REVIEW 677: BADLA

Release date:	March 8, 2019
Director:	Sujoy Ghosh
Cast: Language:	Taapsee Pannu, Amitabh Bachchan, Tony Luke Kocherry, Amrita Singh, Tanvir Ghani, Manav Kaul Hindi

Two people are found by the police in a hotel room in the European countryside. One of them, a photographer called Arjun Joseph (Tony Luke Kocherry, credited here as Tony Luke), is lying dead, while the other, the renowned businessperson Naina Sethi (Taapsee Pannu) is injured. The woman claims that there was an unidentified third party within those four walls with them, although no one was seen leaving and all possible exits were in any case secured from inside.

Her guilt as a murderer is therefore assumed, but Ms Sethi will have none of that. She hires an expensive lawyer called Badal Gupta whose expertise in ‘preparing’ witnesses is legendary in legal circles since he has not lost a single case in a 40 year career. His mantra: “Kanoon wahi sach maanta hai jo saabith kiya ja sakta hai.” (The law believes to be the truth that which can be proved.) Badla begins with this tall, bearded man (Amitabh Bachchan) arriving for a meeting with Sethi to hear her account of events. The narrative unfolds in a series of flashbacks as she tells him what transpired between her and Joseph. 

Writer-director Sujoy Ghosh’s Badla (Revenge) is the Hindi remake of the Spanish crime thriller Contratiempo a.k.a. The Invisible Guest, written and directed by Oriol Paulo, and currently streaming on Netflix. The adapted screenplay – replete with references to the Mahabharat – has been attributed to Ghosh while Paulo has been duly acknowledged as the writer of the original story in the Hindi film’s credits.

Contratiempo and Badla belong to the sub-genre of thrillers where the viewer hears several versions of the truth narrated by various people, some who have credibility because they were present at the site and some who may not necessarily have been there. If you are listening and watching carefully enough, you may spot at least two gaping loopholes much before the big reveal. This is a fault of the written material by Paulo, not Ghosh’s direction or the acting. For instance, the story is pivoted on the extreme and uncharacteristic inefficiency of one of the individuals involved, and calls for considerable suspension of disbelief from anyone who notices this flaw.

Ghosh’s direction is, in fact, efficient as is Monisha R. Baldawa’s editing while they aim at having us guess who is to be believed and who not. Badla’s DoP is Avik Mukhopadhayay whose work on Shoojit Sircar’s October last year was sheer genius. Here he gives us elegant shots of Scotland’s natural beauty along with cleverly chosen frames featuring the various players in this psychological cat and mouse game between the storyteller and the audience.

The end result is a satisfying whodunit which, while certainly not brilliant, is suspenseful enough and occasionally eerie enough, especially when outdoors, to be entertaining while it lasts.

Pannu, like the film, is effective but not great. So is Bachchan.

The handsome model turned Malayalam film actor Tony Luke (Oozham, Sakhavu) makes his Hindi debut with Badla, and delivers the most impressive performance of the lead trio. As is expected in such films, with each retelling of the goings-on between Sethi and Joseph their characters change, sometimes marginally, sometimes dramatically. This good-looking young star lends subtlety even to the dramatic transformation in Joseph in one of the versions. I also love the fact that he does not camouflage his Malayalam accent when he speaks Hindi here – an interesting choice by the actor and his director. 

Amrita Singh has a crucial role in the film. Playing a distraught mother, she gives her character a convincing emotional graph as demanded by the screenplay without once devolving into Bollywood’s stereotypical over-wrought Maaaaaa.

Sujoy Ghosh is a leading light among thriller makers in Bollywood. His Kahaani (2012) starring Vidya Balan set new standards for the industry in this area. The pressure to live up to expectations raised by that film did show in the writing of the climax for Kahaani 2 (2016), but he reminded us of his unmistakable talent for mystery with director Ribhu Dasgupta’s unfortunately underrated Te3n (2016) starring Balan, Bachchan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, which he produced. Maybe some day he will replicate the brilliance of Kahaani, but today what he has given us is Badla: if you are not in too demanding a mood, this is an enjoyable film.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	120 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/badla-movie-review-taapsee-pannu-and-amitabh-bachchan-team-up-for-a-moderately-satisfying-thriller-6222101.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/RedChilliesEnt/  

