ashwinisharma777 Reviews

The Mirror (1997)

Poor cousin of Abbas Kiarastomi's Through the Olive Trees

[3/10 · 9 January 2024]

For someone like me, who just wants a good story - this movie being one made for film connoiseurs who want to explore the philosophy and meaning of cinema - is not good for me.

It was good half-way through until the fourth wall is broken by the child actor, and from thereon, the viewer is led to view the movie with the fourth wall broken, but the way story continues in a very let's say 'organic' fashion maintains the myth that the fourth wall is not broken after all.

But if one were to keep the fourth wall lens, then it makes the viewer voyeuristic who chooses to stay with the child actor even after she wants to escape being filmed - even as the film crew chases down the actor from the set to her home.

It's surely a clever piece of work and one made for the history books - but it fails as an entertainment piece for me. I generally do not take well to content that is made for the creator's own personal enjoyment. There has to be something in it for the viewer too.

I found the cleverness interesting, but the execution a bit amateurish. The child actor would walk consciously while looking at the camera - betraying the fact that the fourth wall breakdown was scripted and executed not much to perfection. Alas, I am able to say this only because I got to see Abbas Kiarostami's films before I started with Panahi's library. Abbas does it so so well that Panahi's efforts in this movie pales as an amateurish metoo copy.

Two Ships (2012)

Threadbare Naked Honesty

[10/10 · 23 November 2023]

It's threadbare nakedly honest in showing what happens when two losers meet and discover the other's loser's streak in the process of uncovering the other person while on an unplanned date.

It's a very sweet and sensitive portrayal of parents of the guy have accepted his loser nature, and how the guy himself accepts that he is a loser - yet, the girl who is a loser is still ambitious, but cries at the end because she also finds out that she is a loser and keeps on attracting other losers.

It's a subliminal satire as well on the umpteen number of romantic films in which the male and female characters always are the best looking ones, successful in their character's story, and have a blazing red carpet to their romance. In that sense this movie is the perfect depiction of anti-romance film.

A Short Story (2022)

Timely Reminder of What's really Important in Life

[8/10 · 23 November 2023]

The movie is deliberate in its imaginative portrayal but very simplistic in what it has to offer - and rightly so.

It's a timely reminder to indicate the significance of things that are out there in plain sight - yet the importance of which is completely missed out on by others.

In its search for the most important thing, the cat tumbles upon plain old 'life' itself - which flourishes in dirt and under the sun.

Perhaps the personification of the cat was telling in its manner that the importance of anything is to be determined not only from the perspective of 'humans' which creates a distorted understanding of what matters - but rather from the perspective of 'organisms'.

Trijya - Radius (2019)

Quintessential Indian Philosopher's Movie

[9/10 · 20 November 2023]

The indian idea of 'neti neti' - not this not that - as a way of defining oneself is essentially an activity not in developing an identity, but rather, in negating any 'false identities' that we have come to attach in today's world.

As a result of attaching to such 'real but temporary' identities, and thus false in a way from a long term perspective, people lose touch with what they really are.

However, the protagonist chooses to not be attached to any of such identity. The refrain is amplified by how he keeps on drifting from one zone to another zone, and there never really is any intent to fixate upon any particular or idealized destination.

In between the imagery of the protagonist against a flowing river, and a long road is poetic filmmaking to signify the journey over destination.

The Gold-Laden Sheep and the Sacred Mountain (2018)

Masterful Display of How Mountains Weigh Over Karmic Law

[9/10 · 12 November 2023]

It can take some time to process and digest the movie but the extended stillness of its scenes will allow you ample time to contemplate. The movie plays with the user's imagination by creating room for a wide breadth of subjectivity.

For e.g., it builds an irony by first presenting the idea that conscience is a mountain in an ocean thus signifying that mental stability has to be a rock as everything else can be daunting dynamic flowing in which an unsturdy mind may lose itself. When this statement was made in the film, we see visual poetry, of the old shepherd's face's fixed reflection ebbing and flowing on the ripples of a water body by which he stood.

