Eeb Allay Ooo Analysis

Eeb Allay Ooo!

Directed by: Pratik Vats

Cinematography by: Saumyananda Sahi

Available on YouTube's We Are One Global Film Festival.

This film has a unique premise, it's about a man who struggles to cope with his new job, a monkey repellent. Such ideas come out of life experiences and deep observation of simple things around us. The film starts with a fish out of water characteristic where everyone around him seem to have things sorted while he's the only one who struggles. The film does a brilliant job of capturing the way people abuse power and authority, from his boss to a random person on a street, everyone abuses him in someway or the other. The cinematographer Saumyananda who also shot the film Nasir, again succeeds in capturing simple things around in an interesting way. There is a long shot of a train passing by and that shot and the sound reminded me of all the times I traveled in trains from my childhood. The shots which they choose to hold longer, are the ones which help us get into a meditative state. This film isn't as slow as Nasir, where it's extremely indulging in the daily events of our lives. 

This film doesn't follow a cinema-verite kind of an approach, they even use cinemascope and the camera moves, tilts and pans. But, the world view of the filmmakers isn't pushed on our faces, they just show us things that they want us to see and they let us feel whatever we want to. I definitely will watch this film again, because I have a feeling that the film has more to offer.

Crazy World Analysis

Crazy World

Written, Directed, Shot, Edited & Produced by: Nabwana IGG

Available on YouTube's We Are One Global Film Festival.

This is a movie made in Uganda, the industry which is called Wakaliwood. They make action movies with budgets like 200$ and the filmmaker Nabwana IGG has to delete his old movies to clear his space to be able to make another movie. These films are made to entertain the people of their village, who struggle for resources even to live. He bought a camera with all of his savings and he's made 50 feature films from 2005. He never expected that anyone outside their village would watch their movies and guess what, TIFF screened this movie in 2019 and invited Nabwana to the festival and gave their team a much deserved applause.  He adds a video joker, who keeps commenting as a voice over, sometimes explaining the scene and mostly mocking the scenes, to give it a parody kind of a vibe. Sometimes, when you think deeper it feels like a mockery of the big scale action movies made in Hollywood. 

This is pure passion for cinema and this is a testament of how hungry we humans are to tell stories even in dire situations. They are an inspiration to indie filmmakers to pool up available resources and to make a film out of that. Some people make their best films in their debuts and some improve with every film and both of them are to be respected equally as long as their passion for cinema is the same with every film, if not more in the later ones.

Hannah and Her Sisters Analysis

Hannah and Her Sisters Analysis

Written & Directed by: Woody Allen

Won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress and Actor

When a film wins Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress, we know how fleshed out each character in the film is and this is definitely a testament of great writing and of course great performances. This film is centered around three women and their lives and about the men they date, their family and friends as well. This film is the least self indulgent film I've seen of Woody Allen's till date, most of his films are an extension of his own personality and world view. In this film, we have about 5-6 characters and we won't have conflict in the film if all of them are extensions of himself. We see orchestration in characters, we see different character flaws, arcs and motivations in each of the women, Hannah, April, Lee and Elliot, Mickey as well.

This film reminded me of the recent Greta Gerwig's Little Women and Hirokazu Kore-eda's Our Little Sister which are both films about four sisters and their lives. While writing movies about multiple characters, it can be challenging because creating one character which is human in itself can be a task and while writing siblings, it can be extremely challenging to create an orchestration. Writing anthology films or multiple characters set up in different professions, different socio-cultural scenarios can be easy because we differentiate the characters with these physical conflicts and in these films we are looking at siblings who grow up under the same roof. Woody Allen plays a supporting character in the film who is hilariously anxious, it is surprising how he manages to write, direct and act in the same film and do films with such frequency and do them such well. This film isn't my most favorite film of his, I'd prefer his self indulgent films because those are the films no one except Woody Allen can make.

The French Connection Analysis

The French Connection

Directed by: William Friedkin

Won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay in 1971.

The poster of this film reads, 'The time is just right for an out and out thriller like this'. This film was quite successful and that means that this film was tight for the attention span of those times. Now, we are used to even more tight screenplays and cliffhangers like what we've seen in Money Heist where they hook us right from the first frame. By today's standards of what's tight, this film isn't that tight but I can definitely understand that it was a tight film for back then. It's a film about cops trying to bust a drug cartel. This film came right when the new Hollywood wave was forming, this film has a lot of scenes shot on real locations with handheld cameras to bring in more realism. 

