Amar Singh Chamkila Review

Amar Singh Chamkila is an interesting film. It is as much a story of the titular Chamkila as it is of its filmmaker Imtiaz Ali, as much a story of 1980s Panjab as it is of modern-day India, and as much a story of casteism as it is of censorship. Most of these – especially the latter – do not make sense together, and yet under Ali, the story of the Panjabi singer finds a political voice missing from Ali’s filmography hitherto.

The story of Amar Singh Chamkila is inherently political in nature (like every other story in this world, one might argue). It is impossible to ignore the politics in the rise and fall of this maverick singer. But unlike in movies like Rockstar or Highway where Ali limited the political commentary to a song (‘Sadda Haq’ in Rockstar) or a dialogue (Randeep Hooda’s monologue in Highway), here he goes a step further. There has always been a reluctance in Imtiaz Ali’s cinema to confront the inherent politics of the stories he tells. Here, too, he does not go as dark and deep as other filmmakers might have, but there is a sense of ownership of the world of Chamkila, the complex, intrinsic relationship between his caste (a Dalit) and his lyrics that comes from the world he is from, the world he has seen around.

In the very first scene, we are introduced to the paradox that was Amar Singh Chamkila (Diljit Dosanjh). A wildly popular singer is murdered along with his wife Amarjot (Parineeti Chopra) minutes before a performance. The action is immediate and impactful and works because as a biopic, it makes little sense to keep the assassination a third-act reveal.

What follows is the chronicling of Chamkila’s rise to fame by different narrators, placing the different pieces of the puzzle together. In essence, this is similar to how a journalist (Aditi Rao Haideri) tries to assemble the life of Jordan (Ranbir Kapoor) together. Here, the writing is better, the protagonist more likable, and the love story between him and Amarjot more subtle. The somber, softness of Chamkila as a person almost works as a paradox to his crude lyrics, often objectifying women. There is an honesty in him, despite the nature of his songs, that makes him likable.

It helps that Dosanjh plays him in a simplistic way that makes you find a heart in his vulgar lyrics. He instills Chamkila here with the kind of humane quality that sits right between seeing him both as a misguided young man and a martyr for art and freedom of speech. The movie makes you understand him, not root for him. All it does is show the viewers a mirror, reminding us that an artist is a product of their society, and their work a reflection of everything they see around. To ask, then, if a work of art is corrupting society is invariably calling the world that artist came and learned their craft from, corrupt.

A big section of the movie tries to tackle the question of immorality, and the responsibility that an artist holds in society. But the Ali brothers problematize this debate fascinatingly with the added complication of Chamkila being a Dalit. At one point in the narrative, he refuses to sing his controversial songs and instead steers towards devotional songs. But therein appears the Shakespearean fatal flaw in Chamkila. He cannot refuse the demands of his audience. He returns to his old songs because, despite his success, he sees his listeners as his masters and turns himself into their servant. It is a dynamic rooted in the casteist history of India. Chamkila is a Dalit, and his service to his fans is deeply connected to his sense of inferiority that he secretly battles behind his loud, voracious songs.

Amar Singh Chamkila is in many ways an extension of previous Ali movies, sharpening the questions films like Rockstar and Tamasha asked. It blends truth with story, and the truth-teller with storyteller. It turns the idea of art into a mythical balm in times of violence as well as a cause for violence in a turbulent society. It is a story of paradoxes that exist even today. Thankfully, the filmmaking allows the thematic chaos to penetrate the storytelling. The editing by Aarti Bajaj is especially penetrative, constantly cutting into paradoxes and parables, doing things that many previous Ali films attempted to do but failed to achieve eventually.

Amar Singh Chamkila is a lot more than the return in form for Imtiaz Ali. It is a reminder of the wondrous, warped relationship an artist shares with their audience. It shows the toxicity of fandom, obsession with people-pleasing, and ultimately a society that was too broken to let its inner thoughts percolate into a song lyric, too fragile to let a man and woman survive on the fame of their songs. It is a movie of a country that was, and still does a complete disservice to its many truthtellers who exist in the garb of artists.

Streaming on Netflix

The Zone of Interest Review

Every once in a while, comes a movie that shakes you to your core. The most common, and probably easiest way to do that is by nudging the emotional chords of the audience. To weep is to feel, and to make someone feel strongly is shaking them out of their comfort zone, these movies tend to believe. Very few attempt to take the tougher route of making the audience sit back and look at themselves, analyze their response to the hate crimes around them, by intellectual stimulation, making them realize that their greatest nightmare is true – they are more like those despicable Nazi officers than they realize. The Zone of Interest champions this delicate space, making it one of the most remarkable takes on Holocaust.

