REVIEW 645: HELICOPTER EELA

Release date:	October 12, 2018
Director:	Pradeep Sarkar
Cast: Language:	Kajol, Riddhi Sen, Tota Roy Choudhury, Neha Dhupia, Zakir Hussain Hindi

There was a time when single mothers were a routine presence in Hindi films. Maaaaaaa, as she was known, was a saintly figure who spoke at a low volume deemed appropriate for the Bhartiya naari, was usually widowed or had had her husband cruelly separated from her by the evil villain, she wore white or very muted shades, attire other than saris was an absolute no-no for her, and her greatest act of aggression would come if ever her son’s life was in danger, at which point she was known to ask Bhagwaaaan if he was nothing more than a “pathhar ki murti” (stone statue).

That whimpering, simpering pativrata aurat has thankfully been retired from among Bollywood’s stock characters. Her disappearance has been a double-edged sword though, leading to rare sightings of single mothers as a whole in recent years.

In that sense, the oddly named Helicopter Eela is a welcome change (oddly named, I say, because the expression “helicopter parent” /  “helicopter mom” is not commonly used yet in India, and clearly Team Eela realises that which is why they try to explain the title awkwardly early on with a fleeting and pointless graphic). Director Pradeep Sarkar (Parineeta, Mardaani) brings us a woman whose husband walks away from her for a flimsy reason, leaving her to fend for herself and their only child. In the way she dresses and conducts herself, Eela Raiturkar is a woman of today. She has professional ambitions and had once scoffed at her boyfriend when he said marriage would put an end to all that for her. When her spouse leaves though, her life begins to revolve entirely around their son Vivan. She relegates her career and her dreams to the background, making the boy the solo agenda of her life. At what point does love begin to suffocate the object of your affection? And what purpose does such a love serve? These are the questions Sarkar seeks to address in his new film.

Drawing up a balance sheet for Helicopter Eela is quite easy since this is not a very deep film. On the Assets side is Kajol’s innate dynamism and the joy of seeing her back on the big screen after a gap of three years, among the Liabilities is her decision to largely over-act the role of Eela. Asset: Riddhi Sen is an utterly lovely artiste. You may remember him as the abusive child-husband in Leena Yadav’s Parched (2015). In a larger role here, Sen brings extreme credibility to his performance as the teenaged, college-going Vivan, and imbues the Vivan-Eela equation with warmth.

Liability: some poorly chosen guest appearances, most especially Mahesh Bhatt who plays himself. His terrible acting unwittingly creates the impression that Bhattsaab may possibly be leering at Eela although that does not seem to be the film’s intention.

Asset: the screenplay gives Vivan a convincing internal journey. Liability: it fails to do likewise for Eela. The writing is so fixated on her bubbly personality and a surface exploration of her obsession with her son, that it does not give us an opportunity to look within her. After a dramatic twist in her relationship with Vivan towards the end, for instance, she returns to a stage she had once passionately sought, but we are expected to believe that that is what she still wants because we are told that is what she still wants, whereas her own behaviour does not indicate whether she is doing so to win Vivan back or because the flame within her has genuinely been reignited.

Liability: the characterisation of Eela’s husband Arun is an absolute zero. He is initially projected as a good guy, but his motivation for quitting home comes across as silly and contrived, to say the least.

For these reasons, the credits hold a disappointing revelation – Helicopter Eela is written by Mitesh Shah and Anand Gandhi, who are among the co-writers of this week’s other Hindi film release, the unconventional Tumbbad. Gandhi, of course, is best known as the director of the fabulous Ship of Theseus (2013). While this screenplay no doubt has a sense of humour, and Sarkar along with Sen and the young supporting cast manage to effectively recreate a Mumbai college milieu, the cursory writing of the heroine is the film’s undoing

Sure the songs by Amit Trivedi and Daniel B. George are frothy and hummable. Sure Swanand Kirkire’s lyrics for Mumma Ki Parchai are a hoot, filmed well and edited smoothly on a frustrated Vivan giving vent to his exasperation with Eela. Sure the imposing St Xavier’s College building in Mumbai has immense visual appeal. And sure the theme is feminist. But when a feminist venture stumbles in the writing of its central female character, you know you have a problem. I could not help but wonder what this film might have been if Gauri Shinde had written and/or directed it. Helicopter Eela means well, but it ends up as an often fun but almost entirely superficial Mom com, a sort of English Vinglish without depth. 

Rating (out of five stars): **

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	128 minutes 49 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/helicopter-eela-movie-review-kajol-over-acts-riddhi-sen-is-top-notch-in-a-funny-but-superficial-mom-com-5365601.html

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

REVIEW 286: MARDAANI

Release date:	August 22, 2014
Director:	Pradeep Sarkar
Cast: Language:	Rani Mukerji, Tahir Bhasin, Priyanka Sharma, Anil George, Jisshu Sengupta Hindi

It’s been a long long time since I’ve watched a Hindi film in a hall where all the women in the audience clapped – several times. They did this today not for a bizarre, unrealistic gang of rape victims on a rampage, castrating rapists as Dimple Kapadia & Co did in 1988’s Zakhmi Aurat. Today they applauded a believable woman police officer whose fisticuffs are a far cry from the fantastical dishum-dishum of Bajirao Singham in Singham Returns; a woman who looks like she may well exist in a police station near our homes. 

