Ishita Sengupta

Babil Khan is notorious for being nice. Social media is filled with videos of the actor profusely apologising for doing something as slight as stepping in front of someone, or striking up heartfelt conversations with paparazzi about his mother. The earnestness is palpable and can be — and is often — adjudged to be people-pleasing, as if his life depends on being liked. In Amit Golani’s Logout, Khan plays Pratyush Dua, a young man desperate to be liked. In other words, he is an influencer. The self-reflexivity of the casting does wonders. Khan is tremendously effective as Pratyush, who spends hours holding his phone to keep a tab on his followers. It is not exactly a physical role, but the actor, with the camera tightly framing his face, remains attuned to the tiniest of gestures. A faint smile hovers over his lips when his following surges, a hint of panic when a rival influencer seems primed to hit 10 million followers before him.

If there is a perfect audience for a horror film, I’d like to believe it is me. This is not false bravado but an honest confession. Bring in someone with green eyes, throw in a jump scare, pull someone from under the bed, and you will see me scream my lungs out. I am always scared and always jumpy. I am the reason that other people, those not scared in the least, are rattled because I make my fear everyone’s business. And yet, Vishal Furia’s Chhorii 2, Vishal Furia’s sequel to his 2021 film, left me disinterested, unscared and, worse, bored. In the last couple of years, there has been a resurgence of the horror genre, except that the effect is softened by comedy. Horror comedy, the consequent hybrid result, has in turn evolved into a commercial goldmine. The context is important because Furia does not give in despite obvious temptations. He remains admirably focused and crafts Chhorii 2 in the same world as Chhorii. Except even the latter, a remake of his 2017 Marathi film Lapachhapi, was not effective to begin with.

When you are a Film Critic, the principal aspect of the job is to show up. It does not matter if one had a fight with their partner the previous night, or that maybe, there are ill parents in the scenario. If a film releases, one turns up. While this urgency is true for most jobs, the difference in this case is the surrender it demands. Unlike being at an office where plugging in headphones is an acceptable sulking option, theaters allow none of the indulgence. One is required to be objective and acknowledge fictional characters with severity as if they were real people. This isn’t a complaint and, truth be told, there are upsides to it. For instance, my parents have been unwell for a while, and between calling them and meeting deadlines, my brow has been perpetually furrowed with concern. I have been thinking about the brutality of time and the many big and little ways in which it affects the people we love. Then I sat for Gopichand Malineni’s Jaat, and my worries were suspended for a while. Time, at least in some cases, appears to stand still.

Watching Zakir Khan do stand-up comedy is to reckon with the limitations of the art form and the possibilities of it. It is to witness regular observations carry the weight of a punchline and existential thoughts take flight with the lightness of humour. It is to see a man holding the audience in thrall even with his silence. Tathastu in 2022 was a genre-defying set that wrapped thoughts about his parents, concerns about mortality, and filial resentment in humour without punctuating them with gags. His latest Delulu Express does something similar without reiterating the format or style. It is a lighter arrangement imbued with excessive style and multiple characters. On paper it is more chaotic but beats with the same narrative heart that Khan has been honing since Tathastu.

A SALMAN KHAN FILM has come to mean certain things: it arrives on Eid, it abstains from intimacy, it extends the actor’s legacy of goodwill, it insists on pairing him opposite someone at least two decades younger, and resists making any demands of acting from Khan. In the last couple of years, there have been multiple renderings of this formulaic outline (Bodyguard, 2011; Radhe, 2021); a doubling down on this blueprint with Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan (2023) whilst also sneaking in another rule: he will not try anymore, pushing the bar to the floor. The upshot of this is that a Salman Khan film can no longer disappoint, it can only impress. The sole way to go is up. As a result, the audience is conditioned to expect nothing and believe everything. Khan wore a jacket mid-air in Kisi Ka Bhai and lip-synced leisurely in Tiger 3 (freely skipping most words). His reluctance to strive is so deep that even an ounce of effort on his part draws cheer. He moves his body and you commend his flexibility. He cries in a scene and you compare him to Robert De Niro. Watching a Salman Khan film today has come to resemble an act of parental bias as if he were an irate child and the rest of us exist to humour him.

An angry mob vandalises a public space. The premise is ransacked, chairs are upturned, and threats are issued: “Every action has a reaction”. They are seething over a remark made by a comedian about their political leader, standing in that place. Soon, social media is crammed with more threats and conspiracy theories, each linking the said comedian to extremists and sources of his funding to illegal sponsorship; he is tipped to be the unofficial spokesperson of the rival party. As days pass, speculations get rife; one party worker comes to a news channel and says he regrets nothing. “There should be a limit to humour”. Harshad Nalawade’s Follower is about that person. This might be technically misleading, but it is spiritually accurate. Nalawade’s astute and timely film is about the faceless trolls that appear to self-multiply and clog every pore of social media. His debut film tracks the senseless way they operate, fuelled by the misguided notion that unquestionable obedience is their greatest calling. Follower is about followers.

Second time within months there is an Aurangzeb reference in a Hindi film. If the Mughal ruler was vilified in Laxman Utekar’s Chhaava then he is freshly referenced in Vikram Bhatt’s Tumko Meri Kasam. A character wickedly says he can do anything to sit in the seat of power, like Aurangzeb. But neither the man saying it is particularly odious nor is the outcome of the mention a disaster. One can argue about the overall ineffectiveness of Bhatt’s new work, but, in reality, Tumko Meri Kasam harks back to the good old time in Hindi cinema when films were made without agenda and motives, and scenes were allowed to breathe and not spliced together by furtive video-game editing. Well, one part of this is more true than the other. Scenes go on unendingly in Tumko Meri Kasam (endearing at first and grating soon after) as the narrative veers towards propaganda. Except, Bhatt’s film props up a man and not a nation. But given that it props at least something up, Anupam Kher features in a central role and does everything. He stands in court as the accused; he argues as his own lawyer and doubles up as a detective to find loopholes in the case even as police officers remain conspicuously absent like what we are watching is a figment of someone’s imagination.

LAST WEEK, a tightly wound, one-shot wonder called Adolescence dropped on Netflix. It took a couple of days and the verdict was out: this is the streamer’s breakout show of the year. Like Baby Reindeer was in the previous year and the first season of Squid Games, the Korean survival thriller, was in 2021. The list keeps expanding as one looks back but the dearth of Indian titles is conspicuous. Vikramaditya Motwane’s Sacred Games (2018) was a formidable start but the mentions have only been leaner with time. There is a distinct kind of non-commital work that is more content in occupying space than inhabiting time. They speak a lot but say too little. Except for Motwane’s Black Warrant (co-directed by Satyanshu Singh), most Netflix originals from India this year have been an assembly line of similar-looking production. Neeraj Pandey’s sprawling Khakee: The Bengal Chapter, the second part of his Khakee franchise, is the newest addition.