Review: Nitesh Tiwari’s “Dangal” is a solid crowd-pleaser despite its problematic second half.

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

There is a moment when we see Nitesh Tiwari’s Dangal, a solid, solid crowd-pleaser, wobble for the first time. It arrives just before the intermission, a blot on an otherwise terrific first half. A man, who later turns out to be the film’s chief villain, publicly derides our hero. We are supposed to feel angry and horrified, but we don’t. We feel confused. Of what use is a villain in a film that does not need one and was doing fine without one?

But this is a Disney production. There will be heroes, and there will be villains. Dangal has them, too, which may or may not be a bad thing, but in the portions where there are no clear-cut heroes and villains, it’s simply outstanding. Based on the lives of Mahavir Singh Phogat, a retired wrestler, and his daughters Geeta and Babita, who won plaudits for the country internationally in wrestling, it loyally follows the script of every Hindi underdog sports drama ever made, but still makes for an inspiring watch. We see how two girls from an Indian state known for its dismal sex ratio battle patriarchy to come out on top in a sport that is supposedly ‘not for women’. We see how their father too fought his own battles when he began training them. We see them reluctant and mortified at first, then slowly getting thirsty for success. In a standout scene, Geeta loses her first bout to a man, the strongest of all the contenders she could have picked from, but wins the respect of the crowd that had assembled to watch it. Seeing how she almost managed to beat him, the judges decide to award her a higher cash prize than the winner, and she sullenly accepts it. Her father, like her, is a little disappointed by the result, but manages a smile when she walks up to him and silently hands him the money she has won. We see her tossing around in her bed that night. Unable to stomach her loss, she wakes up and asks her father when her next match is. This time his smile is different; he knows a champion when he sees one.

The effect is electrifying. Zaira Wasim, who portrays the young Geeta in one of the year’s very best performances, makes the moment hers. It’s stirring to watch her character, who was initially horrified at the thought of becoming a wrestler, turn into a determined young woman who cannot bear the thought of losing. I remembered a chapter in former tennis champion Andre Agassi’s superbly written autobiography, “Open,” wherein he described one of his first losses. Agassi wrote that after the match, his father watched stonily as he received a huge trophy as a consolation prize for a battle well fought. Later, when both of them were walking through the parking lot, Agassi, sensing that his father was more upset with him receiving the humiliating ‘consolation trophy’ than losing the match, turned to him said that he didn’t really need the trophy. His father swiftly snatched it out of his hands and threw it on the ground, where it shattered. Losing was not an option for him. We learn that losing is not an option in the Phogat household, too. But I digress.

What works in Dangal’s favor is the affectionate way in which it has been crafted. Tiwari tells their stories with humor and feeling, without wasting a single crowd-pleasing moment. He makes us feel the sweat they put in. And we like them, not because we are made to, but because they are ordinary people like us, nurturing dreams that overwhelm them. Their victories become our victories. Even the smaller characters find a way to add to the film’s charm. There is a butcher who supplies them with meat at the expense of his business when they start training for the national-level competitions, and when they begin winning accolades, it means a lot to him, too. We see this character only a few times and we don’t see him speaking with the girls directly, but whenever he appears, usually in the background, we can’t help but smile. We must never forget the little people who made their own sacrifices in our fight for success. Tiwari and his fellow screenwriters, Shreyas Jain, Piyush Gupta and Nikhil Meharotra, retain him till the very end, and it’s a sign of how sure they were of the kind of film they wanted this to be. Alas, this does not last for long.

Image source: www.indianexpress.com

In the second half, it all turns topsy-turvy. To understand why, one must first examine how the Hindi film industry usually approaches stories based on real-life heroes. I find that the industry is especially careful not to portray them as even a little flawed. We see them battling the odds and powering through them, as they might have done in real life, but filmmakers take special care to emphasize this again and again. We see them pitted against someone particularly evil, and beating them. We see everyone else’s contribution in a heroic event belittled while the subject on whom the film is made is placed under the spotlight, their contribution drawn attention to diligently. Last year’s disappointing Airlift was a good example of how Hindi filmmakers twist facts to such an extent that credibility is eventually put at risk. We get a hero, but at what cost?

