vsoundarrajan

Up to season 6, Blacklist exuded mystery, thrill, even family drama.

From season 7 onwards, Bokencamp & co ran short of creativity and content.

They keep toggling you, ad nauseum, into " Keen vs Red, up vs down " and vice versa. Loos like they have run out of story.. Time to wind up.

Serials like Elementary, which offered a much greater art, chose to wind up gracefully, though they could have gone on and on, like Blacklist does.

It no longer matters which of the two, Keen or Red are good (or, bad).

The bad guy is clearly Bokenkamp, stretching the viewer tolerance to season 9.

Nice sad ballad of no success abroad. A must see.

But a bit facile in leading us to the altar of success and sliding down the mishap.

What i mean is this. If an unknown Indian could weave so talentedly into the high good books of his HOD, and also win the the love of a sophisticated American girl, all within about 60 minutes of filming, couldn't his talent plus luck have found him some way to complete his film studies? His rise and fall seem somewhat orchestrated by the auteur.

Sad stories need to be as convincing as success stories. Need to do more than wrench the viewer's hearts.

KUMASTAHVIN MAGAL More than four decades ago when this film was made, my mentor, the late T.G Vaidyanathan, taught me how to respond to films. The plots of popular Indian films, Tamil films in particular, he said, were variants of mythological motifs. Their denouement would follow the dictates of mythological norms. I wish he had seen this film, an interesting mythological puzzle. The plot has the basic Ramayana trio- Ramu an upright youngster, Seetha a virtuous daughter of a poor clerk and a Ravana-like young rich womanizer, who sports the indisputable power of money. Ramu dithers like Hamlet and lets Seetha be married off to an old man. Before long Seetha is back home as a widow of an unconsummated marriage. Creditors are set to seize Seetha's house. Seetha, faced with eviction and destitution, is way laid by the womanizer, who offers money in return for her favors- an offer which it seems she can't refuse. Seetha writes Ramu a long letter conveying her predicament and her resolve to end her life as the only way to save her virtue. She ends by asserting her purity and unequivocal devotion to Ramu. Whomever he might marry, her spirit would reside in that spouse she avers. Her suicide acts as a turning point. It makes the womanizer to recant and become good. It commits Ramu as a caretaker of Seetha's family; he undertakes to arrange the marriage of her innocent younger sister. In her bridal attire he sees Seetha. The bridal party, suspecting foul about the suicide, pulls out of the marriage. Their harsh words against Seetha, spurs Ramu into a moment of reckoning, an Agni Pariksha. A resolute and valiant Ramu espouses the younger sister. The sacrifice of Seetha's life is what transformed a baddie into a virtual philanthropist and an indecisive man into commitment to family. In the Ramayana, it required Seetha to finally 'go back' to earth for Ram to be back in the family, united with his sons. I now see why this film, despite its goody over-simplification of issues, touched me.

The Lunch Box a refreshing change from the usual. It features a neglected housewife and a lonely widower both linked by the now world-famous Mumbai dabbawala network. This marginalized housewife, also a mother a of a little girl, is counseled by an old caring neighbor, herself looking after an invalid husband, to reach her husband thru his stomach, following the age-old maxim.

This right remedy, by an error of the 'infallible' dabbabwala network, is delivered to the wrong person. A lonely widower, somewhat misunderstood in his working and living environments, benefits from this tummy-trick. Thereafter, forgetting about the wrongness of delivery, we see a series of exchanges between the housewife and widower, bringing them closer. This is breezily cinematized by scenes of dabba packing, delivery, and suburban train travel amidst Janoba songs by the home-returning dabbawalas.

Such a plot about ordinary lives, filmed with good acting, smart shoots and editing becomes an attractive film festival product. So it has won several accolades in the Europe and US.

Initially the widower shies away from showing up before the yearning housewife but in the end, presumably prompted by his good natured assistant, he is seen trying to reach her.

The film is one-sided in that it focuses on the lonely widower and fails to probe the housewife's life. We are shown that her husband is curt, his stomach hurt (because of the cauliflower from the wrong lunch box), and he may be having an affair. But the film maker drops him after just two exchanges between the couple. Also there is no footage for the little girl, who seems condemned to a lonelier existence.

The dabba note exchanges, far from creating any awareness, alienate the wife further. The last blow is delivered by her mother confessing, on the occasion of the father's demise due to cancer, that she was never happy in her married life! This settles the issue for the young wife who goes in search of the widower and not finding him, decides to go and settle in Bhutan, where we are told, the living is cheap!

The film unwittingly proves the cliché about the way to a male's heart thru his stomach; though it's the wrong stomach, it belongs to a 'right' heart. But the widower shows no interest in the woes of the woman. It's the grub, his own needs that matter. If only the actual husband is made to eat the horrible hotel food for such a long while, he too may mature as a ripe, lonely longing male.

Yet I would any day watch a film like the Lunch Box than a Bollywood.

