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Release
date:
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March 1,
2019
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Director:
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Abhishek Chaubey
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Cast:
Language:
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Sushant Singh Rajput, Bhumi Pednekar, Manoj
Bajpayee, Ranvir Shorey, Ashutosh Rana, Sampa Mandal, V.K. Sharma, Khushiya
Hindi
|
“You haven’t got
it?” one woman tells another, castes “are all meant to categorise men. Women
are a different caste altogether, below all of them.”
In a film filled
with more movement than conversations, words are used sparingly, but when they
come they are on point. Women too are present in limited numbers, but the ones
we encounter are prime movers in the battles being chronicled here.
Writer-director Abhishek Chaubey’s Sonchiriya
is a lyrical account of a gang of dacoits wandering the Chambal ravines,
some of them anxious for a way out.
Dreary, poetic and
desperately sad, it is about unwritten codes of honour among society’s
outliers, about the cruelty of caste and patriarchy, and about the
endlessness of violence once unleashed. “Dacoits too can be good,” says a
character more than once. But this is not an effort to romanticise the outlaws
in the frame so much as to highlight the self-defeating nature of social
inequity in a world where men think patriarchy benefits them though it can pull
them down mercilessly too.
Deaths are the
bookends between which unfolds this tale of a band of male dacoits led by Man
Singh (Manoj Bajpayee) in Madhya Pradesh of the 1970s. Just once does one of
these men refer to them as daaku.
Otherwise, in their vocabulary they are baaghis (rebels) on the run. As they are hunted unrelentingly by
the police, it becomes clear that at least some of them are trying much harder
to escape their own demons than the long arm of the law.
We know nothing
about their background beyond the fact that they are Thakurs, and that Man
Singh and his younger associate Lakhan/Lakhna (Sushant Singh Rajput) are
haunted by a sorrow that they seem unable to and unwilling to shrug off.
Elsewhere in these arid lands, we hear that (the now legendary) Phoolan Devi (called Phuliya in the film and
played by Sampa Mandal) is thirsting for the blood
of Thakurs – but not all of them. Lakhna, it is clear, is fighting a fight he
no longer believes in or takes pride in. Vakil Singh (Ranvir Shorey), for his part, does not trust Lakhna. Rounding off the primary players
is the policeman Virender Gujjar (Ashutosh Rana) whose determination to clean
up the Chambal seems to be as personal as it is professional.
Sonchiriya, which is written by Chaubey and Sudip Sharma, rarely misses a step. Like
Chaubey’s three previous directorial ventures – Ishqiya, Dedh Ishqiya and
Udta Punjab – it is rooted in the
soil from which it emerges. This rootedness is reflected in every element of
the film, from the dialect the characters speak (accompanied by subtitles which
will hopefully give it the pan-India audience it deserves) to their clothing
and concerns. This film has more depth than the more widely promoted, far
flashier Udta Punjab though. And like
the two Ishqiyas, it is
uncompromising and unapologetic about what it has to say.
His direction of Sonchiriya is steeped in conviction. Except
for perhaps three brief scenes in which the momentum is intentionally slowed
down to needlessly heighten the melodrama – when a group of men realise that
they have killed the wrong person/s, while a mother is telling her son his
truth, and in the end between Lakhna and the titular character – not a single
moment of this narrative feels out of place or unnecessary.
Chaubey’s canvas is
enriched by production designer Rita Ghosh, fresh from her superb work on
Nandita Das’ Manto last year, and by
DoP Anuj Rakesh Dhawan’s ability to turn dust bowls into visual gold. Dhawan
does not give us pretty frames here. His unsparing cinematography does nothing
to lighten the impact of the harsh landscapes these characters traverse on
their way to what seems like nowhere. Even the river is not prettified although
it does provide some relief to the eyes. The audience is shown a lot of the
violence that occurs, but not in a lascivious fashion.
The most bloody
murder of the story, however, takes place off camera as one human being vents a
long-burning rage against another, and sound designer Kunal Sharma, while not resorting to
sensationalism, ensures that we know exactly what
is going on without seeing any of it.
The ensemble cast
is brimming with talent.
Bhumi Pednekar is flawless as the beleaguered
woman who intrudes on the gang’s existence. With just four feature films under
her belt (Dum Laga Ke Haisha, Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, Shubh Mangal Saavdhan and now this one),
Pednekar has already emerged as one of the most versatile young actors on the
Hindi film horizon.
All the grime and
misery on the planet cannot camouflage Sushant Singh Rajput’s handsomeness, yet
the actor ensures that what stands out is his character’s bruised and broken
spirit. There are a couple of seconds here and there when Manoj
Bajpayee’s facial expressions come across as exaggerated, but for the most part
he is as fabulous as
Man Singh as he usually is.
Commercial Hindi
filmdom is either indifferent to, ignorant about or afraid of caste as a
subject, as we were reminded most recently by the shameful manner in which it remade
the Marathi film Sairat as Dhadak. The industry is also largely a
patriarchal space, usually telling stories of men or portraying women through a
restricted male gaze. Abhishek Chaubey’s new film, on the other hand, is a
commentary on how, while oppressive systems crush the marginalised, the cycles
of violence unleashed by dominant communities end up sweeping away everyone
including the oppressors and in particular the few who wish to surrender
their inherited privilege. Sonchiriya
is unafraid, it is aware and it cares.
Rating (out
of five stars): ****
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CBFC Rating (India):
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A
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Running time:
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146 minutes
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This review has also
been published on Firstpost:
Poster
courtesy:
