Essay: Decoding the subtleties of Kanu Behl's "Titli."

Two weeks ago, Kanu Behl's Titli was unanimously hailed as one of the better Hindi films of the year upon release. It was not an exaggerated claim, as I found later, thanks to its meticulous structure and carefully written characters that I found worth raving about. 

Before I begin, I should attribute a large chunk of this naive essay to my friend, Ashwini Dabadge. She noticed an important metaphor that I missed, and she told me about it during a rather illuminating discussion I had with her after we both watched the film. 

There are several tiny throwaway details, little flourishes, that stayed with me many days after I watched Kanu Behl's debut. Many reviewers of the film have pointed out Behl's seemingly weird obsession with personal hygiene. A recurring detail where some or the other member of the vulnerable family of violent carjackers is brushing his teeth and clearing his throat noisily -- something of a morning ritual in the family -- hardly seems like a detail a filmmaker would want his audience to watch repeatedly. It's simply unpleasant. Unless that filmmaker is trying to indicate something through it. 

Behl introduces us to this incorrigibly evil male family that engages in small but brutal crimes to earn a living. And he tries to acquaint us with his characters by taking us through their routines, emphatically stressing on how they begin their day. Through the film, three of the four members of the family are seen brushing their teeth vigorously (I don't recollect seeing the character of middle brother, Bawla, doing the same), making nauseating noises throughout. 

As I soon discovered, this detail signifies how the family is trying to rid themselves of their inner evil but always fail to do so. As the character of Bawla only lends a helping hand in the crimes, never being a perpetrator himself, he is not seen doing the same. He is merely a slave of his volatile elder brother, which doesn't entirely redeem him of his sins but makes him a sorry figure. But because we see the characters of Vikram and Titli channelling their inner monsters through their immoral acts, we see Behl's careful placement of these sequences after they partake in something unlawful or unethical. The character of Daddy gets a brief "brushing" scene, too, for not trying to reform his eldest son, choosing to be a silent spectator instead. In Behl's eyes, that makes him as much a criminal, if not more, than his son. The confrontation between Titli and the patriarch near the end is actually Behl's speaking through a fictitious character, I feel.

This theory also applies to the scene where Titli throws up before taking the high road. I believe it alludes to him ridding himself of the evil he had kept bottled inside for so long. As soon as he is done vomiting, we suddenly see him in a new light. We see him as a better, stronger person.

Although this is not a metaphor, the middle brother's strongly implied homosexuality lends itself wonderfully to the intriguing bunch of characters. This detail is implied through brief scenes scattered throughout the film and is kept restrained, bringing a nice subtlety to the character of Bawla. It also demonstrates how thoughtfully Behl and co-writer Sharat Katariya have fleshed out the characters.

Yet another metaphor I observed which was pretty discreet was the house this dysfunctional family lived in. A crumbling, perpetually messy house might be an indication of the crumbling, messy lives of the gents who live in it. And that we never see the characters clean or redo the house and the fact that they don't even seem bothered by it might hint at them being criminals beyond reformation. In one sequence, we get a quick glimpse into the wardrobe of Neelu. It is a tidy one. This bit, I feel, suggests that she is the only upright member of the family.

There are many more such trivial details crammed in the film that might be symbolic. Starting with that framed picture of their forefather, a detail that shows up in many a sequence and which I tried to but couldn't quite understand the relevance of. Maybe another viewing might shed light on that. Or maybe, as I discovered mulling over it in the last two weeks, not knowing what it signifies makes the film all the more fascinating. Maybe like Titli himself, we don't really know whether we want to know. Well.

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Review: Kanu Behl's savage "Titli" is noteworthy but remains stubbornly short of greatness.

Kanu Behl's Titli isn't an easy film to review. It has sequences and ideas that flirt with greatness, a promising premise complete with a stock of great performances from an exemplary cast, and yet somehow it never quite comes together in a way indelible films often do. Behl's character study takes a grim peek into the household of a small, closely-knit, predominantly male Delhi family who moonlight as small-time criminals while the youngest member nurtures dreams of running away. However, in analyzing the dynamics of this volatile family, the film loses sight of its half-done plot that unravels amidst bursts of brutality.

There are a lot of things to admire from the outset. What needs to be applauded foremost is how precisely Behl has managed to capture the bubbling anger that lads from an urban Delhi locality harbor at all times. Borrowing bits from his own upbringing, Behl's vivid representation of how a sullen lower middle-class male family deal with everyday violence and their own enigmatic selves is refreshingly real, giving us an hopeless clan of wife-beaters whose dark past is revealed in sharply written exchanges. And there are little touches that are a stroke of genius; the old patriarch that grunts and garbles and dances impassively in a glum wedding procession; the middle brother's homosexuality is kept ambiguous, adding to the film's many layers; the protagonist dons fake t-shirts of classy brands.

Such fastidiousness speaks volumes about Behl's forte: he knows the city, his characters and the jargon they choose to speak in inside out, and how the city molds his characters. In a Delhi trudging towards development, a joyless place where a car salesman is bashed to near-death with a hammer in broad daylight and the perpetrators get away with it, not granting the poor guy any empathy before dumping his body near a desolate stretch of highway, lives Behl's titular protagonist whose life isn't any better. This, perhaps, signifies the lives of his own characters: bleak, perpetually stuck in the "developing" phase but without any hope of ever being completely "developed."

Titli has these moments, these references in handfuls. We aren't introduced to the characters or the world they inhabit in a straightforward manner. We observe them as they go about living their miserable lives, confronting their piling problems with exhaustion and fury. We sympathize with the impassive Titli's plight until he ill-treats his new bride, a strong-willed young woman who doesn't take domination lying down. (In her debut, Shivani Raghuvanshi is a revelation.) In a hazy sequence of uncomfortable moans and stubborn, silent opposition to his advances, she refuses to consummate her marriage. That's how her character is introduced to us. The sequence is barely two minutes long but we still learn all we need to know about her. And in a later sequence where a bizarre deal is cut in the eerie locality in the middle of the night, she handles a difficult sequence -- once again, brilliantly written and performed -- with grace and deftness. And it is the kind of grace and deftness we don't usually expect from newcomers.

But there is a more urgent problem plaguing this otherwise fine film. The sequences, each crafted elegantly, work individually but not quite as a whole. The plot seems rather simplistic for this complex bunch of people with no firm sense of right and wrong. There simply isn't enough of it. Behl crucially chooses to place them in scenarios of which we can predict the outcome instead of placing them in ones where we might get to see a different side of theirs that is not all black and grey. And when wonderfully fleshed out characters are left scrambling with little plot to work with, it adds up to a frustrating cinematic experience. The thread that ties up the tightly written individual scenes, alas, is too thin to bear the weight of the ideas this film boasts of.

As a character study on a personal level, Titli is probably the most evocative one in recent memory. A film where we see, empathize with and eventually come to care for a bunch of despicable characters is rare, and it is a film that still leaves us with a little hope. Still, there is such a thing as too much unconventionality. Titli makes our acquaintance us people and situations we might have not seen in Hindi cinema before -- at least not in the last decade or two -- but it is a film whose freshness is bogged down by its inability to remain entirely convincing. Still, for Ranvir Shorey's marvelous turn as the belligerent eldest brother and for the amount of potential Behl shows in his debut, this might be worth a second or even third viewing.

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Review: Colin Trevorrow's "Jurassic World" is a lackluster homage to the original.

Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park is the first Hollywood film I remember watching. For a seven year-old kid with no prior experience in watching monster flicks, it was the kind of stuff that nightmares were made of. The small ripples of water in a glass, one of my favorite moments in the movies, became synonymous with clammy fear. And after I watched it for the umpteenth time a month ago, I was still left feeling slightly queasy as the vicious and merciless dinosaurs clobbered, crushed and chomped on everything that we saw on the screen. As a loyal Jurassic Park enthusiast, I chose to skip its sequels to not let the exhilaration I felt upon watching Spielberg's classic dampen. I should have kept it that way.

Colin Trevorrow, who delivered a rather smart debut in Safety Not Guaranteed three years ago, reinvigorates (or at least tries to) dinosaur flicks with this new cinematic diversion. Jurassic World, both a homage and a sequel to the first Jurassic film, adheres strictly to monster-movie formula, but somehow the affair with the big ones makes for a somewhat lackluster viewing. This showy Jurassic Park reboot might be toothier with ambition too bulky for its thin plot, but it's also detached from the very things that made the first part a triumph.

What made Spielberg's version far superior was the amount of suspense and chills he managed to wrest from his setup even when we didn't have dinosaurs on the screen. With little details that contributed in a major way to the terror, most notably torn-down fences and trampled-on cars complemented perfectly by John Williams' exuberant score, Jurassic Park made for a riveting ride that skillfully blended humor with thrills. Jurassic World, on the other hand, has a premise that makes similar promises, but the end product relies heavily on how desperate the audiences were to go back to dinosaur-land. That is not a good sign.

As mentioned before, this is a film that adheres to the formula that can turn any monster movie into a success. Pit humans against something that is gargantuan, cold-hearted and murderous and bingo, there you have it. It is easy to guess where Jurassic World is going with its cliche-ridden story, but the makers can't be blamed here. After all, the dinosaurs are what we want to see, and we get a proper eyeful of them. It impulsively presumed on the part of the makers that the audience would want to see, in broad strokes, humans getting gobbled at the precise moment when everything goes quiet momentarily on-screen and dinosaurs more fearsome than the ones that had been put on the screen in the past installments. If this was the basic idea, it would be fair to say that Jurassic World hits the right spot.

But therein lies its core problem. There are plenty chases that terminate with characters narrowly escaping being meals or irking a new creature enough for it to be hot on their trails. It has been seen before and there's nothing new to heave a sigh of relief about. We don't get a congenial bunch of characters we can invest in or a story that hints at something unique. Instead, imagination is substituted by stereotypes. And that is a major letdown. Essentially, for a monster movie to work, we need to build an emotional relationship with the characters. But with characters like these that are cut straight from the cardboard who try their best to be endearingly funny or anxious, it's hard to genuinely care as they scamper for safety hither and tither.

But there are some things that Jurassic World gets right. The amusement park is bigger, grander and more ostentatious twenty-two years later, and to see it in its entirety for the first time -- a panning shot across the skies supported by Williams' popular Jurassic Park theme -- inspires awe without even trying hard. It is this idea of guiding us through the place that we will be a part of for the next two hours, complete with a few quick glimpses of how meticulously this fictitious world has been envisioned, that really informs us about the ambition this film wants to meet. And the only sequence, I felt, that was reminiscent of the old magic of the first part was when we get to see the Indominus Rex, our fanged baddie, for the first time. It's a clever sequence, utterly unpredictable and executed with great finesse after a typically tense build-up.

Jurassic World culminates in a disappointingly loud, clunky and over-the-top climax that doesn't salvage its many flaws, grave and trivial. Unlike other great films like Steven Spielberg's Jaws or Bong Joon-ho's The Host that had plots where man was pitted against a more powerful and intelligent creature (and also where the "monster" was seen only fleetingly throughout the film), Jurassic World sees Trevorrow decidedly choose thrills over originality and put fang-baring dinosaurs before emotion and character development. It works to an extent if it's a joyride you are seeking. But, for me, I still wished I could see some of Spielberg's mastery at manipulating the slightest details to generate suspense. How unfortunate it is that Jurassic World's cheesiness can fetch it a place on pamphlets advertising pizza.

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Review: Meghna Gulzar's "Talvar" is one of the best Hindi films of the year.

There are several things Avirook Sen's chilling non-fiction book on the Noida double-murder case, Aarushi, did right, but three it did splendidly. One, it managed to commendably reconstruct the events that led to the murder and provide a shade of clarity in a case muddled with "facts," genuine and manipulated Two, it served as an expose of the Indian media's ballooning appetite for sensationalism. And three, it slowly but with a great surge of anger revealed how a botched-up investigation has led to a possible miscarriage of justice.

While flipping through the provocative, extensive and superbly written piece a month ago, I found myself getting more and more engrossed in the web of the details of the horrific crime. I visualized how the house looks, pieced together the minute bits of the puzzle and read into the records of the people on the case until I had a good idea of who, what and when. And the first thing I felt while watching Talvar was not shock nor disgust; it was a strong sense of deja vu.

For those who haven't read the book, Meghna Gulzar's Talvar will be riveting to the hilt; it's a cold docudrama of the crime and its aftermath that gets so much right factually (here, I need to point out that I'm assuming Sen's book is the most factually accurate account of the crime) that one can't help but marvel at the research put into it. But for those who have read the book, it is a satisfying trip to see on-screen that tiny film that played in our heads as we read the book.

Talvar digs its claws into the pulp of facts right away. Faithfully reconstructing the events that led to the discovery of the body of the murdered girl, we see the cops nonchalantly stroll into the crime scene, monotonously burning through their usual questions as the grieving parents come to grips with what has just happened. The following day, a second body is discovered. In between the simple formalities, a vital piece of evidence that could have led to the identity of the murderer is turned a blind eye to by a paan-chewing officer who couldn't care less. It is this terrifying illusion of living in a lawless land Talvar introduces us to that makes it so effective a thriller.

The story, or the many versions of it, unfolds in three different scenarios where three motives are discussed. Akira Kurosawa's classic Rashomon used this strategy to unforgettable effect to unveil how humans readily put the truth at stake to save their dignity. While Talvar is not as neutral as it would like to have been, one must hand it to Vishal Bharawaj who recognized the parallels between that and the real-life outcome of the Noida double murder case, using it to chew over every possible motive but weaving it into the script in such a way that it doesn't hamper the narrative flow. And like Rashomon, it deals with how the truth is willingly put in peril for something as petty as self-importance. Or maybe, as Talvar reminds us, it is not so petty.

Vishal Bharadwaj's tremendous script allows room for little outside of hard facts. It takes stabs at the media's tendency to sensationalize details before they are clarified, how evidence is extracted from a contaminated crime without anyone batting an eyelid and how truth is fashioned from it. But with Bharadwaj, we know it's not going to be as simple as I make it sound. A splash of dark humor, typically sharp dialogue and detailing that helps shape the characters and a nod -- always that nod! -- to his influences (loved the occasional references to Ijaazat; that's where he got the title from for Kaminey, too, I feel) makes it an unmistakable Bharadwaj vehicle.

There's no doubt that this, along with Shoojit Sircar's Piku, is the best-acted Hindi film of the year. A few unnecessary sequences aside, this is top-notch stuff that, unlike other Hindi films based on true events, does not lapse into preachiness and sentimentality. And somewhere near the end, a lethally funny scene dares us to laugh as the morbid details of the crime are discussed and dismissed. We do laugh because it amuses us how an investigation has been fouled up. But what are we laughing at, really? Two people have been incarcerated for life for a crime they might have not committed. We haven't heard about the three other suspects in a long time. It is hardly worth chuckling about.


