A Potpourri of Vestiges Review
By Murtaza Ali Khan
By Murtaza Ali Khan
Featured in IMDb Critic Reviews
All these years Kashyap had been telling media that he was
unable to make the kind of films he wanted to make because of the lack of
resources and now that he had all the resources at his disposal he failed to
deliver. Reports of him leaving India and settling in Europe started doing the
rounds. But soon the rumors were put to rest as Kashyap came out with his
latest offering Raman Ragav 2.0. Despite garnering some positive reviews internationally,
the film failed to impress at the domestic box-office. While watching Raman Raghav 2.0, I noticed
something that I haven’t noticed before in an Anurag Kashyap film. He looked completely lost as a filmmaker. Even
at his self-indulgent best Kashyap was known to highly engaging films. No Smoking,
perhaps, is the best example of Kashyap delivering despite it being an exercise
in self-indulgence. But, Raman Raghav 2.0 was unbearable to watch that it made
some of the recent films by his mentor Ram Gopal Varma look like masterworks of
cinema. It was a really sad moment seeing Kashyap lose his way like that.
Mukkabaaz has been touted as a return to form for Kashyap. Now,
the film was well received at the 2017 Toronto Film Festival as well as the
2017 Mumbai Film Festival. Now, Mukkabaaz is certainly a improvement on Raman
Raghav 2.0 and it also have the trademark Kashyap elements. Nawazuddin Siddiqui
makes a cameo appearance that’s straight out of Dev D. Also, Jimmy Shergill’s
Bhagwan Das Mishra seems like a distant cousin of Ramadhir Singh—the iconic character
from Gangs of Wasseypur essayed by actor-director Tigmanshu Dhulia. As a matter
of fact, Mukkabaaz is replete with references to Kashyap’s earlier films. Seeing
one self-reference after the other, one is painfully reminded of the Farah Khan
films starring Shah Rukh Khan. Kashyap has described Mukkabaaz as a love story
and not as a sports film and yet the game of boxing is central to it. But the
manner in which he has shot the boxing bouts offers nothing refreshing. It’s
well known that Kashyap greatly admires Martin Scorsese and yet he fails to
take any inspiration from the innovative camerawork Scorsese employed to shoot
the boxing sequences in his 1980 seminal masterwork Raging Bull. Also, Kashyap
seems to take his characters a bit too seriously and as a result they never
really come to life, perhaps with the exception of the leads, played by Vineet
and Zoya. The film also fails to do justice to its theme of caste discrimination.
A movie like Sairat, for example, does a much better job of exposing the dark
side of caste divide that plagues India. The strongest point of Mukkabaaz other
than its solid acting performances is its background music which tries its best
to provide impetus to a movie which is at least 25-30 minutes too long.
Overall, Mukkabaaz is
all about Anurag Kashyap trying to prove yet again how politically aware he is
as a filmmaker. The central theme of the film is how the corrupt and bureaucratic system is responsible for plight of sportsmen in the country. And Kashyap's film does great justice to it. The film also touches upon lynching
and hate crimes committed in the name of caste and religion, and although the
intentions are certainly commendable it just doesn't come out organically. He preaches incessantly for over 150 minutes,
without really showing us anything that we haven't already seen in his cinema. His
earlier films like Dev D, Gulaal, Gangs of Wasseypur, etc. too offered food for
thought but they were also endlessly engaging to say the least. But, sadly, Mukkabaaz fails to pack a punch even if we look at it merely from the perspective of entertainment. Yes, the style is
very much there but even that looks rather stale. But, the worst part is that
just like in Raman Raghav 2.0, Anurag Kashyap seems to lack the clarity as to
what it is that he is trying to tell us through his movie. The end result is a
film that feels like a sermon lacking purpose and conviction.
Mukkabaaz is the latest offering from the Indian filmmaker
Anurag Kashyap who is best known for making genre-breaking films like Black
Friday, No Smoking, Gulaal, and Dev D. The film is a joint production of Aanand
L. Rai’s Colour Yellow Productions and Anurag Kashyap backed Phantom Films. The
film stars Vineet Kumar Singh, Zoya Hussain, Jimmy Shergill, and Ravi Kishan in
major roles. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. The
story of how the film came into being is certainly an interesting one. Vineet
Kumar Singh, who plays the eponymous character in the movie, came up with the
idea for the movie and approached Kashyap with the hope of essaying the lead
character. Perhaps, the inspiration came from the famous story of how Sylvester
Stallone wrote the script of Rocky and how he managed to convince the studio
bosses to hire him to play the lead character in the film. Kashyap bought the
idea on the condition that Vineet would train rigorously for the role of the
boxer, leaving everything else aside. Vineet obliged and trained just as a real
boxer would for a year under an actual boxing coach. Seeing Vineet in the movie
one can easily tell how badly he would have wanted to play the part in the
movie.
In my review
of Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), I had written how Anurag Kashyap had a
definite edge over his peers when it came to representing Indian cinema in the
global arena. Kashyap had been on a roll with Gangs of Wasseypur proving to be
a career highlight. People had already started comparing him to the likes of
Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen. But things changed after Bombay
Velvet (2015). It was said to be Kashyap’s dream project. Made with a whopping
budget of INR 84 crore (840 million), the film marked a departure for
Kashyap who over the previous decade had succeeded in carving a niche for himself
in Hindi cinema with low budget films. Given the film’s humongous scope, Kashyap
seemed to have put a lot on stake with Bombay Velvet. He was clearly walking on
thin ice. Watching the movie one got a feeling that Kasyap was out of his
comfort zone. The film ended up garnering terrible reviews but it was nowhere
as bad. In fact, the film did have some admirable qualities—in particular the
cinephilia is seemed to ooze with. Alas, the film bombed at the box-office,
merely managing to make Rs 22.27 crore.
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| Vineet Kumar Singh and Zoya Hussain in Anurag Kashyap's Mukkabaaz |
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| Jimmy Shergill (right) as Bhagwan Das Mishra in Mukkabaaz |
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| A Still from Anurag Kashyap's Mukkabaaz |
Rating: 5/10
Readers, please feel free to share your opinion by leaving your comments. As always your valuable thoughts are highly appreciated!
References:
'Mukkabaaz' Trailer (YouTube)
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