mayoorshetty

Interesting drama based on the lives of two teenagers from Mumbai with the impending Indo-Pak war in the background. Dreams of two friends to leave for a better life in a far away land. Interesting take on the lower middle class teen's of India. With one of the most unusual ending, leaves you wanting for more.

This one's certainly worth a watch. Its been almost a decade since this film was made, don't understand a reason for it to be banned. The controversial parts of the movies are really mellowed down. If the censor board still finds something wrong with it, i would say they must be watching a different film altogether.

The strangest film so far that I've seen in the Pune Festival is Nikhil Mahajan's PUNE 52 (52 refers to a lower class area of Pune. Beginning as an ordinary detective film set in 1992, the year of India's economic liberalization, it finally appears as if someone had shuffled the scripts of VERTIGO and FATAL ATTRACTION together and then ordered a hasty Susan Sontag re-write to achieve a further lack of clarity.

After the first half, when the hero wakes from a nightmare (as is typical in Hindi films) we release than some of the events we have witnessed never really happened. But did he kill or not kill the woman who pretends to be the wife of the construction magnate who he was originally working for?

There is one excellent moment, with the would be wife standing almost in silhouette against the white light coming through the open door of his home with the detective' wife in lighter tones against the dark door, but the differences (or similarities) are never again fully realized. To describe the twists and turns of the plot would be a disservice, if not impossible, but it is necessary to state that the growing affluence of the detective (concurrent with that of India's middle and upper classes) is handled in one fine special effects shot as walls seem to paint themselves and crude furniture morphs into chaise lounges, etc. The hero remains trapped in the end, but by what I am not sure -- either a political/economic nexus, his own weakness, or insanity. I will stop here, hoping to talk with the director in the next few days, who says at least that this is (although you might not know it) "not a murder mystery."

Hansal Mehta's SHAHID, in Hindi, begins with the murder of a lawyer in his office. His first name, Shahid, which also means 'martyr' indicates that he was Muslim. We flashback to the riots in the early 1990s in which he is caught up, causing him to train with Muslim militants in Kashmir. This is not the Kashmir of so many Hindi film songs and dances, but of narrow roads cut into enormous cliffs, the rocks overhanging them.

Shahid runs away from the training camp when he is forced to witness the beheading of a turncoat, is arrested in Delhi, and in Tihar Jail must choose between siding with terrorists again or continuing his former law studies.

He chooses the latter, but on release finds that the law is a double- sided game. So he starts his own practice and takes on only the cases he wants. One is of a woman whose mother-in-law wants her house; we learn later that she is divorced, has a child, and that Shahid wants to marry her. He does, and his family reluctantly agrees. But the majority of his cases favor Muslims who have been falsely accused of terrorism, as we move through more terrorist attacks over time, including the 26/11 attack on the Taj Hotel. In every case shown, including the one involving the house, he receives phone threats, until ... This is a very serious film, more like a novel that what we usually think of cinema, in the style of Sinclair Lewis, or on a really good day, John Grisham.