Friday night - the beginning of a reunion weekend with my childhood friend. Post a long day at work, crazy traffic on my way back, a work call with boss as soon as I got home, and a few glasses of red wine at home, the options were rather obvious - delicious cocktails at a close by bar or an enticing cocktail at Juhu PVR. We opted for the latter one, the one with a straw.
For all those that know Roopa and me, will know us for our love for Bollywood and the high we get from films is never really the same from any other concoction. Sex on the beach. Screw driver. Tequila sunrise. Cocktails are almost always welcome but this time, we opted for the heady mix of Margharita with a Straw.
The film started in a fairly promising manner. Kalki and Revathi's sheer screen presence in the first scene set the expectation for the film. Kalki's acting in this film has put her on a pedestal that I doubt anyone else can even hope to achieve. Through the entire film, I really almost forgot that Kalki is a normal human being in real life and not the specially abled person from her reel life. Unbelievably brilliant performance - words might not do justice. Every movement, every moment, one can submerge into Kalki's world. Relate with her, sympathize with her, even empathize with her despite not being a disabled person, because after all, all her emotions/ desires/ wishes were exactly the same as all of us, at that age, at any age actually.
All Kalki wanted was to be in love, feel loved, to be able to love - without a judgment. Her desire to be seen as desirous, her wish of being wished for by her muse, to look good, to appear smart and be with it - any teenager's regular life (for that matter even a 30+'s regular life - sigh). And I thought that was the point of the film - and I said to myself, what a lovely theme. And what a unique way to portray a teenager's journey through a specially abled person's lens.
But soon it started to dissolve - into ONE BIG amalgamation of disability. And slow slow slow transition into point-less-ness. For me, movies are either for entertainment (our good ol' Bollywood masala movies) or for conveying a point of view or for both. I wasn't sure what the point was in this movie because really, it wasn't a masala film made for entertainment. It must have been made to convey a point, some point but like the Indian cricket team playing a test match, it started off well but soon started losing wicket after wicket and oh so S-L-O-W-L-Y!
First things first, does a disabled person's life HAVE to be surrounded with more disabled people? The boy she flirted with, the lover, even the mother - why did there have to be so much suffering - to what avail? Her own disability and her way of coping with it would have been a wonderful story but in this film, it was like disability begets disability!
If the movie was about a young girl's journey of desire and self discovery, and if the point of the film was that love/ lust/ whatever has no boundaries, why did we need a blind girl to prove that? And even if a blind girl was needed to sizzle up the screen with Kalki, what happened to trying to create that magical chemistry between the two to make it look believable, even fantastical beyond all conventional mindsets? Fire comes to mind here and boy, was there fire on the screen each time shabana and nandita das came together! Missing here unfortunately.
Talking of chemistry, was the turning point of sorts about a completely abled man being able to "see" her and want her as he put on her panties for exactly one round of orgasm? Or maybe the crux was that cheating in this case is understandable because the protagonist was confused about her orientation. Like all other forms of cheating with abled heterosexual people happen as a result of real clear heads and hence not justified. Am I missing something here? Because the preen with which the film ended was almost like an order to the audience to better LIKE Kalki and all her choices.
Of course we as audience loved Kalki. If anything, the movie is about Kalki. All performances of course are extremely noteworthy, great screen play, fantastic direction. But still, its an over complicated milieu of emotions, notions, nuances and situations.
The girl friend's disclosure to her parents about her sexual orientation at the age of 14 and the after effects that followed, Kalki being rejected by her boy-'friend' because, come on, who wants a girlfriend with Cerebral Palsy, the mother quietly suffering with cancer and the father crying alone in bed, the cute boy getting attracted to Kalki despite her disability (honestly men can get turned on by anyone, anytime and we don't need such a complex plot to remind us of that) - SO many things happening in the movie was literally like a whirlwind of shocking disclosures, seeped in extreme moroseness of wheelchairs, white canes for the blind, hair wigs and more, which to my mind, took away from the simplicity this film could have had.
Especially the part where the daughter is giving her mother a bath - what was that? Someone with cerebral palsy gives bath to other adults? That's the only time I got up from my seat and rubbed my eyes to make sense of all that was happening. Maybe that was the idea. Like the ploy of comic relief during Shakespeare's time, maybe the movie reached a point where it needed mindless-ness relief after all the dragging.
I know I am being harsh. The movie did have its memorable moments - a lot of them. Some fun humor, some very real portrayal of a typical Indian middle class family, some real moments of discovery, treatment of a sensitive issue of lust and sexual desire - all these made Margharita with a Straw almost a likeable movie. And it actually can be, except that I wish the story writer and the director had let it remain simple. Simplicity is really underrated in our times. And I wish the makers hadn't gotten so bored of the film themselves to end it so abruptly, though if I were in their shoes, I too would have lost the plot and not known what the right ending could possibly have been.