For a movie that is set in Nazi Germany during the Second World War, The Zone of Interest speaks more of our present than any movie I have seen in recent times. The violence in the movie is not apparent but subversive. It happens off camera, all we see is its aftermath – smoke from the chimneys at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, beside which a family lives harmoniously, contrasting the grim fatality of the camp to a beautiful garden, a perfect image of a happy nuclear family, not oblivious of the crude carnation happening metres away, but simply unconcerned for it.

An early scene in the movie reminded me of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 masterpiece Schindler’s List. In that movie we see Jews storing their wealth in peculiar places. The back of a teeth, loafs of bread. In The Zone of Interest we see the same remains of captured Jews reaching the families of SS officers and government officials. The very people who cannot stand the sight of a Jew accept their belongings gayly. One character even mentions that they prefer toothpastes as sometimes there are diamonds hidden in there. It is in such little details that director Jonathan Glazer paints a picture of a past that feels closer to the reality we are seeing in Palestine.

In another scene we see officials celebrating the successful running of their program, immediately reminding one of the videos viraling on social media showing Israeli soldiers celebrating the killing of innocent Palestinians. It is impossible to look at this movie without contextualizing it in our present – a present where the once victimized Jews are now the victimizer; where the same patterns are at show again, and this time around we are that family living on the greener side of the land.

There is another story in The Zone of Interest. One that runs with the screen turned black, aided only by a harrowing score by Mica Levi. The harrowing score narrates the story that we do not see. The truth of the other side of the beautiful world we see in the movie. It is a reminder of how we have turned the eye against the ongoing violence. The discomfort of knowing the truth but not see it – a reality of blackened indifference we opt in real life that becomes a harrowing experience in the movie.

The Zone of Interest ends with a fascinating teleportation to the present where we see the Auschwitz camp being turned into a museum, honouring the memory of those the characters in the movie have forgotten and are taking every step to erase. It is an ending that reminds you that the imprint of our fatal indifference will outlive us. That history will remember us for our indifference. Always.

Dune: Part Two Review

We are back on Arrakis, the desert planet where Herbert’s iconic sci-fi novel Dune is set in. Under the close inspection of Denis Villeneuve, cinematographer Greg Fraiser, composer Hans Zimmer and actors like Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Florence amongst others, the promise of a stunning visual treat is almost a guarantee as you sit for the 166-minutes long saga, but this time around there is more to our trip to Arrakis than its visual appeal.

In the first part, Villeneuve invested a lot in exposition, leaving me disappointed by how patchy and inconsequential the runtime felt. After all, the 1965 novel is on paper a simple telling of the most classical story of a Chosen One becoming the leader of a tribe plagued by foreign invasion. We already have James Cameron’s expansive Avatar series that explores similar themes. Then why should we care for another story that essentially follows the same beat?

The answer lies in Part Two. One where Villeneuve purposefully diverts from the trajectory of the novel to dig deeper and into more fascinating terrains. The second part starts almost exactly where we left these characters in 2021. Paul Atreides (Chalamet) and his mother Lady Jessica (Ferguson) are travelling with the Fremen tribe of Sietch Tabr. Stilgar (Javier Bardem) is convinced that Paul is the prophetic One who would save the Fremen from the colonizers. It is the kind of belief that goes unchallenged in the original novel.

Here, though, Chani (Zendaya), who also happens to fall in love with Paul through the movie’s runtime, stands as the ideological contradiction to Stilgar and everyone else who sees Paul as the prophetic hero. It immediately heightens the conflict, elevating the movie from a mere visual masterpiece to an accomplishment in writing.

The movie uses Chani’s stand-point as a tether for the audience to notice the crumbling of Paul’s character under the burden of his newfound responsibility, and especially the increasing antagonism of Lady Jessica who almost lets go of her role as Paul’s mother under the more powerful responsibilities of Reverend Mother. This lends the movie towards a conflict that feels far more urgent and impactful than the prophetic war that you know the result of by now if you have seen or ready anything following such a classic template.

The romance between Paul and Chani becomes the core of the movie, from where every other conflict is amplified. It helps that Chalamet and Zendaya do not miss a beat, especially Chalamet who delivers a powerful performance as a young man taking more responsibility than he was ready for.

