REVIEW 771: SHUBH MANGAL ZYADA SAAVDHAN

Release date:	February 21, 2020
Director:	Hitesh Kewalya
Cast:	Ayushmann Khurrana, Jitendra Kumar, Neena Gupta, Gajraj Rao, Sunita Rajwar, Manu Rishi Chadha, Maanvi Gagroo, Cameo: Bhumi Pednekar
Language:	Hindi

It has been a long time coming. 

From the pre-2000 decades when LGBT+ persons were almost always (almost, but not always) written purely as objects of either derision or comedy by Bollywood scriptwriters, to this week’s Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (SMZS); from an earlier era when comparatively sensitive Hindi filmmakers packed their works with subliminal messaging about same-sex love, to the post-2000 era’s intermittent open declarations; from the days when the homosexual relationships in My Brother Nikhil (2005) and I Am (2011) were assumed to be of niche interest by producers, distributors and exhibitors, to the present day when glamorous mainstream stars have been cast as same-sex lovers in films bearing all the trappings of mainstream commercial Bollywood such as Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (2019) and SMZS, it has been a long long time coming.

Bollywood in 2020 is far from being a jannat, orthodox masses still seem to need comedy as a package for a sensitive reality, and at a couple of  places, Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (Be Extra Wary of Marriage) does make apologetic noises to traditionalists. Still, from a time when audiences were conditioned to assume that songs like Yeh dosti hum nahin thodenge (We will not break this friendship) were about platonic male buddies, to today when SMZS is questioning those assumptions, Bollywood has come a long way, baby.

Ayushmann Khurrana stars in writer-director Hitesh Kewalya’s Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan as Kartik, a young man living in Delhi and in a committed relationship with Aman (Jitendra Kumar, listed for some reason as Jeetu in the closing credits here). The two are not out to their families. When they travel to Aman’s hometown, Allahabad, for a wedding, relatives go berserk on accidentally discovering that they are a couple in love. SMZS is devoted to how Kartik and Aman come to terms with this rejection and how the family comes to terms with their truth.

Kewalya’s film is an intelligently handled affair. It is hilarious, but it never mocks the two gay men at the centre of the story. Its laughter is reserved entirely for the prejudice they encounter and the straitjacketed existence of those around them who are determined to preserve their notion of “normal”, even if that “normal” has sucked the joy out of their own lives. SMZS’s sense of humour does occasionally slip up for other reasons (example: that really flat joke about Neil Nitin Mukesh), but at no point does its comedy turn homophobic.

With a word here and and a touch there, through long conversations and fleeting references, Kewalya invites us into his questioning mind and shows a deeper understanding of human relations, gender, Hindu mythology and popular culture than most mainstream Hindi filmmakers. In 2014, when I was working on a feature about the history of LGBT+ portrayals in Bollywood, Ruth Vanita, co-editor with Salim Kidwai of the book Same-Sex Love In India, had told me that when she showed Hindi films featuring the old-style intense yaari-dosti between male leads to her students at the University of Montana, “all of them commented on the fact that the men are singing romantic songs to each other like Diye jalte hai (from Namak Haram) and the songs from Dosti. If you played those songs without knowing that a man is singing to a man, it sounds like a man is singing to a woman...” (For more on that, click here.)

Like Vanita, Kewalya repeatedly asks us to step outside ourselves and consider the possibility of messaging, including coded messaging, featured in art works and mythological motifs we have long loved but seen with different eyes in the past.

SMZS’s intelligence extends to its acting. Khurrana and Kumar are not bound by any of the traits formulaic Bollywood has so far compulsorily assigned to gay men. Khurrana does tweak his body language to play Kartik, but those changes are barely discernable and in no way stereotypical or caricaturish in keeping with Bollywood conventions.

Aman’s relatives, played by the phenomenal Neena Gupta, Gajraj Rao, Sunita Rajwar, Manu Rishi Chadha and Maanvi Gagroo, perfectly capture various shades of bias and acceptance to be found in families that are weighed down by social conditioning and ignorance, not hate.

