U-TURN

U-Turn starts with a disclaimer that it’s based on real events. What these real events mean, is revealed only during end-credits. One can consider it a deceit or a conceit by the helmer, depending on how one wishes to consume that information.

There are many scenes in this film that show something but convey something else; mostly hidden, few completely contrary. This is no Lucia, but writer-director Pawan Kumar’s U-Turn is surely an engrossing, above-average, song less thriller. The movie’s premise starts with a mysterious murder/death of a person having marital issues. The same person is shown to have made an illegal U-turn on the busy Double Road fly-over in Bangalore by shifting aside big blocks used as a make-shift median. An intern (a dusky and an extremely attractive Shraddha Srinath with a nose-ring in tow to make hearts go aflutter) at the Indian Express office (in Shivajinagar of course) is preparing a crime-story based on traffic violations/’un-civic’ sense of riders and drivers and has a home-less – well, he has a make-shift tent if you want to call it a home—guy give her the registration numbers of those vehicles for 100 rupees. It’s discovered that the guy who made the illegal U-turn that day dies the same night. It’s also discovered later, that so have many others who have made that U-turn on the fly-over. What’s going on here? What does someone taking a U-turn on some busy fly-over have to do with his or her death? Everyone is looking for answers, including a more-than-helpful and enthusiastic cop, a bereaved husband and a prospective boy-friend.

As mentioned earlier, by Pawan Kumar’s Lucia standards, this might appear, ironically, a ‘conventional’ movie! And the fact that it might hark back referentially to a Hindi movie not more than 4 years old which also dealt with death and its myriad consequences is quite unmissable: Thematically, yes, the two films are threaded but cinematically, Pawan Kumar’s treatment is quite divorced from the Hindi one and seeps with a local, linguistic authenticity. (There is a hilarious scene where a couple of ‘youths’ ask the intern what rights she has to question their ‘right’ to indulge in traffic violations; is she a ‘Kannadiga’? In the next scene, this patriot who considered himself the judge, jury, and executioner of state-citizenry and rights based on ethnicity is busy snorting coke listening to hard-rock with posters of bands from you-know-where! There’s not a single image or poster of even a Hindi album or a movie – let-alone Kannada music. Well, so much for hyper-statehood tongue-lashing.)

The film plays out on two levels but still manages to hold the interest on both the levels – the thriller and the meta-physical. Kumar explores ‘karma’ and its many manifestations through and within the Hindu philosophy. A U-turn, or its diagrammatic representation, in a sense, is symbolically filtered through thriller elements in the movie. The theory that there is a pay-back waiting for you for your deeds is given practice through the eventful life of some and mainly the death of many. [In one of the most cinematically/technically tacky but metaphorically rich scenes, a person dying is stopped and is, in a way, cursed to live and complete the life-time ‘assigned’ to him by the higher power. Now this is ‘karma’ and an understanding of PRABHDAM and AkAmiyam would help one in enriching the scene’s consumption as a viewer. Basically, the fact that you have to settle all the balances on all the deeds and mis-deeds your soul was a part of before achieving salvation; whether it be in this birth or multiple-births, is cemented on celluloid through a U-turn.)

Pawan Kumar, the writer-director gives subtle hints towards classism, regionalism (as I mentioned in the coke-addicted guy’s behavior) and just leaves them at that. (The old man picked up from the bridge is really given no choice; it is, as they say, the norm in India, ‘पहेले लात, फिर बात’ for the poor, while upper middle-class and the ‘educated’ get the boot only on 2nd or 3rd round of questioning – if they are luckier, they get a cutting chai first and then the boot.] Again, in the opening scene, he depicts a fine camaraderie and mother-daughter tidbits’ exchange; but throws in many societal observations, namely (i) Indian parents’ obsession with marriage and kids and age (ii) having a ‘safe’ job (in Bangalore parlance, read/write BOTH as software). And boy oh boy, if you are using an auto-rickshaw ‘service’ in Bangalore, make sure you have somebody with you who can go back or make a return-trip with and mainly, for the driver, from where you boarded, otherwise the poor driver has ABSOLUTELY no other choice but to extort you to pay at least half the ‘return-trip’ fare. There is another scene where the intern is accosted by the cops late in the night right in her apartment parking-basement/entrance and the ‘watch-man’ is sleeping. Well, he’s sleeping right through the entire noisy episode and even after the sirens have stopped blaring. The man believes in status-quo, and how!

