminate! What a JOKE!!], etc. They are all true. I prefer this film this way. I do not want to see a “coherent” Bob Dylan who notoriously was never so. If you want straight lines and coherence, don’t watch this movie. Do not watch those great films of 60’s from France and Italy. Do not read James Joyce, Virginia Woolf. Do not watch Picasso, do not watch Jackson Pollack. They are all incoherent, lack unified meaning, they are often deliberately obscure, they are all art-house. Then the greatness of art-forms is not for you.

I will give you a solution that make you understand the film better: whenever you find yourself plagued by the “incoherence” of the film, whenever you ask yourself “what does it mean?”, ask instead that famous counter-question asked by Dylan himself: How does it feel? How do you feel?

“I’m Not There” is not only a biopic of many Dylans, or Dylan as an idea, it is a film about his world, his influences, and his thoughts. It is a film about Dylan’s, and consequently Woody Guthrie’s, America. It is a film about the history of film-making. This film can be seen as an attempt to answer that unanswerable question Jean-Pierre Laud’s character asks in Godard’s “Masculin Feminin”: “Qui êtes-vous, Monsieur Bob Dylan?”. It can be taken as an attempt to relocate Fellini’s 8 & ½, or to reinvent it. It can be seen as a critique of those linear documentaries about Bob Dylan. It is something more as well, something I still haven’t discovered yet. May be I will when I watch it for the fourth time. I am afraid the students of Cinema Studies are going to be very busy writing dissertations on this one.

A film of such extraordinary intellectual complexity would have been dull without humor. Fortunately, the film retains the bitter, oblique humor of Dylan all the way through. Did you observe how many times I have a quoted a dialogue from the film? That is because I am in love with this film’s dialogs. They are sharp, moody, Dylan-ish, often very funny, and brilliant.

Yet, after all that, this film would not be standing on its feet today without such brilliant actors. I am particularly bowled out by Charlotte Gainsbourg as Claire. She is as perfect in the role of Claire as Vivian Leigh was as Blanche in “A Streetcar Named Desire”; she is a particularly strong-willed butterfly perpetually wounded. Christian Bale is spot on in his imitations of Dylan; there is a very thin line between imitating and monkey-ing someone, both Bale and Kate Blanchett manages to go deep into their characters even when imitating Dylan accent-by-accent, flinch-by-flinch. Late Heath Ledger, as always, went uncannily deep into his character. So deep in fact, it scares a little. And, of course, there is Cate Blanchett’s performance.

What Cate has done in this film is stuff of legend. Her acting in this movie has taken the craft of acting to a new level altogether. She is a neurotic, caustic, amphetamine-saturated character, a dazzling bundle of flinching nerves with an unpredictably ambivalent attitude towards everything. She takes a roll down the hill with the Beatles, cavorts with a model named Coco, and desperately tries to avoid a paranoid reporter from BBC. Cate follows Dylan so closely that some viewer might just sit back and mutter in discomfort, “Isn’t she crossing the line? Is she allowed to go that close? Is anyone allowed to go that close?” She unveils a pleading, feminine, insecure quality in Dylan’s rage that, I never suspected, was there, inherent in him. Cate Blanchett’s acting in this film should be equated with Orson Wells’ in “Citizen Kane”, Marlon Brando’s in “A Streetcar Named Desire”, or, in “Last Tango in Paris”.

The cinematography of Edward Lachman is cerebral, spot-on, and often dazzling. So is the editing.

Director Todd Haynes has won the Special Jury award at Venice for this film. He should have got the Golden Lion as well, which went to Ang Lee for his “Lust; Caution”.

I am not going to give this film a 5. That does not mean this is not a great film. I am deducting this ½ point as a gesture of optimism. I expect even better things to come from Todd Haynes. I am saving up my perfect 5 for that. Also, great films like this need a little time to gain their true stature. Just like good wine. So let’s say I am waiting for this film to decant a bit. I am not sure this is a perfect film; there is almost nothing to compare it with. May be five years from now, I will accept defeat and give it a 5. For now, I will remember it as an extraordinary film that proved to be a resounding slap over the cheeks of those ruddy little biopics Hollywood puke out in the market every year. I will remember it as 2007's best film.

BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI

GREAT FILMS: ELEPHANT(2003) BY GUS VAN SANT (WINNER OF PALME D'OR,CANNES)

When the tone poem “Don Juan” by Richard Strauss, the great German composer and not a relative of Johann Strauss, was premiered in the year 1889, half the hall cheered and the other half booed. This told Richard that he has found his own musical voice, and he wrote:

“I now comfort myself with the knowledge that I am on the road I want to take, fully conscious that there never has been an artist not considered crazy by thousands of his fellow men.”

After the controversy about his 2003 film “Elephant”, director Gus van Sant could have proudly reiterated that. This is a great film, this is an extremely unlikely film to be made in Hollywood, and it is a miracle that the film was ever completed. It unanimously won the Palme d’Or at Cannes; Todd McCarthy of Variety magazine said that the film is “pointless at best and irresponsible at worst”. Are you wondering why there was such bipolar disorder among critics? I will tell you. But before that, let me tell you one thing. If you want to know whether a film is really good or not, go to the Europeans (not the British), and stop believing the Americans (especially the critics). They are genetically impotent of anything higher than good mediocracy.

First, I must tell you how I discovered this film. It was 2:30 AM of stark, cold night; I was deep into a movie binge. Then I decided to go to bed. Before that, I switched the TV on. It was HBO. The next movie, they showed, was something named “Elephant”. I liked the cinematography from the trailer, so decided to go through the first few minutes, and then go to bed. I did not sleep that night. I was feeling like a new-born.

I am not kidding. That’s what a good film, especially when it comes as a surprise, can do to you. From then on, this film became a personal obsession for me. For the record, in last two years, HBO showed this film only once. Unfortunately for HBO, they sponsored this independent film. Well, enough of oblique talk, lets come straight to the point. Who is this Gus van Sant? All of you have seen at least one of his films: “Good Will Hunting” (1997). Do you think that is a great film? It is not, it is just a very good Hollywood film. You might have seen another of his movies at Z MGM of past: “To Die For”, with Nicole Kidman starring as a murderously ambitious weather-girl manipulating her husband and an unstable boy (Joaquin Phoenix) obsessed with her. Gus van Sant is primarily an independent moviemaker who made it big in Hollywood with “Good Will Hunting”. He made only two mainstream movies after that; he understood the limitation of Hollywood factories to be debilitating for a truly original director, and he left. Here is what he said, “I came to realize since I had no need to make a lot of money, I should make films I find interesting, regardless of their outcome and audience.” Gus van Sant came into his own with his later works, especially in his “Death Trilogy”. Elephant is the second film of the trilogy. What is “Elephant” all about? It is about a massive shootout inside a school, an event strongly resembling the Columbine School Massacre. The reason people got angry about this film is because it is only about the shootout; in other words, it does not provide any reason, background, or cure, it just states what it wants to state. It does not let you close the case shut, and move on after the movie. It keeps the problem open. The difference between “Elephant” and other inane “issue-based” “movies with messages” is the difference between polemic and sincere thought. The difference between political parties and Karl Marx. Between “kitsch” and “sublime”. The greatest thing about this film is that it refuses to essentialize anything and problematizes everything. It is unbearable for the American media to see someone thwart the “great” reasons and cures they have formulated and transmitted everywhere for years, unbearable to see someone denuding the mystic glamour of its favorite events, events that they cover inch-by-inch, second-by-second, deaths they have shown in all their glory; it is unbearable for them to see themselves naked and waxed like a freak. In its after-effect, “Elephant” is a destroyer of myths and myth-builders. If you conform to stupid ideas such as “Films Propagate Violence among Kids”, “Consumerism Kills You Spiritually”, “Charity will One Day Make Every Poor Rich” etc, then you will not like this film. But in that case, you should not like me. Because, if you follow a logical sequence starting from those quoted presumptions, you will end up at the statement “We Are Worse than Baboons”. In case you accept those oft-repeated statements I have put under quotation marks, please accept this as a truth. It might end up being self-reflexive.

Now, for the remnant, are you quizzing yourself why this film is named “Elephant”? There is no reference to any sort of an elephant in the film (other than a pencil drawing in one of the protagonist’s room). There have been many interpretations of the name of the film; some say it is a tribute to a BBC documentary made by Alan Clarke of the same name; I prefer a different explanation. The title is an allusion to the Indian fable “Blinds Watching an Elephant”. Most of you know the tale; blinds cannot gasp the reality of an elephant wholly. What Gus van Sant means here is that we cannot understand the enormity of a homicide only through analytical reason; whenever we try to interpret, we distort the image by essentializing it. “Elephant”, on the other hand, deconstructs the event [in the strictest Derridian sense. You have to see the film to realize how closely it reads the events]. In that respect, this film is truly post-modern (not in an “ism” sense, but as a time&space-frame), and a close relative to films like “No Country for Old Men”.

