20 Greatest Films Of The 2010s

20 – Gully Boy (2019)

To dismiss Ms. Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy as merely an Indian counterpoint to the frequently rehashed rap film would be to deny the film’s vivid but never exaggerated realism; a year or two from now, we might question the very resonance of its rousing story – of a scrappy but starry-eyed boy from Bombay’s ghettos who rises from anonymity to fame as a poet of grungy rap – but as for now, it truly captures the zeitgeist of our times. Mr. Ranveer Singh’s Murad, the said struggler simmering with anguish to break free from the stifling social mores that cow him down, is clearly his finest hour. Rarely has an actor with such a reserve of physical energy harnessed it so skilfully to create a living and breathing portrait of despair and determination. He is almost matched by Ms. Alia Bhatt’s electrically vivacious Safina, with fury bottled up in her almost petite frame and clawing with equal fervour to bend open the bars of her own gilded cage. And it is their cry of defiance and freedom that rings the loudest and truest in what could have been yet another film about rise to riches and glory.

19 – Fan (2016)

If Mr. Shah Rukh Khan had not starred in the leading role, or roles, Maneesh Sharma’s Fan would have been merely another expensively produced suspense film, like so many that get released and it would have probably not even made to the fringes of this list. As it happens, though, there is certainly more to this film than meets the eye but without Mr. Khan playing both a fictional version of his own film star personality and an obsessed admirer who happens to possess an uncanny resemblance, it could have been a lot less intelligent. Long before last year’s mischievously metaphysical AK vs AK, this was the first film to skewer the almost deified public image of the ubiquitous film star and also the ludicrous deification that exaggerates this very image in the first place. Is it high time since one of the country’s most popular film actors wondered whether he is still relevant to today’s audiences? Are our admirers so willingly blind that they can imitate even muscles created by a computer? It is to the credit of Mr. Khan’s compulsive yet hauntingly credible performances and to Fan’s advantage that the dual portrait that emerges makes us believe that anything is possible in the world of films. 

18 – English Vinglish (2012)

Ms. Gauri Shinde’s film is a simple but stirring tale of a humdrum but happy housewife who discovers inside her a zealous winner who just needed a contest to break free from that very mould. It is not the most exciting, startling or ingenious of stories as usually put to the screen but it is a story, rather admirably, that cheers and even celebrates the most seemingly easy victories that this admirably mild-mannered housewife earns on her own pluck. It was wise of Ms. Shinde to cast Ms. Sridevi, who, in her youth, played only characters the very opposite of mild-mannered or meek, as this said housewife. The actress reins herself in deftly and creates a woman of such convincing flesh and blood and such plausible development. The pluck with which she goes around distributing sweetmeats in her neighbourhood, the wounded pride with which she listens to her daughter’s jibes, the greater pain of being misunderstood when her husband waves off her misgivings and finally the confident stride with which she both learns English, corrects others at their mistakes and navigates the streets of Manhattan, these are all vivid, fascinating shades of a wonderfully rounded character and as they coalesce together seamlessly, we realise that this is the finest portrait of a woman discovering herself. 

17 – Talvar (2015)

In 2008, the Noida double murder case, with a thirteen-year old girl as one of the victims, shocked and stunned the police, the press and other people across the country to silence. It inspired a lot of stale gossip but also one of the most intelligent and astute films ever made in the last decade. Ms. Meghna Gulzar’s Talvar, written by Mr. Vishal Bhardwaj, is a thriller with a difference. It does not try to seek out the truth of what had really happened on that fateful night, but rather reveals the deeper and more disturbing truth of our own biases and partial assumptions about the murder and then gives us a hero, in Mr. Irrfan Khan’s determined Avinash Kumar, who tries to wield the titular sword of justice, only to find the rust of corruption and prejudice blunting its edge. As an investigative film, too, it is enlivened by a perversely comic sense of realism; the incompetent police officer who muddies the evidence, the poisonous banter of the people being interviewed on national television, the cold-blooded subterfuge within the walls of the intelligence bureau and finally the laughably prudish officer who describes a missionary position in chaste Hindi, these are all unmistakable signs of a morbid darkness in front of which the real crime itself becomes insignificant.

16 – Love, Sex Aur Dhokha (2010)

Never mind its deliberately pulpy name; Mr. Dibakar Banerjee’s film, shot entirely with grainy and hand-held cameras, feels so markedly real that you would almost smell the sterile air-conditioning air of the supermarket, run by a defeated, debt-ridden man, or even taste the chlorine of the swimming pool where a corpulent man lounges as an image of gaudy vulgarity. Never before cinema, at least Indian cinema, has been so willingly honest to bare the mediocre, bawdy and all-too-true realities of a morally corrupt but still redeemable society with such blunt wit and shocking audacity. Threading together three tales of doomed love, accidental lust and intentionally malicious betrayal, Love, Sex Aur Dhokha also introduced us to a cast of real, broken, flawed people played by young, almost anonymous faces with such believability that we never, for once, judge them for even their most grotesque failings or disbelieve in the last reserve of virtue in their pathetic souls. And yet, this is a film that startles and horrifies as much as it amuses, with perverse humour running through the tight narratives, a humour mined skilfully from the very blackness of urban depravity and decay. There is no contrived happy ending here but at least the film reminds us that to err is, after all, to be human. 

