This Truman Show

Today, The Truman Show was on tv again and I ended up watching it again. I quite like the film. Well, I woudn’t call it one of my most favourite films, but I love the completely original idea of the film.

As you would know it is the story of a reality tv star called Truman Burbank, played by Jim Carrey. The scary part is that his entire life is THE reality tv. Everything he does is watched by millions of audiences worlwide. Whether he's eating, sleeping, heading off to work or visiting the loo, the world is watching – and he doesn't even know it. At least, not at first.

Since birth, Truman has been brought up inside a giant Hollywood dome, inside of which is the made-for-TV town of Seahaven. Everyone he knows – his neighbours, his workmates, his parents, his wife, and even his best friend since childhood – are actors hired by media mogul Christof,( brilliantly played by Ed Harris) for the planet's biggest and most intricate one-man reality show.

Towards the end, he smells something fishy and subsequently plans his escape.

The story is fascinating. And scarily unnerving too. The insecure person that I am, I have forever doubted if my life is a reality tv. What if I’m live entertainment? mundane but entertaining to some. What if all this is make-believe. What if my mother is a brilliant actor, so are my siblings.What if priti actually hates the fat, short and ugly me but sticks to the role brilliantly, day after day. What if my friends deliver their lines, do their part brilliantly, switch off the light and go do the same scene brilliantly in some other set. And for all i know, they’re getting awards for their performance. But I don’t have a clue. Nobody awards me. I’m the lead character, am I not! Maybe they are stocking my best lead award, year after year, but I don’t think I’ll ever see them.

The thing is that we always accept the reality of our surroundings without question. Maybe there’s more to it than I know. At times, it all seems like it is the case. And if it is, then I hope I’m a good entertainer and you’re having a good time.

Please Give

I watched writer-director Nicole Holofcener's Please Give a couple of weeks back and since then I’ve been thinking of writing this post. This is sort of a ‘what-this-movie-is-about-and-why-does-it-make-me-write-this-post’ post. It is a story about a well heeled present day New York couple, Kate and Alex (Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt).

In this era of really complex storytelling, Please Give is one of those films where nothing much happens. It is too self-indulgent, full of dialogues and follows linear storytelling. But it is as charming as life is, warts and all. It’s got its selfish, guilty, passionate and morbid moments.

It is set in present day New York. But it could have been a story of any metropolis in any part of the world. It is so much our story. We, the children of the new world, who make more money than all the family members of our previous generation combined . We, who are fighting this daily fight of being part of this dog-eat-dog world and yet want to believe that somewhere we are good people. I don’t think anybody likes to believe himself or herself as a bad person. We all got reasons to justify any shit we do in life.

Kate and Alex run a business selling overpriced retro furniture to upper class hip people of the city. Furniture which they buy as scrap from the unsuspecting people selling off their dead parents ‘useless stuff’ and hoping to make some money in the bargain.

The business is doing fine, swindling off people of their priceless furniture. But then again, Kate is saddled with this desire to do something good. Maybe she’s saddled with her guilt of bilking people and wants to redeem herself. So she hands out generous dollars to the homeless in the street. But at the same time, she wishes the next door old lady dead, so that she can buy her apartment and combine it with hers. Kate’s character likes to believe that the old lady lived a sad life, no matter if she actually did. But she needs to believe so, maybe to feel good about her own life. She needs to do something to feel good about herself. She doles out 20 dollars to a homeless but denies her teenaged daughter a 200 dollar pair of denims. Because somewhere she likes to believe she is middle class, rooted to the downtrodden. Even Nita Ambani and Shahrukh Khan like to indulge themselves in that belief, no matter what obscene depths of money they are in. There has to be a redemption about being the way you are. Sounds familiar, isn’t it? It does to me.

I loved Please Give because it is such a comment on how our heart is. How we really are and how we like to believe we are. Clueless but clued in. Selfish and generous. All that makes us human. It is in the same school as a Woody Allen film. Or a Satyajit Ray, or a Ritoporno Ghosh, or a Dibakar Banerjee film.( I know, somewhere some bengali is rubbing his palms, grinning, that all the references are of bong directors…hehehe). All the directors and storytellers adept at dwelling into the finer nuances of human mind and heart.

