Ashok's Blog

THE WIRE
A realistic police procedural crime drama set in a crime-riddled drugrunners-controlled urban American precinct that explores one honest cop's quest to re-energize the force. The cop happens to be close friends with a senior judge (they knew each other from the time when the judge was a prosecuting attorney) and keeps feeding him info on the street reality and cop apathy to the situation. This earns the cop a number of enemies, mostly within the force, but he succeeds in getting a task force set up to investigate his allegations, setting off a series of events that takes the whole first season of this highly admired, praised and watched US TV show. These are one-hour episodes (starting with a 90-plus-minute pilot) with almost no background music, frills and attempts to entertain. If you enjoy novels like Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series, or police procedural novels in general - the classic One Police Plaza comes to mind - you'll find much to like in this absorbing series. Its slow as molasses and takes time to get to grips with, but once you're hooked on the characters, you won't want to stop watching. Just don't expect slam bang action and thrills-a-minute, this one's about character and social realism.

DANCER IN THE DARK
If you're familiar with Lars Von Triers's body of work, you can't have missed this gem. But if you're more used to Hollywood product, please, just forget it. It takes a genuine love of film, a lot of patience and the ability to change your attitude to what constitutes great film making to sit through this one, let alone love it. But love it I do, and that's why I watched it again on DVD. The film is about a nearly-blind factory worker, played by Swedish singer Bjork, and her struggle to raise enough money for an operation her son needs. It's a musical with live singing by the actors themselves, and has a very downbeat ending that will break your heart in several pieces. But the most difficult thing to take, for those of us not yet weaned from mainstream movie mush, is the manner in which the film is shot. Using cheap handheld digital cameras, Lars Von Triers opted for a home-moviesh look that is shockingly amateurish looking at first, with a deliberately disjointed editing style that looks like shots are missing and the director couldn't afford any transitions. But if you persevere, you'll find that there is a very real, very beautiful story of relationships and characters unfolding that's well worth watching despite the unorthodox filming and editing style. And as you watch (it's a long movie, almost 3 hours), you begin to realize how beautifully artistic the jerky handheld style is, producing a sense of realism that typical overproduced film making could never have achieved. And when Bjork and her male admirer-almost boyfriend sing the centrepiece song on the train, oh my god, you will be blown away. What a song, and what a picturization, all the more so for the manner in which it was done - using over 100 handhelds set up all over the place, and shot in almost-realtime. A much-celebrated movie on the festival circuit, featuring a brilliant performance by Bjork, and amazingly brave direction and camerawork, this is a must-see movie for real movie fans.

BREAKING THE WAVES
Also by Lars Von Triers - his latest, by the way, is Dogville featuring Nicole Kidman which is equally controversial - this was his most celebrated success. Shot in northern Scotland, Triers broke virtually every rule of film making (or those he hadn't already broken with his previous three films - this one came before Dancer in the Dark) with this grim, intense, controversial, and ultimately powerfully moving love story shot in patchwork, non-continuous weather and exposure conditions, featuring brilliant award-winning performances by Emma Watson and the rest of the cast. Ultimately though the real winner is Triers himself, despite his claims that the director is the least important part of the film making process. I'll post a separate note on Triers' Dogme 95 canonical philosophy of movie making, recently referred to by apna own Kamalhaasan, in a separate post shortly, if I can find time. See this one, just don't expect to enjoy your popcorn with it.

BAADDAASSSS!
Don't be put off by the name. This one's the most entertaining of my recos. A film filled with ample sex, non-gratuitous full-frontal nudity, amazing performances, brilliant direction and script, and a slice of history that cannot, must not, be ignored. And it's a documentary, scupulously faithful to the true story it's based on. Directed by high-profile African American filmmaker-star Mario Van Peebles (ha! just noticed the coincidental similarity between his name and that of Lars Von Triers - but then, that's why Van Peebles' father added the 'van' to his name, to give himself more 'white-European' respectability as well as stick it to the white-Euro establishment) and starring himself, it's the story of his father Melvin Van Peebles and his struggle to make the landmark African American independent movie, Sweet Sweetback's Baaaddaaasss Song. Sweetback (to shorten that difficult-to-type name) was a genuine breakthrough, the first black film to eschew the stereotype of the black actor as a comic or a second-string-to-the-white-hero cliche. It was one of the biggest independent film successes of all time, and changed the landscape of movie making forever. The film is a brutal yet glossily made, powerfully enacted and narrated recreation of the travails Melvin Van Peebles went through (alongwith his then-pubescent son, Mario Van Peebles) to get that film made, and the huge opposition he came up against. Populated with enormously memorable characters - don't miss the Jewish twin-brother theatre-owners towards the end - and with more masala than you could get in the most notorious so-called 'entertainers' out of Hollywood these days, this award-winning documentary is the most fun, and the most insightful and educational I've watched in years.

I've seen lots more recently, but that's all I have time to write about, sorry.

As they say, the cream always rises to the top, so in any case, better to be short but focus on the greats, than to talk about everything, including the mediocre.

As for what NOT to watch, well, that's easy: Anything that features in this month's (or any month's) Top Ten movies in your neighbourhood library's popularity list.