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.