Spoilers ahead…
The ordeal of a group of Indian nurses held captive by a terrorist organisation in the Middle East was brought to screen, earlier this year, in Take Off. Mahesh Narayan’s Malayalam thriller-drama found an ingenious way to up the emotional stakes — it was both thriller and drama. As much as nails were being bitten during the tense portions detailing the rescue, moist eyes were being dabbed at the plight of a single nurse, whom we came to know as a human being before she turned into the target of a covert operation. Take Off made us realise why this risky mission was needed — not because of the abstract concept of the value of human life, but because this particular human life was one we didn’t want to be snuffed off so cruelly.
Tiger Zinda Hai, directed by Ali Abbas Zafar, turns the emphasis from who’s being rescued to who’s doing the rescuing. Understandably so. Take Off was a female movie, written around its heroine. It was yin; this is yang, not just a male movie but one written for a superstar. And how super is this star? He disposes of wolves in the Alpine wilderness as though they were black bucks. He paints. He makes a killer kaali dal. For a while, it’s just Tiger (Salman Khan, looking tired) and his young son on screen, and I wouldn’t have been surprised had the screenplay revealed that he’d given birth to the boy. He does everything. Why not this? Hence the groans from the audience when RAW chief Shenoy (Girish Karnad) announces that they’re going to rescue those nurses, and his assistant asks: “Karega kaun?” Really? Has he not seen the film’s posters?
“Really?” is a question you ask a lot during Tiger Zinda Hai. When Shenoy tracks Tiger down to talk about this mission, Tiger says no. Really? “Hum sab time waste kar rahe hain,” says Shenoy’s assistant, and you have to agree. Unless you’re going to invest a lot of screen time detailing how a reluctant agent is convinced, why have these silly scenes? There’s the sense that someone prepared a list of clichés that had to be dutifully adhered to — right down to the villain capturing the hero and, instead of putting a bullet through him, leaving him to die through convoluted means. I was reminded of the first Austin Powers movie, where Dr. Evil decides to execute the protagonist in a shark tank and declares, “Begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism.” A little later, he leaves, saying, “I’m going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying, I’m just gonna assume it all went to plan.” Tiger Zinda Hai is what you’d get if Austin Powers forgot to wink.
A couple of places give you a sense of what this film could have been. Tiger is married to Pakistani agent Zoya (Katrina Kaif, who’s more convincing in the action scenes than Salman is), and when Shenoy’s assistant sees the Indian and Pakistani flags placed side-by-side on a display shelf in Tiger’s house, he moves them apart. This mistrust could have added a frisson to the proceedings, especially after Zoya and her ISI agents join the mission. But that would take some actual writing. Why bother? Tiger Zinda Hai is the kind of movie that tells you how Tiger and Co. plan to enter the hospital (where the nurses are being held), and then shows them executing this very same plan. The only tension built into the narrative is how much money it will make in its opening weekend.
Julius Packiam is the film’s hero. His background score is the equivalent of the electro-shock paddles that doctors on TV keep pressing on patients’ chests. But there’s only so much resuscitation one can do when faced with such a dearth of ideas. I was surprised exactly twice — seeing Zoya’s battered face after her capture (Katrina has never allowed herself to look this… unbeautiful on screen), and listening to the villain (Sajjad Delfrooz) talk about his past. He says that you die not when you stop breathing but when you are stripped of your dignity, and it made me imagine terrorists as zombies: the undead, filled with unquenchable fury over their losses. Of course, the film does nothing with this. If I said I expected it to, you’d just say, “Really?”
Copyright ©2017 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Dracarys
December 24, 2017
And you are back!!! 🤣🤣🤣
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Vivek narain
December 24, 2017
The dude is no more a hunk, at best a chunk of lard. Zinda only with the support of his deluded supporters
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MANK
December 24, 2017
ha ha haaa, very nicely done
this one doesnt sound like a masala film . looks like a cheap copy of those Rambo films, where Stallone used to barge in to Afghanistan or Vietnam and singlehandedly wipe out the enemies
And not just tired Salman has started looking grotesque .
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Anurag
December 24, 2017
Whats with the hindi voice over for all english dialogues ? This felt like a whole new level of Dumbing down to lowest common denominator. I got to watch the hindi version (if there is an original undubbed version running i.e.) and got turned off by it absolutely. Which version you got brangan ?I believe that my absolutely 100% hatred to the film cud have dialled down by at least 10% if had they released the non -voiceover version all acorss. This was in bangalore. For india release, did any viewer here got to hear english dialogues ?
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phaneendra201
December 24, 2017
Fantastic review literally. Each and every statement in this review is GOLD.
