Given the kind of mess India has been caught in for a few years now, it's understandable that filmmakers, like many citizens, would be itching to express their frustrations through the medium of cinema. Some, like Anurag Kashyap and Anubhav Sinha, take social issues as a starting point to express themselves in the first person while expanding the possibilities of their style and substance. Others, like Pulkit and Vijay Krishna Acharya, buckle under the weight of their good intentions and come up with a mediocrity of self-satisfied proportions. Even Sriram Raghavan and Imtiaz Ali made films this year that seemed more "duty-bound" than acts of artistic expression. This sense of "duty" is once again evident in Prahaar: The Untold Story of Ujjwal Nikam, whose director, Avinash Arun, too, seems content to translate Sumit Roy's text with responsibility and conscience. What this "good boy" attitude leaves out is Arun's talent for striking compositions that yield emotionally resonant images. Killa leaves you stunned with its tactile texture, which renders a coming-of-age tale poignantly relatable. School of Lies is breathtaking because it conjures a world that, even beyond the boundaries of the camera, appears to be in motion. Paatal Lok leaves you speechless with its beautiful balance of politics and intimate emotions, yielding a tender, tragic experience. And even Three of Us, with its small-scale warmth, leaves you feeling sufficiently full.
It's equally disappointing and puzzling, then, that Prahaar comes across as a film that could have been made by just about anyone. The fact that it's directed by Arun seems all the more shocking because the film is devoid of his fine sentiments. The story follows Ujjwal Nikam (Rajkummar Rao) and his efforts to prove Ajmal Kasab (Lalit Prabhakar) guilty in court, but Arun and Roy take the opportunity to address more topical issues: the noise around Maharashtra's imposition of Marathi (a waiter tells Ujjwal he doesn't understand Marathi, and Ujjwal replies that it doesn't matter before proceeding to speak in Hindi); the noise around calling each and every Pakistani citizen a terrorist (a Pakistani lawyer, Chaudhary Zulfiqar Ali, is as interested in establishing the identity of the 26/11 attackers as Ujjwal is); and the noise around the supposed futility of courts and democratic institutions (the film counters this cynicism by presenting a virtuous image of India, one in which constitutional safeguards and the judiciary ideally ensure that criminals are prosecuted through fair procedures, logical arguments, and scientific evidence, leaving no room for prejudice or discrepancies). The filmmakers construct dialogue and scenes that dutifully convey these very thoughts, but obedience is no match for creativity.
I couldn't shake off the feeling that Arun is doing his work out of obligation, as if checking important boxes one by one, not to stir the soul but to preach. How do we know that Ujjwal is a workaholic? He's seen talking on his phone even when he's with his family. How do we know Kasab is crumbling from within and going crazy? He hallucinates worms in his food and on his feet. There are no such visual flourishes elsewhere in the film; the "worms" feel like a mandatory box to tick. How do we know that Abbas Kazmi (Sikandar Kher) has put himself in a prickly position by defending a terrorist? Forget the contemptuous gazes from people in the courtroom and his colleagues. When Abbas is at a restaurant with his family during Eid, a man rebukes him for, well, defending Kasab and ruining the reputation of Muslims. Abbas' family, too, appears uncomfortable with the taunts, but Prahaar doesn't bother listening to what Abbas' wife or daughters might actually have to say about any of this. Do they recognize that Abbas is simply doing his job, or do they, too, question his choice every day? The movie remains mum and incurious about these matters; it merely scatters breadcrumbs for the audience to assemble into an ersatz intellectual analysis over the dinner table.
To sidestep accusations of indulging in hagiography, Roy writes scenes in which Ujjwal lashes out at his son for being a mama's boy and portrays the lawyer as someone who hasn't paid enough attention to his family. These so-called flaws, however, are deviously framed as the sacrifices that make Ujjwal exceptional and hardworking. He is, after all, busy and angry only because he's working for the nation's benefit. So what if he didn't constantly check up on his wife? So what if he screamed at his son for spending time with his mother instead of working on the case with him? At the heart of all these reactions is Ujjwal's zeal to ensure that justice is served. How can the audience even begin to criticize him? If you start finding flaws in his character, you'll only end up falling into a trap of both the filmmakers' and your own making. Prahaar, then, is absolutely a hagiography, but it's a hagiography that maintains the illusion of having blemishes that, in hindsight, reveal themselves to be little more than crafty cosmetics.
Why did Arun choose this film? Could it be an attempt on his part to go mainstream, perhaps to secure funding for more ambitious projects that would satisfy the artist within him? I really hope so, because for a director who, in his best works, evoked palpable emotional worlds through keen, clear-eyed, and gorgeous aesthetics, Arun falls back on lame, conventional tropes to move the audience in this movie. When a little girl recounts her horrific experience of seeing her mother die in front of her eyes, Prahaar not only recreates the event through a flashback but also squeezes every last drop of melodrama from the scene with overly sentimental music and an extended depiction of the characters' suffering, until the audience can finally surrender and start weeping. It's a technique worthy of a soap opera, and its presence here indicates either the filmmakers' lack of trust in the material or Arun's lack of trust in his own skills.
I'm not sure what to make of Rao's performance. On the one hand, it's commendable how he gets the gait and walking style of a paunchy man perfectly right. On the other, the Marathi accent, theatrical speeches, and furrowed eyebrows all call attention to his acting so conspicuously that I was always aware I was watching an actor pretending to be somebody. I found Kher and Prabhakar more absorbing, probably because they play characters with far greater complexity. The movie, of course, doesn't do justice to that complexity, but something noteworthy does come through in their performances, making Prahaar a teeny-weeny bit enticing to think about after the screening. A man comments that people like Kasab are manufactured in a factory, and Prabhakar's Kasab, after seeing the real India, looks like a broken, malfunctioning, sentient robot who suddenly realizes that his code has been typed incorrectly. When Prahaar drops all pretense of catering to the masses, something heady and humanistic does seep through the screen. The feeling, alas, doesn't last long. It disappears swiftly. The real question, then, is why the filmmakers chose to shoot themselves in the foot. That's the answer worth seeking. That, too, is the real "untold story."
Final Score - [4.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
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Publisher at Midgard Times