When YRF lacks Tashan

When flailing YashRaj has to rope in the competition, and the competition ends up being the highlight of its seasonal blockbuster, you know it may be time to start typing condolence letters. (Adi, marry Rani quickly, and take a break. It might rejuvenate your perspective on cinema).

As of now, the critics are drawing comparisons between Tashan and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom : all style, no substance. I beg to differ. I’m one of the few that thoroughly enjoyed JBJ – music, Rikki Thukral, confessions by the café et al. It’d be an insult to put Tashan on the same platform.

Don’t get me wrong – the movie started off wonderfully, and left me gasping by the time intermission came around. The opening shots, of a car careening with two different musical genres inter-cutting from its radio, before plunging into the depths of a river, from where Saif breaks the fourth wall and starts telling the audience what an ass he’s been, is totally brilliant. (The film’s character binaries of language are also instantly established in the two songs, Highway to Hell and Kabhi Kabhie – a masterstroke).

So we’re immediately pulled into Saif’s story of working at a call-centre, bearing a fake English name Jimmy, and falling for a fresh Pooja (Kareena Kapoor), while teaching English to her boss Bhaiyyaji, who turns out to be a regular I’ll-kill-anyone criminal. (Anil Kapoor in a thoroughly unforgettable role). Jimmy falls for Pooja, helps her swindle Bhaiyyaji of 25 crores, which she promptly runs away with. This gets Jimmy to surrender to Bhaiyyaji, who hires a regional, Kanpur-ian goonda Bachchan Pande (Akshay Kumar) to find Pooja and recover the money, with stuck-with-the-rats Jimmy.

What then follows is a two-level road movie, which starts off crisp and engaging due to the originality of the characters, and some absolutely zinger one-liners. The spoof element is always there, especially in the fake rape scene with Kareena and Saif, where his “Why do you need God to save you? Ha ha ha!” totally brought the house down.

But this tightly-wound in your face parody road movie unfortunately starts to unravel quite soon after the interval. The faint echoes of the 70s masala film that was mocked initially, turns serious, complete with its clichés of childhood sweetheart flashbacks, ‘bachpan se bichchad gaye’ theme, the villain roasting his victim with electricity, and loose, barely believable action that doesn’t justify its overblown budget.

While a treat to watch, what was missing from these crucial bits are the tongue-in-cheek elements that the Indian audience is quickly catching up on. When Main Hoon Na first released, with its mid-movie action piece that cocked a snook at Sholay with the Dhanno rickshaw and “ab tera kya hoga Kaalia?”, the critics were just beginning to wonder at the prospect of respectable Bollywood parody. By the time Om Shanti Om came out, everyone, from the audiences to the critics, got it, and were rolling in the aisles.

So when you’re catering for this audience now, your genre parameters should be quite clear. And once they are, you stick to them from beginning to end.


Akshay Kumar, is of course, a complete thespian by now, and he lifts every scene that he’s in. His Ravan entry is phenomenal in comic scale, and kudos to the writers for his character. It’s Pande’s (and Bhaiyyaji’s to a certain extent ) mythological references in the movie that remind us of the constant parallels that 70s action movies were trying to emulate. Good guy versus bad guy, guru and shishya, damsel in distress. His take on the dehati is the perfect foil to Saif’s ‘cool dude’ Indian trying to be American, and gives some of the most thought-provoking nuggets about the value and pre-conceptions attached to English in India, and the prejudices that might invoke.

Kareena honestly deserves better. Post-Jab We Met, she won me over completely, however she proves here she’s more immersed in basking in her new-found ‘it girl’ glory – her face is a treat, while neck down, well. Poking ribs are a sign of malnutrition, as any WHO member can tell you. That Kareena wants to look like Victoria Beckham, in a country where large swaths of people have those same poking ribs, for those exact WHO reasons, is a sad sign for her, for Aditya Chopra, for Bollywood, and the I’ll-lap-up-anything-that’s-marketed-on-TV middle class Indian masses.

In all, Tashan is another hiccup-filled YRF fare that only brightens whenever non-YRF staples are around, ie Akshay and Anil. That’s a sign of things to come, if you ask me. But this is the era of burning Romes anyway, be it the pre-election fervour in the US, the Olympic hoo-haa over Tibet, the protests of monks in Burma, the class action suit against Queen Elizabeth by the Indians in Malaysia. All monopolising monoliths will have to crumble at some point. Which is why I said – Adi, really, get married.

