Shakuntala Devi: Review

Shakuntala Devi, about a woman who got to answers quicker than anyone, also arrives at its final product disconcertingly fast. We’ve just been introduced to five-year-old Shakuntala, playing in front of her home in Bangalore in 1934, when she solves a cube root of an eight-digit number. “The answer just appeared," she says matter-of-factly. “This is no ordinary girl, she's a genius," someone says in the seventh minute. So much for an origin story.

An inordinate amount of foreshadowing follows. Shakuntala is made to skip school and earn as a kind of performing maths prodigy by her father. Her mother tells her, “One day your daughter will give you a hard time". Her sister, Sharda, tells her she’ll be a big man someday, because there’s no such thing as a big woman. Having fulfilled her purpose, Sharda dies of an illness in the next scene, leaving Shakuntala with lifelong resentment against her father, who did nothing to prevent the death, and her mother, who didn’t protest when her husband did nothing.

The real Shakuntala Devi was certainly a genius, someone who could answer impossibly difficult mathematical questions in seconds, and whose books helped generations of students overcome their fear of the subject. Yet, the film struggles to make this sort of natural talent come alive on screen. The main problem is, from her appearance on stage at a Bangalore gentlemen’s club to her calculating the 23rd root of a 201 digit number faster than a computer, she’s always in control, answering questions quickly and with a laugh. What’s the fun in seeing someone get things right all the time? The numbers may dance on the screen as they did in A Beautiful Mind, but Shakuntala is the anti-John Nash, her gift bringing her nothing but joy.

It’s only when the film—directed by Anu Menon, who made the spiky, moving Waiting in 2015—starts focusing on areas of Shakuntala’s life where she isn’t in control that it finds some purpose. She has a daughter with Paritosh (Jisshu Sengupta), a thoughtful, accommodating IAS officer, and for a while gives up her lucrative stage shows. But she misses the adulation and, on her husband’s urging, resumes her travels. She finds she can’t live without her daughter either, and brings her to London. She starts taking her everywhere, cutting her off from her father. “You’re stealing her childhood like your father stole yours," says Paritosh, long after the viewer has made that connection.

As the film switches between the lives of Shakuntala and the grown-up Anu (Sanya Malhotra), it becomes an examination of the choices before ambitious women who are mothers, and the compromises they make. Anu has grown to resent her mother for her dominance as Shakuntala resented hers for her silence. Two of the best scenes are domestic squabbles triggered by this thorny relationship; the flare-up of anger in Anu’s otherwise mild husband, Ajay (Amit Sadh), is startlingly lifelike, while Paritosh telling his wife she’s been abandoning Anu has the unfortunate ripple effect of Shakuntala keeping her daughter close for the rest of her childhood.

Menon and Nayanika Mahtani’s screenplay jumps back and forth in time distractingly, muddying rather than clarifying the emotional journeys. Ishita Moitra’s dialogue is done no favours by Balan throwing her head back and laughing in every scene. Shakuntala’s catchphrase is “Vidya kasam", a meta-reference which, even if drawn from Devi's life, should have been avoided. The early parts of the film, when Shakuntala is just becoming famous, are a slalom course of bad accents and flat humour. Shakuntala tells someone who comments on her pigtails, “Joke also Indian man in dhoti with stick." Joke also writing this simplistic.

Shakuntala Devi does allow its protagonist room to be selfish and shallow along with kooky and brilliant, but all the deep-seated emotional trauma is handled in a manner that’s hurried and facile. At a gathering to promote her book about homosexuality, Shakuntala says she grew interested in the subject because her ex-husband is gay. When Anu asks her how she can lie like that, she says that personal stories sell better and a little embellishment doesn’t hurt. Years later, when Anu confronts her father about why he let her mother keep them apart, he just says, “To love Shakuntala is to let her be. She’s like a storm."