Grounding the normal world is important for other events to feel more dramatic. Films usually don't do that with thrillers, because thrillers open with a dramatic event that the film is already set on a larger than life setup. What they can do is, keep increasing the stakes which is what Money Heist does. They start with they wanting to rob a bank, then they want to print notes, the rest of the show is hooked on the thing that they don't want to kill people. This film runs on plot points and events, Pauline Kael didn't like the film saying that she didn't want films to become just about the plot moving forward, she probably would've liked the film to be more about characters, their flaws, how they overcome them in the course of the movie. It's challenging and interesting, creating character acrs for detective characters.

The Wailing Analysis

The Wailing

Written & Directed by: Na Hong-jin

The film starts with a brutal murder and some weird incidents happening, which sets the tone for the film. The film is a blend of investigation and supernatural elements, in spite of the tension being so chilling in the film because of the consequences and the stakes which are so high; it doesn't have the same thrill as an investigative drama because this also has supernatural elements. What happens because of that is, the filmmakers succeed in raising interesting questions, which creates immense suspense and mystery but they don't have to answer them, have pay offs and connect dots like a conventional investigative thriller because a supernatural element doesn't answer our questions, it strikes them off. This is the only setback in the choice of this genre. The lead actor, Kwak Do-won does a brilliant job; he carries and expresses our terrors in this world.

This film also has suspects, but they don't play on if they did it or not; instead they create drama by having the victim's father attack the suspect, the Japansese man, and then play out on if he did it or if he didn't do it, then what about the attack; what are the consequences for that. The cinematography is totally Fincher-esque; I definitely think that David Fincher's films have revolutionized the way we consume content and especially on Netflix. The yellow and the blue tints added with cameras of such high dynamic range and smooth pans and tilts; you place the camera anywhere, it'll give you visuals decent enough to make the world cinematic. Oriol Paulo's films have been made that way, a lot of Netflix originals like Ozark, Unbelievable, Fincher's shows of course are doing that. In this film, we see a lot of garbage in some shots, in the forest and in some other scenes too; but it all adds to the tone of the film and the visuals look beautiful. It feels like it's a different filter which makes any world look beautiful, I'm sure that's not the case and a lot of hard work goes into it.

Laura Analysis

Laura

Directed and Produced by: Otto Preminger

4th in the AFI's list of Top 10 Mystery Movies ever made.

This is a 1944 American film noir, the premise of this film is about a detective who falls in love with woman whose murder he is investigating. The premise can get complex as the film subtly explores ideas like necrophilia, absurdity. The film starts with the detective asking questions to the suspects and they narrating how they met her and what was their relationship like in flashbacks, this is how we get to know about Laura as a person.

Let's take a look at the origins of film noir, when the anti-hero gangster films like Scarface and Public Enemy where working in the 1930s the Motion Picture Production Code was started when the film shouldn't endorse or glorify violence and breaking the law. But the hunger for morally ambiguous stories didn't die from the audience and definitely didn't for the filmmakers. Then is when they started making films in the genre of film noir, where there is a detective who is solving the murder. We can have these moral ambiguity in the criminals and the deeds they do, but since the protagonist is mostly the detective they are on the right side of the law. We can say that the film noir ended when the code was abolished and again films like Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider and the new Hollywood wave started which mostly made films about the anti-heroes. 

Paatal Lok Analysis

Paatal Lok

Created by: Sudip Sharma

Produced by: Clean Slate Productions

Available on Amazon Prime Video

The tonality of the show is similar to Sacred Games, because of the number of themes they explore about the dark reality of India. The major theme of the show is class divide, as they explain the title of the show being about the lower class people being parasites in Paatal Lok. They explore religion, caste, violence against women, violence in general, psychopathy, politics, media, corruption in the entire system, hierarchy among colleagues, infidelity, sexuality, parental abuse and I'm sure even more. This show which has the premise of an investigative thriller, when four goons are busted when they are about to murder a high profile journalist in the country, but when you go deep into it, we see the things which have made them who they are and it gets more dark. The show has tight cliffhangers that I was forced to binge-watch the show and the duration felt so seamless, because the characters were well written. As the actors were saying in an interview, the backstories of all the characters is present in the show, which are usually given as notes to the actors for preparation. In spite of the brilliant performances by Jaideep Ahlawat, Neeraj Kabi, the show doesn't rely on their performances, it relies on the writing of the show.

