Fargo Season 1 Analysis

Fargo Season 1

Creator and Sole Writer: Noah Hawley

Fargo is an anthology black-comedy crime drama which has different settings in different seasons like True Detective and not in every episode unlike Black Mirror. It is inspired from the 1996 Academy Award winning film Fargo by The Coen Brothers. This season had a lot of references from their films, whether it's the pregnant police officer going behind a killer on a rampage, someone finding big money, the Chief remembering how less violent it used to be back then and my favorite reference was the psychopath treating himself by injecting directly into the wound.

Lester Nygaard has the arc of Walter White in Breaking Bad, who's the victim of bullying and humiliation from people around breaks bad and kills his wife. Lorne Malvo resembles Anton Chigurh but he isn't that psychopathic and he can manipulate people better. In a threatening situation, Anton would first look to kill and I felt that Malvo would probably try to get away first and then look to kill. There are interesting elements in the season like someone finding money and how that changes his life and yet how he feels that he owes something all along his life. People dying and the way the Chief reacts to it. 

Although since the unpredictable nature of the show, numerous characters and arcs it lacks being addictive and it doesn't provide narcotisation whenever you get back to watching it. The format of mini series is in a way that it takes its own time to tell a story and all that's there apart from a movie is that they provide a pay off at the end of most of the episodes in the form of a cliffhanger unlike you pausing a movie midway. Changing the time span and taking it 2 years ahead suddenly, changed a lot of things for me about the season and it got a lot more interesting. 

Mafia: Chapter 1 Analysis

Mafia: Chapter 1

Written & Directed by: Karthick Naren

I wanted to like this film so much, because D-16 was the film that inspired me and introduced me into the genre of investigative thrillers. I also get inspired by Karthick Naren's shorts like Pradhi and Oomai Kural. Somehow, this film right from the opening prologue, it didn't engage me. It might be because the protagonist or the other actors didn't seem real when they were speaking and the one-liner of the film, ie the number of events that happen in the film seemed so less and loose. In spite of the film not having songs or other side tracks, when there isn't enough number of events or enough story over a certain duration of the film, it can get boring.

The plot and the core conflict of the film is so cliche, in the beginning it starts as a cat and mouse story and when the hero acquires the drugs, the villain kidnaps the family of the hero and asks the hero to return the substance. Now, the hero has to rescue his family from him. The hero sends some guys in the villain's place to check his family and he knows a detail about that and for this, the villain is 'impressed'. In spite of there being some hurdles in the way, the writing felt so convenient. The audio-visual quality of the film is good because of the strong technical, especially the sound team but I didn't find any impressive auteurist filmmaking/style in this film either.

When you watch Vada Chennai and see someone speak something about drugs, it feels authentic and that this person has been there and done that, here it felt like he is just making a film about his idea of the drug world. One thing to appreciate is Karthick's conviction to create his world and some characters in it, but it's just that the world isn't grounded enough to feel authentic and it isn't fantasy either so that we surrender to the filmmaker entirely without using our brains.

Manchester by the Sea Analysis

Manchester by the Sea

Written & Directed by: Kenneth Lonergan

Academy Award for Best Actor for Casey Affleck and for Best Original Screenplay.

This film has a meditative atmosphere to it, the static landscapes and even a simple shot of a building looks like a painting. The performance of Casey Affleck is also in a way that he reacts and adapts to situations around more than he being active. This film deals with loss of a person and the aftermaths of it. After his brother's death, Lee Chandler is named guardian to his 16 year old nephew Patrick which forces him to return to his hometown and confront his past. The editing in this film is so refreshing, the cuts to flashback are jarring and that is the feeling they want the audience to have as well because clearly the rest of the film goes on in a smooth way in terms of the cuts.

I felt that I didn't get everything that they presented in the story, maybe I didn't pay enough attention or maybe the storytelling wasn't global and they probably didn't even attempt to do that. But I liked the dynamics between Lee and Patrick as to how they start off with a lot of differences and eventually how they gel together. There's this brilliant scene between Lee and Randi where Randi is crying and feeling bad for Lee whereas Lee feels weird in the situation and it feels like he doesn't want to face that situation. Both the performances were so good in that scene. This scene stood out to me, while watching it and I felt had there been a few more scenes like this in the film with such conflicts I would've found the film more interesting.

The film mimicks life like shows, unlike movies. It's not only about the pace of the film, it's also about the conflicts that they present and the way they present them. I'm not saying that this is a slice of life film like a Richard Linklater's film, there we don't see much of conflicts at all. Here, we see conflicts but the way they're dealt is so subtle and even that sometimes feels like that is larger than life because in real life such conflicts would break someone and not let them be that composed as Lee was.

