THE BEST TITLE FOR THE SAFEST BET

DIRECTED BY COLIN TREVORROW 

STARRING: AUBREY PLAZA, MARK DUPLASS, JAKE JOHNSON, KARAN SONI, JENICA BERGERE with MARY LYNN RAJSKUB and KRISTEN BELL 

If I have a problem with mumblecore, I’d have a problem with every film that is a part and representative of it. Accepting such a film, then, becomes a problem. It’s the bane of genre-filmmaking, in essence. The genre needs sanction for the film to gain appreciation. A lot of gems are left out in their compulsiveness to stick to stereotype. There have been the rarer ones who have chosen to defy. It really is a matter of choice. 

‘Safety not Guaranteed’ – winner of the Screenplay prize at Sundance last year, which was the reason I chose to watch it – is a film that’s a product of its genre, out and out. It’s a flag bearer of a nation I’m at war with. The whole, typical indie stereotype, you know? A first-person narration with a musical score by some folksy, obscure band, shot on steadicam in the manner of artificially flavoured reality. Every character in the film is heavily made up, Darius (Aubrey Plaza) speaks like Diablo Cody wrote her lines, in a teen movie that has crossed borders and gone deeper, rendering depth useless. 

All along, I had to bear in mind that the film had won writing honours. Not filmmaking honours, writing honours. The dialogues engage with you as much as the characters engage with each other, and – this can be said for sure about the film – they do engage with each other. In that, I mean that none of them recite their lines like it’s an assignment, with Arnav (Karan Soni) being a possible exception. He’s there to fit the one-Indian-per-movie quota, or so you think for most of the time. But there are a few precious moments when you give in to his presence. He isn’t merely a plot device, even though he could’ve been an interesting use of one, if only. 

There’s nothing too incredible about the film. It’s perhaps the subtlest handling of time-travel ever – which stresses on everything but the actual act. What makes these people want to go back? Which time do they want to go back to? What do they want to do over there? It’s not frivolous science-fiction that plays with the odds. It’s a human endeavour – the coming out of characters who struggle to express themselves. To learn a little more about Kenneth, Darius must earn his trust. And vice-versa. He’s looking for a partner to time-travel with. Why does he want one? You would answer his question. He does too, when he really needn’t. 

Mark Duplass (director of such films as Cyrus and Jeff, who lives at Home with brother Jay) is Kenneth. He’s an extension of Ryan Gosling’s Lars Lindstrom in ‘Lars and the Real Girl.’ He wants to time-travel. He knows he can. He’s suspect and a news-item, and Aubrey Plaza’s deadpan Darius is the investigative journalist who smiles so rare it’s flattering, almost seductive, when she does. Again, commendable, if not for the fact that it’s a stereotype, lately – thanks to the likes of Greta Gerwig. 

Darius needs to play along to know more about Kenneth. She plays along to cure him, perhaps – in the lines of Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson) in ‘Lars and the Real Girl.’ And there’s also the tiniest (obvious) possibility that she isn’t playing along and actually believes in his fantasy. Like Jesse and Leslie in ‘Bridge to Terebithia.’ What’s good about the film is that it enunciates neither of these possibilities as stronger than the other, which gives the viewer as open-minded an experience as you would want it to. 

Neat bundles of bravado, humour and vulnerability, we have two of those vying for pride of position. One, obviously, is Duplass, at the centre of action. The other is Jake Johnson, who plays Jeff Schwensen, the reporter/bum who takes a couple of interns to Washington so he can track an old love of his. She’s called Liz (Jenica Bergere) and he talks to her on Facebook. He has pictures of her from when she was 18, when she was skinny and blonde; attractive, in short. Now, she’s 38, grown-up and past a lot of shit. His coming to terms with Liz is a sort of coming to terms with himself and the fact that he is, in fact, aging. In this process, his character shows as much of a transition as that of Kenneth, when he warms up to the woman. 

But then he’s reminded that it’s always going to be cold in Washington. He embraces it. He has no choice but that. 

As seems to be an ongoing theme, ‘Safety not Guaranteed’ is a film about trust, almost obviously. It’s a struggle against insecurity that believes in a human victory. It’s as watertight as ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ in its science-fiction element, in the fact that it doesn’t speak much about it. If I could time-travel, I’d stop mumblecore from happening. I would break the indie tradition. And then, a film like ‘Goodbye Solo’ would have happened, which is perhaps mankind’s most sincere attempt at exploring life, loss and death. And that would tell me that my mission has been successful, even before I had gone.

DJANGO BEGINS, RUNS LOOSE, KNOWS NO LIMITS

DIRECTED BY QUENTIN TARANTINO 

STARRING: JAMIE FOXX, CHRISTOPH WALTZ, LEONARDO DICAPRIO, KERRY WASHINGTON, DON JOHNSON, DENNIS CHRISTOPHER, LAURA CAYOUETTE, AMBER TAMBLYN with FRANCO NERO, BRUCE DERN, QUENTIN TARANTINO and SAMUEL L. JACKSON 

Kamal Haasan – in the context of the recent ‘Viswaroopam’ mix-up – called cinema an ‘aerated drink’ – something you drink if you want to, where to take it or not is a choice you own. While I could see where he was coming from, I couldn’t agree with his statement. Not one bit. Cinema is both cause and effect of how things are, how people are; how they thought and acted, communicating what they had intended to communicate through the film, and having made it in the first place. 

