Santosh [2024]

 British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri’s gripping, smouldering and impressive debut feature Santosh operated in the grim intersectionality of class, caste, religion and gender, and the foul cesspit of disenfranchisement, bigotry, caste violence, Islamophobia, misogyny and police brutality. That may seem like a lot is going on for one movie. It’s therefore to Suri’s credit – aided perhaps by her background as a documentarian – that these themes were organically interlaced into the script, thereby ensuring that they’re integral to this police procedural involving the investigations into the rape and murder of a young Dalit girl in the ironically named north Indian state of “Chirag Pradesh”. The clincher was that these subterranean realities were evoked through the gaze of a woman protagonist – privileged by her caste and religion, but not so much by her class and gender – in an inversion to this otherwise “masculine” genre and the heavily male-dominated police force. Shahana Goswami was terrific – in a turn marked by seething fury and restraint – as the eponymous Santosh, a recently widowed woman who decides to inherit her husband’s job of a police constable, and therefore his salary and accommodation, in order to secure her social and financial independence. There, she immediately encounters an environment reeking of patriarchy, prejudices, sexism and apathy, and soon after finds herself amidst an increasingly vile morass on account of the afore-mentioned crime. The scenario was suffused with additional nuance upon the arrival of a seasoned senior inspector (Sunita Rajwar) to lead this politically volatile case, as on hand she treats Santosh with courtesy and even protectiveness – albeit, coloured with sensual undertones on occasions – while, on the other, she has a murky past of custodial torture and cynical expediency.

Director: Sandhya Suri

Genre: Crime Thriller/Police Procedural

Language: Hindi

Country: India/UK

Aghaat [1985]

 While Govind Nihalani’s films were always political, rarely were they so unreservedly Marxist as his compelling and immensely underrated Aghaat. With it he delivered a persuasive, smouldering and nuanced examination of union politics and class struggle. It also, in turn, completed a trilogy of sorts with two brilliant and better-known earlier films. He focussed on a pursuer of individual justice in Aakrosh, an enforcer of legal and vigilante measures in Ardh Satya, and a custodian and enabler of workers’ rights here. Additionally, aside from being fiery, gritty and with violent overtones, the protagonists in all three were driven by their deeply embedded sense of right and wrong and stubborn refusal to quit in morally compromised worlds. It began with a striking dance performance – allegorically demonstrating revolutionary spirit of exploited workers – performed by and for a factory’s union members. Enter Madhav Verma (Om Puri), an educated, conscientious and profoundly committed union representative who’s striving to secure bonuses and benefits with everyone’s long-term interests in mind. His job, however, is complicated on account of a rival outfit – led by self-serving rabble-rouser Rustom Patel (Naseeruddin Shah, in a cameo) and mobilized on ground by his thuggish henchman (Bharath Gopi) – which is fast poaching members through nasty sabotage and reckless promises. When a shopfloor labourer (Pankaj Kapoor) meets with a crushing accident, that ensues an especially unfortunate three-way tug of war with the company bosses who’re happy to play both sides, leading towards an inevitably combustible culmination. The film, buoyed by Vijay Tendulkar’s script that was alternately wordy, introspective and high-octane, was led by a dominant lead performance by Om Puri, and fine turns by Gopi, Amrish Puri, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Rohini Hattangadi, etc.

Director: Govind Nihalani

Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Crime Drama

Language: Hindi

Country: India

Garm Hava (Scorching Winds) [1973]

