Hulla (Uproar): A New-Age middle-of-the-road Delight
Have you ever woken up, from a deep slumber at the dead of the night, thanks to sound of the whistle or the “thak, thak” of the wooden stick of the locality / housing society guard? This was the topic Jaideep Varma dealt with in one of his write ups for a well-known English magazine some years ago. And in it lay the germ of an idea for a film, a film for which – in his own words – he had approached “20-25” producers, all unsuccessfully. That was the reason it took him several years to make Hulla (Uproar). The producers rejected his idea because some of them found it “flippant, too small a subject”, some wanted a star to be the protagonist, as against Jaideep’s choice of Sushant Singh in the role of a stockbroker who wants to sleep peacefully at night, and some said it the end conceptualised by Jaideep was too “serious”.
Don’t blame all these producers if now start seriously envying Sunil Doshi (Bheja Fry, Navarasa, Mixed Doubles….), as finally it was he who took the project on board and thus has given us Jaideep Varma the director (occasionally he blogs on PFC too!), straightway – and surely – to become a name to reckon with as soon as Hulla gets its commercial release.
Yes, Hulla is an unadulterated delight all through, and maybe a true torchbearer of the Hrishikesh Mukherjee-Basu Chatterjee school of filmmaking, which believes in taking up a small, almost non-issue, to churn out some very interesting middle-of-the-road cinema, of course, with 21st century urban sensibilities.
That one can think of the nightly noise created by the area chowkidar to let everyone – including thieves – know that he is awake and alert, as the one-line idea for a full-length feature film itself if quite innovative, but to develop it into a delightful screenplay woven with finely-etched characterization is even a greater reason to rejoice for lovers of new-age Hindi cinema created by cine-literate directors who are distinctly separating themselves from the routine, masala stuff.
Jaideep has not only created a compact screenplay out of his idea, but has implemented it on the celluloid with aplomb, to say the least. Yes, for a film that talks about the importance of shrinking private spaces in an increasingly-over-populated urban societies, it is a little bit too much of a “talkie”, but the dialogues are so full of wit and vigour that you won’t even mind that.
Sushant Singh, who has not got much opportunity to live up to his talent since probably Raj Kumar Santoshi’s The Legend of Bhagat Singh, finally gets a role that allows him to explore himself as an actor – and he is quite convincing as the irritated and increasingly-irritable man whose fetish for might even seem strange for all of us, so accustomed we are to noise all around us (do we feel disturbed by the whir of the AC?). In fact, every actor, be it in a small or a big role, is almost perfectly cast in this film, though a few of the characters occasionally tend to look a bit overdone. But more than anyone else, this film belongs to Rajat Kapoor, the actor in this case. We have seen him all along playing characters belonging to upper-middle class or higher echelons of society, you know, the suave, urban types. Here, Jaideep has achieved a coup – Rajat is simply outstanding as a cantankerous, lower-middle-class Gujarati businessman who is one of those too-self-important housing society secretaries.
But what lifts Hulla beyond ordinary is its poignant end, after all the comic interludes. And yes, at the risk of providing a spoiler, my favourite scene – the Maharashtrian police inspector trying to teach the Punjabi stockbroker how to correctly pronounce the local surname “Pophle”. Take a bow, Jaideep. Although it is not the first film in India to tackle the issue of all-pervading noise in our daily lives – the first one was Nishabad: Reaching Silence, a Bengali film by Delhi-based Jahar Kanungo which did the rounds of a few international festivals a couple of years ago – Hulla is must watch for lovers to new, urban Hindi cinema.
(Hulla had its world premiere at the 10th Osian’s-Cinefan Festival of Asian & Arab Cinema, and was screened as part of the Indian competition section)
Tags: Bollywood, hindi cinema, Hulla, Middle-of-the-road Cinema, Uproar
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
I am looking forward to this film. I like this kind of trivial concepts of films because, like you said, they are most difficult to make into a film and its hard to get the sense of humor right.
Thanks Utpal. It’s scary to get such a good review so early on because it is likely to be all downhill from here. In fact, some people wondered if we know each other well, and it’s a pity we don’t because i just realised I’ve read some of your previous pieces on PFC and liked them. Thanks again for this one.
Hi Jaideep. I have spoken to several film critics in Delhi who watched your film and most of them have good words to say about it. yes, you will have the pressure of keeping up to the level now. Well, it’s really a pity that some think we have to know each other to write a positive review…sadly, that is where the film journalism is perceived to have plumbed to…if you give a good review, you know the filmmaker and if you don’t you obviously don’t know him or are not in good terms with him (or her). This camp business…well, just to tell those doubting thomases, if I feel that a future movie of yours is bad, I will write so even if I am friends with you. Sounds very strange in days of this age, but I believe in keeping my acquaintance with a person separate from my journalistic responsibilities when I write on that person’s work. In fact, from your comment, it is quite apparent that even you don’t remember the brief tete-e-tete we’d after your film’s screening at Osian’s!
hmm…looking forward to it. but strangely, in the last six years in mumbai, i hav never heard the whistle or the thak thak of security and hav changed my address some five times! it was much more in the town where i come from. hav always felt that sushant deserves much more than what he has got…hopefully this film wil do that. all the best jaideep! btw, when is the theatrical promo coming out ? saw some teasers recently.
Yes Utpal, I do remember the brief chat we had. It will actually be nice to meet you again, so whenever you’re in Mumbai next…
Phoenixnu, I am told that all the promo stuff will begin last week of August. As far as not hearing the thak thank or twee twee, well, it is also a function of which part of Mumbai you’re staying in. The film has a comment to offer on that too. :-)