REVIEW 335: HAMARI ADHURI KAHANI

Release date:	June 12, 2015
Director:	Mohit Suri
Cast: Language:	Vidya Balan, Emraan Hashmi, Rajkummar Rao, Suhasini Mulay, Amala Akkineni, Prabal Panjabi, Namit Das, Madhurima Tuli, Sara Khan Hindi

This film should not be called Hamari Adhuri Kahani (HAK). A far more appropriate title would be Hamari Aadhi-Adhuri Khokli Film Ki Kahani.

To be fair, Mahesh Bhatt’s story for HAK is not without merit. In particular, the motivations of one character – the terror accused Hari Prasad (played by Rajkummar Rao) – are fascinating, because the extent to which humans will go to get revenge is always worth exploring. It is also worth exploring, as HAK fleetingly does, the motivations of women when they cover their bodies in numerous announcements of their marital status (the mangalsutra/thaali maala, red bangles, sindoor,  wedding ring, the works), take on their husband’s surnames and carry babies through nine months of energy-sapping pregnancy only to round it off with painful labour before blithely handing the child over to be named after the father and socially be deemed his heir, not hers.

Neither of these is an element to be ignored. Sadly, an outdated storytelling style, a surfeit of cliches, an alarming degree of literalness in its metaphors (especially the references to Radha-Krishna and Sita), some conflicted and laboured ‘feminism’ and terrible dialogue writing end up ruining the potential of this Vidya Balan-Emraan Hashmi-starrer.

Bhatt Senior’s basic plotline is interesting, but he fleshes it out poorly. Given the story’s lack of heft, director Mohit Suri’s deliberately languid pace becomes tedious early on. Worse, writer Shagufta Rafique gives HAK some of the most laughably bombastic dialogues to emerge from mainstream, high-end Bollywood in a while. She is clearly aiming for an approach that was popular in 1970s-80s Hindi cinema. Here’s the thing, Shagufta-ji… First, human beings in the real world have never spoken that way, but we were willing to indulge in a collective national suspension of disbelief for a while because it was fun to do so. The fantasy that was enjoyable back then is not so much any more though ’cos we’ve outgrown that era. If you do wish to revisit it, you need the combined panache of writer Rajat Aroraa and director Milan Luthria who pulled it off in Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai (2010) and The Dirty Picture (2011). Mohit and Shagufta, you have delivered some entertaining films together in the past – 2011’s Murder 2, for instance, was neat. But the dialogue-baazi of HAK and its half-hearted direction kill the film.

Why does a hard-as-nails, apathetic police officer unexpectedly decide to help Vasudha Prasad (Vidya) escape her husband so that she can be with Aarav? Kyunki yeh kaaynaath bhi sachche pyaar karne waalon ki madad karne ko taiyyaar ho jaata hai (because all of Creation steps up to aid the cause of true love), the gentleman in uniform explains.

Why is billionaire Aarav Ruparel (Emraan) so in love with Vasudha? Because bahut saare patey thhey mere, par ghar tumne dilaaya (I had many addresses, but you got me a home), he says.

Woven around such lines is the sketchy tale of Vasudha, abandoned by her husband a year after marriage yet clinging – literally – for dear life to her mangalsutra. Why? Because our values are racing through our veins (i.e. nass-nass mein), she says. Sad and pretty Vasudha arranges flowers for a living in a luxury hotel where Aarav arrives as a guest one day. After two meetings, much gazing and some borderline stalking, as floral scents float through the air from Mumbai to Dubai, he develops behad ishq and mohabbat (boundless love) for her.

Aarav is a business wizkid with his own dukhi bachpan ki kahaani. He also has a weird reason (Oedipal, though unintentionally so, I suspect) for being drawn to Vasudha: she reminds him of his mother. Combine his back story with her miserable present and a contrived climax involving Bastar, and the result is HAK.

