It was heartening to see the 700-seater Regal cinema hall on a weekday evening full of young viewers lined up for a more-than-70 years old film. To make a confession, I had never seen Do Bigha Zamin (DBZ) in its entirety before, only selected clips on TV especially the cycle rickshaw race with its calamitous end. Said to be inspired by watching Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves, DBZ is a grounded drama about the downtrodden in society. Our protagonist Shambhu Mahto (an unforgettable Balraj Sahni) is a farmer forced to look for work in the city to earn enough to clear the mortgage on his farm, after he refuses to sell the land to the rich zamindar (Murad) for the construction of a mill.
Shambhu lands in the sprawling chaos of Kolkata with his stowaway son Kanhaiya (Ratan Kumar), while his wife Parvati (Nirupa Roy) is left in the village with his ailing father. In the metropolis, they meet a motley of characters, some of whom - like the fiery-tongued slum landlady or the street-smart boot-polishing urchin Lalu (a young spirited Jagdeep, devoid of excessive buffoonery) are sympathetic enough to help them out. To put the money together before his repayment term ends, Shambhu works like a dog, refusing himself even basic necessities as a good meal or rest after an accident.
With Shambhu and his family's life Roy depicts the hardship of poor folk in the country, the struggle to make a living or hold on to their most meager possessions, while still trying to maintain a shred of dignity and avoid taking the path of crime. It is a sensitive and sympathetic tale helmed by someone that truly believed in the power of cinema for social change. Roy would later go on to make other striking social dramas like Bandini and Sujata; even his gothic melodrama Madhumati has a strong social backdrop of oppression by the privileged class.
The film's production design and cinematography are wholly married to the vision of social realism. Even the songs (composed by Salil Chowdhary) are an integral part of the narrative, with no extravagant escapist dream sequences. DBZ ends, as it should, on a tragic and poignant note: Shambhu finds himself fenced out of his own land after it is auctioned by the debt court, not allowed to even take a handful of dirt from the earth that he and his forefathers had tended for so many generations.
Kudos to the Film Heritage Foundation and Janus-Criterion for undertaking the 4K restoration of this classic. Largely free of any heavy damage and showing painstakingly calibrated contrast that reveals the vision of its makers, the restored version is a marvel.
Assi is story-wise probably the best film Anubhav Sinha has made thus far because, as Baradwaj Rangan in his review says, he constantly subverts our expectations about what the film is about. When we think it will be a grandstanding courtroom drama where a woman lawyer snatches justice from a biased system for her assaulted client, it goes in another, more interesting direction. It looks at the vicious spiral of violence and retaliatory violence, and how in celebrating an act of vigilante justice, the original victim is no longer a factor.
Of course, Anubhav the storyteller is often tripped over by Anubhav the writer of clunky portentous dialog and his need to virtue signal. To no fault of these terrific actors, Mohd Zeeshan Ayub's sensitive husband and Taapsee Pannu's firebrand lawyer are less credible people than idealizations of the script. Where the film is saved is in the introduction of Kumud Mishra's character - I won't spoil it with any further description, but in both the writing and Mishra's committed performance (including an amazing body transformation that makes you see the actor in a different light), a new dimension is added to what could have been a cliched Pink 2 kind of story. Sinha as director also breaks the fourth wall with periodic reminders that a rape crime takes place at least every 20 min in this country (Adding up to the title's eighty in a day, and that's counting only the reported ones).
All things considered, Assi's core is IMO strong enough to make an impact - the climax is beautifully written in terms of how it again restores focus on the person who was originally violated, and only by systemically addressing the 'might is right' thinking which governs our social conflicts - be they gender, religion or caste based - can we truly aspire to be civilized.
Like its title, which in the English spelling could stand for either the generic Hindi word for 'caste' or for a specific farming community in Northern India, Sunny Deol's latest vehicle Jaat is a schizophrenic beast. On the one hand it wants to be a tribute/cash-in to Deol's legacy as one of Bollywood's evergreen action movie stars. On the other hand, Deol has basically been air-dropped into the trappings of a Telugu masala flick. This is not surprising, since helmer Gopichand Malineni made his name with a string of such formula Telugu films, several of them starring this goon:
Compared to what Malineni makes him do in Jaat, Deol's previous action filmography is so grounded it would qualify as neo-realism. Interestingly, Randeep Hooda with his Haryanvi background is the only true 'Jaat' in the film (Deol's Punjabi heritage makes him a 'Jatt', which means the same thing, but not entirely); But Hooda here plays a Sri Lankan refugee called Ranatunga, while another Punjabi Vineet Kumar Singh (of Mukkabaaz fame) is cast as his psychotic younger brother Somulu(!). After having escaped the Lankan army and made his way to India with his comrades and a cache of gold (don't ask), Ranatunga runs a tyrannical parallel government in rural Andhra; In collusion with corrupt local authorities, his men oppress the cowed cow-munity, conducting periodic beheadings just to let them know who's boss. Decapitation is a major sport in Jaat - If you played a drinking game with each time someone's head flew off their shoulders, you'd be passed out well before the half-way mark.
The half-way mark incidentally is where the movie's title flashes on the screen. Deol's own entry is not long before; he is the lone non-saffron robed passenger boarding the train from Chennai to Ayodhya Dham. Hmm, according to IRCTC this is a journey that takes 39 hours. I have to wonder if Kill's success has birthed a trend of movies where folks that can afford flights (at least economy) opt for long rail journeys as an exercise in sheer masochism. But unlike Kill, this one goes off-rails fast. When technical reasons force the train to break trip, our nonchalant Jaat Wick gets himself an idli breakfast at a track-side cafe (It might be reading too much, but I wonder if his request for dal-roti getting pooh-poohed is Tollywood hinting at their current prevalence over the Hindi film industry). His meal is roughly interrupted when a bunch of local goons bump the plate out of his hands en route to heckling the cafe lady.
This begins the most fun part. Deol's request for an apology is naturally scorned by the goons. He then proceeds to give them the comeuppance they deserve and his fans demand. But even after the beating they only threaten him with the name of their boss. Which means that Deol must drag them to the boss' lair and demand said apology from him. Repeat cycle. This is the sort of structure that would have been conceived in an 80's Hong Kong martial arts caper, but it's entertaining given the over-the-top cartoony nature of the villains and the humor that comes from Deol commencing his 'idli' story at each level. Finally, he enters the stronghold where Ranatunga rules with his wife Bharathi (Regina Cassandra, clearly relishing the opportunity to play wicked). In a more than passing nod to the Ramayana, Deol rescues a bunch of lady cops (led by a mostly wasted Saiyami Kher) that had been imprisoned by the Ravana-worshiping Ranatunga.
