A Short Note on Rohit Shetty’s “Sooryavanshi”

[Contains spoilers.]

If one were to predict the kind of film Rohit Shetty’s “Sooryavanshi” was going to turn out to be, purely from its four-minute trailer, chances are that they would have got it right. The trailer laid out everything one could expect from this film: preaching, loud explosions, an ear-splitting background score, histrionics, a simplistic worldview, and a dull protagonist. Fifteen minutes in, “Sooryavanshi” has ticked them all. By the end of 145 minutes, I realised that the trailer functioned as a linear summary of the actual film. Should I have bothered at all? Shetty’s films, especially the entries in his ‘copverse,’ rarely deviate from a formula that guarantees commercial success. “Sooryavanshi,” mounted on a much bigger scale than the director’s previous films, plays it safe. It would have been foolish to expect otherwise. There’s little here by way of plot, a pastiche of ideas from the many jingoistic films we saw in the last few years: Terrorist sleeper cells have been activated, a plot is hatched, and a city is under threat. Would the titular top cop save the day? No prizes for guessing.

But the surprises in “Sooryavanshi” come from—incredibly—Shetty’s direction. There is a hint of an effort to go beyond just style this time around; Shetty’s direction has more depth and flashes of maturity. Sample this scene, for example: after the terrorist plot is set in motion, two terrorists, both old friends, sit under a tree in the dark of the night and share a quiet moment, knowing this is the last time they will see each other. Or a scene in which a terrorist, while bidding goodbye to his son, tells him to study hard, when his own father has ordered him to execute a terror attack. Or a rather heavy-handed but rousing sequence later in the film that makes a plea for communal harmony. These moments are few, very few, and far in between, but they reassure us that future entries in this series may take more and possibly bigger risks.

But these touches do little to relieve us from boredom. “Sooryavanshi” unfolds in predictable fashion. The protagonist, Veer Sooryavanshi, is projected as a demigod who never takes a step wrong, an old cliché reserved for major movie stars. Characters reiterate the brilliance of Veer Sooryavanshi, he who put country over everything else, even family. The only mistake Sooryavanshi makes is letting his personal and professional lives collide once, resulting in his son getting hit by a bullet. Sooryavanshi is guilt-stricken, but this angle is used to alert us to the innumerable sacrifices that police officers make while serving their country. Noble intention, terrible execution: we get a few speeches of varying lengths to hammer the point home. But this is the mode usually preferred by Shetty, who avoids subtlety like a plague: he creates conflicts through which one character will relay the point Shetty wants to make to another character. These characters never break the fourth wall, but they might as well have.

Notably, “Sooryavanshi” is rife with a bunch of problems common to Shetty’s ‘copverse’ films. Vigilante justice is projected as a necessity in some cases, a couple of issues are watered down to good-versus-evil, and toxic masculinity is championed. Sooryavanshi, like his colleagues from “Singham,” “Singham Returns” and “Simmba,” doesn’t seem to care much for the legal process. It is an especially insensitive point to make in the current political climate, given that the film is also keen on establishing Sooryavanshi as a true patriot. Also equally problematic is the film’s handling of the character of Ria, the wife of the protagonist, relegated here to a position where her job is to simply accentuate her husband’s heroics by being his antithesis. Ria is a ghost of other similar female characters seen in the two “Singham” films and in “Simmba,” only a shade more developed. It’s unfortunate that four films later this series is still struggling to properly accommodate female characters.

Its problematic politics aside, “Sooryavanshi” is that rare example of a big-budget starrer getting a well-worn formula wrong. Bowing out after pitching a bigger sequel is definitely an interesting thought if not exactly encouraging.

[Not for reproduction.]

A Short Note on Abhishek Chaubey’s “Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa”

[Contains spoilers.]

Among Saytajit Ray’s most delightful short stories is “Barin Bhowmik’s Ailment.” Central to that story is an improbability: in one of the world’s most populous countries, what are the chances of two people who have met on a train journey once before, meeting again on another one? And what if one of them had wronged the other in the first meeting? How, then, would the second meeting unfold? In a trice, Ray has us in his grasp. His protagonist, Barin Bhowmik, has forged something of a reputation as a singer by the second meeting, and when he places his companion as someone he had once wronged, his paranoia at the prospect of being recognised threatens to take away the stardom he has earned after much struggle. The rest of Ray’s story hinges on a seemingly simple question: should Barin confess, therefore risk denting his stardom, or should he keep quiet? “Barin Bhowmik’s Ailment” implies that human beings are innately selfish, therefore unlikely to always do the right thing. As much as Barin desires to redeem himself, he fears retribution. He stands to lose too much. By drawing on this detail, Ray cleverly ups the drama and throws in a climactic twist that has us chuckling. I relished “Barin Bhowmik’s Ailment” several times over as a child.

In director Abhishek Chaubey’s rendition of it for the Netflix anthology series, “Ray,” Barin Bhowmik becomes an even more fascinating character. Musafir Ali (played by Manoj Bajpayee) is a celebrated ghazal singer aboard a train headed for New Delhi. Musafir is a man who is tempted easily, which explains his ‘ailment’: when signing autographs, he hesitates to sign one on a fan’s palm, but acquiesces when she lifts up her burqa to reveal her luminous face. Musafir is struck by her beauty. It’s a wonderful piece of writing which Chaubey directs with a lightness of touch that he often brings to his comedies. The terrific opening minutes of “Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa,” Chaubey’s segment in “Ray,” reveal more about Musafir than the succeeding forty minutes. He walks with a swagger, a conceited smile dancing on his lips, embracing attention like one would a gust of fresh air. When alone, he delivers sermons to imaginary audiences. But when he meets Aslam Baig (played by Gajraj Rao) on the train, a man with whom he shares a ten-year-old bond, the encounter peels layers off his ego to reveal a puny, vulnerable man with a secret he had long buried.

Chaubey’s flair for directing comedy is not new. “Ishqiya,” his debut feature, and “Dedh Ishqiya,” his sophomore feature, were marvellously done crime-comedies. The latter was set in a lost world of ghazals and couplets, etiquettes and grace, and in this world men swindled and schemed. Chaubey locates “Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa” in this world, too. Smart call. He knows it—its nooks and corners and people—intimately. Attention is paid to little gestures. When Musafir finishes his drink in one scene, he quietly begs for forgiveness from the Almighty. It’s almost invisible—the deftness with which it is done is most impressive. Likewise, Aslam, the other major character, gets his own set of gestures: he leans forward when he speaks, evoking his background as a wrestler. Bajpayee and Rao are both veterans; neither chews up a scene. They play off each other expertly, accommodate each other’s performance. Long after the film was over, I was marvelling at this aspect.

Like in “Dedh Ishqiya,” the Urdu dialogue in “Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa” sings. Lush language is employed to win people over. Not often does one come across a film full of quotable lines—the mind struggles to pick the best one. Niren Bhatt adapts Ray’s short story handsomely, retaining its playfulness and flavour but giving it his own little tweaks. Salvation is achieved in a dusty shop called ‘Rooh Safa’ (‘soul cleanse’). It’s a scream of a name—there’s a disarming sense of fun running through the film. Why, even when explaining the tricky name of an ailment, a doctor (played by Raghubir Yadav in a sparkling cameo; Manoj Pahwa features in another one at the end) references the 1971 Hindi-language film “Anand,” in which the protagonist was afflicted with a disease with a dreadful name. But somewhere in the middle (it's hard to pinpoint where), a dryness crops up—perhaps a result of too many surreal touches and flashbacks. At fifty-three minutes, this segment does feel a touch too long.

“Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa” is flanked by lesser films in the anthology, but it’s a charming little gem that does full justice to its original material. When it ended, I longed to revisit Ray’s story—and watch the film again after.

[Not For Reproduction]

Handpicks: Favourite Hindi Films of 2020, Ranked

[Contains spoilers.]

