Hindi Medium Review

Hindi Medium

Director- Saket Choudhary

Starring- Irrfan Khan, Saba Qamar and Deepak Dobrial

Rating- 2

Hi I am Pia Batra, that little girl you saw in the trailer of Hindi Medium, whose school admission story forms the plot of the film. My mother Mita Batra is an always blaming, spelling shaming, and drug scaring mom. She is a bit…err…weird. Like she paints me, first with Odomos and then smears me with sunscreen. And mind you it’s winters. Sunblock in winters is like logic in Hindifilms, pointless. But all of it is imperative. These are the quirks that delude filmmakers into creating a character. My father has special traits too. He has a sari-lehnga shop that he calls a fashion studio; you know the typical middle class syndrome that we all have. And that’s the reason my mom goes from Mita/Mithu to Honey, an endearing term meant exclusively for the elite.

So before I get admitted into a school, I get admitted to different strata of the society; from a humble middle class house in Chandani Chowk to a villa in Vasant Vihar and then to a slum in Bharat Nagar. I felt like Dev Patel, Slumdog millionaire in reverse!

My parents even get in touch with an expensive consultant, who conducts classes in various subjects, including English. She is pretty and pretty anglicized. And then I heard her say ‘revert back’ that made the grammar Nazi in me commit suicide.

Our shift to the slums is just a way to get admission in our choice of school through Gareebi quota, but hey that can wait! When you are in the slums, what do you do? Tada!!! Manipulate!!Gareebi Dikhao, audience rulao!!

I sit in corner of my dilapidated house. My mother fights some serious fights over ration andpaani. There are rats and mosquitoes and dengue and chicken guinea and all kinds of poor things that are thrown in, in perfect measure till you reach out for a box of tissues. Aur toh aur, my father even starts working in a factory. I had reached a funny- kuchBhiDotCom turn of my life. So did the audiences. At this point I can’t decide if my parents are sweet or stupid. All this drama so that I can mouth a few lines in English? I wanted to devour the Oxford Dictionary or get my parents introduced to Kangana Ranaut and Kapil Sharma.

Slums are fun because we have Shyam uncle better known as Pappi ji from Tanu Weds Manu. He plays his character with such earnestness that it will win your heart. I secretly wished if he was my father, instead of Irrfan-now-with-a-double-R-Khan. He seemed more sorted and integral and tots won my heart when he hugged his son telling him he was the luckiest person ever. Sniff sniff. Actually he reminds me of my father from a decade ago. Deepak Dobrial is the new humble, poor Irrfan Khan, after all papa can’t play Billo Barber kind of roles any longer. He has done Hollywood films bhai…and even dated Deepika Padukone in a film.

But my father earns applause for putting some sense, some credibility in the climatic speech onHindi/English medium.

So between a poorly directed Hindi Medium and Arjun Kapoor’s broken English in Half Girlfriend, you really don’t have much of a choice. I feel you buddy.

Jazbaa Review

Jazbaa

Director- Sanjay Gupta

Actors- Irfan Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Shabana Azmi

Rating- 2 stars.

In the end a friend asks Irfan Khan (Yohaan) why he lets Aishwarya Rai (Anuradha) go when he loves her. He replies, “Pyar hain tabhi jaane diya, zidd hoti toh baahon mein hoti.” And ironically the movie talks about women empowerment. Ha, what a joke.

Wait, let me take that crown of misogyny from Kapil Sharma’s head and adorn it on your head Mr. Irfan Khan or the writer Kamlesh Pandey. Because let’s face it, all that matters is that you love Anuradha, that you let her go, that you would FORCE her in your arms, if YOU were obsessed with her. And that MAKES you the HERO of the film. Wow. That kind of regression was the only thing missing in Jazbaa, hurrah; it was fulfilled in the last scene.

It’s interesting how filmmakers named Sanjay lend such interesting colors to their films. After Bhansali gave us our first mainstream Blue film in Sawariya, it’s Mr. Gupta who goes green in Jazbaa. The film is tinted so horribly green that I half expected a Madhuri Dixit to fall on the floor with a loud thump and go- “Hum pe yeh kisne hara rang dala….dMaar Daala…” (that would have been a more apt title of the film!)

