annavetticadgoes2themovies

Release date:	February 7, 2019
Director:	Jenuse Mohamed
Cast: Language:	Prithviraj Sukumaran, Alok, Wamiqa Gabbi, Mamta Mohandas, Prakash Raj, Rahul Madhav Malayalam with Hindi

A little boy stands watching a solar eclipse with his father in 1990 with a rough-hewn contraption on his head. The scientist Dad disabuses him of misconceptions about this natural phenomenon that have been spread by superstitious and ignorant folk. Never stop asking questions even when adults tell you that not every question has an answer, the father says.

Fast forward to the present day, the child Albert has grown up to be a respected astrophysicist, still asking questions. He is also a widower struggling with the upbringing of his son Adam who is constantly getting into trouble.

Meanwhile, humankind is awaiting the passing of a red comet at unprecedented proximity to Earth. Electromagnetic waves from the comet are expected to cut off all electrically operated equipment for nine days. With even the smallest of batteries bound to be affected, and no modern means of transport available, a panicked public stocks up supplies and riots break out in some places. Albert for his part takes off for the Himalayas with Adam for a research project. Their lives go haywire following the arrival of the comet and a woman called Ava in their home.

9, as the news media has already reported, is Sony Pictures Entertainment’s first foray into an Indian film industry other than Bollywood (for heaven’s sake please let’s stop using that awful, marginalising term “regional cinema”). It has been produced in collaboration with Malayalam superstar Prithviraj Sukumaran’s newly minted production house.

Prithviraj multi-tasks with this project, also playing Albert on whose shoulders the entire film rests and Albert’s father in his prologue appearance. The film is based on an intriguing premise that merges the very human fear of the unknown with mental health issues, science, the supernatural and a disturbed father-son relationship, the starting block of which is the fact that the boy Adam’s mother died in childbirth. Adam (played by the child actor Alok from Clint) is thus a constant reminder of what Albert lost that his son may be born.

Writer-director Jenuse Mohamed’s plot takes a while to lift off. At first a needless, obvious effort is made to up the already satisfactorily restless atmosphere with some manipulative camerawork especially in the introduction of Albert’s mentor Dr Inayat Khan (Prakash Raj) and shotsfocused on Albert’sface, and a pointless romantic number involving a flashback to Albert’s late wife Annie (Mamta Mohandas) ends up being stilted and clichéd.

9 truly gets into the groove though as soon as the comet and Ava (Wamiqa Gabbi) enter the picture. Once that happens, Mohamed and his able cast, backed by Shameer Muhammed’s slick editing and Arun Ramavarma’s sophisticated sound design, roll out a thoroughly engaging, perfectly paced narrative. Past the problematic initial half hour, DoP Abinandhan Ramanujam strikes a fine balance between closing in on the characters and pulling out to give us an eyeful of the pristine Himalayan setting of most of the film. With a first-rate team on board, Mohamed delivers a psychological-meets-the-paranormal thriller that remains captivating till the big reveal in the climax.

Prithviraj’s controlled performance as Albert, particularly after he figures out the mysterious goings-on around him, is the fulcrum of 9’s effectiveness. A big salute to him too for his diction while delivering the considerable number of Hindi dialogues assigned to Albert.

(As an aside here, it is worth mentioning that Indian cinemas other than Hindi/Bollywood are far more representative of pan-India cultures and languages than is Hindi cinema which almost entirely confines itself to the Hindi belt or at best to other parts and peoples of north India. Sometimes though, the use of Hindi in Malayalam films feels strained, as though Hindi is seen by the writer as aspirational and a mark of coolth, somewhat mirroring the average Hindi filmmaker’s attitude to English – this can be irritating. The use of Hindi in 9’s dialogues works because the language is relevant to the setting and context, but sounds forced in that song featuring Albert and Annie although it is set in Delhi.)

Little Alok is a remarkably mature actor, his confidence is especially impressive in the scenes he shares with his seasoned co-star.

Gabbi may seem to be overdoing her work in places, but be patient – in the end it becomes clear that she is actually spot on with her take on Ava. The writer’s choice of gender for this character is interesting.

Mohandas’ charming personality makes her an apt casting call for a wife that a man might find impossible to get over.

In addition to its focus on science and rationality, 9 is important because it spotlights mental health concerns in a cleverly artistic way designed to invite audience empathy. However, at a crucial juncture it comes across as being confused in its understanding of this sensitive subject. (Spoiler alert) Why and how on earth, for instance, does a cosmologist and not a psychiatrist/psychologist/therapist diagnose and counsel a seriously unwell individual? And what was the writer thinking showing this ‘counsellor’ intimidating and threatening the patient with a deadline to get sorted? (Spoiler alert ends) This review is not expecting 9 to have been a documentary on mental wellness, but considering the widespread ignorance in this matter in India and the prevailing attitude of “this is how such people should be handled”, the film’s casualness in that brief scene, including incorrect terminology, is unacceptable.

9 then is not all smooth sailing, but because its missteps largely occur in passing (the mixed-up portrayal of mental health, the use of a stereotypical black-is-for-evil-white-is-for-good colour palette among other things), once it settles into its rhythm, it is never less than entertaining and largelythought-provoking.

Besides, I would willingly pay the price of two tickets to watch any film in which Prithviraj Sukumaran is in good form. He is here.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	149 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/9-movie-review-the-lovely-prithviraj-an-intriguing-premise-share-space-with-confusing-treatment-of-mental-health-6051611.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/PrithvirajSukumaran/

Release date:	February 8, 2019
Director:	Anand Surapur
Cast: Language:	Farhan Akhtar, Annu Kapoor, Kamal Sidhu Hindi

Adi Contractor is a con man who makes his money playing along with Western stereotypes of India. He is the guy you turn to if you are a foreigner who wants “tedi unglee jobs” done in this country. A supply of elephants, a group of beggars – he will arrange them all for you. So when he is asked to find a fakir with the ability to survive burying his head in the ground for hours, he agrees.

After a fruitless search in Varanasi, Adi finds his ‘holy man’ in his home city Mumbai. Sattar Ali is nothing but a cash cow for Adi, but when the poor man is put up as an exhibit in an art gallery in Venice, you know of course that at some point the hero’s apathy will turn to something else.

Based on a story by Homi Adajania (who we now know as the director of Being Cyrus, Cocktailand Finding Fanny), The Fakir of Venice has been stalled for a decade. It had a festival premiere 10 years back, but has come to mainstream Indian theatres only this week. The delay is not its only problem. Although at a concept level it is an interesting reversal of the white-man-finds-enlightenment-in-exotic-lands trope, and although there is initially some humour in Adi’s shenanigans, the screenplay is too predictable and superficial to make this a memorable experience.

Director Anand Surapur opts for a naturalistic storytelling style, which can be appealing when complemented by substantial writing. In the absence of depth though, it translates into lack of energy.

Adi is played by Farhan Akhtar. In The Fakir of Venice, he is the exact combination that has made him a star via other films: charismatic enough for his acting limitations to be overshadowed by his attractiveness. Annu Kapoor manages to eke out moments of sensitivity in the wafer-thin writing of Sattar Ali. You want to feel more for him though, but there is just not enough of Sattar beyond a sketchy outline and the actor’s investment in the character.

Former Channel V veejayKamal Sidhu has a fleeting role as Adi’s ex-girlfriend but is given short shrift as much as everything else in the film.

In terms of visuals, The Fakir of Venice is pretty, but it fails to fully exploit its setting, considering that Venice is one of the world’s most beautiful locations.

Everything in thefilm feels half-hearted. Neither Farhan Akhtar’s charm nor Annu Kapoor’s commitment can save this semi-baked effort. To be fair to it, it is not excruciating or insufferable, it is simply immensely forgettable.

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	98 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/the-fakir-of-venice-movie-review-farhan-akhtar-and-annu-kapoor-cannot-save-this-half-hearted-effort-6052471.html

Poster courtesy:

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

Release date:	Kerala: January 11, 2019 Delhi: February 8, 2019
Director:	Jis Joy
Cast: Language:	Aishwarya Lekshmi, Asif Ali, Shanthi Krishna, Renji Panicker, Siddique, K.P.A.C. Lalitha, Anish Kuruvilla, Darshana Rajendran Malayalam

Two films with the same story yet worlds apart in quality – you might assume that the difference lies in the contrasting skills of their respective directors, but you would be assuming wrong. Malayalam cinema’s Vijay Superum Pournamiyum is a remake of the Telugu hit Pelli Choopulu. I have not seen the Telugu original, but last year it was my misfortune to watch its Hindi remake Mitron which, despite its alluringly realistic writing by Sharib Hashmi combined with Nitin Kakkar’s assured direction, could not overcome its one glaring handicap: the casting of Jackky Bhagnani as the leading man.

Like Mitron’s Kritika Kamra, Vijay Superum Pournamiyum’s female lead Aishwarya Lekshmi is fire and ice, sugar and spice, and everything you could hope for in a heroine. Playing the hero in the Malayalam film is Asif Ali who may not have the most earth-shattering screen presence on the planet, but by God is head and shoulders and stratospheric levels above Mr Bhagnani!

Truth be told, I can imagine Nivin Pauly or Fahadh Faasil might have elevated this film further than what it is. If stars of their stature were not available, and if Tovino Thomas was considered too much of a repetition after his team-up with Lekshmi in the spectacular Mayaanadhi, how about Neeraj Madhav who proved with 2017’s Paipin Chuvattile Pranayam that he hundred per cent is solo hero material?

Still, Ali’s natural Everyman-ness is a fit for this role and pairs well with Lekshmi’s dynamism in writer-director Jis Joy’s Vijay Superum Pournamiyum, the story of a young couple who meet by accident when he lands up at the wrong house while out to meet a prospective bride. Pournami’s father was disappointed at her birth, since he was hoping for a son. Now she is fiercely committed to making something of herself professionally, but is subjected to meetings with potential grooms she has no intention of marrying. Vijay, who needs to yell the words “Vijay super aanu” into a mirror to build self-belief (hence the title), loves cooking but does not have the guts or the drive to convince his conservative father that cheffing is a suitable profession for boys. So, he forces himself through engineering college, and is currently stuck in a job for which he has zero passion.

Unlike Pournami, Vijay is anxious to be married because he measures his worth only in terms of the dowry he could get that would help his family overcome their financial constraints.

Vijay Superum Pournamiyum establishes its unconventional sensibilities early on. The gender role reversal, for one – in the matter of marriage and career – is striking yet not rubbed in our faces with sermons. This is its defining characteristic.

Pournami is hardworking and level headed. Vijay is a no-hoper who is extremely irresponsible except with the one thing he loves. Though she rejects him as a groom, they bond over their frustrations and she ultimately asks him to partner her in a project that would meet her entrepreneurial goals and tap his talent in the kitchen.

The storyline is not burdened with any of the clichés recycled ad nauseam in so many so-called youth films, and neither of the two central characters is a stereotype. The impossibly bubbly young woman, the man whose stalkerish ways she falls for – none of that crap is to be found here. It is particularly a relief to see that ambition is not treated as a dirty word for a woman.

Vijay Superum Pournamiyum is a believable tale about what could happen if families accept their children as they are and allow them to be who they want to be. The film’s sense of humour, like its running commentary on life, is underplayed. It is narrated in such an undramatised style that much of it does not feel like cinema. Its most endearing quality is that it almost feels like two people called Pournami and Vijay transcribed lines they spoke in real life, and handed them to Lekshmi and Ali to say before the camera.

Except for an energetic song titled Pournami Superalle played out to a choreographed group dance, the soundtrack toomerges entirely with the rest of the proceedings.

Jis Joy’s previous collaboration with Asif Ali, 2017’s Sunday Holiday, was similar in directorial tone but ended up being somewhat bland without the benefit of equally powerful writing. Vijay Superum Pournamiyum has more flesh and character. Ali is nice enough here. The leads are surrounded by beloved veterans Renji Panicker, Siddique and K.P.A.C. Lalitha who fill out their well-written parts well. It is sad though to see Shanthi Krishna delivering yet another generic performance as a generic mother – she has already done too many of these since her return to films in 2017 with Njandukalude Nattil Oridavela in which, coincidentally, Aishwarya Lekshmi made her debut.

In just her fourth screen venture, Ms Lekshmi proves that she has the acting chops and the presence to pull off a film in which she plays a/the central character. She is so good that she almost makes you want to ask the producer to rename this one Superlative Pournamiyum Vijay Superum.

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

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

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/vijay-superum-pournamiyum-movie-review-aishwarya-lekshmis-dynamism-pairs-well-with-asif-alis-everyman-persona-6055881.html

Poster courtesy:

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

Release date:	February 14, 2019
Director:	Zoya Akhtar
Cast: Language:	Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Kalki Koechlin, Vijay Varma, Amruta Subhash, Vijay Raaz, Sheeba Chaddha, Nakul Roshan Sahdev Hindi

A young man has been waiting outside a stadium where a musical show is taking place. He is one among the number of drivers whose wealthy mistress is in the audience inside. For a while now he has been listening to the pulsating sounds emerging from within, and then, in a manner that tells us he can finally no longer hold back, that he cannot help himself any more, he begins striding purposefully towards the performance venue.

As he gets closer though, a security person spots him. There is no noisy confrontation between the two men, just a firm look from that hefty uniformed guard we see only from a short distance and a slight, dismissive wave of the hand, brushing the youngster aside like dust off a carpet, as if to emphasise his insignificance.

We know Murad Sheikh (Ranveer Singh) well by then. We know that this college student cum driver from Mumbai’s congested Dharavi slum is also a gifted aspiring rapper with poetry and music rushing through his veins. We know too that this is not the first time he has been told he is a nobody.