It has been a rather disappointing year for Hindi cinema. Mediocre and bad films outnumbered the good ones. We did not produce a single great film, in my opinion. There was one that flirted with greatness. And that’s all it did. Even the ones that seemed promising initially ended up being letdowns, and the pandemic ensured that we got access to films (some of which are listed below) that would have otherwise drifted into oblivion. Dibakar Banerjee’s “Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar,” completed two years ago, would have released in March had the pandemic not happened. Crushingly still, there is no word on its new release date. If his segment in the otherwise disappointing Netflix anthology film “Ghost Stories” is anything to go by, it should make for a riveting watch.

But what was happening in the world of web-series is another deal altogether. In April came the charming “Panchayat,” lighter than air and with a superb set of characters. Borrowing its flavour from India’s early television sitcoms, “Panchayat” played to TVF’s strength: masterful writing with a keen eye for detail. And lest we forget, it ranks among the actor Raghubir Yadav’s best performances. Anyone who has followed his thirty-five-year-old career closely would know what a glorious feat that is. Not long after “Panchayat” came the nine-part web-series, “Paatal Lok,” created by Sudip Sharma and directed by Avinash Arun and Prosit Roy. Loosely based on Tarun Tejpal’s 2009 novel, “The Story of My Assassins,” the series is what I will remember the year for. A staggering achievement that reintroduced us to the gifted Jaideep Ahlawat (and we will do well to remember him now), it captured a contemporary India entangled in its own prejudices like no other cinematic work in recent memory. And lastly, in October, Hansal Mehta delivered his best work since 2012’s “Shahid” with “Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story.” Rock-solid and strangely addictive, “Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story,” based on the non-fiction book “The Scam: Who Won, Who Lost, Who Got Away” by Debashis Basu and Sucheta Dalal, brought the actor Pratik Gandhi into the limelight, among other coups. I’ve seen it thrice already and look forward to going back for another helping.

On an even smaller canvas, even better things happened. The streaming service MUBI released several features and short films through MUBI India, the most notable being the retrospective of Amit Dutta, one of our foremost filmmaking voices. Dutta largely works in experimental cinema, which might explain why his works are elusive, literally and figuratively. The access which MUBI India provided was priceless. After a long wait, I was delighted to sink my teeth into 2010’s “Nainsukh,” his most popular and distinguished work. Also among MUBI India’s offerings was an outstanding short film, Shazia Iqbal’s “Bebaak.” Extracting a chapter from her life, Iqbal’s film followed Fatin, a young architecture student, who is rebuked by a cleric during an interview for a scholarship. Given a directive to ‘amend her ways’ or risk losing the scholarship, Fatin’s dilemma is vividly captured by a combination of neat writing and competent acting. Right after the interview ends, Fatin lambasts her father, saying, “Why did you have so many children when you couldn’t afford it?” Her father is dumbstruck. The answer to her question is shown, not said: the fourth child, Fatin’s youngest sibling after two younger sisters, is a boy. This unquenchable desire for a male child is laid into ferociously, as it should—remarkable for a first-time filmmaker. “Bebaak” ends on a touching note, hopeful that things can change and will, and we will have to keep fighting whatever comes our way and not concede. Courage is the tonic which will pull us through. I can hardly wait to see what Iqbal comes up with next.

Here are my ten favourite Hindi films of the year. First, a note: As some of them have already made rounds of various film festivals, or were completed years ago but were unable to find distribution, one can argue they are not ‘films of 2020’ and therefore do not qualify to be on this list. However, given the unusual year we had, and considering that many movies were made available to the public through OTT releases this year, I am including them on this list. 

10. LOOTCASE (Dir.: Rajesh Krishnan)

There’s little that is particularly memorable in Rajesh Krishnan’s breezy comedy of errors, but “Lootcase” brightened up many a Sunday for me this year. Most jokes meet their mark, the characters (not too different from the quirky ones we met in Abhinay Deo’s “Delhi Belly” in 2012) serve the plot well, and the actors seem to have a blast. Not a bad way to spend a couple of hours, especially when Kunal Khemu and Gajraj Rao are in spiffing comic form. 

(Trailer here.)

09. AK VS AK (Dir.: Vikramaditya Motwane)

The pull is in the pitch: the filmmaker Anurag Kashyap and the actor Anil Kapoor (playing fictional versions of themselves) square off and a camera captures the duel. Kashyap: enfant terrible, egotistical, crazy. Kapoor: suave, shrewd, privileged. A public spat between the two leads to Kashyap taking revenge by kidnapping Kapoor’s daughter. It’s satire. It’s irreverent. It’s fun. For the first twenty odd minutes, Vikramaditya Motwane’s “AK vs AK” coasts along delightfully as Kapoor and Kashyap trade insults, each claiming to have conquered Bollywood. We settle back comfortably—finally, the film industry is willing to laugh at itself. No one is spared as the film roasts film-makers (including the makers themselves) and film-watchers alike. And then, “AK vs AK” takes a nosedive. The jokes become forced, the plotting becomes tedious. The final twist is especially sloppy—was that really required? There are a couple of nice observations here about the fragility of stardom and the vulnerability of people who have spent most of their adult lives in the spotlight. It works as satire—as a thriller, it fizzles out without actually taking off.

(Trailer here.)

08. RAAT AKELI HAI (Dir.: Honey Trehan)

It’s a shame that Honey Trehan’s “Raat Akeli Hai” is not able to replicate the brilliance of its opening sequence. When it arrives at the coal-black heart of a gruesome murder at the end of 149 minutes, the sagging feeling of disappointment is hard to shake off. Confidently mounted but ultimately a touch overlong, Trehan’s directorial debut gets the basics of a murder-mystery right (the mood, the detailing, the shifty characters, and the dark, dark secrets) but is unable to avert a disappointing finish. In all fairness, the journey is fairly absorbing, with some exquisite images (the film has been lensed by the great Pankaj Kumar) and occasionally sharp writing (by Smita Singh). It could have been a masterpiece. Alas. 

(Trailer here.)

07. BULBBUL (Dir.: Anvita Dutt)

Lyricist and writer Anvita Dutt’s sweeping Gothic fairytale about an avenging witch who wreaks havoc upon men suspected of cruelty towards women was among the year’s most pleasant surprises. A happy fairytale this is not: “Bulbbul” is about cruel violence, oppression, and jealousy, and the scene at its core—unfolding poetically on a rainy night—made my stomach turn. It’s exquisitely photographed and made, and features a slew of wonderful performances. But, there was something lacking. Perhaps another viewing will provide an answer.

(Trailer here.)

06. KADAKH (Dir.: Rajat Kapoor)

A stranger arrives to meet our protagonist, Sunil, on Diwali morning. He introduces himself as the husband of the woman Sunil is having an affair with—strangely at peace with the situation. But when an argument escalates and the stranger shoots himself, Rajat Kapoor’s morbidly funny “Kadakh” is set in motion. Borrowing the idea of a party taking place with a dead body in the house (whose presence is known to only two people) from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope,” “Kadakh” examines the crumbling of a marriage and other friendships over the course of Sunil’s Diwali party. Posing moral questions even when it meanders (and it does meander plenty), “Kadakh” is a fascinating addition to Kapoor’s oeuvre as a director, but far from his best work.

(Trailer here.)

05. CARGO (Dir.: Arati Kadav)

If we were to draw up a list of Hind cinema’s strong points, ‘low-budget science-fiction’ would likely be left off it. Even ‘science-fiction’ for that matter. So it’s rather swell to see Arati Kadav’s debut feature “Cargo” come out of nowhere and attempt to correct that. And what a plucky attempt it is. Like her wondrous 2016 short film, “Time Machine,” “Cargo” pairs mad, almost childlike imagination with weighty themes to create a distinctive product that stands as a testament to her prodigious talent. While “Time Machine” dealt with motherhood and first love, “Cargo” deals with loneliness and death, and the startling fact that, given enough time, someone can get used to them. It takes some effort to buy into the world Kadav, a former software engineer at Microsoft, creates here, a world replete with subpar visual effects and long stretches of blandness. But fling yourself into it like I did, and maybe it will leave you ruminating over what is has to say. There’s an innocence with which Kadav approaches filmmaking. How I miss it.

