RA.ONE - a new benchmark in Hindi sci-fi action flicks

Ladai goliyon se nahin, dil se jeeti jati hain.

Hindi cinema has never had a strong tack record in the sci-fi and fantasy genres. Its product has tended to focus on the musical rom-com, melodrama and tragedy - sometimes all bound up in the same film.  There have been successful gangster, cop and thriller movies, and a consistently rich seam of independent cinema.  But with a few recent exceptions - KRRISH, perhaps - Hindi cinema hasn't really ventured into the lucrative arenas (in the West, at least) of children's animation, fantasy, horror, and sci-fi.  Perhaps this reflects the fact that all these genres need state of the art technical expertise of the kind that up until recently wasn't available in Mumbai - surprisingly so, when you consider India's considerable edge in IT.  But IT in the creative industries - that's something quite different.  Moreover, these films need considerable and expensive post-production work - again not the kind of facilities easily accessible in Bollywood.

All this pre-amble gives you some idea as to how revolutionary RA.ONE is. Because this isn't so much a new film, to be reviewed as other films are reviewed, but a statement of faith in the future of Hindi cinema on the part of its star, legendary Hindi actor Shah Rukh Khan, and his wife and now producer, Gauri Khan.  RA.ONE represents a massive gamble, and indeed investment, on their part - in creating production facilities in Mumbai - in using the best post facilities in London for effects and retrospective 3D.  They  have shown the world that Hindi cinema can now produce movies of technical skill to match anything Hollywood has to offer, and the box office receipts show that Indian audiences are quite willing to embrace the relatively new genre of sci-fi action thriller.  To that end, RA.ONE must be seen as a technical and commercial success - a seminal film - regardless of the quality of the actual work.

The movie itself is far more conservative than the radical technical achievement.  The story is a strange and not entirely felicitous mash-up of elements from TERMINATOR, THE MATRIX, and TRON, shoe-horned into a typical Hindi family comedy. 

Shah Rukh Khan plays a nerdy video game designer called Shekhar, married to his loving wife Sonia (Kareena Kapoor).  In order to impress his alarmingly feminine-looking son, Prateek (Armaan Verma), Shekhar invents a game in which the bad guy always wins. Problem is, the bad guy avatar, Ra.One (a  play on the Hindi name of an evil demon, Raavan) breaks free of the computer game and enters the real world, desperate to kill his gaming foe Lucifer, the avatar of Prateek. Only the good guy avatar, G.One (a play on the Hindi word for "life", Jeevan), modelled on Shekhar, can save the day.

The scenes of family life, with Shekhar and then G.One playing husband and father, are classic Hindi schmaltz.  It's a culture in which the family unit is idealised - where father is always right, mother is entirely dependent on father (despite a brief reference to feminist research), and the little kid is a spoilt brat who comes to realise that, well, father was right all along.  There are schmaltzy scenes of bonding, and Shah Rukh Khan's brand of typically broad, crude comedy.  He does things here that are so simplistic - donning a stupid perm wig to simulate being a geeky southern Indian - that no other actor would get away with.  But accusations that Shah Rukh Khan is a hammy actor are beside the point. His fans want to see through the thinly veiled disguise of costume and antics to the superstar beneath.  He is his own brand - losing himself in characterisation would be alienating to his admirers.

The handling of the sci-fi material is also pretty cursory.  This isn't THE MATRIX - posing deep questions about the nature of reality and perception. The explanation of how Ra.One and G.One can escape the video game is all a bit Basil Exposition.  No-one here is really interested in the philosophy.  But I have to say that I did appreciate the almost self-effacing way in which the screenwriters (David Benullo, Kanika Dhillon, Niranjan Iyengar, Mushtaq Sheikh, director Anubhav Sinha and Shah Rukh Khan) acknowledge this fact. Shortly after the interval they insert a scene where Sonia, Prateek and G.One meet Rajnikanth in the role of Chitti - the robot come to life that he played in the recent Hindi film ENDHIRAN - a much more subtle and intelligent investigation of the nature of virtual reality.  Sonia explicitly pays homage to the superior creation.

Where the film scores big is in the use of CGI and the staging of the action scenes, that surpass anything in recent Hindi cinema, and even surpass second-tier Hollywood action flicks like THE GREEN LANTERN and THE GREEN HORNET.  The imaginary worlds look amazing, Shah Rukh Khan looks superb in his blue-lit suit, and the set-pieces are just stunning - particularly a train chase sequence that culminates in the (subversive political?!) destruction of Mumbai's colonial Victoria Terminus railway station.  I also liked the in-jokes - the inclusion of Desi girl jokes at Priyanka Chopra's expense, for instance.  And, of course, completing the cross-cultural switch, we have the American rapper Akon singing the two key songs that frame the big musical item numbers.  These scenes work really well, and it's actually pretty surprising to see how convincing Akon is singing Hindi lyrics, although this is undercut by the absurdity of Khan lip-synching to them. Ra.One is also one of the more successful retrospective 3D movies of recent times.

Overall, it's easy to knock RA.ONE - the plot is shaky, the sci-fi exposition cursory - and it's basically just another vehicle for Shah Rukh Khan's brand of cheeky family comedy, newly supplemented by his buff physique. The movie was never trying to be a subtle sci-fi thriller.  What is was trying to do was lay down a new benchmark for CGI-packed action films. And in that respect, it's an unqualified success.

RA.ONE went on global release on October 26th. 

London Film Fest 2011 Day 16 - THE DEEP BLUE SEA

Jolyon Coy (Philip), Kate Ogborn (producer), Tom Hiddleston (Freddie), 
Terence Davies (director and screenwriter), Sarah Kants (Liz), 
Harry Hadden-Paton (Jackie) at the premiere of THE DEEP BLUE SEA

This review is brought to you by Professor007, long missing from these pages, and a dutiful stand-in when Bina007 was struck down by cine-flu.

It is rare these days to find a movie that captivates one for its length. It is rarer still to find a movie that keeps one in its spell well beyond the hustle of the tube on the way back home.

Terrence Davies' adaptation of Terrence Rattigan's play The Deep Blue Sea is such a masterpiece. It is beautifully set in 1950s London, yet its topic is timeless. Hester (Rachel Weisz), a young and attractive woman of simple background, who is married to William (Simon Russell Beale), a distinguished man of law considerably her senior, falls in love with the young and handsome maverick Freddie (Tom Hiddleston). In Freddie, Hester seems to find the passion, lust, and physicality that she misses in her married life. Some months into the affair, however, William finds out and Hester decides to leave William and move in with her lover. Freddie, however, seems unprepared for such co-habitation: mentally stuck in his life as hero during World War II, he struggles to find a new focus in life, and is unable to emotionally care for anyone else than himself. Despite this lack of attention by Freddie and her husband's continued attempts to win her back, Hester's love for Freddie is unbroken. She does not, however, get the committed and passionate relationship she so desires, and with every increasingly desperate failed attempt to win Freddie over, she degrades herself more and more.

What is striking in its sadness and yet utter plausibility is how the behaviour of three people, of which neither is spiteful or keen to hurt the other ones, can lead to such pain and misfortune. Rachel Weisz beautifully portrays a woman who, in her attempt to find love and passion, knowingly destroys her life. William, excellently played by Simon Russell Beale, tries to win her back, but is too restrained by his upbringing to show the emotions his wife may be longing for so much. Finally, Freddie is a man who struggles with the void of purpose in his life and at the same time is overwhelmed by the passion of his lover.

To me, an oscar candidate for best movie, best actress and best supporting actor. On vera.

THE DEEP BLUE SEA played Toronto, San Sebastian and London 2011. It will be released in the UK on November 25th and the US in December.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 15 - THIS MUST BE THE PLACE

Rabartu Smitu, Rabartu Smitu, 

tashiwa ga suki Rabartu Smitu

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE is a visually inventive but often frustratingly slow-paced film that bravely tries to juxtapose whimsical comedy and serious history with problematic results. 

