It's difficult to explain how good this movie is and how much support it should get. But I'll try.
Boy meets girl. They fall in love. They have problems between them. They get separated. Do they come together again?
Cliched? Formulaic? We've seen tons of films like that. What more can be done? The prospect of watching a film with a premise like that didn't excite me at all. Band Baaja Baaraat, I smirked. Wedding planner... grrrr. It must be one of those love-shove-shaadi films from the relentless Yash Raj banner, I thought. Yash Raj makes love stories every year to keep up their brand image as peddlers of love stories. In the past, it met their commercial goals. They made different love stories. If something succeeded, they'd do it again and again and again in several other films with Rani Mukherjee, Shah Rukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Preity Zinta, sometimes different stars but with same lighting, same backgrounds, same fields, same houses in Australia or elsewhere until audiences got sick of it. The prospect of another love story from them didn't excite me.
Not even a half-witted writer or director BEGINS to develop a film from thin premises such as this one unless something magical happens. Like an element within this premise takes over with charisma and aplomb to become the source of energy for the same premise. And this element can come from anywhere to anyone in a creative team. It could be a writer, director, producer, their spouses, novel, etc.
Let me give you an example to illustrate the process. I (filmmaker)see this actress, XYZ. She's got a laugh that is so open, hearty and childlike that it makes my heart jump. We bump into each other once in a while. I dream about her on and off. Even though she doesn't know anything about this, my attraction for her keeps increasing until I want to express/put out this love. Not necessarily to her, or to anybody else but as an artiste, I decide to make this into a film, where the audience falls in love with the actress.
I am married man living a lovely life with my wife. But this does not pre-empt my feelings for the actress. Therefore, I feel conflicted. It is keeping me from getting this love. Like a Sufi's love, this love gets pronounced.
Now, the same story comes to me. Boy meets girl. They fall in love. They have problems between them. They get separated. Do they come together again?
It's no longer as dead as before. I can see the girl, the boy, the love, the separation and pain. The story is within me. It is interesting. Now, I decide to develop the story. Where do I start? The childlike laugh? It is precious to me and therefore my story. Now I know I have to have a girl with that kind of laugh. Next, I have questions.
What situation is going to bring out that laugh? It is childlike and innocent. Does her laugh appear as she plays innocently with a cute cuddly lame lamb or does it appear when a simple prank is played, which she is party to. I don't know for now. This is one element. Now how often does she laugh like that. A few times? Many times? I don't want her to be a silly girl, who keeps laughing all the time to gain a few points from her male counterparts. So, I say a few times.
Since I know a little more, I need to develop compelling scenes to bring out that laugh in the WAY I experienced it, though not necessarily with the same events. In the story, each successive laugh of the girl should enhance the audiences' feelings for her just as it happened to me with the actress. Then, when this laughter goes away, they must miss it enough to want to see and hear it again. The laughter of the woman goes through a journey where it is lost and found. Do they live happily ever after or do they get separated for ever? Each choice brings out different ways to relate to it.
When does this film begin? Unfortunately for a lot of people, the film begins here. i.e. when the filmmaker is excited about making a love story and expressing this love. I believe the film begins when it is completely written-when every scene is put out there and they work together. The writing should illuminate the story and provide sparks for the film, which are required to survive the heartbreaks during the production of the film. i.e. while convincing someone to fund the film, while casting for actors, over sparring discussions, during the shoot over a few months, over delays in shooting, while getting the media to create the right amount of interest until distributors put it out on sufficient screens at the right timings with a reasonable number of shows. Simply speaking, the sparks have to be carried on till the film is out with the audience. Often and understandably so, nothing seems worth that much especially if you're not a hungry filmmaker.
Making a film is like painting. Imagine you want to draw a sunrise in a particular village because you love the romantic feeling you get when you see the village in that light. Where do you start? Where is the sun? Left of your canvass, in the middle or right or somewhere in between. If you start at the wrong place, the final painting won't give out the romantic feeling. After, you have begun and it doesn't look right, you add and remove elements to try and make the picture work. At the end of it, it may look nice, but the original sparks are missing. The feeling that you get from the painting is different from what you began with. The effect may be a technically well-made painting, but flat. At the end of it, you may still have a painting on a canvass with the wrong composition or you might even stop painting because the feeling has been killed.