Post-interval, as Deol makes his way to the police station with his rescued charges and we are treated to distasteful reprises of their harassment by the villains, Ranatunga launches a full-scale armed assault with bikes, jeeps and random explosions. More deaths occur, and we become privy to more icky flashbacks, one in which a teenage girl is stripped and assaulted by a senior cop working for Ranatunga. Like Toshiro Mifune's wandering ronin in Yojimbo, a disgusted Deol decides that this town is too rotten to allow to survive, and proceeds to burn it down two-handed, carrying only an armory of assault rifles, RPG launchers, harpoon guns(!), and oh, a military chopper.
There are minor diversions: You have Telugu stars Ramya Krishnan as the President and Jagapathi Babu as the hotshot CBI officer she sends to Andhra to solve the crisis, only to find it Deol-ized before he even gets there proper. There are allusions to land being captured at the behest of foreign powers to extract radioactive thorium as a valuable resource. Mahesh Limaye (once of Jogwa fame) has another crass Bollywood cameo in which he serves as a (loud) mouthpiece extolling the Jaat's badasserie. But Deol's entry as a Ram-like figure - on an Ayodhya bound train - and his fight with the evil Sri Lankan tyrant to rescue Indian womanhood, and the populace in general, is really where Jaat is at.
The action is bloody, but has a cartoony edge that makes it more palatable than a Marco (see how Ranatunga's troops move obligingly in single file so they can get jointly skewered by harpoons like shish kebabs). The sexual violence is more problematic, the inherent misogyny of mainstream Telugu cinema simply transcribed here. Too many gory flashbacks drag the pace while also piling on the ick-factor. However, Deol's ability to convey a sincerity that's naive without getting cloying means that whenever he is on screen, he lifts the film, gives it a little class.
If one were to look for a common thread in all of Dibakar Banerjee aka DB's filmography (at least the full-length features), it would be the interplay between truth and deceit. His comedies Khosla ka Ghosla! and Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! prominently feature swindlers that live by pulling the wool over people's eyes. The characters are either deceiving someone else or blinding themselves to reality for the sake of wealth / happiness. Shanghai and Detective Byomkesh Bakshi! have protagonists driven by a search for the truth hidden behind the wall of deceit. In the fitfully interesting Sandeep aur Pinky Faraar (which was almost buried for want of takers) the characters are a bit of both. It would appear that, like his favorite detective, Mr. Banerjee is also through his films a 'Satyanweshi' (Truth-Seeker).
The first Love, Sex aur Dhokha (LSD) featured the camera as its ultimate protagonist, both an unbiased observer and a tool of deceit. In the world of 2010, it was handycams, CCTV and sting operations with hidden cameras that provided the voyeuristic view. 14 years later in LSD-2 (aka Like-Share-Download), it is reality TV, mobile phone cameras, virtual worlds and live-streaming / social media coverage that peers into our lives.
LSD-2's first episode focuses on Noor (Paritosh Tiwari), who after undergoing gender change surgery is now a participant in a talent show called Truth or Dance. Here the participants, challenged to dance or reveal a sensational truth about themselves, constantly work to up their audience ratings with emotional hooks. By choice I am not a major consumer of reality TV outside of cooking competitions, but this segment recalled my skims of shows like Kaun Banega Crorepati and India's Best Dancer when sitting with mum, their naked attempts to hold audience interest by milking sob stories or generating "behind-the-stage" content that's supposedly candid/unrehearsed. Noor's game is to bring in the mother (Swaroopa Ghosh) she has not spoken to in years, and who still refers to her as male. Their on-camera meeting is all sugary tears, but behind it is a still uneasy alliance, forged not so much by rekindled love as an arrangement to share fame and money. Noor is also desperate for her lover, a co-participant on the show, to publicly acknowledge her. Banerjee's script - with co-writers Shubham and Prateek Vats - fluidly mixes Noor's growing destabilization with the on-camera drama she generates for audience points (with cheeky references to notorious Indian reality TV imbroglios like 'Iske oopar nahin bolne ka!'). He brings the proceedings to a furious boil, aided in no small measure by terrific performances from Tiwari and Ghosh as the estranged mother-son/daughter joined only by their common greed.
Episode 2 has Swastika Mukherjee as Lovina, manager for a social work outfit integrating transgenders into mainstream employment. When one of their subjects Kullu (Bonita Rajpurohit), a Delhi Metro attendant, is found raped and beaten, Lovina raises hell with lax law authorities demanding a full-scale investigation. But the truth is more complicated and it's not a black and white world. Lovina finds herself backed into a corner to get out of which she herself must play the games of power. This segment is remarkable mainly for how nuanced its characters are. Their natures are neither good nor evil, only human (with all that the term implies).
The last segment is probably what will polarize most viewers with its stratospheric launch into surrealism. Live-streamer Game-paapi (Abhinav Singh) garners a following for his channel where he dispenses macho trash-talk while playing a Counter-Strike clone shooter. When an anonymous hacker posts sleazy morphed pictures of GP in a homosexual context, he is outraged. But this makes for a giant spike in his online viewership, leading to sponsorship deals linked to his "new identity" as an LGBT spokesperson.Tormented by the insult to his heterosexual masculinity and the fickle warping of his 'social influencer' career, GP is driven to madness and even death...or is it? Banerjee here goes into full bore whatever the fuck mode, bringing in cyber messiahs and virtual celestial worlds. I can't say it made a lot of sense to me, on the other hand I couldn't help but admire his courage in pulling out something so audacious.
