Review: Raam Reddy's "Thithi" is an incredible debut.

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

In the opening scene of Raam Reddy's Thithi, an old grouch spares no one walking past him as he gibes at them. The men get yelled at, the women barely get more than a murmur. People ignore him, a detail that suggests that he has been doing this for quite some time, and a group of children giggle at his antics. And when he gets up to relieve himself, he slumps over and dies. In a matter of minutes a small group of people discover him lying in the dust and declare him dead.

This particular sequence tells us a lot about what is to follow, and marks the film's first triumph. A world is created, a world of sounds and sights, a lived-in world, within the first five minutes. Before we meet the folk of the village of Nodekoplu, we are already familiar with them and their milieu. We don't need the introductions, really. They can be skipped. But they are not. We are introduced to them again but in a different, more delightful way. Now the news of the centenarian's death has to travel and reach his son, grandson and great-grandson. We see their apathetic reactions to it and then, understatedly, the people's. They begin talking about a grand farewell, grand because the man lived to be a hundred, and getting the rituals done properly, their eagerness to do so not being shared by any of the dead man's kin. But most of all they talk about the feast.

Thithi captures the flavor and the color of rural India quite unlike any other film in recent memory. Like all films set in Indian villages, fictitious or otherwise, it is a busy one, bursting with characters and situations, seamlessly jumping from one to the other. It's like watching one of those old Hindi television programs that revolved around a bunch of likable characters picked out from everyday life and their repartees. (I wouldn't have been noticed if Thithi played with the Doordarshan logo on the top-right of the screen.) But it is a film with its own wit, its own characters, its own world, and its own identity. For someone like me who isn’t clued in to Kannada cinema, it comes across as a breath of fresh air. A more distinctly Indian film has not found its way to the theaters this year, and I reckon there will not be.

The old man owned a piece of land that should be inherited by his son now that he is dead. But the old drunkard with a lion-like mane of white hair who loafs around all day clearly isn’t the ideal candidate to be declared its owner. He would probably sell it off for a small sum to buy more hooch. His son, a responsible individual with a family to feed, instantly tries to get his hands on it. It’s not greed, we find out; it’s a reasonable decision. But the father and his son have had a falling out. Working from a wonderfully layered script he co-wrote with Eregowda, Reddy communicates the stiffness the father-son duo share through a terrific scene. The son is disgusted by his father’s habit of wandering aimlessly armed with a tiny bottle of rum all day. The father is still somewhat tender towards his son although there is cautiousness in the way he deals with him, and the son can only broach the topic of the piece of land. No pleasantries are exchanged. The argument is heated on the son’s part but diplomatic on the father’s. Reddy’s talent is evident in the way he handles the scene, saving us a flashback where we would have seen them having the argument that led to their fallout for the sake of a little more clarity. A lesser filmmaker would have settled for it. We don’t get the flashback, of course, because we don’t need it. The actors, both non-professionals like the rest of the cast, shine. And when we are in such good hands, we need not worry.

For me the greatest films have many memorable moments but no standout scenes. There’s consistency found in them. I have always believed that the best scenes in any film hog our attention and deny us the pleasure of experiencing the film as a whole. We always look forward to the next few scenes to measure up to the finer ones, only to be disappointed when they don’t. Consistency eternalizes them, because we remember the impact the film had on us as a whole, not the sum of its strongest parts. Thithi is one such film. One will talk about this moment in it or that moment in it, savor it repeatedly as they discuss it, but would be at a loss for words when asked to talk about its strongest scene. Each sequence comes with its own magical bits, its own moments.

But the film is all about its characters. Whatever little plot this film has is only a backdrop for us to observe them, observe how situations define people and how they change them, bringing out the best and worst in them. In this case, the dead man’s thithi ceremony serves as one, and in the busyness and small-scale chaos that follows, we get to see how it has influenced the characters to be different people. The son has no qualms about bribing his father to disappear for a few months so that he can usurp the land owned by him, and his son has no qualms about stealing from the naïve girl he has taken a liking to. Their villainy, if we could call it that, is not lingered on for long because circumstances have dictated their behavior. They may be likable people but that cannot keep them from committing bad deeds, even if the people they stand to hurt are related by heart or worse, by blood.

In its third act, Thithi is at its busiest. Threads need to be tied up, stories need to be concluded. It’s a bit overwhelming to keep track of everything, and in some places it feels like too much is happening. But till its pensive final shot, it remains both playful and thoughtful. In pitch darkness, the righteous old inebriate who has infuriated his son by unknowingly spoiling the land deal sits in front of a fire, away from the ceremony now in its last stage. The village readies itself for a performance. He doesn’t want to join in the fun. He would much rather light a fire in the darkness.