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Anu Warrier
December 24, 2017
It is what happens when a writer/director write a tired script and then get ambitious. The original script wasn’t supposed to be a sequel at all. Then Ali Abbas Zafar had a lightbulb moment – why not piggy back on the earlier film’s success? And Adi Chopra who must be the most clueless of producers (and is still living in his DDLJ delusion) agreed – and so the saga goes. Kabir Khan must have had a silent conniption when he was approached for his blessings to an unasked-for sequel.
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Vidya
December 24, 2017
Read this review thrice..eppadi than ezhudaringalo sir! Eddellam appidiye varudhu illa 🙂 genius bit of writing. What is sad is that the guy who wrote the movie probably did not work as hard as you did on the review. Austin powers forgot to wink..who would have thought that up but you !
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Vidya
December 24, 2017
This is why you are the critic the other critics read..saw a film companion video with Anupama Chopra , Rajeev masand and Rahul Desai..someone asked Rahul this question and he mentioned you 🙂 discovering you early on in my life has been one of my biggest joys.
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memymyselfweb
December 24, 2017
Yet another pointlessly preposterous review of an ambitious actioner receiving accolades from audiences nationwide, multiplex & single screens alike. Seems like just like blind Salman fans would pay to watch even films like Bodyguard & Ready, blind Rangan worshippers & yes men would clap & agree to any worthless trash he writes these days. TZH is a sure fire BLOCKBUSTER of epic proportions, among fans & neutral audiences alike!
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Rahul
December 24, 2017
I think that Bhai is at a point in his carrier that it would be embarrassing to him and his fans if film has a good story , screenplay , dialogues etc. Would it not be insulting to Salman if anything else except his presence was needed to make a movie successful?
Of course, Katrina was signed only because Bhai likes to hang out with her.
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Pavan
December 24, 2017
I am sure Salman’s appearance has took a huge beating since Sultan happened. First, it was Ek Tha Tiger. Now its Tiger Zinda Hai. If the sequels are planned further, given their taste and preference, they might be named Tiger Zinda Rahega, Tiger Raj, Jai Ho Tiger and what not…
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lastmohican
December 25, 2017
Awesome review ! Just the right amount of snark. Mic drops at the black buck reference, him delivering the boy, GOLD ! Missed this kind of a review for a while now.
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Purple Sky
December 25, 2017
Memymyselfweb: really? 😋
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Dhanda Soru
December 25, 2017
I have to ask: Is @memymyselfweb Anuj himself? ‘Cause the things he said – and the way he said them – is eerily reminiscent of Anuj. If so, welcome back Herr
love child of Mr.Evil and Shashi TharoorAnuj.LikeLiked by 4 people
knittins
December 25, 2017
“He disposes of wolves in the Alpine wilderness as though they were black bucks.”
Ellam dappil meaning dialaag! 🙂
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Selvakumar Subramanian
December 25, 2017
Well written!
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brangan
December 25, 2017
Yes, that was Anuj 🙂 Missed it…
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writeawordatatime
December 25, 2017
“…but because this particular human life was one we didn’t want to be snuffed off so cruelly.”
This is the exact sentiment of this particular actor’s coterie that makes films for him so that his (onscreen) life isn’t snuffed out so ‘cruelly’. And people go watch, the industry discusses his film like it’s the blessing they were waiting for. Trade analysts who anoint themselves as ‘the’ critics fall at this actor’s feet and who knows clean up his s*** proclaiming his films to be the next biggest thing.
This Hindi film industry is at such a point that I hope it implodes completely, perish, taking its crap with it. The focus is solely on opening weekends, crores and crores that can be made of the two or three days before the next piece of garbage pushes the present one out, the coming week.
Why is the South permitting their films to be remade by such mediocre filmmakers and by an actor who is a murderer of both humans and animals, who abuses women and men? The Hindi Film Industry is now a festered wound of its own making, characters within it are simply not able to say no, each cleaning the others’ backside.
But the Malayalam and Tamil film industries are making some very good films, since the past some years. They still have a great deal of integrity intact that comes across in their output. So why can’t they tell this bully and his gang , no , you do not get the permit to make this film. Or is it an unofficial remake?
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brangan
December 25, 2017
writeawordatatime: This Hindi film industry is at such a point that I hope it implodes completely, perish, taking its crap with it.
What makes you say this? Are you talking only about the big star films (in which case, all industries have their versions of crap), or are you talking of the industry as a whole? If the latter, I don’t agree at all. I mean, even with Salman, you’ve had excellent “mainstream” films like Sultan and Bajrangi Bhaijaan. As for the smaller films, there are many good ones that come out every year.