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Review: Matteo Garrone's "Tale Of Tales" is an enthralling celebration of the grisly.

In one of the early scenes of Matteo Garrone's new spellbinder, a man battles a sea monster for its heart. Literally. The scene plays out in pure cinematic fashion in the fogginess of the sea, with the monster snoozing while the man readies himself with a spear. In one swift stab, the monster that looks like a colossal pale lizard is impaled and it thrashes around, trying to come to terms with this sudden attack and in the process, the man takes a hit from its scaled tail. Later, its still-beating heart is pulled out and cooked, and a princess feasts on it.

It's a dreadfully ugly but weirdly comical sight. The opening twenty minutes serve as a perfect introduction to the many oddities attached with Tale Of Tales, a horror-fantasy fable conceived with great impishness. Meshing three parables set in a fanciful kingdom, each with its own set of quirks, Garrone's film is grotesque, strangely moving and often witty, maintaining that balance with vigor for most of its runtime. An adaptation of a collection of tales by Neapolitan poet and courtier Giambatissta Basile, it is the kind of film whose tendency to turn to the bizarre lends it an unpredictability. This could be an advantage or disadvantage, because once you are sucked into its world, it captures you. Expecting the usual fare from it becomes a foolish want. We are at the mercy of a storyteller who may or may not know the weight of the risk they just undertook. They need to shoulder our expectations, then, and show us something remarkable or risk a disappointed audience.

But in the case of Tale Of Tales, the risk pays off.

And that could be attributed to the fact that Garrone is a clever filmmaker. He is in complete command of the tone of the film, the pace at which his world unravels and the twists that show up at regular intervals. It is not a sprawling period piece that one would expect from a plot, or several, that involve kings and queens and princesses and princes. With only a handful of characters and moody shots of deserted alleys and tiny kingdoms, the film has a quaint touch to it, evoking images of yore that we had only seen in our imaginations through vivid fairytales. Vanished is the realism and stark storytelling of Garrone's masterful Gomorrah.

I wonder: when was the last time a film bragged about sequences where a sea monster was eliminated, a flea was nourished until it became an intimidating beast by an eccentric king, an ogre was not so likable anymore (sorry, Shrek), a lustful king was conned by a bunch of hags and a woman was flayed in accordance to her request? In the same film, too. That's quite, quite mad, to have everything stuffed in a single film, but Tale Of Tales walks its own wonderful path littered with the choicest peculiarities. And nowhere does it seem excessive. Beneath the blanket of macabre humor and inexplicable emotion, each tale is narrated with imagination and deftness, bringing to the table a sweeping cinematic experience with an unmissable philosophical undercurrent.

The parables cross-cut between one another fluidly. Gomorrah is an excellent example wherein he navigated between several parallel strands so skillfully that, for the duration of the film, we knew exactly what was going on with whom. Here, we have less characters to keep track of, which gives Garrone more space for character development. And, indeed, by the end, each character has weaved their spells over us.

However, even with numerous factors tipping the scales in favor of greatness, Tale Of Tales is flawed. Some twists are either foreseeable or simply feeble, not adding enough spice to the proceedings for their inclusion to be justified. But for the most part the film is busy plying us with rich, vibrant storytelling for it to be a foil.

Tale Of Tales is not for everyone, but it is a great way to introduce adults to the joys of, um, adult fairytales, if you will. Of course, with "adult" comes with a large dollop of morbidness and a bright red sign instructing children to keep away.


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Review: Joel Edgerton's "The Gift" offers satisfying drama but is strangely unmemorable.

There is something uneasy about The Gift. Right from the moment it begins, there is a cautionary touch to it, urging us to keep our eyes glued to the characters while it milks the stock scares of its genre. And this unease doesn't let go till the movie is done.

When you are watching a suspenseful film wherein you realize after a while that the director is and has always been miles ahead of you, you know you shouldn't trust what you see or hear. But the only way to truly relish the rest of it is to let it hoodwink you. And so, just for the sake of mere amusement, you let it unfold without luxuriating in guesswork. Personally, when I discover that the film I'm watching has matured into a full-blown mystery, where how much I end up enjoying it hinges on the last twist, I give up trying to one-up the director. But there are people who absolutely cannot accept defeat in this case. I suppose those are the ones who would really delve into the wicked fun that The Gift offers.

In the first few scenes, we get the impression that this is just another addition to the "stalker harasses a happy couple" type of films that brags of some genuine spookfests like Fatal Attraction and Cape Fear, but this is just a brilliant trick to throw us off. Yes, we get a happy couple whose lives are thrown into a tizzy by a seemingly friendly but obsessive stalker intent on invading their private lives for emotional attachment. Yes, we get the usual restless moments when he shows up unannounced, the usual tense details where something goes missing or incongruous sounds are heard. Dead one thing, displaced another thing, paranoid expressions and impassive glares. You name it. There is nothing that isn't squeezed for thrills; cheap, indeed, but effectual. And two proper jump scares thrown into the mix liven things up. In the first half, The Gift manages to stay loyal to the trappings of its genre. Joel Edgerton, who writes, directs and acts in this one, gives us a clear-cut picture of who the bad guy is and who the good guys are. What he doesn't do, however, is shed light on the intentions of his baddie. But why?

Every act of misdeed has a reason behind it. And in incompetent films involving stalkers as the primary villains, this reason is usually attributed to "well, those were wackos so they are capable of anything." Great films sketch backgrounds for them. This character sketch eventually becomes the difference between a hollow thriller and an intelligent one.

Thankfully, The Gift falls into the latter category. When I was expecting the story to burst into violence at any moment, I was treated to nervous chuckles. When the film veered dangerously close to becoming a savage drama involving a man with a disfigured childhood, Edgerton pulled the rug from under my feet and handled it with casual restraint. It's baffling to experience something as erratic as this, but it is satisfying, also.

The second-half keeps blowing off the steam the film gathered in the first gradually, allowing its dramatic ambitions to seep in what was until that moment a mean psychological thriller. Past revelations are made known and characters suddenly have backgrounds, uncommon for what we thought was just another cleverly done low-budget thriller. This disparity between the tones of the two halves is what makes The Gift is a great visceral experience. It forces you to put yourself in the shoes of the characters and question yourself.

Unfortunately, the film also manages to become insipid in a few places. The supporting cast doesn't have much to do except stress on the urgency of the increasingly volatile behavior of the baddie.

The final revelation, although dramatic, packs enough punch to make the film a satisfyingly sullen escapade. Edgerton's direction is sharp, constantly surprising us by reconstructing our impressions of the characters. Because a lot of elements work in tandem in his favor, The Gift manages to elevate itself above other thrillers in the same genre.


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Review: Nishikant Kamat's "Drishyam" is a loyal remake, but leaves much unexplored.

When I was reading Keigo Higashino's The Devotion Of Suspect X, I could see why this book intrigued countless filmmakers. With only a handful of characters, each of whom is relevant to the story in some way, and a meticulous plot packed with sly twists, it needed skill and a strong structure to be as effective in its adaptation. It was the perfect test of someone's filmmaking talent. And although it made great use of its setting of urban Tokyo, it was thematically universal. The story was versatile in the sense that it could just as easily have been set in any other city around the world and still have retained the essence of the original backdrop.

