About flying and freedom (and, of course, love), the Bollywood movie “Hawaizaada,” directed by Vibhu Virender Puri, spins legend into more legend. The year is 1895, and the setting is Bombay. The story concerns a quest by two Indians to build an airplane and to show the British rulers of India — “A monkey can’t make a machine!” one says — what their subjects can do.
But first Mr. Puri takes a long detour into romance. Our hero, Shivy Talpade (Ayushmann Khurrana), a freethinker and fourth-form dropout, falls in love with an actress, Sitara (Pallavi Sharda). They meet onstage, playing the classic lovers Shakuntala and Dushyanta. (Shivy, drunk and no actor, has been shoved into the scene.)
It’s love at first you-know-what, but also a mismatch. Sitara harshly sums it up: “You’re a blue blood, and I’m a harlot.”
Mr. Puri’s film is so laden with symbols — Christian imagery is everywhere — and resonances (Hindu myths and scriptures) that it’s sometimes hard to read. But an Indian nationalist message comes through clearly, and it’s an inclusive one. When Shivy and his mentor, Subbaraya Shastry (Mithun Chakraborty), need money to continue their experiments in flying, which are based on Vedic numbers and principles, Shivy’s old pals contribute money they’d been saving to go on hajj.
A real man named Shivkar Talpade is said to have flown an unmanned plane in 1895 — fueled by mercury! — but “Hawaizaada” has no claims on documentary reality. Its storytelling is solidly in the Bollywood tradition, upping the ante everywhere and allowing Shivy some truly remarkable achievements. And the world it places him in is gloriously artificial: steampunk crossed with “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Shastry and Shivy’s lab is in a beached galleon cluttered with Rube Goldberg-type contraptions. (Science here is a matter of pinging, whizzing balls and steam, and furrowed-brow chitchat about Vedic numbers.)
01/02/15 Rachel Salz/New York Times
But first Mr. Puri takes a long detour into romance. Our hero, Shivy Talpade (Ayushmann Khurrana), a freethinker and fourth-form dropout, falls in love with an actress, Sitara (Pallavi Sharda). They meet onstage, playing the classic lovers Shakuntala and Dushyanta. (Shivy, drunk and no actor, has been shoved into the scene.)
It’s love at first you-know-what, but also a mismatch. Sitara harshly sums it up: “You’re a blue blood, and I’m a harlot.”
Mr. Puri’s film is so laden with symbols — Christian imagery is everywhere — and resonances (Hindu myths and scriptures) that it’s sometimes hard to read. But an Indian nationalist message comes through clearly, and it’s an inclusive one. When Shivy and his mentor, Subbaraya Shastry (Mithun Chakraborty), need money to continue their experiments in flying, which are based on Vedic numbers and principles, Shivy’s old pals contribute money they’d been saving to go on hajj.
A real man named Shivkar Talpade is said to have flown an unmanned plane in 1895 — fueled by mercury! — but “Hawaizaada” has no claims on documentary reality. Its storytelling is solidly in the Bollywood tradition, upping the ante everywhere and allowing Shivy some truly remarkable achievements. And the world it places him in is gloriously artificial: steampunk crossed with “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Shastry and Shivy’s lab is in a beached galleon cluttered with Rube Goldberg-type contraptions. (Science here is a matter of pinging, whizzing balls and steam, and furrowed-brow chitchat about Vedic numbers.)
01/02/15 Rachel Salz/New York Times
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