Gully Boy : Only Characters , No Actors, a Divine Experience

There are times when one goes into a Lunch home and orders an ordinary Thali. One gets served and while the reputation of that restaurant / lunch home is good, that particular day, each item in it is made with such loving care, it is simply spectacular. One doesn’t look around but simply at ones plate and keeps eating and only after one is finished does one gazes around with a slightly dazed look, a smile creeps up on ones face and an involuntary burp is expelled. This is the connect one makes with the Divine .

Did I just say, Divine ? Call it simply a divine providence. This is what happened when Zoya Akhtar introduced me to the hitherto unknown underground rapper Divine, by telling a story around his art form ; Hip Hop and Rap, his story and that of his fellow artiste Naezy. Zoya Akhtar, is a scintillating movie director and with every offering has only raised the expectation bar. From her very honest first offering “Luck By Chance”to “Zindagi Milegi na Dobara” and”Dil Dhadakne Do” the lady has only gone places but with “Gully Boy” she lays it bare, stepping into the world of underground music into an entirely new ethos in which her story resides, Dharavi, the eponymous slum heartland of this megapolis, Bombay or Mumbai.

Murad is a drivers son who stays in Dharavi and is hooked upwith an aspiring doctor , a firebrand, chit of a girl, Safeena. Theirs is a love story that simply exists, he is hers and she is his. No running around the trees, songs, dropping books after a proverbial collision kind of preamble to it. They are each others and that is understood. Murad’s father is a typical misogynist who into this slummy paradise gets another girl as a wife to grace his new mattress relegating Murad’s mother to the was status. Murad watches all this and is stifled with frustration at his situation yet it his stoic quiet demeanour that reaches out and touches you more than any bombast could. He pours out his angst into fiery words. In his sojourn with his girl he runs into a rapper Sher and is hooked to the art. This is what he wants to do and Sher is the kinda secure artiste who encourages Murad to find himself. In steps an evangelical girl making a project on street music with funds to spare and a song gets made. It is launched and goes viral. Yet in all of this the unsure character of Murad remains unsure, some insecurities don’t die away that easily but a tipping point with his father is reached and he tells him rather quietly. I will not change my dream to accommodate reality, I shall instead change my reality that it is in line with my dream. And just as simply an artiste is born. 

When one only remembers the character, sees only the character and hears only the character and never really looks at the actor playing him or her, it is the absolute pinnacle of a performing artists act. Ranveer Singh has delivered just that kind of a wallop with a performance that simply rocks or should we say raps. He is the soul of the movie and carries it along with the other chameleon Alia, one of the most instinctive performers of recent times, to such another level that one is made a part of the plot. The viewer may have been physically in the cinema hall but the heart has traversed that portal which is the screen that separates the seat from the world created by the director as she tells a story. Vijay Raaz as his father, Amruta Subhash as his mother, Kalki Koechlin, Vijay Verma and every single one of the supporting cast has delivered and how, yet the standout support comes from Siddhant Chaturvedi who plays Sher. This actor is so naturally charming that one sees only the rapper M C Sher. Ranveer Singh has stayed so magnificently in character that there is no pomp or bluster, he just is Murad.  

The camera work and cinematography presents Mumbai in its myriad moods and forms so eloquently and beautifully it is superlative. There is absolutely no disconnect in the distance covered between Dharavi to South Mumbai whether by road, bus or train, Bombay throbs as Bombay does at its various time and geographies.

Zoya Akhtar deserves not just a pat on the back for a job well done she has also got her father the talented Javed to write rap and he does that in style. If I have to summarize in a line, one would be missing an experience if one misses this movie. It is that kind of an ethereal experience.

Ani … Kashinath Ghanekar

This movie is Subodh Bhave’s third attempt at a Bio-Pic after his immensely successful Bal Gandharva n Lokmanya Ek Yugpurush. His presence in the earlier filmed version of a popular staged play “Katyar Kaljat Ghusali” and now Ani…Kashinath Ghanekar, is slowly but surely pulling him towards a period era and just as gradually he may have done so many that on a very light note when it is the turn of Subodh’s own bio-pic to be made, wonder who would star in it, was a question curiously asked by a middle aged lady sitting a row behind me in the cinema hall.

Dr. Kashinath Ghanekar, a light eyed, immensely flamboyant, hedonistic dentist turned actor crash landed on the staid Marathi stage ethos that was practically going nowhere during the 1950’s. The 8^th born of an extremely critical father, he remained a man forever seeking his father’s approval that was just as spitefully and viciously denied to him. These are the shades of the man very well captured as they not only became his main driving motivation to seek that compensative approval and adulation from his audience.  Once that was achieved got him so severely addicted to it that he could not survive without it.

A very understanding fellow doctor wife who was a gynaecologist supported his fanciful longing for stage and fame while dealing with his eccentric and self-centred persona. The man worked very hard for his success as is known that he despite having a successful practice in Mumbai worked the nights doing odd jobs on the stage circuit, one of them being that of a voice prompter. From his first big break of getting Vasant Kanetkars play…”Raigadala Jaag Yete” where he played Sambhaji with such élan and finesse that the forgotten son of the famous father came alive in him onstage. It helped that he was a handsome man and the audience that had long since given up on Marathi stage thronged back to it in hordes. A new sun had risen and started blazing on the turnstiles.

Just as proportionately the success went to his head, where his extreme arrogance brought a promising career to a full stop many a time, during the first lull Sulochana his wives patient and mentor pushed him towards cinema under the tutelage of the veteran master Bhalji Pendharkar. Cinema never attracts an actor who starts from the stage, one who is used to the phenomenon of a live interactive audience and its instantaneous feedback. Prabhakar Panshikar another Giant of the stage was staging the author Kanetkar’s new play “Ashrunchi Jhali Fule” and here in a barely 20 minute part Ghanekar with his character Lalya became such a rage, he from the opening night owned the play. It was here in these intermittent visits to Sulochana’s house he ran into her school going daughter Kanchan and the young girls falls for him, hook line and sinker. Her calm and cool demeanour also drew him to her and tilted him away from his wife in this journey ahead. The forever craving soul gets a perpetual fan and his wife of many years who had refused that role categorically, moves on. Arrogance and an extremist starry behaviour rarely keep friends, associates or colleagues and there always are those stepped upon toes waiting to hit back. Three shows per day, excessive alcohol, tobacco use and the obsessive compulsive need for the applause addled the first ever superstar of Marathi stage to such an extent that he collapsed on stage in an alcoholic stupor.

