Thoughts on Rajkumar Hirani, formula films, and the astonishingly successful ‘pk’.
Most of us turn filmmakers when something we’re watching doesn’t satisfy us. If X occurs and we’re not happy with it, if our mind screams out “this cannot be happening,” then we automatically come up with alternatives. It’s our way of making peace, finding closure, and it happens all the time in the movies. It happened to a reader of my blog, who watched pk and commented that the love track between the alien named pk (Aamir Khan) and a human named Jaggu (Anushka Sharma) could have been subtler, that we learn about pk’s love for Jaggu only at the end. I agree. As for me, my filmmaking instincts kicked in during the stretch in which pk comes to Delhi in search of a crooked godman. Earlier, we’re shown that pk lands in Rajasthan and a local promptly steals the device that helps him communicate with his spaceship. He’s stranded, and when a newfound friend tells him that all stolen goods are fenced in Delhi, pk decides to go there and look for the device. And he finds it in the hands of the godman, whose assembly he stumbles into by chance. I wasn’t too happy with this contrivance, which comes at the end of a riotously funny segment involving a street-theatre actor posing as Lord Shiva. This kind of “coincidence”, where you just happen upon the very thing you’re looking for, is always a little iffy, and I wished something else had brought pk to Delhi. Let’s say pk, in the living room of that friend’s house in Rajasthan, discovers this wondrous box-like contraption that broadcasts moving images. He discovers that there’s another wondrous contraption, with buttons – he can hold it in his hand and flip from image to image. And one of these images makes him pause. It’s the godman, and beside him is the stolen device. And that’s what makes pk decide he needs to go to Delhi. And there, he meets Jaggu…
It’s fun to do this, sometimes, but most people I’ve trotted out this scenario to haven’t been amused. You know pk is a phenomenon not just because it’s minting staggering amounts of money, but because viewers are so much in love with it that they cannot stand criticism. The film, according to them, is perfect. With other films, they’ll say to me “let’s agree to disagree” – they are okay with the fact that our views are at variance. But pk has become one of those films where it’s practically a case of “you are either with us or against us.” They want consensus, and it vexes them to find someone with a contrarian opinion. I faced some of this when Interstellar came out and I expressed my annoyance with what I considered the director Christopher Nolan’s bad habits. I bring this up because, like Nolan, I think Rajkumar Hirani is an important but problematic filmmaker, and if they weren’t important, I wouldn’t be analysing their work in such microscopic detail. With hacks, I’d just say it’s a bad movie, point out what went wrong (or right), and move on – this handwringing wouldn’t happen. It happens with Hirani because I expect more, I demand more.
How do we know Hirani is special? Because of the flashback in the first half of pk that tells us about the alien’s experiences on earth. Hirani is one of the few mainstream filmmakers who can pull of the mix of tones and emotions we find in this stretch – it’s funny, it’s whimsical, it’s sentimental, it has parts that make us think, and, most importantly, it’s original. It’s easy to make money with Dhoom 3, working off a prefab template, riding the coattails of a hugely popular brand, counting on the guaranteed patronage of a pre-existing audience. But Hirani’s films are different. You could say that Lage Raho Munnabhai was as much a sequel and a “franchise film” as Dhoom 3, but the film wandered off into a unique zone with its engagement with Gandhian values. I am not a fan of 3 Idiots, but at least at a conceptual level, the film is unique, as is pk.
And yet, when it comes to the execution, Hirani – and this is my problem with him – is turning out to be as much a “formula” filmmaker as the maker of a franchise film. If the enemy-establishment was the medical profession in Munnabhai MBBS and educational institutions in 3 Idiots, it’s now the religious right. If the catchphrases earlier were “jadoo ki jhappi” and “all is well,” it’s now “wrong number.” I don’t have an issue with formula, per se. All franchise films (the Bond adventures, Fast and Furious) thrive on it – we go to these films because we liked what we saw in the previous instalment and want more of the same. In this category, you could also lump films that belong to a genre, and therefore have the must-haves of that genre, which is another way of talking about formula. Most rom-coms, for instance, must have the scene where Boy and Girl get separated (mostly due to some misunderstanding) before their grand reunion at the end. So why, as a reader asked, can you not treat Hirani the way you treat a Subhash Ghai, who was a formulaic filmmaker as well?
The question sounds logical enough, but consider this: Ghai’s formula is a generic masala formula, whose ingredients are the strong mother character, the mythical hero-villain showdown, and so on. So here’s the difference between Ghai and Hirani. Ghai, at his peak, picked and chose from these formula elements and did not repeat them all that often. For instance, Hero is very different from Karz which is very different from Kalicharan. There’s a formulaic sensibility in these films, but the films themselves aren’t reiterations of the same formula. Hirani’s films, however, are more unique in their conception – that is, they’re not assembled from “generic” bits and scraps – and this uniqueness is what makes us instantly sniff out the formula.
He likes, for instance, the Disapproving Father Finally Relents trope – we see it between Munnabhai and his father in Munnabhai MBBS, between the Jimmy Shergill character and his father in Lage Raho Munnabhai, between the Madhavan character and his father in 3 Idiots, and between Jaggu and her father in pk. And apart from the first film, the fathers in all the others were played by Parikshat Sahni. And Saurabh Shukla, who played a manipulative guru in Lage Raho Munnabhai, plays the manipulative godman in pk. A reader pointed out the similarity of the “bittersweet Disney-type farewell” in 3 Idiots and pk, followed by the “happy return scene”. You could add the Death Accompanied By Quirky, Unexpected Music trope – when the Sharman Joshi character attempted suicide in 3 Idiots, we heard opera, and when an equally beloved character in pk dies, we hear an old Mukesh hit. You could add the hero’s sidekick character as well – played by Arshad Warsi in the Munnabhai movies, by Sharman Joshi and Madhavan in 3 Idiots, and by Anushka Sharma in pk – whose reaction shots are constantly invoked in order to amp up the emotional quotient, to make us marvel at the hero just a little more. The Tamil auteur Mysskin’s oeuvre consists, essentially, of variations on his pet themes and tropes, but in his case, these are not just simple, narrative-level dramatic devices to evoke a response in you. They are part of an overall vision. But with Hirani, these are just scenes that move the story forward, and when similar scenes with the same actors, in service of similar stories, become a fixture across four consecutive films, it becomes – as I said – a problem.
