Rahul Desai

As an Indian critic pummelled into submission by the hagiographic reverence and sanitised beats of homegrown biopics over the years, a film like The Smashing Machine is always a bit of a culture shock. What do you mean the hero is not really a hero? What do you mean he’s willing to be emotionally naked, broken, vulnerable, ugly, difficult and unreasonable on screen? What do you mean he’s a victim of his own decisions and not wronged by the world? What do you mean he’s not an inspirational story with a message? Benny Safdie’s sports biopic has a mixed-martial-arts protagonist who’s a serial winner with a drug addiction problem, a mansplaining habit, a toxic relationship that weakens him, a punctured comeback arc, and, eventually, he’s barely even the protagonist. It has Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson finally playing the role he was born to play — that of a champion wrestler and near-invincible strongman — only to challenge his stardom with a painfully human(e) performance.

In the opening episode of the Search: The Naina Murder Case, its protagonist, ACP Sanyukta Das (Konkona Sen Sharma), engages in banter with the cocky man replacing her, ACP Jai Kanwal (Surya Sharma). Star detective Sanyukta is transferring herself to the cyber crime unit in a new city to save her marriage. Jai taunts her for this decision. To get the better of him, Sanyukta casually spoils the twist of a popular crime drama he’s watching. “Silent Justice” is the name of this show, a nod to Criminal Justice, one of the biggest hits of the same streaming platform and production company. The self-referencing is ironic, because Search is another page out of this OTT playbook: SEO-coded title, by-the-books remake of multi-season European/British series, less-than-ambitious staging, formulaic twists, middling craft, functional conflicts, curated colour.

You can see why Lord Curzon Ki Haveli sounds attractive on paper. Regardless of the budget, it’s an “independent-minded” Hindi film, the kind that used to be conceived, crowd-funded and exhibited in the pre-streaming age by film-makers like Sandeep Mohan, Q and Sudhish Kamath. The title is intriguing if one knows their history. It’s a chamber drama, shot largely in the living room of a British manor. It’s a lean production; the main score is Beethoven, the sound design is a co-writer, the suspense is supposed to be Hitchcockian. There are only four, sometimes five, characters in the house. It’s fully conversational, an introvert’s nightmare. There’s enough room for the lens to lurk around. The performers have worked in an indie setup before. The mood — where actors have the freedom to put on strange accents and do strange things — is a front for social commentary.

STEVE opens with a 48-year-old man (Cillian Murphy) on his way to work. He’s full of nervous energy. The way he’s psyching himself up, you’d think he’s going to war. It’s going to be a long and complicated day. He knows it, not because the film revolves around this day, but because it’s just another day. The moment Steve reaches work, the war begins. As the headteacher of a school of reform for troubled boys, he is pulled into the quotidian mayhem of his ‘job’. The students of Stanton Wood are already at it: Jamie and Riley are fighting like animals again, Tarone is provoking everyone, Shy is brooding and simmering after a heartbreaking phone call with his mother. It’s 1996, and the heavy-metal emotions of youth clash with the hard-rock resilience of adulthood. Steve tries to calm them down, assuage them, warn them, banter with them; he’s everywhere and nowhere.

I, Poppy follows an old poppy farmer and her troubles with a ‘wayward’ adult son. Like several others in her Rajasthani village, Vardibai Meghwal owns a patch of land and a poppy-farming license. She is a grassroots supplier of opium, the precious Black Gold that contains morphine used in both medicinal and illegal drugs. The trade is far from profitable, but she perseveres; she cannot afford to worry about moral implications. Her grandsons help her toil in the field. But Vardibai considers her son, Mangilal, a liability for not entering the family business, slacking on his teaching job and barely contributing to household expenses. The situation is dire. Mangilal is an addict who, according to his mother, needs to be cured and controlled and rehabilitated. He is amused by her taunts; he’s never at home, always distracted by hallucinations of an alternate reality.

Like most critics, I jot down notes while watching a movie. These notes are mostly factual reminders: character names, periods, places, plot details, specific scenes, lyrics, credits. When the movie is fine, these notes contain observations: thoughts about shots, metaphors, social pointers, puns, easter eggs and scene breakdowns. When the movie bombs, the notes become adjectives and verbal emojis: so bad, oh my god, worst, REALLY, what is he doing, come on, absolutely not. But when the movie is Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari, the notes look unhinged. For example, I see a note yelling: “Where is the damn leopard?”. There’s another note begging: “But why?”. Another: “Chutney or smoothie?” Another: “Eco-conscious writing, much recycling”. No context. Just madness. If I were to draw a mental map of how I arrived at a stage of waiting for a leopard cameo, the map would be an illustrated review. And I’d be an artist.

Inspired by the real-life journey of educator Mohit Tyagi and his platform Competishun, 13th is a five-episode drama about a venture capitalist who quits his job to help his former mentor build an ed-tech startup. It is composed of two timelines around a decade apart: the struggle of cocky IIT-JEE aspirant Ritesh (Paresh Pahuja) under the tutelage of crowd-favourite MT Sir (Gagandev Riar) is intercut with the struggle of corporate star Ritesh teaming up with a vintage MT Sir to turn this vision into a unicorn. The protege and teacher trade roles across phases; Ritesh chooses to ‘invest’ in Mohit the way he once invested in him. The ominous-sounding title refers to the term used for students who take a drop year after their 12th to prepare for the JEE entrance exam — like Ritesh does in Kota in 2005, but also like he figuratively does after getting disillusioned with startup culture years later.

Hope is the star-crossed protagonist of “Homebound”, a film that retraces the margins of Indian living as the layout of a ‘Snakes and Ladders’ board game. The pattern is unforgiving. Every time there is progress, it is inevitably punctured by a cruel twist of fate; every small leap is laced with the threat of a steep fall. An office peon impresses the bosses and gets promoted to salesman against the odds, but the feel-goodness is short-lived. A young factory worker sends money back home to fund a concrete roof, but his underdog-ness is transient. A bitter spat is followed by a life-affirming reunion, but the joy is brief. This constant snuffing out of hope reflects the skewed social structure of a country where everything — including emotions — are hierarchical. There is no respite; indignity has a pecking order.