Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story

Scam 1992-Part 1: The Casting Coup

Sometimes you have so much to write about a movie that you do not know where to start. So let me start by writing about one thing out of ‘n’ number of good things about this movie, which I think is a kind trendsetter for the film Industry. It is about a new technique, which has started gaining prominence in the Indian film industry only recently and the technique is called ‘Casting’. The credit for introducing and perfecting this art of casting goes only to one person in the industry and his name is Mukesh Chabbra. The website of his company MCCC defines the scope of his work as “ MCCC team analyzes each character and its underlying motivations- whether subtle, implied, derived or pronounced. This helps in a thorough scan of aspirants to evaluate their perceived competence for the given role. The chosen artists are trained through tailored workshops to help them translate their potential into performance that the audience would cherish.’ If this would be the contribution of a casting director in the making of a film, I believe the foundation of a good film is already laid. This technique has brought in yet another big change in our films, which are following this model of casting and that is the increasing screen time or the screen presence given to the secondary star cast. The screen presence created by the secondary actors in such films is so strong that the director/editor is forced to increase the screen time for the secondary actors, consequently reducing the length of the footage given to the lead actors. This is completely in contrast to the earlier approach of filmmaking, where the lead actors used to consume most of the footage, thereby pushing the role of the secondary actors almost into insignificance. This new approach of research based casting makes the landscape of a film look more inclusive and more realistic.

Starting with the films like Gangs of Wasaeypur, Shahid, Dangal etc. Mukesh Chabbra’s latest casting coup is Scam 1992. He has perfected this art to such an extent that in a 10 episode long series like Scam 1992, the characters casted by him have overshadowed the storyline itself. These characters seem to be an integral part of the story line and the entire film comes to life through its ‘varied set of characters’ only – the lead as well as the secondary – they all seem to be absolutely authentic and real, be it Harshad Mehta (flawlessly played by Pratik Gandhi), brother Ashwin, his conscience keeper (played by Hemant Kher), his lonely wife Jyoti (Anjali Bardot), his partner Bhutan Bhat with his internal burns (played by Chirag Vohra), his handsome debauch broker friend Pranav Seth ( played by Jay Upadhyay), the gritty professionalism of Sucheta Dalal (superbly portrayed by Shreya Dhanwanthary through her expressive face and quiet demeanor), the quiet helplessness of RBI Governor ( played by Ananth Mahadevan), the snobbish Citi banker Tyagi ( Nikhil Dwivedi) , the insidious money market broker Ajay Kedia (Shadaab Khan) , the cool menacing bear king, Manu Mundra ( played by Satish Kaushik to perfection), the frustrated NHB Chairman (KK Raina), the grand Parasi style classiness of SBI Chairman (Vivek Vaswani), the exasperations of a righteous CBI Director Madhavan ( played by Rajat Kapoor), the vulnerability of being a PSU banker ( Rajesh Jais), the romance of being a young investigative journalist Debashish (Faisal Rashid ) , the itchiness of being stuck in a frustrating routine job Sitaraman ( Jaimini Pathak), the political side of a scheming Swami (Karthik Krishnan) and the stammering innocence of Sharad Bellary ( Sharib Hashmi). Such powerful performances by a battery of secondary actors in a popular and successful film like Scam 1992 will, I hope, open floodgates of opportunities for talented character actors. In fact this casting coup is a kind of a mini-revolution in the film industry as it is enlarging the scanning universe of potential actors and taking the searchlight to the smaller towns and cities of India- a welcome trend indeed.

