Shiva Universe

Brahmastra Part One: Shiva (2022) is a movie with a lot of jobs to do; it's a superhero origin story and the first film in a planned trilogy and lay the foundation for a new cinematic universe.  But there's a reason why most cinematic universes never really get going.  You can't spend your entire movie setting up future projects; the movie the audience is watching now has to be about something.  Fortunately, Brahmastra is about something.

But before the movie can really get started, it has another job to do: enable celebrity cameos.  Shahrukh Khan plays scientist Mohan Bhargav, and somehow I didn't already know that, so I was the ideal audience for the reveal. 

Mohan is alone in his Delhi apartment studying a mystical artifact when his home is invaded by thugs Zor (Saurav Gurjar) and Raflaar (Rouhallah Gazi.)  Fortunately for Mohan, he has an ancient artifact of his own, the Vanarastra, an anklet which gives him the proportionate sass of a monkey, along with heightened agility and jumping powers.  Mohan casually humiliates his attackers Spidey-style until their boss shows up; Junoon (Mouni Roy) has an artifact of her own, and she uses it to overpower Mohan.

Meanwhile, in Mumbai, plucky DJ Shiva (Ranbir Kapoor) is living his best life.  He keeps catching glimpses of Isha (Alia Bhatt), and he falls for her - plummets for her, really.  He manages to make contact by climbing up the outside of an elevator, and after a lot of banter invites her to a party at his place, and it's actually cute and charming rather than creepy because they're both being really open and honest about their intentions.

The party turns out to be a birthday party for a little girl at the orphanage Shiva cares for, and Shiva reveals a bit of his backstory and motivation: he was orphaned as a baby, left with only a conch shell to remind him of his mother, and he cares for other orphans and looks for the light in every situation.  The romantic mood is spoiled somewhat when Shiva runs away after being suddenly overwhelmed by visions of Mohan being murdered in Delhi, though.  When he returns home, Isha is gone, and he starts to lament the fact that he has no way to find her again but the kids cut him off and explain that Isha is their Facebook friend now.

 Shiva tracks Isha down at her wealthy grandfather's estate, but along the way he catches a news report about Mohan's "suicide," and realizes that his visions are real.  Then he realizes that the next target he saw in the visions, artist Anish Shetty (Nagarjuna Akkineni) is in terrible danger.  So he rushes off to Varanasi and Isha insists on coming along and they . . . spend some time enjoying a romantic tour of the city.

Then Shiva lets slip that he is immune to fire and has a sort of vague control over it sometimes, and they remember the superhero plot and go looking for Anish. Before they find him, though, Shiva sees Junoon and the boys and they realize they have very little time, especially since Raflaar is wearing the Vanarastra.  Shiva and Isha manage to find Anish first, and Anish helps them escape with his ancient artifact, the Nandiastra, which gives him the power of a thousand bulls.  

The trio flee the city, headed for the mountain ashram maintained by Anish's guru Raghu (Amitabh Bachchan), but Junoon and her crew are following in a truck.  Anish sacrifices himself to send Junoon and Zor over the edge of a cliff, but Raflaar still has his heightened leaping powers, and tracks Shiva and Isha to the gates of the ashram.  Then he makes the mistake of threatening Isha, and Shiva unleashes a torrent of flames, burning him to ash.

Then Amitabh Bachchan appears and delivers exposition.  Long ago a group of sages used the celestial energy of Brahm Shakti to produce astras, talismans which function as weapons of incredible power, representing a number of animals and forces.  At the same time, they accidentally created the Brahmastra, mightiest of the astras, a weapon so powerful that it could destroy the world if activated.  The sages became a secret society known as the Brahmansh, charged with guarding the astras, and Mohan and Anish were both members of the society and guarded a third of the now broken Brahmastra,  And Shiva is himself an astra, the Agnyastra, able to control fire without the need for any talisman.  

