Spoilers ahead…
Omung Kumar was Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s production designer before he turned director, so certain things are a given. He likes strong women characters. His first film was Mary Kom. His latest is Sarbjit, about the Punjabi man who wandered off into Pakistan and was arrested as a spy – but the film should have been named for his sister Dalbir (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan). It’s really her story, about her determination to bring him back to her pind. It’s a Mother India-like lone-woman-braving-the-storm narrative, and Dalbir is less a character than an inspirational archetype like Radha, the character Nargis played (she, too, kept searching for a missing man) – you half-expect Dalbir to plough a tunnel between the neighbouring countries and smuggle her brother back. We don’t get too many of these women on screen anymore.
The other Bhansali influence is in the melodrama. Two characters separated by the LOC but joined by the moon they gaze at, by the rain that drenches them – it’s that kind of melodrama, where nature unites what humans divide. Early on in the film, a celebratory dance in bright light and brighter colours gives way, in the next scene, to stormy skies and the rustle of dead leaves when Dalbir’s child dies – it’s that kind of melodrama, where nature reflects human suffering, even commiserates with it, like a solicitous decorator who keeps changing the wallpaper to suit your mood. Animals and birds chip in too. Sarbjit (Randeep Hooda) is first seen with pigeons on his outstretched arms, and when he dies, one of them flutters across the screen, as though his soul is rising to the skies. The best moment of pure visual melodrama comes when Sarbjit, in prison, receives his first letter from home. It’s slipped into his cell, and the minute he begins to read it, the lights go off. But nature steps in to compensate, through a shaft of light that streaks down from a high window. Sarbjit slips his hands through the bars of his cell and holds the letter up to the light. This is where you know a master from an apprentice. Had Bhansali filmed the scene, you’d have felt the gooseflesh.
Omung Kumar doesn’t have the craft to manufacture intense poetry out of intimate moments – and in its absence, he has to rely on a prosaic screenplay that must have read like a Wikipedia page. It’s fact after rushed fact. Daljit goes to Pakistan! Pokhran happens! Dalbir petitions the Prime Minister! Kasab happens! Dalbir gets help from a lawyer! Unfortunately, a lot of this is played at a fairly realistic scale, where the melodrama isn’t in the genre but in the overbearing style. Listening to the high-pitched score during a scene of torture, you’re not sure who, exactly, is being hung upside down and whipped: Sarbjit or the players in the string section. A character actually yells, “Door karo isko hamari nazron se,” a line probably last heard circa Bahu Begum. It isn’t just the Westernised eye of the Akhtar siblings that’s accelerating the demise of this very Indian mode of storytelling. It’s also filmmakers like Omung Kumar, who dive into it without knowing how to swim.
And without the scaffolding of a strong screenplay, we begin to yearn for characters rather than archetypes. Everyone’s a type – Wife, Husband, Sister, Brother, Daughter – and the few moments that work are when we get a glimpse of the people they really are. There’s a good scene where Sarbjit’s wife Sukhpreet (Richa Chaddha) gently reproaches Dalbir for her unceasing martyrdom, and another in which Sarbjit’s daughter rails at her aunt. “Apni is ladaai ko hamaari zindagi mat banaao,” We suddenly see what it must be like to be the daughter of a father who’s only in newspapers and on TV and on missing-person posters. But we need a transition scene to show how this daughter reconciled herself to meeting her father in prison. It’s a moving moment with the whole family reunited, but it feels incomplete because of the loose emotional strands.
This is a remarkable real-life story, with remarkable emotional peaks. When Sarbjit receives his first letter in prison, his name is struck out, and the name “Ranjit” is written over it – that’s whose crimes he’s being accused of. Dalbir gave this man his identity back. She made him “Sarbjit” again in front of the world. This is also the story of collateral damage in two countries. A Pakistani father still mourning the loss of his son has this to say when Dalbir insists her brother is innocent. “Begunaah to donon parivaar hain, par sazaa to kaat rahe hain na?” Another nice line – between Dalbir and Sarbjit’s Pakistani lawyer (Darshan Kumar) – harks back to simpler times, a simpler India. “Apne bhai ke liye lad rahi hoon main,” she says, and asks what his motive is. He simply says, “Main bhi.” I misted up a wee bit. How can all this result in such a dull movie, which is neither a gripping familial drama nor a tense legal thriller?
