India Masala

Department: Mr Varma, please spare us the trauma

In my head, I always imagine Ram Gopal Varma, sitting in his office, legs up on the table, going through a checklist on the last day of a film shoot. Hyperactive camera angle – check. Lots of fake blood – check. Added some element of “Satya”, “Company” or “Sarkar” to the film – check. Leading ladies showing off cleavage – check.

How else do you explain a film like “Department”? That someone (Varma) thought they could make a film with such tacky production values, a convoluted and weak script, and some scenes that could be straight out of a soft-porn flick, and still convince a major studio to fund it and market it as a A-grade movie, is baffling.

The film is about two police officers (Sanjay Dutt and Rana Daggubati), who are asked to to set up a hit squad in order to “finish” the Mumbai underworld. Their target is the eccentric Savatiya (Vijay Raaz) and his gang.

Savatiya is also under attack from two of his own gang members — DK (Abhimanyu Singh) and his girlfriend (played by Madhu Shalini) — both of whom want Savatiya to retaliate against the police.

When powerful local politician Sarjerao Gaekwad (Amitabh Bachchan) enters the equation, both Shivnarayan (Daggubati) and Mahadev (Dutt) realise that things aren’t what they seem.

Varma uses liberal doses of plot lines from earlier films like “Sarkar” and “Satya”, but re-hashes them to such an extent that you might be forgiven for thinking “Department” is a spoof. He uses his trademark camera angles and ear-splitting background noise to create drama, but ends up making it caricaturish. There are times when you can see the film from the point of view of a tea pot, a newspaper and even the striker on the carrom board.

Given the look and feel of the film, you’d think the director had sleepwalked through the schedule. Characters, especially those of DK and his girlfriend are so over-the-top that they are more funny than scary, and except for Amitabh Bachchan, who seems to know what he’s doing, the rest of the cast resemble a deer caught in the headlights. At some point during the second half, you lose all sense of the plot, the characters’s motives and where the film is headed.

Not A Love Story: Compelling tale, amateurish film-making

If you didn’t know better, you would almost think Ram Gopal Varma made “Not A Love Story” just so he could give his audience motion sickness. Crazy camera angles that peer into everything from the leading lady’s skirt to hidden corners of a house dominate this film and that is what stays with you, even after you leave the theatre.

Varma draws inspiration from the sensational murder case of Neeraj Grover, a television executive who was murdered by aspiring actress Maria Susairaj and her then fiancé Emile Jerome. He even shoots in the same building where Grover was killed and makes only cosmetic changes to the actual story.

Mahie Gill plays Anusha Chawla, a small-town girl who moves to Mumbai to become an actress, much to the distress of her possessive boyfriend Robin (Deepak Dobriyal). When she is offered a film role by studio executive Ashish (Ajay Gehi), the two become close and when Robin lands up in Mumbai to surprise her, he is shocked to find Ashish in her flat. In a fit of rage, he stabs him.

To his credit, Varma doesn’t stretch the story. If anything, he deals with events quickly. There are crazy camera angles and an ear-splitting background score, both of which do more harm to the story than good.

With a running time of less than two hours, “Not a Love Story” moves quickly from one scene to the next but Varma does manage to convey some themes — the passion between Anusha and Robin being a prominent one.

If only Varma hadn’t gone ballistic in terms of his cinematography and background score, keeping things quiet and subtle, this would have been twice the film it is now.

The story itself is so compelling — a crime of passion, the love story of two people so passionately in love, it defies logic and the clinical way in which the two hack the body into pieces and dispose of it — but Varma doesn’t always do it justice. The second half could have been the saving grace of the film, but Varma spoils that with over-the-top courtroom scenes.

Rakht Charitra: Bloody tale

At the outset, I have to confess that I didn’t watch a lot of Ram Gopal Varma’s “Rakht Charitra”. Most of the scenes have so much blood and gore and what can only be described as disgusting methods of killing a human being that you are forced to avert your eyes.

The film, based on the true story of Andhra politician Paritala Ravi, is less of a portrait of his time and life, and more of a gory chronicle of the bloody revenge saga he and his rivals are engaged in.

Vivek Oberoi plays Prakash Ravi, the son of a local politician who is killed by his one-time mentor. Determined to take revenge when his elder brother is also killed, he transforms from college student to fugitive, hiding in the jungles and surfacing only to eliminate his father’s killers.

The film traces his journey from a murderer to political leader, a minister in the cabinet with a swanky house of his own, a far cry from his makeshift shelter in the jungles.

What Varma doesn’t do, however, is give us a glimpse into the minds of his characters, whether it is Ravi or his rival Bukka Reddy (Abhimanyu Singh who plays a despotic killer to the hilt).

Instead, he chronicles every murder they commit, whether it is with a sickle, a gun, a handpump and several other weapons I cannot even begin to describe here.

We get that the politics of the region is bloody, but exactly why it is like that, Varma doesn’t tell us. With the result you are left cringing at the amount of fake blood that must have been used during the making of the “Rakht Charitra”.

Phoonk 2: Hardly scary

I hate watching horror films. I am easily scared and even the most innocuous sounds or predictable of horror scenes make me flinch.

