"Ugly" (HIndi Film Review)

I always fear Anurag Kashyap's films not just because they are dark and sordid and present  a grim picture of humanity. I dread his films for the monsters of fear that prey on my mind long after I moved out of the parking lot. "Ugly" had all the trappings of an Anurag Kashyap film - written and directed by him, full-blooded "A" certificate, negative title that promises to show the ugly side of modern life in Mumbai and produced by "Dar" motion pictures as if fear has become the new private equity in Bollywood productions. (But isn't it always the case with most films in India, alongwith love). So I went to the film, thankfully, alone. I was warned. And I paid the price. For 123 minutes, Anurag Kashyap cast his evil spell with a realistic story, "inspired by actual events" about a 10-year old girl's kidnapping. The kidnapping happens in a busy corner - a male supermodel parks his sedan and tells his daughter just to stay put in the car for five minutes as he finishes his errand upstairs. He is joined upstairs by his friend and protege - a casting director. He tells the hero-aspirant that the girl is missing. (But how did he know a girl is inside the car?). They search all over in vain and rush to the police station. Many frivolous chats with the FIR team later,  enters Ronit Roy - Crime Detection ACP. He takes special interest in the case because the missing girl is his foster daughter. His wife - Tejaswini Kolhapure (remember Padmini Kolhapure? Her sister) and the hero-model were once married and now divorced and Kali - the missing girl is their daughter. The story then moves with a riveting speed on what lies beneath a simple plot - there are layers of ugly side to each character: the hero-model loves his ex-wife and daughter a lot but lives-in with another model, Ronit Roy overworks his official machinery on the case of missing Kali so that he settles old scores over the hero-model, Tejaswini Kolhapure is unemotional as a mother but is trapped in feelings of helplessness over an unhappy marriage and many, many affairs with her ex-husband's associates, she is chronically depressed and has a grouse against Ronit Roy for being stone-deaf to her desires and demands, the casting director associate of the hero-model has many shades of grey and plays double games with everybody in the plot and then there are side-characters, kith and kin of Tejaswini who capitalise on the kidnapping drama and add to the angst of the two leading male characters.

The drama unfolds at breakneck speed but on familiar grooves - the police team keeps a tab on most people with GPRS installed devices and tracking equipment of all phones - and the suspects - all lead characters carry on their conversations unabashedly, adding to the viewers' confabulations. Hidden motives include greed, lust, guilt, revenge and revulsion. Anurag Kashyap is good at exposing the dark side but leaves the frames of highlighted emotions unadulterated - you hate them but that's what it is like, take it or leave it. It's a society that has thrived on it's own insecurities and created a rabid, almost incurable feedback loop of crime insensitivities. Here, the lower and upper middle-class is trapped in exploitative and manipulative mind-games with each other and therefore becomes a breeding ground for transactional trade-offs setting it up for the most unthinkable crimes. Behind every great fortune, there is  a crime but behind every crime there is a fortune and those who failed in life. "Ugly" is a mirror to those folks who eke out their living with faultlines in their moral fibre. 

Despite the film's speed, it lags because many sequences were not edited well - a surprise in Anurag Kashyap's films. In many scenes, the lag comes because of the director's obsession with showing the vulnerabilities and the imperfections of the characters. For instance, when the hero and his associate narrate how the girl was kidnapped, the police officer asks the most insensitive questions and also the dumbest questions which are the ways in which the police system works in India - be dumb so you get entertained and educated. The loose ends in the plot, however, remain unanswered like the gaps in investigating the obvious clues or witnesses, or maybe that's the intended message of Anurag Kashyap. But the ending is a shocker  - and reveals Anurag's fallible side of cinematic sensibilities - he has no boundaries when it comes to commercial cinema, he can shock you out of your wits without an apology. That's what "Ugly" is all about - an extension of his bare-all attitude and a periscopic view of life in it's ugliest shades. You may not come out with any feelings of positivity - because the characterisation shows as if "Sab Mile Huwe Hai". This maybe a school of cinema that I don't want to see too much of. Despite the intelligence and the candidness, the film is full of hard-core expletives that come out as a mouthful from even the most urbane people in India. Music by GV Prakash Kumar is wasted but the BGM by one Brian McMere is spine-chilling. Watchable once but only if you like sordid and dark human drama.

Rating: 3/5 

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"Shahid" (Hindi) Film Review

                            

"Shahid" is a gutsy film made way back in 2012 and showcased at major international festivals in Toronto, etc. like "LunchBox". It's quite surprising that the film found no takers until Anurag Kashyap and Ronnie Screwala (UTV) lent their producer's label. Director Hansal Mehta must be congratulated for making an impactful film on the tragic life and times of Shahid Azmi. 

