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Release date:	December 22, 2017
Director:	Ali Abbas Zafar
Cast: Language:	Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif, Angad Bedi, Kumud Mishra, Girish Karnad Hindi

“Yeh toh puri army lekar aa gaye hai,” a scared Indian nurse says at one point as she looks out of the window and sees ISIS troops landing up in droves at a hospital in Iraq where she and her colleagues have been held captive.

“Ghabrao mat,” says her companion, an Indian RAW agent, “abhi Tiger zinda hai.”

Literally translated, those last three words – which are also this film's title – simply mean that someone called Tiger is alive. But since this is conventional commercial Bollywood fare and the aforesaid Tiger is played by a certain Mister Salman Khan, they are also a metaphor for “all is well with the world kyunki (to borrow and adapt a signature phrase from the works of another iconic Khan) Salman hai naa”.

How foolish are the governments, policy analysts, intelligence agencies and academics of the world investing time and money in figuring out how to bring ISIS to its knees. They should have known that the solution lies in the muscular arms and golden heart of a character played by Salman.

Tiger Zinda Hai’s strength is that it is unapologetic about its stupidity. And so, although it is for the most part simplistic in the socio-political statements it lays on thick, it is packed with so much action that it ends up being a fun, even if clichéd, Bollywood-and-Bond-style masala flick which, if you are looking closely enough, does make a subversive point or two.

Writer-director Ali Abbas Zafar’s film is a sequel to Kabir Khan’s 2012 hit Ek Tha Tiger in which Salman played Indian espionage agent Avinash Singh Rathore a.k.a. Manish Chandra a.k.a. Tiger who, while on a mission, falls in love with a Pakistani spy called Zoya (Katrina Kaif). Tiger Zinda Haicontinues where Ek Tha Tiger left off. Zoya and Avinash have quit their respective agencies and are now living in hiding along with their son Junior. Their calm life is interrupted when RAW seeks Tiger’s help to free a bunch of Indian nurses who have been taken as hostages in Iraq.

The opening text acknowledges that the film is inspired by true events. The reference here is to an episode in 2014 involving 46 Indian nurses who were held at a hospital in Tikrit, caught between ISIS and Iraqi government forces. This remarkable real life drama was chronicled beautifully by Mollywood earlier this year in Take Offstarring Parvathy, Kunchacko Boban and Fahadh Faasil. The Malayalam film though was told through the eyes of one of the nurses who was at the forefront of the rescue effort and who, by coordinating with the Indian Embassy in Iraq, ultimately helped get herself and her colleagues back to India. Bollywood’s take on this well-documented episode from our contemporary history sets this woman firmly aside (along with the embassy, the governments of India and Kerala) and revolves around a single man instead.

If you have seen the sobre, credible, realistic yet supremely entertaining Take Off you may understand why Tiger Zindagi Hai feels so ridiculous in comparison and so shamefully male-centric. It took considerable strength of will this morning to put that film out of my mind while I watched Tiger take the reinsand make a meal of ISIS. (For the record, ISIS is called ISC here, and Tikrit is Ikrit.) I was rewarded for my efforts with humour – some intentional, some not – and intermittent adrenaline rushes.

Both Salman and Katrina are limited actors, but they are charismatic and pleasing to the eyes here as always. Katrina is convincing enough in her action scenes to make you wonder why it has not occurred to any Bollywood director to cast her along with perhaps Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra in an all-out action flick centred around women. Salman has been heavy on his feet in recent years, but a combination of well-planned stunt choreography and clever camerawork ensures that we are not aware of that at any point in this film, unlike in Ek Tha Tiger in which he looked visibly tired.

Tiger Zinda Hai is a slick production (though the background score’s jarring resemblance to Don’s music is distracting) and the fisticuffs in it are enjoyable. It also clearly means well in most political matters even though it feels the need to underline its messaging repeatedly and plays to the gallery in an India that is increasingly demanding chest-thumping proof of patriotism from all its citizens and is openly suspicious of minority communities. So, Tiger and the other characters stress and re-stress their love for India with lines such as this one from Zoya: “Sab log samajhte hai ki duniya mein sabse zyaada pyaar tum mujhse karte ho lekin mujhe pata hai ki tum mujhse bhi zyaada apne desh se pyaar karte ho” (everyone thinks that you love me the most in this world, but I know that you love your country even more than you love me). Tiger’s Muslim colleague gives triple evidence of his desh prem. And since the audience cannot be trusted to appreciate that theirs is a culturally disparate team, we are reminded of its Hindu-Muslim-Sikh composition in a pointed exchange between Tiger and his teammate (Angad Bedi) about what it means to be a sardar. We should have seen that coming considering that early on, in a scene in which Katrina’s Zoya bashes up a bunch of goons, the writer felt the need to throw in a character dispensing a line about this being an example of women’s empowerment. Does an audience that supports dumbed-down cinema lose the right to complain about spoonfeeding? Perhaps.

To be fair, Tiger Zinda Hai is not as tacky or loud as Gadar, a film it references with a mention of Sunny Deol’s infamous handpump-uprooting scene in which he scared off the entire Pakistan Army with a bellow. Tiger inhabits a Bollywood that has evolved to a stage where Pakistanis can now be shown as allies in the face of a common enemy, and one character, when confronted over Pakistan’s wrongdoings in Kashmir, gets away with implying that India’s hands are not clean either. Considering the divisive times we live in, even this fleeting scene, sadly, is an act of courage that needs to be lauded, as does another contrived passage involving national flags that pushes the envelope up to a point (though without crossing a certain line). Even the ISC members we meet are not entirely satanic.

Tiger Zinda Hai’s supporting cast is a mixed bag. Kumud Mishra manages to be comical without allowing his comedy to become incongruous in this grim setting. Paresh Rawal, however, overdoes his villainous labour contractor. The handsome Angad Bedi is impressive in a small role that does not challenge him as much as last year’s Pink but still reminds us that this man is hero material.

Tiger Zinda Hai is not a film that is meant to be taken too seriously. I mean c’mon, Salman/Tiger takes off his shirt for no reason at all to give ISC/ISIS and us a generous view of his fabulously toned and oiled torso and arms in a scene that does not even bother to offer a logical excuse for his shirtlessness. And after engineering the escape of those nurses, Tiger and Zoya dance to an item song playing along with the credits. I laughed through these two stereotypical scenes because by this point I had given up gasping with exasperation and had surrendered myself to the idiosyncrasies and ludicrousness of the genre (the genre being Bollywood masala). If you can see Tiger Zinda Haifor what it is, you too may not mind its unabashed blend of swag, silliness and schmaltz.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	161 minutes

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/tiger-zinda-hai-movie-review-salman-katrina-deliver-fun-with-equal-parts-swag-silliness-and-schmaltz-4271153.html

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

Release date:	December 21, 2017
Director:	Ajai Vasudev
Cast: Language:	Mammootty, Varalaxmi Sarathkumar, Unni Mukundan, John Kaipallil, Mukesh, Maqbool Salmaan, Gokul Suresh, Kalabhavan Shajohn, Poonam Bajwa, Mahima Nambiar, Leena Malayalam

Since the December 2012 Delhi gangrape, which fixed the media spotlight firmly on India’s long-running feminist movement, many autorickshaws in the city have taken to carrying stickers bearing the words “This auto respects women”. It is the most tragic and ironic testament to how dangerous this city is for 50 per cent of its population and how autowallahs in particular have been known to harass female passengers in particular.

A similar irony marks director Ajai Vasudev’s Malayalam film that is in theatres this week. Masterpiece’s leading man, college professor Edward Livingston played by Mammootty, chants a mantra throughout his time on screen. “I respect women,” he says again and again and then again, clearly unconvinced by and uncommitted to his own declaration. The character’s actions suggest that the megastar has taken on this catchphrase to mock those who have slammed him over the years for the horrendously misogynistic films he has chosen to act in, including last year’s Kasabathat earned him a notice from Kerala’s Women’s Commission. His insincerity is underlined by the scorn and condescension with which he dispenses these words each time he wishes to put a woman in her place, in a film that has been made with the evident purpose of celebrating aggressive masculinity and treating women lightly.

No, I am not kidding. The hero even has this theme song playing in the background while he struts about: “He’s the man, macho macho man.” I swear I am not making this up.

Masterpiece is set in a men’s college where two gangs of students are constantly at war. Their competitiveness extends to a good-looking youngster called Vedika in a women’s college in the city who recently won a major cultural crown. Soon after they mark Vedika out as property to be duelled over, she is raped and killed. Suspicion falls on her boyfriend, which leads to a clash between students and the local police including ACP Bhavani Durga (Varalaxmi Sarathkumar) and her colleague John Thekken (Unni Mukundan).

About an hour into the narrative, Edward Livingston enters the picture. He is the sort of prof that dudes consider cool because he effectively disciplines them in class but in his free time becomes one of the boys, so to speak, such that when he beats up goons to protect them, the young men on campus cheer him by yelling “goondamasha” (hooligan teacher), which the film seems to consider a compliment.

Edward, of course, proves to be a better investigator than the police, and solves the mystery over Vedika’s death. Of course. The whodunnit part of the film is no doubt suspenseful, but when the big reveal comes, its contrivances somewhat overshadow its interesting elements. For instance, the crime at the centre of the plot took place when a young woman fixes a late night rendezvous with her lover. A credible explanation is not offered for why she chose a lonely spot and that particular time. Another instance: a tubby middle-aged person is shown chucking a human body over a wall as if it were a sack of cotton, a task that perhaps a real-life WWE wrestler might be equal to.

Even the anticipation of the case being cracked is overshadowed by director Ajai Vasudev’s fan worship of Mammootty, which dominates every scene in which Livingston appears. The rape and murder are just an excuse to prove how cool Mammukka can be when he plays detective-detective. There is no dividing line here between the character and the actor, not because the actor is doing a great job of immersing himself in a role, but because he does not bother. Mammootty here is himself on screen as he has played himself in countless films through his decades-long career.

Masterpiece, in that sense, is not so much a film as it is a prop against which Mammootty leans. Everything in it is geared towards paying tribute to the star while apparently signifying Edward Livingston’s coolth. And so, Livington’s car registration number is KL02 BOSS. During his introductory scene an hour into the narrative,“Maharaja” from the college’s name on its boundary wall is highlighted, as are the words “limited edition” on the back of his Hyundai Creta. He has a signature gesture: he keeps holding up his right arm and shakes down his shining kada. Even the title is unrelated to the film’s storyline: it is an ode to him.

It is not that such swagger does not ever work. Mammootty himself has pulled it off in the past. The problem here is that these moves are so lacking in novelty and so generic, that far from being impressive, they come across as laboured and puerile. The director also seems to be working on a template already visited by the Mohanlal-starrer Velipadinte Pusthakam to slightly better effect this Onam, right down to the hero’s late entry, the much younger woman teacher who evinces romantic interest in him and a murder with a college in the backdrop.

What distinguishes Masterpiecefrom Velipadinte Pusthakam is the utter contempt for women pervading every cell of its being. When a classroom full of male students gawk at a pretty young teacher (Poonam Bajwa) with a sari draped low down her waist, a senior colleague (Mukesh) chides them but mutters to himself as he looks away from her slim body in embarrassment, “There is no point in scolding the students.” In his book it is the woman’s fault that those paavam, helpless young men are leering at her.

Let us pause for a moment to think of the extreme insensitivity of that line being featured in a film in which a rape – a crime usually accompanied by victim blaming – occurs shortly afterwards. The low point of this film though is that long after this gruesome assault takes place, a marginal character, the canteen guy Manniyan, makes a quip about rape. Despite the abysmalexpectations Masterpiece had set up for itself by then, I was startled in that moment.

Incidentally, the aforementioned woman teacher is included in the film solely as a showpiece who is smitten by Edward, because no Mammootty or Mohanlal film these days is complete without a good-looking woman young enough to be their granddaughter falling for them. Her youthfulness is unwittingly rubbed in our faces in a scene in which she opts out of her usual saris and wears jeans and a shirt to dance with the students.

Through all this misogyny, Varalaxmi Sarathkumar stands tall as ACP Bhavani Durga, the actor’s natural screen presence defying every effort by Edward Livingston to rubbish her character. Varalaxmi conveys power effortlessly, possibly because of her own innate strength. She deserves better than to play secondary characters in macho-fests like Masterpiece and Kasaba.

The film itself squanders away whatever little potential it hasin its adoration of Mammootty and its misogyny.

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U (because rape jokes, in the Censor Board’s view, are suitable material for children)
Running time:	160 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/masterpiece-movie-review-in-which-mammootty-chants-i-respect-women-and-proves-he-doesnt-mean-it-4272543.html

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

Release date:	December 22, 2017
Director:	Pradeep M. Nair
Cast: Language:	Prithviraj Sukumaran, Durga Krishna, Sudheer Karamana, Alencier Ley Lopez, Saiju Kurup, Leena, Anarkali Marikar Malayalam

Imagine being in love and being denied the right to choose the person you want to spend your adult life with. Imagine the ache of a lifetime spent wondering what became of her or him. Imagine your career taking flight sans the one you want to fly with.

Director Pradeep M. Nair’s Vimaanam (Airplane) is a good, old-fashioned (I mean that in a nice way) tale of friendship, romance and the pain of separation in a conservative milieu where families resort to politicking and even violence to keep young lovers apart. Prithviraj Sukumaran here plays the renowned aeronautical engineer, Professor Venkateshwaran, who receives a call one day from a girl identifying herself as “Janaki’s daughter”. The mention of that name gets the lonely old man emotional and he decides to head for his hometown in Kerala where this Janaki is waiting.

Much of his train journey is spent in a flashback to a time decades earlier when Venkateshwaran was Janaki’s Venkati. They grew up together and now spend their youth in each other’s company, initially blissfully unaware of the prejudice and negativity that will ultimately tear them apart.

Janaki (Durga Krishna) is a pre-degree student from a well-off Hindu family, the daughter of a powerful lawyer whose word is law in a home where his wife cowers before him and his child is punished for not cowering. The hearing-impaired Venkati, on the other hand, is the offspring of a Christian-Nair marriage who has grown up with financial struggle and now, as a high-school pass-out, earns a living as an automobile mechanic to support his widowed mother and sister while working on the side to fulfill his dream of building a plane with his bare hands.

