Superheroes of Newton and Spyder

Not all heroes wear capes. This epiphany hit me when I watched Spyder and Newton recently. Both have protagonists thrown in the midst of situations that came out of left field. Rajkummar Rao’s winsome Nutan Kumar (aka Newton) is accused by his senior (Sanjay Mishra in a lovely cameo) of wearing his righteousness on his sleeve. An unfazed Newton takes the same attitude to the seemingly dangerous Dandakaranya forest as a presiding poll officer to hold Lok Sabha elections for mere 76 people.

Amit Masurkar’s sophomore movie deserved to be sent as India’s entry to the Oscars for achieving that rare ideal of an Indian movie: simultaneously being entertaining and thought-provoking without ever entering the treacherous preachy waters. In its 100-minute duration, Masurkar has woven a yarn-and-a-half, told with the perfect lightness of touch. 

There’s Pankaj Tripathi, who is enjoying a renaissance lately, as the scheming chief of army entrusted with safety of Newton and his support staff, including Raghubir Yadav in a delightful role as the cynical government servant trying to put Newton’s drifty nostalgic innocence in check. Anjali Patil as the flinty local who acts as a liason between locals and Newton leaves her mark as well.

Rajkumar Rao as Nutan Kumar (aka Newton)

 

This lacerating takedown of the ossifying Indian democratic system merits to be the country’s first Rs 100-crore movie that will deserve each buck that it earns, which I know is wishful thinking. There’s a hilarious-as-hell scene where Newton goes to see a girl for an arranged marriage and there are random references to Saajan Chale Sasural and the importance of knowing English. In the following scene when Newton rejects the proposal, his father goes on a tirade that is the very best parental confrontation scene in Indian cinema after the one in Court.

The movie doesn’t throw questions that are metaphysical or rhetorical, it just tells us that human rapacity leaves none of us untouched. It juxtaposes aspirational India with an India that even the Rohingya community on the run might not touch with a bargepole. Raghubir Yadav’s character says that he has an MA in Hindi but he would rather speak English because that’s the lingua franca of this country and he’s gaining fluency by watching American B-grade horror movies on his smartphone. At the same time, a group of people come together to vote and they are so disenfranchised in this no man’s land that they don’t have the foggiest of ideas whom they have to vote for.

Newton’s unflagging resolve to hold voting under such circumstances makes him nothing less than a superhero and the movie so stunningly beautiful. A R Murugadoss’ Shiva (Mahesh Babu) is a more conventional superhero in the Telugu-Tamil bilingual movie Spyder but, thankfully, not a patch on the Hollywood ones that we constantly fob off each summer. His official job as a phone tracker at the IB office in Hyderabad enables him to pre-empt any murders, suicides or cheating cases by acting on them by himself. I know, in the wake of the Blue Whale incidents, this country definitely needs one such crusader.

Shiva faces a setback when he becomes personally involved in a double murder, which takes him down the rabbit hole until he comes across someone who turns out to be the brother of Bhairavudu, a serial killer on the prowl (a menacing S J Suryah). The movie is pretty and yucky, thanks to Santosh Sivan’s sumptuous visuals, but after a fairly engaging first half even the master lensman couldn’t redeem the movie in the unexciting second half. There’s a really long sequence where soap opera watching females are entrusted with the responsibility of freeing a family from the clutches of the killer. Murugadoss seems to be so pumped about this concept that it goes on forever. As set pieces, the movie works. A brilliantly executed roller coaster scene in a theme park deserves a special mention and so does the interval bang.

My biggest disappointment with the movie is its feeble climax. The faceoff between the villain and hero is so boring that I wonder if Murugadoss ran out of ideas and set up this vacuous bare knuckle fight so that the hero comes up trumps on basis of his brawn than brain.

jagannath.jamma@bsmail.in