Shanghai - Movie Reviews ( Note: Pg 17) - Page 12

• Manisha Lakhe

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When your first two movies are tales of easy squat on property and pick and run cons that made everyone chuckle and filled coffers of the producers, and catapulted you to a hall of critical acclaim as well as public kudos, and the third made you even more experimental and famous, how would you fare with the fourth one?

Confession time. I hated the poster. I hated the item song that was playing on every music channel (as in most item numbers these days, the words are too gimmicky, 'Imported kamariya' is as silly as it can get, I have maintained). I hate the footage Pitobash tends to gobble with his act (both in MLA and the potato chips ad in which he is featured), and I did not want to see Emraan Hashmi sing another 'sufi' song when emptying a gun into someone or romancing some bizarre heroine, in another movie.



Thankfully, Shanghai manages to shanghai these beliefs formed by experience and draws you in, making you reaffirm the auteur theory. It is the director who is the master of the vision, and the actors are mere affirmation of the story being told.

This movie has been inspired by 'Z' it claims. Yes, but how many outside film schools have seen this movie? And movie aficionados will watch Dibakar even if the dedication is absent (like his Love Sex Aur Dhoka was 'inspired' by Look). In Z, the black and white movie offersCosta Gavras so much shelter, so much leeway to play with shadows. Here, the director has a tougher job. He handles the political gimmicks with ease, making you chuckle at the quick, clever sloganeering. And his characters loom larger on this riot-torn, hoodlum riddled canvas.



And the story is told so well! Although it is set in a near-Dharavi (Bombay's largest slum) like neighborhood in a big city, you can imagine every character to boot. Even the hoodlum with glasses, riding a flat-bed tempo truck during the riots, managing the rioters, sits like you'd imagine a hoodlum used to such acts would. You will love the cardboard cut outs of the political leaders and the small gestures by smaller actors to convey little things: the hoodlums nodding at each other, dialog that says, 'samjha karo' (please understand) and you do (thankfully the director credits the audience with sense), and even the fear in the eyes of the domestic help. You will love the interaction between the wife and the muse, and it won't matter who they are. Whether it is the known name (Kalki Koechlin) or the unknown (to mainstream cinema) wife. But most of all, you will love what Dibakar has done with Emraan Hashmi.



I did. I am a convert now. I believe that it takes a strong director to say 'no' to a star used to staring pointlessly at the camera while his object of attention attempts to seduce him in skimpiest clothes with a fake sufi song playing in the background, and make him dance with his tongue sticking out in a dusty, dirty song, abandoning his attitude to 'Bharatmata ki jai!'. Emraan Hashmi is fun. And he has been given lines that are perfect for the character, and not him.

The same goes for Abhay Deol. He accent as 'Krishnan' slips much, but he nails the character so well, so calmly, you forget he was Lucky the laconic thief. More points for the director here.



The only thing that grated on our patience (made thin by too many slick Hollywood political action flicks which have moved from All The President's Men to Ides Of March) was the pace of the movie. We may be jaded when it comes to movies that feature elections and morchas and strikes and riots, so the initial pace of the film seems exhausting and events predictable. When you think about it, the politicians are caricatures here as well. We have met them before. But what machinations can do is so much fun, you don't mind sitting back and waiting for the conclusion of the movie.



And it is towards the end that you sit up and notice that you have been played along rather nicely. Such cinema that has a strict spine of a script is rare. And you will be glad to have watched it. I will see it again when it appears on TV, but that's because I like cinema where not a single character looks out of place, not a single event wasted and unused. This movie, to repeat myself, shanghais all other crap we get to watch gilded with A-list stars. This movie is like the welcome scent of petrichor the first rains bring. Hopefully we will have better weather with cinema too!

PS: stick to the bloddy topic