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Release
date:
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March 13, 2020
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Director:
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Homi Adajania
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Cast:
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Irrfan, Radhika
Madan, Deepak Dobriyal, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ranvir Shorey, Dimple
Kapadia, Pankaj Tripathi, Kiku Sharda, Tillotama Shome, Zakir Hussain, Meghna Malik
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Language:
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Hindi
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Angrezi Medium’s opening does not bode well for what
is to come. Text on a black screen at the start offers an amusing
definition of the Hindi word “pita”
and while translating that definition into English, mistranslates “pita” as “parent”. Ummm, “pita” is “father”.
This is a curious
slip-up because despite the post-1960s Bollywood tradition of marginalising women, mothers have been deified to kingdom come by this
film industry. And if a deeper meaning is sought to be conveyed here,
about the protagonist (a man we have yet to meet) doubling up as Mum and Dad to
his child, sorry, it does not come across. This throws up a troubling
question right at the start of Angrezi Medium: would
the film proceed to take the marginalisation of women to new lows? Despite its
opening misfire, the answer is: actually not.
Director Homi
Adajania’s Angrezi Medium stars
Irrfan as Champak Bansal, a widower in Udaipur who will go to any lengths to
ensure his daughter Tarika Bansal’s happiness. Tarika has always, always
dreamt of seeing the world, and when an opportunity to travel to London comes
up in her late teens, she eyes it eagerly. Champak must overcome his fear of
losing her, financial challenges and his penchant for being indiscreet to help
her get there.
Through a series of
misadventures, Tarika does end up in London, so do Champak and his cousin Gopi.
As you would have gathered from the trailer, the men are pretending to be
someone they are not, leading to a further series of misadventures,
mishaps and misunderstandings.
There is great
drama in the plotline, but it is not over-dramatised in its presentation.
The result is an even-toned narrative and a consistently funny, consistently
reflective story on the balance that must be struck between holding on yet
letting go in any loving relationship that does not suffocate either
party.
Angrezi Medium is Adajania’s fourth feature. His debut, Being Cyrus, was an edgy thriller. Cocktail was a step down with its
revival of outmoded gender and sectarian stereotypes. Angrezi Medium is debatable but interesting.
This new film
is a follow-up but not a sequel to the 2017 hit Hindi Medium in which Irrfan and
Pakistani star Saba Qamar played a Delhi couple desperate to get their
daughter out of the old-fashioned, traditionalist milieu of Chandni
Chowk and into an English medium school in the capital’s snootier
quarters.
Like Raj from Hindi Medium, Champak too can barely
speak English, a language that continues to have aspirational value
across India. This,
however, is an extraneous point in Angrezi
Medium. Champak is not quite as wealthy as the BMW-driving Raj, but he is
financially well off. Money too is not the driving force of this plot. The
focus of Angrezi Medium is
Champak’s single-minded commitment to Tarika that leads him to introspect about his conservatism while she reconsiders her
somewhat conventional interpretation of taking flight.
Written by
Bhavesh Mandalia, Gaurav Shukla, Vinay Chhawal and Sara Bodinar, Angrezi Medium’s first victory
comes with its use of language. The film’s characters speak a
Rajasthani Hindi that is a pleasure to listen to, its rhythm rib-tickling
to those of us unaccustomed to it. At no point is it used to caricature the
characters speaking it though. I did at first wish for subtitles, but after the
first half hour it grew on me.
The writing
team has managed to broach multiple themes without making the screenplay feel
crowded. At a time when Islamophobia is tearing through our social fabric, Angrezi Medium takes a
passing comical swipe at those who stereotype Muslims with
specific superficial markers. In a film industry and a society that
have consistently prioritised the aspirations of male children, it is
also refreshing to see a story of a father’s reactions to an independent-minded
daughter’s dreams without any self-conscious tomtomming of their gender by
the filmmaker.
Hindi films were
once obsessed with the mother-son bond. Angrezi
Medium deals with a range of parent-child equations from
the pivotal father-daughter pair to a significant mother-daughter and
a father-son on the sidelines. Even in its unspoken Indian-vs-Western-culture viewpoint, the
film is atypical.
