ATRANGI RE

Ci sono film che andrebbero visti solo una volta.

È il caso di Atrangi Re. Alla seconda visione, quelli che mi erano sembrati peccati veniali si sono rivelati spaventose voragini. Dall'intervallo in poi la sceneggiatura diventa vacua, priva di inventiva e di ispirazione. Un susseguirsi di sciocchezze (vogliamo parlare dell'allegra somministrazione di psicofarmaci, dall'effetto istantaneo?), anche nei dialoghi. Le relazioni fra i personaggi si spengono. La regia, sbalordita quanto noi spettatori, non sostiene la narrazione. Persino gli attori, con l'eccezione di Dhanush, sbiadiscono. Resta solo la bizzarria, del tutto fuori luogo. Verso la fine AR torna in carreggiata, ma il danno è quasi irreparabile.

Il primo tempo è speziato e divertente, malgrado le licenze e le implausibilità. La storia è originale, con una vena di tristezza che soggiace alla commedia e che la rende intima. Non ho riscontrato un'eccessiva banalizzazione della patologia di cui soffre Rinku, la protagonista. La semplificazione c'è - è pur sempre una pellicola d'intrattenimento -, ma è più una forma di fantapsicologia, o di psicologia magica, se preferite. Anzi, la rappresentazione è a tratti abbastanza sensibile e articolata nelle sue implicazioni, e non vi sono ridicolizzazioni.

Il rapporto fra i due personaggi principali è insolito. Vishu, il protagonista, si propone e non si impone, ed è ammirevole nella sua comprensione. Uno stalker sarebbe evaporato dinanzi alle stranezze di Rinku. Rinku non si arrende a Vishu, ma si libera. Da un passato doloroso e dalla sua personalissima strategia per non lasciarsene travolgere, dalla sua interiorità ingarbugliata. E una volta libera, grazie alle opportunità che Vishu le ha offerto, si arrende con fiducia alla vita.

L'incesto nemmeno mi era venuto in mente. La relazione fra Rinku e Sajjad è piena di calore ma asessuata e priva anche solo di ammiccamenti innocenti. Rinku vive il suo groviglio di emozioni in modo acerbo. Diventa adulta grazie a circostanze più o meno fortuite, e a Vishu.

Pur con le sue numerose lacune, l'insieme miracolosamente regge, traballa, sprofonda, e poi risorge. Aanand L. Rai con Zero e AR - e un mix di rusticità, personaggi imperfetti, situazioni stravaganti - ha creato un suo genere che sta al cinema hindi come il weird sta alla fantascienza. O almeno ne sta definendo i parametri, tracciati in precedenza da film quali Shaandaar (2015) di Vikas Bahl o Jagga Jasoos (2017) di Anurag Basu. Forse nel weird Rao ha trovato la sua vena, ed è disarmante la placidità (non la sfrontatezza) con cui ha diretto questi eccentrici lavori, viaggiando sempre sull'orlo del precipizio - e qualche volta precipitando. 

Non c'entra, ma potrei ammirare Dhanush ballare per ore. Per ore.

TRAMA

Rinku da bambina è testimone di una tragedia, e reagisce a modo suo all'orrore. Ma quando, forzatamente, entra in scena Vishu, la faccenda si complica. Anche per Vishu.

RECENSIONI

Film Companion:

