When news broke out that Christopher Nolan was making a sci-fi movie based on space travel called Interstellar, I was eager to see how Nolan handles the grand canvas of the universe with his creative prowess. After watching the movie I am happy that it had all the essential Nolan ingredients - an audacious and improbable core, cerebral screenplay, witty dialogues, mesmerizing visuals and all connected using an emotional chord. But as a science enthusiast, the most heartening thing for me was to watch a lot of real world science littered all through the movie and the clever manner in which Nolan had exploited them for his screenplay. Right from Newtonian mechanics to Einstein's relativity to the Theory of Everything, the movie was a rollicking journey through science. Though there were some outrageuous speculative science towards the end, well thats the creative liberty provided by movie making. Now lets take a look at some of the real world science that was dealt in the movie.
Rocket Propulsion
Just before entering the black hole the AI robot TARS soberly utters, "Newton's Third Law : Can't get anywhere without leaving something behind." It is not only a witty comment that captures the emotional mood of the scene, but also suggests the physics underlying rocket propulsion. A rocket engine is similar to the internal combustion engine in cars, wherein fuel is ignited at high temperatures in a combustion chamber (Rockets carry their own oxidizer in the combustion chamber as the outer space is almost vacuum). In a car engine the combustion energy is used to drive a piston which in turn powers the vehicle. But in rockets the high pressure exhaust produced due to the combustion is accelerated to supersonic speeds using a convergent-divergent nozzle (remember Bernoulli's principle) before being ejected out. According to Newton's Second Law, this acceleration implies a net force acting on the exhaust and the reaction force to this is what provides the thrust that propels the rocket upwards.
Weightlessness
When the Endurance crew is launched into space, they start floating the moment they enter into orbit. Those who have seen videos or pictures of astronauts aboard ISS (International Space Station) would have noted that they too float. This is wrongly attributed to the absence of gravity and hence referred to as 'zero gravity'. But ISS orbits the earth at a height of 400km where the gravity is only marginally lesser than that on earth's surface. So why do astronauts aboard an orbiting spacecraft float or experience weightlessness ? To understand this lets consider a scenario back on earth where you are inside a lift in the tenth floor of a building. Now if you wanted to reach the first floor, the lift will start from rest and accelerate at some rate 'a' until it reaches the first floor. Lets assume that you were floating during this entire downward journey. This means you would have been accelerating at a rate 'g' which is the acceleration due to earth's gravity. Now if g > a then you would have hit the bottom of the lift and if g < a you would have hit the top of the lift and there is no way you could be floating. So if you had to be floating then both yourselves and the lift should be accelerating at the same rate. This can happen under some extraordinary circumstances when the lift cable snaps and both you and the lift are hurtling down at the same rate 'g'. Similarly when a satellite or spacecraft is in orbit around a celestial body (like the earth), the only force acting on it is the gravitational pull of the celestial body. And that explains the floating astronauts on orbiting vessels.
Artificial gravity
Immediately after they enter orbit, Cooper initiates a spin sequence for the spacecraft which induces some sort of artificial gravity that grounds the floating astronauts. What causes this artifical gravity? When the spacecraft starts spinning there is a centrifugal force that provides a downward force keeping the astronauts grounded. This is similar to the outward force that we experience when making a sharp bend while driving in hill stations or while riding the merry-go-round.
Black hole
One of the central characters (literally!) in the movie is a black hole called Gargantuan. Black holes are formed when white dwarf stars with mass exceeding the 'Chandrashekar Limit' have exhausted the nuclear fuel at their core. During the normal life of a star, there is a tug of war between its own gravity pulling it in and the energy produced by the nuclear reaction at the core which is pushing it out. But with time as the nuclear fuel gets exhausted, the star collapses under its own gravitational pull forming black holes . Black holes have so much of mass compressed into a very small volume that they exert an incredible gravitational pull in its vicinity. There is a region surrounding the black hole called 'event horizon' in which the gravitational pull is so enormous that even light cannot escape. And that is one of the reason that black holes are yet to be physically observed, though it is predicted that there is a super massive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy.
