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Film Reviews

Film Review: Chup: Revenge of the Artist (2022)

STORY

The entertainment journalists in Mumbai are haunted in the mist of terrifying clouds when a serial killer is on lose brutally killing only film critics to whom the killer finds passing dishonest film reviews. Inspector Arvind Mathur is assigned to catch him and stop the madness.

INTRODUCTION

‘Chup: Revenge of the Artist‘ is a crime thriller. Two factors propelled me to watch this film. One was that R. Balki directed it who already has entertained us in the past directing some interesting films like Cheeni Kum, Paa, and Pad Man. The other reason is that Sunny Deol starred in it. When Sunny paaji stars, the general audience understands that the film is going to be an action-packed thriller with our He-Man smashing every possible existence throughtout the universe in larger-than-life fighting sequences. But this pick surprised me. So I was interested to know how R. Balki and Sunny Deol collaborate in such an interesting plot.

REVIEW

Almost forty minutes in the film, I felt the story was running in haste. The scenes were short and the dust of investigation was not settling. When you make a crime investigative film, the first forty minutes are the storyteller’s borrowed time to build an interesting crime case to the audience.

The dialogues are surprisingly boring. The leads towards the case are interesting but I just cannot feel myself flowing towards the screenplay because Balki’s direction throughout the film is ordinary.

The love angle of Danny and Nila is unusual due to their mutual interests but boring start of their knowing each other because of unnatural coincidences.

The film falls flat in the second half. Despite having so much potential to give a better conclusion of the case, the quality writing was terribly missing. And one major reason for a disappointing continuity was the revelation of the culprit in the first half of the film. The nature of the case and the whole screenplay pretty much gave an impression to me and surely to everyone who watched the film that Chup will be a suspense crime-thriller with our jaws dropping out in the final scenes. But in the first hour, the makers of the film gave us no chills to guess the person in quest and drop some obvious hints that led to disappointment.

And then average performances. I got to see Pooja Bhatt in a film in ages. Her character looked promising but had not much contribution due to extremely less screen presence. Sunny Deol was okay but Dulquer Salmaan as the maniac in the hunt was disappointing. He is a good actor but this role was not his. That craziness of cutting people and spreading their blood as an art, you need a special romance in those psycho eyes. And that was missing in Dulquer Salmaan. If I was the director of this film, I would have picked either Ranveer Singh or Rajkummar Rao.

The film also suffers from plotholes and I had to question if Balki really was directing all this. There is a mistake in two same murder sequences with the lady feeding her cat where at the same angle, we see the killer walking out from behind but in the previous sequence, the killer wasn’t. Whereas the camera angle was same.

Danny throws Nila from the third or fourth floor of the building and believe it or not, Nila survives with blood on her face. She was thrown on the path, on the hard surface. How come she survived with her head visibly hit on the path with that force? Even Arvind Mathur jumped from that height and dropped down with a leg injury. How come Danny not hear a wheel cart on the rail track coming towards them?

GURU DUTT

Chup is an obvious and ardent tribute to the legendary filmmaker, Guru Dutt. The sound that is repeatedly used in the background, the old songs, and a few scenes in the film especially the studio scene are all the prestigious references of Guru Dutt’s cinematic artistry. Shaping a villainous character’s origins inspired from Guru Dutt’s real-life melancholy over a failure of his film is the biggest plus of the film. I liked the idea where I need to look at Guru Dutt’s angle, what if he had turned a killer of all the people who disliked his cult classic ‘Kaaghaz Ke Phool‘?

CLOSING REMARKS

The story of Chup is easily one of the best of 2022 Bollywood but a failure to give justice through direction and screenplay.

RATINGS 4/10

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Film Reviews

Film Review: Qala (2022)

STORY

After an emotionally struggling phase of her younghood and being under the shadow of her mother Urmila Manjushree a celebrated thumri singer, Qala Manjushree is now an established singer. But with the rise of fame comes unprecedented pressure from the media and Qala tries to cope which begins to deteriorate her health.

