A Hero (Amazon Prime Video; Persian):
A film by the Iranian genius Asghar Farhadi is a joy forever? Well, not quite, considering his subtle but brutal dramatic conflicts never end in any semblance of happiness ever after. His characters are deeply flawed. But they are also strong brave creatures of providence determined to not fall through the crack of a flawed socio-political system. In all his masterpieces Farhadi portrays a padlocked society with characters leading seemingly normal lives with abnormal conflicts(the disappearance of a woman during a family vacation in About Elly, the aftermath of a divorce in The Past, an assault by a mysterious assailant The Salesman). The conflict point in A Hero is, in my opinion, stronger more persuasive in all of Farhadi’s previous films. There is a growing sense of moral idealism eroded by an ethical ambivalence that knocks off the lid at the bottom of this tale, leaving us staring into a dangerous abyss. The casting is as usual, impeccable. Amir Jadidi as Rahim the protagonist is a hero in the truest most classic sense of the term. He has been put into a debt prison in Iran (far less harsh than the normal prisons) for his failure to repay a debt. To compound Rahim’s troubles, his creditor Bahram (Mohsen Tanabandeh ) has a familial ax to grind with Rahim. In this way a seemingly simple morality tale about an unknowing prisoner who desperately wants to return to his normal life spirals into a game of snakes and ladders where the stakes are nothing short of death or freedom; take your pique. There is an abundance of abandoned anger in the narrative. In Amir Jadidi’s Rahim, one can see the herculean efforts that have gone into refraining from lashing out at a social order that incites individuals’ lives to be ruined through persecution. Rahim emerges from prison for two days, meets his girlfriend Farkhondeh (Sahar Goldoost) an incredibly supportive girlfriend who will stop at nothing to get her man out of his troubles. What follows is a kind of tender masquerade of pride and prejudice with Rahim acquiring the status of a local hero, what with he had returned a bag of gold coins to its rightful owner rather than using the money to pay off his debts. There are knotted tensions in nearly every episode of this tragic drama, defined by a smothered fury against social injustice. The plot is propelled not only by the admittedly considerable dramatic tension but more by the frailties and failings of humankind. Rahim for all his goodness of intention is felled by his fatal flaws. He is a wonderful boyfriend and a fantastic father—and there is a touching father-son bonding built into the plot—but he is also a bit of a mismanager in life. Rahim has messed up big time with his finances. Director Asghar Farhadi is not in the mood to let his hero off the hook. He never is. Life is never as simple in an Asghar Farhadi film as it seems.
Unpaused: Naya Safar (Amazon Prime Video):
This is not only well worth our time and attention, this five-tiered omnibus is better more sensitively designed than the first season that came in 2020. Unpaused Naya Safar constitutes 4 stories of varying merit and one outright masterpiece. Quite like Neeraj Ghaywan’s Geeli Pucchi in the anthology Ajeeb Dastaans, Nagraj Manjule’s Vaikunth in Unpaused is so far ahead of the other four segments it deserved a full feature-length treatment. It’s like the Amitabh Bachchan of the anthology towering above the rest with its razor-sharp brilliance and acute insight into human nature during stressful times. Aching darkness spreads over the story as the film’s protagonist, a cremator in a crematorium who suddenly has a full season over his head as corpses drive into the burning ground in wailing ambulances that couldn’t care less and shrieking relatives whose grief has no comfort. Nagraj Manjule in the main role confers a haunting tragic ethos on the situation. Day-in and day-out he burns the abandoned bodies unattended by all except those very close; his father is afflicted and his little son has no roof on his head as the landlord evicts them pleading he has to think of his health safety. There is death, dangerous diseases everywhere in Nagraj Manjule’s brilliantly shot uniquely executed story. There are also spurts of savage humour(son weeping at the wrong pyre). Manjule chooses to end this grim tale of a wounded civilization on a note of hope, and a welcome one at that. Equally grim is War Room, my second-favorite story of the anthology, directed by Ayappa KM about frontline workers grappling in a helpline organization trying to find beds and oxygen cylinders. There is the dread of diseases and death shrouding every moment of this heart-stopping story. The unfailingly brilliant Gitanjali Kulkarni is a teacher turned Covid front worker with a tragic secret that comes out in an unexpected twist of fate. More than the twist, I loved the sense of imminent doom that the director conveys while keeping the tone of narration steady and calm. Teen Tigada steers in out of Covid fears as three itinerant labourers are stranded in an abandoned factory with a truckload of expensive goods. The three actors seen on screen are so immersed in their shared world of unalloyed despair that their bouts of anger and hunger seem all too tangible. Director Ruchir Arun’s sheds empathy for the wandering migrants whose future looks so abysmally devoid of hope, and yet there is laughter and sunshine in this story thanks to the three actors Saqib Saleem, Ashish Verma, and Sam Mohan especially Sam who is the quietest least expressive of the trio, and perhaps the most wounded. Gond Ka Laddu plays it over-cute with Neena Gupta locking horns with a courier boy (Lakshvir Singh Sharan) who ruins her surprise for her daughter when her laddus are crushed in a road accident. What follows is an unbelievable leap of faith, rendered convincing by the heartwarming performances(Darshana Rajendran as the courier boy’s supportive girlfriend is the ultimate spot of sunshine in a world blinded by darkness) and by our desperate need to find some light at the end of the tunnel. The Couple, the final story of this ambrosial anthology is also highly connectible and genuinely likable A young couple, played with understated smartness by Shreya Dhanwanthary and Priyanshu Painyuli, lock horns during the lockdown when the wife loses her job. The taunts jibe bitter rage and growing frustration…all have their say in Nupur Asthana’s evocatively shot short film with lissom if languorous, legs. The stories even in their weakest moments never fail to wedge themselves in our hearts. The actors are fully invested in bringing back to our episodes and moments from the past two years that resonate with all of us, though in no intrusive aggressive way. Easy does it.
Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein (Netflix):
If you have seen Siddharth Sengupta Undekhi for Applause Entertainment you know he is most comfortable in the world of ‘unorganized’ crime. Self-appointed ganglords and their thoroughly bratty children, powered by rudderless goons who think they can get away with murder make Sengupta’s blood boil. There is an undercurrent of simmering spleen in Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein (named after a hit song from the Shah Rukh Khan starrer Baazigar for no particular reason) a looming resentment against the things people with money and power can do to the powerless. This is a series about the abuse of power of wealth, about lawless gangsters forcing their will on the helpless: a favourite theme in our cinema for years. But wait. There is a twist to the tale here. The bully patriarch, played with unerring pitch-perfection by Sourabh Shukla, has a lovely daughter and she is in love with the poor little pretty boy since school. Purva, played by the lovely Aanchal Singh, is no walkover. Nor is she the vampish Bindu of yore slithering and slobbering all over her object of desire. She is a moneyed classy chick who wants the hick with the…never-mind. The writing is unabashedly pulpy and the twists in the plot, especially from the midpoint are mind-numbing in their preposterousness. To his credit screenwriter, Siddharth Sengupta sustains the pulpy momentum right till the end. The frenetic pace, often literally staged with goons chasing law-abiding god-fearing citizens to their death, never slackens. Seen in the spirit of Sidney Sheldon’s fiction-in-motion. Yeh Kali Kali Aankhein is a sock-in-the-tummy entertainer. It is set in a town by the Ganga named Onkara (a stand-in for Varanasi or Allahabad). The last two episodes which turn dark and murderous, are shot in Ladakh with the change of visuals serving a specific function. I saw no compromises in production values just because the size of the screen has shrunk. The series has an eye-catching look and a lived-in feeling. All the actors from Tahir Raj Bhasin(so ridiculous in his bewigged Mahesh Bhatt avatar in this week’s other series Ranjish Hi Sahi) and Shweta Tripathi, playing the simple-minded couple whose togetherness is shredded by the murderous machinations of the rich bitch(these moneyed types, I tell you) to the typecast Brijendra Kala(as Bhasin’s cocky domineering father) and Surya Sharma as Purva’s borderline psychotic brother(almost a repeat of what this talented actor played in the same director’s Undekhi) all do well for themselves. But the real catch of the serial is Aanchal Singh as the won’t-take-no-for-an-answer lover girl. She plays the part in dignified measured tones giving Purva a kind of grace that perhaps the character doesn’t deserve. Also, watch out for Anant Joshi as Vikrant’s best friend. He is the comic relief and a welcome one for a change. And Purva’s rapper-suitor played by Nikhil Pandey is a hoot. I wish the narration was not so anxious to take audiences along. A kind of desperate breathlessness does seep into the storytelling at times. But that’s okay. Better than 10 episodes of languorous tedium that we’ve been subjected to in some recent serial.
