Bollywood Inquiry October 2019: THE SKY IS PINK, WAR & SAAND KI AANKH

Bollywood Inquiry is a monthly column on the biggest new Bollywood movies. Disclaimer: I may not have seen all of the past month’s globally released features, for varying reasons. This month, that applies to the latest installment of the perpetually perfunctory Housefull series.

The Sky is Pink (Shonali Bose)

Priyanka Chopra Jonas returns to Hindi cinema after a three-year hiatus with a story she deeply cares about, producing as well as starring in The Sky is Pink. She teams up with Shonali Bose of Margarita with a Straw fame, an ideal director for openhearted dramas about complex relationships. The emotional wallop of Bose’s latest is well-earned through humanistic storytelling and first-rate performances.

Based on a true story, The Sky is Pink is the quarter-century spanning voyage of the Chaudhary family, who went through a tough eighteen-year period when their daughter Aisha had to undergo a bone marrow transplant at just six months old and subsequently developed pulmonary fibrosis. Aisha only lived until she was 18, but became renowned after devoting her teenage years to motivational speaking – leading to a TED Talk, the granddaddy of all public speaking forums. She wrote a book about her life, released one day before her death.

This heartily baked biopic begins in London with Aisha being born to penniless parents Aditi (Chopra Jonas) and Niren (Farhan Akhtar). The couple reach out to the Asian diaspora via the prominent radio station Sunrise Radio to fundraise for their baby daughter’s life, which becomes a successful endeavor. As the years go on, Niren earns a healthy promotion in his corporate job which affords the family the freedom to move between a house in the English suburbs and a house with a pool in Delhi. 

They can afford maids, they can afford Aisha the opportunities to express herself on bigger platforms, they can afford to seek a publisher for her memoirs, and they can afford to go on snorkeling vacations at her whim. But, no amount of wealth can overcome the morbid luck of inheriting an abnormal gene.

The capacity to resemble a paradigmatic terminal-illness teen drama (still a hot subgenre) is eschewed for a sensitively drawn panorama wherein we understand not only the pain of the subject but the pain of those around her. Fore-mostly, The Sky is Pink is a love story between Aisha’s parents – Bose is careful not to victimise them, instead humanising them through showing the wider trials and joys of their romance.

For example, we witness their attempt at a long-distance relationship for the benefit of their bed-ridden kid and we have a stake in their courage to marry against a conservative milieu that doesn’t make their match an easy one for family members to accept. Both a loving tribute to Aisha’s life and those who were in it, Bose is delicate in presenting a period of love and care without pretending that everything was always sweet. A saccharine finale is expected but earned after a healthy amount of sugar in the preceding acts.

Akhtar and Chopra Jonas are a terrific pairing, lending their gifts to deliver lived-in performances. They make us root for their marriage to succeed even when it threatens to crumble under the extraordinary circumstances. In addition to their bona fide chemistry, they have a believable bond with the young actors Zaira Wasim (the teenage Aisha) and Rohit Suresh Saraf (Aisha’s brother Ishaan), who both turn in sympathetic performances.

Wasim, who previously starred in mega hits Dangal and Secret Superstar, recently announced an early departure from Bollywood due to religious reasons. Part of the poignancy of The Sky is Pink is saying goodbye to her as well as the real girl she portrays, for Wasim is truly a talented performer who made a splash with even fewer credits than John Cazale.

Narrating the film with teenage charm/irritation, Wasim‘s Aisha informs us at the beginning that she’ll die at the end but there’s plenty of surprises along the way. Keen to upend our narrative guesses, Bose displays some impatience by providing contextual details thick and fast – Aisha wink at us with clickbait dialogue – and playing around with the chronology, in the service of constant assurance that the outcome won’t affect the tension.

And right she is, even after the heavy-handedness, for her outstanding direction puts us on the same wavelength – the key to Bose‘s success is, quite simply, building relationships beyond the central connection to Aisha. Our attachment to every family member is the earned out-turn of rich arcs. The director has great respect for her characters and, in turn, the audience, offering a rumination of love and familyhood that’s a cut above others of its kind. I just wish her audience would have offered the same respect and came through on the opening weekend.

War (Siddharth Anand)

It’s so easy to forgive the typically far-fetched chess game storytelling of an action epic when it’s as fun as War. Forget Hobbs & Shaw – this is the bona fide, brawny, brain-free John Woo-style machismo cinematic face-off of the year. The leads are two of Bollywood’s top dogs, Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff who, if they weren’t popular already, would have firmly cemented their star quality with War alone. To put it simply, this movie is f*cking awesome.

Proudly flaunting style over substance, there’s not much War initially throws at you in terms of deep plotting, simply following the two-way chase between rogue veteran soldier Kabir (Roshan) and the staggeringly athletic special agent Khalid (Shroff) assigned to kill him. Soon enough, there’s a whole lot of double crossing and identity interrogation but, mercifully, it doesn’t overwhelm what we paid to see as it did in the Fast & Furious spin-off, obstructing the momentum in the face-off between Idris Elba and The Rock and Statham.

There’s no need to get hung up on lore nor is it worth scratching your head when the second half indulges in one too many retroactive refitting of the plot to explain itself – the whole worldwide terrorist pursuit thing is just a vessel to put the two elite operatives against and in parallel to one another. And by allowing his central performers to demonstrate their physical prowess above everything, framing them at their best angles, there’s a vicarious allure to them. Half the audience will want to be with Shroff and Roshan, half will just want to be them.

Running at a swift 150 minutes, Siddharth Anand keeps things watertight straight from the electric first ten minutes where Kabir shoots a superior dead and Khalid scopes out a terrorist safe haven, followed by a Hawaii Five-O-ish credits sequence that puts you in the right mood and mind for the no-frills B-movie pleasures promised there and then.

