Essay: Kundan Shah’s “Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa” and the Birth of the Likable Loser.

I still remember the first time I saw Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa. I was nine and holed up in a hotel in Nashik, flipping through the channels on television, contemplating whether I should watch a talk show on MTV or a movie on the next channel starring Shah Rukh Khan which I happened to stumble upon. On instinct, I chose to go with the movie.

Back in 2002, when I was watching it, Khan had already established himself as a romantic hero. Tousled hair, a dimpled smile and a boyish charm accompanying a seemingly bratty persona, there was no question of imagining anyone else playing it with such aplomb, such ease, such grace. Khan seemed to be born into the skin of the role; as a child, I could scarcely believe the tales from his days as a struggling actor and that he didn’t come from privilege. But watching Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa was, I remember, a singularly frustrating experience, all because I was familiar with this image he had carved for himself. I put the channel on at that moment in the film in which Sunil, the character he plays, is at his most vulnerable, most innocent. He is at a carnival with the girl of his dreams, holding two cones of ice-cream, and has just been caught lying. The other man, the manifestation of the ‘perfect’ man and one of the two victims of this rather harmless lie, threatens to tell on him. But Sunil, suddenly panicky, does not want him to. He does, though, and Sunil is compelled to tell the truth. The truth is simple enough: He lied for her, because he wanted her to go to the carnival with him, just the two of them. He fumbles through his explanation but his reasons are genuine. He may not be bright but he is pure, purer than the girl and the guy, purer than most of us, any of us. His actions may be deplorable but in that moment I didn’t hate him. And after several viewings over several years, I still don’t.

I don’t know how Khan did it. And I don’t know how director Kundan Shah and co-writer Pankaj Advani wrote it. Sunil never wins at anything. He lies to his band-mates when he is late to a practice session. It's the second time in a week. He has failed his exams thrice. (Later on, when he fails again, he grudgingly agrees to lie to his father that he passed and back it up with a fake mark-sheet.) And then that lie to go to the carnival with the girl of his dreams. He tries, fails, and then tries again. Over and over. He hurts people. He hurts himself. And then he’s back to his cheerful old ways, trying to make amends. In the hands of a lesser actor with little charm to spare, the results would have been unsatisfactory, to say nothing of how unwatchable and bland it would have made the film. But Khan manages to pull it off by playing it just right. His performance is a mixture of empathy and courage, vulnerability and bravura. Sunil’s whimsical world is limited, his dreams are modest, and he keeps them together in his own clumsy way.

For a Hindi romantic-comedy or even a Hindi film for that matter, Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa is a surprisingly testing watch. Sunil’s love evades him. The girl never cares about him enough to stop and consider him as a potential suitor, never takes him seriously. He is always, always a friend. And in his innocence he doesn’t push it, doing as much as he can with the little attention she gives him. He lets her slip out of his grasp, choosing loneliness and music to help him tide over his heartbreak when she falls in love with someone else. We see him suffer, helpless and distraught. And in the climax of the film that I now recall so vividly as if it were only yesterday that I saw it for the first time, right after he chooses to let her go purely for the sake of her happiness, and just after the cursed ring slips out of her hand and rolls into the benches as she’s putting it on the finger of the man she’s about to marry, which makes the whole church get up and look for it, he sees her as if in a dream, exuberantly happy, calling out to him. It’s a confusing moment for him: there is his sister is in the crowd, weeping silently for her brother for only she knows how much this would take from him, and there is the girl he loves, wanting to know if he has found the ring. He has. He’s seen it. But, he shakes his head. Emotion floods his face, overwhelming him. It’s Sunil at his most selfish, most human. This is one thing he cannot do. He can never truly let her go.

If a single moment can indeed define a film, this one is Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa. It allows us a cursory glance into the mind of a character that Hindi films seem to fear, a character they put up so rarely, and never so exquisitely: a guy who’d rather be selfish than generous, who’d rather be flawed than saintly, who’d rather follow his heart than do what the world expects him to. 

Hindi films are often about the hero and heroine walking into the sunset together. This one rolls its eyes at it. It is, bravely, far too busy consoling the guy the hero beat to get to her.

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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: 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.

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Review: Shankar Ramen’s “Gurgaon” is a promising work that wobbles near the end.

[Contains spoilers, many of them.]

The most fascinating aspect of Shankar Ramen’s directorial debut, Gurgaon, is its examination of how violence shapes its characters. In a scene at a pub, just before a full-fledged brawl is about to break out on the crowded dance floor, a man, instead of hitting the other, punches the woman he’s dancing with. The woman is understandably traumatized by the incident and wants to leave, but her companion begs her to stay. She doesn’t. In a later scene, he’s in a bathtub with a prostitute in a seedy hotel. Given his reaction to the incident (he batters the other man until he is stopped), we might have thought he is someone who doesn’t like violence to be perpetrated against women. But, unfazed, without batting an eye and without warning, he suffocates the prostitute with a picture of the other woman. We were clearly mistaken.

