Into the Abyss

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you. “

                                                                   - Jenseits von Gut und Böse  ,Friedrich Nietzsche

Mr. Herzog believes that the common denominator of the universe is chaos,hostility and murder. Mr Herzog also believes that capital punishment is wrong. In Into the Abyss, Mr. Herzog seems to be out to make a case for his second belief. Personally, I think Mr Herzog is more of an explorer for whom making a case for anything is least of the worries.

 Mr Herzog's documentaries are more of narratives. They don't have a linear pattern and they do not seem to be moving towards a finale. They are essentially a set of footage loosely connected to a theme but not strictly adhering to it. The reason for it is that most of his documentaries are driven by interviews. I am not sure, if he looks at them as characters, but the people he questions, are often imperfect narrators. Most of them do not ever offer an unbiased third person opinion on the topic being discussed and many of them are not even capable of doing that since they are too close to the theme being discussed. So they drift off and Mr Herzog often lets them drift off. That's what makes these documentaries so fascinating.

Into the Abyss is one such documentary which talks about a mass murder in Conroe, Texas where three people were killed for a Chevy Camarro. Mr Herzog starts by talking to a prison chaplain who presides over executions. 

Mr. Herzog's line of questioning often starts with small talk which makes people comfortable. He usually asks them to explain about their work and the chaplain in this case explains his job on the execution day and also about what happens at the end of an execution. He then asks if he believes that capital punishment is god's way and the chaplain does not have an answer to that. He says that he just feels that these people who die have made bad decisions. He then talks about his golfing experience where he talks about beauty of life. Then the chaplain breaks down crying. Mr Herzog's camera lingers over the priest and then moves on.

The Documentary starts with the chronology of the crime. It shows the live police footage of the murders with all its gore. Mr. Herzog asks the police chief who presided over the investigation to explain the crime and the line of questioning is mostly objective. He then moves on to the two convicts, Michael Perry and Jason Burkett. Michael is on a death row and is going to be executed after 8 days. The Man is bitter and explains to Herzog that he has been wrongly convicted. Mr Herzog asks him how he feels and the man says that you should get out of state of Texas lest they catch you and put you in the jail too.

Mr Herzog, then moves on to the kin of the murdered and understands the sense of loss that they feel. He then talks to people close to the convicts and tries to understand the background of the two convicts. He talks to the other convict, Jason Burkett who has been sentenced for life. He talks to the father of this convict who is himself incarcerated for 8 counts of felony. The father explains that it is his fault that the crimes happened and feels that if he had been there for his children they would not have turned out this way. Eventually Mr. Herzog moves to a retired executioner who explains the process of execution and explains why he retired. To our surprise, we also find the other convict Jason Burkett is married. He questions the wife who explains about their relationship.

In this series of interviews Mr Herzog seems to be establishing a case against Capital punishment. But, During this whole process, his line of questioning is also such that these people speak out what they feel. His attitude seems to be more to collect perspectives rather than making a black and white case. So, people break down when they speak and when they stop themselves from saying something, Mr Herzog nudges them to express it.

In The middle of the documentary, Mr Herzog captures the surroundings where his camera lingers over empty spaces to capture the loneliness of the place. He shows abandoned gas stations and a board in front of a church which says Sinners Welcome. Although, this might seem like a good way to establish authenticity of proceedings, I feel Mr Herzog does not feel burdened with the case he is trying to make.

By Watching this documentary, I could not decide if I am for or against Capital punishment. I have not thought about the topic. This documentary does not help. It just presents to us people who were part of this harrowing experience and their thoughts. 

P.S. In Mr. Herzog's interviews you would notice the camera lingering on his subjects even after they have stopped speaking. This captures them at their rawest moment where they do not have anything to say but the camera is still focusing on them. To Me, This is as lifelike as cinema can get.