And only to me, it appears. When I mention these issues to people, I get some variation of the “but this film has made so much money” response. But was there any doubt about its success? For a good part, it’s genuinely charming and entertaining – Hirani may be like Madhur Bhandarkar in terms of identifying new settings for essentially similar plots revolving around “socially important” issues, but his light-hearted scenarios are far easier to take than Bhandarkar’s humourless hectoring. (Even if you say that only half of pk is truly worthwhile, that half is more satisfying than the entirety of most other films.) Besides, most people aren’t into analysis of art or artists – they just want to have a good time at the movies. And more importantly, pk features an actor who can do no wrong at the box office, who has assiduously built up a reputation as someone whose films are always worth forking out money for in theatres. If there’s a man who sees just one Hindi film a year in the theatre, that film will be an Aamir Khan starrer. Even the gloomy, moody Talaash (which I think is among Aamir’s best two films of the last decade, the other being Rang De Basanti) made over 90 crores at the domestic box office. And heck, when a film is making so much money, isn’t that it’s own kind of success? Why should Hirani change? Why should he fix something that ain’t broke?
Because if he doesn’t, then it’s going to be hard to consider him a major filmmaker, who is almost always someone with range. Hirani is undoubtedly an important filmmaker – he knows the pulse of the people like no one else. He is also a real filmmaker, in the sense that, when all cylinders are firing, he can create magic on screen, like the way he invests a quotidian phrase (“God only knows”) with existential weight in the scheme of the narrative in the early parts of pk. But what else is he capable of? That question hasn’t been answered by his quartet of films. I hear that Hirani’s next is a biopic of Sanjay Dutt. I am really looking forward to this. It would have been devastating if his next was about another impish, twinkly-eyed outsider who sets about changing things – though at some level, it would certainly be understandable. After all, when your films become the first to breach the 200-crore and 300-crore benchmarks (pk is zooming in on that target), why take a risk with something different? Filmmaking isn’t just an art, and not everyone wants to be a “major filmmaker”. It’s also commerce and it’ll be interesting to see if this Sanjay Dutt project gets going, or if Hirani decides to do more of the same, with the logic that once you enter the race you have to keep running.
On another note, critics, these days, are part of a different kind of race. A long time ago, films would release on Fridays and the reviews wouldn’t appear until the next Friday. Then the interval shrank – the reviews began to appear on Sunday. Then, after the Internet arrived, reviews started showing up the same evening. Now, apparently it’s all about how quickly you can get your review up on the web. It’s all about who’s the first to review the film. How does this help? Once the gold medal for first-on-the-web has been handed out, what about the quality of the review itself? How can one properly process a film and mull over the parts that you’re unsure about, have problems with, when you have an eye on a deadline? I’m being sucked into this race slowly, as the paper has begun to publish its reviews on the web the same day, and it’s caused a bit of stress. As my resolution for the new year, I’m going to try not to think about the deadline. The review is ready when it is ready. As long as the content has some meat, I guess… all is well. Happy 2015.
Lights, Camera, Conversation… is a weekly dose of cud-chewing over what Satyajit Ray called Our Films Their Films. An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2014 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Baradwaj Rangan 
Iswarya
January 2, 2015
Is the beginning of the third paragraph intentional, or is it a prodding issue of a missing “do”?
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Iswarya
January 2, 2015
There, I meant proofing, not prodding. Overzealous mobile dictionary 🙂
And very sad about what you say in the last paragraph. Even as people are lapping up a recycled formula for movies, we, regular readers of the blog have come to expect such fine writing from you that it’s hard to digest that they’re putting you on an overspeeding treadmill.
The strain in your writing is beginning to show and it makes those who really love your writing style click our tongues and shake our heads in sadness. Like Hirani’s fans, we’d love to see what you are best at. Like this magic out of quotidian phrases that you mentioned, there are days we’ve held long over-the-coffee discussions about your witty headers and felicitous phrases. (I particularly remember explaining the Don Juan connection to your Anjaan review title to a wide-eyed friend. Right enough, your blog stats revealed that to be your most popular post last year.)
I am not saying this as criticism directed at you, as such, but the biggest casualty in this who-posts-the-review-first contest is those brilliant headers you used to come up with. Talking of formula, it’s so sad to just look at the structure of your review titles of late, alternating mostly between the two templates of “A pqrs film that does xyz” or “Adjectival phrase, but roughly-contrary-set-of-adjectives.”” As I said, the loss is ours. Wish somebody from the paper took notice of this and decided to desist from joining this mad race 😦
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aravind86
January 2, 2015
One of those rare posts which makes me say ‘Bravo’! Heartfelt and crisp and a very deep look into what goes on in your mind when you write a review!
Side note – waiting for your ‘ugly’ review. It’s been more than a week anyways. 😛
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Rajesh
January 2, 2015
For me, Mr. Hirani makes good entertainers – without making us think/worry about the art or logic or whatever – and hence I do not mind at all that he uses similar looking idea/props in all his movies. It is quite normal for many directors. No need to nitpick on such a director who makes simple entertainers.
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anurag1700
January 2, 2015
‘The review is ready when it is ready. As long as the content has some meat, I guess… all is well.’
