Begum Jaan Review - Page 2

Begum Jaan movie cast:Vidya Balan, Ashish Vidyarthi, Rajit Kapur, Gauahar Khan, Rajesh Sharma, Pitobash Tripathy, Vivek Mushran, Chunky Pandey, Naseerudin Shah, Pallavi Sharda, Ila Arun
Begum Jaan movie director: Srijit Mukherji
Begum Jaan star rating: 1.5 stars

The story of the bloody birth of India and Pakistan is so inherently full of drama that any telling of any part of it needs a great deal of skilled restraint.That crucial thing is thrown to the winds in Begum Jaan', based on Rajkahini', Srijit Mukherji's Bangla film. I haven't seen the original, but this, meant to be a faithful remake, climbs to a high-pitched melodramatic perch, and progresses in episodic lurches, never coming down.

Which is a pity because Begum Jaan' could have been an impactful drama full of memorable characters, led by its leading lady, Vidya Balan. Dressed in flowing robes, eyes lined with kohl, puffing on a hookah, lording it over her ladies, pardon the pun, Balan plays a madam who runs a brothel, slam bang in the midst of all the action.

In the tumultuous days that lead up to the Partition, the location of the kotha' becomes an ironic inflection point : the house where women sell their flesh without checking religion and caste is about to be divided, the line drawn by the British cleaving it down the middle.

The women, who live with an old dai'-like white-sari clad figure (Arun), a burly Pathan guard, and a jovial fellow (Tripathy, one of the better things in the film) who is everyone's companion and one woman's ( Khan) true love, turn fierce protectors of their turf. Just like the more respectable' citizens around them, they do not want their house divided.

Many elements in Begum Jaan' remind you of older, better films. The whole concept of a brothel run by a crude, foul-mouthed feisty madam appears to have been lifted from Shyam Benegals excellent Mandi'. The ecosystem of that brothel and this one is similar too, but that one we believed in : this looks all dressed up for the next shot.

The casual cruelty of those in power, even if receding, exercised especially over vulnerable women ( Naseer's increasingly weak raja' who is both patron and ruthless predator) is so much like Ketan Mehta's classic Mirch Masala'. Naseer was in both Mandi' and Mirch Masala', both of which redefined gender politics in the way they outlined the interplay between the sexes- men, women and others- and the strong and the meek : time to pull them out for a revisit.

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There's a great deal of stiltedness and awkward dialogue between Kapur and Vidyarthi, who play, respectively, the Muslim and Hindu officials overseeing the drawing of the line, their truncated faces peering at us from the sides of the screen : at first I thought there was something wrong with the projection, and then realized it was deliberate. It may have been done perhaps to emphasise the divide between two people, two religions, but as a device, it is embarrassingly clunky.

A still from the film.

The only one who seems to be totally in synch with the jerky heightened silliness of the enterprise is Chunky Pandey who plays a creepy bad guy, hired to get rid of the pesky prostitutes : if they won't go quietly, they will have to be forced out.

A plot that could have turned into a powerful allegory - you divide people at your peril, for tragic temporary fixes and zero lasting gains-is run aground. And the climax is full of fire and faux brimstone and lots of loud speechifying, the ladies of easy virtue turning into a gun-toting fauj', before invoking a certain Rajasthani rani' who is currently the subject of a film with a troubled trajectory.

Such a waste of a talented bunch of actors. And of Balan, who tries hard to invest some feeling into a role which turns into a clich the moment the film opens.

Director: Srijit Mukherjee

Cast: Vidya Balan, Gauahar Khan, Pallavi Sharda, Ila Arun, Chunky Panday, Mishti Chakravarthy

When a movie features Vidya Balan, one expects a lot from it. The actress is undoubtedly a powerhouse of talent but a poorly-directed film can easily sweep away the attention from a flawless performer. With Begum Jaan', director Srijit Mukherjee remakes his Bengali film Rajkahini' that starred Rituparna Sen Gupta in the lead role.

Begum Jaan (Vidya Balan) owns a brothel and looks after it with the help of the King (Naseeruddin Shah). The ruthless king in return sleeps around with every single girl of the brothel. Amma (Ila Arun), Gulabo (Pallavi Sharda), Rubina (Gauahar Khan) and Shabnam (Mishti Chakravarthy) live with Begum Jaan in her brothel. They all live a happy life until India becomes independent in 1947.

Soon after, their lives change upside down. In the meantime, Mr. Srivastava (Ashish Vidyarthi) and Ilias (Rajit Kapoor) order Begum Jaan to vacate the brothel to draw the Indo-Pak border through it. Begum Jaan refuses to do so and the two tough officials appoint a local goon Kabir (Chunky Panday) to vacate the brothel in a months time. What happens next forms the rest of the plot of the film. Will Begum Jaan vacate the brothel or continue staying there and fight for her rights?

