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Key protagonist Murad Ahmed, played to perfection by Ranveer Singh, goes on an Eminem, 8 Mile-style journey, honing his craft with Shrikant ‘MC Sher’ Bhosle (Siddhant Chaturvedi) and Shweta ‘Sky’ Mehta (Kalki Koechlin) as supporters, while tending to his overprotective, doctor-to-be girlfriend, Safeena Firdausi (Alia Bhatt). Like Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, this film is set in the vibrant Dharavi slums of Mumbai. Or sex for the sleaze.Cast: Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Kalki Koechlin, Vijay Raaz, Kubra Sait In creating a world where women rule the roost, the film misses the wood for the trees. It is like a constantly ringing sound that breaks into a session of sex and intrigue. But the political proceedings in the background are never allowed to be forgotten. “Begum Jaan” is a film with some remarkable writing. Here, it crumbles under the weight of carrying too much history on its shoulders. The sexual tension between Naseeruddin and Vidya was far more interesting in “Ishqiya”. Vivek Mushran (remember him’) does an image volte face as a treacherous teacher whose facade of idealism crumbles in the face of a self-serving greed, while Naseeruddin Shah as a royalty who likes kinky cruel sex with girls old enough to be his daughters and cold enough to be his slaughter, seems very little interested in the sex that his character enjoys. If not, you will be chilled to your bones watching this funnyman do a flipflop. If you’ve seen Jisshu Sengupta in the Bengali original, you would find Chunky’s performance lagging and lacking.
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As a man who kills without creed or conscience, Chunky plays one of the most despicable villains seen in our cinema. But there is no respite from the burden of being brutally bartered by power brokers.īarring Pitobash Tripathy’s gentle pimp act (he will remind you of Naseeruddin Shah in “Mandi”), the male species in “Begum Jaan” are slippery, treacherous and self-important - none more so than Chunky Pandey as a cold-blooded killer.
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You wait for Srijit to let his characters loosen up, lighten the load of history and sex that they carry on their shoulders. At times, the excessive zeal to stun and repel are stomach churning. Though this is a film about gorgeous women and sex, it is not the least enticing or seductive. The sexual references spotlighting women as objects of lust will repel the audience, as they are intended to. The impact of the ‘ribaldry during times of Partition’ theme is completely submerged in lengthy lectures on the politics of sex and communalism.Ī lot of what has gone into this brutal and stark film is meant to shock. The allegory of a brothel perched precariously on No Man’s Land is hammered with ferocious dramatic devices like thunderous background music and seismic camera angles. It’s like pressing textbooks into the hands of a bunch of safari adventurers. Srijit Mukherji, that remarkable director from Bengali cinema, is hellbent on taking the brothel of sex workers through a historic journey into India’s partition.
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In a sequence like the one where she slaps a stuporous rape victim (Mishti, Subhash Ghai’s heroine in “Kaanchi”) into a state of emotional eruption, Vidya is so keen to impress us with her range that she behaves like a singer who has newly learnt the ragas and wants to squeeze them all into one song.īesides Vidya’s ineffectual hooker with a hookah act, the other girls, specially playing sex workers, seem to have a lot of fun with their parts when the writer-director is not looking. Her diction, a delight in other circumstances, is here an embarrassing reminder of Vidya’s urbane personality being superimposed on a character who survives by her intuitive cunningness. From the hookah that she insists on snorting to her periodic outbursts of anger and laughter, it’s all a ‘come-watch-me-do-a-National-Award’ act. In fact, this is as good a place as any to mention that Rituparna Sengupta’s central performance in “Rajkahini” as the Madame of the endangered brothel was far more jolting than Vidya Balan.īalan fakes it from the word go.