Chamku review – Kabeer, you slipped!
Warning: Post contains strong language.
When you start noticing flaws in a movie directed by one, who’s first you absolutely admire… you for some odd reason go back to the first movie and go “Ya! The guy made the same mistakes in the first one too…”. The good, in the first one, had so many hooks to keep you engrossed that either you consciously forgive the flaws you may have noticed or you didn’t notice them at all.
Sehar, for us Kabeer fans, was one such good movie. Unfortunately Chamku isn’t. For starters and the most important note on Chamku – Kabeer Kaushik fails to develop any – and I mean ANY – sub characters, parallel tracks or sub plots in Chamku – which primarily focusses on Bobby Deol as Chamku from frame One to frame End. Even if the argument holds – the film is about Chamku – it just does not justify the criminally ignoring of blow-your-brains-to-pieces tracks and tracks of parallel stories and characters that could have left you breathless for years and years. Instead you sip your coke, watch the movie and walk out before the theater manager catches you for an opinion and a request that you don’t trash his theater on your blog.
FUCK IT! What happened? Here was an interesting – absolutely gripping – germ of a story that no one had written or screenplayed on Hindi screen before. Tragically that germ of a fascinating story is just flushed down the toilet.
Instead Chamku is fixated on Bobby Deol. Why? Why didn’t Kabeer create room for the rest of the mindblowing story developments including the characters? Why Oh Why? This is the worst crime of all and I’ll never forgive Kabeer for this. Or was it, as the rumors go, that Sunny Deol, the producer, banned Kabeer from the editing room and edited the movie himself?
Sunny-paaji, you missed the whole point, – if the rumors are true. Kabeer’s strength – as seen in many movies that have succeeded in the last 5 years – is : strong characters besides the main lead and above all the strong parallel plots that move besides what the main leads follow. Oh Why Oh Why!!!
This is tragic. And one should cry over the gross waste of an opportunity whether executed by Kabeer or Sunny-paaji – it doesn’t matter any more. Such a great opportunity to create a Sehar times 100… gone waste.
Chamku starts where Sehar ended. The train. As soon as the opening shots (after the chota parivar sukhi parivar scenes) move on the big screen – your brains flash two words “Mahesh Bhatt”. Bhatt started repeating all those shots for the rest of his career, that people fell in love with, when he first showed them. For example the Churchgate underpass, which started with Saransh, then Naam and so on.
The train sequence, though well shot, a fan of Kabeer Kaushik, who also knows Mahesh Bhatt’s rise and fall, will most certainly fear this repeating of locations. Hopefully Kabeer will take a break from the train for his next few movies.
But very few can portray such touch-the-rustic-reality of India outside Bombay on screen. And Kabeer can. I love when the camera moves close to reality so much that one can literally relate to it scene by scene. The train sequence is one such location that Kabeer handles so deftly. The action sequence that follows is heart pounding.
Kabeer’s strength lies in capturing this interior India on screen which very few in Bollywood’s yuppie-never-know-anything-outside-Mumbai can even attempt to do. So why the hell does the plot have to move to Mumbai??? Why not Delhi? Calcutta? Chennai? Trivandrum? Bangalore? Why why why??? This is a gross underuse of Kabeer’s strengths. The major portion of Sehar’s success goes in capturing the story that exists outside Bombay. In Lucknow. In UP. Why the fuck would one want the story to move to Mumbai knowing what Kabeer can achieve??? Half the battle was lost in the screenplay as soon as the location “Mumbai” was typed on that darn piece of paper.
The story in short, moves from Bobby’s childhood to his youth, showing caste oppression to Naxalites to RAW’s inside (?) ways. Unfortunately each of these phases end up being akin to window shopping. Look don’t touch. In Sehar, each of the issues that appeared was focussed on with a magnifying glass. Forget about it in Chamku. For example the brilliant absolutely brilliant sequence that brings out the story of UP police’s struggle with cellphones in Sehar… none like those appear in Chamku even though there was so so so much to be told and revealed to us.
When I mentioned the second film reveals the flaws of the first movie which you admired for the last few years till you saw the second… it starts with “VOICE OVERS”… Sehar with its voice overs was just right… perhaps not… but Chamku, entire episodes move in voice overs… Kabeer WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING???? You killed so many potentially brilliant snippets of the story where you could have taken us deep into.
And those melodramatic sequences. Old Women. Multiple repeats of Flash back. Now I realize that Sehar had them too. But they just got suppressed in the ample of hooks you had us hanging by. In Chamku very few of such hooks exist. Or perhaps they are in the editing room’s trash can. Just stop repeating flash backs so many times and please step back from pushing the word “over” in your melodramatic scenes.
