REVIEW 706: KABIR SINGH

Release date:	June 21, 2019
Director:	Sandeep Reddy Vanga
Cast: Language:	Shahid Kapoor, Kiara Advani, Kamini Kaushal, Suresh Oberoi, Arjan Bajwa, Adil Hussain, Nikita Dutta, Soham Majumdar, Kunal Thakur Hindi and English with (unsubtitled) Punjabi

It takes almost 50 minutes for the heroine of Kabir Singh to utter her first sentence. “Kabir, what do you like in me?” says this fragile-looking child-woman who was a mute puppet in his hands until then. “I like the way you breathe,” he replies. Ooh, keh diya na dil ko touch kar jaane waali baat!

Okay, my apologies for the flippant tone, but please excuse it as a defence mechanism against one of the most horrific, harrowing, horrendous odes to misogyny and patriarchy ever created by Indian cinema in any language – humourised and romanticised for our viewing pleasure.

Kabir Singh is the Bollywood remake of the 2017 Tollywood blockbuster Arjun Reddy starring Vijay Sai Deverakonda and Shalini Pandey in the roles played in this Hindi version by Shahid Kapoor and Kiara Advani. To call both problematic is an understatement. As I watched Kabir Singh, I could already hear in my head the tired clichés that are rolled out as rebuttals to criticism of such films and are likely to be regurgitated for this one.

“C’mon ya, men like that do exist.”

“Are you saying films should not depict reality?”

“If negative characters could influence people to become bad then how come positive characters do not immediately reform society?”

Or, as Kapoor himself pre-emptively said earlier this week in a newspaper interview: “If we start judging characters, we can’t make movies that are real.”

Oh brother, stop. Please stop. This is exhausting, but for the zillionth time: it is not the depiction of reality that is objectionable here, it is precisely because violent, destructive misogynists do exist and women for centuries have suffered at their hands that it is deeply troubling when a film portrays such a person as cool, funny, and, as Kapoor puts it, a man with “a good heart” who “loves purely” and “wears his emotions on his sleeve”.

Again brother, stop. Stop with the euphemisms, please. Call the Kabir Singhs of the world what they are and show them up for what they are: obnoxious, ugly sociopaths.

Kapoor plays Kabir Rajdhir Singh, an ill-tempered, aggressive albeit academically brilliant medical college student who one day sees a pretty girl on campus and decides she is his. Her name is Preeti Sikka (Kiara Advani) but he does not know that then. They have yet to even have a conversation, but like a dog urinating to mark his territory, Kabir goes to an all-men junior class, announces to the students that they can have their pick of the other women in the college but this one is his woman, and demands that they spread the word on his behalf.

Mind you, all this and everything that comes thereafter (he is a chain-smoking alcoholic and drug taker who descends further into a spiral of substance abuse and sex addiction when he is forcefully separated from Preeti) is depicted in a comical tone and projected as intensity, passion and profound emotion. Every one of the despicable Kabir’s actions is portrayed as the handiwork of a loveable, mad genius. Besides, the heroine who seems initially intimidated by him soon falls in love with him, he treats another woman like meat and she too promptly tells him she loves him, his friends – male and female – adore him, he is popular with the nurses in his hospital on whom he threatens to vent his horniness... I mean, c’mon ya, if so many people are smitten by him he must be having “a good heart”, no?

Judge for yourself the heart so good that Kabir kisses Preeti for the first time while she stands statue-like, having not expressed any interest in him till then, he physically imposes himself on her subsequently too, he orders her around like one might a pet animal that one is fond of, after they have sex for the first time he instructs her in a proprietorial manner to cover up in public, after she falls for him he roughs her up, treats her like shit, repeatedly hits her and tells her she was a nobody in college whose identity rested entirely on her being known as his girl, and worse.

As if none of this was enough, a song titled Tera Ban Jaunga has lyrics that go thus:

Meri raahein tere tak hain

Tujhpe hi toh mera haq hai

(Translation: my path, every path I take, leads to you / I have a right over just you.)

The point about a “right” over a lover is re-asserted in the song Tujhe Kitna Chahne Lage, in which the words go, “Tere ishq pe haan haq mera hi toh hai” (I alone have a right over your love).

From the 1990s, Hindi cinema gradually bade goodbye to the portrayal of violence, molestation and stalking as legitimate forms of courtship. It never went away entirely, but for the most part, if a leading man was a stalker, he was categorically slotted as the villain of the piece as he was in Yash Chopra’s Darr. The romanticisation of stalking and the mistreatment of women while wooing them has made a big comeback this decade, epitomised by Raanjhanaa (2013) and various Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar starrers. Kabir Singh is in the same league: dangerous to the core because it is such a slick production.

For one, it is well acted, especially by Kapoor, Advani (known so far for M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story, Lust Stories, Bharat Ane Nenu), Arjan Bajwa playing Kabir’s brother and Soham Majumdar in the role of the hero’s best buddy Shiva. Kapoor, in fact, is so good here that it is heart-breaking to see him use his gift thus, to see the spectacular star of Vishal Bhardwaj’s spectacular Haider (2014) descend to this cinematic abomination.

The cast is one of Kabir Singh’s many pluses. The cinematography by Santhana Krishnan Ravichandran is plush, the editing by Aarif Sheikh and Vanga himself is truly slick, and the songs are attractive. That said, those numbers are ruined by the manner in which they are used in the narrative along with the overbearing, ear-splitting background score. The songs are pleasant when heard separately, but they are slammed into the film’s soundscape like whiplashes akin to the screechy effects used in bad Bollywood thrillers to startle the audience.

Most insidious is the writing of Kabir Singh, which uses humour to lull us into an acceptance of its terrible, terrifying hero’s obnoxiousness. As offensive as his patriarchal, misogynistic attitude towards the heroine and other women is the fact that towards the end writer-director-editor Sandeep Vanga seems to be trying to evoke sympathy for him by getting him to tearfully confess that he is an alcoholic. Clearly with this goal in mind, a few bars from the nursery rhyme Twinkle Twinkle Little Star are also woven into the background score – in a silly and tacky fashion, it must be said – when Kabir is dealing with the death of a loved one.

Towards the end, Vanga even seems to be attempting a statement about the limits that supposed democracy places on us when a lawyer says of Kabir that such free-spiritedness in a democracy is not okay. Ah, so being a creep is “free-spiritedness”. Got it.

That line is one of many dialogues in Kabir Singh that are written to sound deep and intellectual, but mean little to nothing especially considering the context in which they are spoken.

The naming of the hero in Vanga’s Hindi remake seems to be a bow to the poet-saint Kabir, and to underline the point, in a voiceover in the opening scene the fellow’s grandmother (Kamini Kaushal) recites one of Kabir’s dohas. I do not know whether to laugh or cry at this desecration of the great man’s writing. Kabir Singh and its Telugu forebear Arjun Reddy must rank among the most disturbing examples of the obsessive stalker hero being glamourised by Indian cinema.

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	175 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/kabir-singh-movie-review-shahid-kapoors-intensity-is-mined-for-a-horrific-harrowing-ode-to-misogyny-6857351.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/KabirSinghMovie/

REVIEW 104: LANKA

Release date:	December 9, 2011
Director:	Maqbool Khan
Cast:	Manoj Bajpayee, Arjan Bajwa, Tia Bajpai

Good intentions don’t make good movies – that may sound like a cliché, but it’s true enough to merit repetition. Lanka is a modern-day interpretation of the Raavan-Vibhishan relationship in the Ramayan. It’s also meant to be an indictment of small-town goons who harass and torture women in the badlands where they are a law unto themselves and the law of the land is often irrelevant. But in the absence of a spark, a hard-hitting narrative style and a female protagonist with any degree of charisma, it remains nothing more than a well-meaning film.

Lanka opens in a city hospital where Dr Anju Khanna attacks the husband of a patient who’s come in with injuries that seem like the result of domestic violence. We discover that the good doc has done this before. Ah, so she has been a victim of wife/girlfriend beating, I assume. But as Dr Khanna settles down to write her life story in a bid to exorcise the ghosts of her past, it turns out to be something else.

When Anju’s father was posted in Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor at some point previously, she had been forced into a sexual relationship with the town’s biggest political goonda, Yashwant Sisodia (Manoj Bajpayee). So obsessed was he with her, that he had his henchmen constantly watching the Khanna residence and the family’s every move outside those four walls, thus making escape impossible. With the local police in Sisodia’s pocket, complaining was not an option for the hapless Khannas.

Hmm … interesting. Coming as Lanka does just a few months after Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Sahib Biwi aur Gangster – a stinging tale of politics and violence in the interiors – I was looking forward to another revelatory film. But Lanka is done in by its tepid feel, lacklustre direction and ineffective casting. It’s not that I don’t believe it’s possible for a powerful man to keep a woman captive in a bustling town; it’s not that I don’t believe real-life terror-struck characters without zest or spirit like Anju Khanna could exist. It’s just that Tia Bajpai playing Anju is so lifeless, and has such an uninspiring screen presence, that I was unconvinced that a maverick like Sisodia would be obsessed with such a girl. Even harder to believe was that his sidekick (Arjan Bajwa) would risk his life, his relationship with Sisodia and his career over this unappealing, charmless, wimpish woman. 

