Filmi Geek

No One Killed Jessica (2011)

Dir. Raj Kumar Gupta

My mad crush on Vidya Balan is of recent vintage - it hit me like Durga's trishul about halfway through Kahaani - and so I've missed some of her movies.  I've had a sweet spot for Rani Mukherji much longer, though, and so this dramatization of the Jessica Lal murder case should have been on my list anyhow.  I gave it a low priority due to low expectations that turned out to be somewhat unfair.  While No One Killed Jessica doesn't offer many surprises or insights, nor much in the way of suspense or tension, it is a better movie than my expectations gave it credit for.

Jessica Lal (Myra Karn) is shot and killed in a senseless altercation at a high-society party in Delhi.  Her murder is witnessed by dozens of revelers, and the killer Manish Bharadwaj (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) - the spoiled son of a government minister - immediately confesses to the police.  It looks like an open-and-shut case - so declares television reporter Meera Gaity (Rani Mukherji), who refuses to cover what she sees as a non-story.  But Jessica's sister Sabrina (Vidya Balan) becomes increasingly anxious when the police inspector in charge of the case, N.K. (Rajesh Sharma) tells her that evidence is starting to disappear and few of the partygoers are willing to testify to what they saw.  Manish's father has a lot of strings to pull, and even gets to Sabrina and Jessica's close friend, Vikram (Neil Bhoopalam), who was with Jessica when she was killed.  When Manish is aquitted, Sabrina loses hope entirely.  But the case finally catches Meera's attention, and the reporter will not rest until justice is done and the legal system's failures exposed.

The landscape is so dire for romance-free movies about women - in any language - that I did not have high expectations for No One Killed Jessica.  I expected the movie to be earnest to the point of being self-congratulatory - look at us! We are making a serious movie about serious women!  But while No One Killed Jessica is somewhat earnest - there is a bit of what Amrita calls "righteous face" - it's a solid effort with some good performances. 

Sabrina and Meera meet only two or three times, and only one of those meetings is really of any consequence to the story.  Their trajectories intersect and exchange, though.  In the first half of the film, Sabrina is fully engaged in the investigation of her sister's murder, staying in close contact with the police, with the public prosecutor's office, and even interviewing (and bribing) witnesses on her own to persuade them to testify as to what they saw.  Meanwhile, Meera all but ignores the case.  After the acquittal, these roles reverse.  Meera engages the cases in overdrive, setting up investigative stings and organizing national protests, while Sabrina withdraws, limp and defeated.  Neither one of them has the focus or drive to carry the case through its entire arc; one picks up where the other leaves off.

And yet No One Killed Jessica is very much not a story of women banding together to overcome injustice of the system.  This is not a bad thing; in fact, it's to No One Killed Jessica's credit that the driving characters are only incidentally female.   Indeed, to the extent it is a feminist movie at all, its feminism lies in the fact that the universally applicable struggles that it depicts - getting shot in a meaningless altercation, grieving the loss of a loved one, facing down a horrendously stacked and corrupt legal system - do not, for once, default to male characters.  The very fact that any character in No One Killed Jessica could be male or female without changing any aspect of the story highlights a feminist ideal of equality; not all stories about women need to be Stories About Women.

I gather that much ink has already been spilled by reviewers about the salty language that spews forth from Rani as the fiery reporter Meera.  It may not be natural or realistic, but sure it is a lot of fun; you could play a heck of a drinking game, drink every time Rani says "fuck."  And with or without the cussing, Meera has the most life in her, by far, of anyone in this movie.  I am very fond of Rani Mukherji, and I enjoy, as she gets older, watching her occasionally play more grown-up characters.  Meera is decisive and strong-willed, and No One Killed Jessica does a nice job of presenting these traits as both asset and liability.  Even if Meera's language doesn't make her more believable as a character, she is fun to watch.  And without her energy, No One Killed Jessica would be a plodding, gloomy affair indeed.

