Let's talk about Bollywood!

R.K. Narayan’s short novel The vendor of sweets (1967) is the story of a wise man, called Jagan, who lives in the narayanian town of Malgudi and prospers by selling quality sweetmeats appreciated because they aren’t overpriced or watered down with cheap...

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Yash Chopra ’s “Kabhie kabhie” (1976) was for me like a distant reference, a movie many people had seen and loved back in the exotic seventies, and so, I knew I would have to see it one day. And now that I have, and have both enjoyed it and been disappointed...

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I happened to watch Brick Lane (2007, by Sarah Gavron) recently, a movie based on the acclaimed book by Monica Ali . It’s a well-made, well balanced film about emigration and multiculturalism, to put it positively, or – in a less positive light – about...

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Memories of rain, by Sunetra Gupta (1993) is a dark jewel of a book, a sombre and dense memorial stone made of darkness and yearning, frustration and anger. We are inside a sort of cenotaph: a young Bengali woman’s stream of consciousness and we never...

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This is a rewriting of a post dated April 4, 2007. The blog output is so low these days that I am resorting to rewrites! ( in fact, I’m busy with other things...) I don’t know if you’re like me, but most people around me still don’t really appreciate...

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Roja is an excellent little movie made by Mani Ratnam back in 1992, starring Arvind Swami and Madhoo (Raghunath); it was a real pleasure to watch another of Mani Ratnam’s works. His intelligence, his realism, his careful balance of private and public...

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This stunning little movie (65 minutes) made in 1989 by Nabyendu Chatterjee, who died recently (2005) tells the story of Laxmi (pronounced Loki), a Bengali village woman whose husband fell from a roof while she was expecting her first baby, and has remained...

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Basant (1960) is a loony movie where what you see is more important than what you understand. There is a story, sort of, (tolerably interesting in the first half but totally zany in the second!) but you must forget about it, because the chief interest...

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“Vishvam (Naseeruddin Shah) is one of four brothers who rule their feudal village in pre-independence India with an iron grip. They execute various criminal schemes to increase their own wealth at the expense of the villagers, with the village priest...

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I recently heard a journalist ask the question « Is Bollywood nothing more than a cinema made for India, or is there something universal about it?” – and I thought this question deserved a little post. Every one knows for a fact that the Indian cinema...

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For me the yearly Cannes festival is not much more than an industry's self-celebration which is probably best left unwatched, but these days, it’s difficult to miss Cannes photos and interviews even if you’re only slightly interested in Bollywood. Aish...

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I remember feeling annoyed when, a few years ago, somebody to whom I was voicing my pleasure at recently discovered Bollywood movies, bluntly told me: “oh yes, but Indian movies now… you want to see those from the 60s and the 70s!” Whether he was right...

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This 1958 film, Satyajit Ray’s fourth, might seem to us, 50 years away from it, a strange and slow vestige of a time when the cinema was sadly deprived of the wizardry we now love so much in it. The narration seems clumsy; the lighting is handicapped...

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Aakrosh (1980) by Govind Nihalani (whose first film it was, and who had won acclaim as Shyam Benegal’s photographer) is a sparsely told parable about the foundation of justice: should men follow the law at the expense of truth, or should they seek truth...

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Dilli ka thug (1958) might be tossed aside as a jumble of loosely connected narrative titbits that have been put together for two main purposes: Kishore Kumar’s clowning, and Nutan’s youthful charm. A messy God seems to have been presiding over this movie,...

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