Yaqut Ali does a fact check of Madhya Pradesh home minister Narottam Mishra’s claim regarding Indian culture.
An advertisement for AU Bank recently sparked controversy after Narottam Mishra, the Madhya Pradesh home minister, said that it hurts the religious sentiments of a particular community and that he should respect “Indian culture”. He asked Aamir Khan, who was part of the advertisement, not to appear in such commercials. Due to Mishra’s statements and the controversy, AU Bank was compelled to take down the advertisement. Yaqut Ali of The Wire does a fact check of Narottam Mishra’s claim regarding Indian culture. Watch the video to understand.
The story of Vikram Batra is largely predictable but is saved from being a complete disaster with some redemptive moments.
A new Amazon Prime Video drama, Shershaah, tells the story of a Param Vir Chakra awardee, Vikram Batra (Sidharth Malhotra), during the 1999 Kargil War.
As a war film, it has an inherent disadvantage of narrative fatigue: the subgenre, often serving predictable storylines, has almost exhausted its arsenal. But there’s a silver lining, too: the default format of such Bollywood productions – marked by bloodthirsty jingoism, convenient realities, and heightened propaganda – is so low that even a relatively level-headed film stands out.
Alternating between Vikram’s past and present, Shershaah follows his early days in the army, when he’s posted in Kashmir, as a Lieutenant in 1998. Most Hindi films, parroting the Delhi party-line, have a poor record of depicting the Valley’s complex political realities.
Fixated on nationalist chest-thumping, such movies solely see the conflict through the lens of soldiers and terrorists. Shershaah at least tries to be different. Vikram seems amiable and helpful, mingling with the locals, recognising the importance of being a humane army officer.
A still from ‘Shershaah’.
But writer Sandeep Shrivastava and filmmaker Vishnuvardhan dilute the initial promise with predictable plot turns. The film achieves this through two main means: foreshadowing and reveal. The former is so obvious that it spills out the latter.
In an early scene, for instance, while talking with an old man, Vikram tells him that he doesn’t see his son, Arslaan (Afnan Ashia), these days. This exchange is so heavy-handed that it only means one thing: the young man has become a militant and plans to cross the border. (The film soon confirms this assumption.)
Later, a Naib Subedar, Bansi (Anil Charanjeett), tells Vikram that he’s recently become a father, showing his daughter’s photo. This bit, too, looks like a trite build-up. To no one’s surprise, Bansi is shot dead, and Vikram holds the same photo while looking at the officer’s dead body. There’s an echo of this scene towards the climax, when Vikram calls an Army Major (Nikitin Dheer) a “shield”, a reliable bulwark against the enemies. We can almost product what will happen soon.
Vishnuvardhan’s inability to create original heartfelt moments hurt this film. Even its narrative framing via a voiceover — Vikram’s twin relaying his brother’s entire story in front of a live audience, resembling a very TED-talk like set-up — is quite unconvincing, explaining a film that doesn’t need much explanation.
A still from ‘Shershaah’.
When Shershaah relaxes its guard to tell Vikram’s personal story, centered on his college girlfriend Dimple (Kiara Advani), the result is as insipid. We get such awkward lines – “Palampur ka seedha saadha launda”, “mujhe neend bhi nahin aati”, “mauka dekh kar dhar liyo bandi ko” – that the earlier portions seem thunderingly nuanced. But upon closer inspection, this entire subplot makes no sense.
Given that Shershaah essentially arises from a long speech, Vikram’s brother knowing (and sharing) the intimate details of the college romance is way too far-fetched, even for a Dharma Productions film. To make things worse, this subplot plays in a flashback where, due to contrived writing, Vikram and Dimple are recounting their love story to each other. (Now that is narrative fatigue.)
We hear a lot about Vikram’s passion for the Army. But the film offers only superficial explanations: a) He was a hardy and stubborn kid; b) he was inspired by Chetan Anand’s Param Vir Chakra (1988). When a film has such pedestrian writing, its main hope rests on the performances. But Malhotra lacks the brute intensity and the screen presence of a celebrated army man. Advani, too, is forgettable in a formulaic role.
This could have been a comprehensive disaster if not for some redeeming elements. Unlike other war dramas, Shershaah resists the easy calls of jingoism. It tries to show some compassion towards the Kashmiris, where Vikram talks about earning their trust. (This attempt doesn’t go beyond mere lip service, though, as the film eventually depicts them as brainwashed masses who must be saved – but it is still a refreshing departure from most Bollywood productions that don’t even care for basic decency.)
