Tamasha- An Act Worth Applause

‘There is a notion I would like to see buried- the ordinary person’- Alan Moore, ‘Watchmen’.

Imtiaz Ali had always done the same with all his films- discarding the ‘ordinary person’, favoring instead extraordinarily sketchy and intriguingly enigmatic characters on journeys that take them places but also bring them back to homes, love or even loss. These are people, who want to break free, follow their heart, even as it leads them to certain defeat- and their journeys, while not always ending on a satisfying note, nevertheless leave the viewers uplifted, spellbound. As it happens, Ali is a storyteller of a higher class- his films based on well-worn premises of love, self-discovery and spiritual adventure but the beauty of them lies in the telling- the immaculate, multi-layered way of telling these tall tales.

‘Tamasha’- a sprawling romp of a film, living up to its rambunctious name- is all about that- storytelling. It is a film which tells an often-told tale with unbridled passion, unexpected quirk and whimsy and fine little nuances that make the tale totally new. It does take you on an enthralling ride, but not as much into the charming Corsica or the various dreadnoughts on the film’s narrative map into which the film shifts from time to time, but rather into the tortured soul of its bewildered -and equally bewildering- protagonist.

It begins like all Imtiaz Ali films on a totally unpredictable note- we are escorted, from a theatrical stage scene to a wonderfully nuanced flashback- in which our protagonist, Ved, is a young boy who can’t quite solve math problems and, with eyes hinting at great mysteries inside his soul, grows up drinking deeply from what Salman Rushdie called ‘The Sea Of Stories’.

The writer-director has always been known for blending both spectacular quirk and terrific detail in both the visual palette and the banter between his staunchly progressive characters and all this comes in spades in these irresistibly charming early moments. Ved’s mind, buzzing with stories, rattled off by a grizzly, bearded old Shah Of Blah, who charges fixed rates for his tall tales, is also alive and throbbing with cinematic versions of the most pulpy tales- from The Ramayana to Laila Majnu- and the film’s dreamlike, hallucinatory style captures them all- in grainy, handheld digital video glory-from the larger-than-life Ramleela acts to the stage scenes of romantic separation and blending them together with Ved’s own hyperactive imagination-cramming in all the people he sees around him. It is a fabulous prelude, a gloriously unhinged celebration of the power of storytelling and it sets the film’s twisted premise perfectly.

Our main tale begins in sun-kissed Corsica, the island on which Napoleon Bonaparte was born, and with the equally sun-drenched Tara, a spunky girl who then meets a guy unlike any other. The thing is, the guy is here for an adventure, albeit one inspired by 70’s Bollywood and calling himself ‘Don’, decides to take along Tara for a gallop of ribaldry across this jaw-dropping beautiful island. One condition- they will never tell each other’s truths to each other (ala ‘The Last Tango In Paris’) and they will never meet each other again.

The breezy and breathtaking first half is dedicated mostly to a fascinatingly unconventional romantic repartee between its leads. I would hate to reveal more of this portion- except for how amazingly Ali handles the moments ripe for dullness with great emotional deftness- a touchingly poignant embrace is rendered as subtly romantic and the sexual sparks, while evident, are portrayed with a grown-up maturity unseen in most romances today.

However, ‘Tamasha’ is not really a romance. Far from one, it is instead a character drama centering on its inherently muddled-up character. Tara discovers that the man whom she fell in love with, at an island seven seas away is actually a humdrum, mediocre, office-worker back home. It is at this juncture that the film shifts completely to Ved and while it does reveal all his inner demons-with both whimsical glee and genuine empathy- it is here that Ali’s breakneck pace, so far, slows down and things begin to drag.

Yet, yet. As always, it is largely in how the film tells it story that ‘Tamasha’ gets its wonderfully quirky yet melodious rhythm. The film delights in its dry, verbose humor- Ali’s portrayal of the monotonous routine of Ved’s office life is subtly humorous but his depiction of the twin selves inside this man- best accentuated by his ideas of a romantic date being predictably a dinner or a movie- is equally profound- both drily hilarious and emotionally affecting at the same time. For a good amount of time, the film lavishes attention on Ved’s unpredictable nature- literally a ticking time bomb of a person, tossing cheekily nonsensical words between presentations and yet trying to adjust to a boss, obsessed funnily with neckties.

