stndt97

Film is not just a collection of fake emotions or some pseudo-artistic expressive shots or frames. A film is NOT something which, despite of horrible making, can be enjoyed thoroughly. In order to be a good film, therefore, one need to take some special attention to the 'craft', to the building block of cinema, which present Bengali Cinema, along with Srijit Mukherjee lacks brilliantly.

Watching a movie like this, you'd think, this director doesn't know, how to make shot counter shot, how to construct a story according to its internal logic, how to construct a scene according to the whole story. This whole film is the collection of ill made scenes, as I've said previously. The director failed pain strikingly even to tell a story in a cinematic way.

Cinematic TRASH!

When you look at the big screen inside the huge dark auditorium, after the very moment, when light gets off, you start to expect many thing from the screen. You demand with your own aesthetics and sensibilities, you judge with your own sense of value judgement and morality, you try to get hold of things which are there on screen. A review is nothing but the subjective interpretation of these expectations, where, this title and this review is nothing exceptional.

Going back to the main question, what do you expect from a movie? I can't answer any other's statements as deeply as I can answer my own. I expect a movie to be "A Movie" at first, everything else is less important to me. Obviously that doesn't mean that a film is showing genocide in a very artistic way and my mode of reception is positive with the film. The problem with any kind of afterthought is that this is bound to be subjective, and the dangerous debate and miscommunication which is happening in Bangladesh now, is utterly unnecessary and 'cinema-less', if not unexpected and regressive. "Doob" is a fascinating movie experience for me. After a long time finally I've succeeded to speak for a contemporary industry-produced 'Bangla' movie whole heartedly. We know the sort of pros and cons of working within the heinous circle of any film industry, but, I've to appreciate the major mature steps which Farooki took in the course of making this movie.

Aesthetically, most of the time the movie relied on a very subtle tone and an intimate texture. There are no extra scenes or running motions within the sequence. (Though he can't retain this mature treatment throughout the movie) There are lots of pause and spaces, as the basic human relationships and emotions are. We cannot rush up everything in our 'real' mode of relationships, why should we continuously cut back and forth within one scene and destroy the spatial continuity of the 'realistic' cinema? 'Doob' respects the space between two people, the pause, the subtle gaze, the loss of words. It doesn't try to rush up everything with a single aim to tell the story. In other words, "Doob" adopts an aesthetic to create the story, rather than telling everything in a running mode.

Obviously there are flaws. Which work of art is perfect in the world? But it is the positive power of the film that it can engage the viewer with a serious mode of communication, one wants to forget about the problematic parts soon after watching the movie.

Finally the debate concerning the morality and the 'biopic-like' aspects of this movie, is, at least to me, an utter bullshit. Film, as any other serious art form, offers a parallel world of reality, which should be judged only with its own aesthetics and language. As far as this movie in concerned, it is an extraordinary piece of work which have managed to be a 'film' in the true sense of the term. Everything else (namely, the morality, biopic-like assumptions and other nonsense) doesn't matter at all.

Well I am not an expert in the field of Iranian so called "New Wave Film" movement. The reader should not expect here an expertise discourse.I'm not an expert. I've not yet managed to see a lot of Iranian films, made by leading directors like Abbas Kiarostami, Majid Majidi of Jafar Panahi. My relationship to these movies is through just one man. Jafar Panahi, the rebel. Rebel, but not the prototype like Guevara, or artistic rebel, like Beethoven. He is Jafar Panahi. And that's all.

Any work of art can be judged by two aspects. Either It can be judged by putting it into its context. That type of judgment deserves a lot of research, better for a book. Another type, may be, not completely out of context at all, but judging a work of art through its sheer brilliance and universality solely offered by the unique work which it to be judged.

I've seen two of Jafar Panahi movies before Offside. They were post-banned film, 'This is not a film', and 'Taxi'.

I think in order to discuss Offside, above mentioned two is not very much important, because from offside to Taxi, there are a sea change in the style. But content matters. And here again, in offside, the form and content merged in an unique 'Panahian' way, just like other two. Narrative style of story telling unfolds the characters, the conflicts, and ends with a joy, mixed with a little bit of ambiguity.

In the disguise of the story, the director managed to put some very strong arguments, that is necessarily important, and universal. That's why, even not being a Iranian, not being a Muslim (here important, because the treatment of women in Muslim is quite different), I can relate with the simple disguised words.

I'm not going to discuss the story. But the way of treating the story deserves a word of two. The time span is very compact, that's why the tone and rhythm is almost managed through out the movie.

Any nation wants to treat their citizens in their own self-made way. The most powerful scene in this movie happened, when one of the prisoner girl argued with the soldier, why they are not allowed inside the stadium. This single sequence is enough for Panahi to reveal the paradox in the mind of nation's bodyguards.

The director is here unique, because of his treatment to the soldiers. He didn't make them villains, but a simple friendship created throughout the 'prison'-'out of prison' game. This friendship is very important.

The Nation should know there are the relationships between a man and a woman, that may be, and in general more that sexual desire.

A must watch movie even for non movie lovers.