Filmi Geek

Delhi Belly (2011)

I recentlty read Neal Stephenson's new novel, Reamde, which is about (among other things) regular people who get swept into the circles of very dangerous criminals, and find themselves in desperate situations doing very desperate deeds.  Watching the recent dark comedy Delhi Belly, I was struck by the similarities of its basic outline to that summary of the novel. Most of us will never find ourselves face-to-face with the likes of the movie's diamond smugglers or Reamde's panoply of international gangsters, terrorists, and spies.  But there is something nevertheless compelling about such stories; even with its veneer of silliness, it's hard to watch Delhi Belly without thinking, what would I do if that happened to me?  

Tashi (Imran Khan) is a young, unambitious Delhi reporter who lives in squalor - borne more of laziness than necessity - with his two roommates, the lecherous photographer Nitin (Kunal Roy Kapoor), and a depressed commercial artist named Arup (Vir Das).  Tashi's breezy fiancee Sonia (Shenaz Treasury) has cluelessly agreed, as a favor to friend, to deliver a package that is quite obviously (to the audience, at least) contraband.  Sonia asks Tashi to complete the delivery, but thanks to a series of mishaps the package is confused with a stool sample of Nitin, who is afflicted with the filmi's titular ailment.  Needless to say, the intended recipient, a diamond smuggler (Vijay Raaz) isn't too pleased with the delivery.  And when the young men discover that they have a cache of stolen diamonds, they make a series of spectacularly bad decisions that lead to them chasing all over the city trying to sell the diamonds and, later, recover them.  Tossed in the mix is a colleague of Tashi's, the worldly Menaka (Poorna Jagannathan), whose homicidal ex-husband Rajiv (Rahul Singh) is violently jealous of Tashi - as if Tashi's life isn't complicated enough, an attraction is developing between him and Menaka.

Delhi Belly is, in an objective sense, a very good movie.  It's well crafted, nicely paced, and genuinely funny at times (despite a generous helping of toilet humor).  The three young men in their filthy apartment evoke a sort of parallel-universe version of Chashme buddoor, where post-modern ennui and bitterness replace the dreamy innocence of the trio in Sai Paranjpe's charming movie.  The characterizations are mostly lively, even if the characters are not always likeable.  The acerbic Menaka is especially appealing, though (partly because she is an older actor) she seems at times to belong to a different movie with more mature characters.  Tashi is the least lively; he moves through the film in a nearly emotionless haze.  This is probably intentional, as he seems rather buffeted and passive in his life, bullied into marriage by Sonia's family and shoved into a violent underworld he isn't at all prepared to handle.  And so even his dazed performance is engaging in its own way. 

And yet, despite Delhi Belly's strengths, I can't exactly say I enjoyed it.  Usually I relish high-fidelity renderings of Indian life, and this movie offers a very unusual serving of that, with its young urban atmosphere, its salty language, and its open, realistic, and often funny sexuality.  But perhaps I am simply too old for a movie like this one.  There are for sure some Hindi movies I like more than I would like their Hollywood counterparts, simply because they are Hindi movies.  Delhi Belly, though, is mostly in English, and while I can take some interest in it as an Indian movie, perhaps the overwhelming ways in which it is a youth movie leave me, teetering on the brink of middle age as I am, somewhat cold. 

Then there is the question I raised in the opening paragraph - what would I do in Tashi's situation?  The characters in Reamde do violence I could never imagine myself doing, but in the simple morality of that story the correctness of their actions is never really in question.  In Delhi Belly, by contrast, Tashi and his friends, motivated entirely by selfishness, take steps that ensure their bad situation gets worse and worse.  While that could arguably add an interesting shade to what is essentially an absurd sort of comedy, it does make it harder for me to root for them unconditionally.  And that leaves me feeling that I missed the point - that if I were younger, with nothing to lose, I would sympathize with them and be more willing to get into the spirit of the movie. 

 

Dabangg (2010)

दबंग

The last few years of Hindi movies have seen something of a resurgence of big masala.  I have seen very few of these movies, and so to begin to remedy that gap, I turned to Arbaaz Khan's blockbuster, Dabangg ("headstrong" or "fearless").  I can't say I was disappointed - the movie is a (mostly) retro-feeling entertainer on classic masala themes of corruption, revenge, and family bonds, updated with slick modern production values.  At its heart is an incarnation of the classic Angry Young Man archetype, rendered with just enough nudge-nudge-wink-wink by Salman Khan, whom I seem to like, in spite of myself.

