Peepli Live reviews updated

INDIAN REVIEWS

Minty Tejpal, Mumbai Mirror: 3.5 stars
Blessy Chettiar, DNA: 3 stars
Faridoon Shahryar:: "a film that happens very rarely"
Mayank Shekhar, HT: 4 stars
Pankaj Sabnana, Glamsham: 4.5 stars
Annirudha Guha, DNA:: 3.5 stars
Nikhat Kazmi, TOI: 3.5 stars
Saibal Chatterji, NDTV: 4 stars
Taran Adarsh, Bollywood Hungama: 4.5 stars
Mithila Gupta, News Hits:: "Makes us feel enriched and entertained"

OTHER REVIEWS

Gary Goldstein, LA Times: "succeeds more often than not"
Janos Gereben: San Francisco Examiner: 3 stars
G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle: "can't escape certain predictability to Westerners"
Rachel Saltz, NY Times: "after a compelling setup her [Rizvi's] script runs out of juice"
Rob Nelson, Variety: "peppy screwball comedy"
David D'Arcy, Screen Daily: "bawdy take on the rural class struggle"
Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter: "both funny and sobering"
Aaron Hillis, LA Weekly: "unusual taste of mainstream Indian cinema"

Andrew Schenker, Slant Magazine:  2.5 stars
Michelle Oranje, Movie Line: "Rizvi is unable to commit to (or pull off) pitch-black satire"

Avg. rating: 3.6 stars (36)

One of the three films responsible for turning me on to Indian cinema forever, back in 2001, is Aamir Khan’s ‘Lagaan’. It was at once an insight into a sport I knew nothing about, a country I thought I knew somethings about but soon learned not as much as I imagined, and a great actor who would become the standard I would then hold all other actors to. The film was a personal awakening for me and it started an Aamir Khan marathon which only ended when I ran out of titles, and the actor took a brief hiatus until the year that ‘The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey’ was released. To date, ‘Dil Chahta Hai’, ‘Earth’ and ‘Rang De Basanti’ are films I can watch again and again, thanks to Khan’s charisma and class.

Fast forward a bit to current times and the actor now has added the titles of director and six-time producer (features & commercials) to his ever-growing list of achievements. One of his latest producing ventures is a must-see film titled ‘Peepli Live’, a satirical look at farmers’ suicide in India - “How can that be funny?” you ask. Read on! - written and directed by Anusha Rizvi, with co-director Mahmood Farooqui. But more on this superbly talented duo a bit later…

We definitely live in times when audiences need to be specially spoon-fed a theme, or a specific current affair. Be too blunt and they’ll refuse the message, turn off before you can get your point across. Be too sweet, and they’ll forget that they are watching something of a reality, which occurs every day in a part of the world remote to them. No one understands this more than Aamir Khan. Everything he touches turns to gold because he knows how to balance the right amount of reality with just enough “Bollywood” flair. His is the perfect formula. Be it as an actor in ‘3 Idiots’ - pointing the spotlight on student suicides - or a director and star in ‘Tare Zameen Par’ - bringing attention to special needs children - all his projects feel just right to his audience. Theaters fill up as people flock to watch what this golden star of Indian cinema has thought of next and ‘Peepli Live’ is no exception. It shares in that wealth and will probably go on to become one of the most talked about films of the year to come out of India. It was at Sundance earlier this year and the Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt dedicated a full-page review to the film… Doesn’t get much better than that!

The story is simple enough but it’s not the focus of the film. The true value of ‘Peepli Live’ lies within the film’s themes, the price of a human life and how that is calculated, the media’s hyper-frenzy when it comes to a good story in this “Breaking News” society, the disconnect between the NEW India and the majority of its people, still living in rural communities without drinking water and basic services, and the game of politics in this countryside, much more about gundas and gangsters than serious policy-making and upholding the law. But then again, while the corrupt politician may appear a more overt phenomenon in the Desh, its power is definitely felt everywhere else in the world. And while the story of ‘Peepli Live’ is set in rural India, in the fictional village of Peepli - a metaphor for endless locations that aren’t even listed on any map - its themes and message are understandable to all of us.

The film opens with two farmers, brothers Natha and Budhia, coming back from an unsuccessful trip to the bank, where their attempts to get an extension for the loan on their land failed. The family, on the verge of disaster, hears of a government program which offers the close relatives of any farmer committing suicide compensation of 100,000 rupees, or about $2,000 US. The older Budhia convinces Natha to commit suicide and a veritable circus of events, missed opportunities and dysfunctional behavior from all sides, ensues. Will Natha go through with it? Will the family get the money? Will the urban media girl Nandita get her story? Or will life have the last laugh? Those are questions only watching the film will answer and I urge you to do so, with a group of friends so you can have a lengthy conversation about if afterward, over dinner.

Writer and director Anusha Rizvi is a testament to the power of persistence. She approached Aamir Khan back in 2004-2005 while he was filming ‘Mangal Pandey’ and continued to gently use her power of persuasion until he read her script, then titled ‘The Falling’. Khan says he was “drawn into the material” immediately and found it to be“outrageously funny, and at the same time very heartbreaking”. He continues that this was “a script which was very unusual for mainstream Indian cinema, and probably very few producers would touch it.” Never a conformist, rather a unique milestone-setter, Khan decided that the film “was right up my street!!”

Rizvi’s recent labor of love, with her talented actor/director husband Mahmood Farooqui, has been the re-introduction to world audiences of the lost form of storytelling in Urdu called ‘Dastangoi’. I was among the lucky few in the Asia Society auditorium, in the Spring of 2009, who witnessed his talent and their devotion to a noble art and an important legacy. Farooqui assisted Rizvi in directing ‘Peepli Live’ but is also responsible for the brilliant casting, which includes real people, superb actors and veteran stage performers who light up the screen at every turn. Among my favorite performances are the suicide-bound Natha, played by the adorable Omkar Das Manikpuri, his cranky, coarse-voiced wife Dhaniya, played fabulously by Shalini Vatsa, the cantankerous Amma, played to perfection by the divine Farrukh Jaffer, and the vulnerable, quietly handsome Rakesh, played with shy beauty by Nawazuddin Siddiqui. And, of course, a great cameo by the one and only Naseeruddin Shah as the sly minister Salim Kidwai.

The music is also a highlight of ‘Peepli Live’ and includes ‘Zindage Se Darte Ho’ by Indian Ocean, the last song recorded before the death of Asheem Chakravarty. The background score is by Matthias Duplessy, a French composer based in Mumbai and is quite haunting as an accent to the action on the screen.

As a personal aside, I was bothered a bit by the out-loud laughter of my Indian peers, during one of the press screenings of ‘Peepli Live’. It’s definitely a film that has an irreverent tone and is perfectly a satire, but an all-out comedy it is not… I know, I know, “You’re not Indian, so you can’t understand”. If I had a dime for every time I heard that phrase, I would have at least $100 by now. Yet I think I did understand the film and its nuances quite well, having grown up for the first third of my life in a farmers’ community in Italy. I just didn’t find it LOL funny, rather more insightful and poignant and at times, nearly unbearably true. That’s why I think that when the film opens, on August 13th, you should be among the first to see it, with friends who challenge your thoughts and can create wonderfully inspirational discussions around ‘Peepli Live’, for days, maybe weeks to come. Yup, it’s just that kind of a film. One that will definitely NOT leave you untouched.

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