REVIEW 246: HIGHWAY

Release date:	February 21, 2014
Director:	Imtiaz Ali
Cast: Language:	Alia Bhatt, Randeep Hooda, Durgesh Kumar Hindi

There’s a point mid-way through Highway when Veera Tripathi tells her kidnapper Mahabir Bhati: “Where you brought me from is a place to which I don’t want to return, where you are taking me is a place I don’t want to go to, but this road, oh it’s so beautiful.” She (Alia Bhatt) is a talkative creature, the city-bred child of a sophisticated family rolling in millions, snatched away from her wealthy world just days before her marriage. He (Randeep Hooda) is a lumpen and country bumpkin, a man of few words and many painful memories. That sentence she utters to him is one of many exquisite elements in writer-director Imtiaz Ali’s film Highway.

The leads are fine performers; A.R. Rahman’s music is as quietly haunting as the landscapes Veera and Mahabir cover on their cross-country journey; the songs are smoothly woven into the narrative; the locations (especially a salt-laden, isolated post in Rajasthan, the mountains of Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir) are stunning, many of them hitherto unexplored; and Anil Mehta’s camerawork is spellbinding. Besides, this is that rare Hindi film exploring the theme of child sexual abuse, while socking us in the face with parallel tracks about the exploitation of girls and women in tellingly different fashions in wealthy and poor families.

That’s why it hurts to admit that there is much that is also missing from this film. Some of this has got to do with the fact that every once in a while on this road trip, the director and cinematographer seem so overwhelmed by the spectacular locales they’re visiting, that they stop to get an eyeful; but the screenplay does not have the heft to ensure that this does not result in lethargy. It’s also unsatisfying that Highway gives us only brief glimpses of Veera and Mahabir’s – especially Mahabir’s – minds.  

And then there is the problematic casting. Individually, Alia and Randeep are perfect for their roles. Together though, the pairing is disquieting because the screenplay deliberately imbues their blossoming relationship with a certain ambiguity, leaving us to figure out exactly where they are headed. So, while I found myself longing to see Veera and Mahabir hooking up; I simultaneously felt icky at the thought of Alia and Randeep together romantically. Don’t get me wrong: Randeep is one of the industry’s best – and sadly most under-rated – actors right now (making it easy for us to forgive him for that embarrassing aberration called Jism 2). He is also inexorably sexy. Here in Highway, he is utterly volcanic, with lava bubbling below the surface until he briefly erupts at one point. Unfortunately for him, he’s all man – if you know what I mean – whereas Alia is a child-like, baby-faced, cherubic little thing; and the very thought of him seeing her as anything but that is almost disturbing.    

Alia was introduced to us in the fluffy Student Of The Year where she was expected to do nothing more than look pretty and dance well in baby-doll dresses. In a far more demanding role in a far more demanding film, she proves that she is capable of a nuanced performance instead of merely cashing in on her impossibly youthful, delicate looks. She just needed to be cast with a different actor on this particular journey.

In its best moments, Highway reminded me of one of my favourite recent road films: Peter Weir’s The Way Back. There is a particularly delightful scene in which Veera, celebrating her newfound ‘freedom’, dances with gay abandon to an English song and Mahabir’s bemused, fellow-rustic partner-in-crime (the fantastic Durgesh Kumar) joins in. Watching them together, you know that “Stockholm Syndrome” would probably be a literal, simplistic explanation for what’s going on with Veera. Equally engaging are the times when she expresses wonderment at the most mundane discoveries, such as a decrepit abandoned bungalow, and her kidnappers respond with wonderment at the inexplicably limited life she has led despite her money.

Unfortunately, with all this going for it plus an unpredictable ending, Highway cannot escape from the burden of its sketchy, incomplete feel. In an interview I did with him for Maxim magazine a few weeks back, Imtiaz Ali had told me: “What I find appealing about the road is that when you’re travelling, not only is it entertaining because you see new places, but you discover things about yourself that you did not know before.” This Highway tells us some lovely things about Veera and Mahabir, but we needed to discover much much more.  

Rating (out of five): **1/2 (stars out of 5)

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	133 minutes

Poster courtesy: Everymedia Technologies

REVIEW 245: GUNDAY

Release date:	February 14, 2014
Director:	Ali Abbas Zafar
Cast: Language:	Ranveer Singh, Arjun Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Irrfan, Saurabh Shukla Hindi

There’s an interesting angle in Gunday involving the origins of the two male leads: Bikram Bose (Ranveer Singh) and Bala Bhattacharya (Arjun Kapoor) are orphaned refugees from the newly formed Bangladesh, who escape to Kolkata as children and go on to establish themselves as the city’s most powerful dons. Most references to Partition in Bollywood have dealt with West Pakistan, while the former East Pakistan has remained largely ignored. However, with little writing depth to complement it, this plot novelty can’t save Gunday from the been-there-seen-that quality that pervades most of the film.

