Mini reviews: playing catch up.

Bajrangi Bhaijaan - When you haven't been watching any Hindi films for months and months on end, it feels rather lovely to be swept up in the melodrama again, and this Salman Khan starrer certainly fit the bill, what with Pakistan-India unity themes and the missing mute child of it all. I can't say I hated it, but towards the end it was just a tiny bit too much. Loved seeing Nawazuddin Siddiqui pick up that mainstream paycheck, even if I wasn't huge on his role in this.

Oh, and Kareena Kapoor Khan was in this film, too, a fact I barely remembered until just now. I don't want to say she should pick better films, since maybe none are coming her way any more (lamentable fact of life for married actresses) but I do miss her putting in better work than this.

Dil Dhadakne Do - Speaking of Kareena, would have loved to see the original cast for this, which was Ranbir-Kareena as the siblings who were eventually played by Priyanka Chopra and Ranveer Singh, and Madhuri as the mother (a role that went to Shefali Shetty, who is great here). Still, had that happened, what would have ended up on the screen probably would have been the same, middle-of-the-road family drama with some emotional moments, comedy and dance numbers. I really enjoyed this one, but with the caveat that from the intermission I knew it would be a hopelessly forgettable film. The characters are just a little too bland and stereotypical, the drama predictable and even the twists rather unexciting. It's pretty and it's fun, and then you never think about it again as the credits roll. Indeed, my biggest take aways from the film were the following three things:

1. It is exciting to see Priyanka Chopra still in this familiar environment now that she's set to lead a major US network drama series. I've never been a huge fan, but I've also been the first to admit her talent. 7 Khoon Maaf is still her finest work, but if her mainstream US success leads to more people discovering that Bhardwaj gem, I am all for it. 
2. Farhan Akhtar looks really good in a t-shirt. 
3. ...but Farhan Akhtar annoyingly wrote the character he himself played the Righteous Male Feminist dialogue. Okay, buddy. Okay.

Any Body Can Dance 2 - This one blew my hair back. Is this a movie? Is this just things happening on celluloid in a somewhat sequential manner? Was ABCD the first this bad and I just didn't notice, too swept up in the glorious dance sequences? ABCD2 sure feels like a non-movie, with things happening to characters one barely knows, with every frequent conflict solved two lines of dialogue later by multiple deux ex machina, with cardboard cut-outs having emotions like stickers attached and removed easily for plot convenience. The dance sequences are okay, but with absolutely no emotional connection to anything else that is happening, they feel strangely hollow. I enjoyed seeing the familiar faces from the first film, including Lauren Gottlieb, but holy moly. Don't suffer through this one like I did, even for shirtless Varun Dhawan and some okay naach-gaana.

Badlapur - Am I going to hate Badlapur, I asked my Twitter timeline multiple times, seeing the review summaries pop up here and there, and for the most part people either let their silence on the matter speak for itself, or just told me a flat-out "most likely". But what with director favourite Sriram Raghavan (yes, I know Agent Vinod happened, but I blame that one on Saif), established favourite Nawazuddin and emerging favourite Varun Dhawan, how was I to ignore this film? It was the bane of my existence until I would finally see it. So I did. 

In another mood, another time, this might have become one of my flawed favourites, one that I could re-watch and re-examine for themes and nuances in performances, but at this time, during the mood I was in, I checked out about 40 minutes into the film and never quite checked back in.The tale of revenge turning one man (Dhawan) into a monster as the culprit (Siddiqui) withers in jail is certainly an intriguing one, especially held up against the empowerment through revenge narrative that was Raghavan's first film Ek Hasina Thi (11 years old this year, wow). And yet, when it was all said and done, I wondered if I should have just rewatched his debut.

Raghavan remains a capable director, allowing his leads to shine and for audiences to gain new appreciation for their range, but the "women problem" remains. Huma Qureshi, Yami Gautam, Divya Dutta and Radhika Apte all feature and do great with what little they're given, but the way the other characters or the camera and narrative choices treat them doesn't sit right with me. Sexual coercion can be played up in a way that empathises with the victim and recognises the perpetrator as vile, but instead such scenes are merely used for titillation for the camera and as a demonstration of the male lead's sickening power over his victims. It is disturbing to me when the narrative doesn't condemn a morally ambiguous character's misogyny but instead throws it up on the screen unquestioningly as a fact of life. It's all about choices in portrayal, and Raghavan seems to make the least considered ones each and every time. 

