One swallow does not a summer make, but two recent Hindi films indicate a new maturity in subject matter and execution that should be applauded. Both are small films, both are dark, and both exhibit a technical competence and panache that one associates with the better class of Hollywood thriller. Manorama Six Feet Under draws the bare bones of its plot from Roman Polanski?s noir classic Chinatown, and then keeps surprising the audience with unexpected twists and turns which continue until literally almost the last minute of the movie.
The story, which keeps sneaking up behind you and making you jump, is a marvel; the acting impeccable; the dusty Rajasthan terrain is used just right; the detailing of everything one sees on screen, from the interior of a PWD junior engineer?s home to the nightgown a minor character wears, perfect. It is quite simply one of the best murder mysteries in the noir film genre ever made. Johnny Gaddaar, which is dedicated to the late James Hadley Chase, is a pitiless high-adrenaline thriller about a group of crooks trying to pull off a shady deal with one among them plotting to double-cross the rest and run with the money. The lead character is this betrayer, an amoral young man who is not unwilling to murder his friends to suit his own ends. Tautly paced, it makes no concessions to mainstream Bollywood, like thrillers such as Baazigar and Kaante did, with their songs and comedy routines. James Hadley Chase would have approved vigorously.
The multiplex revolution changed the economics of film-making in India and made it possible to make low-to-medium budget films aimed specifically at the urban English-educated audience. A new breed of young directors appeared, men and women who have grown up on world cinema and yet have affection for the Hindi film as they knew it in their teenage years. In the last few years, we have seen Macbeth transported to the Mumbai underworld and Othello to the heat and dust of eastern UP (Maqbool and Omkara, respectively), the grimy world of encounter cops (Ab Tak Chhappan), films dealing with issues like extra-marital sex (Mixed Doubles, Life In A Metro) and commitment-phobic yuppies (Pyar Ke Side Effects), and the first French farce (Bheja Fry). Now comes film noir in its most uncompromising form. A criminal hero who is truly amoral in Johnny, and in Manorama a hero who has been suspended from his job pending inquiry into corruption charges (and it?s clear he is guilty). The tone is gritty, the violence stark, the crimes heinous, and no one is perhaps what he or she seems to be. The audience has to be on its toes. If one steps out of the cinema hall for a cigarette, he would have missed a couple of vital plot twists. Indeed, Manorama, in which the story keeps burrowing through multiple and confusing layers of untruth and deception, could be too much of a mind bender for the average Hindi film viewer, who may be left scratching his head at the final denouement. But the film?s makers have made no attempt to make it easier for him. This shows courage. And the arrival of a thrilling genre to Hindi cinema. It?s only two swallows yet, but it is two swallows.
