'Shor in the City' (Hindi, Drama)
Director: Raj Nidimoru & Krishna DK
Cast: Tusshar Kapoor, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Preeti Desai, Pitabash Tripathy, Nikhil Dwivedi, Radhika Apte, Sundeep Kishan
The titles of 'Shor in the City', station us immediately at the lowest common denominator that is their locale, the streets of Mumbai. The film rests its feet firmly at the footrest of a motorcycle, constantly looking upwards, but its gaze is never aspirational. It is much more at home drawing its characters, even those alien to the streets, to the grime of its milieu.
Over the eleven days of Ganesh Chathurthi personal moments in the lives of three distantly connected people play out in Mumbai’s public spaces. There is a persistent, yet tacit sense that the city is always a part of the film’s proceedings and its people. While this is the natural order for some, their source of sustenance even, for others it grows from annoyance to dangerous.
For Abhay, played by an aptly cast Sendhil Ramamurthy, it is the criminal element of Mumbai that steadily encroaches and eventually harasses him in his professional space. As an Indian returning from the US, he bears the veneer of a wide-eyed evangelist of capitalism. He even meets Sharmili, his ladylove, in his native habitat — a nightclub (one that any metropolis in the world would be proud of).
From the street goon who cons him for the contents of his wallet to Sharmili, everyone has him pegged as a manageable stereotype at first glance. But scars, both physical and emotional, suggest that there is more to him than the fancy attire and he isn’t so much looking to a new future as he is hiding from a past.
Tilak, Mandook and Premal inhabit the same world as Ajay’s harassers. Their primary source revenue is theft, not just of easily liquefiable assets but also of intellectual property. Mandook is the runt of the group and the most given to exaggeration, never learning from the constant jibes of his friends.
Of the friends, Mandook and Premal do not possess a bone of self-preservation or an eye for consequence. Tilak is the only one who merits a character arc and a woman in his life. For all his escapades, he can’t work up the courage to speak to his young college educated bride.
Marriage sparks Tilak’s path to redemption, but the institution precipitates the problems in the fledgling middle class romance of Sawan and Sejal. Sawan is up for selection to the Mumbai team and politics have him distracted from the proceedings on the pitch. To compound matters, his girlfriend’s parents are lining up prospective grooms for Sejal. As he argues with Sejal on terrace tops, Marine drive rendezvous and main road intersections, Sawan realises there is a universal panacea for his problems – money.
'Shor in the City’s appeal lies in its matter-of-fact portrayal of the cracks in the system and how they never seem to stymie the constant churn that is urban life. From the police to the selection board, every attempt at preserving and nurturing order is only a corrupt version of what was intended. The only things that the film leaves unsullied are its relationships.
Be it a silent invitation through the unhooking of a blouse, the vehement removal of an unwanted engagement ring or the caring enquiry about a scar — the film’s best moments are in the sensitivity it accords the people it throws together. It is also the saving grace of a film that has no narrative engine.