Bollywood Inquiry March 2019: SONCHIRIYA, LUKA CHUPPI, BADLA, KESARI & JUNGLEE

I’ve decided to take residence as Film Inquiry’s monthly Bollywood columnist beginning from March 2019, where I’ll be reviewing the new releases I see each month, at the end of the month. Part of my desire to do this column is because I have a strong interest and love for films from the Indian subcontinent and there are very few western outlets that write about South Asian cinema. I want to review these films for our website’s predominantly western audience.

I will confess now that I won’t get to see everything that releases in any given month (I didn’t get to see the hit comedy threequel Total Dhamaal this month, for instance), and my focus will predominantly be on Hindi films as they are the most geographically accessible ones to my base in London. However, if the possibility is presented, I hope to also cover films in other languages of India too, including Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada – in other words, Bollywood Inquiry may also be Tollywood, Mollywood and Kollywood Inquiry too.

Sadly, the lack of a local release for two highly anticipated movies, Photograph (from the director of The Lunchbox) and the TIFF Midnight Madness award winner Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota (The Man Who Feels No Pain) – both of which were released in India and the USA mid-March – means they won’t be in this first column. Here’s hoping these gems hit British cinemas very, very soon…

Even if Bollywood is a blind spot for you, you may be aware of the common flourishes associated with the contemporary genre-mixing “masala movies”, essentially the tent-pole movies of India: song and dance sequences, melodrama, outlandish action scenes, broad comedy, etc. all contained in an average running time of 165 minutes. Maybe you’ve seen popular films like 3 Idiots, Dhoom and Robot, maybe you’ve just browsed /r/BollywoodRealism or checked out T-Series.

Obviously, there has to be far more than that to this incredibly popular film industry – the world’s largest in terms of output – and my writing will engage with our expectations of the films by considering these preconceptions, in order to distinguish the innovative storytellers from the tired, the sophisticated films against the jejune, and the ones worth seeing on the big screen versus the ones best avoided altogether.

My column begins with a movie that sets the bar extremely high for 2019’s Bollywood Inquiry.

Sonchiriya (The Golden Sparrow)

The best film I’ve seen so far in this young year is Sonchiriya. Abhishek Chaubey’s gritty, gripping Dacoit Western in the Chambal valley is an instant classic, one of the very best movies of its kind.

This no-frills chase film has none of the aforementioned hallmarks of your typical Bollywood action movie, rather more inspired by classic Westerns and gangster films. The leading presence of actor Manoj Bajpayee immediately hints at a crime film with gravitas, considering he’s played major roles in the crime masterpieces Satya and Gangs of Wasseypur, acquainted all-too-well with quality filmmaking and delivering another (short but) noteworthy performance as the draconian, Dutch Van der Linde-esque bandit leader Man Singh, a role he previously played in a smaller capacity for Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen.

I reference Dutch because Red Dead Redemption 2 is an ideal reference point, not just because it’s the most recent great Western story to spring to mind as it continues to linger in the pop culture zeitgeist, but also because of the journey Dutch’s gang go through in the game, chased from camp to camp as they traverse a large landscape following a botched robbery. Man Singh’s rebel gangsters, self-dubbed as Bhaagis, are in the exact same predicament. They’re tailed by the Special Task Force, led by Inspector Virendra Singh Gujjar (a badass Ashutosh Rana) and are faced with a quandary when they encounter a woman on the run with a child.

This is Indumati Tomar (Bhumi Pednekar), accompanying the young Khushi, who needs medical attention. To draw more parallels to Red Dead, the closest to a John Marston equivalent is Lakhna Singh (Sushant Singh Rajput), one of the kingpin’s two right-hand men, who values honour above everything, persuading the other second-in-command, Vakil Singh (Ranvir Shorey) to allow Indumati to be a part of their gang despite her guardianship of a girl from a different caste.

These individuals are given an identity but they are best seen as a collective for the gang’s Robin Hood-ish motivations and loyalty to a certain cause. Conflict is sourced in the caste system, which results in Kushi being viewed as an outsider. With little health, the girl can’t really speak for herself. For the more discriminatory members of the Thakur gang, an individual’s backstory doesn’t really matter if they’re from a rival caste.

One of the great scenes of the movie is when fellow bandit leader Phooliya – clearly inspired by the real Bandit Queen, Phoolan Devi – offers Indumati a place in her gang. Indumati sees no place for herself here and Phooliya informs her that castes only classify the men – the women are seen as something even beneath them. It’s a potent moment in our historical understanding of the caste system and it’s inextricable connection to the patriarchy. A brilliant script also examines the influence of religion and engages with the golden sparrow as a metaphor, fluidly connecting these ideas with the complex moral compasses of the various characters.

