Dus Kahaniyaan - 10 (Cool) Stories! (Dus Kahaniyaan (DVD))

Member Name: anonymili

Product:	Dus Kahaniyaan (DVD)
Date:	14/08/09 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 10 stories in one film, what more could you want?

Disadvantages: Some of the stories might have been worth expanding slightly

Dus Kahaniyan means "Ten Stories". It's a Bollywood film (Hindi language) but not like anything I've seen before. In 1 hour and 53 minutes they've managed to pack in 10 different stories with different actors and directors and an assortment of directors and producers. Some of them even have a director or producer of one story acting in another.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I bought this medley of stories. I hadn't heard anyone else mention it at all but it boasted some really famous Bollywood stars such as Sanjay Dutt, Suniel Shetty, Manoj Bajpai, Shabana Azmi, Naseerudin Shah, Dino Morea and Nana Patekar, along with some not so famous (to me anyway) such as Mahesh Manjrekar, Diya Mirza, Neha Dupia, Jimmy Shergill, Arbaz Khan and Rohit Roy (who appears in 2 of the stories). With such a mixed bag of actors, I was curious to see how good (or bad) this production was.


A TASTE OF THINGS TO COME

Of the 10 stories, I thought I'd give you a bit of a taster about half of them:

"STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT" stars Mahesh Manjrekar and Neha Dupia as a married couple who share intimate secrets with each other each year on their anniversary. This year it's Neha's turn and despite Mahesh having told her of an indiscretion after they met he gets quite jealous when she starts to describe an encounter she had with a complete stranger at a railway station. She describes the setting in quite some detail and we see her husband getting more and more jealous. It's a case of double standards for sure as he says he was drunk when he had his encounter with a woman but even though hers was before the two of them met he starts to level accusations towards her implying that she's "cheap" woman. But is all what it seems? What does she say that changes his and our perception of what she got up to that night at the railway station?

"POORANMASI"is about a woman (Amrita Singh - hadn't seen her on screen for about 2 decades) whose only daughter is about to get married. She has had a loveless marriage herself and we see her verbally abusive husband leaving for a few days for work. Her daughter tries to make her feel young again by making her wear a colourful dupatta (scarf) and bright red bangles that her mother-in-law presented to her. She teases her mother about how beautiful she looks and how she hopes she will look as gorgeous as her mother did on her wedding day. Her mother, we find out, shortly afterwards, has a romantic secret which comes out but not in the way one would expect and all hell breaks loose.

"RICE PLATE" stars Shabana Azmi as a devoted Hindu widow and Naseerudin Shah as a Muslim man she meets at the railway station. Shabana is on her way to meet her granddaughter and manages to leave her purse at home. We see her refusing the first cab she sees as the driver is quite evidently Muslim. She gets the next cab as she sees lots of Hindu idols on the dashboard. When she realises she has left her purse at home, he calls out to Allah and she's horrified that a Hindu would call Allah, except he explains that the idols just belong to the owner of the cab, he just drives it sometimes. When running towards the train Shabana drops her bag and the snacks that she is taking for her granddaughter fall out, Naseerudin stops to help her but she refuses to take back the snacks that he picks up because he's touched them. We're getting the idea that this woman is very extreme in her beliefs. She manages to scrape together enough loose change in her handbag to order a "Rice Plate" which consists of a portion of rice and various other vegetarian dishes all on one plate. She goes to wash her hands and comes back to find Naseerudin eating her food which she snatches back and starts eating crazily. What happens after this bizarre act of greed on her part and how does she learn a valuable lesson from the day's events?

In "GUBBARE" a newlywed couple, who are travelling by bus, have a row over something quite petty and in anger the bride goes to sit elsewhere on the bus. She sits near Nana Patekar who is holding a dozen or so bright red balloons with smiley faces on them. She asks if they're for a child and he says they're for his wife. Every time they row, if it's her fault she makes his favourite Indian sweets and if it's his fault he buys her lots of brightly coloured balloons and a card to say "sorry". The bride thinks that this is very sweet as Nana says he's been married for 35 years. But there's more to his story than meets the eye. What is the full story and what does our young bride learn from it?


ANALYSIS

I think I've given a fair idea of what some of the stories are about but maybe what doesn't come across is how clever each and every one of the stories are in this fabulous production. The endings of a couple of the stories made me chuckle (e.g. "SEX ON THE BEACH" and "MATRIMONY") , some made me think (e.g. "LOVEDALE, "RICE PLATE" and "STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT") and "GUBBARE" actually brought tears of sadness to my eyes even though I guessed the ending for this one.

