Spoilers ahead…
Something about metros makes filmmakers reach for metaphors about birds. Most recently we had Nadaan parindey, the song in Rockstar that had the protagonist calling out to pigeons that were displaced when a jungle made way for a city. It’s the other way around in Hansal Mehta’s CityLights. (About that title, apart from a man’s decision to make things better for a loved one, there’s no connection to the Chaplin classic.) Here, the birds fly into the city – they’re the hungry migrants who flock to urban jungles. A security guard named Vishnu (Manav Kaul) points to birds in flight and tells his colleague Deepak (Rajkummar Rao) that the creatures come from afar and stay close because of fear, and they’ll die if left alone. He could be talking about those migrants. Deepak is one of them. He left a debt-ridden existence in a small town in Rajasthan and moved to Mumbai with his wife Rakhee (Patralekha) and young daughter, and his flight is detailed in a song that goes Ek chiraiya ghonsle ko chhod ud ud jaaye. A bird has left its nest. There are quite a few shots of birds in large numbers taking flight and coming to roost. And by the film’s end, Deepak himself becomes something of a bird – we see him climbing higher and higher, far above onlookers who are specks on the ground.
What do you do when you have a lofty metaphor and little to pin it on? That’s the problem Mehta faces in CityLights, which has very little that’s new. When you go to a cop with a complaint, he’s going to be playing a game on his phone instead of listening to you – he is, you know, callous. When you go to a dance bar and ask for a job, the owner is going to ask you to take off your dupatta and stare at the curves that are revealed – he is, you know, seeing you not as a person but an object. All the clichés tumble out of the closet – village good, city bad, village guileless, city deceitful, village helpless, city predatory, and so forth. Watching CityLights unfold, with its banal contrivances and a plot that can be predicted the minute Deepak lands his job, I wondered what might have interested Mehta in this trite material, derived from the British film Metro Manila. Maybe it’s a job for hire. Or maybe a filmmaker cannot always, you know, soar. Still, how can you make something as stunning as Shahid and subsequently find yourself drawn to this, with its second-hand “ironies” about a family paying Rs. 100 per day to live in an under-construction apartment that will eventually sell for Rs. 3 crore? As reality, the fact is horrifying. But its dramatic value, its impact, after Do Bigha Zameen and Paar and so many years of cinema about wide-eyed rustics being devoured by a malevolent metropolis, is next to nothing. CityLights is content to leave us with what we already know, not just from the papers but from the movies. It’s all about the bird’s eye view.
This isn’t to say CityLights is a bad movie. It’s one of those new-generation Hindi films that’s so well staged and performed that there is, every now and then, a bit that sticks to your mind – like the way Rao squats, hunching his shoulders and drawing his body in, like a person in a cold country huddled in front of a campfire, or the way Patralekha, who looks like Divya Dutta’s younger sister, performs in that dance bar. The first time, she moves stiffly, consciously, as the other girls sway and swirl around her. The second time, she moves more easily, though she still doesn’t look at the customers who surround her, waving bundles of cash. I liked the way Rao delivers a smutty joke. Deepak is the least exuberant of men, a loser in every sense, and Rao makes us see how such a man would tell such a joke. And in a superb scene where Deepak goes to Vishnu’s home for a meal, we see how such a man would sing. He doesn’t belt out the number, locking his eyes with his listeners’. He’s the anti-performer. He looks down, as if singing to his plate. Manav Kaul is even better. He makes you wish that he were the protagonist, and as his wife, Sadia Siddique has a spectacular breakdown scene where she makes us realize what it really means to be “racked by sobs.”