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MANK
December 25, 2017
writeawordatatime: Man, you look really pissed 🙂
i think the hindi film industry has imploded to a great extend, especially this year, take out Bahubali 2 and there was hardly any blockbuster.Even if TZH is a 250 cr + blockbuster, i dont think its going to be very profitable, because these films are now made at such enormous cost.
i can understand why majority of industry and trade have hitched themselves to the salman bandwagon, with Padmavati not releasing and majority of films flopping, this was their only meal ticket and they are going out of their way to ensure that this one works big time
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imvigneshiyer
December 25, 2017
I joined little late through a mutual friend.. but nevertheless it has been a joyful ride since then..
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writeawordatatime
December 25, 2017
“What makes you say this?” –
Yes, every industry has its share of crap, but every industry gives the audience good films as well. Here I’m citing the Tamil and Malayalam industries of today, that have more than a few films that are really good.
But I don’t see this happening in current Hindi industry. OK, first off, I do not watch contemporary Hindi films. I do read a blog at times that focuses on this industry, Satyamshot and I do at times read your take on Hindi films. I think apart from these two and Jai Arjun’s blog rarely when he writes about Hindi films of today, no other online or print place has any worth of read in this regard.
Every big star film is pegged based on its previous performance only, in how much money it has minted, it will make. Eg, this film here. Only you have ripped it apart, rightly so, eloquently so. But you didn’t even ‘need’ to write about this film, that is you are not professionally obligated to. And since when did you become a deal breaker for a film to do well 🙂 . You write about film, cinema as an art form as a craft. There a re few who read. There should quite a few voices as your, each unique and different, in the mainstream to begin to make a dent in what one watches and what one doesn’t need to. This is a necessary yet insufficient condition though.
Anyway, no other ‘reviewer’ ‘writer’ online or in newspapers who have to review Hindi films each week, have this intelligence. The plot is skimmed through and appropriate justifications are made to state that this film is a blockbuster indeed and will do well , rake in the crores, break these records and so forth.
This is taking such deep roots that a film is not allowed to be discussed , a big star film , on its own merit. You are the one to show this terribly made film for what it is. But who else has? Even the above actor’s previous big dud was scarcely given negative takes by reviewers , scared as they were as they could not go against a big star. It was the audience that couldn’t sit through the mediocre film and their word of mouth, online feedback that rightly cut short the film’s run.
Same is the case with the other Khans, Devgan and even Akshay Kumar to a lesser extent. But Kumar is reinventing himself in the kind of films he is making now as he really couldn’t play the game the Khans and Devgan were and are.
But the buck doesn’t stop here. The next gen is also being groomed with the same vigour by the industry. Why? Because of all of them are insiders. The Dhawan son, Sidhdarth Malhotra, Ranveer Singh and struggling to make it in this group Sushant Singh Rajput. Whether they are able actors or not. Shahid Kapoor, he isn’t in any of this hence has patches in his career. Hrithik Roshan is one lost cause. Bachchan Junior, he is enjoying his life thanks to his parents and wife.
Films by the above form the chunk of the industry released, every year, right?. The biggies. Smaller films are doing well. Now I need specifics here, smaller films by big stars? Smaller films by the usual small players who have a niche audience anyway and play to that particular gallery? The latter, even if the industry breaks down, they will rise quicker than the bigger players as they are less dependent on the kind of diseased connections as the big players are.
Now, the smaller films by big stars and even say ‘offbeat to their mega star image’ films that I think began with Aamir K’s, Reema Kagti’s Talaash to his latest Secret S are not left alone in terms of how much they can perform money wise. It simply isn’t enough, 100 crores or so. That they have not been able to make to, say, the new benchmark of 200 300 or what have you is always highlighted. So are these films small? What are they?
I read the title of your review on Secret S and you wrote it was manipulative and facile (hope I’ve got this right) , yet it is performing well, more than expected. Rejoice that it has crossed the 100 crore benchmark , that it is going to release in China now, all hoping that it replicates Dangal’s success there.
Yes, you do write that there are certain films that are excellent as you say, BB and S. But are they worth the moolah that they raked? They are not.
Every film, big and small by biggies are bitten deep by this financial disease. If this week it is 200 next week it ought to be 300 minimum and next week more. Where will this stop? At what limit? There isn’t any. And its scary. Who cares who is the star and who cares what the film actually is worth.
Hence, it’ll be great if Bollywood implodes. Its gotten way too corrupt and rotten. And yes, if the industry does down, causes characters like the above actor to perish, then what’s not to rejoice.
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Anu Warrier
December 25, 2017
@Dhanda Soru, I thought that myself, but please don’t insult Mr Tharoor. I realise he’s the joke du jour, but the man is intelligent and can speak well, and the way he uses language is a delight to ears that have become used to egregious dumbing down in the name of anti-snobbery.
