Straight talk. This is a director’s film. Dibakar Bannerji lives his dream of creating a piece of cinema yet so realistic and out of life, set right in the middle of OUR lives, in OUR India. The dream doesn’t come without a cost. The aam junta, who has put in the bucks will feel that their ’hero’, Emraan has cheated them with this dark, blunt film. When I use those words, mind you I am only talking from the viewpoint of the audience that spends a 100 bucks to get entertained. Yes, LSD, OLLO and KKG were not meant for masses, then why raise the expectations with this one?
The reasons are in plenty. One is Emraan who is synonymous with entertainment and has a dedicated following amidst the single screen audience. Second is that both the popular songs hinted it to be some streamline Hindi drama cum masala watch which this is distantly not.
Now, one may continue to read only if you don’t fit in the above bracket. SHANGHAI is one very powerful film. It has too less of talking on part of the characters and too much of thinking for the viewer. Well, that is probably the director’s style too, given his last release. The film winds itself up in a jiffy and that is an obvious plus for a film that is meant to talk sense.
SHANGHAI, however little the title may suggest, unfolds as a political thriller. The story is rather simple or say very streamlined, as it keeps hanging around only a couple of hinges all through its run of 110 mins.
One is the accident/attempt to murder of the writer and activist Dr. Ahmedi (Prosenjit Chatterjee) and its follow-up investigation by the rather unconventional yet strikingly realistic bureaucrat from the C.M.O., T.A. Krishnan (Abhay Deol). The other is the formation of IBP, a project with clear political undertones to it (like every story in the real Bharat), which requires demolition and resettlement of Bharat Nagar, a squalid locality in ANY city of India. How the lives of Shalini (Kalki), an old student of Dr. Ahmedi and how the V.D.O. shooter Jogi (Emraan) join the party forms the other half of the story.
The neat work by lead actors is one of the USPs. Abhay Deol steals the show with his staunch outlook, simultaneously underplaying his part as a pawn in the game, before he rather chooses to turn the tables. Emraan had a tough job to do, as he had to be the camera guy filming the ’acts’ rather than be the guy in the acts this time. He has put in some effort to come out clean (rather dingy) and that shows. Kalki has the role written just for her. Psychotic, erratic and aberrant as Shalini, she does what she does the best. Farookh Sheikh as the Secy to the CM is excellent. Well that reminds me of his TV show, Ji Mantri Ji, where he played the secy-harassed-Mantri and now he plays the secretary, not actually harassing but too real to be one such! Pitobash takes forward his act from Shor In The City and is noteworthy while he lasts. Prosenjit gets too little to do.So does Supriya Pathak as the CM.
The technical aspects make SHANGHAI immensely impactful. The cinematography is as real as it gets. So is the art. By real, it is meant that the camera and setup never let you feel that you are actually watching a film. The last statement, for a film, is a good thing or bad, of course depends on the way a viewer decides to pick a film.
The background score is effective and so are the two songs that are a part of the running time. The other songs in the album are above average. Special mention for the way the item number has been incorporated in the script. Very novel and applause worthy. You get to see how a stage show should and does happen, which we have mis-branded as ’item songs’ for the laymen of Bollywood viewers!
The screenplay is at par with the requisites of the script, which in turn is predictable after a point right into the second half. Nonetheless, the performances, the setup and the dark, stark theme does pull off the act.
In all, SHANGHAI is not piece of cake cinema. It is rather an interquel to many fims which tag themselves as political thrillers. This one starts where most of the scenario is already built and ends before the dust gets settled down. If you partially get what the last sentence tries to mean, and you are ready to brave through some sensible cinema, this film is for you.
Not the perfect analgesic for the Rowdy wounded, but definitely a good produce of our rather intermittently qualified cinema. 3.5 stars.