Peepli [Live]

Watched 'Peepli [Live]' last Sunday. The film's still going housefull. But somehow I'm still brooding over it.

There's something curiously detached about the film. It touches a chord and you have that 'this is so true-to-life' feeling several times, which makes you nod gently to yourself. But it's very Dev D in its execution, by which I mean 'no nyakami and no out-to-grab-the-eyeballs-by-in-your-face-realism'. I had received feedback that it was a 'sad' film but surprisingly, I remained unmoved. I was touched, of course by the maturity of the art and the brilliant directorial vision that brought the media and political world together in their larger-than-life roles. But the fact remained that it was exactly what it sought to be : something sad and stoic. sober and subtle. Almost Tolstoy in its breadth of vision and range of characters but very Shirshendu-like in the portrayal of their foibles and eccentricities. The note on farmer suicides at the end anchored it in grim reality and ironically extrapolated any compassion it might have aroused onto yourself. It shook you with the realisation that there was nothing to enlighten us about, nothing that the print and broadcast media had not already told you. And yet, you hadn't done your bit to remedy whatever you could have. Instead, you came to a multiplex, paying for a Rs 180-worth ticket to watch a film that made you feel that you were part of the 'thinking' middleclass.

A slap on the face. Yup. That's what the film was for me.