Rumors of the death of the biopic have been greatly exaggerated.

The rumors go something like this: Twenty years ago, director James Mangold made Walk the Line about the life and times of Johnny Cash, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter. It was a critical and box office hit—Witherspoon even won the Best Actress Oscar. The movie was as traditional as it gets, starting with Johnny’s abusive childhood on a farm, and going on to depict his musical ambitions, his chaotic love life, his struggles with drugs and alcohol, and his career setbacks and triumphs.

Indeed, the film was so by-the-numbers, it prompted a parody, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which was both an uncanny simulacrum and a brutal takedown. There’s nothing like a good parody to make you realize how cliched a particular genre really is and once Walk Hard lifted the curtain its tropes, it seemed that the traditional biopic was doomed.

Not so fast! Biopics have merely evolved: Recent ones have largely eschewed the Wikipedia-style retelling of a biography, instead homing in on a particularly illuminating period of the subject’s life. I think that’s a good development, as it forces the filmmaker to reflect on what they think is important about the subject and why this pivotal time frame matters.

It’s fair to say that A Complete Unknown, Mangold’s new biopic of Bob Dylan, exists in a post Walk Hard world. We don’t have hazy flashbacks to Dylan’s childhood in Minnesota; there’s no framing device of present day Dylan, old and craggy, reflecting on his life. Instead, the film focuses on the period when young Bobby Dylan arrived in Greenwich Village with a guitar and a dream. It ends shortly after the infamous Newport Folk Festival where Dylan scandalized the assembled crowd and organizers by “going electric.” (Damn, America was cute back then.)

That said, there is nothing experimental or avant-garde in the storytelling here. It’s straightforward. Its pleasures come from seeing Timothée Chalamet channel Dylan, from its brilliant supporting cast (particularly Edward Norton as Pete Seeger—more on him in a bit), and from its painstaking recreation of the 1960s folk scene.

Let’s start with Chalamet, because that’s who you’re here to read about. Famously, he does all of his own singing and guitar/harmonica playing in the film—and most of the takes are live, because he wanted to capture Dylan’s rough and raw performance style. Only Dylan can really do justice to Dylan, but Chalamet comes close and his instinct to perform live was spot-on. He nails Dylan’s nasal, mumbly voice and he has his confident magnetism on stage as well as his hooded, cautious presence off of it. (Dylan is the rare celebrity who says he hates fame—and we believe him.) Chalamet seems every inch the brooding, tortured, formidable young talent. And the concert scenes rip.

Young Dylan gravitated to the folk scene, because he was a natural born singer-songwriter and because he idolized Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy). But in many ways, he wasn’t a natural fit. He simply wasn’t earnest enough—everything he did was suffused with irony. And he believed that for something to be beautiful, it also had to be a little bit ugly. He derides his musical—and sometimes romantic—partner Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) for having a voice that’s “too pretty.” “Your songs are like an oil painting at the dentist’s office,” he sneers. Baez correctly calls him an asshole.

The foil to Dylan was Pete Seeger (Edward Norton)—as earnest and irony-free as they come. Pete meets Dylan when the young musician shows up unexpectedly at Woody Guthrie’s hospital room. (This, like many scenes in the film is an amalgamation of actual events.) Guthrie, already deep in the throes of Huntington’s disease, can barely communicate, but he bangs his nightstand with appreciation as Dylan belts out the homage tune, “Song to Woody.” Seeger, too, recognizes that Dylan is a special talent and takes him home to crash at his house for a while.

Seeger is shown as having a wonderful life. His wife is a devoted partner, both personally and professionally. His children are adorable and loving. His home exudes an easy, familial warmth. But he is not the brilliant artist Dylan is. What’s more, he truly believes in the special power of folk music—a simple song, simply told, often with a humanitarian message. Dylan doesn’t outwardly scorn Seeger—he appreciates his talent. But he sees him as a bit of a relic and he finds the music corny. And Norton plays Seeger as sweet and sincere, humbled by Dylan’s talent and a little wounded by his artistic rejection. It’s a heartbreaking performance.

The film also focuses on Dylan’s love life. There are two central women in his life—Baez and Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), a beautiful peace activist who brought a measure of comfort and stability to Dylan’s life, but didn’t get much in return.

It’s funny that this is one of the few films Chalamet has done where he’s a true romantic lead—Call Me By Your Name was a love story, but he was the one doing most of the pining (and he was a literal cannibal in Bones and All so does that really count?). Here, he is the object of desire—withholding, mysterious, creative, and a bit of a dick. Who among us has not fallen for that guy? (Even with the help of a slight prosthetic nose, Chalamet is more handsome than Dylan ever was. But honestly, it was Dylan’s brilliance and elusiveness that made him so alluring. And Chalamet captures those qualities well.)

