The 14th MFF: A Retrospective

The 14^th Mumbai Film Festival (MFF) organised by Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) was my first full-blown film festival experience. Here, I revisit some of the highlights of the festival in the futile hope of continuing to live it.

Stories we tell: Dir. Sarah Polley (Canada)

This one was a devastating start to the film festival. All the stellar reviews and repeated allusions to its shattering impact could not prepare me for what I saw in those 110 minutes. Sarah Polley, an actress herself, directs this documentary about her parents and family, using interviews with them, her siblings, their friends, old photographs and Super-8 footage, reconstructions simulating Super-8 footage of her parents’ youth. Memory, love, desire, art, laughter, freedom, loneliness, regret, fear, bitterness, rage coalesce to form one of the most human stories I’ve seen on screen. Amazingly, in addition to all this, the film works like a mystery, in so far as pulling the audience along in the search of an elusive truth. In the process, it re-examines the very nature of truth and its uneasy relationship with us. No one is spared, no one is judged. Polley even chooses to include footage of herself, in the act of experiencing, what we, the audience do. It is as much a journey of painful, honest revelation as it is of self-discovery. The narrative form Polley chooses is so synergetic with the subject matter at hand, it is what lends the film its quietly catastrophic, heartbreaking beauty.  

Miss Lovely: Dir. Ashim Ahluwalia (India, Hindi)

One of the most eagerly awaited films at the festival owing to its selection in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, the premiere was a bit too well attended, leaving the film’s cast and crew (who’d turned up fashionably late) struggling to find seats at their own premiere. Thankfully, the director and the great Nawazuddin Siddiqui were spared this minor ignominy as they were absent.

Set in the world of the C-grade sex-horror film industry in Mumbai of the mid-80’s (Pyaasa Shaitan, Hawas Bhari Chudail and the like), the story follows two brothers Vicky (Anil George) and Sonu (Nawazuddin) who make such films and a mysterious girl Pinky (Niharika Singh) between them. This film is a rarity in that it does not have much of a plot, (whatever it does can easily be predicted), but depends almost entirely on the creation of an atmosphere to create an impact. The use of this approach is a masterstroke, for it does not quite concretely confirm our worst assumptive fears about such a world, yet greatly magnifies every such fear that is realised. For instance, elsewhere, the sight of a man, hands bound with blood flowing from a cut lip, would not make our skin crawl as much as it would in this film.

It is a dread-heavy film, one whose opening shots, in a mocking, spoofing way, portend the imminent doom. The darkness that pervades the film goes beyond the sleaze, bloodshed or the wretched lives of the characters. It just is. We look at the characters laughing and making merry and wonder how they do it in such a world. We look at them suffer and wonder how they survive in it. The dialogue is so everyday and muttered, it is as if one were eavesdropping on the characters. Yet the sound-design is layered, hypnotic and sonorous creating a closed world in tandem with the claustrophobic locations and the extremely tight photography (Mohanan). The swirling, eddying background score and the garish, baroque set-design and makeup provide a weird beauty to the decaying, noisome world of the film.

A really unique experience, but one you would immediately want to wash off your skin. You can’t.

Ship of Theseus: Dir. Anand Gandhi (India, English/Hindi)

To watch this film is to gulp down breath after breath of pristine, mountainous air, heady with the scent of pines. You feel so alive and enriched after watching it, you almost feel it has healed you in some way. The title refers to an ancient Greek conundrum that asks if a ship may remain the same one after a few or all of its planks have been replaced by new ones or those from another ship? In the latter case, which one, if either, would be the original ship? The film uses this as a springboard to jump into three stories, each one uniquely moving and stimulating. Along the way it asks, posits, debates, philosophical questions and struggles with answers. In spite of these, the film is not weighed down by them and remains ethereal, luminous, humorous and completely in the here and now of things.  Fantastic performances by an international cast most of which is little-known. The cinematography by Pankaj Kumar (in his debut feature) is jaw-dropping, consisting of visually stunning compositions, lyrical lighting and long, continuous takes. It sets a new bench-mark in the field. After hearing a lot of the rave reviews both at home and at the Toronto Int’l Film Festival, this is one film I feel lucky to have watched along with the cast and crew. It received a standing ovation at the Jamshed Bhabha Hall, NCPA where it was screened. Now my only hope is that it gains a commercial release as soon as possible.       

