Movie Review: The Edge of Heaven: compelling, powerful drama

It is the final five minutes of the movie that conveys the most powerful emotion.

A son sits on the beach, waiting for his father to return from his fishing trip. The waves ripple endlessly on the shore, a fishing boat lies moored to the left of the frame, a blue sea stretches before him. Even as the end credits roll, the son is still waiting, the waves still wash up the shore…

The best films are best experienced. You enter a theater, the lights go off and you are transported to another world, which is what The Edge of Heaven (Germany, 2007) did to me. Don’t miss it…

photo courtesy - http://www.imdb.com/

Pune International Film Festival: Monday Brief

The plan 

one day 

two theaters

three movies 

11:30 hours - E-Square

Watching the jury members in person in the theater is like spotting THE WANTED, as their pictures are prominent in the festival booklet, aligned next to each other. 

One sits right behind me, his deep voice extolling the film to be screened - The Edge of Heaven...

Movie Review : Persepolis : Poignant and Endearing

Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, a graphic memoir about her childhood, teenage years and adult life is so beautiful and inventive in its black and white illustrations and content, a movie was always on the cards. 

Co-directed by Vincent Paronnaud and Satrapi herself, Persepolis is as inventive as the book and condensed with great skill into 95 minutes. The movie has innocence, humour, heartbreak, despair, hope, war and through it all the story of how a woman finally finds her individuality. 

The movie is a rare gem, though most of the animation is in black and white, you never miss the absence of colour, such is the brilliance of its storytelling. 

For Book Readers 

Much of the graphic memoir content has been trimmed in the movie, so if you want the whole canvas, the book is a great buy. Read the book review HERE.    

Rebellious, curious and full of life, young Marji finds an attentive audience in her grandma.

Marji uses her wits to escape the fundamentalists

Away from home, Marji's dream world is soon to be shattered

Pune International Film Festival 2009: before the screen lights up...

Sunday. 

The razor moves like a snail over my chin. 

Passport photographs; somewhere between a blink and a smile. 

Two beautiful bored college girls hand me the schedule booklet and a photo ID to dangle around the neck.

They let us in, a tiny crowd, 15 minutes before the screening. Sunk in soft seats, in semi darkness with nothing but a blank screen to stare at, the audience reacts in various ways.

An old man nervously plays with the ID card strung around the neck. 

A woman gently taps the encroaching hand of her male companion. 

Four college students, A, B, C and D discuss if there will be uncensored sex scenes in the movie.

Student A reacts, “It is an animation movie, you moron.”

Student B fires, “So what, you fool?” 

It gets tense, just moments ago they had been laughing together. Abuses on various aspects of the human anatomy follow. C and D intervene and an uneasy silence prevails. 

Meanwhile, two beautiful bored girls appear before the screen and needlessly read out the movie name, duration and the director’s name, just like reading from those textbooks in school because the teacher asked them to. Strictly factual, not even a smile… 

I am in a sarcastic, ' laugh at every opportunity' mood. 

So when one of the bored girls says, "We request you to enjoy the movie," I smile widely. It seemed like a subtle command - You have no option but to enjoy.... 

Don't get it? 

Never mind. 

Mercifully, somebody decides to start the projector. 

Showtime.