Randeep Hooda Added Every Color From His Pallette In Shankar

 

There was more of Shankar rather than just a swanky young matured Jatt Blood Thief mafia. What really stands out of the Hindi film Laal Rang (2016) apart from its fresh script and vivid characters that floats in the movie like lifelike images is the depth Randeep Hooda and the director Syed Ahmed Afzal has given to character, Shankar.

Shankar is a gutsy, witty, smart, badasss mafia yet big hearted. He resides in an old abandoned house in Karnal, Haryana and there is nothing fancy about his house. Yet he is liberal to his friends. He Bestows gifts and money. His character is one of those like of Leonardo DiCaprio from Blood Diamond (2007), the one who plays the villain card and sometimes acts as a messiah of poor. A man with extreme generosity and wickedness. Two souls in one body. This can be again seen when he opens up his locker as throws all the money and leaves the room in front of his greedy friend who had just grabbed his collar for not giving him fair share. This shows the magnanimous attitude he carried.  

He keeps calm at most of the time even though he is Jatt! Quite a contrast. There is a scene in the movie in which when he gets up late in the morning, carries his tape recorder, plays it, lights his cigarette and watches the aquarium tank. Now a tape recorder is ok and so is the cigarettes but why fishes? In case you don’t know many people use Aquarium as it provides potential health benefits. It is called Aquarium therapy. It has been scientifically proved that watching fishes in an aquarium tank can reduce tremendous amount of stress and anxiety. Beside it also reduces muscle tension and pulse rate. But the main question is from where all the stresses of the world runs into him? Now that interesting question. I’ll tell you why.

Tell me what does Shankar deals with all day long?

Blood

What is the color of blood?

Red

Now I don’t know if you are aware or not. Psychology says red color increases the pulse and heart rate, and raise your blood pressure. The interesting thing about red color is that it is active, aggressive and outspoken. I know what you are thinking. Dear reader I’m not bluffing if you don’t believe me have a look at it.

https://www.psychologistworld.com/perception/color.php

Moreover in a job as riskier as his and as stressful as his, he has found his own therapeutic method. And there is no point in a movie in which he loses his cool unnecessarily. I love when there is a lot of thinking by directors and actors in development of a character. That’s what makes the character larger than life and becomes cult when the coming generations watch it. Isn’t that is quite thoughtful from the director’s part. Moreover red is such a color that it can create an obsession once you are into it. The last line of the movie which happens to be of Shankar again justifies it.

“Chai chor diya, cigarette bhi chor diya par ye lal rang na chute he mujse!”

So how is Shankar as a lover? I think none better than this short scene would sum him up.

Rajesh: Kya hua bhai?

Shankar: Aaj Breakup ho gaya bhai. Final wala.

Rajesh: Kaise?

Shankar opens up message box of his phone and reads the SMS from his girlfriend out loud

“Shankar mere mummy papa tumhe kabhi nahi accept karengey. Aur me apne parents ka dil nahi tod sakti. Ho sake to muje bhul jao. Please understand”

Rajesh: Toh bhai? Ab Kya Karengey?

Shankar: Understand!

Chori he yaar. Jo bole wohi karengey

Totally cool. Although it may sound careless lover but inside his heart you can see an ardent lover in him which is evident as he keeps his girlfriend’s photo inside his safety deposits, in his wallet and thinks about her every time when he is alone.

There is something different in the way Shankar carries himself. With the way he walks you can notice some sort of Sashaying attitude just like Johnny Depp character in one of his recent movie The Rum Diary (2011). White watching Laal Rang I sensed there was some conjugation between both of the characters. Both were avid smoker and used to keep their calm by keeping their mind limbered from all the stressful environment by their own way.

I think none better than Randeep Hooda could have played Shankar. Especially if we considering all the colors he had to fill in the character. Shankar is like white light. Filled with many humanness colors of emotions which are only visible when it passes through a reality check called prism. There was so much in him to be explored by the audience than just an obsessive and passionate red color.

Analysis of Fan movie and why some of the audience & critics failed to understand it.

I’d like to mention some things that I observed when I first watched the film. Here they are:

 

§  The fan (Gaurav) is in nearly in every scene of the movie.

Even after he dies in the climax he still makes his presence in the scene when Aryan (star) acknowledges the crowd in front of his house. This is one of those point-of-view movies in which the audience lives with the fan and sees the cinematic world only through his eyes.

§ The movie highlights our hypocritical world more than once. 

                  I would like to quote Gaurav (fan) as no words would explain it better.

“Ek ye log he jo facebook twitter pe inki picturo ki burai karte he, fir inke hi ghar ke samne selfie khinchane aa jate hai aur bad me unka sabse bada fan kehte he”

§  Spotlights only on the dark and cynical side of two lead characters of the movie.