Every time we see Hooda, we see a slightly better movie. He’s showier here than he usually is, employing techniques from the I’ll Starve Until My Ribs Show school of acting. But he has a mad glint in the eyes and he moves like a broken puppet. I did not understand half the lines he said, but I understood his pain. As for Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, she’s clearly given it her everything – and in the South Indian Heroine Trying To Pass For A Punjabi sweepstakes, she certainly scores over Hema Malini in Ek Chadar Maili Si. But the character isn’t in her comfort zone, and it shows. She’s best when playing spunky achievers (in Mani Ratnam’s and Bhansali’s films, or in Ram Gopal Varma’s Sarkar Raj), and her worst instincts come out when she plays characters who are sad and suffering. The director doesn’t help her either, asking her to do ridiculous things like break down in a mustard field, or accost a man carrying an orange. And for someone not exactly known for her dialogue delivery, she gets far too many speeches – in between looking for her brother, she seems to be contesting in the Wagah elections. She’s more eloquent in the silent anguish that passes over her face when her child dies. All these years on, the camera still loves that face.
I can’t vouch for the veracity of her Punjabi accent, but it sounds very odd – and I kept wondering if there’s something else, something more than just how good an actress she is (or isn’t), something about the person she is. In older times, all we knew about Waheeda Rehman outside of her films was, say, that she used Lux soap, but with today’s 24×7 media coverage, how easy is it for actors to make us forget purple-lipsticked appearances in Cannes? I think I’m trying to say that an actor’s off-screen persona is a much bigger contributor to their on-screen performance today than it was earlier. Maybe a Neerja worked because Sonam Kapoor’s character was more-or-less Sonam Kapoor, give or take a few crores of personal net worth, but much as we try, it’s really hard to see a very visible brand ambassadress for L’Oréal sweating under a Punjabi sun, trying to fit the snapped strap of a dusty rubber chappal back into its toe-hole.
KEY:
- Sarbjit = see here
- pind = village
- Mary Kom = see here
- Mother India = see here
- “Door karo isko hamari nazron se” = get lost, but in an old-style-Hindi-film manner
- Bahu Begum = see here
- “Apni is ladaai ko hamaari zindagi mat banaao” = Your battle is not our life.
- “Begunaah to donon parivaar hain, par sazaa to kaat rahe hain na?” = Both families are innocent, but they’re being punished.
- “Apne bhai ke liye lad rahi hoon main” = I’m fighting for my brother.
- “Main bhi” = Me too.
- Ek Chadar Maili Si = see here
- Sarkar Raj = see here
- Neerja = see here
- rubber chappal = flip flops
Copyright ©2016 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
neeraja
May 21, 2016
I believe that any true artist will absorb us into their stories their characters and the lives they portray either on screen, stage or page! they can easily make us forget how they stand in real life. The fact is that Aishwarya is the most artificial, talent free, superficial creation who cannot be described as an artist lest we disrespect all art and artists.
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Vikram
May 21, 2016
Hi BR, re: the last para, I am not sure if it’s all down to the actor…if that were the case, how come audiences accepted ranvir Singh (brand ambassador for lux underwear) and priyanka chopra (brand ambassador for rajnigandha elaichi, marvel tea and appy fizz) as baji rao and kashi Bai…IMHO…it’s more to do with the director and a little bit to do with the actor…
In the present case, I guess the dalbir role needs someone who looks earthy…and there seems to be another reason…maybe someone like nandita das?
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RSN
May 21, 2016
Could Ranaut have pulled off Dalbir Nair?
Or,say, Vidya Balance? Even Parineeti?
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gvsafamily
May 21, 2016
Neeraja: spot on!
But I don’t think she was this insufferable always. In fact, when I watched ‘kandu kondein kandu kondein’ I remember thinking of her as the complete package – the arresting face, expressive eyes, perfect lip sync (proving her commitment to the craft) and somehow even felt her heartbreak in the ‘enge enadhu kavithai’ song….
I guess something changed drastically along the way and a lot of it perhaps has to do with the crop of directors she’s been working with…
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Ravi K
May 21, 2016
L’oreal ads or not, Aishwarya Rai is simply not suited for these earthy roles. Many attractive actors and actresses have some flexibility about how attractive they look on-screen, depending on lighting and makeup. Charlize Theron is barely recognizable in “Monster,” for example. But Rai just has one of those faces where, even if you put grey streaks in her hair and chunky glasses over her eyes, she still looks stunning. She never really falls completely into these roles. It always feels like she’s playing pretend. Whereas, for something like HDDCS, you cannot imagine anyone else playing her role.
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RSN
May 21, 2016
Sorry,typos galore
Dalbir *Kaur
Vidya *Balan
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sanjana
May 21, 2016
Rajeshwari Sachdev is one of those rare actresses who can take pains to master a dialect and sound authentic too. She is a National award winning actress in a supporting role. In Balikavadhu, she spoke rural rajasthani language with ease and sounded flawless.
Why dont producers and directors think of casting such people for biopics instead of running after glamorous leading ladies?
Anyways I appreciate Rai for trying. Her next film will require her to be classy and she can do justice there.
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Vishal
May 22, 2016
Don’t know about the accent, but Madhuri Dixit would have a great choice, imo.
