"Super 30" (Hindi Film Review)

 Films about academicians and pedagogy rarely make an interesting script, least of all from Bollywood's point of view which seeks drama in every real story. But Hrithik Roshan's "Super30" achieves that rare distinction. In 154 minutes, director Vikas Bahl re-constructs the surreal life story of a living legend Anand Kumar who's academy in Bihar has been handpicking thirty students every year for making it to the IITs for the last decade or so. From that point itself, the film deserves appreciation - because a subject of how a poverty-stricken passionate Mathematician finds his mojo in life after failing to muster all the money to go to Cambridge University, and later strikes gold by getting paid a bomb at corporate coaching centers where the rich pay princely sums to get their inert kids through the IIT entrance and finally, leaves all that addictive remuneration to start an academy which proves a leveler, on behalf of the poor students from humble backgrounds. The story of the film is an exaggerated cinematic depiction of that struggle of Anand Kumar (who is today celebrated all over Bihar and India as a poor man's passport-giver to the rigorous IITs) but Vikas Behal creates an exciting screen output of a story that needed to be told, aided by the Roshans (minus their in-house music director), a sharp technical crew of writer (Sanjiv Dutta) and editor (Sreekar Prasad) and an acting ensemble who know their lines well (including Pankaj Tripathi and Aditya Srivastava).

What makes the film authentic is the attention to detail in every frame, even if parts of that are dramatized for emphasis. And in doing so, the director never misses an occasion to milk emotions - whether it is the fleeting romantic moments with Mrunal Thakur (she shines even in the briefest lover role ever in a Hrithik film), or with father (Virendra Saxena) or the brief but frustrating encounters with the librarian, or the home which takes papads from him and immediately thrusts his Cambridge letter into a fire pyre (but how did Hrithik have the heart to wrap his papads into it?). The director's precise thinking can be seen from just one scene in the library: Hritihik smuggles himself into a corner of a library trying to steal visuals of one Mathematical Gazette that could be his passport to glory. Any other film-maker could show another corner of a library, but Hrithik is shown in the corner of books about Post-War British History and Economics ( a corner which we can safely assume will be undetected by the librarian who later yanks him out). Throughout the film, visuals like these show a director in command of his craft and wants to pack as much excitement into telling an inspiring story. The build up to the interval is interesting as are the different episodes in the second half which show his innovative pedagogy (methods of teaching concepts in maths, physics and chemistry), the Holi sequence (which is the only lovable item song in the film) and the electrifying climax (where the students distract and destroy an enemy camp out to eliminate them).

Music by Ajay-Atul is one of the most haunting scores in recent times which meet the criteria of a real-life reel drama - measured, melodious, heart-stringing and comprehensive. All the five songs show the class, range and mettle of the composer duo as they have the ability to trigger the right emotions, capture the ethos and yet make the music sound so distinct and clear. Reminded me of the times when Amit Trivedi burst on the scene many years before. If the songs are good, the BGM score is a different class apart - using sanskritised voice-overs of prayer song to invoke the blessings of Goddess Saraswati, the composers build a crescendo in the second half throughout that is at once piercing, soothing and brilliant in orchestral magic. That song that culminates in the climax and throughout the second half is unfortunately, not in the OST but will surely linger on long after you leave the theatre. Performances-wise, Hrithik Roshan is apt and comes out alive after a long time since there is no iron-pumping or Greek beauty to show - he practiced his Bihari accent well and delivers a neat performance that should get some brownie points (pun intended). What subtracts from the film is that the kids (whom you wanted to know more about after the Basanti Song) should have been highlighted more in flesh and bone. But I fully subscribe to the view that the film is dramatized to full measure because of which it has become so engaging to watch - any other treatment would have rendered it less exciting. If only the director spent a little more time to dig into the pedagogy happening in these money-spinning corporate centers, and the suicides happening into IITs, this would have been a seminal film. But overall, a soul-satisfying film and one for the Roshans to be remembered for. Never a dull moment, even for the kids. Go all out for it!
Rating: 3.5/5
#Super30 #Bollywood #HrithikRoshan #VikasBahl #AjayAtul #MrunalThakur #PanjajTripathi

