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balajiviswanathan
Reviews
Jinnah (1998)
Good movie but with a lot of bias
I'm an Indian who wanted to learn about Mr. Jinnah. But, I didn't learn a lot of new stuff and was a quite disappointed.
The good stuff: 1.Lee's acting was quite good and he was quite good for the part. Though he is not Ben Kinsley, he is the main pivot here.
2. Mahatma and Nehru, though portrayed by weak actors, were not depicted too negatively.
3.For a Pakistani film, the film was reasonably professional.
Bad stuff: 1. Younger Jinnah (Lintern) never looked/spoke remotely South Asian. It looked more like the director was trying too much to play to the Western audience.
2. A lot of times the scenes were ridiculous like Gandhiji staring his computer etc.
3. Jinnah's sister in most of the movie really looked like a witch, and maybe she was one.
4. Throughout the movie the Hindus were predators and muslims were shown the prey/reactors. On the contrary while only 10% of Muslims were forced to flee India, 90% of Hindus in Pakistan were either slaughtered or become refugees in India. If Hindus were as blood thirsty as was portrayed in the movie, we would not have let 200 million muslims to stay in our country. Both sides had their victims and evil forces.
5.Maharaja of Kashmir signed the ascension to India after Jinnah invaded Kashmir while the movie totally ignored the crucial fact.
6. There was far too much stress on Edwina-Nehru that at some point I felt it was Nehru/Edwina's biopic rather than Jinnah's.
7. If Civil disobedience and Nonviolence made one a Hindu as depicted in the movie, then Rev. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Henry Thoreau must all be Hindus! Nonviolence is beyond religion and as shown in the movie, Jinnah failed to grasp it.
8. Mountbatten's portrayal was horrible. He was shown to be without humor, grace, etc.
While Pakistanis are right to claim that Jinnah created their nation for them from India, they must also remember that there would be nothing called Pakistan had British India not won her Independence. Jinnah did relatively nothing to win independence to India and that is a fact. If not for Gandhi, India would have taken a few more decades to gain independence and by that time Quaid and his ideas of Partition would have long been dead.
I would give an above-average rating of 6 for a relatively bold story telling and good acting, but on the whole it was quite disappointing.
Gandhi (1982)
Glad that the film was made by a non-Indian
Like most Indians of the present generation, I grew up hating both Gandhi - the film and the great man. Like "sound of music" and "It's a wonderful Life" in the US, "Gandhi" is a routine in Indian Television. But, like a man who knows not the importance of water while sitting amidst plenty, I didn't care about it.
In India, Hindus hate him because he gave too much to the Muslims, Muslims hate him because he was a religious Hindu and overshadowed Jinnah, leaders of the downtrodden hate him because he overshadowed their leader Ambedkar, socialists hate him because he didn't attack capitalism enough... in short most Indians misunderstand and hate him, and I was filled with all their propaganda. But, I was shocked when I spent time at an Amsterdam youth hostel where non-Indian students took great interest in Gandhi. So, I revisited the movie and realized what I missed.
Gandhi brilliantly captures the life of a great soul. It has got some spectacularly great scenes - the salt satygraha, the resistance in South Africa against horse mounted cops and most importantly the court scene where even the judge rises up at the entry of the accused. Gandhi was relatively Western in his outlook (atleast initially) -he borrowed ideas from Thoreau, Tolstoy, Paine and others and the movie was quite faithful to it. The movie is pretty historically accurate and enthralls for the whole of 190 minutes. I don't know of any Indian director who could have done justice to this movie/character.
If you have not watched Gandhi due to a propaganda, you are missing one of the most beautiful movies and an experience of a lifetime.
Kadhalukku Mariyadhai (1997)
A classical romantic movie
Kaadhaalukku Mariyadai is one of the best romantic movies made in Tamil and arguably the best movie of actor Vijay. The film helped Vijay to move to the top of Tamil actors list and was a career making movie for actress Shalinie. The six scores, including the title song were big musical hits of the year. The movie is soft and doesn't contain many spurious artifacts of an average Tamil movie - including elaborate stunt sequences, over-sentimalist melodrama and dream sequences in foreign lands.
The film is about how a young boy and girl fall in deep romance, but are constrained in taking the relationship further as they place their romance in the context of their family bonds. The boy and girl belong to different religions and such an inter-faith marriage is still not very common in India and can bring communal violence in few remote parts of the country and the director has amazingly handled this. A good movie for non-Indians to take a peek at a few quirks and culture of Indian families.
Ghilli (2004)
An amazingly fast paced and exciting movie
The word Ghilli actually means a small sharp wooden game instrument that is used in a game called ghilli-danda (a precursor to Cricket) in India. The use of the word as nickname for the principal character is stylish, as it signifies one who is sharp, fast and can hurt badly when rubbed in the wrong way.
Ghilli is one of the best movies for Vijay and in it is unrivaled in its pace and action. The movie never slacks for a moment, and keep you always with some exciting action. The movie is set in Madurai and Chennai and its story core is simple. A rich landlord tries to covet a beautiful girl in his town, and his unquestionable power and authority, prevents the girl from seeking a justice. The hero tries to rescue her and the majority of this movie portrays the week in which all this action happens.
A very exciting movie and though the story is nothing new, the director and the actors receive praise for the full-paced action.