With an intention to make short films and be a part of the serious hobby-followers who want to learn through watching more work, I have been watching movies for long. While I write movie reviews for planetbollywood.com, there are notes that I want to take on movies that I generally am not able to. Will try to put these notes here.
Over last 3 days I completed one of the controversial movies of this year – Hate Story.
A short review for it: A fast paced screenplay with a very clichéd story and pathetic acting from the female lead Paoli Dam on whom the whole movie rested is the show stopper for the movie. Marketing the movie as an erotic thriller in place of revenge drama was another mistake. I don’t think erotic thriller unless it’s planned and crafted with a strong eroticism value embedded in the story (e.g. Basic Instinct) , can work in Bollywood. Assembled Motley crowd as supporting cast is very good – whether it be Joy Sengupta as company CEO, his wife Irawati Harshe or Saurabh Dubey as a ruthless businessman and father, Mohan Kapoor as the minister – all are rightly casted. About the leading Men – Nikhil Dwivedi can’t act and Gulshan Devaiah is the one who makes the movie watchable.
Gulshan is one of the actors I would watch out for in future. Consider his filmography till now – That girl in Yellow boots (very well acted role of Chittiappa), Shaitan and hate story – Good in all of it. Next he will be seen in a movie called “Peddlers”. This movie is made by Vasan Bala. If anyone here had been following the website passionforcinema.com, he would know how the guy has grown. He had started as a blogger on PFC. Went on to win a short film contest (1min one) there, assisted Anurag Kashyap in all his movies after Dev D. And now here he is with his first film. I hope that the audiences watch more of these small budget , passionate movies and promote it.
Coming back to the topic of movie notes on Hate story, here are my notes – not arranged in any particular format. I would like to highlight, criticism is not as difficult a business as appreciation. Every movie is an effort of hundreds of people hence I strongly believe there will be something or other to learn out of it.
· Background score of the movie was jarring. Long repetitive loops make the hamming of actors accentuated. Of course there were moments when the loops give you a feeling of time passing fast.
· Dialogues of the movie were bad. But worse was the way they were delivered. Especially once Paoli Dam turns into a prostitute. Suddenly her voice turns husky. Suddenly she breathes like a Rhinoceros. In more than one ways there are dialogues to show the strength of women in the world, which very much defeats the original purpose and sounds pretty cheap and derogatory, just for the way they are delivered.
· Film editing is something I really liked. No scene stays for longer period of time than expected. Outdoor scenes are processed differently giving mood to the film every time.
o For e.g. here is a scene where they have shown a chase sequence in old delhi, and then a happy shopping spree and a board room. I felt that colors were adjusted well to suit each of the settings.
· Cinematography in most of the films by Vikram Bhatt has been topnotch. Directors (though he hasn’t directed this) come in different flavor I think. He is a “Glossy-on-camera, weak-on-script” director for me. Cinematography here too is interesting. I could not the following things that were repeated as a motif within cinematography and I liked it.
o Use of big large windows as source of light to light the scenes
o Moving the camera 180 degrees in a over the head shots. It gives you a feeling of spinning your head. Must be quite effective in theatre and can really work well in thrillers which are made indoors.
o Open air balcony shots, with traffic / houses going in the background at a distance.
o Low light, shadow-heavy scenes with open mouths and wide eyes for love making
o There are some neatly done backlit scenes as well. (one of it put above another one is with Joy Sengupta)
o Frames are used at many places to give the idea of place. There are scenes at India Gate, at the lead characters houses and farmhouse that are used with frames in mind.
o Shooting on moving cars and rain is also used multiple times
· Writing especially the story and dialogues are the weakest part of this movie I believe. Every story needs to have a trigger, a logical reaction, a conflict and a resolution.
o Conflict is the most important aspect of any story. Its conflict that keeps moving the story further. Here the idea was that Paoli Dam’s conflict of whether to meekly submit herself or take revenge was not strongly portrayed. This looks worse to me as the last one I saw was Soundtrack, which gives a very longish detailing of the push that a character generates to reach an action. Paoli’s character Kavya takes very extreme steps to take revenge and there isn’t enough justification of it.
o The revenge keeps the story moving but the intensity of the revenge doesn’t look natural because of it. Nikhil Dwivedi’s character is badly underdeveloped. There is no point where you see his need in Kavya’s life and how he makes it better for her. The warmth in their relationship would have been a good comforter to take the story forward.
o There are too many clichés in terms of events : e.g. Friend getting kidnapped for making the protagonist work, a Haryanvi Police officer, an unhappy wife who keeps sulking in front of her husband, a corrupt minister, a loser of a lover – who is just friends! And so on.
o About Eroticism – I don’t think foul language, nude body, husky voice and dusky skin are enough to create magic. There has to be stakes from both sides. There has to be this fine tension of boldness vs. vulnerability, natural instincts vs. socialized behavior that needs building up slowly. For most of those scenes in Hatestory, there was not tension. You always knew what next. There was no doubt about whether she / he will or will not? I find Slice ads much more erotic than hatestory’s love making scene.
The director of the movie is Vivek Agnihotri. He surely has style (earlier films De dana dan Goal, Chocolate), given a good tight story, we might see Abbas Mastan follower here J. BTW he is married to one of my all time favorite actress – Pallavi Joshi.
Movies in line – Garam Hawa and I am Kalam and a couple of documentaries.
P.S. : Yes many of the things here might sound silly and please don’t hesitate to criticize that. Moreover because all I am looking at is basics, I might even have mentioned some very obvious observations as well. But I think this will help me look back and read my blogs and summarize whatever I saw in the film. Will try to focus on one particular aspect if I can in different movies. One that I find the most impressive.
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