Movie review- ROY

Today I went to watch Roy even after all the sad reviews and warnings from my friends. But I happened to be inspired from the movie at a lot of places. Roy (UA) is the story of a thief and a filmmaker who makes a film on the life of the thief.

Kabir Grewal (Arjun Rampal) is a filmmaker who has been signed by producer Irani (Kaizaad Kotwal) but he just can’t think up a good script. Then, one day, he sees detective D.S. Wadia (Rajit Kapur) talking on television about a thief who stole expensive paintings. Kabir heads to Malaysia to make his film, without much of a story. In Malaysia, he meets filmmaker Ayesha Amir (Jacqueline Fernandez) who tells him about her encounter with the thief, Roy (Ranbir Kapoor).

Roy had met Ayesha, wooed her, had had an affair with her and one day disappeared after stealing a painting from her house. That painting was one-half of a painting which was already in the possession of the man (Barun Chanda) Roy worked for and he (Roy) had taken it upon himself to complete the painting by stealing the other half.

Ayesha, who has a brief affair with Casanova Kabir, tells him her entire story about her encounter with Roy, little knowing that Kabir was shooting her story on celluloid as his new film. Then, one day, Ayesha reads the script of Kabir’s under-production film and realises that Kabir has stolen her story. She wraps up her own shooting and returns home and completely disconnects from Kabir. Here, Kabir realises that he is deeply in love with her. He doesn’t even know the reason for Ayesha walking out of his life. He abandons his film project mid-way because Ayesha, who is the de facto writer of the film, has gone away without telling him the ending. Kabir can’t think of how to take his movie forward.

Kabir tries to establish contact with Ayesha but to no avail. He gets lucky when he finally meets her at a film festival and awards function for which he is a jury member and where her film, Malacca Diaries, wins her a prize. That is where Ayesha tells Kabir to stop trying to get her back into his life because she did not approve of him stealing her story.

Here, Roy also realises, he is madly in love with Ayesha. Meanwhile, Kabir and Roy meet and become friends.

Roy soon has a change of heart and he now wants both the paintings – the one he had stolen from Ayesha’s house and its other half. But his boss has already sold the two paintings to an art dealer (Asif Basra). Does Roy lay his hands on the two paintings? If so, how? And if he does get the paintings, what does he do to them? Is Kabir able to forget Ayesha or does he meet her again? Does Ayesha forgive Kabir? Does Kabir tell Ayesha that he loves her? Does Ayesha also love Kabir? Does Roy meet Ayesha again? Does Ayesha forgive Roy? Does Roy tell Ayesha that he loves her? Does Ayesha also love Roy? Does Ayesha go with Kabir or Roy or none of them?

Vikramjeet Singh has penned a story which is far from engaging or interesting. That it moves at a painfully slow pace and thereby tests the audience’s patience is just one of the many problems. The stories of Aye­sha with Roy and of Ayesha with Kabir appear to be happening simultaneously, confusing the audience. Many among the viewers will not be able to comprehend that the time zones of the two stories are different and so are the places where they are unfolding.

Vikramjeet Singh’s screenplay is quite weird. Ayesha is shown to be an idiot who has affairs with two thieves – a thief of paintings and a thief of intellectual property. Kabir Grewal seems to be another idiot who can’t even complete a script, simply because the person whose story he has been stealing walks out on him without completing it. This means, Kabir completely lacks imagination which is why he abandons the project after shooting a good portion of it. Roy’s character is equally weird – there is no explanation given to the viewers about why he does what he does. Probably worse than all of the above is the point that neither the story of Ayesha and Roy nor the story of Ayesha and Kabir appears believable or even appealing enough. All the three characters are so sketchy that the viewers are unable to identify with any of them. Frankly, the feeling the viewer gets while watching the film is that each of the three principal characters is doing nothing and merely indulging in silly and stupid things as far as their romantic stories go. The audience’s sympathy goes to neither of the three characters – it doesn’t go to Kabir because he comes across as a loser; it doesn’t go to Roy because he is a thief without much else revealed about him; and it doesn’t go to Ayesha because she seems to be good at everything including filmmaking, yoga, painting, dancing but stupid enough to not realise that she is being used. Also, Ayesha oscillating between Kabir and Roy will prove to be a sore point with the audience because this hardly makes her appear as a morally right girl. Effectively, the film has two heroes – one is a loser, the other is a thief – and one heroine – who appears morally wrong.