True that. Thats the best thing about you and always keep that up. And perhaps I may be the only one with you on this but for me Aamir’s best work till date indeed has been in Talaash. Not a fan of Rang de basanti But Talaash yes very much is the AK film of all time for me. It is interesting to note when anyone’s filmmaking instinct kicks in. that decides the rest on perspectives.
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Vijayakumar
January 2, 2015
Of all the problems you have mentioned about Rajkumar Hirani’s films, the one that I find the most jarring and obvious is the “Disapproving father finally relents trope”. In PK, when Jaggu tells a story of how proud her father was, whistling till the end of a competition she won, I instantly knew there will be a pay-off scene for this at the end. I knew this only because I knew Rajkumar Hirani’s films (also because Parikshat Sahni played that role) and that IMO is definitely a weakness.
“A long time ago, films would release on Fridays and the reviews wouldn’t appear until the next Friday.”
I still vividly remember eagerly waiting for The Hindu’s Friday Review to catch the review of a movie that released the previous Friday. Was it very long ago?
However those times, there were only 2 films releasing per week if I am not wrong. In these days of five films releasing per week, I guess it is good to have an opinion before choosing the best one or two of the ones that are releasing. I do not read reviews, but I do look at the number of stars some of the websites are giving to a movie (the more websites you look at, the more reliable the information) before choosing the movies that are worth my time. It can be called helpful in that sense.
Having said that, people who like to read good reviews, those who really care about dissecting a film into its tiniest pieces and analyzing them would still be interested in reading your views however late they are, because they would definitely prefer carefully done analyses of movies over hastily written reviews anyday. I, for one, would be. So I really wish you stick to your New Year resolution 🙂
Also, just out of curiosity, do you still see most of the Tamil movies that are releasing now that Sudhir is also doing reviews? If not, on what basis do you choose the movies you want to see?
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Abhirup
January 2, 2015
“Let’s say pk, in the living room of that friend’s house in Rajasthan, discovers this wondrous box-like contraption that broadcasts moving images. He discovers that there’s another wondrous contraption, with buttons – he can hold it in his hand and flip from image to image. And one of these images makes him pause. It’s the godman, and beside him is the stolen device. And that’s what makes pk decide he needs to go to Delhi.”
If this had been done, though, all the scenes that show P.K.’s experiences regarding religious practices–or rather, malpractices–would have to be cut out, isn’t it? After all, if P.K. knows the exact man and place to go to in order to find his locket, he wouldn’t go from one shrine to another to pray to God that his locket be returned, and thus, the most entertaining and insightful scenes from the film would no longer be a part of it. In the scenario you described, it would boil down to a battle of wills between P.K. and Tapasvee. The larger point about religious malpractices could be made in the film precisely because it didn’t opt for the scenario you have suggested. I am prepared to put up with a little co-incidence (P.K. happens to arrive at the exact spot where Tapasvee is present with the locket) if it means having those hilarious and moving scenes before it. Also, as far as co-incidences are concerned, this isn’t that far-fetched. Plus, it may not be a coincidence at all. The meeting with the man dressed as Shiva–the meeting which eventually takes P.K. to his locket–comes right after the scene that shows P.K. pleading before the statues of gods that he be shown a way to find his locket. It may well be that P.K. meets “Shiva”, who leads him to the locket, as an answer to his prayers. It may be Hirani’s way of saying that God does answer your prayers once you forsake pointless rituals (which is what P.K. had been following so far) and pray to him with faith.
As for the formula bit, I concur, but at least so far, I am loving the formula. I too am eager to see Hirani’s take on sanjay dutt’s life because it promises something different from the films he has made thus far, but if Hirani then makes another film like these four and it is as good as ‘Munnabhai MBBS’, ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’ and ‘P.K.’ (I don’t think much of ‘3 Idiots’, though it does have some laudable scenes and performances), I shall be happy. If this is the kind of story he thinks he can tell well, I am okay with it. He does introduce variations in them: ‘Munnabhai MBBS’ is a mostly straightforward story of a fight against a stern institution, ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’ replaces the institution with a single corrupt guy and brings in an element of magic realism in Gandhi’s appearances before Munna, and ‘P.K.’ enhances that fantastical feel by making the central character an alien. Okay, these aren’t huge differences, but they, at least for me, ensure that the films are set apart from each other in spite of the similarities you have mentioned.
That’s all I have to say.
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Ravi K
January 2, 2015
I think it is the social commentary of Hirani’s films that makes people bridle at any criticism of them. “Look at the message! Why do you nitpick and criticize when his message is so good?” is what people seem to be saying.
To be more snarky about it, Hirani is someone who passes for a Great Filmmaker to the average filmgoer who, frankly, doesn’t know much about cinema. Same goes for Nolan. It’s kind of like when someone says they like independent films, then list “Garden State” as one of their favorites.
Being known for a specific formula can backfire, even if that formula was spectacularly successful for a while. Or, especially if that formula was spectacularly successful. Look at how quickly M. Night Shyamalan’s twist endings went from popular to punchline.
Do Indian producers ever hold advance screenings for critics?
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Nikhil
January 2, 2015
Jimmy Shergill and his father are in ‘Munnabhai MBBS’, not in ‘Lage Raho’.
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Nikhil
January 2, 2015
Apologies…Scratch that…dangers of trying to remember things when sleepy.
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brangan
January 2, 2015
Rajesh: I don’t think this is nitpicking, which suggests something minor. I am looking at what I consider a major problem — even if it’s only a major problem IN MY EYES.
anurag1700: Another reason I like “Talaash” is that it’s not just an Aamir show. It’s a very strong “director’s movie” — every department comes out aces. I had some reservations with it the first time I saw it, but the film’s moodiness has stayed with me.