Vidya Balan, on the other hand, offers plenty of that plodding gloominess, albeit punctuated by explosions of emotion.  This is not a terribly rangy performance but it is solid and very sympathetic.  The heart does ache for Sabrina in the moments when frustration and grief overtakes her, whether standing numbly in the shower with her spectacles on, or screaming in rage on the roof of her home.  (The score drowns out these screams, rendering them as silent contortions of pain, nicely highlighting Sabrina's impotence against Manish's father and the vast legal machinery he manipulates.)

And Sabrina undergoes a subtle transformation throughout the film that is very nicely wrought.  Early on, she is all girlish awkwardness - dressed in ill-fitting, dumpy clothes, sporting unstylish spectacles that are too large for her face, wisps of frizzy hair escaping from her simple ponytail.  As the years pass, Sabrina matures - she does not become glamorous by any stretch, but she dresses with more care, and her hair is smooth and shiny.  Despite her resignation and prolonged depression after Manish's acquittal, there is more of an air of adulthood about Sabrina.  It is a delicate touch of costume design, enhanced by subtle physical touches in Vidya's own performance, that adds to the immersiveness of the movie.

(Sabrina doesn't say "Damn it" when the verdict is read; she says "Fuck it," signaling the moment of her attitude swap with Meera.  The subtitles throughout the movie are amusingly sanitized for our protection - Meera's "fuck"s become "damn"s, her "bitch"es "witch"es, and her "bastard"s, "rogue"s.)

Rajesh Sharma's performance stands out as well, as the troubled police inspector N.K.  Coming on the heels of three (er, four now) straight viewings of The Dirty Picture, it's hard for me to see him without thinking of Vidya murmuring  "Keeda Das" with a cynical smile.   But it's a pleasant association because Sharma's character in The Dirty Picture is so appealing.  And he carries a similar appeal here, once again serving as an avuncular protector and patron to Vidya's character.  But N.K. is a darker, more troubled character than Selva Ganesh in a more solemn movie, and his struggle with conscience as he works within the corrupt system even as he is disgusted by it is compellingly rendered.

By the way, if you are not following me on Twitter, this is the kind of trenchant commentary you are missing:

No way, we won't pay - The Broadway-Bollywood Exchange, Parts 2 and 2.5

Not long ago I began a sort of cultural exchange with a friend of mine who loves Broadway musicals as much as I love Hindi movies.  In the first Broadway-Bollywood Exchange, "Bhoot meets Phantom," we watched Paheli and a staging of Phantom of the Opera.  The event was a success, in that we both had a good enough time to do it again.  And so, for round two, my friend brought over Rent (not a staging, but the 2005 film adaptation that featured much of the original Broadway cast), and I hauled out Lagaan.  And this post has now languished unfinished for long enough that we had time to get together again and watch The Dirty Picture.

First, Lagaan and Rent.

We didn't plan it this way, but both of these films feature ensembles of rag-tag folks who band together to face down oppressive forces of rich and powerful folks who try to collect dues from them.   Just as Lagaan's crew presents a microcosm of Indian diversity, the Rent crowd condenses the Bohemian Lower East Side into a handful of vivid totems. 

But that is really where the similarities end.  While Lagaan is a single story driven by a charismatic, confident leader in the form of Aamir Khan, Rent is more truly an ensemble, with several parallel threads woven loosely together by a group dynamic.  And by the way, Rent is a superb show.  It is dated, in all the best and most positive senses of the term - it perfectly captures a place and time that have since evolved and no longer can be found the way they were when the show was written, in the late 1980s - early 1990s.  At the show's core are three love stories - one between two men, one between two women, and one heterosexual.  This skirts the edge of tokenism, but the beauty of these stories is that each arc is driven by the personalities involved in each couple, not their sex or their sexuality.  (Contrast Lagaan, in which all of the three women in the film naturally adore the hero - one is his mother.)

The highlight of Rent is the magnificent ensemble number, "La Vie Boheme."  This song is masterful - it walks a delicate line perfectly, simultaneously glorifying and poking fun at the free-spirit Bohemians and everything they value.  (Forgive the dig at Calcutta - they obviously hadn't seen Kahaani.)

