Winner for all ages

There would be little surprise if Haraamkhor turns out be the year's best independent film

It took four long years for Shlok Sharma’s paralysingly beautiful Haraamkhor to pass through the Kafkaesque Indian Censor Board to get released at the cinemas. The Anurag Kashyap protege has outclassed his mentor in touching the audience’s raw nerve, in a good way. 

The plot, set somewhere in the Indian hinterland, revolves around Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s teacher character, Shyam, who takes a liking for his 14-year-old student, played excellently by Shweta Tripathi as Sandhya. 

If the movie echoes a trope similar to Coetzee’s Disgrace, or “you are the fire of my loins” Lolita, the comparisons shall stop there. The movie instead takes a Munro twist with Tripathi’s classmate, Kamal (Master Irfan Khan), disapproving of any such dalliance and professing his undying love for her. 

Sharma’s superb understanding of small town India mores makes the movie watchable even in the dull moments during its 95-minute duration. There’s a kid who’s called Shaktimaan and dresses like India’s solitary modern superhero all the time. The movie’s real deal is the banter between Mohammad Samad and Irfan Khan. The former, as Mintu, a pint-sized dynamite, especially lights up the screen with his stunningly mischievous antics and effortless dialogue delivery. “If a boy and girl see each other naked, it means they are married,” says Mintu in an oh-so-cute way.

Jasleen Royal’s music, both sparing and playful, is highly effective. Among the remarkable scenes are the one where Siddiqui becomes mad at his wife after she finds out about his affair. The way he simultaneously chides and reconciles with Tripathi in the pre-climactic portions is evocative as well. He delivers  a comedy masterclass in this hideously funny movie. Siddharth Diwan’s vivid camerawork shows rural Gujarat (which passes off as Madhya Pradesh) in its complete glory. There are clear skies, vast vacant landscapes that he inflects with bright colours to depict underlying elegy, intimation, darkness.

One of my favourite scenes is when Tripathi teases Siddiqui in an ice-cream parlour. The unflinching camera and the purity that’s the sole domain of a teenager will stick with me. As a young girl who finds solace from her teacher due to her largely absent father, this would have been the perfect debut for her if not for the delay in release.

Shot in a short space of 16 days on a shoestring budget, Haraamkhor is technically recondite and mordantly obscure. That is, however, an indictment of producer Guneet Monga who is emerging as Harvey Weinstein-lite of India. I know we are only two weeks into 2017, but I would be really surprised if Haraamkhor doesn’t emerge as the best Indian independent movie of the year.