Heady fan approval instantly switches sides and turns into hate…in this painful gap stepped in another powerful actor Dr.Shriram Lagoo and all of Ghanekar’s parts leaked out to Lagoo triggering off a cold war of mammoth proportions. Lagoo’s method acting v/s Ghanekars spontaneous flamboyance was another tipping point that was the harbinger of another change coming over Marathi stage… this battle saw Ghanekar meeting an extremely tragic end. Fickle is the bitch goddess of success and her loyalty often taken for an entitlement and for granted can be disastrous. 

This was Ghanekars’s story in a nutshell, captured for a much later generation by Subodh Bhave and writer Abhijit Deshpande by researching and partly through the book, Nath ha Maaza,  by Dr.Ghanekars second wife Kanchan. 

It is a brave attempt and the cameos are the ones that have stolen the show, because some of them are very well etched out. Prasad Oak as Prabhakar Panshikar, Anand Ingle as Vasant Kanetkar and Sumit Raghavan as Dr.Shreeram Lagoo are excellent. Nandita Dhuri as Dr.Iravati has again delivered a superbly grounded low key performance after her sterling Elizabeth Ekadashi previously. Prajakta Mali the bouncy telestar shines briefly as Gomu in a song “ GomuSangti Na” from one of his biggest hits towards the end of Ghanekars filmy career ; “Ha Khel Sawalyancha”. Sonali Kulkarni as Sulochana is clearly a misfit but Vaidehi Parshurami as her daughter is very good and a sight for sore eyes. And like the title ani…Subodh Bhave as Dr.Kashinath Ganekar is very sincere. Subodh loves a challenge, takes it up and fulfils it with his inbuilt restraint. There are explosive moments written in the script befitting the character. These are the very moments where one wishes that had Subodh let himself completely go, totally unrestrained, it could have added a different dimension and depth to the character. Alas, I missed that. Yes, he can be excused for never having met the star and studying him through his cinema but one must remember that was a medium and platform never favoured by Dr.Ghanekar. The actor lived for the stage, lived to walk through the crowds cutting his way out, listening to the hosannas falling on his ears and like all such artistes who get made by the maker with a self–destruct button.

Whether Dr.Kashinath Ghanekar was really such an important a pillar of Marathi stage that we needed a bio-pic of him is by itself a debatable question, one that never arose in the making of Bal Gandharva. Ghanekar was a very popular star who kept the till ringing at a time when the Marathi Maanus had lost interest in that medium. It is a good movie that stops several yards from being a great one. Is it watchable, yes it is, only if you do want to know who Dr.Kashinath Ghanekar cursorily was?

Thugs of Hindostan – I Went … I Spent … I Slept.

There are various different kinds of movies made under the generic heading of Cinema. They are classified under two main categories, Types & Adjectives.
Commercial Cinema, Art Cinema, Short Films, Talkies, Silent Movies…then within the same category one does find small cinema like a Badhai Ho , or a big budgeted cinema like Bahubali. The Adjectives spread between Blockbuster, Hit, Flop, Dud, Good and Bad and many others.

The same movie house YRF –Yash Raj Films, that gave commercial hits, romances and musicals of a high calibre and even some sterling small movies like Band Bajaa Baraat has created an absolutely new concept of a movie called “The Multi-Crore Inane Opus”. 


Thugs Of Hindostan is the pioneer and breaks new ground by launching an entire new sub-category of movies by itself.

So what do they do ? There is this dude called Vijay Krishna Acharya who had just missed reaching this milestone with his earlier film for YRF called Dhoom3. He goes and sits in a room with Aditya Chopra and they ideate. Acharya says Aamir gave us one of the biggest hits with Dhoom3 and he is the one I want. Adi Chopra says check. Aamir is in. There was a time when this Khan , the most visibly cerebral among the three Khans of Hindi Cinema actually would try and get into a character and do a lot of homework on it. Today he has reverted to the veteran genre of acting which is the Pran style of performing.  Here one creates a look, assumes a mannerism for the character and then hams away until eternity. Aamir has decided that he likes Captain Jack Sparrow and his look in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, now no one told him that his character is almost entirely a land lubber and barely on sea, but no Aamir liked the outlandish style of Johnny Depp which looks utterly charming and suits Depp but on Aamir it looks forced, sluggish and silly. 

Then Adi said I want to beat my Dads record of casting coups. His movie Silsila had made a lot of noise purely on the basis of the casting of Bachchan , Rekha and Jaya Bhadhuri. I want to top that. Aamir is the only Khan to never have shared screen  space with the big B so …check Big B is also in. Suddenly almost 50 crores have been budgeted with these two names in. So who next ? Aamir with the idiotic character cannot have a love interest but we do need a a seriously good looking woman who can look divine as she wriggles about. Acharya raises his hand and says like in Dhoom3, I am comfortable with Katrina. 5-10 more crores have been instantly earmarked. We need ships, forts, cannons, armies, pirates, foreigners and how the heck are we going to make a story out of this?

Then the director laughs at the naiveté of his producer and tells him, you are too old fashioned. Stories and plots are overrated, who needs them? We can looking at the mood of the country try and inject some amount of Nationalism, ekhaad tadka , Nationalism and patriotism sells and then the lead characters can do every single type of nonsense and it shall be swallowed. When we turn a criminal into a revolutionary and patriot anything goes. So we have something like this happening onscreen, unmelodious totally un-hummable songs, forgotten the moment the song has finished, Katrina sings and dances, Aamir Dances and Sings, Bachhan looks suitably intense and the angry young man that made him the Big B having gone, he is now an angry old man who looks rather unsure rapeling down a rope or riding a horse and doing serious sword fighting. Some of the wrinkles under his chin wobble these days.

