Friday, January 07, 2005
2005…..and a bad movie of 2004
It’s been ages since I have updated my blog. There was a lot to write about, but personal and professional obligations took its toll upon my blogging time. However, I am pretty hopeful of getting back on track.
At the outset, let me wish all the visitors to this blog a very happy new year!!!! Have a great time in 2005 folks!!! May this year 2005 bring us good music, movies and books helping bloggers like me to keep penning opinions, ideas and thoughts. Above all, may this year 2005 be a step forward to make this entire world a bit better place.
Coming to this bad movie, though it has come and gone, this movie shocked me so much that I just can’t help writing about it. Coming from a director whom I admire a lot, this movie was a big let down for me. I had gone into the dark room (read: theater) with sky high expectations and came back, a disgusted and a disappointed person. The movie in question is “Naach”. What exactly did Ram Gopal Varma have in mind when he made this movie? Did he venture to make a big screen version of Ayn Rand’s "The Fountainhead"? Did he want to show the heights (or shall I say absolute pits) to which the dress costumes of the female protagonist can go to? This movie can be classified as a miserable failure from all perspectives. I seriously think that the director had no clue about the purpose of this movie and made it just for the heck of it.
Coming to the effort, it’s a typical tale of a person standing by his ideals and ultimately achieving the accolades that person deserves. Since it’s an ancient tale, obviously the audience will be expecting a lot from the key theme of such a movie. The key theme here ‘dance’ is simply atrocious and highly abstract. Atrocious is a word that perhaps does not exactly fit the bill here, but this is the best word I could come up with after going through the dictionary of slang. Now dance needs to be backed up with great music (Another failure: in fact the less said about the music, the better). Since both music and dance fail, the audience will look forward to at least some good costumes. Well, what shall I say about the costumes? The costumes are as abstract as they can be and as minimal as they can be.
When you are abstracting so many things in your movie, a need arises to educate the audience about the relevance and the need of the same. You just can’t make the heroine wear skimpy costumes, put on ghastly make up, make her dance weirdly to the sound of even more weirder music, pass it on as choreography that is way ahead of its time and expect the audience to lap it up with gusto.
Contrast this pathetic effort with the magnificent book “The Fountainhead” that bases itself on a similar theme. You feel sorry for the idealist Howard Roark’s plight as you understand the reasons behind his behavior and the same reader gets ecstatic at the end when Roark has his way. The director should have handled this movie in a similar manner. Rather, he lets the movie meander with Antara’s idealist dialogues backed up by abstract dance movements, without any correlation between them totally confusing the audience. The result of all this: the audience fails to understand the reasons behind the abstract package of dance, music, costumes and leaves the hall in disgust. There is just one silver lining amidst all this nonsense: Abhishek's inspired performance. As usual, he puts his life into his role and dishes out a performance that stands out like a solitary light guiding the viewer in this dark maze of a movie called "Naach".
I sincerely hope that Ram Gopal Varma (One of my 2 favorite Indian film directors, the other one being Mani Ratnam) gives a serious thought about the debacle of this movie and gets back to making great cinema. It’s not difficult for him. Considering that he has made some of the most authoritative mafia movies ("Satya", "Company"), one of the best run-away adventure movies ( “Kshana Kshanam” poorly dubbed as “Hairaan” in Hindi), superb ghost movies (“Raat”, “Bhoot”) and the classic “Shiva”, making more movies in a similar vein should be an easy task for him. Hope is eternal....
It’s been ages since I have updated my blog. There was a lot to write about, but personal and professional obligations took its toll upon my blogging time. However, I am pretty hopeful of getting back on track.
At the outset, let me wish all the visitors to this blog a very happy new year!!!! Have a great time in 2005 folks!!! May this year 2005 bring us good music, movies and books helping bloggers like me to keep penning opinions, ideas and thoughts. Above all, may this year 2005 be a step forward to make this entire world a bit better place.
Coming to this bad movie, though it has come and gone, this movie shocked me so much that I just can’t help writing about it. Coming from a director whom I admire a lot, this movie was a big let down for me. I had gone into the dark room (read: theater) with sky high expectations and came back, a disgusted and a disappointed person. The movie in question is “Naach”. What exactly did Ram Gopal Varma have in mind when he made this movie? Did he venture to make a big screen version of Ayn Rand’s "The Fountainhead"? Did he want to show the heights (or shall I say absolute pits) to which the dress costumes of the female protagonist can go to? This movie can be classified as a miserable failure from all perspectives. I seriously think that the director had no clue about the purpose of this movie and made it just for the heck of it.
Coming to the effort, it’s a typical tale of a person standing by his ideals and ultimately achieving the accolades that person deserves. Since it’s an ancient tale, obviously the audience will be expecting a lot from the key theme of such a movie. The key theme here ‘dance’ is simply atrocious and highly abstract. Atrocious is a word that perhaps does not exactly fit the bill here, but this is the best word I could come up with after going through the dictionary of slang. Now dance needs to be backed up with great music (Another failure: in fact the less said about the music, the better). Since both music and dance fail, the audience will look forward to at least some good costumes. Well, what shall I say about the costumes? The costumes are as abstract as they can be and as minimal as they can be.
When you are abstracting so many things in your movie, a need arises to educate the audience about the relevance and the need of the same. You just can’t make the heroine wear skimpy costumes, put on ghastly make up, make her dance weirdly to the sound of even more weirder music, pass it on as choreography that is way ahead of its time and expect the audience to lap it up with gusto.
Contrast this pathetic effort with the magnificent book “The Fountainhead” that bases itself on a similar theme. You feel sorry for the idealist Howard Roark’s plight as you understand the reasons behind his behavior and the same reader gets ecstatic at the end when Roark has his way. The director should have handled this movie in a similar manner. Rather, he lets the movie meander with Antara’s idealist dialogues backed up by abstract dance movements, without any correlation between them totally confusing the audience. The result of all this: the audience fails to understand the reasons behind the abstract package of dance, music, costumes and leaves the hall in disgust. There is just one silver lining amidst all this nonsense: Abhishek's inspired performance. As usual, he puts his life into his role and dishes out a performance that stands out like a solitary light guiding the viewer in this dark maze of a movie called "Naach".
I sincerely hope that Ram Gopal Varma (One of my 2 favorite Indian film directors, the other one being Mani Ratnam) gives a serious thought about the debacle of this movie and gets back to making great cinema. It’s not difficult for him. Considering that he has made some of the most authoritative mafia movies ("Satya", "Company"), one of the best run-away adventure movies ( “Kshana Kshanam” poorly dubbed as “Hairaan” in Hindi), superb ghost movies (“Raat”, “Bhoot”) and the classic “Shiva”, making more movies in a similar vein should be an easy task for him. Hope is eternal....
