REVIEW 783: BULBBUL

Release date:	June 24, 2020
Director:	Anvita Dutt
Cast:	Tripti Dimri, Avinash Tiwary, Paoli Dam, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Rahul Bose, Ruchi Mahajan, Varun Paras Buddhadev, Vishwanath Chatterjee
Language:	Hindi

I really enjoy the way Anushka Sharma’s mind works. 

I am not referring to this film alone for which of course writer-director Anvita Dutt must first be cited. The mention of Sharma right at the start of this review comes because of a pattern emerging from the choices this talented actor has made in her avatar as a producer in the past half decade. Her debut production, NH10 in 2015, was a feminist crime thriller. Then followed two supernatural flicks, one a romance (Phillauri, 2017), the other a horror movie (Pari, 2018). Just as she is reaping accolades and fending off outraged conservatives for her socio-political crime series Paatal Lok on Amazon Prime, here comes her first feature film to be released directly on a streaming platform. 

Bulbbul combines what appear to be Sharma’s two primary interests – feminism and the paranormal – that earlier came together in the terrifying Pari. Her courageous, non-conformist filmography as a producer is at odds with her off-screen image in recent years of being a supporter of the current right-wing regime.

In Bulbbul, the viewer is transported to the Bengal Presidency in 1881, where child marriages were a norm, and women born or married into aristocratic families were expected – no differently from today – to stay silent about the injustices meted out to them by patriarchy, their caste privilege notwithstanding. 

A sense of foreboding descends on the screen from the very first frame on the wedding day of a little girl (Ruchi Mahajan), and in the palanquin on the way to her marital home, as a kind older boy tells her the story of a murderous, bloodthirsty chudail (female demon). 

Twenty years later, the girl is now a gorgeous but oddly detached young woman (Tripti Dimri) presiding over her mansion while her husband (Rahul Bose) and his twin brother are nowhere to be seen, her elder sister-in-law (Paoli Dam) has been relegated to insignificance and her attractive brother-in-law (Avinash Tiwary) returns after a long absence. 

Director Amar Kaushik had blended humour and the other-world in his Stree in 2018 to turn the tables on men who suppress women in the guise of concern. In a completely different genre, in Bulbbul the conceptualisation of the spirit cocks a snook at anti-feminist propaganda and stereotypes of the man-hating woman. At a very basic level, to me Bulbbul is what Devdas might have been if in a paranormal revisitation of that classic, Paro had turned round and landed a tight slap on the eponymous loser hero’s face.

Dutt is an accomplished lyricist, screenplay and dialogue writer for Hindi films. With Bulbbul she makes her debut as a director. Her writing for this film combines superstition, mythology and history, fantasy, folktale, feminism and fable, to deliver a story drenched in a deep sadness and the blood of women across centuries who have suffered and fought battles so that some of us may today enjoy freedoms that they could not, giving us the strength to fight newer battles against the cruelty that still survives.

The fabulous atmospherics in Bulbbul are a product of Amit Trivedi’s music in collaboration with DoP Siddharth Diwan’s low-lit colour-saturated frames and the production design by Meenal Agarwal in the leading lady’s resplendent house and neighbouring areas. 

Bulbbul does not often venture into bright daylight. Using a palette reminiscent of the lovely Tumbbad (2018), it bathes the screen in shades of red with flashes of gold – the red of the Hindu bride’s clothing and sindoor symbolising the red of a virgin’s blood flowing on her wedding night and onward into a river of silent suffering or rebellion or both. 

The chudail in Bulbbul fits the physical description of the furious female spook of Indian folklore – beautiful, with long hair and feet twisted backwards. Dutt however gives even that convention a neat – and heartbreaking – twist. This mystery woman is not summoned up here to startle the audience in the way traditional horror films do, but instead to set us thinking. (Note: please read this paragraph after watching the film) She is a personification of the rage of the marginalised, and a stark portrait of what the world might be if the oppressed – in this case, women – were to unleash their rage on the oppressor. She reminded me of a conversation I had aeons back with a senior friend who said she hoped I would not become one of “those angry feminists”, to which I remember replying, “But considering all that we are subjected to, should you not be asking why we women are so calm, and why we are not angrier?” (Cautionary note ends) 

For a film that is so thoughtful in its take on gender politics, it is surprising that  Bulbbul  uses a mentally challenged character as one of its metaphors for patriarchy in an India that remains largely ignorant about disabilities of the mind. I also wish the woman-as-goddess trope had not been thrown into the mix, especially since it is articulated by a man in the film. After all, pedestalisation has long been used by patriarchy to deceive women into thinking they are valued, when in fact they are being set up to be pulled down when the system pleases. The film might also have been better served if the character of Bulbbul’s brother-in-law Satya had more detail. 