The end… you feel cheated. What? Is it this simple? Kabeer!!! Come On!!! Is it that simple to squeeze out a solution!!!
The camera never seems to move off Bobby Deol who appears in two expressions. Expression One: Half of a Half a smile as if his ass has a flaming torch underneath. Expression Two: Flick of the brow anger. Then again if the parallel stories were developed in Chamku, Bobby’s two point expression would have fit in well. It would have etched out the persona of a man with a traumatic past. Though Chamku could have been Bobby’s “Arjun“… Tragically, it never happens.
Irrfan Khan looks like he stood there to recite the lines and leave at the end of the day. The rest of the actors seem like… hell I don’t know… doormen?
Reviewers, as you Sehar fans have noticed, are trashing Chamku around. Our dear friend Mr. Taran Adarsh even has a problem with the title “Chamku” saying the city boys and girls won’t be attracted to the title. Here’s one guy who has luck on his side, making money via his trade mag and now dreadfully on TV. How idiotic does one need to be to be paid so much money from so many websites and TV Channels??? Can someone remind Adarsh-jee that until “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge” none in Bollywood wanted more than two words in their movie title.
Unfortunately Chamku isn’t DDLJ and hence the idiots will brag about it “See… we told you”…
For Sehar and Kabeer fans… the question is – So is Kabeer done?
Mercifully… NO… the spark is intact. It is very very visible. You know this is the guy who made Sehar… but he’s going all wrong here. So I’ll humbly disagree with Ms. Sukanya Verma who I hope and pray does not go the Taran Adarsh way.
Don’t kill the spark. The spark exists and it is amply visible in patches all over the movie. Please don’t kill the spark of such a brilliant director who’s still working on finding his bearings. I don’t know Kabeer personally and neither do any of Sehar’s fans whom I’ve met over the net in the last few years. This is for them – Kabeer is still the man to watch out for. Fuck the reviewers.
C Plus. In the end Chamku is an overburnt dal tadka that could have been very delicious. Whether it’s Kabeer’s fault or if the rumors are true… we’ll never know. What we know for sure… we will be on our toes for Kabeer’s next. Meanwhile you break your rule of not drinking hard alcohol and down a few pegs of scotch to write this reaction… hopefully Kabeer will not let this happen again. Cross your fingers.
Tags: Chamku, Kabeer Kaushik
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
I met Kabir Kaushik in Pune last year.. He was shooting Chamku in Khandala that time.. in that 30-40 mins of meeting i learnt that he completed the script in feb2007 but had to wait till october2007 to can the first shot. He spent six months convincing Sunny Deol to take up the film.. One more thing, although his first film was very much appreciated but it didnt brought any money to the makers.. So, Kabir was also under that pressure.. he wanted this one to work..
Yes Oz.. u r right that this man has the spark.. i havent seen Chamku yet but could get it in that brief meeting..
by d way RGV has very keen interests in his scripts and Kabir even narrated a story called ‘Kaza’ to Aamir Khan. It is based on terrorism. Aamir liked it but as usual objected to ‘certain’ parts.. he felt the story will sent wrong messages to muslim community. Kabir didnt agree to change anything. I dont know the recent developments on that..
Going by his record, I wonder what went wrong with Chamku
i was looking forward to chamku more than rock on this weekend. sehar was a terrific experience. oh well …
ye kya bol diya Oz bhai!
Ironic! perhaps this is what Varchaswa ki ladai means — no one can circumvent the powers that be & if u have brains to be better than average then… Go To Hell.
Will still try to catch Chamku. For Sehar’s sake.
Btw: Does any one have any dope on the other Kabir, kabir Kabul Express Khan?
Saw Sehar when it released. Didn’t find anything remarkable in it. Just because you shoot it in Lucknow doesn’t make it a good film. Arshad totally miscast. Pankaj Kapur’s role not convincing at all. No recall for the rest. I think this article is trying to make too much of a bad film and its director. Sehar was mediocrity, and will be followed by more mediocrity. You are betting on the wrong horse, my friend, and it’s not your fault. Mr Right-Horse comes by so rarely.
@Gourav, Thanks for the info! We surely hope… we surely hope…
@ Ravi, hope your experience is better.
@ Joyjeet, now that I think of it… Chamku could as well be a “Guddu Dhanoa” film and no one will notice any difference… no dope on Kabir Khan.
