Release
date:
|
February 14, 2019
|
Director:
|
Zoya Akhtar
|
Cast:
Language:
|
Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Siddhant Chaturvedi,
Kalki Koechlin, Vijay Varma, Amruta Subhash, Vijay Raaz, Sheeba Chaddha,
Nakul Roshan Sahdev
Hindi
|
A young man has
been waiting outside a stadium where a musical show is taking place. He is one
among the number of drivers whose wealthy mistress is in the audience inside.
For a while now he has been listening to the pulsating sounds emerging from
within, and then, in a manner that tells us he can finally no longer hold back,
that he cannot help himself any more, he begins striding purposefully towards
the performance venue.
As he gets closer
though, a security person spots him. There is no noisy confrontation between
the two men, just a firm look from that hefty uniformed guard we see only from
a short distance and a slight, dismissive wave of the hand, brushing the
youngster aside like dust off a carpet, as if to emphasise his
insignificance.
We know Murad Sheikh
(Ranveer Singh) well by then. We know that this college student cum driver from
Mumbai’s congested Dharavi slum is also a gifted aspiring rapper with poetry
and music rushing through his veins. We know too that this is not the first
time he has been told he is a nobody.
In another scene,
one of the most beautiful passages in writer-director Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy, Murad is driving the same
mistress and her parents in their spacious, gleaming sedan one night. The
father and daughter are having an argument – she wants to begin working right
after her graduation, he wants her to study further. Everyone is a graduate
these days, graduation means nothing, the Dad tells her, before asking Murad
how far gone he is with his education. I am about to complete my graduation,
comes the reply, at which point, as if Murad is deaf and invisible even while
he is seated among them, the rich man asks the girl if what she wants for
herself is to be at this fellow’s “level”.
There is so much
happening in that seemingly low-key scene. The cruelty of the master’s words,
the barely discernible look on the daughter’s face that suggests confused
disapproval of her parent’s inhumanity, and the treatment the storyteller
metes out to the older man (Mohan Kapur) – the
camera opts not to show us his face, treating him instead with the same disdain
that he displays towards Murad.
Akhtar’s decision
to erase or blur those who erase and blur Murad is important, because Gully Boy is an ode to the Murads we don’t
see, the drivers outside who do not get to enter the stadium, the chap in our
midst that we ignore in our conversations.
Set in Mumbai’s
underground rap scene, Gully Boy tells
the story of the impoverished Murad’s journey from being forced into jobs he
does not want, to his determined pursuit of his music dream. Supporting him on
this road is his long-time girlfriend Safeena Firdausi (Alia Bhatt), a fiery,
short-tempered medical student who has her own battles with family conservatism
she must fight.
Gully Boy is inspired by the lives of Mumbai rappers Naezy and Divine (a.k.a. Naved Shaikh and Vivian Fernandes respectively), but it is
not a biopic. Like Murad’s being, every cell of this film beats with and for
the art form to which it pays tribute. The music is so powerful that it has the
strength to make a committed rap fan out of a rap virgin.
The writing by
Reema Kagti and Akhtar rarely misses a step, completely immersed as the
screenplay is in the socio-economic realities of its crowded, filthy slum
setting and the present-day socio-political reality of the India in which that
slum is set.
Rap numbers by a
bouquet of writers are a constant in the narrative, either performed on
screen in lava-like eruptions by various artistes or playing out in the background.
The incessant swings to and from, in and out of these energetic, audacious
compositions are handled deftly by editor Nitin Baid.
Cinematographer Jay
Oza (Raman Raghav 2.0, Blackmail) keeps things personal,
staying close to his principal characters except in the impressive opening
scene and when he pointedly zooms out a handful of times to offer us an eyeful
of boxy, cramped Dharavi.
To the outsider
unaware of India’s current troubles or cineastes who prefer viewing films
divorced from the global and national context in which they emerge, Gully Boy may seem like just a
coming-of-age / rise-to-stardom / rags-to-possible-riches drama. But it is not.
This is an era of right-wing dominance, the mainstreaming of extremism and
chest-thumping nationalism, or as Dub Sharma puts it in Jingostan beatbox featured in the film:
2018 hai desh ko khatra hai /
Har taraf aag hai tum /
aag ke beech ho /
Jor se chilla lo /
sabko dara do /
Apni zahreelee been baja ke /
sabka dhyaan kheench lo... /
... Jingostan zindabaad.
