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EDITOR'S PICK
`Inkaar`:
riveting treatise on gender equations
Rating: ****
Khamoshiyan awaaz hain labzon mein bass inkaar hai - Sameer Anjaan`s
evocative lyrics and Shamir Tandon`s compelling composition follows you out of
this searing, probing drama on work ethics in corporate places.
This is one occasion when you don`t mind being stalked.
There are no item songs in Inkaar. The female form is here
objectified not through celebratory songs but in the gender perceptions that
often distinguish the male viewpoint from the female. The songs and music
(largely by the talented Shantanu Moitra) seem to mock the sexual frisson
between the two protagonists as they circle each other in a moral pugilism that
can break both or one of them.
It is not easy being ambitious and true to the conscience. Towards the end of
this riveting drama, Chitrangda confronts Arjun in a washroom where the light
flickers menacingly on her ravaged face.
Can people like you and I who want more from life than love, ever be
happy? she wonders in a choked voice.
Is Rahul Varma really guilty of sexual harassment? Or is the ambitious social
climber Maya Luthria imagining things for her own convenience? Did she lead him
on until it suited her ambitions and then cry `harassment` when she had made her
way to the top of the ladder and didn`t want anyone peering up her skirt?
That versatile and vigorous storyteller Sudhir Mishra, doing yet another
thematic flip-flop after the edgy crime drama Yeh Saali Zindagi,
provides no easy solutions to the question of the male gaze and the female
perception. Inkaar makes you stop and think about that diaphanous
divide between consensual flirting and sexual harassment.
But this is not a version of Barry Levinson`s Disclosure. Sudhir
Mishra`s treatise on the gender equation in an ambitious environment is far more
dense and complex than a simple buffet of tongue-in-cheek innuendos interspersed
with moral homilies. And yes, Arjun and Chitrangda are far more skilled actors
than Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. It would be no exaggeration to say that the
film wouldn`t have worked with any other actors.
Arjun, in fact, grows better with each film, so much so that nowadays a film
featuring him is an assurance of innovative aesthetics. Here, he sinks into the
part of the part-mentor part-tormentor with impassioned familiarity. Arjun knows
the world of the cut-throat corporate competitiveness where every promotion for
an individual could be a moral and ethical demotion. As played by Arjun, Rahul
Varma comes across as both sensitive and arrogant, considerate and sexist. He`s
a bit of a mystery, really.
Chitrangda is, in one word, a revelation. In sequences that appear in no
chronological order, she nails her character of the ambitious small-towner who
doesn`t mind her senior`s `mentoring` until it suits her. Her character Maya
could easily be perceived as a go-getting bitch. And that is how she appears
when we first meet her in the boardroom where the inquiry commission, headed by
an uncharacteristically listless Deepti Naval, brainstorms over Maya`s
allegations against Rahul.
Chitrangda enters the character`s snarled ambivalent inner world creating with
sketchy vividness, a character who is ruthlessly ambitious and yet not loathsome
in her overweening ambitions.
Strangely, there is very little of Maya`s personal life, a lot more of Rahul`s
backdrop with his pushy father (Kanwaljeet). The one sequence where Maya visits
her mother is cursory. You wish there was more of that iconic actress Rehana
Sultan who plays Chitrangda`s mother.
A large part of the narrative is restricted to the boardroom where the inquiry
unfolds over two days. To his credit, Sudhir Mishra never lets the proceedings
get claustrophobic or stagey. The dexterous editing by Archit Rastogi creates a
liberating space within the suffocating theme of a relationship challenged and
squeezed by mutual ambitions.
Mishra`s world never crumbles under the weight of the immorality that inundates
his characters` existence. As in Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi,
considered by many to be his most accomplished work, there is a moral redemption
for protagonists at the end. Perhaps the end-game in Inkaar is a bit
of a cop-out considering how self-serving the protagonists were shown to be in
their ambitiousness. But the unflinching integrity that underlines the moral
twist to the fable of the fallen twosome is unimpeachable.
A mention of the supporting cast is imperative. The actors who play the
protagonists` corporate colleagues, specially Ashish Kapur, Mohan Kapur and
Vipin Sharma, add a lustre of wicked irony to the goings-on.
The coming-of-age of the working-class heroine who can be ambitious without the
fear of being branded a bitch reaches a culmination in Inkaar.
The dynamics of office politics have never been more dynamic. Inkaar
is one helluva jolt in January.
Filmmaker Sudhir Mishra is unhappy with the portrayal of villains in films and says the good vs evil fight has caused great harm."Bad films cause great harm when they portray villians only as foul mouthed, sneering, lecherous types. Real villians are often sweet talking, humorous,family men who commit unspeakable acts of horror when threatened," Mishra tweeted on Saturday morning. Read More