Rocky aur Rani kii prem kahani – A Review

Karan Johan directs Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt in Rocky aur Rani Kii Prem Kahani. Ranveer Singh plays Rocky the flamboyant Punjabi lad stereotype to the absolute hilt and Alia plays Rani the cultured Bengali lass like only she can. Both Ranveer and Alia infuse so much genuine warmth and charisma into their characters that you cannot help but grin from ear to ear!

Rocky is from the ultra rich Randhawa family led by the venerable matriarch Dhanalakshmi played by Jaya Bachchan whose husband is played by Dharmendra who is confined to a wheelchair with his memory fading. Bachchan rules the family with an iron fist and has tried to mold her son Tijori played by Aamir Bashir in her image, driven and arrogant with nary an emotional streak. A couplet read out by host at a awards function jogs Dharmendra’s memory and reignites a long-suppressed flame of lost love. The love in this case is Jamini Chatterjee played by Shabana Azmi, Rani’s grandmother, the cultured, sensitive, and convivial matriarch of the Chatterjee household. Rocky and Rani try to reunite the lovers Dharmendra and Azmi in the hopes of improving Dharmendra’s health and memory.  What transpires from there is the clash of families, values, cultures, and their very very different worlds.

The magic that Shashank Khaitan, Ishita Moitra and Sumit roy weave through their story and screenplay is where this movie turns all the usual Bollywood family drama tropes on its head.  But more than anything else this is Karan Johar’s love letter to Bollywood, to the world his father inhabited, and that Karan Johar has a very unique perspective on. He furthers the narrative with throwbacks to old classic Bollywood songs, Abhi na jaao chod kar to stop a loved one in their tracks, Aaj Mausam bada beimaan hai to romanticize the rain like only Bollywood knows how to do, Aaj fir jeene ki tamnna hai to symbolize the breaking of long suffering housewife’s shackles the list goes on and on. Not since Anupam Kher and Sridevi’s medley in Lamhe or the antakshari in Maine Pyaar Kiya has the Bollywood nostalgia been deployed with such precision. Karan Johar innately understands the language of Bollywood. He also understands culture and the zeitgeist as no one else does. He released the song Dhindhora baaje re knowing that he will face criticism of him still having a Sanjay Leela Bhansali hangover (aka Kalank), I even saw someone call the song cringey online and they mashed the video together with Dola re and said that works better but the moments that precede the song tells you that Karan Johar is in on the joke and that this movie is singularly his vision.

Ranveer and Alia are on top form. Ranveer is gaudy in Gucci, he is vain like no one’s business. His introduction is by means of the song Heartthrob ji literal minutes into the movie and you know you are in safe hands, an actor who doesn’t do anything by half measures and a director who is assured in his vision. What is usually saved for the end credits with a carousel of Bollywood actors popping in to shake a leg or two is turned on its head and becomes the opening song. Alia Bhatt brings a luminescence to screen that would brighten the darkest of forests, she scoffs at everything Rocky is but cannot help herself falling in love, with the slightest of inflections in her laughs they go from mocking Rocky to falling in love with him. Alia Bhatt gets several big moments, and it is the dichotomy of her diminutive frame and ability to assert her presence and making her voice be heard which lets her make mince meat out every one of those big moments. The tender moment between Tota Roy Chowdhury, Rani’s father and Ranveer Singh were reminiscent of tender moment between Michael Stuhlberg and Timothée Chalamet in Call me By Your Name. I was prepared to dislike Jaya Bachchan in this movie based off of the trailers, thinking how one note her performance felt instead I  came away empathetic for her character’s plight, never shown love or respect when she marries into a new family,  married to a man who seemed more interested in poetry and pinning for a lost love than in providing for a family she took it upon herself to put on the pants and be the breadwinner and in the process become so hardened that she forgot to feel anything for anyone not too dissimilar to her perceived public persona of late. When she mischievously (maybe malevolently) giggles she is still that girl from Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Guddi.

There has been a lot of talk in the past week about how subversive Barbie movie was to bring forth discussion on feminism, misogyny, existentialism and capitalism, my thoughts on barbie were far from that. If there is a subversive blockbuster this summer then in my opinion it is Rocky aur Rani kii prem kahani. Karan Johar turns the sanskari family Bollywood crutch on its head, gone are his K3G “its all about loving you family” days and he ushers in a millennial India which asks for respect from family in trade for love. The Heroine is the one who is day-dreaming of the Hero dancing in the snow, runs back to her hometown, chases down the hero and stops traffic to confess her love, she is the one who goes down on bended knee. But he does all this with his typical Karan Johar touch, there is a the barren tree in the middle of snow a la Ishqwala love, monochromatic chiffon sarees fluttering in the winds a la Suraj Hua Maddham. Like the new advert of Dhanalakshmi sweets says Soch nayi, Swaad vahi. I am even willing to forgive the blasphemy that is the What Jhumka song – we’ll chalk it up to sampling rather than remixing – I mean if Beyonce does it on Renaissance who are we to stop Karan and Pritam from doing it? Especially if the results are as foot thumping!