 M.S. Sathyu’s celebrated film Garam Hava delved into the minority experience during India’s Partition, not in terms of physical violence and political intricacies, but on its social and economic costs, by steadfastly focusing on a Muslim family that served as a microcosmic representation of the community. Additionally, it provided a mirror to three disparate periods – 1948, recently independent yet divided nation, on the backdrop of Gandhi’s assassination, when the story is set; 1973, on the verge of being plunged into Emergency, when the film was made (against considerable odds); and now, a polarized time replete with ghettoization and persecutions. The slice-of-life parable – adapted from a short story by Marxist and feminist Urdu writer Ismat Chughtai, and adapted jointly by Urdu poet Kaifi Azmi, and script writer, art director and Sathyu’s wife Shama Zaidi – is centred on the Mirza family in Agra, which is headed by two contrasting brothers. While the elder brother, who’s involved in politics and is aware of his self-interests, relocates to the newly formed Pakistan, the idealistic and gentle-natured Salim (veteran thespian Balraj Sahni, in a distinguished turn, that was also his final), who runs a shoe business, and stays back with his wife, kids and aged mother. His deep optimism that things will soon improve is continuously undermined as he loses their ancestral home, sees his business spiral, and faces religious hostility, while his love-stuck daughter (Gita Siddharth) suffers debilitating heartbreaks, elder son checks out, and younger son (Farooq Shaikh) fails to get employed. Yet, despite these relentlessly tragic setbacks, Salim refuses to surrender his dignity and hope, and ultimately embraces progressive politics, with this humanist streak providing a moving mirror to these turbulent times.

Director: M.S. Sathyu

Genre: Drama/Family Drama/Political Drama

Language: Urdu/Hindi

Country: India

Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyoon Aata Hai [1980]

 Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s excellent tapestry Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyoon Aata Hai opened with an absorbing ride through the streets of Bombay, accompanied by a smooth jazzy score, which immediately made this seem like an intoxicating love letter to the city. Being the gentle, erudite and politically invested filmmaker that he was, Mirza had of course in mind a much more nuanced exploration and complex investigation of the city than that. He accomplished that through interlacing of three fervently political themes – with an infectious mix of satirical chuckle, simmering angst and defiantly Marxist gaze – viz. portrayal of minority experience, depiction of a heretofore “apolitical” working-class protagonist’s furiously evolving class consciousness, and an impassioned probe into the early days of what would erupt into the “Great Bombay Textile Strike” during the early-1980s. His infusion of elements of documentary and reportage into the narrative, and a dialectical reworking of the “angry young man” persona, brought in intriguing additional dimensions to it. The film’s eponymous protagonist, played with insouciance and aplomb by Naseeruddin Shah, is a Christian auto-mechanic who starts off as an aimlessly angry, smug, opinionated and insular guy who’s proud of his wealthy customers, is incorrigibly boorish to his independent-minded girlfriend (Shabana Azmi), and is casually derisive of any protests by workers. However, when his father (Arvind Deshpande), a veteran textile worker, is beaten up by lumpen thugs at the best of the mill owners for participating in strikes, he starts experiencing a remarkable change in his political views and expressing solidarity towards those who he’d been dismissive of. The fine cast also comprised of Smita Patil as Albert’s wry sister and Dilip Dhawan as his disillusioned brother, among others.

Director: Saeed Akhtar Mirza

Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Political Drama/Romantic Drama

Language: Hindi

Country: India

Khandhar (The Ruins) [1984]

 Made during the 1980s, his final productive decade, Mrinal Sen’s Khandhar was as much about physical ruins as emotional ones. The interplay between the two, especially how one informs the other, added nuanced undertones to this quietly evocative work. Like many films before and since, it’s around a few urbane and carefree friends going on a short fun getaway out of the city, only to experience something far deeper and more complex than what they’d expected. It begins with Subhash (Naseeruddin Shah), a photographer, reliving a lasting melancholic memory elicited by an old photo of a woman that he’d taken in the past, and that’s followed by a double click into that memory. Dipu (Pankaj Kapoor) had coaxed him into taking a weekend trip to his ruinous ancestral home located far from the madding crowd; Shubhash’s thoughtful nature and Dipu’s matter-of-factness are complemented by the goofy spirit of Anil (Annu Kapoor), who also joins them. Upon arriving at this dilapidated estate – which had once boasted of prosperity but eventually turned into a crumbling wasteland as residents moved out and scattered elsewhere, and which seems to be stuck in a time warp that’s far removed from modern city amenities – they meet Jamini (Shabana Azmi), an intelligent but lonely woman who too is irrevocably stuck. Her blind and dependent mom, obsessed with a guy who’d promised to marry Jamini but never did, starts assuming that he’s finally returned, and that leads to the formation of a fleeting yet profound attachment between Shubhash and Jamini. Elegantly shot by K.K. Mahajan, comprising of a particularly memorable turn by Azmi, and filled with deafening silences, this clearly remains one of Sen’s most low-key works.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Drama/Romantic Drama