It’s not a bad thing, though. We love heroes. But the facts, which I find more interesting, drown when a true-life story is embellished with fiction to become more entertaining. In Dangal, facts become insignificant when the filmmakers amp up the drama by shifting their focus on turning Mahavir Singh Phogat into a hero, as if he weren’t one already. We see Geeta turning into a weak athlete under the tutelage of her new coach, the film’s ‘villain’. We see him as incompetent and jealous and hungry for personal glory. We see her decline under him, thanks to his ineptitude, and then her ascent when she goes back to training under her father’s watchful eye. It’s clear what the film is getting at, but at the same time, it is so silly a move to introduce him that I could barely accept him as a principal character. It isn't enough that he's shown as a clown; because of his inability to understand Geeta's natural game, it is up to Mahavir Singh Phogat to ghost-train her for the international matches. The film goes so far as to show his envy hit its peak before Geeta's final match at the 2010 Commonwealth Games when he gets her father locked up in a room, thereby depriving him of a chance to watch his daughter win gold for the country. Although it is intended to be Geeta's coming-of-age moment, her moving out of her father's shadow, one can't help but wish it was handled with more tact.

In spite of these very real problems, Dangal seldom loses its grip. Its wrestling sequences are choreographed to perfection, and one has to try really hard not to jump out of their seat and cheer. (I came close twice or thrice.) No other sports movie in recent memory manages to so effortlessly generate the pulse-pounding excitement that Dangal does with its showdowns. There is the much talked-about sequence where Mahavir Singh Phogat and Geeta wrestle after she returns home from the National Sports Academy a different athlete. The training imparted there changes her both as an athlete and as a person. Her enraged father is wrestling for his faith in himself and his abilities as a trainer while she is wrestling for her independence that was taken from her by him as a child. She is desperate to be on her own, to have her own identity, while he still wants to be able to guide her. It's an emotionally charged sequence, and its execution is flawless. The same can be said of the other wrestling sequences in this film that manage to not make the second half look considerably poor in comparison to the first.

Dangal would not have worked if it wasn't for its remarkable cast. The amount of effort that has been put in to nail the Haryanvi lingo as well as the more physical sequences is evident. As I said before, there is no doubt that the filmmakers were sure of what kind of film they wanted to make. I just wish they were wise enough to not bow to commercial demands.

(Not For Reproduction)

Handpicks: The Five Best Indian Films Of 2016.

[This list is not for reproduction.]

Five, because I could not watch all the films that I wanted to this year.

Two notable films that you won't find on this list but deserve to be on it are: Sairat, Nagraj Manjule's epic romantic musical that skilfully mixed ingredients of commercial cinema with social themes; and Aligarh, Hansal Mehta's compassionate film on Ramchandra Siras, a gay professor at the Aligarh Muslim University, who was found dead in 2010 under mysterious circumstances, questioned the invasion of privacy in his case.

5. “Chauthi Koot” (dir.: Gurvinder Singh; Punjabi)

In Chauthi Koot, there is silence of a unique kind. It is fraught with tension and suspicion, and when someone speaks, the words don’t diminish the tension it carries. This silence is masterfully maintained throughout the film. It is important, because Gurvinder Singh is trying to do something ambitious here: take us back to the Punjab of the ‘80’s, a time of widespread distrust and disorder, using atmosphere as a time-machine. He succeeds. Chauthi Koot, based on two short stories by Waryam Singh Sandhu, is a modest, profound film that adopts an ambiguous approach to tell a story of fear and paranoia, and how innocents are pulled into someone else’s fight. It prompts us to put ourselves in the shoes of its protagonists. There are no easy answers to be found here, but ample ideas to mull over.

