Bajirao Mastani (Hindi)

This film can help you bring back the 90s. 

Perhaps you recall with some degree of fondness the embrace of epic in Hollywood's last decade of the millennium. You went and saw war dramas like Braveheart, and tragic romances like Titanic. Greatness still seemed a bit more tangible, a bit more reachable. 

Bajirao Mastani brings back this style of film-making. Expressing a natural patriotism, the film tells the story of Bajirao I (Ranveer Singh), a celebrated Indian general who helped to unify the Hindu peoples in the Maratha Empire, ending Muslim Mughal rule in the 18th century. 

Yet despite his service and excellence, Bajirao comes into confrontation with his society when takes Mastani (Deepika Padukone), the daughter of an allied Persian-Muslim faction, as his second wife.  His family and the Brahmin class refuse to accept her as a wife, and unscrupulously do everything in their power to ruin the mighty couple. 

This film is remarkable for how it manages to transcend mere political polemics and stakes out a truly majestic vision of heroism and virtue. Bajirao, a brave and heroic national figure, is idealized without apology, portrayed with a form of admiration we have forgotten in the self-loathing West. Yet this isn't mere self-congratulation. The society, its religion, and its caste system are severely criticized as regressive and even malevolent. In this film, we see both a national hero and national ignominy on open display. 

Americans are decidedly incapable of making such subtle distinctions in their own viewpoints and thought processes. Here, you are either critical of the nation and all its traditions (a capital L Liberal), or you accept them all without reservation and believe that George Washington never told a lie. 

This is why we don't see films like this in the United States anymore. The idea of a hero could only serve to promote some kind of political agenda, which will enrage a large portion of the personally offended populace. Nobody can distinguish between abstract, eternal virtuous qualities and what's currently trending on Twitter, so it's better to avoid the problem of heroic qualities, and keep making movies with Kevin James. 

Meanwhile, in India, which shares a border with Pakistan, they can and do make a film about a Hindu prince and his love of a half-Muslim princess. Surely, this film offended many people.

But that's alright, because no culture or country paralyzed at the thought of offending people can still be called worthy of epic.

Final Word: Unapologetic, Heroic, Majestic...

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Soggade Chinni Nayana (Telugu)

Be careful. This one may just blow your mind.

First off, please don't come to the theater with any narrow American conceptions of genre. I have given it much thought, and I have no clue what to call this film. Somebody at Wikipedia called it a "supernatural family drama film". Good enough for me, but it's probably best to not even try.

Better to just lay down the facts: Bangaru Raju (Akkineni Nagarjuna) was an aristocrat and landowner in a village called Sivapuram. He died in a suspicious accident, and perhaps justly, for while living, he brought nothing but grief to his poor wife Satya (Ramya Krishnan).

Bangaru Raju, you see, is a player. A seduction king. A kind of Hindu demi-god gifted with a preternatural ability to drive women absolutely crazy. I'm talking better than Leonardo DiCaprio. He's so good, his insulted widow still keeps an almost life-size portrait of him in their marital chamber. Forget the cover of People magazine. Bangaru Raju deserves a shrine.

But love has grown cold in the next generation. Disgraced by Bangaru Raju's philandering ways, she raises their son, Dr. Ram Mohan (also Akkineni Nagarjuna), to become the precise opposite of a Hindu seduction god. Instead, he is bound to become a doctor in the United States. Sounds about right.

With such a lifestyle, Ram has, of course, an utterly loveless marriage to his wife Sita (Lavanya Tripathi), who has come back to India with him to tell Satya and the family that they are to be divorced.

At this point, Sita prays to her Bangaru Raju shrine. Though a "top 5 doctor in the USA", Ram must now learn relearn the basic masculine bearing his Western lifestyle has taken away.

Thankfully, the Hindu god of the underworld, Yama (Nagendra Babu), intercedes, and is willing to allow the spirit of Bangaru Raju to return to the land of the living and inhabit the body of his son. In his time on earth, he will attempt to resolve his son's marital woes, as well as better understand the circumstances of his mysterious death.

