Hulla: Seeking That Elusive Balance
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More competent people than me have spoken about the cinematic merits of Hulla and I have little desire to add to the cacophony. However, the response to Hulla only corroborated a trend of polarized opinions that we seem to be engendering especially when it’s about appreciating popular arts and cinema. It’s either unquestioning acceptance or outright rejection. There isn’t a middle ground nor is there a balance.
This only proves the academic belief that media explosion doesn’t lead to a cornucopia of ideas and wider acceptance of divergent views. Rather, people start simplifying their world and stick only to tried and tested outlets that give them their preferred version of reality. So, you have the paradox – a proliferation of information sources but a narrowing of outlooks.
Therefore, the view that I go to a cinema hall for entertainment and I won’t appreciate anything that remotely differs from my view of it. Why not? After all, I have paid for it. It is exactly the line of thought that leads to people only accessing sites and news channel of a particular ideology and build a monochromatic view of the world. This isn’t a case of lack of appreciating others point of view. This is physically shutting oneself off from the ‘other’. While it’s dangerous in the political world, it’s catastrophic in the arena of arts which thrives on co-existence of differences.
And, that is my problem with the reception of Hulla. It’s an original script that unfolds intelligently. Flimsy? People find plots of Amit Chaudhuri and Jhumpa Lahiri (two authors as examples) as trivial. These authors make the details count. They take us below the placid surface of life gradually to show the myriad eddies that run beneath. It’s not the broad strokes of their characters that grip us. It’s their everyday commonness, the richness of the routine that makes them unique. It’s a trait which we seem to have forgotten. It’s a difficult path to follow and Jaideep follows it with aplomb in Hulla. It’s a delicately woven fabric. Flimsy, it ain’t. There’s a difference.
God knows I have enjoyed my bit of mindless cinema through the 80s to today. And I will do so till eternity and celebrate it with unabashed gaiety. But I am greedy as well. I will continue to savor the richness of everything else that comes up in between as long as it’s heartfelt, aesthetic and not manipulative. So, why can’t we have a place for the expansive gestures of Akshay Kumar in SiK along with the simplistic concerns of Rajat Kapoor in Hulla? Don’t we need the juvenile antics of Partner to lift our spirits as much as we need to pause and reflect on our lives (as in Hulla) and the sheer inanity of what occupies us? We deserve both, we need both to prevent our sensibilities from being hijacked by any single ideology.
Hulla isn’t a film that deserves the reception it has got. It’s an intelligent film that takes its intelligence lightly and yes, almost flimsily. It’s a film that deserves more audience than what it has attracted or been allowed to attract. In a way it speaks truth to the power. We all need it at times. It balances our portfolio.
Tags: Balance, Hulla, Review
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
“Zindage Ek Latifah Hain” – Rajesh Khanna said it in Safar. Life is made of trivial stuff.
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Maaki kirkiri
Kya bola bhai!
On a scale that is loaded with polar extremes, the needle for this one tends to zero.
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couldn’t agree more with you subrat!!!
There is a world of joy to be explored and found in little things – Somthing that authors like P.G.Wodehouse have explored humorously or otherwise. There is a whole world in our understated life full of tivial musings that are nostalgic, meaningful, and sometimes dark as well. Increasingly our movies are becoming unidimensional and wannabe. any effort to break the jinx must be supported and not derailed.
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Now that you have said it (that you dont like manipulative cinema), can you please counter the argument that believes that all cinema is meant to be manipulative…
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(frankly, i have a similar opinion to yours but am not able to counter this line of thought when questioned, hence asked professor :D).
Btw, havent seen Hulla, so forgive my convenient ignoring of the rest of the post
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Its amazing how the Haters took control on the 1st 2 days after the release. I have a feeling it was a reaction to Jaideeps personal blogs.
Now seems like almost 90% of the people are saying its a decent film which deserves its audience.
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The Haters were out there with their weapons on the ready and us normal viewers had to watch the film before we took any stance. So, the difference in opinion!
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There comes another post on Hulla…More hulla being generated here….
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I would like to humbly apologise to everyone for not being able to like / appreciate Hulla despite getting an almost exclusive viewing (was one of maybe 15-20 ppl). I understand that one has to understand the perspective with which the film was made and am sorry that I was not capable of “getting it”.
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Good post. Fully agree with you.
Kic, you,like every other person are within your rights to like or dislike any film. And you also have the right to express your opinion about the film. You probably didn’t like the film inspite of going to watch it with an open mind.But i feel this post is aimed at the people who trash a film merely because the subject or treatment is not to their taste, and without watching it with an open mind or in the right perspective.
If somebody loves to watch only mindless entertainment, fine, go ahead. But please dont go about trashing an intelligent, meaningful film just because it does not provide you the kind of “entertainment” you wanna watch.
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Haila! you finally wrote a FILM REVIEW. Can’t get over it.
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@Raunak,
*Firstly, what is trashing a movie mean? Is giving 2 or 2.5 stars (which is what most reviewers gave this movie and which is also what most films get) “trashing” a movie?
*Reviewers have an opinion. They stated it. Most reviews say that the first half is enjoyable, the second half isn’t. Maybe you (or may others did not find it so) – fair enough. That is the way it is. Is that “trashing” a movie?
*I have no issues with people stating their minds – say why the movie works for you. But, when you have everyone who is praising the movie talking on the lines of “why dont others like it?”, “why dont people GET IT the way the film maker intended it”, “how the blazes can anyone give 2 stars to this movie” etc, it just shows a lack of respect for someone else’s point of view.
PS – my response should probably not have been on this thread … it is one of the more balanced ones on the subject. Just that it happened to be the fourth or fifth one is quick succession – it almost made me feel that we were discussing Ganguly and Chappell all over again!
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Kic, who’re you really? And why are you so actively bent on pulling Hulla down in every thread?
Do you lose something if Hulla gets a wider audience? Maybe it didn’t work for you, but do you gain something by making others lose something? Why this crab mentality?
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Subrat, thanks for joining in with a very balanced and mature write-up. Mine was written in considerable anger at 3 in the morning so it was highly whatshallIsay aggressive and undiplomatic and in bad taste in some parts ;-)
Hope we meet again soon.
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Kenny, thankyou for saying what i’ve been trying to tell kic all along.
kic, by repeatedly stating that you didnt GET what the flim maker of Hulla was trying to say, you and some other people are inadvertently pulling down the film. Ok, lets assume your right and that Hulla is a very mediocre product.But tell me, how many of these big budget, masala movies that have come out of bollywood recently are even remotely good??In fact, most people would agree that most of them have been nothing short of garbage. Yet, they succeed in finding mass appeal dude to the hype generated prior to their release.
But when it come to these mini budget films, the shoestring budget alloted for their publicity means that they have nothing but positive reviews and word of mouth publicity to rely on,in order to reach a wider audience.
So its my humble request to you to please ,as far as possible, avoid posting negetive comments about Hulla or similar mini budget movies. You have every right to express your opinion but please try and keep it mellow as you might unknowingly end up hurting the prospects of such films.
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Kenny,
Can I ask you the same question? Why are you so hell bent on trashing all those who didnt enjoy the movie? Works both ways, mate.
Cheers
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Raunak,
How can I pull down any film by my view? After all, I am the poor old “armchair expert gyaan baatoing type”!
Anyway, on your point, what the film needs are positive reviews – of the film. Not negative reviews of those who did not rate it more than 2 or 2.5 stars or of those who did not happen to like it.
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