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The Slick Emotional Porn Genre Of Story Telling - Example - Raincoat
bevivek
This is more a comment on a shtyle of film making and less review of a movie.
Raincoat, a national award winning movie by Rituparna Ghosh is a cinematic adaptation of O.Henry's Gift of the Magi. GOTM of course is the story of a couple who love each other really but being deeply broke, each sell their most prized possession to buy a Christmas present for the other. The sting is that the gift each purchases complements the prized possession of the other, that alas is now sold. Life.
RG breathes more Chowringhee Lane into this already sobby concoction and transforms it to emotional porn. What intrigues me is the recurrent Bengal connection with such works. Am I the only one who finds many Bengali authored or directed effusions wallowing in excessive sentiment and teeming with hugely self-indulgent, weak, loser characters?
Raincoat is also of this breed and the fact that it is done beautifully (The movie got the National Award in 2004) only intensifies the agony. Nuanced silences, beautiful camera work, authentic sets with the right number of creaky antique furniture, gloomy rooms with the right percentage of mildewed walls, stunningly evocative music, nauseatingly multi-layered dialogue and beautiful, soulful actors, all miscast to tell a soppy tale that makes you throw up (of course, in an artishtic way, not just one crude heave).
Others of the same genre are Choker Bali and Devdas. All those who have seen or read Devdas and felt that what the sot needed, really needed, was less women or booze and more a good whipping raise your hand. Parineeta the movie, almost joined the Raincoat brigade, but was rescued on the verge by Vidya Balan's eyes, Rekha's abs and the humour tipped Birla Cements ad ("Yeh deewaar toot tha kyu nahin hai?") in the dying throes of the movie.
Coming back to the Raincoat brand of storytelling, there's hope yet for RG. His undoubted cinematic gifts can be salvaged if he immediately inoculates himself with the works of Saki, the only known antidote to the disease of Overly Sentimentalis. One may then perhaps look forward to well directed deadpan humour and abrupt exciting ends to his cinematic characters. Imagine the audience delight if in Raincoat, instead of giving the expected ill affordable gift, the girl decides the best gift is to put the man out of his misery, shoves the body in one of the wardrobes littering her house and thoughtfully uses the money in the man's raincoat to pay overdue rent and buy much needed provisions. Why, RG might start a new cinematic genre (well, at least in Tollywood).
The Slick Emotional Porn Genre Of Story Telling - Example - Raincoat
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Shantanu Dutta
June 4, 2006
01:40 PM
The story line as is befitting a Bengali type sentimental and sobby but the music by Subha Mudgil was eheral - "Mathura Nagarpati Kahe tum Gokul Jayo" whatever its symbolic meaning a brilliant song which a man like me with little knowledge of classical music can appreciate.
bevivek
URL
June 4, 2006
01:51 PM
Shantanu - Absolutely, the music was brilliant as I've also mentioned. In fact, technically the film is stunning, good camera work, acting ... My problem are to do with the subject matter and its treatment.
temporal
URL
June 4, 2006
03:58 PM
bevivek:
am intgrigued and was not sure:)
shtyle was intentional or typo?
Anil Menon
URL
June 4, 2006
06:44 PM
The Bengalis do seem to be fond of a good cry. So do the Mallus. In a Mallu adaptation of say, The Sound of Music, the children would fall down the cliff in the final escape attempt, the Nazis would win WWII and the whole weepy mess would end with a slow, heart-rending rendition of Maria's first song: "THE HILLLLS ARRE... ALIVE WITH... THE SOUNNND Of MUSIIIIIIC..."
Shantanu Dutta
June 4, 2006
09:06 PM
Isnt that good - At least some communities in the country have a heart !! And they also end up being leftist in their leanings quite a bit !!
bevivek
URL
June 4, 2006
10:23 PM
T - Both shtyle and artishtic (alas changed to artistic in the final version) were intended
Shantanu - I am all for having a heart myself.
Anil - :) On the other hand if Adoor G had had a go at SOM, the children would have run away from home, the captain would refuse to leave Austria and Maria would have become Rolf's lover.
temporal
URL
June 4, 2006
10:42 PM
bevivek:
ok:)
will change it back
sami
URL
June 5, 2006
01:51 AM
Maybe authors can leave a sign to indicate (to the editors) the intentional use of unconventional spellings.
I liked the subject of the story of Raincoat but not the execution of it. Rituparno Ghosh always promises more and delivers less imo. Music of Raincoat was excellent, but those were the pre-himesh reshammiya days.
bevivek
URL
June 5, 2006
10:27 AM
Sami - Good idea on marking intentional use of misspellings.
We all pray that the Reshammiya effect is temporary.
temporal
URL
June 5, 2006
11:16 AM
well there is a sipmle (sic) way of doing it
;)
dakshin
URL
June 5, 2006
11:12 PM
Hmmmm...interesting !!
SRI RAM
June 6, 2006
02:51 AM
Was a good bullshit movie.
like the work of camera/lights.
sami
URL
June 6, 2006
03:14 AM
(sic) might confuse if the author intends to retain (sic) itself or not i.e., should the editors leave it as 'sipmle(sic)' or make it 'sipmle'. Maybe it can be left as is if it is in the quotes and remove it if outside of them.
temporal
URL
June 6, 2006
08:48 AM
sami:
splitting atoms;)
how about a simple note for the editor saying x, y and z are intentional?
bevivek
URL
June 6, 2006
09:56 AM
Yes, something simple to indicate to say, "Hey editor, leave those words alone" should suffice.
Perhaps an email to the editors is best so that the mark doesnt mistakenly appear in the published article.
Bose
June 6, 2006
11:47 AM
hey...I agree completely!
Bengali characters are so emo! Our literary leanings make us such girls on screen!
We need some Bengali cowboys- rough and crude individualist characters to bring back Manliness back into our movies.
Jim Thio
URL
September 20, 2007
12:13 PM
Porn accentuate disparity of beauty. It's in a sense the opposite of burga. In consensual society, porn allows pretty girls to out evolve the ugly ones. So ugly bitches hate porn.
Deepa Krishnan
URL
September 20, 2007
02:13 PM
Arrgh, now you've brought back painful memories of Aishwarya Rai mincing her lines in Raincoat. aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhh. This is like a bad toothache come back to haunt me.
bevivek
URL
September 21, 2007
04:11 AM
Deepa :-) not to mention the barf creating conversations between the Devgun and his friend's wife which are so many layered and so shweet it makes me ill
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