 

15 – Udta Punjab (2016)

There are, I think, only a few directors in our film industry who not only understand the rich potency of a good story but also know how to translate it skilfully to the screen with an equally solid grasp on the sense of realism and conviction. Mr. Abhishek Chaubey happens to be one of them and while Udta Punjab, a mostly grim and grimy story of the drug scene of Punjab and a few characters trying to make some sense of it, borrows its format from Traffic and its narrative beats from British fiction, with such skill does he and co-writer Sudeep Sharma adapt these influences to the milieu of the said state and India that we never detect even the slightest hint of this permissible foreign impression; everything feels urgently, immediately Indian in flavour and detail. The frequently high-strung pop-star, played with such tremendous spontaneity by Mr. Shahid Kapoor, is as believable as the beaten-and-bruised migrant worker, played with equal ardour and emotional ferocity by a nearly unrecognisable Ms. Alia Bhatt: both, after all, struggle to escape the muddle that they have landed themselves in. Like the rest of this region and like the rest of the world; the film’s greatest strength is its almost universal resonance.

14 – Tumbbad (2018)

Before Tumbbad arrived, horror was one of our most abused genres, ruined by a glaring lack of quality, wildly exaggerated performances and much unintentional hilarity. Directors Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad stabbed that genre with a surge of not only violence and terror but also such pure photographic beauty and such profound subtext flowing through the frequently shocking narrative that it will be impossible, even as things become horrifying, to look away from the screen. A timeless, haunting and elegiac tale of gluttonous greed and its bloody consequences, Tumbbad is also a handsomely mounted period piece. Mr. Pankaj Kumar’s cinematography is not only absorbing and epic but also perceptive, detailed and poetic; an unmistakable sense of fateful life can be discerned from the masterful way in which he frames his characters against the meticulously recreated pre-independence background of the story. And the storyline, of a secret of treasure passed down from generation to generation and of an utterly greedy prospector who cannot keep his hands away from the treasure even with the grotesque demons to protect it, has a rich resonance and is suffused with irony; the very real and believable performances are of help too. In the end, the real horror lies not in those hideous monsters but rather lies coiled in a heart blackened and burned out by corruption. 

13 – Lootera (2013)

It is hard to categorise the films of Mr. Vikramaditya Motwane; he is one of the few directors of the last ten years who have had the skill and versatility to try out successfully many variations of the popular film: coming-of-age drama, existential thriller, vigilante film and even a metaphysical film. But it is Lootera that is his finest film, a skilful adaptation of a tale by O. Henry if simply for telling what could have been a predictable film narrative with the same rich depth and perceptive wit to be found in a story to be read in a book. Even beyond its literary integrity, however, this is a film of uncommon skill and mesmerising beauty. The simple story– of the titular thief who pretends to be an archaeologist and ends up falling in love with the delightfully naïve daughter of the very zamindar on whose wealth he has planned his designs – is brought to life with the most credible strokes of characterisation and vividly elegant touches of plausible period detail. As Mr. Motwane skilfully orchestrates the unlikely but palpably passionate romance and then the heart-rending betrayal, he also sets into motion a melodrama of such emotional power that you would even believe the little bittersweet miracle with which the film ends. 

12 – Queen (2014)

At a first glance, Mr. Vikas Bahl’s Queen feels like a film that has already been made before. Young and naïve Rani Mehra, essayed in a performance of almost sublime spontaneity by Ms. Kangana Ranaut, has been informed by her groom-to-be that their upcoming wedding is to be cancelled; after some tears are shed, she decides, rather startlingly, to go on her planned honeymoon to Paris all alone. It is right from there that we see what could have been yet another film about yet another girl from suburban Delhi turn into how this girl from Delhi discovers not only herself but also a world and a different face to life she never knew. That is, of course, only describing it too didactically; Queen might not be one of the most “original” films out there but it still works splendidly as a wonderful “novelty” and Mr. Bahl, helped by his actress and his writers, keeps things rattling along so entertainingly, in such pleasantly breezy, even silly, fashion that we hardly get the time to nit-pick. This is easily the finest example of feel-good cinema that one can find, making us cheer for this bumbling but wholly admirable heroine and also urging us to find within us a reflection of all that’s naïve, exuberant and admirable in her. 

11 – Badlapur (2015)

Revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold but Mr. Sriram Raghavan’s unexpectedly brooding, almost haunting film of revenge and redemption goes even further and serves us an ice-cold heart to go along with it as well. Badlapur, named after the desolate little town between the cities of Pune and Bombay, the first signifying the horrifying past – of the double-murder that begins the film on a suitably grim note – and the latter promising a future of absolution, is the first film of its kind to explore the literal no-man’s land between these two moral extremes. Mr. Varun Dhawan, as the boyish-faced husband and father who loses not only his family but also his innocence in that one brutal swift stroke, gave one of his most restrained yet plausibly unsettling performances. Mr. Nawazuddin Siddiqui, as the said murderer, is even more unsettling and even oddly endearing as a slippery criminal trying to escape the fact of his destructive deed but finding himself confronted with the consequence of that act. The film is essentially a story that mirrors these men’s respective paths to both nihilism and salvation over the course of fifteen years and in the process, we are compelled by the haunting realism of the story to re-examine our own thoughts and memories of what just happened. 

