REVIEW 582: HICHKI

Release date:	March 23, 2018
Director:	Siddharth P. Malhotra
Cast: Language:	Rani Mukerji, Harsh Mayar, Neeraj Kabi, Rohit Suresh Saraf, Sparsh Khanchandani, Poorti Jai Agarwal, Benjamin Yangal, Jannat Zubair Rahmani, Jayesh Kardak, Riya Shukla, Vikrant Soni, Kalaivanan Kannan, Shiv Subrahmanyam, Supriya Pilgaonkar, Sachin Pilgaonkar, Vikram Gokhale, Hussain Dalal, Asif Basra Hindi

Back in 2005, when he released the excellent Iqbal, I remember writer-director Nagesh Kukunoor saying: a few minutes into the film, you will forget that my hero is deaf-mute. Truth be told, it was a while after watching Iqbal that it struck me the leading man was also Muslim sans all the indulgent clichés and compulsory cultural markers associated with Hindi film Muslims until then.

Kukunoor’s conviction and approach to that character come to mind each time I watch a film on a differently abled person or minority community member, and I find myself asking: does it pass the Kukunoor/Iqbal Test?

Hichki does. 

Director Siddharth P. Malhotra’s new Hindi film is about a teacher who is tasked with bringing an unruly, disinterested class of financially backward students in line. Apart from the children’s background, Naina Mathur (Rani Mukerji) faces two additional challenges: their elite Mumbai school, St Notker’s, seems resigned to their fate; and Naina has Tourette Syndrome, a disorder characterised by vocal and motor tics, in her case a tendency to make certain loud involuntary sounds and swing her head to the side while touching her hand to her chin, most especially when she is agitated. Her battle then is not just to help the girls and boys of Class 9F overcome their own pessimism and the prejudice they face from some of the richer students and one particular teacher, but also to guide them past the prejudice they direct at her.

Hichki (Hiccup) is based on the book Front of the Class by Brad Cohen and Lisa Wysocky which was made into the 2008 American film of the same name. Frankly, although it will very likely prompt scores of Google searches in the coming days, Hichki is not about Tourette’s – Malhotra’s film is designed to have us looking past Naina’s condition, seeing her as a woman who happens to have Tourette’s and is determined not to allow her students to succumb to their worst fears or insecurities, to recognise their own failings and biases even as they battle the biases others hold against them. Tourette’s is just one of multiple factors steering this screenplay – written by Anckur Chaudhry, Malhotra himself, Ambar Hadap and Ganesh Pandit – that, interestingly for patriarchal Bollywood, has taken a male-centric literary work and adapted it with a woman as the protagonist.

The result is a largely engaging film that, despite the hiccups in its writing journey, manages to hit the mark.

It is, in some senses, a predictable path. We know from the moment Naina Mathur enters that classroom, how the story will turn out: that the kids will resist her, they will next be won over by her sincerity, and they will finally become her allies. Occasionally it feels rather thin too as a consequence, sometimes manipulative and often also very simplistic. This is, after all, a formula that has been repeatedly visited in films since E.R. Braithwaite took up a teacher’s job in his book To Sir, With Love and Sidney Poitier followed suit on screen more than half a century back. The addition of classism within the school and Tourette’s to the situation does, however, alter the dynamics.

In the end then, Hichki offers enough surprises and enough moments of unmanipulative emotional intensity to be a rewarding experience.

One of the film’s biggest strengths is Mukerji, who has been seen in only three features – Aiyyaa, Talaash and Mardaani – since the box-office success of No One Killed Jessica in 2011. She lifts Hichki every time she is on the scene, bringing empathy and charm to Naina’s character without at any moment soliciting the audience’s pity. Even when the screenplay is passing through its most slender passages, Mukerji elevates it with her presence.

She is surrounded by a bouquet of charismatic supporting actors, not all of whom get the benefit of in-depth characterisation. Most of the students in Naina’s class, for instance, are painted with broad brush strokes and a single defining attribute that do not do justice to the evidently capable actors playing them. Among the ones getting short shrift is Riya Shukla who delivered an electrifying performance in 2016’s Swara Bhasker-starrer Nil Battey Sannata.

The youngster with the benefit of the best-written part is Harsh Mayar playing Aatish, the last rebel standing in 9F. Look closely: that casually good-looking guy is the same fellow who played the little livewire Chhotu in Nila Madhab Panda’s I Am Kalam (2011) for which he won a National Award for Best Child Artist. Age has done nice things to Mayar, looks-wise and acting-wise. There are some rough edges that need smoothening out, such as when he is given a somewhat schmaltzy speech to deliver, but overall he has the ability to hold his own in Mukerji’s company and acting chops worth watching out for.

