This Way Up ^

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The Dawn of Night

Kathmandu musicians go back to their roots to explore sounds and songs deeply rooted in local culture.

The intimate brick-paved courtyard of Nepal Music Centre at Pinglasthan plays host to Night Band’s gig tonight. The gig is a fundraiser, named Sanai Garauna, in aid of Koseli School for slum and street children at Shantinagar, where Chandra Kala, the girl who played the demi-guardian of a blind man in Kathor, the band’s first music video, studies.

A crowd has gathered. 

Long-haired dudes, musicians, friends of musicians - around three hundred of them. Band member Jason Kunwar is a bit edgy tonight. He hurries through the questions I throw at him before finishing a couple of band shots and rushes to the auditorium for their first act of the night.

Inside, the air is nonchalant. The crowd surrounds the small raised platform on which the band is already seated, each holding the instrument they are about to play. Someone from the audience screams for Kushal, another band member. Some are waiting for the act to start while others are sending the occasional text message.

The structure of the music they play is reminiscent of the Canadian musical ensemble Broken Social Scene but only Nepali; guitar riffs are heightened by drums and djembe and Sumnima and other band member’s hum in place of vocals. When the actual vocals come, it’s muted. This adds to the melody along with the occasional flute solos to the otherwise instrumental tracks.

With each of their tracks, the applause increases. But the band is not making history tonight. Instead, the gig is a testimony to the slow and steady rise of the uniquely Nepali sound that is Night.

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If anyone had attended Night band’s gig years ago, they would’ve witnessed a completely different scene. With a different lineup, the band then adhered to the heavier side of music and played progressive metal. Night played a couple of gigs back in 2005 and the following years and was most notable as the remnants of the death metal band Maya.

Now, with a completely different lineup; with Sumnina Nepali on the vocals, Jiwan Lama on percussion and guitar, Kushal Karki on vocals and guitar, Jason Kunwar on flute, sarangi, guitar and vocals, Prem Gurung on the bass, Birat Basnyat on drums and percussions, and Niraj Shakya on keyboard and percussion, the band is different and their music even more so.

The transition to the sound that is Night now, a blend of ethnic and nearly extinct Nepali instruments backed by guitar and drums and poignant lyrics that the band calls ‘independent new-school folk’, was a direction that none of the members treaded consciously.

“It was not forced at all,” Jason explains. “I was doing an audit job back then and the sole purpose for that was to buy instruments. I travelled all over for the job. It was then that I got to hear folk music from different parts of Nepal.”

Jason shares one such experience with me of his travel to Eastern Nepal. He witnessed a ritual of the Meche community who were performing some sort of celebratory ritual. The beat of the chyabrung dhol and the tune of the song ‘mirrored the thought process’ of him at that particular moment. “Maybe I was leaning more towards folk music from those time but the transition came about naturally,” he adds. Jason is now pursuing his Masters in Ethnomusicology.

Now, the band comes together in a small practice room in Kamaladi 3-4 times every week. The room has a host of instruments lying around from singing bowls to dhime. This is the room where all the ideas come together. They improvise, ditch some ideas or add more to some. Everything is organic.

I ask Kushal if the band reflects the coming-of-age of the members.

“There is definitely a level of maturity in our music now, from the lyrics to the melodies. But more so than that, it’s the ensemble of all the people and everything they bring together in this practice room that defines the band and its music,” says Kushal. Niraj adds, “We just wanted to explore our choices. And it’s easier to reflect on our own roots.”

Now the band has been performing regularly at venues around town. And with Ani Ukali Sangai Orali, their first album ready for release, the band is coming together in the right direction.

Photo: ECS Media

Kathor, the band’s first music video was released a few months back. The song, adapted from a scene from the play Khariko Ghero, the Gurukul adaptation of The Caucasian Chalk Circle for which the band also composed the music, tells a story of ‘love that rises beyond situations and circumstances’ in Bibhusan Basnet’s own words. 

Former band member Bibhusan, who directed the video, tells how the video has turned out, with everyone’s input. Chandra Kala, the slum kid in the video was auditioned from a host of students from Koseli School. “She was a revelation,” says Bibhusan, “she would tell us incidents from her own life during the shoot and would give us suggestions, which I think has shaped the video in the way it is.”

Another song of the band that has been released is Basai Bagayo; a delicately layered song which starts with the sound of a row boat against the water. A host of instruments layer the track which eventually heightens to the lament of a family on exodus and ends with the sound of the row boat against the water. 

The song is a sincere tale of those displaced by the Koshi river floods that destroys the homes of thousands of people every year. Lines like ‘barud kini lyamna hajur’ (let us please buy explosives), apparently suggesting to blow up the dam that reserves the downward flow of water from Nepal causing the flood every monsoon and the use of the word barah, a Nepali expression for pity, makes this situational song all the more contextual and hence, Nepali.

This is Night. It’s the exploration of situations and themes that makes us Nepali. The problems and jubilance that shape us expressed musically through instruments that are available exclusively to us.

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“The strength of the band is their humility. They are restructuring the Nepali music scene and people are only eventually realizing it,” says musician Bartika Rai who has collaborated with the band on several occasions. “They are all full time musicians who are aware of the stigma attached with the music scene in Nepal but passion drives them. Night is one band that seems strong enough to accept originality in the most original sense. I think it is because of bands like Night and Diwas Gurung that it is acceptable for Nepali music to be cool,” says Bartika.

Pavit Maharjan from the prolific folk-ensemble Kutumba says, “Night is doing a commendable job. But I think they are limiting themselves to their own circle. I would suggest this bunch of talented musicians to leave behind the remnants of their underground days and make their music available to a wider range of listeners.”

The current core of Night Band and their music is the culmination of a series of changes and exploration. If anyone has attended their gigs or even heard their recordings, one will definitely have an inkling that the band has found their roots, in the deeply rooted culture of the country. What musical direction the band takes in the coming days will only be apparent in the future. But the band is open to changes. 

