Review: Kranti Kanade’s “CRD” is the year’s most curious and frustrating work.

[May contain spoilers, many of them.]

A sack is held up. A man orders a group of fledgling actors to toss in their cellphones and keys. A moment later, another man walks in. He's the important fellow; he looks calm. The group is noticeably nervous. He singles out a woman from the group and stares hard at her breasts. The hopeful look on her face when she saw him fades and slowly gives way to insecurity. She's suddenly very aware of his gaze. He notices this and chides her. If she wants to be an actor, he says, she has got to get used to this. He adds that there will be men who will gaze at her the way he did and maybe masturbate at the thought of her later on. Insecurity over how a person looks at them is a trait of a bad actor – if they ever become one, that is.

It's one of the early scenes in Kranti Kanade's CRD. The language is coarse; the execution, fearless; and the ideas, boggling. It's rare and refreshing to see an Indian film rejecting the imply-but-do-not-show approach that many Indian filmmakers choose to take in order to make their film more consumable. Kanade is barely interested. His approach is more immersive, more tangible. The camera never leaves the actors, never observes them from a distance but through tight close-ups. We are very much there. It's a captivating experience, even when it becomes too surreal, too uncomfortable. For every single minute of its 108-minute runtime, CRD risks revolting the conservative viewer with its daring.

On a more personal note, I cherish such films unless they are daring for the sake of being daring. In recent years, India has nourished an ecosystem where independent cinema can thrive, and this has resulted in passionate filmmakers making passionate films on paltry budgets. But a more personal grouch is that some of these films are visibly eager to shock and be spoken about. It affects the experience, because it feels, to me, contrived. I like watching risks being taken, and there is no greater thrill when the filmmakers pull it off, but if these risks are simply to ensure the film will be spoken about later, I would not categorize it as great cinema.

CRD, thankfully, avoids this.

The teacher employs a number of tricks to get this group get in touch with their emotional side. He likes to break them down so that they can bring a raw and realized quality to the play. This involves talking about their most tragic experiences, discouraging them without mincing words (he tells a budding actress she’s so unattractive that the best role she might snag would be of a female cop), even fornicating with their mothers. This does not sit well with our protagonist, a newbie to this environment of the cutthroat inter-college theater competition prep and an accidental one at that. He actually wants to be a writer. But they have writers. They need actors. Ta-da.

Using the competition as a background, CRD examines the artistic process very closely and how it sometimes brings out the worst in people. It is a product of rigorous filmmaking, superb performances and at times incredible imagination. It is also quite a bit of fun. But, surprising for a film of such energy, it is an exhausting picture. Kanade, an FTII and UCLA alum, likes to pay his tributes. Which is why, I guess, CRD assumes the appearance of a film that tries to do a lot in such a short span of time. In places we are led to believe that it has almost decided to be a certain kind of film with a certain kind of appeal, but it surprises us by being something entirely different. In one scene it’s accessible, within our grasp, but in the next, it ends up being surreal, freeing itself from it.

These shifts in tone rarely come across as jarring. Because Kanade is a superior filmmaker, and CRD’s biggest pleasures stem from how it jumps from one exciting scene to the next, from one idea to the next. I would be lying if I said that these elements – well written independent scenes interspersed with brief animated sequences and often inscrutable ones – work together as one. They don’t. They can, and do, get frustrating. But how can one accuse a film of trying too hard when it rarely tosses in a dull image or idea? 

It is commendable for a film that experiments as much as CRD does with its narrative to not lose focus from its central characters. For the teacher, winning is everything, even if it means writing a manipulative play on patriotism, where two Indian soldiers try to coax information from a female Pakistani spy without harassing her physically because they are Indian, and playing the national anthem in the end to drive his point home. For the protagonist, opportunity is everything, even if it means stealing the limelight with, should we say, not entirely ethical means. Their character arcs are developed with great restraint. The teacher, though a formidable opponent, is moved by art. The protagonist, though sincere with a more idealistic perspective toward art, abuses it at one point. It’s an interesting point to explore, which CRD, in its final moments, does with quiet success.

Ultimately, the film we get is as brave as it is frustrating, as weird as it is exhilarating. I am not sure I will watch it a second time. I do not feel it is necessary, for I do not have a reason to. All I know is, I am not likely to forget it anytime soon, for reasons both good and bad.

(Not For Reproduction)

Review: Amit V Masurkar’s “Newton” is that rare satire that gets it right.

[May contain spoilers, many of them.]

The most telling line, in a movie full of telling lines and telling images, comes about twenty minutes into Amit V Masurkar’s Newton. At four in the morning, amidst pitch darkness, a team of armymen and government officials prepare for an eight-kilometer trek to a school where an election will be held. Bulletproof vests are slipped into, guns are kept at ready. (The CPRF officer, Aatma Singh, cannot emphasize enough on how ‘dangerous’ the area is; at one point, he makes the group a most unusual offer: that his men will brave the forests and go to the villages to get votes from eligible voters instead of the whole team doing it in a more democratic way.)

We see a woman walking up to them. She is a local, we find out; there to ensure that no city-educated, Hindi-speaking (the local language is Gondi), gun-cradling individual can mislead the locals into voting or, more likely, not voting. Her name is Malko. Aatma Singh is at once vigilant. He asks her for identification, which she has, but he asks her to return. Newton’s, the protagonist, way of introduction is friendlier; he smiles and welcomes her with a traditional namaste. Aatma Singh is dour. He accepts Newton’s request of allowing her to come along (though he clearly does not seem to be too happy about it) and orders his men to give her a bulletproof vest, too. Only she does not want it. ‘I am a local,’ says Malko. ‘I will be in greater danger if I wear one.’

