REVIEW 718: JABARIYA JODI

Release date:	August 9, 2019
Director:	Prashant Singh
Cast: Language:	Parineeti Chopra, Sidharth Malhotra, Jaaved Jaaferi, Sheeba Chadha, Aparshakti Khurana, Sanjay Mishra, Neeraj Sood, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Sharad Kapoor Hindi

The road to cinematic hell is paved with concepts that must have sounded good on paper. A handsome young man who abducts grooms for a living falls in love with an irrepressible young woman. Those who know Bihar well will be familiar with Abhay Singh's trade: his clients are the families of unmarried women who cannot afford the dowry being demanded by potential grooms, and therefore get eligible men kidnapped and forcibly married to their daughters. Babli Yadav's father is anxious to see her married, but her reputation for wildness has ruined her prospects. She has clarity about her feelings for Abhay but he is all mixed up in the head because of his parents' failed marriage.

This was material that an efficient, talented team may possibly have expanded into something worthwhile. Instead, writer Sanjeev K. Jha's imagination appears to have gone on vacation after a while and director Prashant Singh has such a weak hold on the reins that what we get in Jabariya Jodi are a series of contrived twists and turns trying hard to be surprising, a bunch of characters with zero depth, and a lead couple whose convoluted journey to their fate even they seem disinterested in.

Others who lost interest in the project while it was on include the half dozen or so musicians involved who have churned out the most generic soundtrack you could imagine. Macchardani – composed by Vishal Mishra, with lyrics by Raj Shekhar, sung by Mishra and Jyotica Tangri – is the only song worth remembering.

If you really want to know about the business of groom-napping in Bihar, read news reports. Jabariya Jodi is too boring and shallow to be taken seriously as a source of information.

Parineeti Chopra and Sidharth Malhotra play Babli and Abhay, who seem to forget their Bihari accents at some point. Can’t blame them. Maybe they were distracted by the really bad lines trying to sound smart scattered throughout the film. I was distracted too, but I think there was one assigned to his Daddy, a goonda and aspiring politician played by Jaaved Jaaferi, which went something like this: Tum bahu (daughter in law) ka soch rahey hai, hum bahumat (electoral majority) ka soch rahey hai.

At first it is not all bad. Jabariya Jodi has its moments of humour early on. And how can one not enjoy just gazing at the sinfully handsome Sidharth Malhotra? But after Abhay abducts a lot of people, then Babli abducts him, then Abhay abducts her, and they all head off on a road to nowhere (there are no spoilers here, the trailer has revealed all this already) it was a struggle to stay awake.

There are some scenes aspiring to be intellectual and emotionally profound along the way, scenes in which he discusses his fear that he may turn out to be a jerk like his father and is therefore afraid to hook up with a woman he genuinely loves. Maybe there was something there worth exploring, but this team is clearly not equipped for the job.

Fine supporting artistes like Sheeba Chadha, Aparshakti Khurana, Sanjay Mishra and Chandan Roy Sanyal are criminally frittered away in Jabariya Jodi. As for the leads, it is hard not to feel sad about their wasted potential.

Parineeti Chopra had shown great spark in her debut film Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl (2011), but has since then seemed more invested in publicising her impressive weight loss than picking solid scripts. There is only so far that your bright diamond-like eyes can take you, Ms.

Malhotra deserves better but either does not have the right instincts for scripts or is just not getting good offers. Either way, the hottie from Student of the Year and Ek Villain, he whose eyes can by turns be pools of pain, longing and mischief, he who gave so much to the lovely Kapoor & Sons and Ittefaq, is too good for the bland fare that has dominated his filmography since 2012. Jabariya Jodi makes the worst of his films so far look worthy of National Awards though. For one, it has the depth of a teaspoon. More important, it is dull dull dull.

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA (bookmyshow)
Running time:	144 minutes (bookmyshow)

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/jabariya-jodi-movie-review-sidharth-malhotra-is-too-hot-and-happening-for-such-bland-fare-7135641.html

Visuals courtesy: Spice PR

REVIEW 600: ANGREZI MEIN KEHTE HAIN

Release date:	May 18, 2018
Director:	Harish Vyas
Cast: Language:	Sanjay Mishra, Ekavali Khanna, Shivani Raghuvanshi, Pankaj Tripathi, Brijendra Kala, Anshuman Jha Hindi

Autumnal love tales hold out the promise of yearning and hope combined. They speak either of happiness reclaimed and second chances claimed or of opportunities forever lost. Writer-director Harish Vyas’ Angrezi Mein Kehte Hain is one such. Produced by the National Film Development Corporation and Drumroll Pictures, it is the story of a middle-aged man who has taken his wife for granted through almost a quarter century of marriage but realises her worth when the possibility of losing her looms large.