It does not end here. In a flashback, his father is about to commit murder by taking a pickaxe to his victim. When the axe is brought down in a rather dreadful moment, the father’s blood-caked face carries the same stony determination as his son’s. It’s an interesting moment; it’s the coming-of-age of both father and son in two different eras, but both through murder.

In many ways the characters of Kehri Singh and his son, Nikki, are similar. Kehri Singh is a man who made his bones by killing his kin and grabbing land that did not fully belong to him; Nikki is someone who wishes to do the same. He wants his adopted sister, Preet, clearly the apple of her father’s eye, out of the way. He yearns to become a somebody but he lacks the education and magnetism. She is more sophisticated and measured, letting out secrets to only those she absolutely trusts. He is reckless, craving for a place in the spotlight; she wants to stay out of it. He wants to open an upscale gym on his father’s property, but she casually points out that he got the spelling of ‘powerhouse’ wrong in the pamphlet he made as a sales pitch to his father. He has everything, but he has nothing too. So he spends most of his time driving around with his younger brother and his friend, betting on cricket matches and visiting pubs. His sister, an architect by qualification, spends this time working on a massive real estate project for her father in her office on the property Nikki wanted for his gym.

If Gurgaon’s real estate is a big pie, then Kehri Singh has the biggest piece. The very invocation of his name is enough to seal deals; in one particularly revealing scene, Nikki is about to bet a large amount, but the bookie only accepts his bet when his friend mentions his father. Nikki is living in his father’s shadow and he is looking for ways to get out of it.

This is not the first time a family as dysfunctional and volatile as this has been brought to the Indian screen. We last saw one such family in Kanu Behl’s terrific Titli, a tale about a family of carjackers with tempers who eke out a living by committing petty crimes. Gurgaon's family is wealthier, but they understand violence. The women are rational; the men unreadable, forever in pursuit of power.

And then there’s Gurgaon itself. But in this case it’s not the place that makes the men who they are; it’s the men that make the place what it is. Ramen’s bleak realization of the place lends it an alluring quality. It has a shiny surface but a murky underside. There are people who have everything, and there are also those who have nothing. In one scene, a man who has been hired to kidnap Preet inspects the layout of her project and asks her how she intends to supply the property with water. In an earlier scene, that same man stood in a long queue for water that was brought to his neighborhood in a tanker. It’s an ironic moment where the two worlds within Gurgaon collide in the dark; Preet imagines an upmarket park where the rich will haves their homes and offices, but she encounters a man who thinks progress means a steady supply of water, nothing more.

Like Titli, Gurgaon explores the themes of patriarchy and ambition, and how violence irreversibly seeps into the lives of its characters. Then there’s the violence that none of the main characters inflict, but it’s very much part of the lives of Gurgaon’s residents. In a deeply unsettling scene, we see a tollbooth attendant being taunted with a can of beer. The perpetrator’s face is never seen nor is the attendant’s. A minute later, the hand that carried the can of beer brings out a gun and fires. The killing is as cold as it is impulsive. Ramen uses it to give his world a certain mood. Anything can happen. And ‘anything’ does.

The central characters are developed beautifully. We are revolted by their actions, but are also eager to know what they will do next. Ramen doesn’t oversimplify things; he gives us enough time and background to unravel them ourselves. Nikki doesn’t like the fact that his adopted sister, whom he leaves no opportunity to remind came from a ‘gutter’, will be the heir to their father’s empire. He believes that he’s entitled to that fortune. And as time passes, he finds it increasingly difficult to control his overblown ego. He ticks off a guy who dared to touch his sister. It’s not out of love for her; he simply cannot accept that someone doesn’t fear him enough, as people usually do his father.

Gurgaon slips just when the story needed tidying up. Had it ended fifteen minutes earlier, it would have been a much, much better film. Alas, it doesn’t. It goes on, twisting the story and hammering it out of shape. A character-driven mood piece would have made more sense, and one would have believed it was slowly inching toward it, but Ramen brings the familiar urgency of a thriller to the last fifteen minutes of a film that was, for a large part, a quiet examination of what greed does to the power-hungry. As a result, it leaves us with a feeling that we may have seen this before, and it’s a disappointing feeling. I expected more, but in this case, less.

But it doesn’t take away from the fact that Gurgaon is a stellar debut. With its world-weary characters who have cynicism for a companion, how gently tension is handled here, and an eye for atmospherics, it makes a strong case for the talent of its cast and crew.

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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.

[Not For Reproduction]

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)