REVIEW 400: DHANAK

Release date:	June 17, 2016
Director:	Nagesh Kukunoor
Cast: Language:	Hetal Gada, Krrish Chhabria, Vipin Sharma, Gulfam Khan, Rajiv Lakshman, Vijay Maurya, Vibha Chhiber, Suresh Menon Hindi

There is a scene in Dhanak, in which two boys are seated on a swing with Pari, the elder sister of one of the li’l fellows. She watches them with affection and mildly chides them for over-eating as they stuff their faces with jalebis. The mini gents feed each other, but it seems not to even occur to either of them to offer her a nibble.

Later, Pari sits with her brother Chotu and a child-like man. Again, the man feeds Chotu while not even asking her if she is hungry, and again, she seems not to mind at all.

It is unclear whether writer-director Nagesh Kukunoor intends us to read Dhanak this way, but his latest film is as much an unspoken comment on the male-centricity of our collective human existence, as it is an endearing road movie about two siblings journeying across a desert to meet Shah Rukh Khan.

Dhanak is the story of Pari and Chotu who live with a childless uncle and his heartless wife in a village in Rajasthan. The kids lost their parents a few years earlier, and Chotu lost his eyesight when he was four. Now eight, he is the focal point of 10-year-old Pari’s life. She selflessly showers him with love, deliberately fails in school exams – despite being a very bright student – so that they can end up as classmates, and has promised him that his vision will be restored before he turns nine on October 2 of the year in which we meet them. As it happens, Pari is a fan of Shah Rukh while Chotu is obsessed with Salman Khan

When Pari sees SRK on a poster for eye donations and later learns that the star is shooting near Jaisalmer, she runs away from home with Chotu to get her favourite Khan’s help to help Chotu.

During the risky excursion from their tiny hamlet and across the blazing Thar, they meet a motley bunch of characters who serve as a reminder of the evil that exists in this world while also underlining a fact we too often forget: that the good out there far exceeds the bad.

Kukunoor keeps his tone real and the proceedings believable through most of the film. For the most part, Dhanak is consequently both charming and insightful. Even when he stumbles occasionally, the children remain consistently loveable. And stumble he does, such as in the chance encounter with a somewhat clichéd white man (Chet Dixon), the abrupt shift in gears to a mystical realm with a soothsayer (Bharati Achrekar) and the stereotyping of the children’s hard-working aunt (Gulfam Khan) as a mild version of the evil stepmother from old fairytales while their lazy layabout of an uncle (Vipin Sharma) is viewed through a lens of indulgent tenderness. 

Through all this though, the characterisation of Pari and Chotu, and the incredible child actors playing the two, remain pitch perfect. Their conversations flow naturally, their chemistry is palpable and at no point does Kukunoor try to manipulate us with precocious cutesiness as so many directors do when they are working with such young artistes.

The children are surrounded by an array of interesting supporting actors, most especially Vipin Sharma playing their uncle and the attractive Rishi Deshpande as an elderly truck driver. These are strong performers to be up against, but Hetal Gada as Pari and Krrish Chhabria as Chotu are more than up to the challenge. They were just 10 and eight years old respectively when the film was being shot, yet they do not take a single misstep. Producer Elahe Hiptoola reveals that 500 kids were auditioned in Mumbai, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Bangalore and Hyderabad to find this pair.

There is more to them than their innate, innocent charm. They were born to be before the camera. It would interesting to see what Chhabria grows up to be, since he currently has the advantage of a baby-like appearance, is of slighter stature than the girl and in the film, has the benefit of playing a bratty, chatty youngster of the kind adults are usually drawn to. She – taller, with a face maturer than her age – is a confirmed quantity though: sweet-voiced Hetal Gada is, without question, a formidable talent.

Hats off for the casting win, Team Dhanak!

Chirantan Das’ camerawork among those scorching desert sands is eye-catching. Tapas Relia’s songs are uniformly catchy and include a revisitation of the lovely old Dama dam mast qalandar in the stunning voice of Devu Khan Manganiyar.

This brings us to a concern with an element in the film’s sound quality though. The transition from conversations (and one actor’s own singing voice) to the playback song recordings is not smooth at all. This audio bumpiness is glaring even to my technically inexpert ears and occurs more than once in the film.

It was also a mistake to let Krrish Chhabria himself sing the opening line of Tujhe dekha toh yeh jaana sanam at one point while he has professional playback artistes singing for him through the rest of the film. The contrast between his regular Joe voice and the extraordinary singers who have sung playback for him is needlessly rubbed in our faces considering that Chotu’s singing ability is one of his striking qualities.

This is particularly disappointing because elsewhere it is evident that the director does care about detail: in the personal Shah Rukh story each satellite character has up their sleeve, in the lipstick mark that should not be on that coffee mug with a starring role…

Overriding any and all reservations are the two children at the heart of this film, their seeming incorruptibility and artlessness, the touching bond they share, Kukunoor’s way with children, his trademark sense of humour, and Dhanak’s faith in faith. Chotu asks Pari one day: Why do you credit X with this kindness being done to us, when Y is responsible for it? She replies: Leave me to believe what I believe, and you believe what you wish. That, ultimately, is what Dhanak is about: allowing the mind to wander where it will, seeing a rainbow (dhanak) in the night, putting your trust in who or what you will – God, miracles or even Shah Rukh Khan.

