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Reviews
Daughters of Destiny (2017)
Morose and Angst-ridden
DAUGHTERS OF DESTINY
4 Part Documentary Series
Shot over 7 years
Streaming on Netflix.
When a film, in this case a documentary series, which should have been a positive and feel good experience for the viewer, leaves you not exactly sad, but certainly with an overwhelming sense of poignant melancholia, how do you explain that? All the intensions of the people involved are good, and in the end things works out well too... but listening to the four students speak of their lives, in a tone lacking exuberance, a pall of gloom seems to fall over the entire film. This despite them having finally achieved much and are ready to take on the world.
Has the creator of the series, DAUGHTERS OF DESTINY, Vanessa Roth, failed? It is unfortunate, because it is in the hands of the director to extract the information in whichever tone she wishes. It is for her to alternate between light-heated episodes, which am sure there were many, along with the grim stories of existential anxieties in their lives.
The series is the story of SHANTI BHAVAN, a boarding school set up near Bengaluru, by an NRI, which offers education to the underprivileged sections of society. The way they operate is very novel and if I might add, experimental.
The policy of the establishment is to pick only one child, from about 20 impoverished families each year, at the age of 4, and educate them through school, college and sometimes postgraduation, till the point s/he starts working. It is instilled into the children, all the while, that once they are done with their education, their main aim in life is to give back to society, starting with educating their siblings, lifting their own families out of poverty, and finally their communities.
The story of the institution is told through the eyes of four students - all exceptionally articulate, with remarkable clarity of thought.
The children experience a sense of achievement and also disappointment. I won't go into the exact nature of their experiences, but leave it for the viewer to find out. What makes it worse, is that the management itself, goes through periods of financial instability, putting the lives of the students into uncertainty.
I do wish that the series had given as much time and footage to the good times the children and management have on their journey, rather than make it entirely morose and angst-ridden.
AK vs AK (2020)
Immensely watchable
Watched AK vs AK, and I think it's a novel concept, very well executed...
Anil Kapoor is fantastic... very believable.
Anurag Kashyup on the other hand, comes across as "acting" the role of the stereotypical villain - complete with sneers and snarls. And towards the end of the film, when the script takes a sudden change in direction, his performace takes a major dip... I can't tell you much, therefore these criptic references...
The handheld, candid camera was impressive. The edit was crisp.
Some of the dialogues are priceless. Like one character, from the labour class, at a very tense moment in the film, tells Anil Kappor that he too is an actor. What does Anil think, that he is the only actor around? That's followed by Anurag's assistant, Yogita, giggling spontaneously off screen. There are many such vignettes casually thrown in.
The role of Anil's son Harsh was short, but even that seemed a bit long - particularly one hammy scene was unnecessarily stretched... but I appreciate the dad ensuring a role for his son, as meaty as the script would allow. Did that expose Harsh's limition as a raw actor?
One flaw which bothered me throughout was that, one fragile looking female assistant was shown to cover the entire action single-handedly, for 10 long hours. In the end we even realise it is not a tiny HD camera which fits in the palm of her hand, or a cellphone camera, but one of the heavy, professional video cameras, that she has been lugging around and shooting with throughout.
But all this is just splitting hairs.
All in all, the film is cleverly scripted, well directed, fast pace and immensely watchable,