In which I answer a few questions on an older film… or a new one… or take on a few YouTube comments…
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#AskBR – Arjun Reddy / Kabir Singh
Posted on June 25, 2019
Baradwaj Rangan 
NaamShabana
June 25, 2019
I was reading Rahul Desai’s review of the movie on film companion and I found the way he ended his review a little strange. He says – “Maybe it’s no coincidence that the only moving part of this film is a brief montage of the two in a four-year long-distance relationship. She weeps, he struggles. Deep inside, perhaps it was reassuring to see them far apart.”
He therefore would have preferred them to be unhappy but with their gender politics correct rather than them be happy(By being together) with their gender politics wrong(And I do think the nature of relationship portrayed is bad and I found the movie difficult to watch). Is it not sad that we would prefer two people to be unhappy but our politics to be endorsed rather than see them happy in a contrary setup? Also, its not very different from parents who separate couples in the name of caste and religion( because that it is their politics). I find this preference to be paternalistic and robbing individuals of their agency. Its not only agency when it is exercised in one type of way…individuals can exercise agency to do bad things to themselves and others also. It may be bad but it is still agency.
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shaviswa
June 25, 2019
The problem with this film is not the misogyny but how it is portrayed. Had the movie taken one of the following arcs, you would not see such negative views.
Arjun is a brilliant student with anger management issues. He falls in love but abuses his girl and they fall apart. Arjun loses his way, wrecks his life, realizes his mistakes, repents, feels the pangs of separation and finally patches up with the heroine promising to have turned a new leaf and to live a happy life.
Arjun is a brilliant student with anger management issues. Falls in love, abuses, they fall apart. Guy goes further south with alcohol and drugs, wrecks his career and life, and isolates himself from everything and everyone. After many years, he meets the heroine, repents and apologizes, wishes her well in her life and moves on to live a life of repentance and whatever….
The former arc would provide the path back to a normal life. The latter is a tragedy. But with these approaches, the writer would at least provide the message that Arjun’s life was affected by his poor behaviour, his issues with anger, his misogyny, etc.
What Arjun Reddy does is to just brush past these and provide a very easy and happy path back to normal life. There is nothing that tells the hero that what he did was wrong. I did not see enough evidence of his character growing up (as you have mentioned) but for the one or two scenes where he appears to have changed. Even after growing up he is still chasing that maid.
BTW the story does not have a long period of Arjun abusing himself. It is less than 9 months of such abuse (he meets the heroine in the climax scene when she is still pregnant with his child). So when and how did he grow up?
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IMF
June 25, 2019
When I was watching Arjun Reddy – that’s one thing I kept thinking about. It could have been a great character study involving a toxic male lead. However, it totally turned out to be such a terrifyingly bad celebration of toxic masculinity.
One thing, as you said, is the male lead – Vijay’s extremely charismatic. However, there’s more though. They’ve deliberately added tropes to make him ‘heroic’ – he’s a topper and a brilliant surgeon (and that point isn’t even subtle – that’s hammered home), his love is “pure” despite him fooling around (and obviously, Preeti remains ‘chaste’ for him, that too is made pretty clear), and I could go on. And the whole stylistic sequences and the hammering BGM makes sure that you accept him as a ‘hero’. Not to mention the ‘happy ending’.
And the same thing can be said in a much more effective way, even from the male POV without glorifying it – that’s shown effectively in films like Ishq. (Spoilers) You’d pointed it out in your review too, I suppose – we hardly see anything about Vasudha (which is the point I guess), but the film makes certain that his actions aren’t glorified. His toxicity makes you squirm, and the middle finger to him is so fitting. While I get that people still may have problem with that, these things set it apart from Arjun Reddy, which is a rotten pile of garbage morally and gets serious flak for the same reason. And it’s so much worse because it’s some pretty slick making that keeps you hooked.
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Jyothsna
June 25, 2019
AS you say, both of them are nut cases and deserve each other!
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Isai
June 25, 2019
BR, it would be nice if you can use the word dominant caste instead of upper/forward caste. For one, it is more apt here, with reference to the entitlement that you were talking about. Kounders and Nadars got themselves changed from forward to backward classes in the past few decades and now some of the Reddys also want to do that for reservation benefits. So, this forward/backward terms have lost their academic meaning. Also, I feel the word backward/lower caste doesn’t sound as right (or even truly reflect the reality) as the tamil term ‘pirpaduthapattor’. I understand that it is commonly used, but it would be nice if you can avoid it.