Humble Politiciann Nograj (Viacom Voot, Kannada):
Comic actor Danish Sait who by now owns his (anything-but-humble) politician Nograj’s wobbly character, dip-dives into the despicable dirty games that politicians play, and comes up with some genuine if lowbrow, laughs. But be warned: the laughter this time is as ground-level as it can get. If you are looking for edifying humour, look elsewhere. Here in Nograj’s world, the laughter comes from a place of absolute self-serving asininity. Sample this: Nograj tells his ever-faithful assistant Manjunath(Vinay Chendoor) that he needs protection. Manjunath dutifully pulls out a condom from his bag.“Put it on your head, because you are behaving like a dick,” barks Nograj. Well, okay then. The knocks delivered on Indian democracy’s hardened knuckles are filled with chuckles, of not a very refined variety, I am afraid. The cheesy humour goes with the mood of dimwitted political horse-trading in the series. Yes, MLAs are taken to a resort and locked away. No, it is not the last resort. Director Saad Khan had earlier written the film version of the same protagonist political clown’s antics in 2018. Over there, Nograj played by the delectably over-the-top Danish Sait who looks like a confounding cross between Pawan Malhotra and Dulquer Salman, wished to be an MLA. Now he wants to be the chief minister of Karnataka, no less. I am pretty sure he would want to be the prime minister in the next season of this fair-to-fine politic aperitif with characters painted in such broad strokes of satire that they end up looking like cartoon strips come-alive, which I suspect, is what the team behind this beetle-leaf burlesque wanted it to be. Humble Politiciann Nograj is fun when it isn’t trying to spoon-feed us with unnecessary information on how the jokes work. “Prank call,” he later whispers to his assistant. As long as Nograj doesn’t think the audience is as stupid as some of his political adversaries, the series is fun. By the way, is Nograj gay? There are hints all over that he is, his speech and manner. But then one never knows about these things, especially in politics.
Putham Pudhu Kalaai Vidiyaadha (Amazon Prime Video; Tamil):
Five stories, not all equally persuasive, about individuals connecting during the lockdown, you would have to be heartless to not fall in love with these characters and their attempts to reach out. A sequel of sobs gleaned from the first five stories that were released in 2021, the current stories are, in many ways, far more credible and connectible than Season 1 which tended to get over-cute while showing couples locked away together and blessing all the 340 gods for this windfall of time together. In Season 2 the nerves are far more on-edge and the characters are in no mood to look at the brighter side of the pandemic; because by now, there is none. In one of the best stories Loners directed by Halitha Shameem, the protagonist Nella(Lijomol Jose) switches on an app that gives her the sound of traffic for one hour. She befriends a fellow-loner Dheeran (Arjun Das) and his dog. Deeran warns Nella that their growing bonding could be just a symptom of the cancerous loneliness spreading itself out further and wider with each lockdown. “Taking out the trash every day is a highlight of your day. So is talking to me,” Dheeran observes, not unreasonably. The bonding between the two seems very real. I know of so many people who have befriended strangers during their prolonged solitude. My favorite story of the quaint quintet is Mouname Paarvayaai where a couple, played with marvelous muted nuances by the redoubtable Joju George and Nadiya Moidu, are not on talking terms for months. This segment of the anthology is tender and brutally funny. The swipes at the husband’s ineptness in the kitchen when his wife falls ill, are so direct I felt like an inherent part of the plot. Joyously, Mouname Paarvayaai is well-paced, which some of the other stories are not. Mugakavasa Mutham about two traffic cops on duty during the lockdown who come close while uniting a pair of young lovers is much too labored. The contrivances diminish the story’s beauty. In Nizhal Tharum Idhama a potentially resonant story of a daughter returning to her hometown in Pondicherry after her father’s death to reclaim their family home shoots itself in the foot when suddenly director Richard Anthony decides to introduce a bunch of Greek Chorus dancers whose relevance I couldn’t figure out. They only made Shobi (played by the very photo-genic Aishwarya Lekshmi who has a marvelous meltdown sequence towards the end of the story) seem somewhat schizophrenic. The story that meanders the furthest away from its center is The Mask. A story about coming out, it squanders its main plot-development opportunity in an utterly bland encounter between the closeted gay hero Arjun (Sananth) and an antisocial pal Velu (Dhilip Subbarayan). Before their evening talk session is done, we are bored to distraction by the sheer blandness of their conversation. Despite the jerks of a discrepancy, the anthology means well. And it has its heart in the right place. Even in its worst moments, the anthology reminds you of the unspoken ways in which the pandemic has changed our lives. And it does so gently, not afraid to tell the truth but ensuring that the sagas of solitude do not spin themselves into a web of despair.
