Ex-Stream Benefits is a column where senior journalist Subhash K Jha picks what the best streaming platforms had to offer across the previous month.
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November was not a particularly favourable month on the digital platform. Feature films on OTT hit all-time low this month with Zee 5’ Squad. Netflix’s Meenakshi Sundareshwar though a charming portrait of a marriage between two earnest Tamilians, lost its way in translation. The low-tide month was not without its bright moments. But there were more misses like Lionsgate Play Originals’ abysmally improper Hiccups & Hookups where Lara Dutta and Prateik Babbar attempted to act cool as sexually uninhibited siblings, and Voot Originals’ Illegal which is reason enough to illegalize all stretched-out sequels. What remained during the month was not always brilliant, but sufficiently exciting, if not consistently so, then frequent enough to be considered encouraging. My choice of the month’s best.
Dhamaka (Netflix)
Taking off as a terrorist-negotiator thriller, Ram Madhvani’s film moves into areas of storytelling where terrorism merges into opportunism and good intentions are regurgitated in a pukey mess. It is a powerful parable on injustice and discrimination delivered with brute force that spares us none of the violence that a situation of social inequality breeds and bleeds into a compromised nation. Besides Kartik Aaryan the other heroes of this tactile thriller are Monisha Baldawa-Amita Karia’s editing and Manu Anand’s cinematography . These master-technicians put a dizzying spin to the out-of-control lives of neurotic characters , playing live on television. The supporting performances specially by Amruta Subhash as the Boss and Soham Majumdar as the Voice, are bitch-perfect and pitch-perfect , respectively. But it is Kartik Aaryan whose powerful performance holds the film together. His journey from a self-serving scumbag to a conscientious newshound is convincingly achieved by the young actor. This is his best performance to date, and one that puts him ahead of all competition. I see Kartik winning all the best-actor awards this year. Dhamaka is one of Netflix India’s most hard-hitting films in recent times. There are many reasons why it must be seen. Besides being a thoroughly entertaining thriller it opens up wounds that never healed. They never will. Not in a society where the conscience is a luxury.
Jai Bhim (Amazon Prime Video)
Not flawless by any stretch of the imagination. Loud and bombastic . But nonetheless effective. Jai Bhim, the chant of the followers of the champion of the downtrodden Baba Ambedkar which in present day context of socio-economic disparity, has even more relevance than what it had 20 or 30 years ago, is a relevant work, lacking in nuance but never short of genuine feeling. This loud but hard-hitting film on poverty and police brutality is set in the 1987 and based on a real-life incident where an innocent man from the destitute Irula tribe in Tamil Nadu was taken into custody and beaten to death. The survivalist narrative, punctuated by cries of anguish and whoops of triumph, is a terrific star-vehicle for Suriya who steps in 30 minutes into the plot, to play the heroic lawyer Chandru who, we are told , habitually fights cases for the downtrodden. Suriya is most comfortable in the messianic role imbibing his compassionate character with an unreasonably steep amount of empathy. I guess a society based on monstrous discrimination does need Chandru to stand up for the voiceless. But in reality, how many such messiahs come forward to rescue the powerless multitude ?Here is where Jai Bhim takes a nosedive into fantasy. It portrays the activist-lawyer as a wand waver, weaving his magic through a complex and murky labyrinth of legalese,b ringing the wrongdoers to heel. It’s all done for claps. At 2 hours and 42 minutes the film overstays its welcome by at least half an hour. But till the end we care about what happens to Senggeni, and never mind the actress’ smeared dark skin-tone which keeps fluctuating in colour.
