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“Marjaavaan” has all it takes to make a blockbuster—a bicep-flexing ‘hero’, his loyal-to-death friends, a petite ‘heroine’, a couple of items numbers, a formidable villain, unrealistic action sequences, and a heavily dramatized climax. This could have brought in flocks of audiences to the cinema if it were the 90s—but it’s not. In the year 2019, when both Indian cinema and the audience have matured enough to celebrate realistic stories and lifelike protagonists, a larger-than-life hero who can pull water tankers with his arms and punch through motorcycle helmets is not welcome—if he’s not Bajirao Singham, Rowdy Rathore, or Chulbul Pandey.

Directed by Milap Zaveri, Marjaavaan is literally a 90s movie, probably written for Sunil Shetty or Sunny Deol, but made in 2019 with Sidharth Malhotra performing the heroic duties as “Raghu”—a gangster with a good heart. Now how many gangsters with good heart stories have we seen? Countless, right? “Marjaavaan” is just one of them, with nothing new in the storyline. Even most songs in the movies are remixes of 90s’ hits. A film can’t be as unoriginal as this.

Now Malhotra, who has played plenty of boy-next-door characters in the past and is still struggling to make a mark in Bollywood, tries to pull off the “angry young man” character in this one but fails miserably. A 90s hero has to have a damsel in distress and this we get in the form of Tara Sutaria who plays “Zoya”, a ‘mute’ music teacher who falls for Raghu at first sight and sets out to reform him. The clichéd repertoire is then complete with Raghu’s arch-nemesis “Vishnu” (Riteish Deshmukh), the dwarf son of Raghu’s boss who is jealous of his father’s fondness for Raghu. And the clichés continue.

As the movie progresses with a lazy screenplay and even worse acting, the audience is nothing but dumfounded at the lack of creativity in this big banner (T-Series) film.

Story-wise, Marjaavaan has an uncanny resemblance to Sanjay Dutt starrer “Aandolan” (1994). In fact, a few scenes and side stories could be directly out of the classic.

What hurts more than the repetitive storyline is the acting of the lead stars. Malhotra, who sure grew up watching actions stars like Ajay Devgan and Akshay Kumar can’t seem to emulate them. Only flexing the biceps and giving cold stares doesn’t make the audience believe you can take out a dozen goons at once. You need to have that ferocity built into your character.

As for his co-star Sutaria, she’s the weakest link in the movie. Zoya is mute but can hear and expresses herself with sign language. It is evidently clear that Sutaria came ill-prepared to the sets to play Zoya. We can only watch in despair while she struggles to mime through sign languages with zero conviction.

The most disappointing performance in the movie comes from Deshmukh though. Mostly seen in slapstick rom-coms and adult comedies, Deshmukh loses all credibility as a serious actor he won from his performance in “Ek Villain” (2015). Playing a dwarf gang-leader, Deshmukh had the opportunity to carve out a memorable character as Vishnu, but he seems confused on whether to look sinister or funny for the part. Deshmukh’s Vishnu lacks the villainous disposition and ends up looking like just another supporting character.

Overall, despite a big banner name and experienced hands, Marjaavaan is a mistake for everyone involved. It in fact seems like a spoof of 90s Bollywood, but, unfortunately, the filmmakers were making a serious film. There’s no entertainment factor, zero comic relief, and overburdened dialogues without any memorable punchlines—a flop show all the way.

Who should watch it?

This is one film we don’t recommend to anyone. We suggest you skip it even when it is eventually released on Youtube.

Actors:
Sidharth Malhotra
Riteish Deshmukh
Tara Sutaria
Director: Milap Zaveri
Genre: Action/Drama
Run time: 2hr 15mins

Paul Kalanithi was just months away from qualifying as a neurosurgeon and completing his postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University when he was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer at the age of 36. Suddenly, the doctor becomes the patient. And his plans to start a family with his wife, Lucy, now seems like a distant dream, one that would perhaps never come true.

Kalanithi chooses to pen a book because, as he writes in an email to his best friend, he has outlived two Brontës, Keats and Stephen Crane, but, unlike them, he doesn’t have anything to show for it. Writing When Breath Becomes Air is a) his way of coming to terms with his death and, more importantly, b), as his wife said in an interview after the book’s publication, his way of communicating with his daughter Cady after his death.

However, when Kalanithi died on March 2015, the book wasn’t complete. His wife Lucy wrote an epilogue for it and the book was published 10 months later. In the book Kalanithi ponders on what makes life worth living when one is facing death. Apart from meditations on life and death, Kalanithi also gives us a glimpse into the life of someone who strives to always maintain a positive outlook.

For Kalanithi, life was never about avoiding suffering. So when his wife asks him, “Don’t you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?” when they decide to have a child, his reply is, “Wouldn’t it be great if it did?’”

‘When Breath Becomes Air’ is perhaps the most soul stirring book I’ve read. Lucy writes in the epilogue that his memoir can teach us to face life and death with integrity. And indeed When Breath Becomes Air serves as a reminder to value life and not think of death as a tragedy. Kalanithi’s message is simple: We are all confronting mortality on a daily basis, whether we know it or not, and the beauty of life lies in the fact that it’s so uncertain.

“Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when.” The important thing, he says, is not how long we live but how we live.

But be warned, this isn’t a book you can read in a single sitting or even over the course of a few weeks for that matter. There were times when I couldn’t read another page. But I also wanted to be comforted by Kalanithi’s words and to find out how Lucy and his daughter were doing. It’s compulsive but you have to put it aside and take time to process what you have read after every few pages.

