No Smoking
Have been offline, preoccupied with some stuff. More on that later. Meanwhile I just wanted to say how much I liked Anurag Kashyap’s new film. No Smoking has a cool plot, dark humour, great music, some nice Bombay moments, and an elegant performance by John Abraham… And it’s visually so good. Yes, there are a few moments that are over-clever, but so what. And mmm, I liked the Jesse Randhawa-Adnan Sami tribute to Bob Fosse.
I had problems with Black Friday despite liking a lot about the film. But No Smoking is very very confident, and very nice. As far as I’m concerned, the critics who have panned the film can go take a hike.*
*****
(Added later, now that I’ve found some time)
What I liked:
the open blue skies;
the hallucinatory imagery;
the distant, unhappy wife; the busty, all-over-him secretary;
the dusty dhurries, the dirt, the biometric screening;
the descent into deeper and deeper levels of the underground, like the deepest circles of hell;
the weird efficiency of the call-centre at the prayogshala;
the sameness of those faces - the taxi driver, the security guard, the man in the lift…
eating out at night - and outside the restaurant, meeting old friend Abbas Tyrewala, cross-eyed, wearing a hearing aid, and with two of his fingers missing. oh, and that weird drunk, too.
the memory of K’s first cigarette with Abbas.
Ae ajnabee…
the stylish music.
the murky haze of the sea-view from Worli. Avarsekar Heights?
the dreamlike strangeness of night-time Bombay… the rows and rows of car headlights, their reflections shimmering in the dark water.
—-
*As for the quarrel between Anurag Kashyap and Khalid Mohammed, part of it has been quite entertaining, I have to say, and it’sbeen good - or at least cleansing - to see someone speaking their mind in an industry that’s mostly built on dishonesty and vacuous smiles. But now the ad hominem attacks are getting rather tiresome and embarrassing, and it’s time for both of them to get a move on.