Having said that, I’ve always had trouble situating Quentin Tarantino in the present day, as controversial as that’s going to sound – uncontroversial if construed as stupid, which would further be a downfall. There’s no doubt that Tarantino – who, along with the Coen Brothers, undoubtedly personifies the wit and wackiness of here and now – is as much a symbol of current consciousness as one can be. A stretch of imagination might even canvas him to be exactly what post-modernism in cinema is all about, for he is someone who reinterprets the past in the style of the present and is constantly aware that he does. And in his awareness of the fact that he’s retelling, he finds a story of his own to tell. 

I’m fresh from a discussion on filmmakers of the present day with special focus on Tarantino as somebody who’s bothersome in the fact that his disregard for real-world issues doesn’t come across as problematic, per se. Genre-filmmaking gives him that comfort. He isn’t a continuation from yesterday’s trouble at the office or today’s misunderstanding at home that people tend to run away from. A Tarantino film begins and ends on film-reel. Or whichever digital device has come to replace it. His writing and technique are bottles adorned with gems of ideas that bear his signature as he pours a drink he had collected in droplets from what had percolated through grains of sand, of time gone by. 

It’s a 1961 Chateau Cheval-Blanc. And he would waste it on KFC and a bag of fries as he asks you to be tasteful. 

‘Django Unchained’ had its defining moment somewhere near its 150th minute, when Broomhilda Von Shaft (Kerry Washington) – a captured black woman, a slave – trembles at the sound of footsteps, and clings to her blanket like it could save her from whatever it is that whoever was to come would be capable of. The door bursts open, its frame is a spotlight on the wall. We see the silhouette of a man wearing a hat. Until ‘Django Unchained’ happened, there would’ve been a hundred percent chance that that man was white, in the manner of a John Wayne or a Clint Eastwood, or an Eli Wallach, at least. “It’s me, baby,” says the shadow/silhouette. It’s a black man who goes by the name of Django Freeman (Jamie Foxx), thanks to a doctor who was crazy enough to have hated slavery in pre-Civil-War times. 

Christoph Waltz plays that doctor – Dr. Eric Schultz, a dentist who has quit his profession to round up corpses and earn himself a reward. He is a bounty hunter. Django gets comfortable playing deputy for the span of an hour and a half, with the doctor being rather gun-in-cheek with his humour. What he can’t beat, he blows off. And when he can’t blow it off, he talks his way ahead. There’s one encounter where he kills a sheriff to get to negotiate with the U.S. Marshall. His profession, he says, is about “getting paid for killing white people.” Nothing could excite dear Django more. 

Bounty-hunting with Dr. Schultz has very few rules, all of which are of utmost importance. Every con needs them to play characters they shouldn’t break. Django’s first mission requires him to identify and help exterminate three men known as the ‘Brittle Brothers.’ Freed from slavery for God knows how long, Django is allowed to wear clothes as he sees fit – which he takes to a level that one of the women slaves at the plantation shows surprise that he chose to wear it and wasn’t forced into it. He’s allowed a gun as long as he’d use it. And Dr. Schultz has something like an elephant-rifle that can’t fire without pulling some entrails out to trouble the censor board with instances of gore. 

If the first con is to show how good the two of them are, the second comes to show how evenly they could be matched. Dr. Schultz crosses work boundaries to ask Django about his sweetheart. He tells him about the Siegfried-Brünnhilde legend, and how Siegfried climbed a mountain, tamed a dragon and walked through a ring of fire to rescue his beloved. Every German, he says, would give anything to help a Siegfried get his Brünnhilde back. Over dinner on the rocks, they plan their next con. 

This time, the Doctor and Django play a Mandingo trader, and a slaver – a sort of wrestling consultant, crisp and cut-throat like an army commander – as they find out that Broomhilda had been sold to Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) from ‘Candyland’, an estate down in Mississippi. Django throws caution to the winds as he treats the wrestlers (whom he had come to inspect) like dogs as real dogs maul one such called D’Artagnan – a wrestler who dies to show us what Calvin is capable of. Dr. Schultz does his share in asking for ‘Hildi’ the moment he arrives at Calvin’s doorstep. 

Two scenes captured my attention at Candyland. The moment they – the Doctor, Django and Calvin – get there, Calvin tells Steven (Samuel L. Jackson), an Alfred of sorts, that “that is Django” and they’re supposed to hate each other. Steven, probably a bleach away from being inducted into the white-man-hall-of-fame, doesn’t think twice. He has no reason on his own to hate Django. But then, there’s the fact that he’s the Big Man’s property, making littler men little. It could also be a tussle between the privileged and the liberated. Still, he hates Django until the end, for the simple reason that the white man asked him to. 