The fact that Ved merely wants to follow his true vocation-storytelling- is perhaps as simple as the premise can be but ‘Tamasha’ truly makes its mark by the little but crucial ways in which it deviates from formula. Another film would have tweaked out the bipolar behavior of Ved and turned it into a trashy thriller- this one sticks to his tale and tells it in ingenious ways that make the difference.

There is so much to admire in the film’s wonderful touches- the fact that a troupe of bohemian musicians sing along that addictive ‘Heer To Badi Sad’ ballad, beautifully used against Tara’s desolate quest for happiness. Or that fabulous rickshaw driver, who used to be a singing sensation in his hometown- a small but pivotal character who takes the film on a thrilling new path- along with that inanely catchy ‘Wat Wat Wat’ song. A. R Rahman belts out an elaborate, if slightly uneven, score to go along with the film’s perfectly captured moods, S. Ravi Varman shoots with immersive beauty and Aarti Bajaj edits as if cutting across psychedelic images and visions but the best part about ‘Tamasha’ is how light Ali’s direction feels- wrapping up this fable with amazing confidence in his material- making even moments like the son-father confrontation or the final romantic reunion genuinely uplifting and tongue-in-cheek by turns, by the blend of great dialogue and solid visual sense to go along with them. A common criticism for his films has been a lack of focus but things remain wonderfully in place and focused here.

The actors all have a ball- Piyush Mishra is magnificent as the said wizened raconteur who frequently muddles together details (much to Ved’s nitpicking chagrin), Javed Sheikh plays stern patriarchy without being ruthless or unfeeling, Vivek Mushran is quite a lot of fun as a boss who prizes behavior over performance and finally, we boil down to Deepika Padukone as Tara and Ranbir Kapoor as Ved, playing a pair so full of both spunk as well as simmering emotions, that they alone shoulder the film on the sheer irresistible spark of their chemistry. Individually, Padukone is quite super- with both plucky mischief (the way she says Mata Hari in a Japanese falsetto) as well as vulnerability (the way she fidgets when openly asking Ved if he has a girlfriend yet). But this is Kapoor’s film and he makes it fly, blending enigma, alluring mischief and psychological pain in an extraordinary way to command a whole movie. It is his finest hour.

‘Tamasha’ is a wonderful tale, an old-school tale which preaches us all to follows our hearts and shed routine (and those scene-stealing, ravishing Corsican locales help) but while the other films this year saying the same thing (the heartless ‘Dil Dhadakne Do’ and the silly ‘Shandaar’) were basically dampeners, this one soars merely by the way Ali tells it- with trademark flourishes of wit, whimsy and hearty emotions. As Mishra’s weary storyteller would say, what is wrong if the story is the same, just settle in and listen to it anyway. The same would apply to the film, even as it does deviate gloriously from formula. Good films get us drunk on the power of cinema, this one does something better- getting us all drunk on the power of storytelling.

My Rating- 4 Stars out of 5.

Spectre- A Waltz With Old School Bond

     

                             

Christoph Waltz was born to play a Bond villain.

It is not just how good the actor plays slithery evil, coating that core of pitch-black insidious evil with a fascinating flair for the spoken word and the sly grin. Rather it is also how his sheer, self-assured essence hints at the promise of bigger things taking place sooner or later. Whenever anything as much as his shadow has appeared on the fringes of the screen- either as the devilishly vicious colonel or the lightning-quick bounty hunter- everyone else- and we the audience as well-is rubbing his or her hands in abated breath, gleefully or nervously anticipating what may come ahead, aware that it must be something incredible.

Director Sam Mendes clearly knows this and fashions his second Bond film as much as he casts Waltz in a masterstroke as the original Bond nemesis with unabashed sensational pulp. 

This is a 24^th outing that feels like a leisurely yet thrillingly prolonged foreplay of a film- a film which is unafraid to let the brooding tone dominate its proceedings but which is also primarily concerned for the big bang- often compromising plausibility for a pulpy, wishful premise that is all about delivering big, brassy moments- a film which blares its jazzy beats as loudly as possible.

