Mehr Filme

The Indo-German film festival is going on here in Bangalore…

Oktoberfest
This movie shows the amalgam of life on the last day of Oktoberfest, the two week beer festival held yearly in Munich. There are several stories running in parallel that are loosely linked here and there. The stories are about best friends, about relationships falling apart, coming together and about parents and children with the central theme sort of being love. None of the stories in the movie are intense as such and it just shows day to day people. The director himself said that if you really stand in Oktoberfest and take notice you will see all the things in his movie. What I really liked in this movie is that none of the stories as such reach a conclusion. There are left as loose knots that you can make up your mind as to where they will go next.

To me the story of the wheelchair guy pretending to be handicapped was really good. Twenty odd years ago there was a bomb blast at Oktoberfest and this guy keeps harassing the fest police over the phone by asking them questions like “Could it have been prevented?” In the middle he meets a girl who runs one of the rides at the fest. They obviously like each other and spend some time getting to know each other but in the end the cops catch up to the guy and arrest him. She is totally betrayed when she finds that he is actually not handicapped. At the police station he finally explains to the chief, who was patrolling the day of the bomb blast, that his father lost his legs in that blast. He was kid then and had made a big fuss about an Oktoberfest t-shirt. His dad had gone back to the fest area to get it for him and had got caught in the blast. Finally the next day he comes back to meet the girl but the scene fades there, you are left to think about what she says to him and where they go from there…

Overall the music is really very nice and had me tapping my feet time and time again. The movie is well shot given that it is almost completely oudoor and was made in the actual Oktoberfest.

Off-Beat
This is a story about kind of a reclusive guy who as a kid survived a serious car accident in which his parents were killed. After the crash, apart from the trauma, he has some medical complications for some years but now he has grown up and works as a paramedic where his nickname is “Crash”. He continues to have flashes and nightmares about his past life including the accident and it is through these flashes his story is told. His grandmother raises him and there is a beautiful scene in which she tells him about strength and courage. She says you can forget about everything else but there are only two things you can do in tough situations “inhale and exhale”.

Crash is kind of a loner but a workaholic who keeps helping all kinds of low lives on the streets. The tag line of the movie is “probes the soul of a troubled young man who rescues others but is desperately in need of rescue himself.” In his dreams he sees a woman who he actually doesn’t know. Finally one day he does meet her, the situation is complicated (I won’t explain much why it is complicated, but believe me it is nothing like a typical love triangle complicated) and they do fall in love but at the end of the movie life repeats itself in a horrible way. The scene where Crash is pulled between life and death has been shown is one of the most unique ways. So many movies show people dying but finally making it back to life due to a touch or a tear drop, this movie does the same but adds a very nice twist to it. To me the whole movie is worth watching just for that scene.

The movie also touches one of my favorite animal stories. A very touching story about a really brave and faithful mongoose, written by Rudyard Kipling: “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”. In the ambulance when the girl tells Crash “I feel sorry for you” dealing with death, blood etc “and you always arrive late”. Crash replies with “My grandmother told me this and I believe in what Rikki-Tikki-Tavi said ‘There is reward in every good deed’.” And with that they burst out laughing.

Overall the story is pretty good and the movie is well made but it is very graphic since he is a paramedic, people with a weak stomach will have trouble.