“It will be a bit irresponsible now to say that the core of our music will differ after, let’s say, three years,” says Jason, “but we are flexible because change is inevitable.” ■

An edited version of this article was first published in ECS Living. 

To learn more about the band and its music visit http://wearenight.com.

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Flirting with Truth

In what is a deeply personal project for Actor/Producer Namrata Shrestha, the horror in Soul Sister lies not in the spooks but in the deep personal fear of abandonment.

I wonder who coined the phrase ‘the suspension of disbelief’. For something that is used only generally, the phrase is pretty demanding. For one, it asks you to overlook all the implausibilities within a given narrative structure given that ‘the work can infuse true human insights into the story’. 

If you take time to consider the phrase, its implication is pretty grave. We are an entire generation taught to question everything. We add structure, minus implausibility and multiply everything with heaps of logic. Something that can’t happen in real life has no way of manifesting itself on to a piece of work, we think. If ‘suspension of disbelief’ was not a literary device, our books and movies would have been limited by only narrow imagination.

In what is a deeply personal project for Actor/Producer Namrata Shrestha, Soul Sister forays into the horror category that similarly demands you to leave your reasonings, not your brain. 

Namrata plays Maya, a doe-eyed orphan returning to her family home to settle in where the horror is not in the spooks but in the deep personal fear of abandonment. Maya is haunted by a recurring dream which from fleeting instances of horror eventually turn into a nightmare. Later, as Maya narrates her story, in what really seems like pages from Shrestha’s own personal diary, we get an insight into the emotionally-unavailable Maya, deeply disassociating herself with everything.

In all sense, Soul Sister is a movie made for Namrata Shrestha. The camera loves her. We see Shrestha watching pensively from a car window, a thick canopy of forest shadowing her struggle. We follow her through cafes and bookstores, the idle air deceptively masking the urgency. We see her go through the banalities of living, seemingly recovered from the loss of her family. And when she meets Vastav (Deepak Sharma), a married man, he becomes her only outlet and connection to the real world.

But in Soul Sister, reality is stranger than fiction. In a cafe aptly named ‘Cafe Fiction’, Vastav announces to Maya that “this is the real world” and that is “just a dream”. This sense of spatial disparagement is also seen throughout the movie. Here, the house, that is central to so many haunted house movies, is not even spared a passing shot, enough to be properly established in the mind of the viewers. As we go through the movie, it appears that we are watching some kind of meta-thriller unfolding in no space in particular. “Vastav ra kalpana bich ko bhram,” as Maya puts it in one of her monologues.

If Shrestha is the brainchild behind the movie, Director Prashant Rasaily’s craft makes the movie his own. Rasaily is someone who has evolved over the years as an able storyteller and his control over the craft is apparent in the way he treats the vague plot of movie into the full feature that we see. Venturing into a completely different genre is not something most directors do in the prime of their career.

If Kathaa, Rasaily’s second feature, glorified a simple tale of love lost and found, in Soul Sister he uses the device of fear, however unsubstantiated it may seem at first, to bring us a step closer to the truth. On one hand, Soul Sister is a thriller, slowly uncovering the reasons behind Maya’s fear and on the other hand, it is the study of all the dark emotions fear brings with it. But with the subtlety with which Rasaily treats both of these possibilities makes neither work and sadly, the movie never comes together as a whole.

Rasaily treats most scene with utmost subtlety. Here, a marital disagreement in not heightened by a sudden bout of background score but rather announced by the thundering of a storm heard somewhere over the distant skies. Even when most conversations appear, the dialogues are usually faintly spoken, only telling of its irrelevance because Rasaily wants you to only give your attention to Maya. The horror elements that he incorporates into the movie, which should’ve shaped it into an able thriller, is only hinted at.

As for the other possibility that the movie could have excelled in; decoding more of its central theme of ‘fear’, it had me lost somewhere during the last reels of the first hour (and the predictable ending did not help). Soul Sister is an earnest attempt to debunk the archetype of the horror genre, zoning into more personal terrain of fear which deserves a view once. ■

An edited version of this article was first published in Friday Weekly.

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Mountain High

The top signifier that you are in the Everest region is not the prayer flags strewn at every possible nook, or the cryptic looking mane stones with Buddhist chants sculpted on their face. It is, instead, upon hearing and asking the question, ‘How high are we?’ - with recurring frequency and bated breath - that you know that the mountains have surely crept in you.

As the noise of the twin otters taking off and landing at the Lukla airport levels down, an all-pervading silence envelops the region, the kind which slowly starts seeping into you.

Bells hung around the necks of yaks clang as prayer flags strewn in impossible corners flutter freely in the mountain breeze undistracted by the clamour of faroff Kathmandu. The cobbled streets of Lukla (2860m) are a clatter of footfalls with trekkers from all over the world converging to move further towards Mt. Everest.

Once separated from the rest of the world due to its remoteness, Khumbu Valley was not called ‘the hidden valley’ for no reason. The fertile basins made by the Dudh Koshi river that cuts in and out of the valley, and the meadows in the upper part of the region, rests as a buffer zone to the mountains that lie beyond. 

Mythologically known as Beyul, or the ‘blessed valley’, this area, secluded from most outside interventions, was the perfect refuge to those fleeing war, famine, and other calamities. Early inhabitants of the region, which we now know as the Sherpas, share common heritage with the Tibetans, and their culture remains unfazed even after the region was opened for visitors during the 1960s.

Several decades later, the region has become one of the most organised trekking routes in the country, and the flagship trek to the Himalayas.

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Along most of the trek, you will pass through cryptic looking mane stones with Buddhist chants written all over it. If there is a motif that is emblematic of the entire region, it is probably the colourful prayer flags, which have their roots in Buddhism, a religion followed by most inhabitants of the region. They are strewn all over small stupas along the route and major monasteries like the Tengboche monastery (3,867m) as a token of reverence. At the base camp (5,380m) and Kalapatthar (5,545m), the final legs of the journey, they signify the triumph of the trekkers and the end of an arduous journey. At Thukla (4,940m), in the mountaineers’ cemetery, they stand as a solemn reminder of the dangers of the mountains.

