I have
always been kind of a History buff. I love almost anything and everything about
it, especially if it involves any political aspects. There is so much to know, there is so much to learn from there. For my money, I think the
second world war is the most fascinating period in history of mankind. Almost
every other thing happening in the world right now, you can trace back their
origins to something that happened in World War II - directly or indirectly.
Even in cinema, there is so much material based on holocaust, almost overdoing
it, it has almost become a genre of its own. However one aspect of cinema that
is usually associated with History and still gets lukewarm response from me is
Period pieces. To tell you the truth, it is mostly because most of them only
take the setting from the certain period and more often than not are a work of
fiction than actual true historical events. Even if there is a smidgeon of a
truth to them, I am still attracted to them. Such was the case of A Royal Affair(2012). Not that it only tells the part of the true story as apparently
most of it stays to the history but I had no idea if it's a true story or
fictional. I was drawn to it only because of the Oscar buzz surrounding it and
incidentally, it was playing in a theater near me. This is only the second
occasion of me watching a foreign movie in a theater - other being The Intouchables(2012) - and again, incidentally, both seem to be locking horns
against each other in the Oscar race.
Set in 18th Century Denmark, A Royal Affair(2012) is a story of Caroline Mathilde who served as Queen of Denmark and Norway for 6 years, from 1766 to 1772 until she was arrested and sent into exile amidst allegations of affair between her and Johann Struensee. Struensee started of as a personal physician to the King but became very important figure, virtually running the country for two years prior to his arrest. It starts with her arrival from England after her marriage to Christian VII of Denmark. As she finds out right after their marriage, Christian is ill mentally. They got off on the wrong foot as Christian's stepmother makes him believe that Caroline is everything he is not and will eventually take his place. This rift between them keeps on growing because of his aggressive behaviour towards her and her indifference towards him. Doctor Struensee comes into the picture on King's tour of Europe when he falls ill and court starts looking for a personal physician for him. He gets this job not based on his qualification but first because of the referral from Count Rantzau and Brant and then because King finds him interesting. Rantzau and Brandt have lost their place in Royal court since Christian became the King as Bernstoff, who became most powerful minister in King Christian's court, did not like them and they expect to be re-instated to their position in return of this favour to Struensee. Struensee is a man of progressive thinking, a man of enlightenment as he calls himself and they are considered as an enemy since they oppose the medieval thinking with strong emphasis of faith and religion. However, Struensee and King hit off immediately and start spending a lot of time together. Struensee is seen as a bad influence initially as after his appointment Christian starts firing people who have been with him since his childhood like his tutor and people blame him for that.
Struensee uses his influence in a lot of good ways - he tells King to improve his relationship with Queen, he encourages Christian to put his ideas in court and most importantly, keep his craziness in check. Even queen doesn't have a much high of an opinion of him at first. But as she gets to know him better, they get acquainted to each other with the help of common interests like Books and Horse riding and Voltaire. She likes the man of enlightenment in him who is speaks of things she is been told not to. Around him, she can be an intellectual that she was accustomed to or was known for in England but never had a chance to be in Sweden because of censorship and King's behaviour. He cements his position further as a faithful adviser in eyes of both King and Queen, this time by using his doctor degree, when he successfully vaccinates Prince Frederick. With incidences like this, Queen and Struensee get closer and closer and then dances and illicit meetings turn acquaintance into friendship, friendship into fascination and then into full-blown titular affair. In the mean time, Struensee becomes much more influential on King too. With some other free-thinkers like him with Christian and Caroline together, they try to bring some reforms. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't until one day in one crazy moment, Christian dissolves the existing cabinet and replaces Bernstoff with Struensee. What follows is rule of reform to bring Denmark out of stone age mindsets, off course until relationship between Carolina and Struensee threatens it all.
