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CTRL – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

Be Very Careful:

In spite of reading warnings about online frauds and invasion of privacy,  most people are lax about security.  Nobody reads the terms and conditions before clicking on ‘I Accept’ because it’s too complicated and time consuming.  Vikramaditya Motwane’s film CTRL (on Netflix), written by him and Avinash Sampath, is a cautionary tale about the consequences of allowing social media  apps too much access into personal details.
Nella (Ananya Panday) and her boyfriend Joe (Vihaan Samat) are popular influencers, which means they share everything about their lives together to gather more followers. The numbers get them endorsement deals.
One day, Nella wants to surprise Joe at a restaurant where he is meeting work buddies, and is publicly humiliated when she catches him kissing another girl. Her meltdown, also captured on camera makes her the laughing stock on social media. Worse than loss of face is loss of followers and livelihood.
In a mood of despair she signs up for an AI app, chooses a male assistant to help rid her online platforms of Joe’s images. She gives the app admin access, and basically all permissions to read and access her mails and messages. The AI Avatar she names Allen (voiced by Aparshakti Khurana), would have been creepy in the real world, but Nella just needs emotional support– she seems to have just one offline friend, who, like Allen, is not available all the time.
Initially, she is thrilled when she becomes a solo success as an influencer; then she gets news that Joe has gone missing, and it hits her just how much the app has embedded itself into her life.
The film is slickly and truly contemporary when dependence on digital devices has become an epidemic. Many youngsters and seniors too would be lost, and maybe, lonely, without their smartphones.  Companies data mining to sell products to consumers is a step away from controlling every aspect of our lives, dictating preferences and expressing thoughts on our behalf. It’s a scary dystopian situation of mind control, and it’s almost here. Deep fake videos and voices are being used to con or blackmail the vulnerable.
The format of the film is screenlife, which means for most part the action is seen on a screen; very few scenes are offline. It can be disconcerting to watch, because of the phoney excitement that’s part of the contest sharing deal. The comments and emojis– mostly trolling– are constantly running at the side.
Ananya Panday’s performance, without the filter of vanity, is earnest.  All young stars have an online presence and are aware of the risks of oversharing and trolling.  Since she belongs to the generation of smartphone-addicted youngsters, she brings a certain veracity to the character, comfortable with the jargon and visual quirks.
(This piece first appeared in seniortoday.in)
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Cinemaah

Sector 36 – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

Murders  Most Foul:

The Nithari Killings of 2006 had pierced India’s doesn’t-happen-here complacency.  The sensational case of murder, sex, cannibalism, necrophilia in a nondescript area of Noida had dominated the media for months.  BBC made a documentary Slumdog Cannibal (2012),  Netflix’s True Crime  documentary The Karma Killings came out in 2017, and the idea was picked up for  movie Murder 2 and Deepa Anappara’s novel Djinn Patrol On The Purple Line. There didn’t seem to be much outrage, however, when the two accused Moninder Singh Pandher and his domestic help Surinder Koli, were acquitted in 2023, for lack of evidence and shoddy investigation. The lingering question, if any, is how could such a thing happen without anybody noticing? The fact is, that it could possibly happen again, and nobody will notice, or care. Apathy is now our society’s default position.

Eighteen years later, Aditya Nimbalkar’s film Sector 36, exhumes the bones of the case, making use of all the salacious details, but adding no new insights to that horrific chapter in the police files.

Ram Charan Pandey (Deepak Dobriyal) is the corrupt inspector in the Shahadra police station, who could barely be bothered to get off his chair, even as the posters of missing children proliferate on the notice board. The kids belong to the slums where migrants live, and their complaints do not even merit an FIR.

Meanwhile, in a mansion by the basti, Prem Singh (Vikrant Massey), left to mind the house while the owner is away, obsessively watches a KBC-like game show, abducts neighbourhood kids, rapes, kills, eats some body parts, sells organs, and flushes the rest into the drain. In the normal squalor and stink of a slum gutter, the smell goes unnoticed, and the cops just assume the kids ran away or were sold by their own families.

