LIFE OF PI

I believe that LIFE OF PI is director Ang Lee's most technically accomplished  emotionally arresting and finely balanced film.  It surpasses even LUST, CAUTION.  LIFE OF PI must also be one of the most beautifully rendered adaptations - and all the more surprising because the novel upon which it is based was widely regarded as "unfilmable".  Ang Lee, using a screenplay by David Magee (FINDING NEVERLAND), has responded with a film that is both faithful to the content of the book, but also to its sense of wonder and its examination of the slipperiness of faith, identity and storytelling itself. 

All this might make the film sound rather dry and earnest, but it is anything but.  Because at its core, this is a movie that asks us to fall in love with a young boy, admiring his resourcefulness and compassion.  That boy is the eccentrically named Pi Patel, born in French India on the verge of independence.  He embodies the loose infinite multiculturalism of India - creating his own patchwork faith of Hinduism, Catholicism and Islam - much to the chagrin of his liberal humanist father.  The family travels with their zoo animals to America in search of a better life, but a storm hits, leaving Pi the only survivor about a life boat with a vicious Bengal Tiger. He is clever enough to be wary, to survive, thanks in no small part to his patchwork faith. And, in the movie's framing device, tells his story, or versions of it, to the French-Canadian writer who will choose which tale to tell.

Irrfan Khan and Rafe Spall have an easy familiarity as the elder Pi and the writer.  But the movie really belongs to Suraj Sharma who plays the teenage Pi who finds himself on the boat alone with the tiger, and holds our attention for over an hour.  It is a performance that feels utterly natural and compelling and draws us into the story. We care passionately about how he will fare, just as we care about the tiger "Richard Parker" - and because of that, we follow him even as his tale becomes bizarre and magical.

In the epilogue, the movie asks questions about the nature of storytelling and the value of faith. I might not agree with the answers it gives, and they have certainly caused some controversy.  But one cannot deny that the movie finely balances spectacle and provocative ideas in the most charming package. This is clearly one of the films of the year, and the best of Ang Lee's career. It also shows what an imaginative director can do with the appropriate use of 3D and CGI rendering when his intention is to marry it to the material rather than shamelessly cash in on higher cinema ticket prices.

LIFE OF PI was released in November in Canada, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, the USA, China, Hong Kong, Macedonia, India, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan and Spain. It is released on December 14th in Vietnam; and on December 19th in Belgium, France; on December 20th in Belarus, Bosnia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Thailand, the UK, the UAE; on December 21st in Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Mexico, Sweden and Venezuela; on December 25th in Denmark and Norway; on December 26th in Austria and Germany; on December 27th in the Dominican Republic and Peru and on December 28th in Turkey. It is released on January 1st in Australia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama and Russia; on January 3rd in Bolivia and Chile; on January 4th in Guatemala, Honduras and Philippines; on January 10th in Argentina; on January 11th in Poland and on January 25th in Japan. 

FANAA - bipolar Bollywood

FANAA is a film that follows the conventions of Bollywood to its own undoing. The first half is a typical sugary romance. Kajol plays a blind tourist called Zooni who falls in love with Aamir Khan's plain-talking tour guide, Rehan. It's a typical Hindi love story complete with songs, dancing and the obligatory rain-soaked love scene. It's all very conventional and even Kajol's innate charm can't rescue piss-poor songs like Des Rangila. Naturally, having fallen in love, Zooni regains her sight miraculously - a jump-the-shark moment if ever there was one.

After the interval, FANAA turns into a completely different film. It turns out that Rehan is actually a terrorist on the run from the police. He abandons Zooni and their unborn child only to resurface years later, by which time the movie has turned into a cross between SOMERSBY and a snow-bound thriller. It's all deeply unedifying and a waste of everyone's time. It's also totally unsurprising that the woman who penned this implausible drivel was also behind the tedious weepy, KABHI ALVIDA NA KEHNA.

If I have to look for a plus side, I guess I could make the dull point that all Bollywood films tends to look fabulous these days. After years of shite production values, the cinematography and special effects are of Hollywood standards. Shame about the content. Director Kunal Kohli is nothing without a good script: his previous hit HUM TUM must have been down to good chemistry between the leads.

FANAA was released in May 2006 and is available on DVD.

THE NAMESAKE - lyrical immigrant story

THE NAMESAKE is a beautifully produced, deeply affecting immigrant story, based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri. The team behind SALAAM BOMBAY and MISSISSIPI MASALA (director Mira Nair and writer Sooni Taraporevala)and cinematographer Frederick Elmes deliver a sensitive adaptation that will, I hope, resonate beyond the ex-pat communities in America and Europe.

The two-hour drama centres on a charismatic but self-contained Bengali academic called Ashoke. An avid fan of author, Nikolai Gogol, he undergoes a traditional arranged marriage and takes his young bride to America. They have two children, move to the suburbs and have a loving, happy life. This all sounds rather banal, but thanks to absolutely stunning performances by Irrfan Khan and Tabu, this relationship is captivating. It is rare to find two such memorable characters - and such an enchanting portrait of a quietly happy marriage - on screen.

The real drama of the story centres on Ashoke and Ashima's son, formally named Nikhil (a name he can conveniently shorten to Nick in later life), but lovingly known as Gogol. Gogol grows up as an all-american kid and much of the second half of the movie centres on how he comes to terms with both aspects of his life. I found this a far less successul plot strand - although still by far more interesting than most movies. The reason is that Gogol is played by Kal Penn who, while a highly gifted comic actor, simply does not have the chops for such challenging dramatic material*. Another problem is that Gogol's love interests - a Bengali played by Zulheika Robinson and a preppie played by Jacinda Barrett - are thinly drawn: arguably casualties of compressing the novel into a two-hour run-time.

Despite these flaws, THE NAMESAKE remains a fascinating, finely-observed, moving story. Highly recommended.

THE NAMESAKE played Toronto and London 2006 and is on release in the USA, India, France, Italy and the UK. It opens in Australia and Singapore on April 5th and in Belgium, Mexico, the Netherland and Spain in May. It opens on June 14th in Germany. *Although it is ironic to note that Kal Penn has also shortened his Indian name to make it more Hollywood-friendly.