‘Anek’ movie review: A watchable Bollywood trip to Northeast India
India’s Northeast, comprising eight states, covers almost eight percent of the country’s land area. But as these states share borders with Tibet, Myanmar, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal and the region’s indigenous people do not fit typical ‘Indian standards,’ they feel alienated in their own country.
As close neighbors of India, we have probably witnessed this racial discrimination against Northeast Indians in real life, and recently in the news and media as well.
Writer/director Anubhav Sinha yet again takes pressing social issues to mainstream Bollywood with his latest film “Anek”—which shows life, conflict and violence in Northeast India, albeit from an outsider’s viewpoint.
Aman (Ayushmann Khurrana) is an undercover agent who goes by the alias Joshua. He is in the Northeast in a covert operation to bring Tiger Sangha (Loitongbam Dorendra), the top rebel leader of the region, to the negotiation table.
The problem for Aman and his boss Abrar Butt (Manoj Pahwa) is that there is another rebel group called Johnson that has been winning over people. Not coincidentally though, Aman initially planted Johnson in the region to challenge Tiger’s authority.
Now a whole different group is using the name and Aman has no idea who is leading it. There follows a series of power-play and politics that shed light into the actual situation in the Northeast.
To blend in with the locals and help his espionage, Aman befriends Adio (Andrea Kevichusa), the daughter of a school teacher (Mipham Otsal) and an aspiring boxer who wants to represent India. Her father is against her becoming an Indian sportsperson and is himself involved with an underground rebel group.
Aman’s relationship with Adio also complicates the movie’s plot. But those complications are only a small part of the conflicts the film highlights. A powerful rebel leader who has been fighting for secession for decades suddenly finds himself losing power. A skillful and deserving boxer is stripped off an opportunity to represent her country as “she doesn’t look like an Indian.” A mother struggles to save her teenage son from joining a rebel group. A teenager is forced by circumstances to join a rebel group. A ruthless agent suddenly starts having feelings for the people he has to betray.
There are multiple conflicts and complications in the film but all of them point to one major problem—the alienation of people based on their looks and culture. Unlike Bollywood mainstreams in the past, the filmmakers of Anek do not decide on what is right or wrong. They just lay out a series of hypothetical situations and let the audience decide for themselves.
With hard-hitting dialogues based more on ground reality and less on patriotic jingoism, Anek explores gray areas in politics and bureaucracy. Yes, it takes an outsider to the Northeast and puts him in a powerful position. But I don’t believe Aman’s character in the film has the traits of a savior. He too finds himself lost. Of course there are parts where the filmmakers have tried to appease the larger Indian audience with popular cinematic tropes, but wherever possible they have toned down the heroism to highlight the underlying issues.
Ayushmann Khurrana in the lead role is average. Had it not been for the film’s strong script and storyline, the experienced actor would have been a misfit. If “trying too hard” could be used to describe an actor, I think Khurrana would fit it perfectly. As for Manoj Pahwah and the rest of the Bollywood cast, they put on a good show befitting the script.
The Northeastern actors, mostly new to me, just blend in with the film’s storyline. There is nothing striking about them but none of them looks out of place either. I think this is what acting is all about. Not overpowering your co-actors but still getting noticed.
Who should watch it?
Although Anek is categorized as an action-thriller, it’s more of a drama. But it is intense. And people who love watching a combination of good writing, direction and acting will definitely enjoy Anek.
Rating: 4 stars
Genre: Action/drama
Actors: Ayushmann Khurrana, Andrea Kevichusa
Director: Anubhav Sinha
Run time: 2hrs 27mins
‘Memorial’ book review: More than a gay love story
There are some books that I think everyone would benefit from reading. ‘Memorial’ by Bryan Washington is one of those rare ones that nudges our conscience and forces us to question our beliefs. The impact might not be immediately felt but stories like this, I believe, are essential to slowly chip away our biases and stubbornness.
Memorial is the story of two gay men, Micheal and Benson. They have been together for four years and a kind of complacency has set in. Then Mike leaves for Japan, to visit his dying father. Ben is stuck at home in Texas, America, with Mike’s mother, Mitsuko, whose visit coincides with Mike’s trip. Soon, Mike is helping his father at his bar, thinking of taking over the family business. He has also met someone. Ben has settled into a comfortable, homey routine with Mitsuko. The distance gives the two time to reevaluate their relationship and figure out what they want for themselves.
But Memorial is so much more than a gay love story. The focus isn’t just on the couple’s relationship. It’s about what made them the people they are—their convoluted, dysfunctional relationships with their parents, coming to terms with their sexuality, and the lessons they learn as they navigate life’s ups and downs. Then there are all these side characters whose stories teach you a thing or two about love, loss, and being true to yourself.
I especially liked the brilliant exploration of the parent-child relationship. For anyone struggling with issues with their parents, reading Memorial is extremely cathartic. It makes you feel less alone—that maybe you aren’t the only unlucky one as you sometimes tend to think, that perhaps our relations with our parents can never be fully understood or that they can never be as good as we wish.
Washington’s prose is stunning. I suppose that is often the case when an author is clear about his subject and characters. He also writes with a lot of empathy. You feel for even the most problematic of characters—and there are a few of them. Reading Memorial is a stark yet comforting reminder that all human beings are inherently flawed, and that makes this unjust world feel a little more bearable.
About the author
Bryan Washington is an American writer whose debut short story collection ‘Lot’ was published in 2019. Memorial, his first novel, came out a year later but rights to adapt it to television were sold before its publication. His work has been published in The New York Times, New Yorker, and BBC, among others. He is the recipient of the O. Henry award and the 2020 International Dylan Thomas Prize.
