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Greed, for the lack of a better word, is good,
greed is right, greed works.
You remember Gordon Gekko’s
memorable lines from Wall Street?
Gulabo Sitabo is the antidote to that.
The film, directed by Shoojit Sircar
and written by Juhi Chaturvedi,
is a bittersweet study of greed and its consequences.
But this isn’t a morality tale.
Shoojit and Juhi don’t judge their characters.
They simply present them with all their flaws and frailty.
The result is a film which is slyly funny,
because human behavior is so often ridiculous,
but also deeply melancholic.
Gulabo Sitabo is infused with lament
for a more elegant, civilized world,
which is now crushed by the crass and the corrupt.
The name Gulabo Sitabo comes from traditional puppet
art, in which the two characters quarrel incessantly.
Like Gulabo and Sitabo, Mirza and Baankey
are always at loggerheads.
Mirza is the landlord. Baankey, the tenant
who pays only 30 rupees a month.
They engage in a constant game of one-upmanship.
Baankey threatens Mirza.
Mirza steals his light bulbs
and makes his younger sister
spit out a piece of mango that she
has eaten because it’s not hers.
They are petty and a little pathetic.
At the center of their battle is Fatima Mahal –
a once-grand mansion in Lucknow
that is now slowly crumbling – literally.
When Baankey, in anger,
kicks the bathroom wall, it crashes.
This ‘khandani haveli’
is a prominent character in the film.
Shoojit and DOP Avik Mukhopadhyay
showcase it like they would a fading star.
We see the arches and the grills,
the vast rooms and long corridors,
the courtyard and the walls with peeling plaster.
The haveli, which is more than a century old, is decrepit,
but it has more dignity than
most of the characters in the film.
And yet these people lead such hardscrabble lives,
that we understand their desperation
and their constant jugaad to get ahead.
These people are on the margins of middle class.
A better life is in sight, but it’s not within reach.
Baankey is frustrated by his dead-end job,
his lack of education,
his fraying relationship with his girlfriend,
who tells him frankly:
"Humein pata nahi tha, ki aap itne gareeb hain".
Mirza has spent a lifetime waiting for his partner –
the Begum who owns Fatima Mahal –
to die so he can inherit it.
He’s bent over, not just with age,
but with his own servility.
Together they are combustible.
The film takes its time setting up this world,
which is both contained and timeless.
The first hour moves at a measured pace.
In this, Gulabo Sitabo is more like October than Piku.
The humour is quieter.
These characters aren’t necessarily like-able,
so you might feel a little fatigued in their company.
The narrative also meanders, there's this whole bit about
Mirza digging for treasure which just seems forced.
But have patience, because slowly the
emotional rhythms of the film take hold.
And the plot jump-starts.
Juhi’s superpower is her ability to
create keenly observed characters.
They may not have much screen-time,
but we know who these people are.
Take Brijendra Kala’s Christopher Clarke –
a Catholic lawyer in Lucknow,
who insist that he’s special,
because he speaks English at home.
His asides, in English of course, are superb.
Vijay Raaz as the government official, who haughtily
declares that he is archeology, is equally good.
And then there are the women in the film,
the brilliant Begum, who casually asks
Mirza if they got married or eloped.
When he says married, she says,
“Toh hum bhaage kiske saath the?”
Its amazing, I laughed out loud.
There’s also Baankey’s sister Guddo
and his girlfriend Fauzia,
both of whom have more smarts
and sass than he does.
Whatever ideas we might have about
women in conservative environments,
these women refuse to adhere to them.
Their unpredictability propels the story.
One of the added pleasures of the film is the language –
even the insults sound melodious,
like choosi gutli sa chehra and deemak kahike.
It’s lovely to listen to words like ulool jhulool, chironji and
khandani paikhana, which incidentally means bathroom.
The actors revel in the writing.
Especially Amitabh Bachchan who with a prosthetic
nose, white beard and oversized glasses,
leaves his Bachchan-ness behind him.
He makes Mirza cantankerous and stubborn,
but also a shade tragic.
I wondered, did anyone ever love this man?
Ayushmann Khurrana doesn’t have props to play with,
but he holds his own in front of
the formidable Mr. Bachchan.
He laces Baankey’s inherent misery
and sourness with anger,
so that Baankey is always on the verge of exploding.
In this film, he’s not the usual Ayushmann hero, grappling
with a taboo topic and then impart in a life lesson.
It’s a tougher, more complex gig
and he pulls it off, including a slight lisp.
The stand-out is Farrukh Jaffar, who plays Begum –
she’s over 85, but her sparkling
personality dominates the frame.
Gulabo Sitabo is likely to be an acquired taste.
As I watched, I wondered how this old-world film,
might have played out in a theater.
What would the warm blues and oranges
of the haveli look like on a big screen?
Would Shantanu Moitra’s nostalgic plaintive score,
enrich the visuals more?
I also worried that since streaming platforms
don’t encourage commitment –
if you get restless with one story,
you just click on the next,
how many people will actually see this film through?
We’ll never know.
But Gulabo Sitabo leaves you with smile and an ache. And that’s a rare combination.
You could see the film on Amazon Prime Video.
Now to tell you a bit more about MUBI.
It’s a film streaming service showcasing the best of
Indian cinema on their MUBI INDIA channel
and classic international hits on MUBI WORLD.
It premieres a new film every day on each channel!
This week I highly recommend you checkout "Ottaal",
its streaming now on MUBI INDIA.
