After Life

After Life S1

Written and Directed by: Ricky Gervais

Streaming on Netflix.

It's such a bittersweet show. Just the premise by itself is tragic. A guy who was madly in love with his wife loses her to cancer. He is depressed and suicidal now. The affirming part is about how this man manages to live a little longer and eventually gets himself to a better path. Such characters who act arrogant, and have a deep reason for why they behave like this - Arjun Reddy - are hilarious simply because of the difference in their core behavior. Their normalcy is so screwed up that you can put them in any situation and create comedy out of it. That's what the show does to rely on the comic part. For the dramatic part, it's his character arc from being a hopeless, suicidal man to someone who believes that there can be something to live for. Ricky Gervais was lovely in the show, it felt like he was so brutally honest and he put all his vulnerabilities out there just like that.

Some of the lines in the show are absolutely terrific - I would do nothing and be with her, rather than do something without her. I would rather be alive and miss him than him staying alive and missing me. Every day I always wanted to go home and spend every second with Lisa, and I don't regret one bit of that choice. Yes, some of these lines sound so superlative - but the integrity behind these thoughts came through. I like how the tone of the show is very soothing. The only beat in the show that didn't work as much for me was him giving money to the guy who was an addict, and him dying. But apart from that, everything worked for me. I'm curious to see how the show progresses.  

Hannah Takes the Stairs

Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007)

Directed, Shot and Edited by: Joe Swanberg
Written by: Joe Swanberg, Greta Gerwig, Kent Osborne
Streaming on MUBI. 

This film falls in the Mumblecore movement - a sub genre of independent cinema. Typically Mumblecore films are made on extremely low budget, they are quite talky in nature, have few actors with improvised dialogue. Films which probably work on this tone, but made in a slightly more big scale and a structured way would be the Before Trilogy, and such films. This movement has taken cinema to one extreme, which has in turn opened up so much more in terms of the style. Many films need not be Mumblecore, but they can fall anywhere in the middle of the spectrum, according to the story. 

This film doesn't call attention to itself, and even to its characters. The vibe of the film is such that there are a few friends sitting beside you and bantering, and it's like you are sitting there, partly zoned out, but partly invested and you stay with them for an hour or two and then come back to your own world. That's the kind of experience the film gives. It's in a way very sublime. It's inspiring to see where all the filmmakers started from, now all of them are doing pretty good - Greta Gerwig, Joe Swanberg, Mark Duplass and others. Though I didn't engage very much with the film and its characters, I really didn't mind it only because of its tone and aesthetics and I felt like I was hanging around a bunch of people bantering. 

Conversations with Other Women

Conversations with Other Women (2005)

Directed by: Hans Canosa
Screenplay by: Gabrielle Zevin
Starring: Helena Bonham Carter, Aaron Eckhart

It's a very ordinary premise, two people who were once dating meet each other at a wedding after many years when both of them have significant others. But the way the premise is unfolded is interesting, they both start talking as strangers initially, and slowly we understand that they've known each other, and then we know that they've had a history. The film cuts back to vignettes of their younger selves, and we see how they have changed as people. I think it talks about the aspect of how when you meet a set of friends you had when you were young, you automatically become like the group just because you again talk the same language with them. I don't know if the same would happen with a relationship, because if it's one person, you don't have that social image that you have to live up to. You can be yourself and tell the other person that you've changed. 

To me, one of the weirdest things people do is that, once they have an image created of them, they live up to it, even if they don't agree to that image. I don't know if this is self sabotaging tendency or something weird. If someone is called dumb 5 times in a group, that person instinctively starts being dumb the next time too, because he is the assigned dumb one. Well this film doesn't talk about all these things, but it definitely talks about revisiting your past self through meeting people in your life. Although I felt that the writing was a bit messy and too idiosyncratic, perhaps because of the headspace of the characters, but I never got a chance to root for them. 

The Tender Bar

The Tender Bar (2021)

Directed by: George Clooney
Screenplay by: William Monahan
Based on a memoir by J. R. Moehringer
Streaming on Amazon Prime Video. 

