Art films in SPAAAAACE!!!

Cargo (2019) is what they call blue collar science fiction: stories about guys in jumpsuits (and sometimes women in jumpsuits - Ellen Ripley is an exemplar of the type), in space, doing unglamorous work and dealing with isolation and the hostile nature of the void.  Sometimes blue collar science fiction heroes have to deal with killer aliens or talking bombs, sometimes they have to save the last forest in existence, and sometimes they are forced to watch cheesy movies and try to keep their sanity with the help of their robot friends.  And Cargo's jumpsuit clad working stiff is a rakshasa charged with managing the transition of human souls from one life to the next.

Prahastha (Vikrant Massey) has been alone on Pushpak 634A for a very long time, since shortly after the Human-Rakshasa peace treaty.  He leads a very structured and simple life; he greets the human souls (the "cargo") that appear on Pushpak 634A, heals them, erases their memories and sends them on to the next life, and he writes (and does not send) long letters to his lost love Mandakini (Konkona Sen Sharma.)  Life is simple.  And then supervisor Nitigya (Nandu Madhav) informs him that he's been assigned an assistant.

Yuvishka (Shweta Tripathi) doesn't make a great first impression; she's trained in the latest procedures, rather than Prahastha's practiced techniques, and worse, she's a fan.  But after a rocky start, the pair grow to respect and like one another, and start working together well.  And then a meteor storm hits and everything starts going wrong.

And that's basically the plot.  Which is okay; this movie is focused on character rather than action, and those characters mostly have long conversations.  It's slow and sweet and deeply strange, as our all too human rakshasa protagonists marvel at the range of humanity, from an overly focused businessman to Ranchandra Negi (Biswapati Sarkar), the International Loneliness Detective.  

While the International Loneliness Detective is only a very minor part of the plot, he does embody the movie's theme.  Everybody is looking for a connection to the people around them, and I appreciate the fact that the movie does not limit itself to romantic connections.  Yuvishka and Prahastha in particular have no romantic chemistry at all.  Instead, they're friends, and the movie treats that friendship as something that is important and worth fighting for.  In space, even a demon needs a friend sometimes.

A brief review of 'Bobby Jasoos'

 I'm a bit under the weather, but I had to say something about Bobby Jasoos, since it is quirky and delightful.  Expect a proper review next weekend.

It's no great secret that I love schmaltz, so it should come as no surprise that I loved Bobby Jasoos (2014), perhaps the cuddliest detective story I've ever encountered.  Vidya Balan is, as usual, effortlessly charming as Bobby, a middle-class spinster from Hyderabad who wants to become a private detective and pursues her dream through a combination of moxie, bloody-mindedness, and an unexpected knack for disguise.  Ali Farza plays Tasawur, her increasingly befuddled client and also possible love interest.  There is an actual mystery here, and it's handled well, but the real tension comes from Bobby's strained relationship with her father (Rajendra Gupta.)

This isn't a big, dramatic movie, it's small and intimate and character focused and a great deal of fun.

I hope the third movie has a Wolfman.

 Endhiran played a bit with superhero tropes, but at heart it was a movie about a scientist tampering in God's domain, a big budget Frankenstein for a new audience.  So it's no surprise that in the sequel, 2.0 (2018), our artificial man meets Dracula.  And by Dracula, I mean the vengeful ghost of a mild-mannered ornithologist, returned from beyond with the uncanny power to control cell phones.

 Doctor Vaseegaran (Rajnikanth) is still making robots, despite the disastrous robot rampage that ended the last movie, but this time he's being a bit more responsible; at the very least, Nila (Amy Jackson) is programmed with Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.  Nila is designed to be a "Nice, Intelligent Lovely Assistant," only mildly superhuman compared to her predecessor, Chitti (Rajnikanth), but much better at interacting with humans.  (Meanwhile, Vasee's long-suffering girlfriend Sana (Savitha Reddy) is miles away and only ever appears as a nagging voice on the phone, presumably so we don't notice that she isn't played by Aishwarya Rai anymore.)

And then every cell phone in Chennai suddenly activates and flies up into the sky, forming a huge flock of phones before vanishing into the upper atmosphere.  The government assembles a scientific council to try and figure out what is happening, and Vaseegaran immediately suggests reactivating Chitti, but other scientists disagree, especially Doctor Bohra (Sudhanshu Pandey), who happens to be the son of the bad guy from the last movie and is still a little mad about his father's grisly death.

And speaking of grisly deaths, the phone flock starts killing people.  Very specific people, all involved in the cell phone industry.  By the time the flock has reshaped itself into a kaiju-sized eagle and starts ripping up cell towers, the scientific council decides that maybe reactivating Chitti isn't such a bad idea after all.  Chitti saves most of the city, then Doctor Vaseegaran and his robnot pals track the phones down and discover that the swarm is powered by the spirit of ornithologist Pakshi Rajan (Akshay Kumar), who has vowed to punish humanity for the mass death of birds.