Clearly, stories of siblings and sensitivity towards physical disabilities are Kukunoor’s great strengths. 2005’s Iqbal featured a warm relationship between a deaf-mute cricketer and his supportive younger sister. That film stands head and shoulders and a whole human being above his other works. Dhanak, warts and all, is a reminder of the best that this director can be.

It is hard to say which is the star of this film: the writing of the child characters or the manner in which the director has just let them be or the child actors who play them or the fact that Chotu is not made an object of pity by the film? There’s a whole constellation twinkling at us off screen from this warmly appealing, life-affirming film.

Rating (out of five): ***

PS: So does Shah Rukh Khan make an appearance in the film? My lips are sealed.

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	117 minutes

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

PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES & OTHER MARGINALISED SECTIONS IN FILMS / FILM FATALE: COLUMN PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU BUSINESSLINE

FROM IQBAL TO MARGARITA: NO ‘THEM’, ONLY ‘US’

Physically challenged, mentally challenged, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, gay, woman… it is possible for a character to be all or any of these, yet be a source of regular stories, not just hagiographies or tearjerkers

By Anna MM Vetticad

After a few minutes, the wheelchair will disappear.

Writer-director Shonali Bose has repeated variations of this line a zillion times while promoting her Hindi-English film Margarita With A Straw, the story of a sexually adventurous college student with cerebral palsy, now running in Indian theatres.

It reminded me of a similar sentence uttered by another filmmaker precisely a decade ago. Nagesh Kukunoor’s Iqbal is a small jewel of a film revolving around a deaf-mute boy who becomes a national-level cricketer. A few minutes into Iqbal, you will forget the hero is physically challenged, Kukunoor said in interview after interview in the run-up to the release of his film in 2005.

Is it possible, you ask, to stop noticing that large metal chair bearing a human body? Is it necessary to not notice that the man addressing you is doing so in sign language?

The point both Kukunoor and Bose make is this: Disabilities can be a source of anguish, but they need not define us, and we could acknowledge a distressing aspect of a person’s reality without harping on it. A film could well be about a person with physical or mental challenges, without being about those challenges alone. And if, as a filmmaker, you cannot even consider the likelihood of such a film not being a hagiography or a tearjerker, you might want to ask yourself whether you are constrained by your vision of such a person as ‘the other’ and not ‘one of us’.

A personal example may help illustrate my concerns. My mother has been wheelchair bound for many years. Yes, it is painful to see her decline, but believe me, our conversations are rarely about that. As her family, we are constantly vigilant, but if I were to tell Mum’s story, her physical condition would be only one element in it. For the most part I would tell you about her generation-defying liberalism, her fortitude, the bright smile she still manages to summon up in spite of a cruel disease and the sense of humour that remains undefeated by those wheels.

When I watched Margarita the other day, that wheelchair did disappear after a while. What I remember the most is how the heroine Laila’s smile travelled all the way from her lips to those eyes brimming over with sunshine. And what I remember most about Iqbal today is his sense of mischief, and that classic scene in which his sister and he infuriate a bully by using sign language to discuss the fellow in his presence.

When I see Hollywood actor Michael J Fox on public platforms, I do see his physical struggles because of Parkinson’s disease, but the overwhelming feeling is one of admiration for his strength nearly a quarter century after he was diagnosed. His recurring role as the ruthless lawyer Louis Canning in the multiple-award-winning TV serial The Good Wife is not that of a saint with a physical affliction — he plays a manipulative character who uses his tardive dyskinesia (a rare condition which causes erratic body movements) to gain the sympathy of judges and jurors.

These are regular folk with regular pluses and minuses.

It is only fair to clarify that the ‘them and us’ school of cinema is not confined to India, nor to characters with physical and mental challenges. How often have you seen an Indian film featuring an LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) person who is not a source of jokes or whose sexual orientation is not the fulcrum of the story? For many decades, mainstream Hindi cinema in particular would feature Muslim characters only with a specific purpose: either to showcase Muslim culture or as near-flawless creatures whose presence made a point about secularism.

During an interview I recorded with Madhuri Dixit in 2003, I remember her complaining that Bollywood tends to see “women-centric films” as compulsorily being about “issues”. Why must such a film be a rona-dhona story (a weepie), she asked. Why not a light-hearted comedy? No doubt her industry has changed in these 12 years, but her question remains relevant. A large part of the reason could be that, like most film industries in the rest of India, a male-dominated Bollywood too tends to see stories of women through a male gaze, with men being the norm and women the exceptional ‘them’.

It is in this context that Margarita has wrought a miracle beyond the obvious one we have already discussed. Laila is three things that would usually be treated as issues by an Indian filmmaker: she has cerebral palsy, she is bisexual, she is a woman. Hell yes, while watching the film I almost forgot that she’s a woman! And a sexually assertive one at that. Possibly because the director did not turn either element into an ‘issue’?

