REVIEW 790: MERRY CHRISTMAS

 

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 

REVIEW 701: BHARAT

Release date:	June 5, 2019
Directors:	Ali Abbas Zafar
Cast: Language:	Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif, Sunil Grover, Jackie Shroff, Disha Patani, Sonali Kulkarni, Brijendra Kala, Kumud Kumar Mishra, Rajiv Gupta, Shashank Arora, Aasif Sheikh, Satish Kaushik, Nora Fatehi, Cameo: Tabu Hindi

At a crucial point in Ali Abbas Zafar’s new venture, the titular protagonist’s father appears to him and says: “Desh logon se banta hai, aur logon ki pehchaan unke parivaar se hoti hai. Tujh mein poora desh hai, Bharat.” (A nation is made up of people, and people’s identity comes from their family. The whole country resides in you, Bharat.) It is a line that at once sounds profound but means little. It also encapsulates the essence of Bharat: a film that wants to be profound but ends up meaning far less despite its bull’s-eyes.

Salman Khan partnered Zafar on the writer-director’s Sultan and Tiger Zinda Hai with spectacular box-office outcomes. Whatever their lacunae may have been, Zafar was successful in mining Khan’s natural goofiness in both, the latter film also playing up the actor’s trademark unembarrassed, unapologetic on-screen bravado to hilarious effect. Bharat sputters on that front but scores elsewhere with mixed results: it is occasionally heart-breaking, occasionally funny, often political albeit hesitantly so, but by and large just plain dull.

Based on the Korean film Ode To My Father, Bharat is a voyage through post-Independence India while walking alongside a common man whose name is Bharat with no surname attached. He was a boy of 8 and a resident of Gaon Mirpur, Lahore, when his life was torn apart by the cruelty of Partition. His entire existence since has been devoted to keeping the promise made to his Dad (Jackie Shroff) that he would take care of the family.

When we first meet him he is an old man touching 70. As the extended family gathers for his birthday, Bharat (played by Khan) recounts his journey between 1947 and 2010 in flashback. Along the way, several familiar historical milestones are crossed. Post-Partition refugee camps, Jawaharlal Nehru’s death, India’s 1983 cricket World Cup victory, economic liberalisation in the 1990s, the 21st century television boom and more pass by parallel to Bharat’s initial struggle to survive in Delhi, his time as a daredevil motorbike rider in a circus, migration to the Middle East for work, his life-long friendship with the banana-eating Syyed Vilayati Khan (Sunil Grover), his long-standing relationship with the government official turned TV anchor Kumud Raina (Katrina Kaif) and unexpected good news.

The voiceover in the trailer had announced, “this country was born 71 years back...” Why then does Bharat’s story stop not at 2018 but at 2010 with the words “the beginning” on screen? Therein lies a tale. Clearly Zafar wants to make a political statement yet stay safe while doing so (the fact that he needs to protect himself is a sad reflection on the current state of our nation, but that is a separate discussion). The 1990s are heralded in the film with the narrator announcing that the new decade was marked by the arrival of two new heroes, Shah Rukh Khan (that’s very generous of you, Bhai) and Sachin Tendulkar, “but the real hero was (Finance Minister) Manmohan Singh” for transforming India’s economy. This is an unexpected ode to the former FM-turned-PM who has been much maligned, reviled and mocked in the public discourse in the past 5 years, most recently in the Hindi film PM Narendra Modi. Another former PM much reviled in recent years is projected as a hottie earlier in the film.

While both comments in Bharat are in themselves brave in the sense that they defy the mob, I suppose the decision to steer clear of 2014 too can be deemed a statement, its import possibly depending on which side of the political divide you stand on. Clever? Somewhat. And if you think about it, amusingly so.

The format of this film is brimming with potential, and has been tapped brilliantly by cinema in the past, Hollywood’s Forrest Gump being a shining example. For the most part though, the historical events cited in Bharat serve more as markers of dates rather than having any interesting or deep connotation in the context of the leading man’s bio. Combine that with the absence of the usual crowd-pleasing Salman Khan madness, and Bharat ends up being neither here nor there.

The humour, for one, is weak. I mean, c’moooon, Bharat’s Mummy says “Tonsil” for “Titanic” (the ship) and he corrects her, pronouncing the word as “Titonic” instead. Aiyyo! Eye roll. Oddly enough, the comedy works in its most juvenile portions because those parts are headlined by the inimitable Sunil Grover or Rajiv Gupta. The two ace their respective scenes.

Khan and Kaif, on the other hand, are off the mark and off colour throughout. Nope, even when Bharat addresses Kumud as “Madam Sir” with the actor’s signature cutesiness it falls flat. Kaif’s Hindi diction has always been problematic, here it is not even papered over with the by-now-standard her-character-grew-up-outside-India excuse and the way she says the English word “store” more than once in a particular scene is very distracting.

