REVIEW 647: PATAAKHA

Release date:	September 28, 2018
Director:	Vishal Bhardwaj
Cast: Language:	Radhika Madan, Sanya Malhotra, Vijay Raaz, Sunil Grover, Namit Das, Abhishek Duhan, Saanand Verma Hindi

Trust Vishal Bhardwaj to get to the root of India-Pakistan enmity plus crack Bollywood’s star system, both with one stone. His Pataakha (Firecracker) – coming a year after the Kangna Ranaut-Saif Ali Khan-Shahid Kapoor-starrer Rangoon – is a triumph of good acting without a single major star on its roster. Established, respected artistes: yes, in the supporting cast. Newcomers: yes, one of the leading ladies is a big-screen debutant while for the other, this is her second film, the first having been Nitesh Tiwari’s Dangal. Big stars: nyet.

Bhardwaj’s new film is also one of the most hilarious, vivid, electric portrayals of sibling rivalry ever seen on the Hindi film screen.

Pataakha is set in rural Rajasthan where Badki and Chhutki – “children of one mother yet thirsting for each other’s blood” – are constantly at each other’s throats. No particular reason can be pinpointed for this extreme animosity. It just is because they just are.

The two are so abusive and violent towards each other, that it is a wonder they did not finish each other off at birth.

Their widowered father is devoted to them but knows not what to do about their visceral hatred. Bapu (which is what he is called even in the credits – can’t help but grin at the Mahatmafication) earns a modest income from stone quarrying, but is constantly stretched by bribe-seeking government officials. As if that is not stressful enough for the old man, his daughters refuse to be constrained by custom or by his commands.

Based on Rajasthani writer Charan Singh Pathik’s short story, Do Behnein (Two Sisters), Pataakha is not merely a tale of siblings. Just as Hamlet in Kashmir was not about an internecine in-family war, but about Kashmir itself, here in Rajasthan, Badki and Chhutki become a metaphor for two warring neighbours who emerged from the same womb and seem incapable of getting along yet equally incapable of surviving alone. Sound familiar to denizens of the subcontinent?

The film operates at multiple levels. Even without its delicious political impertinence, Pataakha is a hoot. The battles between Badki and Chhutki have a maniacal, frenzied energy that is as heart-stopping as a series of high-adrenaline car chases. The unrelenting slurs the girls throw at each other are never at low volume, and in fact, they are so godawfully loud that if the staid nuns in my mother’s convent school who told her “girls should be seen and not heard” were to meet Badki and Chhutki, they are likely to go into an eternal faint. Except for one particular fight they have in a new home that made me uncomfortable with its decibels and wish for just a few moments of silence, the rest are ridiculously funny for the girls’ combustibility and vocabulary.  

TV’s Radhika Madan plays Badki. Sanya Malhotra, who was the younger Phogat sister in Dangal, is cast as Chhutki. Both personify the firecracker/s of the title. On the face of it, these are easy roles – the two young artistes could have leant entirely on their screaming as crutches. Instead, they ensure that their performances are not reductive nor entirely externalised. The outer trappings are the fun and lively part, but what makes this film an absolute killer is their inner journey, and both of them nail that part.   

Vijay Raaz has often been wonderful in his career, though never more so than when he played the tentwallah P.K. Dubey in Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding (2001) and the diamond thief in the Bollywood film Delhi Belly (2011). He has just as often been repetitive though. Not here. Bapu is a man of grays, swinging between confused liberalism towards his daughters and despotic behaviour. Through all this, but most especially when he resigns himself to his fate, Raaz makes him a loveable, likeable fellow.

The motley crew surrounding the sisters includes curious bystanders, innocent victims, interlocutors, intermediaries, peaceniks and troublemakers. The pick of the lot is the Narad Muni of the story, a fellow nicknamed Dipper played by Sunil Grover who also voices the wry, hysterical narration.

Dipper is part of the problem and also the solution. He gets off on getting the sisters to head for each other’s throats, yet once he puts a matchstick to the tinderbox that is their relationship, he also invests considerable effort in soothing their flared tempers. Grover is clearly having a blast with the role and his enthusiasm is infectious.