At the very next moment, the movie shows the old shepherd struggling to find the reward against the harsh mountainous landscape. Now when the metaphorical ocean is a mountain then what will the mind need to be? Thus not getting the reward is a reality those living in harsh mountainous regions have to live with. The other shepherds constantly maintain the refrain that those not deserving won't get what they seek thus ending up judging those living in the mountains even more harshly who are set up against an unforgiving landscape to begin with where the risk reward equation doesn't function as rosily as it may in urban centres.

The assistant to the old shepherd who had his personal delusions of discovering a gold laden sheep, and who was prone to find the old shepherd's criticism as unwarranted ends up with a near catastrophic result - unconscious and perhaps with a broken bone.

Bhonsle (2018)

An expression of lived realities that get hidden by bollywood's gloss

[7/10 · 18 February 2023]

Stories like that of 'Bhonsle', even though fictional, are as real as they could be in bringing the common social tensions of Indian lives upto the fore.

Bombay's birth was pursuant to colonial imperatives of the British rule. The Britishers wanted to set up an industrial city that could help them expand their international trade in textiles. Bombay's choice happened to be a natural one because of it being a port city. In the wake of its industrialization during the British Raj of the 18th and 19th century itself, Bombay has acquired cosmopolitanism, not because of fancy urbanity, but because of its need to draw in people from different parts of the country to serve as hands towards propagation of past imperial designs.

As far as the city of Bombay goes, no one can really lay claim to the city, as everyone has had a role in its shaping and formation. However, after the reorganization of Indian territories along linguistic lines, Bombay fell into the state of Maharashtra, which was formed as a political expression of the 'marathi' community.

This sense of 'marathihood' now seeks to cannibalize Bombay, a city of its own, with a larger than life background to its emergence and existence. This sense of marathihood intends to re-form Bombay as an imagination of the marathi expressions, and in this urge, perhaps, the origin stories of Bombay's cosmopolitanism is lost.

It's still debatable whether it'd be apt to call Bombay as the cosmopolitan city, and Mumbai as the super-imposition of 'marathihood' - something that 'Bhonsle' intends to portray. The juxtaposition of the frenzied crowd revelling in the streets around the Ganpati festival, with a traumatic event in the storyline betrays the director's desire to associate 'marathihood' as an expression of mob frenzy. This is nothing but coloniality, because it imagines Bombay's cosmopolitanism as a victim of 'marathihood', when a decolonial reading would imply the sea crawling back to claim reclaimed lands, i.e., the natives reclaiming ownership over the city's destiny.

Because the imperial rule ended up designing Bombay's life, one could say that the actual natives never got an opportunity to claim ownership over the shaping up of the city. In that sense, one can say that 'Bombay' will be forever lost to 'marathis', if they give up their claim on 'Mumbai', the marathi alter-ego of the city.

Sadly, Bhonsle, reeks of post-colonialism, because it does not intend to disturb the colonial legacy of Bombay's cosmopolitanism, while at the same time, the film wants to delegitimize the discontents of natives, who are unable to interact with a city of their own, but which feels as much alien as a foreigner. In castigating 'marathihood' the director chose a simplistic route of vengeance towards a denouement that could be subject to multiple interpretations as per one's personal taste.

The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013)

Essential Buddhist Experience of Nirvana in Cinematic Motion

[10/10 · 24 April 2022]

I don't know how many may have realized it, but the whole movie is a beautiful metaphor of life itself and the spiritual struggle that one goes through in order to find meaning in life. If they stay involved in the life's grief, sorrow and joy then they will go round and round like a waterwheel (the waterwheel was also mentioned in one of the songs). However, if you attain enlightenment, you escape the duality of joy and sorrow and attain nirvana - which is when you become enlightened - as shown in the way she joins a buddha lookalike, at the end of the movie. Her choices in her life eventually led her to Nirvana, and most of the movie was a cinematic terrain of how she lives and makes her life choices eventually preparing her for the ultimate emancipation.

Time of the Gypsies (1988)

It's Mahabharata in a family household.

