Pimwalee THAMPANYASAN as Koi

I saw Soi Cowboy yesterday, a film that was in the ‘Un Certain Regard’ section of the Cannes film festival this year. The film hasn’t been released yet but I was given a preview DVD by the producer Joseph Lang, who is my weekly beer buddy. We hook up mostly on Fridays at 6:00 pm at the local pub and chat about films and scripts for a few hours. We throw ideas at each other over a few pints of bitters and ales.

Soi Cowboy is written and directed by Thomas Clay, and the name is derived from homonym girlie bar district in Bangkok. The film is the story of an overweight European man called Tobias and his tiny pregnant Thai girlfriend, Koi. It is suggested that she worked at ‘Soi Cowboy’ and had been ‘saved’ by Toby.

The film begins in black and white with top angle shot over the couple lying in bed. Toby looks expectantly at the girl but she turns away, her back to him, her pregnant ‘bump’ away from him. The film slowly deconstructs the matinal life of the couple. She eats rice and fish while he showers his fat body in the background. He makes square bread toasts and eats them quietly. They don’t say much. We see mundane scenes from a strange marriage through very long and lingering slow shots. The camera travels slowly towards a toaster and we wait along with Tobias for the toast to pop up, but it does not. The slow pace of the film gives us the time to ponder upon the two people. We wonder how these two got together; Tobias, the corpulent ‘farang’ expat living a cushy life in Bangkok with the exchange rate and Koi, the tiny pretty ex-prostitute and bar girl, who sees this as a way out of her poverty stricken life.

There is a scene later in the film where a young Thai girl (who has a Swiss boyfriend) explains how she found it a difficult having sex at first with the white people but slowly one gets used to it, she says. She lists European nationalities and points out their good and bad points. Italians want sex all the time, dirty sex she says. An older woman sitting with them says that it’s alright for a girl to do that in order to help the rest of the family. The girl is waiting for her visa to go and visit her boyfriend in Switzerland. The others look at her in awe, jealous of her elevated status.

The relationship between the two portrays the neo-colonialist ‘north-south’ existence between the powerful and the desperate. Tobias, who would normally be shunned in his own hemisphere for his over weight body, lives in Thailand with a pretty woman in exchange of ‘a good life’. The deconstruction continues… together they visit a temple ruin.

The story suddenly ends and a new story begins, this time in accentuated colours, where the same characters play other roles. The film becomes a shady Thai gangster film… with Lynchian overtones. The pretty girl Koi’s brother is sent on a contract mission back to his village to assassinate his own brother.

The ‘climax’ shows us Tobias (in his new character as a white gangster) with his Thai counterparts waiting in a Lynchian version of ‘Soi Cowboy’ bar for Cha, the assassin brother to return. A male crooner sings on a velvet curtained stage. Koi sits with another prostitute on a sofa in a blue silk dress. The film does not end, it stops showing us any more. But we live with them, think about them.

Thomas Clay’s ‘Soi Cowboy’ dilutes and rejects the conventional narrative and straightforward realism. It does not delve in a simplistic causality and neither uses the term of ‘beginning’ or ‘end’. The protagonists and personages exist and act with complete uncertainty like they would do in real life. There are no simple explanations given to us or any formulae of logic. The ‘pseudo realism’ of commercial cinema is left aside for poetic interpretation and modern visual art. Soi Cowboy destroys the hegemony of the plot and the linear narrative structure.

A must-see for Indian cinephiles and cineastes, for cinema must be seen from a different light. It must be understood from a different light.

We must find a subversive viewpoint against the fascism of linearity and melodramatic boredom that invades our screens.

Or the Joker will become the only reference and parts of it ‘research’ - for all films to come.

After finishing the 90 odd minutes of Contract on a DVD, oztrac walks out for a breather. And VOILA! Across the street is the great Guru Ghantal Varma in beach shorts and ganji (no not a bald woman, but a vest), walking in surf sandals, gracing the streets of Newport Beach, Orange County with Bimbo and BiggerBimbo on his either side, whom one may guess have been offered GGV’s next projects - Thook and Chikoo Raj. Unfortunately his proposed project GGV ki Paani has been temporarily shelved.

ozTrac is a bit apprehensive approaching GGV, knowing his slap and walk away kind of conversations he generally has with the general public in a general place on his not so general blog (a general example)

Nervously ozTrac approaches GGV

ozTrac: Namaste Sir. Hope I’m not disturbing you. But I’m a big fan of your work and wanted to say hello.

