30 Days of Film Meme - Day 1.

This is a meme I saw circling around in a couple of places and decided to make it cover all days of June. Since it's all for films in general and this is a blog about Indian films, I'm going to alter certain days.

These are going to smaller posts, not very lengthy, but then, there is 30 of them coming your way.. Hope you enjoy! (And feel free to do this meme in your own blog, should you so wish.)

1. The best movie you saw during the last year

If I'll be completely honest, it was a toss-up between this and Deiva Thirumagal. Kahaani also rated higher in my books, but because Deiva Thirumagal had a couple of things that kind of bothered me, and as intriguing and well-written as Kahaani was, I'm unsure whether I'll rewatch it, so for that, I think The Dirty Picture takes the cake. It's fun, it's heroine-driven, filled with good songs and great performances, and on top of all that, it's surprisingly thought-provoking for a masala film.

And it's as good an excuse as any to post this smoking hot picture of Emraan and Vidya.

Still gathering thoughts: sexuality & tragic stardom of The Dirty Picture.

Despite the perhaps all-too-academic sounding title, I simply wanted to write another post about The Dirty Picture for a very simple reason. I read bunch of reviews that looked at it critically, analysed it a bit and perhaps concluded it wasn't a film worth its hype, or even worth the price paid for a ticket. And even though I disagree with that assessment - I still love the film and anticipate rewatches! - I did agree with some points those reviews brought up. (This is not the first time this has happened, obviously. I can agree with a lot of things about my favourites which other people found fatal flaws.)

SPOILERS FROM HEREON.

The biggest question for me are the multiple conundrums the film throws at us and perhaps doesn't quite resolve. Silk's sexuality gets center stage, but Silk herself - or even deeper, Reshma, doesn't. Perhaps rightly so, you may think. Isn't her sexual agency what made her who she is? It's what carries her through. She uses it to her magnificent advantage, and perhaps best of all, does not let anybody victimise her for doing so. She's not a meek girl who a sleazy producer propositions in a typical casting couch cliché; she goes out there and does whatever she feels she needs to do, and things simply click in place.

However, this is not a survivor story - when she has her final down to end the supreme high she's been riding on, she still has agency, but doesn't pull herself back out. She perseveres through hatred, but not sadness.

People have commented a lot on the fact that all this story is framed through the words and perspective of the man who hates her, Abraham. This is, depending on your perspective, either an interesting choice or a lazy one. Lazy one, because it allows Silk to be displayed precisely for this sexual agency that Abraham, in almost an unabashedly misogynist manner, loathes. It provides the masala and the titillation for the masses without scratching deeper into the character that Vidya Balan so beautifully portrays.

But this choice can also be an interesting one, because this allows the viewer to question their own viewership. When Silk is framed through Abraham, it becomes clear that we're getting a version of her story, rather than her actual story. We, just like Abraham, merely sit in the audience of the film of Silk, rather than truly stepping into her shoes. We're the same audience Silk builds her success on, but at the same time the one who categorises her into the role of a vamp, so she cannot show she can do more. We don't need to be shown more, we're happy with the sexy song and dance, to have our base need for entertainment catered to.

I say we, but obviously I don't know what everybody else was thinking when they began to think through this film. I can't make this judgment about everybody. But I did start to have these thoughts, because this kind of stardom, this idealised, fragmented idea of what a star is like, is very important to Indian films. The film remains a masala, and I'm not trying to portray it as anything but - it doesn't blatantly hold up a mirror to its audience, but there are these things that rather make me wonder.

I've got this book on Marilyn Monroe, only it's not a book about Marilyn herself, or rather - it's precisely that. It's about the Marilyn created, the stories told of her, the reality that is constructed with bits and pieces of her myth, from her dyed blonde hair to her tragic suicide. We all know her story, and we all have a version of this story; we see her as a victim, or a queen, or a little girl who was just lost, or a woman exploited by men, or whatever. And there are stories similar to hers, and these kinds of iconic women with tragic endings tend to fascinate the culture at large. What happened? What went wrong? Why wasn't she the ideal that we saw on-screen, but just a human being who was sad? Or is that just another interpretation, desperately trying to reach some sort of conclusive truth where none can be found?

So you can see why the film makers wanted to tell this story, because it grips people, it fascinates people, and everybody wants to get at some sort of greater truth of it all. That's the nature of stardom, even when it's built on raw sexuality, the distance between the "real" person and the "star persona".

The question remains - could we get Silk's real story? Or would we be more satisfied with this version, because it creates the myth on our behalf - even through the imperfect lens of Abraham's character?

Masala, titillation, entertainment: The Dirty Picture.

I confess it took me about 20 minutes to figure out the kind of film that The Dirty Picture was trying to be. I think that despite seeing the colourful, glorious trailer, I was still expecting something a bit more grounded - the way that sound effects accented the dramatic moments felt a bit off at first. But pretty soon after something just clicked. There is depth to The Dirty Picture, but it's not the sort of depth an art film or a social film would try to infuse into this life of the sex symbol Silk, played by Vidya Balan. The depth comes from the fact that this is just a superbly written masala picture, but it doesn't try to be a message film or gritty social commentary. And that's a very, very good thing.


Why is it a good thing? Because I find it's more respectful to the character if you don't try to make a message film from her. There's something pretty great about the lack of moralism - at least in my eyes - in The Dirty Picture. While narrated by her biggest enemy, there isn't any kind of judgment on Silk for her choices, good or bad by the way that her story is told. I didn't feel invited to approve or disapprove of her all the time - there were nuances to her, as to the other characters. Any judgment comes from the people around her, but she faces all this with distinct defiance.

She is what she is, and she's defined by her choices, but also by the world around her. It's an interesting dichotomy, and one that everybody in the film portrays very well. For a masala, there are naturally villains and heroes - she is the heroine, definitely. But there are also shades to the characters.


Balan's brilliance is almost a given at this point. I've been so impressed and frankly just moved by her performances in films like Paa and No One Killed Jessica, so I always knew she'd excel here - she can portray Silk's fragile side, her self-confidence even when it goes to the point of arrogance and her exuberance. Perhaps the bigger surprises therefore are the other performances, like Tusshar Kapoor as the man who adores Silk, or Emraan Hashmi as the man who loathes her. Hashmi especially won me over - the journey his character takes is intriguing, and I had severe prejudice about him, having only seen him in Gangster, which was only not a very good film but also not a very good performance. (The fact he's spent half his career practically eating faces of female co-stars hasn't endeared me to him either. I'm fine with kissing but his films rarely seemed to feature good on-screen kisses.)

But in this, I positively loved him, and I thought the chemistry between him and Vidya was practically through the roof. I would not mind seeing them in another film together, and I hope I'm not the only one.


As with any good masala, the songs were a delight, and the cinematography beautiful. I've not read a whole lot of response to this film, but when people name this the best film of last year, I think I'd be strongly inclined to agree. I saw a fair amount of last year's batch of pictures, and considering my enjoyment, and how likely I am to rewatch something, it's pretty clear that Dirty was perhaps the best picture of them all.