The Scent of Green Papaya (Anh Dung Tran, 1993)

The Scent of Green Papaya spans the life of Mui, an illiterate maid in late 1940s and early 1960s in Vietnam. Concerns for daily bread force young Mui to work as a domestic help in an upper-class family located in a distant city, away from her family. She is innocent at heart, uncomplaining, has keen eyes for observing minute details of her surroundings, and is constantly fascinated by the beauty of the nature. Mui's patience and forgiving nature are manifested when she takes in stride the childish antics of her master's two young sons who seem to have a propensity for urinating outside a toilet, or dragging her washing onto the ground. When she is not working, she spends what little time she has free to explore nature. Mui discovers beauty in smallest of details: a drop of water trembling on a leaf, a parade of busy ants, her pet frog in muddy water, the sunlight through the green leaves, and The Scent of Green Papaya. About two-thirds of the way through the film, Mui's life jumps abruptly 10 years into the future. Mui has transformed into a beautiful young woman, and has developed a strong curiosity that comes naturally with blossoming intelligence. She is now the servant of a young musician who is engaged to a rather flippant young woman. Mui is visibly attracted to the musician. Predictably, Mui turns out to be a home-wrecker and the musician sketches her face and teaches her to read. Sensing an underlying chemistry between Mui and the musician, his fiancé trashes his music room and returns the ring. However, the musician remains aloof from Mui's beauty and we wait for the epiphanic moment when the man will suddenly see Mui through fresh eyes and realize that the perfect woman he has been searching all this while is actually under his roof which he shares with Mui. This is exactly what happens in the film.The film is beautifully filmed. Virtually all of the scenes are indoor - there are no wide open spaces or cityscapes here. The film doesn't use any grand symphony orchestras, but only natural sounds, however, the music is off-putting. Anh Dung Tran has a strong penchant for visual beauty as each frame of the film gives great aesthetic pleasure. His aim for visual perfection in fact defies and to some extent understates the ugly realities that the family undergoes in the film. The film is tranquil and meditative, doesn't weave a dramatic plot and fiercely follows the growth of a woman. The acting is rather weak except that of Mui's. As much as the director masters the craft of visuals, he fails to produce enough steam so the climax of the film is mostly a foregone conclusion for the viewer. In essence, The Scent of Green Papaya constitutes an example of a visually alluring film that lacks adequate narrative punch, drama, and strong performance. 

The film was nominated for an Oscar in 1994.

Oka Oori Katha (The Marginal Ones) (Mrinal Sen, 1977)

Loosely based on Indian writer Premchandra's "Kafan", eminent Indian filmmaker Mrinal Sen presents Oka Oori Katha. The story opens in a small village in Andhra Pradesh, a state of India. The story initially revolves around two male characters, a father (Venkayya) and a son (Kista), who are landless and vagrants.Venkayya has a strange philosophy about life: not to indulge in any type of work. He and his forefathers are being subjected to much exploitation by the landlord-class, which has forced him to conclude that life is an unending cycle of exploitation and he will be better off by not working anymore for anybody and that way he will not contribute further to the prosperity of the landlord-class. Kista indisputably adopts his father's principle and pursues vagrancy. For survival they steal and occasionally participate in manually demanding part-time labor the earnings from which are usually spent by the duo over binge drinking. Sen constructs the character of Venkayya to make him look like an iconoclast who defies all social norms, although, Venkayya is not a rebel in the traditional sense. He snivels before the landlord for a free meal and makes caustic comments about the landlord only when he is drunk. In essence, Venkayya's anger manifests in a total rejection of the system and has reduced him to a beast. However, his idea of self-respect seems to be at odds with his moral preferences. Midway in the film and Kista decides to marry Nilamma, a local girl, against his father's repeted warnings. Venkayya advises that marriage would require Kista to work, which would in turn undermine the long-standing principle of Venkayya. Nilamma is soon impregnated by Kista, and despite the demands of the situation, the duo does nothing but lives off the woman. Hard labor, deprivation, and lack of nutrition finally bring Nilamma down, and with no treatment around, she inches her way to death. Despite Nilamma's indescribable sufferings throughout the night, the duo is unmoved and sleeps in the courtyard, and doesn't bother about the occasional screams of the woman. The next morning, they find her dead. Although they have spent nothing on her during her lifetime, they decide to offer her a fitting funeral for which they set out to beg and the upper-class people contribute. Sen brings Venkayya under a tree in the final scene, who clutches the money in his hands and goes on demanding food, clothes, house, and finally Nilamma's life. The camera in the final shot zooms in on Nilamma's face that bursts into flames - a representation of Venkayya's anger. The anger of the oppressed directed towards the oppressors. Aficionados of Sen's films will be least surprised by the subject matter of Oka Oori Katha. Lending cinematic voices to the oppressed is one of the prime features of many of Sen's films. The first forty minutes of the film is a hard slog though as Sen's attempts to establish the two central male characters and their surroundings seem unfocused at times, which could have been handled with strict editing. However, after the introduction of Nilamma, the film gained required momentum in the department of drama and conflicts among the characters became acute. The film analyzes nature of the relationship between the oppressors and the oppressed from two standpoints: the landowner and the landless, and man and woman. Landowners perpetually turn their backs to marginal farmers/laborers, deprive them of their just and fair shares, and eventually push them towards starvation and death. However, they are atypically generous and dutiful to the people from the same class when it comes to donating money for the last religious rites. Similar relationship-parallels hold between Venkayya and Nilamma. Nilamma, when alive, was ignored and taken advantage of, was denied her rights in the household, and ultimately was pushed to death by Venkayya. Is this because she was a woman or does this outcome obtain due to Venkayya's firm belief in his philosophy about the duty of the working class in an atmosphere replete with inequality and deprivation? Can strange principles of Venkayya be so strong so as to overcome his compassion for family members? If so, then doesn't he indirectly lose to the landlord-class by sacrificing a human life?  The film doesn't attempt to disentangle these aspects, which is rather unfortunate. Despite these shortcoming, Oka Oori Katha is one of Sen's acclaimed works that deserves multiple viewings.


