[SPOILER ALERT]
Most underdog films chart a certain graph, and in the end – victory against all odds leaves you filled with hope. Peepli [Live] sucks blood out of that idea & injects it into the darker side of struggle. It leaves its protagonist, a farmer, defeated. No victory, no hope. Just dark, inescapable reality of lakhs of poor in our country. Here, the dog doesn’t have its day, he remains a dog. You & I probably couldn’t have felt this on an emotional level if a certain Aamir Khan had not decided to put his might & will behind a film whose approach is inclined more towards docudrama than a mainstream Hindi film.
Hence, opening with 500-600 prints is nothing short of an achievement for a film like this.
Peepli [Live] takes a dig almost at everyone it features. Politicians have been lampooned millions of times, to the point of bafflement. Of all the characters, Anusha Rizvi portrays the politicians & bureaucrats in the most cold fashion way and, fairly so. The establishment deserve a strict treatment if it doesn’t deliver. Its the media it hits the most hard though. In an age where all our knowledge, information & opinions are influenced by one form of mass media or other, a reality check is important. Peepli [Live] can be called that reality check. In fact, I’m a little surprised by how well the Indian media have taken the film, across board. Its probably because it comes from a person of their fraternity. Criticism from within the tribe is always taken notice of if its healthy. This is another achievement of the film.
You don’t need to pick up stones for making your point. Anything driven commercially sees the practical side of the business first. You & me contribute to the content we see on television. We make their TRPs. We make DT sell. For news media, advertisers are obviously crucial. If we as the viewers/readers decide to spend Rs.10 or Rs.15 on a news daily instead of a Rs.3 or Rs.5, the editorial would depend less on the advertisers which means more newsworthy stories. Same goes for television. We spend an extra Rs. 50 for a more comfortable seat in a multiplex but not on news magazines & journals. We would spend an extra Rs. 20 on our favorite flavored ice cream but haggle over Rs.5 with a rickshaw puller who exhausts himself day in & day out, on roads, which administration fail to mend and for which, tyre manufacturing companies make specially designed wheels so the ride is less bumpier.
One one hand there is Nandita Malik representing English television news media who is unwilling to go & cover ‘the Natha story’ as she thinks that’s not her forte, but on being prodded by her editor reaches Peepli anyway. Once there, she handles her work professionally to the point of being crude. On other hand, there is Deepak who represents the Hindi television news media who also, is unwilling to cover the story because he doesn’t see enough potential for sensation in it. He promises even more sensational stories to his editor, but goes to Peepli nonetheless. And then there is Rakesh – Peepli’s Jan Morcha’s journalist who originally breaks the story of ‘Natha’s suicide’ & unwittingly sends the whole system in a tizzy.Eventually, getting disillusioned by his profession, and ending up in Natha’s shoes.
The parallel sub plot of Mehto – an extremely under nourished farmer who probably also unable to pay his loans, is always shown digging the ground for mud & taking that mud to sell, is according to me the most hard hitting Bollywood representation of poverty in India since the now much celebrated Swades scene where Shahrukh Khan, returning from a farmer’s house, encounters a 10-12 yrs old boy on a railway station selling water.
Peepli [Live] is a depressing showcase of our people. It doesn’t uplift the mood by talking of hope. It takes leave of the viewer on a very brutal & cold note.
In its last 10 minutes, the layered humourous dimension of the reality slides away abruptly. First time in the film you don’t find anything funny about Natha’s appearance. Covered in mud, he sits as still as ‘dead’ at a construction site like hundreds others around him. His existence is irrelevant to us – the beneficiaries of the economic opportunities in the post liberalized India. This is nothing particularly sinful as he might be doing the same if he had been on this side of the divide. Take no moral offence. Its not the classical rich VS poor debate. It’s the haves & have nots issue. Same nation, different (or no) opportunities.
Natha’s story is a story that needed to be told. Its not as skilled as one would have liked it to be but it still works hugely because its played straight & sticks to being a human story. And probably that’s the reason why it still lingers on to your mind long after its over. Natha remains silent, almost in the whole film. He doesn’t have any say in affairs concerning his family or even in his ‘suicide’. He is a guy who has given in to the circumstances & readily gets convinced about giving up on his life as well. His brother Budhia on the other hand, driven by circumstances cowardly asks Natha for the sacrifice.
The film rightly doesn’t take a moral high ground. The young man doesn’t have the time to look back in anger anymore. He gets busy making most out of the emerging markets before he can figure out what concerns him. The film makes you feel guilty anyhow but without a smirk. So instead of shrugging away the responsibility at the back of your head, you are able to find an emotional connect with the story & that works, because at least then you react as a participant. We might not come out of Peepli[Live] all changed but I feel that’s not the idea. Its meant to refresh us about the issues of unattended India. We may not stop eating that favorite ice lolly of ours, but we just might not argue with that rickshaw wallah anymore.
Anusha Rizvi & her team deserve a pat on their backs for making Peepli [Live] as it has been made. The casting & music of the film is bang on. It’s heartening to see such a film doing good business at the box office. The film owes its commercial success to the brand called Aamir Khan, to a large extent. He and UTV deserve a couple of hundred from your pocket for delivering yet again.
Go, pay a price… & forget the popcorn this time!
P.S : (This post was originally published on PassionForCinema on August 19th, 2010 -
http://passionforcinema.com/kue-hum-tera-khoon-pee-jayenge-peepli-live-a-reaction/ )
