[Reader-list] Review the reviews (The Last Lear)

[Angshukanta Chakraborty]

Hi all,

This is the Guardian Film Review of *The Last Lear*. Please send in
your reactions on it (this review) and let's understand what are these
half-baked criticisms (and constant straight-jacketing of the entire Indian
film system as Bollywood, therefore dispensable qualitatively, if not on the
revenue front) by the Western media trying to do.

This is the url if that is more convenient:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/sep/22/bollywood


I would also recommend reading the following review in the Statesman (by
Shoma A Chatterjee) for a second opinion.


http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=30&theme=&usrsess=1&id=227727


Thanks,
Angshukanta

The Guardian revew follows:
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 The most god-awful film I have ever seen The Last Lear does the fledgling
English-language movie business in Bollywood absolutely no favours, writes
Nirpal Dhaliwal

   - [image: Nirpal] <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/nirpaldhaliwal>
   -
      - *Nirpal Dhaliwal* <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/nirpaldhaliwal>
      - guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>,
      - Tuesday September 23 2008 00.17 BST
      - Article
history<http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/sep/22/bollywood#history-byline>

 [image: Preity Zinta and Amitabh Bachchan in The Last Lear]

Lost in the forest ... Preity Zinta and Amitabh Bachchan in The Last Lear

You'd think that Shakespeare and Bollywood would be made for each other. If
the Bard were alive today, his histrionic melodramas would've made him the
fattest cat in Mumbai, his couch worn to splinters by the legions of
actresses he'd have cast for his ridiculous scripts. Even dead, he's still
managed to inseminate India's movie industry to spawn the ghastly bastard
devil-child that is The Last Lear – the most god-awful film I have ever seen
in any genre, anywhere in the world.

   1. The Last Lear
   2. *Release:* 2007
   3. *Country:* Rest of the world
   4. *Runtime:* 123 mins
   5. *Directors:* Rituparno Ghosh
   6. *Cast:* Amitabh Bachchan, Arjun Rampal, Preity Zinta
   7. More on this film<http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/120807/last.lear>

Bollywood overlord Amitabh Bachchan plays a cranky ageing thespian, Harish
Mishra, who is lured out of retirement in Calcutta for his first movie role
by a hip young director, Siddarth (Arjun Rampal). During filming he
befriends Shabnam, a naive young starlet, played by the enticing Preity
Zinta. An English language movie, rare in mainstream
India<http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2008/sep/15/bollywood>,
The Last Lear possesses the worst traits of Indian English-language novels –
prolixity, sanctimony and an absence of any originality – while lacking
their craft and erudition. Plodding, cliche-ridden, humourless and wholly
one-dimensional, the script feels as if it was written by a lobotomised
Kiran Desai.

Bachchan's performance as the supposedly wizened theatrical genius, Harish,
is so atrocious that I almost puked with laughter at it. Looking like Jeff
Bridges in The Big Lebowski, with a huge mane of unkempt white hair, he
gives Siddarth an impromptu soliloquy from The Tempest. But Harish's
Prospero consists of him roaring insanely as he inhumanly strains his face,
as if passing the most excruciating bowel movement, while aimlessly flailing
his arms (I beg someone to upload the scene onto YouTube. It's SO funny!).
But rather than greasing his fingers and helping the poor old boy with a
manual evacuation, Siddarth simply claps and gasps, "Brilliant!"

The dialogue is stunningly bad. While wandering in a forest during the
shoot, Shabnam asks Harish for some tips on acting. Wearing a woolly
bobble-hat and a matching scarf, the sort you stopped wearing when you
started walking to school on your own, Harish replies: "Do you know why
people act?" Shabnam's tremulously waits a moment before the sage gives the
answer with God-like gravitas. "Because they have a desire to perform," he
says. That's as profound as it got for over two hours.

The film takes itself painfully seriously, filled with contrived solemnity
as its characters ponder the fakeness of the movie world in contrast with
Harish's stage-honed authenticity. But it's still crammed with Bollywood's
most outrageous absurdities. On realising that the final scene will involve
a cliff-top stunt, Harish insists on doing it himself in order retain his
artistic integrity, despite being 75 years old and almost blind. And,
desiring the film to be a masterpiece of realism, Siddarth not only indulges
him but makes the stunt even more dangerous, making the old man take a leap
that leaves him seriously injured. If Siddarth were such a murderously
uncompromising auteur, you wonder why he chose the world's worst actor to
star for him in the first place. Harish duly returns to his roaring form
when Shabnam recites King Lear to his comatose body.

The use of English rather than Hindi – no doubt an attempt at breaking into
a wider audience – grates throughout. Harish speaks a ludicrously hammy
English, filled with Tony Blairisms (lots of "c'mons" and "y'knows").
Everyone else speaks with a regular Indian accent – apart from the woman
hired to nurse him, who seems to be based on the faux-wogs of It Ain't Half
Hot Mum. The only time Bachchan is remotely believable is when Harish is
drunk and lapses into an Indian accent reminiscent of the uncouth
street-wise characters that he played so brilliantly as a young man.

There was a time when Amitabh Bachchan was India's Steve McQueen, James
Stewart and Sean Connery all rolled into one, but in The Last Lear he's a
deranged Bollywood mishmash of Bruce Forsyth and Derek Jacobi. This could be
the film by which the English-speaking world will judge him – which is a
crying shame. Everyone else, despite the fact that they never shift out of
second gear, consummately acts him off the screen. Shakespeare's work is
supposed to be every actor's dream material, but for Bachchan – and the
viewer – it's an absolute nightmare.