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 352: SHAANDAAR

Release date:	October 22, 2015
Director:	Vikas Bahl
Cast: Language:	Alia Bhatt, Shahid Kapoor, Pankaj Kapur, Sushma Seth, Sanah Kapoor, Sanjay Kapoor, Vikas Verma Hindi

The road to cinematic boredom is paved with grand intentions.

There are  moments in Shaandaar when you can almost imagine what writer-director Vikas Bahl was hoping to achieve during the conceptualisation of this project. Like those scenes in which Jagjinder Joginder (Shahid Kapoor) and Alia Arora (Alia Bhatt) read each other’s dreams. Or when Shahid, Alia, Pankaj Kapur, Vikas Verma and debutant Sanah Kapoor join forces for an argument via the song Senti wali mental – the sets are delicious, the choreography is imaginative, the music is fun and the lyrics sparkle with each character’s convictions.

This then is what the film could have been: an unusual blend of Wes Anderson’s whimsy, Baz Luhrmann’s over-the-top, luxurious fantasia and Manmohan Desai’s emotion, zest and verve.

Sadly, Shaandaar works only in bits and pieces. It has its heart in the right place as is evident from the messages it tries to convey – about stereotypical definitions of beauty, adoption (some well-intentioned misfiring there), children making their own life choices, the superficiality of the happiness money can buy, and the pursuit of both happiness and wealth. It is also sporadically funny. The rest seems lost somewhere in the recesses of Vikas and his co-writers Anvita Dutt and Chaitally Parmar’s minds, like an inside joke floating around perhaps among those clouds that inhabit Alia’s and Jagjinder’s dreams in the story.

It breaks the heart to say this since Vikas directed last year’s best Bollywood film, Queen, which he co-wrote with Anvita, Chaitally, Parveez Shaikh and actress Kangna Ranaut herself. Queen was brilliant. Shaandaar, on the other hand, struggles from the word go.

The story is set in a castle in the English countryside where two wealthy Indian families gather for a destination wedding. The Punjabi Aroras’ overweight daughter Isha (Sanah) is set to marry the Sindhi body-flaunting gym enthusiast Robin Fandwani (Vikas). She is a nice girl who loves her dad (Pankaj), her adopted sister Alia and good food. He is an egotistical, protein-shake-swilling twit who loves himself. Their union is being pushed primarily by the Arora family’s matriarch, Isha’s grandmother (Sushma Seth), to save her clan from bankruptcy. In the run-up to D-day, Alia gets romantically involved with Jagjinder who is their wedding planner.

Going by standard practice in mainstream Bollywood, you might assume that the film revolves mainly around Alia and Shahid’s characters. It does not. There are many sub-stories within this story, and that’s the first step at which Shaandaar falters. Ensemble scripts require a great deal of directorial and writing skill to keep us equally involved with all the characters even as the spotlight continuously shifts from one to the other. Shaandaar cannot  pull that off. Each time it focuses on Alia and Jagjinder, Isha recedes into the background; each time it moves to Isha and Robin, the other two seem to fade away; and so on. The result is an erratic, bumpy narrative.

The occasional, genuinely comedic portions are pulled down by laboured efforts to be cool and humourous elsewhere. The Sindhis in the film for instance – gold-swathed, money-obsessed loud mouths – are caricatures, yet not unabashedly over-done enough to be funny. Karan Johar’s cameo is contrived (KJo leering at a male star is a tired joke that really really needs to be retired). And what were those panties doing on Alia’s plate? No one tells us so it’s fair to assume that that lingerie’s only purpose was to contribute an intriguing element to the film’s trailer.

In such a scenario, it’s hard to analyse the acting. The cast is talented, but there are no stand-out performances. Since Shahid delivered a career best in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider just last year, this is proof – if any was needed – that no actor is better than the written material at hand. At a couple of places, it even seems as though Alia – usually a sparkler – loses interest in the film.

Still, let it be placed on the record that Sushma Seth looks regal, and Vikas Verma and Sanah are promising. I enjoyed Vikas’ dancing in Senti wali mental and his willingness to make a fool of himself on screen because that was a requirement of the role. Sanah – Shahid’s half sister – has a warm, likeable personality and she holds her own in the presence of established stars.

Let it also be placed on the record that everything and everyone in Shaandaar looks pretty.

That’s it. Team Shaandaar is clearly aiming at a certain quirkiness that it fails to achieve for the most part. In fact, the animated sequences grow tiresome once it becomes clear that the film has more style than substance. The basic plot and other-worldly look suggest a nod to old European fairytales, but Shaandaar doesn’t go all out in that direction either. And the strand about the plus-sized Isha’s self-esteem, well meaning though it is, is put in the shade by Sharat Katariya’s consistently heart-warming film Dum Laga Ke Haisha that was released early this year.

There was a smoothness to Queen that indicated great teamwork. Shaandaar, on the other hand, feels like patchwork. Take that scene in which a gay man comes out of the closet before his relatives. It leads to a sweetly amusing response from the family that is promptly followed by a moment of stereotyping in which he aims a gun at someone with the limpest wrist ever seen in Bollywood. It’s as though two separate mindsets were operating within that idea.

Well, never mind. I loved Queen so much that I plan to pretend to myself that Shaandaar never happened. Until your next film then, Vikas…

Rating (out of five): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	144 minutes

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaandaar