Release date:
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August 18, 2017
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Director:
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Ashwiny Iyer
Tiwari
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Cast:
Language:
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Kriti Sanon,
Ayushmann Khurrana, Rajkummar Rao, Seema Pahwa, Pankaj Tripathi, Rohit
Chaudhary, Sapna Sand
Hindi
|
If you debuted with
Nil Battey Sannata, there will obviously be high expectations around
your next. Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, who broke into Bollywood last year with that sleeper
hit starring Swara Bhaskar, is back this week with her second film, Bareilly Ki Barfi.
Nil Battey Sannata was set in the Indian city that
houses Shah Jahan’s monument to his love for Mumtaz Mahal. Bareilly so far has
been best known to Bollywood gazers for the many musical references it has
inspired, and most famously of course for that jhumka that Sadhna lost in the local bazaar in Mera Saaya 51 years back. I wish I could tell you it will henceforth
be known for Bitti Mishra.
Bitti who?
That would be our
heroine (played by Kriti Sanon), a spirited young resident of the place whose
father runs a sweet shop, mother is a school teacher
and who is herself working in the public grievances section of the city’s
electricity department. Bitti’s parents are worried sick because though they
have paraded their beti before dozens
of prospective grooms, she is still kunwaari.
Whether or not she
is a kanya in the complete sense of
the word is a separate question that they have not dwelt on, but one potential
husband does. “Are you a vurjjinn?” he asks her on the terrace of her home,
where she and he have been sent to bond while both sets of parents wait
expectantly downstairs. Bitti snubs him, as any self-respecting woman should,
and so her matashri’s lamentations
for her daughter continue.
This is our
introduction to both Bitti and Bareilly
Ki Barfi (BKB). Bitti is a non-conformist with a
mind of her own, we are told: she ignores curfews imposed on daughters alone, does
the break dance and rides a mobike in this conservative milieu. Add to that her
professional and financial independence, a point underlined by her supportive
Dad, and you might assume writers Nitesh Tiwari and Shreyas Jain would be
satisfied with their rather neat profile of a small-town woman who refuses to
be constrained by social straitjackets. But no sir, they are not.
Despite all these markers of
Bitti’s free spirit, Tiwari and Jain (who earlier collaborated on Dangal, which the former directed) feel
the need to make smoking the overriding signifier of her sense of independence
by stressing and re-stressing it, then colouring it with a bold red marker in
case we have not noticed – because Bollywood has for some reason in the past
decade or so decided to make the cigarette the ultimate metaphor for feminism.
Apparently, courage and a sense of independence are not good enough.
Nitpicking, did you say? Actually
not. This confused feminism signifies the writers’ lack of conviction and
clarity that turns out to be BKB’s
undoing.
First, while the film’s first 20
minutes are devoted solely to Bitti, once the hero enters the frame she is
completely sidelined. This delightful creature, brimful of potential though she
is, is relegated to the margins as soon as we meet Chirag Dubey (Ayushmann
Khurrana) and Pritam Vidrohi (Rajkummar Rao). From then on, Bitti is reduced to
being nothing more than the object of their interest and duelling.
Second, both BKB’s male leads are victims of half-hearted writing, lost to the
most inconsistent characterisation I have seen in a Hindi film in a while. The
motivations for their actions are unconvincing because each man’s nature and
character swings from left to right like a pendulum throughout the narrative. No,
this not what you might describe as shades of gray, this is a different colour
of the rainbow in successive scenes.
With a screenplay this weak,
nothing can save BKB. Not Sanon’s natural
charisma (this woman is truly special, give her better projects please!) nor Khurrana’s
innate charm. Not the flashes of genius we get to see from Seema Pahwa and
Pankaj Tripathi playing Bitti’s parents Susheela and Narottam; and from Rao
when his character Pritam is being bullied by his friend Chirag.
Pahwa, Tripathi and Rao in
particular pounce on every morsel of inspiration available in this largely
uninspired script. All five artistes far outshine their film.
BKB even fails to explore Bareilly
with any degree of detailing. Add to this one of the plainest soundtracks delivered
by Bollywood this year (featuring songs by five composers) and it almost feels like Ms Tiwari
and her writing team lost interest in this venture halfway through it.
It did not start off this way. In
the opening 20 minutes of BKB, there
are little touches that hold out a promise of better things to come. Like a dejected
middle-class Mum stuffing namkeen back
into its plastic container after the departure of a possible dulha’s family from a ladki dekhna session, while her forlorn spouse
packs laddoos back into their dabba.
Like that scene in which Bitti lies to a cop that she is Christian and he
breaks into English without batting an eyelid, as any north Indian fed on
Bollywood stereotypes would. These well-observed moments are a reminder of the
detailing in Nil Battey Sannata, a
film that was both intensely local and universal. The rest of BKB does not live up to them.
The only positive that remains
consistent throughout BKB is the
humour in its dialogues (barring the decidedly silly, schmaltzy climax). Funny
conversations, however, are not enough to redeem the insubstantial story into
which they are written.
My heart kind of broke as I
watched BKB. 2017 has been a lousy
year for quality Hindi cinema so far. Apart from a handful of indies that have shone
in the dark, the rest of Bollywood’s offerings in the past eight months have been bad enough to tempt a cinemaniac to hang up her
boots. Even in my saddest moments in the months gone by though, I did not dream
that the woman who brought us the life-affirming tale of Chanda and Apu from Nil Battey Sannata would follow that up
with the blandness that is Bareilly Ki
Barfi.
What happened,
Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari?
Rating
(out of five stars): *
CBFC Rating (India):
|
UA
|
Running time:
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122 minutes 49 seconds
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This
review has also been published on Firstpost:
