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Release date:	March 17, 2017
Director:	Midhun Manuel Thomas
Cast: Language:	Sunny Wayne, Aditi Ravi, Aju Varghese, Saiju Kurup, Sudhi Koppa, Renji Panicker, Manikandan, Indrans Malayalam

When problems beset a marriage, a couple’s interests are best served if they are left to themselves to sort out their differences. Egoistic, interfering relatives tend to make matters worse. This has been a recurrent concern in Indian cinema, but when the director of the screwball comedy Aadu Oru Bheegara Jeeviyaanu zeroes in on the theme, it is natural to expect novelty.

Midhun Manuel Thomas’ latest film, Alamara, stars Sunny Wayne as Arun Pavithran, a young bank employee anxious to be married. After several attempts to find a girl for himself, he falls for Swati (Aditi Ravi) who reciprocates his feelings. Swati also works in a bank.

Arun and Swati’s problems begin from the beginning, when their respective families get off on the wrong foot. The first nail in the coffin of their relationship though is driven in when, just days after their wedding ceremony in Kerala, her parents gift the couple a large wooden cupboard (alamara, hence the title). The two move to Bangalore to work there, but their nosy relatives and that alamara hound them all the way.

Parallel to the lead couple’s marital strife is the tale of a piece of land purchased by Arun and his pals, Prasad (Saiju Kurup), Suvin (Aju Varghese) and Justin (Sudhi Koppa). Poor Arun starts feeling crushed, as he handles the tension with his wife on one side and on the other, resists a land-grabbing attempt by a Karnataka gangster (Indrans).

The narrator of Arun and Swati’s story is their alamara, which in itself is an intriguing starting block. Well begun is not always half done though, as this film proves.

Alamara probably sounded great at the conceptual level, especially in the hands of the maker of Aadu. It flounders, however, in its execution. It is not that it is bad, but that it is lukewarm. Bad can still be fun, lukewarm is boring.

There are some laughs to be had at first, especially because the four male friends share a relaxedchemistry, the actors playing them have good comic timing and it is easy to identify with the family ego hassles that swamp most Indian marriages. Anyone who has attended a desiwedding and seen relatives grumbling about arrangements, in-laws grumbling about gifts, etc, will recognise this bizarre milieu where everyone seems to want everyone to get hitched yet everyone seems determined to mess up everyone’s marriage.

Take for instance that moment when Swati presents Arun’s Mum with a gold banglein the presence of dozens of family members and local busybodies, and the bangle does not fit. A normal human being ought to see it as a minor problem, but in a traditional desiset-up it could lead to assumptions, presumptions, gossip, politics, years of taunts, hell and humiliation for the bride.

This well-observed episode and the little touches that precede it could have served as a great kick-off to satirise the Indian family system and our obsession with matrimony. Unfortunately, as the story rolls along, a lack of zest sets in. Thomas seems to mistake absence of verve for wryness, and thus is Alamaralost.

Part of the reason for this missing spunk could be that all the characters are stereotypes. Every man in the film is dying to be married, unless he is already married, at which point he starts feeling hemmed in by that marriage. And why would he not? After all, every husband in the film is a victim. Every man is a paavam (bechara, simple, innocent) fellow whose life is being ruined by a woman. Every woman is a nag who is ruining her paavamhusband’s life. All the men are stupid. All the women are manipulative. All the men lack spine. All the wives are unreasonable, belligerent witches. Yawn.

(Spoiler alert) Everything is sorted out in the end when the paavam male protagonist takes charge as only a man can, and the women immediately keel over in submission at a speed you see only from women in films. Yawn. (Spoiler alert ends)

Except for Arun, none of the other characters is fully fleshed out by John Manthrikal’s writing. For the conflict between Arun and Swati to be immersive, she needed to be as clearly etched out as he is. She is not. Swati never rises above being a mere outline.

While it is possible to blame this flaw on the film’s resentful male gaze and a writer who seems not to see women as people, the fact is Manthrikal’s characterisation of the men too (other than Arun) is inadequate.

It is hard to imagine how Midhun Manuel Thomas managed to assemble such a talented cast of actors and still churn out such an average film. Wayne is a natural, Varghese and Indrans are brilliant comics given a good script, but all three are bereft of any spark in this film. The women artistes are lost to the cliched, superficial writing of their characters.

The only one here who makes some sort of a mark with his performance is the attractive Saiju Kurup, even though Prasad too is a stereotype.

Alamara starts off brimming with possibilities and laughter, but peters out early on under the weight of its commonplaceness. Perhaps this scanty script should have been locked up in the cupboard of the title and left there until someone thought of a way to rev it up.

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	131 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/alamara-movie-review-of-paavam-men-nagging-women-and-lukewarm-comedy-3341178.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamara

Release date:	March 17, 2017
Director:	Antony Sony
Cast: Language:	Manju Warrier, Amala Akkineni, Shane Nigam, Niranjana Anoop, Biju Sopanam, Raghavan, Sujith Sankar Malayalam

Manju Warrier is a sweetie. There are no high-falutin, sophisticated adjectives that could describe her better. She is a sweetheart who fits well in a David-versus-Goliath scenario, because her David is one you so want to root for.

In debutant director Antony Sony’s C/o Saira Banu, there are moments when that quality spills over into self-conscious cutesiness, but for the most part she is reined in at just the right point. There are also moments when Sony seems too aware of her beauty and charm, when he indulges in needless close-ups, lingering more than required on that pretty face, that sharp nose and those trademark large eyes. His awareness too, fortunately, is reined in more often than not.

This control is essential to the effectiveness of C/o Saira Banu, in which Warrier stars as the heroine of the title, a postwoman and foster mother to a law-student-cum-photography-aspirant not young enough to be her biological child. The ‘child’ is Joshua Peter (Shane Nigam), whose brief rebellion against Saira in a fit of anger one night, leads to a tragic incident with the potential to ruin his life. Saira, whose formal education ended with Class 10, is pitted against the noted lawyer Annie John Tharavady (Amala Akkineni) in her battle to save Joshua’s future.

It is an unusual conflict, one that is imbued with empathy for the seeming enemy, a determination to protect oneself without taking revenge on the one who has wronged you, and heartwarming female bonding. It has resonance in the present global political scenario of hate, and in so many ongoing national debates, including the one on capital punishment where the bloodlust of the masses and a desire for vengeance seem to override humanity, common sense and the larger social good.

Sony’s direction and R.J. Shaan’s writing are not always polished, but their lack of finesse thankfully does not overshadow the crucial questions they raise through his film. The two also wisely steer clear of being preachy, a trap that a story such as this could have easily fallen into. Saira and Joshua’s differing backgrounds, their unconventional relationship and the assumptions people make based on their names are all introduced without blowing bugles or beating drums.

Still, Team C/o Saira Banu must be called to account for their film’s overly long first half and the many disruptions in the narrative. Too many songs, for instance, a couple of maudlin numbers sung at a gratingly high pitch, and music superimposed on a montage of Saira and Joshua’s interactions to convey the easygoing nature of their relationship in a cliched fashion, all divert attention from the overall mood.

The film does itself no favours either with its sloppy closing scene set outside the state, and a silly red herring thrown at the audience towards the end, to manipulate us right before the appearance of a crucial witness in court. Why exactly did that character risk turning up in the crowd if he was not forced to be a witness? The loose thread is left hanging there.

Such intermittent amateurishness is irritating. FYI Mr Sony, no magazine of Nat Geo’s stature would accept Joshua’s awkwardly structured caption for a prize-winning photograph, however good that photograph might be. In fact, this film needed an English language consultant at several places. Good intentions are no excuse for slipshod direction or writing.

It is a measure of the immense strength of C/o Saira Banu’s theme, that its socio-political relevance and emotional resonance overcome even these distractions.

Warrier has the personality to carry a film on her shoulders. C/o Saira Banu is greatly helped by her charisma and Shane Nigam’s likeable presence – watching him as Joshua, it is easy to understand why a woman might go to such lengths to protect this flawed boy. Biju Sopanam deserves a special mention for his performance as a small-time lawyer and Saira’s unlikely ally.

The clincher in the casting though is Amala Akkineni as Ms Tharavady. Returning to Malayalam cinema after a quarter of a century, Akkineni brings layers to her character as does the writing by Shaan. Her actions are disturbing, yet it is impossible to hate her. The actress is also a nice example of loveliness getting better with the grace and dignity that age brings.

In a disconcertingly male-dominated industry, it is a pleasure to see that rare women-oriented project that has heft and is not positioned as an offbeat, weepy non-entertainer. This though is not what makes C/o Saira Banu worth watching despite its weaknesses. What makes it worth watching is its thought-provoking storyline, its seasoned artistes and unexpected suspense.

“Yathartha jeevithathilolla drameyude pakathi polum oru kathayilum illa, Moley,” an old man tells a youngster during the film. “There is not half as much drama in fiction as there is in real life.” Saira’s is a very dramatic story, but at the end of the day she is but an ordinary woman who clutches straws in drowning desperation and ends up pulling a bunch of people including herself out of an intimidating, life-threatening ocean.

C/o Saira Banu examines varying definitions of motherhood without elevating mothers to devi status in a stereotypical manner. The women of this film make morally questionable choices to save their offspring from difficult situations, but it is not as if they let themselves off the hook. They did what they did. They are not saints. They exist. The film makes no excuses for them.

Power games toocome in various forms. There are wheels within wheels in C/o Saira Banu, and we are reminded that the David we are cheering on may well be guilty too of taking advantage of another person’s relatively small stature to save her own neck. One person’s David, as Saira Banu learns, may well be another person’s Goliath.It is worth looking past this film’s follies and uneven treatment to arrive at that point.

Rating (out of five stars): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	156 minutes

A version of this review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/co-saira-banu-movie-review-manju-warrier-lends-warmth-to-a-relevant-but-patchy-film-3342310.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/O_Saira_Banu

Release date:	March 24, 2017
Director:	Anshai Lal
Cast: Language:	Anushka Sharma, Diljit Dosanjh, Suraj Sharma, Mehreen Pirzada Hindi with Punjabi

Early in Phillauri, an alcohol-swilling old woman with obviously dyed, jet black hair tells her grayhead of a son that he was the result of a single peg of booze. It is a funny remark, of course, yet one you might shrug off if you think of the number of Hindi films in recent years that have seen alcohol, cigarettes, swear words and sex talk from women as the sole harbingers of progressiveness, and the number of filmmakers who have used these props to mask their deeply entrenched patriarchal notions of womanhood while pretending to be forward-thinking.

Over an hour later though, a character in the film tells a woman that a man is worthy of her, not because of his social status, but because he treated her with genuine respect and honour. It is then you know for sure that Anshai Lal’s Phillauri is not merely faking it. The director along with writer Anvita Dutt have struck at the heart of what true equality means. And what a relief that is.

Phillauri belongs to the love-aaj-and-kal genre, with the story of Kanan and Anu in 2017 told parallel to the pre-Independence tale of Shashi and Roop. Kanan (Suraj Sharma) has just completed his studies in Canada and is now in Punjab to marry his childhood sweetheart Anu (debutant Mehreen Pirzada). Much against his wishes he fulfills the family elders’ wishes by marrying a tree to overcome his manglik dosh. Since the ghost of Shashi (Anushka Sharma) from a bygone era resides in that tree, Kanan ends up unknowingly becoming her groom.

The pretty spook is now stuck with him. His commitment phobia combined with the fact that only he can see Shashi ends up creating confusion in his relationship with Anu as D-day inches towards them.

Is Shashi real or is she a figment of Kanan’s weed-addled imagination? Who knows. What we do know is that while Shashi’s sepia-toned affair with the popular local singer Roop (Diljit Dosanjh) unfolds in Punjab’s Phillaur town, Kanan clears up his muddled head and figures out precisely what he wants from life.

On the face of it, the apparition in Phillauri is a tool to take a comparative look at romance then and now. Yet, with its gentle allusions to India’s colonial history, social attitudes towards artists and women’s autonomy, the film becomes more than just that. It is, of course, a bemused swipe at regressive customs and those who follow them without conviction or understanding. It is a comment on how even now, gifted women are often fronted by men with half their talent because ambition is deemed a dirty word for women.

Most of all though, it is a reminder that the human lives lost in any tragedy are not mere statistics, but real people who died with goals yet unattained and dreams yet unfulfilled.

All this takes a while to sink in though because Lal takes too long to get to the point. Too many Hindi films are lost to the curse of the second half. Fortunately for Phillauri, its affliction is the exact opposite. The pre-interval portion is too stretched out and, after the initial engaging, humorous few minutes, becomes as pale as Shashi’s ghostly presence.

More time than required is spent with Kanan and Shashi together.Suraj has just one expression on his face throughout this segment and Anushka is a shadow of her usually charismatic self. Besides, their equation is far less interesting than Kanan-Anu and Shashi-Roop.

Of the two couples, the old-world pair has way more substance and novelty value than the two youngsters from the 21^st century. It is no wonder then that Phillauri truly comes into its own post interval when it devotes itself primarily to Shashi and Roop’s romance which is at once uplifting and heart-wrenching, thus rendering even the needlessly elongated climax forgivable. The resonance and relevance of their story in modern times is this film’s selling point.

The other USP of Phillauri is its music and the way it is used to recount a large part of Shashi and Roop’s love saga. Music director Shashwat Sachdev and lyricist Anvita Dutt deserve kudos in particular for the beautiful song Sahiba– a reference to the legend of Mirza and Sahibaan which serves as a red herring of sorts here – in Romy and Pawni Pandey’s lovely voices. Lal deserves a big salaam for how this number has been woven into the narrative to such soul-stirring effect.

As with Imtiaz Ali’s Love Aaj Kal in 2009, the past has more appeal in this film too. One reason of course is the eternal poignance of what-might-have-beens and the challenge of that inevitable question: how might I have functioned or even survived in a regressive, claustrophobic era gone by? That alone does not explain Phillauri’s split personality though.

In terms of writing, directorial execution and acting, yesterdayhas zest and today does not in this inconsistent albeit sweet spook story.

