Nishaanchi

The strongest and weakest thing about Anurag Kashyap’s latest is that it is, indeed, an Anurag Kashyap film. As the film plodded along frustratingly in its third hour, I realised he’s still got the goods as a director. It’s something I gleaned from a tender moment in the sprawling 176-minute Nishaanchi. Wrestler-turned-goon Jabardast Singh (Vineet Kumar Singh) has just killed another pehelwaan (wrestler), after finding out he has wronged a local woman. This is Kanpur in 1996, and it’s not just the woman’s ‘honour’ Jabardast wants to avenge; he also wants to settle his score with a man (son-in-law of the president of the wrestling club), who got picked as the captain, ahead of Jabardast for years, forcing him to gulp his humiliation and give up wrestling to become a thug. In the scene, Jabardast is lying in bed with Manjiri (Monika Panwar) telling her he’ll have to surrender to the police. Being the right-hand man of a well-respected/feared thug, Jabardast has been assured that he’ll only have to serve a brief sentence, after which he will come back.

Ah, the age-old tale of twin brothers with identical looks but vastly different values. It’s been done to death in Hindi cinema, and yet, here we are again—because why not revisit a classic, right? In Nishaanchi, Anurag Kashyap takes another swing at his Gangs of Wasseypur-like canvas, complete with brotherly brawls, betrayals, love affairs, and the occasional redemption arc. You know, just your typical Bollywood recipe for family dysfunction. Produced by Ajay Rai, Vipin Agnihotri, and Ranjan Singh under JAR Pictures, in collaboration with Flip Films, this film stars newcomer Aaishwary Thackeray alongside Monika Panwar, Vedika Pinto, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, and the inimitable Kumud Mishra. Kashyap once again takes a deep dive into the murky waters of small-town India, where politicians are corrupt, cops are bent, and men are generally itching to pull the trigger. It’s not just about a bullet to the head, though—no, no. The real violence here is much more intimate, and yes, we’re talking about the good ol’ Purabiya slang. Let’s be real: this is not the polite underworld; it’s the kind where you need to duck every five seconds.

Since Bombay Velvet (2015), every Anurag Kashyap release has brought with it a sense of uncertainty. The general feeling is that — amid his tell-all interviews, frank ideologies, artistic generosity, acting, social media-ing, festivaling and exec-producing — his film-making identity has become worryingly shapeless. Will it be Kashyap enough? Will it be bitter? Will it be too political? Will it be indulgent? Will it be screened at all? He has diversified his legacy so much that it’s natural to wonder if he’s strayed too far (Choked, Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat, Dobaaraa) from the provocative swings that made his name an adjective. The perception is that something is lost, and it needs to be found. Nishaanchi, his latest, is infected with this anxiety of rediscovery. It is shaped by the search for his own school of storytelling, whose students are now everywhere.

Aaishvary Thackeray is saying something to Kumud Mishra when a fly buzzes in his face. It throws him off for a split second, but then he brushes it off and continues speaking. Nishaanchi is three hours long and this moment lasts a few seconds. But in a film where nothing is urgent and time goes by so slowly, it struck me as a rare precise bit of problem-solving. There’s a larger problem that’s not so easily solved. Anurag Kashyap’s last three releases, Choked, Dobaaraa and Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat, were different kinds of disappointing, while Kennedy not finding any kind of release here showed his stock had fallen considerably. Nishaanchi suggests he wants his audience back. Insofar as there’s a Kashyap niche, this is it: north Indian town, twangy Hindi, assorted lowlifes and lovers and family squabbles. It’s a film that’s eager to please and careful not to pick fights, something you can hardly say about any of the director’s previous work.