The other scene – one DiCaprio tries to make his own, losing out to a hammer and a bang – is skulduggery in a literal sense. It’s the typical Tarantino threat being dished out, the quintessential offer he won’t let you refuse. The scene almost plays out like a joke. I did something I wasn’t supposed to do and was amused with the result. Christoph Waltz, as we all know, shot to fame for playing a Nazi tyrant in ‘Inglorious Basterds.’ DiCaprio, on the other hand, is as soft as Hollywood can get. This in mind, what we get is an inversion. In a showcase of ruthlessness and one’s ability to intimidate in the Tarantino brand of terror, DiCaprio does well. Waltz tells him so. Like I said, the scene plays out like an inside joke, ending with another one of those ‘foot massage’ things that Tarantino had popularized with ‘Pulp Fiction’ and a revelation that Alexandre Dumas was actually black. 

With Django playing apprentice to a rock-star for two-thirds of the film’s length, ‘Django Unchained’ works as a beginning story. There’s the classic case of “I’ve taught you everything you know” minus the betrayal. What these two men share both exemplify and redefine chemistry in the film sense of the word. They aren’t master and disciple. They aren’t brothers. You could call them friends, but there hasn’t been a test of faith. What starts off as a ‘you win, I win’ proposal takes a host of detours and lands up in a safe little place in your heart and the heart of cinema itself. The film is about a hero rising. The Doctor helps the film on its way by helping the hero do what he ought to do – rise. Every German, like he says, would give anything to help a Siegfried. A Tarantino character would be German, find a Siegfried and give his life to help his cause for the sake of the film. This is as pure as friendship can get. 

The shot-taking and camera speak of a man who is defined by his trade. It’s like he sits in front of a big-screen monitor when the shot is being taken and talks to his cinematographer on a walkie-talkie from there. Every sequence overstays its time, its elegance stretched to the limit. In one such is a wounded man caught in the crossfire as a shootout happens. Every bullet that goes astray ends up hitting him. It happens once. Twice. Three times. Four times. Five times. You think you’ve gotten the point when Tarantino makes that man tell you that you have, indeed, gotten the point. It’s ‘overkill’ in every sense of the word, done with panache. The literal sense too, if you get what I’m saying. A mortally-wounded man being shot at again and again and again, for splashes of blood and whimpers you think you’ve had enough of. You get what I’m saying? 

Which brings me back to the point of film being an ‘aerated drink.’ It’s not Tarantino’s definition. His wouldn’t be too far from it either. It reminds me of what Fatih Akin said to explain ‘Soul Kitchen’ – an exciting film – after something like ‘the Edge of Heaven.’ “I could really use the restaurant as a symbol for filmmaking,” he said. “The chef is much like a director, cooking and improvising. The owner of a restaurant is much like the producer of a film. The customers are like audiences; the dishes are like films. You even have film-critics with the critics of the restaurant.” As creator of this simulation, Akin manifests himself in the chef, the central character who spices the dishes with whatever he wants them to have; whatever they ask for. Dinners turn into orgies where music takes centre-stage. A health inspector and a shark (who’s after the restaurant) pair up and the chef actually films them ‘at it’ on his camera-phone. 

“All you do is criticize, criticize, criticize,” says Tarantino, through the man whose wife made the masks, in the scene with the Ku Klux Klan – possibly one of the weakest of scenes. Another comes at the end when Django cons a bunch of Australians, Tarantino one among them. He tricks them into giving him a gun so he can shoot them with it. In the line of fire, Tarantino holds a bag of dynamite and explodes. Why did he have to take the dynamite from the saddle? So he can hold it in front when he gets shot at. So he can explode with it. Hitchcock said there’s excitement in the suspense that precedes a bang than the bang itself. Tarantino could go to war with him. He’d tell you he’s going to shoot you in the knee and he’d shoot you there to show you he can still get you excited about it. 

‘Django Unchained’ is yet another guilty pleasure from the man who specializes in them and delivers them like pizza. The only one who can make two black men wrestling for their lives more erotic than a temptress named Sheba who waits for her prey. You know you don’t need it. You know it’s bad for you. Like a dead horse on an open wound, as he would say. A ten on ten, where the scale is not yours.

RIGHT UPPERCUT WITH GENTLE BLUE EYES

 

DIRECTED BY SHAWN LEVY 

STARRING: HUGH JACKMAN, DAKOTA GOYO, EVANGELINE LILY, ANTHONY MACKIE, OLGA FONDA, KARL YUNE with KEVIN DURAND, JAMES REBHORN and HOPE DAVIS 

The closest association ‘Real Steel’ might have with the Oscars is that both happen to take place in the same country. That, or it might’ve been nominated for a couple of technical awards – like sound mixing or editing or special effects, because the film is a fairly good audio-visual achievement. In the event of my Oscar-lead-up, I should probably have picked up a ‘Best Film’ nominee from the past that I hadn’t discussed – like ‘War Horse’ or ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’ – or even bothered watching. 

The last film I took up to analyze – David O. Russell’s ‘the Silver Linings Playbook’ (scroll down for review or click here) – found myself at an all-time low on the review-scale. I found out what was going wrong. This year, I find, has had very little to inspire. Every year, I try to catch up on the ‘best films’ made with one desire – to come across something that can truly represent this generation, this era, this paradigm to completion, and not merely on a technological scale. 