'If nothing, I admire the cojones on Atrangi Re. The nerve. The guts. The unflinching audacity. It’s the kind of bewildering disaster (the title translates to “funnily weird”) that nearly turns failure into an artform. It’s so single-mindedly confident in its ideas - of romance, cinema, humans, emotions, psychology - that I was almost impressed by the delusion of it all. Colourful analogies come to mind. Imagine (...) selling death as “the opportunity to be reborn.” (...) In all my years of film watching, I’ve rarely been as repulsed and riveted at once. It’s one thing to push the boundaries of storytelling; it’s another to pour acid on the boundaries, vaporize them and pretend like they never existed to begin with. (...) Midway through the film, there’s a twist so ridiculous that it dwarfs the lofty ambitions of even Zero, the last “What is love if not insanity/disability persevering?” ode by the writer-director combo. (...) I saw the twist coming from the trailer and the discourse around it. (...) Social media had a field day about Sara Ali Khan being paired with the much-older Akshay Kumar. (...) If you think about it, though, the 54-year-old actor’s presence alone is a spoiler - a hint that there might be a social-message angle to what looks like yet another edgy romantic drama. In a purely meta-Bollywood sense, then, the twist is smart, as is the illusion of Akshay Kumar playing a Muslim lover named Sajjad Ali Khan. But that’s where the smartness ends. That’s where everything ends. In context of the world we live in, the twist is willfully ignorant and offensive, especially given the fact that the second half commits to it with unsettling resolve. There are no half measures, which is why the writing takes us to a doomed place stranded between the philanthropic comedy of Lage Raho Munna Bhai, the self-serious nobility of Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara and the philanthropic dramedy of Ayushmann Khurrana movies. It’s not an unfamiliar trope. Marks for effort, sure, but scars for execution. All I can say is that the last thing we all need in 2021 - on the back of the two toughest years in modern history - is a commercial Hindi film infantilizing mental health disorders and trauma in the language of old-school romance. It’s easy to misinterpret this stance as whimsical and brave. This does also offer a ready-made excuse to justify the film’s over-the-top acting. But madness is too often used as a ruse for method and mediocrity. Here, too, it’s worn like a shiny jewel or a glittering dress: as a physical accessory, not a psychological ailment. (...) Sara’s performance (...) confuses histrionics for depth. She seems to be playing a role derived from movies watched rather than life lived. Dhanush, on the contrary, doesn’t look convinced by the narrative he’s driving. He’s normally excellent at conveying the moral fluidity of love, but Atrangi Re escapes his grasp early on and refuses to return. (...) It won’t make sense to view Atrangi Re as an isolated misfire. It’s important to investigate how we got here. (...) Logic is an extra, and love is both an illness and a cure, in most of Aanand L. Rai’s filmography. The Tanu Weds Manu movies, Raanjhanaa and Zero, all merged literal stigma with figurative ones; the results were mixed, yet there’s no denying that uncomfortable truths were revealed with creative candour. In fact, I’m all for the lunacies of love -  I even bought into the toxic excesses of the Rai-produced Haseen Dillruba earlier this year. But Atrangi Re not only drops the ball, it kicks the ball into outer space and calls it a star. It goes too far to celebrate the irrational overtones of love, mining mental illness for comic chuckles and making the actors look silly by sugarcoating disability for the sake of entertainment. I don’t even have to be woke to notice this; it’s just a glaring problem in a film that ceases to exist beyond its twist. Atrangi Re does end on an encouraging note though. The “A film by” slate flashes not just the director’s name, but also his primary collaborators: the writer, cinematographer, music director, editor, production designer and lyricist. It’s a great precedent in an industry averse to credit. But given the nature of the film, it also feels like a confession that says: It’s everybody’s fault, not just mine'.

Rahul Desai, 24.12.21

Recensione integrale

Cinema Hindi: ** 1/2 

Punto di forza: il primo tempo (***), Dhanush, il personaggio di Sajjad

Punto debole: la sceneggiatura nel secondo tempo

SCHEDA DEL FILM

Cast:

* Sara Ali Khan - Rinku

* Dhanush - Vishu

* Akshay Kumar - Sajjad

* Seema Biswas - nonna di Rinku

Regia: Aanand L. Rai

Soggetto, sceneggiatura e dialoghi: Himanshu Sharma

Colonna sonora: A.R. Rahman

Traduzione del titolo: Rahul Desai, nella sua recensione, propone funnily weird

Anno: 2021

Trailer

RASSEGNA STAMPA/VIDEO

* I wasn't making a documentary, Komal RJ Panchal, The Indian Express, 3 gennaio 2022. Intervista concessa dallo sceneggiatore Himanshu Sharma:

'What do you have to say about the claims that Atrangi Re trivialises mental disorders?

When I chose this story and this concept, I wasn’t making a documentary on mental illness. (...) There is so much more to the film, to that story called Atrangi Re, it talks about love, loss, and trauma, and how trauma can create so many difficulties for you and how love can fix all of those problems. In my head, I used  mental issue as a tool, a sugar-coating through which I am telling you about even deeper things. So, at times while I was manoeuvring my way, it doesn’t mean I am not paying attention to it or that I am not being honest towards it. Please look at the characters in the film, all the characters, like Dhanush’s Vishu or his friend Madhu (played by Ashish Verma), they all have so much sympathy for the girl. They are dealing with her with utmost sympathy. The idea is that you have to see the film for what it is and not what you want it to be. It is important to see the deeper meanings. (...) We need a new set of eyes, a new set of reviewers to watch these new stories. Because, at least, I am done with this boring, banal and shallow reviewing of our stories. That’s all I have to say, that there was so much more in the story, of course mental illness was also there, but that was not the only thing. And please understand the idea of how symbolically the makers are using it. (...) You may say it trivialises the issue, but I would just like to say that I was trying to make these difficult topics simple, so that it can be accessible and can reach a larger number of people. (...) Films (...) should speak human language and that is imperfect. (...) We need to learn how to see a film without judgement, to immerse in the story and to feel it, seek the deeper truth in any film'.

