I know many of you have seen this story in the Times, or have picked up on it elsewhere, but I thought we’d bring it to the table of our humble little abode. Is Lucasfilm just trying to find a way to get me off my ass and see this thing? If so, the plan is working.
Day: May 18, 2005
a mixed bag
recently in the dvd player: “the alamo”, “zakhm”, “hum dil de chuke sanam” and “swades”. two pieces of crap, and two decent but overly worthy efforts. crap first:
“the alamo”: uninvolving, pointless, trivial. even something jingoistic would have been preferable to this lifeless mess. the sad thing is that it seems to think it is a clever movie which has interesting things to say about mythmaking and nationmaking. it does not. the only plus i can think of: i finally know what a bowie knife looks like. other than that this is an exercise in costume design. the guy playing santa anna chews some scenery but only half-heartedly.
“hum dil de chuke sanam”: i’m ambivalent about reviewing bad bollywood films here since most of you are unlikely to watch them unless i recommend them very highly (and of the ones i have recommended mike’s seen “company” and that’s about it i think). so i’m not going to spend too much time on this except to say that no one exoticizes india like indians themselves and that this film may have been written by a particularly stupid 12 year old. the liberalization of the indian economy in the 90s saw the rise of both a big spending leisure class and the expression of a complicated hindu chauvinism. this film, like many other 90s blockbusters, speaks to both–on the one hand providing aspirational fantasies and on the other, in the guise of critiquing it, repackaging patriarchal tradition.