For all those that know Roopa and me, will know us for our love for Bollywood and the high we get from films is never really the same from any other concoction. Sex on the beach. Screw driver. Tequila sunrise. Cocktails are almost always welcome but this time, we opted for the heady mix of Margharita with a Straw.
The film started in a fairly promising manner. Kalki and Revathi's sheer screen presence in the first scene set the expectation for the film. Kalki's acting in this film has put her on a pedestal that I doubt anyone else can even hope to achieve. Through the entire film, I really almost forgot that Kalki is a normal human being in real life and not the specially abled person from her reel life. Unbelievably brilliant performance - words might not do justice. Every movement, every moment, one can submerge into Kalki's world. Relate with her, sympathize with her, even empathize with her despite not being a disabled person, because after all, all her emotions/ desires/ wishes were exactly the same as all of us, at that age, at any age actually.
All Kalki wanted was to be in love, feel loved, to be able to love - without a judgment. Her desire to be seen as desirous, her wish of being wished for by her muse, to look good, to appear smart and be with it - any teenager's regular life (for that matter even a 30+'s regular life - sigh). And I thought that was the point of the film - and I said to myself, what a lovely theme. And what a unique way to portray a teenager's journey through a specially abled person's lens.
But soon it started to dissolve - into ONE BIG amalgamation of disability. And slow slow slow transition into point-less-ness. For me, movies are either for entertainment (our good ol' Bollywood masala movies) or for conveying a point of view or for both. I wasn't sure what the point was in this movie because really, it wasn't a masala film made for entertainment. It must have been made to convey a point, some point but like the Indian cricket team playing a test match, it started off well but soon started losing wicket after wicket and oh so S-L-O-W-L-Y!
First things first, does a disabled person's life HAVE to be surrounded with more disabled people? The boy she flirted with, the lover, even the mother - why did there have to be so much suffering - to what avail? Her own disability and her way of coping with it would have been a wonderful story but in this film, it was like disability begets disability!
If the movie was about a young girl's journey of desire and self discovery, and if the point of the film was that love/ lust/ whatever has no boundaries, why did we need a blind girl to prove that? And even if a blind girl was needed to sizzle up the screen with Kalki, what happened to trying to create that magical chemistry between the two to make it look believable, even fantastical beyond all conventional mindsets? Fire comes to mind here and boy, was there fire on the screen each time shabana and nandita das came together! Missing here unfortunately.
Talking of chemistry, was the turning point of sorts about a completely abled man being able to "see" her and want her as he put on her panties for exactly one round of orgasm? Or maybe the crux was that cheating in this case is understandable because the protagonist was confused about her orientation. Like all other forms of cheating with abled heterosexual people happen as a result of real clear heads and hence not justified. Am I missing something here? Because the preen with which the film ended was almost like an order to the audience to better LIKE Kalki and all her choices.
Of course we as audience loved Kalki. If anything, the movie is about Kalki. All performances of course are extremely noteworthy, great screen play, fantastic direction. But still, its an over complicated milieu of emotions, notions, nuances and situations.
The girl friend's disclosure to her parents about her sexual orientation at the age of 14 and the after effects that followed, Kalki being rejected by her boy-'friend' because, come on, who wants a girlfriend with Cerebral Palsy, the mother quietly suffering with cancer and the father crying alone in bed, the cute boy getting attracted to Kalki despite her disability (honestly men can get turned on by anyone, anytime and we don't need such a complex plot to remind us of that) - SO many things happening in the movie was literally like a whirlwind of shocking disclosures, seeped in extreme moroseness of wheelchairs, white canes for the blind, hair wigs and more, which to my mind, took away from the simplicity this film could have had.
Especially the part where the daughter is giving her mother a bath - what was that? Someone with cerebral palsy gives bath to other adults? That's the only time I got up from my seat and rubbed my eyes to make sense of all that was happening. Maybe that was the idea. Like the ploy of comic relief during Shakespeare's time, maybe the movie reached a point where it needed mindless-ness relief after all the dragging.
I know I am being harsh. The movie did have its memorable moments - a lot of them. Some fun humor, some very real portrayal of a typical Indian middle class family, some real moments of discovery, treatment of a sensitive issue of lust and sexual desire - all these made Margharita with a Straw almost a likeable movie. And it actually can be, except that I wish the story writer and the director had let it remain simple. Simplicity is really underrated in our times. And I wish the makers hadn't gotten so bored of the film themselves to end it so abruptly, though if I were in their shoes, I too would have lost the plot and not known what the right ending could possibly have been.