Vijayakumar: Oh, based on what sounds interesting. I generally do the bigger films. Then again, I also reviewed “Gnanakirukkan” 🙂
Abhirup: Oh no. I was just taking that as an example of how sometimes some of us remake movies in our heads. I agree that the scenario I suggested isn’t perfect — it’s just something that popped up.
Then again, the scenario I suggest could have happened AFTER all those other scenes of searching for god…
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Ramsu
January 2, 2015
It’s funny in a way. Your earlier post was about the intolerance of those who oppose it. This one seems to be about the intolerance of those who support it.
I don’t know if your idea would’ve worked either. But if the film’s success precludes any discussion of what ifs, then by the same logic, shouldn’t the fact that each major religion has a hundred crore followers ought to preclude the making of the film itself? 😀
Frankly, it would’ve been easier for me to get worked up about either view if I had loved or hated the film. While individual scenes worked, the overall script itself felt a bit sloppy.
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Ramsu
January 2, 2015
Apologies for the bad grammar in there. This is the problem with changing one’s mind about the construction of a sentence midway,and not going back and rewriting the whole thing.
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Priyanka
January 2, 2015
Ravi K said “To be more snarky about it, Hirani is someone who passes for a Great Filmmaker to the average filmgoer who, frankly, doesn’t know much about cinema. “
KJo called him the best director working in Indian cinema 😀
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Utkal Mohanty
January 2, 2015
This is the PK season in films and I thought as good as a time as any to mention how I think that Raju Hirani is as close to a genius as you can get in mainstream Indian cinema in any language. His insights into human behaviour , his keen sense of observation, his unique and original sense of humour and his innate goodness of heart and love for humanity marks him out as a once-in-a -century kind of artiste. It si a combination of these qualities that mkaes him connect with audiences in small towns as well as urban metros, to 8 year old kids as sixty-year old elder men and women. It is the universality, honesty and humanity of his vision that touches you. So when someone tries to find faults with any of his scenes I know it is some shortcomings in us , in not being able to perceive his vision. I think, I am fortunate to have got a sense of where he is coming from in most of his apparently absurd or less-than-perfect scenes.
Take the vacuum cleaner delivery scene in 3 Idiots. Many have called it stupid and cheesy. Exactly the opposite I say.I have always considered that to be one of the many masterstrokes that Hirani and Abhijat Joshi added to the original rich material of Chetan Bhagat. For nothing is Abhijat Joshi the highest paid writer in Bollywood and Hirani the acknowledged master of Indian commercial cinema. Because their imaginative leaps are grounded in reality and are used to achieve subtle artistic goals.
To start with the child birth facilitated by a vacuum device is perfectly scientific. Let me quote :
“Ventouse is a vacuum device used to assist the delivery of a baby when the second stage of labour has not progressed adequately. It is an alternative to a forceps delivery and caesarean section. It cannot be used when the baby is in the breech position or for premature births. This technique is also called vacuum-assisted vaginal delivery or vacuum extraction (VE).”“The woman is placed in the lithotomy position and assists throughout the process by pushing. A suction cup is placed onto the head of the baby and the suction draws the skin from the scalp into the cup. Correct placement of the cup directly over the flexion point, about 3 cm anterior from the occipital (posterior) fontanelle, is critical to the success of a VE.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventouse
“Your practitioner applies a flexible, rounded cup to your baby’s head in the birth canal. The cup is connected to an electric suction pump or a small handheld pump that creates vacuum pressure to hold the cup securely to the baby’s head. You’ll be asked to push while the doctor gently pulls on a handle attached to the cup, to help move your baby down and out of the birth canal.”
http://www.babycenter.com/0_assisted-vaginal-delivery_14513
…
Now let us examine the beauty of this script device. Rancho has always been espousing the need for innovation, the need to learn how to use knowledge practically. The director had to demonstrate at some point Rancho a walking the talk, showing his knack for innovation, his ability to use knowledge of science and technology in everyday situations. We have had a glimpse of it when he made the seniors piss on a live electric wire with hilarious effect. This had to be one notch higher. Something the audience won’t expect. I have asked my friends from IIT if they had to think a situation to demonstrate how to use tech funda in a everyday situation, to be used in the film, what would they come up with. Needless to add, no one could think of this.
But it was not just the unexpectedness of it. We have seen Ranch in his male binding avatar with his two friends, Farhan and Raju. Here was a chance to reveal the feminine side of him.
To show how he could empathize with women, be involved with an essentially women’s problem, and come out a winner. It was a unique way of letting him go up in Pia’s esteem and create another kind of bonding between them. And also equally importantly, it was a way of winning the gratitude of Virus and winning him over forever., both by saving his daughter and demonstrating his grasp of technology.
All these are subtle strands of script writing that t only the masters grasp and can execute.
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Utkal Mohanty
January 2, 2015
“It’s easy to make money with Dhoom 3, working off a prefab template, riding the coattails of a hugely popular brand, counting on the guaranteed patronage of a pre-existing audience. ”
I totally disagree with you. The ‘ prefab template’ was the weakest part of the film, and I van bet, no one, but no one, liked those bits…the motorbike chases, the bank robbery, etc…even slightly. The brand name can bring people to the theater for a day or a weekend, but not beyond that. You have seen how a film like Besharam collapsed after the first day. The audiences HAVE . to like it. And what they liked in Dhoom 3 was the epic and inventive story and the emotional nuances of the tangled relationship between Sahir-Samar and Sahir-Samar- Alia. Original? Not really. But the inspiration for what works in Dhoom 3 is not the template of Dhoom 1 and dhoom 2, which were totally plastic films devoid of any emotion, but the template of another genius whom you fail to recognize – Nolan.
