Towards the backdrop of a seedy small city, Bhakshak units out to discover two questions: how lengthy can one stay silent within the face of injustice, and what does it imply to be a journalist?
Profound as they might be, these will not be new questions. And regardless of the numerous methods by which they’ve been explored—probably the most marked maybe being the 1983 movie Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron—a passable reply is but to be discovered.
Bhakshak, directed by Pulkit and starring Bhumi Pednekar, isn’t the reply.
Pednekar performs a struggling tv journalist who will get her huge story one night time from a supply. She is skeptical at first, however her trusted digital camera particular person, Bhaskar Sinha (a pleasant Kumud Mishra), snoops round to pry out sufficient flesh from what’s simply one other authorities audit report. The stakes on this one are larger, for it takes a glance a shelter residence for underage ladies—those who’ve nobody searching for them, because the viewer is instructed repeatedly. From there to getting some semblance of justice is the journey of Pednekar’s character, Vaishali Singh.
Regardless of the promising premise, Pednekar is predictable in Bhakshak. There’s a mellowness to her efficiency at most locations until she rouses a key witness into motion. It’s a mellowness that does little to distract you from her repeated and inconsistent mispronunciation of 1 key phrase within the narrative. After you have heard it, you can’t unhear it. In a language the place the livelier nuances have been picked up, that is jarring.
The film catches many strains—wry jokes centred across the Web, an overbearing patriarchy and a conditioned matriarchy, and particular person urge for food for the distress of others—however most of it’s simply tokenism. After some time, the labour begins to indicate. The movie feels heavy, and never simply as a metaphor.
The digital camera holds the mud of a small-town atmosphere effectively, and some pictures take you to the figurative asking of that repeated query of how a lot we must always care, if in any respect. On the finish of this three-hour-plus film, when a ultimate tease to the fourth wall has been made, we’re actually past caring.
Bhakshak is a movie in want of higher storytelling. Simply having a coronary heart in the correct place doesn’t matter.
