Jalsa

 

Three talented women - Vidya Balan, Shaifali Shah and Rohini Hattangadi with their riveting performance have done full justice to Jalsa. As if it was not enough that the lead roles in the movie are being essayed by women, the envelope has been pushed further by the director who included a specially abled child to act in the movie, something that is rarely seen in movies. Not only has the ten year old Surya Kasibatla proven that cerebral palsy is not a limitation when it comes to acing, he even steals the show in many of the scenes featuring him.

Male actors like Manav Kaul and Iqbal Khan, although in supporting roles, they get noticed. Manav Kaul in fact proves why he is an actor to reckon with, because although he has a reel time of maybe, a couple of minutes, he leaves a mark. And Iqbal Khan as the protagonist's boss does a good job too.

Directed by Suresh Triveni, the movie has one main plot into which is woven several mini dramas - dramas playing out in the lives of the various characters in the movie and every unfolding drama adds to the thrill. 

On one hand, Shaifali Shah as Rukhsana portrays brilliantly the travails of a house help who begins to feel for every member of the household she serves in, be it Maya Menon, a leading media journalist who is her paymaster, or be it Maya's mom played by Rohini Hattangadi or be it Ayush Menon, Maya's son suffering from cerebral palsy, with who she is shown to have a special bond. Shaifali being the actress that she is has been able to convey every nuance of her character with very little dialogue delivery. She has brought out the conflict inside of her - that of a mother who is constantly worrying about her own two children including her own son- whether to leave him behind at home or take him to her place of work - and her daughter who is on the wrong side of the teens, shown as studying for her exams. Shaifali has also brilliantly portrayed the raging conflict within her to seek revenge.

On the other hand, Vidya Balan proves yet again how good an actor she is na dhow bankable a project can be with she in the lead role. Essaying the role of a media journalist and one who takes her career seriously even as she has a son with cerebral palsy about whom she worries no end, the conflict between being a mother wanting to be with her son and of owning up to her misdeeds and being a good human, she has been able to convey these emotions quite well. Adding to this is the anger spats arising from the conflict within and which are misdirected towards her mother, her helplessness at the situation that begin to unfold, the raging thoughts that are consuming her - everything has been conveyed beautifully through her acting. As the perpetrator of the crime, the movie's main plot - that of a hit and run case - she has given a gripping performance. She successfully makes the viewer relate to the myriad emotions in her - right from the shock of the incident to her conflicts about owning up, to the maternal instincts that well up within for her specially abled son. She has brought out the character’s vulnerability so well that the viewer could almost sympathise with her cause even when she is shown losing her cool at the very person who she has wronged - Rukhsana.

Each character has acted so well that it wouldn’t be wrong to state that the viewer is left feeling bad for both - the victim and the perpetrator. The plot revolving around the accident arising from a teenager abandoning safety rules and venturing into the night by herself and in so doing, taking advantage of her mother's trust in her and falling victim to circumstances that develop thereafter is also portrayed with much sensitivity as the teenager is somehow shown as falling prey to the phase of growing up. Kashish Rizwan who plays the role of Aaliya, the victim of a car-hit and daughter of Rukhsana, is for the most part lying on a bed in the hospital with a bloated and injured face, she too has done justice to her role as an 18 year old who falls prey to the hormonal rushes at play at that age to sneak out of the house at night ending up as the victim in a hit and run case. The parents, Rukhsana and her husband Salim played by Sharad Yadav, are left to answer uncomfortable questions even as they worry about their daughter's health.  

Rohini Hattangadi as the understanding yet strong mother plays her part like only she could.

The innocence and friendship among young children is showcased beautifully by Shafin Patel who plays Rukhsana's son and Maya's son Ayush.

The drama in the life of More, the cop, and his colleague  unfolds when while viewing the CCTV footage of the hit and run case, they view some damning footage of themselves, which could mean suspension for them. With his daughter's wedding around the corner, More can ill afford any suspension at this juncture given that he is also set to retire in a month. Srikant Yadav as More is extremely believable in the movie.

And then there is the trainee journalist Rohini played beautifully by Vidharti Bandi. Although wanting desperately to make it big and prove that she had it in her to do investigative journalism, the drama in Rohini’s life unfolds as she falls prey to the pressing need to get a 1 BHK apartment as her mom planned to vist her in a month for which she is falling short of 2 lakhs that was the deposit required for renting out a 1 BHK apartment.

With all the plots and dramas woven in, and some brilliant performances, the movie is a good watch. That it is on the OTT platform makes it that much more easier to watch the movie - at a click of a button, and at the time most convenient!  

