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Considered among the best works of the revered American filmmaker Sidney Lumet, Network was a prescient, tar-black critique of “trash television” and thus remains as relevant today as it was over three decades back. When a veteran news reader learns that he’s about to lose his job of 25 years, he falls off the hook and becomes the “mad prophet of the TV airwaves”. He initially creates embarrassment for his employers, however the tremendous ratings his prophetic slogan, “I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!” generates ensures he doesn’t just retain his prime-time show, a whole lot of crap gets added around him to spin as much money out of his sudden fame as possible. This trenchant satire is filled to brim with a host of superb performances – Peter Finch was absolutely terrific as Howard Beale, the tragic newsman who becomes a messiah for the troubled times and a mouthpiece for the generation’s angst; equally memorable turns were provided by William Holden as Beale’s long-time friend who’s forced to accept the madness around him with sardonic resignation, Faye Dunaway as a workaholic and insanely ambitious programming executive, Robert Duvall as the network’s scheming hatchet man, among others. Though the brilliantly written film divided critics and audience upon its release, its scathing indictment of all the lurid content religiously dished into our homes by the idiot box has elevated it over the years to the status of a modern day classic.
Director: Sidney Lumet
Genre: Drama/Black Comedy/Media Satire
Language: English
Country: US
Bejoy Nambiar had won a competition comprising of aspiring filmmakers and he was supposed get an opportunity to direct a movie backed by Ashok Amritraj. Amritraj, who’s spent his life producing sub-par genre films, didn’t honour his commitment, and fortunately for the wannabe filmmaker, the maverick Anurag Kashyap stepped in in the nick of time. Shaitan is a dark, psychedelic and wickedly funny tale of five friends, and their hallucinatory journey through hell. The five delinquent, emotionally bankrupt youngsters, most hailing from wealthy families, end up inadvertently committing a crime during one of their many hedonistic sprees, thus setting them on a rollercoaster ride involving blackmail and murder. Meanwhile, an excellent cop, who has long stopped acting by the books, takes charge of the hunt. The hyperstylized, unabashedly violent and deliriously amoral film is unrestrained in its depiction of a modern-day urban dystopia. The film however is not without its drawbacks. For one, the young director’s overindulgence ought to have been kept under a tight check by Kashyap. Further, since most of the characters have been painted in broad strokes, they end up just as “types”. And not to forget, it started seeming overlong by the third quarter. Nonetheless, criticisms aside, the film has provided ample proof of Nambiar’s immense potential as a filmmaker.
Director: Bejoy Nambiar
Genre: Thriller/Black Comedy/Crime Thriller/Psychedelic Thriller
Language: Hindi
Country: India
The Kid was Charlie Chaplin’s first direction of a feature-length film. Film lovers might argue as to which among Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, etc. was the greatest work of the inimitable genius, but this bittersweet comedy sure remains among his most popular films; in fact, one might even make a case for it by stating that this was the movie that made “The Tramp” a part of pop-culture lexicon. A poor woman abandons her newborn son, born out of wedlock, and as luck would have it, he ends up in the arms of the Tramp, an unemployed, smartly-dressed vagabond with a large heart. Five years later, the two have become inseparable companions – he takes care of the kid like a loving foster father, while the kid in turn helps him earn a few bucks (courtesy some ingenious, if crooked, ideation). The film is filled with dollops of sentimentalism. But, instead of that acting as a hindrance to the movie, it actually works for it by being a potent balancing force for Chaplin’s signature slapstick sequences. The movie boasts of a much talked about dream sequence which, though, I felt, seemed a tad incoherent vis-à-vis the rest of the film. Special mention must be made of the performance of “The Kid” – it is impossible to fathom how Chaplin, despite the genius that he was, managed to elicit such an incredible performance from the 7-year old Jackie Coogan. Though largely bereft of the kind of searing socio-political observations present in his later films, The Kid does remain an indelible part of Chaplin’s vaunted oeuvre.
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Slapstick
Language: Silent
Country: US
If Mr. Hulot’s Holiday was a refreshing comedy and Mon Oncle a lovely concoction of comedy and mild satire, Playtime, the third film in Tati’s brilliant Monsieur Hulot series, was a raging satire of the highest order – a cringing body blow against incessant automation and ultra-modernization. Unlike in the previous two films, the Paris we all know of is completely invisible here; instead what we have is a gray, wan, drab and utterly impersonal urban jungle of glass, steel and gadgets, and a never-ending stream of automobiles. And in this immensely dreary post-modern world, Hulot seems to be comically and anachronistically out of place – a nostalgic symbol of a lost era. The film is filled with some terrific gags and set-pieces, with the runaway winners being an elaborate, carnivalesque sequence at an upscale, recently refurbished restaurant, and one of the most unforgettable traffic jams ever recorded on screen. Its greatest achievement is that, despite being filled with blistering satire and sulphureous ironies, the message is never in-your-face, as they have been beautifully masqueraded through amazing wit and humour. Sadly for us cinephiles, because of its ambitious scale and radical scope, this movie nearly destroyed Tati’s career as a filmmaker par excellence.
