royce4u2002
08-05-2005, 02:55 AM
http://web.mid-day.com/ArticleImages/images49/hazaaron.jpg
*YUCK **WHATEVER ***GOOD ****SUPER *****AWESOME
Wake up, comrades, it is time
Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi -Rating-****
Dir: Sudhir Mishra
Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Shiny Ahuja, Chitrangda
I remember watching Mishra cringe at a college panel discussion once, when the compere announced him as “the Chameli director.” Among a bunch of gum-chewing kids, that could have been the only way to introduce the filmmaker.
The introduction I would have preferred would be his first film, a slow but stupendous Yeh Woh Manzil To Nahin (1987).
A film about a group of oldies who get together to relive their school activism days, which could easily be categorised as an immensely youthful enterprise.
Or maybe not, given the hopelessly dumbed-down and intellectually deficient times we’ve inherited, where “youth” is only a bunkum marketing statistic.
But that’s another story. The story of Mishra’s far superior prequel (in spirit) to his first film concerns three collegians at the crossroads of life, and their conflict over what route they must charter.
While a radical Siddharth (Menon) quits a cushy couch to turn revolutionary communist in Bihar, his initially reluctant, foreign-bred girlfriend Geeta (Chitrangda), joins him in the movement much later.
At the other end of the spectrum is Vikram (Ahuja) who makes the best of Delhi’s corrupt political corridors and turns fixer — what was possibly the most profitable profession during the height of the bought-out license Raj, which is the milieu in which the film is set.
While Mishra hooks the well-laid-out plot with a tale of love and rejection, most definitely, its trump card is its period, the ’70s — politically the most exciting, albeit darkest hour, of post-independent India.
Yes, there are odd moments where you see the film veer towards the verbose, but unlike Yeh Woh Manzil…, there are delectable exchanges and scene-stealers that transcend the narrative beyond a prescient political essay.
It is a film that exudes a rare, unique feel in the midst of cloned cinema products.
An unusual picture-piece that gives a sense of the romance and idealism of a recent era, when some of the most intelligent minds in this country were swayed by a rebellion for a cause.
A remarkable reminder of a politically conscious, young, urban India, which gave in to what we are today.
Delhi’s St Stephen’s College, that forms Hazaaron’s ’70s backdrop, banned politics on its campus long since — not that the MBA mall-rats from Stephen’s, or any other college would mind the prohibition.
The class struggle in Bihar that became the Naxalite movement — the film’s fulcrum — has degenerated into a bloody, casteist gang war (Maoist Communist Centre represent the Yadavs and the People’s War Group is about the Kurmis).
Political forces that combined to fight a cruel Congress and its ’75 Emergency turned out to be equally, if not more, power-hungry, opportunistic and corrupt louts, provoking the pioneer of the movement, Jayaprakash Narayan, to admit the “end of ideology”.
Now, many years later, despite an ever-widening gap between those who have and those who don’t, the only “ism” that exists is a hollow, heedless consumerism.
Not such a bad thing, so long as the haves, like Ahuja’s street-smart and cynical Vikram, do not need to check in for medical treatment in a lawless village’s makeshift dispensary.
A village, which, as Menon’s Siddharth puts it, may be 1,000 kilometres away from Delhi, but is 5,000 years away otherwise.
It is this most relevant and urgent mirror of our period that makes Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi one of the most significant films of any time. And a film that I think college kids should remember Mishra by.
Though, for some reason, it seems like a tall hope.
ENJOI!!!!
*YUCK **WHATEVER ***GOOD ****SUPER *****AWESOME
Wake up, comrades, it is time
Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi -Rating-****
Dir: Sudhir Mishra
Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Shiny Ahuja, Chitrangda
I remember watching Mishra cringe at a college panel discussion once, when the compere announced him as “the Chameli director.” Among a bunch of gum-chewing kids, that could have been the only way to introduce the filmmaker.
The introduction I would have preferred would be his first film, a slow but stupendous Yeh Woh Manzil To Nahin (1987).
A film about a group of oldies who get together to relive their school activism days, which could easily be categorised as an immensely youthful enterprise.
Or maybe not, given the hopelessly dumbed-down and intellectually deficient times we’ve inherited, where “youth” is only a bunkum marketing statistic.
But that’s another story. The story of Mishra’s far superior prequel (in spirit) to his first film concerns three collegians at the crossroads of life, and their conflict over what route they must charter.
While a radical Siddharth (Menon) quits a cushy couch to turn revolutionary communist in Bihar, his initially reluctant, foreign-bred girlfriend Geeta (Chitrangda), joins him in the movement much later.
At the other end of the spectrum is Vikram (Ahuja) who makes the best of Delhi’s corrupt political corridors and turns fixer — what was possibly the most profitable profession during the height of the bought-out license Raj, which is the milieu in which the film is set.
While Mishra hooks the well-laid-out plot with a tale of love and rejection, most definitely, its trump card is its period, the ’70s — politically the most exciting, albeit darkest hour, of post-independent India.
Yes, there are odd moments where you see the film veer towards the verbose, but unlike Yeh Woh Manzil…, there are delectable exchanges and scene-stealers that transcend the narrative beyond a prescient political essay.
It is a film that exudes a rare, unique feel in the midst of cloned cinema products.
An unusual picture-piece that gives a sense of the romance and idealism of a recent era, when some of the most intelligent minds in this country were swayed by a rebellion for a cause.
A remarkable reminder of a politically conscious, young, urban India, which gave in to what we are today.
Delhi’s St Stephen’s College, that forms Hazaaron’s ’70s backdrop, banned politics on its campus long since — not that the MBA mall-rats from Stephen’s, or any other college would mind the prohibition.
The class struggle in Bihar that became the Naxalite movement — the film’s fulcrum — has degenerated into a bloody, casteist gang war (Maoist Communist Centre represent the Yadavs and the People’s War Group is about the Kurmis).
Political forces that combined to fight a cruel Congress and its ’75 Emergency turned out to be equally, if not more, power-hungry, opportunistic and corrupt louts, provoking the pioneer of the movement, Jayaprakash Narayan, to admit the “end of ideology”.
Now, many years later, despite an ever-widening gap between those who have and those who don’t, the only “ism” that exists is a hollow, heedless consumerism.
Not such a bad thing, so long as the haves, like Ahuja’s street-smart and cynical Vikram, do not need to check in for medical treatment in a lawless village’s makeshift dispensary.
A village, which, as Menon’s Siddharth puts it, may be 1,000 kilometres away from Delhi, but is 5,000 years away otherwise.
It is this most relevant and urgent mirror of our period that makes Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi one of the most significant films of any time. And a film that I think college kids should remember Mishra by.
Though, for some reason, it seems like a tall hope.
ENJOI!!!!