Sreehari Nair wishes to write about that which is in the cultural air but absent from trending lists. You can e-mail the author at sreeharin@rediff-inc.com
'The overarching fact of modern social behaviour isn't that we are irresponsible women and men, but that we are never quite sure, when and how to act responsibly.' 'This is the real side of every Twitter outrage, where those who tweet about stories of 'unreported domestic abuse' end up feeling superior to those neighbours who are summoned up as clueless witnesses.' 'This view of the supposed spiritual decay of our times, which is at the core of Gali Guleiyan, is thus more fashionable than perceptive,' says Sreehari Nair.
'Not only are the concerns expressed in Stree (patriarchy, consent, prejudice against women) mere excuses to touch our 'sentimental hotspots', the movie itself is a few tricks cobbled together,' says Sreehari Nair.
'Any Muslim who shows even the slightest hint of revolutionary thought is marked as 'infected'.' 'At that point, he is taken to the nearest Detention Centre where a procedure called Reconditioning awaits him.' 'Areas with a high Muslim population have been designated as Scheduled Religion Zones.' 'To be an active participant in this social cleansing ritual, there is only one prerequisite: You have to be an undying patriot whose friend and family is his country.'
Sreehari Nair introduces you to three promising movies coming up.
Anurag Kashyap's lovers have no enemies to shoot, says Sreehari Nair, and so they take aim at each other.
This is a film where random storylines are padded together with obscure Internet facts, observes Sreehari Nair.
'Mulk gets a lot of things right, including its vision of the country as a place where underneath the punctilious, forced-secular surface there are volatilities waiting to go off,' says Sreehari Nair.
Dhadak is a film that turns Nagraj Manjule's vision into naught, only so that a few more zeroes can be added to Karan Johar's bank account, says Sreehari Nair.
'What would a composite of Dawood, Rajan, and Arun Gawli be like?' 'What if an absconding mafia boss were to land in Mumbai tomorrow, tired from all the running, and tender his final apology to the city by narrating his story and narrating it with brutal honesty?' Sreehari Nair watches Sacred Games.
'In Sanju, Rajkumar Hirani has essentially found a Rajkumar Hirani story buried inside Sanjay Dutt's life.' 'Now if you think that's scary, sample the alternative: Perhaps Sanjay Dutt had been living his life to suit the narrative of a Rajkumar Hirani film,' says Sreehari Nair.
Dibakar Banerjee delivers his finest work to date, and Sreehari Nair makes sure to applaud him.
'In this chicks-rule-the-roost universe, the men are non-existent, untrustworthy or plain incompetent and it's the women who are providing for each other's fantasies.' Sreehari Nair applauds Ocean's 8.
'Kaala's sin is not that it is presented as a mouthpiece for its director Pa Ranjith's political viewpoints, but that it makes a travesty of them.' 'Ranjith turns Marx into merchandise, all the while functioning as a hired hand for Brand Rajinikanth,' points out Sreehari Nair.
'Harshvardhan Kapoor will go on to become one of the finest Indian actors of this generation,' predicts Sreehari Nair. 'In Bhavesh Joshi, Kapoor treats the movie like a box and tries to break out of it.' 'It's magic to watch a young actor like Kapoor achieve intensity without overextending himself; he can hold a frame while merely being in it.'
Part of what make Ee.Ma.Yau so special is its ability to focus our attention on things that conventional movies throw away under the pretext of storytelling, says Sreehari Nair.
'What we have here is a director who understands how people fight, but has not a clue about how they make love,' points out Sreehari Nair.
'Oddly enough, everything Raazi cannot explain or put a finger on, it glosses over in the name of patriotism or watan-love; glorifying thereby the very sentiment it had set out to mock.' 'This is the unique tragedy of the film: it becomes less of a counterpoint to pseudo-patriotism and more of a companion piece,' says Sreehari Nair.
'Omerta is a work of true moral force; it is, at the risk of sounding fancy, a motion picture for our times,' says Sreehari Nair.
'Sudhir Mishra takes us into the dreams and fears of our politicians, into their self-deceiving pitches, and he shows us their demons and angels,' says Sreehari Nair.
A big part of October's charm is in its taking of a cinematic tragedy and presenting to us how we may experience it in real life, says Sreehari Nair.
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