Over the last week, I have caught up with all the Oscar roundtables released at 'The Hollywood Reporter'. First one was the writer's roundtable where, among other things, they talked about the responsibility films have in terms of telling a story certain way. 'The Office' fame John Krasinski talked about manipulating audience to believe something being incredibly dangerous. There is something similar I noticed distinctly about A Royal Affair that it never leads you as a viewer to believe anything. It puts everything on the table and let you be the judge to choose our own side. It doesn't glorify anyone and at the same time, does not villainize anyone either by being overtly critical. Each of the three leads are being presented from all the angles, good or bad. Another thing that I really liked about it is, even though it's named A Royal Affair, it doesn't dwell too much only on affair part and gives a well rounded view of everything that lead to the eventual end, politically as well as socially. I loved that it spends time introducing the characters, building them and circumstances around them so that nothing seems forced, out of the blue or superficial but at the same time never looses its pace. It takes a lot of maturity on director and writer Nicolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg's part to show such constraint in a script that could have gone either ways. Similar restraint shows in the acting as well as each of the three leads give a powerful performances. After Casino Royale(2006), Oscar nominated After The Wedding(2006) and this year's The Hunt(2012), Mads Mikkelsen must be the most recognizable name from the cast. He is brilliant in the central role of Struensee - very intense and passionate for his cause. Mikkel Boe Folsgaard making his feature debut as Mad King Christian in all of his crazyness turns in a very captivating and spontaneous performance. However, the biggest highlight for me was Alicia Vikander as Queen Carolin - very controlled, restrained but nuanced, subtle and above all very royal. Off course, to add to the whole feel it does contains all the usual props for a period piece like beautiful sets, stunning locations, make-up and big, flowy costumes.
As I said above, along with The Intouchables, it is almost guaranteed an Oscar nomination and even though it is still little premature to be talking about winning right now, it is one of the front runners in foreign film category. Now I do prefer The Intouchables a little over this one but I will be perfectly fine if either of the two wins. At least then, I would have seen the Best Foreign Film Oscar winner before winning its Oscar. Well, that's the First !!
Rating(out
of 5):
Last week,
on the occasion of Diwali, Ryan McNeil at The Matinee unveiled his Bollywood Syllabus that yours truly and Nikhat designed for him. Ryan has never seen a
Hindi movie and after his previous anime syllabus, when he showed interest in
doing something similar with Hindi movies, we jumped on it and this is what we
think will help him at least get acquainted with Hindi Cinema. I am really
excited to see how this panes out, hopefully he will actually like some of the
movies from the list and more than anything else, he will enjoy watching them.
When I thought about doing this Bollywood Essential post, I wanted to do
something from the list and then I remembered that one of the movies in the
list in being re-released this very month in its digitally remastered format.
So, it's time for me to talk about cult-classic film from 1983, certainly one
of the best comedies made in Hindi film industry - Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron(1983).
Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron opens up with opening of Beauty Photo Studio operated by two photographers, Sudhir and Vinod. They have been waiting for more than couple of hours for their guests and none have arrived so far. The problem is, nearby there is another studio opening which is much bigger and is stealing all their thunder. This studio is set-up by Ashok and his girlfriend Priya, who work for one of the biggest and most powerful but also equally corrupt builders in the city, Taneja. Taneja has asked them to set it up so that they can keep an eye on office of activist magazine Khabardar, right across the street from them. Run by its editor Shobha Sen, Khabardar has been trying for a long time to expose Taneja and his corrupt ways that have taken him to the current position. After knowing about the photo studio set-up, Shobha tries to hire Sudhir and Vinod to run her own sting operation on Taneja. Sudhir and Vinod are very straight forward kind of people that want to have their small photo studio and run it but they have a habit of running into their own trap every single time, without fail. They are kind of goofy, little stupid but are good at their jobs. Taneja has internal setting with municipal commissioner D'Mello which allows him to get all the permits for everything he wants the way he wants. He also gets all major contracts for the city as well as. As Sudhir and Vinod's first assignment for Khabardar, Shobha asks them to take few photos of D'Mello's meeting with Taneja. After meeting them, she realizes that both are incredibly stupid but at least they get their work done and she probably can use their goofiness for her own good. So, she offers them another job which is a little more dangerous - they somehow have to break into D'Mello's guest house where Taneja is going to meet him to get his 4 tenders for the fly-over's passed. She also expects a lot of money to exchange hands.