The film won a Special Prize of the Jury at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 1977.

Bhooter Bhabishyat (The Future of The Past) (Anik Dutta, 2012)

In recent times, Indian and in particular Bengali media (in the state of West Bengal, India) are unjustifiably generous when it comes to heaving accolades on the current generation of Bengali filmmakers. This surplus of praise is mostly indefensible as recent Bengali films are still imprisoned by their strange obsession with relationship centric dramas. Exploring relation-based dramas, however, is not the main problem. The problem lies in elsewhere. Most of these cinematic efforts can mostly be characterized by the following undesirable elements: characters that are outside the bounds of possibility, only scratching the surface of emotional layers without much regard for deep character analysis (a lesson in this regard would be to watch, for example, the highly acclaimed Iranian film A Separation by Asghar Farhadi), lack of sensible dialogues, strong desire to pose as an "intelligent" filmmaker who is up-to-date with the world cinema (read literally stealing from these films; an example would be the much-hyped Bengali film Autograph), choosing style over substance, underappreciation for aural instruments of a film (Ritwik Ghatak was a pioneer for using sound brilliantly), sometimes unconvincing and archaic plots (when plots are convincing they are marred by some of the other factors mentioned here), and sheer inability to build up narratives that do not satisfy two important criteria of narrative cinema: credibility and coherence. Although, these films are technically much superior than their 1990s and last decade counterparts. Bhooter Bhabishyat avoids just about all of the above pitfalls. 

The story is exceptionally imaginative and yet simple. A gang of eclectic ghosts (a cook, a Bengali music band member, a Zamindar aka landlord, a representative of the East India Company, a refugee from Bangladesh,  a Bengali theatre actress, a revolutionary from 70s' Calcutta, a Rickshaw puller, and a few others) need help as they are about to be evicted from their current home as a businessman is all geared up to make way for malls and multiplexes.In the backdrop of this, an aspiring director steps in the same old mansion (where these ghosts are housed) for checking the site of an about-to-be-made film. What follows is a burst of activities replete with spoofs, puns, songs, and dance. Although, beneath all these lies a satirical message about the greed of the modern society that spreads its gluttonous wings at the expense of rich sculptural heritage of cities. The first time helmer Dutta is a master storyteller. Humorous and sharp dialogues (although being an ad filmmaker himself, Dutta couldn't escape the usual knack of an ad-maker for inserting punchlines after every two lines of dialogue), first-class camerawork, unforgiving editing, clever montage of sound pieces, keen eye for details, credible reproductions of a bygone age and society, idiosyncrasies of ghostly creatures - everything seem to jell for the film. Dutta heavily borrows from the master director Satyajit Ray's works and he is not at all reticent about this. In fact, when the aspiring filmmaker and the narrator of the ghosts' lives converse to build up the suspense, their performances strongly remind us of the interactions between the famous Bengali detective Feluda and his assistant Topshe. Delivery of some of the dialogues in the film that rhyme with each other is reminiscent of the lyrical exchanges from Heerak Rajar Deshe ( The Kingdom of Diamonds). In many other aspects, the film is replete with references from Ray's films. In fact, Dutta pays a grand tribute to Ray in this film. Overall, Bhooter Bhabishyat is a rare combination of ingenious plot idea, almost flawless execution, skillful exploitation of the medium as an art form, and an eye for commercial success - a combination that is visibly absent in most of the recent Bengali films.