10 – Stanley Ka Dabba (2011)

I confess to a nostalgic bit of self-indulgence by including Mr. Amole Gupte’s beautifully directed film in my list. The school in which it has been filmed, Holy Family, happens to be the very citadel within whose walls and corridors I had learned and then lost whatever I had learned. Those whitewashed classrooms with their colourful felt boards littered with drawings, those sunlit corridors where we all pranced and played, the hubbub of the teachers relaxing in their staff rooms – all are vivid memories that have coalesced into the film’s own virtues –of how it tells its unspectacular story – of a schoolboy who never brings tiffin and thus mystifies his friends and earns the ire of a bullying teacher – with such skill that more elaborate films would pale before its accomplishment. Partho, the director’s son, plays Stanley like any other charmingly raffish hero of the classroom, besotted by his English teacher while Mr. Gupte himself plays the said teacher with a touch of hilarious pugnacity. His direction is even better – he wisely refrains from barging into the natural camaraderie among these boys and reduces the importance of the mystery, revealing the poignant truth only in the end. And yet, the emotion is never exaggerated; the whole film seems like a chapter out of David Copperfield rather than Oliver Twist. 

9 – Band Baaja Baaraat (2010)

The most commercial film in this list should be more rightfully called as a moment in cinema that its producer, the most influential film studio of Bombay, would be deservedly proud of. With Band Baaja Baaraat, Yash Raj Films stepped decisively into the real world of real men and women living in the noisy, humdrum streets of our cities and towns, leaving behind, forever, Swiss Alps, palatial homes and chiffon sarees; for the first time, here was a romance from their stable that was equally concerned, with heartfelt earnestness, about the sky-high aspirations that their onscreen lovers nursed. Mr. Maneesh Sharma’s film might be an effortlessly endearing romance between two such young people (played with sprightly charm by both Mr. Ranveer Singh and Ms. Anushkha Sharma) but even before that, it is also a warmly written story of friendship and camaraderie as these two join hands together to do something beyond the ordinary and prove to be indispensable to each other. As Bittu Sharma and Shruti Kakkar romp around suburban and then sophisticated Delhi, orchestrating wedding parties, decorating venue after venue and thus falling inevitably in love with each other, we are entertainingly escorted through these colourful and cinematic proceedings without ever suspending our sense of belief or even the guileless hope that things will end with a well-earned smile. 

8 – Sonchiriya (2019)

The dangerous dacoit or even the heroic rebel of the hinterland have become such mythical figures of our cinema that we have almost begun to worship the image of a fugitive brigand as a totem of righteous fury against the establishment. But Mr. Abhishek Chaubey’s Sonchiriya is the first film to deconstruct that myth gently and perceptively. Like Mr. Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, to which the makers owe an equal debt of inspiration, it reveals, beneath the gritty and theatrical effect of bravado and danger, the gnawing doubts and fears in these men stranded forever in a no-man’s land between honour and redemption. Even the acting complements the sharp irony of the bleak and brutal realism of the film. Mr. Ranvir Shorey’s ruthlessly determined Vakila is forced, eventually, to confront the futility of his nihilism while Mr. Manoj Bajpayee’s compellingly weary chief Man Singh is haunted by the catastrophic consequences of his past and thus driven to his predestined fate. If Sonchiriya does have a hero, it might be somewhere in Mr. Sushant Singh Rajput’s taciturn but tender Lakhna, a rebel who decides to do, for once, the right thing and thus lends these men a cause, to gun down the most despicable crimes that the establishment stands for. And thus, the film achieves a rugged but poignant poetry of its own.

7 – Haider (2014)

Mr. Vishal Bhardwaj has had to contrive, no matter how skilfully, a milieu or a narrative to fit into the scheme of any of the Bard’s legendary tragedies: a Bombay mob arranged like a Scottish feudal fiefdom and we also had the casteist politics of the hinterland mirroring the threat of the Turkish invasion. But with Haider, he did not have to look any further for “something rotten in the state of Denmark” than the tumult of militant violence and military brutality in Kashmir of the 1990s, a troubling reality brought to the fore with both blunt force and sharp irony. There is a dazzling quality of surrealism, of both musical and theatrical melodrama to the proceedings and many a key incident mirrors the play beautifully, including Polonius lurking behind curtains and also the gravediggers singing at their toil. At the same time, the director transforms the personal travesty of the source into something fiercely political, as we witness just how the tragic situation finds its echoes in the lives of people who live in this beautiful but cursed valley. Mr. Shahid Kapoor, as the titular deposed heir returning to this damned Denmark, is magnificently eloquent, especially in the monologues. But especially unforgettable is this film’s Claudius, played by Mr. Kay Kay Menon with such charismatic cunning and surprising warmth that we almost believe his lies. 

6 – Jagga Jasoos (2017)

Mr. Ranbir Kapoor cemented his reputation in this decade as the finest popular actor on the screen to convey doubt and disorientation within the urban man. While in most films in these ten years, his performance as an initially cocksure man questioning his own identity compelled us to swallow in the limitations of direction and writing, it was with Jagga Jasoos that he finally found his match. Mr. Anurag Basu’s beautifully, almost whimsically directed, film, starring Mr. Kapoor, as a young man who qualifies as a great hero for boys of all ages, is the finest adventure film that I have seen for a long, long time. It is a gloriously imaginative, even silly, storyline that takes our resident school detective from deciphering crimes of passion to weapons smuggling and diabolical villains, from the hills to North African souks and then further into the wild in search of his father. But it is also told with panache and infectious surfeit of imagination and adventure, not to mention such wit and melody as well. The sights are almost as colourful as pages of storybooks – with galloping giraffes and romping ostriches among other things - and there are devilishly clever songs too, lyrics that belong more to the hilarity and satire of Monty Python than Walt Disney. And in the end, this fantasia has something wise to say as well. 

