Starring: Bobby Deol, Sapna Pabbi, Saba Azad, Sanya Malhotra, Indrajith Sukumaran, Jitendra Joshi, Raj B. Shetty Directed by Anurag Kash...
Starring: Bobby Deol, Sapna Pabbi, Saba Azad, Sanya Malhotra, Indrajith Sukumaran, Jitendra Joshi, Raj B. Shetty
Directed by Anurag Kashyap
Based on True Incidents
There is something almost bruising about the way
Bandar unfolds—like a story that refuses to be “told” in the conventional sense
and instead insists on being endured. In that sense, it feels less like a
return and more like a reclamation for Anurag Kashyap—a filmmaker who has
always thrived in discomfort, in moral ambiguity, and in the uneasy silences
between truth and perception.
Produced by Nikhil Deivedi and written by Sudip
Sharma and Abhishek Banerjee, Bandar takes what could easily have been a
sensational premise and strips it down to something far more unsettling: the
slow, irreversible corrosion of a human being under accusation.
At the centre of it all is Samar Mehra, an ageing,
almost-forgotten rock star—once celebrated, now peripheral—whose life implodes
when he is accused of rape by a former partner. What Kashyap does, and does
with unnerving restraint, is refuse to turn Samar into either a martyr or a
monster. Instead, he lets him exist in that most uncomfortable of cinematic
spaces: the unresolved.
The line spoken by a fellow inmate—that Section 376
is worse than Section 302 because the label outlives the verdict—does not
merely summarise the film; it haunts it. Kashyap understands that in today’s
hyper-mediated world, judgement precedes justice. The police brutality, the
media frenzy, the suffocating presumption of guilt—these aren’t plot devices,
they are the ecosystem within which Samar is slowly dismantled.
And yet, the film’s most provocative choice is also
its most dangerous one: its willingness to explore male victimisation without
turning it into a slogan. In a cinematic and social landscape that (rightfully)
foregrounds women’s vulnerability, Bandar risks discomfort by asking—quietly,
almost hesitantly—what happens when the framework fails to account for nuance.
Does that make Samar’s suffering more important? Not necessarily. But it does
make it harder to ignore.
Kashyap, to his credit, resists polemics. He does
not argue; he observes. He does not resolve; he reveals.
This restraint is mirrored in Bobby Deol’s
staggering performance. There is a lived-in exhaustion to his Samar—a man who
oscillates between disbelief, rage, and a kind of hollowed-out resignation. It
is not a performance built on grand gestures but on accumulation: each
humiliation, each beating, each moment of isolation adding another invisible
weight.
The women orbiting Samar are equally compelling,
and crucially, never reduced to narrative functions. Sapna Pabbi as Gayatri is
not written as a villain; her presence lingers as a question mark the film
refuses to simplify. Saba Azaad brings a fragile immediacy to Khushi, while
Sanya Malhotra as Suhani provides the film’s emotional anchor—her scenes with
Samar carrying a raw, almost documentary-like intimacy.
Among the supporting cast, Indrajith Sukumaran’s
inmate leader exudes quiet menace, Jitendra Joshi’s Deore embodies
institutional apathy with chilling ease, and Raj B Shetty adds an
unpredictable, almost surreal edge as the vagabond-poet-prisoner.
Kashyap’s cinema has always thrived on
moments—sudden, piercing flashes of truth—and Bandar is no exception. The
police station sequence, where Samar is first dragged into the system, is
suffocating in its realism. His breakdown before his sister—repeating his need
for ten thousand rupees like a broken loop while the world outside collapses—is
devastating in its banality. And then there is the Pinjar sequence in jail,
which rises above the narrative like a fever dream, equal parts poetic and
terrifying.
Visually and tonally, the film is uncompromising.
It is grimy, claustrophobic, at times almost physically difficult to watch. But
that discomfort is the point. Kashyap has never believed in aestheticising
pain; he believes in confronting it head-on.
The climax, or what passes for one, will likely
divide audiences. There is no catharsis here, no sweeping declaration of
innocence or guilt. Instead, the film ends on a quieter, more ambiguous
note—not of resolution, but of defiance. Samar’s battle is far from over, but
something within him has shifted. The ending does not close his story; it opens
it.
And perhaps that is what Bandar ultimately
understands best: that some battles are not about winning or losing, but about
refusing to disappear under the weight of accusation.
By Pratik Majumdar (author: Love Coffee Murder and
1975 The Year That Transformed Bollywood)
No comments