The story is well-written by Director Hansal Mehta and comprehensively nuanced. Shahid Azmi (played by Raj Kumar of "Kai Po Che" fame) is a tale of a muslim caught in suspicion of terrorist-nexus. He actually joins a camp in Kashmir but runs away from the brutality of the camp. Lands in a prison, meets inspiring leaders from Kashmir of liberal background who wean him away from jihadi influence in the jaiil.Shahid is inspired by Kay Kay Menon, one of the Kashmiri leaders, to study so the years will fly. He gets an informal education in liberal arts in the prison walls. He comes out on bail with help of Kay Kay. He pursues law and becomes a lawyer starting off with low-end law firms bristling with under-paid colleagues and unethical practices - such as backing a wrong horse and without the right cause. Shahid decides to practise on his own, his first case is of a young and beautiful widow played by Prableen Sandhu who is fighting for custody of her property in a dispute of estate created by an intestate will. His next case is a case of a muslim booked under TADA for allowing a friend to use his laptop for terrorist activities.

 Shahid wins both cases, succeeds in wooing the beautiful widow and marrying her. Shahid's career zooms and is seen as a flag-bearer for the causes of exonerating innocent muslims from victimhood by the nexus of State-Police-Judiciary whenever a terrorist attack happens. From the Ghatkopar blasts of 1993 till the Taj Hotel attacks of 2008, Shahid Azmi succeeded in 17 acquittals by taking up cudgels for those who are wronged and not the wrong-doers. In the end, media attention, intolerance by adversaries at the growing stature and elements of society who sense a conspiracy and a criminal pattern in his battles abridge him forever. Three men call him to discuss a case at unearthly hours and shoot him to death. 

That's a long story in a blazing canvass of visuals limited to business-like expediency of court-matters which leave little to imagination. In 129  minutes, director Hansal Mehta shows us a credible real-life character played with alacrity and poise by Raj Kumar as Shahid. Raj Kumar plays the role perfect giving us a feel of an ordinary lad who grows in stature, outgrowing the frustrations of being discriminated against as a minority, navigating the labrynths of law to keep the right people out of clutches. Raj Kumar shows all the shades  - composure, mental agility, frustration, impulsiveness and opportunism. His poker face can hide a billion thoughts crossing his mind but the emotions can only come out as per the director's cut and the camera's angles. All other characters play their part well especially Kay Kay Menon and Prableen Sandhu. One wonders why we don't see Kay Kay often in films - as a consumer of cinema, we have a right to know why a versatile actor like Kay Kay gets the miss.

The film is taut and runs on a razor's edge at times raising meaningful debate about the rights of minorities caught up in the web of law where the needle of suspicion constantly points to them. The film shows the Indian judiciary in rare, authentic light as being reasonable, fair and diligent in its ruminations. The scenes of cross-examination are brilliant and the arguments by Shahid before the denouement is given by the judge are epiphanous. The only flaw in the film is the slow intro and the choice of cases - the angst of the police and of competent adversaries to Shahid was not skilfully handled. Could there have been a Type-I error (in Statistics, an acquittal that was "costly")? What was the impact of TADA on genuine cases? Who could have killed Shahid Azmi and what were the motives? Some questions linger on, even after the viewing. Nehru's ideals for minority protection have become an axiom for many politicians. His ideals were founded on a golden principle of assertiveness- that in any country where the majority is another religion, that need not assert itself but the minorities need a voice because they may feel apprehensive of fighting for their rights. This has greater relevance in matters of court - because the assertiveness of a majority can suffocate a minority struggling to find a voice, let alone raise it. To that end, "Shahild" is a bold experiment which needs to be widely watched. Even if it provokes your sensibilities to the rights provided by law, it is worth a view. My rating 4.25/5.

"Bombay Talkies" Hindi Film Review

"Bombay Talkies" is the name of the latest film co-produced by India's youthful new-age directors: Dibakar Banerjee, Anurag Kashyap, Karan Johar and Zoya Akhtar. As the name suggests, it is meant to be an eulogy on Bollywood's century-old idioms. With the exception of Karan Johar, and to some extent, Zoya Akhtar, the other two are one of the two brilliant filmmakers who have sought new ground in bringing in realistic and hard-hitting story-telling with a rare irreverence to old norms while trying to achieve youthful yet compelling emotional connect with the audiences. The producers have selected the most apt title for a film which has four different tales rendered by these four directors - Karan, Dibanker, Zoya and Anurag with half-hour slots each in a total running time of 127 minutes (which includes the four-minute tobacco ad pre-and post interval and a gaudy "Om Shanti Om" style medley of Bollywood boys and girls - from Aamir to SRK to Ranbir and Kareena and Vidya Balan). Originally, Bombay Talkies was founded in 1934 by the First Lady of Indian Cinema - Devika Rani and her first husband Himanshu Rai. They went on to make many films which had an impact on the development of early Indian Cinema. Bombay Talkies became an icon for the arrival of Indian Cinema and subsequently, we all know how Mani Ratnam started his own Madras Talkies as a motif for South Indian Cinema.