The massifs towards the north are, perhaps, the only equaliser to the striking diversity of landscape of the region. The trek, which starts from the fertile basin of the Dudhkoshi, makes way to verdant forests and grassy flatlands of Tengboche and will take you to desolate places like Dingboche (4,530m) and Lobuche (4,940m), where vegetation is rare. River Dushkoshi cuts in and out of the valley forming the fertile lowlands of Phakding (2610m) and Monjo (2835m). These lowlands act as a buffer to the grassy flatlands of Pheriche (4,371m) and Dingboche (4,410m), beyond Namche and Tengboche, where yaks graze freely.

For the native Sherpas of the valley, for whom the money-making route to Everest cuts right through their villages, a sense of enterprise precedes everything. While the natives may enjoy entitlement in the region’s bustling tourist trade, for many south to the region, Khumbu is their own promised land.

Those who can discern the differences, superficial and otherwise, between the people of Nepal’s many ethnic communities will readily see that the valley is made up of many ethnicities other than the Sherpas. The largest in number, perhaps, are the Rais from low-lying districts who hike up to the highlands every peak season to work in the myriad teahouses and lodges scattered through the trekking route. Some have even shifted to villages like Pangboche and Somare, which lie midway through the route to base camp.

These are the same villages which are a hub of activities during peak seasons. It takes one to closely look beyond this interim air of fullness, however, to see that these villages have lost a sizable part of their population. Most part of the year, the cheery languidness is replaced by desolation, and an overbearing banality takes over these lives.

Those remaining, who have not acted on the reverie of greater promised lands and have not shifted to Kathmandu and the US, find meaning to their lives in devotion. For them, an allegiance to the religion, a school of Tibetan Buddhism, takes the same high place as enterprise does for many.

The most striking display of this enterprise is perhaps Namche Bazaar (3440m), along the middle of the route, where shops, bars and lodges with modern amenities have converged to give solace for weary trekkers and a benchmark for locals to aspire to.

The touristy vibes of Namche Bazaar, also coined the capital of the Sherpas perhaps by enthusiastic travel writers, is a reminder of the far-reaching effects tourism has had in the Khumbu region. Once a sleepy trading outpost, Namche now stocks everything from professional mountaineering equipment to Jagermiester.

Past Namche, beyond the frozen rivulets of Pheriche valley, the solemness of the mountaineers’ cemetery at Thukla, and the eerie desolation of countless outposts like Dingboche, Thukla and Goraksep (5614m), however, is the dominion of the mountains.

Ever reaching for the heavens, these massifs finally put to perspective the seemingly nonchalant enquiry trekkers ask everyone ever since entering the region: How high are we, really? ■

An edited version of this article was first published in ECS Nepal

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‘Kalo Pothi’ movie review: A triumph of Nepali cinema

After watching Min Bahadur Bham’s much acclaimed Kalo Pothi, where two friends growing up in Mugu during the decade-long civil war set out on a journey to bring back a missing hen, I couldn’t help but reflect on how far Nepali cinema has come in the recent years.

After all, a little context is needed to appreciate Kalo Pothi, which combines an erudite understanding of the craft of cinema, with the deftness of a well-woven narrative and then elevates it with a degree of personal involvement that evoked with me, the works of Andrei Tarkovsky, no less.

Our films have been continually recognised by various film festivals around the world for quite sometime now. Most recently, the Bhaskar Dhungana-directed Suntali had successfully combined the conceit of a telenovela with a tale of a village girl that was distinctly Nepali. True to form, Suntali, had wholeheartedly embraced the camp that is distinctive to the telenovela format. But audience couldn't warm up to this use as most failed to recognise the clever juxtaposition of these forms.

A few years ago movies like Suntali was possible in Nepali cinema, movies which drew attention of the guardians of world cinema with its understanding of the craft and the vision to elevate it beyond the trappings of such, Deepak Rauniyar’s Highway had given a whole new generation of Nepali filmgoers what a ‘world cinema’ made in Nepal would look like.

Highway had raised eyebrows with its sordid depiction of the modern Nepali society and had combined multiple narratives to its proceedings which had, until then, been the domain of directors like Alejandro González Iñárritu and Mani Ratnam closer home. Most audience shrugged off the movie, their reason being that the movie was ‘too foreign’. Even more could not stand the fact that director Rauniyar had chosen to not give his myriad characters a closure.

Even after the screening of the much-anticipated Kalo Pothi at a local multiplex, I overheard similar concerns-reasons why audience had not completely warmed up to movies like Suntali and Highway - from the most vocal member of the audience.

But having spent the preceding hours with an excitement that I had not felt for Nepali movies in the recent years, I personally feel such concerns will be short-lived in the case of Kalo Pothi. Or better, it will be only limited within a very small number of the audience.

For one, director Bham’s leads are charmingly relatable. Haven’t we all had that one inseparable friend while growing up who has seen us in the nude and couldn’t care less. Prakash (Khadka Raj Nepali) and Kiran (Sukra Raj Rokaya), two friends although belonging to a different caste (it should matter because we are in Mugu), bring to the simple tale a reminiscence of simpler times we had all lived.

And even though, the film’s provenance maybe Mugu, where the languid air often belies the hardship of the region’s inhabitants and the resulting tenacity, its spiritual home lies in some of the most-revered piece of world cinema.

The movie evokes the works of Abbas Kiarostami in its apparent impassiveness of the camera work. At key moments, cinematographer Aziz Zhambakiyev’s frame only moves when it is absolutely required. These frames are, instead, keys to delve deeper into the inner life of the characters.

And in another sequence, a gleeful lot of kids watching a screening of a Rajesh Hamal movie evokes the love for the medium director Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso had so charmingly brought across.

But in what is the most stunning sequences I have ever seen filmed for a Nepali movie, director Bham elevates a simple tale to a different plane. In impeccably choreographed segues, we are shown the inner life of Prakash. Composer Jason Kunwar’s haunting score acts as the hymn for meditation in these sequences which is the key to the lives of these disparate characters, especially Prakash, living unaware of the immensity of life beyond the rolling cliffs.

