Kyunki Kaminey kutti cheez nahin hai

When I talked to my friend Rick recently, I figured out Kaminey had become for him and most of his college mates what Dil Chahta Hai had become for us when we were in college. We would quote lines from the film, have hairstyles like Aamir's Aakash, dance like Saif Ali Khan did in Woh ladki hai kahaan and even try and catch operas. Yes, it was that deep. Now, Dil Chahta Hai has stood the test of time and it's still as loved as it was in 2001.

And that's why I think Kaminey is the wrong film to obsess with. I know I am in a minority now. Besides Khalid Mohamed and myself, every critic in the country have hailed it as our Citizen Kane, our answer to Pulp Fiction and god knows what. I even read someone calling Vishal Bhardwaj a better filmmaker than Quentin Tarantino. Hmmm... The audience hasn't lapped it up. Kaminey has doen better than Omkara but that's not saying much. Let's forget the box office, which even rejected a film like Luck By Chance (my fave film of 2009 till now). Let's just take a look at the problems I have with Kaminey and if you disagree, I would love to hear from you. That's why the comment box is there, below.

First confession: I do like Kaminey. It's quite a good watch. There are lovely moments in the film. Some great performances, especially Shahid, Chandan, Priyanka, Amol... I love the background score, which plays around Dhan te nan. And I admire the cinematography by Tasadduq Hussain. It's deliciously dark and super heady.

I think in a film like Kaminey which is basically a multi-character thriller laced with dark humour, every character has to be bloody unique. If you look at Tarantino's films and a few of Coen Brothers' flicks, which belong to the same genre, the characters make the movie.

Just take Kill Bill. Now Lucy Liu is just two chapters in the 10-chapter film. And she must have a total of one page of dialogues. And hoe does Tarantino set O Ren Ishii up? She is a Chinese-Japanese-American who saw her parents murdered at age nine and now runs the Tokyo Yakuza. She has 44 bodyguards who call themselves the Crazy 88. And she is super-touchy about her ancestry and can take your head if you have a problem with that.

Let's move to Reservoir Dogs - Michael Madsen's Mr Blonde. The Daily Telegraph in an article describes the character as "Besuited alpha male, particularly famed for impromptu ear-severing. A charming psychopath who likes to simmer and sit tight. Perks up when obscure Dylan-esque Seventies pop hits come on the radio and has a habit of flicking away cigarette butts just before something really nasty happens. Approach with due trepidation."

Let's tighten it further. John Turturro's Jesus in The Big Lebowski by the Coens. He has one scene in the film and you know everything about him. That he is the best bowler around. That he does a Hotel California jig before and after his bowling act. That he was once a peder-ass and had to go door to door in Hollywood to tell everyone he was a peder-ass!

Now, tell me one character in Kaminey whom you know something about. Okay, three Bengali mental brothers who play around with guns. Well if they are from the underworld, that's what they will do. Isn't it? Mikhail, such an important character in the film, what do we know about him? That he snorts coke. That's it? Yes, that's it. And he is not even made to look different. In fact, in the rain scene, it gets difficult to identify which one's Shahid and which one's Chandan.

The other villains... Lobo and Lele. Okay, one talks less and the other talks more. What else? What else? I can't think of. Can you?

Bhope Bhau... This character was getting interesting. There was some work behind it. He is a baddie turning politician by chanting Jai Maharashtra. So when he actually agreed to take money from Shahid and switch to another party, it really made him slyly sinister. But then he wanted to take out Shahid after getting the money. Lo kar lo baat! Ctrl + z, we call it.

The worst ones? Tashi and his sidekick. That is vintage Bollywood. He sits and smokes pipe. He doesn't like dogs, he liked bitches. Come on!

When you start thinking which actor is good and which actor is not, that means the character hasn't worked. Even if you look at Charlie and Guddu, the stress is mostly on the way they talk, on the lisp and the stammer. There is a back story, there is a dream sequence but you only go back with the 'main f ko f bolta hoon'. That's a stylistic device, not a character detail. Character details are what is totally missing in Kaminey and stops it short from a great film. I am not getting into the complicated exposition, the disjointed edit and all that. Just the characters... they do not belong to the world Vishal wanto create. We all know they are supposed to be 'bad' and they are all after the cocaine and the diamonds and the money but give us the little chewy details. The best scene of the film is when Shahid has to sing his story to Lobo and Lele. And that again is about the speech.

That's why Kaminey failed me. It tells us it's smart but then turns out to be totally Bollywood. For that, I prefer Om Shanti Om. Unpretentious and totally enjoyable.

How Tarantino talks his way through his films

A Facebook friend wrote on my wall the other day: "I am a regular reader of your column, sometimes basing my decision of watching a movie solely on your reviews. Would you care to share your judgment of Tarantino's pulp fiction? i think it is wayyyy tooo overr.."