REVIEW 449: KAHAANI 2 – DURGA RANI SINGH

Release date:	December 2, 2016
Director:	Sujoy Ghosh
Cast: Language:	Vidya Balan, Arjun Rampal, Jugal Hansraj, Kharaj Mukherjee, Tota Roy Choudhury, Naisha Khanna, Tunisha Sharma, Manini Chadha Hindi

If you believe the end maketh the movie, then writer-director Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh falls strictly in the category of the not-extraordinary. The second instalment in this series starring Vidya Balan features nothing like the surprise that punched us in the collective gut in Kahaani’s climax back in 2012.

Before the end comes the beginning though, and there is much to recommend in the journey between those two points here – the atmospherics, the pall of disquiet blanketing the narrative, the unusual subject, locations rarely explored by Bollywood (Kalimpong and Chandan Nagar in West Bengal in addition to Kolkata), the cast, and most of all, Balan.

Kahaani 2 begins with a young single mother in Chandan Nagar hanging out with her bedridden daughter. We soon learn that when Vidya Sinha is at work, she has a nurse coming home to take care of Mini who is paralysed from the waist down.

Vidya wants to take her daughter to the US for treatment that she hopes will give the child back the use of her legs. She persists with this belief although her kindly doctor in Kolkata cautions her against being too optimistic about a cure. Then one day an abduction followed by another tragic turn of events ruptures their happy, middle-class existence.

Who is that voice on the phone threatening to separate Mini from her mother forever? Will this Vidya – like the redoubtable Vidya Bagchi of the first film – thrash aside all obstacles to attain her goal? Keep guessing.

What made Kahaani an absolute killer was that its entertaining, layered storytelling was followed by a disclosure through which we realised that nothing had been what it seemed through the film. Kahaani 2 features many disturbing and mystifying individual elements. It also delivers some shock treatment for viewers midway through the first half. Ultimately though you realise that most things in the film were more or less what you thought they were when they first rolled by and the big reveal is just so-so.

The ending may not deliver the goods, but Balan certainly does. The media has for years now discussed her willingness to take on the physical attributes of the various characters she plays. While that is no doubt a remarkable quality, to focus on that alone would be an injustice to this fine artist since physical quirks can be used as crutches by average actors too. Balan’s strength is her ability to drown out her own personality for a role.

And so, here in Kahaani 2, there is not a trace of the hard-as-nails heroine of Kahaani, the overtly sexual, bubbly Silk from The Dirty Picture (2011) or the brazenly manipulative Krishna from Ishqiya (2010) who had no qualms about purring out the words “chutiyam sulphate”, at a time when the industry’s heroines were usually identified by their coyness.

When Vidya/Durga in Kahaani 2 recoils at the first touch of a man she loves, the actress convinces us of her character’s diffidence and fears. As a distraught mother and a victim of social indifference, she does what we have come to expect of this formidable star: she erases Vidya Balan to become the person she is playing, Vidya Sinha.

The rest of the cast offers no equivalent of the lovely Parambrata Chatterjee and Nawazuddin Siddiqui from Kahaani, but it is still good to see an evolving (dishy as always) Arjun Rampal playing the policeman with a past, Inderjeet Singh, and Jugal Hansraj – the little boy from Masoom who grew up to a lacklustre acting career – surprisingly effective as a creep. The incredibly cute Naisha Khanna and the interesting youngster Tunisha Sharma – both playing Mini at different stages of her life – get limited space to showcase their talent, but are clearly worth watching out for.

Though Kahaani 2 has none of the memorable detailing of satellite characters that made Kahaani outstanding (where are you, Bob Biswas?) it is unobtrusively insightful in its own way. The long-term effects of sexual abuse, victim blaming, the politics in the police establishment and small-town life are all dealt with effectively. I enjoyed the sweetness of the brief romance between Vidya/Durga and her beau Arun (Tota Roy Choudhury, nice!), his kindness to her and his non-aggressive wooing. And there is a refreshing, believable normalcy in the relationship between Inderjeet and his wife played by the sprightly debutant Manini Chadha.