Don't F**k With Cats Analysis

Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer

Directed by: Mark Lewis

A 3-episode documentary series

Available on Netflix

This documentary is about a gruesome video posted of a person killing two kittens and how a bunch of amateur online sleuths decide to catch this person by breaking down every detail in every frame of the video. This involves a lot of on screen investigation and it seemed genuinely brilliant that they even find his identity using clues in the video. It resembles the movie Searching where the whole film takes place on digital screens. The documentary enhances the story that it's telling, it definitely makes us feel more disturbed than how we'd react by just reading about the same story.

I've seen the best aerial view/city view imagery in this documentary, the fonts they use and everything is so stylish. We can see influences of David Fincher in this documentary, the static shots or soft tilts, pans, push ins and push outs and also the color palette of the film. The music is so chilling, I felt so uncomfortable and disturbed while watching this and I think music has a huge role to play in this. 

I was trying to understand the psyche of Luka Magnotta, the criminal. He gets a lot of inspiration from movies, characters in movies and he often wants to imitate them. He wants to play games with the police like the famous Zodiac, Jeffrey Dahmer which is why he leaves clues in the form of movie posters. He is a narcissistic person, who wants people to know him which is why probably he also wanted to be an actor or a model in the first place. He torturing animals is a sign that he had chances of being a serial killer, although what led him to be the way he is, if he's a born psychopath or if he's made a criminal is still a question.

Rear Window Analysis

Rear Window

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

This film is similar to Hitchcock's Rope and Dial M for Murder, where the whole setting of the film is minimalist, like in an apartment or two and where the whole story is revealed through dialogue primarily. It almost feels like watching a play than a movie. Films like these are an inspiration to indie filmmakers that we can make brilliant thrillers with very low budget, but it's just that right now revelation of story through dialogue wouldn't be appreciated because of the immense scope there is for visual storytelling.

But the nature of the film being like that of a play can work, when there is a cinematic element like the small fight sequence in the climax. It gives us the feeling of a satisfactory ending. This film being highly rated, I expected more out of this film and I was excited even when I read the premise but I liked Dial M for Murder better than Rope and that better than this film.

Hitchcock usually doesn't bring in the conflict till sometime into the film expect in Rope (out of the ones I've watched) and it was the same in this film and I won't complain about that part being boring but even after the premise was presented, there was hardly any tension I was feeling while watching it. The premise is so interesting that it can work even today, except the balcony setting which I doubt if people would be so dumb to have sex with translucent curtains on. I can even recall a film loosely having this idea, where a guy goes to buy a mobile and when he is testing the zoom of the camera, he accidentally records a murder. In 1-Nenokkadine, there is a brilliant scene with how the photos someone clicks on a camera are used to bring out information. I wanted to enjoy this film, but I was somehow underwhelmed.

American Psycho Analysis

American Psycho

Directed by: Mary Harron

Starring: Christian Bale

This film is about a successful investment banker, Patrick Bateman who tries to fit in to the ideas of materialistic success but and is a psychopath. He isn't just a psychopath in the sense of how highly successful and competitive people can also be psychopaths, he is a serial killer who has a head of a corpse in his refrigerator and has corpses in his cupboard.

Trying to understand his psyche, I was figuring out as to why he is killing and it seems like this is his passion project that he pursues in his free time while his full time job is something else. Also, he tries to mask his dark side with his vanity. The voice over could've been done better/avoided because especially when it is voice over of psychopaths, it isn't that easily convincing. According to a research by psychiatrists who watched over 400 films and they found the psychopath in No Country for Old Men by The Coen Brothers to be accurate to the behavior of a psychopath. Psycho, Silence of the Lambs and American Psycho in spite of being compelling and entertaining with their characters, they were apparently not so accurate.

The ending was interesting, I haven't read the book though but I wish they closed it because I was expecting a kick-ass twist and they ended the film with an open ending. Christian Bale was not that frightening to me in the film, the scene where we see him unleashing over the prostitute is terrifying but that's because of the scene and the sudden graphic imagery we see and apart from that scene I found it a little difficult to get convinced by his performance as a psychopath in the film or maybe he didn't fit into my idea of a psychopath which can be biased with the movies I've seen.

Psycho Analysis

Psycho (2020)

Written & Directed by: Mysskin

Music by: Ilaiyaraaja

Starring: Udayanidhi Stalin, Aditi Rao Hydari, Nithya Menen, Ram

This film punched me right in the gut in the very first scene and even though we've seen a lot of violence, this film can still get overwhelming and it's not because of the graphic imagery but it's because of the sense of psychopathy that's portrayed in the villain and also in the making of the film. Using too much of gore and graphic imagery usually makes us immune to it and makes us feel stone hearted where we don't let us get affected by it. In this film, Mysskin uses the right amount of gore and graphic imagery where in the rest of the film we're empathetic because we're also seeing a blind man falling in love with someone and here we see a psycho chopping heads off.

