Member Reviews

At the end of nearly two-and-a-half hours, you want to ask director Abhishek Kapoor and his writing team that includes Ritesh Shah and Suresh Nair, just one question. What was the story you ventured to tell? Was it about a magnificent, Chetak-like horse that could give its life to his master? If yes, then the most-loved animal film remains Rajesh Khanna and Chinnappa Devar’s Haathi Mere Saathi (1971) where entire families had a jumbo-size crush on Ramu, the hero’s pet elephant. But Abhishek and company treat Azaad like a backdrop, never letting the viewer warm up to the animal who is shown throwing off, neighing noisily and kicking the hero, most of the time. Oh, yes, he also likes liquor and breaks wind loudly (humour alert).

It is a misleading title. When it takes off with little Indira in her grandfather’s house at Anand Bhavan in 1929 where her early dislike for aunt Vijayalakshmi Pandit is established, and it tracks her until the day she was assassinated in 1984, it’s not just about the biggest mistake of her political life. What writer-director Kangana Ranaut has made is a full-fledged, political bio-documentary, detailing the defining moments of Indira Gandhi’s public life, before and after the Emergency that she infamously clamped on the country in 1975. In seeking to understand the person behind the Emergency, Ranaut and her writers Tanvi Kesari Pasumarthy, Ritesh Shah and Jayant Sinha, bring to the fore the vulnerabilities of the PM with the iron facade.

Kangana Ranaut’s much-talked-about film Emergency finally hits theatres across the country where Ranaut directs and acts as former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi and retells an era considered one of the darkest phases in the Indian democracy. But re-telling the era of Emergency (1975-77) authentically, without bias, is not easy and Ranaut’s film slips ever so often, making Emergency the movie quite a passable affair. While the film primarily focuses on the 21-month-long emergency period, it also tries to showcase Indira Gandhi’s rise to power. From being termed as Gungi Gudiya (dumb doll) who grew out of her father, Pandit Nehru’s towering shadow to becoming the megalomaniac, despondent leader who saw nothing wrong in imposing arbitrary bans on the basic rights of citizens during the emergency, Indira Gandhi had quite a journey. Emergency tries to capture all this and tries to even humanise the authoritative leader, making her look flawed and even vulnerable at times- unsure of her own decisions. But Ranaut, who also serves as the writer of the film, never really delves deeper into the incidents and loosely strings important political events into a 2.5-hour-long film.

There were only two things I asked of Emergency. One was to literally see the presses stop (we’re shown this twice). The second was for Sam Manekshaw to call Indira Gandhi ‘sweetie’, like Vicky Kaushal does in Sam Bahadur (2023). This, surprisingly, wasn’t fulfilled. I’m certain the makers were aware of the legend of the army chief saying this to the prime minister, but chose to leave it out. Its absence says a lot about this curious film suspended between opposing impulses. Emergency isn’t what I was expecting. For starters, its focus isn’t the Emergency; the events of 1975-77 take up, at a rough estimate, half an hour in a 146-minute film. Instead, this is very much a Indira Gandhi biopic, progressing in linear fashion from her childhood to her assassination in 1984. Since it’s Kangana Ranaut—a BJP MP who has made a number of incendiary statements about minorities and protestors—directing, producing and playing Indira, I was expecting a crazed hatchet job. This too doesn’t happen.

When Hathi Ram Chaudhary says in his world-weary manner, ‘hum toh paatal lok ke permanent niwasi hain’, he’s not just addressing a character in the series. He’s plunging us into the nether-world again, and we dive right in, willingly. The first season of Paatal Lok (2020), directed by Avinash Arun and created by Sudip Sharma, quickly become a benchmark, in the way it lifted a familiar world — weatherbeaten-but-idealistic cops pulled into cases of murder and corruption in high places — by singular story-telling, and characters that stayed with us. I’ve sorely missed my favourite cop, entire lifetimes imprinted in the craggy lines of his face, in the interim. Welcome back, Chaudhary sir.

Jesse Eisenberg’s written and directed Oscar ready film A Real Pain has been released in India. Filled with humour, depths of human experience, trauma and moving on from it, it explores the story of two brothers from different walks of life. Led by Jesse as well as Kieran Culkin, the film is worthy of his international praise for its performances as well as the brilliant yet simple writing of the story and screenplay. A Real Pain begins with two cousins meeting at an airport to head on a trip together. The two, who hardly meet once or twice a year go on a journey together to honour their late grandmother, a survivor of the Holocaust. Billy and David decide to take a tour in Poland, visiting sights of historical significance during World War II and the Holocaust. Along with four others in the group and a tour guide, there is much talk about survivors, generational trauma, the struggle of immigrants and more.

Speaking purely as a whodunit that begins with the discovery of an unidentified corpse, Rekhachithram is particularly pedestrian. The movie starts with a confession, and we cut to a person who could predictably be one of the murderers. It is not a film written for suspense or leading towards one major climactic twist. Still, nothing prepares you the way Rekhachithram takes you deep into a crime that took place so long ago — back when Mammootty hadn’t yet become the megastar he is today. This is partly because the whodunit is always in service of a spectacular amount of cinephilia. Right from the title font which reminds you of classic ‘80s cinema (as though Bharathan himself was the calligrapher) to the way the lost art of fan mail gets integrated into this crime, the love for cinema isn’t merely a flavour in Rekhachithram as much as it is a part of its soul. Even the wordplay of its title, which could be read both as “composite sketch” as well a movie about Rekha, reveals the film’s dual personalities.

A character named Bulli Raju, played by child actor Revanth, mouths expletives that send grown-ups into a tizzy. We hear some of these words while the rest is masked by the background score. A section of the audience may wonder why the filmmaker makes a boy say things beyond his age. The very next minute, writer-director Anil Ravipudi’s Telugu film Sankranthiki Vasthunam reasons that the young mind has been corrupted by an overdose of content on digital platforms! Bulli Raju’s antics in an early scene bring the house down and set the tone for the film. Teaming up with Venkatesh Daggubati for the third time, after the farcical comedies F2 and F3, Anil is aware that all his target audiences want are a few good laughs. Logical reasoning and political correctness can take a backseat. Within that framework, the film delivers several laughs.