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Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
A masterclass in cinema
#KillersOfTheFlowerMoon is difficult to watch. It takes time to sink in that the cunning oppression of the indigenous people by the migrant and expansionist Whites has not passed even a hundred years. Though the story is told from the perspective of a White man of Italian origin, Maestro Scorsese, and the two main characters are of Italian origin as well (often giving the film a Godfather-esque flavour), abundant presence of indigenous actors and a leading lady locates the time and space of the narrative well. The three hour long film has quite a few 10-15 minutes long scenes with dialogues between two characters, but the charm of the actors and zero fluff writing makes it engrossing. The intensity of De Niro is such that one almost wishes for emancipation of the sinister character he plays. Di Caprio matches him scene for scene, and by virtue of the script, comes out a winner in the final scene. Lily Gladstone is a revelation and her nuanced act will be a top contender for the next Oscar. The background score by Robbie keeps the audience on the tenterhooks and rides the mood of the film for all the length.
All in all, it's more than a film. It's a Masterclass in historical commentary and film making. And like all long classes, get a little saggy at places, but picks up well and leaves a long lasting impact.
The sad part was the empty theatre. With the spectacle of Marvels or Mission Impossibles ruling the roost, a well told story from a master director too can't bring the people to the theatre. Tells a lot of the Insta reel groomed spectators of the current times.
Ghoomer (2023)
Watch it for Abhishek!
Posting while watching! Abhishek has always made his father proud. But after this film, Bachhan Sr. Will envy Abhishek, the actor. The loser drunkard has seldom been played with more panache, humour and grit. And that includes Naseer Saab in Iqbal. I can only imagine the pressure on Abhishek considering the iconic drunk scenes his father has gifted to the screen. Though there are clear glimpses of Amitabh in certain diction and intonation in the role, but largely Abhishek has owned it and taken it a couple of notches higher to his father's.
Script is the usual sports drama and inspirational. The film stands out due to Abishek and of course, Saiyami Kher. Ivanka Das is another surprise actor in this film and her life's actual deal is even more fire, worthy of a film in itself.
Watch it for Abhishek :)
Oppenheimer (2023)
Floccinaucinihilipilification, of little or no value
After the film ended at the expensive IMAX theater, I heard the twenty-something boys beside me talking about the black piece of clothing that was well grafted on an apparently nude actress. The boys on the other side, a few years younger were wondering why Oppenheimer has never been in their syllabus. Down the steps, an outspoken man was showing off his readings on the life and times of the 'actual' Oppenheimer. A new couple were still sitting, and giggling, picking up from the same giant tub of unfinished popcorns. A lady in a crop top was busy disciplining her two children, both under ten who were probably bored with the verbosity without much 'action' in the film.
No one was scared. No one was appalled at the monstrous genius of the human kind that converted an abstract science into a weapon of mass destruction in a war they were already winning. No one was retching at the sight of peeling skins, charred torsos, yellow vomits that persisted till the less fortunate ones took time to perish. There was a feeling of celebration, a general happiness that prevails at the end of a film that a full house planned to watch well in advance,
And that's where the film fails. Of course, the argument could be that it's about Oppenheimer from the POV of a renowned Catholic filmmaker, whose films have earned upwards of $5 billion so far. It's not from some Jewish peace activist or an anti-war Asian. Still, the lack of empathy for the victims that the director, and the storyteller, Nolan demonstrates in this film is remarkable. The main character seemed more bothered about his name being tarnished in the annals of history than his hands, and brain, behind the bloodbath.
That's another fallacy. Those who have watched the black and white interviews of the scientist would not find the man who looked perpetually sad, couldn't look straight into the camera or the eyes of the interviewer, gave his responses with long pauses and a practised, self-loathing monotone. Cillian Murphy might have acted his career best and may win an Oscar or so, but the fact remains that he came across as more of a Nolan character living in parallel timelines, and waking up with a bang to some reality (so typical of Nolan's films) than the actual man.
