Movie Review: Rajkummar Rao’s Bheed
The pandemic for us city dwellers was more about not getting to go out of our abodes and living everyday life, more than the fight for survival. Yes, we had our problems too, but for the majority of us, it never became a situation to choose between life and death. For the migrants, though, who had to vacate the Maximum city and move towards their villages, fought a battle, a battle for life and the fight to save every bit of it if they could. Filmmakers have been trying to capture the situation through their lens over the past two years, but none could crack the idea in a bulletproof way.
Anubhav Sinha, armed with writers Sonali Jain and Saumya Tiwari, decides to tell the story through a lens that captures the reactions of the have-nots to the pandemic. It is quite a fresh perspective to see the boundaries and quest to cross them as a yet another partition. Because it was. The civilized system turned the migrants into workers but never cared about them on doomsday. The boundary is more mental than physical, and the attempt is to bridge it. What works in Sinha’s favour is how he chooses to place the story written by him. His story kick-starts on the 14th day of the lockdown when all of us were confused and borderline misguided. Even the most learned of us.
Rajkummar Rao plays Surya, a man from the have-nots who is now a cop. There are so many nuances in how Anubhav and Raj together establish this man who has only learned taking orders and never given them from the grassroots level. Now it is his test when the power is with him about how he uses it. Add to it that the world doesn’t let him forget his roots and use them like a weapon against him. Rao has a special bone for being vulnerable on screen, and he does it very well.
Bhumi Pednekar as a girl from a higher part of the hierarchy, has had her set of struggles. The actor is amazing at what she does. But the script focuses more on her romantic inclination towards Surya than what she goes through as the doctor. The two get an unnecessary intimate sequence that talks about how even after rising above Surya is still scared to even touch a girl from a higher cast, forget having s*x with her, but it doesn’t end well. Their dynamic certainly ends up looking half-baked.
Pankaj Kapur is a seasoned performer and does his best to bring out the evil of this setup in words. He is used as the voice of the ones waiting at the boundary but is also stereotyped in many ways. Kritika Kamra, as a journalist, is promising and impressive. But her arc ends at the point where she ends up giving a ‘Incredible India’ monologue and doesn’t go beyond. Journalism saw a paradigm shift in both negative and positive ways in these times and her arc doesn’t serve even the tip of the iceberg.
Dia Mirza sadly gets the most under baked part as a divorcee who is racing against her former husband to reach their daughter and doesn’t care if some people die on the way. She gets one scene where she flaunts her privilege and one where someone makes her acknowledge it. Nothing in between.
Bheed is a mix of a conversation that is needed and an ideology that overpowers the said conversation. It is a confusing watch, but it does have its merit, and it cannot be ignored.
