FILM: Gunday
CAST: Ranveer Singh, Arjun Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Irrfan Khan
DIRECTOR: Ali Abbas Zafar
Seriously, this is the funniest Yashraj film in the distinguished banner’s range of existence. Tragically the humour is mostly unintended…. Like the gaffes and boo-boos that litter the decked-up garbage masquerading as a pseudo-historical depiction of Bangladeshi migrants in Kolkata post the 1971 Bangladeshi war of liberation .
Two boys, Bikram and Bala, crawl across the border into Kolkata and become some kind of messianic outlaws. Shamelessly, the film glorifies a life of crime to a level of embarrassing exultation until we see the two “heroes” (ha ha) constantly on the run from the “the law” (as represented by the insanely sane and sensible Irrfan).
But Bikram and Bala, who grow up to be two blobs of brainless brawn played by Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor, are no ordinary criminals on the run. They run in slow-motion sometimes shirtless most time brainless, their biceps and 6-packs glistening in hairless glory. They are the Milkha Singhs of the internet generation, meant to eulogize wanton materialism by flaunting their physicality without inhibition or reservation.
They are the greedy generation from before greed was invented.
Gunday (Gun Day? Gun De? Gande???) is the kind of subverted cinema that reduces every incident, historical or fictional, to a dramatic distress. After the fairly impressive opening that seems to be shot and edited by a different director, there’s no narrative structure, only a series of clumsily punctuated episodes meant to spotlight a kind of heightened yearning for a life freed of moral expectations and obligations.
The two heroes think they are cool when in fact the script highlights their stupidity in the clumsy conflicts of interests when they fight. Shirtless, of course. Chests waxed in the 1970s when wax was used only to make idols.
A major portion of the narrative is devoted to the triangular courtship with Bikram and Bala wooing Kolkata’s hottest cabaret dancer (who isn’t what she seems, but shhhhh!). Nandita(Priyanka Chopra) first meets her two sleazy suitors in a loo when they have their dhotis hitched up to their thighs to relieve themselves.
Yes, you heard right. That’s acme of below-the-belt humour in this downright absurd and offensive crime drama. Priyanka Chopra’s character is party a seductress partly Mata Hari and wholly preposterous in trying to be many thing in a script that isn’t sure of what it wants to be.
Just why an actress of Priyanka’s calibre should agree to be part of a film so wobbly and weird is beyond comprehension. Perhaps she really saw this film as an authentic chronicle of the wages of the Bangladesh war. There is no end to how optimistic an actress can get when she puts her heart where her mind should be and mistakes kitsch for art.
As for the two leading men it’s a toss-up between Ranveer Singh and Arjun Singh as to who hams it more to the flashy finale where they both make a desperate run for their lives while we do the same in our own far less exciting world outside the ridiculous realm that this artificial film, lit up with fake bonhomie and bogus bravura, tries to create for our entertainment.
This is not the first time this film’s director has made a royal hash of a potentially promising premise.He had messed up big-time in “Mere Brother Ki Dulhan”. The damage done in “Gunday” is far more ominous and dangerous. It extols the illicit presence of across-the-borders migrants and attempts to sanction them with a kind of legitimacy, much in the same way that the film tries to glorify the two scummy protagonists as heroes of our times….rather, their times.
The film unfolds in Kolkata circa 1973. Periodicity is showily generated through a poster of the Big B’s “Zanjeer” here and a snatch of R.D.
Burman’s “Keh doon tumhe ya chup rahoon” from “Deewaar” there. Beyond these the film doesn’t make any pertinent point of periodicity.
Of course there Priyanka’s low-cut blouses ending many inches above her waist in a neat bow.
Alas, Priyanka’s blouses are the only neatly tied-up component in this anarchic world of guns goons, guffaws and gaffes. If I was a Bengali I’d be seriously offended by the loud caricatural ambience created in the name of Bangla culture. Of course the Howrah bridge looms up on location and as studio-props every once in a while. But the astounding amount of garish colours that Anil Mehta’s cinematography is compelled to shoot just numbs the senses.
The dialogues range from the strange to the very strange. At one point while killing a friend-turned traitor Arjun Kapoor(making more faces in every frame than Sridevi did in her entire career) says, “Never trust a Bengali who doesn’t like football.”