5 – Shanghai (2012)

The most politically resonant film of the last ten years is not actually concerned solely with statecraft. Like all of Mr. Dibakar Banerjee’s films, Shanghai is more about our society’s willing participation in collective self-deception; it is the first film, since Mr. Kundan Shah’s Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron that dissects, with equally black humour, a horribly complicit yet plausible mind-set that worships relentless progress regardless of the gruesome cost it involves. Adapting Vassilis Vassilikos’ timely novel of a political assassination and its almost successful cover-up into a gritty, mofussil town being urbanised by the ruling party, Mr. Banerjee and his assistant writer Ms. Urmi Juvekar set up skilfully the story of a well-intentioned but equally imperfect activist who is slain in what is loosely disguised as an accident. No matter how skilfully the police and the political thugs try to cover up things, the truth of the matter leaks out and it is left to the film’s brilliantly acted crusaders – Mr. Emraan Hashmi’s seedy cameraman and Mr. Abhay Deol’s seemingly stoic stiff-lipped bureaucrat responsible for the sham of an enquiry – to do the right thing. And yet, the film bravely refrains from even the slightest shred of idealistic escape and instead presents its inconvenient truths with not only stark realism but an urgent immediacy that feels even timelier today. 

4 – Andhadhun (2018)

It is also impossible to find a thriller in the history of our cinema that keeps on pulling off the rugs beneath our feet on every subsequent viewing; in case of most films, we can almost foresee, if we think hard, just what is about to happen and just who is the murderer hiding in the smoke and shadows. Not so with Mr. Sriram Raghavan’s Andhadhun, easily the finest, funniest thriller since his own Johnny Gaddar. There is a “blind” pianist, there is a femme fatale, there is an unsuspecting victim, there are seemingly innocent people with not so innocent intentions and all of these classic hallmarks of noir are put together with such dazzling sleight of hand that every new twist and turn feels not only startling but also ingenious and intelligent. Black humour, too, flows more freely than blood through these proceedings and Mr. Raghavan and his writers keep throwing at us not merely fancy tricks but such audacious leaps of storytelling that after a while, we even start guessing the very motives of these characters and the actual crime itself becomes a mere trivial detail. Mr. Ayushmann Khurrana, as the said pianist with a knowing grin, leads a uniformly excellent cast of actors who make even the littlest parts essential to solving this dazzling mystery.

3 – The Lunchbox (2013)

Watching Mr. Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox is like listening to a wistful melody that transcends easy definition or, rather, watching a vivid, almost ethereal portrait of modern Bombay in stirring, almost mesmerising motion. And it is also a beautifully crafted ode to a beehive of a city still capable of the everyday miracles of happenstance and serendipity. The story itself is pure genius: a tiffin box packed by an earnest wife with lovingly cooked dishes and carried to its intended destination by one of the almost unerring tiffin-carriers of the city finds itself deposited on the wrong desk in a humdrum office – an aging, widowed accountant who is pleasantly surprised by the wonders of that tiffin box. Thus starts an unhurried, warm, melancholic and even tenderly romantic correspondence between these two lonely people. Mr. Batra deserves all the credit for how almost life-like and resonant this film feels – his direction never ever steps in between the almost instinctively orchestrated proceedings and the uniformly effective actors – from Mr. Irrfan Khan as the said widower, thawing slowly to rediscover her own longing for fellow-feeling and love to Ms. Nimrat Kaur playing the striking but sad-eyed wife still brimming with the hope of romantic escape – convey superbly their emotions without a false note. And this is, in the end, also a love story that makes you dare to dream. 

2 – Gangs Of Wasseypur (2012)

Without any question, the most exciting, hilarious and audaciously original film of the last ten years remains to be Gangs Of Wasseypur; Mr. Anurag Kashyap’s two-part saga has not only anarchic violence, broad and bawdy comedy, passionate vengeance and even other passions more lurid and entertaining than just revenge but also a surfeit of gentle, even mesmeric moments. And these too belong so organically to the profane, amoral yet also affable gangland that the film is staged in. It brought back Mr. Manoj Bajpayee, one of the finest (and also criminally overlooked) actors in our country’s cinema, into the star map with a performance both terrifying and tender; it introduced us to fine actors like Ms. Richa Chadha, Mr. Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Ms. Huma Qureshi and Mr. Pankaj Tripathi, among many others; it established a whole new genre of the mofussil film with a unique dialect and colourful flavour of its own and it would also go on to inspire less than worthy imitations in both film and television. Mr. Kashyap’s direction is so persuasive that it keeps us remarkably entertained for more than a couple of hours for each film without ever skimping on characterisation or emotional resonance. And we feel, too, for these guiltily admirable characters – it might be a film about gun-toting, knife-wielding men but what makes it special is just how warm and romantic it can be. 

1 – A Death In The Gunj (2017)

Great cinema is a form of storytelling that adds its own visual uniqueness to a story while also staying faithful to the resonance of its source.  There have been a few films in the last ten years that have been able to accomplish this honourably (Lootera comes to the mind) but Ms. Konkona Sen Sharma’s beautifully filmed A Death In The Gunj shows just how a simple narrative can be told on the screen with cleverly written details and still be endowed with a cinematic sense so vivid and surreal. This is the story of a pained and lonely coming-of-age, of a family holiday in the old hill town of McCluskiegunj and of a young man, sensitive and almost fragile, forced casually, without apparent malice, by the more cocksure people around him to grow up a little faster. Mr. Vikrant Massey, as this said boy, far from heroic or gifted and with eyes that brim with both pain and yearning, gave, for me, one of the most honest and poignant performances of the decade. But this exquisitely sad film, photographed beautifully and with poetic touches that you would find in a great novel, is also about how broken are the very people who pretend to be better than him. Life with its self-deception is to be found in every frame of this film, blending with the lingering shadows of death and disillusionment.

