Film, Food & Cheeni Kum
Light salad with mild seasoning. Good for health! I liked some of the ingredients.. but a bit bland still. Maybe because I am North Indian and non vegetarian!
In short: a sweet little honest film that relies totally on performances.
Film about Food:
This connect about food and emotion - maybe it’s cultural or just purely human but to me it’s interesting. When the movie opened, I was instantly transported to one of my favorite films about food. Allow me to write a bit about that …
Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) Ang Lee’s early work.
The film is set in a house in Taiwan about a widowed Chinese master chef who lives with his three grown up, single daughters. He’s ageing and losing his sense of taste but continues to communicate with them by hosting elaborate Chinese dinners every Sunday. But things change, as the women begin to choose their love. By the end of the film, he changes too.
It opens with a sequence of the master at his work..the chef, his kitchen and bright, colorful vegetables – it focuses on the skillful hands at work, chopping, frying and the pure joy he gets at his craft. It’s a story dealt cinematically and a delight to watch.
Back to Cheeni Kum…
A film about good people who talk a lot because possibly they haven’t spoken in years! That’s fine, because their conversations are interesting. That’s all there is. But even that’s good enough.
The story is about a woman who meets a man double her age and has to introduce him to her father before she lives with him.
(my problem with this is – the father comes in too late!)
The Writing
Cheeni Kum is purely its characters. The 64 yr old ‘boy’ who meets a woman and finally falls in love. Tabu lives her role, her emotions are quite contained and honest. Tabu, you are a good human being and a real actor.
Mr bachchan. Well..he knows.
The biggest problem, however is the weak antagonist. Paresh Rawal, of course is a delight to watch, but his character, really is a nice man. He’s a good man who breaks quite easily. So there isn’t much of conflict in this relationship for starters.
But that’s not what this film wants to do, I feel. This film wants to show us these characters and I am glad it does. I am glad to see both these good people on screen. That’s a relief.
India has just begun talking and a lot actually. We are still using most of our films to make conversations that some of us might still be uncomfortable to make otherwise. Cheeni Kum talks about age, it talks about sex, it talks about middle class delhi, it talks about the west from an Indian’s point of view, it talks about something Indian emotions are grappling with – a clash of the value system. It talks about stuck lives.
And it talks about food of course…
Ang Lee, by the way used a lot of food in his films. The first Chinese feature script he wrote was ‘the Wedding Banquet.’ In his interview published in “My first Movie” edited by Stephen Lowenstein, he confesses that he is inspired by the ‘kitchen’ space.
He says, ” The kitchen is my favorite spot within the family drama because it contains different levels cinematically. It’s both a battlefield and it’s personal. People don’t get together in the living room or in the bedroom. They get together in the dining room or the kitchen. You’ve got all types of business going on there: different levels of interaction. It’s a space I love to film in. My favorite shooting place is the kitchen, then it’s the dining room because everyone sits ritually, everyone has to face each other. But it’s very hard to photograph. The dining table is one of the most difficult things to film, not to mention if you want a hot meal”.
Ang Lee has had a long wait from his student days at NYU to making his films. In this long wait, he ended up spending a lot of time in the kitchen!
Simon and Wei-Tung are a gay couple living together in Manhattan. To defer the suspicions of Wei-Tung’s parents, Simon suggests a marriage of convenience between Wei-Tung and Wei-Wei, an immigrant in need of a green card. When Wei-Tung’s parents come to America for the wedding, they insist upon an elaborate banquet, resulting in several complications.( Summary Written by Scott Renshaw {as.idc@forsythe.stanford.edu}, source: IMDB)
It got made six years after Ang Lee wrote it.
Of course to know more about his journey, get the book, meanwhile go watch Cheeni kum.
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
Smriti: Interesting way of writing abt two films:)
One other film abt Food was Penelop Cruze starrer, “Woman on Top(2000)”.
I did not get you when you write:
[Tabu, you are a good human being and a real actor.
Mr bachchan. Well..he knows.]
Tabu does not know about her acting?
