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this is not a review, just random thoughts/ rants and a question]

Absolutely nothing could spoil THE LAST LEAR for me.

Not the failed alarm clock in the morning due to which I woke up just about 25 minutes before the show started, not the irritating cabbie who messed up the road delaying me further, neither my wallet which was left back home and surely, surely not the sight of an half empty theatre.

I remember being dragged to the cinema by my  parents some nine years back when BARIWALI released, remember sitting there bored to death and disturbing the hell out of  others. Obviously time has passed since then, tastes have changed. The nine years has not only lead me to understand the masterpiece that the film is, but also turned into one of my favorite film, one of the very few Bengali films whose DVD I still put into my player …

Towards the end of Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear, in a scene, Amitabh Bachchan’s Harry is about to take a step which can put his life at risk. As the tension builds up towards the moment I suddenly felt what if Bachchan died today.
Yes, what if Bachchan died today.
This man, who had failure pinned on him from the day he faced the arclights, had 12 flops back to back and then became a popular film star with a similar series of superhits, ventured into politics which boomeranged dutifully, floated one of the first corporate movie production houses in India, got bankrupt, begged for movie roles, single-handedly revolutionised television, delivered celluloid success again and now is referred to as the star of the millennium.
I don’t know if you are supposed to touch wood if you accidentally think of something bad but I was suddenly desperately looking for a piece of wood. …

In a Shakespearean tragedy, one cannot but get sucked into the emotional cauldron. Be it Othello or King Lear or Macbeth or Hamlet, its all about great emotional upheaval when it comes to the core of the Bard’s plays. In Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear, Amitabh Bachchan’s (as well as most of the cast’s) first full-fledged English role, Harish ‘Harry’ Mishra too is a character full of Shakespearean pathos. Quite naturally, it is but natural to expect that Harry’s character would draw you in with its raw emotional power.

Strangely, it does not happen, except in sporadic scenes. It is hard to say who is at fault – Bachchan or the script. Bachchan gives a performance that is one of his best, but even though there have been raving reports about this being his best-ever performance, there is actually nothing much that takes forward his histrionics from the point where he …