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Release date (India):
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December 26, 2014
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Director:
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Anurag Kashyap
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Cast:
Language:
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Ronit Roy, Rahul
Bhat, Tejaswini Kolhapure, Vineet Kumar Singh, Surveen Chawla, Anshikaa
Shrivastava
Hindi
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An alcoholic mother on
the verge of suicide, her wife-beating ex-husband desperate for an acting
career, a child wise beyond her years and torn between divorced parents, an
authoritarian spouse holding on to a college grudge – these are the primary
players in director Anurag Kashyap’s latest film Ugly which turns a kidnapping case into a stinging commentary on
selfishness and opportunism in human relationships.
The film is set in
middle-class Mumbai, a milieu Kashyap clearly knows well. The focal point of
the story is the disappearance of a little girl who was left in a car by her unthinking
father when he went off to deal with a chore. Was she abducted by child
traffickers? Was she taken away by someone who knows her? As the investigation
proceeds, we realise that every player in this story has motivations that go
beyond what they’re proclaiming to their loved ones and to law enforcers. And
like that first season of the serial The
Killing recently telecast on Indian TV – the case of another missing
daughter – Ugly ultimately reminds us
of how much harm we could do to those we love, when we are blinded even
momentarily by self-interest.
Kashyap’s firm grip on
the narrative loosens only towards the end of the second half, when in a bid to
throw up more clever twists than were required, the film leaves too many things
unsaid, too many loose ends that needed to be tied up. When did X and Y become
part of the game? At what point did Z get the idea to turn a prank into a
serious money-spinning enterprise? How did Z manage to convince X that A was
safe?
You will understand these
questions only after you watch the film. For the moment, the point here is that
after a while, in trying to throw up unexpected developments that would take
the audience’s breath away, the writer-director takes away instead from the
film’s overall effectiveness. But Ugly’s
flaws are all forgotten in that one beautifully aching climactic scene in which
we finally discover what had been going on behind the scenes. That disturbing
denouement rips our hearts away, reaches into our souls and demands a moment of
silence as we remain glued to our seats.
Fleshing out Kashyap’s
understanding of the human psyche is a striking cast put together by Mukesh
Chhabra. Tejaswini Kolhapure as little Kali’s troubled mother Shalini was also
in the director’s (unreleased) debut film Paanch.
Here again she provides us with evidence of how much mainstream Bollywood is
missing out by not roping her in more often. Their loss and ours. Rahul Bhat as
Shalini’s ex is excellent. Ronit Roy is the seething volcano who plays Shalini’s
second husband. In fact, the entire cast is impeccable.
Kashyap finds room for
humour in the oddest of places. Ugly
is grim from the start, yet features one of the most brilliantly hilarious, yet
tragic and frustrating interrogation scenarios ever seen in a Hindi film thana. In one stroke, that scene throws
light on the apathy of the Indian police, their ignorance, inadequate training
and every other reason why the average Indian hesitates to visit police
stations.
The art direction by
Mayur Sharma is spot on as is Nikos Andritsakis’ intimate camerawork, creating for
the audience a darkened world where sorrow and intrigue seem to lurk around every corner along with unhappy, myopic creatures.
It’s hard to let go though of the
film’s big slip-up, which is the effort to be over-smart while building up
suspense at a point when the human drama in the story was enough to carry it
forward. Something about Ugly thus
conveys the impression that more thought, care, affection and attention were
devoted to writing the first half than the post-interval portion. For that
reason, Ugly is nowhere close to
Kashyap’s best works so far – Paanch
(2003), Black Friday (2004) and the
short film Pramod Bhai 23 in the
omnibus Mumbai Cutting (2011). Yet, when
it hits home, it hits home in a way few films have done this year. Ugly could have been a lot more. What it
is
as of now is worth watching all the same.
Rating (out of five): ***
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CBFC Rating (India):
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A
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Running time:
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128 minutes
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Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/UglyTheFilm