I honestly couldn't pick my favourite of the 10 short stories but if I had to pick one I'd pick "RICE PLATE" as it really makes you address people's prejudices. Shabana Azmi and Naseerudin Shah are actually very fine actors and much respected in Bollywood and kudos to them that in such a short story and time frame, they leave you thinking about it for a long time afterwards. It might be an storyline where religious bigotry is played to the extreme but it was so well done, I wanted to applaud at the end!

GUBBARE was also very touching and it was amazing to see Nana Patekar pull off such a sensitive role so exceptionally well. He's also a fabulous actor and he really stole the show in the story he appears in.

ZAHIR stars Manoj Bajpai and Diya Mirza, two stars I haven't seen much of in films but I did like the ending of this story. It was a real shocker but I won't tell you more.

Both "SEX ON THE BEACH" and "MATRIMONY" had amusing endings for me but others might not feel the same way about them - they could both be taken fairly seriously but I felt there was an element of black comedy in both of them. You'd have to watch the film to see whether or not you'd agree.

"RISE AND FALL" starred Sanjay Dutt and Suniel Shetty both looking very slick. The story jumps back and forth in time between childhood and adulthood and tries somewhat successfully and cleverly to confuse the viewer. "HIGH ON THE HIGHWAY" with Jimmy Shergill also jumps back and forth in time but this really does confuse unless the last few moments of the tale as the time frames seem to be quite close to each other.

I felt the production of all of the 10 stories was very slickly done with good directorial skills making it so that each story stands on its own merits and one couldn't say any one of the 10 pieces were boring. A couple of them got quite steamy so I guess the 15 certificate is apt for the whole film. Drugs feature in one of the stories but it's not glamorised and gangster assassins feature in another story - this is somewhat glamorised but is it really? I do feel they were trying to get across good moral values in most of the stories although a couple of them encouraged viewers to think for themselves and go against tradition (which I don't feel is a bad thing). Even if sex, drugs and the underworld feature in several of the stories, none of them are what they at first seem. I would stress, though, that none of it is done in a preachy way. As I finished watching Dus Kahaniyan feeling very satisfied and wishing it hadn't finished. It's not often I can say that about a Bollywood production. I'd even say go as far as to say that I'd want to watch the whole thing from start to finish again quite soon. Editing and cinematography was top notch throughout.

I would add here that none of the stories are intertwined so don't expect something at the end that shows how they all mesh together. There's no common narrator in the stories but I think the purpose all in all was to give some new/young directors/producers a chance to show their mettle.

As with most Bollywood films there were some songs in Dus Kahaniyan but they sort of blended in with the stories. If you imagine a normal Bollywood song can last between 5 to 8 minutes there really wasn't enough time to have full songs. They were put in relevant places and the end song which ran with the titles had most of the actors taking part in the song which was quite fun to watch as well as being quite an upbeat dance number.


DVD & EXTRAS

My DVD contains a few extras including the full length songs from the film and a 30 minute documentary about the "making of" which was a bit difficult for me to understand as much of it was in Hindi and there were no subtitles available - from what I did manage to understand (some of it was in English and I do understand some Hindi). In this documentary some of the younger, newer stars talk of how in awe they were of working with the older established stars. The director of Rice Plate says how he had the 2 stars in mind as soon as he had the chance to direct that particular story and there was no way he would consider anyone else in those roles - he was right, they were perfect!

As part of the extras there are English subtitles to select when watching the actual film. I definitely wouldn't buy the DVD on the strength of the extras but the film itself is definitely recommended.

I bought my copy from Eros Entertainment for £1.99 but if you want to pay £19.59 you can get it from Amazon!


RATING

I would be very happy to give Dus Kahaniyan a strong 4.5 out of 5 stars. As I've seen Bollywood films which lasted 3 whole hours, it was a bit disappointing that they squeezed 10 stories into just under 2 hours but it's not a big enough issue to deduct more than 0.5 from my total rating. I enjoyed the whole experience and I'm happy to give this a high recommendation.


TECHNICAL

* Directors include: Jasmeet Dhodhi, Sanjay Gupta, Apoorva Lakhia, Rohit Roy, Meghna Gulzar
* Writers include: Javed Akhtar, Sanjay Gupta, Suresh Nair, Rajiv Gopalkrishnan
* Producers include: Sanjay Dutt, Sanjay Gupta (White Feather Films)
* Release date: December 2007
* Certification: 15
* Runtime: 113 minutes

p.s. It was so enjoyable that I watched the whole thing twice in the space of a week!

Summary: Highly recommended!