As my previous review would show, I wasn't too thrilled by the first LSD. The sequel on the other hand proved far more gripping and imaginative, maybe even profound. No late cash-in this, but a strong return to form for the auteur. Showing now on Netflix:
I realize I'm not in the majority when I say this, but Siddharth Anand's movies leave me cold. This was true right from the time he was making rom-coms/rom-drams (I had the misfortune of watching Bachna Ae Haseeno on a bus trip, a reprehensible exercise which, not just the ladies, everyone should beware of). Anand then shifted to more heavy-duty action with Bang Bang (an official remake of the frenetic Knight and Day). Therein he found his true metier, doing desi takes on the stereotype Hollywood tent-pole action movie. He then churned out the exponentially more bombastic War (which I found enjoyable in its embracing of the ludicrous) and Pathaan. The latter was his biggest commercial success, but for me it was a mostly lifeless experience, not even fun in the illogical masala vein. Pathaan was so concerned with being 'hip' I could not give a fuck about anything that happened onscreen (perhaps I was more concerned with the increasing numbness in my butt and brain).
With Fighter, Anand continues his run of feature-length action-VFX showreels, angling for a job on the next Mission Impossible or Top Gun or at least Fast & Furious installment. The film is set in the world of combat pilots hand-picked as an elite team for strike/rescue missions. After 2019's Uri: The Surgical Strike, rah-rah war movies reflecting the 'New India, Aggressive India' image became cool. With titles like Gunjan Saxena, they also became (preachy) vehicles of female empowerment. Fighter collects these trends into a single package - the Hrithik-worship from War continues in an almost identical adoring coverage of bronzed biceps and gold-flecked hair, Balakot and Pulwama are referenced in the cartoonish portrayal of counter maneuvers, and Deepika Padukone's chopper pilot could be an extension of the Gunjan Saxena character.
Fighter fills the frame with a sizable cast and lip-service is paid to 'team bonding', but make no mistake, this is not an ensemble piece. The characters that are not matinee names have no backstory or hook to make them interesting. They're just there, 'reflectors' to bounce more light on the leads. The audience is never given any reason to care for their fate. One character is the token Muslim card that becomes a martyr; his funeral rituals are completely drowned out by a Vande Mataram cover. Even the manner in which characters seem to have carte blanche to enter control centers for ops they are not part of, or just hang around for emotional detours in the middle of setting up covert missions takes away from the immersion.
The movie expects us to feel bad for Hrithik when he is called out for going cowboy and endangering his squad by abandoning team goals in pursuit of individual targets. Curiously, none of his team-mates have an issue with his lone wolf attitude. The calling out is done by his commanding officer Anil Kapoor, who yells out every sentence like an unruly society chairman uncle bawling at the cricket playing kids damaging his window panes. There would be some logic to this narrative if it culminated in Hrithik's becoming more mindful of following orders, which I assume is what the armed forces want of soldiers. But for some reason this PTSD afflicted bloke's self-obsession becomes a virtue.
The action is slick, I'll grant, but it feels rehashed and unexciting - the exhaust pipes shimmering at launch, the jets blowing snow off the trees or spray off the water surface as they zoom by, the loop-de-loop maneuver, we've seen all this before. It's more like Anand studied scenes from Top Gun to showcase his ability to replicate them indigenously at lower cost. Some of the green screen work is less than stellar (when Hrithik and the villain - a Fabio clone with one bloodshot eye to signal his villainy - are slugging it out atop a careening jeep). The film is set in Jammu & Kashmir, but you get Mediterranean beachside and ultrahip-nightclub song sequences that are awkwardly horned in. For tonal consistency, this Fighter is a damp squib.
With its 80's Bollywood meets graphic novel / videogame sensibilities, Animal reminded me a good deal of Kill Bill. It bears that same element of homage / masturbatory pastiche Quentin Tarantino legitimized as its own art form.
The first inspiration is of course The Godfather. Reddy's film borrows swathes of narrative from that classic (As Baradwaj Rangan's review puts it, "...the trashy Mario Puzo novel and the classy Coppola adaptation that followed"). Ranbir Kapoor's Vijay is Michael Corleone to Anil Kapoor's Don-like tycoon father Balbir Singh. Like Michael, he as a child idolizes the dad, gets estranged from him and then returns when that father is murderously attacked, to take on the family mantle and go after his father's enemies with a vengeance. Of course, one could say Vijay's hotheadedness and penis-driven thinking also make him a Sonny Corleone; And like Sonny is admonished by Don Vito, he is frequently rebuked by Dad Balbir.
Old-school masala movie grammar runs in full vein in the depiction of the father-son relationship. There is a cloying, fetishistic edge to how much the son adores Balbir, stopping just short of attaching himself to and humping the dad's leg. Of course, like most tycoon dads in Indian movies, Balbir can't give his kids time of day, and Vijay's early misdemeanors (as a high school kid, he fires an assault rifle in his sister's classroom to rattle the fellows ragging her) seem like desperate attempts to get his dad to pay attention, even if it is only to give him a dressing-down. Surprisingly for a bigshot business magnate based in Delhi, Balbir actually believes his son he could be imprisoned for a crime. If the Manu Sharma and Sanjeev Nanda cases have taught us anything, it is that rich connected kids can (at least before a major public outcry) get away with murder.
And in the Animal universe, the law simply doesn't exist. I don't think I saw a single police character, not even when the rich tycoon's son-in-law goes missing (SPOILER: he and Vijay don't get along) or to investigate the aftermath of the pre-interval bloodbath in which Vijay trashes a hotel and mows down 300 masked blokes (ANIMAL masks, get it?!) with the help of axes, assault rifles and later a golf cart mounted with a gazillion belt-fed Gatling guns. This sequence with its complete disregard for proportion (and an involved gag about underwear) is fun, though not as engrossing as Oldboy's corridor fight because what really should have been a series of uninterrupted takes is edited to bits.
Post-intermission, we see a more humanized Vijay - his injuries in the hotel massacre have him dependent on a catheter and urine bag, he grows a belly and makes references to needing more frequent pad changes than his wife (Rashmika Mandanna, more on her later). For some reason, he now requires a heart transplant. Of course, he's still (hah!) cocky, but it makes a lot of emotional sense here, him trying to hold on to his alpha-maleness (oh yes, the movie is sufficiently self-aware to give us early on a mini-dissertation on the subject from Vijay's POV). This part of the film was to me the most interesting character-wise, and I would have been interested to see vulnerable Vijay for a longer span. But Reddy has other plans.
After a pointless subplot about a mistress (Tripti Dimri, wasted), the film unveils the major antagonist, another alpha male. This one is played by Bobby Deol: Age and a beard lend him personality and the part is written to his strengths. Now the stage is set for a showdown between Vijay and this guy. It's a more stereotypical contest of beefy biceps and obligatory shirt ripping. It tries to have its moment when Vijay offers his enemy the chance for a cessation of hostilities (they're actually related - elements of the Mabhabharata here). But you know what the bad guy's answer will be.