Ray - 1 Story That Sears, Others That Steer A Little Clear

A new anthology has been released on Netflix. How quickly and easily does one suspect it of conforming to the usual standard of being only partially successful in living up to its promise, of several bite-sized pieces of cinematic storytelling failing to assemble together for a cohesive experience or conveying a shared theme with the same level of consistency. But surely, there would be promise, wouldn't it, in what this anthology sets out ambitiously to do - to traverse and then adapt the hitherto still-uncharted realm of short fiction written by arguably the greatest filmmaker that this country had ever produced. Previously, we have had to sit and also flick with boredom through anthologies conceived on Lust, Horror, Marriage and even the present lock-down scenario; at least, with Ray, we will be reminded, even by the weakest or most offensively bad installment in the series, that one of these days, we ought to be visiting the nearest bookshop and perhaps start reading these little-known stories for ourselves. 

This writer will confess to the same ignorance. I have read only two of the four stories that have been adapted for the streaming screen by the three directors at the helm of this anthology and perhaps, for better or for worse, being both lightly familiar and still largely fresh to his fiction, which is, of course, nothing to be proud of. That is also why I found this collection of stories both admirable in their overarching ambition and also mildly disappointing in how, like any other anthology in this burgeoning streaming platform, it is marred, to some extent, by the same problem of inconsistency. From the little that I have read, though, one can deduce that these stories are to be admired for their light, almost simple prose, for their subtle realism and their dry wit and most crucially in their neutral deconstruction of human incongruities. Considering these qualities, then, there is one episode that hits the mark on every level, another that fits a story with agreeable neatness into a modern context and two that fail quite embarrassingly due to some fundamental flaw or the other. 

The failures, then, first. Mr. Srijit Mukherji's Baharupiya is supposed to be the most intriguing of the four stories chosen. It is a tale of a literal human chameleon, using his skill of disguise relentlessly, turned here into an unexpected yarn of revenge. And true to that last part, Mr. Mukherji buttons down all the fantastical possibilities of the story and seems to be more interested in transforming his downbeat protagonist - a failure of an office clerk who moonlights as a make-up artist and then resorts to the latter as a way of striking back at an exaggeratedly hostile world - as an overly vain anti-hero who eventually deserves or warrants none of our sympathy or feeling. 

Mr. Kay Kay Menon, normally an actor gifted at playing the many shades of grey morality, here too feels straitjacketed with a character who goes from complaining affectedly about how life treats him unfairly to a bitter, burnt-out shell of false nobility. This is less of the actor's fault, however; Mr. Menon's gaunt, almost hunched frame and bespectacled face lined with misgiving are convincing to behold on their own without the prosthetic disguises that he puts on unnecessarily out of malice rather than artistic curiosity. The fault here must be of the director and the writer Mr. Siraj Ahmed, to orchestrate not only his futile acts of revenge but also his brutal catharsis with amateurish clumsiness without ever investing us in both the character and narrative. The dialogue jars in its stilted fashion, the supporting cast are mostly dispensable and one-note; there is an over-reliance on tawdry pulp rather than actual realism for the sake of cheap shock value. And most unforgivably, the decision to film the story in Calcutta holds merely decorative purpose without ever playing any part of importance in the proceedings.

Dialogue, on the other hand, is the least of the problems of the other disappointing episode in this quartet. Spotlight, directed by Mr. Vasan Bala, starts off most interestingly and sets up, again, a fantastic confrontation between religion and cinema, both favourite themes of the cinematic storyteller. At least its characters - a starlet, ironically, of limited histrionic ability and his street-wise manager and friend - talk like how a starlet and a streetwise manager should talk; one of the few redeeming qualities in this installment seems to be the fast-talking repartee between these unlikely friends, the preening, entitled film prince and the knowing aide. And Mr. Bala has an interestingly whimsical aesthetic to his storytelling, something faintly reminiscent of Mr. Terry Gilliam's fantasies that also approach the profundity of satire. 

The story plays fast and loose with the original narrative and throws in a cinephile's vocabulary of references to Mr. Ray's films, especially his unique "entertainments" but too much loose creativity becomes its own detriment. Again, it is hard to believe in this story or feel anything beyond cynicism for any of its characters. The narrative beats are too forcefully audacious and the jokes at film producers, self-entitlement, mediocrity and even shallow religion are too obvious, as if Mr. Bala is always conscious of drawing attention to his whimsical aesthetic. And casting Mr. Harshvardhan Kapoor, a boy better at playing straight, even surly lads on the screen, as this twisted and showy starlet beggars belief. By being woefully unable to convey more than a single expression, Mr. Kapoor only ends up inhibiting his character's skin too close for comfort. 

Mr. Mukherji's other film in this ensemble, Forget Me Not, happens to be one of the few stories that I had read and it fares better than these two films, thanks to a smooth use of its actors and its earnest effort in fleshing out its central character with just the right amount of backstory without interrupting its forward flow. A shrewd, smartly dressed and successful businessman, spoken highly for his elephant's memory, is accosted by a woman who claims that they had not only met before but had also been in a tempestuous affair as well. Unfortunately, this young and preening Big Shot cannot quite remember this particular episode of his life and slowly, his life begins to unravel with disastrous consequences. 