Technically, the film does go through schizophrenic quality of savviness throughout. The technology employed in the climax is tacky. The cops trying to desperately break through a jail-cell where two guys are beating the hell out of each other is badly handled. The cops’ ineptitude at trying to break-open a jail-cell lock starts earnestly but borders and proceeds to hilarity. The ‘time-gap’ appears forcefully induced and the audience can easily sense it to the extent that they start thinking maybe they would have done a better job at smashing the lock than any cop! The good things: A fine background score by Poornachandra Tejaswi and fine lighting by the DOP especially in the chamber scenes. (The pre-death cinematographic treatment, however, is really old-school and tacky – the kind that you might have seen and forgotten in Ramsey Bros’ movies.) But for all this tackiness, there is one absolutely fantastic shot of the cop {Roger Narayanan’s G.K. Nayak} standing atop the fly-over trying to figure out the topography. The camera zooms out step-wise in such a spectacular fashion to capture a hawk-eye’s view of Bangalore that it might attract or force the Google behemoths to re-configure their street-view: Marvelous and absolutely superlative. All the action-scenes in Mad-Max to me are the cinematographic scenes par-excellence of this entire decade and a close, a very close-second is this shot from U-Turn.

Performance-wise, Shraddha Srinath does a good job of playing a novice but still needs to notch up in the acting department in terms of dialogue-delivery. (Do please keep the nose-ring on in your next movies). Roger Narayan as the cop has a fine screen-presence but comes across as too earnest. Hebbale Krishna is superb as the superior who wants to dismiss off the cases as suicide and not unnecessarily ‘complicate’ cases as well as one’s life.

In all, this is, a ‘safe’ film by Pawan Kumar’s standards but a ‘radical’ one by the Kannada film industry’s standards that for the past decade or so is quite happy ripping off legally or illegally Tamil and Telugu masala films. This is a surely recommended film but if one’s expecting something on par with Lucia, well, one’s not going to get it.

AJ: Haider

AJ: Haider: MILD SPOILERS HAIDER is a pretty faithful adaptation of the bard’s HAMLET with a deviation from the play only toward the climax [un...

Haider

MILD SPOILERS

HAIDER is a pretty faithful adaptation of the bard’s HAMLET with a deviation from the play only toward the climax [unexpected but gruesome for sure]. Even in being text-book faithful, this is a very strong work by Bharadwaj when it comes to transposing the tragedy of Elsinor castle onto the grief-laden snowcaps of Srinagar. It is particularly arresting and haunting when it cuts through the emotional cysts of Prince Hamlet, Claudius, and Gertrude.

Bharadwaj starts the film with Dr. Hilal, father to Shahid Kapoor’s Hamlet and husband to Tabu’s Gertrude, getting shunned off to an Indian army detention center for having sheltered and treated a militant. Haider is then introduced to us searching for his father anywhere, and everywhere. VB captures the haziness of Haider’s mind when he sees his uncle and mother enjoying a musical session. He sees her through a curtain and all the time, his gaze is fixed on her, and never on the uncle. It is almost as though the translucent curtain represents the ‘confusion’ in his mind about what his mother is; guilty? Not guilty? An accomplice? And then she sees him and comes close to him drawing the curtain away; aiding in clearing his fogginess. He then, with a strong sense of certainty, accuses them of being in an affair and making the most of the disappearance of his father: He replies to his bewildered uncle’s question with – ‘I am talking about what I am exactly seeing.’ There are many cinematic pearls like these strewn across this movie. Like the initial talk between Tabu and her husband about ‘flames’ within and outside of her body and soul. Or the emotional exchange between them while taking a walk amongst fall colors .Infact, all the scenes that have Tabu and Shahid conversing are superbly built and succeed in belting out great emotional wallops. The scenes between the two are superbly written and acted, conveying the right amount of sexual undercurrent as also the emotional distance widening between them.

King Hamlet’s ghost is very cleverly represented by Irrfan Khan’s Roohdar – and appropriately named [Rooh: soul] so. As a ‘ghost identity’, an ISI agent, he shares information about the father’s death and the conspirator with the son. This sends Hamlet over the edge and he takes to arms and plans revenge on his uncle. The song BISMIL BISMIL is a brilliant stand-in for the traveling actors’ play in Hamlet. The song is outstandingly shot and should be in memory for a long, long time as did that other Kashmiri song, BHUMBRO from Mission Kashmir. Irrfan Khan, by the way, gets one of the best entry scenes ever in Hindi films of recent memory, one that is usually reserved for ‘stars.’ And just right before the interval, akin to Jackie Shroff’s entry in that forgettable film, 1942 A love story.

VB provides fine black humor by representing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as Salman and Salman, two fanatics of the actor Salman Khan. This is almost like a nod to Thompson & Thompson from Tintin and the two actors portraying them are a riot. The Oedipal complex is briefly but cleverly hinted at with Haider kissing his mother on the neck or she reminding him that he promised to marry her when he grew up! To be or not to be conundrum is smartly woven into the narrative – even comically with Salman and Salman.