No One Killed Jessica and F*** Word

Out of the numerous posts on your facebook wall, maybe this one caught your attention because of the title. Now the title is nothing exceptional considering the smartest expression I could come up with the name of the movie and the other word is “AND”. I guess it is that F*** Word which caught your eye. It is a gimmick. An Intended one. No One Killed Jessica with all goodness of its intentions makes use of this gimmick.

I do not have a problem with cuss words. It is a convenient word most of the time. But if it is enunciated, emphasized then you are using it to sensationalize things. That puts a question mark on two things: Your Intentions and Your Smartness as a film maker.

No One Killed Jessica tries to document and dramatize the struggle that ensued to ensure that justice was done in the Jessica Lal murder Case. Now, there are two aspects to it: Documentation and Dramatization.

The Movie in terms of documentation achieves a lot. It briefly touches the incident, the related proofs and witnesses.It also talks about the lack of witness protection program in our country and cites this case as an example. If I look at it from this perspective, the movie is important considering in the last decade or so, we have only a few movies which have documented the happenings of our times and their implications on our nation as a whole. That is the reason we need movies like this, Black Friday or Sehar.

The Dramatization lets the movie down. The movie in terms of the story has three parts: The Incident, The Struggle and The Heroics. Until the Failed Struggle, Vidya Balan(as Sabrina Lal) literally carries the movie. The lady has that tremendous capability of internalizing her characters. So what you see are the close up shots of Sabrina Lal very much in pain and the hopelessness of her journey. You empathize with her just because of the sensitivity with which Vidya Balan plays Sabrina. I would have loved the movie to be more specific about what and how Sabrina Lal Fought, but the movie unfortunately was interested in the heroics.

The Heroics is what trivializes the movie. It is mostly crass and naive. It is a F Word out of place, rather many of them. Rani Mukherjee in her role as the Journalist somehow loses the sensitivity of the situation and her talks of justice come out more as exercises of Self Indulgence. The movie then becomes the poster child of Rani Mukherjee's character and her heroics. The pitch of the movie shifts from documenting to populist, mitigating its cause.

All said, The background score of the movie is sometimes sombre and sometimes exhilarating and very true to the emotive tone of the movie and is somewhere responsible for this movie being felt better than it really is.

A story like Jessica's is pivotal in our history. It has served out to show some major flaws in our system of justice and may serve as a case to creation of new laws, so that such incidents do not happen. On the other end, it has meant a great personal struggle for some people who have endured 10 years with grief and determination which are not two easy emotions to carry together. For most of us, it is a source of cynicsm and admiration alike. Holistically, it is just irony just like the need of emphasizing on the F Word to sell it.

Udaan : I Drift Along

Last year, I watched a movie by Gus Van Sant called Paranoid Park. It is the story of a 17 year old drifter who commits an accidental murder. For its whole run of 100 minutes the movie is mostly about the attempts of the boy to come to terms with the guilt. It silently follows him while his thoughts drift from his childhood to the incident. The movie is mostly nervously silent, event less and ends like that. It just leaves you with possibilities which are terrifying and mostly devoid of a lot of hope.

Udaan, is a movie which is mostly silent in its own terms. It talks of hope but is not vocal about it. It talks about bad parenting, its impacts but doesn’t take it up as an issue. It is a slice of life about people and their attempts to come to terms with the changes around them. It is about how they find their ways, fighting with the circumstances, making peace with some of them and running away from some of them.

Now I am not putting the protagonists in the two movies in the same spot. For me the protagonist(Rohan,Rajat Barmecha) in Udaan is in a far more hopeful position. But the way the movies end to me is similar. Open with a lot of possibilities.

**** Spoiler Alert *****

Udaan is an honest movie. It strips to a run down house where most of us may be living. It could be your or my first house. And it is for a couple of people. The colour could have very well been Sepia. But the movie doesn’t even grant us that fanciness.