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Varun (@varungrover)
January 3, 2015
My only big grouse with Hirani films is the preachiness.
As i said elsewhere – You don’t judge a Hirani film, the film judges you.
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Abhirup
January 3, 2015
“Then again, the scenario I suggest could have happened AFTER all those other scenes of searching for god”
Maybe. But I like the fact that P.K. finds his locket soon after the scene of his pleading to God, and that too through a man dressed as a god. On the other hand, as I said in my previous comment, all those pointless rituals bring him no help, precisely because they are pointless. Once he actually confesses to God that he understands none of those rituals and hence has come to Him, rather than his “managers”, for help, he meets “Shiva”, who takes P.K. to his locket. This, to me, is far more interesting than him chancing upon a programme where Tapasvee and the locket are being shown. There is co-incidence in the latter scenario too (P.K. coming across the very programme that is showing the locket), but the one in the film is more interesting, given the film’s larger point about believing in God rather than in godmen, I think.
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Aran
January 3, 2015
It’s a sad, sad world where the point of writing the review of a movie is to get it out there first. And what exactly is the point of that? Is primacy such an important thing, especially where people read much more for flavor or a particular viewpoint of a reviewer in this case, rather than how many stars a movie has been given? I’d say you need to convince the powers that be at your paper that your USP is geared more toward a cogitation of the issues as they appear in your mind rather than ‘go watch this movie.’
But I wonder – is the audience for your newspaper pieces different than the audience for the blog? And if so, I suppose they might clamor for seeing a review — any review — of a movie earlier rather than later. If it doesn’t matter much to the general public who writes the review, I suppose the poor editors are doing their job of trying to give the public what it wants.
About, Aamir. I’ve never been as into him as the other two Khans, and frankly, completely over him after he started taking himself way too seriously. Now, all his movies pretty much have what I call the Dil Chahta Hai expression – the one with wide open eyes and eyebrows pulled up. There’s really nothing more; he’s playing the same intelligent / elite savior over and over. Makes you remember movies like Sarfarosh and Dil so fondly. A case of the actor being taken over by the star I suppose.
And finally, regarding Rajkumar Hirani’s formula, yes, didn’t enjoy this as much as the first Munnabhai. That was a revelation, this was great entertainment. There’s so much more that we expect from him that a mere great movie is not enough. Didn’t know he was making a Sanjay Dutt biopic. Would be interesting to see what he does there. But all said and done, I think I’d take a few more reiterations of his formula than either Dhoom’s or Bhandarkar’s.
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Madan
January 3, 2015
Great article. I have one question. What kind of director do you have in mind when you say major filmmakers? If you mean somebody like Hrishikesh Mukherjee, there’s simply no comparison (in terms of range), but does Bolly have that kind of director anymore? Today’s pan India entertainers are either South-borrowed action films or South-borrowed comedies….except Hirani’s films. Which might explain the prickliness you encountered from some of his fans. I guess he makes films for people who want entertainment with some substance and soul but are not patient enough to keep up with twisted films like Kahaani.
The golden middle has proved elusive in show business as more and more works pile on to the existing canon, leaving little room for telling a simple story that everybody would be interested in hearing. Hirani has it somewhat in his grasp. Even if his approach to constructing the film is predictable as are his tropes, he covers diverse topics like medicine, education and organised religion and brings out pertinent points that trigger a conversation in the audience (so the films are not wholly superficial either). And in today’s commoditised paradigm, I guess the filmmaker kind of needs to include those cliched catchphrases (wrong number in the case of PK) to please a large audience. More of the same is in now, risk is out.
People seem to approach art with too many preconceived notions these days so something that’s way unexpected might not go down too well. That may indicate that Hirani lacks the integrity of a true artist but I am not sure he was or claimed to be from the get go. I really enjoyed PK for what it was and thought it was a return to form after the more Aamir-dominated 3 Idiots.
I can also relate to what you said though, about the mind seeking to rationalise and find fault, if a film that you thought would work for you doesn’t.
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Bunny
January 3, 2015
@Ramsu: If you think BR’s article is intolerant towards the people who love PK, then maybe you have never faced intolerance or discrimination in your life. Try criticising a recent film of Anurag Kashyap or the highly feted Dark Knight series at a movie forum or in a gathering of film buffs, then you will know what intolerance is, friend.
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Ratish Pandya
January 3, 2015
I have just watched this one. Few comments. I think it is weakest movie if you look at script there are some big glaring holes. Primarily you have to be consistent with the rules you create for your world/character. e.g.
1. We are told in PKs world they communicate telepathically – Yet you see Amir and Ranbir communicating in Bhojpuri towards the end. Does that only work in their planet or the aliens have dumbed down
2. What are the odd of a thief selling the article directly to Godman for 40K
a. It would go the chor bazar rout the normal in Delhi where he would not know where it ended
b. Or be donated to godman out of reverence in which case he is likely to meet the godman
3. I am not clear what happens when the protagonist hold hands
a. Transfer of specific data – Language, feelings, thoughts
b. Transfer of all things experiences (audio, visual, feelings. memories)
This is key premise of movie as many of scenes constructed will not be relevant otherwise. He would know a lot more by holding hands for 6 hours. You would expect more from Hirani… at many places the sequences are contrived and not consistent with the rules of good script. It leans a little too heavily on coincidence (ends up in right city, finds his remote..) to drive the story forward.
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Durga Dalai
January 3, 2015
Reluctant at first to enter the Cinemas, as I was while writing this comment. The diffidence about one’s authority to question the high gods of filmmaking and the dread of being judged incompetent and lynched on the altars of social media.
It began quite right. Having paid an exorbitant price for an admission ticket via a black marketeer, increased parking charges, I smirked upon myself at the irony of it, wondering if the makers were conscious of the box-office fate.
