REVIEW 229: SHAHID

Release date:	October 18, 2013
Director:	Hansal Mehta
Cast: Language:	Raj Kumar, Prabhleen Sandhu, Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Kay Kay Menon, Vipin Sharma, Baljinder Kaur Hindi

Shahid is an uncommon film that downplays the high drama intrinsic to its story. We’re talking about a young man who fled a terrorist-training camp, was falsely accused under an anti-terror law and jailed, then rebuilt his life and became a messiah of others similarly held under trumped-up charges. We’re talking about a man who faced threats throughout his career as a human-rights lawyer. We’re talking about a true story, tragic but steeped in optimism. Despite all these elements, director Hansal Mehta has resisted the temptation to make a high-decibel potboiler, delivering instead a disconcertingly real and highly effective film.

Shahid begins with the end of Shahid Azmi’s life, before rewinding to where it all began: a boy horrified by the brutality he witnesses at a terrorist-training camp. The story is precisely what I’ve told you in the preceding paragraph. It’s the quietly overwhelming detailing that makes this film what it is. There is extreme poignancy in Shahid’s interactions with his clients who are terror accused, there is humour in his decidedly un-subtle courtship of a pretty client. What’s most attractive about the writing of this film (by Hansal Mehta, Sameer Gautam Singh and Apurva Asrani) is that it doesn’t gloss over the protagonist’s flaws as an individual: he was selfless towards his clients and the wider cause of innocent Muslims being placed under the scanner every time terror strikes, but he also unthinkingly took his own brother for granted; he was an ultra-liberal towards women, he also bravely soldiered on with his work in the face of threats, but he was a coward about introducing his liberal wife to his conservative family.

That blend of contradictions is not easy to take on, but actor Raj Kumar (a.k.a. Raj Kumar Yadav) does so with seeming effortlessness. Despite a couple of leads, Kumar's filmography has been dominated by supporting roles so far. In Shahid, at last he gets a character and screen time into which he can sink his teeth and he does so with the ravenousness every good actor must feel when deprived of substantial roles. The rest of the talented cast includes Prabhleen Sandhu who drew attention in the unheralded Sixteen earlier this year and attracts the spotlight once again as Shahid’s bemused client; and the wonderful Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub as Shahid’s generous brother Arif. After an array of tiny film roles, Ayyub played Dhanush’s best friend in Ranjhanaa this year. Now, dear Bollywood, give him the leading role he so deserves!

This is a disturbing film yet it does not lead us to despair. Earlier this year in Shootout At Wadala starring John Abraham we met real-life gangster Manya Surve, a promising young student whose false incarceration led to a life of crime and a tragic end. It does not matter how Shahid Azmi’s story culminates. His life would have been worthless if we don’t see in it the positivity that shines through. True, young Muslim men falsely charged with crimes become vulnerable to crime-recruitment agents (as do poor African Americans and any other marginalised group anywhere in the world), but not everyone makes adversity their excuse for wrongdoing. Shahid did not, and that’s the great takeaway from this film.

This, however, brings me to my only grouse with the film. Shahid Azmi is in a terror training camp at the start of the film and the screenplay feels no need whatsoever to acknowledge that he had no business being there. These are not places that you and I might casually wander into by mistake. Yes, he did not use that training; yes, later he was kept in jail for too long though he’d committed no crime; but is it the contention of the writers that it is unreasonable for the police to even suspect the integrity and intentions of a person who decided to join such a camp? Fighting for minority rights should not mean glossing over minority wrongs. Those who do so end up preaching to the converted. In this aspect of the screenplay, the film plays into the hands of Sangh Parivar acolytes who are forever accusing secular liberals of refusing to ever acknowledge any wrongdoing by anyone in India’s Muslim community. I’m not saying we must bow to saffron fundamentalists, but that being apologists for any community is unwise. In the strange, suspicion-filled country that India has become, of course it takes courage to speak up for Muslims, but it takes as much courage to ask questions to Muslims. Onir’s I Am (2011) showed that rare courage, risked accusations of being anti-/pro-Muslim and anti-/pro-Hindu, and presented a more well-rounded picture of the Hindu-Muslim equation as a result.