It just layers itself with the situations and the response of the characters. It brings the protagonist to a house where the parent is not exactly friendly. The father(Ronit Roy) is shown to be a disciplinarian. His Pride stems from winning the morning race against his son. You start with expecting this character to break at sometime. But then you are a spoilt viewer. You have been given that privilege many a time. The movie goes on to explain the fears of the father, his reasons for his behavior, but never gives him the courage to face himself. You end up making peace with the fact that he cannot change.

The protagonist is a budding writer.The movie through is ridden with beautiful verses whose words defy the boys age. In one delightful sequence, the boy tries to make his parent understand him with his poetry. The father , though impressed, refuses to concede. The movie titillates you with these moments where you expect the father to give up and that never happens. He is shown softening in some instances, only to go back to his own notions.

The movie takes you places where a drifter would go. You travel with it. You never empathise with the protagonist but go with yourself. You stand beside him and the stay in the moments with him. He does not need you. So you go with your own thoughts in that moment.

The movie as a whole is eventful but the events never lead to anywhere. Those are just moments which one remembers when sitting with an old friend, chatting about his bad boy days. Those are just moments when the protagonist escapes from his life and steals his moments. It just establishes the facts that how some of us wish we could refuse to be institutionalized and keep drifting. It is a trip down the memory lane for some of us and liberation for some of us.

**** Spoiler Alert Ends ****

The movie ends with the characters who start as they were. Just that they move on with some new decisions. There is no change of heart. Just that there are some new equations and new bonds and new hopes some of which are unfounded. Some of us might call it an escape, but each escape is just a new road. As the movie ends

“Kahani Khatam hai, Ya Shuruat Hone ko Hai”

For me who may just be standing 10 years ahead of that boy, am not sure, because the glass is sometimes half full and sometimes half empty.

My Name is Ganesan and I am Ranting

My Name is Khan was an anticipated movie. I am not sure what I expected from it. It was more of a ritual. I have watched every SRK-Karan Johar movie in a cinema hall within a week of its release. Somehow, I wanted to keep up with the record. And yeah one expectation was that it would at least be entertaining.

So, I decided to invest three hours of my already sleep deprived weekend’s schedule. And now I question the prudence of the whole endeavor.

We are the work product of our Indulgences. We are limited and freed by them. My Name is Khan shows how badly we can be limited by it.

The basic question is what was the path the movie trying to follow:

a) An autistic man apparently oblivious to the happenings, hence incorruptible, sleepwalking to the so called proof of concept f his goodness, the pedestal, meeting the President of US? You can blame me for being limited by my thoughts about Forrest Gump

b) A portrayal of the Prejudice which springs up on the mention of a name, using again the incorruptible autistic man as a method. But, you got the autistic man right, but how did you present the Pre-Judice?

Now what I admit is that it could be a smart move, though not novel. And it could have very well helped the portrayal of the sad reality of our times. Had it resisted the temptation of the manipulation it tried to achieve.

** Spoiler Alert Begins ***

Manipulation 1:

The whole small town in Georgia Sequence seemed to be the work product of a dissatisfied director on the editing table. It was a fuel to the dreaminess that was set out to achieve. We shall Overcome was the Jana Gana Mana of K3G. Here you see a director who cannot get out of himself.

Manipulation 2:

The football ground sequence where SRK is sent across to meet the President of US, the triggering event of the series of events, itself seemed a filler. Here you are talking about a couple 7-8 years into marriage and the wife in a post traumatic stress, finds her husband’s religion as the problem. Ok, I will give her the benefit of the trauma. But, where does the US president come into all this?

Manipulation 3:

The whole Mosque Sequence, Getting the Doctor arrested, and his associate stabbing Rizwan with a knife seemed so juvenile. And the whole suffering then used as a premise to bring back the angry wife defeats the whole purpose of the labour of love, the long journey to meet the president.

*** Spoiler Alert Ends***

My problem with the whole movie, if I consider it a medium to make us aware of the reality is, what does it tell us that we do not hear on a news, read on a newspaper and hear from people? Where is the research?

