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 353: TITLI

Release date:	October 30, 2015
Director:	Kanu Behl
Cast: Language:	Shashank Arora, Shivani Raghuvanshi, Ranvir Shorey, Amit Sial, Lalit Behl Hindi

Titli is one of the most gripping Hindi films to come to theatres this year. It is entertaining in a hard-to-explain sort of way because it is so heart-stoppingly matter of fact about the horrific, sad, almost bizarre reality check it delivers.

“Reality check” because its universe is far removed from the Hum Saath Saath Hain brand of family that Sooraj Barjatya and many of his colleagues have popularised among Bollywood audiences. Vikram, Bawla and Titli in this film are together not for the saccharine reasons that have bound Barjatya’s many clans. They don’t sing, dance and beam at the camera. They don’t joyously celebrate festivals, marriages and every day of their lives bedecked in designerwear. They don’t match their clothes to their wall paint and furniture. The most these three brothers can afford or bother with is to shave and appear less scruffy when they try to get a bride for the youngest of the three, the interestingly named Titli. They share a home by an accident of birth and an inexplicable bond that comes from the happenstance of being born to the same parents.

When we first meet them, Titli is straining at the leash, trying to get away from the life forced on him by his violent, car-jacking siblings. He is desperately saving money when the elder two discover that he wants out. They decide to get him married. A wife will not only tie him down, they figure, she will also be a big help in their trade. The young female entrant into their all-male household – which includes their eerily quiet father – has a strange story of her own.

Titli is gritty. It is often violent, entirely disturbing, occasionally tough to watch, unexpectedly amusing in flashes and at every step of the way, compelling. What makes it worthwhile even when it is challenging is the non-voyeuristic manner of the portrayal. Besides, despite the dismal scenario in which it is set, in an unlikely alliance that emerges through the story, there shines an unexpected ray of hope.

So assured is his hand on the baton, that it is hard to believe Kanu Behl is a debutant in direction. Some explanation for his steady vision comes from his CV: he has assisted Dibakar Banerjee in the past and was the co-writer of Love Sex Aur Dhoka with Dibakar (who is a co-producer of this film). No doubt it helps too that Kanu’s co-writer on Titli is Sharat Katariya, the writer-director of my favourite Hindi film of 2015 so far, Dum Laga Ke Haisha.

Like Dibakar, it is clear that Kanu and/or Sharat know Delhi well. This is evident, for instance, from how specific they are about the locality where they place their parivaar of Dillivaasis in the story. Jamna Paar (the other side of the River Yamuna) is not a standard Hindi film location. For most snooty south Delhi inhabitants, it has for long signified a lesser part of the Capital which the wealthy do not inhabit. They have less knowledge of the city’s geography and sociology than Team Titli who are aware that there are worlds within worlds, that rising property prices have meant that many moneyed families too reside here. And so Vikram, Bawla and Titli are not just generally placed somewhere in Jamna Paar but precisely in a narrow bylane of a messy mohalla near Jamna Paar’s Mother Dairy plant.

This element in the detailing is as delightful as the banians the men wear at home, discoloured from the original white to a sweat-and-overuse-induced dullness. It is among the many reasons – the unrelenting intensity included – that make Titli such an oddly pleasurable experience.

If I have a grouse against the film, it is that in the post-interval portion, certain plot points and especially the explanation for Titli’s getaway plan get slightly confusing. And though I understand the need to shock with bloodletting especially to convince us of Vikram and Bawla’s consciencelessness and unblinking amorality, I do not want to watch a self-indulgently extended puking scene in which the camera wanders close to the mouth of a puking man.

That being said, the film gives us much more to celebrate than not. It is, for instance, a sermonless, unobtrusive smack on the face of patriarchy. It is also a twisted ode to love and second chances. As for Titli’s cast, they are uniformly, intimidatingly good and highly believable. I confess I have not so far found Ranvir Shorey interesting – that changes with his performance as Vikram in this film. Even lovelier is Amit Sial as Bawla. This wonderful actor ought to be routinely cast as a leading man in films. Newcomer Shashank Arora plays Titli with great restraint and Shivani Raghuvanshi as his wife Neelu is brilliant. The two are so amazingly real, it’s as though the film’s casting director plucked them out of real homes in Dilli’s Jamna Paar in a grimy colony somewhere in the vicinity of Mother Dairy.

Titli was screened in the prestigious Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival last May. It has taken 17 months for this remarkable film to come to mainstream Indian theatres. That is 17 months too many.

It is but natural for Dibakar to back a film that shares his cinematic worldview. The pleasant surprise here is that Titli’s co-producer is Aditya Chopra, whose directorial blockbusters so far are the polar opposite of this film. The Dibakar-Aditya collaboration bodes well for the future of filmmaking in the country. Together they have introduced us to an important new voice in Indian cinema with Titli. Welcome to the national scene, Kanu Behl.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	116 minutes

Poster courtesy: Yash Raj Films