All in all this is what happened. I find my seat, sink into it and before long Ronit Roy of the Perry Masonish, Adalat fame from TV comes bizarrely garmented as a Maharja who is shown owning a fort for exactly 13 minutes after which he is killed and his daughter is taken n brought up by Khudabash aka Bachchan…and once Aamir hits the screen, sense leaves. My eyelids had become heavy and they dropped. The six word honest review of this movie would therefore be. I Went … I Spent … I Slept. 

My final bit of a suggestion is that if you cannot avoid going for this movie is to choose a cinema hall with the most comfortable seats.

Badhai Ho : The stork visits ... uninvited !!!

There comes a sunny phase in one’s career when one can do nothing wrong.

Paulo Coelho first said it in a book and then Shahrukh Khan repeated it in some movie , that "When u want something bad, from the heart, dil se, the entire Universe (Coelho’s word) or Kaaynat (Shahrukh’s usage) conspires to give it to you". Ayushmann Khurana is going through just one such zingy time in his life. 

After such a humdinger of a complex plot in Sriram Raghavan’s AndhaDhund he signs up for just a one line story in “Badhai Ho” written by Akshat Ghildiyal & Shantanu Srivastava and directed by Amit Ravindernath Sharma. Yeah , I too wondered why did they need two guys to write a one-line-story? Then I looked at the dialogue writers and they are the same pair, the story writers, and here they have scored really wonderfully. When the plot is just a single line then you need loads of dialogues and conversation to fill in 124 minutes of screen time, and here the pair does a splendid job.

We have a poor IT dude Nakul Kaushik(Ayushmann Khurana, in a rocking form) whose life is cruising at an even pace despite having the typical milieu surrounding him of urban yet decidedly middle class Gurugram. This milieu is so type cast, so type cast that one bursts into immediate laughter at the comfortable familiarity of it. It has pesky inquisitive neighbour's who feel it is their birth right to peek into your house and personal life and offer advice as if they were designate consultants from the big 5 of the world. It has the saucy neighbouring fresh bhabhiji who gives our man the lecherous glad eye, the tiresome yet crafty younger brother, the smart and sassy grand-mother (Surekha Sikri, absolutely superb), the slightly scatter-brained but loving father (Gajraj Rao) and a very warm, kind and once upon a time exceptionally pretty mother who his father just can’t get enough of. There even is one dish, where Nakul in his IT Multi-National company despite his middle-class background has managed to snag for himself; a very pretty , grounded n rich girl ( Saniya Malhotra, very charming) who adores him very much, understands him and wonder of wonder even her mother (Sheeba Chhadda) likes him too. 

So where is the fly in the ointment? The Parents decide to rumple the bed sheets again and in a fit of passion the father makes a deposit and does not withdraw in time. The cruel cold finger of fate then plays its hand and it’s the time for congratulations to be in order…again. There is a baby due and it is the parental decision to have it that blows Nakul’s world away. It’s just not done…he screams at the skies. Society is not too kind either and the kindly and the meaningful barbs keep flying here there and everywhere, each finding its mark on Nakul & his brother. It’s just his girl Renee (Saniya) who takes it casually and she even advises Nakul to take a chill pill… parents are allowed to do it you see, she cheekily tells him. Yet its easier said than done, as he has not come to terms with the shock. He blows his top at her mum, and both he and the girl split for a while and mope. The show, whenever the spotlight moves away from the young lead pair and shines on the conjugally active parents, simply rocks. The older pair are so much in character it is unbelievable and makes one feel both exasperated and warmly fuzzy at the same time. Neena Gupta and Gajraj Rao are fantastic and when the old Surekha Sikri gets her footage, does the veteran set the screen on fire or what? Mutual love, family values, the right things all rush the characters to the predictably happily ever after ending…but where the plot is linear the treatment is nuanced and sublime.

There was a time in the late 70’s and early 80’s when the Bachchan blitzkrieg swept Hindi cinema like the Tsunami tidal wave that hit many a coast… a thin, fumbling, non-descript yet charming middle-class hero called Amol Palekar stood the action onslaught and scored winner after winner with the directorial trio of the two Basu’s and a Mukherjee. Today in the big budget 100 crore bonanza movies mostly from the Khans and a few big Heroines…Ayushmann is doing his work in just as outstanding a manner as Palekar did decades back. He though is much better looking than Amol Palekar ever was but it’s his easy performances that ensures perennial longevity for the films he is a part of; wonderful. It’s a movie that can be missed because it is small and there are other movies to watch. However mark my words if you have bought a ticket for this one because the other screens in the cinema hall were full then believe me, your money is definitely well spent. Amit Ravindranath Sharma as the captain of the ship, its director can take a proud bow on a job very well done. Family drama's are a genuine balancing act and one can be excused for losing it, but not here, the accusation cannot stick. Its a top class controlled effort and deserves its rightful mention.    

AndhaDhun : Wicked & Deep is the Fog that Thrills

Civilization is but a thin veneer and what keeps it on and functioning is the barest of a social construct. Give the power to anyone to be absolved of this and the animal in man emerges with a vengeance. Sriram Raghavan’s characters have always been these tight rope walkers, grey, dark, amoral and tautly wound. Their believable characteristics emerges from this.

Right from his “Ek Haseena Thhi”, “Badlapur”, “Johnny Gaddar” to now “AndhaDhun” Raghavan conveyed that every man craves and craves badly but what limits one is the wafer thin barrier created by social community living. Remove that and every man, woman and child is immoral, can stoop to any level, peer into anyone's life shamelessly, take things that may not belong to him or even wipe somebody off cleanly if they are undetected or not seen. It is like Plato said in 'The Republic' in the episode of the 'Ring of Ghyges; The Ring makes the wearer invisible. This is the truest test of moral character of what one can, shall, would and does when one is not seen.

