What do you get when you try to squeeze a cut lemon inside out? Well, if you planned on using the juice, it just went kaput. While on the other hand, if you just wanted to soil your palm, you hit bull's eye.
Romance, personal liberty, family: each of them can be made into epics, with sequels. But taking them all and shoving them into the skins of powerful character actors will only give the audience indigestion.
Shakuntala Devi, The Human Computer: reads the title of the movie. What would the casual viewer expect? A story of some unusually talented woman? Yes. And what does the viewer realise 120 minutes later? The computer was human too. But this is just the case of the common cine-goer, which the present generation is not. This lot is on the verge of making disruptive choices about the kind of movies it wants to watch; particularly when web-series offer a much more delightful menu to choose from.
The maths genius from Karnataka inspired many an engineer to read her numerous puzzle and numbers books for his/her interviews. Her awe inspiring rags-to-riches story fed aspirations of many a rural folk to chase their dreams in true earnest. For that is the Shakuntala Devi the nation, the world wants to know, or better still, needs to know. And therein lies the legend, the impeccable math wizard with her witty remarks and larger than life persona.
But the director had other plans, it seems.
Different is the order of the day, after all. Even if it comes at the cost of sabotaging the image of a childhood hero for millions of students.
So, the movie begins rather shakily with Shakuntala Devi's daughter suing her mother for causing her financial damage. That would set the feminist lobby talking from the very first scene. Then the movie swings back in time to a village in Karnataka in British India, where the little Shakuntala is shown solving numerical problems way ahead of her age. Her merit draws attention at the local and then national level. He father's constant show-mongering results in a childhood spent in the commerce of numbers. While this does keep the family going, it fosters the growth of a fiercely independent woman who doesn't take very kindly any encroachment upon personal liberty. She shoots an admirer in the ear on one such occasion.
So, the protagonist lands up in London to escape her past. It is here that with some initial struggle, she makes it to the big universities, not as a student, but a performer of mathematical tricks. This gives her bread and name. Her mother writes to her from India, not to inquire about her well-being but to ask her to resume the supply of much needed money. This infuriates the already headstrong lady even more and she takes up the show-business full time with some help from local admirers in the UK.
She piles up the pounds in quick time, hops from country to country helping herself to a sizable fortune. She finds love in a typical yes-man, who fits the description of a feminist fetish. The IAS officer falls to her charms and agrees to marry her when she proposes. They have a daughter, which didn't prevent the mother from flying away abroad to conduct numerous shows. Meanwhile, the money-meter keeps turning and she forgets her daughter for a while- until Daddy becomes the first word the little one utters. This sets off the insecurity in the mother and she flies back to the IAS officer's home and out, snatching the baby from her doting father's arms- and life, for a decade hence.
Meanwhile, the hatred for her own parents back in the countryside continues unabated. There is also the occasional sprinkling of the math show, to keep things in sync with the film's title.
The little girl grows up just like her mother, travelling from one show to other, longing to go to school, missing her dad sorely and in a continuous search for the mother she wanted Shakuuntala Devi to become. The father comes to know of her misery from her letters and arranges a rare meeting with the mother. The parents, after some arm-twisting by the father, agree that she needs to go to school. The girl grows up hating the mother even more when she goes to a boarding school and is denied any meeting with her father. This goes on till she, now a woman, puts her foot down to marry the man she loves, much to the pleasure of both the parents.
Now, that is a narration a viewer can relate to. But the director doesn't like good old story-telling. So the plot yo-yos from the 1930s to the early 2000s, to the 1950s to the 1990s, from every decade in the 1900s to every other decade of the 1900s. Meanwhile, the viewer has completely lost track of the "Human Computer" part of the protagonist and is instead, looking at a horrible mother, a dominating wife, and a genius-but-selfish celeb.
Now, where is the mathematical wonder-woman the viewer had read about on the internet before watching the movie? Where is the famous astrologer, politician and author we all knew? Somewhere in the fillers in the form of the maths shows, I guess. Because that is ultimately what the movie achieves in the end- systematic assassination of the miracle character- Shakuntala Devi.
The editing needs special mention since people watching the movie are sent on repeat time travel trips throughout its length. The songs help in making it a 120 minute affair and the costumes and screenplay scream out loud: women-only. While Balan's other movies too had a feminist shade, those characters had mettle in the form of range of acting, vibrancy of emotions and adequate melodrama. The actors fit into their roles very well, but the cohesion of them all fails to build the image of a family, or families in the mind of the viewer. The chemistry between the actors looks, at best, well-rehearsed. Nothing more.
The movie might as well have been titled "Shakuntala Devi- Behind the Human Computer".
An investment of two hours would have to be made after much thought, especially when entertainment is fast approaching the home-space and not vise versa.
