THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL is a movie of questionable taste and worse political judgement.  It's a testament to its charming cast that it manages to slip down rather easily, all the same. 

The basic concept is that a bunch of middle-class English pensioners move to a ramshackle Rajasthani hotel and experience epiphanies. The recent widow (Judi Dench) learns independence; the retired civil servant (Bill Nighy) and his wife (Penelope Wilton) learn that they do not love or even like each other; the two desperate singles (Celia Imrie and Ronald Pickup) learn that are still sexually attractive; the racist (Maggie Smith) learns tolerance; and the gay high court judge (Tom Wilkinson) finds peace. 

The problem with the film is the typical problem that modern England has in viewing its colonial heritage. On the one hand, it simply has to acknowledge the dirt, disease, discrimination and general chaos of modern India. On the other, it is faintly embarrassed of this disapproval given its own guilt regarding the Raj, and still has a deep-seated love of the country whose culture, language and cooking have so influenced the home nations. The result is a depiction of India that is at once patronising and awe-struck.  India is the country of spiritual revelation and ancient wisdom.  But it is also depicted as a country of almost child-like innocents who believe in happy endings, ideally set to a musical number.  This absurd juxtaposition is best summed up in the movie SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE - marketed as a "feelgood movie" despite scenes of child beggars deliberately blinded, capped off with the obligatory song-and-dance number straight after a scene where the hero's brother has shot himself.  

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL isn't quite as crass as SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. And indeed, in one storyline, we see a reconciliation between ruler and ruled played out as a reconciliation between two homosexual lovers - one a colonial, one an Indian. That at least shows some self-awareness on the part of the film-makers, although it falls far short of the kind of self-examination seen in the novels of E.M.Forster.  But at the end of the day, this is just another movie in which India is a colourful, exoticised backdrop against which pampered Westerners can gain "self-knowledge".  There's no real concern with what life there is really like. And the self-knowledge is easily gained - in the case of Maggie Smith's character, the personality alteration so swift as to beggar belief. 

Still, as I said, the movie is a surprisingly pleasant watch, mainly because it's cast is top-notch and charming, partly because where the movie is on "home soil" it is actually quite insightful.  In other words, when focusing on the disappointments of old age, the movie actually has interesting things to say about the way in which the middle classes are seeing their pension income eroded - their healthcare costs increase - the shock to discover the welfare state and corporate pension simply aren't enough - the indignity of realising one's sex life might be over - the desperation of knowing that the chances to turn one's life around are limited, if they exist at all.

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL is on release in the UK and Ireland. It opens on March 15th in Germany; on March 22nd in Australia; Norway, the Netherlands,  New Zealand, Russia, Estonia, Finland, Spain and Sweden; on March 28th in Belgium; on March 20th in Italy and Lithuania; on April 12th in Portugal; on May 4th in India and the USA; on May 9th in France; on May 11th in Brazil; on May 17th in Hong Kong and Singapore; and on May 24th in Argentina.

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. 

3 IDIOTS - The funniest Hindi comedy since Munnabhai

3 IDIOTS is one of the funniest Hindi movies I’ve seen since MUNNABHAI MBBS. So it comes as no surprise to find that it was written and directed by Rajkumar Hirani, the guy behind that smash-hit. 3 IDIOTS also has certain plot similarities to the first MUNNABHAI movie. Once again we find ourselves in an Indian university, with students under pressure from their adoring parents to do well and get a great job. Once again we have an iconoclastic rebel who goes against the faculty head and argues for less learning by rote and more actual education. And once again, there’s a romance between the rebel and the Dean’s daughter. But there the resulting is far more raucous, far more consistently witty, and genuinely laugh-out loud funny.

Aamir Khan plays Rancho, an iconoclastic student who transforms the lives of his two best friends Raja (Sharman Joshi) and Farhan (Madhavan). Together, they are the 3 idiots of the title, who fight financial and social pressure to have pursue their passions. They come up against the tyrannical and uncaring university dean, nicknamed Virus, and played by the typically hilarious, but here more modulated, Boman Irani. Lisp and comical haircut aside, Irani’s Virus is less funny than terrible, because until tragedy strikes his own family, he does not change. The 3 idiots also come up against the university swot, a Ugandan NRI nicknamed Silencer, played with a pitch-perfect East African gujurati accent by Omi Vaidya. Silencer is also a tragic figure, but equally one of the funniest, with a hilarious comic set-piece revolving around a formal speech in front of the education minister which the fluent Hindi 3 idiots have doctored replacing the word “serve” with “screwed”. Silencer is also the best exponent of the movie’s full and up-front exploration of fart jokes! Naturally, this being a Hindi film, there has to be a love interest, and so we have Kareena Kapoor, also superb at the comdy, playing Pia, the dean’s daughter.

The bulk of the movie takes place a decade ago, and sees Rancho befriending the other idiots, confronting the dean and falling in love. The movie’s framing device takes place in the present day, with Raju, Farhan and Silencer trying to track down Rancho after ten years of radio silence.

The perfectionist Aamir Khan, aged 44, undergoes an impressive physical transformation to play Rancho, a university student. He has lost weight, and the combination of baggy clothes, make-up (unfairly – botox?!), posture and physicality make him more convincing in the role than you might imagine. It was even more suprising to see how far this actor, famed for his serious political films, could do pure physical comedy. His acting in the song “Aal eez well” is superb, and genuinely laugh-out-loud funny.

