The title of my review of
Dibakar Banerjee’s latest explains the title Shanghai that seems to elude most of its viewers. The title,
indisputably, is far-fetched, and demands of the audience an awareness of the
unattainable dreams Indian politicians are famed to peddle. Shanghai is the
prototype city of the ultimate development human civilization can envisage at
the present moment. So every Indian politician hawks this dream,
unconscientiously; they are either oblivious of the predicament of several
hundred people the realization of such a dream would entail, or they are simply
not bothered. Dr. Ahmadi raises his voice against the brutality of such a
project in a fictional Indian state, unimaginatively named Bharatnagar. He is
assassinated, and the rest of the film, in a crime-thriller mode, is a search
of the assassin. However, the viewer is all along aware who the real
villain is. It is the characters, within the film, which has to arrive at the
truth already available to the viewer. But, the film never once names the
villain and attributes to the viewer such superior knowledge. The irony is the
Indian viewer has grown so used to the corruption and evil practices of the
State in general, that she can anticipate the end from the very beginning.
If the end is already predictable from the very outset, why
watch Shanghai? Why are people raving
about the film? Is it really that great? I would say not quite. The film simply
plays to the gallery, recounting and tying up into a single narrative political
news that have been making headlines in the past few years in the media. Dr.
Ahmadi (a glamorized, younger and suave version of Anna Hazare) is the tragic
hero, the kind the nation badly needs at present. His socialist idealism,
though undercut by his foreign university degree and teaching career, seeks to
dismantle the general scene of aggressive capitalism in the post-global world. However,
the popular version of progress that means approximating the dream technopolis,
notwithstanding the quagmire such progress thrusts millions of less-privileged
people into, barely changes.
The film is realistic enough not to monger another dream of
a better future. Rather it lays bare the atrocity of the lust for power, when
Dr. Ahmadi’s widow enters into a pact with the political party that killed her
husband, and contends the election. Although a responsible and honest
government official resign, giving up on a prospective career, nothing changes
eventually. In fact, in declaring “Shalini’s book on Dr. Ahmadi’s assassination
was banned in India”, the film makes the viewer aware that she is acting voyeur
to a forbidden narrative. The farce called democracy becomes all the more
manifest in this declaration and the subsequent realization that dawns on the
viewer. This is nothing new; official versions of history are mostly
fabrications, and fiction has often intervened to relate true history. Shanghai performs the same function,
reflecting on a pan-Indian reality at present.
If not
for the content, the film is strongly recommended for its three mind-blowing
performances: Imran Hashmi breaks new grounds as the porn filmmaker Jogi. With
yellowed teeth and a bulging tummy, Imran steals the show with panache. Abhay
Deol, who almost grows into the tie and the formal shirt, downplays his dimples
to a startling effect to infuse credibility into the middle-class, idealistic,
and serious Krishnan. Kalki’s is a passionate performance; she enacts with her
eyes and body language what Shalini believes in. She would invariably remind of
dedicated women freedom fighters strongly rooted in ideology. Prosenjit Chatterjee’s
Dr. Ahmadi is a looker, indeed. But his forced Hindi is a downer. Banerjee
could have very well made him a Bengali. Pitobash, Farooqh Sheikh and Supriya
Pathak are near perfect.
Shanghai
incidentally is smarting at the box-office under the onslaught of the agonizingly
rowdy Rowdy Rathod. The postmodern
lack of political and historical depth becomes ironically manifest in this. The
GenY any day would give Shanghai a
miss for a conventional garish Bollywood potboiler. Sad indeed! It barely
matters whether Shalini’s book is banned or not! Nobody seems to care, right?
Image Courtesy: apnaindia.com
Image Courtesy: apnaindia.com
