Ex Stream Benefits | From Jogi to Hush Hush, the best on OTT in September

The rapidly declining standards on the digital platform are a cause for concern. Each month, the standards fall, and we are left looking at the best of a bad bargain. There were some bright spots in September, and one outstanding feature film on Netflix, though the desirables were far outnumbered by the blitzkrieg of bilge, and that includes straight-to-OTT films like Cuttputlli and Babli Bouncer. Jamtara and Shiksha Mandal wanted me to say, stop! No more seasons for these luckless dingy small-town crime thrillers. Ritesh Deshmukh and Tamannah Bhatia’s Plan A Plan B made us wish for Plan See. I hope it is implemented soon. Here is looking at the best of September.

Attention Please (Netflix)

Writer-director Jithin Isaac Thomas’s Malayalam experimental horror drama Attention Please on Netflix, reminded my of the spookily authentic normalized horror hemisphere of Jordan Peele. The central actor even resembles Peele’s favourite actor Daniel Kaluuya. Although, I must admit, Vishnu Govindhan, who plays Hari, the victim and the secret sociopath, in Attention Please is a much superior actor to Kaluuya. I don’t think Thomas’ highly overwrought hyper-ventilating film on bullying and its aftermath would have worked were it not for Vishnu Govindhan. The role needed someone as dark as the tone of the film. Caste discrimination sadly, is related in our society to skin tone. Vishnu is dark-skinned, and desperate to make a place in the mainstream of society. His four flat-mates constantly taunt him about his lack of success as a film writer. The benign banter among the friends, the casual references to actors and filmmakers in Malayalam cinema,makes this seem like a struggler’s manual on how to remain calm while life passes you by. Hari, it seems, has been struggling for years without any luck. Producers, we are told, hear him out but finally reject his stories. His friends are reluctantly supporting him financially while trashing him emotionally. They never stop taunting Hari reminding him that he is a failure in life, that she should return to his village, etc  etc. So far, the narration appears to be a mélange of familiar situations, where the victim of non-stop bullying stubbornly ploughs ahead with his career aspirations, no matter what others may say. Jithin Thomas builds a deceptively casual tone of lighthearted ribbing teasing and heckling in the initial scenes which Hari seems to take in his stride. The storytelling’s tone goes from casually droll to pitch dark once the five friends move to the terrace of their apartment. What ensues there can only be described as unmitigated horror. As Hari’s innermost bitterness surface in a hurling ball of rage, the film becomes a chilling prod , an awakening call for the audiences’ deepest sense of guilt regarding the casual insults to the downtrodden .The caste factor is not underlined in the narration. Bullying is. In each group of friends there is someone who is constantly heckled and ragged. Hence the suicides, and the pent-up violence that manifests itself in this film without a shred of hesitation. What is most remarkable in Attention Please is the economy of characters and the play of light and shade in the restricted space. There are only five characters, plus a woman, one of the flat-mate’s girlfriends (Arthira Kallingal). The camera (manned by Himal Mohan) doesn’t try to compensate for the dearth of characters and space. It remains steady almost static not willing to allow the dark tone of storytelling to snuff out the film’s redemptive light that flickers at the end of the tunnel. We know it is there. We don’t see it ,while Hari holds his friends hostage in a game of cat-and-mouse that can only end one way. How the writer-director gets there is the USP of the narration. With the advancing dread in the storytelling, the director never allows us to relax. For those of us who can’t see the damage we do to those whom we constantly remind of their shortcomings, Attention Please is a warning.

Jogi (Netflix)

The best thing about this vivid recreation of the 1984 anti-Sikh carnage was Diljit Dosanjh. I can’t imagine anyone else playing the victim card so persuasively without actually seeming a victim. Diljit was born during the year that the carnage of his community took place. His sense of outrage is therefore entirely derived from what he has heard. This is one reason why he played Jogi so passionately. After doing so many laugh riots, Diljit did a life riot with just the right blend of grief rage and restraint. As for the film, it could have done with a lot more restraint. The early scenes are ominous and the buildup to the carnage is admirably authentic. Kumud Mishra, as the counsellor Tejpal Arora, who declares 1,000 rupees for every Sikh corpse (and 5,000 if it’s a VIP,like Diljit), is chilling in his nonchalance, as only Mishra can be. While Diljit’s heroic determination to save all his loved ones makes him an instant messiah, the real hero of the anarchic carnage is the Hindu cop played by Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub who risks his life, family, career to drive Jogi and his family and neighbours out of Delhi into the safety of neighbouring Punjab. The climax is very poorly staged, and fairly filmy. But the film has an inner strength that makes it authentic and urgent.

Hush Hush (Amazon Prime Video)

Apart from Juhi Chawla, who is terribly miscast as a woman with a horribly compromised past, Hush Hush managed to be a watchable, often engaging. The principal actresses have the looks and sometimes the skills, though not always, to make us partially involved. Shahana Goswami is as usual the stand-out among the five principal actresses. It is interesting to see the husbands being painted in believable strokes of empathy in this chic chick flick. In spite of women taking centrestage, the spouses are sketched with care and they have an active role to play in the plot. The problem here is one of pacing. The narration at times slackens and needs a good shake by the shoulder. There is enough meat to dig into here, though.

The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power (Amazon Prime Video)

This is beyond a shadow of a doubt ,the OTT event of the month, if not the year. The fantasy saga has set new records as it garnered more than 25 millions views on its premiere day September 2, as the series took off on magical adventurous journey to Middle-earth Second Age. The awe-inspiring visuals created for this series have garnered a lot of praise and applause. And rightly so. Each frame is so spectacular that I was often left wondering what the whole series would look like as one tightly edited feature film on the big screen. There is no doubt that the makers of this scintillating series pushed all limits in order to bring J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision to life. How poor our own fantasy adventures look when compared to what The Rings Of Power has achieved. But that’s another story.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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