You have doubts or hitch to say staright whether Mr Bachchan was able to bring you satisfaction as an actor in the film? :-w
I remember reading somewhere that Nagesh Kuknoor was making a film called Tandoor – with Bachchan as a hyderabdi cook who opens a restaurant in america and runs into trouble…then falls in love with an american lawyer…nagesh was saying itd be indias first food film.. i thought the idea was cool…not sure when he intends to make this though.
yes he wanted to make this after teen deewarein but after that he has no luck getting the right production to fund it. and he is looking for susan sarandon stature actress oppposite big b.. nothing is falling place.. and thus the delay. hope it gets made soon. i was a bit surprised to see cheeni kum with big b as thats the food film too.
Mmmm, RK – Woman on Top is one of my favourite timepass films. Silly and slight, but all the performances are great and I can’t get enough of Peneolpe Cruz in this film, she just radiates…
Like Water for Chocolate and Tampopo are two other great movies about food, and if I weren’t at work I could come up with a long, long list – maybe later…
Last Movie Watched: Cheeni Kum
Listening To: NPR
Reading: Granta
t!
yes “WOT” was a good time pass. rather films like this and Spanglish, are always good time pass. They swing between emotions and funny situations
I hated WOT, it was simply annoying. Only food films I kind of liked was Bawarchi, My Wife’s Murder(watch Boman Irani, you ll know what I mean)
Cant wait to see CK.
Last film: Shootout at lokhandwala, ek chaalis…
Listening to : Sivaji
Reading: Superman’s Death
oh btw, Nice post, Smriti!
Smriti
I read that book about MY FIRST FILM last year. Excellent book.
********
Last Film Watched – SOPRANOS – Season 4 (9/10)
Listening to – THE DROP www.kcrw.com
Reading – The Delivery Man by OZ
What a grt film very interactive fim talketive
Amitabh is magical and Tabu compliments his persona with ease only she could have matched his towering performance. The love story is full of humor and innocense and the biggest surprise of the film was the little girl sexy and her relation with bachahan great act by the little wonder. And not to forget the captian of the ship the ad man Balki what wonderful storytelling and narration full marks to this newcomers (never too late is the new mantra in bollywood) and I would say our film industry is arrived of late no longer we will have to see SRK and yashraj crap formula films are out and indian cenima has arrived gone are those days where people will make fun of hindi cenima. If 2006 was rocking than 2007 will be full of surprises only good cenima is the order of the day. This weekened was pasia vasool with grt films like shoot out.. and chenni kam.. and cheeni kam is a winner as it also got clapping from the crowd towards the end. Balki has given us best visual and cenematic beauty the romance was so natural and innocent i loved every scene in the film be it tabu asking bachahan to run, chemist, scenes in the kitchen, sexy and bachahan’s communication, paresh rawal and his antics. The movie desearves most prestigious awards. High substance and less hype was the grt marketing strategy of this good cenima.
You just can’t afford to miss chenni kum.
liked the first half.its intersting. but second half is not that great.didnt like the kid’s charcter also. actually not very fond of kids who behave like adults n she was one.also,the first half looked like…all the smart lines written by a bunch of copywriters. people do talk like that but not always. not every sentence.n zoha sehgal…she is superb. its great fun to watch her act.
Thanks fr ur comment RK. I ‘ll do a post on Amitabh Bachchan – actor. i want to. please wait for it.
t! that’ll be a nice long list to do at some stage.
on the other extreme – The cook, the thief, his wife and her lover(1989) – anyone?
thanks tushar.
Last film watched: Cheeni kum!
music : misc. nusrat and atif aslam
reading: lajja by taslima nasrin
Oh yeah, but while I am taking a tea break, two of my favourite comedies are about eating (a different concept than being about food), “Delicatessen” and “Eating Raoul”.
I promise, I am really a nice girl. Don’t let my choices in movies give you the wrong impression of me ;)
After watching Cheeni Kum, I guess the idea got stolen from Nagesh and with that I dont think Tandoor will ever see the light of the day (atleast with Amitabh… now that Nagesh has moved to Subash Ghai camp and secondly with SRK lobbying himself to play the lead in Tandoor).
Having said “inspired” from Nagesh brain-child I am happy that Balki has done a spectacular job, visible in every scene of CK.
And the movie – definitely Chopras and Johars have a lesson to learn here!!!