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 435: M.S. DHONI – THE UNTOLD STORY

Release date:	September 30, 2016
Director:	Neeraj Pandey
Cast: Language:	Sushant Singh Rajput, Rajesh Sharma, Kumud Mishra, Anupam Kher, Kiara Advani, Disha Patani, Bhoomika Chawla, Neeta Mohindra Hindi

Hagiography or biography? Creators of biopics often struggle to decide between the two. M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story has different problems.

In skirting the most questionable aspects of cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s life, in sidestepping all controversies involving him and the BCCI through his reign, and in avoiding any mention of corruption in India’s sporting establishment, the film ends up attributing its protagonist’s trials almost entirely to fate, personal finances and heartbreak. The result: M.S. Dhoni is so lacking in energy and verve for the most part, that you have to wonder whether there is no mid-path between over-dramatisation and flatness.

Born in Ranchi to lower middle-class parents, Dhoni – Mahi to family and cricket fans – has gone on to become one of the game’s most successful players and team captains. It goes without saying the journey to this place has not been easy. It never is, not in any arena, not even if you are the child of a millionaire in a country that lays out the red carpet for sporting talent. In Mahi’s case, there are the added burdens of economically humble beginnings and the fact that India can be hell for anyone who wants to make a career on a sports field.

Our celluloid Mahi’s concerns are far more mundane. A government office fails to forward a letter in time, he misses a flight, a member of a selection committee tries to push someone else’s name over his for no apparent reason – while all these could well be possible, and that unforwarded letter is believable, the film fails to effectively convey the blood, sweat, tears and toil that must have gone into making Mahi the icon he is today.

Writer-director Neeraj Pandey’s latest work suffers primarily from his seeming determination to play it safe. Making Dhoni out to be an apolitical, all-round nice guy would have been a compulsion since the film is co-produced by the cricketer’s long-time friend and business associate Arun Pandey. Presenting a sanitised view of the BCCI and flitting over serious internal issues must have been necessary too since Dhoni is still in active sports and would obviously not want to offend his bosses with a film he has backed to the hilt through its promotions.

But what the bejeezus prompted the muting of even Virender Sehwag’s name at a selection committee meeting? Was this a Censor Board decision or a choice made by the filmmaker? The producer’s rep has not yet responded to an email query on this point, but even if the muting was sought by the Censors, it fits in with the overall, ultra-careful tone of the narrative.

M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story stars Sushant Singh Rajput as one of cricket’s brightest living stars. It begins with Mahi preparing to take the field at the 2011 Cricket World Cup. Before going deep into the game, it rewinds to a hospital on the day of Mahi’s birth and then follows his story in a linear fashion until it returns to 2011.

In the first half, the film does a good job of capturing the intimacy and sweetness of social interactions in small-town Ranchi, the warmth in Mahi’s pocket-sized home and the dreariness of life as a ticket inspector for a man whose dream is to play cricket, in contrast to his middle-class Indian father’s ultimate dream of a government job for his son. When Mahi lifts off in international cricket though, M.S. Dhoni dips.

With diplomacy being the storyteller’s main concern, post-interval it almost feels as if Mahi’s career milestones are being mechanically checked off a list. At this point, the film starts getting repetitive. Cricket match on. Enter: stressed out father (Anupam Kher) watching TV, mother at prayer in the room’s pooja corner, sister (Bhoomika Chawla) and brother-in-law cheering before a television in their home, tense mentors watching separately in their respective homes, friends watching at a shop. These scenes are amusing at first, but after a point and even when the parties get together, serve no purpose other than to add to the film’s inordinate length of 190 minutes along with numerous scenes of real-life matches into which Rajput is inserted.

The actor gets Mahi’s demeanour and a cricketer’s body language right. We already know he is capable of that from his fantastic film debut in Kai Po Che. After the exit of child star Zeeshan who plays a junior Mahi, Rajput also metamorphoses brilliantly from a physically slight youngster to a strapping adult over time in M.S. Dhoni, a result of excellent teamwork between him and the make-up, styling and camera departments. He is interesting too when playing happy, flirtatious or mischievous. In moments of sorrow and anxiety though, he falls short.

This inadequacy becomes particularly glaring when he shares screen space with the two stand-out members of the film’s impressive supporting cast: Rajesh Sharma and Kumud Mishra playing Mahi’s first coach and his first patron respectively.

Their junior by many years, young Kiara Advani steals the show from right under Rajput’s nose when she enters the picture as Mahi’s girlfriend Sakshi who becomes his wife.

It would be unfair though to judge Rajput by M.S. Dhoni. He was electric in Kai Po Che and deserves the benefit of the doubt in a film that ends up as an insipid PR exercise for the real Mahi.

The writing is occasionally even unthinking. At the hospital where Mahi is born, there is confusion over whether Pan Singh Dhoni’s wife gave birth to a girl or boy. In another country this could have been an acceptable moment of mirth about a nurse’s inefficiency. In boy-obsessed India and its sub-set – boy-obsessed Bihar – where male infants are sometimes stolen from hospitals, you wonder if a point is being made, and then realise that it is not. This is one among several superfluous scenes in the film.

I also did not understand the need to fictionalise Sakshi as being a complete stranger to Mahi when even a non-cricket fan like me has read that they were schoolmates. And why do we not get to see interactions between Mahi and cricketing legends Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag beyond file footage of matches? Yuvraj Singh (played by a well-cast and well-styled Harry Tangri) gets some space, but only very little.

Whatever.

Through M.S. Dhoni, there are flashes of humour and pleasant touches that show us what might have been if Pandey had not been constrained. My favourite moment is in the treatment of a friendly Pakistani gentleman who allows Mahi the use of his phone, without drums beating to announce his nationality and tackily link it to his goodness. He is there not as a harbinger of cross-border amity or discord as we see in most Hindi films, but as a regular person. I also enjoyed the way the film quietly addresses the challenge of being an ordinary young woman in a conservative society romantically linked to one of the country’s most famous men.

Overall though, the screenplay lacks insights and depth. M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story starts off well but does not seem to know where to go from there.

If Neeraj Pandey needed to be this careful, perhaps he should have manufactured a bottle of antiseptic instead of making a film.

Rating (out of five): **1/4

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	190 minutes

A version of this review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/m-s-dhoni-the-untold-story-review-sushant-singh-rajputs-film-is-insipid-pr-for-mahi-3028346.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.S._Dhoni:_The_Untold_Story