Sacred Games Gets A Political Boost
Netflix couldn’t have hoped for a better boost for their premium series Scared Games about a turbaned Sardarji cop and a crude sociopath playing hide ‘n’ seek for 8 8-hour long episodes, than the huge uproar over Nawazuddin Siddiqui (who has rapidly grown typecast playing the scummy sociopath) calling a Rajiv Gandhi a….errrr, “Phattu”.
Firstly,the excuse that the actor is not to blame doesn’t hold water. Nawazuddin Siddiqui should check hisdialogues before delivering them.Would he call a politician from the ruling regime any kind of unparliamentary name?
Secondly, who are we to protest about Sacred Games when Mr Gandhi’s own son usually so vocal on all matters to do with his family, is silent? Far milder rebuke in Madhur Bhandarkar’s Indu Sarkar had the Congress loyalists out on the streets.
Recently
Arnab Goswami on his news channel was busy pulling up the entire film industry for their selective outrage against the curbing of freedom of expression. According to him the entertainment industry should be pulled up for not defending Nawazuddin’s right to call Rajeev Gandhi “Phattu”.
Does that make any sense?
But guess who’s is having the last laugh? The Netflix brand has suddenly gained exceptional momentum in India. People are logging in to see what all the fuss is about. While the derogatory mention of the Congress leader is just a passing utterance what really gets our attention is the series’ insouciant faith in the language of lascivious liberalism. There are two lengthy sequences of Nawazuddin having noisy sweaty anal sex, with female partners (so don’t jump to conclusions).Committed actor that he is Nawaz must have undertaken lengthy bouts of rehearsals before plunging in.
Ooof. The things one has to do to be true to one’s job.
It would be hard for audiences to see him play the iconic litterateur Sadat Haasan Manto after watching him defile the female anatomy with such unaesthetic brutality.
But then perhaps knowing how sexually liberated he was, Manto may have approved.
I am not too sure that the explicit language and graphic nudity/sex works in a free-flowing natural manner. Filmmaker Paul Schrader is not off the mark when he says the profanities in Sacred Games sound like kids trying out grownup language. Every time Nawazuddin or Saif Ali Khan and even the ladies who play sluts, transvestites, gangsters and other fornicating fringe beneficiaries tell us where they would like to put their private parts and what they would like to do to their adversaries allies’ mothers and sisters it sounds like they are pausing the plot to consciously and deliberately shock us.
There is also plenty of nudity and not-so-sacred sex , all designed to show how the social outcasts behave in their bedrooms. Two of the actors Rajshri Despande and Jatin Sarna have done nude love-making scenes. While Rajshri goes topless (much to the squealing delight of the social media) the little-seen Sarna has done a fully nude shot(though admittedlly his privates are concealed by the lighting) during a frenetic copulation sequence which ends with the actor getting seriously thrashed by his own gang members.
Talk about getting a gang-bang.
All this would not be allowed in Indian movie theatres. It almost seems as if Netflix is celebrating that creative freedom denied by the censor board to filmmakers in India.The torrent of abuse and humping is like a kid who is gifted a big box of chocolates which he gorges on until he is sick.
Sacred Games just doesn’t know where to stop.