Language: Hindi

Country: India

Bhuvan Shome [1969]

 Mrinal Sen’s first Hindi film, Bhuvan Shome, came at an intriguing juncture. While he’d already made 8 features – including the delightfully roguish romcom Akash Kusum – he was still a year away from transitioning into an emphatically political filmmaker. This seriocomic ‘slice of life’ tapestry – which he adapted in an understated deadpan vein from a story by the pseudonymous Bengali novelist “Banaphool” – nevertheless amply demonstrated his burgeoning love for formal playfulness, from jump cuts, freeze frames and animated doodles to whimsical episodes, wry internal monologues and sardonic narrations (by Amitabh Bachchan in his first movie credit). Incidentally, Satyajit Ray, who’d derisively summarized it as “Big Bad Bureaucrat Reformed by Rustic Belle” – his seven-word synopsis, though, was inch-perfect – may’ve been influenced by it to an extent when he made his first Hindi feature 8 years later, viz. the deliciously satiric period film Shatranj Ke Khiladi. The eponymous Mr. Shome (Utpal Dutt), a high-ranking Bengali civil servant and middle-aged widower – is an incorrigibly proud and uncompromising stickler for rules. Growing mid-life existential crisis leads him to a “hunting holiday” – in a farcical attempt to cure loneliness with adventure – and finds himself in an isolated terrain in rural Gujarat. At the end of an absurdist last-mile bullock cart ride, he’s inadvertently acquainted with Gauri (Suhasini Muley), a lively, unambiguous and friendly village girl who helps the gauche Shome, clearly a fish out of water, while also reforming him without really meaning to. During his bumbling expedition, Gauri’s vivacious charm and nonconformist views end up striking a deep chord within him – probably falling in love with her too – and he finds himself a light-hearted and uncharacteristically forgiving man upon his return to the city.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Comedy/Social Satire/Adventure

Language: Hindi

Country: India

A Night of Knowing Nothing [2021]

 Payal Kapadia’s stunning hybrid docu essay A Night of Knowing Nothing – alternately hypnotic and urgent, intimate and shared, impressionistic and pulsating, melancholic and feverish, fragile and radical – fluidly glided between epistolary narrative, found footage and defiant activism. The ‘Film and Television Institute of India’ graduate made her institute both canvas and springboard for her inquiries into individual and collective memories, and invoked Milan Kundera’s powerful statement in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. The delicately muted yet boldly shapeshifting work, unsurprisingly, bore eclectic cinematic traces – from being informed by Chantal Akerman, Chris Marker and John Abraham to directly nodding to Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Pasolini and Ghatak. Set to the heartbreaking voiceover of an unnamed film student – lamenting, over letters to her estranged boyfriend, the breakdown of their relationship as she belongs to a lower caste, and thereby touching upon how love is as much political as it’s personal in an intensely patriarchal and caste-ridden society like India – it expanded into a rousing testament to dissent, disobedience and resistance by students. Starting with the massive protests that’d rocked FTII upon the outrageous appointment of a loyalist of the country’s reactionary government – which Kapadia had herself fearlessly participated in – it then segued into student activism movements that erupted across various public universities, and the violent wrath of the state machinery that they faced. The film’s contrapuntal texture – interlacing elegiac meditations and dream-like images with the thrilling here-and-now verité of archival footage – was magnificently woven through its amorphous structure, exquisite photographic compositions – grainy, low-fi, 8mm and 16mm B/W images, interspersed with shots of saturated colours – and deeply absorbing sound design.

