Uday Bhatia

“Small cell carcinoma,” the doctor begins. Two blank faces stare at him. “Have you seen Anand?” he tries again. “What happened to Rajesh Khanna.” The simple point of Superboys of Malegaon is that, even at its bleakest, life can be made sweeter by cinema. The Anand reference softens the blow of a cancer diagnosis for two movie-crazy men who’ve travelled from the small town of Malegaon in Maharashtra. When they get back, the patient’s friends gently rib him about having a rich man’s ailment. Even the doctor’s life is made a little happier. He accepts a part in their upcoming film in return for home visits, saying he’d always wanted to be an actor but his father forbade it. Thirteen years earlier, Nasir (Adarsh Gourav) and Shafique (Shashank Arora) are on a motorbike, singing an improvised tune about not being too ambitious because they’ll end up dying in Malegaon anyway. It’s an early acceptance of the cards they’ve been dealt: Nasir to shoot wedding videos and work in his brother’s photo studio, Shafique in the mill.

It speaks to the relaxed control of Sabar Bonda how animals freely roam the frame and steal our attention. An optimistic goat breaks away from the herd and approaches two humans eating their lunch; it’s shooed away unceremoniously. A cat draws our gaze as it walks across the screen before it’s spooked by yelling and runs off. As Anand (Bhushaan Manoj) talks to his friend Balya (Suraaj Suman), he glances at a nearby buffalo that’s lifted its tail and done its business. Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s Marathi film, which won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival this month, is set in a village in Maharashtra. It’s close enough to Mumbai that Anand can take a bus there to perform his father’s last rites in his ancestral village. But it’s also a world removed, a place, in the local imagination at least, of opportunity and permissiveness, herbal shampoos and special friends.

Chhaava opens with a Maratha raid on a Mughal town. As he slashes his way through enemy ranks, Sambhaji (Vicky Kaushal) notices a crying boy caught in the skirmish. He returns the child to safety. I knew this image would return in some way and it did, about an hour later. A little girl herding goats on Maratha land wanders out of the frame. In the next shot, she’s staggering back, set on fire by advancing Mughal troops. There’s no such thing as a moral army, only propaganda and the tales we choose to tell ourselves. A French traveler to India in the early 18th century wrote about the devastation of one Maratha raid: “We camped out next to villages reduced to ashes… Women clutching their children in their arms, men contorted, as they had been overtaken by death… a sight of horror such as I had never seen before.” We see such a scene in Chhaava—but done by the Mughals. When the Marathas in Laxman Utekar’s film (based on a 1980 novel) burn down a town, there isn’t a human in sight, and the only casualty is property.

Boman Irani began acting in films in his 40s. From the start, it seemed like he’d always been there. He was a throwback to an earlier era of actors like Charles Laughton and Alex Guiness who were happy to disappear behind a wig, a fake nose, an accent. Irani could, of course, play it straight, like the father in Lakshya. But no one was better at going broad. His Khurana in Khosla Ka Ghosla and Asthana in Munnabhai M.B.B.S. are legend, but there’s a spectacular rogue’s gallery stretching from Darna Mana Hai to Don, Well Done Abba to Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd to Jayeshbhai Jordaar. Irani stars in The Mehta Boys and does a fine, fussy, fretful job. It’s also his first film as director, co-written with Alexander Dinelaris (Birdman) and co-produced by his company, Irani Movietone. It’s a polite little film about a recently bereaved family, emotionally available, a bit shapeless. Not all directors start with a big swing, but this is closer to forward defence.

Jeo Baby’s The Great Indian Kitchen was intended for theatrical release in 2021, but likely benefitted from the covid restrictions that resulted in a digital-only release. With everyone stuck inside, it was the right time for a film about the value of domestic work. It was one of the most acclaimed films that year, and it seemed only natural to hear some months later that the Malayalam film would be remade in Hindi. What was surprising to me, though, was the director attached to the project. Arati Kadav has directed one feature (Cargo, 2019) and a handful of shorts. A slim filmography, and yet she’s one of the most distinctive voices working in Hindi cinema today. Her work till now has tended towards science-fiction with a warm, handmade quality. A remake never seemed like the right use of her capacity for whimsy and invention, though I was curious to see what direction she might take Jeo Baby’s film. Having watched Mrs., I’m hoping this is Kadav’s ‘one for them’.

When was the last time the hero in an Indian commercial film was introduced without any fanfare? Deva opens with downbeat credits composed of fractured surveillance images. And then its titular character just appears, riding his bike down a tunnel. No buildup. No flying bodies. No ‘Sparkling Star Shahid Kapoor’. Ten minutes later, Kapoor is, in effect, reintroduced: there are sundry hero shenanigans and a dance number. But the opening is enough to guess that this is a rare contemporary Hindi commercial film whose rhythms aren’t those of Tamil or Telugu cinema. Then again, its hurt, sombre rhythms aren’t classic Bollywood either—despite Dev being positioned before a mural of Deewaar while ‘Main Hoon Don’ plays.

This week last year, a film released that seemed to epitomise popular Hindi cinema’s decline over a decade. Fighter might have set out to cash in on the success of Top Gun: Maverick, but it played like an advertisement for the sitting government at the centre. Releasing months before the general elections, the film—like Uri: The Surgical Strike in 2019—showed the prime minister as capable commander in chief while engaging in hysterical Pakistan-baiting. “Unhe dikhaana padega ki baap kaun hai (we’ll show them who daddy is),” the PM in the film says, a statesman-like sentiment befitting a Republic Day release. Sky Force also takes a ‘baap’ jab at Pakistan, but it’s a half-hearted swipe. As a fighter pilot film releasing on the weekend of 26 January, there are certain jingoistic beats directors Sandeep Kewlani and Abhishek Anil Kapur must feel they have to hit. And they do, but their heart isn’t in it. On the face of it, there’s not much to recommend this film—it’s underwritten, square and tries to pull off elaborate action on a clearly insufficient budget. But where Fighter tends towards rabid nationalism, Sky Force stumbles awkwardly in search of reconciliation.

There were only two things I asked of Emergency. One was to literally see the presses stop (we’re shown this twice). The second was for Sam Manekshaw to call Indira Gandhi ‘sweetie’, like Vicky Kaushal does in Sam Bahadur (2023). This, surprisingly, wasn’t fulfilled. I’m certain the makers were aware of the legend of the army chief saying this to the prime minister, but chose to leave it out. Its absence says a lot about this curious film suspended between opposing impulses. Emergency isn’t what I was expecting. For starters, its focus isn’t the Emergency; the events of 1975-77 take up, at a rough estimate, half an hour in a 146-minute film. Instead, this is very much a Indira Gandhi biopic, progressing in linear fashion from her childhood to her assassination in 1984. Since it’s Kangana Ranaut—a BJP MP who has made a number of incendiary statements about minorities and protestors—directing, producing and playing Indira, I was expecting a crazed hatchet job. This too doesn’t happen.