Lost: Yami Gautam-Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s masterpiece is much more than a political-thriller
Lost: Yami Gautam-Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s masterpiece is much more than a political-thriller
By the end of Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Lost, the entire definition of the word ‘Lost’ is transformed. From being a Costa-Gavras-styled political thriller about a missing person, Lost takes us with gentle but firm hands, to a place where we are left wondering about all the losses that we as a collective society have suffered over the years: the loss of basic integrity and humanity, to begin with.
Wait. There is much more.
Even those who seem outwardly clean and uncorrupted in Loss eventually turn out to be victims of a society that seems inured in inequity. There is this wonderfully written sequence at a police station where an underage boy is being held as a suspect. The film’s hero a crime reporter Vidhi Sahani (Yami Gautam) hurls herself into a dangerous situation to get the boy out.
Luckily for Vidhi the cops look as helpless as the boy. This is where Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s narrative scores the highest points: it doesn’t waste time in pointing fingers at corrupt individuals. It goes for something far more basic and vital.
A wizened mother whose son has gone missing lies in bed unsmiling. Lost attempts to retrieve that woman’s smile.Not that it is a receptacle of false hope. But as long as there is a Vidhi, there is hope. Yami Gautam gets the role of a lifetime as a crime journalist. There are slanted references to a woman doing a man’s job. But this film has neither the patience nor the time to get into gender debates. There are far more crucial issues to be tackled.
Where is Ishaan? As played by Tushar Pandey, Ishaan is a seriously committed theatre activist whom Safdar Hashmi would have adopted. When he goes missing all fingers point to a suave smiling politician Varman played with a natural charm by Rahul Khanna (why doesn’t he face the camera more often?). Varman remains a point of moral ambiguity all through the tense ‘thriller’ which eschews all the stereotypes of the genre.
As a counterpoint, there is Vidhi’s Naanu (Pankaj Kapur), who voices political homilies when he is not busy cooking for his much-adored granddaughter. Kapur is a natural-born scene stealer. So are Pia Bajpiee as Ishaan’s love interest, rapidly slipping into a life of compromise and Honey Jain as Ishaan’s sister, so lost, a bite into a chocolate pastry brings a smile on her fatigued face.
Yami Gautam Dhar as a crime reporter who puts her feet into a much deeper puddle than she imagined gets overshadowed in every scene with her screen grandpa. It takes the actress some time to come to the truth about her character’s gritty pursuit of the truth. She becomes more comfortable as the narrative evolves.
The Bengali actors in the smallest of roles are so natural, their Mumbai counterparts seem a little strained in comparison (Neil Bhoopalam sounds robotic as though he is reading his lines from a teleprompter).
The real hero of Lost is the city of Kolkata. It has never looked more vibrant and mysterious in any Hindi films since Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani.
The legendary cinematographer Avik Mukhopadhyay who also shot Anirrudha’s brilliant Pink looks at Kolkata as a character in the film. The decadence and the surrender to a compromised existence are an integral part of the world that is created in Lost. It is a world where the powerful and the political challenge the Establishment without ever being fearful of ramifications. The level of redemption is woefully low. But the glimmers from the cracks make us hopeful. Lost is a film about hope.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.
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