The Devil’s Backbone (Spanish): excelente!

★★★★★★★★★☆

Haunting, expansive, imaginatively symbolic and immensely moving supernatural fantasy that is so visceral and emotional a fable, its akin to poetry in motion. Playing away like a testosteroned sibling of Guillermo Del Toro’s magnificent Pan’s Labyrinth, following a recently orphaned young boy being brought to an orphanage run by the idealist leftists in remote post-Civil War Spain only to face the mystery of a sighing ghost; an outrageously violent, gold-digging orphan-grown-into-caretaker; a ticking bomb right in the middle of the orphanage courtyard; and a crew of similar-aged orphans to make friends with, the motion picture is so tastefully layered that even its title alludes to a historically valid tug of war between superstition and science in a war-ravaged, dispirited, curious-to-believe Europe.

In fact this suggestion of biological mutants [in the movie they are aborted fetuses afflicted with rachischisis] being given the rank of monsters before molecular biology i.e. genes, DNA, RNA, mutations developed as a science makes for a bewitching read in the decade’s best popular science book Mutants by Armand Marie Leroi for those interested.

As all the movie’s threads: political, real, fantastical: converge, you have a thoroughly dramatic epic supernatural thriller that resonates long after you have seen it.

Visually accomplished, beautifully scored and unflinchingly real and tension-laden, it is peopled by probably the most charismatic acting crew (Fernando Tielve with that wizened child-man faceas the young Carlos, Eduardo-Abre Los Ojos-Noriega with a goosebump-inducingly devious turn as the irredeemable villian besides the supporting actors) who take every scene to the next level with the sheer amount of sympathy and spontaneity they are made to attack the lines with.

The cloaked mystery of the underground water tank in the kitchen, the fairy-tale like motifs (weighty gold ingots, the gash on ghost’s forehead perennially leaking a blood-fume which dissolves into liquid air surrounding the ghost), the socio-political/adult-child/real-surreal parallels operate with a flair seldom seen (the scenes leading upto the fatal catastrophe where the orphans are being rounded up and briefed in one room and simultaneously, a scandalous denouement is staged as the principal’s handicapped wife is threatened at knife-edge for locker’s keys by her young lover: all this through the POV of a confused, rifle-armed girlfriend of the knifer standing square in the middle); the backstory of Santi-the ghost, the thwarted rescue mission in a catastrophic fire where most guardians and saviours are slaughtered, the stabbing amidst the sun-scorched field, the heart-rending bond between the orphanage boys, the candid conversations and reactions, the raw violence, the searing drama and then the lilting, almost phantasmagorical contemplation on the nature of ghosts, the reasons found for the alternate supernatural courtesy the elegant eloquence of the intuitive and warm principal who reveals himself as the narrator: all this collectively make for a work of rare finesse.

And together with Del Toro’s own Labyrinth and the Swedish Let The Right One In make for the most compelling contemporary supernatural thrillers made with kids as the key protagonists. Enthusiasts of Del Toro’s cinema will revel in the anticipatory ring that some of the themes and key plot points have, with respect to later works like The Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and The Orphanage (2007). Simply superb!

eXistenZ: Cracklingly inventive sci-fi!

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Taut, subtle and imaginative sci-fi horror where a life-like simulation game is being dry-tested on a motley of keen beans who unravel the game’s goals in accordance with their subconscious as this becomes a game inside a game. So we have a dopey slash geeky game designer [Jennifer Jason Leigh, uninhibited & unpredictable] who starts a trial run of her new game and is shot by an assassin from a competing firm who’s on a shooting massacre, which leaves only a humble marketing trainee [Jude Law, convincingly curious] to drive her to safety, get a bioport installed and oblige her with a friendly game to work out the damage being done by the unforeseen shooting during the initiation.

Almost Kafka-esque in its sparse alternate universe, it draws on its obvious parallels of the true nature of human existence cleanly and with flourish. The foetus-like fleshy game pods with placental cords which are plugged into a bioport installed within the spinal column and the flesh-and-bones pistol which shoots teeth are offbeat and innovatory touches, and so is the actual “gameplay” with affected people stuck in “loops” only being able to work with certain key statements, then Jude’s character developing gamer-instincts and gamer-urges: some of them downright savage and carnal, and with him forever questioning his perceptions and the nature of what’s real foiled wonderfully by Jason Leigh’s blasé attitude, it keeps it real.