It’s a marvelous line. It is that moment, one of the many in this film, where optimism and skepticism clash and the results are for everyone to see. Her understanding of this region has been conditioned by its political turmoil and years of violence, so she knows exactly how someone will react upon seeing her wearing one of those ‘government’ vests. She feels safer without it.

The other side of the same coin is Aatma Singh. He, too, has been conditioned to expect the worst. There’s a hint of distrust in the way he looks at her and speaks to her. But it’s not his fault. He’s passionate about his country and his boys; he wishes for a fatter budget so that the government can buy better weapons for them.

In the middle is Newton. An idealist and do-gooder through and through, Newton’s understanding of the world lies in the pages of his copy of the election manual. Both the woman and CPRF officer, inform him on more than one occasion that he doesn’t understand this region; while his intentions may be noble and his sincerity hard to rival, he’s far removed from the world they are accustomed to. His determination is childlike because he doesn’t understand, or maybe because he’s ignoring the hard truths. The film is, in a way, Newton’s introduction to his own country, a country he wants to protect and serve but one that won’t let him.

The Maoists have asked for a complete boycott of the elections. There is a looming threat of an attack. Every crack of a branch, every rustle of leaves is a cause for alarm. Newton, accompanied by two colleagues and Malko, and the CPRF officer and his team, has to conduct a fair election. The total number of eligible voters is seventy-six. Most of them are illiterate and unfamiliar with the voting process, partly because nobody really cared about their votes till now and partly because they never really cared.

But Newton wants to change that. He wants them to vote of their own accord. And not just that: he wants them to vote for the candidate they want to see as their leader. Without oppression or threats, like it should happen in a proper democracy. It’s far from simple. When he explains to them how an electronic voting machine works and rattles off the list of names of the candidates, Malko helpfully steps in to illuminate him about how things are. These people have never heard of these names before. They do not know the parties they represent. Or the promises they have made. How could they possibly know whom to vote for? When they push a man from their group forward saying he is their politician and leader, Newton is more bemused than amused. That’s not how a democracy functions. But again, have they ever been part of a democracy?

And therein lies the beauty of Newton. It asks these questions which, at a time when political discourse has been reduced to babel, qualify as brave. The approach isn't accusatory but shrewd; it's almost miraculous how the makers get away with it. Masurkar and his co-screenwriter Mayank Tewari aren’t really interested in exploring Newton’s disillusionment with the system. Newton isn’t readily made a hero of nor is Aatma Singh made a villain; they are both right in their own ways, and we get their agitation. Both have flawed ideologies. Both have been caught in the crossfire between the government and communists. And both have now found themselves in the same boat.

The film does seem to pit them against each other too often, given how Aatma Singh always seems to patronize locals, which Newton disapproves of. But this film isn’t about who wins between the two of them; they are simply cogs in a much larger machine. It’s about a bigger war being fought in the background, which we never see, and how innocent civilians are inevitably sucked into it. It’s a film that concerns itself less with the big problems and more with the consequences they have.

Newton works, as it should, due to its remarkable writing. With its roots firmly in the satirical territory, it allows us the luxury to laugh at certain things that one would only laugh at in a satire. But beneath the humor there is truth, stinging and uncomfortable, making us squirm. There is poignancy. In a particularly vivid scene, the villagers are grabbed from their homes and herded to the polling booth (the scene wisely crosscuts between that and a chicken getting caught and killed) because a foreign journalist wishes to get a piece of the election pie on tape. The façade is captured on camera and peddled as ‘democracy’ and ‘development’. The metaphor of the chicken couldn’t be more obvious, but it works.

Newton falters a little in the film’s third act when our protagonist, in a desperate bid to do the right thing, does something totally outrageous. It’s handled lightheartedly, making Newton come off as a Gandhian hero more than anything, but sometimes subtlety cannot be the answer. Something less theatrical would have worked beautifully here. Still, it is hardly a blot on an otherwise darn impressive film. The country moves on, as do our characters, in the same flimsy, flawed way it always has. But I could not resist feeling that the characters belong elsewhere. Maybe if Newton and Aatma Singh would have put their determination to use in better circumstances, we would have been better off.

(Not For Reproduction)

Review: Shankar Ramen’s “Gurgaon” is a promising work that wobbles near the end.

[Contains spoilers, many of them.]

The most fascinating aspect of Shankar Ramen’s directorial debut, Gurgaon, is its examination of how violence shapes its characters. In a scene at a pub, just before a full-fledged brawl is about to break out on the crowded dance floor, a man, instead of hitting the other, punches the woman he’s dancing with. The woman is understandably traumatized by the incident and wants to leave, but her companion begs her to stay. She doesn’t. In a later scene, he’s in a bathtub with a prostitute in a seedy hotel. Given his reaction to the incident (he batters the other man until he is stopped), we might have thought he is someone who doesn’t like violence to be perpetrated against women. But, unfazed, without batting an eye and without warning, he suffocates the prostitute with a picture of the other woman. We were clearly mistaken.

It does not end here. In a flashback, his father is about to commit murder by taking a pickaxe to his victim. When the axe is brought down in a rather dreadful moment, the father’s blood-caked face carries the same stony determination as his son’s. It’s an interesting moment; it’s the coming-of-age of both father and son in two different eras, but both through murder.

In many ways the characters of Kehri Singh and his son, Nikki, are similar. Kehri Singh is a man who made his bones by killing his kin and grabbing land that did not fully belong to him; Nikki is someone who wishes to do the same. He wants his adopted sister, Preet, clearly the apple of her father’s eye, out of the way. He yearns to become a somebody but he lacks the education and magnetism. She is more sophisticated and measured, letting out secrets to only those she absolutely trusts. He is reckless, craving for a place in the spotlight; she wants to stay out of it. He wants to open an upscale gym on his father’s property, but she casually points out that he got the spelling of ‘powerhouse’ wrong in the pamphlet he made as a sales pitch to his father. He has everything, but he has nothing too. So he spends most of his time driving around with his younger brother and his friend, betting on cricket matches and visiting pubs. His sister, an architect by qualification, spends this time working on a massive real estate project for her father in her office on the property Nikki wanted for his gym.

