Lokmanya Ek Yugpurush: An Ode to Nationalism

Praveen Lulekar

The primary thrust of a biopic is always on hailing its hero. Some do it subtly, some with grandeur. What they also do along the way is raising a picture of the ideology the person stood for. How holistic this picture becomes depends on how much the makers delve into the internal conflicts of the ideology. It is here that films like Gandhi, Sardar and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar sail ahead of others.

Lokmanya Ek Yugpurush is an unapologetic ode to nationalism. The film probably realises the flaws of the stream of thought and even touches on it. But through minute cinematic elements, it becomes a political agenda of its own.

The film is the story of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak (Subodh Bhave), a prominent freedom fighter and an early propagator of nationalism in India. It covers Tilak’s life from 1879 to 1914. Many historical events take place during the period: his association and fall with Gopal Ganesh Agarkar (Sameer Vidwans); the foundation of and writings in newspapers Kesari and Maratha; his alleged tie-ups with the armed revolutionaries and his periods of imprisonment including that in Mandalay.

The first half is consumed by the Tilak-Agarkar episode. This is a duel of the conservative and progressive thought, Tilka supporting the former one. There is a lot of pace to the proceedings as the duo establishes the New English School and the newspapers and takes on the British government with vigour. For the film, Tilak emerges the hero and Agarkar remains a weak, sidelined character. It presents both the views elaborately, but upholds Tilak’s views through its treatment.

We see Tilak walking on the upper stair while they take a walk; Tilak standing while Agarkar sits on a hill and Tilak exercising while Agarkar coughs in the jail. A clear supremacy of Tilak is established through the frame design. In the Age of Consent Bill episode, the film commits an innocent mistake of portraying Tilak as a cunning strategist. For a common viewer, this throws the hero in a negative light. Whether the film wants to purposely portray the grey shades is unclear. Tilak disrupts Agarkar’s general meeting and walks off with thumping background music.

The symbolisms get darker as the film progresses. In the 1896 Pune Plague episode, the British are shown torturing households. In a sequence where a police officer is raping a woman, a wooden devhara - the shelf where idols of god are kept - falls down. This is a sad association of a state of woman’s body with religious purity. Similarly, before a riot sequence, a dead pig is thrown in a Muslim area. The film neatly shows how Muslims initiate the riots and attack a procession carrying idols of Lord Ganesh. A strong reinforcement of the prejudiced view of ‘who starts it’!

The treatment of the film is engaging. There is ample use of low-angle frames to establish the strength of Tilak’s character. The overall camera work is pretty fancy with a lot of aesthetic appeal. The background music is also aplenty but creates a lot of effect. This technical finesse is supported by a swift screenplay.

Bhave pours his everything in the role. This is probably the best performance of his career. He does well to raise a consistent character that is outspoken and bold. Unfortunately, the writing has not backed it with a concrete ideological structure. Vidwans is exceptional as Agarkar. It would be exciting to see more of him as an actor.

Lokmanya Ek Yugpurush becomes a complete political agenda by the end of its runtime. The film does not utter the word ‘Congress’ though the Tilak was the president of the party and it is an important part of his political career. The film will definitely be remembered for its dialogues and staunch stands, but an in-depth look at Indian Nationalism in films, is still awaited.

m4m: One Time Watch

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Mitwa: Symbols of Love

Praveen Lulekar

 This space is increasingly becoming a platform for my literary experiments. And although my professional responsibilities discourage me from doing that, I still prefer to push envelopes. I am glad mformovie doesn’t hold a rigid institutional view and respects individual opinions, as long as they match the website’s overall sensibilities.

The reason I want to break patterns is that most films I watch no longer inspire me. There used to be a point in every film where I could say, ‘Yes, this is the perspective (negative or positive) I can carry forward.’ Good films or terribly bad ones, have several such points. Unfortunately, the films we are making these days do not give me even a single moment that triggers analysis. They rather make me numb.

