An unabashed review of Besharam

There are occasions when you decide to trust your instincts and go against your better judgment. Neurons are firing in your brain, willing you to turn back. You pause, take a deep breath and tell your heart, ‘there, there, its going to be alright’. You walk into the theatre, settle into the cramped seats, the movie opens, the script unfolds and you whisper to your heart, ‘bravo!’ Well, this was exactly what I did NOT experience last evening as overwhelmed by an attack of masochism, I found myself staring emptily at the opening credits, with its proud announcements of the many media partners that Besharam had wangled, an agony that you are subjected to before the real pain…oops movie begins.

From the very beginning the makers of Besharam – to their credit – warn you to what lies in store. Javed Jaffrey serves up a montage of his past caricatures in his depiction of a Hawaladar or a money launderer. ‘Bheem Singh Chandel’, he announces with his worst scowl to a hapless cop who had dared to halt his booty laden convoy, as you glance askance at the nearest exit, in case a quick evacuation is needed. A couple of Scorpios leap into the air in flaming infernos as if on cue; a stunt favored by the current brat pack  - read Rohit Shetty – to warm things up. It pretty much is downhill from here and you would do well to save yourself a few grey cells by realizing straight up one key fact – there is no plot. Besharam was meant to have no plot, for it is a vehicle for the latest progeny of the Kapoor clan (and his doting parents) to indulge themselves with both father and son outdoing themselves in letting the audience having a peek at err, well, their ‘crack’ and I’m not referring to jokes here, not the verbal kinds anyway.

With their investment secured by shamelessly plugging for an iconic car marquee and a popular candy maker – if you walk in a little late you can be forgiven for mistaking the movie for an elaborate Mercedes ad – Abhinav Kashyap sets about what could have been a comic caper and ends up dishing out sheer nonsense and toilet humor of the cheapest kind. Appalling one liners with references to flatulence to actually having to witness the elder Kapoor’s morning exertions on the throne, with its attendant ghastly acoustics, leaves you wondering if you can survive till intermission. This may well have been an attempt to recreate Ranbir in his illustrious grandpa’s avatar of a tramp in the cult Mera Naam Joker. I hope that is a figment of my imagination alone as Raj’s rendition of the forlorn clown and the timeless soundtrack exuded a fragrant whiff, best left unsullied by the fetid odor from Besharam’s armpits.

The characters are paper thin and silly; Pallavi Sharda’s character careens through the streets of Delhi in her freshly acquired Merc A class in the initial scenes (perhaps Merc wanted to show off the A class’ handling too, not content with branding alone) with a lunatic glint in her eyes, this impression of a vacuous belle quickly gives way to a self-possessed corporate climber who would rather putter around in an ALTO than hitch her ride to a sadakchap mechanic. As you try and reconcile these disconcertingly contradictory traits, the caricatures pop up thick and fast, threatening to nudge you over the edge. Warning: long forgotten twitches and tics may resurface, do carry medication for pre existing conditions. Neetu Singh looks ancient and gnarled; perhaps it would have been wise to let memories of Amar Akbar Anthony and Deewar reign in the hearts of admirers. Rishi Kapoor looks content playing a goofy cop but fails to evoke either humor or sympathy, in that order. There is an art to playing such slapstick roles where your gestures and sense of timing often complements and sometimes transcends the inane storyline to leave the audience in splits: Anupam Kher and Kader Khan in Haseena Maan Jayegi comes to mind, a movie which was hugely entertaining purely for the histrionic skills on display without having to resort to toilet humor. But perhaps the intent with Besharam is different.

If you are still reading this, it can mean only one thing, that you are hoping for a reason to still watch this effort. And the answer should be obvious: Ranbir Kapoor. You can’t help but think that someone with such screen presence is wasted here, but then that is stating the obvious; Ranbir follows in the long line of the Kapoor clan with Greek god looks and charisma and the female fan following with comes with it, but with little else. They have made Bollywood (sharing the turf uneasily with the Khans) and Bollywood is because of them. Every once in a while the audience is subjected to a grim reminder that they loom larger than trivial considerations like a good script and storylines and it will be easier for us to live with ourselves if we see Besharam as great family entertainer: not your family but the Kapoor’s. Pallavi Sharda has potential and we see glimpses of that here, with some luck and a few more mega budget releases, we should see her exchanging cold stares with the leading ladies of tinsel town. The rest are as forgettable as, well the gas that passes from the nether regions as so eloquently described by one of Ranbir’s flunkies in the movie.

Review: Prisoners

The camera pans into a dusty stairwell leading down from the trapdoor into the dark basement. A musty smell pushes him back momentarily, like a palm thrust against his face. The scene cuts to change the shot, now focusing at him from the bottom of the stairwell, as if something is watching him from down below. He chooses his steps carefully down the flight of stairs, cutting the darkness with the sharp beam of his flashlight. Camera angle changes once again, now over his shoulder staring into the darkness below ahead of him. You see a callused hand placing itself on his shoulder. That’s your cue to shriek, squirm, an opportunity to grab your boyfriend’s biceps perhaps. A familiar setting for a thriller/slasher flick? Maybe. But then again, not quite if the flick in question is Prisoners.

Folks who have seen Zodiac may get a sense of déjà vu with its intricate storyline and cerebral treatment. Same is the case here right down to the obsessive detective with his funny eccentricities, but more on that later. The flick opens with the brusque and brooding lead, Keller Dover – played by Hugh Jackman – uttering a prayer as his son shoots a deer in the woods; a symbol for the deep religious theme that underscores the movie. You see this surface throughout the movie – snakes which evoke the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the inner turmoil of a father driven to brutality in a desperate bid to locate his daughter. It reminds you of Se7en with a deep sense of melancholy pervading the length of the film. Unlike the former which skirts the thin line between mind numbing boredom and psychosis, this takes you back to the days of the frontiersmen when the American wild was yet to be won and men like Jackman’s character survived under the shadow of their hunting rifle.

The narrative is very verry deliberate but that’s what it takes to plumb the depths of the characters. And that’s also what it takes to convey the despair of two sets of parents dealing with the disappearance of their daughters. This is very much a good vs evil story and the descent of god-fearing men into violence and bloodshed. The movie’s greatest success is to depict that struggle; the scene where Jackman is barely able to restrain himself from rearranging the suspected abductor’s jaws with a hammer and brings it down crashing into a sink instead is stirring. This isn’t one for the faint hearted; you can’t help but cringe as you watch Paul Dano’s – playing the main suspect – character being pummeled into a bloody pulp by Jackman who brooks no resistance in tracking his daughter down. You hold your breath as you follow an intruder into the Birch – the family of the other missing child – home, clueless about the motive but with a clear sense of foreboding. You can’t bear to watch as you expect the worst and yet the scene culminates in a way which leaves you heaving a sigh like never before. Whether it’s one of relief you gotta watch the movie to find out!

The flick is nothing if not for its powerhouse performances. Jake Gyllenhaal playing Detective Loki is almost talismanic in his presence. His chronic blinking injects an almost farcical element in the otherwise grim proceedings. The portrayal of at times kooky and always obsessed cop is pitted against the other titan in the movie, the often maniacal portrayal of a possessed father by Hugh Jackman. Best known for his superhuman feats in X-Men, this dapper auteur turns in a delicious performance which surely must also go down as a lesson on Machismo 101. Styling himself on the intrepid patriarch from back in the bad old days when you stood guard with a gun as your family slept, the viewer can almost see a sleeping giant being roused by the sequence of events. He is taciturn but spits out words like gunshots, is moved to tears with grief but willing to scald and maim in an effort to locate his daughter. Wannabe tough guys, this is one playbook from which you could fish out a leaf or two. The supporting cast does their job well which is to reach deep into their souls to make sense of the sudden and inexplicable loss. Themes of alienation and isolation in small town America come to the fore. Things always aren’t what they seem and that’s what keeps the narrative chugging along, even if the plot unravels too early in my opinion for a classic whodunit.

This is a must watch if you are hooked to David Fincher movies although this one is by Denis Villeneuve. Don’t expect for all the pieces of the jigsaw to fall into place however, that would do disservice to such a nuanced film

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