My Problem with the Love Story if it was a Love Story, is why does it necessitate the protagonist to meet the President of US, when the so called Love is Back to Meet him. There is a scene at the juncture where Kajol Says “ Ab iski kya zarurat hai, chalo ghar chalte hain”. It was a clear indication for Rizwan to go home and the director to end the movie.

When I say all this, I appreciate how Shah Rukh Khan has acted in the movie. You see the character in the movie, the lack of which you blame him in his other movies. He is an actor who communicates very well with his audience. Moreover, the Asperger’s Syndrome Act forces him to an objectivity which is refreshing to watch. He knows facts and he refutes arguments with Facts,that is when he is allowed to, which is a different act from him. Though in some scenes, he tends to slip into his wisecracks but can be forgiven, given the whole scheme of things.

But I guess, the story goes awry because of the whole thought process of the director. A direction which does not seem to find its direction. It wants to be a lot of things and ends up being a lot of half cooked things. It necessitates its protagonist to meet the President of US, save a town from flood and sing Hum Honge Kamayab, when a crowd sings We shall Over Come to prove that he is not limited by his disabilities. This is the story of another sad reality of our times, what it could have been and what it ended as? Just if someone could get out of himself.

P.S. If you want me to summarise the whole rant, look at the image at the top. My whole problem is with the US flag being there.

Gosford Park And An Observation

Once when I asked my friend for a Wodehouse, he pushed me back. These are not your kind of stories, was his reason. For my "Claiming to read Anything" ego, this was kind of unacceptable. These are not kind of people you would ever relate to, he said. These are about the people who have a lot of undeserved wealth and just talk and talk. They never work. It is just the wit in their conversations, that is so good about these books. You would not like them, he said.

Anyways, I went on and tried reading a Wodehouse. It was about a character called PSmith . I am embarrassed to say that I do not even remember the name of the book. I could not finish the book. I think my friend was right.

The initial few reels of Gosford Park brought the same dread back in me. But, after watching Gosford Park, I came across one realization. Whenever we observe or read about the lives of others, we relate to their conflicts more than their happinesses. The reason could be plain spite, empathy or sympathy, but maybe that is what links you to a story more than anything. I guess that is why a certain Rocky Balboa is so popular. He has those self doubting conflicts of an everyman. Remember that last scene in the final installment Rocky Balboa when he walks away from the arena with his people before even the results are announced.The greatness of the scene lies in the conquest of self doubt rather than its quantification and sums up everything him and our love for him stands for.

Gosford Park to my humble observation strives on these conflicts and that is what kept me going on this movie. The Best part is that these conflicts most of time are just undercurrents. And you as a viewer are supposed to understand them. The less you judge, the more you know.

Gosford Park is in core a murder mystery.But I think that is just a reason to tag it to a genre. It is more about the people who have gathered in a country mansion in England for a shooting party. The Mix of the people belong to that stereotype of British bourgeoisie, where people are affected so much by others lives and are so quick to judge them.The movie is scandalous for most of its course with infidelity galore emphasizing more on that stereotype.

The Stereotype is just be a pretext. The brilliance of the movie lies in some moments where the camera just pans on certain characters out of the blue and concentrates on their lonely moments. These are the moments which are so cleverly few and far between those tiring rounds of conversations that make the whole story so human. The reason being that the scenes preceding these moments these characters behave so synthetically that a certain honest corner in you cringes. And in these moments you as a viewer are made to identify with their conflicts and actually try to guess their fears.

In essence, the story concentrates on mannerisms of many and lives of few. Two of them are kept indifferent to these proceedings and one other indulged. The indulged one is a maid called Dorothy(Sophie Thompson) who is shown more as an observer of the proceedings and is often amused or shocked.

The indifferent ones Robert Parks(Clive Owen) and Mrs. Wilson(Helen Mirren) are shown rarely.Helen Mirren plays a head maid who is more often shown concentrating on the job at hand.This is a master act by Helen Mirren who always seems to be holding something up her sleeve.