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Isai
June 25, 2019
7:53 Glass ceiling in bollywood?
In 2008, I had this nagging feeling that when South indian movies get remade in bollywood, they receive a step motherly treatment from established hindi film critics. Their shortcomings are magnified and the highlights are only grudgingly acknowledged. I had just watched my favorite hindi film critic Rajeev Masand call hindi Ghajini a stupid, B-movie. He said it is a ‘dumb movie that celebrates its dumbness.’ I had not seen the hindi movie then and thought that when a movie gets remade, its making may suffer or due to nativity issues, its soul may not be retained. But in the last 10 years, when I look at the bollywood reviews of such remakes, I have seen that:
1. A star (say Aamir/Salman Khan) movie which is a South Indian remake, ALWAYS gets a lower rating/praise when compared to ALL other equally successful (in terms of box office) movies of the same/similar star in that period.
2. For a given star rating (say 2/5) of a critic, a South Indian remake would ALWAYS out-collect ALL similarly rated original movies of the same/similar star in that period.
3. A movie that is simultaneously made and released in a South Indian language, hindi will ALWAYS have its hindi rating <= South indian rating (rarely equal, mostly lesser), even if it given by the same publication. This will happen even if it doesn’t have any cultural/nativity issue (a recent example is the movie Game Over.)
I abhor persecution complex and would love to be proved wrong. But, I think the facts of at least the last 11 years are consistent with the above 3 points.
I feel that bollywood critics see bollywood (& themselves) as FULLY representative of Indian Cinema. They seem to have a notion similar to that of the Mahabharata – “Whatever is here, is there elsewhere. But, what is not here, is there nowhere”. So, when an ‘outside’ movie is successfully remade, they usually relate it to hindi movies of a bygone era (It has 80’s style villain etc.) or take 1 particular aspect of the movie alone and use it to strongly condemn the ENTIRE movie, as if to justify why nowadays such movies usually don’t get originally made in bollywood.
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Sai Ashwin
June 26, 2019
@Isai
I agree fully and the worst part is many of these critics are so ignorant of the more “artsy” films in South India. They only acknowledge the mainstream films by big stars or the remakes.
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vinjk
June 26, 2019
Just finished watching the video. I’m wondering as to why this video is not attracting as many “attacks” as my article? 😀
Is the tone of my writing?!
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tonks
July 9, 2019
As the recent interview with Anupama Chopra has made it clear, no de-assholefication of Arjun Reddy was conceived by the director from his “fat chick as friend” days to his laughable “objection of objectification” days. The director thinks that the hero deciding that fat chicks make better friends for pretty chicks is not objectification in the least 😀
I absolutely loved the way Anupama Chopra carried out that interview btw. She is gracious enough to hear his point of view, and charming as she defends some people he accuses, and asks relevant questions to him without in the least coming across as offensive. Hats off to her.
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tonks
July 9, 2019
I beg to differ from your opinion that how impressionable one is, does not depend on one’s age. The younger you are, the more likely you are to be influenced by things you see around you. Your brain soaks up impressions like a sponge. Aren’t most of our characters formed by the time we are in our twenties?
An interesting read in this context :
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2083410/
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Aadhy
July 9, 2019
Just caught up with Kumbalangi nights on Amazon prime, in which there’s a scene where the Bobby character tries to kiss his girlfriend (Baby) inside a theater after she’s repeatedly refused to consent. The movie they are watching is Arjun Reddy and its climax is playing over this moment. Bobby would’ve watched Arjun kiss Preethi in the movie earlier and would’ve been itching to do the same. The climax of Arjun Reddy where all’s well in the end gives Bobby the validation to plant the kiss on Baby against her liking. But the reality (in Kumbalangi nights) is different, there’s no romantic background score, no slomos, all he gets is a firm slap. He storms off the theater hurting from the slap, announcing “I’m a man”.
This scene manages both character development and a subtle ‘message’ about glorifying toxic characters. Now there isn’t one scene in Arjun Reddy where the director does not look at Arjun empathetically or lovingly or both at once. Also I think it’s naive to assume all the late-teens in their hormonal early undergrad years have the mental maturity to look at movies and not get influenced by it, if not inspired. Young couples throng theaters to watch these ‘epic romance’ sagas and apply movie logic to their lives all the time, like Bobby in that scene. There’d be girls like Baby who retaliate and also some like Preethi who’d quietly endure abuse, making it all the more important for the creator to have a distinct voice from the toxic characters he’s creating. He can love his character as much he wants and is free to show it to people, doesn’t matter how much ever an asshole the character is. But the people paying for the movie needn’t have the same fondness for his characters and he can maybe try to take the criticisms without sounding like a salty loser.
