REVIEW 785: RAAT AKELI HAI

Release date: July 31, 2020 (on Netflix) 

Director: Honey Trehan

Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Radhika Apte, Padmavati Rao, Shivani Raghuvanshi, Nishant Dahiya, Ila Arun, Shreedhar Dubey, Aditya Srivastava, Riya Shukla, Shweta Tripathi, Swanand Kirkire, Tigmanshu Dhulia

Language: Hindi

Sometimes a film has the power to grip you from the very second it takes off. Honey Trehan’s Raat Akeli Hai (RAH) does that, grabbing attention with a vice-like hold from the moment it opens with a chilling murder on a deserted highway in the inky blackness of the night. 

Fast forward to five years later, and there is another murder: a rich old man is found shot and with his face bashed up on his wedding night. Inspector Jatil Yadav is called in to investigate (yes, Jatil, not Jatin – there is an amusing story there).

The elderly victim had money and a wealth of people around him. Yadav realises within minutes of being inserted into their lives that no one is above suspicion: not the dead man’s pregnant daughter, not his drug-taking son or the son-in-law whose sole concern is his claim to the family fortune. Then there is the victim’s enigmatic sister and niece, an arrogant nephew, the young bride herself and the domestic help who seems to know more than she lets on. 

While sifting through clues and possible motivations, Yadav, who is edging towards middle age, must also deal with his pesky albeit well-meaning mother’s marriage goals for him.  

Trehan has so far been known as one of Bollywood’s top casting directors. The meticulousness with which he and his colleague Taran Bajaj have picked actors for even minuscule roles in RAH explains his reputation for excellence in that department. The confidence with which he has helmed this film belies the reality that it marks his directorial debut. 

Every frame of RAH, every technical aspect, has been handled with extreme care. The film plays out mostly in darkness. Open spaces late at night where fires are replicated by the reflective surfaces on which they fall and the red-tinted low-lit interiors of homes elegantly captured by DoP Pankaj Kumar set up, heighten and sustain the sense of intrigue and suspense in the narrative. It can be safely concluded that Kumar has superhuman abilities since his repertoire ranges from the visual philosophy of Ship of Theseus to the atmospherics of RAH.    

The writing by Smita Singh (who has been credited with the story, screenplay and dialogues) pays heed to even the minutiae in the life and demeanour of each character. RAH is an effective crime thriller, but goes well beyond that to also serve as a running commentary on state politics and the sociology of small-town north India. 

The most visceral statement emanating from Singh’s story is about the way society punishes women victims of sexual abuse, irrespective of class, and views them with suspicion while covering up the sins of their male predators. She also finds space for colourism, a telling reference to the double standards inherent in Hindutva politics, and a spectrum of hypocrisy where a target of prejudice may very well turn out to be prejudiced in their own way – like the man who is rejected by a woman because he is too dark-skinned for her taste, who in turn says her attire indicates that she is not as “susheel” (good, modest) as he would like his wife to be. 

“Susheel” is translated as “virginal” in the subtitles, which is an interesting interpretation of the Hindi word. It is a measure of the importance Raat Akeli Hai gives to detail that the subs have been done by no less a personage than Abhishek Chaubey (director of Dedh Ishqiya and Udta Punjab, and one of this film’s producers) along with Utsav Maitra. 

 This team clearly has an affection for language and is aware that subtitles across Indian cinemas often wreck the director’s and writer’s intent. Singh’s dialogues merit every bit of that love. 

Despite the large ensemble of characters, Singh and Trehan make each one distinctive. 

Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Jatil Yadav switches with characteristic ease from hard-as-nails policeman to a softer version of himself. 

Radhika Apte as the much-hated bride, Radha, embodies an oppressed yet defiant, despairing yet still spirited woman wronged. 

Each actor stands out in their own right, though I must say it was a pleasure to see Riya Shukla – who earlier played Swara Bhasker’s acid-tongued daughter in Nil Battey Sannata – here playing a significant part as the terrified household help. 

In his role as a senior policeman, Tigmanshu Dhulia’s natural timing seems particularly well-suited to the local flavour of the dialogues. 

Shreedhar Dubey makes himself likeable as Yadav’s gossipy deputy who personifies casual misogyny with his assumptions about who done it – a reminder that patriarchy is perpetuated not necessarily by men with horns on their heads but by the ‘nice guys’ too. 

And Ila Arun is utterly loveable as Yadav’s mother. I melted into a puddle as I heard her explain what his father meant to her. 

