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]

A Short Note on Achal Mishra’s “Gamak Ghar”

[Contains spoilers.]

For a feature film debut, twenty-three-year-old Achal Mishra’s serene “Gamak Ghar” grapples with a formidable subject: home. Over three time periods—we open in 1998, return in 2010, and finally close in 2019—we examine the slow death of an ancestral house in Bihar’s Madhopura. As its inhabitants age, so does the house. On a strictly conceptual level, “Gamak Ghar” is magic: a story, our story, told in 90 concise minutes, leaving us with an ache in our hearts, a priceless offering. On a narrative level, however, there is something lacking, something that could truss the three parts up. Mishra’s primary focus here is mood and detail; there is an artfulness in his approach. When we open in 1998, the house brims with life. Children play in a courtyard in which a tulsi plant occupies the centre; men sit in the verandah playing cards; women gossip away in the bedroom. A newborn rests in a cradle, the apple of everyone’s eye. Everyone’s content. Every word exchanged quivers with feeling. Laughter is easy to come by. Mangoes are picked directly from trees. It’s a world that once existed but no longer does, and this recreation does it justice.

Snatching these moments from the characters is cinematographer Anand Bansal, whose work in “Gamak Ghar” warrants the highest praise. Each frame is is a painting unto itself, using colours and light intelligently, lending the film the wistful mood it strives for. Avni Goyal’s excellent production design deserves a mention as well, capturing the passage of time so skilfully that I wondered at one point whether the film was actually filmed over a period of twenty years.

When the family regroups in 2010, the walls have begun crumbling and the people have grown distant. Dinner is had in near silence, we get clumps of stilted conversation, and instant noodles is the kids’ choice of snack. The house is surrounded by taller, firmer, newer buildings. The emphasis on detail is as fascinating as it is exhausting, for we are always left observing from a distance, barred from engaging with the characters. There is a beautiful extended scene in which the matriarch, the one to whom the house was bequeathed, leaves it for the last time, to be with her son in the city. The camera is stationed a little further away, refusing to invade the moment. I wished with all my heart that it did. I wished with all my heart to share it with her.

The third part, taking place in 2019, is bereft of dialogue. The rotting house, neglected and forgotten, is now manned by an old watchman. It will be destroyed soon to make way for a grander structure, and only one member of the family shows up to supervise its demolition. By leaving a lot unspoken, Mishra prods us to confront who we have become. The house that accommodated innumerable memories, now rubble and dust. A brilliant shot of the family member taking the picture of the deceased family patriarch off a wall, maker and destroyer as seen through the half-broken roof, pops up near the end. It’s a deeply poignant image. One wishes “Gamak Ghar” found more like it.

[Not For Reproduction]

A Short Note on Arun Karthick’s “Nasir”

[Contains spoilers.]

At 85 minutes, one wouldn’t have imagined Arun Karthick’s remarkable second feature, “Nasir,” an adaptation of the short story, “A Clerk’s Story” by Dilip Kumar, to move along leisurely. A day in the life of Nasir, a Muslim garment store attendant, it’s a deeply intimate, lyrical portrait of a man who has long stopped living for himself. Capturing the rhythms of an everyday existence adeptly from the first frame, Karthick approaches “Nasir” with thought and sensitivity, choosing to observe than comment. We get long-shots and close-ups on the minutiae of Nasir’s life: counting money, standing in a queue for water, sipping on tea, waiting on his colleague, smoking a beedi. Karthick is unyielding—there’s a reason why “Nasir” is sketched so carefully. We aren’t supposed to understand him; we are supposed to be him.

There is ample skill on display here. Nasir resides in a mostly Muslim neighbourhood of Coimbatore. As he makes his way out of its sinuous lanes with his wife, the sound of prayer grows dimmer and is finally replaced by the babel of the world we now live in, where demagogues scream into microphones and hate is freely distributed over loudspeakers. The two worlds have co-existed peacefully till now, but by the end, one will have violently infiltrated the other. Nasir has inured himself to ignore the growing anti-Muslim sentiment that surrounds him; even as his colleague casually exchanges nasty remarks with a friend on the phone, Nasir’s face does not register even the faintest of flickers.