De Martes a Martes (From Tuesday to Tuesday): Dir. Gustavo Trivino (Argentina)

A tightly wound film, it is the story of a man during a period of (as the title suggests) 8 days of his life. It’s a debut feature with a tight budget that contributes to the overall tautness of the film. It would be a crime to give anything away, except that the man is an absolutely regular guy with a blue-collar job and a family. But he secretly nurses a desire and, over the course of the week, is an invisible witness to something that may change his life forever, depending on what he does about it. Or does not. The director masterfully turns up the screws in little touches, subtly supplies clues and creates a generally disquieting atmosphere through everyday interactions and dialogue. Reminded me of ‘The Machinist’, oddly. A crackerjack thriller.  Oh, and with a bloody good central performance.

Antiviral: Dir. Brandon Cronenberg (Canada)

While most kids of great directors struggle to break free out of their parents’ shadow, Brandon son-of-David Cronenberg goes the other way. After watching this film, one would be forgiven for thinking David Cronenberg made the film. The apple clings tightly to the tree.

But that is only so far as the subject matter is concerned. The treatment, while reminiscent of the master, is amped-up with a heavy, electronic score and sustained slow-motion hallucinatory sequences. Celebrity obsession has reached such a peak as to warrant the existence of legitimate companies that patent and sell celebrity diseases to fans who want to feel a visceral connection with their idols. Not only that, there also exists a celebrity meat market, where slabs of meat containing cells of celebrities are sold to customers to provide them the satisfaction of literally eating their idols. This piece of speculative fiction is based smartly on fact. The HeLa cell line, one of the most famous malignant cell lines of all, is invoked to ground this madness in a reality that is chillingly plausible.

This is only the set-up. The film accepts it to be as normal as, probably, the sun rising in the east. The protagonist Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) works at just such a celebrity disease firm, and all hell breaks loose when he breaks the one cardinal rule: he carries a celebrity disease outside the premises of his company to sell it on the black market. And, as in ‘Videodrome’, rival corporations jump into the fray too, with sides being changed, double-crossed, people being hunted and punished in really uncomfortable ways.  

This is one of the coldest films I’ve seen: watching it is like swimming in waves of ice. Most of the film has been shot indoors, yet the locations are all sterile, blindingly white, drained of all warmth. The human beings are pale, seen through extremely tight close-ups, so that we can see every throbbing vein, every freckle clearly. There is a purpose for all this and it is revealed in the graphic displays of veins being pierced by hypodermic needles and copious amounts of dark-red, warm, thick blood flowing over those sterile surfaces and out of those bodies, making even hardened horror fans queasy. Cronenberg Jr. has his father’s gift for icy atmosphere, icy females and warm blood-letting down to boot.  

Aqui y Alla (Here and There): Dir. Antonio Esparza (Mexico)

This film reinforces the fact that just watching human beings be themselves through a camera they are unconscious of is still the most fascinating sight on screen. No, it is not a documentary and neither does it feel like one. The camera is steady and, in most cases, static. But we see lives, deep and rich in their everyday detail unfold before us, people who we can almost touch and talk to and we are hooked, sucked in from one scene to another.

It tells the story of one of the many Mexicans who work legally in the United States. After spending several years in the States, Pedro returns to his native village in Mexico to his wife and two daughters and begins life anew. Through them, it simply shows us the mundane life of a Mexican village with love, laughter and music. There is minimal drama; no one even so much as raises their voice.  Perhaps, this is a movie that defies complete description; it simply has to be experienced.

I have said before that it is not a documentary. It would scarcely have worked as one for it does not speak about any issue as such. When the film ends, you just want to go up to Senor Pedro, shake his hand and tell him, ‘You are a good man’.  

