Hulla:for the lost sense of surprise
Full name?
Raj Puri
Arey middal name, baap ka naam
Shiv Puri
Haan to tera full name Raj Shiv Puri hai..
Kitne saal se Mumbai mein rehta hai?
6 saal se
6 Saal!! 6 saal se Mumbai mein reh raha……
BEGINNERS LUCK
Common place irritations..bad jokes…
Hulla is a delight, quite simply, away from all the noises that it created. Commonplace loud neighbours, the ones who shy away from society meetings, apartment aspirations, that office co-worker who hitches a ride for a day and repeats it till eternity for ‘goodwill’, and the society secretaries and the reluctant funny cops and you….
koee ummeed bar naheeN aatee
koee soorat nazar naheeN aatee
maut ka ek din mu’ayyan hai
neeNd kyoN raat bhar naheeN aatee ? [ mu'ayyan = definite ]
I do not see any hope now
Nor do I see any face
When the day of departure is fixed,
Why is it that I still do not get sleep the whole night?
Long back I had come across this Ghalib sher, during my Ghalib days and its funny how it fits perfectly in Hulla’s case, and it all just came back to me, for totally unplanned motives.
No one can have peace longer than his neighbour pleases. – Dutch Proverb
Jaideep Varma constructs the film almost like an Integral Calculus problem in higher math. One man doesn’t get sleep. Half an hour in the film, he still doesn’t get sleep. Another half hour. Still no sleep…
I haven’t read Varma’s fiction novel, Local, but going through some of the reviews told me it touched upon a similar un-exoticized look at urban life in the grit and grammar of something as transitory as a local train.
Sushant Singh, Rajat Kapoor, Kartika Devi Rane, Dibyendu and a lively support cast, all make Hulla a leaf-from-life commonplace incident. In fact this ‘one incident made into a feature’ thing does bother you. But thank god for the cinematic slaps the film conjures up, it goes beyond such petty worries.
References can be drawn – literary, newspaper stories, cinema of the mundane etc, but the strongest point in Hulla is the accessibility. You don’t know whether to wink or whine. It is your life. It is you, the man in the apartmented life, turning over every night, over the apparent fuss a whistle creates, it turns his nights over, and the implied sense of ‘peace’.
And then there is Indian Ocean. Boy can they elevate a film or what! Just few touches here and there, and you got yourself some piece of cinema.
From the opening credits to the random cut-ins of background themes to the fantastic end credits, Indian Ocean’s music lives a life of its own in the periphery of the fine-tuned Hulla.
The main theme(la la, even termed the Lala song in the ‘Making), is a free-flowing trip, the kinds you would stay for to fade till the very end. Their music can do that to you. And that’s the reason the world is crazy for them, it is not for no reason that we can’t have enough of their stage shows, rare songs, albums and documentaries. It is fun to see Indian Ocean and their views of how they put together the music pieces for the film, in the Making DVD. The same goes for the other details covered in the making – the crew worries, technical talks, how the film was shot, conceived, produced, the hurdles it faced, and not to forget some of the finest scenes from the film. I guess it’s a good sign for our films that we are seeing some well-made ‘making’s off late. I hope it fosters a good trend. It is only all the more pertinent and significant in case of Hulla. Like Jaideep says, “that’s the only way new stories will be told”.
I also went back to the script, and found it to be a breezy read, with its own share of smart twists, and nuances that add the much-needed drama to a mostly interior-shot film. Some observations(from the script and the film):
-The husband’s anti-elite outlook, also reflected in the ‘you should have married a bookie/bookworm’ scene.
-Office colleague
“bas tu mujhe pick up kar liya kar”
“shukr kar tu mere route mein hai”
“to sava rupaye ka Prashad chadha doon kal”
-OPENING CREDITS SET TO INDIAN OCEAN’S FREE-FLOWING MUSIC-
(montage of city streets in rush hour, a liberal yet capitalized world(good morning, dalaalon) in broadstrokes of citylife)
-The ‘gehmagehami’ in office – the inside view of stock trading, how the most mechanical looking things govern all the apparent-aesthetic- pleasures of life.