This is a film in love with parallels. Shakuntala is made to skip school, then makes her daughter skip school. Shakuntala becomes like her father, Paritosh is like Shakuntala’s mother, Ajay is like Paritosh. Two of Shakuntala’s relationships end with a man telling her she doesn’t need him. Shakuntala pushes Paritosh during an argument; her daughter pushes her during another. Most gratingly, Shakuntala and Anu both find out their mothers cared about them through old scrapbooks. All this emotional rhyming and the breathless rush of events cannot obscure the fact that this film never finds a way to make its protagonist’s genius interesting.

Shakuntala Devi is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Healing Is a Miracle: Album review

The first time I heard Julianna Barwick’s music, it sounded like a film score, something Terrence Malick or Werner Herzog might use. It seemed untethered, as if her layered, wordless choral harmonies needed a visual to anchor them. But then I heard her again, in a more relaxed frame of mind, and the sound slowly expanded in my head. Depending on the kind of music you’re into, Barwick’s ambient mosaics might remind you of Brian Eno or Cocteau Twins, Arvo Pärt or Enya. Her method is simple: using a digital pedal to record and create vocal loops, which are layered into a dense but wispy sound. There are synths and sometimes strings and other voices, but mostly it’s just the multiple echoes of her pristine voice.

Healing Is a Miracle, her fourth album (released on 10 July), is the fullest iteration of her sound. Its judicious electronic touches owe partly to Barwick’s friends, producer Alex Somers and Sigur Rós’ Jónsi, gifting her a studio monitor for her birthday. She first used it while recording Inspirit, the opening track. “When I added the bass I really felt it in my body, you know, in a way you just wouldn’t with headphones… I got really excited about making the record in that moment, and I think that really had an impact on the sounds I ended up making," she said. The electronic embellishments—scattered beats on In Light and Nod, the rumbling that closes Flowers—are useful additions, adding some grit and bottom end to her ethereal sound.

Most of the tracks are a wash of synths and Barwick’s voice, often layered five or six deep. This is not music that reaches out to grab you, but the simplicity of its construction has the benefit of making every addition in a song—a new loop, for instance—seem crazily dramatic. The guest spots are unobtrusive and apt—harpist Mary Lattimore on Oh Memory; producer Nosaj Thing on Nod; and Jónsi, patron saint of ambient vocal soundscapes, on In Light.

Healing is a Miracle is, as the title promises, a restorative, uplifting record. Barwick's previous album, Will (2016), was a more fractured sound; this one is closer to the euphoria of 2013’s Nepenthe. You might wonder if you should hear it like a regular album or leave it on in the background. My advice would be to let it find you in the right mood. I’ve heard it while working, while washing dishes, in bed before going to sleep, and it’s a different experience each time. Whether or not you’re in need of healing, Julianna Barwick’s sound is a miracle.

Dil Bechara: Review

Twelve minutes into Dil Bechara and I was sad.

What’s weird was this was one of the few moments when the film wasn’t trying to induce that feeling in me. It had just pulled off a superior version of that standard Hindi movie scene, the musical number introducing the hero: a young man dancing on stage, then climbing down and performing amidst the audience, tracked all the way by the camera. This was achieved with deceptive ease, without a single cut, and it occurred to me that this would be a sensational way to introduce an unknown actor to the public. And then I felt a twinge, because, of course, this wasn’t hello, it was goodbye.

Dil Bechara was always going to be rough. Rajput died less than a month and a half ago, the intervening time marked by profound sadness and terrible acrimony. Now, not only do we have a new film starring him but one that’s based on perhaps the sappiest YA property ever: John Green’s 2012 novel, The Fault In Our Stars, about two young cancer patients in love. What’s more, Mukesh Chhabra’s adaptation, with its likeable leads and wall-to-wall music by A.R. Rahman, really pushes your buttons. The more stoic might last till the final scene before dissolving in tears but most viewers will be sniffling their way through.

“I don’t want to be strong," Kizie (Sanjana Sanghi) says in a voice-over at the start. “I just want to be normal." Instead, she gets a lot of merry abnormal as Immanuel ‘Manny’ Rajkumar Jr (Rajput) dances his way into her life and refuses to dance out. He’s cocky and persistent at first, as most Hindi film heroes are nowadays, but obviously taken with her. She starts off sparring with him (as female leads are supposed to) but it’s half-hearted; even as he makes fun of her name, her music and her primness, a smile keeps breaking through her irritation.