“Elephant” is one of the most poetic films I have ever seen. It is made of extremely long tracking shots filmed through SteadyCams. Harris Savides’ cinematography astounds even after watching it thrice. The film follows several students throughout the huge school on an ordinary day that ends up being the date of the shootout. There is violence in the film, but they are not violent. Gus van Sant strips the killings of their glamour, effect, convention and polemic by making them anemic; he shows what they really are: repetitions of video games, simulation of a simulation. The deaths in this film are “cool”, or even “cold” in a Marshall-McLuhan-Jean-Baudrillard sense. The film does not try to analyze its characters; instead it respects their privacy (when a student enters the classroom, the camera remains outside). One of the shooters, Alex (played by Alex Frost) is an accomplished pianist. He played Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” in a long sequence, and that music becomes the theme (the score is actually played by the actor Alex Frost). It is one of the most serene and memorable use of Classical music in a film I have ever heard. The cinematography in reminiscent of the great Hungarian director Belá Tarr, and in its empty uneventful nature, it reminds me of Michelangelo Antonioni at his best. Also, one can say that such film-making signals a return of Cinema verité.

The film was shot in an improvisational way. There were no dialogs in the script; they were made up by the actors ad lib. It was an inspired choice, as it helps the film to avoid “meaningful”, cliché films. Everyone looks so real that it might scare you. In fact, all the actors in the film are amateurs; many of them were from the school where the film was shot.

Some people complained about some essentialisation in the film: the shooters watch a Nazi propaganda film; they play a video game where they shoot people. That disturbed me for some time: are they not trying to propagate a “message”? But then I realized where my, and other critics’, problem lies. We forget the fact that Americans are the largest consumer of Nazi propaganda products. We forget the fact that it is natural for a teenager to play a shooting game on his laptop (I do the same on my desktop). Film directors are not responsible for our thoughts, responsible for the conventions we unconsciously follow. It is a major lesion we often tend to forget.

Roger Ebert once wrote a very significant thing about Hollywood: “when it comes to tragedies, Hollywood is in the catharsis business”. It is not even a truth, it is troth. They are into other monkey businesses too. Hollywood is the pinnacle of professional, segmented film-making; but to be a true Auteur, you have to stop formalizing films. And great films only come from true auteurs and that too once in a while [that does not mean there are no auteurs in Hollywood]. This is one of those films. If you ever felt love towards the medium called film, you should watch this movie. It is a film that dwells at a different level of film-making altogether, a level rarely reached by filmmakers, rarely enjoyed by cineastes. See whether you like it or not.

N.B:--This film was produced by Diane Keaton. I am a big fan of her work, and I think producing this film should be counted among one of the greatest things she has ever done. Without a free leash, and without the producers not “peeing” [a word used by Gus van Sant himself] on the film, such movies cannot be made.

BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street, by Tim Burton, Rating: 3 in 5

As a film, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” has all the good and bad qualities of a typical Tim Burton film. Some will enjoy the good ones; some will overemphasize the bad ones. On my part, I am rather disappointed by this film.

From the very beginning, Burton’s films have shown how the atmosphere can become the most important factor of a film. Most of his films --- “Beetlejuice”, “Edward Scissorhands”, the “Batman” films, “Sleepy Hollow” etc ---- are “atmospheric” films; their virtues lie solely in their atmosphere. On the flip side, many of these films lacked coherence in the development of their story-line, which is essential for the kind of films they are. Same things hold true for “Sweeney Todd”; although the story does not suffer from completely unnecessary intrusions of characters like Michael Keaton’s in “Beetlejuice”, the story never becomes surprising or engrossing enough to make Sweeney Todd’s anguish, or his pained humanity seem true. May be the “spectacular” nature of musicals was always a disincentive for the film’s subject. At the end of the day, this film will be remembered as the bloodiest musical ever made on film that had a stunning backdrop of 19^th century London.

