Saturday, February 29, 2020

 

In (Premature) Defense of 2.0 & Every New Movie Ever Going to be Made

It is my humble opinion that great movies serve one purpose - they make it a memorable experience for viewers. And they make it memorable by wowing audiences visually, cognitively or emotionally or a combination thereof. Few movies transcend all three experiences in the exact right proportion. Movies that fall do this are defined as Awesome Movies.

As an example, Enthiran, released in 2010, was an awesome movie.It had a humanoid robot (cognitively appealing), built from scratch with sheet metal and PCBs (more cognitively appealing),with Aishwarya Rai (visually appealing), a robot that falls in love with her (emotionally appealing), and tons of Rajinikanth (cognitive, visual and emotional phenom).

But alas, there is such a thing as "too much" of any one of these experiences.If there is too much visual action, or emotional drama or cognitive masala, the Awesome movie fizzles out. And that has been known to happen before as well. A lot.

In the coming days, 2.0 hits the screens. There will be moments before, during, and after the movie, where you will question everything you know about your appreciation of a fine cinematic experience, and start to believe that the movie is bad.

You will hate Akshay Kumar as the Bird in the sky, and every time you look at his face you will be reminded of the insane amount of CGI and Artificiality and Non Realistic Fantasy the director has put in the movie.

If you are a Rajini fan, you will think the movie didn't have enough Rajini in it. It will descend into a debate about whether or not Rajini should enter politics.

If you are a Shankar fan, you will think the movie was too much about Rajini. It will descend into a debate about whether or not Rajini should enter politics.

If you are a Rahman fan, you will question if his days of good music are gone forever and if you should officially start a Santhosh Narayanan Thalaivaaaaaa (with 4 extra a's) Page on Facebook.

If you are an Amy Jackson fan..... well, dont bother, you are not real. Wake up. (Incidentally she's not real in the movie either, playing a role written specifically for her - a robot!)

You may be a progressive thinking liberal, and you will want to burn the theater down for a couple of the bad jokes Shankar tried to insert to please front benchers. It will descend into a debate about India's culture and Sabarimala.

You may be financially conscious and the vulgar $450 Cr number will boggle your mind into saying crazy stuff like "So much Poverty we could've removed if we spent money on buying clothes for poor". It will descend into a fight about whether BJP should be building statues.

There are possibly thousand different reasons you have been waiting for this movie to come out. And  as soon as the initial rush of being in the theater, watching this movie leaves you, you will find that the movie doesn't live up to the extraordinary expectations you had for it, because one aspect of the movie ruined it for you.

In the midst of all this, you will read a 100 reviews trashing the movie, 500 status updates and check-in's with movie ticket pictures, Youtube videos with poor imitations of the Superstar, a few crazy clips of the people involved in the movie getting angry, and at least 5 High Court cases for banning the movie for either "hurting sentiments" or "copyright infringement".

And all this will spoil the movie for you, and you will start to question "everything you know about your appreciation of a fine cinematic experience, and start to believe that the movie is bad."

It is important you resist that feeling.

You see, regardless of how good a movie 2.0 actually is, this is an extremely important movie for audiences in India to watch. Because this movie in some ways, will decide what movies we will watch for the next 10 years.

Few film-makers break out of the safety net (and only they can afford to) make movies that expand the boundaries of the cinemas we watch. And these pioneering filmmakers giving new technologies, new styles and new techniques a platform in their movies is what makes the Indian film industry gain new capabilities to tell new and bigger stories.

When Shankar used 65 cameras in one action scene in Anniyan, it was unheard of. Today it is common place enough that simple duet songs use it.

When Rajamouli made Magadheera, he really built the tools to be able to make Baahubali in the years down the road.

When Bollywood made 10 different boxing movies, it was slowly building the fanbase and interest, and the template to succeed at making one Dangal.

In an absolute disappointment of a movie called Kochadaiiyan, an established sequence of operations was established to produce a motion capture movie in India, and that's what is making 2.0 possible.

Bad Ambitious Movies always beget Great Ambitious Movies!!

