REVIEW 262: GODZILLA (3D)

Release date:	May 16, 2014
Director:	Gareth Edwards
Cast: Language:	Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn English

I’ll make this short: Godzilla is a damp squib. Sixteen years after Roland Emmerich generated shock and awe among my generation of Hollywood film viewers with his take on this Japanese movie monster, Gareth Edwards’ re-telling of the tale comes with just a whiff of a story and adds nothing so dramatically improved by way of special effects to justify a remake.

Like most great monster stories, this one too is meant as an allegory for the potential impact of human interference in nature. Godzilla – or Gojira as the Japanese say – has spawned numerous films, television shows and other art works in multiple languages. This Hollywood remake falls short on too many fronts.

First, it takes incredibly long to give us our first sighting of the gigantic lizard. Second, instead of rushing us through the scientific mumbo-jumbo that is inescapable in such a film, it has a bunch of people just going on and on and on with their jargon before the actual excitement begins. Third, those scientists in Japan – which is where the early part of the film is set – look laughably clueless in comparison with the American scientist who breaks into their work complex… But of course Americans would know better than the Japanese in a Hollywood film. What was I thinking?

Fourth, there are three creatures here, which makes it all slightly confusing, and more to the point: (a) the first two, who are called MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms), look somewhat plastic-metallic and reminded me a bit of those transformers in the Transformers series (b) Godzilla himself is definitely impressive but considering that almost two decades have elapsed since Emmerich made his film, considering the dramatic leaps technology has taken since then, he’s not a particularly earth-shatteringly evolved version of the reptile from that earlier film.

This is not to say that the new Godzilla has no redeeming factors. I did say the central monster himself is an impressive fellow. And the 3D delivers some special moments, particularly when it rains in San Francisco on screen and it feels like it’s raining in the movie hall. There’s also an excellently edited, heartbreaking scene of separation early on in the film involving Bryan Cranston (from TV’s Breaking Bad) and Oscar- and Cesar-winning actress Juliette Binoche.

That, however, is about it. The film’s talented cast is wasted for the most part, though no one gets as raw a deal as Ken Watanabe who plays one of those clueless scientists I was referring to. For the most part of the film, Watanabe’s Dr Serizawa is required to do nothing much but hang about open-mouthed, surrounded by decisive, smart American military fellows in the US as they go about saving the world ... which is America, of course. Unforgivable.

The story – to the extent that I could understand it – involves two MUTOs who feed off radiation. The male MUTO in Japan flies off to the US to mate with a female MUTO, and nature’s way of restoring its balance apparently is to send Godzilla to destroy them ... in America of course! Godzilla apparently resides beneath the ocean and has survived numerous human efforts to destroy it. In the midst of the mayhem caused by the trio – in America of course – the hero’s family is split up. Yes there’s a human hero, but he’s got such a sliver of a written character that I couldn’t have cared less if he’d not been reunited with his son and wife in the end, and had disappeared into the sea with Godzilla instead.

When Dr Serizawa says in one scene, “The arrogance of man is in thinking nature is in our control and not the other way round”, I wanted to punch the screen in irritation because that same point has been made with so much more depth and beauty in far superior films. Remember that crackling early conversation in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Jurassic Park between Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), the park’s owner Jon Hammond (Richard Attenborough) and Hammond’s flunkies, when Malcolm chides them for the collective arrogance in the room and their absolute lack of respect for nature? Remember in that same film, on discovering that the dinosaur eggs in the park have voluntarily mutated to produce different sexes so that they can reproduce (the park’s creators had generated eggs of only one sex to control multiplication), a scientist says in absolute awe: life will find a way? These are among the most memorable scenes in sci-fi/monster film history. Serizawa’s scene is wannabe in comparison.

Sorry, Mr Edwards, it’s not enough that you create a Godzilla of spectacular proportions. I’m afraid you need to build a semblance of a film around him.

Rating (out of five): **

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time: MPAA Rating (US):	122 minutes PG-13 (for intense sequences of destruction, mayhem and creature violence)
Release date in the US:	May 16, 2014

Poster courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla_2014

FILM FATALE: BOLLYWOOD’S PRO-MODI VS NO-MODI DEBATE & THE END OF INDIFFERENCE / COLUMN PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU BUSINESSLINE

(This column by Anna MM Vetticad was first published in The Hindu Businessline on May 10, 2014)

Headline: APOLITICAL NO MORE

Introline: Bollywood seems to have finally shed its political apathy and its infamous reticence

We were all set for the shoot. Lights: check. Camera: check. Makeup: check. My star guest — one of the hottest women in Bollywood — was just entering the room when her publicist whispered in my ear, “Ma’am is requesting you not to ask political questions.” Meaning? No questions about Shah Rukh Khan, right?

