Saibal Chatterjee

A pitch-perfect Pratik Gandhi performance underwires the intrinsic authenticity of Ananth Narayan Mahadevan’s Phule. But more than anything else, it is the abiding pertinence of the film’s theme that sets it apart from anything that Bollywood has delivered, or is likely to produce, this year. Phule has its share of dramatic flourishes, but it lets nothing deflect it from its resolve to bring to the big screen an essential story that is still as relevant as ever, notwithstanding a card at the end of the film (obviously at the behest of those with the power to decide what we can and cannot watch), proclaiming that the caste system is a thing of the past.

A red diamond brings the worst out of two men—a criminal kingpin and a globetrotting con artist—in Jewel Thief - The Heist Begins. The trouble is, it does not spare the film either. Jewel Thief - The Heist Begins, all style and no substance, is an abomination of monumental proportions. Beyond trite, it rests on a premise that should have been snuffed out on paper itself. The precious object that two combatants are ready to die for is of African provenance. It triggers a rigmarole that traverses the world—Budapest, Istanbul, Mumbai—for inspiration. It finds none. The heist thriller piles inanity upon inanity and never pauses to ponder why. Produced by Siddharth Anand’s Marflix Pictures, the Netflix film is directed by Kookie Gulati and Robbie Grewal. It has come from the stable that delivered War, Pathaan, and Fighter. Don’t let that fool you.

Epic in length - it has a runtime of nearly four and a half hours - but squarely focused on the minutiae of the life of three boys and their excessively stern father, Naangal (This Is Us) is an exceptional piece of cinema. Calling it a piece of anything would be somewhat incongruous - it is far larger than that. Naangal - the Tamil film is part of the Asian Cinema Competition at the ongoing 15th Bengaluru International Film Festival - is a striking and sweeping collage of innumerable shards of memory, mostly unsettling, collated and rendered in the form stunning images underwired by a fantastic background score and strung together with impressive skill and imagination. Written, directed, shot and edited by Avinash Prakash, Naangal has the look of a work helmed by a seasoned director. But it is a debut film. A deeply personal essay, its length is bound to be commented on. What is important is that the time that Naangal takes to tell a story that spans about a decade seems completely justified. Growing up is never easy particularly when home isn’t what it is meant to be - sweet home.

The strong points of Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Story of Jallianwala Bagh - it does have a few - are most surface level. The intense and occasionally blustery dramatization of the legal battle waged by one brave man to bring mass murderer General Reginald Dyer to justice is mounted and filmed with impressive flair. But in its deeper, defining folds, there is much that would have benefitted had more thought and rigour gone into the project. Akshay Kumar - he is obviously in here to lend star power to a historical that largely steers clear of commercial tics - is clearly miscast as the Malayali lawyer-statesman Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair, who sued the Crown for genocide after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of March 13, 1919 and almost single-handedly took the case to its logical conclusion.

Writer-director Suman Ghosh situates Puratawn (The Ancient) in a sprawling ancestral abode inhabited by a widowed matriarch and her housemaid. Many stories, some fading, others perennial, and many of them going all the way back to the 1970s and beyond, resides in this mansion and in the mind of its principal occupant. The physical location as well as the wizened lady’s psyche are sites where mere words and gestures do not convey as much immediate meaning as forgotten objects and indelible remembrances do. It is human to hold on to secrets, to create mysteries, and to conjure up conundrums in the course of the humdrum of existence — the protagonist of Puratawn does all that as she looks for ways to resist obliteration of what she holds dear.

Nearly 25 years after uprooting a handpump in a fit of rage in Gadar and over three decades since upselling the power of his dhai kilo ka haath, Sunny Deol, now 67 years old, revels in ripping out (or apart) ceiling fans, banisters, columns, statues and other voluminous objects from their perches and sockets and wielding them as handy and deadly weapons. While the veteran actor still looks the part and struts around with the requisite panache in Jaat, the rough-and-ready tropes that once worked famously for him and his films no longer possess the sheen that can help deflect our attention from a patchy script riddled with holes the size of giant craters. Jaat is much ado about a couple of uneaten idlis and an upset man in quest of an apology until bigger issues - the discovery of thorium in coastal Andhra Pradesh, the displacement of villagers who have lived there for centuries, and the corruption of politicians and policemen all too willing to play into the hands of international conspirators.

How much solemn politics is too much solemn politics in an out-and-out action movie that aspires to be much more than just a vehicle for three of Kerala’s top male stars? No matter what L2: Empuraan, toplined by a superstar who has ruled the roost for decades and helmed by another who pulls out the stops both as director and actor, packs into its three hours by way of larger commentary, the gap between intent and result not only refuses to go away, but also fluctuates wildly. There is, of course, no known limit to what degree, and sort, of topical relevance a thriller must attain in order to break free of its genre confines and assume elevating social significance. L2: Empuraan, a Malayalam tentpole production whose Hindi dub is in theatres nationwide, is anything but frugal with its barbs at the abuse of power and the pitfalls of personality cults. The second part of a planned trilogy that began with the 2019 hit Lucifer, this Prithviraj Sukumaran-directed potboiler mixes up its visceral chops, ultra-violent spirals into excess and visual pizzazz with all-out attempts to show up forces that are out to destabilise Kerala in a fictional world that intermittently mirrors the real one in which those in authority lay down the rules to suit their immediate agendas.

Their incredible true story has been in the public domain for well over a decade and a half but the deeds of the moviemakers of Malegaon have never ceased to fascinate. Inherent in the tale is the drama of improbable dreams of nondescript individuals clashing with daunting societal and economic constraints and, in the bargain, engendering phenomenal acts of self-belief. Director Reema Kagti captures it all in Superboys of Malegaon, a matter-of-fact fictionalized retelling. Her film is a classic rollercoaster in which dizzying and sobering, flighty and probing, roll into and out of each other. Superboys of Malegaon, produced by Excel Entertainment and Tiger Baby, is about unremarkable lives made noteworthy by trajectories less ordinary. But, operating firmly within the realms of the real and the relatable, the film steers well clear of the cliches of the genre.