Sai and Shujath talk Cinema

This is an excellent movie. This movie is not about a story. It is about getting a feel for gangsters’ lives. It is about understanding how they live, who their friends are, where they eat, how their wives live, the rules they have to live by, their society, their world. This movie succeeds big time in creating the atmosphere for the audience to start feeling the lives of these gangsters. Anybody who is looking for a fast paced movie or for a story or entertainment should keep away. This is for the audience willing to soak in the ambience and feel what the characters feel. This is for the audience willing to think and understand the characters, their choices, their dilemmas, their lives and their deaths. This is the best film I have seen so far depicting the life of the mob (though other films including my favorite Ram Gopal Varma’s gangster trilogy do depict it well to some extent, it is only as a part of a larger story/theme).

This is my first Martin Scorsese movie and I would have to say he rocked. This is a movie where the direction overshadows the screenplay (Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese based on a book by Nicholas Pileggi). In the hands of most other directors, this movie would not have been what it is. Joe Pesci (who I absolutely loved as Vincent Gambini in My Cousin Vinny) and Robert De Niro excel in their supporting roles while Ray Liotta as the main protagonist and Lorraine Bracco as his wife do a great job as well (though this is the only movie of either of them that I’ve seen). This is a must watch for those who appreciate the art of filmmaking.