Mr. Mukherji's hand is more assured here. This is essentially a high-strung melodrama pretending to be a psychological thriller but at least we find it a more believable kind of melodrama than usually served to us. There is something particularly convincing about this inscrutably successful man and the skeletons that he has hidden carefully in his closet and there is something even more lifelike about the urban relationships, both normal and affected, that he shares with people both at home and work. Mr. Ali Fazal deserves more than generous applause for playing this casually condescending but vulnerable businessman with both ease and despair. Even as the film ends with an explanation of incidents that is too long-winded, it is at least truer in spirit to the disorientation conveyed by Mr. Ray in the original story. 

The best, as they say, is to be reserved for the last. I find myself smiling with a twinkle in my eyes thinking of Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa. Mr. Abhishek Chaubey is a director of rare skill and real storytelling ability and also, most important, a director who is fond of language and its indispensability in storytelling. All these abilities come to the fore and more than that, this is also a testament to his skill in understanding his source material. This is easily the finest film that I found in this anthology, the crowning jewel of this mostly odd collection and the reasons are too many to put down here. 

The story itself is simplicity, more admirably loyal to Mr. Ray's story of two strangers in a train who seem to have met in a train before as well but to that, the makers have added a rich intricacy that gains on new meanings, both poetic and gently amusing. Mr. Chaubey's normal skill for realism is complemented adequately by his unexpected gift of visual idiom; reality, imagination, dreams and nightmares blend together seamlessly held in place by a visual aesthetic that feels naturally, unhurriedly evocative and the verses of Urdu ghazals either quoted eloquently in conversation or playing as background music. That is what I meant when I said that this is a film fond of language, of the rich tapestry of Urdu and its bejewelled intricacies. The film takes you in unexpected directions even as the denouement is clearly in sight and while in the other films, there was always a sense of apprehension or cynicism, what makes this the most perfect of adaptations is how, even with its imaginative and artistic detours, it still retains and even enriches the wisdom, humanism and self-deception of Mr. Ray's prose. 

None of this also could have been possible without the splendid actors that Mr. Chaubey has picked to populate this beautifully crafted canvas of humour and self-discovery. Mr. Gajraj Rao as a former wrestler and journalist now fallen on hard times is frequently a guileless pleasure for the audience, filling his amiable failure of a man with an irresistible spirit of tenderness and fellow-feeling; he is, however, matched and even surpassed by the flawless Mr. Manoj Bajpayee, as his fellow passenger - a celebrated ghazal singer who wears his wistful heart on the sleeves of his elaborately stitched kurtas. Blustery, easily unsettled, full of both endearing innocence and sly guilt, both hope and despair, here's a character to fall in love with essayed by an actor of such genius ability that he is, today, one of the few performers in this country's cinema who convey convincingly humanity in all its flaws and virtues, in its numerous paradoxes and incongruities.

The Irishman: A Timeless Tombstone For A Legacy Of Crime

Mobsters die bloody, undistinguished deaths in Martin Scorsese' The Irishman. 

Not that we get to see those deaths or their gruesome details. Scorsese, lifelong poet and artist of violence and crime, who once scored unforgettable rock epics against montages of once proud and boastful men being shot, stabbed and beaten to death and their bodies being discovered by dumbstruck policemen, refrains, this time, from showing us the obvious; rather, we are told the hard, cold facts of their inevitable fate, the unflinching truth writ large on the screen whenever we are given our first, undeniably impressive glimpses of these men in their heyday. And right then, it is apparent what the veteran filmmaker is gunning for: an unfurnished portrait of the brutal reality of a life of crime, of how it goes down, in the end, to a futile waste. 

It is this sad, melancholy sense of wistful regret, of an awareness of this very same futility, that marks so much of The Irishman and, in effect, makes it a strangely timeless film, a cinematic experience both exquisite and elegiac, a rare thing: a crime saga that, for the first time, makes us feel the weary, heavy-hearted toll of an entire lifetime marked by death, betrayal and a vain attempt at grabbing back glory. 

Scorsese' film begins, unexpectedly, in a nursing home for ageing old-timers. The camera, in a trademark Scorsese long-shot, cruises leisurely down a corridor while The Five Satins' In The Still Of The Night, a pop classic that will surely gain eternity with its wonderful usage in this film, plays in the background like muzak. Our gaze circles around a grizzly, white-haired man sprawled on his wheelchair and then, he stares back at us through his inscrutable dark glasses and starts to talk. 

That old man was once Frank Sheeran, the titular Irish-American freebooter and this is, at least in the beginning, ostensibly, about his rise, from a trucker stealing prime steaks to a trusted, tight-lipped henchman for a Mafioso family, with a penchant for "painting houses" and doing more odd jobs. For a good part of the first hour of this leisurely, almost larger-than-life narrative, unravelling gracefully and unhurriedly over 210 minutes, we follow his arc, we sense his gradually sharpening sense of a professional dedication to his unsavoury profession and also, deep inside his almost icy soul, a stirring ghost of disenchantment. 

Propping him on his predestined path deeper into the darkness of crime is his de facto benefactor and "made man" Russell Buffalino, a taciturn, affable yet shrewd mob boss adroitly pulling the strings, making negotiations and keeping things on an even keel. The two men share an unlikely mentor-protege dynamic that is soon supplanted by the arrival on the scene of a bigger player in the story inspired from real-life history. Union bigwig Jimmy Hoffa offers Sheeran, already touted and well-spoken for his efficient talents, the chance to be a "a part of this history"; a history of vain wish fulfilment in which the unions wage war against the Kennedy dynasty. Can Sheeran deliver on his promise?

