Confessions of an Epic Indian

Sudhir Mishra outdoes himself with Hazaaron Khwaishon Aisi.

I suspect the reason is that, for once, he has a producer with no financial limitation, and who has the sense to know where to spend the money and where not to.

From the very first frame, the film is the product of a cinematically mature mind, an Indian intellectual who doesn’t believe that life and art should be partitioned, and who’s willing to tell a story without a damn for the commercial pundits who decree what can and can’t be done in a Hindi film.

This is a beautiful, heart-breaking love story set against the backdrop of the late Sixties and early Seventies - including the Emergency years.

It’s about three people from a Delhi uppercrust college - presumably St. Stephen’s, but wisely, director Mishra (or is it producer Nandy) decide not to name names throughout the film, which, interestingly enough, doesn’t detract one bit from the realism.

After all, anyone who goes to see a film of this calibre either knows what happened and who did what during those historical years, or was brain-dead, or is functionally illiterate and ill-informed about his or her own country’s history.

The love triangle takes center stage, and that’s the first thing Mishra gets right.

Brilliant casting - KayKay Menon, Shiny Ahuja and debutante Chitrangada Singh are so marvelous in their characters, they inhabit that cinematic space the way only really committed actors can do.

The production design is just right - combining the tawdry with the elegant in a mix that’s uniquely Indian. The cinematography, music, all other departments are just right as well.

In short, this is that most amazing of accomplishments, a serious Hindi film that manages to tell a reasonably entertaining love story too, and has a couple of good songs in it as well - although no gratuitous ‘dream sequence’ song-and-dances, thankfully.

I loved it. I’m going to see it again. And yet again.

This one’s a real treasure, a national treasure. If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t listen to a word anyone else says, just see it.

As for the other movie I saw last week, the less said the better.

Waqt was a waste of my waqt. Skip it.

I also caught a couple on DVD.

Suspect Zero featured Ben Kingsley in one of the menacing, screen-stealing performances that he seems to have become typecast in of late.

It wasn’t a patch on his brilliant, brutal turnout in the Brit indie flick Sexy Beast of a few years ago, but the story on the whole was interesting and original, if a bit convoluted.

At first, you wonder what the hell is happening - and whether anything is happening at all - but in the end everything resolves itself quite neatly.

It’s a film about a serial killer who is targetting other serial killers, and about yet another serial killer who is on the most ambitious killing spree in serial killer history.

Yes, it’s a few too many serial killers, but it’s still engrossing stuff for a couple of hours. Worth a dekho but that’s it.

And now, as my movie binge (hopefully) winds down, I need to catch up on my reading.

I’ve barely managed ten or twelve books the past three weeks, which is less than half my usual number. And those are mostly research/work-related, not for pleasure.

This week, I have about two dozen research books to get through, to prep me for my writing schedule starting May first week.

And I have some absolutely terrific new novels and anthologies (incl. one of poetry) just crying out to be picked up.

Time to hit the books!