This show has a Fincher-esque yellow tint all over which we didn't see in most of the Amazon Indian original shows till now. Netflix used that in their shows like Sacred Games, Delhi Crime and I think that by not using that yellow tint, the world feels even more grounded like how we saw in Mirzapur or in Panchayat; whereas this yellow tint subconsciously adds a dramatic effect to the world we are watching. Show runner Sudip Sharma said that they took 2 years to write this show, which totally makes sense because every character in the show has a meaning and a purpose; either they have an arc and learn a lesson or what happens to them helps in sharing the worldview of the show. Now, it feels like the investigative thriller plot is just a tool to explore all these character motivations and arcs and now even if the revelation was something else, it wouldn't matter.

Broadchurch Season 1 Analysis

Broadchurch (Season 1)

Created and Written by: Chris Chibnall

A kick-ass murder mystery show, watch it on Netflix.

This show is about the murder of Danny Lamiter, a 11 year old boy, in a small town Broadchurch. It is an 8-episode show, each of 45 mins. It has similar pace across the entire show, even the 4th and 5th episodes are equally engaging and tight as the 1st and the last episodes. The investigation carries for about 60-70% of the show and the rest 30-40% is the drama, the aftermaths of a family and their suffering for the loss and the conflicts between the detectives, their personal lives and their past baggage. This show is constructed so well in terms of having suspects and clearing them off, they have 2 suspects who aren't cleared till the last episodes, they have 4 suspects who are cleared by the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th episodes each. Each suspect is created with an absence of alibi, a lie and a history of violence and they are cleared off with a smaller crime, which is unrelated to the murder which they were trying to hide from the detectives or through a traumatic past which explains their history and their unusual behavior in the present. This has a lot of scope for drama and it's not just a whodunit. 

I think British detective shows/films are well made because in British detective fiction was A-list literature like Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes whereas in American detective literature was sold in pulp materials, which was considered low art because it was cheap to buy. I think detective stories, if told with a blend of drama, can be made for excellent, chilling and riveting tales. By the end of the 7th episode, I felt such a high that I was going to watch the finale right away and find out who the killer is, that was the sort of suspense that this show built and created. The spirit of Broadchurch and the milieu was captured well, in spite of the mood and tone of the show. I'm not as excited to watch the 2nd season because the murder is solved and I'm not as interested in the drama between the characters.

Love Sonia Analysis

Love Sonia

Directed by: Tabrez Noorani

This film is about sex trafficking and it's definitely not an easy film to watch. The film starts with a poor farmer who feels that his daughter is a disgrace and the world that this story is set in, feeling such things are quite normal and they probably don't even know about women empowerment and they create the world honest to itself. The farmer sells one of his daughter to clear of his debts and that's a brilliant scene, where her sister gets to know that she's being sold. The sound of that scene is horrifying, it cuts back and forth to both the sisters resisting, shouting and the other people forcing them and trying to convince them at the same time. The editing of that scene was impeccable. The girl goes in search of her sister and she ends up at a brothel house, which is shot very well, it feels so dark. The soundscape of the brothel also gives us a feel of how that place is, we hear cries and moans of pain in the background and there's a scene where these sounds increase and she closes her ears. Both the sisters played by, Mrunal Thakur and Frieda Pinto did a brilliant job. I can only imagine how difficult it would've been for them to play the parts.

Manoj Bajpayee is brilliant as the bad guy, he looks at himself like he's taking care of all these women and he calls it home for them and he deals them with a lot of care. All of this is so horrifying. At one scene, he sells the girl for half a cigarette. Rajkumar Rao and Richa Chadda are good in the role they play as well. The film doesn't make you cry and make you feel better after watching the film, it makes you feel disgust and uncomfortable for you to understand what's happening in the world. It's important to watch these type of films once in a while, at least to feel grateful for what we have right now.

Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum Analysis

Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum

Directed by: Dileesh Pothan
Starring: Suraj Vasudevan, Fahadh Faasil
Written by: Sajeev Pazhoor
National Award for Best Feature in Malayalam, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Fahadh Faasil.

Dileesh Pothan is more interested in fleshing out characters, creating the world around the characters than the plot. He takes an incident and he focuses on how the characters and the people around them react to this incident. I think even if he makes a gangster film, he'd probably take one murder among the several murders that we see in gangster films and explore the aftermaths of that one murder for all the parties involved and effected by it. It's interesting to see a slice of life approach, with the backdrop of a crime incident. There is a scene where the husband tells his wife that she should've been careful, he does victim blaming and she looks pissed off. They address she being pissed off in the next scene, but when we understand what she's thinking and why she's pissed off immediately, then that's immersive storytelling. This was done well in Zoya Akhtar's Dil Dhadakne Do, if you have the world view of the film maker, you'll straight away get why the young people are pissed off in the film and if you don't share the world view, you won't get what the characters are pissed off at and you won't get the film most of the times.

The editing, sound design and the cinematography don't call attention to themselves but they definitely show the beautiful landscapes of Kerala just like Ayyapanum Koshiyum does. Fahadh Faasil plays a thief who doesn't lose hope till the end and tries to escape at every given chance. This trait, reminded me of Walter White who will think of every possibility at any given trouble he faces. These men are bad, but we can learn and get inspired by this trait of them about how they won't give up and lose hope till the end.

I am Kalam Analysis

I am Kalam

Directed by: Nila Madhab Panda

Written by: Sanjay Chauhan

National Film Award for Best Child Artist, for Harsh Mayar.

This film is interesting to me because, it is set in Bikaner and we see a grounded milieu of the place which is excellent but the conversations and the scenes that take place in this grounded milieu are filmy and dramatic. The scene where the kid fools the guy that there's a ghost and he funnily gets scared by it, it's a sweet scene because the kid somehow manages to face troubles and take care of himself. The milieu and the setting are that of a typical indie art house film and the conversations that take place are in the zone of a mainstream Bollywood film and I felt that this was a confusing yet an interesting choice to tell the story on a lighter note. This film has so many influences from the Iranian Children of Heaven by Majid Majidi where the kid's problems being trivial and so small for us, is the whole point of the film. 

The film has a warm feeling to it in spite of the rusting colors and the backdrop. The kid is so exciting to see and be with. His ambitions and enthusiasm in life in spite of the people surrounding him asking him not to dream too much, is so inspiring and I think that's the whole purpose of life, to be motivated and to look forward to something in life. Whether you reach that goal or not isn't that of much importance, in the same way how this film doesn't show if he got to meet APJ Abdul Kalam or not. He meeting Kalam or not isn't the point, he getting inspired by him and he doing the things he does because of that inspiration is an incredible story. Having said all this, my opinion of the film while watching it wasn't as pleasant and as refined as it is after a few days of watching it. For me, this film isn't about underprivileged children in India or the lack of education and opportunities, the film talks about it but for me the film is about finding hope and inspiration through something in depressing situations.

Sonatine Analysis

Sonatine (1993)

Written, Directed and Edited by: Takeshi Kitano starring himself

Sonatine is a yakuza film, a popular genre in Japanese cinema dealing with the lives of crime syndicates. Kitano plays Murakawa, the protagonist of the film who is tired of the gangster life and he is sent by his boss to mediate a dispute between the allies. There is something unique about the performance of Takeshi Kitano and his portrayal of the gangster world, this is quite contrast to the Scorsese world of gangsters where Joe Pesci is constantly cussing and yelling at people. I love the Scorsese's milieu more, but this took me aback a bit. Murakawa is eerily silent always, even when there is a shoot out going on, his calmness conveys that this doesn't scare him anymore and also that he has lost that zeal in life. He is no more that adrenaline junkie, that he'd have been in his younger days. I've read that as Kitano was a comedian in Japan before this film, they didn't accept him as a gangster and the film didn't work whereas he being not so popular in the international market worked to his advantage for this film.

