Wednesday, September 19, 2012

beyond reviews.......Rockstar!

"Beyond the conceptual right and wrong, in a field far far away; I'll see you there love!"  - Rumi

in short.........an experience I was completely enthralled with, so much so to the pinnacles of elation, that I was yelling expletives in the theatre......an experience I was afraid to go through again, coz I believe I'd breakdown and cry......an experience 4 which I'd prostrate b4 Imtiaz Ali, AR'God'R and Ranbir.........Rockstar! Now if that can make up for a satisfying review which might make atleast a few others want to watch the movie in an appreciative sense, then I'll proceed with discussing the finer nuances of this film and not 'review' it as such......
.....to briefly enumerate my reasons for writing this blog, this movie is quite probably a symbol of an epitome of directorial creativity that Indian cinema can accost. It is an amalgamation of the finest in the trades of music, production design, editing, cinematography, script writing, narrative, montage cuts, character studies and the art of equipping cinema with those unsaid yet emphatic emotions. This movie was quite possibly a very dear work for Imtiaz Ali, who is an ace at portraying the finer nuances of love and the eccentricities involving present day relationships. This movie has one of the finest OSTs ever rendered by Academy and Grammy award winning composer A.R.Rahman. Above all, many viewers (particularly, self assumed critics who repeatedly panned it) completely missed the point with this flick. Though I'd not avow that I'd stood in the shoes of Imtiaz while understanding this film, I did manage, from my chosen vantage point, to be mesmerized by this cinematic experience and here I wish to ponder all about it verbally!
             There is a quote headlining this blog. Though I slightly altered the way its translated to fit the context of my blog, that quote can nevertheless stand to be the pilot essence of this movie. That and a few other hues embrace this film and make it enticing, and yet definitely a bit bemusing to comprehend. Possibly this is where many people took away all the wrong messages from this film. People thought its a movie about a frustrated rock star who dresses like a character from an Arabian nights fable and dooms his career due to his insolence. As an outcry, let me bandy that this film is not merely a biographical account but rather it is a discourse on the juxtaposition of enigmas that any simple human experiences as a part of his life. These enigmas include love, liberty, freedom, intimacy, loneliness, ambition, success, anger, vengeance, peace and above all, self realization! Embedded in the representation of all these emotions inside a character in this movie, as a supporting layer, is a subtle yet catechismic hint to Rumi's quote. Maybe it simply tugs at one's heart saying, lets just leave whats right and wrong for a moment; lets not justify; lets just converse with one's innerself and one's only primary love; in a field alien to everything else in this world! On this afterthought in the movie, those several enigmas I mentioned earlier are impinged, fighting for space of their own, just like they do in anybody's life. First there is love, a feeling that is definitely like no other, and the moments of being close to that one person, the moments of being alone yearning for their hands to be in yours', the moments of loneliness, and the flashflood of memories that consistently haunt a heart in love. This flick is a portrait for love; And Liberty, the priciest possession for any human, and its celebration in the petty little things that we do to spice up life. And anger, which is actually second to none! This flick betokens the anger that we have hidden behind our affected mirth; anger towards a life that has bounded us owing to its cession to predefined directions and orders; anger towards ourselves for not grabbing the right to take life into our hands when chance presented itself. And finally, ambition; and the pinnacle of a human's capacity in his quest to beeline to his destiny.