In another scene, one of the most beautiful passages in writer-director Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy, Murad is driving the same mistress and her parents in their spacious, gleaming sedan one night. The father and daughter are having an argument – she wants to begin working right after her graduation, he wants her to study further. Everyone is a graduate these days, graduation means nothing, the Dad tells her, before asking Murad how far gone he is with his education. I am about to complete my graduation, comes the reply, at which point, as if Murad is deaf and invisible even while he is seated among them, the rich man asks the girl if what she wants for herself is to be at this fellow’s “level”.

There is so much happening in that seemingly low-key scene. The cruelty of the master’s words, the barely discernible look on the daughter’s face that suggests confused disapproval of her parent’s inhumanity, and the treatment the storyteller metes out to the older man – his voice and distinct English accent are recognisable (they belong to actor and TV show host Mohan Kapoor), but the camera opts not to show us his face, treating him instead with the same disdain that he displays towards Murad.

Akhtar’s decision to erase or blur those who erase and blur Murad is important, because Gully Boy is an ode to the Murads we don’t see, the drivers outside who do not get to enter the stadium, the chap in our midst that we ignore in our conversations.

Set in Mumbai’s underground rap scene, Gully Boy tells the story of the impoverished Murad’s journey from being forced into jobs he does not want, to his determined pursuit of his music dream. Supporting him on this road is his long-time girlfriend Safeena Firdausi (Alia Bhatt), a fiery, short-tempered medical student who has her own battles with family conservatism she must fight.

Gully Boy is inspired by the lives of Mumbai rappers Naezy and Divine (a.k.a. Naved Shaikh and Vivian Fernandes respectively), but it is not a biopic. Like Murad’s being, every cell of this film beats with and for the art form to which it pays tribute. The music is so powerful that it has the strength to make a committed rap fan out of a rap virgin.

The writing by Reema Kagti and Akhtar rarely misses a step, completely immersed as the screenplay is in the socio-economic realities of its crowded, filthy slum setting and the present-day socio-political reality of the India in which that slum is set.

Rap numbers by a bouquet of writers are a constant in the narrative, either performed on screen in lava-like eruptions by various artistes or playing out in the background. The incessant swings to and from, in and out of these energetic, audacious compositions are handled deftly by editor Nitin Baid.

Cinematographer Jay Oza (Raman Raghav 2.0, Blackmail) keeps things personal, staying close to his principal characters except in the impressive opening scene and when he pointedly zooms out a handful of times to offer us an eyeful of boxy, cramped Dharavi.

To the outsider unaware of India’s current troubles or cineastes who prefer viewing films divorced from the global and national context in which they emerge, Gully Boy may seem like just a coming-of-age / rise-to-stardom / rags-to-possible-riches drama. But it is not. This is an era of right-wing dominance, the mainstreaming of extremism and chest-thumping nationalism, or as Dub Sharma puts it in Jingostan beatbox featured in the film:

2018 hai desh ko khatra hai /

Har taraf aag hai tum /

aag ke beech ho /

Jor se chilla lo /

sabko dara do /

Apni zahreelee been baja ke /

sabka dhyaan kheench lo... /

... Jingostan zindabaad.

(Rough translation: It is 2018, the country is in danger / You are in the midst of the flames that have engulfed us / Scream out loud and scare everyone / Draw everyone’s attention with your poisonous agenda... / Hail the land of jingoism.)

Jingostan beatbox is arguably the most forthright political comment to emerge from an otherwise largely cowardly Bollywood in recent years.

Rap becomes a tool to spell out Gully Boy’s position on multiple prickly issues in a hugely entertaining fashion without sounding like sermons. Much is also said via the storyline sans bhaashanbaazi. This gives the narrative a fine balance between allusions and open declarations, making it both fun and unapologetically political.

Islamophobia, for one, is referenced in a conversation overheard from another room. Murad’s most unwavering ally and fellow musician MC Sher is introduced in an emphatically feminist, massively enjoyable sequence, but the feminism of the rest of the film – its take on gender segregation, discrimination in education, the hijab, domestic violence and more – emanates from the life stories being told.

The Muslimness of the leads is neither over-emphasised nor underplayed. This is in keeping with the evolution of the portrayal of Muslims in Bollywood from a pre-2000 positive stereotype and characters whose religious identity was an overriding factor, to present-day Hindi cinema where the likes of Akhtar normalise the Muslim community, giving us the good, bad, wonderful and ugly just as they do with the majority community.

Gully Boy is not without its rough edges. Male infidelity is usually humourised in Hindi cinema. Here it is not dealt with lightly, but is certainly forgiven with a speed and casualness that is uncharacteristic of the female partner facing it and thus unconvincing. The tone of the film is just as generous towards the man in question in this matter. At this juncture alone, it feels like the writers did not quite know what to do other than hurry past this failing in a character they otherwise want us to like.

The screenplay also papers over class divides on the music scene. A deliciously furious duel of songs between the hero and an uppity rival (insult rap is what it should be called, if that term does not already exist) gives us a clear view of what our man is up against, but it is soon glossed over by the film’s talent-conquers-all idealism.

What does indeed conquer all in Gully Boy are its songs, with their addictive rhythms and volcanic poetry. To watch the birth of Apna time aayega in particular (composers: Dub Sharma and Divine, singer: Ranveer Singh, lyrics: Divine and Ankur Tewari) is a special experience in itself.

Singh embodies Murad as he drowns out his naturally flamboyant personality to play a shy, angry yet optimistic youth whose words have the ability to crush a harsh opponent in a way fists never can. His body looks better nourished and more carefully sculpted than you would expect from a person in his dire circumstances, but his physique is wisely not displayed often enough to distract from the believability of the rest of him.

In real life, at least in public, Singh is more Simmba– his last screen character – than Murad. It is impossible to remember the Simmba in him though while watching him here.

His brilliance is matched scene for scene by the devastatingly good Alia Bhatt who has a comparatively smaller role but owns Gully Boy as much as he does. The writers have ensured that Safeena is not merely a satellite revolving around Murad. Her battles are a crucial element in the screenplay’s study of the social milieu he inhabits, in which his art is initially suppressed and ultimately blossoms.

The superlative supporting cast includes the charismatic debutant Siddhant Chaturvedi playing MC Sher. Vijay Varma, who epitomised evil in Pink (2016), is immaculate as Murad’s morally ambivalent friend Moeen. And sweet Nakul Roshan Sahdev gets to headline Gully Boy’s most hilarious scene.

Zoya Akhtar has shown remarkable maturity from her very first feature, Luck By Chance (2009). In Gully Boy she displays the same clarity of vision she had when she started out.

For a film that is about protest music, the music of anger and rebellion, Gully Boy is surprisingly quiet and extremely funny. Its understatedness and sense of humour are among the multiple reasons why it is also one of the best films to emerge from the Hindi cinemascape in recent times.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	155 minutes 48 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/gully-boy-movie-review-ranveer-singh-alia-bhatt-are-devastatingly-good-in-zoya-akhtars-ultimate-anthem-for-the-rebel-6083111.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/RanveerSinghOfficial/

Release date:	February 21, 2019
Director:	Unnikrishnan B.
Cast: Language:	Dileep, Mamta Mohandas, Suraj Venjaramoodu, Siddique, Renji Panicker, Lena, Priya Anand, Aju Varghese, Saiju Kurup Malayalam

“It is not how something is said but what is said that matters,” Judge Vidhyadharan played by Saiju Kurup declares towards the end of Kodathi Samaksham Balan Vakeel. This is the film’s attempt at advocacy for persons with disabilities, which in other circumstances would have been laudable. Here though it is far from convincing since Vidhyadharan has spent the preceding couple of hours displaying a curious mix of sarcasm and kindness towards a lawyer with a stammer appearing in his courtroom.

Dileep is cast as the said lawyer, Balan Vakeel of the title a.k.a. S. Balakrishnan. And Vidhyadharan is not the only one mocking him. The screenplay does too.

A disability may well lead to misunderstandings and confusions that could be comical, but when every character in a film is contemptuous of a protagonist with a speech impairment, when even a person with empathy is shown pulling the fellow down, when the writing draws almost entirely on that element for its comedy, then an effort to appear sensitive in the finale is almost offensive.

This desire to be a little bit of everything – hateful yet considerate, loud yet genteel, crudely comedic yet backing a noble cause – is the hallmark of writer-director Unnikrishnan B’s Kodathi Samaksham Balan Vakeel (KSBV). It tells the story of a lawyer who has fared poorly in his career so far due to his stammer and lack of confidence. It does not help that his mother (Bindu Panicker) nags him viciously, his father (Siddique) is usually intoxicated by a cocktail of alcohol and drugs, and his brother-in-law (Suraj Venjaramoodu) is a selfish, manipulative jerk. The latter is a cop who drags Balan into a controversy that becomes a turning point in his life.

The crux of the controversy is a false case of sexual harassment foisted on one of the most high-profile men in Kerala. It cannot be a coincidence that the prime sufferer in this “goodalochana” (conspiracy) is Balan. This is not the first time since he got bail in the ongoing woman actor rape case that Dileep (who is charged as a conspirator in the crime) has used his on-screen avatar to promote the propaganda spread globally by misogynists that gender-sensitive laws are widely misused by women. In last year’s Kammara Sambhavam, his character, a corrupt politician, went so far as to make a throwaway remark about how his team would be free to go about their unscrupulous work if they diverted the public’s attention by having a woman slap a fake charge of sexual violence against any well-known man.

That comment in Kammara Sambhavam was unrelated to the rest of the plot, whereas in KSBV, the false allegation is the fulcrum of the storyline. This latest attempt to build a case for Dileep in his real-life legal quagmire is self-defeating though because – and this can be said without giving anything away – KSBV ends up unwittingly making the point that men use women to misuse women-related laws. Ha. So the joke’s on you, Messrs Dileep and Unnikrishnan.

Even if you view the film without any knowledge of the context to the casting, it is laden with cinematic clichés and social stereotypes. The Common Man who transforms into Superman at the click of a finger (literally, in this case), a damsel in distress who is rescued by the aforesaid hero, a non-stop stream of potshots directed at Balan’s stammer, slapstick comedy, a song and dance centred around a semi-clothed woman that is completely unconnected to the narrative – you will find it all in KSBV.

Balan has trouble beginning sentences. When an associate called Anzar (Aju Varghese) helpfully grabs the phone from Balan to say the first word the latter is struggling to get out in one scene, it is funny since he does it without malice. So is the second time he does it. But for the most part Balan’s stammer is the subject of unfunny barbs and derision.

When listeners mispredict a word Balan is about to say, their impatience with him is unkind enough, but when they do it incessantly throughout the film, it just gets worse each time. The cruelty of KSBVlies in the fact that it is not merely portraying ableist characters, Unnikrishnan is clearly himself tickled by their meanness towards Balan, as he is tickled by the extreme misogyny in the hero’s Dad’s interactions with his Mom and the old chap’s casual violence towards her.

Aju Varghese plays the film’s most irritating character. Renji Panicker is very well used. Saiju Kurup is good, as he always is – give this man larger roles, please Mollywood! Venjaramoodu manages to pull off some, though not all, of the intentionally over-the-top comedy plus his character’s sliminess. As for Priya Anand, I don’t know why she even bothered to accept this blink-and-you-will-miss-her role. Mamta Mohandas has it just marginally better.

Anuradha Sudarshan (Mohandas) is a hapless woman also swept up by the imbroglio that has taken over Balan’s existence. At one point we are told that her father, a sketchily described random character, was confident that she would be able to crack a puzzle he has left for her because he believes she is smart. Really, Sir? All that we see is Anuradha hanging around Balan and hanging on to him while he solves the mystery and saves her life. This is particularly upsetting because it results in a waste of Mohandas’ strong screen presence.

Of course the two also fall in love. It is, after all, an unwritten rule in commercial Indian cinema across languages that at least one good-looking young woman, the younger the better, must be attracted to the hero of a film especially if he is played by a big male star, irrespective of the man’s age.

As in all such situations, the almost two decades separating Mohandas and Dileep are treated as an everyday phenomenon. What is far more amusing though is the important flashback to Balan’s college days. Can you imagine a female actor in her 50s in Mollywood being asked to play a college student for even a few seconds?

Lost in all this triteness is a rather interesting mystery, the not-bad-at-all sub-plot explaining how and why Balan began to stammer, and Dileep’s surprisingly restrained portrayal of Balan’s disability. With juvenile humour and prejudice dominating the screenplay, Team KSBVhas no one to blame but themselves.

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

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

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

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/kodathi-samaksham-balan-vakeel-movie-review-dileeps-unexpected-restraint-is-overshadowed-by-crudeness-cliches-and-prejudice-6135241.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/ActorDileep/

Release date:	October 17, 2018
Director:	Vetri Maaran
Cast: Language:	Dhanush, Aishwarya Rajesh, Andrea Jeremiah, Ameer, Samuthirakani, Daniel Balaji, Kishore, Pawan Tamil

(This mini review was originally published as a Facebook post on November 14, 2018, on facebook.com/AnnaMMVetticadOfficial)

I have been meaning to share this with you for a few days now. I managed to catch Vetri Maaran’s Vada Chennai by the skin of my teeth just before it left theatres. Thankfully, it was released here (in Delhi where I live) with English subtitles.

I loved many things about Vada Chennai, but I was not blown away. This story of gangsters who called the shots in north Chennai from the late 1980s to the early part of this century revolves around Anbu (played by Dhanush) who evolves during the course of the narrative from an innocent, young, gifted carrom player to a Godfather-like criminal overlord. We become acquainted with the many people who had an impact on his life, most especially his girlfriend and later wife, Padma (Aishwarya Rajesh), a don named Rajan who was invested in the welfare of the local poor, Rajan’s tough-as-nails wife Chandra (Andrea Jeremiah), and rivals-in-crime Senthil and Guna, all this against the backdrop of historic political developments such as the deaths of MGR and Rajiv Gandhi, and the rise of Jayalalithaa.

