Rahul Desai

A high-profile summit between Delhi and North-East India — the ‘mainland’ and the ‘margins’ — is around the corner. Nagaland is the sensitive face of this summit. The region is divided between rebel factions who distrust the centre and older statesmen who bat for peace and integration. A veteran leader is killed. Officers from outside arrive to lead an uncertain investigation featuring political strife, local divides, drug dealers, foreign forces, covert business interests, historical trauma, traitors, scapegoats and shifting loyalties. A secondary character dies, making it personal for the grief-stricken protagonist; his allegiances are questioned, and he is suspended. There is a mole in the midst. A little orphan searches for belonging. A conspiracy unfolds beyond borders and within governments. Our hero in a dysfunctional marriage must clear his name without compromising on his moral fibre. But enough about Season 2 of Paatal Lok.

Most Indian moviegoers are wired to like cinema that squeezes lemonade out of life’s limes. The country has such deep social faultlines that we automatically appreciate stories looking for silver linings within them. Take the middle-class space crunch, a problem as old as time. Over the years, it’s been softened by several movie genres: the joint-family saga that emphasizes the happy chaos of communal living, the romcom or sex comedy where everyone gets a say, the love story thriving on secrets and shadows. Think Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, where a small-town household weighs in on the hero’s erectile dysfunction; think The Affair, Hardik Mehta’s short film about a married couple from a cramped Mumbai flat meeting like covert lovers after work. The movies sell nightmares as lesser dreams; we see no breathing room, but the characters reframe it as togetherness and proximity.

A hit series churning out multiple seasons is like a small startup that’s teased by old clients when it becomes a unicorn. It invites those classic jibes: “oh you’re too big for us now” and “boss you’ve changed”. After the success of Season 1 of Delhi Crime, most viewers went into Season 2 anticipating this change — maybe it’ll be safer, more templatised, splashier and simpler. But despite a creator shuffle, Season 2 not only reinforced an honest personality and forensic gaze, it also addressed criticisms of the first season by humanising its Delhi Police characters — warts, blind spots and all — rather than glorifying them. The popularity, if anything, made it more introspective.

I admit I have trust issues with a Luv Ranjan screenplay. When it’s funny, I worry if I’m amused for the right reasons. When it’s dramatic, I get anxious about the gender politics behind the gender politics. When it’s chatty, I look for hints of meninism in the elaborate arguments and expository dialogue. When it’s good-looking, I am distracted by everyone speaking like they’re in a detergent ad. When it’s progressive, I suspect it’s trying to fool us. When it’s regressive, I wonder if it’s aware. One might argue I’m being too paranoid about a harmless genre: the romantic comedy. (I can almost hear the “stop overanalysing, just enjoy” voices). But we live in an age of relentless commentary; storytelling is only a vessel. Every new-age Hindi film, regardless of form, has something to say. Maybe it’s on us to figure out what that is, before choosing to be entertained or disappointed.

Baramulla opens with a striking single shot: a solitary flower bud in the snow attracts the attention of a child named Shoaib. It’s the sort of shot that usually ends with the sound of a bullet and the image of blood splattered across the whiteness. It is Kashmir after all. But the camera floats above the valley as the spell breaks and he trudges into the background. Minutes later, he disappears during a local magic show. Hard-nosed DSP Ridwaan Sayyed (Manav Kaul) is summoned to this town to crack the case and locate Shoaib, the son of a former MLA. Ridwaan’s track is rooted in the normal — more kids disappear from the same school, and the film shows a band of militants (led by a faceless mastermind named “Bhaijaan”) behind these kidnappings.

It’s a miracle that a movie named Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat exists. It’s like watching a 141-minute music video of tight reaction shots, slow-mo emotions, designer entry shots, personality twists and lone tear-drops. It’s also like watching an injured middle finger to a digital generation that equates love with consent, respect and dignity. If the movie were a person, it’d be a Sanam Teri Kasam stan who was once a Tere Naam devotee who became a Kabir Singh fan who became a MeToo apologist who then decided to explore wokeness within the realms of toxic masculinity. I’d be worried if this were a competently crafted film. Fortunately, it has the emotional intelligence of a soggy peanut. A visual transition early on hints at a self-cannibalising Bollywood story: coins thrown at a sultry single screen (because “mass” is the genre) match-cut to coins paid to a washerman by the humble siren from the screen. As the Scorsese meme goes: Absolute Cinema.

Thamma opens in 323 BC. A cocky Alexander the Great boasts to his troops during his invasion of India. But the fabled Greek warrior does not die in Babylon — he is slaughtered in a tropical jungle by a fanged ‘betaal’ leader named Yakshasan. This bloodthirsty Hindu demon is revising history without even realising it. “You will take over Bharat?” he snarls. Yakshasan spends the next several centuries feasting on anglo blood. He picks up some broken English on the way. India’s independence movement in the 1940s is a buffet for him: pale-skinned and stiff-lipped colonisers everywhere. But Yakshasan is soon debarred and locked up by his own clan when they realise that his freedom-fighting was a front for uncontrollable primal instincts all along. He wasn’t a spiritual protector or paranormal vigilante, just a hateful being out to erase one community. A hammy Nawazuddin Siddiqui playing Yakshasan stokes the narrative fire. The metaphor writes itself, but Thamma refuses to pay any heed to its most interesting character: a power-hungry madman who is exposed for milking nationalistic fervour.

Good Fortune plays out a bit like a smart-alecky Aziz Ansari comedy sketch. A skit-like one-liner — what if a well-meaning but incompetent “budget angel” body-swaps a wealthy white guy and a miserable brown guy? — is pan-fried with a series of thematic keywords: gig economy, American dream, immigrant struggle, racial biases, capitalist greed. It’s a deadpan spoof that counts on looking like a deadpan spoof; even the sincerity is supposed to sound designed and clunky. It has the narrative scale of a gag, too. As a film, it doesn’t know where to go after the social gimmick wears off; it just fizzles into the sort of artificial resolution that, if I didn’t know any better, passes off as image-renovating and self-righteous tripe. The film is fun when Keanu Reeves turns earnestness and bad writing into an art form. But as a Barbie-styled comment on modern American society, it comes across as performative and dishonest. Look Ma, (no) Wings!