Let’s get done with the story part first – Shivam Sarang (Swwapnil Joshi) is a flamboyant playboy. He runs a successful chain of resorts in Goa along with Avni (Prarthana Behre), who is one-sidedly in love with Shivam. Enter Nandini (Sonalee) and Shivam falls in love. He first proposes Nandini to be in a platonic relationship with him but then wants to marry her. Nandini, with affection for Shivam and a contradicting past, adds complications.

I can go on about how Mitwa apes Bollywood or how its dialogues are burdened with romantic realisations (Guy: Prem kaay aahe? Gal: Je tujha majhyawar naahi). To prove my non-existing worth with technical points, I can also elaborate how incorrectly the camera chooses its focus in many scenes. There is the dramatic background score, unreal twists and a lead pair that refuses to spark any chemistry. And yes, the beautiful Behre who brings in moments of sense with her ease.

The more important point I want to talk about is, as audience and as people, what our ideas of love and romance are. After all, it is the incomplete understanding of this immature notion in us that inspires such films.  

First and foremost - our love is loaded with self-pity. We fall in love and often are unable to express it. Because love is something beyond words. Unfortunately, the other person is unable to realise this divine abstract. The result – devaa tujhya gaabharyala umbraach naahi... We have other reasons to be diljale (especially boys) – she likes another guy, she can’t break an earlier commitment, she is just a heart-breaker...

The divinity takes another form when we understand love is about sacrifice. So a girl marries a guy even though he is fatally ill. Or in Mitwa’s case, Avni is a model of how innocent and selfless love can be. She easily gives up Shivam for Nandini. Behre makes it work with her performance, but with Joshi and Sonalee, you start feeling is it all worth it?

Nandini’s past – Ashwin, is another such case. He is brain dead but is alive just to live up to his commitment that he will never leave Nandini. It doesn’t end there – he cries when Shivam goes to meet him and leaves his praan when he discovers Nandini is now in secure hands. I remind you 

again, he is brain dead!

I am a poetic person and would have loved this if this was a legend told as poetically. All this happens in a supposedly modern world. Our modern hero checks out women before he hires them (for professional purposes) and has plans of having undefined relationships with them. And then, there are songs where winds blow and pallus flow. Yes, Bollywood romance – our ultimate definition of love.

Please forgive my fatigue. But I sincerely believe good movies are reflection of our lives and even our dreams. Beaches, slow motions and teddy bears are only the symbols of romanticism. Let’s move inward now. Where real feelings reside. The audience is ready, test them.    

m4m says: Watch at your own risk 

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Poshter Boyz: Nothing beyond the Poster

Praveen Lulekar

A good parameter of judging a movie is how long it takes to come to the point. Poshter Boyz hosts the outdated concept of titles on the backdrop of a sky. It then begins with a song – the village jatra, romance…all mixed in it. Then we see three men facing consequences of something unknown – broken engagements, upset wives and angry girlfriend ka baap. There’s also a wall putty advertisement to test your patience.

 After a tiring (and predictable) half an hour, we are ‘revealed’ that the men have appeared on a vasectomy awareness poster!

This is sad. One Marathi actor, whom we thought was a thinking being and would strike the golden balance between commercialism and creativity, has missed the aim at least by a mile. He chooses a far-fetched script, a clumsy director and has probably forgotten to hire an editor. Poshter Boyz might still be successful at the box office, but it loses its inclusive appeal right from the beginning.

Aaba Deshmukh (Dilip Prabhavalkar), Sadanand Kulkarni (Hrishikesh Joshi) and Arjun Jagtap (Aniket Vishwasrao) are the three poster boys. Trapped in the mentioned situation, they try to trace the culprit. From government servants to local photographers, everyone seems to be scared of Arjun bhai and his chelaas. Each of them is simultaneously fighting a personal duel with someone in the family, which are supposed to serve as side tracks. Finally, they decide to escalate the issue and go on a nude hunger strike.

