KAI PO CHE: REFRESHING AND RESPONSIBLE SAGA OF YOUNGSTERS

Circumstances play a major role in shaping any one's life.  The parables about construction of life based on values and attitude is always a paradox. Your life is never in your hands. Your destiny is not in your hands. Your entire life is a result  of numerous happenings in and around you. The way you react to a certain event that happens without your intervention decides the next phase of your life. These are the very simple rules of life. Fortunate are those who construct their lives in the very way they wanted it to be. The rest navigate according to the poetry of the nature, prose of the technology and drama of other fellow beings.

Kai Po Che tries to drive this point home  through a saga of friendship of three different youngsters.   And it succeeds in its attempt. The plot is taken from India's most popular author's book. And the author himself acknowledged that the film is far better than his book. And therefore full credit to the director Abishek Kapur whose no nonsense approach elevated the film and made it one of the best films of 2013.

The film takes a plunge into the lives of three friends and their approach towards life in midst of nature's anger and human narrow minded outrage. Refreshingly the film tries to portray the struggle of the youngsters to settle in life and sustain their friendship amidst their personal  emotions and prejudice. The film's strength lies in the way it put forth sensitive issues without highlighting them. You are made to watch one friends agony over his personal loss during a communal riot and another friends concern for his fellow beings and at the same time we have another who wants to save both despite his own fears for his life. Such mutual concerns tell you the impact of a communal riot that still looms large over the entire country.

There are umpteen number of reviews specifying the merits of  story and other departments. In fact this is no way a story. Its a study of relationship and that too a very simple relationship of three friends. A relation ship that survives and succumbs to simple twists life brings in suddenly. The protagonists make an attempt to gain control over situations and makes us travel with them in their pursuits.  And It takes a sudden stop at a juncture where we and them have to depart with hope and pain

Cricket,Religion and Nature's anger are blended on a canvas called Gujarat in a very effective manner and the characters use this wide canvas to bring out wide range of emotions in a believing manner. The love story of one friend and its impact on the friendship, the cricket obsession of one friend and its impact on friend ship and the opportunistic relation between one friend and his uncle and its impact on friendship the central points of this movie. In between  all this we see an array of different characters who influence these friends at different points.

In the movie one of the friend loves the sister of another friend. Their intimacy thickens and the girl fears of a pregnancy. They rush for a medical test. The girl gets back to home. All of a sudden the riots broke up. Both the friends end up in a tight situation. The brother hands over the phone to his student and takes his friends phone. And in this chaos the sister sends up an sms that everything is fine. Reading this Sms the brother looks up at his friend in a state of shock and the other slips into shades of guilt and that expression defines this movie's motive.

Every one played their role with perfection. The dialogues are well written. The photography topnotch. The music is pleasing to ears.

Go for Kai po che. It makes you remember how you dreamt of a life with your friends before you chose yours.

MIRCHI....TOO HOT TO SWALLOW

A state of comatose has taken over this blog for a certain period of time. In this brief period movie that can be defined as neo noir stepped into telugu world (Ko ante koti) movie with satire on social issues (matru bijlee ka mandola, krishnam vande jagdgurum) movie recalling a heist of 1987(special 26) movie that sent chills with a eatery(pizza) movie that was unnecessarily a centre of controversy(viswarupam) demanded a review from this blog but time definitely provided little room to execute a thought provoking review.Occupied with my work and problems I chose only particular movies which quenched my thirst and relaxed me at the required time. In this way I am completely away from a lot of Telugu movies and definitely missed our flavour.

My good gods seem to have a taken a pity on me  and yesterday i  got an opportunity to watch Mirchi which is already a block buster. As the movie progressed I saw the protagonist transforming from a lover boy preaching the message of love- to a reformer who reforms bad guys -to a family man who understands a mother's agony-to a sword wielding angry young man and then came the interval. In the second half a flashback reveals transformation of the protagonist from a software engineer to blood thirsty  factionist to a son who abides by his father's words. As the flash back ends the protagonist asks the antagonist to stop blood shed by killing him. The goons and their leader thrash the protagonist black and blue and he slips on to the ground unconscious. On a simple provocation our hero raises up from the ground and in a whisker of a second  grounds all the goons and lays the sword on the neck of their leader and then preaches him the virtues of non violence and love. 