The structure of Vimaanam is such that we pretty much know how the flashback will end from the moment it begins. The joy though is in the treatment of Venkati and Janaki’s journey. Prithviraj and Durga imbue their characters with innocence and clear-heartedness that is alluring. Despite the anger, bias and scheming all around them, they somehow manage to remain pure and clean. Their seeming incorruptibility makes them protagonists you root for (even when they break the law at one point, in pursuit of his dream). I wanted him to make that plane, I wanted her to have her freedom, I wanted them to be together.

The story is told from Venkati’s standpoint, but this is not a conventional male-centric romance. Janaki takes centrestage with him and if I have a grouse it is that while we get to know her, her family, Venkati and his allies, the screenplay neglects his mother and barely shows us his sibling.

Comparisons are inevitable between Vimaanam and the 2015 Parvathy-Prithviraj-starrer Ennu Ninte Moideen about a Hindu woman and a Muslim man in love in 1960s Kerala. At the risk of being reviled by fans, I confess that although ENM’s theme itself was gripping, I found the film inexorably stretched to manipulate the audience. Vimaanamgets its tone just right most of the time and its occasional descent into maudlin, melodramatic territory (the airport scene, for one) is forgivable because its drama and scale are at no point allowed to dwarf the intensely personal portrait of the couple at its core.

The other inevitable comparison would be with this year’s Vineeth Srinivasan-starrer Aby, the release of whichVimaanam’s makers unsuccessfully tried to stop in court. Aby was about a mentally slow, socially awkward young man without an aviation background who builds an aircraft in his hometown. Both are reportedly inspired by the same true story. The thematic similarity notwithstanding, Aby was tedious whereas Vimaanam pulsates with dreams and regret.

The film’s achievement is that although it has been made on a lavish scale in spectacular locales with eyecatching visuals by DoP Shehnad Jalal and top-line VFX (barring the clouds in the final frame), it never diverts its gaze from Janaki and Venkati. Despite the grand aerial views of cliffs and sands and the vast ocean, it remains from start to finish an intimate saga of heartbreak.

One complaint: while Jalal shoots his hero well, he is needlessly determined to emphasise his heroine’s looks. Yes yes, we get that she has large, attractively droopy eyes, but there was no need to give us so many close-ups of those eyes from so many angles, all with the purpose of capturing her looks rather than her sentiments. Interestingly, he pulls away and gives that lovely face space whenever his attention shifts from the physical to the emotional.

Both actors bring their A game to this film. They have a warm on-camera equation. Despite being a debutant, Durga Krishna shares the weight of the film with Prithviraj and carries it on her shoulders with confidence that is not intimidated by his experience. He effectively alters his physicality to signify the advancing years. Although he is too much of a man to look like the boy he is supposed to be in the flashback, he gets halfway there through what appears to have been considerable weight loss in addition to his body language.

In their later years, he gets good ageing makeup, hers leaves her looking much younger than she could possibly be when we meet her as an old woman. Considering the money that has clearly been invested in this enterprise, it is also disappointing to see the lack of detailing in this department. Hands and the sides of necks age too, you know. The makeup team missed that point.

Vimaanam’s supporting cast is led by the always excellent Alencier Ley Lopez playing Roger, Venkati’s mentor and co-conspirator in the business of making his first plane. Sudheer Karamana too turns in a neat performance as the hero’s comrade in arms. It is particularly nice to see the two let their hair down for the scene featuring the song Meghakanavinu. The usually dependable Saiju Kurup though opts for overstatement in his role as one of the spokes in the Janaki-Venkati romance.

Gopi Sundar’s songs work well when they are woven into the narrative. Meghakanavinuin particular is entertaining and unusual in the way it uses two female voices and the sounds of the tools in Venkati’s workshop in its instrumental arrangements. Here too, we get evidence of the director’s intent to stay equally focused on his male and female leads. He is working, she is assisting him and his team, but the song is hers with the others singing in chorus in the background. It is an atypical musical choice that subtly reflects the filmmaker’s mindset.

The song that should have been dispensed with is Vaaniluyare, melodic though it is. It is one of those stereotypical numbers to be found in commercial films across Indian film industries where the hero and heroine sing and dance at archaeological sites and locations of exquisite natural beauty. Though Durga’s grace and considerable dancing skills are in evidence here, Prithviraj’s personality is not a fit. Besides, while there is a certain kind of film in which this kind of diversion works, Vimaanam is not that film.

What itis is a brooding depiction of great achievements overshadowed by great sadness and a sense of emptiness, when your being remains forever chained to a past not of your making. Prithviraj as Venkati and Durga Krishna as Janaki embody yearning and heartache. Whatever the film’s missteps may be, I found myself cheering as Venkati’s first plane took off, but most of all, I really really wanted to see Janaki with him. Sweet simplicity is not easy to achieve on screen. That’s what Pradeep M. Nair delivers with Vimaanam.

Rating (out of five stars): ***

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	147 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/vimaanam-movie-review-prithviraj-sukumaran-durga-krishna-embody-heartache-and-yearning-4273579.html

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

Release date:	December 22, 2017
Director:	Aashiq Abu
Cast: Language:	Aishwarya Lekshmi, Tovino Thomas, Leona Lishoy Malayalam

“Sex is not a promise.” I cannot believe I just heard these words from a heroine in a mainstream Mollywood venture. Aparna Ravi a.k.a. Aps in Mayaanadhi (Mystic River)is a far cry from the coy virgins of past Indian films for whom sex was usually a mistake that almost inevitably led to a pregnancy.

This is not to say that other women in Malayalam films – or Indian cinema at large – have not gotten between the sheets with heroes in the past. Just this year, one of the most comical sequences in Angamaly Diaries involved a woman visiting the male protagonist in hospital to offer more than just sympathy. Their sexual escapades were designed as a source of amusement though, and the woman in question was not the heroine. In too many other Indian films, sex between a leading man and woman who are not married to each other has become a sort of mandatory signifier of coolth used by conservative filmmakers to mask their conservatism and/or establish how with-it they are. Exhibit No. 1: Aditya Chopra’s painfully self-conscious “look at me, look how progressive I am” Befikre from Bollywood in 2016. Exhibit No. 2: Mani Ratnam’s aiming-to-be-modern but ultimately conformist O Kadhal Kanmani from Kollywood in 2015.

Hear this, dear Indian filmmakers: showing your heroine having sex is not an indicator of your film’s liberalism, giving your heroine agency is. The difference between aspiring to be feminist on this front (or faking it) and genuine conviction is in evidence in Mayaanadhi.

Aashiq Abu’s new film stars Aishwarya Lekshmi as Aparna and Tovino Thomas as her on-again, off-again boyfriend John Matthew a.k.a. Mathan. Aparna is an acting aspirant who has been earning a living by emceeing and modelling while she works towards a break in films. Mathan was her senior in college and is now a professional racketeer. Each has a challenging family background, his is far more troubling than hers.

Mayaanadhi is a romance disguised as a crime thriller. When the curtain goes up, a series of events unfold that force Mathan into hiding. While he stays low key to escape the police, the film explores his long-standing relationship with Aparna, which is now in the doldrums since she no longer trusts him for reasons that are completely his fault.

Aparna is a bright, determined, professionally ambitious woman who knows her mind in all matters except Mathan. They have been friends as much as lovers – a magical combination that is hard to recover from. Though her head tells her he spells trouble, she remains as fond of him as she is attracted to him. The film stays with them as he desperately tries to get her back in his life while she is torn between her affection for him and her desire to get over him.

There is so much to recommend in Mayaanadhi. The attractive Aishwarya Lekshmi, for one, a model-turned-actor who is effortlessly glamorous on screen. She made her film debut earlier this year in the only awkwardly written passage in the otherwise excellent Njandukalude Nattil Oridavela. In Mayaanadhi she is handed a vast canvas and wonderfully nuanced writing to display her considerable acting chops.

Tovino Thomas has had a year that most actors can only dream of. If in Oru Mexican Aparathahe was a gritty and grim political activist, in Godha he was a man-child, and here in Mayaanadhiwe get the full blast of his versatility as he aces Mathan’s irresistible boyish charm and longing for his Aps.

(Spoiler alert) That scene in which Mathan lightly accuses Aparna of “talking like a prostitute” and instantly regrets his words is a fine example of great writing meeting great acting. Her reply, in sharp contrast to his unevolved reaction to their rendezvous, reminded me of Shruti’s response in the morning-after scene in Band BaajaBaaraat (Hindi, 2010) in which Bittoo expresses regret for their sexual encounter, as if it is a catastrophe that he as a man must take responsibility for. (Spoiler alert ends)

For its non-traditionalism, smooth flow, credible characters and situations and so much else, the true stars of Mayaanadhi are director Aashiq Abu and his frequent collaborators, writers Syam Pushkaran and Dileesh Nair. Their lead pair come across as real people with real dilemmas. Neither of them is flawless, but unlike in most commercial Indian cinema, the man’s mess-ups in the relationship are not casually justified or glorified. And it is a joy to see a woman who is strong but not in a cliched filmi fashion: her strength is believably human and not divine.

Team Mayaanadhi draws us into Aparna and Mathan’s story so effectively that we ache for them. The film’s atmospherics are compelling. DoP Jayesh Mohan ensures that Mayaanadhi is visually exquisite. His colour palette is dominated by whites, blacks and steely grays in the outdoors, almost as if Kerala in this film is experiencing an icy winter it never does in reality. This cinematographic choice serves to build up a sense of immense sadness and a feeling of foreboding around the fate of Aparna and Mathan’s romance.

There is also a largeness and grandeur to his outdoor frames, but the director’s narrative style is such that when Aparna and Mathan are together on screen, nothing matters but these two. He also wisely eschews song and dance numbers that are characteristic of commercial Indian cinema. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is allowed to distract from the ruminative mood of the narrative and the twosome around whom it revolves.

Till the interval, I remember being curious about the mystery behind the crimes we witness in the film’s opening scenes. Those questions recede into the background by the second half, by which time I found myself more preoccupied with what to expect for Aparna and Mathan as a couple.

There are plenty of other people around them, including some characters with stories that are striking even though their time on screen is limited. The actor Sameera played by Leona Lishoy, her autocratic brother (Soubin Shahir) and Aparna’s emotionally needy mother all leave an impression, yet somehow the film seems mysteriously depopulated. This is the most remarkable aspect of Mayaanadhi: Abu builds his narrative in such a way that his satellite characters are not neglected but his lead couple are lost in their own thoughts and their own world, and I found myself lost in them.

This is what gives Mayaanadhi its fine balance between being relatable and yet being an epic romance. It is a befitting December release in a year that has witnessed some great works from Malayalam cinema.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	136 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/mayaanadhi-movie-review-aishwarya-lekshmi-tovino-thomas-headline-the-romance-of-the-year-from-mollywood-4274751.html

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

Release date:	January 12, 2018
Director:	Akshat Verma
Cast: Language:	Saif Ali Khan, Akshay Oberoi, Isha Talwar, Sobhita Dhulipala, Kunaal Roy Kapur, Shenaz Treasury, Vijay Raaz, Deepak Dobriyal, Amyra Dastur, Neil Bhoopalam Hindi

When the writer of Delhi Bellyannounces his intent to direct, obviously there is reason enough to sit up and take notice. That film – released seven long years back, produced by Aamir Khan and directed by Abhinay Deo – was an excellent black comedy that pushed the envelope in the genre more than most Bollywood filmmakers had for decades before that or have since. Its writing, direction and casting were in sync with each other. Kaalakaandi gets one element right: its cast. But though Saif Ali Khan is funny as hell here and several of his talented co-stars show spark, the writing does not give any of them enough substance to bite into and the film does not fully take off at any point.

Khan plays a man who has just discovered that he has stomach cancer and barely a few months to live. He is shocked at the diagnosis because he has lived what he considers a clean and healthy life. Read: no smoking, no drinking, no drugs, no fooling around. Since his family is celebrating a wedding when the doctor breaks the news to him, he decides to keep it to himself but also to live it up since he now has nothing to lose. His bizarre transformation confuses the groom (Akshay Oberoi) who, in any case, is coping with his own set of problems arising from pre-marital heebie-jeebies.

In the same city lives a young couple on the verge of parting ways since she (Sobhita Dhulipala) is leaving him (Kunaal Roy Kapur) while she heads off to the US for a PhD. With just hours to go for her flight they attend the birthday party of a close friend (played with aplomb by Shenaz Treasury).

What seems like light years away from their swish lifestyles, a notorious gangster’s sidekicks (Vijay Raaz and Deepak Dobriyal) are dealing with dilemmas of their own.

During the course of the film, the paths of these disparate characters cross in the most fleeting fashion, resulting in dramatic consequences for all of them.

Kaalakaandi (which, I have learnt from one of Khan’s pre-release interviews, means “gadbad” or “everything going wrong) is about karma taking over as we make other plans and the importance of occasionally surrendering to fate.The film is set in Mumbai and about two-thirds of its dialogues are in English, a choice that is well suited to the milieus it inhabits.Verma has an interesting enough concept in place here and has picked just the right bunch of artistes to get where he wants to go. The opening half hour offers plenty of Saif-Ali-Khan-induced laughter and zaniness to hold out the promise of more to come.

Sadly, the rest of the film does not live up to this potential, since it is neither madcap enough nor pacey enough nor raunchy enough nor witty enough nor shocking enough nor clever enough nor gutsy enough nor experimental enough to have the effect that it seems to be aiming for.

Verma’s inability to flesh out his basic idea for Kaalakaandiis particularly unfortunate because Khan is in his element here. In film after film, this actor has shown that he has the chops to pull off pretty much every genre, but his industry is not offering him projects to match. He was sweetly likeable in Chef last year and beautifully melded amorality with heart in Rangoonjust months earlier. In Kaalakaandi, he lets his hair down wonderfully as he descends into nuttiness, but the script is too frail to give him the space to spread his wings.

