Rangoon

(This is not a review. I was so overwhelmed by the film and its layers, themes and characters that I had to put down what -- and how -- I saw few of them. This might read like I am trying to make myself understand the film. So, spoilers ahead, of course.)

A film set. Shooting crew – all male. It’s a musical opening scene, fantastic one at that. All are singing in the praise of one woman – Julia. Miss Julia.

Director cuts the scene. He approves it. Producer appears from the top, with unmistakable tyranny, and orders one more take to be shot, with altogether new and more daring actions.

“Mujhe Mrs. Billimoria huey bina nahi marna hai,” tells Julia to him.

“You are Julia. Miss Julia… My Julia,” replies Rusi Billimoria, the producer.

Julia is the identity he has given to her. Her real name was Jwala Devi, we learn later. She was a gypsy, a street performer. Rusi spotted her and bought her from her mother for a thousand rupees, we learn this in a different scene even later.

These verbal details are spurted casually in a funny conversation. You gather these fragments and connect to know the character, their story. Even for a minor character of a Japanese soldier, we first see him singing, while held captive in a deserted church; later, he tells he is a music school graduate; even later we also see him playing a mouth organ.

Rusi bought Julia when she was 14. She is now star action actress of his studio. And he is in love with her. He calls her “kiddo”. Their relationship is very dominant-submissive. Patting his thighs, he asks her to sit on his lap. She submits.

And then there is Jamadaar Nawab Mallik. He comes in the picture as a personal bodyguard of Miss Julia. And with him, she falls in love… that spiritual kind. They realise that when they are away in a jungle and in deep mud. It’s perhaps a foreshadowing that their love story is meant to be doomed.

But as it turns out, in the second half, Mallik is in single-minded love with the nation (He is an INA rebel). Like how Rusi is with Julia. Rusi even divorces his wife. He tells his father, “Mohabbat jaan bujh kar toh nahi ki. Bas ho gayee.” We then realise that this tyrant might have a heart after all. He would let the dead body of an INA rebel rot in jungle, but cannot gather himself to hold a gun against a kid of another rebel, despite his loyalty towards British makes him call them traitors.

This torn and conflicted love triangle finds, right in the middle of the story, the oldest symbolism in the books – a bridge. VB makes it work – adding that melancholic ‘Alvida’ track. The second time these lovers assemble near the bridge, which is at the end, a lot of water has flown under it, and they are not the same as they were.

Julia now refuses to sit on Rusi’s lap. She is realising her own identity; where her heart lies. She tells him, “Tum uda lo toh main aasmaan mein, tum bula lo toh jaangh pe. Tum kaho toh main Miss Julia, tum bolo toh mai Mrs. Bilimoria.”

Nawab’s devotion for nation has broken upon her. He tells her, “Tum apne jism me bandh ho.” She was only a fairness-cream applying actress, until then, who used to roam in her tinted car in Bombay, indifferent to the freedom protests happening around. We also see one early scene in a different light now, when Rusi offers her a ring and asks to wear once the wound on her finger is healed. She tells, “(Zakham) jaldi nahi bharega,” and wears the ring over it, as if covering every bit of her childhood injury with all the luxury that is coming her way through him. It’s when the surrounding and surmounting politics hits her personally, taking away her beloved as well as her dear Man Friday, she has her realisation. It’s like her coming-of-age.

Action star Julia comes out of the screen now. She hijacks a train (This is the Rail Ki Rani film that Rusi had denied her to star in). And we head towards the climax which could be a companion piece to Haider’s climax.

Haider's finale was covered in ice; this one takes place between fire and water. If Tabu’s character was symbolic of Kashmir there, Julia is India here. How both are lost in the battle. Shahid plays rebel in both the films, but with different fates (No, not talking about Kaminey here). It is in this last moment, we see Rusi having a change of heart. He does what he had perhaps seen Julia doing on street when she was 14 – maut ka rassa (Rusi had also starred in a film called Maut Ka Rassa -- we see the poster in an earlier scene). Julia walked tight rope all her life. (It is also for this reason that I wish it was Julia who gets to do that again with the sword. It would have been a proper coming-of-age, and of course, more than that). Rusi manages to do it in the finale. We don’t see him crossing it – film fades out and ends.

The bridge to Rangoon is burnt. The rebel for freedom continues.

Udta Punjab Movie Review

If you look at what comprises Udta Punjab – a rockstar, drugs, drug addicts, political nexus of drug peddling, a cop and a doctor on the mission to bust this nexus – it sounds like a high octane thriller. Sorry to report, it’s just half that. And it’s not bad. Because major part of the film still makes it one of the most sublime films you’ll see this year.

“Apart from the war that we are fighting against the system, the real war on drugs is within our home,” says Kareena Kapoor’s character Dr. Preet Sahani to Sartaj (Diljit Dosanjh), an assistant police, whose own brother is a victim to the raging drug addiction in Punjab. Simply telling you the statistics of the drug rage will not horrify you as much when you see a teenage throwing up on a hospital bed with little hope of making it. The film too takes that tone. It’s more personal than political.

When Preet and Sartaj talk about how they would go about muckraking underground drug peddling nexus, they talk with unlikely amusement – impending of their inevitable romantic arc. The scene is treated romantically too. In another scene, when Sartaj is stabbed with a heroine syringe at the back of his neck, you expect the situation to become graver, but it turns into… a romantic one.

Also when Alia Bhatt’s nameless Bihari immigrant character on a run bumps into Shahid Kapoor’s newly rehabilitated Tommy Singh, who’s also on a run after peeing on his audience (the scene’s not entirely chopped, in case you’re wondering), they talk their emotions out. Though Bhatt aces this scene, it’s least likely for such characters to talk their emotions out this intelligently. But they are in despair, seemingly beyond repair. She has found someone in front of whom she could outburst her suppressed emotions; he has found someone who has no shame in confessing that she’s equally a loser. And in this emotionally tensed situation, she tersely kisses him. It’s unlikely, but you know the film wants to convince you with the point here more than the character.

The story, very novella-like, follows through these four characters with stakes of their own, yet each of them contributes for almost same screen time. It’s like an old-school ensemble drama. Even with mainstream elements infused, the narrative is refreshingly unique, Chaubey’s filmmaking, thoroughly consistent, undisturbed. The opening scene is paused after the title appears on a flying object and the film goes on to introduce us with the characters on a peppy rap, and we continue with the flying object post that. The end credit is similarly tweaked. We see a shootout, more than a chapter closed, and we are left with a shot of Balli crying (Sartaj’s heroin addicted brother). He is symbolic to the state of Punjab, who has been through the worst of drug addiction. This is the story that the film and its makers want to hit you with. But after hard drugs and heartbreaks, there is still hope. We are told that in the epilogue.

I wanted to see more of Bhatt’s story, even grimmer, to feel for her. But one character who deserves a film of his own is the regional pop-star Tommy Singh. The most explosive song of the film’s soundtrack (Andar Da Kuttaa) is not a part of the film or this pop-star. It is used in a way that we are already distanced from him. Modeled on Yo Yo Honey Singh (the catchphrase here is ‘Wah Wah Tommy Singh’), he makes crass songs too. He’s a narcissist buffoon, meant to be laughed at. High on cocaine, he feels inspired after seeing his own reflection even in loo water, unaware that this is where he’ll drown into (yes, we are looking at Danny Boyle’sTrainspotting) and this is what he’ll rise from (recall: he peed on public, chased to meet his real inspiration… a never found love – Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s Ikk Kudi Jida Naam Mohabbat comes alive here). He gets few more fine scenes but those should be fully realised into the film: The Fall and Rise of Tommy Singh.

Though the film touches upon the political aspect here superficially, it exposed the other system and its vindictive nature before its release for which it literally fought its way. You probably rooted for the film to win. Should you watch it for that reason alone? Happy to report, there’s more than just that.