Director: Jacques Tati
Genre: Comedy/Social Satire/Urban Comedy
Language: French
Country: France
While a lot of movies are being made these days which have their basis on Islamic terrorism, Charlie Wilson’s War concentrated on what gave rise to this global phenomenon. And unlike most movies tackling subjects “based on actual events”, this wickedly funny Mike Nichols movie, adapted from a bestselling novel of the same name, has been imbued with dark humour, sarcasm, political incorrectness, lightness of tone and an overall freewheeling quality, without ever losing sight of its biting political commentary. The film traces how the eponymous Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks), a womanizing and hard-drinking Texan congressman, propelled by the persuasiveness of a wealthy, rabid Houston socialite (Julia Roberts), and with more than a little help from a CIA loose cannon (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), helps Afghan freedom fighters in doing a Vietnam by defeating the mighty Soviet army, which inadvertently ends up providing the springboard for the catastrophic rise of the Talibans. Tom Hanks, cast against his type, is good as the sexist and powerful politician who loves his booze and his babes (look out for a sprightly turn by Amy Adams as his pretty secretary), while Hoffman is brilliant as always as a gruff, moody, cynical and utterly non-conformist Company veteran.
Director: Mike Nichols
Genre: Political Satire/Political Drama/Docu-Drama
Language: English
Country: US
The Purple Rose of Cairo must have been close to Woody Allen on account of it being a lovely homage to the joy of watching cinema. Cecelia (played memorably by Mia Farrow) is leading a drab existence, what with trying to survive in Depression Era America, losing her job, and being married to a brutish husband – all compounded by the fact that she’s a meek and docile person. So, in order to escape from her dreary life, she spends hours in movie theatres. While watching the eponymous movie – a screwball comedy – one of the film’s characters (played to perfection by Jeff Daniels) literally jumps out of the screen and run away with her. What follows is a series of immensely hilarious sequences, with the film’s other characters not being able to continue with their acts, while the movie’s director, producer and actors running helter-skelter to get hold of the renegade character. However, despite all the funny gags, a deep sense of melancholia pervades through the film, made all the more sad when Cecelia is forced to crash-land back to her glum existence after the guy who actually played the character (played again by Jeff Daniels) does a neat double cross on her in order to rescue his career. Though it falls short in terms of the intellectual content vis-à-vis Woody’s other renowned works, this bittersweet fantasy-comedy with its whimsical content remains an important part of his vaunted cannon nonetheless.
Director: Woody Allen
Genre: Comedy/Romantic Comedy/Fantasy/Media Satire
Language: English
Country: US
Inspired from Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, Husbands and Wives is Woody Allen’s bitter yet poignant examination of marriage among middle-aged upper-middle class New York couples. One fine day Sally (Judy Davis) and Jack (Sydney Pollack) reveal to their best friends Judy (Mia Farrow) and Gabe Roth (Woody Allen) that they are splitting up. As they had seemed to be a happy couple, this casual revelation of their’s ends up in throwing the lives of the neurotic and intellectual Roth’s into complete disarray, as beneath the veneer of happiness, their relationship too has turned into one of blasé and unfulfillment. Filled with dark and edgy humour, caustic wit, pointed observations, and poetic irony, this searing critique is a brilliant dissection of the slow disintegration and falling apart of a seemingly happily married couple. Yet, for all the punches and jabs at mid-life crisis, and the foibles, infidelity and misdemeanours that populate marital relationships, the splendid script (along with superb performances and a heady dose of on-camera interviews) surprisingly also ensures that one does a bit of soul-searching as to finding the meaning of happiness – or at least contentment – in a severely lonely, urban milieu. Ironically, at the end, while Sally and Jack decide to get back, Gabe and Judy go their separate ways. Interestingly, the film also saw the public real-life splitting of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow; irrespective of what one of many inimitable cynical one-liners from Woody’s pen states (viz. “Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television”), life does imitate art, and vice-varsa.
Director: Woody Allen
Genre: Drama/Comedy/Urban Comedy/Social Satire
Language: English
Country: US
Mon Oncle, Jacques Tati’s followup to Mr. Hulot’s Vacation – which introduced the endearing character of Monsieur Hulot to the world of cinema – was, like the latter, an audio-visual spectacle of the first order. However, unlike the latter, which was lighter and more freewheeling in tone and feel, this one seemed to me Tati’s version of Chaplin’s Modern Times. Shot in glorious colours, this high farce is at a delightful mixture of immensely funny gags and searing social satire. Set in an unknown point of time in Paris, the film placed the bumbling and lovable eponymous character at the unique juncture between carefree and joyous lives of the common Parisians, and the ultra-modern, gadget-filled mansion of his brother-in-law. And, while the dichotomy and contrast between these two worlds provide loads of laughter, they also show how incessant automation might make life easy while dehumanizing it at the same time. Meanwhile his brother-in-law employs him at his factory, and as expected, his presence is enough to hit the factory’s best-laid disciplined environment for a toss, albeit inadvertently. Tati wasn’t just spot-on as the pipe-smoking and ever-so-courteous Hulot, the support cast too was incredible in portraying the series of idiosyncratic characters that populate the film. Though uniformly filled with hilarious gags, the mischievous acts of the children and the party sequence provided the maximum number of laughters for me.
Director: Jacques Tati
Genre: Comedy/Social Satire/Slapstick
Language: French
Country: France