What worked for me: Dhanush’s restrained performance; his subtle yet clearly discernible physical transformation; the fact that although this is a male-dominated film (as most Tamil films are), and though Padma and Chandra are only supporting characters, they are still crucial to the proceedings and Chandra, at least, is not merely present as a facilitator/enabler in the men’s lives; the impression left by the two charismatic women artistes despite their limited screen time; and via Senthil and Guha, the spotlight Vada Chennai places on how fluid the definition of goodness can be – at different points in the story, one or the other of them appears to be the nice guy of the two, depending on the perspective from which they are being viewed.

All this goes in Vada Chennai’s favour, but the many sub-plots, the multiplicity of characters and the back and forth in time get confusing after a while. And the overall plot has limited novelty value. Bitter gang wars, the stranglehold of the underworld on the slum dwellers in the film, politicians who manipulate the poor while awarding contracts to private enterprise under the pretext of public welfare, a don who has the common people’s interests at heart – there is nothing here that has not already been covered by Indian cinema in general or Kollywood in particular, nor is the treatment unusual enough or gripping enough to be compensation.

So yes, this is a polished production. And yes, Dhanush’s performance and the film’s other positives did keep me engaged till the end. But Vada Chennai is not gut-wrenchingly beautiful and heartbreaking like Vetri Maaran’s last film Visaranai. Not even close.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	166 minutes

For the original link to this review, click here

Poster courtesy:

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

Sexy Durga Director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s Unmadiyude Maranam Is Wacky Irreverence In Search Of A Platform

“Thank God”

“Vande Mataram”

In another place, at another time, say in a Hindi film starring Manoj Kumar, these words might have been taken at their face value. In India of 2018, in maverick Malayalam director, certified rebel and avowed atheist Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s latest film though, in a socio-political scenario where religion and nationalism are being aggressively stuffed down the throats of the citizenry, I find myself laughing as they appear on screen right at the start.

“Thank God”

“Vande Mataram”

Both expressions are flashed – separately, in succession – on a black, otherwise blank sheet as a preface to Sasidharan’s so-far-unreleased Unmadiyude Maranam (Death of Insane). Coming as they do from an iconoclast, these seemingly innocuous words take on a whole new meaning that serves as an indicator of the irreverence to follow. Context, after all, is everything.

Unmadiyude Maranam is set in a dystopian world where dreams dreamt without permission are declared illegal and anti-national, and an Emergency-like situation leads to under-the-counter sales of these forbidden visions. It is not a conventional feature film – it has barely any dialogues, instead a monologue in Mollywood star Murali Gopy’s voice is juxtaposed against a montage of seemingly unconnected visuals including scenes played out by actors, shots of idyllic landscapes and archaeological sites, and actual archival news footage.

The videos sourced from news channels include the nationwide anti-rape protests that followed the 2012 Delhi gangrape, the Kiss Of Love campaign in Kerala, sloganeering in favour of Tamil writer Perumal Murugan, coverage of Gauri Lankesh’s assassination, and Sasidharan’s own high-profile battle with the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa a year back when his Sexy Durga was dropped from the programme – along with the Marathi film Nude– despite being picked for a screening by the festival’s selection committee.

Sasidharan describes Unmadiyude Maranam as a very personal reaction to his traumatic experience with Sexy Durga, as a result of which he “was undergoing a kind of depression”, a feeling “that there is no way out”. This explains the ruminative tone of Gopy’s narration. The text is purportedly fictional, essay-like and heavily abstract when heard in isolation and interpreted literally, but when seen in the context of the visuals, it mirrors today’s India to an unnerving extent. The film’s clever impertinence lies in the fact that it does not name any political party or specific ideological group, so if anyone were to claim that it is a criticism of their particular party or ideology, their accusation would amount to an admission of guilt.

The choice of Murali Gopy is interesting, since he is perceived in some quarters as being pro-RSS/BJP. The fact that his late father, the legendary actor Bharat Gopy, joined BJP no doubt contributes to this assumption, as does the actor-writer’s gritty 2013 Malayalam film Left Right Left, which faced heat for exposing the rot in Kerala’s Communist party. Yet, as Khaleej Times’ Deepa Gauri puts it, with Left Right Left he “annoyed partisan left and right-wing parties in equal measure”. Besides, he was vocal and unequivocal in his support for Sexy Durga when the BJP government embarked on a witchhunt against the film. (Gopy’s recurrent good-man-as-victim-of-scheming-woman line, evidenced in Left Right Left and this year’s Kammara Sambhavam, requires a separate discussion.)Zeroing in on him as the voice of Unmadiyude Maranam may be Sasidharan’s resistance against the mindless slotting of all unbracketable individuals as compulsorily “Communist”, “Congressi” or “Sanghi” in the current public discourse if and when they are critical of one or the other of these ideological/political streams/organisations.

In short, Unmadiyude Maranam is fascinating, surreal, frightening, hilariously cheeky, deeply philosophical and political, and while it will most certainly be labelled artsy by those whose tastes don’t lie in the direction of experimental cinema, it is hard to pin down in terms of genre, content or even ideology. It is documentary-like but flirts with fantasy, it is fantasy that reflects reality only because our current reality is so bizarre that no writer of the past could have guessed that an imagined hell would ever become the truth we live in.

It is also, frankly, uncensorable. Although the news footage used in the film covers episodes spanning several years and states governed by various parties, the present BJP government at the Centre is likely to view Unmadiyude Maranam as being aimed at this establishment, if not in the same way that they have interpreted any exhortation to “vote for secularism” since 2014 to mean “vote against BJP” then because Sasidharan’s spirited defence of Sexy Durga (in contrast with the Nude team’s virtual silence at IFFI) embarrassed the sarkar. In that sense, there is no point in submitting Unmadiyude Maranamfor Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) clearance.

Not that the film would stand a chance if another party were heading the Central Government. India’s prevailing Censor practices and continuum of social conservatism place curbs on CBFC officials across ideological divides, making it impossible, as of now, for even a liberal to okay a film such as this that repeatedly uses the naked human body (all sides displayed) both as a metaphor and in enacted scenes of harassment and assault. At the very least, massive cuts or pixellation would be demanded, which would amount to slaughtering the film on the outside chance that Sasidharan were to agree.

For his part, the director does not want to waste his time submitting Unmadiyude Maranam to the CBFC, having burnt his fingers severely with Sexy Durga. His point is not merely that he sees it as a purposeless exercise since the outcome is predictable. He admits that if Unmadiyude Maranam is rejected by the Board “there can be a huge news on that: ‘Sanal’s fourth film also ended up in a Censor problem’,” which could translate into audience curiosity, but the lesson Sexy Durga taught him, he says, is that a controversy diverts attention from the substance of a film.

“In India at least people could not find the essence of Sexy Durga and remained stuck on the title,” is his lament. “People know the film and me only due to the controversy, and what I was trying to convey was not conveyed at all.” He recalls with regret that at parallel screenings of Sexy Durga, before and after its mainstream theatrical release, all viewers’ questions were related to the brouhaha over it, not the issues it deals with. Contrary to conventional wisdom in PR circles, Sasidharan feels “the controversy was actually killing the film.” This attitude reflects his desire for something beyond the spotlight and box-office returns, a desire to get to people “who I can ignite” to generate a conversation.

This is why he wants Unmadiyude Maranam to reach audiences “without any unwanted noises” so that they “just watch, understand and discuss it without any kind of burden or baggage”.

How he can make that happen is the big concern now. Without a CBFC certificate, a theatrical release is ruled out. The filmmaker’s current predicament arises from knowing that Unmadiyude Maranam is unlikely to be showcased even on India’s festival circuit where at least one major fest has already rejected it.

As permitted by a provision of the Cinematograph Act 1952, the country’s Central governments have, over the years, by and large given festivals an exemption from CBFC clearance for films to be screened at these events. The present government’s I&B Ministry denied this exemption to Sexy Durga for Mumbai’s MAMI fest last year. Following the subsequent noisy imbroglio at IFFI 2017 over Sexy Durga(changed to S. Durga by then by a CBFC directive) and Nude, India’s festivals have become cautious –self censorship by organisers over general fears of greater government monitoring and mob violence combined specifically with their awareness of Sasidharan’s already strained relationship with the powers that be, leaves Unmadiyude Maranam in the position of being perhaps a domestic festival outcaste.

Festivals abroad that he has approached so far have found the film too personal or beyond the understanding of non-Indian viewers. Yet, the personal is most often universal too, and cultural nuances notwithstanding, Unmadiyude Maranam has global relevance in an age that has seen the simultaneous rise of divisive right-wing leaders across the world, from Donald J. Trump in the far West to Rodrigo Duterte in the far East.

The film was completed this summer. E-platforms Sasidharan has approached so far have not bought into the concept either – not surprising since Unmadiyude Maranam is more wacky and wacko than anything these websites have sourced from India so far. Besides, orthodox voices in the country have already been raised against uncensored works being available for viewing online.

Be that as it may, Sasidharan is determined to get Unmadiyude Maranam to audiences before the 2019 general elections in India, because “I feel now everything is, like, concentrating towards a kind of Emergency situation.” He is no longer in a state of despair though, as he was during the Sexy Durga affair. He has almost finished work on his next film, Chola, which is unlike all his previous starless projects since it features marquee names Joju George and Nimisha Sajayan. Once that is done, he intends to shift his focus back to Unmadiyude Maranama.k.a. Death of Insane. “If it is not in theatres, okay, then let people watch on their own personal computers,” he says.

The fact that a film on thought control requires intricate planning to escape the thought police proves the very point it set out to make. QED.

This article was published on Firstpost on December 13, 2018:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/sexy-durga-director-sanal-kumar-sasidharans-unmadiyude-maranam-is-wacky-irreverence-in-search-of-a-platform-5722311.html

Related article by Anna M.M. Vetticad: Sexy Durga or S Durga? How the government’s reaction proves the very point the film makes

Photographs courtesy:Sanal Kumar Sasidharan

Release date:	March 1, 2019
Director:	Abhishek Chaubey
Cast: Language:	Sushant Singh Rajput, Bhumi Pednekar, Manoj Bajpayee, Ranvir Shorey, Ashutosh Rana, Sampa Mandal, V.K. Sharma, Khushiya Hindi

“You haven’t got it?” one woman tells another, castes “are all meant to categorise men. Women are a different caste altogether, below all of them.”

In a film filled with more movement than conversations, words are used sparingly, but when they come they are on point. Women too are present in limited numbers, but the ones we encounter are prime movers in the battles being chronicled here. Writer-director Abhishek Chaubey’s Sonchiriya is a lyrical account of a gang of dacoits wandering the Chambal ravines, some of them anxious for a way out.

Dreary, poetic and desperately sad, it is about unwritten codes of honour among society’s outliers, about the cruelty of caste and patriarchy, and about the endlessness of violence once unleashed. “Dacoits too can be good,” says a character more than once. But this is not an effort to romanticise the outlaws in the frame so much as to highlight the self-defeating nature of social inequity in a world where men think patriarchy benefits them though it can pull them down mercilessly too.

Deaths are the bookends between which unfolds this tale of a band of male dacoits led by Man Singh (Manoj Bajpayee) in Madhya Pradesh of the 1970s. Just once does one of these men refer to them as daaku. Otherwise, in their vocabulary they are baaghis (rebels) on the run. As they are hunted unrelentingly by the police, it becomes clear that at least some of them are trying much harder to escape their own demons than the long arm of the law.

We know nothing about their background beyond the fact that they are Thakurs, and that Man Singh and his younger associate Lakhan/Lakhna (Sushant Singh Rajput) are haunted by a sorrow that they seem unable to and unwilling to shrug off. Elsewhere in these arid lands, we hear that (the now legendary) Phoolan Devi (called Phuliya in the film and played by Sampa Mandal) is thirsting for the blood of Thakurs – but not all of them. Lakhna, it is clear, is fighting a fight he no longer believes in or takes pride in. Vakil Singh (Ranvir Shorey), for his part, does not trust Lakhna. Rounding off the primary players is the policeman Virender Gujjar (Ashutosh Rana) whose determination to clean up the Chambal seems to be as personal as it is professional.

Sonchiriya, which is written by Chaubey and Sudip Sharma, rarely misses a step. Like Chaubey’s three previous directorial ventures – Ishqiya, Dedh Ishqiya and Udta Punjab– it is rooted in the soil from which it emerges. This rootedness is reflected in every element of the film, from the dialect the characters speak (accompanied by subtitles which will hopefully give it the pan-India audience it deserves) to their clothingand concerns. This film has more depth than the more widely promoted, far flashier Udta Punjab though. And like the two Ishqiyas, it is uncompromising and unapologetic about what it has to say.

His direction of Sonchiriya is steeped in conviction. Except for perhaps three brief scenes in which the momentum is intentionally slowed down to needlessly heighten the melodrama – when a group of men realise that they have killed the wrong person/s, while a mother is telling her son his truth, and in the end between Lakhna and the titular character – not a single moment of this narrative feels out of place or unnecessary.

Chaubey’s canvas is enriched by production designer Rita Ghosh, fresh from her superb work on Nandita Das’ Manto last year, and by DoP Anuj Rakesh Dhawan’s ability to turn dust bowls into visual gold. Dhawan does not give us pretty frames here. His unsparing cinematography does nothing to lighten the impact of the harsh landscapes these characters traverse on their way to what seems like nowhere. Even the river is not prettified although it does provide some relief to the eyes. The audience is shown a lot of the violence that occurs, but not in a lascivious fashion.

The most bloody murder of the story, however, takes place off camera as one human being vents a long-burning rage against another, and sound designer Kunal Sharma, while not resorting to sensationalism, ensures that we know exactly what is going on without seeing any of it.

The ensemble cast is brimming with talent.

