RDX To Jailer, Hypermasculine Heroes Are Hits

From RDX To Jailer, Grey 'Heroes' Are A Hit At The Box Office

Hypermasculine heroes, dripping with rage, aggression and moral ambiguity, are striking box office gold. Neelima Menon writes.

THE large open ground in front of the church is teeming with families in their Sunday best, eager to partake in the food and festivities. It’s a pleasant scene, until a few miscreants spoil the day. The hero’s father is hurt in the fracas, which is the cue for the former to unleash the first of many (fist) fights. A jab, an uppercut, some pulsating background music — and the RDX game has begun.

If RDX had to be condensed into one punchline (pun intended), it would be: “If you mess with me, you’d better be ready for the consequences”. That punchline recurs in a vicious loop throughout the movie. So there is a history of violence and vengeance that triggers still more violence and vengeance. Three young men — certainly not of calm disposition, and who would rather let their fists do the talking — find themselves in a mess. Their circumstances stem partly from confusion and partly from their own doing. Be that as it may, the damage is done and retaliation has to follow.

That may sound like a premise of your typical masala potboiler, but what makes RDX work is its appeal to an aspirational generation of youngsters who are enthralled by the sight of testosterone-fuelled men fighting to flex their egos and aggression. It is about young men who are more sensitive to threats to their fragile masculinity. Even if the story is done to death (men fighting to save their families from adversaries) what works is perhaps the packaging and the timely action set pieces. RDX’s narrative often falters when it comes to emotional heft and dialogues but it gets the adrenaline-charged stunts on point.

At TIFF 2023, A Marathi Film Offers A Thoughtful Interrogation Of Marriage & Womanhood In 'New India'

Sthal is an impassioned look at the travails of a woman stuck in modern India that is suffocated by a custom that shows no signs of going away — arranged marriage. Aditya Shrikrishna writes.

SPACE is important in Jayant Digambar Somalkar’s Marathi debut feature Sthal (A Match). Savita (Nandini Chikte), from Dongargaon, is in the final year of her Bachelor’s in Sociology. Her safe haven is a cabin within her college library. The enclosure is bookended by pictures of Ambedkar and Savitribai Phule, and the newspaper in front opens the outside world to her. At home, the claustrophobic living room is a space of confinement. It’s where she is forced to gloss herself up and sit in front of suitors for her marriage and their family, all men, and answer a laundry list of questions asked in the same tone and order. After a point Somalkar keeps only the voiceover, Savita in the frame doesn’t even speak. They come and go, an event that is choreographed like a set piece, a cycle with the same start and end every time. In the beginning, over the opening credits, the men are faceless with cloth covering them and a song sung with enthusiastic, obvious glee lists the qualities and chores expected of a wife. Somalkar adds a thin layer of comedy over the oceanic depths of oppression that is patriarchy.

Sthal, also written by Somalkar and consisting of non-actors, premiered at the ongoing 48th Toronto International Film Festival. It is an impassioned look at the travails of a woman stuck in modern India that is suffocated by a custom that shows no signs of going away — arranged marriage. Somalkar’s focus is on Savita but in her story lie the several micro stories of characters who either play a part in controlling her life or are indirectly affected by her fortunes. Like her elder brother Mangesh is waiting for her to be married off so that he can propose to his lover, lest his life come in the way of her marital bliss. So conditioned into the system, for him, Savita’s prospects in what is essentially a market look like a bigger roadblock than his own unemployment and bleak future.

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