‘Life of Pi’ was supposed to be that movie. It didn’t work for me. ‘Argo’ would be Hollywood's pride, mixing the studio-picture with American consciousness. Tarantino hasn’t ever attempted to dissociate himself from the film world and represent humanity on the whole. ‘Lincoln’, again, sounds like a mix of both – of classic Hollywood storytelling and American values. I would not go to the lengths of calling these films jingoistic, but you get what I’m saying, right? 

There’s a whole lot of absentees. Ramin Bahrani – without whom it’s been a painful three years – needs to come back. So do Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. It’s too soon to expect Thomas McCarthy, after ‘Win Win’ the year before last – delightful; one of the year’s best, easily. Alexander Payne has a film coming soon, set in his hometown. It’s the second time I’ve referred to him on a review, in two days. Not good. 

I’ve always loved cinema. I hate to sound distinguishing, but for someone who loves film, I haven’t been content. I think the creative world can do better. There’s a lot of films I haven’t watched. There’s a lot of films I don’t even have access to. Given that, maybe I’m selling it short. But that’s only because I don’t have the luxury of patience. It’s been a year since I’ve had a film experience that’s made me truly belong. The last time I had that was when I watched Marc Webb’s ‘the Amazing Spider-Man’ – a story of youth, mortality and crazy romance. In a world where superhero movies have bitter, morbid love stories, it was a kiss of life exchanged between young guns firing at the same time. 

Contrast that with a film that kept saying “life’s hard enough as it is,” ‘the Silver Linings Playbook’ made it harder. I struggle with down-to-earth fiction. I think it takes a tall story to really bring one down to the ground. That, or life itself. I think it’s a thin line – I’m actually debating it inside my head. What Woody Allen could do with ‘Midnight in Paris’, he didn’t do with ‘Manhattan.’ 

Okay, that's not quite true. It's out of order as well. I can’t discuss filmmaking trends with Allen as an example, even if he has shown changes with time (at his own pace). 

The point of contention is this. On the one hand, a slight stretch of imagination in a film that promises reality seems unforgivable. On the other, we have those that never attempt to come close to the ground and yet find a way to appeal to the deepest of your senses. 

‘Real Steel’ is one such film. It’s set in a future that looks like the past. Culture gets accentuated – human beings get more rustic as robots resemble them to the best of their ability. Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) manages one that’s as untrustworthy as he is – it takes a good, solid beating, he can’t patch it up anymore. He moves on. One more to the dirty pile. Son Max Kenton (Dakota Goyo) arrives, bringing with him this ancient-looking, puny specimen that shows some traits they hadn’t seen in robots before – the ability to obey and understand, the latter kept a secret throughout the film, part of a punch-line. 

He calls the robot ‘Atom.’ It looks nice and friendly. If it had lips, it would smile. Max shares a bond with it that’s neither made to sound too special, nor left unstated. He brings it to Charlie, a washed-out boxer from the golden era, made in Hollywood. Deep in debt and no robot to spare, Charlie is pretty much ‘anything goes.’ He goes with Atom, teaching him boxing in something that’s, interestingly, called the ‘shadow mode.’ It means the robot would imitate anything that he does, where what it does is mere shadow. 

I spoke about jingoism, right? Well, the bad guy here is a bot called Zeus that has Darth Vader written all over it – in a film that’s all about father and son, it could’ve well been Atom’s dad, for all you know. Zeus is of Japanese design – made by this man called Tak Mashido (Karl Yune) – and is managed by a Russian tycoon called Farra Lemkova (Olga Fonda), two people who might as well have been talking exhibits in a display of stereotypes. There’s a cowboy who calls a black man (Anthony Mackie) ‘homey’ who calls him ‘partner’ in return. They bond over a hundred grand the partner wouldn’t cough up. 

Alright, one too many challengers in one too many big fights over the years. Agreed. ‘Real Steel’ almost faithfully (deliberately?) follows ‘Rocky’ with its plotline. ‘Rocky’ was the everyday man’s struggle for recognition. ‘Real Steel’ is a man’s search for himself, there being no surprise in the place where he finds himself again. The robot has twinkling blue eyes that seem to invite you into its depths. So does the boy. It’s not the first time that Shawn Levy has handled something like this – he directed ‘Night at the Museum’ and its sequel, both of which stick to the theme of man discovering himself in something seemingly inanimate. “I just want you to fight for me,” says Max, in the scene just before the last act. Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) didn’t need to be told this. Neither does Charlie, but then Max has the bigger mouth. 

There are places where ‘Real Steel’ exasperates you with its faith in Hollywood clichés. But it has an undercurrent that’s fairly consistent. What can’t win a fist-fight beats you with a show of heart, in the manner of saying too much as opposed to never saying what needs to be said. 

