Badla: The Hindi Invisible Guest

This Hindi remake is fifteen minutes longer than the original Spanish film, yet it doesn’t even have musical numbers. It is structural faithful to its source, but nobody rushes the great Amitabh Bachchan—nobody. The legendary Bollywood actor plays a legendary jury consultant, who will come out of retirement to crack a particularly sensational case in Sujoy Ghosh’s Badla, the Hindi version of The Invisible Guest, which is now showing in New York.

The narrative is basically the same, but many of the genders are flipped in Ghosh’s adaptation. Naina Sethi is the tech entrepreneur who is embroiled in an adultery-murder media feeding frenzy, but she has excellent legal representation. In addition to her high-priced attorney, she will have a session with Badal Gupta, who is considered the best witness prepper ever. Yet, he requires the whole truth to do his job properly—all of it. However, pulling it out of Sethi will be a struggle.

Thus, begins a verbal game of cat-and-mouse. Frankly, the circumstantial evidence against Sethi is pretty damning. She woke up in a locked room, next to the murdered body of the lover, Arjun Joseph, who threatened to expose her in a text. Of course, wily old Gupta can tell there is more to the story. He forces Sethi to rewind a few months earlier, when she and Joseph killed a young college student in an auto accident. Instead of doing the right thing, she dumped the body in the swamp, while he was rather awkwardly bluffing his way through an encounter with the victim’s parents. To make matters worse, a blackmailer subsequently lured them to the hotel, where Joseph was murdered and Sethi was knocked unconscious.

If you enjoy being played, Badla and The Invisible Guest before it are your kind of films. There are two or three big game-changing twists that are wonderfully over-the-top, totally unlikely, and gleefully entertaining. That is particularly true of Ghosh’s take, which relishes the melodramatic luridness of the scandal and mayhem.

Amitabh Bachchan plays Gupta—case closed. Watching him charm, cajole, and interrogate Sethi is more fun than any single film requires. In fact, Ghosh rather sensibly shifts the film’s center of gravity from the flashbacks to the interview sessions, because Bachchan is definitely his ace in the hole.

As Sethi, Taapsee Pannu hangs right there in the pocket with Bachchan. In fact, she is wickedly effective at turning each new revelation. Similarly, Tony Luke constantly upends our assumptions as the ill-fated Joseph. Unfortunately, Denzil Smith and his Morgan Freeman-voice are under-utilized as the investigating cop. However, Amrita Singh and Tanveer Ghani provide a moral core to the film as the victim’s parents.

Consider yourself warned: Badla will manipulate you and use your assumptions against you, jujitsu-like. It also follows Invisible Guest beat-for-beat, so viewers who have seen the Spanish film will find no surprises here. On the other hand, the tone of Ghosh’s film is not as dark, probably because the ensemble chews the scenery with relish that is utterly infectious. Needless to say, it starts with the great Bachchan. Recommended for fans of Bollywood and twisty thrillers, Badla is now playing in New York, at the AMC Empire.

The Great Gatsby: Luhrmann “Punches Up” Fitzgerald

This is not the Long Island of Ed Burns movies.  As everyone should remember from high school English class, East Egg is where the old money elite are ensconced and West Egg is where the nouveau riche frolic the nights away.  They are so close yet so far away.  This is still the case in Baz Luhrmann’s brassy 3D adaptation of Fitzgerald’s moody classic, The Great Gatsby (trailer here), which opens across the country today.

Mystery man Jay Gatsby throws extravagant parties in his West Egg mansion in hopes his old flame will someday wander in.  Daisy Buchanan now lives with her husband Tom, an old moneyed philandering bully.  Gatsby hopes her nebbish cousin Nick Carraway, living in the hobbit cottage next to his estate will help him woo her back.  A lot of drinking ensues as the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg’s faded billboard look down on man’s folly.  At least it’s a heck of a party.

Let’s be frank, Luhrmann is a West Egg filmmaker if ever there was one.  Once again he empties his kit bag of ostentatious razzle dazzle, anachronistic music, and a singular fusion of pop culture irony with syrupy melodrama.  To his estimable credit, Luhrmann never tries to crank up the novel’s modern “relevancy.”  Gatsby and his gangster associate Meyer Wolfshiem are not reconceived as sub-prime lenders, nor do any characters’ untimely deaths coincide with the 1929 stock market crash. 

Instead, Luhrmann is the sort of director who might step on the set and proclaim: “you know what this scene needs? More dancing flappers.”  To an extent, we should all be able to buy into that.  You can dismiss Luhrmann’s style as shtick, because it is, but it is his shtick.  However, on some level, he still has to hold together a narrative and guide his cast.  The latter is rather problematic, starting at the top.

Aside from his gloriously over the top entrance, set to the crescendo of Rhapsody in Blue, Leonardo DiCaprio is profoundly wrong as Gatsby.  This is the great Byronic brooder of proper upstanding American literature, but you would hardly know it here.  Chipper and shallow, DiCaprio’s Gatsby is like the Gatsby Gatsby always wanted to be.  This is rather disastrous given Luhrmann’s surprising faithfulness to Fitzgerald’s storyline.

Perhaps even more head-scratching is the choice of Carey Mulligan to play Daisy Buchanan, due to her eerie resemblance to DiCaprio.  Is Luhrmann offering a subversive commentary on the characters’ narcissism when they stare into their beloved’s eyes and see themselves reflected back?  Or is it just a case of careless casting?  Regardless, it is quite creepy to watch them rekindling their romance.  Far from a femme fatale, her Buchanan is just plain mousy.

On the other hand, poor Tobey Maguire has been taking it in the shins from critics, but his “gee whiz” persona is perfectly suited to Nick Carraway.  Likewise, many were thrown for a loop by the announcement the great Hindi actor Amitabh Bachchan would play Wolfshiem, but that voice could sell anything.  Next time, let’s make him Gatsby.

Who would have been better suited for the title role?  Seriously, how about Robert Downey, Jr.?  Take into account the similarities between Tony Stark and Jay Gatsby.  Both are conspicuous consumers and relentless re-inventers.   They have rather ambiguous wartime experiences and are smitten with ghostly pale blondes.  Of course, we can instantly believe Downey has been to some very dark places.  DiCaprio, not so much.

For his next project, Luhrmann ought to do a legitimate Busby Berkeley musical.  His big sprawling musical bacchanals really are a lot of fun to behold.  Unfortunately, the rest of the film is sabotaged by the inappropriate leads and a complete abandonment of the novel’s dreamy ambiguity.  Big and loud, Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is what you would expect, never transcending the Moulin Rouge! template. For those who want to see Fitzgerald this way, it is now playing pretty much everywhere with a movie screen, including the Regal Union Square in New York.