The psycho played by Udayanidhi Stalin, is one of most frightening villains I've seen in a long time. This psycho is similar to the one in Raatsasan, both of them don't rape these women and they feel like they kill people with dignity. But the psycho in here doesn't torture people before killing them, unlike in Raatsasan. Both of these people have troubled childhoods, they've been wronged by the society. Having such backstory feels like an excuse for them turning out this way, sociopaths can turn out to be the way they're because of bad upbringing but here we're talking about psychopaths and psychopaths usually have underdevelopment in a part of their brains which is responsible for feelings like empathy and remorse. Sociopaths would be guys who're involved in a fist fight with other frequently, whereas a psychopath would methodically kill them three days after.

Mysskin's writing is so good, the sequence of events he puts in and the way the story unfolds, there is always something more he gives us than we'd expect. The best part is that the filmmaking is auteuristic, in every craft of the film. Psycho worked for me as a serial killer mystery movie, but it didn't work in the way he tried to empathise with him like a Joker did.

The Platform Analysis

The Platform

Directed by: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia

Written by: David Desola, Pedro Rivero

Available on Netflix

This film is a sci-fi horror which does a strong social commentary on themes like capitalism, class divide and equality. It's also a survival film which is why even if you take out the social commentary aspect of it, it's still a watchable film. The film has a lot of violence and gory imagery, but it feels that the film deserves it especially for those who look at this world in a gloomy way. 

The film has an interesting concept, it's similar to Snowpiercer and I've read Cube as well. The Hole has a lot of levels, more than 200 and food gets passed from the top, ie from level 1 and the lower levels get to eat the leftovers from the above levels. The film is about how there's enough food but only if people at the top ate only what they needed to survive, that food could be passed to all the levels. The food gets over, I guess, by level 70-75 and from there people don't get food. There are some people in between who want to divide food equally and ask people below them to eat the serving they made for them and to make another serving for the people below them, but of course people don't listen. 

This film is a good thriller/horror film as well, it has some good turns in the story and the ending is also quite interesting. The color of the film suits the tonality of the film. It'd have been more interesting probably if the levels had different kind of interiors as well, that's probably too much to expect if they didn't have that sort of budgets for the production design but I was looking forward to some gorgeous interiors in single digit levels which contrast to the gore happening downstairs which makes it even more sad. It feels like every turn is a life and you just keep praying that you're born rich in the next life, everytime you die is what was happening.

There was also an interesting view on how people at the top don't have much to loom forward to, they only have to think and that talks about existentialism.

Demolition Analysis

Demolition

Directed by: Jean-Marc Vallee

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts

The premise of this film is simple and interesting, Davis an investment banker loses his wife in an accident and the rest of the film is about him coping with it. Jake Gyllenhaal gives a brilliant performance as Davis, whose actions are almost unpredictable all the time. Soon after his wife dies, he goes to work and acts all normal. The idea of letting out physically is so strongly dealt in this film, Davis and the kid start to destroy the whole house. Before that, he even goes and works with these people who have these physical jobs of destroying walls and doors by paying them in return.

The cinematography is good, there was usage of strong warm colors throughout the film which I felt was a little out of place. A huge mention to the soundscape of the film, I think this film deserved an Oscar nomination for Best Sound Mixing but maybe since the film didn't do well they'd have ignored this. The way ambiance levels are used in this film is so good, whenever we see that he's a bit zoning out, the ambiance levels are almost down to zero and when he's coming out of it, it again cuts back to normal. The editing was also refreshing, it almost everytime cuts before we expect the scene to cut and the usage of voice over was excellent in this film.

The only thing that didn't work me is the way this premise is dealt and the ending, it wasn't emotionally satisfying and this can be because we don't see much of physical/external conflicts in the film and this film is more about his rehabilitation, which could've been interesting but somehow this film wasn't that great.

Raja Varu Rani Garu Analysis

Raja Varu Rani Garu

Written & Directed by: Ravi Kiran Kola

Available on Amazon Prime Video

I can't recall a Telugu film being this high on style other than Mathu Vadalara in the past few years. The cinematography and the especially the edit is recognisable and though they haven't used it to push storytelling, they have used them as stylistic choices. The editor of this film would've had a blast working on this film. The story of the film is simple and it sounds cliche when told, but this film isn't about the story. This film is beyond the story, it is about the experience and being there with the characters. It gave me Richard Linklater vibes, where you don't tell stories of the most dramatic moments in life, but you tell those small moments which usually everyone ignores. 

