A Novel Adaptation of A Novel

One Liner: Three point quite something (on a scale of 5).

The other day, while I was deciding on which movie to watch, 3 idiots never figured in my list. Reason – I thought it’s just a scene to scene cinematic adaptation of a novel. However, thanks to one of my friends I decided to go watch the movie.

Now, about the movie. As it’s quite clear in the promos and all, Aamir, Madhavan and Sharman are friends in graduation college and the movie is about their lives in the college. The basic set of characters are same as those of the book – Aamir is an thinking student, Madhavan is a staunch admirer of Aamir, Sharman is their friend who tries to move away from the two but comes back to them later and Kareena is director’s daughter and Aamir’s love interest. But the similarity almost ends here, except for a few scenes here and there.

This where the novelty aspect comes in. Aamir is not just an original thinker but also inspires others to lead more passionate and fulfilling lives. His romance with Kareena is limited and it doesn’t, unfortunately, end up in sex, as in the book (I particularly remember, Ryan, his character in the novel commenting about post-coitus smoking. Kareena, isn’t a doctor either in the book. Neither is she engaged in the print version. Their affair, in the book, is more in accordance with their ages and appropriately more juvenile. Frankly, in the movie it seems a little mixed up, in a typical Bollywood style.

Coming to Aamir, true,he is looking quite young for his age but there’s difference between looking young and looking like a youngster. The same applies for Madhavan and Kareena. Rajkumar Hirani, leveraging his name, could have cast some fresh faces. Not that the actors in the film didn’t do justice to their roles. Sharman Joshi performed beautifully in the job interview scene and so did Madhavan in the scene where he tries to convince his parents about his future plans. However, it’s the performance of Boman Irani that really stands out. The way he lives out his role, yet again, is exemplary. His gait, his voice modulation, his antics, all went into making the character true to life. The way he portrayed his frustration, anger or helplessness in different scenes are just awesome. I really loved his performance in his last scene with Aamir when he gifts the latter his favorite pen.

For his part, Aamir, yet again, donned an educator role after Tare Zameen Par and it called for too in the current times of IIT foundation course from Std VI. However, while in TZP he doesn’t take a centre stage; in 3 Idiots he had an overarching constant presence. Given the original story, I found it a little jarry . Kareena sported a new look that’s less loud and non-yuppie. Her role, though short, is decent and not just-for-romance types.

Regarding cinematography and background music, they are decent and non-intrusive. The picturesque scenes on the way to ladakh were captured well. I particularly liked the aerial shot in the initial part of the film when the camera takes us along the beautiful hill terrain over to the highway. Coming to songs, their timing is not abrupt and a couple of them are hummable too. However, given Shantanu Moitra’s name, I personally expected a little more from the album.

Finally, as I see, and I see it so quite often, the hero of the film is the director. The way the plot and characters are suitably remoulded, I think, makes for a classic case study of how to successfully adapt a novel Rajkumar Hirani has proved, yet again, that he is a master in dealing with human strengths, frailties and emotions. What I see as the most commendable achievement is the way the movie brought this message – in life, one should pursue what one loves most and is extremely passionate about. As one strives for excellence, success will automatically follow.

This Avatar Too Is Epical.

One liner : one hell of a movie.

In the second half of the movie Jack, the hero, once comments “I am gonna take this to a different level”. These words are equally apt for the director James Cameroon too. The movie truly is epical in proportions. Apparently, it has cost some $ 237 million. I, for one, am pretty sure that it’s gonna easily recover the movie. Out here in Ahmedabad, it's a huge hit and getting tickets with out sufficient pre-planning is difficult.

Coming to the movie, the basic plot is pretty simple. It’s on the lines of many sci-fi movies. It’s about people on earth waging a war against some ‘aliens’, aborigines of a certain moon like satellite called Pandora. In the end, the 'human' beings win. The key word here is ‘human'. Two things about the movie – one, the dream like states of the film’s characters and two, the hero being the chosen ‘one’ to save life on Pandora – reminded me of Matrix. But the similarity ends there.

The visuals and detailed graphics are truly of a different world. Just class apart. They are very engrossing. That the movie is available in 3D format too only added to its appeal. The music is good, though at times it reminded me of background sound of some tribal based computer games. Given the proportion and depth of graphics work, the cinematography is pretty good. However, given that it’s a 3D picture there could have been, probably, a few more breath taking shots.