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Review: Gurvinder Singh's "Chauthi Koot" is a fine but slightly inconsistent study of paranoia and fear.

[Contains spoilers, a lot of them.]

The first thing I noticed about Chauthi Koot as I took my seat in the blacked-out movie auditorium was that it didn't take more than a few seconds to engage me. I had rushed in a bit late, and ferreted around for my seat in the dark. But the sound of train screeching as it pulled into the station drew me into the world of Chauthi Koot even before I had the chance to look at the screen. The sound design was excellent. I had walked into a film late on many occasions in the past, but I used to always try to not take my eyes off the screen even as I searched for my seat so as not to miss much. Since a majority of these films had dialogue-heavy opening scenes, it was difficult for me to bother with something as trivial as being seated for them. But Chauthi Koot opens with silence, followed by more silence. It opens with hurried footsteps and commonplace sounds. The only telling visual detail in its first scene is the anxious look on the faces of the two men we are introduced to. 

Indian filmmakers have two ways of approaching historic events that have violence attached to them. They either lead us directly into the heart of them, like Gulzar did with Maachis and Anurag Kashyap did with Black Friday, or they merely inspect the consequences of the violence caused as a result. This is the path less taken but, I believe, the more cinematic one. (But that remains to be argued.) Satyajit Ray did it memorably in Shatranj Ke Khiladi, where the bloodless battle on the chessboard was far more important than the actual battle happening miles away. By implying bloodshed, the suspense is amplified by a few notches, because it uses the viewer's imagination to tell a tale. Chauthi Koot is the kind of film that relies heavily on that technique. There is palpable tension in the proceedings, and this tension translates the implied violence into something far bloodier and terrorizing in the imagination. When a shot is fired, punctuating the stillness of the village, we sit up. To see any act of violence would have surely lessened the visceral experience. Thankfully, Singh knows this and all too well.

The opening half-hour of Chauthi Koot is great, great filmmaking. After missing the last train to Amritsar, two Hindu men desperately begin asking a few indifferent policemen patrolling the station for help. They are joined by a Sikh gent, also keen to get to Amritsar as soon as possible, in their attempts to convince the guard of a train headed there to let them in. The problem is, the train is supposed to leave the station and reach Amritsar empty. The guard's answer is a stern no. Neither of them wants to sit in one place or spend the night at the station for they fear they would be picked up on suspicion. It's never said out loud, but the shifty glances are informing. As the train begins to chug, buckling under despair, they force their way into the guard's cabin, ignoring his weak protests, only to find themselves in the company of two Sikh strangers and a few others. This sequence unfolds languidly over the course of twenty-five minutes, but so smooth is its execution that each moment of it feels like an opportunity to immerse ourselves in that world. I felt incredibly lucky.

One thing I acknowledge now that I have seen both Chauthi Koot and Anhe Ghore Da Daan, Singh’s National Award-winning debut, is that he can’t be faulted for his filmmaking. His style is reminiscent of Mani Kaul, his mentor, and is quite effective. The first half of the film is well crafted (although some people may have some problems with how he merges the two stories namely "Chauthi Koot" and "Hun Main Theek Thaak Haan" by Waryam Singh Sandhu the film is adapted from) but that is only a slight wrinkle. Perhaps Singh wants us to know how the turmoil touched so many lives in Punjab back then, even two people who meet quite by accident have their lives disrupted by it. We move to the other story, where a Sikh farmer and his family are pestered every night by Khalistani militants who want him to kill his beloved dog to stop its incessant barking that may alert unwanted passersby. When the military comes knocking the next day and ransacks his house, he doesn’t know which side to take, for both sides cause mental turmoil in their own ways. 

This particular chapter is marked by a few lows, notably in the way the mood is dealt with, but it does manage to get under our skin. The information is also dealt with in a manner that makes the opening sequence look comparatively stronger in comparison, with characters launching into lengthy stories about the acts of violence in other parts of the state as opposed to the opening sequence, which left it to us to imagine what it felt like to live in those times. But even when things are a little too simplified for them to have a powerful impact, Singh makes this portion look impressive. There is a moment when the terrorists are about to leave, promising menacingly to return, and the dog begins barking from the barn. The terrorists only look at each other, then at the farmer, who looks down. It’s a marvelous moment that is at once funny and frightening. The barking dog symbolises the human spirit, the courage of those who lived through difficult circumstances, and its placement in that scene captures it beautifully.