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tonks
July 10, 2019
Aadhy : Wow, I had not caught it, that the movie played during that scene was “Arjun Reddy”. Hats off to director Madhu Narayanan for sending out messages like these.
By the way, article gives another perspective into the flaw in the filmaker’s reasoning in the Film Companion interview :
https://www.thehindu.com/thread/arts-culture-society/whats-wrong-with-kabir-singh/article28330643.ece
“This mirror that Vanga is holding up also shows us that we’re using flawed arguments to defend our sexist views. In his interview, the filmmaker expresses disappointment in the people who call his movie an expression of toxic masculinity. And his supporters on social media agree, saying something to the tune of, “Just because you see it doesn’t mean you have to do it”. Why, says Vanga, I grew up watching gangster movies, but that doesn’t mean I am a gangster.
But herein lies the issue: we live in a society that has more or less made it clear that murder, shooting someone point blank, and running a drug cartel are punishable offences. While not all punishments might be enforced, we are aware that murdering someone after watching, say, The Godfather, or dealing in drug trafficking after Narcos, will probably put us in trouble. Because the unacceptability in such cases is rather cut and dried, it’s safe to justify its depiction on screen.
But does that same justification hold good when it comes to a scene depicting a girl being followed home from college? Being kissed her against her will? Being forced to ditch class and go on a date with you? Not punishable, and often laughed off by people saying “boys will be boys”.
And that is why these romanticised depictions of toxic masculinity are a problem: because society is still at a stage where large parts of it believe that that kind of behaviour is acceptable.
As for those who might say, “This is just a movie and not a prescription to young men,” I have this to say: A movie about chauvinism doesn’t have to be chauvinistic. As audiences, we welcome more films about misogynistic behaviour, because that’ll help deepen the conversation about how art influences life influences art. But to parade a movie as something that it is not will not help move the dialogue forward at all.”
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tonks
July 10, 2019
There’d be girls like Baby who retaliate and also some like Preethi who’d quietly endure abuse
But I think I do agree a little with BR’s take on the character of Preethy. She is mute but she does look at Arjun Reddy when none of the other girls do in that first scene. And though you couldn’t read her mind in the cringe inducing scenes that follow in the class room when he marks his territory, she does show the anatomy drawings on her arms to her friends like a trophy. So her character to me was portrayed as being complicit, and hence was not as problematic as someone being abused against their will. The fault I saw in the movie was in the romanticising of toxic masculinity.
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Madan
July 10, 2019
Watching Arjun Reddy in instalments on Prime video just because I wanted to see what the fuss was about. Will comment on the video when I am done.
But here’s why I think the initial romance is problematic. In isolation, we could say that since she eschewed the opportunity to voice any protest to his overtures (if they may be called that), she has consented. But when the set up shows him as the dada of the class, intimidating one and all and not taking shit even from the dean, this consent can be properly interpreted instead as acquisence under duress. Maybe with time, she starts to grow fond of her captor, just as Belle fell in love with the Beast. But the initial approach is thrust upon her and she isn’t asked if this is OK. Notably, in B&B, it is Belle who takes the first step to make love to Beast, not him thrusting his monstrous self on her. How hard can it really be to see that such advances are unwelcome? Maybe it does happen in heartland engineering colleges but it is not a world I recognise from my college days in Mumbai. Nobody would have dared talk to girls that way in our college. And SIES was just a middle class college, not a posh haunt like Jai Hind, NM or Mitibhai. I can however see why some, maybe many, men even in metros responded rapturously to Kabir Singh and I will come to it when I am done watching AR. For now, I do find the romance set up problematic and very far from romantic.
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Thupparivaalan
July 10, 2019
tonks: A lot of people have said Anupama was not confrontational enough, and I dont agree with them. What more could she do? She was already in a tricky situation.
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Madan
July 11, 2019
Finished the film and also the video. A few disagreements.