Director: Payal Kapadia

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film

Language: Hindi/Bengali

Country: India

Kalyug [1981]

 Kalyug, Shyam Benegal’s modern-day retelling of Mahabharat, mirrored the giant epic’s violent tale of familial feud, hubris, compromised ethics and mutually assured destruction. Co-written with Satyadev Dubey and Girish Karnad, it transplanted the epic from medieval world of warring royalties to hostile corporate behemoths – two branches of the same family – in 1980s Bombay, who, in their unbridled power lust and desirous of a prized government contract, roll out increasingly ruinous machinations. One half of the battling families – the Pandavas – is represented by the soft-spoken eldest brother (Raj Babbar), the hedonistic middle-brother (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), the arrogant but capable youngest brother Bharatraj (Anant Nag), and the eldest’s bewitchingly beautiful wife Supriya (Rekha) who secretly covets the youngest. The other half – the Kauravas – is represented by the vindictive Dhanraj (Victor Banerjee), and his great friend and mastermind Karan (Shashi Kapoor), who’s a cultured loner, carries a secret torch for Supriya, and – unbeknownst to himself – is the former trio’s eldest brother. One pitfall of having a massive ensemble cast – which also comprised of Sushma Seth as family matriarch, Amrish Puri as her brother, A.K. Hangal as ageing loyalist, Om Puri as trade union leader, Supriya Pathak as Bharatraj’s young wife – is that they must shine in their limited screentime. The heavy plot painted a bleak picture of greed, cut-throat competition and murky realpolitik, while providing limited scope to delve deeper. The film, therefore, was a mix of some captivating highs – Karan’s reaction upon hearing his backstory and Supriya’s motherly consolation of a broken Bharatraj that veered towards erotic were haunting moments, Om Puri’s cameo was explosive, and the bloody tale was unapologetically maximalist – and unavoidable lows due to plot contrivances and overcooked moments.

Director: Shyam Benegal

Genre: Drama/Family Drama/Crime Drama

Language: Hindi

Country: India

Manthan (The Churning) [1976]

 Shyam Benegal, who’d made ad films on Amul during his advertising days, partnered with Verghese Kurien – who’d played a pivotal role in Amul’s success and “White Revolution in India” during the 1970s – and a whopping 500,000 farmers who donated Rs. 2 each, in his compelling film Manthan. It was infused with remarkable political prescience by being a crowdfunded film – and therefore, free of commercial obligations – that chronicled the cooperative dairy movement pioneered by Kurien which turned milk farmers into micro-owners and thereby considerably freed of exploitations by predatory businessmen. Benegal, however, didn’t have a hagiographic character study in mind. Instead, through Manohar Rao (Girish Karnad), a veterinary doctor who arrives in a tiny hamlet with hopes of collectivising the rural community into a cooperative, he painted a microcosmic and multitextured tapestry on impoverished villagers manipulated, fleeced and turned into bonded labour by a cunning local dairy owner (Amrish Puri), and rabid cast-based discrimination of the Dalit populace by an upper-caste Panchayat leader (Kulbhushan Kharbanda). The gruff and tenacious Rao, armed with his with socialist and egalitarian ideals, must navigate through these complex, seething and violent fault-lines in order to have the milk cooperative set-up and operationalized. The fearlessly rebellious Bhola (Naseeruddin Shah), the fiery and independent-minded Bindu (Smita Patil), Rao’s troubled wife (Abha Dhulia) and his impassive colleague (Mohan Agashe) interlaced the brewing maelstrom with riveting human dynamics. This remarkable final chapter in Benegal’s bleak and fierce ‘Rural Trilogy’ – preceded by Ankur and Nishant – comprised of an alternately angry, mournful and sensuous script by Vijay Tendulkar and Kaifi Azmi, lyrical vistas of the harsh landscape by Govind Nihalani, and a recurring song that served as a deeply evocative motif.