A still from ‘Shershaah’.
There’s one bit of layered foreshadowing that works: Vikram, as an army man, being oblivious to rules and hierarchy. It produces some funny scenes, but it also prepares us for the climax, where he transcends those very rules to become an exemplary officer. Some familiar beats, such as Vikram’s interview on TV intercut with his friend’s and family’s reactions, land well.
Even during the intense war scenes – shot and edited with impressive rhythm and momentum – the film doesn’t drown in Islamophobic dog-whistling or repulsive self-absorption. Towards the end, Vikram even tells his subordinates, “I’m not going to give you a loud lecture on patriotism. You’re patriots, that’s why you’re here.”
But the more remarkable, even surprisingly moving, part about the film is that it understands the essence of war: that it is insanity, and the battlefield courage – especially the kind shown by Vikram – comes to those who embrace madness, valour, and patriotism with such ferocious intensity that it is impossible to distinguish among them. (At one point, a fellow officer tells Vikram, “This is madness.”) The film ceased to exist for me in those moments, and I could only think about the 24-year-old who didn’t think twice. Whowas he? What drove him?
What compels some people to snap all cords with rationality — even when that irrationality is for a higher purpose? Shershaah only posits stale simplistic answers and, as a result, dilutes the portrait of exceptional courage that it tries to purportedly honour.
Despite all the flaws, the film continues to stand out because of the things it gets right – the powerful need to start talking now.
To give you context for any cause for celebration over Netflix’s latest release Guilty – despite some glaring flaws – let’s refer to an incident that occurred in early January. Dressed in black, Deepika Padukone had joined the ranks of those protesting against a vicious attack by masked assailants at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
In reaction, Union minister Kailash Choudhary told the press that those found supporting the ‘tukde tukde gang’ were “equally guilty” – subtly hinting at Padukone’s supposed affiliation to this gang – a gang even the home ministry has “no information about“.
In that tumultuous atmosphere, the support of a single celebrity put the onus on others to take a stand too. It was not just her support in isolation, but the crucial message it raised that was important: that the powerful, those who hold sway, need to start speaking up.
Ruchi Narain’s Guilty, produced under Dharma production’s banner, serves a similar purpose. Based on the #MeToo movement, this film is an acknowledgement that the powerful do see us and that they are not complicit in the crimes of their colleagues. The film also carefully handles the question of manipulation. Who manipulated whom, and whether something like that is of any credit in a crime. “It feels like an assault on woke culture, and in several scenes, pretends like it’s an insensitive cousin to the terribly tone-deaf and shamelessly smug Section 375,” read the Hindustan Times review.
Netflix writes the synopsis as the trysts of a girlfriend in search of the truth when a “college heartthrob” is accused of rape by a “less popular student”. In a very Rashomon-esque narrative, Guilty traces accounts of eyewitnesses who narrate very different versions of the night of the crime. It clearly depicts how men and women alike dismiss the (mis)behaviours of their associates.
In a piece titled ‘If You’re Friends With a Sexual Harasser, You’re Part of the Problem Too’, published on Arre, Sreemoyee Mukherjee writes, “It is easy to accept that sexual harassers are other people; that your friends and family could never be entwined in that heinous a crime.” This is the exact mentality which leads to the rampant dismissing of serious allegations.
During the course of the film, the case is laid heavily against the “less popular” woman in question: Tanu Kumar (Akansha Ranjan Kapoor). Her Twitter handle is ‘TanManDhan’, she is called an “easy rider”, and she makes no secret of lusting after the college heartthrob Vijay ‘VJ’ Pratap Singh (Gurfateh Singh Pirzada). On the other hand, Vijay’s character (cringe-worthy from time to time) is portrayed as the alpha, the ultimate good boy who continually tries to protect his girlfriend Nanki Dutta (Kiara Advani) from the “evil clutches” of men and society alike.
The merit of the film lies in capturing the nuances of these public trials. Once Tanu ‘outs’ Vijay as a predator who had allegedly raped her on the night of the college fest, the audience is divided – there’s no foolproof conclusion to hang on to. Vijay is not a Kabir Singh prototype, hence the primary reaction to his character is not one of dislike or hate.
Similarly, Tanu is not the shy, closeted, traumatised portrait of a rape victim. She returns to college soon enough, and is vocal about her stance against privileged ‘man-children’. In fact, a significant portion of the college thinks she is “hashtag whoring”, and that her supporters are only helping out over popularity tokens.
