The media buzz concerning
CHENNAI EXPRESS is sensational. At least in India. The "highest
grossing movie ever" (even bigger than 3 IDIOTS?) is a veritable
blockbuster and the comments on social media platforms like Twitter
go head over heals: who, when, where and how often has been to the
cinema. Some have already seen the movie multiple times. Ram Gopal
Varma for example claims to having been in movietemples for five
times – and there is little reason to doubt him. Well, maybe the
film is indeed getting better the more often you see it, like Shah Rukh
Khan posted on his Twitter account. Room for improvement though is
plentiful in this half-baked and uneven romantic comedy that is
indeed pretty funny and charming at first, but then drags itself – after the
intermission – rather boringly to a really violent finale. And
CHENNAI EXPRESS is, at least, half an hour too long.
The film is just
like one would expect it to be: it depicts beautiful people
in beautiful landscapes, it portrays love conflicts, problematises grave subjects like the
dichotomy of arranged marriages versus individualism, and then there is that
daughter running away from the patriarchal father. And it is just
very unfortunate for the hero that the pretty girl, whom he all too
happy lends a helping hand as she jumps on the running train, is the
daughter of a crime boss. And he, SRK, - symbolically – has to take
the blame himself for all the trouble he gets in: for he reaches out
(in good faith and unknowingly) even for the pursuers of the young
lady, mistaking them for regular travellers that would miss the train aswell. Shortly thereafter,
he feels the machetes of the Tamil gangsters around his neck.
And because he is the kind of guy that can't say No! to anybody, he soon has to
impersonate the lover of the young lady, willing to marry her. Which
means: trouble all the more. But then, hey!, they get to know each
other better, and just everything falls into place...
Rohit Shetty, director of the impeccable and beautifully hysterical
over-the-top-action film Singham,
which was totally convincing, delivers with CHENNAI EXPRESS a completely standardized
and superficial romance for the masses. Interesting cinematography?
There is hardly any in this movie. Shah Rukh Khan, who again plays
his usual character of the faithfully naïve and kind-hearted mother's
favorite, that is indeed quite clever, has a strong tendency to completely overacting his role and gets very silly at
times. He cuts his grimaces as if being in an eighties high
school TV movie, which is sometimes quite embarrassing. The action,
however, on which I had high hopes, is most of the times redundant and
forgettable. The chase-sequencess have got not that tight rhythm (in
contrast to the sometimes exquisite song&dance-parts!) and almost
none of the power that were so great and gripping in some of
SINGHAM's finest scenes. For example in the first car-chase turned
motorcyle-chase-sequence, it is not the clever cutting that holds a
tight grip of the audience's attention, but the brutal incident of
the pursuer on the motorcycle getting almost knocked off the bike,
then over the handlebar so that he almost breaks his backbone – so
here you get brutality instead of sophistication; it's almost the same understanding of "action" in
the final battle with the rival looking like a tamil version of Hulk,
who is two meters tall (and broad), a fierce muscle man, aswell a son
of a Don and selected as Deepika Padukones husband. No doubt, their
fathers have a financial interest in this bond and the will to extend
their power. It is violence in extremes what you will find in this
fight – SRK gets worked up heavily, with fist of steel and bloody
machete blades – but the hero stands his ground. And that's not all
of the mess. What does this movie actually tell us, but that the one
that hits hardest gets the girl? Yes, SRK turns into a man and fights
for what he believes is good, but are the methods and means really
that uninportant? He should have left the scene with a smile and
gotten the girl anyway... but, you know, then there would not have
been a final fight.
To what extent CHENNAI EXPRESS' depiction of the rural village in contrast to
the city as a metropolis might be a conservative backlash in contemporary Hindi cinema, I dare not say. But in this movie, like in SINGHAM, the clan lords reign in smaller communities just near and outside the city, where they govern
their own world. They even have got their own train stations, namely where they
want them to be - where the gangsters pull the emergency brake. Is there anybody
complaining when 200 criminals armed with machetes claim this to be a regular platform of an imagined train station?
And concerning the acting: what is Shah Rukh Khan's understanding of his characters, at times, where
he repeatedly stages himself as a postmodern, self-reflexive character that is self-conscious and aware of this staging-process? Does SRK actually even play a new role or character or does he simply re-enact an aspect of a former figure, maybe cleverly combined into a motley pastiche? Questions
that remain, when you will have forgotten the movie for a long time ...
***
PS: Please forgive me for my bad english, for I'm obviously no native speaker - and I didn't want to bother my friends, who are no doubt a lot better in this than I am. Maybe there will be more reviews in english from now on, but that depends on my time and... errr... my laziness. If I could attract more readers to the site that would be some motivation - for I don't know yet, how often the google-translation is being used. Since I installed it though, there are definitely more people from outside of the EU finding their way to Schneeland. So, I hope it's readable at least, and some of you might even enjoy it. Thanks for reading my stuff!