A storm indicates the end of the first half, suggesting, perhaps, what is about to come. But in the second half, the film meanders for a long time, thinning out some of the film’s carefully built-up intrigue. We hear about Operation Bluestar on the radio in one scene. We see how the farmer finally lashes out violently at his dog, unable to stand its barking any longer. The circumstances he has found himself in have turned him into someone who would now hurt his beloved. They have caused him long-term mental trauma. They have put fear in his heart. It’s not immediately affecting, but the more we think about it, the more we comprehend its impact. But one can’t help but feel slightly disappointed. The deviation from the central story feels unnecessary and forced. A tighter second half would have made the film more moving.

As the film nears its conclusion, we return to the people in the guard’s cabin, now closer to Amritsar. Upon the guard’s insistence, they alight before reaching the station, where the two Hindu gentlemen hurry away into the darkness so as not to be seen with their Sikh companions. The Sikhs catch up with them, requesting them to proceed as one for they fear getting shot if seen alone, and the Hindu men agree out of compassion. The group then navigates the metaphorical darkness as one. Ending on a hopeful and humanistic note is Chauthi Koot’s quietest – and biggest – triumph. There’s humanity to be found in times of fear and paranoia. Here is a film that celebrates that.

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Review: Anurag Kashyap's "Raman Raghav 2.0" is bland.

[Might contain spoilers, a lot of them.]

There is a little detail from Home Alone that I recalled quite suddenly when I was watching Anurag Kashyap’s new film, a detail that gave me much amusement. It was insignificant, really, but I am puzzled by why it came to me out of the blue, and why it seemed to be relevant. In Home Alone, Kevin watches a grim and violent gangster film that terrifies him, and the film is titled – believe it or not – “Angels With Filthy Souls.” By the end of this film I couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony. Oh, how wonderfully the title would have worked here! But I digress.

Early in Raman Raghav 2.0, we see a madman who has just surrendered to the police describing one of the murders he committed. Quite suddenly – significative of his nature, perhaps – a casual story becomes a confession, and it indicates that he is not of sound mind. We are entranced by the acting on display, but here’s the problem: As much as we would have liked to soak it up, we cannot. The music is terribly distracting. This sequence needed silence. This actor needed to be left alone to do his job. The music accentuates the character’s unstable mind, our first glimpse of it, but it doesn’t need to. Take the music out of the sequence and we have a truly spectacular one, where the actor in question effortlessly displays his potential and his ability to take a standard scene and do something extraordinary with it for the umpteenth time.

And it doesn’t end here. Very little in the film works and it is such a shame. Kashyap is back in familiar territory here, working with a small cast and largely driving the plot using atmospherics, juxtaposing the murkiness of Mumbai’s underbelly against the murkiness of the human conscience. It is an idea that looks intriguing on paper. However, when it takes shape on the big screen, it becomes a muddled mess of man chasing man, of man killing man. It’s ugly. In his previous films, this sort of ugliness had a way of keeping us hooked. Gangs of Wasseypur found mood in its violence. Raman Raghav 2.0 tries to find a footing. It is a story of two men on either side of the law united by a penchant for violence, emotional and physical, but the violence here has little meaning. Most of it is carried out without emotion, like an everyday activity. Scene after scene of an iron rod being dragged around, of it splitting a skull open, of blood spilling does little to tell us more about the character perpetrating it except he’s a psychopath who does not seem to care. And scene after scene of the junkie policeman ill-treating his woman tells us that he’s perpetrating a violence that is not physical, that does not leave a bloody trail. It’s an interesting concept that needed more ironing out. Because Raman Raghav 2.0, miraculously, is flat. And “flat” is an adjective one would never have associated with a film helmed by Kashyap until now. At least I would not have done so.

One thing I have consistently admired about Kashyap’s cinema is how he manages to make his characters seem like people who have inhabited the world he creates for a long time. They seem born into it. It lends so much credibility to the film, lends it an energy that he uses so well. But I did not get the same feeling as I watched Raman Raghav 2.0. These characters never commanded my attention nor were successful in upholding it when they had it. The lines they uttered lacked the characteristic sharpness of his writing. Gone are the days when his ear for Mumbai’s street lingo (Satya; co-written with Saurabh Shukla) made us marvel. Gone are the days when the city’s colors and sounds (Black Friday) he captured made us sit up and take notice. He still has a wonderful ear for the lingo and an eye for locales, but Raman Raghav 2.0 is not a creature of the city. That the city does not play a major part in this film is its undoing. It really puzzled me why Kashyap, who captures Mumbai in all its grime and glory quite unlike his peers, didn’t use it more.