To its discredit, Guilty lapses into an overused formulaic pattern: the honest lawyer (Danish), who goes beyond the requirements of his job in order to serve the greater good, the girlfriend with an obvious dark past attributed to sexual assault, the misportrayal and cliched use of mental illness as a trope, etc.
“The film itself feels like a dry, stage manifestation of a Twitter thread. As a viewer, it’s difficult to empathise with any of the faces involved,” reads Film Companion’s review. And it’s true, the characters come off uni-faceted, as though they are puppets with a limited role to play.
The film jumps right into its role as a #MeToo analysis, without anyone having enough time to make individual impressions.
In an attempt to cloud the judgement of the viewers and protect the element of suspense, the narrative also continuously maligns the victim. The washroom scene with Kumar hogging the water, the false accusation that Tanu levels against Nanki and so on seem crass after a point, continuously trying to make a point that has already been made – that Tanu Kumar is unconventional.
But the effort to uphold that tipped over into uncomfortable character assassination. The ultimate monologue delivered by Nanki, underlining the essence of the #MeToo movement – “ab hum hamare saath hai”, seems insincere since the film does not grant Advani’s character enough time to transform from the biased girlfriend who slapped the victim into a symbol of feminist liberation.
Just as the first half of the script is unnecessarily prolonged, the second half is a rushed attempt at fitting in every right word and phrase.
Despite all the flaws, Guilty continues to stand out because of the things it gets right. Mirchandani’s (Dalip Tahil) casual comment about firing all the female interns in the #MeToo season, hits close to home.
Before the end credits roll, the writers remind us that most of those accused during the Indian #MeToo wave have comfortably returned to work. There is still no strong measure to ensure that the guilty are held accountable. This film reminds us that the onus is on us.
Meghalee Mitra is a littérateur and hopes to change the world, one word at a time.
The humour is so flat, juvenile and lame that you endure the film with a blank expression on your face and pity in your heart.
Raj Mehta’s Good Newwz, starring Akshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor Khan, makes its intentions clear right from the first scene: by unfolding as a mini-ad for Volkswagen. The camera sweeps down the facade of a German automaker showroom; inside, the cars are shots in elaborate close-ups. The hero, Varun (Kumar), a senior executive at the company, walks in with a miniature model of a car on his palm. He then explains the different features of a model to a potential buyer. The first five minutes of the movie feel like flipping through the brochure of a high-end automobile manufacturer. Only if the film got better.
Co-produced by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions, Good Newwz revolves around Varun and his wife, Deepti (Khan), an entertainment journalist who wants to become a mother. The film wastes no time in painting her as a humourless, nagging type: she marks her ovulating dates on the calendar, pesters her husband for sex, tells him to “not take stress” (as it would affect his chances of becoming a father).
The power dynamics between Varun and Deepti are clear from their first interaction: he gets all the jokes, thereby a sly upper-hand in the relationship, while she gets singled out to laugh at. (Every small thing about Deepti is milked for laughs, even her phone password: “000000”.) You know the stereotype: Good Newwz, then, is just the ‘Dharmafication’ of WhatsApp ‘pati-patni’ jokes.
If the film’s dialogues rely on the rehashed gendered tropes, then its plot makes even less sense. Its most crucial plot point, of Varun and Deepti consulting a fertility clinic, seems abrupt and contrived, because, as suggested by the film, their inability to become parents arise from their lack of co-ordination (they have sex, on average, only twice a month) and not because of their individual sexual health. But perhaps that’s too much to expect from a film like this.
Worse, the humour in Good Newwz is so flat, so juvenile and lame that you endure the film with a blank expression on your face, and pity in your heart. The first joke in the film comes around the 44-minute mark when Varun, the dudebro of dudebros, is reading a Gabriel García Márquez novel (One Hundred Years of Solitude, in case you’re interested). Further, the film is fixated on a snazzy kind of edit for its own sake: in many scenes, the screen splits into vertical or horizontal panels without good reason.
Soon, the film’s second couple enters — Honey (Diljit Dosanjh) and Monika (Kiara Advani) — who, hailing from Chandigarh, seem bound by duty to live up to a stereotype. Honey, often wearing a red velvet jacket with the word “Honey” on its back, is loud and lame and intrusive. (Ditto Monika.) They’ve come to the same clinic, as Varun and Deepti, for the purpose of becoming parents. The film sets up a parallel between the suave Varun and in-your-face Honey. (Honey’s visiting card reads “Land Owner”.) As the tug of war shifts from Varun-Deepti to Varun-Honey, the film transitions from being sexist to classist.