Theory of Relativity
After dealing with time in a non-linear fashion in Memento, Nolan explores the concept of time dilation in this movie. When Romilly says that spending one hour on Miller's planet is equal to seven years back on earth, it sounds bewildering but is actually based on the works on one brilliant German physicist who goes by the name of Albert Einstein. Between 1905 and 1916 Einstein proposed two theories that shook our notion of space and time. The first among this was the Special Theory of Relativity which dealt a blow to the notion that time is absolute. According to this theory the flow of time is different for people who are travelling at constant velocities but in relative motion. More specifically, time runs slower for those moving at a relatively higher speed. Thats why Cooper says to his young daughter that he might be the same age as her when he returns as he might be travelling at the speed of light. The second theory is called General Theory of Relativity which deals with effect of gravity on space and time. When Newton proposed the laws of universal gravitation, it was a monumental scientific achievement because it was the first time the physical world was described in the language of mathematics. Though the law had been verified to a very high degree of accuracy, Einstein was uncomfortable with certain aspects of it and hence proposed the General Theory of Relativity. One of the key predictions of this theory which is relevant to the movie is that time runs slower in a stronger gravitational field and vice-versa. And that explains why time runs so slow on Miller's planet which is near to the black hole that exerts a strong gravitational field. (The Special theory of relativity and General Theory of Relativity aren't just theoretical predictions but have real world applications. The clocks in GPS satellites run slower than that on earth as these satellites orbit the earth at very high speeds of 14,000 km/hr. Also since they orbit the earth at heights of 20,000km, they run further slower as the earth's gravitational field is lower compared to that on surface of earth. These effects have been taken into consideration when designing the GPS satellites.)
Tidal force
When the Endurance crew land on Miller's planet, they encounter tides which are the size of mountains. These monster tides weren't randomly placed there to give a kick to the screenplay, but were caused due to the large tidal force exerted by the enormous gravitational pull of Gargantuan. It is similar to the tides caused in the earth's water surface by the moon's gravity.
Grand Unified Theory
The holy grail of theoretical physics currently is the formulation of a theory which unifies all the four fundamental forces of nature - strong force (present inside the nucleus of an atom holding together the protons), weak force (responsible for radioactive decay), electromagnetic force and gravitational force. The biggest hurdle towards this grand unification is the incompatibility between General Theory of Relativity and Quantum mechanics. General theory of relativity works well at the large scale like stars, galaxies et.al. whereas Quantum mechanics works well at the atomic scale. In our day to day life we never encounter massive objects at the microscopic level and so this discontinuity in the laws of nature is not a problem. But at the centre of the black hole there is a huge mass that has been compressed to the atomic scale and hence it is essential that the two theories reconcile with each other. So I presume that is the quantum data that Cooper transmits to his daughter which she uses to solve the gravity conundrum.
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Two of a kind
To be honest I was more scared than thrilled at the prospect of watching Paradesi given the pedigree of its director. Bala is the master of pathos, whose films have a heart-wrenching portrayal of the not-so-ordinary people of the society. If Sethu dealt with the transformation of a college student into a mentally retarded person, then Nandha was about a protagonist who gets killed by his mother. If Pithamagan revolved around a grave digger, then Nan Kadavul dealt with the lives of Aghoris and the travails of beggars. I enjoyed (though with a heavy heart) his first three creations, but Nan Kadavul didn't impress me and hence skipped his penultimate offering Avan Ivan. So here I was re-entering the world of Bala after a break of one movie and hence all the trepidation. You might ask why force myself to do something when I am not so comfortable doing it. That's because deep down I have lot of respect for Bala, who has the rare ability to create unconventional characters that get completely assimilated into the narrative without disrupting its flow. And added to it there were all the rave reviews floating on the internet.
The milieu is a rural village in Madras Presidency during the British Raj. The first half is focused on establishing the lead characters and providing a glimpse into the social dynamics of the village. There is the protagonist Rasa raised by his harsh yet doting grandmother, whose sole purpose of existence is to fill the stomach. Then there is his uncle who is always drunk and seems to have lost count of the women he had impregnated. And we have Angamma, an effervescent village damsel who engages in lighthearted banter with Rasa. A major highlight of the first half is the marriage sequence which brings to the fore the interplay between different characters. There is also the sidetrack on the booming romance between the Rasa and Angamma. And just when you were on the verge of forgetting this is a Bala movie, there comes the first reminder in the form of the 'Kangani' (slave recruiter). From then on it is a one way descent into agony and suffering.