"Bombay Talkies" Hindi Film Review

"Bombay Talkies" is the name of the latest film co-produced by India's youthful new-age directors: Dibakar Banerjee, Anurag Kashyap, Karan Johar and Zoya Akhtar. As the name suggests, it is meant to be an eulogy on Bollywood's century-old idioms. With the exception of Karan Johar, and to some extent, Zoya Akhtar, the other two are one of the two brilliant filmmakers who have sought new ground in bringing in realistic and hard-hitting story-telling with a rare irreverence to old norms while trying to achieve youthful yet compelling emotional connect with the audiences. The producers have selected the most apt title for a film which has four different tales rendered by these four directors - Karan, Dibanker, Zoya and Anurag with half-hour slots each in a total running time of 127 minutes (which includes the four-minute tobacco ad pre-and post interval and a gaudy "Om Shanti Om" style medley of Bollywood boys and girls - from Aamir to SRK to Ranbir and Kareena and Vidya Balan). Originally, Bombay Talkies was founded in 1934 by the First Lady of Indian Cinema - Devika Rani and her first husband Himanshu Rai. They went on to make many films which had an impact on the development of early Indian Cinema. Bombay Talkies became an icon for the arrival of Indian Cinema and subsequently, we all know how Mani Ratnam started his own Madras Talkies as a motif for South Indian Cinema.

Back to "Bombay Talkies" the movie. The four films are directed individually by the four talents above, with their respective name splashed on the screen when their film starts with a 15 second blackout separating one from another to indicate the end of one film and the beginning of the other. That way, the format is a little different from "Darna Mana Hai" where the stories lead upto the climactic story ending. That makes this a winning collaboration with a must-watch tag. What makes the four stories watchable is the bench-strength use of promising technicians like Amit Trivedi who scored thrilling music for all the four stories, inter-mixing the need to elevate the many moods essayed in each director's short story with impressive repertoire of folk music, playback, instrumentation from everyday rhythms and purcussions. Anyone who has long spotted Amit Trivedi from the time he debuted on MTV Unplugged till "DevD" OST got released will vouch that Amit Trivedi is the most-dazzling find amongst the current crop of Bollywood music composers. His music is rich, varied and culturally resonating with the heartbeats of Hindi heartland music, no wonder he still hasn't got the call from masala-oriented South film producers. 

How are the four stories? Are they real? Yes. Credible? Yes. Evocative? Yes, again. 

First story is an explicit take on Indian Male homosexuality directed by Karan Johar (what else where you expecting?). Randeep Hooda and Rani Mukherjee live their own lives in different cubicle nations within the media industry. They are almost sex-less and live a boring civil life until their frustrations surface with the entry of an intern at Rani's office. This young lad is a self-confessed Gay and he gets cosy with Rani in a platonic way only to get cosier with her husband in a plutonic way. Karan seems deft in handling the emerging theme of homosexuality and its repurcussions in conservative Indian families. The gay abandon with which Karan revels in re-creating the sexual preferences of an emerging male order makes it a subtle watch with some hummable music remixed of the old sixties by Amit Trivedi. That room, that music room of old LP records and audios owned by Randeep Hooda in the film must be any music lover's delight - it must belong to one of them - Anurag Kashyap, Producer Viacom's Raghav Behl or Farhan Akhtar, Zoya's sibling.