Kurmavatara (The Tortoise, An Incarnation): Dir. Girish Kasaravalli (India, Kannada)

Amidst all the new-age cinema endorsing value systems that are more globalised (if at all they do endorse), it is refreshing to see a film that speaks of Gandhian ideals in today’s times. The setting is a lower-middle class household in Bengaluru, presumably, consisting of Ananda Rao, an ageing government employee and his son, daughter-in-law and their son. Ananda is a gruff workaholic who is approached to play the role of Mahatma Gandhi in a TV production by its director. Initially turning him down, he eventually accepts it at his family’s insistence and the continuing efforts of the director. Being an untrained, inexperienced actor has its pitfalls, however, and performance anxiety is the least of them. He is profoundly affected by Gandhian ideals to his family’s delight, at first, but then to their chagrin. His popularity is taken advantage of by several friends and acquaintances for their own vested interests. One naively expects such a simple, old-fashioned, gently humorous film to merely highlight the paradox of how we see Gandhi today and the contrast between reel and real life. But the film doesn’t stop at that. Ananda does not become more like Gandhi nor does he bring about a sea-change in others around him by resorting to satyagraha. He does try fasting once, but to no avail. The film betrays no such romantic illusions about Gandhi’s methods and thus, reveals a wisdom seemingly at odds with its old-world charm. Ananda does get in touch with his emotions more after being required to emote for the camera. On the other hand, we see several instances of Ananda questioning Gandhi’s own behaviour while being well in character. This is the strength of the film: that it challenges and breaks assumptions about itself even as we watch it. In a sequence in the film, a situation has the potential to become a communally charged one. It is defused, not by appealing to the common sense of the people, or their sense of communal amity, but by giving in to the demands of the fanatics. In that sense, it is a clear-eyed look at the paradox of Gandhian ideals not only in today’s day and age, but also the very ideals themselves. This film provided me with a lot of food for thought, and most of the conclusions drawn above, are in hindsight.

Xingu: Dir. Cao Hamburger (Brazil)

To be honest, I chanced upon this film only because the screening of ‘Amour’, one of the biggest draws of the festival, was cancelled at the eleventh hour. I went in disgruntled, without expecting anything from it, given its title and the synopsis I’d read of it. I hadn’t heard of the director too which was another minus. Yes, my hurt ego had ballooned to an unimaginable size. This film not only pricked the air out of it, but healed it too, restoring it to its erstwhile good humour. A classic case of serendipity, this remains one of the most fascinating films I’ve seen at the festival. It tells the real-life tale of three brothers in the 1940’s who sign up on a whim to partake of the civilisation drive of central Brazil, hitherto unreached. The brothers are of the family Villas Boas, Claudio, Orlando and Leonardo. They are well-educated but pass themselves off as manual labour so that they may live life in the great outdoors at the mercy of Nature alone. While exploring the jungles of Central Brazil they chance upon an ancient, indigenous tribe with whom they successfully manage to interact peacefully. After this first success, they are repeatedly called upon by the National Government to aid the civilisation drives and make contact with other tribes. In most cases, the brothers serve as a velvet glove for the iron fist of the Govt. in displacing the tribals. The film documents the assiduous efforts of the brothers to soften the inevitable blow- of contact between the white man and the tribals- as much as possible.  In the course of their work, we also see their personal struggles, relationships with the tribals and relationship with their own folk, the white men.

In doing so, it raises fundamental questions about the conquest of nature, the neo-colonisation of the tribals and its globalised nature, whether tribals should be brought into contact with white men at all, and the wherewithal to do so. The herculean efforts of the brothers bore fruit when, in the late 1960’s. the Government allowed them permission to build a reserve park where different indigenous tribes might reside in peaceful coexistence away from the sight of white men. The park bore the name of the great river of the region: Xingu. The film benefits enormously from the expert photography on location and extremely accurate recreation of those pages of history that are often overlooked. The end credits showed the great Fernando Meirelles as one of the producers. My day was made.      

BMW: Aditya Bhattacharya (India, Hindi/English)

It is a return of sorts for the director whose last film Dubai Return (2005) with Irfan Khan and Divya Dutta never released. To most people (which is not many) he is still known as the guy who made Raakh way back in 1988, which pulled off a casting coup by getting a very young Aamir Khan, Pankaj Kapur and Supriya Pathak together. And then disappeared. I haven’t seen those movies, so I went in for this screening more out of curiosity than anything else.

