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Cinema fascinates, provokes, inspires and entertains more powerfully than any other media. Shaaditimes seeks to understand and interpret human relationships in all its nuances. What better way to explore these intricacies than reviewing films that explore the agonies and ecstasies of human relationships? If you too want to review any such film please do send it in to the editor.

A Good Year

Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Russell Crowe, Albert Finney, Marion Cotillard, Abbie Cornish, Archie Punjabi.

Relationships matter more
When the star stockbroker Max Skinner (Russell Crowe's character) is asked when he last met / spoke with his Uncle Henry, he admits that he has not done so in years. In the process of making money and keeping ahead in the rat race of living, man is known to have lost touch with human kindness and the simple joys of living in communion with nature. But most disturbing is the fact that spurred on by the spirit of competition and the paramount attraction of big money, how easily young ones forget to include their parents or family elders in their frenetic schedules. Indian society is beginning to see it happen now and increasingly the senior citizens are relegated to a corner of the house or in their hometown. In India too this is becoming increasingly a social problem.

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Ridley Scott's A Good Year, opens with Max Skinner making a killing on the trading floor, but celebration time is cut short as he receives news that his Uncle Henry (Albert Finney) has passed away and that Max has inherited his estate and vineyards in Provence, France. His lucre driven mind makes him cross the Channel with one intent - selling the house. But a walk around the property and the house floods Max with warm memories of Uncle Henry and happy carefree days. A suspension from work forces him to spend a week in the house, during which period the caustic, callous Max rediscovers his lost soul-stirrings. His plans to sell the house are interrupted by the arrival of the American Christie (played by Crowe's fellow Australian Abbie Cornish), who purports to be Henry's illegitimate daughter.

The story of A Good Year is predictable and ordinary. But it is Ridley Scott's narration and treatment, which raises the film to an immensely relevant and viewable experience. Its realistic story line adapted from the novel by Peter Mayle is made even more enjoyable by class performances and superlative cinematography. In the opening sequence, Russell Crowe as Max Skinner comes through as a mean, thoughtless person, who is incapable of being gentle or kind. Crowe is superlative in the scene where he gets trapped in an empty swimming pool and tries to get out, and he does with a tinge of comedy. The softening of Max Skinner is made even more convincing as he falls in love with Fanny, the feisty café owner played by Marion Cotillard. The latter is an apt foil to Crowe. But the cherry on the cake is a heartwarming cameo by Albert Finney as Uncle Henry.

A Good Year is synonymous with Vintner's language, which describes a good wine. While for Max Skinner it's a year when he made a personal transition. When he starts letting people into his life and acknowledges the warm presence of Uncle Henry, then Max starts to bask in the warmth of the joys of simple living. The bottom line in the film is relationships matter more than making money.

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