Scam 1992:Part 2: Branding the deficits

The most heartening thing about the film is that they have tried to bring to screen the factors that created a phenomenon called Harshad Mehta. Harshad was a super hero for the retail investors in India but the real Harshad Mehta was merely an embodiment of middle class aspirations, particularly the middle class Gujarati aspirations with an inborn hunger for money and recognition. He had the handicap of being born in a family of meager financial means and also being deprived of an opportunity to have a good education. These ‘handicaps’ created a bundle of inferiority complex in his personality, which got manifested in his strong dislike for the elite or the privileged in society. When he started dabbling in the share market he realized that the affluence in life was not a factor of merit, it was rather a by –product of manipulation and machinations. The more he tired to dabble into the market -an outsider- the stronger came the repulse from the gatekeepers of the ‘citadel’. This resistance fuelled his hatred for the elite club and ignited his zeal to break into their domain. All his life was spent in trying to invent ways and means to penetrate into this fiercely guarded terrain of the elite and beat them in their own game in their own territory. It was like David vs. Goliath. And in order to win this war against the ‘mighty ‘, all he had in his armory was his bundle of inferiority complexes but a deep diving mind. He also realized that the entire business of the share market and the money market was built around a world of perceptions. These perceptions he soon realized were only a matter of few intangibles and could be crafty created by undertaking an image building exercise, an exercise which nobody in the financial domain had done till then. The inspiration for creating his brand Big Bull came from his filmi inspiration Amitabh Bachhan, the Big B. Some of the tangible ways of building the brand ‘Big Bull’ were his lifestyle statements like wearing a luxury watch and a holding a branded pen while signing and driving around in a Lexus car. This exercise of brand building was supplemented by a lot of PR, advertising and word of mouth publicity. So he strategically converted all his ‘deficits’ into a fashionable brand called the ‘Big Bull’. The brand Big Bull packaged all his shortcomings into strengths (Growmore and Live Life King Size) and converted Harshad Mehta into an enigmatically magnetic phenomenon. The men on the streets of India lapped up this brand and became his followers.

Powered by brand Big Bull, he walked into the boardrooms of the elite financial community, be it foreign banks, PSU banks, financial institutions, Public sector Undertakings and the Corridors of the Power that be. The cleverly crafted brand became so powerful that these ‘elite bankers’ themselves lined up to seek his patronage and his business acumen. Every one in the financial world wanted to have a share in the Bull Run created by Harshad Mehta. This euphoria and the heightened level of perceived trust helped him play the game of ‘Merry go round’, which is to take from one hand and give it to the other. The Bull Run continued till one fine day ‘ ‘fate’ intervened and someone in the banking system bothered to do a reconciliation between the books and the BR’s ( Bank receipts).This long story is painstakingly captured by the ten episode long series called Scam 1992, the Harshad Mehta Story.

Besides giving prominence to the roles of the secondary star cast, this film has also helped in discovering two amazingly talented actors namely Pratik Gandhi and Shreya Dhanwanthary.

Pratik Gandhi (who hails from Surat, a place known for the speculative share market activity) has not only acted as Harshad Mehta, he has been successful in portraying the ‘phenomenon’ called Big Bull. A Gujarati stage actor, Pratik, has gone under the skin of the character to bring out the story of the making of the phenomenon called Harshad Mehta. His acting, his mannerism, his understated confidence or the lack of it, his searching eye glances with a quarter of a smile, his body language (a copy of AB’s gait) coupled with his Gujrati tinged accent and frequent use of Gujrati idioms and word play has been able to personify the complex character of Harshad Mehta, who till his last days was convinced that he did nothing wrong and was playing the game like the rest of the elite and his party was brought to a stop by somebody who had something deeply personal against him, an angle which the film also tries to hint at without confirming it.

The second discovery of the film is the female lead Shreya Dhanwanthary, who has been Miss India South 2008. This is her first big break in mainstream Hindi cinema and she has gracefully capitalized on the opportunity. The energy and rectitude with which she has carried the role of a professional financial journalist is admirable. She brings authenticity to an offbeat character of a young journalist, who was trying to take on the big bad world, while navigating the by lanes of Dalal Street. Shreya has been able to do justice to the character while managing to bring out the frustration, determination and the vulnerability of a young female financial journalist, who is trying to make her place in the domain of financial journalism, which was conventionally dominated by the men. Besides having an expressive face and beautiful eyes, she has the acting talent, the right combination to be a potential acting star in Indian film industry.

Scam 1992: Part 3: Hindi film with Gujrati Snacks

It is no secret that stock market lingo in India is Gujrati flavored Hindi and the makers of this film have used the same in the film to add authenticity to the characters and the storyline.

Though the film is based on a book, which is full of technicalities and financial jargons, the film’s script has focused on the human side of the story behind this complex web of transactions. It is heartening to see how the writers of the screenplay have simplified the financial jargon of the share and money market into simple and easy to follow dialogues in ‘Gujrati flavored Hindi’ with the use of idioms and word play. There are plenty of such interesting dialogues like ‘Ishq hai to Rishk hai’, ‘Bears ke ball bearings tight ho jayenge’, ‘Paper main upper ka line sirf attention ke liye hota hai’, ‘’Don’t value a company on the basis of its value’ (aka Value is a matter of perception), ‘Aap hamen jaan jaoge to maan jaoge’, ‘Sitaraman Bank of India’, ‘CBI has started liking the breakfast of my home’ etc.( I could not follow many. ) Backed by the shooting at authentic locations like the Bombay Stock Exchange, Dalal Street (you will recognize the white staircase of BSE, if you have been there), State Bank building, Fort, CBI office in Bellard Estate, Times of India Office at Fort, Mumbai etc., and by using names of the real persons like Ashwin Mehta, Sitharaman, Pherwani etc the film has become highly relatable. I specially enjoyed Sucheta’s conversation in Times of India office with the cartoonist RK Laxman when she asked him why he did cartoons of common man only and not common woman. His reply was witty as usual, “ Women are not common.” Such cameos make the film endearing.