GGV: Get lost. Fuck off. When GGV need alone time, only Bimbo get GGV time.

ozTrac: Thank you Sir. That I will Sir. But before I go, let me congratulate you on your latest Contract. Whaaat a moooovie Sar whaaat a Movie.

GGV: Get lost. Fuck off. I bring no one close to me. Those coming close get big bamboo in their pichwada (Hinglish: Behind-wada, a place in Mumbai)

ozTrac: That I will Sir. Thank you Sir. But what a movie this Contract Saar. Whaat a movie. Even Doordarshan could never produce a play that had so much going into so little. This waaas your bestest movie Saar. How do you do it each time every time?

GGV: Get lost fuck off. GGV makes time. Time does not make GGV.

ozTrac: Thank you Saar. I will Saar. Just wanted to tell you how I enjoyed your hero becoming superman and killing everyone in 52.5 seconds flat. But people are questioning that scene Saar? Your comments…

GGV: Get lost. Fuck off. What GGV wants (looks at the breasts of Bimbo, slurps)… GGV gets.

ozTrac: So true Saar. So true. How you making human speak in the language of Martians and making it so believable, it is truly amazing Sir. Characters in your films are no longer characters… they are DDG… dialogue demi gods. Yet so many people did not like it, which I cannot understand Saar.

GGV: Get lost. Fuck off. GGV gets what GGV like (buries face in BiggerBimbo’s assets). People don’t like my movie… they should get lost, fuck off.

ozTrac: Such great dialogues coming from your mouth making my eyes going water water Saar. So much water flowing down and yet this zaalim(Hinglish: watch any Bollywood movie that has a character called “thakur”, “Zamindaar”) duniya think you are blowing producers’ money by making crap. Can you believe this Saar… they calling Contract Crap.

GGV: Get lost. Fuck off. GGV behind is pumped with money from producers’ pump. Let all crap people find such behind, such pump and attempt to make movie. Then GGV will review their crap.

ozTrac. So True Saar So True. And so well said. Years ago even I had asked similar question to the respectable Shakti Kapoor on why after getting chance after chance after chance he never was able to rape the heroine in the movies. Bullshit! Then the respectable Mr. Shakti Kapoor too had snapped back at me and challenged me to act in movie and try raping heroine. The two incidents are so similar O great GGV… thank you for opening my eyes.

GGV: Get lost Fuck off. GGV rapes what GGV likes. If GGV doesn’t like, GGV gets raped.

ozTrac: So true Saar So true. Before I leave, would you like me to assist you in showing Ms. Bimbo around Newport Beach? This area my area I know very well.

GGV: Get lost

ozTrac: Thank you Saar… how about Ms. BiggerBimbo?

GGV: Fuck off.

Now it’s a serious problem. If you are writing a hardcore cult character for your film, we have to count on few faces only, and at certain level even they are getting over used and flop. Experiment with new actors will drop the budget of the film big time.

Now during our talk, the discussion shifted to “The Dark Knight”…is there anyone who isn’t blown by Joker??…whether it’s his pencil vanishing magic or sticking his head out of the police van or his nurse outfit act…RIP Heath Ledger who played this role at the age of 28….such a goddamn mature n cult performance at 28??….Now what if we make TDK in India…who can play Joker?…Irfan, KK, Amir??…we took the discussion to PFC authors and got many suggestions as…Shahrukh, Shahid, Manoj Bajpai, Shiney Ahuja, Saif, Govinda, Pankaj Kapur, Nana Patekar, Deepak Dobriyal, Vinay Pathak, Ashutosh Rana, Boman Irani, Nasser, Paresh Rawal, Zakir Hussain, Shayaji shinde, ranvir shorey ……Some took Joker to classics as…Sanjeev Kumar, Premnath, Joginder or Jeevan…..some also made Joker speak tamil/telugu/malyalam with….Rajnikanth, Kamal Hassan, Jayaram, Partheban, Jagapathy Babu, Jeeva..

Now what If we adapt these popular hollywood(avoiding world cinema for instance) scripts like following in India….who can be ideal actor according to you for that particular role in bollywood…take it as your simple casting exercise..

