Serious Men: A savage social satire

Serious Men (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Not rated, with profanity and sexual candor

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.13.20 

It’s bad enough that India’s emboldened Hindu extremists have been attacking and persecuting their fellow Muslims, Christians and Sikhs; matters are worsened by the inflexible caste system that adds an additional layer of oppressive discrimination.

 

In a rare moment of relaxation, young Adi (Aakshath Das) manages to coax a
near-smile from his father, Ayyan (Nawazuddin Siddiqui).

Director Sudhir Mishra takes a ruthless jab at the latter with Serious Men — available via Netflix — which is as brutal a satire as I’ve seen in awhile. The assault is relentless; the script — by Abhijeet Khuman, Bhavesh Mandalia, Niren Bhatt and Nikhil Nair — is a sardonic spin on journalist Manu Joseph’s 2010 novel of the same title (although an initial text crawl suggests that the adaptation is quite loose).

 

Almost nobody emerges unscathed in this indictment of caste, greed, gullibility, opportunism and — to borrow a British phrase — arrogant upper-class twits.

 

Ayyan Mani (the always excellent Nawazuddin Siddiqui) works as a personal assistant to Dr. Arvind Acharya (M. Nassar), a senior astronomer at the ironically named National Institute of Fundamental Research. Ayyan, a Dalit (lower-caste), is treated with undisguised contempt by his boss, a Brahmin (the highest caste) who routinely berates his assistant’s “primitive mind.”

 

Such behavior is institutional, and Ayyan is helpless to surmount the barrier that inherently grants Dr. Acharya a level of respect that (we soon realize) he hardly deserves, while Dalits are shoved into matchbox-size shacks in the city slums. This injustice is even more infuriating because Ayyan is intelligent enough to perceive that his boss is a scoundrel, who has just soaked the government into funding his ludicrous project to prove that Earth is being invaded by alien germs.

 

At first, Ayyan is philosophical about this situation; he and his gentle-natured wife, Oja (Indira Tiwari), enjoy “gaming” the system by (for example) pretending to be higher-caste tourists at a fancy hotel. Ayyan is a second-generation Dalit, and — as he views things — one must be at least fourth-generation, in order to shed the Dalit designation and become an elite who can get away with “doing nothing at all.”

 

When they have a son, and the boy grows old enough to enter the school system, Ayyan hatches a scheme of devious revenge. The boy, Adi (Aakshath Das), is a meek, owl-eyed cherub who — thanks to his eyeglasses and hearing aid — ordinarily would be the natural target of classroom bullies. But Adi is ferociously smart, and — being a child — can catch the attention of the elites who reflexively ignore his father.

 

Ayyan knows this, and exploits the situation. Ruthlessly.

 

Which means that he’s also robbing Adi of his childhood innocence.

Photograph: Sharply focused

Photograph (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and absolutely needlessly
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.25.20

Sometimes relationships sneak up on us, under the most unlikely circumstances.

Photograph — not to be confused with The Photograph, released in mid-February — is a warm-hearted little fable from Indian filmmaker Ritesh Batra, who made such an enchanting feature debut with 2013’s The Lunchbox. His new feature is streamable via Amazon Prime.

Much to the surprise of Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), his grandmother Dadi (Farrukh Jaffar,
right) becomes quite enchanted by the young woman (Sanya Malhotra) who has agreed
to feign being his fiancée, in order to preserve family harmony.

As with that earlier film, Photograph’s gentle saga unfolds against a thoughtfully instructive depiction of tradition, class divide, prejudice, family expectation and the inexorable tug of modern sensibilities, all taking place in the tumultuous, crowded and wildly colorful neighborhoods and street markets of Mumbai.

The language on display is an equally rich brew: a vibrant blend of Hindi, English and Gujarati, the latter commonly spoken in Mumbai. Characters weave in and out of all three, sometimes within the same sentence (and thank goodness for subtitles).