In the midst of so much that is good, two points about RAH are a cause for concern. Firstly, the relationship Yadav tries to build with a woman in the film is exploitative because of the unequal power equation between them, far worse than perhaps even a doctor wooing a patient or a lawyer wooing a client because when he first makes an aggressive overture towards her, he is in a position to destroy her completely. This is not to say that no man would make such a move in real life, but that this particular man’s behaviour here seems inconsistent with his characterisation until then and thereafter, and that the script does not bat an eyelid in the matter, which becomes noteworthy considering the progressiveness of the rest of the writing. 

The finale gets stretched for over 20 minutes after the big reveal, partly due to the Agatha Christie-style gathering of all the players in a single room for the detective to say his piece (which is sweet) and partly due to a needless bow to the conventional definition of happily-ever-after. The closing scene feels odd not just because it is unnecessary but also because of the lack of chemistry between the two actors and characters involved. By this time though, RAH had me completely engrossed and in a forgiving mood.

It helps that the film closes right then with one of the mood songs Sneha Khanwalkar has created for it. Khanwalkar’s soundtrack and Karan Kulkarni’s background score play a crucial role in RAH’s pensive tone. 

Raat Akeli Hai (The Night Is Alone / Lonely / Solitary) marks the advent on the Hindi film scene of a bold new voice. Here is some breaking news of the happy variety: director Honey Trehan has arrived.  

Rating: 3.5 (out of 5 stars)

Running time: 150 minutes

Photo courtesy: IMDB

REVIEW 780: GHOOMKETU

Release date:	May 22, 2020
Director:	Pushpendra Nath Misra
Cast:	Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Ila Arun, Raghubir Yadav, Swanand Kirkire, Anurag Kashyap, Dipika Amin, Bijendra Kala, Rajendra Sethi, Ragini Khanna, Cameos: Chitrangda Singh, Sonakshi Sinha, Ranveer Singh, Amitabh Bachchan
Language:	Hindi

Though Nawazuddin Siddiqui has built his reputation largely on grim, sometimes even grisly roles, we know he has the genes for comedy. We know it from Lunchbox in which he was sweet and charming and comical in an otherwise pensive scenario. We know it from other, lesser films too in which we caught flashes of his funny bone. Ghoomketu – now streaming on Zee5 – is his attempt at an all-out comedic performance in an unconventional Bollywood project. 

Produced by the now-defunct Phantom Films and Sony Pictures, Ghoomketu has been languishing without a release for some years. It is easy to see why – why the concept found backing and why the completed film could not find takers. Ghoomketu’s writer-director Pushpendra Nath Misra (creator of the Netflix series Taj Mahal 1989) obviously had a good idea to begin with. He also then wrote a neat beginning and end. The bit that comes in between though, the bit that makes up the length of a film, flounders. 

Ghoomketu is named after its hero, a 31-year-old aspiring writer from small-town UP who wants a career in Bollywood. The film opens with him having run away from home, leaving behind his joint family. In Mumbai, a corrupt policeman is tasked with tracking down this runaway who is trying to convince a producer to buy his terrible scripts. 

From the word go, it is evident that Ghoomketu has little talent. Such a leading man is perfect material for hilarity or for perceptive commentary on the arts or whatever a filmmaker wishes to explore through him. Bad artists can make for great cinema – after reading this review, try watching Tim Burton’s 1994 film Ed Wood starring Johnny Depp as the eponymous real-life American director reputed for making horrendous films. 

In Misra’s case, having thought up an interesting character, he seems not to know what to do, which is ironic since the film displays as little imagination as its protagonist. 

The opening half hour or so of Ghoomketu is entertaining. I found myself giggling at the intentional silliness of the scenarios and characters. Too soon though, it became clear that the film is aiming for a certain whimsy that it does not have the depth to achieve. 

The use of graphics, animation, superstar cameos and the narrative device of getting the hero to talk directly to the camera end up feeling like window dressing in the absence of substance. After a while then, Ghoomketu becomes a long wait for a flight to take off.

Siddiqui tries hard and is initially effective. Beyond a point though, the script does not have enough meat for him. 

The supporting cast is a roll call of  actors who have in the past shown superb comic timing, and at places in Ghoomketu some of them do manage to elicit laughs.

Bijendra Kala and Rajendra Sethi are a hoot. Yadav is under-utilised and his Dadda is given little to do beyond scream at people. Kirkire gets to be mopey. Kashyap, making a rare acting appearance, shows some spark in his introductory scene but the writer has not bothered much with his character thereafter. Ragini Khanna who carried the Hindi TV serial Sasural Genda Phool on her shoulders and was impressive too in the Hindi film Gurgaon is wasted here. 

