Sheitan - The Contrarian Corner

A look at the trailer of Shaitan is good enough to arouse the curiosity of anyone who is enthused by decent film making, subject to tolerance of often debated subjects like drugs, alcohol, violence etc. (Kashyap does a responsible job of cautioning the audience that the film in no way endorses the usage of above). And of course, a catch phrase like “Discover your inner Shaitan” is enough to get you to your spot in the multiplex.

The film begins promisingly, establishing the identities and mannerisms around the bunch of spoilt kids (most urban youth can identify with) who seem to be destined to achieve the film’s manifesto. The scene where Amy meets KC and the two open ‘a joint account’, promises fun and gives you a hint of where the film is headed for the next 20 minutes.

However, as the film progresses, the film is plagued by the ever-existing syndrome of the lack of depth and purposefulness in the script. One can’t help but notice the striking similarities between Shaitan and Paanch (Kashyap’s directorial debut) simply for the way the film moves. While Shaitan had the potential of reaching out to the larger sects of audience (thanks to the censor related troubles of Paanch), it only ends up being a stylishly executed mediocre script having performed decently on most other criterion.

With due regards to the sympathy for the first-time director, it is difficult to ignore so many obvious flaws in the film. Pretty much everything in the film took off well, but ended up going nowhere. From character building to plot development, most parts of the film (even the best ones like the shootout and the chase) merely seemed to be there to exhibit the director’s eagerness to put them in there, rather than essentially relating to the nucleus of the plot.

Perhaps, it is a little harsh to say that, but really, where was the inner Shaitan. And who’s inner Shaitan were they trying to portray. The whole chain of events that land the gang in trouble seemed to be inspired more by fear, chaos and naivety, than thoughtful capers originating from a demonic brain. Some (and not all) bloopers I can recall at this point are:

·     The scene where KC pushes Amy from the terrace into the pool as a test of her ‘Bharosa’ is a serious violation of the laws of physics. The height from which Amy was pushed must have been 30 ft at the least, into a pool of what 11 ft? If Nambiar was so particular abt this scene, they might as well have shot it around some cliff to respect its plausibility.

·     Amy – Till the end, the reasons for her untimely perturbed behavior weren’t sufficiently explained. The scene where she goes out for dinner with her folks and pulls her timid act didn’t quite gel with the flow of the film. Not that it seemed relevant in any way. Besides, Amy’s character turns psychotic at will to help the cause of her mommy’s plot which demanded bail outs every now and then. Also difficult to fathom is the vindication of her being let free after she murders Dash.

The Mummy Returns

·     The stunning silence of Khandelwal’s wife. May be she was in fact under the spell of some inner Shaitan, but that really needed some intervention.

·    The 3 characters – KC, Dash and Parsi were again an extension of the director’s unwillingness to take it deeper. They showed moments of brilliance alright and were extremely well acted out too (special mention for Gulshan Devvaiah as KC). But again, just when the director was expected to unleash the Shaitan, he decides to squander it aimlessly. The scene where they try and strike a deal with the cop was indeed setting it up wonderfully, just to fade into unwarranted chaos and beat around the bush routine. Dash was the most underutilized characters of the lot. So underutilized that Nambiar didn’t even bother to explain the relevance of his death. Nor does he give a hint to whether he was truly ill-intentioned.

The film wasn’t bad at all, if you were benchmarking it against the industry standards. The mood setting music, camera work and editing are extremely commendable. So is the performance of mostly fresh actors. The list of Khandelwal’s followers is likely to increase manifold as he does a magnificent job as a troubled and bad-ass cop.  Raj Kumar Yadav as the corrupt cop is quite convincing too.

But, the cast is stronger than the characters they play. Also, when we already associate terms like path breaking and trend- defining with the film, there are a number of concerns to be dealt with.

In the last decade or so, the film industries in India (across states) have expressed the need and witnessed the emergence of better processing of films on technical grounds. Lot more emphasis and quality goes into aspects like cinematography, editing, sound engineering and background score etc along with the growth of media schools that offer proficiency in these spheres. However, despite the academic training for the prospects of the industry, the scripts continue to suck. The causes for this are usually tied back to the number of corrections and adaptations made to the original script, but that wasn’t the case here as Nambiar wrote the film himself.

