Director Sriram Raghavan, Bollywood’s undisputed master of pitch-dark thrillers, takes a bit of a step back from the racy narrative rhythm of Andhadhun and walks a fine line between the unhurried and the urgent, the philosophical and the provocative, and the classy and the kicky in Merry Christmas, a quiet head-scratcher that never lets go of its grip on the audience.
If the black humour-laden 2018 thriller drew inspiration from the French short film L’accordeur (The Piano Tuner) and galloped in an all-new direction, the dual-version Merry Christmas, starring Katrina Kaif and Vijay Sethupathi (as odd a screen couple as any in the history of Hindi and (probably) Tamil cinema) crafts a loose adaptation of the Gallic crime fiction writer Frederic Dard’s book, Le Monte-charge.
The title of the French story literally translates as ‘dumbwaiter’. In English, the novel was known as Bird in a Cage. Both a freight elevator and a trapped avian are relevant analogies in the context of the tale that Merry Christmas locates in the Christian community of 1980s Bombay.
In a literal sense, things – and lives – move up and down in Merry Christmas, but the film itself is stupendously even-keeled. Rarely is languor so totally hypnotic. The controlled momentum of the film, and even its occasional lack of pace, is an integral part of the design. Every cut, every camera angle and every bit of blocking enhances anticipation and foreboding without letting on what exactly is to be expected round the corner.
The film opens with a split screen that reveal two mixer-grinders. One reduces chillies and lentils to maligai podi, the other produces a powder from tablets. Both conceal dark secrets. When they are revealed, they unveil two facets of obsessive love gone awry. Isn’t life indeed a grind? What one makes of it …read more
Disclaimer : This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by FilmyFriday. Source:: NDTV.com
