Anurag Basu is indeed a maestro, a virtuoso in the way he orchestrates plots in varied genres, has adapted them in the past if taken from outside sources, and spins a fabric that can be cinematically worn with supreme comfort. Add the (now six-film) support of today’s only musical (active in films and hailing from Mumbai) maestro of substance, Pritam, and I knew beforehand that his film, at the very least, will be above-average.
After all, he is the whiz-kid who has helmed gems like Gangster, Barfi!, Jagga Jasoos and Ludo in the last two decades, and a filmmaker’s true caliber is known by his best work and not by a few creative mishaps that have valid but undisclosable reasons for them being so (like Kites and Tumsa Nahin Dekha). Anurag began with the gripping Kucch To Hai (which he co-directed) and Murder, followed by the unique Life In A…Metro.
But what I experienced in the movie hall was sheer magic in the way it unfolded. Stories of normal people eking out lives, apparently but not always of their own choices, from school-going teenagers to 70-plus human beings, all intertwined in a remarkably seamless way.
Shibani (Neena Gupta) and Parimal (Anupam Kher) were keen on marrying each other when in college, but things went South for “organic” reasons. Shibani married a chauvinistic man (Saswata Chatterjee) who never gave her space or freedom, and in time, she quashed all her desires and dreams and settled for domesticity.
Their daughter, Kajol (Konkona Sen Sharma) is a hot-headed and volatile soul and has wed Monty (Pankaj Tripathi), who after a few years of marital boredom, wishes to stray (within limits, as he claims!) on “Linger”, the film’s counterpart of Tinder. Eventually, the unexpected happens and Kajol leaves him, but what happens next with them?
Her sister, Chumki (Sara Ali Khan) is the epitome of CONFUSION! She is now in a corporate job (after attempts at two other professions) and is engaged to her colleague. Kajol-Monty’s daughter (Ahana) is on the fringes of adulthood and in classical ‘today’ fashion, is unable to fathom whether she is ‘straight’ or ‘gay’!
On the other side (the film straddles Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore) is a blogger, a devil-may-care young man, Parth (Aditya Roy Kapur), who encounters Chumki when she strays into his home in a drunken state and they soon develop an easy friendship. Parth is also friends with Shruti (Fatima Sana Shaikh) and budding musician Akash (Ali Fazal), who are married but financially not comfortable. They have a long-distance marriage finally and Shruti is tempted by her friendship with a colleague who is a single father.
A college union reignites the Shibani-Parimal friendship, and Parimal even invites her home to pretend to be an obnoxious ‘stepmother’ and somehow make his widowed daughter-in-law (Darshana Banik) leave home and carve her own life after she has lost her husband (Parimal’s son) along with Parimal’s wife in an accident. She does not wish to get on with her life, though her college friend is in love with her and wants to marry her.
Most of these characters and their traits, trials, joys and tribulations and the tremors in their relationships, tussles and changes in their beliefs, values and obsessions are introduced through a wonderfully interspersed musical series of songs that are beautifully written, composed and filmed, through a band (comprising Pritam. Papon and Raghav Chaitanya) that keeps playing everywhere from rooftops to roads and wherever) with added portions lip-synched by almost every lead character. And in that sense, to an elevated level, this film is a sequel in spirit to Life in a…Metro.
Happily, this time, despite a length of 162 minutes (which could have been shortened a whit in the second half), the proceedings are as light and humorous as they are dramatic. The narrative is decidedly subtle in its messages on relationships. Unconditional acceptance of one’s partner, giving space and falling in love with the same person again and again to foster durability in bonding is the core ethos of this lovable film and its exhilarating story and screenplay (Anurag himself). The dialogues, life-like, crisply urban and when needed trenchant and even bold, have been fabulously penned by Sandeep Shrivastava and Samrat Chakravarthy.
Cinematography (Anurag again with Abhishek Basu) is pristine, and the production scale and values are amazing. Pritam’s music completely blends with the narrative it is created for, with eight exceptional lyrics by Sandeep Shrivastava, Anurag Sharma, Neelesh Mishra and Mayur Puri and the use of Momin Khan Momin’s and Qaisar-Ul-Jafri’s poetry as well. The BGM (Pritam again) is outstanding, though the decibel levels could have been curtailed a tad.
Metro…In Dino is a treasury of great performances. First the flipside: Anupam Kher is shockingly mechanical and Ali Fazal stiff and not as effective as he could have been.
But the rest are magnificent, or at least outstanding. Konkona Sen Sharma, in the complex character and through her mercurial moods, again shows the extraordinary brilliance of her turn in Mr. & Mrs. Iyer. Pankaj Tripathi as Monty, is expectedly exceptional: this man is a living manual on all shades of acting!
Aditya Roy Kapur’s expressions, tones and body language stress only one fact: how comparatively mediocre artistes get the fame he deserves but has not acquired even 15 years since he started as a lead! Sara Ali Khan is simply superb and her temperamental switches and eyes create sheer magic, akin to her mother Amrita Singh’s formidable forte. Neena Gupta is fantastic, and Fatima Sana Shaikh’s acting nuances are indeed commendable.
From the supporting roles, all the three youngsters (Mikhail, Ahana and Vanshika) are fantastic with nothing to choose between their bang-on natural performances. Rohan Gurbaxani scores as Kajol’s Goan friend, Darshana Banik as Anupam Kher’s subdued and stoic daughter-in-law and Saswata Chatterjee as Shibani’s husband, especially when the latter comes into his own in the last 30 minutes of this film.
Miss this one and you miss one of the finest scripts on relationships (not just in the metros and in these days—In Dino) we have encountered in the movies.
Rating: ****1/2
Anurag Basu Productions’ & T-Series Films’ Metro…In Dino Produced by: Anurag Basu, Taani Basu, Bhushan Kumar & Krishan Kumar Directed by: Anurag Basu Written by: Anurag Basu, Sandeep Shrivastava & Samrat Chakravarthy Music: Pritam Starring: Pankaj Tripathi, Aditya Roy Kapur, Konkona Sen Sharma, Sara Ali Khan, Ali Fazal, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Anupam Kher, Saswata Chatterjee, Darshana Banik, Rohan Gurbaxani, Mikhail, Ahana, Vanshikha, Kush Jotwani, Anurag Basu, Imtiaz Ali, Pritam, Papon, Raghav Chaitanya & others
(Used under special arrangement with NIT)
