Four decades after his death, Bengal’s greatest star still commands a devotion that borders on the religious. Uttam Kumar was revelatory in Satyajit Ray’s Nayak (1966), one of his most iconic performances. Every year, in the month of September, when Uttam Kumar was born in Ahiritola in the northern parts of Kolkata, and also in July, when he passed away, people across West Bengal go wild with celebrations in tribute to Uttam Kumar though he passed away in 1980, more than five

Peter o' Toole in 'The Night of the Generals' (1967), which remains vastly underrated despite its trenchant probing of the Nazi psyche. This week marks yet another anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe. The dating of the twentieth century’s most cataclysmic war, always a matter of controversy, has definitively begun to shift in both popular and academic histories to underscore its global dimensions. In the past two decades, the war’s historiography has

Sergio Leone turned the Western inside out with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, transforming America’s frontier myth with irony, violence and Ennio Morricone’s unforgettable music. Eli Wallach as 'Tuco' and Clint Eastwood as 'Blondie' in Sergio Leone's genre-bending 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' (1966). Three men stand in an old cemetery in a desolate landscape, facing one another in the now-famous Mexican standoff during the American Civil War. The war is raging somewhere

Khilawadi, a short fiction film directed by the young and sprightly Shobhita Thakur, alumnus of the FTII, Pune, is making news wherever the film is being screened. Why? The subject of the film is shocking in its inhuman brutality. Through a brief but powerful narrative, the film tells the story of the 12-year-old Sapna who is good in studies and dreams of becoming a doctor one day. The term “Khilawadi” is a locally used word associated with the Banchada community in Western

A still from Peter Brook's 'The Mahabharata' (1989) Every time Hollywood drops a blockbuster movie based on one of the foundational epics of the West, a collective groan seems to arise from a significant section of Indian cinephiles and the Indian audience at large: If they can do it, why can’t we? Yugo Sako’s brilliant Ramayana, the Legend of Prince Rama (1993) Be it Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (2004), Uberto Pasolini’s The Return (2024), or Christopher Nolan’s latest Odyssey (

Separated by 55 years and radically different philosophies, Satyajit Ray and Christopher Nolan found remarkably similar cinematic ways to make the elusive nature of time visible. A still from Ray's biting classic Mahapurush (1965) “Gentlemen think alike!” is the proverb that resonated in connection to what Nolan recently said while praising Satyajit Ray's work; and with cinema’s timeless exploration of scientific and philosophical concepts. Let me direct you to a piece of dia

Laurence Harvey and Frank Sinatra in John Frankenheimer’s sinister ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ (1962) Meta’s recent apology to the Indian government for briefly restricting a video posted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the turbulent education protests spearheaded by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) was yet another reminder that some of the most consequential battles of our time are fought in the invisible territory between grievance and manipulation. The larger issue

The 1968 miniseries L’Odissea remains the definitive adaptation of Homer's epic It is profoundly dispiriting to watch timeless epics or famous fictional characters, let alone actual historical ones, rendered hollow by contemporary ideological caprice. The casting choices in current high-profile period adaptations, most glaringly seen in Christopher Nolan’s much-hyped The Odyssey, reflect an industry increasingly obsessed with modern optics over historical and narrative integr

If you thought Lawrence of Arabia (1962) was the only great desert classic, think again. Overshadowed for decades by David Lean’s masterpiece, Khartoum (1966) remains one of the great neglected historical epics. Directed by Basil Dearden and anchored by commanding performances from Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier, it deserves a place alongside the decade’s finest large-scale historical dramas. While it falls short of the towering achievement of Lawrence of Arabia, it rem

There are films that critics unanimously consecrate, and others that, despite critical derision, retain a strange and enduring grip upon memory. Such ambivalently received films are cherished with an almost irrational devotion by those who encounter them at the right age and the right mood. The Cold War yarn ‘Ice Station Zebra’ (1968), from the nerve-wracking novel by thriller maestro Alistair MacLean, belongs firmly to the latter category. I watched it during adolescence whe

The first thing that struck me about the story was how implausibly modern it sounded. A filmmaker in India obsessively listening to an obscure dream-pop track from Los Angeles. An actor with ten million Instagram followers casually asking the internet if anyone recognised the song in his post. A comment beneath it. A reply. Then, within forty-five days, a film was born. Most films begin with financing decks and market calculations. I’m Not An Actor began with taste. Aditya Kr

Cinema ceases to interpret reality when it begins to shape how that reality is understood. There is a reason history is easier to watch. Even when it is selective, dramatised, or quietly biased, history comes with distance. It allows us to engage without feeling implicated. We can question it, critique it, even reject it - but we are not inside it. The present offers no such comfort. When cinema focuses on the present, it ceases to be a secure narrative space. It starts shap

Pinjar literally means “cage.” But the word can be expanded to mean more than a cage. In Rudrajit Roy’s debut film, the title refers both to birds, the bird-catcher and to other characters held captive in the larger and invisible cage called Life. “Pinjar is about captivity in its visible and invisible forms. It asks whether freedom is an external condition or an internal awakening. It does not provide solutions. It observes, reflects, and invites the audience to confront the

Legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa (1910–1998) was shaped as much by American cinema as by Japanese tradition. American cinematic genres, be it the film noir , gangster pictures and above all, the Western coursed through his work. As a result, some of his masterpieces proved unusually hospitable to remakes. Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) became ‘The Magnificent Seven’ (1960) while his ‘Yojimbo’ (1961) - itself indebted to Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 novel Red Harves

If Werner Herzog’s ‘Aguirre, the Wrath of God’ (1972) is justly recognised as a staple of world cinema, Irving Lerner’s ‘The Royal Hunt...

Robert Redford was an icon of American cinema whose political courage and dedication to independent storytelling left an indelible mark...

There was a time when war films aspired to something greater than the blood-spattered grit of today or tightly choreographed mayhem. They...