REVIEW 566: KULDIP PATWAL: I DIDN’T DO IT!

Release date:	February 2, 2018
Director:	Remy Kohli
Cast: Language:	Deepak Dobriyal, Gulshan Devaiah, Raima Sen, Parvin Dabas, Anurag Arora, Jameel Khan, Vikram Kochhar   Hindi

A poor upper-caste man is jailed on suspicions of having assassinated the young chief minister of a fictional north Indian state. Please read the word “poor” here to mean not just impoverished but also “bechara” and “paavam”. Because while cracking the mystery of the murdered CM, writer-director Remy Kohli’s Kuldip Patwal: I Didn’t Do It! offers an unrelenting, undisguised lament for communities once privileged by birth. In Kohli’s worldview, clearly hapless upper castes are now perennial victims of uncaring politicians and reservations unfairly being granted to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes whose plight seems irrelevant to him.

The insensitivity of the film’s simplistic, one-sided take on caste politics is only one of its follies. Another is its apparent conviction that it is very clever. As exasperating as its ideology is the narrative style, which jumps from flashback to flashback to – sigh – yet another flashback, for no particular reason other than that someone probably considered this a smart thing to do.

The truth is that after the first half hour of this 127-minutes-long enterprise, I lost interest in whether or not Kuldip Patwal did it. My concern was why Deepak Dobriyal, Gulshan Devaiah and Anurag Arora did Kuldip Patwal. Do these gifted artistes share the film’s convictions or are they, like scores of other talented actors, struggling to find worthwhile roles in worthwhile films in nepotistic, star-obsessed Bollywood?

So anyway, Kudip Patwal: I Didn’t Do It! begins with the killing, in September 2013, of three-term chief minister Varun Chadha (played by Pravin Dabas), and brief shots of the alleged assassin standing not far away. It then rewinds to 15 minutes before the murder.

The flashback bears little fruit and we are back at the assassination and the arrest of Kuldip Patwal (Dobriyal) who was in the audience at the rally where Varun was shot dead. Kuldip insists he is innocent. The local cop Ajay Rathore (Arora) is soft on him. Lawyer-philanthropist Pradyuman Shahpuri (Devaiah) is roped in to defend him.

When Pradyuman meets Kuldip for the first time in jail, the film flashes back to 11 years earlier. Then at some point it travels to 18 months earlier. The telling of Pradyuman’s story is interspersed with snippets from Varun Chadha’s life. The bright, hard-working and educated Pradyuman shone in an exam for a sarkari naukri. He failed to get a job all the same because he is a general category candidate. Every step of the way, his struggles are exacerbated by the policy initiatives of this well-intentioned politician who, with no seeming malice, ends up quashing the dreams of this upper-caste man already suffering at the hands of an overbearing mother who makes too many demands on his ageing father.

Caste is a complex devil. Reservations have, in some arenas, altered power equations and consequently led to deep-seated resentment from communities that once had everything handed to them on a platter at birth but now must make do with a diminished share of the pie. Ignoring this resentment would be unwise, and in the hands of a more well-informed, skilled and sincere writing team, Kuldip Patwal could have been an insightful take on India’s changing caste dynamics.

A long road separates “could have” and “is”. Kuldip Patwal: I Didn’t Do It! fails to make that journey since it is too busy not giving a damn about Dalits while simultaneously trying desperately to be an edgy thriller.

Past to present. Present to past. Past to present. The film swings back and forth although the non-linear narrative does not serve any purpose in either building up suspense or empathy for the sketchily written characters. During Kuldip’s trial, there is a flashback to “14 years earlier” and then to “12 years earlier” and then...well, I did not care.

I do care about Deepak Dobriyal, Gulshan Devaiah, Anurag Arora and others in the credit rolls though. Dobriyal’s calling card as of now is the fireworks display he has put up for us as the hero’s friend Pappi in the Tanu Weds Manu films. He also tugged at the heartstrings in last year’s Hindi Medium. Devaiah is still struggling to find a foothold in Bollywood after an explosive debut in 2011’s Shaitan directed by Bejoy Nambiar.

On the other end of the spectrum in this cast is Raima Sen – granddaughter of the legendary Suchitra Sen – whose emotive abilities the late Rituparno Ghosh tapped so well in his directorial ventures. She plays the dead Varun’s wife who is also (you won’t believe this) the lawyer for the state in her husband’s murder case. The rest of her co-stars here do the best they can with Kuldip Patwal’s perfunctory writing. Sen, on the other hand, appears stiff and lacklustre throughout this pointless mish-mash of caste, murder and politics.

Still, she should be commended for not bursting out laughing in the film’s final scene when its supposedly great grand twist is revealed. Drum rolls please!

There should be a national award headed your way just for that, Ms Sen.

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	127 minutes 7 seconds

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/kuldip-patwal-i-didnt-do-it-movie-review-a-pointless-mish-mash-of-caste-murder-and-politics-4332067.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialKPmovie/

REVIEW 562: VODKA DIARIES

Release date:	January 19, 2018
Director:	Kushal Srivastava
Cast: Language:	Kay Kay Menon, Mandira Bedi, Raima Sen, Sharib Hashmi Hindi

Vodka is an intoxicant, but expect the opposite effect from director Kushal Srivastava’s Vodka Diaries now in theatres. The title is drawn from a nightclub in Manali linked to a series of murders that ACP Ashwini Dixit (Kay Kay Menon) sets out to solve in the film. Subsequent scenes reveal that those crimes may well have occurred only in Dixit’s imagination, as character after character that he had seen dead resurfaces around him, healthy and whole. Either that, or someone is playing a nasty trick on him or orchestrating a cover-up. Take your pick.

When these mind games begin, Dixit is already traumatised by a recurring nightmare. He fights hard not to succumb to his confusion and fears, even as his wife Shikha, a poet played by Mandira Bedi, tries to soothe his nerves when that bad dream occurs. To some extent their banter does calm him down.

In addition to the lead couple and the murder ‘victims’, there are two important players in this story: a mystery woman played by Raima Sen who is shadowing Dixit, and a subordinate cop (Sharib Hashmi) who is a master of pathetic puns and jokes.

Vodka Diaries’ basic concept may have been developed better by a better writer, but as things stand, when the big reveal comes, Raima Sen’s character’s secret is so silly that the aspect of the plot which had potential – why Dixit sees what he sees or thinks he does – ceases to matter.

Menon, who has been truly special in some films, usually needs a solid director to keep him in check. In the absence of controls in Vodka Diaries, he overdoes things to such an extent that he gives the impression that he is mocking himself, his character and the film.

Hashmi, who was so loveable in 2014’s unheralded Filmistaan, and Bedi are more invested in their half-baked roles. Sen, on the other hand, with not a hair or a dot of makeup out of place, looks pretty, bored and disinterested.

DoP Maneesh ChandraBhatt delivers some eye-catching shots of picturesque Manali, and along with the production design team manages to build up an ominous atmosphere in the early part of the narrative. However, the look of the film recedes into the background as the effect of the inert direction sets in and the overt effort to manipulate the audience gets tedious.

The casting director too must be called to account. The artistes playing the murder ‘victims’ are so indistinctive that, frankly, I could not bring myself to care whether they were alive or dead.

If the writing department had shown as much devotion to Vodka Diaries as Raima Sen’s styling team did, perhaps something could have come of it. The mystery here is not who the killer is, who died or whether someone died at all. The mystery is who the hell greenlit this undercooked script, deeming it worthy of being made into a film.

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	118 minutes

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/vodkadiariesthefilm/