Monsoon Shootout
Perhaps Amit Kumar's film should have been called Monsoon
Standoff. When naïve young cop Adi (Vijay Varma) corners his suspect in an
alleyway, the film slows down to a standstill, and from this tense confrontation, the
narrative branches off in three directions. Adi has Shiva (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) in his sights and staring down the barrel of his gun,
but he hesitates for a crucial moment as his mind races through the possible
outcomes of his actions. Kumar's screenplay allows us to see what happens if
Adi lets Shiva escape, if he kills him, or if he takes him into custody, and
while this Sliding Doors-style approach is undeniably schematic and gimmicky,
the director uses it to find moral complexity in his story. No matter what
course of action Adi takes, somebody ends up getting hurt, as the ripple effect
from the battle between cop and criminal impacts upon each character's friends
and relatives in unexpected ways. Monsoon Shootout was in development for the
best part of 10 years, with Kumar claiming that the convoluted nature of his
narrative structure was the main reason behind that long gestation period.
Bearing that in mind, presence of apparent character and storytelling inconsistencies
that one would expect to be ironed out in revisions is baffling, but they don't
get in the way of the film's powerful dramatic pull. Kumar's direction is slick
and propulsive, and he rattles through his three stories in under 90 minutes,
although perhaps a bit of breathing space could have afforded more time to
Adi's love interest Anu (Geetanjali Thapa), who is something of an
afterthought. As the lead, Varma is solid but unmemorable, failing to invest
his standard-issue "idealistic rookie in a corrupt unit" character
with much colour, but there are great performances to be found elsewhere in the
picture. Neeraj Kabi and R. Balasubramanian are compellingly duplicitous
presences as Adi's no-nonsense boss and the local slumlord respectively, but
the film is comprehensively stolen by Nawazuddin Siddiqui, whose vivid
inhabitation of the hatchet-wielding psychopath Shiva has a vivid, explosive quality that
energises the whole film. Monsoon Shootout is handsomely crafted, with some
great location work, and Rajeev Ravi's cinematography is superb, particularly
in the beautifully lit night scenes, when he makes a virtue of the torrential
rain.
B.A. Pass
The entry for B.A. Pass in the festival brochure draws
comparisons with The Graduate, and it's easy to see why, but Ajay Bahl's film
takes the older woman/young man dynamic down a much less comedic road. Mukesh (Shadab
Kamal) is a student forced to live with relatives after the death of his
parents, which brings him into contact with Sarika (Shilpa Shukla), a friend of
his aunt's whose husband is also his uncle's superior. When Sarika invites
Mukesh over to run some errands, his aunt and uncle are only too happy to be of
service, but no sooner has he entered her home than she's taking advantage of
the startled youth. Bahl wastes little time in setting the wheels of his plot
in motion. Soon Sarika is educating her young companion in the ways of
lovemaking and then – after he has been sufficiently trained – she starts
pimping him out to her friends, all of whom are happy to pay for his talents.
B.A. Pass is one of the most chaste sex-driven films you'll ever see – all such
encounters keep breasts covered and lower regions carefully blocked – but Shukla's
sultry, commanding presence is enough to infuse the film with an erotic charge all
by itself. The film is never quite as gripping when she's off screen, although one
scene in which Mukesh is hired to comfort a lonely widow is quite touching. Bahl
clearly wants to make a film noir and all the elements are there – the femme
fatale, the evocative score, the inevitable corruption of the protagonist. The
film could have used some more of the visual ingenuity that Bahl displays in
the climactic scenes, when the neon lighting gives it a nightmarish quality,
but Bahl's direction is generally smart and confident, and he has produced a classy adaptation of Mohan
Sikka's The Railway Aunty (which you can read here).
Shahid
The true story of Shahid Azmi is an extraordinary one. As a young
man, he and his family suffered violent persecution at the hands of Hindu mobs,
and he reacted by enlisting in a militant training camp in Pakistan. After
having a change of heart, he escaped the camp and returned to Delhi, where he was arrested on anti-terrorism
charges and thrown into jail. This was the start of his life's unexpected
second act, as he used his time behind bars to study the law, qualifying as a
lawyer and dedicating himself to defending poor people whom he believed to be
wrongly accused of terrorism. In 2010, he was working on behalf of Faheem Ansari
– accused of involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attacks – when he was gunned down
in his office, which is the incident that opens Hansal Mehta's film. With Raj
Kumar Yadav giving a very convincing performance in the title role, Mehta takes
a sober and stately approach to Shahid's tale, although some of the superfluous
material that does little more than swell the picture's running time could have
easily been lost. Shahid does show admirable attention to detail, most notably
in how much it depicts of its lead character's court cases, which are given a
substantial amount of screen time. At times, these courtroom exchanges threaten
to bog the film down, but the conviction of the cast and the sense of
authenticity that Mehta brings to them ensure that they are mostly very effective.
Shahid is a stirring and often very moving film about the importance of
standing up for what you believe in, even if it means you might have to pay the
ultimate price.
Tasher Desh
I've now seen two films by Qaushiq Mukherjee – who prefers
to be credited as Q – and I still have no idea what to make of him. I found his
last film Gandu to be energetic but ultimately exhausting, and while Tasher
Desh is nowhere near as aggressively confrontational as its predecessor, it
does confirm that Q is more a creator of images than much of a storyteller. An
adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore's play, Tasher Desh something to do with a
group of noble characters living in a crumbling palace whose conversation
revolves around their desire to fly, and their tale is intercut with shots
of a man wandering through a train station talking to himself. The film's title
card appears 45 minutes into the movie, and it seems to indicate a shift in
focus, with something resembling a coherent story beginning to unfold in the
film's second half. Now in striking colour, Tasher Desh becomes the story of a
mysterious island populated by inhabitants named after playing cards. These
people entirely lack human emotions, a state which is challenged by the arrival
of characters from the first half of the film, whose expressions of desire and
freedom sow the seeds of a revolution. That's about all I can tell you, because
narrative coherence is not exactly Tasher Desh's strongest suit. Most of the
time it resembles a series of music videos loosely stitched together, but there's
something invigorating about Q's extravagant visual sense, which recalls
directors like Ken Russell and Tony Scott. His editing tricks can be
aggravating, but his sense of colour is frequently dazzling and the film
possesses enough gorgeous imagery to make up for its shortfalls in content –
even the film's subtitles are beautifully crafted. I don't know how readily I
can recommend Tasher Desh or not, but I certainly liked it a lot more than
Gandu, and I'll keep an eye out for whatever it is that Q is planning on
unleashing next.
