In 2017, the journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh was gunned down outside her home in Bengaluru. Among those disturbed by the incident — and the larger trend of journalists and scholars dropping dead in modern India — was filmmaker Kanu Behl. Known for dark, masculinity-probing films like Titli and Agra, Behl wanted to break out of his shell and attempt something fresh. Along with screenwriter Ishani Banerjee, he threw himself into research, which lasted 18 months.
“We attended court sessions, spoke to crime journalists, lawyers, cops, even a couple of underworld sharpshooters,” Behl shares. Josy Joseph, a Delhi-based investigative journalist whose book, A Feast of Vultures, was widely acclaimed, was one of the resources. Everyone had the same refrain: a criminal-political-corporate nexus befogs and bedevils our unequal world, rendering truth-seeking virtually impossible. “A bigger story started emerging out of our smaller story.”
The resultant film, Despatch, began streaming on ZEE5 on December 13. Tense and tenebrous, it wears the garb of a straight-ahead thriller. Manoj Bajpayee is Joy Bag, a crime journalist probing a shootout and treading into forbidden waters. The character is closely and clearly modelled on Jyotirmoy Dey, the star Mumbai scribe who was shot down by bike-borne assailants in 2011. Behl says he never approached the story as a true-lifer, unlike, say, something like Hansal Mehta’s Scoop, which references the J-Dey murder as its central trigger.
“I saw this as a Faustian exploration of one man’s actions, “ says Behl, who holds Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View and All the President’s Men—masterworks of the paranoid press procedural—in high regard.
“Journalists, in real life, are fallible, fragile, greedy, and troubled. If our system is morphing into something we don’t like, are our people also morphing into the same?”
Likeability, indeed, is not one of Joy’s stronger suits. He is not a family man; his marriage to Shweta (Shahana Goswami) is falling apart, and he’s involved with two other women, both journalists played by Arrchita Agarwaal and Rii Sen. It is a grasping, libidinous performance by Bajpayee, closing out the year with another sex-fueled role after the one in Killer Soup. “Despatch is probably the maximum sex I’ve had on screen,” Bajpayee, 55, laughs, adding, “The three relationships have a unique dynamic, and it’s replicated in the love-making.”
Bajpayee had first met Behl at a party, and complimented him on his debut feature, Titli. This was standard; what surprised Behl was the follow-up call the morning after. “I was struck that he meant it, and genuinely wanted to collaborate,” Behl says. On set, Bajpayee was put through the wringer, doing 40-45 takes at times. The process, as he says, was taxing and exhausting, yet rewarding. “This is what keeps me alive,” Bajpayee says. “I cannot carry dead meat to the set. I can take everything but I cannot take boredom.”
Shot by cinematographer Siddharth Diwan, Despatch is grimy and unbeautiful, filmed in the concrete wildernesses of Mumbai, Delhi-NCR and London. One scene, ostensibly unfolding inside a Gurugram data centre but actually shot in Mumbai, finds Joy out of his depth and running for his life. It captures the blend of desperation, improvisation and flow-blown panic that is the lot of crime journalists plying their precarious trade. “A journalist is not an intelligence man,” Bajpayee remarks. “He’s learning things on the fly, trying to get to the truth. But in Joy’s case, he’s trying to get there fast. He’s always in a hurry.”
Kanu Behl and cinematographer Siddharth Diwan on the sets of ‘Despatch’
Despatch was shown at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival in October; another Bajpayee-starrer, Ram Reddy’s magic realist yarn The Fable, also screened at the festival. Even at his age and stature, Bajpayee continues to make time for indie-er, experimental projects. This has always been his way, he maintains. “I can either chase paychecks or chase the excitement of going to set.”
In an early scene in Despatch, Joy, apropos of the Mumbai underworld, says, “Abhi naya king hai… (There is a new king now)“. It’s a title Satya’s Bhiku Mhatre had famously claimed for himself, over 25 years ago, proudly and rhetorically asking, “Mumbai ka king kaun?” Bajpayee reflects on how his cinematic journey is inextricably tied up with the city’s changing face.
“In older times, even with the mafia and the crime and the shootouts, there was a shade of cultural warmth to the city. We had our Govinda and Ganesh Chaturthi. But now, with the relentless vertical expansion, the local ‘Mumbaiyaa’ feeling is lost. That’s how these white-collar crimes have emerged — with the skyscrapers.”
Published – December 13, 2024 04:57 pm IST
