Dispatches from the Wall Corner: A Journey through Indian Cinema

by Baradwaj Rangan

Disclaimer: Baradwaj Rangan has no illusions of grandeur that you are going to base your movie-watching on his reviews or even agree with his assessment of movies.
He is a film critic simply because he loves cinema – discussing, analysing and getting nostalgic about it–
and has no qualms in accepting that, ‘pop culture doesn’t always welcome the deserving and the worthy but sometimes the sideshow carnivals that make modern life such an entertaining merry-go-round.’
Split into six sections – Actors, Hindi Cinema, Directors, Music, Tamil Cinema, and Reviews – Dispatches from the Wall Corner is a collection of Baradwaj Rangan’s best writings, and outstanding in unraveling the magical world of Indian cinema. For instance, like a fawning fan before the Superstar’s altar, he convinces us how Rajinikanth ‘…isn’t a formula that can be bottled and bartered.’ Or despite an obvious reverence for masala Hindi films of the Seventies, including Sholay and Don, he unhesitatingly describes Yash Chopra’s characters as “pretty people in prettier clothes”. Straddling the worlds of Tamil and Hindi movies with great panache, the book is wonderfully honest about how, for instance, ‘Hindi cinema has learned that maximum profits can be made from the handfuls of multiplexes… ,’ while on the other hand, ‘Tamil cinema continues to tell the stories of the villages.

Genres: Nonfiction

610 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 14, 2014

About the author

Baradwaj Rangan is an Indian film critic, writer, and formerly the deputy editor of The Hindu. He later became a senior editor of Film Companion. Rangan won the National Film Award for Best Film Critic in 2006. Before joining The Hindu, Rangan wrote for The New Indian Express. He has also authored two books, worked as a screenwriter, and is a teacher at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai.

Reviews

[Sahitya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review is probably going to be very rambly, so I hope you’ll keep up with me 😊😊

I love movies, specifically Indian films. I’ve grown up watching them and despite how much I’m exposed to world cinema, it’s still the emotional heft and vibrancy of our cinema that resonates with me the most. But I won’t say I watch a lot of it - growing up, it depended on affordability, now it’s more of a personal preference - but I still love the experience of watching it, hooting at a hero’s entrance scene in the theatre or humming the tune when I’m watching at home. And that’s why, in this age of influencers and YouTube stars, it’s no surprise that there’s an abundance of American channels who react and review Indian films, and I happen to love and follow one of them. Ironically, it is while watching one of the videos of “Our Stupid Reactions” that I came to know about this book, and immediately went looking for it. Imagine my delight when I found it on Kindle Unlimited of all places. I had been on a kind of a slump and didn’t feel like reading any of the books on my tbr, so this one came at the perfect time and I couldn’t have asked for a better book to act a bit like a palate cleanser which made me nostalgic and all kinds of happy.

Baradwaj Rangan is obviously a National Award winning famous critic, but I’ve only been following him since a couple of year when he started reviewing on YouTube. I have always been amazed by the unique way he analyses a film, and I particularly enjoy how he answers in length questions asked by the twitterverse about one movie every week. So, I was very excited to read this book, which is essentially a compilation of his articles about cinema, music, the artists as well as many of his reviews. The first surprise was reading Karan Johar’s foreward, the most unlikeliest of choices but he is cheeky and self deprecating as always. The second surprise was finding out that me and BR are the alumni of the same university, albeit a few decades apart. It changes the way you approach a book when you realize that this is a person who studied engineering but his love of cinema compelled him into becoming such a prolific critic.

BR’s command over the language is masterful, he is such an excellent writer that I want to keep reading whatever he has to say, even if I vehemently disagree with his viewpoint. He can also be very scathing in his criticism, but he coats his sarcasm in such a flourishing manner that you don’t feel the blow so much. In every sentence, his absolute adoration for the cinematic medium is reflected, so when he is disappointed by a movie or an artist, you really feel for him. His various interviews were a delight to read, especially his observations about his interviewees and how we was sometimes feeling about getting to talk to his cine idols. I couldn’t help but be intensely fascinated by his interaction with RGV, especially his reaction about the eccentric director. Even his obits about some of the greats of cinema are like a showreel, where we get to remember them but not exactly with rose tinted glasses. While I really loved his general musings about directors or particular movies, and what they meant for the cinematic movement of the country or Tamil Nadu, I ended up reading only his Hindi film reviews in the second half of the book. My exposure to Tamil cinema is very limited and reading about some familiar artists who also made significant contributions to the Telugu industry was fascinating, but I didn’t feel much interested in the Tamil movie reviews. The Hindi film reviews were hilarious though, especially because most of them were negative but ones which I had actually enjoyed a lot. But despite these opposite opinions, I never could find fault in his analysis - just a realization his standards are a lot more higher than mine.