Bikram and Bala are inseparable buddies. A childhood spent together battling poverty, derision and potential sexual abuse has resulted in a bond so strong that even when they fall in love with the same woman – cabaret dancer Nandita (Priyanka Chopra) – they sportingly agree to woo her individually and let her decide for herself who she prefers. Also in the picture is ACP Satyajeet Sarkar (Irrfan) who has been brought into Kolkata specially to bust their gang because the local police have yet to gather any incriminating evidence against them.

Ali Abbas Zafar – who earlier made Mere Brother ki Dulhan starring Katrina Kaif, Imran Khan and Ali Zafar – is the writer-director of Gunday (Sanjay Masoom is credited for additional dialogues). The weakness of the film is its writing and the fault with the writing begins with its clichés. For instance, since coal mining is Bikram and Bala’s mainstay, there are dialogues galore about the blackness of coal, about koyla and a heera coming from the same element, about black as a mark of disgrace/evil and white as a sign of purity/goodness. The character development of the heroes is also limited and there’s nothing in particular to support Nandita’s explanation for why she falls in love with one and not the other.

The film also suffers from an inability to pull off what seems like a desire to be realistic and yet operatic, melodramatic and fantastical. With similar ambitions, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Ram-leela recently managed to do that balancing act. Gunday, however, is too weak to be effective. At times it seems headed towards a Blood Brothers kind of nature-versus-nurture debate, but that angle is not sustained for long. There are shades of Sholay in Bikram and Bala’s Yeh-dosti-hum-nahin-thodenge friendship complete with a coin toss in the picture and a train robbery early on in the film; but no, this is not a reworking of Jai and Veeru’s equation either. In what’s probably a bow to Ram Gopal Varma’s iconic gangster film, a colleague addresses ACP Satyajeet as Satya, but Gunday has none of Ramu’s insights.

On a positive note, the film does not let up on the costumes and styling for its period setting (this is 1970s-'80s Kolkata). That apart, the visual appeal ends up being distracting. Ranveer and Arjun have obviously worked hard on their physiques – bless you, boys! Ranveer in particular must be complimented for getting the bulk just right here unlike in Ram-leela’s Tattad tattad song in which he was over-muscled. However, the heavy body make-up, oiled torsos and posing about are out of place in the space they occupy here. When the wind blew off Chulbul Pandey and Chhedi Singh’s shirts in Dabangg to reveal impeccable bodies, it worked because the film was not asking to be taken seriously. Gunday, on the other hand, seems confused about what it wants to be. So, when Bikram and Bala rip off each other’s shirts in a wrestling bout, I wanted to whistle at their physical beauty but also laugh because my reaction seemed like a mismatch to the intended emotional intensity of the scene.

Still, in this respect and in the writing, overall the second half of the film is much stronger than the first with some interesting twists coming up (though the most well-executed 15-minute stretch comes right at the start when Bikram and Bala are children). Even the songs, which are dull and almost stop the proceedings each time they are inserted into the pre-interval portion, are better used in the latter half by which time they are woven into the narrative. Saaiyaan in particular has Irshad Kamil’s lyrics, Shahid Mallya’s voice and the storytelling all falling into place. “Kal Meera tadpi Kanha ko
/ Sab laaj-samaaj gawaee re
/ Ab prem mein tadpan-tarsan ki / Hai baari Kanha ki aayi re,” goes the song marking one of the best directed portions of Gunday. The other is an excellent face-off between Satya and Nandita in a cemetery in which she argues that Bikram-Bala are good souls who are victims of their circumstances; he points out that not everyone who’s had a tough life turns to crime, that environments can’t be an excuse for wrongdoing.

That short yet cracking conversation comes as a relief because the film’s initial scenes lend a disturbing coolth to the villainy and swagger of the children playing little Bikram and Bala. The exchange between Satya and Nandita has particular resonance considering the ongoing national debate on juvenile criminals in India. Earlier, there is another neat scene in which Nandita ticks off the boys for what she assumes are their assumptions about a cabaret girl.

Disappointingly, Ranveer and Arjun’s chemistry in Gunday is not a patch on the sparks flying between them in their recent joint TV interviews. It feels unfair though to judge actors when they’re working with inadequate written material and direction. That this is a talented cast being wasted is evident from the fact that where they are given good writing they shine, as is the case with Irrfan and Priyanka in the aforementioned two scenes. We needed more of that in Gunday. This is not an unwatchable film. It’s simply unremarkable, inconsistent and unoriginal.

Rating (out of five): ** (2 stars out of 5)

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	154 minutes

Photographs courtesy: Yashraj Films

REVIEW 244: HASEE TOH PHASEE

Release date:	February 8, 2014
Director:	Vinil Matthew
Cast: Language:	Parineeti Chopra, Sidharth Malhotra, Adah Sharma, Manoj Joshi, Neena Kulkarni, Sharat Saxena Hindi

Hasee Toh Phasee is an unusual Bollywood romantic comedy that uses the clichés of the genre as a mere backdrop to give us two characters of the sort we rarely meet in Hindi cinema. So yes, there’s a large, very rich joint family, there are bodies laden with heavy jewellery and expensive clothes in the run-up to a shaadi, and there are happy parivaars singing and dancing on grandly conceived set pieces. None of that though is allowed to overshadow the young couple at the centre of it all: Meeta and Nikhil.