The chaste Hindi-speaking Pandey, who plays Raavan in the colony’s Ram Leela, would not have been kicked aware from his dereliction of duty, but for his own daughter getting picked up. She is saved, but the now chastened inspector starts investigating seriously.

When he talks to the owner of the house, Balbir Bassi (Akash Khurana), the wealthy businessman pulls strings of his old boys’ network, that includes the DCP (Darshan Jariwala) and a minister or two. The DCP only swings into action when a rich kid is kidnapped, and there is media attention to be gained. Following up with Bassi on a missing sex worker earns Pandey a suspension.

Later, with the encouragement of the honest new DCP (Baharul Islam), Pandey has enough evidence to arrest Prem.  Massey must have taken the role of the awful pervert, just for that one scene of interrogation, where Pandey tries to hold back his rising disgust, as Prem very calmly lists his crimes, with the why, when and how.  He seems proud of what he has done, and arrogantly demands to be let off in time to catch the latest episode of the game show, secure in the knowledge that his boss will get him off.

Prem’s confession leads to the discover of many more dead kids in the drain behind the bungalow that came to be known as The House Of Horrors. The film goes for the gruesomeness and shock (watching it needs a tough heart or the quick averting of the eyes), and even tries to justify Prem’s perversion with a flashback of his own abuse by his uncle, a butcher, who taught him how to dismember animal carcasses.

As just another crime thriller, Sector 36 is well made, but that was not an ordinary crime, and the film (on Netflix) needed much more than just a police procedural. With the benefit of hindsight, the advantage of fictionalizing, and without the pressures of the box-office, writer Bodhayan Roychaudhary and director Nimbalkar could have delved deeper into the case and its impact. Obviously class plays an important role, but did the deplorable attempt at a cover up by the cops have any implication? How was society of the time and the media affected by it?

The performances are excellent—Deepak Dobriyal has a clearly defined character graph and holds his own against Massey, who is unfortunately made to play Prem with an almost charismatic insouciance.  The film warns about the disturbing visuals, but is still nightmarish; worse still when even a cursory search reveals what really happened, and how the monsters eventually escaped the noose.

(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)

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Cinemaah

IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack – Web Series Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

Unlikely Heroes:

In the midst of a plethora of OTT shows on fights against terrorism, if anything, Anubhav Sinha’s new series (on Netflix) proves that heroes don’t have to be strapping six-packed dudes with guns.

The four men who are seen silhouetted against the sky in several shots of IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack, are middle-aged, out of shape bureaucrats, given a chance to be a part of history, and also be judged harshly.

Sinha dives right into the highwire tension, as an intelligence operative in Kathmandu notices something fishy, and tries to stop the Indian Airlines Flight  IC 814 from taking off to Delhi. But he hits a wall of lazy bureaucracy, and the flight is hijacked by five masked men.

The passengers and crew, expecting a normal journey, are rudely jolted by men with guns and grenades. The pilot Sharan Dev (Vijay Varma) is ordered to fly to Kabul, but the plane does not have fuel to reach that city. The initial episodes of the six-part series are spent in the panic of passengers, the calm of the cabin crew (Patralekhaa Paul, Additi Gupta Chopra), and the efforts to land the plane for fuel.

Sinha and his co-writer Trishant Srivastava do not rush the proceedings – it is an authentic recreation of what took place—and a lot of it must be in public memory, since in 1999, TV coverage was on (real footage is interspersed) and the media got news almost as fast as it took place. The hapless pilot and his team have to save the passengers, keep the hijackers from blowing up the plane or killing anyone.

Meanwhile, with no demands forthcoming, there is confusion in Delhi among the various government departments, and nobody willing to take a decision over what might be an explosive and lose-lose situation—these men are an array of acting talent, Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Arvind Swamy, Manoj Pahwa, Kumud Mishra, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Kanwaljit Singh.

It’s a coalition government, with PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the helm, when the demand is to release terrorists—including the body of a dead one—who would take the unpopular call?

The series is based on the pilot’s book Flight To Fear, and even though the outcome of the hijack was known—how a series of negotiations and calling in favours, finally landed the flight in Taliban-controlled Kandahar, how the only passenger killed was a newly-wed man, and how the media sensationalized everything, the series is still suspenseful and nerve-wracking.

(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)

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Cinemaah

Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

That Femme Again:

The 2021 film, Hasseen Dillruba, directed by Vinil Mathew, was based on the germ of an idea from Roald Dahl’s twisted thriller, Lamb To The Slaughter. It ended with the murder of Rani’s (Taapsee Pannu) lover Neel (Harshwardhan Rane), her husband Rishu (Vikrant Massey) cutting his hand off to make it look like the body in a burning house is his, and the couple run off to Agra to start a new life.

They get away with the crime, but cannot live together, for fear of the cops catching up. In the sequel, Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba, directed by Jayprad Desai, there is a temporary lull before the storm. She she runs a beauty parlour, he works as a coaching class teacher, both putting aside money to escape the country.  Then, a cop (Aditya Srivastav) from their past turns up carrying his suspicions with him, but much worse, Neel’s uncle Mrityunjay aka Montu Chacha (Jimmy Shergill) arrives with the promise of exposing the two and their crime. He is proud of his “woodpecker” reputation–like the bird that pecks away at a tree trunk till there is a hole in it.

In the first film, the plot unfolded in a convincing way; the sequel (also written by Kanika Dhillon) is too convoluted. Which is not to say it is not entertaining. Rani, stylish for middle class Agra, dressed in strappy, backless blouses and sexily draped saris, becomes the object of devotion of a door-to-door compounder, Abhimanyu (Sunny Kaushal). Rishu has his own stalker-ish admirer, Poonam (Bhumika Dube), but she admits she wants a temporary alliance, while Abhimanyu is the old-style aashiq, who existed only in old movie romances, and trashy paperbacks.

The pulp novelist Dinesh Pandit, whose plots and lines give his fan Rani ideas for her own perilous life, comes to the rescue again through the outlandishly fiendish stories. With Montu Chacha dogging her every step, Rani and Rishu have to communicate through Pandit’s couplets scribbled on walls. It is “Panditji’s” book that gives Rani the thought of marrying Abhimanyu, to deflect the cops’ scrutiny.

The husband of convenience accepts his role, and the two spend their time drinking and playing snakes-and-ladders. But in any effective thriller the plot eventually thickens, and slithers all over the sleepy town, like the crocodiles that have taken over the river in Agra. These reptiles play an important part in the escape plan of Rani and Rishab, with Abhimanyu being a sporting accomplice. But, of course, there are deceptions and several twists in the tale, which may be implausible, but also give the viewer the thrills unapologetically offered by corny novels, the bombastic lines or loony logic of which are never questioned by fans.

Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba is that kind of believe-it-or-not film, that wraps up one passionate love story, but leaves room for a third part!

The performances are uniformly excellent, but Sunny Kaushal and Jimmy Shergill wade right into the spirit of it, and enjoy themselves. “Gajab” as Montu Chacha is fond of saying.

(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in) 

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Tribhuvan Mishra CA Topper – Web Series Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

Noida Nightmare:

The lack of censorship on streaming platforms means that a show like Tribhuvan Mishra CA Topper can get made. On the surface it is about a man forced to become a gigolo because of financial pressures, but it also attempts to be dark, funny and in its own way, socially observant about current sexual mores.

Tribhuvan Mishra (Manav Kaul) works in a government office that deals with building permits, but is resolutely honest. He lives in a Noida colony with his wife Ashoklata (Naina Sareen) and two kids, providing just enough for them, but also unable to stretch the monthly budget when extra expenses come up. When the bank where his life’s savings were deposited goes belly-up, Tribhuvan is in dire straits (a CA topper does not invest in diversified portfolios?).

