Warning: While a sincere effort has been made not to present any spoilers in this article, any plot disclosures made ahead were inadvertent.
My Rating: ***1/2
As has been the norm for artists trying to make a movie with any semblance of a statement in India, 'Madras Cafe' has run into a deluge of problems. The movie has effectively been banned in the state of Tamilnadu, going against both the censor board's approval of the film and the Madras high court's refusal to stay the release of the movie. It now appears that the film is not being played in some theaters even in U.K. as reported here. Artists, especially movie-makers, it seems, are the easiest prey for radicals pursuing distorted agendas. But, more on that later.
I went in to watch the movie with no grandiose expectations and while I wasn't mind-blown after watching it, I must admit I was pleasantly surprised. The first half of the movie was gripping but I dreaded the part after the intermission; when most Hindi movies seem to get their scripts written by an imaginative 5-year old. Thankfully, while his acting abilities may speak otherwise, John Abraham, the producer, hits the dart close to the middle again in his second outing.
'Madras Cafe' is fast, racy and lacks the thing that I sometimes miss in my food but definitely not in my movies: Masala. Shoojit Sircar's restrained & no-nonsense approach to this movie is what struck me the most. The hero does not send 20 bad-guys flying with one punch, does not make chest-thumping theatrical (read comical) statements about his pride for India and most importantly, seems vulnerable through out. In fact, John Abraham has no hand-to-hand action sequences and never seems inclined to repeat his body-baring antics from Dostana (sorry ladies!).
The movie is of course set in the late 80s and 90s when India had it's own misadventure, a la Vietnam, in Sri Lanka. Without revealing too much of the plot, John Abraham plays an Army Major who is tasked with dangerous missions in Jaffna as the head of RAW covert operations. While some parts of the movie (including conspiracy theories) are figments of Mr. Sircar's imagination, the Tamil struggle for rights, the rebellion by the 'Tigers', the Indian involvement and the subsequent assassination of a former Indian PM seem to stay close to the truth. The names of most characters are altered (V Prabhakaran is 'Anna') though the facial resemblance of a few characters to their real-life counterparts is uncanny. The violence in most sequences is not gory and intensity is maintained with words rather than blood. Relationships between characters stay surprisingly mature and the fact that Nargis Fakhri & John did not hook-up at the end had me wondering if I did really watch a Hindi movie. There no songs in the movie (hurray to that!), the locales are perfect and the Tamil-speaking actors in the movie sound authentic, even when they speak in Hindi with a southern accent.
Moving to the cons, the primary letdown has to be the acting. John Abraham is decent in some scenes though his lack of emotion is glaring at times. Nargis Fakhri showcases her poor acting skills yet again and her parlays with John involve him talking in Hindi and her responding in English (a little weird). The quiz master, Siddharta Basu, does pretty decently as the head of RAW and other than Prakash Belawadi who plays 'Bala' convincingly, I suggest a crash course in acting from Naseeruddin Shah for all other 'actors'. The editing at times could have been better and some parts of the movie seem not well-thought out (like John narrating his story to a priest; why?).
The message trying to be conveyed seems to be that wars are played by corporations & rich men but it benefits none of the people actually fighting the fight. Death, betrayal and suffering are some of the horrible realities of war and the makers of the movie do not shy from presenting this fact.
Overall, could the movie have been better? Absolutely. And yet, I find myself recommending others to watch this movie. It is the closest Indian cinema has come to presenting facts about real incidents in the Indian history whilst including an imaginary tale but without injecting meaningless bravado. Watch the movie for the honesty & restraint with which Sircar et al. have delivered it. Not to forget the fact that decent Indian spy movies are hard to come by so this may be the chance of a decade.
*Movie Review Ends; discourse about the Tamil aspect begins*
Now to answer an important question about the movie; is 'Madras Cafe' anti-Tamil? In my view, most definitely not.
Nowhere in the film is there a single dialogue against Indian Tamils. Even when Sri Lankan Tamils are mentioned, the people are shown as the victims of a mindless pogrom first and the victims of LTTE's (not called LTTE in the movie) violent actions later. Yes, the LTTE or 'Tigers' are shown as the antagonists but how do you portray a rosy picture of a violent militant organization that has brutally murdered an ex-PM of India? The causes for the rise of the LTTE, including the savage actions of a section of the Sinhalese population, are sufficiently accounted for. In fact, any Sinhalese person who watches this movie will perhaps be offended as the Sinhalese are depicted as the belligerents.
Most Tamilians that protest such movies must understand that seeking exclusive bans for films that try to show an alternative understanding of their reality will only hurt them in the long run. Indian cinema/arts cannot and must not be held hostage to vicious rhetoric and hysterical frenzies. Censoring arts to only mimic one's perception of reality will lead to the degeneration of a society, as often taught by history. As the movie seems to suggest, the people who benefit the most by whipping-up public anger are the fat-cats with an ulterior agenda while the mango man, in general, couldn't care less about such things. So to anyone from Tamilnadu who criticizes the movie & has cared to read thus far I say, WATCH the movie. Watch it & then decide if you should be offended. For that matter, the people of India that lost over a thousand soldiers, many civilians and a former Prime Minister to the LTTE have just as much cause to be offended. Offended, because some of our fellow citizens seem to forget that that the organization that they so vociferously support is one that waged a deadly war against their nation not too long ago.