Sanjay Mishra plays the silver-haired Varanasi-based post-office employee, Yashwant Batra, who has shared his life and home for 24 years with his accommodating spouse Kiran (Ekavali Khanna). The couple has a college-going daughter, Preeti (Shivani Raghuvanshi), who is secretly involved with the local boy Jugnu (Anshuman Jha).

We have all seen couples like Yashwant and Kiran, the sort who seem to be together out of habit more than anything else, whose bond is sustained by custom and tolerance not affection or attraction. In terms of thematic plausibility then, Angrezi Mein Kehte Hain is initially on solid ground. However, it stumbles after a while, because the screenplay runs out of imagination and is unable to take the story forward with conviction, depth or gravitas.

Firstly, it wants us to see that below his rough façade, Yashwant fosters a great love for Kiran after all. This claim is hard to swallow though considering that his behaviour towards her through the first half is not merely undemonstrative, it is outright selfish.

His attitude goes beyond the social conditioning that leads him to tell Preeti: “She (Kiran) manages the house, I go to office – this is what you call a marriage.” It goes beyond the daughter’s admonition that he does not know the difference between love and duty. In truth he is a narrow-minded patriarch who genuinely thinks it is the natural order of things that the entire household should revolve around him and his needs.

It is possible to buy into the house-bound Kiran’s longing for an expression of tenderness from her boring, brusque husband, but Yashwant’s post-interval claims of fondness for her defy believability, unless you accept the conventional notion that habit and love are the same thing. While this failing is largely due to weak writing, it does not help that Mishra – who has been so remarkable so often in the past – is unable to pull off the role.

Not only is the veteran actor miscast here, he has zero chemistry with his heroine. He is a particularly awkward fit in scenes in which Yashwant belatedly courts Kiran. Far from injecting poignance or the intended humour into these passages, the writing, his acting and styling reduce the man to a caricature.

In sharp contrast to Mishra’s turn as Yashwant is Ekavali Khanna as Kiran. She is a knockout, an actor with a personality so arresting that you have to wonder why on earth we see so little of her in films. Khanna was in Sudhir Mishra’s Daas Dev last month, playing a poorly sketched character. In a dominant role in Angrezi Mein Kehte Hain, she steals the show from right under the nose of the film’s more famous leading man.

When Kiran (in lovely cotton saris, I must add) is not around to overshadow him, the strong-willed Preeti does. The girl’s refusal to settle for a husband like her Dad is unapologetically articulated, a refreshing change from the dutiful tone good children compulsorily adopt towards the worst of parents in orthodox Bollywood. Her disgust for his self-centredness co-exists with love for him, whether instinctive or in recognition of his better qualities, far more credibly than the characterisation of Yashwant. 

Shivani Raghuvanshi’s natural performance as the firebrand Preeti lives up to the expectations raised by her brilliance in 2015’s Titli. And Brijendra Kala as Jugnu’s father is fun to watch. Pankaj Tripathi, usually a critic’s delight, is wasted in a clumsily written satellite role, as a devoted husband called Firoz Khan nursing his unwell wife.

Although the insertion of songs in the narrative is not always smooth, the pleasantness of Angrezi Mein Kehte Hain’s soundtrack compensates for this abruptness. It is a joy to hear Shaan’s distinctive voice after such a long time, partnered by the talented Vaishali Mhade and Pravin Kunwar in the sweet romantic track Meri ankhein composed by Kunwar. Another star singer, Mohit Chauhan, toplines Oni-Adil’s melodic Tera hua main jab se with its introspective lyrics by Pratibha Tiku. The album features an eclectic mix of numbers, all hummable, ranging from the catchy Aaj rang hai, which is Oni-Adil’s take on a traditional Amir Khusro qawwali, to a semi-classical piece and one wedding song.

Three numbers reportedly mark a return to films of the lyricist Yogesh whose past credits include the iconic Anand, Chhoti Si Baat and Baton Baton Mein. Yogesh writes in Meri ankhein: “Mere khayalo ke aasmaan par tum hi toh chhaaye ho / mere jivan mein leke bahaare tum hi toh aaye ho / main sach kahu toh tum jaan ban kar mujh mein samaaye ho.” (Roughly: My mind is filled with thoughts of you / you have ushered a spring into my existence / truth be told, you are the life that resides within my being.)

