I’ve always cinema shares a lot in common with ‘magic’ – not the Harry Potter kind, but rather the David Copperfield variety. At the start of a performance, the audience is astutely aware that what they’re about to witness is nothing but a bagful of clever tricks. However, if the performer is talented and his execution flawless, the audience is invariably left with a sense of wonder, and for the more discerning amongst them, a faint curiosity that ponders: Just how the hell did they do that?
The element that creates that sense of wonder in both these forms is believability. Which is why a magician will always choose a well-known subject(such as the Statue of Liberty or the Taj Mahal) for his grand invisibility trick, rather than some elementary prop on stage – because it is that much harder to believe, and therefore that much more impressive(when pulled off successfully).
Shimit Amin, in my belief, aspires to be such a magician. In his former outing, he gave us Chak De, a very entertaining albeit slightly formulaic film about a rag-tag group of women hockey players and a tainted coach with a point to prove. The old-genie-in-a-new-bottle trick had much to be lauded, although it owed a part of its success to its superstar lead, Shahrukh Khan. Nonetheless, it achieved its purpose – it established Shimit as a force to reckon with in the industry, and gave him the necessary leeway and vehicle(Yash Raj Films) to experiment with a broader(and a riskier) palette.
Indeed, Rocket Singh: The Salesman of The Year is quite a bold risk. Not only is the premise far more unconventional than standard Bollywood fare – dealing with career issues, office politics, and what ‘entrepreneurship’ signifies for middle-class Indians – but it is also fairly naïve, especially in its conclusion. But it is this naïveté that gives Shimit the opportunity to work his ‘magic’. And he does precisely that, by rooting his characters and settings in reality, which allows us, his audience, to relate with, and by extension, believe in their plausibility.
There are a few chinks in the armor – what motivates mentor Nitin’s(an excellent Naveen Kaushik) change of heart is never quite explained, and is therefore, never quite convincing. Also, a few hundred computers procured by 4-5 clients maketh not a ’55 lakh rupee’ company - but then, to expect that level of detail from a YRF production(for whom it is usual fare to imply that a horde of Punjab farmers regularly dance wearing bright colored clothes in their color-brushed corn fields) would be, well, blasphemy.
What allows Shimit to pull it off then, is his attention to detail as far as his characters and their settings are concerned. The art design is top-notch. The office cubicles induce an all too familiar sense of claustrophobia; the switchboards are dirty, the desk phones are cheap and the loo is just the right tiny. All the actors are consistently brilliant – especially Gauhar Khan as the hot-but-definitely-not-blonde secretary and D. Santosh as the porn-obsessed system engineer.
And in what is perhaps his most challenging role to date, Ranbir Kapoor puts in his best performance yet. There is a sequence where his manager, Sunil Puri(a convincingly evil turn for Manish Chaudhary) blasts him for his naiveté, and the camera focuses on Ranbir as we watch his eyes react ever-so-subtly to every insult and abuse. Ranbir is definitely not suited for films like Rajneeti, which call for dramatic flair and histrionics, but he is perfectly at ease in roles such as these, which require emotions to be underplayed and the delivery understated. In an age where ludicrously over-the-top performances have become the norm, it is at times refreshing to see a mainstream actor who can slip into character as easily as Salman and Hrithik can slip out of their clothes.