Golaberij - Marathi Cinema Review

Gola-Berij ( Sum Total ) …A walk down memory lane with friends

How does one narrate a story of an entertainer in an audio visual medium? Tell it simply and it can attain an entertaining documentary feel like a “Harishchandrachi Factory”. Take it to a grand scale like some flamboyant personalities portrayed and we get a “Bal Gandharva” but Kshitij Zarapkar has moved off the beaten path with “Gola Berij” and we get a narrative which is so fresh that the journey becomes a familiar walk down memory lane with friends you have known all your life.

Confused??? Don’t be…This is a movie experience like no other seen lately where the screenplay is firmly the star of the show. It’s an absolute work of art.

And this could only be possible because the person whose story it tries to capture is an entertainer whose footprint is virtually seen on all walks of art. Purushottam Lakshman Deshpande  aka Pu La  Deshpande or simply Pu La is a name that hardly needs an introduction.  A powerful writer with a incisive insight into the heart of characters he created, a spontaneous wit that relied on the everyday happenings , he was also an accomplished Musician who had a mastery over the harmonium and composed and arranged music for many a film. He faced the camera and his sensitive funny portrayals are immortalized on film when he moved on from cinema and writing he created a unique form of live stage entertainment called the “Katha Kathan” or Storytelling and it is here where he made his greatest mark and kept all of his listeners in absolute splits. He was truly the favourite son of Maharashtra, the one who made her laugh; a true blue “Ashta Pailu Kalakar” an all rounder.

Kshtij Zarapkar’s vision is unique. The story of Pu La is captured as a journey from his childhood and it is here that he interjects the story of the man and enriches it with the characters created by Pu La the writer. We meet these unique characters at different walks of Pu La’s life and the ride becomes a joyride into the familiar. Thos who are not familiar with the literature or Katha Kathan of Pu La are going to have an experience that will definitely lack a punch but the director is rightly banking on the diea that how many such philistines exist? If they do, they would still enjoy the movie and the movie shall bounce them back into picking up Pu La’s vast literary contribution. Either ways it would be a good thing.

The second absolute winner here is the casting and the quality of the star cast. The who’s who of contemporary Marathi cinema’s acting talent finds expression in this vision. The main protagonist Pu La ( superbly played by Nikhil Ratnaparkhi) & his wife Sunitabai ( Neha Deshpande of the winsome smile) ta humbly stands to the side like a narrator and allows his characters to take the center stage and frolic with abandon. And frolic they do…These characters ssemingly meet the narrator at various times and mark separate milestones in the life of Pu La. They are largely drawn from his Sahitya Academy award winning work “Vyakti ani Valli” . These are the cameos that makes the film so delightful, each seasoned performance and so true to the characters we all know from his writings.

Early childhood is symbolized with the arrival of  Avinash Narvekar as Hari Tatya, the person who looked and told the history of the land and Shivaji Maharaj in particular without any particular attention to tense or time. 

The College days are captured in the company of the disparate trio of  Bhaiyya Nagpurkar( Pushkar Shrotri) , Natha Kamath ( Prasad Oak) and the dashing Nanda Pradhan( Subodh Bhave) . Natha the eternal lover spurned ( Mukta Barve) on the grounds of caste and Nanda the cursed angel whose life lacks for nothing material but conceals the tragedy of a run-away mother who abandons him and whose one prized memory is the gentle night spent on the lap of his college mate ( Bhargavi ). Each character is so rich that they don’t find enough screen time but they flit in and out of the frames leaving us with the sense of the familiar connect. 

In Adulthood the writer encounters the most acerbic of his characters in Antu Barwa the old man from Konkan village, a veritable coconut whose tough hard shell hides a sweet meaty heart. This is a super fine character one of the writers best and could only have been played by an actor of a fine caliber and little wonder for the part we have Dilip Prabhavalkar. This is the performance that maintains the correct balance demanded of it, One fraction here and there and the game would have been lost. It is spectacularly won here. 

Kshitij Zarapkar comes as Raosaheb one of the most flamboyant of Pu La’s characters who has a mouth like a sewer. This he himself admits quite candidly but is a soft touch when his own worker asks him for money. Satish Shah as 100% Peston Kaka captures an enjoyable train ride to the writers shift to Belgaum. Four other characters make their mark in a fashion like only they can . Namu Parit, the dhobi with his own metric of right and wrong. This conscience less character is played with oodles of mischief by Sharad Ponkshe. The tireless do gooder Narayan ( Ananad Ingle, excellent)  who comes into his own in any function may it be a marriage a funeral or a thread ceremony. Chitale Master ( Mohan Agashe, superb) the absent minded Teacher who takes genuine delight in his students by scolding, cajoling lauding and touching base with their families and reminiscent of an era where the Teacher was called Guruji one who occupied a position that even superseded the parents. But the high impact "lump in the throat" performance comes from Babdu ( Sanjay Narvekar flamboyant, over the top and perfect ) - the man who strayed from the path. The black marketer, cum bootlegger who fondly recollects the writers moms besan laddoos and the one man in the entire class who truly regretted that “Ghosalkar Master died jhala” . 

Prashant Damle, Satish Pulekar, Pradeep Patwardhan, Jaywant Wadkar come in intermittently and play their parts but it’s such a rich diaspora of acting talent that a student of cinema should definitely take this movie to study the nuances of character portrayal.  Absolutely delightful and must see is this walk into the familiar territory. One cannot do justice to all the characters created by the author by having them in one movie but those who have screen time do full justice to it.The writer director liberally has drawn from all of the writers best known works like "Vyakti & Valli", Asa Mi Asa Mi, Gun Gain Awadi, Mhais, his cinema journey and story telling episodes making this narrative fluid yet rich. 

Vijay Deshmukhs cinematography and the attention to detail on the sets makes this film that gets introduced to us as a stage act by Manoj Joshi, such a different piece of work that the director Kshitij Zarapkar can stand up and take a bow for a job truly well done. 

Don 2 : Mushkil nahi Namumkin

Prelude : 3D as a technology was invented 50 years back and had it really done something exceptional to the cinema viewing experience, it would certainly have attained greater popularity. 

Synopsis: 5 years after the first Don escaped, he has become the King of the Asian drug market seeking to capture Europe. For this he needs Wardhan rotting in a Malaysian jail. Wardhan has a key that shall open a locker in Zurich to a tape. With this tape Don intends to coerce the V.P of Germany's premier bank to show the way to the 'currency plates'. This is the Don's master plan to rule Europe by executing this caper. Roma who is now in Interpol is on his tail with a retired or just about to retire d'Silva. I did make a genuine effort to try and tell you more but this is it. 

"Don ka intezaar to gyarah mulkon ki police kar rahi hai!!!"

So said the first Don in 1978 without setting a foot outside Mumbai...oops Bombay then. This is the one line that has absorbed Farhan Akhtar and is the basis of his Don movie franchisee...let the courts decide whether the Akhtars legitimately own this or the Irani’s..ours not to reason why...ours just to see and cry...

Cry???

The first fifteen minutes of the movie truly sizzle and then sadly the flame goes out and how. 

Don 2 is a holiday odyssey made by a trainee at a travel agency who in his enthusiasm to get the best deals jumps across countries and continents in the shortest time giving no thought to the paying tourist. 

Needless to say we have first class travel arrangements in luxury yachts, exotic locales. Fast cars. Only one amazingly talented hostess ( Lara dutta showing off her various wigs and classic sartorial faux pas...a colourfully orange nightgown on an unending pier takes the cake ) and extremely friendly border authorities and officials. So we journey with the old Don who has vanished from part 1 remake from Thailand to Malaysia to Switzerland to Germany.

On the way he picks up a Wardhan from a Malaysian jail(Om shivpuri in the first part had not impressed greatly but his was an Oscar worthy performance looking at Bomman here...5 years in jail have frozen that mercurial actors face into one weird scowl). Given gen nexts requirement, we need a token computer geek. The geek has to be partnered with a local country girl to show his credibility of being in place with the times,  however unconvincing the actor playing the part comes across (Kunal Kapoor totally in need of a crash course from Barry John, Anupam Kher or whoever is teaching acting these days ). So Don and entourage are in Germany and voilaa before one can say “apple strudel” we have the German RBI equivalent bank having an Indian Vice-President ..so first there was the geek and now the veep.explanation given..."after all We Indians are everywhere."

