The Violin Player, a film by Bauddhayan Mukherji

... Sometimes it hurts. It hurts beyond measure. Beyond belief. It hurts enough that you realise that you are alive. That life has finally claimed you for itself. You are deep in its clutches and there is no escape. No window, no crack in the wall, no trapdoors leading into the soul of a John Malkovich and his rich life, no. nothing. Only  the now. The unending, dark, dank, empty now.

 These 70 minutes crafted by #BauddhayanMukherji are for those of us who are trapped in the now. It is for us to comprehend the lack of levity that life allows us, to cope with the copious amounts of crap that time throws at us and to smile through it all as if in deliverance, a smile that only the strumming of a forgotten stradivarius can bring to a tired face. 

 And to soar above this filth, there must be music, there must be Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Vivaldi, Verdi, Ravel, Strauss, Rossini....and some Tagore perhaps, to keep things closer home.

Do not for a minute mistake these 70 minutes for a film. The Violin player is not a film. It is a study of the human spirit...because never can one have said so much in so little time and in such few frames.

#RitwickChakraborty. Now, I have often foung this man lacking, too arrogant to be taken seriously, too shallow in his portrayal that he has been typecast in thus far(his director's folly no doubt). Perhaps he didn't care about these roles, simply because he was waiting to Be #the Violin Player*. Because here, he ceases to be anyone but the violin player. Every crease on his face, every molecule of sweat, ever arch of his brow, the  twitch of his sardonic lips, every single breath drawn, belongs to his character and no one else, not even to himself. He becomes despondency, hope, success, disdain, disgust and pure genius ...all of that and then some. He is music. In skin. In pain. In ebuliant child-like desire, naked, in decripit form, a low life, stuck in reality and unable to shed the banality it brings and everything that comes with it, in our tiny, tiny insignificant, inelegant lives. 

You have made us all strip down and see our own selves for who we are... our souls needed this beautiful melody to sink into, to find the abyss and then rise and rise to the crescendo that is the sheer brilliance of #Bhaskar Dutta - you, my boy are a find and may success find you soon enough. 

#AdilHussain, A man of few words. Your eyes do all your talking. Your dark frame in its luminous white, leaves the human mind exposed, in all its nudity. You are sublime in the character you have been given and you assay it with the ease of a child playing with a toy. You are such a beautiful dark soul that you pervade the essence of the pain the violonist echoes...like a silent unrelenting chant, a nebula of dark matter, uncompromising in what you seek, thick, viscous opaque and your eyes, oh your all seeing eyes, they belong to the devil in this film.

#NayaniDixit, you sweet, unassuming invisible thing you. You make me sit up and take notice of you; You insist i do and I do! In your fullsome wonderfully terrible avatar that makes me gape at the futility of my being, the crude that comes to life and the careful that comes to a halt. You are beautiful in your ugliness and grotesgue in your salvation. You were my rewind, my pause, my encore, my oh-my-god moment. So thank you.

Here, in this film, you surrender your soul to pain. Bauddhayan Mukherji makes you  submit to melancholy, to delve in modern indian surreptitious erotica, to reach out to the dark recesses of an adult mind, to the even tempered logic of mundanity, to insanity, to pure survival, to depravity and to the drummings of your heart that match the first cadence of the creation of such a masterpeice by prodigy #BhaskarDutta, as you sit gripped by the intensity of the art that beholds you. 

Do not waste your time on any review, for it shall fail to capture the beauty you are about to witness. Don't try to hold on to the wings of this butterfly, lest you cripple this ethereal being, before it takes flight in your heart.

Note: The cockroach. That's what this universe is all about, the cockroach.

Haraamkhor: Indian cinema beams out brilliance.

India: Undervaluing its geniuses

Okay, so which moron ever said #Haraamkhor was an average film?!! Oh Damn you movie critics for making a masterpeice wallow in self pity. This is seasoned film making, enacted by some of the darkest faces I have seen come alive and shine bright on any *mm* screen.
And am I blown by the performances!!!

Nawazuddin Siddiqui Nawazuddin Siddiqui - it is an honour to watch you *become* the mildlly revolting, childlike in his lust and increadulous in his love for the girl. Your *Shyam* the teacher could win an award for simply the display of *concealed rage*, if nothing else!!

#ShwetaTripathi you brilliant child of modern Indian cinema, you made *Sandhya* stand tall next to Nawaz, your giggles, your eyes full of mirth, pain, betrayal, lust, you girl can cram so much into those tiny tiny pupils full of such expression!!!

#MohdSamaad as Mintu and #IrfanKhan as Kamal - Sandhya’s classmates play the underaged testosterrony *Sutradhars* of this wind mill blown saga, are such a rare delight. It is absolutely incongruous to put them down as just *child artists*. They make you gasp and giggle, shriek and run wild with their dirty, perverted, innocent, adorable gaffs and very vivid imagination... Watch out for the little one. He is a tour de force.

The nuanced story telling and the insane genius of Shlok Sharma's craft will leave you in deep awe and extreme sadness. Pity, these are Indian artists who have to struggle to fill Inox seats, when under the global arch of film making they are so often hailed for their blessed skills and raw talent. The infantile ease of each character, the sombre love of the police inspector, the insecure wife, the batshit crazy child who is The Shaktiman, every single thread depicts such natural shades of our life. Thanks Bodhayan Roychaudhury for insisting I watch this one alone.

This is superlative artwork and this Director, he knows his people, the glory in their small moments, their gentle hearts and their rich dark luscious souls. He knows the myriad languages India speaks. From the hollowness of committed men, the bold beautiful shamelessness of small town women, the utter glee and crushing sorrow of adolescent children...right until the last hurrah, the song #kidrejawaan which seals every single sordid end frame of Haraamkhor so seamlessly, with such dissonance, that you weep.

P.S: Can someone tap the Censor Board of India (not very gently) and tell them to quit trying to apologise for an adult subject by labling it as *Chatra Shoshan?* This is a love saga gone horribly wrong between a student and her teacher. Deal with it. No exploiting for anyone to see. So There.