So, 3 IDIOTS is utterly hilarious. But the great thing is that it is also politically provocative. The key argument in the film is that Indian parents are too strict with their kids, picking out their careers for them, and putting too much pressure on them succeed. Worse still, success is measured purely by salary, with which you can buy flashy branded clothes and attract a pretty wife. The price of this pressure is extreme – suicide. Rancho argues that real learning isn’t learning by rote to come first in an exam. And that, rather than trying to come top in an exam, if you “pursue excellence, and success will follow, pants down.” Most of all, if you love engineering, be an engineer. Don’t become a banker in a foreign land. It’s a wonderful ethos and the argument sorely needs to be made. It’s great to see a populist movie taking such a stance.

Of course, with Hindi cinema you have to expect a big dollop of melodrama and implausibility. For instance, the framing device see the “two idiots” go in search of Rancho by driving from Delhi to Shimla via Ladakh – a massive road trip that seemingly happens in a day! And the single most ludicrous set-piece is the scene where Rancho and the students help the dean’s daughter to give birth despite heavy rains, a lack of electricity, and any medical equipment. Just when you think the scene can’t get more schmaltzy and melodramatic, Hirani pushes it one step further, with the movie’s motto, “Aal eez well” playing a key part. It’s ludicrous. But then again, you have to assume that a writer-director who has pastiched Hindi cinema tropes in the song “Zoobi Doobi” knows perfectly well what he’s doing. He’s both pandering to our expectations of what a Bollywood movie should do, and simultaneously sending them up. It takes a very assured director to create a scene that’s both moving and hilarious.

3 IDIOTS was released on Christmas Day 2009.

London Film Fest Day 4 - GULAAL

GULAAL is a thought-provoking, brutal epic from Indian director Anurag Kashyap. Mired in production difficulties and censorship battles it eventually slipped into Indian cinemas in March to a weak reception from audiences more fond of escapist, high-gloss Bollywood romances. Since then it has played Venice and now London and received critical praise.

GULAAL is strong meat. It speaks honestly about sex, drugs, corruption, fundamentalism and the fissures that permeate "One India". In GULAAL, protagonists don't just sing to each other, they have sex and back street abortions; they smoke pot to relax; they fix ballots; they threaten and co-erce; illegitimate children threaten rightful heirs; and rightful heirs reject aristocratic privelege. The action is shot in ill-lit rooms and grimy interiors and back streets, as Rajasthani separatists subvert a student election to cream off funds. This is modern India indeed. But the lyrics of Prithvi Bana's brilliantly satirical songs speak of the aspirations at Independence. Contemporary struggles are constantly held in contrast with the ancient political and moral struggles contained in the Mahabharata through the device of a Hijra/Eunuch and having people dressed as characters from the ancient Indian epic always in sight. For Western audiences, the comparison that is most resonant is with Shakespearian tragedies - where love affairs are entangled with high politics, and a Fool sings apparently comic songs that skewer the case in point. I don't think I have ever seen such an ambitious and angry Indian film, and if not every bold choice works, you have to admire the ambition and the fine central performance of Kay Kay Menon.

GULAAL was released, after a long delay, in India in March 2009. It has since played Venice and London 2009.

Late review - CHANDI CHOWK TO CHINA

Nikhil Advani, director of Bollywood weepie KAL HO NAA HO, and love story, SALAAM-E-ISHQ, returned in early 2009 with a glossy, US-backed, Bollywood love-story-comedy-martial arts flick called CHANDI CHOWK TO CHINA. A vehicle for ageing comedy hero Akshay Kumar, and up-coming actress Deepika Padukone, the movie is there to show us that Bollywood can do wire-fu too.

The plot is simple - too simple for a 150 minute film. Kumar plays his standard rough and ready hero with a heart of gold. He's a poor cook with bad luck. But all that changes when some Chinese people believe him to be the reincarnation of an old Chinese hero, who should return to their village and defeat the gangster who is controlling their lives. On the way, Kumar's character meets an Indian model who is also on her way to China, where her twin sister is now working for the aforementioned gangster. Naturally (!) the hero learns that all those years dicing potatoes were, "wax on, wax off" styl-ee, the perfect training to be a martial arts legend.

The problem with this film - as in most modern Bollywood films - is that the concept, the songs, and the look - are more important to the film-makers than the actual story. Indeed, I am not surprised in the least to know that the film's teaser poster - Akshay Kumar in a Chinese outfit - was the inspiration for the storyline, rather than the other way around. The sets are glossy, the martial arts lean heavily on CGI and wire-fu, the songs (Shankar Mahadevan) are forgettable, and I'm starting to become really embarrassed for Hollywood stars who ape rappers and MTV videos.

Overall, in the whole 150 minutes the only real fun I had was in two scenes. In the first, the hero finds "the face of hanuman" in a potato and people start worshipping it - great satire. In the second, the heroine attaches a dance-gadget to the heroes legs, and Kumar does a little skit ape-ing Bollywood hits of the past. Kumar is good at physical comedy. He's less convincing as an action hero. He should leave the wire-fu to Hrithik Roshan. I am deeply unconvinced by Padukone's talent.

CHANDI CHOWK TO CHINA was released in January 2009 and is available on DVD.