The film is about Raja and Rani and how Raja struggles to express his love for Rani. Kiran Abbavaram who plays Raja, his performance is more absorbing and reacting than being active and this worked brilliantly for this character. At a point, it felt repetitive that all the film is only about Raja attempting to express to Rani and somehow he doesn't. At a point it feels like he doesn't want to express and he's just lying to himself that he wants to express. Naidu and Chowdary are memorable characters who're well performed and consistently written. The only problem I had with the film, is Rani's character. She's written like a man's idea/fantasy of a woman and not like a real woman.

The vibes of the village, is well captured through the greenery. Although a lot of times the costumes were matching the background and it seemed a little off. In Premam, we see a lot of black used because it kinds of contrasts with the green but here a lot of times we see matching costumes and backgrounds. The color of the film seemed off in some frames although in most of the film, the frames were so good.

The soundscape of the film deserves a mention, the director Ravi Kiran Kola said in an interview that they dubbed with a certain distance from the mic to get a sync sound vibe and it totally worked for the film. Sometimes I couldn't figure out the exact dialogue clearly and it's a good sign because that's how real life is. The sound is mixed in a way that when a scene is cut, we don't observe the cut through the change in ambiance. That is because the ambiance isn't pushed as much, which I think they should've done.

The film deals with a simple plot and as I wrote earlier, this film is beyond it's story. The ending was satisfying, but it was a step below brilliance.

Adaptation Analysis

Adaptation (2002)

Directed by: Spike Jonze

Written by: Charlie Kaufman (and Donald Kaufman)

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep

When I first read the logline of the film, I didn't believe what I just read. I was so confident that there was a mistake in the logline that I was reading, but when I watched the film it turned out to be true. This never happened with any other film/show and I think this in itself is something that Charlie Kaufman needs to be appreciated for. The film is about Charlie Kaufman having a writer's block while adapting a novel, yes you read that right, Charlie Kaufman writes about himself and his experiences while trying to adapt a novel and how frustrating he found that experience. This film will be best appreciated by people who're into filmmaking, screenwriting or writing. There's a twin brother of Charlie, Donald Kaufman who's writing a serial killer thriller, a genre which sells for good money. He's another version of himself whom he's trying to hate and hide all the time. Charlie wants to be unique, Donald prioritises structure, form and the rules of screenwriting and he follows Robert McKee holistically. 

Charlie Kaufman's usage of voice over is so good in this film, it feels poetic, the way they speak and the words that are written. The debate of voice over is also addressed in the film, McKee says that if you put a voice over it's lazy writing and Charlie in the end even addresses this, that McKee might hate him for this but who cares about McKee. The film shows a writer's life, a writer's insecurities and fantasies so accurately. All of the insecurities come from not writing enough, not impressing yourself with the material you've written and not having done anything worthwhile yet. The writer's fantasies are women falling for his intelligence and having sex with him for that. Since Charlie Kaufman has already faced all of these in real life, he can show all of these in an authentic way. The film is so meta that Charlie approaches Donald, the industry's writer to write the ending of the film and the ending of the film has all of that McKee preaches, conflict and high tension. The ending felt a bit off for me, till then the film was beautiful and it felt like a Charlie's movie and from there it became a Donald's movie. Meryl Streep plays the writer of the book which they option for a film and it's interesting to see her thoughts in form of voice over while writing the book and Charlie reading them simultaneously.

Uncut Gems Analysis

Uncut Gems

Directed by: The Safdie Brothers

Starring: Adam Sandler

This film is a brilliant story of a gambling addict, by gambling addict we're not talking about someone who constantly gambles with the money he has, we're talking about a person who gambles with money which he doesn't even has. Howard Ratner is played by a brilliant Adam Sandler. He's an adrenaline junkie, he doesn't want to play safe ever. Howard doesn't want to simply go home and have sex with his partner, he'd rather hide in the house and pretend that he's not home, arouse her through text first and then surprise her. This scene is a brilliant subtext about his character, about how he wants that rush all the time. He should've been a trader, he'd probably be a bad trader but that would've been a better profession for him. I'd have liked to see his childhood or his backstory as to what made him the person he is, the adrenaline junkie that he is. Probably they'd have avoided that because not every person in real life has a scene that happened in their childhood which turned them into what they're. 

The craft of the film is noticeable, there's an inherent clumsiness in the cinematography and the editing of the film. It isn't an clumsy that we've to put efforts to figure out what's happening, but it works in stating the mood of the film. A lot of shots are handheld and I can recall a scene in the car before they strip Howard and put him in the trunk. That scene cuts to shot reverse shot very fast and all the shots are almost closes and this nature of the editing and cinematography makes us feel like we're present at the situation there. 