Mangold is a an exceptionally competent director. You can sit back and know you’re in the hands of a true pro. But he does have a hard time avoiding cliché or facile mash-ups. The Civil Rights movement is merely a tiny backdrop to the film, although Mangold makes it very clear that Black artists approved of the young troubadour. (At least twice he has an established Black blues artist—Odetta, in the wings of the Newport Folk Festival, and the made-up bluesman Jesse Moffett, on the set of Pete Seeger’s public access television show, Rainbow Quest—nod approvingly as Dylan sings.) This strikes me as self-serving, a shorthand for really delving into Dylan’s relationship to Black music and the civil rights movement. And Mangold uses Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook), clearly one of his heroes, as an avatar for artistic rebellion and integrity. (“Track some mud on the carpet,” he advises young Bob.) The pep talks he gives Dylan were likely fabricated.

The heart and soul of the film, though, is that relationship between Dylan and Seeger. And here’s where giving a film focus really does help. Because Norton’s open, searching face will break you. But it also reflects a larger cultural shift, away from a more decorous kind of counterculture, to one that was loud and rebellious and angry.

Do we understand Dylan better after watching A Complete Unknown? A bit. He’s a famously elusive figure (which Todd Hayne’s cleverly tackled in his experimental Dylan biopic, I’m Not There, by giving Dylan several different personas played by different actors). But the film’s biggest thrill is watching the formation of an uncompromising artist and getting a little taste of what it must’ve been like to wander into Gerde’s Folk City on a random night and see a young man in a snap cap who was about to change the world.

In the final moments of the movie Rifle Club, there are references to the Wild Wild West films that have Mexican stand-offs and stuff. The intention of Aashiq Abu and his writers is to create something of that texture against the backdrop of the hill stations of Kerala, where placing a similar wildness and lawlessness is very convincing. With a runtime of around 114 minutes, the movie is very much focused on what it wants to say, and a larger chunk of the screenplay is invested in building the club and its characters. While the pre-climax face-off between the two gangs is pretty slick and engaging, somewhere, I felt the finale needed a bit more refinement to have that wow factor.

As you can guess from the title, the film is about a rifle club in Wayanad. The story is set in 1991, and a Malayalam superstar named Shajahan, who predominantly works in romantic films, has come to the club in order to get some training in hunting. He has plans to do a hunting movie similar to Mrugaya. But the night he chose to spend there wasn’t really the best day as the club had uninvited visitors. Who are these visitors, and what they really want is what we see in Rifle Club.

The structuring of Rifle Club, to an extent even the location, has a similarity to Varathan on a script level. A major part of the movie is getting invested in showing us who these characters are, how they are to each other, and to what extent they can go. In the middle portions of the movie, you can see the script trying to draw parallels between the events happening in the Rifle Club and the actual hunting. The script neatly foreshadows many things that really elevate some portions of the final act of the movie. Just like Varathan, it is the counterattack that really sets the ball rolling. And the banter that happens between Dayanand and Avaran is hilarious, and in those patches, you get to see the Aashiq Abu we sort of missed post-COVID.

Dileesh Pothan, as Avaran, is pretty agile and confident. The body language and the dialogue delivery are on point, and you can sense the experience of that character in the way he has performed. Anurag Kashyap, as the antagonist, gets to be this crazy dad character. In most of his acting gigs, we have seen him do similar stuff, and this time, it was in better clothes. Vijayaraghavan, as the veteran of the club, was pretty good. Vishnu Agasthya plays a fairly extensive character in the movie, and he performed his part with ease. Sooraj, aka Hanumankind, as Bheera was fine in that eccentric character and it was actually a good casting choice. Vineeth Kumar plays the part of the film star, who transforms over the course of the incident. The rest of the cast has some big names like Suresh Krishna, Vani Vishwanath, Surabhi Lakshmi, Unnimaya Prasad, Darshana Rajendran, etc. Their screen times are relatively less, but they are all pretty memorable because of the character quirks.

Aashiq Abu, who has also done cinematography for this film, knows that surprise isn’t really the element that can make this movie work. World-building is really necessary for the final act to work, and for that, writers Syam Pushkaran, Dileesh Karunakaran, and Suhas use the first half. You get to see the rough dynamic between the members of the club. The things that Avaran tells Shajahan while he aims, which also come in the form of lyrics, are basically a description of the attitude of the club members. The cinematography opts for monochromatic sharp lights for a lot of sequences, which sort of sets a genre movie ambiance. Rex Vijayan’s tracks and background score really pump up some of the setpieces.

