Spotlight is, however, the best of the lot - it’s a social satire masquerading as a showbiz satire.
Like Chaubey’s Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa, Spotlight also opens with a quirky title card - an idiosyncratic touch that randomly unites the two best entries in this anthology, but also seems very arbitrary, stylistically speaking, since Srijit Mukherji’s films don’t tag along on the ride. In Vik’s case, it’s a ‘look’ - a literal look that sends his fans into a frenzy and forces critics to rip his films to shreds. Like Ipsit, the protagonist of Vasan Bala’s Spotlight - a typecast actor played by Harsh Varrdhan Kapoor - also finds that he is losing his X-factor.
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We’ve come full circle, in a way the train, as it were, has returned to its station of origin. More than the films of Satyajit Ray, whose fascination with trains even inspired Wes Anderson, Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa brings to mind two of Alfred Hitchcock’s best rail-themed movies - The Lady Vanishes and Strangers on a Train. Manoj Bajpayee and Gajraj Rao in Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa, a chapter in Netflix's Ray. There’s a mystery box quality to the film that Chaubey and his actors gleefully unravel, with support from a couple of cameos that I won’t spoil by revealing here. It’s a terrific two-hander that on paper must’ve read like a chamber piece, but is given cinematic flair by Chaubey’s confident direction and Niren Bhatt’s playful screenplay.Ĭhaubey relies heavily on the performances of his two stars, yes, but isn’t afraid to stamp the material with his unique sensibilities. But once again, it’s the oversimplified execution and derivative storytelling that proves to be the film’s undoing.įortunately for us all - Ray included - director Abhishek Chaubey comes to the rescue with his delightfully delicate film, Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa, starring Manoj Bajpayee and Gajraj Rao as two men who meet on a rail journey, but can't seem to shake the feeling that they've seen each other before. Menon is great at playing unassuming psychos, and Bahupriya, in which he stars as an overlooked makeup artist, gives him a fascinating Joker-esque character to sink his teeth into. That dubious honour must go to Mukherji’s other entry, the Kolkata-set Bahupriya, starring Kay Kay Menon in essentially a one-man show. Ali Fazal in a still from Forget Me Not, a chapter in Netflix's new anthology series, Ray.īut the most unmemorable of Ray’s four films isn't Forget Me Not. The ending, although flashily filmed, robs the chapter of all ambiguity.
The premise of this film - about a man coming to the gradual realisation that is greatest superpower is fading before his eyes - is undeniably intriguing, but the execution gives it an air of preposterousness that is difficult to shake.įorget Me Not is hauntingly shot by Swapnil Sonawane, a man who knows a thing or two about capturing Mumbai at nighttime and the everreliable Ali Fazal’s performance is admirably reigned-in, but the script, by Siraj Ahmed, is too clunky to examine the story’s core themes with any sort of depth. But his self-obsession prevents him from even registering the men and women in his orbit. Ipsit’s rise to the top of the corporate food chain, it is heavily implied, has left a trail of casualties. What Ipsit does for a living is very vague he’s somewhat of a stock CEO-type who’s always on call with his assistant, and perpetually surrounded by a gaggle of admirers.
But a chance encounter with a former flame sends him spiralling into self-doubt. Ali Fazal plays Ipsit, a corporate shark who is described by his colleagues as a human computer. The first, a paranoid thriller directed by Srijit Mukherji and titled Forget Me Not, is some sort of monument to cancel culture.
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