Rango

Rango:  The Film.

The perception of the animated films has seen a sea of change in this decade. It has gone beyond the wild imaginative brains of little ones and managed a Bull’s eye amongst the experienced, matured, thinking minds as well….and when films like RANGO come you stop wondering how or why of this phenomenon?

The film seems repulsive to start off with…mainly because of the characters, justifies the choice as the film moves ahead. A seemingly deliberate choice of cold-blooded animals for characters nauseates you until the story slowly starts to grip you.

I won’t indulge into the actual narrative as they are the inevitable hands which will hold you throughout the duration of 107 minutes.

There is nothing new about the story. It is a classical ‘underdog eventually turns into a big dog’ story. Rango, a domesticated lizard, aspires to become a hero without leaving the comforts he has. A classic case of a common man who visualizes only the glory part and conveniently forgets the struggle up to it. So he has a plot ready to glorify himself…all in the confines of the luxury and security of a glass chamber…never imagining or wanting to get out and actually live it. But then what’s the fun when everything turns out the way you want it…where is the fun without conflict…and incomes a conflict, dressed and served hot and dry…

A dime of an accident throws Rango off his owner’s car in the middle of a desert. He finds himself in the ‘struggle matrix’ of the journey. This is where the film hits you….BANG...not that it is unpredictable…but the moment Rango touches down (crash lands actually) you start feeling uneasy, wondering ‘What is he going to do now? And how?’

Personally it touched me in an eerie way. It played a loud alarm for a lousy soul like me who just plans and don’t do anything about it. It gives a kick to people like me who believe that they will start living their dreams but tomorrow onwards. It is a punch in face for people like me who want to taste success without failure…whose sense of purpose gradually changes to just dreaming from living the dream….and BANG…you suddenly find yourself challenged by your own dream, staring down at you…wanting you to embrace it…live it…and there you are…incapable of living up to yourself…feeling naked and ashamed in front of your own dream…blanking out…looking for directions to fulfil your own dream…thinking ‘What am I going to do now? And how?’

Rango’s blanked out mind gets a direction from an armadillo who asks him to find water in an almost dead town called Dirt.

Like a stranger in his own plot Rango tries hard to be the hero of his own story. Pretentiously brave, geographically challenged, expectation wise overburdened....not ready for anything mentioned above makes Rango a rickety scaffolding, trying to hold his own not so small, dream-fort.

A chain of events slowly bring down the veil off our so called hero…exposing him as ‘just a good for nothing Chameleon.’….the dream seems to fade out of eyes slowly...and the eyes asserting never to dream…never-ever…and I personally feel that is the moment when a hero is born or buried…

A hero which harbours on the failures and humiliation…which feeds on the negative energy to recoil…and which never shies to look up to his own hero when in trouble…a virtue which rises when it seems dead and buried...a hero who might not have the heart to hit hard, but definitely has a heart to stand up, over and over, again and again, every time he is hit hard….

So Rango rises. Takes a short but crisp jab at the current scenario of urbanization, makes a short work of his detractor and wins the girl…to live happily ever after.

The humour in the film is aptly dry. No highlighting, after pause laughters…no loud expressions…a different kind of, matter of factly humor which goes with the situations in the film.

For the choice of repulsive animals for characters, the deliberate effort eventually makes sense as it reflects the one within each of us whom we don’t want to touch…whom we are repelled off…whom we don’t want to face…but as the film nears end you are in love with the characters…may be a sign of accepting yourselves as you are…may be an urge to touch your imperfect self…maybe an itch to be a hero through it…

For me Rango is a superhero film which is oxymoronically repulsively enjoyable. One of the rare films which justify the Oscar nomination and victory!!