Dune: Part Two is, however, far from perfect and continues to suffer from its problem of a proper antagonist. Austin Butler is ruthless as Feyd-Rautha, but the movie does not spend enough time with him for his final scene in the movie to carry the desired impact. I wished a lot more of him and his world. It would have helped the final twenty minutes from being very good to truly mind-blowing.

Villeneuve, though, clearly rests on his ability to capture visuals to blow the mind of his audience. The world of Dune: Part Two feels real in an almost surreal way. In the age of CGI where every MCU movie makes the most incredible, unimaginable visual seem real, this movie makes everything a lot more lived-in. It almost outdoes what the first part did, visually.

With the second part Villeneuve has concluded the story of the first novel, but the movie does enough to keep you promised and anticipated for a third part. It is in equal part a celebration of the original Dune novel and a diversion from it; a love-story as well as a cautionary tale on hero-worship and what the title of a hero – a messiah – does to the person bestowed with it.

Merry Christmas Review

There is something about festivals that amplifies the loneliness of your heart. In Sriram Raghavan’s dazzling new movie Merry Christmas, this core idea of loneliness becomes an impregnable presence as we track two characters and their loneliness over a period of a little over twelve hours.

In typical Raghavan fashion, the movie is a delicious delight for a cinephile, tattered with easter eggs, references to old Indian and Western classics, and a background score that makes it all appear like a Broadway play. We start with Albert (Vijay Sethupathi), who claims to have returned to Mumbai after seven years. He tells Maria (Katrina Kaif) that he was in Dubai all these years, having met her and her daughter first in a restaurant and then at Regal, watching Pinnochio. Maria is a single mother, who almost immediately forms a bond with Albert, the kind of connection you wait and wish for all your life, but stumble upon only once or twice in a lifetime.

The recipe for a romance is set, and Raghavan designs the first act of his movie as a beautiful, dream-like romance. The chance encounter of two lonely people in a city of millions, a few drinks, a tantalizing set-piece where the two spring into an impromptu dance, an elevator kiss, and you’re sucked in the world of Albert and Maria.

Unlike earlier Raghavan directorial, where the greyness of the characters was introduced to us as a matter-of-fact reality, in Merry Christmas the movie tasks us to see these two as simple beings in a crowded yet lonely world, relish in their innocent, young romance. You want them to be happy, to have a happy ending. But this is a Sriram Raghavan movie, the Christmas cannot be as merry as the title of the movie suggests.

A dead body, another suitor, and a police officer for an eye for detail crowd the scene as the plot thickens. But Raghavan remains true to what his intentions are here. Unlike the brilliantly conceived Andhadhun, Merry Christmas is less about the crime and more about the criminal – no, that makes it sound like Badlapur – it is less about the criminal and more about the arc of redemption of the human being behind that criminal.

This is basically what you would get if Raghavan directed Hulu’s popular show Only Murders in the Building. Like that show where a murder becomes the basis for the writers to explore the loneliness of its three primary characters, Raghavan and his writers use the presence of a dead body here to do more than tell a suspenseful whodunit.

Instead, the movie is a character study, more than anything else. It is a narrative based on choice, and its eventual implications. Just how in Before Sunrise Celine (Julie Delpy) decides to disembark and spend time with Jesse (Ethan Hawke), Albert’s choice to spend a few hours with Maria has a ripple effect that is far beyond what he could have imagined.

The movie tries to find truth in their deceptions (at one point Albert retracts his Dubai story to say he came from Nasik), but also refuses to give us the comfort of a parallel, more trustworthy narrative. We have to trust these bunch of untrustworthy characters, and navigate our way. It makes for a delicious mystery, one where the audience is left in a free-flow, to decide who they trust, and who they root for.

It helps that the performances remain consistently top-notch. I have never seen such long, undisturbed moments of Kaif’s close-up as she delivers a dialogue, and ace it to the tee. This is a masterful performance by Kaif, one that serves as a timely reminder that there is more to her than what a Spy Universe asks her to be. Vijay Sethupathi is reliably solid, his eyes constantly reeking of an ache the source of which you are never too sure of.

There is also a constant artistic brilliance at show here, nothing more spectacular as the final few minutes where everything is conveyed without the use of a single dialogue (another moment where I was reminded of Only Murders in the Building).

