How Sriram Raghavan’s Merry Christmas takes trend of pan-India films a step further

The term ‘pan-India’ has gained currency since 2015 when S.S. Rajamouli’s blockbuster Baahubali: The Beginning was released. In the post-Bahubali era, pan-India films have set the cash registers ringing at the box-office. But these films have often adopted a formula encompassing universal narratives, grand set designs, and star-studded casts. Consider, for instance, the common ingredients in films like Brahmastra, KGF, RRR, Pushpa, and Animal — aiming for a thousand crores, and more. All of them feature testosterone-driven heroes or male saviours, if you will, with elements of vigilante violence and disconcerting misogyny cooked together to serve the perfect broth.

The storylines in these films (the latest being Animal) are often laced with hate and violence, which have seemingly hit a chord with the audience, and translated into humongous box-office collections. However, beneath the dazzle of their achievements lies a paradox, a dichotomy between the aim of financial gains and the inadvertent overshadowing of cinema’s core purpose — storytelling. And this is where Raghavan’s Merry Christmas, adapted from an as-yet-unnamed French novel, which is set to release on January 12, comes in. It might be that well-crafted film with cross-star collaboration which is likely to excel — business-wise, and from the perspective of craft.

Raghavan’s brand of neo-noir cinema

Raghavan is a clever filmmaker when it comes to nailing the Neo-noir genre. In his numerous interviews, he has expressed his love for film director/screenwriter Alfred Hitchcock. The influence of the master of suspense is quite evident in all of Raghavan’s previous works. The world of his storytelling is occupied with morally grey characters with darker facets, blurring the lines between right and wrong. Moral ambiguity, dark humour, Neo-noir aesthetics, and cinematic homages are his prime preoccupations as a filmmaker.

In the cult thriller Ek Hasina Thi (2004), he sketches the psychological journey of the protagonist (Sarika, played by Urmila Matondkar) in a way that the audience is compelled to empathise with her morally ambiguous actions. In Badlapur (2015), Raghu (Varun Dhawan) seeks revenge for the brutal murder of his wife and son. In Andhadhun (2018), Akash (Ayushmann Khurrana), fakes being blind as an experiment to improve his piano skills. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Raghavan is a master when it comes to sketching anti-heroes. In Merry Christmas, we can expect to meet a similar figure, richly imagined, and dexterously portrayed.

One of the largely celebrated villains from his films in pop culture is Liak (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) from Badlapur; his idiosyncrasies, including his peculiar laugh and unconventional moral code, makes him more than a traditional antagonist. Talking of the villains, Simi (Tabu) from Andhadhun was hilariously driven by her insatiable greed; her portrayal was so pitch-perfect that she even makes the act of cooking a crab seductively enthralling for the viewers. It is interesting to note that Raghavan has a consistent knack for selecting diverse antagonists, from Tabu in Andhadhun to Saif Ali Khan, a slick criminal, in Ek Hasina Thi.

There have been several cinematic homages that he has paid in his films — from Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra in Johnny Gaddaar (2007) to the pivotal piano scene where Ayushmann Khurrana’s character becomes entangled in a suspenseful sequence, reminiscent of the tension in Denis Dercourt’s short film The Page Turner (2006). In fact, in Andhadhun, Anil Dhawan (a yesteryear hero of the 1970s) plays an extended version of himself as Simi’s husband. This pattern continues in Merry Christmas, details of which could be seen in the trailer: from Regal Cinemas of Bombay to Dial M for Murder (directed by his mentor Alfred Hitchcock), The Merry Widow (which might be related to Katrina’s character as the trailer hints at her having a daughter) and Pinocchio.

Raghavan also tends to use foreshadowing — a narrative device to signify the nature of characters’ actions in a film — a lot. In Ek Hasina Thi, rats transition from symbolising fear to revenge, while in Andhadhun, rabbits play a crucial symbolic role. In Johnny Gaddaar, five fish with red puree foreshadow the death of five gang members. This motif is also apparent in the trailer of Merry Christmas where a similar theme is portrayed as Vijay Sethupathi and Katrina Kaif hold paper birds in their hands.

Merry Christmas: Expectations set high

Merry Christmas, set in Mumbai, is a bilingual thriller with different endings in the two versions. The trailer betrays a charming romance between two strangers, and drops a twist that makes us conclude that it’s going to be a gripping thriller. The trailer also has two distinct postcards, featuring a young Rajesh Khanna in the Hindi version with the cryptic message, “The night is darkest before the dawn,” and Kamal Hassan in the Tamil counterpart. The film is set to bank upon the pan-India presence with a different ensemble cast for the Hindi and Tamil versions, including Sanjay Kapoor, Vinay Pathak, Pratima Kannan, and Tinnu Anand in the Hindi one, and Radhika Sarathkumar, Shanmugaraja, Kavin Jay Babu, and Rajesh Williams in the Tamil one. There are special cameo appearances by Radhika Apte and Ashwini Kalsekar. 

In the opening shots in the Hindi version, two mixer grinders are cleverly juxtaposed — one filled with peanuts and red chillies, and the other what seems to be the sleeping pills. Merry Christmas features iconic landmarks like Mumbai’s Kaali-Peeli taxis and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. Departing from the clichés of previous pan-India films, Merry Christmas is driven by a compelling story rather than relying on tried and tested formulas of the past. Given the track record of the journalist-turned-director/screenwriter, who has wowed us with his storytelling, the expectations are always set high.