 

This is great stuff - affectionate, self-deprecating, clever.  And also really, really different from anything I've ever seen in a Hindi movie.  This gets to the core question I've had since the Broadway-Bollywood exchange began - the apparent lack of crossover appeal between these two art forms.   I think the answer is that while they are superficially similar  in the ways I discussed in my previous post, the style and overall aesthetic senses are quite different.  In Hindi songs, singers rarely harmonize - even with the widespread adaptation of western musical styles, the kind of harmonious counterpoint common in Broadway shows hasn't really entered the filmi musical lexicon.  Moreover, song production in Hindi films remains somewhat sloppy about picturizing the same voice on different actors - my friend commented on this while we were watching Paheli, and it grated on me even more recently in The Dirty Picture, where a rivalry dance-off, "Honeymoon ki raat," would have been a much stronger scene if they'd bothered to use different voices for the two women. 

This is not a well-developed theory, but it's leading me to think that the musical and performance aspects are so strong in Broadway as to be the principal reason people watch the shows.  In Hindi films, in contrast, songs are beloved, and movies are also beloved, but somewhat independently of one another.  For example, one could not reasonably say of Rent, the way I have of Devdas, that the movie is atrocious but the songs are wonderful.  And conversely you couldn't have an excellent Broadway show with forgettable songs, the way you can have a fantastic Hindi movie whose songs fall flat (say, Khamoshi).  (No, I didn't intentionally choose two Bhansali movies for those comparisons - I noticed that they were while proofreading this post.  How did that happen?  I suppose I unconsciously remembered the Broadway-inspired aspects of Bhansali's own style, on display most notably in the solidly mediocre Saawariya.)

I still think there is room for overlap, or at least appreciation, of one form by fans of the other.  I am ready to watch more Broadway shows and appreciate them for what they are, even if they don't occupy the same brainspace for me that Hindi movies do.  And there is still room for shared delight in the way songs are picturized and staged.  It might just be the weird way my brain works, but watching Angel and Collins romp through the streets of New York in Rent's "I'll cover you" put me in mind of Madhuri Dixit and Akshaye Khanna dancing through Vancouver in Mohabbat.  (Watching the songs back to back now, I realize this makes no sense at all, but come on folks, work with me here.)

  

 

At any rate, the point is that despite some obvious differences we are still enjoying one another's respective enthusiasms.  About Lagaan, C. said simply, "I liked it," followed by, "it was long."  As we watched, she anticipated nearly every turn - Lagaan is not really complex.  She was a little confused by the cricket, though - I forgot how hard that aspect of the movie is when you are totally unfamiliar with the game.  And she asked a question about the climax that I could not answer:  on the final no-ball, why does the village side get to switch batters?  I know someone out there can help us with this. 

And now, on to Part 2.5 of this exchange:  The Dirty Picture.  

Two main takeaways from the experience of sharing this with C.: (1) Vidya Balan does not light C.'s fire the way she does mine.  (This is fine and only fair; Sierra Boggess doesn't turn my crank the way she does C.'s.)  (2)  If Vidya Balan does not light your fire, some of The Dirty Picture's scenes that I find so, er, stimulating, come across as cheap and rather cheesy.  C. actually laughed through the bow-chicka-wow-wow red negligee scene that (I am increasingly embarrassed to admit) melts my shorts.  The best moment of the night came during that scene, though, when C.'s wife shouted in from the other room, "That sounds like a porno!  Are you two watching a porno in there?"

I blushed a little.  Okay, a lot. 

C. liked the movie overall, though.  She found the ending "somehwat Marilyn Monroe-esque" and was surprised to learn that the film was based on the life of a real person other than Marilyn Monroe.  And, she was very impressed with Vidya's performance.  "You don't realize just how much she has transformed," C. said, "until you see the flashbacks at the end."  Toward the end of the movie, a bloated, exhausted, broken Silk stumbles through the streets of Madras and sees scenes from her rise to fame reflected in various bits of glass and mirrors.  The contrast is startling - there is a freshness in those early scenes that gives a palpable sense of them as a very, very long time ago.  So:  still more praise for Vidya's excellent work.

There will be more in the Broadway-Bollywood Exchange series - C. and I seem to enjoy watching movies together.  Up next, Chicago ...