The Rules of The Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)

Often cited as Renoir's best work and counted as one of the greatest films of all time, The Rules of The Game is a piece of work from the French Impressionist Cinema that is credited with unprecedented camera works, novel editing techniques, and Mise-en-scene styles. The film deploys familiar tragic and comedic elements to depict the worthlessness of French upper-middle class in the1930s. The film analyzes upper class social animals whose lives are full of unending sequence of parties, frivolous gossips, moments that reek of moral superiority of the upper class, and romantic entanglements that are flagrantly illicit. The essence of the film is that Robert and his wife Christine host a hunting excursion at their colossal country estate. Among the guests are Robert’s former mistress, a world-famous airman who claims to be in love with Christine, and a goofy character played by Renoir himself who is friends with all of the above characters. These characters constitute the cream of the upper class. Downstairs, the household staff is a miniature version of the upper crust that’s partying upstairs. The characters downstairs are trying to follow the example set for them by the upper class bourgeois. Christine’s maid, Lisette has her own world of flirtatious activities while her husband, Edouard, a gamekeeper at the country estate, is the only person who tries to maintain order in the estate. The inconstant and adulterous affairs continue throughout the film and the characters are in perfect moral agreement with all of these because no one takes anything too seriously. Indulge in dalliances but abstain from upsetting the social order of things - The Rules of The Game. Renoir is visibly honest about the foibles of his characters. The film heavily relies on its comical timing and excels at it. Renoir believes in the fluidity of scenes and avoids cutting scenes into a collage of small shots. That is what defines this film and elevates it to a classic level in terms of technical superiority. When characters run through hallways and engage in physical jostles, Renoir avoids cutting. He prefers long and unbroken takes and follows characters with a watery camera. Another virtue of the film lies in its exploitation of visual depth. The deep focus fills the frame with moments large and small to enjoy and appreciate. The classic value of the film lies in its ability to invent cinematic techniques unfamiliar in the 1930s and to approach a novel subject matter much ahead of its time. The Rules of The Game is humorous, sarcastic, and finally sad while also is a great example of technical brilliance. 

We Need To Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay, 2011)

The film centers on a woman (Eva played by Tilda Swinton) whose psychopathic son has pushed her to the edge of sanity. We Need to Talk About Kevin delves into Eva's mind by periodically moving between past and present. Eva lives with her husband, son and daughter in an expensive home in an idyllic small town. However, from the interiors of the house we could gather that the house has never become a home for its inhabitants. These people share a common physical structure, but their psychological structures are innately different from each other. Eva is skeptical of the marriage, doesn't want a child, and lacks instinctive kindness towards children. Her husband Farnklin (John C. Reilly) is an aloof man who appears situationally supportive of his wife, son, and daughter, cheerful,but lacks serious familial attachment and commanding position required of him as one of the parents. He is completely clueless about the alarming dynamics between his wife and son. Only the daughter, Celia, who is really young seems to be normal, but her normalcy is constantly shattered by Kevin, the son. Kevin is instinctively fiendish, who is supremely talented as to how to wound Eva, snub her, deceive her and make her soul bleed. Kevin seems to be living embodiment of the Devil. Kevin's character is depicted at three ages. As a baby, Kevin can try the patience of a saint. A relatively younger Kevin is such a little devil who enrages Eva so much that she breaks his arm. In the movie, this particular incident is seen more like a vicious triumph of Kevin than an instance of child abuse. As a teenager, Kevin is loving towards his father, but deliberately designs ploys to hurt Eva. The film starts with Eva dreaming about a lake of blood that ultimately turns into an annual tomato festival. Throughout the film the director uses the color Red as a route to emancipation for Eva while at the same time the same color is used to capture the disturbing psyche of Eva. Though the film is titled as We Need To Talk About Kevin, they never talk about Kevin. As if, by averting any dialogues and discussion about Kevin, the film emphasizes the need for such talks and on another level forces us to consider an important question that might plague the minds of the parents of troubled children: Is it nature or nurture? We Need to Talk About Kevin is a powerful film about a disturbed child and the magnitude of psychological trauma created in the minds of parents by a series of devilish acts by the child. The parents helplessly take the back seat like an audience and are ultimately nudged in the direction of psychosis. 