Madhuram (SonyLIV, Malayalam):
At first the amount of sentimental sweetness that pours into writer-director Ahammed Khabeer’s modern fable on hoping healing and acceptance, overpowers you. How can any film laying such a legitimate claim to realism invest so much nobility into suffering? How could a place of pain, a hospital, be used to project such unconditional joy? The government hospital in Khabeer’s film is overpowered by lingering schmaltz. But wait. Let’s not be too hasty in dismissing this as just another feel-good fluff film designed to deliver some year-end hope. Madhuram is eventually much more than a total of its sentimental validation. Its ‘message’ of hope amid despair and death, is never shrill or even insistent; it just quietly hovers in the air like the aroma of the biryani that plays such a decisive part in the pert and inspiring plot. Initially, the film wears the aura of a daily soap. We meet various characters who are attendants to patients in a government hospital where we understand, the staff is polite, the doctors are patient, and the patients a gentle and undemanding lot….ummmm…arcadian angst? For all its overt ostensibly unreasonable optimism, Madhuram is a winsome therapeutic journey into the dark tangled thought processes of those who quietly watch their loved ones heal or die in hospitals. There is never a middle path to the conflict between mortality and immortality. If the film so adroitly overcomes its inherent deficiency of excessive sentimentality it is thanks to the actors. I cannot say this enough times: Malayalam cinema has the best slew of non-acting actors, so natural it seems they are not aware of the camera capturing their emotions in undulating motions. Joju George who in my opinion was better than the great Fahadh Faasil in Malik is the plot’s centrifugal force. He is not only the all-round Uncle Agony for all the impatient attendants of the patients, but he is also the purveyor of the film’s central love story where George’s character Sabu falls in love with a plucky Gujarati girl Chitra(Shruti Ramachandran) who, incidentally looks as Gujarati as idli masquerading as a dhokla. George’s love story comes to a stirring painful and poignant cathartic culmination; this again reiterates the film’s over-sentimentality which is both its main strength and weakness. Arjun Ashokan is also amiable as a newly married confused husband trying to cope with his mother’s surgery and his (arranged) wife’s efforts to blend into the marriage, not to mention her brave and not unsuccessful efforts to cook from YouTube recipes. As for Indrans, last, seen as Oliver Twist in the amiable domestic drama Home, when is he not completely into his character? With performances that never scream into our souls, Madhuram is just the year-end send-off that we need. Yes, there is pain and suffering in our lives. But there is also hope and recovery.
Mudhal Nee Mudivum Nee (Zee5; Tamil):
More than the overrated Chichchore and almost as much as Dil Chahta Hai… Mudhal Nee Mudivum Nee (MNMN) is a coming-of-age brew that is heady, intoxicating, provocative, and poignant…sometimes all at once. This is the kind of rare film that is easy to overlook for its achievements: the writer-director Darbuka Siva (who has also composed the felicitous songs and music) doesn’t tom-tom his skills as a raconteur of remarkable ruminative resources. The film’s fluid emotions and virginal faces merge and melt into a kind of nostalgic inner-view into the youthful aspirations of the 1990s that never screams for attention. Most endearingly the frames never plead for nostalgia. There is no overt attempt to hammer in the aura of the era through clothes, hairstyle, cars, or, most annoying of all, songs (such a convenient mode of period recreation!). Instead of force-feeding us with periodicity, Darbuka Siva allows the actors to free-flow into the characters. The one problem that I had was in keeping up with the identity of all the youngsters. There are so many of them! Luckily writer-director Siva allows us to choose our favourites. I came away with the thoughtful musician Vinoth (Kishen Das), the foolhardy Chinese (Harish Kumar, over-the-top initially but settles in), the bitchy Catherine (Purva Raghunath), the conservative and possessive Rekha (Meetha Raghunath)…all outstanding in their inconspicuous everyman-ship. Darbuka Siva extracts the optimum juice from the indefinable elixir of youth and its impulsive horny follies. And yet for all its raunchiness and recklessness, it is not all fun and games in the plot which some critics have called “rambling”. It can’t be helped. Growing up is not as linear and neat as many coming-of-age films make it seem. MNMN is not afraid to fall off the edge. The narrative often takes impetuous leaps of faith, opting to remain true to the young protagonists’ journey of life rather than looking to somehow tie up the loose ends. There is a dark subplot about the homophobic Richard (Varun Rajan) bullying Francis (Rahul Kannan) from school to the old boys’ reunion and then suddenly, and unconvincingly apologizing to the victim. Could this apology be just so that Richard’s sensible and just wife is appeased? Many questions remain unanswered, and that’s the way it’s meant to be. The end-product does have a messy feel to it. For those sold on a cogent structure, there are two social gatherings—a passing-out farewell party at school and a long but richly reflective and revealing old students’ reunion at the end—which book-mark the proceedings. The song that Vinoth sings for his lost love at the reunion is so beautifully composed and positioned in the plot, which not for a second do we feel manipulated into a collective meltdown. Oh yes, there is also Cupid in the film, played as a Woody Allen-ish romantic worrier by the director himself. Cupid is called in to mend Vinoth’s, broken heart. But the belated attempt for a happy ending is most welcome.MNMN gives us a fresh-faced dewy-eyed rose-tinted look at life and love at an age when nothing else matters. Frozen in time. This is an exhilarating liberating joyride into a past when Archies cards expressed love far better than the movies. This is a thoughtful winsome cinematic ode to an era of corny courtships.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.
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