However, there are some redeemable moments. Kashyap really shows a flair for infusing a seemingly ordinary sequence with dark humor in a chapter titled “The Sister.” What if your psychotic sibling turns up at your doorstep one day after many years and asks for a little harmless help? The creative possibilities are endless. It could make for a tense story that allows the audience a sigh of relief in the end or a more casual one but with a terrific twist. Kashyap goes for both here. It’s a superbly controlled chapter, where each line carries weight and each expression adds to the tension. We are allowed a little relief before it bounces back with a bite. We recoil but not without a small chuckle. Now, that is some sequence! Nawazuddin Siddiqui is reliably brilliant here, bringing fury and menace to his role with aplomb. Vicky Kaushal and newcomer Sobhita Dhulipala do extremely well in their respective roles, adding layers to their drearily written characters. I was particularly impressed by a scene of theirs where he waves a gun at her, threatening her without bothering to mince words, evidently proud of his masculinity and his ability to not care for a fellow human being. His aggressiveness stems from his addiction to coke. In the middle of his threat, she casually answers a call from her mother, leaving him dazed and speechless. After the call ends, she returns to the conversation almost lazily with “So, what were you saying?” It’s a line that swiftly reduces him to a nobody. It underlines his vulnerability and hollowness. The masculinity is only a façade. We discover who the stronger person is here, and we don’t need someone who flexes their muscles for that.

Some months ago, I watched a 1997 Japanese horror-thriller called Cure, about a policeman with some domestic troubles on the trail of a most unusual serial killer. It was a slow and complex film that went places, explored many ideas and ended on a high. The patient viewer was rewarded. It did not explore the fascination a serial killer has for someone out to hunt him, but it did a splendid job of exploring his demented mind. The pattern of violence in that film had meaning. It was integral to the story. Its inclusion in the film wasn’t purely for shock value. Raman Raghav 2.0 is no Cure, but it had potential if only it wasn’t so repetitive. We know how it is going to end, and it disappoints us by taking the safest route there. And the safest route is usually the most predictable. Such a letdown.

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Review: Q's raunchy "Brahman Naman" is his most accessible film to date.

The first thing that we notice and acknowledge in provocateur Qaushiq Mukherjee’s – who goes by Q – new film, his most accessible to date, is that it sounds different. And no, I do not mean the liberal use of expletives or the fact that it is in the English language. It’s the jargon. For some reason, I was instantly reminded of Jason Reitman’s Juno. The fast-talking, Shakespeare-quoting protagonists here, cocky and geeky quizzers who designate themselves as gods, use words like “obsequiousness,” “ocular fill” and go for “mayhaps” instead of “perhaps.” (An imaginative mind would easily see them hanging out with Arundhati Roy's shaggy and pot-smoking architecture students from In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones.) I haven’t met a fellow Indian – quizzer, nerd or otherwise – who talk like Brahman Naman’s protagonists, who uses the words that they do. And I do not claim to know many of them, having never been a part of the country’s quizzing scene. It's a fascinating world we enter, and our first glimpses of it – the clothes they wear, the music they listen to, the cars and scooters they ride, and the houses they live in – are beautifully captured.

We can acknowledge one other thing early into this movie, too. The outrageous and bawdy Brahman Naman is several steps ahead of the other so-called sex comedies India has to offer. It has a lot of interesting things to say and, er, show. It has wit and style. It has life. It is less flashy in comparison to Q’s previous works. It does not feature actors doing a great disservice to their profession. And it does not go for sexist and homophobic jokes – tasteless, in other words – to elicit laughter. And yet, it remains unsatisfying. Not because it shies away from showing or saying something, but because the filmmaking feels a tad gimmicky. 

Q's works have always been a bit showy, serving more to provoke outrage than engage, and Brahman Naman is an out-and-out Q product. There's a snappiness to the narrative, explicit nudity, emotional detachment for the most part, and an eagerness to shock. But this is an oddly likable tale of sexual awakening. Or, er, almost-sexual awakening, so to speak. This isn't the first time the filmmaker has tackled this subject. In Gandu, his controversial debut that was banned, he had explored it fearlessly and not in a manner that will stay with a viewer for how they responded to the film. Although a grungy but great film that made a very real effort to challenge censorship, it will be sadly remembered more for its explicit sexual content than for anything else. Brahman Naman, thankfully, will be remembered, if it does, for everything else except its attempts at subversion. 