The story begins at the bustling Gateway of India, a tourist landmark also popular with locals, and swarming with street photographers who eke out a living by offering instant snapshots to passersby. The middle-aged Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) is one such entrepreneur, having long ago traveled to Mumbai from a small farming village, in order to earn money to pay off an old family debt.

As we gradually learn, this is an impossible task, the goal receding more rapidly than his ability to reach it.

Sheer caprice allows Rafi to cross paths with Miloni (Sanya Malhotra), a young woman just departing from a pleasure boat outing with her family. He extends his usual sales pitch; lost in her own thoughts, she shyly accepts.

Once the photograph is taken and developed — and what a fascinating gadget Rafi has in his backpack, for that part of the procedure! — Miloni suddenly has second thoughts. Perhaps she realizes that an invisible barrier has been breached; she’s a middle-class Mumbaikar, divided by religion, cultural background and even skin color. Rafi, one of the “unseen,” has more in common with Rampyaari (Geetanjali Kulkarni), the “low-class” maid who cooks and cleans for her parents.

Perhaps surrendering to doubt, Miloni quickly departs, failing to pay Rafi for her picture.

And, not too much later, feels guilty for having done so.

The Lunchbox: A wonderful meal

The Lunchbox (2013) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated PG, for no useful reason, and suitable for all ages
By Derrick Bang

Movie buffs live for this moment: the thrill of discovery, striking when you least expect it.

The Lunchbox, an impressively accomplished feature debut for writer/director Ritesh Batra, is a bittersweet romantic charmer: by turns droll, sensitive and achingly poignant. And although we’re thoroughly absorbed by the core story involving two lonely people, Batra also delivers a perceptive analysis of big-city Mumbai, as it struggles at a cultural crossroads sparked by the age-old clash between tradition and progress.

On top of which, we get some astute social commentary on the nature of love, the sad fate of those who settle, and the possibly greater emotional rewards for those who defy expectations and, well, take an impulsive plunge.

Not bad, for a 104-minute film that spends almost all of its time with just three characters.

Batra’s narrative also is a cinematic valentine to the grand tradition of epistolary novels, ranging from classics such as Fanny Hill and Dracula, to more modern examples such as The Color Purple and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Indeed, I frequently was reminded of Helene Hanff’s marvelous 1970 book, 84, Charing Cross Road, for reasons that I can’t specify without spoiling some of the delights to be found in Batra’s film.

And, finally, mention must be made of the wholly immersive performances from the excellent cast, starting with veteran Indian actor Irrfan Khan, who seems everywhere these days. Aside from a busy schedule in his native country, American audiences will recognize him from Slumdog Millionaire and The Amazing Spider-Man; he also was the best part of Ang Lee’s film adaptation of Lifeof Pi, as the adult Pi Patel.

He stars here as Saajan Fernandes, a government accountant who has toiled for 35 years in an employee- and paper-strewn office that could, in different hands, be the subject of biting satire. But Batra’s touch is resolutely serious, his approach matter-of-fact. We’ve absolutely no doubt that scores of such offices exist throughout Mumbai, equally staffed (stuffed?) with quiet men who juggle facts and figures, struggling with pencil, ink and hand calculators, nary a computer to be seen.

Saajan is weeks from retirement, and therefore saddled with the responsibility of training his excitable young replacement: Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), about whom, more in a moment.

Batra’s plot is driven by his story’s fourth primary “character,” the astonishing Mumbai tradition orchestrated daily by the dabbawallahs, a community of roughly 5,000 deliverymen who ferry between 175,000 and 200,000 hot meals from the kitchens of housewives to the offices of their husbands. The numbers are staggering, the process nothing short of amazing, as these lunches cross the city via bicycle, bus and train ... even during monsoons.

The positions are hereditary, dating back some 130 years, and even more impressive for the fact that almost all dabbawallahs are illiterate. The meals reach their proper destinations via a complex code of colors and symbols: a system that even led to a flattering 2010 study by the Harvard Business School ... a point of pride mentioned by one dabbawallah, at a key moment in this story.