But, only for a price you are allowed to have an experience. After all, it took PK a brothel, to learn how to communicate and align with the ways of this world.
Maybe he should have stayed there all along instead of wandering through the high hospices. Maybe the remote would have found its way back to him. Maybe the message would have driven home. Maybe it is time for a bit of housecleaning.
If filmamking were akin to religion, ask yourself who are the Gods and who are its preachers?
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Bunny
January 3, 2015
@Ratish Pandya: 1) PK had transferred linguistic abilities to Ranbir and co. The reason they were talking in Bhojpuri was to get ready for the Earth. It’s like how sportspersons warm up before a big game. It’s how people rehearse talking in front of a mirror before an interview.
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soumya
January 4, 2015
@Ratish pandya: Those scientific loopholes bothered me throughout the movie…If holding hands could transfer language and thoughts of the other person then how come the concept of God never got transferred?? How come an alien possessed “human” emotions? A species using telepathic communication would rely solely on a single transmitter to communicate with home planet on an alien planet?? But then is there any point in searching for scientific accuracy in a hindi movie??
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hrishi
January 4, 2015
watching pk led to a sobering realization.
chetan bhagat:books = aamir/hirani : movies
any other unrealistic expectation is our fault.
maybe when converted to money the movie earns 500 cr as opposed to whatever a book makes.
but this is the intellectual level.
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chronophlogiston
January 5, 2015
No different from Spielberg’s ‘formula’, isn’t it? 🙂
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Gradwolf
January 5, 2015
Just got around to reading this. Oh that was some random shift in tone in the last paragraph!
The Sunday reviews are a bit worrying and disconcerting aren’t they. Yeah, I am just now on that phase 😉 It’s like Clooney in Gravity, “Houston in the blind…here’s my review”. By the time it arrives, people have read some 100 odd reviews already. How different is the Tamil scene wrt the Hindi one? I am talking more about the Hindi films (and in Madras more so) because disadvantage is from the get go as no preview shows on Wed/Thu for the review a day before or on the day.
The only solace is one is assured you don’t write reviews for the “Please tell us this movie is worth watching or not?” crowd so doesn’t really matter when it comes out I guess.
Uff, that became a personal rant.
PS
The other problem here – Still no sign of Ugly releasing here. Bigger problem if like me you are a “I’ll wait as long as possible to watch on the big screen purist”.
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Ram Murali
January 5, 2015
Reading your article made me respect filmmakers like KB and Mani Ratnam all the more…firstly, they make/made a very conscious attempt to ensure that no two consecutive movies were similar…and, even when they revisited some broad themes or topics, it was invariably with a fresh perspective or engaging new characters…
for instance, Aval oru thodarkathai and manathil urudhi vendum certainly have some broad similarities…but when you dig deeper, you certainly see freshness in characterizations and some specific issues that are brought to the fore such as organ donation…
I think the devil is in the details…it’s okay to have a format that works as long as there is a genuine attempt to infuse it with freshness, esp. with the characterizations…
more overtly commercial filmmakers like Shankar and hirani depend on formulae…the more discerning/thinking filmmakers love to revisit broad themes…
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sridharvisu76
January 6, 2015
@brangan Nice review and reviewOfAReview as usual.
I think it is the heart and inspiration of a creator that is at question. Flashback pieces in PK are by far the best in that movie and engaged me the most (in an indian movie) this year.
The creator has enjoyed that part and that shows. True inspiration from within.
The rest of the movie seems like someone else writing those pieces. Or someone is in a hurry to start lecturing. It is not a creative process. It is more like prose. It shows laziness masked by change-the-world-attitude. It just shows lack of patience during a creative process in waiting for the next wave of ideas (first wave being the great flashback piece).
PK in good hands wouldn’t be rushed. it would reflect the flashback piece in material and spirit. Oh what a great movie it would have been.
When I saw PK trailers I was worried it would be like a copy of Barfi. It is not. But Barfi, i liked that movie because it was like watching a single movie. PK seems like a mix of many movies in which I only liked one of them.
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Abhirup
January 6, 2015
I re-visited ‘P.K.’, and found that the formula still entertained me a lot. This is not to say that Hirani shouldn’t try something different — hence my eagerness for his take on sanjay dutt’s life — but I think ‘P.K.’ remains a film to be applauded.
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brangan
January 7, 2015
http://madaboutmoviez.com/2014/10/27/deconstructing-darkness-an-analysis-of-mysskins-crime-trilogy/
This interesting link shows us how a filmmaker (Mysskin) can pursue the same types of characters and situations and YET end up with very different movies. Pertinent to the article above.
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Prasad
January 7, 2015
Good and clean humour and honest film making has become a rarity in both in bollywood and kollywood. Hirani is one rare director who provides us this and yes he does have a similar framework to deliver this through a social message. In this process there are some characters which may be repeated as mentioned in this blog.
Also one another point is he doesn’t try hard to make his film look like an epic. Even in his interviews he has a very simple view of life and that’s what he wants to show in his movies. I was browsing “Movies which changes their life in you tube ” from all top directors and Hirani paid homage to “Anand” and that is the movie which changed his life.
Having said that many directors like Mandhur bhandarkar, Sanjay Gupta .etc came up with ” Bicycle theif, Bandit queen, Raging bull which are movies which changed their life and all that but eventually they churn out movies like is “Heroine” “Kaante” .etc
Point am trying to make is there is no arrogance in his approach that “I’am an epic filmmaker” and there is honesty in his films.