Some years back I talked about how Kucche Dhaage, a 70's drama thriller, deconstructed the revenge tale so often found in Indian films. It portrays the horrible things people do for revenge, and also how this desire to avenge wrecks the people involved psychologically. In some ways, it lets these human monsters off the hook a little too much, giving them a redemption arc on the second half, whilst also showing that since they've devoted themselves to the violence of revenge, they can't ever lead normal lives after it. Badlapur, in many ways, is an even more brutal, and unrelenting deconstruction of revenge narratives, but as Indian films often are, it's still too concerned with its murky lead, not his victims.

As much as I hated this film, I'm not ready to give up on Raghavan yet, such is my deep affection for his first two films. But would I recommend this one? No chance in hell.

Traipsing through underwhelment; some mini-reviews of films.

Miss Lovely (2012 originally/2014 wider release) - I know, I know, this doesn't belong here, but I had to be honest about this. I love a lot of things about this movie; Nawazuddin Siddiqui is number two, while number one is the excellent cinematography. This camera knows where it wants to be, and creates a very interesting visual world for the film, complemented by fantastic period setting and accompanying art direction. Superb. Everything else, though? Plot, characters? I could take them or leave them. The depiction of the sleazy-yet-honest world of the A rating was fantastic, but I was never sucked in, fascinated by what was happening. Was it good? Yes, definitely. But I didn't love it.

Special Chabbis (2014) - I've tried to finish the last hour of this movie for about five to six times now, and I've failed each time. I can't figure it out. This got good reviews, I dig the cast a lot, there's things happening and yet I'm just like, "wow, this is .. something .. I'm going to go do dishes". For a heist movie, that's really bad. But I may be completely alone in this, admittedly. If something amazing happens during the final third of this movie, harass me about this, otherwise, I'm sorry but I tried.

Ishkq in Paris (2013) - This wasn't such a bad movie if it weren't for the fact that it managed to remind me why the film industry is such a rotten business, and it did all of this in a merciful 90 or so minutes. It's a simple enough romcom about two strangers meeting serendipitiously, spending a magical night talking and getting to know each other, only to depart with the intention of never seeing each other again. And yet.. The sound mix is writing cheques (emotional cues and comical effects) the writing of the film can't cash, which makes the film seem like a bad parody of a romantic film. Then there's the absolute tragedy of Preity Zinta, a tragedy too great to cover in such a small amount of space. This movie broke my heart, and I'm still recovering.

Chitrangada (2012) -  I bought this Rituparno Gosh film from Kolkata, as the plot description sounded deliciously ambitious - exploring themes of gender identity, the Chitrangada myth, love and dance all at once. Instead, when I finally sat down to watch this, I found it a slog to get even half-way through. A story about a choreographer (played by the director himself) falling for a drug addicted musician, the film plods along but I didn't connect to the characters, nor did I feel like it was saying anything very substantive. The musician character Partha is just plain unlikable and an obvious mess from the get-go, making the love story difficult to understand or root for. I get the sense that this was an intensely personal film for the late director, but I just felt very detached from it.

Ivan Veramathiri (2013) - I must stress that none of the films I'm covering here are awful, not even Ishqkqkqkq. It's just that thing where a movie fails to hook you in and keep you there for its duration. I saw ads for this Tamil flick while in Chennai and it looked okay enough, and the fact is, it is okay enough - the romance track is a little inane perhaps but Vikram Prabhu is alright and everything else works, yet I just didn't care? Now, a few months separated from the experience, I struggle to remember anything that happened in it, apart from the main points of the plot, and the heroine holding a gold fish in a plastic bag for the hero. I suppose that's something.

A treatise on masala, and Kick.