Vidya and Emraan have a flair for bombast-by-design as you can see from their track record (he was in Once Upon A Time…, they co-starred in Dirty Picture). Here though they are completely wasted, with little to do but pose around between those hackneyed conversations and speeches.

The film has evident pretensions to epic emotions, but extreme close-ups of the leads’ faces, her tears and her curls cannot compensate for a weak story. In fact, Vishnu Rao’s long shots of some attractive locations (an overhead view of Mumbai, a garden in Dubai, the sands of the desert city) get tedious beyond a point in this soulless film. Rao shows little imagination in capturing Bastar, though even his regular shots of a spectacular locale are better than the glaringly fake computer imagery used to conjure up a field of flowers in crucial scenes in rural Chhattisgarh.

Suhasini Mulay though gets the worst of the cinematography: when her face is caught in tight close-ups, she looks like a woman possessed by a spirit rather than an elderly relative offering kindly advice to Vasudha. It’s nice to see Amala after so many years in a Hindi film (as Aarav’s mother), but the stand-out member of the supporting cast is Prabal Panjabi (playing Aarav’s employee Apurva) whose inexplicable screen presence gives us one of HAK’s most unwittingly comical scenes: in which he declares his friendship and (platonic?) love for Aarav.

As for the film’s seeming ‘liberalism’, the unspirited Vasudha dramatically transforms into a modern-day Durga in a late scene with her husband to articulate some very valid thoughts about a woman’s identity being inextricably linked to her husband’s, but the point is entirely lost in the speechifying, the trite imagery of Durga’s idols passing behind her just then (Vasudha is very conveniently in Kolkata at the time) and the film’s completely contradictory stance until then.

No doubt women like Vasudha do exist – there is nothing wrong in portraying this reality. The problem lies in the fact that the film itself seems to endorse the stupidity of such women, going by the symbolism of a naari as a man’s slave appearing repeatedly through the narrative till then: Vasudha cleans her husband’s feet when he turns up at her house after five years, a filthy, bedraggled creep demanding her affection and loyalty; later she falls at Aarav’s feet on discovering that he intends to save that same abusive husband.

Then of course there is the not-so-minor point that early on in the film when Vasudha dashes off to save Aarav from a fire in a hotel, he yells at the hotel’s security staff with this spectacularly sexist line: ek aurat ko mujhe bachaana pada! A mere aurat! Imagine that!

Spectacularly sexist and spectacularly boring – that’s a lethal combination. It hurts to see Vidya in such a film.

Rating (out of five): *

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	131 minutes

FILM FATALE: BOLLYWOOD’S PRO-MODI VS NO-MODI DEBATE & THE END OF INDIFFERENCE / COLUMN PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU BUSINESSLINE

(This column by Anna MM Vetticad was first published in The Hindu Businessline on May 10, 2014)

Headline: APOLITICAL NO MORE

Introline: Bollywood seems to have finally shed its political apathy and its infamous reticence

We were all set for the shoot. Lights: check. Camera: check. Makeup: check. My star guest — one of the hottest women in Bollywood — was just entering the room when her publicist whispered in my ear, “Ma’am is requesting you not to ask political questions.” Meaning? No questions about Shah Rukh Khan, right?

In my experience, Hindi movie stars tend to avoid comment on political issues, but they rarely try to pre-censor an interview. This particular actress, however, is known for getting her agent to convey this request to journalists before every long-format Q&A. On earlier occasions, I had laughed it off because I wasn’t interested in her reactions to political affairs then. This was different. This was a month when her industry was engulfed in politics; when Shiv Sena had threatened to block the release of SRK’s My Name is Khan (MNIK) unless he apologised for his remarks about Pakistani players in the IPL. It goes without saying, I refused to agree to her condition and did the interview my way.

This memory from 2010 has flashed through my mind repeatedly this month as a battle rages in Mumbai’s film circles between pro-Modi and no-Modi groups. These people openly sparring over ideology… could they possibly be from the same industry that was once notoriously non-committal about politics or terrified of it?