And while we are all aware, by now of the director's unerring mastery of this particular genre and milieu of storytelling, that is what we are tempted to ask ourselves too: can Scorsese, too, deliver on his promise, to even overshadow the unrivalled greatness of his earlier works? Can he give us something as canonical and inimitable as Goodfellas all over again? It is reassuring to know that he can, that he does, resoundingly so, though not quite in the same way as you expect. The Irishman has the director's immaculate signature emblazoned on every big and little scene and yet it is fuelled, this time, less with a delirious. hyper-kinetic energy and anarchy and more with a gnawing acknowledgement of guilt and a throbbing emotional resonance that puts it up there as the finest, most poignant of crime films ever made. 

Cinematographer Rodriego Prieto shoots this film like a fever dream; scored to the choicest of classic pop and rock and roll hits and Robbie Robertson's intense, almost Leone-like harmonica swells, the lavish long-takes are breathtaking in how they bring to life a world of the past, a sense of time and place in history, with such authenticity and bruising intimacy, that we are drawn into this world with effortless artistic mastery while Thelma Schoonmaker cuts the rich, elaborately measured screenplay by Steven Zaillian, with the finesse of the finest tailor and yet, Scorsese breaks and subverts his own rules here: a tracking shot digresses and closes up on a row of floral wreaths in a shop window while shots from a saloon are heard in the background, a sudden murder in broad daylight is filmed in ultra slow motion so that we register each moment of outrage and shocked disbelief and, in one ingenious reference to The Godfather, we all stop breathing as a woman hesitates to turn on the ignition. 

For all this dazzling daredevilry, demonstrating a director in the very peak of his prowess, it is when The Irishman strikes hard at its emotional core, especially in the film's final, painfully troubling hour of devastating reveals and disillusioning conclusions, that the film achieves both the heartrending beauty and dystopian complexity of such deconstructionist works of cinema such as The Wild Bunch and of literature as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. As in these iconoclast creations, the very tropes that were always the mainstay of these stories are turned on their head and, for the first time, we look at these popular, almost mythic characters without their pretensions and facades of make-believe glory or even villainy. Rather, we see them as they are, people living a lost dream, nursing futile hopes and rendered vulnerable by the inevitability of their fall from grace. The overwhelming feeling, despite the routinely entertaining, smoothly orchestrated twists and turns and Zaillian's juicy, profanity-ridden dialogue, is of unmistakable despair, of a last and foolhardy shot at greatness and everlasting legacy.

The performances are unforgettable and indelible. Al Pacino, playing Hoffa with crackling electricity, harnessing all his spontaneity and fire to the best effect, makes for an irresistibly showboating character, an easily flustered rabble-rouser who won't take it lying down and whose quixotic denial of the increasingly dire realities around him set the stage for the film's real rub. Joe Pesci is even more extraordinary as Russell Buffalino, ageing with measured, beautifully calculated grace with each new plot proceeding, superbly in place and quietly, magnificently at the helm of the devastating decisions that he has to take. This itself feels like something of a miracle; the astonishingly combustible performer, who had earlier built a reputation out of his usually hot-headed, almost psychopathic mobsters, reins himself majestically, appearing almost like a doppelganger for the director himself. 

This is an ensemble cast for ages, of men that we had seen on the screen so many times as quotable and forever influential mobsters; another Scorsese collaborator of the yesteryears shows up in a truly memorable cameo as the silken Angelo Bruno while Stephen Graham chomps up much scenery alongside the already celebrated legends as a sneering, smarmy rival union leader who triggers Hoffa's explosive rage. Watch out, also, for Anna Paquin, as Sheeran's daughter Peggy who is also an unlikely witness to his dirty deeds and also his silent and troubled conscience. 

And then there is Robert De Niro. Returning to the screen with the filmmaker who is irreversibly responsible for their most incredible collective triumphs, here is the veteran actor, lately miscast in works of mostly variable quality, finally recovering his true histrionic greatness. His Sheeran is a performance of almost unbelievable honesty and emotional power; even as he stays stoic and stiff-lipped about his dedication to his chosen vocation, his guilt and pathos are to be found in those eternally exquisite, wistful eyes, in his silences and in the way he tries to disguise them as his indifference. This is ultimately his story, the heartbreaking tale of his own inevitable fall from grace, condemned to live with the betrayal that he commits and unable and even reluctant to find redemption. De Niro plays each beat, from the measured, almost perfunctory attempts at affability and warmth to the growing sense of disillusionment with the world around him, with pure perfection. It is a performance as timeless as this film. 

The film comes full circle at the end, Scorsese pulling out and zooming in to Sheeran's room in that very nursing home, but not before the man is subjected to his own trial of fire, compelled, by age and desolation, to face, for the first time, his own vulnerability, of death knocking on his door, the door that he leaves ajar in the film's final, haunting frame. All through these 210 minutes, this was what Scorsese was always driving at. At its heart, cold and yet bleeding with the guilt of lies told and blood spilled, The Irishman is about these brutal but battered and broken men trying to find some forgiveness for their failings, in vain. As Raymond Chandler wrote so truly, dead men are heavier than broken hearts. 

My Rating: 5 Stars

Joker: A One-Man Show Of Misery

Every Joker has a unique laugh that always echoes in your mind. 

From Cesar Romero's ridiculous, cartoonish glee, to Jack Nicholson's creepy cackle, from Mark Hamill's devilish, sardonic laughter to Heath Ledger's manic, excited whoops of delight and derision, every cinematic version of Joker has brought his signature sense of dangerous, deranged humour to the screen and made an unmistakable impact, even to the point of parody. It is then only normal for us fanatics, who, despite our shared love for the Caped Crusader, have worshipped this unforgettable, irascible devil of the comics sinfully, to expect that the latest in this line-up, at least, knows his killing jokes and lethal punchlines.