Ok, coming back to the film, Nicole Holofcener writes strong women characters. And she manages to take out some brilliant performances out of her actors, specially the female characters. Even in this film all actors, especially the women, outshine their male counterparts. Whether it is Kate’s gawky 15 year old daughter Abby (Sarah Steele), or the controlled radiologist Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and spa attendant Mary (Amanda Peet) – or their ailing and sharp-tongued grandmother (Ann Guilbert). But the one who really is most amazing is Catherine Keener as Kate. I must confess that I never much liked her, unlike Priti who forever did. In fact, i almost hated her. That’s maybe because I always saw her enacting these very strong women characters. But I saw her as the mother in Where The Wild Things Are, and now in Please Give, both parts where she is vulnerable and yet strong. And I have to confess that I am in love with her. Maybe that’s how all love stories begin. With a certain dislike and resistance towards a potent force and then a complete surrender.

Please Give is kind of movie which is critical of us but at the same time is sympathetic to us. All it’s doing is showing us that what we really are. Human, with all our flaws and shortcomings, far from the idealist picture of this righteous person we carry in our heads.

So if you can lay your hands on it, please watch Please Give.

So Long...

There’s something about leaving, which is always hard. Parting with things, places and people is harder than you imagine. And then it is harder if you have a filmy mind like me. You imagine events in a certain way in your head and it never turns out that way. Real life so doesn’t imitate reel life, for sure.

Last week I said goodbyes twice. First to Calcutta, and then to Ogilvy. Strangely with Calcutta, it wasn’t so hard. Every time I go there, a certain sense of detachment sets in.
And that’s because of the political scenario which just doesn’t let the city move. Out of the 5 days I was there, one day the city was crippled thanks to Mamata Banerjee’s Maha Rally, the other day there was Cab strike. So it wasn’t exactly a dream run in Calcutta. So saying bye to my people was harsh, but not so much to the city.

And then my bbye moment to Ogilvy. It was harder than I thought. I just hung on to it. I just wanted to be and not leave. I wanted to have my friends gather around and talk, maybe go out drinking. But then with everybody gone before me, there was no one around to do that with. So I hung on to studio and client servicing people I have never spoken and said my bbyes for ages, hoping someone would walk me out. Because that’s the way the reel rolls in my head. But thank god to Nitin and Jossy. It was nice talking to Nitin. Thanks for the gift. And Thanks so much to Jossy for the book. Very well thought of. And I loved what he wrote on the inside page. May your wish for me come true, because that’s my wish too. So I staggered out of the agency alone, and no matter how much you tell yourself to be a man and not cry, your eyes do well up. I have spent close to 3 years in this agency, known some wonderful people, made friends with some, goddamn!

So anyway, both my bbyes weren’t exactly the way I imagined. Maybe I should start dreaming those morbid NFDC type movies of 70s where nothing great happens through the movie, the jholawala union leader gets killed, people die of hunger and in the last shot the sun sets behind the fume belching industrial backdrop, leaving the screen dark. But maybe I’ll not. Why screw the vision of the head. It’s a wonderful world in there. Atleast things are perfect in there. So I’ll keep dreaming in Technicolour.

Love, Sex aur Dhokha, darling!

“And you call this a film!?”

That’s how one of the 3 young women sitting next to us reacted when the end credits of Love, Sex Aur Dhokha started rolling. Not that they were quiet through the film, like most of the other viewers. Like this man in the row in front of us complained during a brutal scene of honour killing ‘kya film hai yeh?. He even asked his wife to remove the food-tray in front of him, citing ‘mann khatta ho gaya.’

What were you expecting, bade bhaiya? Probably a movie with some ‘scenes’. Before he bought his popcorn, he could have done a little homework on the film. But I guess that is too much to expect out of people, the whole thing about expectations out of a film, that is. People just float in, expecting to watch a film which is already there in their head. A film just the way they are used to seeing, a three act narrative of the beginning, the middle and the end. Nowadays, most have opened up to the idea of ‘different’ films as well. But LSD is nothing like you expected. You don’t have a clue of what’s coming. LSD fucks you. In the ass.

With so much voyeurism and reality TV happening around us, somebody had to make a film on it. And thank God, it wasn’t Madhur Bhandarkar.

LSD doesn’t follow a pattern of single story with the beginning, middle and the end. It uses three different stories of love, sex and betrayal to give you one composite film experience. A film which has no lose ends, all of them tied together tightly with one another. Long back when I was in college, I’d watched a film called ‘The Idiots’ in a film festival. I had no clue about the director Lars Von Trier or Dogme films, but I was pretty moved by the film. There was a certain naivety, and a certain devilish morbidity to it. It was heartbreaking to watch that film. As was many of Lars Von Trier’s films I later watched. I had the same reaction watching LSD. It slaps you across your face throughout. It is not exactly funny when you think it is. It is moving to see how mundane people are, and yet how devilish they can be. People do the most horrible things to people they love, or let’s just say to people who are their own.