Unless you’re living in a vacuum, you know where this is coming from. This April, a group of eminent citizens, mostly from Bollywood, issued an appeal to the electorate in the ongoing general election “to vote for the secular party, which is most likely to win in your constituency”. The letter was signed by a cross-section of film personalities including, surprisingly, makers of money-spinning hardcore commercial cinema.

They did not name any politician or party. However, in what must surely rank as a self-goal, BJP supporters in Bollywood have exploded in protest, translating the call to vote for secularism as a call not to vote for Narendra Modi. This is a “conspiracy” to “divide” our industry, they say.

A film journalist cannot but rub her eyes in disbelief as this storm refuses to subside. In the past, political apathy has been a hallmark of Bollywood, unlike some of the other Indian language industries, and in sharp contrast to Hollywood. Even stars who join political parties have rarely publicised their stance on combustive issues. Equally bizarre are some who have canvassed for politicians during polls. In the 2009 election, Salman Khan took the cake, the bakery and the wheat field with it, when he campaigned for candidates from both the BJP and the Congress! I am not supporting parties, I am supporting friends, he explained.

Over the years, even as Bollywood’s right to free speech has continuously been attacked, most victims have bowed to bigots. It’s only fair to point out that protests against art in India usually include physical violence, with the state doing little to protect its people. For political, religious and social groups, targeting artists, especially commercial film folk, is an easy route to publicity. With money and personal safety at stake, Bollywood often asks how they can be blamed when they opt for self-censorship and apologies.

Well, the point is, artists from other fields have shown far greater courage in confronting political goons. So have Mumbai’s documentary makers and some parallel cinema luminaries. Mainstream players in Bollywood though (with a few exceptions such as Mahesh Bhatt and Shabana Azmi) have consistently played it safe.

What then has prompted the change in 2014? A widespread sense of urgency regarding the election this year is one factor. The Aam Aadmi Party’s emergence has also fired the imagination of many who see among the party’s recruits ‘respectable’ folk who don’t fit the stereotypical image of netas. It must be pointed out though that the winds of change have gradually been blowing away the industry’s infamous indifference since 2010.

If time in the Gregorian calendar is divided into BC and AD, then this Bollywood calendar of political evolution can be divided into BM (before MNIK) and AM (after MNIK). When Shiv Sena challenged Shah Rukh four years ago, Bollywood insiders and viewers witnessed the unprecedented phenomenon of a megastar refusing to be cowed down. Spurred on by public and media support, one by one most film personalities — though not all — spoke up for him. Ultimately, despite delays within Maharashtra which hurt the bottomline, MNIK got an all-India release and became a massive hit.

Sometimes, it takes just one courageous individual to discover that a bully is a coward. SRK tugged at the Shiv Sena’s beard and Uddhav Thackeray lost face. The price has been that AM, religious right-wingers have consistently singled out SRK for propaganda and abuse. History must credit him though for forever changing Bollywood.

The ongoing row over Modi is another turning point AM. As more film personalities express political views publicly, there will be strength in numbers and the risk of violence will hopefully decline. Don’t lament an imagined end of unity, dear Bollywood-gazers. Celebrate instead that Bollywood’s political apathy has finally ended. Silence cannot be an option for India’s most high-profile entertainers.

(Anna MM Vetticad is the author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. Twitter: @annavetticad)

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

REVIEW 182: AASHIQUI 2

Release date:	April 26, 2013
Director:	Mohit Suri
Cast: Language:	Shraddha Kapoor, Aditya Roy Kapoor, Mahesh Thakur, Shaad Randhawa Hindi

A hero with a sharp, pointy nose... A heroine with a sweet face... A hero who’s a tall, strapping fellow... A heroine whose complexion glows with youth... Individually Shraddha Kapoor and Aditya Roy Kapoor are attractive enough. Together though, they face a grave problem: there’s zero chemistry between them. The fundamental issue with Aashiqui 2 is that the leads look like a doting little girl and her fond elder brother, NOT a couple desperately in love. The Internet tells me Aditya is 27 and Shraddha is 24. The real-life age difference of merely three years is irrelevant though because Shraddha looks like a kid in her mid-teens whereas Aditya has the face, body and demeanour of a full-grown man. Watching her swear undying devotion to this adult human male somehow brings back memories of that asexual kiss SRK planted on Deepika’s forehead in Om Shanti Om…another fond elder brother…though he, of course, was dealing with a self-imposed hurdle: Deepika is 21 years his junior. 

