Jhund is a novel breeze in the ramshackle ruins of Mainstream Hindi cinema. Its as if, Nagraj Manjule, with his debut Hindi film is telling us all how its done. His craft is fresh, unpredictable and absolutely beautiful to watch on screen. It feels he has understood completely the rhythms and beats of cinema as well as the drug on which cinema lives and intoxicates its audiences at large. Nagraj Manjule brings cinema back to the Hindi Film scene and he does so with a silent revolting charm.
In Jhund what speaks louder are its aesthetics. They are in a constant conversation with you. Smashing its golden glitters all over your face to the point that all you can do is sit in awe of its wonder. Jhund tells you that you don’t need a star for a film to speak to you (although it stars Amitabh Bachchan), you don’t need any of the fancy stuff. All you need are smart aesthetics, something fundamental to cinema and what recently was beginning to get lost in the smoke of makers creating only certain type of films with a very formulaic, lazy way of storytelling. Nagraj doesn’t indulge in dialoguebaazi or moral lessons or sudden realisations, something one would expect from the film’s subject matter and cast, but instead he creates magic just through his frames by just pure, unmatched storytelling. Scene after scene, as it was being played before me, I felt happy to be witnessing such profundity through visuals and by the end, I was left teary eyed. Cinema is not yet dead. Nagraj comes to revive it.
The eye with which Nagraj sees the world of the marginalized is one of deep empathy and so we don’t judge the characters. They are just a product of their place, of an oppressive and unjust system which makes them so, which fills their innocent growing years with fuels of violence. We stay with them, breathe with them, abuse with them and end up feeling so much for them. Nagraj takes us to the lanes of the other side, where garbage is being dumped by people of high society, where the old drink day and night and the young are involved in petty crimes. They all have hardened because of the way life has been hard to them, their humanity hidden beneath a sheath of oppression. And we see all this with extreme sense of empathy and love, bringing us closer to the people. While in Fandry and Sairat we see a dangling sense of hopelessness cloud over, Jhund gives rise to a hundred suns that pass through the messiness and emanate light.
Jhund shows the other side without ‘othering’ it. It has some minor glitches in its writing but the sheer magnificence of its telling outweighs everything. It is an important film both sociologically and as a piece of art. It manages to create new ways to bring forth its ideas thereby incorporating a garland spreading its fragrance throughout. Nagraj is the nightingale singing his tunes to glory, spreading its magic in the air, and in the process reclaiming the shoddy paths of popular Hindi Cinema. Bow to thee sire!
KuchTohBhi 