There is inexpressible pain here. Nasir’s mother has cancer, he has a mentally challenged adopted son, debt, an ordinary job. And yet, for someone has every reason to complain, he seldom does. He pulls two women shopping for saris into conversation with the warmth of a son. He pours himself into his poetry, expresses how much he loves his wife through a handwritten letter to her. We listen to its contents over a series of extended shots, each word bringing the man we have been watching throughout into sharper focus. There is a simplicity about him, about the way he does everything he is asked to, about the way he maintains the innocence of his minuscule world.

Films about communal violence often linger on the suddenness of it, and the emptiness. But it’s terrifying just how quickly we move on. “Nasir” is no different. In retrospect, the signs were all there: the provocations over loudspeakers grow increasingly vile. Karthick sets us up for tragedy with the flair of an old-timer. In the final shot, Nasir is sprawled out uglily on the ground in an alley of his neighbourhood. In the poetic opening shot, we see him sleeping in a foetal position. A streetlamp imparts light through a window. In both images we see his silhouette. A life has been cruelly snuffed out by a hollow act of violence. The world we see it as just another person dying. But we won’t; we will mourn it. Karthick’s triumph lies therein.

[Not For Reproduction]

Review: Bhaskar Hazarika’s stirring “Aamis” marks the arrival of a bold new talent.

[Contains spoilers.]

In the first meeting between Sumon and Nirmali, there is palpable uncertainty. She, a paediatrician, has been called upon by him, a PhD student, on a Sunday. She hesitates as he pleads: his friend has suddenly taken ill and is in pain, and he is worried. He’s just a couple of lanes away, Sumon beseeches. She doesn’t look away from his stricken face. Should she accompany him? What could a paediatrician do to cure an adult? And yet, there is something about Sumon, his childlike innocence being taken over by fear. She eventually concedes.

As it turns out, the friend’s first tryst with meat-eating had its consequences. He swears he won’t eat meat again if cured. Nirmali smiles, almost. ‘Meat isn’t the problem,’ she says. ‘Gluttony is.’

Bhaskar Hazarika’s sophomore feature, “Aamis,” pulls that line apart. How far is too far? What can you do for the person you love? Nirmali and Sumon are utterly ordinary in many ways, unable to show each other what they really feel, say what they really want to say. She’s a respectable name in the medical community, and he, someone who’d rather stay away and alone, in company of his preference. He is a member of a Meat Club at the university, where they catch, slaughter and cook different exotic meats to sample their original flavour and texture. ‘Do you know where frozen meat comes from?’ he asks her. ‘Where it is kept and for how long?’ He doesn’t touch frozen meat. She is intrigued. As payment for her services, she asks him to get a sample of whatever he cooks next.

Hazarika captures the initial stages of a growing romance with great care. When in Nirmali’s company, Sumon’s eyes betray a desire that we are not sure even he is aware of, and she is careful in her gestures, as if she is mindful of the fact that she’s toeing a line that mustn’t be crossed. Even when they text, Sumon is a bit reckless with his affection, whereas Nirmali is measured, slightly aloof. His passion for experimenting with food captures her fancy, and together they have rabbits, catfish with colocasia, and soon, bats. He eats with his hands, she prefers a spoon. Mental block, she says. She can’t touch food with her fingers. Eroticism flows freely during these meetings as glances are exchanged and fingers twitch in longing to touch one another. And yet, they don’t touch. Sumon is smitten; when Nirmali sends him a friendly picture of her with her son, he zooms in on her face, aching to touch it, drink it. He relieves his sexual longing by masturbating, but keeps himself in check when they meet. Nirmali remains enigmatic. She isn’t flattered by the attention he lavishes upon her; she is, after all, on a small and seemingly trivial culinary adventure.

The distance between them, between what they could have, is far greater than just a few centimetres. As it were, Nirmali is married to an insufferable and exceptional doctor who spends most of his time in rural medical camps around the country. Whenever he is home, he talks of little but his exploits in the field, and always with a trace of condescension, as if castigating everyone else for living comfortable lives. In his company, Nirmali is not an equal: she is his wife and mother to his son, never a doctor. He barely notices her, barely listens to her. She tells him about Sumon, but he’s buried in the happy memories of his achievements. Later, when Sumon is invited to their house party, she introduces him. ‘Ah, the journalist,’ her husband remarks, his hand outstretched. ‘The PhD student,’ she corrects him. But her husband isn’t mortified. He couldn’t care less.