Let this not for a moment take away from Shahid’s many triumphs. It’s most entertaining and simultaneously upsetting scenes are in the courtroom. Like Jolly LLB early this year, this film too gives us real courtrooms with real lawyers; not the gloss and glitz that mainstream cinema usually presents. Anyone who’s had the misfortune of getting stuck in judicial processes in India will recognise those cheap plastic chairs, the laughable, loophole-ridden arguments put forward by lawyers and the lackadaisical “tareekh pe tareekh” trauma of litigants expressed so melodramatically – but with such a deep understanding of reality – by Sunny Deol in Damini. Kudos to the partnership between the writers and art director Rabiul Sarkar in these scenes. Here and elsewhere, DoP Anuj Dhawan brings to us a forever-grey-and-brown Mumbai and Delhi, his restless camera adding to the constantly disquieting air of the film. Shahid does not spoonfeed us every element of the story; it assumes a certain intelligence in the audience as a result of which we’re expected to assume a lot that goes on – here, editor Apurva Asrani skillfully complements Hansal Mehta’s narrative style with his smooth, seamless work.

Shahid is an uncomfortable film, holding up a mirror to us and showing us what we’ve reduced our world to. This cautionary tale is a tale of hope though – and that’s what makes it lovely.

Rating (out of five): ****

CBFC Rating (India):	A (So this film gets an A certificate I assume because of a sliver of a human bum – not even the entire bottom – showing in one scene, but Boss gets a U/A despite extremely violent scenes of men breaking necks, arms and legs with bare hands?! Hypocrisy!)
Running time:	2 hours 9 minutes

Photograph courtesy: Effective Communication

163: TALAASH

Release date:	November 30, 2012
Director:	Reema Kagti
Cast: Language:	Aamir Khan, Rani Mukerji, Kareena Kapoor, Raj Kumar Yadav, Shernaz Patel, Sheeba Chaddha    Hindi

Have you ever watched a film and felt it had everything going for it, yet something didn’t quite add up? That you weren’t blown away despite liking so many individual elements in it? That’s how I felt as I left the hall after Talaash. The cast is impeccable. The atmospherics are perfectly set by cinematographer Mohanan, music director Ram Sampath and the production design team. This is a Mumbai that’s neither entirely glitzy nor completely grimy, just very disturbing. Reema Kagti and Zoya Akhtar’s screenplay explores marital ties in a way Hindi cinema rarely does. Yet in the telling of the tale, it doesn’t all quite come together.

Without giving away anything in this suspense thriller, here’s the story: Film star Armaan Kapoor is killed in a puzzling car accident and Inspector Surjan Singh Shekhawat (Aamir Khan) is called in to investigate. Surjan aka Suri realises there’s more to the case than meets the eye as he meets Armaan’s wife, friend and questionable contacts. All this happens while Suri and his wife grapple with the chasm that has emerged between them since they lost their son; and with their new neighbour who insists she can talk to the dead and also that the dead seek out troubled living souls. Thrown into the mix are the friendly prostitute Rosy (Kareena Kapoor), the no-gooder Taimur (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) and a missing pimp with a secret.

Can’t say a word more about the plot. What can be revealed though is that Rani Mukerji is simply brilliant in this film as Roshni, the woman struggling with the death of a child and the simultaneous loss of a living husband who blames himself for their boy’s accident. This is not a character aided by extreme physical disabilities such as she was in her role in Black. Nor does Roshni have any personality quirks to come to her rescue, like her Meenakshi Deshpande in Aiyyaa. In the simplicity and understatedness of her performance in Talaash, Rani reveals why Bollywood is doing us such a disservice by not writing more meaty roles to match her wonderful talent. C’mon Rani, you too owe it to us to go seek out those roles. The actress’ wardrobe manager also must be lauded for showing us that no one can be sexier than a neatly turned out, sari-clad Indian housewife who is fit yet not overly conscious of her looks.

And what does one say about Nawazuddin Siddiqui? Not a star in the fabled Rs 100 crore club, yet a star performer who can make us dislike his character although the actor himself has such an attractive, likeable personality! After Kahaani, Paan Singh Tomar, Gangs ofWasseypur and now Talaash, this must surely rank as The Year of Nawazuddin. The charismatic Kareena’s Rosy is miles ahead of her more studied 2004 performance as a hooker in Sudhir Mishra’s Chameli (though it must be said that in Talaash, she being a streetwalker from a grungy brothel, not a high-class call girl, her sophistication is inexplicable). Aamir as Suri is nicely underplayed. A special kudos to him for not leveraging his superstardom to hog screen space.