Chaubey shows no mercy in offing his characters, like in all the best Westerns. Cinematic influences for creating suspense and action include Peckinpah’s violent streak and the Coen brothers, particularly No Country’s sparse use of music. Stretches of silence create a remarkable sense of danger. We can’t expect any one character to see a happy ending with the tense atmosphere the director sustains from start to finish. Anuj Rakesh Dhawan’s cinematography is splendid, effortlessly capturing the sunkissed beauty of the valley with the darkness of the gangs that overwhelm it.

Drawn to stripping the glitz and glamour of his performers, Chaubey puts Sushant Singh Rajput and Bhumi Pednekar through the ringer – much like he brutally did with Shahid Kapoor and Alia Bhatt, the actors who played a drug-addicted rockstar and a sex-trafficked migrant worker, respectively, in his previous movie Udta Punjab.

The roles of Rajput’s conscientious criminal and Pednekar’s lone survivor come with a heaviness that the actors may not want to carry again, but their ardour and talents let them reach into depths that they haven’t reached before. Based on the box office, Sonchiriya sadly hasn’t received the appreciation it deserves but it’s ubiquitous brilliance destines it to grow in stature, year after year, and be subject to rediscovery. This is one of the best chase films ever made – people just don’t know of it yet.

Luka Chuppi (Hide and Seek)

Sonchiriya didn’t fare well at the box office because it opened against Luka Chuppi, a rom-com entirely powered by recent breakouts Kartik Aaryan and Kriti Sanon. What makes the results of the box office clash really gutting is that Luka Chuppi is stunningly mediocre, coasting on the star power of its attractive leads and a couple of standard-fare pop songs.

Set in the traditional cities of Mathura and Gwalior, the non-traditional media types Vinod “Guddu” Shukla (Aaryan) and Rashmi Trivedi (Sanon) fall in love with each other. He’s the lead reporter of the TV channel where she’s based as an intern. Guddu asks Rashmi to marry him, but, coming from traditional families and understanding traditional mindsets, she proposes an alternate idea – a live-in relationship. He agrees, and both of their families follow them down this rabbit hole, leading all parties to confusion and chaos when they assume Guddu and Rashmi are married and the lies are eked out. There’s no getting away from overbearing kinfolk!

The point of Luka Chuppi is about youth setting new expectations of relationships, with such arrangements, before actually getting married. It’s a concept that works and strengthens their love, proving that they don’t need their parents to seek out a potential partner based on old-world criteria.

The “chemistry” between Aaryan and Sanon, who have over 25 million Instagram followers between them, is almost entirely engineered in scenes that look like Chanel commercials. Gorgeous backdrops, nicely framed shots, good looking people, amorous music.… I fully expected them to plug their fragrance at the end of every one of these romantic montages.

Whilst the romance is torturously extracted through a series of banal montages, what’s more incapacitating is that this rom-com is completely defective when it tries to provide comic pleasures. The characters jovially speak as if the punchline is at the end of their tongues but they can’t let it out, their delivery hamstrung by a poor script. There’s an attempt to salvage the non-jokes with upbeat music that plays as a laugh track surrogate, punctuating the beats that we’re supposed to find funny.

Luka Chuppi is a sexless romp that’s inconsistent on which audience it’s serving – adult-oriented sensual innuendos about everything from threesomes to safe sex are countervailed by direction that forbids Guddu and Rashmi to go as far as just kissing each other, probably because of “impressionable kids” or something.

Beyond the narrative idea of concealing marital status behind the family, the title of Luka Chuppi is only half measured when observed on a primal level of filmmaking – the romance and comedy are hiding, but nobody makes an effort to seek it. I recommend to avoid playing the game altogether.

Badla (Revenge)

You have to take the bad with the good, and fortunately Sujoy Ghosh blesses us with the good again, following the eminently forgettable Luka Chuppi. Badla is a return to form for the acclaimed director of Kahaani who delivers another arresting mystery thriller involving missing bodies and murder.

This is an official adaptation of the Spanish film The Invisible Guest (Contratiempo), a dialogue-driven twisty-turny thriller about businesswoman Naina Sethi (Taapsee Pannu) looking to clear her name from allegedly murdering her lover with the help of esteemed lawyer Badal Gupta (Amitabh Bachchan).

