Release date:
|
July 17, 2015
|
Director:
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Kabir Khan
|
Cast:
Language:
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Salman Khan, Harshaali
Malhotra, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Om Puri, Rajesh Sharma,
Sharat Saxena, Adnan Sami
Hindi
|
I
can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a Salman Khan film so much.
Oh
yes, it was Dabangg back in 2010 when
director Abhinav Kashyap, Salman, Sonu Sood and the rest of the team struck a
fine balance between being playful yet not stupid. Five years later comes
director Kabir Khan’s Bajrangi Bhaijaan
(BB) in which an excessively dramatised,
play-it-safe finale does not kill its overall impact as a heart-warming
entertainer.
The
story had the potential to be terribly over-done: a six-year-old Pakistani girl
called Shahida gets lost in India when she comes visiting Nizamuddin Auliya’s
dargah in Delhi with her mother. She chances upon the good-hearted, naïve Hanuman
devotee Pavan Kumar Chaturvedi a.k.a. Bajrangi who is constrained in his
efforts to help her by the fact that she is mute and too young to write. When
he figures out that she is from Pakistan, his attempts to legitimately get her
home fail. So he decides to personally transport her across the border and to
her family.
Now
imagine this core concept in the hands of director Anil Sharma who gave us that
India-Pakistan screamfest Gadar: Ek Prem
Katha starring Sunny Deol in 2001.
Better
still, don’t pain yourself by imagining that. Thank god instead for Kabir. The
director of Kabul Express, New York (my favourite in his
filmography) and Ek Tha Tiger, does
an unobtrusive balancing act almost throughout BB. This film has none of the hollering or populist demonisation of
our neighbour that spoilt the moving love story at the heart of Gadar. Nor does it awkwardly deify all Pakistanis
in the interests of superficial political correctness. A thumbs up for that and
so much else, Kabir.
As
with all Salman’s films, BB too gives
him the maximum screen time in comparison with his co-stars. As with most of
his films, he brazens his way through this one too on the strength of minimal
acting skills and oodles of charm. He was cute and likeable in Dabangg, in this film he is completely overshadowed
by the supporting cast. Salman has been slow on his feet in films in the past
five years, but Kabir has used his star attraction wisely here, giving him only
one major song-and-dance sequence to shoulder and no scenes in which he has to race
about unrealistically.
The
list of scene-stealers in BB is led
by Harshaali Malhotra playing Shahida a.k.a. Munni. Yet another great job by
casting director Mukesh Chhabra. Not only is she incredibly huggable, this tiny
debutant can also act. She is sweetness personified but she does not rely on
that innate quality to get by, nor does Kabir over-cutesify her as directors of
child actors are prone to doing.
Kareena Kapoor Khan plays Bajrangi’s supportive girlfriend and Delhi-based teacher Rasika. Though
she is present in less than half of BB
– and what a crying shame that is! – this fine actress does full justice to her
role of a strong and broad-minded woman in trying circumstances.
Playing
Pakistani TV journalist Chand Nawab, Nawazuddin Siddiqui enters the picture
almost one-and-a-half hours into the narrative and walks away with the film. He
owns the screen every single time he appears, which is why it is ironic when in
that scene in which Chand and Bajrangi finally discover the name of Shahida’s
village and Chand breaks into a celebratory dance, the camera zooms into Salman
and the kid, cutting Nawaz out for a while. His dialogue delivery, his
laughter, a rousing PTC (piece to camera) and that fleeting moment when he
leans over to tap a colleague’s shoulder – every second that we see him is evidence
of his genius.
BB is blessed
with other strong supporting actors too, among them Rajesh Sharma as a
Pakistani police officer and Om Puri in a brief but memorable role as a Muslim
clergyman in Pakistan.
What’s
nice about BB is that it doesn’t rest
primarily on its hero’s popularity as most Salman films do. V. Vijayendra
Prasad’s story is affecting, timely and carefully crafted considering the
hyper-sensitivity of elements in both major religious communities portrayed
here. Kabir’s dialogues are for the most part bereft of bombast and
intermittently humourous.
DoP
Aseem Mishra not only delivers extravagant visuals in naturally beautiful
settings, but also turns run-of-the-mill canvases into something special. I
particularly enjoyed those shots of Munni, Bajrangi and Chand on a bright yellow
bed of corn in a mini truck (though I confess I’m not sure corn would be
transported without its natural casings in real life).
Though
Pritam has not created any extraordinary song here, most are enjoyable while
they last. Selfie le le re is particularly unmelodious, but
all is forgiven in the face of the way Bhar
do jholi meri is utilised to take the narrative forward when it is
performed in a dargah in Pakistan featuring singer Adnan Sami in a guest
appearance.
More
than the music, it is the lyrics of some of the songs that leave an impression. I thoroughly enjoyed both the writing
– by Mayur Puri – and the enactment
of Chicken Song, which goes thus: Thodi biryani bukhari / Thodi phir nalli nihari
/ Le aao aaj dharam bhrasht ho
jaaye…
The
situation quietly weaves in a message for vegetarians who demand segregation
from non-vegetarians. In fact, apart from the overt lesson about India-Pak and
Hindu-Muslim amity, what is interesting about BB are the many such neat asides touching upon various issues from media
indifference towards positive news to a woman defying patriarchy, all without
sermonising. Note, for instance, Rasika’s refreshingly non-DDLJ response to her autocratic father’s ultimatum to Bajrangi to get
a house in 6 months if he wants to marry her.
That
being said, there is much in this film that defies logic, but those flaws are
overshadowed by the emotional pull that had me rooting for Shahida, Bajrangi
and Chand throughout the second half. I confess though that the over-wrought
climax almost ruined it for me, stretched as it was to breaking point, with too
much use of slow motion, not a single situational possibility left for after
“The End”, and the director’s balancing act between communities becoming
strained for the first time. I cannot tell you what happens, of course, but it
did make me wonder what we would get if Kabir remade Balu Mahendra’s Moondram Pirai/Sadma with Sridevi and
Kamal Haasan. Would he allow Sri’s character to leave without knowing that
Kamal is the one who had helped her while she was suffering from amnesia? Come
back and read this question after you see the film.
Again
without giving anything away, I could not help but wonder if under the present
dispensation in India, where Hindu fundamentalists hold far greater sway than
Muslim fundamentalists, a liberal film maker felt compelled to ensure that if
he shows an Indian Hindu making a move towards saying Allah haafiz (Bajrangi never actually utters the words) then he had
better pre-empt any offended sentiments by ensuring that this is immediately
followed by a Pakistani Muslim screaming out the words Jai Shri Ram – more than once. Perhaps the prevailing negativity in our country has led me to over-think this, but I did wonder about it.
It’s
a good thing this scene came after I
had already dissolved into a puddle of tears as I watched Bajrangi Bhaijaan. My vision of that long-drawn-out climax is clouded
by the tears and laughter that preceded it, by the touching transformation of
the prejudiced and insular Bajrangi as a result of his encounter with Shahida,
and by those two rockstars Harshaali and Nawaz.
Rating
(out of five): ***
CBFC Rating (India):
|
U/A
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Running time:
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159 minutes
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