AndhaDhun begins with a one eyed pest of a rabbit in a cabbage field evading a furious hunter and the scene abruptly fades off into an unseen climactic darkness to open up to light on Prabhat Road in Pune. From the one eyed rabbit the plot has veered onto a blind Pianist Aakash (Ayushmann Khurana) and his recently bumped into muse Sophie (Radhika Apte) on the streets of Pune. Raghavan’s comfort in his hometown makes the city one of the intrinsic characters of the plot. Sophie lands Aakash a job in Franco’s pub and there one sees the faded movie star Pramod Sinha (Anil Dhavan) and his young saucy wife of a suspect moral fiber. The blind Aakash gets embroiled in an intricate plot of wicked proportions and then with every single passing moment falls deeper and deeper into the mess. 

The plot draws inspiration from the French Movie “ L’Accordeur’ or the Piano Tuner. Raghavan does not permit you to sit still in your cinema seat relaxed for more than ten minutes and as the brilliantly nuanced characters interact with each other across rather surprising twists and turns exposing a different hue, the story hurtles onto a mind-blowing open ended climax the kind only an auteur of Raghavn’s cerebral class can come up with. Manav Vij as the philandering cop and his high strung yet loving wife Ashwini Kalsekar or Chhaya Kadam as a lottery seller and Zakir Hussain as the ordinarily never suspected doctor engaged in the nefarious organ trade…each of them is individually brilliant. Nothing in the story line is expected and it is as if a general plot line was chalked out and the actors having interacted, dashed against each other, lived their characters so fully that the story wrote itself, got enriched and taken to another level; one that is simply spectacular. 

Ayushmann  Khurana  is in a role of a life time and so spot on is his essaying the character that at every moment one starts feeling sympathy empathy wonder disgust and even dislike for the shades conveyed as is the case with Tabu who is supreme in her part that she has effortlessly drawn onto and worn like a second skin. This is the perfect foil and these two own the movie. Radhika Apte is sweet sincere and very comfortable one who is very natural. 

The punches that Raghavan gives the viewer are felt as audible gasps and thrilled embarrassed laughter of having been caught unawares in shock, surprise and thrill. The pace of the movie is relentless till post interval it meanders for a while in the organ trade business but before it loses sight is quickly back and leads to a stunning climax that joins most of the dots.

Superb camerawork, slick editing and clear story telling backed by brilliant performances undoubtedly makes this movie an unmissable, must watch movie of 2018.

Sui Dhaga : A delightful shorba from a perfect broth

Have you been hungry over a long period of time? All that comes your way during such a time is hastily put together, spicy stuff from  a hot wok that has been hurriedly fried n tossed . Then to avoid this, one goes into a fancy labelled eating place. Here under the packaging of conditioned atmosphere, good sofa sets smartly turned out waiters, with fancy crockery and cutlery that promises a hugely inflated bill and one still gets served the same insipid or over spiced fare. I have been cheated too often in this manner to know that this does not leave a nice taste in the mouth.

So one goes hungry outside and eats only at home or partakes only the home-cooked meal. This while may be good in many aspects; the range here is limited to the skill and range of the cooking available. The taste buds are left wanting. Then one day when you have left home and forgotten the lunch box, the pangs drive you into a non-descript yet clean looking place. Here looking at the simple menu on offer you order the soup. The shorba comes served in an ordinary glass bowl but the aroma has tickled the nostrils while it was approaching the table. Then the sight of it pleases ones eye at the simple clarity of the broth and as one dips into it and mouths the first spoonful, the subtle flavours explode on to your palate and one is suffused with a sensation of pure delight. A smile lingers on as one has a fill of an ordinary menu prepared quite beautifully.

Sui Dhaga is just this kind of a broth, simple, subtle and full of nuanced flavours.

Mauji ( Varun Dhavan) and Mamta (Anushka Sharma) are matter of factly launched at you as husband and wife, the son and daughter-in-law of  a pesky Babuji ( Raghuvir Yadav, competent as ever) and a Maaji (Yamini Das, who is like that extra raisin one has surprisingly found in a motichur ka laddoo. Sublimely superb) who is so much into the character that one definitely gets a feeling of the familiar watching her? Mauji is a happy go lucky simpleton, sincere, honest, hard-working, obedient, dutiful grandson of a black n white photograph hanging on the grimy wall. This wrinkled old coon in the photograph was a skilled tailor master whose business bombed and effectively turned his son , Raghuvir Yadav into a risk averse service goer of a type who cloaks his non-relevant work life into an epic of one on whom duty declared that he should be like this. His elder spineless son has left home to be a ghar jamai at a comparatively richer household and the younger Mauji who though has inherited his grandfather’s skilled fingers on a sewing machine is willing to follow his fathers footsteps by loyally playing the fool to an advantage taking shopkeeper. The crescendo of his humiliation is once witnessed by his wife who is hurt beyond measure at this demeaning role. In a very very subtle manner she pokes at his self respect that wakes up from its seemingly self-imposed slumber.

This is the tipping point and Mauji’s transformation begins from a pleasant yet simply trusting a young boy-man into a man. A man whose wife walks by his side, happily and proudly, willing to go that extra mile for her man; holding his hand, comfort him with soothing words, directing him responsibly and even at times taking cudgels for him. The story line holds no surprises finally spiralling towards a contest that one already knows who would win. The fun of this movie is not in knowing the end result much before it has come that one does, but it is in the delightful walk that Mamta and Mauji take. Their sincerity draws you into their story in such a compelling fashion at times one’s eyes moisten both with pathos and joys experienced by this quite a surprisingly adorable pair  who baffle you with their inexperience, yet make you admire their drive n persistence and even one feels like pushing  them simply over the speed breakers that keep popping up quite often in their path. Their victory is the finale and a beginning.