This is where the director has totally lost the plot, there is no cohesive story that links up part 1 and 2 apart from a sketchy voice over and when they were shooting the new movie in Germany the hard bound script that had the story was forgottenback home in India and since no one wanted to travel to India...we are left with a movie that has frames which are very attractive but no rhyme or reasoning to them. German efficiency is conveyed to us in a manner that the bank veep gets an immunity for an international criminal in like 30 minutes...try telling our RBI Governor Rengarajan to do the same for Kasab...if he cant or wont we can still get away by saying this is because of a beauracratic India, the poor Germans have no such luxury.

There were serious expectations from Farhan Akhtar and this movie was his litmus test in creative writing let alone direction. Don had remained in the public memories because of characters like Narang,Shakaal, Mac, Jasjit each one having a clear role knowing what part they essayed in the larger scheme of things.

Watching Sharukh Khan in every frame of a SRK movie can be tiring not to say irritating when he is not looking or performing at his best. Priyanca as Roma has a logical role but then she too loses it towards the end with an ‘ uff tumhey goli lagi hai, kinda line where one feels given the cliched cinematic tradition she would tear off a strip from her bullet proof jacket and tie it around SRK’s scratch” Lara’s character and role is so totally redundant one wonders what is she doing here. If we have left someone out of the performances department without a mention then well its because they truly were not noticed...There is not one song which shall go down as hummable...the remake had a sensational composition in “Aaj ki raat”, here "Dhuaan" is just not in the same class

The ‘why’ is what baffles me...now that we have a movie that is bereft of a story we need to make it saleable and fast because a longer stay in the cinema’s is certainly going to damage its recovery process of investment, hence lets make it 3D,  charge the viewers double and get out fast before anyone realises that “Is Don2 ko samajhna mushkil hi nahin namumkin hai”

Memory Vignettes - Dev Anand - Adieu

Working keeps me young & maybe that’s why they call me evergreen - Dharam Dev Pishorimal  Anand

Circa 3rd December 2011, London , Dev Anand passes away. It took time to sink in and hence the delay in writing this piece. I believed truly so that this man was immortal. What else can be a testimony to it but the fact that he was acting and directing a film at a young age of 88 years; A working career spanning 65 years, Unbelievable.

In the decades of the fifties and sixties Indian Cinema was dominated by a Troika. Dilip Kumar who re-invented acting had laid claim to the title of the Thespian, Raj Kapoor who captured the common man in his Chaplinisque portrayals of a socialist India was the Great showman, and then there was Dev Anand. Unabashedly I  say he was my favorite.

Dev Anand was not quite as easy to slot neatly as the other two. Maybe because he was arguably not as talented an actor like Dilip Kumar nor did his movies have the depth of a Raj Kapoor's did but when Dev Anand smiled on screen with that twinkle in his eyes the silver screen lit up. He defined and symbolized a rakish romance. He was the handsomest of the three and while the other two ( Raj & Dilip) conveyed an image of pathos , Dev was Mr. Cool even before Cool was a word in spoken parlance.His image ethos was urban through and through. The reason he was difficult to slot is also because he played apart from the lily white hero roles, all kinds of characters with shades of grey and he played them fearlessly and effortlessly.There was no concern for the prototype hero image which seemingly restricted his contemporaries. He  even got clobbered in his films unlike the typical Hindi film hero who was always dishing out more than was served to him and even then one still loved him.

Enough and more has been written about his films the great ones that he acted in , some brilliant ones that he produced under the Navketan banner and directed and even those haphazard narratives that masqueraded as films beyond the 80’s. We are not treading that path. The onscreen avatar of Dev Anand for me stops at “Hare Rama Hare Krishna’ this was the last great film that Dev Anand made and all that which came after was pure indulgence.