The screenplay also looks one of complete convenience. Ayesha chancing upon Kabir’s script is just one case in point to indicate how very convenient the screenplay is. For, why would a director leave his script so callously for someone to pick up?

If the romance is far from heart-warming, the light moments are very few and even they are feeble. Emotions fail to touch the heart because the audience doesn’t connect with any of the three main characters. The ending is very confusing. Dialogues, penned by Vikramjeet Singh and Hussain Dalal, are extremely routine and commonplace.

Arjun Rampal tries to look sincere and dedicated but his lack of conviction in the script and in his characterisation is all too evident. Ranbir Kapoor is ordinary and he, too, seems to have simply acted for the sake of acting. He lends star value, of course, but the unsubstantive role he portrays is bound to greatly disappoint his fans. That he is not the hero of the drama will only agitate the audience. Jacqueline Fernandez is earnest but to no avail. She looks gorgeous. Shernaz Patel gives her cent per cent to the character she plays – a production head with Kabir Grewal. Anupam Kher has his moments as Kabir’s father. Barun Chanda is effective as Roy’s boss. Asif Basra makes his presence felt in a brief role as an art dealer. Rajit Kapur leaves a mark. Cyrus Broacha is good but his Hindi pronunciations and sense of gender are pathetic. Kaizaad Kotwal and Mandana (as Pia) provide fair support. Others do as required.

Vikramjeet Singh’s direction may be alright as far as the technicalities are concerned but his narrative skills are below the mark. He confuses the audience at several places and is not able to engage them or entertain them. Music (Ankit Tiwari, Meet Bros. Anjjan and Amaal Malik) is the best thing in the film. ‘Sooraj dooba hai’ (by Amaal Malik) is a surefire hit. ‘Tu hai ki nahi’ (by Ankit Tiwari) is also very appealing. All the other songs are also melodious. Lyrics (by Abhendra Kumar Upadhyay, Sandeep Nath and Kumaar) are weighty. Song picturisations (choreography by Ahmed Khan) are good but could’ve been better. Sanjoy Chowdhury’s background music seems heavily inspired by Hollywood films. It appeals at places. Himman Dhamija’s cinematography is nice. Locations are breathtaking. Sanjay Shekhar Shetty’s action and stunts are functional. Vintee Bansal’s production designing is alright. Dipika Kalra’s editing leaves something to be desired.

On the whole, Roy is a confused film which will confuse the audience more than it would entertain. Despite a hit music score, it will prove to be a flop fare at the box-office.

A HERITAGE WALK TO HAUZ KHAS

Last sunday I organised a heritage walk to the coolest hangout in Delhi- hauz khas village. It was a step towards making people sensitive to the heritage around them and make them more aware of their lineage. I was apprehensive as to how many people might turn up but eventually I was leading 13 people. And I started with the gyaan giving.

Way back in the 13th century, Sultan Alauddin Khalji ruled from the capital city of Siri (Delhi). He decided to dig up a tank, Hauz i Alai, about 28 hectares large to provide water for the fields & the capital. After him, the Khalji dynasty declined & the tank fell into disrepair. It silted up & people carved out private plots of land on it. They dug wells & were selling of its water. The Khaljis were followed by Tughluqs among who Firuz Shah Tughluq took interest in this site. Firuz Shah was the last important Tughluq ruler, who had his capital at Firuzabad (now called Kotla Firuz Shah) on the river Yamuna. He repaired the tank, removed encroachments & built a madrasa complex around. This complex is the focus of our heritage walk. Firuz Shah renamed it Hauz Khas, a special tank. The madrasa building is an L-shaped structure & double storeyed. It has a mosque, colonnaded halls (which were probably classrooms), cells (probably for living in) & independent standing pavilion many of which have graves. Firuz Shah Tughluq’s tomb stands at the junction of the 2 wings of the madrasa. There are stairs leading down to the tank from the building, at regular intervals. Now these are mostly closed up, some by iron grills, others by dumping rubble on them. Hauz Khas village has come around this very complex. The Tughlaq kings were also the patrons of art and learning, they invited scholars, artists, architects and craftsmen from Western and Central Asia to the court of Delhi, a centre of learning in the 14th century. Contemporary historian, Zia-ud-Din Barani wrote “The capital of Delhi, by the present of these unrivalled men of great talents had become the envy of Bagdad, the rival of Cairo and the equal of Constantinople”. The Hauz Khas madrasa was one such institution which would have attracted scholars & learners from far & wide.