As a boy, Chulbul Pandey is tenderly cared for by his mother Naini (Dimple Kapadia).  But his stepfather Prajapati (Vinod Khanna) openly and cruelly favors his natural son, Chulbul's dull, lazy half-brother Makkhi.  Once grown, Chulbul (Salman Khan) is uncensored in his contempt for his father and Makkhi (Arbaaz Khan), despite still living with them.  Chulbul is a police inspector - a corrupt one, who builds a minor fortune in bribes and blackmail from smugglers and other criminals he is supposed to be keeping in line.  Chedi Singh (Sonu Sood), ostensibly a student political organizer - but really more of a thug for the political party of Dayal (Anupam Kher) - tries to enlist Chulbul's help for his strong-arming dirty work.  But Chulbul doesn't like or trust Chedi, and extorts him instead.  Not one to readily to submit to that sort of demand, Chedi takes advantage of the slow-witted Makkhi, manipulating the rift between the brothers to try to gain the upper hand over Chulbul.

There is an awful lot of swagger in Dabangg.  Chulbul is nearly all swagger - Salman Khan's stiff physique almost won't allow him to move without it, and his crisply ironed shirts, expensive shades, and neatly-trimmed mustache multiply the effect.  But swagger is appropriate for Chulbul the anti-hero, who is a throwback to characters like Amitabh Bachchan's Vijay in Deewaar - he is unabashedly corrupt and criminal, despite an over-inflated sense of honor and fierce loyalty to those whom he respects, and especially to his mother. Indeed, Chulbul's notion of honor - and his somewhat out-of-proportion response to perceived violations of it - is his defining characteristic and a theme throughout the film.

Chedi Singh would like to have as much swagger as Chulbul - on some level, Chedi's rivalry with Chulbul is more about who is the coolest, most muscley guy in the village than it is about anything else.  Chedi is shirtless in about half his scenes - Chulbul, despite Salman's reputation for disrobing, doesn't lose his shirt until their climactic final melee.  And when he does, it happens with a style and humor that epitomizes the best of Dabangg's winks at the audience:  as Chulbul grasps for the first time the depth of the violence that Chedi has done to his family, his muscles bulge in rage, tearing the fabric right off his body. 

Despite all the self-conscious bravado, though, there is plenty of richness too, just as you'd expect from classic-style masala.  Makkhi is a dolt, but there is a sort of sympathetic sweetness to him as well; his main motivation is not to defeat the huge alpha-personality of his brother, but rather to marry girl he loves (Mahie Gill), whom his father rejects because she lacks for a palatable dowry.  One gets the sense from Arbaaz Khan's surprisingly nuanced performance that Makkhi resents his father's attention, that he never asked for it, and that he envies Chulbul's freedom to do and say anything he wishes.  Chulbul's scenes of reconciliation with him, and especially with their father, are genuinely touching, in that excellent way Hindi movies often have of allowing even the toughest and most relentlessly masculine of men to nevertheless display deep emotion. 

Dabangg's women add some depth as well, and as often happens in masala films, provide some anchoring and counterpoint to what would otherwise be overwhelming maleness.  Chulbul's romance with a sad potter girl named Rajjo (Sonakshi Sinha) begins with at-first-sight suddenness, but develops more satisfyingly after their marriage, as Rajjo gives hints of an independent personality and a backstory that is mostly left to the viewer's imagination.  Sonakshi Sinha - Shatrughan's daughter - is quite promising here in her debut.  She is perhaps a little too grave for the big masala feel of the movie, but at its best that gravity is reminiscent of the intense characters that Jaya Bhaduri sometimes played in masala films.  I'd like to see her in a serious role - I think she might have the chops for it, which is not something I often feel about very young actors.   The wonderful Dimple Kapadia is underused as Chulbul and Makkhi's mother, but fills the screen with tremendous presence in every scene she gets. 

Songs can make a mediocre masala movie memorable, and make a good one great.  The songs in Dabangg do not go so far as the latter, but they are satisfyingly pleasant and fun. The title song is an excellent number; its neo-traditional sound is far superior to the monotonous club tunes that frequently mar modern movies.  Its picturization offers a good sense both of village life, and of the protagonist's character.  And then there is the item number, "Munni badnam hui," picturized on an energetically sexy Malaika Arora Khan.  This number is very well-rendered, and I want to like it more than I do.  I admit, without attempting to rationalize, that I hold older films to a different standard when it comes to item numbers - I sure do love me some Helen, some Aruna Irani, and even some Bindu now and again - but there is something off-putting to me about a nautch-girl in a modern movie.  (I had similar issues with the widely beloved "Kajra re" in Bunty aur Babli, a song that "Munni" references briefly).  Add to that Chedi Singh's cartoonish leering - his eyes bulge out of his head as though he has never seen a woman before - and the overall effect on me is not entirely entertaining.  (It doesn't help that I don't much like Sonu Sood; he looks too much like Amitabh Bachchan.) 