             Imtiaz might have chosen to tell this through an artist's life because I believe, typically artists can achieve thoughts and emotions that are a notch or two above what we mere mortals can fathom! When an artist is out there in his realm, creating work out of mere vacuum that shall be remembered for centuries , he is conversing with divinity in its absolute sense. Thence, when an artist lands out of that elevated mood into the conventional world, he turns out a misfit and either absorbs himself in the finer nuances of life like love or contends persistently with the boundaries that life may exert upon him. The resulting omnipresent intensity in an artists life has been Imtiaz' basic tool in his attempt to capture on cinema, the essence I dwelled upon previously.
             Technically speaking, when you turn an imagination into cinema, you first capture that into a frame. Then these frames are run with time according to a specific logic called as the plot and a structure called as the screenplay, music, dialogues and other technical work is blended in,  and a motion picture is generated. Yet, each one of these frames depicts in its own language, a point of time, an emotion, a premise, plot and particularly, a definitive moment! It is customary in conventional cinema to have the plot define the sequence of these frames. Worse still, in certain diffusive cases of Indian Cinema, a character or the actor playing that character is the defining fulcrum for this sequence of frames, a practice we understand to be "Heroism". Generally, there's a simple way to look at this; assuming you have a Point A to Paint B tale you wish to talk about, you shoot a few scenes, cut and paste them together in a sequence, and there, you have your movie. But when the elements you have at hand are emotional debates, musical sojourns, romantic escapades and essentially a majority of illusions that life throws at us, that too, an artists life no less, this very premise shatters the credibility of a conventional style of making cinema. One may try break the above premise into several cinematic moments but when the moments, the whole lot of them, are deep and intense, it gets extremely difficult to run these moments (& frames) subsequently, linearly and chronologically. Thus, Imtiaz chooses a very ingenious style of breaking his entire concept into episodes, one for each vertex of the essence that I spoke of earlier. Then instead of employing a linear framework, he chooses to cut, interpolate and extrapolate between various moments of the protagonist's life that appeal to the concerned vertex and fuse them into scintillating montages, quite frequently aided by the haunting OST, where each track is dedicated to one of these specific vertices. Again, these episodes rarely follow chronology and are abstractly juggled along the movie's timeline. Also, seldom has music, deft editing and striking imagery come together so aptly as they have in Rockstar to make the numerous montages. These montages sprawled across at several parts of the movie, are the very essence of Imtiaz' narrative for Rockstar as they embody for each episode, what it wishes to say, cut across time, space and general cinematic convention. Here sense doesn't take centerstage. Emotion does! 

                If the montages garner the movie with a sublimity, it is the music that effectively gives these montages their innate beauty. Infact, the film's music is in itself an alter ego to Imtiaz' concept. One might wonder if, in usual fashion, Imtiaz sketched out the kind of music he needed and then commissioned the same to ARR or for a change, based on a simple set of ideas, ARR made the music and then, the entire flick was shot around the OST to justify what each track tried to tell. The way the movie's shot and the music complement each other like a perfect rainy sunday afternoon and a cup of warm green tea on the porch. It is factual that out of the many albums Oscar & Grammy bagging Rahman composes for, largely in south India, hardly do directors tend to meet up to what visual spectacles one comes to expect of the movie based on the album. Mani Ratnam, a scion of Modern Indian cinema, who regularly partners with Rahman, is the only other guy who's been adept at taking the albums with enough grandeur to the silver screen. About the album itself, much has been said and done, with it raking up almost every other music award that has been conceived in 2011, and I needn't dwell on much here save for saying that its another heady mix of genres like Rock, Ethnic Bhangra, Blues, Sufi, Opera and the occasional Rahman riff raff that transcends a genre or two in an experimental sense. However, I'd like to contend the several arguments that the so-called 'critics' meted out debasing the movie's album saying it were not "Rock" enough for a film titled 'Rockstar' and that ARR was not the ideal guy to get a Rock album out of! Now that I've already established the way the OST bolsters this flick's narration, I only have to reiterate myself that the album was essentially composed to go with the various episodes in the plot and to not be a Rock/Punk/Metal album that you can pick off the shelves. This album is about a lifetime; not the discography of an emerging street Rock band. Further, spare me the eloquence of going gaga all over about Rahman's achievements. He is truly a musician who has taken the rulebook and shattered its very roots. His gargantuan trophy cabinet notwithstanding, Rahman has collaborations with people of the magnitude of Hans Zimmer, Mick Jagger, Dave Stewart, Dido and has composed for several 'ceremonies', the recent examples being the 2012 Academy Awards OST and the 2012 London Olympics opening (which was incidentally directed by Danny Boyle, another of Rahman's cinematic partners). Not only does Rahman have the zest for music to have begun and successfully run till date, the KM Music Conservatory, the only one of its kind in India, but also he still retains the prodigious enthusiasm to sample new instruments and artists with every new album. The Rockstar album sees a collaboration with ace guitarist Orianthi for "Sadda Haq", whose CV spells out works with the likes of Michael Jackson, Van Halen, Joe Satriani, David Garrett, etc. In any case, the psechedelic rock reminiscent bass notes from "Jo Bhi Main" or the incredible leads from "Naadaan Parindey" are 'Rock' enough to qwell anti-rock allegations.
            The third major figure after Imtiaz & ARR in the making of this flick definitely has to be Ranbir Kapoor. An actor, whose increasingly being known for his choice of scripts and his gradual yet remarkable acquisition of mature acting skills, Ranbir portrays Janardhan/Jordan to the T with transcending body language, dialogue and expression as the plot takes the character through several highs and lows. Credit should go to the way he'd let Imtiaz employ him in the different tinctures that he envisioned. One interesting fact is that Ranbir allegedly learnt to play the guitar so that he may not fake and falter with the movements of his fingers on the fretboard in the several close-up shots of Jordan's concerts that the script demands. Take that for a dedicated artist! As Barfi, Ranbir's next film receives much critical acclaim currently, more so for his action, I think its time I extol him as one of the pivots around which modern Indian Cinema shall turn around.

