Bhonsle Movie Review: Manoj Bajpayee powers a story of degeneration and decay

Bhonsle starts off with two contrasting images. On the one hand, we have an idol of Ganapati being readied – painted, clothed, crowned – and on the other, we have Ganpat Bhonsle being stripped off his ornaments. He is retiring after tirelessly serving Mumbai Police. He removes each item of his uniform from his person and places it on the table in front of him. The two travel two different paths to get to the same place – Churchill Chawl.

Devashish Makhija’s Churchill Chawl in Bhonsle is a microcosm of India – where open drains flowing right through the courtyard and rat-infested corners are ignored, but black paint spilt over ‘Marathi’ must not be. The ‘Bihari’ who did it must pay. It is bhaus vs bhaiyaas. And then there is Bhonsle.

Caught in his post-retirement daily routine of brewing a flask of ‘chaha’ and sitting down with a vada pav, cooking a watered-down dal for lunch, slapping the transistor, placing a shabby aluminium ‘patila’ under a tap that never seems to flow, washing his uniform, drying it then placing it under the mattress to get rid of the creases, so on and so forth, Bhonsle goes through his day at a snail’s speed, hoping to get a service extension. He is a loner, isolating himself from people not because of a pandemic but because he despises people. He’d much rather feed the stray than indulge in a show of hollow Marathi pride. And then, he finds a friend in Lalu.

Watch the trailer of Bhonsle here:

Lalu (Virat Vaibhav), about seven or eight, has moved into the chawl with his sister, Sita (Ipshita Chakraborty). They’re from Bihar, and that’s enough to warrant hostility from Vilas (Santosh Juvekar), a taxi driver by night and an aspiring Marathi neta by day. A hostility that’s given birth to Rajendra’s (Abhishek Banerjee, in a cameo) hatred towards Marathis. Lalu becomes a pawn in Rajendra’s petty plan and things spiral into motion.

To say that Manoj Bajpayee owns the character of Bhonsle will be stating the obvious. The actor has never given us a chance to say otherwise. This time too, he blends right in. Manoj gets Bhonsle’s demeanour perfect – he stoops, walks ever so slowly, has a permanent weathered look on his face. Santosh Juvekar beautifully portrays Vilas’s desperation to emerge as a leader and frustration at failing to rouse that feeling in his fellow Marathis. Ipshita’s Sita, as the sole bread-earner of a family-of-two, is stern with a sort of benevolence that completes the character. The actor portrays the dichotomy perfectly. Virat as Lalu is vulnerable, helpless, and basically just a kid who wants to be a kid.

Makhija has spent more time in perfecting each frame with the precision of an artist than he has in editing. Several scenes in this 135-minute film could have been shortened to suit today’s OTT-viewing patterns. Yet, these scenes are such visual delights, that you don’t mind looking at them an extra 10 seconds. Credit to Jigmet Wangchuk for the picturesque cinematography here. Mangesh Dhakde’s gut-crunching music complements these very scenes.

Makhija has also made brilliant use of Ganapati Bappa itself. The elephant god’s prime purpose in the lives of us, mere mortals, is to irradicate our sorrows and bless us with happiness – dukh harta, sukh karta – but he must do all that as a mute spectator to all the wrongdoings taking place before him. Close-ups of elaborate eyes drawn on the massive idol, glowing in the dim light, as if teared up, says it all.

A particular scene at the hospital where Bhonsle is admitted stands out. Ganpat sort of comes face-to-face with Ganapati in the form of a man sitting across him with an oxygen mask stuck to his nose and the pipe winding down like the elephant god’s trunk.

The last 20-odd minutes of the film pick up the pace when you see the mortal Ganpat taking upon himself what Ganapati couldn’t. Before the visarjan, he must eliminate the evil and restore peace upon the Earth – or Churchill Chawl in this case. That is, until ‘ursha varshi’.

Bhonsle is streaming on SonyLiv, and for those of you willing to surrender to a poetry-like cinema, Bhonsle is a must-watch.

(The writer tweets as @NotThatNairita)

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