When his harried wife, constantly taunted by her brother Shambhu (Sumit Gulati) and deceptively demure sister-in-law (Shweta Basu Prasad), tells Tribhuvan that she wished he had some marketable talent. Tribhuvan recalls Ashoklata complimenting his love-making skills and decides to put that to work for him.

A profile on a site offering sex, instant tips from a friendly gigolo (Jitin Gulati) and the mousy accountant with the handle of CA topper, succeeds in acquiring a large client base of satisfied women. He never seems to have any moral qualms about what he does, and how it might affect his family and work if it got out – Noida is a small town after all, and Tribhuvan drives around on a distinctive yellow scooter (alluding to one of Manav Kaul’s plays)!

The story of this unlikely Don Juan of Noida had great potential, but the directors Puneet Krishna and Amrit Raj Gupta, go the usual way of crime and violence. One or Tribhuvan’s happy clients is Bindi (Tillotama Shome) the unhappy wife of Teeka Ram Jain aka Raja Bhaiya (Shubhrajyoti Barat), a gangster who runs a mithai shop as a front.  Other Noida lowlife’s abound, so the language is saltier than usual, and guns are branded at regular intervals. Two cops (Faisal Malik, Sunil Saraswat) turn up at Jain’s shop regularly for free snacks, but are clueless about other crimes in their jurisdiction. When they do raid a seedy hotel and catch Tribhuvan in the act with a client, the cops are surprised that there is such a thing as a male prostitute!  The woman is unapologetic and unashamed.  Why is all the lecture about morality directed at the woman, she asks before stalking off.

The show brings up the issue of female desire, and how women are now capable of seeking pleasure outside when they don’t get it from their men. The dreamy, movie mad Bindi is saddled with a dull, boorish husband, and realizes what she was missing when she meets Tribhuvan—not just sexual gratification, but the simple joy of being looked at with appreciation.

Tribhuvan gets increasingly prosperous, starts looking and behaving more confident,  pays off his debts, buys a shop for his wife’s bakery, and would have carried on happily, were it not for Jain’s loyal henchmen discovering where Bindi goes when she sneaks out of the house.

It is as if the makers are somewhat embarrassed by their own plot, and cover up by making it loud, profane, lurid. The interiors are garish, the characters are quirky, and most of the gangsters and their henchmen talk like they just binge-watched three seasons of Mirzapur. The nine-part show has too much padding, like two gangsters constantly bickering about who is better, Shah Rukh or Salman Khan.

Casting Manav Kaul was the masterstroke—the actor looks so decent and sincere, that even when he is up to the neck in sleaze, he looks like none of it touched his soul.

(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)

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Wild Wild Punjab – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

Men Will Be Boys

This is Punjab, but it’s also Luv Ranjan’s laddish universe, in which a bunch of overgrown boys, who ought to have adulted by their thirties, run riot from Patiala to Pathankot, with enough booze consumed to float a few boats. Wild Wild Punjab, co-produced and co-written by Ranjan, and directed by Simarpreet Singh (on Netflix), is a somewhat more sober version of The Hangover school of cinema. It’s much less profane and just borderline misogynistic—nobody gets an anti-women monologue (maybe because Kartik Aryan is missing in this melee)—and if setting fire to a place with alcohol-saturated piss is anybody’s idea of comedy, then this one’s funny.

There are four friends—Maan Arora aka Arore (Sunny Singh) is the Casanova, Gaurav Jain (Jassie Gill) is the “vegetarian” daddy’s boy, Honey Singh (Manjot Singh) is the rich transport company heir, and Rajesh Khanna aka Khanne (Varun Sharma) is the joker of the pack, the actor still channeling his inner Zach Galifianakis. To give him credit, though, nothing is too ridiculous for him—including getting a bullet in his backside, and then getting kicked there.