The film starts with CGI blood-drops that look suspiciously like diluted tomato ketchup running down blue-tinted gables of shanty houses. The symbol holds true for the entire film: it is mostly about blood ketchup and blue-tinted 19^th century London. This film is an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s stage musical of the same name [the logo at the beginning of this article is the original poster of the musical]. Benjamin Barker (played by Johnny Depp), a barber, is falsely arrested, charged and sentenced to life of hard labor in Australia by a licentious Judge Turpin (played by Alan Rickman), who coveted Barker's "beautiful and virtuous" wife, Lucy (played by Laura Michelle Kelly). Returning 15 years later, Barker adopts the name of Sweeney Todd and says goodbye to his friend, sailor Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower), who rescued him from the sea. He then returns to his old flat above Nellie Lovett's (played by Helena Bonham Carter) pie shop on Fleet Street. She tells him that after his arrest, Turpin tried to rape his wife, and she poisoned herself out of humiliation. After receiving this news, Todd vows revenge and reopens his barber shop in the upstairs flat. His method is simple: he cuts the throats of his customers and sends the bodies down to the basement through a chute. Nellie cuts the bodies up and uses the meat to make the best meat pie in whole London.

It is highly unsettling (I presume this. I have been a gore fan for long time, so it all looked lip-smacking to me) to see serial killers with operatic music. To heighten that effect, it is filmed differently than formal musicals: you do not see groups of dancers singing choruses, or anything of that sort. There is absolutely no dialog in the film, which is again very rare. Burton, surprisingly, makes the film more quasi-realistic than a musical fantasy. The London of yesteryears looks like Hell’s Kitchen in the film; it reminded me of the ghastly details I read once in a huge book called “London: A Biography”. Following recent [and deplorable to me. I have lived in one of the most notorious cities in the world for its poverty, Kolkata, throughout my life, and never saw a slum look blue in moonlight] tradition of showcasing any bleak part of a city through clod blue filters, the production design of Dante Ferretti and cinematography of Dariusz Wolski help create a dark, frightening and eccentrically skewed vision of London. Most of the characters have a larger-than-life and over-the-top feel of a Dickensian caricature. They all have deathly blanched faces, almost blue from lack of blood. One of the good things about this film is that all the songs are sung by the actors. It makes the words of the lyrics sound more clear and important, helping the story to grow naturally. It is something Woody Allen did in his musical comedy “Everyone says I Love You”. It also avoids the over-emphatic singing style of professional singers.

I wrote “Most of the characters have a larger-than-life and over-the-top feel of a Dickensian caricature”. The problem of the film is that even the principal characters are caricatures. It would have worked if the film showcased itself as a musical fantasy, but the quasi-realistic nature of the movie leaves us with a lot of unfulfilled expectations. Also to be blamed is Johnny Depp. Criticizing someone like Johnny Depp sounds sacrilegious nowadays, but I have no qualms in saying that his acting in this film has a sad after-effect of Jack Sparrow. I detected a slight backward tilt every time he delivered a major dialog. That backward tilt, strongly reminiscent of “you-know-who”, ruined my day. And at the end of the day, the character of Sweeney Todd remains a phantasmagorical caricature; his human emotions seem shallow, his ultimate redemption seems phony. Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow deserved at least an Oscar; if there was ever a performance that can be tagged “original”, that was it. From such a great actor, I expected far better performance. I expected him to frame the character of Sweeney Todd in a different manner. His acting in this film seemed to hesitate between sincerely enjoying the act of killing and feeling deep resentment for what happened to him in past. Too shallow by my standards. On the other hand, Helena Bonham Carter is perfect in her role. She is quite an actor; it is a shame that she still remains under-estimated in Hollywood. But the best performance comes from Allan Rickman as judge Turpin. You have to watch him to realize what a truly nuanced actor from English school of acting can do to such roles. His acting will stay with me for a long time.

There is a segment in the film that shows the true capabilities of Tim Burton as a director, though. Nellie, while butchering human carcasses every day, still dreams an insane dream of marrying Sweeny and making a good thing out of it. Her dreams are painted with heart-rending softness that stirs our compassion; it makes the character of Nellie surprisingly believable and familiar. Sadly, Sweeney does not seem to have such hidden chambers; it would have been a good thing for his character. He is either a chocolaty simpleton of a husband (in flashback), or a one-dimensional monster. I have a suspicion that Tim Burton wanted to create his own “Kill Bill”, but lacked the quirky appreciation of the genre that Tarantino showed.

The songs used in the film are highly complex; it is a miracle that the actors managed to do justice to them. It bears the signature of mid-twentieth century, urban style of music. A veritable Sondheim masterpiece.

