REVIEW 189: AURANGZEB

Release date:	May 17, 2013
Director:	Atul Sabharwal
Cast: Language:	Arjun Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor, Prithviraj Sukumaran, Jackie Shroff, Amrita Singh, Sasheh Aagha, Deepti Naval, Sikander Kher (credited here as Sikandar Berry), Swara Bhaskar, Anupam Kher, Tanve Azmi Hindi

In the future, this country will be controlled by two sets of people: politicians and corporates – sources of extreme power and extreme wealth. The police will derive their strength from deciding who to align with.

These words are uttered by a pivotal character in Aurangzeb. And it is his belief that forms the theme of this latest offering from Yashraj Films. Arjun Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor and Prithviraj Sukumaran form the film’s leading trio. Their playing ground is Gurgaon, the booming city in Haryana that forms a wealthy suburb to the country’s capital, New Delhi. This is hitherto rarely-explored territory in Bollywood. Rishi plays DCP Ravikant who decides to infiltrate the builder-gangster Yashvardhan Singh’s operations taking advantage of the fact that Yashvardhan’s son Ajay has a twin Vishal who has long been considered dead by his father (Arjun plays both boys). Ravikant is supported in his scheme by his nephew/foster son ACP Arya (Prithviraj).

Writer-director Atul Sabharwal has a straight-laced, no-frills approach to storytelling, which is his strength. In fact, if it weren’t for the multiplicity of characters and convoluted relationships that confound the confusion over identical siblings in the last half hour, this is actually a nice film. Unfortunately, if well begun is half done, then poorly ended equals undone, and that’s the problem with Aurangzeb.

Still, while the going’s good, it’s very good. Gurgaon is an ideal setting for this story, its glitzy high-rises rubbing shoulders with acres of vacant land that form a paradise for a builder-politician-criminal-police nexus. The glass-and-chrome buildings, the dusty plots of land, the lonely roads and shrubbery in their vicinity are all well used by director of photography N. Karthik Ganesh to build up a sense of foreboding about the fate of the characters populating the film. Vipin Mishra’s background score is just as effective and understated (though his songs, supplemented by Amartya Rahut, are a tad lifeless).

Most of all there is the cast. God bless this era in Hindi filmdom that provides opportunities such as Aurangzeb to an older talent like Rishi Kapoor. In his second innings in Bollywood, the actor has been exploring so many more avatars than he did in his youth. Nowhere though have his chameleon-like abilities been more in evidence than in this film in which he manages to be menacing despite an extremely personable appearance, brutal yet so hard to dislike.

Last year, Malayalam star Prithviraj had sportingly offered himself up for objectification before Rani Mukerji’s unrelenting gaze in Aiyyaa. In this, his second film in Bollywood, he shows Hindi viewers what fans in Kerala know already: that beyond the handsome face and well-muscled body, there is a fine actor who can stand shoulder to shoulder with a veteran like Rishi and do his director proud. That he has pulled off a north Indian character while only occasionally betraying a hint of a Malayalam accent is just as commendable. If Bollywood has any sense, it will offer this man more roles.

It’s a challenge then for young Arjun Kapoor to not just face up to these two but also a formidable supporting cast while taking on a double role in this, his second film. The verdict: well, he’s good as the spoilt brat Ajay (funny and cute, in fact) but needed to lend some spark to his performance as the more staid Vishal. That he manages to make them different people for us without caricaturing either is notable though. The script shows up a flaw here however – Ajay is supposedly being fed a diet of cocaine and alcohol by his girlfriend, yet when he’s kidnapped and kept away from that lifestyle for a considerable period of time, he shows no signs of withdrawal symptoms. Hmmm.

Salma Agha’s daughter Sasheh Aagha makes an interesting debut in Aurangzeb as Ajay’s much abused girlfriend. There’s one particularly tender scene in which she senses that Vishal is not Ajay, not because of some silly mole or birthmark or any other device favoured by bichhde-hue-bhai Hindi films of the past, but because of his thoughtfulness towards her. It’s nice to see Jackie Shroff as Yashvardhan, inhabiting a worthwhile role in a Hindi film after a long time. And Amrita Singh, who’s suitably evil as his mistress, really should do more films.  

With so much going for it, it’s unfortunate that the last half hour of Aurangzeb is spent mentally trying to figure out which brother is where and trying to recall who is related to who in this web of characters. The handling of a couple of the shootouts too is off the mark leading to some disappointingly un-energetic scenes. A pity, because it’s such a pleasure to see a face-off between the principles of one man whose mantra is “kingship over kinship”, while another believes that “Apnon ki keemat sapnon se bada hota hai”. Maybe next time then, Atul Sabharwal? Hope to see you again soon.

