The War Within turned out every bit as clichéd as the Voice critic had said. It is indeed a high-def film (thanks, Mark) and not as muddy as the typical DV release. (I have two quarrels with the early days of digital filmmaking: one, regular DV doesn’t yet simulate the saturation, crispness and ‘movie look’ of film, though it inevitably will; and two, digital projection really hoses those who sit up close, like me, because of pixelation. We want to be the first to receive the images from the screen, said Bernardo Bertolucci’s pretentious Dreamers, but unlike a French cine buff, for me it’s simply about max res. And always-available seats.)
This plot, penned by lead actor Ayad Akhtar, is as single-threaded and simplistic as anything you’d see on the nature channel. And that’s not just due to budget, it’s due to writing. Compare to the richness of the action in the low-budget Monsoon Wedding.
Whenever you see a character running around with a white SO and a bottle of whiskey, you know s/he’s a Bad Muslim. Hi Pardes, hi Purab Aur Pachhim! Venerable jungle fever hottie Sarita Choudhury, who in Mississippi Masala ignored the no-smoking-in-bed rule, is surprisingly believable as an older auntie. But she struggles with her Urdu accent — are there really no desi accent coaches? Shelley Malil in The Forty-Year-Old Virgin had just as hard a time. I smell opportunity for some underemployed dramati.
Nandana Sen, in all her Porsche-eyed, Nubian-profiled glory, is given little to do. Firdous Bamji, who plays the terrorist’s unsuspecting batchmate, looks like a wounded, Trojan Eric Bana. Ajay Naidu and Aasif Mandvi appear in only a single scene. When you bend Naidu’s reflective cranium over a mirror, you see a tattoo saying U. BIQUITOUS; after this movie, it reads WASTED.
The movie suffers from amateurish acting and slack editing that leaves seconds ticking in between characters’ reactions. In a pivotal scene toward the end, the baby-faced killer’s reaction seem totally implausible. This flick doesn’t just telegraph its intentions, it puts out a press release, posts them to a blog and pings IceRocket.
The movie’s subject matter left me totally conflicted. On one hand, there’s the inevitable exoticizing of Islam, not by Akhtar but by an American audience’s gaze. It reminds me of the idiots who post frothing, right-wing rants in our comments quoting wingnut Web sites. Try taking off the white hood, provocateur pusses. Dammit, we’ve lived among a hundred and fifty million Muslims in India. Unlike you, we know them, we understand them, they’re our neighbors, they’re our friends; and except for those whose conservatism is near-Hasidic, most are utterly unremarkable.
On the other, it’s discomfiting seeing a fantasy where Grand Central gets blown up. It’s too close to home to pen a script where the real-life desi ghetto of Jersey City, home to IT workers innumerate, turns into a terrorist breeding ground. Don’t march red arrows over a map of my city. Don’t put me inside the head of a fuckup who believes in violence, slaughter of innocents and collective guilt. Don’t mess up the South Asian brand launch by associating it with criminality. I already ostentatiously flip open my bag every day to fish out a book in front of the subway police, and I left the movie expecting looks of disappointment of the ‘you people’ kind.
Most depressingly, don’t prove that terrorism, not business, is the successor to the Indian trifecta of myths, hippies and poverty. Not only does terrorism seemingly provide most new roles for desi actors, it’s the biggest new cottage industry for Muslim comedians and telepundits.
The Mississippi Masala cast has longevity beyond its years. In Proof, Roshan Seth plays the gently disapproving Professor Bhandari, while Gwyneth Paltrow plays a math prodigy in his class stricken by her father’s mental illness and recent passing. It’s Paltrow’s run at Russell Crowe and A Beautiful Mind, her attempt to prove she deserved her Oscar for that light-hearted Shakespeare trifle. She wears little makeup, and there’s a sex scene which never moves south of the neck; the stripping of glamor is the donning of clothes. The movie is somewhat bleak, and Jake Gyllenhaal is never believable as a math geek. Shall I compare thee to a Prinze Fred-day? Thou art more pretty and more emasculate. Sad Sir Hopkins barely stirs to phone it in. But the film’s tight dialogue and snappy one-liners betrays its theater roots. Like The Shape of Things, it’s an adapted talkie that sings. Q.E.D.
Strings pull my strings, whether it’s the violins in INXS’ ‘Never Tear Us Apart’ or the stirring crescendo in the Bombay theme. Like the proto-human wail of L. Subramaniam’s melancholy violin, the Mumbaya instrumental texts me chills. It was surprising to hear a decade-old A.R. Rahman Bollyjingle in the soundtrack of a new movie, Lord of War (watch the trailer). This is one great flick, Bombay theme or no, and Nicolas Cage nails its epic pitch. The opening sequence of the life cycle of a bullet is astonishing, the poster visually arresting, and the rest of this Künstlerroman lives up to billing. It’s a hustle movie about an international arms dealer, Catch Me If You Can with a high-powered scope.
The director, Andrew Niccol, probably got his hands on the musical piece via a story he wrote that’s still in production. Paani / Water is a dystopic sci-fi flick involving Rahman, Shekhar Kapur, Vivek Oberoi and yes, Deepak Chopra. The instrumental is apropos, opposites are apposite: Cage is arrested by Interpol and stranded under a wide African sky, his hands cuffed and his bird stripped for parts. The lyrical chaser to Hindu-Muslim riots sounds right for a scene promising violence of more intimate provenance.