The film has received tremendous positive reviews from critics. Why, I don’t know. Despite all the hullabaloos about this film, I found it to be a noble failure, and nothing more than that. I give this film a three. It does not deserve any more.

BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI

Eastern Promises [2007], by David Cronenberg. Rating: 3 & 1/2

Before I give my opinion about David Cronenberg’s latest Oscar-nominated film “Eastern Promises”, let me quote the remarks of two critics:

“I've said it before and hope to again: David Cronenberg is the most provocative, original, and consistently excellent North American director of his generation…. (the film is) directed with considerable formal intelligence and brooding power.”

--------J. Hoberman, Village Voice

“What it's really about, more than sensitivity for displaced people or social analyses, is violence — hideous, gruesome, over-the-top violence…. For Cronenberg, such cheap sensationalism is business as usual, and this far into his career, that business has slipped into artistic bankruptcy……(the film) isn't about Russian gangs so much as Cronenberg's own dark passions not just for violence but excruciating carnage, which he brandishes mercilessly…… (it is a) a stifling descent into grim shock and disturbing awe.”

---- Bruce Westbrook of Houston Chronicle

You need not take the second critic seriously; he belongs to a recent foolish trend of film critics (read politically correct priests) who stop seeing a film as it is, but as they expect it to be. If anyone goes to watch a film about Russian mafias and expect complete non-violence, then that man must be the sorriest buffoon ever seen inside a cinema hall! But in case you do not like blood and graphic violence, this film might not be your cup of tea. This film IS violent, but never over-enthusiastic about it. It also does not adhere to the genre regulations of Italian mafia movies.

The first critic is more to the point, but something is missing there too: this film is certainly not one of Cronenberg’s best, and, most disappointingly, it had every potential to be his Magnum Opus. It had the potential to be as influential a film as The Godfather is. It had everything in it to be remembered forever, but it just missed its mark. Despite all that, this is a better movie than most of the ones we are going to see coming out of the factories in the next few months. It is an original, engrossing, deeply disturbing film about identity, violence and the constant human degradation it causes.

The film is based in London, where Anna (Ivanova) Khitrova (played by Naomi Watts), a midwife at a London hospital, witnesses a 14 year old child, Tatiana, die in childbirth, while the child, a girl, survives. She finds a diary (written in Russian, which Anna cannot read) in the dead girl’s person, and checks it to find the home address of the dead girl. She finds a card for the Trans-Siberian restaurant owned by Semyon (played by Armin Mueller-Stahl), who is in reality a powerful boss of a Russian mafia family, or Vory V Zakone. Anna meets Semyon and talks about the dead girl. Once Semyon learns about the diary, he immediately understands that the diary can be used against him. Here starts a very subtle, polite, but deadly cat-&-mouse game in which Anna gets more and more involved. Deeply involved in this snare is Nicolai LuZhin (played by Vigo Mortensen), Semyon’s driver and a soldier under Semyon’s son, Kiril (played by Vincent Cassel). Another big player is Kiril, a sad homosexual who must suppress his taste to survive, and expresses his masculinity by manhandling young girls and by remaining drunk most of the time. As Anna gets more and more involved, even the lives of her mother (played by Sinéad Cusack) and her melodramatic, but simple uncle Stepan (played by Jerzy Skolimowski) are in danger. There is a huge twist at the end of the film that will send you off your seat. The film is not really about how the mafia works, but about a “why”: why are they doing what they are doing? And you will not get the answer until nearly the end of the movie. The script keeps its secret very effectively, in that respect.

The film has a very authentic look and feel. No one in the film uses a gun. They use razors and curved knives which prove even more effective, and certainly gorier. Director David Cronenberg explained, “We have no guns in this movie. There were no guns in the script. The choice of those curved knives we use in the steam bath was mine. They’re not some kind of exotic Turkish knives, they’re linoleum knives. I felt that these guys could walk around in the streets with these knives, and if they were ever caught, they could say 'we’re linoleum cutters’.” Precise and logical. There is something in this film that is very rare: while watching it, you feel that there are other unseen events in these characters’ lives, you kind of anticipate how they celebrated last year’s Christmas, that girl’s marriage and this boy’s first communion. In this respect, it reminded me strongly of The Godfather. But, unfortunately, the film fails to become an epic.