Ashutosh's Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey is that composition that went wrong. Terribly wrong. The spark for the film must have come to Ashutosh before writing the film, not after. The characters and their development are so dead that you don't feel for any of them. The spark may have been so weak that it may have "Uhhh"-ed and "Ahhh"-ed when the writing began. It skipped everyone's (team's) understanding that there is a HUGE issue about using children for violent activities-something that we all react to when we see a Blood Diamond, Children of God or a Hurt Locker or when we read about children being used for terrorist activities. This film HAD to come up with a critical explanation as to why it was OK to use children for extreme violence. Going by the recruitment scene, it didn't. I suspect nobody thought about it. So, you have a group of so-called independence fighters who end up looking like terrorists, who use children for their activities. Since there is NO good reason given for it in the film, I'd rather see Surjo Da and his group die than live and hire more children and women to fight whatever high cause they were pursuing.
To top that, you have Surjo da and his group of friends spouting dialogues which equate freeing the village to freeing the country. When your finger bleeds you don't think 'I need to bandage my brain or lungs or body.' You think or react to the finger even if there is a larger context of say your spiritual well-being. Surely, it must have been a local movement supported by outsiders at a higher level. The screenplay and dialogues are so contrived and preposterous that you wonder whether these freedom fighters were half wits and whether their activities made any sense at all. And then everyone has to look like a nerd and be serious to suit Abhishek Bacchan's unshakeable, depressive persona. For god sake, in reality they were young guys, who had a lot of fun and energy, which helped them believe in their cause. (Oh! How I miss the Abhishek of Bluff Master).
There is a lot more I can say about Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey, but it all boils down to lack of sparks in the making of the film. There were no questions and no challenge because there was no spark or source of energy to take the story forward. It shows. The only reason it got made was on the success and reputation of a Lagaan and because of the notions of freedom struggle, patriotism, which people are afraid to confront. The film was made like a bad coverage of events. Did a film have to be made? Why not put a blog out there and say what happened sequentially or create a discussion in the media about it. Why should THIS content be worthy of a film made for a paying audience? Assuming the story was worthy of being made, I see it as gross injustice to the way the story was told.
Now contrast this with Band Baaja Baarat. A simple story of guy meets girl. They do business together. They fall in love with each other. That everyone will know before seeing the film. How it will happen is the critical question?
That the film opened badly, is not news to me. People are wary of a love story from Yash Raaj films because of its predictability. Band Baaja Baaraat was bound to get affected. But on the flip side, Yash Raaj has a lot of clout and still produce films like Rocket Singh and Lafangey Parindey, which I liked. So it is not really a bad deal to get a good love story made by them.
What took me to the theatres was Anushka's performance in Badmaash Company and a bit of hope from a Yash Raaj film. And what a film it turned out to be!
Despite the simple storyline. Everything within it was so fresh and new without being wild or punk. The story progresses organically. It takes care of a lot of questions, through characterisation, screenplay, dialogues, art direction and camera work. It's not about two people in vaccuum, falling in love like in Imtiaz Ali's films (sorry sir). It covers new ground by answering a lot of simple questions.
I can go on and on. But I don't want to screw it up for you. Thankfully, the film doesn't devote scenes to answer each of these questions. You learn along the way. At some point in the film, you know Bitto and Shruti so well. You like them equally. You'd like them to be together. And you also know how hopeless love between them would be because of who they are.
And hope enters the picture in a very beautiful kind of way that you never expected but can completely believe. The best thing.... sorry go see the film.
For me, it is THE film of the year. I attribute it to sincerity (towards the original spark and loads of hard work). You MUST watch it. It will be a sorry situation if the makers-writer, director, producer, actors, art direction, make up, cinematographer-don't get the support of audiences and they are made to believe that they got the composition wrong, when in fact they created a great symphony with perfection. If they don't get support, that team will lose confidence. You may not get another symphony from them again. I desperately want the team to make another film. Please watch the film.
Special mention should be made for Maneesh Sharma, the director, for being true to the intent, for being the 'composer'. Habib Faizal, also the writer of Do Dooni Chaar Wow! what a writer. He makes reality fascinating.
Yes. And yet, it's only a boy meets girl story after all :)
Real editing is about effectively designing and communicating audio visual content. It is an art that I long to be lifelong student of. Other than complain about bad editors and editing, I have little to contribute. In this series of articles, I'll talk about video editing software. Ideally any system Mac or PC should have equally competent editing software. Since the 2000s, the Mac had Final Cut Pro (FCP) and PC had several editing software including Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere. FCP made deep forays into the professional market then dominated by Avid especially in television and became the market leader of professional editing software. The advantage of having a market leading software is that you have a lot of users and forums and therefore a lot of shared solutions. My History with Editing The non-linear workflow that I had followed pre-2002 in a professional television production set up was: import/capture footage on low resolution, edit, export final edit on full resolu...
Sadly nobody's gonna see because nobody's invited to blog yet.
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