Where Talaash falters is in the writing and narration of its denouement. The actual background to Armaan Kapoor’s death, the secret he is holding on to, comes as a damp squib. The climactic surprise involving the reason for his final accident is a surprise indeed, yet is not as impactful as it should be – because Talaash feels like it’s trying to replicate the tone of a certain iconic Hollywood film we’ve seen about the talking dead; because the ending needed to have been told in a less languid fashion; and because too many minutes seem to have been devoted to it. The languorous pace that until then had contributed to an alluringly grim mood somehow takes away from the finale. In a film that’s meant to be a thriller, this is a big failing. If I watch Talaash again, it will not be for the suspense; I’d watch it again for its lovely cast, for ominous Mumbai but most of all for the Roshni-Suri marriage and the Rosy-Suri bonding so unusual for a Bollywood film.    

Rating (out of five): **9/10

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	140 minutes

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talaash_(2012_film)

REVIEW 151: GANGS OF WASSEYPUR 2

Release date:	August 8, 2012
Director:	Anurag Kashyap
Cast: Language:	Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Huma Qureshi, Zeishan Quadri, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Raj Kumar Yadav, Pankaj Tripathi, Richa Chadda, Piyush Mishra, Reemma Sen Hindi

This will be a short review: Gangs of Wasseypur 2 didn’t work for me. That’s it. There’s nothing much to say beyond that. Yes, Nawazuddin  Siddiqui is a wonderful actor and commendations need to go to both director Anurag Kashyap and casting director Mukesh Chhabra (one of the best in the industry) for the choices they’ve made in both editions of Gangs of Wasseypur ... on the other hand, the entire magnificent cast has been sorely under-used in this one. Yes, the music is fun and the lyrics are cheeky ... on the other hand, some of the sheen is lost because of the sameness to the proceedings they’re meant to complement. And yes, the treatment of some of the scenes of violence did take my breath away (in particular that one involving a dying man’s beating heart, of which I will say no more in this review) ... on the other hand, monotony sets in beyond a point. And so, in the overall analysis I found the film boring, overly long and repetitive, it didn’t add any particularly new dimension to the GoW1 story, and to be honest, I don’t understand why Part 2 needed to be made at all.

Gangs of Wasseypur 2 takes off where Wasseypur 1 left off, and then moves along pretty much the same lines. Sardar Khan (Manoj Bajpai) has been killed by Sultan and his men, which leads to a continuation of the Khan-versus-Qureshi inter-family war of generations. The politician Ramadhir Singh (Tigmanshu Dhulia) continues to pull the strings from a distance. And Sardar’s son and successor Faisal Khan (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) continues – like his father before him – to be emotional and sensitive before his wife but brutal and heartless elsewhere. The violence continues to be unrelenting. And Wasseypur town in Dhanbad continues to be ravaged by the pointlessness and mindlessness of it all. Continues … continues … continues … so what’s new?

Perhaps I might have liked GoW2 more as a standalone film without GoW1 coming before it. Perhaps the repetitiveness could have been dispelled if the focus of the film had shifted entirely from the unyielding cycle of bloodshed and political maneuvering, and to the vulnerability of Faisal’s reluctant gangster. Nawazuddin has one of the loveliest faces in Bollywood right now. His slight stature adds charm to the character of Faisal who is a politely shy boyfriend yet reveals himself to be a ferocious lover to his wife; a man who weeps because he was compelled by circumstances to join a battle not of his making yet is a single-mindedly cruel don. Unfortunately the film gives us only sporadic glimpses of an intimate portrait of Faisal. The overwhelming picture is of Faisal’s actions as a ganglord alongside the shenanigans of his brothers, pretentiously named Perpendicular and Definite.

The first two films of the Godfather series – to which GoW seems like an ode – were effective because they were not uni-dimensional and the sequel took the story forward. Not so with the disappointingly dull Gangs of Wasseypur 2. As a cine buff who has immense respect for Anurag Kashyap’s work, I seriously wish he had not made this film.

Rating (out of five): **1/4

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	160 minutes

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangs_of_Wasseypur_-_Part_2        

REVIEW 51: SHAITAN

Release date:	June 10, 2011
Director:	Bejoy Nambiar
Cast:	Kalki Koechlin, Neil Bhoopalam, Kirti Kulhari, Shiv Pandit, Gulshan Devaiya, Rajeev Khandelwal, Raj Kumar Yadav, Rajit Kapoor, Pavan Malhotra

Shaitan is what Paanch might have been if it had lacked soul but possessed more sheen. It must rank as one of the heartbreaks of contemporary Hindi cinema that Paanch, Anurag Kashyap’s debut film as director – a raw, sock-you-in-the-face, punch-you-in-the-stomach type of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll saga – was never released as a combined result of Censor intolerance and the producer’s problems. Nearly a decade after he made that film, Kashyap is now himself an influential Bollywood producer presenting to us debutant director Bejoy Nambiar’s Shaitan.

