Sometimes it’s not a movie but the experience of watching a movie that stays in the mind — and not entirely for the right reasons. For me, the popular Once Upon A Time In Mumbai franchise will always be about grandiloquent lines. There is one exchange in Once Upon A Time In Mumbai Dobaara! between Akshay Kumar and Sonakshi Sinha in which Kumar tells his lady-love: “Paanch minute mein izzat utaar sakta hoon (I can rape you in five minutes).” I don’t know what hit me more: the obnoxiousness of the hero and his expression of so-called love or the catcalls and whistles of the audience in reaction to this statement. The insensitivity and inappropriateness of the response made me feel vulnerable, disgusted and angry in turn.
That was in 2013. Six years later, the story repeated itself with Kabir Singh. The majority of viewers rolled in laughter as a deplorable scene of abuse — a house help being ill-treated and threatened on screen — played out. There was evident approval when the heroine was slapped; I flinched. It’s not to do with women alone. In Badrinath Ki Dulhania the assault on a man evoked big laughs. I couldn’t understand what the joke was.
Are these scenes and responses a reflection of the inherent conservatism and toxicity of our society or are they indicative of cinema’s role in the formation and acceptance of newer and more insidious themes being played by role models? The eternal debate rages on.
Meanwhile, for a film critic, watching a film ‘first day, first show’ all alone on a Friday morning often feels like being marooned on a choppy sea, holding on to your own little raft of personal opinions in the face of tidal waves threatening to drown you. I choke on my coffee often, feeling the sheer solitariness of being at a tangent from the larger film audience universe. But more often than not, my digressive beliefs strengthen in the process and I feel the urgency to state them candidly and vigorously. It makes me dive deeper into the personal. The consensus around fires up the contrarian in me.
Simultaneously there is also the wonderment at the many possible ways of seeing. I often wonder whether I am watching the same film as the people around me. And it’s not just to do with gender representation, it’s also about humour and how it is perceived. A Mehmood in Padosan may have brought the house down in north India, but was the character perceived as anything more than a convenient caricature in the south? Was the Kantaben track in Kal Ho Naa Ho about homosexuality or was it a joke about homophobia? Be it the balatkaar (rape) gag in 3 Idiots or the ageist one in Sanju about a 91-year-old woman, what may have been offensive and politically incorrect to a small section is also the kind of broad and adolescent humour that has more ready takers than you can even begin to imagine. One wo(man)’s abuse is often entertainment for many.
But on some rare occasions there is harmony. I don’t think I would have been able to sit through the inanity of Race 3 were it not for the manner in which the audience was laughing at its cheesiness. They sang the ditty written by ‘Bhai’, “Ik baar baby, selfish hoke, apne liye jeeyo na”, in unison, deliberately out of tune. My heart couldn’t help but sing along.