Khanne is suicidally distraught because the girl he loves is getting married to another. After getting roaring drunk, they decide to drive the three-hour distance to the wedding venue in Honey’s swanky SUV he lovingly calls Paro, so that Khanne can tell Vaishali (Aasheema Vardaan)—often referred to as veshya (hooker)—that he is over her. Three hours, however, turn out to be a very, very broad estimate, since the path to heart-mending closure is strewn with distractions.

It’s tough to encapsulate the plot without giving away spoilers, but along the way, they crash a wedding, get into drunken stupor, and add a passenger (Patralekhaa) to the car. Then it is decided to take a detour so that they can pick up a young woman (Ishita Raj), who can pretend to be Khanne’s hot new girlfriend, so the “I’m over you” would be more convincing and the bride could be made jealous. Every few minutes, in the fast-paced misadventure (screenplay and dialogue by Sandeep Jain and Harman Wadala), something goes wrong for the dudes.

So, since it is Punjab of the Bollywood stereotype, at some point, cops (Rajesh Sharma) are involved, a lockup is experienced, drugs enter the picture and then, gangsters (Anjum Batra, Samuel John) joining the fray is a given. There is violence, but of the jokey kind—in the midst of a chase and shootout, there is a hilarious phone conversation with a gun supplier about a malfunctioning weapon. Bullets fly, cars overturn, but nobody actually gets hit, except unfortunate Khanne, in the posterior. It’s all in the cause of entertainment. Men getting into trouble because of their stupidity, greed or, in this case, uncontrolled guzzling, is a legit subgenre of the road-cum-buddy movie; every time there is a lull in the movie market for a comedy, one of these can easily be trotted out. The friends can be men or women—the idea is taking a trip that goes topsy turvy!  The last ones that hit the spot were Madgaon Express and Crew.

A film like Wild Wild Punjab needs an actor like Varun Sharma to raise the laughs, the other three, do their bit and play off his antics, but sportingly let the light shine on Khanne. This is the kind of film to watch with friends and maybe a six-pack; it has some risque bits, but nothing so vulgar that the pause button would need to be hit if Mummyji walks into the room. As for Daddyji, the film has one meanie (Gopal Datt) who tells his son, “You mess up and I will go back 26 years and wear a condom.”  Generations of scary Punjabi fathers never got a line like this.

(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)

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Cinemaah

Kota Factory 3 – Web Series Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

Education Mess:

When the first season of Kota Factory came out in 2019, it brought the Rajasthan city to the notice of audiences, who may not have been aware of the intense competition and soul-crushing slog that goes into the preparation for entrance exams of elite engineering and medical courses. Getting in means success and financial stability for the whole family. The flip side is the fear of failure that has led to an inordinately high number of suicides among the coaching class students of Kota.

Subsequently this grim reality of youngsters cracking under the pressure of expectations and shattering of dreams has been making it to the news. The solutions, like locking terraces or putting springs in fans, hardly tackle the actual core of the issue—the shortcoming of the Indian education system. TVF’s web series, went into the classrooms and hostel digs of Kota, but sanitised the air of anxiety that must permeate the walls of the commercial coaching classes for whom topping exams is more important than the mental or spiritual health of the students.

Then there was Jeetu Bhaiya (Jitendra Kumar), who was different– the popular physics teacher, with an aphorism for every crisis. It was in Season 2 that a suicide occurred and in Season 3, directed by Pratish Mehta, that Jeetu Bhaiya is assailed by self doubt (and recurring mould on his walls) that leads to therapy.

The star teacher of Kota had, in the last season, started his own institute called Aimers, because he always told his students not to dream but to aim, because dreams are just seen, aims are meant to be achieved.

In Kota Factory Season 3, also in black and white like the earlier two, the same core group of students returns, to carry forward the plot from coaching to the make-or-break exam– a fine bunch of young actors including Vaibhav (Mayur More), Balmukund Meena (Ranjan Raj), Uday (Alam Khan), Vartika (Revathi Pillai) and Shivani (Ahsaas Channa). A new character is added in the form of Pooja Didi (Tillotama Shome), whose approach to teaching is like Jeetu Bhaiya’s—make the kids feel for the subject, not just swot to pass.