Like the duo’s performances, Bharat’s songs too are lacklustre. Irshad Kamil’s lyrics for Slow motion are kinda entertaining, Zinda is sorta catchy, but on the whole I found myself wondering when Vishal and Shekhar will next come up with a soundtrack to match the memorability they delivered in Dostana.

No doubt Zafar means well with Bharat, but his writing often unwittingly displays his social conditioning even when he is attempting a progressive message. This is epitomised by a scene in which Bharat tries to convince an African pirate that there is no colour prejudice in India, which is ironic considering that their conversation is contained in a scene featuring a racist joke about a black-skinned south Indian man.

Unlike the recent Bollywood release Kalank, the villains of Partition in Bharat are not confined to the Muslim community. In a decade when the world and India have been engulfed by Islamophobia, this is significant. However, Zafar’s decision to include the national anthem right in the middle of the film should be questioned, knowing as we do that the anthem has been a source of tension in some halls in recent years with certain audience members choosing to use it as a tool to vent a certain nationalist aggression against others.

At another place Zafar questions the need for marriage, which is a gutsy thing to do for a Hindi filmmaker – and then he pulls back. And the way Disha Patani’s character enters then abruptly exits the scene becomes yet another instance of the dispensability of glamorous women in commercial Hindi cinema.

The best of Bharat comes right in the beginning and then almost towards the end. The initial portrayal of the Partition and later efforts to reunite families separated at the time may seem emotionally over-wrought to some, but I confess I was reduced to tears in both segments. Unfortunately, what comes between, though largely inoffensive is only sporadically rewarding. Far from being a Forrest Gump with Salman Khan, Bharat is mostly a plodding trek through post-1947 to contemporary India.

Rating (out of five stars): **

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	155 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bharat-movie-review-salman-khans-sometimes-heart-breaking-hesitantly-political-plodding-trek-through-history-6761361.html

Posters courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/BharatMovie2019/

REVIEW 660: ZERO

Release date:	December 21, 2018
Director:	Aanand L. Rai
Cast: Language:	Shah Rukh Khan, Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Sheeba Chaddha, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Brijendra Kala, Mallika Dua, R. Madhavan, Abhay Deol Hindi

Aanand L. Rai’s Zero is divided into two distinct compartments: one where the screenplay allows leading man Shah Rukh Khan’s naturally energetic personality, comic timing and charm to take flight, and the second in which the film appears to be trying to say something very grave and very deep but fails to lift off. Thank the cosmos for Bollywood’s dimpled wonder, his charisma and enthusiasm undiminished by his 53 years, because without him, Zero has little going for it.

The story takes off in Meerut where a 38-year-old (ahem!) scamp called Bauua Singh has forever been taunted for his physical disability. Bauua (SRK) is of very short stature, but does not allow social opprobrium to dampen his zest for life, his self-esteem or his over-sized ego. He is keen on marriage and obsessed with the movie star Babita Kumari (Katrina Kaif). In pursuit of a potential spouse, he avails of the services of a marriage broker (Brijendra Kala). In pursuit of his screen idol –  “bhabhi (sister in law),” as his friend Guddu refers to Babita – he enters a contest, the prize for which is a chance to attend a party with her.

Somewhere between long-distance trysts with the Bollywood beauty in movie theatres and at fan gatherings, meetings with his broker and fights with his father (Tigmanshu Dhulia), Bauua encounters the genius space scientist Aafia Yusufzai Bhinder (Anushka Sharma). Cerebral palsy is not mentioned by name in the film but her constrained facial expressions, speech and physical movements tell their own tale. The wheelchair is to the brilliant Aafia what height is to Bauua – she has not let it clip her wings.

Zero is the latest collaboration between director Aanand L. Rai and writer Himanshu Sharma who have caused box-office storms so far with Tanu Weds Manu (2011), Raanjhanaa (2013) and Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015). Two things have characterised these hits: their misogyny and their connect with small-town India. Unlike Kanpur or Varanasi in those previous projects, Zero’s screenplay does not quite capture the specific fragrance and feel of Meerut. On the plus side, Zero does not hate women – the downer is that it simply does not know what to do with them.

One thing this film does get right is its hero’s frenetic energy and acerbic humour for which Khan proves to be an excellent fit. Sharma, wisely, does not scrub insensitive language out of the film in the interests of superficial – and unreal – political correctness. Life is not a movie review where a critic spends hours trying to figure out whether “dwarf”, “midget” or “vertically challenged person” would be the most appropriate usage, and Sharma understands that. Characters around Bauua in his hometown hurl the Hindi word “bauna” (dwarf) at him and define him almost entirely by his height without a care for his feelings, as most people in the real world sadly would. Crucially though, the writer and director themselves do not view him through a condescending or contemptuous lens. Bauua gives as good as he gets, piercing through the barbs with a tongue that is sharper than a butcher's knife and a skin that is thicker than rhinoceros hide.

