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Film: Trainwreck
Cast Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, Brie Larson, LeBron James
Director: Judd Apatow
What’s a fine line? How do you tread it? The fine line between satire and insult? Between black and disgusting humour? Between incredible improvisation and incredibly boring? Between girl power and girls doing the boy thing? The more you think about it the more realise that this line, like everything else, is different for different people. Judd Apatow made a career – and careers of a few of his friends – by treading the fine line between treading many a fine line and pretending to do so. And he is back with Trainwreck, the first feature he is directing that he has not scripted.
Amy (Schumer) has casual one-night-stands, probably more than once a night. She hates commitment, even though she is kind of with a guy. She drinks incessantly, even though she hates the hangovers. She talks crass, even though she is supposed to work on an upper-class lifestyle magazine. On other words, she does everything the Seth Rogen prototype does, except, of course, she is a ‘she’.
Amy is like this because, you guessed it, she has Daddy issues. A hilarious flashback right at the start establishes that. She is going steady with Steven (John Cena), but still hooks up with others whenever she has a chance. A chance decision by her editor Dianna (Tilda Swinton) leads Amy to Dr Aaron Connors (Hader), a sports-injury physician. One thing leads to another. Thing is, can Amy hold it together?
Judd Apatow was apparently so taken up with Amy Schumer’s script that he agreed to direct another person’s screenplay for the first time in his directing career. It would have been nice to see that script though, because Trainwreck feels nothing other than a typical Judd Apatow movie. And I don’t mean it in a bad way.
Apatow is famous for plonking his camera in the middle and letting his actors take the show forward. It works at times, with some great jokes, a sense of naturalism comes through, you see characters as people, with seemingly real emotions, awkward silences, unintentional stammering and the like. On the flip side, the movie tends to drag. When the joke is long drawn out, the time taken is also the same. And not all jokes are funny. Trainwreck is the same. It has its moments and it has its shouldn’t-have-been moments.
A big plus for the movie is its performances. Bill Hader is sweet as the good guy, but with insecurities. Tilda Swinton disappears into another role and look that I had to find out from the credits. Basketball great LeBron James has a very meaty role. And, here’s the surprise, he doesn’t screw it up. There are big name cameos aplenty, some of which work while some fall flat. Even John Cena plays the male version of the dumb blonde – the stupid sports jock – with a lot of enthusiasm.
Amy Schumer, however, does not come across as perfect. Which shouldn’t have been the case because this is her vehicle. But then again a lot of it may be because of how unlikeable her character is. Unlikeable, not annoying. But then one realises how much of our perception of a performance is rooted in how we relate with the character. Amy does herself no credit and it is a warts-and-all depiction.
Trainwreck is chock-a-block with clichés but also has a lot of heart. Amy Schumer tells an everyday rom com story, but tries to infuse it with a dose of realism that is more than what you expect. She tries to walk the thin line. But then in a Judd Apatow movie, the line is never stationary. Maybe, just maybe, despite all its crassness and overgrown-girl-in-a-women’s-body vibe, Trainwreck might have benefitted from a more traditional direction than Apatow’s. But, then again, that’s me walking the thin line.
Film: Bangalore Days
Cast: Dulquer Salman, Nivin Pauly, Nazriya Nazim, Fahadh Fazil, Parvati Menon, Isha Talwar.
Director: Anjali Menon
Imagine a parched land bereft of rain for months. A brief drizzle, however small, would thrill everyone in the land. What if it was a torrential downpour? It had been a while since I saw a film in my mother tongue. Months, maybe even more than a year. Then I sat down to watch Bangalore Days.
Bangalore Days is the story of three cousins – Kuttan (Nivin), Arjun (Dulquer) and Divya (Nazriya). It is not a growing up story, it is the story of what happens after they are grown up. Kuttan is a brand new software engineer, while Divya is a sprightly young thing dreaming of an MBA from IIM. Arjun is an adventurous nomad or shameless wastrel, depending on who you ask. The story kicks into gear with Divya’s hastily arranged wedding to Das (Fahadh), a quiet, unsmiling corporate guy. She moves to Bangalore with him, as does Kuttan. Soon Arjun joins them, taking a job as a racing bike mechanic.
Das goes for a foreign trip and the three musketeers have shiploads of fun in a landlocked city. It was like a second childhood until Das caught Divya trying to ride a bike with Arjun. Slowly cracks start appearing in a marriage that had not set well enough, to borrow a construction metaphor. Das, too, has a skeleton in his closet, which is a locked room to which Divya doesn’t have access. Meanwhile, Kuttan falls for a half-Mallu air hostess, Meenakshi (Isha), and Arjun makes an on-air connection with an RJ Sarah (Parvati).
In small, at times predictable and, at others, unexpected spurts, life unravels itself for the three cousins and they realise nothing remains constant. Bangalore Days takes relationships and situations familiar to us and gives them a twist. Instead of telling a hometown story it takes the ‘akkara’ route. Here the akkara (the other shore) is just an overnight bus journey away, but then Bangalore is both near enough to be accessible to everyone, but the idea of Bangalore is always just out of reach.
The most memorable of Bangalore Days are its characters. They are all very accessible. Every one of them has endearing qualities, while being irritatingly flawed. In short, they could be you or me. They were developed by a writer-director who cared, but who also frustratingly left a few ellipses to these characters.
The characters are also helped by some damn fine performances. Even minor roles were taken up by veterans and they ensured that there were no weak sports. Considering it was the first I was seeing of Dulquer, Nivin and Nazriya, I must say I was very impressed. Nazriya was the most spontaneous, while Nivin gamely made himself the butt of many jokes. Dulquer spoke with his silences and Fahad was able to give weight to what initially seemed to be a thankless role.
The stand-out, for me, was Kalpana. As Kuttan’s mother it seemed like she was just making up the scenery. Until something major happened and she was suddenly thrust into the limelight. Then you see why there are very few in Malayalam cinema as talented as her. But here there was a tinge of frustration for me. What should have been a landmark examination of the life of a long-married housewife in today’s fast-changing world suddenly acquired more stereotypical hues. Maybe Anjali Menon felt too much attention was being taken away from her leads.
But then, Anjali’s intention was always to entertain. So we can forgive a fresh software engineer having an apartment in Indira Nagar, no less, that would definitely be out of even his manager’s salary bracket. We can also forgive a ridiculously hot air hostess falling for the same engineer.
In the couple of days since I saw Bangalore Days I had more questions than I wanted. There were predictable elements (like the story behind Das’ locked room), there were story decisions that seemed contrived (like why Arjun had to be with motor bikes). But these were glossed over by the so many factors that worked, like how the parents viewed the cousins’ relationship, how Bangalore, instead of being a childhood dream was actually a reassuring arm that the cousins leaned against, how an earworm of a song with simple lyrics became an anthem of sort.
But I never had the questions or complaints when I was watching the movie. It is like a road trip. Like all good trips, the journey is more important than the destination. And Bangalore Days is an exhilarating journey. Go on, climb aboard. This is a ride you should take at least once.
