A 'Rush' of blood to the head - Review of the movie Rush

There are films which touch you with their tenderness and leave you with a song in your hearts. And then there are flicks which shock and jolt you out of stupor, sparking thoughts of picking up cudgels against all that ail humanity and lasting all the way up to the multiplex parking lot. ‘Rush’ belongs to neither of these categories. It does not need to. It is one of those genre busting films which blows you out of the theatre with its scale and sweep. It’s reminiscent of Chariots of Fire in that it depicts the intense rivalry between two athletes which consumes themRon Howard,. But that was about running, which is arguably the purest of athletic pursuits with its numerous references to myths and legends. This however is F1 racing, the debauched adolescent of the sporting world with its hedonistic and reckless ways. It bewitches you in the way delinquent kids with bikes and leather jackets always get their girls: with a promise of danger and death staring in the face.

The opening scene from that fateful day at Nurburgring sets the tone of the intense rivalry which runs as the central theme. Moving the clock several years back to the past, it chronicles the different paths to racing glory that James Hunt, the flamboyant British driver with dashing good looks and cavalier ways and Nicky Lauda, the obsessive and neurotic Austrian, whose methodical and dispassionate approach to motorsports made him a polar opposite of Hunt, took; the latter’s somewhat comical looks and abrasive personality not the least of the differences with Hunt’s charisma and spontaneity.  Lauda’s approach to racing was perhaps ahead of its times; in an era (and maybe even now) when racing was synonymous with machismo and the tantalizing prospect of ‘cheating death ‘, as Hunt once describes, Lauda was into it by his own admission and I quote, ‘God gave me an okay mind, but an ass which can feel everything in the car’. This clash of personalities defines the tone and the differences are brought out poignantly in scene after scene. My favorite is the one where Lauda and his girl (Alexandra Maria Lara) hitch hike a ride from a couple of besotted Lauda fans when their ride breaks down. The two having met only hours before at a party, the lady is incredulous when the fans wax eloquent about his heroics on the racetrack, with Lauda himself pottering along behind the steering wheel during the scene. The ruthless exposition of Lauda’s racing philosophy that follows and how he succumbs to the lady’s taunts to abandon his reserve will surely go down in folklore as one of the more memorable sports movie scenes.

Ron Howard takes the first half to masterfully flesh out the characters. The rivalry is allowed to build up as you almost rejoice and despair along with the characters. Chris Hemsworth, who essays James Hunt, lets us peek into the inner turmoil of a man liable to be easily dismissed as a dilettante. His ritual of retching his stomach out before every race and his fortitude in bouncing back from personal setbacks, including winning newshounds over with his disarming one-liners when quizzed over his failed marriage, underlines this performance. When you consider that Hunt’s character is overshadowed by Lauda’s for the latter’s sheer grit and raw emotions, Hemsworth manages to hold his own as a playboy racer who found it in himself to turn in one intense season. Hell, he even sounds philosophical as he paints the irony of zipping around in a ‘bomb on wheels’ chasing juvenile glory in a playful yet seductive scene with his eventually estranged wife played by Olivia Wilde.

Gears are shifted in the post intermission with the chilling race on that fateful day in Nurburgring gluing you to your seats. The cinematography is explosive as the mean machines trace the contours of the legendary track which has extracted its pound of flesh over the years. The visual of the spider crawling down a beam on the foreground while the racetrack’s lethal reputation is narrated – as a metaphor for its grim harvest -  is another personal favorite of mine. The final race of that year – the Japanese Grand Prix with Mount Fuji as the stunning backdrop - provides the final unraveling of the characters personalities. No prim endings here ala Days of Thunder with the hero burning rubber into the sunset with lady love riding shotgun, only a brutal expose of a sport where percentages are played not to triumph, but just to stay in one piece.

If you are a petrolhead, watching it once will not satiate your thirst for octane, if you are not, the disarming honesty of the two rivals will still make you fall in love with their pursuits for glory. The roar of the V12 engines were still ringing in my head even hours after I had left the theatre; you feel sorry for the other releases, who can stand up to a 450 horsepower beast screaming down the tarmac scattering dust and blades of grass in its wake?! Even then, this is less about the machines and more about the human endeavor to pursue glory. The exchange between Hunt and Lauda in the closing scenes sums up the conflict between the head and the heart in sports; what is often seen as heroism in the arena may just be foolhardiness. Can athletes regard their craft dispassionately and could winning just be a function of playing the percentages? Are the Hunts of the world modern day gladiators or was Lauda the forebearer of the modern day pro athlete, who is in it only because he can’t be better at anything else?

Rush is a movie which inspires faith in the magnificence of sports and yet questions the legend of the Achillean athlete who is eventually shown up to have feet of clay. What is evident is its ability to spur mortals to superhuman heights; that’s why the Sennas of the world live on in our hearts.

