Fighter: Siddharth Anand's Latest Is Caught In A Curious Crosswind |
This is #CriticalMargin, where Ishita Sengupta gets contemplative over new Hindi films and shows. |
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| | Cast: Anil Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Hrithik Roshan |
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SIDDHARTH ANAND’s Fighter, based on a group of fighter pilots of the Indian Air Force assembled to counter a crisis, is two films in one. Almost always there are two — nearly contrary — narratives running together. The film says one thing and does another. It espouses one ideology and brandishes another. In one scene an Indian officer beats a Pakistani terrorist to a pulp and states the latter belongs to no country. Almost in the same breath, he continues hammering the man and says India is the “owner” of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), a contentious piece of land between the two neighbouring nations. A running theme in Fighter is Indian Air Force officers specifying that their fight is against extremists and not a country and yet it furnishes no evidence to distinguish one from the other. (Stream top-rated movies and shows across platforms and languages, using the OTTplay Premium Jhakaas pack, for just Rs 199/month.) Anand’s film is what unnamed trolls on X, formerly known as Twitter, often call anyone who does not agree with them: “pseudo secular”. The term is supposed to mean something but it is a vacant usage, signifying nothing. In this regard, Anand’s latest leans in the similar direction as Sunny Deol starrer Gadar 2, that freely milked the tropes of jingoism embedded in the current political climate while also maintaining a facade of secularism. It is nowhere more evident than in the events the film chooses to showcase and the way it goes about it. Fighter centres on the 2019 Balakot airstrike where India had conducted a bombing raid in Pakistan to avenge the latter’s attack on Pulwama. The specifics of the details are sketchy at best and inflated at worst. Although the official narrative stresses that the airstrike destroyed a training camp in Pakistan, multiple sources later underlined that nothing of consequence was achieved by India. Fighter , written by Anand and Ramon Chibb, not only goes forth with the government line but also embellishes it at will. |
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Karmma Calling: Lukewarm Revenge |
Karmma Calling is so bad that it almost veers towards being a guilty pleasure, but quickly settles into being an unbeatable mess. |
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| | Cast: Raveena Tandon, Namrata S |
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A LOT about Ruchi Narain’s new show Karmma Calling makes sense if one reads up on its origin. The series that is now streaming on Hotstar is an Indian adaptation of ABC's crime drama Revenge. A decade back Narain had approached Star India with the idea of retelling the American series for an homegrown audience. The Indian media house was keen but the project fell through since the network refused to give the rights. It took some years, some reshuffling of the executives for it to finally culminate as a sprawling seven-episode series on a streaming site. But despite the change in form, the outing’s initial ambition comes easily to the fore given the way it unfolds with the expressed aesthetic of a daily soap. The signs are all there: the background score heightens at the very sight of a reveal (like a half-opened drawer), actors communicate only in side-eyes and they chew on every word like talking is an excuse for them to practise breathing exercises. Narain’s Karmma Calling is so campy that camp here is both the genre and the tone. It is the reason for the show’s existence and the excuse for it. It is why…well I give up. Narain’s series does that to you. It breaks your soul, crushes your spirit and beats down your will to a pulp. It is so bad, in all possible aspects of story and storytelling, film and filmmaking that it makes an artform out of it. It is so bad that it almost dives in the direction of being a guilty pleasure but quickly settles into being an unbeatable mess. Karmma Calling is determined to defeat you, and here I stand — defeated. — ISHITA SENGUPTA |
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