Robert Downing Jr. In his predatory scene gives a glimpse of his experienced repertoire and may get his share of the awards the next season. His character seemed more reliable, perhaps due to the fact that interviews of Lewis Strauss are not so easily available on the net and he could imagine the person the way he wished. Emily Blunt impresses, but that I guess is her tight lipped British demeanor in any case. Jean Tatlock, both the actor and the character she did, were magnificently wasted as the person didn't seem to have much affect on the life and thoughts of Oppenheimer, who would apparently screw any woman who wishes so. The much talked about nude scene was better clothed up in India, as the nudity didn't seem any impact on the course of the film and seemed to be there only for titillation.
The most ridiculous part of the film is, of course, use of Albert Einstein. Appearing in two scenes as an apparent consciousness of the Director of the Manhattan Project, he seems comical and without any purpose. Even the scene that reveals in the end the dialogue they had by the lake is so shallow in conversations that it could have been jolly well between Salman Khan and an apprentice in Tiger 3!
About the IMAX experience. Well, the filmmaker tried his best and advertised to his might to bring billions of dollars into this much hyped format of display. Except for the thunderous roar that causes vibration of the seats, the IMAX experience is banal in this film.
There is a scene when Gen Groves, Matt Damon in one of the many monochrome characters he plays, recruits Oppenheimer. When he speaks of the adverse adjectives people refer the professor with, Oppenheimer asks, "And they don't say a brilliant mind, etc.?" The General says, "In the community you are in, that's a given."
So will be the cinematography, editing, special effects, sound engineering etc. In a Nolan film. After all, the guy is the most hyped filmmaker of our times. But if after all this hype, you find an onion, peeling layer after layer and reaching a nothingness, that too with no tears in your eyes, you may find the experience of watching the film a three hour exercise in floccinaucinihilipilification, of little or no value in the annals of documented history or cinema.
One Cut Two Cut (2022)
The film has its intent right
As a satire, the story works and it's a breeze to watch. It's good to see that first HPN and now this film is taking local Bangalore artistes pan India. There are several hilarious moments that needed to be tied up into one thrilling narrative. Best part is the four musketeers, led by Prakash Belawadi, who evoke several rib ticklers
I wanted to know more about Neha and the stand up comedian, like where are they from? What brought them to Bangalore? How Neha affords cars still looking for jobs? Characterization needed more depth and overall, screenplay needed more tightness.
Jai Bhim (2021)
For the people, of the people, by the elite
Where I lived in Patna, a community called Mushahar lived around us. Shriek cries of pigs being hunted and skinned, their catch of field rats and squirrels that they displayed, their habitat and drunken squabbles bothered our middle-class sensibilities a lot. Even in those urban surroundings, we were all told to take care of our belongings from these nomadic urchins. 'Jai Bhim' took me back to those personal memories and showed me a mirror of ignorance and insensitivity towards these marginal communities.
The film's pitch is set to the populist tunes and though there is no fight sequence with the hero, the background music, gestures of the 'star', the camera angles - they all build up the hero worship Tamilnadu is so much known for. Personally, I feel an actor like Vijay Sethupati would have brought more layers to the protagonist's character. Suriya, even in this author backed role, seemed much of a star and less of a seasoned lawyer. Prakash Raj too was routine.
The real 'hero' of the film is Lijomol Jose's Sengeni. Her physical acting and lack of expressions while helpless will haunt a sensitive viewer for long. Just that they had to blacken an otherwise fair actress for a role hurts me a bit. Same as Suriya, I think a naturally deglamorized actress would have been fitter for the film.
Manikandan's Rajakannu, Rajendran's Mosakutty, Tamizh as SI Gurumurthy - and the rest of the cast bring to life the daily day toils, joys and sorrows of the incidents and characters.
It is a difficult film to watch. The torture scenes should have come with a warning for the mentally not so strong people. If it gets so disturbing at times to watch, I can't begin to imagine how difficult the lives of such marginal communities actually are.
The movie could have done with some editing. Even without the melodrama creating background music, the film would have remained as effective. I think the film could have opened with Sengeni waiting to meet Advocate Chandru and the rest could have unfolded gradually. Narration through flashback, as a trope, has not been well exploited in this film.