Director: Shyam Benegal

Genre: Drama/Rural Drama/Film a Clef

Language: Hindi

Country: India

Joram [2023]

 Devashish Makhija boldly combined bleak social observations and scorching political inquiries with genre elements and narrative urgency – thus smartly overlaying popular narrative forms on subaltern themes – in Joram. It quite ferociously commented on the unabated marginalization of the already marginalized tribal community, through the rancid politics of “development” and brute power of the state machinery – albeit, in the garb of a taut chase, revenge and survival thriller. Dasru (Manoj Bajpayee) is a migrant construction worker living a squalid existence in Mumbai along with his wife (Tannishtha Chatterjee). He, unbeknownst to those around him, had a combustible past life – he was once a member of a rebel guerilla outfit in the Jharkhand forests that was engaged in a violent battle with the political-industrial nexus to prevent the appropriation of their lands – which he’d fled from to escape the cycle of violence and its eventual extermination by the state. His past, however, catches up with him when he gets identified by a vengeful tribal politician (Smita Tambe) – her monstrosity amplified by her collaboration with those who’re engaged in the annihilation of her community – who has his wife brutally murdered and compels him to go on the run. A reluctant cop (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub), who hasn’t lost his moral compass despite the mucky environment surrounding him, is tasked with liquidating the helpless man. The suspension of disbelief that the chase necessitates – especially Dasru’s nightmarish odyssey along with an infant – becomes a relatively minor footnote in this canvas laced with fury, anxiety, disdain and loss. Dasru’s bafflement upon seeing his cherished land transformed into desolate dystopia – lush forests stripped into barren mines and rivers guzzled by dams – made for a particularly haunting imprint.

Director: Devashish Makhija

Genre: Thriller/Political Thriller/Crime Thriller

Language: Hindi

Country: India

Monica, O My Darling [2022]

 Monica, O My Darling is a heady, devilish and deliriously entertaining joyride, and riotously lurid and pulpy at that. This crackling celebration of lowbrow crime genre was liberally peppered with references – Vasan Bala, who’s as much a cinephile as he’s a filmmaker, doffed his hats to pulpy hardboiled literature, neo-noir capers, cheesy B-movies, crime comics and old-school Bollywood – thus exuberantly underscoring its self-reflexive nature, even though that never came in the way of the enjoyment. Interestingly, amidst the stylistic flourishes, hyperbolic expressions of sensuality and violence, a labyrinthine plot packed with red herrings and outrageous twists, and darkly ironic interjections, Bala also craftily sprayed some pungent social observations into the mix – from ethics of AI and self-serving corporate governance to sharp class commentaries, nepotism and male gaze. Deliciously adapted from Keigo Higashino’s Burūtasu no Shinzō, the narrative hinges around a slew of gleefully saucy characters – the titular Monica (Huma Qureshi), an incredibly voluptuous and promiscuous femme fatale who has no qualms about her desires, wants and needs; Jayant (Rajkumar Rao), who’s made it big as much for his engineering chops as his relationship with his boss’ daughter, but which now hangs in balance thanks to Monica; the boss’ brash son Nishikant (Sikandar Kher) who hatches a preposterous plan to murder Monica, as she’s accused him – among others – of impregnating her; and ACP Naidu (Radhika Apte), a chatty and wisecracking cop. This rollicking tale of lust, greed, blackmail, double (and triple) crosses, and multiple grisly murders, was superbly complemented by a terrific retro soundtrack inspired by 1970s Hindi music – the film’s title is itself a gushing nod to an iconic R.D. Burman composition – created by Achint Thakkar and Varun Grover.