Unlike Green’s book, and the Hollywood film based on it, Kizie and Manny don’t meet in a cancer support group. That scene comes later, with Manny sharing offhandedly that his leg was lost to osteosarcoma. Other than that, though, he seems fine. Kizie is the one who's visibly ill—she has difficulty breathing and carries around an oxygen cylinder she’s named Pushpinder, connected to her nose at all times by a thin tube. The morbidity of the premise is leavened somewhat by Manny’s determined silliness (he ropes Kizie in for a zero-budget film he’s making with a friend) and Rahman’s warm embrace of a soundtrack. There’s even a weird quest thrown in: Kizie is obsessed with an old album and wants to find its reclusive composer and ask why the title track is unfinished (I regret to inform you that this is a metaphor).

The writing tends to get overwrought at times; I rolled my eyes when Kizie tells Manny he’s as important for her heart as Pushpinder is for her lungs. Shashank Khaitan and Suprotim Sengupta are fine comic writers, so it’s surprising that the dinner scene with Kizie’s parents (played by Swastika Mukherjee and Saswata Chatterjee) and the couple doesn’t sing the way it ought to. A trip to Paris yields little more than a couple of touristy montages. Sanghi, in her first lead role, has an appealingly non-pixie manner, a measured voice and a fantastic alarmed face. She and Rajput are a believable odd couple in love, but their stabs at genuine emotion are diluted by the almost cynical premise and the frank attempts by Chhabra, making his debut as director, to wring every last tear he can.

It’s no shade against Dil Bechara—an adequate weepy romance—that the one thing that makes it unique is the circumstances surrounding its release. Rajput is gentle and moving, yet I doubt Manny would have moved me to tears had this released a year ago. It’s the sight of Rajput as Manny, listening to his own eulogies, that breaks through the choreographed tear-wringing and is just elementally, desperately sad. Thankfully, Dil Bechara doesn’t end without offering some hope. Cinema takes away, but it also heals. Tacky films by Rajini fans get an appreciative screening. Songs unfinished for years are made whole. Imperfect farewells are rendered graceful and complete.

Greyhound: Review

On Conan O’Brien’s podcast earlier this month, Tom Hanks told the host how he found The Good Shepherd, the C.S. Forester book that formed the basis for Greyhound, in a used book store. The picture on the cover, of an “aged, grey-haired, beaten-up guy", grabbed him. When he got to reading it, he couldn’t put it down. “It was like a procedural. It was start, continue, finish, that’s it."

Greyhound, written by Hanks and directed by Aaron Schneider, is also a start-continue-finish kind of film. It gets its name from the codename for the light warship commanded by Ernest Krause (Hanks), an American doing his first Atlantic crossing, in 1942. He must guide an Allied convoy of 37 supply ships to Liverpool, crossing the dangerous “Black Pit", a stretch of the ocean where aerial cover isn’t available and German U-boats lurk. The film’s on a mission too. It’s 90 minutes, and barely a few moments are taking up by anything that’s not germane to the action. Apart from a flashback that lasts about three minutes, it all takes place on the ship.

It took Hanks some 10 years to get Greyhound made, and it isn’t difficult to see why. This is a film that’ll appeal most to World War II and navy nerds—not a demographic studios are looking to capture today. The script must have seemed impenetrable to execs reading it, a maelstrom of boatswain and commodore and huff duff (high-frequency direction finding). I’d estimate that 60-70 per cent of the dialogue is naval terminology. Yet, the film surges forward coherently; you may not know the terms but you’ll grasp the import.

Greyhound begins with the convoy three days away from air cover. The subtext—which we get to know early on—is Krause’s inexperience in war situations. The film plays it subtly—a microsecond of hesitation after one of his commands, a look of doubt quickly covered up. And Krause proves himself calm and capable immediately, successfully blowing up a threatening U-boat. However, he refuses to take a detour and pick up evidence of the ‘kill’, an indication of his unwavering focus on getting the convoy to safety but also his religious beliefs (he begins the film in prayer and occasionally speaks in scripture). When one of his men says the U-boat's sinking means there are 50 less Krauts out there, he replies, “50 souls."

