Double-double cheeseburger, please

The new Bollywood movie Shakalaka Boom Boom is a sensitive investigation into how Asha Bhosle stifled an entire generation of upcoming playback singers. Any similarities with Amadeus, such as identical plot, characters and dénouement, are mere coincidence. From the moment Amadeus Asha is attacked by an exploding disco ball to the scene where she’s dragged down to hell by the boss demon from Doom, this is quality entertainment!

The famous Manhattan skyline

Director Suneel Darshan is a veteran of subtle filmmaking like Talaash: The Hunt Begins… Commit his name to memory: you will not soon forget him. He interrogates and subverts the Goregaon East paradigm via magical realism. The movie is set in NYC, but Johannesburg’s Hillbrow Tower keeps appearing in the distance. The bridges and local newspapers do not hail from America. Characters’ eye colors change from blue to brown and back. A couple’s first date takes place at a Vegas-style cabaret, which, in case you’re unfamiliar with New York, dot every corner of the West Village.

Sheet music is enlarged by two hundred percent so it’s legible to the blind. At key moments, a guitar pops into existence from hammerspace. It is an electric guitar. ‘Reggi’ strums it anyway. The dead Salieri returns for the music video finale. This movie is a sentimental conversation between screenwriters and the pre-cynical.

The film also cannily situates itself in post-sexual ambiguity. Our Mozart Upen Patel pays homage to the actresses of yesteryear. Eyebrows threaded, hair dyed and straightened, eyes made azure, body waxed, wearing fingerless lace-up opera gloves, Patel is saying, ‘Tell I’m any less than Zeenat Aman.’ Celina Jaitley (Sheena)’s unlined face and rock-hard bosom are as unyielding as the granite countertops in Patel’s struggling-artist flophouse, 2000 square feet of sandstone-and-hardwood-floor squalor in that slum called Herald Square. The male backup dancers wear sequined kerchief tops and go-go pants. Bravo, I say, throw off the conventionalism of the sexual subaltern.

The director rises up in ethical and political insurgency against bourgeois-national concepts like ’subtlety’ and ‘intelligence.’ At various points, a jealous rival snuffs out a candle, shatters a CD, cuts his own finger and sucks out the blood. The film pulls these classic ‘metaphors’ from sledgehammerspace.

Truly, this film’s constituency nominates authority against the materialist criollo-colonial historical narrative. If the subaltern cannot speak, we may at least be its native informants. But I see that some disagree with its brilliance:

This movie is the top contender for the WORST movie ever made. [Rediff commenter]

Mr. Nitin Bhardwaj, what are you saying? This movie is the Disco Dancer of our generation. It’s PoMo pomodoro for the post-Derrida. Writer Anurag Kashyap will be better-remembered for Shakalaka Boom Boom than Black Friday. And deservedly so!

Great fun. Must-see. Bring a sense of humor and a bottomless appetite for cheese.

Bow to my crotch laser and fingerless opera glove

Related post: The Disco Dancer