In Wolf of Wall Street, Scorsese does NOT sympathise with DiCaprio’s character. His depiction of his debauchery is utterly no holds barred but when DiCaprio mocks the policeman, it is a sad indictment of American society and not a glorification of the character. In a way, this character is the white collar version of Alex from Clockwork Orange. There too, Kubrick at no point sympathised with him. You do laugh your ass off, but at how unabashedly cruel he is and the realism of both these characters getting away with it is therefore even more hard hitting. I said it elsewhere in a KS discussion, and the problem is that our filmmakers want to make messed up characters (which is fine) but then proceed to make them the hero to protect their box office prospects. And THAT is deeply problematic. I do not feel Arjun Reddy was all that bold when you compare it to indeed Sigappu Rojakkal or Moodu Pani. Have the guts to show your main character as a villain. If you don’t have that conviction and seek to confuse and manipulate the audience, then don’t whine when critics bash you.
Now how does he manipulate the audience? By using the BGM and music to keep the focus on the love track without a reckoning of the protagonist’s flaws. Not to mention the convenient cop out ending. If you title the film after the protagonist and make it all about him, then converting it into a love beat doesn’t make sense. At various junctures also, Arjun fails to show the brutal honesty that the DiCaprio’s character does. He fails to own up to his issues and comes up with lame justifications like I am not a vagabond. Well, you are if you behave like one, no matter what background you have and what your qualification is. This should be a hold the mirror to society moment in the film but because the director is so biased in favour of the protagonist, it comes across as justifying himself instead.
Lastly, on the subject of consent, I didn’t know a woman turning and glancing at you is “making the first move”. I thought that happens when your gaze inadvertently falls on them and they want to remind you to mind your business. Reminds me of this guy who asked bunch of us internet friends whether we did not think a girl wearing revealing clothes was giving signals etc and we said she is not wearing it for you. Sorry, in my reading, the consent still comes across as obtained under duress and without consideration for the girl’s feelings. That she turns out to have feelings for him too is just a convenient cinematic construct and the film does not stretch itself to make us buy into it as plausible because again it is so biased towards him and the love track so it has to make the love track win at any cost.
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Anu Warrier
July 11, 2019
Slow clap for both Aadhy and Madan Thank you, gentlemen, you restore my faith in men.
@tonks: o her character to me was portrayed as being complicit, and hence was not as problematic as someone being abused against their will.
Tonks, abuse is problematic and complex simply because, quite often, the women (mostly, but in some cases, men, too) are complicit in their own abuse. That does not make it not abuse! It just means that they have been manipulated into accepting that abuse unquestioningly. And this is why it takes so long for many women to leave abusive relationships.
As for looking at Arjun Reddy, does looking at a man signify consent? My gaze caught that of a young man in a theatre in Trichur; I can assure you I was in no way inviting his attention. I just happened to be killing time till the box office opened. But he found out where I lived and was circling around my house with his friends the very next day. When I ignored him while walking through the gates, he let out some choice invectives – apparently I’d ‘led him on’. How? I have no idea. My brother had to come out to give them a piece of his mind. Luckily for me, they left me alone after that. Or what? I was complicit in that unwanted attention? Hell, no!
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brangan
July 11, 2019
Madan: For the 100th time, I am not saying what AR does is RIGHT. I am just saying that the film makes it easy for us to see why HE thought Preeti was giving him a sign — it’s as nutty a reason as Kamal (in GUNA) abducting the girl because he thought the temple bells rang and the arrow sign in the temple pointed to her.
(If Guna was “impaired” by his looniness, AR is “impaired” by his anger management and entitlement issues. That’s why I see them as somewhat similar characters.)
I am only looking at this as a reasoning for the CHARACTER, not from the POV of the audience (each of us will react in different ways to all this, and either buy it or not).
So when you combine this “she looked at me” scene (which makes AR thinks Preeti likes him) with Preeti showing off the anatomy diagrams or draping a blanket over him (which shows she likes him), the mutual attraction is obvious… to ME. (You don’t have to buy it.)
That’s why I keep saying that these two are nut-cases and they deserve each other.
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Madan
July 11, 2019
BR: But that “she was the only one who looked at me” comes very late in the day (almost an afterthought). During the set up itself, we are led to believe she remained mute and non committal all the while that he dragged her with him. At least I find it difficult to change my assessment of the scene post facto. I am not saying you said what is shown in AR is right. I only disagreed with your reading and felt the film doesn’t invest a whole lot in depicting consent (possibly because the director deemed it unimportant).
