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]

A Short Note on Kanu Behl’s “Binnu Ka Sapna”

[Contains spoilers]

Kanu Behl sure likes a wedding procession.

In “Titli,” his exceptional feature film debut, a wedding procession moves through a dingy lane, lit by men carrying neon green lights. The cavalcade consists of people gyrating energetically but their faces are oddly blank. It’s almost comical, but it helps detail the world Behl wants to create, a world where misery is so rife that people force themselves to be happy, but the despair never leaves their faces. In “Binnu Ka Sapna,” his impressive 32-minute short film now streaming on MUBI, Binnu, our protagonist, buys a bottle of phenyl and moves through a similar wedding procession lit by men carrying neon green tubelights. His glum, inscrutable face stands out as people dance wildly; immediately, we sense his disconnect with the world. Binnu’s family is splintered: his mother and father haven’t seen eye to eye in many years, their marriage broken beyond repair. At home, they barely exchange words. Binnu is lonely, alone. His periodic voiceover furnishes us with a brief history of why it has come to this: his mother, then young and happy, once walked out of a bedroom with her handsome brother-in-law, and his father saw them. When he slaps her publicly, to everyone’s shock, the first crack in the marriage forms. But Binnu empathises with his mother. ‘She just walked out of the bedroom,’ he says with a trace of sadness in his voice. This event is a portent of the film’s deeply unsettling ending.

In various interviews, Behl revealed that he wanted to make a film about the roots of anger. Through Binnu’s eyes, we see the seeds being sown (a dysfunctional, unhappy household) and bloom into a growing disenchantment with the world, with women in particular. We see shots of tea boiling away merrily in a pan and sense a bitterness brewing inside him. Tea is especially important to him: a reminder that, even as their marriage fell into decay, his mother couldn’t resist a cup of tea made by his father. He picked up this strange little ritual between his parents by observing them. He believes tea is a balm of sorts, a balm that heals tattered relationships.

Binnu wants to leave behind his past behind, a past that has shards of violence, but it’s now a part of him. (Whether separable or not we don’t know yet.) A menial job and a wise mentor do little to free him from the clutches of mounting cynicism. As he gets into a sexual relationship with his boss’s daughter, finally getting cheated on, the male chauvinist inside him starts gnawing into his conscience. As with “Titli,” Behl approaches this subject with the deftness of a specialist. Men who have grown up surrounded by violence, and those who end up perpetrating it, have some peculiar rationale explaining their actions. Binnu does, too. Behl, however, doesn’t simply tell us that; employing a 1:1 aspect ratio and a lean narrative, he charts Binnu’s journey from a confused young man to a resentful misogynist by putting us through various snapshots from his life, emphasising on crucial details that help us discern how he sees the world as he ages. Binnu liked a girl from his college, but never spoke to her; his first sexual encounter is awkward and passionless; his last girlfriend was too lovely for him, almost criminally lovely. Binnu chillingly puts this into perspective: ‘There was no need for her to look that beautiful.’ With that thought, Binnu’s cloning, as it were, is complete: he is now the spitting image of his father at the exact moment when he saw his wife emerging out of that room with her brother-in-law in tow. The hereditary nature of hate, and how it is unwittingly passed on from parent to child, is where “Binnu Ka Sapna” finally arrives, springing an ending that is as alarming as it is daring. In lesser hands it would have been blatantly exploitative. But Behl cuts away at just the right moment, allowing us to pull a deep breath and let our thoughts run amok.

[Not For Reproduction]