The possibility that making 2.0 today may make an Amar Chitra Katha Superhero Movie possible, or a Mars mission movie a la Tik Tik or Martian possible.

But what about being objective, and critiquing the nuances of filmmaking as an appreciation of art and a reflection of our society and popular culture? I say - Valid point! But hear me out.... Now, I know very little about how the Universe operates, and my worldview is restricted to my Facebook and Twitter feed. But if the reviewers on my feed are anything to go by, nuance and subtle references are severely underrepresented features of their assessment of movies, and in all fairness, the First Law of Social Media Engagement states that the more nuanced view someone takes, the lesser likes/retweets/engagement it gets - which defeats the whole purpose of posting opinions onto social media in the first place. So reviewers, by natural laws of Social Media Survival of the Fittest gravitate towards populist 1-liners which reduces movies to caricatures of themselves. 

So regardless of why you hated 2.0 or any other movie that will be released in future, please remember to thank the people who stared at the task, knew and understood how impossible it was to make the movie they wanted, and went ahead did it anyway, because at the end of the day, this movie is not about this one movie alone, it is about the kind of movies we will see in decades to come in Indian Cinema!


Update: I watched 2.0 in Rochester Hills, MI (on the day of release, there were at least 20 shows in Tamil, in addition to about 10 more shows in Hindi/Telugu in the Detroit area - in total Maayajaal style - unheard of for an Indian movie, even Baahubali), and absolutely loved the movie! It was everything I hoped for, and more. 2.0 the Rajini character in the second half of the movie is Black Sheep Chitti on steroids, and I absolutely loved it! And what a great job tying everything back to the environment and how we are destroying it with cell phone towers - I get it, it was a little preachy, and felt like a kid's movie at times, but the lighthearted nature of the movie was a big part in why it was enjoyable! And as predicted, social media is full of disappointed moviegoers - there's just no pleasing some people I tell you.

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# posted by Rohit @ February 29, 2020

Saturday, February 1, 2020

 

The One Where Heer is Very Sad.

Kaansen Khronicles #1: Revisiting Songs from years past, that have been lost in the chaos of Social Media-era content explosion! 



Picture this. A girl returns from a bizarre trip to Corsica, where she meets a stranger, and she falls in love with him. She doesn't know his name, or anything about where he comes from or what he does. Anguished at her foolishness for letting her soul mate leave without the classic Bollywood "Kya Yahi Pyaar Hai" song in the Alps, she does her best to get on with life, getting big promotions at work and all, but barely hiding the fact that she is borderline clinically depressed, and desperately needs to find herself the love of her life. Picture all this, and then insert a quirky 4 man Bhangra Band that likes to punctuate every sentence they sing with a stereotypical "Haye Hoye". Misfit ? Nope. Just A.R.Rahman doing his genius thing.

Coming at a time where his obsession with the Punjabi/Bhangra genre was at its peak following Katiya Karoon and Patakha Gudhi in the years prior to Tamasha, Heer Toh Badi Sad Hai, is a classic Rahman number with symphonical layers woven together underneath the leading instrument - a Tumbi and the Sarangi in this instance - and crisp vocals from Mika Singh. The song generally has a peppy outlook, and the Bhangra Boys singing it on the screen dont look too upset while they're singing in celebration either - especially the older gentleman with his toothless grin.

The song itself beautifully captures the effects of Depression - a superficially content and satisfying life, but the deep issues beneath the surface waiting to drag a person down. Irshad Kamil's lyrics add another layer of simple language loaded with cliched analogies that help the listener connect with Tara.

Indian Film songs do not live in isolation - they are often pieces of a bigger puzzle - the story the director is trying to tell. This song is yet another showpiece of the crucial mental connection Rahman seems to make with some of his repeated collaborators like Imtiaz Ali that helps him set the mood with a song in the context of the larger story surrounding it.

Some day, I hope to read a story about how Imtiaz Ali and A.R.Rahman envisioned using this theme to highlight Heer, or Tara's despair, but in the meantime, this song needs to be celebrated as one of Rahman's best offerings in the past decade in Hindi cinema.




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# posted by Rohit @ February 01, 2020

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