The Kangani on the pretext of providing better wages along with food and shelter, convinces the villagers to work in the tea plantations owned by the British. But once they reach there, they realize they have been duped into working in absymal conditions and there is no way out of this hell. Right from the British to their fellow countrymen, they are betrayed and exploited till they give up and surrender to the futility of the situation. You can't help but wonder if there is any other species on this earth which so shamelessly exploits members of its own kind just for its own betterment. Kudos to Bala for exploring a relatively unknown dark episode of our own country in such a gritty and poigant manner without any commercial compromises. And he is ably supported by his cinematographer and music director who capture the mood through their sepia visuals and melancholic sounds.
But when you are watching such movies where the innocent are just free-falling into more and more suffering, the viewer becomes disillusioned and gets submerged in a sea of grief. So for all those distraught souls who want to indulge in some vicarious pleasure of good bashing the evil, I would suggest watching the English movie 'Django Unchained' directed by Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino is a maverick genius known for his unconventional but highly gripping narratives, which have complete disregard for both history and geography. In Django, he choses a theme very similar to that of Paradesi, the era of black slavery and racism in the United States of America. But in his own inimitable style, he uses slavery as a running leitmotif and unleashes an improbable chain of events through some strange concoction of characters.
The movie begins with a German bounty hunter releasing a black slave from his white masters and together they indulge in bounty hunting, with the final goal of freeing the black man's wife from a notorious white plantation owner. True to its intended Western Spaghetti style, we see the protagonists riding on horses with cowboy hats, drawing guns at the speed of light and shooting anything that is white and mean. Then there are the Tarantino regulars like the insane shootouts where blood becomes spray-paint and internal organs get splattered all around. Amidst all this there are the occasional glimpses of racial segregation and the inhuman treatment meted out to the blacks, which have striking similarities to scenes in Paradesi.
The movie becomes more engaging when the protagonists meet the plantation owner to rescue the black man's wife from him. From then on there is a palpable tension in the air as to how the events will turn out to be. The sequence at the dinner table in particular keeps you at the edge of the seat and it is made all the more gripping due to the stellar cast of Leonardo DiCaprio, Christopher Waltz and Samuel L.Jackson. And the roller coaster ride comes to an end with an incendiary climax, that is befitting of the outlandish yet enjoyable narrative that preceded it. So for those feeling very heavy after having Paradesi as a main course, you can try a light dessert named Django Unchained.
The milieu is a rural village in Madras Presidency during the British Raj. The first half is focused on establishing the lead characters and providing a glimpse into the social dynamics of the village. There is the protagonist Rasa raised by his harsh yet doting grandmother, whose sole purpose of existence is to fill the stomach. Then there is his uncle who is always drunk and seems to have lost count of the women he had impregnated. And we have Angamma, an effervescent village damsel who engages in lighthearted banter with Rasa. A major highlight of the first half is the marriage sequence which brings to the fore the interplay between different characters. There is also the sidetrack on the booming romance between the Rasa and Angamma. And just when you were on the verge of forgetting this is a Bala movie, there comes the first reminder in the form of the 'Kangani' (slave recruiter). From then on it is a one way descent into agony and suffering.
The Kangani on the pretext of providing better wages along with food and shelter, convinces the villagers to work in the tea plantations owned by the British. But once they reach there, they realize they have been duped into working in absymal conditions and there is no way out of this hell. Right from the British to their fellow countrymen, they are betrayed and exploited till they give up and surrender to the futility of the situation. You can't help but wonder if there is any other species on this earth which so shamelessly exploits members of its own kind just for its own betterment. Kudos to Bala for exploring a relatively unknown dark episode of our own country in such a gritty and poigant manner without any commercial compromises. And he is ably supported by his cinematographer and music director who capture the mood through their sepia visuals and melancholic sounds.