To begin with, this story is enjoyable and quite intriguing. Shaitan stars Kalki Koechlin from Dev D as a troubled NRI kid who’s just landed in Mumbai because her father is working on a government project. It’s evident from the start that Amrita Jayshankar a.k.a. Amy is mentally not all there. She writes her mother’s name on every piece of paper she can get and imagines that Mom has been confined to a mental institution though she’s dead. Her father and stepmother seem to love her, but she’s not willing to give them a chance. Enter: rebellion and ‘friends’. Amy meets Dash, KC, Zubin and Tanya, and the five decadent youngsters while away their days in a haze of booze, sex, cigarettes, drugs and a speeding Hummer. Wildness is second nature and remains that way even when a joyride leads to tragic consequences, and their lives spiral out of control.

They’re a charismatic bunch, these five actors. Neil Bhoopalam (Zubin) who we’ve earlier seen in No One Killed Jessica and model-turned-actress Kirti Kulhari (Tanya) deserve particular mention for their natural ease before the camera, and Shiv Pandit (Dash) for his easy good looks. Besides, our introduction to the depravity of these fast-talking, highly intelligent youngsters comes through well-edited sequences (take a bow, Sreekar Prasad) filled with sharp-witted, cheeky dialogues that are highly entertaining. When they first meet, Zubin tells Amy to choose him as her boyfriend. “F*** the tiger, save the Parsi,” he says. But the joy of these positives rapidly gets diluted as style takes over substance especially in the second half of the film. I remember the precise point at which the over-stylisation of Shaitan began to irk me. It’s when a clever story is being told in flashback – the word “flashback” flashes on screen, then it’s rewound, then the words “flashback mein flashback” appear, then ... well, the thing about being clever is that you must not allow the effort to show. And sadly for Shaitan, it feels like it’s trying too hard.

To be fair to Bejoy Nambiar, he’s got his basics in place – the production is slick, some of the writing is commendable, the accident that proves to be a turning point in the film is superbly executed, and he’s remarkably sure-footed while interlinking two long, parallel sequences of mayhem unfolding beautifully over that lovely classic song Khoya khoya chand (I really loved this part very very much). And so I’m keen to see how Nambiar will evolve with a second film. But in Shaitan, gloss overshadows heart beyond a point, which makes it tough to empathise with the characters or invest in their pain. I found myself enjoying the violence unfolding on screen, but not really caring too much about the fate of that crazy five. In fact, I was far more involved with a satellite character: Rajeev Khandelwal’s irrationally violent cop who is deeply in love with his estranged wife and is investigating a high-profile case while struggling with his own failing marriage.

The film’s catchy background score gets jarringly and unnecessarily loud in several places, and the characterisation of many of the central players isn’t very consistent either. Okay, I get that the lead five are spoilt, bratty and irresponsible, but there’s nothing that tells us in the beginning that they are fools. So what explains the loophole-riddled plan they come up with to get out of a tight spot? The plan doesn’t go awry solely due to circumstances beyond their control. No, it goes awry because it’s downright stupid. Amy is the daughter of a well-connected man, but when her bizarre behaviour makes it to television news, she and her friends seem surprised beyond belief. Why? Why does her stepmother suddenly break down saying she can’t live without Amy, although it’s obvious that the two barely have a relationship? And why do Amy’s parents – who otherwise come across as decent, caring folk – not take her to a psychiatrist when it’s staring all of us in the face that she’s been completely unhinged for years?

Kalki Koechlin has an uncommon and arresting face that worked perfectly for her out-of-control Chanda in Dev D. She deadpans her way through Shaitan. It would be a pity if her third film also features her as a wacko character given to a spot of debauchery, and relies more on her interesting facial features than her acting skills. On the other hand there’s my pick of this cast, Rajeev Khandelwal, whose exceedingly likeable personality and under-stated performance reminded me of why he was such a superhit as Sujal on the TV soap Kahiin To Hoga. I wonder why Bollywood is not giving him a better deal.

Shaitan is about five youngsters who are done in by the devilish streak within. It’s also a fine example of a promising film that’s done in by its own seeming determination to be glib. I’m waiting for your second film, Mr Nambiar.

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

CBFC Rating:                       A with one cut

Running time:                        128 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi with some English

Photograph courtesy: http://www.facebook.com/CultofShaitan