Soulfood - A review of The Lunchbox

What do you do if lunch cooked by a stranger arrives on your desk? Simple, you tuck into the fare laden with expectancy and savor the inviting flavor, only to have pangs of curiosity disguised as hunger haunt you the next day. Thus starts ‘The lunchbox’ with an innocuous event of misplaced meals bringing together two disparate lives with a promise to alter their courses forever.

The movie is rooted into the mundane; routine events with the potential to change forever lives which have long settled into a dreary rhythm. The overwhelming shadow of Mumbai the metropolis looms large over the characters, her invisible hands pulling strings for hope to peek, only to dash them cruelly. This mood of despondency is however regularly punctuated with optimism; Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s character is glib and opportunist, a byproduct of a lifetime of deprivation, yet he retains an affection for an old widower ambushed by an unlikely fantasy. Nimrat Kaur plays the spurned bride with aplomb, displaying numerous nuances of a life lived in constant disappointment. Culinary skills are her only forte with which she attempts to reignite her marriage with a disembodied voice of an elderly neighbor as her confidant and who herself has a woeful story to tell. Human tragedy in The Lunchbox does not pervade the storyline with baleful melancholy; wit is used adroitly to convey the message that hope springs eternal. Sample the story of Nimrat’s neighbor who the audience never sees: her comatose husband, seemingly lost to the world, nevertheless ignites hope, at least in his wife’s mind by his catatonic fixation with the ceiling fan. An appliance thus provides sustenance and purpose to lives which otherwise would have drowned in hopelessness.

The cinematography employs muted tones, transporting the audience back to a different era where love still had romance and the forgotten art of writing letters a means to bring two divergent lives together. The narrative depends heavily on moods and emotions conveyed by gestures and expressions; Irrfan Khan glancing around covertly before pocketing the amorous missive depicts the dilemma of one who is torn between societal norms and his yearning to rekindle his life. The tenderness between the two protagonists is deliciously understated; it transports you back in time where love was beholden to a union of minds with one drawing strength from the other. Sample the scene where Nimrat is troubled by a suicide which has a disturbing semblance to her own life, plagued by a straying husband. Her sense of foreboding is assuaged by the deadpan humor of Irrfan who relates a somewhat bawdy account of his privates being violated in Mumbai’s stuffy local trains; a case of comedy of errors with which he conveys that things are not always what they seem.

The movie is a celebration of your senses as evidently conveyed by using food as a device with which the protagonists connect. Nimrat tries to win back her husband by pouring out her passion in her cuisine and unwittingly ends up firing the will of a much older man’s desire to salvage a life rendered cold by loss and tedium. Irrfan is expectedly consummate in his portrayal of an ageing and cantankerous accountant wary of displaying any affection which threatens to derail his selfish existence. I cannot recall any other Indian movie which uses something as basic yet powerful a tool as food to trigger a chain of events which transforms lives. The earthy visuals of an Indian kitchen and the archetypal images of a stodgy day in a dull Indian ‘daftar’ being livened up at lunch hours by overworked clerks smacking their lips over a sumptuous meal defines this movie. I hope this is a watershed in Indian cinema where basic indulgences are deftly used to create a connect with the audience.

The lunchbox is in a way an evocative throwback to the Ray era and his Calcutta trilogy where the ‘everyman’ is the subject in the backdrop of the all-encompassing metropolis. Director Ritesh Batra’s treatment of such quintessential urban topics displays promise even though the conclusion is somewhat drawn out and lacks the tautness of the first half. Irrfan’s holds the film together with his powerhouse performance; his dry wit flashing like a samurai’s sword. Watch this one for its celebration of life and hope as much for its pathos of life in a big city

India's Vietnam - A review of Madras Cafe

If you have been weaned on a diet of a certain genre of cinema immortalizing ideology fuelled conflict played out in the jungles of Vietnam, this may look like the pee wee leagues after having savored some superbowl action. ‘Madras café’ however dares to go where most Bollywood fare would dare not venture, namely geopolitical conflict and gunboat diplomacy, themes which come as naturally to Indian mainstream cinema as do soulful ballads to Daler Mehndi. The flick is not without its limitations; John Abraham seemed to have his facial tissues kneaded into a tight dough allowing very little emotional flexing and Ms Fakhri needing to work on a number of things, minor ones among them being histrionic skills. After all, those fabulous cheekbones can only take you so far. The dialogues sound contrived (especially John’s voiceover narration), punctuated as it is with liberal doses on English which appears jarring in an essentially Hindi movie. The plot fails to capitalize on the enormous possibilities at a grand sweep and scale that a subject like civil war provides and settles for a more sensational topic like the assassination of a former head of state as the central theme. One could feel the minefield that the director was navigating through in the treatment of such a controversial subject; too many sensibilities one couldn’t afford to offend. Nothing illustrates this better than John Abraham stumbling out of a church drunk and disheveled, lamenting at the state not having done enough to save the ex-PM. One wonders how this takes precedence over him losing his wife to the plotters, but then maybe I’m cynical and macho John did always put queen and country ahead of personal grief!