The next part of the walking tour was in to Deer Park. The Deer Park has 3 monuments dating from the Tughluq & Lodi period. Bagh I Alam ka Gumbad is a massive tomb typical of Lodi architecture. Next to it stands a small mosque. Kali Gumti, a one roomed structure is located just across the walking path from the mosque. Walk a few steps ahead & you will find the Tuhfewala Gumbad hidden in foliage.

The weather was perfect and Delhiites had all the reasons to be out this fine sunday morning. I hope to see more people in the following walks.

AAP ki Delhi

We all got used to the "paanch saal Kejriwal" song and we eventually do have AAP in Delhi, hopefully for a longer time this time. Amid all the nuances of psephology and the complications of sociology, the Aam Aadmi Party’s spectacular victory represents a hopeful pattern in Indian politics. Indian voters are looking for agents of change rather than stasis, hope instead of easy cynicism, aspiration instead of fear, positivity instead of defeatism, and the future instead of the past. Contrary to the mean arithmetic of social scientists, politics is less about ideologies, programmes, buyouts and freebies. Politics is always more psychological. It requires the projection of qualities that are not simple to project: sincerity, credibility, perhaps even a sense of adventure. Which is why politics is always more contingent. No alternative is perfect. But voters are willing to give a chance to those who, at a given moment, best represent this new disposition.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s own victory was, in part, due to his ability to occupy this narrative. One simple way of looking at the story is this. In Delhi, the tables were turned. The BJP looked old and less credible. Led by the prime minister, it was more petulant than positive, aggressive than constructive, reeking of cynicism rather than idealistic, full of hubris rather than humility, and stale rather than new.

The AAP, on the other hand, wears the imprimatur of a new revolution. It is a party that defies the conventional wisdom that you need big money or a sectarian interest to be successful in politics. It is a party that, in response to the crisis of the Indian state, wants to deepen participation — in a new language of democratic experimentalism. In Arvind Kejriwal, it has a leader who, even in disagreement, exudes a sincerity that is impossible to match. He did what no politician has done in India. When he made a mistake, he simply said sorry. It allowed him to move on.

It has, at least in Delhi, a genuine organisation with youth and idealism behind it, a cast of spokesmen who try to exemplify public reason more than clownish antics.

If the BJP has any sense, it will draw the right lessons. For one thing, it should break the cynical awe in which Amit Shah is held and empower other voices in the party. The line between being clever and being too clever by half is very thin. The BJP is now transgressing it — witness its shenanigans in Bihar. Second, voters are feeling betrayed by the BJP. The prime minister is now trapped by his own mystique. His vacillations in the face of reactionary elements in his party and the sense that the talk is running ahead of the walk are growing. The municipal elections in Rajasthan were also a signal about this in minor key. Third, Modi now has a Congress problem. Other than the ones who predate Modi, the BJP is failing to nurture local leaders who have an independent base and voice. Cooperative federalism cannot be run with a centralised party. The BJP should be grateful that it has got the jolt early enough to correct course. But Modi has to realise that political capital dissipates fast.

But the AAP’s victory is full of possibilities. For one thing, it sharpens the battle against plutocracy, a major poison in Indian democracy. Second, it gives the Opposition some momentum. A different government with street power a few miles from Race Course Road is not to be underestimated, though the AAP will have to exercise judgement in using this power. Third, for a polity looking for a new kind of politics, there is now something of a model that can be replicated, at least in urban India and in states like Punjab, where the search for alternatives is growing desperate. Fourth, while the AAP has deep roots in the politics of the poor, it showed how it could also reach out to the middle class, particularly younger voters. It is also a pointer to the BJP that even a slightest consolidation of the non-BJP vote bodes ill for it.

In terms of long-term structural changes, there are two tantalising possibilities. The first is the creation of a new institutional culture. This includes not just the performative dimensions of the relationship between politics and the people, but also far-reaching institutional changes: authority and accountability could be relocated in ways that are more functional. The entire architecture of urban governance — the relations between state governments and local bodies and development authorities — needs to be set on a new footing. This will be Kejriwal’s first challenge.

The second challenge and opportunity is this: It was fashionable to portray the AAP as unleashing another populist class war, fiscally imprudent and insensitive to growth. This was a gross exaggeration unleashed by those who were engaging in class warfare anyway. But the central challenge facing India is how to create cultures of negotiation around important issues where we do not oscillate between cronyism and populism. All the important issues facing us — pricing water and electricity, managing land and environment, access to health and education — have been stymied by this oscillation. Even now, the fog of obfuscation and false choices in these areas is threatening our future. Creating credible and inclusive negotiation on these issues is the central task. In India, the rich have evaded accountability by raising the spectre of class warfare, and the poor have been cheated by populism. There has to be a liberal critique of oligarchy at the top, and a social democratic critique of populism at the bottom. We hope the AAP is the harbinger of this change.

