Women telling women's stories!
But, for how long are Vidya Balan movies going
to rely solely on being Vidya Balan movies?
She’s amazing, yes.
But….aage?
Hey guys, my name is Sucharita,
this is Film Companion,
you are watching Not A Movie Review
and right now I am not going to
be reviewing Shakuntala Devi.
Shakuntala Devi and her “human computer” abilities,
was stuff you would read about
in Manorama yearbooks,
when polishing your
entrance exam capabilities, kyunki G.K.
Math mein jab mera dhyaan nahi lagta tha,
mujhe yaad hai Papa would say,
“Pata hai, Shaktunala Devi ko koi bhi date de do,
woh ekdum bas bata deti thi,
ki kis mahiney ke kaunse din pe
woh date" or something like that.
A truth which was almost used as
urban legend all over the country,
to convince kids to take math seriously
and work harder.
So naturally, I expected the movie
to be in awe of this woman,
who in the digital age, has largely,
unfortunately gone unsung.
I doubt any 20 year old will be able to recall this
calendar story, or the human computer parables.
Movie ke starting mein, it's made clear that
Shakuntala Devi’s daughter, Anupama Banerji,
played by Sanya Malhotra in a
thoroughly unconvincing wig,
she has been a consultant
on writing this movie.
Anupama Banerji, not Sanya Malhotra.
Which, could have been a really evolved deep dive into
what it means to be associated with a ‘famous’ person.
But in fact hota yun hai ki, while the film says it is “based
on a true story as seen through the eyes of a daughter”,
never mind that a huge part of the film plays out
before the daughter was even born,
the film mounts very well,
but from there,
just tumbles and falls continuously.
Koi bhi film, about a celebrated figure,
ya real life event,
agar start hoti hai ek court room se,
jahaan the stakes are set so high,
you have prepared us for suspense,
ki kya hua hoga for a daughter to take her mother,
that too the legendary Shakuntala Devi to court,
toh, you’re being told ki,
ready ho jaao suspense ke liye.
Lekin cut to flashback,
which just flashes back way wayyyyy too back.
We now start at baby Shakuntala’s childhood,
when her talents were first discovered.
And then, the screenplay falls into
the Sanju trap
of rushing through episodes in her life, without
giving the viewers enough time to get involved with,
or invest in any single part of it.
She walks into rooms, solves one insane math problem,
everyone stands up and starts clapping,
expecting the viewers to also feel the same way.
But just by repeating this scene multiple times over,
it doesn’t become more effective.
Vidya Balan, as usual, is exceptional.
Few moments of the film that stay with you
are only when Vidya is in her element.
She’s electric as a young Shakuntala,
who gets to prove ki computer ne galati kari hai,
and she actually LIKES being
called the human computer.
Ya as a woman who
tells her future son-in-law,
"mere paas bohot paise hain,
main sirf middle class hone ki acting karti hoon".
Vidya and her full throated, delightful laughter
is the only glue holding together
this writer-director Anu Menon and writer
Nayanika Mahtani’s clunky screenplay together.
Another scene mein, she visits her childhood home,
opens a box and finds her mother’s old clothes.
In an instant, she smells her long gone mother,
and the mood changes.
She starts wailing and
Vidya Balan is FULLY Vidya Balan.
It's incredible.
Par, the screenplay doesn’t know
what to do with that.
Because iss scene ki high, iska emotion, it comes
crashing SO hard in the next few moments,
it's almost like you’re watching
two different dramas.
Shoutout to make-up, hair
and costume department for Vidya.
Niharika Bhasin dresses her throughout the film
in well-researched, era-appropriate clothes
and chunky glasses,
and Vikram Gaikwad, Shreyas Mhatre have clearly
had a great time designing make up,
wigs, her hairstyles, which obviously,
I mean it's crucial, especially when
you're depicting a real person
and your film is taking massive jumps,
through time.
But then again...
what happened
with Sanya Malhotra’s wigs?
Ishita Moitra’s dialogue is
perhaps clunkier than the screenplay.
Pehle scene mein hi, the filmi-ness overshadows
the emotion the moment is trying to generate.
It’s a daughter, talking straight to us, the audience,
inviting us into her mother’s life,
through her lived experience.
She's saying, look, she wasn’t all that great
as you made her out to be.
Bohot bhaari insight hai
into what's to come,
taking everything we know so far
and rubbishing it within one minute,
asking the viewer ki bhool jaao,
calendar, computer, yeh saari kahaaniyaan jo suni thi...
main tumhey sach bataoongi.
WOW.
But, dialogue tonality is so ‘dialoguey’.
“Uske saamne baaki saare shabd
pheeke padd jaate hain.”
“jisse bhi maine pyaar kiya, meri maa ne 
usse mujhe chheena hai, ab aur nahi.”
The raw human emotion
the scene is trying to invoke...
the dialogue effectively creates a barrier
between you and that feeling.
You know what I'm saying?
Shakuntala Devi was clearly an enigma,
a math problem herself,
which many tried to solve,
with science, with love,
but at least according to this movie, she was
so unpredictable, no one fully understood her,
and perhaps not even Anu Menon’s film.
Factoids like she never went to school,
her father was a lion tamer,
her elder sister died
because they were too poor,
or that she once shot a man
a very weird Neil Bhoopalam by the way,
or that she had once a Spanish man in her life,
her ex-husband might or
might not have been gay,
she wrote a whole book on homosexuality,
she turned into an astrologer,
stood in elections against Indira Gandhi etc., etc.
There is a ton of information and trivia.
But, as it happens very often
with movies on famous people,
all of this shoved into one script,
with limited screen time,
doesn’t let you fully absorb
the meaning of any of it.
Through the film, characters
keep on saying “Vidya Kasam",
jab jab woh ekdum aise
declare karna chahte hain ki
by God, hum sach bol rahe hain.
It's meta, kyunki Vidya Balan,
par I also wish Vidya and "Vidya" ke aage bhi
movie thodi aur imaginative hoti.
So, on a scale of 1 to 10,
Shakuntala Devi is…
4 to 5 tick mark strong ‘female protagonist’
wali moments bhi hain iss film mein,
which while great, and welcome,
unfortunately just feel like
they've been added in there, because...
have to.
Dialogue ke aage jo moment se catharsis
nikalna zaroori hota hai na, woh aaya nahi yaar.
Also this week, Lootcase.
So stick around, and subscribe to Film Companion.
Mujhse milne Instagram pe aa jaao.
Kitne dino baad bol rahi hoon,
it's feeling very good.