In the midst of this carefully chosen cast, Bhumi Pednekar appears incongruous, not for any fault of hers but because of what her brief appearance in the narrative signifies. The lovely Ms Pednekar was the heroine of the 2017 Bollywood hit Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (with screenplay and dialogues by Kewalya) in which she had a solid role alongside Khurrana. Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan has no plot connection to the previous film, the title merely cashes in on that one’s recall value. It is telling then that the producers felt comfortable revisiting the name while dispensing with the leading lady, instead of establishing a new brand. As it happens, this is customary in the world of Bollywood franchises and sequels. Obviously Pednekar’s cameo here is a bow to the success of Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, but her role is written almost like a spare tyre lying unused, it is embarrassingly insignificant (a cameo need not be) and forgettable, and it is an unfortunate reminder of the continuing dispensability of women stars in this male-star-obsessed industry.

Repeat: Bollywood is far from being a jannat of progressiveness. It is up to viewers to decide whether to see the glass as half full or half empty. There is a third option: we could celebrate forward movement and yet draw attention to missteps and steps yet to be taken.

SMZS falters during a scene in which Aman’s mother laments her husband’s unwillingness to fight for her son, but simultaneously criticises her son for – so she says – expecting his family to evolve overnight. This monologue is designed as an expression of empathy, so it has to be placed on the record that marginalised social groups do not owe it to dominant groups to break them in gently. Individuals may CHOOSE to do so for strategic reasons or out of love and affection, but no one has a right to demand it.

Whether this scene is a mark of the writer’s own sub-conscious conservatism or a safety net spread out with commercial compulsions in mind is hard to tell. It is troubling though, as is the odd emphasis on how homosexual relations ought to be private during a TV news announcement about the Supreme Court’s ruling on Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that earlier criminalised same-sex relations. This moment in the film would perhaps pacify conservatives who seem to have this bizarre expectation that anyone who is not heterosexual wants nothing more than to have sex in public. Perhaps that is why it is there.

Hopefully these aberrations will find mention among the many conversations SMZS will spark off. That it will spark off conversations is a given. This is, after all, no ordinary film raising ordinary questions, as is evident early on when two characters dwell on how a father’s sole contribution to creating a child is his  sperm. One of them adds that a child spends an entire lifetime repaying the debt of that single sperm. So you see, SMZS’s courage lies not just in its condemnation of homophobia, but also in its questioning of the very foundation of the Indian patriarchal family structure which rests on the belief that children owe parents a debt of gratitude for having made them/us.

SMZS is funny, brave, smart and thoughtful, and Kewalya is a voice worth listening to.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 3.5

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	119 minutes 37 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/shubh-mangal-zyada-saavdhan-movie-review-ayushmann-khurrana-starrer-crosses-a-new-frontier-for-lgbt-portrayals-by-bollywood-8070971.html

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

REVIEW 764: PANGA

Release date:	January 24, 2020
Director:	Ashwiny Iyer Tiwary
Cast:	Kangana Ranaut, Yagya Bhasin, Jassie Gill, Neena Gupta, Megha Burman, Smita Dwivedi, Rajesh Tailang, Richa Chadha
Language:	Hindi

She was the captain of the Indian kabaddi team with an international career awaiting her before the birth of a premature baby prompted her to turn her back on the game she loves. Jaya Nigam did not have in-laws  pressuring her or a husband bullying her: she simply did what she did because it did not occur to her that there was an option and, as her son later points out, it did not occur to her husband to share her load.

Seven years later, which is when we first meet her, Jaya is running a ticket counter for the Indian Railways in Bhopal, micromanaging her child’s life and constantly stressed out. She adores her family and they adore her right back, but a dissatisfaction gnaws at her that she finally confronts during a minor quarrel at home. So begins her journey to return to the country’s kabaddi scene.

Kangana Ranaut plays Jaya, a woman like a million others whose professional dreams remain unfulfilled because she did not treat them as a priority. The film does not judge her nor does it particularly advocate the choice she makes: it is what it is and we are simply being told that this is what she did. This non-judgemental but non-idolising view of Jaya is the selling point of Panga.