But when you are watching such movies where the innocent are just free-falling into more and more suffering, the viewer becomes disillusioned and gets submerged in a sea of grief. So for all those distraught souls who want to indulge in some vicarious pleasure of good bashing the evil, I would suggest watching the English movie 'Django Unchained' directed by Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino is a maverick genius known for his unconventional but highly gripping narratives, which have complete disregard for both history and geography. In Django, he choses a theme very similar to that of Paradesi, the era of black slavery and racism in the United States of America. But in his own inimitable style, he uses slavery as a running leitmotif and unleashes an improbable chain of events through some strange concoction of characters.
The movie begins with a German bounty hunter releasing a black slave from his white masters and together they indulge in bounty hunting, with the final goal of freeing the black man's wife from a notorious white plantation owner. True to its intended Western Spaghetti style, we see the protagonists riding on horses with cowboy hats, drawing guns at the speed of light and shooting anything that is white and mean. Then there are the Tarantino regulars like the insane shootouts where blood becomes spray-paint and internal organs get splattered all around. Amidst all this there are the occasional glimpses of racial segregation and the inhuman treatment meted out to the blacks, which have striking similarities to scenes in Paradesi.
The movie becomes more engaging when the protagonists meet the plantation owner to rescue the black man's wife from him. From then on there is a palpable tension in the air as to how the events will turn out to be. The sequence at the dinner table in particular keeps you at the edge of the seat and it is made all the more gripping due to the stellar cast of Leonardo DiCaprio, Christopher Waltz and Samuel L.Jackson. And the roller coaster ride comes to an end with an incendiary climax, that is befitting of the outlandish yet enjoyable narrative that preceded it. So for those feeling very heavy after having Paradesi as a main course, you can try a light dessert named Django Unchained.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
The rise and rise of Nolanism
What do you call a movie that has no story, no screenplay, one chest barring hero, two half clad heroines and a few shabby villains? Most of the Indian movies. What do you call a movie that has a jobless dude and a dumb dudette chasing each other's arse and paining ours too ? The remaining Indian movies. Now, what do you call a movie that is very poignant, stimulates the grey cells of even an analog engineer :) and creates a cult following. If you aren't able to guess, then try this clue - It generally has Christian Bale in the lead. Yeah a Nolan masterpiece what else! To me a Nolan movie is like a mind-blowing Ph.D
dissertation - an unbelievable premise brilliantly explained in a
complex manner. The 'beyond belief themes' sow the seeds for the rich
harvest. If it was teleportation machine in The Prestige, it was dream machine in Inception. And in Memento it was short term memory loss - Nolan's
greatest contribution to Indian cinema. He then weaves a complex
screenplay surrounding this theme. Its so complex that a simple
distraction by that niggling couple sitting next to you means you need
to skip this show and catch the next show! And in the end he skillfully
concocts all this to produce a movie that leaves you flabbergasted both mentally and emotionally.
It has by now been clearly established that I am a huge Nolan fan. But my loyalty will always be questionable as I am yet to watch Memento! By no stretch of imagination was it due to the satisfaction of having watched our own billionaire-lover boy-short term memory loss patient, Mr.Ghajini. It is just one of the few unexplainable things in life. Also I got to watch The Prestige before Batman Begins. I was immediately consumed by its theme which was quite different even for Hollywood standards. It had all the 'Nolan' ingredients like a dark leitmotif, an analytical screenplay with an emotional connect and an awesome conclusion. Next was Batman Begins where Nolan demonstrated the art of making a super-hero movie that is dark, realistic, pulsating and thoroughly enjoyable all at the same time. His collaboration with Hans Zimmer was duly noted from the arousing BGM which lent an epic flavor to the movie. Then came the movie which elevated him to the status of a cult figure - The Dark Knight. It once again re-defined the landscape of super-hero movies by achieving the perfect fusion of sight, sound and substance. The movie featured a never-again-in-a-lifetime performance by Heath Ledger which earned him a posthumous Oscar. And with Inception he entered the realms of sci-fi thriller. The movie was literally the stuff of dreams with temporal multilayer and seamless transitioning between them. It is impossible and an injustice if I try dwelling into the movie in this forum, but in short it transformed film-making from mere entertainment into a niche field where only very few creative geniuses are allowed to play. And Hans Zimmer's Dream is collapsing BGM was... LEGENDARY! It is then only natural that his latest offering The Dark Knight Rises (TDKR) had created unprecedented expectations among both critics and fans. It was considered a near impossibility to match the brilliance of its predecessor and the untimely death of 'The Joker' wasn't going to make the task any easier. So does the final installment in the greatest super-hero series ever made make for an awesome conclusion?