To Mr. Levy and the ‘Real Steel’ camp, technology is about holograms and fancy screens where the wires don’t show. Atom is an old-timer even in that respect. He steams up like a bad radiator, his wires spark and his eyes flicker as he staggers like he’s disorientated – at one point, the commentator actually uses that word, with quite a bit of ‘almost-human’ references thrown in as well. Somehow, you wish it was a little under-played a little. Like ‘Cinderella Man’ maybe. Jim Braddock (Russell Crowe) would make a fair Charlie, give or take a few pounds. And I’m most definitely not comparing boxing styles here. 

‘Real Steel’ is ‘Rocky’ with Adrian replaced by a brat to make it more about men than before. Where, among a bunch of beasts and bureaucrats, man triumphs. Well, almost triumphs, with scope for betterment – betterment that means getting together, holding close to those who matter as Hollywood defines them, in a world that won’t go beyond the boxing ring. It’s a sturdy-but-modest piece of furniture with a load of varnish it could’ve done without. And it passes woodshop, with honours.

The film played on TV when I desperately thought I needed a break from this year’s monotony and the overflowing list of films I’m yet to watch. It’s the tall film I thought I needed to bring me back to ground level. Having sparred with robots, I should – hopefully – be able to deal with humans better now.

TOO MUCH SILVER LINING, UNDERESTIMATING GRAY

DIRECTED BY DAVID O. RUSSELL 

STARRING: BRADLEY COOPER, JENNIFER LAWRENCE, ROBERT DE NIRO, JACKIE WEAVER, JOHN ORTIZ, JULIA STILES, SHEA WIGHAM, PAUL HERMAN with CHRIS TUCKER and ANUPAM KHER 

There’s something good and great about putting all your cards on the table. It also tells me whether I’d want to play my hand as part of an informed decision. It’s double-edged; it’s also the only way to go. The world can thrive on lies, deceit and sleights of hand. I wouldn’t want to. I put all my cards on the table. I’d expect you to do that as well. Fairness could be over-demanding like that. And it’s only fair that it is, if you think about it. 

‘the Silver Linings Playbook’ is a lot like Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence). She’s the page-turner on David O. Russell’s script. She’s the meta-statement he makes through the film. She’s an active part of the rhetoric as well. I’d get back to that at a later point on this review, but accepting her is similar to accepting the film; it’s too tempting not to. By that I don’t mean a one-woman no-show. The film is anything but that. And, nonetheless, this is a woman who had held her whole office to ransom before she went to war with herself. The promos call it ‘sex-addiction.’ I think that’s a bad term to call the situation itself, to begin with, let alone hers. But she has a reputation. 

Patrick ‘Pat’ Solitano (Bradley Cooper, in his first ever acting role) sticks his neck out to change that reputation of hers. He’s fresh out of a mental facility and is diagnosed as having been undiagnosed bipolar – Dr. Patel (Anupam Kher) does that diagnosis for the audience. Their interaction is convenient. You come to learn that Pat - previously a history-sub at the local school - had assaulted the history teacher whom his wife Nikki (Brea Bee, unspeaking) had an affair with. You come to learn there’s a trigger (Zoolander, anyone?) – ‘My Cherie Amour’ by Stevie Wonder – their wedding song that was, ironically, playing when he caught them in the shower together. You come to learn he has a history with delusion and violence, in the fact that he almost beat the man to death. You come to learn there is a restraining order. 

This is as useful as any Indian actor has ever been in a Hollywood motion picture. 

Oh, and even though you don’t really need Dr. Patel for that, you come to learn that Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro) is just about as crazy. And when I call Pat crazy, I don’t refer to his diagnosed condition as much as I refer to the method he chooses to fight it. It’s called ‘Excelsior’ – a Latin term that translates to ‘ever upward’ – as American as it can get. In fact, it’s supposed to be the motto of New York city, something the Eagles should’ve known before they let Pat hit the stands in their game against the Giants. Pat intends to recycle his negative energies, put them in the garbage bag he wears, and transform them into positive energies. Richard Hoover (Greg Kinnear) tries something similar with his ‘seven-step success’ plan in ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, if you remember. Both films represent as much as they parody the American household. 

Russell does a good job fleshing out the characters that make the household and beyond, most of whom have a mix of craft and genuineness to back them, in terms of actors and performances. Jackie Weaver, as the ever-frightened Dolores Solitano, Pat’s mother who shuttles between two madmen – one who bets his life and future on a Football team, the other finding himself entangled in such a wager – is a revelation. Russell won Melissa Leo the Supporting Actress Oscar, last time around. Ms. Weaver is among the lot this time –I’m glad she is. It’s hard to play married to De Niro, the comic. You’ve seen Blythe Danner patronize him in the ‘Meet the Parents’ series. There are those Hollywood type parents who win your love with the way they screw up. Weaver, however, sets her own unblemished record. She inspires sincerity in a film that makes an effort to live up to hers. 

Now, I spoke of Pat’s entanglements – there are two. Pat Sr. who wants father-and-son time on his own holds one end of the line. The other belongs to the ex-wife inside Pat’s head – a commitment he had made to himself. To help him transcend, Tiffany entangles herself in both. What follows is two Hollywood clichés – of the messenger and the guiding light – in a film that states quite clearly it doesn’t want to play out like Ernest fucking Hemingway wrote it. 