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soumyabharathi
May 22, 2016
I keep on wondering how the film would have turned out with Richa Chadda and Aishwarya swapping their roles, Richa playing fiery fighter of a sister and Aishwarya playing the silent suffering wife? But then again I guess its not so much of her brand ambassador status as her larger than life stardom that’s comes in her way of slipping into any character..
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sanjana
May 22, 2016
Director should have been someone like Ashutosh Gowariker or Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra.
Divya Dutta would have been near perfect as the sister.
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Sami Qahar
May 22, 2016
Punjabi accent was painful. Sounded more haryanvi. And she couldn’t pronounce KH and said K instead.
Darji was the worst character of the film. No emotion no connection. Many cases odd wrong casting.
They could have taken richa for the sister and someone like radhika apte for the wife. The film was distant.
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brangan
May 22, 2016
This isn’t about how “good” an actor is, and I agree that Ash isn’t the greatest. (Though I do find her very persuasive in Sarkar Raj, the Ratnam/Bhansali films, especially Devdas.)
My question — rather wondering-out-loud — is more about whether certain actors can cross over into certain parts without the audience noticing a “dissonance.” I feel that there is always a bandwidth within which we accept actors, and this bandwidth is a combination of many things including their public persona.
PS: Also, I find that Richa Chaddha is a tad overrated. Yes, she’s good, but in all her films I’ve found a certain tendency to hold back and I don’t find much of a range. Then again, she hasn’t been around all that long — but this is just based on what I’ve seen of her.
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sunitha sudarshan
May 22, 2016
Hi…I don’t know how fair you are in your reviews because 90% of the time I am in sync with your assessment but I really love the way you express and put accross your feelings and thoughts so succinctly with relevance to what you are writing compared to any of your contemporaries..eg.in today’s article on Illarayaja ..’But Illarayaja’s was the ….but let me try again’. Wonderful..I’ve always felt the same but could never have put it so effectively, in words..loved reading your book too,more so because I traverse Hindi,Tamil,not so much the recent ones though, and English n a smattering of good regional just like you and am a Tambram from Bangalore…Thnx,Sunitha Sudarshan,a fan.
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Sri
May 23, 2016
Nice point about Loreal using Aishwarya somehow not clicking it as earthy person fighting for her brother. I think this might also be a curse for a lot of Indian actors. You see them so much on TV, the magic or rather the mystery almost doesnt exist.
The best actors like magicians possess this mystery. Like Kevin Spacey, What do you really know about the guy. All it takes for him to make you believe he is a scheming whip of the house who has bigger ambitions is less than 2 minutes. Of course, script , direction and everything else do take importance.
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Sami Qahar
May 23, 2016
BR partly agreed on chadda. GoW and fukrey have different range. Masaan was underwhelming. She was wasted in this one. Her range is not known yet. She needs the roles kangana gets but she’d never get those roles.
Ash has never been good barring HDDS. Even with ratnam, her raavan performance was ordinary.
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the brangan fan
May 23, 2016
films like this and azhar are not biopics,they are just tributes in memory of someone whose life story is a good one liner
films like nayagan and yennai arindhaal are the actual biopics(though they were never promoted by saying “the terrific story of…..”)
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NivyaNKP
May 24, 2016
I cant agree about what u said that an actor’s off-screen persona has more contribution than their on-screen. Then why are people buying tickets for Salman Khan movies and buying things such as he is a good,responsible citizen, a humanitarian and stuff like that considering that his image has been tainted by the black buck poaching case, and of course the hit and run case.
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brangan
May 24, 2016
So a question to those who’ve seen the film. Randeep gets drunk, lingers dangerously on the markers along the border, falls over on the other side and is picked up by a jeep. So there was no barbed wire fence etc. then?
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Venkat Ramanan CS
May 24, 2016
BR, still waiting for a review of kammatipaadam
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ramitbajaj01
May 24, 2016
There was none, sir. The place got the barbed wiring after Sarabjit’s arrest. Dalbir laments this fact in the movie, and wonders what the fate would have been if the govt had taken this step 3 years earlier.
I think the apathy of the establishment ruining common lives was the running theme in the movie.
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Rocky
March 23, 2024
Watched Swantantra Veer Savarkar yesterday. What a superb movie. No songs and romance yet so gripping . Hooda simply excels as an actor and director .
The dialogs are so pointed, piercing yet do not come across as melodramatic .
There is so much history to cover that at times it may look rushed . Also all the conversations with the British are in English , and there are many ( some long ones too) , I think that will hamper its business in B and C centers.
It is so honest that I wont be surprised if WB bans it in a few day.
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Rocky
April 6, 2024
Hats off to Anmol , who is perceived to be from the FC camp to actually interview Randeep Hooda !!
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