Finally all credit must to the veteran filmmaker Hansal Mehta, who has a track record of a giving us such meaningful films like Shahid, City Lights, Aligarh, and Omerta. He has always picked up socially relevant issues and beautifully de-cluttered them to produce lovable films. More power to you Mr. Mehta, keep de- cluttering more and more Mehtas. India is full of stories for your kind of films.

Scam 1992: Part 4 (Last) : History repeats itself

The Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Buke, once said that ‘those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it’.

By that logic, Scam 1992 needs to be seen by the ‘man- on- the- street‘, the main victim of the scam 1992, so that we do not see repeat of such scams in future.

But looking at our track record, we Indians have not learnt much from our history. Our public memory is short and we believe in forgiving and forgetting things very fast. The Harshad Mehta scam happened in 1992 and by 2002, just a decade later, the financial market was again rigged by another stockbroker called Ketan Parekh, who used similar tactics to rig prices of certain hand picked securities, informally referred to as K-10 stocks. Again after 10 years of this rigging scam, the financial ecosystem in our country saw yet another loot in the form of huge amount of loans being doled out to another set of unscrupulous brands and biggies like Mallayas and Choksis. This reckless binge of banking created one of the largest crises in Indian banking industry in the form of Non-performing assets estimated to be of the order of Rupees ten lakh crore or so. Those in the know of the things would vouch for the fact that once again the banks and the financial institutions in India competed with each other in doling out favors to these new darlings of the banking industry. The point I am trying to make is that, this enigmatic animal called financial industry in spite of various reforms and numerous checks and balances does not believe in learning from its past mistakes and the scams have continued unabated in our country in one shape or the other. Every time, someone has found a new loophole in the system and exploited it. The genesis of all these financial frauds, to my mind, lies in our inability to educate people at large to exercise discretion and restrain and keep human greed in check. No wonder that in spite of so much of audit and supervision in the financial system, we still have PMCs of the world taking the gullible investors for a ride.

However, films like Scam 1992 help in drilling down the importance of learning from the past mistakes and sensitizing the common man about following some discretion and discipline when it comes to financial dealings and not to follow the heard mentality. It is, therefore, in the interest of the common man, the ultimate victim of all these scams that more and more suchlike research based investigative films are made to make us think, reflect and introspect on ourselves as individuals and as a society.

The brutal truth is that even after the so-called modernization or the digitization of Indian banking system, it continues to be as vulnerable as it was in 1992, when by using a small stroke of his pen (1 changed to 6) Sitharaman could evaporate Rs 500 crore from the banking system. Who knows this time instead of a stroke of pen, it could be a just a click of a mouse?

The fear and the irony is that once again after a gap of ten years from the NPA scam, our financial ecosystem is getting susceptible for financial scam of yet another kind. Haven’t you seen the trailer of this new –scam- in- the- offing in the form of the film ‘Jamtara’? Please watch this film on Netflix and educate yourself and your family. Till then enjoy the Gujrati breakfast with Harshad Mehta and his family. All said and done, you are watching most likely the best film of Hindi movie of 2020. 

Ludo

I saw the film Ludo (2 hrs. 30 minutes), could not complete it in one sitting. After watching the film over two days, I did not feel like wasting more time writing about it, till I read the interview of the writer- director of the film, in which he seems to have said that he did not know how the script of this film got developed. Talking about the intuitive style of the director, an actor in the film has said and I quote “In life it is also nice to sometime just take a leap of faith. It’s so nice to do work, which takes you back to your training. Working with him is a lot like that because of the process he has. He does not over brief his actors. He wants their performance to be instinctive and their reactions to be as natural as possible. People might think, Arre Dada does not tell us this or that. We don’t know when we will shoot. But that’s a part of the process because he wants pure emotion to come out. That’s the film, he has made. Such a pure and clean film.”