Masala films are like being sucked into a dream taking place in somebody else's head. To say they contain no logic is misinterpreting their own, magical logic, one that relies less on representing things as grounded and flawed, and more on representing them as perfect, idealised to the point of absurdity. Character types instead of characters, formula instead of story.

Devi (Salman Khan) in Kick is a masala hero, working solely as an avatar for dialogue, an empty cup the fantastical mind of the filmi imagination to pour some character traits into, while the audience forgets the character even has a name. He inspires awe from entrance to the closing shot. "Are wah!" we are to exclaim at his herogiri - the dancing, the fighting, the punchy dialogues, the comedy and the romance. A hero is never wrong. It is the flaw of the heroine to think ill of him, even as well-intentioned as her worries are. It is the flaw of the pseudo-antagonist, the Other Guy, or second male lead, to mistake the hero for his villainous actions as actually a bad guy. The Heroine and the Other Guy will eventually understand their mistakes. The Hero stays unquestioned.

Entertainment is the measure: the mirth I felt when that first overly clever, painfully over-thought and constructed piece of dialogue was spoken. It is a meter shooting up and down as the film progresses. The rating goes from fun to none, but the pace is so quick it's hard to concentrate on one irksome miscoming when the film is serving up ten different things in the next scene. The ride is great, but certain masala measures are questionable, such as the romance. Devi elbows his way into our disgruntled heroine's life without much care about how she feels about it all. Jacqueline Fernandes is quite good at disgruntled, confused and possibly a third expression I can't quite place. Happy, maybe? Is she, does the movie give her any reason to be? She just is. Women, eh?

Randeep Hooda (ah, the bias) as the Other Guy musters up enough life to the screen when the heroine seems too lost to be present or when the hero seems too tired to try too hard. His eyes light up with laughter or turn a steely stern gaze, and he's always the bridesmaid never the bride, and yet he seems to have better chemistry with the hero than the heroine. Women, eh? Why write them with personalities when you can just put all that effort into the second male lead, you know?

As a dessert to this hearty meal, we get the actual villain, Nawazuddin Siddiqui's glorious entrance into the hallowed halls of big budget. Given typical masala hay of semi-sadistic horrid rich guy, he spins gold out of it like a veritable Rumpelstiltzkin, and the results are captivating. This is concentrated, unadulterated villainy - potent, slightly nonsensical and all the better for it. I will probably rewatch the whole film just for these scenes. And the songs, and Randeep Hooda, and the dialogues, and pretty much everything. For all the easily detectable snark in this here review, I really did enjoy this.

Modern masala has many an ailment. It's too calculated and superficial to be anything but fun, cool and sexy. Most often it's an attempt at all three, since the concept of 'cool' dies anew with every Race film. It doesn't move to tears, it doesn't reach the great masses, it's just there. But while it's here, why not enjoy it, and remember it, like one remembers a great night that resulted in a hangover. And if you can't stomach it, go watch some other Nawazuddin Siddiqui films. Everybody wins.

The Lunchbox and the argument for self-reflection.

The pointlessness of consumption starts to hit home when the DVDs you've hauled from half-way across the globe gather dust as you're so preoccupied with life and other interests that you've got. Believe you me, I don't mean to abandon Indian movies without much warning every 18 months or so - it just happens. And then I rush back in, flushed with new-found excitement. The love is always there, in a way, even when the blog is dead and the DVD player abandoned. I just get so tired, tired with the mediocrity, tired with the dullness of the Bengali art picture I'm forcing myself to sit through just because, tired of waiting for DVDs to come out, tired of the vapid jokes made on Koffee with Karan. So I leave, and then I come back.

I should have, of course, returned much earlier, as the brilliant Dabba (or The Lunchbox, as it's so widely known internationally now) arrived in Finnish cinemas a little over a month ago. I always wanted to see it, and I don't even feel like the film suffered from praise overload. It is a darling film, full of little flavors and notes to pick up on, well-directed and written, and with captivating performances and gentle comedic touches. It's got Irrfan Khan, ambassador of Indian acting to the western world, and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, the new can-do-no-wrong actor, and Nimrat Kaur, a shockingly fantastic newer find.