The big let-down in Kahaani is the writing of the climax, whether viewed in isolation or in comparison with its remarkable predecessor. For the record, these are the credits: Screenplay – Sujoy Ghosh, Dialogues – Ritesh Shah & Sujoy Ghosh, Story – Sujoy Ghosh & Suresh Nair.  Ghosh, who is so confident in his conceptualisation till that point, is clearly aiming at a similar sock-the-viewer-in-the-neck impact as before, but comes up instead with an unimaginative, more or less predictable whimper.

To be fair, his deft direction and Namrata Rao’s skillful editing ensure that there is not a moment of boredom right until then. The two have found a good match in DoP Tapan Basu, production designers Kaushik Das and Subrata Barik who together manage to make the film’s small and large spaces feel cloistered and intimidating, while lending unexpected warmth to Vidya and Mini’s tiny home in Chandan Nagar.

Clinton Cerejo’s music gently wafts around the film and then ends with a bang: the neatly orchestrated, energetic rendition of Rabindranath Tagore’s Anandaloke mangalaloke accompanying the end credits is so haunting that I stuck around for the very last word to disappear from the screen.

Vidya Balan is fantastic in Kahaani 2, but storywise, the film is like a pleasant meal spoilt by a mediocre dessert. If only…

Rating (out of five stars): **

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	129 minutes 55 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/kahaani-2-movie-review-vidya-balan-is-lovely-but-sujoy-ghosh-climax-is-a-let-down-3135648.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahaani_2:_Durga_Rani_Singh

REVIEW 398: TE3N

Release date:	June 10, 2016
Director:	Ribhu Dasgupta
Cast: Language:	Amitabh Bachchan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vidya Balan, Sabyasachi Chakraborty, Padmavathi Rao, Aarnaa Sharma, Ricky Patel, Masood Akhtar Hindi with a little bit of Bengali

If you have seen the South Korean thriller Montage, then you do not need this cautionary note: Te3n is to be watched with rapt attention. No loo breaks, no glances at your cellphone.

This Amitabh Bachchan-Vidya Balan-Nawazuddin Siddiqui-starrer is an official remake of the 2013 film by writer-director Chung Keun-Sup, who is acknowledged in the credits here for the story. The narrative of the Hindi film is firmly rooted in Kolkata where events unfold over an eight-year period.

Bachchan plays John Biswas in Te3n, an old man whose eight-year-old granddaughter Angela is kidnapped and killed in 2007. Over the next eight years, Biswas relentlessly pursues police officer Martin Das (Siddiqui) who handled his case, determined to persuade him not to give up on finding the kidnapper whose trail had apparently long gone cold.

Angela’s death had a profound impact on Das too. He handles his trauma – or perhaps tries to escape his sense of guilt – by leaving the force to become a Christian priest. In 2015 when Biswas arrives at his church with a clue to the whereabouts of the kidnapper/s, Fr Martin Das urges him for the nth time to heal rather than rake up an old wound. 

Biswas is undeterred, of course. Meanwhile, Fr Das’ curiosity is piqued when another kidnapping takes place and his old friend, police officer Sarita Sharma (Balan), asks for help with the investigation because of the similarities between the two cases.

Central to the effectiveness of Te3n is its pace, which serves to build up a sense of dread and foreboding until the identity of the culprit/s is revealed. There are no high-speed car chases, screeching tyres and high-decibel shootouts anywhere in sight. This is not that kind of film. The simmering treatment is designed to unite viewers with Biswas’ frustration, to help us understand why he takes so many risks to attain closure. It is almost impossible to shake off the fingers of fear that grip the heart as he appears to repeatedly endanger himself in his quest for the truth. And when the big oh moment arrives without drumbeats and trumpeters, it is hard not to share his anguish and sense of helplessness.

The star of this film is director Ribhu Dasgupta’s refusal to step on the accelerator. Dasgupta clearly has a deep understanding of the film’s milieu and a firm handle on the solid written material at his disposal.

Suresh Nair & Bijesh Jayrajan’s screenplay favours minimalism over verbosity. So do the dialogues by Ritesh Shah. Both add to the film’s atmospherics and unyielding tension.