And then there's a different kind of beauty to be found here. We do not have protagonists – four males – we like, for they ill-treat on a regular basis the one character we actually do like. They treat women like objects one should lust after only when they tick the correct boxes when it comes to caste and fashion. But even when there's nothing likable about them, there is nothing unlikable about them. They are not innately bad people. They are reflections of misogynistic men we have known at some point. Writer Naman Ramachandran's excellent and incisive writing forces us to understand them and their actions without ever disliking them, even when they foul up. While their antics are only moderately amusing – I am obligated to not spill the beans here, unfortunately, but I will say that the aftermath of a party sees an especially nasty piece of revenge – it is their confusion and lack of courage to approach women and recognize the right people for them that makes them charming in a weird way. At a time when students in Indian cinema are categorized very broadly into "geek," "cool," "disinterested" and "rebel," these characters come across as real. And it is such a relief.

 As the story progressed, I found myself becoming increasingly restless. The weariness came as it ventured into a territory I am not particularly fond of: self-indulgence. It is hard to pinpoint the exact moment where it set in, but I came to discover that it stopped being the film I was enjoying until that point. I had stopped caring for its characters. My emotional investment into the story wasn't there anymore. I was looking for a scene or maybe a detail that would make me invest in its characters again. But I did not find it. The characters don't stop being themselves, and the lack of variation in their attitude toward life or people in general made for a somewhat monotonous conclusion. They go on with their lives a little wiser, as they should, but the impact of it isn't strong enough. Sure, there are a couple of fabulous sequences and the film manages to stay unpredictable till the end. But in retrospect, I feel a small emotional punch would have made me enjoy it more. (There is this slight detail in the end, a nod, that did make me smile a silly smile, but it was followed by an inexplicable twist. That is… exactly why it didn’t live up to my expectations.)

Brahman Naman is that kind of film that doesn't entirely work, but it makes one excited to see what the people involved come up with next. It does manage to beat most Indian films released this year on the basis of its spunk – yes, pun intended – and its ability to capture an era, something which many domestic films fail at. And let's not forget that lovely, lovely soundtrack. Greatest 80’s hits, handpicked. Wow. Wow.

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Review: Abhishek Chaubey's "Udta Punjab" is an important film that plays it safe.

[Might contain a few spoilers.]

In Udta Punjab, Abhishek Chaubey's third feature-length film, there is an excellent moment that stands out for its quiet power and terrific execution. A junkie rockstar who glorifies drugs in his songs that youngsters are now hooked on bumps into two doting fans in a jail cell in the middle of the night. He is in for – you guessed it – possession of drugs. The two youngsters are quite taken by the presence of their hero and begin crooning one of his songs as soon as he settles down. They inform him matter-of-factly that the first time they injected, his face flashed before their eyes. It is an attempt to flatter their idol. The camera lingers momentarily on his carefully lit face. He is appalled. Then, Chaubey drops the bomb: the boys have been jailed for murdering their mother over money they wanted to fuel their habit. But in another matter-of-fact declaration, one of the boys pipes, "When you get the urge, what else can you do?"

Like nearly half of the film, the scene plays out mostly in darkness, which I was thankful for. We don't really need expressions to amplify the impact of it. We don't see the boys again. But we get the idea that they aren't the only ones who went to the extremes to fuel their habit. They aren't the only ones who sit in those jails, remorseless and aimless, looking for another fix.

It does not take us long to figure that Udta Punjab is on a mission to inform and warn us about the emotional, physical and spiritual harm drugs can cause. With three cautionary warnings and every other conversation touching upon the subject, it doesn't need a stamp from the CBFC about whether or not its intentions are honorable. The outcry prior to its release made us expect a Trainspotting, maybe a tamer version of it because, well, we are in India after all. (Though it does pay a small tribute to the fabulous toilet sequence in Trainspotting, a cinematic moment that is permanently burned in pop culture.) But it is pretty evident that the makers of Udta Punjab have taken a cue from Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, with its cross-weave narrative following several characters – all non-users in that case – whose lives are affected by the drug trade. It is also an angry film, and it does not try to hide it. Characters involved in the dealing of drugs are routinely subjected to smacks and beatings, and the Samaritans seethe at the sight of stoned youngsters. So, for the big screen, Udta Punjab transforms facts and research into an overly cautious and grim tale of a place struggling to understand the enormity of the problem it is facing.