4. “Ottaal” (dir.: Jayaraj; Malayalam)

Jayaraj’s Ottaal, a worthy adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s short story “Vanka,” is arguably the year’s most heartbreaking film. Taking place mostly in and around the marshlands of Kerala, it is the story of a recently orphaned boy’s attempts to start a new life with his aging grandfather, a duck farmer, while also trying to get himself accepted by society. Brought alive by empathetic direction, terrific writing, and gorgeous cinematography, Ottaal immerses us in its richly textured world. Although Jayaraj adds his own little touches to this neat adaptation to make it more accessible to the Indian viewer, he does little to mitigate the crushing power of the original. I will never be able to forget Kuttappayi of Ottaal like I haven’t forgotten Vanka of “Vanka.” What needs to be noted here is that “Vanka” was written in 1896, and more than a century later its message still stings.

3. “Visaranai” (dir.: Vetrimaaran; Tamil/Telugu)

I wasn’t familiar with the cinema of Vetrimaaran before I watched Visaranai, but that has changed. Or, if I had to put it in another way, it made me change that. A boldly political film, which is a rarity in Indian cinema these days because of a certain babu in the CBFC, it’s an immensely disturbing indictment of the country’s policing system. Sometimes the caretakers of the law are worse than those who break it. It’s a scary thought. In the end I was left thoroughly shaken. Maybe you will, too.

2. “Thithi” (dir.: Raam Reddy; Kannada)

There wasn’t a film I saw this year more Indian than Raam Reddy’s Thithi. It was reminiscent of the TV serials that used to be shown on Indian television a long, long time ago that mainly focused on a group of people in a quaint little place and chronicled their daily lives and interactions. It’s indeed marvellous how beautifully it observes its characters without making it look heavy-handed, and how the light humour is woven into its thoughtful story. It’s the kind of film that offers little food for conversation but much for thought. We just soak it up.

1. “Kaul” (dir.: Aadish Keluskar; Marathi)

Aadish Keluskar’s remarkable debut was made on a shoestring budget, but that doesn’t deter it from being one of the most original and brave Indian indie films in years. I caught it at a free screening in March, and I consider commuting for nearly an hour in peak Mumbai traffic one of the better decisions I took last year. It’s hard to describe what Kaul is about. It’s also hard to describe how it engages us with its stark visuals and soundscape. It’s a carefully made film, and it often ventures into a territory we do not expect an Indian film to venture into. (People love to call it – and I believe the term is – “mindfuck.”) It’s ambiguous, philosophical and grim, and it requires a willingness on the viewers’ part to explore what it wants to say. It’s the quintessential nightmare of film distributors. There is so much to absorb, so many ideas to take note of that one viewing was never going to be enough. (I have not gotten a chance to watch it again yet.) The discussions are never going to end. The best we can do is applaud it for its guts and watch it again. And wait and see what the very talented Keluskar comes up with next.

Review: Jayaraj’s “Ottaal” is an excellent adaptation.

[Contains spoilers, many of them.]

My most vivid memory of watching Schindler’s List is the horror I felt while watching that sequence in it in which smiling and waving children are packed onto trucks to be carried to a place where they will be put to eternal rest. Their parents are on the other side of the field, celebrating another day of survival, realizing only too late what’s happening. Chaos follows. I watched with cold dread and a growing sense of numbness.

In Jayaraj’s Ottaal, winner of the Crystal Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2016, a recently orphaned five-year-old boy is about to be sent to a place that’s going to crush his spirit and ruin his childhood. But he is yet unaware of it. He blissfully celebrates going away to the city to ‘learn’, promising his wise grandfather, a duck farmer with whom he stays in the idyllic marshlands of Kuttanad in Kerala, that he will be back soon. The child’s innocence and simplistic view of the world is matched by our knowledge of it. We realize what’s going to happen to him. The happier he seems, the more heartbroken we become. His happiness is poisonous. I recalled the sequence from Schindler’s List when I felt a familiar pang of dread while watching it.