It tells the story of a New York based journalist of Indian origin, Nivedita (Sarita Choudhury) who is in Mumbai to shoot a documentary on encounter specialist Dilawar Khan (Javed Jaffri). The titular BMW refers to the car Khan drives, as well as becomes an acronym for Bombay’s Most Wanted. For the film, she also interviews his informer Inayat (Chandan Roy Sanyal) and, later, a former bar dancer Vanilla (Tannishtha Chatterjee). The three subjects share a close bond from an earlier time. The journalist’s arrival coincides with several synchronous changes in the city: encounter specialists are now hunted and harassed by the new political establishment, bar dancers have been rendered jobless due to RR Patil’s landmark decision and the informer is on the run, hunted by both the sides he played and betrayed. Nivedita’s attempt to delve into the encounter killing of the feared Pote Bhau (Vijay Raaz) shifts the delicate balance between the three subjects, in addition to drawing the ire of Khan’s former boss (Adil Hussain) now hell-bent on capturing him to please his superiors. Amid this dynamically changing landscape, Nivedita struggles to piece together the jigsaw of Pote’s killing.

The narrative is rather convoluted with different versions of the same event seen through different eyes, certain events are fractured and intercut with other events, characters and their motivations subtly change with every retelling and fact and fiction intermingle freely to create the uneasy matrix of life. Along the way, the movie doffs its hat to masterpieces in this tradition such as Rashomon, The Usual Suspects, L.A. Confidential, even Ab Tak Chhappan. But at its heart, it is a whimsical film, with a uniquely bittersweet taste, finely, though sometimes, unevenly, textured. The performances are uniformly good, the humour is quite off-beat, the musical influences eclectic, ranging from Italian opera and American jazz to Indian folk and Hindi film music. The director has called it his blood-speckled love-letter to his growing-up city, Bombay. In the list of worthy cinematic tributes to the city, it surely occupies its own distinct niche.  

Reality: Dir. Matteo Garrone (Italy)

It is said that the name of the director (given his last work, ‘Gomorrah’ which I haven’t seen yet) was enough to draw audiences to this film. Turns out it is far, far removed from the world of organised crime explored in ‘Gomorrah’ and tackles the appeal of the reality show ‘Big Brother’ (its Italian version) to a fish-seller in Naples. This one, named Luciano, is happily married with three daughters and a large extended family of brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles who live together in a huge, crumbling mansion that might have once belonged to a fairy tale. As the movie begins, we see him to be infatuated with the reigning Big Brother winner and an ardent aspirant to the show. He is a cheerful, forever optimistic family man, rather like Roberto Benigni’s character from ‘Life is Beautiful’. However, as the film progresses he becomes more like Robert de Niro’s character from ‘The King of Comedy’, a man so naively optimistic that you worry for him, who smiles so hard and so long, you feel uncomfortable and unpleasant, afraid when the smile might slip to be reveal the inevitable ugliness beneath. In his obsession with the show, he slowly descends into insanity, despite repeated attempts by his family members, especially his wife, to break his fall. Stunningly directed, with marvellously long Steadicam-held takes, during which the camera manages to watch the actors so closely we can tell what the characters are thinking inside their heads, the film is a technical tour-de-force. The ending is debatable and seems abrupt. But this is a film that is more about the journey, which itself rushes by with such headlong passion, that we may be forgiven for anticipating a fittingly grand destination.    

Of Guy Ritchie and his best

It was at the place of a peculiar friend of mine that I first came across the name Guy Ritchie. I call him peculiar, owing to his erstwhile blissful ignorance of treasures right under his nose. An unexpected invitation to ‘check out some cool movies’ saw me at his place for the first time in the eight years that I had known him for. While inspecting newly burgeoning collection of DVDs (courtesy his elder brother who’d just returned from China), I happened to come across ‘Chinatown’. An involuntary ‘Wow!’ escaped my lips. Hearing it, my friend, who was busy trying to select a pizza to order, craned his neck over my back and peered at the DVD in my hand. I looked around at him with an expression that screamed ‘Where the hell did you get this?’, ‘Have you seen it?’ and ‘Do you know what this is?’ all at once. Instead, all that came out of my mouth was ‘Man..... this...this is bloody dynamite.’ To which he replied, mildly nonplussed, ‘What? It’s good or what?’

After that, all I could do was silently return to inspecting his marvellous collection once again. ‘All The President’s Men’, ‘Blood Simple’ and ‘Serpico’ were met with similar replies, but with progressively more befuddled expressions at my increasingly loud exultations. In my excitement I forgot what I had originally come to his place for. He reminded me of it, thus: ‘Screw all that’, he said suddenly. ‘Check this out.’ He picked up and handed me a DVD that read ‘Snatch’.