In its beauty and precise staging, these sequences reminded me of the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, especially his Domenico’s speech sequence from the movie Nostalghia.

What Bham has apparently done and succeeded in with Kalo Pothi is to not merely affect the appearance of a new form but has, along the way, created a distinct style that will only be better in the days to come.

Kalo Pothi is a solid addition to world cinema, a triumph for Nepali cinema. ■

An edited version of this article first appeared in Online Khabar.

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‘White Sun’ movie review: A culturally significant piece of cinema

A war of ideologies has brought little positive change to the lives of the denizens in director Deepak Rauniyar’s White Sun, where two brothers can’t seem to set aside their political differences, even in the midst of a grave familial tragedy.

When ideologies are institutionalised, hopes and fears also suffer the same fate. Voices, and aspirations no longer remain individual, and eventually get drowned in the collective act of a revolution. Caught between decrees and declarations, and the left and the right, however, lies countless stories which often lay forgotten.

White Sun, which opened in theatres last week after an extensive tour around the world (Venice Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival), brings to fore several such stories, set in motion by the political upheavals during the last two decades.

There is a child made orphan by the conflict and another who has been rendered stateless while the entire youth population remains absent from villages. Those who remain in the decidedly dreary hinterland of White Sun (the gloomy and stark cinematography is by Mark Ellam), live in the hope of concrete change. But amidst partisanship, and remnants of the revolution, the only thing that remains is a palpable sense of hostility.

This hostility, which is initially extended towards Chandra (Dayahang Rai), a former guerrilla fighter, upon his arrival to his native village after the death of his royalist father, soon snowballs with the corpse’s journey downhill to the cremation site. Like the bus to Kathmandu in director Rauniyar’s debut feature Highway, the final journey is caught in its own ‘bandh’.

There are no one obstructing the tedious path downhill though. Unlike organised protests and staged lockdowns, the journey is stalled due to class-bred prejudices and ideological differences, which is not much different from the political deadlock faced by the country in transition, during the fragile peace process.

And unlike Highway, with its multiple narratives, White Sun ties together myriad repercussions of the war elegantly with its narrative, put in thrust by the conceit of the death.

It’s aesthetic flourishes are generous, and the performances are great throughout. The second time around, director Rauniyar has beautifully realised a culturally significant piece of cinema with White Sun, which situates itself neatly in the larger context.

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‘Kabali’ movie review: The Indian Dream

It is a testament to the far-reaching affects of Indian cultural imperialism when a scrawny-armed Rajinikanth doing impossible pull-ups is met with cheers and whistle at a theatre here in downtown Kathmandu.

Although the excitement to see the actor on screen elsewhere may nowhere be the same as in India (where he draws an insurmountable fervour even at the retirement-ready age of 65), seeing millennials only versed with the actor’s reputation exclaiming with the frail actor’s moves and swagger may be of concern to some.

Even the movie itself is a testament to India’s soaring aspiration. The burgeoning country’s rags-to-riches story is well carried over to Kabali, which tells the story of a young labourer (Rajinikanth in the titular role) imprisoned on false charges in Malaysia, slowly taking over the underworld of the country.

In the movie, Kabali represents the thousands of Indian Tamils who once migrated to Malaysia to work in its plantations during the British colonial era. A context of this history adds a richness to the narrative which otherwise mostly eludes the brassiness of its theme with frenetic action and chase sequences in multiple cities.

This context, however, is purely a conceit and is not inseparable to the movie making Kabali, a derivative gangster movie which borrows the infallible Rajinikanth’s stardom to its use.

And while not as positively absurd as Rajinikanth’s older releases as to warrant memes and jokes, Kabali still finds moments of ludicrousness. Most will mainly hang around for those.

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‘Teen Ghumti’ movie review: A sincere adaptation of Koirala’s novel

I would not be saying anything new when I say literature and cinema are two different disciplines, and that each demands a completely different understanding of the respective form.

Based on BP Koirala’s novel of the same name, director Bikash Dhakal’s Teen Ghumti, which opened in theaters last week, is bound to draw many comparisons with that of the litterateur politician.

Cinema has always been considered a ‘lesser’ medium compared to literature. Perhaps, it is because books and essays are mainly written for a discerning audience. They first guide the imagination of the reader with the beauty and economy of prose and then open them self up to interpretation–unlike films.

A film is mainly visual, and it has a more definite form which makes it more accessible.

As is the case with Teen Ghumti, and many other films, movies however constantly feed (many times, assault) visual information to the audience, without ever guiding their mindfulness.

What we are told in a certain scene of a film through dialogues and acting may not always register with the viewers, not because they are not fully realised, but because it is characteristic of the medium. More often than not, our minds register that films are an artifact after all.

Director Dhakal’s Teen Ghumti is mainly limited by concerns like these. For Koirala’s distinguished prose, the film adaptation comes off as generic, mainly because of its lack of understanding of the cinematic language.

Director Dhakal relies on a certain degree of formalism, with his heavy-handed use of generic over-the-shoulder, and clumsy tracking shots, without exploring possibilities of adding richness to the narrative.

In the movie, the years preceding Indramaya’s (Garima Pant) eventual realisation of her destiny, is as tumultuous as the life she has lived. In a city, where the clutches of an overbearing Panchyat system is turning some of its denizens rebellious, a Newar woman’s decision to get hitched with a Brahmin man outside of her household would not be the only radical decision she would be forced to take.

To the film’s credit, even with the unyielding staging of the scenes and unimaginative camera works, Teen Ghumti is a far superior movie when compared to other recent releases, and not only because of the novel it is based on.

The movie is also superbly-casted and boasts of a screenplay that is sincere to the novel.

All these are realised with adequate art direction, although clumsy animation in many shots could put off some viewers.

It may be hard for films to achieve the same level of personal involvement from audience as books tend to, but it is not completely impossible.

