The film feels like an anecdote stretched into a novel. By the end, the loose plot does come together, but it doesn’t feel like it’s been worth this kind of build-up.
Spoilers ahead…
What a curious film this is! There’s, first, the tone. The story begins with the friction between Mirza Sheikh (Amitabh Bachchan), who manages his wife’s crumbling haveli in Lucknow, and a cussed tenant named Baankey Rastogi (Ayushmann Khurrana). The latter lives with his mother and sisters in a small space whose rent has stayed the same since he was a baby. Mirza wants to earn more from all his tenants, and as “revenge”, he steals their light bulbs and bicycle bells and sells them for loose change. There’s a downbeat, Dickensian air to this greedy man, to whom money means everything. His kurta-pyjama set seems to have been stitched during the Sepoy Mutiny, and he walks with a stoop in a way that suggests he’d rather walk with that stoop than shell out cash for a doctor’s services.
Read the rest of this article here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/reviews/bollywood-review/shoojit-sircars-gulabo-sitabo-on-amazon-prime-the-too-carefully-curated-mood-feels-tonally-off-with-this-material-baradwaj-rangan-ayushmann-khurrana-amitabh-bachchan/
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Vikram s
June 25, 2020
Hi BR, was waiting for your pov on GS. I saw it first day, I wanted to like it but there wasn’t much to grasp. Both the main characters were cardboard cutouts, the spice came from the supporting actors (Christopher Clark 🙂 , he even says hum lunch aur dinner khaate hai). It seemed like the writer-director duo went about squeezing any fun that might have been there in the premise or the situations. Also, I felt this was another director who wants to rob ABs legacy of all the heroics of yore… Here, it’s difficult for a fan to watch him as a feeble old man with no redeeming qualities.
I am glad this one went straight to OTT, it didn’t have a chance to run in theatres (not sure whom they were targeting in the theatre, I couldn’t fathom quite a few local lingo dialogues, was depending on subtitles quite a bit)
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An Jo
June 25, 2020
Beneath the comic musical-beats of GULABO SITABO, there carries a twang of pain for every beat. There’s a reasoning for everything here; why Amitabh was chosen? Why was he lisping on about his famous movie ‘Deewal’?
In perhaps one of his most unadulterated movies ever, coming close on the heels of October—that had a bad actor to begin with—Shoojit takes the finest actor-star the Hindi film industry has ever seen, and pits him against an actor who is known to own small-town-actor roles.
This is a film about people not letting go. The irony that Shoojit and writer Juhi Chaturvedi want to focus on is not just the so-called ‘older’ people, but the younger ones too! And that’s Ayushman’s Bankey Rastogi…
https://satyamshot.wordpress.com/2020/06/21/an-jo-on-on-gulabo-sitabo/
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krishikari
June 25, 2020
You nailed it!
I was a fan of Ayushman and not really a fan of AB ( I know, blasphemy) but this film reversed that. Too bad the film as a whole didn’t go anywhere satisfying with all the promising bits and pieces because not one single character, especially Baankey who got so much screen time had a proper arc.
” Curated” is the perfect word to describe this collection of characters and set ups without pay outs.
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krishikari
June 25, 2020
Shoojit takes the finest actor-star the Hindi film industry has ever seen, and pits him against an actor who is known to own small-town-actor roles.
AB beats AK at his own game, if you want to look at it that way, but the writing let AK down. He plays what’s written, he doesn’t bring anything of his own.
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abishekspeare
June 25, 2020
The only way i related to October was I too felt like going into coma halfway through the movie.
The biggest reason for watching this film to me was to see the Angry Young Man(AYM) of India who defined a generation of movies come to logger heads with Ayushman Khurrana, who has to his credit created a whole new Ayushman(AYM) genre. And hence, my biggest disappointment with Gulabo Sitabo is it doesn’t have enough… Gulabo Sitabo. The AYM vs AYM is the so underwhelming.
This is NOT a movie that’s designed to be seen on a streaming platform where you can fast forward an uninteresting scene or pause the video ten times to go fill your snacks. Wonder how differently it would have turned out had it released in theaters.