(Somehow it is only English that suffers from this malaise. Speak any other language well, and you’re praised to the hilt. Speak English well and you are the butt of jokes.)
/end venting.
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Vivek narain
December 25, 2017
Hrithik Roshan is not a lost cause,he is still the original greek god. And he has managed to evade the muck that has engulfed bollywood, without starving. Even at the peril of flogging my pet cliche, i must say he transcends bollywood and the mugs whose sole ambition is to turn bollywood into a khanate of morons.
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praneshp
December 28, 2017
@ writeawordatatime: I disagree with you, because I saw at least 2 very nice Hindi movies in the last month (Ittefaq and Tumhari Sulu). Curious though: How is Sidharth Malhotra an insider (or Sushant Singh Rajput, but your sentence is ambiguous)?
Opinion: Since Rangan moved to FC, he’s had a well-deserved dose of publicity, but that has brought to this blog some people that are fans of his, and not movies.
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Nikhil
December 28, 2017
@Anu Warrier: “Somehow it is only English that suffers from this malaise. Speak any other language well, and you’re praised to the hilt. Speak English well and you are the butt of jokes.”
The reason is pretty clear, right? English is a marker of class in this country and if you are seen as “showing off” your fluency in it (justifiably,or not), you are judged to be subtly (or not so subtly) flaunting your privilege. Not saying this line of thinking is right or that it is a good reason, but it’s understandable.
Also, “butt of jokes” is a bit much, no? Surely what Shashi Tharoor is being subjected to would fall largely under the head of good natured ribbing.
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Madan
December 28, 2017
Tharoor is an interesting one. There’s no doubt his command of English is pretty much virtuosic but he does make it a point to flaunt it, even where it’s unnecessary. He once said he was only trying to use the precise expression to convey his thoughts and even in saying so, used, as always, an uncommon expression. It has nothing to do with reverse-snobbery. I would object if a native speaker indulged in such verbosity but strangely enough, they don’t seem to do so. At least not in a way that sounds like Colonel Haathi. Some Indians do feel compelled to show off their English, whatever be the motivation to do so.
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Vivek narain
December 28, 2017
Talking of showing off, people all over the world show off whatever edge they have, be it english or whatsoever. In fact it’s prerogative that makes people brow beat others,the prerogative of Wolf Larsen the immortal character penned by Jack London makes him what he is, the tyrant unparalleled. And take this piece from J.H.Chase ‘He was middle aged with a neat pot belly and immaculately dressed. The kind of square she hated. God how she hated these successful bastards with their smug know all expressions’.
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Rahul
December 28, 2017
“Somehow it is only English that suffers from this malaise.”
Remember Chupke Chupke? Speaking of Sanskritized non colloquial Hindi was used , and very well in my opinion, in the service of comedy.
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Anu Warrier
December 28, 2017
Madan, the point is, the expression may not be uncommon to him. People who use language well, use it without second thought. Sometimes, one has to scrub around in order to use words that others will not find uncommon.
There’s a joy in listening to someone articulate, who has a command over the language that doesn’t feel the need to dumb down in order to be thought okay, someone who relishes the many ways language can be used – it’s a lost art.
@Nikhil – have you seen the Tharoor memes that are floating around? It goes beyond ‘gentle ribbing’; But you’re right – it’s a class distinction. But as Manjula Padmanabhan put it so succinctly once, ‘I speak an Indian language called English.’ Nehru didn’t have to prove his Indianness by not speaking good English. Today, people would have excoriated him as anti-national for his ‘When the world sleeps…’ speech because he didn’t make it in Hindi.
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Madan
December 28, 2017
@ Anu Warrier: Oh, there is indeed no need to dumb down. But betwixt dumbed down and rodomontade is a vast ocean. And yes, he did use it…in his verified twitter account and in a tweet where he hoped to explain his style. By the way, a word too obscure for the poor wordpress spellcheck which has lamentably bathed said word in blood.
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Rahul
December 28, 2017
I agree with Madan. There is no question that his command over language is supreme, but colloquial language can not exist in a vacuum – one has to be aware of the context and the intended recipients. Twitter is a colloquial medium and his choice of words is certainly amusing to me.
The same language I will not find out of place in this blog, for instance.
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Anu Warrier
December 28, 2017
I grinned a wicked grin at his quip, but I think his tongue was firmly in his cheek as he wrote that post, since he was addressing it to people who send him parodies of his writing/speaking style. I think he was self-parodying there.
My point, however, is if I didn’t already know what ‘rodomontade’ meant, I would have looked it up in the dictionary. It is not that obscure a word, really. (Came across this when I was searching for Tharoor’s tweet: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/welcome-words-that-ring-true/article22267775.ece) I concur, and second the writer’s argument.)