Bhumi Pednekar is flawless as the beleaguered woman who intrudes on the gang’s existence. With just four feature films under her belt (Dum Laga Ke Haisha, Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, Shubh Mangal Saavdhan and now this one), Pednekar has already emerged as one of the most versatile young actors on the Hindi film horizon.

All the grime and misery on the planet cannot camouflage Sushant Singh Rajput’s handsomeness, yet the actor ensures that what stands out is his character’s bruised and broken spirit. There are a couple of seconds here and there when Manoj Bajpayee’s facial expressions come across as exaggerated, but for the most part he is as fabulous as Man Singh as he usually is.

Commercial Hindi filmdom is either indifferent to, ignorant about or afraid of caste as a subject, as we were reminded most recently by the shameful manner in which it remadethe Marathi film Sairat as Dhadak. The industry is also largely a patriarchal space, usually telling stories of men or portraying women through a restricted male gaze. Abhishek Chaubey’s new film, on the other hand, is a commentary on how, while oppressive systems crush the marginalised, the cycles of violence unleashed by dominant communities end up sweeping away everyone including the oppressors and in particular the few who wish to surrender their inherited privilege. Sonchiriyais unafraid, it is aware and it cares.

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

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

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/sonchiriya-movie-review-sushant-singh-rajput-bhumi-pednekar-and-a-band-of-fine-artistes-deliver-aching-desolate-beauty-6175821.html

Poster courtesy:

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

Release date:	March 8, 2019
Director:	Sujoy Ghosh
Cast: Language:	Taapsee Pannu, Amitabh Bachchan, Tony Luke Kocherry, Amrita Singh, Tanvir Ghani, Manav Kaul Hindi

Two people are found by the police in a hotel room in the European countryside. One of them, a photographer called Arjun Joseph (Tony Luke Kocherry, credited here as Tony Luke), is lying dead, while the other, the renowned businessperson Naina Sethi (Taapsee Pannu) is injured. The woman claims that there was an unidentified third party within those four walls with them, although no one was seen leaving and all possible exits were in any case secured from inside.

Her guilt as a murderer is therefore assumed, but Ms Sethi will have none of that. She hires an expensive lawyer called Badal Gupta whose expertise in ‘preparing’ witnesses is legendary in legal circles since he has not lost a single case in a 40 year career. His mantra: “Kanoon wahi sach maanta hai jo saabith kiya ja sakta hai.” (The law believes to be the truth that which can be proved.) Badlabegins with this tall, bearded man (Amitabh Bachchan) arriving for a meeting with Sethi to hear her account of events. The narrative unfolds in a series of flashbacks as she tells him what transpired between her and Joseph.

Writer-director Sujoy Ghosh’s Badla (Revenge) is the Hindi remake of the Spanish crime thriller Contratiempoa.k.a. The Invisible Guest, written and directed by Oriol Paulo, and currently streaming on Netflix. The adapted screenplay – replete with references to the Mahabharat – has been attributed to Ghosh while Paulo has been duly acknowledged as the writer of the original story in the Hindi film’s credits.

Contratiempo and Badlabelong to the sub-genre of thrillers where the viewer hears several versions of the truth narrated by various people, some who have credibility because they were present at the site and some who may not necessarily have been there. If you are listening and watching carefully enough, you may spot at least two gaping loopholes much before the big reveal. This is a fault of the written materialby Paulo, not Ghosh’s direction or the acting. For instance, the story is pivoted on the extreme and uncharacteristic inefficiency of one of the individuals involved, and calls for considerable suspension of disbelief from anyone who notices this flaw.

Ghosh’s direction is, in fact, efficient as is Monisha R. Baldawa’s editing while they aim at having us guess who is to be believed and who not. Badla’s DoP is Avik Mukhopadhayay whose work on Shoojit Sircar’s October last year was sheer genius. Here he gives us elegant shots of Scotland’s natural beauty along with cleverly chosen frames featuring the various players in this psychological cat and mouse game between the storyteller and the audience.

The end result is a satisfying whodunit which, while certainly not brilliant, is suspenseful enough and occasionally eerie enough, especially when outdoors, to be entertaining while it lasts.

Pannu, like the film, is effective but not great. So is Bachchan.

The handsome model turned Malayalam film actor Tony Luke (Oozham, Sakhavu) makes his Hindi debut with Badla, and delivers the most impressive performance of the lead trio. As is expected in such films, with each retelling of the goings-on between Sethi and Joseph their characters change, sometimes marginally, sometimes dramatically. This good-looking young star lends subtlety even to the dramatic transformation in Joseph in one of the versions. I also love the fact that he does not camouflage his Malayalam accent when he speaks Hindi here – an interesting choice by the actor and his director.

Amrita Singh has a crucial role in the film. Playing a distraught mother, she gives her character a convincing emotional graph as demanded by the screenplay without once devolving into Bollywood’s stereotypical over-wrought Maaaaaa.

Sujoy Ghosh is a leading light among thriller makers in Bollywood. His Kahaani (2012) starring Vidya Balan set new standards for the industry in this area. The pressure to live up to expectations raised by that film did show in the writing of the climax for Kahaani 2 (2016), but he reminded us of his unmistakable talent for mystery with director Ribhu Dasgupta’s unfortunately underrated Te3n (2016) starring Balan, Bachchan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, which he produced. Maybe some day he will replicate the brilliance of Kahaani, but today what he has given us is Badla: if you are not in too demanding a mood, this is an enjoyable film.

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

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

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/badla-movie-review-taapsee-pannu-and-amitabh-bachchan-team-up-for-a-moderately-satisfying-thriller-6222101.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/RedChilliesEnt/

Release date:	Kerala: February 15, 2019 Delhi: March 8, 2019
Director:	Ahammed Khabeer
Cast: Language:	Rajisha Vijayan, Aswathi Menon, Joju George, Sarjano Khalid, Arjun Ashokan Malayalam

There is no genre better suited to the widely celebrated New Age slice-of-life Malayalam cinema than the coming-of-age film. Writer-director Ahammed Khabeer facilitates a well-suited match between the two in June, the story of a young woman from Kottayam called June Sara Joy.

Khabeer’s film, which he has co-written with Libin Varghese and Jeevan Baby Mathew, travels with the girl from her teens to her 20s, from her first day in Class 11 to approximately a decade later, accompanying her through adolescent crushes and adult romance, her relationships with parents and friends, encounters with misogyny and patriarchy, and her pursuit of her dreams.

June makes for an interesting choice of heroine, because there is absolutely nothing remarkable about her or uncommon about her experiences. In fact, this is how she introduces herself to her class on Day 1, as someone with no special talents unlike the rest of them.

In the time we spend with her as viewers, nothing happens that would seem dramatic to the average observer, no tragedy, no great achievement. Yet in her own eyes, of course, her life is packed with drama as we see her shed buckets of tears through a major confrontation with her normal-as-hell parents and other situations.

This perhaps is the point being made by the writers: that what seems routine to the outside world can be trying, stressful, joyful, exhilarating and/or depressing by turns to the person going through what we are just watching. That “normal” and “ordinary” are often a matter of interpretation.

Khabeer’s storytelling style is easygoing, naturalistic and a good fit here. While June could have done with a paring down of the number of songs fitted into the narrative, Lijo Paul’s editing works well for it. We are occasionally taken back and forth in time through the many passages in the protagonist’s life, with Paul making smooth jumps that usually illustrate how she got to a particular point or how she has changed.

Rajisha Vijayan, who debuted to critical acclaim in 2016 with Anuraga Karikkin Vellam, has the task of portraying this blossoming youth. She is most convincing in June’s teenage years when she captures the child-woman’s sprightly demeanour, affectionate nature, immaturity and innate decency in equal measure without over-cutesifying her, and again in the transitional phase during which she confronts gender prejudice with undiluted spirit. Not so convincing is the writing and acting of the oldest June we get to see in the film when she is well into her 20s. This is a young woman who was shown to have matured in preceding scenes, yet her body language remains unchanged and her artificially energetic, child-like behaviour comes across as contrived during her first meeting with a new beau, when she seems like a bit of a regurgitation of the old Manic Pixie Dream Girl cliché.

Her physique and styling too seem unaltered. I have read that Vijayan lost considerable weight to play the teenaged June. The problem is that she looks exactly like the teenaged June right up to the last scene. I do not understand why anyone thought this actor needs help to look younger. The fact is her appearance is so youthful, that she could have done with better makeup and an intelligent stylist to look older for the 20-something June.

This is also a concern with at least two of the actors playing her classmates who look too baby-faced to be women well on their way to 30 in the end. The boys are much more believable as men and, in truth, some of them are less believable as schoolkids.

By this point in the film though, much water has passed under the bridge, and Ms Vijayan under Mr Khabeer’s guidance has drawn us so inexorably into June’s existence, that I, for one, as a viewer, found myself in an indulgent mood.

The Dad quietly pouring her her first drink while the mother is not watching, her first kiss, her first open battle with patriarchy are all handled perfectly naturally without creating a big shindig around them as other contemporary commercial filmmakers do. However, the one folly – and a big folly it is – is the inconsistency in the definition of June’s dream. (Some readers may consider the rest of this paragraph a spoiler) In one crucial, well-executed portion, she is shown avidly fighting for a woman’s right to be more than just a stay-at-home mother whose decisions are made by a dictatorial husband. Not long after, an important character asks her what precisely her own dreams are for herself. She has no answer then, and by the finale, both she and the writers seem to have either lost interest in finding one or have completely forgotten about it. (Spoiler alert ends)

This forgetfulness implies a lack of commitment. Along with the schmaltzy, over-stretched climax that extends way beyond the nostalgia it intends to convey, it subtracts from the overall impact of June.

Still, there is plenty to like in this teens-to-20s saga, not the least reasonsbeing its gentle tone, Rajisha Vijayan’s likeable screen presence, and her comfortable chemistry with her co-stars, especially the lovely Joju George playing her liberal-yet-conservative Dad and Sarjano Khalid who is cast as her first boyfriend.

I would gladly re-watch June just for the joy of revisiting the warmth in the leading lady’s scenes with her indulgent father.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	141 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/june-movie-review-slice-of-life-malayalam-cinema-meets-the-coming-of-age-genre-to-gentle-effect-6228151.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/JuneMovieOfficial/

Release date:	March 8, 2019
Director:	T.V. Chandran
Cast: Language:	Akshara Kishor, Lal, Iniya, Narain, Renji Panicker, Priyanka Nair, Indrans Malayalam

Back in those days, Azhagan tells little Radha, we could not walk on the road.

The child asks: Why?

Because our bodies were filthy from the work we do, the old man replies.

She is unrelenting: Could you not simply wash yourself and walk on the road?

No, he explains, the dirt on our bodies was centuries old and not that easy to wash off.

This simple question-answer session between a middle-class upper-caste girl and a poor old Dalit man encapsulates the essence of Malayalam cinema stalwart T.V. Chandran’s new film. Pengalila does not have the depth, detailing and plotline intricacies of Kammatipaadam, Rajeev Ravi’s spectacular indictment of caste structures released in 2016. Nor does it have the benefit of the almost spiritual cinematography in Jayaraj’s Ottaaland the resultant speaking silences that punctuated the impoverished Kuttapaayi’s relationship with his grandfather in that film. What Pengalila does have are Radha’s beguiling innocence, Akshara Kishor’s loveable presence and Lal.

The bonding between Radha (Kishor) and Azhagan (Lal), she as yet untainted by caste and class considerations, and the child protagonist’s enchanting artlessness are what lend poignance and charm to this otherwise uneven tale of caste and patriarchy in contemporary Kerala.

The story takes off when Radha’s father (Narain) shifts from Mumbai to rural Kerala for work, bringing with him his wife and children. Her mother (Iniya), a former NGO worker, is feeling suffocated in this conservative, slow-paced environment where the husband has persuaded/bullied her to confine herself to the care of their home.

With more spare time on her hands than she would like, and a spouse who taunts her for not earning money even as he bars her from doing so, the young woman encourages Radha to roam unfettered with her thoughts.

It is here that the child befriends Azhagan, a sociable elderly chap who rakes muck in the fields and on the roads to earn his living. Through her conversations with him, Radha begins to understand casteism. Through her observations of her mother’s frustrations and her parents’ troubled relationship, she begins to understand patriarchy.

Considering that Pengalila comes to us from award-winning director T.V. Chandran (Ponthan Mada, Paadam Onnu: Oru Vilapam), its patchy quality is surprising. The multiple flashbacks to Azhagan’s past that include anti-establishment protests dating from the 1940s look like something out of an average high-school stage production. They are superfluous anyway, and come across as a pointed effort to convey an impression of scale. So does the occasional self-indulgent shot that lingers longer than it needs to without making a point.

Just as bad, all the characters other than the main four, but most especially Azhagan’s wife and a newly married woman in despair, are superficially written. And it does not help that some satellite parts have been given to disinterested extras, or that the great Indrans is wasted in a barely there, awkwardly handled role.

Chandran even resorts to an amateurish graphic to illustrate how Kerala’s Dalits greened this land, which was then grabbed from them.

That map of the state may, at best, have worked in A Child’s Introduction to Oppressive Social Systems in a junior school.

These disappointing elements in Pengalila are an exasperating distraction from what lies at its core: a very small child’s emerging awareness of the harsh realities she was born into. It is, after all, a joy to hear the girl’s guileless, unwittingly sharp questions to the ever-patient Azhagan and to her dynamic, fiercely independent mother who is straining at a leash forced on her by a regressive husband.

