Afwaah: A well-intentioned film marred by problems in narrative

We are living at a difficult time in history where sentiments get easily hurt even on the smallest of things; where impulsive action is thought to be an idea of justice; and where some people are constantly on the wait to find any thing against another community to show them their place. At the centre of it all is the booming social media presence which seems to be guiding what people are fed and hence what they must think. The opening credits of “Afwaah” are meticulously designed in such a way so as to bring forth this idea of a time where social media has taken over our minds acting always as a catalyst to unleash the terror that remains in our hearts. Reputations are made on social media and lives turned upside down within a few clicks. “Afwaah” starts with one such blot on the reputation of an emerging young leader when his rally turns violent. It is made to be a tout thriller taking place in a single night in lines with Sudhir Mishra’s 1995 film “Is Raat Ki Subah Nahi” which also sets off in a similar way although in an entirely different context. Revisiting the same structure after more than 25 years, Mishra infuses it with incidents from our recent past that have changed the way we inhibit the country. That’s where it loses its ground in the hope of making the story come out of the socio-politics rather than through an interplay of its narrative.

The fundamental problem with “Afwaah” is that it is not designing its characters based on the principles of narrative; rather it is making them stand along with some already identified set pieces from current affairs and then asking them to take a sprint through the 124 minutes that it runs. The characters don’t navigate the story to reach a certain intellectual truth that brings out the political reality of our times but instead they are already given a programmed stance of a certain political understanding. Due to which, inherently, all that the film manages to remain is a clutter of an unresolved anger that has come about from newspaper readings transformed onto the screen without feeding it with any level of cinematic truth or language. Sudhir Mishra, who has always been a flagbearer of layered narratives, ends up becoming more of a columnist and less of a filmmaker. Its as if his brazenly evolved form of the yesteryears is reduced to mere underlining of the facts some of which are heard every day on social-media. “Afwaah” neither surprises nor adds any new reflection to the way our collective consciousness has been put to test in the recent times; in fact, it just reciprocates what the many ‘ahl-e-dil’ have been expressing over the years on the changing nature of truth and the dilution of facts. And if a piece of art merely remains to be a testimony of the times we are living in, without delving into the artistic truth, how far is its purpose served?

 

The film is not trying to be a sensation nor is it bringing to light some realization that wasn’t known yet. It is the story of an advertising professional named Rahab who has returned to India from America and finds himself caught in the middle of a rumour spread by a politician against him. Oscillating around this orbit of thought is a corrupt policeman, a power-hungry politician, an idealist fighting back to save Rahab and a brainwashed dim-witted gangster. This is a popular elemental structure that we have come to see in the films of Prakash Jha set in Bihar or of Tigmanshu Dhulia that were set in Uttar Pradesh. The only difference being here is that Mishra chooses to set the story in Rajasthan with the dialects of the local language hitting your ears giving you a sense of a different world. In a bid to subvert the dynamics of this plot style, he attaches the fact of rumour mongering that has been a growing parasite in India in the recent years. Mishra explores the cyclic nature of rumour where it goes on to finally bite the one who started it as he also inhibits the same world. The rumour doesn’t spare even the one who spreads it for a mob knows no rationality. Now, on face value the idea sounds fair. When seen in the film however, it raises doubt on what it ends up being while wanting to say something completely different. It culminates to become something unrecognizable to the outer reality. It seems to be attaching a sense of justice to mob lynching where a force of antagonism in the film falls prey to an angry mob riding on the molten lava of hate. On a narrative level, the mob has done justice by dealing with the film’s villain in their own animalistic manner, giving a sense of release and resolution to the story. In satisfying the narrative tendencies, a hurdle is created where although the overall incident is a mirror of the society but what it ends up meaning gets convoluted. It is a misfire and one which nearly wants to make you feel better about the lynching, which otherwise should have filled you with rage. This happens because of the unruly blending of the film’s structure with the politics. The quest to reach a narrative resolution makes for a moment that doesn’t seem to be making sense in the reality which exists around us that it proclaims to be containing of. So, the idea that rumours come back to stab the one who started them, remains a product of Mishra’s imagination which also ends up giving the film a moral tale-ish feeling; its complex subject matter reduced to a simple resolution that is based on the idea of justice of the mob. All of it combined becomes ironical, then, for a film that in-fact wants to take a stance against lynching. Because of the lackadaisical approach to the craft and its broken togetherness with the political reality, the craft begins to take the upper hand in guiding the politics at its disposal. This leads to the creation of an even stranger alternate reality which coincides with nothing on the outside world.

However, what really comes as a moment of relief and eases up the emotions, is the beautiful song that runs through the film in some portions. It reveals the style of Mishra that uses songs to deliver an emotional reaction. Sung in the husky voice of Mame Khan from Rajasthan, it carries the pain of the incidents shown in the film with great intensity. It is written by Dr. Sagar as a child’s lament to the mother of how her lullaby lacks something today. Filled with images that are prevalent in lullabies, the song connects it with the larger ideas of violence and how things have gone awry in the neighbourhood with the coming of spring. The song does well in blending the poetics with politics by employing clever metaphors. If only the film managed to do that as well.

Aren’t ‘films’ made on political realities supposed to be guided by the aesthetics? Shouldn’t the narrative conflicts arouse emotions and thereby make you wonder about the wider political implications? These are some questions that come to mind seeing films made on similar lines with the language of the film not meddling well with the politics but instead seeming to co-opt the latter in its glance. Sudhir Mishra has made films in the past which bring out the nuances of reality through the complexities in the form and so it becomes difficult to accept the fact that “Afwaah” has come out from the same mind. The only way to make sense of it is to think of it as a cinematic representation of a twitter feed that fails to elicit any response to your senses. It is like a tweet which has contained in its limited characters, an impulsive outrage generated by a rampant consumption of news. Sudhir Mishra wants us to know, he is there, speaking through his films. Whether it packs any relevant punches is another story.