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.

Two divided by Zero.

When Shah Rukh Khan was trying to break into the Bollywood film industry without the benefit of family connections or industry contacts, he took practically every role that was offered to him.  And it worked.  Khan didn't just become a star, he became the star, King Khan, and he reigned over the film industry for many years.  I'm not sure he ever quite broke the habit of accepting as many parts as possible, because he's done a lot of weird movies over the course of his career.  And that's good!  I like weird movies!  On the other hand, it also means he's starred in some stinkers.  And then there's Zero (2018).

Khan plays Bauua Singh, a little person from a wealthy family in the city of Meerut.  Bauua is supposed to be a good-natured scamp, but we don't initially see much of his good nature; he spends most of his time dreaming of Bollywood actress Babita Kumari (Katrina Kaif) and spending money on his assorted hangers on, including his trusty sidekick Guddu (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub.)

It's only a minor plot point, but Bauua also has a special gift: with a flick of his finger, he can turn any star into a shooting star.  This is intended as a charming bit of magical realism, so nobody realizes that he possesses a destructive power that would make the Dark Phoenix weep with envy, a power that operates over interstellar distances and (given the speed of light) possibly through time.

Despite his incredible cosmic power, Bauua is still a bachelor.  At a matrimonial agency he sees a photo of Aafiya Yusufzai Bhinder (Anushka Sharma), a beautiful and brilliant scientist and mathematician who works for that famous American space agency, the NSAR.  (NASA?  Never heard of it.)  It's not until he arranges a meeting that he realizes that Aafiya has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair.  They fail to hit it off in spectacular fashion, ending with Bauua being bodily thrown out of the school she's speaking at.  Humiliated, Bauua crashes another of her speaking engagements, makes a scene, and is thrown out and humiliated again.

So Bauua changes tactics.  He mounts a full-fledged "played by Shah Rukh Freaking Khan" charm offensive, and manages to win her . . . friendship, initially.  But the relationship develops over the course of a few months, until they finally spend the night together. And then he drops her.  

A month later, Bauua returns home to find Aafiya's parents, there to arrange his and Aafiya's marriage.  Bauua's parents are naturally thrilled, and before the kids can really object, the match is fixed.  On their wedding day, after a tense conversation with Aafiya, Bauua runs away, and winds up in the entourage of his idol, Babita Kumari, who turns out to be deeply troubled and trapped in a life of meaningless excess, as well as a dysfunctional relationship with Bollywood star and smug jerk Aditya Kapoor (Abhay Deol.)  Bauua helps Babita with her issues, and she helps him realize what a colossal jackass he's been, so it is now time for the "win Aafiya back" portion of the movie.

Winning Aafiya back means travelling to America and interrupting yet another one of her speaking engagements.  She tells him to go to hell, and Bauua can see that a musical number is not going to cut it this time, so instead he volunteers for the upcoming manned mission to Mars, because as everybody knows, astronauts are selected through an open audition process.

Zero was a box office disaster, but it's really not the worst movie I've ever seen.  It's not even the worst Shah Rukh Khan movie I've ever seen!  Instead, it's a bit of a curate's egg - good in parts.  The cast is fantastic, especially Sharma, who clearly poured her heart and soul into this role.  While the relationship between Bauua and Aafiya is definitely unhealthy, it is actually easy to tell what they see in each other.  The movie has one really good song.  And representation matters, even if it's this clumsy.

But that leads me to the biggest flaw in the movie.  There is no reason for Shah Rukh Khan to be in this film.  His performance is fine, mind you, but there are many actors in India who are little people, and without the pressure of star casting this could have been a life-changing role for any of them.  Perhaps because of the pressure of being a Shah Rukh Khan movie, Zero keeps striving for epic, when the actually interesting part is the real human connection between two flawed but compelling people who don't look anything like your typical Bollywood couple.

That just raises further questions!

From the moment I first saw the amazing movie poster, I have dreamed of watching Rocket Tarzan (1963). For the longest time, that was easier said than done, but the current copyright holders have finally put a nearly complete version on Youtube, and my dream has been fulfilled. Well, kind of - the print is grainy and occasionally skips, the sound drops out completely from time to time, and most seriously, there are no subtitles. Ive managed to watch the occasional movie without benefit of subtitles in the past, but Rocket Tarzan is particularly tricky since there is so much apparently going on and I still have yet to find a single plot summary online.

Here's what I've been able to figure out. Tarzan lives deep in the jungles of India or possibly Africa; either way, sometimes he fights lions and sometimes he fights tigers. he's not alone in the jungle, though. There's a nearby kingdom, which may be a surviving Roman colony, or may be an ordinary isolated kingdom with a fondness for cosplay. There is also a brilliant professor, his beautiful daughter, and his laurel-and-hardyish lab assistants/comic relief sidekicks. The professor is trying to build a rocket to travel to the moon. The people of the mystery kingdom are helping him, but a guy with a mustache wants the rocket for himself! Fortunately, Tarzan is there to help, and also fortunately the comic sidekicks are surprisingly competent; one of them gains superhuman strength and combat skills when he drinks from the bottle he always carries with him, but I'm not completely sure if it's some sort of potion or he's just a mean drunk.

After many shenanigans and kidnappings and narrow escapes the main characters all climb aboard the rocket (with Mustache Guy stowing away) and fly to the moon, where they discover ancient ruins, cheap sets, giant cardboard stars, and a big-nosed evil alien who sends a robot (or "Robert," as he keeps saying) to attack our heroes. (They are actually menaced by two apparently unrelated robots. The one from the poster is by far the more convincing of the pair.) The Robert is defeated, the big nosed alien is blown up, and then Tarzan faces Mustache Guy in, and I am not making this up, a lightsaber duel.

Rocket Tarzan is obviously very different from the Bollywood movies of today; with all the narrow escapes and sudden twists and turns it's structured more like an old fashioned movie serial, like Commando Cody with occasional musical numbers. I'm not sure if my experience really counts as watching the movie, since I'm still not clear on what just happened, but on the other hand, I don't know if it would make much more sense even with subtitles. Either way, though, I'm still counting this as a dream fulfilled.