Return of the Yodha

 Kalki 2898 (2024) opens in the distant past, during the terrible last days of the war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas.  (You don't need a working knowledge of the Mahabharata to follow this movie, but it helps.) Ashwatthama, son of the great teacher Drona, unleashes the Brahmashirastra, the most destructive weapon in existence, in an attempt to kill the last unborn heir to the Pandava dynasty, only to be stopped by Lord Krishna (Krishnakumar).  Krishna declares that Ashwatthama is the worst sinner on the battlefield, and sentences him to live, alone and pained by his unhealed wounds, until the final incarnation of Vishnu is born.  

And he does live, for thousands of years, as an animated montage displays humanity's worst crimes, starting with Roman gladiatorial games and building up to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Holocaust; this sequence does not pull any punches.  When the movie shifts back to live action, the world is a very different place.

The world is a grim post-apocalyptic wasteland, stripped of resources; one of the early scenes is set in a truck hovering over the dried bed of the Ganges river.  Kasi is the last city on Earth, dominated by a range of scavengers and other lowlifes, but people from tiny villages in the wastelands still keep coming, because there's nowhere else to go with any resources.

Hovering above Kasi is a flying structure known as The Complex, where the fortunate few live lives of luxury.  In theory, anyone can buy their way into The Complex, but in practice gathering the required amount is practically impossible.  It's quickly made clear that these are very bad people who collect any fertile women they can find and force them into Project K, a scientific experiment at the behest of the decrepit Supreme Yaskin (Kamal Hassan), who rules the complex like a despotic god.

The Complex is opposed by a band of rebels who huddle in their hidden city of Shamballa.  many of the rebels believe in the impending incarnation of Vishnu, inspired by stories told to them by Mariam (Shobana).  Others are more cynical, but they are all devoted to overthrowing Yaskin and his minions.

But it's not all worldbuilding - there are characters as well.  It starts with plucky young girl Raia (Keya Nair) sneaks into Kasi disguised as a boy, but narrowly escapes being detected and conscripted into Project K.  She flees the city pursued by a robot, and takes shelter in the cave where Aswatthama is meditating.  he makes short work of the robot, but refuses to listen when Raia tries to convince him to join the rebels; he's here to save one person, not fight in anyone else's war.  But that's about to change.

Within The Complex, SUM-80 (Deepika Padukone) is going about her daily routine as part of Project K.  The subjects who have not been successfully implanted care for their pregnant sisters, at least until the scientists decide to brutally harvest them for the serum that keeps Supreme Yaskin alive.  What no one knows is that SUM-80 is also pregnant; she doesn't know how it happened, but she wants to keep her child from being harvested.  Unfortunately, time is running out.

And then there's designated Han Solo homage Bhairava (Prabhas), a skilled bounty hunter with an array of cool gadgets and a high tech dune buggy with a chatty AI named BU-JZ-1, or "Bujji" (Keerthy Suresh).  Bhairava is obsessed with the idea of getting into The Complex, and he's thrilled to discover that his occasional girlfriend Roxie (Disha Patini) has landed a maintenance job there.  He talks Roxie into getting him a temporary job as well, and once they make it to The Complex he convinces her to sneak away with him and explore, which involves a ride along the beach next to an artificial ocean, a dance number, and crashing a fancy party, but it all comes crashing down when Bhairava accidentally destroys Michelangelo's David.  

This leads to SUM-80 making a literally miraculous escape into the waiting arms of the resistance.  Commander Manas (Saswata Chatterjee), who acts as a sort of middle-management Darth Vader, offers an enormous bounty for SUM-80's return, which could be the one big score that Bhairava was waiting for, but he'll have to fight his way through rival bounty hunters, raiders, and Aswatthama in order to get to her.  The last one turns out to be the problem; Aswatthama isn't just a giant immortal, he's a mythical warrior from an age of legends, and is more than capable of dealing with Bhairava's technological tricks.  SUM-80, named "Sumathi" by a friendly but doomed rebel, makes it to Shambala, where she's greeted as . . . well,as the mother of the next incarnation of God.

She knows it's not safe.  Aswatthama knows it's not safe.  The audience definitely knows it's not safe.  manas and his men are searching for her, Bhairava wants to find his bounty and to outdo the one giant man who beat him in a fight.  It's all leading to a climactic battle in Shambala which will end in widespread destruction, a key character twist (which is well telegraphed if you're familiar with the Mahabharata) and a cliffhanger, because apparently this is the first movie in the Kalki Cinematic Universe.

It's easy to think of this movie as "Bollywood Star Wars," and there's some truth to that, even though the lightsabers only appear in one brief flashback scene.  On the other hand, I can see some influence from other sci-fi films of the Seventies and Eighties, like Zardoz and Warrior of the Lost World; Bhairaya even drives his AI-equipped vehicle through the illusion that masks the secret home of the Resistance.  That's not a bad thing; those movies were not great, but Kalki 2898 inherits some of their better ideas, and the whole production is infused with a gritty, run-down Seventies sci-fi style, only with a much bigger budget.

 

Prabhas is genuinely charming and the cast is engaging, but Amitabh Bachchan towers over everybody else, both literally and figuratively.  Aswatthama has the strongest backstory and the clearest character arc, and he has the added advantage of being played by Amitabh Bachchan, who is famously good at acting.  Saswata Chatterjee is another standout; Manas is a genuinely terrible person, and he alternates between over-the-top villainy and resigned banality of evil.

The movie looks great, and the plot is compelling, but there are a lot of characters and it does take a long time to get going.  Trim the padding, and we could have gotten one complete story instead of another epic that will take real world years in order to resolve, but people like their cinematic universes these days, and the movie we do get is pretty fun.

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.