The first story follows an Aditya Chopra school of film making obsessed young guy Rahul (Anshuman Jha) making his diploma film, who has the same idea about love as depicted in his mentor’s films. Now you can laugh saying this guy is unreal, but believe me this guy is real. They are all around us. There are so many like him, my brother in law is one such guy, with his motley crew of FB friends who sound just like him. So the hero falls for his film’s heroine, a rich girl Shruti (Shruti) with a fleet of Mercs and her Punjabi Baroque house. The second story is about Adarsh (Raj Kumar Yadav) and Rashmi (Neha Chauhan) in a 24×7 departmental store, always under CCTV surveillance. The third is about a sting operator journalist Prabhat (Amit Sial) who carries out an operation with frustrated model Naina (Devdutta Banerjee), who is out to avenge being ditched by famous Punjabi pop star Loki Local (Herry Tangri). All mundane people, like you and me. Feeding off each other like parasites. Clinging on to each other for love, giving in to sex, and tied with a common thread of betrayal.

Most film-makers have a brilliant debut film and there after start corrupting, giving into the pressures of banners and box office. Or simply because they don’t have any good story to tell. So the treatment takes over the content. Not the case with Dibakar Banerjee, he debuted with the brilliant Khosla ka ghosla, followed it with an even sharper Oye Lucky! And now has surpassed all his brilliance with his most caustic film. He is a director in command of his craft.

The screenplay by Urmi Juvekar and Dibakar Banerjee is gripping. The camera work by Nikos Andritsakis is absolutely brillaint. As Dibakar said in his interview that this is the first time in India that the digital cameras are used as digital cameras, and not as a poor cousin of the 35 mm camera. Editing by Namrata Rao is crisp. You must listen to the music album, if you are not already hooked on. I’m in love with Sneha Khanwalker's music, she is absolutely charming in this one as well. The lyrics written by Dibakar himself, are sharply written and topical. Lyrics like ‘main saat janam upwasa hoon, aur saat samandar pyasa hoon’ are absolute gem. The cast is brilliant, all the actors including the guy playing Shruti’s father and the other cocky store attendant have done their bit effortlessly.

It has more heart and soul than a lot of things I have seen, read or watched. The last time I was this moved watching a hindi film was Maqbool. After watching LSD, I wanted to go sit alone somewhere. Say nothing. Light a cigarette. Maybe shed a tear or two.

Priti and I end up watching films back to back in halls. Even today we had bought tickets for LSD and Lahore, of which we had read and heard good things only. But after watching LSD I felt like tearing away the tickets of Lahore. But that would be an insult to the very reason a film is made. To be watched. So I didn’t do it. I wish I had.

Viva America

People are celebrating halloween in india now...waiting for the day we'll have 4th of July fireworks. Viva Ameerika!

That's what my FB status message read around last Halloween. Some of my friends reacted quite sharply to it, labelling me as no-fun and an anti-American. Now i take serious offence to that. Not the no-fun part. I largely agree to being a no-fun boring kind of a guy. But i have serious reservartions against being labelled an anti-American. Because i love America. I’ve never been to America, but I have this genuine love for some things American, not all, but most. I love America as I know it, these images I get of America through Hollywood, media, American sitcoms, music and popular culture.

I love films, and you cannot love cinema and be oblivious to Hollywood. Hollywood of 70s (which I only saw later), 80s and 90s played a huge part in discovering my love for cinema. Well most of Hollywood fare is utter crap but then there are some gems every now and then. I love American sitcoms, they’ve got more easy humour than British ones. I love the Stand up comedians. I love the whole idea of New York. I want to spend at least 6 months of my life there. Soak up on all the urban ‘culture’. Watch Musicals (they are unarguably the best in the world), visit pubs and listen to underground bands, jazz acts, stand ups video artists. Be part of The Central Park and the Times Square of hurried, smug people. Of warm and clipped smiles. Be part of the cosmopolitan jamboree that New York is.

How can I love a place without ever being there? Well, I haven’t met Madhuri Dixit also, but boy, don’t even get me started on how much I love her. Yes, even now.

