After all, it is just food.

The Menu (2022)
Director: Mark Mylod

Back when Master Chef and Gordon Ramsay's 'Hell's Kitchen' were a rage in Malaysia, I used to ask myself what the farce was all about. I could not understand why the chef had had his honours stripped off or what was wrong if the fries were slightly soggy or the meat was overcooked. After all, food is medicine, and we eat to live, not live to eat.

Obviously, none of the people at the receiving end of my lament saw any merit in what I was blabbering. To them, culinary skill is an art form. In fact, they thought it was science, a branch of science more delicate than neurosurgery or detonating a time bomb. On top of knowledge of alchemy, art was the essence of luring potential gluttons.

An episode of 'Hell's Kitchen', or sometimes 'Master Chef', carried so much toxicity and backstabbing as wannabe cooks scrambled to stir up cuisine in record time. They had to do that with the provided ingredients in the most creative way as deemed by the judges. In my school of life, these were all exercises of futility, as productive as counting the grains of rice before cooking! After being brought up by a mother who impressed her children that gluttony is a trait best left behind in our pursuit to achieve greater heights in life, I fail to appreciate the anger of the Head honchos. 

'The Menu' must be a revenge movie for all those cynics like me who like to ridicule the histrionics exhibited by braggers obsessed with culinary skills. It also takes a swipe at the so-called self-professed know-it-alls who think they possess the know-how the best about cooking, where to source the best foods and how to bring out the best flavours. And combine with it an exotic location, a mad chef and murder to complement, you get this movie - 'The Menu'. 

It is a dark comedy that tells the story of a group of food connoisseurs attending a food-tasting session worth dying for. It sniggers at the obnoxious waste of resources and the extreme ridiculousness of high-end restaurants and their equally eccentric chefs.

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A Military Doctor, A Contradiction?

Doctor (டாக்டர், Tamil; 2021)
Story, Direction: Nelson Dilipkumar

At one look, it may look like a poorly made comedy with the protagonist appearing all sullen and grim, with a perpetual frown throughout the movie as if he holds all the world's problems upon his shoulders. And it is supposed to be a comedy of all things. On the other hand, the plot is about the hero rescuing his love interest's niece from abductors involved in an international child abduction racket! Quite a perplexing one is this dark comedy. It is, however, not short of one-liner punchlines. It conveys the message that we are all self-centred hedonists who are only interested in self-gratification and personal interest and see not beyond our immediate family members. Rules and regulations only apply to others. We are quick to close an eye and bend the rules when we are in the spotlight.

The movie starts with Dr Varun (Sivakarthigeyan), a military surgeon, deciding whether to operate on an Indian Army afflicted with near-fatal injury with dismal prognosis and a captured terrorist with a better outcome. Dr Varun chooses the latter. His rationale is that information from the terrorist would help to defeat the enemy. That is Dr Varun, the pragmatist who calls a spade a spade.

His very thing upsets his fiancée and calls off the whole wedding plan. She accuses him of being unromantic and unsympathetic. Dr Varun takes all this stoically. It is about that time that the finacée's niece is found missing, and the whole family goes into a tailspin. The police seem to be dragging their feet. The telephone tapping technologist that the police sent to their home is more interested in throwing his weight around than actually finding something. The local ruffians that the police rounded up appear clueless about the missing girl.

This is where our military doctor moves in, not as a knight in shining armour, swashbuckling style, but as a maverick strategist utilising his resources to recruit the local hoodlums, including the comical Yogi Babu, to mastermind the girl's return and dismantle an international network of child kidnappers.

Forget logic, indulge in the comedy and take in the message. 

Some professions need their practitioners to perform without fear or favour. They need to be fair, unwavered by emotions, but full of compassion. The controversies surrounding vaccine passport and accusation of the unvaccinated piggy-bagging on the herd immunity conferred by the vaccinated population makes us question whether this is fair. Knowing very well nothing is absolute in science, can the medical practitioners stay idle when the politicians and the Big Pharma go on churning out statistics to meet their agenda?.

An exciting combo - military doctor. An army person is just supposed to follow orders, not ask questions. A doctor is supposed to question, not take things at face value and hearsay. A doctor is supposed to investigate and make a decision. Conversely, the military does not need smart alecs; they want unquestioning loyal followers who hold the silence till the end. A military doctor, a contradiction?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.