An adaptation – and a terrific one by Joshy Mangalath – of Anton Chekhov’s 1896 short story “Vanka,” Ottaal takes place mostly in and around the marshlands of Kerala. In these marshes lives a community of fishermen, away from the busy cities, building their own lives in their own little world. A postman, one of the many endearing characters in this film, laments everyday that there are no letters for anyone in Kuttanad, but his tone is hopeful. On the other side of the village, on the banks of a river sits a man with a fishing rod trying to catch fish. Whenever Kuttappayi, the boy, is passing by, he asks him with childlike curiosity whether he managed to hook any. No, he has not. But, the man says, it’s a pleasure just to sit there and hope. It’s a little detail, but a significative one: this is a place untouched by pessimism. This is a place free from worry, where everyone knows everyone, and everyone gives generously to everyone. This is a community that has learnt how to live peacefully.

Image source: www.berlinale.de

Ottaal is a film that reveals itself through little moments like this. Jayaraj’s direction is decidedly low-key but assured. Together with cinematographer MJ Radhakrishnan he paints a textured world of sounds and people, like a man who communicates with the others through a few peculiar calls and spends the rest of the time caroling without a care in the world. And Kuttappayi is at the center of this world, a character so tragic that your heart sinks at the very sight of him. His story is revealed through an exchange early on: his parents, deep in debt, committed suicide by poisoning their meal and even gave some to him, but he was saved. His life is far from easy. He’s happy living with his grandfather. His grandfather is secretly ailing but he loves and cares for the boy more than he lets on. He wants to be there for him. His closest friend is Tinku, whose well-off father disapproves of his friendship with ‘duck boy’ Kuttappayi. Tinku’s mother sympathizes with the boy but is unable to provide for him given her failed attempts at softening her dour husband. So Kuttappayi stays where he is, struggling to build his own little life, trying to find acceptance in a world that has been unrelenting to him.

Through these episodes, the film gently hints at how unfairly the world treats a young and poor orphan. Kuttappayi’s life seems to be defined by separation: separation from his parents because of debt, separation from Tinku because of class, and finally, separation from his grandfather because of an illness. He’s just a young lad who has much to offer to the world, but he’s living, both literally and metaphorically, in muddy waters.

Finally, when his helpless grandfather decides to send him away to the city to ‘learn’, the film inches closer to a devastating end. In a skillfully executed scene, the old man has a drink with Boss, his only link to the city. Boss suggests that Kuttappayi be sent to a factory where fireworks are made and half-heartedly adds that he will be happy there. The old man doesn’t dismiss the idea right away. He wants Kuttappayi to be in safe hands, but that seems to be a long shot. Now he just wants him to be under a roof. It’s a fine moment, and Kumarakom Vasudevan, who plays the old man, handles it with aplomb. He captures the turmoil the grandfather is going through and the courage it takes to break the heart of someone you love dearly through a few moments of brooding silence. He does not speak, and yet his eyes tell us all we need to know.

Ottaal is the kind of small film I find easy to love because it’s made with so much heart. It has an important message to impart, and, unlike most Indian films with social messages, this one does not force-feed it to us. We are left with a lasting image of Kuttappayi sleeping in darkness without a blanket with a few boys his age, his fate now uncertain. He has written to his grandfather using the light from a candle. For someone who has suffered so much, he remains optimistic. Come what may, we know he will always light a candle. It’s a thought that brings us much comfort.

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Review: Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land” is an early jewel in his filmography.

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

Boy meets girl. They are first a little aloof, but then keep bumping into each other. They are both struggling in their respective careers, and are stuck in jobs they do not like. They dream of bigger, better things. They fall in love. They support each other. And then comes that moment where they must decide whether they want to be together or pursue their dreams.

It’s a familiar template. And yet, in La La Land, the incredible new film by Damien Chazelle, each moment feels like a discovery. Not a ‘rediscovery’, mind you, but a discovery. It’s an old-fashioned romance told with so much imagination and style that none of it seems familiar. It makes us forget that we have seen bits of it before. Maybe in this film, maybe in that film – it doesn't matter. Here is a film that is going to take the familiar and turn it into something memorable. It promises as much in the first ten minutes. La La Land has us enthralled before it even gets going.