That said, the writing of the thread about his character is the only one with the substance and life to keep this film going. The highlight of Kaalakaandi is his encounter with a transgender sex worker played by a luminous Nary Singh. The easy blend of light-heartedness and poignance in their interaction marks an important milestone for the portrayal of the trans community by Bollywood.

In the sensitivity Verma seemingly effortlessly combines with humour in that one episode, he proves that he has what it takes to be a director. If only he had spent more time on his script, it may have occurred to him that the strand involving Khan could have been a standalone venture.

The rest of Kaalakaandi is dead before it takes birth. Getting Oberoi to say “fuck” a few times, infusing Raaz and Dobriyal’s segment with ma-behen abuses, showing a naked woman covered in a sheet and throwing her lingerie at a horny lover or injecting a heavy dose of drugs into the plot doth not a black comedy make.

Each member of the cast has provided ample evidence of being a gifted performer in earlier works. Vijay Raaz was the heart and soul of Delhi Belly and Kunaal Roy Kapur was a hoot in the same film. We know from the Tanu Weds Manu films that Deepak Dobriyal is a killer comic. The good-looking Akshay Oberoi is just emerging from the brilliance of Gurgaon last year. Sobhita Dhulipala – who is a hottie – made a smashing debut in Anurag Kashyap’s Raman Raghav 2.0in 2016. Yet in Kaalakaandi, when they are occasionally engaging, it feels more like a factor of their natural charisma than the writing of their respective characters. And then there is the usually exceptional Neil Bhoopalam who has zero impact in a pointless cameo here.

Besides, the timeline is inexplicable. The events in Kaalakaandi happen over one night, yet everything seems to take much longer than it possibly could in reality. The young couple, for instance, pack so much into the two hours before her flight that you have to wonder what clock they are operating on. This loose writing deprives the film of the compactness it should have had considering that its 111 minutes and 54 seconds is far less than the average Bollywood length.

It is hard to believe that a film directed by the writer of Delhi Belly is, for the most part, a drag. Despite Saif Ali Khan being in cracking form, Kaalakaandi lacks fizz and purpose.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	111 minutes 54 seconds

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/kaalakaandi-movie-review-saif-ali-khan-is-funny-as-hell-but-the-film-lacks-fizz-4299605.html

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

Release date:	January 19, 2018
Director:	Samir Soni
Cast: Language:	Sanjay Suri, Nora Fatehi, Zenia Starr, Ayaz Khan, Aryan Veir Suri, Pitobash, Purab Kohli Hindi

Most people worry about the end of their youth. What may be just another birth anniversary in the eyes of some, could turn into a nightmare for those who view the start of a new decade in particular with dread. In Rajiv Kaul’s case, you can take that literally. A tragic death – murder or accident? – mars his 40^th birthday, but he wakes up the next morning to find that all seems to be well and that the bloody episode of the previous night appears not to have happened at all.

Tidbits from that day, however, keep repeating themselves, in different ways and different settings. At first, the premise is interesting enough. Has Rajiv slipped through a crack in the universe and got caught in a time loop in a Groundhog Day Redux? Is someone playing a cruel joke on him? Is he the victim of a crime? Is the film capturing the goings-on in the imagination of a mentally unwell individual? Or is this just a metaphorical depiction of gerascophobia, the fear of ageing?

When My Birthday Song initially throws up these questions, it evokes curiosity. After a while though, it reveals that it has little to offer beyond its clever concept. The repetition of events in Rajiv’s life then becomes increasingly dull rather than fascinating as it should be, so that by the time the answer is unveiled, it does not have the desired jolting effect. Ho hum. Yeah yeah, very smart, but…yawn.

Model-cum-TV-star-turned-debutant-film-director Samir Soni’s My Birthday Song lacks punch in its narrative style, depth in its writing and imagination in its camerawork. Among other things, it sorely needs some layering in its examination of Rajiv’s crisis of conscience that is a crucial part of this tale.

Soni has co-produced this film with his lead star, Sanjay Suri. The screenplay too is Soni’s, with inputs by Vrushali Telang.

In Onir’s My Brother Nikhil (2005) and Nandita Das’ Firaaq (2008), Suri has shown us that he is capable of complexity given the right project and director. He is earnest playing Rajiv Kaul in My Birthday Song, but the screenplay gives him little to sink his teeth into. His co-star Zenia Starr, playing Rajiv’s wife Ritu, shows some spark that may be tapped in a better film.

This birthday song goes flat too soon to sustain interest.

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	95 minutes 40 seconds

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/my-birthday-song-movie-review-sanjay-suri-is-trapped-in-a-clever-concept-gone-dull-4309869.html

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

Release date:	January 19, 2018
Director:	Sanjay Patel
Cast: Language:	Rahul Bhat, Tillotama Shome, Tirth Sharma, Haresh Dagiya, Chetan Daiya, Jay Bhatt, Vivek Ghamande, Jay Vithlani, Jayesh More Hindi

The workers at Apollo Chemicals, a chromium sulfate factory in Gujarat, are falling like ninepins. Many have developed respiratory disorders and ulcers, others cancer, some have died as a result. The head of their union is indifferent to their plight since he has sold his soul to the management. As more men succumb to the unsafe conditions in which they operate, another leader emerges from their midst. Reluctantly at first, and then more decisively, Jay Gohil (Rahul Bhat) takes it upon himself to ensure that his colleagues get justice and Apollo is set in order.

India-born, Canada-based director Sanjay Patel’s Union Leader goes where few Hindi films have bothered to tread in the past two decades: to the area of workers’ rights, once the favoured destination of parallel cinema and the pre-1990s mainstream. Union Leader’s strength is that it is committed to its cause, it seems to have some knowledge about the inner workings of a chemical factory and its weight rests on the capable shoulders of Rahul Bhat, an actor of tremendous talent who has inexplicably been largely ignored by mainstream Bollywood.

Bhat was fantastic in Anurag Kashyap’s underrated 2014 film Ugly. Here in Union Leader, he brings an X factor to his performance that rises above the limitations of the screenplay. Even before we are told that Jay is in physical pain, it is possible to sense an underlying suffering that he is not revealing to us, to sense that there is more to that furrowed brow than just his worries for his co-workers and his family.

Bhat’s charisma and Patel’s evident good intentions help Union Leaderpull through despite the pale writing of several promising supporting characters and the too convenient resolution of the workers’ issues. In truth, labour unions in India are up against the rarely-surmounted combined might of unscrupulous industrialists, corrupt politicians and bureaucrats in addition to double agents in their midst, with their troubles compounded by caste and regional divides. Union Leader fails to convey the extreme complexity of the circumstances in which the country’s poor factory hands find themselves.

In addition to Jay’s colleagues, we are also introduced to his wife Geeta (Tillotama Shome) and teenaged son Harsh (Tirth Sharma). Shome here carries forward her reputation as a dependable actor. Sharma made a mark as the heroine’s schoolmate in Advait Chandan’s Secret Superstar just a few months back, and lives up to that promise here. The warmth in the trio’s equation, Harsh’s fledgling interest in Gandhian values and his influence over his initially cynical father give the film its relatability.

It is also nice that though the screenplay portrays Jay’s journey from hesitation to complete involvement in the workers’ struggles, it does not feel the need to show him metamorphosing into a ferocious sloganeer and orator. He remains, till the end, a low-key man whose fierceness lies entirely within.

Where the film falters is in its exploration of the battles at Apollo Chemicals. In the engaging first half, the conversations between Jay and his co-workers feel real, the actors playing those supporting parts feel not like actors at all and Darren Fung’s music sets a muted mood that serves to highlight the despair and turmoil in their midst. As it progresses though, Union Leaderis unable to effectively tap its supporting cast. I wanted to be better acquainted with Jay’s colleagues beyond the realm of their problems that are discussed at length pre-interval, but after the break the writers add little to our understanding of them as persons. This robs Union Leader of the emotional stirrings that should be a given in such a story.

The screenplay by Patel himself and John Winston Rainey is also unable to capture the magnitude of the problem at hand, the years of back-breaking, dispiriting toil that go into procuring workers their rights. This is not to say that the labour scenario is entirely hopeless or that no legislative and judicial battles have ever been won, but that the ease with which victory is achieved is unconvincing in Union Leader. The film’s portrayal of trade unionism is too simplistic then for it to be considered a serious study of the subject or for it to leave a lasting impression.

Still, this is clearly a heartfelt film. Whatever be its weaknesses, the genuineness of Patel’s concern and Bhat’s sincerity make Union Leaderwatchable.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	106 minutes 20 seconds

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/union-leader-movie-review-rahul-bhat-tillotama-shomes-film-is-simplistic-but-heartfelt-4310511.html

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

Release date:	January 12, 2018
Director:	Anurag Kashyap
Cast: Language:	Vineet Kumar Singh, Zoya Hussain, Jimmy Sheirgill, Ravi Kishan Hindi

It is a wonder that Bollywood has taken so long to wake up to the sports film genre. India’s fractured society and corrupt sports authorities, after all, suck talent into a whirlpool of misogyny, casteism, regionalism and every other imaginable prejudice and power game, throwing up scores of stories begging to be told. Thankfully, the wait has been worth it. After the back-to-back box-office successes of Mary Kom(2014), Sultan and Dangal(both 2016), after Kollywood contributed to the bunch with Saala Khadoos (Sudha Kongara’s simultaneously produced Hindi version of her 2016 Tamil-Hindi film Irudhi Suttru), here comes one of the best Hindi sports films ever to be made: writer-director Anurag Kashyap’s Mukkabaaz (The Brawler).

Mukkabaaz is not your everyday sports biopic. If Chak De! India– an outstanding precursor to this trend, released back in 2007 – put the spotlight on communalism, gender and government apathy in Indian hockey, Mukkabaaz red-flags multiple factors that hold back boxing talent: caste, class and the use of professional influence to settle petty personal vendettas.

Through the medium of sport, it provides a running commentary on the socio-political landscape of Bareilly and – despite its cultural specificities – India at large, all wrapped around an endearing romance. The tensions in the protagonists’ lives are so unrelenting and so believable, that I found myself often on the edge of my theatre seat, as if watching a thriller. This is one of the most intensely dramatic Hindi films seen in a while.

Mukkabaaz revolves around a boxer in Bareilly called Shravan KumarSingh who crosses swords with the local don of the boxing establishment, Bhagwan Das Mishra, while simultaneously entering into a romantic relationship with Bhagwan’s niece Sunaina. Bhagwan sets out to ruin Shravan’s career and to terrorise Sunaina’s parents into separating them.

What he does not account for are Sunaina’s spirit and Shravan’s resilience, which make them formidable both individually and together. Sunaina may be mute, but she is not one to be silenced by a society that in any case denies a woman a voice even if she suffers no such physical disability. Shravan may be exhausted from years of fighting the system Bhagwan represents, but he is not one to give up easily. Mukkabaaz is about his battle to become a state-level boxer and the couple’s joint battle against Bhagwan’s villainy.

Kashyap weaves a rich tapestry of emotions and politics in Mukkabaaz. The initial story by Vineet Kumar Singh, who plays Shravan, was expanded into a screenplay by a large team that includes Kashyap himself. In the hands of lesser writers, the film may have come across as being contrived to pack in too many ‘issues’ and faking concern. Kashyap & Co, however, roll out their narrative with a burning conviction from which everything flows naturally.

Mukkabaaz, in any case, is not “about ‘issues’”, it is about two people and how they react to the curve balls thrown at them. Life, after all, does not play out in compartments. Misogyny, for instance, does not decide to give a mute woman a day’s break just because she is coping with hurdles related to her speech impairment that day. The film acknowledges that instead life rushes at us in multiple strands we must cope with simultaneously. The proprietorial attitude that men have towards women they love, beef terrorism, inter-caste romance, a cheeky inversion of the Bharat Mata Ki Jai slogan being chanted by violent nationalists dominating the current public discourse in India, Brahmin arrogance, Dalit oppression – you will find it all in Mukkabaaz and it all feels just right. At 155 minutes, the film is long, but the length too feels just right.

The immersive storytelling is bolstered by immersive camerawork and acting performances. Singhis staggeringly good as Shravan. Although he looks older and decidedly more mature than the under-30-year-old he is supposed to be in this film, in every other way – including his physique – he embodies his bruised and battered but-never-say-die character.

Debutant Zoya Hussain achieves the fine balance required to capture the mischief and fire that combine to make Sunaina. Ravi Kishan is so convincing and likeable as the coach who takes Shravan under his wing, that you have to wonder why Hindi cinema does not explore his talent more. To him is assigned the task of asking Shravan this most crucial of questions: you have to decide, do you want to become a mukkabaaz (brawler) or mukkebaaz (boxer)?

Jimmy Sheirgill is terrific, although he is saddled with a one-dimensional character. While watching Mukkabaaz, I assumed that his cloudy, bloodshot eyes were a result of fisticuffs from the past, but a stray tweet to a viewer from Kashyap that I happened to spot yesterday reveals that Bhagwan is suffering from glaucoma which, it seems, is a major side effect of steroid intake by sportspersons. This is where intricacy in cinema becomes delightful – when as a filmmaker you stay so true to your subject that you pay attention to minutiae most people would not be knowledgeable enough to appreciate.

The interactions between Shravan and Sunaina go off-key a couple of times when sappy music breaks the tone of the rest of the narrative, but these moments are too brief to overshadow the pleasurable mix of humour, tenderness and understanding that marks their relationship. I also love that Sunaina’s sign language is subtitled and thus given the respect it deserves.

Interesting use of music aside from those couple of maudlin passages, lively lyrics, intentionally rough-hewn production design, superlative editing by Team Kashyap regular Aarti Bajaj and a humorous streak (epitomised by Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s guest appearance that harks back to a day when he was an unknown and this would not have been deemed a guest appearance), all combine to make Mukkabaaz thoroughly entertaining. Its politics and vocabulary make it a magnificent cinematic experience. The finale in the boxing ring is, to my mind, the film’s only contrivance, but I was too lost in its loveliness and courage by then to be put off.

