 "Best of MAMI")
I would go out on a limb and say that this year the line-up of the Mumbai Film Festival would rival that of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa. It was never the case before, but this time the array of movies is just spectacular. Here are a few that you ought not to miss.
Right Now, Wrong Then: Hong Sang-soo is my favourite film maker among the living ones. I love the fact that he invented a new grammar for cinema. The use of deliberate camera shots, nary a technological gimmick, and same motifs over and over make him one of the most exciting film makers. He can make a ten-hour movie on people reciting the Oxford Dictionary and I would still keep gaping at the screen. To top it all, this Golden Leopard winner at the Locarno film festival is being touted as the best film of his career.
Arabian Nights: Portuguese director Miguel Gomes is a cipher. His cinema is cryptic and ridiculously post-modern, but his searing images are sure to give you a chemical high. His 338-minute movie, based on the collection One Thousand and One Nights, is by far his most ambitious and befuddling work - it is already being compared to Satantango and the Three Colours trilogy.
Mistress America: The Frances Ha team of director Noah Baumbach and actress Greta Gerwig is back with this shrewdly observed film on the hip 20-somethings of present-day Manhattan. From the rushes, it looks like yet another scathing indictment of the zeitgeist of privileged white kids, something no one could do better than Baumbach.
The Lobster: "Somewhere in the near future, single people face a choice: Join a program to find a mate in forty-five days or be transformed into an animal." This is the movie's premise. As corny as it might sound, this Greek New Wave director can make really good sense of the absurd and his English-language debut lives up to the promise.
Taxi: Jafar Panahi, the cause celebre of Iranian cinema, is back with a trenchant commentary on the vastly reclusive country. He poses as a taxi driver in Tehran, in this series of portraits of everyday characters hiring his driving services. This has "cinematic delight" written all over it.
Francofonia: Alexander Sokurov, the Russian purveyor of hauntingly sad and brilliant cinema, made a documentary on the occupation of the Louvre by Nazi forces. This part Godardian essay film, part historical recreation documentary divided the audience at every film festival. But then, that's quintessential Sokurov - compellingly divisive.
45 Years: This is Andrew Haigh's much-anticipated follow-up to his acclaimed indie hit Weekend and the sparkling HBO show Looking. While his previous outings were about homosexuals, this subtle, austere British film has an elderly heterosexual couple - Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay - musing on their 45 years of marriage. Phrases such as "offers richly thought-provoking rewards for fans of adult cinema" and "a masterful study of human interaction" are making rounds for this movie.
Youth: Italian film director Paolo Sorrentino is almost a spiritual heir to Federico Fellini. The Great Beauty, his 2013 film, a major hat tip to essential Fellini movies, won the Oscar for the best foreign film. If one is to believe the festival reviews, then The Great Beauty is a mere sketch compared to this Sistine Chapel of a movie that has Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel in top form as two longtime friends vacationing in the Swiss Alps who are reflecting on their past.
Thithi: If you are looking for the Court of 2015, look no beyond this Kannada movie, which won two awards at the Locarno film festival. Twenty-six-year-old Raam Reddy's stripped-to-the-bone directorial debut is about the 11-day ceremony being held owing to the death of a 101-year-old man. If you have to punch something small and adorable to make it to this screening, so be it.
Right Now, Wrong Then: Hong Sang-soo is my favourite film maker among the living ones. I love the fact that he invented a new grammar for cinema. The use of deliberate camera shots, nary a technological gimmick, and same motifs over and over make him one of the most exciting film makers. He can make a ten-hour movie on people reciting the Oxford Dictionary and I would still keep gaping at the screen. To top it all, this Golden Leopard winner at the Locarno film festival is being touted as the best film of his career.
Arabian Nights: Portuguese director Miguel Gomes is a cipher. His cinema is cryptic and ridiculously post-modern, but his searing images are sure to give you a chemical high. His 338-minute movie, based on the collection One Thousand and One Nights, is by far his most ambitious and befuddling work - it is already being compared to Satantango and the Three Colours trilogy.
Mistress America: The Frances Ha team of director Noah Baumbach and actress Greta Gerwig is back with this shrewdly observed film on the hip 20-somethings of present-day Manhattan. From the rushes, it looks like yet another scathing indictment of the zeitgeist of privileged white kids, something no one could do better than Baumbach.
The Lobster: "Somewhere in the near future, single people face a choice: Join a program to find a mate in forty-five days or be transformed into an animal." This is the movie's premise. As corny as it might sound, this Greek New Wave director can make really good sense of the absurd and his English-language debut lives up to the promise.
Taxi: Jafar Panahi, the cause celebre of Iranian cinema, is back with a trenchant commentary on the vastly reclusive country. He poses as a taxi driver in Tehran, in this series of portraits of everyday characters hiring his driving services. This has "cinematic delight" written all over it.
Francofonia: Alexander Sokurov, the Russian purveyor of hauntingly sad and brilliant cinema, made a documentary on the occupation of the Louvre by Nazi forces. This part Godardian essay film, part historical recreation documentary divided the audience at every film festival. But then, that's quintessential Sokurov - compellingly divisive.
45 Years: This is Andrew Haigh's much-anticipated follow-up to his acclaimed indie hit Weekend and the sparkling HBO show Looking. While his previous outings were about homosexuals, this subtle, austere British film has an elderly heterosexual couple - Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay - musing on their 45 years of marriage. Phrases such as "offers richly thought-provoking rewards for fans of adult cinema" and "a masterful study of human interaction" are making rounds for this movie.
Youth: Italian film director Paolo Sorrentino is almost a spiritual heir to Federico Fellini. The Great Beauty, his 2013 film, a major hat tip to essential Fellini movies, won the Oscar for the best foreign film. If one is to believe the festival reviews, then The Great Beauty is a mere sketch compared to this Sistine Chapel of a movie that has Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel in top form as two longtime friends vacationing in the Swiss Alps who are reflecting on their past.
Thithi: If you are looking for the Court of 2015, look no beyond this Kannada movie, which won two awards at the Locarno film festival. Twenty-six-year-old Raam Reddy's stripped-to-the-bone directorial debut is about the 11-day ceremony being held owing to the death of a 101-year-old man. If you have to punch something small and adorable to make it to this screening, so be it.
jagannath.jamma@bsmail.in