Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by FatCat

I had a problem each with the movies I watched yesterday. One was directed by Mahesh Bhatt who has less consistency than he has hair on his head. The other starred Jennifer Aniston who will forever be the spoilt one from Friends. For me atleast. So going into watching both movies back to back at the MMB I had to spent the whole train ride from home isolating both sentiments.

Now I am not a professional movie watcher or critic (though I may review them like one!). I can’t tell my Kurosawa from my Ajinomoto. So I went in expecting a good story telling experience. Not looking out for the editing, the sound technology and all that jazz.

Both Arth and The Good Girl are stories about relationship. Wihle the former concentrates on the aftermath of infidelity, the latter nicely depicts the motivation to go bed-hopping.

Arth is one of those rare Hindi movies I have seen that has secured both critical and commercial success. Not to mention the phenomenal popularity of the songs in it. The story speaks of a jilted wife whose husband has run into the arms of a movie star. The wife goes through a gamut of emotions from depression to anger to loneliness and finally to independence. In the meantime the movie star herself abandons him branding him eternally untrustworthy.

Arth is not a slick movie. And it is not meant to be. The directly clearly wants to portray the characters and how they cope with the situations they are put into. No time for camera angles and life-like sets and panoramic shots. There are clearly good guys and the bad guys in Arth and really noone who struggles with both sides of an issue. An over-simplification perhaps.

Shabana Azmi as the jilted wife is excellent but maybe pulled it off a tad too effortlessly. Arth belongs to her. Smita Patil fits the role to a T. Khulbhushan Kharbandha shines in his role of the infidel husband but, I dare say, not by much. The screenplay does drag a bit in places but the Jagjit Singh ghazals help to tide over some of these patches. The songs come late in the movie but are well worth the wait and are undoubtedly classics.

The Good Girl takes the same overall theme of infidelity but this time makes the woman the adulterer and spends more time talking about what led to her having an affair with a co-worker. The great thing for me about this movie was how you could love and hate ALL the characters in it. At some point all of them beg sympathy and then a little later evoke loathing.

Jennifer Aniston slogs through a deadbeat life working in a retail store. The only thing more deadbeat is her marriage to a pothead painter, played by John C Reilly. She has been trying with no success to have a baby and thinks her husband has a problem with his swimmers.

When a new co-worker played by Jake Gyllenhaal joins her store she sees the opportunity to meet somebody new and exciting. All this is depicted with excellent subtlety. Soon she is having an affair, sleeping with her husband’s best friend to keep him from talking about it, and finally gets pregnant.

The movie ends, depressingly perhaps, with her in her old job, back with her husband, a baby and all her skeletons burried for good. It is not a story of personal triumph like Arth. A woman tries to break out of her opressed surroundings but fails and goes back to the drudgery.

All the characters are excellent. Jennifer Aniston was a revelation for me in a dark and unglamorous role. The Good Girl is a good movie which does not try too hard.

I recommend both movies.

Comments

Comment by charukesi on February 7, 2006 @ 12:36 pm

fatcat, it is believed that Mahesh Bhatt bsed Arth on his own life - Smita Patil being Parveen Babi in real life.

Comment by Akshaya on February 7, 2006 @ 9:40 pm

Boss your understanding of cinema is so bad that either you shouldn’t watch films at all, or should watch about thousand more before you start even thinking about them critically. Writing is an altogether different matter.

- Akshaya