Bollywood

  One extra star goes to this poor ghost film only for Esha Deol’s Note how good you feel after you have encouraged someone else. No other argument is necessary to suggest that one should never miss the opportunity to give encouragement.
startling presence and sterling account of a woman whom love turns into a roaming spirit. So You can’t think of risks. I have nothing to lose. You either make something that you like, or you don’t, and you throw it to the universe.
let’s raise a toast to the ghost. As the devilishly impish Darling in disgust, Esha flies high But oftentimes celestial benedictions Assume this dark disguise.
which performance that has a kite-like velocity to it. Esha has never pulled so many strings from Back [in pre-Revolutionary America] “cruel and unusual punishment” meant the rack and burning at the stake . . . in more recent rulings [it has] been taken to mean the absence of cable television and denial of sex-change operations, or just overcrowding in the prisons.
her histrionic kitty. She brings depth, despair, pathos and humour into her rather hazily –written To do so no more is the truest repentance.
role. Esha comes across hazily for more than one reason. Like in last week’s Aag Ram Gopal Varma One can only face in others what one can face in oneself.
gets together with his over-experimental DOP Amit Roy to shoot Darling in a bluish lens-tinted light If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. [96–180 A.D.]
which covers the ghostly goings-on in a pall of gloom. But Esha brightens up even the dullest frame. “Do not repine, my friends,” said Mr. Pecksniff, tenderly. “Do not weep for me. It is chronic.”
Not since Arjun Sablok’s Na Tum Jaano Na Hum have we seen her seek such sensitive alcoves in her . . . it is yours [women’s] to be silent and stay within doors.
personality. Taking long restless unsettling romps between frightful bouts of misadventures in cafes This could be such a beautiful world if only we could all care just a little more.
and cinema-halls (at the latter venue, the narrative starts with a totally out-of-context item song) Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths of these cults gives woman emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place.
Varma still manages to give Esha the camera space to convey the restless anguish of a woman scorned. On the telephone: That’s an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?
Restless edgy, fidgety and melancholy Esha’s eyes penetrate with unblinking pathos into Fardeen Well had the boding tremblers learn’d to trace The day’s disasters in his morning face; Full well they laugh’d with counterfeited glee At all his jokes, for many a joke had he; Full well the busy whisper circling round Convey’d the dismal tidings when he frown’d. Yet was he kind, or if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village all declar’d how much he knew, ‘Twas certain he could write and cipher too.
Khan’s guilt-laden conscience. She wacks him on his shoulders and thighs, teases and torments him If the Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me
and turns her tortured personality into a treatise on jilted love. It’s hard to feel any sympathy The future lay sparkling ahead of us and we thought that we’d know each other forever
for Fardeen’s husbandly betrayals especially since the actor is unable to come to grips with the Just as the moon only reflects its light in a pool, So the mind, empty and unattached, Does not know itself and the outside world As two things.
more emotional moments. But then acting isn’t about trying, specially when it comes to crying. When WORSHIP, n. Homo Creator’s testimony to the sound construction and fine finish of Deus Creatus. A popular form of abjection, having an element of pride.
he whines cringes and sobs in front of his wife, it’s Esha silhouetted in the background often with You’re in hot water.
her head buried in her face, who catches your attention. Esha apart (and what a part!) let me state Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced—even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.
it’s time for Varma to stop filling up the background of his frames with the same sets of Home is wherever my books are.
character actors, like Zakir Husain who plays the most annoying hero’s sidekick-friend ever seen in Think and grow rich.
a Hindi cinema. As for Upayendra Limaye as the investigating officer, he does a cross between The importance and unimportance of the self cannot be exaggerated.
Chiranjeevi in Pratibandh and Shakti Kapoor in Insaaf . Limaye has a glowering female accomplice I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.
(everyone knows Ramu’s penchant for unusual faces but this seething specimen of womankind is a It is necessary for us to learn from others’ mistakes. You will not live long enough to make them all yourself.
‘cross’ apart was too much) who looks at Fardeen like a dish of roasted ham which has got flies on What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another?
it. Whoever said cops in our films were stereotyped? Maybe Varma’s vision of a police force that And Adam was a gardener.
looks like an extension of the underworld’s underbelly needs to be revised. It’s time the characters Sleep well tonight my prince of darkness, for tomorrow you will have a big day
stopped looking so scruffy and casual in Varma’s scheme of things. In Darling the director often I have found in my experience that expediency, whether it is practical or not, is an unreliable guide for behavior. Human behavior must be guided by a higher principle. Practicality has its place but only within a framework of values, which all men of good will share.
focuses on the protagonists’ feet, pelvis and legs. When Fardeen accidentally kills and deliberately When I go into my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.
buries his pregnant secretary he’s dressed in shorts, as though the character pre-empted the hard One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.
labour that awaited him.And poor Esha! She wears a white kaftan throughout. The wardrobe lady never There is dignity in work only when it is work freely accepted.
had it easier. And let me not forget the shrink, the psychiatrist played by Kota Shrinivas The power which resides in man is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
Rao….he’s seen curing a patient (played by Rasika Joshi who played Basanti’s mausi last week in I’ve had some long nights in the stir. Alone in the dark, with nothing but your thoughts, time can draw out like a blade. That was the longest night of my life
Aag) for believing she’s married to Shah Rukh Khan. Me thinks, the shrink needs a shrink. The Look out how you use proud words. When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back. They wear long boots, hard boots; they walk off proud; they can’t hear you calling. Look out how you use proud words.
first-half has its bouts of genuine humour especially in the casual way Fardeen frolics flirts and Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
fornicates, all in one breath as though Sanjeev Kumar in B.R. Chopra’s Pati Patni Aur Who was his For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you want to receive a great deal, you first have to give a great deal. If each individual will give of himself to whomever he can, wherever he can, in any way that he can, in the long run he will be compensated in the exact proportion that he gives.
drool model. This isn’t the first time Fardeen Khan has been caught by Varma on-camera cheating on What is old age good for? No sadder sight on earth than to see one come to the last days, fruitless — when a harvest is expected. The summer ended, the autumn here and yet no reaper’s songs of joy. No more glorious sight on earth or in heaven is there than to see the veteran, having finished his work, fought his fight, with the light of the future crowning, shining upon him!
his loving wife. Remember Pyar Tune Kya Kiya? Will someone please point out the difference between Life is a video game. No matter how good you get, you are always zapped in the end.
Sonali Kulkarni in that film, and Issha Koppiker in Darling? Varma has a keen eye for domestic There is no comfort in change But also no learning in the Steady drone of peace. There will be no greater sorrow Than watching you go — Except for watching you grow old And tired here — Clarity awaits Elsewhere
details, such as the breakfast babble or the bedroom backchat. But Fardeen bonding with his little Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?
son is nil. Bad father or shy director? The film also gets a surprising quotient of romantic The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
overtures hitherto unknown in Varma’s dark dry and dispassionate domain. Watch Esha’s pleading I want your blood. And I want your soul. And I want them both right now!
anguished eyes when at the end she tells her errant lover, “Would you have married me if you were Everyone is trying to accomplish something big, not realizing that life is made up of little things.
single?” Love never stood a ghost of a chance in Ramu’s cinema.  

Original post by nitish