If Gurgaon’s real estate is a big pie, then Kehri Singh has the biggest piece. The very invocation of his name is enough to seal deals; in one particularly revealing scene, Nikki is about to bet a large amount, but the bookie only accepts his bet when his friend mentions his father. Nikki is living in his father’s shadow and he is looking for ways to get out of it.

This is not the first time a family as dysfunctional and volatile as this has been brought to the Indian screen. We last saw one such family in Kanu Behl’s terrific Titli, a tale about a family of carjackers with tempers who eke out a living by committing petty crimes. Gurgaon's family is wealthier, but they understand violence. The women are rational; the men unreadable, forever in pursuit of power.

And then there’s Gurgaon itself. But in this case it’s not the place that makes the men who they are; it’s the men that make the place what it is. Ramen’s bleak realization of the place lends it an alluring quality. It has a shiny surface but a murky underside. There are people who have everything, and there are also those who have nothing. In one scene, a man who has been hired to kidnap Preet inspects the layout of her project and asks her how she intends to supply the property with water. In an earlier scene, that same man stood in a long queue for water that was brought to his neighborhood in a tanker. It’s an ironic moment where the two worlds within Gurgaon collide in the dark; Preet imagines an upmarket park where the rich will haves their homes and offices, but she encounters a man who thinks progress means a steady supply of water, nothing more.

Like Titli, Gurgaon explores the themes of patriarchy and ambition, and how violence irreversibly seeps into the lives of its characters. Then there’s the violence that none of the main characters inflict, but it’s very much part of the lives of Gurgaon’s residents. In a deeply unsettling scene, we see a tollbooth attendant being taunted with a can of beer. The perpetrator’s face is never seen nor is the attendant’s. A minute later, the hand that carried the can of beer brings out a gun and fires. The killing is as cold as it is impulsive. Ramen uses it to give his world a certain mood. Anything can happen. And ‘anything’ does.

The central characters are developed beautifully. We are revolted by their actions, but are also eager to know what they will do next. Ramen doesn’t oversimplify things; he gives us enough time and background to unravel them ourselves. Nikki doesn’t like the fact that his adopted sister, whom he leaves no opportunity to remind came from a ‘gutter’, will be the heir to their father’s empire. He believes that he’s entitled to that fortune. And as time passes, he finds it increasingly difficult to control his overblown ego. He ticks off a guy who dared to touch his sister. It’s not out of love for her; he simply cannot accept that someone doesn’t fear him enough, as people usually do his father.

Gurgaon slips just when the story needed tidying up. Had it ended fifteen minutes earlier, it would have been a much, much better film. Alas, it doesn’t. It goes on, twisting the story and hammering it out of shape. A character-driven mood piece would have made more sense, and one would have believed it was slowly inching toward it, but Ramen brings the familiar urgency of a thriller to the last fifteen minutes of a film that was, for a large part, a quiet examination of what greed does to the power-hungry. As a result, it leaves us with a feeling that we may have seen this before, and it’s a disappointing feeling. I expected more, but in this case, less.

But it doesn’t take away from the fact that Gurgaon is a stellar debut. With its world-weary characters who have cynicism for a companion, how gently tension is handled here, and an eye for atmospherics, it makes a strong case for the talent of its cast and crew.

[Not For Reproduction]

Review: Konkana Sen Sharma’s “A Death in the Gunj” is melancholic and graceful.

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

The worst feeling is the world is feeling inferior to a bunch of loathsome people. We know they are neither as talented as we are nor as likable; yet things worked out well for them. Luck favored them when it really mattered. They can now afford to look pontifical. We, on the other hand, are kicking around in the dark in search for that evasive first step on the ladder of success.

Shutu, the protagonist of Konkana Sen Sharma’s affecting A Death in the Gunj, has completely lost sight of that first step. But he hasn’t told anyone yet; it’s one of the many things he keeps to himself, lets it nibble away at his self-confidence. His father recently breathed his last, and he has abandoned his mother to join his cousin on a trip to McCluskiegunj, where he can grieve in peace. He has also failed his final exams. Shutu’s psychological state is anybody’s guess; however, he is putting up a brave front. He greets his aunt with a smile. Everyone gets a smile from him. Hiding behind it is a boy who has been is forced by death to become a man. He is struggling to deal with this change and the responsibilities that come with it.

Watching Sen Sharma’s delicately drawn debut, I was reminded for a brief period of Francois Truffaut’s masterful The 400 Blows. Its protagonist, too, was as misunderstood and troubled as Shutu. People don’t understand Shutu or care about him; he’s always sitting away from everyone, shy and reluctant, unless a game or an activity requires more people to be present. Only then does he get noticed and called. When the aunt is out of custard, he is asked to go inside the house to fetch some. Or a shawl left on a chair. He is a pitiful figure, a misfit among adults, and he belongs to a world where innocence is too precious to be squashed by people who do not know the value of it. But Shutu is trying hard to belong to a place where cruel pranks are played on him without so much as a second thought.

To her credit, Sen Sharma does splendidly. She reveals her characters one by one, careful to let us get a good idea of how they are with the others and then with Shutu. We have the pompous and popular Vikram, the tactful Nandu, the collected Brian, the poised Bonnie, Nandu and Bonnie’s eight-year-old daughter Tani, and finally the devil-may-care Mimi. We also have Nandu’s parents who understand that the children now need to be by themselves.

