Barah Aanna and a Million Dollar Grouse

PROJEKT iVIEW | Movies, Review | April 4, 2009 at 11:05 am

iView Author: Varun Grover (Mumbai,India)

Email: varun.grover26 [at]gmail[dot]com

Barah Aanna and a Million Dollar Grouse

Modern cities, a recent article in ‘The Economist’ suggested, are like Wikipedia. Open for all, editable (habitable) by all, and having increasing faith as the numbers increase. I also feel that the classic socialist model of class-conflict doesn’t fit well on the current city structure, especially for bigger cities like Mumbai. There is no institutional, industrial routine being followed, no fixed sources of income and expenditure, and no moral hang-ups, or limitations. Of course, the conflicts exist, but on a more personal level, and for more personal reasons. There is no more ‘Us vs Them’, and that’s why, it’s a surprise and major let-down to see such a wide-eyed, ‘Eureka’ look Raja Menon’s ‘Barah Aanna’ casts on the people who make up one-half of our city.
Burdened with clichéd writing, and bordering on look-at-my-NGO-spirit, the film ends just when it actually had begun! The banal detailing of 3 characters from city’s ‘underbelly’ (guess, that’s the ‘in’ word right now, thank you Danny Boyle!) gives a feeling that writer-director Raja Menon spent most of his life without ever meeting a watchman, driver, or waiter, and seems too guilt-ridden and amused by the fact that even they could dream, or even wear black goggles. Each scene, from maudlin to cheerful, is repeated thrice to nail the fact that how sad, thankless, and yet hopeful life these ‘others’ live. Story, for the lack of a better word, progresses as slowly as Indo-Pak Track 2 talks, and consists of justifications for the ‘underbelly’ to kidnap the ‘overbelly’ folks. And well, that’s about it.
Off the cast, Arjun Mathur could join the leagues of ‘As Wood As It Gets’, and Naseer, though silent for the most part, does bring in some visual relief with his unspent angst. Vijay Raaz, as the watchman who turns kidnapper, is the sole high-point of the film, and carries the bat in spite of some very ordinary and repetitive lines.
And here’s a grouse. Why do directors, when co-writing a film with another set of writers, tend to poach the credits by announcing ‘Written and Directed by:’ in the credit rolls. That clearly is a misguiding, if not mischievous or downright dishonest, statement. If the film has another writer, and you have a separate writing credit list where you have already taken the credits, why the big ego-boost and a clear thumbs-down to the writer, by restating ‘written and directed by’? I have seen that with Vidhu Vinod Chopra and many big names, but ‘Barah Aanna’ went one step ahead, by crediting Raj Kumar Gupta as ‘Dialogues (Hindi)’, which is meant to say that he just ‘translated’ the whole thing? (I remember ‘Water’ had similar credit for Anurag Kashyap, and ‘Raincoat’ tops the list by giving Sameer Sharma credits for ‘language inputs’, when he had actually written the Hindi dialogues.) Ridiculous, to say the least, as most of the lines by the principal characters in ‘Barah Aana’ have an Awadhi or Bhojpuri twang, and in any case, degrading the ‘translations’ is like degrading both the languages involved.
In the end, Barah Aanna, a rare Indie film, just shows us the glimpse of what it could have been, had it not fallen into the trap of chest-beating, all-justifying, spoon-feeding, character-development and focused on some more novel craziness our cities inhabit, among the same set of characters. Or is it like asking for too much? May be.