Pacific Rim: DVD Review

Usually, DVDs made for the Indian market are woefully short on extras. Instead of any special features worth the name, there’s often just a theatrical trailer or a gag reel, which is worse than nothing at all. It gives us great pleasure, therefore, to inform you that not only is the two-disc edition of Pacific Rim filled to the brim with extras, but that these features are genuinely illuminating.

At some point in the not-so-distant future, an alien race called the kaiju begun their assault upon earth. The best defense we could come up with, of course, was to create giant robots called jaegers, controlled by two pilots who synch their consciousnesses within the body of the machine. There’s a little suspension of disbelief required, obviously, but for this reviewer at least, last year’s Pacific Rim was a great throwback to the early days of cable in India and long afternoons of watching anime monsters and robots very similar to the ones in Guillermo Del Toro’s film. There’s a moment when Rinko Kikuchi’s pilot shouts “For my family!” at the height of one battle, and it’s cheesy beyond belief, but also thrilling in the way those throwaway TV serials used to be.

Del Toro is well-schooled in both the kaiju and mecha traditions of Japanese filmmaking. His audio commentary goes into great detail about the taxonomy and cultural kinks of kaiju (a tradition that includes Godzilla) and historical antecedents of mecha. And that’s only a fraction of what he covers in his commentary: he also finds time to discuss why Pacific Rim is full of sports movie clichés, why he used the language of the western rather than the war film, and how he and his team created the outsize special effects. There’s plenty there for the trivia hunter:  Del Toro mentions how his friends Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity) and Alejandro Iñárritu (Biutiful) weighed in with suggestions, and why Rian Johnson (The Brothers Bloom) deserves credit for the film’s ending.

The commentary alone is worth the price tag, but there’s a solid set of bonus features on disc two as well. Thirteen “Focus Points” – short making-of featurettes with charmingly geeky names like “Goth Tech” and “Honoring the Kaiju Tradition” – take up roughly an hour. Then there are artist sketches for the jaegers and the kaijus, deleted scenes, a look at the digital effects process and the obligatory blooper reel. Del Toro takes centrestage for most of the extras, though we also hear from the actors (among them Idris Elba and Charlie Hunnam) and technicians (who mostly talk about the challenge of living up to their director’s genuinely enthusiastic but outsize demands).

This review appeared in Time Out.

Ankhon Dekhi: Review

An intertitle at the end informs us that Ankhon Dekhi is dedicated to Kumar Shahani and Mani Kaul. This makes sense – not only because Rajat Kapoor assisted these directors early in his career, but also because his latest feature is a fair idea of what a Shahani or Kaul film might look like if they were at all fun to watch. This is not to belittle the achievements of these two great, serious directors. It’s just that it’s a brave soul who reaches for Satah Se Uthata Aadmi instead of Chupke Chupke at the end of the day. Ankhon Dekhi is satisfying on both levels – it has the look and feel of an art film, with its meticulous framing and philosophical digressions, but none of the intellectual distance of one.

Kapoor, who’s written and directed the film, plays Rishi, the younger brother in a lower middle class Old Delhi joint family. Normally, Rishi –upwardly mobile, looking to break with tradition and family – would be the natural dramatic centre, but this film is more interested in his mild-mannered elder brother Bauji (Sanjay Mishra), who decides one day that he’s no longer going to believe anything he can’t see with his own eyes. This leads to his quitting his job, causing a minor sensation in the neighbourhood, and driving his long-suffering wife round the bend.

What looks like a pretext for a few easy laughs evolves into something more profound. Bauji isn’t really trying to be difficult or impress anyone; he’s simply attempting to rearrange his world until it assumes a shape he can understand. He’s ridiculed initially and is unmoved; later, he gains a flock, and remains unimpressed. Like Yossarian sitting naked in a tree in Catch-22, or Bob Dylan circa ’66 confusing a gaggle of pressmen by interviewing them, this is Bauji’s way of countering a world gone crazy.

Even as Bauji makes his stand, everyday life – report cards and illnesses, domestic squabbles and weddings – continues unabated. It’s the specificity of this clutter that sets Ankhon Dekhi apart from other smartly written films that follow the mainline of a story and keep everything else as background decoration. Kapoor keeps everyone and everything in focus. Every person who wanders in front of the camera is worthy of interest: not just Bauji and Rishi and their families, but a series of minor characters ranging from the priest’s gossipy son to a math teacher who has a crisis of faith. The level of detail owes as much to the writing as it does to the sound recording (Resul Pookutty, Amrit Pritam Dutta), with multiple voices overlapping and talking at cross-purposes like in an Altman film. And cinematographer Rafey Mehmood works wonders, creating the illusion of depth in crowded, cramped spaces.

While it might hamper the film’s chances at the box office, the absence of known faces goes some way towards establishing the ordinariness of the characters. Just how distracting better-known actors would have been in these surroundings is underlined by a Ranvir Shorey cameo. The audience, aware of his long-standing association with Kapoor, laughed as soon as he appeared onscreen and the spell was momentarily broken. Luckily, the cameos are few and brief, and we’re mostly carried along by a lively, if unknown, cast. They mesh so well together that it seems unfair to single anyone out; even Mishra treats his rare lead role with the modesty of a supporting player.