Then, the illicit relationships are revealed. Vikram and Mimi go back a long way, and a blind eye is turned to when the now-married Vikram gets too cosy with Mimi in public. The group also regularly spurns their helps, doing little to make them feel comfortable. Unwittingly the helps also become targets, albeit not as frequently as Shutu, of the group’s whims. When they run out of hooch, the group thinks it’s wise to plan a midnight invasion into their helps’ shack for some. They think it’s wise to force them out of their routine to play an impromptu game of kabaddi. Sen Sharma doesn’t linger on these details longer than is necessary. A brief shot of the helps silently having dinner on New Year’s Eve, where a dog belonging to Tani eats out of their plates, is especially revealing. While the group in their fineries revel inside, drinking expensive liquor and eating out of expensive china, just a few yards away people are still struggling to put food on their plates. Sen Sharma reveals how each character is capable of getting in touch with their dark side in a split second and subtly hints at how this can affect the overly sensitive.

But the relationship central to the plot is that between Vikram and Shutu. Vikram is a hothead, the guy who loves being the attention-hogger at gatherings, and he routinely heckles Shutu. The three most dramatic bits in the film – a round of planchette, a game of kabbaddi, a sudden disappearance – all end with Shutu’s mental state worsening. It’s us who know this because the camera loyally stays with him – the adults are oblivious to what they are doing to the boy.

But what impressed me most was how emphatically and thoughtfully Sen Sharma writes the character of Shutu. He isn’t infallible like most Hindi film heroes; he’s flawed in his own way. When Mimi begins paying him some attention, he is taken by it. He abandons his closest companion, his niece Tani, for a quiet afternoon with her. It’s clear that Mimi considers their ‘affair’ nothing more than a drunken mistake, but for Shutu it means the world, a way to regain his lost dignity. Secretly, he dreams of getting back at Vikram, and Mimi is the path he chooses to take. He has a dark side albeit one that isn’t fully developed yet.

If there was something that resembled a flaw in A Death in the Gunj, it would be its shocker of a climax. We see a vintage gun hanging on the wall of the house earlier in the film, and we know that it might, and will, go off at some point, maybe during its denouement, and it does. The question is, who would be at the end of it? It’s disappointing to see that, just for a split second, A Death in the Gunj becomes a different film. We expect it to sweep us off our feet like it’s been doing for the most part, but the film, while concluding on an emotional note, leaves us wanting more. It’s not the best way to part with a film one very much liked till that point. However, at the same time, I cannot imagine a more fitful conclusion.

In the end, as I left my seat, my thoughts drifted back to the first line of the film. “Maybe we should bend the knees and put the body in a foetal position,” one man quietly says to the other, who nods. It’s a sharp line; a dead body now rests in the womb of a car, like a foetus. The men finally see the dead man for who he was: a baby, someone they should have gone easy on. We don’t know if they realize that. Maybe they do. It’s something hinted that, not spelled out. Perhaps that’s why the film stays with us.

[Not For Reproduction]

Review: Vikramditya Motwane’s “Trapped” is an impressive minimalist drama.

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

The film’s title appears on screen when a shy guy on his first date with the woman he loves is about to react to the news that she is getting married in two days. He is shocked, but she doesn’t discourage him; her eyes twinkle mischievously. The timing couldn’t be more appropriate. He is literally trapped; he has to win her over if he wants to be with her. It means finding an apartment in Mumbai in two days, because evidently space matters to her.

I have lived in Mumbai all my life and I know what a nightmare that could be. Finding an apartment takes weeks, months even. He has two days. He tries to work out a deal with several real-estate agents but none of them like the sound of his budget. Finally, and now slightly desperate, he agrees to deal with one shady guy. It’s an apartment on the 35th floor of a high-rise, overlooking the vast, sprawling, intimidating city. On his first visit, he notices that the house has problems. The shady guy reveals that the apartment doesn’t belong to him; it belongs to someone else, some Javed bhai. But it doesn’t matter to him. He has managed to find an apartment. The first hurdle has been crossed, so to speak.

It’s easy to place ourselves in the shoes of the protagonist, Shaurya, whom we see in Trapped. He’s the everyday nobody, an unremarkable, scrawny chap who enjoys pav-bhaji slathered in butter and trusts blindly when anxious. He stutters while speaking to the girl. He forgets to reason with her when she demands that they move into a bigger apartment. He doesn’t leave his house without bowing in front of a framed picture of a god, and this habit finally costs him. He gets locked inside his new house without food, water and electricity.

On paper the idea must sound quite ridiculous. How can someone living in a populous metropolis be stranded? Wrestling for personal space is something everyone does everyday here. But Vikramaditya Motwane is no ordinary filmmaker. He’s thoughtful, observant, and knows how to work with details. He constructs the scene where Shaurya gets locked in carefully. The lock always remains jammed. The electricity circuit trips without warning. We see this when Shaurya visits the apartment for the first time, an omen of sorts. The watchman is half deaf, the building crummy, thus eliminating the possibilities of other residents, and the apartment is on the 35th floor. When Shaurya tries to hammer, kick, punch, yell his way out, we get an idea of how helpless he really is. There is really nobody coming.

This has been seen before, most memorably in Robert Zemeckis’ Castaway, but never in a Hindi film. Motwane doesn’t focus on the heroics of Shaurya but instead on how this predicament takes a toll on his physical and mental health. Shaurya, shy and timid, tries and fails, picks himself up, fights his fear of rats, and finds himself at his most resourceful when he’s thirsty and the city, surprising as it usually is, blesses him with a welcome shower. He thinks of ways to get people to notice him. He lights a fire, makes a slingshot, tries to find a means to escape. His coming-of-age, from a timid guy who was comfortable in a crowd to someone willing to steer his destiny, is the defining moment of the film, and it is rousing.

