Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Hindi Medium
English Matters
In this age of escapist cinema, a filmmaker takes up a major issue and instead of preaching and has the skill to turn it into satire is cause enough to applaud Saket Chaudhary.
His Hindi Medium is a light-hearted look at the class structure in India, which is defined by the ability to speak English with the right accent, going to the right schools, living in snooty upmarket areas, holidaying in the right spots and so on. (This week’s other release Half Girlfriend also touches upon this English snobbery.)
Raj Batra (Irrfan) owns a large Chandi Chowk boutique selling “original duplicates” of famous designers, and is wealthy enough to live well, which is not enough for his wife Mita (Saba Qamar), who will do anything to belong to the elite (she pronounces it ‘e-light’ which earns her a smirk from the English speaking playground moms) class. The problem is their inability to speak in English.
Mita wants her daughter Pia (Dishita Sehgal) to go to one of the best schools, for which they move to the right locality, subject themselves to the ridicule of uppity neighbours, obey the diktats of a consultant (brilliantly played by Tilottama Shome), try to tap every connection and fail.
Raj just wants to please his wife, and decides to get his daughter in through the Right To Education (RTE) quota meant for the poor. For this, they have to move to a stinky, rat-infested slum and pretend to be poor. This is where the film’s sharp humour fails, this part about the nobility and aspirations of the poor ring false and are actually patronizing.
Their friendly, water-sharing neigbour Shyam Prasad (Deepak Dobriyal) trains Raj in poverty and his wife teaches Mita how to battle the water queue. The child, over whom all the drama is generated, is surprisingly placid, adjusting quite easily to slum life.
A slice of Indian life—any number of parents have suffered the dawn queues for forms and the school interviews—some pithy lines and an absolutely award-worthy performance by Irrfan makeHindi Medium watchable. Just paper over the flaws and stop yourself from looking down on Hindi (or any Indian language) speakers.
Labels: Cinemaah
Half Girlfriend
Same Old Story
For years and years, it has been a Bollywood formula to have two people from different class backgrounds fall in love. So Mohit Suri’s Half Girlfriend based on Chetan Bhagat’s book is not all that new.
All it does is somewhat modernize the old formula, which still feels strange when a girl who is hanging out, making out and being emotionally dependent on a guy is surprised when he expresses romantic feelings for her. In today’s age, Riya’s (Shraddha Kapoor) simpering seems very out of date.
Her ‘half boyfriend’ is Madhav Jha (Arjun Kapoor), princeling of a small Bihari village, who manages to get into an elite Delhi college in the sports quota, but cannot speak English. “Even the grass grows in English here,” he despondently tells his mother (Seema Biswas) on the phone, just before spotting a French-braided basketball player who gives him reason to stay on.
Riya is the poor little rich girl, who deals with the domestic violence situation at home by soaking in the rain (hence, baarish song is a must), drowning out the noise by strumming her guitar and singing the same song, or sneaking up to the top of India Gate. A girl ideally meant for a few sessions with a shrink, but she prefers the slavish devotion of Madhav, bad English and all. With all the romance (on his part) and friendzoning (on her part) when they find the time to study is never established. College, like in so many other films, is just a location to shoot.
Riya dumps him to marry a man of her own social status, bumps into him again in Patna where he is seeking funds for the village school from the Bill Gates Foundation (he actually makes a poor CGI cameo), picks up the romance-friendzone thread again and this goes on and on, till everybody but Madhav can see that he is unhealthily obsessed, and also cannot take no for an answer.
For those who have read better books and seen better romantic films, Half Girlfriend is quite flat. It is redeemed somewhat by the stars emoting away earnestly, but a supporting actor, Vikrant Massey, as the loyal friend, gets some of the best lines and walks away with every scene he is in.
Mohit Suri and his writers need a crash course in Delhi snobbery for describing a tiny diamond on a chain as “baroque.”
Labels: Cinemaah
