Five most neglected films of 2018 

Kuch Bheege Alfaaz:

This is Onir’s elegiac ode to a time when love was felt in the heart, and not on the social media. In his latest directorial venture, the prolific and insightful director probes wounds that never heal. The love that grows between two wounded people, trapped in the numbing bustle of the metropolis— Kolkata this time (It was Delhi in Onir’s previous film Shab), is not an uncharted territory in the cinema of emotional diaspora that Onir has constantly explored and Anurag Basu also examined with scrupulous integrity in Life In A... Metro. In Kuch Bheege Alfaaz (KBA), the traditional tearfulness associated with the emotions of hurt, pain, betrayal, isolation and guilt— yes, all of these emotions are compressed into Onir’s latest—are alchemised into a warm-hearted frothy storyline. There is a lot of ‘ping’ in the pain of mutually shared hurt between the pair as they exchange messages on the phone that they find very entertaining. Zain Khan Durrani is most decidedly a prized find. His command over his character’s dithering emotional graph is impressive.

Missing

That face is the map of the human heart. No one does it like Tabu. Not when she sets her heart on it. Everyone has gone gaga over her performance this year in Andhadhun. Errrrr…. aren’t we missing something? This time, she plays a distraught mother whose little daughter, on a visit to Mauritius, gets kidnapped. Nothing in Missing is as it seems. In pursuit of an ever-renewable suspense, Mukul Abhyankar’s writing lapses into the ludicrous. The twists and turns in the plot are meant to startle in a very ‘boo’ kind of a way. And some of Manoj Bajpai’s efforts to do the ‘How A Good Actor Plays A Bad Actor To Con The Law’ is just not up to the mark. In other words, a good actor doing a bad job of bad acting...Complicated? But it is just the way writer-director Mukul Abhyankar wants it. On every step, he plants a red herring so red, that you feel you are walking on a blood-soaked minefield. Except, that there is never an explosion. In fact, the feeble writing and the unconvincing situations would have done the strained suspense in, were it not for Tabu’s magnificent performance. Playing a grieving mother whose emotions can’t be trusted, she brings a persuasive candour and an everlasting splendour to her role.

Beyond the Clouds

I seriously think the English-language title did the film in. Majidi Majidi’s masterly study of poverty and crime in the slums of Mumbai was a riveting, bumpy ride across a world we only see through the side window of our moving cars. The message of hope and humanism shines like a beacon of light in the charged-up electric screenplay written by Mehran Kashani, where the drama of the damned is not an affectation, but a way of life. Right away from the very first shot showing a run-down hoarding for a cellphone company, Mumbai’s heartbeat throbs life and breath into every moment that Majid Majidi’s narrative exhales over frames, that seem to embrace life in all its inglorious colours. In the very first sequence, we see our hero hopping off a car at a distance across the road. Aamir is not up to any good, he never will be. Or, so we think. The quality of life bequeathed to Aamir and his elder sister Tara (Malavika Mohanan) is such that beauty, harmony, compassion and other luxuries of a desirable existence are hard to obtain. And yet, this is where the humanism of Majid Majidi’s cinema comes into voluptuous play. In spite of the abject seemingly irredeemable darkness, there is that spark of light igniting the soul. The film moves through two different narrative zones after the protagonists, siblings, are separated by a crime. Aamir finds himself looking after and caring for the family of the very man (Gautam Ghose), who brought disaster in his life. It is debutante Ishaan Khatter who stands tall in a film, where life dwarfs even the bravest. Ishaan’s Aamir is impetuous, volatile and self-destructive.

Mitron

The most neglected film of the year is about an aimless Gujarati chap (Jackky Bhagnani), who marries a girl so focused on her promising career, that she makes her husband look like a fly trapped against an opaque windowpane. The film, directed by Nitin Kakkad (of Filmstaan) is a rare film about a marriage being an uneven wicket without making the woman look like a victim or the man a monster. Funny and wistful, catch Mitron on the small screen.

Halkaa

Somewhere, I saw a supercilious review of this marvellous film, describing it as an exercise in “potty training.” This is akin to calling Pather Panchali poverty porn. Or Salaam Bombay an exploitative exercise! The morning toilet habit plays a big hand in director Nila Madhab Panda’s new film. But, Halkaa is not only about morning ablutions. The potty prattle secretes an immense compassion for the downtrodden. I wouldn’t call the wonderful children in the film “oppressed.” By India’s abysmal standards of poverty, Pichku (played by the wonderfully sensitive Tatthastu) is a happy child. Sure, his father is a wretchedly overworked rickshawpuller (played by Ranveer Shorey), who dreams of owning an autorickshaw. He shouts at Pichku. But if your son did his morning business inside your one-room tenement, would you lose the plot? Providentially, Panda doesn’t suffuse the narrative with the blinding light of positivity. He never glorifies poverty. Nor does he use it as an occasion to share a raga of wretchedness with the music of our stricken soul. There is no attempt to manipulate our emotions into state of sympathetic submission, as Pichku and Gopi set out on a mission to get a toilet at any cost. Non-judgmental poverty is not easy to process and project on screen. Panda does it with an exceptional level of success. Of course, the performances are superb. Little Tathtastu is as precious and prized a discovery as some of Panda’s child actors in his earlier films.