Emergency, Paatal Lok 2: Reviews This Week

Paatal Lok Season 2 Is Slick, Smart & Superbly Acted, But Falls Short As A Follow-Up

Paatal Lok's second season flirts with banality at first, comes dangerously close to becoming ludicrously atonal and rediscovers its momentum by the mid-way point, Manik Sharma reviews.

Dir: Avinash Arun Dhaware

Cast: Jaideep Ahlawat, Ishwak Singh, Tillotama Shome, Nagesh Kukunoor

Streaming on: Amazon Prime Video

IT’S NOT UNTIL THE HALFWAY MARK of its hotly anticipated second season that Paatal Lok feels like it has relocated to a familiar, affecting place. An unlikely death triggers an emotional slide into the abyss of chasing shadows with broken mirrors as a lens. Hathi Ram Chaudhary, the titular, police inspector played by the excellent Jaideep Ahlawat, reclaims at this juncture, his position as the canvas of a narrative that has until then flirted with the idea of picking up other brushes. Paatal Lok is about the rot in humanity, but also about the goodness that tries to survive alongside the filth. Not out of some grand plan to exact a form of heroism, but to simply prevent the drainage pipes of society from welling up. The Chaudharys of our world are therefore surgeons, quietly flushing out these pipes without anyone noticing. The much-awaited second season isn’t a patch on the audacity, and the violent, twisted core of the first. Yet, despite initial hiccups, it ultimately unrolls into a worthy survey of a world, from where purgatory feels like an acceptable exit door.

The second season begins with the murder of the Naga political leader Jonathan Thom, in Delhi to attend a crucial investment summit for the state. Years after the events of the first season, this is a world where Ansari, played by the dependable Ishwak Singh, has cleared the civil services exam to supersede Hathi Ram in rank and authority. Both happen to converge on the same case via different routes. Ansari is chosen for the job, whereas Chaudhary, as is often his thing, becomes the man unwittingly in possession of its most crucial thread. The two decide to collaborate on an investigation that takes them from the Nagaland Sadan in Delhi to the beaming, yet daunting peaks of Dimapur in the north-eastern state. It’s between the two cities the story ebbs, flows, crashes and ultimately cracks open.

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Emergency: Kangana Ranaut Gets Indira Gandhi's Look, But Not Her Complexities

The most interesting bit about Emergency is that it could easily pass off as a document of today if the dates were not mentioned. The symptoms of the time are eerily similar, writes Ishita Sengupta.

Dir: Kangana Ranaut

Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Shreyas Talpade

Playing in: Theatres

IN THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS there has been an upsurge of political biographies — or more correctly, hagiographies — in Hindi cinema. Facts are routinely distorted, central figures are rendered in one-note uprightness, and the past is used as a springboard to scale up the present. With Emergency, a film whose release was postponed for months, Kangana Ranaut attempts to inject criticality into the genre but she pushes the needle so far right that it takes the form of another kind of hagiography, where every leader of the opposition is depicted as a true patriot while the woman at the centre of the narrative, Indira Gandhi, is painted in shades of arrogance and power.

It is not wholly surprising. Ranaut, who has written the script and directed the film, is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the opposition to Gandhi’s Congress. In the past, she has made several comments challenging the authenticity of India’s independence, mostly led by the Congress, while praising the present government for instilling bravado in people. In that sense, her segue into directing Emergency, chronicling the tumultuous time in Gandhi’s Prime Ministerial tenure — from 1975 to 1977, an era of press censorship and indiscriminate arrests — feels like a natural progression. But with the film, she also tries to make a biopic on Gandhi and the intent leaves her at the crossroads of demonising and exalting the daunting figure.

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Azaad: Biopic Of A Horse Masquerading As A Pre-Independence Story

I am not sure if it was the limited acting capabilities of both the debut actors, Diana Penty’s refusal to enunciate any dialogue or Ajay Devgn’s allergy to emoting but everything comes to be centred on Azaad - the horse.

Dir: Abhishek Kapoor

Cast: Aaman Devgan, Rasha Thadani, Ajay Devgn, Diana Penty, Piyush Mishra

Playing in: Theatres

IT IS ONLY JANUARY but Abhishek Kapoor’s Azaad might be the most effective debut vehicle you see all year. The filmmaker mounts the debutante in an impressive scale, centers the story around them and extracts a performance that not many would be able to deliver on their first film. There is skill here but there is also screen presence. They never leave our sight, go through the narrative beats with committed conviction and in the runtime proves to be the best actor in the cohort. Azaad might be the most effective debut vehicle of the titular character, Azaad — the horse.

If I had not known better I would have assumed Kapoor’s film is a biopic on a horse. Now that I have seen the film and know better, I still believe it is a biopic on a horse. It is the animal which takes the centerstage in an outing propped as the debut of two nepo babies — Aaman Devgan is Ajay’s Devgn’s nephew, and Rasha Thadani is Raveena Tandon’s daughter — it is the animal that emotes without the caginess that others exhibit. In a film that is set against India’s pre-independence struggle and is as designed with excess emotions as one generally expects these stories to be, it is the horse that showcases credible restraint. Honestly, it is so impressive that Azaad should have been part of promotions, it should open up a separate category of awards (I suggest “neigh”) and take the overnight success well. After all, we know one too many actors who didn’t handle it well.

— IS

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The Roshans: The Same Old Story

The Roshans joins the league of self-serving vanity vehicles that do a disservice to everyone – the people compelled to sit before the camera and say nice things, and to the form of nonfiction itself.

Dir: Shashi Ranjan

Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Rakesh Roshan, Rajesh Roshan

Streaming on: Netflix

SHASHI RANJAN'S The Roshans comes in the long line of documentaries that reduce filmmakers to a footnote. The presence of directors is as incidental in these films as is writing about them. The reason is simple: these are uncritical observations about famous people (Angry Young Men, The Romantics) where the nonfiction form is used as a smokescreen to wax eloquence about them. Craft here is little to nothing, comprising assembling footage, generously provided by those benefiting from the exercise, and bringing together more famous people willingly sitting before the camera to do the needful.

In The Roshans, there are many. You name it and they are there. Actors like Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Madhuri Dixit, musicians and singers like Sonu Nigam, Alka Yagnik, Asha Bhosle, Salim Sulaiman, to name a few. They all sit against a similar background (JW Marriott is credited for location) and speak highly of the Roshans like they have all been hostage.

— IS

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