Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani (2023)

When I watched the trailer of ‘Rocky Aur Rani’, it reminded me of ‘Vicky Donor’ – the male protagonist is Punjabi and female protagonist is Bengali. One focuses on brawn, the other on brain. Needless to say, opposites attract and the rest is sexual chemistry. Oops, history.

I wanted to watch ‘Rocky Aur Rani’ with my mother, and she agreed to come along. She is a fan of typical Bollywood (minus the violence), and was happy to watch Bengalis on screen. Mentions of Bengalis triggers pleasant childhood memories in her.

I was mildly shocked to see the nepotism at play right in the beginning of the movie, when the song “Heart Throb” featured Varun Dhawan, Ananya Pandey, Sara Ali Khan and Janhvi Kapoor. It distracted me from the rather delightful storytelling (with a voiceover by Ranveer Singh) about the Punjabi Randhawa family. The matriarch Dhanalakshmi, played by Jaya Bachchan in a manner reminiscent of the patriarch Amitabh Bachchan in K3G, is a self-made, successful businesswoman who treats her DIL in the same manner as how her MIL treated her. Rather shabbily, mildly put. The matriarch’s milder poet husband Kanwal (played by Dharmendra) suffers a fall early in their marriage, has partial amnesia and is unable to walk or care for himself. It is the tougher matriarch who provides for the family. She isolates her son from her husband and grooms him to be her arrogant successor. Now, she wants her grandson Rocky (played by Ranveer Singh) to take on the family business.

It was interesting to see how Rocky isn’t averse to working with her, even though she rules with fear. His passion for dancing remains hidden from the family, and he is unable to stand up for his mother or sister. Or himself, for that matter. He is well-behaved for the most part, perhaps a credit to his mother.

In a rather ‘tharki’ turn, Kanwal exclaims the name Jamini (after forcibly kissing a much younger woman who isn’t bothered by it) and the family doctor advises that they must find out who Jamini is. Jamini (played by Shabana Azmi) is Rani’s (played by Alia Bhatt) paternal grandmother, who had a brief extra-marital affair with Kanwal. As Karan Johar’s movies emphasise, rich people in unhappy marriages find empathetic soulmates in affairs (remember Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna?), but family always comes first. So, Dhanalakshmi continues to remain lonely, unhappily married and provides for her ailing husband and remainder of the family – something that’s ignored by the affair partners, and every other character.

Rani (a famous TV anchor who is educated in Delhi University and Colombia) agrees to help Rocky make their grandparents meet. While doing so, Rocky and Rani too fall in love. Watch the movie to see how both love stories end.

While I wasn’t thrilled with the casting of the parents on both sides (much like in Hindi TV serials, they looked of the same age as the lead characters), the casting of the grandparents was fantastic. The delightful usage of old Hindi film music, especially while flirting, was welcome too.

The movie touches upon a host of issues – impact of misogyny, assertive feminism, extra-marital affairs, domestic violence, objectification, fat-shaming, men who enjoy classical dancing (and people who oppose this), how education and lack of English skills don’t matter when it comes to matters of the heart, cancel culture (and how mild rich young men are affected by it – I am laughing as I type this), how DILs can bond with their MILs and SILs with their FILs. 

In K3G, the female protagonist (played by Kajol) was loud in dressing, under-educated and non-English speaking. Here, it is Rocky who is all of this, with one vital difference. He is rich. Super rich, in fact. This is the commonality that both families are bound by, and hence nobody needs to worry about marriage expenses or real differences in lifestyle or what happens if both Rocky and Rani give up their jobs. Perhaps the boondi laddoos will save all of them (Rani gets the recipe!), much like the matriarch did.

Oppenheimer (2023)

A few months ago, when I got to know that Oppenheimer was going to be released in 2023, I had mixed feelings. I did not want to see a movie that showed the “other side” regarding Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are others who felt the same way as me – the Japanese have delayed the movie from being screened in Japan. Yet, I remained curious, particularly since I knew about Albert Einstein and his pacifist ideas. Perhaps I could learn something from this movie too about some of the greatest physicists the world has known.

And I did learn. More from Christopher Nolan, i.e. His storytelling is compelling and engaging as ever, and I hope to read “American Prometheus”, the book on which the movie is based.

The cast is fantastic – I particularly liked Robert Downey Jr, Josh Hartnett (such a delight that he was in ‘Pearl Harbour’ too) and yes Matt Damon – all big names. Cillian Murphy worried me in parts with his thin frame. I wasn’t surprised to learn that Oppenheimer is a patient of depression and schizophrenia, and was grateful that Nolan showed this aspect in a physical sense too. I almost expected stills from J. Edgar featuring Leonardo Di Caprio to be shown in this movie. That would have been interesting to see!

“Genius is no guarantee of wisdom. How could this man who saw so much be so blind?”

The Manhattan Project is an amalgamation of what happens when Physics, Armed Forces and Politics come together. The usual call to violence – some lives lost are better than more lives being lost – is opposed by Physicists who signed the Szilard petition including David Hill (Rami Malik in a persuasive role), and they are expectedly ignored.

“You drop a bomb, and it falls on the just and the unjust. I don't wish the culmination of three centuries of physics to be a weapon of mass destruction”

It was interesting to see the portrayal of women and womanising in the movie, and how sexism is prevalent in Science and Academia. Nolan doesn’t demonise the mistress nor places the wife on a particularly high pedestal – something that other moviemakers mirroring societal norms tend to do.

“Well, a fool or an adolescent presumes to know someone else's relationship, and you're neither, Lloyd.”

In 2023, Oppenheimer is the movie I have liked the most. I was happy to see Picasso’s painting ‘Woman sitting with crossed arms’ appear in the movie. I wonder what the world would have been like if a majority group of women Physicists had worked on the Manhattan Project.

I hope my father can watch it sometime - Physics always reminds me of him. If any of you like Science and politics come together, don’t miss it! 

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

As always, I was eager to watch Tom Cruise in the latest Mission: Impossible movie, particularly after seeing videos where he rides a motorcycle off a cliff and skydives. My jaw dropped while watching them.

When the movie released on July 12 and I couldn’t go to watch it in the same week, I thought my chance was gone. Over 3 weeks later, I achieved my personal mission impossible and went to the theatre – it turned out to be a great experience at Insignia.

 
As Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) wryly explains, IMF is not the International Monetary Fund but the Impossible Missions Force, and it takes on tasks that are classified as impossible by legitimate intelligence forces. This time, I found more than a touch of humour in the movie – the theatre burst into laughter at the scene when the 1957 yellow Fiat 500 appeared.

The plot is the usual – bad people have access to destructive power, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team take fascinating, improbable steps and prevent the destruction from being unleased. Each time, there is hope that Ethan will survive the mission and he does so. Unfortunately, the heroines are mostly not so lucky. I was genuinely disappointed to see Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) being eliminated.

I loved the scene where Ethan Hunt’s old id card is displayed. I am glad he has taken to aging well and we have authentic cinematic moments like this one. I also liked the implausible scene where he tells Grace (Hayley Atwell) that he will hold her life as more important than his own.

Ethan Hunt: [to Grace] I swear your life will always matter more to me than my own.
Grace: You don't even know me.
Ethan Hunt: What difference does *that* make?

Post this series, I am waiting to see how Tom Cruise guides the rest of his career. I hope he gets back to doing movies like ‘Rainman’ and ‘Jerry Maguire’. And yes, I hope he gets an Oscar one day!