Barbie – A Review

Greta Gerwig directs Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in Barbie. The movie introduces the world to Barbie by means of a 2001: A Space odyssey monolith monkey scene inspired opener narrated by the inimitable Dame Helen Mirren. It introduces us to the perfectly pink utopia known as Barbieland where all the barbies live and wave at each other “Hi Barbie” “Hi Barbie” with a plastered smile permanently affixed on their faces very much like the iconic plastic dolls.

Margot Robbie plays stereotypical barbie, the one most resembling the original barbie with the impossible figure and perfectly chiseled cheekbones and a tumbling mane of gorgeous blonde hair – essentially Margot Robbie herself. Robbie sets in motion a series of events that threaten to disrupt the utopia when she has the existential thoughts about dying. To fix things she must go on a journey of self-discovery – of sorts. She has to find the girl who is playing with her and to make her happy and not have those thoughts of death and then the balance will be restored, and things will go back to being fantastic in plastic. Safe to say things don’t go as planned. Robbie puts her whole self into this and has the distant vacant stare perfected to near science.

Gosling is Ken to Robbie’s barbie – there’s more Kens but Gosling is Kenough! If Robbie is the physical embodiment of Barbie – Gosling is the physical embodiment of Ken and the psychological embodiment of a Ken as played on an extended SNL skit, his goofiness is just incredible, and you are waiting for him to break character break the fourth wall and look at you with a smirk and a shrug. There is a lot of other actors, some notable and others less so but they all are more a part of set decoration than anything else. Kate McKinnon being the exception – she gets to be a slightly more developed character than the rest. America Ferrara plays Gloria – the mother of the girl whose barbie is Robbie’s real-world counterpart. Ferrara more so than Robbie is the beating heart of the movie, but you wouldn’t know it going off of the extensive marketing.

The production on this is incredible, everything looks fake and shiny, like it came out of acetate lined box. The costume design is incredible with many iconic barbie looks being prominently featured. The music is poppy, the Ryan Gosling solo “I’m just ken” although a bit anti-climactic is still a fantastic song that does more to further the inner dialogue of Ken than most other material Gosling is given to play with.

I really wanted to like this one – I even went in barbiecore (well a bright pink tshirt is about as barbie core as I get) but I was massively disappointed. For a runtime of almost 2 hours nothing of significance happens in the movie. The story meanders from a portrayal of a “life in plastic, is fantastic” to patriarchy on steroids real world. The conceptual setup doesn’t make sense is there 1 barbie in the barbie world for each barbie that a real person plays with in the real world, what happens when a barbie is discarded in the real world – something akin to the toys coming alive in toy story would have atleast helped this make more sense. Also, the barbie and ken role reversals in the real world as compared to barbie world comes about a bit too suddenly and jarringly. There is a tender moment when Robbie tells an old woman she’s beautiful and she retorts “I know” a thing one barbie says to another in barbie land – this would let us believe that the old woman played with barbies in her youth. A few more moments like this would have helped ground the story a bit more. I got why barbie went to real world, I still don’t think I understood why gloria and her daughter come to barbie world. And how gloria’s daughter an angsty gen-Zer verging on goth just suddenly turns pastel-y. Ken brining patriarchy to barbieland and then losing interest in it just as quickly after forgetting to vote it into constitution seemed rushed and inconsequential other than to let Robbie deliver a monologue. Simu Liu was right there – Ryan Gosling being interested in horses and Simu Liu wanting all the other perks of patriarchy would have atleast made more sense, and then Gosling no longer wanting to participate in patriarchy would have been a better logical conclusion.  The Mattel execs led by CEO Will Farrell seem to bridge the real world and barbie world by means of acting a fool in both worlds. Much like Barbie if you scratched beneath the surface you’d find a hollow shell of an idea – Greta could really deliver a story that really spoke meaningfully about the absurdity of patriarchy, the burden the society puts on women to look a certain way, act a certain way, and if you ever stepped out of line, you’d be outcast. But instead, we get a movie that is more style over substance, more rhetorical than introspective, more choreographed dance routine than coherent story telling. I wanted to sit with this review to check what my problem with the movie was – was it the “wokeness” or the purportedly women-centric story telling? On the contrary I wanted the movie to be properly woke, I wanted them to struggle to solve patriarchy – at least in barbie world – I wanted it to actually hold a mirror to the society to show them that under the aegis of barbie that allowed little girls to dream about other things than just being mothers they haven’t solved anything. I just wanted Barbie to BE everything but its just not.

Oppenheimer – A Review

Christopher Nolan directs Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer, the biopic on the rise and fall of Robert J Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer is Nolan’s lengthiest and quite possibly his most ambitious and most meditative film so far. The film also stars Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Josh Harnett, and Florence Pugh amongst a whole host of familiar faces in pivotal roles

Told in a non-linear fashion the story written by Nolan himself as an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin tells the story of Robert J Oppenheimer as a troubled physicist who travels to Cambridge and then Netherlands to “mop-up” in the second wave of quantum physics . The story tracks Oppenheimer’s dalliances with communist ideology, his setup of the quantum physics at Berkley and the move to Los alamos to lead the Manhattan project and the eventual downfall and withdrawal of his security clearance.