The biggest surprise for me was his section on music. I enjoy listening to Indian movie songs, and my level of liking depends on if it’s entertaining or has a beautiful tune and lyrics. But the way in which BR analysed the composition, the use of instruments, the differences between a live music orchestra vs a more technological production etc was a revelation, because I didn’t know that movie critics could give such in-depth insights about music. His commentary about why a song works, what makes it memorable, the affect of choosing the right singer for the right song, the importance of the song-dance in Indian cinema and how it has evolved over the decades - it’s all like reading a masterclass and I was amazed at his knowledge about music, both Indian and international.

To conclude, I have to say this felt like an enriching experience. Either reading it in bits and pieces or at a stretch, this book is steeped in memories and nostalgia and deep love of Indian cinema and it gave me immense joy, as well as respite from my usual dangerous fantasy worlds or even more horrifying real world. And the only way to sign off this wonderful reading experience is by going to a movie theatre to hopefully watch the next blockbuster of Indian cinema.

[Selva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recommended for movie buffs who are tired of simplistic/regular film reviews. covers only Tamil and Hindi movies. Actual rating: 3.5 stars.

[Anu Warrier · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is one reviewer I read regularly. One critic whose critiques I wait for, a person whose writing I enjoy just for the art that he brings to his craft. So when I read on his blog about this book coming out soon, I had to pre-order it. For one, he is an articulate writer. It is not just his command over the language, but his turn of phrase, the humour and wit that he brings to his writing, and his unabashed love for his subject - the movies - that make you return to his writing again and again.
Baradwaj Rangan comes across as the sort of person who enjoys every moment spent at the movies - settling into his seat in the wall corner before the advertisements begin, and still sitting there as the end credits roll, while others mill around him, eager to go home before the crowds begin. That absolute enchantment with the movies comes through even when he is writing about the latest infantile box-office 'hit'. I've been reading him for years, and yes, there have been times when I have vehemently disagreed with him, but what I like about his writing is that there is an honesty about it. He takes his cinema seriously, and he is usually kind in his analysis. I have never known him to pan a film, trashing it for a lack of logic, for instance.

Rangan is also kinder to the small film, the first-time director who seems to have something to say even if he falters on the way between idea and execution. It is very rarely that he finds a film that he cannot bear, and then, the fun (for us readers) is to see how elegantly he dismisses it. (The film has to be very bad and with no redeeming qualities whatsoever for him to do thus.) However, I do not ever remember him saying 'Leave your brains at the door.'

He also doesn't tell his readers whether they should watch a film or not. Instead, he talks about how he felt watching the film. About what he liked and did not like. Most importantly, however, he is sympathetic to the demands of the box-office, while at the same time critical of films that lay claim to high 'art' and fail to deliver.

Dispatches From The Wall Corner is a collection of the National Award-winning film critic's articles, reviews, and his opinion pieces (sometimes archived under his 'Bitty Ruminations' on his blog). Right from the Foreword - by Karan Johar, no less! I was grinning. Because Johar confesses to being completely taken aback at being asked to write the foreword. 'Does this man even like anything I've made? he asks, after listing the headlines of Rangan's reviews of his films.

The anthology is compiled across six categories - Actors, Hindi Cinema, Directors, Music, Tamil Cinema and Reviews. The sections on personalities alternate between interviews, opinion pieces and even obituaries.

I laughed out loud while reading this gem in his obituary of Gemini Ganesan: By way of songs though, Gemini got short shrift - the film's best number went to Sivaji and a slim-trim Saroja Devi, while Gemini got 'Andru oomai pennalo' where he was reduced to prancing around (in a truly embarrassing tribal get-up) with Savitri, who, by that time, had clearly begun to relish her breakfasts, lunches and dinners.