I have to add a note about the violence.  As I have recently mentioned in reviewing Ram Lakhan and Ghulam, my tolerance for movie violence is already very low.  In movies of the 1970s, poorly synced dishoom-dishoom sound effects and watery, orange-pink fake blood yield violence that is too silly to be very disturbing.  In Dabangg, by contrast, violence is rendered with modern production values, and just becomes too much for me to bear. Body-checks are accompanied by hyper-realistic bone-crunching sounds, and gunshots by viscous spurts of blood and spatterings of flesh.  Even if I avert my eyes - and there were times I had to - the audio remains to churn my stomach.  The fight scenes are highly stylized and even cleverly amusing at times - Chulbul's first melee is interrupted when the cell phone of one of his foes starts to ring, and Chulbul stops mauling the man to dance to the jaunty tune.  The way that Chulbul and Makkhi finish off Chedi Singh in the climax is appropriately imaginitive and dramatic for the movie's masala tone (not to mention aggressively homoerotic!) - but also especially nauseating.  Most viewers probably have a higher tolerance for stylized movie violence than I do, but for me, it was just too much of too much, and eroded my delight with this otherwise very entertaining film.

Dhobi ghat (2011)

धोबी घाट

Aamir Khan productions come with a lot of baggage, given his reputation for being self-consciously highbrow, condescending toward the cinema traditions that made him famous, and caring too much about what the West thinks of his movies.  Whether that's deserved or not - I don't follow his interviews closely enough to weigh in on that - his latest release stands on its own merits.  Written and directed by his wife Kiran Rao, Dhobi ghat ("washerman's wharf") is at its best an engaging meditation on the ephemeral nature of life in Mumbai.

Shai (Monica Dogra) is an American-born banker on a sabbatical of self-discovery in Mumbai.  An aspiring photographer, she combs the city looking for subjects to shoot.  She befriends a hard-working washerman named Munna (Prateik Babbar), who introduces her to some of the city's grittiest and most colorful quarters.  She also meets a brooding artist, Arun (Aamir Khan) - they have a one-night stand, and after an awkward, angry morning-after parting, she retains an attraction and curiosity about him.  Meanwhile Arun, moving into a new apartment, discovers some video letters shot by a girl named Yasmin (Kriti Malhotra), intended for Yasmin's brother but evidently never sent.  Arun becomes engrossed in Yasmin's story, raptly studying the letters, taking inspiration for his new set of paintings, and eager to discover what happened to her. 

One of the themes of Dhobi ghat is that the city exists in multiple layers, both physical (shore, gutter, house, high-rise) and class (rat-killer/dhobi, servant, wealthy educated classes).  The movie happens in the spaces where these strata meet and slide against each other.  Only the American-born character, Shai, willfully and self-consciously disregards this stratification, nudging herself into Munna's spaces.  Apart from Shai, the only customer who invites Munna into her home is a dour woman who, it is implied, wants him for sex, and dismisses him as a dhobi when she realizes he will no longer provide that.  For upper-class Mumbai-walas, Munna is a service provider, not a person.  Shai uses him as well, in her own way, but she also genuinely cares for him, especially by the film's end.  Yet their friendship, like nearly everything else in the film's Mumbai, is transient.

Indeed, the loveliest moments in Dhobi ghat are its many symbols of the transitory nature of city life - characters move house and leave scant artifacts behind; names are scratched in sand and washed away by the waves; construction sites stand for the relentless pace of change.  Even the videos, paintings, and photographs that drive the film's stories can only imperfectly capture moments; the records may remain, but like Arun's elderly neighbor they are mute and leave questions unanswered. 

The weak link in the script is Arun; the brooding, temperamental, loner artist is a cliche and just a flatter character than the others.  His obsession with Yasmin's letters is meant to add depth, but it doesn't tell us much about Arun, it's not personal enough to him - who would not be bewitched by such a vibrant young woman, by the mystery of her unsent letters and her unknown fate?  Arun only takes on dimension at the very end of the film, as he deduces the logical conclusion of Yasmin's story and wordlessly struggles with the possibility that the art she inspired him to make is an exploitation of her suffering. 