But sometimes, we see these good actors thrown at the mercy of terrible scenes. Deepak doesn’t drink, doesn’t look at women that way, and yet, predictably, he finds himself in a dance bar, downing one peg after another. Then, when he gets home drunk, he wakes Rakhee up and asks her to dance for him. This stretch pretty much encapsulates the problem with CityLights. This is melodramatic material, but with this cast and with this director, the attempt is to “class it up,” to put a “realistic” sheen on things, and it doesn’t work because the film, as it goes along, becomes increasingly unrealistic. We have all these great “touches” that are meant to make Deepak and Rakhee “real” people – the fact that they’re god-fearing, the fact that he was in the army – but the film itself isn’t a “real” film. It keeps building towards some sort of manipulative thriller, and thrillers, inherently, are more cinematic than real. All the realism of the earlier scenes begins to look ludicrous in light of the blatant contrivances towards the end, which we would have forgiven (or even demanded) in a film that didn’t pretend, all along, to be a gritty drama.
In another touch, Deepak and Rakhee are shown to have almost similar lives. They get a scene each where they drop off their daughter at school, or with other kids. Both of them find a job through (conveniently) helpful people who are employed in the same line, and they face similar trials at work – Rakhee is asked to shed her upper garment and execute a turn so that her prospective employer can check out her wares, and Deepak is asked to strip and execute a turn in order to prove that he isn’t carrying anything on him. And both of them find themselves fired and having to ask their employers for money they are owed. All this is fine detailing, but it comes at the cost of the thriller elements, which are shoehorned in most hastily. Thrillers require their own kind of detailing, their own kind of buildup. When someone is killed, we need to register this death. We need to see what happened, and how – and if this happens to be a character we’ve grown to care for, we need time to absorb the emotions in the scene. Why skimp on this? As a result, the drama isn’t hard-hitting enough, and the thriller tropes aren’t satisfying enough. More importantly, we don’t buy Deepak doing what he does. We see him being humiliated, but we don’t feel the depths of his desperation, given that he barely seems to register these humiliations. It’s an interesting touch to show Deepak as someone who calmly accepts his lot in life – thrillers are usually based on people who don’t – but the film never manages to tie up his slow-witted and phlegmatic nature with his heated, impulsive actions later on. How is an important question in this kind of film. It’s never convincingly answered.
At least, not with the level of conviction that we found in earlier Bombay films that reached for metaphors about birds, films like Gharonda, whose title referred to the nest the man and the woman sought to build for themselves. Their situation wasn’t as wretched as Deepak’s. They were lower-middle-class. But that’s just hairsplitting in a city where everything’s so expensive, and we understood how the man and woman came together, how they split up, how she agreed to the kind of transaction that’s as alien to her nature as what Deepak does in this film is to his. We felt the desperation in those characters from what we saw and also what we heard, the lyrics that spoke of blind, bottomless nights and winding roads that would never lead to one’s destination in one’s lifetime. These are good lyrics, whose imagery adds to what we see on screen. The lyrics in CityLights are nowhere as evocative, and this wouldn’t be a problem in a tight thriller with a smattering of songs, but the music, here, is such a constant, so in your face, with the same songs played over and over, that it’s impossible not to see that the lyrics are merely telling us about what’s already been shown. When Rakhee tells Deepak she’s found a job and he weeps at what she has to do, we hear Jo mile usme kaat lenge hum – we’ll get by on what we get. Elsewhere, we get Kitne saare chehre hain aur tanha sab ke sab – so many faces and yet everyone’s lonely. We get Parchayeen ke peeche peeche bhaag raha hai man – a line about chasing shadows. This isn’t even sentiment. It’s just schmaltz.
KEY:
* Nadaan parindey= see here
* City Lights = see here
* Metro Manila = see here
* Shahid = see here
* Do Bigha Zameen = see here
* Paar = see here
* Gharonda = see here
Copyright ©2014 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Sudipta Bhattacharjee
June 1, 2014
Brangan – even assuming that ‘Citylights’ doesn’t break new ground in terms of cinematic narrative, is it still not important that hard-hitting movies like this get made, if for nothing else then to make us pause and think about the lives of the less fortunate? Especially given the usual escapist fare that throngs our multiplexes week after week (I love them as much as the next movie-buff, but…..)? Especially, given that very few people in today’s audience have experienced a ‘Do Beegha Zameen’ / ‘Gharonda’ etc?
May be your reaction needs to be tempered given that you are probably jaded, having seen many films with a similar theme….