Varun constantly derides Honey’s pronunciations — him calling sperm “spam” is repeated for laughs throughout the movie. He’s not different with Monika, either (she calls “flush” “flesh”, in one scene, and Varun breaks into loud fits of laughter). He also makes fun of their Hindi. More than the fact that these ‘jokes’ are painfully weak (and arise from misleading stereotypes), they reinforce a power differential seen for long in Hindi cinema: a hero laughing at a heroine’s expense, a big star deriding lesser popular actors (here, Kumar makes fun of Dosanjh and Advani — two actors ranked lower in the Bollywood hierarchy as compared to him). And sure enough, later, we get a scene where both Kumar and Dosanjh laugh at Advani.
Good Newwz’s first half flounders in good measure for one decent joke or plot turn. It fails, and fails miserably, to find any. Until we find out that Varun and Honey’s sperm samples are exchanged. As a result, now, both Deepti and Monika are pregnant but with sperm from different men. Even this shouldn’t have been a cause for concern (or the film’s central conflict) because, then the question simply should have been, why not just abort and adopt a baby instead?
That, the film implies, is not an option, because the fathers, in essence, ‘own’ the babies (and, by that extension, their wives’ bodies as well). You don’t expect a Kumar film produced by Johar to be particularly progressive, but these assertions, even with that point in mind, sets a new low bar. When Honey finds out that Deepti is pregnant (with ‘his’child), he rents an apartment in the same building, and follows her around – with binoculars – so he can monitor her daily movements. All of this is, of course, supposed to be funny.
When all fails, then this so-called modern drama pulls off the oldest card in the book: appealing to the inherent ‘humanity’ of the motherhood. You can predict such scenes with ease: Deepti seeing the foetus’ outline, through an ultrasound on a monitor, and the doctor pointing towards the “baby’s [beating] heart”, which is “alive and kicking”. A schmaltzy score swells in the background as the doctor tells her, “It is a big blessing for any woman to get pregnant.”
Then adds, “For you, it’s a miracle.”
Later, Deepti tells Varun, “We’re killing a child. We can’t be murderers.” Good Newwz unfolds like a lame propaganda that should make the Republican party proud. Quite strange, then, that Dharma Productions – the financier of such recent masterpieces as Dhadak, Simmba, Kesari, Kalank, Student of the Year 2, and Drive – hasn’t changed its tagline to “Make Hindi cinema great again”.
Kabir Singh exists in a parallel world: one where people aren’t held accountable for their actions.
At 1:08 am last night, before starting to write the review of Kabir Singh, I pinged my friend, a fellow film critic, to check about a moment in the movie. “So there’s a scene at the start where he [Shahid Kapoor] holds a knife and tells a woman to undress?”
“Yeah,” he replied.
I pinged him again to confirm whether the woman was not “Jia”, played by the movie’s second heroine Nikita Dutta, but a peripheral character.
“No.”
“That happens, right?” I had a sudden impulse to fact-check the entire scene. That bit felt, more so in hindsight, so vacuously shocking that I thought I had made it up.
“Can barely believe myself but yeah.”
Kabir Singh is the kind of film, one steeped so deep in viciousness, that it needs a genre of its own: ‘Lynchian’ misogyny. ‘Lynchian’ – named after American filmmaker David Lynch, the maker of surreal thrillers that keep you hooked and nonplussed – befits this movie, because the relentless misogyny here makes you question your own sense and judgement. Maybe it is not the movie, you first tell yourself, it is me.
After surgeon Kabir Singh (Kapoor) threatens the woman to undress, a part of the audience in a Connaught Place multiplex laughed. The subsequent scenes were no different – the maid in his house breaks a glass; Kabir runs after her: the audience laughed. At the hospital, a nurse comments on his beard and shabby look. Kabir turns towards her, pretends to unzip himself in a bid to scare her, and she scampers: more laughter.
This, quite quickly, becomes a pattern: Kabir, nursing some kind of heartbreak, is a raging alcoholic who is also hooked on to drugs, and his irrational aggression is almost always played for laughs. Maybe it’s just the character, you tell yourself again, not the movie. We, after all, don’t know this guy; it’s only fair to give him, and the film, a chance.
Kabir Singh cuts to a flashback. He’s provoked on the football field, picks a fight and punches his opponent. The college decides to suspend him for a month, but not without the dean (Adil Hussain) informing us that Kabir is the “topper of the board, college and university”, a student with an “impeccable academic record”, “one of the best ever”. Kabir, on the other hand, refuses to apologise, saying, “This is me. I have no regrets.”