I was hesitant to see Animal because the reports of Reddy's previous hit Arjun Reddy glorifying a self-centered misogynistic prick kept me away from that one. But while dominated by the conflict between alpha-males and featuring a vulgar brand of humor, Animal does not legitimize them. Vijay's willingness to shed pools of blood to protect the family doesn't necessarily win him their adulation. His position towards women is a little murky. He criticizes his sister for being doormatted by her husband, but that seems more an expression of territorialism - How dare someone outside of the family disrespect her? As his wife, Rashmika Mandanna displays a lot of agency. She accepts his alpha-male status but is ready to hit back when he crosses her boundaries. A telling moment is when she lashes out at her mother, justifying her devotion to her blood-crazy husband, because he stood by her in her moments of need when her own parents deserted her for their social standing. She also gets a great scene when she confronts Vijay about his infidelity - it doesn't justify the time wasted on that subplot (which has a laughable conclusion) but it's engaging and Mandanna gives a solid account of her dramatic talent - I also appreciate that Reddy retains her original South Indian accent instead of a generic dub. The chemistry between her and Ranbir Kapoor supports the volatile and intense relationship of their characters, and I wish more of the film could have been told from the perspective of this couple and how it affects their dynamic than from the traditional all-male angle.
Ranbir Kapoor obviously commits to the lead part. Why wouldn't he, it's like Al Pacino playing Scarface's psycho-gangster, a colorful OTT actor's showcase - he even gets to do the body transformation bit (or wears a convincing fat suit). One part of Vijay's life the film keeps behind closed curtains is the time between his leaving home after he is thrown out by his father (thrown out in style though, he at least gets to keep an airplane) and when he returns in the wake of the father's attempted killing. This is the period when Vijay supposedly lives an independent life in the US with his wife and raises two children. While it might have been nice to see a different facet of his personality (and how he functioned outside of his family), Reddy adds to the script's intrigue by not exploring that segment. He does refer to it in a telling exchange between Vijay and Balbir towards the end when Vijay calls out his father's complete ignorance of his life away from the family and of the person he could be when not drawn into conflict. Sadly, Anil Kapoor gets the short end of the stick. The father-son relationship is a crucial dynamic of the film and at the heart of the protagonist's actions, but the part of Balbir Singh is flat and under-written. He is mostly a reaction board to Vijay's doings, reduced to either sounding out Vijay or lamenting his misdeeds. You don't get an overall sense of the man, who seems remote to his family, but is apparently so loved by his employees, they whoop with joy when his son proclaims vengeance on his attackers.
Some of Reddy's editing choices are strange. A crucial killing in the film is shown much ahead of time with a jarring jumpcut - the scene goes from just-married clean-cut Ranbir angling his honeymoon plane over a steep slope to him suddenly all bearded and mean heading a convoy of cars and armed henchmen out to cause murderous havoc. The narrative later backtracks to explain, but the overall effect is of needless complication in the name of style and reduces the impact of the scene. The second half starts get tiresome with all the convolutions (and a post-credits sequence that steps into parody territory). I respect that Reddy wanted to tell the story in a messy way, but too much is often just too much. For better or worse, the score of the film is in tune with its loud sensibilities - there are occasions where the music drowns out the dialog, and moments where you dearly wish for a pair of earplugs.
That said, Animal at least strikes me as a work that reflects the vision and sensibilities of an individual movie-maker and not a collection of box-office choices. The fact that I could sit through this 200(!) min slogathon without at the end wanting to kill myself tells me that it was doing a few things right. Your mileage may vary.
Despite the glowing review from my go-to movie critic Baradwaj Rangan, I had reservations about 12th Fail. Based (at least loosely) on IPS officer Manoj Sharma's life, the film details the story of how he went from being a 12th class fail to successfully clearing the hyper-competitive Public Service Commission entrance hurdles. From that outline, it threatened to be like the numerous cliched Indian sports movies of the last 10 years, only without the sportsing. And how does a film generate excitement about someone passing an examination - Ticking the right answer box hardly conveys the viscerality of scoring a goal or smashing a cricket ball into the stands, right? This worried me.
The other factor was Vidhu Vinod Chopra. Chopra made a name in the late 1980's with his crime thrillers Khamosh (1986) and Parinda (1989). The low-budget Khamosh was a first-rate mystery that cleverly used its film-within-a-film conceit; Even in its limited release it garnered eyeballs, and the unveiling of its suspense was a tour de force discussed by fans years later. Parinda - a noir mixed with Bollywood sentiment - was script-wise shaky, but its technical chutzpah courtesy his frequent collaborators - art director Nitin Desai, DoP Binod Pradhan and editor Renu Saluja - impressed cinephiles.
Post-Parinda, Chopra became Bollywood's Golden Boy. Sought after by stars and handed massive budgets, his next project 1942: A Love Story - an escapist period drama almost 5 years in the making - reflected the bloat of his ambition. The technical wizardry was there, but the storytelling was a meandering mess. The man who at one point was poised to turn the course of Bollywood had succumbed to its excess. 2000's Mission Kashmir, which Kashmiri origin Chopra claimed to be a passion project, reduced complex terrorism issues to childish outbursts and cartoon villainy. This was enough to put me off his cinema, and it coincided with his own hiatus from direction. Chopra was now content to produce films, majorly those of protege Rajkumar Hirani (the Munnabhai franchise, 3 Idiots, PK, Sanju). The subsequent occasional forays he made into direction (Ekalavya, Shikara) did not interest me at all. Still, Rangan's review, coupled with the praise from my other trusted movie reviewer Deepa Gahlot, goaded me to take this one in at the cinema.
In 12th Fail, we first meet Manoj Sharma (Vikrant Massey) as a high school pupil in Chambal, a province of Madhya Pradesh in northern India historically (in)famous for its dacoit gangs. It is also notorious for rampant cheating in the board examinations, which is not only permitted but actively supported by the school authorities. After an honest police officer (Priyanshu Chatterjee) disrupts the operation, Manoj and his entire class end up failing their year. That same officer later comes to Manoj's aid when he and his brother are hassled by the constabulary for crossing a local politico's goons. Manoj is inspired by the upright cop to become one himself, a dream that eventually leads him to the challenge of clearing the public service exams.