Tushar Kanti Ray’s cinematography complements their labours, capturing Kolkata’s chaos and colours sans clichés, lending shades of gray and a pall of detached gloom to the crowded city. It is as if, like John Biswas, for the camera too time has stood still while a bustling city hurries about all around.

The Howrah bridge, those bright yellow taxis, the immersion of Durga idols – all the familiar indicators make an appearance without screaming out that they have been dragged in to remind us that we are in Kolkata. And while none of these visual landmarks is overwhelming, there are some refreshing additions that Bollywood tends to not notice: Fr Das’ imposing church and an equally imposing imambara, both of which are crucial to the story.

Equally to the point, it is nice to see the way Ray focuses on the three beautiful faces that are pivotal to the film, without overdoing it as many DoPs have done particularly while working on Bachchan’s post-2000 films.

The detailing in the sound design by Shajith Koyeri and Tanmoy Chakraborty’s production design (especially of Biswas’ home and the interiors of the spaces from which Fr Das and Sharma operate) also play an essential role in Te3n’s very real, dramatic-yet-not-melodramatic quality. So is the action by Sham Kaushal, who is careful not to hark back to Bachchan’s invulnerable Angry Young Man avatar of the 1970s and ’80s.

Clinton Cerejo’s music is apt till the big reveal, although it is over-used after that point, which is also when the film carries on a lot longer than it needed to. Still, there is enough humanity, believability and suspense in Te3n to put its flaws in the shade.

Beyond the gripping mystery are some delightful elements that are unobtrusively woven in, indicating the team’s intimate knowledge of Kolkata, interest in Indian society at large and disinterest in superficiality, for the most part. For instance, minority community members are usually featured in Bollywood stories with a specific purpose: Muslims – secularism; Christians – glamour and exoticism; Sikhs, Parsis and homosexuals – comedy; Dalits – you’ve got to be kidding, they do not exist as far as most of mainstream Bollywood is concerned. In Te3n, however, a huge deal is not made of the fact that two of the three main characters are Christians, perhaps Sharma is too. And except for the irritating insistence on having them use the English words “god” and “prayer” instead of “bhagwan” and “prarthana” though they are speaking in Hindi throughout, they do not otherwise conform to the stupid Christian stereotype that dominated Bollywood till the 1990s and has occasionally reared its head since then. A song and dance is not made either of the religion of the kindly gentleman at the imambara.

The backroom team of Te3n is ably fronted by sound acting. Bachchan shrugs off the star persona and trademark mannerisms that have marked many of his post-2000 films, to deliver a felt performance, drawing us into Biswas’ grief and silent fury. Siddiqui’s subtlety as he switches from priest to policeman to priest to policeman underlines his casual brilliance. And Balan – who is inexplicably cited as a “guest appearance” in the opening credits – is as sturdy as ever, though hers is the least fleshed out character of the trio.

Thankfully too, nobody is trying to ‘do Bengali accents’ here. Seriously, accents are superfluous in such films. After all, it calls for a suspension of disbelief to buy that characters in Kolkata would operate entirely in Hindi. If we are willing to go that far, unless we never ever want a Hindi film to be set anywhere outside the Hindi belt, why would we needlessly burden actors with accents? This is one of many sensible directorial decisions that make up this film.

Te3n is not without weaknesses: it could have done with some snipping at the end, the title does not work and there are a couple of important loose ends that should have been – and easily could have been – tied up. For instance, the actions of a primary character hinge on the extreme cooperation and trust of an individual who is a satellite player in the story, but we never fully understand why and how that trust was won. You will get that sentence only after you watch the film in its entirety.

It is a measure of Te3n’s strengths that, in the overall analysis, these complaints recede into the background. It is so wonderful to see director Sujoy Ghosh who gave us Kahaani, backing this film as a producer. Ribhu Dasgupta’s Te3n is a strong, entertaining whodunit, so lovely in its sadness and so thoroughly engaging in its observations on old age, escapism, persistence, love and revenge.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	136 minutes 54 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/te3n-review-amitabh-bachchan-vidya-balan-nawaz-film-is-solid-suspense-thriller-2826374.html

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