I will explain my bias – that is how I learnt language; forced by my father to look up a dictionary for the meaning of a word I’d read (and asked him the meaning of). It led to a lifelong love affair with language, words and their meanings and their etymology. My subject of study and my profession all thank my father for his farsightedness.
So why not use that smart phone to look up the meaning? People might actually learn something. But so much easier to laugh at him, right? (I don’t mean you in particular, but in general…)
@Rahul, one of the main reasons I am not on Twitter. I cannot fathom using numbers instead of words and some of the language leaves me scratching my head just as much as others scratch their heads at Tharoor’s use of English. I shudder to think of that platform used as the benchmark of a language.
Let me ask you one thing, though (a general ‘you’): If you weren’t fluent in English, and someone made fun of the way you spoke, would it bother you? How would you react if people trolled you for your poor English and send you parodies of your accent/tone/lack of grammar and syntax? If that is rude, what makes it okay to laugh at someone for being fluent in a language and speaking it the way he does? Polysyllables are not to a thing to be afraid of, people.
All said and done, the man clearly has a sense of humour about this, as witnessed by his response to the Amul ad. Good for him, and I, for one, hope he never stops using the language he does.
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Vivek narain
December 29, 2017
If i have to be highfalutin, i go thru Charteris’ books, if i have to be hard hitting Chase is there to guide, for intrigue and the reality of this temporal existence Carroll is the finest oracle, for a racy narrative Bourne Identity is the tops, for chivalry and the lost art of knight errantry Cervantes really inspires E.S.Gardener for real life philosophy. Harold Robbins, Alistair Maclean, Frederic Forsyth etc. are for birds, not me.
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Madan
December 29, 2017
@ Anu Warrier Not to belabour the point, but there’s again a lot of space between using the infamous 4chan vocabulary and Tharoorisms. I think one can hold their own with grammatically correct, crisp and smart English that doesn’t make you reach for the dictionary. That is not exactly what Tharoor is doing. He is entitled to his style of expressing himself but if it appears incongruous on social media, people are going to say so. They cannot be denied their impulse to react to it. On another note, I don’t have this problem with his contributions to newspapers or magazines so maybe his somewhat pompous way of speaking English comes across on social media (which tends to reflect how we speak rather than how we write) and feels inadvertently amusing (to me) in that context.
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Madan
December 29, 2017
@ Rahul Apart from the Chupke Chupke example, Kamal Hassan’s Tamil also gets mocked. Yuvan Shankar Raja delivered a mock KH regret message for not attending a Raja concert. Honestly, I think it’s much more to do with aesthetics than anti intellectualism. You CAN make a pop hook out of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. But it matters how and where you use what word.
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MANK
December 29, 2017
A salman khan film thread became a venue for a serious discussion on semantics, i dont believe this. is nothing sacred on this blog anymore 😀 .
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ThouShaltNot
December 30, 2017
Sesquipedality is not just an Indian affliction. The tussle between a simple style (Atticism) and an ornate one (Asiaticism) is as old as Greek rhetoric. People take either camp based on their aesthetic comfort or plain convenience. The choice of a single long word might be to elucidate context and avoid circumlocutions. But, overuse of such might also indicate a simple desire to flaunt. H.W. Fowler, a British lexicographer and usage guru, scoffed at the choice of fancy words. OTOH, Samuel Johnson, also a British lexicographer, embraced the florid style. Both were exponents of the English language. “Use fancy words when you must and shun it otherwise”, is reasonably good generic advice. It might come down to judgment. And the “setting” (known as “decorum”) matters.
Now, to mumble something about our hero (so the thread police doesn’t ticket me), “…When all is said and done, Salman Khan is not guilty of lexiphanic usage. He is merely guilty of acting in bad Hindi movies with worse titles. Plus, he not only drives crazy, he drives us crazy…” 🙂
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Madan
December 30, 2017
@Thoushaltnot: Agreed. It’s an aesthetic choice. In my case, I generally prefer understatement and economy (Tendulkar over Lara for eg) over flash and excess. So it follows that I react to Tharoor bringing an AK47 to a hand wrestling bout or dislike Vairamuthu’s lyrics (though in both cases I do respect their SKILLS). It’s not hard and fast because it’s a very instinctive preference and I am sure people will pick exceptions if I listed down enough of my favourites across the spectrum.
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Anu Warrier
December 30, 2017
Madan, having flogged this dead equine long enough, let’s agree to disagree. 🙂
MANK, the blog is still sacred since we weren’t arguing semantics. 😉
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ThouShaltNot
December 30, 2017
I hope thread contamination is only a venial sin. If I end up in purgatory for talking Vairamuthu instead of Salman Khan, I’ll blame @Madan for dragging me into the discussion and request waiver 🙂 IMO, VM’s excesses in this area became pronounced during his ARR years. Not so much with Raja. Ornamentation was there, but using words out of circulation (or used ever?) in TFM? “poombaavaai aambal aambal punnagaiyO mouvval mouvval” from “vaaji vaaji vaaji” for one. What the covfefe ! Before I get carried away, VM is not entirely to blame. Spoken Tamizh has also veered off significantly from written Tamizh that we (the hoi polloi) are at a loss when we run into “strange” words that shouldn’t count as strange.
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Dhanda Soru
December 30, 2017
Goddamn, didn’t think a casual jibe at Tharoor would turn into a debate on semantics and snobbery.
@Anu Warrier – Fair point. As someone who belongs to a generation that routinely uses abbreviations in place of phrases (even if those phrases are as short as “as fuck”), it was a tad jarring to see him describe the simplest of things with the kind of vocabulary that would have you scrambling for a dictionary at times.
I must confess though, I’m in awe of Anuj’s tenacity. Most people would’ve stayed away after pretty much being e-booed and booted off this blog. And yet here He is, telling us tasteless peasants about the error of our ways. With this kind of tenacity, he ought to go on a crusade of enlightenment, educating us snobs on the tastes of the masses. 😛
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Vivek narain
December 31, 2017
Salman khan is the pack mule of bollywood, shares the initials with the inimitable Shammi Kapoor. But Mr.Tharoor is no pack mule of congress, though he shares his initials with the legendary Sebastian Toombs and Simon Templar, he has done nothing worthwhile to take liberty of being as flippant and verbose as the great ‘Saint’.
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Anu Warrier
December 31, 2017
@Thoushaltnot: Spoken Tamizh has also veered off significantly from written Tamizh that we (the hoi polloi) are at a loss when we run into “strange” words that shouldn’t count as strange.
That’s the problem with English as well, and that’s precisely my point. These words, once upon a time, wouldn’t have counted as ‘strange’. Social media has dumbed down written language so much that someone using a whole word instead of an abbreviation is seen as weird.
Dhandasoru, no worries. I enjoyed the exchange. All I’m saying is that if you want word dynosaurs like us to respect your abbreviations (which leave me scratching my head and searching for the urban dictionary), then you should be able to take a few polysyllabic words in stride and take recourse in the Oxford English Dictionary if you need a refresher.. 🙂 (And I mean a general ‘you’ – no personal remarks here.)
I agree with you about Anuj’s tenacity. I think he feels we are more to be censured than pitied and it irritates him that we Just. Don’t. See. It. His. Way. Anuj is the true evangelical – people must be brought around to the correct way of thinking. I’m sure there are plenty of people who think as he does, but if he talks to them, he’s preaching to the choir. It’s a feather in his cap if he can only bring us to see the error of our ways. 🙂
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Madan
December 31, 2017
“VM’s excesses in this area became more pronounced during his ARR. Not so much with Raja.” – So maybe the rub of their dispute then or that VM was straining to capture his erstwhile heights in his second innings. But I agree and do like his lyrics for Enna Satham Indha Neram which he himself said he was proud of IIRC.
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ThouShaltNot
December 31, 2017
@Anu
What you bring up is another dimension to the problem and I agree about the effect of technological march (smartphones , messaging applications, twitter and even the idea of staying in constant touch) on divergence from the standard written form (ICYMI, YWDOIABTY. Yes, We deal only in abbreviations, thank you 🙂 ). Laziness was convenient, now it is virtue.
My VM related remark though was about a slightly different facet of this divergence that applies to Tamizh (I think of standard Tamizh as a thoroughbred, given that, for all practical purposes, it has been de-Sankritized. And in this regard, it is different from English). What I had in mind was the influence of English on Tamizh speech. But, this may be true of other South Indian languages too (or even non-Indian).
A former T.N. cabinet minister, who was an accomplished Tamizh scholar and a fine orator, once highlighted the problem with English encroachment into spoken Tamizh thus: “Aen brother last weeku beachukku varala ?” A problem’s dimension has gradually shifted from paal-la-thanni to thanni-la-paal (not to mention the effect demotic speech anyways had on furthering this divide). I am not untouched by this, but it bears highlighting. Coming back to VM, despite all this, I think, he, more than others, OOOLF (operates out of left field) 🙂
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ThouShaltNot
December 31, 2017
Quite likely, there is more to the break-up between IR and VM. But, if I had to guess about one aspect of that relationship, IR, having worked with Kannadasan and Vaali, had less reason to be awed by VM’s creative output and might have reined him in more on his material (or at least felt free to do so).