As I already said, Rifle Club is under two hours long, and it is not beating around the bush to get to the main deal. That aspect of the movie, along with a banter-filled set piece in the final act, really elevates the film. But in totality, I felt the ending should have been a better extension of the kind of action we saw till that point. On the bright side, for people who used to love Aashiq Abu films, this one gives reassurance that he still has it in him.

BOTTOM LINE
A Plain Rural Romance

PLATFORM
ETV WIN

What Is the Film About?

Prasad, a happy-go-lucky youngster, has just turned a graduate, spending three college years without gathering the courage to express his love for Leela. After many brief glances, failed attempts to strike up a conversation with Leela, Prasad finally connects with her after over mobile texts. When one of his texts doesn’t earn an immediate response, Prasad gets increasingly anxious.

Performances

This is one among Shanmukh Jaswanth’s better digital outings in the recent times, where he impressively slips into the role of an anxious village boy. Anagha Ajith has limited screen time but delivers the goods in key situations without trying too hard. RJ Mirchi Saran (Raji) is the pick of the lot among Prasad’s friends, though his timing appears to be slightly influenced by Sunil.

Other actors in the gang – Madhan Majji, Chaitanya Garikina, Shiva Thummala, Shravanthi Anand and others – have decent screen presence as well. Surprisingly, the experienced hands like Aamani, Goparaju Ramana, VS Roopa Lakshmi, don’t add much value to the proceedings.

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Analysis

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Like scores of stories in Telugu cinema and on OTT thriving on nostalgia, Leela Vinodam is a tender, small-town romance told from a male perspective. Set in the late 2000s, during the early days of the mobile phone era where communication took a new digital turn, the film banks on a simple idea, tapping into the insecurities and apprehensions of a good-at-heart, lovestruck youngster Prasad.

Borrowing a leaf out of films like Mail, Raja Vaaru Rani Gaaru, Leela Vinodam’s protagonist Prasad is a timid boy who struggles to convey his love to a college sweetheart Leela. He is surrounded by friends – Raji, Swarna and gang – who push him to do the needful but end up confusing him more. The wafer-thin story has a minimal conflict, focusing on the little joys in villages and one-sided love.

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The director Pavan Sunkara takes his own sweet-time to establish Prasad’s love for Leela in the first 30 minutes through his interactions with a best friend. While it’s evident that Leela is interested in Prasad, the absence of a direct confirmation makes the latter anxious. When he ultimately shares his feelings for Leela over a text and she doesn’t reply, all hell breaks loose.

Leela Vinodam, more than a love story, serves as a time-capsule of a different era (probably aimed at the 90s kid?) before social media, other modes of instant communication took charge of our lives and SMS was the go-to option for conversations. Through Prasad’s confusions, the film captures a brief passage of time in the character’s lives where they could afford to be irresponsible.

That the film relies on a very basic premise – a boy’s wait for a response from his lover – is its strength and weakness at once. The simplistic idea is an advantage because the conflict is very relatable to its target audience. There’s no scope for confusion in the storytelling and the tale provides an indirect opportunity to explore the rural milieu through the oddball characters, sprinkled with humour.

However, after a point, the screenplay loses its spunk and gets laborious, as the director desperately finds various ways to delay the inevitable and understand Prasad’s confusions from many dimensions through imaginary scenarios, trying to decode what factors could’ve prevented Leela from responding to him. Ultimately, the impressive climax salvages the film, ending it on a feel-good note.

Leela Vinodam is neither good nor very bad. It’s simply an inoffensive time pass fare with a few takeaways – nostalgia, humour and bromance. A more imaginative screenplay could’ve bettered its impact.

Music and Other Departments?

TR Krishna Chetan’s score keeps the playful spirit of the story intact, though the songs are strictly okay. Anush Kumar’s cinematography, replete with a lively colour palette, is an asset to the film, making full use of the pleasant rural backdrop and prominent landmarks in the village. Better work with the editing and the screenplay may have helped its cause.

Highlights?

Relatable story

Nostalgia factor

Decent performances, cinematography

Drawbacks?

Tedious screenplay

Writing lacks freshness, novelty

Inconsistent with humour

Did I Enjoy It?

Only in parts

Will You Recommend It?

If you don’t mind an okayish small-town tale on one-sided love

Leela Vinodham OTT Movie Review by M9