Indian filmmaker Jeetu Joseph recognized this trait. In 2013, he made Drishyam, a film that has been incorrectly designated as an adaptation of The Devotion Of Suspect X. It is no adaptation. The skin of the story is identical, yes, but Drishyam was a potboiler with a very "Indian" backdrop. It had the novel's craftiness replaced by light melodrama and its bright sleuths and criminals replaced by brutish cops and a weepy family. And yet, Drishyam was exceedingly clever and engrossing when it got busy unravelling. While The Devotion Of Suspect X plunged into the pulp of its story right away, Drishyam took far too long to establish its characters. But because of its ingeniousness, it lead to no less than four remakes in four languages.

Nishikant Kamat's Hindi remake is utterly faithful to the Malayalam original, so much so that the dialogues are direct translations, but somehow this one is afflicted by some of the old problems and some new ones. But the Hindi-language remake is also a specimen of how the presence of a great actor can hinder the film from being nothing but a hollow remake.

It is not for the first time that a Hindi film has misrepresented the scenic landscapes and antiquated cities of Goa, take it from someone who has his roots there. Like many recent films starring Ajay Devgn, the Goa in Drishyam bears a striking resemblance to some lush getaways not far from Mumbai. This fallacy is particularly interesting, because Higashino used the Tokyo setting in his novel to add layers to the story while Kamat does nothing of that sort. There is no indication that we are really in Goa except for the characters' continual references to Goan cities and the fact that the local restaurant (named "Martin's Corner," no less; you might find a restaurant called that on every turn in Goa) sells seafood. Those are not enough details to authenticate the pastoral Goan setting.

As mentioned before, this film is a loyal remake. Like the original, it takes its own sweet time, almost the whole of the first-half, to construct the characters, show them living a happy life before tossing in an incident that would crumble their world. It is the quintessential underdog story; a man is protecting his family from the ire of a top cop whose son is missing. Needless to say, a cat-and-mouse game ensues and things get deliciously twisty.

But post the intermission, Drishyam turns into a different film altogether. Long gone are the happy days and long gone are the happy faces. Each face in the film is marked by anxiety, which heightens the tension, undoubtedly. The pacing is brisk and the unravelling, meticulous and controlled, is superbly handled. It is almost surprising to see the second-half bolting toward an explosive showdown in contrast to the first-half tootling along like a carefree child toward nothingness. This change is so effective, in fact, that one probably won't notice the relentlessly cheesy dialogue or the cardboard characters when such delightful deftness is on display.

The only slight improvement in Kamat's Drishyam is, of course, Tabu's inclusion in the cast. The "top cop" character in the original wasn't as menacing or purposeful as Tabu makes it seem here, and her cold stares makes it difficult to predict the imminent turn of events. Casting Ajay Devgn opposite her as the desperate father may not have been the brightest of casting calls, but he is appropriately earnest. Though, I felt his brawny persona, a result of playing so many beefy characters for too long and hamming it up for all those entertainers, does affect an honest performance from him in a way.

But Drishyam's biggest goof is that far too much goes unexplored. Avinash Arun, who breathtakingly shot the recent Masaan and the terrific Killa (also directed) earlier this year, is curbed from doing much with his camera. The consequence? The picturesque locales remain a part of the landscape and we don't get regular eyefuls of them. The characters have suppressed emotion and angst and desperation, but nothing comes to the fore. The only emotion that comes to the fore is what drives the plot in that context, not what makes the characters human.

Eventually, skill and craft get Drishyam past the finish line. It needs to be said that it is nearly an hour too long. But in hindsight, one can't shake off the feeling that it could have been so much more. Still, this is a solidly entertaining potboiler.


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Review: Neeraj Ghaywan's ambitious "Masaan" marks the the arrival of a noteworthy wielder of the megaphone.

There are films that put on a riveting show of their unconventionality as soon as the clock starts ticking.

In the opening sequence of Neeraj Ghaywan's impressive debut, we see a girl watching porn, taking off to check into a seedy hotel with her boyfriend where their mating is interrupted by the arrival of a bunch of cops who threaten them with shame or worse, death. It is a captivating sequence that is executed with such sensitivity that it promises a whole lot of things promptly, some of which it meets by the end and some of which it doesn't. And the biggest promise it makes is to sidestep blatant exploitation, which in the hands of any other filmmaker would have been inevitable.

And that is how the strongly atmospheric Masaan elevates our expectations in a marvelously rendered opener. It sucks us into its miserable and enticing world, keeps us hooked as it tries to tell an ambitiously woven tale in modern-day Banaras and sagaciously balances themes of redemption and tragedy. There's a lot of plot here that needs telling, two different strands that have to meet at some point and Masaan's triumph is that those two interwoven tales do meet at the point of coherence.

This has been a year of debutants, a year in which Indian cinema finally came of age. The emerging indie movement had never been as visible as it has been this year, and Masaan really is the cherry on the cake. It won two awards, including the FIPRESCI Award earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival, and the first thing that struck me when the film ended was how justified its achievements at Cannes were. This is mature, subtle and purposeful storytelling, something that one doesn't expect to see in a debut, and it only gets better as the film progresses. It cuts back and forth with clarity between those two stories, invades the consciences and minds of its characters till they are people we know and understand. The problem with telling two simultaneous stories is, everything can turn muddled in the blink of an eye. We may lose track of the story or simply grow disinterested in the characters. It is too big a risk to undertake, but Ghaywan goes for broke here. He understands his characters, their milieus and the world of which they are a part, and tells his story with great empathy. And I have always strongly believed in one thing: any director who has great empathy for his characters can do no wrong.

As we move on to another story, a really charming romance that bowls you over with its simplicity and spirit, we are made to take notice of the skill of the storytelling. On one hand, we have a story that kicks off gloomily and on the other hand, we have a delightful romance that thrives on optimism. And in the middle of all that, we have passages of poetry narrated by the characters that lends a certain lyricism to the film. Ghaywan's command over the tone is laudable, never bungling in spite of two stories with different flavors. Nitin Baid's editing makes sure the tone remains consistent and never distracting as the film switches between the stories in a determined pattern.

Apart from being a story about redemption and hope, Masaan also manages to be a story of loneliness and the unpredictability of life, with its people seeking closures that their lives are unwilling to give. Like I said, it is all ambition. There is much to soak in, much to pay attention to, much to tell. But Masaan does a great job of cramming great detailing -- right from the clothes the characters don to the way they speak, all reminiscent of the Banaras we know -- tonal shifts and many, many characters. Everything works quite well for the most part. And that's also owning to heartfelt performances from a largely talented cast.

Alas, it has a few flaws. Screenwriter Varun Grover's scrutiny of the different facets of city is beautifully incorporated into the story, thereby creating a place that is almost a character in itself, forgive the hackneyed line. And a long and booming round of applause for cinematographer Avinash Arun, who also debuted a couple of weeks ago with the miraculous Killa. The Banaras in Masaan exudes a tranquility and melancholy that helps a great deal in the telling of the stories. But the stories themselves are paced inconsistently and plotted a tad unconvincingly. In parts, the film is monotonous and predictable. And personally, I found a major plot point too far-fetched to believe. I was expecting it to be treated with a bit more realism.

But these admittedly minor flaws were forgiven when the whole film came together in a nifty tug at the end. What matters is, Masaan is unconventional in the best possible way. It is an earnest effort, an outstanding debut by any standard. Rarely has a story this sprawling been told with such clarity and confidence and maturity. For a film that promised so much, Masaan is memorable. And in all likelihood, one of the better Hindi films of the year.

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Handpicks: The Best Films Of 2015, Till Now.