-In-laws – Feng-Shui, Malabar Hill talk over the dinner, the difference between Dalaal Street & Wall Street, “its like Monopoly!”, the look on the father’s face at the mention of ‘buri nazar’. – ‘Darkness at Noon’/Dark Noon(Jackie Chan film), ‘main bhi ameer hota to aise hi sochta’.
-The watchman – ‘Navy ka aadmi hoon sir’, having three daughters make a sensible man, ‘that’s my observation’.
-The passage of time through changing shirts, the rising-slowly tension
-Janardhan character(Rajat Kapoor) – cribbing wife, “tum apna ye pump band karogi?”, use of still frames(static life) in Janardhan family scenes as opposed to the handheld in Raj’s scenes(mentioned in the Making).
-The debate over ‘whistle’ – “my first decision as a secretary’, society meetings, the fake sense of hierarchy, orthodox secretary, the whole insider-outsider debate, society rules, ‘timtimaata flashlight le le.”
-The society characters – ‘Hockey ho jaaye?”, the loudmouth wisecrack, the ready-to-open-his-shirt-‘meri pichhli society mein..’ character, the sophisticated neighbour who is happy to run away, the quintessential drinking broken English rock music lover Gonsalves(impact!), Bhayaanak Maut playing in the ‘speaker kaise hain’ scene, the mysterious father-in-law-husband-wife-new neighbours(‘NEETA!”, Bedroom kahaan hai?!).
-The ear plug scene – fear and its psychological treatment
-The use of pun/smart one-liners : ye bheekh maang raha hai ya haq, what the …., chaunkaane waala chaukidaar, good morning dalaalon, ‘tu to sensex se bhi jyada sensitive hai’, ‘seeti ka anticipation’, ‘sona to aapko Dubai mein milega’
-‘Leaving Home’ poster in the theatre scene
-How the fates tie together inevitably – both the families’ fortune go down together(GK Developer crashes)
-Scene at the police station – Pophle/Phople, NC report
-The talk about ‘respectable’ and ‘acceptable’ professions (Artist, Painter, Poet…Broker!) – wife’s promotion
-The one-up game with Janardhan – ek pachaas, do tees, teen chaalis!
-A special mention of the pay-off – the Chief Minister sequence, a true revelation- Raj Naraaj, Jackie Chan ki film mein daal do, Shirt zapt kar lo!, Speakers confiscate kar lo(election campaign mein kaam aayenge), sense/nonsense of humor, kidnap the daughter(Neeta!), would you like to comment?(Good point, I voted for you)
-The final sequences – the neighbours planning to leave, the passing of ‘throne’ of secretary, the cruel sense of humor of life(Viraar Gujarat mein hai na!), and Puri’s family leaving simultaneously(party se pooch paisa poora black mein chalega kya, deal thoda kam bhi kar lenge, hamaari taraf se society ko aakhri gift,the goonda-like-dealer’s ring tone)
-The powerful final sequence – flat mein leakage tha but now it’s fixed, flat ke papers taiyaar hain, the last shot where Puri and Janardhan’s eyes meet- loading of luggage in the taxi – driver smiles – he adjusts his rear view mirror – abbey chal, gaadi ganda mat kar! – and you see the same watchman on the streets now- the camera pans to the left and you get quite a ‘everything is turned upside down-things are not the same’ feeling.
INDIAN OCEAN bits:
Doob raha hai shaam ka taara, main bhi waise doob raha
Dhundhle mein dikh na raha
(Janardhan Theme – continues from a failed deal to his journey home, the look at the neon brands from inside of the city bus, only to be further shaken morally whatwith the ‘book a room in the hotel for client’ scene)
Subah ki roshni bas ek nayi, baaki sab baasi baasi hai
(ennui, monotony, like songs in a playlist)
Raste saare thehre thehre…
Bas mein nahi duniya ye kisi ke
Bas ye khud hi pe chale
Jo khudi mein khud ko badal de
Duniya uski badal chale
Hulla is not only an important film(not even comparable to the wildly-celebrated A Wednesdays and MMJ’s), it is one that will grow, with its minimalistic inside out view at the glitzy by-products of compartmented life, a theatrical pay-off structure(the pay-off almost took a good 90 mins), an almost self-destructive faith in the power of cinematic surprise through role reversal and music, and a back-handed treatment of an otherwise out-there-on-the-streets day-in-the-life-of-a-check-to-check, weekend-to-weekend existence, if we could give one film to these times and the times to come, it is Hulla.
