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

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Not For Reproduction)

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

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Not For Reproduction)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Not For Reproduction)

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

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

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

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

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

Image source: www.hindustantimes.com

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

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

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

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

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

(Not For Reproduction)

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

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

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

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

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

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

Image source: www.indianexpress.com

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

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

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

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

(Not For Reproduction)

Handpicks: The Five Best Indian Films Of 2016.

[This list is not for reproduction.]

Five, because I could not watch all the films that I wanted to this year.

Two notable films that you won't find on this list but deserve to be on it are: Sairat, Nagraj Manjule's epic romantic musical that skilfully mixed ingredients of commercial cinema with social themes; and Aligarh, Hansal Mehta's compassionate film on Ramchandra Siras, a gay professor at the Aligarh Muslim University, who was found dead in 2010 under mysterious circumstances, questioned the invasion of privacy in his case.

5. “Chauthi Koot” (dir.: Gurvinder Singh; Punjabi)

In Chauthi Koot, there is silence of a unique kind. It is fraught with tension and suspicion, and when someone speaks, the words don’t diminish the tension it carries. This silence is masterfully maintained throughout the film. It is important, because Gurvinder Singh is trying to do something ambitious here: take us back to the Punjab of the ‘80’s, a time of widespread distrust and disorder, using atmosphere as a time-machine. He succeeds. Chauthi Koot, based on two short stories by Waryam Singh Sandhu, is a modest, profound film that adopts an ambiguous approach to tell a story of fear and paranoia, and how innocents are pulled into someone else’s fight. It prompts us to put ourselves in the shoes of its protagonists. There are no easy answers to be found here, but ample ideas to mull over.

4. “Ottaal” (dir.: Jayaraj; Malayalam)

Jayaraj’s Ottaal, a worthy adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s short story “Vanka,” is arguably the year’s most heartbreaking film. Taking place mostly in and around the marshlands of Kerala, it is the story of a recently orphaned boy’s attempts to start a new life with his aging grandfather, a duck farmer, while also trying to get himself accepted by society. Brought alive by empathetic direction, terrific writing, and gorgeous cinematography, Ottaal immerses us in its richly textured world. Although Jayaraj adds his own little touches to this neat adaptation to make it more accessible to the Indian viewer, he does little to mitigate the crushing power of the original. I will never be able to forget Kuttappayi of Ottaal like I haven’t forgotten Vanka of “Vanka.” What needs to be noted here is that “Vanka” was written in 1896, and more than a century later its message still stings.

3. “Visaranai” (dir.: Vetrimaaran; Tamil/Telugu)

I wasn’t familiar with the cinema of Vetrimaaran before I watched Visaranai, but that has changed. Or, if I had to put it in another way, it made me change that. A boldly political film, which is a rarity in Indian cinema these days because of a certain babu in the CBFC, it’s an immensely disturbing indictment of the country’s policing system. Sometimes the caretakers of the law are worse than those who break it. It’s a scary thought. In the end I was left thoroughly shaken. Maybe you will, too.

2. “Thithi” (dir.: Raam Reddy; Kannada)

There wasn’t a film I saw this year more Indian than Raam Reddy’s Thithi. It was reminiscent of the TV serials that used to be shown on Indian television a long, long time ago that mainly focused on a group of people in a quaint little place and chronicled their daily lives and interactions. It’s indeed marvellous how beautifully it observes its characters without making it look heavy-handed, and how the light humour is woven into its thoughtful story. It’s the kind of film that offers little food for conversation but much for thought. We just soak it up.

1. “Kaul” (dir.: Aadish Keluskar; Marathi)

Aadish Keluskar’s remarkable debut was made on a shoestring budget, but that doesn’t deter it from being one of the most original and brave Indian indie films in years. I caught it at a free screening in March, and I consider commuting for nearly an hour in peak Mumbai traffic one of the better decisions I took last year. It’s hard to describe what Kaul is about. It’s also hard to describe how it engages us with its stark visuals and soundscape. It’s a carefully made film, and it often ventures into a territory we do not expect an Indian film to venture into. (People love to call it – and I believe the term is – “mindfuck.”) It’s ambiguous, philosophical and grim, and it requires a willingness on the viewers’ part to explore what it wants to say. It’s the quintessential nightmare of film distributors. There is so much to absorb, so many ideas to take note of that one viewing was never going to be enough. (I have not gotten a chance to watch it again yet.) The discussions are never going to end. The best we can do is applaud it for its guts and watch it again. And wait and see what the very talented Keluskar comes up with next.