One can always divide oneself into being a hindu or a muslim, gujarati or a Bengali, south Indian or a northeasterner and then there’s this whole thing about being a world citizen. But I believe after being an Indian, more than anything else, we are American. The urban Indian life imitates American lifestyle. And it is true for most of the countries around the world. We are bombarded by everything American (some of them excellent, some good and some bad). You switch on the TV and the sitcoms you love are all American, the music you mostly like is American, so is the fast food you so love, the language you pass off as English is American. For a country colonised by brits for over 200 years, we are more American than we are British. We drop our easy on tongue American and put on our best Liverpudlian accent only to sound exotic. You go to “fookin hell” or "let’s rob sum ciggies fellas" only when you want to sound different.

We have the same kind of family values and melodramatic ideas about patriotism and social behaviour. Are homophobic, and have closeted ideas about sexuality as Americans do. Only they being a ‘first world country’ and us being ‘third world country’, there are differences in how we approach them, but the basic structure of society is the same. Being American makes us feel at home. Gives us a sense of belonging. For example, sometime back a couple of my friends were traveling through Cambodia and Vietnam. They were sick of eating ‘exotic’ asian food and then they saw a McDonalds and they immediately felt ‘at home’. That’s how American we are.

You Know You Are a Nepali When.....

Ok, this is just for the kick of it. Thanks dipendra for sending it, i added some too. I waited for you to add some of yours, but I couldn't wait to post it(you can always add some). So here it goes...

- You look up when you hear an airplane.

- You point with your lips.

- Whenever you meet someone you ask, “bhaath khaayao? ("Have you had your food?" )

- You meet someone in a movie hall and ask, "cinema herna aayeko?” (Here to watch a movie?”)

- You call all action movies " action pack!!!!"

- You know the three Ds of partying. i.e - dance, drink and dangdung (fist/khukuri fight).

- You think all festivals mean relatives playing cards and getting drunk.

- You cannot drink without chicken chilly and momos.

- You think chilly chicken and momo are nepali food.

- You are crossing a one way street and you have to check both sides. (debre ani daine)

- You get annoyed when people think you are from Nepal.

- Your relatives give you money whenever you visit them. ( even when you are 40)

- You sing or atleast hum “Ghaam paani, ghaam paani…” everytime it drizzles while the sun’s still shining. ( even when you are 80)

- When you see a pair of slippers upside down (ulta chappal) you have to turn it around.

- You don't cut your nails at night. (Lest the devil take you and your family)

- You feel you haven’t eaten if you haven’t had Bhaath (rice).

- You are not allowed to hum or sing while eating.

- You laugh at everything on Nepali TV but you still watch it.

- You dont know that the buff you have been eating is actually short for buffalo.

- You have been dragged to a mandir on saraswati puja so that you will get good grades.

- You are afraid to step on any paper, or pen (You don't want to piss off Saraswati and flunk an exam).

- Your grandmum doesnt let you whistle at night.

- You can’t date someone if you are not in love.

- You Know who Humjayaga is.

- You watch Korean movie and try to act like you’re in one.

- You miss those mountains you used to see the moment you opened your eyes in the morning.

- You go out for lunch/ dinner/ whatever in a group and look at the menu for half an hour and order:
1. momo
2. chowmein
3. fried rice
4. chilly chicken

- You think of titaura and your saliva glands go wild!!

- You miss wai wai ,churpi and tituara almost any given day.

- You are good at drunk driving, especially if it's bad mountain roads.

- Your conversation with any Nepali you just met always ends up being an interview to unearth the degree of association with this person. (eh...Ghar ka?? gangtok? Tyeso bhaye timi xyz lai chinchhau??)
- 90% of the time you end up knowing someone who knows someone who knows the person.
- The remaining 10% of the time the person is your relative.

- You think cats are evil.

- You feel obligated to pay for everyone else when eating out with your friends.

- Your non-nepali friends in primary school earnestly asked you if you know karate and if you ate cockroaches for dinner.

- Your American friends ask you if you have climbed mount Everest.

- You probably haven't even seen mount Everest.

- Your favorite Hollywood actress used to be Phoebe Cates

- You pronounce Phoebe Cates as "fobee cyats"

- You love the pungent, fermented smell of pickled bamboo shoots (tama) and dried and aged vegetable leaves (gundruk) + you are drooling at the thought right now.

My Favourite Dialogues

Owing to overwhelming pressure from the ardent followers of this blog, I am compelled to write this post. Ah, wishful thinking!!! Ok, now that I’m done indulging myself, let me tell the real reason to write this post. Some days back a couple of my colleagues were discussing some film dialogue, and I knew this post was long due. So here goes my list of favourite dialogues, of course the ones that I remember at the moment. Some of them are not even spoken dialogues but voiceover, but what the heck! And please do add your favourite/s.


