Shubhra Gupta

A woman leans on a pole in her compartment, for support, for balance, swaying with the rhythm of the train. She looks exhausted, after a long day at work. We take in, like she does, the way the city looks at night, bars of refracted light and darkness dancing across her face. This image, which comes early in Payal Kapadia’s lyrical ode to working-class Mumbai and female friendship, becomes a marker of the themes the film explores, and it stays with you.

An underdog dance group making something of itself: right from the opening frame of Waack Girls, you know that this will be the trajectory of this rag-tag bunch, based in Kolkata. But this Sooni Taraporevala-created-and-directed nine part series attempts to build in differentials. First off, Kolkata is still not a city you’d think of when it comes to street style dancing and underground meetings where dance-offs occur. A lovely Cal feeling is captured in a crumbling old mansion, in a tony club, in the corner puchka-wala, and in the accents people use. You do see some familiar structures on the skyline, like the Howrah Bridge, but they are just there, no emphasis laid. That is refreshing.

Going into ‘I Want To Talk’, I had no idea that that the character Abhishek Bachchan plays is based on an actual person called Arjun Sen. That knowledge would have added a certain layer to the story of a man who bests certain death- a diagnosis of laryngeal cancer and the consequent grim prognosis of a limited future—and is still around on planet earth. A valid question arises, after you’re done: anyone surviving 19-20 tough surgeries, and finding the energy to bring up a daughter, and run a marathon, is worthy of respect, but is that enough to engage us for two hours? Director Shoojit Sircar has an affinity for characters dealing with life-and-death situations, set in the innards of hospitals (October), as well as exploring filial connections (Piku). Both themes are here, but the depth and emotion which elevate his plots surface only occasionally.

The choice of using ‘Freedom At Midnight’, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre’s account of the tumultuous build-up to India’s independence in August 1947, as the basis for the seven-part web series of the same name achieves one thing above all else: adapting from source material which has been in existence for several years, especially from the celebrity author duo who couldn’t be accused of being either pro-India, or pro-Pakistan, frees creator and director Nikkhil Advani of being accused similar bias.

On February 27, 2002, several coaches of the Sabarmati Express at Godhra station caught fire, causing the deaths of 59 people, many of them women and children. The train from Ayodhya, bound for Ahmedabad, was full of ‘karsevaks’ returning after a ceremony held under the aegis of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). Flames could be seen in four coaches, according to reports, but the worst hit was Coach 6, where the deaths took place. The horrific incident was followed by three days of rioting in Gujarat: according to several accounts, the number of the dead was well over 2000. The Nanavati-Mehta commission, appointed by the state government, concluded that the fire was the result of a pre-planned arson by a large Muslim mob; the one-member Banerjee commission instituted in 2004 by the government at the Centre declared that it was an accident.

On paper, ‘Vijay 69’ must have felt like a splendid idea. Old men dodder. They don’t go about being potty-mouthed, or making sad sex jokes. How about getting Vijay Mathew, a ripe 69, to have a vocabulary which is more foul than fair, even if he has reached grandfather status? Next, how about setting him an impossible task? Even the fittest baulk at attempting the triathlon. Why not get our elderly hero to have a dash at it? Vijay lives in a house surrounded by the memories of his dead wife, the only one who used to encourage him in his endeavours, the chief of which seems to be getting ranked in a swimming race. Everyone else, including his dearest friend Fali (Chunky Panday donning a grey wig and the broadest Parsi accent that can be mustered), thinks he’s gone bananas.

First things first: all hail the arrival of Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Indian cinema’s first real female action star who demands our attention from the get-go and never loses it through the six part series, Citadel: Honey Bunny. She’s coiled, ready for action, exploding off the screen whenever the script demands it of her, and the demand stays consistently high. As the family woman-cum-spry spy, who will do anything to protect her daughter, Samantha’s Honey is the best part of this enterprise, directed and written by Raj and DK (Sita Menon also gets writing and directing credit), and executive produced by the Russo Bros.

All right folks, we are back in the labyrinth. For a third time. Lots of stuff that we remember from the earlier outings. Creaky two-hundred-year-old Bengali havelis. Locked rooms. Vengeful ‘aatmas’. Ghosts who flit about. And characters who spout their lines, and vanish.