This is a necessary film. The sage Ramakrishna Paramhansa had said, "Theatre educates the masses", and the same can be said about this film.
Just to document the plight of the marginal tribes who struggle every day to prove their existence despite their skills and demanding work could have given the film much credence. That the director has attempted to do so within the parameters of popular cinema makes it even more creditable. Gnanavel seems deft in handling the scenes depicting the masses. Where he had to blend the same with the matinee icon's charisma, there are a few hiccups.
I have given an extra star in the review just due to the boldness of the makes and Prime Videos to let this film happen. Though set at a pitch a tad higher than necessary, the film delivers the message home.
To conclude, the medium of cinema, an OTT channel and a viewer like me who is privileged to use internet and a holiday to watch make me write the caption of this review. This cinema remains as a peep into the masses through an elitist binocular.
Thalaivi (2021)
Old wine, one bottle
If you have liked Mani Ratnam's #Iruvar, you will find Thalaivi overwhelming. In Iruvar, all characters were relatable and grounded, except Aishwarya Rai, who was ethereal by design. So. If you are looking for humanization and subtle nuances of the famous and controversial personalities in their daily lives, please do not watch #Thalaivi. Kangana is no Mohanlal.
#thalaivi is intended for the large screen audience that digs in hero worship. Fellows (I included) that grew ear concealing hair and shouted 'jioooo' whenever Amitabh appeared on the screen in the seventies. People who laid prostrate on the roads that MGR or Jayalalitha passed through. This is period drama, in its best moments. It reminded me at times of Jatra Paala, a Bengali popular form of stage performance. It tells more about Kangana, who didn't care to show any shade of a South Indian demeanor, than Thalaivi herself. Kangana's acting seems to be fabricated using the threads from Manikarnika. When she plays younger Jayalalitha, the heroine, she doesn't look the part. As the character grows older and she gets to mouth Amitabh-esque dialogues, she seems more at ease.
Storyline picks up incidents from Jaya's life that establishes her as the female protagonist in a male dominated political bastion of the South, more like Kangana has been to the Khans and the Punjabi clans in Mumbai. It carefully avoids the darker shades of the characters and conveniently ends at the scene of Jaya becoming the CM. It's more like 'Making of Jaya', a documentary by the party loyalists. It didn't have to tread the difficult terrain of Jaya's post CM overtures.
Technically, it's a regular film. Music is forgettable. Script and dialogues are predictable. Arvind Swamy and Nasser try to look the parts and mostly succeed. Their characters are sketched from the sepia distance of the newspaper readers of yesteryears. I didn't get much meat there. With Bhagyashree and Madhoo, it's more of nostalgia. Actor who stands out is the one who plays antagonist Veerappan, MGR's aide.
Biopics are homage or demonization in this country, not really a 360-degree view. Can't blame the producers. It more reflects on us as a country and people. Cinema is an industry and sustains livelihood. It can't risk the wrath of bhakts and fanatics. This film is crafted to avoid controversy while characterizing a highly polarizing person. It does its job.
Jallikattu (2019)
A riveting and educating show, quite rare
Cinema is a business. So, the mainstream follows the rules - invest, gather a professional technical crew, get bankable and saleable stars, make them entertain the audience and, in the process, ensure that a story, albeit old and hackneyed, is told to the satisfaction of the spectators. A cardinal rule remains not to be violated - Never, ever, disgust the audience or make them uncomfortable.
In an interview, one of his many PR exercises, Hindi film superstar Shahrukh Khan told that he is bound by the song and dance routine of the industry as the audience expects him to do it. In the same interview, a few sentences down the line, he said that streaming services provide opportunity to the filmmakers to let go of all the constrains and expectations and be free to make the kind of films they wish to make. OF course, he was promoting Netflix, but somewhere, sitting next to Brad Pitt, he seemed embarrassed to have tried not hard enough to be a memorable part of the world cinema.
