Beneath their remorseless violence, what the John Wick films reveal about heartbreak, and the blossoming of grief. |
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| THE HAUNTED ACTION HERO isn’t new. It’s a trope as old as time. Nearly every protagonist in the history of action cinema comes from a space of damage and pain. Nearly all of them are broken, angry or some combination of both. They have nothing left to lose. They are often “ghosts in search of graveyards”. At times, this passes off as an excuse to justify the limited acting skills of these stars. (They aren’t emoting because they’re numb, you see). But mostly, it becomes the license to kill — and to express tragedy as the most physical version of itself. When we see them break bones, bodies and spirits, we are actually seeing the invincibility and vulnerability of heartbreak at once. It’s a stretch, but it’s probably the most accessible grammar of grief. The reason the John Wick franchise represents the pinnacle of this genre is because it reveals grief as an endless journey. Beneath the remorseless slicing and shooting and stunts and style, it reveals heartbreak as a permanent and shapeless feeling. Not a feeling that goes away with time, but the sort that stays and evolves — the sort that one can only get more proficient at. These might sound like heavy words for what is, on paper, a hugely successful Hollywood action series about a retired hitman who sets out to avenge the murder of his dog. But the flesh is a front for some soul. The beagle puppy was a gift from his late wife, Helen. It was supposed to be his support animal. John Wick returns to the dark side — to wreak havoc in the underworld he had walked away from at his peak — because his grieving process is derailed by that very world. When the Russian gangster’s son attacks Wick’s home in the first film, he is essentially attacking both the endurance of his love and his opportunity to break in peace. — RAHUL DESAI |
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Bheed Is A Compelling Archive Of A Human Tragedy |
THERE’S SOMETHING called “an Anubhav Sinha film”. The specification speaks less of the filmmaker’s signature and more of his insistent filmmaking. With Mulk (2018) there was a definite shift in his oeuvre which has only become more defined with time. Sinha’s focus on social malaise is so obdurate that the fixation has evolved into a parameter of its own, hinting at both his limitations and flourishes. His previous outings reveal his blindspots: a tendency to be obtuse (Anek, 2022); prioritise theme over treatment (Thappad, 2020); and more crucially, lean on saviours for intervention (Article 15). In that sense, his latest film is cut from the same cloth and yet unfolds as a departure. People here are not striving to be heroes. Instead, given the times they are in, the attempt is to be less of a villain. — ISHITA SENGUPTA |
| (Un)Haunted By The Ghosts Of Police Procedurals Past |
PURUSHA PRETHAM is set in the expansive backwaters and pastures of Kochi. At the centre of the narrative is a police station and its assorted hard-boiled cops, for whom grappling with the oddities of the dead and the living has turned humdrum. When a dead man’s body washes in on the backwaters, their instinctive response — which comes from years of working with human remains and having to plunge into the investigative routine — is weariness. So you have a local diener earning a hero’s welcome for fishing the corpse out of the water. The plot picks up momentum when a woman, Susanna (Darshana Rajendran) claims that the dead man — whose remains have already been buried by the cops — was her husband; however, the grave itself is now discovered to be empty. — NEELIMA MENON |
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