‘Punches’ is one factor that can make a comedy really work. But even the Fu Bai Fus and Comedy Expresses do that. To stand as a film, it takes everything from situations to characters to dialogues. Poshter Boyz fails on the very first criteria – pace. The slow proceedings, predictable turning points and shabby editing let the film down. The director is inspired from a real life situation, but reality seems to be limited to the photos being printed without permission. What happens after that is totally imaginary, and by that I mean complete absence of realism...or sanity.

The onus of raising the characters totally falls on the actors. Prabhavalkar’s limited screen space keeps him handicapped and Vishwasrao is unnecessarily (and irritatingly) over the top. It is Joshi who generates the sparse laughs. He is in complete control of his act and gets all the nuances right – phenomenal job again!

The inference is clear – the director (Samir Patil) is not in control. The reflection can be clearly seen in the work of the supporting actors. Piyush Ranade (as Deshmukh’s son) makes you wonder if all that’s going on screen is professional. Pooja Sawant, Neha Joshi and Suhas Paranjpe are all misdirected. Like Prabhavalkar and Joshi, it is the individual talent of Uday Sabnis and Uma Sardeshmukh that makes them likeable.

Poshter Boyz taps all that is superficial. It has sexual innuendos, hyper-sexual women and out of tune moral lessons. To complete the picture, we have high profile guest appearances. And that is the only thing producer Shreyas Talpade brings to the film.     

m4m says: Watch at your own risk 

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Court: The Farce of a Democracy

Praveen Lulekar

I begin to write this with a complex. So much has been written about this film and in such great words, that I wonder what new I can offer! I’m sure by the time this review reaches you, you would have booked your tickets and getting ready to watch Court. Lines like ‘a fine critique of the judiciary’, ‘a staggering account of the caste system in India’ or ‘exposing the real face of democracy in India’ would have given you a (false) sense of a rebellion. I do not claim to be superior, not even different, but I do feel that I should convey what the film is in the context of what we are used to as film-goers.

Court is definitely a depiction of what we are as a country and as people. It probes the existence of objectivity and neutrality in our system. But what earns it such high accolades is its highly subtle and low-key treatment. This lifts it from being a fiction to a document of immense potential. As audience, this is what we need to appreciate.

Narayan Kamble (Vira Sathidar) is a 65-year old Dalit Shahir (folk singer) who sings songs that are purportedly against the system. He gets arrested one day on charges of abetment of suicide. It is accused that a drainage cleaner has committed suicide because Narayan Kamble has sung a song that roused the cleaners to do so. Vinay Vora (Vivek Gomber) fights the court case for Kamble, Nutan (Geetanjali Kulkarni) is the public prosecutor and Sadavarte (Pradeep Joshi) is the judge. As the case progresses, we get a thorough insight in the functioning of the court and also into the lives of the advocates and the judge. 

The first thing that strikes you is the style of filmmaking. This is the classic European structure where simple reality is depicted, acutely replicating every detail. The immediate question is can a film be completely objective? The answer is No. And that is not even the intention. Court pays complete obedience to its own narrative form – it shows you how boring the court proceedings are, that there is no ‘taarikh pe taarikh’, the opposing advocates are neither enemies nor qaabil dosts and more importantly, the manipulators do not operate in an obvious, bribing way. The democracy is still working and that’s the sad part. It is a farce whose prime-movers are not visible. These realities and observations lead to deductions that can make you shiver if you’re looking closely. After Kamble gets finally gets bail, he is trapped into another case. And a new (and probably many) cases will follow him now.

  

There is an in-depth detailing of the characters’ lives which might seem useless. But that is where Director Chaitanya Tamhane is making larger statements. So if Vora is buying groceries from a sophisticated mall, he has a car in which he plays jazz music and his Gujarati parents are superrich, all of it is for a reason. The man hardly charges fees for fighting the case, instead pays the hefty bail amount himself. He can ‘afford’ to do such social service. Nutan, on the other hand, can’t, because she is a middle class woman travelling in locals. And when you see Sadavarte on a ‘pointless’ family trip, it needs to be observed how unscientific is a man who needs to take rational decisions every day! In totality, you also get a holistic picture of what disparities exist in our society.

