REVIEW 135: DEPARTMENT

Release date:	May 18, 2012
Director:	Ram Gopal Varma
Cast:	Sanjay Dutt, Rana Daggubati, Vijay Raaz, Amitabh Bachchan, Abhimanyu Singh, Madhu Shalini, Anjana Sukhani, Lakshmi Manchu

Remember how George Costanza and Jerry Seinfeld try to sell the concept for a TV show to the bosses at a major American network with the words: ‘It’s a show about … … … NOTHING!’?

I’m afraid my mind wandered towards Seinfeld and in many other directions as I watched Ram Gopal Varma’s Department. Because it truly felt like a film about … … … NOTHING!

I know there is a story somewhere in there, and I will try to recount it to you in a later paragraph. But it was hard to focus on the subject at hand since I was so distracted by this film’s numerous purposeless camera angles – shots of a character taken from below another’s armpit, Vijay Raaz as seen from below a lady’s thigh, a dancer’s right thigh placed over the left while the camera teases us in the direction of her crotch, Amitabh Bachchan as seen from above, an elongated Raaz as seen from below ...

Department is set in the Mumbai underworld which was once Ramu’s forte. That of course is the tragedy of this film: that the man who gave us the rawness of Shiva, the intense hopelessness of Satya and Company, could be so lost in himself as to have made Department. Underlining the tragedy is the fact that he has a cast of fine actors at hand here (not counting Lakshmi Manchu – playing Sanjay Dutt’s wife – whose dialogue delivery is decidedly awkward). Just last year, Abhimanyu Singh chilled us to the bone playing a homophobic policeman in director Onir’s I Am. Monsoon Wedding’s Dubey (Vijay Raaz) delivered one of the finest supporting performances of 2011 with his turn as the gangster taking shit – literally – in Delhi Belly. But these wonderful men and their co-stars – Amitabh Bachchan in particular – are reduced to mere props in the eyes of an eccentric camera.

So let’s quickly be done with the story! Shiv (Rana Daggubati) is an honest and disillusioned policeman who is recruited by Mahadev (Dutt) into a new department – simply called The Department – that works outside the purview of the law to put the fear of God in Mumbai’s gangsters. The don Sawathya (Raaz) must contend with them while also dealing with rebellion in his own gang. Meanwhile, Shiv meets gangster-turned-politician Sarjerao Gaikwad (Bachchan). Also in the picture are Shiv’s fiancée (Anjana Sukhani), Mahadev’s wife, Sawathya’s flunkey DK (Abhimanyu) and his power-and-cigarette-obsessed moll (Madhu Shalini).

In its effort to throw up surprises at every turn, Department is so contrived that it’s boring. For god’s sake, by now we need more than the revelation of an underworld-politician nexus to shock us out of our seats! And for god’s sake, a steady stream of violence, a steady flow blood and a gratingly loud background score can’t compensate for a poor script! In a scene that could variously be described as a tribute or an effort to recreate an iconic passage from Satya, DK and his girlfriend stand on what seems like a cliff overlooking Mumbai, and DK throws out a remark to the cosmos about his ambitions. No Ramu, it doesn’t work. It especially doesn’t work for those of us who watched and loved Satya back in 1998, and still have an image etched in our minds of that glorious moment in time, of a scruffy Manoj Bajpai on a cliff, looking across the waters to Mumbai and yelling out to the world: “Mumbai ka king kaun? Bhiku Matre!”

There’s nothing novel either in the content or the presentation of this latest underworld story from The House of Ramu. Unless you count the bizarre camera work! Uff! The shaky camera and weird angles in Ramu’s Not A Love Story last year gave me a touch of nausea and the beginnings of a migraine, and spoilt what was otherwise a very unusual and surprisingly nuanced take on the Neeraj Grover murder case. In Department the camera does not shake, but the shots are still weird, travelling above, below, beneath and between various body parts without either being particularly artistic or adding to the narrative in any way. The only shot I found even half-way interesting was a very close close-up of the side of a teacup with the visible shadow of the beverage still swilling around inside, left there half drunk by a policeman who must do his political master’s bidding and leave everything, yes everything, when summoned to a task. That apart, I suppose I’m grateful that emerging Telugu star Rana dubbed for himself in this film instead of being given a completely mismatched voice as he was in his Bollywood debut Dum Maaro Dum. In every other department though, Department is a let-down.

And about that much-touted item number with model Nathalia Kaur … ya okay, she’s got a hot body, but so what? So do a zillion other girls trying to make it in Bollywood! There’s such a thing as screen presence. And that she certainly ain’t got! So why has Ramu been waxing eloquent about her all this time?

O Ramu, Ramu, wherefore art thou Ramu?