Streaming on Amazon Prime. 

Hitchki

Hitchki is another one of those refreshingly different movies targeted at the multiplex thronging multitudes. A progressive movie, it highlights several issues at different levels even as the movie too tries to break new grounds by projecting as its lead cast an actress who had quit the acting scene to get married and become a mother. Rani Mukherjee as a victim of the Tourette’s syndrome is ably supported by Sachin as her father, and Neeraj Kabi as her co-teacher in a school.

The movie begins with the scene where Rani Mukherjee, playing the role of Naina Mathur, is facing an interview board for the post of a teacher. Even as the interview board acknowledges Naina’s educational qualifications and other certifications, Naina begins to produce strange noises from her throat which evinces some kind of problem that Naina had. Naina is shown to be explaining that she has Tourette’s syndrome and that her condition and these involuntary noises emitted by her including the act of rubbing her throat were as a result of Tourette’s, it becomes abundantly clear that she was going to be rejected by the board. As one of the members advices her about not applying for teacher’s position as her condition would probably render the task of teaching difficult for her, she gives a befitting reply when she asks them if they had ever heard of Tourette’s syndrome and as was to be expected, none of the board members had. So, as she left the room, she told them that if she could during the course of an interview teach something to the board members, she could well imagine what she could do as a teacher. Despite, the don’t-give-up attitude that she abundantly displays, at one level the movie shows Naina struggling to get a teachers job due to her health condition.

At another level, the movie highlights the plight of parents of such children. The real-life husband and wife pair of Supriya Palgaonkar and Sachin play the role of Naina Mathur’s parents in the movie. So while the mother is shown to be sympathetic towards her daughter, empathizing with her condition, understanding the pain her daughter goes through at being rejected by peers, and yet being able to do little, the father is shown as someone who has problems accepting a daughter who is deviant from the normal. He is shown as someone who would get embarrassed at her condition. In fact, in one of the scenes where the young Naina Mathur is out dining with her parents at a restaurant, and Naina breaks into these involuntary noise-making and head shaking, her father is shown to get embarrassed and quickly places the order for food on behalf of Naina. Naturally, the bond between the father and daughter is strained. The father in fact, goes on to abandon his family, leaving them in a lurch. Hussain Dalal playing the role of an understanding and empathizing brother is almost portrayed as an epitome of acceptance, love and care – a character almost utopian yet believable. The brother plays the role of the mediator between the father and daughter every time the father is shown visiting them. Her insistence to become a teacher is explained well in one of the scenes. It is during one of her father’s visits to the family and he is shown telling her that he has got her a job  in a bank, and she refuses it saying that she is keen to become a teacher.  When her father ridicules her about this insistence of hers, we are shown a scene in flashback, when Naina is very small, and in her school’s auditorium. The principal in on the stage addressing a large crowd of assembled children, teachers and parents. He is shown asking the crowd about the noise that was being made when the programme was on – and he encourages the child who ever was making the noise to won up and come up on stage. Naina, prodded also by her mother, owns up and walks to the stage. The principal, very sensitively, and probably aware of her condition, makes her speak to the crowd about Tourette’s syndrome. By the end of this episode, the children of the school, the teachers and parents had all been sensitized to her condition and they had all become more accepting of her. Naina naturally went on to idolize her principal and also dreamt of being a teacher, just as good and sensitive as her principal.

The, at a different level, also deals with the divide in the society between the haves and the have-nots. Naina finally succeeds to get a job at a school – in fact her own school. When Naina, after five years of struggle to land herself a job of a teacher, finally gets a call from her own school, she is shown to be ecstatic, and why not. However, she gets far more than what she had probably bargained for. The school was offering her a class teacher’s job for Class XI F, a section that was not there when she was a student of the school. On probing she gets to understand that this class belonged to a motley group of children from the underprivileged society as part of the Rights to Education policy of the government. The children had become rebellious due to the divide in the school that they could perceive between them and the rest of the school. They had realised that they would be treated differently – that the rest of the school would never accept them as mainstream students. To the movie’s credit, within the less-than-2-hour-long length of the movie, it does do a credible job of portraying the divide to a great extent.

Neeraj Kabi, true to his repute of being a class actor, an actor of a different league, pulls off the role of a teacher who is good and yet not at all sympathetic to the cause of the children of XI F, with aplomb. He is shown forever belittling the efforts of Naina Mathur and trying to influence the principal of the no-worthwhileness of having the class of IX F.