But one must appreciate the amount of effort put into bringing the nitty-gritty of the drug trade to us. This isn't merely a gimmick or a backdrop to explore more mainstream themes. Chaubey's film dives right into the grimy world of corrupt cops, elusive dealers and those stuck in between. He concerns himself with the human element in substance trafficking rather than the commerce of it. So when a woman here finds a packet of dope that has "dropped from the sky" and attempts to sell it before getting caught by lecherous dealers she robbed it from in the first place, we don't see how her move has possibly disrupted a cycle of dealings. Instead we see her getting shoved in the room and sexually assaulted. It is a dreadful scene that confirms two things: Chaubey's insistence on showing us, the Indian viewers unaccustomed to watching the ugly, violent side of organized crime, the ruthlessness of the drug trade, and his original decision to stick to the human side of the story.

And it pays off. His characters – a rockstar, a farm worker, a cop and a doctor – do well as our guides in the underbelly of the state. We get glimpses into how the locals cope with the widespread presence of drugs. We see the lasting effects it has on the youngsters there. We see the cops twiddling their thumbs, indirectly aiding the dealers in their businesses. It is enough to revolt us. Then there are those flashes of brilliance to balance out the weaker, more contrived portions of the film. (The cop and the doctor team up to get to the root of the drug trade, and manage to do it without a hiccup. A little too simplified, I felt, even for a Hindi film.) In another razor-sharp sequence, the rockstar, in a drugged haze, tries to warn his young fans of the horrors of addiction only to be booed. Pushed to the brink, he urinates on them, disregarding morality for arrogance and chaos. (Although we never see the actual act.) It is a sequence that injects great energy into a film that, until that moment, showed signs of slowing down, one of those few moments when the film roars.

However, not all of it works. If I had to have a complaint with the film, it would be this: it meanders. Long stretches of time are dedicated to touching upon the topic of why drugs are bad instead of advancing the plot, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Promoting good through a film is not a bad thing at all. But it does affect the larger picture. The last half-hour feels like a breathless sprint through the story after a leisurely walk. It ends the film on a high, but it feels like an unearned rush of adrenaline. Some evenness would had a much stronger impact, and the tying-up would have felt more organic.

Udta Punjab can hardly be classified as "bold" cinema, but it nevertheless is a brave film. While I would have preferred one that points fingers and names names, we must applaud one that took a step towards tackling a pressing issue especially in a mainstream Hindi film.

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Review: Nagraj Manjule's "Sairat" is a powerful tale of forbidden love.

(Contains gigantic spoilers, a lot of them.)

I don't remember the last time an Indian film left me dazed.

In February, Vetrimaaran's white-knuckled crime-drama Visaranai came close, but Sairat is a different kind of beast. It doesn't want to turn us into cynics right away. It takes its time, introduces us to its characters and its world, makes us fall and believe in true love. It is the kind of love that is rarely seen in Indian cinema: It blossoms from awkward glances and stares to letters and secret meetings. It thrives in its details and its optimism. Sairat treats love as a kind of delicate emotion, something that cannot be just expressed using a few words. Indian cinema has often simplified it through its modern 'rebel' version of love, where young guns profess their love for each other openly in an attempt to defy the social norms society has imposed upon them. Nagraj Manjule begs to differ. His version, the subtle one, is more relatable, overwhelming and joyous.

Sairat is, however, far from perfect.

It is a superbly written and decently acted romance that grabs you when it takes flight and then rams you into its stony realism. It is a bit of Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, a bit of Alaipayuthey/Saathiya, and a bit of Ishaqzaade. And yet, with a lot working in its favor, Sairat doesn't quite manage to sweep one off their feet. It does manage to get its message across, courtesy a rare empathetic touch, and its treatment makes it different. I have always maintained that any director who has great empathy for his characters can never make a bad film, and Sairat is a prime example. Manjule, who often incorporates his observations growing up in a casteist society, has lived this story, has lived through these episodes, and now wants to tell us that story. It is a film that beautifully captures the details of small-town life, and of the hierarchy that exists within it. It begins with a young man running through the fields to catch a glimpse of the girl he likes, and when the canvas is expanded a bit after the story takes a turn, those fields are set fire to when he elopes with her. These fields hold a special significance. They begin with being an obstacle, something he has to cross to catch a glimpse of her, then become something of a comforting nest for them when they get involved. They can be themselves in the fields, and the fields shield them from the ire of the 'outer' world. It is a neat little detail. It helps develop their romance, and when the fields are set ablaze, a part of the romance ends. Now they have a world to face.

