SUVISO

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, fondly known as Babasaheb, remains an iconic figure in Indian history, celebrated for his relentless fight against social injustices and his pivotal role in framing the Indian Constitution. Soon India will mark the completion of 75th years of our constitution. It becomes imperative therefore, to scrutinize whether the dreams harmonised by Babasaheb have indeed been materialised or not. The present landscape of the country sees a resurgence of the ideas of Ambedkar for multiple reasons. And his ideas do supply a solid framework - still, for many of the contemporary issues, which even now seem insurmountable. Central to his philosophical vision for the country was the establishment of a society grounded in equality and justice. His work "Annihilation of Caste" remains a seminal treatise on the subject, where he critiques the rigid and dehumanizing caste hierarchies. For him, the exploitation of Dalits was the major problem that sprouted from this rigid caste ...

As I was crossing a street in some part of Jalgaon, I came across a little book shop. It was a like a typical Indian tapri. To be clear it indeed was a  tapri . The old man, the owner of that shop, evidently had to sustain by selling cigarettes, paanmasalas ,  gutkas and similar stuff. Presumably he couldn't sustain himself by selling only the books. And the books too, which no one reads anymore. I stopped to have a look. English Classics interested me more than anything else. Sadly they were the most torn out pieces amongst the whole) entire bunch. My eyes smiled after detecting George Eliot, Henry James, Thackeray and alike. What suprised me the most however was the fact that how passionate the old man was while showing and talking about his books. Particularly when I said he had very good bunch of classic books. He grew more and more passionate as I was looking for everything in his little tapri . And he knew each and every book and could discern what each particular book ...

Ambedkar The dream of Ambedkar he had conceived still remains unrealized. This is not the country of his imagination. His fears have come true. This is nowhere a society he envisaged. Today on his birth anniversary, people remember him just as someone who drafted our constitution. Others remember him for reservations. Specific part of society hate him for that particular reason. But mostly people seem to come to an understanding of his undisputed contributions. His figure have survived in people's minds, his ideals however are long dead. Today is his birth anniversary. I am sitting here on the terrace of my house. Its almost midnight. 'His' people are celebrating. With sounds of loudspeakers, and DJs, 'They' are dancing joyously. It seems a special day for them, evidently no less than a festival. His figure is godlike. A figure of saviour which saved them. The air is filled with dreadful irony. He would have abhorred the idea of people making him a God. He also woul...

Autumn Sonata - 1978 Directed By : Ingmar Bergman Incurable diseases, hopeless marriages, broken relationships, indifferent hearts; resentment, hatred, pain, guilt, loss, insanity and death! Utterly disgusting in its rawness of emotions that one feels the very same emotions crawling in his skin, after watching this naked display of guilty emotions, where people are in want of love but also would not refrain themselves from eating each others heart alive by cruel, with unbearable words and passionate hatred.  Starting with a sombre tone, as the gentle husband introduces his wife, with apparent disappointment in his manners, the film going through severe changes in tone, and until we know it we are already guttered in this extraordinary display of familial guilt and trauma. The wife initially seems cheery, naive, easily irritable and really wants to make her mother happy when she arrives to her place to spend few days with the family. Matters get ugly, secrets are reveale...

2021 was not quite as good as 2020 with respect to movies. Though i have seen quite a lot of films this year too. Most of them were rewatches of the films i had seen earlier. 2021 movie log List of all the films i have seen this year : here Rewatched films : here Letterboxd has been quite useful for keeping track of films. Its perhaps also the app i used the most this year.  Some Stats :  Total films : 130 New Films : 97 Rewatches : 33 Year wise : pre 1950s - 5, 1950s to 75 - 10, 1975 to 2000 - 17, 2000 to 2010 - 20, 2010 to 2021 - 45 Top 10 favourite films seen this year: Honourable mentions : Casablanca-1942, On The Waterfront - 1954, Stalker - 1979, Persona - 1966, American Beauty - 1999, Moonlight - 2016, North By Northwest - 1959, The Tree Of Life - 2011, Wuthering Heights - 2011, Babadook - 2014, Piku - 2015, Highway - 2014, The English Patient - 1996, Repulsion - 1965, Platoon - 1986, Soul - 2020, Lilya 4-ever - 2002, Drive - 2011, Funny Games - 2007, Tess -...