The second story is the most brilliant of the short films, directed by Dibaker Banerjee. It shows an in-form Nawazuddin Siddiqui as a go-nowhere dweller of a certain chawl in Mumbai, with a bed-ridden daughter who is tired of dad's old stories and a wife who juggles many jobs in three shifts. As if to make a statement on Ponzi schemes, Dibaker introduces EMU farming which has caught on with India's aspiring middle-class. One day, our Mumbai householder goes for the job of a Security Guard, misses it by a whisker and lands himself in a crowd watching Ranbir Kapoor's latest shoot. He gets a rare call from the film's Assistant Directors to enact a two-second scene - to bump into Ranbir from the other end, engrossed holding a newspaper. He exults at the opportunity and gets ten minutes to rehearse in a solitary set away from the din where he works himself up to do the role. In that interlude, he imagines having  an intense conversation with his theatre-obsessed father - brilliantly played by Sadashiv Amrapurkar - who was always pushing him to get to the basics of life. Then the shot readied, improvisations done, Nawaz goes home in a trance forgetting the small change, and the bottle of water earned as a perk for the brief role. He goes home, re-enacts the day's exciting proceedings to his daughter and wife, in a majestic  narrative without words and only flute music in background. This is the best story and my research tells that this is based on one of Satyajit Ray's famous short stories. 

The last two stories are more effusive of the magic spell of Bollywood on India's youth and children. Zoya's story is about a young boy whose father drives him to football but the boy loves the dances of Bollywood. He eulogies Katrina Kaif and becomes her in dreams and in daylight as he pursues dancing to the point of raising money for his sister. The end is filmy with sibling love and dream coming true but this is the only story which has an item song, if you can call that of Katrina's onscreen and off-screen presence in the film. The last story by the nonchalant Anurag Kashyapa is about a father (Sudheer Pandey) and son (Vineet Singh). The father's wish is to send the son with an heirloom bottle of "Murabba" (a kind of a ladoo made of sweet pumpkin) to Bollywood's Badshah's house - Prateeksha - the home of Amitabh Bachchan for a bite by the legendary actor so he can die in peace, something his father did with Yousuf Khan a.k.a Dilip Kumar. The saga is all about the days of wait and exasperation by the youth from Allahabad as he encounters many others who live on a pail of water in order to shake hands with Bollywood's glitterati. It is a pithy take by Anurag to capture the timeless appeal of Bollywood's icons. There's a sweet ending with a twist in the tale but Anurag handles it well with  raunchy wit.

On the whole, all the four stories have their signature styles of their creators who are in between their swinging and cutting-edge form. Undoubtedly, my take is that the honors go the four in this pecking order: Dibaker, Anurag, Zoya and Karan. What spoils the party in the end as we are about to applaud a rare ensemble of a talented foursome is a loud reprise to the ruling Divas of Bollywood in their audacious dream costumes - as I said from Kapoors to Khans. This must have been some producer's silly idea to endear an otherwise charming junction of upmarket, mofussil and fairy tales to the front-benchers who whistle at sighting each of the two generations of glitterati including Sridevi, Juhi and Madhuri. A great, watchable experiment and hopefully, Viacom should make it viable for more coming in this direction of sterotype-smashing cinema. 4 out of 5 for "Bombay Talkies". But I wonder why, U/A for a film that starts off the first story with hair-raising homosexuality. Maybe India will be the 15th nation in the world to endorse same-sex marriage now that the Censors have no objection to it.

A K Hangal @95. RIP. Bollywood's Angelic Old Man.

AK Hangal. RIP @95. I had the fortune to meet this towering stage/film personality when he gave me an interview at CPI congress. It was a heady feeling to push my way as a sophomore journo/freelancer for "Deccan Chronicle". We met at Railway Guest House at SCR. He was charming and gentlemanly. But the caption my editor gave for this story in DC forever estranged him - it hurt him for he was a communist at heart. I pray for his peaceful soul journey wherever he is. He gave me one of my earliest press stories while I was still in journalism school - and a scoop to boast of. Even if he has essayed fewer roles, he will be remembered forever - his multiple hats as theatre personality, as Rahim Chacha in "Sholay", as a CPI activist - all gave him a halo. He is the most-loved old man of Hindi Cinema.