There's a lot of unpredictability in the outcome of the bets, because this is a film about a grey character and we'd not expect him to either win the bets or lose them in an obvious way. So we'd keep guessing till the last moment, I liked the ending so much. It's a Breaking Bad arc, the bad guy does good in whatever he does but it is illegal/unethical and he gets defeated or he dies in some other way which punishes him. But had he lost the bet/ had Walter White been killed by some gangster in a fight it'd have been a different story. In this film I was never rooting for this guy, he felt messy and I kind of pitied him all the time unlike let's say a Walter White, whom I was rooting for to get away. But, they didn't even try to do that, so it's alright. 

Ayyappanum Koshiyum Analysis

Ayyappanum Koshiyum

Written & Directed by: Sachy

Starring: Prithviraj Sukumaran, Biju Menon

Available on Amazon Prime Video.

This film has a simple plot, it's a tiff between two men; one is Koshy Kurien played by Prithviraj Sukumaran who has a lot of influence and the other is Ayyappan Nair, a cop. Circumstances put them opposite each other once and from there each of them keeps doing a tit for tat to the other in a loop. The film is 3 hours long and it never feels boring, it isn't a slice of life film where we see a character going through many phases in life or it isn't a film with a lot of plot twists and turns, it has a simple premise and it's just because of the brilliant writing and filmmaking that it works. The world of the film, the socio-cultural milieu is established very well. The landscapes, the costumes, the people's perspective on a lot of things are clearly captured. Both the characters are written in a way that they're consistent throughout the film, especially Ayyappan Nair. He's a cop and we have a certain image of him, but when we know that he was a guy who killed a lot of people in the past and the people say that he's like a bull and the police uniform is what tames him, we don't see a different Ayyappan Nair there, we don't see different body language or a drastically different performance. We see the same person, but just our perspective of the person changes.

Prithviraj Sukumaran does a good job, his hair, make up and costumes play a huge role in the depiction of his character, mainly his sense of pride and masculinity. The film deals with the themes of masculinity, revenge, ego and how men deal with these. The core themes raised in the film and the way they're dealed is similar to Karthik Subbaraj's Iraivi, that's a more dark film because we see people dying and lives getting ruined there but here we see it on a lighter note, like the saying 'men will be men'. It's interesting to see how these men won't even let the other person go to jail and suffer, and how they want to kill the other person with their own strength. They've good spirit, they won't punch below each other's belts. It's like rivarly in a boxing match. They go to each other's houses but don't harm their women and children. Each of them feels like a warrior with honesty and integrity. This is what I liked about the film, it's at a grey zone. It's not Lord Ram or Ted Bundy all the time, there are billions of people between them or some even beyond them and cinema helps us meet a lot of these people.

The music by Jakes Bejoy is so minimalist in some scenes, it doesn't even feel like music. He uses simple sounds and sound effects to create drama in the scene and that's my favorite style of creating drama. You don't need an orchestra playing all the time, in every scene that you see. The look of the film is also consistent, it has a certain look in the police station and a certain look in the landscape of the outdoors. The pacing of the film is similar to most of the Netflix originals, where we can watch the story in a laid back way and yet it isn't boring by any means.

Madha Analysis

Madha (2020)

Directed by: Srividya Basawa

Starring: Trishna Mukherjee

Madha is an authentic and a strong depiction of psychological trauma, as the director Srividya Basawa spoke in an interview with TNR about how she went through a lot of trauma herself. The interesting part about the film is that the plot in itself is like trauma, where you have nightmares that someone frames you for something you didn't do or as something you aren't and you are tortured. This story coincidentally has slight similarities to Steven Soderberg's Unsane which was shot on an iPhone 7 Plus. But Unsane was released in 2018 and Madha was started way before that. There are interesting twists and turns in the film. The revelation of the twists could've been done in a more stylish way, but I don't know if she wanted that tonality for the film.

Trishna Mukherjee does a good job in playing, Nisha, especially the asylum sequences. Venkat Rahul who plays Arjun, the love interest of Nisha, didn't fit the role. He gives creepy looks, which is good acting but he's so obviously creepy and it doesn't feel like Nisha is being deceived, to some extent it feels like Nisha is being stupid for trusting him (but yeah, the ending justifies some of that). Probably, Vinod Varma would've been an interesting choice for that role, he was so deceptive in D-16. The entire psychology professor episode didn't work for me, the professor and essentially the film maker was lecturing the audience about their views on psychology. 