If you've made it this far and accepted such a totally uninhibited, outlandish premise, you would probably enjoy Soggade.  Overall, the film is essentially comedic, with hilarious cases of mistaken identity between Bangaru Raju and Ram. However, this doesn't exclude serious conflict, and the comedy also contributes to a serious commentary.

Beneath the laughter, we see what happens to people when they become Americans. In one generation, they lose their innate attractiveness, their very sense of what it means to be a man (or a woman). They lose the very blood in their veins and their capacity for enjoyment, instead finding all their meaning in the new god of Work. They can't solve their problems, and can't even love their wives. Their answer to all of life's questions: "I'll Google it!" (See 0.30 in the trailer below.)

Granted, Ram is a top surgeon, and he is not considered entirely pathetic. But the wide scope and immersive quality of this film captures us in its world of fantasy, where it's still much cooler to be a man than a professional.

Final Word: Kulturkampf as outlandish farce...

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Wazir (Hindi)

A game is a game is a game

This is the ominous refrain of chess master Pandit Dhar (Amitabh Bachchan) in Wazir, a tense terrorist drama not dissimilar from American shows like 24. Daanish Ali (Farhan Akhater), a counter-terrorism agent, loses his daughter in a shootout with terrorist suspects from the hotly disputed Kashmir region. In despair, a series of events leads him to Pandit, a kindly old retiree who now runs children's chess programs. Pandit confides in him that the has also lost his daughter, and that though the death was officially ruled an accident, he suspects political intrigue on the part of Welfare Minister Yazaad Qureshi (Manav Kaul).

As the team of Pandit and Daanish comes closer to unveiling the nexus of corruption and personal animosity behind the deaths, a mysterious henchman (Neil Nitin Mukesh) code-named Wazir (the Hindi word for the queen chess piece) starts to harass Pandit. Where is he coming from, and how does he fit in this chess puzzle of alliance, betrayal, and grand strategy?

Overall, there is little in the concept of this film which will be too foreign to an American audience. Indeed, "terrorist thriller" is pretty much the national genre at this point. Yet the idea of chess as a metaphor in a violent confrontation is something you likely won't see in Hollywood. Rather than waterboard the bad guys into submission, in Wazir we are treated to a more mental approach to such problems, more of a Sherlock Holmes for the 21st century than a Jack Bauer.

Final Word: An intelligent if familiar thriller...

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Charlie (Malayalam)

Maybe The Bible just isn't getting it done for you, aesthetically speaking. Too much melodrama, too many remakes, too much cult following. 

Thankfully, a team of Malayalam filmmakers made Charlie, a kind of New Testament for the early 21st century. Charlie (Dulqueer Salaman) is a mysterious and elusive bohemian, pursued by the free-spirited Tessa (Parvathy), a young woman who has fled to the island of Kerala to escape her family's pressure to marry. Known to the locals as "the genie", Charlie practices a Christ-like ministry of service, his laughing magnanimous spirit aiding mankind in its varied moments of distress. 

While episodes in which Charlie keeps the company of prostitutes and fisherman make the Biblical parallels fairly obvious, there is a distinct and different value system here, one decidedly different from the "Judeo-Christian" values loved in our red states. While there is a generosity of spirit here which has been lost in the American prosperity religion, even more striking is the total sense of personal liberation Charlie exhibits. Without Christian duty or piety, Charlie offers his overwhelming benevolence free of dogma or obligation. A cult figure without a cult, he is more akin to a Nietzschean Zarathustra than Jesus, a lonely soul whose ministry is as much about living boldly as it is about preaching. 

Also unlike Jesus, his priestly celibacy is only a temporary condition, as he is sought by an equivalent female companion. Charlie must be found and Tessa must find him. Charlie must be loved as he has loved, be returned as he has given. Tessa must show the courage to resist her family's more mundane concerns in pursuit of this ideal man. Like King Arthur's sword, only the woman able and willing to find Charlie will pull him into a commitment. This kind of active, equal adoration is, again, very different from the desperate "save me" thinking common in contemporary American relationships. 