In Ashwiny Iyer Tiwary’s directorial debut, the sleeper hit Nil Battey Sannata, a poor mother goes back to school to spark ambition in her daughter who, till then, had a “well, a housemaid’s daughter will obviously grow up to be a housemaid” approach to life. Chanda in that lovely film had to cross several external hurdles and handle her troubled relationship with her child. In Panga, Iyer Tiwary has Jaya battling almost entirely with herself. We are surrounded by women like her: women who are so entrenched in home management that they are convinced their families are incapable of handling the job and their families therefore never give it a shot. Again, Panga neither judges Jaya’s attitude nor idolises it – it is what it is and she is who she is.

The first half of Panga is thoroughly engaging as it portrays Jaya’s blissful domestic existence and quietly simmering discontent in a charming, understated fashion. It is only in the second half that it gradually becomes evident that, heartwarming though the film’s positivity is, it also ends up giving us a sanitised view of middle-class India and women’s struggles.

Apart from her own choices, there is almost nil conflict in Jaya’s life. Her husband is loving and angelic to the point of being near perfect. Her mother is near perfect. Her son may say a couple of hurtful things to his parents but he too is a darling. Her neighbour is ever willing to chip in. Her friend, a professional coach played by Richa Chadha, drops everything at the drop of a hat to move to another city for her. Her colleagues are fond of her. If her boss is hard on her, it is because she is late to work. And she encounters no gender prejudice from men in the personal or professional sphere. None. In fact, so intent is the film on reminding us that family did not stand in Jaya’s way, that having made the point convincingly through the narrative in the first half, it gets her to say so in so many words to a TV journalist in the second half, as if in a bid to ensure that conservative audiences got the point.

In fact, the ONLY opposition she faces while working towards her career goals comes from women: her mother’s mild admonition is overshadowed by the mean female team captain, and a fleeting glimpse of mothers at her son’s school indicates that they are a nasty lot. Men – her coach when she was younger, her husband, the coaches she encounters during her second innings, the son whose goading is responsible for getting her back in sports – are all unequivocally supportive. The thing is, individually each of these characters is believable. Collectively viewed though, the overall niceness scrubs out the reality of women’s struggles in middle-class India steeped as it is in misogyny, sexism and discrimination. And the unstated point that women are the only ones who stand in the way of other women is offensive (though saleable to the masses of course) because it is far removed from the truth – no doubt plenty of women play along with patriarchy, but men helm and benefit from it, so why are we pretending otherwise?

The film’s play-it-safe nature is seen in other ways. Like in Sultan before it, when an ambitious woman gets pregnant, the A-word is not even mentioned. I am not suggesting that all ambitious women would consider abortion in such circumstances, but that it is unrealistic to portray a scenario in which not a single person brings up the possibility.

Elsewhere, although Panga makes an appearance of being cool around Chadha’s character, the normalisation of Jaya’s casual dismissiveness towards her at one point because she is unmarried is problematic and the ending suggests that the team of this film – like Chhapaak before it – just cannot fathom being single as a possible ‘happy ending’ for a woman. In this matter it reveals the innate conservatism closeted even in most liberals.

To be honest, it hurts to make these points about Panga, because Iyer Tiwari gives her film a pleasant tone at all times, the rhythm of the narrative never lets up, the ending is gripping and it is a film I liked at many levels. The charismatic Ranaut’s sedate performance anchors the narrative and she never wavers even when her character’s stress reaches fever pitch. Jassie Gill is wonderful in the role of her husband, making him an Everyman in whom every woman might find an ally. The supporting cast is dotted with likeable actors. And the very confident Yagya Bhasin as the lead couple’s son never allows his character’s maturity to cross a line into precocious acting.

Panga is charming and in the first half very credible, but its charm also camouflages the warts in the world women face every day.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.75

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	129 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/panga-movie-review-kanganas-sedate-turn-anchors-a-heartening-but-sanitised-take-on-middle-class-india-7950101.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panga_(film)