The Great Indian Butterfly (2007) User Reviews

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[adipandit · 7/10 · 6 April 2010]

From the promos it seems that this movie is about some adventurous trip of a couple which it is but quite an unusual one. It is a movie about a couple which are not going around well n are frustrated from their routine life.

The movie has many hidden layers to it which unravels time to time, making you feel a lot more about the lead characters. Writing of the movie is good n is told in a very nice manner without complicating it even if the characters are complicated.

Aamir Bashir n Sandhya Mridul are topnotch n played their part superbly. Aamir is such a talented actor n we need to explore him much more. Cinematography is excellent n many a times you feel that a painting is in front of you.

On the whole it is a very nice movie portraying the lives of us stuck in the rat race n ignoring all other aspects of life including our families.

Not so great, might just be a butterfly....But definitely Indie

[sesht · 3 April 2010]

Structured as a road movie, this deceptive drama boasts subtle direction, and solid performances from its leads, keeping the dual pronged theme in focus throughout, even at the risk of losing its core art-house audience. A typically dysfunctional suburban Indian yuppie couple decide to go on vacation to de-stress, and have an ignominious start when they miss their flight, and have to lose a couple of days driving to their destination instead. What happens during that drive, and the rest of their vacation, how their equation plays out during that time, is what the rest of the movie is about. There is also a surprise lurking towards the end of the movie, which I did not see coming, and will not spoil here. Suffice to say that the payoff at the end is worth the price of a multiplex ticket.

A sincere attempt by a mature screenwriter/filmmaker to portray a phase in an Indian yuppie couple's post marital relationship, showing attempts being made by each (rather insincerely, one would feel on initial observation) to resolve the issues inherent within. A poor start to a well-planned vacation instantly sets the tone at the beginning of the movie, establishing the strained nature of the couple's relationship right at the onset. The rest of the movie plays out like a road movie for most of its running time, taking some diversions into each issue that is plaguing the couple, with a few flashbacks thrown in for good measure, but more about those later. No sides are taken, and I felt that was the best part in the screenplay (though a plot point later in the movie made me reflect on that interpretation), among other things (cinematography, performances), about this movie. The office politics scenario in Sandhya's character's ongoing career-plot could have been portrayed with fewer clichés, as mentioned in the review, but still plays out like it could have happened in real life as well. However, where I differ with the reviewer is my opinion that this aspect does not detract from the main movie, which plays out thereafter with the director in full control of where he wants the audience. In addition to the dual- pronged theme, there are also consistent, yet subtle attempts in certain scenes lead the audience to form multiple interpretations from those, which has a very interesting denouement, and worth the price of admission for it alone.

The diversions taken to explain and account for the mythical nature of the title are jarring, along with the choices made in the soundtrack. Surprisingly, Kashyap's Hindi number (without subtitles, surprisingly, though other Hindi dialogues are all subtitled) seemed to blend in (though its not her best), and the choices of English pop stick out, and if you close your eyes, you might feel that you are watching an 80's English drama. Dated.

It is an art-house movie, and has been marketed and produced as such, and in my opinion, should be supported so that similar attempts are encouraged to have their own multiplex releases. In Hyderabad, Inox, with its digital projection, offers the best viewing experience. Obscure parts of Goa have never looked this good. Plenty of beautiful sunset shots on-location as well, made me yearn for a quick Goa trip to escape the Hyderabad heat. :-)

Side note: - Strange coincidence that the same company is releasing 2 indie movies in the same week, the other one being 'Pankh', and even that during the cricket season - it smacks of the powers-that-be having no confidence in their own products. Hope they have better runs on DVD at least, though the company has done whatever it could to torpedo their own earnings.

Pros: Performances, Cinematography, Interplay between the mythical and real plot threads Cons: Soundtrack, The 'searches' for the mythical insect in the title

The Great Indian Butterfly tells a lot and shows little making it a journey through hell for us, the poor unfortunate audience

[sashank_kini-1 · 2/10 · 14 January 2013]

The Great Indian Butterfly tackles head-on multiple abstract themes of love (and its absence), peace, happiness, joy, pleasure, guilt, grief, search etc in a matter typical of new Indian art house films. There are abrupt cuts and fade-outs to flashbacks and dreamlike sequences. There is a smattering of symbolism. There is inclusion of music through unconventional ways such as live performances, and a recent trend that has been adopted to appeal to urban Indian audiences and foreign viewers is to only have the actors speak in English throughout. Unfortunately, the movie finds little success in any of the levels; the main deterrent here is the abundance of telling and little of showing, and hence we never really feel for the characters and their situations because they keep telling us every damn thing they are feeling.

