Gerald D'Cunha

Pic.: Uttam Ghosh I love movies with good stories… with tight editing, great music and cinematography… I love them even more when there is great drama, emotional hold and spectacular performances. Sanjay Leela Bansali’s movies have most of these elements… He creates extra-ordinary drama and grandeur out of very ordinary stories… I loved ‘Black’ so much that I watched it three times! Not because I have been a huge fan of Amitabh Bachchan, but, I found the movie emotionally very gripping, dramatized extremely well, performances top-class… and, above all, the music - just spell-binding. But, I wasn’t moved to watch his other movies the way I was by ‘Black’. Yet, ‘Bhajirao-Mastani’ appealed to me a lot. I loved the story-telling… the drama, the grandeur, the costume, the editing, the music and the cinematography… the performances… and, above all, the passion of the movie-maker, Bansali… It was oozing out in every frame! So, I watched the movie twice… Once, all alone, ...

Pic.: Natrajan Subramani T here is this dialogue in the Hindi movie, ‘Wazir’. It comes from the wheelchair-bound Punditji (Amitabh Bachchan). He tells his new friend, Danish (Farhan Akthar): “Tomorrow if God asks me, ‘I gave you a long life… what have you achieved?’, I will tell Him, that I have made my friend laugh.” “Big deal,” you might react… But, when life is tough, it ‘is’ tough to laugh… In the movie, for Danish, the laughter is tough… and, his friend, Punditji, knows how valuable it is… that, he dramatizes the importance of it, saying, that, if God were to ask him what he had achieved with his long life, he would answer: “I have made my friend laugh.” Well, that’s a movie, the reel-life. In real life, if God were to ask you and me the same question, what would be our answers? I am a huge fan of Amitabh and Fahan. I liked ‘Wazir’… but, essentially, I found it to be over-the-top (not in terms of performances)… unconvincing. But...