India Best Films- Page 3 of 3

Waltair Veerayya – Telugu Cinema Tackling the Unserious with Confidence

It is perhaps not the most original sentiment in the world to declare a Telugu blockbuster interesting for subverting its tone, audience & subject, yet Waltair Veerayya, the newest from Bobby Kolli, has a blast doing so in spades. Waltair (Chiranjeevi) is a smuggler, often apparently a fisherman, hired by state police to extradite Solomon Caesar (Bobby Simha), a drug kingpin wanted for the murder of a slew of local authorities. Waltair hunts Solomon using his veritible tricks of the trade library – including such tactics as, disguising oneself in the villain’s hotel, wearing extremely noticeable attire, and bumbling around an airport with the crew.

The trailer for Waltair Veerayya, which gives some semblance of how this concept is supposed to come across, is a never-ending barrage of action shots in various settings with our lead placed squarely in the middle, as if kicking his enemies off the barriers of the screen for nearly three hours. What the trailer doesn’t reveal is how disorienting Kolli keeps his layered gang novela: the initial sequence of Solomon’s entrance promises a brutal story of “the beast hunter” meeting his prey. What follows could not be more mistakable for a common Telugu comedy, our lead a scruffy, drunken weirdo making every inconceivably silly intention a happy accident for the trueness of law enforcement.

At its best, Chiranjeevi—an actor no stranger to notoriously strange cinematic environments, but digging himself well into a charismatically aged humor here—leads an ensemble that comes across as tried and practiced with the sort of genre-mixed kerfuffle Kolli wants to embrace. The baffling whiplash from playing pants-down-level punchlines smoothly into serious, spotlight-coordinated corruption busting should be a lot more strained than this, and Waltair Veerayya‘s first half might as well feel part miracle for not allowing the actors to fall into tonal abyss.

Post-intermission leaves a lot to be desired, a commonplace travel back in time to the roots of Waltair’s true enemy, and true origins, that rides action de résistance far more than the wholesomely juggled first half. Where boring plot characters are interjected for sustenance, an entirely jarring final minutes at least makes up for what Kolli seems to be going for – memorable accountability, in spite of wanting so earnestly to play out the class clown role for himself.

Seen at Cinemark 18 & XD, Los Angeles

Kuttey (India) – An Insult to Global Action Influences

By Sebastian Torrelio

A defiant cry: “For the Revolution!” An undramatic cut sharpening a wooden facade, a blade lifted, an obvious prop blood squirter, and suddenly – a face rested decapitated. Kuttey is at least somewhat consistent in such bland motifs and imagery being used to create no motivational action.

Bhardwaj’s metaphorical tale on the animalistic tendencies of our most low-down gruesome criminals spills itself over three different perspectives, a concurrent narrative of outer-Mumbai seediness broken down into one gang’s interaction with another, and then another, each on the hunt for some dogged on-the-move cash flow.

Edited like a child was let loose with the footage, Kuttey plays a plethora of the book’s tricks: music preempts slowdowns of action for no reason besides to make shootouts seem cool; characters often don’t seem to know why they have to enter dialog scenes when intuition gathers – it would be easier to move onto the next opportunity to confront someone over drugs and guns.

India’s obsession with displaced timeline stories cannot survive an era of filmmakers unwilling to contend with how to keep the storytelling structure interesting, aside from names, gore, song queues and a really pompous intermission break. An action one isn’t interesting when you’re pacing your camera this slowly, when there is so little interaction between targets on-screen hidden by slow pans to other foes shooting from offscreen. Ended again, of course, by the overly dramatic slow-mo.

The film’s central young couple, portrayed by Radhika Madan and Shardul Bharadwaj, stop the film dead in its tracks. Madan brings an unbridled level of perceived mischievousness not only for the crime-adjacent world her family and loved ones place her in, but for her own curious mind, a soul willing to steer the film into a risk-fraught location (read: sex and intrigue) above something spoiled by bullet cases and fake blood splatters. It’s meant to thematically appeal to a traditionally masculine audience yet somehow plays more like a channel flip on an old television set, the brutalist Kuttey unfurled as a more sensitive homestead tale.

If the grand message at play is that crime is indefensible, then maybe so much of the film, namely its resolution, shouldn’t be played with this much animosity. Kuttey doesn’t value its own stock of human emotions well enough to make any considerate plays of its web of characters, choosing instead to let them fall into the pulpy pile of warnings and conflict foreboding.

Seen at Cinemark 18 & XD, Los Angeles

Writing With Fire – Sundance Film Festival 2021

If you’re looking for an inspirational documentary that follows a group of trailblazing women in India, consider Writing with Fire. It follows a group of Dalit women – Dalits being the lowest caste in the Indian caste system – that start a newspaper in Uttar Pradesh, one of India’s largest and most politically important states. The newspaper, Khabar Lahariya, stands out from the others both because it’s written only by women and because of its emphasis to seek out the truth no matter what.

It starts with one of the paper’s lead journalists reporting on a local rape case. In it, we witness their reporting process. Meera first interviews the victim’s family for first hand info, then heads to the police station to press them further on the crime, before beginning to form a report. We see this process a few times throughout the film as they interview politicians, Dalit women without sewage systems that the government has promised, and worker’s strikes. Because of the topics they shine a light on and their determination to find answers, they face a lot of trouble.

This is clear when the reporters are out in the field. One reporter has to confront one union leader who at first refuses to talk with her because she’s a woman. Another reporter covering the upcoming elections has to banter with the male politicians just to try and get comments from them. It’s clear that being patronized is a part of their day job in the patriarchal society. However, they also have to put up with it at home from husbands that berate their independent working spirit.

It’s not just the patriarchy that is framed as dangerous to the reporters as the rising Hindu nationalism within India is posed as a threat too. One example is the young member of some kind of Hindu Youth League that patrols his neighborhood armed with a machete to fight crime. His role feels a lot like the Hitler Youth from Nazi Germany. He doesn’t appear to have much direction apart from his hatred of Muslims. The rhetoric of the local politicians are equally alarming, with the directors pointing out the new state leaders remarks that Islam is intrinsically linked with Terrorism. It feels like that the freedom of Khabar Lahariya and its female journalists are threatened by the continued rise of the male dominated BJP Hindu political party.

Lastly, it’s quite interesting to see exactly how a start-up newspaper is run. In addition to seeing how they gather a story from outside, we get to see how the newspaper is run at the office. We see their daily meetings – including one where one reporter gets disciplined for a low output – and hear about their growth strategies. Currently, they’re all embracing the switch to the growing digital reality by equipping all their reporters with camera phones and giving them lessons about YouTube. As the film runs, these YouTube clips are inserted into the narrative as milestones for their growth as their subscribers rocket to a few thousand after a few weeks work.

Whilst it’s probably a bit longer than it needs to be, Writing with Fire is well worth a watch for anyone interested in learning about inspirational women battling the patriarchy around the world. If anything, you’ll learn a bit about the current state of India and running a newspaper.