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One of Conan Doyle’s classic Sherlock Holmes capers, I can’t remember which one, has the inimitable private eye and sidekick Dr. Watson on their way to the English countryside to solve a crime most foul. Enamored with the pastoral beauty, the impressionable doctor compulsively breaks into trite adulations on life in the country while Holmes, impossibly rational to a schizoid degree, alerts his friend to the warps in the seemingly serene. Lonely expanses with no one to hear your scream, no one to stumble on a freshly dug grave, no one to turn to help- a dark, opaque silence like the depths of an ocean where evil could hide and thrive. With ‘Manorama 6 Feet Under’, Director Navdeep Singh locates Doyle’s heart of darkness in the barren desert expanses of Lakhot, Rajasthan.

Navdeep Singh’s tale of detection, deceit and decay, begins in true noir style, with the camera working itself up from a bunch of scrambling ants, every one as similar and inconsequential as the other, each assigned to its duty which it will mindlessly fulfill until its eventual death, to the unlikely hero waxing shamus on his deadbeat existence in a small desert town and the altered reality of hot air, barren expanses and mirages. The opening sequence, set to a haunting soundtrack, is a purely stylized head trip as the hero rips on his bike across the strange, alienating scenery that messes with his consciousness. At the end of the sequence, with deliberate pacing that will continue through the film’s long-winding 135 minutes, director Singh begins to etch his unlikely hero- Satyaveer Randhawa, junior PWD engineer and aspiring crime novelist. Noir heroes have come in every shape and size from manic depressive (Humphrey Bogart in ‘Maltese Falcon’) to clinically disciplined (Alain Delon in ‘Le Samurai’) to the playfully perverse (Elliot Gould in ‘The Long Goodbye’) to the stark raving psychotic (Ralph Meeker in ‘Kiss Me Deadly). In Satyaveer Randhawa, Director Singh and actor Abhay Deol have created a quintessential Indian noir hero. He is married to Nimi (Gul Panang)- a broad caricature of the Indian housewife, beautiful but nagging, who runs a beauty salon to supplement the income, who is adamant about visiting her parents for Diwali and whose idea of a relaxed evening is tuning into television soap operas as her husband sits beside her listlessly waiting for the moment where she drops the remote to change the channel. He is constantly obsessed with the utter debacle of his novel ‘Manorama’, something he was counting on to get him out of his dead-end life. His way of interacting with his son is by trudging through a game of ‘snakes-and-ladders’/’ludo’. The only respite he seems to be getting in the hot desert town would be the occasional story that makes its way to pulp magazines and evenings spent drinking with his brother-in-law Brijmohan (Vinay Pathak), a wise-cracking, malpua-eating, cold blooded cop. The ennui of his existence is only made gloomier by his suspension from work and impending investigation for getting caught with taking a motorcycle as ‘gift’ from a company. The way Nimi and he reason with it- the whole department takes bribes, it’s sheer bad luck that Satyaveer got caught.

The conceit of the noir narrative is to have disparate storylines that will inevitably merge to yield a grand climax and for this, ‘Manorama’ borrows the fundamentals from Polanski’s classic noir ‘Chinatown’ for which Director Singh doffs his hat by having a scene in which Satyaveer is watching the Polanski classic on his Television. Singh is careful not to pilfer in Gupta-esque fashion while deliberately adapting the script the way Lam’s ‘City of Fire’ was adapted to Tarantino’s ‘Reservoir Dogs’.

Sarika turns up as the mysterious Ms. Rathore, wife to the local politician at the Randhawa residence with a job for Satyaveer. He has to spy on her husband whom she suspects of having an extra-marital affair and for a few photographs the pay is handsome. The scene, shot among shadows is a replica of the famous ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ exchange between femme fatale Vanessa Redgrave and a cocky Jack Nicholson in ‘Chinatown’. Neither Sarika nor Abhay Deol can measure up to their counterparts and the scene falls flat on its face. It is an essential sequence, one which sets the film in motion, one of deceit and intrigue. Singh’s version of a femme fatale wrapped in saree must have appeared brilliant on script but fails to translate to the screen mostly because Sarika and Deol fail to channel the erotic undercurrent of the original.

The plot is laid. Satyaveer accepts not just because the offer is easy money, it is excitement of playing Detective Raghu, the protagonist of his failed novel, of reliving lost aspirations. But in a noir scenario, there is no such thing as easy money. Every penny has its price and soon, on his way back from a drinking sojourn with his brother-in-law, he encounters Ms. Rathore who claims that she isn’t Ms. Rathore but Manorama and hints that she might not have long to live. There are people out there who would rest better on her death. Even this interaction between Deol and Sarika plays awkward. This one has a goofy shtick about it with Deol playing it sozzled but in a genre as pulpy as noir an occasional foot-in-mouth only makes proceedings interesting. Sam Fuller’s seminal ‘Pick Up on South Street’ would offer enough proof on that.

Manorama winds up dead and the case is promptly dismissed as a suicide and inspite on better advice from brother-in-law Brijmohan (curiosity killed cat), Satyaveer cannot resist playing Detective Raghu. As he navigates murkier waters, the delicate middle-class reality around him begins to unravel. He finds himself descending down a spiral of duplicity and scandal as if he has scratched the surface of the world he knew and a toxic bile of truth gushed out. Secrets are revealed – dark and disturbing. Secrets some people will kill to contain. Very soon a couple of cartoonish henchmen are out for Satyaveer’s blood. His neighbors alert him that in his absence they sighted mysterious people trying to break into his house. He runs into a girl (Raima) who also claims to be on the run from the same people, who might hold an important clue that will fit all the pieces together. He finds himself falling for her even as he wonders if she is all that she seems. With his descent into darkness and violence, the unlikely hero finds he is capable of holding through even if it’s by sheer wit. The listless householder turns stubborn and cocky. Satyaveer is becoming Detective Raghu, his very creation. He even begins to speak in hard-boiled pulp. When asked if he knows how to cock the revolver’s safety catch, he replies that he writes detective novels. This is cinema coming on as hip as can be.

