Yeh Mera India: N Chandra’s best yet?
N Chandra’s name was associated with very successful films – Ankush, Pratighat, Tezaab (remember ‘Ek, Do, Teen…’ and Madhuri Dixit?) – that looked at the underbelly of the society and politics in a loud way. These were films that said everything in the loudest possible manner, and managed to strike a great chord with the ‘aam janta’. In a way, Ankush, made in 1986, was a path-breaking film with virtual unknowns as the cast (well, who knew Nana Patekar before that?) that went on to become one of the biggest Box Office grosser just by its sheer strength of ‘direct-action’ dialogues and treatment. That was before he gradually lost his way, through films like Narasimha and Yugandhar that tried to further cash on the same format but failed. Then he went into virtual oblivion, making flop after flop – Humla, Tejasvini, Beqabu, Wajood, Shikari – till he tried his hand in a comedy called Style, loud and nonsensical, but somehow connecting with the front benchers in such a big way that it became a hit. It was succeeded by a sequel called Xcuse Me, but excuse me, it took Chandra nowhere. Then came Kagaar, another loud exercise that was so, so.
But with Yeh Mera India (earlier known as Breaking News), Chandra has suddenly turned into a filmmaker who can also speak subtly, at least by his standards. In fact, YMI surprises you with its highly-topical storyline, accomplished handling of the complex intertwining of multitude of stories that are seemingly unconnected, a tout screenplay which virtually does not miss out on any detail, and mostly superb performance by the ensemble cast (Anupam Kher, Rajpal Yadav, Vijay Raaz, Atul Kulkarni, Rajit Kapur, Sarika, Seema Biswas, Pravin Dabas, Perizaad Zorabian, Purab Kohli, Smiley Surie, Sayaji Shinde et al.).
The film tells the story of one day in the life of 12 characters. It starts off as a series of unconnected ‘breaking news’ on television, but finally it turns out that all these ‘stories’ are somehow connected with one another. Chandra has managed to tackle a whole range of issues – from caste politics, terrorism, underworld to changing moral of the society, compromised ideologies, frustrated Naxalites and the so-called Marathi-vs-North Indian issue. And to his credit, he does it seamlessly, though here and there one sees a tendency to go back to his loud style. YMI is a fast-paced film with one act moving to another, and each character’s sketch drawn quite completely. A sudden appearance of philosophic poetry mongering through a background voice towards the middle somewhat derail the pace, though Chandra has managed to get his act together again.
The stories interwoven in the film could have been – and has been – made into separate movies altogether, but to Chandra’s credit, they seem one singe story finally. This is perhaps Chandra’s best till date, Tezab and Ankush’s Box Office history notwithstanding. To its credit, despite rotting in the cans for over two years (it was completed in 2007) for lack of distributors, it manages not to look dated.
And yes, just watch out for the superb cameo by Rajpal Yadav, who for a change, speaks mainly through his eyes and body language.
Tags: n. chandra, Trailer, Video, Yeh Mera India
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
coool!!…i would love to watch this film by N.Chandra after a long time!!..afterall this movie is all about India!!
Ankush was well made. And he tried to cash in on the same subjects through Narsimha and Yugandhar. Are these hit films by fluke? Chandra’s subsequent flop films seem to suggest so. As RGV says, the film maker can never know.
Style and excuse me had a lot of stupid regional humour. Lets hope YMI is mature.
Looks like a yawnfest. The old N Chandra anyday.
Is it just me or Style was actually funny. Yes it was loud, but it was not crass. Sharman Joshi was excellent. I guess that makes a front bencher
Style was actually funny, and it had one of the best comic performances by Sharman Joshi in the recent years that goes overlooked more often than naught. ;)
Today, I cringe when I see Tezaab, but I had seen this film about 13 – 14 times then
just saw the film, it had its heart in the right place despite the flaws.