Rating (out of five stars): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	137 minutes 58 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/phillauri-movie-review-anushka-sharma-diljit-dosanjh-rev-up-this-inconsistent-sweet-spook-story-3350506.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillauri_(film)

Release date:	March 24, 2017
Director:	Avinash Das
Cast: Language:	Swara Bhaskar, Sanjai Mishra, Pankaj Tripathi, Ishteyaq Khan, Mayur More, Vijay Kumar, Nitin Arora, Vishwa Bhanu Hindi

“In future, whether a woman is your wife, a prostitute or one step above a prostitute, ask what she wants before you touch her.”

There is such deep satisfaction to be had from hearing a character on the big screen utter this sentence. That it comes from the heroine – not the hero – of the film in question, is cause to pop open a zillion champagne bottles. It is a moment of triumph, not just in this week’s Hindi film release, Anaarkali of Aarah, but in Bollywood history.

In 1993, the lawyer Govind (Sunny Deol) roared out the well-remembered “tareekh pe tareekh” speech against the victimisation of a woman who was an eyewitness to a rape, in Rajkumar Santoshi’s Damini. In 2016, Amitabh Bachchan’s lawyer Deepak Sehgal snarled out the words “no means no” in a courtroom in Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Pink. Both are significant films, no doubt, but 2017 is now witnessing a much-needed evolution beyond them. In Anaarkali of Aarah, a woman – not a man – storms into the lion’s den and skewers him with her wits and fury, as she reminds him about the meaning of consent. A woman, not a man – hold on to that.

Anaarkali, the firebrand who ticks off a male sexual predator in this fashion, is the protagonist of a film that works not just because of its sound gender politics though. It works because its feminism is embedded in a gloriously entertaining, skillfully told story with the best musical score and most intelligent choreography of the year so far. Even when it defies believability to snatch victory out of defeat for a beleaguered woman, Anaarkali of Aarah does so with such conviction, that it is impossible not to cheer despite knowing at some level that the real Anaarkalis of the world are hardly likely to get off as lightly.

Swara Bhaskar plays the central character of the tale, a stage performer in Bihar’s Aarah town who is passionate about her song and dance. When a local bigwig molests her in public one day, not surprisingly the entire system closes ranks to protect him.

Anaarkali is not one to be taken lightly though. She is the sort of person some might consider foolhardy and others would call brave. She fights the man who preys on her along with his protectors and social opprobrium to have her say and live life on her own terms.

Writer-director Avinash Das makes his debut with a film that can only come from genuine belief. His writing is as assured as his direction. He obviously knows Bihar and small-town India, which accounts for the fact that Anaarkali of Aarah at no point exoticises its setting or its characters. Most important though, he appears to know women like Anaarkali well.

The tone of Anaarkali of Aarah’s narrative is unfaltering as is the look and sound of the film. Anaarkali sings erotic numbers often steeped in double entendre, as she would in the real world, yet the lyrics by Ramkumar Singh, Dr Sagar, Ravindra Randhawa and Das himself take dual meanings to a different level by supplementing their sexual content with the woman’s rebellion, resilience and lamentations. In Lehnga jhaanke she sings of the spellbinding effect her skirt has on men, in Mora piya matlab ka yaarshe speaks of the deception by those very men, and in Sa ra ra ra she dares them to touch her without permission.

“Hamra ke confusiya ke gaya / Khidki se Patna dikha ke gaya / Hamra th chaukhat ke bhitri zulam hai / Saiyyaan ghoomakkad ko dharti bhi kam hai/ Dekho suit boot zulmi taiyyaar / Mora piya matlab ka yaar,” she sings in this telling number written by Dr Sagar.

If Das is the captain of the ship, music director Rohit Sharma is his first officer. Not only are the earthy, folksy tunes and lyrics compelling, but the voices too have been chosen as if by a casting director. It is as if Swati Sharma, Indu Sonali, Pawni Pandey and Rekha Bhardwaj were all born to sing for Bhaskar and Bhaskar alone.

In fact, Anaarkali of Aarah is remarkable in the Hindi film musical universe in the sense that at no point does it seem like anyone but the actress herself is singing.

Swara Bhaskar’s smoothly textured voice is one of her defining characteristics. With no obvious effort to sound gravelly or loud, she seems to have modified it to match her playback singers.

We already know Bhaskar’s innate talent from Tanu Weds Manu(TWM), TWM Returns, Raanjhanaa and last year’s Nil Battey Sannata, but Anaarkali of Aarah is a big step up in her journey as an artist. She so completely inhabits this character, that there is no Ms Bhaskar to be seen in the by turns raunchy, feisty, angry, scared, hurt and irrepressible Anaarkali.

Adding to her understanding of the character is the delightful work of the film’s costume designer Rupa Chourasia and choreographer Shabina Khan. Anaarkali’s dance moves in Sa ra ra ra and her complete immersion in that song gave me goosebumps.

Anaarkali of Aarah is a good lesson for those who seem confused by the ongoing debate on the portrayal of women in Hindi cinema. Anaarkali is objectified by the male characters in the film, but never by director of photography Arvind Kannabiran’s camera. Her character is demeaned by several men in her life, but never by Das, the man who has written the story of this film. She sings of the reality of women who are subjected to a sleazy male gaze, but Bhaskar at no point submits to being degraded herself as a woman, as Kareena Kapoor Khan did when she danced to “Main toh tandoori murgi hoon yaar, gatka le saiyyaan alcohol se” in Dabangg 2.

Bhaskar’s choices in this film, her performance and the manner in which Das has conceptualised and fleshed out Anaarkali all add up to a unique moment in Hindi cinema.

Anaarkali… features other interesting characters too. Rangeela, the man who runs the ‘music company’ of which the heroine is a member, is played with admirable control by Pankaj Tripathi. His gestures and body language in several places might conventionally be considered effeminate, yet Tripathi never reduces Rangeela to a camp caricature.

Sanjai Mishra as the film’s antagonist delivers a performance of great depth here. He makes university vice-chancellor Dharmender Chauhan a slimy fellow without resorting to easy gimmickry and over-the-top acting that usually defines the Hindi film villain even today. Watch out for that moment when the camera rests on his face in the climax.

If I have a grouse against Anaarkali of Aarah, it is that Rangeela is not better explored by the script. His relationship with Anaarkali is obviously complex, which is why she forgives him his aggression, unlike Dharmender Chauhan. Something is missing in the portrayal of that equation.

Another character who should have been better explored is Anaarkali’s young ally Anwar played by the loveable Mayur More. Anwar is cute, his unflinching support is endearing, and it is nice to see that this relationship does not take a predictable course (nothing in the film does). It would have been nicer still to discover more of Anwar through the script.

(Spoiler alert) There is a scene in the film in which a man walks seemingly menacingly towards a cowering Anaarkali in a closed room. He turns out to be a well-wisher, and that flash of intimidation appears to have been designed to throw us off. Brief though it is, it sticks out because it is the only point at which the script momentarily takes its theme lightly to manipulate the audience. (Spoiler alert ends)

The best written supporting character in Anaarkali of Aarah is another of the heroine’s allies, Hiraman played sweetly by Ishteyaq Khan with control that rivals Tripathi’s.

Among other things, Avinash Das appears to be having fun with names here – Anaarkali, Hiraman, Bulbul... Will this Anaarkali, for instance, be buried alive by patriarchy or banished to another kingdom, like her legendary forebear? My favourite of the lot is the corrupt cop Bulbul Pandey, as different from Salman Khan’s Chulbul Pandey in Dabangg as chalk is from cheese.

All this is the background from which emerges that one line from the heroine, translated at the start of this review: “Randi ho, randi se thhoda kam ho ya biwi ho, aainda marzi poochh kar haath lagaaiyega.” It may read like a conventional Hindi film dialogue of the sort that tends to attract cheers and wolf whistles from the masses, but be assured that it is discomfiting to status quoists. For proof, look no further than the Censor Board’s A rating for Anaarkali of Aarah.

When a ‘hero’ is violent with a heroine, as Badrinath was in Badrinath ki Dulhania earlier this month, and that heroine says in so many words that his behaviour is all her fault, the Board finds his violence worthy of a UA rating (meaning: fit for consumption by children if their parents consider it so). But when a woman on the margins of society fights back, she is deemed suitable only for adults. Pahlaj Nihalani and his ilk apparently do not want our “Bhartiya sanskriti” and impressionable children to be influenced by “uss type ki aurat” (that kind of woman).

Bless you Avinash Das for celebrating in a most entertaining fashion, every gutsy, rebellious, non-malleable, non-compliant uss type ki aurat through your Anaarkali. And bless you Swara Bhaskar for bringing this wonderful woman to life on screen.

Rating (out of five stars): ****

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	113 minutes 5 seconds

Poster courtesy: IMDB

Release date:	March 23, 2017
Director:	Lal Jr.
Cast: Language:	Asif Ali, Bhavana, Lal, Sreenivasan, Lena, Baburaj, Sreenath Bhasi, Balu Varghese Malayalam

There are few mood killers more effective than a person who is overly aware of their good looks and a film that is conscious of being cool. In the case of the new Mollywood release Honey Bee 2: Celebrations, the self-consciousness is misplaced since there is nothing cool about this decidedly dull sequel to the 2013 hit Honey Bee.

Writer-director Lal Jr’s Honey Bee 2 takes off where the first film left off, recounting the suicide bid by Sebastian a.k.a. Seban (played by Asif Ali) and Angel (Bhavana). Saved from watery doom, the two become part of a witless scheme featuring their friends Ferno (Baburaj), Abu (Sreenath Bhasi) and Ambrose (Balu Varghese) and Angel’s tempestuous brothers who are now reconciled to their romance.

The goal: to get Seban’s parents’ approval for his marriage to Angel. The catch: he is afraid they may feel hurt that their son chose his bride while they were estranged. Pretending that Seban and Angel do not know each other, Mikhail (Lal) and Angel’s remaining siblings propose the alliance to Seban’s Mum and Dad, Ruby (Lena) and Thampi Anthony (Sreenivasan).

Far from being the buddy flick that the first one was, this one ends up being a strained, over-stretched family drama with the plot centering around Seban’s love for his parents, his desire not to cause them pain and his highly contrived actions as a result. The film falls flat in its bid to be emotional, and the effort dilutes its comedic elements which, in any case, are repetitive, loud and too often crass.

Is it really funny that a bunch of people shout a lot or down litres of alcohol? How juvenile must you be to enjoy the use of crude words and gestures to indicate human body parts?

The early scenes hold out promise if you have a taste for slapstick humour. Ferno’s English remains amusing, but how long can he sustain himself on that prop? Like actor Baburaj playing Ferno, Sreenath Bhasi too retains his comic timing as Abu, but all three friends are poorly developed in the script and relegated to the sidelines.

With Lal Jr undecided about what he wants the film to be, the second hour of Honey Bee 2 goes round and round in circles, with a multiplicity of characters adding to the consequent confusion.

The confusion becomes irrelevant though, because Seban is an unlikeable bore, and frankly, it is hard to care beyond a point whether he loves Angel, why he wants to be with her and whether they will end up together.

In fact, it is impossible to imagine why this vivacious, intelligent woman would want to be with this charmless fellow, or why the film revolves around him and not her. Equally, what does it say about the choices available to female artistes in Malayalam cinema, that an interesting, beautiful actress like Bhavana agreed to play a supporting character in such an ordinary film focused on a male star with far less charisma than she possesses?

Low-brow humour is bad enough, but what is a viewer to do with lack of energy and lack of purpose? The most fun I had with Honey Bee 2: Celebrations came from wondering where I might source that lovely modernised adaptation of the settumundu Angel wears at her engagement ceremony; and from the foot-tapping songs Jillam jillala and Nummada Kochi, their music by Deepak Dev, the choreography, and in particular Lal’s uninhibited dancing to both.

Yes I do want to check out that chicken-laden “kaayika biriyaaniyude ruji” but macha, before that I must have a cup of coffee to jolt myself out of the boredom emanating from this film.

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	128 minutes

A version of this review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/honey-bee-2-movie-review-macha-bhavana-co-are-wasted-in-this-dull-asif-ali-centric-sequel-3351760.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/HoneyBee2Movie/

Release date:	March 24, 2017
Director:	Mahesh Narayanan
Cast: Language:	Parvathy, Kunchacko Boban, Fahadh Faasil, Asif Ali, Anjali Aneesh, Prakash Belawadi Malayalam with some Arabic, Hindi, English, Tamil (most of the non-Malayalam dialogues carry Malayalam subtitles)

You know you are having a grand time as a film buff when it is still the first quarter of the year and already your “Best Indian films of 2017” list has begun writing itself in your head. Take a bow, Mollywood, for having the capacity to deliver an Angamaly Diaries and a Take Off within the same month. And take a bow Indian cinema as a whole for having the capacity to deliver a Take Off from Mollywood and an Anaarkali of Aarah from Bollywood within the same week.

Sadly, language politics in the coverage of films by the so-called ‘national’ media is such that most English platforms have either entirely ignored or given short shift to two of these three films because they are not in Hindi. Sad, because Take Off is an ode to the Indian spirit, not the Malayali spirit alone. There is that other little matter: it is brilliant.

Well-known film editor Mahesh Narayanan makes his directing debut with a story inspired by the real-life experiences of Indian nurses held captive in 2014 in Tikrit, caught between Iraqi government forces and ISIS. The nurses’ ordeal is recounted through the fictionalised life of one, Sameera played by Parvathy.

Take Off gives us time with Sameera, extensively covering her personal history before placing her in Tikrit, so that when tragedy ultimately strikes, we already deeply care for her.

We see Sameera through professional challenges, as a dutiful daughter asserting the right to provide for her parental home after marriage and fighting the conservatism of her marital home. Within minutes, as the power of Narayanan’s storytelling draws us in, her journey becomes ours. And so we follow her at work, through her romantic relationships, marriage, motherhood and ultimately to Iraq where she travels for a job. It is important that we do so, because by the time she comes face to face with ISIS, we are fore-armed with the knowledge that battle is a habit for her and courage is second nature.

At one point, before the jehadists take over her hospital, Sameera says: How long will I be afraid? Growing up I was afraid of my father, then my husband, and now my son.