For those who did see The Invisible Guest, at the risk of getting into spoiler territory but needing to accurately mould expectations, I’ll just say that Badla is a little too similar.  Set in Aviemore, up in the Scottish Highlands, this Indian reskin primarily finds its cultural uniqueness in the heavy verbal reference to the Mahābhārata as a parallel for the narrative. Of course, there’s also the presence of contemporary and classic screen stars in Taapsee Pannu and Amitabh Bachchan, reuniting after starring together in the terrific courtroom drama Pink.

It’s certainly arguable that Badla essentially exists only to cash-in on a hit film by appealing to a wide audience with its casting choices and meagre changes to the original narrative. On the other hand, the silver lining of closely adapting The Invisible Guest makes Ghosh avoid Bollywood’s worst masala indulgences, unlike the remakes of Memento (Ghajini), Leon: The Professional (Bichhoo) and The Silence of the Lambs (Sangharsh), to name a few examples of thrillers that lost their kick in translation.

As a result, this gripping story is worth sharing the way Ghosh chooses to, as it pairs a witty Sherlock Holmes-esque character with someone almost as intelligent. The ceaseless one-upmanship between the two is a thrill to watch. Badla swiftly moves along at a concise two hours and the Rashomon-esque storytelling sustains the tension and keeps us guessing about the truth behind the murder – again, the guessing applies only if you haven’t seen The Invisible Guest.

50-year veteran Bachchan is as compelling to watch as ever, the witty investigative lawyer role fitting him like a glove. Amrita Singh puts in a magnetically multifaceted performance as the mother of the murdered man, the question of “How far will she go to discover the truth?” a fascinating sub-plot in itself.

Taapsee Pannu suppresses her emotions with a neutral expression as if she’s being guided by Robert Bresson and it benefits her greatly in the audience’s unknowing of the truths and lies that Naina shares with the smarmy lawyer sat across her. The conclusion of Badla won’t convince everyone – I’m not fully sure myself if it stuck the landing – but ultimately it doesn’t detract from the non-stop edge-of-your-seat enjoyment that precedes it.

Kesari (Saffron)

Staying in-sync with the yo-yoing quality of March’s offerings, Kesari is unfortunately an overall disappointment.

Based on true events during the British Raj, Kesari recounts the story of Havildar Ishar Singh who, from a small army post, led an army of just 21 soldiers of the Sikh Regiment in the 1897 Battle of Saragarhi, as they fought against a legion of Afghan tribesman in what is considered as one of the greatest last-stands in military history.

Kesari takes its name from the distinguished appearance of the central soldiers, clad in saffron-coloured uniforms matched by their turbans. The visual coordination extends to the sandy dusk of the valley, the sky and their camel-coloured outpost, all synchronised to establish a place and people with a distinctive visual identity.

Staggering long shots highlight the extraordinary vistas of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the colossal difference between the warring sides – one protected by a simple fort, the other advantaged by a vast landscape and sheer numbers – imbuing a mighty sense of heroism for the lionhearted Sikhs.

The widescreen aspect ratio allows DOP Anushol Chobey to produce frames with appealing symmetry and create depth from the furthest edges of the frames. It would have been amazing to see Kesari in 70mm. Amazon’s exclusive streaming partnership means there will soon be prime (pun intended) opportunity to savour our favourite shots at the behest of a pause button.

Crossing the line from poignant tribute to absurd hagiography, the wildly patriotic Kesari capitalises every heroic act with an orchestral blare. There’s such a colossal amount of mythologising of the battle that you wished they saved some of it for the character development.

Kesari relies on an inherent interest in these characters based on their underdog-ness so much that it refuses to add a third or even second dimension to any individual besides the lead character. It’s natural to root for the army of 21 but these martyrs deserved better, just a modicum of personality, a sliver of something for us to connect with them on a stronger emotional level. The failure to emotionally attach to the characters might sound more like a “me” problem rather than the film’s problem, but there are two major reasons for this that are entirely the fault of the film.

The first is a large amount of dawdling in the first half with elongated comedy sequences, sketches totally devoid of personality, that feel at odds with the militarism displayed in the rest of the time. The only value I see in these sequences is that they’re an emblem of the calm before the storm. By far the most interesting personal moments concern the lead character envisioning his wife Jiwani (Parineeti Chopra) by his side, reflecting on the life they’ve built together, a prosperous one that they intend to continue afterwards. No one else is endowed with even a hint of history.

Reason number two is an absolutely preposterous climax that threatens to terminate any admiration we have for the movie. A lengthy action sequence choreographed to an utterly excruciating and downright disrespectful degree, it converts these characters from humans to cartoons, totally detaching them from a genuine sense of valour especially after a thrillingly coherent stretch of gun fighting.

