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Joker's aside
Movie: The Dark Knight
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman
Showing at: E-square, City Pride, Gold Adlabs, Mangala, Alka Apollo, Vijay
THE Dark Knight will always be remembered as the last film of Heath Ledger. That was a tragic coincidence. However, what were the chances that it might also be among the gifted actor's best? This is a superlative performance in a superlative film.
We've had quite a few good superhero films If Tobey McGuire's Spiderman was a lesson in humility, Robert Downey Jr re-carved a career for himself with Iron Man's tragic genius. The Dark Knight asks a question far more basic: What makes a person a hero?
Batman (Christian Bale) is just one of them. The film has many: District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) willing to take on the mob; Lt Gordon (Gary Oldman) fighting a lone battle in a corrupt police force; Dent's assistant Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who is loved by both Dent and Batman; Dent's CEO Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) who puts in his papers rather than compromise on his principles; and even Gotham City's people who choose at one moment to die rather than live with blood on their hands.
Battling the mob and the unpredictable Joker (Heath Ledger), Batman increasingly realises that while people may be grateful for a vigilante, they can't lead lives hoping for a man in tight suit and bat wings to come flying down to save them in trouble.
There are calls for Batman to reveal his identity, to put himself out there, even as he himself puts his weight behind "the real heroes". In this darkest of Batmans, as the city crumbles under the lunacy of Joker, the Dark Knight doesn't show the light. He just holds up the arm that does it. Grimacing, merciless and supremely intuitive, the Joker wants Batman out as he is the symbol of Gotham's hope.
After Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal, there has never been a villain you have hated as much.At one point in the film, he walks away from a hospital he has just blown up, dressed in a nurse's uniform, shaking his hands in glee, when he turns around and realises that some part of it is still standing. The Joker shakes his head and rattles the remote. As explosions go off, he starts and jumps into a bus. For a long time to come, there may not be a scene as scary and funny.
"Do I look like a guy with a plan?" the Joker asks. Think about that.
Goodbye, Mr Ledger.
Predictably puerile
Movie: Kismat Konnection
Director: Aziz Mirza
Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Vidya Balan, Om Puri
Showing at: E square. INOX, City pride, Gold Adlabs, Mangala, Jai Fame, West end, Laxmi Narayan, Nilayam
HE'S a down-on-his-luck architect. She's the one who's going to turn it all around for him. The kind of story that Aziz Mirza used to wing. But Kismat Konnection doesn't connect.
Raj is in the Mirza mould of the underdog heroes who slip occasionally, but get up, in the end, to fight the good fight. Priya (Vidya Balan) poses the conflict: Will it be massive malls or a community centre for the homeless; crass commerce or love? Will rich businessman Om Puri, in a fake white wig, win? Or will Boman Irani, in an equally fake grey one, who espouses the cause of the aam aadmi, trounce the opposition?
No prizes for guessing which side Raj will choose. The trouble with Kismat Konnection is not only its predictable screenplay, but its even more predictable filling-in-of-the-spaces between the first and the last frame, and the lack of any real fire, barring a stray sequence or two, between the lovebirds. Shahid, who had gone on to another level in Jab We Met, slips right back into his floppy haired, too-eager-to-please style, and Vidya stays exactly where she's been-on the same single-track, and as determinedly frumpy.
Please never let us see Juhi Chawla, who's usually capable of sense, as a trumped up technicolour crystal ball gazer, again.
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