It is a turning point in our understanding of her, because while fear itself may be a reflex reaction beyond human control, succumbing to that fear is a choice – a choice this woman does not make.

The escape of Indian nurses from Tikrit was widely covered by the media, so we already know this story’s ending. It is a testament to Narayanan and his co-writer P.V. Shajikumar’s skills that despite this, in Take Off’s final moments they spring a surprise on us drawn from the fictional elements of the script.

There has been talk that Take Off has shades of Airlift. This is an unthinking parallel, because apart from the fact that both are based on true stories set in Iraq involving Indians stuck in conflict zones, the two films are as different as a single apple and an orchard full of oranges. Airlift was entertaining, slickly produced and unusual in that commercial Hindi cinema usually steers clear of contemporary history, but it was also an intentionally dishonest film that painted real-life stars as villains in an effort to build up its protagonist played by Akshay Kumar.

Take Off has integrity. Of course Sameera is the central figure, but she is not artificially lionised by diminishing others in a bid to play to the gallery. The names of the characters in this real-life drama are not used in the film, but several are present: a fictionalised Indian ambassador to Iraq (played by Fahadh Faasil) who engineers the nurses’ escape, a foreign secretary played by Prakash Belawadi, in addition to Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj and then Kerala CM Oommen Chandy, both of whom make an appearance as unnamed voices on the telephone.

Though the ambassador is the kingpin of the op, it is implied that all four are a cohesive team.

Central to the success of this film is Parvathy’s flawless performance as Sameera. She seems not to strain a single nerve or muscle to capture the spirit of our incredibly strong heroine. You would think that she is not acting, she is just being.

The supporting cast is as impeccable. Kunchacko Boban deserves a special mention for his endearing turn as the unconventional man behind this unconventional woman, even if his character provides perhaps the only episode of incongruity and indecisiveness in the film, the only episode in which the writers appear unjust and conservative in their view of a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her life or prioritise herself over others.

Faasil holds himself back to just the right degree, to ensure that his character’s heroism never acquires a filmic swagger. Asif Ali’s brief but impactful role momentarily erases thoughts of the godawful Honey Bee 2: Celebrations that is also currently in theatres.

Every tiny role – whether of Indians, Iraqis or others – has been cast with the sort of attention to detail that makes Take Off the work of genius that it is.

Narayanan has co-edited the film with Abhilash Balachandran. Their flair is particularly evident in the smoothness of the intercuts between multiple strands of Sameera’s life in the first hour of Take Off– far from being confusing, the narrative structure serves to highlight the unrelenting nature of Sameera’s struggles. How is this woman not exhausted?

No individual is caricatured here, though it must have been tempting to at least parody ISIS. What you do not show is sometimes as telling as what you do. By hinting at a flash of humanity from a bigot at one point and not clearly revealing the man’s act of kindness (we can only guess at it), Narayanan snubs his nose at the “you are either with us or against us” attitude pervading our world. Life is not a college debating society where you must be for or against a motion, life usually plays out in confusing shades of grey of the sort Narayanan chooses to capture.

This is a thinking man – even the most minuscule element in the film points to that. The use of language, for one. Take Off did not have English subtitles in the NCR theatre where I watched it, but embedded in the film are Malayalam subs that suggest a stance on the country’s language debate. Narayanan clearly does not subscribe to the average north Indian’s vision of Hindi as a language all Indians ought to know or the false notion that it is a language every Indian does know. As characters in Take Off slip in and out of Malayalam, Arabic, Hindi, English and even a spot of Tamil, it is interesting that Malayalam subs come up on screen for the Arabic, English and Hindi dialogues but not Tamil, reflecting the reality of language as it is understood by Take Off’s primary target audience who are Malayalam speakers.

One argument I have with the film is its fleeting lack of clarity on the matter of women’s reproductive rights: without giving anything away, let me just say that under Indian law a woman does not need her husband’s permission for an abortion, although many conservative doctors act as moral police in this matter. The fuzziness here seems deliberate, which is disappointing in a film that is crystal clear with every other point it makes, sans sermons or lectures.

Barring this passage, Narayanan speaks in an assured voice, complemented by world-class technical departments. Sanu John Varghese’s cinematography, Shaan Rahman and Gopi Sundar’s music, the measured sound design (Vishnu Govind, Sree Sankar) and credible production design (Santosh Raman) all contribute towards making this a realistic, thoroughly nuanced, gritty and gripping film.

Take Off is not what might conventionally be described as ‘issue-based’, yet its every word, shot and line brims with meaning. The film is packed with commentary on gender, religion, terrorism, questionable decisions that are inevitable in diplomacy, mental wellness, Kerala society, poverty, unemployment, immigration, the enemy within Islam, the mindlessness of the many who adopt a path of violence without foreseeing consequences for themselves, and more.

In one potent scene, Sameera camouflages a pregnancy by voluntarily donning a burqa, a garment she had earlier pointedly avoided, thus earning her in-laws’ censure. Is she now succumbing to patriarchy? Or is she, as a member of a marginalised social group, cleverly using a tool of exploitation to her advantage, to beat the exploiter at their own game? Like the diplomats in the film who use their knowledge of forces of evil to overcome them?

Did I forget to mention that Sameera is pregnant through most of Take Off? That her resilience urges us to rethink our definition of strength? Or that the beautifully understated use of the national anthem in Take Off should serve as a lesson to those currently pandering to self-styled ‘nationalists’ by foregrounding Jana Gana Mana in a contrived manner in their films?

No I did not, because there is just too much to say. Take Off is one of most intelligent thrillers I have seen in a long time. This is a riveting survival saga, made by a team gifted with acute political and social awareness. It is, in one word, stunning.

Rating (out of five stars): ****1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	139 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/take-off-movie-review-parvathys-brilliance-headlines-a-riveting-survival-saga-set-in-iraq-3352984.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/TakeOff.Movie/

Release date:	March 31, 2017
Director:	Shivam Nair
Cast: Language:	Taapsee Pannu, Prithviraj Sukumaran, Manoj Bajpayee, Akshay Kumar, Veerendra Saxena, Anupam Kher, Zakir Hussain Hindi

Early in director Shivam Nair’s Naam Shabana, the eponymous heroine asks her beau why he loves her. He replies: I doubt if any man has said this to a woman before, but I love you because being with you makes me feel safe. Since there is no logical or biological reason why the fellow should assume that no man feels emotionally safe with a woman, I assume the allusion here is to a sense of physical security inspired by the feisty Shabana’s exceptional martial arts prowess.

It is an odd reason to love another human being. More to the point, it is the first of many unsatisfactory responses to the question why repeatedly crying out to be addressed by this film.

Here is one why, not fromShabana but about her: Why does that uninspiring chap Jai love Shabana though she is so unappealing and so listless except when in a sporting ring?

There are more whys coming up later in this review.

Taapsee Pannu plays Naam Shabana’s Shabana Khan, a college student and kudo practitioner who is recruited by a top-secret, off-the-grid Indian intelligence agency. Shabana lives in Maharashtra with her mother. Jai is not the only one with an eye on her. An invisible someone is tailing this beautiful, middle-class woman from a congested Mumbai colony. When tragedy strikes her life, we are told that the unnamed agency was tracking her as a potential recruit.

Naam Shabana is a prequel to the 2015 hit Baby directed by Neeraj Pandey starring Akshay Kumar, with Pannu in a small but memorable supporting role. The new film – produced by Pandey – tells us her character’s story preceding the events in Baby. Since Pannu’s performance and her evident skill in Baby’s action scenes drew audience and critical acclaim in 2015, it makes sense that someone thought of making a film placing the spotlight on her.

Now if only they had devoted time to building up her character and developing a credible story around her. Although Pannu is first-rate in Naam Shabana’s many fight scenes, her acting is off the mark in the rest of the film and Shabana is half-baked. In the effort to portray a woman who suppresses her feelings, Pannu ends up delivering a bland performance except when she is indulging in fisticuffs. When she is throwing punches, she is captivating. When she is not participating in a tournament or bashing up some evil wretch, she is dull.

Southern Indian audiences know Pannu well. Hindi viewers got the full blast of her acting talent in last year’s Pink. She falls short of expectations in Naam Shabana, a victim of inadequate writing and direction.

Like her, the story too never rises above being a promising concept. The team of Naam Shabana – in the footsteps of Akira’s teamlast year– seems to have been more focused on making a film that can be labelled “woman-centric”, rather than creating a woman character of some worth. In the absence of an engaging protagonist and well-thought-out script, what we get are efficiently choreographed action sequences, a slick surfaceand a pace that is impressive at first until it adds up to nought when glaring loopholes and many unanswered whys start calling out.

Why, for instance, was Shabana picked by the agency? Considering that there are scores of fiery, aggressive, driven, earnest female athletes enrolled in the country’s national and private sports programmes and clubs, what is the defining quality that distinguishes her from other such gifted women?

Her religion, we are told, is an important qualification, since it gives her perspective that no politician – Hindu or Muslim – has. (The point is raised in the film’s one genuinely contemplative conversation which, by the way, is over too soon.) Could that be all though? What else?

Which brings us to other whys.

(Possible spoilers ahead)

Why on earth is she pulled out of her training to join one of the most important intelligence operations in the world? Sure she is good, but that good? There is no evidence to prove that she is even India’s best, so why why why?

Why would a covert arm of the government of India bet everything on a rookie?

Why would a much-wanted international criminal not confine himself to fortified and isolated residential and medical facilities, considering that for years he has gone to great lengths to protect himself from multiple security and intelligence agencies?

Why would such a man turn stupid one fine day, if not for the convenience of Shabana and her colleagues, and because Pandey – who has written Naam Shabana– could not think of a more intelligent idea to get him in captivity?

Why would an individual who has been at pains to hide his identity from the aforesaid agencies then reveal it at the drop of a hat under duress, instead of having a well-planned, carefully conceived lie at hand to deceive them?

Why, when your best man is available, would you assign the most crucial job in a crucial group assignment to Shabana, an untested newcomer? I mean, I get that you want to prove that you are indeed making a “woman-centric” film, but for heaven’s sake could you not come up with a believable reason for the team leader’s decisions beyond your film’s projected USP?

Women can do without such condescension. And Pannu can do without superficial female characters on her resume.

(Spoiler alert ends)

Akshay Kumar has a cameo in Naam Shabana as Ajay, the leading man from Baby. His character is not half as cool as the makers seem to think he is. And when he is around, through Ajay’s behaviour and authoritarianbody language, Pandeyand Nairunwittingly betray the male-centricity of theirworldview.

Anupam Kher is here too, in a brief role as the unconvincing, unfunny tech wiz Shuklaji who too we first saw in Baby. Manoj Bajpayee as Shabana’s boss and Danny Denzongpa as his boss are both so-so.

Malayalam superstar Prithviraj Sukumaran as one of the villains of the plot is handsome as ever and trying his best. The wilting film perks up when he enters the picture, but the big twist in that passage can be seen coming from a mile and frankly, there is only so much that an actor’s natural charisma can do in the face of writing that lacks conviction.

Still, Naam Shabana is a better film than Baby. It has a more polished appearance, and the idiotic bad guy here is at least less idiotic than the amateurs in the earlier film.

Here is a thought. Next time you make a film supposedly revolving around a woman, please do so because you have a great story to tell, not because female-led cinema is a hot current trend.

And next time you wish to make a prequel to a hit, again, please do so because you have a substantial story to tell, not because you want to cash in on a successful brand.

Footnote:Trivia buffs FYI, a running counter on a CCTV in Naam Shabana reveals that the film is set in 2011, yet a television monitor moments later is shown tuned in to a news channel called CNN News18 reporting on Manmohan Singh. Of course Singh was PM back then, but for the record, CNN News18 went by the name CNN-IBN in 2011. The name was changed in 2016.

Rating (out of five stars): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	148 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/naam-shabana-movie-review-taapsee-prithviraj-akshay-combined-cannot-erase-the-films-lack-of-conviction-3360570.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naam_Shabana

Release date:	March 31, 2017
Director:	Haneef Adeni
Cast: Language:	Mammootty, Arya, Anikha, Sneha, Shaam, Miya George Malayalam

What was Mammootty thinking when he signed up for this one? There are certain big screen projects in which a megastar can pull off strutting about to remind us of his hotness and coolth. A film purportedly on child rape is not that kind of project.

Yet, that is all Mammootty does in this weird directorial venture by Haneef Adeni. The Mollywood legend is not The Great Father’s only preening peacock, but he is the leader of the pride. Here, in short, is what happens in this film:

Mammukka caresses his beard.

Mammukka twirls his moustache.

Mammukka wears stylish clothes and poses for his daughter.

Mammukka wears stylish clothes and poses for the camera.

Mammukka gazes sexily at the camera.

Mammukka wears a leather jacket and gazes sexily at the camera.

Mammukka beats up people in slow motion.

Mammukka beats up people at normal speed.

Mammukka walks.

Mammukka walks, in the presence of a loud background score dominated by pretentious English lyrics about his awesomeness.

There is more showing off where all that came from, in the form of imposing aerial shots, over-stylisation in every department and Peacock No. 2, a policeman played by Arya.

Here is what else happens in The Great Father:

Arya works out without a shirt.

Arya gazes sexily at the camera, his jaw angled just so.

Arya beats up people in slow motion.

Arya beats up people at normal speed.

Arya walks.

Oh by the way, several children are brutally raped and murdered in this film, but of course they are secondary to the dudes in the lead.

Story? Sara David (Anikha) is a schoolkid who considers her father her superhero. Dad is the prominent builder David Nainan (Mammootty) who regales his daughter with tales of the many dragons he has slayed. Mum is Dr Michelle David (Sneha), who is inconsequential to this plot beyond the fact that she bore a child who is Mammootty’s character’s daughter. She is no different from that pretty female cop in fitted clothes who shows up to take instructions from and report to the good male cop played by Arya, ASP Andrews Eapen.

A serial child rapist is on the loose in Kerala. One day, when he wanders too close to home, David takes it upon himself to finish the fellow. His antagonist in this mission, oddly enough, is Andrews. Their conflict is one of the The Great Father’s many contrivances.

