This is a critique of the movie "Call me by your name". It has a few plot details that may be spoilers, if you have not seen the movie. On the same weekend when my city of birth, Mumbai, was observing the Annual LGBT Pride, I happened to watch "Call me by your name". Interesting coincidince: while the pride represents the struggle for a legal, dignified status for the gay community of my motherland India, the film is the epitome of mainstream celebration of the acknowledgement, awareness and acceptance at a global level. While I was convincing my buddies on watching this movie, a new American friend, corrected me that I mustn't call it a "Gay" love story, but a love story. Touché! Heteronormativity is either the curse of ignorance or a scared man's camouflage. This intrinsic need to outrightly dismiss any alternative viewpoint on intimate matters of sexuality today is as absurd as those who once laughed at the thought of the earth bein
Spoiler alert! More than a movie review, this is a critique and has several plot details that you may want to avoid if you would so choose. Let us all agree that at some point in a good movie, content should take over the form. No, it's not fair to say Padmaavat lacks story. In fact, there is a fairly detailed story with a couple of side plots too. But the film maker continues to wow us with his trademark visual wizardry where story somehow is on the back burner. It’s almost like Sanjay Leela Bhansali assumes that his audience cares more about slow mo sequences like that of a king being dressed for war by his (unblinking) wife than about characters, background and context. This kind of narcissistic commitment to treatment puts this potentially masterful director in the same league as Rohit Shetty (who thinks audiences only want to see cars topple) or David Dhawan (who loves cheap thrills) or Abbas-Mastan (who’re all about WTF twists and turns in the plot). I almost w