Anurag Kashyap brings a wealth of insights into this tale of “Uttar Pradesh ka Mike Tyson”, the woman he loves, the system and social realities that are responsible for India’s embarrassing track record in international sports. The back-breaking, soul-crushing opposition Shravan faces reminded me in some ways of Tapan Sinha’s fabulous Ek Doctor Ki Maut. Unlike that film though, this one is not mellow at all. It is also, in the midst of Shravan’s tragedy, oddly uplifting.

A Hindi film that is unafraid to say what it has to say in this present repressive atmosphere is rare. This is fearless, energetic filmmaking at its best. What a great start to 2018.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	155 minutes

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

Release date:	January 19, 2018
Director:	Venu
Cast: Language:	Fahadh Faasil, Mamta Mohandas, Manikandan R. Achari, Nedumudi Venu, Vijayaraghavan, Praveena, Kochu Preman, Soubin Shahir, Chethan Jayalal, Dileesh Pothan, Spadikam George, Sharafudheen Malayalam

Some films refuse to settle into a single genre. Writer-director Venu’s Carbon is one such that will not be tied down by slotting. Funny throughout, eerie in places, suspenseful in parts and, especially in the second half, gazing wide-eyed at the wondrousness of nature, it drifts about in a trance just like its male protagonist whose head is forever floating in the clouds.

Siby Sebastian, played by Fahadh Faasil, is constantly hatching legally and morally dubious get-rich-quick schemes, while youngsters his age take up jobs, marry and manage their homes. He knows he is seen as a loser, a layabout and a fraud by the community, but is unshaken by their judging eyes. Some day, somewhere over the rainbow, he is sure he will make his millions.

The first half of Carbon is spent establishing Siby’s kookiness combined with delicious non-conformism and the effect of his shady affairs on his friends and parents. After flitting from one failed plan to the next – ranging from peddling a gem that is not his to working as a middleman in an elephant sale – he is tasked with visiting a remote spot where one of his contacts has bought a decaying palace. His assignment is to recce the place and figure out how it can be turned into a tourist resort. Once there, when Siby hears of a lost treasure from the era of Tipu Sultan, he zeroes in on his next grand adventure.

With Carbon, award-winning cinematographer Venu returns to direction after 2014’s Munnariyippu. His new film walks a thin line between being wacky and completely wacko. The story offers no answers and the messaging is open-ended. Through Mamta Mohandas’ character Sameera, a self-professed “jungle junkie”, it references Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, yet it appears to contradict the point about the treasure in your backyard in its climactic shot.

This is a film that is exasperatingly, fascinatingly open to interpretation at all levels. Every step of the way, I found myself expectantly waiting for the next hint of its intent, the next shot, the next turn, the next rustle of leaves, the next whisper in the wind, the next creature camouflaged by trees or resting in its cave, and in the end I was left somewhat bemused and still intrigued.

It is often unclear in the film whether we are watching reality or one of Siby’s dreams, whether a character exists in fact or in his imagination. How much of Carbon is taking place in Siby’s head is worth considering, all the while remembering what Professor Dumbledore tells Harry Potter as the curtain comes down onJ.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

The film’s full name is Carbon: Ashes and Diamonds from which you might surmise that it is about what we do with the cards we are dealt by fate. Will you allow life to reduce you to ashes or will you, as carbon is wont to do under tremendous pressure, emerge a shining diamond? This then is as much Siby’s journey to find himself as it is to find an ancient hoard of gold.

It is more though. “We need a bit of fantasy to liven up our lives” – you have heard Siby utter these words in Carbon’s trailer. Perhaps this is a clue to the film’s mystery? Or perhaps not?

By not being condescending towards Siby’s opposition to social norms, Carbon reveals its own quietly rebellious streak. His refusal to go down the path that society expects all of us to follow – study, find work, marry, have kids, work, retire, die – is a reminder that there is no one-size-fits-all game plan for the human species and individuals must be left to make their own road. It is worth noting too that in his quest for a cache of precious metal, Siby chooses to push himself beyond his comfort zone. He is not naturally brave like Sameera, who does not bat an eyelid before sleeping out in the open in the jungle, but he overcomes fear to get where he wants to be.

The second half of Carbon is largely devoted to a long walk through forests near the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border, which is when it becomes as much a survival saga as it is a treasure hunt.

If there were a National Award for Location Choices, it should go to the film’s location scouts. Post-interval, Carbon enters visual heaven, and K.U. Mohanan’s keen eye beautifully captures the thick vegetation typical of the region, looming rock formations, a glimpse of an elephant through dense trees, a herd of bison peeping back from the foliage, forbidding mountains, a cave on a cliff, a bubbling stream... Repeat: heaven.

This is arguably the veteran cinematographer’s best work yet. Through large swathes of Carbon, all we see are Siby and his companions trekking across this splendid landscape. They barely speak. And Mohanan’s camera seems to call on us to walk along in communion with nature.

One grouse: the way Kammatipaadam’s Manikandan R. Achari is shot in a cave here in a bid to make him scary. Achari plays a local called Stalin, who is Siby’s guide. The camera angle used on his face is designed to spook viewers. It bothered me that choosing him – not Faasil or Mohandas – for that shot, was an effort to cash in on widely held Indian biases regarding looks.

Carbon’s nicely underplayed sound design – with its clever use of the power of suggestion – is crucial to its effectiveness. Vishal Bhardwaj, making a rare foray outside Bollywood here, serves up a mixed bag of songs though. Benny Dayal’s robust rendition of Thanna thane briefly injects energy into an otherwise deliberately languorous film, but Rekha Bhardwaj’s terrible diction and poor singing of Dhoore dhoore are downers.

The cornerstone of Carbon is its cast. Fahadh Faasil steps so forcefully into Siby’s shoes that he sweeps us away in the tide of the fellow’s seemingly crazy convictions. Mamta Mohandas as Sameera owns every scene she is in, though she enters the picture only an hour into the narrative.

Venu does not settle for anything but the best in small supporting roles either. Achari as Stalin, Dileesh Pothan and Nedumudi Venu as Siby’s business allies are all in spiffing form. Kochu Preman and Soubin Shahir are appropriately twisted. Sharafudheen is unobtrusively hilarious as he offers his friend solace and wisdom. Praveena is memorably strange without going over the top. Apart from Achari, the others mentioned in this paragraph get just a few minutes eachon screen. It is a measure of their arresting personalities and abilities along with Venu’s attention to detail that each makes a lasting impression nevertheless.

The pick of the supporting cast is Spadikam George playing Siby’s father. There is a scene in which the two meet in a marketplace after a gap. The way the dad looks at his son, using the most fleeting of hand gestures and a glance to convey his deep affection and a parent’s longing to have his son back home, come what may, his faults be damned, is unforgettable.

Venu, to borrow the title of Arundhati Roy’s book, is a god of small things and the big picture in Carbon. His idiosyncratic cinematic vision and the la la land of Siby’s mind make for enjoyable viewing in this unusual film.

Rating (out of five stars): ***

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	146 minutes

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/carbon-movie-review-fahadh-faasil-is-a-showstopper-in-an-unslottable-adventure-4312569.html

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

Release date:	January 19, 2018
Director:	Kushal Srivastava
Cast: Language:	Kay Kay Menon, Mandira Bedi, Raima Sen, Sharib Hashmi Hindi

Vodka is an intoxicant, but expect the opposite effect from director Kushal Srivastava’s Vodka Diaries now in theatres. The title is drawn from a nightclub in Manali linked to a series of murders that ACP Ashwini Dixit (Kay Kay Menon) sets out to solve in the film. Subsequent scenes reveal that those crimes may well have occurred only in Dixit’s imagination, as character after character that he had seen dead resurfaces around him, healthy and whole. Either that, or someone is playing a nasty trick on him or orchestrating a cover-up. Take your pick.

When these mind games begin, Dixit is already traumatised by a recurring nightmare. He fights hard not to succumb to his confusion and fears, even as his wife Shikha, a poet played by Mandira Bedi, tries to soothe his nerves when that bad dream occurs. To some extent their banter does calm him down.

In addition to the lead couple and the murder ‘victims’, there are two important players in this story: a mystery woman played by Raima Sen who is shadowing Dixit, and a subordinate cop (Sharib Hashmi) who is a master of pathetic puns and jokes.

Vodka Diaries’ basic concept may have been developed better by a better writer, but as things stand, when the big reveal comes, Raima Sen’s character’s secret is so silly that the aspect of the plot which had potential – why Dixit sees what he sees or thinks he does – ceases to matter.

Menon, who has been truly special in some films, usually needs a solid director to keep him in check. In the absence of controls in Vodka Diaries, he overdoes things to such an extent that he gives the impression that he is mocking himself, his character and the film.

Hashmi, who was so loveable in 2014’s unheralded Filmistaan, and Bedi are more invested in their half-baked roles. Sen, on the other hand, with not a hair or a dot of makeup out of place, looks pretty, bored and disinterested.

DoP Maneesh ChandraBhatt delivers some eye-catching shots of picturesque Manali, and along with the production design team manages to build up an ominous atmosphere in the early part of the narrative. However, the look of the film recedes into the background as the effect of the inert direction sets in and the overt effort to manipulate the audience gets tedious.

The casting director too must be called to account. The artistes playing the murder ‘victims’ are so indistinctive that, frankly, I could not bring myself to care whether they were alive or dead.

If the writing department had shown as much devotion to Vodka Diaries as Raima Sen’s styling team did, perhaps something could have come of it. The mystery here is not who the killer is, who died or whether someone died at all. The mystery is who the hell greenlit this undercooked script, deeming it worthy of being made into a film.

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	118 minutes

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

Release date:	January 25, 2018
Director:	Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Cast: Language:	Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, Shahid Kapoor, Aditi Rao Hydari, Jim Sarbh, Raza Murad, Anupriya Goenka Hindi

In a scene towards the latter part of writer-director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s new film, Rani Padmavati has a conversation with the mother of Badal, a loyal soldier in her royal husband’s army who gave up his life to save his king. The queen informs the madre that her son is dead. The aforesaid madre refuses to mourn her child’s passing, replying instead that a Rajput who loses his life on the battlefield is not to be deemed dead.

By then, much speechifying about Rajput valour and usool(principles) has already flowed under the bridge on screen. But wait…there is more. “Today I understand why Rajputs are said to be brave,” says Ms Padmavati. “It is because they are born of brave mothers like you.”

Oh Mummy! I almost choked on exasperated laughter in that moment as I sat watching in IMAX 3D in a darkened hall in Delhi, because like so much else in the film, the goings-on in this passage too contradict what its self-worshipping Rajput characters are saying. Far from being an example of that much-touted Rajput bravery, Badal’s end was the result of a foolish and egoistic Rajput king’s foolhardy moves going against the common-sense advice of his far more intelligent wife Padmavati – the king’s stupidity leads to his imprisonment by an enemy ruler, at which point Padmavati displays further intelligence and political acumen in entering the lion’s den and snatching her husband from the jaws of death with the help of those like Badal.

If anyone’s courage should have been celebrated at that point, it should have been the courage of Padmavati who, genetically speaking, was not a Rajput herself but a child of the Singhal kingdom that lies in modern-day Sri Lanka.

Lesson No. 1 from Bhansali’s guide to populist pandering: do not let facts stand in the way of dialogues designed to massage the collective ego of the men in a community you wish to please.

Padmaavat– originally named Padmavati till the Censor Board forced a title change following extremist reactions from that very community – is steeped in such unwitting contradictions. The film tells the story of Rani Padmavati, second wife of Maharawal Ratan Singh, king of Chittor situated in today’s Rajasthan. H.R.H. Ratan encounters Padmavati in an accident when he visits Singhal to procure its famed pearls for his first wife. They fall in love and Padmavati returns with him to Chittor as his bride. Through a series of events, Alauddin Khilji, sultan of Delhi, hears of the woman’s unparalleled exquisiteness and – since he wants to possess every “nayaab cheez” (unique thing) in the world – attacks Chittor to get her for himself. After another chain of events, Padmavati kills herself along with all the female adults and children of Chittor in the practice of jauhar, an old north Indian custom where women would commit suicide by jumping into fire instead of risking being raped by a rival army when faced with certain defeat.

Bhansali’s Padmaavat is based on the 16^th century fictionalised poem Padmavat by Malik Muhammad Jayasi. Most modern historians concur that Rani Padmavati a.k.a. Padmini is a figment of Jayasi’s imagination although Alauddin Khilji and Ratan Singh a.k.a. Ratan Sen a.k.a. Ratnasimha are historical 13^th-14^thcentury figures and the siege of Chittor did indeed happen, Alauddin’s purpose being to expand his kingdom and not to forcibly take a mythical queen.

In the year leading up to the release this week, fundamentalist Rajput organisations have committed acts of violence, threatened worse, demanded a ban and in general created a hubbub based on their inexplicable assumptions that this film insults their people. Quite the opposite. Padmaavat is an irritating ode to Rajput bravery which, if you read history books, is as much a myth as Padmavati a.k.a. Padmini herself.

From the very first scene, Bhansali’s goal is clear: to pedestalise Rajputs and demonise the Khiljis, to pander to the larger Hindu Right via Rajputs by slandering a Muslim king.

And so, while H.R.H. Ratan Singh (played by Shahid Kapoor) looks pristine, as if his pyaara sa, gora sachehra has been newly cleansed by an Emami or Vaseline face wash, Alauddin (as played by Ranveer Singh) is a perennially dirty-faced devil, his chehraforever smeared with what appears to be blood and mud even when he is not in battle. Alauddin’s hair is wild, his walk almost bear-like, his eyes at all times either narrowed to slits or widened to convey his menacing intent, while H.R.H. Ratan looks angelic. If Alauddin wants a woman for himself, he is portrayed as lustful, whereas Ratan’s betrayal of his first queen for Padmavati is sweet romance. Alauddin has sex with another woman minutes before his wedding, rapes his first wife Mehrunissa (Aditi Rao Hydari) and beds a prostitute even while consumed with desire for Padmavati, but H.R.H. Ratan makes sweet sweet lurve to Padmavati. Alauddin and his uncle Jalaluddin (Raza Murad) are shown tearing into massive chunks of meat like savages, while H.R.H. Ratan feeds himself delicate morsels of food. Bad Alauddin always wears black and other dark shades, whereas the good Ratan, dons whites, beiges and cheery colours. Wicked Alauddin stomps his feet in laughably animalistic dance moves to the song Khalibali whereas Ratan, dahling Ratan, carries himself with dignity. And get this, in what seems to be Bhansali’s ultimate signifier of debauchery, the nasty Muslim king’s male lover is trivialised – oh no! bisexuality! how terrible, no? – whereas the good Hindu man’s eye wanders with poise and only in the direction of women. Heterosexual promiscuity and infidelity are allowed, no?

