Rajni's Universal Robots [Review: Endhiran]

Endhiran (Robot) is a Tamil production starring Tamil superstar Rajnikanth and Bollywood's Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Given the size of the Indian movie industry - and audience - I don't think I need to point out the significance of bringing these two names together in one film. Rajni plays android Chitti and also his creator Dr. Vaseegaran who would rather spend his nights in the lab with a soldering iron than with his long-suffering girlfriend Sana, played by Aishwarya Rai.

Even though the film is shorter than Return Of The King there is a hell of a lot of plot: Chitti goes from failed military prototype to superhero to love rival to supervillain, and the film rolls together ideas from RoboCop, The Terminator, I Robot, Bicentennial Man, very heavily from Short Circuit and probably every other robot movie book or play since Rossum's Universal Robots, while adding one or two twists of its own.

Endhiran also utterly disregards Western genre conventions combining elements of action, thriller, romantic comedy, slapstick comedy and black comedy and of course musical theatre, and there is absolutely no conflict between any of the styles: you get to have your cake and eat it.

I have one complaint: the subtitles. Endhiran has the worst English subtitling grammar I've ever seen. Sorry. I'm often disappointed in fellow cinemaphiles who miss out on some great films because they find subtitles too irritating - but this is exactly the kind of thing that gives subtitling a bad name. Incidentally, and just to drive the message home, you can see the best subtitling ever in this film.

As a Westerner with little experience of Bollywood or Tamil cinema I can report Endhiran is very watchable and I would recommend it to others outside the traditional audience. It has captivating stars and catchy music, it's full of ideas whether original or borrowed and it's fun from start to finish. I sincerely hope this leads to many more Bollywood-style sci-fi epics.

Light Of Other Days

Reflections in a Slow Glass (TM) window:

In 2008 I remarked here that there was no prospect of a new film version of Karel Capek's famous play R.U.R. Now it's in development, with director James Kerwin on board (reported on io9 last year, also official website here.)

In 2009 I commented on Stephen Baxter's Titan, which continues to be that rarest of things - a science fiction novel that does actually predict the future, describing clearly and accurately the first steps of the Chinese manned space programme, and sadly anticipating the break-up of Space Shuttle Columbia during re-entry. As described in the book, atmospheric data from the Cassini mission is now being analysed carefully as it may indicate there is life on Titan.
Also in 2009 I reviewed my three favourite Terry Pratchett novels here, commenting that I preferred his science fiction writing to much of the Discworld series. Mr. Pratchett has just announced to my joy that he will be returning to science fiction in a future novel - which he will co-write with Stephen Baxter (news via Grasping For The Wind.)

Real life sci-fi: Čapek was right

Czech playwright Karel Čapek coined the phrase "robot" for a mechanical worker in his 1921 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). This play sees the robot workers rise up against their human masters and take over the world, but be careful about interpreting this as a West-style disaster epic - firstly, this is post-revolution, USSR so the robots are the good guys in a Marxist, proletariat versus bourgeoisie sort of way; secondly Čapek is an indiscriminate satirist and I don't think anyone in any of his plays is excused the sharp edge of his pen.

It seems Čapek may have been on to something. While computers get their digital hands on our companies and transport networks, the robots are making their move too. While our attention has been distracted, over the last few years robots have quietly taken over the choiciest human jobs. I mean, now robots can be camel jockeys, conductors, wine tasters, seals, fishes or sharks - I mean, what does that leave for us?