Review of film CARGO |
This week will see a number of films released on the digital platform, among them is debutante director Arati Kadav`s homegrown science-fiction CARGO. The film was picked up by Netflix after it was played at SXSW and MAMI festivals. It is an innovative but inert mashup of Eastern ideas and Western storytelling. CARGO is a film that explores themes such as reincarnation, or rather the corporatization of reincarnation and caste, all coated in a layer of slick modern science-fiction. In a film industry that has mostly stayed away from the genre, CARGO could feel massively derivative to certain audiences. Vikrant Massey`s character, a `rakshasa` named Prahastha, is having the same sort of existential crisis that was slowly consuming Sam Rockwell`s miner in Duncan Jones` film. For decades, Prahastha has been stationed in a spaceship, where he readies recently deceased people for rebirth. He goes about his job with rigid precision as he attends to his `cargo`. He projects himself as a lone wolf but the arrival of the youthful Yuvishka played by Shweta Tripathi brings new energy not only to Prahastha`s life but also to the film, which in its attempts to portray monotony had become slightly monotonous itself. Tripathi is an effortlessly endearing actor, and her character is a nice foil to Massey`s more stoic veteran.
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