UNDER-APPRECIATED CINEMA - I

As I have come to understand, a movie doesn't really have to be "good" to be "awesome". With the right amount of audio-video and special effects, huge landscapes and sets, and mind-boggling stunts, an otherwise ordinary movie becomes a top box-office grosser. The intrinsic characteristics of the movie are seldom sized up. I do not speak of the artsy-fartsy flicks here, but of the subtle yet riveting onez, that have gone unsung for want of more glitz and glamor, publicity or maybe publicity stunts.

But should we miss a great movie just because we haven't heard of it?

TEEN DEEWAREIN (2003) : Very few have heard of this movie, fewer have seen it, maybe because it wasn't released in many theaters across India. Nagesh Kukunoor, writer-producer-director of the movie, belongs to a new cadre of film-makers who use new innovative ways to target the new urban audience. The movie is a story of 3 prison inmates on death row- Jackie Shroff, Naseeruddin Shah, and Nagesh Kukunoor, each for having killed a woman. Gulshan Grover plays, ironically, the humane prison warden and Juhi Chawala an amateur filmmaker, making a documentary on their lives. The three convicts could not be any more different in character and in their responses to the death sentence. The film is not just a human interest story or a polemic against the death penalty but also a suspense thriller. The story has an unpredictable twist in the end where we see how a single incident connects 3 different people forever, like the 3 walls of a room. With outstanding performances by Naseeruddin Shah and Juhi Chawala, and an exceptional plot, this movie could certainly make the biggies of Hollywood jealous!

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (1975) : This is one of the very few movies that I have watched on TV, and perhaps the only one that I watched in the middle of the night. Not only is it adapted from a Rudyard Kipling story, or directed by John Huston, or set in the British ruled India, but it also has Sean Connery and Michael Caine in their finest performances. The two are officers in the British army who find themselves at a loss when their services are no longer required in Asia. While blackmailing a local Raj, they are exposed by author Rudyard Kipling and eventually get him to witness a contract for their latest plan – to become kings of a small country by training a village to conquer the rest of the villages and then leave months later with riches. 'Flawless', is the word for it as it couldn't be closer to perfect. Interesting trivia about the movie is that it is about a real place- the then 'Kafiristan' is now 'Nuristan', a place located in Eastern Afghanistan.