It felt like a Grand Slam event where the neck keeps swivelling from side to side; like watching Siddaramaiah one moment and Basavaraj Bommai the next while they filibustered on Karnataka’s electoral grounds, with Bajrang Bali in the centre.
On the one hand was Sudhir Mishra’s Nawazuddin Siddiqui-starrer Afwaah, in which he sourced communal flare-ups over beef and love jihad to mischievous rumour-mongering, with an innocent Muslim drawn unwittingly into a poli-tical vortex.
On the other was Vipul Amrutlal Shah’s The Kerala Story, which starkly told the real story of non-Muslim girls in Kerala being lured by a conversion racket that brainwashed them into becoming either suicide bombers or sex slaves, with ISIS as the puppeteer.
Two diametrically div-ergent perspectives with vastly dissimilar messaging. Which one to watch and applaud will depend less on cinematic sensibilities and more on which side of the ideological fence one wants to align with.
Both filmmakers also got different moments and issues to whine over. Sudhir Mishra regretted on social media that liberals who supported his ideology didn’t throng the theatres to patronise his cinema. And, in an unexpected move, he teamed up with Vivek Agnihotri — who represents the other end of the political spectrum — to promote a podcast they have done together. Vipul Shah had his tryst with headlines through court cases in Kerala and the Supreme Court with petitions against the release of his film, besides finally deciding to step out and put his views on TV screens.
Will all this attention translate into box-office collections? It’s too soon to tell but, interestingly, a big PR firm that had promoted The Kashmir Files and had been signed up to do the same for The Kerala Story stepped out practically at the last minute. There seems to be an intriguing behind-the-scenes story on why Vipul was dumped by his PR outfit just as the controversy over his film was heating up.
It was Shiva until last year. It’s Bajrang Bali this season, not only in Karnataka but also in the theatres as the sparkling new trailer of Adipurush has “Jai Shri Ram” all over it. Unabashedly fervent and carefully unoffensive, the Jai Shri Ram number composed by Ajay-Atul for the film also makes for a catchy chant.
What is not in the headlines but is a strong whisper is the biggest divorce settlement heard so far in the Hindi film industry. A busy producer, who has almost one important release every month, is said to have reached the family court with his glamorous wife. The rumoured figures are dizzy, said to be hovering around Rs 800 crore plusRs 2 crore every month, probably until the kids grow up and join papa’s business. There has been talk for some time now about the producer’s fascination for an actress who’s known more for sensuous item numbers than for histrionics. But is that attraction strong enough to prompt a divorce? The producer’s late father, who too was in the same business, was also known for his intimacy with a famous woman outside his marriage. But even at the height of his passion, the father had never sought a divorce from his wife. So why is the son setting a trend by going in for such a costly divorce? Maybe the proposed film on the late father should shift focus to include the son whose life has all the elements of a strong family drama.
A personal family affair seems to be playing out on the sets of Gangster, a web show currently being shot in Uttar Pradesh. Making his debut on OTT, Shatrughan Sinha plays a powerful, politically well-connected mafia and farmers’ leader, rumoured to be somewhat patterned on gangster Sunder Bhati. Veteran Sham Kaushal is out there choreographing the violence-tinged action scenes.
With Sonakshi Sinha in a kickass central role in another crime thriller titled Dahaad, the family will be all over our TV sets. For Poonam Sinha and son Luv are also shooting for Gangster, playing Shatru’s wife and son in the series. It is the first time that husband and wife are working together after their marriage in 1980.
Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author