There is no pretence at objectivity or nuance in the contrasting portrayals of the two monarchs. This is a literal echo of the average Hindu right-winger’s view of Muslims as horny, carnivorous beasts. Padmaavat is a perfect example of a Hindi film couching its extreme prejudices in grandiloquence and tacky clichés, with those clichés embedded in resplendent frames.

Meanwhile, the gorgeous Ms Padmavati (Deepika Padukone) wears gorgeous lehngas while her gorgeous hair flows in just the right gorgeous wave and her perfect gorgeous makeup remains unsoiled even when she hunts in a Singhal forest or flees Alauddin’s fort. As with all Bhansali’s post-Khamoshifilms, this one too is operatic in tone and visually stunning. After a point though, all that flawless beauty – architectural, sartorial and human – becomes exhausting (as it did in his worst film so far, Guzaarish), especially because his biases, his penchant for overstatement and his regressive worldview overshadow all else.

Among the many contradictions in Padmaavat is the fact that it chooses to lionise Rajputs when, by its own admission, Chittor fell because of Rajput disunity and cowardice. H.R.H. Ratan seeks help from all his fellow Rajput rulers but they turn him down for fear of antagonising Alauddin.

The biggest – and most frightening – contradiction though comes in the horribly romanticised depiction of jauhar, although the opening disclaimer states that the film does not intend to glorify the custom. Really? Why then does a closing voiceover, right after the act is shown on screen, seek to deify Padmavati’s ‘sacrifice’? She walks towards the flames, her hair blowing in the breeze, her voluminous skirt swirling about her ankles, her eyes burning with determination, full-bodied music playing in the background, joined by a sea of women clad in bridal red (including – I wanted to vomit when I saw this – a pregnant woman and a little girl) all voluntarily approaching their death.

That anonymous child is the only one in the crowd looking fearful rather than purposeful. I wonder if Bhansali let that shot of her frightened face slip in by mistake, because the rest of that elongated passage is clearly intended to valourise Rajput women. Jauhar was a horrendous practice underlining the belief that a woman’s life is worth nothing if her vagina, the sole property of her husband or future husband, is invaded by another man. Considering that conservatives even in today’s India place greater value on what they see as a woman’s ‘honour’ over her life, it is scary that Bhansali has chosen to glamorise jauhar in his film in a bid to play to the Rajput gallery.

I am only portraying a reality from our past – I can almost hear him say the words. There is a difference though, Mr Bhansali, between portraying a shameful reality and venerating it.

So yeah, everything in Padmaavat looks pretty, but the film has little else to offer beyond that, not even the striking performances that marked out Bhansali’s last directorial venture, Bajirao Mastani,in 2015. Ranveer Singh appears to have bowed completely to Bhansali’s vision of an evil Muslim king. While one cannot argue with an actor seeing a director as his captain, what is certainly worth questioning is his decision to accept this role with the full awareness of what that vision entailed in this case.

Others who have submitted entirely to Bhansali’s line of thinking in their performances are Raza Murad playing the ravenous Muslim, Jalaluddin Khilji, and Jim Sarbh (who was so interesting in Konkona Sensharma’s A Death In The Gunj just last year) here playing a scheming homosexual, Alauddin’s slave Malik Kafur who one of the virtuously heterosexual H.R.H. Ratan’s courtiers describes as Alauddin’s “begum”. Giggle giggle.

Shahid Kapoor as Ratan Singh has precisely one expression on his face from start to finish, which is such a disappointment considering how amazing he was in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider (2014).

Deepika Padukone and Aditi Rao Hydari look great, of course. They are the only ones among the lead cast who manage to eke something out of the stereotype-ridden writing by Prakash R. Kapadia and Bhansali. Although their roles do not give them much space for depth, they remain convincing as epitomes of grace and elegance throughout.

Neither their presence nor the overkill of extravagant spectacle can save this film though. Apart from the tuneful Binte dil and brief snatches of the background score, even the music does not match up to what Bhansali’s films have delivered in the past.

Padmaavat’s disturbing ideology – misogynistic, communal and homophobic – is bad enough. The final nail in the coffin is the lack of chemistry between Deepika Padukone and Shahid Kapoor, which made me long for the Aishwarya Rai-Hrithik Roshan pairing in the equally lavishly produced, vastly superior Jodhaa Akbar (2008). Remember Queen Jodhaa peeping out from behind curtains at the topless emperor? It was a scene crackling with electricity and longing. Watching Padmaavat’s lead couple together though, I could not for the life of me understand why Padmavati gave a fig – or her life – for H.R.H. Ratan.

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	163 minutes

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/padmaavat-padmavati-padmavat-movie-review-bhansali-couches-regressive-opportunistic-messaging-in-exhausting-visual-splendour-4317153.html

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

Release date:	January 26, 2018
Director:	Jeethu Joseph
Cast: Language:	Pranav Mohanlal, Lena, Siddique, Anusree, Sharafudheen, Meghanathan, Jagapati Babu, Siju Wilson, Aditi Ravi, Tony Luke Malayalam

Late one night on the darkened terrace of a Bengaluru nightclub, three men engage in fisticuffs as a hapless woman tries to stop them. One of them suffers a fatal fall off the roof. To save himself from the dead chap’s influential millionaire father’s wrath, another member of the trio blames the death on the third man there, aspiring musician Aditya Mohan a.k.a. Aadhi.

What follows is over two hours of one of the most exciting rollercoaster rides ever to emerge from Malayalam cinema, as Aadhi ducks the police, a ruthless rich man’s wide network and the machinations of the fellow trying to protect himself. Writer-director Jeethu Joseph, who gave us the brilliant thriller Drishyamin 2013 (remade in four Indian languages), offers ample reparation here for his surprisingly slapdash Oozham released in 2016. Aadhi is marked by some clever writing, slick execution, top-notch production values and chases that are so frickin’ awesome, they rival the Bournefilms although Mollywood works on a fraction of the budget of an average Hollywood venture.

The film looks good from the word go, but it begins with two needless reminders that its leading man, Pranav Mohanlal playing Aadhi, is the son of megastar Mohanlal. Pranav has acted as a child but this is his debut as an adult. First, we have the credits running over Aadhi in a club singing the title track of the 1980 film with which Lalettan made his debut, Manjil Virinja Pookkal. A few minutes later, Mohanlal himself makes a brief appearance.

While the quality of the shooting of the club scene and the rendition of that still-goosebump-inducing number are top notch, the need for either passage – especially the star cameo – is questionable. Hey we get it: Pranav has a famous Daddy. But to unnecessarily stress and re-stress that point within the narrative is to unnecessarily remind us that doors open far more easily for the son of Mohanlal than they would for the child of an unknown person which, while being true of course, is a disservice to the young man who shows us through Aadhi’s 2 hours and 38 minutes that he has the chops to stand on his own feet now that his surname has given him a headstart over his contemporaries.

Aadhi’s early scenes establish the easy equation between the hero, his mother Rosy and father Mohan. Although the film is not positioned as a deeply intellectual affair, it is evident from then on that it does not intend to insult viewer intelligence either.

In the first conversation we witness between Aadhi and his mother, we learn that she is a Christian, the father a Hindu, and they eloped when Rosy was just 18. The inter-community marriage sans conversion (Rosy does not change her faith, as is usually expected of women in such situations) and the informal parent-child relationship suggest a liberal family. Yet, when Aadhi jokingly tells Rosy that he intends to bring home a Muslim bride to make a secular point, her face falls although she tries to camouflage her evident discomfort with the idea. That passing exchange is an unobtrusive reminder of how divided Kerala society truly is below the surface, even if it is better off than most of the rest of India in this matter.

Soon, the warmth of Aadhi’s home in Kerala is overtaken by the chill that follows that accidental death on a rooftop in Karnataka, and Aadhi’s musical prowess takes a backseat as life calls on him to make use of his training in the martial art form parkour. The effectiveness of this film comes from the impeccable balance it achieves between its breathtaking stunts and the emotional heft in the saga of a nice guy caught in a tragic situation not of his making, of supportive parents desperate to save him and strangers who step up to risk their all for him.

The basic nuts and bolts of the script may sound vaguely familiar, but the treatment is refreshing, the action unique in the Mollywood scenario and the film as a whole gloriously entertaining.

While the storyline tugs at the heartstrings, the chase sequences could put a heart patient at risk. Pranav and the artistes playing his enemies turn the film into an unrelenting adrenaline rush as they race through back alleys, sprint across rooftops, dangle from verandahs, vault over walls, leap through rather than around various other hurdles and display seemingly superhuman physical skills.

Yet, Aadhi is no superhero. His endearingly human qualities are a far cry from the irritating machoism of most male protagonists in Malayalam cinema these days. He is achingly youthful and scared, and neither the actor nor the director tries to mask the character’s vulnerabilities to appeal to testosterone-ridden sections of the audience. Aadhi weeps with fear and heartbreak, he pukes with fatigue and tension, and even while he seeks to keep his family and friends out of harm’s way, he does not hesitate to call for help when it is evident that he cannot do without it.

Despite the genre and the fact that the film does not project itself as anything but a mission to get audience pulses racing, it still continues to display its political consciousness in this and other ways. I love the fact that there are Malayalam subtitles embedded in the print for Kannada dialogues, a sign that the maker respects the possibility that his core audience may very possibly not know any language other than Malayalam (too many Mollywood films unfairly assume that their primary viewers understand multiple languages).

The only truly troubling moments in Aadhi come when more than one character blames the woman on the roof for Aadhi’s problems since the men were fighting over her. The second person to accuse her softens the blow by saying she was “knowingly or unknowingly” responsible, but that is not enough in a world that routinely holds women accountable for the consequences of men’s deeds. The fleeting allusion to caste resentments within business families could perhaps have been less fleeting, but that is a minor grouse.

The centerpiece of the proceedings in this film is Pranav’s parkour training. Far from playing spoilsport by demystifying the stunts while showing us the harnesses, green screens and other aids that make such incredible feats possible, the outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage accompanying the end credits provide evidence of Pranav’s – and his co-stars’ – litheness and craft, which is what makes everything so convincing. (It was nice too to catch a glimpse of a female trainer in those shots. I wonder why Joseph did not include a woman among the supporting action artistes on screen.)

Parkour is not Pranav’s only strength. He is sweet-looking and a natural before the camera. Although it is not possible to tell whether he would be able to carry off a film outside the action genre, here he is a perfect fit.

Aadhi is clearly the film’s central character, but make no mistake about this: this is an ensemble film where Joseph’s writing, bolstered by a gifted cast, makes each small role memorable. Jagapati Babu could have gone over the top as the wealthy industrialist who pursues Aadhi with murderous intent after the loss of a son, but he keeps himself in check. The ever-dependable Lena and Siddique bring warmth to their turn as Aadhi’s anxious parents. Lena in particular is so trim and attractive that you know if she were a man (well, frankly, even if she were a tubby man) she would have been routinely getting lead roles rather than being a constant presence as a character artiste in Malayalam cinema.

My favourite people in this film are the poor siblings who go out of their way to help Aadhi when he is in distress. Jaya and Sharath are believable reminders that basic human decency does exist, a point brought out so well sans melodrama by actors Anusree and Sharafudheen. The friendship that blossoms between these three in the middle of a traumatic situation is heartwarming to say the least.

Aadhi is neither a whodunnit nor a howdunnit but a how-he-escaped-from-being-accused-of-it. Considering that almost all the cards are laid out on the table within the first half hour, it is commendable that Jeethu Joseph keeps the suspense going till the end and that he does not resort to any irritating contrivances.

The smashing action choreography – backed by excellent sound design and background music – holds Aadhi all the way up to its nail-biting climactic battle. I found myself letting out involuntary whoops of delight every time Pranav Mohanlal/Aditya Mohan zipped across the screen or smoothly leapt over an obstacle and keeping my fingers crossed for him in a way an audience member only will while watching an artiste who is so lost in his performance that you lose yourself in him. What a fun showcase this is for such a likeable newcomer.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	158 minutes

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/aadhi-movie-review-pranav-mohanlal-is-a-perfect-fit-for-a-smashing-action-flick-4322379.html#comments-section-4322379

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

Release date:	January 26, 2018
Director:	Shamdat Sainudeen
Cast: Language:	Mammootty, Dharmajan Bolgatty, Hareesh Perumanna, Stunt Silva, Adish Praveen, Lijomol Jose, Soubin Shahir Malayalam

Three men – two petty thieves from Kerala, and a Tamil gangster – are on the run with a stolen diamond necklace. Their precious loot belongs to a man called Simon Mundakkal. As luck would have it, Mundakkal is the ammaavan (uncle) of a senior policeman – James played by Mammootty – and calls on his nephew for unofficial, off-the-books help since the necklace is part of his untaxed, unaccounted-for wealth. James agrees.

Elsewhere in the city, a poor little boy’s posh classmates mock him for his shabby uniform and schoolbag. When he manages to earn some money, he gets himself a new bag and clothes.

Not far from where the child lives, a young woman is being pestered for attention by a man to whom her father offered her hand in marriage many moons ago. Ramya works at an Idea showroom, her stalker is a beauty parlour owner.

These apparently disconnected strands come together in Street Lights, a film that is uncharacteristic of Mammootty’s current filmography dominated by aggressively masculine, star-struck tosh.

Though Street Lights is marketed and positioned as a Mammootty flick, his character does not relegate the rest to the sidelines. When James is around, we are treated to some stylised camerawork dwelling on him, but it is not obsessive like films of the Kasaba and The Great Father variety. On the whole then, cinematographer-turned-debutant-director Shamdat Sainudeen does what very few of this iconic Malayalam actor’s directors have bothered to do for too many years now: Sainudeen tells a story that is not dwarfed by a star fixation, and he gives all the major characters in the film ample space and time on screen.