Fiction
When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 228, Hardcover

With actor/producer/director from the blockbuster “Loot” fame Nischal Basnet starring in the dark comedy “Ghamad Shere,” the expectations of the audience and film critics were high. Ghamad Shere—almost a ‘film noir’—starts promisingly. But by the time it reaches the interval, it kind of loses the plot and is then unable to climb back into the entertaining spectrum.

That’s what happened with the film’s reception too, we’re told. It started well in the cinema halls with a decent number of audiences in the weekend. But the turnout fell sharply in a couple days, adding to the low spots the film actually hits. The power of word-of-mouth can’t be ignored.

Written and directed by Hem Raj BC, Basnet plays the protagonist Sher Bahadur aka Shere, a Nepali migrant worker who has returned to his hometown in Chinchu, Surkhet. Shere, a naïve yet stubborn simpleton, buys a piece of land on the bank of the local Khahare River and settles there with his wife and son. He’s just begun cultivating the land when the river floods it, and he’s left with nothing. In an attempt to get compensation for his lost property, Shere ends up filing a case against the river.

The story has an interesting albeit not entirely new premise. We’ve seen protagonists challenging the ‘act of God’ or ‘force majeure’ before: “The Man Who Sued God” (2001), “Oh My God” (2012), to recall just two of the previous international movies. Yet, unlike those movies, its extended storytelling and lack of focus on the main conflict nearly sinks Ghamad Shere. Instead, there are way too many conflicts, without any of them satisfactory resolved. This gives the film a weak body even as it has multiple arms and legs, encumbering it and making it crawl rather than sprint.

Basnet puts in an average performance as the socially crude Shere. He sounds rude most of the times, does not understand the complexities of life, and easily resorts to physical violence. But he has no malice towards anyone and is in fact a harmless creature when not provoked. Basnet as Shere is convincing, and yet the lengthy screenplay more than once exposes his mediocre acting.

His real-life spouse Swastima Khadka on the other hand performs exceptionally well as Gauri, in the film his sister-in-law and an English teacher at a local school. Khadka is brilliant as the strict, assertive, yet loving and nurturing Gauri. She has a friendly and somewhat flirty relation with Shere but it doesn’t look wrong or sexual at all. Khadka with her acting skills maintains the dignity of her character and makes the audience love her in all the situations. After her insignificant roles in multi-starrers and loud comedies, Khadka as an actor has clearly come of age in Ghamad Shere. She doesn’t divulge from her character a bit and is pleasant to look at throughout.

One commendable fact about the storytelling is that it takes the film to western Nepal. Nepali cinema is travelling in terms of locations and we are no more forced to see only Kathmandu and Pokhara, or Manang/Mustang. If you are a wee politically inclined, the film also gives you a mini-course on the functioning of the new local governments, especially the judiciary, in the country.  

Only if director BC had cut redundant sequences and focused on Shere’s fight for justice the film would have been so much better. But unfortunately the film spends too much time garnering sympathy for Shere. So much so that it becomes a borderline ‘yawn fest’ at one point. And no, irrespective of what rumors would have it, Ghamad Shere has absolutely nothing to do with Nepali Congress Chairman Sher Bahadur Deuba.

Who should watch it?

Basnet and Khadka don’t lack fans. And watching the two together on screen could be a treat for them. For others, the film is marginally below average and you may want to rethink how much spare time you have for it.

Rating: 2 stars
Length: 2 hrs 15 mins
Director: Hem Raj BC
Actors: Nischal Basnet, Swastima Khadka

When her novel ‘The Palace of Illusions’, based on the Mahabharat told by Panchaali, was published 10 years ago, many readers asked Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni what she would write about next. Usually that was a question she had no answer to but this time she instinctively knew she had to write about Sita. Just like Panchaali, she wanted Sita to be able to tell her own tale.

In Hindu mythologies, women are more often than not relegated to the margins and we rarely get to know them unless it is in context of their husbands who are always mighty warriors. Which is why retellings of these ancient texts are so important. They bring women to the forefront and give them a chance to tell us how things transpired in their lives and how they felt about it.

And ‘The Forest of Enchantments’ is just that. It’s Sita filling in the gaps in the story and recollecting her version of events. What I specially liked about Divakaruni’s retelling of the Ramayana is that it’s not just Sita’s story either. The other women—Kaikeyi, Mandodari, Surpanakha—also get a chance to set their narratives straight. They are more than just mothers, wives and sisters. Kaikeyi is an excellent charioteer and swordswoman, and Mandodari is shown to be a perceptive leader with infinite compassion for her people.

We know how the Ramayana plays out but even if you don’t reading Divakaruni’s version of the mythology is enough for you to understand the story. There’s everything there, from Sita’s birth and her marriage to Ram, the eventual exile, to Ravana kidnapping Sita, and the ultimate rescue and the birth of Luv and Kush. Divakaruni has also chosen to be faithful to the original text and kept the ending the same. But it’s much more nuanced than in the original text.

Sita’s Ramayana, which is what this book essentially is, is far more than a story of morality and filial duty, as Ramayana is generally made out to be. The Forest of Enchantments reads like an important commentary on love, duty, the importance of balancing the two and, sometimes, when situations demand, being able to prioritize one above the other.

I read The Forest of Enchantments on a weekend. Divakaruni’s writing is a joy and the story too is captivatingly told. If you, like many women I know, have always been slightly angry by the unfairness of things in Ramayana, then this book will appease you  a little.

Fiction
The Forest of Enchantments
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 359, Hardcover