Rating (out of five): *

CBFC Rating:                       A

Language:                              Hindi

Photograph courtesy:  https://www.facebook.com/#!/departmentmovie

REVIEW 34: I AM

Release date:	April 29, 2011
Director:	Onir
Cast:	Nandita Das, Juhi Chawla, Manisha Koirala, Sanjay Suri, Rahul Bose, Purab Kohli, Anurag Kashyap, Radhika Apte, Abhimanyu Singh, Arjun Mathur

In the Book of Exodus in the Bible, Moses asks God what his name is. God replies: “I am who I am.” I was reminded of that passage as I watched director Onir’s film this week. I Am is a quartet of short stories: I Am Afia, I Am Megha, I Am Abhimanyu and I Am Omar. The protagonists are not divine, but there is an attitude that pervades each of their stories: I am who I am and you need to deal with that because despite my confusions and crises, I am comfortable with myself.

First there is Afia (Nandita Das), a young divorcee in Kolkata who wants to have a baby through artificial insemination. We then move to a community that Indian society in general, and Indian cinema in particular, rarely bothers with: Kashmiri Pandits. I Am Megha is about a Kashmiri Hindu girl (Juhi Chawla) who returns to Srinagar for the first time since her family was forced to flee. Story #3 is set in Bengaluru where a seemingly carefree and self-centred Abhimanyu (Sanjay Suri) battles memories of being sexually abused as a child. In the final chapter we meet a gay man in Mumbai whose fear of coming out to his family leads to a horrific situation.

Onir earlier directed My Brother Nikhil, Bas Ek Pal and Sorry Bhai. For me personally, Bas Ek Pal is the film in which he strayed away from his innate ability to tell realistic stories in an apparently effortless fashion. In I Am, he returns to his strengths.

There’s nothing wishy-washy about any of these accounts. Afia wants a baby but not a man in her life. Abhimanyu confronts his mother: did she genuinely not realise that her husband was violating her son? I Am Omar shows a gay man being raped in a way that won’t fit the conventional definition of that crime. And most courageous of all is the position that Onir takes on Hindu-Muslim tension in Kashmir. At one point, Megha’s childhood friend Rubina (Manisha Koirala) explodes in anger because the army conducts routine checks on their house since her brother is a surrendered terrorist. Later, listening to Rubina’s complaints about the situation in Kashmir, Megha retorts: “Kis baat ki problem hai tumhe? Is the army treating you unfairly? Is India taking away your rights? Or is it because of the constant reminders that your brother is a trained mujahideen?” It’s a brave question for a film to ask in an India where we have become slaves of misplaced notions of political correctness, and where a sympathetic stand in favour of one community is often assumed to be anti- the other. In I Am, Rubina in turn asks a question that had never occurred to Megha: “Imagine what it might have been if you had stayed back and I had managed to leave?” Yes, despite all the misfortunes that befell her family, would Megha want to trade places with this beautiful young girl who is stuck in a state where life has come to a standstill and concertina wire is more visible than human beings?

Megha’s story, incidentally, is inspired by the experiences of actor Sanjay Suri who has produced I Am with Onir. Suri’s family left Kashmir in 1990 when his father was killed by terrorists. Among the many things for which Onir needs to be applauded is the decision to draw from a man’s experiences, yet tell the story of two women in a terror-torn state since it is women who suffer the most in conflict situations. Kudos is also called for since Onir and Sanjay crowd-sourced funds for this film through the online social media.

I Am is hard-hitting and unapologetic about its views. It’s beautifully acted by every single member of the cast except one star who I will discuss later in this review. And while it’s realistic, it is never dull. The songs don’t intrude on the narrative. And Onir tells the four stories with a light touch that takes nothing away from the seriousness of the issues he’s raising.

Many things are hinted at without being underlined. There is that passing suggestion of an attraction between Afia and the man whose sperm could give her a child. There’s the fact that only much after watching the film did it occur to me that two out of its four protagonists are probably Muslim. I Am doesn’t make a big deal of Afia or Omar’s religious identity unlike most Bollywood films where Muslim characters are placed in stories to make a point … either about shayari or the nawabi way of life or secularism perhaps. Rarely do you come across a Muslim who happens to be there as just another human being in the film.

Then there is the easy manner in which language flows in I Am. Bollywood usually struggles to write dialogues the way multi-lingual Indians speak. English-school-educated characters in particular are generally given lines that are written – and delivered – in an ungainly, unnatural fashion. But the people in I Am switch between Hindi, English, Bengali, Kashmiri, Kannada and Marathi in precisely the way you and I might.

The only sore point for me in the entire film was the casting of Rahul Bose in the fourth segment. Bose is a limited actor whose immobile face contrasts sharply with his talented co-stars here. I Am Omar is a chilling story, tough to watch because of its stark portrayal of sexual exploitation, but Bose’s performance dilutes much of its impact. Kashmiris in the audience may also fault Manisha Koirala for her accent but Megha and Rubina’s story is so well-acted and so rare that I, for one, have already forgiven her.

So there you have it: I Am is a sincere and gutsy film. Don’t let my praise mislead you: this is not a grand epic, it’s small and simple and that’s why it’s lovely. Take a bow Onir.

Rating (out of five): ****

CBFC Rating:                        A without cuts. Some swear words have been beeped out

Running time:                        110 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi, English, Kashmiri with a bit of Bengali, Kannada, Marathi

Photograph courtesy: http://www.iamthefilms.com/downloads