The result is ‘Spectre’- an unruly, uneven beast of a Bond entertainer, which might skimp on the grittiness of the new world of the forever-young spy but nevertheless doles out healthy servings of classic, preposterous Bond- plenty of eye-candy, welcome banter between the proceedings and a wonderful sense of self-depreciation that undercuts the stakes and makes it all a heady guilty pleasure. Think of it as not a film vying for resonance or even emotional connect but all giddy sensation- like your favorite cocktail served in a svelte-looking glass.

It begins with perhaps the finest, most beautifully choreographed pre-credits sequence in quite some time. It is the Day Of The Dead in a dusty Mexico, a macabre occasion, a celebration of impending death and we glide in and out of the feverish crowds of commoners and death-heads in the sweaty ghettos. It is a moment of compelling hypnotic intrigue- with Mendes and master-cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema following Bond, right after he discards both a woman and his death-head mask, leaping from roof to roof, on his way to a mission with Scorsese-like relentlessness before it all erupts into a pulse-pounding action setpiece oscillating beautifully from the sunbaked skyline to the frenetic crowds below. One gets the idea- this is a film soaked in testosterone.

Despite the daredevilry, Bond returns not to applause but rather some bad news. The new M, played with hard-nosed charm by Ralph Fiennes, is angry over his brash actions while it happens that the 00 section, deemed as obsolete, is closing shop. Still, Bond has a secret mission up the sleeve of his jacket and he chooses to go at it with typical pluck, stealing along the new Aston Martin DB9- a particularly feisty-looking vehicle- along for the ride, taking him from melancholic Rome to frosty Austria to blistering North Africa- as well as into some dark personal territory.

The film rarely wastes time to settle down on the basics- there is a secret community which is creating global chaos and it is run by an overlord who makes his introduction in a heart-stopping sequence of silent dread. Like how the terrible ‘Quantum Of Solace’ followed up ‘Casino Royale’, Mendes’ new film takes a drastic approach, with writers John Logan, Neil Purvis and Robert Wade suggesting that the said community had to do with all the catastrophes demonstrated in all the previous three Bond outings. Clearly, there is a dark truth here somewhere and the film teases it out eventually but it takes its own time to do the same, cramming in a parallel track of a possible coup inside the MI6 and Bond sharing the camaraderie- and even some twisted romance as well.

While Mendes’ last film, the beautifully-crafted, if a bit too simplistic, ‘Skyfall’ balanced its emotional pathos with clever banter, this one tries to blend both together in the same brew and while there is enough fun for the fans and casual viewers alike, the tone of the proceedings somewhat jars and there is ultimately an emotional coldness here that makes us not care particularly about the fate of its characters- though the final hour does bring the film on an even keel, even as things blow up with great élan all around.

It is precisely for the explosions, the chases, the guns and gadgets that Mendes wants us to care for and boy, they are all served in grand style- echoing the pulpy, fun-filled mood of those sixties Bond films, which were seldom about things more serious than saving the day in style and bombast. ‘Spectre’ delights the audiences gleefully with its fascinating blend of the old and the new- a mixture that is most successful on the action front. Hoytema shoots with relentless energy and moody aesthetic Mendes’ globe-trotting narrative. The helicopter scuffle of the beginning is as intense and immediate as the pumped-up action that we see in all recent Craig outings while a sleek car chase in the streets and stairways of Rome is vintage fun for the true-blue Bond fans- with some funs with gadgets, terrific sight gags and Craig’s Bond himself not afraid to let dry witticisms flow from his mouth. In scenes like these, the film pays its homage to the past without ever forgetting its post-modernist streak and the result are clean-cut action scenes packed with both pomp and punch- just watch out the raw fist-fight inside a train (rivalling the one in ‘From Russia With Love’) or the climactic finale in London, in which clocks are ticking with all intention to explode with a wallop.

The film works, thus, better than expected; even for its rambling 150 minute duration, this is a film which entertains us more than it would seem likely. Even as the main narrative lacks focus, there are plenty of touches- both in the film’s witty asides and sight gags- Bond landing on a sofa after a deadly fall, the Aston Martin’s in-built machine guns lacking ammunition and so on- as well as into the main strokes- the redemption of Mr. White or the ultimate secret of the nemesis and his connection to Bond- which more than compensate and add a lot of substance to the style all around.