Like in the two films Motwane has made previously, the detailing is careful. If Mumbai is the villain of Trapped, then it’s certainly the most complex one in recent memory. It consumes Shaurya whole, breaks him, but also helps him up when he’s down. It’s omnipresent. When Shaurya looks out of his balcony at the twinkling lights of the city, it seems as if the city is staring back at him, in the eye. When he sits silently, the sounds of traffic and construction work can be heard in the distance. Freedom is within his reach, but the city is unwilling to give it to him without a fight, without making him work for it first.

And then there is a recurrent detail involving a cockroach. When Shaurya wakes up to fight to survive for another day, he sees the cockroach first. It is like him, fighting to survive another day, not knowing which mountain needs to be scaled next. It’s in details like these that we realize we are in the hands of a terrific filmmaker who knows his job all too well.

There are problems with one-character films like Trapped and they are not limited to the narrative only. On one hand, they can get repetitive and dull fairly quickly, and might even seem overlong even when they are actually brief. If the actor portraying the role slips up only once, the whole film might come crashing down. On the other hand, we need to be convinced of the protagonist’s predicament. At least I need to know that there is no way out for him. Unless I am convinced, I cannot fully invest my attention in his fight for freedom. Trapped has a few errors in its logic, and certain developments in its story seems a little too contrived. There is also a brief period during which it gets repetitive. These are characteristics of most one-man films out there, and it’s unfortunate that Trapped, too, is a victim of them.

Of course, I am in a privileged position to pinpoint where it goes wrong. To imagine it all and to tell it the way it has been told is not an easy job. I realize that. Motwane does a fine, fine job of letting the plot unfold organically. Trapped overcomes its narrative challenges and Rajkummar Rao, who plays Shaurya, is absolutely terrific in it. It’s that rare film that belongs as much to its director as it does to its actor. It’s unfair that we get to see a film from him once in about four years. There’s a silent ten-minute epilogue at the end that is a masterly touch. If that doesn’t make one believe in Motwane’s talent, I don’t know what does.

(Not For Reproduction)

Review: Subhash Kapoor’s “Jolly LLB 2” is a farce that goes on for too long.

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

An evil police inspector is in the witness box, about to face questions from the earnest and determined prosecution. He's calm, but the glint in his eye is menacing. Clearly he is a staple character in a simplistic Hindi film that wants to win over its audience, and for that it takes the liberty of overlooking logic in a few places. I know this because only in such a film can one find the defendant sullen when he is asked to step into the witness box, as if he didn’t expect it.

The prosecution begins with his questions, but the defendant cuts him off by murmuring a threat. In a court of law, in front of judges, lawyers, people.

Yes, this must be a Hindi film. I have no reason to suspect otherwise. The defendant has no respect for the judicial system. The lawyer doesn’t step back; he comes up with his own smart-alecky reply. We have seen this before. In a carelessly-written exchange in Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Pink, the bad guy mutters, “You don’t know who you are talking to,” through gritted teeth to the defendants’ lawyer while under questioning. For how long will baddies in Hindi courtroom-dramas be written so loosely, I wonder. They are not complex individuals. They are one-note villains whose only job is to be as evil as they can so that our virtuous heroes can get the better of them in the rousing climax for the sake of catharsis. Makes for a rather dull watch, I say.

Neither sharp enough for a satire, nor taut enough for a courtroom-drama, nor as insightful as the film it thinks it is, Subhash Kapoor's Jolly LLB 2 is a farce that goes on for too long. It is a sequel – was it really necessary to make one? – to a modest if flawed film that won us over by its sincerity. But that sincerity is lacking this time around. It’s far more ambitious, with more focus on the absurdities that are seen in an Indian court of law everyday, but so insipid is its approach that it eventually becomes a poorly conceived attempt at satire.

I have always believed that the opening scene says a lot about what kind of film the makers wished to make. In Jolly LLB 2, the answers to an English exam are revealed over a loudspeaker by a sly gent who knows how to go about doing business with slyer people. It’s an absurd scene but one that is also undeniably amusing. (I fervently hoped watching it that the film won’t end up being a hodgepodge of farce and melodrama, which is exactly what it ends up being.) Jolly a.k.a., Jagdishwar Mishra grinds away in the office of a reputed lawyer everyday, barely wringing more respect than a common peon, and dreams of starting his own practice. He has a wife and son whom we don’t see much of. He has an old father who wants to see him succeed. He’s somehow making ends meet.

And herein lies the film’s first problem. What kind of a man is this Jolly? What makes him tick? Ambition? Wanting to make his father proud? Provide a better life for his wife and son? We are not told. The film treats them as secondary characters, using them to mine drama for tears. They vanish for long periods of time and magically reappear in the film’s more dramatic bits. We do not get to understand them, empathise with them. Nor Jolly. We are forced to think he's pleasant and honest because he has a smile permanently stuck on his face and notices the ones who are really in need of help in the crowd. We don't get to see him do something that earns our affection for him. It's puzzling. What good can come from a film whose lead character is such a mystery and its villain so run-of-the-mill?

Jolly bungles up in a big way. The pregnant widow of a man killed in a fake encounter commits suicide when she becomes disillusioned with the world and with him, and he blames himself. It compels him to study her case, to fight her fight for her. It’s interesting to see a commercial film tackling the critical subject of fake encounters and how the people involved resort to untangle themselves from the mess they create, but Jolly LLB 2 plays it safe. It produces an oversimplified, easy-to-follow case for us. A man is gunned down in cold blood by an inspector who only wants a promotion. He is promptly written off as a terrorist, the inspector gets his promotion, and the case gets swept under the carpet. Until our hero comes in.

