Posted:
Off for 6, over the top
By Mayank Shekhar
Posted On Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 02:18:45 AM
Delhi-6
Rating : * 1/2
There's good reason to make an entire film of videos for AR Rahman's finest music to Prasoon Joshi's inspired words. This film is one-half that: montage sequences after another; a track after the other, and yet another. You tap your feet. It doesn't speak very highly of the film itself.
Those who went to colleges more home-bred to the culture of Delhi speak fondly of a class of students called the 'Delhi 6 types' (6 being pin-code for the area around Old Delhi's Chandni Chowk). Usually Muslim by birth, considered arrogant by nature, you'd always find 'Delhi 6 types' on a motorbike, sporting hair-do encouraged by a film-star of their choice. Their general sense of style is determined less by weather, more by the hit film of the season: sleeveless vests one day, leather jackets another. They speak with a fine command over Urdu. This makes them easier to identify within a box.
Abhishek Bachchan doesn't play a 'Delhi 6' type. Unfortunately no one in this film does. Bachchan's character, Roshan, is an American, whose parents moved to the States before his birth. He's neither been to India before, nor to a foreign-exchange counter. He tips in US dollars; wears aviator sunglasses, all decked up at his own terrace. The annoyingly constant expression on his face is either of sullen, deep thought (second-half). Or, a dry sarcastic smirk that holds back a laugh (before-interval). He rarely talks.
When he does, he goes, "India works," or nudges his grandmother watching Ram Leela, "Hey daadi, look, it's the golden deer." The tongue rolls along the 'r' in a fake twang mostly acquired from airports like the JFK. In fact it should be called the 'airport accent'.
Sonam plays a sprightly young thing in Old Delhi, though she hasn't much of screen-time or story of her own. She calls the American Born Confused Desi in her neighbourhood a "burger chhaap". It's a phrase from the 1980s. The young in Karachi call their American-types "burgs" (McDonald's, the root, is the same).
The Chandni Chowk girl sees Indian Idol, a talent-hunt show, as escape-route from an arranged marriage that may seal her freedom forever. The ABCD boy and the girl-next-door fall in love, though you'll forever wonder how or why or when.
Abhishek's Roshan isn't quite on a homecoming trip. He's merely there to drop his ailing grandmother off to their ancestral home. He sticks around doing nothing in particular. I'm not sure of his future. He certainly has no past or present. The silly, supposedly suave hero appears at best a jobless bummer prying into people's private lives. No surprise, everyone mistakes him for a mysterious serial-attacker called 'monkey man' who's been hounding the neighborhood and national news for a while.
The actual distance between this Walled City and a swanky world city called New Delhi is about five minutes on the Metro. It doesn't show. This Roshan-boy is likely to spend more time in cafes, bookshops and bars in and around Connaught Place. He does the Ram Leela every night, and hangs instead among, a horrid cop after him (Vijay Raaz), cunning, 1950s 'Lalaji' (Prem Chopra), bored uncle in his 60s (Rishi Kapoor), a 1980s 'Hindu social drama' family of divided brothers (Om Puri, Pawan Malhotra), a 1930s untouchable (Divya Duttta) who the locality won't have near, neither would the angelic, Muslim grandmom (Waheeda Rehman), back from five years in America. There are then the low-caste slaves and maulvis and repressed wives and rabid Hindu fundamentalists, even Amitabh Bachchan in a mythical Middle-Earth.
Mehra sets a disjointed Delhi-6 in a strange space-vacuum, more like RK Narayan's Malgudi or Saeed Mirza's Nukkad. Nuance may be a purpose. Yet not one character is even loosely established; none, vaguely captivating; no one you may care for. Everything is a caricature, everyone over-the-top. Communal riots break out. The hero bumbles on.
The film juxtaposes TV images of India's mission to the moon with illiterate public-frenzy over an alien 'kala bandar' (black monkey) with a mother-board on his chest, and springs on his feet. The black monkey is eventually a metaphor for the demon inside us all, which expresses itself in conflicts the world over.