1. Jim Carry for The Grinch/ A Series of Unfortunate Events/ The Number 23
2. Jack Nicolson for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest/ The Shining
3. Robert De Niro for Mean Streets/ Raging Bull/ The Untouchables
4. Al Pacino for Scarface
5. Marlon Brando for The Godfather(Please avoid AB)
6. Tom Hanks Philadelphia/ Forest Gump/ The Terminal
7. Joe Pesci for Goodfellas/ Casino
8. Samuel Jackson for The Pulp Fiction
9. Anthony Hopkins for The Silence of the Lambs
10. Edward Norton for The Fight Club/ American History X
11. Russel Crowe for A Beautiful Mind/ Gladiator
12. Morgan Freeman for The Shawshank Redemption
13. Jamie Foxx for Ray
14. Johnny Depp for Sweeney Todd
15. Ellen Burstyn from Requiem for a Dream
16. Hilary Swank for Million Dollar Baby
17. Helena Bonham Carter for Fight Club/ Sweeney Todd
18. Julia Roberts for Erin Brockovich
19. Uma Thurman for Kill Bill
20. Cate Blanchett for Elizabeth/ The Aviator/ Babel
21. Christina Ricci for Black Snake Moan
22. The action girls for Death Proof

I don’t think we have shortage of stars. But we fall short on unconventional actors. Our stars do try to act but come out as wannabes. We need actor on whom someone can put money with confidence. Actors, who can just perform, not act. So go on, try your imagination. Why so serious???

Title: Towards a more credible Indian Cinema

Mainstream Indian cinema for long has always thrived on an uncanny gloss-a gloss which is overtly hyper-real. Filmmakers for decades have been making films in which the characters are far removed from the multitudes or their immediate neighbors.

Screenplays have been out and out dialogue heavy and plots have centered on a world which is completely alien from our everyday mundane existence. But worse still, Indian audience at large has accepted these “formula films” for far too long. Perhaps a change is in the offing.

Without going into the details of the plot I will briefly mention a few films and try to prove my point. Mixed Doubles (2006) a hilarious comedy directed by Rajat Kapoor deals with marriage. Malti (Konkona Sensharma) and Sunil Arora (Ranbir Shorey), married for 10 years, faces a peculiar problem. Sunil is starved of sex yet he would not have sex with his wife. Perhaps ten years is a long time. And he tries to explore ways to make his marriage more successful and more spicy. Mithya (2008) ,also directed by Rajat Kapoor is a black comedy which posits its main character VK in strange situation of a false identity. Bheja Fry (2007) directed by Sagar Ballary needs no introduction.

It is difficult to believe that all of the above films were made in Bollywood and each of them has earned a fortune at the box office. True enough that the success of these films have been made possible because of the multiplex culture that has evolved in our premiere metros. Young, urbane, city bred, suave India minds little in spending at the multiplexes.

Never ever in history has Bollywood seen such a wave of new kind of film making. . In the 1980s Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalini etc. directed a bunch of “art house” films which went on to gain major critical recognition across the globe. But they were hardly recognized by the ordinary film lover. While these films were made on extremely important social issues, they failed at the box office. The cost of this failure was very high. Inevitably, the film movement started by Benegal stopped due to lack of producers. It is perhaps very important to recognize that cinema is a strange art form where salability is important for its own survival. European neo-realistic doyens of cinema concede today that much of why Neo-realism in Europe was successful may be attributed to an intelligent European viewer who made the experimentations commercially viable.

An important aspect of the above films I talked about is the near ensemble cast in all of them. Markedly the films lack a hero. They lack heroic deeds. The plots are essentially based on backdrops that middleclass Indians are very familiar with. They deal with extraordinary tales of ordinary mortals who impregnate the society around us. It is this honest treatment of ordinary extraordinariness which sets them a class apart. Besides, these films are made by a talented bunch of people. Rajat Kapoor for instance has had his training at FTII, Pune from masters like Mani Kaul and Kumar Sahani. He made Raghu Romeo on a shoe string budget of 15 Lakhs ( he produced it himself with all his savings) which flopped. But with subsequent hits Mixed Doubles and Mithya he is now a “practicing filmmaker”. In his own words the world has changed.

Raghu Romeo was born in 2003. He died a week later. “I went into complete depression when Raghu Romeo bombed. I had lost all my money, and I thought I’d have to wait another six years to make my next film. But, luckily, that didn’t happe? Rajat went on to do Mixed Doubles, which came out in 2006. “And after that, I got to do Mithya, which I’ve just completed? And for the first time during the conversation, there is a discernible excitement as the voice pitches itself a whole fraction of a decibel higher. “And I’m pinching myself. I’m saying: Is this truly happening?

