Spoilers ahead… I was riveted by this story about a Brahmin boy and a Dalit girl. It’s like watching a gut-churning Asghar Farhadi melodrama filmed in Michael Haneke’s detached CCTV- style. Hari and Deepa (Neeraj Mathew and the excellent Sherlyn Bhosale) are Class XII students. They find an empty classroom, have sex, and record it […]
September 13, 2022
Spoilers ahead… The film’s most beautiful thought is that art has the power to move you, even if it’s an art you’ve never been exposed to. Sometimes, if you give it a chance, the connect just happens. There’s one distinguishing trait about Ananda (Choudhury Bikash Das), who looks like he is in his sixties or […]
April 4, 2022
Spoilers ahead… Will these oral traditions and songs exist after the people leave their homes and become anonymous labourers in the nearest city? That is the big question that hangs over the film. Shishir Jha’s directorial debut, Tortoise Under the Earth, is in the Santhali language spoken in the Jharkhand area. (Shishir is also the […]
September 29, 2021
Spoilers ahead… If transcribed, you can read the text here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/ Copyright ©2021 Film Companion.
September 15, 2021
Spoilers ahead… The English title of Paka is River Of Blood and it’s evident from the very first scene. An old man dives into a river to retrieve the body of a young man and nobody knows how he died. One of the many, many jokes in this movie is that all the expert divers are old men — […]
June 24, 2021
Spoilers ahead… Text: The story of Leena Manimekalai’s Maadathy is almost folkloric in its simplicity, but if the final scenes remind you of The Shining, it may be no accident. The film, billed “an unfairy tale”, is really a horror story — about a subsection of Dalits in southern Tamil Nadu, called Puthirai Vannaar. As the name suggests, they are […]
March 22, 2021
https://www.filmcompanion.in/reviews/malayalam-review/hasyam-malayalam-movie-review-jayaraj-fashions-a-comic-masterpiece-that-revolves-around-death-harisree-ashokan-kpac-lalitha-baradwaj-rangan/ This is a very funny film, and the “humour” rests on a couple of existential questions. One is that life is absurd. We have to laugh if we want to get through it. Spoilers ahead… The amusingly named Japan (Harisree Ashokan) has a very matter-of-fact approach to death. In an early scene, he says […]
March 6, 2021
https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/berlinale-2021-celine-sciamma-jacqueline-lentzou-and-the-other-women-who-competed-for-the-golden-bear-9384711.html Five of the eighteen titles that will compete for the Golden Bear, are directed or co-directed by women. A look at ‘Petite Maman’, ‘Moon, 66 Questions’, ‘Ballad of a White Cow’. Spoilers ahead… I’ll begin with a shout-out to the web site womenandhollywood.com. It was founded in 2007, and it “educates, advocates, and agitates […]
March 5, 2021
https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/luiz-bolognesis-the-last-forest-playing-at-berlinale-2021-takes-us-to-the-yanomami-tribe-in-the-amazon-basin-9381571.html This is a record of a rapidly vanishing home. In 1986, the discovery of gold deposits led to an invasion by 45000 prospectors and the death of 1500-1800 natives. Spoilers ahead… In Ex Pajé (2018), filmmaker and anthropologist Luiz Bolognesi captured the spirit, the essence, the modern-day conflicts of the Paiter Suruí, an indigenous […]
March 5, 2021
https://www.filmcompanion.in/film-festivals/berlin-film-festival/berlinale-2021-introduction-hong-sangsoo-brothers-keepers-bad-luck-banging-or-loopy-porn/ Plus, the boarding-school mystery, ‘Brother’s Keeper’. And the marvellously titled ‘Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn’. Spoilers ahead… In the opening scene of Hong Sangsoo’s Introduction, a man is praying. He says he will do anything. He will give up half his wealth, give it to an orphanage even, if God gives him one […]
March 4, 2021
https://www.filmcompanion.in/reviews/tamil-review/kuthiraivaal-movie-review-tamil-directed-by-manoj-jahson-and-shyam-sunder-a-surreal-experience-about-the-multiple-selves-we-inhabit-with-kalaiyarasan-and-anjali-patil-pa-ranjith-berlinale-2021/ This Pa Ranjith production, being screened at the Berlin Critics’ Week, is too literal. It’s also a fascinating attempt to put psychoanalytic theory on film. Spoilers ahead… In Kafka’s Metamorphosis, a man wakes up to find that he’s transformed into a giant bug. There are echoes of this classic story in Kuthiraivaal, a Pa […]
March 3, 2021