Sharad Katariya, the director,  has done a credible job and the movie produced by Yash Raj Films will guarantee it a good release. The movie belongs to Varun Dhavan and Anushka Sharma who have put in their hearts and souls into their characters and never once have they faltered. Anu Malik talented as ever composes a few beautiful songs to Varun Grover’s script driven lyrics. The support castled by Namit Das as the over effusive and funny relative who is also a fixer, gives out a performance that is very good and as do the others.

Those who enjoy the spicily loud fare normally dished out by Yash Raj films that are manoeuvred into the 100 crore club may give this movie a miss. This is for those who enjoy a simple story told quite well. This is the kind of food that promises to be food only and not pretending to be anything else, wholesome and entirely an absolute value for money cinema experience. Bon apetit.

Dear Zindagi : Alia aali re ...

There are movies, there are scripts and in this weird rigmarole comes in an actor who simply steps in and owns it with her / his performance. The entire movie then belongs to that one person and no others in it matter. Dear Zindagi, is one such experience.

In the early 70’s we had Kaka aka Rajesh Khanna, when his era ended it was Amitabh Bachchan and then the Khan zone started...yet movies belonged to the menfolk. Nargis and her Mother India is but a distant memory of the past until very recently. The last few years have seen the new girls take such a firm grip of their roles and movies that the gender glass ceiling has been broken and how !!! Vidya Balan in Parineeta and Kahani, Deepika Padukone in Cocktail , Tamasha, Piku , a Tapsee in Pink, Alia Bhat who showed promise in Highway now delivers a whopping super punch in Dear Zindagi.

Gauri Shinde the director who gave us the entertaining English Vinglish by serving us a rewarmed up old dish in Sridevi had earned with it her credentials as a solo masterchef. She could now serve her own masterpiece with fresh ingredients , without supervision and she does it stylishly.

Kaira ( Alia) is a bohemian rhapsody in the form of a talented and mixed up camerawoman...a cinematographer. An independent girl who while being young is also opinionated and has no hangups of hooking up with men friends. She does take utmost care to be the one to call off the relationships first, before the guy. Her camaraderie with her chick pals ( Ira Dubey and Yashaswini Dayama)  is sassy , bitchy, warm and real and we cruise through the early portion of the movie enjoying the happenings yet not being able to clearly put a finger on the pulse of it. Does it meander for long ? Maybe, but it still is frothy fun while it does, till Kaira has dumped restaurateur Sid and film producer Raghuvendra (Kunal Kapoor, good looking and credible) and while she is on to her next guy a musician Rumi ( Ali Zafar, dashing and sparkling ) runs into another bohemian soul in a shrink Dr. Jahangir Khan (Shahrukh Khan ). Dr.Khan isn’t a typical psychiatrist in the manner by which he sifts through the jigsaw puzzle that is Kaira and aids her into reconstructing the picture back, to shed baggage and rediscover her truer higher self. It is Psychiatry, Life Coaching, Hand Holding and Counselling loaded with filmy babble. It is a pleasure watching SRK when he isn’t playing another Rahul something clone from his Yash Raj repertoire. SRK and Alia after this movie are sure gonna make having a Shrink acceptable if not fashionable.

It is a director’s cut as Gauri Shinde also the scriptwriter has written a difficult story. The music by Amit Trivedi is hummable yet the songs may not stick to the memory banks. The camera by Laxman Utekar is splendidly candid and while Shahrukh is on screen it zooms up so close that SRK and his many moons spent on this earth become apparent. SRK is very good but the movie’s real star is Alia Bhatt. For one so young she shoulders the complexed character with real panache, at once effervescent, saucy and sensual, loud and outspoken yet reflectively morose even at times this girl has delivered the best performance of her career so far and it augurs for many more ahead if her talent pool gets tapped rightly.

Demonetization may keep one away from the screens, as has been the fate of a few new releases like Rock On 2 but they were strictly avoidable...Dear Zindagi is not, and while it may not have mass appeal the movie is sure to work even commercially very well because its the girls aura that has bubbled out and lit up the film watchers world with an announcement. I am here.

Ye Dil Hai Mushkil : Ban the Banners, they created more curiosity than the movie deserved

A controversy & the furore that followed

Karan Johar has taken a Pakistani actor in the film, one Fawad Khan. When Fawad Khan was asked to condemn the terrorist attack on India he kept mum.Hawwww. The censors then pass the film. The Central Government keeps its mouth closed neither assuring protection to the exhibitors and producer nor denying it. Ban this film said Raj Thakeray, who stepped in and said we won’t allow exhibition. Some distributors stepped up and the association of single theatre owners in four states denied its exhibition and release. Karan Johar keeps quiet for the longest time as he had not stepped out of the bounds of the law but then at the very last moment chickens out and states vehemantly a love for his country. The CM of Maharshtra steps in and with Raj Thakeray playing the counting machine they force the hand of the producer and have him fork out Rs.5 crore and contribute it to the Indian Army. The Army does not like this and states it with no uncertainty. The Army says that it won’t accept any coerced funding, but take only voluntary donations. The gravel is yet to fall on this one whether the funding was voluntary or not. In the meantime the movie is released in the multiplexes to full houses.

Ye Dil is truly Mushkil - The K Jo Checklist

There is a new checklist that is out now when one has to go and watch a matured , older yet not exactly wiser K Jo directed movie. 

• Is LOVE , friendship ?
• or Is FRIENDSHIP, love?
• For life sufficiency and sustenance between Love & Friendship is either one of them good enough , or are both required or neither is enough?

•To make a movie universally acceptable is it necessary to have an international ambiance but with every single character a Person Of Indian Origin? Then a PIO to be a PIO has to flash his or her passport and proudly too. No it aint hip anymore in a Dharma productions to be an Indian with an Indian passport. You may at best become the clapper boy in the next movie.

• Should you watch a K Jo directed film if it does have a SRK , Kajol or Aalia Bhatt not in the lead roles but as special appearances ? These are the new red flags.

Story 

None. 