Krause gets the respect of his men but the dangers increase once the convoy suffers losses and six German subs are found circling them. Krause, low on sleep, drinking endless cups of coffee, yet civil and calm in front of his subordinates, is a typical Hanks leader. There are shades of his captain from Saving Private Ryan and his commercial boat skipper in Captain Phillips—ordinary men who must lead by example and keep their self-doubt hidden away. There’s a moment where he seems frozen by a bad decision he’s made and half a dozen other problems requiring immediate attention. But he snaps out of it after a few seconds; there’s no time for even the brief breakdown of Saving Private Ryan.

One of the few times we leave the ship is when the camera lifts up, over the cloud cover until we can see the green Northern Lights. The reference might be to Krause’s religious bearings, or it could be a way of indicating the vantage point he needs to take everything in. But Krause is never above the action, he’s always in the thick of things, and Hanks is supremely adept at keeping us in the moment. His face, though largely impassive, is a map of the character’s emotions: the conversation with his executive officer (Stephen Graham) on the deck shows all the pressure and nagging doubt Krause is feeling at that moment without losing sight of his practical nature. There’s also a beautiful scene later when he’s asked to give up a well-deserved victory lap, and Hanks' face falls momentarily before righting itself.

This is such a dad film it’s almost a granddad film. It isn’t just the WWII setting and the naval geekery. Krause spends the whole film getting sailor’s names wrong. He changes from shoes to slippers at one point. Twice we hear cusses; in both instances the men apologize to Krause immediately. Greyhound is a modest effort, unconcerned with providing conflicts for the supporting characters or with larger statements about war and honour. Instead, it’s efficient, stirring and self-contained, virtues that seem almost quaint in American cinema today.

Greyhound is streaming on Apple TV+.

Dil Bechara: Album review

Coming a month after Sushant Singh Rajput’s death, AR Rahman’s Dil Bechara soundtrack could have ended up, for no fault of its own, out of sync with the still-mournful public mood. Instead, here is an album that’s perfect for this delicate moment. There’s nothing that’s jarring or experimental or harsh. Instead, the soundtrack has something like a healing touch, an enveloping warmth of melody, harmony and familiarity.

The title track sets the tone. It has some of the insinuating quality of Aye Udi Udi from Saathiya, but is slinkier and softer, with Rahman crooning about friendzones, shadowed closely by backing vocalists Poorvi Koutish and Hriday Gattani. There’s a brief bit of weirdness in the bridge but Rahman’s tender reading of the second verse (he stretches the word “kyun" over a whole line) reinstates the low-key romantic mood.

Taare Gin is in the style of a Disney musical, Shreya Ghoshal and Mohit Chauhan singing different lines and melodies at the same time, the song lifting two-thirds of the way through into a beautiful crescendo. It comes down just as quickly, the wistfulness in Chauhan’s voice reflected in Amitabh Bhattacharya’s questioning lyrics: Yeh waada hai ya iraada hai/kabhi yeh zyaada hai kabhi yeh aadha hai (is this a promise or a decision/sometimes it’s too much, sometimes halfway there). Later, on the charming Maskhari, Bhattacharya shows his unparalleled knack for the unexpected phrase, rhyming “dil ko de araam" and “fokat mein badnaam" with “peedahari balm" from the old Zandu balm jingle.

I don’t think I’ve heard so many close harmonies on a single Rahman album. Khulke Jeene Ka has Arijit Singh and Shashaa Tirupati singing in unison right out of the gate. Jonita Gandhi joins Hriday Gattani on the chorus of Main Tumhara, and later sings an aching verse with him. On the jaunty Mera Naam Kizzie, it’s Aditya Narayan and Poorvi Koutish who harmonize, their playful vocals underlined by a chirpy clarinet in the style of 1950s song arrangements like Eena Meena Deeka. Rahman’s usual stable of excellent backing vocalists add further layers to all the tracks, creating a warm, pillowy sound.

The one departure from the easy-going sound doesn’t land. Afreeda is such a tepid revisiting of Khalbali that you have to wonder why they went to the trouble of getting Palestinian vocalist Sanaa Moussa to sing it. Hip hop artist Raja Kumari makes it worse with her nonsensical bars—for all his unerring musical instinct, Rahman continues to have terrible taste in rappers. There’s also an unnecessary remix of the title track, before the album closes out strong with a limpid violin instrumental, The Horizon of Saudade.

The general consensus among Rahman fans is that his music in the 1990s and 2000s was more immediately arresting, and that you have to let his recent work wash over you. Dil Bechara certainly gains from a couple of relaxed listens, with smaller details of instrumental colour and vocal arrangement coming into focus. I’d imagine the music will gain further resonance once the film is out and the warmth of the melodies offers some comfort to viewers struggling with the thought that this will be the last time they see Rajput in a new work.

Cricket returns to rain, empty stands and Black Lives Matter

After 117 days, there was cricket. Only, because this is England in July, there wasn’t much cricket. Rain interrupted play several times on 8 July, and only 17 overs could be bowled on the stop-start first day of the first Test between England and the West Indies at Southampton. The hosts ended the day on 35/1, Dom Sibley the lone wicket, losing his off stump to a fiery Shannon Gabriel in the second over. Even as fans cheered the return of cricket, some might have wished the restart was in drier climes.

Though short on sporting action, the day was made significant by something that happened just before the first ball was bowled. All the players, in position on the field and on the boundary, took a knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The West Indies players wore a black glove on one hand and raised that arm aloft. Both teams also have the BLM logo printed on their shirt collars.

That morning, broadcaster Sky Sports posted a video featuring two of its commentators, West Indies great Michael Holding and Ebony Rainford-Brent, the first black woman to play for England, talking about their experiences with racism and the need to address it in cricket and society at large. The two of them spoke again, separately, on the issue, the Holding monologue going viral on Twitter. During the broadcast, the scorecard carried the words “Black Lives Matter". Small gestures, perhaps, but necessary ones.

Cricket with covid restrictions took some getting used to—for the players too, as West Indies skipper Jason Holder returned interim England captain Ben Stokes’ fist bump with a handshake. Though football has prepared us for it, the absence of a stadium crowd is felt just as keenly in cricket—perhaps more so, because unlike the constant noise of a football game, cricket has moments of relative quiet followed by explosions of sound. I missed the cheers that would have accompanied Joe Denly’s pull for 4 off Gabriel, and the groan that would have come from West Indian spectators as he edged the next delivery past third slip for another boundary.

Day 2 brought with it more gloom—but no rain. With the benefit of uninterrupted play, I could begin to appreciate the small joys of cricket without crowds. Gabriel knocking Denly’s off stump over was a thrilling sound, as was the crisp ‘tock’ of a Stokes pull. There was a purity to this spectacle: cricket for the sake of cricket, no one to applaud you but your teammates, like a village or gully game elevated to the highest level.

The visitors won the first session, their four-man pace attack reducing England to 87 for 5. Stokes and keeper Jos Buttler righted the innings post-lunch, nudging the run rate, which had hovered around 2, closer to 3. Holder broke the partnership in the 53rd over, inducing the edge from Stokes. Soon after, he had his fourth, getting Buttler to edge, keeper Shane Dowrich taking a fine outstretched catch; and his fifth, Jofra Archer LBW for 0 (Holder had an excellent day with the reviews as well, with three decisions overturned). Holder took yet another before Dom Bess and James Anderson frustrated the opposition for 30 crucial runs. England were finally bundled out for 204, Gabriel picking up his fourth.

After tea, John Campbell and Kraigg Brathwaite put on 43 for the first wicket. James Anderson finally had Campbell LBW for 28; the opener survived two earlier LBW decisions on appeal. This was the only West Indian wicket to fall, with Brathwaite and Shai Hope seeing the session to a close at 57/1. It capped a satisfying day for the visitors, placing them in a position to get a useful first innings lead in rainy conditions—though the gap of 147 could start looking more serious if Anderson, Archer and Mark Wood find early wickets. All in all, a gritty, competitive day of test cricket. The players will just have to ignore the empty stands and imagine the grateful fans.

