Hot take: Gulabo Sitabo

'Gulabo Sitabo' (2020) is, on the surface, a slow-paced and somewhat meandering story about the spiteful, penny-pinching landlord of a dilapidated, ancestral mansion and his constant bickering with a set of tenants who he is trying to evict. Mirza, the landlord, is played to perfection here by Amitabh Bachchan, unrecognizable behind a set of prosthetics. He replicates the senile mumbling and hunched but sprightly walk of the old man to great effect. Ayushmann Khurrana, as the equally bumbling and self-proclaimed leader of the tenants, manages to disappear behind the Lucknowi dialect, complete with a hilarious lisp and saggy gut.

The film was marketed as a duel between these two characters, but it is in fact an ensemble piece full of fine actors who hold their own, and sometimes even outshine, these two leads. Shrishti Shrivastava puts in a stand-out performance as the clever sister who tries to outsmart the connivings of all the male characters. Brijendra Kala brings humour to the crafty lawyer Christopher Clarke who stores his pride in a misplaced colonial hangover. Vijay Raaz brings great physicality to his role as an archaeologist with eyes on the property; alternating between being pompous and deferential as per the status of the person he is speaking to. Even minor characters like Ayushman's girlfriend Fauzia (Poornima Sharma) and Mirza's hearing-impaired sidekick Sheikhu (Nalneesh Neel) leave a mark in the few scenes they hold. Farrukh Jaffar who plays Mirza's wife Begum, seems to be a minor character but turns out to be the fulcrum of the story.

Juhi Chaturvedi's dialogues are absolutely crackling, and even though they seem to just slip out of the characters' mouths unnoticed, had me laughing out loud in many places. But it is also incredibly layered writing, allowing for multiple readings. The first thing that draws your attention is that in this world, the power dynamic is reversed - the landlord is Muslim while all his tenants are Hindu. This is reflected in the dialogue at multiple times, where Mirza refers to his tenants as "pests" that need to be "exterminated". Other power dynamics are reversed - women overwhelmingly have the upper hand over men; they are more clued in, educated and sometimes even more scheming than some of the powerful guys. Religion seems to pose no problem in this world, as Ayushman's girlfriend Fauzia casually teaches him about Mughal history while eating prasad in a temple. In many ways, then, this is a more utopian-universe than we live in. But despite these superficial changes, this is no straightforward moral tale about tolerance as a virtue.

Each of these people and entities seem to be driven by one and one thing alone - and that is greed. Mirza claims to love his house and want to keep it to himself, yet it is technically in his wife's name and he sells off parts of it happily for a few coins. The tenants talk about their rights, but all they want is a share of the pie. The government archaeology department claims to want to preserve it, but only wants the money it can make from turning into a museum. The lawyer claims to protect the rights of the existing occupants, but is actually operating a side scheme to get a private builder in. It would seem that only the 90-year old Begum actually loves and cares for the house. But even here things are not what they seem.

Gulabo Sitabo will test your patience if you focus on wanting to know what happens or how the tussle ends. Because this film is not about the fight at all, it is a character study of what society has come to and how little we care for both aging human lives and the historical heritage of our nation. In a sense, director Shoojit Sircar takes forward and develops the theme of Bhardwaj's 'Pataakha' (2018), which used the trope of two warring sisters to depict India and Pakistan. Here, we get a deeper and more humane study of the factions at war within Indian society. The citizens are so destitute and desperate that each category is just trying to make a little more money than the other, often at the cost of the other. Both public and private actors claim to have the people's interests at heart, but actually only want the money. Nobody is good or bad; everyone is just trying to get ahead. Each thinks they have agency, but just like the Gulabo Sitabo puppets, while they fight, someone is silently pulling the strings elsewhere and the rug from underneath their —and the viewers’—feet.

If the constant bickering and back-and-forth in this film tests seems to have no resolution, it is perhaps because it tragi-comically yet accurately reflects what the great historical haveli of India has been reduced to by a bunch of warring occupants driven to dire poverty and propelled by greed. Listen to the dialogues closely, watch the plot carefully and yet you will not see the twist coming. The twist does not resolve, but only reinforces the larger point Sircar and Chaturvedi are making about how when we give up our humanity, no degree of shifting power dynamics can help because while some individuals go up the ladder and some are brought down, society as a whole languishes at the bottom. Our obsession with quick resolution diverts our attention from the larger picture, both in life and in the film. A toilet wall breaks in the beginning of the story; by the end, the mansion has changed hands but the wall hasn't yet been fixed.

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Slice of Life

Language: Hindi/Urdu Runtime: 2h 4min Year of release: 2020 Streaming Platform: Amazon Prime Video

Hot take is a series in which I offer my first impressions of films from India and around the world.