Sonchiriya
“Beehad mein baaghi hote hain; Daqaet milte hain Parliament mein!”
Lines from Hindi films of recent times are so run-of-the-mill and unremarkable that they seldom stay with you. This one did. Spoken by Irrfan, portraying soldier-athlete-dacoit Paan Singh Tomar in Tigmanshu Dhulia’s 2012 eponymous film, that one line gave a great insight into the minds of the baaghis – they didn’t believe that they were the bad guys.
I recall – vaguely – passing through the ravines which had been home to the dacoits in 2007. That was the first time I heard of Chambal. And of its most-fabled personality – Phoolan Devi. My seven-year-old imaginative version thought what would happen if our trusted Omni were to break down in the middle of the road there, in Chambal. Would daakus appear from the swathes of dry, arid land on either side of the highway? What would they do to us?
Director Abhishek Chaubey has described Sonchiriya – his fourth film – as an action-adventure film about bandits facing an existential crisis. There perhaps hasn’t been as intriguing a one-liner about a Hindi film in a while. Chaubey’s work as a filmmaker is out there for everyone to see – he co-wrote Omkara and Kaminey with mentor Vishal Bhardwaj (whose third outing as a composer for Chaubey this film is), directed the Ishqiya films, delivered a powerful experience with the drug drama Udta Punjab, and produced what is, in my not-so-humble opinion, one of the finest films of 2017 – A Death in the Gunj.
The film opens with a grotesque image of a snake being feasted upon by flies. A band of bandits approaches the snake. They all don khaki uniforms, making it easy for them to be mistaken for the policemen hot on their trail. The band halts when they see the snake. One of them calls out to the leader, and a second later, a man of medium build with long, seventies-style sideburns to accompany his greying hair, shuffles forward warily. He lifts the dead snake with the barrel of his rifle and places it on the side of the path, joins his hands in a brief, mumbled prayer, and walks on. To his crew, Dadda, as the bandit is addressed, has made a grave error. A shraap now hovers over him. It is at this moment that Abhishek Chaubey chooses to flash the title on screen. It’s a moment innocuous and insignificant, but you realise the relevance of Sonchiriya written on the screen at that particular moment much after walking out of the theatre.
Sonchiriya delves into the lives of the Man Singh gang’s frontmen – Vakil Singh, the second-in-command; Lakhan Singh, the leader’s protégé; and Man Singh himself. Rounding up the cast of protagonists are Indumati Tomar, a Thakur woman on the run from her family for rescuing a young girl who has been raped; and Virender Singh Gujjar, the Madhya Pradesh Police officer leading the charge against this particular bunch of baaghis.
If you’re going to watch Sonchiriya with the hope of having a good time, you might want to reconsider. Chaubey’s film is anything but a good time. It is a harsh look into the lives of outlaws in Central India, toxic masculinity and suppression of women, and casteism, with dollops of philosophy thrown into the mix.
The film unfolds slowly, despite the genre. And though the initial thought of how long it was when you walk out might make you feel fatigued, ultimately you feel grateful that Chaubey didn’t squeeze everything to get a shorter runtime.
Some films have overarching themes – Tumbbad played around with the concept of greed, Gully Boy trained its camera on hope, Zero with incompleteness (in a rather incomplete manner); Sonchiriya focuses on guilt and remorse. Pashchataap, as Lakhan calls it. And deliverance too.
The way writer Sudip Sharma works this rather philosophical tone into the film’s messy action-packed, dusty realm is partly where the appeal of Sonchiriya lies. Working from a story he co-wrote with Chaubey, Sharma plunges into this world of Chambal with nary a thought for the audience, people who probably have never heard of the place. And he does it splendidly. The dialogue is crackling (I walked out of a show that played a dubbed version in Hindi as opposed to Bundelkhandi and when I watched the original, I realised the impact a different audio track can make), sprinkled with the sort of dark humour that made Udta Punjab the sort of film it was: two scenes are especially funny, one in which Man Singh tells Vakil to present a hundred and one rupees to the bride whose jewellery the gang is looting, and another where one character mocks the other for thinking they’ll be served mutton in jail after surrendering. “Mutton khayenge bhosadike!” says the man sarcastically. The screenplay delves into the characters with the sort of ease not too many Hindi films can boast of, and Sharma fortunately doesn’t feel the need to constantly draw the audience back to the same point.
The action, spread over the film’s entire runtime, is messy and gritty, just as you’d expect it to be. The shots with Gujjar and the cops show a measured, cautious approach, whereas Man Singh and company are haphazard, uncoordinated and all over the place. Kudos to Sunil Rodrigues and Anton Moon for the way in which they’ve executed the action, and to Chaubey and Sharma for how it plays out and how well spread out it is.
The film’s music – soundtrack by Vishal Bhardwaj with lyrics by Varun Grover and original score by Benedict Taylor & Naren Chandavarkar – is made up of those rare pieces that are soothing (Sonchiraiya & Ruan Ruan) and energetic (Naina Na Maar & Baaghi Re) in equal measure, whereas the score is enchantingly haunting.
