Digging for Meaning

1. Anger is Comedy Bill Hicks, George Carlin.. most comedy is  disguised tension. Raju Hirani's brilliance is in channelling that anger seamlessly into a narrative that flows from seemingly light-hearted comedy (even when it is subversive) to empathetic realisation. In act-one of his films, you laugh. In act-two you can't help but cry with mirth/ empathy. This is why his Munnabhai films are classics. Your reactions are not voluntary. the jokes do make you laugh, and the denouement does make you cry. With PK, Hirani got the first part very well - subversive comedy that gets laughs and nods. The second part however, seemed to lack in empathy. Anger as comedy worked, anger realised was 'lull'. 2. To think or to feel?  Maybe it was the wooden performance by Aamir Khan who is supposed to be an alien. Maybe, it was the paternalistic tone of the film that tries to teach people a little too hard. But mostly, it was the lack of clarity in script. Who were we supp...

yesterday I saw ' Coffee and Cigarettes' . Its quite an interesting movie. Not that I haven't seen similar ideas. There's one German movie, essentially a collective of several short ones, about conversations raveling life's facets in various ways. (I don't remember its name.. it was shown in some new movie maker's festival of international cinema in Pune. ) In cofee n cigs, its done with taking conversation over coffee n cigs as a ruse, a common theme through the movie. I though how simple conversations could lend themselves to creation of such fantastic movies. Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are easily amongst the most beautifully engrossing movies ever, and what they fill the space and time is with conversations. simple. conversations. (Ofcourse Julie Delpy did help :D . She is simply brilliant, absolutely beautiful. She is so awesomishly godly in three colors: white .) The leisure that this form of movie projects is simply astounding and alludes to an...