The camera work, with steady frames and no camera movement, is realism transformed into a poignant cinematic language. The chilling reality keeps mounting on you, subconsciously. The humour rises out of the same reality, because we are so devoid of it. And in the process, we realise that this is not about Narayan Kamble or the rebellious Dalit movement. The Mohsins, the Bhaiyyas in Mumbai and every other minority makes appearances. It is either made too fragile or it fights for its identity in a questionable way. The temples, Hanuman mandals and much more tells you what it is suppressed under. The blue colours, the chand-taras tell you the defiant stances. And the names – Narayan, Vasudeo, Shankar...tell you their wounded belonging.

Watch Court for a truly cinematic experience. Through its craft and genuineness, it is bound to make you restless.

m4m says: A Must Watch

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Rege: A Scary Nexus!

Praveen Lulekar

Rege is one of those films that thoroughly depress you. So if you say films should reflect society, here is the mirror. Call it pessimism, realism or simply ‘not for the holiday season’, this is a film that boldly shows what’s under the fat belly of our system. It is crafty in narration and extremely dark in effect.

The film proceeds in two narratives. The present shows a crime branch cop Pradeep Sharma (Mahesh Manjrekar) being tried for an encounter. His assistant Sachin Waze (Pushkar Shrotri) is using every weapon in his armoury – bribes, fear, favours and more encounters, to save his boss. In the flashback, we see Aniruddha Rege (Aaroh Welankar), a final year medical student, getting attracted to and consequently trapped in the clutches of underworld. Open ends of the two stories keep meeting as the story progresses.

The biggest problem a viewer might face is the criss-cross narrative. The second thread is further divided into two tracks – one, of the actual entrapment of Rege and other of the police investigating him. The screenplay writers keep shuffling between the three narratives and it can be at times tough to keep up. But it all gets sorted (if you can call it ‘sorting’) and you discover the frightening story under the grim scrrenplay.

Apart from this consciously built suspense, the film is extremely realistic in its treatment. Its greatest victory is that it never allows you to take sides; if you start believing Rege is a victim, you see his fascination for the bhais. If you see Sharma finishing crime, you are startled to see the coldness with which he takes bribes.

Director Abhijeet Panse goes really close to the way in which police treat criminals, their investigation style, the ways in which they bribe and how natural and everyday all this is for them. After an encounter, a constable says wearily – ‘That guy is a Nepali; we can’t send his body there right? Just mention ‘unclaimed’ in the report.’ 

It is this subtle quality that does not make the film preachy or ‘about’ corruption. Corruption, in fact, is a secondary part; it is about people seeking to get their way. Whatever doesn’t fit in the system, we have a way round to it. Out of that, another system emerges – one where the police are connected to the businessmen, the businessmen to the judiciary and criminals and the criminals back to the police. It’s a scary nexus!

Panse, a politician himself, however refrains from showing a greater political involvement. We do see glimpses of the Shivsena at a few places; favourably or otherwise, we don't know. Sigh!

Two important technicians play vital role in the narration – Monty Sharma (background score) and Mahesh Limaye (Cinematography). Sharma does a terrific job of giving many scenes their gravity; he quite intelligently understands the pace of every situation. Credit also goes to Panse, who chooses his moments of quite background and saves the music from being overused. Limaye has again emerged as the ace who amplifies the effect with some stunning frames. The night sequences, especially, are beautifully taken with creative use of lights.

Amongst the actors, Manjrekar takes away the larger piece of the cake. He has the wittiest dialogues and the arrogant Sharma reflects every bit in the actor. On a different note, however, Manjrekar seems to be getting trapped in these kinds of roles and needs to pursue more variety. Shrotri has also maintained a really good air as the wily negotiator. Theatre actor Welankar, debuting with the film, fits into the role perfectly.

It is a general mentality to go to theatres to ‘enjoy ourselves’. Escapism is kind of a synonym of our mainstream cinema. On the other hand, we dismiss films that take up a social cause as boring. Rege is a challenging recipe; it is compelling yet dark in equal measures. Can you digest it?

m4m Says: A Must Watch

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