Bheed is a loud social commentary that falls flat due to the weight of too many half-cooked stories & characters sequenced into a linear plot
Photo: T-Series In all of his recent films, Anubhav Sinha has tried to tackle India’s complex socio-political issues. His movies tend to be loud and direct, often crossing the line of being preachy. Bheed is no different. The movie is shot in the style of a documentary, with both wide frames and close-up shots, and attempts to bring out issues of caste, class, money, privilege and failure of a system, all in the background of a blocked check post—used as a microcosm of India—during the first lockdown to curb covid-19. And while the director is fearless in his approach and has tackled the issues head-on, a lot of depth and emotions are lost in an attempt to cover too many aspects.
Nearly the entire film portrays the events of a day, 13 days after the beginning of the first lockdown, when “migrants” are returning to their villages from cities that could never become their home even after they had spent decades living there. It depicts a monolithic system where desperate and clueless “migrants” are on one end, and a bunch of equally clueless bureaucrats on the other, with neither having an idea as to how the problem will ultimately be resolved. It steadily builds different characters and converges them to a tipping point, generating a certain curiosity about how it will all go down. This is one thing Bheed does well—establishing the confusion witnessed during the lockdown.
Rajkummar Rao plays with maturity the role of a Dalit police officer assigned to guard the check post. He is “in charge” in a system that has systematically made him weak and incapable of being in charge. He becomes an oppressor and an oppressed at the same time, feeling powerful and powerless at the same time. Rao’s character knows the right thing that should be done, but he is not a person who can independently take decisions. He is part of a system that has oppressed him and his caste for generations. He reminds one of the Malayalam novel Nooru Simhasanangal by Jayamohan, where the author deals with the existential dilemma of a Dalit ias officer who has great official authority but is still low on the social ladder.
Renu Sharma, the character played by Bhumi Pednekar, has a strong start and portrays the nuances of the struggle of an inter-caste marriage. But the role ends up being nothing more than Rao’s shoulder support.
Pankaj Kapur plays the role of a Brahmin who is proud of his social position but is brought down by his economic desperation. And it is with his portrayal that the film falters the most. In an attempt to give his character an arc and explain to the Brahmin poor that they are one with the Dalit poor, the film invisibilises the fact that the Brahmin poor are not at all in the same boat as the Dalit poor, everything affects them differently, the lockdown included.
The central conflict in the film is between a bureaucracy following orders and people trying to survive the lockdown. The people want to reach home; the police know the people should reach home, but they have to follow orders and stop everyone from being out on the road. The film showcases very well how the compulsion to follow orders, even when they appear senseless, makes perfectly intelligent humans act stupidly and violently. And this is what the film should have focussed on.
But there are other characters and half-cooked sub-plots, which, in a small setup of a check post, do not help the movie. The characters are just representations of a “type”. Caste, like in every Anubhav Sinha movie, has a say in this film as well. But the ambition of filling all elements makes the movie too crowded and fails to make it strongly about any element in particular. The film forgets the nuances of characters.
While the lensing of the film is both wide and up close, the shooting style somehow manages to lose the essence of intimacy that should have characterised it. The black and white colour scheme, that Sinha in a later interview said was inspired by pictures of Partition, neither adds an element of drama, nor enhances the visual feel of the story.
The reason Bheed loses track is its heavy reliance on loud dialogues. While Sinha is right in being loud with Rao’s character (to depict his helplessness of being in a position of power despite his caste), the director gave too many people too much to say— commentaries that did not add much value.
In the Malayalam movie Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum, the director Dileesh Pothan uses posters on a wall and nuanced dialogues to bring out the cast of the characters. Director Martin Scorsese uses silence to enhance the drama of a scene. In Bheed, Sinha prefers the cynicism of a photojournalist, the idealism of a reporter, the selfishness of a privileged woman (played by Dia Mirza), and the anger of the hero to offer loud commentaries.
Still Bheed deserves credit for being direct and raw. Certain scenes are constructed beautifully to convey emotions. The scene where a group of people, travelling in hiding in a cement mixer, emerge out of the vehicle to be asked by Mirza’s character how they kept breathing, is a fine example where a lot is said without too many dialogues. The open ended climax too is a fine end to Sinha’s social documentary of a film, which is a brave attempt that ends up being too loud on comme-ntary but low on substance.
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