Homemade: Review

Directors, even arthouse directors, live in nice houses. This wouldn’t normally be a surprise or interfere in our enjoyment of their work. But Homemade—a Netflix anthology of 17 short films made during lockdown—invites us into their living quarters, and the succession of sleek apartments and villas tells its own story. The starting point is comfort: not something to hold against the makers but a clue to the general milieu on offer. Sebastián Lelio (Gloria) even alludes to it in his “Algoritmo", actor Amalia Kassai singing: “There’s also the issue/ Of speaking from privilege/ Of thinking of this pandemic/ From this sumptuous place."

Even within their seemingly comfortable worlds, these films offer a multiplicity of techniques and approaches. Pablo Larraín (No, Neruda), who also produced this anthology, makes a ribald comedy from video conversations, only 11 minutes long but with a delightful twist. Rungano Nyoni (I Am Not a Witch) constructs “Couple Splits Up While In Lockdown LOL" out of text messages. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s "Penelope" is both pandemic sci-fi and a gently absurdist look at loss. Ladj Ly (Les Misérables) sends a drone out to look at his working-class, immigrant neighbourhood of Montfermeil, Paris. Antonio Campos (Christine) opts for psychological thriller, Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty) for tiny talking figurines, Lelio for a musical.

You might notice motifs and tics carried over from the film work of these directors and actors. Sorrentino, even when doing little else but placing tiny figurines of Pope Francis and Queen Elizabeth II around his house, can’t seem to compose an ugly frame or resist a silly joke. Kristen Stewart’s mercurial, sleep-deprived performance in her own “Crickets" is reminiscent of her work on Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper. Naomi Kawase’s poetic "No Border"—the most visually striking of the anthology—is easily recognisable as hers. There are also departures: Ana Lily Amirpour, maker of the singular genre films A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night and The Bad Bunch, directs and appears in the serene, straightforward "Ride It Out", a bicycle ride through a locked-down Los Angeles narrated by Cate Blanchett.

In many of the shorts, the director’s family is enlisted, either behind or in front of the camera. David Mackenzie, the Scottish director of Hell or High Water, turns the camera on his teenage daughter, who frets about turning 16 and being able to hug her grandmother again. Cinematographer Rachel Morrison’s Malick-esque “The Lucky Ones" is a letter to her 5-year-old son. Nadine Labaki and Khaled Mouzanar (Capernaum) shoot their precocious daughter as she chatters nonstop in Mouzanar’s Beirut office and ends up singing Bella Ciao. Through these glimpses of their lives in lockdown, we see our own fears and boredoms reflected: funerals we can’t be part of, rituals of handwashing and distancing, haircuts by family members, spells of introspection and horniness and despair.

As you make your way through Homemade, you’ll find echoes of one film in another. Both Morrison and Gurinder Chadha pay tribute to their deceased mothers, while Johnny Ma, in a simple and affecting short, cooks his mother’s dumplings (and includes the recipe) for his family in Mexico. There’s another, less obvious rhyme, one which speaks to the uniquely disorienting nature of this time. In Schipper’s dryly comic “Casino", he’s kept company by three other versions of himself. And in Compos’ “Annex", a strange man taken in by a couple for the night turns out to have a doppelganger, or maybe two.

Several of these films were shot on phones, using whatever equipment was at hand. The results look tantalisingly achievable—you might find yourself thinking after some of them, that was nice but I could have done it. Indeed, some of the amateur short films on Twitter and Instagram in the past few months are no less inventive or revealing of the times than the films in Homemade. What we seem to be witnessing, perhaps for the first time in cinema’s history, is a comprehensive democratisation of the filmmaking process. Phone cameras set this in motion years ago, but the pandemic has added the restrictions of access to money and materials. Things will likely go back to what how they were, but for this brief moment in time all that matters is your idea and your eye.

Homemade is on Netflix.