I am not big on musicals. It’s not a genre that appeals to me much. It’s difficult for me to find context when talking about them because I skipped watching them for the longest time. I have only seen a handful of them. And I cannot remember the last time a musical, from the very few I have seen, swept me off my feet the way La La Land did. (To think I grew up on Hindi films.) From its splashy opening number that plays out in a traffic jam in the middle of the day to its splendid final scene, it’s a film that made me want to sink my teeth into this genre. It’s an ode to a city, an era, and to those strugglers living out of suitcases who dare to dream. It captures the complexity of struggle and the beauty of wanting something so desperately that it drives you. It captures how love makes it seem, if only for a moment, that it's indeed possible to get anything that we want if we want it badly enough. Yes, it's nothing that we haven't seen before. Yet it is new, every moment of it.



It's in the aforementioned traffic jam that Sebastian and Mia cross paths for the first time, he a struggling musician and she a struggling actress. They lead dull, unsatisfying lives. They are always hunting for opportunities to break out of it, to pursue something that makes them happy. They fail, and get back to their old lives. But Chazelle does not allow them to become sorry characters; he focuses instead on the sparks that fly when they are alone. The world around them ceases to exist when they are allowed to do what they love. Mia’s audition for a role is impressive; she can obviously knock it out of the park. But she does not get it. Sebastian’s job demands that he play a few standard Christmas tunes on the piano at a restaurant where nobody is paying him any attention, and he gets fired for leaving a room breathless when he, feeling suddenly inspired, drifts away and plays what he wants. She’s there, passing by, and she is left astounded. Fates intertwine.

Although these two sequences end on a sad note – both don’t ‘make it’ – they leave us feeling hopeful for them. Our attention is drawn to their passion and determination. They’re likeable underdogs. They soon find each other. They see themselves in each other. When they take a walk after a party, they impulsively break into a joyful song-and-dance routine. Failure does not bog them down. They keep going. It’s a film that belongs as much to its director as it does to its actors, and the magic that we see is as much a creation of its director’s as it is its actors’.

This is extremely confident filmmaking. Chazelle, who last made Whiplash, is adept at creating lovely moments that stay with you. Some involve dance, the others drama. When Sebastian, a purist, joins a band and, in a concert that Mia attends, plays the kind of music he does not believe in, Mia gets disillusioned. He's not the same person she fell in love with. She slips out before the audience begins cheering wildly. This is Sebastian's first brush with real success. But she does not see herself in him anymore. It's a terrific moment, when his success becomes their failure.

It only helps that Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling play off each other wonderfully. They infuse Mia and Sebastian respectively with such charm and feeling that we can't help but fall for the pair. Chazelle recognises this, which is why he lets them command the film. Even when a certain scene demands that they work without music, they make the film soar. Surprisingly, though, their performances aren't extraordinary. It is not a film that requires them to be, really. All the elements work together without overpowering one another. Rare.

La La Land is one of the best films of the year and an early jewel in Chazelle's filmography. With three films to his credit now, this guy seems to be warming up. His little touches are exquisite. Sometimes, it's not a question of whether the story a filmmaker chooses to tell is new or not. It's about how it is told.

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Review: Gauri Shinde's “Dear Zindagi” is a major misfire.

[Might contain spoilers.]

In one of the many, many exchanges in Dear Zindagi, Gauri Shinde's glossy sophomore film after her delightful debut English Vinglish, Shah Rukh Khan, playing a renowned therapist called Dr. Jehangir “Jug” Khan (why does every character who is a somebody in a Hindi film has to be ‘renowned’?), says, “Genius is knowing when to stop.” It's ironic that the line finds a place in a film that's about forty minutes too long in addition to being meandering and indulgent.