The most brilliant moment in the movie where she walks into the room of Clive Owen and inquires if the hospitality is good enough. You are thrown into the scene without any information,but Helen Mirren brings so much to the table with her dignified performance in that scene that you just live in that moment and know what is to come.

I think talking about the story would not be much fruitful.Nor what will happen at the end.These is no lesson in it. It is only people and their fallacies. It may be about us in a different surrounding. For once, we just need to observe everything and take we lessons home.And I may just be writing about all this due to only a realization.

My Left Foot: The Power of Contempt

I think the two great actors of our times have stark contradictory Characteristics. One of them Tom Hanks, indifferent, seems to be blowing in the wind of the circumstances. The Other Daniel Day Lewis, Indulged, always seems bothered by them. And when I talk about the latter, what comes to me is contempt in the eyes of the actor, and the power that the contempt generates.

I start talking about this contradiction, because, I saw My Left Foot and at the end of it, I went back to its paradox, Forrest Gump. And what came to me, is how one completes other and how each of them, is homage to what the lead actors in them represent.

Enough has been said and written about the Forrest Gump and it features in the Favorite Movie section of most of the people I know.

But I think what stops, My Left Foot, from being such a favorite, is its indulgence. A third person observation would rate Daniel Day Lewis’s performance as one of the greatest, and by god, I vouch for it. But, it is not a situation you would like to be. The character is conflicted, has his flaws, and is so much bothered by his surroundings. We all are. Hence, though you can identify with him, you do not want to be him.

Daniel Day Lewis brings about a contradiction, named Christy Brown on screen. A man you start pitying for his physical disabilities. And then he delivers your pity a knockout punch, because he overcomes them for his own sweet achievements and arrogantly tells you how wrong you were for your pity. This is a masterwork of sheer contempt, where your ideas and conventions of pity are shown their way.

Some of the moments of the movie would seem exaggerated, but I guess it is not about moments.

The story is about a man suffering from cerebral palsy from childhood. The only functional organ is his left foot, with which he paints. A very exhilarating and eventually frustrating moment of the movie is when Christy tries to explain, what is quarter of a quarter, and when nobody understands what he has written.

But I think these are just proceedings and the motive is just the character. It is not about his achievements but his reactions to the journey.It is just about how the man lives those moments.

He holds your attention when he is on. He is a cripple, every legible word he speaks, you take as a boon. He is arrogant, not a pleasant company, always, and he is determined. And while you watch these proceedings, you hate the person, then you pity him, and then you feel exhilarated at his victories.

Then you again feel pity, because the arrogance of his victories does help him accept that he would never have a female for a company. What makes it all human, is the failed tries to get female attention, and the inevitable expectation, he has from those females to give as much love as his mother.

When an actor is able to take you through so many contradictory feelings, it is you who is at test to determine your true thought about the man.

Then there are his eyes. You would just go on watching them and know what is happening to him. They are at their majestic best when they are angry, they laugh when he is happy. There is so much power on the screen that you forget the disability of the character he plays, and just admire.

One of my reviewer friends once said, that the best stories are about contradictions. I cannot agree more. Contradictions are what make us the people that we are. And if you want a powerful example, go watch Daniel Day Lewis, playing Christy Brown on screen. He is sheer power of contempt on screen and you just end up being slaves of that master act.

INTO THE WILD - THE WORLD IS JUST AWESOME

There is a commercial campaign doing rounds on discovery channel. It says the "The World is Just Awesome". One of the commercials features Bear Grylls(Man Vs Wild) hanging on to a helicopter, about to jump into the space and sea. The height is giddy and the sea is completely blue below. This image comes back to me. When I ride on my bike without my helmet on, when I run on to the top of a nearby hill. The moment of this image has freedom and man can actually count the forces acting on him. Or can he?