The film maker has used a lot of cinematic tools to depict trauma, including the color palette, lighting and the sound design. There's a scene where Nisha is all disturbed and when her colleagues are casually talking to each other beside her she gets disturbed by it. Aravind Menon, the sound mixer mixes the sound in that scene in a way that we feel and experience how she is feeling and hearing their voices louder than they are. The DOP, Abhiraj Nair left a lot of shadows to be there in scenes, especially the asylum sequences and the psychology professor's lecture scenes to bring more realism. Also the shots in Nisha's house, the bathroom scene where she freaks out and wakes everyone up feels so intimate because of the wide lenses they used. 

But, I had an issue with the usage of music in this film. Naresh Kumaran's music sounds good, but they overuse it. There is music in scenes where there is nothing happening, and it feels like the music is trying to create tension there but it just feels more taxing to watch. I had this issue with Phanindra Narsetti's Manu as well. I could also sense some of the background score in this film similar to Manu's background score. When they have brilliant sound designers, Sync Cinema, I thought that they should've emphasised or pushed foley/ambiance more in some scenes than music. The editing by Renjith Touchriver felt noticeable and a bit repetitive at times because almost every transition from a scene to the next was done using a fade to black. I'm not complaining about this, but probably finding some creative cut points would've been more interesting to watch.

This film has aesthetic visuals and good sound design, it has a good theatrical experience but the storytelling is uncompromisingly intimate which is why this film might not be a great communal experience. There's a scene where the camera slowly pushes into Nisha in the asylum sequence where she's just saying something and I could sense the audience losing patience and murmuring something and that took me out of the scene. Had I been watching this in Netflix, I'd have not been interrupted by the audience like this. I felt the same for Manu as well, that too was an intimate film, the conversations in that film are intimate to an extent that they should cheesy when you look at them in a group. Even if the film doesn't do well in theatres, also because of the shutdown due to COVID-19, it'll an interesting film to watch on streaming services. 

Angrezi Medium Analysis

Angrezi Medium

Directed by: Homi Adajania

Starring: Irrfan Khan, Radhika Madan, Kareena Kapoor, Deepak Dobriyal

I was so impressed by the trailer that just the trailer made me emotional and if they could make me emotional in under 3 mins what could they do if I give them 2-3 hours. This is what excited me to go watch the film. The film starts on a light tone, it starts with two brothers having a case and the comedy works. I don't get why the jokes/lines said in the trailer always get a better response in the theatre. Most of the people should've watched the trailer and they'd have known the joke, I don't get how it is funny again. The film has such good actors, both Irrfan Khan and Radhika Madan are so good that they have the emotional grip of the audience. It feels like they can easily make us cry. The core of the film is about youth's oblivion to their parents' loneliness and needs when they get older. I totally agree with what the film was trying to say but they could've shown the child's argument in a way that she was right too. David Fincher says that drama in an argument works best when both of them are right. The child looking for privacy and independence, it is a natural thing and just to push the drama too far they make the child wrong. I get it that if they make both sides more nuanced, the drama wouldn't work.

I was wondering throughout why they used the Hindi Medium title and then the scene where Irrfan Khan tries to get hit for money, that scene brings it all together and that scene is the spirit of the franchise. But I was underwhelmed by the film, in terms of emotions. I was expecting that I'd cry watching the film, by the trailer but I didn't. The film is a fun film, it worked for me but it fell something short of being a great film. The ending worked for me, in spite of it being predictable to me. I love these type of endings in stories where you go for something and you go through one hell of a journey for it but at the end you realise that you don't need what you were looking for all along and you become a different person altogether.

I was wondering why did they have the 'confusion' voice over in the beginning. It didn't add much to the story, his confusion is not dilemma and it seems like he gets confused with jargon. But at the end, it just feels like a small payoff and it feels satisfying. Kareena's track was the same as Radhika's arc and it was just used for Irrfan to say out his feelings on what kids are doing wrong for us to listen. Deepak Dobriyal deserves a special mention, he was hilarious in the film. The writing of the film is structurally solid, I could sense a bit of Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet being applied here. I didn't have fun in some parts of the film like Pankaj Tripathi's track and a few other parts but as an overall experience, it was a fun film to watch.

Thappad Analysis

Thappad

Directed by: Anubhav Sinha

Starring: Taapsee Pannu

The film starts with a title sequence which started talking about different characters and stories, I was wondering if the film was an anthology. It'd have been better if it was but it was disguised as a Taapsee Pannu centered film for the marketability of it. All the stories explored have equal arcs and if they had been treated equally, then it'd have probably been a better film. It is because the story of Amrita was getting repetitive. I remember in the interval I was wondering what more did I know about Amrita and her story other than what I could figure out from the trailer. 

