Melodrama
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FALLEN LEAVES (Dir. Aki Kaurismäki, 2023, Finland) – Chaplinesque
* * * * Kaurismäki’s latest dead pan socially conscious love story, and a return to the proletariat, is one of his most topical but perhaps his best work to date. Almost impossible for anyone to aspire to the innocence of Chaplin in such times of gut-wrenching cynicism but Fallen Leaves does just that, crafting Continue reading
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BLACK WIDOW (Dir. Bob Rafelson, 1987)
The enigmatic Debra Winger was a reluctant film star who maintained a low public profile, evading the gaze of the media, perhaps to the detriment of longevity. A career restricted to just one decade, Winger seemed to fade out of view by the early 1990s. With a tightly written script by Ron Bass, steely cinematography Continue reading
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MULK (Anubhav Sinha, 2018, India) – Us and Them
The final shot of Mulk is an unexpected one, a freeze frame of a young Muslim boy leaping in the air. He is wearing a white topi cap and the No 7 shirt of Dhoni, an icon of Indian cricket. There is a pluralism at work, the co-existence of multiple identities, that seems under threat Continue reading
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SIR (Dir. Rohena Gera, 2018, India-France)
Set in contemporary Mumbai Sir is a sharply crafted romantic melodrama, full of warmth, about a benign architect, Ashwin (Vivek Gomber) and a migrant servant, Ratna (Tillotama Shome). The script is sharply written and brings to life the complexities of Ratna and Ashwin who are are bound by class and caste. Although they are two Continue reading
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JAGO HUA SAVERA / THE DAY SHALL DAWN (India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, 1959, Dir. A. J. Kardar) – The Cosmopolitan Intersections of South Asian Neorealism
“This is the path of the spirit paved with thorns and stones. This is man’s shadow. This is night. But morning will come…” – Khalil Gibran Gibran’s poetic words point to a cycle of endurance, a battle to survive. This quote from Gibran is juxtaposed over the image of fishing boats at night, navigating the Continue reading
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