It's hard to disagree that this should've been India's Oscar hopeful, as even if you find the film bland and overrated, its gentle love story, culture-specific setting (the dabbawallahs' uncharacteristic mistake setting the scene for the exchange of letters), its feel-good vibes and lack of songs included, would have made it the perfect film for that particular audience. Even a month after its initial release, the screening on an early evening was weirdly full - this film is catching considerable word of mouth even in my northern corner of the globe, and I have no doubt Oscar buzz would've helped this along further. But just as well, and I'm happy it's getting such wide international recognition, even without being pitched to the Academy.

So it's a good film, and a joy to sit through, but what I found most important about the film was that it really made me reflect on life. As most good love stories, the one in Dabba is ultimately about something greater than the connection between two people. Saajan (Irrfan) and Ila (Nimrat Kaur) are tiptoeing into a connection with their exchanged messages, and as with any two unhappy people who connect over their unhappiness, their exchanges soon become about their lives itself - what they want, what they don't want, and what they can expect from the future. It's only natural that the viewer also finds themselves asking similar questions - especially if they're relatively young, or with their life in flux, or going through a rough time, or even if they're older, like Saajan, and looking back on their past experiences.

I found myself wondering all of these things, and then arguing with myself - maybe these questions aren't really as tough as one might, in their bourgeois angst, think. After all, endless pondering about life and ourselves, our direction or our happiness, can put a person in a state of utter confusion, that can be only medicated by being marketed self-help in form of books and life style magazines and co-opted philosophies. The Lunchbox seems to also posit that this self-reflection can be rather middle class. Do the dabbawallahs themselves ponder these things? Maybe, but maybe they move on quicker than some of us. There is, in essence, much common sense in the character of Shaikh (Siddiqui), whose description of an ordinary day, full of work but also of little joys, really hit home for me. In a complicated world, simplicity can be the greatest treasure of all, even as I roll my eyes at what a cliché that sounds like. Pessimism remains my affliction.

Such is the beauty of cinema, and of all stories, really. They inspire us to see beyond what is just on the page, and consider ourselves in reflection to the characters. It's not that a film has to be deep to inspire such thoughts, it merely has to be compelling and believable as a story. And while I can't say The Lunchbox became an instant all-time favourite, I appreciate it because it certainly inspired me in many ways, and that's so much more than most films manage to do.

Monsoon Shootout: exploring the what if.

I had no idea what to expect from Monsoon Shootout - I did not recognise the director, didn't look through the cast, and the festival website merely described this as a shooting-filled policewallahs vs goons type of story, essentially nothing new under the sun. I hadn't heard it had been praised in Cannes, I hadn't even heard it had been to Cannes, and I certainly didn't expect what is surely one of the best off-beat films of the year. 

Amit Kumar (son of Kishore, incidentally) directs the story of rookie cop Adi (Vijay Varma in a confident performance), entering the police force, only to encounter deeply corrupt, inhumane police misbehaviour on his first day on the job. Khan (Neeraj Kabi), his superior, is more or less a crook in a uniform - willing to go to any length necessary, where Adi wants to stick to doing things the right way. Quickly he finds himself in pursuit of a suspect, Shiva (Nawazuddin Siddiqui - I gasped in anticipation the moment I recognized him), and has to make a decision, soaked in the monsoon rain - to shoot or not to shoot.

As the narrative starts to go through every possibly scenario, it does a rather remarkable thing of fooling its audience. Even as I knew that the scene I was watching was just a "what if", I was engaged with the story. I was living through it. I was inside this world of slum-dwellers and morally corrupt policemen, of questionable guilt and innocence. 

Nawazuddin Siddiqui has been spectacular in pretty much everything he's been in as of late, so it feels almost tired to sing his praises. He's very effective here - against  the wide-eyed Adi, who's coming face-to-face with tough moral decisions every day, Shiva's varying level of guilt and malevolence is clearly depicted in Siddiqui's performance. Tanishtha Chatterjee as his wife Rani is equally good.