The new season (five episodes on Netflix) takes them out of their preoccupation with studies to other problems—jealousy of another’s easy success, a blip in a romance, financial crunch, meltdowns—but the focus shifts from the students to Jeetu Bhaiya’s angst (which gives the actor more performance challenges). He becomes aware that he takes on too much of the emotional burden of the students, trying to be the balm for everyone’s bruises, and something’s got to give.

Meanwhile, reality gets darker, the education system more toxic, its purveyors more avaricious. Jeetu Bhaiya may fly off the handle when a colleague (Rajesh Kumar) suggests that they focus on the brightest students, but even to his own ears his words about making the effort regardless of the results sound hollow. Because the coaching classes of Kota, and the town itself flourishes because it promises toppers. The students, often seen like ants scurrying about in top shots, are just fuel for the money-making machine.

The real achievement of Kota Factory is that it inspired other shows (Crash Course, Shiksha Mandal) ) and films (12th Fail, All India Rank) to bring attention to the atrocities of the education system in which aptitude comes last.

(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)

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Cinemaah

Amar Singh Chamkila – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

The Shining Star

The mystique of Amar Singh Chamkila endures over three decades after his murder, because his rise was meteoric, and his death so sudden and brutal, that the 27-year-old music star did not get to face the oblivion he believed was the fate of every artiste.

The incendiary times he lived in (during the Khalistan movement), the sheer number of admirers and detractors he collected in that short span, would make the story attractive to filmmakers. A documentary, Mehsampur,  by Kabir Singh Chowdhry, a web series Chamak inspired by him and now Imtiaz Ali’s epic tribute (on Netflix) to the popular singer, who ruled the Punjabi music industry in the 1980s and was known for his bawdy lyrics. When he is embarrassed to look at a journalist wearing jeans, she sneers at him for writing such sexist lyrics and pretending to be shy. His naive answer is that he writes about what he has seen, and he has not seen too many women in pants. Diljit Dosanjh, a singer himself, fits right into the part of the controversial singer, with Parineeti Chopra playing Amarjot Kaur, his wife, who was gunned down along with him. The case remains unsolved—did militants kill him, religious fundamentalists, rivals or cops?

By today’s standards, Chamkila’s lyrics sound tame, but back then, the imagery of forbidden sex, shocked as well as titillated listeners, and he became the top-selling artiste in the state, even when, under fear of assassination, he released an album of devotional songs.

Imtiaz Ali’s film, co-written by him and Sajid Ali, with AR Rahman composing original music as well as using Chamkila’s songs, recreated the legend of a Dalit, Dhani Ram, working in a sock factory, who with a mix of dedication and luck, becomes a singing sensation with the Amitabh Bachchan hair style and swagger. He gets his first break, when his employer, a singer who has been filching his lyrics, shows up late for a show, and the young man, named Chamkila on the spot, is pushed to sing and placate a restive crowd.

A loyal friend, dholak player Tikki (Anjum Batra) steers Chamkila to success, and stands by him when the already married man, weds his partner Amarjot, to protect the singing partnership.

The film begins with the murder and then the story is narrated by his band mates and friends, as a cop (Apinderdeep Singh), who starts being contemptuous of the singer, gradually starts to understand the factors that created as well as destroyed the Chamkila phenomenon.

Dosanjh plays him with an innocence – a man who fills large concert venues with frenzied fans –mostly male– is touchingly admiring of Bachchan; the same innocence makes him fearless when there are hate campaigns and death threats.

Ali uses animation, photos and footage of the real Chamkila and Amarjot, and a fantastic dance number which shows why women also liked his raunchy numbers, to tell the story that took too long to reach the screen, though a fictionalised version, Jodi, did come out, also, coincidentally starring Dosanjh and also co-produced by him.