The film revolves around the acting of Vigo Mortensen as Nicolai. Vigo is a tremendous actor. He seemingly has a sense of humor too; he told the press that he styled his character after Vladimir Putin!! Those who remember him as Aragorn from the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy may not recognize him at all. He is so deep into the character that some of you might become disgruntled: WHAT THE HELL, MAN (!), that man is not ACTING! He internalizes the role, underplays it, making his Nicolai fascinating and scarily enigmatic. Years from now, this will be considered as one of the most memorable mafia characters ever, right there with Michael Corleone and Tony Montana. Armin Mueller-Stahl is brilliant as Semyon; he is scintillating as the apparently agreeable, grandfatherly Godfather. Vincent Cassel goes dangerously deep into his character, Kiril; if you find him a bit too abrupt in the end and a little inconsistent, or banal, it is not his fault but the script-writer’s. Naomi Watts, as always, gives a precise, economical performance. Howard Shore’s score for the film is very restrained and economical. But personally I have a feeling that a more rustic Russian, Shostakovitch sort of background music would have been more memorable. There is a knife-fight scene in this movie that is truly something never shown on the big screen. Roger Ebert commented, “Nikolai engages in a fight in this film that sets the same kind of standard that "The French Connection" set for chases. Years from now, it will be referred to as a benchmark.” I absolutely agree with him.

But let me come to the most important part: the shortcomings of this film. There are two distinct flows in this film, the main narrative and a voice-over of the dead girl reading from her diary. This second stream seems somewhat artificial, shallow and undercooked. Instead of becoming touchingly humane, most of the time it becomes a placard for cheap humanism. In a pivotal scene right at the end of the movie, Kiril refuses to throw the child into the Thames, crying “It’s just a child, papa!”. The whole scene looked abrupt and forced to me. I am not saying that such human angles are unnecessary. What I am saying is that the film does not allow its characters enough time to gradually build that side. It seems as if the director himself did not believe in the way he was presenting the solution. I said this before, and let me repeat it: this film had the potential to be as great an epic as The Godfather. Instead, it becomes a very well-built thriller with an abrupt and pretentious ending. The solution comes too easily at the end; the tragedy dies a pre-natal death. It should have followed the character of Nicolai a bit more; it should have traced the tragic destiny of such men.

This is a very good film, but a rather disappointing one. I cannot give it any more than three and a half points.

BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI

The Darjeeling Limited (2007) by Wes Anderson [Rating:4 & 1/2

Wes Anderson is a rare phenomenon in contemporary Hollywood; he directs, writes screenplays, and gets involved with almost every aspect of film making. In that respect, he is in a rather exclusive league with Quentin Tarantino, and Robert Rodriguez (he "chops, shoots and scores" his movies) etc. Even more importantly, his films tend to deal with certain "personal" problematics of the director: identity, in general. So, at this point, we can call Anderson an "auteur". His latest film, "The Darjeeling Limited"(2007) is a well balanced, exuberantly whimsy, humane without being humanistic, engrossing film. In short, it is a surprisingly excellent film.


The film has a separate prologue, a short film of about 12 minutes called "Hotel Chevalier", starring Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman (by the way, anyone in love with Natalie's luxurious hair will be disapponted. Shot right after the movie "V for Vendetta", she sports a US army kind of a hair cut). In the film, Jack Whitman (Schwartzman) is living at "Hotel Chevalier" for some indefinite amount of time. He is surprised by a call from his girl-friend (or ex-girlfriend) (Played by Natalie Portman). She is in town and wants his room number. It is made clear very early that the relation between Jack and his girlfriend is not ideal; he clearly is trying to keep away from her, and yet, it is hard-to-do-so for him.Jack suffers her with a servile fascination, tinged with an inner force of repressed anger. Well, not as cliche as that previous sentence sounds, but something like that. Jack hurries across his suit, tidies everything up, bathes, dresses, makes another warm bath for her, and then waits. He even sets up a background music for her [Peter Sarstedt's "Where do you go to(My Lovely)!!Natalie's character is a mercurial tomboy, chewing a tooth-pick all the time. They talk, get to bed, and eventually have sex. She sports love bites and other bruises on her thighs and arms; they both ask each other whether they have slept with anyone else or not, and, both lie.Soon we perceive that this sex is a farewell act; the last nod before becoming forever estranged. She asks him: "Whatever happens, I don't wanna lose you as a friend"; he replies: "I promise, I will never be your friend, No matter what.Ever.". She whispers:"If we fuck tonight, we will feel like shit tomorrow".He says:"That's OK with me". She says: "I love you.I never hurt you on purpose."; he says "I don't care". And then follows one of the most beautiful slo-mo tracking shots I have seen in a long, long time. Natalie's character stands by the wooden bureau naked, looking like a condescending geisha (not by any coincident, one of "The Darjeeling Limited"s posters feature a Japanese wood-block painting of a geisha. Jack drapes her with a yellow Hotel Chevalier Bathrobe (the symbol will be repeated). The film ends with the couple looking over the Paris landscape from the balcony, to the tune of the song "Where do you go to(My Lovely)?". The whole film exudes a Fellinisque humor and a full-blooded, if not a little amused, embracement of life in its broadest sense.

