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.

(Not For Reproduction)

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.

(Not For Reproduction)