Re: Manorama Six Feet Under 1080p Download Movies
Osoulo Lejeune
Following the thought that a fantastic screenplay is open to as much reinterpretation as a play, debutant director Navdeep Singh takes the tribute route by basing his first film on Roman Polanski's 1974 classic, Chinatown.
Small-town Rajasthan is no Los Angeles, and Abhay Deol is no Jack Nicholson. And yet Manorama Six Feet Under stands out as a dusty recreation of a superb film, crafted with earthy ingenuity.
Deol's character, Satyaveer Singh, is built in distinct contrast to Nicholson's unforgettable JJ Gittes, a tough yet cultured and well-off investigator, while SV, when we first meet him, is a junior engineer just fired for having accepted a bribe. He's guilty -- the fee lies parked outside his house, on two modest wheels -- and a failed novelist.
His one attempt at a novel -- Manorama, the pulpiest of fiction with a lurid cover making the beautiful Hindi word 'upanyas' sound shameful -- sold just 200 copies. It is then that he sits and wonders what to do with his bitter, sarcastic wife (Gul Panag) and annoyingly energetic son when the door knocks and the femme fatale enters.
Only this isn't the stuff of Philip Marlowe. A soberly-clad Sarika [Images] breezes in and introduces herself as the Minister's wife, and says she needs SV to spy on her husband. Why me, the unemployed writer justifiably asks.
And so it is that SV, tempted by unexpected adventure and a well-timed stack of banknotes, decides to go hide in the bushes and take a few pictures. As the noir genre demands, one thing twistily leads to another...
It's tremendously hard to discuss this film without constantly paralleling it with Chinatown. It's all there: the double-crossing, the false identity, the nose-break (though I wish Singh had himself jumped onto screen to slash it, just like Polanski's cameo) and the resultant bandage, the incest, the blackmail and surprisingly enough even the water issues, the original film being set around the California Water Wars.
Raima Sen [Images] is a strong actress, in an interesting role. Panag too is steadily finding her feet in the world of low-key cinema, played straight and fine. Vinay Pathak is solid as a liquor-friendly cop, but one laments his lack of screentime. Little needs to be said about Kulbhushan Kharbanda, the veteran still effortlessly able to toss an ice-cube at your spine.
The film is shot neatly -- goldfishes flit past eyes, nondescript checked-shirts blend into the sandy background -- with much grounded, rustic charm, and the pacing is good. The film, balanced on the edge of 'slow,' never quite loses the grip. And the end works.
Forget originality Jake, this is Chinatown. This is a noir tribute where fans of the original will have seen it all before, yet sit through this freshly-developed retelling with a smirk on their faces, the kind of smirk that understands why a Chivas and soda could work with daal-baati churma.
Chinatown was a classic and Navdeep Singh remade it into a film which I believe would over the years define the Indian film noir genre. Manorama Six feet Under was released in 2007 when I was in the first year of graduation. That was a time when we enjoyed whirlwind entertainers and watched a lot of Chinese action flicks which had nothing to do with logic or gravity for that matter. Noirs were not exactly a splash in the pan for us at that time but the trailers of Manorama sparked a lot of curiosity for the project.
Overall Manorama six Feet under, is a terrific thriller which is reminiscent of the glimmer of hope for a change from the crass masala potboilers that Bollywood has come to be known for. These are films which keeps the blood flowing through the veins of Bollywood which otherwise has glitz coursing through. It is a film which can be watched and re-watched just for the beauty and material of it. Highly recommended.
Below is a list of eight such underrated movies that may not have dazzled the box office but were definitely critically acclaimed. Most of the movies deal with issues really central to our society or our lives and starred actors, not just stars.
Actors: Konkana Sen Sharma, Rahul Bose, Bhisham Sahni
Director: Aparna Sen
Awards: National Award for Best Actress, National Award for Best Director, National Award for Best Screenplay, Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film
Actors: Sanjay Mishra, Rajat Kapoor, Seema Pahwa
Director: Rajat Kapoor
Awards: Filmfare Award for Best Story, Filmfare Critics Award for Best Film, Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actor (Sanjay Mishra), Screen Award for Best Supporting Actress, Screen Award for Best Ensemble Cast