Sean Penn plays an ageing, bored and depressed former goth rock-star called Cheyenne. His high-pitched voice and Robert Smith clothes mark him as a man-child, trapped in his adolescence, but anchored by the love of his down-to-earth wife, Jane (Frances McDormand) and the friendship of emotionally scarred fan-girl, Mary. The death of his father forces Cheyenne back to America. Almost on a whim, he sets off on a meandering road-trip, searching for the Nazi that had tormented his father. But despite a very moving late scene of confession and humiliation, this is not really a revenge movie at all, but rather a character drama about an estranged son breaking beyond that emotional vacuum in order to become a man.

The casting is strong - with Sean Penn and Frances McDormand complemented by strong cameos from Harry Dean Stanton, Judd Hirsch (as a Simon Wiesenthal cipher) and Heinz Lieven as the Nazi. And the script, by Umberto Contarello, contains many belly-laughs, and superlative dramatic set-pieces. But as with all Paolo Sorrentino movies, the true stars are Luca Bigazzi's fluid, deliberate, elegant camera-work and the flamboyant use of the musical score, this time, by the legendary David Byrne. Technically, this film is flawless and imaginative. 

But it didn't grab me, fascinate me, in the same way as Sorrentino's previous films - IL DIVO and THE FAMILY FRIEND. This is partly because the character of Cheyenne is, however sympathetic, also rather slow and whimsical, and after a while this started to grate. It's partly because the road-trip in the second half is so random and slow. I know that this is the point - that is should have the kind of magic and wonder of THE STRAIGHT STORY - but I did become very impatient with it. And finally, I guess I just felt too uncomfortable with the deliberate juxtaposition of the Holocaust with the character of Cheyenne - the man least likely to come to mind as a Nazi hunter. Something about the man using the hunt for the Nazi as a kind of distraction from a life of satiety, and then as a kind of agent toward self-knowledge, felt weird and exploitative. I know this was a deliberate provocation from Sorrentino - but for me it just didn't work. 

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE played Cannes 2011 where it won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. It opened earlier this year in France and is currently on release in Italy. It opens in Germany on November 10th, in Sweden on November 18th, in the US in December, in Australia on December 26th, in Poland on February 3rd, in Spain in March and in the UK on March 9th. 

London Film Fest 2011 Day 15 - ANONYMOUS

The use of the interrogative tense in the poster for ANONYMOUS is misleading. Director Roland Emmerich and writer John Orloff aren't asking whether Shakespeare was a fraud. They are telling us, without doubt, with complete certainty, that he was. Their theory is that it is inconceivable that a poorly educated provincial dolt could have written plays of such genius and erudition. Rather, they posit that the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, a man of great wealth and learning, wrote the plays. But at a time when theatres were next to brothels, and plays seen as seditious, it would have been degrading for Oxford to be publicly acknowledged as an author.  He therefore allowed the boorish, illiterate actor, Will Shakespeare, to take the credit, and the cash, with Ben Jonson as the unwilling go-between.  If this weren't scandalous enough, the movie further raises the stakes by positing that Oxford was at the centre of a conspiracy by his enemy, the puritan Cecil family, that involved the line of succession, incest and bastards. 

Taken on its own terms, ANONYMOUS is a great success. Indeed, I was quite amazed that Roland Emmerich - director of such dubious, mainstream disaster movies as 2012; 10,000 BC; and THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW - could direct something with such elegance and beauty. Because, make no mistake, ANONYMOUS is a brilliantly directed film. The way in which Emmerich deftly handles the transitions between different periods in Oxford's life is elegant and never confuses.  The conspiracy is woven with great delicacy so that even in the final act, we are genuinely surprised and saddened by the turn of events.  In front of the camera, Emmerich coaxes a career best performance from Rhys Ifans as the older Oxford, and uses CGI to create a completely engrossing and compelling Tudor London.  I was absolutely delighted to see Southwark and the Tower recreated, complete with squalor and grandeur.  Kudos to cinematographer Anna Foerster, shooting with the Arri Alexa (the first feature to do so).  She manages to create a colour palette of warmth and depth, beautifully capturing candelit pageants, and snow-covered country mansions. Most importantly, I cared. I deeply cared about the battle between Oxford and the Cecils - I cared about the fate of young Essex, the Queen's bastard son and pretender to the throne - and I cared about the Queen herself, wonderfully portrayed by Vanessa Redgrave as frail and vulnerable and hounded on all sides. 