Wait till you see one soldier who gets stabbed about five times more than Julius Caesar, resulting in a grotesque sculpture captured through a disgustingly tactless lens, and another one who performs like John Wick despite being set aflame from head to two. Is this how you serve the memory of a valiant man, turning him into something that resembles the Terminator?

There’s some intrigue in the depiction of British colonialist overlords as the perpetrators of the war – the blood of the Sikhs is in their hands. The callous Lt Lawrence doesn’t care who lives and who dies. He’s played by one of India’s resident American actors, Edward Sonnenblick, who previously played a malicious British officer in 2019’s other resist-the-Brits flick Manikarnika. This time he’s upgraded to playing malicious AND racist! Overall, the splendidly saffron-tinted visuals and a few spectacular stretches can’t compensate for Kesari’s shockingly ludicrous finale and too much dilly-dally.

Junglee (Wild)

Filmmakers in both the East and West dedicated a day of on-screen representation to elephants on the 29th March 2019 with the releases of the Dumbo remake and Junglee, an Indian action-adventure movie about veterinary doctor Raj who returns home to his family’s elephant reserve and faces off against an international poaching ring who get too close. The consensus to 2019’s elephant-related features so far is a resounding “meh”.

On paper, both films share intriguing pre-production qualities, with Dumbo being remade by Tim Burton and Junglee directed and co-written by Chuck Russell, the man behind The Mask, The Blob and Eraser, in a rare crossover from Hollywood to Bollywood. There was a fair reason for the hype behind the prospect of an American filmmaker with relevant credentials helming such a film.

But then you remember his last couple of features were the John Travolta disasterpiece I Am Wrath and the middling Mummy spin-off The Scorpion King. He’s no Spielberg, and he’s not quite Chris Columbus either. Nevertheless, you could get a whole lot worse than a director with a perfectly average career score.

I get the feeling Russell was in India to try and make a documentary about the poaching industry, but his resume enabled him to command the budget for a feature. Laying the exposition on thick, his film is absurdly heavy-handed in its depiction of the industry. There’s nothing wrong with a total lack of nuance in a family-oriented blockbuster, but the 12A certificate of Junglee is thrown into question midway by a bloody, brutally upsetting sequence of events that will cause parents to cover the eyes and ears of their children.

Mrs Jumbo has a spiritual companion in the elephant Didi who is impregnated by Bhola, the long tusked elephant sought by the generic bloodthirsty hunters made up of a cross-country crew from the USA, India and Thailand. Bhola is Raj’s ideal companion, with flashbacks to the young boy playing with the elephant employed to underscore their bond.

Of course, this relationship is really just a platform to rationalise Vidyut Jammwal’s demonstrative fighting ability (recalling similar intentions to that of Muay Thai artist Tony Jaa for The Protector), specialising in Kalaripayattu, an Indian martial art that some consider to be the oldest in the world. Jammwal has legitimate combat skills but he’s a star alone on his good looks, built with a superhero physique served through a gratuitous scene where he bathes with the elephants.

The Chandrika sanctuary’s primary inhabitants include the founding father Keshav (Atul Kulkarni), the kind mahout daughter Shankara (Pooja Sawant), affectionately referred to as Shanku, and the head of security Jayesh, who would have been played by Josh Brener is the director was commissioned by Paramount. It’s a very prototypical cast of characters completed by the tenacious journalist Meera, played by model and engineer Asha Bhat. All capable actors, hampered by a crude script full of laughably on-the-nose dialogue.

Naturally, Junglee descends into a whole lot of melee combat, a hero who continues to kick ass even after surviving critical bullets, shifting loyalties of secondary characters, a journalist capturing everything on camera, enemies quarreling over monetary compensation – basically, the most artless Uncharted game ever, saved from oblivion only by Jammwal‘s violent acrobatics.

Junglee is an anti-poaching film for those that can’t be bothered to watch a documentary, preferring to switch their brain off, as it appeals to the lowest common denominator in every way. It’s the McDonald’s of the socially conscious action movie – far from the best choice but certainly the most convenient one. If the prospect of a rugged action hero knocking out goons with style doesn’t appeal to you, there’s hardly a reason to see Junglee.

And that concludes the March 2019 edition of Bollywood Inquiry! In the upcoming month, I’m hoping to see the espionage thriller Romeo Akbar Walter, the controversial biopic PM Narendra Modi, and the all-star period epic Kalank (see trailer below), which is undoubtedly going to be one of the biggest movie events of the year. Stay tuned for April’s column.

Which Bollywood films are you looking forward to this year or have enjoyed so far? Let us know in the comments below.