This review was initially published at TheW14.com

Haider Review

Haider, the film, suffers from dual personality. When it is not a political film, it is a personal film, and sometimes both at the same time. And treatment to both these asymmetric contexts is very symmetric. Each of them leads way to the other. When Dr. Hilaal Meer brought a man to his home to operate on his appendix, he was just a patient for him. But, for the state of Kashmir, he was a militant. Naturally, the army had to take Dr. Meer away with him for supporting a militant to where no one knows. This calls young Haider, his son, back to his home from Aligarh where he had been studying about "Revolutionary Poets of British India". (His returning scene is exactly how Harud begins- another film on Kashmir conflict by Aamir Bashir who plays Liyaqat in this film). He had to return for his father had taught him verse of one such poet, Faiz, during his childhood: "Chalein bhi aao ke gulshan ka karobar chalein". (This tender relationship also explains why Bhardwaj dedicated this film to his father Ram Bhardwaj who was also a poet.) His search for his father becomes as political as personal.

As it turns that his uncle, who is now having a love affair with his mother, had a role in his father's disappearance, Haider gets tormented within. This is where personal and political intertwines. A self-contemplating "Main rahoon ya main rahoon nahin" also finds its form in public mutiny as "Hum hain ki hum nahin". When his inner madness starts taking over him, or as he pretends to, he starts speaking politically most profound things in public as if he is fighting against the evils of his motherland and not of his mother. It was only during the explosive climax (which, by the way, I found a bit on the lines of routine Hindi drama film as all the characters start making appearance mysteriously) when the symbolism of the mother's character as motherland came alive more dramatically on screen. Faiz, who has been the guiding spirit throughout, returns after the tragic climax as his lines are recited in Rekha Bhardwaj's voice throughout the end credits: "Unn maa-on ke naam/unn haseena-on ke naam".

Bhardwaj's use of songs and visuals to tell a story is most distinctive and remarkable. He knows how to bring horror and tension on screen with minimal show of substance- like, flowing blood through wall in Maqbool, a snake dropped in haldi during wedding in Omkara and as in this one when Arshia (though Shraddha Kapoor is unconvincingly intense in this scene) toys with a gun in hand as she has tangled herself with wools of a red shawl (which was symbolic of love before and now of blood); or how an amputated hand holding a gun is more horrific than a dead man holding it after an explosion; or when a kid lying in a truck full of dead bodies, bathed in blood, opens his eyes and realizes he is not dead- and this is played with "Lahoo lahoo lahoo waqt ka khoon hua re" from the Jhelum song in the background. This song comes as an organic development of the story as in any other Vishal Bhardwaj film. He creates such visuals for the song that when looked separately they would seem redundant. Like, as a part of the song, when Haider sees into the eyes of a hopeful woman outside a police station, she shows picture of his disappeared son and it plays "dooba suraj kin aankhon mein", and in response, Haider shows photo of his disappeared father and the song goes "suraj dooba kin aankhon mein" in perfect sync to the pace of the scene. Also, a wandering Haider is echoed with "Jhelum dhoonde kinara". Jhelum river is yet another masterstroke of symbolism in this film. In the Bismil song, Haider enacts the true story of how his father has been killed and thrown into the river for which he lip syncs "Jhelum laal laal hua". And, the one who told him this story was his father's personified spirit that departed from him in the same river. That "spirit" when appears on scene (what an entry, Irrfan!) introduces himself as "Main rooh hoon, doctor ka rooh"- an interestingly named Roohdar. And when the song or sequence is a telling horror, Bhardwaj brings black humor out of it- as in the gravediggers' song with the ingenious use of shoveling sound.

Bhardwaj expects his audience to be informed. If they are not, either they are left missed half of the film or they are left curious to go home and do their homework which most of the audience don't and end up disliking the film. That's one reason why dark comedy of Matru Ki Bijli Ka Mandola didn't work with the masses. Even his source(s) of inspiration, mostly literary, are so immense and wide. He made us go through Ismat Chugtai's Lihaaf to find the subtle hint of queer in Begum Para and her confidante's character (Madhuri and Huma Qureshi) in Dedh Ishqiya. This one has jokes referenced from Osho Talks and a short story "New Disease" by Akhtar Moinuddin. When was the last time a director gave credits for even jokes used in his film?