There's more exposition available, but Raghu won't deliver it unless Shiva agrees to stay at the ashram (which doubles as a school for young Brahmansh to learn to use their powers, like a Himalayan X-Mansion.)  Nandini is sent away, which is a shame because Shiva's power springs from love.  And of course Junoon and Zor survived the fall, and they're building a dark army to attack the ashram.

Most of the elements of Brahmastra are things that I have seen before; there's a hidden school for budding superheroes like in the X-Men, a scavenger hunt for mystical talismans like in Jackie Chan Adventures, and a fighting style that mixes martial arts and elemental power like in Avatar.  And of course the secret society of Indian monks empowering a champion to protect the world is straight out of Shaktimaan. The real bad guy even has a secret origin that's almost identical to that of Tamraj Kilvish.   Like Shaktimaan, Brahmastra is really taking its inspiration from Hindu devotional films, but with a much higher budget.  It's executed well.  It's a tight superhero origin story with consistent rules for the superpowers.

Still, originality and execution are nice, but a movie should still be about something, and Brahmastra is about love.  Shiva is driven by love.  He's powered by love.  He saves the world through the force of his love, not in some hackneyed metaphorical sense, but literally loving the world enough to save it.  And while the movie gets dark at times (this is an Indian superhero movie, so it is not afraid to threaten children) there's a sense of optimism and hope throughout.  It's one of the most relentlessly positive superhero stories I've seen in ages.  

And then the movie ends with a plug for the sequel which couldn't be any more obvious without Nick Fury showing up.  But that is a story for another time.  Brahmastra is surprisingly self contained, despite being Part One.

At least there's no swastika hat.

Coolie No. 1 (2020) is a very close remake of 1995's Coolie No. 1, with Govinda swapped out for director David Dhawan's own son Varun.  It's a very close remake, so I'm not entirely sure why Dhawan bothered, but I will say this for him - as a director, he is incredibly consistent.  For good or ill, if you are watching a David Dhawan film, you are going to get a David Dhawan film, and this movie represents Dhawan at his Dhawaniest.

The plot is almost identical to the earlier movie.  Marriage broker Pandit Jai Kishen (Jaaved Jaafri) is humiliated by hotel owner Jeffrey Rozario (Paresh Rawal) when he brings a potential groom to meet Rozario's daughter Sarah (Sara Ali Khan).  Rozario insists that his daughter deserves a very wealthy man, and nobody who arrived by bus could possibly be good enough.

Kishen vows revenge, and as he stands in the train station glaring darkly at a picture of Sarah a gust of wind snatches the photo and deposits it on Raju (Varun Dhawan), who immediately falls in love with the girl in the picture.  Raju is a penniless orphan with an improbably backstory involving Chekhov's Long Lost Mother, but he's also handsome and probably charming and really easy to convince, which makes him the perfect vehicle for Kishen's revenge.  All they have to do is convince Rozario that Raju is really Kuwar Raj Pratap Singh, a billionaire prince from Singapore.

And with the help of Raju's mechanic friend Deepak (Sahil Vaid) and a borrowed car, they do exactly that, because while Rozario is constantly congratulating himself on his brain power, he's actually really gullible.  Sarah also falls for the "prince", while her sister Anju (Shikha Talsania) falls for Deepak after a two minute conversation.  As in the first movie, Kishen and Raju seal the deal by bringing Rozario to a rented mansion that actually belongs to Mahendra Pratap Singh (Anil Dhawan - yep!  David's brother), the billionaire whose son Raju is pretending to be.

The plot points continue to follow the first movie.  Sarah begs to go to the mansion in Mumbai.  Raju fakes a fight with his wealthy "father", then take s his new bride to a rented house.  Rozario arrives in town and sees Raju working as a coolie, leading to Raju inventing an alcoholic wastrel twin brother who is doing a permanent Mithun Chakroborty impression, and Rozario decides that said alcoholic wastrel would be the perfect husband for Anju.  The drug dealer (Vikar Verma)  Raju got arrested at the beginning of the movie turns out to be Mahendra Pratap Singh's real son, and there's a stabbing and a climactic fight scene at the hospital in which Raju and Deepak are in drag.  

