Shilajit Mitra

Hindi cinema operates in extremes. On the one hand, you have the blatant Islamophobia and sectarianism of recent propaganda films. These films dig around in history to single out a particular community. The other approach is rarer: calm, sober-sided films made with a measure of dignity and intent. Yet these films also have a tendency to hedge, to oversimplify. Too often, they reduce complex realities to pat displays of solidarity. I felt that way about Ground Zero, a Kashmir-set military film with a passing yet palpable concern for local lives. And I feel much the same about Haq, which dramatises the landmark Shah Bano case from the 1980s. Incidentally, both films star Emraan Hashmi.

Cliffhangers are the hot sauce of series storytelling. They’re meant to make us drool, lean forward, smack our lips in anticipation. They are old spice, essential for closing out seasons but also necessary as episode-to-episode hooks. They fulfil an ajinomoto-like role in the cooking of compelling shows, and even the most prestigious chefs will cop to their use. The American television critic Emily Nussbaum is dead-on when she writes, “…cliffhangers are fake-outs. They reveal that a story is artificial, then dare you to keep believing.”

Is Subhash Kapoor the last surviving socialist of Hindi cinema? With Jaideep Sahni in semi-retirement, and belligerents like Dibakar Banerjee put out to pasture, all hope seems to rest with Kapoor. His Jolly LLB movies are animated by a public spirit that doesn’t feel condescending or blasé. Kapoor knows how and when to play it safe, which explains the franchise’s longevity. In a Bollywood that now panders openly to the status quo, these films whisper, if not directly speak, inconvenient truths to power. The latest entry, Jolly LLB 3, is the most urgently confrontational Kapoor has ever made. It is also, I’m sorry to report, the weakest link in the franchise. The satirical silliness of the previous two films — terrorists dressed as monks, an impromptu musical match in court — is given short shrift in Jolly LLB 3; weighty intentions halt the film’s stride. Arshad Warsi and Akshay Kumar return as the homonymous Jollys in a comedy bogged down by messaging and meaning. It’s that most frustrating kind of movie-going deal—agreeable politics hamstrung by a shaky screenplay.

Credit where it’s due: Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri makes the most interactive Hindi films imaginable. One of the discreet pleasures of watching his Files trilogy — Bengal was preceded by Kashmir and Tashkent — in theatres is also listening in on the audience chatter. His films coast on a call-and-response strategy that I find uniquely fascinating. There are pauses built into the narrative for the viewer to gasp and react—in horror, in indignation. Ideologically, these films are crude and convenient monologues; as a piece of communal theatre, though, they’re a dialogue! My morning screening of The Bengal Files at a suburban multiplex in Mumbai was by no means a muted experience. When a hopeful and patriotic man, circa 1946, announces optimistically that Calcutta will be never become a ‘Muslim’ city, an elderly lady three rows from me ad-libbed sarcastically, “Of course it wont”. On Mahatma Gandhi hawking his spiel of non-violence as Hindus are butchered in the streets: “What an a**hole”. And a little earlier, when a Sikh character enters the narrative, this priceless enquiry to the screen: “What is a sardar doing in Bengal?”

In films about laughter and forgetting, flashbacks become a distraction. A sweetly awkward interlude toward the end of Kaalidhar Laapataresolves a minor mystery: why Kalidhar, a middle-aged man with early-stage dementia played by Abhishek Bachchan, loves eating biriyani so much. What links his plate to heart is memory. Let’s call it a meat-cute. This passage (featuring younger versions of characters and scored with the generically sweet ‘Haseen Pareshaniyaan’) returns to conventionality a narrative that celebrates the art of letting go. In the 2019 Tamil original, KD, the moment is handled briskly, with minimum sentimentality. But a Hindi film without a discernible ’love track’ and a cameo is perhaps too much to ask.

A title like Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan spells trouble. It signals the surge of poetry about to overwhelm the screen. Conversations, voiceovers, song lyrics — everything is tuned to Radio Metaphor in Santosh Singh’s romantic drama. “She saw me not with sight, but insight,” says the hero, a visually-impaired man, of his beloved. A beat later: pyaar andha hota hai (love is blind). The film’s obsession with sight-based metaphors and poetic punning becomes… a blind spot. They meet on the train to Dehra. Jahaan (Vikrant Massey) is a musician and a songwriter, low on inspiration, seeking a creative reset in the hills. The passenger opposite him, in the coupe, is Saba (Shanaya Kapoor), a theatre artiste wanting to break into Hindi films. She’s wearing a blindfold (it’s prep for an important audition, she says) and has resolved not to remove it till the end of her trip. Since her manager bailed at the last minute, Saba has to travel alone and unattended. This means two things: (1) method acting, not family connections, is clearly the key to Bollywood. (2) Saba doesn’t realise that her co-passenger, with whom she’s struck up a lively rapport, is not a sighted person. Curiously, Jahaan plays along.

There is a self-aware moment in Sitaare Zameen Par that nicely parodies the moral science cinema of Aamir Khan. A team of neurodivergent basketball players has won a precious free throw in a losing game. Their coach, Gulshan, can’t stop pep-talking the player about to take the shot. Satbir (Aroush Datta) loses his head and yells out. “Sir, pehle aap chup rahiye,” he thunders, telling Gulshan to shut up. Khan — one of the most didactic superstars India has ever produced — needs to surround himself with more Satbirs. In his directorial debut, Taare Zameen Par, a landmark film from 2007, Khan played Nikumbh, a sensitive art teacher who mentors a dyslexic child in a boarding school. The audience, too, felt mentored meaningfully by Khan, their hearts and minds broadened by a thoughtful, virtuous star. Khan spiked his hair and dressed up in a clown suit for the role. Yet, every so often, we spotted a halo behind his head.

Detective Sherdil begins with a rap number talking up its quick-witted protagonist, ending with a declarative “Sherlock and Bakshi could never compare!” A tall claim, but also true in a sense. Neither Holmes nor Byomkesh hung around at crime scenes making reels. This, however, is what Sherdil (Diljit Dosanjh) does in the film’s opening scene, calling it a highlight of his job. The camera circles him in an arc. We are being introduced to a genius investigator. Instead, Diljit looks like he’s ready to drop his latest single. Having busted the biggest kidnapping ring in Budapest — oddly, no one, not even the White characters, speak a line of Hungarian — Sherdil is starting on a vacay. Promptly and unceremoniously, he’s dragged back to investigate the murder of telecom magnate Pankaj Bhatti (Boman Irani). On a highway, Bhatti’s car was waylaid and blown up by a bike-borne assassin. While the killer was caught, who were his paymasters?