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Apr. 2nd, 2006 12:01 am
John Woo Goes to Bollywood
No wonder Vidhu Vinod Chopra has such a reputation in Mumbai. Parinda isn't like any other Bollywood film I've seen before. It's long on the sex and violence and short on the musical numbers and happy endings--exactly the opposite of what I've come to expect. Plus Vinod Chopra has definitely seen A Better Tomorrow. The set-up is straight Hong Kong: Little Brother returns from studying in the States in order to marry his childhood sweetheart and runs smack into what--unbeknownst to him--Big Brother has been doing to pay the bills. And the birds! No John Woo spoof could have as many doves as Vinod Chopra puts pigeons in this film. (The title--Parinda is Hindi for "pigeon"--says it all.) Hell, I don't think the The Birds had this many birds--or, at least, it didn't have the same overactive foley artists, which make every flock sound like a tornado of avian fury.
The sound design is one barrier to overcome in order to enjoy Parinda; everything from the pigeons to the performances seems turned up to eleven. (We've never had to go down to the lowest level of volume on our set before.) Another is the picture quality, at least of the version we saw (through NetFlix, natch); lots of great shots marred by distracting washes of colour. But there are compensations: It's difficult enough to create and maintain tension throughout a 2.5-hour film when you aren't contractually obligated to include at least four song-and-dance sequences. (HK directors got off light with one or at most two Canto-pop numbers.) Yet our man Vidhu manages.
The plot is appropriately twisty (and the gaping holes pardonable) and the movie isn't just Westernised, it's an honest-to-goodness Western--but one where no one gets to ride off into the sunset. Anil Kapoor is somewhat over-the-top as the younger brother, but it's nice to see (snaps up for a Just-for-Da Gratuitous Shower Scene) that fur runs in that family. Big brother Jackie is called upon to do more bezerk yelling than I'd like, but there's lots of intense brooding as well. And, I have to say, I found Nana Patekar as the mob boss a more sympathetic and interesting character than is the general norm; by comparison, Chow Yun-fatt's nemesis in The Killer is just a screaming cipher.
Curiously, the song's aren't subtitled, giving you even more reason to fast-forward through them. Don't worry, you won't be missing out on any Swiss chalets or swirling seas of sapphire saris; the production numbers are extremely modest. I'd recommend watching the brothers' bacchanal following the announcement of Kapoor's impending nuptials, though; there's more homoeroticism in three minutes of it than in any three Woo films. (The simulated bridal bed scene was what had my eyes a-buggin'.)
The sound design is one barrier to overcome in order to enjoy Parinda; everything from the pigeons to the performances seems turned up to eleven. (We've never had to go down to the lowest level of volume on our set before.) Another is the picture quality, at least of the version we saw (through NetFlix, natch); lots of great shots marred by distracting washes of colour. But there are compensations: It's difficult enough to create and maintain tension throughout a 2.5-hour film when you aren't contractually obligated to include at least four song-and-dance sequences. (HK directors got off light with one or at most two Canto-pop numbers.) Yet our man Vidhu manages.
The plot is appropriately twisty (and the gaping holes pardonable) and the movie isn't just Westernised, it's an honest-to-goodness Western--but one where no one gets to ride off into the sunset. Anil Kapoor is somewhat over-the-top as the younger brother, but it's nice to see (snaps up for a Just-for-Da Gratuitous Shower Scene) that fur runs in that family. Big brother Jackie is called upon to do more bezerk yelling than I'd like, but there's lots of intense brooding as well. And, I have to say, I found Nana Patekar as the mob boss a more sympathetic and interesting character than is the general norm; by comparison, Chow Yun-fatt's nemesis in The Killer is just a screaming cipher.
Curiously, the song's aren't subtitled, giving you even more reason to fast-forward through them. Don't worry, you won't be missing out on any Swiss chalets or swirling seas of sapphire saris; the production numbers are extremely modest. I'd recommend watching the brothers' bacchanal following the announcement of Kapoor's impending nuptials, though; there's more homoeroticism in three minutes of it than in any three Woo films. (The simulated bridal bed scene was what had my eyes a-buggin'.)