The dusty, grimy women look like they have not bathed in the entire first half (although at a literal level we know they do because Chhutki steals Badki’s clothes while she is in the bathroom one day). Even in the second half, when they are scrubbed out somewhat, they never come even close to being the polished, waxed, tweezed, plucked, made up, dolled up, gym toned, designer clothed, assembly-line heroines usually featured in contemporary Bollywood. Their faces mirror the dust-laden appearance of a film in which both sparring parties are ever prepared to get down and dirty with each other on the spur of the moment.

Their enmity seems to have begun before the beginning of time – Pataakha does not care to clarify the origin. This could cause some confusion if you choose to dwell on it, but for me it was a source of fascination for where this narrative could possibly be headed. Once the allegorical nature of the story is gradually unveiled though, it is clear why Bhardwaj did not pinpoint a reason. There is none. Like south Asia’s (arguably) most enduring political rivalry, this one too is unreasoned, unreasonable, and such a matter of habit that at some point it has become intrinsic to the survival of those involved.

Of course that realisation raises this question: is it Vishal Bhardwaj’s contention that peaceful coexistence is impossible, even undesirable, for some? Pataakha leaves it to the audience to figure that one out, even as it sucks us into the whirlpool of its manic imagination.

This is not the first time that Bhardwaj has allowed his mind to run wild in the Indian countryside, unrestrained by form, formulae or any manner of convention, his music as rousing as the tale he tells. He tried something similar in Haryana back in 2013 with Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola, and fell flat on his face. It is a good thing he decided to lift himself up, brush himself off and return with Pataakha. Never before has a film been more appropriately named. What cracking good cinema this is.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	136 minutes 11 seconds

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pataakha

REVIEW 468: RANGOON

Release date:	February 24, 2017
Director:	Vishal Bhardwaj
Cast: Language:	Kangana Ranaut, Saif Ali Khan, Shahid Kapoor, Richard McCabe, Shriswara Dubey, Gajraj Rao, Saharsh Shukla, Kashmira Irani Hindi

Bloody hell!

She rides a horse across a stage near the India-Burma (Myanmar) border, blindfolds herself to throw knives at targets several feet away, bashes up bad guys, mud wrestles with a muscular soldier and runs swiftly atop a moving train.

The point is not that Kangana Ranaut merely manages to do all this in a film. The point is, she is convincing while executing challenging stunts, and looks good while doing them. So, allow me to borrow her character’s signature line in Rangoon: Bloody hell!

Ranaut is a queen. If there is one takeaway from Vishal Bhardwaj’s Rangoon, it is this: that there is something terribly foolish about a film industry which fails to fully tap the vast reserves of female talent at its disposal, and does not centre more action films around this lovely actress… or Priyanka Chopra… or Deepika Padukone… or Anushka Sharma… or any of their other feisty, fleet-footed women colleagues.

When Rangoon has the heroine displaying her physical prowess, it is on solid ground. It falters in other areas, but for the pleasure of seeing a fiery woman skillfully performing feats that have for too long been available only to the men of Hindi cinema, it is worth a watch.

Bhardwaj’s latest takes us back to 1940s India, where an action star screen-named Miss Julia (Ranaut) rules Bombay cinema. Her professional mentor and producer, Rusi Billimoria (Saif Ali Khan), is a married man who treats her like he would his pet poodle, a pretty creature to be patronised, pampered and protected, loved in the way he thinks love is meant to be given to a woman, but not respected.

We meet these two against the backdrop of multiple wars. Within India, Mahatma Gandhi and like-minded freedom fighters are trying to rid the country of its British colonisers with the weapon of ahimsa. Elsewhere, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose is building his Azad Hind Fauj. A battle is on between these two ideologies to capture the imagination of the people.

Meanwhile, Billimoria becomes beholden to the British for business reasons. Circumstances force Miss Julia to travel to the Indo-Myanmar border where she must headline a series of shows designed to raise the spirits of the ‘British’ troops stationed there. This is where she meets Jamadar Nawab Malik (Shahid Kapoor), an Indian like so many others serving in the British army, and employed to keep his own people down.

These then are the two triangles around which Rangoon revolves: Julia, Rusi and Nawab; India, Gandhi and Bose.

On the face of it, this is a setting bubbling with possibilities, and considerable swathes of Rangoon (especially in its second half) do mine that potential. Ranaut delivers a seemingly effortless, chameleon-like performance as a woman who is by turns fragile and fierce, hurting yet invulnerable, a child who grows into a woman during the course of the film. The actress and the character she plays here, possess a body that is as intriguing as her mind: she appears delicate, yet explodes with energy and athleticism when life demands it of her.

