Life and other weird things

Blogging after a long time, mainly driven by the sheer dissapointment of having just seen the latest Vishal Bharadwaj film - Kaminey.

Till this evening, I thought Vishal Bharadwaj was one of those rare Indian directors who was more or less infallible. Maqbool and Omkara were works of art which I was personally proud to talk about to my non-Indian friends. They were works which were of world class quality, and were brilliant adaptations of two of Shakespeare's most gripping tragedies.

Kaminey, in complete contrast, is a mind bogglingly disappointing experience. Especially so, since the product comes with a Vishal Bharadwaj tag. It's like purchasing a Rolex watch and finding a 'Made in China' tag under it after paying the bill.

I think what killed the experience for me was the atrocious first 30 minutes of the film. A film which aspires to reach the levels of a Guy Ritchie/Tarantino work has, in my opinion, no business showing us two simpering lovers purring lines like 'Mai tumhe Mumbai se jyaada pyaar karti hun, Calcutta se bhi jyaada, Thiruvanathapuram se bhi...'.

The plot of the film is, to be fair, fairly original. Even if one chooses to ignore the obvious 'inspiration' from Enemy of the State for its climatic sequence. The whole problem is that Shahid Kapur cannot act. And we are treated to a double dose of his hamming in this film, as he plays twins. So, for all the colorful supporting cast - some of whom are genuinely funny - and Priyanka Chopra's sincere acting, every time Shahid or Shahid appears on screen, the tempo falls flat. Sorry. Just not happening. If anyone in the production team thought he would bring the energy of Brad Pitt or Jason Stratham on screen, they were quite quite mistaken.

I have had discussions with a few friends before about Indian films which try to imitate the styles of western ones. Sometimes, folks have told me that it's unfair to constantly criticize Indian films which try to get 'international'. My thoughts on this are - how is it possible, that every single 'remake' or 'inspired movie' is quite brain dead compared to the original ? And the result is the same whether Mahesh Bhatt does it, Sanjay Gupta does it, or as has sadly happened in this case, when Bharadwaj does it.

Maybe I expected too much from the film, but there's no doubting the fact that things like unnecessary songs, contrived romances and lack of acting skills in lead actors make things worse, not better. And 'Kaminey' is most definitely a film that is worse than it could have been.