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harmanjitsingh
Reviews
Mr. Singh/Mrs. Mehta (2010)
Abysmal production values and amateurish direction
This has to be the worst sophomore effort to have reached Indian cinemas in a long time. Forget Salman Khan, forget Govinda, forget even Gunda or Dada Kondke, this film, in Roger Ebert's immortal words for "Freddy Got Fingered", "isn't the bottom of the barrel, doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel, should not be in the same sentence as barrels." There is so much to fault in this film, and so little to admire that I am at a loss where to start.
How about the dubbed, artificial voices of the Mrs Singh and Mr Mehta? How about the horrid make-up? Mr Mehta is wearing eye-liner, for crying out loud! How about a butchering of every scene? How about ham-handed set-design? How about atrocious dialogue delivery? How about ugly actors? And let me not get started about the plot.
Save your money and your time and skip this piece of trash.
Der siebente Kontinent (1989)
The Promised Land of Prosperity
As the movie is aphoristic in style, so will be my comments:
- In the shadow of the laws, where is thy life?
- Does what you drink and consume quench your thirst, the emptiness of your being?
- In the midst of plenty, what makes you cry suddenly and unstoppably?
- Since you were born, what have you not pursued, and found wanting?
- If you think you have everything, think again.
- Your life is not what you write in your letters about your career and health, your life is what is left unsaid.
- As each lap-day comes to an end, the gear again shifts to the first, and we again go through the motions of another mechanized day.
- Unable to come closer in life, with clothes and rules and engagements between us, the only intimacy seems to be in death.
Yeh Woh Manzil To Nahin (1987)
Great movie with a fine sense of atmosphere
Three freedom fighters get together in the twilight of their lives near a college in modern India. The college is witnessing an agitation by the students against the authorities and the police for shielding a criminal, who is the son of the college's chairman.
All three of them seem to be haunted by something terrible which happened during their youth. They are unwilling to even acknowledge the existence of that event.
The drama that is being played in the college reaches a climax when the police raids the college violently and a few students are injured and a policeman killed. The honest student leader is the prime suspect and the police launches a hunt against him.
As an atonement for what had happened in the past, the three old men, along with a old woman friend, who brings catharsis to them for what happened in their pasts, shelter the young college leader.
They are unable to save his life eventually, but the very fact that they tried, strikes a poignant chord as they leave the town in a train, peaceful and strangely free of guilt.
The film is a scathing indictment of politics and corruption in India and contrasts idealism with human frailty very gracefully.