In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones

This wonderful Indian English-language picture is technically a television film, but it played at film festivals, so I'm counting it as a feature. Written by Arundhati Roy, who would go on to win the Booker Prize for Fiction for her 1997 novel The God of Small Things, and directed by her husband Pradip Krishen, the movie achieved cult status in the years after it was made. The story centers on a group of idealistic architecture students living in a New Delhi hostel and trying to pass their 5th-year finals. "Annie" is the ostensible main character, Anand Grover, who is repeating his fifth year for the fourth time after making fun of his principal, Y. D. Billimoria, and never apologizing. Y. D., known to the students as "Yamdoot" or Hell's messenger, is played by the great Roshan Seth (known to Western audiences for his key roles in Gandhi, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, A Passage to India, My Beautiful Laundrette, Mississippi Masala and Street Fighter: The Movie). But this is an ensemble picture for which Roy has written herself a plum role, that of Annie's outspoken, non-conformist friend and fellow student Radha.

The action centers on life in the hostel and work in the classroom. It feels like a cross between Animal House and The Paper Chase if either of those movies had been political and set in India. Inspired by Roy's own experiences attending the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi in the 1970s, the film is both a wonderful time capsule and, now restored from a damaged 16mm master to a new 4K version four decades later, a timeless exploration of India's caste system. Architecture is always sociopolitical, and this film conveys myriad viewpoints and themes without heavy-handed speechifying. We learn about the issues and attitudes by how the students express themselves to each other and their teachers.

You'd think the title would have hurt this picture outside of its native country, since the slang term "giving it those ones" doesn't have a direct translation. But the filmmakers leaned into this when marketing the movie in Europe and America. In this case, "giving it those ones" means Annie is doing his usual eccentric, grandiose acts, or indulging in wild, impractical daydreams of social uplift. His latest idea is to plant fruit trees on either side of railway tracks, where rural Indians shit daily. The fecal matter would provide compost for the trees, while the trains, with attached sprinklers, would automatically water the plants. Some of his fellow students are far more conservative in their concepts for unimaginative municipal buildings. The teachers are stubbornly pragmatic, wanting to churn out designers with the same post-colonial mindset they've trained for years. Radha is at a crossroads, weighing the pros and cons of idealism and realism. Thus, this movie is immensely relatable to anyone who's ever been an idealistic young person on the verge of adulthood. And the characters feel authentic, vibrant, and alive. A real treat!