New world beckons. A Hero is reluctant. A Journey begins.
‘Panchayat’
is a modern day ‘Malgudi Days’ and ‘Yeh jo hai zindagi’ kind of fare with
endearing characters and no nonsense storytelling. The key feature of this web
series how economically the director narrates the story with absolutely no
frills (other than the intermittent drone shots). As the main character
Abhishek Tripathi adjusts to the new world, the audience get to know the village
and its people. Each episode is short and sweet, with a physical element
(chair, tree, flag etc) intertwining with a person’s struggle to overcome a
negative emotion (ego, fear, regret etc) and is perfect for binge watching.
‘The Wizard of Lies’, is a sad and dreary account of how karma pays back almost instantly in this case where a stinking rich man is left to rot in a prison cell, while his family and the people who invested in his firm, are destroyed in the outside world.
‘The Wizard of Lies’, a Barry Levinson’s TV movie, set around financial crimes amidst economic crisis, engages you for the most part with the ever cryptic Robert De Niro, keeps you guessing till the last frame. Understandably, portraying a character of a man who made a few billions by cheating people a lot more than that, he keeps his cards to his chest. In all the scenes where is with someone he has to be on guard like the scenes with the lady who interviews him in the prison, or the scene where he is desperate to raise a few hundred million in a party, or the scene towards to the end in the prison, where his calls go unanswered, and he is all alone…Robert De Niro does not flinch from the character.
At the same time his enacting throws many questions back to us…as to how does it could have felt like to make money at other’s expense, build a phoney world and when all that…that huge edifice starts crumbling, he is left for gasping beneath it. We get a taste (just a taste) of the vintage (and obsessive) De Niro, in two scenes—one with the waiter about a dirty plate (like the berries scene in ‘Casino’) and soon after insisting his son to sample the lobster above everything else. Infact, one can spot a few similarities between ‘Casino’ and this movie. In the former, he ends up where he started and here, the prison, he should have ended up with.
This movie is a good watch for anyone who is a fan of Robert De Niro and don’t mind a bit of financial mumbo jumbo.
“The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3” (1974) based on John Godey’s eponymous novel is classic story telling at its best with no unnecessary frills or flashbacks or jump-cuts in narration. Just make sure there is a novel idea and get right into it…is the mantra. Throw in a few good actors into the mix, do your best with other departments (like the near perfect low light photography) and tell the story. It’s a bit like a routine subway ride where you know the start and end points and buckle yourself in and enjoy the ride, even if it were bumpy.
Speaking of
subway rides and novelty, what if a subway train were hijacked and its
passengers held hostage? This premise (back in 70s) makes sure there are enough
bumps in the ride and the plot gets the required fillip. And, the film moves so
effortlessly forward, with the bad guys appearing in the first few frames and
then the reluctant good guy who ushers us into the new world of trains and
control rooms. The tour of Japanese visitors in the control room is a terrific
ploy to balance the act of show and tell and also to give the audience the feeling
of an exclusive sneak peek into the new world.
There is something about a laid back protagonist who is slowly sucked into action, and who else can play it to perfection than Walter Matthau. He is probably one of the very few actors, who without changing his physical appearance much (except may be in his later films like ‘I.Q.’ and ‘Dennis the menace’) delivers his usual understated yet effective performance. And this movie is no exception.
Apart from
the racial and gender based remarks/slurs (which might be considered okay
during the time the movie was made, and the nature of the characters) and the
less complicated denouement of the plot, the movie still holds interest even
today. The script has the right kind of elements in place and fleshes out
enough details about each character and you remember each one of them when the
movie is over.
Every now
and then, watching movies like these, reminds us that great movies are about
good stories and great story telling. The journey from good to great begins
with a genuinely novel idea and when it does, the train ride from paper/e-paper
to the screen is guaranteed and so are the bumps (plot points) and the
nosy/adorable passengers (characters). Most importantly, audience feel that they
have an exclusive access into the happenings and thus immersed in the magic of
cinema.