Director Sandeep Vanga plants a rather insidious assertion here: that Kabir’s behaviour is excusable because he’s a genius; that he, presumably for the same reason, transcends decency; that normal rules don’t apply to him. This is both an excuse and a defence, the cinematic equivalent of a man with a ‘golden heart’, stretching the argument of ‘boys will be boys’ to its most terrifying conclusion.
Kabir doesn’t leave college because he sees Preeti (Kiara Advani), a girl in a junior batch and, just like that, falls in ‘love’. In fact, it is not love as much as a desire to own someone. “Woh meri bandi hai [she’s my woman],” Kabir threatens his juniors, adding, “barring her, every other girl is yours.” And of course, he has not even spoken to her once.
When Kabir meets her for the first time, the power differential between them is uncomfortably obvious – a senior boy, scary, aggressive, masculine; a junior girl, scared, quiet, hesitant – and, without any context, kisses her on cheek in front of everyone. The film thinks it’s a romantic moment; it cuts to a song.
Kabir never asks Preeti, always orders. Orders her to sit on the front bench with a stocky classmate because “healthy chicks are like teddy bears: warm and cuddly.” Orders her to leave the class with him, in front of everyone, where he’s come to teach, more than once – the film thinks it’s romantic; it cuts to a song. She’s hardly gotten a dialogue by then. Here’s the list of things she does, in fact, before getting a chance to speak: roam around Delhi with Kabir, move into his hostel, make out, have sex, eat pizza.
She gets her first proper line around 50 minutes into the movie. “What do you like in me?” She asks Kabir. Finally, you think, we’d get an answer or something – anything – that would make sense. “I like the way you breathe,” he says, with the confidence of a man drunk on feminist literature. I wanted to walk out.
Let me break down its next 124 minutes for you: misogyny, entitlement, violence, alcohol, drugs, “Woh meri bandi hai”; more misogyny, more entitlement, more violence, more alcohol, more drugs, more “Woh meri bandi hai”; even more misogyny, even more entitlement, even more violence… hang on: I think I need a glass of water. As you can see, there’s some movie in this misogyny. If Jab Harry Met Sejal were a dude, it’d have approached Kabir Singh and asked, “Bro, aise kaise?”
Who is Kabir Singh? Why does he behave the way he does? What does he want? Why does he fall for Preeti – besides, well, his admiration for her respiratory faculty? No idea. (Notable: there’s not much change in his behaviour before and after the break-up.) Repeat the same questions for Preeti: no idea. What does love do, or mean, to these folks? Again, no idea.
Indian films display a warning on screen whenever a character smokes or drinks; Kabir Singh should, similarly, come with a trigger warning every time its hero goes batshit nuts, which is to say the entire movie. Art’s fundamental purpose is to not comfort us or to be ‘morally correct’. But it certainly must be about something, attempt a conversation with something bigger than the sum of its parts (or just the parts themselves).
Kabir Singh exists in a parallel world: one where people aren’t held accountable for their actions, where there’s no introspection, no contrition, no reckoning of self. This could have been so much more – its portrayal of misplaced, exaggerated machismo could have functioned as a mirror where we – the men – would have seen our fractured, vicious selves and taken a step back, to think, to realise. But no such luck here, for this is a movie that is proud of, and even in love with, its hero, escalating and endorsing his misogyny at every turn.
The only silver lining here is the performance of Soham Majumdar, playing Shiva, Kabir’s best friend, whom the film, obviously, consistently derides and emasculates. Advani is profoundly forgettable, although you’re not sure if it’s her limited acting skills or a paper-thin role. Kapoor, to his credit, is convincing as a man out of touch with himself, but because of his one-note character, the intrigue runs out pretty soon.
But it’s all the more chilling to know that stuff like this sells. Kabir Singh is a remake of Arjun Reddy, a 2017 Telugu movie; it won awards, garnered critical acclaim, got picked up by Amazon. A day before its release, the film had 55 paid premiere shows, in Hyderabad, 22 more than Baahubali 2: The Conclusion.
Like Baahubali, Kabir Singh – in vein of a certain kind of Indian ‘masala’ films – keeps increasing its tempo, advancing its world and worldview unchecked. But Baahubali had artistic merits. Kabir Singh, on the other hand, is a Twitter troll (with an egg-shaped DP) masquerading as a feature film; it is the Baahubali of toxic masculinity.