My memories of this stylish actor reside in the manner in which he romanced his ladies on screen. A romance in which there is a playful mischief yet one that maintains a genteel elegance. It was tilted at an angle like he was. Dev Anand never grabbed a lady onscreen, quite the contrary he maintained a distance. His  almost casual embrace too didn’t make his heroines uncomfortable in fact they felt cherished in his arms and company and that came across beautifully in his songs and scenes. Watch a Nutan run down the steps in Dil Ka Bhanwar Karey Pukaar ( Tere Ghar Ke Saamney) or a Madhubala (Kaala Pani ), she is the one who approaches & initiates a physical contact in "Accha ji main haari chalo maan jao na" or the way Hema Malini in a huff is closing those endless windows and curtains (Johnny Mera Naam). The twinkling mischievous demeanour clearly stating that " I shall be a gentleman till you stop being a lady". A thorough gentleman he was both on and off screen and this is the elegance in etiquette that one shall always miss with his passing away.

Another abiding memory was at a recent award ceremony that he attended. Film award ceremonies and their presenters can get personal and some even downright nasty in their attempt to being funny, none more so than the current so called King of Bollywood, Shahrukh Khan. Khan was taking pot shots at every one sitting in the audience and the recipients of his hammering were too junior to object or did not have the command over the English language that Shahrukh constantly uses during his baiting. He acts falsely humble for a few actors like Amitabh Bacchhan for the others he is downright arrogant. Even seniority is not respected as was seen in the Manoj Kumar episode when he mimicked the star in one of his movies. In this function wading through a crowd he came across a quiet Dev Anand sitting in the audience without any hangers on; the common manner in which the film stars group themselves. The Khan with a catty gleam in his eye that said "lets have some fun with this old man" approached with pseudo humility and said "Here I have with me Mr Dev Anand who even I am scared to ask questions as his are the films that I have grown up watching". He would forever live to regret this baiting.

Dev Anand stood up at an angle , a frail figure and tossed back his scarf and with flashing eyes challenged Shahrukh, "Why son ask me anything." The language was the idiomatic Queens English that the Khan could not even hope to imitate. “I think Shahrukh, you are not conveying the picture like it is, if Mr.Bacchhan sitting over there had said he grew up watching my films, he would have been partially right, as for you I don’t think you were even born then”.  Like a whipped cur Khan fled .

The signals were all there but not read correctly. Dev Anand was sitting alone because he chose to, he had always marched to the beat of his own drummer, he neither needed the divided or bunched up camps of the current day Bollywood to define his being. Age may have made his body frail but his thrust & parrying was rapier sharp as ever. It may not have translated into great movies off late but the number of movies he kept on churning out with wannabe actors who were better off undiscovered was a statement of an obsessive, self absorbed cinematic giant who refuses to stop and stop he didn’t. He like the shining star that he was simply moved on to the next realm.

It was indeed a pleasure and privilege to breathe the same air and share some time in this Universe with you, Dev Saab. 

He had remarked that when I die, cremate me or if you choose to bury me and put a stone on it, don’t carve the word “Rest In Peace”…I don’t like that word Rest…instead carve  “Work In Peace”.  WIP Dev Anand. 

Movie review "Rock Star": A Wonderful Self Indulgence

What does one expect to see in a movie titled Rock star?  Rock & Roll …possibly, a bio-pic of a Rock musician…most likely but in director Imtiaz Ali’s imagination it’s just that a title for a movie and the movie is a love story. Disappointed are you at this simplistic assessment…don’t be. It is in the style of the telling that this movie works at a sublime level.

Movie making is one of the most collaborative of modern art forms. It is like one large kingdom made up of many fiefdoms, who contribute to the well being of the product. And when there abounds ownership & co-operation amongst each other while executing their parts, the complete set up can jump into a level that is ethereal. Imtiaz Ali achieves this magical fusion with A.R.Rahman, Irshad Kaamil, Ranbir Kapoor and Mohit Chauhan. This is the band that truly rocks the movie and justifies the title.

How does a simple guitar playing Hindu College student Janardan Jakar aka JJ  transform into the complex phenomenon called Jordan?. 
JJ keeps giving lots of eartime to his college canteen manager and resident Obi Wan Kenobi who along with samosas feeds him some desi wisdom of how real rock stars were born out of broken hearts & pain (all this while Jim Morrison is staring at you from posters) Thus he sets out to acquire it. It is here he runs into a Stephens college girl Heer ( Nargis Fakhri, very pretty & charming but stiff and awkward too) . An interesting friendship shapes up between the Hindu College boy and the Stephens college girl and there begins his journey. It is in the portrayal of JJ that Ranbir Kapoor has come of age as an actor of serious merit. His talent was obvious in his earlier works but the sheer range of what makes JJ into Jordan as essayed by Kapoor is what makes this movie. It is the complete package from the look of a young college boy (costumes designed by Aki Nirula, Manish Malhotra ) to the eyes that lose their innocent charm and grow sadder, deeper and display a confused angst, the eyes are vocal. Ranbir as Jordan breathes life and raw energy into the character of JJ & Jordan and never once does he falter.The manner in which he caresses his guitar, the way he strides onto stage for a performance, his awkward hugs & kisses, his erupting violence it is a masterful act. 

