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Cover Feature
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TSI
About 3 Idiots and 11 stars
TSI Five-O: An education on the charms of cinema and the catharsis it can bring
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 "3 Idiots” is an outlier. It is one of those films that come along ever so rarely and connect with a wide audience on multiple levels and leave an impression on the audience psyche that will easily withstand the ravages of time and memory. It is sheer joy that unfolds on screen, frame after heartfelt frame unravelling an effectively flawless film.
Drawing on (the jury’s still blogging and tweeting on exactly how much) the basic premise of three friends at an engineering college from Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone, Rajkumar Hirani adds his trademark message embedded in mirth template and rolls out a flick for the ages. The first thing he does is smartly setting up the narrative in flashback, a great hook that draws the audience in to pay greater attention to Rancho (Aamir Khan) as they try and decipher his backstory while his other two friends, Raju (Sharman Joshi) and Farhan (R Madhavan) are searching for him. The chemistry between the three is outstanding and the screen sparkles in their scenes together. Add to it the aesthetic pleasure of Shantanu Moitra's music ('Give Me Some Sunshine' is on its way to becoming an anthem!) and the superbly shot college scenes as well as the highways to Shimla and Ladakh and you'll have a hard time catching your breath, so many times will it be taken away.
The flashbacks take us back to the trio’s college days at Imperial College of Engineering (modeled on IIT; shot at the IIMB campus – an excellent choice!) and their run-ins with authority (personified exceptionally by Boman Irani as Viru Sahastrabudhhe or ‘Virus’ for short) as they discover the lesson called life. The comedy keeps rolling, sometimes wrapped in a familiar template but Hirani’s treatment of the scenes and the comic timing of the actors including the support cast makes it crackling. Hirani’s light touch continues throughout the movie and he deftly meets the cinematic challenge of being sensitive without being depressing. Case in point? The way how the scenes shift to black and white for the scenes at Raju’s house to highlight his hardships underline how a serious scene can be kept easy without mocking the condition. The screenplay’s back and forth narrative helps the twists retain their suspense value.
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And best of all, the film never takes itself too seriously, even indulging in a spot of subliminal self deprecation once in a while. Check out the scene where Kareena flees from her wedding to go look for Rancho and halfway down she’s told by Raju that they have no idea if Rancho’s married or not. Some people have been counting the clichés in the movie; I wonder how many of them noticed how they have been smartly refreshed to retain their entertainment value without being tacky.
The three lead actors do a stupendous job, Aamir confounding us again with his brilliance making it look too easy for a forty something to portray a twenty something while Madhavan is effortless as the ‘photographer’s soul trapped in an engineering student’s body’ and Sharman Joshi brings in equal measure of carefree abandon and world weariness to Raju Rastogi. But special credit is deserved
by Omi Vaidya who plays the geeky Chatur with aplomb (his comic scenes are surely the most hilarious) and establishes himself as the de facto 4th idiot. Boman Irani, of course, adds another memorable character to the annals of Hindi cinema with his pitch perfect portrayal of ‘Virus’ – the close to anal retentive director at the college.
It is a film that will endear itself to you with playfulness in its heart and a message of introspection in its soul. Hirani and the rest of the team put in a lot of ‘heart work’ in the project and it shines through in the result which is sublime.
When a film’s lines take only half a week to become part of conversations nationwide, there is no denying its impact. And, since it is that rare and exceptional outlier with a near perfect meter, TSI can't help but award the movie an unprecedented 11 stars out of 10!
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Tareque Laskar
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