In my experience, Hindi movie stars tend to avoid comment on political issues, but they rarely try to pre-censor an interview. This particular actress, however, is known for getting her agent to convey this request to journalists before every long-format Q&A. On earlier occasions, I had laughed it off because I wasn’t interested in her reactions to political affairs then. This was different. This was a month when her industry was engulfed in politics; when Shiv Sena had threatened to block the release of SRK’s My Name is Khan (MNIK) unless he apologised for his remarks about Pakistani players in the IPL. It goes without saying, I refused to agree to her condition and did the interview my way.

This memory from 2010 has flashed through my mind repeatedly this month as a battle rages in Mumbai’s film circles between pro-Modi and no-Modi groups. These people openly sparring over ideology… could they possibly be from the same industry that was once notoriously non-committal about politics or terrified of it?

Unless you’re living in a vacuum, you know where this is coming from. This April, a group of eminent citizens, mostly from Bollywood, issued an appeal to the electorate in the ongoing general election “to vote for the secular party, which is most likely to win in your constituency”. The letter was signed by a cross-section of film personalities including, surprisingly, makers of money-spinning hardcore commercial cinema.

They did not name any politician or party. However, in what must surely rank as a self-goal, BJP supporters in Bollywood have exploded in protest, translating the call to vote for secularism as a call not to vote for Narendra Modi. This is a “conspiracy” to “divide” our industry, they say.

A film journalist cannot but rub her eyes in disbelief as this storm refuses to subside. In the past, political apathy has been a hallmark of Bollywood, unlike some of the other Indian language industries, and in sharp contrast to Hollywood. Even stars who join political parties have rarely publicised their stance on combustive issues. Equally bizarre are some who have canvassed for politicians during polls. In the 2009 election, Salman Khan took the cake, the bakery and the wheat field with it, when he campaigned for candidates from both the BJP and the Congress! I am not supporting parties, I am supporting friends, he explained.

Over the years, even as Bollywood’s right to free speech has continuously been attacked, most victims have bowed to bigots. It’s only fair to point out that protests against art in India usually include physical violence, with the state doing little to protect its people. For political, religious and social groups, targeting artists, especially commercial film folk, is an easy route to publicity. With money and personal safety at stake, Bollywood often asks how they can be blamed when they opt for self-censorship and apologies.

Well, the point is, artists from other fields have shown far greater courage in confronting political goons. So have Mumbai’s documentary makers and some parallel cinema luminaries. Mainstream players in Bollywood though (with a few exceptions such as Mahesh Bhatt and Shabana Azmi) have consistently played it safe.

What then has prompted the change in 2014? A widespread sense of urgency regarding the election this year is one factor. The Aam Aadmi Party’s emergence has also fired the imagination of many who see among the party’s recruits ‘respectable’ folk who don’t fit the stereotypical image of netas. It must be pointed out though that the winds of change have gradually been blowing away the industry’s infamous indifference since 2010.

If time in the Gregorian calendar is divided into BC and AD, then this Bollywood calendar of political evolution can be divided into BM (before MNIK) and AM (after MNIK). When Shiv Sena challenged Shah Rukh four years ago, Bollywood insiders and viewers witnessed the unprecedented phenomenon of a megastar refusing to be cowed down. Spurred on by public and media support, one by one most film personalities — though not all — spoke up for him. Ultimately, despite delays within Maharashtra which hurt the bottomline, MNIK got an all-India release and became a massive hit.

Sometimes, it takes just one courageous individual to discover that a bully is a coward. SRK tugged at the Shiv Sena’s beard and Uddhav Thackeray lost face. The price has been that AM, religious right-wingers have consistently singled out SRK for propaganda and abuse. History must credit him though for forever changing Bollywood.

The ongoing row over Modi is another turning point AM. As more film personalities express political views publicly, there will be strength in numbers and the risk of violence will hopefully decline. Don’t lament an imagined end of unity, dear Bollywood-gazers. Celebrate instead that Bollywood’s political apathy has finally ended. Silence cannot be an option for India’s most high-profile entertainers.

(Anna MM Vetticad is the author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. Twitter: @annavetticad)

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Khan

REVIEW 261: MILLION DOLLAR ARM

Release date:	May 9, 2014
Director:	Craig Gillespie
Cast: Language:	Jon Hamm, Suraj Sharma, Madhur Mittal, Pitobash, Lake Bell, Aasif Mandvi, Bill Paxton, Alan Arkin, Darshan Jariwala, Tzi Ma English with some Hindi

Million Dollar Arm is such a quiet film that it would be easy to under-rate it. Anyone can guess how it will end for the protagonists, yet – unlike most sports films where we already know the central character won that World Cup or breasted that tape at the nth second – this one doesn’t build up an artificial frenzied suspense around the baseball field. What it does is introduce us to this wonderfully gray real-life American sports agent called J.B. Bernstein who plucks two poor boys out of India and takes them to the US to make them Major League Baseball players.

