Arundhati Roy is right about Slumdog Millionaire. In an interview with the Observer, she says:
Only her compatriots could have celebrated the victory of Slumdog Millionaire on Oscar night. "The fact that the film - not even an Indian film - won these prizes sent people into orbit. But it is an odd movie for a country to be proud of. What were we celebrating? Child poverty? If it wasn't so tragic it would be comical."
I could not see what was so great about the movie. There have been far better movies made about poverty in India by Indian directors. Satyajit Ray'sAshani Sanket (Distant Thunder) is a classic based on the famine in Bengal during the Second World War when people starved to death. The Bengali film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1973, but never reached an international audience like Slumdog.
I have nothing against anyone highlighting the poverty and corruption in India, but Slumdog is too stylized, too overtly arty, for me. It is garish, which Ray never was. I was surprised it ended up as one of the biggest all-time Oscar winners, winning as many as eight Academy Awards.
It was only a coincidence perhaps that a tale of corruption and poverty in India also won the Man Booker Prize last year.
Belated good wishes to Suchitra Sen, who celebrated her birthday yesterday. Reclusive as Greta Garbo and one of the most beautiful women ever to grace the screen, she personifies the Bengali ideal of beauty.
Her two grand-daughters, Riya Sen and Raima Sen, are film stars now -- and Riya was said to have caught the eye of the Booker Prize winning novelist Salman Rushdie last year. Riya and Raima's mother, Moon Moon Sen, is also a former actress and a beauty.
But Suchitra Sen is in a class of her own.
This is a clip from a Bengali movie dating back to 1958 starring her and the matinee idol Uttam Kumar, the most famous Bengali star of all time. The film is called Indrani -- an Indian woman's name.
The singer is Hemanta Mukherjee, my favourite Bengali singer. The song begins like Do Re Mi in The Sound of Music. The singer is singing that the sun is about to set and the twilight will create a dream world which will last all night.
The video gets better after the first minute when the camera focuses on Suchitra Sen's face. She looks lovely.
Suchitra Sen and Uttam Kumar created movie magic. Generations of Bengalis adored their films. From the 1950s to the 1970s, they reigned at the box office. Uttam Kumar died of a heart attack on the set of the Bengali film Ogo Bodhu Sundari (Oh Beautiful Bride) in 1980. He was 54.
Suchitra Sen last appeared in the Bengali film, Pranay Pasha (Gamble of Love), in 1978, according to Wikipedia.
Era of romance
The romantic films starring Suchitra Sen and Uttam Kumar portray India before globalization, when the country was less prosperous, the idealism perhaps greater, and when marriages seldom ended in divorce.
Jawaharlal Nehru was the Indian prime minister when this film was made in 1958.
The eminent writers and thinkers of today were still in their youth. VS Naipaul had graduated from Oxford and got married to Patricia Hale three years earlier – in 1955. The Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen was still doing his PhD in Cambridge – he received his doctorate in 1959, according to Wikipedia. The Bengali filmmaker, Satyajit Ray, had just started winning international acclaim with his Apu Trilogy since 1955 (he died on April 23, 1992, at the age of 70). It was a different era.
The one book that captures that era is Vikram Seth's novel, A Suitable Boy.
Era of rock 'n' roll
It was also the time of rock 'n' roll. Elvis Presley joined the army. But there were big hits such as Great Balls of Fire by Jerry Lee Lewis and Sweet Little Sixteen by Chuck Berry. Both charted in 1958, according to The Fifties Web.
What a coincidence! The made-in-India Slumdog Millionaire won eight Oscars this year, including the Academy Awards for best picture and best director, just like Sir Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi did in 1982.
Both also won for best film editing and best cinematography. And while Slumdog took the Oscar for best adapted screenplay, Gandhi took the one for best original screenplay.
One big difference: Ben Kingsley also won the Oscar for best actor as Gandhi.
Gandhi’s two other Oscars were for best art direction and best costume design while Slumdog won for best original song, best original score and best sound editing. Indian music composer AR Rahim must be over the moon.
David Lean’s A Passage to India was also nominated for several Oscars, including best picture and best director, in 1984, but ended up with only two – best actress in a supporting role (Peggy Ashcroft) and best original score (Maurice Jarre).
Gong Li is far from the first star to give up Chinese nationality, reports The Times. Hong Kong-based action superstar Jet Li now holds US citizenship as do director Chen Kaige and his film star wife, Chen Hong. Many more, such as Zhang Ziyi – Gong Li's co-star in Memoirs of a Geisha – hold Hong Kong citizenship, which enables them to travel easily while remaining Chinese nationals. Gong Li married Singapore businessman Ooi Hoe Seong in 1996 and became a Singapore citizen last week. She has long lived mostly outside China, working more recently in Hollywood, says The Times.
Yesterday I wrote about how I adore the mother and grandmother of the Indian
actress Riya Sen, who is being romantically linked with Salman Rushdie. I like
her mother, Moon Moon Sen's coquettish charm, but no Indian actress can compare
with her grandmother, Suchitra Sen.
Suchitra Sen is like Greta Garbo. Hauntingly beautiful, she left the movie
business in her prime and remains a legend.
The films she starred in opposite Uttam Kumar, another legendary actor, in
the 1950s and 60s were some of the most romantic movies ever made. Here is a
scene from one of their movies. Newly wed, they are still wearing the garlands
and traditional Bengali wedding garments.It is very different from Bollywood starrers.