Review: Jayaraj’s “Ottaal” is an excellent adaptation.

[Contains spoilers, many of them.]

My most vivid memory of watching Schindler’s List is the horror I felt while watching that sequence in it in which smiling and waving children are packed onto trucks to be carried to a place where they will be put to eternal rest. Their parents are on the other side of the field, celebrating another day of survival, realizing only too late what’s happening. Chaos follows. I watched with cold dread and a growing sense of numbness.

In Jayaraj’s Ottaal, winner of the Crystal Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2016, a recently orphaned five-year-old boy is about to be sent to a place that’s going to crush his spirit and ruin his childhood. But he is yet unaware of it. He blissfully celebrates going away to the city to ‘learn’, promising his wise grandfather, a duck farmer with whom he stays in the idyllic marshlands of Kuttanad in Kerala, that he will be back soon. The child’s innocence and simplistic view of the world is matched by our knowledge of it. We realize what’s going to happen to him. The happier he seems, the more heartbroken we become. His happiness is poisonous. I recalled the sequence from Schindler’s List when I felt a familiar pang of dread while watching it.

An adaptation – and a terrific one by Joshy Mangalath – of Anton Chekhov’s 1896 short story “Vanka,” Ottaal takes place mostly in and around the marshlands of Kerala. In these marshes lives a community of fishermen, away from the busy cities, building their own lives in their own little world. A postman, one of the many endearing characters in this film, laments everyday that there are no letters for anyone in Kuttanad, but his tone is hopeful. On the other side of the village, on the banks of a river sits a man with a fishing rod trying to catch fish. Whenever Kuttappayi, the boy, is passing by, he asks him with childlike curiosity whether he managed to hook any. No, he has not. But, the man says, it’s a pleasure just to sit there and hope. It’s a little detail, but a significative one: this is a place untouched by pessimism. This is a place free from worry, where everyone knows everyone, and everyone gives generously to everyone. This is a community that has learnt how to live peacefully.

Image source: www.berlinale.de

Ottaal is a film that reveals itself through little moments like this. Jayaraj’s direction is decidedly low-key but assured. Together with cinematographer MJ Radhakrishnan he paints a textured world of sounds and people, like a man who communicates with the others through a few peculiar calls and spends the rest of the time caroling without a care in the world. And Kuttappayi is at the center of this world, a character so tragic that your heart sinks at the very sight of him. His story is revealed through an exchange early on: his parents, deep in debt, committed suicide by poisoning their meal and even gave some to him, but he was saved. His life is far from easy. He’s happy living with his grandfather. His grandfather is secretly ailing but he loves and cares for the boy more than he lets on. He wants to be there for him. His closest friend is Tinku, whose well-off father disapproves of his friendship with ‘duck boy’ Kuttappayi. Tinku’s mother sympathizes with the boy but is unable to provide for him given her failed attempts at softening her dour husband. So Kuttappayi stays where he is, struggling to build his own little life, trying to find acceptance in a world that has been unrelenting to him.

Through these episodes, the film gently hints at how unfairly the world treats a young and poor orphan. Kuttappayi’s life seems to be defined by separation: separation from his parents because of debt, separation from Tinku because of class, and finally, separation from his grandfather because of an illness. He’s just a young lad who has much to offer to the world, but he’s living, both literally and metaphorically, in muddy waters.

Finally, when his helpless grandfather decides to send him away to the city to ‘learn’, the film inches closer to a devastating end. In a skillfully executed scene, the old man has a drink with Boss, his only link to the city. Boss suggests that Kuttappayi be sent to a factory where fireworks are made and half-heartedly adds that he will be happy there. The old man doesn’t dismiss the idea right away. He wants Kuttappayi to be in safe hands, but that seems to be a long shot. Now he just wants him to be under a roof. It’s a fine moment, and Kumarakom Vasudevan, who plays the old man, handles it with aplomb. He captures the turmoil the grandfather is going through and the courage it takes to break the heart of someone you love dearly through a few moments of brooding silence. He does not speak, and yet his eyes tell us all we need to know.

Ottaal is the kind of small film I find easy to love because it’s made with so much heart. It has an important message to impart, and, unlike most Indian films with social messages, this one does not force-feed it to us. We are left with a lasting image of Kuttappayi sleeping in darkness without a blanket with a few boys his age, his fate now uncertain. He has written to his grandfather using the light from a candle. For someone who has suffered so much, he remains optimistic. Come what may, we know he will always light a candle. It’s a thought that brings us much comfort.

(Not For Reproduction)