There were signs. There were signs. A rich and somewhat successful urban woman, Kaira, has emotional problems. She is dealing with stress everyday. She snaps at a guy who accidentally bumps into her in the park. She is an exposed nerve in the company of her boyfriends. She is popping pills. She is trying to decide between two projects with work environments she knows she won’t be comfortable in. We don't think she will make it through either of them. She is like a castle of cards that would fall apart with a gust of wind. Vulnerable, clearly in need of help.

When a film is titled “Dear Zindagi” and it presents a character like this one, we somehow get the idea that it will be dosed with a healthy amount of optimism. And here the dose of optimism presents itself in the form of Jug, the ‘cool doc’. A ray of light in a dark, musty tunnel. Jug understands her, helps her open up and open her windows to a more hopeful world slowly, one session every week. 

It is a film that keeps its ambitions low. To Shinde’s credit, she manages to do two things unique to a Hindi film: Approach mental illness as a serious subject as opposed to an overexploited joke, and build a narrative around the conversations the doctor and patient have. She also tries to get rid of the stigma surrounding therapists. (In parts, the film did look like an overlong advertisement for therapists. I counted at least four instances where we are told that it's okay to sometimes see them.) But the problem here is Shinde’s forced dialogue that tries really hard to be free-flowing while also trying to sound profound, often failing in this regard. Its conscious, self-congratulatory tone creates a barrier between us and the characters. It goes on endlessly without purpose, without saying anything even when the characters are constantly speaking. When Jug gives an example of trying out many chairs before settling for the best one to analogise Kaira’s failure of finding the right guy, it comes across as stale. It’s the sort of theory that doesn’t work in a film anymore only because it’s hackneyed. But Dear Zindagi loves it.

Image credits: www.indianexpress.com

After a while, the pattern became clear: One life lesson per session. While Kaira looks forward to it, we don’t share her eagerness. These sessions are sermons where anecdotes are shared and the past is brought up. There is a nod to Good Will Hunting and even a really tiny one to Analyze This. But the more inspired and original bits are drowned by the long stretches of dialogue before and after them. We crave for more plot, something to break this pattern. As we expect, Kaira’s nervousness is because of a memory that has tainted her childhood. Her vulnerability stems from it. These vital pieces of information, our key to understanding Kaira, come far too late and all at once. By then we are long past caring. Or maybe just I was. 

What made English Vinglish so charming was its sharp writing that, for the most part, avoided preachiness. Dear Zindagi openly embraces it. There are snatches of dialogue that are sharp, reminiscent of the kind of writing we saw in English Vinglish, but they vanish after the character of Dr. Jehangir Khan is introduced. With him comes superficiality. And superficiality has no place in a film that revolves around conversations. It ebbs the actors' charms. The performances are very good, but it’s a shame I could not warm up to them due to this.

Dear Zindagi is a hit-or-miss proposition, really. Those who can relate to the character of Kaira might appreciate what Shinde is trying to do here, but those who can’t might find it hard to adapt to the film’s didactic approach. It might prove to be effective for some considering the film is about a woman opening up to a therapist and is meant to be talky, but this sort of approach lacks shrewdness. Even in its final moments, Dr. Jehangir Khan wasn’t done with his life lessons. I lost count of the number of times I sighed out of boredom and just wished that they had gotten Goa’s characterisation right at least. 

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Review: Karan Johar’s “Ae Dil Hai Mushkil” is a buzzkill.

[Contains spoilers, many of them.]

Not being much of a fan of melodramas, I have always steered clear of Karan Johar’s films. My only brush with his cinema was his well-executed instalment in the anthology film, Bombay Talkies. I don’t know his “style,” but I am told he makes out-and-out melodramas about affluent and good-looking people having problems with each other. I believe the term often used to describe his films is “weepathon.” But there’s one characteristic about Johar the filmmaker that nobody can disagree with: He has a loyal audience, and he knows exactly what they want.

