Metro... in Dino

Early in Metro… In Dino, a middle-aged, middle-of-the-road Monty Sisodia (Pankaj Tripathi), desperate to press the refresh button in his married life, blurts out infertility, infidelity, and morality in one sentence to his nagging wife, Kajol (Konkona Sen Sharma), who seems caught between the ideals of today and the values of the past. In one comic flourish, director Anurag Basu reveals what his kaleidoscope holds, keeping us invested for almost three hours. A child born when Life in a Metro hit the theaters must be 18 now. Not much has changed in relationships, apart from the fact that now we have a teenager in the film who is grappling with her sexuality, and she is in no hurry. Meanwhile, technology and therapy have alleviated the issues faced by the individualistic generation and the concerns of people who missed the bus because they prioritised their family over themselves. Our films often tilt one way or the other. Critics bracket them as progressive, regressive, or somewhere in between. Anurag and his co-writers once again break the brackets and jettison algorithmic screenplays to craft a heart-warming tale of people falling in and out of love. There are echoes of the original, but Metro…in Dino has its own heart.

Anurag Basu’s trademark whimsy and frenzy, music and maelstrom of emotions and equations come together once again in his latest. Metro… In Dino, a spiritual sequel to Basu’s sparkling 2007 relationship drama Life In A… Metro, follows the anthological template of the first film, as well as the filmmaker’s dark comedy caper Ludo, that released five years ago. Unlike Life In A… Metro that drew both its feel and fabric from Mumbai — its incessant rains, its bumper-to-bumper traffic, the connections inadvertently forged and broken on local train rides and the everyday stories of crushed ambitions, lost loves and dreams unrealised — Metro… In Dino doesn’t belong to one ‘metro’. The action shifts between Mumbai and Pune, Kolkata and Bangalore, Delhi and Goa, with the film not being able to ground itself in any city. Each landscape coalesces into the other, with very little to define the film’s backdrop. Physically, Metro… In Dino is all over the place. Which, unfortunately, is an apt descriptor for its structure and storytelling as well.

2007 में आई अनुराग बसु की ही फिल्म ‘लाइफ इन ए… मैट्रो’ (Life In A… Metro) की तरह इस फिल्म ‘मैट्रो… इन दिनों’ (Metro… In Dino) में भी कई सारी कहानियां एक साथ चल रही हैं। बोरियत भरी शादीशुदा ज़िंदगी के बीच मोंटी घर से बाहर झांकता है और उसकी पत्नी काजोल उसे नचाती है। काजोल की छोटी बहन चुमकी अपने रिश्ते को लेकर कन्फ्यूज़ है। उसके करीब आया पार्थ तो किसी रिश्ते में ही नहीं पड़ना चाहता। पार्थ के दोस्त श्रुति और आकाश अपनी शादी, बच्चे और कैरियर के संघर्षों में उलझे हुए हैं। उधर काजोल की मां एक बार फिर अपने कॉलेज के दोस्त परिमल के पास जा पहुंची है। साथ ही परिमल की बहू और काजोल की बेटी की अलग-अलग कहानियां भी चल रही हैं। ‘लाइफ इन ए… मैट्रो’ जहां मुंबई शहर के कुछ जोड़ों को दिखा रही थी वहीं इस फिल्म ‘मैट्रो… इन दिनों’ (Metro… In Dino) में अनुराग की कलम ने मुंबई के अलावा दिल्ली, बंगलुरु, पुणे, कोलकाता जैसे शहरों में कहानी का विस्तार किया है जो दर्शाता है कि स्त्री-पुरुष संबंधों की उलझनें और सुलझनें कमोबेश हर जगह एक-सी हैं। अलग-अलग किस्म के किरदारों के ज़रिए वह इस बात को भी उभार पाते हैं कि रिश्तों की पेचीदगियां हर इंसान के खाते में दर्ज होती हैं। फिल्म में एक बात खास तौर पर उभर कर आती है कि रिश्तों में पारदर्शिता और संवादों की कमी से बात बिगड़ती है तो संभालने से संभल भी जाती है, बस कोशिशें जारी रहें।

Nobody expected Life in a… Metro (2007) to come from the director of Murder and Gangster. It was Anurag Basu’s first non-Vishesh Films venture after four ero-mantic (erotic+romantic) thrillers in a row. Its music composer, Pritam, was known for the chartbusters of Dhoom and Gangster. They were already commercially successful, but it never felt like they were the “makers”. More like hit-creators for hire: executors of someone else’s aesthetic. Until Metro, which became a breaking-free moment of sorts. The inspired multi-narrative drama marked the first real flex of voice for both writer-director and composer. There was a sense of exploration and discovery in the way the film unfolded — the city of Mumbai being a storyteller (with a ‘live’ band), and its many lives, the stories.

It stands to reason that Metro In Dino will have thematic similarities with its spiritual predecessor Life… In A Metro: warring couples, predatory bosses, commitment-phobic men, confused women, straying and returning, sacrifice and recompense. It also has straight-up reprises. Konkona Sen Sharma, whose pairing with Irrfan was one of the highlights of the original, is the only one from the previous cast making a return, with Pankaj Tripathi standing in for the late, great actor; and the three-member band, led by Pritam, is strewn all over the film, like it was in the earlier iteration. In the interim– eighteen years is a long time—so much has changed. Those clunky cell-phones, which a couple of characters used in the earlier film, have changed to the sleek oblongs everyone carries these days, with laptops, tablets, and an overuse of every other device that promises connection, but provides only disconnection. You don’t need an empty flat with a key, the idea borrowed from Billy Wilder’s classic The Apartment, to plan an assignation; you can just create a profile on a dating app and get right down to sexting, even if you choose to call it Linger, rather than Tinder.

When Anurag Basu made Life In A…Metro in 2007, Bollywood anthologies were still a novelty for moviegoers. Add to that, its musical roots by Pritam’s sutradhar in rock band mode lend the storytelling a refreshing momentum. By the time he created Ludo in late 2020, his maverick multi-narrative crime drama was another stylish addition in the genre that hit the overkill mark during the pandemic. Circa 2025, audiences have grown increasingly picky with a poor attention span flitting more towards streaming than screen. Metro…In Dino, Basu’s soul sequel to its mid-2000s predecessor, is a reflection of this fuzzy mind chronicling a dozen or so protagonists caught in a clutter of chaos and conflict. Slice-of-life, coming-of-age, rom-com, couples therapy, love triangle, teenage woes, mid-life crisis, Metro…In Dino’s mish-mash of themes across Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Pune is a hurricane in need of calmer hands. Instead, Basu’s trademark whimsy revels in sending his characters round and round in circles until they’ve spun long enough and collapsed in a tizzy.