Jubilee review (Episodes 6-10): Vikramaditya Motwane's show sparkles with striking performances & solid writing

Cast: Aditi Rao Hydari, Aparshakti Khurana, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Ram Kapoor, Sidhant Gupta, Wamiqa Gabbi 

Director: Vikramaditya Motwane

Language: Hindi

Spoilers Ahead

Jubilee has to be the first show in web history to break into an interval. The final episode shows a cocky Madan Kumar (Binod Das, played by Aparshakti Khurana), the desperate film producer (Ram Kapoor having fun), and the excited-turned-exasperated director Jay Khanna (Sidhant Gupta). Madan walks away and the screen goes black-and-white, and Jubilee breaks into an interval. This isn’t a cliffhanger since part two was supposed to be only a week away. But yes, Vikramaditya Motwane’s show does boast off the longest interval and the shortest time span for the viewers to witness how it all continues in part two.

The events have moved a year later, Khanna is finally directing his film Taxi Driver with a certain sense of urgency and conceit. There’s a bit of duality here in his character, the director in him is ruthless and remorseless, the ordinary Jay is still a headless chicken brimming with enthusiasm and restlessness. And why not? The producer doesn’t want his money to go into ashes, a reference to K. Asif’s Mughal-E-Azam is thrown in as a trigger warning to not delay the film further, and it all leads to this poor young fella bursting out into a fit of fury. He also ends up exposing Nilofer’s (Wamiqa Qureshi) quick rise from rags to riches. This is obviously followed by an apology.

What drives these moments is the restraint with which Motwane handles them. There’s barely any background score in Jay’s scenes with Nilofer, as they let their eyes do the talking, and no matter how close they have come or how deep their understanding about each other is, there’s always a feeling of awkwardness that fills the room every time they speak. Is Nilofer too falling for him? Is Jay unable to keep the director and the hapless lover apart?

He goes through the same emotions as Binod Das did when he arranges a special preview of his directorial debut. The only difference being the audience; Binod’s film was being viewed by the aam janta, Khanna’s audience is his own people from the refugee camp, so obviously the response has to be overwhelming. It’s a subtle hint (or maybe dig) at the cinema of today- How filmmakers assume if their friends and family have liked the film, it’s a blockbuster in the making. What does feel intentional is Motwane’s portrayal of rampant discrimination actors and filmmakers face. A shot shows Jay standing in front of two movie posters, one his and the other Madan Kumar’s. His own film has been allotted only a noon show whereas Kumar’s film Gambler is running in 3. Once again, the period setting vanishes, as a star still continues to dominate the exhibition sector, the preposterousness of his enterprise notwithstanding.

Jubilee is the most striking show in recent times, and what add more colors to the show are the final five episodes; far darker, deeper, and more complex than the first five. The stage has been set, the game is on, but we still don’t know how the players will approach the game, what their motives are; it’s like we know everything and yet we know nothing. Take Madan Kumar for instance; the room is dark, his wife, half asleep, asks him to shut the windows as rains lash the luscious town of Mussoorie. Little she knows a storm will enter her own marital life moments later. Something attracts him about Nilofer and the next moment, we meet him and this ambitious starlet behind closed doors. Everything is fair in love and war, but showbiz too?

Take Aditi Rao Hydari’s character of Sumitra Kumari. Her utter dislike and disdain for Binod goes a step ahead in the progressing episodes. No matter how much venom she has inside, the actress still looks luminous and there’s something about her aura that suggests bruise and hurt. Here’s a woman who has lost the man she yearned for, pined for, and forgiveness is surely not going to be her virtue, revenge will.

In an exclusive interview with Firstpost, when Motwane was asked about not making the show in black and white, he said he wanted to but the idea was shot down in three seconds. Looking at the entire piece he has created, it seems the color palette is fitting, he has already added all possible shades of black and white (and grey too) to his characters. Who would have thought shades of grey could look so colorful?

Jubilee (Episodes 6-10) is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video

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