Just when you thought Bollywood had crossed some sort of all-singing, all-dancing line of demarcation comes Aparahan, a very nearly tuneless drama that takes on the issue of kidnapping and assorted social ills in the northern Indian state of Bihar (it borders Nepal in case you’re wondering). Bollywood superstar Devgan plays Ajay Shastri, a twentysomething straight arrow who longs for nothing more than life in the police force. Unfortunately, he’s fast approaching the maximum age limit, and in between lectures from his father (the statesmanlike Agashe), his girlfriend (Basu), and a string of 13 kidnappings in three months, he lands not on the side of the law, but working for the thuggish criminal mastermind Tabrez Alam (Patekar) who is (predictably if you’re familiar with the region) in cahoots with the local law. Sucked dry of the usual array of colorful Busby Berkeley musical numbers and displaying some seriously dialed-down performances from the otherwise engaging leads – Sharma’s bizarre, birdlike punk Gaya is, thankfully, somewhat more over the top – Aparahan feels like a police procedural refracted through the lens of current Biharian politics, something most Westerners, and this reviewer, don’t have a clue about. Taken at face value, Jha’s film is one long and sordid tale of not-quite redemption, taking the naive Ajay across veritable polar extremes of characterization while making much to-do about the ineffectuality and blatant moral ambiguity of the region’s law enforcement services. Minus the tuneful hits (or near hits, or even total tonal misses, for that matter), Aparahan comes across as a hokey if well-intentioned melodrama, cops and gangsters and, behind them all, dear old dad, whose only concern appears to be his son’s caloric intake or lack thereof. If only that were the extent of Bihar’s apparent troubles.
This article appears in November 25 • 2005.