Luke Morrison - This satan was no poser

The film indeed is bold about aspects like drug abuse, alcohol and publicly watchable levels of homosexuality. But, haven’t we seen this a number of times already? At least 3 films of Anurag Kashyap have portrayed explicit usage of drugs and alcohol etc. Paanch (a film you should definitely watch if you’re looking for that inner Sheitan) with the aspiring members of a rock band, Abhay Deol rolling and snorting coke in Dev D and chaps doing pot in Gulaal scream out loud ‘the been there, done that’ story. Unlike the other two, Dev D was quite commercial and went out to massive audience. Other mass audience films like Dum Maaro Dum have done their share of patrolling too. Films like Love, Sex Aur Dhokha have also gained sufficient cognizance to push the acceptance extents of the Censor Board a fair bit.

The concern though is how fruitful is the whole exercise? It does help the makers in connecting with the niche sect of audience, but in the context of this film, there is nothing judicious about it. In fact, its basic purpose is just for Nambiar to establish himself amongst the league of the neo-noir film makers around.

It would be quite unfair to term the film a disappointment because relatively, the film is still quite a standout. It has brilliant moments that a lot of other cliché films are still far from. But again, just because it offers so much more promise, one can’t help but raise the level of their expectations, only to not be fully convinced. For the ones who value films based on their time’s value, and ticket’s worth, this is definitely more worthy than the dump of junk you’d normally end up swallowing. The film has style written over all over it, but that is not to be mistaken for sophistication and class.

Shaitan(2011) Review [Hindi Film]

SHAITAN REVIEW

Cast : Rajeev Khandelwal, Kalki Koechlin, Shiv Pandit, Kirti Kulhari, Gulshan Deviaya, Neil Bhoopalam

Director : Bejoy Nambiar

Last week we witnessed the release of Shaitan in theatres all over the country. Its also the debut film of Bejoy Nambiar.

Watching the trailer one can, straight away, make out that Shaitan isn’t your regular Bollywood flick. It looked stylish and suave, a lot of attention grabbing spots, good pace, a cast of relatively unknown actors and a production house helmed by India’s most talented director. Lets not forget the line that grabbed most people’s imagination, and mine too, “Face your Inner Shaitan”.

So, do you face your inner Shaitan? Lets find out.

A bunch of rich-urban youth in the city of Mumbai who are given too much freedom and money(apparently not enough) to enjoy themselves. The group of young boys and girls party hard and harder as a group and resort to a lot of uncouth activities that eventually get them into a spot of bother. The film then focuses on how they try to escape the spot of bother. The series of events makes them unleash their Shaitan within them. While the premise of the film may seem pretty simple and straightforward, it’s very well developed.

The film starts of with a Guy Ritchie’esque intro scene where you get to know the characters in the best possible way without wasting too much time on developing them through the film. A 3 – 4 min set of short scenes of each of the films protagonists which will tell you the defining behavioral patterns of the main characters. This eventually leads to the introduction of the main/lead protagonist, Amy(Kalki Koechlin), the NRI who moves down to Mumbai with her father, who is working on a project for the Indian Govt, and her step mother.

Amy then meets KC who quickly introduces her to the rest of the gang. Then as a test of her ‘Bharosa’, pushes her into a pool from the top of the building. Luckily, Amy is a psychotic female who likes this and makes the decision to hang around with the bunch quite closely. Then, there ensues a series of events where Amy and her new group of friends engage in activities frowned upon by the general public which steadily gets worse as time passes on. Sadly, most of these activities are shown like in a format very similar to intro, with a background score, in a space of 3-4 mins. The group is eventually involved in an incident which would mostly involve them going to imprisonment and losing their youth. They decide to act as a group and avoid this.

And this is where the movie starts to go marginally downhill.

“Please tell me Im the lead now"

In probably what is the most important part of the movie, Shaitan loses its main protagonist. As the group begins to run into the shadows to escape the consequences of their action, the lead suddenly starts playing a game of pass the ball where the audience is left baffled as to who the focal point is.

This is the same time when the cop who is put in charge of this case starts getting prominence. Rajeev Khandelwal plays the tough cop who kicks ass and chews bubble gum, but is all out of gum. This character, played almost flawlessly, helps make the movie intense as the group that’s on the run knows there is someone on the chase. Most of his scenes are gritty and get the audiences right at the edge of their seats, loving the bravery and boldness of the cop. No 2 questions asked as the best scenes of the movie involve Khandelwal. A superb shootout scene, where we hear a very cool remixed version of Khoya Khoya Chand; and the best chase scene Ive seen in Indian films… period.

