Ridley Scott’s Sadboi-Hours Gladiator II Is Enjoyable & Effective |
One cannot underestimate the political significance of Gladiator II in this day and age. The politicians running Rome into the ground could be the leaders of any seemingly democratic nation in 2024, writes Rahul Desai. |
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| Cast: Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal |
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EVERY TIME I WATCH A NEW RIDLEY SCOTT MOVIE, I can imagine him — a cinematic gladiator standing in the middle of a studio-owned colosseum — yelling at the crowds: “Are you not entertained?” There’s something incurably romantic about the 86-year-old director’s career right now. He’s not only churning out sprawling, big-budget historical action epics (and blockbuster quotes) at a dizzying rate, he’s doing it his own way in an era of superhero-infected, franchise-injected and internet-fandom excesses. He’s almost like the Tom Cruise of popular directors: an analogue dreamer in a digital multiverse. But Scott isn’t making a statement or anything; I don’t think he cares less about what the rest of the world is watching, loving and making. His storytelling refuses to live and die in the details; his characters are so loosely based on actual people that it’s like watching fiction and reality getting drunk and hooking up violently. It’s such a no-nonsense approach to film-making that one might blame him for being too cavalier, too functional.
But Gladiator II is proof that all the grumpy pulp conceals a beating heart. A sequel to his Oscar-winning Gladiator (2000), the story is set 16 years after the death of the heroic Roman general, Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe). The Rome that his emperor Marcus Aurelius dreamt of was never realised; it remains as corrupt and ruthless as ever. The arc of Maximus — an Achilles-like warrior whose family is killed and he rises back up from slavery to ‘dethrone’ demented ruler Commodus — is partitioned into two here. There’s Hanno (Paul Mescal), a North African soldier taken captive by the Romans after his wife is killed and his land is conquered. Hanno, whose talent for combat takes him all the way to the Colosseum, wants revenge against Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), the Roman general who (reluctantly) killed his people. And there’s Marcus Acacius himself who, like Maximus, is the superstar who wants to stop fighting. He’s had enough; he doesn’t agree with the empire he serves. |
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Freedom At Midnight: Nikhil Advani’s Pre-Independence Drama Is Immensely Watchable
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Freedom at Midnight is about the historicity of 1947 conveyed through the lives of those who curated the history. Ishita Sengupta reviews.
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| Cast: Arif Zakaria, Chirag Vohra, Sidhant Gupta, Rajendra Chawla |
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WITH Freedom at Midnight, Nikhil Advani continues looking at big cultural moments through the microscopic gaze of an insider. Across the two seasons of his breakout show Mumbai Diaries, the filmmaker portrayed pressing social crises through the labour of medical practitioners attending to the casualties. This shift in slant sidestepped the showiness prone to cinematic excess and allowed for a more intimate rendering of public events, transforming, therefore, the narrative around them. In his latest long-form work, Advani turns his gaze to the wide spectrum of India’s independence and reiterates his style of focusing on the bureaucratic bottleneck, telling the story therefore of the people living inside towering buildings and not on the street. Freedom at Midnight is about the historicity of 1947 conveyed through the lives of those who curated the history. On paper little about this is inventive. Traditionally, the fight for India’s freedom has been told through vivid accounts of sacrifice. Advani’s series although relays similar stories — pre-Partition riots, Lord Mountbatten’s arrival to finalise the transfer of power, Mahatma Gandhi’s adamant opposition to religion-based division — unfolds as a departure in its refusal to valourise these personalities. Instead, the show does a compelling job of going beyond the embellishments and stitching together complex portraits of their personhood. |
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Suriya's Kanguva Is A Flaming Mess
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If you thought Indian 2 was cringe, wait till you witness the first 40 minutes of Kanguva, writes Aditya Shrikrishna.
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| Cast: Suriya, Bobby Deol, Disha Patani |
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DIRECTOR SIVA’s Kanguva is a flaming mess. The “pan-India” bug is upon actor Suriya, the film’s producers and Siva, and they don’t have a clear strategy to achieve it. There are no ideas here, just loglines. There is no writing here, just random deaths and fight sequences. There is no story here, just events. This is taking “event film” much too literally. Even if you are ready to forgive all that, there is no actual filmmaking here; just a bunch of shots strung together with no coherence or cohesion. During the film’s promotions, much was made of the makers’ respect for SS Rajamouli. After all, he is the progenitor of this pan-India bug that spares none. But no one in the Kanguva camp stopped for a minute, sat down and thought hard about what makes Rajamouli. What makes his cinema, cinema. Kanguva is not cinema. The story doesn’t need the back of the envelope. Maybe a palm would suffice. There is a present-day portion set in Goa as well as an undisclosed location that forms a Russian research base. The connection to Russia doesn’t come up after the initial scroll text. They are researching some nonsense cocktail of brain and neural networks on children, one of whom escapes. We meet Francis (Suriya), a bounty hunter who teams up with his partner played by Yogi Babu to catch criminals for the police. His competition is his ex-girlfriend Angela (Disha Patani). Her Yogi Babu counterpart is Redin Kingsley. If you thought Indian 2 was cringe, wait till you witness the first 40 minutes of Kanguva. These portions test our patience, there isn’t an ounce of willingness to try here, the team takes the audience for granted and simply strings together one embarrassing sequence after another until the escaped boy meets Francis. |
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The one newsletter you need to decide what to watch on any given day. Our editors pick a show, movie, or theme for you from everything that’s streaming on OTT. |
| Each week, our editors pick one long-form, writerly piece that they think is worthy of your attention, and dice it into easily digestible bits for you to mull over. | | In which we invite a scholar of cinema, devotee of the moving image, to write a prose poem dedicated to their poison of choice. Expect to spend an hour on this. | |
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