Milind Gadagkar’s sequel to “Phoonk”, imaginatively titled “Phoonk 2″, is however less about the thrills and chills and more about unnecessarily loud background music, badly made- up ghosts and an inane storyline that has no beginning and no end.

The film takes off a couple of years where the first film ended, with Rajeev (Sudeep) and Aarti (Amruta Khanvilkar) move to another house in a remote area, surrounded by forests and sinister looking dolls who emit weird sounds.

They soon discover that the ghost of Madhu, the villain who was killed in the first film, is out to get them. After some anti-climactic scenes, like the one where a little girl is shown staring at a wall, only for the viewer to realise the thing scaring her is a lizard — and one that doesn’t even look real.

It is left to Rajeev to save his family from the ghost and her evil machinations, but not before she kills a bunch of characters and tries to harm the whole family.

Gadagkar makes the story very, very predictable and there is hardly any element of mystery or surprise left in the second half, when it is most needed. It is almost as if he gave up on the film halfway.

The ending is so ridiculous you don’t know whether to be happy the movie has ended or you should wait for someone to tell you the solution to the problem presented in the film.

Festivities on celluloid

It is difficult to live in Mumbai and not get a whiff of the Ganesha celebrations on in the city.

In fact, if you live in India, it is difficult to be in any city this time of the year and escape the festive air that pervades everything.

Suddenly everything gets a Ganesha/Durga Pooja/Onam flavour, including work. And since my work pertains to the magical world of movies, this time of the year gets me thinking of both things — festivals on celluloid.

Who can forget the iconic climax in Ram Gopal Varma’s “Satya”, as the camera snaked through the crowds of Ganesha immersion, or Sunil Dutt walking with the crowds in “Dard Ka Rishta” with a Ganesha idol in his hands?

Agyaat: You really don’t want to know

Right at the end of Ram Gopal Varma’s “Agyaat”, there comes a moment that scared me more than any scene in the film. As the credits rolled, it said “Agyaat 2, Coming Soon.”

As if it wasn’t enough that I had to bear the ordeal that is “Agyaat”, I would now, at a later date, have to endure a sequel. Yes, this two-hour comedy badly disguised as a horror film is not worthy of a second look, let alone a sequel.

The film starts off in the way no horror film should — with an item song. Then we move on to a group of characters including an arrogant film star, an eccentric director and an annoying producer, all of whom are proceeding to a jungle on a film shoot.

There, they are killed off one by one by an unknown entity, which none of them can see. In between there are meaningless dialogues, weird sounds and a lot of close-ups of leaves and trees (don’t ask why).

The characters themselves might as well be a part of the woodwork, for all the expressions they show. You feel nothing for these people, wishing that whatever it is that’s killing them would do it faster so you can get up from your seat and go.

Throughout, I couldn’t help but think of Ram Gopal Varma, who gave us films like “Raat”, “Kaun” and “Bhoot”. This one looks slightly better than a submission by a film school student. You feel as if the director himself couldn’t care less what happens to these characters, and you can’t make a film with indifference.

There is hardly any direction, no chills, the camera work is shoddy and there is no attempt to even create any tension in the minds of the audience.

Jana Gana Mana ‘Rann’: new-age anthem?

Nearly 60 years after Rabindranath Tagore’s composition was adopted as India’s national anthem, filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma’s interpretation of it is raising conservative eyebrows.

Varma uses the tune of ‘Jana Gana Mana’ and adds to the lyrics, making it a full-fledged song for his film about India’s media industry — “Rann”.

The 47-year-old filmmaker has maintained he meant no disrespect but only wanted to use the anthem as a vehicle to “draw attention” to the country’s problems.

“For any right-thinking person, I do not believe that he can take offence to the way it’s been done and in what context it’s been shown,” Varma said at a news conference during the unveiling of “Rann” in New Delhi.

Unfortunately for Varma, his adaptation of “Jana Gana Mana” has proved to be more controversial than the film itself. The Censor Board refused certification to the song promo on grounds of it violating the National Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act 1950. And the song is no longer being aired on television.

But that hasn’t stopped curious netizens from checking it out on video-sharing web site YouTube.

“The National anthem is not meant to be Remixed. End of Discussion,” YouTube user ‘orionrage’ wrote in response.

Like horror films? Here’s how you can win some cash

Way back when I was in college, a friend challenged me to watch “The Exorcist” all alone at home, after midnight, in exchange for a thousand rupees.

Of course, being the coward that I am (when it comes to horror films), I declined the offer. Being richer by one thousand rupees wasn’t worth putting myself through such an ordeal.

Looking back though, maybe I should have said yes. That kind of bravery could have won me a cool 500,000 rupees today.

Yes, that’s the amount producers of the upcoming horror flick “Phoonk” are offering viewers if they can watch the film all alone in a theatre.

A lucky few will be shortlisted through a contest that kicks off next week. They will then watch the Ram Gopal Varma film in a darkened hall, with only the empty seats for company.

To win, contestants will have to sit through the entire film (roughly 180 minutes in duration) without bolting in terror through the exit doors.

“We’ve got such a great response to our website (http://www.phoonk.in/) that we decided to turn this into a contest,” says Neeraj Joshi, head of the marketing and promotions department of One More Thought productions, which is producing ‘Phoonk’.