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Showing posts with the label Mainstream cinema

Gustakhi Maaf

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A blind monkey at the center An edifice can only be as efficient as its base. There is no point admiring a fancy well made facade, if it's foundation itself is shaky. This is precisely what is felt about the movie, 'Andhadhun'. The protagonist who is a musician sets up an experiment on himself by acting blind - so that it enables him to compose his tunes well. This seems to be the starting point of the movie - an aspect that is half halfheartedly told in a voice-over right at the beginning; and then later somewhere in the middle, when the protagonist desperately explains about this dialogues in a few dialogues, as his game is exposed. Not giving enough screen time to set up the intensity of the 'why' of this experiment that needs him to go blind, is one reason why the pedestal of this movie seems unsteady. Of course, we know that he wants to create a musical piece for a competition that could let him into the greener pastures of a foreign land, but that just becom

Gully Boy - a disturbing perspective.

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A still from 'Gully Boy' The last sequence of the movie 'Gully Boy' shows the rising rap singer from the slums of Mumbai, walking up on to a glittering stage, attended by various aides on his way, to face a cheering audience. The lights illuminating the upstage area (the one furthest from the audience) suddenly switches on to reveal a two dimensional cardboard cutout  of a slum set, in front of which Gully Boy is supposed to successfully rap. That is when the end credits appear and that is when it struck me that 'Gully Boy' the movie is just that - the voyeuristically captured 'harsh' and 'depressing' milieu of the Mumbai slums evident in the beginning of the movie before even the plot begins to crawl, is just a cardboard cutout stage setting meant to be where it is meant to be - in the background. What is the foreground? The movie is about an angst ridden rap singer who wants to escape up from the 'harsh' realities of a class t