The actor who gets decent material to work on and remains a sweetheart throughout is Ila Arun as Ghoomketu’s adoring Bua – it helps that her interactions with him are the film’s best-written scenes. In the passage in which the senior lady explains to her nephew how she plans to act her way through a particular situation with his father, Arun steals the show from right under Siddiqui’s nose. We need to see more of her in Hindi cinema.

Ghoomketu boasts of several star cameos. Chitrangda Singh looks stunning in her few moments on screen. Sonakshi Sinha, Ranveer Singh and Amitabh Bachchan’s tiny roles seem to have been written with more care than the main characters. Sinha and Singh do a fair job. Bachchan seems to have had fun playing his part – that is actually nice to see. 

There is a tasteless fat joke running through Ghoomketu. I know, I know, some of you will point out that real people do make insensitive comments and a reality should not be censored on screen in a bow to political correctness. Look back though at how Sharat Katariya handled a similar theme in that Bollywood gem Dum Laga Ke Haisha. The issue is not what characters in Ghoomketu say or do, but that the film itself seems to be tickled by the thought of a plus-sized woman. In its attempt at profundity, it even appears to be using a slim woman as a metaphor for a man’s dreams coming true and for a Paulo Coelho-esque moment of treasure-finding involving an important character. Uff.

The twist in the climax is not bad at all, but it is inconsistent with what we have been told until then about Ghoomketu’s writing abilities. Lost in this film’s wafer-thin screenplay is the pleasant soundtrack by Sneha Khanwalkar and Jasleen Royal. More’s the pity.

Ghoomketu is being released directly online during India’s nationwide lockdown prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In these dreary times, it would have meant so much if its content had been a reason to celebrate. It’s sorta okay, but that is hardly enough from a film starring this stupendous cast.  

Rating (out of 5 stars): 1.5

Running time:

102 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/ghoomketu-movie-review-nawazuddin-siddiqui-is-kinda-funny-but-this-experiment-in-whimsy-doesnt-take-flight-8395151.html

Poster courtesy: Zee5

REVIEW 484: BEGUM JAAN

Release date:	April 14, 2017
Director:	Srijit Mukherji
Cast: Language:	Vidya Balan, Gauahar Khan, Ila Arun, Flora Saini, Pallavi Sharda, Rajit Kapur, Ashish Vidyarthi, Pitobash, Naseeruddin Shah, Rajesh Sharma, Chunkey Pandey, Vivek Mushran Hindi

Harlot, whore, streetwalker, prostitute, hooker, call girl or (the politically correct) sex worker … call her what you will, but a woman who plies the sex trade, is rarely viewed by society as a mistress of her own will or one whose opinion matters.

Writer-director Srijit Mukherji’s Begum Jaan is the story of one such woman, madam of a brothel on the outskirts of a town in pre-Independence Punjab. The year is 1947 and the Radcliffe Line has been drawn by the British to demarcate India and the newly forming Pakistan. As it happens, the line runs through Begum Jaan’s brothel. When she refuses to quit her home to make way for a barbed wire fence, she finds herself crossing swords with officials of both countries who in turn are helpless at the hands of a law they do not necessarily agree with.

Begum Jaan has so far prided herself on her power, since her kottha is frequented by everyone in town, from ordinary folk to the local raja, freeloading policemen and British officials. Hierarchies of class, caste and religion may be forgotten when these men visit her to quench their lust, but she soon discovers that she is up against forces much higher than anyone she has ever known. Still, Begum Jaan, her women and their male staff – creatures deemed most ravaged by society and most subservient to it – decide that they will not give in lying down.

The film is about the battle between them and the officials assigned to execute the Radcliffe Line. It is a fascinating concept.

Begum Jaan is Srijit Mukherji’s remake of his own 2015 Bengali film Rajkahini (Tale of The Raj) with Rituparna Sengupta in the title role. The Hindi version stars Vidya Balan as the protagonist.

From the opening scene of the Hindi film, where an unlikely saviour wards off a young woman’s potential rapists, two things are evident: that Mukherji intends to make a big statement about female empowerment, and that his statement will come through self-defeating expressions and a limited understanding of his cause.

It is bad enough that Begum Jaan is confused about what it wants to say. What is worse is that it is so pretentious and superficial, that it fails to plow past its grand intent to find a soul.

