Desi Train

I saw a comic book last Sunday. I paid $10.00 for it. In terms of Desi Currency: 10 X 43.00 = Rs. 430.00. It was the most expensive comic book I’ve ever paid for. Gone are the days when I used to pay Rs. 2.50, then Rs. 3.50 and in the end Rs. 6.00 for my Amar Chitra Katha or Indrajal Comics. The sweet old days of buying 32 pages for a 20 minute adventure are gone.

Today in a Desi Theatre in Southern California you pay Rs. 430, sit your ass on a sticky seat which has traces of 34 chewing gums, listen for 2hours 39 minutes - the crispy krrr krrr noise of Auntyjee infront of you enjoying her popcorn and God knows for what reason crushing and re-crushing, re-re-re-recrushing her paper bag, chunnu & munnu running all around in the theater as if it’s their Baap ka hall with absolutely no check or correction on part of their parents and finally the guy at the back of the hall who, I suppose is making his most important business deal at 10:30 pm in a movie theater, while a movie is playing on screen, on his FUCKING CELL PHONE.

In a recent post I had mentioned, that most of the directors/writers (in Bollywood) today grew up on a staple diet of Hollywood movies; the result is that we see more of Hollywood clones in Bollywood. I would like to modify that statement. Our current Bollywood movie makers grew up on a staple diet of Hollywood…and Comics. Apoorva Lakhiya’s Ek Ajnabee is my witness to this statement.

Watching Ek Ajnabee is like reading a Comic book. Lakhiya-jee in his attempt to polish the film and give it a Hollywoodish effect, ends up making a movie built like comic. The scenes look a like a comic sketch in a frame. Jumping to the next scene looks like another comic sketch adjoining the frame next to it.

The question is: Where is the FUCKING flow? Science progressed far ahead to take us from comics to motion pictures. Motion Pictures = Pictures in Motion. “Ek Ajnabee” is bent on reversing the technology - Showing static pictures in a Motion Picture. Confusing enough?

The screenplay is way amateurish and would not be accepted even as your project submission at a Film School. Why have Bollywood writers forgotten to tell a story? I’m not sure, but Lakhiya-jee certainly needs a crash course in it. And soon.

Ek Ajnabee, starts and traverses all our predictions made in the revelations here. Except the end has a positive note unlike its original Man on Fire. Amitabh zooms out of the airport, straight to Rampal who’s called him in, straight to the Indian family in Bangkok, gets the assignment to protect the girl, scenes showing Amitabh’s aversion to children, change of heart, girl and Bodyguard become friends, kidnapping, tension, an injured Amitabh leaves the hospital to start a rampage, alls well that ends well.

That above is the entire story of Ek Ajnabee, which Lakhiya-jee and team paid no attention to. Instead the team was strictly obsessed with the camera that shot the movie. Were they living in a fool’s world, considering the various so called “experimentations” they have tried out?

I call it the “Flicker” shot. It’s a picture where multiple positions of an object moving from point A to point B are captured in the same frame. So you see AB’s head rolling from left to right in a single shot – caught Flicker style – that is you see 26 heads of AB at different positions moving from point A to B. This kind of shot I first noticed in Pankaj Parasher’s Jalwa. Here Lakhiya-jee and his team use the Flicker shot in every 2 minutes for every 3rd scene. It only means one thing. You come out of the theater with a serious case of “cross-eyed” syndrome.

Both the reviews on IndiaFm and Rediff point to a “racy, tight” first half. Racy first half? What were these critics drinking when they watched the movie? It’s not only the Bollywood makers who can’t think beyond Hollywood, but now we have movie critics SUFFERING THE SAME FUCKING DISEASE.

The other fault which not only Lakhiya-jee suffers from but many others in Bollywood too, is what I call “Contracted” shot backdrops. And for this I will lay this out:

The kidnapping of the girl in “Man on Fire” has a zippy pulsating thrill to it. Over 10 blocks of the street are captured on camera. Multiple cameras used to capture the scene. Long shots show the convoy of cars moving through the streets. Cut to kidnappers communicating with each other. Now like pure chess board moves the convoy of cars carrying the girl is ambushed. Shots fired. People ducking behind cars, kidnappers attempting to make headway on foot trying to move forward towards the girl in the car. Cut. Bodies being hit by bullets. Denzel Washington, moving ducking to get a hold of the situation. Cut. Bullets hitting Denzel. Cut. Hands reaching for girl. Cut. Long Shot of the street. Multiple cars belonging to the kidnappers’ zipping away in different directions, while a seriously injured Denzel slowly gives away to blackness enveloping him.

The “Contracted” shot in Ek Ajnabee, which IndiaFm.com labels it as “Brilliantly executed”. About 200 meters of a patli gulli. Narrow street. Car of kidnappers crosses AB. AB close face shot. Tensed Look. Car drives away. Girl coming out of house. Cut to AB’s face. Tensed Look. Cut. Girl’s happy face, running to open the gate. Cut. AB looks to his right. Mid range shot. Another car with kidnappers drives towards AB. AB shouts at Girl to run. Shooting starts. And this is what Lakhiya-jee does. This shows the lack of energy, motivation and creativity (which started by taking a patli gulli to execute the kidnapping scene): Closeups of 4 Guys and AB firing at each other are shown. AB gets hit. Girl picked up. Kidnapping scene over.

Are you guys SERIOUS? THIS IS BULL SHIT. This scene had so much potential to be brilliantly executed. This could have been the high point of the movie. Instead you chose to take the easy way out. Where are the chess board moves? Where is the serious pulsating gun fight? Where is the large backdrop for this scene? Where are the various elements (people, objects) which could have been stuffed in this backdrop? This whole kidnapping scene has an element of emptiness, contraction, a vacuum which seriously screams for a greater FILLING in it.

I seriously would like to question the MSM movie critics who have praised this kidnapping scene? Were you drunk? Were you given special passes to this movie along with a bottle of Black Label that you could not differentiate between a good scene and a badly executed one. On one hand you guys do mention that this is a copy of “Man on Fire”, so pray tell me DID YOU FUCKING EVEN WATCH “Man on Fire” THAT YOU COULD NOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE POORLY EXECUTED SHOTS IN “Ek Ajnabee” SUCH AS THE KIDNAPPING SCENE, FROM WHAT WAS SHOWN IN THE ORIGINAL MOVIE? ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE TO NOT NOTICE THAT “Ek Ajnabee” is a POOR MAN’S “Man on Fire”.

Amitabh Bachchan can do no wrong. He’s at a stage where roles are written keeping him in mind. So when you watch the movie you can see how effortlessly he plays his part. ‘Ek Ajnabee’ is no exception. Here is one actor who still makes your heart skip a beat with his on screen persona. The rest of the cast (besides a well executed performance by Perizaad Zorabian) are merely used as objects to fill up screen space. Kelly Dorjee doesn’t have much to do and was not even needed in this movie. He seriously needs acting lessons and some theater. I would like to see him rise to become another Danny Denzongpa, a legend in my books.

D Plus. Watch it if you feel the intense urge to view a comic book on the big screen.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 12th, 2005 at 8:48 am
Filed under Bollywood, Movie Reactions
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