“Now, I can easily get up to two crores, which is – for me – huge money? But that’s just money. What convinced Rajat that he’d really arrived was a recent conversation with a producer. “I told him: I have this idea. This is the first scene of the film. I don’t want to write the rest of the film. I’ll improvise? The moneyman replied with two of the sweetest words in the English language: “Go ahead? Why? “Because the world has changed? Rajat says, “as recently as the last two years. People don’t give a [expletive] whether you have a Bachchan or a Saif. They’re saying: You have a good film? We’ll come and watch it.

The most remarkable aspect of the success of these films is that newcomers like Rajkumar Gupta debuts with a film like Aamir, Arindam Nandi debuts with a film like Via Darjeeling. They make this audacity because they believe that the films will be able to recover money with a reasonably high probability. And audacity indeed!! Let’s take the case of Nandi. Rasomon, the Kurosawa classic which inspired Via Darjeeling, in itself a landmark in the history of cinema, was made in 1950. It took 58 years to successfully experiment with multiple narrative in Indian Cinema ( with perhaps the sole exception of Lets Talk by Ram Madhvani).

The Multiplex culture has unveiled a world of possibilities in Indian Cinema. Ideas which were completely alien to Indian Films are being explored and these ideas are making money. Hyper-realism is hopefully giving way to a nuanced portrayal of human life. Humor, which was thought to be the domain of copybook comedians like Jonny Lever is being successfully portrayed by actors who are far from being comic actors. ( Ranvir Shoree in Mixed Doubles plays a light role and Vinay Pathak in Via Darjeeling plays a serious character-are cases to prove my point). Scriptwriters make deliberate attempts to shun melodrama and hyperboles.

A caveat must be in place though. As I mentioned earlier, the success of this new genre of Indian Cinema can be attributed to a large extent to the urbane, suave young India. So it is a prerequisite of the directors that they tell a story that this Indian identifies with. Hence by and large the stories of farmers committing suicide in Vidarbha may attract our early morning sympathy, but they are unlikely to find a place in the evening screenings at the multiplexes. However they did find a place in a Benegal film in the early eighties. If in principle one agrees that their stories too need to be told, then the above reiterates that state (read government) should continue to play an important role in producing films through agencies like NFDC. Cinema should indeed play a major role of social transformation, given its possible reach, as Ritwik Ghatak had suggested decades ago.

Till then let’s revel in Bollywood’s new found creative surge as cinema in India aspires to be more credible than ever before.

Title: How I discovered Woodey Allen
“I do the movies just for myself like an institutionalized person who basket-weaves. Busy fingers are happy fingers. I don’t care about the films. I don’t care if they’re flushed down the toilet after I die.“- Woody Allen

That’s woody Allen for you in his practical best. But irrespective of what the 72 year old film maker feels about his work, there is always going to be people who would care about his films. No matter how insignificant their number might be but these people are still around, hiding somewhere some place like some social outcast, afraid people might call them weird and freaks ( and don’t forget the worst of them- “boring”) too as many have started to call Woody himself. Woody once said that he has no idea about his audience and who they are and what they do, except that he is pretty sure that they exist, and would always come out to watch no matter what he churn out of his camera every year. And not only are their existing loyal fans but every year some hapless person like me bumps into his DVD’s and then there is no turning back.

Four years back I was at my friend’s house and his dad was watching some film which rather seemed to me like a kind of parody on Russia. The film was called LOVE AND DEATH. After watching 30 minutes of it I sort of found it really interesting and so took the DVD from my friend’s dad and came home. I saw the film that night and although there were a lot of stuff which I couldn’t grasp at that time like the references to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and the parody of THE SEVENTH SEAL at the end I really enjoyed the film. There was something so inherently entertaining about the story and Woody’s dead pan expression acting that I got hooked to it. I really can’t remember when I laughed so much watching a film before. And so started my relation with woody. The coming months saw me watching films like TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN, SLEEPER and BANNANAS all basically part of Woody’s early slap stick years. After that came his more serious and light hearted films like Crimes and Misdemeanors, Manhattan and off course ANNIE HALL, which remains by favorite till date. Back then I had no idea about how great a film maker woody allen was and how philosophical his films were, but still I loved him. That’s the great thing about his films; one doesn’t need to get the intellectuality to love them. You don’t need to have read Sartre or Freud extensively to get what he is talking about. Years later when I am revisiting them I find them to be so much more than they seemed to me at that time. In that respect his craft is very much like Chaplin’s, even a child can find his films entertaining, its this rare gift of expressing the most powerful thoughts and philosophies without even once burdening the audience with his intellectuality that makes woody allen truly one of the greats of modern cinema.