https://www.filmcompanion.in/film-festivals/berlinale-talents-participant-tathagata-ghosh-through-my-films-i-try-to-freeze-the-rapidly-changing-corners-of-rural-bengal/ 113 women, 84 men and 8 who preferred to not state their gender — 205 film professionals in all, from 65 countries — have been chosen for Berlinale Talents. An interview with Tathagata Ghosh from Kolkata, one of the nine Indian talents selected for the programme. Spoilers ahead… Tathagata Ghosh, director and screenwriter, gained […]
March 3, 2021
https://www.filmcompanion.in/film-festivals/berlin-film-festival/berlinale-2021-ted-k-tells-the-story-of-the-unabomber-as-a-demented-eco-activist-taste/ If someone told you what ‘Taste’ was about, you may think of Zakariya Mohammed’s ‘Sudani from Nigeria’: a footballer from the African nation ends up in Asia… Spoilers ahead… While watching Tony Stone’s Ted K – as in, Ted Kaczynski, as in, the Unabomber (played by an excellent Sharlto Copley) – I kept thinking […]
March 1, 2021
https://www.filmcompanion.in/film-festivals/berlin-film-festival/berlinale-2021-a-lament-for-a-lost-festival-experience-a-cop-movie-petite-maman/amp/ Cannes has the Riviera and Venice has the water scooters. But Berlin has the cold that someone from Chennai so desperately craves. Spoilers ahead… A fter that rather dramatic headline, let me clarify that the lament is not about Berlinale 2021 going online. The pandemic has opened up something akin to what social media […]
February 27, 2021
https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/dekel-berensons-superb-short-film-anna-sheds-light-on-the-love-tours-industry-in-ukraine-9344531.html This 15-minute film is about: meat. Rather, women treated as meat, ready to be picked up by American men who want someone to cook and clean. Spoilers ahead… The first scene of Anna, a 2019 short film written and directed by Dekel Berenson, is about two people inside a meat fridge. One’s a man, a […]
February 27, 2021
https://www.filmcompanion.in/reviews/tamil-review/nilanadukkam-tamil-movie-review-a-fascinatingly-original-take-on-our-scoop-addicted-media-era-arthouse-asia-film-festival-kolkata-baradwaj-rangan/ The hallucinatory film has its India premiere at the Arthouse Asia Film Festival in Kolkata. The earthquake of the title is both a metaphor as well as an actual calamity. Spoilers ahead… Nilanadukkam! An earthquake! How sensational the term sounds! What a scoop it could be for a journalist who happens to be in […]
February 16, 2021
https://www.filmcompanion.in/reviews/tamil-review/iff-kerala-2021-seththumaan-thamizh-makes-an-impressive-directorial-debut-with-a-quietly-shattering-drama-produced-by-pa-ranjith-baradwaj-rangan/ The nuanced writing in ‘Seththumaan’ (meaning “pig”, like the title of Nagraj Manjule’s ‘Fandry’) weaves in a lot, from Ramnath Kovind to the caste-politics of food. Spoilers ahead… The time is 2017. The place is a village in western Tamil Nadu. Through newspapers and radio, a victorious and empowering Dalit story plays out: the […]
February 13, 2021
https://www.filmcompanion.in/reviews/malayalam-review/iff-kerala-2021-don-palatharas-fascinating-santhoshathinte-onnam-rahasyam-with-rima-kallingal-and-jitin-puthenchery-is-both-familiar-and-new-baradwaj-rangan/ This time, we have a “plot”, and characters who talk a lot. But the aesthetic is as rigorous as in the director’s earlier work. The camera, for instance, is “locked in” throughout Spoilers ahead… When speaking of a filmmaker as distinctive as Don Palathara, the latest work becomes a part of a continuum — […]
February 13, 2021
https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/uberto-pasolinis-nowhere-special-screening-at-iffk-2021-is-moving-without-being-melodramatic-9299521.html This tale of a dying father trying to get his little boy adopted is moving without being melodramatic. Spoilers ahead… At some level, John (James Norton) is the bestest dad ever. That’s what his four-year-old, Michael (Daniel Lamont), might say. John combs Michael’s hair for lice. John reads Michael a bedtime story, very patiently, […]
February 12, 2021
https://www.filmcompanion.in/reviews/malayalam-review/churuli-malayalam-movie-review-makes-us-walk-the-tightrope-between-mind-blown-and-mind-fucked-lijo-jose-pellissery-iffk-baradwaj-rangan/ Usually films come full-circle. But here, it’s like a hypnotist’s wheel. From the centre-point of the inciting incident, the narrative (and your head) spins further and further away into an unending whirlpool. Spoilers ahead… The one thing you can say for sure about Lijo Jose Pellissery: he doesn’t do ordinary. The closest he came […]
November 25, 2022
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