This is an absolute pity because Lanka has a lot going for it. Bajpayee has in recent years hammed his way through too many films, but here he lends just the right amount of menace and leeriness to his character to induce revulsion in an audience. Bajwa – who is best known for playing Priyanka Chopra’s boyfriend in Fashion – is a handsome fellow and a good actor. The brotherly relationship between him and Bajpayee is also interesting in a Hindi film industry that has in the past tended to paint its characters as black or white, rarely gray. In fact, the allusion to Raavan and Vibhishan in their equation is interestingly played out because Bajpayee’s Sisodia/Raavan is projected as a monster yet with a gentle side. The film also boasts of some interesting, wolf-whistle-worthy dialoguebaazi. But stringing together these individual blooms is the job of an efficient director, and unfortunately Maqbool Khan’s work is inconsistent – he manages some scenes of high tension rather well, but falls flat elsewhere especially in the unimpactful climax. He also gives the film an unnecessarily dull pace. Add to that the half-baked explanation for why Sisodia did not marry the woman he claimed to be hopelessly, helplessly taken in by; and supplement that with the fact that … I have to say it once again … Tia Bajpai left me completely cold … and you know why Lanka is an opportunity lost!

Rating (out of five): *1/2  

CBFC Rating:                       A

Language:                             Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanka_(2011_film)  

  

REVIEW 94: TELL ME O KKHUDA

Release date:	October 27, 2011
Director:	Hema Malini
Cast:	Esha Deol, Arjan Bajwa, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Vinod Khanna, Madhoo, Rishi Kapoor, Meltem Cumbul, Dharmendra, Hema Malini

It breaks my heart to write this review … because I’m a softie when it comes to veteran stars, and as you know, this film stars the legendary Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Rishi Kapoor and Vinod Khanna! But a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do! Sigh!

Tell Me O Kkhuda feels like a mother’s offering of love to her offspring, an affectionate effort by Hema Malini to resurrect the career of her daughter Esha Deol. But somewhere between an uninspiring script and a mid-stream switch in directors, it actually does more harm than good to  Esha, who’s a reasonably good actress but has just not managed to make it in Bollywood in the nine years since she made her debut with Koi Mere Dil Se Poochhe.

In TMOK, Ms Deol plays a happy-go-lucky young bestselling author called Tanya who chances upon evidence one day that she’s adopted. She loves her mother and father (played by the always quietly dignified Farooque Shaikh and Deepti Naval) but feels compelled to discover her biological parents. The task, however, is tough because the records of her birth were destroyed in a hospital fire, and the lazy record-keeper casually points her in the direction of three possible sets of parents.

Sounds promising? But after an interesting start, there’s a markedly unenergetic feel to the film which fails to live up to the potential of its basic concept and evident budget. Producer Hema Malini – who dropped director Mayur Puri and took over the reins part way through the shoot – seems to have a fascination for girls in search of their parental roots. Her earlier directorial venture Dil Aashna Hai (1992) starred Divya Bharati who was out to find her mother from a choice of three women, with the help of a friend played by Shah Rukh Khan. In TMOK, there are two friends helping Esha instead. And in place of the daughter’s search for her mother in Dil Aashna Hai, here Esha is on a quest for both her parents.

The locations are pretty (Rajasthan’s Pratapgarh, Kas in Turkey, and finally Goa) BUT the cinematography does not entirely do justice to them. The storyline has promise BUT the treatment does not give it the emotional appeal it could have had. The cast is talented BUT their overall impact is unsatisfactory. Dharmendra, Rishi Kapoor and Vinod Khanna are capable of so much on a good day. They’re joined by the beautiful award-winning Turkish actress Meltem Cumbul playing Kapoor’s wife. BUT no actor is better than the written material on which they’re basing their performances, and the script of TMOK is decidedly lacklustre. Esha’s friends are played by Arjan Bajwa – the handsome and talented model who you will remember from his role as Priyanka Chopra’s boyfriend in Fashion – and Kaminey and Faltu’s memorable Chandan Roy Sanyal BUT both are given short shrift by the script which reduces them to background characters although they’re present in the on-screen proceedings from start to finish. Esha participates in a camel race that could have been filled with suspense and spectacular shots of the desert, BUT it is no such thing.

Saddest of all, Esha Deol for whom this film is meant to be a showcase, comes off looking both tired and uninvolved. Does her make-up artist not know how to handle under-eye dark circles? Didn’t the film’s light technicians and camerapersons know how to highlight a facial glow? It’s really unfortunate because this film is the first time that Esha has appeared on screen with both her legendary actor parents. Oddly enough, the episode involving Dharmendra and Hema Malini has been the least efficiently handled.

As I said, it breaks my heart to write this review …

Now I’m off to gather up the pieces of that broken heart before I write my next review!  

Rating (out of five):  *

CBFC Rating:                       U without cuts

Running time:                        132 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://www.facebook.com/TellMeOKhuda