There is worse to come. The fulcrum of the plot is the rape of a child, but writer-director Adeni did not deem it fit to research paedophilia. The result is that sexual violence is used here as a prop on which Mammootty and Arya lean their male ruggedness.

It gets so bad that Andrews and his colleagues – all of them supposedly well-meaning police personnel – are shown repeatedly badgering a child to acknowledge that she was raped, as aggressively as they would extract a confession from a criminal. Repeat: these are NOT evil cops, and their behaviour is presented as normal.

If that is not offensive enough, we have a psychiatrist (played by Miya George) whose idea of counselling a child victim of rape is to virtually scold her and place the onus on her to bring back smiles on the faces of her parents who are traumatised by her trauma. You would think her own recovery should be the girl’s priority, but no ma’am, this doc believes otherwise.

Wait, there is even worse. The mystique surrounding the rapist reveals Adeni’s Christopher Nolan complex. The villain’s ominous signature tune might have added up to something in a sensible film, in a cipher like this one it merges with the surrounding nonsense.

(Spoiler alert, though I honestly don’t know why I am bothering) We realise while putting two and two together in the climax, that David has known the rapist-murderer’s identity for a while but did not report him to the police. This means he risked the life and safety of little girls across the state in the interests of his personal vendetta. And this is the man the film touts as a “great father”? Seriously? (Spoiler alert ends)

It would be a waste to spend time analysing this ludicrous film’s politics. If you thought Mammootty could not do worse than last year’s White, the star is out to prove you wrong. The Great Father is below the bottom of the barrel. What were you thinking, Mammukka?

Rating (out of five stars): 0 stars

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	151 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/the-great-father-movie-review-mammoottys-swagger-dominates-an-absurd-film-on-child-rape-3363542.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Father

Release date:	April 14, 2017
Director:	Srijit Mukherji
Cast: Language:	Vidya Balan, Gauahar Khan, Ila Arun, Flora Saini, Pallavi Sharda, Rajit Kapur, Ashish Vidyarthi, Pitobash, Naseeruddin Shah, Rajesh Sharma, Chunkey Pandey, Vivek Mushran Hindi

Harlot, whore, streetwalker, prostitute, hooker, call girl or (the politically correct) sex worker … call her what you will, but a woman who plies the sex trade, is rarely viewed by society as a mistress of her own will or one whose opinion matters.

Writer-director Srijit Mukherji’s Begum Jaan is the story of one such woman, madam of a brothel on the outskirts of a town in pre-Independence Punjab. The year is 1947 and the Radcliffe Line has been drawn by the British to demarcate India and the newly forming Pakistan. As it happens, the line runs through Begum Jaan’s brothel. When she refuses to quit her home to make way for a barbed wire fence, she finds herself crossing swords with officials of both countries who in turn are helpless at the hands of a law they do not necessarily agree with.

Begum Jaan has so far prided herself on her power, since her kottha is frequented by everyone in town, from ordinary folk to the local raja, freeloading policemen and British officials. Hierarchies of class, caste and religion may be forgotten when these men visit her to quench their lust, but she soon discovers that she is up against forces much higher than anyone she has ever known. Still, Begum Jaan, her women and their male staff – creatures deemed most ravaged by society and most subservient to it – decide that they will not give in lying down.

The film is about the battle between them and the officials assigned to execute the Radcliffe Line. It is a fascinating concept.

Begum Jaan is Srijit Mukherji’s remake of his own 2015 Bengali film Rajkahini (Tale of The Raj) with Rituparna Sengupta in the title role. The Hindi version stars Vidya Balan as the protagonist.

From the opening scene of the Hindi film, where an unlikely saviour wards off a young woman’s potential rapists, two things are evident: that Mukherji intends to make a big statement about female empowerment, and that his statement will come through self-defeating expressions and a limited understanding of his cause.

It is bad enough that Begum Jaan is confused about what it wants to say. What is worse is that it is so pretentious and superficial, that it fails to plow past its grand intent to find a soul.

(Possible spoilers ahead)

It goes without saying that everything about Begum Jaan’s brothel, from its location to its occupants and customers, is intended as a metaphor for a happily multi-cultural India being torn apart against her will. Parallel to their lives, an old woman in the kottha(played by Ila Arun) narrates stories of legendary queens from Indian history and myth, who stood up to an ancient patriarchal world on their own terms, among them Rani Laxmibai, Razia Sultan, Krishna bhakt Meera and Padmavati.

Three of these women are also played by Balan, Padmavati is described in a voiceover.

These satellite tales of valour mirror the film’s central saga of brave women defying convention and refusing to be subjugated. Sadly, they also reflect the filmmaker’s skewed notions of female honour, most especially when he appears to equate the historical Laxmibai, a real woman who fought the British till her dying breath, to the mythical Padmavati, who is glorified by folklore for having thrown herself into a fire so that an invading emperor would not get his hands on her.

The messaging and metaphors of Begum Jaan are all mixed up, as exemplified by the romanticisation of Padmavati’s ‘sacrifice’. Contemporary Indian notions of female ‘izzat’ (honour) have not evolved beyond a woman’s life being seen as less valuable than her unraped body; a position that goes against what Begum Jaan stands for until the self-contradictory end.

Perhaps we should expect nothing more from a film which, early on, unquestioningly quotes Subhadra Kumari Chauhan’s popular poem about Laxmibai, Jhansi Ki Rani, in which courage is casually described as a masculine quality: “Khoob ladi mardaani, voh toh Jhansi waali rani thhi” (she who fought like a man, she was the queen of Jhansi).

Mukherji may argue that Chauhan meant well. Fair enough. But what is one to make of Begum Jaan’s opening dedication to Urdu literary stalwarts Ismat Chughtai and Saadat Hasan Manto in the context of crucial scenes that completely miss the point of Manto’s Khol Do?

The short story Khol Dowas about a girl so traumatised by repeated rape during Partition riots that as a reflex action she undresses herself on hearing a male voice. That story was not just about the survivor’s mental state but about her continuing worth as a human being. Mukherji is so literal in his interpretation of Manto’s text that I wanted to cry.

In scenes where a very old lady and a very young girl replicate Khol Do’s heroine’s actions, Mukherji also unwittingly betrays an oddly benevolent, muddled view of male rapists resulting from thoroughly misplaced ideas of sexual violence.

With the writing so inadequate, everything about the film ends up being ineffectual. It is impossible to feel for Begum Jaan or the women in her brothel because they are not women, they are broad brushstrokes illustrating Mukherji’s surface-level interpretation of female strength.

The acting is constrained by the weak script. And so, Balan – who has been so wonderful in the past – sits here with legs akimbo and issues one-liners in a monotone, but is unable to dig deep and summon up a relatable human being, because there is nothing in the writing that she can dig into. Those one-liners are amusing at first, but sound empty after a point. We see a flash of the gifted artiste we know her to be in a scene where she watches as a customer forces himself on a new recruit…but only a flash.

The supporting cast of fine actors – including Pallavi Sharda and GauaharKhan as women in the kottha, Pitobash as their pimp and Naseeruddin Shah as a ruler of the region – are all in the same boat. Sharda and Khan fare somewhat better than the rest.

The greatest victims of the film’s intellectual pretentions are Ashish Vidyarthi and Rajit Kapur playing one-time friends turned government officials on opposite sides of the border. The actors’ faces are often half cut off the edge of the screen by Gopi Bhagat’s camera, no doubt again as a metaphor for a nation being torn apart against its will. In a film that fails to come together as a whole, it is an irritating device.

Among the many half-cooked aspects of this half-cooked film is Javed-Ejaz’s action. Except for the first scene in which the women use physical force to send government officials and police packing, they seem grossly unprepared for battle. Gutsy does not mean foolhardy and stupid yet that, in effect, is what they are in the climactic confrontation.

These elements might have been better developed if the director had not been so distracted by what appears to be his primary goal. Everything about Begum Jaan is dwarfed by its transparent ambition to be an epic of great intellectual depth and a lofty feminist statement.

No ism can work in cinema without characters who evoke empathy. The starting point of a film has to be a great story, not a great cause. Feminism deserves advocates with a better understanding of both cinema and the movement. Begum Jaan’s intriguing basic concept deserves a writer who could have expanded on it to better effect. And the lovely Vidya Balan deserves better than this soulless film.

Rating (out of five stars): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	134 minutes 42 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/begum-jaan-movie-review-vidya-balan-and-feminism-deserve-better-than-this-soulless-film-3383716.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begum_Jaan

Release date:	April 14, 2017
Director:	Sidhartha Siva
Cast: Language:	Nivin Pauly, Althaf, Aishwarya Rajesh, Binu Pappu, Gayathri Suresh, Aparna Gopinath, Sreenivasan, Musthafa, Tony Luke Kocherry, Santhosh Keezhattoor Malayalam

A month after Tom Emmatty’s Oru Mexican Aparatha saluted Communism with a tale of the violent rivalry between student political organisations in Kerala, Sidhartha Siva’s Sakhavu (Comrade) comes to theatres to tell us what makes a true comrade. This one stars Nivin Pauly in a double role – as Krishna Kumar a.k.a. Kichchu, whose membership of the student outfit SFK is solely driven by his ambitions for himself; and as the younger version of a veteran Communist leader called Krishnan, willing to give up his life for workers’ rights.

If you are not disposed to watch films opposed to your views, be warned: Sakhavu’s heart beats for Communism and it does not pretend otherwise. What works in its favour is that it does not allow its affection for Kerala’s old-time Marxists to turn into propaganda and falsehoods. It helps too that Pauly gets truckloads of screen time from start to finish.

The leading man’s charm dominates the first half of Sakhavu, which is devoted to Krishna Kumar’s shamelessly selfish plans that he has no qualms sharing with his friend and associate Mahesh played by Althaf. The interactions between these two are a hoot, not the least because there is no exaggeration here: their comedy mocks our bizarre and troubling reality, we have all been stung by hypocrites in politics who pretend to serve the people while serving themselves instead.

Siva’s smooth writing of these passages is bolstered by Pauly and Althaf’s spanking on-screen chemistry and comic timing. Althaf in particular is ROFLMAO-worthy (yes, that is a word) each time he opens his mouth to speak.

Sadly though, he virtually disappears in the second half, which goes back in time to the younger Krishnan’s battles on behalf of workers. This part is often thoughtful and thought-provoking, yet loses its way for various reasons. First, it stretches itself especially with the needless insertion of full-length songs in a narrative that could have done without them (the problem is not with Prashant Pillai’s numbers but that they have been used in their entirety).

Besides, the tone and politics of the second half contrast too sharply with the preceding portion.

Krishna Kumar’s story works because it takes a critical view of politics per se and Communist politicians in particular. Krishnan’s saga, however, is uncritical and one-dimensional, inhabiting a world divided simplistically between good workers and horrible bosses. The former are all unequivocally saintly folk whose actions must never be questioned, the latter are tarred with one stroke of the writers’ brush as exploitative, evil and cruel.

The film also reveals a prejudice evident in many Malayalam films where the outsider, especially the north Indian outsider, is viewed through a lens of othering if not outright suspicion. The one significant north Indian character in Sakhavu, a tea plantation and factory manager played by the attractive Tony Luke Kocherry, is a nasty piece of goods with no redeeming qualities. (Aside: the factory signboard bears the surname “Mehta” but the spelling “Mehatha” is used on a document the owner is shown signing – if this was not an instance of casualness and there is a deeper meaning here instead, I confess it was lost on me.)

These are issues particularly worth raising in a film that wears its conscience on its sleeve.

Still, there is no question that Sakhavuis well intentioned and serves its purpose with the mirror it holds up to politicians and young political aspirants, showing us in Sakhavu Krishnan and Krishna Kumar the contrast between the rare idealist and the insincere wannabe.

(Spoiler alert) One of the highlights of Sakhavu is Pauly, who slips into two characters and three distinct looks with such ease that after watching the film I went looking for the name of a third actor on the Internet, only to be reminded of the magic that can be worked when a talented actor and skilled make-up artist team up. (Spoiler alert ends)

Pauly is surrounded in this film by a strong supporting cast, including many familiar faces in tiny roles. Aishwarya Rajesh reminds us of her innate charisma in her performance as Sakhavu Krishnan’s wife Sakhavu Janaki, although she is poorly served by the make-up team in her senior avatar. The old Janaki’s youthful skin is a surprising let-down in a film where another young actor has been rendered almost unrecognisable by intelligent ageing make-up.

It is tempting to look past the follies of Sakhavu because so much of what it says resonates in the troubling, divisive times we live in, far beyond a discussion about the loss of Communist ideals. I watched the film in a packed west Delhi hall where the cheering audience’s love for Pauly seemed to rival their love for comrade-ery. They clapped loudly and repeatedly through Sakhavu Krishnan’s dialoguebaazi. To be honest, I too was tempted to let out a whoop of delight when Krishnan refused to reveal his surname to a wealthy landowner, saying that instead of being known by his caste and religion, he wished to be known by what his chosen first name – “Sakhavu” – indicated about him.

Sakhavu does not have the natural ease of Sidhartha Siva’s National Award-winning Ain from 2014 nor is it as thoroughly consistent as his sweet little Kochavva Paulo Ayyappa Coelho from last year, but it has its merits. Siva seems to have his heart in the right place, and he does, after all, make the point he sets out to make here, aided by one of the most interesting male stars of the present generation.

Rating (out of five stars): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	164 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/sakhavu-movie-review-comedy-nivin-pauly-are-stars-of-this-faltering-ode-to-a-communist-ideal-3386740.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/Movie.Sakhavu/

Release date:	April 21, 2017
Director:	Sunhil Sippy
Cast: Language:	Sonakshi Sinha, Kanan Gill, Shibani Dandekar, Purab Kohli, Smita Tambe, M.K. Raina, Suchitra Pillai, Manish Chaudhari Hindi

Noor Roy Chaudhary is a young mediaperson in Mumbai, keen to practice journalism with meaning, journalism that makes a difference to humanity and is aimed at the larger good. The chasm separating what she wants to do (unearth corruption, for instance) and what she is allowed to by her video news agency (interview Sunny Leone, cover Ripley’s-Believe-It-Or-Not kind of drama) seems unbridgeable, and so she spends her life cribbing about...well...her life.