In Teem Ghumti however, the camera never fully explores Indramaya as the source material allows. Many opportunities are missed.

Even more scenes are cut short, and some are clumsily expanded through mawkish song sequences with unsettling lyrics that completely deviates from the richness of the movie’s dialogues.

Having said that, Teen Ghumti succeeds in telling the story of Koirala’s complex character. But whether it justifies the novel as a whole is a different question (an unfair one), and one that should only matter to those who have read the book.

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'Chapali Height 2' movie review: A staggering display of excess

Like most modern Nepali films, director Dipendra K Khanal’s Chapali Height 2 finds fodder in contemporary culture. This is different from the movies from the early days of Nepali cinema when conflict arose from the disparity in social classes in our villages.

The popular tropes of the ruthless zamindar and the doting mother shaped the contemptuous hero, who had deep roots in the hierarchy of cast and the distribution of class. Definitely, all these variables were staged, and distorted, but they were essentially a reflection of the times, in varying intensity.

Interestingly, Chapali Height 2, which tells the story of a privileged group of Kathmandu youth, brings to fore disparities (more on that later) that are equally contemporary, but distressing nonetheless.

While a savvy cast, conscious voyeurism and good pre-release hype might appeal to audience initially, trite pop psychology, staggering exhibtionism and (an unintentional?) subversive profiling ‎eventually makes the movie an insensitive display of excesses with minimum scope for cinematic merit.

In the movie, Abhiman Jung Shahi (Ayushman Deshraj Joshi, a remarkable range for a debutante), plays an entitled charmer, who is willing to reform his promiscuous lifestyle for Akriti (Mariska Pokharel), a doe-eyed doctor he is pursuing, only to have his incriminating past upset the lives of everyone involved.

As far as disparities go, the most striking is the frivolities that define these youth, the sort that only comes with entitlement. Granted that these privileges are distorted for the movie’s advantage, it would have been acceptable to some degree only if the story had a bigger scope and understanding of the youth culture. Then it would have served as an apt commentary of the modern times.

Instead, the only perspective, with which we see the lives of these characters, is through a peeping hole of voyeuristic obsession.

In another example of Nepali filmmakers getting away with appalling insensitivity, this neglect of a broader awareness interestingly turns into a tacit exercise in microaggressions towards the British Gurkha community.

The subtlety of the casual racism to follow is established at the very beginning when Abhiman assures his position in the dynamic between his ‘best’ friend Bullet (Rear Rai as the half-witted caricature of Mongoloids in recent Nepali cinema; a new trope?) as superior, and that he has taught him the ‘class’ which his heritage didn’t ‘predispose’ him of.

Of course, this is coming from the same person, who refers to girls as 'underwear' and exclaims "I want that one!" at the sight of a prospective partner. Granted that comedy does not exist without someone taking its brunt, these banters soon turn into microaggressions towards an entire community in the severity of the comment and its repetition.

On the underlying racism in DW Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, film theorist Tom Gunning once wrote that although the movie may not be entirely accurate, it does, however, “painfully, and even unintentionally indicate the sorts of hysterical anxieties and aggressive fantasies that underlay American racism.”

Is Chapali Height 2 venial to the lack of sensitivity towards an entire community? Although urgent, the question may not find traction in the face of the movie’s many other shortcomings.

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‘Suntali lai Bhagai Lagyo Jhilkeley’ movie review: Unwilling to let go of past

Director Rishi Raj Acharya’s Suntali lai Bhagai Lagyo Jhilkeley aspires to be many things but ends up being a shrewd display of the polarisation present in Nepali cinema.

To be fair, the movie, set in a generic milieu is about the general concerns of a familiar group of villagers, and does try to infuse a sense of distinction.

Set in Panchayat-era Nepal, the movie delves right into the lives of the villagers somewhere in western Nepal. The use of Khas language tries to establish the setting, even though lives populating it could have come from any village anywhere in hilly Nepal.

Before a date becomes a mere stamp on a letterhead and a rote melodrama takes over every semblance of ‎distinction set earlier through the heavy-handed use of elements like language and artifacts (it uses closeup shots of 25 paisa coins more than it should), the movie keeps viewers engaged in the lives of the villagers, even as they are a mere re-imagining of tropes of popular Nepali cinema.

Only if engaging the viewers were a marker of how good a movie actually is.

If nothing else, Suntali lai Bhagai Lagyo Jhilkeley is a testament to the Nepali movie industry’s unwillingness to let go of its past.

It is one thing that the makers are incapable of doing anything more. We all have room to grow. But herein lies a genuine concern if for any reason, producing this dismissible fare is a matter of only abusing the liberal nature of filmmaking.

It may be a hard reminder of the latter fact that credit roll of Suntali lai Bhagai Lagyo Jhilkeley boldly announces two future productions–as if movies were a commodity.

A more pressing concern that arises from movies like Suntali lai Bhagai Lagyo Jhilkeley is how divisive the Nepali film fraternity has become over the years.

How else can Bhaskar Dhungana’s Suntali (which in its own peculiar way tells more about this very nature of our film fraternity than this review will ever do) exist alongside movies like Suntali lai Bhagai Lagyo Jhilkeley which build on the exact derision (notice both the titles) Suntali cleverly builds upon.

But then, film-making is a medium for all, and unlike literature, it is also accessible to all. A fledgling fraternity like ours can only wait and watch.

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‘Dishoom’ movie review: Guns, explosions and Pakistan

If there is one scene in Dishoom that represents the entire movie, it has got to be the one in which John Abraham, Varun Dhawan and Nargis Fakhri are brought together by an ongoing investigation.

After a top cricketer is kidnapped somewhere in the Middle East, India’s Ministry of External Affairs sends a steely officer from the Secret Task Force (Abraham) to hunt him down.

The six-foot sulker has just broken a stereo blasting Honey Singh with bare hands just because he means business, while a young woman (Fakhri) dripping wet from a recent dip in her pool is sending all sorts of chills to a rookie cop (Dhawan).