I find myself nodding vigorously when I read his estimation of Abhishek Bachchan: "...he's lipsmackingly good with the light stuff, but his successes in other kinds of roles possibly depends on the skills of his directors."

He writes tidy obituaries to Joy Mukherjee, Dev Anand, Feroz Khan, Nirupa Roy, and Suchitra Sen, while elsewhere, he tries to analyse the reason behind Rajinikanth's success and popularity. His thoughts on the death of VK Murthy leads to an interesting article on how technicians who are associated with certain filmmakers become more popular by association to 'good' cinema than those who work on films that are not considered 'art'.

He talks about Sholay being larger than life, and why we cannot make a Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak anymore. He references Dil Chahta hai - '...the most affecting, most bracing, most honest coming-of-age film from modern day Bollywood' - when he writes about Rock On, Wake up Sid and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara - all of which he thinks are 'well-crafted films, glutted with good writing and acting and startling moments of self-discovery, and that is why it's baffling when they excuse themselves from genuine emotion.' He has a reason why they do so, he thinks - '...in other words, it was a little too much reality for a Friday night.'

The section on directors is fabulous - interviews with Govind Nihalani, K Balachander, Ram Gopal Verma (who hijacked the interview according to Rangan), Shankar, Selvaraghavan, et al; an article on the questions he would have liked to ask Tamil film director Bala (who cancelled the interview because he hated Rangan's review of his latest film), and his thoughts (while sitting through Welcome to Sajjanpur) on Shyam Benegal and how the Master had fallen. This section ends with an obituary (of sorts) to Yash Chopra.

He writes about people you never thought he would write about - the section on music contains articles (expected) on AR Rehman and Ilaiyaraja (an interview with director Gautam Menon on working with the maestro), but it also has notes on Bappi Lahiri and the advent of disco music, along with his thoughts on the score of Guzaarish; it ends with 'notes' on film music. We can sympathise with him when he talks about Binaca Geet Mala, admitting that while it listed 'popular songs', he winced at some of the songs that occupied the top slot. I empathised when I read this - 'Why do our film songs sound so much better during long rides in foreign countries?'

We also empathise when he writes about his fascination with actors - 'The Kamal who was cool way before cool came to Tamil cinema.' And the disillusionment with an idol - Kamal's films, those days, felt like summer vacations - while today, they've come to feel like annual examinations. And when he writes 'He's done enough for Tamil cinema. I'd like to see him back where he began - as, quite simply, one of the coolest people, if not on the planet, at least on the Tamil screen', I think that would resonate with our thoughts of some of our idols.

All this is just a peek into this delightful book, the second half of which is a collection of reviews of films from over the last ten years. They include some surprises as well - films you didn't think would make the cut. Some of these reviews come with their own laugh-out-loud moments, such as when one performance by a leading lady results in his wishing he could invent a new category in the next year's award ceremonies - Most Annoying Lead (Female). Or this throwaway sentence that sums up my nebulous thoughts after watching the remake of Don - "And you can't help thinking that all that the older Don needed to achieve the same contrast was Amitabh Bachchan." Or this lovely gem about Madhur Bhandarkar - "...a filmmaker who wants to do this (examine the cancers that are eating away at our society) should be something of a pathologist... (however) the only thing he is interested in being is a taxidermist."

Dispatches is not a book that need be read at a stretch, but can be picked up and read - whenever, wherever, however. People who do not know Tamil cinema can just skip the whole section because there is enough cross-referencing there to make even a seasoned Tamil film-goer slightly befuddled. If there is one peeve, it is that some of the articles are just too short. Just when you have got caught up in reading his analysis of a film critic who is also a fan and his feelings when he meets his idol in the flesh, wham! it is over and we are on to other articles, other thoughts.

As a book on cinema, it is not so much a collection of writings on 'Cinema' (whispered with awe and reverence) or an insightful analysis of the same, as it is a collection of thoughts and reflections that travel hither and tither, willy-nilly, through the by-roads of our films, both Hindi and Tamil, and give us a closer look and a deeper understanding of films and the many people and things associated with it.