The writing process of Kitano was by building up four incidents in the film, the beginning, inciting incident and a plot point in the middle and the ending and he apparently led the film flow and fill in between these scenes. That explains the narrative, the film doesn't have a cause and effect kind of a narrative, there isn't 'therefore' and 'but' in the narrative, it goes like 'and then' all the time. This isn't a complaint, but it's interesting to see a slice of life kind of a narrative in a gangster film having bombastic action set pieces. Japanese cinema have introduced new genres to cinema like the Takashi Miike's J-horror films like Audition, Ichi the Killer and Ring which have had a huge influence on all the gory violent horror films which were made later across the world. I'm interested to watch the J-horror films and see how they were monumental in starting a trend, in spite of me not being a huge fan of horror.

Nasir Analysis

Nasir

Directed by: Arun Karthick

MAMI Year Round Programme Home Theatre

In this film, we just be with Nasir for a day and experience his daily life which is shot in an Avant-garde style where even visuals of daily chores like turning on a gas stove and going on a scooter, are shot in an artistic way and we see static shots lingering for way more than they would in films that we regularly see. Capturing the milieu of the era is definitely a responsibility with film makers and many don't care about it, on the other hand this film is entirely about the milieu. It sometimes feels like this film is a tourism for privileged foreigners who watch this in film festivals. We either see extreme close-ups or we see distorted angles or extreme wide angle shots of these daily chores and we see them in all ways except in a way we are used to watching them. The most interesting part of the film, is how Nasir is casual about the bigotry all around which might seem shocking to us, because he actually is used to it. We hear bigotry in speakers of the street where party workers are saying such things, we see random people around talking such stuff and we don't see a lot of it, most of this is done in the sound design and the post production.

This film reminded me of Ryan Coogler's directorial debut, Fruitvale Station which has the exact same plot set in a different world, with different kind of a bigotry. There it is race and here it is religion. Both the films don't try to hard to make us empathize with the characters so that when the explosive endings happen, we cry. If it takes us to love them on a personal level for us to feel bad about such racial and religious killings, then it's even more tragic than the events. In this film, we follow Nasir throughout the day and we know a little bit about him and the ending leaves us baffled about how casually this person was killed.

Mayurakshi Analysis

Mayurakshi

Written & Directed by: Atanu Ghosh

Starring: Soumitra Chatterjee, Prosenjit Chatterjee

National Award for Best Bengali Feature Film

This film is the story of a father and a son, the father is Sushovan, he is 84 and is starting to show symptoms of geriatric dementia and cognitive dysfunction. His middle aged son, Aryanil, visits him from the US. This film is about the inevitability of not being with your parents when you move out with your nuclear family. We've seen this in the 2018 commercial pot boiler film in Telugu, Prathi Roju Pandage. Both the films, depict this problem well but both of them don't try to address the problem or solve it. This film depicts a realist ending, where the son leaves the father and goes away because he can't risk losing his job. One strength of this film are the performances, they convey a lot beyond their dialogue, especially Aryanil, played by Prosenjit Chatterjee. He is not a bad person, but he creates an aura with his performance that this person is not approachable, which probably explains his personal life. This comes out of nuance and it is not easy to do that for an actor, without changing the character drastically. I felt the same with Payman Maadi's character in A Salesman, there too he is not a villain; but he portrays the grey shades very well.

The film isn't shot in an Avant-garde abstract style, there is usage of voice over and a decent amount of backstory and the plot is revealed through dialogue and yet the film making takes a lot of scope for visual storytelling. The milieu of Bengal is portrayed well, the mise-en-scene elements in the house, the set, the props all reminded me of Satyajit Ray's Agantuk - The Stranger. It is minimalist and decorative. The editing doesn't call attention to itself, but there is a sense of trust that is created in the beginning of the film that I'm watching a good film and that's because of the pacing of the film. The pacing matches the mood of the scene. This film doesn't have a conventional structure, it shows some characters and takes us into their world for sometime and let's us think whatever we do about the world. It doesn't have a beginning, middle and an end in the conventional sense of the terms.

Mayanadhi Analysis

Mayanadhi

Directed by: Aashiq Abu

Written by: Syam Puskaran, Dileesh Nair

The best part about this film is that, it doesn't box itself into a genre; just like life. Genres are just convenient ways for audience to decide if that's something they'd like to watch or not. It comes out of fear of watching bad content and if the content is good, the genre of the film won't matter, everyone wants to watch great stories. Mayanadhi has a crime and mystery element to it, from Maathen's character and it has a slice of life underdog story with Aparna's character and once in a while we see a Richard Linklater-esque scenes with they just spending time with each other. None of this feels forceful, everything flows seamlessly in the narrative. This film is giving me the confidence that while writing, you need not worry about rules/genres.

The film doesn't shy away from the nuances of reality, Maathen calls Aparna a prostitute at an instance and yet the filmmakers don't judge him, they definitely acknowledge what magnitude of mistake it is but should she leave him for that or not, they leave it to the character's choice to make. I'd probably straight away leave him, but she doesn't and her actions felt consistent to her character. There is an extraordinary subplot of a supporting character, who is a successful actor but when her navel shot appears in a film, her brother comes to her place and takes her with him. I think this subplot affected me more than the plot of the main characters. Are we rooting for Maathen to get away? I wasn't. But was I rooting that he get caught? I wasn't either. It's a complex spot the writers put us in and I'd love to be in such morally ambiguous places while watching films. It felt like an Asghar Farhadi's world where your senses of right and wrong are constantly challenged. 

Satya Analysis

Satya

Directed and Produced by: Ram Gopal Varma

Dialogues by: Anurag Kashyap

Starring: J. D. Chakravarthy, Manoj Bajpayee, Urmila Matondkar

Satya is often credited to be the film which started the Bombay noir genre in Indian cinema. There are a number of reasons for this, one reason which RGV says is the usage of slang and cuss words. He says that no one used the word 'Chutiya' in mainstream cinema before this. Apart from the subject matter, the way it is shot and conceived is to be looked at. A lot of the scenes are shot on real locations, we see Bombay with rains and the city is a character in the film like Woody Allen's films. The cinematographer Mazhar Kamran, shares an anecdote that in the edit table when someone saw shots of Urmila Matondkar (properly lit), they said that the cinematographer can shoot well and they were confused about why he didn't shoot the whole film like that, to which RGV laughed. The point was that, they used cinematography to push storytelling, the scenes with Urmila were pleasant scenes and hence they were shot well lit, whereas the gangster parts were supposed to be dark and gritty and hence the natural lighting and the shadows.

The film has a dense one-liner, things happen so fast in the film. The edit is refreshing, as soon as we hear the line, 'kuch kaam milega', we cut to Satya serving in a hotel and that cut is crisp and tight even today. We see a lot of such cuts, where the dialogue is cut midway and it is cut to what they were referring to and in spite of it being a little jarring it never feels disturbing. There is very less dialogue for Satya, they have a lot of dialogue for Manoj Bajpayee but for J. D. Chakravarthy, who is not a native Hindi speaker, they only had actions largely. Satya relies on visual film making, the conflicts and the fights are all visual and the dialogue is used to carry the scenes only in fillers. The story events are built in a way that we get a feeling that we have witnessed an entire journey of Satya and now I can see how heavily Businessman is inspired from Satya.

Mirage Analysis

Mirage

Co-written & Directed by: Oriol Paulo

Available on Netflix.

This film is a time travel movie, where a boy dies and 25 years later a woman gets a chance to save the boy's life in the past but in the process she accidentally loses all of her family, in this new reality she didn't even meet her husband yet and hence she has lost her daughter now. So, she has to get her daughter back. The plot sounds interesting but it got complex in between and in spite of a few good moments, that feeling of everything falling into place wasn't there by the end of the film unlike Oriol Paulo's previous films. In this film too he uses the trope of a character being in the film with a changed identity and hence I guessed a twist beforehand in this film. The look of the film is similar to Oriol Paulo's previous film The Invisible Guest, it has blue tones mostly and yellow at times. It feels like if they set that color tone for the film, the cinematography is mostly taken care of and nothing much is done other than that. They focus on just capturing the events, the cinematography in itself doesn't call attention to itself. I can't recall watching these color tones in Indian films till now, apart from the Netflix originals Sacred Games and in Dibakar Banerjee's segment in Ghost Stories.