The film understandably has a much bigger canvas than its previous installments. From the beginning the director makes his intentions clear that he wants to end the trilogy with a blockbuster showdown between Batman and his toughest nemesis Bane. So he slowly starts building quite a few characters in this direction. In-fact the first half of the movie is spent on this and I felt it was a bit stretched, though you can sense the gradual increase in momentum. And in the second half Nolan starts putting together the various pieces of the puzzle in his own inimitable style accompanied by Zimmer's crescendoing BGM which is sure to give you the goosebumps. The climax is very much cliched for a Hollywood super-hero movie. But when you are planning to wrap up the proceedings of one of the greatest trilogy, there ought to be a grand farewell and TDKR surely provides that.
The biggest testimony to the genius of Nolan is the widespread following he has among people with diverse tastes (and gender :) ). This is because his movies achieve that rare amalgamation of Kurosowa's ingenuity, Kubrick's intensity and Spielberg's epicness to create a new genre called 'Nolanism'. Its very tempting to declare Nolan as the best of this era, but out of immense respect for the past masters I would just stop short of uttering it. In a career spanning just few films he has entered the pantheon of the 'brightest and bravest' leaving an indelible mark on film-making. And fans like me can be rest assured that the best is yet to come! Take a bow Mr.Nolan. And long live your tribe... (The Nolan tribe includes director Christopher Nolan and his younger brother Jonathan Nolan with whom he has immensely collaborated.)
It has by now been clearly established that I am a huge Nolan fan. But my loyalty will always be questionable as I am yet to watch Memento! By no stretch of imagination was it due to the satisfaction of having watched our own billionaire-lover boy-short term memory loss patient, Mr.Ghajini. It is just one of the few unexplainable things in life. Also I got to watch The Prestige before Batman Begins. I was immediately consumed by its theme which was quite different even for Hollywood standards. It had all the 'Nolan' ingredients like a dark leitmotif, an analytical screenplay with an emotional connect and an awesome conclusion. Next was Batman Begins where Nolan demonstrated the art of making a super-hero movie that is dark, realistic, pulsating and thoroughly enjoyable all at the same time. His collaboration with Hans Zimmer was duly noted from the arousing BGM which lent an epic flavor to the movie. Then came the movie which elevated him to the status of a cult figure - The Dark Knight. It once again re-defined the landscape of super-hero movies by achieving the perfect fusion of sight, sound and substance. The movie featured a never-again-in-a-lifetime performance by Heath Ledger which earned him a posthumous Oscar. And with Inception he entered the realms of sci-fi thriller. The movie was literally the stuff of dreams with temporal multilayer and seamless transitioning between them. It is impossible and an injustice if I try dwelling into the movie in this forum, but in short it transformed film-making from mere entertainment into a niche field where only very few creative geniuses are allowed to play. And Hans Zimmer's Dream is collapsing BGM was... LEGENDARY! It is then only natural that his latest offering The Dark Knight Rises (TDKR) had created unprecedented expectations among both critics and fans. It was considered a near impossibility to match the brilliance of its predecessor and the untimely death of 'The Joker' wasn't going to make the task any easier. So does the final installment in the greatest super-hero series ever made make for an awesome conclusion?
The film understandably has a much bigger canvas than its previous installments. From the beginning the director makes his intentions clear that he wants to end the trilogy with a blockbuster showdown between Batman and his toughest nemesis Bane. So he slowly starts building quite a few characters in this direction. In-fact the first half of the movie is spent on this and I felt it was a bit stretched, though you can sense the gradual increase in momentum. And in the second half Nolan starts putting together the various pieces of the puzzle in his own inimitable style accompanied by Zimmer's crescendoing BGM which is sure to give you the goosebumps. The climax is very much cliched for a Hollywood super-hero movie. But when you are planning to wrap up the proceedings of one of the greatest trilogy, there ought to be a grand farewell and TDKR surely provides that.