Four years down the line I have seen almost every single one of his films numerous times and don’t think I ever got bored. They have this quality about them which can cheer you up in even the most depressing of moods.

Yesterday a kid from next door came over while I was watching DECONSTRUCTING HARRY and I think I just sowed the seeds for another woody worshipper.

P.s- am really grateful to my friend’s dad who graciously gave me all those DVD’S which till date I never returned. Hope he rests in peace.

Many people (including yours truly) have been accusing RGV of losing his touch and making senseless flicks. As if to answer all such critics, RGV decided that he’ll go back to his basics and make a movie using the classic Satya as a template. So let’s see run a checklist shall we?

- A brooding hero who never smiles and never shaves - check;
- A bearded lawyer who bails the hero out from jail - check;
- The hero gets recruited in the gang in a jail-fight - check;
- A hero jiske age peeche koi nahin - double check;
- A poor man’s item song - check;
- A wife who’s constantly whining and screaming her head off - check (there are two of them here God help our eardrums);
- A gang war - check. — the list goes on and on..

So if it’s like Satya, then the movie should be a pleasure to watch right? Wrong! Satya stuck a chord with each one of us and made us empathise with the characters. Remember Bhiku Mathre and his wife in a small, but powerful scene; or the way the beautiful way the love story between Satya and Vidya was portrayed. But in this movie all that emotional touch is missing.

In Contract, the hero Aman, (Adhvik Mahajan) decides to take the plunge into the underworld to break the nexus between the underworld and terrorism. He is recruited by the Mumbai police in an Infernal Affairs like manner to work undercover in the gang of RD (Sumeet Nijhawan) so that our hero can get to the main terrorist Sultan (Zakir Hussain). In a novel twist there’s no moll of the Don, but he has a sister Iya, (Sakshi Gulati) who promptly falls in love with the hero.

No doubt it’s quite a strong plot to make a nice, hard hitting movie. But unfortunately, you don’t give a damn about the characters and where their lives are heading. It seemed like RGV was just overseeing the entire movie with a sense of detachment, not really being involved in the movie making process. As a result the audience sees the movie but does not get attached to any of the characters.

In fact what could be a not bad movie is constantly littered with highly irritating elements. The love track between Aman and Iya starts with ‘Secrets’ which at first seemed to be endearing. Then they repeat the same thing for half a dozen times making us go batty. The rise of Aman in RD gang is shown in a meaningless collage. RD’s main rival is Goonga whose biggest problem in life is his wife who forever screams all over the place. Her pitch in some scenes is so high that it can only be heard by bats and dogs. No doubt it’s some new strategy of RGV to go beyond humans as the target audience. KJo and YRF target the NRI crowd and RGV targets the animal kingdom. And keeping trend with the latest RGV avatar as Baba RGV, there are a lot of Zenisms thrown in the guise of dialogues. Faisle galat nahin hote, nateeje galat hote hain; Main jagah se nahin, Dimag se Kaam karta hoon; Paani sochtha nahi, behta hai. As RGV says in his blog, even ill give an award to the person who’ll tell me the reference to context of the last dialogue.

The only redeeming factors are that this time round the camera angles are not all over the place. The movie briefly comes to life when action director Alan Amin takes over during the action sequence between Aman and Goonga and the climax fight sequence. The sequence of Aman chasing a stark naked encounter cop through the galis of Mumbai was hillarious and well crafted. But these nice moments are very few in number. Only the irritating factors is what that stays with you at the end of the movie. And to make the matters worse, there’s a hint of a sequel which will be having a Superhero who cleans up the entire root of the Mumbai underworld. God Save our Souls. A definite let-down by RGV.

Title: 15 Park Avenue- A Review

Aparna Sen, an iconoclast of sorts, has been making films questioning norms and perceptions of our society.15 Park Avenue is the continuation of that trend.

