Monday, July 13, 2009

Sankat City: Pay-off Master

Original Posting.

Befitting the preposterously loony & delightful characters he’s unleashed upon us, Pankaj Advani walked into the cinema-hall Friday night, veiled in a, yes, Burqa. Not surprisingly, the self-aggrandizing ploy didn’t work, at all; as the only straight-faced soul in a hall-full of hysterical communal film savouring, the maker of the film, playing the voyeur that his true calling indirectly is, was a dead give-away.


It is to Pankaj’s credit that we have a true-blue genre Picchur (in this case, Revisionist Noir, I proffer), completely with re-imagined characters and a setting evoked with unusual realism.

For me, personally, Sankat City has been a difficult viewing experience, in its playing-out, and, the consequence, and on both the occasions.
A lil’ explaining – first time around on Sankat night July 8th, I was busy trippin’ on a space, in my mind, the film occupies & operates from. I got over-enthusiastic to the point of taking great pleasure in spotting genre conventions that Pankaj relentlessly kept heaping on me, to the extent that I was scared for him if he can really keep-up with all the brandishing. Inadvertently, am sure I annoyed my neighbours in the cinema aplenty, a drunk fuck behaving like he’s already watched the film (which I hadn’t) & playing spoiler (rĂ©petition: inadvertent).
My 2nd viewing was kinda spoilt by the presence of the director couple of seats away from me – damn, why don’t people get it, that I want to deal with the screen by myself, like EXCLUSIVELY, not having to bother with the judgments that comes with boisterous appreciation of a work of art.

The space am talking about are that of a most graceful policier, Claude Sautet’s Max et Les FĂ©rrailleurs [1971], and that of a prized possession of mine which happens to be an Interactive Video of a Raymond Chandler novel called The Little Sister.
The former is about a Police Detective (Michel Piccoli) going undercover into the ‘belly of a gang of car thieves/scrap-dealers to lure them into robbing a bank, so he could catch ‘em in the act.
The latter is the only toy I grew up with, a perverse pleasure in a video-gamization of a master’s poorest-written novel, and maan, you should play the book, ‘coz the game is practically a training school in the celebratory bread-breaking in the conventions of our this beloved genre. Owing to the Video’s interactive nature, I have never, like really NEVER EVER, reached its end, in effect having never read the novel, ‘coz there’re numerous ways to ride the ride, relishing its enchantment in what initially sounds like a pastiche of cheesy one-liners, but soon-enough confirms the wisdom of evolution & taste.

Sankat City, whose plot I refuse to dwell here on a hyperlinked PFC, made me want the film to never end, simply because the film’s team was walking the tightrope very deftly, with the confidence of allowing its purveyors the luxury to return to the Home Page, so to speak, whenever they tired of an (non-existent) exhaustion.

Kay Kay Menon’s and Anupam Kher’s posts had upped my expectations of the Long Takes in the film. I like my Long Takes to play like Long Takes, which for some inexplicable reason Sankat City’s numerous ones didn’t for me.
Nor could I fathom why Kay Kay’s Guru was called Guru, of all names, when the rest of thems in the film were so very colorfully designated, more so since Kay Kay was made to play-it so very un-Guru-straight-like, but did play goofy more like the colored ones. I also do have a quaint preference for a non-broad-like play a broad-like femme fatale, and vice-versa etc.
Curiously, I found myself (my neighbor’s fault totally) walking out of the film’s End Credits, and also overheard few other audience members, having thoroughly enjoyed Sankat City while, inadvertently again, humming Kaminey’s scorcher Dhan Te Nan. I suspect the same to have transpired while entering the hall too. what I did though is go find the first bar out of the cinema, get back home, play Ghoom Ghoom loopwise. Intoxicicatory!
I would’ve also, for whatever loserly reasons, liked some melancholy, grim worldview of noir, but Sankat City refuses any. But again, it’s Pankaj’s film. And don’t we want more of thems!!

Am most thrilled with the film, when looking back, that though the writing must’ve been structured in a requisite 3 act nature (that a couple of our film critics oft use as a ‘problematic 2nd act’ stick), the film plays-out, in its first half, as a very charmingly elaborate unfolding of the events (Set-up, if you will), and in the second, as a wickedly-smart paying-off of every single damn thing that ever came-up in the first half. One must’ve really had a hard time with the Repo Man, to have honed Paying-off skills to such effortless heights. Brilliant!
I say this ‘coz if we were to look at all the blockbuster fucks in Bollywood, the only solitary chose they get right are the pay-offs, however sloppy, amateurish, shameless, non-existent soul selling-out, plain whoring, but they do the paying-off, come what may, you & I notwithstanding, celebrated by the film’s audience, like, wholeheartedly.

p.s.
my Pvt Eye. Exe CD had adorable utterances asking me such beautiful existential questions as “Where to next, Bud?”, and allowed me to choose wherever the fuck I wanted to venture, based on my own perception of self-worth.
Dear dear Kamal Swarup, whose Om Dar-B-Dar is THE greatest Indian film ever made, generously taught me about something called one’s perception of their inherent intelligence, and what its allowances consequate into, and more crucially their lack-ofs.
Pankaj seems to have tirelessly answered all those “Where to Bud?” questions to destinate into a sweet sweet spot he’s carved for himself in our hemisphere, a place called Sankat City.

Thanks Pankaj, for a wonderful experience at the cinemas. As a thank you note, I’ve taken a Shanghai Nights-like subversive dig aimed at you, whence opening this piece.
Great going Bro, keep ‘em on, and of course, keep ‘em cumming.

p.s. 02.
Strangely, Sankat City plays much better when viewed sober. Take my word, I should know.