Gulabo Sitabo **
Dir: Shoojit Sircar. With: Amitabh Bachchan,
Ayushmann Khurrana, Vijay Raaz, Srishti Shrivastava. 124 mins. Uncertificated.
2020’s first major Indian release to divert
towards streaming is an offbeam, strangely mismanaged parable about property
management that renders its stars all but unrecognisable. Here is the
established Amitabh Bachchan, buried beneath old-age latex and thick-lensed
glasses; here’s emergent pin-up Ayushmann Khurrana, weighed down by newfound
middle-aged spread. Director Shoojit Sircar’s gaze keeps drifting beyond them,
to a location you couldn’t makeunder: a mildewing Lucknow mansion house, lorded
over by Bachchan’s shuffling miser Mirza, ever looking for ways to kick clan
Khurrana’s collected waifs-and-strays to the kerb. The curious, altogether
tentative drama that ensues may be as close as any filmmaker has come to
signing off on a Hindi redo of TV’s Rising Damp.
Alas, it’s also one of those cases where
forced idiosyncrasy tries the patience from an early stage. With 2015’s sharp,
breezy Piku and 2018’s delicate but involving October, Sircar
began to nudge the Indian commercial cinema in a rewarding, naturalistic
direction; some of the strain of that task can be felt here. A laboured first
half feels out the characters’ dingy surrounds without threatening to go
anywhere, and those feet are apparently being dragged because Sircar and
generally reliable screenwriter Juhi Chaturvedi aren’t themselves sure which
direction to move in. Brakes are soon applied to the mounting landlord-tenant
class war – “Parasite!”, yells Mirza, reminding us of a more decisive film on a
similar subject – in favour of a softer landing as both antagonists fall prey
to creeping gentrification.
While the supporting cast successfully outline a bustling, mutually sustaining community, the stars come to seem like liabilities, which wasn’t the case with Sircar’s previous films. Bachchan burrows into his swaddled meanie, but make-up and props are doing most of the work, work that ultimately serves to distance actor further from audience. A tired-seeming Khurrana, meanwhile, presents as blandly anonymous, reducing a final push for pathos to a limp shrug. Everyone appears at the mercy of shaky narrative foundations; even a cursory survey would suggest that whatever happened on this story’s journey to the screen, vital elements just didn’t take. You watch puzzled, as – like that ageing pile – the film flakes, moulders and crumbles before you.
Gulabo Sitabo is now streaming on Amazon Prime.
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