Bapu files: My quick take on Manoj Bajpayee’s “Sirf Ek Banda Kaafi Hai” (Zee5)
In the age of Kashmir files & Kerala Files, now comes a court room drama which like the earlier ‘files’ has a potential to split the audience into two, either you will be in awe of this court room drama, or you may hate the makers for stirring up a ‘touchy’ topic involving a “Godman”. Maybe Fearing the backlash, the movie was released directly on the OTT platforms, however I am of the view that movie deserved a movie screen opening.
Movie is based on biographical account of an Advocate PC Solanki who had fought and won a molestation/rape case against a highly revered Godman in the country which eventually sent the man to jail facing life imprisonment. Though for sake of legality the names of the characters (except for the Advocate PC Solanki) have been tweaked, but this is very cleverly done so that the audience will know this tweaked person. Secondly, hats off to the casting director for handpicking all the characters who are simply awesome in their respective roles.
Its an out and out Manoj Bajpayee movie, he is literally the lone “Banda” who carries the entire movie on his shoulders. His depiction of seemingly timid exterior but tough interior in the character of steely resolve who takes on the high and mighty, is simply awesome. This is indeed a Mughal-e-Azam moment for Manoj Bajpayee. His concluding dialogs on the case closure are simply epic (goose bump worthy), I can take liberty to place that performance next to our AB’s Dewar dialog of “Aaj to bahut khush hoge” (Incidentally both these dialogs have Shiva reference, In Dewar AB talks to Lord Shiva’s statue, while here MB refers to Shiv-Parvati conversation). This act of MB can serve as a text book example of delivering intense dialogs, one should watch the twitching of his cheeks and mild shiver of is hands – OMG, Take a bow Bhiku Mhatre.
Movie is set in beautiful Jodhpur, a princely city with skyline laced with lovely havelies and labyrinthine alleys of old Jodhpur which add more authenticity to the plot. Cinematography is of top-notch quality, even though this is the maiden directorial venture of Apoorva Singh Karki, it doesn’t seem so, as he has done an impressive job in walking the tight rope of this highly sensitive topic. There are two songs in the movie, one is used during opening credits and the other one in closing credits. The later one rendered by Sonu Nigam is simply a haunting melody. It was nice of the director to not have got tempted to use songs in between the movie scenes, as it would have slackened the tense moments.
Of the supporting cast there have been some superlative performances by veteran theater artists like Surya Mohan Kulshrestha in Bapu’s role (this guys has just one dialog in movie, but eyes & body language speaks a lot) , second one is NSD graduate Vipin Sharma, and the best one is the girl & her parents(Adrija, Jaihind Kumar & Durga Sharma).
Since the movie spans a time of nearly 5 years, I would have loved to see the aging of characters which was missing, secondly it looked like movie was edited many times (may be to make it less controversial) which shows off at many places when you experience jump cuts as an audience. MB’s strange hindi accent was a bit of ear-sore for me. However, one can over look these things to watch this hard-hitting court room drama.
It is indeed true that this kind of movie just needed “sirf ek banda” in form of Manoj Bajpayee to drive home a point that one has to be wary of wolves in sheep’s skin who are amongst us.
Comments