Rajkahini', which was released in 2015, is a 3-hour long film and dealt with individual issues of partition and the journey of prostitutes in the brothel. The girls are nowhere close to what life as a prostitute actually looks like, except for Vidya Balan. Though the film wasn't a commercial hit but it was an art film which was critically acclaimed. Director Srijit Mukherjee tried hard to pick up the best pieces from his earlier film and present in a grand manner, but the film looks very forced upon and animated.

This 134-minute feature is a word to word copy from Rajkahini' (No jokes since it's an official remake of it). Even the cinematography of the film is remade. Srijit Mukherjee took the word liberty' a little too seriously while remaking this film. He could have (and should have) easily shot the film in a much different and improvised way. The edit of the film also looks a little abrupt.

Point to be noted that Holi comes in the month of August in the special case of Begum Jaan'. Really?? What a creative blunder! First half of the film is quite a yawn fest but the second half picked up pace with Vidya's intense act.

Coming to the actors now, to begin with, Vidya Balan, in an attempt to earn the next National award, overplayed in few scenes but obviously, she knows how to cheat and turn an average scene into gold. Cuss words, puffing hookah, boldness of a sex worker, Vidya has done it all to have a hit and somewhat she is succeeded also. Pallavi Sharda and Gauahar Khan are surprisingly good. The scene where Pallavi kills Vivek Mushran after being betrayed is commendable. Gauhar Khan just steals the show in the scene with her lover Sujit. Misthi is just a prop in the film with literally no dialogues. The only time she opens her mouth is to scream when Vidya hits her hard. Ila Arun, Chunky Panday, Vivek Mushran, Ashish Vidyarthi and Rajit Kapoor are impressive in their respective acts.

The film is watchable but only once. The major hiccup in the film is its poor execution and the whole set up looks fabricated. Maybe a better director would have made this film much more bearable. Watch Begum Jaan' for Vidya Balan's impressive performance but don't expect it to be a masterpiece!

The truth of Partition is stained with blood and brutality.

One that burnt homes, took lives and livelihoods, spurred communal violence and triggered a mass exodus between India and Pakistan.

It was a time of uncertainty, incredulity, ill will and inexplicable chaos and there aren't too many ways to reflect on it without getting sentimental.

But when writer and director Srijit Mukherjee uses this hellish imagery solely for effect, he belittles one of the most horrific chapters in human history.

Full of histrionics and misandry, Begum Jaan shows little understanding of the trauma and impasse afflicting those in its grip.

In a remake of his Bengali hit Rajkahini; Mukherjee reopens old wounds from history to satiate his appetite for raspy melodrama, laboured production design and cosmetic symbolism.

It begins in Amitabh Bachchan's impassioned voice-over informing us about the British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe and how his hastily drawn border, cutting through Bengal and Punjab, brought about the geographical split of a nation.

Of course, the only purpose it really serves is to form a backdrop for Mukherjee's bombastic, sepia-soaked work of fiction wherein the unibrowed Begum Jaan's (Vidya Balan) far-flung, sprawling brothel interferes with topographical technicality; it falls right over the Radcliffe line.

Not one to budge, Begum Jaan's hostile ways and expletive-rich vocabulary makes her choice amply clear to the authorities delivering the eviction notice.

The officials (Ashish Vidyarthi and Rajit Kapoor), carrying out their respective government's bureaucratic will, happen to be childhood buddies and the film often side-tracks to suffer their clunky nostalgia in oddly sliced frames to imply Partition.

Speaking of their status quo in a tone that is more retrospective than speculating, the duo offers a stiff understanding of administrative compulsions and adds to Begum Jaan's dragging pace.

Mukherjee borrows from Shyam Benegal's Mandi and Ketan Mehta's Mirch Masala, Sadaat Hasan Manto and Ismat Chughtai to equip punch lines in a script whose potential for heft is lost in a meandering structure and perverse pleasure for observing sexual violence.

Though not as explicit in its visuals as the original, Begum Jaan confines the ideals of womanhood to her affinity or aversion for sex.

The camera swoops right onto a prostitute's deadpan expression during intercourse or lingers on the lifeless face of young girl slapped out of stupor, forced into mating.

Begum Jaan adopts crudity to be perceived as potent but flounders every time the characters open their mouth.

The sole exception is Chunky Pandey -- the actor is virtually unrecognisable in the role of a slimy, smutty, soulless enforcer hired to drive out Begum Jaan and sinks his stained teeth into the part with noticeable relish.

Mostly though, there's something exploitative and insincere about its brashness, designed to grab attention or congratulate itself over its widespread audacity for featuring nudity, homosexuality and strong language.