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Anu Warrier
June 25, 2020
I so badly wanted to like this movie. But I too, felt that it could have been cut by an hour without losing anything. I didn’t mind that none of the characters were likeable. AB was rather good, though again, halfway through the movie, I wanted it to end.
Loved the Begum and the sister, most of all. Ayushman is in danger of becoming a stereotype, isn’t he? He just didn’t fit in, really. He’s playing ‘Ayushman playing another version of the Dilli ka Munda. VIjay Raaz and Brijesh Kalra were good, but their characters too seemed ‘stock’.
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ravenus1
June 26, 2020
My take on the film:
Unlike my previous Shoojit Sircar experience with Piku, the tone here (like Amitabh Bachchan’s oversized prosthetic nose) struck me as completely wrong. What should have been a bleak vehicle about a pathetic rat-like scavenger with grandiose dreams, where the humor should come in biting irony, is painfully shoehorned into a sitcom with grating “comedy scene wala” background music. Ayushman Khurana’s character exists solely because someone wanted to sign on Bachchan and Khurana and put it on the marketing blitz. It’s a part not worthy of the actor and dilutes the film’s anchor, which is Bachchan’s Mirza character. Even the end of what feels like an extended slogfest is ruined by an imbecilic coda.
Amitabh is surprisingly good as the wretched geezer. If they had made it with the right tone he had the chops to give a moving performance. But that’s just a load of coulda-shoulda-yada-yada.
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brangan
June 26, 2020
ravenus1: By coda, you are talking about the chat the two of them have just before the closing credits (the “meri jawani” thing)?
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ravenus1
June 26, 2020
No, I meant the birthday party with the dhinchak music and need to show a trendy “with it” grannie? Fatima has already shown her feelings towards Mirza and this was just a pointless add-on that destroys the atmosphere of pathos that was developing after the previous reveal.
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ravenus1
June 26, 2020
btw BR, I am curious to know, what is the procedure for a Readers Write-in? How can one request to contribute and whether there’s any vetting procedure involved?
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brangan
June 26, 2020
Just email me with your submission. See CONTACT link above.
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Ramit
June 26, 2020
@ravenus1- I think the point of showing trendy grannie was to highlight the ‘worth’ of old age. It fitted well with the scene where an old chair is priced much more than what Mirza could think of. I guess the theme was to show the myopic gaze of some people. The movie kept on underlining the importance of education by showing the ignorance of Baankey and Mirza, who often needed other people to make sense of their surroundings, and also, who failed to realize that their greater good lied in being transparent with their folks and not by constantly scheming against them.
By the way, I didn’t like AB much here. I thought his mannerisms were getting repetitive after a while. There were about five instances where he ‘falls down’ out of shock. I wish he had reserved different reactions for different shock scenes.
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Madan
June 28, 2020
I agree much more with AnJo’s views here though I would not rate AB’s performance here as the best. I mean I think he made the most of the hand he was allowed to play but neither he nor AK had much width though they had a lot of screen time. But that seemed to be intentional; they were playing a particular kind of character here. Remove the heritage angle and you could make the same movie about innumerable properties here in Girgaum (and their erstwhile counterparts in Matunga which has been more ‘efficiently’ bulldozed out of existence). The harsh and brash cut-to to the neo-liberal world passing them by was also apt in a way; whilst they squabble over petty considerations, the world is leaving them behind.
As Ramit says, it brings out the importance of education and there is something symbolic about Baankey and Mirza sharing the screen in the last scene because they both think themselves shrewd and smart but they really don’t know as much as they think they do. Baankey’s sister comes up with a good hustle but all Fauzia has to do is to marry into a mall culture world that’s out of the reach of his chakki. And without Fatima Mansion, Mirza’s only vocation is that of a reluctant rickshaw puller.
Yes, the pacing was slow but it was not an insurmountable issue for me and also felt apt for the mileu. I think the pacing was, if anything, a good deal faster than Piku. There’s a lot of conversation over nothing much happening in Piku but it works because of the protagonist’s quirks.
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An Jo
June 30, 2020
** Sreehari Nair on GS**
This is not just Amitabh Bachchan’s finest performance in the last 30 years; it’s also a performance that puts the Bachchan hysteria to shame.