* Writer Himanshu Sharma Breaks Down Atrangi Re, Prathyush Parasuraman, Film Companion, 4 gennaio 2022: 

'Atrangi Re is a baffling creature. Rarely has illogical wonder paired so compellingly, yet so abrasively with romance and drama. Like watching a kite burn in the sky, you can’t help but watch till it is an ashen heap. Forgoing a big theatrical release, the film premiered on Disney+ Hotstar on December 24 to mixed reviews. It was described as both riveting and reckless. Regardless, within the first three days, it clocked 8.8 million views. Another 11.7 million views the following week. (...)

Tell us about the Tamil dialogues. You wrote them in Hindi and got them translated?

No. I would tell Dhanush the larger picture, and what the character should communicate, and then he would put them in his words in Tamil and deliver it. I would never know what lines he was saying. Once he would deliver lines, what a fantastic actor... we were done in two takes. Scripts are not supposed to be read but seen. Once you find the truth in a scene, then just let it be. 

A lot of the initial scenes with Sara Ali Khan felt odd, like her teasing, her intense gaze, her dancing. (...) Why is she being so intense and intimate with Vishu when she has another man, Sajjad Ali Khan waiting? (...)

See, I also wanted to create a juvenile quality about this girl where her actions are not governed by social norms. She would live in a moment. She has her own shortcomings, never thinking of consequences. (...) She had no reason to dance (...) but she did it because she was having fun after the longest time. After spending 22 years in that house, that environment, she is now seeing Delhi, then Madurai. She doesn’t care for limits. (...)

At a screenplay level Atrangi Re is very tricky. The film has a lot of explaining. Entire scenes just play out, trying to explain how Rinku is hallucinating, or whom or why she is hallucinating, or how to treat her, or whether the treatment is working or not working. Were you worried this would get too much for the audience?  

It is a tricky film, especially this whole idea of a person in love with her own father... it is quite tricky, because I wanted to land that in the most innocent way possible. For that I required that explanation, otherwise it wouldn’t reach you. See, at the end of the day it is not about how the story is unraveling. It is about “Are you interested at all?” People will forgive a lot of things if they are enjoying the story. That is what I keep in mind. No story is perfect. But do people want to know what happens next? (...)

You have spoken about being true to the world you are writing your characters in. They are often doing odd things, like slashing wrists and breaking bottles on their heads, Dhanush being the stalker in Raanjhanaa, or administering medicines without the consent of Rinku in Atrangi Re. This might be true to the world they are in. But were you ever worried that being true to a cinematic world might come across as validating certain kinds of violent behaviour here, in our world?

No! Do you have to learn everything from films? (...) I am only responsible for my characters, my story. There is a lot of love I have towards Kundan (from Raanjhanaa) or Vishu. It is okay to make mistakes. But that doesn’t mean we are bad human beings. Vishu is doing these things to himself. See how drunk he is in that scene, and the mental space he is in, dealing with an imaginary character as a competition in love. It was an organic thing, and fun, too, ya. We have loved Kill Bill. If that is not promoting violence, then what is? (...) So let us not put the responsibility of fixing this world on cinema. 

There was an immediate backlash about how the film discussed mental health. In an interview with Indian Express you said you “used [the] mental issue as a tool, a sugar-coating, through which [you were] telling [us] about even deeper things” What are these deeper things?

As I said, the basic thing was an idea of what we think of love theoretically vis-a-vis what we get in life. We have these grand thoughts, definitions of and about love. We live by those definitions, and then, when we have to deal with a real person, we have to learn to live with that. It is like saying, “Yaar, boyfriend ya pati hona chahiye Shah Rukh Khan jaisa” [fidanzati e mariti dovrebbero essere come SRK], but what you have is some Vinod Kumar type person. But that Vinod Kumar can at least go and buy you paracetamol. That imaginary love can’t help you. That real person is there. Flawed, but they will stand by you. Of course, there is also how trauma can create a void within you which love can fulfill. These were a few things I wanted to speak about in the garb of mental illness. It is not that I am saying mental illness is not there. But while maneuvering a story, you have to prioritize. What do you want to put forward? In that process, some things take a back seat. That does not mean you are not aware of it or don’t care about it. You do. But the primary story is important. It should be fun to watch'.

CURIOSITÀ

* Film che trattano lo stesso tema: l'originalissimo Judgementall Hai Kya. In Heaven on Earth, la protagonista, vittima di violenze domestiche, reagisce in un modo molto simile a Rinku. 

GOSSIP & VELENI

* Nel 2021 Himanshu Sharma ha sposato la sceneggiatrice Kanika Dhillon (Judgementall Hai Kya). Per Kanika è il secondo matrimonio. In precedenza aveva sposato Prakash Kovelamudi, regista di JHK.