Swaroop King

Swaroop King
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Saturday 20 December 2014

INTERSTELLAR and 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY


I tend to get more drawn towards something that I do not completely understand than towards something that I know inside from out. Because when the blanks are left out for you to fill, you might be surprised to find the innumerable ways you can arrange the set of answers to obtain completely different and far fetched conclusions. That's why people who like poetry, like it. And until a film can come as close to poetry as Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, it cannot boast of trying to outsmart it.

No. I am not trying to belittle "Interstellar" here. I am trying to establish that Interstellar just didn't even attempt to outsmart 2001, but rather tried to pay homage to it or tried to fill in the blanks it left, with its own set of answers.

In 2001 (From here on wards 2001 means 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY) we see the film begin with man's ancestors the apes living their own life of reality and fear until a strange object, a black monolith suddenly makes its appearance out of nowhere. The curious apes (hence our ancestors) touch it and after that we can see an ape making a tool out of a bone and using it to kill its competitor.
The scene emphasizes that the contact with the monolith has made the ape smarter and has drawn it closer towards becoming a man. What is inside the monolith and how can it make people reach  their next level of evolution is what puzzles the audience, and some people might have blamed the director for not explaining it. But the funniest part is, why do you think he has put a black monolith, which doesn't have any inscriptions or which is not in any shape that resembles any religious symbol, which is neither beautiful, nor horrifying? Because he wants it to stand as a symbol for something that has the answers to the most complex questions and hence it doesn't bother to feel the urge to represent or resemble something. Because it is a whole. And the whole is always the simplest because there is no part of it that it yet needs to get attached to, to make sense. It is only the part of the question or the part of the answer that represents or resembles something. The whole doesn't need to do it. It is the infinity and hence the zero. Only because you cant yet figure out what or how this world makes sense, you keep digging and push yourself to the farthest reaches of your imagination. There would be an answer and that might sound utterly ridiculous when you understand it in its entirety, not because the answer is dumb but because it becomes finite and is nothing when compared to the infinite length your question blew your speculation to. The rule is simple. If you want to create something the size of the universe, just write something on a paper, and leave the story uncompleted. It will give a possibility to N number of interpretations and hence can accommodate even the last particle of dust in the last corner of the furthest galaxy. Your creation is just an unfinished story on a paper, but it is as vast as a vessel that could fit a thousand universes. Thats what God did to man. He created everything with his limitless knowledge and gave man the ability to comprehend only a part but not the whole. hence man kept exploring, wondering and digging and he never ceases to being a man. Not because the universe is limitless but because the answer is hidden.  And that's why a simple, smooth black monolith. That's why Kubrick is a genius. That's why Interstellar can never be as big as 2001.

See, all of the above might not be the reason for Kubrick to choose a black monolith to be the object but I have speculated all of this just because Kubrick left space to accommodate my imagination. That's what "Interstellar" doesn't.
(Nolan rather tries to detail it down. He gives a very well explained and scientifically accurate explanation that gravity is the key for communication through space and time.) But that's why it manages to stand as a more original film than what it would have been if it chewed a little more from 2001.

What stopped me from having further doubts whether Interstellar is inspired from 2001 is the third act. They are noticeably similar. In Interstellar, Coop falls into a black hole which happens to be a place that the future humans build a tesseract which facilitates Coop to send signals to his past self, as time is represented there as a physical dimension. The audience are shocked because his daughter's bedroom is the last thing they expect to see inside a black hole.

In 2001, Bowman encounters a monolith in space and is teleported through a "star gate" which is
visually conveyed to the viewer through some best special effects (of that time) and ends up in a hotel suite kind of room where he sees his old self having his dinner. The old Bowman turns back and looks at the astronaut Bowman, comes near him, and we do not see the astronaut bowman any more in that room (The astronaut has become the old man) The old man similarly becomes Bowman-near-death. And the dead bowman becomes a child the size of a heavenly body. As surrealistic as it sounds, this is the third act of 2001. It is hinted that the monoliths one of which transferred Bowman through space and time to a hotel suite and made him a star child are placed in space by aliens who are more advanced than humans and want to help humans evolve away from their limitations. The final sequence of 2001 looks like it appears in Bowman's head and hence some think it is not real. But as Dumbledore says to Harry Potter why should something taking place in the head mean that it is not real? Real or metaphysical, the sequence hints at man crossing the hurdle of his limitations and achieving a superiority over his past self and it is not ironical that he looks like a child after he achieves the ultimate transformation. What does that mean? That the final monolith has made him into a God by feeding him all the data of the universe and transforming him into a giant embryo (thus pushing away physical limitations)? Is God just an alien more advanced than humans?
The aliens are not shown in the fim but talked about. That is a very fine choice as that lets us visualize them as beings who do not necessarily have to be bound by physical appearances. It buys us the convenience of believing that they are advanced beyond the humanity's perceived limits of physics.

That's where "Interstellar" takes off. In "Interstellar", the people who placed the worm hole near Saturn are not aliens. "They" are not "aliens". "They" are "us". Interstellar prefers a more "real" and a more comprehensible(at least to who know physics) depiction of the redemption of humanity. Nolan, rather than going poetic, went scientific. That hits the right note with today's generation who are used to precision, specificity and accuracy. Interstellar in one sense, is the fine grained version of the more abstract 2001.

However 2001 chooses to tone down its emotional inclinations because it looks up to the ultimate enlightenment and the ultimate transformation as its peak, it's flag has to fly high above the emotions of us lesser beings. The coldness with which it shows us the proceedings asks us to try to cope up with the nullifying of emotions that the transformation brings. Interstellar does the reverse. It highlights the human emotions and goes to the extent of making love to become the key to the redemption of humanity.

While 2001 penetrates your subconscious and paints a bewildering abstract masterpiece in your mind, Interstellar touches your heart.

Long live great cinema









Friday 23 May 2014

Manam Review - A tale of love


It is difficult to decide what to start with, when it comes to writing about a film like Manam. The plot is stupid. But so is love. The characters are too sweet. But so is love. The feel is too optimistic. But so is love. And why do all these immaturities and imperfections do not bother you? because this is a tale of love, and that's how it should be.

Revealing anything about the plot is a great crime, and I wouldn't spoil the experience for you. If I have to manage without playing a spoilsport, it is a story of people who lost the love of their lives and how they regained it. You wouldn't be thinking whether it is logically possible for such things to happen in real life, thanks to the sweet narration of Vikram the director of the film, you would only wish and try to fool yourself into believing that love actually has the power to make things happen as they do happen in the film. It's characters crave for love, ooze out love, lose it and find it. The characters are all sincere and the sky is always blue. The clouds might dim the brightness for a while but it all ends with the showers of love.  The universe in which the story takes place, is lovers' utopia where destiny wouldn't dare to end your life-death loop till your thirst of love is quenched. Unless you get in tune with this, you wouldn't begin to enjoy the ride. And what kind of a person doesn't want to live in such a world? At least for a couple of hours! People who like this film and people who don't like it, have the same reason. The above.

The plot starts slowly and progresses at its own pace. Thankfully, there are no "entrance scenes", "build up" scenes and all the rot that Telugu film industry is dishing out lately. The characters are well conyained within the screen and they dont peek out at us to remind that they are the Akkinenis in the real world. Except when the characters reveal their names( Nagarjuna is Nageswara Rao, Chaitanya is Nagarjuna and Nageswara Rao is Chaiyanya) amd the "Drinking" scene. Nagarjuna- Sreya's part is my favourite. It has been very well done talking of the period detailing and the dialogues as well.

Initially when the story unfolds we might feel awkward at the little oddball revelations and developments that turn out (Like when Nagarjuna calls Samantha as "Amma"), but it is not awkwardness that we feel but a strange sweetness that only films like this can pull out. It is very easy for the director to fall in doubt whether the audience feel the same way as he intends them to feel, but he is gutsy enough to proceed with his story without adulterating it by adding the (god forbidden) commercial elements or by trimming the oddball parts.

Attempting something like this in a film industry that is too scared of experimenting and too posessive of its worn out templates is something that deserves a remarkable applause. This film falls in the rare category of films that actually believe and love its plot.

At times the film tries to leap to become a classic. Nagarjuna-Sriya's accident scene, where the car dashes against a tree and the white flowers slowly fall into the pond, the party scene where Sreya enters in an old sari, the scene where Chaitanya confesses to Samantha, are where the film takes bigger leaps.

