In Jubilee, there is an anecdote, a real-life reference, an Easter egg, a veiled allusion to all that has happened, off-screen and off-set, in Hindi cinema before our time. Director Vikramaditya Motwane positions his series during the Partition — a time period rife with old endings and new possibilities, of conflict for space and demand for respect, of the constant struggle between time and money — and sets it in the film industry of the time, which itself was in the middle of upheaval, resistant to change but inevitably giving into it.
In every frame and in every flourish, Jubilee — characterised by some excellent mise en scène and all-around effortless performances that take the narrative several notches higher — harks back to the making and magic, but more importantly to the underbelly, of the movies of the period. The 10 episodes (five are now out on Prime Video, with another five slated for an April 14 streaming date) are set between 1947 and 1953, a tumultuous period in both the history of the nation and the burgeoning film business of the time.
Jubilee is a giant homage to the cinema of that time, and a tribute or expose (whichever way you want to look at it) of the men, and women, who made those moving images come alive in ways both magical and mysterious. The ones whose hearts lay clean, the ones whose heads remained twisted, the ones whose minds were clouded by ambition and thirst for power...
While Jubilee in itself tells a story entrenched in emotions as powerful as avarice and aspiration, rage and rapacity and is a brooding tale about the price of stardom, it is the connection between reel and real which makes this a compelling, almost addictive watch, especially for those who are well versed with, or at least interested in, the antecedents of Hindi cinema.
While some of the references are too blatant to be missed, most of Jubilee doesn't function as a straightforward connect-the-dots narrative. And that's where the real triumph of writers Motwane and Soumik Sen, with a screenplay by Atul Sabharwal, lies.
The powerful pivot around Jubilee's thrilling and poetic narrative is Roy Talkies, headed by movie mogul Srikant Roy (Prosenjit Chatterjee making his web debut). Roy's wife Sumitra (Aditi Rao Hydari), a leading heroine of the time also pulls the strings in Roy Talkies. The two have a tempestuous relationship, with Srikant making it succinctly clear at the outset that when it comes to choosing between his wife and his studio, he will opt for the latter.
When the series opens, Roy is feverishly looking for the leading man of his next film, zooming in on Jamshed Khan (Nandish Singh Sandhu) who has to be christened 'Madan Kumar' because, as someone says in the series, "Khan hero nahin bante". Jamshed has taken off to Lucknow, with the ambition of making off to Karachi to work in theatre and thus spurn Roy's offer to be Madan Kumar, and a seething Roy — well aware that Jamshed and Sumitra are having an affair — sends his loyal Man Friday, a lab technician named Binod Das (Aparshakti Khurana) to get the two back.
But Binod, so long a subordinate constantly trusted with keeping Roy's dirty linen publicly spotless, harbours ambitions of his own of becoming Madan Kumar. Aided partially by luck, but mostly by his own misdeeds, Binod becomes Madan Kumar, his meteoric rise inviting an ally in Srikant Roy and an enemy in both Sumitra and notorious film financier Walia (Ram Kapoor). The other key players of the narrative include the high-on-energy Jay Khanna (Sidhant Gupta), an aspiring film writer who lands up in Bombay as a refugee but refuses to give up on his dream, and the effervescent Niloufer Qureshi (Wamiqa Gabbi), who represents the increasingly porous boundaries between theatre, courtesan culture, and cinema
The interlinked trajectories of Jubilee have their roots firmly entrenched in history. Roy Talkies, for all intents and purposes, is, of course, Bombay Talkies, headed by the husband-wife team of Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani. Devika Rani's elopement with actor Najmul Hasan prompted Himanshu Rai, in a moment of inspired choice, to look towards his lab technician as the leading man of his next film. Kumudlal Kunjilal Ganguly thus became Ashok Kumar, the success of his first film Jeevan Naiya, opposite Devika Rani herself, spurring off a career that lasted decades and has gone down in the annals of Hindi cinema history.
Jubilee has a sprawling narrative, intertwining the politics of the trade with the socio-economic dynamic of the period. It presents ambition as both good and bad, allowing you to either make judgment or simply sit back and enjoy the ride. The writing is peppered with moments both factual and imagined, with Srikant Roy's objection to All India Radio banning Hindi film songs having its real-life roots in 1952. There is also a reference to the origin story of Radio Ceylon. The past in Jubilee mirrors the present of cinema in India today, with allusions to constant surveillance, attempts to push propaganda through cinema, anti-Muslim sentiment and media censorship. At one point, someone says, "Aaj gaana bandh kiya hain, kal hamari filmein rok denge". Not much has changed.
There are, of course, some creative liberties taken, all in service of the story. Himanshu Rai himself died in 1940, but Jubilee sets itself a few years later. A major liberty, calling for more than a willing suspension of disbelief, is undoubtedly the casting of Aparshakti Khurana as the lead of not just the series, but a suave leading man of the cinema of the 1940s and '50s. Khurana, a comic sidekick so far, is earnest and plunges headlong into the part, but is better suited to the part of a loyal Man Friday than to a debonair cine star, even if in certain shadowy silhouettes, he does resemble Dilip Kumar.
The star turn, in fact, comes from Sidhant Gupta, whose easygoing charm will instantly remind one of both Shammi Kapoor and Dev Anand (at one point, his Jay is seen holding a script named Taxi Driver, which also happens to be a Dev Anand film of the '50s) and whose strong hold over a gamut of emotions — from the exuberance of youth to the tortured stance of a man often rejected — makes him a delight to watch. So also is Wamiqa Gabbi, whose vivaciousness as Niloufer lights up the screen in what is otherwise a grim narrative. Aditi Rao Hydari's Sumitra remains a largely peripheral character, not being given enough meat or bite to make her presence felt. Prosenjit is, however, rock-solid, bringing a steely demeanour as well as irresistible charm to his movie magnate. This is a part that needed someone with the depth and range that the veteran actor has and he delivers every time he is on screen.
Jubilee sometimes lags, and some characters come off as superfluous, but its combined effort, with every department — Pratik Shah's camera work, Aarti Bajaj's scissors, Alokananda Dasgupta's background riffs and a soulful and soaring score by Amit Trivedi (who slips into Jubilee right after Qala, which was set in a similar time period and backdrop) — makes you gloss over the creases in its narrative.
Jubilee is an unbridled ode to nostalgia, to movies, to those who came before us. But more than that, it is a powerful portrait of what drives human ambition. Then and now.