It is an awkward character who is inarticulate and the communication is clear only in his music. This musical soul of the whole ride is encapsulated by the poet Kamil in one line “Jo Bhi Main , Keh Na Chahu, Barbaad Karey, Alfaaz Mere”. This movie is neither cerebral nor linear.One actually may have to feel the film rather than merely watch it. It is almost like a collage of sequences put together. These frames sometimes overlap, some times are sequential but wonderfully carry the story ahead. It is a serious film and its soul is musical which draws the viewer in. A.R.Rahman's musical genius needs no telling but it is in this album that he throws at us a wide variety of gems ( Sadda Haq & Jo Bhi Main have a true blue rock flavor of the Rolling Stones genre - Satisfaction, Kun Faya Kun is a sufiyana beauty, Nadaan Parindey and Phir Se Ud Chala are soulfully rendered songs by Mohit) The music created shall make this album a collector’s item for a long time to come irrespective of the fate of the film. It is pure. Do grab the album if unable to see the film and grab it even if you do.

Yet with all the rock music and wonderful locations through which Jordan travels it stays a love story.The language of the storytelling is musical though from the words of Kaamil & compositions of Rahman. The intensity would have heightened had Fakhri been a better performer but she doesn’t make the cut. It is all left to Ranbir and he does a splendid job by himself. It would have been enough had the movie been shorter but Imtiaz Ali like most directors has seriously self indulged in assigning a longer time span to the lead pair thereby losing the plot someplace. He ends up reducing the performance of  Shernaaz Patel and a lot of others ( Heer’s mom ) into cameos. Another is of the late Shammi Kapoor who plays a shehnai master ( Jameel Khan ) who spots the talent of JJ thereby easing his passage into the recorded music world. This is his last movie yet the fire in the elder Kapoors eyes has not dimmed from his hey days in Junglee. Fitting it is that a small semi porn film seen by Heer & JJ has the title "Junglee Jawani". We have the regular humdrum caricatures of the mean parasitic music moghul  ( they just cant be anything else, Rock On gave us a balance of both the good one and bad one) here we are left with a badly wigged loudmouth( Piyush Mishra, hamming away ). Aditi Rao Hydari looks pretty in her part which is slightly bigger than her "Delhi 6" one and with lines and it may just get her noticed for larger parts. Anil Mehta’s camera weaves its magic in capturing the magic of the urban centers of Delhi, Mumbai and Prague to the snow filled beauty of Kashmir and the frames leaves one breathless.The frames are dew fresh.

What doesn’t work for the movie is its length( 18 reels and a full 190 mins ).No fault of the editor though she has done a splendid job, it is Ali letting the reins loose. 


What works is an innate honesty to the central character. It may not be Imtiaz Ali’s finest work to date but when it comes to romance his grip on the sensitivity of portrayals is as good as any one like say a Yash Chopra . Chopra had his romp in the mustard fields of the Punjab, the tulips & daffodils of Switzerland, Well its Ali's turn now to have his motorcycle rides on snow banked roads of Himachal/ Dalhousie/ Kashmir…every maker is allowed his foible which can even become a trademark. 


Finally If a question is asked whether this movie should be seen at all , Yes it must, definitely for one Mr.Ranbir Kapoor  & one Mr. A.R.Rahman. It is a journey for your senses. You too are entitled to indulge yourself :-)

A pod of cheer

 ‘Do come soon. I am waiting for you Rahul, we have to go together’. The voice came from a beautiful girl; the soft morning sunlight was in her eyes. The short sleeve blouse under a rust orange sari displayed evenly tanned brown arms. A keener observer of the female form could also get a glimpse of the slim waist through the transparent chiffon. The smile still played on her lips and the eyes sparkled as she brushed something off her cheek that flew in the air…it was a dandelion pod. The passerby envied Rahul, whoever he was. Obviously it was the first flush of a gentle story at its very beginning.

