Movie Review : Udta Punjab : One More Blow for Misogyny

                                                        

As I endured the torture that was the vast expanse of Udta Punjab, I was left bewildered by the fact that its director is Abhishek Chaubey. That the guy who directed the twin little gems of Ishqiya and Dedh Ishqiya both of which portrayed women as independent characters, with a capacity to think for themselves, should come up with the misogynist fare that is Udta Punjab, boggles the mind.

 

A movie with a surfeit of men and awash with patriarchy is hard enough to digest. To top it, it makes things more difficult for itself by debasing women, dehumanising them and leaving them voiceless.

The movie tries to weave together four different narratives in the backdrop of drug trafficking and addiction in Punjab. However, it fails to bring together the various threads into a coherent narrative. The choppy feel makes the movie seem a dissatisfying experience. Towards the end, the random co-incidences where all characters come together for a resolution, seems awfully contrived.

The two performances that stand out are those of the cop played by  Diljit Dosanjh and Prabhjyot Singh, who plays his younger brother. Prabhjyot, specially, puts in an absolutely stunning performance as a drug addict who gets into all sorts of trouble. He has few scenes but leaves a lasting impression.

Shahid Kapoor plays Tommy, a so called rock/pop/rap star. Surprisingly, all the terms are used interchangeably in the film. Tommy is on a downward spiral, and has one meltdown after another. As he struggles to perform, the character himself attributes his earlier success to drug fuelled chance. Shahid as Tommy is a pain to watch on screen. He is unable to pull off the troubled musician.

Similarly, playing a doctor running a de-addiction centre, Kareena Kapoor does a hatchet job at best. I was gripped with a sense of sense of deja vu to see her reprise the same role she's played multiple times. She leaves no impact whatsoever. Does her character have a name? I seem to have missed it.

The police- politician nexus and the way it is unraveled is so simplistic and comes across as more like watching a scene from Enid Blyton's the five find outers projected on screen. The juvenile attempts at crime busting apart, one small consolation was the romantic pairing of the much older Kareena with the young Daljit. Though I'm not sure of the age of either actor, my guess is there's at least half a decade separating the two, a reversal which is heartening indeed. Yes, we must grasp at straws and be grateful for them.

Then again, the setting up of a drug-induced loosening of tongue for a declaration of love made me very uncomfortable. But that's me.

Shockingly, for a movie with claims to realism, in her final scene, Kareena's character, indulges in actions that defy logic. She seems to forget her training and years of work at a de-addiction centre, and goes on to confront, single-handedly, an addict who is clearly violent and out of control.

Yet again there's a sequence where Alia's character ties a cloth to her stomach and stuffs a rag in her mouth to deal with her withdrawal symptoms, reinforcing the stereotype that overcoming addiction is just a matter of putting your mind to it. As anyone who has worked in the field will tell you this is simplistic and dangerous myth building.

The sequences portraying Alia's character who is forced into addiction as well as the opening sequences with Shahid's character Tommy, both portray the impact of hallucinogens as glamorous and aspirational.

The gore in the movie is enough to want you to throw up. Needless, gratuitous violence which serves no purpose in leading the movie forward or furthering insight into any of the characters.

Which brings me to the biggest problem I have with the movie. The way Alia Bhat's character is etched left me whimpering in my seat, and not in the manner the makers of the movie intended.

This is yet another in the long list of movies which use women's bodies as vehicles to deliver violence, women portrayed as a victims, unable to overcome their circumstances. The movie reinforces the hapless damsel in distress trope. To top it all, Alia's character remains unnamed right till the very end. Erasure of women's identities continues. One more blow for misogyny.

                      

Movie Review: Highway, cinema for our times

Having watched the much-maligned "Highway" which I liked a lot, and having gone through most reviews which ranged from tepid to hostile, I decided to write this piece. Hopefully the handful (or less) of you who will read this, will at least consider watching it instead of an outright dismissal. 

Finally, we have a Hindi movie in which the central character is that of a woman and the focus of the entire movie is her growth and evolution as a person. Hats off to Imtiaz Ali for pulling off a stunning piece and extracting out of of Alia Bhatt, a performance which is probably going to remain one of her finest.

I'm not very sure if Imtiaz Ali set out to make a feminist movie, but this coming-of-age drama, wrapped around a road trip is just that : a rare Hindi movie that displays in full measure a true growing-up of Hindi cinema. (Since I'm not familiar with multi hued regional language cinema of our nation, I refrain from using the term "Indian cinema" for obvious reasons.)

Empathy is a quality fast receding from our collective conscience, as a society and this is but a reflection of the values held by its members at large. This movie yet again proves my point, you don't have to be a woman to be a feminist; having heartfelt empathy for fellow humans is enough.

Veera (Alia's character) is really every middle/ upper class Indian girl. She comes from a rich family. She is kidnapped, and forced on a road trip. 

The point to be noted is that she herself is not rich, rather it's her family which is rich. She seems to have no control over what goes on around her, which is not atypical of such situations. 

Her kidnapper, played with great aplomb by Randeep Hooda takes her on a journey which parallels the one of self-discovery and assertion of her own identity. 

The circumscribed existence of Veera, constantly being kept in check by her family, is suffocating her, and she is reluctant to return to it even after having been set free. 

At one point her character says, she knows she neither wants to go back to the proscribed world of her parents, nor does she particularly want to "settle down" with her former kidnapper. 

Also, dealt with great sensitivity is the growing relationship between her and her former kidnapper, a kind of love story, given a very different treatment from the run-of-mill Bollywood fare.

 

The assertion of her character, that she wants to be her own person, rings true, and that, I think, is the biggest strength of the movie.The little touch at the very end where she's depicted holding a copy of "Women Who Run With The Wolves" has it's own tale to tell. Perhaps it was too easy a prop to fall back upon, but truth be told, it warmed the cockles of my heart to see it up there. 

For the serene, soulful music of the incomparable A. R. Rahman, for the glorious shots of the prettiest places, for still, silent characters with pared down dialogues and faces which speak loudly but in silence, go watch "HIGHWAY". It's a different kind of ride !