Four stars
Fiction
Memorial
Bryan Washington
Published: 2020
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Pages: 303, Paperback
‘Runway 34’ movie review: Another overlooked Bollywood gem
An immensely talented but cocky passenger aircraft pilot who likes to live it up takes on his next flight in a hungover state after partying the night before. Still, everything is going smoothly for him until the landing nears. The weather at the destination airport is stormy and he has to reroute. There are a few major hiccups and altercations while landing at the alternate destination but the skillful pilot manages to avert a disaster and make a safe landing.
Following the incident, the media and the people at large hail him as a hero. He is endlessly thanked for saving countless lives. But soon, an inquiry is started against his ‘possible negligence’ that day. The hero is pushed into a gray area with the law, and many of his decisions come under question.
Although the Indian thriller “Runway 34” claims to be inspired by a real life incident from 2015, the plot is uncannily similar to Denzel Washington’s 2012 American drama “Flight” which also claims to have been loosely inspired by a similar incident in the US. Too many similarities and coincidences here.
Available on Amazon Prime, Runway 34 is actor Ajay Devgn’s yet another attempt at direction. Also the film’s producer, Devgn plays the pilot in question—Captain Vikrant Khanna—who is grilled to the bone by Narayan Vedant (Amitabh Bachchan), head of a government investigative body.
This is Devgn’s third attempt at direction and first display of maturity as a director. Also, as Devgn does not pair with director/producer Rohit Shetty this time, he does not get to fly motorbikes and cars. Instead, he flies a passenger airplane like a normal pilot in a movie that possibly has the most detailed cockpit scenes in the history of Indian cinema.
As an actor, Devgn is mostly known as a Bollywood action star but he has time and again proved his mettle in hard-hitting drama and thrillers (‘Omkara’, ‘Drishyam’). In Runway 34, he yet again delivers an impactful performance, further strengthening his position as a versatile actor. There is an earnestness about him as Captain Khanna; his performance is powerful yet not overbearing.
The same set of compliments can be copy-pasted for the veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan who plays the shrewd investigator Narayan Vedant. But it is also not new for the legendary actor to completely own his role.
As a director, Devgn chooses to be realistic in Runway 34. From the very beginning, one can see that the actor-turned-director whose highest grossing films are usually loud and brash means serious business in this one. He seems to understand the changing taste of his audience, especially in OTT platforms.
Runway 34 does not completely glorify a ‘hero’ figure; the protagonist comes with his share of virtues and vices. The film also at all times maintains its proximity to reality and does not instill over-the-top cinematic tropes.
Unfortunately, a film with such powerful acting and scrupulous filmmaking did not do well in Indian cinemas. Perhaps most Indian audiences are still not mature enough to enjoy nuanced movies.
Who should watch it?
If you expect Ajay Devgn to jump out of a flying plane mid-air and stop the impending crash, no, this is not that kind of film. Runway 34 is a serious portrayal of something that reportedly happened in real life. So it keeps the storytelling clean and simple yet also always captivating. For those interested in high intensity thrillers, it could be a good watch.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Genre: Drama/thriller
Actors: Ajay Devgn, Amitabh Bachchan, Rakul Preet Singh
Director: Ajay Devgn
Run time: 2hrs 25mins
‘The Night She Disappeared’ book review: Predictable but fun
Bookstores in Kathmandu suddenly started stocking up on Lisa Jewell’s thriller novels as ‘every other person kept asking for them’. I’d heard of her, and even downloaded one of her books (‘The Family Upstairs’) on Kindle. But I had never gotten around to reading it. I picked up ‘The Night She Disappeared’ as authors like Lee Child, Marian Keys, Lucy Foley, and Harlan Coben, to name a few, were raving about it. Coben calls it Jewell’s best thriller yet and Child says the suspense is insane. But I thought The Night She Disappeared was okay. It’s not the best thriller I’ve read, definitely not even one of the good ones. But I had fun while it lasted.
The story follows the disappearance of 19-year-old teen-mother Tallulah and her boyfriend Zach. It’s 2017 and Tallulah goes on a date with her boyfriend, leaving her baby son Noah with her mother, Kim. The next morning, Kim wakes up to find her daughter hasn’t returned. She calls Tallulah’s friends and finds that she and Zach were last seen at a pool party in a private property near the woods in Surrey. She goes there to inquire and is told that they had called a taxi and left in the wee hours of the morning.
It’s hinted that maybe the couple ran away. But Kim knows something is off. Tallulah wouldn’t just not come home. She wouldn’t leave Noah like that. A year later, the case has gone cold with no more leads to pursue. Sophie Beck, a mystery writer, moves into a house near the property where Tallulah was last seen. She comes across a sign that says ‘Dig Here’. There she finds a ring that Zach had bought for Tallulah. She then tries to piece together what might have happened that fateful night.
The story is narrated from three different perspectives—Kim’s, Sophie’s and Tallulah’s. That keeps things fresh and interesting. However, you will easily be able to guess what’s going on, especially if you read thrillers. The writing isn’t that great either. The language feels a little lame at times. But I’d still recommend it if you want a light, breezy read to get your mind off something that is bothering you.
About the author
Lisa Jewell is a New York Times and Sunday Times #1 bestselling author. Since her debut novel was published in 1999, she has written 18 more books and they have been published worldwide in 25 languages. She is best known for a number of dark psychological thrillers like ‘The Girls’, ‘Then She Was Gone’, and ‘The Family Upstairs’. She was born and lives in London.
Three stars
Fiction
The Night She Disappeared
Lisa Jewell
Published: 2021
Publisher: Penguin Books
Pages: 482, Paperback
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55922299-the-night-she-disappeared