The performances in Dhobi ghat range from adequate (Aamir Khan, Monica Dogra) to exquisite (Prateik Babbar and Kriti Malhotra); the latter do as much with their faces as their dialogue and are as engaging and believable as the script allows.  Kriti Malhotra renders especially well the slow choking of Yasmin's spirit, as her bright, vivacious smile early in the film fades to a haggard exhaustion by its end.  At any rate, criticizing minor weaknesses in characterization or performance feels like nitpicking a film that is as much impressionist painting as tightly-woven text.  On balance, Dhobi ghat is delicate, touching, visually rich, a pastiche of engaging stories very well told. 

 

Tere Bin Laden (2010)

तेरे बिन लादन

I am not sure I have ever seen a movie quite like Tere Bin Laden (a pun meaning both "your Bin Laden" and "without you, Laden"). It takes what could be a charged, angry, minefield of a premise and turns it into a film that is light on its feet, absurd, and utterly charming.   

Ali Hassan (Ali Zafar) has dreamed of emigrating to America ever since he was a little boy in Karachi, Pakistan.  After an unfortunate misunderstanding puts the brakes on that dream, Ali is stuck as a beat reporter for the tin-can outfit Danka TV.  He knows a guy who can give him a new identity and a false passport, but it's an expensive proposition.  While covering a cock-crowing contest in a nearby village, Ali discoveres a guileless chicken farmer named Noora (Pradhuman Singh), who is a dead ringer for Osama Bin Laden.  Ali hatches a plan - fabricate a fraudulent Bin Laden video and sell it to finance his American dream.  He enlists the help of his cameraman and best friend Gul (Nikhil Ratnaparkhi); the hapless Danka TV tech Lateef (Chirag Vohra); a makeup artist named Zoya (Sugandha Garg) with big dreams of her own; and a drunken revolutionary underground radio jockey Qureishi (Rahul Singh), who is all anger with very little substance.  The video is a big success - bigger than Ali bargained for, as it unleashes a war that threatens to put the kibosh once again on his trip to America, and brings a CIA manhunt to his doorstep.  Ali and the gang have no choice but to undo the mess they made, in a hurry.  

After watching the darkly wry Peepli Live, I suppose I expected similar bleakness from Tere Bin Laden.  The film's opening scenes - in which Ali, on a flight to America just days after 9/11, is presumed to be a terrorist and arrested - made me squirm, wondering if I was in for a (not at all undeserved) scathing comic attack on my country's attitude toward brown people. In the terrific song that plays over the opening credits, "Ullu da pattha," Ali is booked and interrograted.  He stands in a line-up bearing a sign reading "South Asian" - along with a black man whose sign reads "African," a Latin man whose sign reads "Mexican," and a white man whose sign reads "Peter."  This commentary on the way white America treats its own versus how it treats perceived outsiders is certainly both astute and cleverly rendered.  But it also hit a little too close to home, and I feared the film would be difficult for me to watch.  Lucky for me, these opening scenes do not set the tone, nor reflect dreamy, idealistic message of the rest of the movie.

Instead, the movie is relentlessly silly, with a finale that is so sweetly ridiculous as to obliterate any hints of political critique that might have been lurking after that introductory scene and song.  There could be some  implied crticism of American foreign policy in the backdrop, hinted at in the news reports of the bombings ignited by Ali's fraudulent Bin Laden video.  But if there is, it is more than balanced by Ali's own unwavering love for Amreeka.  Even the film's one American character, the CIA man in charge of the hunt for Bin Laden, Ted Wood (Barry John), tempers his bluster with some genuine savvy - he's not merely a big man with big guns.  He seems to respect his Pakistani assistant Usman (Chinmay Mandlekar), delegating real authority to him.  And when the fraud hits the fan, Wood is smart enough to listen to Ali and work with him. 

This lightness and balance leaves the audience free to laugh all the way through - and in my case as an American, unburdened by a great deal of "it's funny because it's true" guilt and discomfort.  And even without a heavy political message, Tere Bin Laden has plenty to offer. Packed with laughs and slapstick, the movie rides Ali Zafar's pop-star charisma from beginning to end.  He is simply adorable in this role - gentle, idealistic, and earnest.   The scenes where he volunteers to pay the fines levied on Lateef by their tyrannical boss Majeed Khan (Piyush Mishra) are genuinely touching.  Pradhuman Singh as the utterly ingenuous Noora is also a revelation; he even manages to be loveable, rather than creepy, as he sweats and prays for control of his desires when Zoya gets close enough to apply his makeup.