You get the premise. What on earth is this hotchpotch picture?
http://www.mumbaimirror.com/article/30/20090221200902210218452212134ef9d/Off-for-6-over-the-top
By Mayank Shekhar
Posted On Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 02:18:45 AM
Delhi-6
Rating : * 1/2
There's good reason to make an entire film of videos for AR Rahman's finest music to Prasoon Joshi's inspired words. This film is one-half that: montage sequences after another; a track after the other, and yet another. You tap your feet. It doesn't speak very highly of the film itself.
Those who went to colleges more home-bred to the culture of Delhi speak fondly of a class of students called the 'Delhi 6 types' (6 being pin-code for the area around Old Delhi's Chandni Chowk). Usually Muslim by birth, considered arrogant by nature, you'd always find 'Delhi 6 types' on a motorbike, sporting hair-do encouraged by a film-star of their choice. Their general sense of style is determined less by weather, more by the hit film of the season: sleeveless vests one day, leather jackets another. They speak with a fine command over Urdu. This makes them easier to identify within a box.
Abhishek Bachchan doesn't play a 'Delhi 6' type. Unfortunately no one in this film does. Bachchan's character, Roshan, is an American, whose parents moved to the States before his birth. He's neither been to India before, nor to a foreign-exchange counter. He tips in US dollars; wears aviator sunglasses, all decked up at his own terrace. The annoyingly constant expression on his face is either of sullen, deep thought (second-half). Or, a dry sarcastic smirk that holds back a laugh (before-interval). He rarely talks.
When he does, he goes, "India works," or nudges his grandmother watching Ram Leela, "Hey daadi, look, it's the golden deer." The tongue rolls along the 'r' in a fake twang mostly acquired from airports like the JFK. In fact it should be called the 'airport accent'.
Sonam plays a sprightly young thing in Old Delhi, though she hasn't much of screen-time or story of her own. She calls the American Born Confused Desi in her neighbourhood a "burger chhaap". It's a phrase from the 1980s. The young in Karachi call their American-types "burgs" (McDonald's, the root, is the same).
The Chandni Chowk girl sees Indian Idol, a talent-hunt show, as escape-route from an arranged marriage that may seal her freedom forever. The ABCD boy and the girl-next-door fall in love, though you'll forever wonder how or why or when.
Abhishek's Roshan isn't quite on a homecoming trip. He's merely there to drop his ailing grandmother off to their ancestral home. He sticks around doing nothing in particular. I'm not sure of his future. He certainly has no past or present. The silly, supposedly suave hero appears at best a jobless bummer prying into people's private lives. No surprise, everyone mistakes him for a mysterious serial-attacker called 'monkey man' who's been hounding the neighborhood and national news for a while.
The actual distance between this Walled City and a swanky world city called New Delhi is about five minutes on the Metro. It doesn't show. This Roshan-boy is likely to spend more time in cafes, bookshops and bars in and around Connaught Place. He does the Ram Leela every night, and hangs instead among, a horrid cop after him (Vijay Raaz), cunning, 1950s 'Lalaji' (Prem Chopra), bored uncle in his 60s (Rishi Kapoor), a 1980s 'Hindu social drama' family of divided brothers (Om Puri, Pawan Malhotra), a 1930s untouchable (Divya Duttta) who the locality won't have near, neither would the angelic, Muslim grandmom (Waheeda Rehman), back from five years in America. There are then the low-caste slaves and maulvis and repressed wives and rabid Hindu fundamentalists, even Amitabh Bachchan in a mythical Middle-Earth.
Mehra sets a disjointed Delhi-6 in a strange space-vacuum, more like RK Narayan's Malgudi or Saeed Mirza's Nukkad. Nuance may be a purpose. Yet not one character is even loosely established; none, vaguely captivating; no one you may care for. Everything is a caricature, everyone over-the-top. Communal riots break out. The hero bumbles on.
The film juxtaposes TV images of India's mission to the moon with illiterate public-frenzy over an alien 'kala bandar' (black monkey) with a mother-board on his chest, and springs on his feet. The black monkey is eventually a metaphor for the demon inside us all, which expresses itself in conflicts the world over.
You get the premise. What on earth is this hotchpotch picture?
http://www.mumbaimirror.com/article/30/20090221200902210218452212134ef9d/Off-for-6-over-the-top
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
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