Movie review - Vazhakku en 18/9

A wonderful enactment, full of pathos.  Two parallel tracks, one of an upper middle class family in an apartment and another a slum.  The two tracks and the people involved meet only after the poor servant maid, Urmila Mahanta, survives an acid attack.

The police conduct a thorough investigation and the culprit is caught, but he is not brought to justice, sadly.  The usual powerful politics pokes its ugly nose and the innocent poor Sri is framed.  His love for the servant maid is exploited and he consents to plead guilty.

The unexpected turn of events consists of Urmila taking matters in to her hands and the film ends in poetic justice for the corrupt policeman.  What is not justice, poetic or not, though is Urmila having had to suffer the disfigurement and the jail sentence too.  Sri makes a very convincing and endearing young one-sided lover.  His friend in the roadside restaurant is initially irritating but he turns out to be an honest fellow.

On the whole a very gripping narration.  All the atrocities that can be done with the mobile phone are well brought out.  This film made me understand the hatred I have for rich spoilt teenagers.  

The end leaves the viewer feeling sad for the innocent and gullible people in the film as well as all those out there whose stories never make it to the world outside. 

Movie review - Main Gandhi ko nahi mara

I was left wondering how this Gandhiji related title was suitable for a film based on dementia/Alzheimer's. 

Anupam Kher dons the role of an absent minded professor, whose absentmindedness is actually the beginning of a more serious brain deterioration.  It could be age-related, because he is retired from active service for a couple of years, but still remembers some incidents with vivid detail.  Urmila Matondkar is the only daughter between two boys, older one away in the US and younger one still in college.  Not wanting to trouble her older brother she takes up the responsibility of caring for her father - taking him to doctors and worries over him.  The younger brother immaturely talks about admitting his dad in an 'asylum' which angers Urmila and rightly so.

Things shoot out of control when Urmila's four year boyfriend's parents visit to discuss the possible marriage when her dad bursts out in anger for having kept a teacup inadvertly on Gandhiji's picture.  Urmila is caught in between her father's deteriorating mental health and the insensitivity of her boyfriend.  Its when she finds him married that her world collapses, but she has to pull on for her father's sake - he has had more instances of running away from home and even setting his room on fire.  He repeatedly says that it he did not kill Gandhiji.

A good doctor comes into the picture and his approach turns around things.  The family unlocks their father's obsession with his guilty feeling.  An unexpected experiment turns out to be a success and things get back to normalcy.

Its only possible in Indian movies that the topic starts off as brain dysfunction and ends up in patriotism!