ashrafamodd

Filmmakers should learn from Bicycle Thief. Learn what can be achieved economically without ridiculous budgets. Tens of millions of dollars were not necessary to create what is one of the best films in history.

What a beautiful film it is! The innocence of these characters even with their faults due to their desperation after their livelihood is shot with the loss of their bicycle. This is a human story about the human struggle as father and son walk all over the city to find their stolen bicycle.

As simple as the film is, it's highly emotional, particularly the final, famous scene. My favourite moment was in the restaurant as the son is wary not to spoil his father's budget, and the father is too concerned with his plans, to notice anything else. The boy can't help being distracted by the rich boy beside their table. Genius filmmaking by by De Sica.

I love all Wes Anderson's films but I've always thought that this is his weakest film. I love how Wes uses Indian characters in his films, with the humour he brings to them, and I most love their portrayals here in Darjeeling Limited too but many parts of this film seems off colour to me.

I didn't like Adrien Brody's character. I'm not sure why he was chosen for this film. Maybe because he looks like one of the important characters in A Passage to India? You can figure that out. A homage? Doesn't matter, but Wes tends to fill his films with meaningless costumes for giggles anyway.

For the most part while I felt he was one of the directors working today, bringing something new to cinema, but many of his films seem to be pointless anyway. Just like how a character would say in one of his films, 'What characters? They are just children in animal costumes.' one could say the same about many of Wes' films.

While it doesn't matter in many of his films, in this films I don't know if he is trying to be deeper, but you get that feeling in a film in India. You get the feeling that this is a film with a higher concept but none of all that comes through to me. I think the way he works Max Fisher's (I know, I'm joking) short story into the movie is a confusing device. Many of these unusual devices I didn't mind, in fact I liked them.

But I had the biggest problem with how he portrayed the Indian characters in the train. He had his usual sidekick on the train but the American accent was off-putting for me and the behaviour of the Indian girl doesn't seem Indian to me at all. It's something that a non- Indian won't bother about it. But it bothers me.

Also this film is not as funny as his others. I only found Owen Wilson to be great as usual. I don't want to say too much about it, but everything about how Owen played this character was both hilarious and sometimes even touching. Like I said, he's achieved this in other Wes films too.

All in all, this is a film that I don't remember too much off easily, and that's a weakness. Perhaps I was more disappointed because I thought this movie had so much potential.

Coming from Durban to the film festival in Cape Town, I was curious to catch this Indian film made by a fellow South African. Woodwind isn't a film about Indians. It's a film about foreigners who go to India and the impact Indian culture has on their perceptions. When I see films about foreigners, like the British or Americans in India, they often fall into the trap of the Oriental cliché. They go to India and learn the usual type of Eastern mysticism and these are always created in a weak Hollywood fused with Bollywood style.

Woodwind doesn't fall into that trap. In fact it's not even totally set that the inspired philosophy is exactly Indian, it belongs to much of Eastern wisdom, that could be all of Indian, Chinese, Japanese and other ancient philosophy in this region. This is why the final act of the film is fitting where Bonifaz is seemingly no longer in an Indian region, and from the mountain area, where the clothing and flag details, reveals that he could be closer to Nepal or Tibet.

The location of Varanasi gives Woodwind a strong Indian flavour and I've read that this is because Benares (the old name for the city) is one of the oldest existing cities in civilization. There's also other places along the Himalayas that we see, which could've been stuck in time for a few centuries and keeps alive this feeling that we are experiencing a very old culture.

I mostly enjoyed how this film captured this reality. I felt as if I was there in India. While realistic, these scenes maintained the high quality of a fiction film with breathtaking cinematography. The movie moves up a gear when the character Bonifaz travel from South America to India. The South American scenes contrast very well with India and were also done very well, but I was mostly fascinated to watch this movie for India and fortunately we are taken there after only about a 15 minute intro.

The introduction in Bonifaz's home country is to highlight the musician having given up on the music from where he is coming from. Most of all, Woodwind is a critic of the Western approach to art (using music as the prime example) and goes as far as hinting that European art has failed as a medium to transform humanity. Then it contrasts that to the Eastern approach and we notice what its like for Bonifaz to follow this new, humble path as an artist that isn't directed by the ego of an artist that desires halls of fame.

What I like is that Bonifaz doesn't walks this new way in a clichéd manner. He still retains much of his own style and in his new music he creates a fusion of Asian and Western music. He doesn't play the santoor like an Indian or Persian, but does so in a way that reflects himself.