The film is currently doing rounds in the festival circuit, but when it finally gets a proper release in India, I bet it'll make many people's "Best of 2013" lists. As with many stories, the setting and the beginning are nothing new - there have been countless films where cops are as bad as the criminals they're trying to catch, and where politicians conspire with gangsters in an urban setting. But the different take on these themes in this setting, and the excellent acting makes Monsoon Shootout completely worth it. 

Talaash: when is a slow reveal too slow?

Had it been released any other year, Talaash would've probably been the best film of the year. Lucky for us the audience, the year was 2012, which gave us another excellent Hindi mystery thriller, Kahaani. It's difficult not to talk about the two films in conjunction with one another, as they both involve an urban setting, a main character trying to piece together what seems like an unsolvable mystery, a plot twist and attempt to hood-wink the audience into not seeing that twist coming. They're also both films you're best knowing the most minimal amount of premise, going in.

So here's what I'll say about the plot - things you can piece together from the first trailers, which hit the internet about a year ago: a man drives off into the sea on an entire empty road, for no apparent reason. A police man (Aamir Khan) tries to piece together what happened, while growing distant from his wife (Rani Mukherjee) and running into the lady of the night, Rosie (Kareena Kapoor), who helps him try to solve the mystery.

I will try to discuss the film without revealing spoilers, but you're very sensitive to this sort of thing (I know I am!), you may want to stop reading now.

Talaash is a finely made movie with competent direction, littered with strong performances (from the heart-wrenching one from Rani Mukherjee to the crooked yet sympathetic character portrayed by Nawazuddin Siddiqui). It's definitely a step up from Reema Kagti's debut, Honeymoon Tavels Pvt Ltd, which was adorable but not too ambitious. As such, it's hard to phrase why the film doesn't really make it into my favourites. It's got so many things going for it, from the performances to the themes it portrays (which I cannot really discuss without going into spoilers), to the excellent cinematography. Going into it, I didn't know much, but I was expecting a lot - that's what tends to happen when three of one's favourites are shoved into the same film, with a promising premise. I'm not quite sure if the film delivered on all the things I really wanted it to.

I suppose one factor was the relatively slow pace of the middle third of the film. As a viewer, you're trying to put together the same mystery Aamir's Surjan is attempting to solve, but coming up with very little. I wasn't really at my sharpest when watching, so perhaps I could've seen the twist coming, had I concentrated a little more, but by the time the film got to its half-way mark, I found myself as frustrated as Surjan seemed to be. Things just weren't adding up in a satisfying manner, and the film began to feel a bit boring. I was fine with the twist, when it arrived - it seemed strangely fitting, and I didn't mind the aspect it added to the film. I figured it out, I suspect, exactly at the moment the director wanted me to figure it out, considerably before Surjan does, but not so early as to ruin the discovery.

So what I was left with was "just" a good film. When put up next to the crop of other good films, Talaash definitely stands out as a good film, but not so overwhelmingly strong that I'd say I loved it. I also wasn't so personally moved by as to call it a favourite. But worth seeing, especially if you like any of the three big stars in the main cast? Absolutely. 

Gangs of वासेपुर.

Gangs of Wasseypur, Anurag Kashyap's epic about the titular town and its violent history, is a 320 minute film, split into two for a commercial release. I watched them re-united as one cinematic experience, spanning over five hours of my time and over 60 decades of fictionalized Wasseypur history. It was quite a ride, to put it mildly. In five hours, you meet a lot of characters and part with some of them too early, and others not as early as you would have liked. In five hours, you get to think a lot of things, and also feel a lot of things. In five hours, you ask tons of questions, some which get answered, many you're left to ponder over on your own.

The plot tells a fairly uncomplicated story of how revenge fuels decades' worth of violence between two camps. In some ways, the story in all its turns and roundabouts is secondary to the feeling of living in this world of Wasseypur: the somber narration by Nasir bhai (Piyush Mishra) walks us through it, and there are always certain constant realities to be found, like blood spilled or the greed of people. If you can stomach the very violent genre of the film, complete with unabashed and frequent, uncensored cussing, then the film is definitely among must-sees of Hindi cinema overall, and one of the best of last year, easily. It's got some flaws, like some confusing sequences (which I may have to blame on lacking DVD subtitling in part I), or certain characters being rather underwritten (more questions than answers about why they do what they do), but overall, it's a great effort.

