The Dark Knight Rises

Can a superhero die? Can he retire? Can he burn out? What happens when scars physical and mental, accumulated over years of battles with adversaries, and the weight of the burden he carries begin to take their toll?  These are the questions that Christopher Nolan grapples with in the final chapter to his Batman films, which is the bleakest of the trilogy.

Hope is a precious and rare commodity in the Gotham of Nolan’s vision. The city is either too corrupt, too fearful and if it is peaceful, it is a false front with an air of foreboding and pessimism permeating the atmosphere. Villains in the bat-universe do not seek to rule the world , they want to hold the city hostage in fear, drive citizens to the edge and crush their spirit, before destroying them, of course.

As The Dark Knight Rises begins, it’s eight years since Batman has retired after taking the fall for Harvey Dent’s crimes. Bruce Wayne has now turned into a recluse and Wayne Enterprises suffers due to his lack of attention.  Batman is no longer needed in a city which has been swept clean by Commissioner Gordon and his force. However beneath the peaceful facade a storm is brewing, as  super –terrorist Bane, a League of Shadows alumni like Bruce Wayne, has come to Gotham to complete the League’s unfinished mission- the destruction of Gotham. Aged and debilitated by the effect of all the injuries collected in battle, Bruce Wayne must don the cape again, against the wishes of Alfred.. With the aid of a dubious cat burglar Selina Kyle and rookie cop John Blake, Batman must confront Bane. But before that he must conquer his own inner fears.

The Batman of The Dark Knight rises is the most vulnerable super hero in any super hero movie ever seen. Batman might be an immutable symbol but Bruce Wayne is a mortal whose body and mind have wilted under the combined physical and mental exaction of playing the caped crusader role. His body is broken and his mind has not recovered from the terrible costs extracted from the encounter with the Joker. For the first time it does appear possible that the Bat would not win.

It is unavoidable that Bane would be compared to Dark Knight’s Joker. But while the joker was a mad dog, Bane is a rhino, quicker, stronger, heavy-handed and impervious to pain. Bane does not scramble on the ground, have knives in his shoes or hold women against gunpoint, he hits straight and hard like a train. He’s gone to the same school as batman and would be more than a match to Batman in his prime, let alone when the bat is broken and jaded with ‘no cartilage in his knees’. Bane is not just a thug out to prove himself, but a general, a leader of men.  He might not have the philosophical leanings of Ra’s Al Ghul or the mad craftiness of the Joker but he is a superior physical specimen, trained in combat and capable of the most extreme brutality when demanded.

As far as performances go, Christian Bale comes back to the fore after being overshadowed by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. Tom Hardy brings a formidable physical presence to the role of Bane. While the Darth Vader like mask and muffled voice, enhance the pure menace of Bane they leave Hardy with hardly any means to show his acting chops. Those expecting an encore of his performance as Bronson, would be disappointed. Anne Hathway brings feline charm to the role and delivers the best written lines with aplomb. Joseph Gordon Levitt, playing John Blake, has the most screen time after Bruce Wayne. There is no total despair without hope – Bane says. John Blake is the believer and Joseph Gordon Levitt plays the role with heart-warming sincerity. Marion Cotillard looks strangely subdued and off-colour playing a sane woman in a Nolan film.

The Dark Knight is ultimately a super hero action film and Christopher Nolan does not disappoint. There are some jaw-dropping action sequences in the film like a mid-air kidnapping, a well prison and a huge melee scene shot on Wall Street. Nolan does not demand suspension of disbelief, he buys it. The Bat makes its debut and Michael Bay should take a few lessons on how to make hardware fights interesting. Jonathan Nolan’s screenplay is even more kinetic than the Dark Knight and ensures that the audience can barely keep up with what is happening. One could say this serves the dual purpose of obscuring several plot holes as well as ensuring repeat viewing.  For the devotees of the Batman universe some of the plot twists may not be as surprising as for the normal public.

What Chris Nolan has achieved with his Batman films is to take what are essentially action films away from their usual light-hearted or quirky avatar. His films take themselves more seriously than any previous superhero movies. His villains are agents that serve to demonstrate the dark side of human beings. While the Dark Knight talked about themes like escalation in the context of conflict, Dark Knight Rises has a flirtation with the idea of kangaroo courts, class conflict and consequences of revolutions. Bruce Wayne is an inwardly tortured tragic hero and this is a film which gets him his closure. At the same time, the film leaves enough hints and a delicious ending to ensure that the franchise has a foundation for further instalments, if the studio cares to follow, even though Nolan himself would not return. Or would he? 