POURQUOI PERSONNE ME CROIT This is a crime genre film; a scientist is killed, allegedly by his own kid. It's also a children's film; it's they that help establish the boy's innocence. All this is not new but gradually we find the denouement bursting at the seams and launching an indictment of the world of elders. Kids as moral agents, knights of justice. Initially based on finger prints, the police name the boy as the culprit. Having done so, the entire system- police, judiciary, media, psychologists, neighbors and even the mother- interpret every subsequent happening or finding as reinforcement of the boy's guilt. It never strikes any one to think of other possibilities. The job of finding the true criminal falls on the kids. We have Kevin, the street cleaning boy of an insensitive father, who keeps loading his wife with children and who make Kevin to work to sustain the family. There is a computer-geek whose single parent mom keeps dating and mating, only to get heart broken and consoled by her son. His trusting girlfriend, daughter of conservative parents who gave evidence against the boy and a sympathetic step-sister complete the team. The way these pass thru all the odds against them is no doubt a modern fairy tale. Here every clue leading to the truth gets destroyed by the machinations of the true killers and the closed mind of the system. The investigators too, looking righteous or self-righteous eventually turn out to be either evil or end up supporting injustice. These, added to the quick pace of the film keeps the viewers teased and tensed. What saves the boy at the end is a chance video chat. The site aptly named 'true love' exposes graphically the murderer and his motives. Thus, in this world of adults conforming to make-beliefs, it is the kids who have the key to truth, opened with true love. Final scene is touching. Asking to be alone, the boy takes a look at his dad's face in his mobile and slowly lets a tear down. At last he's free to mourn his loss in peace. The film is intended only to be a fast paced entertaining thriller with kids in action. But it rises high enough to touch our conscience.

Please forgive me. I am not competent to write this as I do not know to read or write Kannada. But, after seeing Naayi Neralu last night, I can't help saying these. Samskara, Vamsha Vriksha and now Naayi Neralu churn something in me. Back in the 70's, my mentors told me that Samaskara was an international great -deemed as good as a foreign art film, what with an Australian photographer, progressive elite makers and so on. I saw the film with respect and came out respectfully with no further thoughts. Later I had to watch it again, to assist a French prof who was to subtitle it, then too the same sort of blank respect. Vamsavriksha was a different experience. It ribbed me somewhere in my Brahmin culture ethos. Though not a Nanjangudu-aficionado, I could feel a little twang about the past and present. (May be because I was raised in a Thanjavur village?) My mentor critiqued Samkara which was considered a 'committed' film (about the breakdown of the old culture) and Vamsha Vriksha as a bottleneck (two generations to their respective predicaments). Lately I begin to feel that the latter was closer to reality. Byrappa was also throwing a cultural poser like URA but was coming closer to the gut. After all dead bodies never posed such a crisis. Now Naayi Neeralu begins like Samskara. It starts with a puzzle of Vishwa, accepted as son-reborn but not as daughter-in-law Venku's hubby. In the rural Brahmin culture I've known, such issues are settled in a down-to-earth manner based on power equations and not as a Sastra-dependant-riddle. But the film progresses slowly from a cultural conflict into a personal one – a feminine predicament. The agony and expectation of a Brahmin widow, head shaved, blouse-less, devoid of flowers and life-celebrating things, living on a single meal a day; all this amidst all others living auspiciously. These are shown poignantly. Though initially annoyed, I began to see why. These are the inner churnings of Venku. She is not bothered about whether Vishwa is a husband reborn or not. Her issue is one of re-life for herself, right or wrong. Ultimately her resurgent zest for life gets the better of social taboos. Leaving the elders to debate the puzzle posed to the Sastras, she opts for the new incumbent. So the story takes a new turn, from Samskara to Vamsha Vriksha. Venku goes to an isolated islet to live with this claimant. Soon his pre-natal clairvoyance wears off and his current youthful extra-marital attractions surface. So Venku is damned. The 'sanctity' of widowhood gone, her man is slipping away, leaving her an unaccounted child. Here she makes an existentially admirable decision. Having opted for a second-married-life she'd go all the way. She is ready to live on in that islet with her child with no hope of a husband. Here Venku goes one step further and bolder than Vamsha Vriksha's remarried lady lecturer. Bravo Venku my heart says.

I am a 69 year old Indian who has never been abroad though i try to remain informed.The film has conflicts which do not seem addressed in the denouement. Cop father and son seem to belong to an era prior to world war II when Hollywood movies saw the 'good' side as wholly good. The night-club son seems to belong to a more recent period. Another is about the wholly diabolic Russian thugs challenging the angelic cops. Third is about the girl friend disapproving of the police carrier. If a nightclub man joins the police, it would appear to be be a not-so-commendable business move. Having seen the Al Pacino and also the Luc Besson movies where the good and the bad infiltrate all walks of life, I find this a bit disappointing.