What happens onscreen

Ranbir and Anoushka in the first half hour have zippy conversation, cuddle, dance, smooch, look good and do the usual bummery. Then over the next five half hour slots keep repeating it until it comes out of one's ears. Fawad looks non-existently handsome and has no presence or his character any depth. As to Aishwarya Rai, one wonders from which angle did one conceive her to be a shayaraana (a Urdu poet) who spouts some really nice lines. Ash looks better as she has aged well but her acting and performance is still at the same strained level that she perfected in her magnum opus “Jeans”. No feeling ever reaches her eyes and they remain the same , blank and cold forever. Ranbir Kapoor is likeable but boringly the same as he was in all his recent movies. 

Aalia Bhatt in a special appearance brings in a breath of fresh air but it is too short. SRK in a special appearance is disgustingly smug and all in that one frame look sufficiently attractive yet old. 

The one real watchable performance comes from Anoushka Sharma. This girl is growing with every single film and is a treat to watch. She is sincere, saucy and sharp in each of her line delivery and comfortably natural on the screen. Niranjan Iyengar has written some wonderful lines in the dialogue and they may have qualified for an award had there been a structure or a story to support them. The movie has no single hummable song atleast nothing that shall remain in the memory after hearing it. Pritam struggles yet goes home with a cheque. His director found the work delieverd acceptable.

Conclusion

Had it not been for the controversy created over misplaced patriotism, the movie may definitely have flopped and quietly at that too. The controversy shall rake in the moolah by bringing in the crowd and even after having to fork out the Rs.5 crores there would be plenty left for K Jo to laugh his way to the bank. But he would be careful this time. Outside the bank he may adjust his expression, make it solemn and serious and then go in with the gunnybag full of collection money for depositing it.

K Jo wins, everyone else loses.

YZ : A coming of age ... to score

Why YZ ?Is that a movie ? Ohhh, a Marathi language film? Was that your first choice? To be honest, no, but what would you have me watch… a Mohenjo Daro ? Gimme a break. 

So there you are, with me booking tickets for YZ… there was something zany about the title. I didn’t know anything about the movie, nor the star cast, not the director but yeah I knew fleetingly that it had Sai Tamhankar. Her name and the movie’s title aroused sufficient curiosity to find me attempting this exercise.

Marathi films and cinema off late has been in a state of flux. A metamorphosis, if you want to call it that. After being bereft of ideas for close to 3 decades the scene has exploded and how. The fresh crop of actors, directors, producers is attempting the new, the story boards are fresh, the production value is seriously up and the package now looks as good as a Hindi film even at 1/20^th of its budget.

YZ, now why did it attract me… it’s a bad word, clean and simple...a slang so common on the roads of Maharashtra it would and can rival the BC’s and MC’s of the Punjab and the North. But its presentation is unique. The slang is picked up, polished, buffed up and after attaining the removal of all rough edges is packaged and presented to us not as a word but as an attitude. Just imagine shouting a BC in the middle of a Mumbai street, all would hear a bad word and they wouldn’t be wrong, but Sameer Widwans ( YZ’s director) sees the person belting it out, makes note of the person yelling, to spot and accurately paint for us his attitude. 

I loved this approach of looking at things, it does have us storm into the life of Gajanan Kulkarni ( Sagar Deshmukh ) a wimpy history professor from the town of Wai. Gajanan or Gajya is a 33 year old virgin and rightly so. A quirk of fate finds him and his wimpy approach being transferred and trans-shipped from a college in Wai to a College in Pune. The wimp as expected encounters a culture shock and is all prepared to go back home in a week till fate intervenes and deals him a second blow. He collides with Battees (32, Akshay Tanksale, playing a street smart bumpkin of a student to perfection with his battered out of Pune and Mumbai accent and rough rakish approach to things ). Here begins the wimps coming of age story with the teacher as the student and the raw and rough student as his life coach.Coming of age can be a huge misnomer till one takes into account the bramhinical social mindset of the country, here, if one is 33 years of age, employed and yet unmarried there is something wrong. If this gets fed into a person, gender apart, it can become a monumental high jump to be completed, where the target could even be tough for a Sergei Bubka or Yelena Isinbayeva, let alone wimps who have learned to walkwith baggages and exist by hiding their selves deliberately.

Gajya encounters 3 women in his journey towards becoming a finished YZ and in each of this stage he learns a potent part of himself and then starts proudly wearing it on his sleeve. The girls in his life are credible for the characters that have been drawn and fill up those proto types quite well. Sai Tamhankar, the sensual sassy actress is devoid of this aura of hers and delivers a knock out performance, while Mukta Barve and Parna Pethe as the other two are believable.

Is this movie good? It’s certainly not bad. However on reflection it is a tad bit too long and some serious snipping would have made it tauter and pacy. It loses pace in key moments and that invites my sleep-o-meter which induces the zzzzz in me. Concisely put, Battees (32) the character, Gajya and one girl interaction would have been a crisp growing up journey with the Pune background playing its role actively. Here one feels and I could be mistaken that it is a 45 minute movie repeated thrice each with a different girl. There are innovations that are quite cute, there is an entire song belted out in Sanskrit, a dream sequence, but Sanskrit nevertheless. It is a watchable movie and while one doesn’t come out feeling that did one get a super bang for his buck..ummm no…the money wasn’t entirely wasted either. Those like me who still are reeling under the image bash of seeing a sanskritik avatared Sai Tamhankar are the chappies who may struggle for words in articulating to you what about the movie did not sit well. Every element is real and believable but the story did not need so many elements is my first gut reaction.

There are many positives in this movie and the camera takes the first spot followed by the caricatures sketched and they who get presented in the title display of the cast and characters, Akshay Tanksales battees is hilarious and spot on in parts and while the wimpy Gajya is good it is Sai's Parnarekha which is first rate. She has improved as a performer is easy on the eye in her character. If you ask me that what would you say after watching YZ has come of age...and my answer is straight, it is Marathi Cinema without any doubt.

Sultan: Of the Swing, Salman Rules.