The Thin Red Line

(VO)What's this war in the heart of nature ?
Why does nature vie with itself?.
The land contend with the sea?
ls there an avenging power in nature?
Not one power, but two?

A very powerful opening shot which sets the tone of the film.


Adaptation

John Laroche: Point is, what's so wonderful is that every one of these flowers has a specific relationship with the insect that pollinates it. There's a certain orchid look exactly like a certain insect so the insect is drawn to this flower, its double, its soul mate, and wants nothing more than to make love to it. And after the insect flies off, spots another soul-mate flower and makes love to it, thus pollinating it. And neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of their lovemaking. I mean, how could they know that because of their little dance the world lives? But it does. By simply doing what they're designed to do, something large and magnificent happens. In this sense they show us how to live -- how the only barometer you have is your heart. How, when you spot your flower, you can't let anything get in your way.

So lucid, so beautiful. Charlie Kauffman is a genius of geniuses.


Taxi Driver

Travis Bickle: You talkin' to me?

One line which became part of modern pop culture. Travis Bickle. The most flawed superhero of all times, and Robert DeNiro, the boss, the god! The combination couldn’t have been any more smouldering.


Full Metal Jacket

Private Joker: A day without blood is like a day without sunshine.

Private Joker: I wanted to see exotic Vietnam... the crown jewel of Southeast Asia. I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture... and kill them. I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill!

Crazy Earl: These are great days we're living, bros. We are jolly green giants, walking the Earth with guns. These people we wasted here today are the finest human beings we will ever know. After we rotate back to the world, we're gonna miss not having anyone around that's worth shooting.

Each of the cold-blooded dialogues are a testament to the horror of the war. Each dialogue a smack on the face, a kick in the gut.


Maine Pyar Kiya

Jeevan: Ek ladka-ladki kabhi dost nahi hotey. yeh toh ek pardaa hai pardaa, kapkapaati raaton me, dhadakte huye dilon ki bhadakti hui aag ko bujhaneka, chhupaneka.

Long before he turned it into a mass movement, Ram Sene chief sat down in a dingy room and wrote those historic lines. A true lesson in Indian sanskaar, this.


Maachis

Kuldeep: Jab who namaaz padhti thi toh dil karta tha ki mussalman ban jaaun.

When you think you’ll heard and read every possible way to say I am in love, Gulzar goes ahead and writes something and you go, ‘wow’!


Waqt

Yeh bacchhon ke khelne ki cheez nahi, haath kat jaaye toh khoon nikal aata hai.

Long before I cared to notice that Raj Kumar was not exactly a great actor, I was floored by his style. Ok, it was a rub-off of my elder brother idolizing him, and I was only idolizing my elder brother by following his likes and dislikes. But Raj Kumar surely had style.


Trainspotting

Renton: So why did I do it? I could offer a million answers, all false. The truth is that I'm a bad person, but that's going to change, I'm going to change. This is the last of this sort of thing. I'm cleaning up and I'm moving on, going straight and choosing life. I'm looking forward to it already. I'm going to be just like you: the job, the family, the fucking big television, the washing machine, the car, the compact disc and electrical tin opener, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisurewear, luggage, three-piece suite, DIY, game shows, junk food, children, walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice of sweaters, family Christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption, clearing the gutters, getting by, looking ahead, to the day you die.


Andaaz Apna Apna

Gogo: Crime-Master Gogo naam hai mera. Aankhen Nikal ke Gotiyan Kheloonga, gotiyaan.

Juvenile and over-the-top it is, but I laugh my head off every time I watch this film and every time I hear this dialogue. And I do watch it every time it’s on TV.


Oldboy

Oh Dae-su: If you stand aimlessly at a phone booth on a rainy day, and meet a man whose face is covered by a violet umbrella, I'd suggest that you get close to the TV.

Without the context the dialogue might not seem as important, but it holds the key to the plot. It is almost funny but heartbreakingly so.


Gunda

Bulla: Mera naam hai Bulla, rakhta hoon main hamesha khulla!