Anuradha Verma is the best lawyer in all of Milky Way! And that’s not even an exaggeration dude. She gets a murderer, a rapist out on bail because she convinces the judge that there was another person present at the crime. No, the judge is not a school going kid.

She is forcefully hired by some voice on the phone who wants her to fight and win a case of a rapist or else he would kill her daughter. The rapist’s victim is Garima’s (Shabana Azmi’s) daughter. Wow, mamma against mamma, perfect recipe for full melodrama. And we are not let down. Painfully long lectures roll out at every given opportunity; lectures on Maa ki Mamta, Aaj Ki Naari, Dard ki Seema and my favorite Main Mazboor Thi.

Gosh if I won a dirham for every cheesy dialogue, I would be a millionaire by the end of the film.

And then there is Irfan Khan and his set of dialogues. There is NEVER a straight reaction from him. Sample this-

Tum yaha rehte kaise ho?
Main yaha nahi rehta, yaha intezaar rehta hain!

Main nahi so sakti, mujhe kaam karna hain?
Neend ek Mashooka hain…something something…aur raat humsafar hain…blah blah blah!

On sharafat!
Jinke phone mein password nahi hota woh shareef hote hain! BURP!

But it’s not actors’ fault; it’s the writers’, who just wanted to flaunt their vocabularies, their imageries, their analogies. So what if it has got nothing to do with the film and its story, at least it’s poetic, oops, I mean painfully poetic.

Hence the emotions never reach us. I never felt Anuradha’s pain when her daughter was kidnapped. I never felt Garima’s pain when she was fighting to get her dead daughter justice. There was no pain, only words and overacting; mujhe meri beti ki cheekhe sunai de rahi hain…oh really, so sad…where is my popcorn!

Irfan-easy-breezy-I-am-so-real-Khan plays the mumbling version of Rowdy Rathore’s Don’tAngryMe Akshay Kumar. You see Irfan Khan doesn’t scream like Akshay. He is a real actor bhai, he only mumbles. His pointless dialoguebaazi evoked irritation in me that’s reserved strictly for karele ki sabzi.

Aishwarya-15-expressions-for-one-emotion-Rai exhausts every muscle in her body to ACT, like making up for no work in last five years, like let me do all the acting in this film, not sure when the next project comes along. She plays a lawyer. Give us some tension filled court scenes, some reason, some logic, some investigation, alas we have gyan.

The film gives such gyan on life, love and universe that it seems less like a whodunit murder mystery and more like a Satsang. There is a spiritual spin to everything. A character in the movie says, I like holding my coffee mug close, because I want to hold my life close and feel it with my naked fingers. I laughed out so loud that my cheeks still hurt.

Yep, you can hold the coffee mug close, hold your life close too. I am not sure if you should come anywhere close to Jazbaa.

WHAT THE RATINGS MEAN

5 stars: Loved it. (This could make to top ten movies you must watch before you die!)

4 stars: Liked it. Recommend it. (This will help you sound intellectual and give you stuff to add at water cooler conversations.)

3 stars: Didn’t hurt. Watch it once.

2 stars: It put me to sleep. Watch it if you are an insomniac or a newly wedded couple. Winks!
1 star: Do I even need to explain this?

Talvar Movie Review

Talvar

Director- Meghna Gulzar

Starring- Neeraj Kabi, Konkana Sensharma, Irfan Khan and Tabu

Rating- 4

Ashwin (Irfan Khan) right in the beginning of the movie jokingly doubts the reputation of CDI (Cinematic CBI) as it organizes an event on 1^stof April. And towards the end of the movie, a court magistrate hurriedly announces her take on the Double Murder case and in the same breath asks if it is time for lunch. Between these two scenes the film beautifully captures the apathy of our system, our incompetent policemen and the tragic story of a family that depressed me to tears.

It’s almost funny how the two releases this weekend left me feeling miserable; Singh is Bl(ah)ing for its sheer absurdity and Talvar for showing how our system succumbs to ennui. Though incomparable, unlike Singh is Bling, Talvar is so well titled that I envy the brains behind it. For those living under the rock, Talvar is cleverly titled after the high profile case of Talwars where a teenage daughter and a servant were brutally killed in Delhi in 2008. There is a beautiful scene in the film where a senior CDI official observes how everyone talks about insaaf ki devi’s blindfolded eyes, the balance in one of her hands, but no one talks about the sword (Talvar) it holds, that has gathered rust over the years, summing the crux of the movie in just a line. It is this razor-sharp writing sharper than those slits on Shruti’s neck that makes this movie such a painfully pleasant experience. Vishal Bhardwaj, I am a fan.