“Puri saahab! Sabki suraksha zaroori hai…”
Hulla is out on Moser Baer DVD priced at Rs 100. It also includes a Making DVD.
Tags: Common Man, Indian Ocean, Jaideep Varma, Moser Baer, rajat kapoor, RK Laxman, Sushant Singh
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
Its a good movie…some sequences like ‘Sports on the Terrace’ and ‘Residents meeting, in which one guy is always angry’ are really funny…But not a masterpiece though..
Mere ko yeh picture dekhne ka hai :(
Ok, would you pay $30 for it? Worth it??
That’s the only way i’m gonna get to see it!!!!
Well, GBP 15!!
Its a neat little movie,very natural & original.Anyone can relate to it.And yes some sequences were really good.I liked the way the movie ended in particular.But after a while I found Sushant Singh’s character to be irritating- probably that was the director’s objective.But I really want to know why the apartment scenes were shot in Pune instead of Mumbai & passed off as Mumbai instead.overall a decent movie- but not something that I would go ga ga over.
I loved Indian Ocean Docu. The way Jaideep constructed the story was awesome. The details and the social topics that he touched were really entertaining.
Hulla – did not work for me. I guess it did not as i think it is way too much closer to my comfort.
Nice write-up.
I did enjoy Hulla, but I don’t think it’s anything extraordinary. May be it was Sushant Singht’s performance that (at least partly) spoiled the movie for me.
Absolutely agree with you on Indian Ocean!
It should have been kept to a short. Or else something else could have been the focus in the story. Maybe his insecurity about his status leading to tensions in married life leading to problems due to fraud at office and the whistle being only the trigger which blows the lid. If that was the intention, then the execution of that was below par.
.
Making the whistle as the central point of the story for most of the first half, somehow doesn’t work. The film clearly meanders when it also tries to capture the nuances of Janardhan’s life…it should have kept the focus on the central character…imho
Yet to see the movie.. Read ur write-up. definitely goin to watch it now..
One of the finest films of the last year. Kind of film that can change or strengthen ur beliefs…it did strengthen mine. I always thought Indians don’t get subtle humor and pathos…and Hulla proved just that.
It’s a treat for those who understand middle-class mediocrity, modern city divides, and hurriedly put together ‘rules’ of modern societies (i don’t mean housing societies here)…for the rest, it may just be another ‘comedy’ with some good sequences. Alas…it’s gone, and all we can do now (or still) is crib, fight, or diss.
It was definitely a good entertainer. But it should have been restricted to a tele-movie or drama. Felt like ur watchin an extended version of ‘Star Bestsellers’ or ‘Gubbare’. Honestly, a lot of others and me felt that as a movie it lacked focus.
As Varun says, it was a very good reflection of our middle-class. But I would still have felt robbed if I watched it in the cinema and definitely if I paid an atrociously overpriced $30 for a Moserbaer DVD which you get for Rs.100.
On that note – I just got OLLO and Dev D for $25 each. I ripped it and burnt it on another better quality DVD without the annoying ADs that you have to sit through.
are you “that” Azazel? if you are, were are u these days? are u still working for the PC vendor MNC?
btw, about this article, sorry i could not make head or tail of it…maybe coz i havent seen this film yet.
OK, to begin with. Ga ga ga ga.
@ravptor, would like to hear more on Leaving Home. Went through all the write ups on the LH website. Sounds pretty cool. Inshallah will get to screen it soon here.
@Varun, absolutely man. We have all lost the little sense of humor if we ever had one. Hence the title.
brilliantly written !!!
saw the movie after reading this review and liked it immensely… the last song(when credits roll) sums up the mood and purpose of the movie.
Thanks Akshay. Glad the effort was worth it.
Tushy – The write-up is due. Will do it soon. Have to do a IFFLA wrap-up post.