Anuj Kumar

When the invisible claws of censorship begin to throttle creativity, filmmakers either conform or subvert. This week, Subhash Kapoor, who has mastered the art of sugar coating the bitter pill with satire, rewinds to the farmer agitation against land acquisition in Greater Noida’s Bhatta Parsaul in 2011 that changed the course of discourse of politics of development to drive his Jolly LLB franchise forward. Kapoor relocates the source of the story from Uttar Pradesh to Rajasthan, but its soul echoes with the farmer’s distress across the region. Here is a film that puts the farmer at the centre of the narrative; here is a story that prioritises the spirit of the law over its letter, delivering a message that underscores the need for an equitable distribution of wealth.

Noted French filmmaker and screenwriter Jean Renoir once said, a director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it up and makes it again. A decade back, I related to this famous quote while watching movies of Mahesh Bhatt and Ram Gopal Varma when their graphs were coming down. This week, Renoir’s words echoed in my ears while watching Anurag Kashyap’s Nishaanchi. One of the most original voices of our times, Anurag seems to have cut down his cult of Gangs of Wasseypur (GOW) into fragments and then casually stitched them into a fresh screenplay around crime, revenge, and sibling rivalry. Laced with potent social commentary on patriarchy and the politician-criminal nexus in the Hindi heartland, the idea is not new; some of his expressions of the human condition have become stock. However, like GOW, Anurag subverts Bollywood tropes and titles to create a tantalising experience that works in spurts and disappoints in chunks. The best is the limerick made out of Andha Kanoon, Sarkar, and Baghban.

Coming at a time when the debate about the original inhabitant and the migrant/trespasser is raging across the world, young filmmaker Raam Reddy mounts a fable that fascinates with its subversive tone and veritable voice. The atmospheric visuals and magic realism remind one of Marquez and Manoj Night Shyamalan, but Raam sets up his own leela in the hills of the Himalayas. In Jugnuma, Dev (Manoj Bajpayee) lords over the orchards that once belonged to the British masters. He has inherited the colonial privilege that he delegates to the locals to nurture his sprawling estate. Mundane meets the magical, as Raam opens a window to the Dev’s introspective nature. Suggesting the misplaced pride of being self-made, the genial master makes his own wings and glides over the hills to keep a check on the locals who work on his estate, look for possible trespassers, and perhaps test his boundaries.

During the pan-Indian wave, one thing that has reached Bollywood shores from the South is the toolkit of the Iron Age. Armed with cleavers, these days our heroes are slashing and slashing hard. It is not always when the stakes or tempers run high. It is just for the hack of it. Bored of firing gunshots from a distance, now they wield an axe and a hammer to grind the opposition to pulp. With an adult certificate becoming a sign of misplaced maturity, the makers can play with as much blood as they want. There is nothing like excess anymore. If Ranbir Kapoor can do it, how can Tiger Shroff be far behind? In this fourth installment of the action franchise, Ronny (Tiger) is madly in love with a girl named Alisha (debutante Harnaaz Sandhu), who the world feels doesn’t exist.

During the pandemic, a booster dose of the vaccine became a common term. It was intended to boost the immune system’s response to the virus. This week, Vivek Agnihotri injects a booster dose of cinematic virus that he unleashed with The Kashmir Files lest people develop immunity against communal politics. Once again, blending a discriminating version of the past with a myopic vision of the present, The Bengal Files not only scratches the wounds of the Partition but also punctures them to manipulate emotions. Soaked in blood and hate against one community and religion, the film uses cinema as a tool to divide. Juxtaposing the present State of affairs in West Bengal with the Calcutta riots of August 1946 in the wake of the Muslim League’s call for Direct Action Day, followed by the Noakhali riots, the film says that Partition is an unfinished business, instigating majoritarian fear about demographic change and illegal migration.

In the pantheon of real-life criminals that Indian filmmakers love to recreate on screen, Charles Sobhraj perhaps tops the list. The serial killer’s exploits are expounded with such reverence that the law enforcers appear pygmies in front of him. The latest being Black Warrant on Netflix. Debutant director Chinmay Mandlekar’s Inspector Zende finally turns the tables on him by revealing what happens after his daring escape from Tihar Prison in 1986. Though a worthy documentary on Madhukar Zende exists, it is surprising that Bollywood has taken such a long time to document the distinguished Mumbai Police officer who nabbed Sobhraj twice, without making a fuss. How it missed the attention of Akshay Kumar is a mystery!

A musical drama loosely inspired by the life of Padma Shri Raj Begum, Songs of Paradise puts into focus the rich poetic culture of Kashmir that often gets buried under the “Files” of jaundiced perceptions. It is the side of Kashmir that we have hardly seen in Bollywood. Set in a time and space when the idea of a woman singing in public was taboo, it follows the struggle of Zeba Akhtar (Saba Azad/ Soni Razdan), who emerges as the voice of freedom because of her talent and tenacity. With the support of her tailor father (Bashir Lone is outstanding), Zeba stitches her musical dreams under the tutelage of Masterji (Shishir Sharma), who urges her to participate in a singing competition organised by Radio Kashmir. She wins the contest, but the social stigma attached to music forces her to assume a pseudonym, Noor Bano.

Early in this romantic comedy, when Param (Siddharth Malhotra), a second-generation businessman who is besotted with data, buys into the idea of a new computer application that promises to find the perfect match for netizens, he wonders, “It looks good in theory, but is it practical?”. An hour into the film, and one realises that Param was inadvertently talking about the screenplay he is part of. The story of a romance crossing regional and cultural barriers might have sounded great on paper, but on screen, it plateaus before it reaches Deccan. In romantic comedies, the destination is usually known; it is the journey that matters. Twelve years after Chennai Express, Bollywood boards a passenger train to Kerala with the same level of ignorance about the South but much more self-awareness. Both liquidate the fun.