Saturday, November 07, 2015
Charlie Ke Chakkar Mein
Drugs, Lies and Videotape
On watching Charlie Ke Chakkar Mein, the first question that comes to mind is, why did Naseeruddin Shah agree do this film? Then there is the bigger question, why was this film made at all?
The grungy, convoluted thriller about a group of friends, gangsters and a fortune in cocaine (aka Charlie) does not even have the freshness one might expect from a film with a bunch of young people. It looks like it was made on a shoe-string budget just to get some aspiring actors on to the screen. Probably written in a Lokhandwala or Malad café.
A large chunk of it is ‘found footage’ as one of the characters a wannabe filmmaker, keeps shooting everything, even his own and other people’s private moments. A lot of it doesn’t make sense and the ever changing story told by a shifty prisoner is more confusing than convincing.
It starts with a semi nude woman writhing supposedly in a drug-fuelled haze, and then a mass shoot out, the video footage of which senior cop Sanket Pujari (Shah) along with a fresh faced female investigating officer (could not catch the actresses’s name) and male IT expert starts watching. The footage was shot over a period of time by the very creepy Jeevan (Nishant Lal). His gang of friends that include Sam (Amit Sial), Deepak (Anand Tiwari), Meena (Mansi Rachh) and Patty (Anchal Nandrajog) are all into drugs, and during a booze and cocaine ‘high’ Sam gets into a fight with a gangster and later, he ends up dead.
Now some gangsters, represented by the sexy Hera (Disha Arora) want the friends to do a drugs drop for them in return for protecting them from the cops.
Bits and pieces of these events, arguments among friends, and just random scenes were shot by Jeevan. The cops try to make sense of what happened. They nab one suspect Sohail (Subrat Dutta), who leads them on with his set of lies.
There is deception and double cross and gradually a sense of nothing-is-what-it-seems, but by this time, the viewer is long past caring. The film has been released to catch the gap before the big festive releases hit the screens, but it doesn't even have the potential to get some word-of-mouth crowd.
Labels: Cinemaah
Tuesday, November 03, 2015
Titli
Bleak House
His mother named him Titli, because after two songs, she wanted a daughter. But the eponymous protagonist of Kanu Behl’s film has none of the joy or colour his name suggests. He (Shashank Arora) is a young man who looks prematurely aged, with deep lines of disgruntlement etched on his face, and permanently disappointed eyes.
He lives in an ugly Delhi tenement with his father (Lalit Behl), and brothers Vikram (Ranvir Shorey) and Bawla (Amit Sial). The maleness of the household is underlined with a bit too much hawking and spitting; a desire for upward mobility suggested with all that teeth-brushing and fuss over a dining table. The brothers are carjackers, using violence with chilling casualness—in one scene, they drive around with blood on their faces—but still inexplicably impoverished and desperate.
Titli (with that name, he must have been brutally ragged in school), wants to get out of that hell hole, but is trapped further when his brothers force him to get married to Neelu (Shivani Raghuvanshi). The bride is in love with a married man, who has been stringing her along. Women have no place in that bleak male world—the brothers just want a smart girl as an accomplice. It is suggested that the deceased mother suffered abuse at the hands of her husband; Vikram’s wife has left him because of domestic abuse, and is demanding a high alimony that he cannot afford.
Sympathy is meant to be diverted to Titli, who does not want to be like his brothers, but his idea of escape also involves lies, deceit and violence. In another terrifying scene, he breaks the wrist of his wife, so that she can’t sign the papers needed to withdraw her money.
There are households like this, there are violent and macho men like Vikram (Bawla’s homosexuality is hinted at) and there is brutality and torment of one kind of the other to be faced by the poor on a daily basis—in the world Kanu Behl portrays, there is no happiness in poverty or nobility in suffering. He makes the viewer see how the other half lives, but at the end of it, there is no takeway, and certainly no entertainment.
The film is a sincere debut, with some fine performances—Ranvir Shorey is outstanding; one can appreciate the film, but would think twice before recommending it to friends.
Labels: Cinemaah
