REVIEW 222: JOHN DAY

Release date:	September 13, 2013
Director:	Ahishor Solomon
Cast: Language:	Naseeruddin Shah, Randeep Hooda, Shernaz Patel, Vipin Sharma, Elena Kazan, Sharat Saxena Hindi

John Day is a mirage. There’s no better way to describe a thriller in which, as a viewer you keep waiting to reach that oasis in the distance that will make the trek through the burning desert worth it, but it just doesn’t come.

In the first half hour of the film when a girl dies while on vacation with her boyfriend, and we are later introduced to her grieving parents John and Maria Day, there’s a promise being held out of great revelations to come. “Have faith in God,” says John to his wife. “Have faith in God and then he treats you like shit?” she shoots back. Shortly afterwards, Maria is attacked in her home and there’s a hold-up in the bank where John is a manager. Aha, the plot thickens! But then the film takes too long to reveal its hand, and worse, that hand turns out to be a damp squib.

The length of time John Day takes to arrive at its climactic twists and turns might have been acceptable if that climax was intriguing. After all, the beauty of Manoj Night Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense was that a lumbering ride ended in one of the most fascinating film endings in history. Unfortunately, the promised oasis in John Day turns out to be a little shrub. In the end then, it matters little that Naseeruddin Shah and Shernaz Patel are sweet together as Mr and Mrs Day; or that this is that rare Hindi film featuring an elderly man as its hero; or that this is that rare Hindi film in which an old man is shown kissing his wife, however briefly; or that the production designer, background score composer and cinematographer join hands to build up an atmosphere of foreboding from the word go; or that some of the locations are scenic. Up to the 1980s, Hindi cinema was dominated by stereotyped Christian characters – gangsters, gangsters’ molls, bartenders, bootleggers, cabaret dancers, quasi-foreigners who could barely speak Hindi, drunken men, dress-wearing women who slept around unlike the virginal heroines and so on. From the 1990s onwards, Christians virtually disappeared from Hindi films. John Day is that rare post-1990s Hindi film with a Christian as a leading man and – surprise, surprise! – no Bollywood-esque stereotypes. Like the other positives though, this too fades into insignificance after a while as the film peters out with each passing scene.

Randeep Hooda delivers a generic performance as Gautam, the brooding, corrupt cop with a miserable past; we know he’s capable of far better than this. The interesting discovery in John Day is Elena Kazan playing his alcoholic girlfriend Tabassum Habibi. Unlike most other recent international imports into Bollywood (media reports tell me she’s of German-Russian ancestry), this girl can act.

What exactly is John Day about? Well, that’s the thing: it tries to be about a lot of things but ends up being about not much. Unlike producer Anjum Rizvi’s earlier film A Wednesday, this one does not have pace or contextual relevance to make it gripping (A Wednesday was also an anarchist’s dream that tapped into a prevailing national bloodlust, but that’s a different discussion). Here in John Day, there’s a father out to get revenge for the death of his daughter, a mother who blames herself for the tragedy, a gangster devoted to his religion and crime, an underworld-media nexus, a boy tormented by memories of sexual abuse, a man afraid of commitment, a woman desperately in love, a murky international corporation and a beautiful, vast stretch of land called Casablanca Estates in which I’d lost interest by the time its secret was finally unveiled.

Director Ahishor Solomon is clearly well-intentioned and not without talent, but he fails to bring it all together into a compelling, convincing whole. In the end, what remains is a feeling that he was trying to make a grand, profound film … the key word being “trying”. The overriding memory though, is of a “cigarette smoking is injurious to health” warning that inexplicably remains on screen throughout the film from the very first frame, even when there’s not a ciggie in sight; and two scenes of violence more gruesome than anything you’ve ever seen in a mainstream Hindi film.