She stands like a playful nymphet that she is while the officer shoots questions at her. But only his lips move. His arms (and also his face) seems to have been locked perpetually to his hulking torso which seems to have a life of its own, making it impossible to voluntarily control his muscles. All the while, the rookie cop has done every bit of comic relief ‘actorly’ possible.

If you find this unyielding dynamic amusing, then Dishoom will probably work for you. And yeah, there are also guns, explosions, several cameos and a sequence with landmines which will shine new light on the phrase ‘break your balls.’

If cinema is representative of the times we live in, ten years from now, supporters of the Modi government will probably look back at Dishoom and see a Bollywood film which finally asserted India’s position among the top dogs. Those critical of the government will probably regard the movie as an exercise in machination of the same.

As for us now here in 2016, it is hard to say whether all the high-handed nationalism in Dishoom, which boasts an External Affairs Minister modeled after Sushma Swaraj, is purely coincidental or premeditated so that the movie can be granted a tax-free status, at the least.

It is one thing that the protagonists are a metaphor for religious tolerance (one is a Hindu and the other is Muslim, even their collective initial reads J&K) but how acceptable is it when an Indian officer points a gun at a bona fide police officer and then declares that “the rules does not apply” to him.

Everything else in the movie is also probably analogous to the way in which India is working to bring down the enemy, which is of course Pakistan.

What is the role of a woman in this trite mechanism? You may say.

This should not really be a question after you’ve seen a frame which borrows Jacqueline Fernandez’s legs as a centrepiece.

But at least in Dishoom, we have the hard working MEA to shut up the feminists.

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REDRUM

The Shining, Stanley Kubrick, 1980

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'Gajalu' movie review: A fair addition to Hemraj BC's universe

If one were to graph the theatrics in director Hemraj BC’s films, one would get what would resemble a straight line, with small peaks along the way, and one massive peak and valley towards the end. The line would then extend further and neatly form a bow.

BC has never been comfortable with drama and has mostly played out conflicts in his films with a degree of unease-- killing off his protagonists in a bid to resolve the story. His debut Hostel glided past its runtime with a sort of boisterous merriment in a bid to capture a youthful exuberance that hardly explored its scope for drama.

His second feature Jerry played out in a similar way--an impish glee overruled the movie until at the end when everything came to a close with the hero's death. His third film (and the most dramatic one till date) Sambodhan, was a shift from his earlier films. But even with a plot dealing with serial murders and their investigation, the theatrics was not only unyielding, it was unfitting for its hero who was instigated to act for a greater cause.

With Gajalu, BC continues the tradition of his first two films of portraying  the camaraderie between a group of young friends.

In the movie, Aarav (Anmol KC reprising BC's earlier heroes, who are unable to find a footing, for the third time) is an aspiring filmmaker who meets Sujata (Shristi Shrestha), a former Kumari while shooting for a documentary. Sujata, while unable break into normalcy, holds aspirations that go against her family's tradition. But when Aarav invites Sujata into his life, complete with a bunch of 20-something friends (one of whom is introduced in scene where he goes down on a girl), tradition is meant to be broken.

While a crisp editing job and a more refined screenplay might have made the movie better, Gajalu holds wells to chart the growth of its heroine from a guarded, inhibited self to a fully-realised woman living under her own terms.

Debutante Shrestha is commendable in her role. When we hear her speak for the first time, her trembling voice carries the baggage of someone who has had no say in life.

She bites her nail, weighs down her words--all the while holding on to the composure passed on to her as legacy.

In one scene, where Aarav’s sister Prakriti (a feisty Menuka Pradhan) is being proposed for marriage, Shrestha is somewhere in the background. But the scene is more about Sujata’s own aspirations (and she delivers it beautifully) than it is about Prakriti. These two women couldn’t have been more different from each another.

Gajalu works in parts like these. And although let down by a confounding screenplay replete with soapy hearts hidden underneath revelrous air, the films in director BC’s oeuvre are a continuation of one another, of sorts, if you look at the collective growth of his heroes (a la the recurring character of Antoine Doinel in Francois Truffaut’s films).

These are semi-autobiographical undertones or are, perhaps, just a coincidence.

Forget for a moment that the heroes in the films BC and KC have collaborated in (Hostel, Jerry & Gajalu) have three different lead characters, and that they are instead the same member of the Hemraj BC universe where kids revel in the glory of youth and then realise that they have more room to grow or sometimes, not.

If one charts the growth of BC's heroes as a continuation of one another, you will find the growth to be more pronounced and hence, effective. Gajalu's Aarav may very well be a matured Aditya Bikram Rana from Hostel. Similarly, Aditya could very well be playing himself in Jerry but as a young adult who's left behind the angst he had during his teens in Hostel.

In Gajalu, Aarav's life is touched by Sujata as much as hers is by Aarav--learning about loss and love as they both grow.

Only a fourth collaboration will tell where this will lead to.

This article first appeared in OnlineKhabar English.

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May this road be never-ending.

Highway, Imtiaz Ali, 2014

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A Journey

There are plenty of arresting visuals in director Rick McFarland's beautifully shot and edited film Highway to Dhampus but one shot that particularly stands out is also one of the more generic shots of the movie.

After a tragedy has struck the lives of its tenants, the skies above a gleaming peak have turned salmon pink in anticipation of moonlight. Clouds form and then move waywardly, leaving a pattern that almost makes the wind visible as Ajit (Raj Ballav Koirala) narrates, “We are all brought in this world to change.” In all fairness, it's essentially a shot of one of the mountain peak of the Annapurna range. But what this shot and several others achieve in their evocation through their sheer beauty and timing is something only few films could have achieved and is the defining strength of Highway to Dhampus.

Ajit is piloting Elizabeth James (Rachel Hurd-Wood), a UK socialite who has left her entourage behind to come to Nepal after a PR disaster for an image-building exercise along with Colt (Gunner Wright), her photographer assigned to capture James’s charitable outing. Their destination maybe Ghandruk, where Laxmi (Suesha Rana), a spirited local runs an orphanage. But the journey takes them to a different plane altogether where these four strangers are grounded at, in their collective and inherent wish for transformation.  