Using the power of positive ions (and Ghostbusters ripoffs) Pakshi's spirit is captured, and everything is great.  There's a ceremony!  Tearful speeches are given!  Everybody just decides to forget about all the people Chitti killed in the last movie!  But Doctor Bohra is not happy, and releases Pakshi.  The ghost possesses Vaseegan's body, using it to go on an anti-cell phone rampage in the heart of the city.  Chitti charges to the rescue, but because he can not bring himself to harm his creator, he is quickly dismantled.  Then Pakshi turns into a weird human-bird-cell phone hybrid and flies off.  As one does.

Two of the three protagonists have been taken out, but Nila is still on the job.  She repairs Chitti, then inserts the red chip from the last movie that activates his evil "2.0" persona; after all, while Chitti can't bring himself to harm his creator, 2.0 is delighted to do so.  And, as in the previous movie, 2.0 creates an army of duplicates to help him, meaning a return of the Giant Hamster Ball of Doom, though sadly no giant snake.  The movie itself frames this as a clash between Good and Evil, but it's really a battle between "Amoral Jerk With a Relaxed Attitude Toward Collateral Damage" and "Well-Meaning But Genocidal Zealot Who Has Things to Say About Ecological Balance."  

Let me get the bad stuff out of the way first.  Sana wasn't exactly a deep and well-rounded character, but here she's reduced to an offscreen caricature of a jealous, nagging girlfriend.  It would have been better to leave her out of the movie entirely.  And then there is the science, which is bad for a movie about a robot fighting a ghost.  The movie has a valid point to make about the delicate balance of life and how much we depend upon the creatures that share our world with us, but then it tries to make that point with a load of pseudoscientific gibberish that even the evil cell phone executives can't help but point out is not scientifically proven.  And of course negative ions are not evil, they just have extra electrons and want to share.

However, nuanced characterization and scientific accuracy are not the main draw here.  This is a movie built to deliver spectacle, and it does exactly that.  The early scenes of cell phone murder are effectively creepy, making light seem more sinister than darkness.  And yes, there are robots.  And the robots fight things, in a variety of spectacular ways.  It is a movie that knows exactly what it wants to be.

Vintage cheese.

 Half Ticket (1962) is a bit older than the Bollywood movies I'm familiar with, but it does have an absurd premise and a cast which includes some of my favorite supporting actors.  How could I resist?

Vijay (Kishore Kumar) is the youngest son of industrialist Lalchand (Moni Chaterjee) and he's clearly supposed to be a charming free spirit, but most of the time he's an annoying twit.  After a series of Vijay's wacky and allegedly hilarious pranks, Lalchand has had enough, and decides to marry off his wayward son.  A match is quickly arranged, and then Lalchand agrees to allow his son, the notorious prankster who does not want to get married, to meet with his potential father-in-law alone.   This turns out to be a bad idea, as Vijay promptly torpedoes the match. Furious, Lalcjhand tosses him out of the house.

Vijay wants to travel to Bombay, but he can't afford a full price train ticket, so instead he disguises himself as a child, a process which involves plying an actual child with candy and ice cream and then stealing his clothes.  (There are elements of this movie which . . . have not aged well.  At all.)  It's an absurd plan, and it starts to fail almost immediately, since the man at the ticket desk is not willing to sell a ticket to an unaccompanied child, even an unconvincing one.  Luckily for Vijay, passing stranger Rajubaba (Pran) intervenes, claiming to be "Munna's" uncle, and Vijay gets his half ticket.  Unfortunately, Rajubaba is secretly a diamond smuggler, and has planted a large gem in Vijay's pocket in order to get it past the station police.  

Vijay spends his time on the train acting like an exaggerated caricature of an obnoxious child, while trying to avoid the creepy older guy who is posing as his uncle and showing a strange fascination with his pockets.  (As I said, certain elements have not aged well.)  After giving Rajubabu the slip, Vijay sneaks into the private room of Rajnidevi (Madhubala), who is happy to shelter the weird kid for the night.

Once in Bombay, Vijay stops acting like a child (hooray!) and instead starts looking for a job.  Of course, it's a big city, times are hard, and he's still an annoying twit, so it takes a few tries.  Meanwhile Rajubabu and his girlfriend Lily (Shammi) are combing the city, looking for Vijay and the diamond that he does not know he has.  There are disguises and counter-disguises (at one point Pran puts on a grey fake beard and wig, and winds up looking uncannily like his future self; I've never seen old age makeup get that close to the way the actor will eventually age) and chase scenes and Vijay keeps bumping into Rajnidevi without either of them realizing that she is the potential bride he ran away from.

I am happy to suspend my disbelief and pretend that there are people who are fooled by Kishore Kumar pretending to be a child, but even if you are willing to accept the ridiculous premise, the plot doesn't really hang together.  But that's okay, because this is a farce; the plot is only there as a vehicle to get the characters into absurd situations.

Half Ticket was a big hit when it came out, but that was nearly sixty years ago, and the movie is definitely a product of its time.  Still, I can see traces of how Sixties Bollywood evolved into the Bollywood I know; while Vijay was completely over the top, he's clearly an ancestor of Shah Rukh Khan's carefully polished comic persona.  And there were some familiar faces.  I'm actually a big fan of Pran (a Pranatic, if you will) so it was a delight to see him being young and suave, along with a ridiculously young Helen in a surprisingly wholesome item number.