Highway - 2014 Directed By : Imtiaz Ali One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest can be easily dismissed as being a fundamentally flawed film, and experts of psychiatry must have gone angry watching Chief escape from the asylum which otherwise was considered such genuinely cathartic moment of the film by film lovers including myself. While there are people who don't have any special insight about psychiatry or they don't necessarily want think about what happens to Chief after he escapes. For them it is merely a freedom from the oppressive system of Fletcher. It is symbolic for them. But the problem with it is that, Chief's life after the escape might not be as good as we think. He will get lost in the outer world due to his impairment and illness. And the whole idea of patients going wild and rejecting authority might upset and even make many disgusted by the film. For them, its a perfect example of how an inaccurate and inappropriate a film can be. But on the other hand, what ...

The White Tiger - 2021 Directed By : Ramin Bahrani The White Tiger have many kind of problems, but they are not very stark. They are not significant, but still quite obstruct this film to be a lot better than what it is. This is awkward, lukewarm and confusing film throughout, but enjoying nonetheless. As an adaptation of Arvind Adiga's Booker Prize winning book, this film is somewhat accurate and faithful to its source material. The book was also quite lukewarm and confusing. And if I am allowed to be little more critical, it was gimmicky. And the film somewhat makes that gimmick much more obvious and visible here. There are instances where you have to join the universal opinion and question your own judgment because of it. When you read a book or watch a film, people are so crazed about that piece of work, but you don't see the greatness of the work which the people around you are referring to. And more often than not, you question your own judgement in that case ...

Wuthering Heights - 2011 Directed By : Andrea Arnold Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights is a refreshing look at a period piece. Unlike the romanticism we usually get from period films, her's is a bare, raw, wild and unrefined. Perhaps even accurate than what we generally get. It is careless to please anyone, content with itself and with its own flaws, but perhaps the very flaws are its advantages too. Perhaps they are not flaws at all, maybe Arnold have a vision which the viewer or reader for that matter dont have. And she know something about the story we dont.  Period films are generally about wide green beautiful fields, delicate costumes, stern diction, a particular way of speaking, and many formalities and extravaganzas. Wuthering Heights totally drops these conventions and shows something bold and raw it its form. It is animalistic, natural, savage, yet so beautiful in its raw form. It is definitely audacious. It may not please everyone, and having released a d...

Tess - 1979 Directed By : Roman Polanski Tess is a very frustrating character. You start to question her many times in the film. Whether she is pure, angelic, enduring or just plain stupid. She surely not an idiot though, and there is a real frustration. The pain and misery she goes through seems at times to be self induced. But it is way more complicated than that to understand the origin of her misery. And though her own naivety or her ignorance about the evils of society, and, people in general cause her much of that misery, they aren't certainly the only reasons or even the chief reasons.  Hardy's masterful prose definitely raises questions on the plight of people like Tess. One must acknowledge that Tess do exist in real world. And that makes the character so frustrating. Countless number of Tess are bearing the pains others have inflicted without raising a word, silently. And Hardy so sensitively put forward one such story of misery and tragedy. The characters...

Locke - 2013 Directed By : Steven Knight I like to think that Locke is perhaps about stoicism. Its a lesson about stoicism. Perhaps about how to handle situations which are out of control. And in the end stoicism prevails. Perhaps its not hardcore or perfect form of stoicism which is described in the books. Ivan Locke has his faults. He shouldn't have been in that position in the first place. It isn't his dead father's fault that he has impregnated a women who is not his wife. Or he should have been more sensitive to the woman who carries his child. He is sensible man though, his soul is being tortured, his mind is not at rest and his whole world is falling apart in front of him. Yet he bears it all. He is determined to his thing, right thing. And probably thats the basic idea of stoicism, isn't it? Sometimes it is confusing to define stoicism. It has its shades, its variants. Ivan Locke has his variants. He has a deep urge to save the ruins of his already d...

Pride And Prejudice - 1995 Directed By : Simon Langton There are some books written exclusively for adaptations. They make good stories. They have good 'plot'. Perhaps alluring mystery or some centerpiece around which the whole thing revolves. They hardly provide anything else. Once you read it, you are done with it. You might not look up to that book or film later on ever. Though it certainly may give some pleasure. And there are other types of books; where an adaptation is nearly impossible. Its characters are perhaps so intricate, intriguing and nuanced that they cannot be transformed to the screen. Sometimes these books give something so distinct of a feeling, mood or ambience that cannot be replicated. Like that one of Hardy's mysteriously dark, symbolic and tragic Tess, or The Mill On The Floss' brother - sister dynamic by George Eliot, or the social commentary in Dicken's Hard Times or even Oliver Twist. Pride And Prejudice is certainly one of those books. ...