(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)  

 

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The Indrani Mukerjea Story: Buried Truth – Web Series Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

A Maze Of Deceit:

The Sheena Bora murder case had all the ingredients that makes the media salivate and the viewer watch in horror as shocking details unfold. It was no garden variety murder—she was the daughter of one half of Mumbai’s power couple, and watching the rich and famous squirm makes for great tabloid-y crime reporting.  That’s the reason why calling a true crime docu series (on Netflix) The Indrani Mukerjea Story: Buried Truth is an exaggeration, because there are no great revelations here—it was all covered by the media in minute detail, and the line-up of journalists who had the front row seats as the tragedy unfolded, are interviewed in the series, along with cops, lawyers and of course, the lead ‘actor’ of the drama, Indrani Mukerjea herself.

When Sheena Bora disappeared in 2012, and three years later the remains of a charred body, allegedly hers, was unearthed from a Raigad forest, the first lurid nugget of information that came up was that she was not Indrani’s sister as she had always claimed, but her daughter from her first husband. She also had a son, Mekhail, whose bitter damnation of his mother is a part of the four-part series. Her second husband Sanjeev Khanna, was named co-accused along with the driver Shyamvar Rai, who blew the whistle on his employer.

When Indrani and later, her husband Peter Mukerjea were arrested, it was a full-on media circus, mainly because they were rich, famous and powerful. The high society of Mumbai had always been faintly contemptuous of Indrani, who had come in from nowhere and claimed the spotlight; there was also unconcealed envy, for the same reason. So when the Mukerjeas fell from the heights of their well-appointed South Mumbai apartment, there was undeniably an element of schadenfreude.

The series lays out the points of view of various people, but the ones who get the most screen time are Indrani’s daughter Vidhie, who was adopted by Peter, and the abandoned son Mekhail. Whether Indrani killed her daughter or not– the case is still in court– she was already being judged for being the bad mother who left her kids behind to chase after wealth, which also meant men, because for a woman with no great qualifications, her stepping stones had to be men. She claimed her father had raped her and Sheena was a result of incest, and still dumped the kids in that house; Mekhail says that Indrani first had him committed to a mental asylum where he was tortured, and then tried to kill him too. He and Sheena were a part of her sordid past she no longer wanted in her glittering present.

Then Sheena and Rahul, Peter Mukerjea’s son from an earlier marriage fell in love, and decided to wed, which was opposed by both Indrani and Peter. Except for Vidhie, no other member of the Mukerjea family agreed to be interviewed for the series. So the story is sought to be steered by Indrani and her lawyers, but if she meant to whitewash her image, this show was not the right platform. She spent over six years in prison, and her photos looking wan and exhausted kept surfacing— though there was very little sympathy for her. Even her lawyer, Ranjeet Sangle, expresses bafflement at the “unique” family, where every individual has an agenda.

The show, directed by Uraaz Bahl and Shaana Levy, juxtaposes the interviews with staged enactments in which actors playing Sheena, Rahul and Peter are used, with faces hidden, accompanied by frenetic music. But there are voice recordings of calls between Rahul and Peter, where his anguish is clear. Except him, and to some extent, Mekhail, nobody else seems to be affected by Sheena’s disappearance and no attempts are made to find her. There are allegations of a high-level cover up, but obviously no proof of it.

Ghoulish details are discussed and enacted—like how Sheena was drugged and strangled, then make-up was applied her  corpse, which was left seated in the backseat of the car, before being taken to the forest—that had been recced before under the pretext of looking for property—and buried.

In the show, Indrani claims Sheena is alive, protests her innocence and wants justice for herself, not for the poor missing or dead daughter. There are conflicting accounts and speculations about what might have happened and why, but no credible reason for why this show was produced and released (after some controversy) before the court can pass a verdict. There are large doses of conspiracy, scandal and mystery to make a very watchable show, but that would have remained later too. Audiences who might expect to see a tired or defeated Indrani Mukerjea would be surprised to see a still glamorous woman, who is able to look directly at the camera and tell her story that is obviously full of half-truths and outright fiction, and demands that she not be judged. It takes immense ambition and twisted kind of courage to be Indrani Mukerjea and that comes across very strongly on screen.