Let me give an example of “Ugly” which I just saw recently. It is praised by many but it didn’t work for me. I would say ” Black friday is Anurag Kashyap’s best. In ugly he wants to show how negative his characters can be and ” How dark his movies ” can be. And he almost goes to such disturbing scale and in the end it’s chaos and we don’t root for any character. For me is is just manipualtion and trying hard that to tell that ” I’am India’s Martin Scorsese”
Same thing is true for selvaraghavan’s, madhur Bhandarkar’s movies. Somehow you sense a dose of arrogance that their films are nothing short of epic.
Atleast ,We need to give to Hirani that he doesn’t try hard and he just wants to enteritain us with good and clean humour even though his character’s has smilar patterns!!
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RT
January 7, 2015
Finally saw this last week. I thought the first half was great – it was sort of like a mix of ET and 3rd Rock from the Sun. Unfortunately, by the end of the first half it started to concentrate on religion and then as you’ve mentioned lapsed into Hirani-formula mode and it went a little downhill from there. There were a few good bits but overall the 2nd half was disappointing.
Like a couple of other commenters, I found the sci-fi part a little jarring. They communicate mentally by holding hands – how does that work when you have to call out to someone on the other side of the road ?
What about telephones, radio, television, plays, etc ? Do they have any of those ? Do they even have a language ? And if they do have a language, surely they can tell a lie ?
I can understand the reasons for the last scene showing the 2 aliens conversing in Bhojpuri. what was Hirani supposed to do – show them holding hands without speaking a word ? However, in terms of remaking the movie in my head, I would have liked to have seen the aliens conversing with each other in Bhojpuri and landing somewhere in China.
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Shankar
January 8, 2015
My take is that these film makers chose to be formulaic because they are successful in doing so. I don’t think they are claiming to be “class” film makers or so and if we put them in that pedestal, we are to blame and not them. Another film maker who comes to mind is Shankar. He recycles similar tropes and events in many of his films and the audiences lap it up. The couple of instances when he deviated from his formula – Jeans and Boys, the films were perceived to be flops in comparison to his other films. So he went back to what he does best – fight corruption! 🙂 The larger aspect of all this is if any of this cinema actually makes an impact in terms of reducing corruption or so…but hey, Shankar is just a film maker and placing these unjust expectations is not right. It’s the same with Hirani’s films too…a few hours of entertainment and back to the drudgery of life! 🙂 Some how I don’t feel the need to analyze these films that much…hey, that’s just me.
pk was okay…nothing earth shattering but I was pleasantly surprised that Hirani was willing to take on religion, which is always a hot spot everywhere, and especially in our country where yamakandam and raahukalam rule the doings of everyday life! 🙂
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Madhavan
January 11, 2015
Felt that the film was similar to OMG ( Paresh Rawal). Only the packaging was different. However, it was entertaining. No masala no bidi jalai le etc.
And your review is nicely conceived.
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Apu
January 14, 2015
RT: One correction – they do not communicate by holding hands, they communicate with each other mentally. He needed to hold hands because he could not do that with humans. (Kind of like bluetooth did not work, so he tried downloading through USB). And because they know what the other person is thinking, it is impossible to tell a lie.
I would love to know more about that world too, but the movie was not really about that world, it was about our world as seen by someone from there.
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Shankar
January 16, 2015
Your response to Vivek in the “I” comments about Shankar summed up what I was saying about him as well as Hirani. To me, they are both similar film makers, making entertainers and happy doing so even if their films might be perceived by the public to be revolutionizing the society. So, thanks….even though you did not respond to my comment here, I’m glad we agree on this! 🙂
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brangan
January 16, 2015
Shankar: Actually we agree only about Shankar. I still think Hirani’s “formula” works differently, and his films do make a case for him to considered an important filmmaker 🙂
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Utkal Mohanty
January 23, 2015
Saw PK for the second time this Tuesday, sandwiches between my viewing of ‘I’ and ‘A Theory of Everything’.
My God, what a mess of a film it is!
A film that starts with a Pakistani boy and an Indian girl fighting for a ticket to a double bill of Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s poems and Amitabh Bachchan’s performance in some town in Belgium! And ends with revelation about a letter delivered to the wrong girl because she was holding the right cat! And in between it has an alien who doesn’t know what it can do and what it cannot.
And what a kickass courageous film it is!
Halfway through I could not believe Hirani has actually made such a film.
It asks questions that serious thinkers have forgotten to ask, let alone a filmmaker in a mainstream film.
It is also a very funny film. I was laughing when I was not thinking.
And sometimes I was laughing AND thinking.
The episode with PK trying to pass off Gandhi’s photos as currency notes, or when PK was getting his lessons in colour coding – what colour you wear when you are getting married and what colour you wear when your husband dies.
But mostly I was amazed at Hirani’s dare. He was actually using a Bollywood film to ask ordinary viewers these kinds of questions?
Yes, he was. And people were responding. Laughing, yes. But also realizing …how ridiculous some of their seemingly normal behaviour has been!
So what are the questions Hirani raises in the film?
But before that let us get rid of some silly distractions. Like the accusations of it being anti-Hindu. Or it targeting only the supposed evils of Hinduism. That’s quite easily done. First off, an alien landing in a Hindu-dominated India is likely to encounter Hindu rituals more than that of any other religion. Secondly, no other religion, say Islam or Christianity, or Buddhism, is dominated by rituals and such a bewildering variety of practices in public life related to God as Hinduism is. If he had to critique other religions’ concept of God he had to do it at the level of abstract principles. And that won’t provide any narrative base for an interesting film. The point is through all his picking holes in Hindu religious practices no one can show a single instance where he is implying that other religions are any better. He attacks the practice of the proselytizing the poor by the Christians, he questions the godliness in preventing little girls from getting educated by some Muslims , and he questions the very idea of terrorist attacks to protect one’s Khuda as if Khuda couldn’t protect himself.