Where it does
stumble into conformist territory is in brief conversations where Champak
speaks of the selfishness of children who leave their parents on reaching
adulthood and accuses such youngsters of using their parents for 18 years
before dumping them. Of course there are kids who head out without sparing a
thought for parents who were good to them, kids who toss such parents out
of their lives without any consideration for their needs or feelings, and of
course such kids are jerks, but Angrezi
Medium fails to acknowledge that in the place where the film is set at that
point, it is just as common for parents to chuck their kids out when
they turn 18. And in India, where such a practice is alien, parents go to
another extreme and interfere in their children’s existence as a matter of
right. And what of parents across the world who are rotters? If you do not
have the space to at least touch upon all these points, it is terribly unfair
to dwell on just one, especially considering that Indian films tend to
pedestalise parents or at the very least view them with an uncritical eye.
These passages in Angrezi Medium are aberrations in a film
that is largely non-judgemental in its approach to its characters. Thankfully,
the screenplay does not stretch the point too far and sort of sorts it out in the
end.
Angrezi
Medium’s other
frailties are not connected to the values it sets out to propagate. A prologue
about how Champak has been confused since childhood feels contrived, even
if a link is clearly intended between that juvenile indecisiveness and his
adult confusion in a changing world. This plot element is marginal to the
proceedings though.
Far more problematic is the way
the narrative intermittently flags in the second half when it
spends too much time on the often improbable, even impossible means
Champak employs to get Tarika admission to the college of her choice.
Irrfan and Dobriyal are lovely together, but the film loses steam in these
portions by straying too far from the Dad and daughter and becoming too much
about the cousins. On the whole too, as a result, Angrezi Medium
unwittingly becomes more about a devoted father than it is about a father and
daughter, it becomes more about Champak than it is about Champak and
Tarika.
This is an injustice to Tarika
who is purportedly the second lead. Post-interval Angrezi Medium is
less invested in her than it was pre-interval, a writing choice that
subtracts from its overall impact. The screenplay redeems itself by getting
right back to her in the end.
(Aside: This, I suspect, was a
Freudian slip. We are so used to placing men, their work and their needs at the
centre of our stories – read: our personal lives, our art, our news coverage –
that the best of us often do not realise how we have internalised our
social conditioning. It shows up in many ways big and tiny, including how a
screenplay writer might unconsciously prioritise a male character over a woman,
or translate the common-gender “parent” as the masculine gender “pita”, or – if the headline of this
review gave you pause, then please note – how socially we casually use
masculine expressions such as “thinking man’s film”, “mankind”, “manpower” and “man
hours” for gender-neutral circumstances but are startled or offended when
anyone similarly uses the feminine gender.)
Radhika Madan as Tarika is a
perfect fit for a role that requires her to match up to the formidable Irrfan.
In her debut Hindi feature, Vishal Bhardwaj’s wacko Pataakha, she had proved her ability to carry a film on her
shoulders as one of two female leads. In Angrezi
Medium she stands her ground in an ensemble film, acing the comedy, the
fieriness of her character, her pensive moments and her maturing with equal
confidence.
I am not sure why Kareena Kapoor
Khan agreed to play a supporting character in Angrezi Medium, since male superstars almost never make such
choices in Bollywood. That she agreed is the film’s good fortune because
she is a stately presence in a small but important role.
Deepak Dobriyal blazes his way
through Angrezi Medium with the
smashing comic timing that made him stand out in Tanu Weds Manu and Hindi Medium. Give him more, Bollywood. C’mooon, give him more.
Time, trouble and money have
evidently been spent on casting even characters who get just a few seconds to
minutes of screen time in Angrezi Medium.
Unlike most Hindi films that cut corners by recruiting cringe-worthy individuals
to play foreigners, this one has good actors in those parts too, which is
crucial since most of the film is set abroad.
Irrfan is returning to acting after
a long break due to a health scare. He seems to have grown as an artiste in
this time away from the public eye. He is so consumed by his
character that the strain of doing an accent never once shows, nor does he, unlike
many lesser actors in other films, allow that accent to overpower his sensitive
performance. After The Lunchbox, Champak
in Angrezi Medium must rank
as among his best work. A fine performance for a fun film.
Rating (out
of 5 stars): 2.75
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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145 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
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