Luck By Chance

When Danny Boyle wanted to cast the lead for Slumdog Millionaire he wanted a struggling Indian actor, one who looked an absolute loser. But he had to cast, Dev Patel from England, his Brit accent notwithstanding, because all struggling actors in Mumbai have six packs and go to gym for four hours a day. Luck by chance’s Vikram Jai Singh (Farhaan Akhtar) is one such struggling actor from an affluent background in Delhi, who comes to Mumbai to try his luck in the movies. He joins an acting school, and learns to ride horses, dance and fight - all essential ingredients of success in Hindi films, as his teacher tells him. He meets and gets romantically involved with fellow struggler Sona Mishra (Konkona Sen) from Kanpur, who has hooked up with a sleazy producer (Aly Khan) in the hope of her major ‘break’, which has been eluding her for the past three years. When superstar Zafar Khan (Hrithik Roshan) quits a film by producer Romy Rolly (Rishi Kapoor) midway, Vikram is cast as his replacement as a result of a sequence of fortuitous events in which Vikram’s cunning and lack of qualms plays a significant part.
Luck by chance is the story of how success in Hindi films is more a function of luck (being in the right place at the right time) and opportunism than straightforward hard work and talent. Vikram’s chance comes out of the blue because of his being at the right place at the right time while Sona struggles from one minor role to another waiting for that one starring role. The film also offers a look into the basis of relationships in the film industry and how they are used and manipulated. It takes aim at several aspects of the film industry – the insignificance of actresses in Hindi films, the cult of the superstar, film glossies, opportunistic superstars who go back on their words, hypocritical corporate financers with false standards, producers who worship at the feet of superstars but don’t bat an eyelid as they exploit a newcomer, flop actors who turn into directors, star kids, star moms etc. It depicts all the flaws of the film industry but does it in a jocund manner, without demonizing the players like a Corporate or turning them into ridiculous caricatures like a Rangeela. So many stars seemed to be laughing at themselves that one wonders if they really have developed such a magnanimous sense of humor or failed to realize that the joke is on them, inadvertently. An example is an interesting sequence where Romy Rolly is seeking a replacement lead for his movie and of the four established real-life actors he approaches, three are star kids and one is a model-turned-‘actor’.
Farhaan Akhtar has a more rounded role in this film than Rock on and he does it adequately, without being spectacular. However he underplays it so much that it is hard at times to separate his Vikram from the Farhaan Akhtar who hosts ‘Oye it’s Friday’. He is cast opposite the excellent Konkona Sen Sharma who brings great depth to her portrayal of the struggler who always talks about and waits for her big break. Vikram might be the protagonist but it’s Sona whose character has a real arc. Dimple Kapadia is excellent as the former star turned starlet-mother (a phenomenon unique to India) – switching from classy to street-nasty and back in a blink. Isha Sharwani does well with her role of the starlet and holds her own in the few steps of dance with Hrithik Roshan. Hrithik Roshan plays the star Zafar Khan with ease and provides some of the best comedy. Rishi Kapoor goes overboard at times, playing too hard for the laughs with his portrayal of the fat producer, which clashes with the general low-key subtleness of the film’s humour. Cameos abound with actors playing both characters and themselves – Aamir Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Boman Irani…… although Karan Johar’s appearance and his who-dares-wins dialogue would be more at home in a self-indulgent film awards show than this film.
The characters are human with real and unexaggerated flaws. There are no sudden changes of heart or film-resolving redemptions. Zoya Akhtar’s script and direction are spot on and the film does not drag for even a second. There are some memorable scenes like the opening title sequence, a scene where Vikram goes for his first audition and sees dozens of almost identical looking young men and a scene where the superstar plays with street kids across a glass window. The dialogue is fresh and the humour is contemporary ala Dil Chahta Hai. The music is good and never breaks the continuity of the film.
Luck by chance is a must-watch for its subtle humour, its honest yet light-hearted look at the film industry, its original and satisfactory ending and its good performances. It might not be big on music or dances or action or melodrama but it is an insider’s view of the film industry without any bias or protectiveness. It is a great directorial debut by Zoya Akhtar.