There are some differences.  On the plus side, Rozario never slips drugs into anybody's drink, making him a bit less despicable than 1995's Hoshiyar Chand.  That's good.  On the other hand, because the plot is so familiar, the movie speeds through the early setup; Raju and Kishen don't have an earlier connection, so they are planning ti defraud people within minutes of their first meeting, and while Raju has a backstory laid out in the opening cartoon, a backstory which is not followed up on at all, the movie spends no time establishing his hunger for family, companionship and respect, the thing that's supposed to actually motivate him.  It's like trying to remake The Wrath of Khan without Space Seed - you can see where the emotional beats are supposed to go, but none of them have been earned.

Otherwise, it's like the first Coolie No. 1, an incredibly broad farce about terrible people committing fraud and never feeling a smidgen of guilt.  Normally in this kind of movie the hero is tormented by a guilty conscience, and their lies are exposed before they can get married, but not here!

Still, in a sense Coolie No. 1 is an impressive achievement; it's a disappointing remake of a movie that I didn't like very much the first time.

It's a twin movie with no actual twins.

Coolie No. 1 (1995) was  a big success for director David Dhawan, and now it's considered something of a cult classic in India, an excellent example of Dhawan's particular brand of comedy.  That can be a good thing, because he's made a number of successful films.  Of course, he also made Andaz, and I'm still mad about that one.

 Raju (Govinda) is a humble coolie, carrying luggage for disembarking passengers at the bus station.  Well, perhaps "humble" is the wrong word; Raju is proud to be "Coolie Number One," and wears an inscribed armband that he can point to while bragging.  He's a devoted follower of the Coolie's Code, determined to help carry the burdens of the people around him, and he is also (as is common for Bollywood heroes) unexpectedly good at beating people up.  He demonstrates both qualities when drug smuggler Mahesh (Mahesh Anand) hires him to carry two suitcases before being chased off by the police.  Raju tracks Mahesh down, delivers the suitcases as promised, and then beats him up and drags him to the police station.  Mahesh vows vengeance, but he's safely locked away, and it's not like he's the son of a wealthy businessman who will return to play a key role in the movie's climax or anything, right?

During another feat of bus station derring-do, Raju befriends priest and marriage broker Shadiram (Sadashiv Amrapurkar).  Shadiram brings a potential groom to meet Malti (Karisma Kapoor), the daughter of Hoshiyar Chand (Kader Khan), but when Hoshiyar Chand discovered that the family arrived by bus, he berates them for being too poor for his daughter, humiliating Shadiram in the process.  Shadiram vows revenge.

The plan is simple - disguise Raju as a rich prince visiting from Singapore, get him married to Malti, then reveal the truth to Hoshiyar Chand at a suitably dramatic time.  Raju is so smitten with Malti's photo that he agrees right away.  His mechanic friend Deepak (Harish Kumar) agrees to provide a "borrowed" car and pose as the driver, which is convenient because Hoshiyar Chand has two daughters, so Malti's sister Shalini (Kaanchan) can have a love interest too.

And the plan works really, really well.  Malti immediately falls for Raju as "Kunwar Mahendra Pratap Singh".  Literally - she falls out of a tree into his arms.  (Shalini falls for Deepak at the same time, but that's not a part of the plan, just a thing that happens.)  Hoshiyar Chand prides himself on being suspicious, but a quick visit to a rented mansion and a little reverse psychology are enough to make him agree to the match, and Raju and Malti are promptly married.  

And then Malti decides that she really wants to see this mansion everybody's talking about, and insists that Raju whisk her away to her glamorous new life in Mumbai.   He buys some time by pretending to be feuding with his "father," the businessman who owns the mansion (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and storming away from the mansion and his alleged life of privilege, and the couple settle into a modest life in a rented home.  Also Shakti Kapoor is there and attempts comedy.

