the rajini experience

There is a festival in India, predominantly celebrated in the north, called Holi. Well, the idea of the festival is to spend a whole day throwing color powder and water on each other. I don’t know what that sounds like to you, but personally, I think that festival is a conspiracy by the laundry owners association of India. I don’t buy this holi-thing at all. Making my clothes colorfully dirty isn’t something I would be really happy about. They may be colorful, but Come on! It’s still dirt. I think it has no logic to it. It seems bizarre that people fall for such a trick by those laundry owners. But people celebrate it anyway – and celebrate it in loud, muddy, mucky, and may be even in unhygienic ways. Funny how, they seem to be genuinely happy about it. So are hundreds of festivals around the world, that have absolutely no logic.

That is the only way to approach Rajinikanth’s movie release. It is a film festival. No, not those film festivals, where these big shots of movie business get together and watch painfully sad movies, that are purported to be the exemplars of modern cinema. This is a celebration about an addition of this unclassified genre of colorful, stylish and enjoyable movies, and only way to call them, ah well,is Rajini’s movies. (This is a post, that assumes a little knowledge about Tamil movies, especially Rajinikanth. Some information available here, here, and here. You can skip this post anytime, you don’t like.)

So, a new Rajini’s movie – Sivaji – was released on Friday. Anyone who hasn’t been brushed by the Rajini’s phenomena before, would ask, “I don’t understand this kind of fan frenzy. Whats so great about this guy or this movie ?”. You don’t understand a Rajini’s movie, you celebrate it. You are just happy that there is another Rajini’s movie released today, you can go watch, and live the Rajini experience. If you still say,”I don’t get it”. Yeah, I don’t get that holi-thing either. But, hey, it is a part of the culture, anyway.

I am in Hyderabad now, and so I would have to settle with a telugu-dubbed version of Sivaji. This makes it very difficult to imagine the equivalent dialogues in Tamil.(I am native of Tamil Nadu) But, Rajini could have spoken Japanese on screen, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Its impossible for the language to get in the way of Rajini’s ultimate screen presence. The first scene in the flashback, where Rajini returns from USA, is just AWSUM. I remember, how I felt after a 17 hour flight back from the US. I could describe myself feeling like human feces, and probably smelling like that too.(Can I use the word SH*T?) But when Rajini arrives on flight from US, on screen with a white suit and an orange tie, I couldn’t help looking him at awe. What shall I say ? I am a fan and was exited like a little girl with her pink new shoes.

Story line is a successful merge of the stereotypical Rajni’s movie with stereotypical Shankar’s plot. Rajini returns from the US, very rich, builds a university in India (and get a girl in the mean time), but loses everything building the university, thanks to a corrupt system. The rest of story is all about how he gets back at the system, by recruiting local rowdies(for his own law-enforcement) and then by money laundering. And thus, Rajini gets his revenge-of-a-wronged-man story line, inter wined with Shankar’s usual screw-corrupt-system-literally plot.

Well, the story may be typical and dubious, but Rajini is no stereotype. It is impossible to look anyone but Rajini, when he is on the screen. Every frame, when Rajini is on, has been enhanced and worked upon meticulously with such a finesse, that, it is just magical. Ground breaking work on stunts, camera, special effects, art and direction. Flipping coins, swinging the coin back and forth with sleight of hands, catching the gum on the rebound – Rajni is so conscious on what he does on screen, he sure is super star. Man, I want to see the movie again (again, language doesn’t matter!). And after a long time, I watched a movie with pieces of paper flying all over in every song! (It is customary to throw bits and pieces of paper overhead especially for movies with super stars, such that it glitters on the light from the projector and gives an illusion that Rajini is dancing in paper rain. It might actually annoy you, if you aren’t used to it. But, its a lot of fun, if you are part of it!!!)

I don’t think any actor is as frame-aware and fan-aware as Rajini. Kamalhassan is sure a better actor than Rajinikanth, but there is a difference. Kamal not only acts, but becomes the character, and doesn’t give a damn about who is going to watch his movie. Rajini, on the other hand, talks to the camera and the fan, as the character/as himself, in way that doesn’t insult the intelligence of the fan. (Many who try to emulate Rajini – Simbu, Danush etc. – end up offending the viewers, making them feeling stupid for paying for the ticket.)