‘What’s this?’ I asked. Now it was his turn to look incredulous. ‘You haven’t heard of it? Don’t tell me...... Really? Hohoho......’his face and voice beginning to flush and thicken respectively with rising thrill. ‘You’re in for some treat.’ I didn’t think so especially after the jewels I had seen just moments back. He seemed to sense my longing for them, for he quickly continued, ‘Just watch it, man. You’ll fall off whatever you’re sitting on. The first time I saw it, I was like....like.....I went...... it’s crazy sh--’

‘What’s it about?’ I asked weakly, trying to stem his gushing flow of words and actions. ‘No point telling you anything beforehand. Watch it here, right now and see for yourself.’

‘Okay, okay, who’s in it?’

‘Brad Pitt and Jason Statham, you know the guy from The Tranporter, plus a lot of other guys.’

I mentally groaned. To me, then, Brad Pitt was just a blond, Greek-God movie star, in the news more for his link-ups than his acting prowess. It didn’t help his case that the only films I had seen of his till then were ‘Troy’ and parts of ‘Meet Joe Black’. Jason Statham was another matter entirely: I’d hardly heard of The Transporter, let alone Statham.

As for the rest of the ‘other guys’, all flashily posing on the DVD cover, I had never seen them before in my life, a fact that gave me little comfort.

‘And who is it by?’ I asked perfunctorily.

I remembered the name that followed the question throughout the viewing of ‘Snatch’, indeed through repeated viewings. I tried to visualise, past the name and the few still photographs on the internet, what such a man thought or did to come up with such movies. Writing such lines of dialogue. Plotting such labyrinthine, yet miraculously interlocking stories. Creating such thrillingly evil, loony villains. Performing such dazzling tricks of visual wizardry on screen, in addition to compositions that looked so dynamic, even while static. Using songs I had never heard before, yet felt floridly exhilarated listening to, especially after viewing the way the scenes had been cut to them.

Indeed, in our late teens, when we first discovered him, a Guy Ritchie film was the epitome of coolness, smartness and, simply put, the way to be. I had discovered him quite late, well after ‘Swept Away’ had been released. I had no idea at first, that the fellow who’d made ‘Snatch’ and ‘Lock, Stock...’ had been behind ‘Swept Away’ too, which I knew to be god-awful. Fortunately, when I learnt he was also responsible for ‘Revolver’ and ‘Swept Away’, I was not far in time from when the first trailers of ‘Rock ‘n’ Rolla’ hit the screens. And I was glad, for they showed he was back to crackling form.

But I was not to experience it first-hand anytime soon, for it released in India on the same weekend that the Taj Hotel was besieged by terrorists and (most) Mumbai residents were under self-imposed curfews. No, it was only as late as 2010 that I managed to see it. But it was more than worth the wait. For this beauty was different, way different from all his other works, despite being in the Guy Ritchie prototype and being proclaimed by critics as ‘back to what he does best’.

The cards are dealt out with dizzying expertise within the first five breathless minutes of the film. Unusual as it may seem, despite not having an action scene as its opening one, it contains more thrills and needs more careful attention than required for an entire average action film. Only then does it slow down a bit, to let us assimilate and grasp the whole set-up.

Narrated by the warm and deceptively inviting voice of Archy (Mark Strong) it starts out defining a rock-n-rolla as one for whom the only way to enjoy the good life is as the sum of its parts: money, glamour, dope, fornication, all at once. It then moves into explaining, at break-neck speed, the current scenario of escalating property rates in London. This is a result of extensive development and redevelopment by mostly foreign investors, operating in an environment very favourable to them, what with numerous tax breaks, hedge fund bonuses and ample government support. Now this has ‘left the natives struggling to keep a foo’hold in the property ladder’ as Archy says. So what remains is the proverbial back-door entry for local property players, the most powerful of them being Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson), Archy’s employer. Who, by definition, becomes the proverbial frowning doorkeeper to an extremely high-profile, uber-exclusive club.

Lenny Cole, for his part, prides himself on being the foremost bastion of the fort called the London property market, and believes that it would behove any foreign investor to approach him and him alone. He possesses the most thorough knowledge of the local markets, has the most well-developed, time-tested connections within the British bureaucracy and as well as the grey area of local dealers, thugs and the London underworld, of which he himself is no small part.

In the time-honoured tradition of a closet-quisling, he harbours a mixture of limitless jealousy, ill-concealed awe and cavalier condescension towards the foreigners, or the ‘f***ing immigrants’ as he likes to lump them all together, and ruthless, cut-throat disdain for the local, bit players.

