Entertainment Review: India Lockdown

Like images of a nightmare that may or may not dim over time, memories of those terrifying months of the lockdown are still embedded in the mind. The corona virus  has left enough stories of trauma and hope to fuel several films; trust Madhur Bhandarkar to pick the most banal.

In his film India Lockdown— which looks only at Mumbai– a set of people from different social strata are affected by the shutting down of the country. Do you see people struggling with covid affected patients in tiny city apartments?  Work from home hassles?  Kids’ education interrupted?Lack of medical care for non-covid ailments? The exhaustion of health and municipality workers going beyond the call of duty?  Not in Bhandarkar’s world!

How exasperating it is it to find that Bhandarkar is more concerned about the sexual needs of the city’s residents than actual crises they may have faced. Forget proper research, Bhandarkar and his writers (Amit Joshi, Aradhana Sah) could have found enough stories if they had done a Twitter search.

The film looks at the days just before and a little after the first lockdown, when people grumbled about inconvenience, but did not imagine the horrors to come. A senior citizen, Nageshwar Rao, (Prakash Belawadi) lives alone and is waiting to go to Hyderabad to see his pregnant daughter when the virus strikes. He is forced to stop his domestic help and do all the household chores himself, and, of course, flights are cancelled so he cannot travel.

His househelp Phoolmati (Sai Tamhankar) and her husband Madhav (Prateik Babbar) who runs a food stall, are unable to repay loans or manage rent. For lack of an option, they decide to walk to their Bihar village, along with two small children.

Mehrunissa (Shweta Basu Prasad) and other sex workers in the red light area have to find ways to ply their trade or starve.

And the most irritating characters of the lot are a couple of college students (Satvik Bhatia-Zarin Shihab), who just want to hop into bed; and a pilot in the neighbourhood, Moon Alves (Aahana Kumra), who hits on the teenager.

Bhandarkar is hardly able to go beyond the superficial in conveying the characters’ emotions, but is in unabashed crude more mode when he looks at the antics of Mehrunissa and her horny customers. Even in the midst of an inhuman trek, over long distances, the men are more interested in trying to seduce the attractive Phoolmati than worrying about where their next meal will come from.

Shweta Basu Prasad is chirpy enough to make her character likeable, the other actors barely pass muster. With his penchant for picking up realistic subjects, Bhandarkar is a quick mover with his pandemic project, but like most of his films, this one too is short on depth or imagination, and high on sensationlism.