Here, I come back to my first point on how the film spreads its cards out on the table for everyone to see. It looks promising. You look at yours; you play Pat to its Tiffany impersonation. You have your own ex-wives and Father-concepts, right? Films have come and films have gone that have told you it’s okay to be crazy – the whole world is. ‘the Silver Linings Playbook’ falls in line. It skates on thin ice with denser material below. Like I said, there’s an ex-wife in the picture. We don’t really know the reality in that relationship. Nikki (unspeaking, as I deliberated) doesn’t have her say. Pat has his. It’s David O. Russell speaking, actually. He wants his happy ending. Tiffany deserves it. Jennifer Lawrence, the hottest choice to play self-confident-but-fragile these days, deserves it too. 

Still, I find myself in disagreement. Maybe because I like my Hemingways and Alexander Paynes intact. Maybe because (and this is crucial) by putting itself out there, saving nothing for mystery, the film happened to reduce itself to an option than a mind-instructed, necessary pursuit – pretty much the risk that Tiffany runs, half the time. There’s a voice inside my head that said “the worst I can do right now is consent to marry you,” on Pat’s behalf. Maybe I think the girl doesn’t deserve that either. And who said 'sex-addiction' finds its cure in high-fidelity? Maybe I wanted Pat to be put in that spot, where he is one option among many, for Tiffany. Maybe the right one, but still - an option.

Or maybe it’s just a mood-swing of mine. And maybe I would shed tears of joy watching the film another time, when I’ve taken my meds.

ON ETERNAL SUNSHINE AND SPOTLESS MINDS

DIRECTED BY LORENE SCAFARIA 

STARRING: STEVE CARELL, KEIRA KNIGHTLEY, MELANIE LYNSKEY, ADAM BRODY, ROB CORDDRY, TONITA CASTRO, DEREK LUKE, T.J. MILLER with PATTON OSWALT, NANCY CARELL and MARTIN SHEEN 

Lorene Scafaria wrote and directed ‘Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist’ that starred Kat Dennings, Michael Cera and Ari Graynor. You can almost see that in the premise of her new film ‘Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.’ A woman who is in control of an existing relationship meets a man who isn’t. The difference here is that now he has the option to not want to do anything about it. Nick O’Leary (Cera’s character in ‘Nick and Norah’) needed mending. Dodge Peterson, (Steve Carell) on the other hand, awaits doomsday. The least he can do is sit tight. 

The thing about casting Steve Carell is that you’d find the character hollowed beyond what you’d have intended him to be. Dodge has just had his wife (played, incidentally, by Carell’s real wife Nancy Carell) drop him like he’s got dirt all over. He goes over to a friend’s place in the aftermath. The friend’s wife, initially, sets him up with a friend of hers (Melanie Lynskey) who intends to get the best out of the rest of her days. She then makes a pass at him herself. “Linda (Dodge’s wife) got to do what she wanted to do,” she says. “Why not me?” Dodge is dumbstruck. His only answer is to jump the fence and run away. He does exactly that. 

Penny (Keira Knightley) is introduced to us before she’s introduced to Dodge. We have a shot of her leaving her boyfriend (Adam Brody) as he clings to the door like it’s her, not letting go. Her hair short, Knightley reminded me of her character in ‘Love Actually,’ Richard Curtis’ collage of love stories. She’s from England – not New England, old England – and has an accent. That’s about the only thing about her that is strange in a character that is archetypical American. Emily Blunt was an example in ‘the Five-Year Engagement.’ I don’t know if it’s a trend, but if it is, it’s worth noticing. 

The film begins like it’s going to hang loose on an existential thread, but quickens to define a task for itself by means of its lead characters. Dodge comes across a letter that hadn’t quite reached him, from a high-school sweetheart by the name of Olivia. “Is she the one that got away?” Penny asks him. “Well, they all got away,” he responds, with Carell’s defeatist smile. “She was just the first one.” In that letter, needless to say, Olivia expresses undying love that had just resurfaced, given recent events. Having mentioned he hasn’t got the time or energy to handle ‘someone new,’ Dodge fixates on a past that he intends to bring to whatever remained of a future. 

Penny, on the other hand, calls it quits – something we see right through. It’s not even the usual movie-resolution. “I haven’t seen two people as much in love as they (her parents) are,” she says, when she insinuates that that’s what had possibly had her set such high standards for herself. 21 days wouldn’t be enough to find the one. Knightley works like a miracle in both aspects of frivolity and intensity that doesn’t help a character who finds herself in the most predictable of positions. There is, for instance, a sequence where Penny takes Dodge to Speck (Derek Luke), another ex-boyfriend, who claims he knows her enough to know she’s a “survivalist, more than a romantic,” and hence would choose to stay with him. You smirk because you know better. 