Tashan ki tashan

So the unthinkable has happened - due to non-agreement between YashRaj Films and a united front of multiplexes (yes, I know, it's weird) - India's multiplex's didn't release Tashan today, the proverbial Friday. And how bizarre - us NRI-log have now watched a major Indian release way before our desi counterparts.

Time was when I saw Taal in 1999 in a musty, one room cinema the size of a toilet in Lutwyche, populated by local Indians dressed up as if attending a wedding, since it was one of the few occasions for them to see and be seen. And Taal came months after its Indian release, hired out by a distributor hanging on to some form of new desperation.

Today Tashan was showing at The Regent (even as it gets ignored at AdLabs and Inox in Mumbai), was a full house for both the 5:30 and 8:30 shows, and were full of new Indian faces I didn't recognise, wearing casual jeans and shirts. (The fact that none of them turned off their mobile phones, littered the cinema, and constantly cut queues, is another story. ) And all of them were new imports - for both educational and professional purposes. I hesitate to call them NRIs - you only earn that after you've collapsed into tears upon listening to AR Rahman in your home stereo, and gravitating towards tabla music playing around Queen Street Mall. Yet - they almost wanted to seem slotted that way - almost as if being NRI were somehow superior to being desi. Who the hell knows.

Anyway - preface over, here's the actual review, since I know those in India who haven't seen the movie, and want to know if its paisa vasool - or even if there's a hint of the ol' Khiladi-Anari chemistry from AK and SK. My personal theory - if there was, it was chalked out by the script.

But you decide:

**NOTE: This review is written ad hoc as first thoughts, and may be revamped in the future. Original version appears in Bollywhat (check out 'tabula rasa').

Tashan - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

GOOD

- Anil Kapoor's English. I want that man to read Shakespeare to me before I go to bed every night.

- Some zinger one-liners. ("toh kya, AISE hai?" And the translated Deewar monologue. And "bilkul George Bush ki tarah").

- Akshay Kumar's Bachchan Pande characterisation. Esply his entry as a Ravan who stops the play.

- Some of the movie's road trip aspects.

- A good tight first half.

- The Sanskrit chant in the climax (it sounds familiar, I want to know what it is).

- Surprisingly, the Dil Dance Maare picturisation.

- The very interesting film discourse about language, Eng vs Hindi, illustrations of demographics of those that use them and those that don't, and what one type thinks of the other.

BAD

- Unconvincing action - way too OTT.

- Unconvincing in terms of character motivation too. We have no way of believing that Kareena can shoot well, or that AK can run up buildings and accost a whole gang of goondas, and dodge bullets till kingdom come.

- An unravelling climax, where there is no crescendo - the action plateaus at a high pitch, which makes it unwatchable. It's suddenly 70s villain climax, without the tongue in cheek.

- A ridiculous backstory to Bachchan Pande, and the ridiculous unlikelihood of Bebo as Gudiya. And the coincidental realisation. Again, way too serious 70s cinema. Came into the story waaayyyy too late.

- An unresolved/unnecessary plot point of Saif as police informer, whose purpose dies with the officer. His motivations aren't enforced in the script after that.

UGLY:

- Kareena in Chaliya. Surprisingly she wasn't as skinny in the other parts - Chaliya seems to have been a nugget of time of super-skinniness. Ribs. I could see her ribs. There's nothing sexy about poking ribs.
(Interestingly, the house full audience which hooted every time Anil opened his mouth, and whistled at Akki's entrance, remained strangely silent throughout that song).

- A halting, skipping script post-interval, which only gets highlighted when the characters are being themselves.

- An overblown budget on action that does not get justified.

So? Worth the DVD? Hmm. Yeah. But if someone could rip just the 1st half for me, I'll be happy.

Game Over (?)

What is it they say about journeys, and their various stopovers? That implication that as you progress towards your destination, it's not about the distance left to get there, but the distance that you've already covered. But most importantly, it's the distance you get from yourself. So you can, after a while, literally stand slightly away, offside, look back, and go "gee, that was someone else who started out, wasn't it?"

I think I am now that person, and because of my stopovers, some brief, some protracted, I think I've become a little more seasoned. I know when a barricade is staring me in the face. I also know the whole thing about it pulling back when you push against it, and then pushing forward when you don't expect it to.