This style of film making is called film-noir something that many big banners of India have never experimented. And this is the only the second time YRF experimented (the first being Detective Byomkesh Bakshi). That’s one of main reason that many audience failed to digest the movie because such kind of mainstream cinema never made to the floors. Last time we saw such genre of cinema was 4 years ago, Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), before that it was Maqbool (2003) in which all the characters of the movie including the police duo (Om Puri and Nasseruddin Shah) were notably dark. Other film which comes to my mind is Satya (1998). I cannot say anything about Manorama Six Feet Under (2007) which many critics refer as film-noir because I’ve not seen it as of now.

Our audience is used to see the protagonist and an antagonist. This is the first time in mainstream cinema where you’ll see two antagonist in one frame.  

§  No songs in the movie

              The movie is about Bollywood yet there is no song in the movie. Of course there are dance rehearsal scenes in the movies. The fact there is no song is actually good thing because it helps the characters and audience to seep into the story line of the movie rather than hanging up on dance moves and foreign locations.

§  Innovative and self-explanatory style of cinematography.

There is one scene in the movie which was brilliantly shot. Let me tell you in brief about that scene first. There is star rivalry between Aryan and Sid Kapoor. In order to please his star (Aryan) the fan (Gaurav) assaults and humiliates Sid Kapoor and to get Aryan’s praise he sends the video on every media platform and it goes viral. For Aryan it’s crime and informs the police to arrest Gaurav, who roughens him up. Later Aryan comes to visit his fan at police station. So here we are. The fan and his star face to face. Surrounded both the sides by mirrors.

 

This is the situation when both of them get a reality check. They both get to know the ugly truth about themselves. The superstar Aryan gets aware by the perils of stardom but doesn’t know what kind of monster is lurking inside his fan. Whereas on other hand the praise and ardency in him about the star mortifies when he learns to know that his fan-ship is overlooked and his commitment his squelched completely. This meeting inside the room turns out to be a big reality check for both of them. The star which we look in front of camera is entirely different person and so are some of his fans.
Now the idea of mirror being placed in the scene is purely rational. The cinematographer wants to tell even though they are seeing each others wide range of persona and number of aspects of their physical being but they fail to see the real being inside them. The mirror only shows what kind of a person you are from outside but not the person hidden beneath you. The same thing happened here. Both never really show the monster inside either of them and took each others act for granted. And from here we can forecast the silent storm is on its way.

·  The movie leaves the audience with a million dollar question: Why the fan dies in the movie or why the superstar doesn’t say sorry to his fan. 

           Many people were left perplexed as they never got what the film wanted to say and the one who got the idea of what the film was about (which they believe) and concluded that the fan loses in the end.Actually the truth is deeper than that. It is the star that also loses because he fails to make his fan understand that behind his glamorous and enchanting lifestyle lies a shit load of hard work. Even after given so many chances the fan could not get over his obsession and superiority complex. The fan loses his life unable to abide by the truth that he faces and leaves the star to live with the burden that came because of his fan’s death. Both never sailed on one ship.

           This explains that there is a huge gap between the celebrity and fan. And the gap widens more and more. Although the social media may have created huge platform to get acquainted with movies stars but it never really speaks about what it takes to be a star and many of us like Gaurav takes it for granted. There is a life beyond impressing others. Rather than being someone else it’s important to be oneself. That’s the entire idea behind the film. That’s what Aryan wanted to say to Gaurav and that’s what the entire film is about.

“Chodd rehne de tu nahi samjega”

The fan as a movie will work for you if you are a big film-noir fan. The cinematography is interesting just like I’ve mentioned before. Didn’t see any loopholes in the story or the scene. It is the first movie to be shot at the Madam Tussaud museum London and yes did I mentioned SRK has played larger than life character in the film?

My 5 Most Influential English Films

5. 12 Angry Men (1957)

 

This is the one of the best court room movie I ever saw. The film opens up in a room with 12 jury members discussing whether the convict is a guilty or not.

The discussion which started on a lighter note takes a huge turn when one out of eleven men finds that the boy is not guilty.
What follows after that was the heated argument between the twelve men.

This is timeless classic directed by Sidney Lumet.

A Hindi film was inspired from the same movie – Ek Ruka Hua Faisla (1986) featuring Annu Kapoor, Pankaj Kapoor and other 10 men. 

4. Fight Club (1999)

 

Well, I’m breaking the first rule of Fight Club. Damn I need to fight now!

90’s was the era which brought the art of neo-noir film making back again. The era was marked by seamless classic movies that went on to became cult movies. Fight Club was one of them. The impact of the Fight Club on whoever saw was that he/she felt there’s still something more of it which they wanted to see. The whole movie set up from the point of view of The Narrator (Edward Norton), the voice that cannot be sad and pathetic than his.