(Trailer here.)

04. KAAMYAAB (Dir.: Hardik Mehta)

If there is such a thing as an actor born to play a role, Hardik Mehta’s “Kaamyaab” makes a fine case for it. Sanjay Mishra, the terrific character actor who has spent twenty-five years in the movies, plays Sudheer, a washed-out and ageing character actor who learns in an interview that he has acted in 499 movies. A power cut criminally cuts this interview short but it gives him a mission: to seek a meaty role for his 500th film. At once wise about how the Hindi film industry thinks and functions (at one point, when a film director calls Sudheer by his name, just his name, his assistant hisses, “Sudheerji”—the honorific is an afterthought) and respectful of the many struggles of an actor, “Kaamyaab” probes the difference between an actor and a star by deftly avoiding moralisation. Its heartbreakingly beautiful (albeit over-the-top) ending made my heart sing. Would make yours, too.

(Trailer here.)

03. GULABO SITABO (Dir.: Shoojit Sircar)

Borrowing its title from a glove puppetry theatre show about two bickering women, Shootjit Sircar’s “Gulabo Sitabo” is a beast to tackle: playful, funny, gently melancholic, and when one thinks they have managed to get it, slippery and profoundly sad. Vultures circle an ancient tumbledown house in Lucknow, and what a lovely selection of vultures we have here: the grouchy old landlord, Mirza; his wife, Begum, sole owner of the property; Mirza’s tenants that include Baankey Rastogi, who runs a flour mill; and a potpourri of other characters that include an oily government chap, Gyanesh Shukla, working with the archeological department. Everyone lays claim to the property—even the government. While much of “Gulabo Sitabo” revolves around how these characters try to outwit each other, Juhi Chaturvedi’s typically intelligent script traverses weightier themes like poverty, selfishness, and our innate desire to hold on to something we call ‘home’. It’s a demanding film, and if we spare a little patience, an amply rewarding one.

(Trailer here.)

02. SIR (Dir.: Rohena Gera)

It seems only natural that the actress Tillotama Shome, nineteen years after debuting as the young house-help Alice in Mira Nair’s “Monsoon Wedding,” portrays the house-help Ratna in Rohena Gera’s small miracle of a movie. Maybe Alice is Ratna now, all grown up and worldly. And much like her performance in Nair’s film, Shome here is absolutely flawless as the maid who gradually, fearfully, falls in love with her employer. Screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018, “Sir” captures the stages of this romance that a classist society would mock harshly. Ratna’s employer, Ashwin (played by Vivek Gomber; equally marvellous), couldn’t care less. But Ratna does—the society she is familiar with is a far cry from the one her employer knows. It is Gera’s ability to capture this bit of detail, and other similar details, that makes the film so special. And it springs an ending that is arguably the best ending in any movie I saw this year, an ending that made my heart soar furiously, an ending that I simply cannot get enough of. A word is spoken, just a word, and spoken bravely. And its utterance takes a knife to classism in fine style. Incredible.

(Trailer here.)

01. EEB ALLAY OOO! (Dir.: Prateek Vats)

Monkeys have taken over government buildings—literally. A new migrant, Anjani, is tasked with keeping them away. He is not enterprising; the monkeys are cunning and stubborn. (The symbolism is on point.) Anjani hates his job with all his heart but it is the best his meagre qualifications can fetch. Prateek Vats’s absurdist satire “Eeb Allay Ooo!” begins here most unassumingly, but by the end of 97 bleak minutes, it has touched upon the exploitation of migrants, unemployment, and religious extremism. And like many great films, it features an insurmountable villain: a big city—here, New Delhi. As Anjani tries to gull the monkeys, finally let down by a pitiless city and its people, “Eeb Allay Ooo!” comes into its own as a strong political work that masterfully brings to light the plight of millions of migrants across the country. Furthermore, it stars the discovery of the year: the actor Shardul Bharadwaj who as Anjani delivers a performance that ought to have had him smothered him with plaudits. But, ah, Anjani would have laughed at our optimism. 

(Trailer here.)

[Not For Reproduction]

Essay: A Tribute to Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s “Khamosh”

[Contains spoilers.]

A couple sits on a rock near the banks of a gushing river and discusses a future together. Their lines sound unrealistic in the way Hindi film dialogue often does, because this is a scene from a movie they’re shooting. A hand appears from the water and brushes against the woman’s sole. She kicks it away, caught in the eroticism of the moment. The director calls for a retake. The same thing happens again. Momentary confusion paves the way for a breathtaking reveal: a body emerges from the water in slow-motion, breaking, in truly cinematic fashion, the brief lull a plot that had seemed to hit a dead end left in its wake.

In Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s “Khamosh,” murder is everywhere. It is discussed, it is suggested, and it is seen. A motley film crew is filming a romantic thriller (ironically titled “Aakhri Khoon”) in Pahalgam, Kashmir, and at the heart of it is a murder. The director understands its significance in the film—he wants its execution to be flawless. But his crew is indifferent to his enthusiasm. His actors, like most seasoned film stars, are weary but professional, not particularly fussed about this director and his grand plans to stage the perfect murder.

This introduction doesn’t divulge what simmers just beneath the surface. Jealousies abound. Bitter glances and murderous stares are shot over dinner. Men are seduced and women objectified. From sleazy producers to conniving mothers, the set-up is reminiscent of a great Agatha Christie novel. (There is no doubt Christie might have been one of Chopra’s many influences.) After a budding actress slaps the inebriated producer at a party, her body is found hanging from a tree the next day, exactly how it was supposed to have played out in the movie they were filming. The police declare it an open-and-shut case of suicide, citing that she was upset to lose out on the lead role in an upcoming production. But, as it happens so often in the movies, this isn’t the entire truth.

What’s puzzling is that she was rehearsing her lines the night before in the hotel’s boathouse, an isolated cabin on the hotel’s grounds doubling up as a costume cabinet. The scene she was rehearsing is the one in which her character gets murdered, an ominous coincidence. She was screaming out her lines, much to the chagrin and amusement of the crew, when suddenly her voice lost its histrionic quality. Fear was palpable. Her terrified screams for help echoed in the dead of night. But nobody batted an eye. Everyone heard her rehearse, but nobody heard her getting killed. 

Released in just one cinema, the Regal, in Bombay in 1985, a year after Chopra’s remarkable debut feature, “Sazaye Maut,” “Khamosh” is a fascinating specimen of Hindi independent cinema. Working off what might have been a stringent budget, Chopra uses ingenious filmmaking to elevate a stock murder mystery. The misty, stark, achingly beautiful landscapes of Pahalgam accommodate not lasting love affairs but cold-blooded murders. Quite incongruous, one might think, keeping in mind how the Hindi film industry has long used Kashmir as a place where lovers requite their love for each other, often through lavishly filmed songs. In “Khamosh,” the place attains a shroud of eeriness. Even Binod Pradhan’s camera is voyeuristic—it creeps up on people, eavesdrops, intrudes. We, the audience, are complicit.

A cursory glance at Hindi cinema’s most popular murders tells us how dramatic we like them to be. Vijay Anand’s “Teesri Manzil” opened with the image of a body zipping through the night air and landing on a slab of pavement. Later, in the same movie, a more sensational killing, extracting a well-earned gasp from those watching it for the first time. In Yash Chopra’s “Ittefaq,” a fugitive seeking refuge in a woman’s house on a rainy night stumbles upon a dead body in her bathtub. And that startling twist in Abbas-Mustan’s pulpy “Baazigar” deservedly made a star out of an actor. What these subversive murders have in common is that they were executed in cold blood by someone we expected to possess a little more humanity. And if only the film was seen by a larger audience, the cleverly staged murders in “Khamosh” would have found their rightful place alongside them. If only.