@ Akki, lets give them a chance. lets hope it isn’t what you think it is.
kabir khan’s next is with yashraj starring John Abraham , Neil Nitin Mukesh and Katrina Kaif…set in USA i think…
in one of his interviews he said it was a hard hitting subject…lets hope for the best..
rocky
i disagree with everything what u said…..
Sehar wasnt good because it was shot in Lucknow but because it captured the milieu very well…
and Arshad and Pankaj gave able performances if not great..
the dialogues were very well written……
and his next is the same he was supposed to do with AAMir i think..produced by arshad warsi….
also OZ they showed on TV that he didnt attend the music release event of the film and even any press briefings about the movie..
so ur guess is as good as mine…..
Nice article oz bhai…
Its good to see that you still havent given up on Kabir…i loved his seher..and loved the humbleness in his interviews…
again, the same request…does anyone know him, so we can invite him to write on pfc?
@ashwin/oz – he didnt attend the premiere as arshad warsi didnt let him go! i don’t think he disassociated himself from the movie. http://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/2008/aug/220808-arshad-warsi-chamku-director.htm
rocky, sehar had its elements and not only the milieu but the depiction of contractor’s mafia and police force outside ‘mumbai masala’ was quite realistic..i had liked sehar for its rustic and raw approach..n agree with ashwin/oz on this..yet to watch Chamku though.
Sehar for me was one of the finest movies of 2005. Gajraj singh was like a modern day Gabbar to me.
I was waiting for the next release of Kabeer, before the promos of Chamku came out. I think it is just an off product from Kabeer. Looking forward to his next movie, which I think is tentatively titled Qazaa
Why did Chamku have to move to Mumbai? My only theory could be Bobby Deol wouldn’t fit anywhere else! I didn’t buy him even a bit as a Naxalite brought up in Bihar. Arshad in Sehar breathed like a Lucknowi (not like I’m from the North to be an expert on the subject), but I BOUGHT the fact that he was a Lucknowi, educated in Delhi…
Bobby… aah well… nevermind.
Another question, would this film have held any of the Sehar-esque promise had it not been produced by Vijeta Films? I don’t know and I hardly intend to float an accusatory theory; just generally and GENUINELY wondering…
A friend of mine watched Chamku this weekend… I asked him how it was. This is how the conversation went:
Dude: “It was just Bichoo and Jaal and this guys other films…”
Me: “What guys others films?
Dude: “You know that guy… Sunny & Bobby’s cousin…”
Me: “Who, Guddu Dhanoa”
Dude: “Yeah yeah yeah, that guy! This is just like his other films like Bichoo and Ziddi…”
Me: “Oh ok… But he direct this film.”
Dude: “Really? Was it one of his assistants”.
Me: “Remember that movie Sehar… with Arshad Warsi as a cop in Bihar…”
Dude: “Oh yeah! That was a goooooood movie man. Arshad Warsi was wicked! Good direction, it was a tight movie!”
Me: *silent*
Dude: “THAT guy made Chamku?!”
Me: *silent*
Dude: “Holy shit… we’re fucked…”
***IGNORE PREVIOUS COMMENT – This is how it should have read…***
A friend of mine watched Chamku this weekend… I asked him how it was. This is how the conversation went:
Dude: “It was just like Bichoo and Jaal and this guys other films…”
Me: “What guys others films?
Dude: “You know that guy… Sunny & Bobby’s cousin…”
Me: “Who, Guddu Dhanoa?”
Dude: “Yeah yeah yeah, that guy! This is just like his other films like Bichoo and Ziddi…”
Me: “Oh ok… But he did NOT direct this film.”
Dude: “Really? Was it one of his assistants”.
Me: “Remember that movie Sehar… with Arshad Warsi as a cop in Bihar…”
Dude: “Oh yeah! That was a goooooood movie man. Arshad Warsi was wicked! Good direction, it was a tight movie!”
Me: *silent*
Dude: “THAT guy made Chamku?!”
Me: *silent*
Dude: “Holy shit… we’re FUCKED…”
@Tony Mera Naam
Sehar was not set in Bihar.
Areh haan, it was in UP nah? Sorry dost, I typed that comment while working, kept getting interrupted so lost my train of thought… The point was my friend honestly mistook “Chamku” for a Guddu Dhanoa film (just like Oz point on in Cmt 6…”@ Joyjeet, now that I think of it… Chamku could as well be a “Guddu Dhanoa” film”) and was disturbed to learn it was in fact from the Director of Sehar.
this is kind of writeup that i expect from oz
not the torture series
the basic quality that is evident is the experience
only a person with long experience with cinema can use the words the way they have been used in this article
a novice can never write like this
the shining this article has is the polishing of time
no practice in creative writing can attain that