Merry Christmas might not be the twisty narrative that Andhadhun offered, but it is always nice to see a director experimenting after a success than becoming a prisoner of a tried formula. This is Sriram Raghavan in total control of his power as a storyteller, teasing us into baits of romance, and murder, before encapsulating it all into a study of crime, criminals, and loneliness.ur

Kho Gaye Hùm Kahaan Review

Kho Gaye Hum Kahaan is an addition to a list of movies written by Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti that are titled from a phrase used in a song in an earlier movie produced by Excel Entertainment. These titles re-imagine the phrases, expanding on the depth they carry and build it into a legacy of their own. So-much-so, that after a point you forget that you first heard ‘zindagi milegi na dobara’ in the title track of Rock On! and ‘dil dhadakne do’ in a song from Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Kho Gaye Hum Kahaan takes its title from a song from the forgettable Baar Baar Dekho (also named after a song from the 1962 China Town, a movie titled reused years later in a Kareena Kapoor Khan-starrer…. sorry, I’m digressing). In that movie, the phrase was used romantically, placed with visuals of two people falling in love as they grew old together. In the Arjun Vairan Singh directorial, the term assumes a deeper meaning, hinting at the addictive relationship the urban young of our country share with social media.

Despite being a movie that often comes with a holier-than-thou attitude, Kho Gaye Hum Kahaan is quite an earnest, empathetic movie. The story follows three childhood friends, Imaad (Siddhanth Chaturvedi) is a stand-up comic, Neil (Adarsh Gourav) is a gym trainer and Ahana (Ananya Panday) is an MBA working at an MNC. She and Imaad are cohabitating, the former is quite regular on dating apps, indulging in swift, harmless flings while Ahana is in a seemingly solid relationship.

Writers Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti use these three characters and their uber Bandra-esque setting to explore the toxic dynamic the youth shares with social media. The most convincing of the lot is Ahana, who after being dumped uses social media to make her ex-boyfriend jealous, faking a happier, hotter life simply to grab the attention of the man who distanced himself from her.

Imaad uses jokes as a coping mechanism, and non-serious relationships to mask the darkest secret of his past. In that sense, his entire life feels like a social media profile. He is not addicted to social media, he has turned his real life into one. Neil is the aspirational one here, wanting to make it big and using social media both, as a means of upping his professional game and also, at an important point in the movie, using it to channelize the most ridiculous side of himself that social media makes easier for anyone to show off.

In a world of violence, patriotism and hyper-masculinity, Kho Gaye Hum Kahaan is a breath of fresh air. It is both a nostalgic piece (reminding you of Akhtar-sibling classics like Dil Chahta Hai and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara) and also a timely, largely intelligent commentary on Gen Z.

It helps that the performances are quite strong here. Adarsh Gourav continues his solid run of form in 2023, while Siddhanth Chaturvedi’s Imaad is a reminder of the kind of prowess he holds as an artist. But the surprise package here is Ananya Panday, standing tall in front of two terrific performers. Her Ahana is vulnerable, vehement, stupid but also real, which ultimately makes you want to be with her through the runtime of the movie. The character, much like Panday’s character in Gehraiyaan, feels like an extension of herself. But maybe we need to recognize the quality of her performance here and not find excuses to shroud a deservingly good performance.

Kho Gaye Hum Kahaan lacks the universality of the earlier friendship-trio movies that have come out of Excel Entertainment, and can get preachy (and it does not have the privilege of Javed Akhrar’s poetry that a Zindagi… had), but the movie does a lot of what recent movies, including Zoya Akhtar’s The Archies could’t do, give us characters we understand, empathize with and end up loving with all their flaws intact.

Now Streaming on Netflix

Dunki Review

If you look at Rajkumar Hirani’s filmography, Dunki was bound to happen. For years now he has been treading the tricky path of blending comedy with social issues. At its peak it gave us a movie like 3 Idiots and P.K., and at its low we got Sanju, that picked the wrong story for a right social issue (or vice versa). In his sixth movie in twenty years, Hirani fumbles with this blend, sacrificing an important story on the altar of the Rajkumar Hirani Template.

The problem with Dunki start early. In its first few minutes we see signs of a lethargic filmmaker getting tangled in his own glory. There is an attempt to give Dunki a 3 Idiots-esque start, a whimsical comedic sequence that leads to three friends trying to reconnect with a fourth. In 3 Idiots, the long-lost friend was Rancho (Aamir Khan), here it is Hardayal Singh Dhillon (Shahrukh Khan).