(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)

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Cinemaah

Bhakshak – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

Army Of One:

There are sporadic media reports on the horrific abuse of girls in orphanages and shelter homes – the helpless minors exploited by the very people tasked with their care. After a few days of outrage, the news is forgotten as some fresh sensation occupies the media. Pulkit’s film Bhakshak, based on a true story, is about a fearless journalist who tenaciously follows up and exposes abuse in a shelter home run by a powerful gangster.

Vaishali Singh (Bhumi Pednekar) has an independent news channel in Patna, with just one other staffer, the old and wise Bhaskar (Sanjay Mishra), who is her cameraman, assistant and sounding board. It is not clear how she funds the channel and what audience she has, but she has money to pay an informer, Gupta (Durgesh Kumar), rather generous sums for leads. Who this man is or how he comes by his information is not clarified either, but he gives her a report that talks about sexual abuse in a shelter home in Munawwarpur, run by the menacing Bansi Sahu (Aditya Srivastava). Because of his clout in the corridors of power, with politicians, cops and bureaucrats on his payroll, no action is taken on such a damning report. How did any agency even get close enough into the shelter to even record those facts, or who signed off on it, is not explained. The painfully earnest film is rather thin on important details, but that does not take away from Vaishali’s mission.

The film opens with a grim scene of a girl being tortured and killed, so the veracity of the news is not in question. The audience is already primed to root for anyone who can bring such monsters to heel. Later, there are more scenes of the girls being mauled by men, with the help of the sinister female warden, Baby Rani (Gulista Alija).  Expectedly, Vaishali’s initial investigations are stonewalled. A bureaucrat from the social welfare department (Chittaranjan Tripathy) says he could take action only if he officially received the report. A smiling Bansi easily threatens her, a black car follows her around, cops refuse to file a complaint, when her brother-in-law is attacked.

Vaishali also has to fight a battle at home, where her husband Arvind (Surya Sharma) complains when she is not home to cook her a meal, or her family wants to know why, after six years of marriage, they do not have children.

It never occurs to Vaishali to trace the source of the report, but she starts talking about the police and government inaction on her channel. Strangely, no other media outlet picks up on the scandal—when this is just the kind of sensational news that would grab eyeballs. She finds one girl (Tanisha Mehta), who witnessed what happened inside the home, and managed to escape, and bases her expose on her reluctant testimony. She also, finally, gets the support of the newly transferred female police officer Jasmeet Gaur (Sai Tamhankar).

Pulkit and his DOP Kumar Saurabh, get the dingy ugliness of a small town, where people living right next door to that house of horrors would surely be aware of the goings-on, but ignore it. As a background song goes, “Shamil hain,” blaming all of society for its complicity in this crime against women. This is how corruption and apathy corrodes society, and were it not for a few good people, things would be even more hellish for the underprivileged—orphan girls are the most vulnerable, because nobody cares if they disappear. Even honest cops are hampered by the red tape of procedure.

Bhumi Pedneker is given a rather one-note role, but she aces it with her sincerity as the voice of journalistic conscience that is getting to be increasingly weak. The casting of the other characters is spot on.

Interestingly, Bhakshak has been produced by Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies—the star may not do a realistic film like this himself, but it’s good to know that his backing gets it made and exhibited.  A somewhat half-baked Bhakshak does not reveal anything new, but because it is on a streaming channel (Netflix), it will be seen by a lot more people than if it were released in the cinemas. It should create some awareness and maybe raise some compassion towards victims of abuse– it would be too much to expect a social campaign or sustained action by the lethargic system, but at least the film does its bit towards the cause.

(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)

 

 

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