I don’t know how I wound up in the theatre to watch his latest, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, but I was sincerely praying that I wouldn’t have to sit through a “weepathon.” In 21^st century terms, the film is about a guy who gets into the “friend zone,” panics, and then attempts to get out of “the zone.” Over the course of 158 minutes – which feel like eternity – it captures the entire process of getting in, panicking, and trying to get out. This is accompanied by gorgeous locations, actors who look impeccable in every frame, and a bunch of cameos. A picture wrapped up in gloss about people suffering beautifully is a gift to us to mark the festival of lights. It doesn’t sound too bad until we realise what we have got ourselves into. 

Ae Dil Hai Mushkil kicks off with Johar bringing a surprising lightness of touch to one overwritten scene after another, something he isn’t known for. Although he follows the spoilt-brat-bumping-into-a-woman-who-changes-his-life formula loyally, he’s ignoring his own approach to a story here. Melodrama is mostly kept at bay, but there are still cringeworthy moments of indulgence and theatricality. He tries too hard. The actors try too hard. We don’t get enough opportunities to understand the characters they portray. We have met the characters before: He’s the introverted and confused son, a man-child, of a wealthy father, and she’s the buoyant and carefree woman who gets excited by just about everything. We don't know what drives them, how they see the world. It’s hard to feel for such thinly written characters, and it’s important to feel for them because we know a love story will be blossoming between them soon. (We are, after all, watching a mainstream Hindi “Diwali” film.) The story just needed to breathe, to develop naturally, but Johar doesn’t let it. 

Through the first half, the film coasts along like an old train on rusty rails: It’s somehow doing what it is supposed to, but there is no telling when it will collapse. One misplaced detail, one little bad scene or a weak plot point and it’s going to go down. (The moment does arrive near the end.) It’s strangely thrilling to watch how it tries to balance itself with its excesses and innumerable flaws, because we sense a confidence here. It’s happy to be what it is, happy to be flawed. It’s delivering what most Hindi “Diwali” films try to deliver: Digestible fun and frolic. Some people, like me, cannot watch something as self-aware and extravagant as this. But we understand that we are not the audience Ae Dil Hai Mushkil was made for.

The love between them does not blossom. The guy does not get the girl. He tries to be content by keeping her in his life as his best friend. He gets into a relationship with a mature and lovely Urdu poetess who lives in Vienna (hmph?), and who, for the first time, accepts him as a man. This is his first mature relationship. There is a moment when the best friend meets the new girlfriend, and the girlfriend wants to know why the best friend never fell for him. The best friend replies that she got a baby in a pram, not the mature person the girlfriend got. We inexplicably get the feeling that this exchange was supposed to be the film’s crowning moment. A man’s soul mate and his dream woman are sitting across each other and talking about him. The dream woman is curious; the soul mate, full of feeling. This moment could have been melancholic for the sake of cinema, but, thanks to its awkward execution, it is reduced to a sad little joke. 

Finally, a sudden – and terrible – “plot twist” in the third act crumbles the film. At least till that point the film was managing to keep itself from coming apart. From then on, I didn’t stop cringing till the lights came back on. There is absolutely no justification given for its inclusion except that perhaps we hadn’t cried enough. It comes across as Johar’s last-ditch attempt to make us cry. We still don’t. It just doesn’t work.

I discovered a way to analyse how different I am from the film’s target audience while watching the film in the theatre. A huge group of forty-somethings had occupied the row behind mine, and they laughed when the film wanted us to laugh, cried when it wanted us to cry. Rarely did we respond to it in the same way. I suppose it worked for them. Maybe I am just not cut out for Johar's cinema. 

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Review: Jonas Cuaron’s “Desierto” is neither terrifying nor particularly thrilling.

[Contains spoilers, many of them.]

Jonas Cuaron’s Desierto, the Mexican submission for the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film this year, should have worked. It does not.