Before listing some of my favorite films of 2015, I'd like to mention a 300-minute miniseries whose first half gave me the impression that it is quite something, and might be the movie of the year. Bruno Dumont's Li'l Quinquin is absurd, whimsical and riveting, using wry humor to tell a grim story deftly. Although I have only seen the first two parts of it (it is a four-part miniseries), I feel it will turn out to be an experience to cherish. 

As is evidenced in this list, films playing at the Cannes Film Festival each year constitute my watchlist.

Some of my other favorite films of the year are, in no particular order:

• Amy (UK)

Asif Kapadia's incredible and empathetic documentary on Amy Winehouse's rise and eventual death paints an astonishingly multidimensional picture of her. Constructing her life from the moment she stepped into the world of music to her untimely and tragic death, it digs so deeply into the thoughts and milieu of vulnerable and troubled star, we feel like we had known her all her life at the end of it. Kapadia's achievement here is that he keeps himself completely detached and pieces together her life using home videos, interviews from her friends and family and her songs like a skilled analyst. And the extent of the research he and his team have done is breathtaking, to say the least. Masterfully packaged and always profound, it darts toward a devastating conclusion we all know, but when it gets there, we wish it didn't. Brilliant.

• Killa (known as The Fort internationally; India)

I watched Avinash Arun's Killa twice in the theater, and both times I was bit by the nostalgia bug. A quiet, subtle and reflective film, it is beautifully told coming-of-age story that is as honest as it is humorous. There are no eye-catching gimmicks here, no fancy tricks. It's a tale told with simplicity and insight, and makes for a rather uplifting experience. It needs to be experienced. As of this moment, this is the best film I have seen all year.

• Timbuktu (France/Mauritania)

There have been only a few films that have truthfully depicted life under militant rule. Afghani filmmaker Siddik Barmaq's shattering Osama is one such film. But Abderrahmane Sissako's Timbuktu, a film that was nominated for the Oscar earlier this year and that premiered in competition at Cannes last year, also deserves to be a part of that category. A discerning and sensitive piece of cinema, it cogently illustrates how the populace of Timbuktu fight for -- and always lose -- their basic human rights against the jihadists who have invaded their land and lives. What distinguishes Sissako's film here from other similar films is the approach to the story and its setting he adopts. Scenes of stoning and lashing are handled with great tactfulness, unnerving us with only a few brief flashes instead of a lengthy sequence that would have been grisly and exploitative. And it is this tact that finally makes Timbuktu an unforgettable experience.

• Gett: The Trial Of Vivane Amsalem (Israel)

Thanks to Surya Vasisht, who reminded me about a film that made quite a splash in the festivals it played at last year. A divorce drama that isn't quite in the league of Aghar Farhadi's A Separation, probably the most haunting and intricate divorce drama in recent memory, Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz's Gett: The Trial Of Vivane Amsalem offers a lot of finely-layered drama. A peek into the five-year ordeal of a woman who wants to divorce her husband but is a victim of his stubbornness and her own persona, it crucially chooses not to take sides by opting for an objective approach. With no "good guy/bad guy" angle, it only becomes more engaging as we don't know whom to root for, with both characters being equally flawed and equally human. The only put-offs are two scenes of hamminess that splotch an otherwise powerful and subdued film.

• Court (India)

A metaphorical and intellectually rich character study, Chaitanya Tamhane's Court does two things well: it gives us a supremely accurate depiction of the drab Indian lower courts and the people that crowd them and marks the arrival of a major talent. When I first watched it in a nearly empty theater, I grew frustrated with the lack of dramatic momentum. But when it ended, I was silenced; it is astounding how many layers the film has and how flawlessly it manages to convey what it wants to. Although marketed as a "courtroom drama," it isn't one at all; in fact, I don't think it falls into a particular genre. Pessimistic about the country's judicial system, it delivers a harsh but vivid picture of how we, at the end of day, still are casualties of it, and how it might never be resolved. But the treatment is assured and aloof, which is a clever move to make us direct observers without ever making us invest emotionally. If that isn't unique, I don't know what is.

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With that out of the way, let us turn our attention to the films that might make a splash later this year. Here are some of my most anticipated films of the year:

• Son of Saul (Hungary)

Probably my most anticipated film of the year and surely the most talked-about film at this year's Cannes Film Festival, Laszlo Nemes' grungy Holocaust-thriller seems like a winner from the outset. Designated to be a devastating but compelling experience, I can hardly wait.

• The Lobster (Ireland/UK/Greece/France/Netherlands)

Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos' deadpan Dogtooth was a stunning near-masterpiece that was overlooked and despised because of its disturbing subject matter. A science-fiction romantic-comedy that looks kooky and alluring -- and I would expect nothing less from Lanthimos -- The Lobster would surely be a film to watch out for. It's an added bonus that the film won the Jury Prize at Cannes earlier this year.

• White God (Hungary)

The outlandish trailer of Kornel Mundruczo's film had me under its spell. I don't know what to make of it. But it looks simply gorgeous. 

• The Tribe (Ukraine)

A contemporary silent film by Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy in Ukrainian Sign Language with no subtitles according to Wikipedia, it's a plucky and supposedly shocking experiment that will have a great payoff if it executed to perfection. And the least we can do is give it a shot.

• Titli (India)

I have been waiting for Kanu Behl's unflinching and bleak take on urban violence and patriarchy ever since it premiered in the Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. Those who have seen it have heaped praises on it. It has been announced recently that the film that has already released in France is going to get a commercial release in its home country in October. The wait goes on.

• Our Little Sister (Japan)

I simply cannot resist anything by Hirokazu Koreeda. With 2004's masterful Nobody Knows and 2013's thoughtful and moving Like Father, Like Son, he makes some of the most emotionally complex and balanced dramas in contemporary cinema. Need I stress on how restless I'm to watch his latest?

• Dheepan (France)

There are people who love Jacques Audiard and then there are those who think he's overrated. Personally, I think Audiard is a terrific storyteller. His strength is that he absorbs us into the world he creates in his films by keeping his characters relatable and tells his story with great compassion. Dheepan, his new thriller and controversial Palme D'Or winner at this year's Cannes Film Festival, might not have anything original to say but I expect to see a palpable story and great craftsmanship on display.

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Review: Asif Kapadia's astonishing "Amy" is documentary filmmaking at its riveting best.

We all know Amy Winehouse. That husky voice complementing that jazzy music so perfectly, it flings us in fantasy-land.

But we don't quite know the girl Asif Kapadia shows us in Amy, a devastating account of the rise and eventual untimely death of the songbird for whom fame and frenzy became too much to handle. But here's the thing: this isn't just another account of her life. We know how it is going to end. But how we get there is where the real essence of Amy lies.

What catches your attention right away is how Kapadia treats the material. A teenaged and sassy Winehouse carols the birthday song with her friends, carols for a group of people who are going to turn her into the Amy Winehouse we knew through newspapers, and there is a naiveness about her that simply cannot be overlooked. Swiftly, we recognize her as one of us, one of those commonplace folk who do commonplace things. And it is a particularly impressive move because of the impact it has on us; just like that, we are watching closely. Although I do understand why Kapadia decided to start with this particular clip, for this is a clip filmed way before fame touched her and therefore it gives us a glimpse into the ordinariness of a girl for whom life was about to catch off-guard, I wanted to know how she was professionally. But I needn't have worried. Kapadia takes good care of our queries.