We are quickly transported to a flashback of gags, where we see Hardy entering the lives of these village-dwelling dreamers who, along with Sukhi (Vicky Kaushal) want to go to London for a better life. The movie is mildly funny here, and in moments it reaches an emotional peak thanks to Kaushal’s terrific performance. But you also fear something that becomes a predestined threat in the second half.

Dunki makes the cardinal sin of pausing for humor. Unlike a P.K. or 3 Idiots where humor was a part of the narrative, Dunki pauses its story to fill it with gags. They are funny till you realize the movie is in service of them and not the opposite. Too much time is lost in these gags before the movie realizes that it was titled ‘Dunki’ and not ‘4 Idiots’.

When the idea of “donkey route”, a form of illegal immigration, is introduced, the movie brushes past a daily-routine montage in an Imtiaz Ali movie that is used to convey a point before going to the real theme of the narrative. Nothing works after this. You don’t care about the characters because their motivations are not strong enough, the movie tries to hide this by one unfunny gag followed by the next. One designed around a ‘kiss’ is especially lethargic, almost cringey.

There are a few good monologues, sounding especially good in the echoing voice of Khan, but that’s too little and too late. A reverse-dunki is again infused with forced humor, where the movie once again flusters an opportunity to say something important, something poignant about the problem of illegal immigration.

Dunki is a case of disappointing “what-ifs”. A narrative of “what it could’ve been”. The much-awaited SRK-Hirani collaboration is a drab disappointment, one that reminds us that a director caught in their own trapping is worse than its bleakest shadow. In a year where we saw Khan reinvent himself as an action hero, we are now in need of a Rajkumar Hirani reinvention too. Hirani is not Hirani-ing like he once used to.

The Archies Review

The Archies is a movie that you get when you mix nostalgia with the sensibilities of Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti. It is a sweet, soft, often indulgent movie that works more in its friendship and revolution and less as an exploration of a love-triangle between three young individuals.

An official cinematic adaptation of Archie comics, the movie tells the story of a fictional Anglo-Indian town named Riverdale that seems like a piece out of the Wes Anderson cinematic universe. The buildings are in pastel colors, books, cafes, set to perfection. It is a dreamland, similar in its escapist allure to Barbie-Land in Barbie.

This makes The Archies a beautiful movie to watch, but it also makes every stake the characters face seem small. There is no real threat to the beauty of Riverdale, no danger of things not working out for our young rebellions. And yet, there is something that the Akhtar siblings and Reema Kagti bring to the coming-of-age genre that is special.

I must admit, I am a sucker for this genre. It gets me emotional in ways those melodramatic tear-jerkers do not. Zoya Akhtar aced this genre in the brilliant Gully Boy, here she walks on a tighter rope. She tries to blend the nostalgia of the original comics, its quintessential love triangle, and her own sensibilities, making a movie that works in parts before reaching a climax that is all heart and smiles.

The Archies uses the primary comic characters of Archie (Agastya Nanda), Betty (Khushi Kapoor), Veronica (Suhana Khan), Reggie (Devang Raina), Jughead (Mihir Ahuja), Ethel (Dot.) and Dilton (Yuvraj Menda) to deliver a musical that does more than meets the eye. It is an eye-candy of a movie that surprises you with its politics.

Of course, all this is set around a confused Archie oscillating between Betty, his childhood friend, and Veronica, the privileged new girl in town he is clearly smitten by. In a soft, simple scene he says to Jughead how he wished he had two hearts to love both the girls. Of course, he doesn’t, and he inevitably drags himself in murky territory. This romantic track, infused with some peppy music, the most memorable being the grandiosely staged ‘Va Va Voom’, forms the movie’s most forgettable section. This is especially sad because the romantic tension between the three leads forms a big part of the allure of comics, finding its roots in the Indian cinematic culture in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. The perfection of the set refuses to give their raw vulnerability to take centre-stage. It doesn’t help that in these early minutes of the movie Suhana is especially pale, feeling more plastic than privileged.

Thankfully, this changes as we come close to the hour mark, where the movie starts to pick momentum. As the business of adults – H. Dawson (Vinay Pathak) and Hiram Lodge’s (Alyy Khan) underhanded dealing for the latter to take over the havened central park of Riverdale – becomes the reason behind all the youngsters coming together and raising a voice against the abuse of nature for capitalist greed.