Into the Wild is a movie which has been on my "To Watch" list for quite a while. It promised something you yearn for. To minimize the number of forces acting on you, to break free, to move away. Finally I got hold of it. The two hours and twenty eight minutes(end titles included) were liberation. Liberation as an experience. Experience just enhanced by some beautiful compositions by Eddie Vedder(Pearl Jam).

We all want to escape. A notion in our subconscious, of a place where you would be free. If you feel you don’t, Please consider this a peculiarity only to me. But when I think about such a place, I think of a free fall and I think of the sea. When I think about both of them, I see an endlessness about them. Places in your short sighted, momentary reactions you consider as endless. It is this endlessness about them that fascinates me.

Christopher McCandless(Emile Hurst in the movie) was a person who went out in pursuit of this endlessness. He assumed a name Alexander Supertramp and took a dip into the wilderness. In his short life, he conceptualized this idea of freedom and went on to pursue it. The pursuit was not to reach anywhere but to move away from things. The Move Away was rather a Moving On, if you see it in that perspective. Into the Wild is the story of that Moving On. It is a story where Christopher McCandless believes that the society which follows a particular pattern needs to be given a break, reasons need to be abandoned and Wilderness needs to be given a chance. This is exemplified in a scene when he burns the dollar bills he has at his disposal. That moment gave me some sadistic pleasure. After that, everything was just devoid of contempt .

Now in the truest sense of word, society exists in your mind. Its rules or the patterns you call them, all are thought about and perceived by you. You make peace with the picture created by that interpretation or question it. And when you give it a break, it actually comes back to you. Moments of peaceful solitude can actually replay the patterns to you. You can actually be more bothered about them. This belief of mine is reemphasized in a particularly brilliant scene in the movie, when Chris while trying to cook a hunted moose, replays what he experienced at his home, due to his parents who had a troubled relationship and who kept going to keep up a social image, they wanted to portray.

But that is not all what getting Into The Wild is all about. It is about experiencing, rather introducing entropy to your life. Entropy which only nature can introduce. It is about being Wild in the Wild. One such brilliant scene in the movie is where Chris goes Kayaking on a particularly violent river. He fights the waves and goes on. At the end of that adventure, he says "If everything in this world is rode by reason, the possibility of life is Destroyed". That line stays with you.

And, there is fear. Once, Me and my friends went for a trip to goa. On a typically violent beach, we decided to try some jet skiing. It was a high tide day and the sea looked fearsome. We went ahead with our pursuit though. When we were somewhere in the middle of the scheduled distance, the Jet Ski turned. Me and my friend, feel into the sea in that moment of shock. Though I claim to enjoy the sea, the point where you can no more stand induces a fear in me. When we fell into the sea, my first instinct was to try to stand, to find that quiet assurance of gravity. I could not find the ground. Though I managed to get back to write this, that particular moment brings back that fear to me. The fear is your connect to the world you leave behind. Attachments that you claim to wish to renounce and still cant live without in the core of your heart. That is the fear which Chris McCandless felt three times in the movie.

You would call it a coming of age story. But it would be a story which has a possibility of making you as viewer, come of age. There are moments of exhilaration. There are moments of sanctity which only a virgin island far away from civilization can offer you. The movie is your weekend trip. And it goes back to the basics. It then starts rebuilding. Chris in the movie moves in and out of civilization. He works in a corn farm as a daily wage labour. He learns the skills and likes doing them. He intends to go to Alaska one day.

In his life in Alaska, he writes his experiences in a diary. One entry is made as GET ORGANIZED. Now, this is where I emphasize on growth. Now, this growth may be termed as a contradiction with respect to the whole movie, because the whole intent was to move away from society, people and attractions. I choose to collectively call them as ORGANIZATION. But there is a difference. The ORGANIZATION in the latter case is the discovery of it, due to realization. In the former, it is just a knowledge just handed over with an assurance that things would be safe if you are organized.