(Rough translation:
It is 2018, the country is in danger / You are in the midst of the flames that
have engulfed us / Scream out loud and scare everyone / Draw everyone’s
attention with your poisonous agenda... / Hail the land of jingoism.)
Jingostan beatbox is arguably the most
forthright political comment to emerge from an otherwise largely cowardly
Bollywood in recent years.
Rap becomes a tool
to spell out Gully Boy’s position on
multiple prickly issues in a hugely entertaining fashion without sounding like
sermons. Much is also said via the storyline sans bhaashanbaazi. This gives the narrative a fine balance between
allusions and open declarations, making it both fun and unapologetically
political.
Islamophobia, for
one, is referenced in a conversation overheard from another room. Murad’s most
unwavering ally and fellow musician MC Sher is introduced in an emphatically
feminist, massively enjoyable sequence, but the feminism of the rest of the
film – its take on gender segregation, discrimination in education, the hijab,
domestic violence and more – emanates from the life stories being told.
The Muslimness of
the leads is neither over-emphasised nor underplayed. This is in keeping with
the evolution of the portrayal of Muslims in Bollywood from a pre-2000 positive
stereotype and characters whose religious identity was an overriding factor, to
present-day Hindi cinema where the likes of Akhtar normalise the Muslim
community, giving us the good, bad, wonderful and ugly just as they do with the
majority community.
Gully Boy is not without its rough edges. Male infidelity
is usually humourised in Hindi cinema. Here it is not dealt with lightly, but
is certainly forgiven with a speed and casualness that is uncharacteristic of
the female partner facing it and thus unconvincing. The tone of the film is
just as generous towards the man in question in this matter. At this juncture
alone, it feels like the writers did not quite know what to do other than hurry
past this failing in a character they otherwise want us to like.
The screenplay also
papers over class divides on the music scene. A deliciously furious duel of
songs between the hero and an uppity rival (insult rap is what it should be
called, if that term does not already exist) gives us a clear view of what our
man is up against, but it is soon glossed over by the film’s
talent-conquers-all idealism.
What does indeed
conquer all in Gully Boy are its
songs, with their addictive rhythms and volcanic poetry. To watch the birth of Apna time aayega in particular
(composers: Dub Sharma and Divine, singer: Ranveer Singh, lyrics: Divine and
Ankur Tewari) is a special experience in itself.
Singh embodies Murad
as he drowns out his naturally flamboyant personality to play a shy, angry yet
optimistic youth whose words have the ability to crush a harsh opponent in a
way fists never can. His body looks better nourished and more carefully
sculpted than you would expect from a person in his dire circumstances, but his
physique is wisely not displayed often enough to distract from the
believability of the rest of him.
In real life, at
least in public, Singh is more Simmba – his last screen character – than Murad.
It is impossible to remember the Simmba in him though while watching him here.
His brilliance is
matched scene for scene by the devastatingly good Alia Bhatt who has a
comparatively smaller role but owns Gully
Boy as much as he does. The writers have ensured that Safeena is not
merely a satellite revolving around Murad. Her battles are a crucial element in
the screenplay’s study of the social milieu he inhabits, in which his art is
initially suppressed and ultimately blossoms.
The superlative supporting
cast includes the charismatic debutant Siddhant Chaturvedi playing MC Sher.
Vijay Varma, who epitomised evil in Pink (2016), is immaculate as Murad’s morally ambivalent friend Moeen. And
sweet Nakul Roshan Sahdev gets to headline Gully
Boy’s most hilarious scene.
Zoya Akhtar has
shown remarkable maturity from her very first feature, Luck By Chance (2009). In Gully
Boy she displays the same clarity of vision she had when she started out.
For a film that is
about protest music, the music of anger and rebellion, Gully Boy is surprisingly quiet and extremely funny. Its
understatedness and sense of humour are among the multiple reasons why it is also
one of the best films to emerge from the Hindi cinemascape in recent times.
Rating (out
of five stars): ****
CBFC Rating (India):
|
UA
|
Running time:
|
155 minutes 48 seconds
|
This review has also
been published on Firstpost:
Poster
courtesy:
No comments:
Post a Comment