After 2018,it looks like 2019 will be another golden year for Indian cinema. First Yuri which is on release and thenSonechiriya speak about a simmering war raging at the fringe of society, The characters speak an unvarnished truth about life at the edge.What we see is not always pleasant but never uninteresting.
Raw wounded, brutal and violent…The trailer of Abhishek Choubey’s fourth feature film Sonechiriya is a dacoit drama without horses. For years we’ve been brainwashed by Bollywood into believing that dacoits travelled by horses when in fact there are no horses in the Chambal valley. The Dacoit Drama and the Tale Of The Poetic Taawaif are the most sublime misrepresentations of Indian cinema.
The last time I saw a dacoit film without red-eyed bandits scampering around on horses was in Shekhar Kapoor’s Bandit Queen.And now in Abhishek Choubey’s Sonechiriya we are introduced to a powdery wasteland where the ravines are raw and the wounds even rawer. It took me a while to recognize Sushant Singh Rajput, Manoj Bajpai, Ranvir Shorey, AhutoshGowarikar and Bhumi Pednekar under all the grim grime.
The trailer shows all the bandits to be on the run. Their fugitive status is neither pitied nor ridiculed. Sonechiriya seems to be a celebration of outlawry in all its grimy gritty glory. There are bouts of humour in the blitzkrieg of non-choreographed violence.We see a couple of dacoits resting it out on a rooftop for the night,when one of them wonders if he would get mutton in jail.
“Why only mutton,” retorts his compatriot, “The jailor his daughter every Sunday for you.”
Ahem.
Brutal to the bone, Sonechiriya touches raw nerves in our socio-cultural DNA which has allowed inequality to foster for generations.Now it’s too late to even try to rectify the economic imbalance. The film shows fringe people accepting their place and fighting for what they believe to be their fundamental right to survive.
In many shots of the trailer I was reminded of Sunil Dutt’ s Mujhe Jeene Do.Without the horses, of course.And the tawaifdancing to the sublime sound of Lata Mangeshkar’s Raat bhi hai kuch bheegi bheegi chand bhi hai kuch madhyam madhyam.
The night us neither drenched nor is the moonlight mellow in Sonechiriya. For that we will have to wait for the next RajKhosla dacoit drama. May his outlawed souls rest in peace.
Rishi Kapoor worked only once with Manoj Kumar .And that didn’t go too well. The film… Read More
The mythical Meena Kumari’s last film was not the timeless Pakeezah but an atrocity named Gomti Ke Kinare where … Read More
One of your best works Mukti Bhawan Is 8 years old now? Mukti Bhawan is… Read More
Catchphrases are common in many TV shows—from Joey asking “How you doin’?” in Friends to… Read More
Waheeda Rehman who did a string of superhits has huge compliments to pay Manoj Kumar.… Read More
On His 70th Birthday, The Best Of Hariharan .Tum gaye sabb gaya(Maachis): This heartstopping meditative melody on lost love… Read More
Leave a Comment