Of the men in the storyline, the one given most heft by the writing is the doctor (Parambrata Chattopadhyay) who becomes the heroine’s friend. And of her many relationships, the one I found most complex was with her sister-in-law, Binodini – two women united in mutual despair yet playing games with each other for survival. 

Dutt has assembled a solid cast for Bulbbul. Tripti Dimri as the title character lives up to the promise she showed in Laila-Majnu. Her Bulbbul is in a state of constant internal turmoil camouflaged by an enigmatic demeanour, which the young actor conveys almost imperceptibly with the lightest of touches.   

Dimri’s co-star from Laila-Majnu, Avinash Tiwary gets a role here that is not flashy like the one he had in that film or the delightful but underrated Tu Hai Mera Sunday. He too is a picture of understatement. Ruchi Mahajan who plays the child Bulbbul is a dear. My pick of the supporting cast though is the unfailingly good Chattopadhyay. 

Since the film is set in Bengal, it requires a suspension of disbelief to accept characters who are all speaking Hindi. Dutt wisely does not ask her non-Bengali actors to do exaggerated Bengali accents to convince us of their characters’ ethnicity – the milieu is right, the look and styling are on point, thus making it possible for the viewer’s imagination to do the rest of the work. 

Among other joys that it offers then is the fact that Bulbbul is one of those rare contemporary Hindi films to travel beyond the Hindi belt and Punjab to a culture and place that Bollywood does not often visit these days. With its eerie air and mythical, mystical tone, Dutt’s film brings alive a spectre that is not scary in the way the average Hindi film bhoot or daayin is – what is scary are the circumstances that brought this creature to such a pass. 

Rating (out of 5 stars): 3

Gulabo Sitabo is streaming on Netflix.

Running time:

94 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bulbbul-movie-review-anushka-sharmas-continuing-interest-in-the-paranormal-yields-compelling-results-8519781.html

Poster courtesy: IMDB

REVIEW 781: CHOKED

Release date:	June 5, 2020
Director:	Anurag Kashyap
Cast:	Saiyami Kher, Roshan Mathew, Parthveer Shukla, Amruta Subhash, Rajshri Deshpande, Upendra Limaye
Language:	Hindi

Sarita Pillai nee Sahastrabuddhe’s life mirrors the humdrum lives of millions of middle-class Indian women. She wakes up every morning, cooks, prepares her kid for school, sends him off before heading to her own office in teeming Mumbai where she spends her day in mechanical, emotionless toil as a bank teller before returning home to cook, serve her kid and husband Sushant, admonish the latter for being a layabout, clean up and sleep. 

Forward to the next day. Wake up. Repeat. Sleep. And the next. And the next. Wake up. Repeat. Sleep. Wake up. Repeat. Sleep. 

Her listless existence and her evident disinterest in Sushant are punctuated occasionally by lively kitty parties with women in the neighbourhood who revel in gossip, including about members of their own group. 

We know from the start that there is and will be more to Sarita, heroine of director Anurag Kashyap’s Choked: Paisa Bolta Hai (Money Talks) that is streaming on Netflix from today. We know we can expect more than that surface mundaneness for two reasons: first, the film’s smartly executed prologue indicates some hanky-panky with money; and second, hints are dropped early on about an event in the past from where her marriage went downhill. 

Sushant for his part has more spark and appears to have more going for him than she does although he does nothing. He hangs around contributing zilch to the housework, casually plays his guitar at home and plays carrom with friends in the building. Sarita’s tetchiness towards him inexplicably does little to dampen his affection for her or dull the twinkle in his eyes, but it also does not enthuse him enough to lift a finger to share her burden around the house. 

Then one day, as the trailer has already revealed, Sarita unexpectedly comes across a stash of cash and for the first time in the film we see her face come alive. 

Choked is about what she does with that secret horde, and through that adventure it tells the story of a life stuck in a rut, a relationship at the edge of an abyss, greed and corruption in the era of demonetisation. 

At first Choked is intriguing. The manner in which Kashyap portrays Sarita’s boredom and sense of hopelessness in her role as wife and home manager is striking. Her act of latching a door and switching off a light night after night after night before going to bed is used to remarkable effect to underline the repetitiveness of her routine and the monotony that domesticity can bring. 

Sarita’s empty eyes and irritability when contrasted with Sushant’s easygoing nature and their son’s charm allude to a background that must have been far more interesting than her current busy yet godawfully drowsy routine. 

