Why So Much Over-Acting, Ranveer Bhai?

It is  the season of adrenaline rush  on screen. Every screen-hero is  scampering  to the perilous peaks of  virility, killing, maiming, shooting ,slaying  and mowing down adversaries with lawless impunity.

 These  dilating parameters  of  lawlessness in recent films are  explained  by  my friend  filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali explains as  “a reaction to the  physical and emotional  pressures and constraints  during the  pandemic,everyone wants to go into movie theatres for an emotional  release,like Shahid Kapoor screaming at  a hurling train in Jersey.”

I quite agree with that assessment of  the  high-octane actioners  ramming  into the theatres . You wouldn’t expect  Yashraj Films’s Ranveer Singh’s Jayeshbhai Jordaar  to do a Pushpa , RRR  or  KGF on us.  However this is exactly what Ranveer Singh is  seen  doing .Even as he starts  as timid and  tremulous  he turns  violently   aggressive towards  the climax, unleashing a  feast of fury in the trailer when his father, the sarpanch of  a  village  who believes that girls  must stop using  perfumed soap to avoid getting  unwanted  public attention, commands  Jayeshbhai to get  rid of his unborn  baby girl.

This is Boman Irani’s  LOL moment. And I plead guilty of  obliging. However titivating toxicity and turning it into  titters is  not the  solution to social evils.  Just because  Boman’s  patriarchal  arrogance  is  humorized  it doesn’t take away the  venomous  sting from a social  malaise.

 Ranveer Singh thinks addressing female foeticide  in a light facetious manner  will change society. Rest assured, it won’t . Some social malaise  run too deep to be cured with  laughter. Killing of  the female child in  the  womb is one  of those incurable afflictions that  our social system seems  to feel it is  entitled to propagate  with  intrepid  brazenness for generation after generation. And what can cinema  do about it?

Plenty!  If  cinema tries. In  Manish Jha’s disturbing dystopian  drama Matrabhoomi  we encounter an  entire village  denuded  of  feminine presence after  generations of  foeticide.The  film was a tough watch , as any film on  a  burning social  issue must be. Why  trivialize a social  evil by making light of it?If tomorrow someone makes a film on  the Kathua rape case would we expect comic relief to make the brutal crime  more  digestible for the audience?

  Ranveer Singh’s overt energy-level is  all wrong in Jayeshbhai Jordaar. When  a meek man  rises above his  temperament  to save his  unborn child we must not fritter away the gravity of  the moment in crowdpulling tactics.

It is one thing  for Ranveer to  play the  desi Elton John off screen.  But to flirt with fleet-footed flamboyance in the role of a anxious  father fleeing his unborn  child’s  murderous marauders is  just not right.