The writer, you find, distorts characters with whims of her own. Is it like Dodge to have his Dad (Martin Sheen) fly her back to where she’s from? Debatable. But mostly, yes. Is it like Penny to come back? You don’t know, for Penny isn’t Penny anymore. The end of the world is bound to do strange things to those who are to face it; perhaps more to those who want to write about it. Lars Von Trier showed us with his ‘Melancholia.’ ‘Seeking a Friend for the End of the World’ could’ve been better if only the ‘end of the world’ part was driven home stronger. What we have looks like a meta-narrative of two characters who are, slowly, becoming aware that their film is going to end. And they simply had to do what the author intended them to do – one shaken out of her skin because she doesn’t know what she’s doing, the other ‘madly in love’ for he’s known to be resolute. 

Yet again, Scafaria evokes memories of another film that you’d almost think she has tried to implicate it. Penny asks Dodge to not let her fall asleep. In ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,’ Clementine (Kate Winslet) asks Joel (Jim Carrey) to not let her sleep so she can cling to her memories – the last she has of them together. Penny’s excuse is hypersomnia. She says she could sleep through an apocalypse and not know the world had ended. But she couldn’t sleep through a flight back home, which means she wouldn’t sleep through an apocalypse. Dodge doesn’t have to do anything. It’s all the work of the end of days - on two promising characters and a writer who shows promise, but in flashes.

THE COLOUR, THE TEXTURE, THE FLAVOUR - OF EXCESS

DIRECTED BY AKIVA SCHAFFER 

STARRING: BEN STILLER, VINCE VAUGHN, JONAH HILL, RICHARD AYOADE, ROSEMARIE DEWITT, WILL FORTE, DOUG JONES, ERIN MORIARTY and BILLY CRUDUP 

‘the Watch,’ previously called ‘Neighbourhood Watch,’ doesn’t start with the usual crash-land of spaceship or meteorite that’d give the entire plot away. There’s never been a movie where the alien wins. There’s only been those, occasionally, where there isn’t a battle as such. Seth Rogen’s involvement (as co-writer, along with buddy Evan Goldberg and Jared Stern) takes you back to the likes of ‘Paul’ on how a mildly successful comedy could be, in terms of contemporary entertainment value. ‘the Watch,’ in comparison, has very few laughs, all in bad taste. The sad part is that you think these characters deserve better. 

Perhaps this could be accounted for by my familiarity with Rogen and his work, but I could almost see ‘the Watch’ shaping up – in the writer’s room and out. Firstly, I think it’s kind of sad that they had to change the title. The ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ poster with the ‘Say no to Aliens’ sign on it gave you some idea on what you were up against. Even though ‘the Watch’ doesn’t exactly keep it a secret – its premise is established in the sequence that immediately follows the opening credits – you’re still confused on what the movie is about. 

The opening credits show a middle-aged man doing middle-aged things about a town called Glenview in Ohio, keeping away from his over-eager wife. He’s in a lot of clubs, we find, but does nothing that means anything. Is this a film about purpose, then? Would it raise the existential question and drop it without an answer, taking to convincing instead, making it a bittersweet mid-life experience of sorts? Ben Stiller, the man who’s perfect for the role, has himself been in a couple of movies where the lacklustre individual finds himself in the midst of the extraordinary. If the ‘Night at the Museum’ movies amount to anything at all, that is. 

“He’s the perfect guy,” I can hear Rogen say. “He’s a little less sorted out, you know, because he’s got PG-13 morals in an R-rated comedy. And he breaks his course because he can’t make pit-stops, you know? But he thinks he’s still in the race. And he needs all these people, all these buddies of his, to run the long road with him. A road where they end up busting alien balls together instead.” 

In ‘Knocked Up,’ there’s a scene where Rogen, playing Ben – an epitome of wasted humanness – asks Alison (Katherine Heigl) who works for ‘E!’ if she’s interviewed Vince Vaughn. He then tells her how he thinks Vaughn would be amazing to hang out with, and how, unlike other celebrity fantasies, he actually thinks his company would be something Vaughn would enjoy. ‘the Watch’ sees Rogen write for that man, which could’ve been a dream come true. They’re different comedians with some striking similarities, I’ve observed. Vaughn strikes me as a person with a slightly more impressionable conscience than Rogen, but that’s about it. They’ve played to their strengths in picking Vaughn for a role. Rogen couldn’t have possibly let him down. 

Franklin (Jonah Hill) is Shia Labeouf’s Mutt Williams gone rogue. I’ve previously expressed how fatigued I am with Hill’s brand of comedy. To put it simply, it hasn’t changed a bit. Franklin does poor switchblade and is even worse as a shot. He’s in the Watch so that he could join the force that rejected him before – and unceremoniously at that. His timing is impeccable, but his jokes suck. ‘Cyrus,’ ‘the Sitter,’ ’21 Jump Street.’ I can count the number of times he’s played an individual who shuttles between a man and an adolescent so fast he doesn’t linger anywhere for long. In fact, I don’t think he’s played anything else. Back in ‘Superbad’ times, he worked as a Rogen duplicate, hired because he looked younger. As his own comic, he’s yet to prove his worth. 