From hereon, the review will get more specific and will contain SPOILERS for both parts.

To me, Gangs of Wasseypur was really crystalized in two scenes. Among the many characters, the main protagonists are Sardar (Manoj Bajpai) and his son Faizal (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) - they're in focus throughout most of the film, and yet they're very different characters. The revenge tale that frames the film is one things that simultaneously unites and divides them. Sardar is very much in touch with the idea of avenging his father, but the actual deed he can set aside for later. Faizal is only vaguely connected with the revenge mission, and occasionally shows signs of thinking it's pointless, and yet he inadvertently ends up killing the very man who killed his grandfather.

While Sardar wins none of my sympathies, Faizal gets a surprising amount. He's not much better than his father - he kills mercilessly, without blinking, without thinking twice. Yet he's somehow more human, more at a loss at everything he's doing, and his part in this cycle of violence he finds himself in. Sardar is at ease with his mission in life, and pursues it with ruthless precision. Faizal escapes reality to drugs. He can also be cold and calculating, and selfish, but not in the way his father is.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the scenes I'm about to talk about both deal with their treatment of women.

Sardar has left his wife to hide from the police, and ends up lusting after Durga (Reema Sen, who apparently now wants her name spelled as Remma), a young woman. I'd say they share a couple of meaningful looks, but this would be a lie - he stares at her, while she gives him a peek or two from a safe distance. When he finally approaches her, she is silent, and doesn't react to him, apart from trying to wrangle her arm from his grip. While the implication is that she wants him, as we later see her slipping into his bed out of her own volition, it was hard to watch these scenes and not read something predatory into the way he was looking at her. Even the eventual sex scene is far from romantic - it's fast, and on his terms, and his hand muffles whatever noises she makes. The unfortunate side effect of seeing this film after India has begun to publicly deal with its women being victims of rape and sexual harassment is that Durga's consent is almost not there at all. Most of all, Sardar's seeming lack of interest to whether she says no or yes is what really disturbs me.

He doesn't improve much after, abandoning his family for the new wife, at least for a while, and by the time he eventually gets killed, I found myself not caring particularly much.

Faizal, on the other hand, ends up approaching his childhood crush Mohsina (newcomer Huma Qureshi) after seeing her at the cinema. Their romance develops slowly after Danish, Faizal's brother, ends up marrying Mohsina's sister, putting them temporarily under the same roof. In a key scene, Mohsina scolds Faizal for holding her hand without asking for her permission. This shocks him into retreating but she assures him it's fine, as long as he asks her for her permission, and he accepts this. The contrast to the previous scenes I described were so stark, I was a bit in awe. Their relationship continues rather delightfully into a happy marriage, where they both seem playful and content with one another. In probably the best scene of the film, she comforts him (and sings to him), after he wonders what the point of all that he's accomplished in life, and in crime is, as he didn't really want any of it. It's one of the few moments in the film where everything stills and we're treated to a simple, gorgeously acted character-centric scene.

Their story ends up being the most human part of the film for me, and Nawazuddin Siddiqui is so compelling in his performance, his character becomes the only character besides the female ones (none of whom get an entirely fair deal in my eyes) who I genuinely root for. The complexities the film presents in its morality mean that this is by no means an obvious choice, nor is it the "right" one. Like I mentioned, Faizal kills a lot, often without reason. And yet, the acting makes him so relatable in a peculiar way, so interesting to watch that I cannot help but want him to make it.

I think Gangs of Wasseypur makes it onto my favourites list for the cinematic world it creates for itself. The beautiful cinematography, the music infused to it, all the performances that make up a solid ensemble cast and the real stand-outs among them, it just seems that a lot of things Kashyap and his team got so precisely right. It's gory, but compelling, and it doesn't meander much for such a long film - if anything, I think it could've used a few more character-building sequences.