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director – Arati Kadav
To emit – Vikrant Massey, Shweta Tripathi
First-time director Arati Kadav’s homegrown sci-fi film Cargo, picked up by Netflix after playing on SXSW and MAMI, is an innovative yet inert mix of Eastern ideas and Western storytelling. Like Masaan through Moon, Cargo is a film that explores themes such as reincarnation (or, more accurately, the corporatization of reincarnation) and caste, all clad in a sleek, modern sci-fi cloak.
But while it may seem refreshingly original here, in an industry that has mostly stayed away from the genre, Cargo could feel hugely derivative to certain audiences. Moon, for example, is a film whose influence can be felt in practically every scene. Vikrant Massey’s character, a ‘rakshasa’ named Prahastha, is experiencing the same kind of existential crisis that slowly consumed Sam Rockwell’s miner in Duncan Jones’ film.
Watch the Cargo trailer here
For decades, Prahastha has been stationed in a spaceship, preparing recently deceased people for rebirth. He does his job with stiff precision as he tends to his ‘load’ – men and women who generally reel under the impact of being killed – almost like an Apple store technician working on a used MacBook, or an impassive doctor attending to your patients.
But Prahastha is neither a computer scientist nor a doctor. If anything, he was a sad idiot trapped in a ‘sarkari naukri’. For company, he has another ‘rakshasa’, a middle-aged uncle named Nitigya, with whom he talks via a CRT monitor. But things take an unexpected turn when Nitigya tells Prahastha that he will be joined by an assistant soon. Prahastha protests. It is, as it has been projecting for more than seven decades, a lone wolf.
The arrival of the young Yuvishka (Shweta Tripathi) brings a new energy not only to Prahastha’s life, but also to the film, which in its attempts to portray monotony had become a bit drab. Tripathi is an effortlessly endearing actress, and her character is a nice contrast to Massey’s more stoic veteran.
Shweta Tripathi and Vikrant Massey in a still from Cargo.
Loneliness in outer space, as an idea, is so ripe for drama that filmmakers can’t help but return to it every two years, it seems. And while few will ever be able to get anywhere near 2001: a space odyssey or Solaris, the recent Ad Astra and even Prometheus made some clever observations about loneliness.
But while Michael Fassbender’s android in Ridley Scott’s film had the time and curiosity to contemplate his place in the universe, the fact that Prahastha is a demon doesn’t really add to him as a person in Charge. It is the equivalent of changing the ethnicity of a character, but without their ethnicity having any impact on the plot. If the ultimate goal is to suggest that even mythological creatures are capable of feeling human emotion, then Prahastha, frankly, should have been more fantastic to begin with. Here, he basically looks like Vikrant Massey. No pointy ears or anything.
Kadav also seems to have been inspired by the comics. There’s an attempt to build a world that, while clumsy in execution, reminded me of Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ brilliant Saga comic series. Tradition, however, only weighs the film. Did Cargo really need dumps from regular expositions on human-demon diplomacy? Perhaps, if the information could have added something to the plot. An excuse to talk about capitalism or class, perhaps? But as it is, it only adds to the confusion. If demons have superpowers similar to the X-Men, why do some of them still do menial jobs? Why have they not yet mastered human beings or taken over the world? they are demons, right? How can Prahastha be a legend on Earth and yet go unnoticed by every deceased person when they come face to face?
Also Read: I Am A Mother Movie Review: Has Netflix Found The New Christopher Nolan? Hilary Swank thinks so
The problem with Cargo is that it gets too bogged down by self-imposed liability to break up its audience. There is a feeling that Kadav is pulling his punches so as not to alienate the viewers, while he should have thrown them deep. end and relied on them to swim to the surface. But with that said, not many filmmakers (or actors) would have the courage to try something like this at all. Perhaps now that the heavy load has been delivered, you can approach your next film with more confidence. I hope that.
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The author tweets @RohanNaahar
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