Dharmajan Bolgatty and Hareesh Perumanna play small-time robbers Sachi and Raju. It is an unusual casting choice, considering their naturally comical screen presence, which serves as a foil to the hard-core criminality of their companion and accomplice Murugan played by Stunt Silva. You know as soon as you first see their faces together that Street Lights is not your regular crime thriller.

The sub-story of the impoverished boy Mani (played by National Award winning firebrand Adish Praveen) provides the film’s strongest emotional pull.

The thread involving Ramya (Lijomol Jose) is the only one that is typical of the hardcore commercial cinema that Mammootty usually inhabits. Her ‘beau’, played by Soubin Shahir, refuses to take her no for an answer, has her parents’ support in his peskiness, and at one point, as she lies back with her eyes closed in a chair in his parlour for a facial, he comes over to take a selfie with her without her permission, as his female staff look on and giggle. In short, he indulges in the sort of obnoxious behaviour that has become familiar in films which happily equate sexual harassment with courtship. The narrative tone used throughout this segment is one of fond indulgence, despite her evident disinterest and disgust.

The social attitude towards his conduct is underlined by the irony of scenes in which he is pursuing Ramya on his mobike while this standard Censor-mandated notice flashes on screen: “Riding two wheelers without wearing helmets is a punishable offence.” And stalking women? This question becomes particularly pressing because the Central Board of Film Certification a.k.a. Censor Board thought it fit to give Street Lights a U (universal) rating. Read: suited for children.

In terms of performances, Shahir is suitably icky playing an icky character who is comedified by the writing. The film may be an unusual choice for Mammootty in many ways, but his acting is somewhat generic. My favourite characters in Street Lights are Raju, Sachi and Murugan. Their group dynamic, the suspense surrounding the cat and mouse game between them and James, little Adish Praveen’s sweetness and the manner in which the three stories finally intersect are what make this film engaging. It is not remarkably memorable, but it is fun while it lasts.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	129 minutes

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/street-lights-movie-review-mammoottys-latest-is-a-step-up-from-his-recent-generic-choices-4323767.html

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

Release date:	February 2, 2018
Director:	Remy Kohli
Cast: Language:	Deepak Dobriyal, Gulshan Devaiah, Raima Sen, Parvin Dabas, Anurag Arora, Jameel Khan, Vikram Kochhar Hindi

A poor upper-caste man is jailed on suspicions of having assassinated the young chief minister of a fictional north Indian state. Please read the word “poor” here to mean not just impoverished but also “bechara” and “paavam”. Because while cracking the mystery of the murdered CM, writer-director Remy Kohli’s Kuldip Patwal: I Didn’t Do It! offers an unrelenting, undisguised lament for communities once privileged by birth. In Kohli’s worldview, clearly hapless upper castes are now perennial victims of uncaring politicians and reservations unfairly being granted to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes whose plight seems irrelevant to him.

The insensitivity of the film’s simplistic, one-sided take on caste politics is only one of its follies. Another is its apparent conviction that it is very clever. As exasperating as its ideology is the narrative style, which jumps from flashback to flashback to – sigh – yet another flashback, for no particular reason other than that someone probably considered this a smart thing to do.

The truth is that after the first half hour of this 127-minutes-long enterprise, I lost interest in whether or not Kuldip Patwal did it. My concern was why Deepak Dobriyal, Gulshan Devaiah and Anurag Arora did Kuldip Patwal. Do these gifted artistes share the film’s convictions or are they, like scores of other talented actors, struggling to find worthwhile roles in worthwhile films in nepotistic, star-obsessed Bollywood?

So anyway, Kudip Patwal: I Didn’t Do It! begins with the killing, in September 2013, of three-term chief minister Varun Chadha (played by Pravin Dabas), and brief shots of the alleged assassin standing not far away. It then rewinds to 15 minutes before the murder.

The flashback bears little fruit and we are back at the assassination and thearrest of Kuldip Patwal (Dobriyal) who was in the audience at the rally where Varun was shot dead. Kuldip insists he is innocent. The local cop Ajay Rathore (Arora) is soft on him. Lawyer-philanthropist Pradyuman Shahpuri (Devaiah) is roped in to defend him.

When Pradyuman meets Kuldip for the first time in jail, the film flashes back to 11 years earlier. Then at some point it travels to 18 months earlier. The telling of Pradyuman’s story is interspersed with snippets from Varun Chadha’s life. The bright, hard-working and educated Pradyuman shone in an exam for a sarkari naukri. He failed to get a job all the same because he is a general category candidate. Every step of the way, his struggles are exacerbated by the policy initiatives of this well-intentioned politician who, with no seeming malice, ends up quashing the dreams of this upper-caste man already suffering at the hands of an overbearing mother who makes too many demands on his ageing father.

Caste is a complex devil. Reservations have, in some arenas, altered power equations and consequently led to deep-seated resentment from communities that once had everything handed to them on a platter at birth but now must make do with a diminished share of the pie. Ignoring this resentment would be unwise, and in the hands of a more well-informed, skilled and sincere writing team, Kuldip Patwal could have been an insightful take on India’s changing caste dynamics.

A long road separates “could have” and “is”. Kuldip Patwal: I Didn’t Do It!fails to make that journey since it is too busy not giving a damn about Dalits while simultaneously trying desperately to be an edgy thriller.

Past to present. Present to past. Past to present. The film swings back and forth although the non-linear narrative does not serve any purpose in either building up suspense or empathy for the sketchily written characters. During Kuldip’s trial, there is a flashback to “14 years earlier” and then to “12 years earlier” and then...well, I did not care.

I do care about Deepak Dobriyal, Gulshan Devaiah, Anurag Arora and others in the credit rolls though. Dobriyal’s calling card as of now is the fireworks display he has put up for us as the hero’s friend Pappi in the Tanu Weds Manu films. He also tugged at the heartstrings in last year’s Hindi Medium. Devaiah is still struggling to find a foothold in Bollywood after an explosive debut in 2011’s Shaitan directed by Bejoy Nambiar.

On the other end of the spectrum in this cast is Raima Sen – granddaughter of the legendary Suchitra Sen – whose emotive abilities the late Rituparno Ghosh tapped so well in his directorial ventures. She plays the dead Varun’s wife who is also (you won’t believe this) the lawyer for the state in her husband’s murder case. The rest of her co-stars here do the best they can with Kuldip Patwal’s perfunctory writing. Sen, on the other hand, appears stiff and lacklustre throughout this pointless mish-mash of caste, murder and politics.

Still, she should be commended for not bursting out laughing in the film’s final scene when its supposedly great grand twist is revealed. Drum rolls please!

There should be a national award headed your way just for that, Ms Sen.

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	127 minutes 7 seconds

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/kuldip-patwal-i-didnt-do-it-movie-review-a-pointless-mish-mash-of-caste-murder-and-politics-4332067.html

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

Release date:	February 2, 2018
Director:	Shyamaprasad
Cast: Language:	Nivin Pauly, Trisha Krishnan, Siddique, Neena Kurup, Vijay Menon, Aju Varghese Malayalam

Jude is different. At 28, he is more socially awkward than a pubescent teen and easily bullied. He is hardworking and, in his specific areas of interest, brilliant. He obsesses about his routine. He refuses to tell lies even if his congenital honesty causes embarrassment to a family member. His idea of frankness extends to telling people hurtful truths that need not be told. He has no friends.

His loving mother Maria – a stay-at-home parent – worries about him. His father Dominique (pronounced Dominic), who runs an antique store in Kochi, is forever exasperated with him. His college-going younger sister Andrea tolerates him with condescending amusement.

On a trip to Goa with his Mum and Dad, Jude meets the noisy, music-loving Crystal Ann Chakraparambu and her father Sebastian. Crys runs a café and is the lead vocalist in a local band that performs at her restaurant and at weddings. Sebastian is a psychologist who, when not swimming in alcohol or betting on cricket matches, uses music as therapy for persons with mental/psychological issues, leads Tai Chi sessions in his front yard and hangs out with Crys.

Unlikely friendships are formed, and over time Jude begins to understand his own diffidence better. As he does, his family too starts seeing him with new eyes, not as an eccentric or difficult youngster, but as a unique individual with special problems and gifts.

Art-house director Shyamaprasad opts for a light touch in Hey Jude. In terms of its naturalistic, unmelodramatic narrative style, the film sits well with the likes of last year’s Nivin Pauly-starrer Njandukalude Nattil Oridavela and other slice-of-life cinema that has been a hallmark of the Malayalam New Wave – if you wish to call it that – of the past decade or so. Pauly himself has been one of the stars at the forefront of this movement that has earned massive box-office returns while defying many of the conventions of commercial cinema. In Hey Jude, he plays the title character whose Asperger’s Syndrome is staring back at viewers with any degree of awareness about the condition, long before he is diagnosed in the film.

Asperger’s is part of an umbrella category of disorders called Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) marked by challenges with social skills, behaviour and communication. In Jude’s case, what to a viewer comes across as endearing innocence is irritating to Dominique and Andrea. This leads to many comical situations. What sustains Hey Jude through its entire first half is the sensitivity with which Shyamaprasad portrays their interactions (even if Jude’s actions are foreseeable to us while, oddly enough, the father who has known him all his life cannot seem to predict them).

The delicacy with which Hey Jude treads around its central character in its pre-interval portion is one of its many attractions. We are introduced to his multiple quirks with humour and affection, yet the storyteller is never patronising towards him.

Not everyone on the autism spectrum is a savant, but this expectation has been a widely held misconception about ASD ever since the global success of the Hollywood film Rain Man (1988) in which Dustin Hoffman played a mathematical genius with autism. Possibly because of this false impression arising from a film that otherwise had a huge role in awareness building around autism, and perhaps because I am currently also watching the US TV serial The Good Doctor, in which the protagonist is a genius medico with autism, frankly I have been longing to see a screen offering on someone with any disorder on the spectrum who is not a genius. Be that as it may, Hey Jude does still score – when assessed in this context – because it is not fixated on Jude’s incredible knowledge of oceanography or his calculator brain, its focus throughout remains his confusion about his distinctive limitations.

That said, it defies believability that Maria and Dominique, who seem educated and certainly belong to a community and a state known for their high education levels (they are Malayali Anglo-Indians), would not have doggedly sought medical opinions about their unusual son in all these years. It appears that Maria’s sounding board until the events of the film is their priest. Considering the compulsory educational qualifications required to be a Christian priest, it further defies believability that that gentleman would not have advised them to consult a doc about Jude.

Even if you buy this set of improbabilities, what is impossible to swallow is the extremely unintelligent behaviour of the doctor who does at last use the A word to the parents.

(Spoilers ahead)

The series of missteps in Hey Jude’s second half begins with what can only be described as mind-boggling stupidity on the part of Dr Sebastian who not only leaves copious notes about Jude’s Asperger’s lying around where the young man could easily chance upon them, but even goes so far as to describe him as “abnormal” to his face.

It is also troubling that the film does not deem it fit to examine a point raised by Jude when he sees that the doctor had, without his permission, viewed his intensely personal video diaries. Jude is unequivocal in his furious assertion that this is an invasion of privacy. By leaving that point hanging, the film suggests that it is not important enough. Before that, Maria and Dominique are shown not even batting an eyelid when they find the videos with Sebastian. It is as if intruding on the private space of an adult who is not considered “normal” is kosher.

By this time, a certain predictability has settled into the proceedings. That scene in which Jude finally overcomes his fear of water to save his Dad from drowning can be seen coming from a mile. I mean, c’mon, at a party filled with able-bodied adults, no one else jumps into the swimming pool when Dominique falls in, as if they all knew the passage had been written into the screenplay of their lives to give Jude a chance to cross this milestone.

(Spoiler alert ends)

Hey Jude then is a mixed bag. Nivin Pauly’s remarkably restrained performance imbues the film with an all-pervasive charm that overrides its follies. The downplaying of his natural good looks, the precise way he says “crispy”, the ungainly manner in which he storms up a flight of steps to his room – there is not an iota of exaggeration in any of this, it is all just so.

One of the aforesaid follies lies in the greater depth and verve lent to the writing of Dominique rather than Jude. Although Jude is the lead, Dominique dominates the narrative and, played as he is with such gentle nuance by veteran actor Siddique, ends up being more memorable.

Hey Jude is the Malayalam debut of Telugu-Tamil superstar Trisha Krishnan who has made the same mistake now as with her 2010 Hindi debut Khatta Meetha: she has chosen to play second fiddle to a major male star already established in the industry she is just entering (earlier, Akshay Kumar) instead of opting for a film in which hero and heroine get equal space. Krishnan looks beautiful here as always, but beyond bringing her innate charisma to the role, there is not much she can do with her sketchily outlined character or the rushed reference to Crys’ bipolar disorder.

Aju Varghese in Hey Jude, on the other hand, gets a hilarious cameo to beat all cameos.

DoP Girish Gangadharan – whose work in Angamaly Diariesis still fresh in the mind – fills the film with glossy visuals. He is on a roll when showing us the changing geographical landscape on the road trip from Kerala to Goa, though I wish that spectacular aerial shot of a pristine beach as the family enters Goa was not repeated as they leave. If the intent was to bookend Jude’s stay, it does not make sense since his personal journey does not finish there. The dialogue writing though switches smoothly between Malayalam and English, as it would in this milieu in real life.

Hey Jude’s music is an ode, witting or not, to the Beatles with whose song it shares its title. One of the most-loved bands of all time, the Beatles’ works were distinguished by irresistible tunes and very basic lyrics. Each song here is hummable, but the words of at least two – Hey don’t worry Jude and Rock rock (well sung by Sayanora Philip) – are so rudimentary as to be amusing.

Still, the pleasantness of the melodies matches Hey Jude’s overall tone: sweet and affecting. This is the sort of film that made me want to put my hand on my heart and go, “Awwww.”

