Jigar Brahmbhatt

Jigar works as a software professional. His idea of a well-spent rainy afternoon is a hot cup of ginger tea, a bowlful of snacks, and an intriguing Hitchcockian thriller. Apart from movies, literature, eastern philosophy, and music, his mind occasionally swings from one thing to another, but he finds consistency in expression. His stories are always in-progress.

About Elly

About Elly [2009] Review: A Moral Mystery

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, mused Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov. It is so human to lie, to make things up. One does it as a matter of course, even when it is not a regular habit. It’s like a spasm in the monologue that is always running in one’s head, a sudden contraction in the verbiage – done involuntarily, almost like a sneeze. A really amusing example is a scene from 2012’s Moneyball. Brad Pitt asks Jonah Hill whether he did the player evaluation he was supposed to do.

‘Tamasha’ and the Problem of living your Dreams

For a film that dares you to live your dreams (the big fat cliché of our times), a film which has a “troubled” storyteller at its centre,Tamasha never rises to inventive narrative heights. Despite the Rumi quote about unfolding your own myth, it relies heavily on beaten to death stereotypes to create a very ordinary story and interjects it with flashes of popular sagas (Romeo-Juliet, Heer-Ranjha…) to make the full package appear hip or profound. It doesn’t create any myth.

a thousand years of good prayers

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers [2007]: An Intense Family Drama

“Older people make good grandparents, no matter how they were as parents.” A Chinese father visits his estranged daughter living in America. She receives him as if out of obligation. He exclaims…

La Jetée [1962]: A Sensation Frozen in Time

Have we ever solved the puzzle of memory and time? How can a film approach them? Not by providing a solution for sure, but by creating an intricate puzzle of its own. La Jetée, a short film made in 1962, is remarkable for being made completely out of still images. In the words of filmmaker Chris Marker it is a photo-roman (a photographic novel). It tells the story of a man “haunted by an image of his childhood”. As a kid, the protagonist had seen a woman