After establishing her milieu neatly, we move on to how she fared in the competitive environment. We hear the voices of her manager, her album producers, best pals, then-boyfriend, documenting her life at every moment and every turn till she became the Amy Winehouse we know. The footage intercuts between her personal and professional lives, and we see how one Amy slowly but surely turned into two different Amys, and it's ruffling.

The story of Amy Winehouse's affair with fame unfolds chronologically, and each sequence gives us an inkling of the extent of the intimidating research Kapadia and his team have put into it. It is like a jigsaw puzzle; he knows where the pieces go, but the way he manages to coerce her associates and family to divulge everything they know about her and assemble the details together into a coherent whole is truly laudable. I say the research is intimidating because even though we might know where the story is heading, what path it follows to its conclusion, we are still under the illusion that we are watching a person we never knew through a microscope. The use of her euphonic music is ingenious; in parts, Kapadia uses her songs to describe phases in her life, and for once we don't listen to them as songs. We find a whole world of meaning behind those lyrics, and begin to comprehend the person who wrote them.

Ultimately, Amy is devastating. It is not easy to mature with someone for over two hours and feel like we have known them our whole life, and then see their descent into eternal silence. Kapadia makes sure we get to mingle with not only the star but also the woman behind it. And one of Amy's -- and Kapadia's -- smaller successes is that we see a woman whom we can relate to in the early parts, and then observe her slowly alienating as we get to know her better. By the end, we are not even sure we knew the same person we wanted to know when we first saw her. And the discovery is shattering.

Review: SS Rajamouli's "Baahubali: The Beginning" is noteworthy for its sheer vision and magnitude, but sticks to conventional storytelling.

I don't have much of an inclination toward epics. Nor do I possess a lot of knowledge of Telugu cinema.

For me, even when they are handsomely mounted, epics need to involve a great deal of subtlety to work. Mughal-E-Azam is one such film, a timeless doomed romance that hinged on subtlety to ensure that the intricate battle of egos vibrates with real emotion. I simply can't sit through a film featuring large quantities of people sword-fighting in enormous battlefields. It is exhausting and delivers little to nothing emotionally or intellectually. But when you are in the hands of a master storyteller who knows his material front and back, top to bottom, and who doesn't make any attempt to manipulate his audience into believing his film goes deeper than what it shows, who can guess how enriching the experience will eventually be?

That's one thing I really admire about SS Rajamouli. There is honesty in his filmmaking. Without involving pretentiousness, he tells a story as it is without using gimmicks or fancy-schmancy technical tricks to blow dust into our eyes and compel us to overlook his flaws. With his last offering, the terrific and wildly imaginative Eega, he reaffirmed himself as one of the country's most original filmmakers.

And there is no filmmaker I would have wanted to see helm an alarmingly budgeted fantasy-epic than one who knows how to use CGI to propel the narrative, not create the illusion of an inventive film. The first part of a two-part saga, Baahubali: The Beginning is largely predictable and theatrical, but grand, sweeping, brilliantly conceived and extremely well-told.

It is a safe risk. Right from the opening scene, it is quite apparent that the story will make use of countless threads of other fantasy films serving as templates, therefore plot twists will be mostly out of the picture. Even the characters are stock. Evoking Hindu mythological stories purposefully, the setting is not unfamiliar: a kingdom ruled by a tyrannical and typically virile king and an innocent but dogged savior who is the rightful heir to the throne but is -- foreseeably -- unaware of that detail. The establishment of the environments the characters populate is done meticulously. Personally, I would expect nothing less from a filmmaker of Rajamouli's caliber, someone who firmly roots his characters in the story and utilizes them to layer his narrative. At the end of the first-half, we know exactly who is thinking what and where their place is in this congested saga.

As mentioned before, there is nothing here that we haven't seen and recognize, but the lack of subtlety is often frustrating. Not that the film requires it, but we are often reminded of its lack when the actors emote loudly for added dramatic effect.

Post intermission, the film dissolves into a prolonged flashback. And for once, this is a prudent move. Baahubali: The Beginning is one of those rare films whose second-half outshines the first by miles. The focus is shifted to only three characters and the relationship they share, therefore shrinking the world in the film and giving us more space to savor.

Which brings me to the all-essential, exhaustive and extensive war sequence that is the defining moment in the half and the film in general. Usually, war sequences of colossal proportions in film have action shown from multiple point-of-views, muddling it and rendering it ineffective. The idea, I guess, is to give it an epic feel by showcasing the bloodshed through the eyes of different characters to stress on the magnitude of it. In Baahubali: The Beginning, the war sequence is a watershed and it is evident from the way Rajamouli and his editor Kotagiri Venkateswara Rao handle its execution. Skillfully cutting between the viewpoints of three characters amidst thousands, it is a truly majestic sequence that makes great use of creativity and CGI. I can go as far to say that I haven't come across a more inspired war sequence at least in Indian epics. I can only imagine the mountainous task of directing over two thousand extras for that single sequence that Rajamouli confronted, and eventually came through laudably.

Alas, Baahubali: The Beginning is not without a couple of serious shortcomings. Short on plot twists also, what acts as a deterrent more often are the flat CGI effects in a few places. Although the world the story is set in is fantastical, the effects (most notably the sequence wherein a bull is tamed by the antagonist using his bear hands, pun intended) do not awe like they are supposed to. Instead, they come off as tacky. And thanks to the Censor Board's new shenanigans, we are supposed to live with a watermark in the lower left side of the screen that reads "CGI." Apparently, the disclaimer about animals not being harmed in the making of this film didn't suffice; mutilating a visually stunning epic is the way to do it.

Baahubali: The Beginning ultimately sets the tone for the conclusive second part like a prequel should, but I wish it were more understated and novel. It is groundbreaking, yes, and a film we need to applaud for its sheer magnitude and vision and courage, but those who seek something exceptional beside its technical accomplishments will most likely be disappointed. It sticks to conventional storytelling. It holds the power to spellbind but not the power to surprise.

Review: Avinash Arun's "Killa" is a mesmerizing examination of childhood.

It is fast turning into a year of debutants. 

So far, we have had Chaitanya Tamhane's Court and M. Manikandan's Kaaka Muttai that have left indelible impressions, that have given us plenty reasons to whoop, that have left us feeling exceedingly optimistic for the future of Indian cinema. That's a good enough reason to celebrate.

But there is one film, one sensational film, that stands out among these gems, the vanquisher. Avinash Arun's profound and intricately constructed debut, Killa, is the film of the year. And I'm not talking about Indian cinema specifically when I proclaim that.

I have always believed that the most difficult of all stories to tell involve deciphering children and their emotions, how their minds function, how they survey the world we live in. It's a complex subject to explore that is often incorrigibly simplified, but when done right, I find that there is no greater joy than looking at the world through the eyes of children. Arun's Killa does exactly what one would look for in a film about children: it presents children as they are. Emotionally complex, eternally buoyant and frequently misunderstood. No falsities, no oversimplification. Only sensitivity. 

It's a quiet, almost meditative and painfully poignant reflection on childhood, the earthshaking distress we feel when we are estranged from our friends, how venting our unhappiness on the world becomes our only source of solace in these times, not realizing that the world already has heaps of problems to deal with in the first place. The balance it manages to strike between humor and poignancy is superlative. Rarely has a debutant demonstrated such tactfulness. It's generously scattered with moments so charming, so impossibly funny -- one of the factors that contributed to the humor is how truthful the shenanigans the kids pull off are -- that I could not resist grinning. It's almost as if we needed reminding that to enjoy a film, it needs to speak to us by telling us something about ourselves, not through disposable gimmicks. 

