Cast: Vikrant Massey, Shweta Tripathi, Nandu Madhav, Konkana Sen Sharma, Ritwik Bhowmik, Rohan Shah, Biswapati Sarkar, Hansal Mehta, Anjum Rajabali
The cycle of life and death continues, and the pandemic somehow brought us closer to that confrontation that nothing is in fact permanent in life. Cargo, the very recently released on Netflix focusing on the genre sci-fi meets myth will make you think as you’ve never thought before.
When I first met Prahastha, the rakshas astronaut of Pushpak 634 A, I realised how comfortable one can become with loneliness and how a bubble of happiness can come in and cause some disturbance in the beginning but later make someone get used to it.
Cargo is not your usual sci-fi or a movie purely based on mythology. In fact, it is an amalgamation of both of these genres in a way that you’re bound to remain hooked to this movie. It reminds you of the fact that life and death are a cycle, and there’s no avoiding it. The movie also smashes the concept of heaven and hell, since everyone who dies visits the post-death transition spaceship and gets prepared for the next life.
Watching Vikrant Massey spend an entire lifespan and him being so comfortable around his life in Pushpak 34 A will make you remind of the many a times that you may have befriended loneliness and in fact, gotten used to it. He didn’t have a lot to play within his role, but the way he carried the entire movie in that confined spaceship is commendable.
He’s not your usual man who loves melancholy but in fact, finds a new way of life when Yuvishka Shekhar enters his spaceship and adds life to it. Special mention to Shweta Tripathi who has proved that age is just a number and played the role of a college graduate with ease. You cannot tell that she for real is a 36-year-old woman because she looks nothing older than a girl in her early twenties.
Tripathi brings life to the movie in ways which sort of fill the holes of the emptiness that Vikrant’s character portrays. The way she interacts with the dead shows that she’s more human than any of us.
Nandu Madhav as Nitigya, the space agent is an anecdote that the movie needs. Konkana Sen Sharma steals those 5 minutes of the screen space effortlessly as her role of Mandakini, Prahastha’s lost love interest.
Arati Kadav, the director and the writer of Cargo has taken us into a world which we had never seen before. The world of demon agents who prepare us for the afterlife as part of the human rakshas treaty. The way she’s woven this story into a tragically beautiful piece with just the right amount of comedy is something that did take my breath away. A stellar story which introduces us to the uncomfortable truth of life and death, and sort of makes it all comfortable in the end.
I would give nothing less than 4.5 stars to this newly released gem on Netflix. If you haven’t seen it, please do yourself a favour and watch it.