The above made me imagine what could have been the process of making of this film. Let me lay it down. One day, during a break on the shoot of his previous film, Barfi, the director was playing Ludo with his cast and crew. Everyone was enjoying the game. Excited by the thrill of ups and downs in the game, someone suggested that we should a film on ‘Ludo’. Another person suggested that it could have four tracks like the four quadrants of the Ludo. The art director added that these four tracks should have four colors –red, blue, yellow and green like in the Ludo. The director topped up the discussion saying let us add a ‘dice’ of fate to give a metaphorical meaning to these tracks. The music director informed that he had the leftover tracks of film Barfi , which could be used for the new film. In case of any shortage, he could dip into old popular songs depending upon whether the track was ‘naram’ or ‘garam’.

The casting director suggested that we should have four distinctive styles of acting in these four tracks. Immediately four prominent actors with very different acting styles were called. They were telephonically briefed about their distinctive characters and they were asked to develop their tracks independently and instinctively. Days passed by and nothing happened. Then one fine day, a producer showed up and said I would provide ignition to your intuition. So the ‘ensemble’ was quickly assembled and the shoot started. The writer-director sat back and allowed each actor to act out his track till he (the actor) thought that his character had come to its full bloom! Must have been a pure joy for the actors as it is rare that a writer-director allows such long ropes to stretch so far that too in so many directions without bothering to know how he is finally going to knot them together at the end of the day.

As the producer had deep pockets, the art director, production designer and music director also added their own ‘inspired’ tracks and layers to the film. After canning so much footage, the writer-director realized the he had played no role in the making of the film. So he wrote an enveloping role for himself and played it himself to make the audience understand as to what was happening in the film and why.

After all this was canned, the ‘loads’ of footage was handed over to the editor to a make a Ludo out of it. The poor editor tried to cut the film to its size, but the big stars overpowered him as they had by this time got enamored with their characters and would not let anyone snip at it. The poor guy had to accommodate all the colorful tracks in the film hoping that the audience would be happy to see four different films in one film enveloped with a metaphorically metaphysical message explaining the deep difference between ‘sin and virtue’, a subject, which only Bhagwan Krishna had attempted to demystify centuries ago in Bhagwat Geeta. So much for the ‘instinctive’ style of the filmmaking.

All said and done, Ludo is an interesting colorful film with some quirky acting sessions and if you don’t use the glasses used by the critics, you may find the film entertaining. It is something between a black humor and a musical comedy. Play on if you can spare two and a half hours.

Chhalaang

Chhalaang is a sports film like its predecessors Chak de and Sultan etc., but there is nothing much to make it standout or to give a different reason to watch another sports film, except that it makes you smell the popularity of sports in the small towns of Haryana like Jhajhar. The milieu and the language of the film make it a film probably made for the audience of north-India only as it’s typical local dialect and flavour restrict the film to travel beyond the boundaries of the Hindi heartland. However this localised treatment makes the film rooted. What restricts the film from becoming an excellent film is probably its script, which is not very well developed. Some twists and turns in the story look unconvincing jerking the credibility of the storyline. For example the scenes to convince the parents to send their children again to participate in the completion are not very convincing. Also the reasons for a young, attractive and intelligent female computer teacher to develop a liking for a ‘good for nothing’ PT Instructor (more so when a more capable new PT Teacher is also in the fray) are not fleshed out. Acting wise also Raj Kumar Rao acts like Raj Kumar Rao; perhaps he was chosen for this film as his general screen image fits into the required image of the protagonist for this film. The other actors who have added value or the credibility to the film are Saurabh Shukla, Satish Kaushik and Zeeshan Ayyub, besides the kids, who look authentic and naturalized. Chhallang is a big leap but not high enough!

AK Vs. AK

Do you know what is the meaning of the word ‘Jhakas’? Even Anil Kapoor, who coined this word and popularized it, doesn’t know its meaning. Like the expression Jhakas cannot be described in words, AKVs.AK is an atypical film(a meta movie), which cannot be reviewed in simple language. So here is an attempt to describe AK Vs. AK. Anil Kapoor + Anurag Kashyap+ Quentin Tarintino+ Alwyn Kalicharan+ Vanity Van + Face Time+ Bound Script+ Thriller+ Realistic +Cinema Verite + Films + Flops +Failures+ Revenge +Nawazuddin + Sonam+ Vesova+ United Mills+ Hostage+ Fear+Sweat+Birthday+ Bony Kapoor + Kali Pili + CCTV+ MAMI +Karan Johar+Insecuirty+Potshots+Director’s AD+ Casting Couch +Fact +Fiction+ Twist in the tale+ Asthma+ Experimental+ Hand held Camera+ Branded Watch+ My film, my rules+ Unexpected + Suspense +Edge of the seat+ Dark films + Cuss words+ Fans + Filmfare + Film City + Kidnapping +Dance +Christmas + Family + Son+ Blood+ Bruises+ Arrogance+ Parents + Star+ Michael + Javed +DVD Library+ Plot + Action+ Cut +Story +Midlife Crisis + Drama+ Acting+ Nepotism + Shock+ Daughter +Police Station+ Local Train+ Broken Marriages + Broken Nose +My name is Lakhan FYFI (For your ******* information). After watching this film, I can visualize the sound and the sights of Jhakas. Thanks Vikramditya Motwani for making a Jhakas film.

#AKvsAK #Indie #films#Moviereview#cinema#movies#bollywood

The White Tiger

Don’t cross the 180 degree line is one of the fundamental rules for cinematographers. But there are numerous examples of this rule being broken in filmmaking today. Similarly, ‘Show, don’t tell’ is an old adage for the screenwriters. ‘The White Tiger’ is a film, where the internationally acclaimed writer director Ramin Bahrani has departed from this old sermon and used a Voice Over (VO) to tell a story giving it the perspective of the character, Balram Halwai (a rags to riches saga, reminding you of Slumdog Millionaire in a way) played with a naturalistic flair by a young actor Adarsh Gourav. The objective of a screenwriter is to take the audience into the world of the character-physically and mentally. In this film, which is narrated through a series of e-mails, that the protagonist writes to Premier of China narrating his story of entrepreneurship (set in early twenties, when Indian economy was on an upsurge riding on the wave of internet- based commerce), the director has used the VO to communicate the point of view of the protagonist, especially his emotional strife. Visualize the VO in which Balram describes his dislike for the character Vitiligo (played by Nalneesh Neel), when they meet for the first time in the basement of a five star hotel in Delhi. While craning of his neck back so as to keep Vitiligo’s face away, the scene establishes our deep-rooted dislike for the people with this non-communicable disease; the VO makes the messaging/sub text complete. Mere visual of Balram craning his neck away wouldn’t have conveyed the same meaning. Some really rooted and relatable performance by a newcomer Adarsh Gourav and nice cameos by Priyanka Chopra and Neelesh Neel engagingly punctuate the narrative of the film maintaining the rhythm and tempo of the film aided by Punjabi and Hindi folk. It is believed that Adrash stayed in a village in Jharkhand at a friend’s place and worked at a tea stall in Delhi in order to get under the skin of the character. All his preparation shows on screen. Watch his action of cleaning his hands by rubbing them on his hairs after eating the pan offered by Mahesh Manjrekar before he is asked to sign the confession statement. It will not be out of place to say that Adarsh has carried this film virtually on his lone shoulders.

The White Tiger is an adaptation of a novel by Aravind Adiga, who won the Man Booker 2008 award for this book. Aravind is an Indian-Australian, who hails from Chennai and was educated at Alosys College, Mangalore. The writer-director of the film, Ramin Bahrani is an Iranian immigrant settled in US and has many award winning films to his credit, namely Man Push Cart, Chop Shop and Fahrenheit 451. He is also a professor of film directing at the Columbia School of Arts, his alma mater.

Another notable feature of this film, which makes it rooted are its Hindi dialogues. I could not find in the credit list the name of the Hindi dialogue writer, but whosoever has done it has used the authentic colloquial lingo .For instance listen to the dialogue used by Balram, when he enters the driver’s room at the haveli and the No1 driver says that they will shortly buy a bedding for him. His reply ‘ARE KOI BAAT NAHIN HUM ZAMIN PAR HI PASAR JAYENGE’. The use of word PASAR makes the character truly rooted in the Hindi heartland, where the story is supposed to be unfolding.

In a nutshell, you may find The White Tiger a tad longer, but it is certainly a watchable film.

Tribhanga

‘Tribhanga’ is a standing body position or stance used in Indian classical dance forms like the Oddissi, where body bends in one direction at the knees, the other direction at the hips and then the other again at the shoulders and neck. Other poses described in dance theory are ‘sambhanga’ for the ‘figure in equipoise” and ‘abhanaga’ for a slight bend in one leg giving a curve to the figure.