Okja - 2017 Directed by : Bong Joon-ho Okja is four or five films in a single one. It is a drama, a sci fi, a comedy and maybe a satire as well, and many more things, maybe even a thriller. It is a kind of film, which have bit of everything, which is all over the place, and still everything works, quite rare. It could have easily been called as a chaotic mess or undercooked or overcooked, but in fact it really isn't. It is a lovely mess. It has very contrasting elements, the very first scene is; an evil CEO of meat company is promoting her beaf, she tells how she is going to revolutionize the pig meat industry by producing meat from genetically mutated large pigs, which are enormous, probably the size of elephant's baby. Now that scene is business like, very monotonous and superficial and sick. As the evil lady finishes telling her stupid plan, the camera cuts short. We are now in a completely different part of the world. Previous was New York and now some remote ...

Pyaasa - 1957 Directed By : Guru Dutt One of the true pleasures of watching Pyaasa is Guru Dutt's face and his genuine expressions. It doesn't seem like he is playing a character; he is playing himself. Such is the power of those expressions. The genuineness of eyes, the horror in the same eyes when he is exposed to the dirty existence of social hypocrisies and selfishness. Or genuine delight over simplest of things. Or the childlike wonder about the world around him. Everything about that face felt so real and human.  Here is an actor who knows art of acting. While others are waving their hands obsessively, exaggerating expressions, speaking dramatically and mechanically, leaving no traces of subtlety; Dutt is subtle, hardly exaggerating or waving his hands or making faces. He is still. His every word leaves an impact, whether he is angry, sad, disappointed, horrified or happy. Every emotion is portrayed to its utmost perfection. Here is someone who is magical, mys...

Us - 2019 Directed By : Jordan Peele Us is a very layered horror film. It has lot to say, apart from being an excellent tense horror flick. Jordan Peele had given similar film before, Get Out, which was not very subtle like Us, and was different from this one, but there are same techniques and approaches which obviously draws few valid parallels. Although keeping all that in mind, its safe to say that Us is its own thing and should not be compared to the former film of Peele. Us is deliberately and so skillfully shot, it is certainly a solid work. The cinematography and editing is top notch. The score is chilly and effective. You feel that a lot has been done to achieve what we have seen in the film. The acting is fantastic, especially Nyong'o, who is so dynamic and skilled. She is literally playing two people in the film. Its an ambitious film to say the least. Its overwhelming only to think about how much rich symbolism it has and how much thinking is done to make it....

Death Proof - 2007 Directed by : Quentin Tarantino Death Proof is quite a niche film. So Tarantino-esque. There are cues everywhere suggesting it to be a Tarantino flick. With characters trying to be cool, the scenes of women's feet obsessively throughout, group of people sitting on table and just talking, lot of talking, people shitting curses, and more talking. Only certain type of people might enjoy this. I am stuck in between; neither hated nor loved it. The film is competent, sure. It feels like it. The camera work is top notch, the cinematography is great, and the stunts, breathtaking. But its so obsessed with itself. I later learnt that Death Proof is an attempt to imitate the general exploitation B films of 70s era of Hollywood. Cant relate. That takes the fun out for me. People who are aware of that context seem to enjoy the film better. With characters just acting as action caricatures, who dont have any psychology but just doing what they are supposed to do. ...

Soul - 2020 Directed by : Pete Docter One of the most misleading advice we get from the people around us is, to have purpose, a passion and in Soul's language; A Spark. When you are naive, 13 or 14, receptive to all that is happening around, you cant help but listen to those advices and think about yourself and think about how does that relate to you. You hunt for your passions and mistake your hobbies and interests as passions. You go on indulging in them just to later find out that, it is not you really wanted. It never was. While the real questions of life gets sidelined and you are left with your own little petty passions in this complex, incomprehensible world.  Even after you find your passion, or something that you truly love to do, there is not really the end of it. It isnt that concrete, or black and white thing where after finding your Spark you will be happy forever after. Tragedies happen, misfortune happen, world never goes according to your plan, the messy world is fu...

Maqbool - 2003 Directed by : Vishal Bhardwaj Maqbool is a clever character study of a man's gradual descent from loyalty to betrayal; from respect to rage; from reason to madness; from life to eventual and tragic death. Vishal Bhardwaj's Maqbool is powerful adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy, Macbeth, which deals with themes of loyalty, betrayal, love, guilt and death. Set in underworld of Mumbai, Maqbool is realistic portrait of world of gangsters' and their psyche. It is oftentimes dark, serious, repressed and at unexpected times wickedly funny.  Jahagir Khan aka Abba ji(Pankaj Kapoor with his Brando-esque mannerisms), is an aging don of Mumbai, who runs the crime world, with the help of his loyal lieutenant, Maqbool(Irrfan Khan) and Kaka, his loyal(underrated Piyush Mishra). Purohit and Pundit, are two utterly corrupt cops who help them fight their rivals(played charmingly by Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri respectively). They are film's charm and wit. ...