The acting rarely reaches stunning heights and the only standout performance is delivered by the RAW Chennai station chief played by Kannada actor Prakash Belawadi with his gritty portrayal of a double agent compromised in a CIA honey trap. He lends depth and credence to the character with his brusque demeanor conveying a steely resolve which belies the deception which unravels later in the movie. The somewhat deranged air that he brings to his persona is apt to the overall theme of death and deception of the flick.  

Siddharth Basu is a total letdown. Zero screen presence, total lack of timing and dialogues mouthed as if his only preparation for the project was to have watched mass produced Hollywood disaster movies in an effort to ape the men in uniform bark out obvious orders reduces this role to a poor caricature. Some thespians were never meant to make the transition from the small to the silver screen and Basu proves why some shouldn’t even have attempted in the first place. What works for the movie however is the crisp pace at which the narrative moves and the cinematography which looks accomplished. Do not again expect the Napalm fuelled orange haze which envelops classics like Apocalypse Now, lending it a surreal look. Redemption is provided by the jump cuts using original stills, perhaps from the war ravaged locales. Most of the brilliant cast from Vicky Donor is however underutilized here as they sleepwalk through their lines. If you’re still at the theatre past the lemon break having suffered through Ms Fakhri holding forth on world affairs, the events in the second half of the movie leading up to the assassination is taut enough to keep you hooked till the climax.

Watch Madras Café if you retain nostalgia for spy thrillers like Spy Game and the impeccable Robert Redford in it. You will however be well advised to skip John’s lament at the end; somebody should have told him that failed intelligence officers don’t get to drown their sorrows in a liquor bottle, they are left to rot behind a desk.

Memories of Biafra - a review of 'Half of a yellow...

There are books and then there are books which grab you by the scruff of the neck and keep you hooked till you have journeyed from cover to cover. Reading ’ Half of a yellow sun’ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was like sparring with a snub nosed super heavyweight; the prose is hard-hitting and keeps you ducking and weaving with the poignant questions it raises on subjects as diverse as race, class and human conflict. Her writing transports you into the early years of a newborn state, still grappling with a transitory phase from a colonial past to an uncertain future as the change of guard happens in a newly liberated Nigeria. The language, earthy and direct, brings out the ancient prejudices and contempt that the erstwhile white ruling elite retained for the blacks. The book traces the lives of diverse characters against the backdrop of the ethnic conflict shortly after Nigeria was liberated and the subsequent move for the breakaway state of Biafra. This secessionist move still evokes strong emotions in modern day Nigeria and you feel the stillborn nation’s shadow hanging heavy over the plot.

The prose is simple yet lyrical and begins with little Ugwu making his way from an obscure village to work as a houseboy for the young firebrand Mathematics professor Odenigbo, a product of the Western educated intellectual elite and a strident advocate of African nationalism. One experiences the discordant notes through Ugwu’s eyes as ancient tribal identities try and make peace with an urbanizing Africa, forever changed by the legacy of the empire. You sense the author’s masterful grasp of human relationships as she presents a contrast between the twin sisters Olanna, Odenigbo’s beautiful lover with a heart of gold and the cold and headstrong Kainene who is different from her twin sister in every way. Daughters of one of Nigeria’s wealthy aristocrats, the conflicting personalities of the twins - one affectionate and optimistic about the young nation’s future while the other aloof and viscerally cynical of the motives of the avaricious and ham handed kleptocrats who only seek to perpetuate exploitation – present a vivid commentary of the dilemma of the young state. The cast of characters is rounded off by Richard, the dreamy British expat who is equally enamored by Kainenene and Nigeria’s tribal heritage and harbors a fanciful if touching idea of writing a book on the ancient pottery art of Nigeria.

The characters are thrown into a maelstrom of both interpersonal and physical conflicts as interracial strife threatens to tear the country apart. You love the author’s nuanced treatment of how the characters’ lives intersect; the uneasy ferment resulting from ancient beliefs colliding with western ideas, hurling the protagonists headlong into conflict. Perhaps the most revealing aspect of this book is the depiction of the naked brutality of the Biafran conflict, where starvation – which would become a weapon of choice with African warlords – was used with lethal efficacy to cow the secessionists into submission.

Half of a yellow sun, the emblem of the stillborn Biafran nation, stands as a parable of a people who dreamt of an abode where they could be free. One gets the feeling that the yearning stemmed more from the rebellious air that the postcolonial era was redolent with as opposed to a well articulated need for self-determination. As is the case with most such utopian ambitions, the disillusioning end stood as a stark anticlimax to the initial heady emotions. The lyrical quality of the prose however makes you a believer and a convert and leaves you wistful as only such heretical fables can.