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

[Rajkamal Goswami]

MAN THE FILMS SUCKED BIG TIME....psudo film making at its best

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 5:12 PM, Angshukanta Chakraborty <
angshukanta at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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:
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  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.
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-- 
Rajkamal Goswami
ATREE, Bangalore-24