M Cream movie review : the quest for high-quality hashish and the meaning of life.
Cast: Imaad Shah, Ira Dubey, Barry John, Raaghav Chanana,
Auritra Ghosh
Rating: 3/5
Malana cream, the high-quality hashish from Himachal Pradesh, and the village where it originates were the subjects of Amlan Datta’s absorbing documentary Bom A Day Ahead of Democracy in 2011. Datta spent days in the remote village and returned with a romanticised portrait of the villagers and their relationship with the drug that is their sustenance. Agneya Singh’s debut feature M Cream is about a group of entitled Delhi residents who try to find the village where the prized narcotic originates. Like the stoners, the movie never quite finds its way.
A shortage of quality hashish in Delhi encourages the wealthy drifter Figaro (Imaad Shah) to get off his couch and set out on a road trip with his friends Niz (Raaghav Chanana) and Maggie (Auritra Ghosh). Jay (Ira Dubey), a journalist with whom Figaro has had a run-in at a party the previous night, is the fourth wheel in the journey. Figaro and Jay squabble for the sake of producing dramatic tension in a movie that is bereft of it¸ but alcohol and drugs help them discover that they are kindred souls.
The misadventures include an acid trip and an encounter with the so-called real world when Figaro and Jay join a handful of activists protesting against a proposed resort in the hills. “We are children of chaos and anarchy escaping into the endless unknown” is just one of the several gnomic statements by Figaro, presented here as a Beatnik in search of truth via a quest to push drugs into his system. There’s as much rhyme to his writings as there is reason for the disjointed actions of the underdeveloped characters. The highly pretentious dialogue, most of it in English, certainly injects unintended humour into what is an earnest but unsuccessful attempt to make grandiose statements about politics, the state of the nation, the meaning of existence, and revolution.
With his dreadlocks and cultivated cool, Imaad Shah looks the part of a permanent stoner, but his sub-par acting skills make Figaro as much of a joke as nearly everything else in the movie. At the top of the list of offenders is Barry John, putting on a southern American accent for the part of a hippie who runs a commune where stoners regularly meet to trip and have sex under the stars. If M Cream is what passes for underground cinema in India, perhaps it’s best that it stays underground.
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You might not be interested in the frustration, loneliness
and anger felt by a rebel, but you can still empathise. You might not have
stood up against authoritarian agencies, but you can always stand by those who do.
You might not have dared to break the shackles of a comfortable middle class
existence, but you can start off on a journey that promises to take you away
from it. After all, the idea of being a rebel is unbelievably romantic.
Four Delhi friends set out on a road trip to the interiors
of Himachal Pradesh, thinking the trip will fill the vacuum in their lives.
They plan to find a rare drug called M Cream. Fig (Imaad Shah) and Maggie
(Auritra Ghosh) are from affluent families and are non-conformists in a way.
Niz (Raghav Chanana), a working class photographer, and Jay (Ira Dubey), an
anti-establishment college student, join them. The farther they travel, the more
they go inside their subconscious.
From a hash-selling hippie Vishnu Das (Barry John) to a
group of carefree foreigners, they meet a string of usual suspects on the way,
but the M Cream is nowhere to be seen. Or, are they still not high enough to
realise the omnipresent ecstasy surrounding their existence?
Director Agneya Singh is ambitious like most debutants. He
wants to present his side on so many things: Drugs, politics, literature,
alcohol, love, sex, freedom and revolution. He mostly speaks through Shah’s
Fig, a guy with a mop of hair and a love for poetry. He loves to quote authors
and can differentiate between Vikram Seth, Rabindranath Tagore and Jimmy
Hendrix. It’s been a while we saw a well read Indian youth on screen.
It’s delightful to hear Shah and Dubey’s conversations. They
are so full of quotes and aimless counter questions. They don’t know what they
want, but we know that we want to return to the University campus.
Once the nostalgia phase gets over, we are back to fight a
battle that won’t produce any instant result, but will assure that we’re not
alone. In the film, a French journalist-activist shows us what it takes to
believe in a cause.
However, this happens only after a lot of trippy music and
booze guzzling. A little nudity and some sex scenes too get their share. It’s
fine if you don’t want a closure, or don’t want to be spoon-fed. But, it also
affects the coherence of the plot. What can make it tricky is the point where
you stop identifying with these youngsters.
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ReplyDeletethanks for it
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