The change creeps in slowly. James, who is in the most obvious need for transformation and who is also equally ignorant of this need is the first to surrender. As the dust and noise of Kathmandu settles down to make way for the quaint hinterlands, James’s cynicism subsides in what is the movie’s most obvious transformation. “It is not that hard to touch and change lives as in the big movies,” she says. But the movie’s more subtle yet striking shift comes to its peripheral characters long after James’s story-book like metamorphosis.

In all fairness, Highway to Dhampus made mostly by a foreign creative and technical crew has created a more grounded picture of Nepal than most Nepali films released recently could not achieve. Take for instance its handling of its cinematography that never exotifies the country’s immense beauty through a lens of romanticism. Its shots are utilitarian in its economy but ultimately poetic in their beauty and their precise distribution. They are further sensitised by the movie’s universal themes and composer Sam Cardon’s beautiful musical scores. I for one, was thankful that the score was not the usual token compositional piece from Nepal’s own Kutumba or Sur Sudha. The themes varies from love, forgiveness and humility; all required for a meaningful transformation. At one point, Highway to Dhampus even touches upon spirituality, but it does so without building towards epiphanies.

The movie’s handling of its Nepali characters is also commendable in their authenticity and nuances. While Laxmi dreams of experiencing the world beyond the books she has devoured, Ajit in all his grounded demeanour, is experiencing his own struggle. “We come from two different worlds,” he says when Colt asks him about his fondness towards Laxmi to which Colt replies, “Well, Pokhara is not exactly London.”

The self-assured pilot Ajit Thapa is perhaps the most demanding character in the movie to which Koirala delivers beautifully. Ajit’s struggle in the movie is very personal and he eventually subverts this crisis inward, his face telling of the quiet suffering he is going through. Rana as the grounded local welcoming everyone with open hearts is charming, her eyes never failing to shine bright with her unguardedness. But the most memorable character in the movie is that of Prabhujee, a perpetually curious child from Laxmi’s orphanage played by Sayush Gurung Bajracharya. The movie’s many delightful moments is at the helm of this kid. Sometimes it is not just the comedy that leaves you smiling.

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Show me a hero

Imagine a nightclub. Now imagine its Venetian woodwork sprinkled with Christmas lights and the dance floor filled with partygoers, its bar stocked with liquors and half-naked bartenders. It this were the 80’s, the party would have happened in a makeshift designated party area with extras prancing around with colourful prop liquors, very much telling of the artifact that it was. But this is 2015. Things have to be believable, even if it's just the artifice.

He sings something like,“dancing floor kay hero hum,” before beating up an overbearing ex of the most beautiful girl in the club. She says something like, “I have to go to Paris. I don’t want any extra baggage,” and then focuses all energy onto her lips for a pout before taking a selfie with her iPhone after which she concludes, “I just want to be free.”

It's all well and good in director Nikhil Advani’s Hero until the actual plot points come. Advani can be gritty when he needs to be and his reimagining of many situations of an old story is relevant for our times. He can even draw emotions without making anyone cry torrentially on screen. But even with ample believability working in favour of the movie, Hero feels out of place for the time and viewers it is made for. With its strange reimagining of the familiar conflicts driving the 80s, Hero feels like the tipping point of all the tropes of old Hindi cinemas combined, splashed with a coat of today's sensibilities.

For one, with the liberty which is given to today’s kids, the story of Hero would not have been possible at all. I have not seen the original Subhash Ghai directed Hero to compare with the remake that director Advani's Hero is based on. Bollywood like many other movie industries in the world, after all, runs on novelty and Nikhil Advani's Hero has plenty novelty factors going for it that hides the average fare perched comfortably underneath that all encompassing title.

The title, based on the supposed transformation of its protagonist from a goon never really happens. The glowering Sooraj (Sooraj Pancholi) is all muscles and  Radha (Athiya Shetty) is all but a contraption of lip gloss and selfies who speaks lines like, “Stay away from me, I’m gonna call my dad.” Its core emotional outbursts is strung together in impersonal song montages while at other times, they are painfully over-stretched. After the main conflict loses its tenacity, Advani introduces a completely new character as the main villain for the story to resolve like a neatly-tied shoelace. 

Bollywood has countless examples of the so called 'star kids' playing sugary characters in syrupy escapades as their debut, especially Alia Bhatt's unbearably smug act in her debut Student of the Year. And it is easy to dismiss Hero as the launch vehicle for Sooraj Pancholi and Athiya Shetty, two kids who were lucky enough to be under the scanner of a producer ready to play 'star maker'. But Bhatt went on to star in Imtiaz Ali's Highway and Varun Dhawan similarly went on to play the harrowing hero in Sriram Raghavan's Badlapur.

In Hero, Sooraj and Athiya's pair works in parts. The scope of their characters may be limited in the face of the movie's aging heart but they bring across a sense of unguardedness to the story in their youthfulness. It is a far cry from the stated 'rebels' in the movie's posters but this adds to the movie and elevates it from being a mere remake tailored to suit the launch of a star kid. Only future will tell what they will do with it.

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Spinning Around

At around the middle of director Pranab Joshi’s Resham Filili, Resham (Binaya Shrestha) is feeling peculiarly contemplative.

He is with Sunita (Menuka Pradhan) - his foul-mouthed, motorbike-riding girl of pursuit - somewhere in the outskirts of Kathmandu but he is in no mood for hounding her today. Instead, he looks over at the sprawling expanse of the brick city right under his nose. Resham is repentant all right (and you better believe him), leaving his mom and sister at his village home on the false pretext that he is in Qatar, earning big bucks. “Gaun bata ta sahar kasto najik dekincha,” he says, almost exclusively to himself, as if he cannot grasp the workings of the city in which his earnest ambitions never took flight.