By choosing to not let the film deviate from the blueprint of an old-fashioned whodunit, Chopra makes the crucial (and brave) creative choice of giving us ample time to engage with the clues. And what clues these are: a deceptive photograph, a hidden movie prop, an inscribed khukuri, a missing button, and a body hanging from a tree. To the lover of mystery fiction, this would seem like a fine world to get lost in, especially when nothing ends up being what it first appears to be. We see each of these clues in close-up before Chopra cuts away. When they are referred to later after the plot has unravelled a little more, they acquire a special significance. Shorn of the flamboyance seen in Chopra's later work, “Khamosh” is a tightly controlled, thrilling exercise in suspense.

In this teasing mix (which includes passing tributes to “The Godfather” and “Psycho”) is a parallel thread casting light on how the Hindi film industry exploits hopefuls. At one point, a chilling rape scene is woven casually into the film they’re shooting. “This’ll make your career,” the director tells a budding young actress. When the scene crosses into lewdness, she breaks down. Chopra’s camera pans across the film crew’s stony faces. This pan is slipped in at the end as well, when the mystery is tied up, the villain is dead, and the crew discovers who it was all along. Only this time we see their faces through a red filter, as if indicating their complicity in letting these brutes roam free.

For years I instructed whosoever I recommended the film to to get into the habit of watching charming Hindi-language comedies from the 1970s if they ever hoped to grasp the achievement that is “Khamosh.” And for years I got puzzled looks in reply. Truly, what makes the film’s climax Hindi cinema’s finest example of metacinema is how it shrewdly plays on one of Hindi cinema’s most loved stereotypes. Oddly enough, “Khamosh” ends up being just like its murders: cold, smart, flawless.

[Not For Reproduction]

Essay: A Tribute To Ram Gopal Varma’s “Rangeela”

[Contains spoilers.]

It is Hindi cinema’s oldest story: The girl chooses love over riches. It is also the story of Ram Gopal Varma’s “Rangeela,” which turned twenty-five a couple of weeks ago. I desist from saying it has ‘aged like fine wine’, for it hasn’t aged a day. If anything, it achieves a rare feat, a hallmark of a great film: with each viewing, one gets to see a different film. A recent rewatch made it plain that this was no longer the fairytale I believed it was. “Rangeela” is far richer than it is made out to be, far more melancholic. Beneath its buoyancy is a tale of loss and discovery, an ode to a city that has time and time again taught people more about themselves than anything ever will, and to the city's cinema that has a say in not just what we dream about but also how we dream.

“Rangeela” arrived in 1995, when India, its mind fixed on globalisation, had opened its doors for the world to peek in; when Hindi cinema, resurrected after a bad run in the 1980s, delivered its most beloved romance with “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge”; and when a young filmmaker, Varma, who had not made an out-and-out romance until then, decided to take on a fairytale set in Mumbai. And the approach he chose for his first romance was daringly novel: he recruited a music director who had not scored a Hindi film before; a young actress, while not new, had yet to get her big break; and a young actor, who was actively resisting getting typecast, was picked to play a street cookie. These elements gave “Rangeela” its face: a flock of young talents, eager to prove themselves, conduce to deliver a film that is, at its core, a crowdpleaser, but not in the way most Hindi films tended to be at the time. It didn’t have heroes and villains or even traditional action sequences. Even its love-triangle (if it was indeed one) was atypical: the two men never fight for the affections of the girl. They brood privately, hurt privately; there isn’t a grain of machismo in them. The two men, Munna and Kamal, are broken. Munna is an orphan and Kamal a widower, their shot at a happy life cruelly obliterated by fate. Mili, the woman they both love, is their best shot at happiness. They cling on to it, unwilling to let go.

The essence of “Rangeela”—and of Mumbai—is captured by this love-triangle. Mili, young and vivacious, dreams of becoming an actress. The fact that she is one of hundreds of thousands of hopefuls doesn’t cross her mind. Her naïvety is offset by the men who love her. Munna is a small-time black marketeer of movie tickets, dealing with life one day at a time, one problem at a time, with no idea of what his future looks like. But even his aimlessness is measured. He has had a rough childhood, one that may have involved a trip too many to the police station. A single scene in which Munna deals with a cop who comes sniffing without any trace of fear slickly establishes this.

On the other side is Kamal, a withdrawn and lonely movie star yet to get over the death of his wife in a car accident. The incident haunts him, stings him: one gets the impression that he blames himself for it. When narrating the incident to Mili, Kamal, brave at first, is soon overcome by remorse. For a moment, just a moment, his vulnerability is for all to see. Only Mili does, her face drained of all colour at the sight. It’s the first time she sees him for who he is, without the curtain of stardom to shield him from the lies that movies feed us.

The two Mumbais of “Rangeela” clash constantly—Mili’s fanciful, Munna and Kamal’s grounded. Cinematographer W. B. Rao uses light to great effect. When alone, Munna and Kamal are cloaked by darkness. For Mili, Rao chooses bright frames. When Mili is with either man, the frames are lit well, reinforcing how important she is to them. Disguised to appear as throwaway details, they colour this tale in their own little ways. But the film derives much of its magic from A.R. Rahman’s sublime soundtrack. What of it? The film just wouldn’t have been the same without it. My childhood wouldn’t have been the same, either. Nor would Hindi film music.

A sombre tale this is not. “Rangeela” is pure, unbridled joy. Any implication otherwise is put to rest by its upbeat opening number. The dialogue is rapid but witty, specked with wisdom. The relationships are carved beautifully. When Munna and Kamal first meet, Munna is aloof but Kamal is polite, not threatened by this man because he does not care to know him. At an amusement park, Mili’s father gets ice-cream for his family but not for Munna. Munna may be ‘like a son’ to him but he is still only a tenant. (An example of how “Rangeela” consciously avoids being goody-goody.) This is Mumbai’s middle-class: Amiable but not overly so, keeping one eye on their money at all times. And although Munna doesn’t try to hide what he does for a living, this law-abiding family couldn’t care less. He is still welcome to dine with them. Believing in the inherent goodness of people is one of the city’s many characteristics, and that Varma not only recognises this but understands it well enough to use it to lift the film puts him in a class of his own.

As with any great film set in Mumbai, “Rangeela” works the far-reaching impact of ‘Bollywood’ into the film. The lead characters’ fantasies and dreams are often based on the movies they watch. An extra movie ticket becomes an instrument to show you care about someone. When Mili asks Munna if he has an extra ticket to a new film starring Kamal, Munna wields it as if it were a slice of gold. A closer reading tells us why—it’s the only thing he can afford to give her. And it is from a cinema hall that Mili flees in the film’s charming climax to stop him from going so far away that they would never meet again. Varma plays to the gallery here; of course he couldn’t resist. And neither could we. Here is a film that laughs at ‘Bollywood’ (Gulshan Grover, as the Steven-Spielberg-worshipping Steven Kapoor, is a hoot) but cheekily slips in a final scene at dusk where Munna and Mili squabble, having just professed their love for each other. Once the tricky business of confessing one’s true feelings is over, there’s still a life to lead. But we need not worry. We leave assured that no matter what the world throws at them, these two will be all right.

[Not For Reproduction.]

Review: Nitesh Tiwari’s “Chhichhore” fails to breathe new life into the Hindi college comedy.

[Contains spoilers, many of them.]

It’s really hard to not know where Nitesh Tiwari’s “Chhichhore” is headed fifteen minutes in. A man prances around naked in the corridors of a boys’ hotel, and before we know it a water fight has begun. Two boys become five, then ten, then twenty. In five minutes, everyone is soaked but stoked; it’s a ritual of sorts and it’s done. The boys pledge their allegiance to one another. There we go, another year, another film about friendship in college. Which wouldn’t be an entirely bad thing in more assured hands; consider the charming airiness of Abbas Tyrewala’s “Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na” for a moment. But “Chhichhore” goes the other way; the approach to the dog-eared material here is deliberately—or at least seemingly so—heavy-handed, confirming quite simply that it is going to be that type of movie.

And that type of movie gets a fresh coat every five years or so, seldom an upgrade. “Chhichhore” tries to get the best bits of “Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar” (itself a loose remake of the terrific “Breaking Away”), “Student of the Year” and “3 Idiots” to work furiously together. But little does work. When their son tries to commit suicide after failing in an exam, Anirudh (Sushant Singh Rajput) and Maya (Shraddha Kapoor) reach into their past for a story that underlines why failing isn’t necessarily bad. And into the past we dash, where we meet a young Anirudh, a brilliant student (aren’t they all?) condemned to hostel H4 on his first day of college. H4 is reputed to be stocked with slackers, bad rooms, and bad food. And yet Anirudh warms up to his peers, a small group of lazy stereotypes: Sexa, a porn addict; Bewda, an alcoholic; Acid, a foulmouth; Derek, a chain-smoking shirker; and Mummy, a mouse. There is, predictably, an attempt to squeeze humour out of these bare descriptions, but it is forced, delivered consciously, like an obligation that must be met. We never meet the men, though; we never know what they are thinking unless they articulate it, and we never see them vulnerable or nervous like regular engineering undergrads. (I missed terribly the shaggy, smirking architecture students of Pradip Krishen’s “In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones,” who viewed the world through defeated, bored eyes.)

After we meet the group, we meet Maya. Anirudh is smitten, and with him, everyone else. He tries to woo her (thankfully without a song) and fails, fails miserably. This romantic angle oughtn’t have felt so disposable, because it does contains a pleasant moment or two, but it does, for the actors play it blandly. By this point, “Chhichhore” has barely set off but already feels like a patchwork of fail-safe elements threaded together by a clumsy craftsman. We are also introduced to Raggie (played by Prateik Babbar), the conceited (unofficial) leader of H3, the chicest hostel on campus, who will eventually end up challenging the boys of H4 in the General Championships, the annual sporting competition in which the hostels compete against each other. It wouldn’t come as a surprise to me if I was told Raggie idolised Shekhar from “Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar” as a kid; for the most part I couldn’t tell the two apart. Raggie spites the boys of H4 by calling them ‘losers’ (which, for some reason, is supposed to be a barb and not a precise classification) in a way not different from how Shekhar called the boys of a lesser college ‘pyjama-chaap’.

After breezing through the imperatives of the Hindi college comedy (with scenes of ragging, a joke about hostel food, and a stray comment about how friends in college end up being family), “Chhichhore” trains its attention on the General Championships. The boys of H4 are desperate to win: for Derek, who may not get another shot at glory, but chiefly to obliterate the ‘losers’ tag that has tacked itself to them. This is familiar territory, at times too familiar: the parallels with “Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar” are far too many to be an innocent coincidence. (At one point, the final minutes of a relay race are a frame-by-frame copy of the climactic minutes of the last race in the Aamir Khan-starrer.) There’s even a flicker of “Lagaan” here: the boys of H4 are embarrassingly bad, and the smug boys of H3 exceptionally good, and so, in keeping with the rest of the film, the impending clash leaves us little to look forward to. The underdog tale has been redrafted several times, most imaginatively “Lagaan,” which fashioned a spectacle out of an absurd story; “Chhichhore,” I am afraid, does not follow suit. It uses nostalgia to smoothen out its narrative creases, and while that approach works only intermittently, it throws up several questions, the most important of which is: What in this film is novel? The answer, I suppose, would be: Little. Nostalgia, after all, can only do so much. And with it gone, a blandness begins to infect the narrative. “Chhichhore” hits the few highs we expect it to (thanks to sincere turns from the supporting cast) and the lows, but it falls short in surprising us. It is further weighed down by its constant jumps in time, between the present, where Anirudh and his friends recount the story of the General Championships to Anirudh’s coma-bound son, and the past, where Anirudh and his friends strategise to win. This is crucial in explaining the occasional narrative lumpiness: the present is contrived, the past rather chirpy.

With its ambitions neatly outlined at the start of the second-half, it’s disappointing indeed to see “Chhichhore” retreating to the comfort of predictability. Save for a couple of spirited jokes, most of it is spent sermonising. Where a line ought to have sufficed to establish something, the film employs four, said by different characters in different ways. And just to ram the point home, someone repeats it later again, in the plainest possible terms. But in its final minutes, in spite of determinedly sticking to what appears to be a riskless formula, it does spring a little surprise, one that, when I went back to it later, I would never have guessed was coming. It is not everyday that we see a Hindi film that accepts failure as an important (if not integral) part of growing up, and somehow manages to make it uplifting and wise, but “Chhichhore” does so—quietly, skilfully. Although these concluding minutes are dusted in sugar, there is a bittersweetness to them, a rare sort of bittersweetness. God knows this film could have done with more of it. But at least it's a start.

[Not For Reproduction]

Review: Anubhav Sinha’s “Article 15” is a timely indictment of the caste system.

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

The two discrete worlds of Anubhav Sinha’s new film “Article 15” come alive through songs. As the opening credits roll, a Dailt woman (played by Sayani Gupta) croons “Kahab Toh,” an earthy folk song, amidst a downpour. Somewhere close by, two teenage Dalit girls get assaulted inside a bus gliding along the road against the overcast sky. We then jump to a jeep coasting along the highway, under the golden glow of the sun, while Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind” plays. The juxtaposition isn’t exactly understated, but the details and colors used to render these two worlds convey a clear message: we are travelling into the heart of darkness and leaving behind the comfort of blissful ignorance. But this also momentarily conveys something far more interesting: the filmmaking is thoughtful, if not subtle. Sinha, who last made “Mulk,” a sharp drama about a Muslim family facing ostracism and a lengthy legal battle when one of their own goes rogue, is staging a comeback of sorts after spending years making underwhelming films. His affinity for the underdog parallels his keenness for uncomfortable truths. In “Article 15” we get both: an underdog battles the centuries-old caste system; one that has a small village (and we have no clue how many other villages and cities) in its stranglehold, one that compels institutions to look the other way when two of the three girls are found hung from a tree the next morning.

Twenty minutes in, I thought the striking similarities between “Article 15” and Alan Parker’s 1986 drama “Mississippi Burning” couldn't possibly be mere coincidence. In Parker’s film, three Civil Rights activists go missing one night in Mississippi, which prompts the Federal Bureau of Investigation to send two agents, Ward and Anderson, to investigate their disappearance. It studied the coming apart of a small town plagued by racial violence, and in doing so, captured quite vividly how hate stays ingrained through little but significant everyday things; segregation in restaurants being one, for example.

“Article 15” borrows loosely from the Badaun gang rape and murder from 2014, an incident of unspeakable horror, to make its observations on caste privilege in small-town India. By the time the newly minted IPS officer Ayan Ranjan (played by Ayushmann Khurrana) arrives in Lalgaon, somewhere in Uttar Pradesh, a cover-up has begun taking shape. He instantly guesses something is amiss. Whispers follow him everywhere, and an old acquaintance behaves strangely, almost as if he were keeping himself from blurting out secrets. The village is drenched in uneasiness. A senior police officer fills him in: three Dalit girls have disappeared. He goes on to talk about “their people” with an airiness that seems to suggest it is a common occurrence within their community. The police is pushing a casteist narrative, one that is far too convenient for Ayan’s shrewd ears. The bodies of two of the girls are discovered the next morning, hanging from a tree. There is an unconvincing explanation to the events that the cops seem eager to pursue, but Ayan is not sold on it.

Hindi cinema has long been averse to the idea of having two protagonists and so we get one. Ayan is the product of the clubbing together of Ward and Anderson's personalities, retaining their virtues while slyly leaving out their inefficiencies. He is young, sort of brash, and his influences, like the liquor he prefers, are largely Western. He is city-bred, ignorant of the ways of the hinterlands, but has a knack for catching on quick. Within days of his arrival he has decoded what (or who) dictates the laws of this region, has singled out the powers that be, and has injected, to some degree, a new life into an indolent police force. This sort of hero, not uncommon in Hindi cinema, is someone we can easily place: one who doesn't take a step wrong, who nudges at the truth, who puts his country before himself, and who will, inevitably, have the last laugh.