The story could have been one of Rajkumar Hirani's projects (I would not be surprised if it had started out that way). But I suspect Hirani would have loaded it with cute catchphrases and artificial sweetness. While 12th Fail has its own catchphrase in its repeated refrain of "Restart" it's used more sparingly. Also, Chopra at the helm brings in a lot more believable texture. It's not just in the production design, it's in the writing of the characters and the casting of actors suitable for the parts, instead of marquee names. The scale is deliberately kept small, detail substituting for scope. Manoj's dusty ill-lit village where he and his brother are suddenly burdened with maintaining the family, after their father (Harish Khanna) takes a suspension order for disobeying his corrupt superior's instructions, feels authentic. When he comes to Delhi, we are not given the scenic tour of the capital. Manoj's world is one of narrow crowded alleys, makeshift classrooms and dusty bookshelves. En route he has already lost the money his grandmother (Sarita Joshi) gifted him from her precious pension savings; he must clean toilets, mill flour and work other odd jobs to earn a living (the flour milling is also an analogy to the daily grind of his existence). These misfortunes are depicted with matter-of-fact restraint, focusing less on the tragedy and more on his resilience.
Vikrant Massey (Death in the Gunj) gets the lion's share of the applause for his committed performance in the lead part. But unlike other mainstream movies where the remaining cast is solely defined by their equation with the "hero", every character is etched and performed in a manner that transcends caricature. In a late scene, the aforementioned father meets with Manoj and tearfully breaks down over how his proud honesty has destroyed his family and that the poor can never hope to win. "But we can't admit defeat either," Manoj responds. Geeta Agarwal Sharma as Manoj's mother gets some memorable moments - check out the finely modulated scene of their encounter when Manoj returns home dejected after initial setbacks. Even the actor doing a one-scene part of a valet Manoj encounters when paying a surprise visit to his girlfriend in Mussouri comes off as a rounded individual instead of a stereotype.
As regards the girlfriend (Medha Shankar), this is in the end a movie meant for mainstream consumption; a romance angle is deemed mandatory. There are some gauche stumbles here, like when the girl Shraddha mistakes Manoj to be an aerospace engineer just because he is holding a book on that subject, which leads to a misunderstanding later. But Chopra and his co-writers keep it mostly integrated in the main narrative. Shraddha has her own little arc - she is an idealist that has quit medicine to join the IAS because she wants to ensure adequate treatment for the poor. While advancing on her path, she remains supportive of Manoj; without tomtomming feminist credentials, the film shows that the woman can be an equal, even superior partner in a relationship. The normally played-for-laughs 'hero ka dost' role is also depicted with greater nuance and substance: The easy-going Pritam Pandey (Anant Joshi) generously accommodates the struggling Manoj and backs him when he is down, but when Pritam's own fortunes turn, it affects his outlook and their bond of friendship. Again, this is handled in a credible and sympathetic manner.
Right from his early films, Vinod Chopra was regarded as an Indian Brian De Palma, a brilliant visual director. In 12th Fail his command over the form continues: DoP Rangarajan Ramabadran employs handheld tracking, overhead shots, complex pans, the works. And Chopra, who at one point created some of the most gorgeous images in Hindi cinema, is not afraid to use unflattering source lighting or grimy textures. It is an uncharacteristic yet welcome shift that feels more like the effort of a fresh and hungry filmmaker. More importantly, it is all in the service of the storytelling.
In a time when mainstream Indian cinema is regressing with its extended celebration of machismo jackasserie, it is wonderful to see films not about gym-bred jocks tossing off hordes of minions in slow motion with barely a scratch on their well-oiled pecs. Armed with only the grit to withstand life's trials, Manoj Sharma held steadfast and finally reached his goal. A similar determination to telling an honest story allows 12th Fail to make its place in our hearts. I award it a First Class.
The Khufiya (Secret) in the title of Vishal Bhardwaj's new film (produced with Netflix) covers both the professional and personal life of its protagonist. Krishna Mehra aka KM (Tabu) works in covert intelligence, a spy 'handler' executing missions for the country that will never be highlighted in newspapers nor discussed at dinner parties. Krishna regards herself a professional and personal failure. We first see her reacting to a major workplace disaster. On the domestic front she lives apart from her ex-husband and son, and is almost always absent from the latter's big moments: Early in the film she turns up late for his performance as Brutus in a Hindi stage production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (which in itself appears a nod to VB's penchant for adapting the bard). Even this teen knows that her job at the "Central Secretariat" is a front for something else, and resents her constant bluffs. Krishna has another secret. She is separated from her husband (Atul Kulkarni) because she is a closet lesbian.
This detail is not doled out in linear fashion. Khufiya begins with a birthday soiree in Bangladesh, where an attractive woman brings a gift for Brigadier Saqlain Mirza (Shataf Figar) of the Bangladesh military, believed to be in cahoots with Pakistani intelligence. The gift is actually a lethal weapon, but the woman has been betrayed, and she is the one killed (with a fork stabbed into her jugular, perhaps a nod to Julius Caesar's murder?). The woman is Heena Rahman aka Octopus, a protege of Krishna. We soon enter a flashback in which Rahman proactively approaches Krishna with an offer to spy for her. Rahman is played by sensational Bangladeshi actress Azmeri Haque Badhon, whose innate magnetism makes it easy to digest the chemistry she develops with Tabu's character and the emotional turmoil caused by her assassination. Long after her character is off the screen, you feel her impact.
Bound by orders from her superior (Ashish Vidyarthi, in a rare non-mugging part) and driven by personal angst, Krishna sets out to catch the mole responsible for Heena's death. The obvious suspect is staffer Ravi Mohan (Ali Fazal) who seems to enjoy a lifestyle exceeding his official income. Ravi is rather easily recorded copying office secrets (literally, on a photocopy machine. It seems a little too quaint, but the narrative is set in the pre-millennium years, when USB drives and even CD burners were not mainstream technology). To figure out who is pulling his strings and how the information is transmitted, they set up an elaborate surveillance network covering Ravi's home as well. Thus we are introduced to his wife Charu (Wamiqa Gabbi, of Godha and Jubilee fame) and mother Lalita (Navnindra Behl). Charu is a doting spouse and mother...who, when alone, rolls her own joints and shakes a sexy hip to hippie-era Bollywood ditties. Lalita spends time with an Osho-inspired spiritual guru Yaara-ji (Indian Ocean / Aisi Taisi Democracy's Rahul Ram). When KM's team sets out to apprehend Ravi, things go very wrong; she has to start all over to catch a traitor and avenge the death of her lover.