While the focus is on them, the film is a rewarding experience. Akshara Kishor is aptly chosen to portray Radha’s wide-eyed innocence, while Lal plays Azhagan with equal parts zest and grace. They are an endearing twosome and make Pengalila, for all its follies, a film worth watching.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	111 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/pengalila-movie-review-a-child-protagonists-guilelessness-lends-poignance-to-an-uneven-tale-of-caste-and-patriarchy-6231811.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9905462/

Ill-informed, dishonest, though perhaps well-meant, Period.End of Sentence’s win reflects poorly on the Oscars

Since Period.End of Sentence’s Oscar win last week for Best Documentary (Short Subject), a steady stream of laudatory articles and congratulatory interviews of its American director Rayka Zehtabchi have appeared on the Net. The Indian news media in particular has been flooded with almost universally and unequivocally positive reviews and reports celebrating “Oscars’ India connection” since Guneet Monga’s Mumbai-based Sikhya Entertainment is one of the film’s producers.

Monga has, among other things, been at the forefront of what some might call the Hindi New Wave of the past half decade or so. She has been backing Bollywood indies of the sort that usually struggle to make it to mainstream theatres (Lunchbox and Masaan among them), so if any behind-the-scenes cinematic force deserves the limelight – international or domestic – it is she. However, admiration for her track record and even the movie-worthy, charming story of how Period.End of Sentence. was kicked off by an enterprising teacher and students at Oakwood School, California, should not divert attention from this unfortunate point: that though it may well have been started with good intentions, it has ended up a confusing, poorly researched and, sadly, even dishonest film.

Period.End of Sentence.– a Netflix original and currently streaming on the platform – is a 26 minute documentary set in a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Hapur district, 60 km outside Delhi. It focuses on poor menstrual hygiene and ignorance about periods in this rural community, told through the story of how attitudes change when a low-cost sanitary napkin making machine (purchased from funds raised by the Oakwood students) is installed locally to enable women of the place to manufacture pads themselves and become entrepreneurs in the field. That machine is the invention of Coimbatore resident Arunachalam Muruganantham, who was the subject of Amit Virmani’s 2013 documentary feature Menstrual Man and the inspiration for the Bollywood film Padman (2018) starring Akshay Kumar.

At a time when the Sabarimala imbroglio has put the national media spotlight firmly on the stigmatisation of menstruation in various ways in Indian culture, Period.End of Sentence. has the power to further mainstream that crucial conversation. Besides, to be fair to Zehtabchi and to Melissa Berton, the American teacher whose initiative led to the making of this film, they have both been at pains to explain to the Western news media that the stigma around periods is not just a problem of financially constrained countries like India. In an interview to awardsdaily.comlast month, Berton said: “It’s definitely an issue in the US as well. They put free pads in a lower socio-economic area recently in New York and attendance went up. It’s not just a developing country issue.” Likewise, Zehtabchi told Glamour: “After they see the film, I hope people understand this period stigma doesn’t just affect those in India. We experience it in the United States and in other cultures as well.” The other side of this coin though is that a similarly ill-researched film set in the United States is unlikely to have escaped scrutiny in the way Period.End of Sentence. has.

For those of us who are not experts on this subject, the first warning sign of trouble should come from the mixed signals Period sends out. Almost half the film is devoted to introducing viewers to woman after woman, girl after girl in Hapur who freezes, giggles or suffers excruciating shyness when asked about periods. Throughout this segment, the effort is to convince us that women here do not know of sanitary napkins, that the few who do are too diffident to buy them, and that they all opt for makeshift cloth pads made from rags.

Yet when the central figures of Zehtabchi’s documentary – the charismatic aspiring policewoman Sneha among them – start peddling the pads they have made under the brand name Fly with Muruganantham’s machine, they are shown devoting most of their time to convincing potential customers that Fly is better despite being cheaper than other sanitary napkins in the market. This is odd, because if the women they are targeting have never before used sanitary napkins, as we have been told by the film until then, then they would not know or care, at least not at first, about what else is available on shop shelves.

Logically speaking, Fly’s primary challenge should have been to convince Hapur’s women to switch from cloth pads to sanitary napkins in the first place, but at no point do we see Sneha & Co doing that. In fact, their brief chats with potential buyers shown on screen in the second half suggest that most of these women do indeed know of sanitary napkins and many are perhaps using them. The question that follows then is why the film would initially try to convince us otherwise.

Could it be that poor village women in the far off ‘Orient’ who have zero awareness about sanitary napkins are more exotic and therefore make for more colourful cinema than poor village women in the far off ‘Orient’ who already use sanitary napkins and only need to be convinced to switch from one brand to another?

Or could it be that tarring all these women with one brush is easier thanexplaining the heterogeneity in this Indian village in which co-exist women who are aware of sanitary napkins and those who are not, women who use sanitary napkins and those who do not, women who use unhygienic alternatives and those who use clean cloth?

Or, could the confusion in Period.End of Sentence.simply be the result of lazy research?

The only statistic available in the film comes from Muruganantham who confidently claims that “less than 10%” of Indian women use sanitary napkins. He does not cite the source of this information, but a basic Google search should have told Zehtabchi that it is questionable.

In fact, this figure is one of many issues in Period.End of Sentence.– including environmental concerns – red-flagged in an exhaustive blog published by the Karnataka-based NGO Mythri Speaks immediately after Zehtabchi collected her Oscar trophy last week.

Muruganantham himself has contradicted the number on other platforms. In a TED Talk in Bangalore earlier this decade, he claimed that only 2% of Indian women use sanitary pads. His company Jayaashree Industries’ website too at present says that just 2% of Indian women use sanitary pads, though it is unclear from the language of the site whether it is referring to women across India or only rural women. Here too, the source is not given. Another part of the website does however refer to a report by the market research group AC Nielsen stating that “88% of women in India are driven to use ashes, newspapers, sand husks and dried leaves during their periods”. What the website does not reveal is that this Nielsen study, though widely quoted in the media has come in for strong criticism for its limited scope among other reasons.

The far more credible, pan-India National Family Health Survey (NFHS) of 2015-16 – easily accessible on the Internet and also widely quoted in the media – reveals that 48.2% of rural women and 77.5% of urban women in the 15-24 age group use what NFHS describes as “a hygienic method” of menstrual protection (read: “locally prepared napkins, sanitary napkins, and tampons”). Those using sanitary napkins in particular amount to 41.8% of this demographic.

According to NFHS, the all-India figure for those using a hygienic method of menstrual protection in this age group is approximately 58%. These statistics, though far less sensational than the sole figure given in Zehtabchi’s documentary, are certainly shocking and unacceptable. It is not this article’s contention that India has any reason to be proud of the fact that 42% of the country’s young women use unhygienic methods of menstrual protection. The question mark over Period.End of Sentence. arises entirely because it misrepresents facts.

There is enough drama in the truth, but sadly, it appears that Zehtabchi and her team wanted more. Towards this end, they have gone beyond playing fast and loose with stats.

In one of the film’s most memorable passages, a teacher in a school in Hapur is shown pestering her female students to explain the meaning of periods for the benefit of the camera before a packed classroom filled with boys and girls. One child in particular becomes the focus of everyone’s attention as she struggles to speak, nearly paralysed as she is by a debilitating shyness.

While this exploitative scene is used to illustrate the average rural Indian woman’s fear of discussing periods, it should make us wonder how many girls of the same age even in urban India or Zehtabchi’s home country, the US, would be particularly delighted to respond to an insensitive interrogator in such a public situation about a biological phenomenon they are just getting used to in their own lives. That this particular girl belongs to a conservative society makes the film’s approach even more problematic.

Child rights activists in India and abroad will hopefully also take note of Zehtabchi’s own admission about the unethical manner in which she shot that scene. In an interview to documentary.org, quoted in Mythri Speaks’ blog, Zehtabchi says: “...we walked into a co-ed classroom, unannounced, in India. The teacher asked the 15-year-old students if anyone could tell her what menstruation was. And there’s a shot in the film of a young girl who’s called upon, and she stands up completely petrified. In the film, there is about 30 seconds where she literally cannot say a word. In real life we got about three minutes of footage of her where it seemed like she was going to faint…”

Read that again. She shot interviews of minors. Without their prior consent. And the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave her an Oscar. Unarguably the most sought-after film award in the world.

The Oscar win for Period.End of Sentence. will no doubt play a part in encouraging more conversations, and more open conversations, about menstruation in India and the rest of the world. This, however, is no excuse for the means adopted by the film to achieve its goal. The end cannot justify untruths and insensitivity. Period.

FOOTNOTE:

The subtitles of Period.End of Sentence. are curious. It is not clear from the credits whether the subs were given by the production team or Netflix or another party. Whatever be the case, the terribly politically incorrect analogies used by an affable elderly woman called Shabana to market Fly pads in Hapur have been mistranslated. Shabana, who is one of the key characters in Period, compares Fly to a “susheel bahu” (good-natured daughter-in-law) and an unnamed rival brand to a “sundar bahu” (good-looking daughter-in-law), and later equates Fly with an ugly (“badsoorat”), black (“kaala”) man who is competent. The subtitles merely use the words “beauty” and “quality” to convey her meaning, although the literal translation would have also served the purpose. It is obvious from the tone of Period that it wants viewers to like the likes of Sneha and Shabana whose lives this project claims to have transformed, and while it is possible that there was no political calculation behind the writing of the subtitles, the departure from accuracy in the subs here alone suggests an attempt to camouflage evidence of Shabana’s biases at least from liberal viewers in the West. The point being missed here is that women have a right to their rights, to education and to health whether they are nice people or not.

The subtitles, of course, are the least of Period’s problem areas.

This article has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/period-end-of-sentences-win-reflects-poorly-on-the-oscars-it-is-ill-informed-dishonest-though-perhaps-well-meant-6206141.html

Poster courtesy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Period._End_of_Sentence.

Release date:	Kerala: March 1, 2019 Delhi: March 8, 2019
Director:	Snehajith
Cast: Language:	Suraj Venjaramoodu, Madhupal, Sunil Sukhada Malayalam

When the closing credits of a film spell “choreography” as “corriography”, it does not require much imagination to guess what went before. For evidence of Daivam Sakshi’s extreme amateurishness, look no further than that misspelling.

To say that director Snehajith’s film resembles something a kindergarten kid might roll out would be to insult kindergarten kids. Daivam Sakshi is not just a juvenile sermon on Hindu-Muslim amity that switches midway to Muslim stereotyping, the production quality is C-grade and it features the most insistent, meaningless, irritating background score I have heard in a Malayalam film in recent times.

The point then is, what is Suraj Venjaramoodu doing in this low-brow project?

This is not a casual question. Too often we let character artistes off lightly for participating in rubbish, with the excuse that everyone has a home to run, loans to repay and so on. Sorry, that excuse should not cut ice here because Venjaramoodu, who seems to be in every second Malayalam film being made these days, sometimes in small roles and occasionally playing the lead, is clearly not short of work.

When the star of Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum appears on the poster of any film, he guarantees it attention. With great power, great respect from the audience and great critical acclaim comes great responsibility, Sir. Apologies therefore for not excusing you for lending your name to this rag called Daivam Sakshi.

Venjaramoodu here plays an autorickshaw driver called Sethu, a kind Hindu man whose Muslim friend Iqbal runs a shop selling pooja materials to devotees visiting the temple across the road. Iqbal’s choice of business raises eyebrows among conservatives in both communities, a response that seems to surprise the gentleman and his wife. Their naivete is part of the film’s effort, which lasts throughout the first half, to build up Iqbal as the golden-hearted stereotype of a minority community member seen in cinemas across the world.

Positive stereotyping is perhaps the most dangerous form of othering because it is deceptive, and in this case is a set-up for the rest of Daivam Sakshi that throws up that other Muslim stereotype, the currently prevalent one of the Muslim as a (potential) terrorist.

That all this comes in a Malayalam venture is surprising and disappointing, because one of the great things about contemporary Malayalam cinema is the extent of representation of religious minorities in stories. Minority community members are not treated as curios by Mollywood, but as regular people – good, bad, beautiful and ugly.

The team of Daivam Sakshi is clearly incapable of that kind of finesse, intelligence and open-mindedness.

The film’s ‘story’ is nothing but a potpourri of plot points and clichés, it is abysmal in every technical department, and the editing is over-enthusiastic to the point of being laughable (just stop those pointless wipes, please).

The audio quality of Daivam Sakshi is so bad, it is shocking that mainstream theatres have actually given this film a platform. And then there is that poorly shot, terribly lit song and dance sequence in a nightclub that tries very hard to ape Entammede jimiki kamal (the superhit from Velipadinte Pusthakam) to embarrassing effect.

I remember once writing in a review that Kerala is so beautiful, you could place a camera at any random spot and come up with spectacular frames. I was wrong. Daivam Sakshi has zeroed in on perhaps the only cinematographer in existence who could make even God’s Own Country look unremarkable.

This is not “cinema”, this is nothingness. Why did you agree to be a part of such nonsense, Mr Venjaramoodu?

Rating (out of five stars): -10

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	103 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/daivam-sakshi-movie-review-suraj-venjaramoodu-lends-his-name-to-amateurish-stereotyping-disguised-as-communal-amity-6243491.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/daivamsakshiofficial/

Release date:	March 15, 2019
Director:	Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra
Cast: Language:	Om Kanojiya, Anjali Patil, Prasad Sawant, Adarsh Bharti, Niteesh Wadhwa, Syna Anand, Makarand Deshpande, Rasika Agashe, Atul Kulkarni Hindi

An earnest child travelling to the seat of power in Delhi to get justice for a loved one is a theme visited more than once by Hindi cinema over the years, though perhaps most famously in the 1957 film Ab Dilli Dur Nahin. The problem of open defecation in India too has captured the imagination of Hindi film makers in recent years. The Akshay Kumar-starrer Toilet: Ek Prem Katha created a box-office storm in 2017, and in 2018 came the lesser known Halkaa by director Nila Madhab Panda, about a child slumdweller on the outskirts of Delhi determined to have a toilet in his home.

