We want unbelievably nonsensical premises in a realistic setting—like playschool teachers, holding 20 kids hostage demanding to meet the PM
Illustration/Uday Mohite
And so, to the movie that‘s got everyone’s panties in a twist— Gehraaiyaan or its other title, ‘Gehraaiyaan F*ck’ (50 per cent of the dialogue has an ‘f’’ word in it). Safe to say, this film has got under everyone’s clothes, sorry, skin.
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Just throw the question up in the air, “How was Gehraiyaan?” and you don’t just get a damning response, but a dismissive review. It’s the film that audiences love to hate and hate to love; no one quite knows what to make of it, and you know what we do when we’re flummoxed, we gang up against it.
“What is this weird pariah in our midst?” we ask angrily.
Some of the comments I’ve heard:
1. “This is a ‘puke’ film”: So, a new genre of cinema is born, alongside porn, political thrillers, popcorn entertainment, parallel cinema, and psychological drama—the ‘puke’ film.
2. “This is a one-time watch”: Like that’s a bad thing? Some of my favourite films I’ve watched only once!
3. There’s the ‘opposite sides of porn’ response: Wives say, blushing slightly… “Why must these actors keep taking off their clothes?” Husbands red-faced with anger, whisper, “Yaar, where was all the sex they promised, interval ke baad, nothing… there was no porn… only waves, ya.”
This is the bunch who secretly expected 50 Shades of Grey and got only 20.
4. One pseudo intellectual who’s never risen out of his armchair told me, “It was like Woody Allen meets Wim Wenders meets Wajda…. the screenplay was too derived and too lazy.”
(I wanted to tell him, “Get out there and make your own feature film, dude, I’m struggling through the first screenplay, it’s the hardest job in the world, second to landing on the moon,” but I refrained.)
5. And, there’s the “It was damn slow” brigade. When Hollywood takes its time, it’s “Wow damn intense”, when Bollywood does the same, it’s “Damn boring ya!”
Gehraaiyaan has struck a chord with people—discord—a sense of unease, and dissonance.
I believe the word is “disruptive”, it doesn’t allow people to settle into normal viewing comfort.
Gehraiyaan is genre-agnostic, one that lacks guns, gore, the glorification of violence, “gaana” and glam, no goofiness masquerading as humour, gender politics, or garbled pontification.
For us, Bollywood and Hollywood have distinctly strait-jacketed sets of rules, in the ways we judge—for us in Bollywood, form and formula are intertwined, and the moment the ‘B’ world crosses the line into ‘H’ territory, the knives are out, because then you’re forced to assess a Hindi film through an Angrez cinema lens. And boy, how tough is that! We want unbelievably nonsensical premises in a realistic setting—like playschool teachers, holding 20 kids hostage demanding to meet the PM.
Bollywood must basically deal in broad strokes, you accept subtleties in Hollywood, and we are not a subtle nation? The moment Bollywood goes ‘inward’, we go ballistic, we’re confused… our robotic responses go askew. The R2D2 in us gets disconnected and we’re just unable to say, “Hmmmm... interesting film.” What we don’t instantly connect with, we reject with a collective “How dare you!” No discussion, just diss it.
Both Shakun Batra’s Kapoor & Sons and ‘Gehraiyaan’ tread that fine line, mixing a largely western sensibility with the occasional Indian smack in-your-face.
How is Gehraiyaan different?
No one can be indifferent to it, that’s how.
Not bad Mr Batra… your screenplay took its time to unfold, Deepika Padukone took it deep, your DOP gave us a lavish canvas, replete with shadows and reflections, and I’ve never heard the cello define a soundtrack.
Looking forward to possibly two sequels—Gehraiyaan 2: Deep Dive and Kapoor & Daughters.
Plus anything else you do that somewhat explores relationships with some “gehraiyaan”.
Promise to give them a “two-time watch”.
Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com
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