You may not have heard of Kanti Shah and his contribution to Indian cinema. He is not your regular V. Shantaram, Gurudutt, Raj Kapoor or even Manmohan Desia, Farah Khan or Vishal Bhardwaj. He is not the ‘face’ of Indian cinema, but the smelly ass of it, which most of you hoity-toity people so snobbishly turn your nose up at. But Kanti Shah and his film are, without doubt pure genius, and Gunda his crowning jewel!! As mithun Da would say, “Koi Shaq”!!


As good as it gets

Melvin Udall: You make me want to be a better man.

I know it’s soppy. But rolling off Jack Nicholson’s caustic tongue, it’s something else.


Reservoir Dogs

Mr. Brown: Let me tell you what 'Like a Virgin' is about. It's all about a girl who digs a guy with a big dick. The entire song. It's a metaphor for big dicks.
Mr. Blonde: No, no. It's about a girl who is very vulnerable. She's been fucked over a few times. Then she meets some guy who's really sensitive...
Mr. Brown: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa... Time out Greenbay. Tell that fucking bullshit to the tourists.
Joe: Toby... Who the fuck is Toby? Toby...
Mr. Brown: 'Like a Virgin' is not about this sensitive girl who meets a nice fella. That's what "True Blue" is about, now, granted, no argument about that.
Mr. Orange: Which one is 'True Blue'? Nice Guy Eddie: 'True Blue' was a big ass hit for Madonna. I don't even follow this Tops In Pops shit, and I've at least heard of "True Blue".
Mr. Orange: Look, asshole, I didn't say I ain't heard of it. All I asked was how does it go? Excuse me for not being the world's biggest Madonna fan.
Mr. Blonde: Personally, I can do without her.
Mr. Blue: I like her early stuff. You know, 'Lucky Star', 'Borderline' - but once she got into her 'Papa Don't Preach' phase, I don't know, I tuned out.
Mr. Brown: Hey, you guys are making me lose my... train of thought here. I was saying something, what was it?
Joe: Oh, Toby was this Chinese girl, what was her last name?
Mr. White: What's that?
Joe: I found this old address book in a jacket I ain't worn in a coon's age. What was that name?
Mr. Brown: What the fuck was I talking about?
Mr. Pink: You said 'True Blue' was about a nice girl, a sensitive girl who meets a nice guy, and that 'Like a Virgin' was a metaphor for big dicks.
Mr. Brown: Lemme tell you what 'Like a Virgin' is about. It's all about this cooze who's a regular fuck machine, I'm talking morning, day, night, afternoon, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick.
Mr. Blue: How many dicks is that? Mr. White: A lot.
Mr. Brown: Then one day she meets this John Holmes motherfucker and it's like, whoa baby, I mean this cat is like Charles Bronson in the 'Great Escape', he's digging tunnels. Now, she's gettin' the serious dick action and she's feeling something she ain't felt since forever. Pain. Pain.
Joe: Chew? Toby Chew?
Mr. Brown: It hurts her. It shouldn't hurt her, you know, her pussy should be Bubble Yum by now, but when this cat fucks her it hurts. It hurts just like it did the first time. You see the pain is reminding a fuck machine what it once was like to be a virgin. Hence, 'Like a Virgin'.

Just a bunch of crooks rambling away to each other, but there’s so much more happening there in the conversation. A riveting scene from the master of long-winding dialogues.


Kill Bill Vol II

Bill: A staple of the superhero mythology is there's the superhero and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone. Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent....What Kent wears - the glasses, the business suit, that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He's weak, he's unsure of himself, he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race.

Another piece of classic Tarantino. The dialogue is self-explanatory, I needn’t add more.


Meghe Dhaka Tara(Cloud-capped star)

Neeta: Dada, ami baachte chai (Brother, I want to live)

Ok, I am a big sucker for melodrama. But I cannot imagine a single soul who will not be stirred by this scene and this dialogue. It is brilliantly portrayed and is disturbingly heartbreaking. You have to watch it to know what I am talking about. In a confirmation of the popularity of Meghe Dhaka Tara, a recent survey by a leading Indian news group reported that this concluding line of the film was the most well-known line of any film.


Agantuk(The Stranger)

Manmohan Mitra: Aami oder moton Bison aankte paarina( I cannot draw bison like them)

‘Them’ here refers to the people who drew animals in the ancient Altamira caves of Spain. Dialogues are often mirror to a character. And very rarely a director or writer’s work can capture a personality in just one sentence dialogue. Satyajit Ray was one man who could so wonderfully do it. In this one dialogue, he successfully captures the angst of a man who has seen it all, been there-done that, yet is aware how little it is compared to the genius of so called primitive cave-dwellers.