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Bachchan is Jigra‘s language, inspiration, attitude and plan B, notes Sukanya Verma.
Vasan Bala creates worlds that may appear deceptively similar to the ones you and I inhabit, but run entirely on their own terms and whimsy.
It’s a part of the film-maker’s charm and cinephile influences, which made the likes of Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota and Monica O My Darling such a treat.
Jigra, probably his most big-ticket project so far, is also his most sombre.
More than nods to pop culture moments, he internalises one of its biggest icons, Amitabh Bachchan, as both emotion and grammar.
Bachchan is Jigra‘s language, inspiration, attitude and plan B.
But the tone Bala is going for is simmering not swagger and the representative of those angry young ideals is not some towering masculine figure, but a pocket-sized Alia Bhatt determined to bring her incarcerated brother back home.
Co-produced by her and big sister Shaheen along with Dharma Productions, Jigra‘s prison break bravado can be best described as Bachchan, Alia Bachchan spearheading Vasan Bala’s Bangkok Hilton sans the bullshit but tons of bedlam.
Back in 1993, Dharma made Gumrah directed by Alia’s dad Mahesh Bhatt, which rehashed the afore-mentioned Nicole Kidman mini-series to chronicle Sridevi’s misery behind bars after she’s falsely implicated on drug trafficking charges by the unsympathetic Hong Kong police until rescued in true blue filmi style by Sanjay Dutt.
Bala, on the other hand, does away with all the melodrama and violence to craft a slick escape thriller around a sibling dynamic that plays out the nightmare for what it is against a growing atmosphere of dread.
There are times when his indulgence rob the momentum of its steam and devil-may-care heroics prevail over good sense.
But his ability to surprise our Bollywood conditioned brains by devising new forms of menace, turning a John Woo-style prison riot into a Chinese Communist movement and showcasing Alia in a savage new light without resorting to gore won my dil and jigra.
Watch out for the full review in just a bit!
Jigra Review Rediff Rating:
