Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

DIRECTOR Anurag Kashyap believes in living life on his terms, and making cinema that may not please everybody. His first two films – Paanch (Five) and Black Friday – ran into massive problems with the Indian movie censors. The first was denied a certificate on six grounds, including abusive language and glorification of violence. His second feature made in early 2000 on the police investigations after the Mumbai serial blasts of 1993 was not permitted to screen for a couple of years because of the sensitive nature of its subject. When Black Friday finally opened last year it got rave reviews.

Scripting his latest movie, No Smoking, Kashyap must have realized that open confrontation with the authorities does not quite pay. So, he plays around with words and actions, and presents what seems like a strong indictment of cigarette smoking. But scratch this layer, and what unfolds is quite another thing. To premiere at the Rome International Film Festival (opening October 18), No Smoking is experimental, trying out unique colour tones and editing possibilities, but the picture is unlikely to get into the commercial circuit. It will possibly fare very well in festivals and go on to attract critical attention.

Kashyap, who is better known in Indian cinema circles as a writer (he penned the dialogues for Deepa Mehta’s Water among others), portrays K (model-turned-actor John Abraham) as an arrogant, insensitive executive, whose chain smoking habit irks his pretty wife, Anjali, (Ayesha Takia). When she can take it no more, she enlists the help of a detoxification centre, run by an autocratic godman, Shri Shri Prakash Guru Ghantal Baba Bangali Sealdah Wale (Paresh Rawal).


Director Pradeep Sarkar makes look and feel good cinema. If his earlier Parineeta (The Married Woman) adapts a 1914 Bengali novella by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay and sets it in the Kolkata (Calcutta) of early 1960s, his latest Laaga Chunari Mein Daag (Journey of a Woman) cuts to more modern times. Set in the holiest of Indian cities, Varanasi, the work, however, pans across Mumbai (Bombay), Switzerland and Spain, dramatically effecting a clash of tradition and modernism, of subjugation and freedom. Emotional and spirited, the movie mounted on colourful sets that turn Varanasi into an ethereal, lamp-lit city is unlikely to step into the arthouse circuit, though its box-office potential within the country and outside seems promising, given the eye-catching costumes and breathtaking locales. Song sequences in Switzerland and Spain appear as marvellous picture postcards, but are hardly relevant to the plot.

Laaga Chunari Mein Daag – which literally means stain on my veil (a term used for a fallen woman) – tries hard to project the modern Indian woman, but does not quite succeed because it appears to have been scripted a good 10 years ago, borrowing the ideas and ideals long buried.


I am told Sudhir Mishra’s Khoya Khoya Chand may not after all premiere at the Rome Film Festival, beginning October 18. The movie’s producer, Prakash Jha, a director in his own right, feels that since Khoya Khoya Chand would open in India only in December, the gap after Rome is uncomfortably long. Besides, he fears that any negative reviews of the film at Rome can spoil its box-office prospects at home. Be that as it may, I cannot understand why the Mishra-Jha combo should be so sensitive and scared of what critics have to say. And can their opinion make or mar a movie?


Rekha is 53. She has always been a diva. But when I saw her in the 1970 Sawan Bhadon, I could never guess that she would turn into not just a beautiful swan, svelte and seductive, but also one of the finest actresses the world has ever knew. Her varied roles in films like Umrao Jaan, Silsila and Khubsoorat – just to name three – were exceptional. If she was intense as a courtesan in Umrao Jaan, she was bubbly, witty and winsome in Khubsoorat. Torn between a lover and a husband in Silsila (considered a true story of the actors in the movie), Rekha conveyed the agony and ecstasy of a woman in pain and pleasure. In fact, she stole the show from Jaya Bachchan and Big B. The only performer who could match her was Sanjeev Kumar.

For some years now, Rekha, who is the daughter of Tamil cinema’s Kadal Mannan (King of Romance), Gemini Ganesh, has been keeping away from the public eye. I wonder why. Maybe she wants to fade away. Anyway, people would remember her as an exceptionally great actress, a fitness freak who put Jane Fonda to shame and, above all, a fine human being.