There is a common feature in all the movie i watched this year. The protagonist is one among us. He fears like us. He behaves like us. In special 26 Akshay kumar and his team fear after every robbery.In Ko ante Koti Sharwanand  loses the game to Sri hari. In matru Bijilee ka mandola Imran loses his battle to rain. In pizza the hero ends up in the house where his fears can become true. In Viswarupa a helpless Kamalhasan watches in guilt a hanging for which he is the cause.Even a dynamic cop like Bajpai  in Special 26 behaves like us. There was a huge consistency in the characters in these movies.   

 It pains us to see our protagonist like us. Hence we need an impossible hero. We need one who can preach and kill, one who can love and hate, one who can remember and forget, one who can earn and donate, one who can dance to an item song despite heart wrenching tragedy in his life, one who can be smooth and hard  one whom we can never see in our entire life. We are habituated to see our hero in this mould. 

The actress in special 26 carry a sense of dignity. The heroine fears about her future and finally does whatever she wants. The heroine is viswarupam is an nuclear oncologist and considering a divorce from the hero. The heroine in matru bijilee ka mandola  is conscious of the society she lives in. The heroine in pizza is an author whose line of interest is horror fiction.The heroine in Ko ante koti is a social activist. The heroine in Krishnam vande jagadgurum is a social conscious TV reporter .( both these films were huge flops).   In English Vinglish Sridevi reminds us the pain of an neglected house wife in a very defined manner. Even in a regressive film like Dabaang Sonakshi Sinha as well as Dimple Kapadia come up with better characterizations and personality

The actress in Mirchi (save the protagonist's mother who seemed a marriage event host) cannot speak against their male partners. One heroine has done MS in ..... but still in a state of confusion over her life. Another one a village belly was head over heels over the looks of the protagonist. They have no other work than romantic escapades. Other women represent a medieval culture.

These days we see a lot of awakening among the women in India. Voices are tough and lot of anger is vented out against injustice meted out to them. I don't know what happens to these voices when such degrading portrayal of women takes place in our  movies. 

Another funny aspect i observed in our faction movies was the antagonist and his family despite belonging to the same class of the protagonist  are dark skinned and very unclean. On the contrary the family members of the protagonist are fair and very neat. All the members of family were dressed in the traditional attire where as our heroine dons all the collection of Manish Malhotra and Ritu Beri. .

We have abundant treasure of literature. Ranging from Nanniah to yandamuri we have been bestowed with as lot of fiction which can offer any film maker a food for thought. Telugu poetry prose and drama are no less to any reputed master piece. Our history presents us with facts which are very stranger than fiction . We are a part of a legacy of thousand of heroic tales. When other states are busy filming  classics based on their history and literature we still lie in the blankets of a monotonous imaginary faction tales. When the protagonist s of other states are very near to real life and inspiring stuff our hero still wilds sword and romances in the break. 

There's no wrong in action movies. In fact i am  a die hard fan of Die Hard movie series. . John Mcclane needed a film time to conquer the antagonist. He was tired. He was injured. And as the film nears end he was completely down and we want him to get up and bash the goons.  Yet he takes time, searches for a weapon  and ends the movie in style and make you believe everything is real.   

But our faction hero's  are great than John Mcclane. In fact they will definitely laugh over the travails of John Mcclane Had it been them they should have utilized the time to romance, dance, fashion lessons and what not. John Mcclane has only one agenda. Our agenda is multipurpose. And Violence in die hard movies will be at shame watching our faction movies. And it pains me here to compare my favourite Die hard movies with our stale action capers. I am just making my point. Action movie doesn't mean  rotten dish served in a neat plate.

Our hero's never die hard. They make us die  hard in the theatre .