Delhi Belly: Belly-ticklingly boisterous

Delhi Belly is a test in how much you can laugh; in fact, it’s a laugh riot that may stand-in for a 96-minute VLCC abdominal work-out, of course without the perspiration! Your belly would literally undergo so many vibrations, you may emerge from the theatre trimmer than before! Delhi Belly is indubitably the best stress-buster to come in a long time. An adult comedy need not always bank upon double-entendre, slapstick and crass humour to draw the guffaws, and thanks to Aamir Khan, Abhinay Deo and Akshat Verma (the story and scriptwriter), the likes of Golmaal, Double Dhamaal, Dhol, etc. would perhaps run for cover now, out of shame. With Delhi Belly, the adult comedy in Bollywood finally comes of age.
Well, it’s a comedy of errors, and what an error to begin with, I swear! It’s gross, but, nonetheless, hilarious, for the whole thing remains so close to reality. Priceless diamonds get exchanged with dung ‘erroneously’, which in turn gets delivered to the devilish don who, of course, is not particularly pleased. And what follows is a roller-coaster ride of bhaag bhaag that barely gives you the opportunity to recover from your splits! The ensemble cast is a clique of men and women extremely identifiable, only that, they are caught up in a funny situation, which is not particularly funny to any of them, really! I believe that is indeed the hallmark of a good comedy. To add to that, like all good comedies, Delhi Belly does make you think, too. May be afterwards. The show ends in several deaths, break-ups and other unpleasant things underlining the darkness that looms large at the heart (read, belly) of the city.
The film begins with a familiar background score from the late 70s which soon reveals its source: the television at the airport airing a Rishi Kapoor track. This very song acts as an intertextual tool that refers back to the movies of the 70s, where the villains were inevitably smugglers. A clichéd theme is taken, given a make-over, and transmuted into a truly contemporary comedy. The tragic underbelly is however hard not to recognize. Violence, lust, covetousness, opportunism, distrust, blackmail, heartbreak, all these are woven into a rich comic texture, but, with a tragic undertone. The film’s greatness lies in operating on black humour without giving an overwhelming feel of it. Therefore, it’s hard not to laugh, but on second thoughts, the darkness does make its presence felt.
Imran Khan, Kunaal Roy Kapoor, and Vir Das make an awesome threesome! Specially, Kunaal as Nitin is unforgettable, given his believable struggle with an upset tummy through the roller-coaster ride. Vir as Arup is remarkably subtle, sometimes lost, and marvellously funny. Imran Khan is good, but certainly is overshadowed by his two other friends. The quirky Poorna Jagannathan as Maneka is ‘queerly’ loveable, and it’s hard to forget the scene where she shoos away an elderly couple by pretending to ‘ride’ Imran, when the latter gets a real hard-on! Vijay Raaz as the merciless don is full-on entertainment, and I wondered how he did all that with a straight face. Even Shehnaaz Treasury as Sonia performs.
Ram Sampath’s music is another plus. The disappointing thing is that the coolest track of the year Bhaag DK Bose Bhaag only comes in bits and parts, but somehow lends the film its marathon mood. The end credits roll with the extremely funny I hate you (like I love you) with Aamir Khan dressed in a way to remind you of Shotgun Murugan. I have rarely seen the audience sitting through an end-credit song so patiently and enjoying it too. And please note, the T-shirt Imran Khan wears for the greater part of the movie has ‘Stylish Rajnikanth Sunglasses’ written on it on a tag on the left side of his chest. Well, if that too means something to you!

'Dhobi Ghat': Intertwined lives and a city

In his non-fiction narrative on Bombay, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, Suketu Mehta writes:

If you are late for work in Bombay, and reach the station just as the train is leaving the platform, you can run up to the packed compartments and you will find many hands stretching out to grab you on board, unfolding outward from the train like petals.

 Kiran Rao captures through her lenses a Bombay which generates a new meaning for everyone who visits the city. What Arun (Aamir Khan) feels about the city ---“Mumbai my muse, my whore, my beloved’ ----- is Kiran’s feelings too, or else she could not have shot Bombay so romantically, yet realistically. The film opens on the rain-drenched Marine Drive through Yasmine’s (Kriti Malhotra) amateurishly held video-camera, and soon moves to other people and other stories inextricably connected with each other. Arun’s painting exhibition is a tribute to all the people coming from different states of the country, people who have made Bombay what it is today. Arun makes a dig at those whose political agenda is to officially provincialize the city. The film cutting across class and community borders is actually an answer to the drive towards such provincialization.

