OTT: Netflix
IMdB: 7.1/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% (too few reviews as of this point)
My rating: 8/10 (one point for needless emotion and hamming about 25 minutes from the end as if they realised that they had taken this as far as they could and had to now wrap it up, and one point for the predictable climax, though I must confess that I did shed a tear, which is par for the course for me in such movies).
After a long time, our dysfunctional family (because we were forced to quarantine together, despite our desire to socially and otherwise distance ourselves from each other) watched a movie together, and it took more time to choose which one to watch than the actual run-time of the movie.
Anyway, preface out of the way, it is based on a very macho bodybuilder and athlete (who participates in the local strongman competition) and his journey of discovering the difference between sex and gender, with lots and lots of love, hate, tension, anger, angst, frustration, and affection thrown in.
While it looks, prima facie, superficial and straightforward, there are many analogies, metaphors, and allusions to more profound, deeper things that may need the audience to pay close attention to the sets, art, costumes, hairstyles, side characters, situations, and so on. I loved the fact that the director and writer do not treat the audience as idiots needing detailed and over-the-top spelling out and laboured explanations of complex matters and quickly move on with the story, hoping (and rightly presuming) that the viewers will figure things out using references to contexts and their own intellects. Good show, Abhishek Kapoor. You brought the sensitivity you showed in Kai Po Che in this. Subtle, under the surface, but always there, without it ever erupting (except for a couple of scenes) out like pus from an over-ripe pimple.
By the way, Kanwaljit Singh still looks so good at 70! I did not know he co-wrote this with Abhishek and Ayushmann (apparently, he didn’t; this was just a rumour). Of course, I have loved him since his Buniyaad days.
Vaani Kapoor is a revelation. She is so believable that even knowing that a lot of that is makeup, lighting, and camera angles, one finds oneself being able to see her as the character she plays with such ease that would have done someone way more senior than her proud. She probably deserves some kind of award for this. So nuanced, but simmering under the skin, just like the entire story. I take my proverbial hat off to her.
Now, to the costumes, hair, casting, sets, art, lighting, and sound. Who does all of these things in Ayushmann’s films? How do they always get it just right? How do they nail it every single time? I know these are different people in different films of his, but I mean, how is it that we go to an Ayushmann film and just expect all of this to be perfect. And how do every one of his films deliver? Is he, like Aamir, the magic touchstone? I don’t know and I don’t care. There is not one Ayushmann film I have found that is not worth watching (OK, maybe ‘Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan’, but everyone is allowed an off day once in a while).
Having come so far without speaking of either the plot or the narrative, without giving too much away, let me just say that ‘Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui’ has done more for the cause of understanding and integrating trans people into Indian society than any other educational, social, or government movement could even have ever hoped to achieve.
Also, let me say this once more: Ayushmann Khurrana is a rockstar, in every sense of the word. The choice of his films, his costumes, dialogues, acting, his body transformation, and general performance is of a calibre that he is the kind of actor Aamir Khan tried very hard to be, though I love Aamir as much and for similar reasons (even if some of his early movie choices were just…eww!) before realising that it was too little too late.
Ayushmann has been called the woke Savarna, the self-centred pseudo-ally, the narcissistic entitled cishet man bent upon acting the saviour, and so on by the self-appointed woker-than-thou exclusive club of talk-gooders (as opposed, of course, to the do-gooders), of which I am myself surely a member, though I’d Groucho Marx it any day, and twice on a Sunday. That said, frankly, I don’t give a flying fuck. He does what he does. And I think he does more for the cause he cares for (even if for purely commercial or artistic reasons) by simply picking the right script and character and giving it his all than by giving interviews or writing articles. May we have more of people like him.
Go, watch it. It is, by the way, still running in theatres.