Jallikattu, a Malayalam film that made its online debut in Amazon Prime, is in that league of Indian films which do not hesitate to make its audience cringe and yet, be at the edge of his seat throughout its 94 minutes. It is a masculine film with no pretext or apology. It's so acutely masculine that it is almost primordial in its depiction of greed, lust, anger and acute apathy. From the opening sequence, in which exaggerated sound of a clock ticking introduces the characters in a close-up, till the last where the hunting masses are shown to have turned Neandarthal, the movie doesn't let you take your eyes off the screen. The close-up visuals of meat being sliced and the satisfaction of the customers forming a queue to buy their share is debilitating.
It is a film that after a very long got me mesmerized, as if the storyteller is making me angry, happy or even laugh at his choice. It is a film in which I went back to the credits and found the names who have done Sound, not only the music, and Cinematography (Music: Prashant Pillai, Sound: a bunch of gifted technicians, Cinematography: Gireesh and Gangadharan). It is a film where the credits start with the name of the storywriter (S Hareesh, who has partnered the screenplay as well). It is a film that is apparently about a buffalo running amok in a remote village and the villagers trying to catch it (Hence, Jallikattu, the Tamil tradition in controversy some time back), but juxtaposes with minimal effort and maximum élan unravelling of layers of trained civility that contain humans. It ends with the unnerving show of what happens with those layers have been peeled off.
The lead actors (Anthony, Chemban, Sabumon, Santhy) look and act too real to be called actors. But the captain (Director: Lijo Jose Pellissery) ensures that even his tenth and eleventh players are match-winners. The shopkeeper who writes the letter for Paul, Paul himself in the aftermath of his herbal garden being ravaged by the buffalo and the chasing men, the drunk, old man who points out that the beasts often have two feet and not four - one can say that there are no side characters in this film. They are all central.
The buffalo's rage is breathtaking and its chase, for the humans and by the humans, leave scars on the audience's complacent sensibility. The scenes are quite gripping and realistic, and one struggles to comprehend the calmness with which the team might have approached the film-making, especially when the disclaimer says, 'No animals were harmed'.
Overall, to feel proud and get high on India cinema, please watch more and more of the so-called regional, off-beat ones. That's where the pearls are formed under pressing layers of mainstream mediocrity.
Manto (2018)
Manto and I
Manto, the film (2018) - reflections
When I was about eight, we lived in a by-lane of an erstwhile fisher's colony, Machua Toli, of Patna. My parents had to move away from the joint family we lived in there. Irreconcilable differences, you'd say in today's parlance. There were tears, seethed in anger, streaming in vulnerability that parted an address of intimacy into torn realities. That was my first sense of partition.
I missed my playmates, two sons of a rickshaw puller and a housemaid, and the courtyard in that otherwise dark home where I rode my tricycle and intimidate my aunts of riding over. In our new, rented home, we lived with the strangers, with a veranda and a toilet shared with the other tenants.
Soon, I learnt to play in a no man's land next to our rooms, all alone, and made up three imaginary playmates, Rakhi, Sukhi and Bhutkarua. I am amused to realise that after about five decades, I still remember those names exactly. Maybe, because they gave me company for three years, during the noons after my morning school when my mother would be tired and asleep, during the evenings my father would be working late and I would wait for him after finishing my homework.
Those were my first fictional characters, protagonists or hero's friends in many roleplays I told myself, modelled after the kids I had to leave behind in that by-lane of Muchua Toli.
Manto lived a partition as well, much real, bloody and unnecessary than mine. He was as helpless as I was. He realised that the people closest to him were drifting away just because he belonged to the 'other people'. The eyes of Nawaz, playing the role, reflected my torment, looking at Bombay for one last time and then, at the ship signalling to set sail for Lahore.
Fortunate would be the literary readers that Manto was not eight at that time. Doomed was he that he was not eight while crossing the line. He was destined to carry the cross that forever split his being into two nations and uncountable characters wedded to his fiction. He was a rebel, or so it would seem. His nightmares, tears behind the door of a prison, anxious observation of a spider climbing up the rods and failing, then trying again, and dropping down were only for Safia to see.
Safia, his friend and wife, the mortar that kept him together, was always with Manto through those human moments. She loved the animal Manto for whom the civil norms of the timid never made sense. She cared for the messiah whose only religion was truth.