So, I found the variety in the soundtrack to be very interesting with the Indian Classical Music, some great European classicals and also then the new music created by Bonifaz.

All in all, I think Woodwind offers a new perspective not just from cinema but also honours the value of Indian and Asian culture and art to the world. For once it was great to see an Indian film that doesn't measure its value by using Hollywood as the ideal, and so the style of the film complements the message and experience of Bonifaz.

I found this incredible movie when I visited Johannesburg recently because it's impossible to find films like this in Durban.

Parajanov creates a fascinating, one can say, almost an orgy of cultural detail in the highest art form. The details are what fascinated me, reminding me of Asia, perhaps with Turkish influence but also a strong Eastern European flavour.

I must admit that I'm not educated about the culture of the regions in the former Russian states or countries near there. The media in South Africa hasn't shown us any of this so it was a completely new experience for me.

The style Parajanov uses isn't a normal way of telling a story. It reminded me of how I used to look at old books of paintings from the East or even the Middle East. So, I have to congratulate the filmmaker on achieving something that is so rich in artistic detail, to a level I've never seen before.

This got me curious to find more films by him. I found Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and while it was a beautiful movie, it wasn't as brilliant as Sayat Nova. So, I highly recommend this film to anybody who loves art films and appreciate those from filmmakers such as Peter Greenaway. That's the closest example I can think of that has been shown on television in South Africa.

Even though I'm of Indian decent, I only visited India on holiday but I've lived in an Indian community in South Africa. This movie reminds me of my childhood, the way the old aunties and grannies used to be in our Indian neighbourhoods but it wasn't as rural as it was in India and my generation was a few decades later. Yet, I related very closely to this film.

I grew up watching many Bollywood films in our family, with our parents and I'd yearn for the quality Bollywood of older times. Satyajit Ray doesn't provide that Bollywood nostalgia but he provides total realism that I haven't seen in Indian cinema - to his level.

I mostly love the way his characters are free to walk around the rural areas and their simple pleasures in the field, going toward the train and playing with water. Being about children, it is playful but also very serious with the way Ray depicts the grandmother and her relationship with the children's mother. I've been calling her grandmother, but i wasn't sure if she was just an old lady/aunty in the village or a blood relative. I might've missed that but it's all the same as she was treated as a relative and I think in Indian communities they could've adopted this responsibility to take care of her anyway.

Ray isn't sympathetic to his characters, he shows us their ugly and beautiful side. He does this with the mother and children. He exposes some real weaknesses and his coverage of Apu is very dreamy, seemingly like himself. For me Pather Panchali is the best of the Apu Trilogy because its very real, but it's not easy to get going because it was Ray's first film and he was notably still mastering his craft at that stage.

This movie doesn't have that epic feel like many of other Kurosawa's films. There's no war scenes and no western inspired action scenarios. In many ways this is a very simply structured movie by Kurosawa, yet I feel it's his most powerful film.

It's just the way he deals with both the darkness of society and eventually... hope. To find hope in such a terrible story of rape, adultery, revenge and murder. This sounds like quite an ugly story but Kurosawa tackles it in a softer manner. Part like a court room drama, and part like a Citizen Kane structure of reflecting on the past.

What's interesting is the way Kurosawa has created multiple perspectives on the vital events of this story. The truth depends on the good or evil of each character. This is no clichéd approach to morality. It's sophisticated yet the story itself is very simple, with everyday types of characters.

The big difference is the villain of the piece. He is almost cartoonish in his mannerisms, and I wonder why Kurosawa wanted this. Perhaps to show the animalistic nature of man when he is down to his base senses of fulfilling his desires?

Salaam Bombay is not easy to watch because it leaves me emotionally spent, but that tells you just how good this film is. Mira Nair has therefore succeeded in creating an authentic experience, highlighting the ugly side of life in Mumbai (previously called Bombay).

You can tell that Slumdog Millionaire borrowed many of the interesting elements of Salaam Bombay, but added extra spice with a British flavour mixed with Bollywood. However Salaam Bombay keeps everything real and this is why it's the strongest film I've seen set in India.

The story line revolves around Indians in poverty, where older men exploit children to work on the streets, and Salaam Bombay takes us into this horror filled underworld. Where Nair wins is that she makes you care for these young characters and it turns into quite an emotional ride.

There are moments which reminded me of the best of the French New Wave, such as 500 Blows and Salaam Bombay is certainly a film at that level. Eventually, you need to be ready to through this feature length film, enduring some of the worst experiences in India. Perhaps if Nair contrasted this with some of the more beautiful aspects of Mumbai, it would've been more rounded.