Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities (or Meenaxi) is a 2004 Indian Hindi musical drama film directed by M. F. Husain and starring Tabu, Kunal Kapoor and Raghubir Yadav. The film is centered on Hyderabad novelist Nawab (Yadav) who is suffering from writer's block. After five years and no stories, Nawab comes across an unconventional muse, Meenaxi (Tabu). The three cities referred to in the title are Hyderabad, Jaisalmer and Prague. The film features an acclaimed score and soundtrack by A.R. Rahman.
It is semi-autobiographical in some aspects. There are allusions to Husain's own experiences with his muse, Madhuri Dixit, with whom he made his previous film, Gaja Gamini (2000).[2] The film was screened in the Marché du Film section of the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.[3]
The audio was released on 24 January 2004 creating controversy regarding the song "Noor-Un-Ala" which had lyrics directly taken from the Quran.[4] The film was pulled from cinemas a day after some Muslim organisations raised objections to the song.[6]
This article discusses filmic emotion by focusing on how the dominant color (blue in Gabbeh and Meenaxi; red in Mirch Masala) is used to elicit emotion. Through alienation effect, the viewer is distanced from the aims and goals of characters, and is less likely to experience the sorts of emotions that result from identification. The first two films use multiple frames of narration leading to character(s) in the outer frame becoming like spectators, invested in, for instance, fortune of others emotions that are central to the enjoyment of movies. In Mirch Masala, narration focuses on class struggle; there is minimal engagement with characters' individual aims, goals, and desires. While the red film foregrounds social anger, the blue films foreground consciousness. The three films together ask questions about what makes war and what makes peace, and how human action and human consciousness, represented through colors, figures in all this.
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