Overall, Sivaji yet another Rajini experience. But if you aren’t a fan of Rajini and still wonder how seemingly smart people would fall for cheap tricks for a man who, according to you, is just over-hyped crap, I would just say this – with a wink -

Coool!!! (You have to watch the movie to get this )

gandhi-giri and new york subway cars

I saw a Hindi movie on Friday called “Lage Raho Munna Bhai”, directed by Rajkumar Hirani. It was smart, hilarious and very interesting. In the movie, the protagonist Munna Bhai uses Gandhigiri, Gandhism equivalent of Dadagiri, to solve his problem. Even though the movie is about social transformation, it doesn’t get as preachy as the tamil director Shankar’s movies. But the significant difference between Raj kumar Hirani’s Munna Bhai and Shankar’s Anniyan/Indian is that Shankar uses the philosophy of fear (as typified by the cliche “An eye for an eye”) and Hirani tries the antithesis of fear – love, as manifested by the principles of Gandhism. But, if you don’t want to get so touchy by using the word “love”, feel free to give your own name. In the movie, Munna Bhai appears in his friend’s on-call radio program, to provide solution for the callers’ problems based on the principles of Gandhism.

Here is an example of such a Gandhi-an method, Munna advises. One of the callers’ problem is that his neighbor spits pan right at his door, making the door and the area around it look like cat puke. The caller says he had tried to tell the neighbor, but he doesn’t stop spitting. The Munna Bhai’s gandhigiri solution caller is this: After the neighbor spits in front of the door, smile at the him, and Clean the door. The idea was to send a message to the neighbor by cleaning the door over and again, and thus producing a transformation in the heart of the neighbor. I agree its touchy. In the movie, Munna Bhai shows that Gandhi’s method works, when the neighbor stops his spit act. While watching this scene at the movie, I hear murmurs among the audience questioning if such a solution would work in real life. I would be one of those audience, if I had not read the book “Tipping Point” written by Malcolm Gladwell.

The book “Tipping Point” is about an interesting phenomenon defined by the moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips and spreads like an wildfire – like an epidemic. In this book, Gladwell discusses about such a phenomenon that happened in New york city in the 1990s, causing the crime rate to plummet. In the city, during a period of five years, murder rates fell by two-thirds, and total crimes fell by half. Gladwell says that this crime drop has the same characteristics of the spread of epidemics. He defines three principles of epidemics – The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor, and the most interesting one I think is, The Power of Context. My point of interest is the the “The Power of Context”, which says “Human beings are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they seem.” and “A small change in a person’s immediate environment can cause big effects”. For the other two, here is an writeup of these principles in the context of marketing.

While discussing the power of context in the case of New york city, Gladwell produces examples about the small changes brought about in the New york subway systems that helped reverse the city’s crime epidemic. David Gunn was appointed the new subway director. He insisted that they have to start with the small things that symbolically indicate an environment for crime to happen. Graffiti being painted on the subway cars is such a symbol. Gunn decides to take on graffiti before anything else. He says

The graffiti was the symbolic collapse of the system. When you looked at the process of rebuilding the organization and morale, you had to win the battle against graffiti. Without winning that battle, all management reforms and physical changes just weren’t going to happen.

How did Gunn handle the problem of Graffiti in New york’s subway cars ? He drew up a new management structure aimed at cleaning the system line by line, train by train. On stainless-steel cars, solvents were used. On the painted cars, the graffiti was simply painted over. OK. What if the cars were vandalized again ? They cleaned again, and again. They were religious about their cleaning. At the end of the line, where the trains stopped and turned around, Gunn setup a cleaning station. If a car came in with graffiti, the graffiti had to be removed during the changeover, or the car was removed from the service. They make sure dirty cars are never mixed with clean cars. The idea was to send a clear message to the vandals – by cleaning over and again.