The one thing out of many I loved about the movie is that it purposely shapes an ambiguous message, the interpretation of which is left to the audience. A lot of audience who watched this movie classifies this as an action movie and they are not wrong, the only thing wrong about them is about their immature psyche corroded by a narrow view of the world. The fight sequences in the movie does not signifies the physical combat skills in fact it gives the feeling to the participants which otherwise are vague and numb in our current world. The fights represents a resistance to the impulse to be enclosed in the society and it strips away the fear of pain and the reliance on material signifiers of their self-worth leaving them to experience something valuable.

It is directed by David Fincher. The remarkable work of the duo Fincher-Pitt is also seen in the movie The Curious Case of the Benjamin Button (2008), Seven (1995). My second favorite work of Fincher is Seven and not to mention which is first. And yeah! Heard about the U.S. television series called House of Cards? He has played an important role in its creation.

3. Pulp Fiction (1994)

 

I saw this movie a year ago. When I was in my PG hostel. I exactly remember the time when I was done with the movie. 2:55 in the A.M. I walked out of my room to take a piss and my mind still drenched by the bucketful of visual art that I hit me. 2 and a half hours of incredible cinema. 2 and a half hours of intense story told by some genius. The cold breeze that passed through my body could not even move a single erected hair of my body. I came back to bed just to open my laptop and play it again. I discovered an unconditional mésalliance with the cinema which was once lost long ago was reincarnated again and how much time it took. Only 2 and a half hours!

I don’t wish to write anything more about this film as of now. Because in the coming articles you will read a saucer full about Pulp Fiction only here, here in movie cafe.

2. Easy Rider (1969)

 

There are movies which get your spine and head a motionless erect stance on to the screen right from the very first scene. And there are not many films which highlights what the film is actually about right from the very first scene. If anyone wants to know what freedom is and what freedom actually stands for see this movie. I am not bolting out of time so I can least explain what the first scene was. The two protagonist of the movie Wyatt aka Captain America (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) before hitting the road stops for a while. Peter Fonda looks at his golden color Rolex wrist watch. Removes it and stares at it for a while only to throw it down in the mud and hits the highway. He disengages himself from the so called scheduled and uptight world which controls man.

After that what followed was a one and hour of cinematic journey on which they take you to the one of the most beautiful landscapes across the States, you get to know what hippie culture was, how the drugs and marijuana where taking over, the communal lifestyle, cynical people at that time and the outlaw bike culture that stressed on one thing, just one thing, “Individual Freedom”…

Well you may argue the movies Sean Penn’s Into the Wild (2007), The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) inspired by Che Guevara, Reese Witherspoon’s Wild (2014) and many more fetches the same idea than what is so different about Easy Rider. Well I’m gonna say is... let’s just cut it. My dear reader lets go on a biking trip from Kanyakumari to Ladakh and after that from the White Desert of Kutch to the Trans-Himalayan trip to Arunachal. And we will promise ourselves that we’ll spent the night only in camps instead of hotels and with bonfire stories that would share our experience of our trip and how India has changed over the years. Only our views not from some blogs or news channels. Sounds cool ah? Well that’s how exactly Easy Rider was made. No Script, no predefined dialogues. Just original views of Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper on how they couldn’t find the real America that was built on the bloods of fathers who died for exemption. This movie has influenced me to pursue and listen to my heart.

1. The Big Lebowski (1998)

 

Speaking about the influence. What if I told you the movie that I am about to talk had such an impact that there is a whole new religion rolled up that is solely inspired by the lifestyle of its lead protagonist. Not only religion but there books written about the core idea on which the movie was based upon (For egs. Tao Te Ching by Laozi, The Dude De Ching, Big Lebowski Spawns Religion, The Tao of the Dude and many more…) The Tao of the Dude is actually a good read. The book eases up the idea of Taoism in the form of Dudeism and how over the long history of our mother Earth, from Lao Tzu to Lebowski, Epicurus to Einstein, The Buddha to Bob Dylan, The Upanishads to John Lennon, Mozart to Pink Floyd all have reminded humanity what is the most important in life: personal liberty, peace of mind, leisure time and good friends. Oh Dude! What in god's holy name you are blathering about?

Coming back to the movie. It is a neo-noir, stoner, adventurous, acid trip, and comedy film. The character of the “The Dude” (portrayed by Jeff Bridges) was inspired from the Chinese religious philosophy, Taoism and from some concepts of the philosopher Epicurus, all presented in a style exemplified by the character of The Dude. The Dude takes it easy at all time and keeps his mind limbered away from the uptight world. The conscious mind must relax and stop standing in its own light man! Let it go so that it can flow with the Tao of the universe. And live in the moment to… Ah look at me I’m rambling again!

So these are for me the top five most influential English movies. Share your thoughts and please do tell me which movies have change the way you think. I hope the article was good because I try to keep myself in the hip of our time.