The angry young man is, here, a grumbling old fool, and the template-to-chronicler journey feels like an evolutionary leap.
For this role, he has quite literally made the journey, from Mumbai, the city responsible for the Bachchan template, to the state of his birth, where, one assumes, he must have spent hours as a child, studying and swallowing human frailties.
https://www.rediff.com/movies/column/gulabo-sitabo-is-amitabhs-finest-performance/20200630.htm
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Saahil Siddiqui
July 1, 2020
I disagree with you baddy sir on this one. Wrote a short piece here on saahilsid.wordpress.com which is basically my review of the film. Do check it out if you have time
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An Jo
July 2, 2020
@Saahil; really loved this part – The shared singularity of greed. Overestimation of short-term materialistic gains and under-valuation of human relationships. It makes a statement on the human nature of gold-digging (quite literally) based on assumptions, whims and fantasies that eventually lead to nowhere. After all, the lowest common denominator incessantly lives in “hopeless hope”. Under the sheepish skin of a slice-of-life comedy is a film that makes profound points.
Fine summation on the spirit of the movie! Please keep writing!!
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Sai Ashwin
July 9, 2020
@Ramit I think the important point here is “I guess the theme was to show the myopic gaze of some people” which you said suggests extrapolation. Now I don’t think every film needs one single theme unifying the film with coherence but usually most mainstream films contain one core idea like that. I think the problem I felt with the film is I did not feel this theme/core that makes the film feel coherent at the end. Instead after the film ended I just felt “That was interesting but what was the point?”.
I too share the dislike with the stupid dhinchak music with Begum at the end. At that moment it just felt that the film was looking down and laughing at Mirza and Baankey. They might not be great people but I felt such a treatment was unwarranted.
We spend the entire film with these two characters, understanding why they are the way they are, and why they behave the way they do. But the film refuses to share any insight to the audience. This was especially bad with Mirza’s character, I mean why does he love the haveli so much? So much that he didn’t have any heirs so he could have it all, and why would someone like the even agree to sell the haveli? So many of the character motivations are unclear. These could be answered with “cuz he is greedy” but that make the character super one dimensional.
There was a small moment where Baankey says to Guddu while they are lying on their bed that be it a flat or a LIC, they have to live together. Referring to their previous argument and suggesting to put aside their differences for the sake of the family. This was a mature comment and the moment showed that there is more to Baankey than we have seen. But in the rest of the film there are no more such character moments and not even one for Mirza.
Now you don’t have to do a complete 180 and make them super good people all of a sudden but just make them feel like real people would be nice. Way too many characters feel cartoony, when its supporting characters like the Lawyer or the Archeology guy then it’s fine, these characters can afford to be cartoony but not the main characters.
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brangan
July 9, 2020
Sai Ashwin: Now I don’t think every film needs one single theme unifying the film with coherence…
That’s a brilliant, brilliant point and I would take this further and argue that every film NEEDS a core theme that provides what you call “coherence” (whether this core theme is spelt out or not).
Here, it’s so loose and the characters are so ill-defined that the theme could be anything from history/modernity to “women having the last laugh” to you-name-it…
That’s what I meant when I said: “By the end, the loose plot does come together vaguely in the head, but it doesn’t feel like it’s been worth THIS kind of build-up.”
Because the build-up is so unfocused…
Compare this with BHONSLE, another slow film with a lot of darkness and misanthropy. There’s never much doubt about the overarching structure, even if the sub-themes may lead me to different interpretations than yours…
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Sreehari
July 9, 2020
If you apply the theory that “a film needs to a unifying theme,” more than 80% of those French New Wave films would cease to exist. Something like a Shoot The Piano Player, for example, combines themes, impressions, chance encounters, and yet that only makes the film more life-like. A maker’s unified vision of life, of art (present in at least the first hour of GS) is more important than a “unified theme.”
The most interesting Indian films being made today illuminate something about Life — they seem to say, without saying it in as many words, that film critics and cinephiles would probably benefit from attending a Life Appreciation Course than a Film Appreciation Course.
On that subject, what is the core theme of Nashville?
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