Rahul Desai

Kesari Chapter 2 is a strange film. Based on the 2019 book The Case That Shook The Nation, it dramatises the events following the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The story revolves around C. Sankaran Nair, the Indian lawyer who took on the British Raj in court to prove that the massacre was a carefully planned conspiracy. So, on paper, the patriotism it exudes is more of an old-school one — the kind detected in period dramas like Ae Watan Mere Watan (2024) and The Waking of a Nation (the recent SonyLIV show featuring a fictional version of Nair). I’d like to believe that these stories use the atrocities of colonialism as a medium to express the importance of dissent, free speech, secularism and anti-establishment courage in present-day India. After all, Nair’s fight is inherently one that challenges an oppressive rule and the systemic abuse of power.

Let’s start with a modern horror story. When the first season of Sacred Games dropped in 2018, there was a surge of hope for a newer dawn of storytelling. The OTT space felt primed to embark on go-for-broke adventures that Hindi cinema and television couldn’t: take risks, platform untapped talent, challenge the mainstream, exhibit genres and languages. But the rapid and predatory privatisation of this medium meant that — save for a handful of titles every year — the hope remained a mirage. Studios, flowcharts, eyeball races and formulas turned the streaming space into a land of the living dead, where art became the flesh-and-blood exception and not the zombified norm.

For a hot second in 2023, the Internet turned on Babil Khan. The young actor, son of the late Irrfan, became the rare nepo-kid who got trolled for saying all the right things. His viral take on romantic relationships — where he batted for gender equality and called out the chauvinistic phrasing of “getting girls” — was treated with suspicion; he was accused of being too rehearsed, too pretentious. Social media was flooded with scrutiny and jokes about performative wokeness and green-flag syndromes. To his credit, Khan leans into this persona for Logout, a cyber thriller in which he plays a famous and chronically online influencer on the brink of breaching the 10-million-followers barrier.

If Chhorii (2021) was an overlong, preachy and screechy horror film centered on female infanticide, Chhorii 2 is an overlong, preachy and screechy horror film centered on child marriage. In a post-Stree world, this social horror template feels a bit hollow without humour — like the cinematic equivalent of a gender studies student on a gap year. The sequel takes place seven years after the events of Chhorii, Vishal Furia’s Hindi remake of his Marathi movie about a pregnant woman (Nushrratt Bharuccha, as Sakshi) who walks away from a patriarchal and baby-killing village with the ex-wife (Pallavi Ajay, as Rani) of her murderous husband. If this sentence sounds complicated, never mind. Just remember that Sakshi is the hero because she went through hell and back to protect her girl-child.

During his second of many uncomplicated rampages in Jaat, Sunny Deol delivers a line that’s his version of Shah Rukh Khan saying, “Before touching the son, deal with the father” in Jawan (2023) or Salman Khan saying, “Politics is not my field, but don’t force me to enter it” in Sikandar (too recent). Deol’s self-referential roar goes: “The North knows this ‘dhaai kilo ka haath,’ now let the South experience it”. It’s a fun idea, if you think about it (but not too much). Deol’s the definitive North Indian hero, a man’s man’s man’s man steeped in Sehwagian clarity: see enemy, hit enemy. Following in the steps of his contemporaries, Jaat is his pan-Indian intro-shot: a hit Telugu director, a coastal Andhra setting, villains from Sri Lanka (not Pakistan), a Jai Shri Ram-song entry on an Ayodhya-bound train, a hulk-smash setup, a mixed cast and crew.

Over its three seasons, The White Lotus has become an American TV franchise that at once satirises the insularity of American affluence and the superiority complex of a social media generation that laps up the satire. Much of the show — its characters, reaction shots, music, monologues, conversations, scandals, twists, weekly episodes — is staged with a sense of the memes, hyper-aware humour and internet buzz it generates. The virality is an inextricable part of the design. It caters to — but also skewers — an average woke viewer’s desire to be seen as well as their disdain towards Western capitalism and anti-intellectualism. We are invited to laugh at rich and culturally oblivious vacationers dispensing the emptiest thought farts with the self-seriousness of 13-year-old cinephiles. Note, for instance, the gravity of the score almost mocks the levity of Sam Rockwell’s hysterically hollow monologue about his sexual awakening (if one can even call it that). But we are also lured into identifying with a couple of ‘outsiders’ — people who think they’re better than everyone else — in each of the seasons. In Season 1, it’s a Black teenager tagging along on a Hawaiian holiday with the wealthy white family of her best friend; it’s also a freelance culture writer who’s newly married into money. In Season 2, it’s a straight-laced lawyer who cringes at the superficiality of her husband’s friends; it’s also a frumpy young assistant of an eccentric heiress on a Sicilian holiday.

Early on in Harshad Nalawade’s Follower, we see its central character, Raghvendra “Raghu” Pawar (Raghu Prakash), commuting to work one morning. It’s an innocuous little routine—a man rides through town on his motorbike. The passing scenery is reminiscent of any tier-2 Indian city: dusty cricket grounds, petrol pumps, bus stops, a giant clock, a flyover under construction, a bridge. A closer look, however, reveals that the streets simmer with unresolved frictions and resolute fictions. Garlanded statues of fabled kings compete for attention with garlanded statues of fabled queens. Flags of clashing political parties and communities dot the statues and bus stops. A lone church shies away in the background. Raghu has the stoic manner of a combatant weaving through the debris of a decades-long dispute. We soon learn that this town, Belgaum, is a war zone of identity.

S. Sashikanth’s Test is yet another story about a celebrity feeling the rage of a common man. It follows Arjun Venkataraman (Siddharth), a legendary Indian cricketer thrown into a crisis. The crisis is manufactured by a bitter scientist, Saravanan (R. Madhavan), who needs money to fend off loan sharks, pay for his wife’s IVF treatment and, most importantly, float a revolutionary hydro-fuel project. The twists are corny and implausible. The Netflix-thriller template flattens the initial promise. There are too many loose ends, abrupt transformations, unnecessary characters, over-the-top performances (Madhavan’s villain era — or Maddy’s baddie era — is just not it), and lazy resolutions. In short, Test is not a great film.