Director: Vasan Bala

Genre: Crime Thriller/Black Comedy/Neo-Noir/Mystery

Language: Hindi

Country: India

While We Watched [2022]

 In his nuanced, compelling, politically urgent and deeply solemn reportage essay While We Watched, Vinay Shukla freely traversed from the macro to the personal – a country engulfed with unfettered majoritarianism, frenzied nationalism and religious zealotry; the rotten state of mainstream TV media that feeds on hysteria and hatred, and spews it back through virulent disinformation, thus shaping and proliferating the right-wing narrative; the extraordinary struggle that a journalist must endure in order to remain independent and ask uncomfortable questions – while crafting an elegiac paean to Ravish Kumar. The former Senior Executive Editor with NDTV – he worked there for nearly 30 years and anchored a number of flagship programmes, prior to his resignation immediately upon the media house’s hostile takeover by the oligarchic Adani Group – was as celebrated for his courage, defiance, resilience, integrity and plain-speaking (with wry satiric undertones), including being bestowed with the Ramon Magsaysay Award, as he was incessantly vilified, abused and threatened for neither pandering to the government lines nor cheerleading for the right like his bile-spewing peers. Shukla crafted discomfiting juxtapositions by interlacing the increasingly dystopian external milieu – cow vigilantism and mob lynching by bigoted supremacists; character assassinations and threats of violence against people freely designated as “anti-nationals”; crackdown on social and political dissenters using official agencies, etc. – with melancholic interiority, achieved through intimate close-ups of Kumar, growing desolation at seeing his colleagues leave (farewell cakes served as a running motif), his moments with his family frequently broken by malicious calls, etc. This, along with the terrific Writing With Fire from previous year, powerfully depicted the crumbling fourth pillar of democracy, by fearlessly yet tenderly documenting rare exceptions that’re stirring and disquieting in equal measures.

Director: Vinay Shukla

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film

Language: Hindi/English

Country: India

All That Breathes [2022]

 Shaunak Sen, while speaking of the driving force behind his terrific documentary All That Breathes, articulated his eagerness to “touch upon the whole through the particular”, and this parallel embracing of seemingly dichotomous facets made it an especially powerful work. It was both an example of transcendental art and electrifying reportage; an unsettling portrayal of urban dystopia, while also a quietly uplifting piece; as much an expression of profound humanism as of political dissent and defiance; universal and timeless in its broader philosophies, while also extraordinarily “in the moment” in its geographic and contextual specificities; simultaneously muted in its tone, eloquent in its fierce social commentary, and pulsating in its tremendous sense of vitality and urgency. Its primary subjects were two soft-spoken Muslim brothers – Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad – residing in a desolate section of Delhi, who rescue and treat birds – predominantly the majestic black kites – at their cramped home turned makeshift clinic, despite financially and procedural hurdles. Its subject was also the city of Delhi, with its smog-filled skies and grim ecological footprint, alongside its stunning culture of resistance and troubling social fault-lines that’re demonstrated, respectively, by the massive protests that the draconian citizenship laws sparked and the venomous riots that those in positions of power engineered. And, not least, its subject was a nation-state’s irrevocable turn towards muscular majoritarianism and smug xenophobia, wherein the kites – which’re treated as outcasts by veterinary facilities for being a “non-vegetarian” species – become representative of the broader political canvas, thus paving way for touching “the whole through the particular”. While speaking of the film’s haunting portrayals, complex themes and contrapuntal manifestations, one is also transfixed by its hypnotic and rapturous audio-visual compositions.

Director: Shaunak Sen

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film

Language: Hindi

Country: India

Mammo [1994]

 The scarring memories of Partition – displacement of millions; the macabre violence, irreparable loss and profound rootlessness that accompanied it; the absurdity of an imaginary line on the map and barbed wires permanently dividing people; the ensuing politics of prejudice – were hauntingly referenced in Mammo. The first film in Benegal’s ‘Trilogy of Muslim Women’ – which also comprised of Sardari Begum and Mammo’s pequel Zubeidaa, and all written by Khalid Mohamed based on incidents from his life – provided a powerful repudiation of the recently enacted citizenship law – alongside the right-wing populism, jingoism and otherization that catalysed its formulation – through a Muslim woman who’d been compelled to move to Pakistan but craves to return, as much because of the oppression that she faced there as a childless and dispossessed widow, as because she considers India her home. Riyaz (Rajit Kapoor), a writer who lives with his aged grandmother Fayyazi (the brilliant Surekha Sikri), chronicles this story from 20 years back when, as a moody 13-year-old kid – who, like Antoine Doinel, loves skipping school to watch movies in theatres – finds his and his grandma’s lives turned upside-down by the unannounced arrival of “Mammo Nani”. A person of extraordinary verve, vitality and exuberance, despite the gut-wrenching experiences she carries; fearlessly frank and opinionated; as well-read in Faiz’s poetry and Manto’s short stories as in the Quran; devout, while also harbouring stirringly progressive views; and played with extraordinary warmth, vivaciousness and delicacy by Faridah Jalal, Mammo Begum is ready to subvert political systems to be with her sister and nephew in Bombay. Alas, she can’t escape the vicious cycle of life and the devastating trauma of being forcibly evicted for a second time!

