Handlooms

Stumbled on this site by accident. Great visuals and lovely saris mean I keep going back to it.

Seven Steps and a Minister's Daughter

Another weekend at home with domestic chores and DVDs. Its been a tiring two and half months and my watching of serious cinema has faltered. On the other hand Australian free-to-air telly is so dismal I rarely watch it*. I had picked up Saptapadi on a visit to Kolkata and it seemed to occupy a middle space so I decided to give it a go. It turned out to be immensely watchable. While melodramatic and following many of the unrealistic tropes of the cinema of its time, it was also surprisingly quiet in parts (as an e.g. the confrontation scene between Suchitra Sen and Uttam Kumar's father starts off as the usual hi-jinks but unexpectedly concludes in a plea that appeals to her better nature, in contrast the one between Sen and her father hews to ghastly stereotype) and imbued with ideas and intelligence. It is also finely idealistic in the way 50s movies were and remarkably compassionate in the way it treats almost all the characters, though Uttam Kumar's character is clearly infallible. The acting is pretty consistent and you can see how Indian actors approach roles and bring a specific style to their acting which deeply taps into the Indian psyche. The movie itself is imbued with themes of sacrifice, salvation, undying love, humanity and a belief in goodness, all familiar themes in Indian literature. It is intended to be uplifting and it achieves that purpose.

Similarly Manthiri Kumari, though a different kettle of fish, is an example of how well constructed some old films were and how well they use dialogue, sadly a dying art in modern cinema. This may well be because the movie was intended as DMK propaganda, but it works on its own. The movie is surprisingly perfectly paced and edited, somewhat uncommon for what is really a very twisted Indian tale of palace intrigue (don't know if Ellis Dungan had a role in this) . And like all movies with extremes of good and bad characters, this one has the most delicious villains who are given their comeuppance by a good but clever woman i.e. the eponymous Manthiri Kumari. This movie also has one of my grandmother's favourite songs, "Vaarai nee Vaarai", which is a love song and a coded song of death all at once. In fact Tamil cinema in the 50s spans an astonishing range, much of it with a political subtext, and makes for interesting viewing. Manthiri Kumari is really the odd one out in my list of favourite movies but I do recommend it.

*Sometimes SBS is an exception so this weekend I also watched The Spectator which almost made me change my poor opinion of Italian cinema.

The Last Aztec

In my mundane life of the past few weeks, the odd bit of frisson came from watching The Last Aztec. It was a meandering, eccentric doco and rivetting in parts. DBC Pierre's idiosyncratic, garrulous and not to speak of drunk presentation and some kind of mad love for Mexico meant you watched the whole damn thing regardless of whether it was fact or grandiose, passionate assumptions. The title seemed sly - appearances notwithstanding, he may well be the Last Aztec.