Beyond this though, Zero has nothing to offer. Part of the reason seems to be Sharma’s inability to write relatable women who are neither ridiculously eccentric, brusque and self-centred like Tanu nor selfish and manipulative like Zoya in Raanjhanaa. Remove from the picture the animosity towards womankind that oozed out of Raanjhanaa and the othering in the Tanu Weds Manu films, and what you have are the dead bores Aafia and Babita.

Babita gets one interesting scene in which she tells Bauua about her parents. Aafia does not even get that. No doubt Bauua is funny and feisty, but he is also a big jerk with her every step of the way, making it impossible to understand why she falls for him because the mere fact that he is the only man she has met who is at eye level with her is hardly an explanation, although that is what their conversations imply.

Their separate journeys with Bauua are so terribly contrived and intellectually pretentious that I found myself longing for them to exit the frame each time they were there, and to leave him alone with Guddu so that we might enjoy the crackling banter between the two men.

Zero is, no doubt, attempting to make a profoundly philosophical point at the intersection of the protagonists’ physical disabilities and their joint exploration of the universe, but whatever it is is lost in the swirling mists of the writer’s mind.

One point that does come across is the unspoken intermingling of communities evident in Aafia’s name and her parents’ relationship. Subtlety so relevant in these politically divisive times rears its head elsewhere too – this time with clever comicality – in the matter of marginalised communities within dominant groups (Bauua is male and visibly upper caste, but that does not save him from incessant denigration due to his appearance).

Thankfully, Bollywood has progressed beyond the days when Anupam Kher had to go down on his knees to play a dwarf in Shirish Kunder’s Jaan-E-Mann (2006). Bauua’s small size has been achieved reportedly with the same technology as has been used in the Lord of the Rings films and The Hobbit. Some day soon, hopefully the industry will get to a place where it does not need such tech because it has place for actors like the great Peter Dinklage who plays Tyrion Lannister in the Game of Thrones series. For the moment though, it is worth celebrating that a mainstream actor, writer and director in this dismally conservative, ableist industry came up with a film that revolves entirely around a vertically challenged man.

That, of course, is not enough. Zero’s storyline is convoluted, confused and dull. Of the female leads, Kaif’s primary job is to look stunning, a duty she fulfills to perfection, while the heavy lifting in terms of acting is left, quite sensibly, to the more talented artiste of the two. Though Sharma totally immerses herself in Aafia’s physicality, there is little she can do to elevate the woman above the dreary writing. 

Khan delivers an endearing performance as Bauua, but has more chemistry with Guddu (played by the unfailingly remarkable Mohammmed Zeeshan Ayyub) than with either lady. The superstar has been in experimental mode for the past three years with films like Fan, Raees and Dear Zindagi that have offered him a chance to explore the actor in him. Those films, flawed though they were, were far far far better written than Zero.

Even Ajay-Atul’s music for Zero is limited. The wistful melody and rousing orchestration of Mere Naam Tu comes in one of its most visually appealing scenes. Issaqbaazi – featuring Salman Khan in a neatly conceptualised cameo – is lively but lacks depth. And Husn Parcham is a big yawn.

Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of Zero is Khan’s willingness to laugh at himself along with Messrs Sharma and Rai. In one scene when asked how old he is, Bauua slips up and gives a figure other than 38. The fact that the character is lying about his age serves as an amusing swipe at a superstar who by and large persists in playing characters much younger than he is and/or starring opposite much younger women. Of course the point would have been more effective and would have come across as more sincere if the leading ladies of Zero weren’t 20 years junior to Khan.

In a sense, Aanand L. Rai’s career path in 2018 serves as a metaphor for Bollywood in a year in which this male-star-struck industry has repeatedly struck gold – qualitatively and financially – largely with films it conventionally considers “small” such as Stree, Raazi, Badhaai Ho and Veere Di Wedding, while hyped-up ventures headlined by major gentleman superstars have too often turned out to be damp squibs. As a producer, Rai threw his weight behind the starless fantasy/thriller Tumbbad which released a few months back and has proved to be a pathbreaker with its solid and adventurous writing that earned it glowing reviews and a welcoming audience. Whether or not Zero rakes in big bucks at the box office, it is a spluttering, tottering affair.

If and when you do your next Zero, Mr Rai, do put the screenplay through the same arduous pressure test to which you would subject Tumbbad. Better still, give us more Tumbbads please.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	164 minutes 15 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/zero-movie-review-shah-rukh-khans-comic-timing-is-the-only-thing-going-for-this-spluttering-tottering-affair-5769221.html

Visuals courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/Zero21Dec/

https://www.facebook.com/RedChilliesEnt/