Director: Shyam Benegal

Genre: Drama/Political Drama

Language: Hindi/Urdu

Country: India

Mandi [1983]

 Mandi, or physical marketplace, manifests market economy, interplay of demand and supply, and flow of capital; it’s a place, therefore, marked by bedlam, greed, jealousy, Machiavellian manoeuvrings, and even exploitation of labour, while also championing coexistence, camaraderie and community. Shyam Benegal’s bold, chaotic, satirical, mesmeric, compassionate, and, I daresay, Feliniesque film – set in a raucous and throbbing bordello in Hyderabad – triumphantly embodied and embraced all the afore-mentioned traits. That it so marvellously avoided male gaze, voyeuristic impulses and sensationalism despite a subject such as this, and didn’t whitewash anyone even while humanizing the intensely ostracized field of prostitution, underscored this maximalist tale with nuance, delicacy and seriousness. Rukmini Bai (played with commanding brilliance by Shabana Azmi in one of the finest performances of her career) is the madam and matriarch of the afore-mentioned brothel, which she runs with intelligence, grit, cunning and flair. She cares for the place and her girls, is fiercely protective of their agency, and is especially fond of Zeenat (Smita Patil) who’s getting trained in classical singing. Their seemingly harmonious co-existence within the neighbourhood’s ecosystem, however, comes under attack on account of wealthy businessman Gupta (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) who’d like to have the land cleared, and a shrill moral policing City Councillor (Gita Siddharth). The magnificent ensemble cast comprised of a slew of stalwarts of the then “parallel cinema” movement – Naseeruddin Shah in a terrific turn as Rukmini’s volatile factotum Tungrus, Om Puri as a leery photographer, Soni Razdan as Rukmini’s sharp-tongued colleague, Saeed Jaffrey as Gupta’s reluctant ally, Amrish Puri as a bombastic Sufi cleric, Satish Kaushik as Gupta’s unctuous assistant, Neena Gupta as one of Rukmini’s girls, Pankaj Kapoor as a phony activist, etc.

Director: Shyam Benegal

Genre: Comedy/Black Comedy/Social Satire/Ensemble Film

Language: Hindi

Country: India

New Delhi Times [1986]

 Serious and meaningful films on journalism in India are as rare and elusive as serious and meaningful journalism in India – which, of course, isn’t unsurprising given that what passes off as “journalism” in this country, barring a handful of exceptions that can be counted by the fingers of one hand, is a manifestation of the grotesquerie that Wilder presented in his trenchant media satire Ace in the Hole. Films like New Delhi Times and Writing with Fire, therefore, are exceptions that prove the damning rule. Directed with here-and-now gusto by Ramesh Sharma and eloquently written by the great Gulzar, it fearlessly focussed on the unholy love triangle which has become even more conspicuous now than it was then, viz. government-corporate-media nexus. The story is centred on Vikas Pande (Shashi Kapoor), a middle-aged, upright and respected executive editor at the eponymous newspaper, who’s immensely committed to his work and isn’t afraid to speak truth to power. A criminally negligent hooch tragedy and the murder of a politician at a town in Uttar Pradesh catch his attention. And, as he starts digging into these two seemingly unrelated incidents, he ends up uncovering a murky political conspiracy that goes all the way to the state’s Chief Minister who’s embroiled in a grimy power struggle with a brash and ambitious MLA (Om Puri). The dogged and potentially perilous investigative journalism that he conducts, strains his marriage to his lawyer-wife (Sharmila Tagore), earns him the acute displeasure of the politicos, and even sets him at loggerheads with the scion (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) of the ageing industrialist who owns newspaper. His friendship with Anwar, a cynical but fearless photo-journalist, added an interesting layer to the proceedings.