I'm a huge fan of the personal cinema, where the films have a deep sense of self within. I used to think that a deeply personal film could only be made by an auteur. But here, we see a film that is based on someone's memoir, adapted into a screenplay by someone else and directed by someone else. This instills hope that collaboration could also lead to deeply personal cinema. Perhaps, it's placebo effect sometimes, where if you know that a film has been written and directed by someone, based on their own experiences, it automatically starts seeming more authentic. This film is a beautiful story of a writer, about his childhood, his fractured family, an uncle whom he finds a father figure in, and it's also a story of ups and downs, and it's the most inspiring film I've seen in a while. 

My favorite scene in the film is where the kid talks to his older alcoholic self, and says, 'Just go to sleep, wake up after 20 years and tell people what you could've been'. It's such an inspiring line. That is what happens, we all go to sleep, either by being in the rut, by doing something we hate, or by telling ourselves and everyone else that we are busy, when we ourselves don't have a clue about what we are doing, and why we are doing it. Let's wake up! The modern world and especially parts of the woke culture has so many ways to put us to sleep - the lifestyle, alcohol, food, a sense of contentment for no reason, a feeling of acceptance for mediocrity, "self love". This film inspires you to wake up and do what you love with your everything, and it's extremely subtle. It's not chest thumping music, with a base voice saying motivational quotes. The film simply sits back and tells you that life can go on without you as well, and it's very easy for you to end up like a nobody, and perhaps all of us are going to be nobodies. If you want to become something, get on your ass and do something about it. 

Tick, Tick... Boom!

Tick, Tick... Boom! (2021)

Directed by: Lin-Manuel Miranda
Based on a play of the same name by Jonathan Larson
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp

I'm not a big fan of musicals, but this film hit the right spot. It strikes a balance. And I loved the film, because it's about an obsessed artist - one of my favorite themes in cinema. Sankarabharanam, Whiplash, Black Swan, so many more. I like the premise about how an artist feels like he has to achieve something, become something before he turns 30, and he feels this pressure all the time. But once he hits that mark and has done nothing, it's liberating there on. The realization that you can't do much expect put in the work, it's beautiful. This film hit hard, because throughout the film we see how much he sacrifices for his workshop. He is almost in a state of semi-consciousness; especially that scene where he has a fight with his girlfriend and his fingers move on her back in rhythm. His entire consciousness was focused on his artwork and he did that for years, and the result? Nothing. Literally, nothing except for a few praises. Which is exactly what his girlfriend asked him, what if nothing changed after the workshop.  

The phone call that follows, the advice that follows - 'write about something you know', it's such beautiful advice and by the end when he tells his girlfriend that all he has are questions, she responds saying that's a good start. I really enjoyed the subplot of his friend getting cancer, and how he too experiences a ticking clock, but more literally than the protagonist. I love films like these, because they find glory in putting in the work, not in the result. What are you going to do next? Start writing the next one. And life goes on...

Oslo, August 31st

Oslo, August 31st (2011)

Directed by: Joachim Trier
Written by: Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier
Premiered at Cannes Film Festival 2011.

The film is about a suicidal drug addict, who gets a day of leave from the rehab center to apply for a job. The film is about the events that happen in this one day. He goes to meet his old friend who is married with a kid. The friend encourages him to do something with his life, and he goes to a job interview where he walks out of the room. He quits after the slightest of inconvenience. This is where I thought that he is in a state which is too far from the place he needs to be at. The film then lives up to this scene, he later gets drunk, buys drugs and shoots up in the ending. It's a tragedy. The film has a bleak worldview, which says that the world has nothing much to offer which would make an addict stay off drugs for a while.

The protagonist is in a very low state in the entire film, we realize that as he meets people. His sister doesn't show up to meet him, we realize that he treated his ex-girlfriend badly. The film never attempts to even give him a redemption, the direction that the film goes in, character feels beyond redemption. But I personally don't think anyone is beyond redemption. I would've preferred a bittersweet ending over such a bleak ending, but I think since it's talking about a drug addict, the numbers probably speak and probably that's where the bleakness comes from. I like how the film was shot, handheld, non-continuity editing, especially the opening sequences - it's almost like an intimate documentary. Anders was beautiful in the part, he brings out a sense of pain through even his blank face.

Maanaadu

Maanaadu (2021)

Written and Directed by: Venkat Prabhu
Starring: STR, SJ Surya, Kalyani Priyadarshan
Streaming on Sony LIV.

This film is almost like a video game. It is a time loop film, where a day keeps repeating over and over again for the protagonist. But it's also a cat and mouse game between the hero and the villain. Though, I saw the interval twist coming, I found the film to be interesting. My only issue was that the loop was done too much. It got irritating after a point. They made a loop even for small small things. Although it was nice that later, they weren't cutting from the start and I loved one cut in the film, which is there is an intense action sequence and then they cut to the coffee shop - it's beautiful because tonally it gives a relief and this coffee shop was already established earlier. I enjoyed some of the twists and turns in the film, which Venkat Prabhu's films usually have, but I didn't quite enjoy the way SJ Surya was yelling throughout. The pitch of his acting, was a bit too much for me. He was too dramatic, he was yelling and I personally would've liked a toned down version of the performance. 

I like how the film too treats itself like a game. There is a nice pay off, when Simbu in the airport stands below a glass falling from the roof. I like the scene where SJ Suryah is convincing the CM's brother that he can't kill him, and Simbu is pretending as if they both are a team - that scene had nice word play. I enjoyed the film in parts, it's mostly because the repetition felt too much at places and it was even draining at times. 

Being the Ricardos

Being the Ricardos (2021)

Written and Directed by: Aaron Sorkin
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem
Streaming on Amazon Prime Video. 

It's classic Aaron Sorkin. It's based on a power couple back in the 50s - Lucille Ball, an actress and Desi Arnaz, an actor and a musician. They both star in a popular TV show and the film is set in the writer's room and the BTS of the show. Sorkin goes all out with the witty dialogue, musicality in the dialogue - especially in the scenes of table reads where Lucy gives some suggestions after imagining scenes. It's so snappy and fast, you can't help but admire the Sorkin-ish style at play there. I wonder if Sorkin talks like this in real life, but if he does, it'd be challenging to keep up a conversation with him. I like art which is stylish, and is not so realistic and Sorkin is one of the very few writers who has created a distinct style in writing. The modern writing style with a lot of stream of conscious stuttering, mumbling, self referential banter is being done by a lot of people. Tarantino popularized it, and people have made their own spins to that style after that. Sorkin's style is so tough to replicate and probably that's why we don't see much of that stuff. 

Being part of a writer's room myself - I really enjoyed the conflicts they capture in the writer's room in the film. I like how the film opens up various layers of conflicts as it keeps going. Initially, it's about Lucy being unnecessary hard on the writers, and later it goes into Lucy trying to save the marriage, by making Desi feel important too. Sorkin does this not only within the course of the film, he does this within a scene too. For example, the scene where Vivian confronts Lucy about her sending over breakfast - it's a beautiful way of opening up about how Lucy is concerned about her popularity. I didn't see that coming. I wouldn't say it's a great film, but it's a good Sorkin film and that's enjoyable right there. My favorite of Sorkin's directorials is still Molly's Game. 

The Worst Person in the World

The Worst Person in the World (2021)

Directed by: Joachim Trier
Written by: Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier
Best Actress at Cannes for Renate Reinsve. 

This film fulfilled me on every level. Firstly, I could relate to 4-5 characters in the film. Of course, the protagonist, Julie, she is 30 and she yet feels like she is still a kid who has to figure out everything in life. She is indecisive. She struggles with career choices, she struggles with her relationships and basically everything. There is a beauty in being indecisive - it basically means that they don't carry your mistakes, and you'll move on as soon as you realize that you're at a wrong place. I could relate to the guys she was dumping, I could relate to her when she was doing it, and I could relate to the new guys she was going to as well. It's like that level of fulfilment. The film basically us everything that happens in the world of modern dating. It takes an empathetic view to everyone, the film never judges the characters and that's the beauty of the film. We usually rush to put labels to everything, even something like cheating - if you have to understand why someone does that, you have to be empathetic and that's exactly what the film does.

On a filmmaking level, I was tripping all out when I was watching this. Classic postmodern cinema. Fragmented narrative style. Non-continuity editing. Voice over and montage. Chapter-wise narration. Beautiful cinematography. Amazing performances, especially Renate was so good and Anders is so good in the ending, I got so teary. The beautiful thing about Renate was that, Julie was feeling guilty for leaving Aksel, but it's only to an extent and that's exactly what comes through Renate's eyes. In the shot where they are spooning, and he grabs her breast and she gently takes his hand away. It's such a beautiful shot - he's still in love and she has completely moved on. I love the scene where she writes an article, and it's read out through voice over. I loveee the party scene where they are goofing around. The film has a tone where it can do whatever it wants to, and yet everything is so coherent to the world of the characters.  

About Time

About Time (2013)

Written and Directed by: Richard Curtis
Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams

It's a slice of life romantic comedy, but with the small add on of a time travel element. They don't treat the time travel element like sci-fi movies do, they seamlessly blend a fantasy element like that into the mundane. The film seems like an epic because of the span of events that the film covers. We see Tim growing up from a kid to a man having three kids, and feeding them. And I remember a beautiful cut, when they decide to have the third child, there is a transition shot and then it straight cuts to the woman having a bump. The voice over was beautifully written, with beautiful observations about life, my favorite one was - 'no matter how many times you travel in time, sometimes you can't make someone love you'. The Margot Robbie track was beautiful, the moment he knows that he didn't feel anything with such a gorgeous woman like her the second time he met her, he knew that the woman he was with was the one, because he realized what he felt with her is something no one else can make him feel. I like how the tone slowly goes from comedy, to romance, and then slowly to bittersweet.

It's beautifully shot as well, we don't see wide shots of landscapes or anything, we mostly see close shots of the people talking, creating an intimate experience, as if we are just sitting with them as they talk. The only time they use wide shots is when something is happening on the roads, but I remember thinking if the houses were small in size, but I realized that they shot it like that to create an intimate effect. I remember, Satyanshu Singh once told about how Anurag Kashyap gave a suggestion on how to fix an issue in Chintu Ka Birthday (2019) that the house they got was more spacious than they wanted. AK suggested them to make the characters whisper when they dub, so that subconsciously, the audience will feel that they are nearby to each other - which is why they're probably whispering. 

Peppermint Candy

Peppermint Candy (1999)

Written and Directed by: Lee Chang-dong - The director of Burning (2018)

The film opens with the suicide of the protagonist and then it explores what all he had gone through by flashbacks, in reverse chronology order. The film ends with a scene where the protagonist and his friends meet near a bridge as kids and have a lot of fun - they were innocents back then. This is the exact bridge where he commits suicide now. The film is set in historic events taking place in South Korea. The film is a character study of the protagonist, in the setting of South Korea - exploring how a man loses his innocence because of a series of events in his life and then finally ends up killing himself. This is an unconventional screenplay - it is like a cocktail of La Dolce Vita and Memento - but it's also a beautiful character study as well.

The film shows that the director has control over everything in the frame, the staging and the blocking is just beautiful. He takes his own time to get into a scene, he mostly uses off screen space to start a scene and slowly goes into a scene. This created a similar effect to his beautiful mystery film, Burning (2018). I like how he captures physical drama through wide shots and doesn't cut very often, whether it's a havoc in a place, or a fight scene, or a police slapping a suspect - he captures them in a way that it seems like it's happening right in front of us.  He uses sounds to create drama, for example, the first scene where he commits suicide is an exuberant scene. We see the visual of the train coming behind him, and him screaming and all of it coming together to a freeze frame. It's cinematic brilliance. He uses sounds of trains here and there, to remind us of the tragic event. This screenplay technique seems like a gimmick, but it's always interesting to see where the characters started from, when we see some esoteric, eccentric characters.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

Directed by: Terry Gilliam
Starring: Johnny Depp, Benicio del Toro
Based on a book of the same name.