There is an unmistakable human pulse underneath all the zany outbursts in this comedy of error that slowly tugs you in. Here, tenderness and jokes on flatulence go hand in hand and an elaborate costume gag tells you about a person’s idiosyncrasies, his aspiration and his nature all at once. Where else will you see a stack of mobile phone recharge cards evoking laughter and endearment all the while signifying the character’s desperation as well as aspiration.

Director Joshi’s visual telling of humour in the movie is particularly effective. Here, every outburst of emotion is accompanied by a piece of physical comedy, where an intense chase sequence is abruptly halted by the waft of steaming momos nearby. If Resham lies to his mom over the phone telling he in Qatar when he is actually in Kathmandu doing not so well for himself, the shopkeeper bursts into tears, instantly elevating the scene to a bittersweet plane where you laugh at Resham’s plight while also empathizing with him. And like Edgar Wright, the British director of The Shawn of the Dead fame, Joshi is not afraid to take his jokes to the next level.

Take this scene for instance. Hariya (Kameshwar Chaurasia) is talking to a bunch of guys over tea. In a fashion similar to the beginning of the movie when he reaches down his underwear to examine the origin of a foul smell, his scatological obsession fittingly turns the conversation to toilets. Someone says, “Toilet nabhako ghar ma pani kohi basthyo?” The scene then immediately cuts to a shot where Resham and Hariya are showering with urine a closed wall, painted with a bold ‘basthyo!’ slogan. The joke would’ve ended with the remark in most movies but Joshi is bold enough to elevate the joke with visuals. In these absurdities, the movie almost becomes surreal.

Amidst all the laughter is a story of enterprise, the kind of undertaking driven by desperation. Apart from Resham and his roommate Hariya, who do odd jobs like selling drawing books and porn CDs to travelers in a bus park, there are many other characters in the movie who take to themselves for making ends meet. While women in the movie are either helpless (Resham’s aging mother and his sister) or completely uninterested to support their family (Sunita and her mother), it is up to the men to stand up as the sole breadwinner of their family. Maybe this patriarchal heredity is the ‘khandani baaza’ that has been handed over to Resham by his father.

There is Dorje, the self-proclaimed tire king who fittingly sits on a throne made out of tires. He is the biggest dealer of used and new tires which can be supplied to anyone planning to stage a protest. There is a father, who has been working in the same pair of shoes for years in his repair garage to support his family. And then there is an aspiring director (perhaps reflecting Joshi’s own ambitions) who goes by the name Kharani and can pull any string to direct atleast one movie during his lifetime.

All these subplots and odd characters do their part in evoking laughter but it also makes the movie very much busy to keep up with after the first two acts; a fate similarly shared by Ram Babu Gurung’s Kabaddi. By the time the movie builds up to its main conflict, Joshi is way out of touch from his earlier narrative style leaving the viewers with an explanatory voice over from Resham to move the much forced resolution in place. He tries to use the same humour device in these latter part like in the scene where Resham and Hariya are in a fight. A plate flies over at an inviting poster of Sunny Leone during this tussle and the shot extends a few seconds more for it to be merely a passing shot. But this neither evokes laughter nor adds anything to the tussle.

By the time everything falls into place, in the manner you may or may not agree with, Resham Filili has one more delight for its viewers in the form of Kali Prasad Baskota’s heartfelt rendition of the classic Resham Firiri. A beautiful Panche baaza motif runs throughout this ballad which tells the plight of youths like Resham; caught between the responsibilities towards his family and his own ambitions but held by his own limitations or those forced by others. “Besooray dhunaima bajaudai manko, murali tiriri,” sings Baskota and the title of the movie becomes ever more relevant.

No matter what you do, life will take you for a spin and when that happens, there’s nothing you can do other than to laugh with it.

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Mumbai Blues

Nothing really happens in Mumbai, not before 10 at night. Nothing much goes on in the apartment of a brooding artist, except for the occasional one night stand which he claims doesn’t happen often. Not all that much occurs in the sea-facing bungalow of an explorer fascinated by her own land, either. Nothing really happens in a moody little hideout of a newly-wed housewife. Munna’s tiny shack, which leaks during the rains, is not much of a happening place either.

The lives of Mumbaikars in director Kiran Rao’s Dhobi Ghat in not expressed through the deafening roar of the city’s trains, or the immense energy that that the city throws at its denizens. Cities change, neighbourhoods change, houses change, the weather changes, but people don’t. Unless they want to.

In one of the most candid scenes of the movie, Shai asks Munna - a likable dhobi who aspires to become a hero - if he misses home. Munna shrugs his shoulders in response and then smiles backs gently, his unguarded demeanor telling of the earnest ambition of someone unaware of his own limitations. Shai is a NY-based banker who is in Mumbai for a sabbatical. She’s grounded yet ambitious, is always toting a camera, and loves taking candid pictures. “Its one of those things that makes me happy”, she says. Arun, on the other hand is a painter who finds his muse in a lost set of tapes that fatefully connects him to Yasmin, a housewife who videotapes her surroundings to send back to her brother; a creative act that contrasts with the banality of her married life.

Rao’s Mumbai is a refreshingly toned down city‎. The blacks and yellows of the rickshaws are there, and so is the incessant monsoon. But only here can a fascinated outsider ride a cab to a conveniently less crowded Marine Lines and write poetry. Only here can a dhobi and an NRI meet by chance, take time off from their distinct lives, walk languidly in the crowded street sampling street food as they go, and even casually deal with the moody kabaab waalas without being irked.

It’s this part-melancholic part-celebratory quality of Rao’s Mumbai that exudes such raw romanticism where even Godard’s Breathless wouldn’t seem out of place. But all the composure with which Rao has filmed her muse (“Mumbai: my muse, my whore, my beloved,” declares Arun in the film) makes us see the seemingly mundane lives of her characters with the same composure, deceptively masking their urgency.

So, what is Dhobi Ghat about? Is it about urban loneliness? Is it about class differences? We’re never told. Rao doesn’t even bring her characters to conclusion, let alone answer these questions. Dhobi Ghat is one of those rare slice-of-life movies which is not so much watched as it is felt and lived.