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MANK
June 1, 2014
I think Hansal mehta got mahesh bhattised, so to say. ,Mahesh bhatt produced this film and the intermingling of these two aesthetics just doesnt work. Mahesh Bhatt is not the filmmaker who made Arth and Saraansh any more you know .as you said “the attempt is to “class it up,” to put a “realistic” sheen on things,” might have been a bad idea.Bhatt should have hired someone from his own camp to direct this.
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Infrequent Ranter
June 1, 2014
I largely agree with your review. The main ‘problem’ I had with this movie, which you have also described above, was that it kept trying to be a realistic movie while it was actually too melodramatic in most ways.
http://infrequentranter.wordpress.com/
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ramitbajaj01
June 2, 2014
Sudipta ji, muh ki baat chheen li aapne.
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brangan
June 2, 2014
Sudipta Bhattacharjee: So you’re saying that the fact that this got made is more important than the fact that it’s much good? I don’t quite agree with that. Then why even bother to review these films? The fact that they are made in a cinema culture that’s all about urbanites is enough to proclaim these films as “worthy” or “important” or whatever, no? Every film sets a bar for itself that it has to clear, and this bar has nothing to do with the cinema culture outside or whatever — and for me, this film didn’t clear that bar.
MANK: Bhatt should have hired someone from his own camp to direct this
And in that case, we wouldn’t be seeing this many glowing reviews 🙂
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MANK
June 2, 2014
Brangan: And in that case, we wouldn’t be seeing this many glowing reviews
Bingo. Its rather unfair right?. The directors from Mahesh bhatt camp are pretty good(i am not talking about pooja bhatt of course 🙂 ). It seems that media is somewhat prejudiced against Bhatt & his disciples. they never get the recognition they deserve.
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Bunny
June 2, 2014
@MANK: Interesting. I’d say the Bhattian directors are the few who get respect from the modern-day brutally choosy Indian audience and media, despite generating ostensible sequels. And Anurag Basu (the most loved director from the Camp) easily got away by making a plagiarised film ‘Barfi’. Compare that to other directors who get pelted with stones for getting inspired. It’s a Bhatt world really.
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fili
June 3, 2014
We went to the film with some cynicism because of the promos. that notwithstanding its difficult to believe the same guy made something so pure as Shahid. This was fake, regressive and worst of all boring.
Didn’t buy into the central premise/conceit. Amazed by how most folks are speaking of it as some sort of realistic hard-hitting document of migrant life. yes the migrants in the city live terrible lives (relatively) but they live. Like a Munna in Dhobhi Ghat, crushed, transformed may be – but living. Most manage to sustain a family of 5 back home in UP/Orissa/ Bihar. I had hoped that Mehta would be after some distillation of this life, instead it was the regressive, dry, banal b-grade drama (or the lack of it) that he went for.
You have nailed it again Mr. Rangan. My only issue with the critique is with the comparisons with Do Bigha Zameen and Gharonda. Citylights fails not because we have seen DBZ/ Gharonda/ Paar etc – no not at all! It fails because it is false and a badly made film. There are many flaws in Do bigha Zameen (i thought the kid was puke inducing) but yet there was something of those early winds of migration that Roy had captured truthfully in that film, the bond that a farmer has with the land, the naivete and the economic disillusionment that coincided with freedom. And the superb ending shots, those remnants of beauty..Sambhu leaving his land, perhaps never to return but yet (maybe therefore) existing in our memories for ever. Here, she makes a return to the good old gaanv, serenaded by maudlin music and flashbacks. These are totally different films. The Bimal Roy who made DBZ would have made a different film on migration today. A film that would have explored the humanity a bit more, the mundane cycle of existence, its transformation and what remains of it. there would have been better drama, more sentimental may be, but I would have cried each time I thought of ‘that’ Deepak later(and he wouldn’t have had to die heroically in any shootout either in a Bimal Roy film :D). Hated the shots where we see Deepak asking around for jobs, with dialogs conveniently muted by that manipulative shit we call music. Finding a job in Mumbai isn’t really the problem for migrants. But then Mehta here, wasn’t after any reality, just pretensions of it. And it still wouldn’t have been half as bad if it weren’t this boring. Cheers!