She knew how Manto went in and out of his stories, aimless, easy but always honest. Nandita has captured these transitions the way Manto would have felt himself. Rasika as Safia breaks down on two occasions, gets angry on one but never ceases to love, and live, Sa'saab.
Flashes of potent geniuses pass before you during the 112 minutes of the film, Paresh Rawal, Javed Akhtar, Rishi Kapoor, Divya Dutta, Vinod Nagpal... they pass like the stations that Manto might have crossed during his train rides between Lahore, Amritsar and Mumbai. That was before he got scared, before he ran away, before he felt as vulnerable as the millions who ran and were not blessed to live and bleed their shame and fear on blank pages.
Manto joined the exodus for his own sake, for the sake of his family that he adored. He couldn't afford to stay put. Robbed of the land where his parents and the firstborn were buried, Manto could never forgive the senile political class and a bankrupt, rushed imperial power. The people he saw vanquished, and killed, and raped, and sold around, pleaded with him to write about them. He obliged them, much as his sober psyche could take.
Manto's potent words and characters ate up Nandita, Nawaz and a host of brilliant technical experts (sound, cinematography and art direction, three cheers!). The film couldn't rise over the writer. The past of Lahore of 1948 is such high definition, that sitting in the chilled auditorium (eighteen people watched the second show, I counted) in Bangalore of 2018, I could smile, laugh and be angry with Manto. Such is the permanence of Manto's works that the artistes making the cinema disappeared into an ephemeral mist. It didn't matter that the celluloid version could become a reality after six anxious years of wait and passionate hard work.
His signature shone. From right to left, alive in the audacity of a pencil that preserved the Sheaffers and Parkers he never needed to use, in the letters that could make pearls feel humble, it read 'Saadat Hasan Manto'.
Insaniyat zindabad. Afsana nigari zindabad.
Newton (2017)
Nothing happens, no one comes, no one goes and it's not awful
When I entered the theatre, it lifted my heart to find the hall filling up well. Good for a small budget film, I thought. May be its Oscar nomination has boosted the crowd, the cynic in me commented.
My neighbour in the theatre came late and made us all stand up. He remained seated, however, during the National Anthem. He had, perhaps, always wished to do it but never gathered the courage or got seated in the last row with minimum risk of being seen. His courage seemed a product of darkness and less visibility. His wife stood up, he didn't try to resist her from doing that.
When the movie began to roll, the man chuckled. First, unsure ones, after all the topic seemed serious to laugh out loud. His volume as well as pitch of laughter increased as the movie progressed. His shrill laughter made me uncomfortable I was amused with the narrative, but was this something to laugh out loud? Is the film pro establishment or it has its leaning towards the other side? What is the agenda of this film?
For about two hours, the director played with my well versed, end predicting mind. He made me wait for the action. After all, there are Maoists around and military forces in every frame. The government officers trying to conduct polling have to be protected. May be, the protagonist will find the Maoists human. Where are the Maoists? When is the action due? How long shall we wait? Amit Masurkar reminded me what Brecht had said, there is no Godot.
Screenplay, script, dialogues,camera and the other crafts are right in place in this film. Director exhibits singular restrain in adhering to a single narrative. Raj Kumar is maturing as an actor in every film. Anjali Patil is a revelation and her character is the soul of the movie. Veterans Raghuvir ji, Sanjay ji and Pankaj ji kept the narrative grounded in real time.
The way the film uses silence and anticipation is unique. The director has shown a lot of courage here. In fact, silence stands out to be the antagonist in the setting of the jungles. It takes time for jungles to become a jungle, a character said. Dialogues are colloquial, still memorable. I remember now quite a few of those verbatim even after a couple of hours of watching the film. The body which passed the film in the current Indian ambiance and that which selected it to represent India in the Oscars must as well be lauded. Newton is a critique on Achhe Din peddling politicians, yet delivers the strong cure wrapped in a coloured, soluble capsule. My son dislikes the contemporary melodramatic Hindi movies. When he learnt that this has been nominated for an Oscar, he nodded his head and pursed his lips in appreciation.