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Madan
July 11, 2019
I also didn’t get the “two nutcases who deserve each other” thing out of it because the narration was too slanted towards AR’s perspective with next to nothing about what she wants. I still don’t know why, just subjectively and not logically, she is so madly in love with him. We are just told to accept that she is. But when it is imposed like that, multiple interpretations of that are possible. Yours as well as Anupama Chopra’s is that they are nutcases who deserve each other. Mine is that she is a captive who is now dependent on the captor. And that is why even after marrying another person, she longs to be with him. Because he created a dependency that won’t go away. There is not one frame where he stretches himself, sacrifices his ego to win her heart. He just orders her to love him and over time she agrees.
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sanjana
July 11, 2019
Preeti may be feeling happy that a goon hero selected her over other girls. Some weak girls fall for such goon hero types!
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brangan
July 11, 2019
sanjana: Exactly my point. I remember mentioning this incident earlier (I think during REMO), but I’ll mention it again.
It was only when I spoke to girls from smaller towns and cities that I realise that it was a matter of pride for having a boy “follow” them. This thing we see in Tamil and Telugu films, of men just following women from a distance — that’s really a measure of social worth for some of them.
This is not the case with AR of course, and as I said, I really wish I had gotten to know more about Preeti and her thinking, but I bring this up to say what we deem as problematic is a way of life for many people. That’s THEIR story — and it is up to us to say “I buy this” or “I don’t buy this”, based on how we see and read the film.
Now, take the “girls being followed” example above:
Is it a problem in real life? Yes.
But am I okay seeing one the story of one of these girls up there on the screen, but from the POV of the boy? Again, yes.
Anyway, this argument keeps going around in circles, so… 🙂
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Madan
July 11, 2019
Whether it is problematic for Preeti to choose as she does is not my concern. My concern is why she chose as she did is never explained. As I said, the director cannot make up his mind whether to show unadulterated toxic masculinity or a love story and ends up mixing both. And that is what is problematic for me.
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Isai
July 11, 2019
“Because he created a dependency that won’t go away.” How is he ALONE responsible for this dependency? I consider that mental faculties are independent of gender and for me, that includes taking responsibility for one’s actions and not playing the victim card. As Sanjana said, some weak girls may fall for the goon hero types (a reversal of this weak girl – strong guy trope is in Jai-Nayanthara relationship of Raja Rani) but in that case as BR said, both of them are nutcases.
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Madan
July 11, 2019
Isai : Ah but that is precisely the problem I have with how it is filmed. I have not met women so incapable of agency, not even in lower class. I actually gave the director benefit of doubt and said for me to buy into the universe he created, I would have needed to see something about why Preeti made love to him in return. But what was shown in the film does not correspond to my reality. And not only am I a middle class guy who grew up in some boondocks 50km from Mumbai, I am a lot less privileged than Arjun Reddy. So I don’t want to hear about how out of touch I am with real India blah blah. You can’t have real India rural squalor and Rome backpacking trips in that case.
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Isai
July 11, 2019
“But what was shown in the film does not correspond to my reality.”
BR made this point in a very interesting interview in 2015:
“But then, one thing that most people don’t understand is that most films are stories of people behaving in a particular way. It’s only when you extrapolate it and say that people in films should behave like how YOU imagine people should behave – that’s when you get into all these problems.”
http://indiaindependentfilms.com/2016/03/06/conversations-with-baradwaj-rangan/
Also, I get that you didn’t buy into how Preeti seems to be so incapable of agency which I suppose means that you found it to be unrealistic but this still doesn’t justify why you consider him alone to be responsible for the dependency. Either Preeti had agency and she was a nutcase or she didn’t have any agency which makes the portrayal unrealistic leaving the director at fault. But, we can’t take it out on the character and say he alone is responsible for the dependency.
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tonks
July 11, 2019
Madan “felt the film doesn’t invest a whole lot in depicting consent (possibly because the director deemed it unimportant)”
I think that hits the nail on the head.
For me, it was plausible that Preeti could have been flattered by his attention at first sight. I wouldn’t blame her. He is perhaps the best looking male lead I have seen in a movie recently. And though it is not overt consent, there are umpteen non verbal ways of showing attraction to someone, and one of them is holding their gaze.
But his subsequent arrogant, entitled, marking his territory behaviour in the classroom was insufferable. All that drinking, smoking, bravado, bluster, anger and glamorisation of toxic masculinity was what I had a problem with, in the movie.