10,000 hours at a minimum are invested in a field of choice before one becomes a master and a champion of it. Malcolm Gladwell in his bestselling book "Öutliers" drew this out as one of the conclusions from the data he analysed to decode success. 

Now why did this particular thought come to my mind as I silently walked out of the cinema hall after watching “Sultan”? Both I and my wife were quiet. It was an unexpected experience that had come our way. A Salman Khan movie released on Eid, had us emerging out of a cinema hall in stunned silence.

Salman belongs to an elite troika that has ruled the Hindi Cinema onscreen space over the past twenty years now. Never having been ever openly credited for knowing the craft or for his histrionic ability his notional equity commanded a lower price in the acting arena compared to Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan. Yet Salman Khan’s movies across his career have collected more money than those of the other two put together, who were a part of the supposed serious, mainstream projects. He is a star, loved by the masses, singularly handsome, and dated the most beautiful women in the world onscreen, his off screen image has a darker edge, that of a bad boy.  His off-screen antics from his early career have been the stuff that did not create happy stories and some took him to facing the law. There is also a different side to him in which he is known to help his co-stars, actors and other technicians that earned him the respectful sobriquet of bhai. From his debut in 1988 till 1992 he gave 5 solo super hits, this was the closest anyone came to Rajesh Khanna’s  record of delivering 15 back to back super hits from 1969-72. Then he meandered in his career, doing nothing meaningful yet his films made money till 2009. That year saw the rebirth of a Bollywood Colossus in him. "Wanted", was a Hindi remake of Pokkiri a Telugu film, directed by Prabhudeva , from this movie on one saw Salman taking command over the box office in a fashion that left every single peer, senior, junior gasping and miles behind. He defined the term a “100 crore” film. Consistently he has given 100's of crores of collections per film, each one of which has the typically front seater crowd whistling, howling and cheering for his action, romance and dances.

This though now was a different Salman Khan. He had taken charge, his performance, his understanding his commitment to every project grew by leaps and bounds and this attention reflected in his performance and films. His Rajveer Shekhawat to Chulbul Pandey are characters have stayed on in his audience’s memory. But with his legal cases, his oft quoted understood - misunderstood utterances and his more popular goofy cinematic image make him a soft target to be looked down upon by the select discerning audience. This same set had done it to Govinda years earlier and now it was Salman’s turn.

It was in this mindset we had entered the Cinema Hall to watch Sultan.

Sultan Ali is a townie from a village in Haryana and the movie opens in a wrestling pit. Sultan (Salman Khan ) has been a local legend in the past and a new recruiter Amit Sadh, trying to enlist him for the TV visual sport of MMA is aghast on seeing an old paunchy clerk in a government office. His queries to a friend of Sultan’s, unearths a story buried under the grime and sweat of a life in which he lived, loved and now seemingly looked like having lost. This was not an athlete in his prime who could be revived or could he? The wrestler has left the ring in memory of his paramour, Aarfa (Anushka Sharma) and as his friend joins the dots we take part in the romance of an impish Sultan. There in Sultan is a lot of heart, broken, bruised but ticking. This is what carries him on and the story leisurely moves on to its conclusion. 

Ali Abbas  Zafar, the director has a firm grip over the movie and it is the script that takes centre stage. It’s the treatment that separates this movie from the rest of what Salman has done. The story is the hero and the lovely lyrics by Irshad Kaamil the poet & lyricist its heroine. The romantic ballad "Jag Ghumiya" is so elegantly crafted by his pen that it will linger on for a long time.The fact that Salman himself lends his voice is just another raisin that I found in my biscuit. The dialect of the movie stays true to its location, is found in the songs too. Both the stars Salman and Anushka are & stay totally in character to deliver excellent performances. Their look is so beautifully designed, that both of them are believable completely.  The music by Vishal-Shekhar is rooted in the soil and the camera by Artur Zurawski the Polish Cinematographer makes love to the landscape and characters.

There is a genuineness ringing across the coin of Sultan the Movie with such a clear ring...it is amazing. The last time we had seen such an authentic energy and across the board genuineness was in Band Baja Baarat by Maneesh Sharma from the YRF’s stable. It is after that we see Ali Abbas Zafar hitting it out of the park in his third attempt at movie making after “My Brother Ki Dulhan”  and “Gunday”. Sultan shall allow him to take a bow for a movie well made. 

In a collaborative effort like making a film when all things fall into place, it is on account of everyone totally owning their work and roles. It is only on such rare occasions then that the movie watching experience becomes seamless and sublime. Everybody is outstanding and no one performance needs to be lauded. The man of the match is clearly the director and the team has won. The Kingdom is no longer King Khan's , it is a Sultanate now and there is but one SULTAN.

TE3N : South Korea to Kolkata, not much lost in translation

Kolkata is the new city of montages for the new age Hindi cinema. Look at the recent ones that have gone across our viewfinders and you shall get at what I am talking about. Kahani, Byomkesh Bakshy, Piku and now we have Te3n. 

No other city with the exception of Bombay actively interjects itself into the cast and script so wilfully like Kolkata making it special.

Te3n produced by Sujoy Ghosh and finding shape under the directorial baton of Ribhu Dasgupta is a good looking dark film. It is based on the South Korean film Montage and is officially a remake, with the copyright purchased. South Korean cinema has had unmentioned remakes earlier like the Sanjay Dutt starrer Zinda made from Oldboy. It is a different kind of cinema the South Korean one, and adapting it into the Indian ethos and milieu is a serious challenge. Ribhu Dasgupta has done a stellar job at this.

It all begins with a bang and an accident in sepia frames and the movie narrates itself 8 years later. John Biswas (Bacchhan, after Piku is officially now a screen Bengali, so natural is he at it )  loses a grand-daughter to a kidnapping and murder and is hounding the police for every single day of his eight years. The now cop in charge Vidya Balan, has empathy but no solution for the justice sought. The then veteran cop Martin in charge has also experienced the same deep rooted trauma of the crime and changes professions at the juncture of failure to become a priest. No clues are forthcoming and the case is stagnant and plateaued until a chance encounter with a baby girl unravels a thread for John. And while the thread unravels, there is a fresh crime. The MO is the same and the new cop seeks out the priest and his past expertise as a cop to crack the case. It’s a leisurely paced movie plot that deliberately tumbles itself towards a conclusion. Does John find justice, Do the police crack the cases form the fulcrum on which this plot is hinged.