Besides the lead trio of Choked are a good fit. Sarita is played by Saiyami Kher who had the misfortune of making her Bollywood debut with Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s worst film till date, Mirzya (2016), but managed to reveal her innate charisma even in that dismal enterprise. The young actor has an impressive personality and speaking eyes. In the role of Sushant is the attractive stage and Mollywood artist Roshan Mathew whose brief filmography includes an aching portrayal of a man in love with a man in a conservative society in Geetu Mohandas’s otherwise middling Moothon. And Parthveer Shukla who plays their son is a little fireball of darlingness without the irritating precociousness that so many directors seem to demand of their child actors. 

Once the nuts and bolts of their relationship and the neighbourhood dynamics are established though, despite a series of twists and turns right till the end, the narrative is curiously lacking in energy. 

Sarita and Sushant’s back story, from which the title Choked is drawn, is not quite as fascinating as it is made out to be. His subsequent irresponsible behaviour and the progression of their equation are unconvincing. 

Kashyap and writer Nihit Bhave appear to be making a point about Narendra Modi’s decision in 2016 to demonetise select Indian currency notes – the point being that the corrupt and the powerful found their way around it, while ordinary citizens suffered. However, they seem to have internalised it so much, they say what they seem to want to say so hesitantly and in such a roundabout, meandering manner, that Choked almost comes across as praise for demonetisation, a measure that has had a  disastrous impact on the Indian economy. There is even a song and dance featuring the hero celebrating demonetisation that is placed prominently in the narrative. The collective effect of these elements sadly dilutes the impact of the cheeky song that plays with the rolling credits in the end. If Choked is intended as a sarcastic critique, it depends too heavily on the viewer being indulgent towards the director, being aware of his politics and off-screen stances and having studied the country’s reaction to the present prime minister.

And no ya, the play on “choked” does not work either. 

What does work is the constant flow of dialogues between languages in the way they naturally might in the Mumbai home of a couple in a mixed marriage. although Mathew swallows some of his lines as a result of which I often could not make out what Sushant was saying in his mother tongue. Of course a lot can be forgiven because he is cute. Ironically, his Hindi diction is excellent, and comes as a package with a delightful trace of a Malayalam accent. The precise way in which he says “contracts” and pronounces “L” or the way she pronounces “D” are fun to hear because their accents are not being caricatured. 

The usually reliable Amruta Subhash is inconsistent though – warm and hilarious in parts, but in one passage, surprisingly hammy.

There are a couple of standout scenes such as the one in which Sarita and Sushant fight in bed with their kid lying asleep between them and another involving the couple, a kitchen drain and top-notch sound design by Gautam Nair. The construction of both scenes is vintage Kashyap, as is the mischievous closing song.

What is not vintage Kashyap is the lack of clarity and sharpness in what he seems to be saying about demonetisation and achhe din. 

And exactly what is the point in showing us a lazy jerk of a husband who never does any work at home, is inconsiderate to his wife but is somehow presented as a sweetheart, is made to sound at one point as though he is willing to do anything for her but oh how unfair is she, and in the end gets to save the day? 

Kashyap’s last two breathtakingly good films were Mukkabaaz and Raman Raghav 2.0. Choked wants to say a lot, but is not even as hard-hitting or entertaining as his tweets.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2

Running time:

114 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/choked-movie-review-anurag-kashyaps-demonetisation-saga-is-curiously-hesitant-and-dull-8450691.html

Poster courtesy: IMDB

REVIEW 741: DRIVE

Release date:	November 1, 2019
Director:	Tarun Mansukhani
Cast: Language:	Sushant Singh Rajput, Jacqueline Fernandez, Boman Irani, Pankaj Tripathi, Vibha Chibber, Sapna Pabbi, Vikramjeet Virk Hindi

So it is here at last: the first direct-to-Netflix release by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions. 

Produced by KJo, written and directed by Tarun “Dostana” Mansukhani, starring Sushant Singh Rajput and Jacqueline Fernandez, Drive is a thriller that follows the tried-and-tested pattern of a heist within a heist within a heist. Film industries across the world have explored this genre to fun effect. India’s Hindi film industry a.k.a. Bollywood proved that it has the chops for wheels-within-wheels-within-wheels crime back in 1978 with the iconic Don starring Amitabh Bachchan, more recently with Abbas Mustan’s Race in 2008 and the SRK-Farhan Akhtar Don films in 2006 and 2011.