This was the Bengali ideal of romance in the 50s, 60s and a good deal later,
I suppose. My wife is a great fan of Uttam Kumar and she has seen every film
starring him and Suchitra Sen. I saw them with her when we started dating
and after we got married. We saw this film together. The Bengali movie industry never fully recovered from the death of Uttam Kumar in 1980 and the internationally acclaimed filmmaker Satyajit Ray in 1992. Ray directed Uttam Kumar in Nayak (Hero), where Uttam Kumar played himself, a movie star.
Peers to the end. It’s hard to believe Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni both died on the same day. I saw Bergman’s Seventh Seal at a Calcutta (Kolkata) film club long ago and still remember the Dance of Death, where eerie medieval figures dance across a vast emptiness. And who can forget the opening scene where the knight (Max von Sydow) sits down for a game of chess with robed and hooded Death? It’s amazing how haunting it is, this black and white film made in the 1950s.
We in Calcutta used to compare Bergman with Satyajit Ray, who was no less poetic and atmospheric -- and to my mind -- even greater as a filmmaker. But the man to read on Bergman is Richard Corliss, on the Time magazine website.
Bergman was one of the greatest filmmakers, but Antonioni defined a generation. For a baby boomer like me, it’s impossible to forget Blowup and Zabriskie Point. Blowup (1966) caught the excitement of Swinging London while Zabriskie Point (1970) was about late 1960s America. It had music by Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead. But while they can be heard on the soundtrack of Zabriskie Point, the Yardbirds can be seen at a gig in Blowup. Here is the scene where they perform at a London club. I have posted it on this blog before. But Antonioni’s death gives it a fresh resonance. Here’s the sound -- and the look -- of the Sixties. Jeff Beck smashes his guitar while Jimmy Page happily plays on and singer Keith Relf belts out great rock'n'roll.
MTV turns 25 this month, the Sunday Times reported yesterday. Not that I ever watched it. When I first saw it, it showcased artistes like Michael Jackson, yech! And when I last saw it, the fast-moving images made me dizzy. I realised I was getting old.
There was a time when I loved psychedelia. And some of my favourite movies featured great music. Reading the article on MTV reminded me of Michelangelo Antonioni's stylish thriller, Blowup, set in the swinging London of the 1960s. It was the ultimate in cool at that time: the music, the photography, captured the era perfectly.
The Yardbirds perform in one scene towards the end. Seeing it on the big screen was absolutely mindblowing.
I searched the Net to see if I could see that scene again. And here it is.
It doesn't have the same effect seen on the Net. But look at the lineup. That's Jeff Beck smashing his guitar. He is backed by Jimmy Page. The singer is Keith Relf.
The man entering the disco is the hero, David Hemmings, who plays a fashion photographer. He takes sneak shots of a couple making love in a park. When he develops the film, he sees a dead body and blows up the picture to investigate the mystery.
The Yardbirds in this scene are performing Stroll On.
The finest actress of her generation and a beautiful woman, Meryl Streep radiates intelligence and can be both warmly attractive and tantalisingly cool. It was the warmth that shone through in an interview published in The Straits Times yesterday. Ong Soh Chin wrote about her husky laugh and her ''crushing sense of humility''. Streep, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Kramer vs Kramer (1979) and Best Actress in Sophie's Choice (1982), said she had nothing to teach. "Acting is so much about play and maintaining an innocence about yourself and what you're doing, '' she said. "Otherwise there is no instinct." I instinctively knew I had to blog this, just to post a picture of my favourite actress. I haven't seen a single movie since Fahrenheit 911, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but I hope to see Streep's latest starrer, Prime, which opens in Singapore today.
A lot has happened in the five days since I last wrote. I still can't get over the death of Anne Bancroft, who played Mrs Robinson in The Graduate.
It's one of the most unforgettable films for someone of my generation. How can anyone forget the soundtrack with all those Simon and Garfunkel classics -- The Sounds of Silence, Scarborough Fair Canticle, and of course, Mrs Robinson. I saw the film and immediately Dustin Hoffman became my hero. He was like no other actor at the time. He played the anti-hero college graduate Benjamin to perfection.
But the most memorable scene for me, now that I look back, was not between him and the nominal heroine, Katherine Ross, but his bedroom scene with Bancroft, who played Ross' mother. In the scene, Bancroft starts talking about art, having been an art major in college. But Hoffman starts laughing. Even though they are having an affair, to the young man, she is still a middle-aged housewife. He finds her talk about art funny. It's insensitive, cruel, and, as one grows older, haunting.
A fortysomething reminiscing about his dreams and aspirations can seem funny to a teenager or a twentysomething as if they alone have the right to dream and strive. They are right, of course; the future belongs to them.
But we had our glory days too. I will watch The Graduate any day over any of the Star Wars movies. Spoken like an old man, but I remember seeing the first two Star Wars movies when they were first released, and even then I didn't think much of them. Not after Blow-Up and Easy Rider and MASH and Woodstock and, yes, The Graduate. Those were my kind of movies. Here's to you, Mrs Robinson: we love you still, as you know.
Parveen Babi was the first Asian actress to be featured on the cover of Time magazine. But even Indian film buffs wondered why she had that honour. She was not a great actress and the films she made were eminently forgettable. But she was glamorous and one of the most beautiful actresses to grace the Indian screen. Now she is dead. Out of the public eye ever since she retired from the film industry years ago, she must have led a terribly lonely life. Reports said her body was found in her apartment in Bombay probably two days after she died. The Telegraph has the sad story.