I was totally struck the method Gunn used to make the subways clean – not harsher punishment for the vandals, but to send a message to them by cleaning the cars. Of course, there is a difference between the tone, the kind of the message (or even a subtle difference in the motive), Gunn and Munna Bhai conveyed to their subjects. But the action point is the same – If you want to stop people from making dirty of public places, you just have to keep it cleaning – rigorously and continuously.

If it works for the multi-billion dollar cars of the New york subway system, it sure would work for everyone.

little miss sunshine

It was an interesting day yesterday. I read the book “1984″ by George Orwell, finally. It consumed my whole day. The writing was so powerful, that, I was underlining at the rate of a sentence per page. That reduced my speed of reading, and guess what!!! It made me think!!! Yeah, its deep. I think, I would reserve my thoughts on “1984″ for another post. Later yesterday, I went to watch the movie “Little Miss Sunshine”. It was comedy movie, and when I try to classify the movie in the unofficial comedy-film-making taxonomy, that was so not a comedy.

It is true that “Dying is easy, but Comedy is hard”. But the writers of comedy movies, of late, doing it easy. They have only been picking the toppings from an available of menu of theme-choices. The menu (also called unofficial comedy-film-making taxonomy) goes like:

1. satire/parody
2. slapstick
3. gross-out (the flavor of the day)
4. screwball (the classic)
5. a double with the choices 1-4
6. a triple with the choices 1-4
7. anyway you want (available toppings: choices 1-4 again).

Or they probably could be using a script-vending-machine. Or they were seriously trying to prove the hypothesis that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite amount of time could reproduce the works of Shakespeare. And probably, they didn’t get enough monkeys. (I do think they have a lot of time)

Well, there is another generation of comedy movies, that start out funny, but as it grows – We have got a surprise for you – tada!! – A chick flick!!!. Actually, I am not against chick flicks. I don’t hate them. I even enjoy some of them. My only concern is that jokes in such movies would have made a pure comedy movie.

There are Comedy movies made of nothing but a few jokes scattered here and there in a generic sub-theme. And then, there is “Little Miss Sunshine”. I had a wonderful time enjoying this movie, but a hard time classifying it – only to have found out that it doesn’t fit any of the choices above. I think it belongs to a genre of its own.

The story is about a (dysfunctional) American family – a dad, a mom, a brother, an uncle, a grandpa, and finally the youngest member of the family – the blue eyed little girl – Olive. They set out on road trip from New Mexico to California, so that, Olive can compete in a child beauty contest, Miss Little Sunshine. The movie is about their their adventures during the 700 mile journey and at beauty contest.(The tendency to place “dysfunctional” in brackets is a because of a general Indian thought that “dysfunctional American family” might sound as an oxymoron. I don’t think, it is prejudice, but it is a gap in family values between two cultures and, the assumption that MTV is America. But I do think, every functional family, irrespective of nationality, has to be dysfunctional in some department. We don’t pick our parents or our children -OR- Do we ?)

The movie, of course, is a satire about the issues in family life and other heavy issues it rubs on, such as drug abuse, suicide, and child beauty contests. But the comedy is not satirical. Comedy in the movie is mostly a the result of irony about an individual’s position against the family backdrop. Though, the family is fabricated for the movie, the script brings a kind of plastic realism touching all the characters of the story. It is smart and funny.

I couldn’t remember a movie or a story, that displayed such a weight in each of its character – in the solemn expression of comedy.

vanity

I like John Grisham’s writings. He has this very distinct style of writing, its quite powerful. But I never wanted to read his book “The Devil’s Advocate” – may be because of the subject, which seem so super-natural and religious, uh actually, Christian.

But I did watch that movie yesterday. Al Pacino is perfect in doing the devil in the movie!!! My favorite quote from the movie is, when the devil says…

Vanity is one of my favorite sins.

By the way, I really didn’t know the meaning of Vanity, until I looked it up in dictionary. ‘Vanity’ means excessive pride in oneself and/or one’s accomplishments.

The movie has a really interesting theme – the devil, trying to establish his foothold in the society, using the law. The Law as the back door for the devil!!! Its an interesting attempt, and I think, it worked OK for the movie.