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Mere Pyare Prime Minister (MPPM) tells the story of a child in Mumbai whose campaign for a toilet in his slum begins when he realises the danger his mother faces while relieving herself in darkened public places since there is no toilet available to her. Toilet: Ek Prem Katha was about women’s dignity, Halkaa was about human dignity at large, MPPM is about women’s safety. The subject is significant and a discussion on it essential, but a film has to be more than the issues it hopes to raise, and this one suffers in the storytelling and casting departments.

Firstly, it takes just too long to get to the point where little Kanhaiya a.k.a. Kannu discovers his cause. The narrative picks up from then on, but the writing of the protagonist is not particularly novel or deep, and the actor himself does not manage to give the character an edge.

Young Om Kanojiya who plays Kannu is not as dynamic as the many excellent child artistes Bollywood has discovered in the past decade nor quite as talented. I found myself far more drawn to Prasad Sawant and Adarsh Bharti, who play his sharp, witty friends Nirala and Ringtone respectively – if given better fleshed out roles, these two boys have the potential to match up even to the likes of Hetal Gada and Krrish Chhabria who blazed across the screen in Nagesh Kukunoor’s Dhanak in 2016, the ensemble cast of Chillar Party and Harsh Mayar from I Am Kalam.

The conversations between Kannu, Nirala and Ringtone are often sweet and funny, but there are not enough of these in the film to up its energy levels.

The scene-stealer among the children in MPPM is a girl who gets the least screen time of the lot. Syna Anand who plays Kannu’s buddy Mangla is a riot in that brief passage when she confesses to his mother and hers that she knows where Kannu has disappeared. That scene is the high point of MPPM both in terms of writing and acting. There is too little of Ms Anand, however, in the film.

The two main adults are far better conceived than the child protagonist. Kannu’s mother Sargam (the lovely Anjali Patil from Newton) and her relationship graph with her friend Pappu (Niteesh Wadhwa) are more captivating than anything else in MPPM. She has been written with sensitivity and care, he with understanding, and both actors deliver quietly effective performances. There is also a small supporting character called Rabiya, played by Rasika Agashe, who left me keen to see more of her.

It feels as if the writers – Manoj Mairta, Hussain Dalal and Mehra himself – are less comfortable with little ones than they are with grown-ups, which is obviously a big handicap in a film with a child at the centre of the action. This is perhaps why the trio stretch the definition of cuteness and appear to be trying too hard too often to elicit awwws from the audience, never more so than in that scene before the Gateway of India where the children’s begging and getting inappropriately physical with passers by are treated with an “oh look how chweet they are” tone. (What follows at a police station, on the other hand, is far more relatable and fun.)

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra has an uneven filmography. Bhaag Milkha Bhaag was thoroughly enjoyable, Akswas deeply problematic, but for me at least he will always remain the man who gave us the gut-wrenching Rang De Basanti. Mehra is not the only one not living up to expectations with Mere Pyare Prime Minister. The music by Shankar Ehsaan Loy is as inconsistent as the film itself: Bajaa bajaa bajaa dhol bajaa re is perky and conjures up nostalgia for a musical era gone by with its use of C. Ramachandra’s charming Are ja re hat natkhat from the 1959 classic Navrang, but the title track is annoying. Gulzar’s lyrics are nice but not memorable. A word here though for DoP Pawel Dyllus who has the challenging task of showing various characters doing potty or surrounded by potty in authentic locations, yet manages to make the point each time without being intentionally repulsive.

Mere Pyare Prime Minister no doubt means well. The fact that so many Indians still do not have toilets in 2019 is a matter of national shame, and it is a relief to see a mainstream Hindi film maker zeroing in on the risk that poor women take every day with the very basic, very human act of defecation. The most commendable aspect of the screenplay is that it does not consign a woman survivor of sexual violence to eternal mournful misery, nor turn her into Hindi filmdom’s populist rape-survivor-turned-vengeful-vigilante stereotype (Zakhmi Aurat) or find a relative to take on that role (Kaabil, Mom), allowing her instead to try to move on with her life with laughter, her earlier verve and an attempt at normalcy. This is a socially important position to take, which is what makes it even more unfortunate that the overall treatment and the casting of the leading little man areinadequate.

Despite its heartwarming intentions, liberal soul and some interesting actors, Mere Pyare Prime Minister is an underwhelming experience.

Rating (out of five stars): **

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	103 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/mere-pyare-prime-minister-movie-review-rakeysh-omprakash-mehras-toilet-katha-is-a-mix-of-heartening-intent-jagged-treatment-6256381.html

Poster courtesy:

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

Release date:	March 15, 2019
Director:	Tigmanshu Dhulia
Cast: Language:	Ali Fazal, Shraddha Srinath, Reecha Sinha, Ashutosh Rana, Rajeev Gupta, Deepraj Rana, Sikander Kher, Sanjay Mishra Hindi

Love across social barriers and parental opposition is a theme as old as the hills in Bollywood. Instead of merely revisiting it though, as generations before him have done, writer-director Tigmanshu Dhulia chooses to use it as a hook to pay tribute to his beloved Bollywood and to Allahabad. It is a challenging task since, sometimes, there is only a fine line between recycling and an ode. In his hands though, for the most part that line is thick, firmly drawn and distinctive, with immensely entertaining results.

Dhulia (Haasil, the Saheb Biwi Aur Gangsterseries, Paan Singh Tomar, Raag Desh) and his co-writer Kamal Pandey place Milan Talkies’ heroine in a conservative Brahmin clan in the pilgrim city. Her fiance is from an educated family, so Maithili a.k.a. Janak Kumari (Shraddha Srinath) is required to pass her college exams before the marriage can take place. Towards this end, her uncle (Rajeev Gupta) hires the resourceful, morally ambiguous Aniruddh Sharma a.k.a. Annu (Ali Fazal) to help her cheat her way to success.

When he is not illegally sourcing university exam papers for the student populace, Annu is preparing to be a Bollywood director by making a film with his limited resources and local talent. The two youngsters meet, sparks fly, and what follows is love, rebellion and mayhem.

The film’s title goes beyond being just a reference to a theatre the couple frequent for their meetings away from prying eyes. Every word, line and shot in Milan Talkies is a bow to classic Hindi cinema, its everlasting beauty and even its clichés. Mughal-e-Azam gets pride of place in the narrative, in a goosebump-inducing scene that could draw a tear from the eye of a committed cineaste. Elsewhere, Sanjay Mishra’s character stands framed by a window with a poster of Pakeezah behind him, as he leans down on the sill and looks in on Maithili who is seated languidly in the adjoining room.

DoP Hari Vedantam’s work shows a passion for Bollywood that parallels Dhulia’s obvious love for it. The Holi song once mandatory in Hindi films, the chase across rail tracks, the escape on a train – they all find a spot here, without trivialising this film industry and, for the most part, without making light of the disturbing social scenario on which Milan Talkiestrains its spotlight.

Contemporary Hindi filmmakers seem by turns indifferent to caste, ignorant of it or afraid of open discussions about it, as evidenced most recently by Dhadak, the tepid Hindi remake of the Marathi blockbuster Sairat. Dhulia, however, shows no fear in highlighting the self-defeating egotistical nature of brahminical patriarchy. Here though, his apparent keenness to pay obeisance to Hindi cinema gets the better of him briefly as the plot of Milan Talkies suddenly and uncharacteristically echoes the romanticisation of benevolent patriarchy so famously done by Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ) in 1995.

(Spoiler alert) The difference between the two films lies in the fact that “Ja Simran, ja jee le apni zindagi” (Go live your life, Simran) was the culmination of a thread running right through the deeply regressive though beautifully packaged DDLJ, which was from start to finish the story of a man determined not to marry the woman he loves without her father’s permission, whereas Milan Talkies is until that point and even after it an all-out snub to such nonsensical traditionalism. The scene in which Annu unexpectedly becomes intent on Maithili’s “gharwaalon ki marzi" (her family’s consent) is a complete break for his character and for the film itself which had, until then, given her agency in the most trying circumstances. (Spoiler alert ends)

The return to no-holds-barred defiance right after that scene hopefully means that that moment of inconsistency in the script was more a misstep on the part of the writers rather than a sign of lack of commitment to non-conformism. Either way, it does manage to subtract from the resonance of the song that follows shortly, written by the brilliant Amitabh Bhattacharya: “Dhat teri teri zamaana / humko tthenga fikar / apna bheja hai tamancha / dil hai pressure cooker.” (In short: To hell with you, society / we care a fig about you.)

Still, the energy, insightfulness and sense of humour in everything that came before it is so impactful that three-quarters of the battle has already been won by then. (There is a needless comment on mardaangiin another part of the film, which again is incongruous in the face of its overall gender politics.)

Dhulia and Pandey manage to bring Allahabad alive in Milan Talkies with affection, a funny bone and yet no ambiguity about its failings. The music by Rana Mazumder and Akriti Kakar is brimming with infectious verve, that is perfectly balanced out with the challenges in Maithili's situationin particular. This is epitomised by the tension Dhulia manages to whip up around her in a world where even the simple act of watching a film could be rife with danger for a young woman, despite which there are admirable individuals who manage to break out.

Holding this enterprise together along with the director are his top-notch cast. Each one is in spiffing form but a special mention must be made of Dhulia himself whose ease with comedy as he plays Annu’s father in Milan Talkies is a reminder of how undervalued he is as an actor.

Ali Fazal is by now an old hand, equally undervalued by Bollywood despite his engaging personality and acting capabilities.

Debutant Shraddha Srinath who plays Maithili is a find. Her good looks are a bonus, but what truly makes Maithili work is the manner in which she slips into the character’s tricky mix of combustibility and sweetness without allowing the effort to show.

Maithili is one of Goddess Sita’s names. Mythology tested this woman unjustly and in ways that are beyond the endurance of any normal human being. In Dhulia’s Allahabad in the 2010s, she is still being forced to walk through fire simply for the right to live a normal life and be happy. Milan Talkies is lots of fun, but there is so much more to it than meets the eye.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	141 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/milan-talkies-movie-review-tigmanshu-dhulia-recasts-ddlj-as-a-tribute-to-bollywood-and-social-rebellion-6272601.html

Poster courtesy:

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

Release date:	March 21, 2019
Director:	Anurag Singh
Cast: Language:	Akshay Kumar, Suvinder Vicky, Vansh Bharadwaj, Parineeti Chopra Hindiwith some Punjabi

WARNING FOR PARENTS: This is an extremely violent film filled with Game of Thrones-grade bloodshed, beheadings and impalements. It is curious that the Central Board of Film Certification, which has issued A (Adults-only) ratings for far less gore and the use of swear words in recent years, found Kesari fit for a relatively mild UA. In the Indian system, UA stands for “unrestricted public exhibition subject to parental guidance for children below the age of 12”. For some perspective, please note that Udta Punjab was rated A for its abundance of expletives, the Rani Mukerji-starrer Mardaani was rated A for colourful language and violence that is tame compared to what we see in Kesari which has got a UA despite heads being chopped off, an eye being mutilated in close up and, among a zillion instances of bloodletting, a clear, lingering shot of a dead Sikh soldier’s body pierced by multiple swords that have been driven into the ground to hold him up almost horizontally. (Warning ends)

Imagine a real-life battle in which a band of 21 soldiers defended a fort against about 10,000 opponents and managed to inflict heavy casualties on the enemy. This, according to records, is what happened at the Battle of Saragarhi in 1897 in which men of the British Indian Army’s 36th Sikh Regiment warded off Pathan troops for several hours till their last breath at a small British outpost that falls in modern-day Pakistan.

There is enough drama in the truth to merit a nail-biting, breath-stopping film. The truth is not enough for too many filmmakers though.

So, in the hands of writer-director Anurag Singh – creator of Punjabi blockbusters making his Bollywood debut here – Saragarhi gets embellished and twisted to please the communities it means to pander to and play along with the current dominant national discourse.

There can be no doubt about the bravery and skills of the 36th Sikh Regiment, but co-writers Girish Kohli and Singh seem to consider it an inconvenience that these men were, after all, fighting for the British Empire. In their bid to turn the 36th Sikhs into a cause that viewers of Independent India could root for, Kohli and Singh divert attention from Her Majesty and write conversations into the screenplay that position Saragarhi as a campaign by brave Sikhs for their qaum and for India’s azaadi.

Then, to cash in on the prevailing nationalist frenzy steeped in Islamophobia, they present the Pathans with an absolute lack of nuance as hordes of bloodthirsty, regressive, cowardly, unethical barbarians fighting a jihad in Allah’s name against a civilised, liberal, gutsy, noble force.

When Havildar Ishar Singh (Akshay Kumar), head of the 36th Sikh Regiment at Saragarhi, opens his mouth and roars, the Pathans, though armed to the teeth, cower before him as the Pakistan Army did nearly two decades back when Sunny Deol hollered at them and threatened them with a handpump he had uprooted with his bare hands. Like old-style Hindi film villains, the Pathans are often stupid to boot and in at least one scene are shown assaulting a solitary Sikh one by one instead of in unison. If this film’s version of events is to be believed, the Pathans’ only strength lay in their numbers and their utter amorality.

Kesari takes its time to get to the battle, spending its somewhat slow-paced first half establishing Ishar’s unwillingness to accept orders from British seniors that go against his principles, acquainting us with his wife (Parineeti Chopra) through a long flashback and fantasy sequences in which he holds imaginary conversations with her, and building up the bond between him and the men newly under his command at Saragarhi. This segment is equal parts funny, mushy to cringe-worthy levels and trite.

The momentum picks up post-interval as does the tension, despite a Sikh soldier breaking into song at a crucial moment in the battle. But as much as the combat is executed skilfully and is designed to set pulses racing, the clichéd, populist portrayal of the Pathans, the Sikhs and vintage Bollywood heroism robs Kesari of all finesse and intelligence.

