‘Dilli Dark’ is a film about the outsider syndrome and some really dark horses
Michael Okeke, the protagonist of the film Dilli Dark, is young, dark-skinned and African. He smarts as Delhi looks at him as an outsider, and then realises that the outsiders are already here—as neighbours, in history books, and in the subconscious of every ‘Delhiite’ who got here before he did. It is not personal, it is a reflex. As his friend Debu says: “It’s not ok, just the way it is.”
Debu (played brilliantly by actor-writer Shantanu Anam, a Delhi boy), for instance, as a Bengali, will always be suspect in the eyes of his north Indian landlord for his non-vegetarianism. Mansi (Geetika Ohlyan, who played the cop with tantrums in Soni) the godwoman's life will always be precarious in the city until she attracts big-league devotees and gets a spot on the slick chat shows. As for Yakut, the Abyssinian lover of Razia Sultan, whom Debu suggests Okeke adopt as role model, he was top gun only for a while when he had the heart of Delhi’s queen and roamed around with her on a big white horse.
Dilli Dark is Dibakar Das Roy’s first feature. He has directed films in various formats. And he may well turn out to be a worthy inheritor of Dibakar Banerjee’s mantle of being the director par excellence of ‘Delhi films’ —Khosla ka Ghosla, Oye Lucky Oye, LSD, and so on. He has the potential. His sense of comedy is spot on; he now only needs to make his storytelling and character-building more layered. Dilli Dark created quite a buzz on the festival circuit last year, and is set to have its release in Delhi theatres this weekend.
Nigerian actor Samuel Abiola Robinson, who Roy cast as Okeke, has 30 films to his credit, including Sudani from Nigeria, a sports-cum-community feature that won the best Malyalam feature film prize at the 2018 National Awards. Dilli Dark is his fourth film in India and his first as lead actor in a Hindi film. In it, his rap, ‘Kale hai, Dil waley hai’, is a fit anthem for the deliberately lowbrow, trashy aesthetic of the film and a play on darkness, the core idea of the film. It shows he can play the restrained yet eager foreign student, who, when lectured to for not fitting in enough, does what he can. But dusk onwards, he explodes—the city and his boss test his limits. When a woman on a scooter almost runs him over, he, by then already half-way Delhiite, is ready with the BC gaali.
But Michael Okeke, MBA student by day, has to turn into ‘Kevin’ with a drug peddler boss by night. The boss, a fellow Nigerian with a bossy girlfriend, runs a salon as a front for his real business. There is a hilarious exchange when both show off their Delhi cred, with Michael saying he is done with peddling, and he is “MBA, MBA” here in Delhi, and his boss says he is no less with a “BA from Delhi University”.
Light and day
Okeke’s double life, packed into day and night, light and dark, with some of the characters being both his bane and boon, hassling him and also ensuring his life is easier in the city, is how Roy sees urban lives and people—a dichotomy to be handled without bitterness. The film is a result of pickling of Roy’s own experiences when, in his early years in Delhi on the North Campus, he had to change his room 15 times due to troublesome landlords, and the problems that come from living cheek by jowl with other people.
“Villains don’t always come bearing swords. Sometimes the antagonist can be the friendly neighbourhood electrician who is entering your flat,” says Roy. What the electrician is capable of in Roy’s film may make you think again before you call in yours or let him near the fridge.
Delhi, for all its faults, is, unlike many other cities, language-agnostic. It’s something Okeke picks up early on in the film; just knowing the Delhi lingo, sharing its vibe of struggle, push and hustle goes a long way. If rebuffed, try harder as its source is something else. As Ranjani Mazumdar, professor of Cinema Studies, School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU, puts it: “There’s this idea that outsiders are infringing on the rights of 'permanent' residents. This is plainly a fiction invented to channel the rage at being disenfranchised.”
Buddha blows off steam
Roy has chosen his characters well. Robinson as Okeke is a calm Buddha amidst the chaos. His bestie and city-rationaliser Debu is a happy pig.
Speaking of Okeke, Roy says: “The first thing I wanted to do was create a character who the city ‘happens to’ and not the other way around. To establish the chaotic vibrancy of Delhi, we needed a protagonist who could provide support by being a contrast in every way. Also, through Okeke’s introversion, the struggle of him trying to make a place for himself in a city like Delhi is accentuated. Mainly because Delhi is known for loud and sometimes aggressive personalities, and a quiet outsider is the best person to embody that side of the city.”
But with Okeke cast as a drug dealer, the very thing that Delhiites expect all Africans in Delhi to be, isn’t that a self-goal? Cliches are important, says the director.
“They help you see patterns in life. The film shows Okeke trying to beat the stereotype. He needs the money he is getting from drug dealing to pay for his tuition, and tries to get off that life as well. So, it is something he is forced to do. The film, therefore, questions generally-held perceptions of Africans and pits it against reality—what Okeke is versus what he wants to be,” says Roy. “It’s a dark city, but it’s dark for everybody.” The film, he adds, is against all sorts of easy judgments. But could that be a problem?
In trying to keep it light in the dark, the hero ends up being amoral and borderline opportunistic. Okeke refuses to lie or divulge his ‘product-selling’ experience on Delhi’s streets when his academy arranges a job interview but, too, easily joins the godwoman’s team to fool others and even imagines the godwoman, who is also his cocaine client, could fall in love with him. Till then, looking to ‘get Neha’, his landlord’s daughter, he, as if a switch has been lit inside him, is now ready to be ‘got’ by Mansi Maa. Dilli Dark is ultimately a survivor’s story; by instinct, Okeke knows the rules of the game.