            Now let me move on from the zigzag screenplay and the editing, to the little details that make up a great narrative and boy, is this flick filled with them. Often, the greatest directors don't churn out blockbusters or movies that defy earthly logic and aim for a larger than life experience. They deal with humane subjects that form a part of anybody's everyday life, yet their directorial charm lies in the little details and events that help in connecting the audiences to the characters and moments on the screen. 
                 Look at the nifty way Imtiaz chose to cut from a concert in Verona with a distraught Jordan to the Janardhan of Hindu College, Delhi auditioning for a petty chance, the character is in his element in either frame, with the guitar and his ballad and only diffracted by time and its wrath on the artists' soul. And then, in a recapitulating tone, Imtiaz returns to the same moment in Verona at the end, aided by montages to juxtapose these two moments.
 


 










In this frame below, a very fast paced montage is halted and the camera pans melodiously as the words "Phir Se Udh Chala" (I've taken flight again) go by. Emphatically fitting, as the director wants the audience to take a moment off from the song and actually reverberate in Jordan's feeling of flying high in love; in the imagination of a past moment with Heer. 

I saw a promo for the track "Kun Faaya Kun" and this image stuck in my mind ever since. As a worn out, and nomadic Janardhan calls out for a direction in his life, and suddenly finds it through music and the name of God, can the portrayal be any better than this frame where he looks out to the sky for a rendezvous with God? Does this happen to us? 
Little details rejuvenate this movie. Be it the "Rock for Peace" logo on Jordan's helmet as he rides with Heer in complete tranquility;







or the duel between two people judging what's right in Love in a deserted Prague at dawn, shown with much ambiguity in this masked camera angle; 




 


or the little talk Jordan gives about a flock of birds in angst in the middle of "Sadda Haq";





 or how blithe he's found singing amidst sex workers; who might actually be reflecting his anguish and quest for peace; 





or how Heer revels in the complacency of having conceived Jordan's seed inside herself; as if her life is complete then;





or Jordan's cliched yet quintessential middle fingered reply to the shackles the world has for him;





or Jordan's reckoning of himself; his music; his life as he his guitar's engulfed in flames, and him bedraggled in a tub; 


or the final rendezvous with Heer's spirit, which one might wonder could be the real solace his soul could have ever wanted. I have a second perceptive for this frame out of sheer haplessly romanticized optimism. May be it was not Heer's spirit. Maybe, she sprang back to life and this is just Jordan's psychic revelation of the same fact. Maybe, they lived happily ever after; In my take, the answer is left for the viewer, whatever he may choose it to be!

           On a footnote, Imtiaz collated supreme technical excellence rendered by the best from the Industry (cinematography, editing, etc) and some deeply influential artistic work produced by truly gifted artists (the literature, for instance) for his masterpiece. He took a strong essence; one which is equally bemused and wise; one which is absurdly simple and strikingly complex; and portrayed it with supreme gusto, aided by phenomenal work from A.R.Rahman and Ranbir Kapoor. Rockstar, in my opinion, shall remain among the greatest of films I've watched, one which has managed to truly shatter me. A film that was hugely mistaken by public opinion and an art work that needs to be seriously reconsidered. In the diminutive experience I've had in life, I've had the fortune to fall in love, endured angst and pain, faced the questions about Life that are so reflected in Rockstar! Yet, Life goes on mellow and I can be more than happy someone out there stepped forward to make this movie and I thank the makers for that!

            P.S. - Irrelevant as it sound here, but I digress a little to dedicate this blog to the plethora of artists that have left us to an eternal space waiting for them elsewhere. That includes the mighty 27 club, artists who could not see a 28th year on Earth, giants like Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse; and others whom we have so much adored alike, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, etc. Maybe for the divinity in their art, their ecstatic self reverberance when they're in their element performing, for their immense courage in questioning the confinement of our civilization and for their sense of infinite liberty, this world, physically, was too constrained for them. Maybe they just had to spread their wings and take flight!