Afwaah movie review: Sudhir Mishra says it like it is in an explosive political drama

Cast: Bhumi Pednekar, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sumeet Vyas, Sharib Hashmi, T.J. Bhanu, Sumit Kaul, Eisha Chopra, Rockey Raina  

Director: Sudhir Mishra  

Language: Hindi   

What is the meaning of butchery? Is it the slaughter of animals – that motif used so routinely in commercial Indian cinema and the public discourse to stereotype and demonise Muslims – or is it the slaying of people? Is it the killing of a beast by a business establishment that sells meat for human consumption and nourishment, or the killing of a person to provoke social unrest? By articulating this question not through words, but with visuals, director Sudhir Mishra makes an explosive statement in the opening minutes of his new film Afwaah (Rumour).

Produced by Anubhav Sinha, written by Mishra, Nisarg Mehta, Shiva Shankar Bajpai and Apurva Dhar Badgaiyann, and edited by Atanu Mukherjee, Afwaah is set in a Hindi belt pradesh where the young politician Vicky Bana (Sumeet Vyas) makes a provocative speech that leads to deadly communal violence – supposedly a riot, but actually orchestrated. Vicky’s fiancée Nivedita (Bhumi Pednekar) is outraged but realises that he has support within her own family. The extent of that support becomes clear to her only later.

On what seems like a parallel track at first, we meet Rahab Ahmed (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) who has returned home from the US and is a celebrated advertising professional here.

That these two stories will converge is clear from the initial seconds, when they briefly collide before being thrown apart. The inevitability of that subsequent meeting gradually builds tension on screen as Nivedita-Vicky and Rahab’s strands move at differing paces and with differing rhythms for a long stretch of time, until they crash into each other at an unexpected moment.

What follows is a saga of intersectionalities between extreme patriarchy, religious sectarianism and right-wing militancy steered by a neta who is committed not to an ideology or individual, but to himself alone. The second half of Afwaah is not as firmly structured as the first, nor as finessed, but the point it makes is powerful and unequivocal. The effect is startling considering how servile most of Bollywood has become and how even liberals in this industry, with some honourable exceptions, have either fallen silent or have been walking on eggshells around political themes in contrast with some of India’s other film industries.

There is much more to Afwaah than its courage though. As the primary characters hurtle down a highway to apparent doom, Mishra delivers a gripping political drama that is unafraid to call a spade a spade and an evil opportunist exactly that.

Sumeet Vyas (Ribbon, Unpaused) approaches Vicky with a balance that is not easy to attain since he is not written as a cartoon. This is the kind of cold-hearted, polished politician you might meet at social gatherings in south Delhi, who wears the appearance of a conscience on his sleeve and about whom even the educated public is known to say, “He is not a bad guy, it’s the party that is to blame.” It is tempting to believe in him even after seeing how low he can go, because Vyas makes it so hard not to believe.

Bhumi Pednekar as Nivedita a.k.a. Nivi keeps it real, as she always does, giving the character a will of steel through her understatement. This is a woman caught between contrasting worlds, under pressure from the conservatism of her background but guided by her own progressive mindset, and Bhumi plays her with a knowing expression, almost as if Nivi is watching her life from the outside even as she is embroiled in the goings-on.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui is cast as a man who stumbles over his English but has the confidence not to care in a society that considers the language a mark of sophistication. He occasionally slips over Rahab’s swag, but embodies the man’s bemusement when he is sucked into a whirlpool of behind-the-scenes politicking and crime.

In a largely though not entirely solid supporting cast, watch out for the consistently excellent Sharib Hashmi as a politician’s minion, Chandan, and T.J. Bhanu as a policewoman. In one of Afwaah’s most telling scenes, Chandan beautifully exemplifies the enslavement of the enslaved and the manner in which patriarchy binds both oppressed and oppressor communities.

The latter half of Afwaah is not as tightly constructed as the former, particularly dipping when it chooses to repeatedly stress a point already made clearly. No one needed to spell out why this title was chosen, but after a conversation in which it is needlessly explained, the repetition in the use of the word suggests that the team of the film under-estimates the audience. We get it. This film is about how an individual or organisation with resources can spread a lie like wildfire on social media, mining the public’s confirmation bias against the marginalised – religious minorities, women, anyone – to give that falsehood the appearance of truth.

The acting by those playing Vicky’s IT Cell and the writing of that set of people comes across as caricaturish. Certain moments – Nivi becoming aware of Rahab’s religious identity, the climax of a dance performance – are set up with such obviousness that their impact is lost because they can be seen coming from a mile. There is a zing missing in the editing of the scene featuring the stage show that makes it stick out from the tautness pervading the rest of the film. The epilogue too feels somewhat superfluous.

These criticisms are vastly outweighed by what Afwaah gets right. The chase scenes – far removed from the Fast and the Furious genre of cinema, more akin to Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday – are so real that I almost felt I was running with the characters involved, straining to catch my breath. And that other scene in which two pivotal players in the plot are on either side of a busy highway and one of them can see a potential tragedy unfold was first rate. The writing and direction of Afwaah’s most captivating scenes are well-complemented by DoP Mauricio Vidal, sound designers Bhaskar Roy and Kunal Lolsure, composers Karel Antonin (who is credited for the background score) and Shameer Tandon (music).

Afwaah’s ending may seem optimistic, but make no mistake about this: this is not a film about simplistic solutions, as we learn from a story Rahab tells an enthralled audience vs his attempt at re-enacting it in the present. Equally important, it means so much to see a Muslim lead who is just a regular guy, and a woman protagonist who is valiant without being a Rani of Jhansi.

After Yeh Saali Zindagi (2011), it has seemed as if Mishra was struggling to get back in the groove with his craft and the politics of his cinema. Inkaar and Serious Men were troubling in the latter context. Afwaah marks a return to full form of the veteran who is forever hailed as the maker of Iss Raat Ki Subah Nahin and Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi. Long before these films were made, keep in mind that he co-wrote Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron with Kundan Shah, a cult classic about which liberals these days often say: this film can never be made today. Maybe it can, maybe it cannot, there is no way to conclusively prove this hypothetical assumption, but Afwaah is a concrete example of a Hindi filmmaker pushing back against a repressive system and his work seeing the light of day despite the circumstances in which he operates.

While Mishra’s and Team Afwaah’s bravery is laudable, it is also true that bravery alone cannot birth quality. Afwaah is riveting cinema. Riveting and incredibly relevant.

Rating: 3.5 (out of 5 stars) 

Afwaah is in theatres

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial

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