(Possible spoilers ahead)

It goes without saying that everything about Begum Jaan’s brothel, from its location to its occupants and customers, is intended as a metaphor for a happily multi-cultural India being torn apart against her will. Parallel to their lives, an old woman in the kottha (played by Ila Arun) narrates stories of legendary queens from Indian history and myth, who stood up to an ancient patriarchal world on their own terms, among them Rani Laxmibai, Razia Sultan, Krishna bhakt Meera and Padmavati.

Three of these women are also played by Balan, Padmavati is described in a voiceover.

These satellite tales of valour mirror the film’s central saga of brave women defying convention and refusing to be subjugated. Sadly, they also reflect the filmmaker’s skewed notions of female honour, most especially when he appears to equate the historical Laxmibai, a real woman who fought the British till her dying breath, to the mythical Padmavati, who is glorified by folklore for having thrown herself into a fire so that an invading emperor would not get his hands on her.

The messaging and metaphors of Begum Jaan are all mixed up, as exemplified by the romanticisation of Padmavati’s ‘sacrifice’. Contemporary Indian notions of female ‘izzat’ (honour) have not evolved beyond a woman’s life being seen as less valuable than her unraped body; a position that goes against what Begum Jaan stands for until the self-contradictory end.   

Perhaps we should expect nothing more from a film which, early on, unquestioningly quotes Subhadra Kumari Chauhan’s popular poem about Laxmibai, Jhansi Ki Rani, in which courage is casually described as a masculine quality: “Khoob ladi mardaani, voh toh Jhansi waali rani thhi” (she who fought like a man, she was the queen of Jhansi).

Mukherji may argue that Chauhan meant well. Fair enough. But what is one to make of Begum Jaan’s opening dedication to Urdu literary stalwarts Ismat Chughtai and Saadat Hasan Manto in the context of crucial scenes that completely miss the point of Manto’s Khol Do?

The short story Khol Do was about a girl so traumatised by repeated rape during Partition riots that as a reflex action she undresses herself on hearing a male voice. That story was not just about the survivor’s mental state but about her continuing worth as a human being. Mukherji is so literal in his interpretation of Manto’s text that I wanted to cry.

In scenes where a very old lady and a very young girl replicate Khol Do’s heroine’s actions, Mukherji also unwittingly betrays an oddly benevolent, muddled view of male rapists resulting from thoroughly misplaced ideas of sexual violence.

With the writing so inadequate, everything about the film ends up being ineffectual. It is impossible to feel for Begum Jaan or the women in her brothel because they are not women, they are broad brushstrokes illustrating Mukherji’s surface-level interpretation of female strength.

The acting is constrained by the weak script. And so, Balan – who has been so wonderful in the past – sits here with legs akimbo and issues one-liners in a monotone, but is unable to dig deep and summon up a relatable human being, because there is nothing in the writing that she can dig into. Those one-liners are amusing at first, but sound empty after a point. We see a flash of the gifted artiste we know her to be in a scene where she watches as a customer forces himself on a new recruit…but only a flash.

The supporting cast of fine actors – including Pallavi Sharda and Gauahar Khan as women in the kottha, Pitobash as their pimp and Naseeruddin Shah as a ruler of the region – are all in the same boat. Sharda and Khan fare somewhat better than the rest.

The greatest victims of the film’s intellectual pretentions are Ashish Vidyarthi and Rajit Kapur playing one-time friends turned government officials on opposite sides of the border. The actors’ faces are often half cut off the edge of the screen by Gopi Bhagat’s camera, no doubt again as a metaphor for a nation being torn apart against its will. In a film that fails to come together as a whole, it is an irritating device.

Among the many half-cooked aspects of this half-cooked film is Javed-Ejaz’s action. Except for the first scene in which the women use physical force to send government officials and police packing, they seem grossly unprepared for battle. Gutsy does not mean foolhardy and stupid yet that, in effect, is what they are in the climactic confrontation.

These elements might have been better developed if the director had not been so distracted by what appears to be his primary goal. Everything about Begum Jaan is dwarfed by its transparent ambition to be an epic of great intellectual depth and a lofty feminist statement.

No ism can work in cinema without characters who evoke empathy. The starting point of a film has to be a great story, not a great cause. Feminism deserves advocates with a better understanding of both cinema and the movement. Begum Jaan’s intriguing basic concept deserves a writer who could have expanded on it to better effect. And the lovely Vidya Balan deserves better than this soulless film.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	134 minutes 42 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/begum-jaan-movie-review-vidya-balan-and-feminism-deserve-better-than-this-soulless-film-3383716.html

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