Two guys travel and a go through a series of experiences as they trip on different kinds of psychedelics and drugs. This film is essentially a trip, although it's an equivalent of getting high on multiple drugs one after the other. There is mundane, something interesting, absurdity and then lunacy. This film is full on lunacy for 90% of it. Absurdity or lunacy can be best appreciated when it's put beside something mundane. This film doesn't has any of that. It's outright lunatic from the first frame to the last, which is why after a point it gets a little exhausting. The usage of voice over was a big relief in the otherwise erratic, lunatic film. That is the only thing that was normal and mundane in the film, and that kept me invested in all kinds of stuff in the film.

The visuals were so trippy, distorting and appropriate to the drug trip. Sometimes, it was an effect which distorts a normal image in different styles. Sometimes, they image outright lunatic stuff like animals, bats, and weird things in the scene. In some of these scenes, the production design was expressionist, and those scenes creeped me out. Both the actors were beautiful, these things are so physically and mentally draining to perform. I don't know if they were actually high on all those drugs. I think if not on drugs, they had to have been high on something, because I don't think it's possible to act this batshit crazy being sober. I love films which push the boundaries of absurdity, and even if they don't end up engaging - at least they tried something different and they are not mundane for sure. You can at least pick a scene from this film, watch it and laugh about it. 

The French Dispatch

The French Dispatch (2021)

Written and Directed by: Wes Anderson
Cinematography: Robert David Yeoman
Premiered at Cannes Film Festival 2021.

The French Dispatch is a buffet of the arts. It goes to prove that film as a medium allows us to explore any and all possible combinations of art forms that are available. We have seen musicals, which use extensive amounts of music to tell story, like Annette, La La Land. We have seen TV or dialogue heavy film like Before Sunrise, where the writing takes a front seat. We have seen silent films or extremely visual films like Roma, where cinematography takes a front seat. We have seen films of Agnes Varda, where she combines the art of photography and film. We have seen films like Paterson, where the art form of poetry and film come together. Wes Anderson uses a lot of art forms, and combines them in a way that he creates an own artistic voice of his own. He doesn't necessarily does that by creating different worlds, he does that with his style and his craft. A godly voice over narrating the story, whimsical characters running around, with a lot of visual dark comedy happening with beautifully constructed set pieces. 

The French Dispatch is just like a magazine, it has different stories and different sections. For me, the most engaging story was the first one - the one of the troubled psychopath artist. I think what Wes Anderson did was, he wanted to explore the debate of the art vs the artist - which is so prevalent in the heavily political environment. But he didn't have the artist do something wrong which would make him get cancelled, he made him a straight up murderer and then played the same debate, which makes for a very interesting conflict. If you even remotely feel his art should be allowed to the public, then the artists who are cancelled for less scandalous acts should definitely be allowed to create. It's a very interesting short. I enjoyed the others too, but more so for the style and the craft than the story.   

Fallen Angels

Fallen Angels (1995)

Written, Directed and Produced by: Wong Kar-wai
Streaming on MUBI.

What you take back after watching a Wong Kar-wai film is the feeling the film leaves you with. It's almost like an abstract painting. The feeling that a Wong Kar-wai film leaves you with is a bit similar to the feeling a Murakami book leaves you with, although Murakami uses story too to elicit the same feeling and Wong does that purely with imagery and sound. Fallen Angels is a film that leaves an effect on you, not with its characters, emotions or the story, but with the kind of imagery that the film uses throughout. Wide angles, handheld camera, rapid movements of the camera, fast cuts, neon lighting, the cityscape of Hong-Kong - it's an extremely visual film. The camera play is so dynamic, and it's so rare to see such movement of camera in the films in the 90s. Now, we see such camera work because of fluid cameras, but back then it was rare. 

Wong's usage of voice over is beautiful. It's almost like you are listening to a bed time story, irrespective of how dark or adult, the themes are. Just like Chungking Express, I'm only left with the residue of the story and characters in my memory - it's so vague. I'm just consumed by the imagery. Perhaps In The Mood for Love, was the only Wong film where I remember so much about the characters. I think it's because his world in itself is so rich to experience, that I get lost in the aesthetics of the film and the craft. It's so tough to achieve a kind of trust from the audience where irrespective of the story - you would be invested in a film just to experience the director's craziness and Wong has undeniably achieved that with his work.