However, Taneja isn't the only one who has big dreams and is ready to get his hands wet in an attempt to achieve them. Among others, these is Ahuja - Taneja's main business rival. There is a very well thought contrast in the characters of Taneja and Ahuja suggesting the face you put on for everyone does not make you a person you are - Taneja is very sophisticated, soft spoken person who comes off as a otherwise likable whereas Ahuja is a drunkard, brutish even in his manner of speaking and a hooligan. Even though they are so much different, their final goal is same and even Ahuja knows that the only way to get his hands on any of those contracts passes through D'Mello's pocket. Unfortunately for D'Mello though, Ahuja pops up at his house at the same time Taneja is there to get D'Mello's signature. That night, they both realize that D'Mello is playing them both, basically to get more money. They decide to meet at another place to sort out their differences so that third person can not take advantage of it. While they are discussing this, they are told that neither of them has got those contracts as someone else has already signed them. Now that they have been double-crossed, Taneja decides that he has to take care of D'Mello. Sudhir and Vinod are following Taneja everywhere, even when they thing it is too dangerous for them. Shobha knows that they are more interested in her than her job and uses it brilliantly with everything she's got to coax them into doing anything she wants. However they discover something way out of their league completely inadvertently and what follows is a race of truth against power, integrity against money. Keep an eye out for the final chase sequence though as it is unforgettable, especially Mahabharat farce which is officially my 'most watched scene ever'.
Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron was
much more like a passion product for most of the involved. Most of the cast and
crew were just out of their respective degrees from National School of Drama in
New Delhi or some other film school and none of them had any sort of stable
career by then. Lot of actors didn't even take any money to work in it, they
did it as a stepping stone for their career. In hindsight, it feels like
a miracle to see so many well known faces of the industry together in a film as
in 30 years since this movie, many of the actors have reached different heights
in their respective careers. With likes of Nasseruddin Shan, Om Puri, Sathish
Shah, Pankaj Kapoor and Satish Kaushik, this is probably the best ensemble of
the character actors Hindi cinema has to offer and despite that, director Kundan Shah made this movie in a budget of 725,000 INR. Now-a-days, movies have marketing budget that is 10 times bigger than that. Even the look and feel of this movie tells you that it is a low budget movie but what they lack with money, they compensate it with passion. Now this whole movie is played out as a dark comedy, a satire on deeply rooted corruption in almost every stream - in bureaucracy, business, media or even politics. One thing that I frequently go back to defend this movie is Monty Python and any of their movies. Their movies usually play like an all out farce but have a strong social commentary that goes with it. With a lot of over the top acting and many unbelievable situations like appearance and disappearance of coffin, characters feel like almost caricatures of themselves. Shobha seems like only person that knows what she is doing but as in Monty Python, that is pretty much intention here.
Every character in the movie is a parody of something similar that does exist in a real world, none of which is too subtle or even too smart, maybe a little too parodied for some. However at the heart of all this stupidity and parody is very serious introspection of society and its ways which holds surprisingly true even after almost 30 years since its release. As I explained above in case of Taneja and Ahuja, all the characters are well-thought. Script takes various turns, some of which may feel extraneous but even the small events have something more to say than meets the eye. Take scene under the bridge where a cop takes Sudhir and Vinod's ticket money from them for no reason for example or their fight with Shobha in the end. All in all, it is a remarkably timeless take on very human quality of greed or self-importance against moral or ethical standards.
Rating(out
of 5):
Previous Essentials:
Satya(1998)
Sholay(1975)
