Post the humungous success and critical acclaim of The Dirty Picture, one had to feel a certain buzz about the next Vidya Balan ‘starrer’, Kahaani. Not only because of the prime cast, but also because of the huge presence of primarily good actors from the Bengali film Industry working in a Bollywood film and also the presence of Calcutta/Kolkata. Kahaani is essentially about what the title suggests. It is about stories and telling them. That director Sujoy Ghosh and co writer Advaita Kala can conceive of such an idea and weave a thriller on it is worthy of kudos indeed. Without giving much away, the film is essentially about a pregnant woman, Vidya Bagchi, or Bidya as she is called, who has come down from London to this city for the first time, in search of her missing husband. And sees Kolkata, a different and mysterious city which even to its too critical and familiar audience is becoming these days, a tad defamiliarizing. The film is about this search and what this search leads to. In this search Kahaani encapsulates and explores the dingy and the underbelly of Kolkata, not the city of high rises and shopping malls, but the lanes and by-lanes of an ancient labyrinthine mystery. It explores the peripheral lives that unfold in the darkness of the city. Its people and places suddenly reverberate into a visual cacophony and becomes that all important character in whose matrix all the characters are trapped.
Kolkata is a cinematographer’s nightmare as well as paradise as is most Indian cities with a colonial background. The unplanned roads and the dingy lanes act as exciting and vibrant backdrops for a camera and the capturing of it is a challenge for anyone with the instrument. It is this city that we have seen in The City of Joy and very recently in Srijit Mukherjee’s 22shey Srabon, which incidentally was a thriller too. Kahaani in this aspect was a brilliant attempt, but one feels at one level, where the film could have shot off, the cinematographer as well as the director has reverberated certain clichéd images that has been used to saturation. The use of the steadycam, personal perspectives and series of close up shots take you directly to the action, and puts you in the midst of it, and it is in this sense the importance of Kolkata as a character is essential and is highlighted.
Coming to the actual plot, the storyline, as I said earlier, the fact that the director conceived of the idea is commendable indeed and the plot really had the potential to blur the lines between fact and fiction, reality and surreality. Srijit’s 22shey Srabon title track ‘ashole sottie bole sottie kichhu nei’ kind of reverberates in your mind as you hear the opening credit rolls, and to it ‘ami shotti bolchhi.’ Kahaani tells us a tale and tells us almost brilliantly, yes, almost. The plot which might have been the film’s greatest weapon, kind of lets it a bit down also. The opening sequence of the metro attack and the sequence with the child holding the bag, and in a separate case, where the milk bottle containing the poison chemical comes from in the bag are questions that are left unanswered. The sequence itself felt out of place. The film could have done brilliantly well, I say almost flawlessly well had it concentrated on a personal story line and focused on the microscopic rather that to forcefully increase the ‘seriousness’ by childlike intervention of the Intelligence Bureau, its workings, the entire hacking scenario, and a ludicrous terrorist angle. If the IB really functions as lackadaisically as portrayed, really, God help this country. But again if the terrorist is as ludicrous as it is portrayed, we need not worry. It feels disappointing to say the least that a film which had so much potential to be a cerebral masterpiece, and once in a time film, kind of leads some of that potential down the drain.
Shooting on real locations are done to give a film a realist touch. However the director should note that it has to be backed by realism on all accounts. The very sequence when Bob Biswas (Saswata Chatterjee) first attempts to push Vidya Balan and eventually pulls her back, as a metro train is approaching, is something that thankfully is in reality impossible with the posting of patrolling guards, a detail which might have been missed. Also ‘Satyaki’ was not the ‘Sarathi’ of Arjun, he was his friend as Arjun’s ‘Sarathi’ was Krishna.
The entire ‘mother-motif’ that the film uses with the Durga Puja, at the backdrop is pertinent to the plot, yes, but Kolkata is much more than Durga Puja, Howrah Bridge and Victoria Memorial, which somehow remains the only images of the city to its expatriates. The whole morality angle and the mythological archetypes, the mother angle do make for good box-office but take something out of the cerebral intensity of a thriller, the character study of a thriller, it takes out from a film’s multidimensionality. You feel pleasure at the end of the film, and not tired at all, as you are not stretched. The audience is left relaxing at the end as actions happen as expected, almost too forcefully true. I refrain from analyzing it thoroughly as it would give the plot away.
Though not entirely critical, the film does have some aspects which act eventually as its strongholds. At moments the film is brilliantly clever, amazingly shot but fails to sustain it. The true strength of the film lies in its cast whose performance can be summed up in one word, ‘brilliant’. The film is riding on a refreshing wave of ‘women’ centric movies to have recently come out from the Bollywood industry and it is a good sign that the industry is looking to break conventions here. The film was about Vidya Balan and much of the success of the film critically would also be because of her as she is the prime focus and she has stood up on all accounts. She has evolved into a truly brilliant actress and provides another stellar performance. Parambrata Chattopadhyay, as the cop ‘Rana’ also excels in his demure fashion and does the character full justice. Nawazuddin Siddique as Khan, Shantilaal Mukhopadhyay, Kharaj Mukherjee, Dhritiman Chattopadhyay all essay their roles to perfection. But a very very special mention, to Saswata Chatterjee as Bob Biswas who really makes this film reach its highest echelons. Small screen space did not deter this brilliantly portrayed character who is brought to life in a remarkable fashion and Saswata Chatterjee deserves thanks for doing it. With his vulnerabilities and Cold-bloodedness, the audience will fear the “nomoshkar” ever again. He has to be one of the most fearful characters of modern Indian cinema. Thanks Saswata Chatterjee and Sujoy Ghosh for giving life to it. Amongst the considerable number of reasons that would make the film a must watch or a re-watch, Bob Biswas and Saswata Chatterjee would be prime.
Kahaani is a film with potential and a huge one at that. The film does have some flaws, like the music which mostly seemed out of place, so I won’t use many words for it, but the flaws it has can be mostly overlooked on the account of the step the film has taken. Sujoy Ghosh has trodden an almost untrodden path in Bollywood with this film and deserves accolades for that. Solely judging with the critical eye, Kahaani is a good watch and within the constraints that Bollywood places on filmmakers, it is a considerable attempt. It is a huge sigh of relief from seeing the so called biggest film industry in the world can at least attempt to make standard good films these days. What is that standard? Well, that is for another day, but Kahaani verges very close to that.
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