Review: Akarsh Khurana’s “Karwaan” is a frustratingly bland fare.

[May contain spoilers, many of them.]

It’s not particularly difficult to identify what kind of film Akarsh Khurana’s Karwaan is trying to be. The effort is practically visible. Its characters wear sunglasses picked off a shelf from a designer store. Their clothes are dapper, summery. They travel in a beautiful blue van through some gorgeous, sun-drenched ghats. And their wonderfully trimmed faces (with a touch of make-up) do not show any signs of fatigue or age. Charming. We get a few lines that ruminate over presumably meaningful stuff, like death, life and grief, many of them over a drink of coconut water overlooking streams impossibly blue and lush green trees. We are supposed to swoon, catch these bits of wisdom before they flit through the air and disappear. But the only problem is, we don’t.

Karwaan is a film that proves, among other things, a useful fact: That good-looking films don’t always end up being good cinema. A relationship with a film cannot be built if one doesn't understand from where it originated, why this story needed to be told. Really, there is absolutely no excuse for writing a character who goes on unfounded rants in Hindi whenever he bumps into foreigners, or a coy guy who takes orders (or ‘requests’, if you may, although they don’t sound so) on the phone from a sobbing woman he’s never met. If these are attempts to make us like these two, then one should get the idea that the makers are trying hard to find a footing without straining their imagination too much. And how marvellous to be proved right. For the most part, this film seems to meander through sequences where the characters do things that, I would like to believe, are essential for us to understand them. Only this doesn't happen. These bits seem jarring, alienating us from them. Who are these people? Where do they fit into this world? Why are we supposed to sympathise with them? We don't know. But the film rolls on assuming we do, and so do we.

It's not as if the makers don't try to get us to like them. As if this were a cleverer idea than writing a coherent story, the makers toss in a few painful moments (some unexpectedly hitting their mark) where humour is forced into the story to give it some more juice to keep us invested. These attempts feature a fast-talking character at his brusquest, inviting bewildered looks from the people he comes in contact with. When he’s not jovially expressing his disgust at women wearing ‘skimpy’ clothes (which he does on at least two occasions), he pretends to be mute just so he wouldn’t have to pay for petrol. (Incredible how this callous little detail is played for laughs.)

For all that goes wrong with the film, one thing is for certain: Karwaan’s premise is undoubtedly more interesting than most Hindi films’. Two dead bodies get mixed up, and a software engineer from Bangalore has to travel to Kochi to drop off the ‘wrong’ dead body and pick up his father’s, the ‘right’ one. It could have made a splendid black comedy, but the makers settle for a road film instead. Given that the pleasures of a road film can equal a black comedy’s if done right, this doesn’t seem to be a poor decision at the outset. However, when the characters come into the picture, things do start to look shaky. For one, it often feels as if three different characters written for three different films were plucked out and placed in one, and a blue van was thrown into the mix as an afterthought so that they could be together. These characters have – unsurprisingly – gloomy pasts, and this quirky road trip will – again unsurprisingly – prove to be more eventful and life-changing than they originally thought, wringing their pasts out slowly and allowing them a chance to make peace with them.

If only we were living in the early 2000’s and all of this sounded new. We are, unfortunately, eighteen years into the 21st century. But, this doesn’t deter the makers from approaching it like a brand-new concept, putting together something around the ‘comic’ sequences and ironing it with monologues about life and death to ensure all the elements stay in their place. Half-baked developments are introduced without a good reason. A romantic angle for one character (handled a little insensitively later on) and an encounter with a past flame for another is hardly relevant to the story, which I thought began with a guy trying to arrange for a proper burial for his deceased father from whom he was estranged, but ironically enough these parts are among the film’s most engaging. I am not completely sure the writers intended for it to be so, but much like in life, unpredictability has its own rewards.

What saves the film from being a completely bland fare is the considerable charm of its three leads. (Although it’s been a while since a film has forced Irrfan Khan to ham.) Till the end, Karwaan maintains its distance, its few rewards limited to the surface. I walked away without feeling a thing for any of its characters. That disappointing feeling, I believe, can be cured by a drink of cool coconut water. 

[Not For Reproduction]

Review : Imtiaz Ali's "Highway" is charming codswallop.

You know there's something terribly wrong when the abductee starts finding her abductor cute.

Oh, no! Oh, yes.

