Road, Movie (2010)

I love this movie so much

Pretty Good

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

To be honest, this movie is one of my favorite Indian movies in a long time. I have stopped watching contemporary bollywood garbage which it dishes out every other week. I consider BLACK as India's best movie in last 30 years. 3 Idiots & Rang De Basanti are good, but this movie is in class of its own. It almost feels MAGICAL that you are transported into Dev Benegal's world. Its mesmerizing movie. An astonishing work of cinematography. Do anything but don't miss out on this HIDDEN GEM.Also, this movie never had huge marketing behind it, i can understand why that was the case. Simply people in India don't like such artistic movies and most are illiterate but still it doesn't bring this movie down. I am glad such a movie was made and it is an awesome experience. You will feel entrenched in the Director's vision of India & Rajasthan.

Dev Benegal's 2009 film was premiered on Channel 4, where I saw it. Radio Times, in their lazy and scant review, described it as 'plays out like an Indian Cinema Paradiso set in the deserts of Rajasthan', which is only partly true.Almost nothing can stand up to Cinema Paradiso, that being in my top 5 films of all time, but Road, Movie certainly has its charms. The centrepiece is a colourful, ageing truck that is also a mobile cinema. This van is the ticket to freedom for Vishnu, a restless young man, who wishing to escape being sucked into his father's hair oil business (yes, this is a gentle comedy) and he has a buyer for it; a museum in a town by the sea.To get there, he treks across the desert (gravelly, but still tough) and his journey and the characters he meets, including the mechanic called upon very early (it HAD to be a temperamental van!) who becomes the projectionist and general fixer-up of everything. There's also a young lad, a runaway urchin. These two could be seen as the Philip Noiret character and the boy in Cinema Paradiso. Then a visually striking gypsy woman, who becomes a romantic distraction for Vishnu, is picked up when they run out of water and she has some.Bollywood films are the most watched in the world, apparently and so obviously various flicks are shown in sprawling communities, projected onto the walls of dwellings and such.Shot in deeply saturated colour and looking very attractive, it's not a deep, meaningful film but a nicely distracting, accessible one, nostalgic about long strips of celluloid and the joy that they can bring - and one that western audiences can easily appreciate and enjoy.It looks like it's generally unavailable in the U.K, at least as a region 2 DVD. I only found this region 1 on Amazon by typing in the director's name and not the film's title - as that brought up hundreds of connotations, but not the right one.Hopefully now, Channel 4's airing will have it released properly. It certainly deserves to be.

Road, Movie is director Dev Benegal's tribute to the magical realm of cinema. He is back in style after a decade-long sabbatical following Split Wide Open, to show the world how much he has matured as a filmmaker. He adds his Midas touch to such an offbeat piece of celluloid, giving it a western aroma only to take you on a journey that is sure to find you wherever you are and promises to take you wherever you want to go.Vishnu (Abhay Deol) is a young man who is sick and tired of the life that is thrust upon him. To escape from his father's hair oil business, he volunteers to drive an antique 1942 Chevrolet truck across the desert to a museum, only to experience the thrill of adventure amidst his humdrum life. On his way he picks up a young tea-stall boy (Mohammed Faizal Usmani) who wishes for a better life in the neighbouring city and a voluble mechanic (Satish Kaushik) who intends to attend a local fair. Vishnu's road trip is filled with its initial hiccups with the truck breaking down at the drop of a hat. He encounters a corrupt cop who looks for sport in Vishnu amidst the lifeless desert. This is when Vishnu discovers that his truck houses a movie projector and is a mini theatre-on-wheels. He trades their release with the cop who has a libido alive enough to watch blue films.The third character Vishnu picks up en route is a young gypsy woman, played by Tannishtha Chatterjee of Brick Lane fame. Time and again, amidst the drought-struck desert, Vishnu and his mates pass by a band of women frantically searching for water, the imagery being heightened when they see Vishnu drink from a bottle. Vishnu's presence of mind is heightened in the climax when he dupes the desert-don (Yashpal Sharma) with his hair oil advertisement gimmick. Unfortunately, after 97 minutes, Road, Movie comes to an abrupt halt, leaving you desirous of much more.Road, Movie, as the name suggests, is both about the life on the road and how the characters are rescued by the movies they screen. Cinematographer Michel Amathieu (Paris Je T'Aime) has captured the barren virgin deserts of Rajasthan with immense grandeur and élan and deserves the laurels for providing the visual imagery. The background score by Michael Brook (Into the Wild) is reminiscent of Gustavo Santaolalla in The Motorcycle Diaries and sets the tone of the journey. Production design by Anne Seibel (Munich) illuminates the sequences of the fun-fair amidst the dull and dry desert, which sadly is just a dream sequence. The dialogues are hilarious and coupled with the comic timing of such seasoned actors trigger giggles and laughs, especially those of the little boy and Satish Kaushik when he is verbose, drunk on Old Monk and high on ganja!! The plot does have scope for improvement and could have been thickened. The characters could have been further developed. All but the protagonist are unnamed. Satish Kaushik is at his comic best. Tannishtha does justice to her limited screen time reaching her peak when she sings an impromptu gypsy song. Abhay Deol shows exactly why he was always who Dev Benegal had in mind. Abhay Deol has grown from strength to strength such that none of his cousins are even distant competition to him. He comes across as very disillusioned and enigmatic and unlike in Dev D, he is shown in this movie searching and drinking water. His chemistry with Tannishtha seems coercive and feeble.This film is sluggishly slow, just as the speed of the vehicle depicted and it requires tremendous patience to watch and appreciate it. The film conveys an important message of self-discovery and fulfillment albeit it loses direction. Road, Movie is sure to tug at the strings of your heart and is a must watch for all ages. So, get on the road and watch this movie. I am going with a 3.5 stars out of 5.Joydeep Roy for MuvieMadlyDeeply.com