Ghajini - the emperor has no clothes

Beware of a film that opens with a medical college professor telling his students - “The brain is the most important organ of the human body”
- Old Chinese Proverb
For close to 10 years now, Aamir Khan’s association with a film ensured that audiences could walk into the theatre without reading any reviews, with the assurance that the film would boast of the same high standards of meticulousness and perfectionism that he represents and brings to each of his performances. With Ghajini, a film that is shoddily written and directed and feeble in nearly all departments, that reputation must take a beating. It is hard to imagine why Aamir Khan, who is reputed to be as fastidious about the scripts of the films he signs as he is for the right look for his character, agreed to do a film which does not seem to have a script at all.
The story of Ghajini unfolds in a mix of a linear and two flashback sequences which scarcely enhance its coherence. In a linear manner, the story is so – The muscle bound telecom mogul hero (whom no one has seen for some reason) returns from overseas. By the silliest of plot contrivances hero falls in love with minor-model heroine while pretending to be a struggling model himself. After some songs and some silly comedy heroine too falls in love with hero and agrees to marry him, not knowing he is a mega-tycoon. Hero lies to the heroine that he is going to his village to see his ailing mother when actually he is going to London. While hero is away, heroine exposes a kidney-stealing cum child prostitution racket run by the big-mustached villain - Ghajini. Ghajini implicates himself before the heroine and then kills heroine and injures hero on the head giving him short term memory loss (and side-effects like an infinite pain threshold, superhuman strength and an OCD of exercising). Hero now stumbles around Mumbai with his disorder using his tattoos and Polaroid photos as external memory devices, looking for Ghajini. He kills people with the efficiency of T-1000 from Terminator 2 and looks confused after doing so (for comic effect). Hero finds villain. Hero kills villain. Hero parties with children. End of film. Thrown in the middle are a cop who runs as fast as Osain Bolt and shares the hero’s penchant for flaunting his biceps, a medical student with unclear motivations, an absurd backstory about buying 3 ambassador cars, juvenile jokes involving chaddis among other things, an unfunny SRK impersonator and lots of product placement (Van Heusen, TVS, Hamam etc).
I will not try to nitpick here. I will not question how plausible it is that no one has ever seen the head of the biggest telecom company in India. Or why he always travels in a cavalcade of four black Mercedes-Benz cars like a Mafioso. Or why there is no serious police investigation when such a high profile man is attacked so brutally. Or how does the head of a pharmaceutical company who diversifies his revenue stream by dabbling in kidney rackets and child prostitution and surrounds himself with the most obvious scum of the earth, get invited as a chief guest to the cultural function of a medical college. These plot-holes are minor flaws before Ghajini’s main problems – incoherent story, mediocre performances and poor direction.
Director A R Murugadoss does not understand Hindi. That is evident from the poorly written dialogues. It also seems that he does not understand subtlety, or understatement. The film is riddled with stale clichés and sickening melodrama that make one cringe. The heroine’s benevolence is established by scenes where she helps a group of handicapped kids. To reinforce that this was not a one-off incident there is another scene where she helps a blind man to the bus stop and narrates everything that is happening around which the poor blind man can’t see (how very humane!). Her profound love for the hero is proved by the fact that she sells her most hard-earned possession for the treatment of the hero’s sick mother (who doesn’t even exist because the hero is lying to hide the fact that he is going to London in his private jet).
Whenever there is the slightest hint of action in the film, A R Murugadoss turns on the hyperactivity throttle. The camera goes into an epileptic seizure with 2 second rapid-fire cuts, idiotic fast-forward motion, and all kinds of pretentious camera tricks with loud sound effects. Unfortunately none of them are able to conceal that the action is rather lame and the fights poorly choreographed. For a film with such a large amount of violence there is not a single fight sequence that gets your adrenaline up.
The background score is a perpetual attack on the ears. There is not a quiet moment to be found in the film. The score abounds with more cries and wails than an Enigma album and weird metallic sounds. The aim seems to be to deafen the audience and stun them into a state of partial unconsciousness, so that they do not realize what garbage they are being subjected to.
A R Rahman has provided a cut-price, B-class variant of his music. The songs, except the beautifully shot Guzaarish are hardly memorable. None of the songs register with their tunes and the less said about the lyrics the better. It is hard to believe that this is the same composer who gave us Rang De Basanti.
The performances range from awful to mediocre. Asin overdoes the cheerful yet naïve yet mischievous yet virtuous girl part. Her act composes of shrugging her shoulders, moving her hands around excessively and putting on a myriad of expressions that seem to come straight out of a high-school play. So overdone is her performance that Aamir Khan appears to be embarrassed sharing frames with her. Her cringe-inducing acting completely cuts out the slightest iota of empathy or sympathy one might feel for her character.
Aamir Khan’s performance can be divided into two halves – before injury and after injury. The pre-injury Aamir Khan is strangely subdued, and seems ill at ease with Asin. There is about as much chemistry in the Aamir-Asin pairing as one would find in a history textbook. In the second half he displays only two emotions – rage and confusion. Vengeful and furious, he explodes with the intensity of a raging volcano when reminded of the sad demise of his beloved; however his love story is so badly sketched out that one wonders what he is getting so worked up about. In the scenes when he gets confused after suffering a memory loss, not only does one not feel any sympathy for his condition but it is hard to suppress laughter at the brainless absurdity of it all.
Jiah Khan has a poorly written character whose motivations are difficult to fathom and she does not add anything to our understanding of them with her rather limited acting skills. Pradeep Rawat, who played Sultan in Sarfarosh, plays the pantomime villain with gusto and adopts a faux Haryana/Western UP accent to further add to the comicality.
Ghajini suffers from an asinine script with innumerable plot contrivances and poorly written characters, who act erratically according to the whims of the director and the direction he wants to force the film into. It suffers from a cacophonic score, noisy songs and camera work which makes you wonder whether the cinematographer was having seizures. The only innovative part of the script - the 15 minute memory, has been conveniently lifted from Christopher Nolan’s Memento and then misused in the worst possible manner. The only commendable thing about Ghajini is the work Aamir Khan has put in to sculpt his body but considering the overall poor standard of everything else in the film one wonders if so much pain would have been better utilized for a better film.
Ghajini is a mediocre film and seems a vanity project for Aamir khan, to prove that he too can do ‘mainstream’ films with as much élan as anyone else. If mainstream means deposit-your-brains-at-the-baggage-counter cinema, he has proven his point emphatically. Now let’s hope, normal service will resume.