Fakir of Venice: Good Short – Yes! Terrible Feature Film
You have the budget to shoot in the most picturesque of locations in Venice, Ladakh and Benares, you have big name acting talent and then you have that all essential novelty in the script with a title on the front page that reads “Fakir of Venice”. Then you go about shooting, but fail to capitalize on the acting talent and you end up wearing off the novelty in the first 15 minutes and you are left with a good hour and 40 minutes struggling with the second and the third act.
Anand Surapur’s Fakir of Venice starts off on a promising note following Adi Contractor, a production coordinator (played by Farhan Akhtar) who makes “things happen” for film production crews. An art gallery in Venice specializing in installation art whose owner is enamored by eastern mysticism tasks him with finding a holy man who can perform the tantalizing act of burying himself inside sand (which is widely acknowledged a state of transcendental meditation). Therein was the challenge for Adi, and the only conflict in the film, sucking us into the breathtaking beautiful locales in Benares.
[This portion of the content is removed at the request of Phat Phish India Private Limited, the producers of this movie]
With that said, this directorial debut film does have moments of clever irony – the episode of Sattar (Anu Kapur) getting an identity card to get his passport cleverly questions the existential crisis of the title character very early in the film. His naïve answer “I am me” sets the tone for the third act. The uber coolness of Adi as suggested by his generous use of expletives, his implicit flirtations, shot division geared to highlight Farhan’s triceps left me challenged with understanding the real motivation of his character. There is a 20 minute climactic sequence (with relevance to help the script) set in an ornate Venetian room which was attempting to provide the psychedelic imagery rife with transvestites, bondage, ecstasy and trance. It, however, fell far shot of what Tarsem Singh did in his “The Fall” and “The Cell”
It’s abundantly clear that there is an emerging intent to tell stories that crossover boundaries and cultures and appeal to a wide international audience. However, with that noble intent, one could get sloppy with the intent of the characters and the premise in the screenplay. Fakir of Venice fell to both that lure and lacunae.
Tags: Anand Surapur, anu kapoor, benares, Fakir Of venice, Farhan Akhtar, venice
Anurag Kashyap
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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
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Glad that Talented Anu Kapoor is back as an actor….. i think premise sounds interesting … gotta see this …. sadistic imagery can get little unwelcome at times … does any one remember Sanjay F Gupta’s Karam had masochistic transvestite sequences too !! …… oh yes one more thingy … i have read about Tarsem Singh’s Work, hoping to see it … @Girimohan can we hear morevabout Tarsem Singh coz he is relatively unknown all over India… pfc would be a good place to spread word about his work
Ali: Anu Kapoor was indeed the redeeming quality of the movie! It took me back to his TV days before “Antakshri.
About the post-ecstasy psychedelic scene, it just did not fit the movie’s climax. It did not even qualify for tribute sequence to provide a glimpse of the unique side of Venice.
And Tarsem – His “The Fall” is probably the most under rated movie I have seen in the last year and half. It was brilliant! Visually stunning, classic metaphors. You should absolutely rent it!
So Tarsem came to US couple of decades back (someone correct me if I am wrong) for film school. He shot to fame with his “Losing my Religion” music video for REM. Growing up in India watching MTV in early 90s, I remember that video was so iconic – it changed the thematic landscape of shooing music videos
@ Girimohan well i even read somewhere that he is the director of Iconic “We will rock you” video too … also once i was reading review of his “The Fall” by Roger Ebert http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080529/REVIEWS/805290301/1023 4 stars and such a stellar review by world’s most renowned critic… Phew…
It is a pity that even wikipedia has so less info on Tarsem :( and ur Recco for “The Fall” has made me a step closer to watching it.
sad indeed, the film looked damn good on paper.
@Ali, you can find 2 reviews of The Fall on PFC. We tripped on that film last year.
Tushar: I am not completely dismissing the film:)
But it just didn’t the hold the ground for a feature.
I am hoping Anand Surapur can also provide some perspective on the incessant use of fade outs.
Sure Giri, I would definitely give it a watch, not often Annu Kapoor graces films with such character roles. Also, I have a knack of liking the films that get panned in festivals. Last such film was QGM.
And ya, another lesser known film was a certain Inglourious Basterds.
Tushar: QGM?
And Inglorius…, dont even get me started. In the director’s own words in the climax scene just before the fade out, Brad Pitt, looks into the camera (doing his face carving obviously) and announces “This might just be my best work”. That pretty much sums up my appreciation for Inglorious:)