Backlog. Eklavya and Guru

In the draft section of my blogger admin site, there are a few unfinished posts that deal with a number of films I watched during the last weeks but that never came out of the draft stage. Since I don´t feel like finishing them and still I want you to know, here a short résumé.

Eklavya. This one pains me a lot. I really really really was looking forward to seeing it. I mean take in the cast. AB 1.0, Saif and his mom, Jimmy Shergill, Jackie Shroff, Vidya Balan, Raima Sen and mera pyaara Sanjay. It is the first direction of V.V. Chopra after Mission Kashmir. The promos hinted at a "Gone with the wind" like outset.
And then V.V. blows it. My Eklavya draft was subtitled: "It might have been grand" and that precisely how I feel about it. The setting is grand, the acting too, even the basic story. Then why, oh why did he have to cut it down to 107min? It is an epic saga, it demands an epic length. So instead we are left with hints at some backstories and we almost don´t learn anything about what drives the characters. And that assembles to a lackluster feeble movie. There is potential, and you get a glimpse of it in various scenes, like at the the climax. But. But it feels like an abstract of a Shakespearean drama for a 3rd grade english class homework.
Two presumptions:
One: In addition to the mutilated story, the very last, bahut kharab scene hints at some "higher power" that forced Chopra to a) give it a masala standard fare ending and b) to edit the length to some "western cinema" timeframe. Big mistake.
And two: It is still rather difficult to get the official DVD. None of the leading online stores have it yet. The only place I found it is amazon.co.uk . I so hope that this hints to a directors cut version in the hopefully not to far future.
So if you can get your hands on a copy. Go and watch it. If only for the acting and treat it like a preview of what might come one day.

Film two is Guru.
I love Mani Ratnam. He is my favorite director. Bas.
But, and here comes another but, Guru is his weakest film so far. I just can´t empathise with the characters here. And that is such a pity. I feel it is the death of any movie if you just don´t care what happens. And that is exactly the problem I have with Guru. Unreflected greed as main statement just does nothing for me. Corruption is good as long as I can turn it into wealth? Journalism should use all means to get the story across even if you have to stage the stories? Don´t get me wrong, but where´s the message? And I don´t mean a profound life altering message. Anything would do, leave it open or tell me you don´t have a message for all I care, but give me something.
So is it a bad film? No. It is still a Mani Ratnam movie. It´s a AB 2.0 one-man show. I love the songs. And technically (in any way) its a great film. I just don´t care about it.

Minnale and 12B - didn´t I watch these stories before?

That just shows my luck at picking DVD´s. Didn´t watch any films for more then two weeks and then I pick those from my huge still-need-to-be-watched pile that are, in the case of 12B a Tamil remake of a British movie I didn´t like too much, and in the case of Minnale the 1:1 Tamil Original to the first movie I reviewed on this blog: Rehnaa Hai Tere Dil Mein.

So I can make this short. For the story of Minnale go the RHTDM post and replace Saif Ali Khan with Abbas (whom I never liked that much) and Diya Mirza with Reema Sen.









My watching RHTDM is a gazillion of movies ago but I still think I liked the Hindi remake better then the Tamil Original.
Mostly because I could not sympathize a bit with Abbas, whereas liking Saif (and the way he played his character) made the heartbreak in the twist a bit more satisfying.

12B is a Tamil version of Sliding Doors with a little different twist. Here we have the guy (Shaam) missing/not missing the bus #12B one fine day and we watch what happens to his love life simultanously in both unfolding storylines.










In one life he gets the girl he was running after (Jyothika) and gets his share of trouble and in the other he doesn´t, and gets another share of problems as he takes ages to find what he has in another girl (Simran) he meets.
Michael at bollywoodblog.de (warning: german text) didn´t like the climax/epilogue. Me neither. One thing in favor of 12B though: there is a special appearance of Suni(e)l Shetty. And he gets soaking wet bhi. Not as good as having John Hannah in Sliding doors, but hey, who am I to complain.

Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein

The week before last I visited Ashrafs Store in Munich, and went completly crazy in there. A huge cupboard with all (or mostly) Original DVD´s, though all terribly expensive (€20 to €25 for current movies) ohh it was heaven.
Well to make a long story short, I bought so much that I got a DVD for free and that was "Rehnaa Hai Terra Dil Mein" It looked interesting as it had Saif Ali Khan in it and R.Madhavan. The movie is from 2001 so it was filmed around the time Dil Chahta Hai was, and I loved Saif there. That was easy. Madhavan I knew only from his small role as Ajay the pilot in "Rang de Basanti". He was sweet there, I liked him and I also knew that he is big in Tamil Films.
But oh boy can that guy play!!

The story is nothing new. Sam (Saif Ali Khan) and Maddy (Madhavan) attend the same college, while Sam is an A grade student, Maddy is the colleges bad boy. Both come to blow and Sam is forced leave the College vowing that one day he will have his revenge on Maddy. Some years later we meet Maddy again in Mumbai where he teaches Software and has basicly grown up to be a decent guy. He gets the chance to work in the U.S. but refuses because he does not want to leave his dad (Anupam Kher ... I love it when he shows up in movies). One day Maddy spots a beautiful girl whom he instantly falls in love with. He tries to meet her but chickens out more then once before he talks to her. Then he finds out that Reena (Diya Mirza) is supposed to get marries to an NRI from the U.S. Maddy´s last chance to meet her is to pretend to be Rajiv and make her fall in love with him before the real Rajiv arrives.

Well of course they fall in love and of course Reena finds out about Maddys deception on the day Maddy planned to tell her herself. Maddy desperately tries to console Reena but to no avail. Reena is so pissed that she accepts her arranged marriage