Huh???
Gunday is a dumbed-down version of Yash Chopra’s classic “Deewaar” where the boy from world of poverty grew up to a life of glamorized crime. There was strong matriarchal figure in “Deewaar” frowning deeply in disapproval of the anti-hero’s anti-heroic antics.
In Gunday, there are no moral obstacles as Bikram and Bala whoop it up in orgiastic rituals of disorganized crime. There is only the very talented Saurabh Shukla looking embarrassed uncertain and defeated trying to tell the heroes they’ve lost the plot. He probably saw what the makers of this film couldn’t.
Gunday wastes acting talent as though it was available at discount rates. The very talented Victor Bannerjee and Pankaj Tripathi show up in walk-on parts and are hastily packed off to focus on the two studs on steroids in the 70s slithering in slippery motions across the railway tracks stealing koyla from the carriages.
How ‘coal’ is that!
Irrfan’s voiceover tries to keep the plot together. Brilliant actors have their limitations. (IANS)
FILM: Heartless
CAST: Adhyayan Suman, Ariana Ayam, Deepti Naval, Om Puri
DIRECTOR:Shekhar Suman
You really can’t put a good man down.
Even when his heart breaks he bounces back stronger than before.
So it is believed. But watching actor-turned-director Shekhar Suman’s directorial debut I am not too sure. His vulnerable ailing protagonist Aditya (played by the director’s son Adhyayan) goes through a series of life-changing knife-in-the-heart experiences that leave him disenchanted and shattered.
Heartless is no ordinary coming-of-age story. It tells the powerful if illogical story of a young heir whose urgent need for a heart transplant puts him in an incredible medical and emotional crisis.
The screenplay by Nina Arora weaves the story of love and betrayal into a tenable if somewhat far-fetched medical condition known as anesthetic awareness.
The film is subtly sleek in appearance. The first half when the romance between the weak-hearted Addy and the girl at the hotel reception (newcomer Ariana Ayam, treacherously sweet and adequate) unfolds has a zipped up classy quality to it. The courtship is cluttered with unwanted songs. And just this once, they are excusable.
How can we have a modern day Devdas without the music flowing in his veins?
The Dubai landscape is glamorized by cinematographer Derrick Fong only to the outer limit of believability. The star son gets to drive sleek sports cars and wear designer suits only because he plays rich. The film’s biggest USP is its restrained narrative. Nowhere does the director allow the inherent melodrama of the plot to overpower the characters.
The actors grapple successfully with characters that seem to belong to a daytime soap opera. Adhyayan Suman makes a confident comeback in the author-backed role. His eyes are filled with a pain that seems more existential than physical. He brings to his borderline-ludicrous character a sense of bridled tragedy and a stifled desperation evident in his breathless speech and anguished body language. He plays a life threatened with annihilation, stopping itself from falling apart in the nick of time.
Adhyayan’s scenes with his screen mom Deepti Naval ring true even when they go from the real to the surreal to the other worldly. Shekhar Suman plays a kind of mentor-friend to Adhyayan with that jaunty gaiety that comes naturally to him.
Indeed if this week’s other release “Hasee Toh Phasee” is at heart a father-daughter story, “Heartless” is a mother-son saga told with a tearful wave of the hand by a director who doesn’t weigh down the narrative with excessive characters.
The plot restricts its manoeuvres to just a handful of effectively etched designer-characters, in clothes to match. (IANS)
While Adhyayan’s character remains on its feet, the film works effectively and cogently. Once he is horizontal on the operation table the narrative suffers a rush of woozy incredulity requiring herculean amounts of suspension of belief from the audience. Tragically the sort of going-with-the-flow that the film demands from us is not justified by the thinned-out proceedings.
But all said and done “Heartless” works within its ambitious realm of love, betrayal and mortality. It makes an endearing departure from routine romances about broken hearts and mended morale.
Director Shekhar Suman doesn’t quite manage to hold the audience’s attention in that spellbinding grip which the plot suggests. But the drama never sags.
This is a stylish career-relaunch for Adhyayan Suman. (IANS)