But till that moment arrives, Sairat, like Manjule's debut Fandry, seems content in being a charming love story. It has none of the occasional jabs of the former and none of its angst. It is hopeful, making us believe if only for a while that the world exists without the invisible barriers of caste. Fandry had this parallel, too. We see an ideal world of flourishing fields and radiant smiles, an ideal world, and then we see how casteism blots it. Fandry, where the lower-caste boy's anger at being made to face the hurdles of prejudice slowly builds till he finally snaps and lashes out, followed a similar trajectory. But here, Manjule does not want to make an out-and-out arthouse venture. Sairat is a decidedly mainstream film in comparison, with lush fields and blue waters glowing a bright yellow replacing the morose imagery of Fandry, and elevated by a terrific soundtrack from Ajay-Atul that throbs of energy. It is an interesting decision and a necessary one, for the second-half is the exact opposite of the first in its tone and treatment. The contrast has its own potent effect. Suddenly, the sheath of fantasy is lifted and what we get is a gripping story about two lovers on the run in a world that is a far cry from the one they chose to fall in love in. No more do the flowers blossom, no more does the sea shine golden. Tempers flare and the village is enveloped by fear and dread. We almost expect a gunshot to ring out somewhere or a knife to come flying out of a pocket. But Manjule shows us nothing of that sort. He milks the tension and leaves us with clammy hands.

So, in a way, Sairat emulates Fandry when it stops being a romance. There is simmering tension in every frame. It shakes us out of our reverie as we plunge into the grimness of the 'real' world. And here, we see in shrewdly placed details how different they had grown up to be. Take, for instance, the scene where they eat at a roadside stall. The boy drinks out of a tumbler spotted with dirt, enough to revolt the girl he loves. He has to buy her a water bottle and he still doesn't sip from it once she's done. He prefers the tumbler. It is a fairly obvious detail that suggests how their respective backgrounds have divided them over something as simple as a drink of water. In another scene, when they are shown a grimy shanty by a kindly woman, he sets to work immediately and silently to make it livable while she doesn't move. She complains of a pungent smell and the dust while he doesn't say a word. He has grown up and grown into a world of grimy shanties, and has fought for himself all his life. This is no different. He even cooks for them because she doesn't know how to. When she finally does, he doesn't approve of her efforts. The cracks in their relationship deepen.

That is the beauty of Sairat. While Hindi films often tend to show two lovers escaping the castle and from the clutches of the monster inside it, here is one that is more interested in what happens next. They have accepted each other, but will they accept the flawed versions of each other?

It is over this thought that the film's most masterful sequence is built. A petty rift between the two turns into a major argument when jealousy and mistrust circle their love. He strikes her suddenly, in full view of the public. It is their first real fight, we find, and it takes a lot out of both of them. They weep separately later. She leaves, but returns soon after to find him inconsolable and contemplating suicide. The scene's subdued emotional power is enough to reduce a stony viewer to a blubbering mess. It also does a great job of representing the film's chief triumph: We are watching something familiar but our reactions are exactly what the director intended to arouse. We just know she will come back to him. And she does. We feel inexplicably relieved. Since we have seen them go from strangers to soul mates, every moment they share has become ours, too. We feel responsible.

I will digress a bit here. Because when my thoughts go back to the film's shocking conclusion that springs up rather abruptly, I feel both sad and confused. There's no doubt about how effective it was, considering how carefully and deliberately it had been constructed for maximum impact. (In fact, I couldn't help feeling the conclusion had been written first and the story was built around it once it was firmly in place.) It is cut from the same fabric as that of Fandry, only more cynical. The sight of bloody footprints signify a forlorn future. A life has been wrecked, and it had barely begun. Manjule wants us to know that the seed has been sown. And it all began when two people 'dared' to fall in love.

Sairat was arguably intended to stir up a fiery debate on how love is accepted -- or unaccepted -- in the modern society. And it does a remarkable job of provoking horror when all we did at first was revel in its vibrancy. The occasional unnecessary scenes aside, it is a brave film that deals with a touchy subject and tries just as bravely to be a commercial film. Let's just hope there's more to come while we relish this one.

(Not For Reproduction)

Review: Maneesh Sharma's "Fan" fails to fully explore its intriguing premise.

An obsessive fan uncannily resembles a star he adores. Think of the possibilities this one-line story idea can birth. In the hands of a filmmaker who loves to get creative, it could develop into a bizarre masterpiece. In the hands of another filmmaker who enjoys making psychological thrillers, it could be the film they had waited to dig their hands into. Why, then, should it become a perplexingly illogical thriller about a cocky and paranoid star chasing a heartbroken fan out to destroy the stardom he holds dear through two different cities? Maneesh Sharma's Fan becomes just that.

