There is so much history to reclaim from our past. Madras Cafe does it with enrapturing elan. This is a cinema signifying a coming of age with unforgettable visuals and drama, and a rousing, mature career-defining performance by its leading man.
If only history could be changed by art. Cinema is a powerful medium for socio-political expression and revolution. Alas, in this country, entertainment engages all other aspects of life on celluloid.
But seriously, it’s time now to get off the Chennai Express and get into Madras Cafe for a cuppa the compelling. We need a reality check. And we need to regain a sense of history in Bollywood cinema, which seems lost in the hoary art of street-side tamasha, glorified and aggrandised by processes of cinematics that are perceived to be the elixir of pop culture.
Heightened realism is a means to achieve a synthesis of fantasy and history in this deftly scripted semi-fictional account of the processes leading to Rajiv Gandhi’s tragic assassination in 1991.
The trenchant script co-written by Somnath Dey and Subhendu Bhattacharya attempts and succeeds in building the same spiral of pseudo-history that Oliver Stone built in JFK. I feel Indian politics, because of the country’s multiculturalism, is far more complex than its American or European counterparts. Our cinema tends to dilute, simplify and trivialise history because we are much too wary of and lazy about getting involved.
Not Shoojit Sircar. Not Madras Cafe. Not John Abraham, what a courageous producer and actor John has proven himself to be! More of that later. But first the plot. Let me say right away that to understand the enormity of the story told in Madras Cafe, the audience ought to be familiar with the violent history of the Sri Lankan civil war. But hey, even if you don’t know that thousands of Tamilians died in the war of separatism, it is no sweat off the screenplay’s back. Tucked away in the compelling creases of the plot is a terrific thriller about the assassination of a prime minister, who, let it be known, is not named in the film. Nor are the LTTE, Prabakaran and the other key players. But then this is India. Here, secrecy and stealth are the founding fathers of any political exposé.
But you can’t escape the clutches of history’s tyranny. Shoojit’s skilful interweaving of fact and fiction leaves little room for skepticism. We know as we watch with helpless astonishment, that the ‘Prime Minister’ will die, that the hero in this case won’t be able to save him.
Such are the heroes in real life. Unsung, sizes smaller than life. John Abraham skips into the part of the RAW agent Vikram Singh with an ease and comfort of a natural-born secret agent. If James Bond or for that matter Kabir Khan’s Tiger were to have any truck with real-life politics, they would have been as believably brave and as credibly heroic as John in this film.
Every actor seems to take a cue from the vast resources of authenticity at their disposal. Especially riveting is Prakash Belawadi as John’s associate who seems to drink hard to escape from the enormity of his compromise. Even Nargis Fakhri, so self consciously affected as Ranbir Kapoor’s doomed soul-mate in Rockstar, nails her war correspondent’s part with her radiant presence. But I have a quibble with her character Jaya. Why does Jaya speak in English while Vikram answers in Hindi?
The linguistic puzzle never quite obstructs the devastating drama of war violence conspiracy and betrayal. These are dramatic points of political reckoning. And yet Shoojit keeps the proceedings subdued and low-key. It’s a miracle how Shoojit’s narrative voice never gets shrill even when the occasion is so ripe for over-statement.
Plenty of the credit for the tonal correctness of the narrative must go to Kamaljeet Negi’s brilliantly unadorned cinematography which locks in on stunning visuals of violence and espionage-related action without falling into the mistake of making the frames look prettier than the grim situation they are meant to capture.
Shoojit’s editor Chandrashekhar Prajapati imbues a documentary style mood to the footage. But the sense of cinematic expansiveness is retained in the way the camera moves through the characters’ restless lives searching for positions of comfort in a situation laden with desperate anxiety.
There is a whole lot of stifled drama in Madras Cafe. When a key character dies in the second-half the tragedy is handled without fuss. John Abraham’s tight-lipped performance gives the film a sense of tragic grandeur. We constantly feel we are in a territory where drama has no place. The soundtrack is exceptionally honest. At times, I actually heard John wheezing while talking under duress. Shantanu Moitra’s background music underscores every scene without hammering in the emotions.
Madras Cafe is a dark deep and satisfying film about the politics of separatism. The film doesn’t take sides. If it is against anything, it is the culture of violence that nations often feed into neighbouring countries for their own gains. This film opens up the hit hero-unexplored genre of political drama in Bollywood. After Vickey Donor, we know Shoojit Sircar is comfortable exploring innovative cinematic territory. Here he tells an edgy, disturbing, provocative but rational and fair-minded story that takes mainstream Bollywood cinema kicking and screaming into a new horizon.