In a wonderful song sequence Archie’s friends perform a musical piece for him essentially telling him that everything is politics. It is a rare and glorious sight to see a Hindi film in the times of blatant hate and violence talk about the importance of politics in the mundane of life. It reminded me of the far-superior ‘Humko Usse Kya’ from Jagga Jasoos. But unlike that Basu directorial, Akhtar here is more driven to make her movie’s primary conflict political. These are kids of another generation, one that decades later would vote for Narendra Modi, recognizing their political voice for the first time.

Like in their previous collaborations, Kagti and Akhtar excel in depicting intimate conversations between their characters. A beautiful scene between Dilton and Reggie is the perfect example of how these women are in total control of these moments. Another wonderful moment belongs to a powerful scene between Betty and Veronica, where their friendship triumphs over everything else they’re going through.

It is in moments like these that The Archies shows glimpses of what it could have been had it tapered over some of it flaws. The end product is still a charming affair, but it also makes you wish for more. The un-villainizing of Hiram Lodge especially stuck to me. This is easily the least effective Zoya Akhtar movie. But a half-decent Zoya Akhtar movie is still a pretty solid movie.

Streaming on Netflix

The Return of the Big Screen Experience

As I sat in a largely packed movie theatre at eight in the morning for the first day first show of Jawan, I could not stop myself from going back to January when a similarly euphoric reaction welcomed Shahrukh Khan’s return on the big screen in Pathaan. That felt like the beginning of something that was long awaited. A return of not only a star the country loves, but also the return of the allure of the big screen experience.

That started what continued to be an interesting year for Hindi cinema. In movies like Tu Jhoothi Main Makkar and Zara Hatke Zara Bachke, there were regular success stories, even if the quality of the movie was not quite there yet. People were slowly returning to the movie theatres after the debacle of 2022 where one of the most consistent actors of our times failed to generate any buzz for an otherwise decent Laal Singh Chaddha. People flocked to the same auditoriums for Pushpa and RRR but not for Hindi films. There was a Ranbir Kapoor flop along with Khan’s debacle and a terrible Ranveer Singh-starrer that almost confirmed the depletion of anticipation around any Hindi film actor. If an Indian entertainment journalist was as dramatic as an English journalist back in the 1880s, they might have written an obituary of the Hindi film industry. It needed a miracle to change the dynamic tide. Pathaan proved to be that game-changer.

But half-a-year later Pathaan stood tall and alone as a Hindi movie that disrupted the way of the world and rose to colossal heights. It seemed like a one-off affair, especially after Salman Khan’s Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan failed to come anywhere close to the madness that Pathaan experienced.

The first aide of a complete shift in trend, interestingly, came from Hollywood, who are themselves reeling from one of their worst summers at the box office. The one respite for Hollywood was the internet-created term called Barbenheimer, a play on Barbie and Oppenheimer that took over the world like nothing had in years. It suddenly became cool to talk about Barbenheimer, to discuss which movie to watch first on the weekend. I went for Oppenheimer first. A packed theatre of Nolan fans watching a movie that marveled at the audience’s ability to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The audience was ready to be in the dark auditorium and make their brain work. Next, I saw Barbie in a show where everyone was in pink. Both the films felt like an event, an experience, a festival that everyone wanted to be a part of. It seemed like Barbenheimer had done its bit. Now it was on the Indian filmmakers to capitalize on this.

A week later when Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani came out after a disappointing trailer, something changed. After years of hating Karan Johar for his choice of clothes, his talk show, and his stand on the big bad N-word, the country found the filmmaker within they had once accepted with open arms. During the hefty runtime of the movie, the audience met the filmmaker Johar. An artist away from the flamboyance of his persona, ready to course correct himself and dated ideas explored in his early ventures. People were back in theatres, not as dramatically as in Pathaan, but in a way that Johar must have wished for. Rocky Aur Rani… was never meant to be what that YRF giant was. It was more of a soothing, nostalgic reminder of what the Hindi film industry does better than anyone else. It was, as a slate in a Dharma movie trailer would say, a “celebration of love and life”.  Rocky had found a place in his audience’s heart. A Karan Johar protagonist was being loved again in over a decade. Maybe, just maybe, the times were changing.

