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Wednesday, April 24, 2024
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BOLLYWOOD B.A. PASS
EDITOR'S PICK
Somewhere towards the end of the protagonist Mukesh's descent into a
self-created hell, we see him standing shamelessly at the roadside soliciting
sex, being picked up by three drunken burly men.
A little later, Shadab Kamal sobs in the bathroom, blood dripping to his feet in
a trail of tell-tale brutality.
The intense implicit violence that underlines this sequence reminded me of a
similar process of sexual debasement undertaken by Mark Wahlberg in Paul Thomas
Anderson's "Boogie Nights".
That was a film about the porn industry in the 1970s.
"B.A. Pass" is set in present day Delhi -- Paharganj, to be more
precise. Bustling with sights, sounds and smells of doom and despair, it is a
gripping story of a young financially-challenged man's journey into a world of
prostitution.
We could say, we have never seen this before. And we would be as close to the
truth as this film tries to get.
The taut screenplay by Ritesh Shah never allows room for superfluous moments. We
follow Mukesh's descent into a life of compromised morality with an absence of
condemnation and censure. Mukesh's environment and his circumstances as a
displaced orphan are not exploited to generate pathos.
No one in this film allows us to feel sorry for the derelict lives. The
characters fit into the film's wretched karma with disturbing inevitability, as
though everyone we see in this motion picture was pre-ordained to suffer and
fade away.
By the time we arrive at the finishing line, we know the protagonist has
exhausted all his options. It is the end of the road for the film's achingly
young gigolo-protagonist. Hard choices have to be made at this pen-ultimate
juncture.
As we watch the talented Shadab Kamal lay bare his character's soul, we are
suddenly reminded of how far we have come in his 95-minute journey from
innocence and anxiety to despair and doom.
Debutant director Ajay Bahl puts forward a little gem of story which radiates
the colours of life's most grim and harsh reality. There are so many young
dreams dying every day in the metropolises. As one struggler in Bollywood once
told me, "I came to Mumbai to kick ass. Instead I ended licking ass".
To envision the withering away of innocent aspirations in the merciless light of
reality without a shred of self-pitying melodrama is not an easy task. Bahl does
it with great confidence and sensitivity.
That he has personally done the film's cinematography is such a beautiful
circumstance for the film. I doubt another cameraman could capture those places
in these troubled characters' lives that Bahl captures with such force and
vitality.
Moving fluently from the tender to the brutal, Bahl portrays the underbelly of
Delhi with telling truthfulness. There are no false notes in this tale of
seduction and debasement. What gripped me right away were the passages of
screaming silence.
"B.A. Pass" italicizes the character's askew lived by bathing them in
silence. The soundtrack (composed by Alokananda Dasgupta, daughter of filmmaker
Buddhadeb Dasgupta) is aptly minimal austere and unsparing.
The sex is suitably cold and detached. When the young virgin-boy hero arrives in
the bored housewife's home for the first time, she wastes no time in getting him
to lie down on the sofa clambering over him briskly and unbuckling his trousers.
The seduction is swift and businesslike; the sex, sometimes ugly, never
satisfying.
When a woman is caught with a gigolo, her husband rapes her doggie-style in
front of the toy-boy to let the wife and her lover know who wears the pants in
the house even when its down to his ankles.
The film is mostly populated by unlikeable, loathsome people. And yet in their
selfish manoeuvres they willy nilly end up being part of a plot that keeps the
audience involved till the very end.
A part of the film's riveting charm originates from the authentic faces that
populate Bahl's nation of damnation. These are real people living out of
authentic homes that exist beyond the director's domain of 'action' and 'cut'.
While the supporting cast of unknown faces (barring Deepti Naval who shows up in
a sad moment) extends a hand of sturdy believability, it is the dynamics shared
between Shilpa Shukla as the housewife espousing a secret life of sexual
indulgence, and newcomer Shadab as a casualty of rampant promiscuousness, who
provide a centre to this melancholic ode to a life of fringe fatal benefits.
Shilpa, seen in a strong performance earlier in "Chak De India",
doesn't let us come near her character's insecurities. She plays the fornicating
housewife with stoic candour.
Shadab's character is gauche and flummoxed to begin with but quickly begins to
grasp the importance of being sexually empowered. Shadab is a discovery.
And Dibyendu Bhattacharya as the chess-playing vagabond raises some 'grave'
issues. The cemetery never seemed less asymmetrical.
"B.A. Pass" is a stark and brutal saga of seduction and betrayal. It
is that unusual work of cinema which explores the darkest depths of the human
consciousness without losing sight of the light that underscores life.
It would be erroneous to treat this film as only a serious noire effort. It is
that, yes. But it's also a film that makes an impact in unexpectedly blithe
ways, creeping up into our conscience when we least expect an intrusion and
lodging itself cosily in a corner.
A young small town boy moves to Delhi to stay with his aunt and finish his college. Soon he is seduced by a mysterious married woman known to him as Sarika ‘Aunty’. Set amidst the neon-lit by lanes of Delhi’s Paharganj unfolds an erotic human drama between the two. A relationship based on lust, lies and deceit is forged. As the young boy gets more and more entrenched into his surroundings he discovers a city that thrives on corrupting even the most naive and innocent.
B A Pass promotional activity Stills
Press meet for movie B.A.Pass - Stills