Galat ko galat kehna bhi galat ho gaya hain’. This extremely powerful line, which finds its way into Lost at some point during its two-hour runtime, not only arrives at a crucial juncture in the fearless journey of its protagonist, it also succinctly reflects the times we are living in. A time when the mind lives in fear. A time when holding one’s head high doesn’t come without its share of hindrances. A time when the world has been broken, almost irrevocably, into fragments by narrow domestic walls. A time when words that come out from the depth of truth are silenced. A time when perfection is hardly the goal and tireless striving has been replaced (well, almost) by corrupt forces looking to make a quick dime. Where the clear stream of reason has lost its way in the dreary desert sand of blind faith and fanaticism. Where burgeoning freedom of thought and action is almost always nipped at the bud itself or smothered at the slightest hint of dissent. And a country where once speaking truth to power was considered a fundamental right now looks at the same as amounting to treason.
The dilemma between telling the truth and siding with what is right forms the core of Lost. Director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s sophomore Hindi feature film outing after his much acclaimed Pink — which spoke about the importance of consent and made ‘No means no’ an indelible part of our vocabulary — shines the spotlight on what has become a rare breed today: the honest, intrepid and morally upright journalist whose pursuit of the truth is not influenced by those in the seat of power or cowed down by the harbingers of violence.
At its core, Lost, streaming on Zee5, is the story of a young man — whose caste and position in society makes him largely invisible to others — gone missing. Dalit theatre activist Ishan Bharti (Tushar Pandey) goes mysteriously missing one day, but that he is ‘lost’ hardly raises an eyebrow. That is until Vidhi Sahni (Yami Gautam Dhar), a young crime reporter with a ready nose to sniff out news, stumbles upon the case, gradually opening a can of worms, with Lost touching upon everything from caste-based division, Maoist radicalisation, media-political nexus, the degeneration of journalism, politics of marriage and gender dynamics.
Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s greatest strength as a storyteller has been his ability to pack in both meat and meaning between the layers. That, however, ends up being Lost’s biggest weakness. Touching upon so many strands — most of which are interlinked, but also demand comprehensive detailing and treatment — the film somehow falls short of bringing them all together in a way that not only makes for a compelling watch but also forces one to think. Lost plays out over two hours but its rambling narrative does it no favours.
The film starts off with Ishan’s disappearance, which is somehow linked to young political leader Ranjan Varman (Rahul Khanna, spiffy but far from menacing). It is catalysed by the former’s ambitious girlfriend Ankita’s (Pia Bajpaiee) sudden closeness to Ranjan. The cops are forced off the case, but Vidhi is not one to be shooed away. She starts investigating in the face of extreme resistance, and eventual threats, but buoyed by her own spirit and the encouraging words of her grandfather (Pankaj Kapur) who talks about the irony and tragedy of violence as effortlessly as he doles out recipes of upma and sambhar, Vidhi never gives up.
Given the responsibility of a role that demands much of her — physically and emotionally — Yami embraces the character like second skin and comes up trumps. Vidhi’s dogged determination is illustrated by her quiet resilience and not by the predictable eyes blazing, fistpumping brand of ‘journalism’ today that has reduced news to noise.
Lost gets some bits right, but Roy Chowdhury’s predilection to cram his narrative with too many things ultimately results in a film which feels both muddled and meandering, and ultimately renders Lost as both purposeless and predictable. Ishan is ‘lost’, like millions in this country are, as the statistics in the end-credits show, but the character is not written in a way which makes us feel for him or collectively lament over his disappearance. Instead, Lost becomes more invested in Vidhi’s feisty journey, with Avik Mukhopadhyay’s camera sniffing and swishing through the sordid and seedy lanes and bylanes of Calcutta. Lost has the atmospherics right, but these are not frames that the Hindi film viewer — surviving on a steady diet of Kahaani and Yuva, Barfi! and Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! — hasn’t seen before.
Lost plods on, somehow losing its way in the middle, with the story (by Ritesh Shah and Shyamal Sengupta) never making it clear why its characters inexplicably have a sudden change of heart or why a politician with so much power would feel so threatened by a young theatre activist or what the equation between Ankita and Varman truly is. That’s because most of the characters, with the exception of Vidhi, are sketchily written. It’s only a consummate actor like Pankaj Kapur, playing more than just a twinkly-eyed grandpa, who makes his rather trite lines jump off the paper, and often saves the messaging from becoming maudlin. Shantanu Moitra’s music — particularly Nouka doobi — fits the mood of the film. In the end, Lost is sincere, but as we know in the real world, that is often not enough.