[10/10 · 11 April 2021]

So the 995th movie was 'Time of the Gypsies' - a classic from Emir Kusturica.

The masterful ending wrapped up so many grand ideas and concepts in one carefully enmeshed serving that one would have a hard time believing if the underlying themes enthusing stories such as this film are capable of being consciously curated or if these underlying themes have an abstract existence of their own - as Dawkins' memes; only to find contemporary expression from time to time.

It was a tragedy wrapped in a parody summed up expertly in Merdzan's confessional monologue at the end, which was comically shuttered when Jesus' cross fell back to its position before Merdzan had restored it. Though it was gravity that restored Jesus' cross to its upside down view of the world; in the context of the climax - it profoundly declared that Merdzan's crookedness also had a role to play and his evilness helped move the plot.

The setting in the gypsy community was perhaps apt for the western lens to understand an amoral view of the world. The gypsies' reputation for not adhering to any modern notions of ownership and property rights, noted in Ebert's review - provided fluid grounds for the film creators to craft an amoral storyline that does not preach.

The grand narrative kind of ties with the concept of 'Yin and Yang', and in the context of the film, an idea is pushed that evil drives one to understand the 'hero'. It was Joker who made the Batman. It was Kauravas who made the Pandavas. It was the Romans who made Jesus. It was Raavana who made Rama. You kinda get the drift what it alludes to considering the cultural politics of our times ( 😉 ).

Fun fact: The characters were gypsy muslims, but the absence of imagery of the divine in Islam led to the director featuring the christian representation of divine. An imagery of the divine was crucial to act as divine imprimatur on the turn of events, including all of the good, the bad and the evil.

Parasite (2019)

Status envy breeds evil, with redemption found in repentance than in genuine moral conviction.

[8/10 · 11 April 2021]

So the 996th title for me was 'Parasite', where status envy breeds evil, with redemption found in repentance than in genuine moral conviction.

Personally, I consider cinema artful when it lays by the wayside, experiences that are commonly available to us, and thereafter presents a narrative that defies such common experiences.

Poor people smelling funny was one of the reasons some of my national law school acquaintances wouldn't ride the delhi metro - something that agitated me, but far from such behaviour being a 'morbid distaste for the poor' as the film's leftist reviewers would point out - it's merely an outcome of their socio-economic realities where their lifestyles are cocooned. It's nothing that is maliciously intentioned.

That's why, Parasite failed to enthuse me as much as it seemed to have enlivened reviewers to become a concert of uniform appreciation. I take that to be more a sign of the Marxist class consciousness becoming mainstream in our times than a sincere and objective appreciation of the cinematic mode.

It should be said that the rising popularity of such class consciousness could have made it possible for both - such a theme to be adapted for the screen, and for the reviewers to overlook the lack of artfulness.

Far from 'shocking' and 'emotionally riveting' ending that induces gasps as per The Guardian's film reviewers, the film lazily climaxes through a chaotic ending and tries to paper over the dangerous rationalization of poor people engaging in lies, deceit, and violence against the rich. Criminal and unethical behaviour is not warranted against anyone - irrespective of any markers of personal identity.

Half-way through the reel, the film did issue a poser: another one of the common experiences I spoke of earlier - whether 'niceness' is a result of being 'financially well-off'?

As answers to that poser, the poor husband and his wife held opposing views in a binary. However, the film does not even try to portray any tension in any of the characters with respect to that binary. The characters were straightjacketed into fixed outlooks on life - with the poor father redeeming his crookedness only after being at the receiving end of pain. Without further deliberation or exposition of that poser, one would tend to think that it was inserted more for effect than as part of a well thought out thematic tapestry.

In fact, I find it shocking that review after review imagines the film to be an exegesis of the growing inequality, class divide, and immobility of social classes. It shouldn't happen - that bad or criminal behaviour is passed off as justifiable under any circumstances, not so, especially in a democracy, where political equality is unshakeable and which guarantees a form of equality that is more powerful and capable of overcoming barriers to class immobility through modern welfare states and well functioning institutions.