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	146 minutes

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/hey-jude-movie-review-nivin-pauly-trisha-krishnan-starrer-has-heart-and-humour-but-not-enough-depth-4334431.html#comments-section-4334431

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

Release date:	Kerala: January 12, 2018 Delhi: February 2, 2018
Director:	Dijo Jose Antony
Cast: Language:	Saniya Iyappan, Eldho Mathew, Dhruvan, Vijayaraghavan, Salim Kumar, Sreejith Ravi, Leona Lishoy Malayalam

This is not a review, this is a protest against whoever allowed this kindergarten-grade project to come to mainstream movie halls.

On most days, I would not have bothered to write about a non-descript film of such abysmal quality. Queen, however, must be discussed because its arrival is a symptom of what continues to ail India’s distribution and exhibition sectors where so many good films – including some that have earned awards and critical acclaim at festivals – struggle to get a theatrical release for various reasons including, either that they are not big-banner, star-dominated ventures, or their producers do not have the clout or conviction to persuade theatre owners to give them shows.

I had read about this Malayalam film before I watched it this weekend. The Times of India, in a report dated January 31, 2017, thought it fit to devote a whole article to Queenalthough it has no particular credentials to recommend it for such space. This was even before the casting, a time when indies by unknowns never get written about in the serious film press because critics are, rightly, waiting for the film to speak for itself. Yet TOIhelpfully informed readers an entire year before Queen was out that it “is inspired from a real-life photograph which was floating around the internet once, of a girl in a sari walking the street before an entire group of her boy classmates. The director, Dijo Jose Antony, says that he himself is an engineer and he visited the college in the photo to learn more about their lives.” (sic)

What inspired The Times to expend so many words on Queen? Had they read the script and been convinced of its potential? If yes, could they tell us who on their staff displayed such godawful lack of discernment in not dismissing the script as the worthless potpourri it was/is. The nation – to borrow a line from one of this media group’s most famous ex-employees – wants to know.

A day after the TOI report appeared, there came one in The New Indian Express (TNIE) dated February 1, 2017, with more details of the project. TNIE went so far as to call Queen“a fun-filled college movie” although it was, as mentioned in the same sentence, yet to be made.

Now that I have seen Queen, I can assure you it is no fun at all. The story begins in a setting now familiar in Malayalam films: a college campus where male students fight with each other, harass women students and behave as if female homo sapiens are rarer than Yeti and the Loch Ness monster. This obnoxious scenario where over-wrought masculinity plays out was most visible in last year’s Chunkzz. That film was deeply offensive, but had a better cast and production values. Queen looks shabby and washed out in addition to being creepy.

The writing team’s focus is the college’s Mechanical Engineering course where the men break out into a testosterone-induced frenzy when they hear that a woman is joining their class. This leads to further disturbing scenes of stalking and harassment projected as comedy. I am not bothering to spare you from spoilers here, because this film does not deserve that effort.

So anyway, next the woman wins the men over with her sunshine smile. Once they stop misbehaving with her, they fight with others who do. Once they are done with that they discover she has cancer. Once the film is done with that episode, she heads straight out of the hospital and on to the college campus to dance in a bright red sari surrounded by hordes of her male collegemates and – for some reason I did not bother to wrack my brains over – an elephant. Next she is raped and killed. Next her character is assassinated in court, in the press and on the streets. Next, her classmates fight for justice for her. Next, they win. Next, the film ends.

The tragedy is that in the courtroom scenes, a lawyer (played by veteran Salim Kumar) does make a couple of pertinent points about the victim shaming flying around. Those questions do not matter though because for this film, rape is not an issue of grave concern as much as it is yet another masala item to throw into the mix to spice up a screenplay.

Come to think of it, calling Queen a film is a compliment. An uncharismatic lead cast and some established character artistes have come together in this non-film to act out an amateurish screenplay on sets that might not pass muster with the drama team of a respected school.

What is infuriating is not just that Queen was made but that it somehow travelled to theatres in Kerala and from there has even travelled outside the state. This is no mean feat.

One of the films on my list of Best Mollywood Films of 2017 published on this website last month was Dr Biju’s Kaadu Pookunna Neram (When The Woods Bloom), a gripping tale of the troubled equation between oppressed tribal communities and the state as represented by the police. It starred Rima Kallingal and Indrajith Sukumaran (both marquee names), it boasted of world-class cinematography, it was intelligent, politically courageous and entertaining. Biju is a multiple National Award winner. Kallingal has won several prestigious awards. None of this was enough to recommend Kaadu Pookunna Neram to distributors and theatres outside Kerala. Even getting to a theatre within Kerala was tough.

There are so many great films that audiences are deprived of seeing because their producers do not push them enough, and when they do, India’s distribution companies and theatres do not want to risk backing them, if not because they lack star value then because of their unconventional themes. In a scenario where the likes of Kaadu Pookunna Neram struggle to get to us, it is almost criminal that Queenhas come so far.

Rating (out of five stars): None (I refuse to rate this film)

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	157 minutes

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/queen-movie-review-this-is-not-a-review-this-is-a-protest-4334535.html#comments-section-4334535

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

Release date:	February 9, 2018
Director:	R. Balki
Cast: Language:	Akshay Kumar, Radhika Apte, Sonam Kapoor Hindi

Akshay Kumar is charming.

Arunachalam Muruganantham redefines the word fascinating.

Separately, Kumar’s charisma and Muruganantham’s saga are remarkable ingredients for any film. Together though, they are Padman’s failing and its strength.

Muruganantham’s life has been widely chronicled by journalists and was the subject of the excellent documentary Menstrual Man by Amit Virmani released in 2012. A poor school dropout from Tamil Nadu, Muruganantham invented a low-cost production system for sanitary napkins when he saw his wife using dirty, unhygienic home-made cloth pads during her periods. His methods, media reports tell us, have now become both a source of inexpensive, clean sanitary pads and income for rural women across most Indian states as he spearheads a movement to install these hand-operated machines in villages where they are run by women entrepreneurs.

The journey to this place has come at great personal cost. At first, shocked that a man would concern himself with menstruation – a subject that remains taboo in many communities in India – he was boycotted by locals and even his family who deemed him a pervert. Today, of course, he is an award-winning innovator of global repute who has earned the respect of his people and his parivaar.

In writer-director R. Balki’s hands, Muruganantham has become Lakshmikant Chauhan, a poor man from Madhya Pradesh who notices his bride using filthy rags in place of pads, is shocked at the high cost of sanitary pads available in the market and thus sets off on the same road taken by our real-life hero.

If you view Padman in a vacuum bereft of context, it is entertaining and, for the most part, sensible. How do you do that though after Muruganantham has acquired such fame, unless you have been sleeping under a rock?

Knowing that this is the biopic of a real person who has been changed from Tamilian to north Indian in the script so that a north Indian megastar could play the part makes Padman an example of so much that is wrong with north Indian cinema and our society as a whole. The north-Indian-isation of a southerner is becoming somewhat of a routine practice in Bollywood – and Kumar its foremost practitioner. The heroics of a Malayali man called Mathunny Matthews and others in the Middle East were turned into the tale of a fictional Punjabi called Ranjit Katiyal (again played by Kumar) for Airlift in 2016. Late last year, the experiences of a group of Malayali nurses who escaped captivity in Iraq after their hospital was taken over by ISIS (recounted so beautifully in the Mollywood film Take Off) was rewritten as an account of a swashbuckling fictional espionage agent called Avinash Singh Rathore (Salman Khan) rescuing them in the Bollywood film Tiger Zinda Hai.

The message from Bollywood is clear: the definitive, normative Indian is a northerner, Hindu, upper caste and male, while the rest of us are exceptions.

The difference between Airlift and Padman is that Matthews was little known outside Kerala, and therefore it was possible to place him on the backburner of the mind while watching the film. The difference between Tiger Zinda Hai and Padman is that Tiger positioned itself as over-the-top commercial fare that is not to be taken seriously, whereas Padman’s narrative style is such that it asks to be taken seriously.

This is, of course, heartbreaking, because barring this troubling truth, Balki tells his story with efficiency and, by and large, with sensitivity. It is wonderful to see a mainstream film pulling menstruation out of the realm of whispers. Besides, Kumar is a delight to watch, never more so than when he absolutely kills a speech delivered by Chauhan at the United Nations. He has an irresistible screen presence, Radhika Apte is flawless playing his wife, and the packaging – pleasant music, Kausar Munir’s breezy lyrics that resonate with meaning – makes the first half in particular completely engrossing.

(Spoilers in this paragraph) By the second half, Padmanstumbles. One reason is the insertion of a character called Pari Walia as an MBA student who decides to help Chauhan/Muruganantham in his business. Sonam Kapoor is sweet as the fictional Ms Walia until the silly contrivance of a romance between her and the hero, which is hurriedly forced into the narrative. This terribly unconvincing angle sullies their segment because the writing does not convey a progression of emotions up to the point where she expresses her feelings for him. This is possibly the reason for the zero chemistry between the two stars (it does not help that Kapoor looks young enough to be Kumar’s daughter here). (Spoiler alert ends)

It is heretoo that Padman’s conflicted gender politics surfaces along with its limited understanding of the taboo around menstruation. Balki and his co-writer Swanand Kirkire seem to assume that two characters of the opposite sex played by two glamorous stars cannot possibly be just friends.

Besides, the early part of the film went into not just the need for affordable sanitary napkins in Chauhan/Muruganantham’s town, but another crucial issue: the social assumption that a menstruating woman is inauspicious and polluted, which is why women in so many communities are forced to stay out of the house, away from family and society, on those days of the month. By the end of Padman, the availability of sanitary napkins miraculously and without explanation leads to the end of the stigma too. This is a simplistic supposition, disappointing considering how well the subject of menstruation is dealt with in the first half.

For a film that is about self-sustenance among women, there is also some needless patriarchal dialoguebaazi about a mard being one who can provide raksha (protection) to the women in his life.

That said, there is so much in Padman that is enjoyable and meaningful. Muruganantham’s bio is so incredible that if you did not know his is a true story you might have refused to believe it. Kumar and Apte deliver engaging performances. And Balki says what he has to say with a light touch and in a non-preachy tone.

While watching Padman I tried my best to get over my exasperation at the Chauhanisation of Muruganantham. It was hard. Balki has said in an interview that his purpose was to take a message to a larger audience that Hindi cinema affords (especially since the Hindi belt is worse off in the matter of menstrual hygiene than the rest of India, that casting Kumar was part of this effort, that in any case he could not envision anyone but Kumar in the role and that it would have been unnatural to set a Hindi film in Tamil Nadu. Hmm, I wonder how we would have felt if Richard Attenborough had decided that it would be unnatural to set an English film in India, had rewritten Mahatma Gandhi as a white Briton leading India to freedom and had cast a famous white actor in the role, all with the claim that he wanted to spread the message of ahimsa far and wide. Same thing, no?

There is a lot I liked about Padman, but a lot that bothered me about it too.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	139 minutes 59 seconds

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/padman-movie-review-akshay-kumar-is-charming-in-an-entertaining-but-problematic-film-4342921.html

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

Release date:	February 9, 2018
Director:	Kamal
Cast: Language:	Manju Warrier, Aangelina Abraham, Neelanjana, Tovino Thomas, Murali Gopy, Anoop Menon, Vinaya Prasad, Indrans, Renji Panicker, Lakshmi Priya, Rahul Madhav Malayalam

Aami’s opening scene shows a woman on a hospital bed in 1971, Bombay. Kamala Das, star of the Indian literary firmament, iconoclast and thinker, is lost in musings that will persist through this 155-minutes-long film.

We go back in time with her, to 1939 and her ancestral home at Punnayurkulam in Kerala’s Thrissur district. The film reminds us that little Kamala – Aami to her relatives – is from a literary family. Her mother, for one, is the renowned writer Nalapat Balamani Amma. She asks a lot of questions, this girl who might have been silenced elsewhere, but not in this home frequented by cultural stalwarts, where questioning minds and progressive thoughts co-exist with several gender, caste and class status quos.

The guilelessness and quiet rebellion reflected in what Aami asks remain an intrinsic part of her personality into her adulthood, as it is presented to us by award-winning writer-director Kamal. Through his eyes, we follow Aami from Punnayurkulam to Calcutta where her Anglophile father works, to her husband’s home in Bombay, on her travels with him, Thiruvananthapuram after his retirement and her death in a Pune hospital in 2009 – all factually accurate. We follow Aami when, at 15, soon after India wins Independence, she is married to Madhav Das, 20 years her senior, and becomes Kamala Das. Later, she assumes the pseudonym Madhavikutty for her Malayalam works. In her twilight years, when she converts to Islam, she calls herself Kamala Surayya.

Her many names mirror the multiple personalities dwelling in this one intriguing woman. There was the feisty nonconformist of her autobiography Ente Katha (My Story), which has captured the imagination of generations of Malayali readers and which, media reports tell us, she later confessed was as much myth as bio. There was the columnist who spoke frankly of a woman’s sexuality even back then. Both are a far cry from the restive creature – sometimes mouldable yet usually firm in her convictions, decisive yet wracked by confusion, sensible yet at times whimsical – that dominates Aami even while it brings us those other facets of her persona too.

(Spoilers ahead, if you choose to consider them so)

A person may well convey an impression of strength while struggling with herself. Aami’s flaw is that while it effectively captures Kamala’s restlessness and constant unease, it does not take us closer to understanding why that spirited child grew into this troubled woman. Was it mental illness and/or the trauma of having a sexually aggressive husband who hired a prostitute to train his teenaged bride to please him and callously flaunted his male lover before her?

A doctor is consulted in passing. Aami’s primary failing at this point is the mixed-up characterisation of Madhav Das who, after the initial cruelty, is shown displaying extreme kindness towards his delicate wife and supporting her career. Without a transition from one stage to the next, it feels as if we are seeing two men instead of one who evolved into a better person.

Still, the woolly writing of the husband apart, it is possible to buy into Kamal’s conception of Kamala as tough yet conflicted, although a reason is not proffered or justified – it is possible if you heed his reminders that Aami is just an interpretation of this very public woman.

The reminders come mostly through the medium of the ageless Lord Krishna (played by Tovino Thomas) from whom she seeks solace and answers when she is most disturbed.