The arguments of Vikram, his family members all seem so conveniently written, all they manage to say is 'a woman has to bear it' and 'what would people around say'. These don't seem like how a person who thinks it is okay to hit his wife would justify his actions. It was so obvious that he had to apologize the next day, he even understands that it was his mistake. But for the film to run till the end, he doesn't say 'sorry'. Probably the arguments could've been like old people saying that they used to try to fix things when they were broken and now everyone wants to buy new things as soon as they are broken. The arguments of the other side being so weak, it becomes a propaganda film. It is important propaganda, but it is still propaganda.

The first question that came to my mind when I watched the trailer of 'Thappad' was, if I think that I know what the film is trying to say from the trailer then why do I go and watch the film?

Some arcs are beautiful, Amrita's introspection is well done. But throughout the film, whenever Amrita and anyone else meets it is the same argument made throughout by both sides. I'd have liked to see what would Amrita have done if Vikram had apologized the next day and then if the people around ask her to move on, would she have called their advice stupid? That film would've been an interesting (Asghar Farhadi-esque film) to watch. It was interesting how they showed that it was Amrita's choice to be a home maker and that doesn't mean that she is to be respected any less. The other stories had interesting events happening, the lawyer and her husband who almost rapes her, the domestic help whose husband hits her everyday. The domestic help subplot was important because that indicates that they aren't being oblivious to what happens in some underprivileged places.

Wild Strawberries Analysis

Wild Strawberries (1957)

Written and Directed by: Ingmar Bergman

Golden Bear at 8th Berlin International Film Festival

Nominated for Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay

This film has a simple premise but it lies on the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The premise doesn't even has a conflict in the first place, a 76 year old retired doctor Isak Borg travels in a car to receive a honorary degree from his Almamater. There is no physical conflict here, the conflict is internal and it's abstract. He keeps getting weird dreams and the incidents which he shows in the dreams are recognizable in a way that you can recall getting such weird dreams. A dream sequence is shot with overexposed lighting and it is interesting that Bergman used this technique of the actor physically being there in the childhood scenes which symbolically indicate that he's reminiscing those moments. This technique was later used by Woody Allen in Annie Hall who cites Ingmar Bergman to be his major influence in films and that shows in his work as well, the themes they explore are existential and intellectual in nature.

The editing in this film majorly comprises of dissolves, these work majorly when they have to show his mind slowly wandering from one place to another. The extensive usage of dissolves remind me of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining and Jim Jarmusch's Paterson, there is a meditative feeling when you see two beautiful landscapes dissolve from one to another. A major theme explored in this film is acceptance, it's about accepting how life happens to you and about how you cherish and not regret the way you lived your life. The scenes in the film kept wandering here and there with different people he meets and until I read some essays on the film, I couldn't clearly decipher what he's trying to say with it. It's because the entire film is so sub textual and layered and especially when it's a foreign language film where you're not familiar with the socio-cultural milieu. I'm yet to watch Ingmar Bergman's other films, I'll probably get a better understanding of his films after I watch his other work.

Memories Analysis

Memories (2013)

Written and Directed by: Jeethu Joseph

Starring: Prithviraj Sukumaran

Available on Hotstar

Memories is a serial killer murder mystery, it is inspired from Se7en, not only for the religious inspirations from the killer there is also a scene of confrontation with the killer where the cop gets so close to catching the killer but misses. They miss because if they catch the killer this way, it is because of chance and not because they cracked the case. In this film the backstory of the protagonist, is strong and HIT had a similar backstory for the protagonist and the trauma is also showed in a similar setting. But here, we strongly see the need for the hero's well being to take up the case to get out of his alcohol addiction, we root for the hero taking up the mission whereas in HIT it actually felt like the hero would be better off without him taking the case.

I didn't like the usage of background score in this film, they hardly lifted any scenes and there is music playing almost throughout the film, even when they are just talking and there's hardly any drama in the scene. In films like this, there is a lot of variation in terms of the tension in the film, we see the hero and his mother talking at home in a scene and we see a dead body in another scene and the music is used to a similar extent in both scenes. Instead if we can ground the other scenes without music, the interesting scenes can get more tension with the music.

There is no misdirection in this film, whatever clues they find take them to the destination and the identity of the killer eventually unfolds event by event. It starts with the motive of religion, the cop then traces what he means by translating the texts on the victim's bodies engraved with a knife. He then finds out a relation between the two victims and calls them and their story unfolds, they get further clues about the killer being a limp and the killer's rough physical description and then the motives get unfolded before the identity. Usually the why of a murder mystery is opened after the who is opened, here it isn't that.

Prithviraj Sukumaran plays the cop, Sam Alex and he does a good job. This film was released in the same year as Mumbai Police was released, which was also a murder mystery and in that film Prithviraj's character loses his memory after the accident. His variation in both these films wasn't great acting, but it was good enough for us to distinguish them. The making of this film is also minimalist like Mumbai Police and here as well, it works in favor of the film. Memories is the film before which, Jeethu Joseph came up with the classic thriller Drishyam in the same year, which I think is one of the best thrillers made in Indian cinema.

