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All articles by Dimple Punjabi
22 August 2011
The wild at heart frequently take the path to self-destruction. They are vulnerable to their great elations. Their intense natural desire to break free, explore, and conquer often makes them face their own mortality. These individuals are the heroic failures, the foolish idealists, the ruined champions of humankind. Werner Herzog’s spellbinding documentary, Grizzly Man, shows the life and work of...
23 August 2009
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The epigraph of Things Fall Apart quotes the above four lines from Yeats’ poem. While the original lines of Yeats’ poem continue with blasphemous details of his own era – full with angst for what seems like the end of Christianity, Achebe’...
05 May 2009
Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore could be called a retelling of the Oedipus myth, but not essentially so; Yes, there is an ominous father; Yes there is a troubled teenage boy, and, yes there is also that dreadfully threatening fear of the future. But there’s more. Much more.
The novel begins with a fifteen year old boy backpacking and embarking on an obscure journey to search for his mother....
07 April 2009
It’s a daunting task to explain a personal book. How could one explain something that resembles a journal more than it does a typical piece of fiction? The biggest challenge lies in capturing every emotion, word or thought in entirety that resonates with one as (s)he reads along, and conveying it with all its essence to the reader. A word of advice, though – If the reader of this piece is going...
21 February 2009
Flight of the Red Balloon is Hou Hsiao Hsien’s 2008 tribute to Albert Limorisse’s thirty four minute short The Red Balloon, the legendary film about the adventures of a little boy who was magically trailed by a willful red balloon through the old-fashioned streets of Paris. This too is about a wondrous red balloon that follows a little boy through his footprints in Paris, but unlike its...
25 December 2008
The year was 1984, when following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the anti Sikh riots were started in the capital of the Indian country. Twenty three years after the massacre, Shonali Bose’s critically acclaimed film Amu, was released to retell the ghastly story of the Sikh community. The “engineered” carnage, that the bureaucracy, the authorities, the dignitaries, the politicians, the police...
12 December 2008
The third installment of Deepa Mehta’s Trilogy, after Fire and Earth, was her conflict ridden film Water. The film begins with an absurd belief quoted from the Sacred Hindu Texts – “A widow should be long suffering until death, self restrained and chaste. A virtuous wife, who remains chaste when her husband has died, goes to heaven. A woman who is unfaithful to her husband is reborn in the womb...
07 December 2008
Sixty three years post India’s independence, what has happened to the instructions of the father of the Indian country? India is the world’s largest democracy, what is it that we pride ourselves on? Where are the ideals of Gandhi today? - You already know the answer to that. These are some questions that Lalit Vachani documents in his film “In Search of Gandhi” - A film that attempts to trace the...
24 November 2008
Warning: Spoilers Ahead!
Love is rarely worthy of a chronicle if it is not cheeky, blasphemous, unexpected, life-altering, I wrote in my review of Memories of my melancholy whores. I guess I should have reserved that judgment, for it probably holds more true for a book that is far more engaging, stirring, and famous, (or notorious, depending on which school of psychology you subscribe to). A book...
12 October 2008
An oddly lovable film about a subject as somber as transexuality, Alain Berliner’s Ma Vie En Rose (My Life in Pink) is an engrossing fairy tale like movie about Ludovic , (Georges DuFresne ) a seven year old delectable boy, who wishes to swap from the blue for boy, to the pink for princess way of life. A gleaming casket of first-rate performances, picture-perfect cinematography and realistic...
22 September 2008
For hot blooded youth, lack of a sense of identity and respect stokes the dormant fire raging within, leading to an explosion that reverberates for years before it dies down. And before it does, it consumes thousand others in internecine conflicts of revenge, hatred and isolation. Places like West Bank (Israel-Palestine), and Kashmir are breeding grounds for such disgruntled youth, who,...
02 September 2008
"Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom...” Sudhir Mishra in his 2005 film Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi, stepped in to boldly and magnanimously challenge Nehru's noble proclamation. If Nehru...
28 August 2008
Lebanon director Labaki’s first appearance film Caramel is a sticky-sweet serving of women who work in and wander around a quaintly colorful beauty salon, set in the capital of the Lebanon Republic. The dazzling debut director (who plays the role of Layale, the salon owner herself) shows an appetizing mishmash of women who tread along and seek for themselves in their subtle ways, a life of...
21 August 2008
A struggling quadriplegic fights for the right to a dignified death for three agonizingly continuous decades, wrestling fearlessly despite his benumbed body for a freedom that eliminates life. The Sea Inside is director Alejandro Amenábar’s powerful 2004 Oscar winning film, Based on a true life story of Ramon Sampedro, a traveling sailor who was paralyzed neck down after a deathlike accident... A...
06 August 2008
An autobiographical inspiration of the 1940’s famous actor Hansa Wadkar who joined the pompous film industry in order to support her on the breadline family, the film goes to show an adapted form of the same as Usha, stunningly played by Smita Patil who takes on solely, the survival of her financially trodden family, after Keshav (Amol Palekar) the family supporting intruder ( who is later her...
13 June 2008
Choker Bali meaning Grain of Sand, Tagore’s marvelous work is the quintessence of love and everything that is wrapped around its intricate enfold. Simple love, tempestuous desire, impatient longing, and agitating seduction are only some of the strokes that Tagore’s masterly brush paints within this brilliant book, within our tender hearts.
The protagonist of the story is Binodhini - (my most...
05 June 2008
They meet at random public places, make sweet and striking conversations, keep you gripped and thinking (all in half an hour) and go back- with each of them and each of us, feeling more free and resolved than before.
Gowri Ramanaryan’s Water Lilies is an inspiration of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies (which is a compilation of around 250 of his oil paintings depicting Monet’s extravagant art) and...