Welcome, Stockholm syndrome, to a barbaric, bucolic and beautiful India you never knew. It's an oddly effective subject to build a plot around, and who better to do it than Imtiaz Ali? The curly-haired filmmaker serves ravishing road-trips with oodles of romance, a hint of zing and a whole lot of originality. It's a done deal, boss. He gets straight into it : we have a damsel-in-distress bride-to-be who is whisked away by brutal baboons right from under her sissy fiance's nose.

Oh, dear. We sympathize. And her ordeal has just begun.

The twenty-something girl is an adventurous flake. She cries, weeps and adjusts quietly, fends off possible abusers and any kind of human contact. She tries to run, but returns fairly quickly. The kidnappers are astounded, and so are we. It's the beginning of a very promising fairytale.

Imitiaz Ali is arguably one of the finest filmmakers in the Hindi film industry. His ideas are habitually avant-garde that impress and depress in equal measure. But his love for the road remains rare. Watch any film of his, any film, and you'll find that he has sneaked in a sub-plot involving a journey on the long, desolate stretches of the road wherein he can freely indulge in his obsession. And when you have a virtuoso cinematographer by your side, surveying the badlands with his camera, why not join him?

The first part of Highway is some of Ali's darkest work yet. It's a deeply personal film, one that he ached to make all along but had to back out because of its experimental nature. And he had shown us flashes of how grim his ideas can get in the loathsome Rockstar, where Nargis Fakhri tried to masquerade stand-up comedy as acting. My trust in Ali faded slightly after Rockstar, having somewhat liked his previous efforts. Highway, well, makes it worse.

The girl is chatty, friendly and a nudnik. We like her when she makes demands of her own. The kidnappers remain astounded. This gives the director ample space to infuse the tense setting with a few quick laughs and he does so beautifully. The leader of this gang grimaces and barks at the carefree angel, like he's noticed a person like this for the first time. Maybe he has. Funny, hasn't he ever seen Jab We Met, Ali's most successful film to date? Because the girl he has abducted is an extension of the lead character of that film. Just saying.

The girl, we find out, has a filthy rich daddy. Well, doesn't every character who is kidnapped in a Hindi film? Anyway, the desperadoes know they're in big trouble. They run without any real plan. We follow them. We keep following them till the lights come on and the credits roll.

Wait - what? Where is the damn plot?

Uh, it isn't there.

So, so, so what was the point of the film? Yeah, that's a head-scratcher. Because the industry rarely doles out great road films - and here's the finger to those who say Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is a great road film - so surely a director would think twice before scuppering it?  Nope, not in this case. The first half of the film had me on my feet, applauding its newfangled take on the orthodox road movies and buffing it with a fresh coat of inventiveness. Ali makes no mistake. He creates tender and often funny moments between the two leads, charms us with his quirky, peppy banter and his neatly-written characters.

Alia Bhatt, who vastly underplayed her cliched character in her debut, shines as Veera Tripathy, the pathetic lass. Since Ali has confessed to filming the movie without a proper script, Bhatt had a lot of room to make her character memorable, and she has done it. She has done it. In an unexpected scene, Veera tells her unsuspecting abductor a disturbing tale of incest she underwent at the hands of her uncle and the horrors that unfold in her house she doesn't want to go back to. It's a doozy. I shit you not, the whole theater went utterly silent during that one scene. It's a quiet sign of triumph, compadres.

Randeep Hooda is an underrated actor. The thespian, who made his debut a decade ago, is up to snuff as Mahabir Bhati, the pitiless abductor. Though he's overpowered by the young girl's obvious allure, and spends most of the time grimacing and sulking, it's uplifting to watch how he warms up to his abductee.

The second half is Ali concurring to the audience's tastes. Seriously, what went wrong there, chum? Dear, dear. You really don't need to show a hint of romance between a pair unlikely to fall in love. Because then, some people, like me, find it hard to keep their eyes open. Yawn. They smile. Yawn. They joke. Yawn. Look, they build a home together! Yawn. She screams. Ho-hum. The end. Huh?

But there are flashes of brilliance that show us what kind of a film this could have been. Like the scene in which Veera makes one of her kidnappers buy her a CD consisting of English songs and dances to it with him in the middle of the Kashmiri terrains. Or like a scene in which her appreciation of a tumbledown house invites mild sarcasm when her kidnapper asks her why she's so fascinated with the ruins. There are little moments like these which make it impossible to dislike the film. Sigh.

Oh, gee. I didn't realize this is fast turning into an ambivalent review. Damn!

Alright, I didn't like it. Why the nitpicking review, you ask? Because I'm not too fond of movies that do disservice to their lead actors and thwack me on the face because I expected too much from them.