Rating (out of five): **3/4

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	145 minutes

Photograph courtesy: Yashraj Films

REVIEW 188: THE GREAT GATSBY (3D)

Release date:	May 17, 2013
Director:	Baz Luhrmann
Cast: Language:	Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, Carrey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Elizabeth Debicki, Jason Clarke, Amitabh Bachchan English

It’s a small but significant role... That should answer the question on the minds of all Indian film-goers about Amitabh Bachchan’s turn in The Great Gatsby. Now that that’s out of the way… The Great Gatsby is Australian director Baz Luhrmann’s interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920s book, widely considered to be among the greatest American novels ever. This is the story of the decadent rich of the time and their emptily lavish lifestyles; of superficiality and hypocrisy; of a woman who’d rather run away with her lover than make an open declaration of this love before her husband; of a man hopelessly in love, who needs to know that his woman did not feel an iota of emotion for another man in the years they were apart; of a husband who bursts into rage at the realisation that his wife is having an affair, unfettered by the fact that he’s widely known to be sleeping around himself. 

The triumph of Luhrmann’s film – and indeed Fitzgerald’s book – is that it could be transported to the present times with nothing lost in translation. The setting could be a Page 3 party in Delhi in 2013, with guests bitching about their host while sipping glasses of wine; where men still demand a standard of morality from wives that they do not adhere to themselves; where women will go to any lengths to maintain a veneer of ‘respectability’.

Our narrator is Nick Caraway, a World War I veteran who has been advised by his psychiatrist to write out his story as a cathartic exercise. Nick’s typewriter takes us to New York City where he returns after the war, settling into a small house next to the extravagant mansion of a certain Mr Gatsby. No one seems to have ever seen this mysterious billionaire yet his impossibly spectacular parties are attended by everyone. At one of those dos to which he finds himself invited, Nick is sought out by Jay Gatsby. He discovers then that the huge home, the attention-seeking parties, had all been set up by Gatsby to win back the love of his life – Nick’s now-married cousin Daisy Buchanan who was parted from Gatsby many years earlier. 

At one point in the story, Nick tells Gatsby that he’s worth a 100 of those money-laden guests at his parties… It’s a poignant moment, because Gatsby has just been taunted for his roots in poverty and for the source of his present income. Poignance, though, is not the dominating force in this film that is touching in places, but in the overall analysis is sadly pulled down by Luhrmann’s obsession with flawless visuals. No doubt Gatsby’s galas – complete with fireworks, acrobats and live singers – required a helmsman with a grand vision (and who better than the director of Moulin Rouge for that). But that vision somehow translates into a sense of detachment from the goings-on as the second half comes around. Even the 3D seems like a pointless indulgence. Towards the start, Nick sees himself as a figure both inside and outside his story. As a viewer, the persistent feeling is of being outside; of not being entirely drawn into the proceedings on screen, somewhat like in a Sanjay Leela Bhansali production where there is so much perfection in the visual settings that the film is robbed of sentiment.

The costumes in The Great Gatsby are to-die-for. The music builds up the frenetic pace of the dizzying celebrations in Gatsby’s home. The parties have been excellently re-created by the film’s production design team with a deliberately undisguised use of CG enhancing the sense of artificiality and sterile beauty. Now if only they had been restrained elsewhere, giving the characters more natural-looking spaces to unleash themselves with full force upon us.

Of the cast, Tobey Maguire as Nick is a disappointment, walking through the entire film with pretty much the same facial expression, except when a touch of incredulity flits across his face at the wild party he attends with Daisy’s husband Tom Buchanan and his mistress. Carey Mulligan as Daisy aptly conveys the character of a woman so flippety that she is not indifferent as much as she simply forgets the people she supposedly loves. What she does not do though is convince us that she has the charisma to have kept Gatsby in her thrall for so long. This failing is underlined by the striking presence of actress Elizabeth Debicki playing Jordan Baker, a golf player who belongs to the Buchanans’ social circle and has more to her character than Daisy’s puddle-deep feelings. Bachchan is effective as Gatsby’s business associate. It’s a cameo that required a star with a towering personality, and Luhrmann has chosen well here.

The pick of the cast though is Leonardo DiCaprio who is wonderful as the protagonist living a lonely, hollow life despite being surrounded by material goods and people. He is confident yet not pompous as he strides past his guests, not entirely displeased with the knowledge that he’s important enough to be gossiped about; he’s tender and vulnerable as he watches Daisy dance through his home with joy at seeing what he has made of himself; he explodes like a prize fighter in that scene when he is being reviled for his background; and when he meets Daisy for the first time since his return, he is a shy, awkward kid. This is what we needed more of to put the Great in The Gatsby. Alas, there’s just not enough.

Rating (out of five): **3/4

  

CBFC Rating (India):	A
MPAA Rating (US):	PG-13 (for some violent images, sexual content, smoking, partying and brief language)
Release date in the US:	May 10, 2013
Running time:	146 minutes

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby_(2013_film)