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All about Berlinale
Long queues, freezing air, bad palak paneer… here I am, pretending that covering Berlinale 2015 is cruel work. The first couple of days about a film festival, you realise, aren’t about the film festival. At least, not entirely. They’re about being in a new city, about the relief that most people here speak English; about […]
Berlin Diary: The heat is on
February 14, 2015
Holmes is older. Mainstream sex becomes bolder. And Peter Greenaway blasts the cobwebs off biopic conventions. After a lot of earnest, well-intentioned, even well-made films, there was still the sense that there has been nothing yet that really shook you, shocked you. That probably explained the crowds at the screening of the new Peter Greenaway […]
Berlin Diary: Ice cream, cheesecake…
February 13, 2015
All good things, including film festivals, must come to an end. Midway through the festival, I decided I hadn’t seen much Asian cinema. I missed Nagesh Kukunoor’s Dhanak, thinking that I’ll get to see it back home anyway. (A friend who was at the screening said the response was rapturous.) The in-competition Chinese film Gone […]
Berlin Diary: Franco-philia
February 13, 2015
When does James Franco sleep? That question isn’t likely to be answered soon, given the number of films he has at the Berlinale. James Franco spreads himself so thin that for every film he bombs out in, like Herzog’s Queen of the Desert, the law of averages practically guarantees something better somewhere else. We get […]
Berlin Diary: Art from the other America
February 12, 2015
Two affecting and very “local” films, from Guatemala and Chile. In an early scene in the Guatemalan feature Ixcanul, directed by first-timer Jayro Bustamante, a peasant family living in an outback is visited by the family of the man who’s to marry their daughter Maria. The groom-to-be, during the lavish feast laid out in his […]
Berlin Diary: Red, white and blue
February 11, 2015
Thoughts on the festival’s tribute to Technicolor films, mainly from Hollywood. It’s strange in this internet-booking era to find oneself queuing up for a film. It’s stranger still when the film isn’t new, or when it’s the kind that hardly anyone sees, save for committed (and, yes, should-be-committed) cinephiles. But long lines are a regular […]
Berlin Diary: Lost in translation
February 10, 2015
On Terrence Malick’s new movie, which is very much in the vein of his recent work. Knight of Cups, Terrence Malick’s latest head-scratcher movie, starring Christian Bale, features an earthquake, a temperamental sibling, an emotional ex-wife (Cate Blanchett), several dalliances (including one with Freida Pinto, who sticks her toes into Bale’s mouth), a hold-up in […]
Berlin Diary: Birds of a feather
February 9, 2015
Other journalists. Plus, a needless update of material that was much better served by Buñuel. Jabba the Hutt. Princess Leia. These aren’t names you expect to hear at a film festival. And yet, here this man was, one seat away from me at the screening of Isabel Coixet’s Nobody Wants the Night, talking about… I […]
Berlin Diary: Love across continents, and over time
February 7, 2015
Herzog disappoints. Plus, an excellent character study about a long-married couple. The next time we begin to accuse an Indian filmmaker of choosing stars who command press attention rather than actors who’d actually vanish into the part, we should remember that well-regarded foreign filmmakers do this all the time, sometimes to the detriment of their […]
Berlin Diary: Two women
February 7, 2015
The opening-night movie was hardly what you’d call a “festival film,” but one couldn’t write it off either. The press screenings at the Berlinale are special affairs. They are scheduled before the world premiere of the films in competition, which means we are literally the first audience for these films. I’m going to keep this […]
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