Back to "Bombay Talkies" the movie. The four films are directed individually by the four talents above, with their respective name splashed on the screen when their film starts with a 15 second blackout separating one from another to indicate the end of one film and the beginning of the other. That way, the format is a little different from "Darna Mana Hai" where the stories lead upto the climactic story ending. That makes this a winning collaboration with a must-watch tag. What makes the four stories watchable is the bench-strength use of promising technicians like Amit Trivedi who scored thrilling music for all the four stories, inter-mixing the need to elevate the many moods essayed in each director's short story with impressive repertoire of folk music, playback, instrumentation from everyday rhythms and purcussions. Anyone who has long spotted Amit Trivedi from the time he debuted on MTV Unplugged till "DevD" OST got released will vouch that Amit Trivedi is the most-dazzling find amongst the current crop of Bollywood music composers. His music is rich, varied and culturally resonating with the heartbeats of Hindi heartland music, no wonder he still hasn't got the call from masala-oriented South film producers. 

How are the four stories? Are they real? Yes. Credible? Yes. Evocative? Yes, again. 

First story is an explicit take on Indian Male homosexuality directed by Karan Johar (what else where you expecting?). Randeep Hooda and Rani Mukherjee live their own lives in different cubicle nations within the media industry. They are almost sex-less and live a boring civil life until their frustrations surface with the entry of an intern at Rani's office. This young lad is a self-confessed Gay and he gets cosy with Rani in a platonic way only to get cosier with her husband in a plutonic way. Karan seems deft in handling the emerging theme of homosexuality and its repurcussions in conservative Indian families. The gay abandon with which Karan revels in re-creating the sexual preferences of an emerging male order makes it a subtle watch with some hummable music remixed of the old sixties by Amit Trivedi. That room, that music room of old LP records and audios owned by Randeep Hooda in the film must be any music lover's delight - it must belong to one of them - Anurag Kashyap, Producer Viacom's Raghav Behl or Farhan Akhtar, Zoya's sibling.

The second story is the most brilliant of the short films, directed by Dibaker Banerjee. It shows an in-form Nawazuddin Siddiqui as a go-nowhere dweller of a certain chawl in Mumbai, with a bed-ridden daughter who is tired of dad's old stories and a wife who juggles many jobs in three shifts. As if to make a statement on Ponzi schemes, Dibaker introduces EMU farming which has caught on with India's aspiring middle-class. One day, our Mumbai householder goes for the job of a Security Guard, misses it by a whisker and lands himself in a crowd watching Ranbir Kapoor's latest shoot. He gets a rare call from the film's Assistant Directors to enact a two-second scene - to bump into Ranbir from the other end, engrossed holding a newspaper. He exults at the opportunity and gets ten minutes to rehearse in a solitary set away from the din where he works himself up to do the role. In that interlude, he imagines having  an intense conversation with his theatre-obsessed father - brilliantly played by Sadashiv Amrapurkar - who was always pushing him to get to the basics of life. Then the shot readied, improvisations done, Nawaz goes home in a trance forgetting the small change, and the bottle of water earned as a perk for the brief role. He goes home, re-enacts the day's exciting proceedings to his daughter and wife, in a majestic  narrative without words and only flute music in background. This is the best story and my research tells that this is based on one of Satyajit Ray's famous short stories. 

The last two stories are more effusive of the magic spell of Bollywood on India's youth and children. Zoya's story is about a young boy whose father drives him to football but the boy loves the dances of Bollywood. He eulogies Katrina Kaif and becomes her in dreams and in daylight as he pursues dancing to the point of raising money for his sister. The end is filmy with sibling love and dream coming true but this is the only story which has an item song, if you can call that of Katrina's onscreen and off-screen presence in the film. The last story by the nonchalant Anurag Kashyapa is about a father (Sudheer Pandey) and son (Vineet Singh). The father's wish is to send the son with an heirloom bottle of "Murabba" (a kind of a ladoo made of sweet pumpkin) to Bollywood's Badshah's house - Prateeksha - the home of Amitabh Bachchan for a bite by the legendary actor so he can die in peace, something his father did with Yousuf Khan a.k.a Dilip Kumar. The saga is all about the days of wait and exasperation by the youth from Allahabad as he encounters many others who live on a pail of water in order to shake hands with Bollywood's glitterati. It is a pithy take by Anurag to capture the timeless appeal of Bollywood's icons. There's a sweet ending with a twist in the tale but Anurag handles it well with  raunchy wit.

On the whole, all the four stories have their signature styles of their creators who are in between their swinging and cutting-edge form. Undoubtedly, my take is that the honors go the four in this pecking order: Dibaker, Anurag, Zoya and Karan. What spoils the party in the end as we are about to applaud a rare ensemble of a talented foursome is a loud reprise to the ruling Divas of Bollywood in their audacious dream costumes - as I said from Kapoors to Khans. This must have been some producer's silly idea to endear an otherwise charming junction of upmarket, mofussil and fairy tales to the front-benchers who whistle at sighting each of the two generations of glitterati including Sridevi, Juhi and Madhuri. A great, watchable experiment and hopefully, Viacom should make it viable for more coming in this direction of sterotype-smashing cinema. 4 out of 5 for "Bombay Talkies". But I wonder why, U/A for a film that starts off the first story with hair-raising homosexuality. Maybe India will be the 15th nation in the world to endorse same-sex marriage now that the Censors have no objection to it.