Far from being a war drama based on actual events, it then becomes just another Die Hard in which the ever-invincible Bruce Willis is replaced by the ever-invincible Akshay Kumar. When an explosion occurs in the midst of tents, sending them up in flames and consuming everyone within touching distance, only Akshay a.k.a. Ishar emerges unscathed. The Pathans are so intimidated by him that even when he is completely surrounded, it takes them time to attack him all at one go. As it happens, Ishar is also a saint.

The manner in which Kesari stereotypes the Muslim Pathans – the marauding mob, the evil mullah, the wily and campish sniper – fits the narrative being pushed by the present Indian establishment. (And for the benefit of discerning viewers who might object, two ‘good’ Muslims are thrown into the mixfor good measure.) While this aspect of the film merits a discussion considering the wave of Islamophobia sweeping across today’s world, it is equally important to focus on the positive othering of Sikhs.

Bollywood categorises Sikhs into two clear-cut groups: the undiluted boisterous buffoon and the undiluted braveheart. Kesari deals in the latter. The positive stereotyping of marginalised and minority communities tends to lull liberals and members of those communities into complacence, but needs to be viewed with concern for what it is: a sugar-coated form of othering, a manifestation of the filmmaker’s inability to see that community as “one of us” or, at worst, a mask for prejudice. If you find your heart warming up to the routine pedestalising of Sikhs in Hindi films, remember that pre-2000 Hindi cinema was marked by a positive stereotyping of Muslims, with the golden-hearted, all-sacrificing Muslim being a regular in stories back then. What did that trope seek to hide?

Blanket statements and blanket characterisations of communities in films should always give us pause.

To say none of this matters if a film is entertaining amounts to denying the power of cinema. Yes, Akshay’s natural charisma does come through in Kesari when he is not over-acting. Yes, the men under his command are well cast, with Suvinder Vicky and Vansh Bharadwajparticularly making a mark as the supportive Lal Singh and the rebellious Chanda Singh respectively. Yes, the cinematography by Anshul Chobey is impressive and the battle scenes are more technically polished than the recent Manikarnika. And yes, the passing reference to caste discrimination among Sikhs is a greater acknowledgement of caste than we are used to from Bollywood. But none of this should distract us from the sad reality that Kesari’s makers do not have faith in the very story they claim to tell.

Early in Kesari, a British officer taunts Ishar Singh – the soil of Hindustan births only cowards, he says. His contempt sparks off a rage in Ishar and a desire to demonstrate that Indians are valiant. He spouts a line around this time about how he is tired of the enslavement of his people, first by Mughals and now by the British. This entire portion is written to indicate that the 36th Sikh Regiment fought at Saragarhi for their own self-respect and, in the long run,India’s freedom, not because they were paid to do so nor out of loyalty to Her Majesty the Queen of England. What a perfect example of mindless cinematic patriotism – it seems not to have occurred to the writers, that at the end of the day, what their film is saying is that Ishar’s goal was to prove himself to his white master.

Irrespective of what the 36th Sikhs’ actual motivations were, obviously theirs was a historic last stand worthy of a film. When an honest army procedural could have had an impact, the team of Kesari chose instead to be a barely disguised propaganda vehicle and to chronicle this remarkable episode with self-defeating twists. A spot of exaggeration here and there could of course be explained away as cinematic licence, even the loudness and initial tempo could have been excused, but this goes way beyond that. It is as if Team Kesariwere dissatisfied with the truth about the 36th Sikh Regiment who, ironically, they seek here to lionise.

Rating (out of five stars): **

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	150 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/kesari-movie-review-akshay-kumar-does-a-sunny-deol-in-a-gadar-style-drama-with-gusto-and-zero-nuance-6302171.html

Poster courtesy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kesari_(film)

Release date:	March 28, 2019
Director:	Prithviraj Sukumaran
Cast: Language:	Mohanlal, Manju Warrier, Vivek Oberoi, Prithviraj Sukumaran, Tovino Thomas, Indrajith Sukumaran, Kalabhavan Shajohn, Saniya Iyappan, Nyla Usha, Baiju, Saikumar, Shakti Kapoor Malayalam

In a scene typifying the overall tone of Lucifer, Stephen Nedumpally stands facing an armed villain. The bad guy has a gun pointed right at Stephen’s forehead, while a bunch of others look on. Several slow mo shots, flying fists and mundus later, the hero has snatched the weapon, killed at least half a dozen men and with his bare hands grievously injured the rest of his foes who came at him not all together but in batchesfor his convenience as commercial Indian cinema’s satellite villains tend to do.

Stephen, it dawns on his arch enemy then, is no ordinary man. He is, after all, played by megastar Mohanlal, he who is deserving of a smashing entrance, a scaled-up soundscape and wise lines.

Devotion to the Malayalam cinema legend is not Lucifer’s only weakness. The film is equally hampered by a poor screenplay that fails to take its unusual premise forward and by pretensions to a gigantic scale that end up miring the entire narrative in clichés.

As far as disappointments go, this one is a double whammy. Writer Murali Gopy most recently demonstrated his understanding of Kerala politics through Kammara Sambhavam (even if it unfortunately degenerated into a propaganda vehicle for Dileep). In Lucifer which is set against the backdrop of politics in the state, though he begins and ends with an interesting take on the nature of evil, he flounders in between as the goal appears to become the creation of a grand epic rather than a soul-searching examination of the subject through relatable characters.

As if that is not enough of a let-down, there is the fact that actor Prithviraj Sukumaran makes his directorial debut with Lucifer. Here is another one of his works that does not match the worldview and intelligence he reveals in his interviews.

The story of Lucifer kicks off with the death of the veteran Kerala leader P.K. Ramadas, also known as PKR, resulting in a power struggle in his party and family. Among the many players in this game are Stephen who is the old man’s foster child, PKR’s daughter Priyadarshini (Manju Warrier), son-in-law Bimal Nair a.k.a. Bobby (Vivek Oberoi) and son Jathin (Tovino Thomas). In the background hovers a gun-toting mercenary called Zaid Masood (Prithviraj himself) and a video blogger played by Indrajith Sukumaran.

Unless the director simply wanted to prove that he has the clout to rope in such a stellar assembly, the casting is inexplicable. Why would you gather some of Malayalam cinema’s biggest stars across generations, fine actors to boot, and then waste most of them? Tovino Thomas gets an introductory shot that is worthy of a star and a charming scene at a political rally, beyond which he has little else to do. Prithviraj’s job is to occasionally appear, look intimidating and disappear.

The most criminal under-use of talent is reserved for Manju Warrier whose primary task is to hang around. As it is, there are hardly any women in Lucifer, even in crowd scenes. Those that are there are all shadows on the margins of the men’s lives – never taking any initiative, but instead existing solely to be manipulated, abused, led, guided and/or saved by the men.

The biggest mystery is why Prithviraj hauled Vivek Oberoi all the way from Bollywood for this role. Oberoi has barely lived up to the promise he showed in Ram Gopal Varma’s acclaimed Company in 2002. He brings nothing to the only role in Luciferother than Stephen Nedumpally that has been written with any degree of care. This casting decision comes across as part of a misinformed attempt to give Lucifer resonance in the north, towards which end even Shakti Kapoor – long forgotten by Bollywood – has been given a cameo, a Hindi ‘item’ number is added to the mix, and the end credits are accompanied by another Hindi song. Considering Prithviraj’s stature in Mollywood, one of India’s most respected film industries, the evident effort to attract attention elsewhere is quite embarrassing.

(Spoiler alert) An episode of sexual abuse in Lucifer called for just a little bit more courage on the part of the writer who makes the perpetrator a stepfather rather than a biological father, (spoiler alert ends) but the fleeting reference to communal divides on the political landscape and the style makeover given to a political aspirant are all indicators of how much more this film could have been if the screenplay had stayed focused and probed deep, if the director had not been so anxious to impress.

Lost in a cloud of Mohanlal-ness, pomposity, ineffectual characterisation and pointless extreme close-ups (including one very pronounced, rather irritating shot of Lalettan’s hand), are a luscious-looking Kerala and a fascinating premise.

Right at the start, the activist blogger Govardhan equates Stephen Nedumpally with Hinduism’s Mahiravana, Iblis from Islamic mythology and Christianity’s Lucifer from whom the title comes.

Stephen himself says at one point that the greatest fraud perpetrated on the public has been the claim that politics is a battle between good and evil though it is, in his view, the greater evil versus the lesser evil.

The two lines are tied in by repeated parallels drawn between Stephen and Lucifer, the fallen angel of Christian mythology, the one who rebelled against God, who in this film’s universe is refashioned and repositioned as a “necessary evil”.

There is so much that could have been done with this intriguingly frank and realistic theory on the essentialness of evil – in politics and for human survival at large. What we get instead is Lucifer’s transparent ambition that overwhelms everything else in this enterprise.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	174 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/lucifer-movie-review-prithviraj-dwarfs-a-neat-premise-with-mohanlal-and-pretensions-to-a-gigantic-scale-6346701.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/LuciferOfficialMovie/

Release date:	March 29, 2019
Director:	Nitin Kakkar
Cast: Language:	Pranutan Bahl, Zaheer Iqbal, Mir Mohammed Mehroos, Mir Sarwar, Mozim Bhat, Mir Mohammed Zayan, Soliha Maqbool, Baba Hatim, Adiba Bhat, Hafsa Ashraf Katoo, Madikha Parvez Ratta, Bareen Faheem, Ahmed Rigoo, Neelofer, Hemant Kher Hindi with Kashmiri

Sometimes sweet simplicity is all it takes.

Director Nitin Kakkar’s Notebook is set largely on a pristine lake in Jammu and Kashmir where an ex-Armyman gives a new career a shot, taking to teaching Kashmiri kids in a remote island school. Kabir is battling his own demons while coping with the unique challenges of the new job when he comes across a diary written by his predecessor.

Firdaus was not one to accept authority blindly. While at Wular Public School she poured her frustration, loneliness and life’s great questions on to the pages of that notebook, which ultimately falls into Kabir’s hands.

The young man is, expectedly, soon drawn to this woman he has not met but has come to know well through her innermost musings, and decides that he is in love with her. Truth be told, 20 years back I might have been moved by this love-across-barriers-of-space-and-time aspect of the film’s storyline, but the older me believes that while attraction is not something within our control, love is a decision and not a word to be bandied about lightly.

Still, Notebook works because the Firdaus-Kabir lurve angle is not rubbed in our faces beyond endurance, because the narrative style is filled with an innocent sincerity that is hard to find in mainstream commercial Hindi cinema these days, because the individual stories of Firdaus and Kabir are more intricate than the storyteller’s unassuming tone lets on (and of course it is natural that they would be attracted to each other since, after all, they were genuinely getting to know each other through their writings).

Most of all, Notebook works because of those children. Everything about them – the adorable cast, Firdaus’ commitment to them, Kabir’s increasing attachment for them, their playfulness, and one boy’s desperation for an education.

The trailer of Notebook emphasises the Firdaus-Kabir romance and relegates the children to the background, although the intersection of the bond developing between all of them is its actual selling point. No doubt there is space here for greater detailing and depth in the characterisation of most of the little ones, but there is still enough in the screenplay to make the interactions with these bright, mischievous darlings enjoyable, and to make the boy Imran in particular both memorable and heart-tugging.

Nitin Kakkar knows well how to make a political comment without lecturing his audience. He did it with rip-roaring humour in his debut film Filmistaan, and with endearing understatedness in last year’s Mitron that was pulled down solely and entirely by the decision to cast Jackky Bhagnani as the leading man.

Troubled Kashmir is obviously a fertile playing field for a filmmaker like him, and he does a commendable job of driving home the tensions and pain beneath the scenic tranquility of this jannat. The mother who takes a crucial decision for her children, a despairing father, a boy who can envision a future in which he is sucked into the bitterness but also sees a way out of this morass, a man who stood by friends when their lives were under threat, a woman in a patriarchal world who knows her mind and is unafraid to speak it, a man who gets a bird’s eye view of the human cost of war and does not casually brush aside any loss as “collateral damage”, they are all present in this short, charming tale beaming with an optimism that is perhaps occasionally simplistic but serves as a much-needed salve for the soul in the divisive times we live in.

Imran is played by the handsome child debutant Mir Mohammed Mehroos whose mature, deeply felt performance belies his age and inexperience. Each member of this ensemble has something to offer, but this new entrant deserves to be singled out, as does Mir Sarwar who plays his father with flair.

The adult debutants of the film are both proteges of producer Salman Khan, as media reports tell us. Pranutan Bahl who plays Firdaus is the granddaughter of screen legend Nutan. Zaheer Iqbal, Notebook’s Kabir, is reportedly Khan’s friend’s son. Unlike with the remake of Subhash Ghai’s Hero, here Khan has chosen well.

Pranutan was born to be before the camera. Neither she nor Zaheer would fit conventional Bollywood definitions of prettiness, but they possess an X Factor that counts for much more than that.

Notebook is based on the Thai film Teacher’s Diary whose writer-director Nithiwat Tharatorn and co-writers are duly credited here. Their screenplay has been adapted by Darab Farooqi with dialogues by Sharib Hashmi and Payal Asar.

Kashmir is not a mere gimmick in the reworking, it is a well-considered change of setting. Like the fact that Firdaus and Kabir belong to communities on opposite sides of the socio-political schism running through the state, the choice of place too is not underlined or turned into a sermon.

With the exception of Bumro, the soundtrack is not extraordinary when heard independently, but the songs are inserted nicely into the narrative and fit the mood of the film well. Bumro of course is infectious. This Kashmiri folk song was earlier used in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Hrithik Roshan-Preity Zinta-starrer Mission Kashmir. The loudness of that earlier film is a sharp contrast to the determined quietness of Notebook.