While Arun takes his time building his world in affectionate detail in the first-half, subtly establishing his characters and the relationships they share, it's in the second-half that the film turns into something more than what initially met the eye. Strained relationships are skillfully and unhurriedly examined in wordless scenes, through mournful glances and furtive smiles, and a boy finally comes of age. In an empathetically crafted sequence, he realizes the worth of having a mother from the unlikeliest of people. A world in which he was a misfit, a home in which he felt isolated become a part of his identity and he gradually comes to accept them as his own. It is in the capturing of this exquisite moment that Arun won my salute. It's a passing moment that is difficult to spot, for it is ever so discreet, but its overpoweringly wistful effect is felt somewhere near the end. It's the kind of moment that turns great films into enduring masterworks.

It only helps that Killa is one gorgeously shot film. The lush hills, mud paths, rusty bridges and blue seas are characters in themselves, being as much parts of the protagonists' lives as the landscapes, contributing a great deal to the film's moody atmosphere. I doffed my hat to Arun's spirited camerawork that engages us swiftly into the small but devotedly composed world. The performances, from even the smallest actors in the briefest roles, are brilliantly multilayered, and the young lot does wonders. They carry the whole film on their shoulders and make it look like a cakewalk. Parth Bhalerao, perhaps the most recognizable actor from the young lot, is particularly miraculous. His brusque Bandya is a character of warmth and goofiness, but he manages to imbue him with a sadness that is hard to describe.

Killa, eventually, is a heartbreaking film. A hushed montage of the people and places we have come to know and care for plays in the final few minutes, and ends with a moment of great hope. In a film that is full of heart, it is the heart it aims at till fade-out. 

It hardly needs pointing out that it is the film to outclass this year.

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Review: M. Manikandan's "Kaaka Muttai" grapples with tragicomedy like no other film in recent memory.

I have always found movies about slum children or people who dwell in the slums to be slightly manipulative. Often in such films we are subjected to repeated and exploitative shots of the dreadful living conditions in the slums as a means to invoke empathy, and how this small world has been preexisting discreetly while we walk past it everyday. While Slumdog Millionare resorted to brash exploitation to stir up the compassion needed to invest into its story, Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay offered a more realistic and subtle picture. 

It comes as such relief, then, that Kaaka Muttai, one of the more extraordinary debuts one is likely to see this year, neither glorifies nor exploits poverty for sympathy, but tells an uncommonly charming story about two slum boys yearning to taste a luscious pizza with a lot of heart. In the process, as is inevitable and in a way obligatory also, it delicately emphasizes on the discrimination between the rich and the poor in India, and how the people involved deal with it. 

It's a tragedy, naturally, but director M. Manikandan is too shrewd an artist to fall for that stereotypical trap. He sidesteps the despair in his tale and shifts his focus to the optimistic bit, thereby delivering an uplifting adventure that has a gloomy undercurrent we rarely have to confront. It is a film that celebrates morality in a cruel world, and conveys this through the shenanigans of two boys obsessed with a snack that even the people who can afford to munch on it consider to be harmful.

It is the perfect recipe for a quasi-preachy film that would have characters delivering routine sermons, but Kaaka Muttai rebuffs that approach entirely. Through humor and heartbreak and tenacity, it teaches us a bit about the world we live in, a bit about us, and it never slips into the melodramatic territory. It is predictable, yes, but the most notable triumphs as far as films are concerned are those that follow a path from the outset that is foreseeable till its conclusion, yet it manages to win you over. Kaaka Muttai is one of those films. It reflects a world that we know, is inhabited with characters we might have met at some point in our lives, but it is its honesty that eventually sways.

While also commenting the effects of globalization on the country and on the mindset of its people, Manikandan's dense debut switches tones rather skillfully as it oscillates between tragedy and comedy. It's a film about a mother's desperation to bring her family together and her diminishing hope, about how she tackles the absence of a father figure in her sons' lives. It is a film about her concealed sacrifice. But at its core, it is a film about entrepreneurship. It's a film about the naivete of two lads when the odds are stacked against them and how they beat it with their steadying optimism. These layers form an exquisite blend that drives the narrative. Each scene is put to good use to sculpt either the characters or the plot, and with each passing moment, Kaaka Muttai reinvents itself. In many ways, that is a rarity. 

The allure of Kaaka Muttai, like most great films', lies in the little throwaway but carefully handled details. In one the scenes deep into the film, the boys unknowingly turn up in dapper clothes only to come up against a catastrophe, and their mother washes her feet on their brand new clothes as a means for salvation. In another, possibly the most vivid of all sequences, a rich kid offers them each a piece of pizza, which they initially gape at but then reject it as they take the offer to be an unfounded insult. The rich kid's confusion is both funny and evocative, for he's completely oblivious to what his actions have led them to feel. After all, he was doing that in good faith. It is marvelous how many perceptive details are crammed in each scene, and how relevant they are in shaping our impression of the characters. Perhaps, this is one of the copious things that I would go back to the film for.

But this film wouldn't have worked half as well if it wasn't for the fabulously understated performances. Admittedly, I'm not as well acquainted with contemporary Tamil cinema as I would have liked to have been, but this committed ensemble only enhances a fine script. The young actors at the heart of this coup have such a strong screen presence, it feels awkward to even imagine for a second who could have played their roles if they had not, and their scenes with Iyshwarya Rajesh, who plays their mother, are doozies. There is no better actor here; only actors who complement each other like actors should. 

My only gripe with Kaaka Muttai is that the story goes slightly awry in the second-half, almost surrendering the logical consistency it maintained throughout for some needless drama. But looking at the bigger picture, it isn't something that would tarnish the joy that it bequeaths to us. Some of the finest Indian films in recent years have been debuts, and Kaaka Muttai proudly upholds that tradition. It is absolutely wonderful.

  

Review: Zoya Akhtar's "Dil Dhadakne Do" is a brave attempt to revive a dead genre, but a feeble one.

Zoya Akhtar can be deservingly counted amongst the most exciting filmmakers working in the Hindi film industry today. She has a novel approach, always something interesting to say, beautiful to show, without ever banking on her cast entirely to make sure her audience leaves, content. Her contributions to her films are evident, even when she manages to cast prominent actors even in the smallest of roles, splurging on the minutest details. While her miraculous debut, Luck By Chance, was an affectionate, bravely grim and always insightful exploration of the functioning of the Hindi film industry, it was her second film, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, that she made known the kind of cinema she believes in. It is classic escapist cinema; glistening and scenic locales, a barrage of good-looking people at every corner of the frame who wear fashionable clothes but are strangely alienated in their own lives. 

Dil Dhadakne Do is a contemporary rehash of the genre that Sooraj Barjatya made his decades ago, but it suffers from the same problems that Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara did. It has a troop of affluent but mysteriously unlikable characters who say dull things, do dull things, have dull problems and grumble throughout the film in the hopes of solving them, but all of this against the backdrop of a lovely country. It doesn't help their cases much, I'm afraid, that these problems are boringly predictable, and neither does it help our case because our narrator here is a dog.