Craig is reliably great as Bond and more affable than ever. He is still searing in the action but- and this is a welcome surprise-he has also learned quite a bit to belt out the occasional wisecrack- either when ordering a martini in vain in a health clinic or leering unashamedly over his prized vehicle inside Q’s garage. Pretty much everyone is in good shape with enough leg space- in particular, Fiennes as an unsmiling yet suave M and Ben Whishaw as the mild-mannered and geeky Q, increasingly nonplussed over Bond’s exploits. As for the ladies, Monica Bellucci is frankly wasted as an emotionally torn widow and appears more of a casting indulgence but Lea Seydoux brings both snap and heat to the proceedings- initially all vulnerable and steadily turning strong-willed and diligent enough to pack a punch into the film’s most slack moments.

This brings us to the main talking point of the film- Waltz as the film’s villain- Franz Oberhause (or is he really that?). We have had a fairly good time with good actors over the years playing these enjoyable villains but Waltz is already of a different class- embodying even his silent stares with seething menace. His introduction- cloaked in silhouettes-might be one of the finest scenes in the film- his words, elaborate and spoken with gingerly grace, are marvelous and all his moments are those which make you sit up with palpable excitement. The only downer is that we can’t get enough of him in the film- but we look forward to a comeback later in the series.

‘Spectre’ is a beautifully choreographed film- a mesmeric, elaborate dance of waltz (spell that in capitals) which celebrates the old-school charm of vintage James Bond in spades, without forgetting to be firmly modern in its tone. It may not have the best story out there and it will be sometime before Mendes actually beats Martin Campbell, yeah but like those evergreen Connery classics, this one wants to have a load of fun- with both gadgetry and just a little dash of seriousness to satisfy the hardcore fans as well as the newbies. This is no Martini but rather a tall drink of old ingredients, but oh how beautifully it plays the beats of that famous theme music at every single sip so that we gladly swallow it in.

My Rating- 4 Stars Out Of 5

Titli- Stings Like A Butterfly

In a newly evolving, gradually urbanizing world, the air is coated with dust.

The dust, flung from the massive pits into which concrete is poured and steel rods are implanted, is something that blocks out the glint of the sunlight, to the effect that even as it is bright and glitzy in this new town, the grey skies bear down on the denizens of the ground.

In the little, crammed ghettoes that lie at the periphery of these wannabe skyscrapers, the dust is an element of the land- like the muddy water flowing from squeaky faucets, the greasy icing on a birthday cake or the sweat and blood that flows in its gutters. It coats your face, your clothes and even your conscience.

Kanu Behl’s sobering, stunningly bleak debut is about a youngster trying to escape the grime, the filth and the moral decay that surrounds him in the form of his psychotically-messed up siblings. But while there is enough argument in his favor, as to make us empathize with his world-weary gaze at a pitch-dark world around him, by the end of the tough-to-stomach tale, he himself ends up throwing up all the filth that has accumulated in him for his single-minded dream.

‘Titli’ is indeed a harrowingly brutal tale of trying to break free in a cruel world whose walls won’t really cave in but Behl’s nuanced storytelling help to make even the unpalatable vital, organic and pretty much unmissable.

The eponymous slacker is a particularly unhappy, listless young man, who has dreams of buying up some parking floor space in a newly developing mall in Gurgaon. He needs to cough up a chunk of cash for that and when he steals the same from his elder siblings, such is his incompetence that he loses it all too.

The elder brothers, a hair-trigger Vikram (Ranvir Shorey) and the calmer and possibly homosexual Bawla (Amit Sial) are naturally furious. Together, the three brothers jack vehicles on lonely highways, with always bloody results and after the said money goes missing after a job gone wrong, Vikram is most infuriated on knowing that his younger brother wants to fly the coop.

The family decides to get Titli married and the girl, a middle-class college girl by the name of Neelu, is chosen and eventually considered for manipulation by this all-male ensemble. What begins from here is a twisted tale of man-woman relationships, with Behl and co-writer Sharat Katariya offering ruthless but often precise insights on the skewed gender and socio-economic issues at play in this godforsaken hinterland.