Most of the film flows at a great pace with very good alternation of scenes between Rajeev the cop and Amy and her friends, the pseudo criminals. Its only interrupted by a couple of scenes occurring repeatedly through the film which pissed me off to no ends.

i) The scenes involving Khandelwal’s wife played by Sheetal Menon

These were by far the most frustrating points of the film for me. Everytime you get an intense scene and get you all gripped and pumped up, its immediately followed by a scene with Sheetal Menon. Sheetal Menon plays the estranged wife of the cop, who feels bereft of a family because her husband is too busy fighting the law and hence not dedicating enough time to her. This leads to her filing for divorce. These scenes go a long way in establishing the gritty and stern nature of the cop but are poorly timed and are too slow rendering the audiences to sit back on their chairs during the best parts of the film. She also completes the movie with absolutely no dialogue. Nothing! She just frowns, sighs, huffs and puffs in all her scenes. Even her parents have more lines than her.

ii) Amy’s Mother

These scenes were intended to explain Amy’s psychotic behaviour but they did a poor job of doing it. Basically, Amy’s mother is some sort of psychopath(I don’t know its not explained) and despite all of that, Amy is very attached to her and profusely loves her. This leads to her writing and drawing morbid things in her notes and books and practically any piece of paper. These scenes could have been made far more effective had there been some kind of dialogue or some sort of explanation. Leaving things to the audience to guess can be useful at some points, not critical character defining moments. This flawed an ending which could have been monumental for me.

Sheetal practicing her famous monologue for the film

Despite the flaws that I have highlighted above, the movie manages to maintain an intense atmosphere throughout and all done in a very stylish and suave manner, just like the trailer was. It’s entertaining and helps mark an important thing in Indian cinema, for me, the acceptance of the concept of alcohol and substance abuse, in films, by Indian audiences. Indian directors and script writers have long been hindered by the sensitive nature of the Indian Censor Board. They’ve largely stepped on scenes involving drugs, violence and vile behaviour. All of those are effective elements in cinema and story-telling today. Shaitan has gone a long way and reached out to a lot of people who would normally not watch this type of a film and has garnered new audiences for the style of cinema which should really change the current scene of Indian cinema. While its too early to tell, Shaitan might just have done it.

Bottom Line:

Shaitan is an intense film that is a huge and welcome relief from the kind of garbage Bollywood makes week after week. It represents the small bunch of movies that really , and significantly, makes an impact and at the same time is entertaining. There are a handful of scenes which could have been so much better with just 5-10 mins of extra screen time but, despite that, it marks a stellar performance from a director for his debut film. It makes use of an excellent musical score to help add to the atmosphere of the film.

Rating the Film :

Screenplay: 6.5/10

The screenplay is fairly straight-forward and does not have too many twists or unexpected changes in its flow or pattern. There are a couple of excellent scenes early on to provide humour, which are very well presented, but this fizzles out after the intermission.

Musical Score : 9.5/10

The movie has one of the best musical scores Ive heard in Indian cinema, yet. It powerfully integrates it into the film to help enhance the intensity of the scenes and the film overall. The remixes of Khoya Khoya Chand and Aboorva Raagam(in the intro song) are just superb to hear and do not do anything to disturb nostalgia, as most remixes do.

Acting : 8/10

All actors deliver a solid performance. The standout actor is Rajeev Khandelwal, playing the bad-ass cop. Im pretty certain most of the actors would get a lot of calls now and I honestly hope they stick to doing similar serious roles to help garner a genre of actors.

Script : 6.5/10

Much like the screenplay, the script is fairly straightforward. Seemingly, everything that was on the script could not be transalated on screen, which if it had, would have resulted in an EVEN better film. The script delivers some solid light hearted moments and excellent sharp dialogues to get some serious laughs from the audiences. There were still a few parts which went unexplained and seemed to lose direction; the blame should fall on the script.

Direction : 8/10

An excellent debut for a director. The film is shot stylishly and edited strongly to deliver a strong and intense experience for the audiences. I hope to see more from the director.

Overall Critical Thinker Verdict(Not an average) :

7.3/10

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