To learn how not to be pulled down by a spot of speechifying in a screenplay, he just needs to take notes from his co-star, theatre veteran Neeraj Kabi, playing the doggedly classist Mr Wadia, Naina’s bete noir in the St Notker’s staffroom. Even when the man sneeringly describes 9F as “municipality garbage”, Kabi ensures that his character comes across as credible rather than hyperbolic.

People can be mean. People who face nastiness from others can in turn be nasty to those less fortunate than they are. Hichki may not have the heft of Iqbal but it is a valuable reminder, through the vehicle of the Naina-Aatish equation, that intolerance is not justified simply because the person at the receiving end is flawed. It is also, of course, about not giving up on a human being if you spot redeeming qualities beyond their jagged exterior.

The film itself is not without its faults, but its uplifting theme and Mukerji’s understated performance serve as compensation. Besides, it drew tears from me more than once, each time when I was least expecting it. Sweetness and good intentions make for a pleasant combination in Hichki.  

Rating (out of five stars): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	118 minutes 29 seconds

A version of this review was published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/hichki-movie-review-rani-mukerjis-to-maam-with-love-hits-the-mark-hiccups-and-all-4402515.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hichki

REVIEW 293: CHAARFUTIYA CHHOKARE

Release date:	September 26, 2014
Director:	Manish Harishankar
Cast: Language:	Soha Ali Khan, Zakir Hussain, Harsh Mayar, Seema Biswas, Mukesh Tiwari Hindi

The road to cinematic hell is paved with good intentions, poor production values and mediocre writing. Chaarfutiya Chhokare is meant to be an expose on child sex trafficking and the vulnerability of juveniles at the hands of veteran gangsters. At a time when India’s juvenile justice system is being widely debated in the national media, this could have been an important catalyst for further discussions. However, it is so poorly conceived and so tackily executed, that far from generating a debate on the issues at hand, the film does not even merit a detailed review.

Soha Ali Khan plays Neha Malini, an NGO activist who wants to set up a school in a remote area in Bihar. Once there, she meets the deadly local criminal Lakkhan who dominates everyone and everything in that largely impoverished community. She also comes up against three little boys – the chaarfutiya chhokare of the title – who are being used as shooters by Lakkhan.

If you have friends in the NGO sector, you will know that those working in social milieus different from their own tend to make an effort to blend in with the crowd. In the case of women workers, that usually translates into wearing unobtrusive Indian clothes in a rural area such as this one. Yet here, Neha goes about her mission while togged out in stylishly casual Westernwear and driving a flashy SUV on deserted roads.

Let’s grant the film this concession: perhaps she is naïve and no one advised her to do otherwise. What though excuses Chaarfutiya Chhokare’s terrible presentation and lacklustre direction? What excuses a lazy screenplay in which, of the three gun-toting central characters, we get to know only one kid called Avdesh, while the other two hang around him as opinionless sidekicks without expressions or dialogues? In the middle of all this, the clarity in sound design comes as an unexpected plus in a film that is sub-par in every other technical department.

Soha is not the only known name in the cast. The usually reliable Zakir Hussain plays Lakkhan with an accent that sounds like it might be coming from the border of West Bengal and Bihar. Nothing wrong with that except that it’s inexplicable because it’s so vastly different from the way the rest of the village, including his own gang, speaks.

There are three other wonderful actors in this film, doing their best but rendered helpless by the pathetic quality that threatens to drown them: Seema Biswas playing Avdesh’s mother, Mukesh Tiwari as a slimy policeman and Harsh Mayar who plays Avdesh. Mayar is the remarkable child actor who won a National Award for his sparkling performance in I Am Kalam, which was released in theatres in 2011. It’s worrisome that just three years after he earned the national spotlight, he finds himself in a production so unworthy of his charisma and talent.

More worrisome is the fact that Chaarfutiya Chhokare thinks it can get away with making a casual mention of child marriage without even hinting at its own position on the matter. This is not a film. It’s a non-film.

