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It's
time to rejoice. Star Movies' Made In India film festival, aired
every Sunday at 9 pm, is a feast on many levels. For one, we get
to see some of these quasi-classics on the Indian diaspora (and
make no mistake some of these nuggets on celluloid are so good,
you'll wonder how you missed watching them when they made it to
the large screen) in an uninterrupted, uncut and undisturbed form.
What's more some of these portably posh products never got theatrically
released in India, and are now open to our critical appraisal as
completely self contained home-viewing experiences.
Anita & Me: A big screen venture meant for small screen |
Director
Metin Huseyin's Anita & Me, telecast last Sunday, did
get a tentative extremely limited and unimaginative release in India.
I wish it hadn't come to the theatres. Watching it on television
with the correct pauses, punctuation's and pronunciation, I realized
what I suspected for a long time. Many movie experiences are meant
to be savoured at home.
This
elegiac luxuriant and even-paced adaptation of Meera Sayal's celebrated
novel about a 12-year old girl Meena (Chandeep Uppal) growing up
in small English town with its inbuilt provincial prejudices, requires
an intimate connection between the narration and the audience.
It's
like this. We couldn't appreciate the epic qualities of Sanjay Leela
Bhansali's Devdas on television, when it was screened on
Sony Entertainment a few months ago, but we could grasp at the characters'
anguish far more comfortably at home. In Anita & Me the
characters rendered themselves emasculated on the large screen.
On television Meena, her Punjabi parents (played half-well by Sanjeev
Bhasker and Ayesha Dharker, Bhasker being the effective half), her
strangely impassive idol and best friend Anita (Anna Brewster) and
the whole town full of quirky yet credible people came alive as
people we could have tea with, if they like.
Portions
of the film, such as the sequence where Meena-bored and distracted
with her Punjabi household-bursts into a rock 'n' roll routine for
guests-were simply splendid. As for author/screenwriter Meera Sayal
playing Meena's bossy bitchy aunt, here was a made-for-television
performance-broad yet subtle, diluted yet sharp.
It
was with a sense of growing despair that I returned to the soaps
during the later part of the week after watching Anita &
Me. Where are the performers to instill credibility into a medium
so bereft of power and glory, they need to resort to filmy gimmicks
to keep us from surfing channels?
****
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| Some
guys just refuse to age |
Old
age and small screen- an unlikely equation: The old favourite
Kasautii Zindagii Kay on Star Plus has taken a gigantic leap
in time . Everyone looks older…or tries to. While her illustrious
colleague Smriti Malhotra-Irani as Tulsi in Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi
Bahu Thi carried off her maternal makeover with a real-life
mother's aplomb, I'm afraid Shweta Tiwari who plays Prerna in Kasautii...
doesn't quite make the chronological sprint with the trendy spectacles
and hair tied severely backwards.
****
For
home viewing: On television we can't carry the performances
home, for very obvious reasons. Consequently the performances need
to be homely without being unexciting, like what Meera Sayal or
Sanjeev Bhasker did in Anita & Me, or what Jasmeet Walia/Parmeet
Sethi/Rakshandha Khan and Divya Dutta do in Sony's Jassi Jaisi
Koi Nahin and Sahara's Kadam respectively.
****
Realism
on Telly: I also saw some very praiseworthy performances on
Sahara's Kagaar on Wednesday and Thursday. Anoop Soni, the
affable actor from Saaya and Gaatha (remember Star's
failed period -masterpiece from the channel's pre-Kaun Banega
Crorepati days?), played a sleezeball who had been systematically
abusing his wife's little sister…until in a heartstopping finale,
the two ladies put a final stop to his sexual perversities.
****
Actors
need guts:It takes guts to play a sexually abusive character.
I remember many years ago, the late Mohan Gokhale (remember him
aeons ago on Doordarshan as Mr Yogi?) had played one of the infamous
Ranga-Billa duo which had raped and killed the Chopra children in
Delhi? Gokhale was so terrifying in that episode of Sony's masterly
recreation of real-life crimes Bhanwar that it never got
telecast.
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Get
inspired: It's too early to say anything about Aroona
Irani's daily soap Zameen Se Aassman Tak on Sahara.
But I must say I was amused by the way its predecessor Arzoo
Hai Tu packed up to leave with a situation stolen straight
from Kal Ho Na Ho….
So
there was Aman Varma trying to be the small screen's Shah
Rukh Khan (he tried to be the poor man's Dilip Kumar in
the movies, but failed) pretending to be married to a Dr
Priya (a la Sonali Bendre in Kal Ho Na Ho) while
actress Mrinal Kulkarni counter-questioned him. This isn't
the first serial to be "inspired" by the big-screen.
Zee's soap named Aandhi (later re-christened Nafrat
Ki Aandhi) was cadged from Gulzar's film of the same
name and Asha Parekh's watchable Kuch Pal Saath Tumhara
on Sahara is partly inspired by Aditya Chopra's Mohabbatein.
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Some
screen fun: One of the funniest sitcoms I've come across is
Sahara's Bhagwan Bachae Inko on Sahara. Firstly, the producer
is the comic genius Paresh Rawal, though I wouldn't count that
as a quality-guarantee on television. I've seen what Kader Khan
has done on television, and it isn't funny but Bhagwan Bachaye
Inko is, although Rawal doesn't star in it. Another excellent
comic actor Dilip Joshi (seen as Tanaaz Currim's harried but ever-genial
husband in Sony's Meri Biwi Wonderful, and also seen striving
for celluloid stardom in a slipped-and-slashed film Sar Aankhon
Par) shares screen space with two other engaging actors to
create a diverting comedy.
Some
more humour won't hurt |
In
last week's episode the scene where Dilip Joshi's sandwich passed
from him to his two live-in pals was funny. The writing was amusing.
How often have you seen the harassed job-seeker crossing swords
on the way to an interview with the guy who turns out to be the
boss? We've seen it in David Dhawan's feature Chal Mere Bhai
and in the new Ekta Kapoor soap Koi Dil Mein Hai . But
Joshi's comic virtuosity made the cliché into a comic highlight.
****
Mind
it: Much as I like NDTV for its credibility factor they need
to get their facts correct in the film segments. Last week there
was a story on how no big films are being released in February.
This is wrong. Rudraksha and Kismat are multi-crore
projects, both scheduled for this month. Fibbing about feb, huh?
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