The film was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 2011 Cannes Film festival.

Three Times (Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 2005)

 Hou Hsiao-Hsien, a celebrated filmmaker from Taiwan, presents a romantic drama in his own style -  gentle pacing and magnificent visuals that are worth a thousand word. The film boasts of three sublime love stories that are separated by time but unified by the same male-female lead actors. The faces are kept the same (Shu Qi and Chang Chen) across time periods so as to suggest the immortality of love? To suggest that the prototypical characters in love never change only the contexts keep redesigned by socio-political circumstances?  The first story A Time for Love takes place in 1966 when a young soldier falls in love with a pool hall hostess. The boy awaits a war deployment that comes at the expense of his blossoming romance. The girl keeps changing towns in-between to earn her livelihood. A parade of love letters communicate their feelings for each other that comes to its fruition at the end. Hsiao-Hsien's perfect framings and apt choice of the sound tracks (Aphrodite Child's "Rain and Tears" and Platters' "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes") recreate the magic of In the Mood for Love (2000) by Kar Wai Wong. The setting of the second story A Time for Freedom is 1911 when the Chinese Revolution led to the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty. Hsiao-Hsien presents the story as a silent film, in accordance with the background of the film. The boy who is a regular visitor to a brothel wants to start a newspaper and be on the frontline of the on-going freedom struggle. The girl is a prostitute in the brothel who languishes in love for the boy and awaits freedom. Communications between them are established by scarcely dispersed letters. While the boy is all warmed up for the freedom struggle, he fails to see through the servitude of the girl which can be broken by only him.Love remains unfulfilled in a world where individual freedom is engulfed by desire for collective liberation. The modern day story named A Time for Youth is set in 2005 Taiwan.Here a bi-sexual woman is slowly nearing death but is caught in two romantic affairs, with a photographer and a teenage girl. The characters have all the modern means of communication (the computers and cell phones) and still struggle to communicate in the language of love. Their selfish infatuation with the modern day gadgets only take them away from each other.  Love desperately searches for a humane language in a selfish world of machines. The stories have no deep and multi-layered messages as one would expect from such cinematic endeavors.The subtext is simple yet profound and is mostly captured by silent gestures and moments of contemplation. Of the three stories, the first one stayed with me much after the last light had awakened. It is the purity of love and romantic innocence that will once again cast their magical spell on you. 


The film was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 2005 Cannes Film festival.

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (Kundan Shah, 1983)

A rare gem in the history of Hindi cinema.  Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro is a dark comedy from an expert filmmaker Kundan Shah. Vinod (Naseeruddin Shah) and Sudhir (Ravi Baswani) are two friends who want to start-up their own photo studio. The business prospects seem grim and gloomy for them when they are approached by Shobha (Barve), editor of a newspaper named “Khabardaar”. While both of them are equally besotted with Shobha, she exploits their feelings and assigns them the task of spying Police commisioner D’Mello (Satish Shah) and property builder Tarneja (Pankaj Kapoor). D’Mello and Tarneja are involved in an illegal deal. The photographer-cum-spy duo sense a massive web of corruption and bribery the ultimate goal of which is to win the tender for building a flyover in the city of Bombay. While spying, Sudhir and Vinod uncover a murder but remain in dark about the identity of the killer. They manage to recover the corpse as evidence, but eventually lose it. What follows is a long-drawn-out chase with the bad guys that meanders into the oddest of places. This is a crisp and well-directed film that has an excellent cast. Baswani and Shah with their comedic acumen and clodhopping adventures make the silver screen burst into a laughter riot. Pankaj Kapoor, Satish shah and Om Puri adequately represent the bad guys withe their particular idiosyncrasies. Bhakti Barve registers  a sharp performance as the shrewd Shobaji. The movie doesn’t have songs, a trademark of bollywood, except for maybe the hummable “Hum honge kaamyaab”. As a viewer one must be struck by the frankness and naiveté of the images. There is no attempt to intellectualise the comedy. The burden of humor entirely rests on disbelief. As an instance, there is a hilarious scene involving a dead body in a burqa amidst a sea of burqa-clad women. And of course the Mahabharata (The great Indian epic) episode which entailed a delightful spoof of the Ram Lilas we have all seen at some point in our lives. And yet the whole episode never caused any outrage. May be this is a special quality of the film itself – its nonchalant and innocent attitude allowed it to take on both holy cows and ugly underbellies of cosmopolitan India.

