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Thursday, May 2, 2024
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BOLLYWOOD DRONA
EDITOR'S PICK
Rating: ***
Goldie Behl dares to dream. He`s back after
a seven-year hiatus to let us know that Bas Itna Sa Khwaab Hai was
not where his `khwab` (dream) ended. As a matter of fact, the dream begins now.
Drona is a feeling not quite overpowering but purposely underplayed
and designed to bring the till-now-barred-in-Bollywood Lord Of The Rings
genre to our table.
On the storyboard Drona must have sounded outrageously ambitious.
It`s a film that starts in the US, moves to the deserts of Rajasthan and makes
an exit run into a never-never land where blue petals shower down on the screen
creating an area of enchantment and incandescence without letting the spectacle
dominate the characters.
As far as super-heroes go, the one that Abhishek plays in Drona
is somewhat unique.
Seething, scowling, wounded and wanting, Abhishek plays a knight in a shining
armour, a romantic at heart and a warrior only by force. He glides across the
screen doing some of the most gently persuasive old-world stunts conceived on
this side Lord Of The Rings.
The action often involves the leading lady Priyanka, who is quite good.
Behl with persuasive support from cinematographer Samir Arya builds a visual
mindscape manifested in moving pictures that suggest a deep bond between the
imagination and our traditional cultural representations of abstract art, from
desert-based monuments to esoteric weapons that swirl across the breeze and
kill only the evil.
First 10 minutes into this voyage to the realm of our Chandmama-Chandrakanta
genre of fantasy literature, and we`re hooked. From the point when Priyanka,
styled like our first full-blown Lara Croft and dressed and made up to kill
(in more ways than `won`) enters the frame, the film takes off with an emphatic
élan that just stops short of self-congratulation.
Equally arresting is the sequence where our desi dude, superhero Drona, meets
the arch-villain Riz, played by Kay Kay Menon, for the first time. The chaos
that breaks out and the ensuing chase across the narrow cobbled streets of an
unknown foreign country (Prague?) are handled with a delightful eye for comic
book bravura.
All through the telling of this tall and stately tale, Behl displays a restrain
that goes a long way in giving the product the feel of a fantasy well-conceived,
but never over-drawn.
The technique carries the characters fearlessly and fluently. Besides Samir
Arya`s cinematography, which lends the colours of the imagination a hue of the
home-grown, the art direction and the sound design suggest paces of a grace
long-forgotten in our cinema where now, rapid fire storytelling is almost always
equated with an entertaining cinema.
The dramatic conflict converges on Abhishek and Kay Kay Menon. The one silent,
calm from outside and torn and troubled from within. The other ultra-flamboyant
and theatrical, doing what can be called a reincarnation of Mogambo from Mr
India and an indigenous version of Jack Nicholson`s Joker from Batman.
The theatrics that underscore the narrative`s calm surface don`t always work.
Kay Kay`s character goes way over-the-top into an atmosphere of irredeemable
grotesquerie.
Fine actor that he is, Kay Kay gives the flamboyant villainy his best shot.
Abhishek displays a wounded pride and a lacerated soul through his eyes. He
is also immensely adept at handling the action scenes and goes many steps ahead
from his earlier films to under-perform the scenes with heart-warming sincerity.
Priyanka`s styling and body language suggest a smouldering restless sensuality.
By the time we approach the climax, Drona has established its claim
at taking a confident stab at a genre never done before. What it fails to do
is to take that genre into the highest realm of creativity where the characters
would have instinctively become children rather than casualties of the mythology
and fantasy that Behl embraces with ample affection, but not enough of that
quality of connectivity with the audience that superheroes have always achieved
with the audience.
At the end you feel an empathy for the sword-wielding Drona who can`t fly through
the air.
And that`s what makes this superhero so vulnerable and human.
Watch Drona for Abhishek`s reined-in performance as a reluctant
hero, and his crackling hissing, but ambivalent chemistry with Priyanka. And
for the use of special-effects not to overpower but nourish the plot that strides
across two continents and cultures with confident steps.