Both men subsequently team up to scour the globe for most wanted criminal Rizwan Illiyasi (Sanjeev Vasta) and his four associates. The conflict lies in the truth that Kabir killed Khalid’s father a long time ago, believing him to be a traitor, creating an unease in their mutual respect and cooperation. The flag of India waves at the fore of many frames, a reminder that the nation’s security is at stake.

Tiger Shroff exquisitely submits himself into the global league of elite martial arts performers, alongside such talents as Scott Adkins, Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais, just seven minutes into the movie with a blistering one-take sequence wherein he leaps, evades, punches and kicks his way through gun-wielding henchmen, leaving with nary a blemish. In the same period, he redeems himself for Student of the Year 2, removing the blight from his cinematic year.

Hrithik Roshan’s Kabir has spent a hell of a lot of time fighting under the sun, his complexion a mix of scars and tan. You hate to love him as he recalls the slippery slickness of his villainous character in Dhoom 2, effortlessly switching between good and bad with a smile both devilish and prideful and keeping a close eye on his protégé for either protection or self-defence. The anti-hero couldn’t have been better manifested by anyone else in B-Town.

Contrary to Saaho, the other major action blockbuster to come out of India this year, War says the right words in speaking the language of action cinema as the works its inspired by, which include the Fast & Furious series (of course), 007 and most prominently – and surprisingly – Mission Impossible 2. Besides the unique stardom of its leads, War stands on its own feet in the most magnificently Bollywood way with a dance sequence that’s subtextually situated somewhere between Top Gun‘s volleyball sequence and the Predator handshake.

It’s honestly quite hilarious as it happens immediately after Kabir and Khalid agree to embark on a mission after acknowledging their predestination as enemies. Proving to be versatile with their limbs, they shuffle and pop-and-lock as good as they kick and punch. The sequence is a joy for all the reasons it can be in Hindi cinema but, at the very least, it’s another display of Hrithik and Tiger‘s inimitable athleticism. Even if you’re a conscientious objector to Bollywood action movies, you’ll be pro-War.

Saand Ki Aankh (Tushar Hiranandani)

transl. Bullseye

Here’s a worthwhile story that explores the thematic intersection of ageism, feminism and sexism but agonisingly undermines itself by casting younger actresses in “oldface”. It’s a decision that’s bad for the industry in both creative and business-related ways, one that denies any pair of veterans the dream opportunity to portray iconic characters.1 

Those characters in subject are trap shooters Chandro (Bhumi Pednekar) and Prakashi Tomar (Taapsee Pannu), an octogenarian pair of in-laws (this film is primarily set just twenty years ago), who are renowned in India as champion sharpshooters, iconoclasts in the middle-aged male-dominated subculture.

We follow the stereotype shatterers as young mothers, when they were consigned to archaic gender roles and expectations, through to when they hit bullseye after accompanying their daughters to a rifle club and having a shot themselves, through to competing in official capacities with saris over their faces. Opponents laughed at them, then scowled at them, unable to accept that these women could hit the target dead center.

This movie understands that these women aren’t simply avatars for inspiration – not just cool grannies – and aptly weights their stories with the strong personal stakes that drove them to succeed in a prejudiced cultural backdrop. They did it for the many young girls they represented in their family, and destroying stereotypes was a byproduct of their passion to be the best shooters around.

Balwinder Singh Janjua’s screenplay respectfully covers the bad times as well as the good but he loses his way in an elongated third act which shifts the focus onto Chandro and Prakashi’s young daughters who represent the next generation of sharpshooters. It feels like a whole different movie, resetting the audience’s emotions for an entirely different journey that cramps the film to the point of enervation – we’ve already focused on packing our bags by then.

I can understand the intention of adding such a substantial thread to the narrative but the virtual disconnection from the elderly Tomars at such a late point feels like what Bohemian Rhapsody would have been if Brian May had his way (as recited by Sacha Baron Cohen), where Freddie Mercury dies midway and the rest of the time is devoted to the band going from “strength to strength” following the demise of their star.

It obviously means a lot to Pednekar and Pannu to take on the acting responsibilities, as the pair give their utmost efforts, relishing the competitive vigour and personal fulfilment imparted by their counterparts. That’s in spite of the unconvincing attempt to age them – little more than greying their hairs. Granted, the film must have completed filming right before FaceApp took off and provided us all with a disturbingly accurate visual frame of reference for our future selves.

As it stands, though, it’s impossible to understand why age-appropriate actresses weren’t considered. Should Saand Ki Aankh be a success, it could set a hazardous precedent for older actresses in Bollywood, threatened to be phased out by millenials working with a haphazard hair and make-up job.

As good as Saand Ki Aankh may be (which is about half good), practices like this shouldn’t be supported, and this is coming from Anurag Kashyap’s biggest fan – the maverick auteur, normally compos mentis about such issues, produced this film. It may also be the tweest thing associated with his name.

There are too many montages – even more than Rocky IV – because no sports movie can go without a few, though the theme song (Udta Teetar) is an earworm. These sequences follow the training practice guided by the only sympathetic man around, rifle club owner Dr Yashpal (played by the likeable Vineet Kumar), who’s quick to sign up the Tomars for competitions and reinforces his support every step along the way. A true ally.

Godard once said “all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun” but Saand Ki Aankh proves that you can’t get by on those alone. You also need to ensure film isn’t overlong, miscast, and overly reliant on montages.

Next Month

And that concludes the October 2019 edition of Bollywood Inquiry! November is looking remarkably uneventful but we can always rely on Ayushmann Khurrana to make a cinema trip worth the time – check out the trailer of Bala below and stay tuned for next month’s column. You can read previous Bollywood Inquiry editions here.

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