Beyond the IIT dream, the 90s nostalgia, and the uncertainty of youth, lyricist and screenwriter Varun Grover’s debut feature directorial All India Rank is about the Indian middle class’s obsession with order. “Humare ghar control ki badi dikkat rahi humesha se (There was always the problem of control in our house)” the protagonist Vivek (Bodhisattva Sharma) says in a voiceover. We see his father sucking on cigarettes and his mother stuffing laddoos in her mouth. The scenes play out for laughs but underline something deeper: the need to curb impulses, the fear of losing control. AIR is set in a fast-evolving decade (India, just after liberalisation) and all its characters try to cling on to constants amidst rapidly changing variables. Nothing can be left to chance.
Written and directed by: Varun Grover
Starring: Bodhisattva Sharma, Shashi Bhushan, Geeta Aggarwal Sharma, Sheeba Chaddha, Samta Sudiksha
Maybe this want for stability is behind every Indian dad’s obsession with IIT. Vivek’s father RK Singh (a delightful Shashi Bhushan) isn’t taking any chances. He escorts his son to Kota, a sleepy Rajasthan town in the ’90s, slowly waking up to the possibilities of becoming the country’s coaching hub. From here, Vivek’s coming-of-age begins. Like any other teenager, he strives to explore friendship and love, while trying to balance academics, expectations and hormones. Back home, his parents are undergoing their own struggles. Father RK Singh is staring at expulsion from the telecom department, after a tricolour-themed cake he was in charge of, has its colours upside down. Mother Manju (the always impressive Geeta Aggarwal Sharma), on the other hand, is being harassed by a youth, who cheekily goes by the name of WWE wrestler Shawn Michaels.
Quirky details and Varun’s flourish as a writer, bring a fresh perspective to this film, which falls in the competition-drama genre, inundated by TVF shows and most recently, 12th Fail. More than that, AIR aces at painting a picture of an era. Walkmans, Grehshobhas, Swad toffees, fountain pens, this is a loving ode to the 90s. The writing is rooted, eccentric and funny (‘Baap mare andhiyare mein beta power house’ (Father dies in the darkness, son revels in light). Kota of the 90s makes up for a novel setting. This is a town which is yet to be choked with billboards of coaching centres. It is sunny with swaying grasslands and riverfronts. Soothing, which now might be the last adjective that would be used to describe the place.
More than Vivek’s journey, the arc of the parents stands out in the narrative. It is novel to see the film from their prism. How they deal with loneliness after their only son goes away to study. How they struggle to make ends meet after losing their jobs. In a touching scene, Vivek’s father, an otherwise inexpressive man, lets loose and mimics Shaktimaan, trying to allay his wife’s sadness. I expected more of this tenderness, but the film chooses to tread a mundane path.
Vivek’s story, which is central to the plot, doesn’t offer much new. It deals with tired themes of youth indecisiveness and finding yourself. There are some fine touches but the film never gives more than the sum of its parts. It resorts to the same old devices, the same old lessons which have now become coming-of-age cinema cliches. There is a need for everything to come together, to align, to settle. It’s like Euler’s equation, mathematically beautiful, but the result is sadly, zero.
#quirky #comingofage #tale #Cinema #express