Naina starts by constantly instilling in her children of class IX F a sense of purpose and a sense of achievement. In fact, the first few scenes of Naina with the students of class IX reminds one of the famous scenes of “Sound of Music” where the seven children of Captain von Trapp played by Christopher Plummer play out every trick in the book in order to shoo away Maria, their newly appointed home tutor, played ably by Julie Andrews. Neeraj Kabi never ceases to let go of an opportunity to highlight to Naina that she has on hand an impossible task and that she would be better off without this new responsibility bestowed on her.
 

Amidst all the trials and travails, including where acceptance is made even more difficult due to her Tourette’s syndrome, Naina, not one to give up, is finally able to win the trust of these children and to instill in them a sense of purpose and self-confidence. She is shown as a teacher who thinks out of the box and who uses teaching methodologies that are different and suited for the children whose care she has been entrusted with. There are scenes in the movie which look very outlandish as when the children do stuff that make you gape with wonderment whether any school, worth its salt would tolerate acts of such impunity by looking the other way. And yet, you would want to dismiss them as the Director’s prerogative and the writer’s creative license.
 

The movie is an ode to all those teachers including Anand Kumar of Super Thirty who do not give up on their students despite odds stacked against them and in the process making their own journey as well as that of their students a memorable one. From backbenchers and embarrassments to schools, these children are made the pride of the school by the efforts and the never-give-up attitudes of the teachers.
 

A dialogue of the movie where Rani Mukherjee says that there are no bad students, only bad teachers   succinctly describes the main thread of the movie.

The Man Who Knew Infinity

Walking out of the movie hall, one can't but wonder how, for a movie based on the life story of a mathematician, was remarkably engrossing, almost repudiating all those who looked at Math as a dry subject. While the movie presented the story of a very passionate mathematician who wanted to have his work, which he believed had been revealed to him by God, revealed to the world, it could hold the interests of an ordinary movie-goer who was not a  Mathematician. Fast-paced and touching upon nuances that reflected the socio-economic relevance of the times without once moving away from the main plot, the movie, based on what some may surmise as a dry subject of Math, was surprisingly entertaining.

The movie also brings out in good measure the racism that was prevalent in Great Britain, including Cambridge, successfully portraying how Ramanujam fought the odds he faced, including the differences in food, dress and the likes - of a person from such a diametrically opposite society as Ramanujum's. The movie even touches upon how the Brahmin class, during those days, was forbidden to cross the seas and therefore, to travel abroad. In fact, after the movie ends, one couldn't help think how there must have been at least someone in Ramanujam's village, who when Ramanujam got back and fell mortally ill, must have spoken about the curse of having crossed the seas.

While the plot largely underlines how Ramanujam, a great mathematician of his times, who was almost being seen in the same league as venerated mathematicians like Eucleid,  broke his own cultural binds including the one described above, which forebode him to cross the seas as superstitious beliefs were strong that if anyone were to do such a thing, it would bring in ill-luck.




Mathew Brown, the English director surprises by showcasing his own empathy of the times and lives of both, Tamil Brahmins as well as Britishers, during the early 19th century, set as the script was against the World War I times. The story of the great mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujam is set during this phase of history. From the costume designers and set designers, to the director and the cast, everyone seems to have worked hard to bring out the finer nuances of the times. Apart from highlighting the fact that Ramanujam did not have a strictly formal education as the West saw it (Ramanujam must have been exposed to Vedic Maths belonging as he did to a Tamil Brahmin caste, the then-privileged caste in India), and yet went on to create theorems, which to Ramanjum's credit and feat, are still being studied and deciphered in the 21st century. While watching the movie, one couldn't but help think that the director had done good justice to the script, and presented the times in a manner that  may be close to how the 'then' may have been. The brief peeps into a typical Tamil Brahmin household of those days is brought  forth by the wonderful acting by Dev Patel as Ramanujam, Arundati Nag as his mother, and Devika Bhise, as his wife. In fact, Devika Bhise playing the role of Ramanujan;s wife was a surprise package. Although her role didn't seem to demand much of her, she does leave a lasting impression. As does her reel mother-in-law -  the versatile Arundathi Nag, who as usual gives a sterling performance. Toby Jones who plays Littlewood is endearing to say the least. While on the actors, it must be acknowledged that it is courtesy some fine acting by Dev Patel, the movie is able to showcase so brilliantly the lustrous Mathematician's life including his predicament at having come from the East, struggling against odds including food, clothes, culture shock and lack of family support and yet being able to focus on the work at hand due to his single-minded pursuit of getting his work published. Dev Patel, as the Tamil Brahmin Srinivasan Ramanujan Iyengar, has done a good job. Alhough, at times, it did seem like he was getting intimidated at places by the likes of Jeremy Iron who played his mentor J H Hardy and rather brilliantly in the movie.