I watch Bear Grylls on Discovery and I fantasize. He claims of loving nature. But the love, maybe is derived from the endurance that is tested. The basics of human survival that come into play without the corruption of a so called higher code. He eats snakes, insects. I exclaim in disgust. But, then that is the art of survival. The basic instinct of a man at its complete honesty.

I am filled today. With the images from the movie and the feeling those images evoke. These are the most virgin feelings. Maybe these were the feelings man was given to before the first book on life was written, before the first religion was introduced, before the first judgment was passed. Images which reiterate that "The World Is Just Awesome".And this movie brings back to me the first line of that beautiful Bob Dylan song:
"How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?"

"The Answer, My friend, is Blowin in the Wind; The answer is blowin in the wind"

The Last Image of Christopher McCandless in Wilderness

Rest in Peace, Chris McCandless, because peace is what you attained on earth.

Mumbai Meri Jaan

There is a scene in Mumbai Meri Jaan where Irfan Khan Raises his hands and looks to the sky. He has just made a hoax call. What I noticed about this scene was that one hand actually rises in a crooked way. That crooked hand just stops that moment from exuding complete freedom.

Now there are three ways that I could interpret that scene:

First, It may be a mannerism that Irfan Khan had adopted for the character of Joseph. Second it was just the malice in that act that corrupted that feeling of complete freedom. Third, may be the way I would like it to be, the life he lives cannot make him experience that freedom. May be, the third interpretation is actually a summation of the first two.

Mumbai Meri Jaan is an ode to irony. And there is something beautiful about irony. It has all the colors, even black and white, but it paints things in the colors they are. And Mumbai Meri Jaan travels through five lives and shows all those colors.

It is a movie about five people, with each person representing a different stratum. And it ends on a realization for each one of them. But what hits you is the silence of those realizations. It is written all over them. It is conveyed by the randomness of Tukaram Patil’s(Paresh Rawal) retirement speech, or the look on Suresh’s face(KK Menon) who scans two eyes in the end to judge the pain, the people whom he suspects of blasts, feel,or that smile on Nikhil’s(R Madhavan) face when he stands in that railway compartment in the end.

The movie ends on a hope. May be not enough to make up for what happened but enough to take you forward. Paresh Rawal is an exception to that hope and may be in a place where he cannot make changes. A Man’s greatest dreads are brought to fore by Paresh Rawal’s character in the movie. He is at a point of no return. He just ends up on a regret “Zindagi me ek bada kaam karna tha…”

I have seen Dombivali Fast. Paresh Rawal’s character has a finality in it, which I experienced in Dombivali Fast. In the movie, a police inspector says to his sub “Chala Shinde, Manus Marayla Chalu Ya”. The finality is both these statements because of the choices these people cannot come to make. The difference is that one is helpless and other did not realize it on time.

I sometimes feel that a blast is never done a justice on screen(For the movies I have seen at least). This movie was different. There was more of the blast on the faces of KK Menon and R Madhavan than all the gory scenes put together. The horror was brought to life by their faces.

I have had my problems with the way Mumbai lives. I used to discuss it with my two friends who live in Mumbai. Then one fine day they took me on a tour. We intended to go to South Mumbai. Throughout the day we travelled in the local trains from one place to another and the day ended in South Mumbai.

While I was coming back I pondered upon what we did. And I saw certain efficiency in the whole system of local trains. The efficiency lies in the fact that people travel in the space that is just about enough for them or may be less than enough. The chaos gives rise to the rules that you follow for getting your share of just enough or less than enough space. And still there is nonchalance to it, while the act is being performed. As another of my friend rightly puts “There is always a space for one more in the Mumbai Local.”

May be this is not a right way to live and people deserve more, but at the same time it tells you about how much a person can take without even realizing that his endurance is being tested.

I consider Mumbai Meri Jaan an experience, may be prone to the flaws that the medium has in our country. But it has that Loud Silence to make you feel, without being scandalous. It is a movie that makes you realize that the phrase “Yossarian Lives” from Catch 22 is actually exhilaration. And the fact that this needs to be realized, is an irony.