Jack is a cute 5 year old kid from “Room”, a movie based on the novel “Room”. He has been isolated with his mother in a room since his birth. And one day, suddenly, he gets out in the open, the ‘World’. You can read some of the interesting conversations in the movie here. The movie has beautifully expressed a child’s emotional rollercoaster while viewing the ‘World’, through Jack’s monologues. Most of them and directed to his mother. I am compiling them here because I want everyone to read them and be ‘awww’ed…
“Once upon a time, before I came, you cried and cried and watched TV all day, untill you were a zombie; but then I zoomed down from heaven through Skylight into Room. And I was kicking you from the inside. And then I shot onto Rug with my eyes wide open, and you cut the cord and said “Hello Jack..!”
Egg snake is our longest friend and fanciest. Meltedy spoon’s the best to eat with because he’s more blobbier. Labrynth is twistiest. And she hides things so I don’t know where they are. Toilet’s the best at disappearing poo. Lamp’s the brightest, except when the power is out. You (ma) are the best at reading, and songs, and lots, except if you’re having a ‘gone day’. I am the best at drawing, jumping, growing, and nearly everything!
I’ve been in the World for 37 hours. I’ve seen and cakes and stairs and birds and windows and hundreds of cars and clouds and police and doctors and grandma and grandpa… But ma says they don’t live together in the hammock house anymore. Grandma lives there with her friend Leo now and grandpa lives far away.
I have seen persons with different faces and bigness and smells, talking all together. The world is like all TV planets on at the same time (TV planets – TV channels). So I don’t know which way to look and listen. There is doors and more doors. and behind all the doors there is another inside and another outside and things happen, happening. It never stops..
Plus, the world is always changing brightness and hotness. And there is invisible James floating everywhere. When I was small I only knew small things. But now I am five, I know everything.
There is so much of place in the world. There is less time, because the time has to be spread extra thin over all the places, like butter. So all the persons say, “hurry up, let’s get going..”, “pick up the pace finish up now..” Ma was in a hurry to go boing up to heaven. But she forgot me, dumbo ma! So the aliens through her back down. And broke her.
when I was four, I didn’t even know about the world. And now me and ma are going to live in it forever and ever, until we are dead. This is a street in a city in a country called America. And Earth, that’s a blue and green planet, always spinning, so I don’t know why we don’t fall off. When there is outer space. And nobody knows where is heaven.
Ma and I have decided that because we don’t know what we like, we get to try everything. There are so many things out there. And sometimes it’s scary, but that’s ok, because it’s still just you and me..”
From the trailer (I haven’t read the novel), the plot looked simple-same old story of a gangster’s rise and fall; a rather monotonous one, dealt quite a lot with in Bollywood. But while/after watching it, one can’t resist to get attached to it and want more of it. Its influence thrives per episode, and in the end of the season we are left with dumbstruck awe. It breaks a lot of stereotypes, which makes it a unique creation.
The so-called antagonist, Ganesh Gaitonde is portayed by Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who has not only done an extraordinary job of acting, but also has owned the series in the way he says-”Kabhi kabhi lagta hai apun hi bhagwan hai”!. He tells us (actually, Sartaaj) his story in the entire season. He gives Sartaaj a big mystery to solve, which has a long list of sub questions-what is their connection? What’s going to happen in the next 25 days? Why and how was he betrayed? Was he scared? Where was he in the last 15-20 years? Why his third Baap is so important? and so on.. The episodes solve some of these and add a few new mysteries thereby making the viewers stick to their screens. It becomes interesting and thrilling because of his death in the very first episode. In each of the episodes we get introduced to different mythological terms–after which the episodes are named-from Mahabharat with respect to the characters in this story, which is a good change from the bombardment of foreign mythological series.
His wife Subhadra (Rajshri Deshpande) has a small but major part in his life, her death makes him murder 80 random innocent people, which fuels the riots in 1992 and leads him to suffer in jail. Kantabaai was Ganesh’s strong acquaintance and a sort of guide in Mumbai (portrayed by Shalini Vatsa). All these women rise bright and strong, and even dominate over Gaitonde’s being. Whereas Sartaaj Singh is initially isolated and distorted by his divorce. He eventually evolves as a person bold enough to even risk his job by diving deep into Gaitonde’s case. Saif Ali Khan has done his homework well for this character so it doesn’t, at any point, look forced.
One of the appealing features of this season was supposed to be Anjali Mathur (Radhika Apte)-the RAW agent-who is shown continuously fighting the demons of patriarchy in the line of work and the tragic closure of the case of her missing father. Looking at the strong female characters Radhika has portrayed earlier, we might develop some expectations from Anjali, her being a female RAW agent. She is ‘shown’ to have been complaining that female agents, despite their abilities, are forced to do desk work rather than field work. At the same time, she is portrayed to be quite inadequate for her job-not vigilant enough-making her death look dumb. Whether it is the requirement of the character or not is another matter; but RAW certainly trains the agents well, so it’s not convincing enough. Same with Constable-and a friendly colleague of Sartaaj-Katekar’s (Jitendra Joshi) death, it looks slightly out-of-place (not so smart); but along with his family, he makes a significant presence in the season. 
His journey from the cop who is unenthusiastic about the missing Muslim boy to the cop who tells his wife, ”आज खूप दिवसांनी खऱ्या पोलिसासारखं वागलो (Today, I acted as a true policeman after a long time)” with satisfaction, is overwhelming.
It is quite challenging to construct a fictional character taking part in actual history without molding it and constantly switching from flashbacks to present, but the directors and writers are successful in making it look natural.
This reminded me of another movie, ‘The Oxford Murders’. In that, the protagonist-Martin, a university student, unravels the mystery of his landlady’s murder, while being fooled by his idol-Arthur Seldom-who is actually, trying to cover the murderer because of some guilt from past. Seldom makes Martin believe that a serial killer is challenging them by giving them a mathematical problem. But his puzzles are used as a cover by a desperate father of a seven year old girl in need of a lung transplant and he murders next few (who are already on the verge of dying). He plans to blow up the school-bus of neurodivergent kids and use one of their lungs for his daughter’s transplant. He dies in the ordeal, but the curious thing is, why did he think it’s appropriate to take lives of those kids? Because their consciousness was developed in a different way from that of ours? Does it make them insignificant? 
The French graphic novel Le Transperceneige (on which the movie Snowpiercer is based) shows the struggle-to live on the same footage, in the ice age caused by a failed global warming experiment, done by humans of course-between the high and low classes of humans-not caring about the whereabouts of other elements of the planet’s biological sector. It, therefore, indirectly shows the narcissistic human nature-how little we care about others, may they be other humans or creatures.
Two videos from AIB-
Wander with Mudita 