These earnest lyrics, the soothing musical score and two cracking women are betrayed by the tepid writing of Angrezi Mein Kehte Hain’s second half, belying the bunch of international festival awards listed in its trailer. The film derives its title from the song Angrezi mein kehte hain ki I love you in the Parveen Babi-Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Khud-Daar (1982), reminding us, as the strapline on the poster puts it, that you should “just say it!” The problem with Harish Vyas’ film is that though the hero does say it, he does not convince us that he feels it at all.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	108 minutes 30 seconds

A version of this review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/angrezi-mein-kehte-hain-movie-review-sanjay-mishra-is-miscast-in-a-tepid-love-saga-saved-by-its-leading-ladies-4473949.html

Poster courtesy: National Film Development Corporation

REVIEW 547: KADVI HAWA

Release date:	November 24, 2017
Director:	Nila Madhab Panda
Cast: Language:	Sanjay Mishra, Ranvir Shorey, Tillottama Shome, Bhupesh Singh, Ekta Sawant Hindi

                                                                                                                   

How do you teach a child living in a drought-ridden region the meaning of the word monsoon? An amusing early classroom scene in Kadvi Hawa, in which a teacher asks his students to name the four seasons, encapsulates everything that this film sets out to do: give us reason to think, even while unexpectedly entertaining us in a grim setting.

There are no easy answers in Kadvi Hawa (Bitter Wind, though the filmmaker translates it as Dark Wind). In fact, there are no answers at all. Writer-director Nila Madhab Panda’s latest work, on a poor family in a drought-stricken north Indian village, is filled with questions that strike at the heart of our understanding of humanity.

It is a story of what climate change does – and will do – to our species. It is more than that too: a portrait of desperation, for one. If a victim of extreme poverty, government apathy, the criminal foolishness of generations of human beings and other back-breaking circumstances, were to harm others in his situation to save his own skin, would you condemn him or sympathise? Is there such a thing as a right reaction here?

It has been a few days since I watched this film and I am still grappling with that discussion in my head, as I have for years since I read Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, a troubling account of the author’s time in concentration camps during World War II – troubling not only for the staggering scale of Nazi cruelty described in its pages, but also because of Frankl’s frank narration of the survival tactics used by some inmates. 

In a different time and place, Kadvi Hawa examines the same harsh truths, in a world that feels more comfortable with itself if it can view victims of wrongdoing as repositories of unshakeable virtue.

Kadvi Hawa revolves around a blind old man called Hedu (played by Sanjay Mishra) who is worried that his son Mukund (Bhupesh Singh), an impoverished farmer, will commit suicide as he grapples with crop failure and an unrepaid loan. Mukund now sustains the family by doing odd jobs that bring in meagre earnings. His wife Parvati (Tillottama Shome) works from morning till night to keep the house running. They have two children: their schoolgoing daughter Kuhu (Ekta Sawant) and their baby Pihu.

Hedu’s fears are heightened by the arrival of the local bank’s loan recovery agent Gunu (Ranvir Shorey), who has a reputation for driving at least a couple of people to suicide at each of his postings.

Already, there are those in the vicinity who have taken their own lives. In this scenario, where nature’s wrath spares no one, unexpected alliances emerge.

When things go wrong, we all want someone – a person or two, an institution perhaps – to blame. Kadvi Hawa offers no easy scapegoats, no black-and-white rationalisations, but a challenging, absorbing realm of grays. This is an unrelenting film where even when humour rears its head, it does so to make a poignant point. Ramanuj Dutta’s cinematography underlines the starkness of the landscape, delivering Hedu’s land to us in all its blandness, as the dustbowl that it is.

The acting – by the primary cast and satellite artistes – is uniformly solid. And the two leads, Mishra and Shorey, deliver towering performances that might make you want to erase from memory some of the more high-profile commercial films they have worked on in Bollywood.

Although climate change is the overriding theme, writer Nitin Dixit (who is credited for the story, screenplay and dialogues, with Panda himself named as a co-writer of the story) finds space here to explore relationships that blossom in misery. There is such sweetness to Hedu’s bond with Pihu, for instance. And in their home, where tension runs high but fights are few and low-key, we sense a numbness camouflaging the despair the adults feel.

Kadvi Hawa could perhaps be seen as a morality tale, but it does not overtly preach. Although its climax walks a fine line on the subject of natural retribution that could be questionable in this superstitious nation, the film’s victory lies in the fact that as the credits roll, we are forced to introspect because the storyteller give us no one in particular to hate.

Nila Madhab Panda’s calling card so far has been his multiple-award-winning 2011 venture I Am Kalam, a sunny tale of a bright kid who is desperate for an education. Kadvi Hawa is a complete break from that film’s tone, but equally compelling.

Reciting a poem he has written on pollution for this one, Gulzar’s voiceover runs over the titles in the end. “…ye zameen darti hai ab insaanon se,” he tells us. This land now fears humans. Not governments, not politicians or industrialists alone, but humans as a whole. Kadvi Hawa is a bitter pill to swallow, and one that is designed to compel us to look within.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	95 minutes

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/kadvi-hawa-movie-review-sanjay-mishra-ranvir-shorey-excel-in-this-nuanced-take-on-climate-change-4225365.html

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