White to play and win in eleven moves!

It certainly does look like a page flew off from the Howard Staunton classic, 'The chess player's hand book' with all that antique and elegant chess notations(long before the boring and simple algebraic System was invented).  But this is how the book, 'Through the looking glass: What Alice found there', the famous sequel of 'Alice in Wonderland' begins. (Yeah. I admit; I didn't know ) . May be after watching Tim Burton's latest movie adaptation  of Lewis Carrol's classic 'Alice in Wonderland' , I just got curious about the book and the man who wrote it. Tim Burton's adaption is about the sequel, not the original book though the Movie name suggested that its about the original. Though the movie was all colorful and  Johny Depp, the 'hatter' and Mia Wasikovska,  the 'Alice' were  fun to watch, elements of gore were more gory than children, the intended viewer probably could appreciate.Anyways,the  beautifully animated, 'Cheshire', the evaporating cat was doubtlessly my favorite.

 It seems like the entire literature world is arguing on to conclude whether Charles Lutwidge Dodgson(Lewis Carrol was his pen name) was in fact a pedophile or not even after 100 years of his death. Known to be a great creative photographer of his times, he found  nude children, a subject of interest when it came to his photographic adventures. I may like to agree with those critics who believe that this assumption is a byproduct of  viewing a 19th century creation with the eye of a 21st century critique. Let the arguments go on as long as the world has nothing better to do, but the unimaginable talent of Lewis Carrol will be remembered for ever for all his out of the world fantasies and creations which amused children and grownups for hundreds of years.

Schatten der Zeit

 

 'Schatten der Zeit' or Shadows of Time is not a movie to be told or to be heard, but to be felt. When a German film maker, fascinated by the charm of Bengali Cinema, decided to take a movie in Bengali, that resulted in a beautifully crafted unusual love story. The very word 'Love Story' would sound derogatory if used to describe this 2004 flick, as its beyond all such words. It’s about two souls who loves each other but not destined to live together. They would never unite unlike the typical Indian screen couple who would end up in marriage in a fairy tale fashion. After all fairy tales have this nasty way of concluding the story with a terrible incomplete note saying, 'Prince and Princess lived happily ever after'. Fairy tales remain fairy tales just because none of us attempt to complete the story from where it ends. After all who would like to see miseries of life in black and white when they get glittering colours to keep their eyes glued.

            

(Thumpa  and Sikander, great performance)

  'Shadows of Time’ is certainly not a fairy tale and ‘Ravi’ and ‘Masha’ would never live together but their love for each other would never end. Masha would spend her entire life in waiting for Ravi, where Ravi would live an incomplete life just like a Jigsaw puzzle waiting for the last piece to arrive. He would continue his search for her in occasions but goes back to his present like a kid to his mother. Searching for Masha is more like Searching for himself and this search continues his entire life time. Movie depicts four different phases of their life, a childhood in slavery, a struggling adolescence, well settled youth and a peaceful old age. The only aspect of their life which would never change with all those poverty, miseries, unexpected wealth for at least one of them, or even the uninvited wrinkles and grey hairs, is their love and passion for each other.

Florian Gallenberger, an Academy award winning German director attempted something which no one else tried before, to shoot a foreign movie in a foreign land with all foreign actors and in a foreign language. He came to India, done his research, wrote his script, took a course in Bengali language for himself and his German Crew, associated with a brilliant Casting director and picked the most appropriate actors for the job. There were 7000 children who were interviewed before finalizing the boy and girl to play the young Ravi and Masha.  It’s heard that, even the lead actor Prashanth Narayanan (a Malayali Actor and a former badminton champion) had to undergo a Bengali language crash course before taking up this role. Aiswarya Rai and Vivek Oberoi include the list of actors initially  considered for the lead roles. Thanks to the Casting director for doing the right thing in choosing the right people as I felt Prashanth, Tannishtha and especially Tillotama are impossible to be replaced.   

Thillotama Shome as Deepa

    Prashanth (Ravi), Tannishtha Chatterjee (Masha) and Tillotama Shome (Ravi's wife Deepa) were elegantly brilliant and Irafan Khan(Yani Mishra, Masha's husband) didn't disappoint too. The Child actors where amazingly good with Sikander Agarwal playing Young Ravi and Tumpa Das as young Masha. Biplab Das Gupta as a greedy villainy Factory manager has done some terrific performance too. 

(Florian Gallenberger)

Photography, Art direction, background score, period sets (Story takes place in pre-independent India) and almost all other aspects of Cinema were just perfect; thanks to a world class European Crew with their Indian associates, doing all required work. It’s heard that it took just 12 weeks for the team including ten Germans to wind up the shooting of the film in and around Kolkata. The movie starts with a Car Journey which Ravi takes to an abandoned Carpet factory where he met Masha. The brilliant picturization  of this car trip when the titles where shown reminded me of the way, Stanley Kubrik’s Classic horror movie ‘Shining’ which also begins with a beautiful aerial photography of a Car trip on the mountains.

It was Intentional not to disclose the story line as I seriously wish who ever stumble upon this tiny blog, would watch Shadows of Time. The storyline of this movie has seriously influenced ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, a pathetic commercial flick which got all undeserved attention and accolades with no class at all in its credits.

(Prashanth and Tannishtha)

Though the movie was made in an Indian Language and shot completely In India with all Indian actors, it was never released in India. Maybe, we don’t have any distributor in India who would take risk in distributing a class movie to a classless mass. We also have no option in India to buy this DVD as none of the DVD selling portals sells this in India. You can buy it from some foreign portals. This is where YouTube comes in, and you can watch the full movie whenever you please at free of cost. Thanks to the kind heart who uploaded it to YouTube.Piracy doesn't hurt as the movie was released six years back Thanks to Sony Pix channel for airing this movie or else I would have missed this forever. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liNgqY8ld9k