As for “Enna saththam indha neram”, it is one of VM’s noteworthy joint efforts with Raja (mannavane, un vizhiyaal pen vizhiyai moodu, aadharavaai saaindhu vittaal aarirarO paadu…ullangal thudikkum Osai, isai aagaadho.. and so forth). But, the entire team deserves credit for about five minutes of movie magic (maybe Rekha deserves special mention; for the short duration she was around, she nailed it !). When it came to love and intimacy, undoubtedly, VM blazed a trail. But, there is a metaphor of his (unrelated to love) that I like a lot and he used it in Sindhu Bhairavi – “indha sooriyan vazhukki saeththil vizhundadhu, maamey…” Given the recent spate of incidents in which celebrities and bigwigs come crashing down to earth, what an apt metaphor for fall from grace ! Anyways, enough of VM 🙂
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csimumbai
January 1, 2018
All this talk of Bollywood imploding/not imploding reminded me of a question which I hope you guys can help me with. Are there articles/essays on how the film industries (both Bollywood and regional) are dealing with demonetisation and GST. These could have some consequences for the desired implosion. Seems like what has imploded are production houses like Phantom Films. The big guys (Yashraj/UTV/Dharma etc) will learn to live with it.
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csimumbai
January 1, 2018
@writeawordatatime & brangan: Regarding implosion etc. Seems like 2017 was the year of anger. Audiences, reviewers raged about many things. I guess we are of our times – we are all angry and talk past each other. The films that tapped into this rage or provided an escape from it, seem to have done well. But the films that spoke of Gandhian non-violence and accepting cultural difference (Tubelight), romantic love between a lonely middle aged man and a rich woman trying to find herself (Jab Harry) or a nerdy, stammering young detective attached to a father figure (Jagga Jasoos), failed. I hope our anger and insularity implode too, and something productive comes out of it. Bollywood has been around for a 100 years and seems set for another 100.
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Madan
January 1, 2018
“But the films that spoke of Gandhian non-violence and accepting cultural difference (Tubelight), romantic love between a lonely middle aged man and a rich woman trying to find herself (Jab Harry) or a nerdy, stammering young detective attached to a father figure (Jagga Jasoos), failed.” – But Jolly LLB2 ran well even though it had a secular message, which, given by all we hear, should have been a complete no no. Maybe it’s finally just about whether a film works. JHMS was panned even by Imtiaz fans and Jagga Jasoos had just been way too long in the making. If Chinese Democracy didn’t become the best selling album ever, it’s not the audience’s fault, it’s AXL’s for taking so long to make a goddamn album.
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csimumbai
January 2, 2018
Madan – I hold no brief for Tubelight, JHMS, or Jagga Jasoos. And to your example of Jolly LLB2, let me also add Raees which did reasonably well too. Clearly, the malaise is not just about secular/right-wing etc.
My big problem isn’t that these films did or did not do well. My concern really is with a lack of engagement by audiences and film reviewers/critics with some of these films. Let me illustrate my point through JHMS, which I happened to see recently. If you put JHMS in the context of Imtiaz Ali’s recent films, it becomes a lot more interesting film. His heroines in Rockstar, Highway, Tamasha, and JHMS all come from upper middle and elite families. He seems to be saying something through them – that love and relationships bloom when these women move beyond their conditioning. In Rockstar and Highway, these relationships are doomed, but in Tamasha and JHMS, love not only thrives but helps the man discover himself. In JHMS, that man is the middle aged and alienated Harry who is part of the long migration out of Punjab owing to the agrarian crisis there and also because of the insurgency in the 80s. It’s because of Sejal that Harry returns to Punjab and his family again. If you see it in this context the film becomes worthy of engagement – instead critics et. al. focused on the improbability of finding a diamond ring in Europe, which in any case Harry reiterates again and again. One may like or dislike the film agree/disagree with Imtiaz Ali’s politics but that can only happen after engaging with the film.
The result of the lack of engagement with some of the big mainstream films of 2017, that were attempting to say something and also hoping to be financially feasible, is that we are left with Judwaa 2, Golmaal Again, and TZH as mainstream blockbusters. I have nothing against these film, if I get a chance to see them I am sure I will be thoroughly entertained. But in our insularity, rage and the resultant lack of engagement, we may have pushed back the ambitious mainstream film makers by a few years and curtailed the attempt by superstars to reinvent themselves.
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Madan
January 2, 2018
@ csimumbai: I can’t comment on your analysis of JHMS because I haven’t watched it. But I guess you watched it recently, from what you say, and not at the time of release? So if both of us stayed away from a SRK film maybe it indicates his inability to draw viewers to the theater, possibly a baggage of his past failures. I would say in general it is harder to draw people to a cinema hall now than before because ticket prices are high and there is no dearth of alternative entertainment options. Charitable or uncharitable critics don’t exert much influence in this imo.
