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atariq
Reviews
Tere Naam (2003)
i feel like i'm taking crazy pills
i don't understand how other people say this is a good movie, nor how it was possibly nominated for any awards. This movie is horrible. Salman (at 38) plays an unsympathetic college age kid who loves getting in fights, and there is a running subplot and rivalry with a rival college (again in their 30s) age crew, that serves little to further the story except for one pivotal moment.
The fighting is choreographed poorly and added simply to give fights to the movie. The same can be said of the songs. Songs can sometimes further a movie's purpose, but these do not do that at all. In fact, they are almost thrown in willy nilly and could be readily interchanged one for another.
Much brouhaha is made of Salman's "acting" in the second portion of this film. You will find that it is not so much acting as it is the usual award ploy of playing a difficult character. Furthermore, there is no progression, nor is there development. Much is made of suffering which is over the top and unnecessary. Of course, the newcomer actress was so insignificant I can not even remember her name. She does not hold weight, but this movie is a vehicle for Salman, not her. There are no bright points in this movie. I rarely write, and certainly not for middling films. I felt like I had to make a comment about just how bad this movie is.
Satish Kaushik has a niche, and this is not it. He is really far too melodramatic and behind the times. Even this movie feels like it was filmed over a long period of time, and he didn't really get the transitions down. The pacing and plot development aren't there, and the only true milestones are marked verbally and obviously by characters secondary to the plot who extol the virtues of Salman's character because they would not be obvious to others. Satish Kaushik should not be allowed to direct another movie for some period of time, until he focuses on developing a movie fully and the characters. Or he should just stick to his comedy.
Black (2005)
Bhansali overreaches and comes up short...again
While some may applaud his effort to foray into semi-serious film-making, especially moving away from the formulaic song and dance numbers, Bhansali comes up short on delivering the story in the best way possible. The cinematography is absolutely beautiful, and the symbolism, though a bit heavy-handed, is again appreciated. Bhansali manages to do a good job with his actors, but does not deliver the home run he was looking for. Reining in Rani and Amitabh would have made their performances all the more stoic, instead, giving them wild hyperactive motions, and overplaying their histrionics makes a theatergoer wonder what could have been. Black is a solid effort, but by no means the wonder and crossover of Bollywood into something more serious. Bhansali recognizes his great talents as a filmmaker, but as in Devdas, clearly plays for the awards, and makes the film a tribute to his own skill. Devdas was extravagant simply for the sake of extravagance, and while a visual treat, did not really portray the progression of the characters into the abyss, it just showed them at their best and worst points. Black does almost the same thing when it shows extraordinary moments of recognition, but it focuses much more on the dramatic, and not the subtle changes in the characters. This movie is clearly made for awards, and Bhansali does show flashes of brilliance. However, on the whole, his unwillingness to pull back from constantly hitting us with moment after moment instead of letting things build really takes away from the movie, if he truly was looking to make something different. By addressing handicaps, and Alzheimer's, and remaking a truly great film, Bhansali is playing to awards, and when a film tries too hard, as Devdas did, it inevitably falls short. The film as spectacle is great; great cinema, it is not.