It stands to reason that Metro In Dino will have thematic similarities with its spiritual predecessor Life… In A Metro: warring couples, predatory bosses, commitment-phobic men, confused women, straying and returning, sacrifice and recompense.
It also has straight-up reprises. Konkona Sen Sharma, whose pairing with Irrfan was one of the highlights of the original, is the only one from the previous cast making a return, with Pankaj Tripathi standing in for the late, great actor; and the three-member band, led by Pritam, is strewn all over the film, like it was in the earlier iteration.
In the interim– eighteen years is a long time—so much has changed. Those clunky cell-phones, which a couple of characters used in the earlier film, have changed to the sleek oblongs everyone carries these days, with laptops, tablets, and an overuse of every other device that promises connection, but provides only disconnection. You don’t need an empty flat with a key, the idea borrowed from Billy Wilder’s classic The Apartment, to plan an assignation; you can just create a profile on a dating app and get right down to sexting, even if you choose to call it Linger, rather than Tinder.
But the one thing, if you go by Anurag Basu’s characters, that hasn’t changed are humans and their frailties and egos which come in the way of true connection. Pankaj and Konkona, as Monty (I still haven’t got over that name; who would ever have thought of Irrfan as a still-a-virgin-at-nearly-forty, unable to hide sexual neediness but wistful with it?) and Kajol, are weathering the sort of boredom that besets most married couples who behave like old socks, rather than sparkly stockings.
Kajol’s younger sister Chumki (Sara Ali Khan) is trying hard to be a compliant girlfriend in preparation to be a good wife to a guy who wears his suspicions on his sleeve, when not shrugging his shoulders, a personality tic that she doesn’t notice until it is pointed out to her by travel vlogger Parth (Aditya Roy Kapoor) in a meet-not-so-cute moment.
Kajol and Chumki’s mother Shivani (Neena Gupta), who gave up her dreams of becoming an actor when she married the girls’ dictatorial dad (Saswata Chatterjee) is given a chance to relive her youth during a college reunion, where she runs into old flame Parimal (Anupam Kher).
Another strand is fronted by Shruti (Fatima Sana) and husband Akash (Ali Fazal) whose double-income-no-kids corporate grind is threatened by her sudden pregnancy and his deep-seated desire to become a musician. Termination is an option; unhappiness and resentment is a resultant outcome.
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What I really enjoyed in the film were the nimble writerly leaps and the people speaking to each other as people do, in sentences which feel as if they are coming from the character’s lives, rather than rehearsed dialogues on the page. Yes, there is the occasional floweriness, but that’s just Basu leaning into his bent for amping up the mundane. The plot moves swiftly along for the most part, and this time around, there are four metros jostling for attention– Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore– as well as Goa and Shimla.
As the architect of edifices full of messy emotions and registering graphs of hurt and happiness, Basu retains his old touch, and I found myself smiling in the dark, especially in the first half. His style, a mix of the real and hyper-real, always teetering close to making us roll our eyes, outlining even as it underlines, makes for a very specific kind of film, stuffed with fleeting moments of delight when the camera catches characters off-guard, as they go about doing things in a naturalistic manner, before careering off into another exaggerated curve.
Things do slacken post-interval; a couple of crucial situations repeat themselves, and the film strains to fill its nearly three hour length. One of the biggest surprises of ‘Life.. was Irrfan as the self-proclaimed jackass but very likeable Monty, who gives full play to the character’s foolishness ; here, Pankaj Tripathi is allowed to get into full-on burlesque-mode– I think I caught a flash of him hurriedly kissing a female toe– and hot and bothered in rumpled-sheet situations. Can anyone beat Irrfan on all those scores? Not really. But is Pankaj a hoot in some of his scenes, and Konkona is as good as it gets ? Yes, and yes.
I did find a few threads not working in tandem, especially the one revolving around a young teenager’s prolonged wondering if she likes ‘girls or boys’. Quite a contemporary touch, but heavy-handed, and meandering. There’s also the one involving Anupam Kher’s widowed daughter-in-law (Darshana Bainik) and his laboured attempts at giving her her ‘jaa apni zindagi jee le’ moment, in which he asks for and gets Neena Gupta’s willing help: that portion feels both outdated and outlandish.
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A few characters in this large ensemble do not get enough play: in a truly great film, even walk-ons have flash, even if they were always meant to be on the sidelines. You also wish, just like in the original, that Pritam and co would be heard less, and seen even lesser: yes, we know that the lilting soundtrack they create functions as a leitmotif-commentator-character, and Papon’s voice is dreamy, but after a point you want less, not more.
Aditya Roy Kapoor makes you miss Basu’s original muse Ranbir Kapoor, who patented the self-obsessed man-child character, but does well enough as the breezy, irresponsible fellow turning over a new leaf, Sara Ali Khan, playing a Kareena Kapoor-coded character, fares better here than she has in most of her previous films. She also gets a let-all-the angst-out-with-a-shout moment, taking you right back to a similar situation in the original.
Watch | Konkona Sen Sharma on Metro… In Dino
Ali Fazal and Fatima Sana Shaikh dance around relatable dilemmas– careers, aspirations, children– even though he comes off more hangdog than anything else, and she a bit too morose. And just like veterans Dharmendra and Nafisa in the earlier one, Anupam Kher and Neena Gupta show how it’s done, rising above their improbable bits.
But there’s enough zest in the rest of it to keep us humming, and the film, even in its looseness and overly-stretchiness, thrumming. And what a relief, in these days of ham-fisted badly-made patriotic sagas and loud family melodramas, to find adult characters doing adult things, talking up desire and lust and love, even if you can see hints of conservativeness– characters getting into bed, but not going all the way– perhaps as a nod to these times which is bent upon taming all individual passion.
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This really should be a series, because life is unruly and ungainly, spilling over the edges, annoying and exhilarating, in equal measure, and when Metro In Dino is at its best, it catches all those beats: I just hope Basu will not take eighteen years to make his third.
Metro.. In Dino movie cast: Anupam Kher, Neena Gupta, Konkona Sen Sharma, Pankaj Tripathi, Aditya Roy Kapoor, Sara Ali Khan, Ali Fazal, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Saswata Chatterjee, Darshana Bainik, Kush Jotwani, Rohan Gurbaxani
Metro.. In Dino movie director: Anurag Basu
Metro.. In Dino movie rating: Three stars