The writing is superior and stays with you; the words, exquisite. The conversation between Dr. Hilal and Roohdar in the detention center is such a terrific tribute to the inventiveness of Shakespeare when it comes to metaphorical gems. “Mein lafaani bhi hoon, faani bhi hoon; shia bhi hoon, sunni bhi, maulvi bhi hoon, pandit bhi,” claims Roohdar. “Aapko duniya se baatne ka mann nahin karta,” says Haider to his mother. Just when you thought that was a compliment, he ends it with “Aap bahut khoobsorat zeher ho.”

VB’s visual intelligence is breath-taking here. I talked of Haider seeing his mother in the film for the first time through a curtain. In a later scene, Haider’s uncle Khurram [Kay Kay Menon] sits beside Tabu grinning after having won an election. She is shown smiling, a tad happy, and she is wearing glares. You or I would never know what’s going on in her mind, since don’t see her eyes. It is only her smile. So is she guilty? Genuine? How can she sit and smile like that when she calls herself a half-widow? And the screen blacks out to transition onto the next scene. The grave-diggers’ song picturization is fantastic to say the least. Or the scene where Haider shows his mother in a broken mirror her two faces. The relationship between Tabu and Khurram is shown progressively. Haider first sees them having fun and bonding over music. The next scene showing their relationship has Tabu waking up from a dream, only to casually reveal Khurram sleeping beside her. And the ghost equivalent Roohdar enters in a way complimentary to his title of ghost-identity, hazy and blurred and clear only after he wipes his glares.

The photography is breathtakingly beautiful and haunting. The striking contrast between the violence and beauty of the valley is well captured. The music is not to the level of Bharadwaj’s other films. There is a kind of ‘sameness’ that creeps in but lyrics by Gulzar and Faiz Ahmed are memorable. ‘AAP KE NAAM’ and ‘GULON KE RANG’ are the stand-outs. The background music is highly successful in aiding and accentuating the situations and emotional arcs of the characters. It aptly conveys the ambiance of impending doom.

Shahid Kapoor has done a fine job of conveying the emotional muddle of going through the process of avenging his father’s death. He is superb in the town-square scene where almost Chaplin-like, he talks of life in the valley under militancy and army. It’s indeed a fine casting choice. Kay Kay Menon is good but one gets the feeling he is trying too hard to act ‘different’. [Watch the scene where he explains to Haider who his father’s killer is and how he plans to catch him]. Irrfan Khan is rightly subdued and distant. Shraddha Kapoor as Ophelia doesn’t leave much of an impact. But I didn’t understand the logic of her playing an English language news-reporter who pronounces loved as lovvveed and used and ussad. In fact, there is liberal usage of deliberate mis-pronunciation: False becomes faales; acts become actus; school becomes sakool. Not sure whether this is the style in the valley or this is something done for effect here. The one that haunts you even after you leave the cinema-hall is Tabu’s Gazala. God knows how she does it but she conveys those myriad moods right into your heart. That face and body-language cover seduction, loneliness, confusion, angst, guilt with such aplomb that one is left stunned.

Finally, when all is so good, the one part that rattled me is VB’s using J&K’s insurgency problem vis- a-vis the Indian Army as the back-ground. It is clearly a one-sided view. [Through the film, the Indian Army is painted viciously black and then, almost as a token, a line is inserted in end-credits saying the Indian army helped during the floods and we salute them! This sounds  quite cynical.] It is almost as if you are watching a poetic version of INSHAALLAH FOOTBALL. Now VB strikes as a film-maker who is more tilted toward the humanistic angle in any society and its conflicts; the human cost of war so to speak. This transmutation to the Kashmir issue is fine. But what is out-of-sorts is the insistence on ‘specifics’ which incidentally dulls the message that the greatest victim of any strife is the human. Characters – mainly Haider’s—keep pulling out all sorts of laws, bylaws, sections, rules, and acts of UN, Geneva Convention, and Indian constitution in conversations. Nehru and plebiscite are quoted too! But when it comes to the other side, everything is shoved under the umbrella of ‘sarhad paar training ke liye bhejo’. When one focuses on such ‘specifics’, and then one shows only one side of any conflict, there is a problem. You cannot then suddenly change gears to philosophical understandings of the stateless human as a victim of war. Since the ‘human’ is the same across both sides, how do the ‘specifics’ of one side matter more?  This is where Mani Ratnam succeeded in DIL SE. The politics always takes a back-seat, is almost vague. What is underlined is the toll on people, on the resultant emotional upheaval. 

I am not sure how this film is going to fare with the public. This is a heavy film and it almost demands  you to see and feel more than the sum total of what is shown. However, that this will go on to be a collector’s pride is hardly a doubt.