Some films are watched, some films are endured, and some films continue to make noise in your mind even after they have ended.
Anurag Kashyap’s Bandar is the third kind of film for me.
It is a film that does not portray a prison merely as a world of four walls, iron bars, prisoners and police. Instead, it presents it as a system that imprisons a human being from within.
But my biggest opinion about this film, and perhaps the most controversial one, is this:
Bandar is Bobby Deol’s film.
Yes, the film features excellent supporting actors like Sanya Malhotra and Sapna Pabbi, and several other characters have their own importance. But when the film ends, the face that stays with you the most is Bobby Deol’s.
And that is the film’s greatest achievement.
Anurag Kashyap cannot simply be called a director who makes films. That would be an injustice to him.
He is one of Bollywood’s filmmakers who have repeatedly proved that they have little interest in the conventional division of characters into “good” and “bad.”
Gangs of Wasseypur, Ugly, Gulaal, Black Friday and Dev.D all have one thing in common:
The human being.
The human being who can be good, bad, helpless, selfish, and sometimes even a victim of his own actions.
In Bandar too, Kashyap appears to be exploring the same messy, complicated and morally uncomfortable territory.
Here, he does not allow the viewer to sit comfortably and pass judgment.
He throws questions at you and then leaves you alone with those questions.
What is the truth? What is a crime? Who deserves the punishment? And when the system itself makes a mistake, who pays the price for that mistake?
This is Anurag Kashyap’s cinema.
He is more interested in opening wounds than providing answers.
Jail — and What Could Still Be Said About Prisons?
When talking about the subject of prison, Madur Bhandarkar’s acclaimed film Jail cannot be ignored.
The 2009 release Jail presented the judicial system, the helplessness of prisoners, the internal environment and the power dynamics inside a prison in a particular and compelling manner.
It almost felt as though there was perhaps nothing much left to say about this subject.
But the strength of Bandar is that it attempts to portray prison from a different perspective.
Here, prison is not merely the place where prisoners are locked away.
The real prison exists inside the human mind.
And this perspective is what prevents Bandar from becoming just another prison drama.
The film takes the idea of imprisonment beyond physical freedom.
And this is where Anurag Kashyap’s film becomes both interesting and deeply unsettling.
And Then There Is Bobby Deol
To be honest, while watching Bandar, I found myself thinking several times:
*Is this really the same Bobby Deol whom filmmakers once limited to the stereotypical hero and then to blood-soaked action characters like Animal?
In Animal, Bobby Deol made such an impact in just a few minutes that people ended up talking about his character almost as much as the film’s central protagonist.
But the real question after Animal was:
Could Bobby Deol truly re-establish himself as a serious actor?
Bandar is the answer.
After this film, Bobby Deol is no longer merely a “star.”
He has been acknowledged as an actor.
Here, he is not an Animal, but a human being who is gradually breaking down from within under the weight of circumstances.
And the most remarkable thing?
He does not portray that breakdown by screaming or shouting.
We have been hearing about “Bobby Deol’s comeback” for the past few years.
But perhaps it is time to change that phrase.
This is not a comeback. This is a transformation.
The work Anurag has extracted from Bobby Deol may well be the finest work of Bobby’s career so far.
An actor’s ability does not always come entirely from the actor himself. Sometimes, a director discovers the actor hidden inside him.
That actor was already there inside Bobby Deol, but in Bandar, Anurag Kashyap has dug him out.
Anurag did not use Bobby’s star image.
He broke it.
In my opinion, this film belongs to Bobby Deol.
Everyone else revolves around him.
Story and Screenplay
The story of the film is not so complicated that you have to rack your brain to understand its basic premise.
Its real strength lies in the way the film complicates that seemingly simple premise.
As the story moves forward, the questions keep changing.
You feel sympathy for one character, and then begin to doubt that same character.
You assume another character is guilty, only to start wondering whether perhaps he too is a victim of some larger motive or circumstance.
This moral fog makes Bandar better than an ordinary thriller.
And once again, this is Anurag Kashyap’s cinema.
He does not give the viewer moral comfort.
But Is the Film a Masterpiece?
No.
There are moments when the screenplay feels as though it stretches its point for too long.
In the second half, the film sometimes seems to circle around its own questions.
Some of the supporting characters could perhaps have been given greater depth.
And above all, the sensitive moral and social debate that the film raises could have been made more balanced and complex.
But these shortcomings do not erase the film’s fundamental impact.
Because a good film is not always flawless.
Sometimes, a good film is one that leaves you disturbed.
And Bandar does that very well.
Bhandarkar vs Kashyap
If Jail is viewed through Madur Bhandarkar’s perspective, prison there was a brutal reality.
In Bandar, prison becomes more of a psychological reality.
Jail shows you what happens inside a prison.
Bandar focuses on what prison does to a human being.
This is the fundamental difference between the perspectives of the two films.
That is why it would be incorrect to call Bandar a repetition of Jail.
It is a new interpretation of the same subject.