Shai (Monica Dogra) who flies to the city from New York on a sabbatical falls in love with Arun, while the slum-dweller washer-boy Munna (Prateik Babbar) gradually falls in love with her. The film effortlessly moves amongst the world of art, the dark underworld of the city, the posh high-rises and cramped slums, and breathes into the city the freshness of the sea breeze and the infinite mystery of the ocean itself, the mystery of how human relationships are sustained overcoming so many differences.

Arun’s discovery of Yasmine’s video-tapes reveals for him a new perspective of looking at the city. Yasmine, the newly-wed girl from Uttar Pradesh, captures every nook and cranny of the city, every single activity that forms a part of her Bombay life to send to her brother Imran in the village. Arun starts living Yasmine’s life through the tapes and is absolutely shattered when he conjectures that Yasmine had taken her own life in the very room where her videos have been playing day and night.

Pratieik’s dhobi is perfect in body language and in dialogue delivery. His awareness of his class when he visits his customers, his shyness when Shai offers him to be her city-guide and when he gradually falls in love with her, and his anger at his brother’s murder − all these emotions are in the right place. He doesn’t act, but behave. The same is true of Monica Dogra and Kriti Malhotra.

The camera within the camera technique is simply brilliant, for often you do not realize whose narrative you are listening to (read watching)? Is it Yasmine’s or is it the omniscient director’s? Tushar Kanti Ray has done a commendable job! Gustavo Santaolalla’s background score is so very much in tune with the scenes, that you barely recognize it as background score separately.

Lastly, a good piece of art is many things roped into one.. But quite significantly it reestablishes faith in the essential goodness of human beings. Perhaps this is what Dhobi Ghat does and how! A single visit to this ghat is not enough…you would feel like going back.

Peepli [Live]: All is not so well!

The news of Jitu Bagdi’s suicide is what I woke up to today in the morning...the 28-year old sharecropper, a resident of Karotia village in the Burdwan district, poisoned himself to death, unable to payback a loan of Rs. 10,000 (approximately US $ 200), as the crops failed due to scanty rainfall. Five kilometres away, in the village of Basantapur, another suicide was reported a few days ago…Yunus Sheikh another peasant had met with the same fate having failed to repay a loan of Rs. 22,000 (approximately US $ 440). Anusha Rizvi’s Peepli [Live] delves into this grim reality, and commendably so, but despite the sincere efforts, remains somehow detached from the real tragedy. By resorting to the comic mode, it manages to be sporadically entertaining, but the way the narrative is designed is quite predictable. In fact, Rizvi makes too much of the media, and at times, the audience ends up feeling confused whether it’s a lampoon on the media or satire on a major social problem. Actually by taking the satire on the media to an irritating, unbearable extreme, the director often loses focus.

However, the film does have its sunshine moments, thanks to the ensemble cast of non-stars, each of whom delivers power-packed performances. The difficult-to-pacify, half-paralysed, petulant mother who half-rises from her shabby khatia to abuse her daughter-in-law or shout at her good-for-nothing sons and the misfortune they have brought upon the family, is someone you would look forward to as one scene fades into another. The peasant brothers are brilliant too: especially Nattha who turns into a hero overnight having declared that he would commit suicide. The scene where the two brothers fight with fraternal affection against each other as to who would commit suicide is perhaps the most comical of all the scenes, most of the others verging precariously on the slapstick. Little did Nattha know that his life would be transformed in a twinkling of an eye, and all the media attention he gets thereafter makes his life hellish. The government officials, the ministers, the local political leaders are unsparingly satirised, and much of what they do to save the peasants makes for a laughing circus, which, as it goes without saying, does not yield any results. The ending of the film is certainly a telling commentary on how peasants are forced to migrate from the villages in search of asylums in cities, where they are thrust into life-long anguish and pain, no better than the life they have left behind. The poor peasant who quietly drags his loaded bicycle past the media-mela (carrying sacks of soil he digs out from his land), and dies in the end, but does not get any media attention, is another character one may look forward to.

Now friends, a word of caution: Do not rave about Peepli [Live] because everybody is raving about it. If you do not call the film good, your capacity to sympathise with the subaltern would not be called into question. Judge the film from the point-of-view of a film critic and not a social reformer, and you would surely find it wanting. The film is entertaining stuff…and by the virtue (or vice) of being so, the film becomes a typical bourgeoisie take on a serious peasant issue, for both eyes of the business-minded producer (read Aamir Khan) were on the box-office. Yes, the subaltern really cannot speak, and that’s why the bourgeoisie can gleefully sentimentalise on their issues…and when they really speak out…well, our government is already having sleepless nights, no?

P.S: The film may also be judged as a deliberate exercise in lightening the whole issue of peasant suicides for that's what the government has been doing so far. From this point of view, the film may appear a little more appealing.