3BHK Movie Review: An unconvincing advertisement for middle-class success
3BHK Movie Review(1.5 / 5)
3BHK Movie Review: A prominent part of the middle-class struggle is how society and its system place numerous obstacles in the way of an average family’s relentless pursuit of achieving a stable, comfortable life. 3BHK is about the same, but it is told through the perspective of the system. It’s not the system trying to show you a heartwarming tale of a family rising above insurmountable odds, romanticising its unfair ways. It is the system telling you how unfortunate it is that the middle class have to toil across decades, make thousands of sacrifices, beat their hopes, dreams and even love into shape so they fit the life it allows you to have. But it is still the system telling you, how, after all that, when you have crossed the best years of your life, and when your parents are closer to death, you can finally accept the rewards, the fruits, that three-bedroom apartment, with a smile. That is the point that makes 3BHK feel disingenuous, a film that is a metaphorical advertisement for middle-class life and a literal advertisement for a construction company.
Director: Sri Ganesh
Cast: Siddharth, R Sarathkumar, Devayani, Meetha Raghunath, Chaithra J Achar
3BHK could have worked brilliantly as a critique of a broken social system, about how it utterly failed the ever-expanding middle class. But, with its surgical warmth and calculated relatability, the treatment of the film makes it apparent that we are being sold an idea instead of being told a story. The story and the tone of the film are constantly fighting with each other. The story is pulling towards a methodical elaboration of a family’s struggle, while the tone, largely aided by the bright visuals and sappy music, is constantly trying to paint a saccharine picture. There is a poignant scene towards the beginning of the film where the son, Prabhu (Siddharth), is broken down after his first major academic disappointment. With ample cinematic punctuation, a wad of cash is shown to be passed from the mother (Devayani) to the father (Sarathkumar) to the sister (Meetha Raghunath) and finally to the son, Prabhu, to help him get back up and try harder. The rousing music clearly goads us to feel warmth, and the scene is ostensibly geared to make us see how an entire family comes together to support the son. Previously, we didn't just see Prabhu mourning a disappointing exam result; he is broken down by guilt of not being able to help his family. So, as Prabhu clutches the wad of cash with resolve, and the music tells us to root for his success, we cannot help but feel bad for how Prabhu, aided by his own family, is being pushed further into a vicious system that will no doubt break him through more guilt. It cannot be overstated how much the music works against the film, with its constant neediness to register its presence. Quiet moments are a luxury in 3BHK. One could make the argument that 3BHK simply shows the world for what it is and not how we would like it to be. Even with its carefully adjusted perspective of 'The world for what it is', the film ultimately drives to a simplistic ending with nothing much to say. So, its worldview seems to serve no other purpose than to provide artificial warmth at the end.
3BHK makes a daring effort to show a protagonist who is truly unremarkable, who, in essence, is meant to mirror the average common man. They successfully resisted the urge to give him an innate talent that magically springs up out of nowhere in the third act to help him achieve everything he wanted. Prabhu doesn’t become an academic genius through sheer will in a single night. The film’s total commitment to showing truly grounded characters is highly commendable. However, even as they are portrayed with signature wide-eyed middle-class meekness, Prabhu and his family seem to be their own worst enemies. No matter how hard they try, they can't seem to uplift themselves. Prabhu’s average performance in school, college, and work is positioned as the major obstacle for the family’s 3BHK dream. It is never the system but its unfortunate victims, who are the problem.
We do eventually see the characters realising that their choices are not their own and start exercising their individuality. It comes far too late in the story and is still presented as a desperate last-ditch effort in the face of overwhelming failures instead of a transformative journey born of hard-earned wisdom. 3BHK should have either committed to being an out-and-out feel-good drama about a family of lovable characters striving towards a common goal, or it should have gone deeper into the systemic struggles faced by a middle-class family and critiqued the system, which it clearly had immense potential for. By the end, when we see real estate agents bowing down to the camera as they welcome Vasudevan and family to their dream home, we realise that the film isn’t just trying to sell you a real estate developer, it is selling you a very specific middle-class dream, the ones already being sold by corporates, banks, and other institutions. The film doesn’t sugarcoat these dreams as rosy fantasies but as very real struggles, which makes it truthful. But these obstacles and struggles are often borne of Prabhu and his family's own shortcomings and not because of an unfair system. If only the film stopped blaming its own characters and understood the multi-layered structural issues in our society, it could have been a consummate social drama, instead of a synthetic heart warmer.