“Aamis” explores the quiet power struggle between them in this remarkable scene. During the party, the men occupy the top floor of the house while the women are relegated to the ground floor (a detail reminiscent of Robert Altman’s fabulous 2001 film, “Gosford Park”). The women are tasked with arranging dinner while the men drink and discuss politics. Noticeably, Sumon is displaced. His world is away from such trivialities, far away. It has Nirmali, for whom he agreed to come to this party. And when Nirmali’s husband’s friends toast her later (as if it takes that to remind him of her place in his life), Sumon catches her eye.

Here, the film pauses and watches. Because in that moment, the two find each other, both silently desiring something more than just camaraderie, something perhaps they will never get. Hazarika holds that moment and uses it as a pivot to take the film in a thrilling new direction. Nirmali’s smile is stilted, but among everyone present, only Sumon knows that. It’s the first of many secrets they’ll share.

It’s hard not to wonder if the direction Hazarika takes “Aamis” in is only a gimmick, something sprung upon deliberately to stir the viewer, with little thought being paid to how dramatically it will change what we have seen till now. The transformation, evidently, is not without blemishes; it feels abrupt, as if the film was anxious to arrive here. The meshing of genres is determined, methodical. We are beckoned to watch closely.

Sumon is consumed by his obsession, but he doesn’t have anything else to give her. Nirmali isn’t starved of affection; it’s something else she desires. Something taboo, adventurous, even dangerous. When “Aamis” conveys her deeply-rooted hunger, it plunges into horror. With a deliberateness that is refreshing, Hazarika lays out the nature of their relationship through brief montages: Sumon visiting Nirmali in the hospital with a small box, or both of them looking at the sunset while enjoying a quiet meal. Physicality, or the lack of it, is no longer a hurdle; this is a bold new step for them, and it comes with new possibilities. It’s eerie but daringly funny at the same time, as if we are complicit in a depraved secret but curious to see how long it lasts before it is out in the open.

In the third act, Hazarika works the story into a thriller. Long gone are the characters we started with, and long gone is their romance. Now, Nirmali and Sumon appear to be characters from a different movie, and indeed, this appears to be a different film. Its ambition is compelling; I wanted to applaud. Then again comes the question of whether the film could have done without it. But even when the film stumbles—and ever so slightly—Hazarika’s filmmaking remains captivating, right down to that tidy final shot that brims with empathy.

With its bold exploration of the unpalatable and its stubbornness to not be limited by fear, “Aamis” will stay with me for a long, long time. It’s a difficult film to embrace, especially if one happens to be squeamish, but it’s a film to behold. Once I resurfaced from its world, I wanted to go right back into it.

[Not For Reproduction]

Review: Lijo Jose Pellissery’s “Jallikattu” is a grim study of masculinity.

[May contain spoilers, many of them.]

In the opening sequence of “Jallikattu,” Lijo Jose Pellissery’s allegorical new movie, we hop between close-ups of people opening their eyes and drawing breaths. Set to the beats of an avant-garde score by Prashant Pillai, this spate of quick-cuts culminates in a shot of the sun rising, like life emerging from the dark, like people waking up from the dead. The symbolism, while scarcely subtle, is achieved with the flourish of a veteran. But Pellissery is somewhat of a veteran; “Jallikattu” is his seventh feature, a cinematic experience that is as hard to describe as it is to shake off, as tough to watch as it is difficult to leave. Based on S. Hareesh’s short story “Maoist,” it is a tale told more through sound than images, and one figures after two viewings that it is the only way to tell it.

In a small meat-loving village in Kerala, the local butcher Varkey (played by Chemban Vinod Jose) and his apprentice Antony (played by Anthony Varghese) are celebrities of sorts. People crowd around their little shop for the best cuts, and Varkey even parts with a few scraps for the dogs and a few bones for soup to satisfy his customers. People take the little black meat bags to the church, hanging them outside on the branches of a small tree before stepping into it. Meat, clearly, has this village in its clutch, and so when a buffalo gives its captors the slip seconds before they are to slaughter it and tears through the village, everyone sulks. A small group of men pines for its capture. The buffalo wrecks crops and crashes through shops, leaving local businesses in disarray. The men give chase, but to no avail; the animal is much too powerful, much too angry.