Rating (out of five stars): -10 stars

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	119 minutes

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaarfutiya_Chhokare  

REVIEW 68: I AM KALAM

Release date:	August 5, 2011
Director:	Nila Madhab Panda
Cast:	Harsh Mayar, Husaan Saad, Gulshan Grover, Pitobash, Beatrice Ordeix

Smile Foundation – producers of this film – could have made a documentary on the need to educate our children. What they’ve done instead is given us an unobtrusive, non-preachy, loveable film about a little dhaba boy in Rajasthan who idolises A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, is inspired by Kalam’s rise from poverty to Presidentship, studies doggedly by the light of a kerosene lamp while developing an unlikely friendship with a local ‘prince’.

Much of I Am Kalam’s charm lies in its authentic feel and its sense of humour. But it would have been half the film that it is if it hadn’t starred those two exceedingly talented boys Harsh Mayar and Husaan Saad. Mayar has already won a National Award for his performance as the poor yet perennially positive Chhotu who longs for an education and insists on being addressed as Kalam after his hero. He’s a live wire before the camera. Saad’s Ranvijay is less bubbly and therefore less likely to attract attention, but the actor plays his part of the lonely and kind youngster from an erstwhile royal family with the ease of a practised performer though he has starred in only one film before this. The warmth of their chemistry is what well and truly brings alive this sweet and small film.

The story is simple and contained in the two paragraphs I’ve written already. After years of playing over-the-top caricatures of bad men in numerous Hindi films, here in I Am Kalam, Gulshan Grover turns in an unexpectedly likeable performance as Chhotu/Kalam’s boss. Bhati Mamu is the dhaba owner who recognises his boy helper’s immense talent and – in an unrelated development – falls in love with one of his tourist memsaabs. That musician mem is played by Delhi-based French actress Beatrice Ordeix whose Lucie Madam is kind, considerate, a frequent visitor to Rajasthan and in love with India. Ordeix and Yamla Pagla Deewana’s Emma Brown Garrett offer a ray of hope for viewers tired from years of watching actors of limited talent and/or charisma playing white folk in most Hindi films. Chhotu’s bête noir in I Am Kalam is Laptan played by actor Pitobash who is as delightful here as he was in a larger role as an impetuous small-time crook in Shor In The City earlier this year.

The beauty of I Am Kalam lies in the friendship between Chhotu and Ranvijay. But the interactions between Bhati Mamu and Lucie Madam too are entertaining without mocking Bhati, though it might have been tempting to go that way – nice touch! Equally enjoyable are the scenes in the dhaba where the white tourists all look and speak like real white tourists, where Chhotu picks up languages with alacrity, where everyone is taken in by this spirited child, and where we have one of the film’s most memorable moments: an impromptu jam session kicked off when Lucie is testing a new ravanhatta – the traditional stringed instrument popular in Rajastan – and is joined by Chhotu on his khartal, an unnamed tourist with a banjo (Delhi-based musician Deepak Castelino) and everyone else who gathers around to clap, click pictures or watch in admiration ... evocative evidence, if any is needed, that music has no language, class or nationality.

The only thing that didn’t work for me in I Am Kalam was its hurriedly wrapped up ending suffused with improbabilities. Could a tradition-and-possibly-caste-bound king who is so conservative that he doesn’t run a kitchen at his palace hotel suddenly be transformed into the benefactor of a poor boy? And why did that song in the children’s classroom focus so much and so awkwardly on the teacher? The director’s sure-footedness through the rest of the film turns slightly shaky in the last 10 minutes.  

But still, this is a lovely film! 2011 has been unusual because it has brought us a string of Hindi children’s films, all of them very well cast, from Sagar Ballary’s Kaccha Limboo and Amole Gupte’s Stanley ka Dabba to Chillar Party just last month and Bubble Gum just last week. Bubble Gum suffered from indifferent production values and Chillar Party meandered beyond a point. I Am Kalam is more polished; it’s also well-intentioned, entertaining and as much for adults as it is for kids. Sanjay Chauhan’s writing is straightforward and extremely effective. Nila Madhab Panda’s direction is so confident that it’s hard to believe this is his debut feature. A big thank you to him for bringing together the sparkling Harsh Mayar and Husaan Saad in one film. Mayar lives in a resettlement colony in Delhi and is making his film debut with I Am Kalam. Saad was earlier seen in Delhi 6. It will be our good fortune if Hindi cinema provides these remarkable children with more opportunities so that two decades from now, we are still watching them on the big screen, perhaps as the successors of Ranbir Kapoor and Ranveer Singh.

  

Rating (out of five): ***1/2  

CBFC Rating:                       U without cuts

Running time:                        90 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi