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Release
date:
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November 8, 2019
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Director:
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Amar Kaushik
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Cast:
Language:
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Ayushmann
Khurrana, Bhumi Pednekar, Yami Gautam, Saurabh Shukla, Sunita
Rajwar, Vijay Raaz, Seema Pahwa, Jaaved Jaaferi, Abhishek Banerjee,
Dheerendra Gautam, Sumit Arora, Aparkshakti
Khurana
Hindi
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One
of the pleasures of watching Bala comes from its use of language. The
characters in this film speak Kanpuriya Hindi which is a delight in and of
itself. Better still, they hardly ever substitute words in their mother tongue
with English equivalents. On the rare occasions when they do opt for a spot of
English, they are hilarious without the narrative taking a condescending tone
towards them or getting clichéd. And the dialogues
are replete with usages you are unlikely to hear on the streets of Delhi or
Mumbai.
So “hasthmaithun” is “hasthmaithun” for the hero, not “masturbation”.
His younger brother speaks of his family’s “loloop
nazar” on him. And a man is threatened with a “kantaap”, not a slap.
While the going is good in Bala,
it is very good. The first half is rip-roaringly funny, simultaneously poignant
and insightful as it takes us through the protagonist Bala a.k.a.
Balmukund Shukla’s journey from a luscious head of hair in his teens to
premature baldness in his 20s, from vanity and arrogance to a soul-crushing
complex. Director Amar Kaushik, whose calling card for now is the stupendous
horror comedy Stree, never lets the
pace flag pre-interval. Writer Niren Bhatt is clearly determined to make a
point about a bald man’s sense of self-worth, stays true to this message and is
intelligent while doing so here.
In the
second half though, the humour and the intellect dip. For a start, the writing
takes the easy way out in a crucial, pivotal situation. (Caution: Some people might consider the rest of this paragraph a
spoiler) A woman Bala loves and who loves him back is condemned
for rejecting him on discovering his baldness – condemned not merely by
characters in the story, but by the film itself – by establishing her as a
superficial creature for whom looks matter more than anything else and getting
her to dump him solely and entirely because his appearance no longer appeals to
her, never allowing her to believe what would have been a reason that might
possibly have earned her some audience sympathy: that it is in fact his
deception that killed their relationship, not his lack of hair. By
getting Bala instead to acknowledge his lies and self-flagellate, the
film uses even this opportunity to increase his likeability. This is silly,
because it is a sort of ultimatum: once he apologises for lying, she had better
forgive him, or else we will quietly slot her as a youknowwhat. It is all cleverly done,
all the while ensuring that the judgement is subtle and the tone of the
narrative never gets openly vicious towards her. From a film that until then
and thereafter is honest about its hero’s character flaws and does not let him
off lightly, this is disappointing. (Spoiler
alert ends)
The
message being driven home by Bala from
the start is that we must stop caring about what others think of our
looks – that once we begin valuing ourselves, the world will too. Towards this
end, it has a dark-skinned heroine called Latika Trivedi who has all her life been derided for her complexion.
Getting Bala to be one of those who taunted her in her childhood, and making
him a fairness cream salesman in his adulthood even while he battles a bias
against early onset baldness, are both nice
touches. However, this aspect of the messaging fails because the film reveals its own
prejudice against dark skin from the word go.
No one
on Team Bala seems to have
detected the irony in casting a light-skinned actor as Latika and painting her
face black, rather than casting a black woman to
play a black woman. In a film industry that favours goraapan especially for female stars
despite marginal evolution on this front in recent decades, Bala’s unwillingness to seek out
an actually dark-complexioned actor for this role underlines the widespread
attitude that a woman whose skin does not match a certain shade is not worthy
of being a lead. It appears that Bhatt and his
colleagues did not notice either that throughout the film, they treat it as a
given that a dark complexion is indeed less and cannot possibly be pretty, and
equate it with the side effect of a disease (namely, Bala’s alopecia which is a direct result of his diabetes).
The screenplay well and truly bares its prejudice though in Latika’s own
reaction to the mythological tale of the hunchbacked woman Kubja who Lord
Krishna is said to have miraculously turned into a beauty. Stage enactments of
the story in Kanpur are twice shown, both times a dark-skinned woman is cast as
Kubja, and Latika – a bright lawyer who had earlier been vocal about her comfort
with her skin colour – says after a viewing: “Why did Lord Krishna
have to make her sundar? It is
possible that someone would have liked her just the way she is.”
“Someone”?
Umm, but wasn’t the whole point that we must accept ourselves and not measure
our worth by the acceptance of others? Note too that she does not question the
casting of a dark-skinned actor as Kubja and the intrinsic assumption that her
colour is equal to a lack of soundarya.
This is not to say that Latika must be perfect, but that the questioning,
unbiased person she has been shown to be until then does not gel with the
attitude she displays here.
This
inconsistent characterisation and the team’s lack of awareness of their own
prejudice robs Bala of much of its value. Tragic, because when it
is dealing with the hero’s baldness it is smart and sharp, the crackling
dialogues are rich with
cultural references, even the songs and
choreography add to the comicality (watch Tequila, please, and those TikTok videos are out-and-out killers), the comedy
involving Bala never crosses the line into insensitivity and the
cast is absolutely A-grade.
Ayushmann
Khurrana and Bhumi Pednekar live up to expectations by delivering fine
performances, and Yami Gautam as the somewhat frivolous professional model Pari Mishra
displays a talent for comedy here that will hopefully be explored in future
films. The
trio are backed by a fabulous ensemble of supporting
actors, each jostling with the other in the run-up to a Best Supporting Actor
nomination. Every single one of them, including the lesser-known
faces (Dheerendra Gautam playing Bala’s younger brother,
Sumit Arora as his boss) is given space to shine and they chew up the screen in
those moments.
If
this film had no Latika (or she was better written and appropriately cast) and the humour of the
opening half had been maintained in the second, it would have been near perfect. There is a Latika though and the humour does dip,
making Bala a 50-50.
Rating (out
of five stars): **1/2
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CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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129 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
Photographs
courtesy:
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