But it's a David Dhawan movie, so it needs more complication.  Hoshiyar Chand arrives in Mumbai to check on his daughter, and he arrives by bus, so he runs into Raju working as a coolie.  Raju quickly spins a story about his disgraced alcoholic philandering twin brother, and Hoshiyar Chand decides that that would be the perfect husband for Shalini.  Now Raju has to protect his original secret, maintain an imaginary twin brother, and avoid getting married to his sister-in-law.  Oh yes, and there is that angry drug dealer form the beginning of the movie.

David Dhawan has a distinct niche.  He makes broad comedies with a strong romantic track which manage to just pass the Indian censor board, and he's good at that.  Coolie No. 1 in particular is genuinely loved by a lot of people.  However, the movie can be a bit hard to watch for the first time in 2022,  The "trick the daughter of the man who insulted you into marrying under false pretenses" plan is kind of despicable, and it doesn't seem to bother the protagonists; they're upset that they have to keep coming up with new complicated lies rather than the simple ones they started with, but Raju in particular just wants to live with the wife who thinks he's someone else.

Hoshiyar Chand is even worse, with his insistence on marrying Shalini to the imaginary twin.  The movie's low point is the scene in which he tries to slip an aphrodisiac to the man he believes is an angry drunk and then leaves him alone with his daughter.  While the ladies are nice, the men are awful, but the movie ends with a happy reconciliation which is really not earned.

Once you get past all the awful people and a number of jokes that really didn't age well (in particular Shakti Kapoor's hearing aid, the fake Asian gibberish and the lead being in drag for the entire climactic fight) it's a well executed farce.  They really don't make them like this anymore, but on the other hand there's a reason for that.  And the less said about the swastika hat, the better.

(Okay, David Dhawan does make them like this anymore - the 2020 Coolie No. 1 is coming up next week.)

Holdin' out for a Hanuman

Sita Ramam (2022) is the Columbo of epic romance.  There's never any question about  who is going to fall in love with who, or how the relationship is going to end; that's all in the title.  Instead, an angry Pakistani college student takes up the part of rumpled detective, following shaky leads as she pieces together exactly how the story unfolded.  The question isn't "will they/won't they?", it's "How did they?"

The year is 1985.  Afreen (Rashmika Mandanna) is a college student studying in London, but originally from Pakistan.  She is fiercely proud of her native land and has a very large chip on her shoulder.  When she hears about some Indians burning a Pakistani flag, she promptly sets fire to a car decorated with Indian flags.  Unfortunately, the car happens to belong to Indian philanthropist Anand Mehta (Tinnu Anand), who happens to be a major donor to her college.  The administration wants to expel her immediately, but Anand has another offer - she can apologize.  If she won't apologize, she can pay for the car.  If she can't do either within a month, then she'll be expelled.

Afreen absolutely refuses to apologize, so instead she returns to Pakistan to ask her grandfather, retired General Abu Tariq Ali (Sachin Khedekar), for the money.  She's too late; her grandfather has died, and before she can inherit anything she must grant his last wish and deliver a letter from an Indian Army lieutenant named Ram (Dulquer Salmaan) to a woman named Sita Mahalakshmi (Mrunal Thakur).  

She travels to India to begin the search, where she is met by her college classmate Balaji (Tharun Bhascker), who will be her designated sidekick for the rest of the movie.  The address leads her to the former palace of the Nawab of Hyberadad, now a girl's hostel, but nobody there has ever heard of Sita Mahalakshmi.  Balaji suggests starting the search by finding Ram, since they have a name, a regiment, and a year of service, and it works!  Kind of!

Afreen travels from side character to side character, slowly piecing together Ram's story in convenient chronological order.  Ram was an orphan serving in the Madras Regiment in Kashmir in 1964.  Ram was a surprisingly effective soldier, but his secret weapon was compassion; being able to listen to people and look for peaceful solutions rather than shooting first and asking questions later.  In fact, his compassion enables him to foil a plot by terrorist leader Ansari (Ashwath Bhatt) to cause friction between the local Kashmiri Muslims and the Indian Army; Ram manages to save an entire village in the process, all without firing a shot.