Rani Mukerji plays Mumbai Crime Branch Senior Inspector Shivani Shivaji Roy in Pradeep Sarkar’s Mardaani. Hate the title, but let’s discuss that later. When a street kid she’s fond of is netted in a sex trafficking racket, Shivani goes after the gang and its intriguing kingpin. This is a sociological crime thriller atypical of Bollywood: shorn of frills, straight-laced, to the point.

Shivani doesn’t fit any social or Bollywood stereotypes, unless you count the film’s awful name. She’s smart, assertive, pretty, has an unconventional family, is friendly with her juniors yet very much in charge, committed to her work yet not obsessive to the exclusion of all else. She’s fun, she’s sexy, she doesn’t hesitate to bash up bad guys, and she’s not exactly a saint when it comes to the law. I kept waiting for a lazy and trite bow to commercial compulsions with a suddenly glammed-up Shivani in a nightclub, under the pretext of an undercover operation, while an ‘item song’ with a scantily clad female dancer played in the background. No such scene came up.

So the film is consistent in tone until that last scene in which Shivani delivers an unnecessary sermon to the central villain and offers that dreadful, completely superfluous statement to us as a solution to sexual violence: “Apne andar chhupee mardaani har aurat, har bachchi ko dhoondna hai (Every woman, every girl must find the man/manliness/masculinity hidden within her).”

The unmistakable reference is to this line in Subhadrakumari Chauhan’s Hindi poem on Rani Laxmibai: “…Khoob ladi mardaani / woh toh Jhansi waali Rani thhi (She who fought like a man, she was the Queen of Jhansi).” That verse could perhaps be forgiven for equating valour with manliness, since it was written in the early 1900s. Decades later, sycophantic, sexist Indian netas were still adjectivising “man” as a synonym for “decisive” and “brave”. Indira Gandhi was “the only man in her Cabinet”, they said. Israel’s Golda Meir and Britain’s Margaret Thatcher had already earned similar epithets. What a shame that Indian language is still so regressive and gender insensitive, that a film on a gutsy woman police officer is titled Mardaani.

Sarkar’s gender politics is confusing. His Lalita in Parineeta (2005) defied norms. Pinky in Lafangey Parindey (2010) was fiercely independent. In between came Laaga Chunari Mein Daag (LCMD) bearing the absurd lesson that a woman alone in the big bad city has no choice but to turn to prostitution to earn a living. Everything except the title of Mardaani and that last sentence from Shivani are a complete departure from LCMD’s inexplicable medievalism.

That’s the only daag on this otherwise excellent film, which provides a well-deserved platform to one of Bollywood’s best actresses. Rani is pitch perfect as Shivani. She also looks sweet with barely any makeup on. She gets the physicality just right, looking fit, like a fit woman would be, and is delightful in those thoroughly un-Singham-like action and fight scenes. Good job, girl!

Backing her are wonderfully natural supporting actors in well-written roles. The most unusual character of the lot is the trafficking boss who possesses neither the complexion nor the looks, language or demeanour typically associated with Bollywood gangsters. This Hindi-English-speaking Hindu College dropout is the kind of chap who could be your neighbour or mine. He’s played by the lovely Tahir Bhasin who was noticeable even in Abhay Deol’s dismal production One By Two earlier this year, so you can imagine how he shines in this sparkling film.

Mardaani’s clean writing by Gopi Puthran is complemented by cinematographer Artur Zurawski and editor Sanjib Datta’s no-fuss work. Together with Sarkar, they manage to portray the sexual exploitation of girls without being exploitative themselves. Except for that final song, the use of music is minimal, which is well suited to the tenor of the film. The sharp dialogues are rarely melodramatic. There’s some interesting referencing of religion (a muezzin’s call at an interesting point) and popular culture (watch out, Breaking Bad fans). Also neat is the way Delhi NCR has been woven into the scenario, with a Gurgaon multiplex, the Metro, the Hanuman statue at Jhandewalan and our newest landmark, that striking gigantic Tiranga in CP set up by industrialist Naveen Jindal’s Flag Foundation, distinguishing the Capital from Mumbai where the story first takes off. No cliched shots of India Gate and Rajpath as is the wont of most Hindi films.

Let’s pretend we didn’t hear that last line and that they called the film something else. After Kangna Ranaut’s Queen, here comes Rani The Action Queen. This has been a good year for proving that women-centric films can be fun. “Kadam milaake dekho toh / Main saath mein tere chal doongi / Par chhed ke dekho tum mujhko / Main tumko nahi chhodoongi,” goes the song playing in the background in the final scene. It’s more dramatic than the rest of the film, but after years of watching Salman, Ajay & Co mindlessly bashing up baddies in an often enjoyable but always unrealistic fashion, I confess I had a rollicking good time seeing a woman grind her foot into a creep’s groin in a far more probable fashion. Mardaani strikes that delicate and hard-to-achieve balance between realism and entertainment. Very very nice, Mr Sarkar.

Rating (out of five stars): ***1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	114 minutes

Photograph and videos courtesy: Yash Raj Films

Mardaani anthem “Main tumko nahin chhodoongee”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHizXKSN5II&feature=youtu.be