This is where “Article 15” and “Mississippi Burning” diverge, albeit briefly. While "Mississippi Burning" explored the dynamic between Ward and Anderson, two contrasting characters who have perhaps been brought up in two very different worlds, "Article 15" appears content in letting Ayan hold the reins of the narrative. He charismatically strides, yells, and banishes; the others take a moment to catch up. “Talk only with me and nobody else,” he instructs a doctor who's been asked to falsify the autopsy report on the two girls. He knows his officers' loyalties have been compromised, for they fear fingering the powerful local politician and setting off a chain of events beyond their control. His inexperience never gets in the way of his unwavering pursuit of the truth, and there was a moment where I wished for a little more realism. There was hardly any.

Sinha was onto something meaningful there. “Article 15” quickly busies itself in its central mystery while calmly exploring several other strands, and occasionally, just occasionally, produces something truly incredible. When the girls’ bodies are discovered in the blue hues of the morning mist, the image of the crowd around the tree, where the bodies still hang, is unforgettable. (The film has been shot by Ewan Mulligan.) There is also a strand examining how the caste system has managed to worm its way into the force, when a police officer cowers in the company of an equal just because he is (and so often is he reminded) from a lower caste. But the most powerful of them all is that lingering image of a man emerging from filth. In what is a remarkable piece of filmmaking, Sinha uses the metaphor of an overflowing sewer to convey a rather bald truth in mere seconds. The sewer, leaky at first but then a hindrance, has to be “fixed” by someone willing to dive into it. Finally, a man is entrusted with the job, but he is of a lower caste. Sinha chooses to film his emergence from the filth in slow-motion, giving us ample time to flinch, and the impact is staggering; I lived with the image for the next few days.

However, it doesn’t take long for “Article 15” to succumb to the temptation of allocating simplistic solutions to pressing problems. Ayan’s chief adversary is Bhrahmadatt Singh (played by Manoj Pahwa), a veteran police officer under his command. Bhrahmadatt puts up a weak resistance, imploring Ayan to not disturb the santulan, the “balance.” But Ayan, like Sinha, is relentless; he does not stop to reason with Brahmadatt or anyone else standing in his way. The reason behind the longevity of caste politics is never touched upon, or why it continues to be a crucial issue during elections. When a haughty senior officer from the Central Bureau of Investigation decides to visit, he is less concerned with the abolishment of the caste system, which he is not entirely for; he is more amused by Ayan’s idealism and that he is far more comfortable speaking in English than Hindi. (He is put in his place later of course, as is decreed by the Hindi film gods.) This creates a dramatic void: it often feels as if Sinha uses his underdeveloped supporting characters to put across his views on the issue in plain, preachy terms, or to relay statistics, which is something the character of Aditi, Ayan’s romantic interest, mostly does.

But one thing is for certain: Sinha wholly deserves our applause and attention. It’s remarkable that he’s made a film of such spunk, of such anger and of such compassion, at a time when we are flaunting our prejudices so openly. His strokes may be broad (I am reasonably sure the fleeting tribute to Bhagat Singh in the climax was deliberate), his style blunt, but he forces us to think. Given all the things that have gone down in this country in the last few years, that is no minor accomplishment.

[Not For Reproduction]

Review: Ivan Ayr’s terrific “Soni” is a shrewd examination of patriarchy in the new India.

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

Ivan Ayr’s “Soni” opens with an alarming sequence. We hear catcalls over black and the rustling of a bicycle, and it continues for nearly a minute. A woman races her bike on lonely road on a wintry night in New Delhi and a man chases her on his. He jeers, harasses; she ignores him in a practiced sort of way. Her body language and vacant face suggest that she is well accustomed to this sort of behavior. He continues gaily. Suddenly, she slows down, gets off her bike, and walks it through a dark alley. He follows her. A heated volley of words takes place, and the encounter culminates with her lashing out at him. She is finally pulled off him by her associates. He gets a broken jaw and swollen eye.

In any other Hindi film, this would have been a moment to rejoice. In “Soni,” it becomes a premonition. The general feeling is that she, a police officer, shouldn’t have reacted the way she did. Her superior, Kalpana, chides her for it. What if he had a knife? What would she have done then? Why didn’t she follow protocol?

What if she hadn’t defended herself, we wonder. What then?

Soni, the eponymous protagonist of Ayr’s feature-film debut, is a police officer working in the graveyard shift. In New Delhi, her credentials don’t guarantee her safety; lecherous remarks are leveled at her, and her frequent encounters with men inevitably touch a nerve for men do not seem to value boundaries. It’s a film shaking with rage, but it doesn’t permit us the luxury of catharsis by transforming this rage into quick-fix solutions. Instead, it finds other ways to channel it: through silence mainly, by making its central character silently bear the brunt of being a woman in India who simply defended herself from a ghastlier fate.

It has been so long since a Hindi film has understood and rightly exploited the power of silence. In “Soni,” long silences reveal what words don’t: the loss of courage, the agony of being a victim of a patriarchal system that tries hard to drown a woman’s voice, and the dawning realization that things won’t change, at least not right away. Soni gets reprimanded for her aggression, which is seen as a poor quality in a female police officer, and when she reacts in a similar manner in a situation involving a drunk Navy officer, the system finds a way to get her off her job.

The incisive, knowing script, written by Ayr and Kislay, examines not just the gender divide within the New Delhi police force but also the power structure within it, both bound together by an indiscernible thread. Kalpana and Soni’s personal lives are not any better; Kalpana, the wife of a newly instated senior Crime Branch officer, is inscrutable at home. She manages a tired smile when asked questions about having a child, and is talked down upon by her husband when she broaches Soni’s subject. In a particularly impressive scene, she gets into a brief argument with her husband after Soni’s third scuffle. Her husband rebukes her for consoling her juniors, something he finds distasteful in a police officer. The job doesn’t encourage empathy. But Kalpana cannot help it; she hopes to mend what cannot be mended. The two have disparate working styles, two different ideas of how the world works and should work. His is prudent, shaped by years of working in a system he knows too well. Hers is idealistic, driven by a desire to do things right.

When these ideas exist under one roof, as they do here, it is an open invitation for a clash. But “Soni” shuns the temptation to mine drama from it; Kalpana submits to her husband’s lofty barbs by staying silent. When she wants to get Soni reinstated, she quietly requests him to speak with his seniors. At that moment, she is not the IPS officer with a team reporting to her; she is his wife. And he agrees grudgingly, more as a husband than a colleague. It’s the chameleonic quality of this relationship that lends the film part of its acuity.

Soni’s life is not too different. She has an estranged husband who still cares about her, but is kept away by her stubbornness to not forgive him for his past mistakes. She regularly skips meals, a recurring detail that discloses the extent of how much her job consumes her life, and the only person with whom she seems to speak with a hint of affection is her motherly neighbor. In one of the film’s most telling scenes, the neighbor suggests, with outmost seriousness, a way to curb harassment: by wearing the sacred sindoor, the mark of a married Indian woman. It is a wryly comic touch and a terrifying one at that. In another scene, Soni suggests that a girl, who is caught with her boyfriend by two policemen in an old deserted building in the dead of night, wear a shirt and cap to appear more like a man. It begs us to introspect, to ask ourselves why we have allowed male chauvinism to be so deeply embedded in our social fabric that these suggestions, foolish as they might sound, have become credible solutions for women to evade harassment.

The film’s most significant achievement is its thoughtful exploration of the bond between Soni and Kalpana. Although the difference between their respective perceptions of the city is indisputable, with Kalpana being ferried around in the safety of a police car and Soni left to get around on a bike, their experiences are similar to some extent. There is a clear class divide as well, but patriarchy transcends it; whether it is Kalpana’s increasing dependence on her husband to get Soni off, or it is Soni’s brawl against three inebriated men in the ladies’ washroom at a restaurant, women are quite, quite alone. Their men and their country have failed them. In a beautiful moment near the end, Kalpana gifts Soni a copy of ‘Revenue Stamp’ by Amrita Pritam. This comes right after Kalpana learns that her niece is being harassed by boys at her school, and her niece, fearing ostracism, is reluctant to report it. “Soni” reveals itself fully here: the two women quietly accept that all they have is each other and that is how it is going to be, thus changing the nature of their relationship inconspicuously and irreversibly.

