Movie Review: Life in a... Metro

The city never sleeps 4.5/5
Pratim D. Gupta

There’s a scene in Metro, where office colleagues Monty (Irrfan) and Shruti (Konkona) go to the rooftop and scream at the Mumbai skyline. For 20 seconds they just keep screaming. Theirs is the only light strand in the episodic scheme of things in the film, but this is the most symbolic sequence. In those few frames, two wounded souls vent their pent-up anger against the city. The city that gives a lot but takes away so much more.
But then again, Anurag Basu’s Metro is so much more than the man vs city slugfest. It’s also about human follies like chauvinism, jealousy, envy, deceit, vengeance, ambition, and, yes, love, all set against the backdrop of aamchi Mumbai.
These are different stories but all held together by a web of relationships. Shilpa and Kay Kay are married for almost a decade but love doesn’t live here anymore and today even their silences seem to cry out for a fight.
Shilpa’s sister is Konkona, a disgruntled virgin at 30 who falls in love with a homosexual. Worse is her shaadi.com suitor Irrfan, who is 38, claims to be 35, hasn’t touched a woman but stares at cleavages.
Konkona’s roommate is Kangana, who has been sleeping with her boss Kay Kay for two years now. Kay Kay uses his subordinate Sharman Joshi’s flat for their evening trysts. Sharman, of course, loves colleague Kangana when he is not chasing money. Shilpa’s dance teacher Nafisa has met her long-lost lover Dharmendra, who is the Pacific Salmon, returning from abroad to die where he was born.
And this is when Shilpa falls for Shiney, the bus-stop guy who does bare-bodied theatre. In one of the most poignant scenes of the film, they enter the house of his friend (director Anurag Basu in a blurred cameo). He wants to make her coffee but her guilt-ridden mind forces her to run away. She returns after a few moments, the pallu drops and the lips almost meet, but...
There are many more scenes in Metro that deserve special mention. Like the one in which Shilpa and Kay Kay sit across the dining table. She is crying. He thinks his game is up. He confesses and asks for her forgiveness. She confesses and asks for his forgiveness for spending time with another man. She forgives him. He asks, “Bachchi to meri hai naa?”
Without the least bit of exaggeration, Metro is one of the best films to come out of Bollywood in a long time and believe me, I have seen them all (almost). From Murder to Gangster to Metro, Anurag Basu has matured into a master storyteller who can punctuate content with style. And he is also the master of passion in confined spaces. The love-making ledge of Murder returns and so do the corridors of Gangster. But it is his use of the three singing men in black aka Band Metro that is the masterstroke.
Singing atop watertanks and platforms, Pritam, James and Suhail do what Farrelly Brothers did with the singing band in the last scene of There’s Something About Mary. And if their visual presence is stimulating, their audio track is soothing. In dino, Alvida, Kar salaam, O meri jaan... the songs accentuate every mood of the metro and the movie.
Everyone in the Metro cast plays his/her part, but not all individual performances match up to the whole. The best thing about Shilpa Big Brother Shetty continues to be her waistline. Shiney is good in patches, average in others. Kay Kay and Konkona are their usual flawless selves, getting the pitch spot on. Kangana’s new look works but her diction continues to disappoint. Sharman is a revelation, doing a serious role with elan. But it is Irrfan, with the least screen time among the main seven, who is an absolute delight.Watching him chase his dream on horseback in the climax is something else.
Like Irrfan, Metro chases a dream in a metro where everyone is chasing one. And it gets close, very close.