Raman Raghav 2.0 - not so Ugly after all

Our choice of venue was curtailed to Fame ShankarNag in Bangalore, a

cinema that was once a single screen highlight that is now in tatters.

Our feeling on leaving the cinema was not as acute but not very

different about Raman Raghav 2.0. Anurag Kashyap has never shied away

from showing the basest emotions that a human being is capable of, love

and its infinite shades included. It works in Raman Raghav 2.0 only

because he has two very talented actors backing up his slightly weak

spined screenplay - Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Vicky Kaushal.

Given the way 'Bombay Velvet' was received, the expectation behind

Anurag Kashyap's next was always going to be a factor in the way Raman

Raghav was going to be received. A lot of us would have expected Anurag

to have gone all out, but there is a certain amount of restraint that

comes through in his handling of the screenplay. His leads though, have

no such restraints in their portrayal. 'He said my eyes used to glow in

the dark' says one and 'how can you stay with someone who puts anything

into his nostrils, his veins?' says the other.

Vasan Bala's screenplay with Anurag Kashyap - walks through streets of

Mumbai - grime, sweat and ripe(with decay) colours painted roughly on

the screen. While the actual Raman Raghav 2.0 terrorized Mumbai with

random killings, the contemporary Sindhi Dalwai takes inspiration from

him only to paint his own gory graffiti in Mumbais slums. Duality is an

interesting dynamic - crime and punishment, criminals and policemen,

God and the Devil - Anurag Kashyap works with Venn diagrams showing us

where a circle stops and where another begins and where they intersect

but perhaps pulls back too soon - to use his own cinematic language. We

are at times left languishing for more of the whys and wherefores even

though some may argue open- endedness being paramount.

Siddiqui - bright eyed, unkempt and thoroughly scary pulls off another

top tier performance yet never goes over the top keeping everything

under the surface. A short run up of his, helmet clad and dragging a

tyre iron quite literally sends us backing into the seat knowing whats

going to happen next. Vicky Kaushal on the other hand, as has been the

discussion since his performance is a surprise package. A police launda

who cannot bear to keep himself away from any kind of high, his

neurotic and taut performance complements Siddiquis frightening

psychosis but we end up feeling we see too much of (a weakly

scripted)Raghav when we want to see more of Siddiqui.

Ram Sampath has scored the movie and the constant thrumming in the

background helps set the mood for the bashing-in-of-the-skull and

assorted goings on off screen. The camera handled by Jay Oza helps us

waltz through the muck and blood always keeping a perspective of

Siddiqui and Kaushal on screen even when they aren't physically present

in the frame.

Incisive as the acting and story set up is, we still come away wanting

more - two factors contribute to this. The editing could have been a

little more sharper, condensing the story to what it should be and the

screenplay should have been tighter when it came to the why's which is

where the editing might have contributed as well. The hype behind Raman

Raghav 2.0 and the trailers promised devilishness of the kind we were

used to from Anurag Kashyap in Ugly, Gulaal et al. What we realise is

that his latest is not so Ugly.

Our rating - Three and a half stars out of a possible five.

Kapoor & Sons - Since 1921 - It is all in the closet

Indian families aren't simple places to grow up in. Not only do we have a convoluted family tree because of joint families living together from aeons ago, we also pass down sensibilities via the family way. Children are very often asked questions like - 'who do you love more, your mother or your father?'; 'why can't you be more obedient like your brother?' ; 'why can't you be more soft spoken, like the girl across the street?'. And these are questions that not only have answers drilled deep into young minds, they also imprint behavioral patterns in them. No wonder then that dynastic families of actors are even more complicated - well 'Kapoor and Sons - Since 1921' definitely isn't a movie about film dynasties but it does have Rishi Kapoor - who after a long series of strange characters, plays a lovable nonagenarian in a clan that has its full cupboard of skeletons.

The movie is directed by Shakun Batra and starts up like 'The Darjeeling Limited' does - as a sort of comedy of dysfunctional family members. The nonagenarian having had a genuine heart attack after playing at dropping dead for a long time results in the homecoming, at least for a short while, of his two grandchildren - the perfect son Rahul who is a published novelist living in London and Arjun who aspires to be a successful novelist and is working bars in America while trying to reach his goal. Their mum and dad, played by Ratna Pathak and Papa Kapoor(played by Rajat Kapoor - not of the other Kapoor clan) have their own issues. The sojourn of the grandsons provides a platform for all the actors to gather together on the stage and takes us through what I feel is one of the best comedy dramas of contemporary Hindi cinema.

Shakun Batras innate understanding of characters and typical situations in a family almost feels too good to be true for a Bollywood movie and leaves us highly satisfied even though the acting is a little rough around the edges in the younger department - Siddharth Malhotra and Alia Bhatt seem a little wooden while Fawad Khan(free of the trappings of inane comedies like the earlier movie he did with Sonam Kapoor, the title for which I do not even want to remember) is definitely going places. His angst as a 'perfect son' remains slightly unbalanced on the other end by Siddharth Malhotra's (who for the most part is convincing) overly taut jawed performance of a younger sibling who has always been compared to the elder and cannot seem to catch a break. Alia Bhatt acts as herself for most of the movie but fails to emote in the one crucial scene she is required to. All in all, the direction keeps us engrossed to the point that we don't notice the acting hiccups - mostly.

By stages, 'Kapoor & Sons' leads us down a laugh gallery into dark alleys and then proper melodrama. Where it succeeds is that not one bit of our journey feels strange - there is almost a constant feeling of identification with what the characters are going through. Every relationship needs a lot of work to substantiate it as does every family which inevitably has buried secrets. The difference in this Kapoor family is that the patriarch is not a french beard sporting accented gentleman, the sons are not swaggering mules who think they are imports when in fact they are exports. The characters are for the most part, grounded and identifiable and the location - Coonoor, ties it all down neatly into a movie with verdant highs and shaded lows and tangible middles. Par for the acting being low, I would still rate this one of the best Hindi dramedies of late.

We at Paradise Talkies rate it 4 stars out of a possible five.