Rating (out of five): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	2 hours 17 minutes

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Day_(film)

REVIEW 69: CHALA MUSSADDI OFFICE OFFICE

Release date:	August 5, 2011
Director:	Rajiv Mehra
Cast:	Pankaj Kapoor, Gaurav Kapur, Manoj Pahwa, Sanjay Mishra, Deven Bhojani, Hemant Pandey, Asawari Joshi, Mahesh Thakur

I guess Chala Mussaddi Office Office will work best for those who have been regular viewers of Office Office, the popular TV serial from which it is derived. But even if, like me, you’ve watched just a few episodes here and there, or you’ve not seen the show at all, it’s possible that – like me – you’ll have a nice time watching it.

The film is as simple as the serial … Mussaddi Lal Tripathi (Pankaj Kapoor) represents the common man who is constantly trapped in a web of bureaucratic corruption, red tapism, administrative sluggishness and all the other issues that the aam aadmi in India faces every day. The film begins with the death of Mussaddi’s wife. He goes off on a pilgrimage for the repose of her soul and to immerse her ashes in our holy waters. Mussaddi’s long absence from home results in him being declared dead in government files. Result: the stoppage of the pension due to him as a retired government teacher. Most of the film is spent on Mussaddi’s efforts to prove that he is alive.

It’s strange that this film has not been promoted at all by its producers, especially since its protagonist’s struggles are likely to find a resonance with all of us while the nation debates the Lokpal Bill. Mussaddi Lal is you and me. He is Everyman. He is the middle-class family of Dibakar Banerjee’s Khosla ka Ghosla whose land has been fake-sold by a crookish property dealer. He is the little old man who strips at a government office to shame an apathetic babu into action in Lage Raho Munna Bhai. And unlike the Common Man in A Wednesday, he is not playing disturbingly to the gallery by offering an anarchic but populist solution to our problems – he is simply sticking to the Gandhian dictum that stays on screen right through the end credits: “Corruption ought not to be an inevitable product of democracy. Be the change you want to see in the world.” Mussaddi Lal’s refusal to pay a bribe to get what is rightfully his may seem naïve to many, the film’s denouement could be viewed as simplistic, but it’s touching all the same!

Pankaj Kapoor as the central character has had years of practice playing the hapless citizen, but still knows how to pull at our heart strings. He is ably assisted by Gaurav Kapur in the role of his no-good son and the other members of the original serial’s five fixtures – Manoj Pahwa, Sanjay Mishra, Deven Bhojani, Hemant Pandey and Asawari Joshi – who play multiple parts in the film. Makrand Deshpande makes an appearance as a sort of wandering minstrel singing the film’s title song at regular intervals.

The strength of Chala Mussaddi, as in the case of the serial, is that its point is conveyed through humour with scenes and dialogues that are deliberately exaggerated yet not of the slapstick variety. Like the bribe-taking government official who says: “Hum sarkari karamchari hai, koi bimari thodi hai jo theek ho jaaye (We’re government servants, not some sort of disease that can be cured).” Like the student who pays lip service to customs but is too lazy to get up from his chair to touch his old teacher’s feet and so makes do with some long-distance paao chhoona.

Chala Mussaddi is not without its problems. Some of the jokes (especially the decidedly unfunny “do baate ho jaayegi” gag mouthed by Bhojani) get repetitive. Some (like the ones involving the pandits fleecing a man mourning his wife’s death) are not novel. And it’s irritating to see a lack of attention to detail that prompted the editor to splice together shots of Mussaddi and his son headed for the Pension Office on a scooter through a route that takes them past Connaught Place, then Red Fort, then back past Connaught Place and then past Red Fort again. That’s tacky. Still, this is a film with a heart and soul, a good cast and good intentions, a sense of humour and relevance to the times we live in! It’s not sock-you-in-the-stomach, punch-you-in-the-gut brilliant. But it’s nice.

Rating (out of five): **3/4

CBFC Rating:                       U without cuts

Running time:                        98 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://tinyurl.com/3ep5wfn (on Facebook)