Well done, Team Newton, ab Einstein banke dikhao in your next venture. All cine lovers shall keep a watch on this director, screenplay writer and, of course, Anjali and Raj, wait, Raj, Anjali? Hmm
Watch this film with no expectations. With millions of viewers, you will see the place and hear its sounds through Rao. After all, how many times it so happens that a film discovers a new space and language for its audience?
Dunkirk (2017)
Petrificus Totalus
War is horrible. Newspaper reports or TV snippets dehumanize the horror. You browse through the oozing news from Syria or Afghanistan and can pickup your bag to drive away to your work. You settle on your study table after dinner and read first person accounts of the wars raging, as an assignment for your writing course. You feel drowned, but the literary skills of the reportage mesmerize you. You float back to the bed of daily life and snore off to sleep.
In its two hours, Nolan's Dunkirk doesn't let you skip the horror for a moment. Zimmer's sounds in loops make you cringe, wishing hard for it to stop. Hoytema's camera takes you within the gut wrenching inches of imminent death – in land, air and sea. Smith's edit roughs you up just every time you think you got a moment of relief.
You feel trapped with Tommy on the French island. Your only mission becomes to survive the next bullet with Alex, dodge the next bomb with Collins or avoid collision with a sinking ship with George. You root for the lads huddled in the hull of a trawler. You cheer at the sight of the planes at the horizon and then stun freeze upon the discovery of a Luftwaffe fleet.
You forget the side these characters represent, you don't care about your hatred for the colonial excesses of their country – you pray with them to reach a paradisaical home.
After a while, you don't remember that you came for the movie upon seeing 8.9/10.0 on IMDb. The craft of exhibition vies for your attention along with the art of narration. You should be glad to see cinema reach such excellence. Instead, you feel hurt as the three perspectives hit you with the single force of a trident. You bleed plenty, turn deaf after carpet bombing, and yet wish the film to run a bit longer.
You may be disappointed if you are a proud fan of Nolan. The narrative doesn't cover much of space or time. The tale is quite brief and contained. The writer - director uses disturbing details to zoom at the place of war or amplify the moments of survival on your face, with no apologies whatsoever.
You hear a clock ticking. Your pulse races at the synthesized ticking of the wrist watch which, you read later, belongs to Nolan himself. The audacity of a man possessed enough to make time shrink or expand to his wish gets visible in every frame.
It works as well for people not invested in the art of cinema. As an entertainment piece (Alas! I have to call a 'war film' that!), this thriller keeps the uninitiated at the edge of their seats. The story works with its three protagonists finding empathy among the masses. Sans any female role, an all-male cast evoke quite a few non-macho emotions – despondency, entrapment, a single minded zeal to survive – to name a few. Never before have you seen a director celebrate a historic defeat on celluloid.
When the lights of the theater are turned on, you can't rise from your seat. You should be home, but you are left with those who couldn't make out of Dunkirk. Petrificus Totalus, the filmmaker might well have shouted instead of yelling the routine 'cut'.
Dangal (2016)
Full entertainment, average script, single dimension characters, predictable story-line
Dangal : Fan vs Connoisseur {Movie opens. Aamir works in a government office. A younger muscleman taunts him for his age and strength. Challenge accepted – office floor is converted to an Akhara. Character is introduced as an ex National Champion.} Fan: Yeah, what an intro! Aamir is the boss. Conn: But, subtlety? A bit on your face, isn't it? Promos have been telling you for so many months that the man is a wrestler, what is the surprise? Fan: Arre, this movie is about woman empowerment and patriotism. Made by Aamir, you know more than him? Conn: I have been watching world cinema for 4 decades now. Did you watch Million Dollar Baby? Or, Creed? Introduction of protagonist is subtle and powerful. Fan: Saala Khadoos! Conn: Yeah, even that was subtle. A character needs to be established for the various dimensions it has, like a normal human being. {Aamir is already making his daughters' life miserable on screen} Conn: His character is so one dimensional! So, is the wife, compliant otherwise but strict about the kitchen. Daughters seem like puppets. From the instance of their introduction, it's only wrestling for them. Did they not have real problems of men touching them intimately in a rural society? What if dangals coincide with their monthly periods? Where is the subtext of a woman in the socio- cultural context? And even the cousin, almost a buffoon and effeminate. Fan: Boss, this is based on real life. Real life has no drama, only hard work. See, how the girl is beating the boys in the street fights? Such message about girl child! That too, in Haryana. Conn: OK, then a documentary on the Phogat family should have done it. Messages would have been real and direct. Isn't it? {The girl has grown up. The new girl is pretty, and there are whistles from somewhere in the dark} Fan: Now, the real show will start! All championship fights. Full paisa vasool! Conn: Oh, have you watched Commonwealth Games videos on YouTube? Fan: Of whom, this girl? Conn: No, the original Geeta. Could have been included in the documentary.