He talks about the arbitrariness of all religious injunctions: One says worship the cow, the other says kill it as sacrifice, ones says wine is evil, the other says it’s God’s blessing. Surely they cannot all be right. But for the major part of the film he pokes fun at Hindu rituals and religious customs to raise the basic question: Do you ever think why you are doing what you are doing? And a non-Hindu seeing the film is going to end up asking the same questions about his or her own religious practices after seeing the film. It is not if he can go home and sleep peacefully saying to himself, “These Hindus have such stupid practices. Look at my religion. Everything is so rational.” No way. Because he is going to find in his own religion the same amount of irrationality, the same playing on the fear and greed of ordinary men by the priestly class, the mangers of God.
I have read pieces by people like Amish and Madhu Kishwar defending the rituals and practices that Hirani attacks in the film. But these are old defenses had had not deterred people like Buddha, Mahavir, Dayand Saraswati and Debendranath Tagore from rebelling against these practices. Amish says, idols are symbols of the real God, it is the faith of the devotee that turns a stone into God. Fair enough. So the stone is not real God but only a symbol. So Ram or Krishna are not real gods but symbols. So the place of birth of ram is but a symbol and is not worth shedding blood over surely. And when we accept that the real nature of God is something else, the rituals should be helping us in realizing that true nature. Do the rituals do that, or they just play upon our greed and fear? What happens to that realization when we indulge in massive corruption and offer a diamond crown to the Lord? What happens when you promise to offer a coconut if you pass in an exam? Isn’t PK right in demanding his money back if the transaction is not completed? Can the laws of cause and effect ensure one’s getting a job as a result of feeding a cow?
Going through some kind of hardship may steel one to face hardships. But rolling on the ground to get your wish granted? Can’t we think up of more intelligent rituals? Rolling on the left-over food after the higher cast people have eaten? Isn’t it plain that it is a ruse to enforce caste superiority? Many of these rituals and forms of gods were conceptualized when the human understanding of nature was limited. The sun, the moon, the sea fire and rain were given godly forms and worshipped. When our understanding of nature and laws of nature has expanded so vastly, falling back on the old rituals can only take us farther away from the true nature of God, and not nearer.
Hirani plays fair and articulates through Tapasvi the usual concern that many religious people have. ‘ What is your problem if people find solace in breaking coconut or tying a thread around a tree when in mental distress? What is the alternative you suggest?” PK’s answer is partly given in his direct reply to Tapasvi, partly in his advice to people who came to Tapasvi with their problems. To Tapasvi he says, let’s revere the God who has created us rather than the God we have created. To the man whose wife has been struck by paralysis, he says, going to some temple a thousand miles away will not help, stay with her, nurse her, give her company, spend the last days together. WE may or mayint be able to crack the God question to everyone’s total satisfaction. But unitil then we can at least try to be as humane as we can. If psychiatric help is what people need, let us working at better, more professionally sound psychiatry. If meditation brings peace let us prescribe meditation. If prayer at time seems to heal, let us study what aspect of prayer heals. (Let us not be like the scientist who drinks whisky with water, gin with water, rum with water, gets drunk each time and concludes that it is water the common element each time, that causes intoxication.) And whatever you do, don’t do anything out of fear, greed and ignorance. After the Vedanta, after the Upanishads, after Buddha, surely we should be evolving better paths for f reaching and realizing the ultimate truth, or at least devising better societies that foster more ethical, more humane living.
I have also heard the argument that many of these rituals have been around for thousands of years. And in spite of their failings they have been mostly working for so many people. There must be some good in them. Now imagine someone saying to Abraham Lincoln, slavery has been around for hundreds of years and has done wonders for our economy. There must be something good in it. No. The fact that something has been around for years is no defense of its soundness. A few thousand years, so? We Hindus out of all the people should not be putting up that defense. After all we think in yugas, manvantaras and Brahma’s years! Humans have been on the earth for 2.5 million years, and in the present anatomical form for more than 200,000 years. And surely we want to be around for a few million years if not more. And we all know our present state of spiritual evolution is so elementary. There is no way we can be satisfied with humanity the way it is. There is no religion that can claim that it has succeeded in developing a fine form of humanity that we can all be proud of and satisfied with. So the last few thousand years are just the baby steps we have taken on our spiritual journey, towards a form of higher consciousness. We have mikes to go. PK has not shown us the way, it has just flashed a torchlight on some bushes and potholes on the path that we are walking on, so that we can sidestep them, and continue with our exploration.
( So what explains the messy business with the letter in the church. And how does one forgive Hirani for it? Simple. It is a McGuffin, like Hirani and Joshi have said in their interview it is. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin) . It has nothing to do with the meat concern of the film. But without these there is now ay he could make it look like a mainstream Bollywood entertainer and get people to the theatre, who wants to go to a cinema for gyan?
And I forgive it just as I forgive the dog with the letter in Hum Aapke Hain Koun..? In fact, the absurdity of these devices is a clear clue to us; Take this business seriously at your own peril.
And coming back to Hirani, I admire his humanity as much as I admire his courage and intelligence. He could have easily chosen any other subject. There is no dearth of safe subjects on which he could have mounted his comedy. But this is something he felt strongly about and this is he message that he wanted to get across to as many people as he could. Therefore the subterfuges, and the right rope walking.
And I am glad that he has so spectacularly succeeded.)
Ps: This time Anushka’s collagen-enhanced lips didn’t bother me much. If Aamir was pitch perfect as the wondering alien, she was his perfect foil as the kind-hearted Jaggu.
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abishekspeare
September 13, 2020
“I’m being sucked into this race slowly, as the paper has begun to publish its reviews on the web the same day, and it’s caused a bit of stress. As my resolution for the new year, I’m going to try not to think about the deadline. The review is ready when it is ready. As long as the content has some meat, I guess… all is well. ”
Sigh
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