Kapoor is no stranger to satire. He made the sharply-written Phas Gaye Re Obama in 2010. He deftly mixes social commentary with humour. But here, he starts off on the wrong foot and doesn’t find his rhythm till the end. It’s haphazardly put together, as if the makers weren’t entirely show if they want to make a satire or courtroom-drama, so they settle for something in between. There are a few bafflingly absurd bits, like burkha-clad women playing a cricket match, that are mildly amusing at best but fail to signify anything substantial.

When Jolly LLB 2 does turn into a full-blown courtroom-drama in the second half, it becomes considerably more engaging. There are pompous one-liners delivered with great gusto, but I’m afraid none of them are particularly memorable. Annu Kapoor, playing a reputed lawyer against whom Jolly goes, sleepwalks through his role. He’s very watchable. But I wonder: What makes him a ‘reputed lawyer’? He gets his share of the one-liners, but his character lacks the shrewdness and sophistication that Boman Irani’s character had in Jolly LLB. We are told he is a reputed lawyer, but we do not see it.

Jolly LLB 2’s biggest undoing, however, is how it portrays the Indian judicial system. I do understand what purpose a satire serves, what purpose cinema serves in general, but even a satire must contain some amount of truth. In Jolly LLB 2, we see Jolly ‘kidnapping’ a man undergoing trial and who has been accused of abetting terrorism to testify in court for him, and the judge allows him to. (The man turns out to be innocent after all, but that’s stretching credibility.) We see a narco-analysis test being submitted as evidence to incriminate a man of perjury. To the best of my knowledge, a narco-analysis test is inadmissible as evidence in an Indian court. (A more informed piece on this titled “Brief encounter: Who wins in the case of ‘Jolly LLB 2’ versus authenticity” can be found on Scroll.in.)

The problem with these fallacies is that they show the makers are themselves ignorant about the judicial system they want to poke fun of. While their intentions might be noble, it comes across as lazy or worse, ill-informed.

The saving grace in this film comes in the form of Saurabh Shukla. The veteran is at his very best here, and his Judge Tripathi, who makes some rather tall decisions for a judge, I must say, is like the first breath of fresh air after days in a windowless room. He’s funny, comforting, and fun to watch, and injects the film with life when it seems to be failing. He even gets a nice little speech in the end about how the job of a judge isn’t easy, how even when the judicial system is flimsy millions of citizens still trust it will give them justice. It’s one of the high points in a film that is evidently in short supply of them.

Jolly LLB 2 is the kind of family-friendly film that seems to be carefully engineered to do well commercially. It has all the right ingredients for it. What it desperately needed was insight.

(Not For Reproduction)

Review: Karthick Naren’s “Dhuruvangal Pathinaaru” is a subpar thriller that comes undone.

Forgive my condescending tone here, but Indian cinema has rarely produced superior thrillers. By ‘superior’, I mean ticking off the three things that make them such a delight: cleverness, technique, and tautness. Whoever is entrusted with the task of delivering one needs to be clever while plotting them, needs to tell them right, and keep them crisp. It’s a delicate job. And in the case of Indian cinema, filmmakers have rarely succeeded.

I find a majority of Indian mystery-thrillers a bit of a slog to sit through. They are too oversimplified for me, too sloppily plotted. If one misses a detail, they need not worry. Indian filmmakers are in the habit of including a short montage at the end where pieces of the entire mystery come together, in the chronological order, for the sake of absolute clarity. I, for one, detest this habit of theirs. Mysteries need to come together in the head; putting them together on-screen hastily at the end indicates that either they – the filmmakers – weren’t too confident of their technique – which then leads us to question why they decided to tell it the way they did in the first place – or they think the audience isn’t bright enough to figure it out themselves. It does the genre, the audience, and also themselves a great disservice.

Debutant Karthick Naren’s Dhuruvangal Pathinaaru isn’t a slog to sit through, at least not in the beginning. It’s told mostly in flashbacks by a crippled ex-cop who revisits a most puzzling case: on a rainy night some years ago, there was a murder, an accident and a kidnapping, and these three events are mysteriously connected. Naren jumps from incident to incident, from clue to clue, and his stylish approach might seem a little bewildering at first (why do we need to know at what time the clues are discovered?), but we understand why the film is structured so when it finally begins to unravel. It’s exciting to watch the suspense being cleverly amped up, but it is also worrying because Naren tries to tell too many things at once. Things are a bit jumbled, but not too. Amusingly, at one point, the ex-cop says to the new recruit, “So, tell me everything that has happened so far, in the chronological order,” and the youngster obliges. It’s a relief to know that the filmmakers are thinking of their audience.

Here, I must bring up a recurring problem that is as vexing as it is common in Indian mystery-thrillers: too many twists. Too many twists. A mystery is as much about surprising the audience as it is about telling it right, without using sly means to get the intended effect. The number of twists that can be stuffed in it without making it look like a mockery is but irrelevant.

In the case of Dhuruvangal Pathinaaru, we eagerly await its conclusion where that one link connecting the three independent strands will be revealed. But, such is not the case. In fact, it comes apart when it should have soared. For in the last fifteen minutes of the film, a dozen or so twists are packed till it looks grotesque. We are not given enough time to register them, for they come rapidly, one after the other. It’s stunning, but not in a good way. Yes, there was a murder, and yes, there was a kidnapping. And an accident, too. They were all connected, as we guessed. But, nothing is as we thought it was; the film undergoes an abrupt transformation. Now we are suddenly watching a different film. Manipulating the audience by hiding crucial plot points to reveal them all in the film’s thunderous climax is a sign of a subpar imagination or just laziness.

It’s such a shame, it really is. The payoff isn’t particularly rewarding, though some who measure the greatness of a mystery by the number of twists it contains or its ability to confound them in one deceitful way or another will applaud it.

