Anurag Basu’s trademark whimsy and frenzy, music and maelstrom of emotions and equations come together once again in his latest. Metro... In Dino, a spiritual sequel to Basu’s sparkling 2007 relationship drama Life In A... Metro, follows the anthological template of the first film, as well as the filmmaker’s dark comedy caper Ludo, that released five years ago.
Unlike Life In A... Metro that drew both its feel and fabric from Mumbai — its incessant rains, its bumper-to-bumper traffic, the connections inadvertently forged and broken on local train rides and the everyday stories of crushed ambitions, lost loves and dreams unrealised — Metro... In Dino doesn’t belong to one ‘metro’. The action shifts between Mumbai and Pune, Calcutta and Bangalore, Delhi and Goa, with the film not being able to ground itself in any city. Each landscape coalesces into the other, with very little to define the film’s backdrop. Physically, Metro... In Dino is all over the place. Which, unfortunately, is an apt descriptor for its structure and storytelling as well.
Basu’s avant-garde style of filmmaking is well known, defined as it is by instinct and spontaneity, with the director (in)famous for throwing his actors at the deep end on set and winningly extracting organic emotions and reactions from them. The chaos has often shown up on screen, but it has always been carefully curated, accentuating the messiness of the matters-of-the-heart stories that Basu excels in.
In Metro... In Dino, however, that trademark chaos shows up just as... well, chaos. Over the course of 163 minutes — which starts feeling very, very long and tedious after a point — the script, written by Basu with Samrat Chakravarthy and Sandeep Shrivastava, packs in multiple relationships either gone awry or teetering on the edge, infidelity, the regret of letting go, the incessant search for the ‘right one’, confusion about identity and sexual orientation, toxic workplace environment, and much more. The result is a film that crams in too much, saying too little and managing to charm only in parts.
Eighteen years ago, Life In A... Metro brought in a freshness of storytelling with its four-in-one narrative approach. But in the last decade or so — particularly in the pandemic — this format has been exploited a little too much, especially on OTT, with mixed levels of success. In an age now defined by clicks and views, there is also an upgrade — dating apps, influencer culture, the use of social media as a facade, all make their way into this film.
What is retained from Life In A... Metro is music man Pritam — a longtime collaborator of Basu’s — and his band functioning as a sutradhar of sorts. Basu takes it a notch up by fashioning Metro... In Dino as a musical, with almost every moment, every line, every emotion, and every turn of the plot relying on Pritam and his men popping up, guitar and mic in hand, to take it forward. Actors break the fourth wall often and launch into musical limericks at key points. While some of it is novel and delightful — Basu follows the lead of his own Jagga Jasoos — a lot of the film, barring a few well-written and tenderly-acted moments, gets drowned out in the cacophony of the overdone, ubiquitous music.
All the strands in Metro... In Dino have their charm, their defining moments, and scenes of remorse and redemption, tied together as they are by the messy relationships at the centre of each of them. Commitment-phobe, smooth-talking Parth (Aditya Roy Kapoor) chances upon ‘the only fun when she is drunk’ Chumki (Sara Ali Khan) one night. Starting off on a sticky note, they gradually become friends, inadvertently holding a mirror to each other’s lives and worldview.
Chumki’s elder sister Kajol (Konkona Sensharma) and her husband Monty (Pankaj Tripathi) are facing monotony in their marriage, brought on by years of familiarity and drudgery, with at least one of them looking for more outside. Their teenaged daughter, meanwhile, is on her own tenuous journey of self-discovery.
Kajol and Chumki’s mother Shibani (Neena Gupta) has allowed her dreams to take a backseat in raising her children, burdened as she is with a controlling husband (Saswata Chatterjee is solid as always). Shibani rebels one day and takes off on her own for her college reunion to Calcutta, where she meets her former lover Parimal (Anupam Kher). Parimal’s only companion is his widowed daughter-in-law Jhinuk (played by a suitably subdued Darshana Banik). The final love-hate story involves Akash (Ali Fazal), a struggling, self-absorbed musician, whose wife Shruti (Fatima Sana Shaikh) has to bear the weight of their increasingly corroding marriage.
The first half of Metro... In Dino is breezy, with the viewer invariably getting sucked into the complicated lives and disintegrating loves of its myriad players. Not all of it fits well, but there is a certain freshness and fun to Half One that will keep you engaged.
The problem arises post interval with Basu resorting to too much repetition — scenes, dialogues, situations, all seem to be playing out in a loop — with the presence of Pritam, Papon and the rest of the band in almost every frame, feeling more intrusive than complementary. The songs fit well in their respective situations, but taken out of context, none of them — with the exception of Tumhare sheher — have the staying power of In dino, Alvida or Baatein kuch ankahi se from Life In A... Metro.
The rare moments in which Metro... In Dino manages to hit the sweet spot are courtesy the more consummate actors in the ensemble. Konkona — the only one to return from the first film — is easily the pick of the lot, with Pankaj Tripathi’s nimble comic timing eliciting some hearty laughs when the two head off to Goa for a ‘second chance’. The duo have good chemistry, but one can’t help but miss Irrfan, who played Monty in Life In A... Metro. Even Basu’s repetition of Monty’s ‘servicing’ trope, reimagined as ‘dhakkan khul gaya’ in the new film, doesn’t have the zing that Irrfan brought to the original. Aditya Roy Kapoor, who has the responsibility of executing this sequence, however, surprises with his easy charm and uninhibited acting in many scenes. Sara Ali Khan is better than she has been in some recent films, but that laughable wig is an unwelcome distraction.
What also brings on laughs (in a good way) is a subplot involving Neena Gupta and Anupam Kher’s characters, which may seem exaggerated and unnecessary in parts, but is redeemed by the richness of performance that its senior actors bring to it.
While most of the stories in the film seem to be approaching their moment of truth only to be abandoned in haste but still leave a mark, the weakest thread in the anthology belongs to the Akash-Shruti love story. While relatable on many levels, the meandering treatment of this segment does it immense disservice. Fatima Sana Shaikh’s luminous, vulnerable presence is a silver lining, but Ali Fazal’s perpetual hangdog demeanour does him — and the film — no favours.
What also doesn’t work is the convenient and often contrived tying up of loose ends, especially that of the Shruti-Akash segment and the Parth-Chumki friends-turned-fiance story. What unfolds overall is a film that is undercooked in parts and overdone in others.
Metro... In Dino shines when it lets its raw, unfiltered emotions shine through. Like that masterclass of a scene involving Neena Gupta and Konkona that is fiery, visceral and vulnerable. Life often spills over the edges, but the idea is to find the calm in the chaos. Not the other way round.