British comedian Richard Ayoade as Jamarcus is endearing because he’s exotic. And also because it’s sad to see him swayed by these gentlemen. He shows surprise at being offered a beer-can. His eyes widen when he ends up at a local orgy. Of course, all these things have reasons stated in context. He’s as funny as the other men in the plot, but when it comes to chemistry, he sticks out like a middle finger. Rosemarie Dewitt as Mrs. Trautwig (Stiller is Evan Trautwig) is wonderful in bits and pieces as the woman who craves for attention from an absent husband, but she’s stunted to a cheerleader when the big boys take over. Her husband had formed the Neighbourhood Watch. Isn’t it sensible for her to head the women’s fitness centre? She looks like she could. Rogen and Goldberg aren’t as thoughtful. 

I’ll tell you what. In the first scene, a Hispanic security guard at Costco finds he’s become an American citizen. He downs a bottle of Vodka to celebrate and lights a doobie, as Kevin Smith would call it. You don’t know why he did that. He wouldn’t know why he did that; neither would Rogen. He had written and performed in ‘Pineapple Express.’ It’s the sort of movie where you don’t know which one is stoned – the actor, the character, or both. If this is him steering away from stereotype, I’d caution him not to. The guard rolls outrage into a joint and lights up. He then gets skinned by an alien. The film goes downhill from there – a trend that’s evident in the career graphs of Rogen and Goldberg, following the success of ‘Superbad’ and ‘Pineapple Express.’ They’re quite the brand. But they push their saleability. Kind of like a Magnum for a peanut-sized member. Pointless.

TAKES ITS OWN SWEET TIME

DIRECTED BY NICHOLAS STOLLER 

STARRING: JASON SEGEL, EMILY BLUNT, RHYS IFANS, CHRIS PRATT, ALISON BRIE, DAVID PAYMER, MIMI KENNEDY, KEVIN HART with DAKOTA JOHNSON and CHRIS PARNELL 

Tom Solomon and Violet Barnes have a five-year long engagement before they break it off and go their separate ways. Their next one lasts for about an hour – five minutes on film. Too long, you say, are the five years they spend together. So long you actually feel the boredom; share the frustration. The next one blows past like a breeze, and you’re scrolling down title credits before you know you are. 

The success of Nicholas Stoller’s ‘the Five-Year Engagement’ (and yes, it is successful as a movie-watching experience) lies in the fact that it shows the long and winding road. What limits its success is, perhaps, the fact that it shows too much of it. I watched the film in two separate sittings. One was before a late morning class. The other was today, a day after Christmas eve. The way it looks, it must have been strategic. Time-out from everyday life, I figured, could’ve made me as intolerant of the film as Tom and Violet were, at one point, of each other. Christmas break gave the right setting to set things right. And it added to the cheer to watch the film do the very same. 

Tom is played by Jason Segel, a role that can very well have been written with him in mind. He’s a chef from San Francisco who can’t understand why there are other places in the world to go to with good old California back home. Violet, who’s played by Emily Blunt, is British and exists to take him away from there – as a person and as a contributor to the plotline. We ask ourselves why she must be British. We answer saying she needn’t. It’s not to Britain that she drags Tom to – it’s just Michigan, after all. 

Violet had earned herself a post-doc in Psychology at the University of Michigan, under the guidance of Dr. Winton Jones (Rhys Ifans), an old Rooster who keeps at it with the crows because he’s still got game. He’s as comparable as he can be distinguished from the character played by Greg Kinnear in Amy Heckerling’s ‘Loser.’ He does nothing to earn your disrespect, and it’s a tad disappointing to see the film do nothing to vindicate him. Like the French cook in ‘Addicted to Love,’ for instance, who deserved his fate probably only because he was crystal-clear in a murky overall. 

‘the Five-Year Engagement’ has its own share of dispensable characters as well – characters who can’t be this dispensable, if you think about it. Dr. Jones is just one of them. On Tom’s side, we have Audrey (Dakota Johnson), a “23-year old airhead, who probably doesn’t know who the fucking Beatles are.” Tom tells her he needs to go back and explore what he had with Violet when he has ‘the Talk’ with her. Audrey goes “Well, she’s an old bitch. There, I’ve explored her for you!” 

I could see writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber smirking at that statement. We all know Audrey is makeshift for Tom. So is the professor, for Violet. That’s how Stoller designed it to be. Neustadter and Weber made no distinction between Summer and Autumn in ‘(500) Days of Summer,’ in spite of the fact that Summer came with a whole movie-load of the good stuff. Autumn would be the next movie, they’d say.

Stoller can be criticized on that count, but lauded on many – including the very same. Tom and Violet have something they haven’t got with any of those other people they’d go on to meet. They have five years of time invested. Five years that would turn six and not four. Violet, we hear, has been in a four-year relationship before. Gideon walks up to her at her Grandmother’s funeral and shows her “what four years look like.” The film is rich with such illustrative moments. To impact you, they require your support. And they earn that support with a draught of promise that asks you to not give up on these people. You find you won’t. 

In its own line of defence, ‘the Five-Year Engagement’ is a ready bite taken into the stale doughnut of life that goes nowhere. You don’t have to find the right place to pull over and park. You don’t need the right van to get your wheels in motion. An old ambulance not beyond repair, you’ll find, would do just fine.