The movie is more than just a typical biopic, Nolan’s Oppenheimer is not the perfect demi-god like Prometheus of the Greek mythology who steals the fire from the gods and gives it to men for which he is chained to a rock and an eagle eats a part of his liver each day which regrows again, Prometheus continue to suffer for eternity. Instead in Cillian Murphy, Nolan finds a Oppenheimer who is a womanizer, easily influenced by the pull of communism, and just as easily swayed to give up the cause of unionizing so that he can join the Manhattan project, he is not perfect, he is plagued by indecision and regret. Murphy turns in a near perfect performance, the moral conundrum on his face as he takes the podium the day after America drops the nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima is a masterclass in acting. He goes from fearful for the horrors he let loose upon the world to triumphant and jingoistic when delivering a speech, he doesn’t even believe in. Murphy’s internal dialogue is never once espoused in literal words when he is sat in front of the bogus hearing for the renewal of his security clearance but with a far away stare Murphy lets the audience know exactly what is going on. His performance is simultaneously subdued, and explosive aided by Hoyte Van Hoytema’s brilliant closeup work and Ludwig Goransson’s operatic background score.

Robert Downey Jr. turns in a fantastic performance on the back of a brilliant story, his Lewis Strauss switches from being a beleaguered cabinet secretary nominee facing questioning by a senate commission to being a petulant man child who perceived slights at the hands of Oppenheimer where none were intended and quite possibly altered the course of history by not paying heed to Oppenheimer’s warnings about a nuclear arms race out of spite and political ambition. Emily Blunt plays Oppenheimer’s wife and she eats up the scene she’s in and leaves no crumbs. The range she swings from is incredible- she is at once stoic, when she finds Oppenheimer curled up and grieving over the news of Jean Tatlocks’ death she tells him “ he doesn’t get to make mistakes and feel sorry about it , there are too many people who depend on him” and belligerent, when she hurls a glass at Oppenheimer who refuses to fight for himself in the sham hearing over his security clearance.  Josh Hartnett is a welcome surprise and plays the perfect foil to Oppenheimer’s wild swings of emotions. He is grounded and pragmatic. Florence Pugh fails to impress as Jean Tatlock, Oppenheimer’s tragic communist girlfriend as she comes off as nothing more than a joyless scold, I am yet to see the promise in Pugh what every critic everywhere seems to see in every single one of her outings.

The much-hyped Trinity Test sequence where Nolan reportedly did not deploy the use of CGI to replicate the mushroom cloud that results from the explosion of the first ever atomic bomb is an incredible moment of cinematic splendor not because it is explosive and impressive – it IS but it is the moments leading up to it, the breathless building of crescendo thanks to Goransson’s score and Hoytema’s incredible camera work. The back and forth pacing and dialogues have the energy of a Sorkin-like walk and talk that adds to the building momentum and then when the bomb is dropped the deafening silence with nothing more than a leftover violin note and Cillian Murphy’s labored breathing that seems to resonate with yours, heightens all your senses before you are knocked back into your seat by the delayed sound of explosion several times over. This intensity is revisited upon the audience towards the end when Rami Malek delivers devastating testimony to the senate committee that blows up Lewis Strauss’s world. Special mention to Alden Ehrenreich who is a vessel for the audience’s indignation at the injustice Strauss directs at Oppenheimer for his own gains.

There are many layers to peel back with this movie which will need many a revisit. The who’s who of the science community who Oppenheimer studies under and considers his peers, the dichotomy of Oppenheimer claiming Heisenberg “failed” and took a “wrong turn” when Heisenberg’s research is more focused on nuclear reactor for power source instead of a bomb when eventually Oppenheimer himself comes to regret making the bomb. I had an entirely different review typed up at 5 in the morning but I threw it all away simply because revisiting Goransson’s original soundtrack flooded back the memories of the night before, the many world ending existential thoughts I felt while watching the movie. This movie also felt like a personal growth for Nolan – in all his previous outings the flawed hero at the center of the story (Bale’s Bruce Wayne, DiCaprio’s Cobb) always had a moral compass and voice of reason outside of themselves, whether it was Michael Caine’s Alfred, Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox and Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon in the Batman Trilogy or Michael Caine’s Miles in Inception. With Oppenheimer the central character is not just the mythical hero himself but an entire mythology unto himself. I love Scorsese and The Aviator but Oppenheimer makes me wonder what Nolan would have done with his take on the Howard Hughes biopic he planned to make with Jim Carrey as the lead.

Nolan’s dedication to the craft of film making is second to none and it is on full display here. His vision, the visual translation onto film and the aural harmonics come together in a trifecta rarely seen. With a once in a lifetime performance from his principal cast of Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt and Robert Downey Jr. elevated several notches above a typical biopic by Hoyte Van Hoytema’s arresting visuals and a transcendent original score, this is a cinematic achievement that is unlikely to be dwarfed this year or even for some time to come. Make no mistakes this IS the movie event of the year.