One must also note Kunal Sharma’s sound design, which picks out the nuances of the environment of the dusty ravines – the wind, the crunch of gravel and sand – in a fine manner and completes Anuj Rakesh Dhawan’s stellar cinematography.
Dhawan’s understated approach to capturing visuals is one of the film’s defining aspects. Except for one showy (but enjoyable) shot, the rest of it is old-fashioned solid lighting and movement. You leave the theatre with a good sense of what Chambal must be like, for the camera traverses those ravines in a way that makes one feel one is right there in the midst of it all.
Manoj Bajpayee. What do you say about the man that hasn’t been said over and over before, for the last twenty years, if not more? He is in terrific form as the ageing, god-fearing Man Singh and throws himself into the role of the veteran bandit completely, even if his screentime is the shortest of the protagonists. Nobody could’ve played the character better, and Bajpayee seems to know it. Might I add that the voice is one of the most terrific of the Bombay actors, superior, in my opinion, to Amitabh Bachchan’s even.
Sushant Singh Rajput is quite good as the guilt-ridden Lakhan Singh, on edge and adamant in his ways. Rajput has a quiet, unassuming demeanour when he is in front of the camera, which is probably what works so well in his favour, for he almost always manages to blend into the surroundings. If it all he slips up, it is when sharing a frame with the likes of Bajpayee and Ranvir Shorey, their superior craft evident in each of those moments. Still, Rajput does a good job, the lapses of accent a few times aside.
Ranvir Shorey is superb as the bullying Vakil Singh, the second-in-command who is ever-willing to go all guns blazing and take the battle to the enemy. There is something about Shorey, perhaps the fact that he doesn’t appear in films as often enough as he should, that adds to the mystery of Vakil and why he is the way he is. Despite the many flaws in the character, Shorey plays him in a manner that makes you feel for him in every way possible, whether it is the way he reacts when his Dadda is spoken to rudely, the way he takes charge, or whether he shows how loyal a bandit he truly is.
Bhumi Pednekar, while good enough, is the weakest link in the cast of characters, primarily because of how she speaks. The tone is too sanitised, too clear cut. It doesn’t fit into the milieu of the film. But she does well in the scenes where there is little dialogue, and she is, as a performer, very convincing for the most part.
Ashutosh Rana’s Gujjar is supposed to be the embodiment of evil, and Rana looks it, with those terrifying eyes of his and the “Brando from Apocalypse Now” look he sports. He too doesn’t have much screentime but is electrifying in each and every frame he occupies. Gujjar has more to him than being a bandit hunter in khaki and that’s exactly where Rana makes him empathetic as a character, pushing all the right buttons in the stray scenes that he does betray that his hunt for them may not just be professional.
Abhishek Chaubey delivers – just as he had stated prior to the release – a deep action-adventure about Chambal bandits. It would’ve been easy, and perhaps even beneficial, for Chaubey to make a straightforward film about bandits on the run, but he chooses to go into spaces that force you to think. The concept of dharma, specifically that of a bandit, is extremely thought-provoking, driving home the point that not only did these people not think of themselves as the bad guys, they were also keen on fulfilling a destiny of some sort. The vagaries of it, the different views each character expresses make it even more interesting. Then there is casteism: despite being lawless men who roam around in ravines, the bandits are extremely concerned about caste and are quite religious, to the extent that they demand to know whether you’re a Thakur or not before shaking hands (figuratively) with you. Then there is the police’s version of casteism – wherein a couple of Thakurs wax eloquent about the unfair way in which a Gujjar daroga is treating the corpse of a Thakur baaghi, and how the Gujjar dares to order them around. Gender too plays a huge role in the film, since it is Bhumi’s Indumati Tomar and the little girl with her that serve as catalysts. Women are a different caste altogether, says Phuliya, a Mallah bandit who aids Lakhan and company (clearly modelled on Phoolan Devi). One can see what she means. Mothers are slapped by their young teenaged sons; Thakur men do not think it incorrect to rape an Untouchable girl. It’s all quite stomach-churning to watch on-screen but Chaubey doesn’t try to make it easy for you, not the slightest. And that is where Sonchiriya’s biggest strength lies – that it is unflinching in its depiction of the realities of India as most of us do not see it. Seeing all that takes place on screen, one cannot help but recall a dialogue from NH-10 which, coincidentally, was written by Sudip Sharma as well – Gurgaon mein jahaan aakhri mall khatm hote hai na, wahin aapki yeh Democracy aur Constitution bhi khatm ho jata hai.’
I cannot recommend Sonchiriya enough, though I would suggest enquiring with the theatre you intend to watch the film in whether they are playing the original audio with English subtitles. That is the version to be watched. बैरी बेईमान, बाघी सावधान !
Cinephile Stock 