The journalists shown on Bollywood screen have been stereotypical -- cigar-chomping editors in their Saville Rows or the bechara garib patrakar in crumpled khadi kurtas destined to be bumped off in the early reels. Yami’s Vidhi Sahani in Lost is neither.
Some films are worth watching in the theatres, dingy or swanky. Others are worth watching at home, with a bottle of fizzy cola kept in your fridge without costing you a fortune. And a few, above all, are not worth watching anywhere even under duress.
Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Lost, streaming on Zee5 now, is one movie that I would have liked to see in a theatre. It is not because I do not like to slouch on a couch with a cup of Makaibadi in hand within the confines of my house to watch a movie.
I have been an inveterate theatre buff and I often skip even the originals on OTT platforms but when I get to see some of them at times, I instantly feel that I should have seen them in a theatre, not in my 15x10 living room with an outdated home theatre.
Lost is not a Pathaan (2023) that one needs an INOX screen and monstrous sound systems to savour the exploits of larger-than-life superstars, one might argue. It is, after all, a small film helmed by a young actress called Yami Gautam, who plays a journalist out to unravel the truth behind the disappearance of a young Dalit activist.
She has, of course, veteran Pankaj Kapoor and a reclusive Rahul Khanna in company who have done more than a fair job in this film as a doting grandpa and a suave, smooth-talking politician respectively, but it is out and out Yami’s film.
Playing the relatable character of a strong-willed newswoman working in a modern media house, she has delivered a fine performance. Journalists shown on the Bollywood screen otherwise have been stereotypical -- cigar-chomping editors in their Saville Rows or the bechara garib patrakar in crumpled khadi kurtas destined to be bumped off in the early reels. Yami’s Vidhi Sahani is neither.
She looks the part as the reporter-next-cubicle from a modern media organisation, who does not ever frown to get what the old hacks invariably considered the ‘downmarket’ crime beat.
And the credit for such a realistic characterisation goes entirely to Lost’s director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury. Had he wanted, he could have taken a male actor to play the reporter, say someone like Ayushmann Khurrana or even Vicky Kaushal.
In a still-patriarchal entertainment industry, it might have added more box-office heft to his movie without making any difference to its basic plot.
But Aniruddha being Aniruddha, the auteur with multiple National Awards, he chose to repose his trust in Yami, as he had done in the case of three female protagonists in his previous Hindi film, Pink (2016) that turned out to be such a path-breaking film on women’s independence to make her choices.
In this film also, the female protagonist is strong enough to not break down even after facing hurdles in the course of her investigation of the missing case. Her long-distance romance is also on the rocks and her relationship with her father is more than strained, but she does not buckle under the pressures of her life beyond bringing a solitary drop of tear in her eyes that she does not even shed.
She does not scream her larynx out in her room or throw the papers in desperation at her boss either to build up the tension that Syd Field would have loved. Aniruddha does not let her character get bogged down by her emotions in her bid to mend her relationship with her boyfriend or show her angst over her situation. Melodrama or mush obviously has little place in the style sheet given to her by her minimalistic auteur.
But such nuances do not necessarily play rich dividends in all Hindi films. Aniruddha has also sought to convey a strong message through his film about the alienation of the youth that forces them to turn radicals, as also about the crime-politics nexus but he has chosen to do so in an understated manner.
But unlike journalism, brevity is not the soul of filmmaking, at least in Bollywood where steroids are still considered placebos. Over-the-top is not really the over-the-top there.
Lost is another fine film from Aniruddha Roy Chowdhary’s oeuvre that has the unmistakable stamp of its director. What I missed, however, is that I did not get to see it on the big screen. Films such as Kahaani (2011) or Pink worked because of their gripping storylines, background scores and all that it takes to keep the audiences on the edge of their seats inside the dark theatres. Lost has all of that minus the theatre.
Even though it will find enough of receptive audiences on OTT, it would certainly have made more impact had it not taken the OTT route to reach us. One does not need only big and blinding visual spectacles like Pathaan to relish on the big screen. At times, even a small movie like Lost deserves 70MM screen to unveil its real beauty.