Joaquin Phoenix, an assuredly overwhelming, almost fastidious performer who has cemented something of a reputation of playing both torment and delicious evil, is every bit a perfectly cast choice to play the arch-kingpin of crime and right within the first five minutes, the actor creeps into our skin and leaves us shaken and disturbed with his own signature laughter: a rattling, helpless, almost screechy fit of hoarse despair that his Arthur Fleck tries to explain, with a little card of apology, as a pathological condition. 

And all this is before he is pushed over to the edge, before he is reborn as the dastardly super-villain that he is known to be. 

As said, Phoenix is unquestionably brilliant as Fleck, a spindly, skinny and sad-eyed clown and aspiring stand-up comedian living a sordid existence with a mother still nursing hopes that her benefactor and employer, a proud and preening Thomas Wayne, will come to their rescue. Roughed up by street thugs, fired from his short-lived stint as a clown, Fleck rides the underground train back home one dark, dank evening and things turn suddenly violent. Soon, he is not only a reviled prime suspect for the upper crust snobs crying for his blood but also something of a rousing vigilante for Gotham's brutally marginalised masses. 

We follow Fleck through this terse, almost dark and nightmarish descent into the depths of unhinged psychosis with a relentless atmosphere of mounting dread. Lensman Lawrence Sher's visuals are grimy but also dramatic and vivid in their grittiness, lending this film's Gotham City an unmistakably decadent urban texture of a dog-eared trade issue of the period of the film is set in, the banal 1980s and with its materialistic, money-grubbing mindset. Joker, however, achieves poetry truly when it gazes, longingly and almost tenderly, at Fleck's tormented eyes and gaunt, disjointed frame as he trudges on through the city's underlit streets, as he curls up in agony when beaten up and left on the ground and as he soon sways silkily, almost in effete grace as his mind swarms with the poison of nihilistic anger and loathing at the unimpressive world around him. For anybody who has always thirsted for a truly absorbing backstory of one of the most iconoclast pop culture villains of all time, this, the purely sensory experience of watching a tormented character plunge headfirst into off-the-wall anarchy, would suffice. 

Unfortunately, one should not forget that Joker is also a full-fledged feature film, ponderously plodding on for more than 120 minutes, a fact that is not justified by how inadequate the film feels in comparison to the overwhelming performance trying to hold it in place. Director Todd Phillips, hitherto known for brash, physical comedies, tries his hand here at dramatic material valiantly but stumbles frequently on navigating what could have been a thickly plotted narrative to a well-rounded, coherent structure. The film suffers, quite often by doffing its hat relentlessly to not only far more well-plotted comic book storylines but also to better directed and written films and this is where I would like to talk about all those nudge-nudge, wink-wink references to that undisputed artist of urban decadence Martin Scorsese. 

Several elements of the plot feel derivative; like Travis Bickle of the still-extraordinary and heart-rending Taxi Driver, Fleck is God's Lonely Man and also falls prey to the same psychopathic tendencies when he is thrust unwillingly with a gun to fend himself in the streets. And as if that was not enough, his hopes to be a guest on the wildly popular talk show  hosted by his pompous comic idol Murray Franklin, played, in a rather awkward nod to The King Of Comedy, by Robert De Niro, the legend wasted here in a role that feels almost like a mockery of his own unforgettable portrayals Rupert Pupkin in that prescient film. 

Still, cinematic larceny is the least of Joker's crimes. Phillips could have conjured up something ingenious and subversive with these broadly borrowed strokes, even something audacious, outrageous and suicidally brave. It never happens, even as the film flirts with some intriguing ideas, like in the scene when Fleck is pitted against Wayne, who is not any idealistic Charles Palantine but rather our very own Donald Trump in his pompous arrogance and the stage is set for a very incendiary confrontation, complete with a nod at Modern Times, itself one of the greatest satires about a little man taking on a big capitalist world but it ends in a whimper of miserable agony and things only go downhill from then onwards. And the less said about a shoehorned metaphysical moment, the better, really. 

Similarly, there is nothing to be made of Zazie Beetz, cast rather lazily here as the warm and affable neighbour Sophie, whose cruelly brief narrative arc as Fleck's unlikely love interest can be construed as yet another failed attempt to match up to the afore-mentioned films. Those films were much more perceptive and subtle in their approach, using the conceit of unwittingly unreciprocated romance or casual social rejection as a trigger for the onset of the anarchy inside the battered soul of the protagonist; in Joker, she is merely for decorative value, a flimsy piece of flourish that is merely there to make the increasingly dire proceedings lighter. 

There is, however, still not much room for hope and while it is understandable that the film vies for a morbid intensity fitting to the character in question, there is also, subsequently, little room for any wicked wit or particularly subversive intelligence here as well. As origin stories of the arch-kingpin of crime go, Joker really tries hard and in vain to pull off the coup of being as hauntingly atmospheric as the groundbreaking The Killing Joke, with the great Alan Moore's nihilistic, noir storytelling and Brian Bolland's still eerie, nightmarish illustrations, which ironically did a flawlessly neat job of building up, scene by scene, the Joker's devastating moment of catharsis while sculpting, parallel to it, a lean and mean comic book story of insanity and vengeance. 

Yes, it is superbly shot, has a suitably melancholy soundtrack and Phoenix is really worth the money as he always is but is this what we, worshippers of the man who never tells the same story about how he got those scars, deserve? To quote a more memorably wicked voice of evil, it's not quite showtime. 

My Rating: 3 Stars Out Of 5