Apart from the visual experience, I also loved the movie for the statements it made. It beautifully captures the kind of the in-spired lives lead. It depicts their animistic beliefs very well. For example, to ride a horse-like animal, the natives need to 'connect' with the animal. After that you communicate the directions to it by direct thought transmission. Similarly, chosing one’s vehicle to fly in the skies of Pandora is also cool cool. It’s just not that yu chose the creature, the creature too needs to chose yu. And the interesting thing is that yu can only try once. There are many other such instances by which Cameroon subtly teaches us how to respect and acknowledge the importance of other living beings around us. It’s sort of a slap on the face of all who believe that as human beings, it is their birth right to exploit everything on planet earth. With so many discussions about environment and climate happening around, these lessons couldn’t have been timed better :)

Apart from the hero Jack, another interesting character is that of Colonel Miles Quaritch (played by Stephen Lang). He epitomizes the bull dozing attitude of imperialist forcesbig boys like US. He is utterly ruthless about life on Pandora, be it that of the hometree, central to the habitation of native clan or the lives of natives themselves. Like any other real world war mongering official, Colonel Miles loftly promises to bring Pandora under control by with “least amount of loss to lives” of the natives.

Also, the robot like mechanical structures that the military uses to attack natives is a very good metaphor for rule-bound soliders who are completely insensitive to local cultures in real life scenarios.

In short, the movie has a thought provoking theme and imaginative visuals making for a great movie watching experience.

Get this 'straight'

I recently read this wonderful article in Brunch (Hindustan Times’ Sunday Supplement) and for the first time I really understood what being a transgender or transsexual means. I knew the meanings of gay or lesbian and bisexual, but never knew the exact difference between a transgender and transsexual or transgender and gay or lesbian.

If yu too are as clueless as I was earlier, here’s briefly what these terms mean (courtesy: brunch, again):

Heterosexual: The so called ‘straight’ people. A person who is attracted to the opposite sex.

Gay (or lesbian): A man (or woman) who is attracted to men (or women).

Transgender: A person who believes he or she was born in the wrong physical gender. A transgender person is not a gay or lesbian. She (or he) is a man (or woman) born in the wrong gender, attracted like any heterosexual, to the opposite sexual.

Transsexual: A person who has had sex reassignment surgery (SRS), known colloquially as sex change operation. Such a person is said to have ‘transitioned’.

Transvestite: A person who for whatever reason enjoys dressing in the clothes of the opposite sex. A transvestite need not necessarily be gay or lesbian, bisexual or transsexual. Many heterosexuals are transvestites.

Hijra: A transgender or transsexual woman born as a physical male, who is a part of the established community of hijras. You are not a hijra unless you officially join the community, becoming what is called as a ‘chela’.

Before reading any further, I strongly recommend that the article be read first. I would like to share here a few things that ran in my mind while I was reading the article.

Earlier I used to wonder why are people with alternate sexual orientations are the way they are. I think I now it now. They are the way they are b’coz that is the natural way for them...I particularly liked the way Rose has put it in the article. “I can’t explain why I want to do sex change surgery because I don’t need to become a woman, I am a woman”. And the difference between gay and physical male transgender couldn’t be explained better than when she says why she isn’t a gay. "I am not a man. You have to be a man to be gay.”

One thing that has sort of surprised me is Rose’s remark that US is a very homophobic and transphobic country. Even more than India. Another surprising thing is the significance of hormones. I knew that hormones is the reason behind differences in physical features between men and women (like men’s beard or woman’s tone of voice). But I never knew that they influence even our mental processes. When Gazal, talking about HRT says, "Suddenly, I found it easy to cry. Now I know it’s all to do with hormones", yu understand how fragile are our identities as males or females. We are not studs or chicks by virtue or choice but are mere consequences of some chemicals in our body :)

What does pin in 'pincode' mean ?

I was trying out a few urls for this blog and this is the coolest one available. I think the url tells what we bloggers are trying to do in this networked world of web based communications – trying to post stuff without any sort of pin code.

For those who's wondering ‘pin’ in ‘pin code’ means, wiki says that it stands for Postal Index Number, just as zip stands for Zonal Improvement Plan in the word ‘zip code’. On that note of enlightenment, let me end my first blog post ever :)