करीब करीब सिंगल Qarib Qarib Singlle (2017)

It’s impossible to cover Indian cinema without at least a few feel-good Bollywood films. This one, directed by Tanuja Chandra—who has had a fairly long career for a woman directing in India (since 1998), though she has family connections to the business—is a likeable romcom with two big name leads. Irrfan Khan, who sadly died recently, is probably the best-known in the West.

I enjoy a good romcom, but they do tend to lean heavily on the personal charm of their leads. Luckily both Irrfan Khan and Parvathy Thiruvothu have that, although Irrfan’s character of Yogi, a wealthy layabout who writes self-published poetry does initially come across as less quirky than creepy in his insistence. Then again, romcoms do often normalise pathological behaviour, and his is comparatively tame by the genre’s standards. Needless to say, some feeling develops between the two as they criss-cross India (mostly in the north I believe, though I’m hardly a geographic expert). The director encourages her heroine to break the fourth wall by addressing the camera directly in what is now I suppose a time-honoured tradition, but it all comes off rather nicely and this is a very likeable film.

CREDITS
Director Tanuja Chandra तनुजा चंद्रा; Writers Chandra, Gazal Dhaliwal ਗਜ਼ਲ ਧਾਲੀਵਾਲ and Ramashrit Joshi; Cinematographer Eeshit Narain; Starring Irrfan Khan इरफ़ान ख़ान, Parvathy Thiruvothu പാർവ്വതി ടി.കെ.; Length 125 minutes. Seen at Cineworld Ilford, London, Friday 17 November 2017.

तलवार Talvar (aka Guilty, 2015)

Today we sadly learned of the passing of the great Irrfan Khan, so I’m taking a break from this week’s theme on my blog to watch one of his performances; while this review below is unlikely to be of his best film, it’s still a decent crime investigation thriller in which he capably plays a slightly ambiguous character. Others have seen some of his higher profile films — of those, most in English, I’ve only seen Slumdog Millionaire (as well as smaller parts in Jurassic World and The Darjeeling Limited)—but I have enjoyed him in romcoms like Piku and the recent Qarib Qarib Singlle, and his career stretches back to a small role in Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! (1988). He’s an actor that seemed able to play both complex less than heroic characters (as in this film), as easily as likeable easygoing charmers. In any case, he’s usually the moral centre of the films he’s in, all too often playing authority figures we can trust (even if that reputation is played with at times, as with this film).

One of the difficulties Talvar has to get over, in presenting its true-crime torn-from-the-headlines case of a young girl found murdered in her family home near their similarly-slain servant, is that it was never really solved. And so we get, in the now-cliched Rashomon-like way, flashback recreations of multiple different viewpoints on what happened, with all kinds of ridiculous suggestions being put forth (some of them reported gleefully in public) by first the police investigators and then the “CDI” (Central Dept of Investigation) of whom Irrfan Khan’s Ashwin is leading the case. Even more than the criminal investigation, the film is keen to show how messy and disorganised India’s justice system can be, with incompetent cops and bosses who seem (it is implied) more interested in ensuring their old classmates are exculpated of any wrongdoing than in getting a satisfactory conclusion to the case. There’s a hint of Touch of Evil too in the way that Ashwin’s methods can be little better than torture at times—if he’s the hero of the film, he’s an antihero at best—but he’s still more impassioned than most of the guys milling around him, who are mostly looking out for their own careers or their friends. I think it works well, and it’s all very well put together, even if the film itself has a bit of a TV true-crime thriller feel at times; it nevertheless maintains a consistent tone, anchored by Khan’s empathetic performance.

CREDITS
Director Meghna Gulzar मेघना गुलज़ार; Writer Vishal Bhardwaj विशाल भारद्वाज; Cinematographer Pankaj Kumar पंकज कुमार; Starring Irrfan Khan इरफ़ान ख़ान, Konkona Sen Sharma কঙ্কনা সেন শর্মা, Neeraj Kabi नीरज काबी; Length 133 minutes. Seen at home (Netflix streaming), London, Wednesday 29 April 2020.

