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.
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| In a rare moment of relaxation, young Adi (Aakshath Das) manages to coax a near-smile from his father, Ayyan (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). |
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.
As word of Adi’s intelligence spreads, and his fame grows, he becomes a “lucky charm” whose mere presence can confer endorsement. The school principal, a nun, is persuaded by Ayyan to grant the boy a scholarship, because he adds stature to the institution. Keshav Dhavre (Sanjay Narvekar) and his adult daughter Anuja (Shweta Basu Prasad), local movers and shakers in the Bahujan Samaj political party, sense that a carefully scripted speech by Adi could persuade dubious residents — wisely suspicious of politicians — to consent to slum redevelopment.
As everybody’s conduit to his son, Ayyan gains respect himself; people now are willing to talk to him … and curry favor from him.
But the scenario also triggers collateral damage. When Adi aces a test that his school friend Amrita (Bhakti Pathare) fails, her father throws the little girl out of the house for “not being as good as Adi.” This troubles the boy deeply; Mishra draws an impressively shaded performance from his young actor, as Adi begins to understand the consequences of his “enhanced status.”
You’d expect that this would become the crux of the situation … but no, this narrative actually is even more devious (about which, no more will be said here).
Siddiqui is marvelously nuanced. Although Dr. Acharya and the Dhavres are shaded as overly broad buffoons or blatantly corrupt hustlers, Ayyan is all too real: the quietly malevolent panther who prowls in their midst. Siddiqui’s face speaks volumes: Watch the contempt that slides across his features, whenever Ayyan watches his boss from afar.
At times, Ayyan also is downright sinister … as when he confronts and threatens Amrita, after the girl learns something that could prove troublesome.
As a result, this becomes the film’s most intriguing question: Is Ayyan a sympathetic character? Surely he can be censured for so cold-bloodedly manipulating his son, but is this action warranted by circumstance? Is Ayyan a reasonable instrument of retribution?
The delicacy of Siddiqui’s performance creates this ambiguity. Early scenes with Adi, when just 4 years old, reveal Ayyan to be a father who deeply loves his son; the later machinations are based on Ayyan’s hope that Adi can “skip the third generation” and grow up to become an elite.
Pretty heavy emotional stuff, for a film primarily concerned with skewering the bad actors who maintain a harsh societal status quo.
Cinematographer Alexander Surkala and production designer Rakesh Yadav deftly convey India’s hustle and bustle, and the shameful divide between Dr. Acharya’s rarefied surroundings, and the Mani family’s slum existence.
Subtitles are present, although they’re not always necessary; it’s fascinating how many of these characters slide in and out of English, often in the middle of a sentence. (This, too, is something of a jab; as the film opens, Ayyan arrives for work and briefly pauses at a lecture board that reads “Indians who write in English don’t understand India.”)
Be advised, however: This film is not designed with Americans in mind. Instantly adapting to the cultural information dump is up to the viewer. It’s an uphill struggle at times, and I can’t claim to have caught — or understood — all of the story’s nuances.
But the broad strokes are obvious. Indeed, this story easily could have taken place here in the States, where we have no shortage of our own scoundrels and class divides, and been just as trenchant.
And damning.
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