It does not help that the actors in Aashiqui 2 seem to have been instructed to be as languid as possible in their performances, perhaps as an ode to Rahul Roy and Anu Agarwal, stars of the 1990 film Aashiqui directed by Mahesh Bhatt (his brother Mukesh is one of the producers of Aashiqui 2). The languorous style made sense back then because Roy and Agarwal didn’t have an acting bone in their bodies and this was the best way to camouflage their inability to emote. Aditya on the other hand has already shown a little bit of potential in Action Replay (though Guzaarish proved that the potential requires a firm directorial hand) and Shraddha has given us ample proof of her innate talent in her first film as heroine, Luv ka the End. Disappointingly then, their studied lifelessness in Aashiqui 2 is ultimately what makes this film a very sluggish affair to not remember.

This is not the kind of film you would expect from director Mohit Suri whose last venture was the highly entertaining Emraan Hashmi-Prashant Narayanan-Jacqueline Fernandez-starrer Murder 2 in 2011. Whatever the flaws may have been in Suri’s previous films, a deliberate lack of energy has not been one of them. It seems that like the entire team of Aashiqui 2, he too is labouring under illusions about the greatness and legacy of the old Aashiqui. Let’s face it: that film was no Mughal-e-Azam. It was a boring film with a boring hero and heroine who got lucky at the box office because of Nadeem-Shravan’s memorable soundtrack filled with melodious numbers that were a refreshing contrast to the noise reigning through Bollywood in the 1980s. So the referencing of Aashiqui in Aashiqui 2 comes across as inexplicable since the earlier film is not a classic. The shot of a girl and boy with their heads under a jacket was on the poster of Aashiqui. Yeah yeah we remember it, but that does not make it iconic.  Replicating it in Aashiqui 2 then kind of seems silly. The songs in this new film are not bad at all, but since the past two decades have been good for Hindi film music, they’re not dramatically striking either.

Here in a nutshell is the story of Aashiqui 2: Rahul Jaykar (Aditya) is a major pop star whose alcoholism is ruining his career. One night after a drunken brawl at one of his concerts, he spots Aarohi Keshav Shirke (Shraddha) singing one of his compositions at a beer bar in Goa. Struck by her amazing voice, he decides to mentor her and give her the career he’s no longer interested in having for himself. Some misunderstandings follow. Then the misunderstandings are sorted out. Then they work together. Then she becomes a star. Then he struggles with his love for the bottle. Then she stands by him. Then this. Then that. Then a yawn here. Then a yawn there. It’s dull dull dull.

There are many moments in Aashiqui 2 when you think, okay now it will take off…okay maybe now…all right, perhaps now…but each time the film fails to rise above its lacklustre direction, amateurish writing, apathetic editing and unappealing acting. This could have been a film about an ego-less artiste who prefers to live on through another star. This could have been a film about a star whose ego couldn’t cope with his protégé’s success. This could have been a film about a woman foolishly sacrificing her career for a man she ought not to love. This could have been a film about why women stay on in potentially abusive relationships. This could have been a film about stars who can’t cope with stardom. This could have been a film about how alcoholism can destroy a star…

Since I’m indulging in so much wishful thinking here, I may as well add: this could have been a film. It’s not. What it is is a schoolboyish collation of randomly selected scenes through 140 minutes that feel like three hours. The editor and director seem to have lost interest in Aashiqui 2 somewhere in the first scene. No idea why they stuck around.

Rating (out of five): *

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	140 minutes

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aashiqui_2