Well, yaaaay! A very very well-made movie! It even got applause at the theater I was at when it ended. I love movies like that, where you can just sit back and admire the craftsmanship.

And then there’s Amrita Singh. I am loving her second act, taking all those juicy juicy older woman parts that are a little more than mothers. Her character has to be aggressively average, and yet memorable. A tricky balance to pull off. Amrita does it, dresses herself down completely, turns herself into a dowdy older British housewife, but keeps the snap in her eyes and the confidence in her stare that make her memorable, just like when she was young.

Taapsee is the final piece of the star puzzle. I feel bad for her, she is stuck aggressively underplaying for all but 5 minutes of the film. But she does her job, and she makes the most of those 5 minutes when she has more to do. It’s just kind of a thankless job, stuck alternating between sharing screen space with Amitabh, and playing the whimpering damsel in distress in flashback. But on the other hand, she gets loads of screentime, more than anyone else including Amitabh, and I appreciate that they cast a talented actress who has earned this chance in a role that could have been played by anyone. Speaking of nepotism, every single cast member in this film came into the movies as an outsider! That’s something, huh?

The main three roles are the most important part of the film, everything builds off of those performances, but the rest of the movie is great. As for the rest of the cast, it’s a nice mixture of British and Indian actors, none of them super famous, none of them newcomers. Manav Kaul was the only one I really recognized, thanks to Tumhari Sulu, and he did an expectedly good job with his smallish role. The filming is top notch, cinematographer is perfect, editing is low-key fancy (lots of little edits like showing a handbag slam on a table and then a chair pull out), background music is invisible, it’s all beautiful. The script is good too, although I’m not sure how much credit to give it since it is a remake. There are some nice Indian touches, the way the Mahabharata is woven in and out for instance, and there is a gender message that is flipped into it in a really interesting way with the recasting. Plus, of course, Amitabh. Really, I cannot imagine any other actor bringing the pathos and depth to this purposefully calm and unemotional performance.