Nostalgia felt like the flavor of the season. It was the obsession of sticking to the same old that drew people away from Hindi movies, but as Gadar 2 roared at the box-office, that very same old became the reason people returned to Hindi movies. Sunny Deol delivered his biggest hit, days after Karan Johar gave his most critically successful movie. Along with Tara Singh (Sunny Deol), there was also an experimental sequel of a movie that emerged as a surprise success when it came out. Twenty-seven cuts later, OMG 2, an A-certified movie on sex education breezed past the hundred crore mark. Everything that was dropping was working. People had realized the beauty of experiencing a movie how it was meant to. The long lines at the ticket counter (or at the BMS website) were back. People were interested in seeing stories on the big screen.

Even a movie like Dream Girl 2 which would be seen as an OTT release a year ago found takers. But the biggest bang was yet to arrive. Another Shahrukh Khan movie. A collaboration between North and South that would prove to Khan’s critics that Pathaan was no fluke. After a delay of about three months from its original release date, Khan returned with another action movie. This one is a little bolder with its politics, risking more than Pathaan did to push the boundary of commercial success while marking his presence as an important, intelligent mind of our times.

After eight months, Khan once again faced a rousing reception. But this was not an isolated celebration of the big screen. This was the culmination of a story. One that saw old habits finding a new home. In Rocky, Tara, Oppenheimer, Ken, and Barbie, the Indian moviegoing audience had found its love for the big screen. Pathaan and Vikram Rathore, two SRK characters of this year, have done what Ethan Hunt failed to do. They brought the familiar joy of the big screen into our regular habit.

As I came out of Jawan I was confident of the allure of the big screen experience once again taking the nation by storm. A Shahrukh Khan comeback was never going to be a small one. It was always going to be a defining moment in the post-pandemic cinematic journey of the Hindi film industry. As it turns out, his two outings now stand as the beginning and now the culmination of the audience returning regularly for the big screen experience. Hindi films are back in 2023, and somewhere between the two dramatic, dynamic entry sequences in Pathaan and Jawan, so is the biggest superstar this country has ever seen.

Jawan Review

One of the problems with pan-India films is the mismatch of one sensibility over the other. It feels like two worlds are more colliding than collaborating. Director Atlee’s first Hindi feature film Jawan does a largely good job with this grappling fear of a mismatch. Jawan is an out-an-out Atlee film, so much so that it feels more like Shahrukh Khan venturing into the Tamil cinematic space than it is a Hindi film. This is both the biggest strength and weakness of Jawan.

The film centers around Vikram Rathore (Shahrukh Khan), a man with a number of different avatars and a series of social issues at hand that he intends to address. He is many things, and Khan blends the evil enigma of a man who takes a metro train in Mumbai hostage with the driven patriotism of a man in the army uniform. As he says in a monologue later in the movie, he is both good and bad, and that is what makes him a common man.

This common man, though, takes us on a familiar, filmy, often loud, and almost consistently dramatic tale of revenge, corruption, and chaos that is high on politics, and low on emotions but rewardingly entertaining. It helps that in Narmada (Nayanthara) there is an able cop pitted against the criminal acts of Rathore, and later Kali (Vijay Sethupathi) a businessperson who deals in arms.

What stands out above everything else in this movie, though, is its brave politics. Much like Pathaan Khan delivers a masala entertainer with fascinating politics. Here, the messaging is stronger, bolder, and more in-your-face. The film talks about many things ranging from farmer suicide to lack of oxygen cylinders in government hospitals and much later in what might be one of the best uses of breaking the fourth wall in Hindi cinema, a direct message on the importance of being aware and awake while voting. Jawan scores some strong points on its political front a year before the general elections in a country where cinema has lately been used for propaganda.

What the movie scores in its politics, action set-pieces, and its lead actors’ charm, the movie loses in its inconsistent craft. The editing is patchy in parts, the camera movement haphazard and the writing errs on the edge of being dodgy. It helps that in the second hour, things improve craft-wise and we get a film that remains compelling as a total package.

Jawan is an unsubtle re-appearance of Khan on the big screen after Pathaan. In many ways the two movies are similar. They both use the template of commercial cinema to reimagine Khan as an action hero and use that to touch upon themes that are essential to the flawed, fractured system of this country that are often plastered with the more recent obsession of the masses with certain individuals.

This is a brave movie starring a brave, visibly hurt legend of our era in a time of hate and mindless submission in front of the powerful. It is a movie that is both a Rajnikanth movie and a Salim-Javed affair, and somewhere between that it finds the sweet, but clearly flawed spot that the world will know as Jawan.  

Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani

There is a point in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani where a Rani (Alia Bhatt) asks her boyfriend Rocky (Ranveer Singh) who the president of India is. He gives the wrong answer and Rani corrects him. It is a delicious throwback to Alia Bhatt’s moment of national embarrassment on Koffee with Karan in 2012. It is the kind of humor that this Karan Johar directorial thrives on. One that works wonderfully within the norms of the movie’s universe but attains a greater joy when seen from the view of the world where the movie was made. In that sense, it has the quirky quality of Pathaan, which too worked under the metamorphosis of its character and the actor playing it.

On paper, the movie is quite simple. Rocky is the heir of a sweet brand from Karol Bagh and Rani is a sophisticated Bengali from South Delhi. Their romance is odd and inevitable. Rocky knows the latter, and Rani struggles with the former, as they find an undeniable attraction towards each other while playing cupid for another love story that has remained unrequited for decades.

It is set up quite well by Johar and writers Ishita Moitra, Shashank Khaitan, and Sumit Roy. Nothing feels forced here. You understand the physical attraction that Rani feels towards Rocky, and you buy into a gorgeously shot montage of romantic moments where Rocky and Rani start by playing second fiddle to an older romance before taking center-stage. This is also where the movie peaks in its affair with old Hindi film songs, something that then becomes tied to the narrative largely beautifully and sometimes obsessively.

The first half is not without its problems, though. The first thirty-odd minutes are some of the most laborious in the filmography of Karan Johar. The movie struggles to find momentum despite a consistently funny Singh and an equally fantastic Bhatt. But the world seems fake, the world-building half-hearted. All of this changes with one kiss between the most unlikely duo.

The wafer-thin plot appears as an obstacle around the mid-point, making you question the intelligence of Rani (a classic case of telling and not showing in the writing of her character). But thankfully the fun continues. The gags get a little preachy in the second hour, especially one set around bra shopping is jarring and a little too on the nose.

Barring that the second hour works much better than the first. As the two characters switch places, finding a home in the other’s family, we see the coming-of-age of both the young lovers and their older parents. This is where the movie takes control of itself firmly. Each scene develops like a typical Johar scene from his past films and turns into a fantastic case of entertaining, unapologetic course correction. Johar, after busting the myth of a-boy-and-a-girl-cannot-be-friends in his previous Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, twists on the tagline of his 2001 mega-hit “It’s all about loving your parents” to re-working it as it’s-all-about-correcting-your-parents.

What helps is that each member of the family member gets an arc. Rani’s father is a Kathak dancer, a form of dance Rocky is taught as a “feminine” form, his mother is an English professor and by far the most unconvincing character in the movie, and her grandmother is a woman in love with a man she knew for only a week in her youth. Theirs is a bunch of elitist people, seeing anyone who does not quote Tagore for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as beneath them.

The Randhawa’s are the kind of people for whom money is everything. There is a matriarch played by Jaya Bachchan, who is a mix of her husband’s character from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and Mohabbatein. In one of the most memorable moments of the film she mouths the “keh diya na, bas keh diya”, once again brilliantly bridging the gap between her in-movie persona and the larger resonance of Bachchan playing and mouthing this dialogue.

There is her son who is the worst form of mamma’s boy, his wife, a closeted singer, and their daughter, whose healthy and is constantly mocked for her weight. Each of these characters is schooled by the young lovers in scenes that go from powerful, dramatic to sometimes overboard.

It helps that all these along with Dharmendra playing the grandfather and the matriarch’s disabled husband, form a solid cast, giving some incredible performances. A scene where Rocky jumps into a long monologue about cancel culture, his own upbringing, and the elitism of Chatterjee’s is delivered so well that it almost makes you want to go back in time and apologize to each person who you ever judged for their choices, language or mindset.

Johar fills this part of the movie with sparkling, dramatic moments and a couple of happy surprises – look out for a “Dola Re Dola” performance – that keep the film entertaining. It does fall short of greatness by a distance, and a Karan-Johar-prototype death and easy resolutions dampen the impact of the earlier, better-written scenes. But thankfully, nothing as bad as the climax of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil transpires here, ensuring that the movie ends breezily and comes out a winner.

Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani is not Karan Johar’s best by a mile. It is a flawed, bumpy ride, but one of immense satisfaction. It is a movie that shows the growth of a filmmaker while also depicting his grip on the craft of big-budget commercial filmmaking. This is Johar at his indulgent best, and sometimes all you need for a good movie-viewing experience is Karan Johar being unapologetically (but politically corrected) Karan Johar.