Shanghai : Stark & unsettling

Shanghai

Emraan Hashmi, Kalki Koechlin, Abhay Deol, Pitobash Tripathy

At: PVR & others

Rated: 6.5/10

Shanghai stops on you many a times. But, that’s certainly not because it does not have much to say. In fact, it does so, for quite the opposite reason. It has too much to depict, too much negativity to unveil. And it does so, with no cushions for your comfort levels.

It is a raw, gut-wrenching reality that Dibakar Banerjee unfolds before you — the reality of corruption in its extreme and most cunning form, of political chicanery right at the top of the order, of corporate fangs and of the ultimate betrayal of the common man. Like it or not, this reality has no light at the end of the tunnel and if you were to be honest with yourself, as Banerjee is to his mount, you will recognise a dire fact — that we live in a dismal world of no-trust, no-courage and totally no will to fight our way out of it.

Opening into a small town of Bharatnagar, Dibakar loses no time to plunge you into the political-corporate nexus of unscrupulous profiteering. The players are faceless, which is the most alarming part of it. The victims are you-and-me people who are way out of their depth in the game the biggies are playing. There is a social activist Ahmadi who may be a messiah but is privately quite morally corrupt himself. He talks big, sways public opinions with style which also makes co-activists like Kalki Kochelin swoon into bed with him. Never mind his married status. He escorts publicity with elan and is quite savvy around the cameras. Prasonjeet plays the part with a huge amount of commitment, even though he is there only for a small part of the movie.

Abhay Deol, as the Tamil bureaucrat, heading an inquiry into the hit-and-run case in which Ahmadi is run over, is a class apart. His mastery of a dash of Tamil accent in Hindi is startling. His controlled histrionics speak more through his eyes but that does not take away from his body language which speaks volumes too in an edgy kind of way. The personal over professional, the gain over loss battle in his character is very well portrayed.

Then, of course, there is Emraan Hashmi who has given up all his smooching acts in this film for stained teeth and a totally engaging reality bite as a porn video film-maker who is on the run from Rajasthan after a ladki lafda. As the man who holds incriminating evidence against all the biggies, he occupies quite a lot of meaningful footage.

Kalki, with her dressed down looks, comes across as a potential actress who has the difficult job of speaking less and portraying more. Desperately in love with Ahmadi and his missions, and in the know of an attack on him, she looks engagingly hassled, frustrated and yet committed to a cause no one is really bothered about.

The most arresting — and alarming — thing about the film is Dibakar’s obsession to show today’s India up at all levels. Though he has shown nothing that we don’t already know, it is the starkness of it all that gets to you. It is a speaking film which troubles you immensely as it leaves nothing unsaid. It tells you, in no uncertain terms, that trust is a lonely word, just like honesty. And blood-letting is as common as dengue-malaria. To top it all, it is meaningless too.

Shanghai in that sense is edgily excellent, even though it may not agree with your comfort levels. The last few shots are the most compellingly killing, so do go for it.

Source: The Sunday Pioneer, 10 June, 2012