Bharat (2019) Movie Review

I got to see Bharat (2019) in the Amazon Prime Video OTT. This movie is underrated per IMDB. I would put it at a much higher rating than above average, likely 8 or 9 out of 10.

Who would not like this movie? It is pure fiction and has a larger than life story with strong emotions covering the whole spectrum from sadness to happiness, death to life before and to life after, from patriotism to atrocity, from poverty to richness, from dependence to independence, from childhood to old age, from non violence to violence, from fantasy to reality, from existence to non-existence. I would count this as Salman‘s best movie ever, that I have seen.

Placing the Tiger in the background and working in and around untouched domains

Coming from the hangover of the YRF Spy universe. Bharat, makes me think of this as a precursor to the Tiger. Almost completing the Tiger’s background story, which could have easily sat between pre-Tiger to Tiger. With similarly bold character of Katrina Kaif holding up and performing beyond expectations of a stereotypical Bollywood heroine. This also fits well with the Salman Khan’s zone of movies with the premise of India-Pakistan making this one also a true pan sub continent movie of Bajrangi Bhaijan. Complete with the Pathaan and upcoming Tiger Movies, this almost demands at least in people’s mind to give Salman movie fans to make these attempts a redeemer of whatever faults the human has and keeps the hope of negating the differences and unifying the broken hearts of both countries.

Bharat the redeemer

Coming back to Bharat the movie, at some Katrina’s character also knocks out the superhuman of the character making it very human. This must have been a truly humbling experience for the fans. As for the actors, they are just acting, it is for us, that it matters more.

Bharat and work

That scene of getting himself and his team a work visa was funny, unrealistic and stupid, nevertheless entertaining. Going through tough times of Partition of the sub-continent to formation of different countries, the effects of which were shown with good intent and effectiveness, Bharat stands out. Taking us through numerous jobs that the titular character undertakes and gives his best, it is a reminder for anyone who is willing to succeed, to also be willing to put in the effort. As we grow up we relate to different aspects of a movie. A working class person, someone in the working age, hopes to get to work and live a work life, accepts a VIP orAla Vaikunthapurramuloo or The Pursuit of Happyness at a much more realistic viewpoint. On a parallel, Katrina’s character also goes through work life, of immigration, public broadcasting and reality TV, a natural evolution resonating with the macroeconomics of the country of India.

Bharat and immigration

As a southerner, the effects of partition are not known much in the south, only history testbooks and interests in geopolitics would draw a curious mind towards this forgettable but important nation creating moment. I would have to use much imagination on top of the excellent writing of Kushwant Singh in his Train to Pakistan, to fill the gaps of humanness and the lack thereof. Bharat also goes through ambitions of the unemployed, how they wished to build their family first, reminding an average Mamootty fan of Pathemaari. Pathemaari was a serious take on poverty, helplessness, economic immigration and immigrant workers. Similar immigrant worker stories of which we heard and read in the recently concluded Qatar world cup 2022 as well. So many years have passed, but history repeats itself. Bharat particularly touches the immigrant’s nerve when it talks about hopes. Destroying someone’s hope is worser than death. In Kerala, a related proverb goes like, “Give an elephant, but never give hope”. Sometimes as immigrant and/or worker, we give hopes to ourselves, some of them may need a reclassification as a false-hope, to satisfy our ego and give ourselves a really hard footing. Don’t hopes drive us? Don’t we give ourselves hopes to live on and live by? Sometimes winning, sometimes losing and having a lifetime of experience to reflect upon.

Going through different jobs, posing different situations and the associated struggle and fun, it sits well with me as an economic immigrant working out of home country. The fun side of which reminds me of yet another great movie – The Forrest Gump. Salman portrayed an emotionally less aged character in the hit Bajrangi Bhaijan, whose innocence, just like Forrest Gump captured the heart, this one in and as Bharat combines the best of both worlds, and includes a whole universe of characters, emotions, situations and struggles, which is yet another surprise in a Bollywood movie, especially one normally expected out of Salman. Dealing with even pirates, on his own style, who would not want to be Bharat’s friend. It is his friend in bad times, that kept with him, and even this aspect of friendship was explored,in addition other relationships with siblings, parents and extended family with much importance in the movie.

Overall, Bharat was an interesting experience, of laws and lawlessness, ambitions and complacence. It is a wonder for someone who went through The Forrest Grump and Bajrangi Bhaijan to see that even within a standard Indian movie duration, Bharat could offer this much, and keeping a coherent narrative with effective visualization. Like other Salman movies, this one too, stands ground on hit movie songs. Bharat was a refreshing experience, and thence for once putting this particular movie well above my average ratings for an average Hindi Movie.

There was only one instant where I felt the movie could have improved. During Bharat’s near death experience in the underground work place, an otherwise stopped watch should have started working, to show us that this was unreal times, where his whole life flashes before him, and the watch should have stopped, when he recovers, indicating that we are back to normal where the watch never worked.

Bharat also pays good reference times for the legends Shah Rukh Khan, Sachin Tendulkar and Amitabh Bachchan.

Sidenotes

As someone who worked for a Pakistani Origin CEO, in a company which had significant footprint in Pakistan, USA and office in India. Going to a sponsored vacation trip with all Pakistani people in an unknown country, was a unique and memorable experience for me. Thanks to the USA for letting us do that.I would confidently claim that time has been proving over and over again of no much difference between humans, their needs and emotions. And people of all countries gel well when they are outside of their homes. So I would encourage everyone to get out of the comfort of home, and go and see the world. To shine lights on the darkest corners of our brain, to open up and bring in a true acceptance of the world we live in.We need to do more of that between these two beautiful countries and many other countries as well.

Footnotes

I could not end this without relating this movie to my own work life and visa experience as an economic immigration, though not as exciting and entertaining, it has its own ups and downs captured as related posts here.

• The work animals - Nervous system, does most of the control signal propagation leading to control and actions for an average organism. Thereby, are voluntary and involuntary system, so I learn. The involuntary system would do what it has to do, regardless of how much we hope to control it. The voluntary system is in our conscious control. Consciousness …
• Work forever by chance - H1B and green card process for backlogged countries can be compared to a few of the mythological stories. To reach there someone went through H1B which is a process. H1B a temporary worker visa provided lasts 6 months. and during this time a company was sponsor the employee for a green card. Green Card in …
• Aftershock of H1B Layoff - As if losing the job was not enough. There were other clocks that worked at their own pace. The Green Card process with my ex-company ended, PERM was not even processed. H1B ended giving me a grace period of 60 days. A human translation, is there is no more a future job that the company …
• In the US, on your toes - Life in H1B brings surprises and because the H1B is sponsored and beneficiary is you. Life is decided on somebody’s else’s mercy. The amount of say you have on the H1B is zero. Hiding it does not help. That makes one vulnerable. To make it normal, selling, and upselling and shameless self promotion is warranted. …
• Bonded Spouse, by chance - H1B comes with the wonderful option of bringing your family in to the USA. According to the USCIS Family is only spouse and children. Parents, Grandparents, Brothers, Sisters, Uncles, Aunts do not count. Suddenly your family has shrunk. If you like to learn about one country that officially recognizes a family in its fullness, see …
• Let’s write down the H1B Life Opportunities and Limitations, SWOT - H1B a temporary work visa in the USA has some rights written by the the Government here https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-information-resources/temporary-workers.html And there are opportunities and limitations. So let’s do a SWOT. This will be SWOT for the beneficiary. Not for the company, employer, USA or anyone else. Because , you know, well, USA life is centered around …
• Is H1B redefining the modern world of work and economic immigration? - Who is H1B for? H1B is typically for the employer by the employer. Filing lottery through endless renewal petitions are a matter of authority and responsibility of the employer. This upholds the purpose of economic immigration to the USA? Hardly, because it is lottery based, there is no one particular skill to qualify for and …
• Specialty Occupation Lottery (H1B) : The SOL of American Work Life for Indian - H1B Lottery is a work authorization lottery deployed by USCIS for the employers seeking to take in employees who are skilled in specialty occupation. Why would you want H1B? Isn’t it enough that you experienced the F1 student visa life and whatever optional post study work life it offered. If you are that attached to …
• F1 Visa, to the USA and further studentship - I am starting this series on visa in the usa. Most of it is personal experience and a review of life in the ages of various visa. I begin with student (F-1) visa in the usa. For official information click here. For my non-sense continue below. My work experience in India has been exciting and …
• The Confusing trend of Layoffs, Is Median Tenure a good indicator for company stability? - Since 2020 with reasons varying from Covid 19 and what not there has been inconsistent trends in the layoff excellently tracked by https://layoffs.fyi/ . This excellent data is not only useful for the trends in the companies, but also gives locations, industry and sometimes even a sheet with the list of employees who were affected. …

Pathaan (2023) Movie Review

I watched this movie in the USA and have something to say about this. AMC gave a good 30% discount to watch this. AMC theatre was one of the worst I have visited. It was unclean and the seats were not that great. This was comparable to the Kantara showed in Regal which was also yet another theater may be in the verges of stopping there business, or may be they are all restarting from their revenues hit by pandemic?! This review is about Pathaan movie starring SRK released in 2023.

Pathaan film is also based on RAW, just like Vijay’s Beast 2022, but without the problems of it. The movie begins with a KGF1 style setting where the hero, with long hairs covering his face, is tied up, surrounded by villains. The trailer and poster showing SRK, looked like a makeover, unrealistic for the SRK that I have known. His best movie ever, for me is FAN may be followed by Swades. Throughout his movies, SRK has shown a stand alone way to hold any movie up solo, compared to say Amir Khan, where Dangal, Secret SuperStar, 3 idiots, Taare Zamin Par all heavily depended on the story and other characters. Pathaan is a different beast, where we see the best movie formula, chase, fights, game plan, game like adventures sprinkled with enough fun. The movie borrows enough and more scenes from Mission Impossible, James Bond series, KGF1, Uncharted, Batman series and may be some games. If you wanted to see all of this featuring SRK, then this is the movie to watch. If the dialogues had to be in Hindi, this is the perfect movie. If the setting has to be not India, then this is it.

There are some rare scenes in the movie, that anyone who is not even a fan would like. Such as Salman meeting SRK. Who better than John Abraham to play the villain, a villain created by system failure and policy gaps. Just like the one an Anniyan would do. I would anyday side with this character than the main lead. And it was a disappointment not to have a mass dialogue when the final showdown between these two ends. Any Telugu, Tamil movie would better justice in terms of screenplay and dialog at the end of fights. Per Wikipedia, Pathan is corruption of their original Afghan name, and has a history and background story of migration and interaction with other cultures. While I know none of them personally, there is some common terms that resonates with my recent blog posts. These keywords are loyalty, trust and work.

Throughout the film there is an evidence of people doing their work, be it a good guy, bad guy, or the double agent. They are all doing their job until the system thinks otherwise. I saw this movie as a job related confusion and a show of resulting consequences. Everyone keeps doing their job until they find some conflict with other interest. And as a result they assume an anti system stance. Because the system betrayed them and orphaned them. Don’t family come first before duty. Getting priority on this would have helped the villain much earlier. Without a support structure, orphaned and abandoned, there is not much to hold on to with a continuing life. Throughout Pathaan we would also see that both these characters go as in Tom & Jerry fighting and leaving and repeating, never really hurting in a deadly fashion. As in Joker, Thaniyavarthanam, situations can change a person. An inconsiderate society, an ill situation, a depressing environment, a bad upbringing can all contribute to someone going to nadirs of the life, digging themselves in deep without escape. It would take a massive undying Pursuit of Happiness, a King Richard, a divine presence as in Pranchiyettan & the Saint, a friend along as in Neelakasham Pachakadal Chuvanna Bhoomi, an unquestioning companion as in Peanut Butter Falcon. To save someone out. I was disappointed that Pathaan could not reason with and bring back the good in the bad guy, a system can corrupt a person so much, and make it hard to bring them back to life, and it becomes easy to assume that character to be branded bad, pointing finger at their own self-infliction, and rather easily, instead of other ways, push and shovel them into further depths and wish them dead.

Overall a good movie for SRK fans. And keeps the hero realistic without any idealism, that a Vijay or Rajni would have given this character.

I wish to see Enthiran in R-D

We have seen 2 D and the upcoming of 3-D films. I would have preferred the Rajnikanth’s latest flick “Enthiran” to be released with the third dimension to the audience. But no it came in 2 D with very special special graphics team working behind the scenes. The team comprising the Music Maestro A.R Rahman, The master director Shankar, beauty queen Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and an investment of hundreds of crore had shaken the vision of all.

While the Bollywood lovers will still boast of their Amitabh Bachchan- who got the national award recently , SRK (ShahRukhKhan)- whose skills have been honoured by the French Government and thousand others who may have dazzled the platform called Bollywood. While Salman Khan‘s Dabangg hopes to be the most popular , more than the 3 idiots, we see that those up there have a narrower vision and still narrower upper processing area. The Asia’s costliest film is not for them . It is for those who wish to be a superstar some day. The film – “Enthiran”s trailers were supposedly shown for tickets, said some newspapers. You can still see comments in youtube and north -driven phenomenas that they use the most usual swear words to illustrate their angst with words. The Indian film industry is not Bollywood alone. Some say that there is no acting in Rajnikanth’s (Super Star Rajnikanth or SSR for short) movies. I would tell those people that SSR fans don’t go to watch acting brilliance. If that were the case the Southern Film Industry ( I wouldn’t use the combination word “South Indian” as many would prefer because there is no South or North, only INDIA, even that name some find to be disputable) is not short of talent. Kamalahassan and Mammootty had the most number of awards in their bag till Amitabh B got the latest for the movie Paa, a laudable effort from him. Al Pacino has acted nothing new, the average movie seeing Indian can proudly say. Unlike the occasional ripples caused by the wanna be superstars and self-centred kings of the Bollywood the name of “Rajnikanth “ is etched in the annals of film industry for ever. For the first time we feel proud of someone who makes money through “acting” and is the second highest paid actor in the world, without having to act in English or any foreign tongue, and is the widely accepted and modest character in reality. May be the last one character is that which makes him a real super hero. While all the mega super duper hyper stars would take up advertisements and social causes to stay alive on the screen I have never seen an advertisement of SSR. The underlying ethics can indeed yield its fruits as the love and encouragement that the fans give him. He has the characters of godliness . He doesn’t desire anything, He doesn’t want to enter politics where he could have easily been the Chief minister of TN. He is said to have wondered at seeing the finished work of “Style song” ( where SSR is graphically made white for a song, Film: Sivaji- the Boss) while other actors aould have boasted about it. Another famous story is that a group of Japanese fans approached SSR’s home to see him. When he appeared in his normal manner, a dark man with little hair and would have easily passed as a farmer or beggar , they told him that they wanted to see the Superstar, he puts on the make up for them bless them with his starry appearance. Jackie Chan couldn’t have dreamt to be this, Jackie has to do all kind of circus, sometimes its called Kung-fu sometimes Karate who knows the difference. And after all the struggle and exertion Jackie has to crack some joke to entertain people. Of course everyone likes Jackie Chan in movie , in cartoon series (Called the Jackie Chan adventures), and in interviews, wikipedia says he is a singer also, Great. Can any aspiring actor imagine to be a hero without regular work-outs, diets, exercises, acting practice etc etc? That is why SSR is the star of stars

People, especially of the like of me want to be a superhero. The only way is to get the reflex neurons to simulate it . There is no choice of experiencing it in reality. While many English movie heros- Spiderman, Superman, He-man, and the umpteen other men and women seem too childish a fantasy. A hero of our days need some reality and an awesome lot of action and adventure and superhuman features packed into one.SSR provides just that. He is an idol which no one can claim or even try to be. Very few stars such as Vijay (ilaya thalapathy) in India has the producer’s grace of bestowing him with a cool non-dark clean and neat character, setting away the vices. His earlier movies had some shades of gray but with 50 films to his credit he is an angel of all sorts now.

The label of A.R Rahman musical can grab the attention of the onlookers and make them listen to the songs for minimum two times. A.R.Rahman’s music are notorious for the way the don’t cause any effect on the hearer till he listen it another time. While the yesteryear musics from him could make you drop everything and concentrate on music, the later trends show a clumsiness in music. The more he moved to putting music for the Hindi and other languages the sounds have become less charming. Anyone could say that the work that got him Oscar awards aren’t his best. What happened? No one knows. Save for the little spark which easily died in Raavanan song “Üsire Pogudhe¨ there has been nothing to boast of ARR in recent days, also the CWG( Commonwealth Games) theme song was not catchy. But the mind still carries the memories of the musical monuments that ARR has created and entertained the generations and still more generations to come, the inertia of which makes one sit up and listen to his new songs in search of treasure.

Enthiran trailer and the huge show of the audio and trailer releases has been mesmerising. In the trailer the main stuff that grabs attention are the SSP antics plus the excellent choreography and brilliance in the graphics. In the song starting “Kilimanjaro” were the dancers come with feathers and stuff they resemble the movements of birds before we realise that they have lesser clothes and you can seek entertainment in that aspect also! With all this in mind I would like to experience the Enthiran in the Rth Dimension (R-D), that is the Rajnikanth dimension. While the absence of comedians Vivek and Vadivelu has instilled a prejudice that the film may be a good sci-fi thriller with fewer or little to laugh about. The queues shown in TV, especially since the SUN network of televisions telecast program showing the response of the people after watching the movie around the world, little hope remains to watch it soon. But a day will come.