Director: Ramesh Sharma

Genre: Thriller/Political Thriller

Language: Hindi

Country: India

Writing with Fire [2021]

 Khabar Lahariya (literally, “News Waves”) is a rare beacon of hope for journalism in the country – in a landscape otherwise cluttered with jingoism, populist propaganda, bigotry, sensationalism, disinformation and cacophony – in that it speaks truth to power with courage, doesn’t shy away from topics which are inconvenient to the establishment, and covers unsavoury ground realities. But it’s even more than that, as it’s run by rural women from disadvantaged and marginalized communities – necessitating them to operate in an environment dominated by entrenched patriarchy, caste violence and religious discrimination, while also battling economic and domestic impediments – thus imbuing their work with stirring social and feminist contexts. Co-directed by Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas, Writing with Fire is a terrific documentary on this incredible newspaper, and, in turn, a disarmingly powerful work of reportage laced with grit, socio-political conviction and understated eloquence. At its centre-stage were two remarkable Dalit women – Meera, the group’s seasoned Chief Reporter who takes charge of politically volatile stories while also providing mentorship to those needing guidance, and Sunita, a gutsy and self-assured young reporter who’s started covering difficult topics – who are covering such issues as murder of union leaders and activists by the coal mafia, apathy shown by the police towards an impoverished Dalit woman who’s faced sexual violence, and the obnoxious rise of muscular nationalism and cow vigilantism at the backdrop of the ominous 2017 state elections in the violent, chauvinistic and polarized quagmire that Uttar Pradesh represents. Filmed in spare, grainy and compelling visuals, these serious subjects were deftly juxtaposed with the bonding of these heroic comrades including their exuberant trip to Kashmir, their valiant attempts at going digital, and their incredible personal conviction.

Directors: Sushmit Ghosh & Rintu Thomas

Genre: Documentary/Reportage

Language: Hindi

Country: India

Ankur (The Seedling) [1974]

 Shyam Benegal’s prescient, evocative and simmering debut film Ankur operated at the intersection of various hideous social evils – patriarchy, caste discrimination and class divides – within an oppressive feudal structure. Abuse of social capital, fragility of women’s agency, and brazen inequities at play at every stratum – and in turn, various permutations of power imbalances, on account of the three variables of caste, class and gender – were at the forefront of this disarmingly lucid and lyrical tale. The various observations and indictments, however, were organically enmeshed into the proceedings such that the pointed social commentaries only gradually and progressively simmered, until the gut-wrenching finale leaves one scalded with its fury. Interestingly, it started off on a simple note as Surya (Anant Nag), who detests his overbearing father’s mistress and wishes to study further, is compelled to take administrative charge of their lands in a nearby village. Thereafter it transitions into a complicated love story as he, while waiting alone for his wife to reach puberty, becomes attracted to and boldly begins an illicit relationship with Lakshmi (Shabana Azmi), a penurious Dalit woman married to a deaf-mute man (Sadhu Meher) who’s taken to alcoholism upon losing his pottery trade and exacerbated by his inability to impregnate his wife. Things, however, take bleaker turns as Surya’s seemingly demure young wife (Priya Tendulkar), upon eventually joining him, immediately develops an open dislike for Lakshmi; and then, upon Lakshmi informing that she’s pregnant, the unequivocal revelation that Surya’s earlier persona was essentially a sham. Azmi, in her debut role, was terrific as an exploited woman who refuses to go down silently despite being at massive disadvantage on all three parameters, viz. gender, caste and class.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Shyam Benegal

Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Rural Drama

Language: Hindi

Country: India