The very least you would expect after seeing the poster, the credits of Drive and reading its summary is that it would deliver spadefuls of excitement, pretty people in pretty clothes and swish special effects. Well, lower those expectations right away. 

Sure, Rajput and Fernandez look hot in the film, both have tremendously fit bodies, and if you think back on the story, the original concept probably had the potential to become a slick cops-and-robbers drama. At first it does seem like Drive might prove to be an entertainer but the narrative, like the special effects, steadily declines as the film progresses. The SFX are overall so downmarket that it is hard to believe Drive comes to us from Dharma, whose signature for at least two decades has been glossy visuals. 

Not that anything else in the film is of high calibre. Well suited to the SFX are the generic storytelling style, the overall ordinary production quality, inconsistent audio, a stand-out acting loophole and glaring lack of logic that, among other things, translates into Delhi roads – notorious in reality for their traffic jams – obligingly emptying themselves out to accommodate high-speed car races and chases at all times of day and night. 

The reason why Drive is set in India’s capital city is because a robbery is being planned in Rashtrapati Bhavan. The primary players in this game are a group of car racing aficionados, an outsider who infiltrates their inner circle, a criminal known simply as King – you know, like Don in Don – and corrupt bureaucrats. 

The opening race in Drive is reasonably well done, the song ‘n’ dance that follows is kinda nicely choreographed by Adil Shaikh, and Jacqueline Fernandez has some cute moves in it. From then on it is a downhill descent. 

Gaping gaps in the plotline recede into the background in the face of ordinary car chases that routinely look plastic and an embarrassingly low-brow extended climax that feels like the work of an entry-level animation student. Lightning McQueen’s universe appeared more real than the vehicles and roads in several of this film’s scenes. 

Much has been made of the fact that a portion of Drive was filmed in Israel, making it the first Bollywood venture to be shot there. The media has reported that the film was also partly funded by that country’s government. The true mystery here is why the Israeli sarkar thought this film would be a good ad for them in India. Be assured that what Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna is to New York City or Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is to Spain, Drive is absolutely not to Tel Aviv. At best the city is treated like the geographical equivalent of an ‘item’ number chucked mindlessly into a bad Bollywood film – it springs up out of the blue and it has no relevance whatsoever to the storyline.

In the face of such mediocrity, analysing the screenplay almost feels pointless. But a job is a job, so consider this. Without giving anything away let us just say the only way the masterplan revealed in the climax of Drive could possibly have worked is if no one in Rashtrapati Bhavan’s entire security department checked a critical character’s ID carefully for several days. 

Granted that this point arises only in retrospect, and granted that this person could have had the world’s top creator of fake IDs backing them, so instead consider this question that comes up quite early in the film. (Some people may consider this paragraph a spoiler) The loot could not have been where it was unless other critical characters managed to easily beat the security system in the Indian President’s residence for what must have been months, if not years. If you have visited Rashtrapati Bhavan and experienced the tight restrictions in place in the complex, you would know how ridiculous this is. How the crooks aced the system is never explained, we are simply expected to accept that they did because we are told so. (Spoiler alert ends)

Or consider this. Person X says in the end that they were expecting to be deceived by Person Y. But in an earlier scene when X realised they had been double-crossed by Y, the facial expression – clearly visible in close-up – is one of shock and not at all “oh well, I knew this was coming”.

Or this. In a key scene in Drive, a quartet of cars zips through an airport runway and the occurrence seems not to be a blip on the radar of Air Traffic Control (ATC), the local police or the news media at that point or for the two months that the story continues. This writing laziness is intentional – having ATC, the police and press notice the breach would have been too much of an inconvenience since it could have meant the kingpins of the gameplan being discovered before the writer wanted them to be, you see. 

Or consider this. Snazzy cars with the words “Delhi Police” emblazoned on them zoom about the city, offering evidence of how little the team of Drive knows the reality of the capital’s ill-equipped force. 

As for the acting, well, Pankaj Tripathi does lend a Pankaj Tripathi touch to his character, but really, how is one to seriously and fairly critique the performances in such a film?

For a moment let us set aside thoughts of the cast though, and Johar, Netflix and Israel. Let us take that moment to mourn the fact that this sub-standard action flick has been made by the same director who gave us Dostana, which, notwithstanding its resemblance to a Hollywood film, was, in its own way, pathbreaking in the Indian social context. From Dostana to Drive is such a fall.

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	None
Running time:	119 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/drive-movie-review-sushant-and-jacquelines-prettiness-and-an-under-par-heist-come-wrapped-in-awful-sfx-7588511.html

Photograph courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_(2019_film)