True Cringe

 When I wake up in the morning and the sunlight first hits my shut eyes, the first thing I want to open my eyes are to my phone screen. After checking if something earth shattering has happened over the night on social media I scourge for news on Google. Every now and then something interesting or outrageous catches my eye. Today was not a disappointing day either. 

After India’s recent win in the Olympics, everyone is a sports guru in this country. Which is a great thing for sports and sportsmen all around, if it was limited only to sports. Our media has gone bonkers - digging up histories of all medal winners, their humble beginnings and love life are the top of mind these days. So it was sort of obvious that our gold winner Neeraj Chopra who is also called “easy on the eyes” (insert eye roll) would not be spared. But a recent post of Red FM really baffled me. 

There are a bunch of RJ’s singing “Ude jab jab Zulfe teri” to a visibly uncomfortable Neeraj Chopra on Zoom call. Thank God he was not in the studio. I shudder at the thought of what the gyrating ladies would do if they met him in person. So we have a world class sportsperson, who won an Olympic gold for the country and we call him on a show and “tease” him? The video ends with the RJ saying “zyada cheda to nahi humne?” What if a couple of male RJ’s had done this with PV Sindhu? Umm, no comments. Rant over.

Shershaah

What is an Independence Day if you don’t watch one patriotic movie? Now I have grown up watching Roja, Gandhi, Gadar- Ek Prem katha, LOC, Border et al. Except for Gandhi all are Bollywood products and hence have their fair share of jingoism, songs, inspiring speeches, heroic feats and not to forget some kind of a prem katha. So when I started watching Shershaah, I had similar expectation if not more. After all it was coming from the production house known for it’s hyperbole. Karan Johar cannot make realistic films, that’s what I started out with. 

Happy to say I was proved wrong on many accounts. The writers have not taken much liberty in trying to make the story of this hero into something larger than life. The dialogs are realistic, the merging of the true heroes and their casting at the end is a very nice and professional touch - almost gave a feel of global cinema. also, the casting was really awesome, everyone stood out in the roles they played. Really happy to  see Bollywood come of age, trying to keep up with the standards of OTT production qualities. 

NB: This is not a film review, this is what I expected and what I found.

Navarasa

Since we are confined just to our home, we watch a lot of TV. Recently came across this Tamil Netflix original Navarasa. I have not completed watching it yet, but the first few. I am watching something in a regional language after a really long time honestly, so following the language only by the subtitles took a little more effort from me than the mindless sitcom watching I generally indulge in. Following subtitles while feeding a child is even more difficult, but I accomplished it, so yay me. Spoilers ahead.

Sometimes you watch some things in cinema and you laugh at it. The episode, or volume as they call it, on “Hasya” (laughter) was just that. A very cute little story involving a dog which falls into a shit hole, and then the shit hits the fan, literally. Then I was ambling through the rest of the episodes. The episode on wonder, was a brave attempt at sci if, but mostly was me reconciling with the fact that Arvind Swamy has become old AF. Then I found myself applauding the fact that they first pick up lines from Nolan unabashedly and then actually talk about how Nolanesque the idea is, I mean, the gall!

But what really hit home, and perhaps I can’t go on watching now is the episode on “Shanthih” (Peace), where the episode ends with a question mark at the end of the word. A man goes over beyond enemy lines in a war zone to rescue a puppy but gets killed. I mean, as if the premise was not gut wrenching enough, they had to keep a baby, a puppy, a dead brother story line and a guy who believed true compassion exists in every human - made the audience hope for a moment there and BAM! I knew all along it was coming, but pretty cruel, that ending. 

So I made a humdrum about so many chores to complete because that’s how I channel my frustration and went to sleep. I don’t think I can watch the rest. Though I hear the next one on anger is great. Let’s see, may be I will watch it today (but I have to sneak some time away from the kid).

Black Swan

Safely, one of the most disturbing and depressing movies I have watched in a long time. There are times when you simply cannot sit back and appreciate a work of art neutrally. You are taken up in one swift whirlwind motion and thrown into the midst of a complex plot, which is obviously removed from your life, your surroundings, your society, the work you do or even the person that you are; yet you feel that a particular character - in this case, the protagonist - is so much similar to you.

However, that said and done, Black Swan is an exquisite work of art. It is not a sparkling diamond perhaps, that is to say that it is not the undying classic you would watch again and again, but it is definitely a striking crystal.
Watching this movie was a very different kind of experience. There are times you watch a movie expecting it to be something and it turns out to something very different, which actually surprises and pleases you –this was one of those times. I watched the movie prior to the Academy awards so I was unaware of the critical acclaim that it would eventually enjoy. To be very honest, I did not have very high expectations of Natalie Portman; but, my, was I proved wrong and how! As the crests and troughs of the movie unfolded, I was totally taken into this vortex of emotional turmoil that Nina, the protagonist, was going through.

Portman’s portrayal of the obsessive ballet dancer was absolutely amazing. Nina is the epitome of the child who is bent under the parent’s expectations. Only here she not only handles the stress of the expectations of her mother, who is a not-so-successful ballet enthusiast herself, but also her own expectations to be the best. The mechanical dancing girl by her bedside is a true replica of Nina as she is constantly wound up by her mother and driven to perform better and better still. In one emotional crest she reaches out and smashes the dancing girl to pieces in a foolhardy attempt to retrieve her life.

She fights for her place in the troupe with the seductress peer played impressively by Mila Kunis, she fights for her place at home with her mother. At the troupe she struggles playing the dual roles of the white swan and the black swan. Nina is the proverbial white swan, the fragile virgin beauty –she plays the white swan perfectly. However, when it comes to the black swan she falters. She does not know how to seduce men, she cannot be the siren who the Prince would “like to fuck”. In her real life, things are a bit different. She has no privacy in her own home. Though she wants million eyes to look at her in adoration when she is on stage, she shies away from the eyes of her mother at home. She is no virgin, but she has to play the good girl at home. The white swan-black swan duality of the Tchaikovsky piece transcends Nina’s ballet practice and flows into her life so much so that the boundaries of reality and stage begin to blur.

She is fiercely competitive. Though Nina reminds me of the child-woman in Doll’s House at times when she is innocently asking for a chance to play the princess in the performance, we know she is no child. She knows fully well that she is filling in the positions of the erstwhile lead of the troupe. Winona Ryder puts in a sharp cameo as the fading star who is being spurned by the company for a fresher and younger face.

On the night before the grand performance Nina breaks free from her mother’s shackles on a hallucinatory sojourn with her peer and competitor in the dark underbelly of the city’s nightlife. The morning after she finds her world slipping away from her hands, her companion of the night before is almost ready to usurp her place. We see the real Nina only in the final stage performance. As the uninhibited black swan, she has come into her own. She does not falter to grab and kiss the man who has humiliated her for weeks as being frigid and leave him breathless. She does not falter to look her mother straight in the eye. She does not even falter to stab the person who stands in her way, which eventually turns out to be herself.

Nina’s fight with her inner demons does not leave her victorious, or does it?

I was depressed after watching the movie. I had expected it to be the underdog-winning-the-day sort of a movie, where the shy girl who cannot play the seducing black swan finally is able to portray the part brilliantly because of her coming into her own in her personal life. However, it turned out to be something else. Yes, she does finally find her independence, but it is brutally short-lived, quite literally. She is finally suffocated by her Argus-mother who looks on at her final moments being seated among the audience.