Holy Smoke! (1999)

 

 

 

Drama

 

Starring: Kate Winslet, Harvey Keitel, Sophie Lee, Dan Wylie, Paul Goddard

 

India has long been known as the land of snake charmers, exotic lifestyle and enlightenment. People travel the world to meet babas and follow cults that at times might turn out to be a little extreme. Ruth Barron (Winslet) travelled to India with a friend on vacation but soon got mesmerised by a Baba who might have drugged her and psychologically convinced her to be a part of his cult. Her concerned parents, back in Australia, manage to convince her to return home on the false pretext that her father was ill. They hire P.J. Waters (Keiter) an American exit counsellor who specialises in making people leave cults in just 3 days. Ruth and Waters are sent to live in isolation in the Outback where Waters must now convince her to forget about Baba and go back to her life with her parents in Australia. A very interesting story and which builds up in the initial half an hour well, but somehow fails to progress in the same manner throughout. One expects to get involved in the entire cult exiting procedure but progression from day 1 to day 2 does not happen in the linear fashion and you don't quite understand why and how something has happened. Kate Winslet has done good justice to her role and has performed well, however, she has been the only performer with more or less the entire movie resting on her shoulders. A movie to watch out only for Kate Winslet and nothing else.

 

 

Ship of Theseus (2012)

 

Genre: Drama

 

Starring: Aida Elkashef, Neeraj Kabi, Sohum Shah, Faraz Khan, Sameer Khurana, Vinay Shukla

 

Bollywood has always been known to churn out entertainers and never been able to come up with serious movies with being technically sound and have wide critical acclaim. Ship of Theseus has been one of those rare gems that Bollywood has removed that has been revered world-wide. Aaliya Kamal (Elkashef) is an Arabic girl who is visually impaired but yet a highly celebrated photographer residing in Mumbai, India. She is dependent on her boyfriend, Vinay (Khan) to interpret her images and help her in her career. Maitreya (Kabi) is a monk who is fighting the large corporates in court against animal testing. When diagnosed with liver cirrhosis, he has to take medication from those very same people he is against if he wishes to survive. Navin (Shah) is a stock broker whose ailing mother tries to motivate him to do something good that impacts society and not simply chase money. He learns of a bricklayer whose kidney has been stolen when he underwent an appendix operation and feared that his own kidney might have belonged to him. Along with his friend Mannu (Khurana) he takes it upon himself to track down the theft and find the bricklayers kidney. The movie talks about organ transplant and how individuals have been affected by it. The movie is slow and takes it's own time to develop with very long shots. Having been shot with non-professional equipment, the movie gives the feel of something low-budget and amateurish but yet spectacular. A good movie to watch, but you need to be patient. If intellectual art movies are not your thing then forget about it, else it is lovely for the rest.

 

Thumbs up: Fabulous story and performances

Thumbs down: A bit too long and some unwanted long shots

 

Rating: 7.7/10