I can imagine some people seeing a saviour complex in a tension-ridden scene featuring Imran, his Dad and Kabir in Notebook, the sort of complex that usually dominates stories of race, caste and gender (look no further than this year’s Best Picture Oscar winner Green Book), but to my mind that would be an unfair criticism in this case. The scene is a culmination of the actions of every single player in the drama until then, not Kabir’s alone, even though the others are not foregrounded in that moment.

The most problematic aspect of the film comes elsewhere, in the “ladkiyan sab aise hi hotey hai”, all-women-are-traitors line taken by one of the characters, that is left unresolved despite being a dominant track in so many mainstream Indian films and in the sense of male victimhood that pervades the backlash against feminism.

Notebook is not perfect, but like the sterling Kashmir waterscapes in the film camouflaging so much turmoil, and captured here so beautifully by cinematographer Manoj Kumar Khatoi, it too is worth a visit.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	115 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/notebook-movie-review-salman-khan-backs-a-winning-tale-of-two-strangers-and-a-bunch-of-darling-kids-in-kashmir-6350401.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/SKFilmsOfficial/

Release date:	April 5, 2019
Director:	Ashvin Kumar
Cast: Language:	Zara Webb, Shivam Raina, Ashvin Kumar, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Natasha Mago, Maya Sarao, Soni Razdan, Anshuman Jha, Sushil Dahiya English with Hindi and some Kashmiri

A Kashmiri Muslim girl called Noor travels from her home in Britain to meet her grandparents in the country of her origin, along with her mother and the man the latter wishes to marry. There she learns that her father had vanished in vastly different circumstances from what has so far been conveyed to her. She also meets his best friend’s son Majid who, like her, has grown up with just one parent.

There are two significant differences between these children: she is a British passport holder, he has remained in Kashmir, she finds herself unable to rest until she finds out what became of her father, he appears to have quietly accepted his fate.

Writer-producer-director Ashvin Kumar’s No Fathers In Kashmir is a coming-of-age tale set in one of the most politically turbulent, heavily militarised zones on the planet. According to statistics flashed on screen at the start, 1 lakh people have died in the Kashmir conflict since 1947. The title is a reference to the state’s half widows: a term used for scores of women whose husbands have disappeared but are not confirmed dead. It is into this boiling pot of anguish, bitterness and resentment that Noor is thrown without much preparation, and discovers a world more troubled than she could ever have imagined.

This is an area where a child playfully posing for a silly photograph to impress an attractive girlcould suffer consequences more deadly than in most places on the globe, where photographs are not as much memories frozen for posterity as they are potentially incriminating evidence that ordinary citizens must hide away.

Noor and Majid – one a curious outsider, the other a guileless insider – are the eyes through which the film sees, observes and debates Kashmir. They are eyes that the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) found wandering towards inconvenient truths that it would like to keep away from the public. CBFC had initially granted No Fathers In Kashmir an A (adults only)rating that would have automatically and substantially cut down its audience. After a long battle with the Board, the film comes to theatres this week with several cuts and a comparatively lenient UA rating (for unrestricted public exhibition, with parental guidance advised). It is worth asking why it was not instead in the first place given the rating it actually deserves: U (universal).

No Fathers In Kashmir features only relatively mild shots of violence that too in just a couple of scenes. It is not gore but the politics of the film that has rankled with the authorities, as is evident from the insertions, modifications and deletions demanded. CBFC has proved beyond doubt its double standards and blatant pro-establishment bias with this unreasonable UA, a rating that it also recently granted to the blood-spattered Akshay Kumar-starrer Kesari replete with chopped heads and ravaged bodies that merited an A – Kesari though was based on a theme suited to the aggressive nationalism being encouraged by the present government.

No Fathers In Kashmir is a continuation of Ashvin Kumar’s commitment to a state that he has already explored in his documentary features Inshallah Football and Inshallah Kashmir. Kumar (a 2005 Oscar nominee for his live action short Little Terrorist) wears his heart on his sleeve and through these works leaves us in no doubt about where his sympathy lies: with the beleaguered civilians. The Kashmir he brings to us is a space of conflict not simply between the Army and the Muslim public, but also between conservatives and liberals within the Muslim community, between women and an exploitative patriarchal society. This is a picture far removed from the monochromatic image of Kashmiri Muslims as stone throwers and terror sympathisers if not outright terrorists prevailing outside the state.

There are many stereotypes No Fathers In Kashmir seeks to bust, not all of them are related to communal politics. The relationship between Noor’s mother and grandparents, for one, does not follow predictable lines. Majid too is not forced into a sexually-repressed-Indian-male prototype at a point in the film which could potentially have been ruined by viewing him through that prism.

Noor and Majid have been written with empathy and intelligence. Zara Webb gives Noor a stoicism that lends greater impact to the girl’s occasional instances of mischief and undiplomatic, child-like outbursts of rage. The good-looking Shivam Raina manages to make his tentative liking for her and later anger towards her, his instinctive cautiousness and intermittent foolhardiness all equally believable. The youngsters occasionally do slip up, but their innocent appeal pulls them through.

Of the supporting actors, Kulbhushan Kharbanda is credible as always as Noor’s dignified and brave grandfather (whose description of the map of Kashmir probably sent the CBFC into a collective faint). Soni Razdan as the long-suffering grandmother is required to walk a tightrope between love for her son and compassion for her daughter-in-law, a balance that she achieves with finesse despite the limited screen time given to her.

Among the others, Maya Sarao is terrific as Majid’s mother, as is Shahnawaz Bhatt very briefly playing a militant in No Fathers In Kashmir’s most illuminating, surprisingly humorous scene.

The unexpected inclusion in the cast is the director himself who steps into the role of a dour, double-faced religious bigot. Kumar turns in an effective though not earth-shattering performance here.

Except for one scene in which the camera dramatically pulls out to offer an aerial view of Noor and Majid’s intimidatingly vast surroundings, cinematographers Jean Marc Selva and Jean Marie Delorme tend to stay close to the film’s characters. This proximity is initially frustrating because it denies us a better look at spectacular Kashmir, but whether it was intentional or a result of budgetary constraints, it ends up serving the narrative well. A nervous tension pervades the air, underlined by the occasional hand-held shot, and the teenaged Noor’s restless, obsessive, social-media-ready cellphone camera often dominating the screen. Unlike most Indian films set in this picturesque landscape – last month’s visually rich Hamid and Notebookamong them – No Fathers In Kashmir relegates the state’s physical beauty to irrelevance, its geography giving us little to celebrate but plenty to fear.

For the most part Kumar narrates his story with conviction. Where he falters is in a clumsy moment of empathy for the Army towards the end and in the distanced portrayal of the Army throughout. Listening to the Army does not make you anti-Kashmiri Muslim, just as concern for Kashmiri Muslims does not make you anti-Kashmiri Pandit as is so often mindlessly assumed. Every side of every story needs to be told well – not just told – for the same reason that we must all learn history, not as a justification for atrocities but to arrive at an understanding of how we got to the position we find ourselves in now.

The tone and manner of telling counts for everything though, and Kumar’s effort to seem objective in certain portions comes across as half-hearted – if he was as unconvinced as he appears to be, the film might have fared better by leaving out these bits. The otherwise far less profound Hamid was more nuanced in this respect. Kashmir is a challenging proposition for the best of us, but director Onir’s brilliant National Award winning filmI Am is proof that cinematic objectivity and sensitivity are not mutually exclusive, that questions do not necessarily amount to whataboutery. It is, after all, the job of journalists and artists to ask (including that which makes us uncomfortable), for as a character in this very film says: “We never know why people do what they do because we were not there.”

This line spoken by Noor’s grandfather is perhaps the most telling comment to emerge from No Fathers In Kashmir. And notwithstanding its problem areas, the film’s most striking quality is its courage.

For a fictionalised feature to shine a light on the most contentious aspects of Kashmir’s tragedy – from hypocritical fundamentalists to half widows and mass graves– takes immense guts irrespective of which political party is in power at the Centre (or for that matter, which direction the liberal conversation has taken). That Kumar has chosen to do so under a government that has revved up the nationalist discourse to a fever pitch makes him, like No Fathers In Kashmir, truly special.

Rating (out of five stars): ***

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	112 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/no-fathers-in-kashmir-movie-review-ashvin-kumars-courage-and-empathy-for-a-troubled-people-shines-through-6392521.html

Posters courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/nofathersinkashmir/

Release date:	April 5, 2019
Director:	Nadirshah
Cast: Language:	Biju Menon, Asif Ali, Baiju Santhosh, Nikhila Vimal, Dharmajan Bolgatty, Sreenivasan, Ganesh Kumar, Surabhi Lakshmi, Soubin Shahir, Hareesh Perumanna Malayalam with some Hindi, English and Tamil

What was that about?

What on earth was that about?

Director Nadirshah’s Mera Naam Shaji is inexplicable from start to finish. This is not inexplicability arising from deep intellectualism or even basic intelligence. Barring a handful of instances of humour, what it is is a vacuous screenplay struggling to figure out how to get to where it wants to be.

Three strands run through the film, drawing on the present-day experiences of three men from different parts of Kerala who do not know each other and share the same first name, (you guessed it) Shaji.

The Shaji played by Biju Menon is a contract killer whose modus operandi is to stab people in their buttocks.

On a parallel track, the Shaji played by Baiju Santhosh is a cabbie driving a group of young people around Kerala, among them a woman called Neenu Thomas (Nikhila Vimal) brooding by herself in the backseat, untouched by her companions’ mood for revelry.

Then there is the ne’er-do-well Shaji played by Asif Ali, a con man who hangs out with his buddy Kundishan (Dharmajan Bolgatty), even as he mourns the separation from the woman he loves, while his purposeful politician brother (Ganesh Kumar) works hard for the survival of his party.

Their paths inevitably intersect, but the impactless wanderings until then and thereafter suck the fun out of the marginally interesting manner in which they first encounter each other. The confusion arising out of their shared first name should have resulted in a riotous comedy of errors, but it does not.

Clearly the buttock stabbing is meant to be funny, but the writing is too feeble in this case for the humour to take effect.

Equally clearly, the track involving Shaji the driver and his passengers is meant to be suspenseful, but the grand reveal is weighted down by limp writing, clichéd and confused characterisation, and some lousy acting by supporting artistes.

Clearly too we are meant to root for the youngest Shaji’s fading romance, but it is too weakly written to be worthy of any emotional investment. For one, there is nothing more to the other person in the relationship than this description: the pretty young woman that Asif Ali’s character loved and lost. Nothing at all.

The antagonism towards womankind at large that Mera Naam Shajiletsslip near the climax explains why writers Dileep Ponnan and Shaani Khader struggle to step into women’s shoes and thus end up creating such stereotypical female characters. Apart from one hero’s dull love interest who has no agency, twiddles her thumbs and waits to be rescued by her boyfriend, there is the driver Shaji’s loud, nagging, jealous wife (Surabhi Lakshmi). As one of my favourite teenagers might say with an eye roll – boring!

“Boring” is not the word for the barely disguised animosity that erupts briefly in a scene involving the criminal Shaji. At the sight of a woman engaged in a street fight, he says out loud for no logical reason: “What's this? Vanitha mathalo? (A women’s wall?)” The reference, of course, is to the hundreds-of-kilometres-long human chain of solidarity formed by women in Kerala just months back to draw attention to their battles against patriarchy. The deliberate casualness with which it is mentioned is obviously meant to trivialise the grave issues of discrimination that they sought to highlight.

Shaji’s subsequent comments in the scene go even lower. He spews a misogynistic lecture at the woman about how she and her ilk should be set right, in effect advocates domestic violence, and for good measure, walks away from that conversation cursing all “feminist activists”. Since this woman had previously been shown smoking, drinking and speaking English, I guess she was deemed worthy of nothing but condemnation in Mera Naam Shaji’s universe. This passage comes across as a symptom of a long-simmering, deep-seated resentment.

Considering the visceral hatred for women in this portion, the concern expressed elsewhere in the screenplay for a survivor of sexual violence feels faked.

There is not much to recommend the men of Mera Naam Shaji. Asif Ali is a sweet-looking chap but lacks a strong screen presence and here has the additional disadvantage of playing the worst conceptualised of the three lead roles. Given a good script, Biju Menon can be stupendous, but without that here his acting just feels repetitive. Baiju Santhosh does the best job of this trio, but how far can he go with such limited material to work on?

Sreenivasan plays a lawyer in Mera Naam Shaji whose motivations are as inexplicable as the film itself.

As for Nikhila Vimal, she has little to do beyond look mournful throughout. What a waste of a bright, striking, good-looking actor.

Like everything else in this film, there is no particular well-thought-out contextual reason for the choice of a Hindi (not Malayalam) title, or the use of a full-fledged Hindi-Malayalam qawwali (albeit a tuneful, lively one) in the soundtrack. The latter is specifically sought out by one of the smaller characters. If the idea was to remind us that his cultural awareness and exposure extend beyond Kerala, then the fact that he also turns out to be a sexually promiscuous villain amounts to either intentional or subconscious othering. It is laughable that the same film then spells out a spot of messaging on secularism in the very ordinarily composed closing song. Shaji, you see, was chosen as the name of the three leads – Shaji Usman, Shaji George and Shaji Sukumaran – because you will find it in all parts of Kerala, across religious and other communal divides.

It is hard to believe that Mera Naam Shaji has come to us from the same director who, right before this, delivered Kattappanayile Rithwik Roshan (2016), which, whatever its minuses may have been, was funny and well-meaning. Mera Naam Shaji is not just misogynistic, it is boring. Seriously, what on earth was it trying to be?

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	134 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/mera-naam-shaji-movie-review-nadirshahs-boring-film-touches-a-nadir-for-misogyny-in-mollywood-6402651.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/meranaamshajiofficial/

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