Durgamati Easily The Most Obnoxious Film Of The Year

Durgamati The Myth (Amazon)

Starring: Bhumi  Pednekar, Arshad Warsi, Jisshu Sengupta, Mahie Gill

Directed by: Ashok

Rating: **

While cinema the worldover has made  gigantic leaps in theme and execution, we seem to be trapped in a time warp. Who makes this kind of Chandamama mythological anymore? Unless they think the audience is a sucker  for  mumbo-jumbo…. The original  Tamil-Telugu bi-lingual Bhagmathie  was  a  blockbuster. Maybe  Anushka Shetty’s bellowing  bhoot act was  a  big turn-on  to  her fans, much in the same way that some men like to get whipped by their partner in bed.

 You have  to be really twisted to  enjoy  Bhumi Pednekar ‘s persecuted –bureaucrat-turns-into-a –flaming-fatale act . It  is  so  funny  it hurts, when it’s  meant to be intimidating.  It’s  not  the  actress’ fault really.  It’s  the  god-awful  script made even more unbearable by  the direction which plays every scene  by numbers:  4 junior artistes on  the two corners  of the frames, Ms Bhootnath  at  the centre,rest of the cast trying to  figure out where they are supposed to be.The background music is  so upbeat at times that I thought they put the wrong  soundtrack.(Like interchanged  babies in the hospital).

 Hellishly stupid and  imbecilic  Durgamati will  give you nightmares  for days,and for all the wrong reasons. It will make you seriously worried for  the future  of Indian cinema  specially the digital platform which has become a dumping  ground for toxic waste.Durgamati not only  propagates  blind faith,  it does so with the blind insensitivity  of  a child poking his sleeping mother with his  finger.

The  plot is so fatuous it  will annoy you, anger being too strong an  emotion to waste on  this nonsensical homage to nullity. An IAS officer accused of murdering her boyfriend(Karan Kapadia, who happens to be one  of  the producer’s  nephew) is being interrogated in a haunted haveli by  the brother(Jisshu Sengupta)  of the murdered  man(nepotism, you see is  everywhere) and  by a CBI officer(Mahie Gill) who speaks all her lines as if she just got her molars extracted.

Although  Gill  plays a Bengali(and keeps  mixing up her ling, just like everything else  in the film) Jisshu Sengupta has a much more convincing Bengali accent. Could it because he is Bengali in real life? I  can’t be sure of  anything in this film. Is it even a film? Could Bhumi Pednekar, so effective  in her last release, be  so daft as  to  play a woman who is possess by the ghost  of a  dead woman?Andh-vishwas for superstitious women  in backward villages.

Who plays such roles  any more?Who makes such  films any more? Bhumi  has  spoken of this being the most physically challenging role of her career. I  understand her pain. This was the mentally  most  challenging film of my career.It will take me weeks to recover. There are four  hotshot  producers  backing this unpardonable  faux pas , an apology of a film.Whom should I send my medical bills to?