So far so good, but Khufiya's script fumbles badly in the consistency department. Almost as if Bhardwaj is afraid of audiences not being gripped by a serious drama, he bungs in jokes and farcical elements that break the immersion. The aforementioned fork stabbing is more Grand Guignol than anything else. When Charu tracks down Ravi in hiding, it would have been interesting to see how her mission tangled with her emotional involvement with the family, but this is jettisoned in favor of cheap jokes like when her mother in law pooh-poohs Ravi's security concerns describing her as a godsend "free maid". A later scene where a target is lured in with the idea of giving him a doped mutton dish and the other members at the table keep giving excuses about why they are not consuming it views like a particularly bad scene from a Jeffrey Archer novel.
Still, I was carried enough by the good stuff (Farhad Ahmed Dehlvi's cinematography is classy cool) to sit through the not-inconsiderable 157 min runtime in one go without feeling too distressed, which is more than I could say about some of VB's other films in the past few years, or the ridiculously overrated Raazi from Meghana Gulzar. Your mileage may greatly vary.
I'll say one thing for Reema Kagti and her frequent collaborator Zoya Akhtar: With an output that includes material as diverse as Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD), Talaash, Dil Dhadkne Do (DDD) and Gully Boy, they are certainly versatile. Of course, there is the question of whether this versatility is backed by sufficient substance. ZNMD and DDD are fluffy crowd-pleasers providing an aspirational upper-crust western-influenced lifestyle married with some desi sentiment; like Karan Johar films, but less insufferable. Talaash (2012) and Gully Boy (2019) treaded grimier territory - the former was a crime noir with some supernatural underpinnings, the latter showcased the gritty saga of a lower middle-class Muslim boy using art to first shut himself off from his circumstances, and then to rise above them. The results are more mixed here, but they do achieve a credible texture in their capture of the urban underbelly. Kagti also made a period sports film called Gold (2018) with the country's biggest wannabe patriot Akshay Kumar, which I really did not care for (my impressions HERE).
The point of this extended prelude is, if Kagti and Akhtar do not necessarily have first-hand knowledge of the culture and milieu captured in their crime series Dahaad, they can be relied on to do their research to provide a sufficiently nuanced portrayal, at least for the purposes of mainstream entertainment. The setting here is mofussil Rajasthan, primarily the town of Mandawa. Progress, both technological and social, is lagging behind metropolitan India: Smartphones are rare, as are dedicated career women. Sub-inspector Anjali Bhaati (Sonakshi Sinha) faces the double-whammy of being both a woman and a lower-caste. When her team goes investigating, Anjali is barred from entering the homes of the dominant caste. A running gag shows an upper-caste colleague in the police station lighting incense to ward off her aura. Her melodramatic mother is constantly at her to get married. Like with Sinha's previous character Akira, Anjali's reaction to these challenges is to double down and fight even harder, because to give an inch would be to give up the fight altogether.
In several ways this series' antagonist is her antithesis. Anand Swarnakar (Vijay Varma, who I first saw in Gully Boy) is the eldest son in a traditional well-to-do goldsmith family. He is an articulate soft-spoken language teacher, much admired by his pupils and colleagues. While dismissed by his businessman father as a non-achieving black sheep, he has a shining reputation for his efforts at educating children in remote areas during his weekend leisure. Even his wife, who is carrying on an affair with a workplace colleague, believes Anand to be a noble man. But Anand is also a serial killer that preys on lower-caste women, first seducing and then murdering them (no spoilers here, the series is not a whodunit, but about how he is ultimately caught).
Anjali and Anand's paths cross when she comes upon a string of disappearances of under-privileged women who apparently eloped with an unknown lover; she charts a connection between them, concluding that a single man is behind all of it. Of course, the idea of a serial killer in Mandawa is laughable to most of her colleagues. Her only support comes from Station House Officer Devi Singh (Gulshan Devaiah), whose interest in her may be more than professional. Going back and forth in time, the series follows Anand's crimes and the efforts of Anjali and her colleagues to unmask an intelligent and remorseless killer.
There are many things to like about Dahaad, but some missteps as well. Sonakshi's Anjali is a spunky protagonist, determined to breach the limits placed by society. Even if it occasionally seems too eager to signal Anjali's liberated spirit (she has a casual sex relationship with a drinking buddy we never see outside of that context) Kagti-Akhtar's characterization is strong in terms of expressing Anjali's determination to be a tough girl in a tough world. Devaiah's Devi Singh is less well-etched - It's nice to see the actor playing a "good guy", but Devi comes across so "correct" in all his opinions and actions, he is bland as oatmeal. His character has a 'manufactured' feel, as though Kagti-Akhtar wanted to imbue all their expectations for an ideal male into him. I was ready to throw up when Devi Singh gives his son the sort of enlightened talk about women and sex most metropolitan men wouldn't. Even when introducing the idea of Devi being attracted to Anjali (which may be further developed in the almost certain second season), they appear obliged to soften it by giving him a shrewish nag wife.
Sohum Shah's Parghi is a competing colleague to Anjali who is trying to obtain a transfer by currying favor with his superiors. He shows some interesting character development, especially in his reluctance to bring a child into an increasingly fucked up world (I empathize), but his transformation towards the end of the season could have been better articulated. Vijay Varma's killer is a lot more believable - his modus operandi is based on a real-life character dubbed as Cyanide Mohan. Unlike the glamorous psychopaths from the Hannibal Lecter universe, Anand doesn't believe in playing amusing mind-games with the police or arranging his victims in artistic tableaux. He is a blunt petty-minded villain, whose cloak of civility only shrouds an unmitigated ugliness. Even when alluding to a childhood trauma, the writing and Varma's performance do not try to generate sympathy for the character; they only show how he uses it to further manipulate people around him.
A few logical missteps notwithstanding* my only disappointment was that the caste hierarchy element has little play in the investigation of the actual killer - It would have been interesting if Anjali's sometimes reckless pursuit of Anand had been labeled as caste revenge and affected her agency. Still, Dahaad was a nicely paced procedural with a well-realized setting, and I would recommend it to fans of dark crime thrillers.