Cronenberg’s clearly in love with the material enough to have fun with it [like when Law’s character can’t stop himself from ramming his tongue in the invitingly moist orifice on Leigh’s back-now who wouldn’t? and then there’s the teasing final scene questioning if the game’s still on?]. It is supremely accessible, and even though it has a lot of ground to cover with its layered universes, its surefooted enough to never go tipsy with the burden. Thoroughly enjoyable and a must for every science fiction fan. And yes, the visual effects are almost impressionistic with their sheer minimalism [the two-headed mutated gecko, the fleshy pods, the toothed gun, the blood and guts: its all very visceral].

We Need to Talk About Kevin: Unflinching!

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Voluble and fixated to pathological effect, this over-written experimental lit-fic which just contains letters from a neurotic mother to an invisible husband figure about their kid who’s massacred not one, not two but eleven people never fails to engage with its consistent dogged honesty. Shocking anecdotes one after the other padded by circumlocutory commentaries on life, kids, marriage, society and perspectives, we slowly get a protracted, holographic picture of this Kevin the kid, and it is such an overblown, unforgivingly brutal picture drawn with such tasteful articulation, it makes for a compelling read to see how far the narrator goes with it. And she goes all the way. Thankfully all that verbosity is never used to build superfluous, static, extraneous detail. Also by the end, the larger emotion that emerges isn’t one of bitterness or pretentiousness-two of my fears that were culled the moment you finish the first letter.

And yet it is also quite forgettable a work, for by the end of it the whole book remains nothing but a single, distorted viewpoint. A wordy, overtly justified one sure, but distorted nevertheless. The reader is at a gross disadvantage here, because the only window he has is through the words of an awfully unreliable narrator whose obsessiveness with her grievances and unmet expectations, not to forget the merciless hyper-intellectualising and soul-bludgeoning analysis of what? A KID in single digits of age takes quite a bit getting used to. It definitely evokes a reaction as things, characters and relationships downspiral in Eva, the main character’s rued reminisces and yes, it most definitely challenges, yet Shriver manages to keep it somehow scarily real.

I say that because however misdirected her affections, she’s just a magnified [grossly], literal version of the niggling, needling doubts that almost every uninitiated singleton out there has about parenthood. She makes for a captivating voice as she’s not that far off the scale as any one of us with half a clue of what parenthood entails and how by letting your attention get drawn to the wrong details, things can get screwed grandly. So on one level, you have a smashing, if a tad monotonal, cautionary tale that bulldozes everything nice and good-natured as artifice with little compensation and revels in persuasive power of cold, vacuous academic dissection of behaviour; and on another level you have a never-obsolete lambasting of the proliferation of firearms in the country of Uncle Sam with the fervour and concern of a dedicated journo. Besides these, one also has to applaud a rather courageous attempt to go against all the established theories and psychobabble thrown about and construct a formidably unique character with reasons and motivations all his own to conduct a high-school massacre [becoming a "watchee" from the watcher]. The author has a keen ear for the current state of affairs and the contemporary suburban family milieu only gives her fertile turf to slam, rather accurately, a handsome number of “normal” cultural phenomenons.

Shriver’s a thorough natural with her dialogue which perplexed me why she had to hamstring herself with a single narrator; the book reads like transcripts stolen from a posh suburban American psychiatrist’s office throughout with little relief, and maybe somewhere in this bold stylistic choice lies its own charm. In the threadbare, expansive accounts of a character’s own version of herself, her actions and the reactions she evoked from the people living and breathing around her as she goes through a turmoil-laden two decades and is writing in regretful, pathos-laden retrospect-a rare view inside a psyche desperate to compensate and theorise its misjudgements is revealed. Awfully endearing and scarily identifiable.

The book’s an acquired taste, and I wouldn’t go for an all-out recommendation. But if you are in the mood for something that is against-type and reactionary, pick this one up.

Kaminey: KICK AFF!