Well, unfortunately, you picked the wrong guy. I happen to be a HUGE Tarantino fan. And I will tell you why. Because of Pulp Fiction. Of course, I love the manic brutality of Reservoir Dogs, the biting charm of Jackie Brown, the comic book violence of Kill Bill and the lap dance of Death Proof. But what really sums up QT for me is the yapfest of Pulp Fiction.

I recently went to a screenwriting workshop and my instructor there was a really knowledgable guy (and a filmmaker) and he helped me clear a lot of issues with my script. Now, one thing he told me that I totally disagree with is that when two characters talk, the topic has to have a direct motivation to the plot. It was in Pulp Fiction where Tarantino showed us that the dialogues might not have anything to do with the plot. When two assassins discuss European burgers and the metric system, what has it got to do with the film? But then when you think of Jules and Vincent, the thing you remember the most is Royale with cheese. Because that is what makes the film.

The more the characters yap, yap, yap, the more they become characters. It's not without reason that one of the taglines of Pulp Fiction was Just because you are a character doesn't mean you have character! When Inglourious Basterds premiered in Cannes, all the critics went that there was too much of talk and very little action. But then the trailer very clearly told you "You ain't seen war if you haven't seen it through the eyes of Quentin Tarantino." And that is Tarantino - he talks his way through a film. That's his style. That's what makes him what he is today. Just because he made Kill Bill, doesn't mean that all his action films would have fountains of blood spewing out of beheaded basterds.

Forget what I think, the great critic Roger Ebert, my absolutest favourite movie man around, writes in his Inglourious Basterds review: "Immediately after Pulp Fiction played at Cannes, QT asked me what I thought. 'It’s either the best film of the year or the worst film,' I said. I hardly knew what the hell had happened to me. The answer was: the best film. Tarantino films have a way of growing on you. It’s not enough to see them once."

Watch Pulp Fiction again my friend, after a few days, and let it win you over. Honestly, you don't have a chance against it. 

Here's a few of my favourite lines from Pulp Fiction which have nothing to do with the plot. I want you to tell me which one is your favourite...

Jimmie: I don't need you to tell me how fucking good my coffee is, okay? I'm the one who buys it. I know how good it is. When Bonnie goes shopping she buys shit. I buy the gourmet expensive stuff because when I drink it I want to taste it. But you know what's on my mind right now? It ain't the coffee in my kitchen, it's the dead nigger in my garage.

Jules: Well, the way they make shows is, they make one show. That show's called a pilot. Then they show that show to the people who make shows, and on the strength of that one show they decide if they're going to make more shows. Some pilots get picked and become television programs. Some don't, become nothing. She starred in one of the ones that became nothing. 

Vincent: Bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood.
Jules: Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'd never know 'cause I wouldn't eat the filthy motherfucker. Pigs sleep and root in shit. That's a filthy animal. I ain't eat nothin' that ain't got sense enough to disregard its own feces.
Vincent: How about a dog? Dogs eats its own feces.
Jules: I don't eat dog either.
Vincent: Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal?
Jules: I wouldn't go so far as to call a dog filthy but they're definitely dirty. But, a dog's got personality. Personality goes a long way.
Vincent: Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true?
Jules: Well we'd have to be talkin' about one charming motherfuckin' pig. I mean he'd have to be ten times more charmin' than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I'm sayin'?  

Captain Koons: The way your dad looked at it, this watch was your birthright. He'd be damned if any slopes gonna put their greasy yellow hands on his boy's birthright, so he hid it, in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you. [This one did set the watch up and does have a bearing on the plot]

Trudi: You know how they use that gun to pierce your ears? They don't use that when they pierce your nipples, do they?
Jody: Forget that gun. That gun goes against the entire idea behind piercing. All of my piercings, sixteen places on my body, all of them done with a needle. Five in each ear, one through the nipple on my left breast, one through my right nostril, one through my left eyebrow, one in my lip, one in my clit... and I wear a stud in my tongue.
Vincent: Excuse me, but I was just wondering... why do you wear a stud in your tongue?
Jody: It's a sex thing.

Vincent: All right. Well, you can walk into a movie theater in Amsterdam and buy a beer. And I don't mean just like in no paper cup, I'm talking about a glass of beer. And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald's. Know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris? 

Jules: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese? 

Vincent: Naw, man, they got the metric system, they wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is. 

Jules: What do they call it? 

Vincent: They call it a "Royale with Cheese". 

Jules: "Royale with Cheese"? 

Vincent: That's right. 

Jules: What do they call a Big Mac? 

Vincent: A Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it " Le Big Mac". 

Jules: Le Big Mac. What do they call a Whopper? 

Vincent: I don't know, I didn't go in a Burger King.