BANDAR 2025
by
Anurag Kashyap
Every man breathing free air, getting to eat warm food of his choice, shitting in a clean commode and living his life out of his home rather than a jail-box is courtesy a good, disinterested woman who is not hell bent on locking him away. The day she, his beta noire, decides otherwise, yamdoots aka Indian cops shall come knocking and disdainfully throw him inside a cage, personal liberty and due process be damned. That is the long and short of Anurag Kashyap’s Bandar, starring Lord Bobby Deol. Gender laws carry such inherent bias in this country that common sense, legal protection and equality before law do not mean anything when relationships turn sour and the aggrieved female sets out to seek revenge.
Bandar starts off almost as a MRA (Men’s Rights Activists) dream project, with Bobby Deol providing the face of a wronged man, but as the film progresses, one realizes that the film is not quite ready to lay exclusive blame for the messy situation upon women or the woman in question. Man, she was ghosted by our hero after he had had his fill and could no longer take any more of her. He blocked her mobile number to avoid uttering casual lies about his whereabouts. She stalked him with unrelenting passion. Sanya Malhotra, playing Bobby’s sister, expresses her horror when she becomes aware about all this. How can you sow wild oats and then vanish? What do you do when you want to move on, but the lady-in-question is hung up on you? By the end of the film, Bobby himself concedes that perhaps his antics were what drove her to desperation.
There is no gainsaying that police treat common man without much empathy, but when the man sitting in a police station is a minor celebrity or a mildly-rich, semi-educated man, neither is their body language so outrightly offensive, not do they openly mock him for getting caught with pants down. What they have shown here is a crass exaggeration of how cops behave. It is to be understood that they see so much filth floating around, that they do not compulsively judge rapists, paedophiles or murderers. Not just cops, but everyone involved, including lawyers, jail officials, judges and fellow prisoners in undertrial prisons have an innate realization that most rape accusations are lame, fake, misguided, spiteful or having some ulterior motive, and would not stand the test of trial. This is where the film becomes a drag.
Anurag Kashyap somehow lets Bandar slip from being a modern honeytrap story having legal implications into a longish peep into an undertrial prison. Viewers are treated to an overdose of floating shit and filth inside prisons. Gang loyalties and extortions are the order of the day. Many inmates have been wrongly framed, but almost everyone claims to be innocent. But we know a lot about all this, don’t we? The film could have been better served by maintaining focus upon technical aspects of the particular case. Most of these allegations involve breach of marital promise, forced intoxication, or misuse of official position or influence by the accused. Bandar, unfortunately, does not quite build a convincing legal case against Bobby. Reproduction of chats point towards sleaze and debauchery, but how is the charge of rape established here is not quite clear. Police’s active help to the so-called victim to ensure continuous denial of bail to the accused and the judge’s simplistic stereotyping of all entertainment personnel is case specific, and not the norm.
Bobby transforms from a regular guy, fucked by his ex, into a prickly, unstable asshole, who has no idea about what the fuck is going on. This is how it happens when a hurricane hits a regular guy. Even before the case, he was sleepwalking through his life and relationships, so much so that he could not even provide all details to his lawyer. His insistence on writing to his current girlfriend at any cost emanates from his realization that an unclean break had brought the current trouble upon him, and that any future termination of a relationship must occur consciously, truthfully and unequivocally. This is the only lesson that Bandar imparts- severe your relationships cleanly. Precise cuts must be applied; vagueness must be avoided else trouble waits for you around the corner.
Bobby Deol is a delight to watch. The legend of Aashram and Animal has truly grown as an actor. Sanya Malhotra impresses in a cameo as his concerned sister. Saba Azad is a reliable actress but does not quite light up the screen. Sapna Pabbi carries that negative glitter of a crystal-collecting oriental healer; someone who would be mortally offended on being dumped. Indrajith Sukumaran is solid in his role as the boss of a prison faction. Raj B. Shetty has been totally wasted by caricaturing him as a lizard-smoker. He does get a GGVV-like prison dance, but that’s about it. With some sharper writing by Sudeep Sharma and Abhishek Bannerjee, and more directorial freedom for Kashyap, Bandar would have bloomed more beautifully. As things now stand, the film manages to highlight the male grouse but fails to take head-on the inherent biases in gender laws.
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