It's Christmas time!

Merry Christmas (Hindi/Tamil versions; 2024)
Director: Sriram Raghavan

This film has it all: a little Hitchcockian, a tinge of noir, and a hefty dose of female fatale. Set in the urban setting of Bombay at Christmas, the storytellers thought it was all right to cast modern-thinking characters with modern values as protagonists. Otherwise, it would not be believable that a seemingly single mother would send flirting vibes and respond to the advances of a random hunk at the movie theatre. 

That is what happened in this movie. It is Christmas Eve. While everyone is in a celebratory mood, a recently released murderer, Albert, returns to his mother's home. As old memories haunt him, he goes out for a stroll. He meets Maria, who is wandering around with her young daughter, first at a restaurant and then at the cinema hall. They strike up a conversation, and she walks her home. After having a nightcap and leaving the sleeping child at home, they go for another walkabout. Upon their return, they discover Maria's husband slouched on a settee, dead, after apparently shooting himself. 

Albert, as a recently released convict, is sceptical about being involved in a death investigation. She instructs Maria to inform the police while he wipes out evidence of his presence at her apartment. 

Hours later, curious about the turns of events, Albert returns to Maria's apartment. There is no hullabaloo of a crime scene. Instead, he finds her in the company of another gentleman, going up to her place. He follows them to find no dead body there!

The rest of the movie is predictable, not because it is poorly done but because we have seen it all too many times in various combinations. The original story is from a 1962 French movie, Paris Pick-Up @ Le Monte-charge. The French version was more precise, shorter and straight to the point. In the Indian versions, however, there are additional characters. One cannot help but wonder whether other little nuggets are inserted between scenes to imply anything. I, for one, was left wondering whether the purpose of Albert's uncle naming his home-brewed moonshine 'Yadhoom' (Scandivanian for 'reason of existence'; why we love for) carried any obscure philosophical connotation to the whole story. 

Nevertheless, it is a refreshing movie with a retro 1970s feel, fuelled by a liberal display of neon lights to give it its noir background. Kudos to Vijay Sethupathi, Katrina Kaif and Sanjay Kapoor (in the Hindi version) for their commendable performances. In the authentic Hitchcockian way, it ends with a twist.

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

movies

The best time is the present!

Last Night in Soho (2021)

Director: Edgar Wright

We always like to think of the 'good old days' and how life was simpler then and people were honest. Were they really so? Artefacts from our pasts stir so much serotonin that nostalgia sells. Like Pavlov's dog, we drool at sephia photos of yesteryear. Would we really give up everything we have right now and recoil into the past and do it all again if those days were indeed so simple?

If we were to delve into our lives, we should consider ourselves lucky to have survived the negativities that could have brought us down at every single turn of our lives. We should thank our lucky stars that the turns we took at the crossroads of our decision-making moments turned out to be a-OK. Not perfect, could have been better than could have been worse off. What made us take the right turn? Is it some kind of guardian angel, guiding light, our sheer intellect or the deeds of our past karma? I guess it is a topic for the sophists to argue and convince, not the simpletons.

Nobody is saying that life is so easy that we should just accept life as it unfolds upon us without giving a good fight. We should not be fatalistic and just surrender to fate as fate is what we make of it. Akin to the conundrum of whether God had decided that war should commence would also depend on us sending the battleship. Even if God had decided that a battle should occur, it would not happen unless and until we send our armada! Future depends on us and our actions or inactions.

This film tries to us that any time can be a good or bad time. The present can be as challenging as the past and the future. There were injustices before, just as it is now and will be in time to come.  Bigotry, bullying and wanting to domineer is engrained in our DNA. 

Eloise, an aspiring fashion designer from the countryside, gets her break when accepted into the London College of Design. She grew up with her grandmother as her mother, a fashion design aspirant, killed herself when Eloise was young. Eloise sometimes sees visions of her mother. Longing to be with her mother, Eloise, showed a keen interest in things of the swinging 60s. In keeping with this motif, we are sprinkled with many of the British invasion songs of the 60s, e.g. Petula Clark (Downtown) and Cilla Black. A pleasant surprise inclusion is Dusty Springfield's 'Wishing and Hoping', James Ray's 'Got my mind set on you' (Cover by George Harrison in 1980s), Sandie Shaw's 'Always something there to remind me' (Cover by Naked Eyes in 1983) and many more.

Eloise found her batchmates quite repulsive of her background, and hence, she found her own accommodation. It appeared ideal for her as it appeared that time had stood still in that room. The settings were like the 60s. It was fine until she started having recurrent vivid nightmares in which she also became a participant and witnessed a murder. 

After a heady rollercoaster ride into the past and future, Eloise finally resolves her issues and pursue her aspirations as how a good movie should end!

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