The Hindu : New Delhi News : A lull at the theatres before the Diwali storm.... Cinema

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Sunday, Nov 04, 2007
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New Delhi

A lull at the theatres before the Diwali storm.... Cinema

ZIYA US SALAM

LULL MOMENTS: With the big guns keeping away due to pre-Diwali fever, unsung films like “Stardust” and “Mercury Man” get their moment on the big screen this week.

STARDUST

(At Spice PVR, Noida; and other theatres in Delhi and elsewhere)

Hats off to Indian cinemagoers! They are not swayed by marquee names. They refuse to buy half-baked fantasies even in the name of escapism and steadfastly avoid playing a dustbin to Hollywood rejects. Matthew Vaughn’s “Stardust”, based on Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’ novel, is likely to meet the same fate: a low-key entry, and a lower-key departure. On the first day, first show, only a handful of people turned up to watch this fantasy fare. Not a s oul to my right, none to the left; hardly any in front and just a handful behind. The auditorium wore a deserted look. And half an hour or so of the movie gave away all the reason. There is little to recommend this movie that has a seen-that-done-that look.

Not taking away any points from Claire Danes and Michelle Pfeiffer, it is yet another fantasy film that fails to take the young and the throbbing under its wings. Set in a timeless world when it was possible to believe that a guy could run after a falling star, and bring it all back for his beloved, this film fails on two counts: the director isn’t quite sure if the target audience is teenagers, ready to dream and fly, or those in single-digit years when fairies come visiting. As a result, we have a mismatch of fairies and witches, magic and wizardry, pirates and goblins, blood and Babylonian candles that ageless women last saw some 200 years ago.

No, there is no broom in this post-Harry Potter age, but the magic swords and electrifying fingers do that fine enough. And all the professors of the bestselling epic are substituted by mysterious characters: flagging jaws, long unruly locks, and ugly gowns to give that touch of another world.

And to think all of them people a story about a young man’s yearning to win his girlfriend by getting her a shooting star that he has seen fall on the other side of the wall! The wall, it turns out, is a boundary between the real world and the imagined one, the line that should never be crossed, lest men come back as mice, and women encounter witches!

The young man’s search for the star takes him to the forbidden land. He finds the star all right, but the star has transformed into a girl! What’s worse, he is not the only one seeking her heart. On its own, it would have been an interesting premise for a teenage love story, but with its odd mixture of fairies, witches and lovers, it falls in no-man’s land. And that, as any seasoned cinemagoer will tell you, can be disastrous for a film. Any redeeming points here? Well, look close and patiently and you will discover some good shots of the English countryside, and the camera will help in getting a feel of the misty English weather too.

Also, life seems at a standstill in a world where everybody seems to believe in the supernatural.

All good enough to coax a few brownie points out of a reluctant viewer. But none good enough to recommend a visit to dear friends or the paying public.

Better stay away from “Stardust”. The stars flicker and fade, the dust falls into our lap.

MERCURY MAN

(At Wave Noida and other theatres)

When Hollywood decides to be powerful, it gets itself a coat of the impregnable. Then neither fire singes its heroes nor do heights deter them: as has been the case in countless Superman-Spiderman films.

When Asian filmmakers decide to take them on, they throw in martial arts and life becomes a merry jaunt even without the likes of Jackie Chan and Lee. Just recently we had a Korean film making a splash at the box office with its computer-generated spe cial effects. Now comes this film from Thailand, many months after it vowed audiences abroad.

Capitalising on the pre-Diwali lull is this offering from the creators of “Ong Bak”. And in a first of sorts, while Hollywood may still be talking only of 9/11 and New York Twin Towers, the Thai guys make bold to call a man Osama, who predictably heads an international terrorist conspiracy.

The film is shot quite spectacularly. Set in Cambodia, with the customary shots of Angkor Wat, the film starts off as a tale of boy gamblers behind the temples.

Come the cops and the scene shifts to Tibet where travellers, again predictably, are looking for a temple.

Cut to Bangkok. Again, almost inevitably, come the martial arts and a fire-fighter who can do little wrong. Except, of course, that there is a mercury-like fluid up in his veins! It is good as long as the viewers are willing to suspend reason and enter a world of make-believe. But when it does not, as is intermittently the case here, you wonder why directors have such a limited vision. Why must any man out to do justice take recourse to the supernatural or the super-heroic? And isn’t there more to Asian commercial cinema than just the deadly combination of martial arts and breathtaking nuggets of age-old culture? Give us a reality byte, folks.

This one, though, will do for those who love action. No questions asked.

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