Rahul Desai

The first half of Nayyi Navelli plays out like the answer to the question: What if TVF Gullak is pushed into the supernatural space? There’s a quirky Meerut-based family. An ancestral home. Lots of squabbling. Plenty of fondness parading as noise and taunts. And an hour-long emergency meeting on the terrace (against an artificial background of the city that puts the hand-painted sunsets from the 1990s to shame). The black sheep, Bantu, is desperately trying to convince the rest that the newest entrant in the family is a ‘daayan’ (witch); that his elder brother Raja’s wife, Mohini, is not a normal woman. It’s like watching a low-budget courtroom tale. Bantu painstakingly offers proof of the last few months and the mysterious circumstances of her arrival. He recalls weird scenes, narrates eye-witness accounts, and provokes the irritated family members to punch holes in his narrative. All this while an inauspicious and allegedly possessed Mohini — who will soon get multiple entry shots — is locked away in a room.

As a courtroom drama centred on the Indian lawyer who secured the sentencing of the one surviving terrorist behind the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, Prahaar: The Untold Story of Ujjwal Nikam is a predictably effective movie. There’s no dearth of storytelling around this tragedy, so the familiarity — the cultural fatigue — is now used as a weapon. Much like its central character, Prahaar postures, pauses, poses, argues, emotionally manipulates, yells, and wins. Given the subject, it’s hard to get wrong. The background score milks every moment; Lalit Prabhakar plays Ajmal Kasab as a brown-faced monster slowly disintegrating into a man; the CST shooting is recalled and filmed through the eyes of a child; the trauma is amplified so that the fruits of justice taste sweeter. And of course, there’s the patriotic closing argument.

There are two kinds of Indian journalism movies. Neither of them is nice — which perhaps reflects the state of journalism itself — but it is what it is. The first kind of movie unfolds with the confidence of having spoken to one former reporter as research; it explains the profession like a teacher in third grade because it’s also learning simultaneously. The second kind of movie unfolds with the confidence of having spoken to several reporters from different newsrooms, past and present, so that this research can be reduced to a journalism-for-dummies template; it, too, explains the profession like a teacher in third grade because it thinks that the viewers are learning something they’ve never heard of before.

Imagine being such a distinct storyteller that your last name is synonymous with a whole language of film-making. It’s a privilege reserved exclusively for directors: Tarantino-esque, Spielbergian, Lynchian. But Aaron Sorkin is a screenwriter solely responsible for the cinema of ‘Sorkinisms’: a style of dialogue and atmosphere where humans speak faster than they think, flaunt intellectual credibility, exchange smug repartee without a single stutter, do deadpan jokes in a hurry, react without listening, unleash crowd-pleasing one-liners, and demonstrate robotic comfort with one another.

A mainstream remake of a non-Hindi-language movie is often a license to hijack, not adapt. If the original depends more on the treatment and cultural rhythm of an old formula, the imposter has nowhere to hide. Girish A.D.’s Malayalam romcom Premalu was about the scrambled identity of love and ambition for middle-class strivers who enter the adult world; it isn’t perfect (especially a copout airport climax), but the humorous ‘youngness’ of the film sells the point. But Apoorv Singh Karki’s Prem Keetanu is flattened by its Bollywood habits. It is tonally greedy, and the gentrified story is demarcated into genres: it starts out as a TVF-style campus-slacker comedy, morphs into a loud love triangle, collapses into echoes of an obsession tale, briefly flirts with the idea of a coming-of-age drama, and ends as a lightweight romcom. It has the grammar of a music-video montage, where every genre behaves like an entitled lover fending off one another to woo the reluctant viewer.

It’s entirely natural to question the existence of the third film — not first, not second — of a crime franchise, regardless of box-office success. Especially if the premise revolves and revolves around a movie-mad father who keeps hiding the body of his daughter’s abuser to protect his family. Especially if the first two are Bollywood remakes of superior Malayalam thrillers. Especially if the third movie, which has “conclusion” in its title, has nothing to do with the third Mohanlal starrer (released in May) and insists on charting its own narrative path. How dare we be original? The signs are ominous, not least because the background score of this Hindi film series has been partially responsible for my hearing problems over the years. How much is too much? Rinse, Roar (that’s Singham, the other Ajay-Devgn-in-Goa franchise), Repeat. Do it once and it’s novel; do it twice and it’s suspect; do it thrice and the cash-cow is mooing.

Pooja Meri Jaan opens with a dramatic Romeo and Juliet rendition on a Delhi stage. The Shakespearean tragedy ends with both deaths, there is applause, and the lead actors proceed to hijack the spotlight: ‘Romeo’ Aniket (Vikram Singh Chauhan) proposes to ‘Juliet’ Pooja (Mrunal Thakur) in front of a packed theatre. Seconds later, she rejects him backstage. He is devastated, her words hurt, he rides home in the rain like a broken Vishesh Films hero — and kills himself. Pooja is soon booked for abetment of suicide, and the rest of the film revolves around her trial in the court of public opinion.

Dupahiya is a homegrown series that’s difficult to write about. Not because it’s mediocre or anything, but because it’s the kind of low-stakes, minor-key and watchable satire that strives to be forgotten the second it ends. It’s almost too easy to engage with as ambient and family-friendly entertainment; the cast is likeable; the craft is playful; everyone gets a track (read this in Oprah’s “everyone gets a car” voice); the setting is familiar. Season 1 revolved around a stolen dowry motorbike in the crime-free village of Dhadakpur. The Panchayat hangover was strong, despite a broad storyline connecting its several characters. But Season 2 sheds the hangover — ironically, Panchayat itself has mutated into its own imposter — by being more thematically distinct. Besides the dramedy, it grows up a bit and stays tethered to the India of today. I’ll remember it more than the first season because it’s not as…content. Pun unintended.