And then we have such commendable actors taking this brilliant script to another level. The original case was dealt once by police and twice by CBI, so the movie shows all three versions. Konkana and Neeraj (as Shruti’s parents) play all these versions so convincingly that you almost believe the possibility of all three them. Even the supporting cast; Sohum Shah (as the agent’s assistant) and Gajraj Rao (as the pan chewing cop) pack such believable performances that they lend a documentary feel to the movie. A special mention for Sumit Gulati who plays the culprit-compounder Kanhaiya. He is so sleazy, so manipulative, so scheming that I would have mistaken him for the real guy in the original murder case, had I not seen his brilliant work in an otherwise forgettable Phantom.

And then there is Irfan Khan. Dapper and easy, donning photo chromatic glasses, playing video games on his phone and getting the nuances of an agent with such measured distance and empathy that only actors of his caliber can achieve. The scene where he breaks down had me break down as well.

The background score by Ketan Sodha is bang on. The sound of a noisy A/C is so effectively used that it lends such credibility to the movie that it requires.

But there are a few problems too.

I particularly didn’t like the humor of the film. It worked only sometimes. At other occasions it marred the tone of the film.  A couple fighting in the court, a sensational reporter recreating the murder on TV or the unnecessary use of heavy duty Hindi in the climax scene, just to generate a few laughs, didn’t work for me. It felt like writers lost focus, in an attempt to be populist, funny and entertaining. Just like some of my reviews. Yes, I am aware of that!

The round table scene in the end particularly left me underwhelmed. The two CDI parties meet to discuss their versions. Paul (Atul Kumar) pulls a Hindi version of Suhel Seth on us, speaks in hardcore Hindi that no one understands; all words, little meaning. The other party jokes about his words and I lose patience. I almost screamed at the screen: TALK ABOUT THE GLARING EVIDENCE. TALK ABOUT THE BLOOD STAINS. THE WEAPON USED. THE NARCOTIC TESTS. THE POLYGRAPH TESTS. It exasperated me. I wondered why they didn’t talk about the real issue, the real debate that would help them nail the murderer. Instead they happily jested about it. Maybe that’s how invaluable human life has become, maybe we don’t care, maybe that’s what happens behind closed doors, where important decisions are seemingly taken, where logic is mercilessly punctured by baseless mindless  theories and the louder, the obnoxious voice wins. It always happens, at our homes, in our offices and even in such brutal cases.

There is another problem. The case changes against the parents with the new CDI chief’s appointment who runs another investigation on the case. We are not told why he tries to save the Nepali compounder until towards the end, his friendship with a top cop is mentioned, who once invited him to share his vilayati daru.  Two innocent lives for a friendship over a liquor bottle seemed rather too unconvincing. Just like the scenes between Tabu and Irfan Khan as a couple on the brink of a divorce, unnecessarily discussing Ijazat and singing Mera Kuch Samaan…a director-daughter’s tribute to the poet papa I guess?!?

And one last observation, my bit of investigation; Shruti is shown reading Chetan Bhagat’s Three Mistakes of My Life in March 2008. However the book was released only in May 2008. Ok you can judge me later that I read such trashy books. Go book your tickets of Talvar NOW.

It’s one of those rare gems; gritty and gruesome that turned me into Freud. I started psychoanalyzing the human race, how we consume news, how we are so hungry for sensationalism, how we are titillated at a mention of an affair/swingers/honor killing, how misogyny, patriarchy run in our veins.

A film that can evoke such a myriad of emotions; anger, disgust, even helplessness SHOULD NOT BE MISSED!

WHAT THE RATINGS MEAN

5 stars: Loved it. (This could make to top ten movies you must watch before you die!)

4 stars: Liked it. Recommend it. (This will help you sound intellectual and give you stuff to add at water cooler conversations.)

3 stars: Didn’t hurt. Watch it once.

2 stars: It put me to sleep. Watch it if you are an insomniac or a newly wedded couple. Winks!
1 star: Do I even need to explain this?