Kannum Kannum Kollaiyadithaal Analysis

Kannum Kannum Kollaiyadithaal (2020)

Written and Directed by: Desingh Periyasamy

Starring: Dulquer Salman, Ritu Varma

KKK starts in a cheesy way, the opening 30 mins of the film. I didn't expect that as I watched the Behindwoods Short Film Contest winning short 99 of Desingh Periyasamy which was a brilliant one. But as the events keep unfolding, then I slowly felt that maybe the film needed the cheesy opening for us to lower our guards and expectations for the twists to be more shocking. It's maybe to create sharper peaks in the graph that they lower the previous scenes, but after films like Raatsasan where the graph is high throughout in terms of tension or excitement this theory is becoming invalid. The interesting part about this film is they didn't reveal anything in the trailer as far as I can recall and you don't know what the premise of the film would be. At many given points in the film, our expectation of where the film will go keeps changing. Gautham Menon is interesting as an actor, they couldn't have used him better and I couldn't stop laughing at the last scene of his. 

With both 99 and KKK, it is safe to say that Desingh Periyasamy is good with misdirecting the audience and giving twists. He challenges you that he'll give you a twist and yet he successfully gives you one. My favorite moments from the film were the interval and when the friend is sitting behind the customer in the restaurant and he saves him from getting caught. Both of these moments, you're expecting something to happen and suddenly out of nowhere right under your nose something turns up and shakes you up. In 99, with such a simplistic setting and characters too he manages to give you a twist and there too, it is just misdirection. 

In the opening scene we see an Edgar Wright style of editing, I expected more of such tacky cutting in the film and it was only limited to that scene. Ritu Varma is convincing in both the angles that are revealed in the film, she got to explore two different roles and two different looks in this film. There is some cheesy cringe-worthy stuff being constantly said by the side hero, but the cringe is acknowledged which is what makes it forgivable. It's problematic when the film maker takes his/her cringe worthy material too seriously. If the film deserves the runtime or not is something to be discussed, it never got boring but it would've been better had the film gotten into the premise earlier. The montage sequences where they show us them stealing something, like the whole laptops sequence, we understood what's going on way before they cut. Some elements are conveniently written like a luxury car being hacked by someone that easily, didn't seem convincing but this is a feeling I'm getting now when I think of the film and not while watching the film.

The Devil Wears Prada Analysis

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

Directed by: David Frankel

Starring: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway

This film follows a powerful editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine, Miranda Priestly, played by an extraordinary Meryl Streep and a college graduate, Andy Sachs, played by Anne Hathaway who joins her as an assistant, a role for which apparently a million girls would be ready, which is conveniently written. Anne Hathaway has no sense of fashion and she isn't even interested about it, she just wants to write and this job will apparently give her a job at any magazine she wants. There is a lot of hype created around and everyone is in a havoc when they know that she is entering and guess what, Meryl Streep lives up to the hype created. That is the only reason you can forgive the otherwise contrived hype created through dialogue, though they do it visually too sometimes. The film presents its arguments supporting the mad consumerist society saying that fashion is not about utility.

This film is about the journey of Andy, her experience of working with Miranda and how it changes her as a person. I had a problem with the portrayal of being passionate to a self destructive level, like everyone in the film is like the protagonists we see in Whiplash and Black Swan to some extent, but here it is shown in a lighter note unlike those films which explore the dark side of working like that. The accident of Emily was a heart breaking moment for me, the film makers seemed cold towards it. The best part about the film is that, she inherits some positive qualities from the experience like being confident and being presentable. This film is a story of self actualization wrapped up in comedy, which is not an easy thing to pull off. I don't know if the novel is written in a similar way, but the writing by Aline Brosh McKenna is worth appreciating. I watched this film totally from Andy's perspective, similarly without even being slightly interested about fashion but it eventually grows in. But, does Andy redeem herself by giving Emily her wardrobe? I don't know, I'd have liked to see something more for us to feel her redemption.

The editing is dynamic, especially the scene where they show passage of time cutting to different costumes everyday. The costumes of this film is quite noticeable considering the subject matter and it is apparently one of the most expensively costumed film where they used up to $1 million worth of costumes.  The film is loosely based on Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue. The male character, the boyfriend of Andy, is written like how men usually write female characters who are love interests of the protagonist; the writer actually admitted this. The guy is sitting at home or relaxing whenever she is leaving to work, it felt like it is the time of women to kick some ass through their writing. I also liked that Miranda Priestly is still the same till the ending of the film, I hoped that they won't change her character and make her change because she is too strong a person to change for the events which happen in the film.