RIFLE RANGE BOY: funny

Friday, 3 November 2023

Brutally funny?

Bhama Kalabam (Telegu, The Dance of Fate; 2022)
Written and Directed by: Abimanyu

I learned two things from this movie.

Increasingly, crime is a funny business. This film falls under the genre of comedic crime thriller. The Indian cinemas have graduated from fake fighting with comedians pouncing on villains with their most hilarious bumbling moves. Now, it involves quirky investigators or their blundering assistants. Violence is a necessary mainstay, as, after all, it is a crime drama. So, nitty gritty grizzly details of the killing, striking the jugular and bundling a dead body into a suitcase are accepted as the most natural thing to do. Get a 13+ rating, and everything is kosher. Do not question dragging dead weight around with ease and the ability to keep a deadpan face after committing a heinous crime. If you pass all that, you should, as it is a comedy, remember, then you will enjoy this movie.

Filmed during the pandemic, the moviemakers managed to pull through by confining the filming area within a housing colony and the street surrounding it. The effects of movement restriction are hardly noticeable. Despite a few flaws here and there, the film is enjoyable overall.

The other thing I learnt from this movie is about Febergé Eggs. Not many people realise that the Russian Empire has its own stories of gory and glory. With ferocious leaders like Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great (who was terrible), Peter III and Nicholas II, they have their skirmishes with the Tartars, indulgences and opulence. In the late 19th century, at the heights of their Empire, only rivalled by the British, royal jewellers made bejewelled Easter eggs for the Czars to amuse their spouses.

About 69 such eggs were made around St Petersburg, and 52 surviving eggs are exhibited in museums worldwide. It has come to signify the heights of opulence and is worth a fortune.

In this film, one such egg, on display in a museum in Calcutta, is stolen. While admiring the loot, the blooming thieves dropped the egg off their vehicle. The egg lands right smack into a lorry transporting thousands of chicken eggs. The truck heads to a warehouse.

Their leader is livid.

Anupama, a YouTuber, a wife and a mum, has too much time on her hands. Between caring for her family, she manages to find time to be a busybody to mind the businesses of her neighbours.

After exposing one of the neighbour's husband's affairs, she gets into trouble with the residents' committee. Instead of thanking Anupama, the wife of the fornicator, sides with him when he fakes a heart attack. Anupama gets a warning to mind her own business.

Curiosity got the better of her when she thought she saw another resident harming his wife. When Anupama goes to investigate, she faces the thief who lost the Feberge egg. He had tracked the egg to that unit. In a scuffle, Anupama kills the intruder. That starts the cat-and-mouse affair of hiding the body, the discovery of CCTV footage, the police, the leader of the thieves and the rush to find the elusive Fabergé Egg. Amongst all these, in the background, is an aloof pastor who has heard in his childhood of a particular egg handed to believers by Mother Mary at the time of Cruxification of the promise that Jesus will arise from death.

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

Saturday, 25 February 2023

What's in a name?

Maverick School, Malaysia.

I am amused by how some establishments have probably wrong choices of names. In my mind, their names have negative connotations. Or it was intended to be so. As they say in business, any publicity is good publicity. Anything that would stir the readers' curiosity or turns any head is good for business.

Recently I came across two such instances.

A private school called' Maverick' was set up in the Klang Valley. I always thought a maverick always has something up his sleeves. He has a scheme, a sleight of hand, that would benefit him. I perceive a maverick as someone like Artemus Gordon of 'The Wild Wild West' (1965), a secret service spy with tricks up his sleeves to protect the US President.

Apparently, over the years, the term maverick had evolved from giving a negative connotation to something positive. People are no longer expected to be conforming and obedient but to think outside the box to be innovative. Correspondingly, students should not be rote learners but creative instead. Hence, to be a maverick is legitimately legal.

Traditional wisdom dictates that we are strong by numbers. We are familiar with Aesop's fable about the feuding brothers and their ailing father's attempt at unifying them through the analogy of breaking twigs singly versus a tied bunch.

Nexus, Bangsar South, Malaysia.

However, big institutions and conglomerates have earned themselves a bad reputation in modern times. With the ever-widening income gap between the top 1% and the rest of society, they are the favourite subjects of leftists and conspiracy theorists.

A new term often thrown in daily conversations nowadays is the word 'nexus'. That word was intended to denote one's central position in the thick of things, like centrioles in the process of nuclear divisions. Or in the centre of the railway line connections. Also, a nexus of evil is out to destroy civilisation as we know it, etc. Examples of the nexus often mentioned in civil or not-so-civil conversations include The Rothchild Foundation, the Illuminati, the Masons, China, the World Economic Forum and George Soros' Open Society.

Pran

To name a multi-million mammoth construction 'Nexus' to hold business dealings and functions and to promote it as the next best thing since sliced bread may appear shady at best. Does it not sound like a big establishment with nefarious intents? Again, any news is good news.

It cannot all be doom and gloom. If not, my father would not have named me after a Tamil movie star synonymous with villainy. If Charles Sobhraj were notorious, would he have called me Sobhraj? But then, there was a time around the world when no child was named Pran, as the name Pran was the epitome of evil as far as the Hindi film world was concerned. He personified what evil meant. His big piercing eyes, grinding teeth and a cloud of cigarette smoke around his silhouette were enough to send shivers down viewers' spines.

Forget the fact the name 'Pran' refers to the Pranava Mantra, which signifies the cosmic sound Om or Aum, the most powerful mantra in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.