At the end of his harrowing journey, Satyaveer finds himself facing not just a criminal act but an entire system of evil. A system once set up for greater good that has decayed from within and now spreads its decay to all in its grasp. A system spawned by us, voted into power but which has now gone beyond our reach aided by our own apathy and carelessness and now threatens us with its power. A system masked by respectability that subterfuges the evil within. Satyaveer is absolutely helpless when faced by it.

But there is larger scheme, a longer view. Like it is put in the movie- ‘the natural order of things’ and with a karmic fatalism that would do that would do Raymond Chandler proud, the movie pulls out a bravura climax that is the triumph of the common man, making us exult,” This is sizzling cinema”

The performance come a long way into making the film as effective as it is. Abhay Deol is no Jack Nicholson but he isn’t trying to be. He epitomizes the middle-class middle-age crisis and with gradual progression comes on his own in the climax, delivering on both barrels. Gul Panang makes her presence palpable even when she isn’t on the scene and makes the most of when she is. Among the femme fatales, Raima Sen is excellent as the mysterious stranger while Sarika fades to the memory of Vanessa Redgrave. Vinay Pathak as Brijmohan gets the best lines, makes off with another quirky character in his repertoire and confirms his status as serial scene stealer. There is an edge of brutality under his sense of humor and an edge of caring to his brutality and Pathak conveys it with flamboyance. But the towering performance of the movie comes from veteran character actor Kulbhushan Kharbanda. It is a performance of consummate evil. His serpentine viciousness makes him more than a character but a representative of decadence. With his spectacular act, he earns himself a podium alongside the likes of Orson Welles from ‘The Third Man’ and ‘Touch of Evil’ and Kevin Spacey from ‘Se7en’, the greatest of the noir villains. Shakaal is mere caricature compared to Rathore. Arvind Kannabiran‘s cinematography is stark and relentlessly inventive peppering the pulpy narrative with baroque metaphors while noir namesake Riaomond Mirza‘s brassy score which reminds one of the classic themes in a way that is a pure genre aficionado’s delight.

‘Manorama Six Feet Under’ is not just pure calculation, adapting a noir scenario to interior Rajasthan. It probes deeper and such is tradition. Singh interprets the Water and Real Estate scam of ‘Chinatown’ as a Naher (tributary) scam. It is the reality of desert towns of Rajsthan- unscrupulous politicians gathering votes on empty promises of water supply and irrigation at election time. Even the typical noir scene involving the cheeky informant who will give information only in lieu of cash points out the social reality of the poor and the displaced who can do nothing but resign to their fates And when the informant begins to speak a bit too much, another person from his group asks him to shut up. It is jungle law out among the barren sands and as the movie points out, the smaller fish remain in constant fear of the bigger fish. Turn the pages of the news magazines and one will know the reality of the oppressed- lynched, beaten, taken advantage of, displaced from their natural and traditional habitat in the name of development and who do they turn to when the system itself is the oppressor. ‘Manorama Six Feet Under’ is a brutal critique of mercenary politics and corrupt administration and doesn’t shy away from that frequent casualty of contemporary Bollywood- reality.

In the last 50 years, there have been two major landmarks in cinema that have changed the language of cinema forever- The French New Wave and the Tarantino Era. The French New Wave has been capped by inventive noirs- Godard with Breathess, Band of Outsiders etc, Truffaut with Shoot the Piano Player etc, Claude Chabrol whose career is lined end to end with noir thrillers and many others who were profoundly influenced by the American gangster bravado of the early noirs of Sam Fuller, Nicholas Ray etc. Then came the Tarantino era- Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Go, Snatch, Desperado, Ghost Dog etc. Once again, it was noir all through. Among the most important of contemporary directors, the Coen brothers (Man Who Wasn’t There, Blood Simple etc) and the Finnish master of droll Aki Krausmaki (Man Without a Past) have a repertoire of essential cinema that boils down to the genre. In India, homegrown noir cinema has produced many landmarks- ‘C.I.D’ with Dev Anand as debonair detective investigating a murder which spun an entire genre of Bollywood masala mysteries, the under-rated and under-seen ‘Khamosh’ by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, a murder mystery parable about the end of Indian New Wave cinema. Kundan Shah’s seminal cult classic ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron’ is structured as a freewheeling comedy which wears its noir origins proudly on its sleeve. Shah also makes clear his love for his genre when he names the club in ‘Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa’ ‘Chinatown’ and garbs his gangsters in vintage American. Gautam Menon with his successful cop capers (Kakka Kakka, Vetaiyadu Vellaiyadu) in Tamil has become something of a genre auteur while Malayalam cinema has a history of successful noirs with Mamooty’s continuing Sethuram Iyer detective series setting a template that has been oft-imitated. Even the small screen has had its sahre of noir legends in ‘Byomkesh Bakshi’ and ‘Karamchand’.

What I’m trying to demonstrate is that the genre noir despite its pulpy, dime-store origins has frequently, with the passage of time, gone down as a landmark, even changing the course of cinema forever and with ‘Manorama Six Feet Under’, equal proportions stylish and substantial, old school and modern; Bollywood has one helluva new one to be proud of.

Here’s looking at you, kid…