As for the gorgeous Iqbal, not till many months after watching it did it strike me that the hero was a Muslim. How lovely that Kukunoor did not define him in terms of his religion or his speech-and-hearing impairments. How lovely that Iqbal was presented to us as a human being who just happened to be both deaf-mute and Muslim.

Physically challenged, mentally challenged, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, gay, woman — it is possible for a character to be any or many of the above, yet be seen as a regular person rather than a showpiece in an old curiosity shop.

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

(This column by Anna MM Vetticad was first published in The Hindu Businessline newspaper on April 25, 2015)

Original link: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/blink/watch/no-them-only-us/article7137392.ece

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/MWASOfficial

Note: This photograph was not published in The Hindu Businessline

REVIEW 84: MOD

Release date:	October 14, 2011
Director:	Nagesh Kukunoor
Cast:	Ayesha Takia Azmi, Rannvijay Singh Singha, Raghuvir Yadav, Tanve Azmi

Mod is the official Hindi remake of the Taiwanese film Keeping Watch. The rights have been paid for, and if you don’t find any mention of the original in Mod’s credits, it’s because the makers were not contractually obliged to do so – that’s what I was told when I checked with the producer.

Now that we’ve got that information out of the way, here’s the story: Aranya Mathur (Ayesha Takia Azmi) runs a watch repair shop in the sleepy hill town of Ganga. Her father (Raghuvir Yadav) is a Kishore Kumar fan whose band of musicians goes by the name Kishore Bhakts. Aranya’s mother left the family to pursue her dreams in the city many years back. The only mother figure in the young girl’s life is her aunt Gayatri (Tanve Azmi) who owns a small local restaurant. Hanging around in the shadows is Gangaram who is surreptitiously in love with Aranya. The picturesque town is going through a churn because a construction company is trying to buy up a number of private homes to build a large tourist resort. Into this scenario enters a shy young man called Andy Raymond (Rannvijay Singh Singha) who begins visiting Aranya every day with a watch (the same watch each day) that needs repair. He pays her each time with a Rs 100 note that he’s sculpted into a swan. Who is this man? What is his mysterious past? And what is his connection with Aranya’s childhood? I will leave you to discover the answers if you decide to watch this little film.

One of the nicest things about Mod is the choice of location – not a set piece but a genuinely slumberous small town where you can imagine real people going about their business just the way Aranya, Gayatri, Gangaram and their social circle do. Kukunoor hits the nail on the head with the locale and atmosphere. He also gets the casting of his leading lady right. Ayesha Takia Azmi is pretty, has a likeable screen presence and a natural style of acting. Tanve Azmi is perfect as every young girl’s dream aunt – liberal, fun, yet filled with wisdom. Except for Anant Mahadevan as Andy’s doctor, everyone looks believable here, including Rannvijay as the painfully reticent youngster who has harboured a crush on Aranya for a decade.

What does not work though is the chemistry between the lead pair and the progression of their relationship especially once she discovers the truth about Andy. Does Aranya fall for him because she genuinely likes him for who he is, or because of the lack of romantic options in tiny Ganga, or because she feels sorry for him, or merely because he pursues her relentlessly (he made me feel special in a way no one has before, she tells Gayatri)? I guess because I couldn’t feel that palpable pull between the two of them, I wasn’t convinced about the life-changing decision she takes in the end, apparently for his sake? Was that real love or sympathy … I’m not sure. It was also hard to believe that a girl from a small town where everyone knows everyone else would have forgotten her classmate from school so completely in just 10 years – neither Andy’s name nor his face ring a bell with her even for a moment when they first meet as adults. The music too leaves much to be desired.

Despite these reservations, I’d say there’s more I liked about this film than did not. The warmth between the aunt and niece, the kindly fashion in which the daughter tries to wean her father off the bottle, the attention to small characters such as Gangaram (love the shades of gray in this man) and the gentle manner in which Dissociative Identity Disorder is woven into the story without high drama are touches from the Nagesh Kukunoor we know who knows how to tell real stories about real people. It’s been over a decade since this man made Hyderabad Blues and walked his way into our hearts. That film was low on cash and produced with money collected from friends – the bare-bones budget was evident, but even the resultant tackiness was charming because it was clear that this director had a flair and a passion for storytelling. There have been ups and downs since then. Rockford, for instance, was an agreeable coming-of-age film set in a boarding school, Bollywood Calling was fun though flawed, Hyderabad Blues 2 was unimaginably bad, Iqbal was downright brilliant (one of the best Hindi films made about a person with a disability, shorn of melodrama and stereotypes, sensitive yet entertaining), and Aashayein with John Abraham seemed to be going well until it strayed into awkwardly philosophical territory.

And now there’s Mod. What this film needed was an aching chemistry between the hero and heroine, a desperate desire that would convince us that she would give up her life for him. In the absence of that, it still ends up as a small, sweet, simple, slow moving film that has left me with a pleasant feeling of positivity. 

Rating (out of five): **3/4

CBFC Rating:                       U without cuts

Running time:                        120 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/#!/MODthemovie