Then one day Noor catches a newsbreak that she is convinced will make her. In mishandling that report though, she ends up ruining people who matter to her and almost finishing herself.

Director Sunhil Sippy’s Noor is about her reparation and how she gets her world back on track. It is based on the book Karachi: You’re Killing Me by Saba Imtiaz. The screenplay is by Althea Delmas-Kaushal, Shikhaa Sharma and Sippy himself, with dialogues by Ishita Moitra Udhwani.

Before going into a deeper analysis of this film it is important to get this out of the way: the past year has seen a steady flow of self-consciously ‘women-centric’ films in theatres. Most have been hollow, with zero story and zero understanding of or commitment to women. Their sole goal appears to have been to cash in on what the industry sees as a “trend” of women-centric films – like the best Vidya Balan starrers– making big money at the box office. Yes, the makers of such films see women as a “trend”, not people (like men) with lives that are big-screen-worthy for all seasons. The result: they have ended up delivering self-defeating emptiness with thin screenplays and poorly developed female leads, the worst of them being the Sonakshi Sinha-starrer Akira last year. Noor, which too features Sinha in the lead, is thankfully about a story and a woman with a story worth telling, not about Akira-style fake ‘woman-centricity’.

This is what makes Noor watchable despite its flaws, of which there are many. Sippy’s 28-year-old heroine is a believable creature for the most part, often utterly stupid but also credible. She is more than the cutesy froth with which she is introduced to us – messy, always in a hurry, always late, cocksure, tying her hair with the first thing she can find even if that thing happens to be a sock, anxious to have a boyfriend, anxious about her weight, serious in the hours beyond her hard-partying social life. She is more than all the above because Noor has clearly thought out, clearly articulated feelings, goals and dreams, and the screenplay enables us to truly get to know this crazy woman in all her crazy, mixed-up glory.

Just when you think Noor is headed in the direction of being yet another Bridget Jones (meaning: a character written with a veneer of liberalism but no real pre-occupation beyond worrying about her next boyfriend and her next lay), the writing team thankfully goes elsewhere.

Noor speaks lines mirroring the language of a real youngster from her background in Mumbai – for the most part. I repeat “for the most part” here too, because her “tu”, “tumhara” and casual impertinence towards her fatherly editor-owner is pretentious wannabe coolth authored by someone who seems to have a rather irritating stereotypical notion of how news offices function. It is a major flaw in a film that is otherwise not overtly trying to impress.

Noor’s botched-up big break provokes us to think of the ephemeral impact of news coverage not backed by commitment and follow-ups. What happens when the cameras go away and real human beings are left to their own devices, at the mercy of the powers that be just as they were before the spotlight fell on them? This is the overriding takeaway from the film, which makes even its failings forgivable.

Sonakshi Sinha pulls off her character without appearing to try too hard. Her natural performance as Noor once again raises the question: why does she waste herself primarily on Akshay Kumar starrers and the like that demean women and relegate her to being no more than a pout and large eyes and an attractive profile?

The supporting cast is interesting. Kanan Gill and Shibani Dandekar both have attractive personalities and it would be nice to see if they can pull off larger roles. M.K. Raina as Noor’s Dad is a sweetheart. In fact, the film might have benefited from exploring his character further. Manish Chaudhari brings depth to his performance as Noor’s boss, even if the treatment of her relationship with him leaves much to be desired.

The pick of the cast though is the wonderfulSmita Tambe playing a poor woman caught between a corrupt system and irresponsible journalism.

The film’s pluses do not eclipse its minuses though. Its news office milieu is poorly sketched, and while showing Noor re-reporting a news story that was treated cursorily at first, it does not bother to explain what “research” she added to it beyond saying that she did. Such superficiality takes away from the film’s good intentions.

Towards the end, when it seems like Noor is about to lose her way again, this time to become a conformist, a senior tells her: Having found yourself with such difficulty, are you already forgetting that self? It is an excellent line perfectly placed in the film. Unfortunately, it can equally be applied to Sippy’s approach to this work. Just as he has convinced us that Noor is a person of substance who is complete unto herself, he quickly slaps a romance on to his storyline, as if to hurriedly satisfy conventional Hindi film viewers who may consider a romantic interest an essential part of any film andmore conservative viewers who consider a woman incomplete without a man. Worse, he then wraps up his film with an ‘item’ song in which Noor dances in a little dress and is pushed around by a man, as women tend to be in formulaic Hindi films.

C’mon, Mr Sippy, why not go all the way? Why be apologetic about the point you make?

That said, I would still like very much to see the director’s next film. This is his return as a helmsman after a gap of 17 years (I confess I have not managed to findhis first film, Snip!, released in 2000). Here is hoping that Film No. 3 is more confident of itself and we do not have to wait another 17 years for it.

Ditto for Sonakshi Sinha. Four years have flown between the remarkable Looteraand Noor which, despite its follies, serves as a good showcase for her talent. Here is hoping we do not have to wait another four years for a film that does not treat her like a prop.

Rating (out of five stars): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	116 minutes 24 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/noor-movie-review-sonakshi-sinhas-film-is-flawed-but-its-not-akira-style-fake-woman-centricity-3396604.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noor_(film)

Release date:	April 21, 2017
Director:	Ranjan Pramod
Cast: Language:	Biju Menon, Aju Varghese, Hareesh Perumanna, Hannah Reji Koshy, Deepak Parambol, Indrans, Alencier Ley Lopez, Anjali Aneesh Malayalam

Biju Menon could stand in front of a camera staring aimlessly for an hour, and somehow make that work. His comic talent, his knack for subtly suggesting that something else beats below the seemingly frivolous surface and his chameleon-like ability to supplement comedy with gravitas and poignance at the drop of a hat are the fulcrum of Ranjan Pramod’s Rakshadhikari Baiju Oppu (Signed: Patron Baiju).

The film is set in Kerala’s languorous interiors, in a kinda sorta village called Kumbalam far removed from the urban bustle although Kochi is within touching distance. Time seems to stand still here. Those who leave zip ahead of those who stay back. As it happens, many Kumbalam residents simply do not want to leave.

Menon plays Baiju, a work-shirking government official who pours all his energy and passion into mentoring local cricket-loving boys. Thirty-six years back as an eight-year-old, he began playing the game on a vacant plot of land in the area. He never stopped.

Baiju is a founder member of the club/team Kumbalam Brothers. The Brothers and their playing ground are a microcosm of life in this village, which is reluctantly becoming a town and might be a city someday soon.

Baiju is a kind man, the sort who is exasperating to have as husband, father or son, but great to have as a neighbour or friend. Most of his time is spent away from home and office, on the field with his boys. He is a senior citizen in comparison with them, but continues to be a team member. He is not a man of indifferent cricketing talent, but his role in Kumbalam Brothers is way beyond that. He is their captain, patron (rakshadhikari), mentor, father figure, elder brother and buddy, often at the cost of short-changing his own family.

He is the one the boys turn to when a rich parent will not pay for a desperately needed cricket kit. He is the one they confide in through heartbreaks, career struggles and personal loss. Of course there are those in the village who take him for granted, but never with malice. The boys though are utterly and completely devoted to Baiju with every cell of their beings.

In short, he is everything to Kumbalam Brothers and they are everything to him.

There is much that is beautiful in Rakshadhikari Baiju Oppu. The innocence of Kumbalam’s inhabitants, the simplicity and lack of complication, Baiju’s own delicious lack of ambition for himself are all designed to make a city dweller yearn for another way of life. Besides, the pacing – slow and almost sleepy – perfectly complements the seeming aimlessness of the protagonist who is content with his choices even while he celebrates the successes of those who move on.

The humour too is under-stated, like everything else in Kumbalam. Nobody tells jokes, they are just funny, real, believable people.

Ranjan Pramod has had greater success so far as a screenwriter (Manassinakkare, Achuvinte Amma, Ennum Eppozhum) than as a director (he has helmed only two other films so far). That he is a gifted writer is evident in the manner in which he creates about a dozen memorable characters in Rakshadhikari Baiju Oppu without making the film seem crowded. There is Baiju’s sidekick (Aju Varghese) who is searching for a white-skinned bride, there is the team member wooing the pretty woman who lives right next to the playground, the irritable old man whose property also adjoins the playground, Baiju’s slow friend and – though women are marginal to this film’s proceedings – Baiju’s complaining yet loving wife Ajitha (played by the stunning Hannah Reji Koshy) who is thankfully not turned into a ‘nagging shrew’ stereotype.

The casting has been done with great attention to detail, the exception being a construction team whose voices we hear in the end – no doubt we are meant to assume that they are north Indian, but their accents suggest that they are Malayali actors who speak Hindi fluently. The rest though are a roll call of fine artistes, established and unknown. Menon, of course, is fantastic.

Although it seems like nothing much happens in this film, it is packed with stories, sub-plots, satellite characters and meaning. Without sermonising, for instance, it quietly throws light on the colour prejudice and gender segregation rampant in Kumbalam, which is a mini Kerala unto itself. Women are unwelcome on the playground, but are allowed to stay when they put their foot down. Dark-skinned people are accepted in the fold when they stick to their guns.

What is jarring though is that in comedifying that colour bias without qualifiers in a relationship involving a Kumbalam Brothers member, the film unwittingly trivialises the pain it can and does cause. In many ways, Pramod also betrays the narrowness of his male gaze when he reduces each woman’s existence to being someone in relation to a man in this story, not a person unto herself, and when scene after scene goes by with not a female human in sight. It is as if he – like the men in his film often do – forgets, or wants to forget that women exist.

So Ajitha, though not a caricature, is still someone Baiju is happy to leave behind at home. One Kumbalam Brothers player describes the cricket ground as oxygen away from a clingy wife (we have no idea what she thinks). Later, when a woman breaks up with a man she has not even fully hooked up with, the fellow’s friend promptly describes her as a user and a tease. This is the only kind of conversation they ever have about women. Yes, such situations and talk happen in real life – the point is the lack of a countering voice from the filmmaker.

Rakshadhikari Baiju Oppu also tends to romanticise the countryside. Except for pointing out the need for medical facilities in Kumbalam, there is no mention of how tough rural life can be, how discrimination (caste, gender, communal and more) is much harder to flee or shrug off in small, close-knit rustic communities than in the much-vilified ‘urban jungle’.

In Shanavas K. Bavakutty’s exceptional Kismath last year, a low-caste, poor Hindu girl targeted for falling in love with a well-off Muslim man escapes to the big city where she is shown savouring being a drop in an ocean. Our popular cinema rarely reflects this, but the anonymity metropolises afford can indeed be a great escape. Kumbalam though is projected as an unadulterated idyll. The negative characters are asides, the “them” in the midst of the good-hearted “us”. There are two male villains, but they operate on the fringes. Even the supposedly treacherous female lover seems to be in Kumbalam only because her father is in a transferablegovernment job.

This is a rose-tinted view of what can be a harsh reality. Village life is alluring from a distance, but it is definitely not the smooth ride it is often made out to be.

A 360-degree take on Kumbalam might have made this a more mature film. Baiju reminded me a lot of Kunchacko Boban’s Kochavva in last year’s loveable Kochavva Paulo Ayyappa Coelho, but that film by director Sidhartha Siva did not come across as being so selective though it too took a romantic view of the countryside.

As it happens, what we are served in Rakshadhikari Baiju Oppu is so entertaining and Biju Menon is so magnetic, that it would be easy to not look beyond the sweetness and humour of the proceedings or Ranjan Pramod’s smooth narrative. Not counting the needless ‘lesson’ stuffed in our faces in the end, which under-estimates the audience, Rakshadhikari Baiju Oppu is fun and, in its own way, insightful, even though it chooses to tell only part of a story – the charming part, of course.

Rating (out of five stars): **3/4

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	162 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/rakshadhikari-baiju-oppu-movie-review-biju-menon-is-magnetic-in-a-sweet-but-rose-tinted-tale-3399976.html

Poster courtesy: IMDB

Release date:	April 28, 2017
Director:	S.S. Rajamouli
Cast: Language:	Prabhas, Rana Daggubati, Anushka Shetty, Ramya Krishna, Sathyaraj, Nassar, a few seconds of Tamannaah Bhatia Telugu

(Note: This is a review of the Hindi dubbed version of the Telugu film Baahubali: The Conclusion.)

Fans of the Baahubalifranchise have been discussing the hashtag #WKKB on the social media for a while now. If you have not guessed yet, that stands for “Why Kattappa Killed Baahubali”, a reference to the teaser in the closing scene of Baahubali: The Beginning in 2015. You will not find spoilers on the #WKKB front in this review. Hold on to your seats though for the answer to a far more pressing question: #DRTOHS.

In the first film, the tribal boy Shivudu (Prabhas) discovered that he is, in fact, Mahendra Baahubali, son of the late great Amarendra Baahubali (also Prabhas) who was robbed of the throne of Mahishmati kingdom by the machinations of his cruel cousin Bhallaladeva (Rana Daggubati) and uncle Bijjaladeva (Nassar). In Baahubali: The Conclusion, Mahendra hears the story of why and how that happened before setting off to avenge the deaths of his father and foster grandmother Sivagami (Ramya Krishna) and to free his mother Devasena (Anushka Shetty) from imprisonment in Mahishmati.

As with the opening film, this one too is an Amar Chitra Katha-style blend of mythological references and palace intrigue laid out on a vast canvas of visual grandeur. The proportion of the ingredients has been changed though, with myth and socially regressive themes being scaled down, family politics being scaled up, and the decibel levels being raised by several notches.

The novelty of seeing an Indian film so laden with heavy special effects at such a scale from start to finish has worn off in the two years since Baahubali 1 was released, and it is hard now to forgive this one for Mahishmati’s plastic façade and those painfully obvious CGI beasts. Somehow, nothing here seems to match up to that waterfall in Part 1. Still, when the going is good, director S.S. Rajamouli’s Baahubali: The Conclusion is pleasing to the eye, in particular with its costumes, lavish interiors and innovative stunts.

A film of this nature obviously requires a suspension of disbelief in that last department. And frankly, if we are willing to swallow the invincibility of the likes of Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis and the various Bonds down the decades, then there is no reason why we should not buy that scene in which Amarendra mounts an elephant by walking up its trunk with the animal’s assistance and – my favourite of the lot – that war-time gimmick involving palm trees, shields and Newtonian physics towards the end.