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Madan
July 11, 2019
Isai : I allow that there is more than version of reality, especially in India. But if the film does not explain itself, I do not find the explanation that this is a different reality from what I know to be convincing. I have never been to London and wasn’t born in the 70s. So how come I did not have problems with the world of Clockwork Orange? Because it was well written. And Arjun Reddy is not. The director did not get the story in his head onto film. You are attempting to construe an artistic criticism as based on our understanding of reality which it is not. I said it before and I will say it again. I can buy into a different reality, indeed a different universe when that universe is coherently explained. If it is not, I have the right to point out that it is not and that the outcome is therefore problematic. That is not censorship.
Now coming to Preeti, you are inventing a binary alternative – that either she should have shown agency or that she was a nutcase. But there is a third option and which is what I have been stressing on again and again : consent obtained by coercion. When a diminutive girl from a different state is ordered to go with this intimidating 6 foot stud, acquiesing to his demand doesn’t make her a nutcase. Remember at first she complains and her father meets the dean. But when she learns that Arjun is a family acquaintance, she feels helpless and gives up the fight. This is why for Arjun to claim she made the first move feels disingenuous to me and pretty much a self justification for thrusting himself on her. Again, the director did not bother to define Preeti’s character at all and in the absence of anything to indicate how she chooses, how she thinks, it takes a leap of logic to believe she is just a nutcase like him. In QSQT, Juhi’s desire to be with Aamir even at the fatal cost of infuriating the warring families was well brought out. I am surprised that such a long and layered film like AR failed to achieve even that. But to do so, it would have had to cut down on the length at which it dwelled on the protagonist and given her space instead. As I said, a confused film.
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Aadhy
July 11, 2019
Tonks: So her character to me was portrayed as being complicit, and hence was not as problematic as someone being abused against their will.
You’re right. She’s rather quietly playing complicit than enduring abuse. It felt to me the first look of hers at Arjun Reddy was one of being intimidated (natural for a college freshie) towards a mighty senior, rather than one of attraction. Maybe it is the actor’s limitation or I missed it. it’s hard to say. Also in the movie’s chronology, the showing-off diagrams scene happens in the song montage which starts after he kisses her IIRC, until wjhich she wore this disinclined look all the time. Maybe that’s when she fell for him. This is when the movie lost me and I could not make sense of anything afterwards. You need to buy their love story to invest in Arjun’s journey through self-destruction and redemption later, which I didn’t.
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tonks
July 11, 2019
It felt to me the first look of hers at Arjun Reddy was one of being intimidated (natural for a college freshie) towards a mighty senior, rather than one of attraction. Maybe it is the actor’s limitation or I missed it. it’s hard to say
Also in the movie’s chronology, the showing-off diagrams scene happens in the song montage which starts after he kisses her IIRC, until which she wore this disinclined look all the time
Actually, yes, when I think about it, I do agree with both these observations. Not disinclined exactly, but mute, and very passive.
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Isai
July 11, 2019
Thanks for the clarification Madan. I fully agree with your last comment. But I feel that the logic of coercion cannot be extended to that extent to suggest that he alone created the dependency. She had initiated sex with him, later she has got married to someone else and he was out of her life. At that stage, to suggest that he ALONE had created a dependency seems like an attempt to absolve her of any responsibility for her actions and IMHO it is just like saying avan billi sooniyam vechuthaan.
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Madan
July 11, 2019
Isai: While I do not disagree with what you are saying there, I insist that the fault there lies with how the director developed the narrative. There is a dissonance between how AR won over Preeti – through pure intimidation – and her level of commitment to him. I am not interested in who is to blame for the dependency here so much as I am saying that this is a captor-captive like relationship with AR as a Svengali like figure rather than mutual lunacy. If you ask me who is to blame, I will simply say it’s the director as this is the story he chose to give us. And to my mind, he appears oblivious to the power disparity in the relationship. If he really wanted us to see them as two nutcases in love, he needed to make her a much stronger character.
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Madan
July 11, 2019
Just found this. Amazing how much his reading tallies with mine. Yes, the film tried to do much as a result of which its positive commentary – against casteism and substance abuse – gets shrouded and yes the manipulative BGM was problematic. Particularly when the sound design is GOOD and BGM is used sparingly, it really holds up directorial intent in a spotlight.
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