Movie weekends: A hilarious caper and an angst-ridden road trip

Delhi Belly was the movie last weekend - Abhinay Deo’s directorial debut. It’s a fun, racy, cheeky script, with a very young urban India today feel. Tashi, Arup and Nitin (Imran Khan, Vir Das and Kunaal Roy Kapur) are roomies (and what a room.. messy and unclean in the way only bachelor rooms can be) leading single lives in the big city. Tashi is a reporter, soon to be married to Sonia (Shenaz Treasurywala); Arup is a cartoonist in an ad agency (presume he is an art director with ambitions of becoming a cartoonist, since there are no cartoonists in ad agencies and everyone in an ad agency really wants to be doing something else) who hates his boss and whose girlfriend dumps him; Nitin is Tashi’s journalist photographer who takes on photography assignments on the side, to make a little extra money, and who while eating roadside food, triggers a severe case of delhi belly and thus the title of the film.

The plot is a caper that Sonia unwittingly sparks off by agreeing to carry a packet from a relative stranger on one of her flights (she is an airhostess). What follows is a hilarious roundabout with the 3 roomies being chased across the city by deadly gangsters and the boyfriend of Menaka, Tashi’s journalist colleague. It is a screwball comedy with Guy Richie-type elements that in turn are hilarious and suspenseful.

The language is mostly English, the way we speak it, with a lot of Hindi words and slang – and thus not endearing itself to a lot of the moral brigade. There is toilet humour as well, but in the context of the genre, it does not grate.

The actors are first rate. Menaka (Poorna Jagannathan) is fresh and sexy but unusual in the Hindi film variety, and it is difficult to see her going beyond anything niche. Imran has long been a personal favourite and he does not disappoint. Vir Das and Kunaal Roy Kapur are perfect in their roles. The music too has a novelty value that is refreshing. All in all, Delhi Belly is the most exciting Hindi film I have seen in a long while.

I cannot say quite the same about Zindagi Mile Na Dobaara, the one I saw next. The premise is interesting and puts it in the generation-defining mould of Dil Chaahta Hai and Rock On. But the movie does not really live up to the premise. It’s the actors. They cannot hold a candle to the easy camaraderie we saw in Amir, Saif and Akhsay. And of course, the sponsorship of Spain tourism means we see a lot more of Spain than the characters themselves.

Here again, it’s 3 boys, men actually, in this case – Kabir, Imran and Arjun (Abhay Deol, Farhan Akhtar and Hrithik Roshan). Kabir is to be married to Natasha (Kalki) and before he does, the three friends take off on a road trip in Spain. It’s Hangover-like, with a lot more philosophical questions and a whole load of upper middle-class angst thrown in, and of course, is not half as much fun.

Each has their own demons to fight and conquer – Kabir and his decision to marry a girl he is not completely sure of, Arjun and his obsessiveness about making money and Imran and his discovery of his natural father. It is a trip that gives them the opportunity to do this and while it all looks good on paper, there is a falseness to the whole journey that ensures the film does not touch you the way a DCH did. Or even actually a Rock On.

It is of course beautifully shot. Hrithik is hot in the way only he and his bare chested body can be. Katrina is pretty and does the bindaas babe routine decently well. And Farhan has his moments. But it’s a hollow shell of a movie and leaves one wishing for a better, less stilted script. And better music (not a patch on DCH or Rock On).

Dev D

Hindi cinema’s fascination for this Sarat Chandra novel is quite inexplicable if you have read the book (in my opinion, a painfully dragged out story of the life and destruction of a weak, sniveling man). But the umpteenth re-make of the story on celluloid leads me to believe there is something to the story that I have been missing.

So Anurag Kashyap’s version of Devdas comes as a relief. At long last, I find the story interesting. Because here is at least a fresh take on quite a done-to-death tale. He has taken the core of it and set in contemporary times – the Bengali village becomes Chandigarh and the seedy by-lanes of Calcutta become Delhi’s Paharganj.

Abhay Deol, the poster boy of the new wave of ‘multiplex cinema’ makes for a non-formulaic actor as do the two new faces playing Paro and Chanda. Chanda especially merits mention, for her very unusual beauty and the way she combines in a very Lolita way, innocence and worldliness.

As befitting the times, this is a sexed-up, drugged-up version of the tale (Paro is not the virginal martyr we come to expect but a red-blooded young Punjabi lass who is not beyond dragging a mattress to the fields - one of the most memorable scenes in the film - to consummate her love; the distance between Paro and Dev, when he is off studying in London is bridged by phone and internet sex; Chanda’s entry into whoredom is triggered by an MMS scandal in school; Dev’s substance abuse is not limited to alcohol) and this gives it a certain edginess so new to Indian cinema.

AK makes use of music beautifully to lead the story along, to set the tone, to accentuate the descent into drugged stupor. The photography and the saturated psychedelic colours too do the same. The look and sound work together to give the film a stunningly contemporary feel.

And then he goes and spoils it all for me at the end. Devdas as a character is according to me a weak and cruel man who treats the two women in his life (three, if you count his mother in the original) very badly. The only reason he gets any sympathy from a reader or a viewer is because you realize that deep at heart he knows his own shallowness and it is that knowledge that leads him to the path of self-destruction. And when he does drink himself to death, you know that there is justice in the world and you award him the epithet of the martyred lover. In Dev D, horror of horrors, there is redemption for Dev! How can such a weak stupid man live happily ever after?