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Vivek narain
January 2, 2018
SRK is old and looks old, so is SK. Stallone gave way to a worthy Statham and Craig has refused the option for further bonds. Ricky Ponting retired at peak, but our stars lingered on for vain and ephemeral records, the best ones. If there is to be a ‘Ignoble’ award, we will bag them in most of the disciplines.
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Kay
January 2, 2018
ThouShaltNot, I could keep reading your posts on lyrics over and over again. What beautiful way you have with words when you are talking about a song!
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csimumbai
January 2, 2018
@Madan. The only thing that is stopping me from watching an Imtiaz Ali in the theater is my location (small town US). SRK would have been incidental to the decision, though I realized after watching the film that his choice was deliberate and interesting.
About critics – I don’t dispute your point that they have a peripheral role in the success/failure of the film. We may have differences about the degree of influence they exercise or don’t exercise etc. But they are important to the intellectual culture of a community – and when it comes to the intellectual culture around popular culture, I expect a little bit of engagement with the work. They can’t just call themselves movie reviewers, act like gatekeepers/opinion makers, and give themselves an easy pass on their inability to engage closely with popular culture. (Here I don’t have Rangan but some of his new colleagues in mind).
And on that note I will disappear to the periphery of this blog once again. Work begins tomorrow!
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MANK
January 2, 2018
Both JHMS and tubelight flopped because they were plain boring and as a result, almost all sections of the film public rejected it . JHMS in particular turned out to be a nothing film which couldnt even satisfy the die hard Imtiaz ali fans. And as Madan said, ticket prices are so high that its impossible to get the audience to come for a film with negative WOM. Films these days either flop miserably or succeed spectacularly , there is no in between
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brangan
January 2, 2018
csimumbai: The way I see it, there’s WHAT a film wants to do and HOW it does it. Basically, intent vs execution. One should certainly acknowledge intent, but if it isn’t executed well, then the film is a failure. (Of course, each person is going to vary on this. I may think the execution is bad. You may not think so). But that’s the thing, rather than a refusal to engage.
For instance, I found this interesting:
“The most interesting – and underexplored – aspect of Sejal is that she may be something of a repressed sexual being.”
And I definitely do find it interesting to place this film on the Ali spectrum:
“On the surface, he checks all the elements that have come to define his films. The grey area between cheating and succumbing to an impulse. The road-movie romance, a journey that’s as much physical as psychological. The meant-to-be lovers who don’t realise they’re meant to be.”
But all this is still the WHAT. The HOW in this film is severely compromised, IMO — both in the writing and the making — and that is what the review will reflect.
Of course, if your point is about critics who summarily reject the film without digging deep, then yes, I agree to an extent. But a failure to find merit is not = a failure to engage with the film.
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MANK
January 2, 2018
i admire Brangan’s patience\persistence in explaining this point for the umpteenth time…., hope this will not be the last 🙂
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Madan
January 2, 2018
@csimumbai: I wasn’t referring to your decision as an individual but building on that (and mine) to make a point that even SRK’s name is no longer enough to draw the audience. There are specific issues pertaining to SRK’s decisions over the last few years but that’s a different story.
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Madan
January 2, 2018
Regarding the failure of critics to engage with the popular culture, well, some of the now much admired classic rock bands of the 70s were derided by the critics. ELP kept attracting calumny even as they filled stadiums in California. And nobody can call ELP mediocre/lowbrow from at least a technical perspective. So critics have been ‘wrong’ before and this will continue to be the case. Because they too have subjective views about art and sometimes miss what the artist may be trying to convey. And that’s fine because we as end consumers of art often do so as well.
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ThouShaltNot
January 3, 2018
Kay, thank you for the kind words. As someone who loves language (but not just), I fervently engage with a song’s lyrics. It was not always this way (only tune, voice, and style of singing mattered at one time). Ever since that changed, my listening experience has only been greatly enriched. And when I find an excuse, I share what I’ve understood (or appreciate) whole or piecemeal.
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Deepti Chaudhari
January 10, 2018
This is such a shame, because the earlier movie, for all its silliness, had some superb understated moments. My favourite was when the RAW and ISI handlers of both leads find themselves side by side during a chase sequence. This is the first time those two characters are seeing each other, and the awkward glance they share is really worth a thousand words.
I had also enjoyed early portions of Ek Tha Tiger that place this superstar spy in a humdrum neighborhood, buying milk, walking to office, complete with the pot-bellied colleague who intercepts Zoya’s coded messages.
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