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MANK
June 3, 2014
Bunny, Oh they get credit only after they move out of the Bhatt camp. But as long as they make films under Bhatt’s banner , they are totally ignored. Gangster was a well made film , but Basu didnt get any credit for that , now did he?
I think that Mahesh Bhatt invokes extreme reactions in the media. He is brutally honest and extremely critical of the critics and the big mainstream stars and that doesnt sit well with anyone.Also he is totally unapologetic about the ‘Sleaze to please ‘ policy of his film company.Naturally the critics are always hesitant to give him his due.
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cl
June 4, 2014
The ‘Archives’ section has disappeared !! I was reading the posts in the ‘Between Reviews’ category. Please, please put ‘Archives’ back. Thank you.
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nagharajabishek
June 4, 2014
@cl: The archives are still there. They’re just classified by date now as opposed to categories (bitty ruminations, bullet point report and so).
Nevertheless, @brangan: The aforementioned feature was inordinately convenient for me when I first happened upon this blog and helped me massively during the initial binge. You should consider putting it up again although i do understand from my own experience, that wordpress does prove to be a little pain in the posterior when it comes to these things 🙂
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oneWithTheH
June 4, 2014
love the new layout. very smartphone friendly, esp. to view comments. in the desktop site though, lots of unused whitespace because of the center, justified text
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brangan
June 5, 2014
cl: “Archives” are back.
oneWithTheH: I like what you call “unused whitespace.” I like designs that have a lot of white space around the text, and the earlier one, I felt, looked a tad too text-heavy, especially given how long my pieces usually are.
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venkatesh
June 5, 2014
BR: This design wastes a lot of space , unused whitespace is fine but this does it at the expense of readability and cohesiveness.
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Anu Warrier
June 5, 2014
I’m intrigued now. I’d such hopes for Hanslal Mehta and Rajkumar Yadav, and the glowing reviews the film got elsewhere made me want to watch it. You are the first reviewer who has actually said the film is lacking (in quite a few departments, by the look of it), and from the comments, it appears that many others share your opinion. It’s interesting – now do I watch this movie or not? 🙂
MANK, Mahesh Bhatt is a hyprocritical, self-aggrandising idiot (I had other words to describe him, but I don’t think WordPress [or BR] will allow me to post them). He makes a fetish about being honest and direct – what that means is that most often, he spouts the most inane rubbish. Only, he proclaims it with such confidence that quite a few people are taken in by what they see as his ‘courage’ in standing against the tide. Balderdash! *rant over* 🙂
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vaidya
June 6, 2014
Not related to this post. Tried to find your review of ‘Naan Kadavul’ and managed to dig up a link to a desipundit.com site which turned out to be a dead end. Is that review available online anywhere at all? Thanks!
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Madan
June 7, 2014
Haven’t seen the movie. But the premise that a young, debt ridden couple could find accommodation in a flat that could sell for Rs. 3 cr itself sounds unrealistic to the core. The fact is, today’s aspiring new migrants to Mumbai would have to slum it out or at best find a chawl room to stay in because pagdi itself is at least a lakh if not more. Where does a newcomer without a job go for such money. I am not sure if filmmakers really want to make a film about the city that Mumbai has become, confront the truth that it’s just a land shark paradise and not a land of opportunity anymore.
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sordidday
June 7, 2014
Reblogged this on sordidday.
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brangan
June 7, 2014
vaidya: I didn’t do a review as such, but folded review-like points into an imaginary interview with Bala here:
https://baradwajrangan.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/conversation-with-the-creator-of-naan-kadavul/
Madan: It’s an under-construction building, so it’s quite believable.
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Madan
June 7, 2014
Ah, under construction, that makes a lot more sense. Though, typically the apartments that go for those rates are huge, way bigger than what a struggler and his family would settle for. Still, can imagine a rank newcomer to the city getting swindled into living in such conditions.
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