I may or may not agree with everything that Baradwaj Rangan writes, but one thing that he does not do is bore me. Of all the books on cinema that I picked up on this trip, this has been the best written and the most entertaining. From a man who loves his films the way Rangan does, I expected no less.

In his own words (about films), 'But who cares how a thing is labelled if it provides, if only for a diverting instant, a sense of diving into a great ocean of communal joy?

And that is just what this book offers.

[E.T. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Firstly, i skipped the second half of the book as it was reviews of movies. While i enjoy reading fans celebrating a movie or passionately discussing a movie, I hate reading movie reviews. Most reviewers are killjoys and like movies for the wrong reasons and in the few reviews I read in the first half, this author was the same. Also skipped the columns on Tamil cinema in the first half (25%).
I prefer books on movies/sports when I am busy professionally or travelling and this one was free for Amazon Prime members. I had never heard of the author before but his writing was good and he made different points from the usual. Served its purpose for me.

[Govind Nagarajan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Witty and funny, Rangan's takes and reviews of the cinema world often eclipses the entertainment provided by films themselves.

[Shashank Giregol · Rating 4 out of 5]

BR's writings are always subtle and comes from the heart which make a reader to go all out and finish his books.

[Ritvij Tiwari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative. Baradwaj's writing is like a prism.

[Ved. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rangan and his wisdom. Magic.

[Balachander · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have something to confess. I didn't really finish this entire book off before marking it as "Read". Or to be exact, I have read all of this - a compilation of Baradwaj's best pieces on cinema for the Hindu, Indian express and for his blog over the last decade or so - at the time each article was first published. I'm not sure if I am one of his oldest readers but I must be close. So, in that sense, this was a book that I had finished even before picking up. So, there's no guilt at having done what I did. This is also obviously one of those books that I already knew I would like. How much depends on the pieces chosen. And in that Baradwaj is more or less successful, though I don't see a few of my favorites - Omkara, Band Baajaa Baraat and a few more from when Baradwaj was at his snarky best - for instance, I remember a phrase about Nayantara's item number in Gajini (something about her rolls of belly fat doing Mexican waves) And since this is a book on cinema some of Baradwaj's other writings obviously do not find a place (I'm sure he felt bad about not being able to include some of his Arrey O Sambar pieces)
I realize I am rambling on assuming you're already familiar with the author's body of work. Suffice to say that Baradwaj Rangan is one of India's best writers on cinema. Thoughtful, erudite and with a lovely style, Baradwaj's writings were the ones that got me seriously interested in writings on cinema. (Prior to that my favorite writer used to be..cough cough... Khalid Mohammed. I was young ok.) Even if one isn't a cinema lover, one can still read it just for Baradwaj's lovely use of the language. If one is a lover of cinema then the pleasure is doubled. Baradwaj is a patient, thoughtful reviewer, always willing to find something interesting to discuss about even some of the worst movies.(Movies that Khalid would've dismissed with some alliterative nonsense) What sets him apart from some other similarly interesting reviewers (like Raja Sen) is how he uses his knowledge of not only cinema but also literature and music to bring in extra dimensions to his writing. Oh, while I am on music, some of the best writing on film music can be found on his blog. Written in a manner that even someone who isn't music-literate like me can appreciate and understand.
If you'd like to sample some of his work before plunging into this compilation, check out the reviews on blog. I'd recommend the pseudo interview with Bala on Naan Kadavul, any of his writing on Mani Ratnam's or Vishal Baradwaj's or Mysskkin's or Ashutosh Gowarikar's or Anurag Kashyap's movies. (I guess one should be greatful that there are more movies around nowadays they reward Baradwaj's process of reviewing movies.)
To conclude, read this if you're a lover of cinema or just of good writing. If you are already a fan, well then, you probably don't need my arguments for it.

[Diptakirti Chaudhuri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baradwaj Rangan is that rare breed of film writers who can point out things to admire in films you have hated and shortcomings of the films you have loved. His love for cinema is so infectious that he makes you read about films you haven't seen and actually makes you want to see them. (I actually took a break from reading this book and watched one of the movies he had written about.)

Hence, recommended for film lovers.

[carlageek · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are as big a fan of Rangan's critical style as I am, you will love this book as much as I did. I do not always agree with him, but I love the way he argues his points and analyzes film texts. This is a thoroughly enjoyable and rich collection.