The story of the film revolves around Mithi, a schizophrenic, and the dynamics of her relationship with her half sister and also her one time fiancée, Jojo. Mithi’s obvious and inevitable fight with everyday life is perhaps only overshadowed by the fight of her sister- perhaps a more important fight, a more difficult one too. A fight against her own ambitions, against traditional irrationalities and perhaps more importantly a fight against her desires for a relationship. A relationship for life. The dormant seeds of schizophrenia in Mithi resurface after she was brutally gang raped while on one of her journalistic assignments. It brought a catastrophic change to the very psyche of Mithi. Her fiancée, Jojo parts with her conceding that he does not anymore feel the passion for her. All that’s left is a mere shade of pity.

11 Years later, as Providence will have it, Jojo a.k.a. Joydeep Roy finds Mithi wandering on the flank of a river in Bhutan. Now married with a couple of children , his plans for a quiet vacation goes awry as he is dragged towards Mithi by an inexplicable desire .Perhaps to rediscover the long broken chord with Mithi. Little did he know that the ties had severed for ever. Mithi now in a mature stage of schizophrenia doesn’t even recognize him as her Jojo but somehow takes him as a friend. A friend whom she begins to trust once again in life, a friend who had failed her once, a Friend—she believes will find for her , her very own 15 Park Avenue, where Jojo and her five children is waiting for her .That’s her alter ego – her hallucination. Joydeep for once vows not to fail her again. He promises her to help her find 15 Park Avenue- an address even he knew was a mere figment of Mithi’s imagination.

It goes without saying of course that the acting performances were brilliant. The powerful portrayal of a schizophrenic By Konkona , the intellectual yet considerate “didi” by Shabana Azmi and the brilliantly nuanced performance of Shefali Shetty playing the role of a flabbergasted wife of Joydeep Roy perhaps stood out of all.

I think what Aparna Sen tried to explore in the film was captured in one piece of dialogue delivered by Dhritiman Chattopadhyay, the psychiatrist, while conversing with Shabana over tea table. That’s when he says, “whose reality is more real?”- a rhetorical and profound question that. And eventually she herself provides an answer in the concluding scene. Her answer.

The concluding scene of the film, a limbo to many, is perhaps one of the strongest, poetic and more importantly cinematic concluding remarks among contemporary Indian Cinema. In search of 15 Park Avenue Mithi was suddenly lost in her delusional world. When we were all busy figuring out whether the Jojo and others actually found out Mithi or not, the saner ones had themselves started believing that there was a thing called 15 Park Avenue, a hitherto delusional address and actually started asking people around, “where is 15 park avenue?…not palm avenue …no no its not park road …its PARK AVENUE”.A stark departure from saner reality, giving way to anticipation of a mere delirium. Mithi did not disappear any where .The locality was small .She must have been somewhere around, lost in her delusional world …the others would have certainly found her out in a few minutes. What is more interesting perhaps is the transition of these “normal” characters into Mithi’s schizophrenic, fantasy world. The already obscure line, between the real and the unreal, according to the auteur, further gets blurred.

With these subtle concluding remarks she hits the very foundations of “reason” and the way we perceive it to be. The film reaches higher echelons of philosophy of reasoning here by trying to redefine rationality in its own terms , by asserting that its us, the saner ones who have imposed our dimensions of reason on the “insane”.

That brings me to another eminent Sen. Amartya Sen, in one of his seminal works on philosophy, argues that one’s objective assessment of an situation is determined by the virtue of the position that one is in. This, he calls, positional objectivity. What man perceives as shade of red is a mere shade of grey to a cow, for eg. Which is the true colour is perhaps a void question.

Our popular notion of perception precludes us from acknowledge positional objectivity as a possible reason for varying perceptions of reality. Reality to most of us is “absolute”. 15 Park Avenue challenges this very “absolute” notion of realityFor those who have followed Aparna Sen’s films chronologically, from Picnic to 15 Park Avenue , one will realize that her way of film making has undergone a sea change. Sen’s initial training in film making was under Satyajit Ray and Chidananda Dasgupta (her father) both doyens of neo-realistic cinema Today how ever their influence on Sen has waned. She has moved on to a more linear narrative structures of storytelling, nonetheless equally powerful.

Sen’s film as always has been a critically thought out and meticulously planned one, touching the audience at their very core. Whether it will be able to change the ways-of –thinking, deeply seated through centuries, or not only time will tell. But surely it will make many think, the way they have not. And perhaps that’s the beginning of an end.