We get why Sharma chose to cast Shah Rukh Khan in this role. I mean, who else could it have been? The man's stardom knows no limits. His name that became synonymous with Hindi cinema two decades ago still amasses an enormous following wherever he goes. And it has been a while since we saw him clawing into a meaty role. (It has been nine long years since Chak De! India.) But it has been longer since we saw him as a nobody, not as the most popular guy in college, not as the son of an affluent father, but just a regular guy who gets lost in the crowd. A guy who picks up a petty fight with three aggressive men, a guy who loves just for a fleeting moment the idea of having a fan-following. Sharma and Khan, with writer Habib Faisal, create an utterly ordinary and likable Delhi guy (which, for some reason, is no longer easy to do in Hindi cinema) who is besotted with a man he watches every other month on the big screen. All he wants are five minutes with his "god."

I have never been a fan of Shah Rukh Khan, having only admired a few performances of his, but I have immense respect for him. The absurd extent of his stardom notwithstanding, he has proven time and time again that he can act, that he's more than capable of just romancing women on-screen or hamming it up as a villain in some tacky thriller. And once in a while when a turn like this from him comes along -- committed and unassuming, escaping the star persona that always seems to accompany him to the big screen -- it makes me want to get up and embrace it. It is an outstanding performance, one that reminded me of Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson in Ethan and Joel Coen's Fargo. (May the cinematic gods forgive me for that outrageous comparison.) As his own biggest fan, Khan is willfully over-the-top, as McDormand also was in the role that fetched her an Oscar. But it is for a reason: the fan apes the man he sees on the big screen, his gait, the way he talks and conducts himself. And acting in Hindi cinema has always been only a bit shy of hammy. But underneath the theatricality on display, there's emotion. Khan imbues the character of Gaurav, the fan, with a naivety that makes us relate with him instantly. He's attracted not to the glamour of the film industry but to the man, Aryan Khanna, the star, who for him represents the industry. Who represents the rag-to-riches myth that Gaurav wants for himself.

In the first half, Fan does what we expect it to do. It gives us a fan right out of the many stories the papers run on a celebrity's birthday and paints his Delhi middle-class life using vivid details. When the story moves to Mumbai, where the admirer comes with a wish to meet his hero and present him with a gift on his birthday, we get to know him a little better. He's confident and foolishly audacious. He's not afraid to create a ruckus in order to get what he wants. (That means he will not think twice before bribing a man or even hanging out of a running train to quench his fanboy whims.) And yet he is vulnerable. He is emotional and sensitive.

There are a couple of nicely done sequences, like the one where Gaurav is momentarily stunned to see the star in the flesh and calls out to him, but his voice is lost in the uproar that follows when Aryan Khanna appears. But here's the problem: the approach is too simplistic. Using real-life footage, we see the magnitude of Aryan Khanna's stardom, but the film fails to cash in on it in the next moment. How can a superstar walk around with only four cronies? How can he not get mobbed when he is alone? And for how long could this go on? (But these mistakes, hardly worthy of attention in the first half, balloon into something graver and jeopardize the appeal of the story in the second.) The fan is coolly snubbed by his idol and is left disillusioned. Left to deal with the heartbreak. Sharma wants to make us fear a heartbroken fan. He sets up the clash neatly, developing both characters just about enough to give us an idea what awaits us.

And then the film nosedives.

To achieve the briskness and adrenaline rush of thrillers like the Bourne series (here's a timely question: Why?) that consist of many chases through alleys and rooftops and in its attempt to imitate something similar, Fan completely shuns logic and renounces its psychodramatic ambitions. At least the Bourne films earned those chases. Not only does it turn humdrum with an added splash of melodrama, it transforms into something far worse, something we didn't expect: a sort of half-baked commercial outing where the star gives a speech about why fans must carve an identity for themselves and not make their life be about someone they see on the big screen. We suspect the heavy-handedness has something to do with making it a more sellable product. Either way, the attempt to balance melodrama with action does not make for a very memorable setup.

What made Rob Reiner's Misery and Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy, two films about obsessive fans reaching out to their idols, absolutely first-rate was that they made the most of their characters and settings. But if the likable and not-really-crazy antagonist of The King of Comedy was dumped in a Misery-like setting, things would understandably turn absurd. Fan does something similar. We feel for the fan, but it is hard to buy the fact that an ordinary nobody would go that far in his quest for vengeance. He needed a different, more reasonable story. And Shah Rukh Khan, too. He brought his A-game. Unfortunately, the script didn't rise to the challenge this time around.

(Not For Reproduction)