It is also worth noting that both Charlie and Tessa are like alternate reality versions of American Millenials. Tessa even has the whole hispter glasses frame style happening. At times, this film is like waking up in the US and discovering that everyone has a soul again. 

But, if you are a conventional American, do not see this film. The hero destroys a smartphone and laughs at the idea that he needs one. It may just be religiously offensive, and worse than eating beef to a Hindu.  

Final Word: But for those who seek, you shall find... 

 

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Tamasha (Hindi)

Tamasha is a film which is meant to be enjoyed in and of itself, as a singular experience. The name itself means "spectacle" in Hindi, and it treats viewers to a sensory and emotional feast. The stunning visuals, score, and overwhelming chemistry between lovers Ved (Ranbir Kapoor) and Tara (Deepika Padukone) encourage the viewer to savor each individual moment beyond concerns of theme, plot, and wider relevance. While these are present, I left the theater without remembering any specific scene, yet feeling an immense, almost physical satisfaction with the experience as a whole. 

In later reflection, the film presents a profound proposition which is perhaps hinted at by the very force of its style — when reality has become little more than brute fact, truth and wisdom reside in the imagination. When Ved and Tara, two young Indian professionals, meet on the island of Corsica, they agree that they are only going to tell each other lies about their backgrounds in the midst of a whirlwind courtship. 

Upon returning to India, the power of their lies abides, while their real lives stagnate in routine misery. After coming back into contact, they come to a moment of fundamental conflict: Is the narrative of the ubiquitous corporate personality a lie, and is the storyteller more honest and valuable than the corporate manager? 

But the question is never so seriously posed, as the answer is implicit and obvious throughout. There is an admirable light-hearted certainty about the role and value of art as a vital exercise almost entirely absent from American, and indeed Western film. This film is in love with the notion of the power of the imagination. It revels in its artistic tapestry of narratives, of legends and storytellers who have lived this struggle before. 


Yet this is not an excuse for idle fantasizing — precisely the opposite. Ved and Tara are must craft the narrative of their own lives, and false stories are separated from the genuine only by one's own actions. As the film's subtitle asks, "Why Always The Same Story?" 

After the heady emotions subside, the question persists. Alienation, loneliness, cynicism — why always the same story? The message here is clear. Write your own story. 

Final Word: Love is only for people who dare to author their own souls...

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Urumeen (Tamil)

This film makes me want to believe in reincarnation. 

A prince of India is betrayed to the British by a treacherous friend. The wheel of karma returns them to their just positions in contemporary society: The prince becomes Selvaa (Bobby Simha), an earnest if somewhat lackadaisical office worker, while his betrayer returns as the wonderfully named John Christoper (Kalaiyarasan), the enforcer for a low-life, American-style debt collection agency. 


Selvaa discovers an enchanted book telling the story of his past life, and falls in love with the gorgeous Umayaal (Reshmi Menon), who is suffering at the hands of John Christopher and his team of harassers. 

Selvaa's rediscovery of his martyred self is the process of the rediscovery of sovereignty in the soul of the average person, dispossessed and demystified by their robotic conformity to alien corporate standards. By rejoining with his past self, he evolves — from sitting around applying to job ads in his underwear, to channeling a divine force of justice and retribution within him.

And so Selvaa becomes a symbol of honor, resistance, and a settling of accounts for poor Indians victimized by foreign student loan scams. A normal person who becomes a hero thanks to a firm set of values and spiritual guidance. No super powers needed.

This is a radical film, and certainly not your amoral, gratuitous Hollywood "revenge" fare. It is extremely relevant for its portrayal of tension underneath the comfort of the international yuppie class, talented individuals who have spent much of their adult lives cowed and intimidated by the endless predation of finance, perhaps also joining their ranks in the cycle of abuse.

Urumeen offers an alternate vision: a world where crimes are held to account, and, more importantly, history and identity still motivate our actions. Not all has been lost to the Western cult of the technicality and practicality of the moment. Princes dead by British hands still live, and may yet be found at the office.

As Americans, we should be embarrassed that it took a Tamil film to tell this story — one more fundamentally about our lives...

Final Word: Maybe we'll get it right in the next life...

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