What To Watch This Week: Wonka, Joram

Wonka: Pure Milk Chocolate In An Age Of Flavoured Dark Chocolate

This is #CineFile, where our critic Rahul Desai goes beyond the obvious takes, to dissect movies and shows that are in the news.

Dir: Paul King

Cast: Timothée Chalamet

Playing in: Theatres

IT’s fascinating that “old-fashioned” is suddenly all the rage. I don’t mean the cocktail. (Maybe I do, in a way.) I mean the old-fashioned ways of doing things. Given the edgy and provocative times we live in, the simplicity of the good old days sounds inviting. Nostalgia is in. Finding childhood friends and books; vintage haircuts; reminiscing about newspapers and physical photo albums; taking to outdoor activities. And most of all, making art old-school again. Telling stories in forgotten, innocent ways again. That’s what director Paul King manages with Wonka. In 2023, it’s no small feat. It’s like pure milk chocolate in an age of flavoured dark chocolate.

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The origin story of Willy Wonka — the famously eccentric chocolatier of Roald Dahl’s 1964 novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — is sweet (literally), warm, colourful and funny. It’s a throwback to the fantasy musicals of yore: nothing too fancy, nothing too complex, just a lot of singing and design and creativity. Timothee Chalamet is charming as the magician-inventor-chocolatier who takes a new land by storm. He has this boyish zest — just about hopeful enough to be a teen and just about whimsical enough to be an adult who might go on to fashion morality tests in the future.

The film knows that we expect a slightly moody rendition of the character, given Wonka’s role in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movies. It would’ve been perfectly normal to stage him as a bit of a mad-hatting sociopath who — despite his personality — saves his friends, delights the people, and defeats his rivals. But the Wonka we see here is a compassionate genius coming to terms with his surroundings. It’s almost as if the makers deliberately present him as a normal musical hero, keeping in mind that an origin story cannot always be informed by the luxury of hindsight. He is yet to grow into the literary character we know and love. For now, he’s just another kid with a show to put on. With an Oompa-Loompa (an orange little Hugh Grant) of course. It’s a risk, but an honest one.

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Joram: A Politically Charged Work With Fascinating Performances

The Manoj Bajpayee-starrer is a social tragedy masquerading as a manhunt, writes Ishita Sengupta.

Dir: Devashish Makhija

Cast: Manoj Bajpayee

Playing in: Theatres

IN Devashish Makhija’s Joram, his fourth feature and most accessible work so far, the theme and the critique are designed alike. The film is a social tragedy masquerading as a survival thriller. And it unfolds as a clear-eyed commentary on the system that camouflages its devouring instinct as progress. It is a story of the many India(s) that reside in one India and, during its runtime, insists that the parts are stitched and not attached together. The lines of togetherness, are in fact, signs of fracture borne out of decades-long struggle.

Dasru (Manoj Bajpayee) and his wife Vaano (Tannishtha Chatterjee) are construction workers in Mumbai. They are migrants in the urban jungle which has room for all but space for some. Thus, they are reduced to their labour and clubbed in a colorless, numberless building with others like them. Soon, the place will be revamped and handed over to others. Dasru and Vaano are Adivasis from Jharkhand, reduced to a placeholder in the city. They are invisible to the rest but not to all.

Phulo Karma (a terrific Smita Tambe) is an Adivasi woman and ruling party’s MLA. Five years ago, her son was flogged to death when he tried to broker deals with the fellow Adivasis, on behalf of the government, to give up their land. Her husband died soon after, deepening her grief — which she channelled as revenge. Amidst the bloodshed, Dasru and his wife fled but they could only run so far. Phulo found them soon, killed Vaano and staged it as Dasru’s doing. With an infant wrapped around his body, a man is on the run.

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