Kumar Shahani is an Indian filmmaker who created a new cinematic language that is very much his own. His Tarang is very different from the intense stylization and abstraction of his previous work Maya Darpan . It took him 12 years to make his 2nd film Tarang. The film is an intricately plotted melodrama realising his view of epic cinema.
Rahul ( Amol Palekar) , the son-in-law and heir of an old industrialist ( Shreeram Lagoo) , couches his personal ambition under a disguise of liberalism. He develops an affair with a wife ( Smita Patil) of a dead worker.
Shahani explores the class struggle on multiple fronts. It explores themes of conflict and betrayal when different worlds conflict as a result of industrialization. Amol Palekar was convincing as an insecure but ambitious man. Smita Patil played her part well and displayed impressive ranges. Though the work is commendable but still it lacks in some parts. The ending was far from satisfactory and it fails to deliver a punch.
Blow Up was the first English language film of director Michelangelo Antonioni . It was immensely successful at box-office in that period. It was chosen as the best film of 1967 by the National Society of Film Critics.
The main character of the film is a glamourous fashion photographer (David Hemmings) . It looks at the day of a life of the main protagonist. He roams around London taking photographs. He is very much cruel to models and women in his life. One day,wandering at a park, he takes picture of a couple. Later he discovers that he may have photographed a murder while taking the pics.
Blow up is not a thriller though some people might want to put it in that category. Finding meaning in Blow up is difficult because nothing much really happens there . Still it raises many questions. It may be a film which shows how skewed our perception of reality can be. We see through the photographer's eyes. Did that murder really happen or not? The photographs started out as really nice pictures of the scene in the park. But when he blew them up more, they revealed less. So we are not certain if he really noticed murder there or it is his perception. Photographer also tries to tell his friends about his discovery but he understands that he is unable to communicate with anyone. He suffers from isolation . Nobody understands his experience and he is left alone.
One of the main aspect of the film is-camera takes on an active narrative role at certain key points. We notice, the camera becomes the story-teller in part of the blow-ups sequence. The camera also narrates at the end. This is a great work by Michelangelo Antonioni . Like many great works of art, the meaning of the film lies in the symbols and metaphors.
Bad Timing is a 1980 British film directed by Nicolas Roeg . His film rates high in production value . Nicolas Roeg here takes an innovative approach to tell an old story.
An American woman is taken into a hospital after overdosing on pills. A curious detective (Harvey Keitel ) suspects that there is more into this matter. Through several flashbacks,we come to know about the real incident. Alex (Art Garfunkel) is an American psychoanalyst who meets with Milena (Theresa Russell ). They meet with each other at a party and develop a relationship. Milena was a carefree American girl . She suffers from depression and is married to an old man . Alex finds it difficult to cope with her complicated lifestyle. He tries to control her and it results in more damage.
Nicolas Roeg used an interesting method in this film. Flashbacks are essential to the film's formation. He doesn't use the flashbacks in normal way. It comes in many forms : as flashbacks within flashbacks and even flash forwards within flashbacks.
Art Garfunkel gives a good performance as a controlling, possessive person. Theresa Russell is great as Milena, a woman who doesn't want to be "owned". She really gives a passionate performance and shows an incredible range here. The best performance of the film comes from the charismatic Harvey Keitel . Harvey , as the detective who investigates the truth so hard that at one point he seems to hallucinate the facts. He plays the role of a bizarre police inspector to perfection.
The film mainly details the doomed affair between two persons. It focuses on a time in our lives when we understand that our relationship is finished. On the flip side, the film's narrative structure makes it difficult to follow . There are times when we just want to stop watching it because the narration disturbs us.
Landscape in the mist is a 1988 film directed by Theo Angelopoulos. This film tells the journey of two children in search of their father. They are told that their father lives in Germany. On Their journey ,they encounter many odd incidents and people before reaching to Germany.
The two most significant encounters stand-out. They meet a brutish truck driver who rapes the girl . The scene was quite disturbing. When the girl is raped in the back of a truck, the camera slowly moves on the tarp beclouding the incident, ending in a close-up of her hand stained with blood from her violated hymen. They meet a friendly gay-biker named Orestes and the girl gets attracted towards him.
Much like the Theo's previous works, this is also a film that relies heavily on the delicate use of color. They reflect pain,happiness and disappointment. Yet this is not a film of visual contrasts. It very much feels as something Andrei Tarkovsky would direct. This is gloomy,misty and almost mesmeric at-times. On their journey, they learn the realities of life-cruelty, violence and the struggle for survival. This cinema is filled with symbolism. In a particular scene, joy and sorrow are revealed simultaneously as a horse dies before their eyes, even as a marriage is cheerfully celebrated nearby.
To conclude, Angelopoulos portrays a journey of two children whose introduction to the real world has been nothing but a misguided jump into the unknown and people do usually fear what they do not understand. The film is filled with unforgettable instances that are simultaneously real and hallucinatory, seeping into the surreal. This is not my favourite Angelopoulos but worth a watch.
Ucho is a Czech language film by Karel Kachyna completed in 1970. This film is about a bitter married couple - Ludvik (an official of ruling communist regime) and his wife Anna. They return home drunkenly and discover that something is amiss.
The door of the house is unlocked. The telephone lines are out of order. They returned from a communist official party and there Ludvik discovered that other bureaucrats including his superior were mysteriously detained. Ludvik becomes sure that their house is bugged. Tension appears between the couple . They both start accusing each other and bring on long forgotten things into open.
This is a great film about paranoia,the fear of being watched. People
become so seemingly paranoid while working in a communist party. Another important aspect of the film is the disintegrating relationship between the man and his wife. This film is theatrical in it's approach because incidents happen mainly within a house . This film is also theatrical because of it's dialogues. The black-and-white cinematography of "The Ear" is unusually expressive. At the party, there is lot of hand-held camera and wide angle point of view shots .
The performances by both the lead actors were superb. Miss Bohdalová in particular was the best performer. She displayed a whole lot of ranges.