Almost three-fourth of the film is taken up by banal accusations thrown again and again by the two lead characters who are pretty comfortable at venting their feelings to each other. Even the film techniques are not successful – the cuts are jarring and the narrative quite confusing, the symbolism doesn't really work for reasons explained later in the review, the background score is unmemorable and worse is the post-synchronous dubbing which robs the complexities of spatial relations created through audio (for example, the dialogs of a character at a distance are heard at same volume as that of a character closer to the screen).

Speaking of plot, White Feather Films has done a wonderful job in giving a scintillating synopsis for the film (you can read it on the IMDb site). The words themselves have been carefully chosen so to raise as much curiosity about the film as possible; it almost sounds like a work that could've been made by someone like Terrence Malick. In my own words, the synopsis would sound like this: Amateur entomologist Krish and his bickering career-oriented wife Meera are on a search to find a resolution to their unhappy lives, with the husband believing that the search would end only when they are able to locate a rare species of butterfly. On their pursuit, the two have verbal tussles where a few skeletons tumble out of the closet – we get to know what Meera chose to sacrifice in order to get a promotion, and what Krish gave up before marrying Meera. Not keeping it simple and straight, their story is interrupted often either by a white man who just can't stop talking abstruse concepts about butterflies and the lessons he has learned from his own search, or flashbacks of Krish's past affair with Liza or a current subplot involving Meera's telephonic conversations with her filthy-minded boss. We just have to wait and watch whether the search would culminate in bringing happiness or end fruitlessly.

If you want to watch a similar movie told a million times better, you should watch Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper starrer Adaptation, which is really how the theme of search should be tackled. In Adaptation, Meryl Streep played an author named Susan Laroche whose bestseller was to be adapted to the silver screen by Cage, a scriptwriter. That movie was about Cage's search in completing his screenplay, which was a complicated task considering the ambiguous ending of the book itself. In Great Indian Butterfly, Krish keeps reading a book of the same title, but we rarely see him touching the book in the course of the film. We rather get crude shots of Barry John acting as a character who keeps babbling in between, confounding us for most part about his purpose in the film. I won't reveal the true purpose of his character, but I would want to ask one thing: why could the film not do away with Barry for most part, and allow Krish to read passages from the book instead (the device of 'internal sound' could've easily been used).

The flashbacks of Krish's affair with Liza is also crudely shown, especially in the first sequence (the one where Liza is lying nude on the bed with a blue bed-sheet covering her derrière) which is so dominated by the color blue that one is confused whether the scene is a memory or a dream. On the other hand, Meera's scenes with her boss have only one problem – Meera tends to fight and crib too much even while speaking with her boss. But worse than all these are Krish's and Meera's arguments, which start with Meera admonishing her husband for not setting the alarm and then move further to issues like absence of love, past affairs etc. Not once do you really care for the characters because the two don't share the tempestuous chemistry a bickering couple should share, but the writer is more to be blamed for this than the actors.

Sarthak Dasgupta keeps the various themes the central topics of discussion, and this makes the arguments very banal. There is an absence of subtlety, and the repetitive hearings of 'You have never done this', 'We share no intimacy' etc can get highly dull. When we finally get to know what's going on between Liza and Krish, we simply wonder why Krish could not tell it immediately when Meera walked out on him. When I saw Krish stand outside his room in his towel watching Meera leave, I thought 'Man, show some effort! Your inexplicable silence makes things worse!'; I personally thought a secret like 'Krish and Liza having an illegitimate child' would've been slightly more effective since it is parallel to the plot of Krish and Meera not having any children themselves.

The camera work is also very choppy at times. Thank God this film didn't get a wider release, otherwise 'theater and film acting coach' Barry John's own acting abilities and film selection would've been questioned.

Simple, Straight, Honest and Real

[pradeepbawa · 8/10 · 23 July 2010]

Impressive performances.. Both Aamir and Sandhya deserves Kudos for their realistic and settled performances

No nonsense.. No fighting, no loud dialogs, no melodrama, no unnecessary songs.. everything you see is what the movie needed..

straight to the point.. No time waste, no loud discussions, content is realized automatically as the play goes on..

Simple narration.. issue and solution both were provided on one road trip, no deviation or side tracks..

Apt music.. Music lifts the mood of the situation and goes with the story...

Good dialogs.. Easily understandable Indian English, casual and realistic dialogs..

Nice locations.. The road trip, locations were captured very nicely..

Catchy photography.. This is another reason why you feel the movie so connecting..

Appreciative effort.. Need more to come like this

Must watch for metro couple..