REVIEW: Robot

CHITTI CHITTI BANG BANG

At various points in Shankar's Robot, you hear lines such as,

"Main paida nahin hua, banaya gaya hoon"

"Ye akela sau ke baraabar hai"

"He's superb, what a lovely creation!"

And these are all with reference to Chitti, an andro-humanoid robot (Rajnikant, looking scary with plasticised makeup), created by a scientist called Vaseegaran (Rajnikant again, this time with ridiculous wig and beard, trying to look young enough to romance Aishwarya Rai). It takes several minutes to adjust to the idea of watching a Tamil film dubbed in Hindi. And even longer to accept the enormously far-fetched plot and exposition. Still, the first half is not bad. Vasee, as he's lovingly addressed by Sana (Aishwarya Rai), makes pathetic attempts to woo his girl. He then unveils his magnificent robot before a stunned audience -- he's fire resistant, water resistant, has unparalleled strength, can dance, sing, solve complex mathematical problems and memorise the telephone directory in a matter of seconds, we're told. In short, he's Rajnikant, the superhero.

Vasee lends his creation to his fiancee to help her study for her medical exam. She finds him useful to bash up pollutants of all kinds -- neighbourhood romeos who blast music outside her window, petty goons and even computer-generated mosquitoes, one of whom, dares to sting her. Send Chitti to Mumbai, I say. He even transmits answers to her in the exam hall and when caught, superimposes the textbook on to her answer paper from the ceiling!

Meanwhile Vasee's former boss Bohra (Danny Dengzongpa) is jealous of his protegee and tries every trick possible to ensure that his creation isn't accepted by some high-level committee as a tool for national defence. The robot has no feelings, and hence no discrimination, he argues. So Vasee infuses Chitti with feelings and in a reprisal of the climax of 3 Idiots, Chitti single-handedly negotiates a complicated child birth, as his first act of discerned benevolence, a team of qualified doctors looking on in amazement. Only a mother can give birth. But even she can't do it without Rajni's blessings.

However feelings inevitably lead to problems, as Indian cinema has long taught us. And the second half is consumed by the robot's increasing megalomania. At one point, Chitti actually clones himself into an entire army of robots (now imagine this sight!) and in one of the many hysterically garish song sequences (including a tribal dance that seems to have been shot at Machu Picchu in South America!), Rajni plays both the lead and all the back-up dancers. 

The film's climax drags on for a good half hour and you start worrying that Vasee may never ever vanquish the rogue robot army and you may stay trapped in the cinema hall forever, just as Aishwarya Rai is trapped both in the crazy metallic palace Chitti has built himself, and in the film itself, where she's the object of several misogynistic jibes.

There's another character in the 'pre-feeling' days, whom Chitti rescues from a burning building. She's naked and the brainless robot thinks nothing of carrying her out as she is. Only both the girl and the neighbourhood take great offence to this debasement and she promptly commits suicide. When Vasee chides him for not honouring the girl's izzat, Chitti nonchalantly says, "at least she's alive". A perfectly sensible thought that seems lost on a film that has dubiously macho aspirations seeped in repulsive patriarchal values.  

Robot has been touted as the most expensive Indian film ever and yes, the money spent on special effects yields reasonably polished results. But to watch the canonisation of a supposedly ageless 61-year-old movie star (forever and ever, as the end suggests) by making him both creator and destroyer, and yet conveniently absolving him of all blame for the mayhem the film unleashes in the name of entertainment, is just too much to digest. And the whole idea of machines taking over mankind loses itself in this chaos.

Comments

[Beth]

Yes! Thank you for putting so succinctly and powerfully what is wrong with this film's treatment of its (sparse) female characters and its macho/patriarchal assumptions. Those aspects of the film were so wearying. I hadn't even thought about the Chitti-as-creator note in the birth scene, which is a fascinating move from gods and human shaving that power to machines having it. And it's something evil Chitti shares, isn't it, with his army of clones who are still like but less than he is.

If you're interested, I spent a ton of energy trying to sort out that horrifying fire/suicide scene. http://bethlovesbollywood.blogspot.com/2010/10/him-robot-endhiran.html

[Bidisha Ghosal]

Hi,
I agree with your take, but what worries me is that the country is still in love with perverse patriarchal values. The films that have stormed box offices recently, like Dabanng, Wanted, Three Idiots, and now Robot, have only token female characters who are each sidelined with all the testosterone flying about. And the country loves it. Makes me realise we have a Long Long way to go, despite magazines and fiction telling us otherwise.

[Deepa Deosthalee]

Thanks Bidisha and Beth. Beth, your analysis of the film is superb. Thanks for sending it to me. Bidisha, wish anyone knew when anything would actually change. It's exasperating to watch the heroine being compromised over and over again in Hindi cinema. So much so, even when they copied an already sexist film like Stepmom, they compromised both women's characters even further and made them much worse than they were in the original. As for the heroine of last year's magnum opus, '3 Idiots', I intend to write a thesis on her some day.

[deepagahlot]

Sigh... give me a reason to see this movie, gurlz!