Those stunts, M.M. Kreem’s background score and the use of his songs to up the tempo of the narrative are what keep Baahubali: The Conclusion watchable even when the ridiculous over-acting becomes hard to take and the lack of freshness in the storyline sinks in. Daggubati and Shetty – both gorgeous, both equally charismatic – keep themselves relatively in check, which is admirable considering that over-statement seems to be the demand of Rajamouli’s storytelling in this cinematic diptych (“relatively” being a key word here). Prabhas’ pretty face somewhat compensates for all that self-indulgent posing about he does, most notably while Devasena sings a song about Lord Krishna in a scene that unwittingly betrays her man’s Oedipus complex.

The rest of the cast is laughable, with each rivalling the other for the year’s Worst Acting Awards. There is the usually wonderful Nassar who hams here to such an extent that he makes Sohrab Modi seem under-stated in comparison. The extras in every single scene – soldiers, courtiers and subjects – seem to be competing with the memorably howlarious bit-part players of the black-and-white era. And Subba Raju playing Devasena’s beau Kumara Varma is so bad, he should be declared a threat to society.

The queen of the film’s hamsters though (if such a word does not exist in the acting lexicon, then it should) is Krishna whose eyes remain fixed in a bulbous stare through the nearly three hours of this film’s running time.

For all its seeming innocuousness, Baahubali: The Beginning was a horribly narrow-minded film that rolled out a range of stereotypes couched in its good-looking frames. The black-denotes-evil cliché was exacerbated by its white-is-glamorous conviction. Disability coincidentally found its way only on to evil people. And Sivagami’s power paled into insignificance in the face of Shivudu’s sexual violation and ultimate subjugation of the warrior Avanthika played by Tamannaah Bhatia.

In that respect, Baahubali: The Conclusion is a step up. Devasena remains strong and active from start to finish, and is at no point reduced to being Shivudu or Amarendra’s sidekick. She is a partner, not a prop. Still, the marginalisation of Avanthika in this film is almost tragic. In Part 1 she was a feisty woman whose mission was taken over by Shivudu once he ‘makes’ her fall in love with him and discover her inner femininity. In Part 2, she is an absolute nobody with nothing to say and just a few seconds of screen time in mass scenes. In that context, giving Bhatia fourth billing in the closing credits (after the two leading men and Shetty, but before Krishna) comes across as condescension, not an acknowledgement of her star status.

There is so much else that is troubling in Rajamouli’s worldview: for one, the undisputed right of the Kshatriya to rule. If there is a question here, it is only: which Kshatriya – the good guy or the bad guy? And either way, it has to be one of the guys. All the spectacle in the world, the Durga-esque positioning of Sivagami and Devasena, and the emphasis on Mahendra/Amarendra’s virtues cannot camouflage Baahubali’s disturbing romanticisation of social status-quoism.

This then is the conclusion of this review: Baahubali: The Conclusion is a cocktail of fun stunts, attractive stars, grand settings, terrible acting, conflicted attitudes and closeted conservatism. (Aside: The Hindi dubbing is impressive. A bow here to the choice of voices and to Manoj Muntashir, dialogue writer and lyricist for this version.)

As is always the case, each viewer’s response to the film depends on her/his priorities. My priority, I admit, is not #WKKB but #DRTOHS: does Rana take off his shirt (in the film, as he has for the posters)? Answer: yes he does. For good measure, so does Prabhas. Both men rip off their upperwear in an extended scene of hand-to-hand combat, to reveal perfectly sculpted, stunningly muscular torsos in what has now become commercial Indian cinema’s most-used formula across all states. In the way it is told, #WKKB is not as dramatic a revelation as expected. #DRTOHS, on the other hand, is absolute paisa vasool.

Rating (out of five stars): **1/4

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	167 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bahubali-2-hindi-movie-review-baahubali-2-rating-cocktail-of-visuals-terrible-acting-closeted-conservatism-3411488.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baahubali_2:_The_Conclusion

Release date:	May 5, 2017
Director:	Amal Neerad
Cast: Language:	Dulquer Salmaan, Karthika Muralidharan, Chandini Sreedharan, Siddique, Soubin Shahir, Dileesh Pothan, Jinu Joseph Malayalam

Comrade In America (C.I.A.) is 5 parts Comrade, 5 parts the trip to America, all parts Dulquer Salmaan. Comical comrades and Salmaan are the USPs of this recipe, which is neither an all-out tribute to Communism (as the recent Oru Mexican Aparatha and Sakhavuwere), nor an indictment of the ideology and its practice. Communism is for the most part a backdrop here, the setting against which the hero does his growing up.

Salmaan plays C.I.A.’s Aji Mathews a.k.a. Ajipan, a Left party member in Kerala at political loggerheads with his father Mathews (Siddique) who is with the Kerala Congress (KC). Aji is popular and for now, an unemployed layabout reluctant to let go of his college days when he walked tall among admiring fellow students. He now spends his time visiting the campus when he is not at the party office or playing football with friends, participating in protests against KC corruption and distributing Deshabhimani.

What we do not know about him at first is that he is as committed to his girlfriend Sarah Mary Kurian (Karthika Muralidharan) as he is to his ism.

(Possible spoilers ahead) And so one day he takes off on one of the world’s most arduous road trips, to the global headquarters of Capitalism where she lives. America is the antithesis of everything he believes in, which makes his decision to visit the place the ultimate proof of his love, arguably even more than that challenging journey where violence and death lurk at every turn. The people he meets on the way, the lessons he learns through them and at the end of that expedition have a life-changing impact on him. (Spoiler alert ends)

It is an intriguing concept, made all the more promising by the cast, each with a highly likeable screen presence. The distance from intriguing concept to wholesome film is a hard trek though. And despite physically crossing oceans and continents, Comrade In America (C.I.A.) does not make it.

Director Amal Neerad’s latest film is certainly not a write-off though. It is hard to write off any film featuring the incredibly charismatic Dulquer Salmaan, understated humour and such amusing, inventive, well-executed guest appearances. Still, there is only so much that boyish handsomeness, low-key laughter and the kernel of a good idea can do.

Travel is always educational. Imagine then the potential of a voyage through poverty-stricken lands where nature and human beings hold out equal threats. C.I.A. strides purposefully towards that excursion, brimming with possibilities and then fizzles out, a victim of reed-thin writing and flimsy characterisation.

When the going is good (mostly in the first half of the film), it is pretty good. And so you wait in the second half, initially buoyed by the atmospherics, and you wait and you wait and you wait to figure out where this is headed, until at last you resign yourself to the sad reality that this film is going nowhere.

So yes, Salmaan’s comic timing is on point as always – barring one fleeting yet distastefully comedified mention of male rape that panders to general audience ignorance on the subject. I do wish filmmakers would not take such issues lightly.

Salmaan’s heart-stopping good looks do not hurt. Aji’s equation with his father is supremely entertaining. The vapidity of his interactions with his young fellow Communists (played by the excellent Soubin Shahir and Dileesh Pothan) is hilarious, without any of the crassness that pervades films headlined by too many senior Malayalam stars these days. C.I.A.’s occasional swipes at the present establishment worldwide are well woven in – let us just say Modi and Trump bhaktswill not be pleased. And the cinematography delivers striking, picturesque images without dwarfing the treachery of those landscapes.

The film scores high too with those three cameos that I am tempted to reveal to you but will not. One big salaam, Lal Salaam if you wish, to the person who found those three gentlemen actors who are such a perfect fit!

(Possible spoilers ahead) After a point though, it has to be asked: what is the point of it all? The writing completely fails to give life to Sarah and to the motley group who join Aji on his walk across America, with the exception of his Sri Lankan Tamil ally. The Indian woman in the bunch (Chandini Sreedharan) risks rape and death to make that journey for the stupidest reason you could imagine, with no pressing urgency unlike the others. Clearly she is there merely because a need was felt to insert a second attractive young woman into the story, yet little thought was given to her. The only thing less mindless than that is the discovery of what drives Sarah. With all its pretensions to gravitas and novelty, C.I.A.is just a reiteration of Mollywood’s view that all men are paavam potential victims of female betrayal. (Spoiler alert ends)

With almost the entire group reduced to sketchy clichés (example: the traitorous Pakistani, the Chinese man who, in C.I.A.’s tackiest moment, breaks into Gangnam Style because…well…because in Neerad’s stereotypical view, that is what Chinese people do?) it becomes impossible to invest in them. The result is that the film’s closing reference to the cause of refugees, comes across as almost flippant because the lead-up to there lacks depth.

Comrade In America is an interesting idea that needed a better writer to expand it into a full-fledged screenplay. Dulquer Salmaan’s charm, the Shahir-Pothan chemistry, their wit and all those picture-postcard settings cannot camouflage C.I.A.’s emptiness. These elements are sufficient compensation for the price of a ticket, I guess, but in the ultimate analysis they do not add up, making this an unmemorable film.

Rating (out of five stars): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	135 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/comrade-in-america-movie-review-dulquer-salmaans-charm-and-humour-on-a-road-to-nowhere-3427466.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/ComradeInAmerica/

Release date:	May 5, 2017
Director:	Rahat Kazmi
Cast: Language:	Virendra Saxena, Raghubir Yadav, Sonal Sehgal, Shoib Nikash Shah, Tariq Khan, Rahat Kazmi Hindi

If a film is based on Saadat Hassan Manto’s short stories on the Partition, it goes without saying it has been made with good intentions. Manto’s narrations of the horrors of that time have the ability to move and shock all these decades later. But as any cineaste knows, great causes do not translate into great films merely by being great causes – they need a skilled team just as any other film does.

The kindest thing that can be said about writer-director Rahat Kazmi’s Mantostaan– based on Manto’s Khol Do, Thanda Ghosht, Assignment and Aakhri Salute– is that it means well.

For those who have not so far read Manto (please do!), here’s a quick introduction to this literary quartet. Khol Do is the tale of a father desperately searching for his daughter who he lost while they were fleeing their ravaged hometown. Thanda Ghosht is about a mercenary rioter. Assignment is about a relationship of warmth and respect between a Muslim judge and a Sikh gentleman, which goes awry during the carnage. And Aakhri Salute is about friends in the army finding themselves on different sides of the border between two newly formed countries.

In terms of adaptation Mantostaan does not stray from the legendary author’s path, but for the fact that instead of narrating these four stories separately and in succession, it recounts them simultaneously, with a portion from one followed by a slice from the next and then the next and so on. That choice would have made sense if it led to a new interpretation by way of even the slightest nuance not so far spotted by Manto-watchers. As it happens, it does not because Kazmi is not up to the task.

Even that might have been bearable, if the production had not been of such inferior quality. The joy of revisiting Manto is lost here to the all-round shoddiness of this film. The direction is stilted, the special effects are substandard as are all the technical departments, the extras in the cast are expressionless and so are most of the actors in leading roles.

In media interviews the director has revealed that Mantostaanwas shot on location in Punjab and Jammu. The questionable framing, lighting, etc ensure though that everything in the film looks like a set – a very bad set.

In the midst of all this mediocrity, Virendra Saxena as the judge and Raghubir Yadav as a hapless parent manage to retain some of their dignity and hold on, to a limited extent, to their craft. This is not to say that they are wonderful here – of course they are not, no actor can be wonderful in the face of such low quality, but in comparison with the rest they are like balm on a disappointed viewer’s soul.

Apart from these veterans, the only artist in Mantostaan who deserves a mention is young Sonal Sehgal playing the lover of a man who commits unspeakable crimes during the post-Partition mayhem. Again, this is not to say that Sehgal is wonderful here, but that her performance reminds us that she possesses both talent and an X factor that have been wasted in the film industry so far. She is obviously worthy of so much more than this amateurish venture or even the supporting roles she has played in Himmesh Reshammiya-led vanity projects that may have more money and therefore more technical finesse than Mantostaan but are cinematically sub-par all the same.

Manto’s writings are as relevant to our troubled times as they were when he lived. Their enduring meaning and beauty are completely lost though in this poor production.

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	87 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/mantostaan-movie-review-mantos-enduring-relevance-is-lost-in-a-poor-production-3428590.html

Footnote: The first film I reviewed on this blog was Rahat Kazmi’s Impatient Vivek released in 2011. The film was also a prominently featured in my 2012 book The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic for reasons you will understand only if you read the book. For the moment, here is a link to the review of Impatient Vivek:

http://annavetticadgoes2themovies.blogspot.in/2011/01/review-1-impatient-vivek_09.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/MantostaanMovie/

Release date:	May 12, 2017
Director:	Ram Gopal Varma
Cast: Language:	Amitabh Bachchan, Jackie Shroff, Amit Sadh, Ronit Roy, Manoj Bajpayee, Yami Gautam, Supriya Pathak, Bajrang Bali Singh, Rohini Hattangadi, Bharat Dhabolkar, Suhas Phalsikar, Fiza, Cameo: Abhishek Bachchan’s photograph Hindi

When the climax of the first film in your series packs the punch that Sarkar’s endingdid in 2005, be aware that each sequel is a potential victim of the “can it throw up a surprise to match that one?” syndrome. Chances are, viewers have spent your entire film guessing 10 likely twists in the finale. The only way you can live up to expectations then, is to think up an 11^th option no one else could possibly envision.

Director Ram Gopal Varma’s Sarkar 3, the follow-up to 2008’s Sarkar Raj, has a decent enough conclusion – not breathtaking, not astonishing as a whole, but with at least one unexpected touch that helps it pull through. The film is pulled down by another symptom of sequelitis though: fatigue. Varma tries hard to conjure up the same intimidating atmosphere here that he created in Sarkar and Sarkar Raj, but his direction lacks zest, the writing by P. Jayakumar lacks depth and the film ends up looking like a tired effort to cash in on the success of its precursors.

What happens then in the closing minutes of Sarkar 3 matters less than it otherwise might have, because of the soporific effects of the preceding two hours.