I'm getting it now. From unexpected quarters. This is a very seductive stopover too. There're facilities, warmth, stimulating conversation, thought-provoking ideas.I want to be here, hopefully for a long time. The thing is, I’m a little too busy at the moment, with work, study, managing my mum, etc – to spare the time and energy to play this push and pull game. I’ve been there, done that.

But more than that – my last stopover (which is still stopping over, there doesn’t seem to be a clear departure in that sense at the moment) – came to me so easily. Dropped down from the sky, intact in kneeling position, with Persian poetry and proposals to book me in our next lives. I didn’t have to lift a finger. Perhaps that’s spoilt me.

But perhaps, too, as journeys go, you grow up a little. You respond better to fellow travellers who’ve been there, done that, who know what its all about. Who know that playing pull-push games are restricted to adolescent episodes and today's tweens desperately trying to come across all 'found'.

*sigh*.

I have come far. I have still further to go. I'm intrigued by this junction, but I'm also quite weary of it. So unless the barricade stops pretending and opens its arms and envelops the beautiful gift this can be, I really don't have the energy to play its game.

Insider Out

Given the surfeit of writing that occurs in my life these days, I rarely drop by this place anymore, despite curious emails from friends and acquaintances wondering what's happened.

My blog is my space to ponder, and fortunately or unfortunately, of late I have had little time for that.

But then, there are also such things as kernels of notions that invisibly plant themselves within you, then gradually grow over time, till it spills forth at unexpected moments, words that you have heard others say but never thought you yourself would.

At such times, pondering is not an indulgence, it is vital.

I have lived in Australia since 1999, and now know the culture and people enough (I hope) to be able to function adequately in their midst - even when I'm the only one of my kind amongst them. I'm quite used to that notion now, of being the only one of my kind, in any room, in any situation. In fact, it's a second skin I now wear so comfortably that I know that all those I attract are of the same ken as well - that they belong nowhere but within themselves, that they're square pegs in round holes and didn't ask to be that way.

Perhaps it is because of this outsider status of mine, that I see things in my clients that others don't. That although being Indian (raised that way to the point of almost denying my Malaysian nationality) in an all-Australian department, I cannot seem to stand other Indians coming into the Library.

It is an awful feeling. It's akin to treason in my book, that I quite intentionally handle my Indian clients quite differently from my Australian ones - and in a negative way. But I cannot help it. I feel put in a position where I cannot deviate from my professional commitment to treat them just the way I do my other clients, which therefore means many rude things in the Indian book.

These things include:

1. No leniency in accepting e-card prerequisites.
2. Saying no to unreasonable IT demands (even though they come by due to lack of knowledge, not arrogance or laziness).
3. A brusque and no-nonsense manner, pre-empting any chattiness, because:
4. When Indians meet fellow Indians the instinct is to geographically locate you somewhere, if not an Indian region, then its diaspora - followed by a tracing of your geneaology back to the tiny little Indian village your forebears would've waded out from.
5. An expectation of rule bending 'to help out your own kind' once the above nexus is established.

It annoys me no end.

And it annoys me that it annoys me.

I can't seem to find my fixed position on this, and instead I ambit around a locus - I defend the Indians full-scale in the staff tea-room, suddenly representing the whole sub-continent, but after a few hours at the front desk I'm the first to spew the frustrations that they as a group have repeatedly inflicted on every member of the department. It's like my loyalties need to be cleaved down the middle in order for me to reach any level of coherency.

In all honesty - I'm a little surprised at the straight-up boorishness of this particular group that frequent my workplace (by group of course, I mean a 250-strong collossus that has invaded the city centre). I've always, in my various dealings with Indians and India, been charmed off my socks with their knowledge and refinement and intellect.

For the first time, it seems, the India of the village is encroaching upon the town-masquerading-as-city Brisbane. Collisions of culture seem harder than before, their powerful clanging against each other producing vibrations nobody has been prepared for. Hell, even I'm not, and it looks as if I'd been in training for it for years. I'm the perfect halfway house.

Is this natural resistance to being claimed by the Indian mob, a traitorous streak I need to address, or is it merely an indicator of all the various milestones I've crossed since I came here - crossed them to point of having reached the other side?