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All articles by Srikanth Srinivasan
09 April 2009
There are a few directors whose films I can never say no to. More Jarmusch? Yes please. More Herzog? You bet. More Kubrick? Is there even a question? Abbas Kiarostami clearly belongs to this pantheon. Trust Kiarostami to come up with something completely new and radically profound. In what may be his greatest work to date, Homework (1989), he pulls off something that world directors have been...
11 March 2009
German master Werner Herzog has made more than 50 feature films and he is as intriguing as ever. His films, though he has requested people not to read too much into them, have made us raise so many questions about the world we live in. His first feature film Signs Of Life (1967) holds as many questions for us as does his recent Oscar nominated documentary Encounters At The End Of The World. Signs...
08 February 2009
Austria is presently the defending champion of the Best Foreign film Oscar following its dream run last year with The Counterfeiters. However, the inclusion of its contender this year, Götz Spielmann’s Revanche, has come as quite a big surprise. With the film pipping heavy-weight contenders like Italy’s Gomorra (2008) and Romania’s Rest is Silence (2008) , it does make me inquisitive as to why...
31 January 2009
Unquestionably, Kiarostami’s films are unlike any film ever seen, leave alone Iranian ones. But one film that is extreme and decidedly avant-garde even by Kiarostami’s standards – Five: Five long takes dedicated to Yasujiro Ozu (2003) – has turned out to be one of his finest works. In what can be described as a super-slow version of Koyaanisqatsi (1982), Kiarostami presents us five shots of...
23 January 2009
We always have that “one foreign film” to top it all, don’t we? Continuing the tradition of extraordinary films like The Lives of Others (2006), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), this year we have an Israeli flick Waltz with Bashir. Already a winner of the Golden Globe for the best foreign film of the year, the film is all set to make it big at the Academy Awards late next month. Director...
11 January 2009
What other arts have been doing for decades – reflecting on the medium themselves rather than the content they carry – cinema has started picking up. Not many films have sought to break off from the narrative seriousness to come out and ponder on the nature of cinema itself. The names of Godard and Kiarostami clearly stand out in this context. But one quiet little film that Jafar Panahi made...
28 December 2008
Shakespeare’s plays have become an endless pool of resource for the filmmakers of the world. Their universality of themes and emotions has intrigued a range of directors and has prompted so many adaptations and retellings. One of them, King Lear, distinctly stands out. Romeo and Juliet may have become one for the classrooms and Macbeth may still be classified as a terrifying legend, but King Lear...
16 December 2008
“Society, you’re a crazy breed” croons Eddie Vedder. At a time when the country was deemed unfit for old men and there was too much blood flowing around, one man sought to break away from it all, literally – Sean Penn, or rather Christopher McCandless. Adapted from Jon Krakauer’s book on McCandless’ journey of the same name, Into the Wild is the definite heir to the throne of Easy Rider (...
19 November 2008
The prolific career of German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder has been marked by decidedly minimal and vital films that have almost single-handedly defined German cinema during that period, with no credits taken away from Schlöndorff and Herzog. His mastery over the melodrama genre and understanding of the medium have consistently placed him at par with world cinema giants. But Berlin...
13 November 2008
Vanaja (2006) is a quiet little film that has conquered its own domain, won its own set of hearts with its sheer brilliance in thematic and visual execution and perhaps gained an entry to the list of best films of that year. Mamatha Bhukya’s stellar performance elevates the film to extraordinary levels and it is evident that she can teach any so-called-veteran mainstream actresses a thing or two...
07 November 2008
The official entries for the Academy Award have been made and as many as 67 countries are vying for the coveted award this year and the Italian entry is already making waves and being termed as one of the best crime dramas from the country. With the Academy’s policy towards violent and brutal films drastically changing, Gomorra may well cruise through to the last five and one can be sure that the...
03 November 2008
Every now and then, when people start saying “Indie is dead”, there comes a filmmaker, who contradicts them and redefines the course of cinema – both mainstream and parallel. John Cassavetes had ridiculed the American mainstream cinema and its incessant thriving on extravagance with his Shadows (1959). Cut to the 1980’s when gangsters were ruling Hollywood. Enter Jim Jarmusch with the short film...
22 October 2008
American underground cinema has undoubtedly been boosted by the arrival of John Cassavetes whose freedom and fluidity of characters and their emotions felt as a lease of oxygen in a studio driven defunct industry. However, not everyone has able to accept his works with arms wide open. It seems as though the whole of Cassavetes film can be summed up in the term – self-indulgence. What is self...
06 October 2008
What is more surprising than the fact that Ray’s films are universally accepted with open arms and considered timeless is the fact that a large part of the west is able to relate only to Satyajit Ray whenever cinema of India is discussed. Similar to how Satyajit Ray’s phenomenal body of work eclipses all other commendable efforts from the country, his own Apu trilogy overwhelms his other worthy...
30 September 2008
There are not many films that urge the audience to get involved and direct the course of the film. The audience is made into puppets whose emotions are controlled by the strings attached to the director’s whims. Koyaanisqatsi takes the meaning of independent viewing to a whole new level, with the film achieving form as decided by the viewers. Hence the film becomes a unique experience for each...
20 September 2008
Since the death of Andrei Tarkovsky, the search has been on for the heir to the throne he left behind. Many believed that his fellow countryman Alexander Sokurov would be the chosen one. Indeed, his films like Mother and Son (1997) and Russian Ark (2002), that disregarded montage in the same way as the Russian master, strike an immediate chord with viewers familiar with Tarkovsky’s works. But in...
15 September 2008
Krzysztof Kieslowski’s films often deal with the themes of fate, coincidences and choices. The phenomenal Decalogue teased us with the possibilities of seemingly disparate lives being connected. Equally staggering Three Colours trilogy completed a full circle and testified Kieslowski’s theory. But almost a decade before the trilogy, Kieslowski had made Przypadek that had already embraced the...
09 September 2008
Andrei Tarkovsky’s whole new percept of cinema helped discovering newer boundaries to the medium and aided the formation of some of the greatest directors of the future. Though Andrei Tarkovsky’s canon consisted of only seven features, three student films, one documentary and a couple of stage plays and there were more unrealized projects than filmed ones, each of the ideas that were completed...
31 August 2008
Andrei Tarkovsky’s whole new percept of cinema helped discovering newer boundaries to the medium and aided the formation of some of the greatest directors of the future. Undoubtedly, Tarkovsky is one the immovable pillars in the palace of the seventh art. Tarkovsky’s features are often condemned to be inaccessible and too cerebral. In fact, it is Tarkovsky’s films that expect the users to eschew...
24 August 2008
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's classic tale of murder, remorse and redemption set in the modern city of St. Petersburg follows the crime of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov and its consequences that haunt him to near insanity. What separates Dostoyevsky’s work from others is his ability to reproduce human psyche as it is and not cover it up with any kind of pretense. Aging almost 150 years, this fantastic...
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