Although we are only into the second month of the year, it wouldn’t come as a surprise to me if “Soni” ends up being among the best Hindi films to release this year. Ayr, aided by exceptional camerawork by David Bowen, top-notch sound design and two excellent central performances, gives it the tactful treatment it deserves. Its fade-out moment is melancholic, leaving us with a little hope but also the feeling that the future looks bleaker than we feared. At one point, Soni looks on, incredulous, as a man flirts with a female police officer on the phone in the Control Room, and the woman laughs it off, saying she gets four or five calls like this everyday. It is possibly the film’s scariest moment: the acceptance of the fact that men most likely won’t change, so it is up to the women to adapt to the new India. Do we still deserve to remain hopeful, then?

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Review: “Mirzapur” adds little to its borrowed world of gun-cradling gangsters and power-hungry mafia patriarchs.

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

The wedding seems to be a vital element in a gangster picture. The iconic opening sequence of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, in which a mob patriarch casually conducts his business as shrieks of laughter rise from his backyard, where his daughter is getting married and people are making merry, placed the sacred white of a wedding next to the fiery red of the mob business. The first season of the Amazon Prime original, Mirzapur, created by Karan Anshuman and Puneet Krishna, opens and closes with weddings soiled by blood. It begins with a bunch of intoxicated young men infiltrating a wedding procession going through the sleepy streets of Mirzapur, a city in Uttar Pradesh, and how a moment of revelry changes lives. A gun goes off and the groom is killed. The killing is accidental, and the victim isn’t eminent, but it sets in motion events that will ultimately transform the fate of the town.

In recent years the Hindi film industry has looked towards the north, especially Uttar Pradesh, for inspiration to make gangster films. Anurag Kashyap delivered a major work with the ambitious yet flawed Gangs of Wasseypur in 2012, which brought the flamboyance and unruliness back to the Hindi gangster film. There were several smaller films that tried to emulate its style but were not half as successful. Mirzapur appears to be one of those works that are indebted to Gangs of Wasseypur for its creative vision and courage, but it lacks its epic sweep, its startling imagination, its irresistible humor, and more importantly, its nerve. The concoction here comprises of a familiar set of elements: vibrant characters, colorful language, over-the-top violence, and a smattering of tongue-in-cheek humor. And the inspirations that help brew this concoction are diverse. I could spot overt references to Vishal Bharadwaj’s Shakespearean adaptations Maqbool and Omkara, the occasional bows to Gangs of Wasseypur, of course, and maybe a few touches of Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Haasil, too.

However, for any work to be complete, it must find a way around the inspirations that gave birth to it. It must, at any cost, come of its own. In this regard, Mizapur isn’t exactly a success; it struggles to find its feet and establish its world of gun-toting hoods and simmering rivalries, but fails. Its world doesn’t look lived in – rather, it looks borrowed – and the primary characters come alive only much later. But the more urgent problem that isn’t addressed soon enough is, there’s very little originality here.

Mirzapur traces the rise of two brothers against the backdrop of the Uttar Pradesh underworld, and how a stray shooting incident puts them in touch with Akhandanand Tripathi, an arms dealer, opium smuggler and reigning don of Mirzapur, who uses his carpet business as a front for his illicit activities, thus his sobriquet ‘Kaleen bhaiya’. It’s also not particularly surprising to see that he has shades of the character of Abbaji from Vishal Bharadwaj’s Maqbool; both of them appear to have been bred in the same household. Both are married to much younger women and their right-hand men are called Maqbool. And yet, Akhandanand (played by the incomparable Pankaj Tripathi) doesn’t wield the same influence as Abbaji. Never do we believe the extent of his power. We are told about it persistently, though. It’s a little disappointing to pick up bits and pieces about the central characters and events through chunks of dialogue, and it’s one of Mirzapur’s bigger flaws. The writing lacks the polish often found in great cinematic works. The characters constantly articulate what they are thinking out loud, as if being unpredictable is a bad thing, and it robs them of the opportunity to be memorable.

The characters, in themselves, are not a bad bunch. We have the wayward, power-hungry son who is to be Akhandanand’s successor, and the two brothers who threaten his legacy. We have a group of supporting characters as well, boringly written and underused, that inexplicably vanishes for long periods of time. We have a corrupt politician eying higher office who also happens to be a nexus between rival gangs, quite the staple in Hindi gangster films these days. All in all, it’s a mixed bag, and it’s a shame that none of them sparkle. The accents appear to have been picked up rather than imbibed, and the actors seem to have a ball rattling off expletives. Given how the makers of direct-to-stream projects get to work with more creative freedom, it was always a given that Mirzapur would contain a healthy amount of swearing. (There’s little doubt that it would likely not have made it to the theatres if it had been a feature-length film.) And gore, the unwarranted amount of gore. It’s a truly visceral experience to sit through it all, but it’s also a bit of a letdown to see the boundaries of creative freedom being used in a way that eventually adds little to the characters or the plot. It does its bit to set the mood, but it strays far too often into indulgence.

In all fairness, although the brew here is composed of familiar elements, it is never less than fairly engaging. The performances might be a tad inconsistent in parts, and there is no revelation here, unfortunately, but they are strong. (Divyendu Sharma, in particular, is impressive.) And there is a reasonable amount of tension that is executed competently, and two or three powerful moments that clobbered me. I wasn’t fully convinced by how some of the character arcs developed (especially how the two brothers go from innocent students to hardened mafia henchmen in the blink of an eye), but the series moves briskly enough to ensure these shortcomings are not lingered over. The result, then, is a work of few highs and many lows, one that is not immediately promising, but one that ultimately managed to get under my skin well enough for me to look forward to its second season. Hallelujah.

[Not For Reproduction]

Review: Sriram Raghavan’s “Andhadhun” is the best Hindi film of the year.

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

Sriram Raghavan’s obsession with tributes would make a good drinking game someday. His films are littered with them; he reads James Hadley Chase, Raymond Chandler, and Cornell Woolrich; he watches John-Pierre Melville, Alfred Hitchcock, and Vijay Anand. Every master gets a hat-tip, a reference. Johnny Gaddaar, his spectacular thriller from 2007, seemed to have sprung out of the pages of a great Hadley Chase novel. In Andhadhun, these inspirations coalesce to form something that’s utterly new and compelling. There’s a murder at the heart of it, as is usually the case, but the film isn’t about the murder, or who committed it; rather, it’s about the paranoia it triggers, and how it eventually forces those involved in it to get in touch with their rotten side, right or wrong be damned. It’s about people eager to silence each other, but even more eager to listen to each other if it involves a get-rich-quick scheme. And it asks, above all, a rather interesting question: What are you prepared to do to save yourself?

Indeed, good thrillers often hinge on a surprise or two, while great ones decide against it. Great thrillers, I find, are never about their bag of surprises. They are always about their characters. Raghavan excels at writing both. In a staggering scene in Johnny Gaddaar, a young man picks up a gun and pumps bullets into his unsuspecting boss quite suddenly, killing him. This isn’t played merely for shock value; there’s logic dictating his actions. He’s been pushed into a corner. He’s scared and helpless. It’s his only way out. But, would he pick up the gun lying in front of him and kill his unarmed master? Would he dare? He does. And when he does, it makes us gasp. It’s likely the most revealing detail about this character, something that rather skillfully influences not just our view of him but also what we can eventually expect of the film.