Amitabh Bachchan returns in Sarkar 3 as the Godfather-like Maharashtra gangster-politician Subhash Nagre, known to everyone as Sarkar. Nagre continues to be loved by the masses yet misunderstood by many who assume that he fakes altruism to front his underworld activities. With his sons Shankar and Vishnu gone and his wife (played by Supriya Pathak) bedridden, Nagre leans heavily on his loyal lieutenant Gokul Satam (Ronit Roy). Enter: Shivaji Nagre (Amit Sadh), the son of Vishnu who, you will recall, was killed in the first film by Shankar.

Shivaji wants to join his granddad’s business, but his arrival on the scene leads to tension within the gang, making them vulnerable to manipulation by Nagre’s rivals.

Who is truly committed to Sarkar? Who is pretending? These are the questions the film throws our way as it rolls along.

It has been nine years since the release of Sarkar Raj. In that film, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s Anita appeared to take over the reins of Sarkar’s empire, if not fully then at least in part. She is nowhere on the scene in Sarkar 3. While this could be because the actress has made herself unavailable, that is no excuse for why the screenplay does not bother to explain the character’s absence, considering how crucial she was in Sarkar Raj. If you want an example of how dispensable women – artistes and fictional characters – are considered in Bollywood series, you have it here. Repeated references are made to Vishnu and Shankar in Sarkar 3, but there is no mention of Anita, the bosswoman who might have been.

This is the least of the film’s failings though. The fact is the storyline has little by way of excitement, and frankly, it is natural to wonder why Sarkar 3 was made at all. The first half hour is promising because potentially interesting characters are introduced – in particular, the self-righteous neta Govind Deshpande played by Manoj Bajpayee – and you wonder where they will take the plot. Soon though, boredom sets in.

The novelty of hearing Bachchan speak in that gravelly-voiced rumble is now past. The clash between Deshpande and Nagre turns out to be a damp squib. And the bombastic conversations written by Ram Kumar Singh are poor cousins of the seeti-worthy dialoguebaazi we Bollywood buffs have grown up on – you can either go the natural way, as many films have since the 1990s, or go the whole hog in the opposite direction to revive memories of grandiose 1970s-’80s Hindi cinema that Bachchan was so much a part of. Sarkar 3 tries to be the latter, but cannot pull it off.

Bachchan is one of the many cast members lost to this film’s unimaginative writing. The veteran has nothing new to offer in Sarkar 3, coming up with a performance he may well have delivered with his eyes closed. Bajpayee, still fresh from his brilliance in Aligarh (2016), is completely wasted here. Jackie Shroff as a Dubai-based gangster is a bit of a joke, participating in Sarkar 3’s many leery scenes featuring what seems like double entendre aimed at the breasts of his bikini-clad moll.

Sadh has been remarkable in some of his previous films, most notably Abhishek Kapoor’s buddy flick Kai Po Che (2013) and in a small role in the unfortunately little-known Maximum (2012). He tries to infuse life into Shivaji Nagre, but cannot do much in the face of dull penmanship.

Another promising young artiste who suffers similarly is Yami Gautam playing Shivaji’s girlfriend Anu, one of Sarkar 3’s many cursorily written characters. With little meat for her to sink her teeth into, our takeaway of Anu from the film is Gautam’s beauty, nothing more.

The politics of the underworld – or the overworld for that matter – in any country, state or city is always rich material for a good writer. India today is as fascinating as when RGV gave us his fabulous Siva (Telugu, 1989), Shiva (its Hindi remake in 1991), Satya (Hindi, 1998) and Company (Hindi, 2002). There are so many hooks that Sarkar 3 could have pegged itself on, not the least of them being a fellow called Deven Gandhi (Bajrang Bali Singh) who is no Gandhiji, although one character – quite amusingly – does refer to him as such. It required a greater talent to carry that forward.

This is not to say that Sarkar 3 is insufferable. It is not. It is certainly a far cry from Ramu’s worst, which remains Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag (2007). The problem is that we have seen this man’s best. And his best was such bloody darned genius, that it is hard not to be pained by the ordinariness that has been the hallmark of so many of his films in the past decade.

Sadly, Sarkar 3 too is lacklustre and ordinary. Coming from the House of Ram Gopal Varma, in some ways that counts as worse than being bad.

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	132 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/sarkar-3-movie-review-amitabh-bachchan-ram-gopal-varma-magic-goes-missing-3439566.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarkar_3

(This column was published on April 22, 2017, before the release of Posto. The film is in theatres this week)

A LAMENT FOR BANGLAWOOD

The industry that once gave us Arati from Ray’s Mahanagar is gearing up for a new work from the makers of the conformist, misogynistic money-spinners Belaseshe and Praktan

By Anna MM Vetticad

Their last film featured a heroine tearily regretting her failure to “compromise”, that led to the end of her marriage with a selfish, deeply patriarchal, jealous, egoistic man. Nothing succeeds like misogyny, as directors Nandita Roy and Shiboprosad Mukherjee discovered on the release of Praktan (Former), which starred Rituparna Sengupta as that ex-wife bemoaning her self-respect. The film was 2016’s biggest Bengali hit, following in the footsteps of Roy and Mukherjee’s equally prejudiced Belaseshe (At The End of the Day) that drew crowds in 2015.

After two consecutive money-spinners, release plans for the duo’s latest, Posto, have just been announced. It will arrive in theatres in May, riding the wave of Belaseshe and Praktan’s unprecedented box-office triumph that has made Roy and Mukherjee the toast of Banglawood and Posto a tent-pole project.

According to Eros International, worldwide distributors of the three, Praktan is the first Bengali film that released globally on the same day as in Kolkata; both Belaseshe and Praktan lasted 100 days in halls; Praktan was released in 101 theatres in Kolkata and over 25 elsewhere across India. Eros has increased that all-India number to about 100 for Posto, “a first for any Bengali film,” we are told.

While Posto is an unknown quantity, Belaseshe and Praktan’s success should be cause for soul-searching among liberal cinephiles. How does one come to terms with the sad realisation that the social backwardness of these two films is being celebrated by an industry once known globally through Satyajit Ray and an audience that once toasted this great man whose feminism was an intrinsic part of his cinematic genius? That large sections of the public and press are unfazed if not outrightly impressed by the shocking conservatism? One of the rare voices in the media raised against Praktan last year was Debapriya Nandi who wrote in this publication: “The reason why a film like Praktan is detrimental to the discourse around female characters is very simple: it panders to the basest, most crudely primitive assumptions made about women. It takes a strong, positive female character and then outright assassinates her.” The Telegraph invited responses to the question: “Is the message of Praktan regressive for women?”

Most coverage, however, did not even mention Belaseshe and Praktan’s extreme misogyny. One review went to the extent of applauding Roy and Mukherjee for their “progressive themes and fresh ideas”. Seriously?

In Belaseshe, an old man decides to divorce his wife of almost 50 years because their relationship has been reduced to a “habit”. The starting point of the film suggests that it would give us a refreshing take on the boredom that sets into marriages. Instead Belaseshe goes down a safe path from there, glorifying the traditional Indian wife’s role as housekeeper and maid, and endorsing socially pre-determined roles for man and woman within the institution. The elderly wife at one point reveals that she used to eat her husband’s leftovers after he was through with his meals and she would re-use his wet towels after he had bathed, since they smelled of him. In the end, the old man returns to her because he misses the perennial presence of that person who would clear up his messes and always knew where to find his shoes. Apparently, true husbandly love is about acknowledging that your wife is an excellent housemaid.

Praktan is even more cringeworthy. At least Arati from Belaseshe wants nothing more than to be the home bird her husband seeks in her. Praktan’s Sudipa though has ambitions outside marriage for which she is ultimately reviled. I say “ultimately” because the film is sneaky with its agenda. At first it fakes empathy for Sudipa as her husband Ujaan taunts her for earning more than he does, accuses her of having an office affair and demands that she ask his “permission” before making travel plans. In short, Praktan does not gloss over his mean, ill-tempered, bitter, resentful, unpleasant behaviour. However, as the film progresses, you realise it does not unequivocally condemn Ujaan but is of the view that it was Sudipa’s duty to accommodate his ego.

Much of Praktan is spent on a train in which Sudipa’s co-passenger, coincidentally, is Ujaan’s second wife Molly. Sudipa is a conservation architect. Molly is a housewife. The contrast between them is used, in the end, to project Sudipa as a failure and laud Molly’s malleability: Molly speaks with child-like satisfaction of the compromises she made to win over her husband and in-laws, and a sorrowful Sudipa in the finale tells Molly that she has learnt a lot from her, she has learnt now that the result of “adjustment” and “compromise” is, in a sense, victory.

I wonder how Arati from Ray’s Mahanagar (1963) would have reacted to that as she strode towards a future partnered by a well-meaning but insecure husband compelled to come to terms with his wife’s new-found sense of self. The tragedy of Belaseshe and Praktan is not that they were made, but that we have rewarded Roy and Mukherjee for their regressiveness. Think about that as their PR campaign goes into overdrive before the release of Posto.

(This article was published in The Hindu Businessline’s BLink on April 22, 2017.)

Link to column published in The Hindu Businessline:

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/watch/a-lament-for-banglawood/article9653826.ece

Previous instalment of Film Fatale: There are no “Hindu actors” and “Muslim actors”, please!

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/watch/there-are-no-hindu-actors-and-muslim-actors-please/article9557459.ece

Photographs courtesy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bela_Seshe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praktan

https://www.facebook.com/postobengalifilm/

Release date:	May 19, 2017
Director:	Saket Chaudhary
Cast: Language:	Irrfan Khan, Saba Qamar, Deepak Dobriyal, Amrita Singh, Swati Das, Dishita Sehgal, Angshuman Nandi, Tillotama Shome, Delzad Hiwale, Sanjana Sanghi, Cameos: Sanjay Suri and Neha Dhupia Hindi

Class differences, language divides, superiority complexes, the almost killing tension parents experience at school admission time and the snob value of a south Delhi address – they all come together in director Saket Chaudhary’s Hindi Medium, a laugh-a-minute thinkfest starring Irrfan Khan and popular Pakistani actress Saba Qamar. The film is about a wealthy resident of Chandni Chowk who is uncomfortable with English and his wife who wants their daughter to be one with the ‘it’ crowd.

If you know the geography and sociology of Delhi, you would be aware that Chandni Chowk signifies the old rich and traditionalism, while Vasant Vihar stands for a more modern, English-speaking, westernised, moneyed lot. Not all residents of these localities fit these stereotypes, but by and large this is what they symbolise on the socio-economic map of the Capital.

What then does it take to join the VV club? Would shifting house suffice? It is not that easy, as Mita (played by Qamar) and her husband Raj (Khan) find out.

Raj owns an expensive boutique in the Old City, drives a BMW and lives in a spacious house with Mita and their child Pia. Delhi’s most prestigious English medium school is not accessible to them despite their bank balance. Mita’s background is marginally more uppity than his – this is evident from her comparative sophistication and a brush with a former classmate in a well-heeled residential area. She is willing to push her doting spouse to any lengths and to go to any lengths herself to get Pia into that hallowed hall of learning. If this means moving out of Chandni Chowk, investing lakhs in new family wardrobes and a consultant, then so be it.

Raj is more easygoing and less interested in social circles that do not want him. Still, he goes along with Mita’s schemes even when they involve ridiculous extremes, and indulges in some corruption of his own, to fulfill her dream for their daughter. Why? Because he is smitten by his well-meaning even if misguided wife – as smitten as he has been since she first entered his out-moded father’s darzi ka dukaan in Chandni Chowk 15 years back.

This being the plotline, it would have been tempting to resort to clichés that formulaic Hindi films have often favoured: the poor are all saints, the rich are all evil, good folk are flawless, the bad beyond redemption. Or the ones being peddled by the present political establishment in India: all Hindi bhaashis are rooted and humble children of the soil, all English speakers are the snooty “Lutyens crowd”. The reason why Hindi Medium works for the most part is because for the most part the screenplay by Zeenat Lakhani and Saket Chaudhary steers clear of cheap populism and strikes a balance between being critical of a certain elite yet not tarring everyone with the same brush: that consultant, for instance, is superficial and harsh, but that classmate (Sanjay Suri) is kind.

Sure there are exaggerations, but they are amusing, sometimes even irritating, without being offensive, so let’s put them down to cinematic licence.

Even Raj and Mita’s encounter with poverty avoids over-statement: they learn their lessons not just through the wonderfully generous, impoverished couple Shyamprakash and Tulsi (played by Deepak Dobriyal and Swati Das), but through the dog-eat-dog challenges of slum living.

This is the film’s strength. And until the final 20 minutes, Hindi Medium is unrelentingly funny and simultaneously thought-provoking.Then comes that climax including a speech by Raj, which plays to the gallery so transparently and in so many ways, that it feels like an afterthought forcibly inserted into the storyline as a safety net in case anyone considers it too subtle. The contrast here with the overall tone almost manages to kill the film. Almost.

(Possible spoilers ahead)

Raj’s sudden decision to speak extensively in broken English, although his listeners in that scene would obviously understand Hindi well since they are a Delhi crowd; the sweeping statement on language snobbery in that sermon that is a departure from the restraint of the rest of the film – these are among the many needless populist choices in Hindi Medium’s ending. Suddenly then Raj and Mita’s equation feels like a downplayed version of that whole achha-pati-rebels-against-wife-who-leads-him-astray cliché. And c’moooooon, did the only pure soul in that entire pretentious school have to be the Hindi teacher and none else? The one thing more overt than that would have been picking a Sanskrit teacher instead.

Not that the narrative is untroubled until then. The beginning is problematic, when it fast forwards to the present from Raj and Mita’s first meeting as teenagers (played by Delzad Hiwale and Sanjana Sanghi). The present dwells so long on extraneous characters that it takes a while to grasp the connection between those teens and the protagonists.

(Spoiler alert ends)

In terms of performances, Deepak Dobriyal and Swati Das are scene-stealers although they enter the picture very late in the storyline. The child actors in the roles of their son and the lead couple’s daughter – Angshuman Nandi and Dishita Sehgal – are sweet and natural. And Amrita Singh is competent as Principal Lodha.

The one person given the short end of the writing stick is Tillotama Shome as the consultant who trains families for the school admission process. She is a complete, undisguised stereotype.

Irrfan Khan and Saba Qamar have nice chemistry between them. He is utterly delightful, even in that moment of deliberate hamming when he breaks down on leaving Chandni Chowk. Though his accent is somewhat inconsistent, his body language is perfect, and those eyes flit seemingly effortlessly between mischief, affection for his wife and pangs of conscience.

Qamar is a beauty. Between her and Fawad Khan, they might convince Hindi film audiences that Pakistan has cornered a majority share of the world’s hotness. Though her character is often hyper, her acting never is – that is a fine line to tread, and she pulls it off.

As with a large percentage of Bollywood, the casting is not age appropriate though. The text on the screen after the flashback says “15 years later”, a clear indication that Raj and Mita are in their mid 30s. Khan is already 50 and it feels silly that a need was felt to give us a pointed indication that his character is so much younger than the actor’s real age.

Saket Chaudhary’s first two films as director were Pyaar ke Side Effects (2006) and Shaadi ke Side Effects (2014). His shot at pyaar was entertaining and breezy though not earth-shatteringly brilliant. His look at shaadi held out the promise of being an intelligent he-said-she-said take on marriage but forgot the woman’s viewpoint early on. Despite its follies, what we get in Hindi Medium is vastly evolved storytelling from the filmmaker.

Among other things, I enjoyed the use of music in this film, both Amar Mohile’s background score and the songs, original and remixed. Ik Jindari (sung by Taniskaa Sanghvi and chorus, music: Sachin-Jigar, lyrics: Kumaar), has a pleasant tune, happens to be crucial to the narrative and captures the essense of the film with these simple words filmed on a bunch of financially backward schoolchildren: “Suraj jaise chamkenge / Dekhe hain saadi akhiyan ne / Ae sapne ambraan de / Boond boond jodenge pal pal / Door door veh jaayenge phir naal samundran de / Asi ethhe khade / Hai jaana pare / Na kam humko tol” (We will shine like the sun / We have dreamt of the skies / We will collect drops one by one / And gather an ocean in which we will flow away / We are standing here / We must go to the other side / Do not underestimate us.)

On the face of it, Hindi Medium is an indictment of the education system, but it is more than that. It is also a comment on the hierarchies among the wealthy, a nuance that commercial Hindi cinema has rarely captured. Besides, it is so enjoyable until that exasperating finale, that it would be unfair to write it off because of the lasting impact of the lapses in the conclusion.

Hindi Medium makes a point – several points, in fact – by being simple and straightforward yet not simplistic. The film’s achievement is that it tells us things we already know yet forces us to think about them, and has lots of fun while doing so.

Rating (out of five stars): **3/4

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	133 minutes 26 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/hindi-medium-movie-review-irrfan-khan-saba-qamars-laugh-a-minute-thinkfest-survives-its-populist-ending-3457192.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi_Medium_(film)

Release date:	May 26, 2017
Director:	James Erskine
Cast: Language:	Documentary featuring Sachin Tendulkar, Ajit Tendulkar, Anjali Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar, Vivian Richards, Virat Kohli Hindi with English and Marathi

(This is a review of the Hindi version of Sachin: A Billion Dreams. The film has been released in several languages.)

[POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD]

When a man’s every move on the sporting field was tracked with a magnifying glass by the world cricket media and his own maniacally cricket-loving nation during his 24-year international career which is still fresh in public memory, is it possible to say anything new about him that admirers and journalists do not already know?

Is it possible to engage a viewer who is not obsessed with him and/or the game?

Any film on Sachin Tendulkar – fictionalised feature or documentary – would inevitably face these two seemingly insurmountable challenges. James Erskine’s documentary, Sachin: A Billion Dreams, seems mindful of both.

It is not too packed with jargon, thus making it accessible to those who are not committed cricket buffs. It is entertaining enough to hold the interest of non-fans watching with academic curiosity rather than devotion to an idol.

It is filled with familiar moments that could warm the hearts of the cricketing legend’s die-hard admirers, but is not an in-your-face PR exercise designed to lazily cash in on this monumentally popular Indian cricketer’s readymade fan base. In unobtrusive ways it occasionally reveals hitherto unknown facets of him as a person without stating them in black and white.

Above all else, it is a diplomatic enterprise that does not risk openly contesting the popular national sentiment surrounding Tendulkar, and completely glosses over the known controversial aspects of the star’s professional life, yet does so cleverly, so that it comes across as careful rather than worshipful or overtly, shoddily pluggish.

The kid-glove treatment, I assume, was necessary to ensure Tendulkar’s support to the project. It is a measure of Erskine’s skill as a filmmaker that, despite this, Sachin: A Billion Dreams is vastly superior to last year’s Bollywood ventures Azhar(based on the life of former Indian cricket captain Mohammad Azharuddin) and M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story.

Sachin: A Billion Dreams adopts a non-linear narrative structure, inter-cutting between Tendulkar’s phenomenal childhood-till-retirement career path and the present day. The icon’s own commentary about himself is overlaid on file footage and photographs along with comments by a dazzling array of past and present sporting megastars (Sunil Gavaskar, Vivian Richards and Virat Kohli among them), his brother Ajit Tendulkar, wife Anjali Tendulkar, commentator Harsha Bhogle and journalist Boria Majumdar. (Film stalwart Amitabh Bachchan as the lone non-cricketing talking head is a bit of a misfit here.)

The back-and-forth is smoothly executed by Erskine and editors Deepa Bhatia andAvdhesh Mohla, to the accompaniment of a throbbing soundtrack byA.R. Rahman which is one of the highlights of this film (in several portions, Rahman lets music cede the floor to the highly recognisable fan cry “Sachiiiiiin Sachiiiiiin” ringing uninterrupted on screen). Through the family album and actors standing in for the Tendulkar siblings, we meet the gifted child who, with the unstinting support of his parents and brother, Ramakant Achrekar’s no-nonsense training, his own extreme diligence and passion became the giant we know him to be.

Though much of this part of his story is already known, in Erskine’s hands it does not feel stale.

That said, it is important to stress that this is Tendulkar’s version of events, and while following him in the cricketing arena, the film looks at him with a completely uncritical eye.

Tendulkar’s rocky first stint as the country’s cricket captain, for instance, is pretty much entirely attributed to Azharuddin’s resentment. While this may possibly be true, the absence of a voice speaking for Azhar or assessing Tendulkar himself needs to be noted. Maybe Azhar is to blame, but could it also be that Tendulkar was just not a good enough leader at that point? The question remains unasked and therefore, unanswered.

Likewise, the film steers clear of a criticism that dogged Tendulkar throughout his days on the pitch: that he often prioritised personal records over team victories, that his scores tended to be record breakers in his name rather than match winners for the team. I am not for a second suggesting that this is true. However, it is an issue that has been raised by cricket watchers, and so should have been addressed, even if to be nixed with facts and figures.

I have been in at least one newsroom where a reporter who questioned Tendulkar’s attitude was silenced by an editor with the response, “but we cannot ask that, because it goes against the public mood”. I have no doubt other media editors have done likewise in the quest for populism and TRPs. This film would have been worthy of far greater respect if it had not walked on eggshells in a similar fashion.

In contrast to these portions, Sachin: A Billion Dreamsbecomes adventurous and truly analytical while recording Tendulkar’s personal life.

Erskine’s most intelligent moment in the film comes when he gets the Tendulkars to speak of Mrs T’s choices for the family. Sachin is shown informing us unequivocally that Anjali told him she wanted to quit her career as a doctor, whereas in the next shot the lady herself recalls Sachin telling her that one of them would have to leave their career. Of course we all know he did not mean himself, especially when Erskine follows that up with a soundbite from Sachin saying he needed a life partner who would fully understand his dreams. And so, Anjali Tendulkar tells us, she quit being a medical practitioner although she was an MD in Paediatrics. Legend or not, we see here that Sachin Tendulkar is no different from every patriarchal chappie out there who places his dreams and his goals above everything else in his family’s journey.

It is the film’s most quietly observant, best-edited passage, not appearing to pass judgement at all, yet in the obviously well-thought-out placement of those bites, revealing volumes.

Throughout the film, the chronicling of Tendulkar’s personal life scores over the take on his work life. His childhood photographs and home video footage from back then till the present day are thoroughly charming. The romance with Anjali is recounted sweetly and with humour, without for a moment turning mushy or silly as such material can often be. It is also a pleasure to see this intensely private man letting us in on so many decidedly intimate moments of his life. As a viewer, one can only feel gratitude.

This then is Sachin: A Billion Dreams– a film that is not as much as it could have been on some fronts, yet elsewhere is a lot more than it seems to be. It is not anobjective biography, yet thankfully it is far from being a hagiography either.

Cricket fans will have their own take on it, but as someone who no longer cares for the game but cares a lot about cinema, I can tell you that despite my disappointment at the rose-tinted view, I came away from the theatre this morning feeling slightly emotional and very inspired. Of course Sachin Tendulkar is not a saint. How many human beings do you know who are? It is impossible though not to learn something from James Erskine’s telling of this extraordinary real-life tale, and from that 16-year-olddebutant who turned his natural genius into an unparalleled, record-smashing career that has made him the international hero he is today.

Rating (out of five stars): **3/4

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	139 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/sachin-a-billion-dreams-heres-a-movie-review-by-a-cricket-non-fan-3484321.html#vuukle_div2

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachin:_A_Billion_Dreams

Release date:	Kerala: May 19, 2017. Delhi: May 26, 2017.
Director:	Basil Joseph
Cast: Language:	Tovino Thomas, Renji Panicker, Wamiqa Gabbi, Aju Varghese, Parvathy Malayalam

A village playground in Kerala was director Ranjan Pramod’s playing field in the sweetly evocative Rakshadhikari Baiju Oppu released this April. The action shifts to a mud wrestling pit in small-town Kerala in Basil Joseph’s Godhastarring Renji Panicker as a veteran gatta gusthi coach whose sport is losing to cricket in the popular psyche.

Captain, as Panicker’s character is called, is struggling not just with growing indifference within the community, but within his home too. His own son Das (Tovino Thomas) was a promising wrestler but gave it up. Dad sends the boy off to Punjab for higher studies, where he meets ace wrestler Aditi Singh (endearingly spelt “Adithi” in the English subtitles, as most Malayalis would). Aditi is played by Wamiqa Gabbi. Through a series of circumstances, the two end up back in Das’ village where each goes through a coming-of-age journey.

The most telling moment in Godha comes when the embattled heroine, who is being bullied by her family to give up her passion in favour of marriage, tells the hero: “Nobody wants a Sakshi Malik in their own house until and unless she wins an Olympic medal.” It is a remark that ought to shake us up and shame us, considering that we come from a society where successful women are often toasted by people who do not acknowledge the discrimination against women in their own homes. Unfortunately, the screenplay never rises above its many promising parts. What should have been a powerful sports film remains pleasant and entertaining throughout, but fails to be the gripping, compelling saga it could have been.

The concept is brimming with potentially explosive elements: a young south Indian man moving to north India for an education and a young north Indian woman heading off to the south to escape oppression, in a nation where the north-south divide is far deeper than we would like to admit; gender bias; politics in sports...each is touched upon in an interesting fashion at first. As the movie moves on though, charming as it is in so many ways, it becomes evident that it lacks heft.

Comparisons with Aamir Khan’s Dangalare inevitable, although that was a non-Malayalam film, because it too dealt with women in wrestling and it captured the imagination of audiences outside the Hindi belt too. Unfortunately for Godha, although Basil Joseph appears to be a confident director, the film’s screenplay needed to be much more than what it is. For instance, Aditi’s battles with her family’s conservatism and in the wrestling arena are too easily won. Das’ self-discovery is not explored with any depth once his father takes the girl under his wing. And Captain too remains more an idea than a fully fleshed out person.

It is largely a measure of the natural charisma of all three artistes and the supporting cast that they manage to keep the narrative engaging despite the shortcomings in the writing. Thomas – fresh from the recent success of Oru Mexican Aparatha– is likeable here. He must also be complimented on the well-chiselled physique he reveals (without the camera making a song and dance of it) when we see him wrestling. Gabbi is luminous, but what is far more striking is the way she gets the body and body language of a wrestler right. Panicker infuses warmth into the proceedings in a way only he can. And Aju Varghese as Das’ friend is a hoot, as he always is (barring a couple of instances of creepy behaviour by the character, which are presented as comedy).

It is particularly good to see the way Hindi, Punjabi and English are used by the dialogue writer, and the way languages flow in conversations in Godha as they would in real life if an open-minded north Indian were to travel to Kerala. The Malayalis in the film are shown trying to communicate as best as they can with her in the languages she knows, and after she spends some time in Kerala, she reciprocates the effort with Malayalam.

This, along with the strength of the assembled cast, the convincing realistic tone and the humour in the interactions between the characters keep this film going. If the script had half as much muscle as the average wrestler’s body, Godha could have been something special. As it is, Basil Joseph’s film stops at being nice. He is obviously a director with promise, so hopefully in his next venture he will pay more attention to the writing department (which, in any case, is the cornerstone of any goodfilm) before assembling other impressive parts. Here’s looking at you, Mr Joseph!

Rating (out of five stars): **1/4

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	120 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/godha-movie-review-a-malayalam-dangal-filled-with-warmth-but-lacking-muscle-3489607.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godha_(film)

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REVIEW 478: PHILLAURI

REVIEW 479: ANAARKALI OF AARAH

REVIEW 480: HONEY BEE 2: CELEBRATIONS

REVIEW 481: TAKE OFF

REVIEW 482: NAAM SHABANA

REVIEW 483: THE GREAT FATHER

REVIEW 484: BEGUM JAAN

REVIEW 485: SAKHAVU

REVIEW 486: NOOR

REVIEW 487: RAKSHADHIKARI BAIJU OPPU

REVIEW 488: BAAHUBALI – THE CONCLUSION

REVIEW 489: COMRADE IN AMERICA

REVIEW 490: MANTOSTAAN

REVIEW 491: SARKAR 3

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REVIEW 492: HINDI MEDIUM

REVIEW 493: SACHIN – A BILLION DREAMS

REVIEW 494: GODHA