*One thing that bothered me was, in a narrative so conscious of caste identity, why did the suspect's name Swarnakar (literally meaning 'Goldsmith') not ring immediate warning bells for the cops, especially since it is revealed to them beforehand that cyanide is used by the gold industry. Instead, they continue to fret over where he could obtain the poison. It also occurred to me a lot earlier than to these intrepid investigators that the killer, after having sex with his victims, was persuading them to consume the cyanide by disguising it as a contraceptive or morning-after pill.
In preparation for the sequel now showing in the cinemas, I watched 2001's Gadar - Ek Prem Katha (The Revolt - A Love Story). Confession, this is the first time I have seen the whole film, as opposed to bits and pieces, mostly from its crazy climax. At the time of Gadar's theatrical release I was more a Lagaan fanboy, and this was the 'rival' film. I have to say, flaws notwithstanding this is a "propah" old-skool Bollywood masala drama, probably the best film in Anil Sharma's career. Of course, that in itself that is hardly high praise: Sharma made his name in the industry with camp fodder like Hukumat (1987), Elaan-e-Jung (1989) and Tahalka (1992). His Farishtay (1991) was so disgusting in its crass humor I had to switch off after a bit on account of the ick factor. But something about Gadar appears to have clicked with the man; in consequence he has turned out a film with both craft and heart.
Gadar's story (loosely adapted from the real-life tragedy of one Boota Singh) is an archetype grandiose Bollywood romance drama set against the backdrop of post-independence India-Pakistan. Headliner Sunny Deol plays turban-clad Jat trucker Tara Singh, with Jaspal Bhatti alumnus Vivek Shauq as his comic sidekick. Tara Singh has the hots for upper-class Muslim student Sakina (Amisha Patel). When the partition of India happens, Sakina's family after narrowly escaping massacre in the Hindu-Muslim riots boards the train to Pakistan, but she gets caught in the stampede and is left behind. Later she hears that her family was killed enroute to Lahore. The gallant Tara rescues her from Hindu attackers and offers to escort her to relatives in Lahore. She opts to settle with him in India, and they bear a child as well. Later Sakina discovers her family alive and well in Pakistan, and it is arranged that she will visit them with her husband and son.
Alas, her father Ashraf Ali (Amrish Puri) is a prominent Pakistani politician and a bigot that hates India with a passion. In a bid to cut off his daughter's connections with the former homeland, he deceives her into traveling alone, then holds her captive in Lahore using emotional blackmail. Sensing that all is not right with Sakina, Tara decides he has to enter Lahore and get her back, even if it carries the deadly risk of being considered a spy. When his peaceful approaches with her high-placed family fail, our humble trucker wages a one-man war against a virtual battalion of the Pakistani armed forces.
The chemistry between the lead pair of Deol and Amisha Patel works well for Gadar and is the driving factor for on-screen events. You like the couple, and cheer for their attempts to come together. Sakina is inconsistent in the writing: Sometimes she is a total wallflower, reduced to crying in bed waiting for her "shohar" (husband) to rescue her, while in others she spiritedly defies her captors. In the climax she is even cocking a rifle, ready to fire at the military pursuers hunting her family. Still, Amisha conveys the right amount of sweetness for the part and comes across more dignified than most of her later on-screen and off-screen appearances. It has been my (snobbish) opinion that Sunny Deol plays the bulk of his characters with the subtlety of a truck driver / stevedore, so he is aptly cast in the trucker's part (although the accent he uses to address Sakina as "Madam ji" betrays a convent school education than how an actual illiterate person would say it). His Tara Singh displays an openhearted bonhomie in his happy moments, and when he gives vent to his anger, you sympathize and cheer for him. Veteran thespian Amrish Puri as Sakina's father gives a layered portrayal of villainy, caught between his possessive love for his daughter and his hatred for Indians.
Up to a point Gadar is fairly restrained compared to Sharma's other films (even though Deol always has the ability to beat up scores of people, and in one iconic scene, pulls out a hand-pump by its roots to clobber a mob). The climax involves Tara Singh & Co commandeering a goods train while they are pursued by convoys of soldiers and even an attack helicopter. It's ridiculous, but unabashedly so, and reminds one of the extravagant climaxes from Buster Keaton's The General, and Jackie Chan's Police Story 3: Supercop (reviewed HERE). Apart from a mid-movie slump where multiple song sequences are bunched together, Gadar is surprisingly well-paced by Bollywood standards; the 2hr56min experience was less of a slog than I feared. I only hope the sequel maintains that same trait.
The full movie is available to view (without subtitles) on the Zee Movies Hindi channel on Youtube:
The last Vlog episode I did on the Ramsay movies included in Mondo Macabro's Bollywood Horror blu-ray boxset was several months ago. I have no excuse for this huge gap, I was just being a lazy bum. Anyway, a short while ago I saw that people had started receiving their copies of this monstrous set. I felt I should get off my ass and finish with the last entry in this series - Aatma aka Spirit (2006), directed by Deepak Ramsay. Like always, those that prefer to read than watch, the full transcript is available below the video:
I must confess here that I have a special fondness for Aatma. It was the first Ramsay horror feature which I saw in a cinema. When their classic titles like Purana Mandir, Veerana and Bandh Darwaza were being screened in movie halls, I was still a schoolkid and obviously could not go for these Adults Only rated films. Also, the 80's were the age of VHS, and my household was one among many middle class Indian households that did most of their movie-watching at home. Before Aatma, I had seen other horror films in cinemas, including Hollywood films and also some by other Indian horror film-makers like Ram Gopal Varma, but I was still a virgin to Ramsay-style horror on the big screen.
So when in 2006, a new Ramsay horror feature was released, I felt obliged to experience it in a movie theater. Interestingly enough, the Ramsays had previously retreated from big-screen movie-making for some time. 1994's Mahakaal (an unauthorized "re-imagining" of Nightmare on Elm Street) had been the last previous theatrical horror feature from the Ramsay production house. The Indian horror film market by then was in a bad shape, with a glut of zero-budget zero-talent films killing audience interest in the genre.
