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

[May contain spoilers, many of them.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Not For Reproduction)

Review: Why Hansal Mehta's "Shahid" took my breath away.

A few terse words, pleasantries and then, the sound of a livid gunshot punctuates the arid air. 

That's how you are introduced to Hansal Mehta's Shahid, a spectacularly gripping biopic that susses out why that gun went off in the tiny office of the lawyer in the Kurla suburb of Mumbai on a cold February night in 2010. Shahid Azmi, thirty-two at the time of his death, was gunned down in cold-blood in retaliation for him defending some of those accused in terrorist activities. Because of my perpetual love for newspapers, I vaguely remember having read numerous articles in the papers regarding his death. A controversial figure who was a subject of a number of caustic debates, I didn't find it surprising when Mehta wanted to make a film on his life.

What surprised me though was how vitriolic he made it. Mehta goes on a gleeful offensive against the general belief of how a film should be made in the Hindi film industry. The film opens with a horrific recollection of the communal riots that plagued the streets of Mumbai, then Bombay, in 1993. Azmi, just fourteen then, witnessed murder when he ventured out on the streets to investigate the source of the screaming. Enraged, disillusioned and desolate, he joined the terrorist resistance but ran away from the camp when he witnessed the beheading of a man. Returning back to his unsuspecting family, he was picked up on charges of suspicion of terrorist activities by the police, tortured and flung into jail. Diddled out of a normal life, he sought to complete his education whilst serving out his sentence.

Azmi studied law while languishing in Tihar Jail for seven years. Once out, he pledged to help people like him, who were withering in jail because they could not prove their innocence. 

I know, I make it sound pretty jejune, because a movie like this must be watched, not read about. It dejected me that a film like this had only a few takers, not to forget that it made the long, winding path to the theaters three years after it was completed. But it was well worth the wait. It's the sort of film that piles you with hope and compassion without even aiming for it. The only tribute we can pay a valorous film is to watch it and learn from it. That's precisely what I did with Shahid.

You know, Mumbai's grit and grime isn't easy to put on celluloid. You need to have the coarseness of Anurag Kashyap's masterful Black Friday, you have to make it look bleak, hopeful and redeeming. Filmmakers get it wrong most of the time, take it from a guy who's lived his whole life here. It isn't all about college kids driving chic cars, sitting on a pavement overlooking the sea or shopping in opulent malls. That's the picture the Hindi film industry feeds you. Mehta, thankfully, knows that too. 

His version of the city is a meld of people and noise, all remarkably detailed right down to the way they talk. The Bombay slang is unerring, with the characters conversing in expletives even while praising each other. In one magical scene, we see the character of Azmi cooling off with a quick drink of lemonade before his train arrives. That's the city I grew up in, and it makes me blissful to see the city peopled with characters I know and not some caricatures that have been dreamt up by someone from fluffy romance movies.

Shot on a paltry budget, which is a tenth of what it took to make The Lunchbox, the best film of last year, Mehta's film is indisputably richer than that. And the sort of passion that went into making it makes it swanky, a deep love for craft and detail. Like Azmi who turned a blind eye to money, Mehta crucially chooses to tell a story without making it a lavish extravaganza. Whatever he knows about the art of filmmaking, he puts into it, catches the spunk and vigor of a young man driven by a cause and how the circumstances change him. It's a fearless escapade that you seldom get to watch, and Mehta makes no mistake. He doesn't cower, even during a disturbing torture scene, he makes you watch as the victim gets pummeled and finagled to sign his own doom. 

There is a warning put in by the makers which states that the facts may have been twisted for dramatic effect but you know that the warning is as useless as a sweater on a wintery morning in Delhi. The film would not have seen a release without that little message, that was my gut feeling. I can't really say how much of it is fact and how much is fiction, but I suspect a lot of it is indeed factual.

Raj Kumar is on some sort of mission, I think. After proving his salt as an actor in Love, Sex Aur Dhokha, Gangs Of Wasseypur II, Talaash and Kai Po Che!, he delivers a soulful performance that is perfectly nuanced. His Shahid is a man of suppressed anger, enamored by his obsession with justice. Keep an eye out for a wonderfully executed sequence, where he questions his own boss, played by Tigmanshu Dhulia in an effective cameo, as to why he is defending a overtly guilty client. Raj Kumar is outstanding in the role, going from angry to desperate to happy without missing a beat. And when he smiles, you smile. That's how good he is.

The rest of the cast is terrific. I think it's safe to say that Shahid is the second best-acted film of last year, after The Lunchbox which was an obvious choice. Baljinder Kaur as his mother and Mohammed Zeeshan Ayub as his overbearing older brother are first-rate, Ayub proving that Raanjhaana and No One Killed Jessica weren't flukes. Give this man more films, please. Vipin Sharma and Shalini Vatsa as the two prosecutors are marvelous, as is Prabhleen Sandhu, a newbie who plays his wife. Confident and commanding your attention, it's a wonderful, wonderful debut from her.

Shahid was one of the very best films I had seen last year, and one that shouldn't be ignored. Well-crafted, well-acted and neatly written, it's a brave little film that deserves to be lauded. This is how films should be made.