Ultimately, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro is at the heart about the loss of innocence and the breaking of ideals. At the end of the day, in the film, cynicism over idealism and the collective dishonesty triumph over the individual honesty. The two main characters  expose the builder-politician-journalist mafia in all its ugliness, such a contemporary theme in today's India. Beneath its foamy and frivolous exterior lies the real and sad truths of life. The movie ends with Vinod and Sudhir walking out of jail, still in their striped jail pajamas. In the backdrop the spirited anthem, Hum honge kaamyab, hum honge kaamyab ek din, plays mournfully, may be hinting at hope. For the uninitiated, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro can best be described as a breathless satire of cosmopolitan India.

Ghatashraddha (Girish Kasaravalli, 1979)

This is a Kannada language (the language mainly spoken in the state of Karnataka, India) film made by the renowned filmmaker Girish Kasaravalli hailing from the same state. The film is set in a remote village in the state in 1920; a traditionalist rural society  where women are forcefully downtrodden. The story revolves around two characters: a little boy named Ajit who comes to attend a local school run by a village scholar and the widowed young daughter of the scholar named Meena. The narrative of the film unfolds from the boy's perspective. The dainty girl falls prey to the carnal desires of a teacher from the school and is ultimately impregnated. While the girl is still alive, the father excommunicates the girl to avoid social condemnation by performing funeral rites known as Ghatashraddha . The local school shuts down after this soul stirring incident and the boy is forced to go back home. Kasaravalli slowly depicts the stifling social realities of the time  by drawing our attention to an array of religious and social practices that seem to perpetuate the interests of the ruling class (the Brahmins aka Hindu priests) and sufferings of the persecuted. The scenes where the male teachers coach the sacred hymns and the male children learn them by rote portray a perpetuation of patriarchy and instruments of maintaing social powers in the hands of a chosen few. Ajit fails to learn the hymns and becomes an outcast in the school. Analogously, Meena becomes pregnant out of wedlock and immediately becomes a social outcast. The two outcasts together accentuate the rigid social fabrics and the conditions of the people who dare to undermine the righteousness of the system. Kasaravalli's command of black and white images is unparalleled. Ghatashraddha is definitely an important social document and a gem in the New Wave of Kannada film history.

The Hole (Ming-liang Tsai, 1998)

The Hole is a cinematic marriage between two genres, science fiction and musical drama (romance). Ming-liang is one of the prominent directors from Taiwan and is known for long takes, few close-up shots, and minimal use of dialogues. The plot unfolds in Taipei. The city is flooded out and a strange disease has surfaced in the city that turns infected people into human cockroaches that fear any form of light. A woman and a man live in an adjoining top and bottom apartments in a dilapidated apartment complex. The two lonely souls are caught in the middle of an impending ecological apocalypse. Loneliness has engulfed their lives, each is unaware of the other's existence. However, an inept plumber inadvertently connects the two isolated humans by creating a hole in the floor of the man's apartment, which automatically creates a hole in the woman's ceiling. Thus they become connected to each other by a gaping hole, which acts as a symbolic and metaphysical connection between the two previously disconnected humans. From thereafter, Tsai starts weaving their growing affection for each other among the ruins by lip-synched renditions of popular radio numbers that break the monotony of the frames. These numbers, by their conspicuous absence, also underscore the profound loneliness experienced by the characters . The hole gradually becomes a catalyst that compels each character to fix it. At this level the hole non-literally enables them to fill an emptiness in their lives. The woman hopelessly tries to fix the hole by sealing it off with a mop. In contrast, the man ignores the hole and even pours or pukes liquids through it. The differential nature of their actions reveal the different attitudes of men and women towards the concept of romantic involvements. In the climax of the film the man lifts the downtrodden woman through the hole. This particular frame is captured by the shot of his hand reaching through the hole with the light piercing the darkness of her apartment below. Eventually in the face of a great cataclysm, they repair their respective holes in life. The central philosophy behind The Hole is that most often lonesome conditions of humans can be analyzed better by recognizing our striking failure to communicate with those who may be right under our nose.


The film won a FIPRESCI Prize at the 1998 Cannes Film festival.