"Bidurbhai": A Hilarious Social Commentary with Uneven Humor
The Assamese films that have been released in the last few weeks—including Emon, Homeboys, Pratishruti, and Swargarath, to mention a few—failed to impress me. Without getting into the specifics of the stories in these movies—some of which are utterly cringe-worthy —these movies, at best, resembled casually shot home videos that were made with minimal planning or production design or much thought given about its production design. Adhering to guerrilla filmmaking techniques shouldn't be used as an excuse to create impoverished products when the storyline calls for a significant investment in world building to decrease the burden of believability for the audiences.
But I must say, director Suvrat Kakoti has the style and the chops to make a film that works, at least in terms of its visual and commercial potential, if not so much in terms of political correctness. I will get to that later.
But firstly, Bidurbhai is a film that looks like a film in the first place. When it comes to the visual treatment, Bidurbhai is able to capture the actual look and feel of a movie without appearing cheap as if it was shot casually in someone’s backyard. Consider the initial sequence where police arrives at a wine shop to arrest the Bidurbhais or take the scene on the evening of December 31, when the Bidurbhais drink their heartfelt and collectively curse their unlucky fate. Also to observe is how Suvrat Kakoti uses thunder and lightning occasionally as a dramaturgical element in a number of scenes to heighten its impact.
Bidurbhai is an example of money being spent right in the filmmaking scenario of a state where filmmakers with negligible cinematic sense and sensibilities are making films that are just big screen counterparts of the low-budget productions of Rang and Rengoni TV. With Bidurbhai, filmmaker Suvrat Kakoti honors the very fact behind why people go to watch a movie on the big screen - for scale, for wonder and excitement and for entertainment.
And not much has to be said about the story of the film because the characters of Bolin, Ujjal, Nitu and Deep and their antics are already famous and much talked about in the pop cultural space of Assam. Moreover, the hit - Bidurgeet, sung by Achurjya Borpatra, rightly sums up their economic struggles as well. So, the stage was already set for writers Jyotishman Chetia and Suvrat Kakoti to expand the narrative of the four poor, unemployed and down on luck youth in their prime as they try to leave the old troubles behind. But when you are so out at the elbows can new troubles be far behind?
By now the readers must have guessed that the web-series serves as an essential pre-requisite before going in for the movie. Also to note, the review contains major spoilers for those who have not yet watched the film.
Bidurbhai (2024) picks up from where its precursor, the web-series, had left off but this time it’s also bigger and better. In the web-series, the conflict was very personal and individual to the characters. For example, being poor or unemployed was not an immediate conflict in itself, but the inability to publicly confess one’s love for a girl because the character was poor. However, in the new film, the writers have aimed for a larger social relevance as these individual struggles are connected to the larger socio-economic issues such as poverty, unemployment and corruption. This calls for the addition of two new characters, an MLA and his nephew, Diamond Chaliha.
To make the point more clear, the web-series showed how a hardworking man employed in government service “decides” to steal because he was not getting paid on time. The decision was the focus rather than the confrontation over his failure to receive his salary. However, in the movie, the same hardworking man's wife becomes pregnant, and when she needs to be admitted to the hospital, they are severely short on cash. This is the point at which the issue of delayed salary payments is linked to the general healthcare issues, including the shortage of required physicians and facilities in public hospitals.
Yes, Bidurbhai is loud but there are also quite moments. It’s fun but it is also shows grief in the right amount. There is humor and entertainment but it is also laden with social commentary in the most balanced manner. The humor is occasionally self-depreciative (as some of the jokes emerge out of the characters’ social and economic positions) but delivered without reducing the characters to mindless buffoonery, a characteristic that has sucked the soul out of many good comedies. This is where Bidurbhai treads its path carefully.
It balances different aspects and styles of comedy together. The death of a new born and the overall tragedy of not being able to afford the required health care facilities or a better standard of living, the socio-economic realities, the corruption, and the overall grimness of the situation successfully position it as a tragicomedy. But when it comes to the humor, it fluctuates between the situational and the slapstick (particularly the scene where Bolin, Ujjal, Nitu and Deep dresses as women to smuggle Agarwood out of the MLA’s property). Personally I don’t prefer slapstick comedy because it is loud and also sometimes it can be the perfect recipe for a disaster.
If comedy is meant to entertain and not offend, the humor goes a bit far in Bidurbhai when it showcases sexual violence in a humorous manner, as if doing so makes one nothing more than a joke. These are sensitive subjects which are to be dealt with care and respect and not to be depicted through a lens of fun. This is the exact kind of humor that got filmmakers like Sajid Khan (read Humshakals) panned high and low and made sex comedies like Great Grand Masti (2013) and Kya Super Kool Hai Hum (2012) uncool to the core. Caricatures do not gel well with slapstick as much as it does with satire. And Bidurbhai is not a satire.
If a reading at such level is to be done again, something more troubling is reflected in the song De Bhagawan. The singer laments in the song that while God has given others large tracts of land, expensive cars, and attractive women, he has not given him anything. Thus, he prays to God for high wealth and fortune. Here women are equated with materialistic possessions and are positioned as objects to be obtained by men.
There are a few double meaning gags here and there but Bidurbhai also has a unique way to make joke of things that it shouldn’t - like menstruation or homosexuality. It cracks the joke first and then provides an explanation as to why it shouldn’t have been a joke. Actually, it's the character’s desensitized and commoner outlook which subjects them to such prejudice. Therefore, a wise character from among the four immediately offers a politically correct explanation of the other character's naiveté. In the web-series, when one character’s naivety urges him to take a bath because he ate food served by a girl in her menstruation cycle, the wise character explains how menstruation is not untouchability but about maintaining one's cleanliness. Similarly, in the film, a character remarks in a snappy and critical manner that the minister is gay. Then another comes forward to affirm that being gay is not a crime.
Bidurbhai stays determined and focused on the objectives of the plot till the end. It also provides all four of its central characters with enough scope to shine. The writers have taken tried-and-tested ‘misadventures of a group of friends trying to get rich quickly’ storytelling framework which we have already seen in Hindi movies like Dhol (2007) and appropriately contextualize it with local ethos and sentiments. From superstitious practices and donation in the name of religion and festivals to public apathy and indifference of the administration, Bidurbhai indexes many relevant issues but doesn’t confuse viewers with too many sub-plots or too many characters.
