1921

gloomy unlit English countryside atmosphere, an overly dramatic filmy background score and a few bloody finger-marks on a piano form the crux of 1921 — a romance horror film set in 1921 (obviously) in which a ghost whisperer helps out a man traumatised by a vengeful spirit.

It begins like this: the man, Ayush (Karan Kundra) has musical talents, so a kind benefactor (writer-director Vikram Bhatt, in cameo) sends him off from Bombay to his estate in York, UK, on the condition that he looks after his property. A little while later, a hand pops out from his piano scaring the daylights out of him. Ayush seeks out Rose (Zarine Khan), who was born with the ability to see spirits, and asks her to figure out the ghoul’s motive.

Being love-prone young people of the opposite sex, they fall for each other amidst a few songs that sound right out of any previous Vikram Bhatt film. Actually, you have already seen this particular film from Bhatt before as well. His filmmaking style is so precise and peculiar that one can guess the next scene of the screenplay right down to how it will be shot.

Two films currently in the cinemas — 1921, a Bollywood film, and Downsizing, a Hollywood offering — offer contrasts in directorial conceits

Pointing out this lack of ingenuity is not meant to denigrate Bhatt’s old-hand mastery of the frame. The choreography of the camera around the actors is filmic, and at least sustains visual interest even if Kundra and Khan’s lack of chemistry pulls the film down. The supporting actresses fare far better than the leads, owing to the fact that they don’t have to bank on Bhatt’s formulaic direction reserved for his lead pair. Like any of Bhatt’s former main pairs, they heave big sighs, gaze knowingly at each other, say lines right out of a 1990s movie, and look at each other some more.

As a horror film, 1921 doesn’t work. On second thought, it doesn’t work as a romantic drama either. It looks good, has an obligatory steamy exchange between the leads (probably the biggest selling point of a Bollywood-horror film today), but that’s about it.

Downsizing

With Downsizing — a movie playing now in cinemas that I urge you to see (that is, if you are not into mindless blockbusters) — director Alexander Payne fiddles with the commercial and environmental implications of an old science fiction concept. At least that is what one sees in the first few minutes of this finely crafted, slightly slow-moving motion picture.

An ingenious scientist in Norway has found a way to shrink humans down to centimetres. The procedure has its heart in the right place. Humans are a wasteful lot, full of selfish materialistic lust, and the shrinking down reduces man’s effects on the environment.

For instance: when shrunk, four years of human waste of 36 people fits inside a medium-sized plastic bag. Proportionally they consume what their body needs, yet the economic and environmental savings are ginormous.

The dollar also stretches the same way. In a brief hard-sell infomercial in the middle of the film, Neil Patrick Harris and Laura Dern show a lavish mansion (more or less a doll’s house in comparison) that anyone with a modest salary can afford if they shrink. Like any desperate advertisement on late-night television, Dern flaunts a jewellery set of diamonds and pearls costing 83 dollars. Patrick fake-wallows on cue to the camera: “That’s practically our budget for two months!”

For some strange reason, economic fluctuations do not matter within the context of this story. Downsized people make the same money they do in real life. Like millions of other people, Paul and Audrey (Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig) are a middle-class couple who are slowly sold on the benefits, and decide to shrink and move to a lavish community. I’ll leave the story at this juncture — the film doesn’t have much of it anyway. However, I will point out that this miniature idea is played with the right tone and canny intelligence by Payne.

There is, literally, a world of difference between us and the little people, and the film’s production design (a lot of it computer graphics and visual effects) deliberately makes sure that everything looks plastic and toyish. Like Payne’s last few films (The Descendants and Nebraska) the screenplay fixes itself to Paul, yet shrewdly makes him a typical, good-natured, relatable layman.

There is a slight thud in the middle of the picture when Paul — and the film — struggle with the transition to a trickier second half. We are introduced to actors Hong Chau and Christoph Waltz — two characters at the opposite ends of the spectrum, who shift our perspectives to the still-prevailing fallibilities of us humans, whatever our sizes may be.

Downsizing is a radically smart enterprise that spreads itself across many realistic prospects of life. It is definitely not for the masses, though, on reflection, it talks about the very same people.

Published in Dawn, ICON, January 21st, 2018