After radio host Vijayalakshmi (Rohini) runs a story about Ram and encourages the people of India to write letters to the orphan hero, Ram is delighted to discover that he now has family all over the country, and he makes a point of answering every letter and visiting the people who wrote them.  But there's one letter he cannot answer, and one writer he cannot visit.  He receives a letter from someone calling herself Sita Mahalakshmi, chiding him for calling himself a lonely orphan when he has a wife waiting for him.  She spins an engaging yarn about a marriage that never happened, but there's no return address.

Sita's letters keep coming.  They're poetic, charming, and present a window into an alternate life.  She also peppers the letters with clues and riddles.  And then she mentions a magic show she'll be attending in Hyderabad, and the train she's taking to get there, and Ram finally has a clue that he can act on.  

As Ram searches for his Sita, Afreen searches for news of Ram.  Along the way she places a call to his old superior, now Brigadier Vishnu Sharma (Sumanth), and when Sharma hears that this young Pakistani woman is looking for Ram and Sita, he drops everything and orders a search for Afreen, hoping to stop the young woman before she can deliver her letter.

Meanwhile, back in the sixties, Ram searches the train and finds his Sita.  She's stunningly beautiful and every bit as witty and profound as she is in her letters, but oddly standoffish, almost as if she were hiding a secret life as a royal princess and couldn't possibly contemplate a marriage with a common soldier.  Ram delivers a bundle of letters, replies to every letter she ever sent him, along with the phone number of his friend Durjoy (Vennala Kishore) if she ever chooses to contact him, then he leaves.

When he reaches Durjoy's house, he learns that the phone has been out of order for a week, so once again he has no way to contact Sita.  He's upset - until she comes to the house because the phone is out of order so she can't call him to tell him that they won't be meeting again.  Ram takes a discreet photograph of her, then realizes that that was kind of creepy and promptly apologizes.  She leaves him standing alone in the rain, but they meet again at the magic show and start spending more and more time together.

1985.  The trail of acquaintances leads Afreen to Durjoy.  He tells more of the story, and gives her a photograph of Sita, a picture that Ram took years ago.  She brings the photo back to the college/former palace of the Nawab, only to discover that the photo is a perfect match for the Princess Noor Jahan, the woman who donated the palace and founded the college in the first place.

That leads Afreen to the princess's friend and former assistant Rekha (Rukmini Viyayakumar), now a teacher at the college, who fills her in on the other half of the story, about a princess who desperately loved a common soldier but couldn't bring herself to tell him the truth about why they could never be together.  A princess who found herself engaged to the Prince of Oman, a match arranged by her brother (Jisshu Senguopta) in order to save the family fortune.

Afreen is upset about the story ending there, but Rekha explains that the story doesn't end there - Noor Jahan left the palace and Sita arrived in Kashmir, ready to marry her ram.  In fact, Noor Jahan is in Kashmir now, so Afreen can deliver the letter personally.  before she can do that, though, Afreen is picked up by the military and brought before Brigadier Sharma, who tells her how the story really ends, how the letter ended up in Pakistan in the first place, and just how Afreen herself fits in.

Sita Ramam is not the first movie romance to use the "How did they?" format - not by a long shot.  There are strong similarities with Veer-Zaara, a movie in which a young Pakistani lawyer must unravel the secrets of a cross border love affair, only to find herself marveling at the depth of feeling of the star-crossed lovers.  Sita Raman similarly elevates its protagonists and humanizes both sides of the border, but things do not wrap up so neatly.

One advantage of the puzzle-box format is that it forces the movie to develop the romance slowly, starting with a series of poetic letters, then walks in the rain, and so on after that.  Afreen is finding out about the star-crossed lovers at the same pace that they are finding out about one another, and she realizes their worth, their fine spirits and depths of passion at the same time as the audience does.  It gives the viewer time to fall in love before the plot swings back around with one more thing.