Finch (Apple)
I am not too fond of films about robots. But here the humanoid contraption is so well voiced by Caleb Landry Jones it never feels like a set-up. The disarmingly artless film about a man, a dog and a robot has deep resonant feel to it, the music by Gustavo Santaolalla creating a harmony between Nature’s devastation and Man’s urge to heal the hole. The film’s stunning visuals of open skies and looming storms furnish it with a distinctly epic look that made me think about how spectacular it would all seem on the large screen. Happily the size of the screen doesn’t limit the scope of the drama. The feel of empathy compassion and healing when we need them the most loom large in this drama of doom devastation and a sliver of salvation. Not since Castaway have I seen Tom Hanks so immersed in his character that I could not see Hanks on screen at all. Like Castaway , Finch is a one-man show. There is only Hanks to hold our attention for two hours. And boy, does he get it! More character needed to populate the plot? Hanks, but no thanks. This is a work of art embedded in a profound humanism. On the surface it is just a routine dystopian drama about am aging ravaged post-apocalypse survivor who is counting his days. But underneath the weather-worn climate-ravaged surface , Finch secretes a tragic underbelly. Compassion empathy and the human touch are spotlighted in scenes that could have easily slipped into schmaltzy nonsense. For his genuine compassion and an ongoing surge of regret and nostalgia for a lost civilization Director Miguel Sapochnik invokes tremendous respect from us. The Game Of Thrones director is at the top of his game here. Miguel is no survivalists’ champion. He is not here to make a statement on how to cope with impending doom. Into the doom he injects a wealth of hope and sunshine. Just the sheer joy of watching Tom Hanks and his dog sharing a post-cataclysmic kinship is indescribable. Both Hanks and the canine Goodyear(played by Seamus) are brilliant actors, Hanks a little superior (sorry, Doggie).I could see so much history on Hanks’s face that it became crystal-clear that the director couldn’t have chosen a more vital and vivid representative of a post-apocalypse civilization. We see remnants of a lost world embedded in every shred of Hanks’ being. In his last film News Of The World we saw Tom Hanks saving a teenage girl from impending peril. Here too it’s not so much about self-preservation but the will to survive in a congenial climate.
Tick Tick….Boom (Netflix)
Tick Tick…Boom captures the innocence of the AIDS era beautifully. Its hero is the real-life standup comic Jonathan Larson whom I knew nothing about until I saw this film. By getting ‘Spiderman’ Andrew Garfield to play the arresting Larson, the film does disservice as well as a favour to the iconic stage performer. Favour, because audiences immediately warm up to Garfield as Larson , since Garfield is a personable easily identifiable actor. It also does disservice to the real-life character for the same reason. I spent two hours watching Garfield bringing his own impish charm to the character. If we are to believe Garfield then Larson was boyish charming and self-centred to the point of not noticing his girlfriend and bestfriend’s deep sense of isolation and unhappiness from Larson as he ploughs along relentlessly towards the goal of achieving his dreams. The ensuing loss of personal relationships is conveyed in the deeply tragic performances of Alexandra Shipp and Robin de Jesus as Girlfriend and Bestfriend, respectively, Jesus, specially, is splendidly tragic when the bestfriend contracts AIDS. Through all these personal losses, Garfield’s Larson remains stoically unmoved. I get the whole thing about an artiste’s self centredness. But there is more here at play. Garfield is just not able to express the self-disappointments of an artiste so caught up with his dreams that he can’t bring himself to care for those who love him. I think this is an actor’s failure that needed to be mended in this charming but damaged drama of annulled dreams. Nonetheless the film has a lot going for itself. It is a musical, and the songs are thoughtful and easy on the ears, specially, ‘Louder Than Words’ and ‘Come To Your Senses.’ Larson’s short but brilliant lifescape is edited to convey both immediacy and nostalgia, sometimes simultaneously. We see Garfield’s Larson on stage talking about his life even as ‘life’ does its own dance elsewhere. Tick Tick…Boom is a sunny sparkling musical. But it rise-to-fame tropes are all too familiar. From the initial frustrations, to the failed auditions, to the sudden recognition, we know how all of this will finally play itself out even if we have to pretend to ourselves that this is no ordinary rags-to-riches biopic. Which in many ways, it is not.
Drushyam 2 (Amazon Prime Video)
As far as faithful remakes go, Drushyam 2 reprising in Telugu, pretty much the whole scenario, lock stock and barrel, from the original Malayalam film, is a job competently done. Veteran Venkatesh has lately been seen in some socially relevant films, notably Narappa (also on Amazon) which was a more flexible remake of a Tamil film Asuran. Drushyam 2 doesn’t budge an inch from the Malayalam original. Which is not a bad thing, considering the plot’s watertight alibi for a remake is its protagonist’s watertight alibi for a murder that he committed six year earlier, in the first part of the Drushyam /Drishyam franchise. For Rambabu(Venkatesh) it is still family first. He will do anything to protect his wife and daughters from harm even if it means killing and burying a boy who harassed Rambabu’s daughter. I have never been too fond of the plot’s Good Murderer –Bad Murderer distinction that writer Jeetu Joseph makes .The thesis of Joseph’s dubious morality gets an even thornier thrust in Part 2 with cops who are made to feel guilty for trying to trick Rambabu and his family into a confession as he gets away with murder, quite literally. The end-game in Drushyam 2 is all about moving around the pieces on the chess board until the law enforcers are check mated. In keeping with the law-is-an-ass spirit of the original here too the investigating cop is left fuming and swearing to get Rambabu the next time. Yes, Part 3 is on the way. Rejoice, all you Drishyam fans.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.
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