Rahul Desai

In Train Dreams, life is but an accruement of endings. Based on Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella, Clint Bentley’s tender fever-dream of a film is rooted in the anonymity of time: an anti-Forrest Gump of sorts. It’s about the kind of man that history is wired to forget: a humble woodlogger and railroad construction worker, a normal husband and father, a survivor and soliloquy, a grafter and griever. A voice-over introduces Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) as an orphan in his childhood; it closes with him at 80, having lived and loved and lost and lived in the shadow of loss. He is a reluctant protagonist masquerading as just another person. It’s almost as if the story keeps leaving him behind in the hope that he will catch up.

If you’ve watched enough modern Hindi socials over the years, chances are you’re well-acquainted with its red flags. Especially if the themes sound like hashtags: #DysfunctionalFamily, #Therapy, #MentalHealth, #NobodyIsPerfect, #SeekHelp. The preachiness aside, the stories are often designed to offer solutions to everything short of death (or sometimes even that). If not solutions, then righteous advice at the very least. It’s why I both loved and hated Dil Dhadakne Do (and a show like Made In Heaven); the staging of dysfunctionality and cultural quirks are the fun parts, but there’s always a sense that nothing is beyond repair. Every ‘condition’ is curable. The great thing about Perfect Family is that, over 8 fairly long episodes, it puts itself in a position to humanise the hashtags more than feature-length movies do. Its imperfections have character, and even if the intent is tethered to a message of change and higher wisdom, the show feels like more of a journey than a destination. Which is precisely the anatomy of being “fixed” these days; it’s a process with no beginning and ending.

Conceptually, Kaisi Ye Paheli goes for broke. The 95-minute independent film, written and directed by Ananyabrata Chakravorty, wears the cloak of yet another small-town whodunnit. There’s a death in misty Kalimpong; sullen cop Uttam (Sukant Goel) and his boss, Tamang (Chittaranjan Giri), are flummoxed by the details: a religious girl poisoned by a holy sweet? The theatrical Bondo (Rajit Kapur, always) is summoned from Kolkata by the powers that be; the senior sleuth has a direct line to “Didi,” and behaves like he’s an amalgamation of Byomkesh Bakshi and Feluda in his head. Meanwhile, Uttam’s home situation is complicated — he resents his widowed mother (Sadhana Singh) for various reasons, not least because she constantly recalls their past life and late husband. The mother-son bond is strained, she aches for his attention, so it’s amusing when Tamang and team unofficially recruit her to be part of the investigation because of her passion for Bengali detective novels. Uttam’s colleagues confide in her like sons in their downtime; it’s a quirky touch without the energy of a quirky touch.

Animal’s Rannvijay, Kabir Singh’s Kabir, Rockstar’s Jordan, Tamasha’s Ved and Haseen Dillruba’s Rishu walk into a bar. There is no punchline here, because they are no joke. They participate in a victimhood-measuring contest. Rannvijay declares he had to sleep with a female agent knowing who she was and cheated on his wife to make his dad proud; it was very difficult. Kabir claims he slapped a girl to make her love his alpha masculinity; it was very hard. Jordan says he quotes Rumi and chose to meet his dead soulmate in a field beyond; it wasn’t easy. Ved claims his girlfriend fixed him by rejecting his alter-ego; it was terrible. Rishu declares he chopped off his hand to be with his bad-boy-craving wife; it’s been a sacrifice. In walks Tere Ishk Mein’s Shankar, who lights a cigarette and scoffs at them all.

The test of an effective Hindi film these days is the post-screening afterglow. If it’s a loud historical, the chaotic traffic and fumes outside feel like a relief. If it’s a button-pushing social thriller, some walk out with big chests and a renewed passion to blame someone. If it’s a patriotic biopic, there might be wet eyes and a desire to be very Indian. If it’s a love story, men stride out with an inflated sense of self-worth, corny grins and cloud-nine-sized delusions. At different points in life, I’ve been guilty of doing all of the above. Add Gustaakh Ishq to the list, a period drama about poets and lovers that’s so immersive and committed to its setting that I was overcome by an urge to speak in chaste Urdu and rhyme idioms with emotions. The cab driver did not appreciate my use of “qaatil” to describe the waiting time. He sped away the second I started waxing lyrical about English being a flight and Urdu being the nest we come home to.

Of all the Disney movies over the years with PG-13 racial metaphors and diversity parables, Zootopia 2 faces the most uphill battle there ever was. For it takes on the task of doing the near-impossible: the destigmatisation of Snakes. The fear and distrust of this reptile is so historically and genetically entrenched in human systems that the real-world subtext is almost secondary. In Zootopia 2, the unlikely police pairing of hyper-rabbit Judy Hopps and red fox Nick Wilde try their darndest to unscramble snake propaganda — a pit viper named Gary De’Snake emerges in the mainland, and everyone is terrorised. Except Judy, who trusts that the snake is the good guy whose ‘people’ have been maligned by the ruling family of lynxes. Gary wants to prove that the land was theirs to begin with (duh), and the patent was stolen by the sly lynxes. History students, unite.

It’s only noon and I’ve already had three showers today. Under normal circumstances, I’d say it’s because I had to step out in the morning and Mumbai’s AQI is beyond redemption. Under normal circumstances, that’s a perfectly valid reason. But these are extraordinary circumstances. I stepped out to watch a morning show of Mastiii 4, a cinematic pollutant so noxious that I’ve been frantically trying to wash off its fumes after reaching home. Say what you may about a Milap Zaveri film, but it works wonders for my personal hygiene.

You want to believe 120 Bahadur is a different historical drama. It’s from the makers of Lakshya (2004). The enemy is not Pakistan. It’s inspired by a passage of the 1962 Sino-Indian war. The optics speak to a more modern movement of resistance. The regiment in question is made up almost entirely of the Ahir community, a telling choice in the aftermath of the Indian farmers’ protest. The landscape is Ladakh. The film even addresses that there were doubts about the authenticity of the fabled Battle of Rezang La, where 120 Indian soldiers are said to have defended a pass against more than 3000 Chinese soldiers; both countries had their own versions. You also want to believe it knows the distinction between patriotism and jingoism. You just want to believe.