Release date: | January 12, 2024 |
Director: | Sriram Raghavan |
Cast: | Katrina Kaif, Vijay Sethupathi, Sanjay Kapoor, Pari Maheshwari Sharma, Vinay Pathak, Pratima Kannan, Luke Kenny, Cameos: Radhika Apte, Gayathrie Shankar |
Language: | 2 versions of this film were shot – one Tamil, one Hindi – with different supporting casts. This is a review of the Hindi version. |
“So this is Christmas / And what have you done?”
These words from the 1971 John Lennon-Yoko Ono song Happy Xmas (War Is Over) flash on the screen as a prelude to the director Sriram Raghavan’s Merry Christmas. They are played in quick succession with a tribute to Shakti Samanta and a teaser featuring the film’s stars Katrina Kaif and Vijay Sethupathi. The teaser alerts us to Raghavan’s intent to deceive and reveal in equal measure minus melodrama through this narrative.
Happy Xmas – credited here to Lennon alone – is an introspective carol that “emerged from an era of activism and opposition to the Vietnam War”, as a blog by a Lecturer of International Politics on the University of Liverpool’s website explains. There are no manipulative global superpowers at work in Raghavan’s Merry Christmas. The battle here is familial, resulting in an unexpected alliance. And the director’s treatment is devised as a paean to Samanta, maker of such classic thrillers as Howrah Bridge (1958), China Town (1962) and Kati Patang (1971).
Raghavan is a master of mystery. His filmography includes the stop-in-your-tracks delightful Andhadhun (2018), and his gripping debut feature Ek Hasina Thi (2004). Merry Christmas – an adaptation of the French novel Le Monte-Charge(English title: Bird in a Cage) by Frédéric Dard, with a Hindi script by Raghavan, Arijit Biswas, Pooja Ladha Surti (also the editor) and Anukriti Pandey – is a crime drama aspiring to be a love saga. It is a slow burn that is intriguing in its first hour, but declines after its big reveal.
Since even minor specifics could be spoilers, here is a broad introduction to Merry Christmas’ plot. Kaif plays Maria who runs a bakery in Mumbai. She is married and a mother. Her daughter Annie is mute. Sethupathi’s Albert is returning home to Mumbai after several years, following his mother’s passing. When their paths cross, Albert feels an inexplicable empathy for Maria that goes beyond the appeal of her good looks. His past quickly catches up with him though, so he walks away after a warm encounter. When Albert realises that he is not the only one with a secret, however, he is fascinated and unable to stay away.
Few Hindi directors have explored film noir as persistently as Raghavan has and made it his own. Merry Christmas’ gold-tinged world of warm lighting and shadow-rimmed frames has a furtive quality from the start. Its tone is deceptively understated as Maria and Albert go about their business on what initially seems like a routine evening for two lonely people on the town scoping each other out. Yet Raghavan builds an atmosphere aimed at keeping a viewer’s antennae on alert.
The screen is filled with suggestive imagery that plays with our minds and plays on the traditions of crime fiction: a character who sculpts origami swans, speechless little Annie (Pari Maheshwari Sharma) with the innocent wide eyes, a high-ceilinged apartment in a building with an ornate cage for an elevator, an attractive trinket, a watchful giant teddy bear. Besides, Maria and Albert have an aura of sadness about them, and they’re alone in a big city on Christmas eve, a time usually spent with family and community. Something’s gotta give. Obviously.
The determined refusal to pinpoint the year in which this story is set adds to its inscrutability.
I enjoyed Merry Christmas’ opening hour immensely, the sense of expectation, Kaif’s sweetness, Sethupathi’s extraordinary ability to elevate even stray words and glances into moments of great humour or poignance, the empathetic gaze on Maria in this troubling era of Animals and animosity, the art design, the cinematic references, the vintage tunes complementing Pritam and Daniel B. George’s music, Maria and Albert’s lively dance, and a slimeball played deliciously by Sanjay Kapoor. It is also nice to see a normalised representation of a religious minority that is not often visible in Hindi films these days, and an acknowledgement of the diversity within the community that an earlier era of Hindi cinema restricted to Goans and Anglo-Indians. Albert’s full name is Albert Arogyasami, but he is neither a caricatured Christian nor the stereotyped ‘Madrasi’ that Hindi filmdom was once notorious for. However, after a grand deception is unmasked – I can’t say more than this – the writing and direction get lax, the unplugged holes in the deception become apparent immediately and a glaring giveaway is even allowed to linger by the perpetrator.
The understatedness that works in Merry Christmas’ favour through much of the narrative delivers diminishing returns from then on, culminating in a climax with limited impact. What is missing in that final stretch is a magnetic pull between the leads and an urgency in the build-up that was sorely needed for the ending to provide a release. It doesn’t help that Maria’s character remains under-explored in comparison with Albert’s, or that Kaif’s likeability is no match for Sethupathi’s casual brilliance. As a consequence, as the curtain falls, it is possible to read Albert’s motivations and emotion but Maria is still an enigma, so it cannot be said with certainty whether she is driven by anything more than desperation and gratitude.
The last half hour of Merry Christmas feels as if it was left to direct and edit itself and rely on the leading man’s speaking eyes to fill any gaps at that point.
The philosophy behind the film is encapsulated by Albert in this sentence: “Sometimes violence is better than sacrifice.” Ultimately, Merry Christmas suggests that violence inevitably necessitates sacrifice – by someone – but the closing is too loosely handled for the point to be compelling.
Merry Christmas succeeds considerably as a thriller before losing its way, but is unable to establish itself as a romance. A pity, because while the going is good, it really is damn good.
Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.75
Footnote: The credits walk a tightrope with a smartness that made me smile. Kaif’s name comes first in the beginning, Sethupathi’s comes first in the closing scroll, in a nod to their massive stardom in their respective industries, Hindi and Tamil, without succumbing to the gender bias that pervades all Indian film industries or ignoring concerns about Hindi belt supremacism.
Running time: | 144 minutes |
Poster courtesy: IMDB
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