The other characters in the gang add color and depth, resulting in a movie that is smart, light-hearted, and simply great fun.  At just a little over 90 minutes running time, it's easy to squeeze in as an apertif or a late-night snack - I've already watched it twice, and it's an instant favorite. 

Peepli Live (2010)

पीपली लाइव

The best political satires, like Jaane bhi do yaaro, handle challenging subjects with wry humor, and yet manage to leave the audience feeling sad and aware.  Anusha Rizvi's debut film Peepli Live treads a similar delicate ground, offering a successful farce that nevertheless packs a meaningful punch.

Brothers Budhiya (Raghuvir Yadav) and Natha (Omkar Das) are struggling to stay afloat; the bank is about to foreclose on their farm.  They learn of a government program that pays a substantial sum to the families of farmers who commit suicide due to debt, and Budhiya convinces the hapless, melancholy Natha that taking advantage of this program is the best way forward.  A local newspaper reporter Rakesh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) publishes a small piece about Natha's intentions, and before long the story is picked up by a star television reporter Nandita (Malaika Shenoy).  A vast media circus follows Nandita into Natha's remote little village as hundreds of reporters descend hoping for a piece of the sensational "live suicider" story.  But reporters aren't the only ones hoping to make hay out of Natha's plight - state politicians fighting a bitter election and even the national Minister of Agriculture, Salim (Naseeruddin Shah), all leap on the opportunity to spin the Natha story to advance their own agendas.  Meanwhile, Natha is bewildered by the flurry of attention - and doesn't want to die.

A subject like the problem of farmer suicides almost has to be handled with a satirical edge, or the film would be unbearably depressing.  And really Peepli Live is more about the press's sensationalist mentality and the government's fundamental insincerity than it is about farmer suicides or the plight of poor rural Indians.  Budhiya and Natha, while sympathetic, seem rather indolent; they are never once shown working a field, but are often shown smoking and gabbing with their neighbors.  Meanwhile the circus swarms around them.  The press are so desperate for an angle that reporters shoot film of Natha's clothesline and analyze his excrement.  The politicians scramble to one-up each other in disingenuous concern, showering Natha with useless gifts.  Everyone capitalizes on Natha's plight - reporters grabbing ratings, electioneers grabbing votes, and even Natha's fellow villagers who pitch vendor stalls and carnival rides to entertain the visiting throngs. Peepli Live presents all of these maneuverings with a healthy dose of humor, and the movie does offer quite a few wry smiles and even genuine laughs among them. 

Another of the movie's themes is the great gulf that exists between India's urban, urbane middle class and its rural poor.  On this theme Peepli Live's exploration is most layered - it relies not only upon the obvious clashes of culture, but also on subtleties of casting, costuming, and performance that make the audience's experience of this disconnect almost visceral.  In one scene the flawless line of trimmed whiskers of the Chief Minister's moustache presents a stark contrast to Budhiya's grizzled face and Natha's wild unkempt curls and beard.  The farmers stand rooted and hunched while the slick, tall Nandita strides around them.  Even the putative leader of the backward castes wears slick aviator sunglasses as he presents Natha with a gift of a television that Natha's hut lacks electricity to run.  The politicians wear neat, high-quality, expensive clothes; the reporters wear slick modern-style shirts and designer jeans; the villagers wear moth-eaten sweaters and rags.  In one scene, Natha slips and falls in a pile of dung, and then just gets up and keeps on walking.  It reminded me of the exchange in Monty Python and the Holy Grail - "How do you know he's a king?"  "He hasn't got shit all over 'im." 

Among the outsiders, only Rakesh begins to see across this great gulf, and to recognize the depth of the villagers' poverty not just as a vehicle for political advancement or ratings, but as a deep injustice and a real national crisis.  He takes an interest in the story of another Peepli farmer who lost his land to foreclosure, and now digs ditches just to sell the dirt - but, Nandita tells him, marketing research says the only bankable story is Natha's threatened suicide.  Peepli Live deals Rakesh an unutterably cruel blow that is both sucker-punch and wake-up call to the audience.  The abrupt change of tone is jarring, and yet it would be disingenuous of Peepli Live not to end with a dark and serious turn.  After all, if the audience gets to laugh all the way through the story and leave feeling cheerful, we've exploited Natha's misery just as surely as Nandita, Salim, and their ilk do.