Jurassic World (2015)

Let’s be honest, I didn’t exactly hold high hopes for this film, which at times has seemed more interested in creating brand partner synergies for commercial tie-ins, than being actually-any-good as narrative entertainment. Sadly that seems to have been the legacy of Spielberg’s (still quite excellent) Jurassic Park, though it’s hardly something it invented—just that it managed to tap into an enthusiasm for dinosaurs that remains largely unabated over 20 years on. Still, even given that, I remain confused as to why there was an ad before the film for a Lego tie-in. There was no room in the movie for the aforesaid product because it’s a 12-rated action film for a good reason (CGI-created dinosaur terror and mayhem; certainly the human characters weren’t much more than ciphers). Anyway the film’s clear product-placement winner was Mercedes-Benz, just for that smash cut to a perfectly-framed car ad angle of their vehicle after one of the kids says the line “you wanna see something amazing?” Oh to imagine how excited their execs must’ve been when they saw that. Just thinking about such a scenario really brought on some serious feels (not all good, let’s be honest); certainly it prompted more emotions than when a bunch of human dudes were eviscerated in the film (would that they were marketing executives eh).

I could go on about how this cartoonish dehumanisation of violence is an effect of the kind of corporatised culture which was surely intended as a point of satire in the original, but has long since been subsumed under the creature effects and merchandising. However, whatever baggage I might (not unreasonably I feel) load this franchise up with, the thing is that Jurassic World was quite an entertaining ride. Chris Pratt retains an easy-going charm, even if his relationship with prickly park boss Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) remained little more than a doodle in the corner of a page credited to FOUR screenwriters. Perhaps the tenacity with which Claire manages to perform at high speed on all terrains while never shedding (or breaking) her high heels should therefore be applauded as some kind of feminist triumph, but I’ll stop short of that. Still, the kids-in-peril weren’t too annoying, while Irrfan Khan as a wealthy industrialist (an heir of sorts to Richard Hammond) and Omar Sy as the French dino-wrangler were nice smaller roles, even if there was no one who could measure up to Jeff Goldblum. And on the whole the mayhem was coordinated rather well, even if it did rip off some of the set pieces almost wholesale from the original film, to lesser effect.

So for a Summer blockbuster it just about works, I just don’t expect to be revisiting it with any warmth in 20 years’ time.

CREDITS
Director Colin Trevorrow; Writers Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Derek Connolly and Trevorrow; Cinematographer John Schwartzman; Starring Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D’Onofrio, Irrfan Khan इरफ़ान ख़ान, Omar Sy; Length 124 minutes. Seen at the Genesis [2D], London, Tuesday 16 June 2015.

पीकू Piku (2015)

I may go to see a lot of films, but the Indian film industry (Bollywood, if you will, at least when describing Hindi-language film production) is still largely a mystery to me. The popular notion is that it’s all glitzy overblown melodrama punctuated by dance numbers, but if anything Piku proves there’s still plenty of room for refreshingly grounded character-based drama. But Piku is a success no matter what country’s film output you’re used to watching, as it manages to find a light comedic tone even while dealing with some pretty big themes in an understated way.

Key to that is the film’s central relationship, which isn’t a love story; in fact, the film should be commended for introducing a female central character (the Piku of the title) who lives independently, has a fulfilling and successful career and, even up to the very end, does not define her life (as some of those around her do) by whether or not she has a man. No, instead the film is largely a two-hander between the testy and stand-offish Piku—the resourceful and beguiling Deepika Padukone (who in the course of this one film has quickly staked her claim on my affections at least)—and her irascible father Bhaskor, the latter of whom is played by an icon of Indian cinema, Amitabh Bachchan, who turns out to have pretty deft comic timing.

The film’s subtitle or maybe tag-line is “motion se hi emotion” which (as far as I can gather from, er, Google translate) means “motion leads to emotion”, where the ‘motion’ in question is at one level a reference to the film’s last third being a road trip, but more specifically refers to bowel motion, and indeed Bhaskor’s constipation is the film’s ongoing running gag—which to be fair does provide some intermittent amusement. If this were all the film had to offer, I wouldn’t be able to recommend it, especially as, for all the wit and vigour of Juhi Chaturvedi’s dialogue, the editing can get rather frenetic at times and the film doesn’t always entirely succeed in tying together a disparate range of genres. However, ultimately, the toilet humour is more a way to channel issues around ageing and death, as Bhaskor deals with his mortality and his relationship to his wider family, including his daughter. In the end, it’s touching, and while there is a romantic subplot of sorts (with Irrfan Khan’s entrepreneurial taxi company owner), the focus is firmly on the father-daughter relationship.

CREDITS
Director Shoojit Sircar সুজিত সরকার; Writer Juhi Chaturvedi जूही चतुर्वेदी; Cinematographer Kamaljeet Negi कमलजीत नेगी; Starring Deepika Padukone दीपिका पादुकोण, Amitabh Bachchan अमिताभ बच्चन, Irrfan Khan इरफ़ान ख़ान; Length 125 minutes. Seen at Cineworld Wood Green, London, Monday 11 May 2015.