There are just four characters in the movie. Vishnu, played by Abhay Deol, wants to do more than just waste his time selling herbal oil as his father does before him. So, he volunteers for a friend to deliver across the desert an old truck which is a mobile cinema. The film is then about his journey, the movies that he plays & more importantly, the people that he meets on the way.We have seen bits of brilliance from Satish Kaushik in the past, from Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro to Calendar in Mr. India, but I think this is the one that he will be most remembered for as an actor. Cast as a veteran mechanic, Kaushik plays a central role in taking the movie in a different direction than the protagonist has planned to. He has been cast very well along with the little boy that Vishnu picks up early in his journey. Both these characters provide for the lighter moments in the film while also inducing some thought provoking dialogue. There is also scope for a female lead. A tribal whose husband was slain over a water dispute some years ago. As she mentions that she too wants to get lost in the magic of cinema, one can't help but wonder if there is a deeper meaning to this sentence. And this deep meaning dialogue is a standard feature of the film.Wide angle views of the vastness of the desert that lead to nothingness in the desert and a set of women treading along for days in search of water are brilliantly executed. And, other than the road & the movies, they are a common string throughout the film.The film exists at many levels. At the most superficial level, it appears to be a subtle comedy with situational jokes and a bit of slapstick too. You dig a little, and you find that it is a person's journey to finding himself by having to deal with an old truck, rough, dry weather and some people who have been through their share of pain & suffering and how they still manage to be at peace and look forward to some elusive tranquility.Dig a little deeper and you find the film is about some inherent social problems that still affect most of rural & tribal India. That something as basic as water can be a reason for murder & arson is hard to imagine but it is brought to us with a lot of sensitivity. How the lead characters almost die of thirst, how they almost get killed for trying to steal water all help appreciate a problem that is alien to most of us.Dig a bit more and we find that Indian cinema is trying to usher in the seemingly selfish directors who make films from the heart with a message that they want to send across to anyone who tries to understand their cinema. There is no plot in the movie that would build up into something big. For a film like this, there has to be no plot. Very few directors can do it and get away with it. It is a movie that should go down as one that shifted or at least tried to shift the paradigm of Indian cinema.That said there is much that the director could do better explaining & elaborating a little. Like what is the protagonist actually wanting to do with the truck, how does a particular mela (caravan fair) disappear overnight and mostly, why such a brilliant film seem a bit too long even for its 95 minute run time.It is most definitely a lesson in cinematographic excellence. One would just hope that it would be a complete movie in itself too.