Nonika Singh

Illusion meets reality… those of us who have watched Christopher Nolan’s ‘Inception’ with rapt attention know all too well what a fascinating blend it is. Of course, Netflix’s latest web series ‘Shaque: Trust No One’, which too marries phantasmagoric elements with truth, bears no similarity with the acclaimed film. Rather, on the surface, it bears an uncanny resemblance with another of Netflix’s new films, ‘Gandhari’. Yes, like the Taapsee Pannu starrer, ‘Shaque’, which marks the web-series debut of Parineeti Chopra, too, deals with a mother’s search for her daughter.

It’s a talent riot! Four of India’s best directors, a cast that stands tall by the sheer virtue of talent, and a subject which, as a rule, makes most of us squirm. The ‘Lust Stories’ franchise, ever since it made its foray on Netflix, has treaded forbidden territory. Desires, lurking deep within, have leapt on our screens in many forms. Sure enough, the three-letter word, sex, has come out of the closet and yet not quite. Women’s sexual desires are still spoken about in whispers, at least among the old school. The third outing, even with acclaimed directors at the helm, does not really offer anything as path-breaking as the first Emmy-nominated season.

“Hum se pehle bhi kranti, hamare baad bhi kranti…” Yet many of us are not fully clued into the tale of armed resistance and revolutionaries who fought for the freedom of our country, not always successfully, but never in vain. Creator-writer Nikkhil Advani, who floored us with ‘Freedom At Midnight’, recounting the years that led to India’s freedom struggle in many sterling ways, is back again. This time, he digs further back into history — early 20th century. The heroes of his earlier series — Gandhi, Nehru, Patel — are household names. But Rash Behari Bose, Jatindranath Mukherjee aka Bagha Jatin and Sachindranath Sanyal urf Sachin are at best names which ring a bell, but only a few among us fully know or understand their tales of valour.

In the minds of millions of Indians, Gandhari, one of the many towering female figures of Mahabharata, stands out as an epitome of sacrifice and dignity. As a movie by the same name streams on Netflix, you expect an electric analogy. Alas, the comparison with the epic character is only wafer-thin and restricted to our heroine suffering from temporary blindness. Yes, we get it. Gandhari could see but chose to be blindfolded, and so does our heroine. The problem, however, is that the clickbait title rarely moves beyond surface level.

“Violence is my mother tongue, the universal language.” Indeed, this dialogue delivered by Kannada ‘rockstar’ Yash with the panache it deserves says it all. ‘Toxic’, as the name suggests, is about repressed emotions, which in their own convoluted way define toxic masculinity. Before we arrive at this emotion-charged and relevant conclusion, there is a set violence piece in this gangster drama every 10 minutes. The film moves at breakneck speed, leaving you no room to breathe — and often not in a good way. Just when you recover from the onslaught of the piling body count, yet another dance of death unfurls. Who is killing whom is not as important; half the time you don’t know either, as the symphony of violence unspools right through the film.

Yet another crime thriller in the OTT space, but without a feeling of deja vu or excess of familiarity. Swedish series ‘Blodsoffer’, ‘Blood Sacrifice’ in English, by creator George Kay, the maker of heist drama ‘Lupin’, doesn’t just take you into the blood-soaked killings on the streets of Stockholm, but also into the minds of policemen. What happens when those whose job it is to provide security are the victims? Can they protect themselves? The five-part Netflix series opens with the macabre killing of two police officers. To begin with, we don’t see the dance of goriness. The fact that the killer murders with utmost bestiality is mentioned more than it is shown.

Many of us have seen Asghar Wajahat’s poignant and widely staged play ‘Jis Lahore Nai Vekhya, O Jamya E Nai’. And most of us have seen Sunny Deol create ‘Gadar’ in cross-border love stories. So what happens when the two come together? Well, in Raj Kumar Santoshi’s ‘Batwara 1947’, Sunny Paaji’s dhai kilo ka haath is very much intact, if not forever in action, as he bashes up rioters on both sides of the border. What is heartening, though, is the emotive power of the film, which resonates with a fair degree of sentimentality, but is not misplaced. It is adapted from Wajahat’s play, written in 1989 and staged by eminent theatrepersons such as Habib Tanvir, Nadira Babbar and Arvind Gaur. The play might have been set during Partition, but there is no denying its universal timelessness.

The good news is ‘Bhai Tera Star Hai’ is not your regular underdog story of an upstart reaching for the stars, even though the opening song would have you believe so. The not-so-good news, however, is that the Raghav Juyal-starrer isn’t the madcap it aspires to be. Director Vivek B Agrawal and co-writer Sudipto Sarkar do try not to follow the beaten path, but that by itself isn’t enough. The moment Sanjay Kapoor appears as bar owner Fatty, who doubles up as a betting don, you know the makers are aiming for the experimental touch. And the very second you see dialogues popping up on the screen as comic book graphics, you expect an innovative idea.