Thankfully, Rusi is not the suave, likeable, easygoing flirt Khan has played in too many films now. He is an amoral yet charming creature, a man of grays and internal conflicts that appear to surprise him as he discovers them. Khan is as assured here as he has been in his best work so far (read: Hum Tum, Ek Hasina Thi and Omkara), making Rusi hard to like yet impossible to hate in a way that only he can. Rangoon is a sorely needed reminder that this Khan is one of the finest actors among all the heroes in Hindi cinema right now, the one whose versatility has been least explored.

However, for the film to be compelling all the way, it needed us to root for Julia and Nawab, not Julia and Rusi, but the chemistry between Ranaut and Kapoor is strangely lukewarm. And Kapoor deadpans his way through the role, which is inexplicable considering that he is emerging here from a career best performance in Haider (2014) helmed by the same director.

Chemistry is not a factor of good acting alone, it emerges from great writing. Therein lies the problem with Rangoon. Unlike the immersive writing of Haider, Rangoon seems detached from its proceedings, narrating them like an observer rather than a participant.

The story of Rangoon is credited to Matthew Robbins who earlier wrote 2011’s Saat Khoon Maaf, which Bhardwaj directed. The screenplay has been jointly written by Robbins, Sabrina Dhawan (who wrote Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding) and Bhardwaj himself. Perhaps Bhardwaj should have known better than to team up once again with Robbins, considering that despite all the atmospherics and intrigue he managed to summon up in Saat Khoon Maaf, that too ended up feeling like an outsider’s view of the world it sought to create.

This is one reason why Rangoon does not come alive on screen. The film also takes too long to lift off. The best of Rangoon is packed into its second half, but it is once again pulled down by an overly dramatised, ham-fisted ending that is trying too hard to be emotionally wrenching in its nationalist fervour and imposing, but ends up being amusingly trite instead.

That said, the positives of Rangoon call out. Pankaj Kumar’s cinematography is imaginative and grand, and despite the occasional weak spot in the special effects, the film looks rich. Dolly Ahluwalia’s costumes, the hairdos and styling are all exemplary. The combination of Ranaut’s verve, the retro choreography by Farah Khan and Sudesh Adhana, well-written songs blending perfectly into the narrative and lavish set pieces, make Rangoon’s many song-and-dance numbers memorable.

The music is by Bhardwaj, the lyrics by Gulzar. Now that’s a team worth repeating. They roll out an entire spectrum of moods for Rangoon, ranging from the ruminative romantic ballad Yeh ishq hai to the frothy mischief of Mere miya gaye England. When the same film gives you Arijit Singh singing “Sufi ke zulfe ki / Lau utthi Allah hu / Jalte hi rehna hai / Baaki na main na tu” and “Mere miya gaye England / Baja ke band / Na jaane kaha karenge land / Ki Hitler chauke na”, in Rekha Bhardwaj’s voice, you almost will it to extend that quality into every other department.

If only.

Early news about Rangoon indicated that it was based on the true story of Fearless Nadia, the Australia-born actress who lived from 1908-1996 and ruled the Hindi film industry as an action star in her time. As is often the case with such Bollywood ventures, the rumours (very likely initiated by the film’s own team to generate a buzz around the project) have given way to an officially stated position that Rangoon has nothing to do with Nadia.

The truth is, Julia is probably inspired by Nadia, but this is not a biopic. This is a love triangle set in a time when the people of India were grappling with the opposing ideologies of the Mahatma and Netaji. The Bhardwaj who made Maqbool, Omkara and Haider is a man perfectly suited to a film like Rangoon. Sadly, without the writing brilliance of the director’s Shakespeare trilogy, Rangoon gets many things right, but fails to come together as an involving, engaging whole.

Still, Ranaut is remarkable playing the sort of character no Hindi film leading lady has been given for decades now. A big bow to Bhardwaj for that, and to the actress for choosing a path advocated by Gandhi, being the change she clearly wants to see in Hindi cinema. This action queen deserved a more vibrant film though.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	167 minutes 25 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/rangoon-movie-review-kangana-ranaut-is-an-action-queen-in-search-of-a-vibrant-film-3300232.html

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