And so when Vidya Balan quips about menstruation to make her point, it screams 'Look, a mainstream star talking like that' not 'wow, slayed it.' While her interpretation of the stern brothel madam is nothing like Rituparna Sengupta's eerie, cackling control freak, it's too overblown to appeal.

Depressing to see the efforts of an adventurous actress trifled in a film gloating in its empty feminism and token diversity. Instead of intelligent motives or significant female bonding, Begum Jaan skims through their lives just as cursorily as it gapes at the manufactured crowd of nondescript villagers crossing the border from both directions.

The few who leave an impression in Begum's bawdy cluster is a spunky Gauahar Khan and her poignant bond with the bordello minion Pitobash Tripathy though some of their scenes are patchily juxtaposed into the narrative as well as is Ila Arun's storytelling Amma.

In its preoccupation with drama, Begum Jaan neglects to reveal its soul. As a consequence, you feel nothing for the characters, their cause or fate.

Fuelled by stagy impulses till the end, its climatic crossfire is elaborate but of little value.

The shabbily picturised sequence of women blindly firing into nowhere upholds Begum Jaan's flimsy, ill-defined rebellion where Mukherjee draws epic parallels to their resistance.

It is as reckless as Radcliffe's.

Rediff Rating : 2/5

Begum Jaan starts with one of the most hard hitting opening sequences I have ever seen.

The scene " all about two minutes long " is set at Connaught Place in 2016, and is eerily similar to the Nirbhaya incident. It's painful, and gives you quite the jolt.

Then, we travel back in time to 1947 when independence came to India " at the cost of Partition.

Begum Jaan, played by Vidya Balan, is the madam of a brothel. From the unibrow to the contact lens, Vidya is perfection as the Begum.

There's a scene when a new girl is brought to the brothel after she was raped and she is in a state of complete shock. She has stopped responding to anything " until Begum slaps her out of her stupor, until she has a cathartic breakdown.

It's a strong scene, just one of many more to come.

When the girls in the brothel get carried away in the spirit of fun, it is Begum who brings them back to earth. She is strong and appears hard-hearted; what that really means is that she cares deeply " and has a different way of showing it.

Above all, the Begum means business.

Next in line for the laurels is Pallavi Sharda. Her character Gulabo " among the sex workers at the brothel with a traumatic past " doesn't get enough screen time in the first half of the film, but is still a treat to watch. She is also in love with a man who frequently visits the brothel with books and sweets. Pallavi retains her screen presence even when she's sharing the frame with Vidya, and there's no evidence of the vast experience gap between the two actors " and that's saying something!

And we certainly can't leave out mention of Gauahar Khan. After a turn as a no-nonsense cop in Badrinath Ki Dulhania, Gauahar is back with a scene-stealing turn in Begum Jaan. One sequence in particular, where she explains her life to the man she loves, is poignant and powerful.

But no more details to spoil the plot for you.

Suffice it to say that by half time, we're at the main crux of the story: The government has issued an eviction notice to Begum and the brothel's inmates since the Radcliffe Line that divides India from Pakistan is to pass through the property.

The dialogues are strong, painful and riveting. While all of these are beautifully done, and the performances are the biggest highlights, the problem for the viewer by the end of the first half is the different layers to the story, all going on concurrently, and the way they've been put together. It seems a tad abrupt, but this is not that huge of an issue. In fact, it may even add to the 'feel' of the film.

What one hopes for with the first half, is for it to build up to a grand second half, which will include riveting appearances by Naseeruddin Shah and Chunky Pandey.

So does the second half of Begum Jaan deliver?

The answer, is an unequivocal yes.

Defeating the curse of the second half, Begum Jaan gets stronger and better.

You'll come across a scene where Naseeruddin Shah's character is having sex with one of the women of the brothel, while the Begum (Vidya) sings for him in the same room! As a king who is losing his power because of Partition, Shah's character is in the grey zone. And while perfection from Shah is something you take for granted, the surprise lies in the form of Chunky Pandey. He plays the polar opposite of the roles he's been seen in so far, as the the villain here who the government appoints to the brothel evicted. He's ruthless, and finds the worst possible ways to inflict pain on Begum and her women.

The strongest parts of the movie are its script and dialogues. The narrative is layered and the dialogues are powerful. The performances are each better than the other.

Here, however, are the problems: Starting with the cinematography... let's just say that the cinematographer was a little too experimental. Not very good looking handheld shots in one scene coupled with abrupt editing switches and cuts " didn't work for me.

And then there's the ending, which encapsulates the entire story in a minute " which makes you wonder if the filmmakers thought the audience wasn't intelligent enough to have figured that out after two hours of viewing time!

Vidya usually grabs your attention in all her movies. But this movie has all of its actors performing to the fullest and it's hard to point out who is better than the other.

Begum Jaan is strong, inspiring, shocking, and more than anything " heart-wrenching. Don't forget to take your handkerchief (or tissues!) along.