This is a biopic-of-sorts of JB (Jon Hamm) who has been struggling to survive since he started his own business. To save his career, he decides to find baseball’s next big sensation in India, to convert one of the cricket-crazy nation’s bowlers into a baseball pitcher. JB flies off to hold the Million Dollar Arm contest in India. With the help of the crotchety old sports scout Ray (Alan Arkin) and local baseball enthusiast Amit (Pitobash), he finally finds young Rinku Singh (Suraj Sharma) and Dinesh Patel (Madhur Mittal). From there the film takes us through the boys’ discovery of the US, JB’s opportunistic view of them as “investments”, and his gradual conversion from being a “Class A jerk” as his girlfriend calls him.

A story like this is fertile ground for condescension. This could have been a patronising white-man-saves-little-brown-people saga told in the kind of tone we’ve heard from too many Western journalists in the past year while covering India’s anti-rape protests, Moon Mission and other news developments. With masterful deftness though, director Craig Gillespie and writer Tom McCarthy pull back and hold a mirror to JB each time they’re entering tricky territory, giving us a surprisingly sensitive take on alien cultures, disparities and commonalities, underdogs, unwitting racism and white-man-who-is-saved-from-himself.

JB’s early impression of India is a quick composite of crowded roads, traffic jams, chaos and animals on city streets, but at the hands of DoP Gyula Pados nothing is over-emphasised to exoticise. Slumdog Millionaire’s critics may possibly have objections here too, but to be fair, it is but natural for a foreigner to be struck by these overwhelming aspects of India before they notice glitzy hotels, malls, factories and prosperity. It is to Gillespie’s credit that he presents to us these elements of the Indian reality without caricaturing the country.

We get a brief glimpse of Ray sneering at a goat’s kid on a two-wheeler riding beside his car in Mumbai, and an equally fleeting look at JB’s plush hotel in the city. There’s this and there’s that – fair enough then. A.R. Rahman’s music suffers one jarring moment when he includes some bars from Slumdog’s Ringa ringa in the background score, but for the most part it too is engaging and shorn of clichés.

Where the film falls short is in the depiction of the people at large, which could have been more well-rounded without turning Million Dollar Arm into a documentary on India. For instance, the scene depicting the boys’ wide-eyed wonderment when they enter an elevator for the first time is matter-of-fact without being patronising. Of course poor Indian village boys who’ve never been inside a modern building would be fascinated by lifts. In a world where too many Westerners think those are the only kind of Indians in existence though, it is a glaring flaw not to at least briefly introduce viewers to the other kind of Indians, the ‘people like us’ characters, the ones for whom a lift is not a discovery, the ones who are as exasperated by goats and cows on streets as a foreigner might be shocked, amused and bemused.

Million Dollar Arm scores though with its immaculate casting. Few men can play a slimeball in a suit with as many layers as Hamm, well-known in India for his role in TV’s Mad Men. The actor makes JB a character who is hard to hate even when he’s despicable, the sort of chap about whom you feel you know there’s a good guy lurking around somewhere inside him.

Suraj Sharma from Life of Pi is growing into a handsome young fellow, as is the potentially hunky Madhur Mittal who played the wayward elder brother in Slumdog. Both are spot on in their depiction of youthful confidence that occasionally hits a slump. They are so natural before the camera and so charming, that it becomes easy to imagine why JB’s neighbour Brenda would feel a certain tenderness towards them. Brenda is played by Lake Bell who is familiar to Indian viewers from Boston Legal. Her searingly astute observations about JB make for some of the film’s most well-written moments.

Pitobash as Amit is the one who could have ended up being Million Dollar Arm’s only cliched desi. Instead, this gifted actor holds back some of his innate rusticity and exuberance to give us a winning character. The screenplay wisely allows Amit, Rinku and Dinesh to have most of their conversations in Hindi. This gives the dialogues a natural tone, with the Indians speaking not in the stereotypically sing-song, accented English of The Simpsons’ Apu, but in the kind of English and Hindi that real Indians from their particular background would use.

The remaining roles are all played by talented actors who make their few minutes on screen count, including poor Aasif Mandvi who is saddled with the only badly written part. It seems as though someone forgot that business partners are actually supposed to do something in the business. Mandvi’s Ashu Vasudevan seems to contribute little to JB’s firm.

It needs to be pointed out that the film creates the impression that the Million Dollar Arm contest got a lot more coverage in the Indian national media than it did in reality. It should have also been clarified that baseball is many light years away from getting the “billion new viewers” that JB thought his contest would earn for the game in India. This country is still obsessed with cricket, and baseball is still largely a distant sport.

That being said, it goes without saying that the contest changed the lives of the real Rinku and Dinesh. This film though is the heart-warming story of how they changed the real JB’s life. No doubt JB was on an exploitative, self-serving mission, but the boys were too innocent to get that. No doubt the story is focused on JB and not the boys, which some may even see as its failing. However, by the end of its 122 minutes we get to know Rinku and Dinesh just that little bit more and are left with a cloud of warmth floating around the heart. This is a film that’s small in scale, with no pretensions whatsoever to grandeur. Million Dollar Arm is a pleasant and deliberately under-stated ‘melodrama’, as dramatic and real as real life usually is.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time: MPAA Rating (US):	122 minutes PG (for mild language and some suggestive content)
Release date in the US:	May 16, 2014

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