Parineeti Chopra plays Meeta, a drug addict and scientific genius with questionable moral values who fits into the chor-ke-bhi-usool-hotey-hai category of people: she steals without pangs of conscience but will only steal from her dad because that’s her principle, she explains. At the start of the film she briefly meets Nikhil (Sidharth Malhotra). Seven years later, she is back in the home from where she stole money to fund her student research, armed now with a supply of anti-depressants and a plan to steal once again to repay a debt for a lab she started in China. This time when she meets Nikhil, he is engaged to her sister Karishma (Adah Sharma).

Nikhil and Karishma are in a relationship of a kind often seen. They’re fond of each other but clearly not in love. She keeps breaking up with him or threatening to do so, and each time he desperately tries to gain her forgiveness. He is yet to make anything of himself professionally so her constant anger is not unjustified, but her repeated break-up threats and haranguing render her charmless. Why does he not call it quits when being with her is so stressful? Well, because they’ve been together for seven years which in his book is a commitment.

So far so good. The lead characters seem credible and their relationships believable. The acting is pleasantly low-pitched. The songs too are likeable though Zehnaseeb is the only one that truly lingers. The film is visually pretty from A-Z (Karan Johar is a co-producer so that’s a given, I guess) but unlike some of KJo’s own directorial ventures, the prettiness does not threaten to overwhelm its soul. Director Vinil Matthew adopts a storytelling style reminiscent of the low-key tone and tenor of Shakun Batra’s 2012 film Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu which was produced by Johar. That film was about whether a friendship is possible when unrequited love is in the picture. Hasee Toh Phasee, on the other hand, is about a completely mismatched pair who you cannot help but root for even as you wonder whether they’re right for each other.

HTP’s screenplay by Harshavardhan Kulkarni is peppered with under-stated humour and unexpectedly sensitive situations. Meeta’s emotionally charged first encounter after seven years with her father (played sweetly by Manoj Joshi) and the references to TV's C.I.D. during a comical family investigation by Nikhil’s father (Sharat Saxena as a retired police officer) stay on in the mind. However, the writing leaves many questions unanswered. How, for instance, does a girl so deeply fond of her father leave him for seven years without once looking back?

That’s not the only unconvincing portion in the film. Yet, so palpable is the chemistry between the lead pair that all the inconsistencies seem secondary in comparison. From their first meeting, there is an instant connect. Later, as their friendship blossoms in the run-up to his wedding, two scenes wrench the heart: the one in which he discovers her sleeping peacefully in a filthy, run-down building; another in which he forgets her in a locked room. Their bond is electric with empathy. Such chemistry is possible only when good acting, writing and direction come together and in that regard, it’s hard to believe that Vinil Matthew is a director on debut.

That little sparkler called Parineeti we first encountered in Ladies vs Ricky Bahl in 2011 is in fine fettle here as a woman who doesn’t bat an eyelid before telling a fellow that he should dump her sister because it’s they – Meeta and Nikhil, not Nikhil and Karishma – who are made for each other. The manner in which she pulls off Meeta’s disarming, child-like frankness though can’t excuse her inconsistency with the physical quirks she gives her character – attributable to her penchant for pills, one assumes. If the intention was to convey the highs and lows between doses, the point is not effectively made. 

Sidharth is to Parineeti in Hasee Toh Phasee what Shahid Kapoor was to Kareena Kapoor in Jab We Met: a perfect foil to a female co-star’s more energetic presence and role. That he is gorgeous was evident in his first film Student Of The Year (2013). HTP is a reminder that there’s more to him than the arresting face. There’s a well of sensitivity in those speaking eyes, and he’d be wise to seek out directors who tap that aspect of his personality rather than just his handsomeness. Of the rest of the cast, a special word must go to the ever-dependable Neena Kulkarni as Nikhil’s watchful mother. The jarring element of the lot is the actor playing Nikhil’s cousin, the one with the disturbingly lecherous eyes that we discover in the end were inappropriate for his role.

Hasee Toh Phasee is not without flaws – the dry title being one of them – but it’s unusual and fun overall. Besides, when was the last time Bollywood served us an important female character who is a chemical engineer from IIT? Hindi film women who are not home makers tend to be in the glamour business (models, designers actors) or of a vague, indeterminate profession. Over and above everything else in HTP though, there are the sparks between Parineeti and Sidharth. By the end, as a viewer I felt an overpowering desire to do everything in my power to get those two together. It’s not often that a film can make you feel that way.

Rating (out of five): *** (stars out of 5)

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	142 minutes

Poster courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasee_Toh_Phasee