Why make a feature film of that? {Intermission has started. Fan rushed to be early in the queue for overpriced popcorn and cola. His child and wife too went with him. He kept telling wife to take care of the child in the toilet, quite loudly. Movie restarted. Fan rushed back with his family after a little while.} Fan: What did I miss? Father and daughter are fighting I see. Why? Conn: It seems that once the female athletes reach the Academy, they get more interested in fashion, boys, movies etc. They grow their hair. Wonder what P T Usha used to do! Or Malleswari. Fan: Who are these people? Did they win Commonwealth medals? Conn: Malleswari got Olympic medal, my friend! Fan: Arre, Phogats are international wrestlers, Bhai! When Aamir has picked up their life, they must be the best. Conn: Aamir perhaps chose the Haryana story, so that the pretty actresses from mainstream can depict them. Malleswari is from Andhra, stout, not very easy to find a mainstream actress like her. Moreover, weightlifting is not half as glamorous as women's wrestling. {On screen, a national level coach is making an ass of himself. The daughter drifted away from the father and, predictably, lost all the international matches. From the first scene of their conflict, everyone knew that they would reconcile. Aamir gets the control of her daughter's life back and starts phone-training her. The pitiable daughter succumbs to the fatherly diktats} Fan: What an actor! Gained so much weight and now, he has lost so much! Only Aamir can do this? Conn: Ever watched Captain America? Chris Evans was skinny and muscular in the same movie. Fan: That's why I call you anti-national! Why do you always quote America? India doesn't make movies or what? Conn: Sir, this is cinema, world of make believe. In any case, a man who gains weight so much after his athletic days, usually do not have such muscular triceps and biceps. Muscles sag without practice. Fan: You are doubting Aamir's method acting? See, how authentic is his Haryanvi! Conn: Do you speak the language? Fan: No, why do I need to? Conn: Kangana in TMWT would have won by far, if Haryanvi accent were the basis of good acting. {In the meanwhile, there is an announcement in the film about the National Anthem to be played before a match. Spectators stood up like clockwork puppets the moment the band starts playing. This is not the mandatory stand-up, thought the connoisseur and spread on the push-back seat. Fan gave one hard look at him. Connoisseur pulled himself up.} Fan: Now, the climax starts. Oh, my God! Mahabir Phogat ji faced such jealousy? Mean people!That's why nothing happens in Sports in this country! Conn: What sports do you play? Fan: Where is the time? Office, family, child's education
Conn: And your child? Which sports does he like to play? Fan: Where is the playing space in an apartment? Look, how close the competition is between Geeta and that Australian girl! Conn: We all know that Geeta would win. Where is the suspense in the climax? And you know, the original match was a smooth sail for Geeta? Fan: Boss, we don't come to a movie to learn history. 'Entertainment, entertainment, entertainement - as Vidya Balan had said. That Dangal has done. I am happy! {Credits start rolling. Connoisseur and fan depart, waving at each other. The crowd of Christmas cum Sunday evacuates. 'Super hit' was the verdict even before the movie was released. Now, it's only a scoring game of the centuries of crores. Savvy marketeer, smart selector of themes, average actor and film maker – this defines the Hindi megastars. Who directed this movie, connoisseur tried to recall. Who cares! Aamir is there, his courtiers need just that.}