A Breathless Spoof

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">One of the pioneers of the New Wave cinema in France, Jean-Luc Godard, was once asked by a cheeky journalist: Don''t you think that a film should have a beginning, a middle and an end? He doubtless had in mind the absence of a linear plot in Godard''s movies. <br /><br />Of course it should, the director replied and then went on to add: But not necessarily in that order.<br /><br />The Godardian retort often comes to mind as you watch Shashanka Ghosh''s <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Waisa Bhi Hota Hai Part II </span>not because it owes anything to the New Wave director''s techniques but because Ghosh, like Godard, approaches cinema with a supreme sense of the <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">bindaas</span>.<br /><br />The very title of the film reveals a marked, even provocative, penchant for anything that is carefree and zany. For, the reference to Part II would suggest that it is a sequel whereas it is nothing of the kind.<br /><br />Ghosh reckoned, correctly as it turned out, that the title itself would create a buzz rooted in curiosity and suspense. The question - When did he make WBHH Part I ? - is asked but never answered precisely because the question itself is redundant. <br /><br />It is a ploy to crack a joke at the expense of a gullible audience but a joke which, as the film itself reveals, is pregnant with uncomfortable truths about a world that spins on the axis of advertising hype and underworld shenanigans.<br /><br />The originality of the film must indeed be traced to Ghosh''s determination to exploit to the hilt the possibilities of a spoof. Every major character and every setting displays traits that pre-exist as archetypes in the popular imagination: Puneet, the copy-writer and Agni, his cop girl-friend, Ganpat, the gang-lord and Vishnu, his favourite hit-man, Gangu Tai, the boss of a rival gang and her bunch of chamchas right down to a group of boisterous Sardarjis who flit in and out of the film for reasons that no one can quite fathom.<br /><br />All of them speak and act the way those who have been fed on a diet of Bollywood gangster movies expect them to speak and act. But since Ghosh is spoofing Bollywood, what you in fact witness on the screen are not caricatures or pastiches that would have given the game away but portrayals where realism and its counterfeit, fantasy, merge seamlessly.<br /><br />To carry this challenge off, Ghosh has benefited from the exceptional histrionic gifts of his actors. Arshad Warsi as the copy-writer Puneet is a fine blend of the comic and the vulnerable, Agni as the cop is wooden and sensuous turn by turn, Prashant plays the hit-man with uncommon cool. <br /><br />But it is the two actors who play gang-lords Anant Jog as Ganpat and Pratima Kazmi as Gangu Tai who walk away with the honours. Their spoofing of the underworld ensures that the film sparkles with wit and verve.<br /><br />Those who have feasted 20th century masters from Antonioni to Zanussi are likely to dismiss Sashanka Ghosh''s film as a cinematic equivalent of popcorn. Such criticism would be misplaced. <br /><br />It is nobody''s claim that <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Waisa Bhi Hota Hai Part II </span>is compelling in any conventional sense of the word. But the fact of the matter is that Ghosh, the man behind the success of MTV, and his two brash and brilliant producers, Rahul Misra and Sameer Gupta, have come up with a movie which is perfectly in tune with the excitement and frailty of Mumbai in this first decade of the millennium. <br /><br />And it rhymes well with the city''s post-modernist craze to seek <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">masti, mauj </span>and <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">mazaa </span>by questioning all hierarchies, whether these relate to societal concerns, moral codes or even aesthetic bench-marks.<br /><br />Godard, who began smashing cinematic hierarchies and conventions more than forty years ago, would probably approve.</div> </div>