Anurag Kashyap, you turn out to be a male chauvinist after all! And in the process, turn a well set story in my head upside down. That is unforgivable, however brilliant the rest of the film may be.

Atonement

Love stories. I am a sucker for them, especially the doomed ones and the unrequited ones, the searing passionate ones. Think Heathcliff and Catherine in Wuthering Heights, Count Lazlo and Katherine in The English Patient, Dr. Zhivago and Lara, Sydney Carton and Lucie in The Tale of Two Cities, the Vicomte and Madame de Tourvel in Dangerous Liaisons.

It therefore was no surprise when I found myself choking up when I saw Atonement this weekend on DVD. Ian McEwan’s classic book I had already read. And loved enough to rank among my top 10 favourites of all time. So I had approached the movie with a great amount of trepidation - I normally hate movie adaptations of books I love. But the movie was pretty much a faithful rendition of the book and it had actors who I thought were pretty brilliant – so it wasn’t at all bad. Of course it does not have that absolute ‘punch in your guts’ kind of feel that the book leaves you with. But I would recommend it very highly for anyone without the patience to read the book.

Atonement is at heart a love story between a rich society girl Cecilia Tallis and Robbie Turner the son of the household help. It is a love that is interrupted by a seemingly precocious but confused thirteen year old, the narrator of the story. Briony Tallis is Cee’s little sister who harbours dreams of writer-hood and of Robbie himself. She starts to notice the chemistry between her sister and Robbie, reads a note that he writes Cecilia but never meant to send, sees them making passionate love in the library – and then in her confused teenage mind convinces herself and the world that Robbie is guilty of a crime he never committed. It is a lie that changes their lives – sends Robbie to prison and then to war, alienates Cecilia from her family forever and condemns Briony to a lifetime of guilt. Briony writes the book as her last act of penitance, but in a heart-breaking final chapter (and the final scenes in the movie), we realize why there really can be no atonement for her.

Watch this movie or better still, read the book. It is a wrenching story, one that stayed with me for a very long time; with Cee and Robbie entering my pantheon of all-time favourite doomed love stories.

Sivaji

Shell-shocked. That was what I was after watching the biggest film of the year. What really was that? A man, a superman, a ghost, a god? Rajnikanth does have that kind of an effect on you. Especially if you are not a Tamilian, or you haven’t seen a film of his for over 20 years.

Rajni is a phenomenon – we’ve all heard that. He probably deserves a couple of hundred theses written on him. It still might not explain his incredible sway over audiences, apparently the world over. In Sivaji, he plays nothing but himself – El Mariachi, Neo, Superman, Stephen Chow in Kung Fu Hustle, all rolled into one. There is seemingly nothing he cannot do. Halt a bullet in its trajectory, beat up a hundred goons single-handedly, fly into the air a la Matrix, die and then come back to life.

As Indians we are used to exaggeration – we are familiar with macho heroes, be it AB or MGR, beating up the villains to a pulp. We watch it in all seriousness, suspending disbelief. The difference here is, I am truly not sure if I am meant to watch it in seriousness. Isn’t this really a spoof? Isn’t Rajni kind of winking at the audience and saying, ‘Isn’t this cool? I can be what I want and do what I want – this is a movie,’ with a kind of awareness of the ridiculousness of it all?

Sivaji, an NRI returns to India wanting to set up schools and hospitals for the poor. He runs into obstacles – a ruthless businessman, politicians on the take, shady cops, a corrupt bureaucracy, all of who want their share of the spoils. Sivaji tries paying them off, but there is always one more guy to be paid, he loses patience and decides to take on the system, in the process making it his mission to rid the country of black money. So far so good – we know this happens in our films. A hero gets treated unfairly and he turns to vigilante justice. But then things turn bizarre – we are treated to a lesson in economics (what black money is and why it is bad), money laundering (with Muslims as the hawala traders), dying in police custody, and then being revived, ... the list is endless. Somewhere in between, Sivaji also manages to fall in love with a wholesome Tamil girl who wears revealing clothes only in dream sequences, bathes in Fair and Lovely (how much did these guys pay for the product placement, I wonder), turns a Michael Jackson white for the duration of one song and there is a whole comedy track which is pretty pathetic by Tamil film standards. The plots, the characters, all are secondary - you go to see the film for Rajni, nothing more.

For a movie that is touted as the most expensive Indian film ever made, the production values are not all that hot. The songs and the dream sequences look like a lot of money has gone into them; but otherwise, it’s just average on the looks variety. And I was quite disappointed with the music. Rajni himself looks a bit podgy and his Manish Malhotra clothes don’t do much for him.

But then, the ‘Rajni style’ stays intact. 20 years ago, he made flipping a cigarette into your mouth THE thing to do, for 12 year old boys. This time, they get to choose between flicking a deflected chewing gum into your mouth (the cigarette is too politically incorrect, I guess), drumming on your head, wearing sunglasses at the back of your head or flicking a 1 Re coin from hand to hand and then right into your pocket. And of course, saying ‘cool’ at the end of it all.

All in all, Sivaji is definitely worth watching if you have never watched a Rajni film or haven’t watched one in a long time. It gives you a glimpse into a movie world quite different from any other. You may leave the theatre a lifelong fan. Or you may vow never to subject yourself to this again.