But while the premise might sound like that of a gritty caper- Titli deals with the reluctant Neelu to let her meet her married lover, while she herself helps him out with the money- rest assured, it isn’t. This is hardly what you call a thriller. Rather this is the kind of intelligent, astute character drama that we have forgotten to make. Instead of glorifying Titli or merely lambasting his flawed, fearsome yet believable brothers, this is a film which admirably does not choose sides and keeps everything real.

Behl, who assisted producer Dibakar Banerjee for the searing ‘Love Sex Aur Dhokha’, showcases a cannily similar flair for both authentic flavoring as well as deliciously clever nuance crammed in the most unlikely ways. ‘Titli’’s barely furnished mise-en-scene-shot evocatively with 16mm cameras by Siddharth Diwan-is nevertheless alive and throbbing with meticulous detail- from dinners of gravies made with ‘sattu’, to the choice of sub-par cinema playing on the midget TV screens, from the dank lighting of the bedrooms to the cardboard boxes as improvised furnishings in a house as bare as bones. It is all fantastically crafted and Behl and Diwan often craft mesmerizingly earthy sequences- sequences so terrifically soaked in well-timed silences- Titli gazing at a humming insect inside his lampshade, Bawla gazing at women shaving men at a roadshow, Vikram momentarily pausing as a victim’s blood spurts on his face and Neelu crying silent tears on her dim-lit nuptial night, not so much of grief but rather of hideous fear of the lithe monster lying beside her.

But all that would have been a window-dressing if the narrative had not been as nuanced as the visual cues on display. The dialogue often crackles and naturally so- the profane lines barked out with raw immediacy, the more spontaneous wisecracks often hilarious (at one point, Bawla bursts out that women make great salespeople for almost everything) and the quieter moments (the ones in which Titli and Neelu try to bond awkwardly) have a solid ironic punch that lends great weight to crucial scenes. The writing is often a marvel, the characters are all disgustingly flawed yet all too real and it would be a crime to reveal more of this.

‘Titli’ is not really a family drama, as much as it is not a crime caper. The pacing is fantastically unhurried but after a time, and a particularly flawless first hour, there are a few rough spots in the narrative, more out of Behl’s first-time ambition rather than any inherent problem. For one thing, the storyline often diverts from the central thread of Titli’s dysfunctional siblings and shifts its focus to the two hapless leads. While this warrants some starkly beautiful moments, the focus is a bit inconsistent. The violence is often bald and grotesque and there is one moment which will bring down a hail of gasps but the humor is often fascinatingly crueler. This is a film in which a little daughter repeats her new guardian’s curse blankly, where a man is infuriated over the difference of maroon and red, where a test drive turns from smart-mouthed to gruesome, where a husband breaks his wife’s hand so that the fixed deposit dowry can be settled and so much more.

Both newcomers, Shashank Arora as the lean and mean Titli, and Shivani Raghuvanshi as the spunky Neelu, are quite fabulous. Arora grounds his character’s despair in a blend of horrific chauvinism and believable weariness, while Raghuvanshi nails that fine balance of vulnerability and spirited pluck. 

But the show often belongs to the great actors around them- Sial is impressively balanced between rage and genuine empathy, Lalit Behl, the director’s father, is quite exceptional as the idle patriarch, content to sink his biscuits into tea even as his sons argue. And the best of all is Shorey- fiery, hot-blooded, hilariously sentimental and yet with a wonderfully mushy core in his messed up soul- just check out how he tries to please Neelu at the breakfast table.

‘Titli’ is not a film everyone can digest. Behl fashions a bleak, restrained, desaturated world in which the brightest color might be that of smear of blood. It tells volumes of the fundamentally screwed-up nature of parenting and family upbringing in the country’s massive lower classes but not all of it is communicated directly and there is more to than this sprawling film than meets the eye. It does not quite answer its arguments to satisfying effect but that is perhaps the part of its untamable, angry beauty- a film which, like the harsh reality of the brutal terrain it explores, has an ending far from perfect. Still, both the climax and the film’s raw power give us hope- for cinema in particular.

My Rating- 4 and a half stars out of 5