Ironically this return to big-screen horror was very likely inspired by their foray into television programming. During the early 90's satellite TV boom, the Ramsays produced an anthology series called The Zee Horror Show. Household TV sets across the country blared the iconic Ramsay theme tune which had been recycled for the series, and home audiences were both terrified of and delighted by the show. The series had an 8-year run from 1993-2001, probably one of the longest running on Indian television.
Deepak Ramsay, who had previously assisted his father Tulsi Ramsay and uncle Shyam on some of their classic horror films, 'made his bones' on the show, directing the majority of the episodes. It is likely that the experience he gained on this show and the long-running success it enjoyed, planted the idea in Deepak's head of reviving the Ramsay Horror banner for the big screen. In fact, several people have likened Aatma to an extended episode of The Zee Horror Show.
Which is not a bad thing, per se. It reminds me more of the horror and suspense films the Ramsays made for a decade before they hit upon Purana Mandir's monster formula. I quite like this phase of the Ramsays, when they were experimenting with a bunch of different narratives, making for some variety in the telling. There is a strong element of EC Comics style "revenge from beyond the grave" here.
In the story, a young doctor (Kapil Jhaveri) is visited in the dead of night by a strangely pale bloke that tells him about an autopsy he will do the next day. He warns the doc to make an honest job of it or suffer horrific consequences. Imagine the doc's surprise when he finds the same bloke laid out as a corpse on the morgue table. But our doc has a problem - the dead man's relatives have compelled him to pass the murder off as a natural death, by threatening to kill his beautiful wife (Neha / Shabana Raza). Having succumbed to their blackmail, he has to deal with the curse of the dead man's spirit, which is also determined to avenge itself on the murderers. Whether the spirit is successful in its quest for vengeance and whether our doc is able to obtain release from its oppression forms the rest of the narrative.
The influence of the Ramsays' TV stint is certainly reflected in Aatma, but I think mostly to the film's benefit. Moving away from the trademark haunted palace and dungeon locations of their previous films, Aatma is entrenched in a contemporary urban setting. Within the crisp 107 min running time, there is a compact narrative-focused structure, and a lesser number of breaks for songs and odious comedy. I appreciated the moral ambiguity - the doc dishonors his profession and pisses off the dead man's spirit by his perfidy, but he does it for the safety of his family. Our sympathies are thereby divided between the doc and the wronged spirit. As the murderous villains, Bollywood character actors Sadashiv Amrapurkar and Mukesh Tiwari ham it up in style, and Laila Patel as the vamp oozes mucho oomph factor. Deepak sets up some solid revenge kills for the spirit - my favorite is when an unearthly high-pitched scream literally splits open Amrapurkar's head (a possible hat tip to Scanners).
Visually, Aatma is a mixed bag. It is colorful, but lit in a flat full-bright fashion and relies on blue filters for night-time scenes; a look more suited to TV. Camera wizard Gangu Ramsay does bring out his trademark odd angles, and I like some of the modern touches, like the surveillance cameras monitoring the spirit's activity. It's not high art by any means, but it is pleasing Bollywood style horror entertainment. Going by the screenshots I have seen, Aatma's look seems to be nicely replicated in the Mondo blu-ray. It certainly promises to be a huge upgrade over my current VCD copy and I can't wait to visit this late era Ramsay horror in proper high-definition.
Couple nights back I finished with the first season of Farzi, the OTT-series on Amazon Prime. In this crime drama, talented artist Sandeep/Sunny (Shahid Kapur) turns small-time counterfeiter, and then gets involved with high-level players. On the flip side, a job-obsessed but deeply flawed and manipulative cop Michael (Vijay Sethupati) heads a special task force (called CCFART, for the lulz, obviously) to bust the fake notes business in the country. Passionate RBI employee Megha (Raashi Khanna) joins this team, and has run-ins with the counterfeiter. On these three linchpins hangs a narrative with multiple turns and an end-of-season showdown.
I had significant expectations from Farzi, as it came from the stable of Raj & DK, the makers of the Family Man series as well as entertaining movies like 99, Shor in the City, A Gentleman etc (For now let's ignore Go Goa Gone and Happy Ending). But the first episode had me seriously wondering if the burden of simultaneously taking on multiple series had severely stretched out the creative juices of these guys. What I like most about their work - across film and OTT - is their ability to mine individual personality quirks and regional subtleties that make their character writing memorable. In contrast, the bulk of Ep 1 was alarmingly generic and lacklustre. Thankfully, the further episodes picked up the slack, and while the best parts of Family Man are superior to anything we see here, this is still a well-made piece of entertainment.
The casting is terrific across the board. Vijay Sethupati in his Hindi debut gives non-Tamilians a taste of his trademark irreverent style - his peppery exchanges with Zakir Hussain's minister character are a joy to behold. And Michael is suited to the actor's ability to deliver layered portrayals. Michael loves his job, but it's more an ego trip for him than the selfless "desh-seva" mantra that Family Man's good guys had. He is also fairly flexible in his principles, using seized fake notes to buy his son a fancy phone or emotionally manipulating his wife to hold off the impending divorce. Like they did for Priyamani and Samantha in Family Man, Raj & DK continue their mission of giving meaningful parts to Telugu movie 'import glamdolls' - this time it's Raashi Khanna and Regina Cassandra, as the counterfeit-hunting RBI employee and Sethupati's estranged spouse respectively. The talented but often typecast Kay Kay Menon is in cracking form as mid-level fake currency operator Mansoor Dalaal - in both the writing and his performance, the character gets a delightful amount of nuance that separates him from the stereotype gangster/bhai.
In comparison to the more colorful cast members Shahid Kapur's 'Artist' is very tamped down. But this is deliberate - Like the protagonist of Johnny Gaddaar, his character is supposed to be one that flies under everyone's radar. He succeeds when underestimated. But there is also the flip side - he is a cocky fool that gets into shitholes by aggrandizing himself as a playah when he is really a 'lukkhaa' surviving by the seat of his pants with no real strategy. The actor bravely embraces the essential amorality of Sunny and delivers exactly what is needed.
Compared to Family Man's several audacious action sequences peppered through the series, this one mainly comes alive in the chase sequence amidst Mumbai traffic in the last episode (there is a fair amount of action before, but that's more competent than exhilarating). But thankfully, unlike FM S01's brutally abrupt ending, this one has a reasonably satisfying series arc while setting up hooks for the next season. I look forward to them upping the ante.
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