The three back stories of the characters are neatly weaved in with some ends left deliberately or inadvertently open. There are more stories that intersperse and take over the narrative and make the plot more involved and complicated. 

Superb performances from Bacchhan and Sabhyasachi Chakraborty. Sabhyasachi is now finding himself as a default prop in every film that has Kolkata. 

Vidya Balan looks like a Mallu Chechi and tries to act like a young modern Bengali Bowdi who is also a cop. Someplace the cracks show up in the characterization and not in her performance. Same is the case with Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Father Martin. He is good but it is tough to digest him as the padre while easier as the padre who reverts to his cop giri. 

The camera is the final star who creates the ultimate Montage for Te3n and Kolkata shines through in its structural grandness, its fading and populated lively colourful milieu. The music is hummed prose lyrically metered by Amitabh Bhattacharya and set to tune by Clinton Cerejo. The music is unobtrusive, stays in the background and deepens the colour tone of the movie.

The pace of the movie is all Kolkata. It is languorous, slow, deliberate and garrulous sometimes more so in parts where one wishes for silence. 

This movie drives home the point that a new narrative flavour is definitely taking root in Hindi Cinema. This is seriously a welcome change.

Dil Dhadakne Do - A serious wake up call for Zoya

When a director makes a superb debut film, follows it up with a blockbuster hit road movie and has partnered on interesting projects then not only does she raise the viewing audiences expectations but also that of the producers, so what if they are family.

It is like the novelist who after having come out with a spectacular first book is paid a huge advance by the publishers for the upcoming one.

This can be serious pressure. The unexpected can happen too, like if the writer director hits a block on ideas and the delivery date is fast approaching. Then what does the think tank of this project do? Should they still go ahead and launch the project in its expected style ? This one does. Big names are roped in, given the prestige associated with the producers and the successful director involved; the budget also expands exponentially. But still the story idea does not emerge, so what next?

An earlier movie called Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd had a bus journey, the Think Tank searches for inspiration within the same base skeleton of that plot ( after all its their own production) and then they up the ante. The bus journey from Bombay to Goa now becomes a Luxury cruise between Turkey and Egypt. The pieces have begun to fall in place. Soon a screenplay emerges from the one liner that the director had begun this project with. And now what do we get?

We get a superbly packaged film that has a screen play, one that is a medley of scenes. In the process of building the scenes up, now even the one liner story plot is brushed aside and so if we keep searching for it its not a guarantee we shall find it now. Out of Zoya's previous two directed films, “Zindagi Na Miley Dobara” achieved commercial success. It was a great package because it cohesively was held together with exotic locales and a purposeful story that grew upon you as the movie progressed. The first one, Luck By Chance was a searing comment on the Hindi Motion picture industry , made with a lot of heart and hence the most honest of her work so far. ...

“Dil Dhadakne Do” like the title suggests is an entreaty to the viewing audience...please do bring your hearts to this movie because we didn’t put ours into it.

Farhan Akhtar with his cult debut Dil Chahta Hai introduced us to his world of the uber rich and it continues in most of the films produced by Excel Entertainment. Its an altogether special and different world; a world of cut glass and crystal. Here social butterflies bitch serenely over herbal teas and baba ganoush, while their hubbies play golf, have their flings on the side in distant locations and talk multiple billions with absolute impunity, offspring are but mere pawns in their business deals. When they rebel and show individuality, they are screamed at that they never had it so good because they were spawned by self made men. Three such screamers are Parmeet Sethi, Manoj Pahwa and the loudest of the loud (Kamal Mehra) Anil Kapoor. Notable among the wives is Kamal Mehra's spouse played by Shefali Shah. The Mehra’s to celebrate their 30^th Marriage Anniversary organize a cruise party. The impact that this cruise has on their two children Priyanca Chopra and Ranveer Singh and their love lives forms the crux of this film. 

What one can look for here if one has to go for this film...is of course the scintillating presence of Ranveer Singh & Anoushka Sharma, they are on fire and their auras grab eyeballs whenever they are on screen. Priyanca Chopra has done a splendid job as Ayesha and looks glorious in the fine clothes she gets to wear. Anil Kapoor is Anil Kapoor and the old dog hasn’t learned a single new trick. He still confuses raising the performance bar to increasing the sound decibel levels and that he does at regular intervals. The worst part is that he has been given the maximum screen time and this blunts the edge of the film. The other metabolic waste in this film is Rahul Bose. Small mercies is that he is accurately cast as the constipated chauvinist; his is the most exemplary of performances because he lives the part and brings it to life just by being. He does not act at all...why? Did someone consider the possibility that maybe because he just can’t? There is a dog Pluto who narrates the side stories. He sounds like Aamir Khan and on closer look even resembles the finicky star. Divya Seth has by now become the symbolic token of anything Delhi in a cinematic plot just like Victor Bannerjee once upon a time was of anything Bengal.

Ranveer – Anoushka – Priyanca keep the filmy ship cruising. The Anil Kapoor- Rahul Bose combo almost sinks it but the other characters in sheer numbers balance them out and prevent the mishap. Farhan Akhtar should get back to direction quickly, he is looking jaded and the thrill of being seen on screen is long gone, acting now definitely seems to not be his metier. Shankar, Ehsaan & Loy are uninspired.

Zoya needs to pull up her socks. What one feels when one comes out of the cinema hall is being short charged and quite arrogantly too. 

The product has been released and is now so in your face, god forbid if you don’t like it, because then you may even be brashly told it’s maybe too classy for you. 

This film is a wake-up call and hope she reads it well, because one doesn’t like to see ordinary stuff from talented directors. If it makes tonnes of money, that would make it even sadder.