Tuesday, May 22, 2018
Angrezi Mein Kehte Hain
Speak Of Love
Taking
the partner for granted is a common enough condition that plagues many a
marriage, perhaps more so an arranged match, where the gender roles are drawn
by tradition; the man goes out to work, the woman looks after the family. However, in Harish Vyas’s Angrezi Mein Kehte Hain, the husband is
inexplicably grumpy, and the wife equally inexplicably docile.
Yashwant
Batra (Sanjay Mishra) living in an ancestral mansion on the banks of the Ganga
(gives the film a touristy-exotic look), is a postal employee, married to Kiran
(a luminous Ekavali Khanna) from a wealthy family. The unattractive groom from
a lower economic stratum was chosen for his ‘sharafat’ (decency), not for his looks or temperament. Batra goes
to work sullenly demanding his tiffin, comes home, petulantly demands ice for
his drink, eats and sleeps. Apparently, they never went on a honeymoon, take no
holidays, have no social circle apart from her family, that he dislikes. He
never expresses appreciation, never mind love; and for some reason, Kiran puts
up with his odiousness.
It’s
when he tries to push his daughter Preeti (Shivani Raghuvanshi) into the same arranged marriage trap, the
feelings buried for twenty-four years are articulated by Kiran, and it results
in her husband brusquely asking her to leave his house if she is so unhappy,
and she does.
The film till this point is engaging enough, it’s when Batra
tries to woo his wife, the script becomes laboured and the man a caricature. To
contrast with Batra’s crustiness is the jovial neighbour (Brijendra Kala) whose
son Jugnu (Anshuman Jha) Preeti loves, and in a small cameo, Pankaj Tripathi in
a treacly subplot about a man who believes in “love marriage and marriage love”
and tends to his terminally ill wife (Ipshita Chakroberty). If Tripathi and Mishra’s roles were swapped,
the film would have been quite different.
Sanjay Mishra is a good actor, but incapable or portraying romance,
whereas Tripathi would have done a better before-and-after personality change.
At
its heart, Angrezi Mein Kehte Hain is
conservative. A woman is told she cannot exist without a husband, and for all
her fiery defiance of her father, Preeti remains a housewife and caregiver to
her father. Which leaves the viewer with the thought, will she turn into her
mother in twenty-four years, or will Jugnu’s demonstrativeness save their
marriage? If the film is unsatisfying it is because it does not expand
sufficiently on the potential of the idea.
Khajoor Pe Atke
Ham Fest
If Harsh
Chhaya wanted to take an idea from the award-winning Marathi film Ventilator, he should have simply remade
it, instead of turning into a broad, mostly witless, insensitive farce.
When
Jeetendra (Manoj Pahwa) gets a midnight call about his brother’s
hospitalization, he drags his wife (Seema Pahwa) and two kids (Sanah Kapur,
Mayur More) to Mumbai supposedly to help, but actually to keep track of their
family’s flat that the brother had been occupying. He tries to prevent the
other two brothers and a sister from coming too, and makes much of spending on
airfare. The younger brother Ravindra (Vinay Pathak), cancels work meetings and
takes his wife (Suneeta Sengupta) and son to Mumbai, more to keep up
appearances. The hysterical sister Lalli (Dolly Ahluwalia) lands up too and
sends the hospital staff into a tizzy.
The comatose
brother’s wife (Alka Amin) is binge-eating out of stress and his son, Alok
(Vicky Arora) trying to make sense of the chaos of his “item” family. It’s
clear right from the start that nobody really cares about the ill brother, but
Jeetu’s hypocrisy is gold-plated.
Some
situations are believable—like first timers to Mumbai wanting to see a star’s
bungalow on the way to the hospital, go sightseeing, or try to fix a
matrimonial alliance in the hospital waiting area, but mostly the situations
are either clichéd or exaggerated. Even the talented cast hams—only Alka Amin
manages to pitch her performance right. Boys wanting to check out a dance bar
is somewhat plausible, but which girl would be stupid enough to think that a
lowlife chat buddy Rokky Dilwala (Prathamesh Parab) could make her a “heroine”
in films; too much time is wasted on this track.
What the
family goes through is tragic—not knowing over a tense two weeks, if the
brother will survive or die; so the humour should have been dark and tinged
with sorrow, not so obviously over the top. It is admittedly a tough balance,
that Ventilator achieved.
The worst
thing a comedy can do is poke the viewer in the eye, and shout, “Look how funny
this is!” Most of the time, it isn’t!