REVIEW

Qala is a period film set in Calcutta in the pre-independence era of the 1930s or maybe 1940s. And when it comes to period films of the golden age, the bygone era, there are two departments that become more responsible for enhancing all the technicalities and the aesthetics of filmmaking. That is the designing of costumes and the production.

It is hard for me to describe in the most perfect sense but both aspects of Qala are electrifying and give rich vibes of the earliest decades of Indian filmmaking artistry. A meticulous effort to present the old age that disconnects you from the present era. Gives you the same vibe as if you are in the music video of Khamaj and Shyam Benegal‘s Bhumika, or Guru Dutt‘s Kaaghaz Ke Phool.

FEMINISM

The angle of feminism clicked in the screenwriting. I liked this arc of Qala questioning the precise questions and receiving no genuine response. In a universally male-dominated industry, only a woman can describe how difficult it is to make a place in any department in the film industry and what she has to suffer mentally and physically.

Speaking of physical suffering, there is a scene that perhaps never happened before and may have triggered us to question ourselves. After Qala fails to sing the right notes, the music director takes her out and forces her to give oral sex. Minutes later, Qala returns and sings correctly.

It may look like an awful sequence but highlights countless behind-the-door horrors inflicted on women. At the same time, the question that triggered me was how did she sing so well minutes after swallowing semen? Does the vocal chord of the singer not affect or harm after that? I actually had to research on the internet and found out that it doesn’t unless there is a transmissible disease.

LANGUAGE AND PERFORMANCES

The Urdu language was the treasure of classic Bollywood. But here, there is a visible error in language proficiency when actors speak dialogues. I will limit my criticism by implying that the film is set in Calcutta but not Bombay. So perhaps this is how Bengalis spoke Urdu in those times.

The performances are not up to the bar where the period film can be judged with more splendidness. Perhaps it was challenging to perform in a different setting than the norm for the actors. You need actors who can fit in the language and justify the aesthetics otherwise they will end up like Suniel Shetty in Umrao Jaan. Happy to see the debut of Irrfan Khan‘s son Babil Khan. Amit Sial and Swastika Mukherjee were average.

Tripti Dimri as Qala, I don’t know why she reminded me of Sonam Kapoor in her earlier films. There was so much grace and beauty in Qala but her mental performance was bleak. She visibly struggled to collapse her settled persona.

MUSIC

Qala’s music is the signature and authentic reminder of the good old times of the melody. Amit Trivedi knows what to offer in a different setting and he is familiar with this. His music was fabulous for Bombay Velvet and not to forget Lootera‘s number ‘Sawaar Loon‘. This time it is more distinctive and time traveling to listen to the notes, the lyrics, and vocabulary. The music sets the mood and drops you to feel more about those times.

I want to specially mention this singer, Sireesha Bhagavatula; I don’t remember if I listened to her before. But here, her songs particularly the best track of the film ‘Ghodey Pe Sawaar‘ reminded me so much of Geeta Dutt‘s voice and her melodious songs of the 1950s. Qala’s music definitely is one of the best music albums of the year.

DIRECTOR

Anvita Dutt has usually been a lyricist all these years. But her ass on the director’s chair has opened the gates for period films in better crafting and finesse. She is really fond of the classical era. Her directional debut was Bulbbul which was beautifully set in the Bengal presidency of the 1880s.

CLOSING REMARKS

Qala compels the audience to fascinate with striking visuals and lush cinematography. 

Qala is the tale of the struggle for acceptance but jeopardizing it with jealousy. A girl who lost her male twin at birth, failed to convince her mother about successfully passing the legacy in the house of music, and later on being rejected by her. The events occurring in the second age of the film industry.

Qala is a reminder of unwanted rivalry when a professional begins to believe there is a competitor who will replace you and the general audience will accept your competitor and forget you that will distraught you. I wonder what reminds me of this? Yes. Black Swan.

RATING: 7.7/10

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