The film kept me hooked throughout, I was expecting better things would happen and I enjoyed the film but by the ending I had a vague feeling. It's probably because the problem in itself is a superficial element and when the solution of the film too comes from a superficial element, it feels like they could've done this anyway. In spite of they laying the rules of the world, they aren't that clearly registered that when they show a solution, we feel that this was right under our noses and we couldn't figure this out. The film tries something new, in terms of the complex plot especially because of the time travel added to the Oriol Paulo universe. Expecting a kick-ass thriller show from Paulo.

The Grand Budapest Hotel Analysis

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Directed by: Wes Anderson

This film is one of those films which give us such an immersive experience into the world of the characters that even the plot becomes irrelevant to an extent that even a different ending wouldn't have mattered that much. This film is definitely an auteur's work, mainly because of the usage of production design, which isn't talked about much but the idea of mise-en-scene comes from the elements of production design, like the sets, props and also other elements like costumes, hair and make up. All the elements of mise-en-scene are uniquely used in the film, of course the production design plays a major role in the film, but apart from the tilts and pans in the camera, the color palette add to the tone of the film. The story is set in such a way, across generations and how every owner of the hotel had an incredible journey themselves starting from the lobby boy. 

The story is that Gustave H is falsely accused of murdering a woman and he goes to jail, and the film is about his friendship with the lobby boy. The film has a deadpan dark comedy all over, this is done through the editing and the pacing of the film. This film has style over substance and this is usually talked about in a disrespectful way, but all films of Hollywood New Wave (70s) and the most influential European cinema of Godard, Truffaut, Fellini all have style over plot. This film has a plot which gives a satisfying ending, but the film is definitely above the plot. It's a brilliant immersive experience.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona Analysis

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Written & Directed by: Woody Allen

Starring: Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz, Rebecca Hall

Vicky and Cristina are best friends, who visit Barcelona and they meet a painter, Juan Antonio, who finds both of them attractive. He is recently divorced, and yet he is still enamored with his ex-wife Maria Elena, who's a gifted artist. This film has a world view that there are no rules in love, and it can happen to you at anytime, with any number of people and it doesn't even have anything to do your relationship status. Woody Allen's films have had this recurring motif that love isn't something where you draw lines. It's surprising young people aren't making such films on love and it takes someone like a Woody Allen to have such radical, non-conformist world views. It's a big revelation to me by looking at Woody Allen's work that you can still have the same passion on love and art even when you are old and usually we look at old people as they are largely unimpressed by a lot of things. But the ability to get inspired by things is a testament to the passion with which you want to enjoy life.

Art is a big element in this film, almost all the characters are artists. The dialogue is brilliantly interwoven into the narrative, we don't have dialogue as a filler for the plot. The plot is revealed through dialogue, we see character arcs through dialogue and here the actions of the characters are what they say. Maria Elena's relationship with Juan is so interesting and rightly said, it isn't something you can describe easily. Juan's father is a poet and he feels that in spite of these many years of civilization, we haven't learnt to love. The most interesting thing about this film is, in very less duration Woody Allen manages to introduce them as people and even give them certain arcs. Usually films take a lot of time to establish characters and yet sometimes they feel one-dimensional. The film uses music brilliantly, to capture the milieu of the location and more than everything, it inspires us to pursue art, love and have fun in life.

Woody Allen has pursued cinema throughout his life, by making 1 film every year since more than 50 years. Imagine, a film career lasting more than half a century. We have very few people who have managed to do that, we have Manoel de Oliveira with a career lasting 86 years. Woody Allen stuck to the kind of films he makes, occasionally he experimented but largely he does what only he can do, he makes films which are often an extension of his personality. He says that he finds a lot of time, apart from doing 1 film a year. He also plays music in a band. It's inspiring that he has same passion on life and art even at this age and that's the goal, I guess.

Ratatouille Analysis

Ratatouille

Directed by: Brad Bird

A PIXAR film

Academy Award for Best Animated Feature 2007.

If there's one thing that Pixar's films are teaching me as a person, it's empathy. We empathize with a grumpy old man in Up, we empathize with a fish in Finding Nemo and now with a rat in Ratatouille. The plot of Ratatouille has a strong sense of irony, where they have a character, a rat, which is almost an opposite of what kitchens are meant for, pleasant smell and tasty food and we look at rats with disgust, as Hans Landa rightly pointed out. Here, we see a rat, Remy who wants to cook and become a chef. As the plot has irony, we root for the characters more because this won't happen otherwise and this comes to play when Remy is facing hardships and he tells himself, 'I'm after all a rat. Maybe I was too ambitious', we be like, 'No, common. You can do it, you came this far', and that's how we root for the character more.

