Month: November 2013

Possession

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Possession is a 1981 French cult horror film directed by Andrez Zulawski and starring Isabelle Adjani in lead role.  Possession debuted at Cannes, where it was received with notable press.  The central couple, Anna and Mark, is introduced at what appears to be the beginning of an estrangement. Their marriage already is broken, neither party will allow the separation to be resolved without exerting some hardship upon the other. Mark and Anna are shouting each other by the opening five minutes.  After the opening ten, they are fighting in public. The level of frustration, rage, and insanity only continues to rise.  The first half of Possession is peculiar and the second half is bizarre.    Zulawski wrote it while going through breakups to recognize emotional rawness and irrational behavior. People go crazy when relationships go bad.  Murder, mutilation and literal monster breeding are the nightmarish faces of character assassination and financial destruction.

The tension and electricity of the performances is literally inhuman, and it becomes quickly obvious that we are not really watching “natural” or “method” acting but something far more extreme.

 

Arundhati

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Arundhati is a 2009 Telugu ,fantasy film written and directed by Kodi Ramakrishna , starring Anushka Shetty in lead role.   Arundhati is the great grand daughter of the Raja of Gadwal.  Her marriage is settled with Rahul.  Few days before her marriage, she comes to the fort of Gadwal from Hyderabad.  There she is drawn to nearly abandoned fort where a spirit is lying.   Three generations back, Arundhati killed the womaniser villain Pasupathi (Sonu Sood) whose spirit vows to take revenge.  This is Anushka’s first performance oriented role and she does a great job here .  There are many shots in this film where the scenes from the present time will dissolve into flashback and vice versa. She has to show the variations between old Arundhati and new Arundhati. Sonu sood looks deadly in the role of Pasupathi. Visual effects and graphics done by Rahul Nambiar are extraordinary.

The Cranes Are Flying

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Kalatozov’s war film , was adapted by Viktor Rozov from his own play and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1958.  It tells the story of Veronica (Tatiana Samoilova) ,who is parted from new lover Boris (Alexei Batalov)  in Moscow when he joins the army to fight the invading Germans in 1941.  Meanwhile Boris’s cousin Mark is in love with her but she continuously rejects him. Veronica eventually marries Mark and enlists as a nurse , secretly hoping that Boris is still alive. It is visual poetry, stunningly photographed with extreme close-ups ,tracking crowd scenes ,and gorgeous long shots in every sequence.

The film depicts the cruelty of world war 2.  The best thing of the film is that it wasn’t overloaded with patriotic sentiments. It is an impressive and heartbreaking romance in times of war. The direction is great and uses elipses along the story , inclusive in the capital scene when Veronika is raped by Mark.  T. Samojlova has an extremely beautiful face and she gives an unforgettable performance here.