News Entertainment Bollywood Yeh Hai Bakrapur movie review: Scathing satire on blind faith

Yeh Hai Bakrapur movie review: Scathing satire on blind faith

Bollywood has come a long way now, gone are those days when female directors made films about female protagonists. Janaki Vishwanathan's protagonist is neither man nor woman.Film: "Yeh Hai Bakrapur"Cast: Anshuman Jha, Asif Basra, Suruchi




The director keeps the proceedings on a slow-burn, opting for an understatement and subliminal humour where she could have pulled out all stops and given Shyam Benegal's "Welcome To Sajjanpur" a run for its money. By the time the proceedings come to a grinding halt, the narration hasn't moved forward to anywhere close to a nirvana, nor have the characters evolved.

The stagnancy of the milieu interrupted by a silly excitement over a spiritually blessed goat, is staggering in its nullity. Celluloid portraits of rural poverty are generally grim and tragic. This one goes the other way. The world of "Yeh Hai Bakrapur" is flush with fun, not necessarily intentional.

The characters seem to exist on two levels, both as prototypes and individuals typifying the peculiarities of a community grappling with inner prejudices, and trying to balance out personal equations within the context of hugely eccentric circumstance that overtakes the soporific village.

There is also the theme of the urban infiltration in rural India through the character played by Anshuman Jha. A village barber's son and a self-styled hair stylist with an air of deceptive innocence, Jha's Jaffar brings into the story a dash of hurried progressiveness in the dying, decaying village.