logo

iVIEW AUTHOR:
RKS (Mumbai, India)

email: khullamkhulla [at] gmail.com

Language: English

!!** SPOILER ALERT **!!

The following review contains content that reveals the story line. Please be warned.

Metro is a well-shot, processed, written, edited, and directed film. It is as smooth as it can get. It contrives a multiple-track cinematic tale with élan. Is it great cinema? Alas, it is not. It is another fake. There are very few inspired and magical moments in the film. There is a scene where Sharman Joshi kisses a sleeping Kangana softly and she wakes up, and looks at him a wee bit surprised. It is a real thing, perfect and magical, though fleeting. The other moment is when Konkona screams from atop the water tank and is on the verge of crying. Her contorted face, teary eyes, and the strained veins of her neck bring forth all the frustrations of an unmarried, 30-year-old, conventionally not-so-beautiful, lonely girl.

Anurag Basu (AB) has evolved as a filmmaker with each of his films, following in the footsteps of Vishal Bhardwaj. He has developed a better appreciation of the aesthetics of western cinema and has greatly improved since the days of Tara and various other TV programmes he had directed in the past. He knows the technical issues and the tricks to deal with them and can use them effectively now. But all this is easier said and done.

We know that the road from film-faking to filmmaking is a long and arduous one. Very few Indian filmmakers have the vision, patience, and the inclination to take it. They prefer the easier road of a copycat artiste and a jokester. They entrap themselves in this rut by mistaking the form for the substance. They stick to stereotypes, rarely going beyond clichéd motifs, motivations, and ploys in their storytelling. They set easily achievable objectives, and after having achieved them, gloat over the dubious critical acclaim they get.

Let me tell you its story. There are six romantic, artificially but artfully interlinked tracks in the film. Some end in tragedies and the rest in comedies. There is a family guy KK who is a real son of a bull, insensitive and horny, but cannot get excited while at home with his sexy wife Shilpa Shetty. He prefers a plain Jane Kangana, his secretary. Why? We never get to know. Kangana is a nut case, who keeps getting into such relationships and after things get botched up, she cuts her wrists. We know it since her roommate Konkona Sen, who is actually the sister-in-law of the reedy and horny son of a bull, refers to the matter in a scene of the film.

An ambitious kid in Kangana’s office, Sharman Joshi, who wants to realise the dream of his late father to set up his own restaurant uses the keys of his Apartment to climb up the ladder of instant financial success. He is secretly in love with the bespectacled plain Jane without knowing that she is his boss’s girl. He eventually gets to know it when his boss uses his 15th floor (a guess) flat to screw Kangana in a room with a glass window that overlooks the street below. That is the signature theme of AB. Whenever you see a film with a shot of a bedroom at high altitudes and a couple busy copulating under a black or red or white satin cover, know for sure it is an AB film.

Now, let us revert to Konkona, the sis-in-law of the reedy horny son of a bull. She is desperately seeking a bull for herself on the net and in her own office. She rejects the bull from the net, Irrfan Khan, who likes her face and figure and also her breasts as her pallu drops by design* to provide him a fuller look, in preference to a handsome hunk of an RJ in her office. The hunk turns out to be a homo, which reminded me of Page 3. *That is how it looked like. AB should have gone for a better, more natural take.

In the meantime, her elder sis Shilpa Shetty passes her time travelling in buses, and helping olden goldies like Dharmendra and Nafeesa Ali. Olden goldies loved each other in their youthful days, but destiny tore them apart. Now, Dharamji wants the garmi of his ex-flame in his naram days. He wants to die in Nafeesa Ali’s arms. All this romance in the air warms up sexy Shilpa and she starts taking an interest in a gora chitta and muscled theatre actor Shiny Ahuja. You cannot blame her for this. Blame the Unfaithful, the film, for this track and the shot where Shilpa’s toned and sexy belly section starts shivering and throbbing in extreme close-up even before Shiny makes his final move on her. It turns out to be a KLPD affair as Shilpa feels like a whore in the tiny red-lighted room of Shiny and jumps out of the window and runs away.

So, what happens in the end? Nafeesa Ali dies of a sudden attack of something on her way to the hospital with Dharamji trying hard to emote and shed tears of grief next to her in an ambulance. Kangana, mistreated by KK, drinks up a whole bottle of Klinol for a change, but gets saved and kissed by Sharman who chucks his job and ambitions and rushes to the local train station to go to his village. As Kangana gets to know about it, she too rushes to the station leaving KK in the lurch who fights with a taxi driver, gets bashed up, and returns home to his wife and daughter in a bruised and battered state arousing instant sympathy in the heart of a heavily made-up sexy and svelte Shilpa. She seems to have this Michael Jackson obsession about her complexion. She must learn a few things from Bipasha and revel in her natural dusky hue.

In the meantime, Konkona proposes to Irrfan, the bull from the net, who had made her scream atop a water tank and thus had cured her of her deep-seated doubts, fears, shadows, and inhibitions. The bull rides a horse and runs after her to the local station, and into the ladies’ compartment to everyone’s delight. Shilpa finally decides to dump Shiny for the sake of her family and she also rushes to the local station to give him the good news.

Finally, the Dharam - Nafisa, and Shilpa – Shiny tracks end in tragedy. The Shilpa – KK, and KK – Kangana tracks make for neither tragedy nor comedy. The Sharman – Kangana, and Irrfan – Konkona tracks end up in comedy. And a band of singer-musicians keeps appearing and disappearing to gloss over the transitions in the tale.

This is Metro. Implausible, contrived, co-incidental, and clichéd to the hilt. If you expect some nuanced performances from the cast, it is not there barring the exceptions of Sharman and Konkona. As usual, there are plenty of sexy dialogues and situations aimed at extracting laughter and regaling the audiences. I am told they have been lifted from all over. Or should we say AB was paying his tribute to the original masters?

This is the whole issue. Our filmmakers are always paying tributes to someone or the other, without developing their own vision and ideas. They have no integrity and they seem to lack the passion and the drive and the capacity to tell their own stories. Probably they are happy and successful being copycats. I don’t understand why. They just have to take a small leap forward. They have to take a vow that they will never use anything in their film that even remotely looks, feels, and sounds like their favourite Hollywood flick. New ideas and visions will come flooding in.

You have mastered the technique folks. It is time to tell your own path-breaking, world class stories now.

RKS