As a parenthetical aside, the ridiculous campaign by some sections of the left intelligentsia that this election would be rigged or that somehow elections are bought merely by money or deluding rhetoric needs to be mentioned. It not just shows their bankruptcy. It also shows that they have not grasped the most important thing about India: democracy now has the passion of a religion, the thrill of a mystery. Anyone who doubts it, or shows contempt for it, through hubris or condescension, will come to grief.

The movies and their contemporary relevance

TURING AND HAWKINGS

Does sexual preference or gender cast a shadow over the brilliance of the mind? Two films currently running in theatres in India answer with a resounding no. They also provide important insights. The films have much in common, but their differences are revealing.

The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game are both biopics focused on two brilliant British scientists born 30 years apart. The first film covers the life of Stephen Hawking (born in 1942), a mathematician and theoretical physicist who changed forever our thinking about the origin of the universe and the nature of time. The second brings alive Alan Turing (1912-54), who gave us the early computer (the Turing machine) and laid the foundations of computer science, without which the development of modern computers that have transformed our lives would not have been possible. The ending of World War II more than two years before it might have otherwise ended, thus sparing millions of lives, is attributed to the work of Turing and his team. Both Hawking and Turing are today recognised as brilliant men to whom humankind and the world of science owe a deep debt of gratitude. But here the similarity ends. One major difference lies in their sexual preferences — Hawking is heterosexual, Turing was gay — with vastly differing consequences for their ability to live and work in peace.

Hawking, diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963 at the age of 21, and given only two years to live, is miraculously still with us — productive, world-renowned, much awarded and decorated, and surrounded by friends, colleagues and family, including the three children he fathered with his first wife, Jane Wilde. Turing committed suicide in 1954 at the age of 41 — alone, hounded, his remarkable wartime work buried under the British Official Secrets Act, and indicted for indecency for his homosexuality under then prevailing British criminal law. He was subjected to oestrogen injections (a form of chemical castration) in lieu of prison. It was barely a year ago that the queen of England posthumously “pardoned” him for his 1952 conviction — ironically, for what should not have been seen as a crime in the first place.

Perhaps Turing would have found life less fraught in today’s Britain. But what about in contemporary India? In fact, Turing has a notable India connection. His father was in the Indian Civil Service and his maternal grandfather was the chief engineer of the Madras railways. Had he lived to visit India, Turing would have been pained and horrified to find that Section 377 continues to criminalise gay people, and that some of our politicians still believe they can cure homosexuality medically. As I have argued before, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was written by the arch-colonialist, Thomas Macaulay, but many in our government who are working hard to vanquish symbols of our colonial past ironically continue to defend this law.

The films also have interesting takes on the position of women. In The Theory of Everything, Wilde sets aside her doctoral research at Cambridge for several years to build a life with Hawking and bear their children. In The Imitation Game, Joan Clarke, a brilliant mathematician herself (with a double first from Cambridge), solved in under six minutes the puzzle Turing set for inducting people into his team, and which he himself took eight minutes to solve. On the files, she was listed as a linguist, since the British Civil Service had no protocol for a female cryptanalyst, although in practice, she was an indispensable part of Turing’s select team that broke the German Enigma code, and its only woman member.

After the war, Clarke did not become a university professor in mathematics (as Hawking did at Cambridge, and Turing at Manchester). She married an army officer, and long years passed before her later work as a numismatist received recognition. Clearly both Wilde and Clarke sought intellectual companionship over other traits in potential partners: Wilde married Hawking despite his illness and Clarke was willing to marry Turing knowing he was homosexual. Today, exceptional women such as these would have many career opportunities, some on par with their male colleagues at universities like Cambridge and Manchester. But what would their situation be in India? How many Indian women are recognised among our top scientists?

Sexual preference, gender, caste, religion — these do not determine the power of the intellect. But they have much to do with the obstacles that we, as Indians, place in the paths of extraordinary minds, swamped as we are in the morass of social discrimination and prejudice. As Turing’s friend, Christopher Marcom, tells him in the film: “Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of, who do the things that no one can imagine.”

We might wonder how many brilliant men and women in India, faced with severe physical or social disabilities (our potential Hawkings or Turings), fail to achieve the unimaginable, because we fail to allow them the opportunity.