Tribhanga (the film) is a ‘metaphor’ for a story of three generations of women, who make unconventional life choices, live by their choices to follow their passion while unknowingly letting the lives of others around them get distorted due to their unidirectional pursuits of their ‘choices’. It is perhaps the price we all pay for trying to achieve perfection or excellence in our ‘pursuits of happiness’ in whatever area of life we choose to operate. The germs of the story can be seen all around us and it will not be inappropriate to call this film a slice of life film, which will find resonance with urban Indian audience. But what is important here is that this simple story has been brought to life on screen in three different shades of characters portrayed by Tanvi Azmi, Kajol and Mithila Palkar with earnestness and sensitivity. Detractors will have their point of view for criticizing the use of four letter words by the character of Kajol, but to my mind, if the use of ‘gallis’ or the ‘apshabds’ as they are referred to in the film are justified in any story, it is here in this film and for this character, who is accused by her daughter of coming to every PTM with a new boy friend. Her four letter words make her character stand out as a modern day film celebrity perfectly balancing between the chaste Hindi of Tanvi Azami (live-in relations ki sankalpana) and the familiar day-to-day parlance of a Mumbai mulgi. But more important than the characters is the screenplay and direction of the film. I feel compelled to say that Renuka Sahne is a better auteur than an actor. The million-dollar smile girl has this time captivated with her sensitive writing and thoughtful direction. This is her debut as a writer-director and audience will certainly look forward to many more such sensitive films from her. Baba Azmi’s cinematography is charming and Jabeen Merchant beautifully edits the film to flow like the flipping pages of a book. The silent ending of the film reminded me of the theatre tradition, where the silence at the end of the play is filled with the sound of the crowd rising on its feet to give a standing ovation. Clap, clap, clap; more power to you Renuka Sahne.

Platforms like Netflix have been criticized for bringing a spate of template films, but this one is certainly not. I guess name of a celebrity behind the film gave them some confidence to take risk with a kind of an Indie film. Hope we will see more of this kind in future. There certainly is an audience for these kinds of ‘original’ films in India.

Sir

Cinema is a visual medium and a shot well conceived can convey a ‘story’ without the help of any back ups like set decoration, props, acting, dialogues, lights & sound effects. Consider the scene in the film ‘Sir’, when Ratna comes back to look for Ashwin and she finds the apartment door locked. This is a shot taken in the lift lobby of a modern multi- storied building, where we see her coming out of the lift, cut to the lock and she goes back in the lift. In the background, you hear the automated lift voice announcing, ‘Door open, Door close.’ The scene says it all without any fanfare. The credit for visualizing such simply beautiful and meaningful shots and many more such shots in the film (like the one in the bus when she takes off her bangles before reaching the village) must go to the writer director of the film. In this case, the person is Rohena Gera, who made her screen-writing debut with the first season of the Indian comedy-drama television series Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin. She studied at Stanford University and has a documentary ‘What’s love has got to do with it?’ to her credit. ‘Sir’ is an intimate love story, produced by Platoon One Films (founded by Shiladitya Bora) starring Tillotamma Shome and Vivek Gomber. Tillotama has already proven her talent in films like ‘A Death in the Gunj,’ where she won the award for Best Supporting Actress. She has a Master’s degree in Educational theatre from New York University. In New York she also taught theatre to murder convicts at a high security US prison. In this film, she has made her role as a maidservant coming from a village of Maharashtra to work in Mumbai as realistic as it can get. Her body language is enough to convey the purport of the scene. Besides her we have Vivek Gomber, who is known for acting in and producing one of the best Independent films made in India in the recent past – ‘Court’. As evident in this film he has hugely improved as an actor. Suffice is to say that both Vivek and Tillotama make their silent chemistry create sparks against the backdrop of the rich interiors of a high-end apartment in a redeveloped towers located in the middle of Central Mumbai. Their non-verbal cues have added so much depth to the story. Another notable feature of this film is that most of the crew is from International circuit including the DOP and the editors. But they all seem to have added value to an entirely Indian story. The new visual perspective of ‘Mumbai’ brought in by its cinematographer Dominique Colin is fresh and soothing. Even the Ganpapti Visarjan, which we have seen on screen n number of times, doesn’t look chaotic and over-top in this film. The editing does justice to the undulating rhythm and the taught pace of the storyline creating the right emotional arc in the film. A film stays with you because it has been able to get you hooked on emotionally and also because some of the scenes /shots stay with you. For example, refer to the shots of Ratna carrying her chappals in hand every time she enters the house and the only time she forgets to do that is just after the scene when…(watch the film to figure out!). Don’t miss this 99-minute beauty on celluloid!