A couple of amateurish mistakes notwithstanding, there are flickers of promise in the way Naren goes about doing his job. Some moments in the film are executed with a flourish (the accident, shown aerially in slow-mo with Naak Pe Gussa playing in the background, is my favorite), something we don’t see in a debut film, something we definitely don’t see in a film directed by a twentysomething. But I just wish it didn’t succumb to the foolishness of wanting to leave the audience dazed. It was managing quite well for a while there.

(Not For Reproduction)

Review: Shlok Sharma’s “Haraamkhor” is a commendable debut that could have been great.

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

There are films one wants to love because they are brave, especially in an environment not conducive to brave cinema. But the dilemma that I often find myself in is that these films are also flawed at the narrative level, thereby leaving me with mixed feelings. On the surface, these films look groundbreaking; we expect them to shake us, to start a debate, but they don’t. A very recent example is Abhishek Chaubey’s Udta Punjab, a compelling if somewhat underwhelming attempt at capturing a state’s war on drugs. While being noteworthy for tackling a weighty issue in a mainstream Hindi film, the simplistic treatment of its subject was frustrating. But I digress.

Shlok Sharma’s feature film debut Haraamkhor falls into this category. Sharma goes for risqué content here, choosing substance over style, and offers, in parts, a fantastic film. In parts. Because there’s too much unevenness in it to break new cinematic ground. Maybe it’s deliberate, the tonal shifts; it switches between dark comedy and drama, never settling into either genre, and it does take some getting used to. However, once we do, it begins to grow on us.

But even when the film occasionally falters, there is much to admire here; first, its fearlessness. Sharma's film doesn't just toe tricky waters but dives into them spectacularly. In the riveting opening hour of Haraamkhor, we watch with growing discomfort how the fifteen-year-old Sandhya becomes infatuated with her older married teacher. She's had a rough childhood; her mother abandoned her when she was a toddler, and her father, a police inspector, hardly has time for her. She discovers that he's secretly having an affair. The teacher, Shyam, a smooth-talking and often volatile sexual predator, fulfills the void in her life. He offers her an emotional bond, something that nobody has ever offered her. He molests her briefly when she spends a night at his place. Then, we see her slip. In a memorable scene, she asks him playfully if he's the father figure in her life. She lays it down gently; she wants to see how he reacts. He answers, just as playfully, with a 'no'. It's a scene that establishes the nature of the relationship they share: they subtly express a romantic interest in each other for the first time without saying it out loud.

Image source: www.hindustantimes.com

On the side, a younger boy, Kamal, has fallen for her as well. He wants to pursue her aggressively but is unable to. He's shy and inexperienced in the matters of love. His friend, Mintu, his chief consultant on romantic relationships, advises him to do a lot of ridiculous things if he wants to 'get married' to her. These portions are where Haraamkhor draws much of its humor from. The two boys make a charming pair. We want to see more of them, but the focus is firmly on how the platonic teacher-student relationship develops into a sexual one. Sharma treads carefully here. His handling of this development is particularly delicate. We see how the discovery that her father is having an affair drives her into the arms of her teacher, who gently coaxes her into taking the plunge. She does it to secretly get back at her father; he, because he wants to.

In the first half, this plucky premise is handled wonderfully, determinedly avoiding the melodrama that could have attached itself to some of the developments. While the exchanges between the characters are sharply written, a more important problem plagues the film: the characters are extremely underdeveloped. We begin to understand Sandhya slowly, but the others are overlooked. We aren’t given enough to connect with them emotionally. This particular flaw results in the film's climax being unaffecting when it should have been devastating. It feels out of place; I am trying to understand why the film had to end that way. It certainly doesn’t justify its denouement. Furthermore, it doesn’t help that the build-up to the climax is careless. Far too much goes unexplored. For example, when Shyam’s wife discovers his infidelity and leaves him, it doesn’t have a strong effect on him. We don’t see much of her after that. It could have been turned into a critical moment that could have given us a glimpse into the mind of Shyam, but this opportunity is passed to examine how Sandhya warms up to her father’s love interest. That, clearly, is a significant moment in the film, but a lot is sacrificed to make room for it.

The performances are uniformly impressive. There is a very specific character, as complex as any, that Nawazuddin Siddiqui excels at playing: an oily, smart-alecky thug who can slip out of any conundrum, because he knows exactly what people's weaknesses are, and he exploits them to his advantage. He doesn't wear his character's evilness on his sleeve; he brings pathos to this role, and makes us believe that though he – the character – is fundamentally evil, he's still capable of being human. It’s the kind of effort he puts into fleshing this character out that puts him in a class of his own.

This time, though, he finds a match in Mohammad Samad, the little marvel who plays Mintu. His performances in Haraamkhor and 2011’s Gattu confirm that he is a natural. He has an impish charm, a disarming smile, and though he’s sidelined here for the most part, he finds a way to be the scene-stealer that he is. We leave with memories of not Sandhya or Shyam or even Kamal, but Mintu. It takes an actor of prodigious talent to pull this off.

In the end, Haraamkhor is a commendable effort. What's unfortunate is that it settles for ‘commendable’ when a more appropriate adjective, considering the talent that went into making it, could have been ‘great’.

(Not For Reproduction)

Review: Nitesh Tiwari’s “Dangal” is a solid crowd-pleaser despite its problematic second half.

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

There is a moment when we see Nitesh Tiwari’s Dangal, a solid, solid crowd-pleaser, wobble for the first time. It arrives just before the intermission, a blot on an otherwise terrific first half. A man, who later turns out to be the film’s chief villain, publicly derides our hero. We are supposed to feel angry and horrified, but we don’t. We feel confused. Of what use is a villain in a film that does not need one and was doing fine without one?

