Rahul Desai

15 friends (an introvert’s nightmare) meet at a holiday home for a wedding anniversary party. One of them is found dead after midnight. 14 of them become suspects. Nobody is allowed to leave. Rajat Kapoor’s Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa shares a thematic universe with Rajat Kapoor’s Kadakh (2019): overlapping cast members, colourful characters, a dead body, an annual party, free-flowing banter and tense arguments, fragile bonds and incriminatory secrets. But the staging is slightly different. Kadakh was about a couple trying to hide the corpse of a man who accidentally kills himself before their Diwali party. This film is a whodunnit that, in terms of social suspense and tonal flow, shares a universe with ‘psychological’ dramas like Death in the Gunj, Monsoon Wedding (plus a murder) and Titli. It unravels as a deceptively poignant indictment of modern society, armchair morality and rage, and the many ways in which we reverse-engineer our values to fit in.

In a mask, she looks like everyone else. It’s not her city or country, but it’s her home now. The Pune native goes about her daily routine in Tokyo: walking, thinking, dodging other feet, commuting to work on the metro. It’s muscle memory; you can tell she’s been here for a while. The only sounds she hears are of footsteps shuffling, metal doors opening, vehicles moving. Voices stay within; speaking is impolite. And then she sees him, after 7 years, looking perplexed on a platform. In a mask, he looks like the man she loved. They meet at a famous intersection. When they hug, it’s like the moment activates human motion; hundreds of walkers cross the congested street the second their bodies touch. They spend the next few days enjoying the familiarity of an ex-partner in a foreign environment. Everything is new and old at once. She shows him the place; they eat, stroll, run, giggle, puncture the silences, get drunk together. It’s everyone’s Before-Sunset fantasy. But it escalates quickly. When they kiss, it’s like the moment activates faster human motion; a speeding train darts behind them the second their lips meet.

There’s a special genre of Hindi social dramas that distinguish themselves by making a mess of perfectly sensible themes. They’re so chuffed about saying something progressive that they say it with the confidence of a 5-year-old teacher’s pet. They’re so determined to school the average viewer that they do it in the syllabus of pandering. They’re so convinced that only intent counts that the storytelling is treated like a Zoom meeting with an attendance-not-mandatory option. Did I need to use such an unnecessarily colourful analogy? No, but it would help if the film-making tried to be as creative. Chiraiya is the latest example. It brings a cartoon knife to a live-action gunfight. It’s more frustrating to watch because the ideology is sound, but instantly subdued by the demands of a deafening algorithm. The result is a performative women-written-by-men project, where the depth is more theoretical than practical, and where artificial moments are spoon-fed to convey brutal truths.

We’re back to 1971. Again. Contemporary Indian cinema will have you believe that South Asian history — nay, human civilisation itself — begins and ends with 1971. Dinosaurs probably went extinct just before that. Jokes aside, so much of historical storytelling is concentrated into that one decade that the fatigue is real. Ironically, mainstream Bollywood at the time reacted to all the national turmoil with Angry Young Men and disillusioned anti-establishment heroes. But today’s stories are more focused on painting that very country as a vessel of patriotism, political courage and cultural superiority. Naturally, this happens at the expense of two familiar neighbours. To its credit, Jazz City finds a new and expensive way to flaunt India’s role in the Bangladesh Liberation War.

Made In Korea is quite the clever title for the film it turned out to be. The most obvious reading is that the film was made in Korea, but it indicates the coming-of-age story of a lady named Shenba (Priyanka Mohan), giving us the sense that the real Shenba was made in Korea after she migrates there. And then there is the pun. After Shenba makes her way to Seoul, she finds work in a mansion as a ‘maid’, looking after the old lady who lives there. But there ends anything one can remotely term clever about this film.

Some shows are so long and expansive that they become like senior family members — you don’t know if you like or dislike them because you’re inherently attached to them. Especially if nearly 500 minutes are consumed in one day, for professional reasons. Sankalp is (finally) over, but I have to be honest: I find myself missing how talkative and busy and overbearing and old-fashioned it was. I’m not sure what to do with my time anymore. There’s a certain sort of antiquity to a Prakash Jha directorial in this age: a narrative that’s about politics without being political, a potboiler about grassroots power and wise teachers and manipulative king-makers and faithful students, a traditional assortment of characters with shifting allegiances, mythology-fuelled dialogue, a chessboard that’s supposed to convey mind-games and twisty moves and metaphorical pawns. Even when I wasn’t paying attention to one of its 15 subplots, I grew to respect the scale. It’s not peak storytelling, but it’s the kind of committed mid-tier entertainment that reclaims the genre from the algorithmic clutches of modern streaming. In short, Sankalp is watchable because it doesn’t pretend to pander.

One must embrace certain rules to engage with a TVF setting. (Read this in the Fight Club voice). First, you only have the right to criticise the country if you are willing to serve it: an extension of the “don’t criticise movies until you’ve made one yourself” or “you can’t commentate on cricket without playing it” line of argument. It’s a bit more hostile than “be the change you want to see”. Second, Civil Services is the be-all-and-end-all of all careers; there is no greater honour than clearing the UPSC exams and working for the government. Third, India is a perfectly functioning democracy in which inquiries on officers happen without any ulterior motives and political prejudice; corruption is an exception, not the norm. Fourth, every department cares solely for the development of the nation; pro-establishment vibes are good vibes. Fifth, women exist in service of their male counterparts; they’re partners or lovers. And last, caste and religion don’t exist at the grassroots level; only class and opportunities do. Within these rules, and within the truth that nearly every TVF show can be called Aspirants, this series is more adept at exploring the aspirational genre called Walking the Talk.

It’s comforting to watch something like Jab Khuli Khitaab. It’s a bit like going to a small circus in the age of curated theme parks. It’s clumsy at times, you can see the strings, some of the treatment is dated, but there’s an old-fashioned goodness seeping through its veins. Based on his play of the same name, Saurabh Shukla’s film opens with a 70-something man, Gopal Nautiyal (Pankaj Kapur), going about his morning routine with his wife Anusuya (Dimple Kapadia). He catches her up on the news, helps her get dressed, jokes around, and discusses their adult children who are now visiting them at their family home in the mountains. They’ve been together for ages. Except this is a one-way conversation: Anusuya has been in a coma for two years. He misses her; all she can do is listen. The story kicks into gear when Anusuya suddenly wakes up from her coma, and her husband’s unconditional care guilts her into confessing to an affair 50 years ago. The rest revolves around a mopey Gopal wanting a divorce, Anusuya resisting, even as they try to keep their ‘spat’ a secret in the busy household.