There are other factors at play, too. The men pride themselves on their masculinity: one woman is slapped for serving rice cakes for breakfast, another is molested, and many are haughtily told to go home by men because there is a buffalo on the loose. “Jallikattu” is about these men and their distending egos, and how man and animal are not so different when examined closely. (In fact, man comes off much, much worse.) The buffalo howls, the men scream. It grunts, they screech. At one point, when the buffalo has caused considerable chaos, the village enlists the help of Kuttachan (played by Sabumon Abdusamad), Varkey’s charismatic ex-apprentice who has served time. Kuttachan is Antony’s old foe, and now, with the stakes raised, neither of them wants to simply catch the beast; they want to do it publicly to relish the fact that they beat the other to it. The parallels between man and beast are alluded to several times, and at one point, it is laid out quite prominently. The buffalo gets trapped inside a dry well as men crowd around it, jeering and celebrating in a sickening display of brutishness, throwing their fire torches at the clueless, helpless animal. As she is lassoed using car tires and hauled out, Pellissery embosses the sequence with his signature touch, a motif he visits repeatedly in his work: divine intervention. It starts raining, the men disperse, and the buffalo, now given a new lease of life by the same men who jeered at her a little while ago, escapes. The sequence ends with a fleeting shot of the buffalo’s muddy paw print juxtaposed with a man’s. If it’s the throbbing energy of the filmmaking that leaves us winded, the panache with which it is accomplished answers why Pellissery’s work — more precisely, his recent output — ought to fetch a larger doting audience.

A furious whirl of sound and imagery, “Jallikattu” throws us off and pulls us back in cyclically, never letting us settle down or cling on. Pellissery uses lengthy tracking shots to disrupt the pace, then chucks in a series of quick cuts to brace the narrative. As the fugitive animal starts wearing the group out, more men join in, each laying claim to it. Old rivalries are rekindled and new rivalries formed, and soon enough the village descends into chaos. As the search party moves to the forest (a terrific long shot shows the men clenching fire torches between the foliage, like fireflies buzzing around), the men’s patience wears thin. They begin to turn on each other, as was inevitable, and this natural progression reeks of familiarity. We realise that it never was about capturing a stray buffalo: the risky challenge its capture posed would allow the men a chance to stroke their egos, showcase their virility. Then again, it can be viewed as a resonant political statement, which, I am told (for I have not yet read it), the short story aimed for: it discusses the itch for freedom and the corruption of morals in search for power. There are several ways to look at it, but they, more or less, arrive at the same cynical conclusion.

With its ambitious (and mercifully quiet) parting shot, “Jallikattu” leaves us a lot to chew on. We are no different from the cavemen, it indicates, still belligerently fighting over prey having not yet learned the language of peace. And the prey still is, and quite possibly will be, an innocent.

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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?

[Not For Reproduction]

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: Mangesh Joshi’s “Lathe Joshi” is a gently moving tale of a man trying to adapt to the modern world.

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

The most striking sequence in Mangesh Joshi’s Lathe Joshi sees its mostly silent protagonist, Vijay Joshi, arriving at a busy intersection. The light is not yet green but horns blare. And then, just as he’s about to cross, the light turns green and the vehicles swarm in his direction. They go around him, cutting each other, and nobody stops to let him cross. He stands there, lost. The world is in a damn hurry. It has found a way to get around problems. It is not, at least not necessarily, solving any of them. And Vijay Joshi is yet to catch up.

Joshi appears to be a most simplistic man. Having led a life of routine, he has not stopped once in his tracks and had a look around. The buildings have become taller. The people have become more impatient and cold. He does not know this yet. And one day he is told that he has lost his job to a machine. And it is on this day that he finally has a look and is scared of what he sees. This fear is unclear, something he has never felt before; it is born partly out of desperation and partly out of ignorance. For thirty-five years he has operated a lathe machine. He knows his way around it, all right. To his peers he’s more often “Lathe Joshi” than “Joshi saheb.” And yet, someone has invented a machine that has the ability to surpass his throughput and match his artistry with it, and it certainly did not take thirty-five years to build. It is discernible to us, however, that it cannot challenge his passion. Never that. But how much weight does passion really hold in the world that is far too obsessed with automation?

In most films concerning the relationship between man and machine, there is a thin undercurrent of pessimism pinned to the proceedings. Automation leads to unemployment, which inevitably leads to despair. There is much scope for human drama. But Lathe Joshi does not seem to be interested. It’s more neutral in its examination of a man’s stint with unemployment brought about by automation. Vijay Joshi isn't angry. He does not protest nor does he grumble. He accepts it, not like a man who was ready but like a man who has lost the courage to fight. He is now awake to the modern world, a capitalist world that has been consumed by greed, where machines are employed for throughput and not quality. A world that, perhaps, no longer accepts a beautifully made piston as a résumé. And in this world it is extremely important to upgrade, his peer tells him at one point. This declaration is sandwiched between a brief exchange in which his peer confides in him that he does not comprehend how the machines he has been hired to supervise work, and a tea-boy getting them tea out of a machine. When asked why, the tea-boy simply says the request was for “quick” tea. It is not a particularly incisive detail, but we get the point. They did get tea, but cutting down on manual labor will have consequences when it comes to flavor.

For the most part, Lathe Joshi comes across as two films rolled into one: one about a man trying to keep his dignity during the tumultuous period of unemployment, and the other about him trying to adapt to a home that has already been taken over by machines. His blind mother lives off the noise emanating from the television and a small electronic machine that plays a religious chant over and over again. His wife is wonderstruck by the small miracles of a food processor. And his son, their portal to the modern world, is adept at computer repair and has hardware components strewn all over the house. Machines had penetrated Joshi's personal life a long time ago. But he, someone who has quietly spent most of his life around the cacophony of one particular machine, was oblivious to it. He curiously inspects his son's hardware components. At one point, his blind mother is more skilled than him at changing the television channel. When he offers to help his wife, who runs a small catering business, with an order, she rebuffs him. Unlike him, she’s embracing technology, albeit with the usual hesitation. Joshi, on the other hand, is trying to wrap his head around machines and doing a miserable job of it.

Empathy drives the narrative of Lathe Joshi. The many insights it offers can only come from a place of understanding. At one point, Joshi’s son, the smart aleck of the house, is too slow for the world. It is hardly worth doubting that director Mangesh Joshi has observed these characters and their little dilemmas up close. There is no attempt at turning Vijay Joshi into a hero. We do not feel angry for him. When he wants to buy his own lathe machine, his son tells him he’s too old to run his own business. Maybe he should just sit back and relax. When his son buys a new car, Joshi wants to know when he learnt driving. These are little observations but they contribute significantly when we are trying to put this character into context. For a character who is given only a few lines to say, Vijay Joshi is someone we come to understand and empathize with. And the others who make up his little world – his wife, his mother and his son – are given just the right amount of space for us to examine where they lie in the world he’s been forced to inhabit. We walk away knowing how each of them will go about their lives three or maybe four years from now. And to accomplish this is no mean feat.

Conversely, Lathe Joshi seems to slump just a tad in places because of its repetitiveness. Technology has taken over everything, and they mean everything. The grouchy old woman need not visit a temple to offer her prayers anymore. She can simply go to a website. What’s more, she can even buy a gift while she is at it. The constant reminders about how deeply technology has penetrated our lives are quite unnecessary in a film that is at all times, in one way or another, doing exactly this. But these are simply nitpickings.

I am not sure whether the film would prove to be more meaningful upon a second viewing, but if I do watch it again, I have one particular moment which I would like to savor. It has Joshi visiting his ailing ex-boss, and the guard at his ex-boss’ house is most reluctant to let him in. A call is made through the intercom. His ex-boss cannot come to the phone, of course, so his wife does. The guard mentions that “some Joshi” wants to meet the old man before handing the phone over to Joshi himself. After bringing the receiver to his ear, the woman asks him if he is “Lathe Joshi,” and a smile slowly breaks on his face, lighting it up. He’s been given his identity back. It’s something one cannot put a value on. In a world that no longer seems to recognize his talent, here is hope. I felt my heart soar. And it hadn't soared like this in quite some time.

[Not For Reproduction]

Review: Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla's “An Insignificant Man” captures a tale that the papers did not.

[May contain spoilers, many of them.]

You may have never seen Arvind Kejriwal laugh. And by laugh, I mean it originating from somewhere deep within, a genuinely helpless fit of laughter that leaves one chuckling quietly by just looking at him. He’s trying to thwart his colleague’s attempts at recording a voiceover that will accompany the television advertisement for his political party. That laugh – be it from anyone, even a politician – is infectious enough to shatter any preconceived image one may have of them. In interviews and at rallies, Kejriwal comes across as dour and determined, seemingly far too occupied to be amused about something. This moment takes that image and subverts it. Here we see a side of his that prompts his colleague to wonder, “Do the people outside know he can laugh?” We know what he means.

To call Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla’s An Insignificant Man a rare and fascinating gem would be overstating it a little, but it would still be the truth. The fact that it is rare is what makes it so fascinating. We have always been a rather sensitive nation when it comes to politics. We believe it is our constitutional right to shield our leaders from unwelcome criticism, to project them as patriots of the first order, and are ever so keen to see them as men and women of impeccable charm and searing intelligence. The cameras dilute them for us, making them appear more like role models and not like people. Here we see them as people, perhaps for the first time.

What puts An Insignificant Man amongst the year's best films is not just its ability to commendably capture the enormous effort and determination that went into making one of the most remarkable political feats this country has seen in the last few years, but also allow us the luxury of that thrill even if some of us are not inclined to any political party or ideology. It is foremost a story of an underdog wanting to put things right, an underdog whose fight we saw on television, in interviews, through tales and rumors told in buses and trains. But we were declined the opportunity to see what went behind closed doors and pulled curtains. He had supporters and he had haters, and each one, regardless of whether or not they put their trust in him, was curious to know what he could do. He was belligerent, passionate, and outspoken. He took names. He turned many heads. He put on quite a show. I wanted to know more, wanted to keep up with him, even though I never really saw myself supporting his brand of politics. Television reduces these stories of fascinating people to mundane thirty-minute prime-time programs, where they are talked about, dissected, and eventually, inevitably forgotten. Thousands of people tell a thousand tales on television every day and night. Some stories get lost in the shuffle. Some are elbowed out of the spotlight when the next bit of sensational news breaks. What if someone were to stitch the bits that got on television and some that didn't and give us a fully realized real-life character who waged a war against a corrupt system that never spared a chance to try to squash him?

Whether or not An Insignificant Man achieves that is largely our call. It nosily goes inside rooms where he holds meetings with his supporters and refuses to sneak out when he is at his most vulnerable, at his most confused. He wants to do good for his people but also clearly wants to be the final word on all matters. It's not as if the film doesn't take sides; this is a film that is is very much one-sided, but not one-note. It does not eulogize him. It presents him as a person who makes promises so tall that it that puts even his staunchest supporters in a spot. And this is not a film about him, but the battle he and his party fought, a lengthy and complex fight that, over its course, changed the people associated with it and even those who were not, at least directly.

The sort of access the makers get here, uncommon in this part of the world, leads to some fine little details that help us get through to the man – men – we are watching. There is a terrific moment when Kejriwal and his right-hand man, Yogendra Yadav, pensively walk out of a room, down a flurry of steps, and pause to put on their Gandhi caps, a symbol that has come to be associated with the middle-class, before meeting swarms of supporters. It's a moment worthy of a quiet chuckle; in politics, where the absurd is almost never noticed, an identity is essential. They slip into it moments before something important. Even when giving an interview with his trademark bluntness to a television channel after walking out of a film inspired by his movement, he nervously fiddles with the corner of his shirt when the camera moves to the reporter. These details, as trivial and throwaway-like they might seem, make the experience more human, more accessible than any television prime-time program would.

Among other things An Insignificant Man also allows us the opportunity to laugh at not just our politicians, whom we have entrusted to run our gullible country, not just our institutions, but also at the absurdities that we find in every nook and corner of this place. These bits are presented without much gusto, as if they are inseparable to the Indian political scene. My favorite involves two processions of political rivals crossing each other on the road quite coincidentally, leading to an uncomfortable stillness before their supporters erupt with chants. The two rivals have lambasted each other in political rallies and television programs, and now find it a bit awkward to find the courtesy to acknowledge each other openly. They do, of course, but the sequence is an example of how satire finds a way to entrench itself in Indian politics.

Ultimately, An Insignificant Man arrives at a known conclusion, but it leaves us with a satisfied feeling of having watched a narrative that the papers didn't quite capture. There have been countless films over the years that have discreetly highlighted how we failed as a people. An Insignificant Man has something else on its mind. It shows us how we succeeded.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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