The biggest testimony to the genius of Nolan is the widespread following he has among people with diverse tastes (and gender :) ). This is because his movies achieve that rare amalgamation of Kurosowa's ingenuity, Kubrick's intensity and Spielberg's epicness to create a new genre called 'Nolanism'. Its very tempting to declare Nolan as the best of this era, but out of immense respect for the past masters I would just stop short of uttering it. In a career spanning just few films he has entered the pantheon of the 'brightest and bravest' leaving an indelible mark on film-making. And fans like me can be rest assured that the best is yet to come! Take a bow Mr.Nolan. And long live your tribe... (The Nolan tribe includes director Christopher Nolan and his younger brother Jonathan Nolan with whom he has immensely collaborated.)
Friday, February 19, 2010
Proliferation of the decomposition of tamil cinema
(Disclaimer : All characters referred to in this post are NOT figments of my imagination. If there is any resemblance to reel life characters, it is exactly whom you think they are.)
Imagine this - Our 'Mr.Ilaya thazhavali[sic]' Vijay after watching 'Vettaikaran' with his wife and son, eagerly asks his wife for her feedback. Or 'Mr.Title-relinquisher-on-account-of-unworthiness' Ajith Kumar accompanied by Shalini watches 'Asal' and asks her the same dreaded question - How eez the movie sweetheart? I really pity these women and our resilient audience who keep going back to theaters expecting a decent movie at-least on their God knows which visit. Are tamil movies so bad these days? For those innocent souls, sample these -
- In the late 60's when a soon-to-become-CM was happily serenading a not-so-soon-to-become-CM, heroes were portrayed with a lot of dignity as wealthy businessmen, doctors, law enforcement officers and even scientists. But these days they are all uniformly cast as happy-go-lucky uneducated youth sitting on a wall (frequented by stupid donkeys) along with their friends who never seem to age. Well, we (read as audience) are to be blamed to some extent for this. Fed up with the 'angry young man' themes of the 80's, we wanted some realism in our movies. Looks like the directors had taken it very seriously and started casting heroes (read as Vijays and Dhanushs) in their real life avatars.
- Gone are the movies where heroines were a prominent part of the hero's reel life (ya sometimes real life too). These days whenever our hero is fed up caring for his ailing mother or 'vazha vetti' sister or unemployed brother or bashing the villains, he jumps into a Raymond suit or Tommy Hilfiger outfit and starts dancing with the girl nearest to him in the movie sets. That girl is the heroine. And if that girl gives a solo performance thats the 'item' girl.
- If the movie has no story or screenplay but a compulsory run-time of 2.5 hours and the producer has lot of funds, cast another heroine and picturize 2 more songs in a foreign locale.
- Can we ever imagine Sivaji Ganeshan doing a triple somersault followed by a long jump followed by a pole vault 'n' number of times? It's one thing that his anatomy wouldn't allow him to do so, but the fact is he didn't have a Kanal kannan or Rambo Rajkumar as stunt masters. These guys make a completely mockery of Sir Isaac Newton with the help of Archimedes (defying gravity with the help of pulleys and levers) and help our heroes vertically scale running trains and flying planes . But one good thing is they have done away with the biggest legacy of tamil cinema on mankind - that quintessential 'dishoom-dishoom' BGM.
- From the days of Nambiar to Nasser, villains had a real bash in movies. They got to trash the hero till the climax, forcefully sleep with some close or distant relative (obviously female relative) of the hero and at the end get general amnesty. But now a days they get the trashed from the beginning, can't touch even the hero's servant maid and on top of it have to consistently shout at 90dB level.
- Latest techniques to compose a song - A.) Pick your favorite old song. Attenuate the voice and amplify the music and throw in some drum beats here and there. And place it exactly in the middle of the only good scene in the movie. B.) Repeat A.
- The latest menace are the new breed of hero cum director cum producers who look like and act like yuck. But whats the big deal. Cast yuckier guys as co-artistes and all is well by the theory of relativity .
And the worst among the herd are those directors who staunchly believe in the concept of re-usability and hence don't want to waste their non-existent creativity.