The pod in the mean time was carried on by a gust of air and it flew high up. In the trajectory of its flight it executed a gentle twirl and settled on a head covered in an embroidered cap favored by Marwari jewelers. The wearer of the cap was oblivious to its presence. His phone rang and he screamed in delight “How much is it up by? 32%, kya baat kar raha hai…sell all that we picked up yesterday…how much deducting brokerage? Rs.48 Lakhs , that means about Rs.16 Lakhs profit? Done deal…he shook his head in frenzy…he was obviously thrilled with his recent glad tidings. But right there in the middle of a busy market he could not share it with anybody so he just galloped along in search of a body who could properly admire his genius. This sudden motion of his though dislodged the light pod and it carried on in the air.

A small little girl saw it and stretched out her palm. She was a grubby little beggar girl with grime all over her face and a dress that had more dirt than clean patches. But the pod in her hand jumped up a few times and settled there. She closed her palm around it in a hollow so as to not damage it. Her face despite its obvious hardship had a gamin charm and she beamed at everyone around her. Her other palm was stretched out for largesse that had not been in her lot for a few days. The light at the crossing turned red and she got into action tapping on the windows of the cars…hands came out and before she knew she had a few crispy notes from three cars…more money than she had seen in the last month could be anyones educated guess and they wouldn't be off the mark. “Aaiiiii” she shouted at her mother as she showed her collection, she had quite forgotten about the pod in her other hand that flew up and settled on the window of the car and fell in on to the sari of an elderly woman in the backseat.

The lady who had absent mindedly plunged into her purse to give the note to our beggar girl was occupied in thought. She was on her way to the hospital. Her husband was in a coma over the last fortnight after a heavy fall he had sustained. He slipped on the steps & had cracked his skull. Now even the doctors had stopped predicting when he could be out of it. Through the styling of her apparel, her large car and general well being one could sense prosperity, there were worry lines etched on her face due to the hospital visits. The lines did not ease up as she entered the special ward. As she sat on the bed and passed a hand over his forehead, the pod rolled and fell on the blue smock worn by the comatose patient. At that moment his eyes fluttered open and recognizing her, he smiled. Her eyes filled up as she hugged the fragile form on the bed & this made the border of her sari billow. The pod flew out of the room and settled on a starched hemline of a matron passing by the door.

The matron was a good looking woman in her early to mid forties but she was tense. Her boy who had finished his graduation had gone for his first job interview. She was quite sure that he would get the job but he had told her that he would have an additional surprise for her. The nursing community and her job in which she had spent over 25 years only made her dread surprises. She turned as the young nurse at the reception called out to her, Matron call for you. She hurried over and picked up the phone. “Mum, about the job…can you come down for a second, I am at the reception and I don’t know how to tell you? His voice broke and the Matrons heart was filled up with anxiety. She hurried down. As she reached the spot she found a young man who hurried over and hugged her. “Enda Monay…she affectionately murmured in Malayalam…I am still on duty…the hug had dislodged the pod from her hemline and it had stuck to the side pocket of the young man. Mum I got the job and then he turned and expectantly brought forward a young good looking girl wearing a rust coloured orange sari. Mum, this is Jini Thomas and she has agreed to marry me. Jini’s eyes had the same sparkle from the morning as she bashfully met those of her future mother-in-law. Only when she was enveloped in a big warm hug and she exhaled, that Jini realized that she had been holding her breath. The Matron looked at both of them with a mock sternness and then pushed them out…Go Rahul, you and Jini go out and have some fun. We shall meet later at home and you can tell me all about it. Jini you too are to be there…We have a lot to talk about this rascal.

The matron was beaming as she walked in. She saw the driver of Mrs. Rastogi whose husband had been admitted in a coma two weeks back distributing sweets to everyone on the floor. She turned back once to see Rahul and Jini walk out of the door arm in arm…something flew in the air dislodged from Rahul’s pocket, the wind gently blew through the wispy threads of the pod from the open door and  brushed across her face. 

It was a happy wind. The pod flew on …