I have spoiled the movie with this spoiler because there is a chance you will not be able to see this prologue in your theatre. Although it is not essential to see it in order to enjoy the main film, there are repeated allusions to the character of Natalie in the film. But now, let us concentrate on the main film.

In the film, three brothers, Francis(Owen Wilson), Peter(Adrien Brody), and Jack (Schwartzman), who have not been much in contact, have a reunion after one is almost killed in a motorcycle crash(Francis), another is expecting a baby in 15 days(Peter), and they take a journey on a fictional train (called Darjeeling Limited) through Rajasthan (Alas!If only such lovely trains were really there!).

The reunion is convened by Francis, whose head bandages make him look....well, strange, to say the least. Having nearly died (possibly intentionally), he now embraces life and wants to Really Get to Know his younger brothers. They are Peter, expecting a child from a wife he always expected to divorce any day, and Jack , who dials all the way home to eavesdrop on his former girlfriend's(Natalie Portman) answering machine(Jack knows the password). "I want us to become brothers again," Francis vows, "and to become Enlightened."

Francis is presumably obscenely rich, as he has a bald-from-birth assistant, Brandon (Wally Wolodarsky), who carries a printer and a laminating machine around in a different coach, creates detailed itinerary for the brothers and does almost everything for them. Francis is the compulsive type, which is something the younger brothers detest, they had enough of that from their long-lost mother (Angelica Houston) who has abandoned them long ago. Francis wants three of them to "become brothers" again. Francis also has a secret agenda: To meet their mother who is a nun now. They visit Hindu temples and pray in some of the most bizarre ways humanly imaginable.

Now, as you might be thinking now, if these three brothers really got changed by a silly train journey, then this film would have been a truly "THIS MOVIE SUCKS!!" contender. But no, the brothers sink even deeper into their deeply ingrained nature, only they start to accept it a tad better. The movie moves across scene after scene of whimsical humor and fun, with interludes of suddenly sobering experiences. In that way, one can say it does not have a tight plot, but the true charm of this movie in the very fact that it does not run like an arrow, but takes any course its engrossing self-absorption dictates it to take.

Another good thing about this film is the way it uses India as a backdrop. The makers of the film seem to have a good idea about what India is. As a result, India is not something exotic in the film, but a true backdrop with rather complex charms. The INDIAN STEREOTYPES are not seen; the "Sweet-Lime Girl"(Amara Karan, in a very measured performance for a debutant) from the train looks very Indian, but she smokes, talks in a "phirangi" accent, and is absolutely uninhibited about sex. Not very Indian, for some blunt-headed fanatics. But in exchange, she manages to look very believable.

The casting is brilliant. The three principal actors gel and conflict brilliantly. I suppose some will say that the film does not fly to the target. Well, the film does not have a target either. The film itself is the target. It does not have a plot either,in a strict sense.Wes Anderson, somewhat like early Satyajit Ray (by whom, he confesses, he was influenced), is deeply concerned about the characters only, and his camera focuses in to expose the humane vulnerabilities of the characters with a chuckle of understanding. If someone wants to see a routine drama or a screwball comedy, they better avoid this film. Wes Anderson, very clearly, does not believe in any semblance of such formulas.

The film uses music from various Bengali films, mostly from Ray's oeuvre, as background music with considerably success. The music works as companion pieces, sometimes as counterpoint, but never tries to dictate what we are supposed to feel.

All in all, this a very very good film, one of the most refreshing ones in recent years. It deserves a 4&1/2 rating for being such a good movie. But to get a 5,to become a truly great movie, Anderson's self-absorption needs to achieve a new height of sublimity. In a certain sense, Anderson reminds us of an young Woody Allen, exploring his own identity, vulnerabilities a little tentatively. In future, we might see an "Annie Hall" from him.At least, we can always hope.
BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI