Life in a Metro - Movie Review

Prologue:

Bowing to the moral police gaining ground our country, I have decided to give a guidance rating to the movies. Love in a Metro gets a 15 (in a green circle) for a long and longing display of Shilpa Shetty’s belly, liberal images of promiscuous activity in urban middle and upper middle classes and especially call centres (much to the chagrin and wistfulness of my friends in BPOs) and above all gratuitous scenes of women drinking and smoking purely for pleasure and without remorse. Now that I have given you three reasons for seeing the movie, let’s go to the rest.

The Story

Well actually there are 4-5 stories.

Aakash (Shiney Ahuja) is a theatre actor playing to empty halls and struggling to make ends meet while Shikha (Shilpa Shetty) is a lady struggling with her husband’s silences, absences and distances. They have a brief encounter at a bus-stop and the inevitable happens and then does not happen. Shikha’s husband Ranjeet (Kay Kay Menon) is a top executive at a BPO who happens to be sleeping around with his junior Neha (Kangana Ranaut) who inspired by movies in which an actress called Kangana acted, feels that sleeping and weeping are good ways for career advancement.

Ranjeet uses the apartment of his subordinate Rahul (Sharman Joshi) for his night shifts. Rahul lets out his apartment for Ranjeet and other seniors at his BPO to gain some brownie points. Rahul has a crush on Neha and is crushed again when he realizes that Neha is sleeping with his boss in his own apartment. Neha’s roommate is Shruthi (Konkona Sen), Shikha’s sister who is pushing 30 and desperate to get married and runs into Monty (Irrfan Khan), pushing 40, a complete opposite in character and a male chauvinist who feels that gazing at a lady’s chest is okay. Again the inevitable happens.

Shikha (Shilpa) spends some of her time at an old age home where Shivani (Nafisa Ali) talks about her long lost love. Shivani regains it when her lover Amol (Dharmendra) comes back after 40 years and they elope from their old age home to set up a cosy nest for themselves.

My Views

“Pehle tho bistar pe galti se bhi pair takraate to sab kadwahat pighal jaati thi. Ab tho hamari khamoshiyan bi aapas me jagadthe hain” – Shikha on her marriage

“Did you leave her or she left you” - Shikha, “Love left us” – Aakash

“Hamne Zindagi girvi laga dhi, makaan tho kharid sake lekin ghar nahin bana sake” – Shikha (on house mortgage)

How I wish movie synopses could be condensed into a few quotes from the movie. Love in a Metro is that kind of movie. It has 4-5 stories, but one theme. A theme of love lost and gained and (sometimes) lost again. It has all these parallel stories running together to weave a colourful tapestry of emotions - hopes, disappointments, love, ambition, greed, confusion etc. The director Anurag Basu, who has earlier done some decent work in Gangster and some indecent work in Murder pulls off a petite piece of art here. He has inspirations – the entire letting-out-the-apartment episode is from Billy Wilder’s classic - “The Apartment”. But I am glad when people take their inspiration from Billy Wilder rather than say movies like Spiderman or Stepmom.

The stories might be predictable. But Anurag has a deft hand with characters and an even better one at casting. You grow to know and love/ hate their characters and at the end of the movie still want to continue to be with them and know more. Some areas could have been scripted better – Shiney Ahuja’s role has an incompleteness to it and so does Shilpa Shetty’s. Nafisa-Dharmendra’s track too could have had a bit more meat. No complaints with the others. Rahul-Neha’s episode is very sensitively portrayed. The Konkona- Irrfan episode is easily the highlight of the movie, a wonderful romantic comedy involving meeting of opposites. Probably one of the most delightfully written pieces in Hindi cinema of late, reminding you of Basu Chatterjee’s or Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s gems of the 70s. Both actors steal scenes from each other. Anurag should just make a movie on these characters. The movie is worth a watch for this storyline alone.

Anurag also has some nice directorial touches like the three singers (including Pritam, the music director himself) who crop at moments through the movie like the wandering minstrels we read about or Sutradhars, carrying the story along with some songs.

Anurag Basu’s main talent has been in getting together one of the finest collections of actors of our generation – Irrfan Khan, Konkona Sen, Kay Kay, Kangana Ranaut, Shiney Ahuja and still give each of them a significant role to chew on. Irrfan Khan, as they say is this part of the world, is a “total stud”. He brings immense depth to his character and you wish his episodes with Konkona were longer. Konkona Sen is good as usual. My favourite Kay Kay Menon acts with as much intensity as always. Kangana Ranaut may be being typecast in a self-destructive woman’s role, but she manages to pull it off each time. Even Shilpa Shetty is brilliant, her quivering belly conveys more emotions than most actresses’ faces. And thank Anurag for reminding us of Dharmendra.

Anurag has a nice sense of visuals, he makes even Mumbai in rain look good, even those dull, morose, blackened buildings somewhere around Mahim creek. As he has shown in his earlier movies, Anurag is able to get fantastic music from his composers and Pritam’s music, though a bit music-video like, is composed and sung very well.

Summary

Life in a Metro is the kind of movie which Woody Allen would have made if he was in India or Gulzar could have made if he was born 20-30 years later and Mani Rathnam should have been making, if his aspirations did not run ahead of his abilities. I am not comparing Anurag Basu with them, he is just aiming that high which should be applauded with both hands. Life in a Metro is the best Hindi movie I have seen this year.