Dil Dhadakne Do kicks off with a voiceover explaining the milieu of each of our four protagonists, and setting up the plot that will go precisely haywire in the next 170 minutes. In the opening minutes, Akhtar cleverly stresses on the problems of each character without overdoing it, and we quickly have a clear picture of what's going on their minds. As the story progresses and finally boards a plush yacht, more and more characters join in, crowding the story as one would expect it to, but each character, each relationship is established rather skillfully. Romance -- furtive, open, expressive, subdued, developing, decaying -- is at the core of the story. People are either falling in love or out of it all over the place, and it gets on one's nerves at a point when it is hard to keep track who is chasing whom. But beside the multiple love angles here, there's also the familial problems that plague the family at the heart of all this. The family in question has a patriarch who is a millionaire but struggling to keep his company afloat, a self-made millionaire daughter who is -- I found this rather interesting -- among the world's ten best entrepreneurs as ranked by Forbes (that's a bit tall, innit?) but who is -- ouch! -- snubbed and overlooked by both her in-laws and parents, and a son who is the heir to the fortune but who wants to do nothing but ride planes. Of course, realism is not something to be found here.

As mentioned before, the story follows the same trajectory that Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara did three years ago, only with more simplified characters. It is hard to invest into their troubles emotionally, because these are not characters whom we love or empathize with but the story develops assuming that we are already buying into their grief. That is a major blunder. 

Until intermission, Dil Dhadakne Do is predictable but reasonably diverting, and the set-up promises a potentially fun second-half. But post-intermission, the story crumbles like a sand castle in a tornado.

There is a limit to how far one can stretch their story till it goes topsy-turvy, and how whiny the characters can get in successive scenes. But this limit is challenged so brashly, it becomes doubly difficult to care about anything any longer. The outcome of each parallel thread can be seen from a mile away, yet we are made to watch as each character struggles to cope with the decaying relationships in their lives. What was foreseen as a potentially amusing set-up swiftly deteriorates into a cluttered mess. Oh, where did the subtlety disappear? It vanishes completely, and everything goes -- painfully -- downhill from there. But the saving grace comes in the form of an adeptly executed scene where empowerment of women is broached. It is a shining star in the phase of the film where homilies on marriage and children are delivered at every turn. We will gladly lap it up.

The performances are nothing to speak of, except Anil Kapoor, Shefali Shah and Ranveer Singh who give performances so earnest, it manages to salvage the film marginally. But what salvation can be achieved in a film that promised so much, yet achieved so little?

In films that tackle dysfunctional families, it is necessary to create quirky characters that are genuinely affable and earn our sympathies, characters whom we can envision as or hope to be real people. Dil Dhadakne Do lacks that. And with an ending that is utterly over-the-top but thankfully not prolonged, it only becomes harder to care for these chicly-dressed but hollow mortals. 

This is not a bad film. It has a few bits here and there that are amusing, and a clever voiceover narration that is often introspective. But a handsomely-mounted film cannot redeem certain shortcomings. And the shortcomings are too many to turn a blind eye to. Reviving a dead genre isn't necessarily a bad idea, but it needs to be done right to be effectual. This simply is not.

(Not For Reproduction)

Review: The charms of Shoojit Sircar's "Piku" are simply impossible to resist.

One aspect I always admire about Shoojit Sircar's films, may it be the impressive Vicky Donor, the compassionate Yahaan or the gripping Madras Cafe, is his empathetic approach towards his characters. Sircar isn't one who approves of his characters being cardboard cutouts that we have to buy as human beings while using his flair to propel the story. He imbues them with real feeling, allows us to witness them go from being personae to people we know, and have always known. It is this compassion that sets him apart from his peers.

I have always believed that a film tends to get immeasurably and mysteriously more enchanting when the director has great empathy for his characters.

Piku might just be Sircar's best yet, and though it evidently lacks a coherent story -- not that it needs it, really -- it finds a great deal of warmth in a dotard's gastric troubles.

If crowd-pleasers are the need of the hour, this sure is one to laud. Like an old-fashioned auteur, Sircar uses quaint locales of New Delhi that have a quiet dignity and populates it with his characters and the subtlest of details. The nuances are often so marvelous both in the art design and performances that one doesn't really need to take the effort to dig into this concoction; Sircar manages to fling us right in the middle of the morning troubles of a familiar Bengali family by skillfully manipulating a terse conversation. A waspish old hypochondriac and his daughter bicker over his diet and his imaginary constipation problems before she heads off to her office, but it is enough to brief us about the relationship they share. Juhi Chaturvedi, also the screenwriter of Vicky Donor, pens this brisk opener that probes gently but deeply into their lives, and never presents us with a shallow sequence as the story matures into something more dense. It is writing of the highest order. Each scene is utilized to flesh the characters out, bring out a detail we had not noticed about them and acquaint ourselves with them better.

Although Piku toys with the familiar here, it has the rare quality of being entirely unpredictable. Essentially a heartwarming father-daughter story, there's a gorgeous sequence early into the film where Bhashkor, the sullen old man, has too much to drink and begins frolicking in the middle of the night. His daughter, at first reproachful but then can't help but smile at the sight, regards him silently as a parent would regard their child from the door of the room, heads back to her own and twirls around for a bit. Volumes of sentiment is captured in a few seconds of subdued imagery, and it made me want to cheer loudly. Like the film itself, it's a celebration of the imprint of childhood inside each one of us, and the sudden feeling of realizing its existence.

And these magical bits keep dropping.

There's a likable madness about the old man, but the daughter panders to his every request even when she feels it's a waste of time. When the film transcends briefly into the road-movie territory, he begins singing and she joins in discreetly. To an outsider, it seems like a dysfunctional family trying to keep to itself, experimenting with the very definition of conventional, but to them it is a routine they have been maintaing for a long time. Sircar's and Chaturvedi's triumph here is that the audience is never made to feel as if they are scrutinizing an unorthodox, reclusive family. To make Piku a noteworthy attempt as an offbeat comedy-drama, the quirky potential of the story is never exploited. Instead, it is treated as one would treat a more conventional drama that involves an eccentric family.

Sircar only plays to his strengths here. He has the ability to keeps a carefree tone throughout, even when the characters discuss some rather weighty themes, and employs very little to no melodrama to make an impact. The scenes do not linger longer than it is necessary. This tautness gives Piku its zing that even a well-cut thriller rarely provides by burning through a bag of tricks. This is old school filmmaking.

The performances need to be exacting, carefully spontaneous and multilayered to make a film like this work, and the cast performs small marvels. This definitely is the most well-acted Hindi film of the year till now, but there is an actor who stands out among them all. Amitabh Bachchan, the veteran who is probably in the most diverse phase of his career currently -- and what a fine, fine career he has had! -- turns Bhashkor into one of the most winsome characters I have seen in Hindi films recently, and each moment of his screen time is one to cherish. He's gullible, acid-tongued, delightful, chatty, unapologetically proud of his heritage and overly protective of his daughter, much like any 70 year-old senile person, and Bachchan's earnest, flawless performance is one of his very best. He pulls off each variation fantastically. Bhashkor's silent acceptance of his daughter as the mother figure in his life is handled with real delicateness, and Sircar deserves pats on his back for that.

My only grouse -- and this is only nitpicking -- is that a film like this needs to be shorter, not as prolonged as Piku is. And it drags a wee bit towards the end with repeated but admittedly amusing conversations tackling the different ways a person can defecate, but their very presence does not serve any purpose.

Ultimately, Piku is nothing but a crowd-pleaser that hinges on nostalgia and pits enjoyable characters against each other to fulfill the void of entertainment. And in that respect, it is a smashing success.

As if the scene featuring an intoxicated Bhashkor dancing wasn't enough to soak up, there's a sublime sequence at the end that shows him cycling through the teeming, pastel streets of Kolkata. I would pay a fortune to be at the place where the idea for that sequence was conceived.

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