A couple of small-time thugs, One-Two (Gerard Butler) and Mumbles (Idris Elba) have their eyes on a run-down property for which, as they are informed by a lawyer, they need a large sum of money. The only one willing to lend them such a large sum without too many questions asked (‘given these boys’ criminal records...’) is Lenny Cole, says the lawyer. Lenny promptly agrees, lends them the money and, at the same time, leans on his personal network of lawyers and councilmen to deny them permission for redevelopment.

When One-Two finally realises the permission for planning cannot come through, he is left aghast while Archy’s quietly sardonic voice-over observes, ‘That’s right, sweethearts, you’ve just been f***ed’. Needless to say, the building has been impounded by Lenny Cole, leaving them still short of two million euros for which they have a week to pay.

Meanwhile, a Russian billionaire named Yuri Omovich has decided to buy up and develop 12 acres of prime London property into a residential complex, for which he needs Lenny’s help. Lenny offers him planning and building permits within ‘seven months and no red-tape’ for which he quotes seven million euros as his price. Yuri closes the deal without losing a beat. To seal it, he offers Lenny a painting that he considers lucky, one that Lenny admires, as a sign of goodwill.

To obtain the money, Yuri calls upon his trusted accountant, Stella Baxter (Thandie Newton), a lady with smouldering good looks and an equally icy demeanour. She is so well-versed in her field, she doesn’t think twice about hiring street thugs to rob the money in such cases. And, make a cut out of all such ‘transactions’, of course. Her usual port of call, in such instances, is the Speeler, a ‘hot little house of crime’ that houses as its tenants a local group known as the Wild Bunch, led by One-Two, Mumbles and Handsome Bob (Tom Hardy).

They grab her job offer with the timing and accuracy of trapeze artists and pull it off just as well. The loss of an apparently large sum of money hurts Yuri less than we’d expect, who promptly orders Stella to have ‘another seven million euros lost in the books’. Yuri is smitten by Stella, who, on her part playfully purrs, ‘Mr. Omovich, I’m the best at what I do, but even I cannot hide seven million euros from the tax man.’ Yuri’s entourage views this exchange with rising concern, familiar as they are with his profligate, philandering ways.

Meanwhile, Yuri’s lucky painting has been stolen while in Lenny’s custody, which sends him, Lenny into a nervous rage and sends his men tripping over each other to retrieve it. Archy, of course, leads the operation with surprisingly convoluted results.

The one thing critics always complained about his films is that they are all style and no substance. That they involve a lot of clever trickery without any purpose. That it is hard to take them seriously given their glib lines and clockwork plots and lack of relevance. Though I fail to understand why such movies cannot be enjoyed for their own sake, I do agree that this time round the film cuts deeper because of its firm underpinning in a very real milieu: a London developing at a break-neck pace, foreign investors jumping willy-nilly onto this bandwagon, local businessmen and omnipresent bureaucrats, in their desperation to keep up, willing to do anything to curry favour with the foreigners, and the ensuing skulduggery.

This time, in Rock’n’Rolla, the humour is simultaneously less contrived, more organic, dry and caustic, the actors never seem to be winking at the camera, never behave as if trying to keep a straight face amidst the hilarity, as in his first two films. It is of the kind that is borne of darkness, of the sound of a delirious laugh at the end of a dry sob. The characters are fuelled more by genuine desperation rather than the (relatively) affected truancy and blithe anarchy of ‘Lock Stock...’ and ‘Snatch’. Even the heavy, emotional bits in those movies served more as self-conscious attempts at being serious (and being taken as a “serious” work of art) and do not sit as easily with the rest of the movie as they do in this one. Guy Ritchie, after the twin debacles of ‘Revolver’ and ‘Swept Away’, not to mention his personal turmoil, seems to have been baptised by fire, coming out slightly more unhinged, slightly more reckless, yet mercilessly exact and lacerating. Vicious salvos against most social mores and institutions abound.

So we have Lenny Cole who, upon finding out that his step-son is alive, after reading the news of his death in the papers a few days ago, bursts out in chagrin, ‘He just doesn’t die, that cockroach. I’m telling you, the third world war will have his name written all over it’.

The same step-son, who happens to be a famously doped-up rocker by the name of Johnny Quid (front-man of a band named ‘Quid-lickers’, no less) likes nothing better than to fake his own death at regular intervals, only to stage sensational Lazaruses. This prompts his loyal, yet blasé, managers and assistants to discuss news articles on his various ‘deaths’ as blandly as though they were unexpected weather changes, with one of them even quipping, ‘If he’s dead, that’s the third time this year.’ The reason, as provided by one of his most loyal votaries (a hypnotically eerie Matt King) is as follows: ‘You know his music sales have gone up a thousand percent in two weeks. You see, Johnny, the crack-head, knows that a rocker is worth more dead than alive. Silly world, ain’t it?’

In a scene that would resonate uncannily with (and indeed, be an eye-opener for) Indian audiences, we see Lenny employing a whole range of devices to inveigle a venal councillor (a superbly tremulous, snivelling Jimi Mistry) into doing his bidding. The devices include a high-end car of his choice, desired female company, fat, potent cigars and custom-made lighters with the councillor’s name engraved on it.

We see Stella, impeccably dressed and ravishingly poised, complain, out of boredom, ‘I’m a 30-year old accountant married to a homosexual lawyer. For a marriage of convenience, it can be quite’-after a drag on her cigarette- ‘inconvenient’. But that is only after her dandy husband slyly remarks, ‘Do you know why you get those deals? It’s because those sad, fat old men like it when you swear at them. They shake like cocktails and sweat like Semtex when you raise that posh little voice. You, my love, are a rare commodity.’

We meet a couple of fearsomely built Russian thugs, comparing the appearances and provenances of their numerous scars, while guarding a fortune. And, yeah, just like the step-son, refuse to die, or even stay down, despite an entire action and chase sequence that would finish ordinary mortals twice over. Their stationary car is bulldozed by the flank and turned turtle by an enormous cargo lorry, they are Maced, bludgeoned with golf-clubs, clobbered with thick sticks, they lose copious amounts of blood, give chase until they cannot even crawl, and yet, by the end, retain enough life to shoot looks of pure venom, and swear vendetta, at their prey.

The latter are, of course, the Wild Bunch, who are hardly better off themselves, and indeed, probably cursing the fey moment in which they decided to name themselves such. For their part, they manage to dodge super-machine gun fire (inside a sports supermarket), steal a car and a scooter, ram the car into a pole to avoid the eight-inch jagged knife blade that has pierced the roof itself, wielded as it is by one of the Russian goons. Indeed, various members of the Wild Bunch, by turn request, implore and threaten the goons to stay down, even as they batter them with a golf-clubs and cricket bats. What gives the entire sequence its undercurrent of humour is the fact that the Wild Bunch never expected any show of resistance against their opening gambit of using a cargo lorry as a battering ram against a SUV, in the first place.

The chief antagonist Lenny Cole, is an English chauvinist, who, when not feeding his own countrymen to cannibalistic, omnivorous crayfish, spews out his (considerable) bile at the ‘f***ing immigrants’, slapping, groping and gripping vice-like the you-know-whats of his stooges. Everyone by turn, according to convenience, is labelled an immigrant, be it Omovich (Russian), Mumbles (Afro-Brit), the councillor (SouthAsian-Brit) and One-Two (Scottish).

Johnny’s haunting exposition of his personal philosophy using a cigarette pack while playing an equally haunting piano piece is intercut with an unsettling manifestation of his philosophy in real life. This particular scene exists in a class by itself.

The visual style is restrained, but that is only by Guy Ritchie’s own standards. David Higgs’ photography expertly captures London as it is: in shades of dun. Indeed, the movie almost seems monochromatic at times. There are almost no primary colours, and except for one blue-filtered scene, the film is entirely in golden-brown and grey. Yet there is a difference. This time round, Ritchie is interested not only in the low life of London, but also in the uber-rich. So we have scenes set in golf-courses, on private yachts, in the offices of councillors, high-end pubs. The framing is as immaculate and innovative as ever. Note the way the camera draws in closer to Matt King’s face as he speaks about the morbid fascination of a life of drugs vis-a-vis Johnny. This time round, however, Ritchie is less interested in showing off his fancy camera tricks, and more interested in making sharp, pertinent observations. Yet he cannot help himself, and gives in wholeheartedly to his stylistic urges. Not that we complain. The entire car and foot chase sequence is shot with an impressive mix of hand-held, tracking and subjective shots of the people involved. Low-speed cameras are used to great effect, especially in the subjective shots of One-Two and the Russian running. The blurred frames bounce up and down flush with their heads giving us a sense of their sweaty fatigue.

One of the recurrent points of humour in a Guy Ritchie film has to be the utter bemusement and exasperation of Americans at the ways of the modern English folk, a far cry from the ‘stiff-upper lipped’ ones the Americans love to poke fun at. Indeed, it is the same Americans who in Ritchie’s movies are left flotsam and jetsam amidst the wreckage by the end. Remember Dennis Farina’s character by the end of ‘Snatch’? Not content with one of them, Ritchie has two such dumbfounded, goggle-eyed Americans in the form of Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges and Jeremy Piven, as Johnny’s hapless managers, Mickey and Roman. As if Johnny wasn’t enough, they have to meet Johnny’s feral step-father too. By the end, I’m sure they’re willing to anoint Johnny as their guardian angel.

For a film titled ‘Rock ‘n’ rolla’, nothing less than a scintillating pop-rock score is expected and Guy Ritchie, here, outdoes his previous work. The tracks are not run-of-the-mill, classic rock ones, but lesser known (though no less accomplished) quirky gems. They lend additional character, underscore key themes, and indeed, add new dimensions to the scenes they embellish. After watching them scored and cut thus, we can’t think of the scenes without the accompanying songs. Cases in point: The feverish first few minutes of credits, narration and story all cut to Black Strobe’s ‘I’m a Man’; ‘Be Mine, Little Rock-n-rolla Queen’, cut to shots of a frenzied band performing, an equally frenzied audience losing it and, perhaps, an even more frenzied Johnny demolishing an enormous troll of a security guard with a pencil and a dust-bin lid; the entire desperate chase cut to the ghoulish ‘We Got Love’; Matt King’s gooseflesh-inducing narration intercut with a skeletal Johnny going cold turkey, all cut to ‘The Man has a Gun’. And wait till you hear the simmering ‘Funnel of Love’.

As far as performances go, all the actors have a ball. Gerard Butler, freed from the heavy mantle of a thunderous, comic-book, Spartan hero is relaxed here. By turns smart, oafish, confused, jittery, vexed in equal measure he is one unlikely protagonist, (or leading man, if you will).

Thandie Newton gives the phrase ‘devil-may-care’ a whole new meaning, as she shows a hard edge I couldn’t imagine her having. Just watch her feeling sorry for poor One-Two (in her own way) and making up for it with a sex scene that is cut in the most innovative, yet uncluttered manner.

Tom Wilkinson is barely recognisable with his top-shaved pate and dark, opaque glasses. Yet there is no mistaking the steely rasp in his voice, and he uses it to great effect here to create an absolute dog whose bark is as bad as his bite. Just watch him softly edify Archy using the example of crayfish, while making tea, ‘That’s the thing about greed, Arch. It’s blind.’

Tom Hardy as Handsome Bob develops his character like a Polaroid photograph, slowly yet surely until we marvel at the final image.

Toby Kebbell looks lean, mean and wasted, but his appearance belies his wiry strength, stiff brio and unmatched ability to raise hell. With dark circles under his eyes, the ghosts of the past and present within them and uncomfortable, stinging truths on his lips, he cuts an uncannily commanding figure.

However, it is Mark Strong as Archy, who carries this film on an even keel, as it were. Watching quietly, observing reasonably. Using just as much force as is prudent. (‘Now, if the slap don’t work, you cut’em or you pay’em. But you keep the receipts, 'coz this ain’t the mafia’) Bland, smooth, calmly threatening by turns, and at times, all of them at once. Watch the way he conveys his message to Roman and Mickey in the form of a throwaway wisecrack into a microphone at their studio: ‘You never sing the same if your teeth fight your bone.’ Or at his look of surprised glee when the tables are turned on a never-more-vulnerable One Two.

Brimming over with acerbic, ferocious wit, encapsulating scathing social commentary, a rugged, gritty, yet urbane style that straddles a vast swathe of contemporary London, typically, yet uniquely colourful characters, a deliciously labyrinthine plot with a sting in its tail, RocknRolla is, simply put, one hell of trip. As Roger Ebert said of it, ‘with anything more happening, this movie could induce motion sickness’. Keep your pills at hand.