In Andhadhun, a young pianist pretending to be blind is a silent, almost idiotic witness to a murder. We don’t see the actual murder; we see a body and a pool of blood next to it. Two people – one of whom is the victim’s wife, the other her lover – dispose of it as he plays a somber tune, pretending to not have seen any of it. (This is, in a way, reminiscent of Chaplin’s dark comedies, particularly Monsieur Verdoux; a tribute, maybe?) When she lamely tries to cover it up, he goes along with it. The sequence plays for about seven minutes, seven glorious minutes, and it tells us all we need to know about the two central characters. Both sides are lying to each other: he about his blindness, she about being innocent. But little things also tell us about who they are when the masks they wear slip off. He’s smart enough to play dumb. She weeps silently when the body is finally taken care of. A lot of things are hinted at, and some are left unsaid. Neither of them knows what the other’s intentions are. It’s an amusing conundrum. He knows for sure she’s lying. But what does he do with the truth? She suspects he's lying. But what does she do about it?

Like in his previous thrillers, Raghavan puts his characters in precarious situations, adds a layer of intrigue, and then invites us to watch what happens. In Andhadhun, exuberantly written and performed sequences lead us down a cold and damp rabbit hole. The pacing is relentless; we have barely finished relishing one sequence, one marvelous surprise, when the film moves on to a better one. Sample for a bit that terrific sequence featuring a sly police officer arriving at the protagonist’s house and nosing about, waiting for his mask to slip off. The timing of this sequence is especially interesting: it comes right after two dramatic reveals which we are still trying to wrap our heads around. It’s pure cinema, and Raghavan orchestrates the hell out of it. But the same question prods us again: If the mask does slip off, what would happen? We know what the characters are capable of, but they never react in the way we expect them to. It’s the excitement of finding out that fuels the experience of watching this film, of knowing that, in one way or another, it’ll find a way to surprise us. It’s a tightrope walk for any filmmaker, and Raghavan more than rises up to the challenge.

In the second half, however, the film’s momentum does dip. The film, as we know it, is taken from the hands of these wonderfully mad characters and placed into the hands of those we barely know. It’s a risky move, not to mention how puzzling it is, the consequences of which could very well prove disastrous. For one, a substantial amount of screen time would have to be dedicated to develop this new bunch of characters and arrive at an acceptable answer to why we should be watching them instead. (This also explains the strange void at the beginning of the second half. But it mercifully doesn't last long.) Imagination is still very much at the forefront of things, but less patient viewers may disagree. Speaking for myself, I can’t say I was too happy with this change, but I was intrigued nonetheless.

What distinguishes Sriram Raghavan’s films from other Hindi (or even Indian) thrillers is his idea of what constitutes a great thriller. His thrillers seldom revolve around the ‘who’ or the ‘why’. We know why his characters do what they do, and so we aren’t really sure what to expect when things don’t go according to plan. In Andhadhun, we know who committed the murder and why they did it. He also lets us know who might go next. It’s out in the open. And yet Andhadhun manages to catch us off guard frequently, without making a big deal of it. He never draws our attention to how clever he has been nor seems eager to shock. His plots evolve organically, his character arcs develop beautifully, and his twists are deftly done. It’s consistently intelligent filmmaking.

It is not customary for an Indian thriller to place a red herring near the end. I find that in most Indian thrillers the last few minutes before the end credits roll are devoted to connecting the dots, sometimes several times over. Flashbacks are usually employed to do the job of achieving complete coherence, or something close to it. It’s a lazy, lazy move. Andhadhun subverts this cunningly; yet another example of how well the makers have structured it and how satisfying the experience is as a result. I have seen it twice and I saw two different films: the first with an ending that was agreeable, and the second with one that was astonishing. It really depends on how we see it.

Andhadhun might be the finest Hindi film to be released this year. It might just be the year’s funniest as well, and definitely the year’s most irreverent. With an ingenious plot, insightful bits of detail that are woven into the proceedings most scrupulously, and a clump of excellent performances, Raghavan has cemented his reputation of being Hindi cinema’s thriller pundit. I just wish this means he gets to script every movie death henceforth.

[Not for Reproduction]

Review: Akarsh Khurana’s “Karwaan” is a frustratingly bland fare.

[May contain spoilers, many of them.]

It’s not particularly difficult to identify what kind of film Akarsh Khurana’s Karwaan is trying to be. The effort is practically visible. Its characters wear sunglasses picked off a shelf from a designer store. Their clothes are dapper, summery. They travel in a beautiful blue van through some gorgeous, sun-drenched ghats. And their wonderfully trimmed faces (with a touch of make-up) do not show any signs of fatigue or age. Charming. We get a few lines that ruminate over presumably meaningful stuff, like death, life and grief, many of them over a drink of coconut water overlooking streams impossibly blue and lush green trees. We are supposed to swoon, catch these bits of wisdom before they flit through the air and disappear. But the only problem is, we don’t.

Karwaan is a film that proves, among other things, a useful fact: That good-looking films don’t always end up being good cinema. A relationship with a film cannot be built if one doesn't understand from where it originated, why this story needed to be told. Really, there is absolutely no excuse for writing a character who goes on unfounded rants in Hindi whenever he bumps into foreigners, or a coy guy who takes orders (or ‘requests’, if you may, although they don’t sound so) on the phone from a sobbing woman he’s never met. If these are attempts to make us like these two, then one should get the idea that the makers are trying hard to find a footing without straining their imagination too much. And how marvellous to be proved right. For the most part, this film seems to meander through sequences where the characters do things that, I would like to believe, are essential for us to understand them. Only this doesn't happen. These bits seem jarring, alienating us from them. Who are these people? Where do they fit into this world? Why are we supposed to sympathise with them? We don't know. But the film rolls on assuming we do, and so do we.

It's not as if the makers don't try to get us to like them. As if this were a cleverer idea than writing a coherent story, the makers toss in a few painful moments (some unexpectedly hitting their mark) where humour is forced into the story to give it some more juice to keep us invested. These attempts feature a fast-talking character at his brusquest, inviting bewildered looks from the people he comes in contact with. When he’s not jovially expressing his disgust at women wearing ‘skimpy’ clothes (which he does on at least two occasions), he pretends to be mute just so he wouldn’t have to pay for petrol. (Incredible how this callous little detail is played for laughs.)

For all that goes wrong with the film, one thing is for certain: Karwaan’s premise is undoubtedly more interesting than most Hindi films’. Two dead bodies get mixed up, and a software engineer from Bangalore has to travel to Kochi to drop off the ‘wrong’ dead body and pick up his father’s, the ‘right’ one. It could have made a splendid black comedy, but the makers settle for a road film instead. Given that the pleasures of a road film can equal a black comedy’s if done right, this doesn’t seem to be a poor decision at the outset. However, when the characters come into the picture, things do start to look shaky. For one, it often feels as if three different characters written for three different films were plucked out and placed in one, and a blue van was thrown into the mix as an afterthought so that they could be together. These characters have – unsurprisingly – gloomy pasts, and this quirky road trip will – again unsurprisingly – prove to be more eventful and life-changing than they originally thought, wringing their pasts out slowly and allowing them a chance to make peace with them.

If only we were living in the early 2000’s and all of this sounded new. We are, unfortunately, eighteen years into the 21st century. But, this doesn’t deter the makers from approaching it like a brand-new concept, putting together something around the ‘comic’ sequences and ironing it with monologues about life and death to ensure all the elements stay in their place. Half-baked developments are introduced without a good reason. A romantic angle for one character (handled a little insensitively later on) and an encounter with a past flame for another is hardly relevant to the story, which I thought began with a guy trying to arrange for a proper burial for his deceased father from whom he was estranged, but ironically enough these parts are among the film’s most engaging. I am not completely sure the writers intended for it to be so, but much like in life, unpredictability has its own rewards.

What saves the film from being a completely bland fare is the considerable charm of its three leads. (Although it’s been a while since a film has forced Irrfan Khan to ham.) Till the end, Karwaan maintains its distance, its few rewards limited to the surface. I walked away without feeling a thing for any of its characters. That disappointing feeling, I believe, can be cured by a drink of cool coconut water. 

[Not For Reproduction]