But one would have to acknowledge that despite the movie being about Ramanujam, and despite Dév Patel doing good justice to the role, the best actor in the movie was Jeremy Irons as Prof J H  Hardy, ably supported by Toby Jones. Jeremy Jones's acting prowess is able to bring out the complex nature of human beings, Playing the role of Professor Hardy, he is able to potray a man who had this veneer of toughness even as he sponsored Ramanujam's travel and stay in Cambridge, perhaps for his won selfish Mathematical reasons, but is also able to brilliantly show how hard nuts have a much a softer inside as Prof Hardy is shown fighting against racial prejudices to help Ramanujam get due recognition and honours for his Mathematical prowess. Not to forget mentioning how he is shown helping Ramanujam get medical aid even after knowing that he was suffering from TB, a much dreaded disease then.

While the movie is certainly about a mathematician, it does not have a boredom-moment. From the youthful days of a much-devout Ramanujam when he spent hours scribbling theorems on the floor of little-visited corners of temples and ruins, to the final journey of a man longing to be back with his wife, the script is taut and to use an oxymoron, resplendent with subplots, including the universal wife-mother-in-law issues, the yearning and longing of a dutiful wife, the World War I making even professors to force-volunteer as soldiers having to fight in the war front and so on, the movie never makes one feel bored.

I enjoyed  the movie thoroughly!

 

Aligarh

Thanks to the multiplexes that have sprung up like mushrooms across the length and breadth of India, the dividing line between what was once referred to as 'art movies' and the so-called 'commercial movies' has thinned. And with this thinning of the line, has been the coming of age of the new wave cinema in India, prompting experimental and realistic film makers to showcase movies like never before. Moviegoers couldn't have asked for more as they get to experience movies that leave them to ponder over socially-relevant issues long after they have left the cinemas.

Hansal Mehta's Aligarh is the latest in a string of such movies. Aided by a taut script, power-packed performances and good direction, this movie should hopefully awaken the better sense in people yet opposed to repealing Article 377. Manoj Bajpai playing the protagonist in the movie, couldn't have done better justice in bringing out the pain of a professor, ostracised by an institution to which he has given most of his life. Beautifully portraying the anguish of a mentally-shattered professor whose sexual preference is exposed by a sinister, undercover sting operation that was the result of professional rivalry and workplace politics, I am not sure there could have been anyone who could have played this role better. Bajpai brings to fore the wretchedness that the professor may have felt living his life as it were in a society where gays are not accepted. RajKumar Rao, who plays the character of a Malayali journalist trying to help present the professor in a good light and get him justice, once again delivers a good performance. Ably bringing out the pain that a PG faces in Delhi, to allowing the audience a peek into relationships at work, he lives up to the reputation that he has been building for himself - that of a good actor.

From highlighting the travails of a distraught professor whose life in a small town turns for the worst as his private life is exposed even as an insensitive society laps up stories about him that his own colleagues helped plant, to gently questioning the commonly-known narrative that the professor died a natural death, the movie goes all out to defend the cause of the LGBT  community. Narrow selfish interests of colleagues is subtly showcased as one of the characters is shown challenging  Professor Saras that he would not be allowed to continue in the post that he held  at the University - that of the head of the department of linguistics - for long. And a week later, two intruders enter the professor's house, get inside his bedroom, and force him to be filmed in poses that the intruders deemed fit so as to expose a gay professor.

Professor Saras's loneliness, his incomprehension of what had happened, what was happening and his continued love for his university is brilliantly captured in the portrayal of the character in the movie. His growth from a sensitive person who perked up at the mention of gay or same-sex to one who couldn't be bothered at what the world thought of him as he gets  to mingle with more of his own. Manoj's sensitive presentation of this I-don't-care-anymore attitude of the professor when he is shown sleeping at the court room during his case hearings is brilliant to say the least. Ably supported by a good cast, from that cast that plays his colleague Shreedharan to the lady who plays the lawyer, the short two-hour long movie makes for a good attempt in sensitizing the public to the woes of people with a different sexual preference.

The movie is thought provoking and totally relevant to the times. Coming as it were during a time when Article 377 is being debated more than ever before, the movie's timing couldn't have been better. In fact, the movie has scored on multiple levels. Hansal Mehta's direction, helped along by a taut script, the choice of locales, everything seems to add punch to an already powerful narrative.

Hopefully this movie will be able to tell the world to let everyone be. A highly recommended movie.