Kaminey

Finally watched Kaminey and I wonder why I didn't make the effort to watch it in a theatre. A DVD doesn't do justice to the pall of gloom (and doom) that hung over the story.

I'm a writer and my one big learning from Kaminey is to aspire to throw in such a large number of characters with their own back-stories that we briefly glimps across the 24 hours that spans the movie.

I can't stop thinking about Tashi's relationship with his wife and child, what makes the three Bong brothers so crazy, Charlie's dreams and his compulsive lust for a gamble, Guddu's conscious polarity to his brother,  a possible homo-erotic angle between Charlie and Mikhail, the metaphysical reason why Bhope is diabetic (how did the sweetness go out of his life?). And who is the little boy who keeps asking Bhope for chocolate and ultimately, a cycle? The fatal flaws are perfect.

There was also a sort of sibling pairing off that happens in the movie. At the heart is the Guddu-Charlie brothers-by-blood thing, then there's the Charlie-Mikhail brothers-by-choice thing, the three pagal Bong brothers, Cajetan and his brother who spar on ideologies of business and family, Lobo and Lele as the cop brothers, the Mikhail-Bhope phonetic brotherhood (Bhope Bhau-Tope Bhau) and finally, the one bond that prevents this from becoming an all-boy fest - Sweety and Bhope. 

Phew! Brilliant. How did Vishal Bharadwaj pull off a movie of such a short duration with so many characters and their baggages?

Reminds me of the way flash fiction is written - cut the crap, make it short, render it memorable.

Pics from Kaminey's Facebook album.