(N.B. - The title suggests nothing more than the fact that tamil cinema is decomposing rapidly...)
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Pasanga - A classic ?
A few days back when I stepped out of the theaters after watching Pasanga with two of our 'pasanga' (aani and bull), I was completely overwhelmed. I was sure I had just seen a classic and one that will be a trend-setter. But was it just an impulsive reaction borne out of the drought of good movies in tamil cinema? Or was it a genuine classic? What is to follow in this blog is a deconstruction of my thoughts into words and see if it turns out to be a classic.
To squeeze the story into nine words - it's about the rivalry between two secondary school mates. If inflated it would read something like - the pride and arrogance of the highly naughty son of a teacher (antagonist) along with his two 'close associates' is challenged by a new-comer (protagonist) who is an immediate hit with both his class-mates and teachers. The innocuous scheming employed by the triumvirate and how the new-comer tries to reconcile with them along with the brief animosity that develops between their families amounts to a run-time of two and half an hour. Sounds like our regular run-of-the-mill movies except that the characters are abridged in age? But the similarity ends here. The simple yet refreshing and entertaining screenplay and the characterization that is both realistic and interesting, is like a fresh whip of cool breeze. From the start there is a discernible difference in the treatment of the movie. For a change kids behave and speak like kids. There is a dignified appeal to the classrooms and at least in this movie teachers are sensible and seem to be in control of the classes. The portrayal of parents is heartening in the sense that they are ready to give up their ego for the welfare of their children. There is also an underplayed romance that runs parallely devoid of any sleaze and glamor. But the icing on the cake is the characterization of the kids. The naiveness, rivalry, cravings and aspirations of children have been brought out in an enjoyable manner with loads and loads of humor. Let it be the disposition of the protagonist to demand encouragement for his deeds or the innocuous instigation of the antagonist by his 'close associates', there is a sure charm in them.
For a movie of this genre, the technical finesse is also a sweet surprise. The songs are just average but the BGM seamlessly alternates between the various moods of the movie. The cinematography is refreshing with some pleasing shades and hues that beautifully complement the movie. Overall the movie is a sincere and straight-out-of-the-heart effort, that explores the lives of children in a realistic manner. And just for the records here is a rural themed movie sans its blood and gory. Looks like I am convinced this is a classic. How about you?
N.B. - There are no protagonist or antagonist in the movie. I used them for the ease of referral.
To squeeze the story into nine words - it's about the rivalry between two secondary school mates. If inflated it would read something like - the pride and arrogance of the highly naughty son of a teacher (antagonist) along with his two 'close associates' is challenged by a new-comer (protagonist) who is an immediate hit with both his class-mates and teachers. The innocuous scheming employed by the triumvirate and how the new-comer tries to reconcile with them along with the brief animosity that develops between their families amounts to a run-time of two and half an hour. Sounds like our regular run-of-the-mill movies except that the characters are abridged in age? But the similarity ends here. The simple yet refreshing and entertaining screenplay and the characterization that is both realistic and interesting, is like a fresh whip of cool breeze. From the start there is a discernible difference in the treatment of the movie. For a change kids behave and speak like kids. There is a dignified appeal to the classrooms and at least in this movie teachers are sensible and seem to be in control of the classes. The portrayal of parents is heartening in the sense that they are ready to give up their ego for the welfare of their children. There is also an underplayed romance that runs parallely devoid of any sleaze and glamor. But the icing on the cake is the characterization of the kids. The naiveness, rivalry, cravings and aspirations of children have been brought out in an enjoyable manner with loads and loads of humor. Let it be the disposition of the protagonist to demand encouragement for his deeds or the innocuous instigation of the antagonist by his 'close associates', there is a sure charm in them.
For a movie of this genre, the technical finesse is also a sweet surprise. The songs are just average but the BGM seamlessly alternates between the various moods of the movie. The cinematography is refreshing with some pleasing shades and hues that beautifully complement the movie. Overall the movie is a sincere and straight-out-of-the-heart effort, that explores the lives of children in a realistic manner. And just for the records here is a rural themed movie sans its blood and gory. Looks like I am convinced this is a classic. How about you?
N.B. - There are no protagonist or antagonist in the movie. I used them for the ease of referral.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)