American films have always played the underdog role in food films, citing that French and Italian cuisines are considered the best in the world and we'll prove you wrong. They also did this in Julie and Julia and they did this badly in Ford vs Ferrari where they almost created villains out of the opponents. Here, we don't see much of that. Although we see pretentious food critics and the culture of how critics can make or break the business of a restaurant. In spite of this being an animated film, I got the sense of Paris while watching the film mostly because of the music and the color palette. Food films are a sub-genre of slice of life films and I wish they made more of these films, because it's almost feels therapeutic. Chef was a such a beautiful film. We also have travel films like that, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Into the Wild, Ye Jawani Hai Deewani. The difference between fiction food/travel films and food/travel documentaries is that we have flawed characters having character arcs over the journey they take in the film, which is satisfying to watch because in reality it is tough to notice changes in ourselves while we are changing as people.

Blow Out Analysis

Blow Out

Directed by: Brian de Palma
Starring: John Travolta

This film is loosely based on Michaelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up, there it's a painter and here we have a sound recorder, who does sound design for films, who accidentally records something which turns out to be evidence for murder, which is otherwise struck off as an accident. This film has a Hitchcock vibe to it, in terms of the tone, mood and the visual appeal. Quentin Tarantino loved John Travolta in this film before casting him in Pulp Fiction, this is his favorite film. The beautiful aspect of this film is that, the artist, the sound designer actually makes a film to create evidence of the incident. He records sounds, and he finds photos of the incident published by another man and he joins them to create a video of it and syncs them to make a film. We have an artist creating art to create evidence on a crime scene. Again, this film explores and merges art and crime, my favorite genre. I wish there was a term to this.

This film has a sad ending, the evil wins but somehow in films where the mystery is held tight throughout, or if the film watching experience was so good throughout, the endings are forgivable. The best examples are, Zodiac, Memories of Murder, The House That Jack Built, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Fincher, The Wailing, all of these films have such good watching experience throughout that for me when I think of these films, I hardly remember the ending and which is why David Fincher probably does good with shows than films. In shows, what we remember is the world of the characters rather than the plot events, the endings which is how Fincher constructs his world. Similarly, here in Blow Out, in spite of the brilliant film making, raving reviews by Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert the film didn't do good at the box office, because of the unsatisfactory ending. The immediate response to a film usually comes from the reaction to the ending and what we think of the film next day after sleeping over it, is the impact the characters had on us.

Right Now Wrong Then Analysis

Right Now Wrong Then

Written & Directed by: Hong Sang-soo

I'm glad I discovered this filmmaker, he's referred as the Korean Woody Allen. It's disrespectful to label an artist as a derivative of another artist, even if you compare them with legends but it's fun for film buffs to do this. He is similar to Woody Allen, because he's been making 1 film a year on an average from about quarter a decade and because of his self indulgent, existential themes with filmmakers, film critics and film students as characters in most of the films. Woody Allen is self indulgent in the sense he draws from his own life all the time and his characters are mostly tweaked versions of himself. Both of them make slice of life films, in Woody Allen's films we at least have conflicts most of the times expect in a Midnight in Paris and a few more but in Hong Sang-soo's Right Now, Wrong Then there is practically no conflict. A filmmaker visits a city to screen his film and give a lecture at a film festival, he meets a girl and they go out and talk and that's the film. It's more Richard Linklater than Woody Allen in terms of the physical narrative.

The unique and probably the most radical ways of making film about Hong Sang-soo is that he starts shooting a film without a script. He wakes up everyday at 4, writes till 9 in the morning and gathers his actors and shoots the portions that he wrote that day. He lets them improvise and often gets them drunk if they have to be drunk in the scene. He uses zoom in the middle of the scene, which gives it a more realistic feel like Lars von Trier did without going out of focus and getting back in The House That Jack Built. It feels like he doesn't take his films so seriously, he wants his films to mimic life and the way life isn't interesting always, his film too just lingers for so long on the characters. His choice of scenes, makes me wonder if he is more focused on getting life experiences to be able to write and every scene feels like he'd have experienced this.