Badlapur Revenge on the audience's innocence

A Frontbencher’s view

Saw many critics are falling over each other in praising ‘Badlapur’. I the normal front bencher of Indian cinema should have read the warning signs. The only good thing about ‘Badlapur’ is the ravishing Huma Qureshi. Damn it someone give her a full blown masala heroine role please. I promise I shall learn to whistle and be there on day one in the theatre.

I am one of those who have suffered ‘Badlapur’ today . More of that later. But the first thought that hits me why call a movie “‘Badlapur’ don’t miss the beginning”. I was thinking of some the other revenge classics how could they be titled – ‘Sholay’ don’t miss the interval. ‘Ghayal’ – doesn’t matter if you missed the beginning. Or ‘Haider’ – miss it totally, you won’t die. OK , first the few good things about ‘Badlapur’. Varun Dhawan has given a very sincere performance; the lad is here to stay.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui has brought sliminess of his character alive on the screen. The beauty of his performance is that you don’t really know when he is being sincere when he is being slimy, if there was one layered performance of a man full of shades despite being purely evil – this is it . In split seconds he is playing games with his lady love and in split second he displays how vulnerable he is, and the way he speaks – dubara ispe haath uthaya to I will finish you goodnight. Wah !

Huma Qureshi puts in a very sincere effort as a woman who has no choice in life and knows she loves the wrong guy. That’s it.There is nothing else in ‘Badlapur’. Sure it has some very well written moments. Great dialogues and good chemistry between two principle characters of the movie . The revenge seeker and the villain. But that does not make a classic vendetta movie. Let me say this with a heavy heart that none of today’s Hindi movie directors know how to make a good revenge-lena movie.

Sometimes I feel, forget ‘Sholay’, today’s vendetta movie makers should go and visit these two under rated revenge classics of the 1980s – ‘Aakhree Raasta’ and ‘Ghayal’. These two movies had a tight screenplay, scenes which brought out the conflict between why revenge is a poisonous emotion even for the seeker and does not bring peace but why a man still seeks it - remember that great line which Amitabh delivers to Sridevi – aatm-hatya meri biwi kar chuki hai maar daalne ka farz main poora kar raha hoon aur Sunny Deol’s Ajay telling his lady love – main manta hoon ye ghar dubara nahi bus sakta magar kai aur ghar ujadne se bach jayenge! - And they made great statements on the then societal and legal systems and yet – they were able to involve the audience frame by frame. These movies did not insult their audience’s intelligence and yet were hard hitting. The audiences, I repeat, got connected with these.

Say whatever and defend how much ever, ‘Badlapur’ and the recent ‘Haider’ fail on this one single point. If the audience does not root for the vengeful hero or heroine and does not applaud each and every advance that he or she makes towards the evil one – a vendetta movie has failed. ‘Badlapur’ fails here.The worst part of ‘Badlapur’ is, the man who is the reason behind a devastated brutalised innocent family is made to look like the guy who is just complicated , he did nothing wrong.

His dialogue in the climax is absolute justification of rogue sycopath behaviour. In fact in the end the director through his lady love tries to give a message to the audience that a father who is only seeking revenge for a dead innocent son and husband to a victimised wife is the guy who chose the wrong path . yeah right.

What next Sriram Raghavan, a lecture or a movie on how we should understand the side of phedophiles ?

In all this ‘Badlapur’ becomes more like a ‘Ghajini’ made by Satyajit Re, it is neither mainstream nor film festival material .By the way dear Sriram Raghavan, I do hope you did your research on this simple fact that Maharashtra does have a city called ‘Badlapur’ and it means exchange not revenge. This city was a place where travellers in the olden days would change horses. So....

By Rahul Deo Bharadwaj