The Film Emotional Atyachar
Cast: Mohit Ahlawat, Kalki Koechlin, Ranvir Shorey, Vinay Pathak, Anand Tiwari, Ravi Kishen, Abhimanyu Singh
Director: Akshay Shere
Synopsis:
The Film – Emotional Atayachar, is a ROAD THRILLER WITH BLACK HUMOUR. It is an ensemble film set on the deserted highway between Mumbai and Goa and revolves around incidents that take place in one night to four sets of travelers. It is essentially a dark film, in which, each character is an anti-hero who has a dark side. The real HERO of the film is the mysterious interconnection between these stories that unfolds in a non-linear format. Each story varies from the other in its humour, flavour, and content but is driven by more or less a similar motive – money.
Film Review
Every character in debutant director Akshay Shere’s funny, bitter and violent ode to the road movie wants money. Sometimes they also crave for sex. For example, there’s this incidental character (the film has drug dealers, racketeers and criminals crawling out of every frame) who’s force-doped by Ravi Kishen, who is very at home playing the revved-up psycho.
The director has good ingredients— less but definite number of characters, a non-linear narrative, big ‘new-wave’, genre-defying film-centric names like Mr. Ranvir Shorey, Mr. Vinay Pathak, and Mr. Abhimanyu Singh; a concise running time of 90 minutes—on paper but the translation on screen is pretty average. The plot covers just a couple of days/nights with respect to time and Bombay to Goa with respect to distance and locations. Everybody in the movie is after a bag of huge loot and the film summarizes as a who-got-it from start to end. There is a casino owner, Bosco that wants to profit up his dwindling income from a partnership with a ruthless and a turn-coat businessman; there is an all-out-evil Sophie that is Bosco’s seedy girl-friend/moll; there are two of the most unchristian of Goan cops Joe and Leslie – one is Mama’s boy while the other is a ‘Tom and Jerry’ boy; there is a budding entrepreneur who has brains for a huge project but not the capital; there is a wannabe gangster, Junior and his on-the-run dimwit accomplices.
The performances range from sharp to outright hammy, with Mr. Ravi Kissen living the hammy part and Mr. Anand Tiwari enacting brilliantly a confused but good-hearted wannabe Gujarati businessman. He gets everything right – from the intonation to the Gujarati business dreams-in-his-eyes to the gamut of expressions conveying the only conscience-laden character in the movie. Mr. Ravi Kissen undoes what he did well in ‘Raavan’ and hams all-out (also throws in a couple of Mahabharat-esqe laughs). Mr. Abhimanyu Singh is wasted and drink-walks through his role. Mr. Ahlawat plays the role of a ‘thinking’ businessman to perfection – he ‘thinks’ more and acts less. Ms. Kalki plays her role with terrific wooden beauty. By the way, she will definitely earn the dubious distinction of being remembered as the most inanimate cabaret dancer ever in this history of Hindi movies – she is so inert and cold in a night-club song sequence that one wonders whether all the libido-packed married men that came to seek outside-entertainment in that club exasperatedly ran back to their wives! However, the director deserves kudos for depicting a woman character that is unapologetically immoral, manipulative, and a man-eater/killer depending on the situation. There is no sermonizing, she is what she is – take it or leave it. Mr. Shorey and Mr. Pathak breathe some life into their roles, but one gets the feeling that their portrayal is a been-there-done-that routine.
As has become the vogue these days, in the name of ‘new-age’ and ‘niche’ cinema’ the film is generously laden with expletives and vulgarity. Everybody from the cops to the gangster to the moll to the lady on the phone is mouthing profanities. I missed the CBFC certification—as I walked in a couple of minutes late— but fervently pray that it is strictly an ‘A’ movie. I do not wish to imagine 7th standard kids mouthing those unmentionables when playing cricket in the local grounds. And for the energetic minds, there is a scene that is baffling and begging to be understood. What is it about those scorpions that are blasted by the cops from a tiny aquarium right in front of the tied-up Mr. Bosco? For one, I did not get the philosophical underlining—if there is any I mean; and logically, Mr. Bosco is gulping beer right the next scene, hale and hearty, when he had a bunch of unbridled scorpions ready to give him a lap-dance in the previous scene! Were they neutered ones? Huh?
One finds impressions of almost every caper-genre director from the English speaking nations, be it Guy Ritchie or Quentin Tarantino and also from our own Mr. Varma (remember ‘Daud’) and Mr. Sudhir Mishra (‘Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin’). There is the comic-book introduction of characters and mention of their weird soliloquies uncannily similar to Mr. Tarantino’s character-introduction in ‘Kill Bill’. There is the same-shot visualization from different perspectives via different characters – a la Mr. Ratnam in ‘Yuva’ or Mr. Alejandro González Iñárritu in ‘Amores Perros.’ The cinematography and music pass muster while the editing is good. This then, again, is one of those movies in the garb of new-age ‘entertainment’ that aim high on paper for originality but consciously or unconsciously end up camping in Mr. Tarantino’s or Mr. Ritchie’s filmdom.
With whatever was left of my head after watching the movie, I tried to understand the significance and relation of the film’s title to the actual film. Alas, I did not get it at all and the film Emotional Atyachar and its title- decoding exercise turned out to be one mental atyachar.