Of course, when I stand back from the film, the whole thing seems a bit pointless. I've always thought that these debates - who wrote Shakespeare; was Shakespeare a crypto-Catholic; was the Dark Lady really a boy - pretty pointless, as there simply isn't the documentary evidence to decide it either way. So you're just left with dogmatic people using thin supposition.  In particular, the idea that Shakespeare couldn't have written the plays because they required great education strikes me as peculiarly class-ist. Just because someone is provincial and working class doesn't mean they aren't capable of genius - I mean, isn't the whole point of genius that it's like a lightning bolt. And anyway, according to Rene Weis' superb book "Shakespeare Revealed", Shakespeare attended a local grammar school and was taught by a string of Oxbridge graduates in all the subjects and to the very same standard that the movie suggests Oxford was tutored in and to....

But as I said, there's no point quibbling about the truth. I am perfectly happy to believe Will Shakespeare was indeed Shakespeare.  That didn't stop me having a cracking good time watching ANONYMOUS.  To that end, this movie falls firmly in the same category as SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE - a pleasing fiction.

ANONYMOUS played Toronto and London 2011. It is currently on release in Portugal, Finland and Norway. It opens on October 28th in Canada, Ireland, the UK and the USA. It opens on November 3rd in Germany; in Spain on November 11th; in France, Russia and Singapore on November 17th; in the Netherlands, Mexico and India on December 1st; in Sweden on December 16th; in Hong Kong and Hungary on February 2nd.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 14 - HUNKY DORY

Minnie Driver is the only recognised name in Marc Evans' musical drama HUNKY DORY.

Welsh director Marc Evans (SNOWCAKE, MY LITTLE EYE) bravely takes on a "concept" film with his new musical coming-of-age flick, HUNKY DORY. Minnie Driver (with impeccable Welsh accent) plays a teacher in a Welsh school, putting on a musical version of Shakespeare's The Tempest that incorporates the popular music of 1976 - David Bowie, Nick Drake, The Beach Boys - the year in which the movie is set. And while Driver is the only recognised name actor, she's actually not the person carrying the film. Rather, the young cast of talented kids steal the show, with the lead schoolboy Aneurin Barnard making an impressive debut. 

I found the movie earnest, joyful, but uneven and unsure of what it wanted to be. French writer Laurence Coriat (WONDERLAND) has penned a script that isn't an out-and-out big dance number musical in the manner of GLEE or HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. Indeed, it seems to want to be one of those authentic realist teen flicks of the US indie movement - AMERICAN GRAFFITI or DAZED AND CONFUSED. And even then it can't resist one of those plot devices that seems totally out of scale with all that preceded it - stupidly clumsy deus ex machina. Combining social realism and musical numbers is a hard trick to pull off, and HUNKY DORY is no BILLY ELLIOT.

HUNKY DORY had its world premiere at London 2011 and has no commercial release date yet.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 14 - THE AWAKENING

Dominic West (Robert) and Rebecca Hall (Florence) star in THE AWAKENING.

THE AWAKENING is an intelligent, adult horror movie that sees Florence (Rebecca Hall), a notorious debunker of spiritualism, invited to a boy's boarding school by Robert (Dominic West) to investigate an apparent haunting. This sets up a classic haunted house movie, in the manner of Alejandro Amenábar's The Others - but with the refreshing site of a clever, independent woman as the protagonist, and the pervasive air of  post-war mourning hanging heavy over proceedings. The resolution is satisfyingly complicated and there were enough genuinely unexpected scary moments to make this good horror - particularly the pivotal bathroom scene. Admittedly, there is nothing particularly innovative in the set up (Nick Murphy and Stephen Volk), but first time feature director Murphy creates and sustains a genuinely tense and morbid atmosphere that completely sucked me in, largely thanks to superb cinematography from DP Eduard Grau (A SINGLE MAN, BURIED) and a desaturated colour palette.

THE AWAKENING played Toronto and London 2011. It opens in the UK and Ireland on 11th November.