These are the scenes in which Kamal indicates that his Aamiis a portrayal not just of the Kamala Das/Surayya extensively covered by the news media and revealed in her interviews, but also of the fantasy of herself that existed in Kamala’s head as Kamal envisioned her.

The director’s intent is encapsulated in this line spoken by Malayala Nadu magazine’s editor: “Ente Katha. Madhavikutty. Is this all true or are they this woman’s imaginings?” The same can be asked of Aami: is this all true or are they this man Kamal’s imaginings?

Aami’s appeal for you then depends on whether you are willing to buy into those imaginings.

The film worked in large parts for me because in recounting Aami/Kamala’s life, Kamal has adopted a poetic, ruminative tone that I found compelling. He is aided greatly in this by Bijibal’s mellow background score, M. Jayachandran’s tuneful songs and especially Shreya Ghosal’s beautiful singing of them (for the nth time, hats off to her for her Malayalam diction), and the atmospherics conjured up by Madhu Neelakandan’s cinematography.

When the narrative does occasionally become leaden, Krishna returns and lifts the film as much as he lifts Kamala’s mood. This is in no small measure due to Tovino Thomas’ likeable screen presence and the writing of the dialogues here to sound like conversations between real people instead of ponderous metaphysical reflections. Aami’s Krishna is a delightfully non-judgmental and secular being who addresses the protagonist as a friend, not as a deity on a pedestal.

An array of well-known character actors appear in minuscule roles. Each leaves an impression though Renji Panicker as the Malayala Nadu editor benefits from the best writing of the lot. Through that one character – disparaging Kamala before others, lascivious when alone with her – Kamal’s screenplay captures the hypocrisy of a deeply patriarchal, sexually repressed society that was equal parts shocked and fascinated by a woman’s remarkable openness about concerns usually swept under the carpet. Murali Gopy is good as Madhav Das despite the writing.

The casting of the lead could have been better. If you can tolerate the distractingly thick and dry, odd-coloured make-up Manju Warrier is saddled with (it ages her too much when Aami/Kamala is in her 20s, then not enough until the final shots), you might be drawn into her world as I was.

The star delivers an involved portrayal of the adult Kamala, and is well matched by the sprightly Aangelina Abraham playing her as a child. The deadpan Neelanjana is a poor choice though for a teen Aami. She weighs down crucial scenes with the girl’s first crush (a truly handsome Muslim art teacher) and in her husband’s bedroom. I was relieved when the segment with her was over.

The political hot potato in Kamala’s story is her conversion to Islam in 1999. It is the film’s most interesting and simultaneously disappointing portion. Kamal does a good job of depicting the controversy that erupted when Kamala Surayya first emerged on the scene, and in reminding us that her decision was none of anyone’s business but her own. Among Aami’s most gripping passages is a scene that has Kamala confronting Hindu fundamentalists who try to obstruct her return to Punnayurkulam. Another shows Muslim conservatives dictating life choices to her.

One version of events is that Kamala embraced Islam under the influence of a younger man she fell in love with. She herself told the press she was drawn to Islam when she studied it to teach two Muslim children she had adopted 27 years earlier (her family has confirmed the adoption). Aamiopts for the former, possibly because it allows the screenplay to steer clear of the highly critical comments Kamala made about Hinduism that infuriated Hindu extremists at the time.

The film also plays safe with Muslim extremists by offering platitudes about Islam’s respect for women without a countering voice. The late writer had a right to change her religion, but it would not have been anti-freedom for Aami to critique her more ridiculous pronouncements about Islamic culture in interviews, including a romanticisation of the purdah and what at least some readers must surely have seen as a betrayal by a woman who once abhorred fetters, when she said, “I’ve had enough freedom… Restrictions bring their own happiness.”

Kamal sticks his neck out by dwelling at length on Kamala’s conversion, but sadly does not go far enough. Similarly, in the matter of Kamala’s friendships with men, except in the case of Akbar Ali played by Anoop Menon, it avoids revealing how often her fantasies translated into an amorous reality. While Kamal may argue that he genuinely believed they did not, the tacky handling of an interlude with an impactless male Italian pen friend indicates some awkwardness on the part of the director on this front.

This hesitation encapsulates the pluses and minuses of a film that takes on a controversial subject, offers a commentary on social mores in Kamala Das/Surayya’s lifetime, but holds back beyond a point. Aami’s thoughtful tone is engaging but it is too risk-averse to be as captivating as the woman whose story it tells.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	155 minutes

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/aami-movie-review-manju-warrier-holds-attention-in-an-often-engaging-but-too-often-risk-averse-biopic-4346001.html

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

Release date:	February 9, 2018
Director:	Vinu Joseph
Cast: Language:	Biju Menon, Neeraj Madhav, Anjali, Soubin Shahir, Alencier Ley Lopez, Sudheer Karamana, Basil Joseph, Dinesh Nair, Shilpa Manjunath, Salim Kumar, Vijayaraghavan, Nirmal Palazhi, Dileesh Pothan Malayalam

It beats me how an artiste as experienced as Biju Menon was not instinctively wary of this film’s flailing screenplay. Writer-director Vinu Joseph’s Rosapoo revolves around a down-and-out entrepreneur desperately initiating one poorly conceptualised venture after another. Each new business sends him deeper into debt, to get out of which he launches the next one, and then the next one, then the next.

In all these misadventures, Shajahan (Menon’s character) is joined by an equally desperate, impoverished young friend (played by Neeraj Madhav) who has long wanted to make a film but so far only managed to assist in a couple.

Dinesh Nair plays a third wheel in their group and is treated like a spare tyre by the screenplay. Basil Joseph steps into the role of their smooth-talking associate, whose mindless ideas Shajahan keeps falling for.

At first, Rosapoo has an infectious energy and charm. Menon is always a pleasure to watch, and possesses the skill to pull off both comedy and poignance with equal elan. Madhav has proved in a brief career dominated by supporting roles that he has what it takes to leave his stamp on any part, even carry an entire film on his shoulders when given a shot at playing the lead, as he did so effectively in last year’s Paipin Chuvattile Pranayam.

The best of actors need solid writing on which to rest their talents though, and after a while it becomes clear that this essential ingredient is missing in Rosapoo. Mutta Pattu (The Egg Song), which announces the group’s entry into egg selling, comes armed with a contagious verve, upbeat melody and rhythm, but once it is through, it is evident that the film has nothing much going for it beyond its vivacity.

Shajahan and gang travel from Kerala to Tamil Nadu to make a soft porn film in Chennai. What follows are a series of encounters with leches, liars and parasites. Their chosen heroine is a sweet young woman who spends half her time warding off the advances of men on the team.

Where there are creeps, there will be rape jokes and other bawdy talk, and Rosapoo is not short on either. It makes no sense to be offended though, because writer-director Vinu Joseph seems genuinely convinced that he is doing black comedy, satirically exposing the exploitation inherent in the porn business. Sadly, Joseph’s good intentions have not translated into good cinema.

In the interactions between the lead four, their introduction to the production executive Sajir (Soubin Shahir) and especially in their over-the-top scenes with the low-grade writer V.T. Shankar (Salim Kumar) you can sense where Joseph wanted to go with this. He has a capable cast at his disposal. What he does not have are the chops to pull off comedy, black or otherwise.

With the direction and writing veering way off the mark, Rosapoo’s uneven production quality becomes particularly jarring. Among other things, the tips of Neeraj Madhav and Basil Joseph’s noses are cut off in Mutta Pattu, in parts where it would have been shot before a green screen.

In the end, what stands out though is the unfunnyness of it all, the inability to strike that vital balance between a comic tone and difficult circumstances, clichés about the porn film industry born of patriarchal notions of the feminine ideal, and quaint conservatism that sees itself as liberalism. (Spoiler ahead) In one instance, a young woman’s wedding is cancelled because her father’s friend borrows all her jewellery. The borrower offers to barter himself to repay his debt, expressing willingness to marry the girl as compensation. Everyone agrees despite the distastefulness of the proposal from a man who, in any case, is vastly older than she and a proven loser at that point. And they all live happily ever after. Uff! (Spoiler alert ends)

Rosapoo is a floundering mess. What are you doing on this road to nowhere, Biju Menon?

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	140 minutes

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/rosapoo-movie-review-biju-menon-shows-poor-judgement-in-taking-this-road-to-nowhere-4346933.html

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

Release date:	February 16, 2018
Director:	Neeraj Pandey
Cast: Language:	Sidharth Malhotra, Manoj Bajpayee, Rakul Preet Singh, Pooja Chopra, Kumud Mishra, Adil Hussain, Naseeruddin Shah, Vikram Gokhale Hindi

There is a formula writer-director Neeraj Pandey adopted in his 2015 hit Babythat he carries forward into this one: show a bunch of smart-looking, well-dressed people going somewhere, anywhere, at all times at a clipped pace, keep the characters moving – literally, physically – throughout, use brisk edits to cut back and forth between them, rope in an intense background score to scale up the energy, and give them clever-sounding dialogues that hold out the promise of something interesting to come at some point during the rest of the film.

Aiyaary adds an uncommon title to the mix along with Manoj Bajpayee, Sidharth Malhotra and the repeated use of top-to-bottom tilt shots of cityscapes. The tweaks to the blueprint do not save this film from its hollowness or air of déjà vu though. This is BabyRedux minus the chest-thumping nationalism, still convinced that it is far cleverer and cooler than it actually is.

“Vacuous” is a mild choice of adjective for Pandey’s new film, the latest in a series of thrillers he has churned out since the sleeper hit A Wednesday! in 2008. Its troubling politics of anarchy notwithstanding, at least A Wednesday! had a story and meaning going for it. Baby had Taapsee Pannu playing that rare female character given impressive stunt scenes in a Hindi film. Aiyaary has nothing.

As with Baby, Aiyaary too revolves around a covert ops team of the government of India, this one formed within the Army. It is headed by a Colonel Abhay Singh, played by Bajpayee. Malhotra is Major Jai Bakshi, an agent gone rogue. Their unit was formed with government sanction, on the understanding that they would be disowned by the sarkar and the sena if they are ever found out.

No one discovers them, but Jai decides to expose them to the media for reasons that are completely unclear even after the end of the film.

(Spoiler alert. Yawn.)

Jai claims he is blowing their cover because during surveillance operations he realised that everyone is corrupt – yes, his grand revelation is as non-specific as that. However, since it is evident that he considers Colonel Abhay clean, there is no clarification about why he rings the good man’s death knell too or why, at the last minute, he chooses to issue repeated warnings to him to get out of there. Where is “there”? Beats me.

Abhay’s undercover cell had the government’s okay, but was put together by army chief General Pratap Malik with funds that were not authorised on the record. So the chief (Vikram Gokhale) is in trouble too, although it is never apparent why Jai decides to ruin him either since he too seems to be a nice guy.

Oddly enough, Jai is working for a corrupt arms lobbyist who was formerly with the army. Lt General Gurinder Singh (Kumud Mishra) wants to punish Pratap Malik for objecting to the inflated quotation offered by a group he represents in a defence deal. Why is sweet, innocent, disillusioned Jai aiding bad, bad Gurinder in bringing the General down? Again, beats me.

Jai’s ‘explanation’ for his actions, when it does finally come, is so empty, so bereft of detail and logic, that it feels like an act of betrayal on the part of Pandey the scriptwriter. There is also an Adarsh scam-like reveal that is hyped up throughout the film and then recounted in a silly, over-dramatised fashion in the climax.

Jai is in hiding and undercover from the beginning of Aiyaary but all that glib talk from him amounts to a lot of hoo-haa considering that he epitomises stupidity in the way he allows a civilian to discover his true identity by leaving his army I-card lying around in his absence. Besides, Abhay manages to find him with just a click of his fingers, at which point our hero and his girlfriend/accomplice react like hapless babies.

(Spoiler alert ends. Yawn.)

Oh yes, before I forget, in the picture is a girlfriend cum software specialist whose professional talents come in handy for Jai’s hanky panky.

Her name is Sonia Gupta (Rakul Preet Singh), and like Jai’s colleague, Captain Maya Semwal (Pooja Chopra), she has little to do beyond be attractive and provide the director with an alibi in case he is accused of excluding women from his all-male story.

Singh is just fresh from the success of the Tamil filmTheeranAdhigaaram Ondru in which she got to play a cutesy female trifle in an otherwise gripping thriller about a no-nonsense male cop. Here she gets to go a step further and give us proof of her character’s hacking abilities by typing furiously on Jai’s laptop with her impeccably manicured fingers.

Poor Chopra comes across as being capable of something more than just standing around, but in Aiyaary, that is all she gets to do.

Meanwhile, Adil Hussain, who was fabulous in last year’s fabulous Mukti Bhawan, is so unconvinced of his role as an arms dealer here, that he seems to be suppressing his laughter while playing the part. I swear I could sense a medley of giggles just below the surface in all his scenes.

Bajpayee somehow pulls off the incredible feat of appearing earnest in an ocean of fluff. Malhotra looks sincere and delicious from start to finish. His pretty face and sensitive eyes are worth the price of a ticket in the worst of situations, but here we get the bonus of his slim physique encased in battle fatigues. It is a sight that, I assure you, is guaranteed to have any healthy, artistically inclined human being go weak in the knees.

Barring the low-priced extras the casting director settled for in Europe, as Bollywood often does, money has obviously been spent on producing Aiyaary. Now if only time had been spent on thinking the script through.

With his 2013 film Special 26, starring Akshay Kumar and Bajpayee, Neeraj Pandey proved that he has what it takes to execute a solid thriller. Aiyaary– which means shapeshifter, trickster, and more– is an example of what happens when a filmmaker, like most of the industry he operates in, mentally differentiates between a thinking, niche audience and a commercial audience (read: the masses), and blatantly takes the latter for granted.

Aiyaary’s first hour is engaging because it gives us reason to assume that great twists and turns will unfold at any moment. That promise is unfulfilled in the remaining 100 minutes of the film. Pace and bluster cannot compensate for lack of substance. This wannabe James Bond flick is nothing but a blast of hot air.

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	160 minutes 10 seconds

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/aiyaary-movie-review-sidharth-malhotra-is-pretty-and-manoj-bajpayee-earnest-in-this-blast-of-hot-air-4353879.html

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

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