But this is a Disney production. There will be heroes, and there will be villains. Dangal has them, too, which may or may not be a bad thing, but in the portions where there are no clear-cut heroes and villains, it’s simply outstanding. Based on the lives of Mahavir Singh Phogat, a retired wrestler, and his daughters Geeta and Babita, who won plaudits for the country internationally in wrestling, it loyally follows the script of every Hindi underdog sports drama ever made, but still makes for an inspiring watch. We see how two girls from an Indian state known for its dismal sex ratio battle patriarchy to come out on top in a sport that is supposedly ‘not for women’. We see how their father too fought his own battles when he began training them. We see them reluctant and mortified at first, then slowly getting thirsty for success. In a standout scene, Geeta loses her first bout to a man, the strongest of all the contenders she could have picked from, but wins the respect of the crowd that had assembled to watch it. Seeing how she almost managed to beat him, the judges decide to award her a higher cash prize than the winner, and she sullenly accepts it. Her father, like her, is a little disappointed by the result, but manages a smile when she walks up to him and silently hands him the money she has won. We see her tossing around in her bed that night. Unable to stomach her loss, she wakes up and asks her father when her next match is. This time his smile is different; he knows a champion when he sees one.

The effect is electrifying. Zaira Wasim, who portrays the young Geeta in one of the year’s very best performances, makes the moment hers. It’s stirring to watch her character, who was initially horrified at the thought of becoming a wrestler, turn into a determined young woman who cannot bear the thought of losing. I remembered a chapter in former tennis champion Andre Agassi’s superbly written autobiography, “Open,” wherein he described one of his first losses. Agassi wrote that after the match, his father watched stonily as he received a huge trophy as a consolation prize for a battle well fought. Later, when both of them were walking through the parking lot, Agassi, sensing that his father was more upset with him receiving the humiliating ‘consolation trophy’ than losing the match, turned to him said that he didn’t really need the trophy. His father swiftly snatched it out of his hands and threw it on the ground, where it shattered. Losing was not an option for him. We learn that losing is not an option in the Phogat household, too. But I digress.

What works in Dangal’s favor is the affectionate way in which it has been crafted. Tiwari tells their stories with humor and feeling, without wasting a single crowd-pleasing moment. He makes us feel the sweat they put in. And we like them, not because we are made to, but because they are ordinary people like us, nurturing dreams that overwhelm them. Their victories become our victories. Even the smaller characters find a way to add to the film’s charm. There is a butcher who supplies them with meat at the expense of his business when they start training for the national-level competitions, and when they begin winning accolades, it means a lot to him, too. We see this character only a few times and we don’t see him speaking with the girls directly, but whenever he appears, usually in the background, we can’t help but smile. We must never forget the little people who made their own sacrifices in our fight for success. Tiwari and his fellow screenwriters, Shreyas Jain, Piyush Gupta and Nikhil Meharotra, retain him till the very end, and it’s a sign of how sure they were of the kind of film they wanted this to be. Alas, this does not last for long.

Image source: www.indianexpress.com

In the second half, it all turns topsy-turvy. To understand why, one must first examine how the Hindi film industry usually approaches stories based on real-life heroes. I find that the industry is especially careful not to portray them as even a little flawed. We see them battling the odds and powering through them, as they might have done in real life, but filmmakers take special care to emphasize this again and again. We see them pitted against someone particularly evil, and beating them. We see everyone else’s contribution in a heroic event belittled while the subject on whom the film is made is placed under the spotlight, their contribution drawn attention to diligently. Last year’s disappointing Airlift was a good example of how Hindi filmmakers twist facts to such an extent that credibility is eventually put at risk. We get a hero, but at what cost?

It’s not a bad thing, though. We love heroes. But the facts, which I find more interesting, drown when a true-life story is embellished with fiction to become more entertaining. In Dangal, facts become insignificant when the filmmakers amp up the drama by shifting their focus on turning Mahavir Singh Phogat into a hero, as if he weren’t one already. We see Geeta turning into a weak athlete under the tutelage of her new coach, the film’s ‘villain’. We see him as incompetent and jealous and hungry for personal glory. We see her decline under him, thanks to his ineptitude, and then her ascent when she goes back to training under her father’s watchful eye. It’s clear what the film is getting at, but at the same time, it is so silly a move to introduce him that I could barely accept him as a principal character. It isn't enough that he's shown as a clown; because of his inability to understand Geeta's natural game, it is up to Mahavir Singh Phogat to ghost-train her for the international matches. The film goes so far as to show his envy hit its peak before Geeta's final match at the 2010 Commonwealth Games when he gets her father locked up in a room, thereby depriving him of a chance to watch his daughter win gold for the country. Although it is intended to be Geeta's coming-of-age moment, her moving out of her father's shadow, one can't help but wish it was handled with more tact.

In spite of these very real problems, Dangal seldom loses its grip. Its wrestling sequences are choreographed to perfection, and one has to try really hard not to jump out of their seat and cheer. (I came close twice or thrice.) No other sports movie in recent memory manages to so effortlessly generate the pulse-pounding excitement that Dangal does with its showdowns. There is the much talked-about sequence where Mahavir Singh Phogat and Geeta wrestle after she returns home from the National Sports Academy a different athlete. The training imparted there changes her both as an athlete and as a person. Her enraged father is wrestling for his faith in himself and his abilities as a trainer while she is wrestling for her independence that was taken from her by him as a child. She is desperate to be on her own, to have her own identity, while he still wants to be able to guide her. It's an emotionally charged sequence, and its execution is flawless. The same can be said of the other wrestling sequences in this film that manage to not make the second half look considerably poor in comparison to the first.

Dangal would not have worked if it wasn't for its remarkable cast. The amount of effort that has been put in to nail the Haryanvi lingo as well as the more physical sequences is evident. As I said before, there is no doubt that the filmmakers were sure of what kind of film they wanted to make. I just wish they were wise enough to not bow to commercial demands.

(Not For Reproduction)