There is no doubt that it will find a place in the current political climate. Immigration is a topic currently in the spotlight, thanks to a demagogue who has been opposing it vociferously. We read about incidents in the papers where immigrants have been attacked or threatened for no reason at all. So, a minimalist film about immigrants being hunted down like animals couldn’t have come at a better time. We think it will be urgent and exciting, not limp and ineffective. Certainly not limp and ineffective. But Desierto – well, you can guess.

It opens with a truck carrying illegal immigrants breaking down in the middle of a parched desert along the US-Mexican border, who then continue the journey on foot. On the other side of the desert, a drunken and clearly racist lunatic hunting rabbits notices them, and then, on a whim, decides to pick them off one by one. It’s not a random act of violence; he chases the ones who get away for two days without pausing for breath. For him, it’s a game where he has the advantage, a game in accordance with his beliefs. The unarmed immigrants have no option but to run, to hide, and to save themselves. But stranded in the hot son and in the middle of the seemingly endless expanse of a rocky desert, where could they run?

Like Gravity, Desierto makes it clear in its first ten minutes that it will be a straightforward, if simplistic, survival thriller. It was probably meant to be that way. If anything was different, like a villain with a conscience or maybe a bunch of immigrants who fight back, it would have compromised on its power to provoke. It wants to be provocative, so much so that there is no attempt to provide any background to any of the characters. They are markedly categorised into two groups: the unarmed and helpless are the good guys, and the armed inebriate is the bad guy. We just know that one of the good guys has a son somewhere. He's the good guy because he has a son, a family. The bad guy, well, has a dog, a savage one. He swigs from a bottle, laughs, and woohoo’s after massacring most of the group. Then he yells, “It’s my home!” in case we had any trouble figuring out just how evil he really is. So much for subtlety.

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Like Gravity, Desierto makes it clear in its first ten minutes that it will be a straightforward, if simplistic, survival thriller. It was probably meant to be that way. If anything was different, like a villain with a conscience or maybe a bunch of immigrants who fight back, it would have compromised on its power to provoke. It wants to be provocative, so much so that there is no attempt to provide any background to any of the characters. They are markedly categorised into two groups: the unarmed and helpless are the good guys, and the armed inebriate is the bad guy. We just know that one of the good guys has a son somewhere. He's the good guy because he has a son, a family. The bad guy, well, has a dog, a savage one. He swigs from a bottle, laughs, and woohoo’s after massacring most of the group. Then he yells, “It’s my home!” in case we had any trouble figuring out just how evil he really is. So much for subtlety.

Desierto suffers from the same problems as Gravity, which Jonas co-wrote with his father, Alfonso Cuaron, but, notably, also has similar strengths. Our protagonists here, like the protagonist there, want to escape to safety. They need to improvise a way to get there with a lunatic and his loyal dog hot on their trail. We are filled with horror when the gun-toting bad guy attacks them for the first time, but that feeling doesn’t quite return even when the others are eliminated in gorier ways. Owing to a poor screenplay and inadequate character development, Cuaron turns a promising premise into a mostly predictable mess. It’s a slog where we feel nothing at all. We can’t be blamed, though; the characters in the film hardly show any emotion, whether empathy or fear, when their companions are killed. They remain unaffected, panicky. And if they can’t summon empathy, how can we?

Somewhere in the second half of the film, I lost all interest. It was too late to expect it to give me something more. The villain became unimaginably caricatural with his occasional murmuring of “Let's get them,” and even uttered a roar of anger at one point. (Oh, come on!) The last remaining immigrant – played by the ever-reliable Gael Garcia Bernal – tries to dodge him in the inevitable final chase, not fighting back even when his life is in mortal danger. It became frustrating. The most he does is utter a cry of helplessness to counter his hunter’s roar of anger. Such flatness overwhelmed me. The one-sided perspective managed to inspire some sympathy, but it made it less of a thriller. And that is a major flaw, even if the intentions behind it were noble.

Apart from stray moments of terror and wonderful work from cinematographer Damian Garcia, Desierto manages to remain mostly unimpressive. Some thrillers lack heart, others cleverness. This one lacks both. It's disappointing to see it being reduced to a rubble.

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