Premature thoughts on Tandav

*These thoughts came while I was high and saw Tandav posters being shared by someone on her insta story as "something promising"

It again smells like the cynical narrative of the age-old conflict between self-serving egotist leaders in a world of oblivious public. How democracy is not what it promises, and how it becomes a chessboard for people in power.

Saif's and Dimple's character posters state their cynicism and possession of the knowledge that they are perfectly perceived as a myth by innocent people who don't understand their faces without the veil. And because the public doesn't understand anything, a public whose morality changes with the mainstream media consciousness, so they have no reason to play fair and sincere politics.

In the end, the consciousness of the story falls similar to that of Prakash Jha's Raajneeti, which I personally like, but not how I see politics now.

My problem with this kind of telling is that if you drag the politics out of it and put it in some other arenas, the effect remains the same. If Raajneeti was a corporate power battle, or a family drama, just volume up the scale, the sets, the stars, the music, everything shouting to you that this is Big power games of Big people. This was not the case of, say Dibakar Bannerjee's Shanghai, but that also didn't reflect any of the chaotic confusions and conflicts which I feel about current Indian politics.

What bit is refreshing is the powerless underdog Zeeshan Ayub's character, the youth of awareness. Who is serving something bigger than the self, an ideology here? And Sunil Grover's poster staring, breaking the fourth wall, right at us with his nihilistic cynicism bereft of power-lust, stating politics as a compromise between good and bad.

 

This seems Raajneeti with a tint of awareness. And disappoints me hugely. 

I was really excited about Saif walking in bandi in 'Dilli' (in the Amazon year 2020 teaser). But after having a glimpse of the show teaser and character poster and the 'Builder' Ali Abbas Zafar (by categorisation of Manu Joseph) the odour of gigantic cliche ran through me.

I don't think Zafar understands the present state of political conflict in India, where everyone (except the weakling political opposition of congress and kin, which I don't think gonna survive another decade) fighting, thinks they are serving something bigger than the self. They want their society as perfectly ordered as they think their ideologies are and see politics as an instrument for it.

Be it the whole majoritarian Right Hindutva wing or the small but culturally powerful urban liberal, the new rising Bhim army or the dying left et al. People supporting these narratives believe in them and worship them, the leaders emerging out of them is more of a symptom than a cause of these movements. There are socio-cultural, economical, and historical reasons for which these moments are reactions.

What conflict I wanted to see is a Zeeshan-like character in power, pitched against equally opposite opponents, who all are more than self-serving and share the historical anxieties and future dreams of their supporters. And then make the audience swim through each ideology and put them in a moral dilemma, of what is the correct way to run a society. Pick up contentious polarising issues and show why each pole thinks they are right on their side, and unveil the extremities of their noble ideologies.

Obviously, this kind of narrative portrays a kind of socio-political chaos. Turning the generation from an age of innocence to an age of awareness. What happened during Nixon's America or Indira's India. I loved PataalLok as it was confirming all that I know already, beautifully. It was like all the political analysis of a teenager turned into a beautiful cinematic experience. But it didn't give way to my present confusion, I would have loved it more if I would have seen it in class 11th. It canvassed awareness but not what the awareness does to the individual and collectively to a society when the line between good and bad diminishes. Today we need that kind of story.

Now I want the feeling of something like Sorkin's Trial of Chicago 7, but far more complex than it, which made me feel the dilemmas and confusions of now. An autocratic govt opposed collectively by people from far opposing perceptions about the world. Every side is flawed in its own way and the state of chaos propels you to choose one to restore order, but you don't know which is more correct.

I would also love to see a similar political drama of India's Emergency period and Sampoorna Kranti.

But Zafar seems more interested in simple-minded daanv-pench tactics of power game, or not, maybe Amazon just chose him for his builder qualities and put philosophers in the writing team.

I judged Patal Lok on its trailer. But there was Sudip Sharma at the helm of it, which I didn't know. 

And Tandav's writing team has Article 15's Gaurav Solanki and the other 2 new writers. And Amazon's Indian original guys are not that stupid to show such a bland tale. I think they choose philosophers and builders both fulfilling their purposes.

I hope I would be disappointed, till then Whatever New Year.

- Ujjwal Narayan