Explosive, audacious and spectacularly entertaining crime caper from the Man who has singlehandedly defined, reinvented and set the benchmark for the noir genre in Bollywood-Vishal Bharadwaj. After the decadently sinister Maqbool and the masterfully brawny but hideously miscast Omkara, clearly third time’s the charm for me as Kaminey is everything that the respectable-indies-showing-how-it’s-done-but-just-missing-it [read Sankat City, Mithya], the-now-anonymous-and-transposable-but-once-iconic RGV vehicles, and the unapologetically-plagiarised-then-desified-artificial-posturing of Lakhias, Sanjay Guptas and Anubhav Sinhas want to be, but never will be, for this my friend is the “real thing”.

This is the real roar amongst the shrill catcalls that we have been hearing for the past many years. This was how we did it, i.e. full-on and by that I mean unapologetic, racy, throbbing full-on. Not the diffident, neurotic, self-consciously ironic full-on with arsey-humble nods to the films of yore [DevD, Johnny Gaddaar anyone?] and thanks to Bhardwaj we will continue to. And how can I forget: in the year, where the clueless and the uninitiated went mental after the synthetic “realistic pap” of Slumdog Millionaire, Kaminey couldn’t have come at a better time to show, pardon me repeating myself here, HOW IT IS BLOODY DONE.

So it goes like this, two brothers or slumdogs shall I say-identical twins-one an insufferable stammerer Guddu, another a lisper [actually, a liffper] Charlie, a fast-lane bookie with dreams of becoming a millionaire who go their own separate ways to chase their individual destinies but end up, as it happens, getting wound up in each other’s affairs unknowingly thanks to a girl and a guitar [watch the movie to know what I mean] and as is typical of such larger-than-life monozygotics screwed-up-by-the-ever-powerful-destiny-to-come-face-to-face epic thrillers, cross each other paths again with insane, hysterical, noisy, and rather sentimental repercussions.

Shahid’s sincere attack on this two-pronged devil of a headlining role is not a pitch affected or misfired. He is one guy who has taken almost superhuman leaps to overcome his boy-man impishness and thrown himself in the arena to grab the gauntlet, and grab it he does. Just that, once again, he’s surrounded by an intimidating amount of histrionic pandemonium courtesy a formidably seminal supporting ensemble which more often than not slip the carpet away from Shahid’s candy-ass stutterer or the silent-seething liffper when the frames are shared. I don’t want to deconstruct his performance further per se, because I can’t fault it on many levels [the face-off between twins and the climactic showdown alongwith the natural chemistry with his screen-love are a joy to watch, courtesy him], but when viewed in the bigger picture, for a leading man, maybe more intrinsic and not transformed bravura could have just sent the film on another level. Call me unreasonable. Giving credit where its due, he’s one talented sonofabitch who can now be given a flipping trophy without wondering if he could do better. This is him at his best and he performs with an appreciation for subtlety and internalisation that is light years ahead of his contemporaries, so what if he’s just a tad less of an ass-whopper he’s so meticulously projected to be. Still, brave!

Priyanka Chopra’s performance and presence is wholesomely winsome. The lass is going from strength to strength with every passing movie and why not? She performs with that rare sparkle and uninhibitedness that A-listing leading ladies of nowadays are simply devoid of conjuring. Be it going ballistic on her brother and his motley set of cronies with an assault rifle or any firearm in the vicinity [by God's grace in this grimy Mumbai underbelly, there's always more than ten littered around] or mouthing off her goody-two-shoes boyfriend who gives the staple “priorities” lecture when she gets knocked up, as Sweety, Piggy Chops stands her own amidst the testosterone-motherlode she’s surrounded by.

I can’t fill this space with the rest of the credits [I wish I had a notepad to pen them all down] but suffice to say, spearheaded by Amol Gupte as Piggy Chop’s big brother, they seem to be having so much fun, just watching the whole crew perform and react had me in splits and smiling throughout. Fantabulous is the word. Watch Gupte do pretend shelling with Charlie’s partner-in-crime or the officers interrogating Guddu making him sing to break through the stammer].

The writing is so cued in to every character’s quirks without ever making it obvious, the swearing [of just the right level, not the crass verbal smut that seems to pass off as humour] is pureed with a consistent spattering of wit and then there’s the sheer convolution of the going-ons which give this Jeffrey Archer meets Tarantino via Guy Ritchie and Salim-Javed of 70s phillum a crackling energy all its own. As the various, precariously ignited and staged subplots and fringe characters all converge in that swashbuckling finale, you want to wolf-whistle. Its that good.

And man, does it help or what that Vishal is a composer par excellence? What a thoroughly keen ear for giving cadence to his action [Dhan TaNan is the anthem for 2009 thank you very much], gravitas to his drama [just watching the way brothers seek each other, communicate in an understanding that goes well beyond the slice of their lives captured by the camera], potency to the introspective scenes [those few moments when the title track plays] and punctuation to the insanely-well timed situational comedy. And I can’t believe I haven’t said a word of how accomplished his visual sense is. That wafting and gliding 1000-rupee-note scene that instantly transports Charlie from the ringside to neon-glow of gold-silver-mint-fresh-moneybills world: we are there with Charlie, or as the foreboding flashbacks finally get sewed to a crisp backstory, the tipping point in Charlie’s life is signified by replacing his kid-self with the muscular adult he’s become are just a few examples of what makes Kaminey so special. We have fun and we don’t have to leave our brains on auto-pilot, when was the last time that happened?

This guy Vishal is just blessed with an astute sense of what makes good cinema, and as viewers we are blessed that he can tell it like the way he wants: archetypical larger than life fables and morality sagas, dunked in machismo, attitude and brawn all his own, and always so coolly, so quintessentially Indian.

Rush now to see this, I write any more and I’ll spoil it!

★★★★★★★★☆☆

A Case of Exploding Mangoes: Almost there!

★★★☆☆

Ambitious and irreverent political “faction” piece that had me zapped with how easily the [debutante] author juggled multiple narratives set horizons apart yet connected by one single real-life tragedy: the enigmatic assassination of President Zia-Ul-Haq in ’89. Hanif creates the book’s most compelling character in Zia colouring him with plausible anecdotes, quirks, his-well-known fanaticism, his relationship to religion, his paranoia about security: every nuance finds itself a credible account or interaction. It is borderline voyeuristic as we are talking about rather intimate drama of a real-world historical figure, but guilty pleasure it sure is.

Zia isn’t the prime narrator here, though. It is a billious, cynical commanding officer who’s being reprimanded true military style for a key aircraft that goes missing with his best mate. Which gives the book its fire, with every satirical prod of this character piercingly accurate and every angry, humorously canned jibe at the sorry state of affairs tickling the funny bone, but it gets old fast and turns wearingly descriptive when things switch off from first-person [ and go....he was carried from A to B, got tortured at B to reveal details about person A, then was blindfolded and taken to C where he had conversation with person B, then he got released and while sipping tea with person C, got presented with persons A and B, and so on and so forth].

Unless you are some keen historical enthusiast who’d revel in these details for your next thesis in criminal counter-investigation techniques in South East Asia, I don’t see much that comes out of these descriptions. Maybe Hanif was completely taken over by his own skill of how minutely he could recreate the era, and then turn all these historical figures into characters, in fact lots of them and then jot five vignettes around each of them-tiny tidbits of soapy, saucy drama, jumble these vignettes up and then make the predictable denouement tortuous and seem masterfully constructed. It is a deception that’s laid bare when you read cover to cover: the structure is forced upon rather dry content.

But rejoice my hearties, for the climax with all its predictable, pre-ordained dots to be joined is rock solid: proof enough of how persuasive Hanif’s pen can be. The prose, for all its accumulated, unedited word count is delivered in succinct, forceful sentences and phrases that keep the whole affair engaging even at its most sagging or interestingly experimental [there's a whole splendid subplot of a mango-chipping errant crow and to watch this angle play out had the chaos theory-reveller in me smile; and then there's this one sequence where the written page burns with a suggested sexual chemistry between the two friends].

Hanif is a writer of astonishing talent, has a natural flair for narrative and I am ready to give him the benefit of doubt that for all its natural fallacies that debut works come bundled with [indulgent over-written spiel around under-developed sub-plots and ideas], he is a literary voice worth reading.

Run it down as much as I do his terse-then-rambling Exploding Mangoes, I enjoyed being genuinely transported in the era with all its layered politics, mind-games, military machinations, brutality, diplomacy, grime, dust and oddly enough, the scent of mangoes. Not bad!