In the past, Kapoor has directed films that were mildly amusing, and one – the 2008 black comedy Mithya – which was strange, searching and almost great. Ankhon Dekhi is unquestionably great, but don’t take our word for it. See it, as Bauji would insist, with your own eyes.

This review appeared in Time Out.

Queen: Review

We’re only two-and-a-half months into the new year, but there’s already a neat little narrative forming around the unusual prominence of strong female characters in Hindi films in 2014. It started with Madhuri Dixit and Huma Qureshi in Dedh Ishqiya, puppet masters disguised as damsels in distress. This was followed by the kooky, off-kilter pill popper played by Parineeti Chopra in Hasee Toh Phasee and Alia Bhatt’s damaged kidnapping victim in Highway. Compared to these characters, with their unexpected quirks and shadings, Rani, the protagonist of Queen, is a more conventional figure. All credit to Kangana Ranaut, then, who builds her from the ground up and makes her so appealing that the audience doesn’t mind playing cheerleader in what is clearly going to end up a redemption story.

Before redemption cometh the fall, which arrives in the form of Rani’s fiancée, Vijay (Rajkummar Rao), backing out two days before their wedding. Shy, under-confident Rani is devastated, but when she recovers slightly, she realises their honeymoon tickets to Europe are still valid, and that she may as well go for her first trip abroad. You know what they say: Paris when it fizzles.

If you’ve ever watched anything that falls roughly within the jilted-woman-goes-on-a-vacation genre, you’ll be able to map out the broad trajectory of Queen. Rani must get her groove back – or realise that she had one in the first place. So even though Paris is forbidding at first, she’ll soon meet Vijaylakshmi (Lisa Haydon), a sexy single mom who may as well have “free spirit” tattooed on her tanned legs. And thus Rani is dragged out of her salwar-wearing shell, first by the “hippie-type” Vijaylakshmi, and then by the trio of men (from Japan, Russia and France) she ends up rooming with in Amsterdam.

So we watch Rani drink, let her hair loose and develop a small crush on a parody of an Italian chef (Marco Canadea, over-the-top but enjoyable). But director Vikas Bahl and co-writers Parveez Shaikh and Chaitally Parmar are careful not to have Rani transform too quickly or drastically. All too often, we’ve seen characters in our films alter beyond recognition after a few days abroad. Rani starts off simple and retiring, and ends the film just as simple, and a shade less retiring. But Ranaut’s playing is so sympathetic and free of artifice that it’s plain to see how much this small fillip in confidence means to Rani.

In many ways, Rani is a close cousin to Sridevi’s Shashi from 2012’s English Vinglish. Both are retiring sorts who find themselves on trips abroad; both are tethered to men who think they’re a little too hip for them. Yet, where Shashi ended up sacrificing freedom for family, Rani takes her new-found confidence and literally runs with it. Queen isn’t path-breaking – there are too many stock characters and predictable scenarios for that – but it has a big heart. After a while, even its clichés are rendered warm and fuzzy.

This review appeared in Time Out Delhi.

Shaadi Ke Side Effects: Review

Shaadi Ke Side Effects is a colossally boring film, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t make a great drinking game. You do a shot every time there’s a thundering cliché along the lines of “having a baby affects your love life” or “men can’t take responsibility”. You do two shots if there’s a reference to Vidya Balan’s weight, three if you spot a lift from Knocked Up or Modern Family or half a dozen other probable sources. And if you laugh, you’re out, because alcohol’s wasted on anyone who finds this film funny.

After a night of let’s-pretend-we’re-married-to-other-people, Trisha (Balan) and Siddharth (Akhtar) realise that an unplanned stork visit is in order. Rather than taking care of things and spending the rest of the film in a Bergmanesque funk, they decide to have the baby. Everything’s cute for about five minutes. Then Trisha starts scolding Siddharth about everything from baby towels to his piñata skills. Two hours later, she’s still yelling and he still has that martyred look.

Director Saket Chaudhary and his co-writers Arshad Sayed and Zeenat Lakhani make Trisha out to be a terrible scold, but let’s look at the evidence. She’s the one who gave up a corporate career to raise the child; her biggest crime is being a little obsessive with her parenting. He, on the other hand, is the jingle composer who decided to become a parent after some backwards advice from a stranger with quadruplets, the father who leaves his toddler behind with a horse-handler, the family man who goes to the extent of creating a new identity so he can move into a PG accommodation and spend time away from his home every few weeks. Yet, Trisha’s the one who has to stop eating ice-cream because it’s making her fat.

It’s depressing to watch Akhtar and Balan try and ground these caricatures in reality, only to be tripped up by tin-ear writing and bombed by clichés. The only thing less surprising than Trisha and Siddharth’s marriage coming apart at the seams is the way it’s hastily sewn back together. Ram Kapoor, Vir Das and Ila Arun turn up for cameos, as do Samsung, Royal Enfield and a bunch of other product placements. There’s even a split-second clip from Chaudhury’s previous film, the unrelated Rahul Bose-Mallika Sherawat starrer Pyaar Ke Side Effects. Hubris. Learn it in Bollywood.

This review was for Time Out Delhi.