2020TV-14 1h 53m
Genre: Indi Sci-Fi & Fantasy.
Every once in a lifetime comes a film maker / script writer/ director who makes a film on what plagues her / his soul deeply. Profoundly. And manages to render it on film, ever so simply. Like a residual thought in motion.
If ever, like me, you have caught yourself asking, in and without a pandemic, the very purpose of being alive on this little blue rock... these 80 minutes May very well be your pill to cure this ache in your gut.
I feel a certain privilege to be able to review a script so loaded with social wisdom and resolute philosophy, that has managed to keep it so real. so material. It touches that intangible part of every Indian soul.
Scratch that, every soul.
Our wonderment at this lifetime of guilty pleasures, of the myriad sins, of the childlike joys, of the bafflements, of loss and longing ... this space journey - all aboard this spaceship called earth - is brought in to such sharp and distinguished focus with every masterful stroke of the editor on board what looks like props stolen from the sets of Captain Vyom... so 1970’s, that the soul weeps.
Weeps with the happy knowledge that every one of us must feel this urgent ever pressing need to know what comes after. Weeps with the terror (at any given point) of imagining what awaits when the lights finally go out. Weeps for their own Karma of the here and now. Weeps because they find truth, difficult.
One must congratulate the crew on board the Pushpak 634A - the charming hope and curious craft of Shweta Tripathi matched by the soft, understated but effective pragmatism of our hero in space #VikrantMassey who capture the essence of the endless possibilities of what may come. His stoic steadfastness to secure yet cherish the superpowers that make the human mind so strong and yet so fragile. He is a delight.
And yet, both swimming in their own fish bowls, much like all of us - wondering, whats out there. It is so Pink Floyd and also Alisha Chenoy at the same time.
I thank them for being the proxy conduits on a journey in outer space, just to remind us that the soul lingers, hunts, seeks and finds... something the body will never behold.
A special mention here of Konkona Sen Sharma for being that tiny window of celestial light that shuts out the bleak and lonely jours of our Massey Saab.
The sets, the dialogues, the chosen characters like Mr Nityagiji, with their demon superpowers, are thrown in to fill the void - the absolute and abject refusal by the director to bring in a few old fashioned indian gods - making this desi ghee soaked version of India’s epic tryst with death and afterlife - seem almost like a UN press debrief - all caught along a spotless 75 year long- Manushya Rakshasa peace treaty in space - leaving you feeling, solved. Almost complete.
Left to my devices I would change nothing. It’s perfection in rendering a storyline so elegant so perfectly blended in with the dichotomy of all that is Indian everyday and everything, all things man holds universal.
- That background score, “you are my forgetmenot” - slow Bollywoodesque clap for nailing the pithy nature of the moment...
From me, these 1.2 hours of abundant soul searching pleasure was a gig guide through inter galactic queries and home truths. On Life and mortality. The soulful and the soul less. TheLiving and the dead. Those who weren’t meant to leave. And those who refuse to die.
It’s a toast to the undying spirit - reinvented to suit our analogue mindset - with Post Death Transition services . And. A coming to terms with the following dark emptiness. And also everything in between.
Don’t despair if your heart wants to cry out loud after the last frame. You will want to see this film. It is a celebration of cinema. Indian cinema. It is Satyajit Ray’s Professor Shonku meets Wes Anderson meets Nolan. I cannot recommend it enough.
Cargo is a 2019 Indian Hindi-language science fiction film written and directed by Arati Kadav. The film is produced by #AratiKadav, #ShlokSharma, #NavinShetty and #AnuragKashyap. Cargo premiered at the 2019 #MAMI Film Festival under the spotlight section. The film premiered on Netflix on 9 September, 2020.
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