Retro Reel by Sreepathy, Volume 5

Retro Reel is a column about movies, but not about the latest box-office releases. There will be aspects of review, but the column is intended more as a recommendation of good movies of different genres, with the sense of a retrospective – hence, the ‘Retro’ in the name. In a day and age when movies are projected digitally, the word “reel” may seem retrograde and outdated. Yet, no other word captures the imagery of a movie as “Reel”…Sreepathy is an unabashed movie buff who loves a well-told onscreen story. He has a list of about 450 must-watch movies, and Retro Reel is an attempt to share with friends of a similar bent of mind, some of the best movie-watching experiences he has had. He lives in Naperville with his wife and two sons.

3 Deewarein

Unlikely.

On many levels, that word just about sums up “3 Deewarein” – Retro Reel’s first Hindi movie recommendation. For starters, it is as unlikely a Bollywood film as its creator, Nagesh Kukunoor, is a filmmaker. In the late 1980s, Nagesh was indistinguishable from the thousands of young Hyderabad engineers from myriad middle-class families, who made their way to the US of A in search of degrees, distinction, and dough…This chemical engineer, boasting no filmi pedigree, discovered his passion for filmmaking in Atlanta and spent his saved-up dollars making a couple of interesting rookie movies using a handheld camera…And then, in 2003, he announced his arrival in Bollywood with this movie, using a cast of popular stars and a team of professional technicians…

“3 Deewarein” is also unlikely in many other ways. When have you heard of Bollywood making a completely home-grown thriller with a focused style of storytelling? Or, how frequently does a Hindi film completely avoid its favorite staple of trees-and-bees-song-and-dance stuff, and yet remain very entertaining? Or, how common is it to find a Bollywood movie where stars shape themselves to fit the film’s script, instead of the other way round? Or, when did you last see the gorgeous Juhi Chawla being almost unrecognizable, wearing virtually no makeup in a full-length role? Mind you, “3 Deewarein” is not the greatest of movies, but it’s a rare movie that deserves our applause for ushering in a fresh wave of movie-making, and our ovation for a new director who tells a story crisply and with unique conviction…It is unlikely, but is unprecedented…

…Set in a jail, the movie is about three convicts with their bizarre stories of how they came to be on death-row, and the emotional baggage they carry in their lives. What unfolds are the engrossing profiles of the convicts. The first is Jaggu (Jackie Shroff), a poetry-spouting lawyer who is convicted of brutally murdering his wife. He is reticent, remorseful, and remonstrates that he should be punished for his crime. The second is Ishaan (Naseeruddin Shah), a street-smart con man who killed a pregnant cashier during a botched bank heist. Insisting that it was an accident, this smooth-talking charmer is forever scheming to escape from the prison. The third is Nagya (Nagesh Kukunoor himself), a relative simpleton who has a death sentence for throwing his wife under a car. The most endearing of the three, he protests his innocence and naively believes that “truth will prevail” (Satyameva Jayate), while speaking in that quaint, but very accurate, Hyderabadi-Hindi dialect…Stepping into this triangle of tales is Chandrika (Juhi Chawla), a documentary filmmaker who wants to make a feature on the lives of those three death-row inmates. She comes with her own story, replete with its share of baggage and demons from the past…

What Kukunoor weaves with these four disparate yarns makes for 102 minutes of taut and absorbing storytelling. The movie’s title obviously refers to the walls of a prison, but the curious part is about the three walls. You can conjure up a metaphor for the convicts’ stories as the three walls, with the woman’s story completing the fourth wall of a prison cell…Along the way, the movie paints several unusual, but striking, vignettes – the caring, progressive jail warden; the warmth and bonding between the prisoners; the easy chemistry between Juhi Chawla’s character and her three subjects; and the quiet, steely, inner strength of an assertive woman against her abusive husband…

There is an interesting anecdote about how this movie got made. Apparently, in 2002, Kukunoor, scouting for a suitable setting for a prison-based script he had written, came to know that the Musheerabad jail (a very old decrepit prison for hardened criminals in Hyderabad) was being torn down to make way for a multistoried hospital. The ardent Hyderabadi that he is, he managed to obtain a stay order from the court to delay the demolition, and finished shooting the entire movie, on location, within 34 days…As a nostalgic Hyderabadi myself, I have memories of that jail – no, not as one of its favorite inmates (!), but as a young boy, peeping out of bus windows to see if he could catch a glimpse of “scary” prisoners as the bus made its way to and from school…

“3 Deewarein” belongs to a genre that Bollywood had never forayed into before. Its camera-work is very realistic in the way it reveals the stark interiors of a prison, and uses angles and colors to keep the narrative intriguing and gripping. I don’t want to reveal much about the four central stories, but I can assure you that Kukunoor tells them in the most riveting manner to keep you pinned to your seats till the very end…The movie’s undertone of humor is a big plus, especially Nagya’s Hyderabadi-Hindi, which is intrinsically funny and authentic…The other aspect is that the story keeps its characters warm, vulnerable and human, and shies away from painting them in hues of ‘good versus evil’…

As for the movie’s credits, Naseeruddin Shah is an actor’s actor and hardly needs any lessons or directing to perform. He charms his way through the movie, effortlessly mixing nonchalance, concern, and hardheadedness into his character. Nagesh Kukunoor’s sense of timing in playing a not-so-bright character seems as natural and unaffected as his writing and directorial abilities. Jackie Shroff is muted and doesn’t indulge in any of his usual flamboyance. Gulshan Grover, playing the reformist jail warden, does well in a role in which he is cast against type. He seems out of place, but that’s only because in our mind we cannot see him as anything but a disgusting villain! The movie’s use of English interspersed with Hindi is unnatural at times but does not stick out like a sore thumb…But the best thing to happen to “3 Deewarein” is Juhi Chawla – her unadorned elegance, draped in the simplest of sarees, with a prominent bindi on her forehead, and her hair tied in casual pleats. With no layers of makeup to hide her talent, she charms you, not with her obvious pulchritude, but with her observant portrayal…

Don’t be disappointed with the slightly contrived ending; rather, enjoy it for the way it ties up all the loose ends neatly…This was Kukunoor’s first big feature film. He only got better and better with his later creations: “Iqbal”, India’s first authentic sports-theme based movie, and “Dor”, a truly great movie with a fascinating parable-like quality – his best and most brilliant to date…

PS: 3 Deewarein is available in the Naperville Public Library.