The cinematography is top notch, the music that strikes the right tone with the melodrama of the film, the performances, subtle, the screenplay gripping, the shots aesthetic and the ending is sweet.

The film has its own flaws. The episode where Nagarjuna gets rid of Naga Chaitanya's love interest who comes between his father and mother, doesn't sync with the emotional maturity of the film. Because the characters are all firm believers of love, it is indigestible to see that Chaitanya's character forgets his lover with whom he chose to spend his life with, just for a simple and small reason.

That is where the film took its liberties but no, it mars the "sincere" color of the film. That being said, this film is a must watch for all Akkineni fans, Telugu film lovers, because it is the last film of Akkineni. Though his character is limited to a short time, he managed to pump his charm and love-ability into those moments.

Watch it for the people who made it with love, passion and sincerity. Watch it for Nageswara Rao. Watch it for Nagarjuna.

Watch it for Akhil.



Saturday 11 January 2014

1:NENOKKADINE REVIEW

We all have illusions. We all think and deduce, act and remember, and our memories form an integral part of our intellectual being. We so deeply depend on them that our entire understanding of our own life depends on what we remember and what we see. Our mind fills the gap left by what we cannot see, remember and understand with its own illusuons.  The protagonist in 1:Nenokkadine also has illusions. But his ones are visual. Rather than filling the gaps, they play with his actual senses.  Gowtham, a rock star has a rare psychological disorder where he cant differentiate between reality and illusion. His mind constructs whatever is missing from his life and tries to convince his conscious with stories comfortable for his logic to believe. And he falls for the trick. There lies the story. When he is told that he is being conned by his own mind, part of him agrees but something inside him whispers that his life is defined more by what his crippled memory says is true, than by what the psychological records prove.

A few minutes into the film, Gowtham murders a man and surrenders himself to the police. When the police search the spot for the dead body, they realise that not only themselves but Gowtham also is fooled by his mind. Gowtham assumes that someone killed his parents and is haunted by the fear that they are coming for him as well. The moment he discovers  he has this problem, he faces the bewildering challenge of differentiating truth from illusion. And Sukumar wants the audience to run along with Gowtham, in his shoes. Everytime the hero hangs between reality and illusion, it is a test for the audience also. Nenokkadine is not so much a thriller as it is a mystery. 

The first half of the film takes its own time to establish the plot. Usually psychological thrillers begin with a bang. Like a mysterious murder, and then the clues, questions and doubts start playing. This film right after the bang gives out its biggest revelation that Gowtham is seeing things from his mind, the question of whether his past is true or not still lingers. The rest of the film is all about his travel to his past, his identity, hurdled by his disorder. Sukumar in his greed to engage the mind of audience althrough the film, resorted to fool them sometimes if necessary. But thats what a psychological thriller is about. You are watching it more often from the point of Gowtham than from a third person. Thats why in the first fight you can clearly see Kelly Dorjee holding a gun rather than some mysterious man entering like a shadow. Then you get to know that he is just an imagination. The whole film follows this scheme. You have to think while running with the hero, follow all the scenes and investigate on your own, if you dont want to get lost in the confusion. For that you got to look at the other characters present in the location and observe. Perhaps the telugu audience have a problem with that. People beside me in the theatre began joking about whats true and whats not as they couldnt follow.  

Mahesh's performance is the highlight of the film. He showed all the emotions as precisely as a Mathematics gold medalist answers (a+b)2=?

Nenokkadine, as a story doesnt worry much about the so called commercial elements that the telugu audience popularly crave for. But the execution does.  A straight psycho-thriller story, devoid of any comedy tracks, grand entrance scenes, and powerful dialogues, written for a star hero whose fan following is on a phenomenal raise lately, is enough a sentence to sound the dare the makers have exhibited. Perhaps this has troubled the director a bit. So he inserted songs at unnecessary places and dampened his own pace. 

Another problem with the film is its length. I would have felt happy if the same film had ended a half an hour earlier. The purpose a thriller is to thrill. Any drop in the pace would betray the lack of any other entertaining elements. If the takeoff is slow, the flight should be racy. But both cannot be lagging. 

Will audience love this film? Most probably not.
Is this a bad film? No
Would I recommend this? 
If you are a fan of entertainment, skip it. If you are a fan of cinema, watch once.

P.S:- My heart skipped a few beats when Kriti Sanon asked "Am I hot?"
Yes she is.