The story is built on staples of old-time Hindi cinema, from twins to a widowed mother to revenge for a murdered father. But instead of the traditional series of emotional highs, we get a leisurely paced film filled with a sense of how these events may unfold in the real world. The mix of grit and tongue-in-cheek humour is joyous and infectious. A longer review follows, and it may contain spoilers.
To get a sense of Anurag Kashyap’s new movie (or new half-movie, given that this is Part 1), I’ll describe the opening scene in some detail. The scene is about a bank robbery. What would you expect? Nail-biting tension? A pulse-pounding score? Fast cutting? In short, a jangly sense of the audience’s nerves being shredded? But here’s how Anurag sees it. It begins with a leisurely chat between a bank officer and the man who makes great poori-chana, and a cameo by Lijo Jose Pellissery. It moves on to a very comic stretch where a man in a mask reads out a set of threatening instructions. It moves on to the sight of a couple in a car, where the man gets out to have a leisurely conversation with a security guard, where he talks about Rajinikanth and Geraftaar. And then, the cops move in. Someone is arrested and taken to the police station, where we get a leisurely conversation about a dream. Everything happens in a flavourful, roundabout way, reminiscent of reading a juicy (and yes, leisurely) book on a long train journey.
With its hinterland setting and localised accents, with its story that spans at least two generations, with its casual bloodletting, with its elaborate and elongated scenes, with its brash male characters and strong female characters, with its many eccentric indulgences, Nishaanchi may sound like Gangs of Wasseypur. There’s even the emotional distance, the result of the whole thing resembling the work of a postmodern prankster rather than a traditional dramatist. But these are just surface-level similarities. The two films are very different. Nishaanchi is smaller in scope, and it does not have the feel of a sprawling saga that tells the story of a place and its people. It’s also much lighter in tone – and it’s the most fun Anurag Kashyap has had in a while. He’s really enjoying himself here. He may overuse an in-joke from Scarface, but it’s one of things you brush aside easily because of how fresh the film looks and feels, with cinematographer Sylvester Fonseca almost becoming a co-director with his breathtaking work. If you want to masturbate to cinema, this is your dog-eared copy of Debonair.
Nishaanchi is set in Kanpur, and its foundation is a mix of clichés and tropes from older Hindi cinema. (The writing is by the director, Ranjan Chandel and Prasoon Mishra.) The opening sounds of the film come from the prayers at a mosque and the clanging of temple bells, suggesting a time of “Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai”. We get the equivalent of two friends in love with the same girl, the widowed mother at her sewing machine, the Ram aur Shyam-like mix of strong and weak brothers, someone out to avenge a father’s murder, the zamindar out to snatch the meagre pockets of lands belonging to poorer people, the villain adopting the hero’s son and leading him to a life of crime, the cabaret dancer who oozes sass and sex… But unlike the older films, Nishaanchi isn’t larger than life. It’s a genre that you might call reality-kitsch. It’s proof of what a major filmmaker can make from minor material.
Aaishvary Thackeray plays twins named Babloo and Dabloo. He’s a good find. I especially liked him in a scene where he (as Babloo) has a (leisurely) conversation with local bigshot Ambika Prasad (the ever-reliable Kumud Mishra) about how he cannot do the thing he’s being asked to do. The content is dramatic, but the confrontation hardly looks like one. Aaishvary infuses rage, reluctance, and grudging respect into this stretch, and we see a man who is trying to say “fuck you” as politely as he possibly can. Nishaanchi is set in three timeframes: it starts in 2006, goes back to 1996 (when Babloo and Dabloo were children), and returns to 2003. Aaishvary dominates the first and third timeframes, though the women around him steal the show.
Whatever you think of Anurag (or this movie), no one can deny the filmmaker’s talent for using fresh faces. Vedika Pinto is thrillingly alive as Babloo’s love interest Rinku. She is a former kathak dancer who now performs item songs as Rangeeli Rinku. Her personality is equally colourful, and we are guaranteed to see more of her in Part 2. But the real “nishaanchi” of the film, in all senses of the word, is Monika Panwar, who plays Manjari, the mother of Babloo and Dabloo. She has the lankiness and the angular grace of Nutan in her earlier films, and she’s the most self-controlled force of nature you’ve probably seen. When the cocky Babloo is sent to jail, Manjari is upset, but at that moment, all she says is that he should not try to be a tiger because he’s going to a zoo and not the jungle. “Chidiyaghar mein sher aur bandar ka ek hi aukaat hai.” It’s a fabulous line.
In a way, Nishaanchi is about the loss of a way of life. A kathak dancer becomes an item girl. A sharpshooter gives up her talent when she becomes a housewife. A man with the robust name of Jabardast (Vineet Kumar Singh) loses his position as a wrestler because of the politics in the akhada. We will soon see him bathing a buffalo. The film references change, too. Babloo brings up the contrast between Mughal-e-Azam and Hum Aapke Hain Koun!. And it’s easy to see how the family feud of the former gave way to the family-friendliness of the latter. It’s easy to look back to a time when the break in a film came with the word “madhyantar” (which is replicated here) and not “interval” or “intermission”.
But the film works even without this subtext, because it is so filled with the joy of kitschy pop culture. ‘Zihaal-e-miskin’ from Ghulami is remixed as a jingle for garam masala. There’s a song reminiscent of ‘Mere jeevan saathi’ from Ek Duuje Ke Liye, but using the names of films from a later era. Even the staple attire of screen mothers of a certain time – the white sari – gets a twist. When a mother asks her son why he remembers his father, he says that her white sari won’t let him forget. It’s actually a small bit of gender commentary. At another point, when a man scolds his son for killing a bird with his catapult, his wife reminds him that he eats chicken. Again, this feels like a small bit of… something bigger, like the fact that the character played by an actor named Mohammed Zeezshan Ayyub is named Kamal! The biggest problem with Nishaanchi is that its ending is actually the madhyantar of a giant movie: we shouldn’t have to wait for Part 2. But if there’s more like this in store, the wait should be worthwhile.
