Review: Road, Movie review
The comma spliced title of the film kept me intrigued for quite some time. The nitpicker in me hit the books to find a reason as to why the words 'road' and 'movie' are separated by a comma? Here's what I found out: It has to do with a train. Train of thought. "You're looking good, let's go have some coffee" doesn't necessarily mean "you're looking good so let's go and have some coffee". The readers are free to make their own connections between the two fragments/ideas, separated by the comma, in the first example. While in the other the connection is made more than apparent. This kind of construction of sentences - paratactic syntax - is usually employed by poets to juxtapose different kinds of imagery to fire up the readers' imagination. Cutting short this aside in linguistics, I think it's a brilliant and a promising title, only because of that comma, but as they say in Hindustani Naam mein kya rakha hai?
Road, Movie is the story of Vishnu (Abhay Deol), heir apparent of his father's rather small and unsuccessful hair oil enterprise Aatma Hair Oil, and his road trip in a old and rickety Chevy truck, which houses a traveling cinema, across the Thar Desert. This road trip is his opportunity to break out of the monotony of his existence. An assorted cast of characters - a chatty chaiwallah (Faizal Usmani), a grizzly know-it-all mechanic (Satish Kaushik), a despotic and sex-starved cop (Virendra Saxena), a wandering widow (Tannistha Chatterjee) and a ganglord (Yashpal Sharma) - that Vishnu encounters en route provide the film rest of the plot points.
Visually exuberant, Road, Movie, doesn't really impress. Its languorous pace makes it unbecoming of a Road Movie. Even at 90 minutes it seems long. The script is watery and the characters are grossly underwritten (to an extent that two of the characters aren't even given names). A Road Movie is supposedly a bildungsroman, a coming of age narrative, where the central character evolves through the journey, nothing of that sort happens in this film.
Some sequences are so contrived that you wonder as to how difficult could it be to write a film that remains true to its own logic. It seems unbelievable to see a character who lords over the water mafia in the desert, who kills at will, softening up after a head massage.
Michael Brooks, known in India for his collaborations with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Sahab, and some remarkable work on Sean Penn's 'Into the Wild' provides a background score with very little Indian influence. It sounds more African if I'm not mistaken. The Mela too, in the film, has a distinct European aesthetic to it. Reference to Starbucks, which hasn't yet set shop in India, is both anachronistic and telling of the fact that its release here is only incidental.
Some logical flaws like putting up the last screening without electricity only add to the chaos. Had director Dev Benegal set the story in the the realm of fantasy all this wouldn't have mattered. But the fact that he's located it in reality make these (and many more) oddities quite conspicuous.
Everything put together, Road, Movie partially succeeds in redeeming itself. The brilliant photography, for one, gives the script a slick veneer to hide behind. The stark landscape of the Thar is rendered beautifully by Michel Amathieu. There are also certain moments in the film that tell you that this it's a labour of love. Alfredo, the projectionist in Cinema Paradiso snipped out scenes that the local church deemed inappropriate. Here, Satish Kaushik, takes out the scenes that he thinks will bore the audience and goes on to relate the story of Princess Scheherazade!
Aatma hair Oil, the legacy and the smell Vishnu so hates plays a pivotal role in the film. It gets him out of sticky situations; it lubricates the rusty projector, gets him water and a lot of money. The Tel brings about the only transformation that takes place in Vishnu's character: from refusing to even smell it (as his father tells him - "soongh isse...yeh tere future hai"!) in the beginning of the film to allowing a masseur to give him a head massage in the penultimate sequence. I couldn't really figure out what this change means though. I just wish that the Tel would've been used in a more imaginative and robust way. Could it have been used to run the truck or even cool its carburetor (and instead of having "khuraak" written on the fuel tank cover, could it have said "Iraq ka Paani" thus underlining the irony of violence over, both, oil and water)? Could it have restored lost vigour (and not just of the metaphorical variety!) in the leader of the water thieves a la Sande ka Tel? Like I said, if it'd been set in the realm of fantasy, it'd have saved itself from a lot of embarrassment and actually turned out to be a good film.
Finally, I come to the centre piece of the film, Abhay Deol. The apathetic Vishnu would have been a tough role to play. Why? The guy is a loser and doesn't offer much in terms of material to the actor. But why must Deol wear this constipated look on his face perpetually? It doesn't even get better even after he takes a dump on the road. Satish Kaushik alone stands out in this film. Sporting Aviators, both Virendra Saxena and Yashpal Sharma exaggerate their characters. But it can't be entirely their fault. The director must take the blame for not calibrating their characters. The chai wallah boy and the wandering widow, who as I mentioned earlier go without names in the film, make do some smart lines and kohl lined eyes respectively.
As for the comma spliced title, I think it does bring the two powerful media - road and films - together reasonably well, at least in terms of their respective imagery. The underlying ideas though don't mix. Like oil and water
It's a one time watch. The more you can suspend your critical faculties the better placed you'll be to enjoy this film. Or, you do what one of my friends did. He had a ball imagining as to how various situations in the film would have been resolved had Vishnu's role been played by Abhay's cousin Sunny!
The film, like Aatma Hair Oil, has some lubricating properties. Not enough, though, to penetrate.
(1 vote)
